Adolph Hitler Mein Kampf (My Struggle)

particular problem.
Therefore there remained only two possible ways. Either to 
recommend our own party members to leave the trades unions in 
which they were enrolled or to remain in them for the moment, 
with the idea of causing as much destruction in them as possible.
In general, I recommended the latter alternative.
Especially in the year 1922­23 we could easily do that. For, 
during the period of inflation, the financial advantages which 
might be reaped from a trades union organization would be 
negligible, because we could expect to enroll only a few 
members owing to the undeveloped condition of our movement. 
The damage which might result from such a policy was all the 
greater because its bitterest critics and opponents were to be 
found among the followers of the National Socialist Party.
I had already entirely discountenanced all experiments which 
were destined from the very beginning to be unsuccessful. I 
would have considered it criminal to run the risk of depriving a 
worker of his scant earnings in order to help an organization 
which, according to my inner conviction, could not promise real 
advantages to its members.
Should a new political party fade out of existence one day 
nobody would be injured thereby and some would have profited, 
but none would have a right to complain. For what each 
individual contributes to a political movement is given with the 
idea that it may ultimately come to nothing. But the man who 
pays his dues to a trade union has the right to expect some 
guarantee in return. If this is not done, then the directors of such 
a trade union are swindlers or at least careless people who ought 
to be brought to a sense of their responsibilities.
We took all these viewpoints into consideration before making 
our decision in 1922. Others thought otherwise and founded 
trades unions. They upbraided us for being short­sighted and 

---

failing to see into the future. But it did not take long for these 
organizations to disappear and the result was what would have 
happened in our own case. But the difference was that we should 
have deceived neither ourselves nor those who believed in us.

---