Wanted to correct Lenny Flank’s article I used above. Hitler does use the word “evolution”
seven times (at least in English translation) in volume 2 of
Mein Kampf, but zero times in volume 1. Lenny might have been referring to volume 1 only, and used a different translation. As in normal English usage, the word is often used as a synonyn for “change” but Hitler seems to refer to “biological” evolution at least twice (
in red), and “cultural evolution” once.
Weikart also disagrees that Hitler was a simple “creationist.” Hitler does refer often to “Nature” and uses other “Darwinian” phrases like “struggle for existence” (e.g. “My Struggle” is what
Mein Kampf means).
volume 2, Chapter IV: Personality and the Conception of the Folkish State –
“In order to elucidate this point of view it may be worth while to glance once again at the real origins and causes of the
cultural evolution of mankind. The first step which visibly brought mankind away from the animal world was that which led to the first invention. The invention itself owes its origin to the ruses and stratagems which man employed to assist him in the struggle with other creatures for his existence and often to provide him with the only means he could adopt to achieve success in the struggle. Those first very crude inventions cannot be attributed to the individual; for the subsequent observer, that is to say the modern observer, recognizes them only as collective phenomena. Certain tricks and skilful tactics which can be observed in use among the animals strike the eye of the observer as established facts which may be seen everywhere; and man is no longer in a position to discover or explain their primary cause and so he contents himself with calling such phenomena ‘instinctive.’ In our case this term has no meaning.
Because everyone who believes in the higher evolution of living organisms must admit that every manifestation of the vital urge and struggle to live must have had a definite beginning in time and that one subject alone must have manifested it for the first time. It was then repeated again and again; and the practice of it spread over a widening area, until finally it passed into the subconscience of every member of the species, where it manifested itself as ‘instinct.’ This is more easily understood and more easy to believe in the case of man. His first skilled tactics in the struggle with the rest of the animals undoubtedly originated in his management of creatures which possessed special capabilities.”
volume 2, Chapter VIII: The Strong Man is Mightiest Alone –
“The general
evolution of things, even though it took a century of struggle, placed the best in the position that it had merited.”
volume 2, Chapter X: Federalism as a Mask –
“He [Bismarck] trusted to the levelling effect of time and to the pressure exercised by the process of
evolution, the steady action of which appeared more effective than an attempt to break the resistance which the individual states offered at the moment. By this policy he showed his great ability in the art of statesmanship.”
volume 2, Chapter XI: Propaganda and Organization –
“I have never been in favour of hasty and pedantic methods of organization, because in most cases the result is merely a piece of dead mechanism and only rarely a living organization.
Organization is a thing that derives its existence from organic life, organic evolution. When the same set of ideas have found a lodgement in the minds of a certain number of people they tend of themselves to form a certain degree of order among those people and out of this inner formation something that is very valuable arises.”
volume 2, Chapter XII: The Trade-Union Question –
“Here also the principle holds good that the spirit is always more important than the external form which it animates; since this form can be created mechanically and quickly. For instance, the leadership principle may be imposed on an organized political community in a dictatorial way. But this principle can become a living reality only by passing through the stages that are necessary for its own
evolution. These stages lead from the smallest cell of the State organism upwards.”
volume 2, Chapter XIII: German Alliance Policy after the War –
“The oppression which we suffer from at the hands of our enemies is no longer taken, as it formerly was, as a matter for laughter; but it is resented with bitterness and anger. There can be no doubt that a great change of attitude has taken place. This
evolution has not yet taken the shape of a conscious intention and movement to restore the political power and independence of our nation; but the blame for this must be attributed to those utterly incompetent people who have no natural endowments to qualify them for statesmanship and yet have been governing our nation since 1918 and leading it to ruin.”
So I guess it is debatable whether Hitler was a (strict or simple) “creationist” in
Mein Kampf (published in 1925-26).
Phil P
