1st September 1941, midday
Pragmatic politicians vs.
meta-politic philosophers.
When one has preached in the desert for decades, it proves, when the time comes for action, that one has lost all contact with reality. These Germans of the old school were fine fellows, but their speciality was literature. Their audience was twenty thousand readers of their own stamp. None of them knew how to speak to the people.
Right from the beginning, I realised that one could not go far along that track. The man who means to act must find his support in faith, and faith is found only in the people. The great masses have no mercy, they go straight ahead with the simplicity of innocence. We have seen what a people is capable of, when it is led. All possibilities exist in it, for good as well as for evil. The duty of National Socialism inevitably boils down to this: all that is best in the people should be allowed ceaselessly to develop.