I now for the first time turned these questions over in my mind coloured, as they were, by my position towards Germany’s alliance policy and the economic policy of the Empire from 1912 to 1914, and I found that the solution of the riddle lay more and more cer¬ tainly in that force with which I had made acquaint¬ ance, but from quite another standpoint, in Vienna : the doctrine and world-view of Marxism and its organizing influence.
For the first time I began to consider how an attempt might be made to master that world-pestilence.
I studied the aims, the struggles and the success of Bismarck’s special legislation. My study gradually gave me principles of granite for my own convictions —so much so that since then I have never had to think of changing my personal views on the question. I made also a deep study of the relation between Marxism and Judaism.
In 1913 and 1914 I began expressing my convictions in various circles, which to-day are in part still true to the National-Socialist movement, that the question of the future for the German nation is that of the destruc¬ tion of Marxism.
The internal decline of the German nation had begun a long time before that, but, as in life, people were not clear about the destroyer of their existence. They sometimes tried treatment for the disease, but they often mistook the symptoms for the cause. As no one knew that or wished to know it, the fight against Marxism was worth no more than the nonsensical recommendations of a quack.