Mein Kampf Martial Arts Passage

Essay by Fritz Maes

Adolf Hitler, an Iron Cross decorated veteran of the Great War, once advised—according to the contemporary social context of his party’s political goals and while making brief mention of a curious numerical value—how each man of the Storm Battalion should best ready himself athletically and martially; both to securely support the National Socialist German Workers Party and to potently deal with treacherously violent and ethnically traitorous Bolsheviks:

Yet if the Storm Battalion may be neither a militia-organisation nor a secret league, then the following consequences must emerge therefrom:

1. Training has to proceed not according to military considerations, but rather, according to those of party-functionality.

So that the Storm Battalion membership are to become physically fit, the major value must not be put upon military drills, but rather, upon sporting activity. Boxing and Jujitsu have seemed to me ever more vital than some bad, because only middling, shooter-training. Give the German Nation six-million flawlessly- trained sportive physiques, all aglow with fanatical patriotism and bred for highest fighting spirit: Then in less than two years, when needed, a National State is to create out of them an Army; at least insofar as a certain basic stock is available to said Nation. Yet, at present circumstances, this can only be the Military of the Realm, and not some warband stuck fast in mediocrity. Physical conditioning shall infuse the individual with the conviction of his superiority, and give him that confidence which always only resides in the realisation of his own power. Moreover, it shall provide him those athletic proficiencies which serve as weaponry for vindication of the Movement. ~

-Adolf Hitler quoted from his work Mein Kampf (“My Combat”; Vol.2/Ch.9; 1927) via the official party-edition published by Zentralverlag der NSDAP (München; 1936).