“The aspect of the situation that first made the most striking impression on me and gave me grounds for serious reflection was the manifest lack of any individual responsibility in the representative body. The parliament passes some acts or decree which may have the most devastating consequences, yet nobody bears the responsibility for it. Nobody can be called to account. For surely one cannot say that a Cabinet discharges its responsibility when it retires after having brought about a catastrophe. Or can we say that the responsibility is fully discharged when a new coalition is formed or parliament dissolved? Can the principle of responsibility mean anything else than the responsibility of a definite person? Is it at all possible actually to call to account the leaders of a parliamentary government for any kind of action which originated in the wishes of the whole multitude of deputies and was carried out under their orders or sanction? Instead of developing constructive ideas and plans, does the business of a statesman consist in the art of making a whole pack of blockheads understand his projects? Is it his business to entreat and coach them so that they will grant him their generous consent? Is it an indispensable quality in a statesman that he should possess a gift of persuasion commensurate with the statesman’s ability to conceive great political measures and carry them through into practice? Does it really prove that a statesman is incompetent if he should fail to win over a majority of votes to support his policy in an assembly which has been called together as a chance result of an electoral system that is not always honestly administered. Has there ever been a case where such an assembly has worthily appraised a great political concept before that concept was put into practice and its greatness 0penly demonstrated through its success? In this world is not the creative act of the genius always a protest against the inertia of the mass? What does the statesman do if he does not succeed in coaxing the parliamentary multitude to give its consent to his policy? Shall he purchase that consent for some sort of consideration? Or when confronted with the obstinate stupidity of his fellow citizens, should he then refrain from pushing forward the measures which he deems to be of vital necessity to the life of the nation? Should he retire or remain in power? In such circumstances does not a man of character find himself face to face with an insoluble contradiction between his own political insight on the one hand and, on the other, better still, his sense of honesty? Where can we draw the line between public duty and personal honour? Must not every genuine leader renounce the idea of degrading himself to the level of a political jobber? And on the other hand, does not every jobber feel the itch to ‘play politics’, seeing that the final responsibility will never rest with him personally but with an anonymous mass which can never be called to account for their deeds? Must not our parliamentary principle of government by numerical majority necessarily lead to the destruction of the principle of leadership? Does anybody honestly believe that human progress originates in the composite brain of the majority and not in the brain of the individual personality? Or may it be presumed that for the future human civilization will be able to dispense with this as a condition of its existence? But may it be that today, more than ever before, the creative brain of the individual is indispensable?” Adolph Hitler.
Excerpted from “Mein Kampf” author, Adolph Hitler.
Islander.