Hitler's Secret Book - "Zweites
Buch"
The unpublished sequel to "Mein Kampf",
also called "Hitler's Second Book"
Written by Adolf
Hitler in 1928, but never published
Found by an American officer in Germany in 1945
Verified as written by Hitler
First official publication in English in 2003
Focuses on Hitler's views on German foreign policy |
Adolf Hitler's Zweites Buch
Index
Zweites Buch:
Foreword
Chapter 1:
War and peace
Chapter 2:
The Necessity Of Strife
Chapter 3:
Race and Will in the Struggle for Power
Chapter 4:
Elements of Foreign Policy
Chapter 5:
National Socialist Foreign Policy
Chapter 6:
German Needs and Aims
Chapter 7:
Policies of the Second Reich
Chapter 8:
Military Power and Fallacy of Border Restoration as Aim
Chapter 9:
Hopelessness of a Solution
Chapter 10:
On Necessity of an Active Foreign Policy
Chapter 11:
Germany and Russia
Chapter 12:
German Foreign Policy
Chapter 13:
German Goals
Chapter 14:
England as an Ally
Chapter 15:
Italy as an Ally
Chapter 16:
Summary
Also:
Adolf Hitler's "Zweites Buch" as one PDF file
(complete book, but missing Chapter 7. Note: Use the
index to the far left)
A note by Radio Islam on Hitler's
"Zweites Buch"
Other texts by Adolf Hitler
Foreword
In August, 1925, on the occasion of
the writing of the second volume, I
formulated the fundamental ideas of
a National Socialist foreign policy,
in the brief time afforded by the
circumstances. Within the framework
of that book I dealt especially with
the question of the Southern Tyrol,
which gave rise to attacks against
the Movement as violent as they were
groundless. In 1926, I found myself
forced to have this part of the
second volume published as a special
edition. I did not believe that by
so doing I would convert those
opponents who, in the hue and cry
over the Southern Tyrol, saw
primarily a welcome means for the
struggle against the hated National
Socialist Movement.
Such people cannot be taught better
because the question of truth or
error, right or wrong, plays
absolutely no part for them. As soon
as an issue seems suitable for
exploitation, partly for political
party purposes, partly even for
their highly personal interests, the
truthfulness or rightness of the
matter at hand is altogether
irrelevant. This is all the more the
case if they can thereby inflict
damage on the cause of the general
awakening of our Folk. For the men
responsible for the destruction of
Germany, dating from the time of the
collapse, are her present rulers,
and their attitude of that time has
not changed in any respect up to
now. Just as at that time they were
cold-hearted in sacrificing Germany
for the sake of doctrinaire party
views or for their own selfish
advantage, today they likewise vent
their hatred against anyone who
contradicts their interests, even
though he may have, a thousand-fold,
all the grounds for a German
resurgence on his side. Even more.
As soon as they believe the revival
of our Folk, represented by a
certain name, can be seen, they
usually take a position against
everything that could emanate from
such a name. The most useful
proposals, indeed the most patently
correct suggestions, are boycotted
simply because their spokesman, as a
name, seems to be linked to general
ideas which they presume they must
combat on the basis of their
political party and personal views.
To want to convert such people is
hopeless.
Hence in 1926, when my brochure on
the Southern Tyrol was printed, I
naturally gave not a second's
thought to the idea that I could
make an impression on those who, in
consequence of their general
philosophical and political
attitude, already regarded me as
their most vehement opponent. At
that time I did entertain the hope
that at least some of them, who were
not at the outset malicious
opponents of our National Socialist
foreign policy, would first examine
our view in this field and judge it
afterward. Without a doubt this has
also happened in many cases. Today I
can point out with satisfaction that
a great number of men, even among
those in public political life, have
revised their former attitude with
respect to German foreign policy.
Even when they believed they could
not side with our standpoint in
particulars, they nevertheless
recognized the honorable intentions
that guide us here. During the last
two years, of course, it has become
clearer to me that my writing of
that time was in fact structured on
general National Socialist insights
as a premise. It also became clearer
that many do not follow us, less out
of ill will than because of a
certain inability. At that time,
within the narrowly drawn limits, it
was not possible to give a real
fundamental proof of the soundness
of our National Socialist conception
of foreign policy. Today I feel
compelled to make up for this. For
not only have the attacks of the
enemy been intensified in the last
few years, but through them the
great camp of the indifferent has
also been mobilized to a certain
degree. The agitation that has been
systematically conducted against
Italy for the past five years
threatens slowly to bear fruit:
resulting in the possible death and
destruction of the last hopes of a
German resurgence.
Thus, as has often happened in other
matters, the National Socialist
Movement in its foreign policy
position stands completely alone and
isolated within the community of the
German Folk and its political life.
The attacks of the general enemies
of our Folk and Fatherland are
joined inside the country by the
proverbial stupidity and ineptitude
of the bourgeois national parties,
the indolence of the broad masses,
and by cowardice, as a particularly
powerful ally: the cowardice that we
can observe today among those who by
their very nature are incapable of
putting up any resistance to the
Marxist plague, and who, for this
reason, consider themselves
downright lucky to bring their
voices to the attention of public
opinion in a matter which is less
dangerous than the struggle against
Marxism, and which nevertheless
looks and sounds like something
similar to it. For when they raise
their clamor over the Southern Tyrol
today, they seem to serve the
interests of the national struggle,
just as, conversely, they come as
close as they can to standing aside
from a real struggle against the
worst internal enemies of the German
nation. These patriotic, national,
and also in part Folkish champions,
however, find it considerably easier
to launch their war cry against
Italy in Vienna or Munich under
benevolent support and in union with
Marxist betrayers of their Folk and
Fatherland, rather than fight an
earnest war against these very
elements. Just as so much nowadays
has become appearance, the whole
national pretence by these people
has for a long time been only an
outward show which, to be sure,
gratifies them, and which a great
part of our Folk does not see
through. Against this powerful
coalition, which from the most
varied points of view is seeking to
make the question of the Southern
Tyrol the pivot of German foreign
policy, the National Socialist
Movement fights by unswervingly
advocating an alliance with Italy
against the ruling Francophile
tendency. Thereby the Movement, in
contradistinction to the whole of
public opinion in Germany,
emphatically points out that the
Southern Tyrol neither can nor
should be an obstacle to this
policy. This view is the cause of
our present isolation in the sphere
of foreign policy and of the attacks
against us. Later, to be sure, it
will ultimately be the cause of the
resurgence of the German nation.
I write this book in order to
substantiate this firmly held
conception in detail and to make it
understandable. The less importance
I attach to being understood by the
enemies of the German Folk, the
more I feel the duty of exerting
myself to present and to point out
the fundamental National Socialist
idea of a real German foreign policy
to the national minded elements of
our Folk as such, who are only badly
informed or badly led. I know that,
after a sincere examination of the
conception presented here, many of
them will give up their previous
positions and find their way into
the ranks of the National Socialist
Freedom Movement of the German
Nation. They will thus strengthen
that force which one day will bring
about the final settlement with
those who cannot be taught because
their thought and action are
determined not by the happiness of
their Folk, but by the interests of
their party or of their own person.
Back to book INDEX
Chapter 1: War and peace
Politics is history in the making. History itself is the
presentation of the course of a Folk's struggle for
existence. I deliberately use the phrase struggle for
existence here because, in truth, that struggle for
daily bread, equally in peace and war, is an eternal
battle against thousands upon thousands of resistances,
just as life itself is an eternal struggle against
death. For men know as little why they live as does any
other creature of the world. Only life is filled
with the longing to preserve itself. The most primitive
creature knows only the instinct of the self
preservation of its own, in creatures standing higher in
the scale it is transferred to wife and child, and in
those standing still higher to the entire species.
While, apparently, man often surrenders his own instinct
of self preservation for the sake of the species,
in truth he nevertheless serves it to the highest
degree. For not seldom the preservation of the life of a
whole Folk, and with this of the individual, lies only
in this renunciation by the individual. Hence the
sudden courage of a mother in the defence of her young
and the heroism of a man in the defence of his
Folk. The two powerful life instincts, hunger and love,
correspond to the greatness of the instinct for self
preservation. While the appeasement of eternal hunger
guarantees self preservation, the satisfaction of love
assures the continuance of the race. In truth these two
drives are the rulers of life. And even though the
fleshless aesthete may lodge a thousand protests against
such an assertion, the fact of his own existence is
already a refutation of his protest. Nothing that is
made of flesh and blood can escape the laws which
determined its coming into being. As soon as the human
mind believes itself to be superior to them, it destroys
that real substance which is the bearer of the mind.
What, however, applies to individual man also applies to
nations. A nation is only a multitude of more or less
similar individual beings. Its strength lies in the
value of the individual beings forming it as such, and
in the character and the extent of the sameness of these
values. The same laws which determine the life of the
individual, and to which he is subject, are therefore
also valid for the Folk. Self preservation and
continuance are the great urges underlying all action,
as long as such a body can still claim to be healthy.
Therefore, even the consequences of these general laws
of life will be similar among Folks, as they are among
individuals.
If, for every creature on this Earth, the instinct of
self preservation, in its twin goals of self maintenance
and continuance, exhibits the most elementary power,
nevertheless the possibility of satisfaction is limited,
so the logical consequence of this is a struggle in all
its forms for the possibility of maintaining this life,
that is, the satisfaction of the instinct for self
preservation.
Countless are the species of all the Earth's organisms,
unlimited at any moment in individuals is their instinct
for self preservation as well as the longing for
continuance, yet the space in which the whole life
process takes place is limited. The struggle for
existence and continuance in life waged by billions upon
billions of organisms takes place on the surface of an
exactly measured sphere. The compulsion to engage in the
struggle for existence lies in the limitation of the
living space; but in the life struggle for this living
space lies also the basis for evolution.
In the times before man, world history was primarily a
presentation of geological events: the struggle of
natural forces with one another, the creation of an
inhabitable surface on this planet, the separation of
water from land, the formation of mountains, of plains,
and of the seas. This is the world history of this time.
Later, with the emergence of organic life, man's
interest concentrated on the process of becoming and the
passing away of its thousandfold forms. And only very
late did man finally become visible to himself, and thus
by the concept of world history he began to understand
first and foremost only the history of his own becoming,
that is, the presentation of his own evolution. This
evolution is characterised by an eternal struggle of men
against beasts and against men themselves. From the
invisible confusion of the organisms there finally
emerged formations: Clans, Tribes, Folks, States. The
description of their origins and their passing away is
but the representation of an eternal struggle for
existence.
If, however, politics is history in the making, and
history itself the presentation of the struggle of men
and nations for self preservation and continuance, then
politics is, in truth, the execution of a nation's
struggle for existence. But politics is not only the
struggle of a nation for its existence as such; for us
men it is rather the art of carrying out this struggle.
Since history as the representation of the hitherto
existing struggles for existence of nations is at the
same time the petrified representation of politics
prevailing at a given moment, it is the most suitable
teacher for our own political activity.
If the highest task of politics is the preservation and
the continuance of the life of a Folk, then this life is
the eternal stake with which it fights, for which and
over which this struggle is decided. Hence its task is
the preservation of a substance made of flesh and blood.
Its success is the making possible of this preservation.
Its failure is the destruction, that is, the loss of
this substance. Consequently, politics is always the
leader of the struggle for existence, the guide of the
same, its organiser, and its efficacy will, regardless
of how man formally designates it, carry with it the
decision as to the life or death of a Folk.
It is necessary to keep this clearly in view
because, with this, the two concepts -- a policy of
peace or war -- immediately sink into nothingness. Since
the stake over which politics wrestles is always life
itself, the result of failure or success will likewise
be the same, regardless of the means with which politics
attempts to carry out the struggle for the
preservation of the life of a Folk. A peace policy that
fails leads just as directly to the destruction
of a Folk, that is, to the extinction of its substance
of flesh and blood, as a war policy that
miscarries. In the one case just as in the other, the
plundering of the prerequisites of life is the cause of
the dying out of a Folk. For nations have not become
extinct on battlefields; lost battles rather have
deprived them of the means for the preservation of life,
or, better expressed, have led to such a deprivation, or
were not able to prevent it.
Indeed, the losses which arise directly from a war are
in no way proportionate to the losses deriving from a
Folk's bad and unhealthy life as such. Silent hunger and
evil vices in ten years kill more people than war could
finish off in a thousand years. The cruellest war,
however, is precisely the one which appears to be most
peaceful to presentday humanity, namely the peaceful
economic war. In its ultimate consequences, this very
war leads to sacrifices in contrast to which even those
of the World War shrink to nothing. For this war affects
not only the living but grips above all those who are
about to be born. Whereas war at most kills off a
fragment of the present, economic warfare murders the
future. A single year of birth control in Europe kills
more people than all those who fell in battle, from the
time of the French Revolution up to our day, in all the
wars of Europe, including the World War. But this is the
consequence of a peaceful economic policy which has
overpopulated Europe without preserving the possibility
of a further healthy development for a number of
nations.
In general, the following should also be stated:
As soon as a Folk forgets that the task of politics is
to preserve its life with all means and according to all
possibilities, and instead aims to subject politics to a
definite mode of action, it destroys the inner meaning
of the art of leading a Folk in its fateful struggle for
freedom and bread.
A policy which is fundamentally bellicose can keep a
Folk removed from numerous vices and pathological
symptoms, but it cannot prevent a change of the inner
values in the course of many centuries. If it becomes a
permanent phenomenon, war contains an inner danger in
itself, which stands out all the more clearly the more
dissimilar are the fundamental racial values which
constitute a nation. This already applied to all the
known States of antiquity, and applies especially today
to all European States. The nature of war entails that,
through a thousandfold individual processes, it leads to
a racial selection within a Folk, which signifies a
preferential destruction of its best elements. The call
to courage and bravery finds its response in countless
individual reactions, in that the best and most valuable
racial elements again and again voluntarily come forward
for special tasks, or they are systematically
cultivated through the organisational method of special
formations. Military leadership of all times has
always been dominated by the idea of forming special
legions, chosen elite troops for guard regiments and
assault battalions. Persian palace guards, Alexandrian
elite troops, Roman legions of Praetorians, lost
troops of mercenaries, the guard regiments of Napoleon
and Frederick The Great, the assault battalions,
submarine crews and flying corps of the World War owed
their origin to the same idea and necessity of seeking
out of a great multitude of men, those with the highest
aptitude for the performance of correspondingly high
tasks, and bringing them together into special
formations. For originally every guard was not a drill
corps but a combat unit. The glory attached to
membership in such a community led to the creation of a
special esprit de corps which subsequently, however,
could freeze and ultimately end up in sheer formalities.
Hence not seldom such formations will have to bear the
greatest blood sacrifices; that is to say, the fittest
are sought out from a great multitude of men and led to
war in concentrated masses. Thus the percentage of the
best dead of a nation is disproportionately increased,
while conversely the percentage of the worst elements is
able to preserve itself to the highest degree. Over
against the extremely idealistic men who are ready to
sacrifice their own lives for the Folkish Community,
stands the number of those most wretched egoists who
view the preservation of their own mere personal life
likewise as the highest task of this life. The hero
dies, the criminal is preserved. This appears self
evident to an heroic age, and especially to an
idealistic youth. And this is good, because it is the
proof of the still present value of a Folk. The true
statesman must view such a fact with concern, and take
it into account. For what can easily be tolerated in one
war, in a hundred wars leads to the slow bleeding away
of the best, most valuable elements of a nation. Thereby
victories will indeed have been won, but in the end
there will no longer be a Folk worthy of this victory.
And the pitifulness of the posterity, which to many
seems incomprehensible, not seldom is the result of the
successes of former times.
Therefore, wise political leaders of a Folk will never
see in war the aim of the life of a Folk, but only a
means for the preservation of this life. It must educate
the human material entrusted to it to the highest
manhood, but rule it with the highest conscientiousness.
If necessary, when a Folk's life is at stake, they
should not shrink from daring to shed blood to the
utmost, but they must always bear in mind that peace
must one day again replace this blood. Wars which are
fought for aims that, because of their whole nature, do
not guarantee a compensation for the blood that has been
shed, are sacrileges committed against a nation, a sin
against a Folk's future.
Eternal wars, however, can become a terrible danger
among a Folk which possesses such unequal elements in
its racial composition that only part of them may be
viewed as Statepreserving, as such, and therefore,
especially, creative culturally. The culture of European
Folks rests on the foundations which its infusion of
Nordic blood has created in the course of centuries.
Once the last remains of this Nordic blood are
eliminated, the face of European culture will be
changed, the value of the States decreasing, however, in
accordance with the sinking value of the Folks.
A policy which is fundamentally peaceful, on the other
hand, would at first make possible the preservation of
its best blood carriers, but on the whole it would
educate the Folk to a weakness which, one day, must lead
to failure, once the basis of existence of such a Folk
appears to be threatened. Then, instead of fighting for
daily bread, the nation rather will cut down on this
bread and, what is even more probable, limit the number
of people either through peaceful emigration or through
birth control, in order in this way to escape an
enormous distress. Thus the fundamentally peaceful
policy becomes a scourge for a Folk. For what, on the
one hand, is effected by permanent war, is effected on
the other by emigration. Through it a Folk is slowly
robbed of its best blood in hundreds of thousands of
individual life catastrophes. It is sad to know that our
whole national political wisdom, insofar as it does not
see any advantage at all in emigration, at most deplores
the weakening of the number of its own people, or at
best speaks of a cultural fertiliser which is thereby
given to other States. What is not perceived is the
worst. Since the emigration does not proceed according
to territory, nor according to age categories, but
instead remains subject to the free rule of fate, it
always drains away from a Folk the most courageous and
the boldest people, the most determined and most
prepared for resistance. The peasant youth who emigrated
to America 150 years ago was as much the most determined
and most adventurous man in his village as the worker
who today goes to Argentina. The coward and weakling
would rather die at home than pluck up the courage to
earn his bread in an unknown, foreign land. Regardless
whether it is distress, misery, political pressure or
religious compulsion that weighs on people, it will
always be those who are the healthiest and the most
capable of resistance who will be able to put up the
most resistance. The weakling will always be the first
to subject himself. His preservation is generally as
little a gain for the victor as the stay at homes are
for the mother country. Not seldom, therefore, the law
of action is passed on from the mother country to the
colonies, because there a concentration of the highest
human values has taken place in a wholly natural way.
However, the positive gain for the new country is thus a
loss for the mother country. As soon as a Folk once
loses its best, strongest and most natural forces
through emigration in the course of centuries, it will
hardly be able any more to muster the inner strength to
put up the necessary resistance to fate in critical
times. It will then sooner grasp at birth control. Even
here the loss in numbers is not decisive, but the
terrible fact that, through birth control, the highest
potential values of a Folk are destroyed at the very
outset. For the greatness and future of a Folk is
determined through the sum of its capacities for the
highest achievements in all fields. But these are
personality values which do not appear linked to
primogeniture. If we were to strike off from our German
cultural life, from our science, indeed from our whole
existence as such, all that which was created by men who
were not first born sons, then Germany would hardly be a
Balkan State. The German Folk would no longer have any
claim to being valued as a cultural Folk. Moreover, it
must be considered that, even in the case of those men
who as first born nevertheless accomplished great things
for their Folk, it must first be examined whether one of
their ancestors at least had not been a first born. For
when in his whole ancestral series the chain of the
first born appears as broken just once [one man], then
he also belongs to those who would not have existed had
our forefathers always paid homage to this principle. In
the life of nations, however, there are no vices of the
past that are [would be] right in the present.
The fundamentally peaceful policy, with the subsequent
bleeding to death of a nation through emigration and
birth control, is likewise all the more catastrophic the
more it involves a Folk which is made up of racially
unequal elements. For in this case as well the best
racial elements are taken away from the Folk through
emigration, whereas through birth control in the
homeland it is likewise those who in consequence of
their racial value have worked themselves up to the
higher levels of life and society who are at first
affected. Gradually then their replenishment would
follow out of the bled, inferior broad masses, and
finally, after centuries, lead to a lowering of the
whole value of the Folk altogether. Such a nation will
have long ceased to possess real life vitality.
Thus a policy which is fundamentally peaceful will be
precisely as harmful and devastating in its effects as a
policy which knows war as its only weapon. Politics must
fight about the life of a Folk, and for this life;
moreover, it must always choose the weapons of its
struggles so that life in the highest sense of the word
is served. For one does not make politics in order to be
able to die, rather one may only at times call upon men
to die so that a nation can live. The aim is the
preservation of life and not heroic death, or even
cowardly resignation.
Back to book INDEX
Chapter 2: The Necessity Of
Strife
A Folk's struggle for
existence is first and foremost determined by the
following fact:
Regardless of how high the cultural importance of a
Folk may be, the struggle for daily bread stands at the
forefront of all vital necessities. To be sure,
brilliant leaders can hold great goals before a Folk's
eyes, so that it can be further diverted from material
things in order to serve higher spiritual ideals. In
general, the merely material interest will rise in exact
proportion as ideal spiritual outlooks are in the
process of disappearing. The more primitive the
spiritual life of man, the more animal-like he becomes,
until finally he regards food intake as the one and only
aim of life. Hence a Folk can quite well endure a
certain limitation of material goals, as long as it is
given compensation in the form of active ideals. But if
these ideals are not to result in the ruin of a Folk,
they should never exist unilaterally at the expense of
material nourishment, so that the health of the nation
seems to be threatened by them. For a starved Folk will
indeed either collapse in consequence of its physical
undernourishment, or perforce bring about a change in
its situation. Sooner or later, however, physical
collapse brings spiritual collapse in its train. Then
all ideals also come to an end. Thus ideals are good and
healthy as long as they keep on strengthening a Folk's
inner and general forces, so that in the last analysis
they can again be of benefit in waging the struggle for
existence. Ideals which do not serve this purpose are
evil, though they may appear a thousand times outwardly
beautiful, because they remove a Folk more and more
from the reality of life.
But the bread which a Folk requires is conditioned by
the living space at its disposal. A healthy Folk, at
least, will always seek to find the satisfaction of its
needs on its own soil. Any other condition is
pathological and dangerous, even if it makes possible
the sustenance of a Folk for centuries. World trade,
world economy, tourist traffic, and so on, and so forth,
is all transient means for securing a nation's
sustenance. They are dependent upon factors which are
partly beyond calculation, and which, on the other hand,
lie beyond a nation's power. At all times the surest
foundation for the existence of a Folk has been its own
soil.
But now we must consider the following:
The number of a Folk is a variable factor. It will
always rise in a healthy Folk. Indeed, such an increase
alone makes it possible to guarantee a Folk's future in
accordance with human calculations. As a result,
however, the demand for commodities also grows
constantly. In most cases the so-called domestic
increase in production can satisfy only the rising
demands of mankind, but in no way the increasing
population. This applies especially to European nations.
In the last few centuries, especially in most recent
times, the European Folks have increased their needs to
such an extent that the rise in European soil
productivity, which is possible from year to year under
favorable conditions, can hardly keep pace with the
growth of general life needs as such. The increase of
population can be balanced only through an increase,
that is, an enlargement, of living space. Now the number
of a Folk is variable, the soil as such, however,
remains constant. This means that the increase of a
Folk is a process, so self-evident because it is so
natural, that it is not regarded as something
extraordinary. On the other hand, an increase in
territory is conditioned by the general distribution of
possessions in the world; an act of special revolution,
an extraordinary process, so that the ease with which a
population increases stands in sharp contrast to the
extraordinary difficulty of territorial changes.
Yet the regulation of the relation between population
and territory is of tremendous importance for a nation's
existence. Indeed, we can justly say that the whole life
struggle of a Folk, in truth, consists in safeguarding
the territory it requires as a general prerequisite for
the sustenance of the increasing population. Since the
population grows incessantly, and the soil as such
remains stationary, tensions perforce must gradually
arise which at first find expression in distress, and
which for a certain time can be balanced through greater
industry, more ingenious production methods, or special
austerity. But there comes a day when these tensions can
no longer be eliminated by such means. Then the task of
the leaders of a nation's struggle for existence
consists in eliminating the unbearable conditions in a
fundamental way, that is, in restoring a tolerable
relation between population and territory.
In the life of nations there are several ways for
correcting the disproportion between population and
territory. The most natural way is to adapt the soil,
from time to time, to the increased population. This
requires a determination to fight and the risk of
bloodshed. But this very bloodshed is also the only one
that can be justified to a Folk. Since through it the
necessary space is won for the further increase of a
Folk, it automatically finds manifold compensation for
the humanity staked on the battlefield. Thus the bread
of freedom grows from the hardships of war. The sword
was the path breaker for the plough. And if we want to
talk about human rights at all, then in this single case
war has served the highest right of all: it gave a Folk
the soil which it wanted to cultivate industriously and
honestly for itself, so that its children might some day
be provided with their daily bread. For this soil is not
allotted to anyone, nor is it presented to anyone as a
gift. It is awarded by Providence to people who in their
hearts have the courage to take possession of it, the
strength to preserve it, and the industry to put it to
the plough. Hence every healthy, vigorous Folk sees
nothing sinful in territorial acquisition, but something
quite in keeping with nature. The modern pacifist who
denies this holy right must first be reproached for the
fact that he himself at least is being nourished on the
injustices of former times. Furthermore, there is no
spot on this Earth that has been determined as the abode
of a Folk for all time, since the rule of nature has
for tens of thousands of years forced mankind eternally
to migrate. Finally the present distribution of
possessions on the Earth has not been designed by a
higher power, but by man himself. But I can never regard
a solution effected by man as an eternal value, which
Providence now takes under its protection and sanctifies
into a law of the future. Thus, just as the Earth's
surface seems to be subject to eternal geological
transformations, making organic life perish in an
unbroken change of forms in order to discover the new,
this limitation of human dwelling places is also exposed
to an endless change. However, many nations, at certain
times, may have an interest in presenting the existing
distribution of the world's territories as binding
forever, for the reason that it corresponds to their
interests, just as other nations can see only something
generally manmade in such a situation which at the
moment is unfavorable to them, and which therefore must
be changed with all means of human power. Anyone who
would banish this struggle from the Earth forever would
perhaps abolish the struggle between men, but he would
also eliminate the highest driving power for their
development; exactly as if in civil life he would want
to eternalize the wealth of certain men, the greatness
of certain business enterprises, and for this purpose
eliminate the play of free forces, competition. The
results would be catastrophic for a nation.
The present distribution of world space in a one sided
way turns out to be so much in favor of individual
nations that the latter perforce have an understandable
interest in not allowing any further change in the
present distribution of territories. But the
overabundance of territory enjoyed by these nations
contrasts with the poverty of the others, which, despite
the utmost industry, are not in a position to produce
their daily bread so as to keep alive. What higher
rights would one want to oppose against them if they
also raise the claim to a land area that safeguards
their sustenance? No. The primary right of this world is
the right to life, so far as one possesses the strength
for this. Hence, on the basis of this right, a vigorous
nation will always find ways of adapting its territory
to its population size.
Once a nation, as the result either of weakness or bad
leadership, can no longer eliminate the disproportion
between its increased population and the fixed amount of
territory by increasing the productivity of its soil, it
will necessarily look for other ways. It will then adapt
the population size to the soil.
Nature as such herself performs the first adaptation of
the population size to the insufficiently nourishing
soil. Here distress and misery are her devices. A Folk
can be so decimated through them that any further
population increase practically comes to a halt. The
consequences of this natural adaptation of the Folk to
the soil are not always the same. First of all a very
violent struggle for existence sets in, which only
individuals who are the strongest and have the greatest
capacity for resistance can survive. A high infant
mortality rate on the one hand and a high proportion of
aged people on the other are the chief signs of a time
which shows little regard for individual life. Since,
under such conditions, all weaklings are swept away
through acute distress and illness, and only the
healthiest remain alive, a kind of natural selection
takes place. Thus the number of a Folk can easily be
subject to a limitation, but the inner value can remain,
indeed it can experience an inner heightening. But such
a process cannot last for too long, otherwise the
distress can also turn into its opposite. In nations
composed of racial elements that are not wholly of equal
value, permanent malnutrition can ultimately lead to a
dull surrender to the distress, which gradually reduces
energy, and instead of a struggle which fosters a
natural selection, a gradual degeneration sets in. This
is surely the case once man, in order to control the
chronic distress, no longer attaches any value to an
increase of his number, and resorts on his own to birth
control. For then he himself immediately embarks upon a
road opposite to that taken by nature. Whereas nature,
out of the multitude of beings who are born, spares the
few who are most fitted in terms of health and
resistance to wage life's struggle, man limits the
number of births, and then tries to keep alive those who
have been born with no regard to their real value or to
their inner worth. Here his humanity is only the
handmaiden of his weakness, and at the same time it is
actually the cruelest destroyer of his existence. If man
wants to limit the number of births on his own, without
producing the terrible consequences which arise from
birth control, he must give the number of births free
rein but cut down on the number of those remaining
alive. At one time the Spartans were capable of such a
wise measure, but not our present, mendaciously
sentimental, bourgeois patriotic nonsense. The rule of
six thousand Spartans over three hundred and fifty
thousand Helots was only thinkable in consequence of the
high racial value of the Spartans. But this was the
result of a systematic race preservation; thus Sparta
must be regarded as the first Folkish State. The
exposure of sick, weak, deformed children, in short
their destruction, was more decent and in truth a
thousand times more humane than the wretched insanity of
our day which preserves the most pathological subject,
and indeed at any price, and yet takes the life of a
hundred thousand healthy children in consequence of
birth control or through abortions, in order
subsequently to breed a race of degenerates burdened
with illnesses.
Hence it can be said in general that the limitation of
the population through distress and human agencies may
very well lead to an approximate adaptation to the
inadequate living space, but the value of the existing
human material is constantly lowered and indeed
ultimately decays.
The second attempt to adapt the population size to the
soil lies in emigration, which so long as it does not
take place tribally, likewise leads to a devaluation of
the remaining human material. Human birth control wipes
out the bearer of the highest values, emigration
destroys the value of the average.
There are still two other ways by which a nation can try
to balance the disproportion between population and
territory. The first is called increasing the domestic
productivity of the soil, which as such has nothing to
do with so called internal colonization; the second the
increase of commodity production and the conversion of
the domestic economy into an export economy.
The idea of increasing the yield of the soil within
borders that have been fixed once and forever is an old
one. The history of human cultivation of the soil is one
of permanent progress, permanent improvement and
therefore of increasing yields. While the first part of
this progress lay in the field of methods of soil
cultivation as well as in the construction of
settlements, the second part lies in increasing the
value of the soil artificially through the introduction
of nutritious matter that is lacking or insufficient.
This line leads from the hoe of former times up to the
modern steam plough, from stable manure up to present
artificial fertilizers. Without doubt the productivity
of the soil has thereby been infinitely increased. But
it is just as certain that there is a limit somewhere.
Especially if we consider that the living standard of
cultured man is a general one, which is not determined
by the amount of a nation's commodities available to the
individual; rather it is just as much subject to the
judgement of surrounding countries and, conversely, is
established through the conditions within them. The
present day European dreams of a living standard which
he derives as much from the potentialities of Europe as
from the actual conditions prevailing in America.
International relations between nations have become so
easy and close through modern technology and the
communication it makes possible, that the European,
often without being conscious of it, applies American
conditions as a standard for his own life. But he
thereby forgets that the relation of the population to
the soil surface of the American continent is infinitely
more favorable than the analogous conditions of European
nations to their living spaces. Regardless of how Italy,
or let's say Germany, carry out the internal
colonization of their soil, regardless of how they
increase the productivity of their soil further through
scientific and methodical activity, there always remains
the disproportion of the number of their population to
the soil as measured against the relation of the
population of the American Union to the soil of the
Union. And if a further increase of the population were
possible for Italy or Germany through the utmost
industry, then this would be possible in the American
Union up to a multiple of theirs. And when ultimately
any further increase in these two European countries is
no longer possible, the American Union can continue to
grow for centuries until it will have reached the
relation that we already have today.
The effects that it is hoped to achieve through internal
colonization, in particular, rest on a fallacy. The
opinion that we can bring about a considerable increase
in the productivity of the soil is false. Regardless of
how, for example, the land is distributed in Germany,
whether in large or in small peasant holdings, or in
plots for small settlers, this does not alter the fact
that there are, on the average, 136 people to one square
kilometer. This is an unhealthy relation. It is
impossible to feed our Folk on this basis and under
this premise. Indeed it would only create confusion to
set the slogan of internal colonization before the
masses, who will then latch their hopes onto it and
thereby think to have found a means of doing away with
their present distress. This would not at all be the
case. For the distress is not the result of a wrong kind
of land distribution, say, but the consequence of the
inadequate amount of space, on the whole, at the
disposal of our nation today.
By increasing the productivity of the soil, however,
some alleviation of a Folk 's lot could be achieved.
But in the long run this would never exempt it from the
duty to adapt the nation's living space, become
insufficient, to the increased population. Through
internal colonization, in the most favorable
circumstances, only amelioration in the sense of social
reform and justice could take place. It is entirely
without importance as regards the total sustenance of a
Folk. It will often be harmful for a nation's foreign
policy position because it awakens hopes that can remove
a Folk from realistic thinking. The ordinary,
respectable citizen will then really believe that he can
find his daily bread at home through industry and hard
work, rather than realize that the strength of a Folk
must be concentrated in order to win new living space.
Economics, which especially today is regarded by many as
the savior from distress and care, hunger and misery,
under certain preconditions can give a Folk
possibilities for existence which lie outside its
relation to its own soil. But this is linked to a number
of prerequisites of which I must make brief mention
here.
The sense of such an economic system lies in the fact
that a nation produces more of certain vital commodities
than it requires for its own use. It sells this surplus
outside its own national community, and with the
proceeds therefrom it procures those foodstuffs and also
the raw materials which it lacks. Thus this kind of
economics involves not only a question of production,
but in at least as great a degree a question of selling.
There is much talk, especially at the present time,
about increasing production, but it is completely
forgotten that such an increase is of value only as long
as a buyer is at hand. Within the circle of a nation's
economic life, every increase in production will be
profitable to the degree that it increases the number of
goods which are thus made available to the individual.
Theoretically, every increase in the industrial
production of a nation must lead to a reduction in the
price of commodities and in turn to an increased
consumption of them, and consequently put the individual
Folk Comrade in a position to own more vital
commodities. In practice, however, this in no way
changes the fact of the inadequate sustenance of a
nation as a result of insufficient soil. For, to be
sure, we can increase certain industrial outputs, indeed
many times over, but not the production of foodstuffs.
Once a nation suffers from this need, an adjustment can
take place only if a part of its industrial
overproduction can be exported in order to compensate
from the outside for the foodstuffs that are not
available in the homeland. But an increase in production
having this aim achieves the desired success only when
it finds a buyer, and indeed a buyer outside the
country. Thus we stand before the question of the sales
potential, that is, the market, a question of towering
importance.
The present world commodity market is not unlimited. The
number of industrially active nations has steadily
increased. Almost all European nations suffer from an
inadequate and unsatisfactory relation between soil and
population. Hence they are dependent on world export. In
recent years the American Union has turned to export, as
has also Japan in the east. Thus a struggle
automatically begins for the limited markets, which
becomes tougher the more numerous the industrial nations
become and, conversely, the more the markets shrink. For
while on the one hand the number of nations struggling
for world markets increases, the commodity market itself
slowly diminishes, partly in consequence of a process of
self industrialization on their own power, partly
through a system of branch enterprises which are more
and more coming into being in such countries out of
sheer capitalist interest. For we should bear the
following in mind: the German Folk, for example, has a
lively interest in building ships for China in German
dockyards, because thereby a certain number of men of
our nationality get a chance to feed themselves which
they would not have on our own soil, which is no longer
sufficient. But the German Folk has no interest, say,
in a German financial group or even a German factory
opening a so called branch dockyard in Shanghai which
builds ships for China with Chinese workers and foreign
steel, even if the corporation earns a definite profit
in the form of interest or dividend. On the contrary,
the result of this will be only that a German financial
group earns so and so many million, but, as a result of
the orders lost, a multiple of this amount is withdrawn
from the German national economy. The more pure
capitalist interests begin to determine the present
economy, the more the general viewpoints of the
financial world and the stock exchange achieve a
decisive influence here, the more will this system of
branch establishments reach out and thus artificially
carry out the industrialization of former commodity
markets and especially curtail the export possibilities
of the European mother countries. Today many can still
afford to smile over this future development, but as it
makes further strides, within thirty years people in
Europe will groan under its consequences.
The more market difficulties increase, the more bitterly
will the struggle for the remaining ones be waged.
Although the primary weapons of this struggle lie in
pricing and in the quality of the goods with which
nations competitively try to undersell each other, in
the end the ultimate weapons even here lie in the sword.
The so-called peaceful economic conquest of the world
could take place only if the Earth consisted of purely
agrarian nations and but one industrially active and
commercial nation. Since all great nations today are
industrial nations, the so called peaceful economic
conquest of the world is nothing but the struggle with
means which will remain peaceful for as long as the
stronger nations believe they can triumph with them,
that is, in reality for as long as they are able to kill
the others with peaceful economics. For this is the real
result of the victory of a nation with peaceful economic
means over another nation. Thereby one nation receives
possibilities of survival and the other nation is
deprived of them. Even here what is at stake is always
the substance of flesh and blood, which we designate as
a Folk.
If a really vigorous Folk believes that it cannot
conquer another with peaceful economic means, or if an
economically weak Folk does not wish to let itself be
killed by an economically stronger one, as the
possibilities for its sustenance are slowly cut off,
then in both cases [it will seize the sword] the vapors
of economic phraseology will be suddenly torn asunder,
and war, that is the continuation of politics with other
means, steps into its place.
The danger to a Folk of economic activity in an
exclusive sense lies in the fact that it succumbs only
too easily to the belief that it can ultimately shape
its destiny through economics. Thus the latter from a
purely secondary place moves forward to first place, and
finally is even regarded as State-forming, and robs the
Folk of those very virtues and characteristics which in
the last analysis make it possible for Nations and
States to preserve life on this Earth. A special danger
of the so called peaceful economic policy, however, lies
above all in the fact that it makes possible an increase
in the population, which finally no longer stands in any
relation to the productive capacity of its own soil to
support life. This overfilling of an inadequate living
space with people not seldom also leads to the
concentration of people in work centers which look less
like cultural centers, and rather more like abscesses in
the national body in which all evil, vices and diseases
seem to unite. Above all, they are breeding grounds of
blood mixing and bastardization, and of race lowering,
thus resulting in those purulent infection centers in
which the international Jewish racial maggots thrive and
finally effect further destruction.
Precisely thereby is the way open to decay in which the
inner strength of such a Folk swiftly disappears, all
racial, moral and folk values are earmarked for
destruction, ideals are undermined, and in the end the
prerequisite which a Folk urgently needs in order to
take upon itself the ultimate consequences of the
struggle for world markets is eliminated. Weakened by a
vicious pacifism, Folks will no longer be ready to
fight for markets for their goods with the shedding of
their blood. Hence, as soon as a stronger nation sets
the real strength of political power in the place of
peaceful economic means, such nations will collapse Then
their own delinquencies will take revenge. They are
overpopulated, and now in consequence of the loss of all
the real basic requirements they no longer have any
possibility of being able to feed their overgrown mass
of people adequately. They have no strength to break the
chains of the enemy, and no inner value with which to
bear their fate with dignity. Once they believed they
could live, thanks to their peaceful economic activity,
and renounce the use of violence. Fate will teach them
that in the last analysis a Folk is preserved only when
population and living space stand in a definite natural
and healthy relation to each other. Further, this
relation must be examined from time to time, and indeed
must be reestablished in favor of the population to the
very same degree that it shifts unfavorably with respect
to the soil. For this, however, a nation needs weapons.
The acquisition of soil is always linked with the
employment of force.
If the task of politics is the execution of a Folk's
struggle for existence, and if the struggle for
existence of a Folk in the last analysis consists of
safeguarding the necessary amount of space for
nourishing a specific population, and if this whole
process is a question of the employment of a Folk 's
strength, the following concluding definitions result
therefrom:
Politics is the art of carrying out a Folk 's struggle
for its Earthly existence.
Foreign policy is the art of safeguarding the momentary,
necessary living space, in quantity and quality, for a
Folk.
Domestic policy is the art of preserving the necessary
employment of force for this in the form of its race
value and numbers.
Back to book INDEX
Chapter 3: Race and Will in the
Struggle for Power
Here at this point I want to
discuss that bourgeois concept which views power chiefly
as a nation's supply of weapons, and, to a lesser
degree, perhaps also the army as an organization. If the
concept of these people were pertinent, that is, if the
power of a nation really lay in its possession of arms
and in its army as such, then a nation which has lost
its army and weapons through any reasons whatsoever must
be done for permanently. These bourgeois politicians
themselves hardly believe that. By their very doubt of
this they admit that weapons and army organization are
things which can be replaced; and that consequently they
are not of a primary character, that there is something
which stands above them, and which at least is also the
source of their power. And so it is. Weapons and army
forms are destructible and are replaceable. As great as
their importance perhaps is for the moment, just so is
it limited when viewed over longer periods of time. What
is ultimately decisive in the life of a Folk is the
will to self-preservation, and the living forces that
are at its disposal for this purpose. Weapons can rust,
forms can be outdated; the will itself can always renew
both and move a Folk into the form required by the need
of the moment. The fact that we Germans had to give up
our arms is of very slight importance, insofar as I look
at the material side of it. And yet this is the only
thing our bourgeois politicians see.
What is depressing about the surrender of our arms, at
most, lies in the attendant circumstances in which it
took place, in the attitude which it made possible, as
well as in the wretched manner of doing it which we
experienced. It is outweighed by the destruction of the
organization of our Army. But even there the major
misfortune is not the elimination of the organization as
the bearer of the weapons we possess, but rather the
abolition of an institution for the training of our
Folk to manliness, which was possessed by no other
State in the world, and which, indeed, no Folk needed
more than our Germans. The contribution of our Old Army
to the general disciplining of our Folk for the highest
achievements in all fields is incommensurable. Precisely
our Folk, which in its racial fragmentation so very
much lacks qualities which, for example, characterize
the English--a determined sticking together in time of
danger--has received at least a part of this, which in
other nations is a natural, instinctive endowment, by
way of its training through the army. The people who
chatter so happily about socialism do not at all realize
that the highest socialist organization of all has been
the German Army. This is also the reason for the fierce
hatred of the typical capitalistically inclined Jews
against an organization in which money is not identical
with position, dignity, to say nothing of honor, but
rather with achievement; and in which the honor of
belonging among people of a certain accomplishment is
more greatly appreciated than the possession of property
and riches. This is a conception which to Jews seems as
alien as it is dangerous, and which, if only it became
the general patrimony of a Folk, would signify an
immunizing defense against every further Jewish danger.
If, for example, an Officer's rank in the Army could be
bought, this would be comprehensible to Jews. They
cannot understand an organization--indeed they find it
weird--which surrounds with honor a man who either
possesses no property at all, or whose income is only a
fragment of that of another man who precisely in this
organization is neither honored nor esteemed. But
therein lay the chief strength of this incomparable old
institution which unfortunately in the last thirty years
of peace, however, also showed signs of slowly becoming
corroded. As soon as it became fashionable for
individual Officers, especially of noble descent, to
pair off with, of all things, department store Jewesses,
a danger arose for the Old Army which, if the same
development continued, might have some day grown into a
great evil. At any rate, in the times of Kaiser Wilhelm
I, there was no understanding for such events.
Nevertheless, all in all, the Germany Army at the turn
of the century was the most magnificent organization in
the world, and its effect on our German Folk one that
was more than beneficial. The breeding ground of German
discipline, German efficiency, forthright disposition,
frank courage, bold aggressiveness, tenacious
persistence and granite honorableness. The conception of
honor of a whole profession slowly but imperceptibly
became the general patrimony of a whole Folk. That this
organization was destroyed through the Peace Treaty Of
Versailles was all the worse for our Folk, as our
internal enemies thereby finally received a free path
for effecting their worst intentions. But our
incompetent bourgeoisie, for lack of any genius and
ability to improvise, could not even find the most
primitive substitute.
Thus, to be sure, our German Folk has lost possession
of arms and their bearer. But this has been the case
countless times in the history of nations, without the
latter having perished because of it. On the contrary:
nothing is easier to replace than a loss of weapons and
every organizational form can again be created or
renewed. What is irreplaceable is the spoiled blood of a
Folk, the destroyed inner value.
For in opposition to the present bourgeois conception
that the Treaty Of Versailles has deprived our Folk of
arms, I can reply only that the real lack of weapons
lies in our pacifistic democratic poisoning, as well as
in internationalism, which destroys and poisons our
Folk's highest sources of power. For the source of a
Folk's whole power does not lie in its possession of
weapons or in the organization of its army, but in its
inner value which is represented through its racial
significance, that is, the racial value of a Folk as
such, through the existence of the highest individual
personality values, as well as through its healthy
attitude toward the idea of self preservation. In coming
before the public as National Socialists with this
conception of the real strength of a Folk, we know that
today the whole of public opinion is against us. But
this is indeed the deepest meaning of our new doctrine,
which as a worldview separates us from others.
Since our point of departure is that one Folk is not
equal to another, the value of a Folk is also not equal
to the value of another Folk. If, however, the value of
a Folk is not equal to another, then every Folk, apart
from the numerical value deriving from its count, still
has a specific value which is peculiar to it, and which
cannot be fully like that of any other Folk. The
expressions of this specific, special value of a Folk
can be of the most varied kind and be in the most varied
fields; but collected together they result in a standard
for the general valuation of a Folk. The ultimate
expression of this general valuation is the historical,
cultural image of a Folk, which reflects the sum of all
the radiation of its blood value or of the race values
united in it. This special value of a Folk, however, is
in no way merely aesthetic cultural, but a general life
value as such. For it forms the life of a Folk in
general, moulds and shapes it and, therefore, also
provides all those forces which a Folk can muster in
order to overcome the resistances of life. For every
cultural deed, viewed in human terms, is in truth a
defeat for the hitherto existing barbarism, every
cultural creation [thereby] a help to man's ascent above
his formerly drawn limitations and thereby a
strengthening of the position of these Folks. Thus a
power for the assertion of life truly also lies in the
so-called cultural values of a Folk. Consequently the
greater the inner powers of a Folk in this direction,
the stronger also the countless possibilities for the
assertion of life in all fields of the struggle for
existence. Consequently the higher the race value of a
Folk, the greater its general life value [through]
which it can stake in favor of its life, in the struggle
and strife with other Folks.
The importance of the blood value of a Folk, however,
only becomes totally effective when this value is
recognized by a Folk, properly valued and appreciated.
Folks who do not understand this value or who no longer
have a feeling for it for lack of a natural instinct,
thereby also immediately begin to lose it. Blood mixing
and lowering of the race are then the consequences
which, to be sure, at the beginning are not seldom
introduced through a so called predilection for things
foreign, which in reality is an underestimation of one's
own cultural values as against alien Folks. Once a
Folk no longer appreciates the cultural expression of
its own spiritual life conditioned through its blood, or
even begins to feel ashamed of it, in order to turn its
attention to alien expressions of life, it renounces the
strength which lies in the harmony of its blood and the
cultural life which has sprung from it. It becomes torn
apart, unsure in its judgement of the world picture and
its expressions, loses the perception and the feeling
for its own purposes, and in place of this it sinks into
a confusion of international ideas, conceptions, and the
cultural hodgepodge springing from them. Then the Jew
can make his entry in any form, and this master of
international poisoning and race corruption will not
rest until he has thoroughly uprooted and thereby
corrupted such a Folk. The end is then the loss of a
definite unitary race value and as a result, the final
decline.
Hence every existing race value of a Folk is also
ineffective, if not indeed endangered, as long as a
Folk does not consciously remind itself of its own and
nurse it with great care, building and basing all its
hopes primarily on it.
For this reason, international mindedness is to be
regarded as the mortal enemy of these values. In its
place the profession of faith in the value of one's own
Folk must pervade and determine the whole life and
action of a Folk.
The more the truly eternal factor for the greatness and
the importance of a Folk is sought in the Folk value,
the less will this value as such achieve a total
effectiveness if the energies and talents of a Folk, at
first slumbering, do not find the man who will awaken
it.
For so little as mankind, which is made up of different
race values, possesses a uniform average value, just as
little is the personality value within a Folk the same
among all members. Every deed of a Folk, in whatever
field it might be, is the result of the creative
activity of a personality. No distress can be redressed
solely by the wishes of those affected by it, as long as
this general wish does not find its solution in a man
chosen from a Folk for this task. Majorities have never
wrought creative achievements. Never have they given
discoveries to mankind. The individual person has always
been the originator of human progress. Indeed a Folk of
a definite inner race value, so far as this value is
generally visible in its cultural or other achievements,
must at the outset possess the personality values, for
without their emergence and creative activity the
cultural image of that Folk would never have come into
being, and therefore the possibility of any inference as
to the inner value of such a Folk would be lacking.
When I mention the inner value of a Folk, I appraise it
out of the sum of achievements lying before my eyes, and
thereby at the same time I confirm the existence of the
specific personality values which acted as the
representatives of the race value of a Folk and created
the cultural image. As much as race value and
personality value seem to be linked together, because a
racially valueless Folk cannot produce important
creative personalities from this source--as, conversely,
it seems impossible to infer, for example, the existence
of race value from the lack of creative personalities
and their achievements--just as much can a Folk,
nevertheless, by the nature of the formal construction
of its organism, of the Folk Community or of the State,
promote the expression of its personality values, or at
least facilitate it, or indeed even prevent it.
Once a Folk installs the majority as the rulers of its
life, that is to say, once it introduces present-day
democracy in the western conception, it will not only
damage the importance of the concept of personality, but
block the effectiveness of the personality value.
Through a formal construction of its life, it prevents
the rise and the work of individual creative persons.
For this is the double curse of the democratic
parliamentary system prevailing today: not only is it
itself incapable of bringing about really creative
achievements, but it also prevents the emergence and
thereby the work of those men who somehow threateningly
rise above the level of the average. In all times the
man whose greatness lies above the average measure of
the general stupidity, inadequacy, cowardice, and
arrogance too, has always appeared most threatening to
the majority. Add to this that, through democracy,
inferior persons must, almost as a law, become leaders,
so that this system applied logically to any institution
devaluates the whole mass of leaders, insofar as one can
call them that at all. This resides in the
irresponsibility lying in the nature of democracy.
Majorities are phenomena that are too elusive to be
grasped so that they can somehow be charged with
responsibility. The leaders set up by them are in truth
only executors of the will of the majorities. Hence
their task is less that of producing creative plans or
ideas, in order to carry them out with the support of an
available administrative apparatus, than it is to
collect the momentary majorities required for the
execution of definite projects. Thus the majorities are
adjusted less to the projects than the projects are to
the majorities. No matter what the result of such an
action may be, there is no one who can be held
concretely accountable. This is all the more so as each
decision that is actually adopted is the result of
numerous compromises, which each will also exhibit in
its character and content. Who then is to be made
responsible for it?
Once a purely personally drawn responsibility is
eliminated, the most compelling reason for the rise of a
vigorous leadership falls away. Compare the army
organization [institution], oriented to the highest
degree toward authority and responsibility of the
individual person, with our democratic civil
institutions, especially in relation to the results of
the leadership training on both sides, and you will be
horrified. In one case an organization of men who are as
courageous and joyous in responsibility as they are
competent in their tasks, and in the other, incompetents
too cowardly to assume responsibility. For four and a
half years the German Army organization withstood the
greatest coalition of enemies of all times. The civil,
democratically decomposed domestic leadership literally
collapsed at the first thrust of a few hundred
ragamuffins and deserters.
The pitiful lack of really great leading minds among the
German Folk finds its most simple explanation in the
desolate disintegration, which we see before us through
the democratic parliamentary system which is slowly
corroding our whole public life.
Nations must decide. Either they want majorities or
brains. The two are never compatible. Up to now,
however, brains have always created greatness on this
Earth, and what they created was again destroyed mostly
through majorities.
Thus, on the basis of its general race value, a Folk
can certainly entertain a justified hope that it can
bring real minds into existence. But then it must seek
forms in the mode of construction of its national body
which do not artificially, indeed systematically,
restrict such brains in their activity, and erect a wall
of stupidity against them, in short, which prevent them
from achieving efficacy. Otherwise one of the most
powerful sources of a Folk's strength is blocked.
The third factor of the strength of a Folk is its
healthy natural instinct for self-preservation. From it
result numerous heroic virtues, which by themselves make
a Folk take up the struggle for life. No State
leadership will be able to have great successes, if the
Folk whose interests it must represent is too cowardly
and wretched to stake itself for these interests. No
State leadership, of course, can expect that a Folk
possess heroism, which it itself does not educate to
heroism. Just as internationalism harms and thereby
weakens the existing race value, and as democracy
destroys the personality value, so pacifism paralyses
the natural strength of the self preservation of Folks.
These three factors--the race value as such, the
existing personality values, as well as the healthy
instinct of self preservation--are the sources of
strength, from which a wise and bold domestic policy
time and again can draw the weapons which are necessary
for the self assertion of a Folk. Then the army
establishments and the technical questions regarding
weapons always find the solutions suitable to support a
Folk in the hard struggle for freedom and daily bread.
If the domestic leadership of a Folk loses sight of
this standpoint, or believes that it must arm for the
struggle in terms of weapon technique only, it can
achieve as much momentary success as it pleases, but the
future does not belong to such a Folk. Hence the
limited preparation for a war was never the task of
truly great legislators and statesmen of this Earth, but
rather the unlimited inner and thorough training of a
Folk, so that its future could be secured almost as by
law, according to all human reason. Then even wars lose
the isolated character of more or less immense
surprises, but instead are integrated into a natural,
indeed self evident, system of fundamental, well
grounded, permanent development of a Folk.
That present State leaders pay little attention to this
viewpoint is partly due to the nature of democracy, to
which they owe their very existence, but secondly to the
fact that the State has become a purely formal mechanism
which appears to them as an aim in itself, which must
not in the least coincide with the interests of a
specific Folk. Folk and State have become two
different concepts. It will be the task of the National
Socialist Movement to bring about a fundamental change
here.
Back to book INDEX
Chapter 4: Elements of Foreign
Policy
Consequently if the task of
domestic policy--besides the obvious one of satisfying
the so called questions of the day--must be the steeling
and strengthening of a nation by means of a systematic
cultivation and promotion of its inner values, the task
of foreign policy is to correspond to and collaborate
with this policy in order to create and to secure the
vital prerequisites abroad. A healthy foreign policy,
therefore, will always keep the winning of the basis of
a Folk's sustenance immovably in sight as its ultimate
goal. Domestic policy must secure the inner strength of
a Folk so that it can assert itself in the sphere of
foreign policy. Foreign policy must secure the life of a
Folk for its domestic political development. Hence
domestic policy and foreign policy are not only most
closely linked, but must also mutually complement one
another. The fact that in the great conjunctures of
human history domestic policy as well as foreign policy
has paid homage to other principles is not at all a
proof of soundness, but rather proves the error of such
action. Innumerable Nations and States have perished as
a warning example to us, because they did not follow the
above mentioned elementary principles. How little man
thinks of the possibility of death during his life is a
noteworthy fact. And how little he arranges the details
of his life in accordance with the experiences that
innumerable men before him had to have and which, as
such, are all known to him. There are always exceptions
who bear this in mind and who, by virtue of their
personality, try to force on their fellow men the laws
of life that lay at the base of the experiences of past
epochs. Hence it is noteworthy that innumerable hygienic
measures which perforce redound to the advantage of a
Folk, and which individually are uncomfortable, must be
formally forced upon the main body of a Folk through
the autocratic standing of individual persons, in order
however to disappear again when the authority of the
personality is extinguished through the mass insanity of
democracy. The average man has the greatest fear of
death and in reality thinks of it most rarely. The
important man concerns himself with it most
emphatically, and nevertheless fears it the least. The
one lives blindly from day to day, sins heedlessly, in
order suddenly to collapse before the inevitable. The
other observes its coming most carefully and, to be
sure, looks it in the eye with calm and composure.
Such is exactly the case in the lives of nations. It is
often terrible to see how little men want to learn from
history, how with such imbecilic indifference they gloss
over their experiences, how thoughtlessly they sin
without considering that it is precisely through their
sins that so and so many Nations and States have
perished, indeed vanished from the Earth. And indeed how
little they concern themselves with the fact that even
for the short time span for which we possess an insight
into history, States and Nations have arisen which were
sometimes almost gigantic in size, but which two
thousand years later vanished without a trace, that
world powers once ruled cultural spheres of which only
Sagas give us any information, that giant cities have
sunk into ruins, and that their rubble heap has hardly
survived to show present-day mankind at least the site
on which they were located. The cares, hardships and
sufferings of these millions and millions of individual
men, who as a living substance were at one time the
bearers and victims of these events, are almost beyond
all imagination. Unknown men. Unknown soldiers of
history. And truly, how indifferent is the present. How
unfounded its eternal optimism, and how ruinous its
willful ignorance, its incapacity to see, and its
unwillingness to learn. And if it depended on the broad
masses, the game of the child playing with the fire with
which he is unfamiliar would repeat itself
uninterruptedly and also to an infinitely greater
extent. Hence it is the task of men who feel themselves
called as educators of a Folk to learn on their own
from history, and to apply their knowledge in a
practical manner [now], without regard to the view,
understanding, ignorance or even the refusal of the
mass. The greatness of a man is all the more important,
the greater his courage, in opposition to a generally
prevailing but ruinous view, to lead by his better
insight to general victory. His victory will appear all
the greater, the more enormous the resistances which had
to be overcome, and the more hopeless the struggle
seemed at first.
The National Socialist Movement would have no right to
regard itself as a truly great phenomenon in the life of
the German Folk, if it could not muster the courage to
learn from the experiences of the past, and to force the
laws of life it represents on the German Folk despite
all resistance. As powerful as its inner reform work
will be in this connection, equally it must [may] never
forget that in the long run there will be no resurgence
of our Folk if its activity in the sphere of foreign
policy does not succeed in securing the general
precondition for the sustenance of our Folk. Hence it
has become the fighter for freedom and bread in the
highest sense of the word. Freedom and bread is the
simplest and yet, in reality, the greatest foreign
policy slogan that can exist for any Folk: the freedom
of being able to order and regulate the life of a Folk,
according to its own interests, and the bread that this
Folk requires for its existence.
If today, therefore, I come forward as a critic of our
Folk's leadership in the sphere of foreign policy both
past and present, I am aware that the errors which I see
today have also been seen by others. What distinguishes
me from the latter perhaps is only the fact that in most
cases it has only involved critical perceptions having
no practical consequences, whereas, on the basis of my
insight into the errors and faults of former and present
German domestic and foreign policy, I strive to deduce
proposals for a change and improvement and to forge the
instrument with which these changes and improvements can
some day be realized.
For example, the foreign policy of the Wilhelminian
period was in many cases viewed by not a few people as
catastrophic and characterized accordingly. Innumerable
warnings came, especially from the circles of the Pan
German League of that time, which were justified in the
highest sense of the word. I can put myself in the
tragic situation that befell all these men who raised
their voices in warning, and who saw how and in what a
Folk perishes, and yet were not able to help. In the
last decades of the unfortunate foreign policy of the
pre War period in Germany, parliament, that is,
democracy, was not powerful enough to choose the heads
for the political leadership of the Reich by itself.
This was still an imperial right, whose formal existence
no one yet dared to shake. But the influence of
democracy had grown so strong, however, that a certain
direction already seemed to be prescribed to the
imperial decisions. Hence this had disastrous
consequences, for now a national minded man who raised
his voice in warning, on the one hand, could no longer
count on being invested with a very responsible post
against the pronounced tendency of democracy, whereas,
conversely, on the basis of general patriotic ideas, he
could not fight against His Majesty The Kaiser with the
final weapon of opposition. The idea of a March On Rome
in pre War Germany would have been absurd. Thus the
national opposition found itself in the worst of
situations. Democracy had not yet triumphed, but it
already stood in a furious struggle against the
monarchic conceptions of government. The monarchical
State itself responded to the struggle of democracy, not
with the determination to destroy the latter, but rather
with endless concessions. Anyone who at that time took a
stand against one of the two institutions ran the danger
of being attacked by both. Anyone who opposed an
imperial decision on national grounds was proscribed by
patriotic circles as much as he was abused by the
adherents of democracy. Anyone who took a position
against democracy was fought by democracy and left in
the lurch by the patriots. Indeed, he ran the danger of
being most ignominiously betrayed by German officialdom
in the wretched hope that through such a sacrifice it
could gain Jehovah's approval, and temporarily stop the
yelping of the pack of Jewish press hounds. Under the
conditions of that time, there was no prospect at hand
of making one's way to a responsible position in the
leadership of the German Government against the will of
the democrats or against the will of His Majesty The
Kaiser, and thereby being able to change the course of
foreign policy. Further, this led to the fact that
German foreign policy could be contested exclusively on
paper, which consequently launched a criticism that
necessarily took on the characteristic features of
journalism, the longer it continued. The consequence of
this, however, was that increasingly less value was
placed on positive proposals, in view of the lack of any
possibility of their realization, whereas the purely
critical consideration of foreign policy occasioned the
innumerable objections that one could adduce in all
their fullness, all the more so because it was hoped
that thereby one could overthrow the bad regime
responsible. To be sure this was not achieved by the
critics of that time. It was not the regime of that time
which was overthrown, but the German Reich and
consequently the German Folk. What they had foretold
for decades had now come to pass. We cannot think of
these men without a deep compassion, men condemned by
fate to foresee a collapse for twenty years, and who
now, having not been heeded and hence in no position to
be of help, had to live to see their Folk's most tragic
catastrophe.
Aged in years, care worn and embittered, and yet full of
the idea that, now, after the overthrow of the Imperial
Government, they had to help, they again tried to make
their influence felt for the resurgence of our Folk.
For ever so many reasons this was futile, to be sure.
When the revolution shattered the Imperial scepter and
raised democracy to the throne, the critics of that time
were as far from the possession of a weapon with which
to overthrow democracy as formerly they had been from
being able to influence the Imperial Government. In
their decades of activity, they had been geared so much
to a purely literary treatment of these problems that
they not only lacked the real means of power to express
their opinion on a situation which was only a reaction
to the shouting in the streets; they had also lost the
capacity to try to organize a manifestation of power
which had to be more than a wave of written protests if
it were to be really effective. They had all seen the
germ and the cause of the decline of the German Reich in
the old parties. With a sense of their own inner
cleanliness, they had to scorn the suggestion that they
too now wanted to play the game of the political
parties. And yet, they could carry out their view in
practice only if a large number gave them the
opportunity of representing it. And even though they
wanted a thousand times to smash the political parties,
they still indeed first had to form a party which viewed
its task as that of smashing the other parties. That
such did not come to pass was due to the following
reasons: the more the political opposition of these men
was forced to express itself purely journalistically,
the more it adopted a criticism which, though it exposed
all the weaknesses of the system of that time and shed
light on the defects of the individual foreign policy
measures, failed to produce positive proposals because
these men lacked any possibility of personal
responsibility, especially since in political life there
is naturally no action which does not have its dark as
well as its bright sides. There is no political
combination in foreign policy that we can ever regard as
completely satisfactory. For as matters stood then, the
critic, forced to view his main task as the elimination
of a regime recognized as altogether incompetent, had no
occasion, outside of the useful critical consideration
of this regime's actions, to come forward with positive
proposals, which in consequence of the objections
attached to them could just as easily have been
subjected to a critical elucidation.
The critic will never want to weaken the impact of his
criticism by bringing forward proposals which themselves
could be subjected to criticism. Gradually, however, the
purely critical thinking of those who then represented
the national opposition became such a second nature that
even today they consider domestic and foreign policy
critically, and deal with it only critically. Most of
them have remained critics, who therefore cannot even
today make their way to a clear, unambiguous, positive
decision, neither in domestic nor in foreign policy,
partly because of their insecurity and irresolution,
partly because of their fear of thereby furnishing the
enemy with ready ammunition for criticism of themselves.
Thus they would like to bring about improvements in a
thousand things, and yet cannot decide upon taking a
single step because even this very step is not
completely satisfactory, and possesses doubtful points;
in short it has its darker sides which they perceive and
which make them fearful. Now, leading a nation from a
deep and difficult illness is not a question of finding
a prescription that itself is completely free of poison;
not seldom it involves destroying a poison through an
antidote. In order to eliminate conditions recognized as
deadly we must have the courage to make and carry out
decisions that contain dangers in themselves. As a
critic I have the right to examine all the possibilities
of a foreign policy and to take them apart in detail
according to the doubtful aspects or possibilities they
bear in themselves. As the political leader, however,
who wants to make history, I must decide upon one way,
even if sober consideration a thousand times tells me
that it entails certain dangers and that it also will
not lead to a completely satisfying end. Hence I cannot
renounce the possibility of success because it is not a
hundred percent certain. I must neglect no step for the
reason that perhaps it will not be a full one, if the
spot in which I momentarily find myself might bring my
unconditional death the next instant. Neither,
therefore, may I renounce a political action for the
reason that, besides benefiting my Folk, it will also
benefit another Folk. Indeed, I may never do this when
the benefit to the other Folk will be greater than that
to my own, and when in the case of a failure to take
action the misfortune of my Folk remains with absolute
certainty.
Indeed, right now I encounter the most stubborn
resistance in the purely critical way of viewing things
that many people have. They recognize this and this and
this as good and as correct, but despite this they
cannot join us because this and this and this is
dubious. They know that Germany and our Folk will
perish, but they cannot join the rescue action because
here, too, they detect this or that which is at least a
blemish that mars its beauty. In short, they see the
decline and cannot muster up the strength of
determination to battle against it, because in the
resistance and in this deed itself they already again
begin to smell out some possible objection or other.
This deplorable mentality owes its existence to [springs
from] a still further evil. Today there are not a few
men, especially the so called educated ones, who, when
they finally make up their minds to fall in line with a
certain action or even to promote it, first carefully
weigh the percentage of the probability of its success,
in order then to calculate the extent of their active
involvement likewise on the basis of this percentage.
Thus this means: because, for example, any decision on
foreign policy or domestic policy is not completely
satisfying and hence does not seem certain to succeed,
one should also not espouse it unreservedly with the
full dedication of all his powers. These unhappy souls
have no understanding at all of the fact that, on the
contrary, a decision which I deem to be necessary, whose
success however does not seem completely assured, or
whose success will offer only a partial satisfaction,
must be fought for with an increased energy so that what
it lacks in the possibility of success in percentage
points, must be made up for in the energy of its
execution. Thus only one question is to be examined:
whether a situation demands a definite decision or not.
If such a decision is established and recognized as
incontestably necessary, then its execution must be
carried out with the most brutal ruthlessness and the
highest employment of strength even if the ultimate
result will be a thousand times unsatisfactory or in
need of improvement or possibly will meet with only a
small percentage of probability of success.
If a man appears to have cancer and is unconditionally
doomed to die, it would be senseless to refuse an
operation, because the percentage of the possibility of
success is slight, and because the patient, even should
it be successful, will not be a hundred percent healthy.
It would be still more senseless were the surgeon to
perform the operation itself only with limited or
partial energy in consequence of these limited
possibilities. But it is this senselessness that these
men expect uninterruptedly in domestic and foreign
policy matters. Because the success of a political
operation is not fully assured or will not be completely
satisfactory in result, not only do they renounce its
execution, but expect, should it take place
nevertheless, that at least it will ensue only with
restrained power, without a complete dedication, and
always in silent hope that perhaps they can keep a
little loophole open through which to make their
retreat. This is the soldier who is attacked by a tank
on an open battlefield and who, in view [in consequence]
of the uncertainty of the success of his resistance,
conducts it at the outset with only half his strength.
His little loophole is flight, and certain death is his
end.
No, the German Folk is today attacked by a pack of
booty hungry enemies from within and without. The
continuation of this state of affairs is our death. We
must seize every possibility of breaking it, even if its
result may a thousand times likewise have its weaknesses
or objectionable sides as such. And every such
possibility must therefore be fought out with the utmost
energy. The success of the battle of Leuthen was
uncertain, but it was necessary to fight it. Frederick
The Great did not win because he went toward the enemy
with only half his strength, but because he compensated
for the uncertainty of success by the abundance of his
genius, the boldness and determination of his troop
dispositions, and the elan of his regiments in battle.
I'm afraid, indeed, that I will never be understood by
my bourgeois critics, at least as long as success does
not prove to them the soundness of our action. Here the
man of the Folk has a better counselor. He sets the
assurance of his instinct and the faith of his heart in
place of the sophistry of our intellectuals.
If I deal with foreign policy in this work, however, I
do so not as a critic, but as the Leader Of The National
Socialist Movement, which I know will some day make
history. If I am, therefore, nevertheless forced to
consider the past and the present critically, it is only
for the purpose of establishing the only positive way,
and to make it appear understandable. Just as the
National Socialist Movement not only criticizes domestic
policy, but possesses its own philosophically grounded
Program, likewise in the sphere of foreign policy it
must not only recognize what others have done wrongly,
but deduce its own action on the basis of this
knowledge.
Thus I know well that even our highest success will not
create a hundred percent happiness, for in view of human
imperfection and the general circumstances conditioned
by it, ultimate perfection always lies only in
programmatic theory. I also know, further, that no
success can be achieved without sacrifice, just as no
battle can be fought without losses. But the awareness
of the incompleteness of a success will never be able to
keep me from preferring such an incomplete success to
the perceived complete downfall. I will then strain
every nerve to try to offset what is lacking in the
probability of success or the extent of success through
greater determination, and to communicate this spirit to
the Movement led by me. Today we are fighting against an
enemy front which we must and will break through. We
calculate our own sacrifices, weigh the extent of the
possible success, and will stride forward to the attack,
regardless of whether it will come to a halt ten or a
thousand kilometers behind the present lines. For
wherever our success ends, it will always be only the
point of departure for a new struggle.
Back to book INDEX
Chapter 5: National Socialist
Foreign Policy
I am a German nationalist.
This means that I proclaim my nationality. My whole
thought and action belongs to it. I am a socialist. I
see no class and no social estate before me, but that
community of the Folk, made up of people who are linked
by blood, united by a language, and subject to a same
general fate. I love this Folk and hate only its
majority of the moment, because I view the latter to be
just as little representative of the greatness of my
Folk as it is of its happiness.
The National Socialist Movement which I lead today views
its goal as the liberation of our Folk within and
without. It aims to give our Folk domestically those
forms of life which seem to be suitable to its nature
and to be a benefit to it as the expression of this
nature. It aims thereby to preserve the character of
this Folk and to further cultivate it through the
systematic fostering of its best men and best virtues.
It fights for the external freedom of this Folk,
because only under freedom can this life find that form
which is serviceable to its Folk. It fights for the
daily bread of this Folk because it champions [in
hunger] this Folk's right to life. It fights for the
required space, because it represents this Folk's right
to life.
By the concept domestic policy the National Socialist
Movement therefore understands the promotion,
strengthening and consolidation of the existence of our
Folk through the introduction of forms and laws of life
which correspond to the nature of our Folk, and which
can bring its fundamental powers to full effectiveness.
By the concept foreign policy it understands the
safeguarding of this development through the
preservation of freedom and the creation of the most
necessary prerequisites for life.
Thus, in terms of foreign policy, the National Socialist
Movement is distinguished from previous bourgeois
parties by, for example, the following: The foreign
policy of the national bourgeois world has in truth
always been only a border policy; as against that, the
policy of the National Socialist Movement will always be
a territorial one. In its boldest plans, for example,
the German bourgeoisie will aspire to the unification of
the German nation, but in reality it will finish with a
botched up regulation of the borders.
The National Socialist Movement, on the contrary, will
always let its foreign policy be determined by the
necessity to secure the space necessary to the life of
our Folk. It knows no Germanizing or Teutonizing, as in
the case of the national bourgeoisie, but only the
spread of its own Folk. It will never see in the
subjugated, so-called Germanized, Czechs or Poles a
national--let alone Folkish--strengthening, but only
the racial weakening of our Folk. For its national
conception is not determined by earlier patriotic ideas
of government, but rather by Folkish, racial insights.
Thus the point of departure of its thinking is wholly
different from that of the bourgeois world. Hence much
of what seems to the national bourgeoisie like the
political success of the past and present, is for us
either a failure or the cause of a later misfortune. And
much that we regard as self-evident seems
incomprehensible or even monstrous to the German
bourgeoisie. Nevertheless a part of German youth,
especially from bourgeois circles, will be able to
understand me. Neither I nor the National Socialist
Movement figure to find any support whatsoever in the
circles of the political national bourgeoisie, active at
present, but we certainly know that at least a part of
the youth will find its way into our ranks.
For them.
Back to book INDEX
Chapter 6: German Needs and
Aims
The question of a nation's
foreign policy is determined by factors that lie partly
within a nation, and partly given by the environment. In
general the internal factors are the basis for the
necessity of a definite foreign policy as well as for
the amount of strength required for its execution.
Folks living on an impossible soil surface
fundamentally will tend to enlarge their territory,
consequently their living space, at least as long as
they are under healthy leadership. This process,
originally grounded only in the concern over sustenance,
appeared so beneficent in its felicitous solution that
it gradually attained the fame of success. This means
that the enlargement of space, at first grounded in pure
expediencies, became in the course of mankind's
development a heroic deed, which then also took place
even when the original preconditions or inducements were
lacking. Later, the attempt to adapt the living space to
increased population turned into unmotivated wars of
conquest, which in their very lack of motivation
contained the germ of the subsequent reaction. Pacifism
is the answer to it. Pacifism has existed in the world
ever since there have been wars whose meaning no longer
lay in the conquest of territory for a Folk's
sustenance. Since then it has been war's eternal
companion. It will again disappear as soon as war ceases
to be an instrument of booty hungry or power hungry
individuals or nations, and as soon as it again becomes
the ultimate weapon with which a Folk fights for is
daily bread.
Even in the future the enlargement of a Folk's living
space for the winning of bread will require staking the
whole strength of the Folk. If the task of domestic
policy is to prepare this commitment of the Folk's
strength, the task of a foreign policy is to wield this
strength in such a manner that the highest possible
success seems assured. This, of course, is not
conditioned only by the strength of the Folk, ready for
action at any given time, but also by the power of the
resistances. The disproportion in strength between Folks struggling with one another for land leads
repeatedly to the attempt, by way of alliances, either
to emerge as conquerors themselves or to put up
resistance to the over-powerful conqueror.
This is the beginning of the policy of alliances.
After the victorious war of 1870-1871, the German Folk
achieved a position of infinite esteem in Europe. Thanks
to the success of Bismarcks statesmanship and Prussian
German military accomplishments, a great number of
German States, which heretofore had been only loosely
linked, and which, indeed, had not seldom in history
faced each other as enemies, were brought together in
one Reich. A province of the old German Reich, lost 170
years before, permanently annexed at that time by France
after a brief predatory war, came back to the mother
country. Numerically thereby the greatest part of the
German nation, at least in Europe, was amalgamated in a
unitary State structure. It was cause for concern that
ultimately this State structure included ..........
million Poles and .......... Alsatians and Lorrainers
become Frenchmen. This did not correspond either with
the idea of a National or of a Folkish State. The
national State of bourgeois conception must at least
secure the unity of the State language, indeed down to
the last school and the last street sign. Further it
must include the German idea in the education and life
of these Folk and make them the bearers of this idea.
There have been weak attempts at this; perhaps it was
never seriously wanted and in practice the opposite has
been achieved.
The Folkish State, conversely, must under no conditions
annex Poles with the intention of wanting to make
Germans out of them some day. On the contrary, it must
muster the determination either to seal off these alien
racial elements, so that the blood of its own Folk will
not be corrupted again, or it must without further ado
remove them and hand over the vacated territory to its
own National Comrades. That the bourgeois national State
was not capable of such a deed is obvious. Neither had
anyone ever thought about it, nor would anyone ever have
done such a thing. But even if there had been a will to
do this, there would not have been sufficient strength
to carry it out, less because of the repercussions in
the rest of the world than because of the complete lack
of understanding that such an action would have found in
the ranks of the so called national bourgeoisie. The
bourgeois world had once presumed it could overthrow the
feudal world, whereas in reality it continued the
latter's mistakes through bourgeois grocers, lawyers,
and journalists. It has never possessed an idea of its
own, but indeed a measureless conceit and money. But a
world cannot be conquered with this alone, nor another
one built. Hence the period of bourgeois rule in world
history will be as brief as it is indecently
contemptible.
Thus, right from its foundation, the German Reich had
also assimilated toxins into the new State structure
whose deleterious effect could all the less be evaded as
bourgeois equality, to top things off, gave Jews the
possibility of using them as their surest shock troops.
Aside from that, the Reich nevertheless encompassed only
a part of the German Nation, even though the largest. It
would have been self evident that even if the new State
had not possessed any great foreign policy aim of a
Folkish character, at least as a so called bourgeois
national State it should have kept in view further
unification and consolidation of the German Nation, as
its minimum foreign policy aim. This was something that
the bourgeois national Italian State never forgot.
Thus the German Folk had obtained a National State
which in reality did not completely encompass the
Nation.
Thus the new borders of the Reich, viewed in a national
political sense, were incomplete. They ran straight
across German language areas, and even through parts
which, at least formerly, had belonged to the German
Union, even if in an informal way.
But these new borders of the Reich were even more
unsatisfactory from a military viewpoint. Everywhere
were unprotected, open areas which, especially in the
West, were, in addition, of decisive importance for the
German economy, extending far beyond the border areas.
These borders were all the more unsuitable in a military
political sense, since grouped around Germany were
several great States with foreign policy aims as
aggressive as their military means were plentiful.
Russia in the east, France in the west. Two military
States, one of which cast covetous glances at Eastern
and Western Prussia, while the other tirelessly pursued
its centuries old foreign policy goal for the erection
of a frontier on the Rhine. In addition there was
England, the mightiest maritime power of the world. The
more extensive and unprotected the German land borders
were in the east and west, the more restricted, by
contrast, was the possible operational basis of a naval
war. Nothing had made the fight against German submarine
warfare easier than the spatially conditioned
restriction of its port areas. It was easier to close
off and patrol the triangle shaped body of water than
would have been the case with a coast, say, 600 or 800
kilometers long. Taken all in all, the new borders of
the Reich as such were not at all satisfactory from a
military point of view. Nowhere was there a natural
obstacle or a natural defense. As against this, however,
everywhere were highly developed power States with
hostile thoughts in the back of their minds. The
Bismarckian premonition that the new Reich founded by
him would once again have to be protected with the sword
was most deeply justified. Bismarck expressed what was
fulfilled forty five years later.
As little satisfactory as the new Reich borders could be
in a national and military political sense, they were
nevertheless even still more unsatisfactory from the
standpoint of the possibility of sustenance of the
German Folk.
Germany in fact was always an overpopulated area. On the
one hand this lay in the hemmed in position of the
German nation in Central Europe, on the other in the
cultural and actual importance of this Folk and its
purely human fertility. Since its historical entry into
world history, the German Folk has always found itself
in need of space. Indeed, its first political emergence
was forced primarily by that need. Since the beginning
of the migration of Folks, our Folk has never been
able to settle this need for space, except through
conquest by the sword or through a reduction of its own
population. This reduction of the population was
sometimes effected through hunger, sometimes through
emigration, and at times through endless, unfortunate
wars. In recent times it has been effected by voluntary
birth control.
The wars of the years 1864, 1866 and 1870-71, had their
meaning in the national political unification of a part
of the German Folk and thus in the final end of German
State political fragmentation. The black, white, red
flag of the new Reich therefore did not have the
slightest ideological meaning, but rather a German
national one in the sense that it overcame the former
State political fragmentation. Thus the black, white,
red flag became a symbol of the German Federal State
which had overcome the fragmentation. The fact that,
notwithstanding and despite its youth, it enjoyed a
positively idolatrous veneration, lay in the manner of
its baptism, for indeed the very birth of the Reich
towered infinitely above otherwise similar events. Three
victorious wars, the last of which became a literal
miracle of German statesmanship, German military
leadership, and German heroism, are the deeds from which
the new Reich was born. And when it finally announced
its existence to the surrounding world in the imperial
proclamation, through its greatest imperial herald, the
thunder and rumbling of the batteries at the front
surrounding Paris reechoes in the blare and the flourish
of the trumpets.
Never before had an Empire been proclaimed in such a
fashion.
But the black, white, red flag appeared to the German
Folk as the symbol of this unique event exactly as the
black, red and yellow flag is and will remain a symbol
of the November Revolution.
As much as the individual German States increasingly
fused with one another under this banner, and as much as
the new Reich secured their State political prestige and
recognition abroad, the founding of the Reich still did
not change anything with regard to the major need, our
Folk's lack of territory. The great military political
deeds of our Folk had not been able to give the German
Folk a border within which it would have been able to
secure its sustenance by itself. On the contrary: in
proportion as the esteem of German nationality rose
through the new Reich, it became all the more difficult
for the individual German to turn his back on such a
State as an emigrant, whereas, conversely, a certain
national pride and a joy in life, which we find almost
incomprehensible today, taught that large families were
a blessing rather than a burden.
After 1870-1871 there was a visibly rapid increase in
the German population. In part its sustenance was
covered through the utmost industry and great scientific
efficiency with which the German now cultivated his
fields within the secured frontiers of his Folk. But a
great part, if not the greatest, of the increase in
German soil productivity was swallowed up by an at least
equally great increase of the general living
requirements which the citizen of the new State now
likewise claimed. The nation of sauerkraut eaters and
potato annihilators, as the French derisively
characterized it, now slowly began to adjust its living
standard to that of other Folks in the world. Thus only
a part of the yield of the increase of German
agriculture was available for the net population
increase.
As a matter of fact, the new Reich never knew how to
banish this need. Even in the new Reich, at first, an
attempt was made to keep the relation between population
and land within tolerable limits through a permanent
emigration. For the most shattering proof of the
soundness of our assertion of the towering importance of
the relation between population and land lies in the
fact that, in consequence of this disproportion,
specifically in Germany during the 1870s, 1880s and
1890s, the distress led to an epidemic of emigration
which even at the beginning of the 1890s had swollen to
a figure of nearly one and a quarter million people a
year.
Thus the problem of the sustenance of the German Folk
had not been solved for the existing human mass, not
even by the foundation of the new Reich. A further
increase of the German Nation, however, could not take
place without such a solution. Regardless of how such a
solution might turn out, it had to be found in any case.
Hence the most important problem of German foreign
policy after 1870-1871 had to be the question of solving
the problem of sustenance.
Back to book INDEX
Chapter 7: Policies of the
Second Reich
Among Bismarck's innumerable
utterances there is hardly another which the bourgeois
political world could have been more fond of quoting
than the one that politics is the art of the possible.
The smaller the political minds which had to administer
the legacy of the great man, the greater the force of
attraction this utterance possessed. For with this
proposition, to be sure, they could embroider, indeed
justify even the most wretched political bunglers, by
simply appealing to the great man and trying to prove
that, for the moment, it was impossible to do other than
what was being done, that politics was the art of the
possible, and that consequently they were acting with a
Bismarckian spirit and in a Bismarckian sense. Thereby
even a Herr Stresemann can receive some sort of an
Olympian wreath to put around his head which, if not
really Bismarckian, is at least bald. Bismarck had an
exactly demarcated and clearly outlined political goal
before his eyes. It is an impudence to want to saddle
him with the idea that he achieved his life work only
through an accumulation of specific political
possibilities, and not through a mastery of specific
momentary situations with an eye on a visualized
political aim. This political aim of Bismarck was to:
Solve the German question through blood and iron
Eliminate the Habsburg Hohenzollern dualism
Form a new German Reich under Prussian Hohenzollern
leadership
Arrange the highest possible external security of this
Reich
Organise its inner administration on the Prussian model.
In the pursuit of this aim, Bismarck utilized every
opportunity, and worked through the diplomatic art as
long as it promised success; he threw the sword into the
scales if force alone was in a position to bring about a
decision. A master of politics, for whom the operational
sphere extended from the parquet floors of drawing rooms
to the blood soaked earth of battlefields.
Such was the master of the politics of possibilities.
His successors have neither a political aim nor even a
political idea. In contrast to him they muddle through
from today to tomorrow and from tomorrow to the day
after, and then with conceited insolence quote that
man--whom partly they themselves, partly their spiritual
predecessors had occasioned the most difficult concerns
and most bitter battles--in order to present their
politically senseless and aimless, ruinous stammering as
the art of the possible.
When, in his three wars, Bismarck set up the new
Reich--all due, however, to his brilliant political
activity--this was actually the highest achievement that
could be realized at that time. But this was only the
indispensable, necessary prerequisite for any future
political representation of the vital interests of our
Folk. For without the creation of the new Reich, the
German Folk would have never discovered the power
structure without which the fateful struggle could not
be carried on in the future too. It was equally clear
that at the outset the new Reich certainly had to be
joined together on the battlefield, but that internally
the component States first had to grow accustomed to
each other. Years of adjustment had to pass before this
consolidation of German States into a Union could in the
first instance result in a real Federal State. This was
when the Iron Chancellor discarded the cuirassier's boot
in order then, with infinite cleverness, patience, and
with a wise understanding and a wonderful sensitivity,
to replace the pressure of Prussian hegemony by the
power of trust. The achievement of making a coalition of
States, formed on the battlefield, into a Reich
interconnected in a touching love, belongs with the
greatest ever brought about by the art of politics.
That Bismarck at first limited himself to this was just
as much due to the wisdom of his insight, as it was the
good fortune of the German Nation. These years of the
inner peaceful construction of the new Reich were
necessary, if one was not to succumb to a mania for
conquest whose results would have been all the more
uncertain, since the executive power within the Reich
itself was still lacking in that homogeneity which would
have been a prerequisite for the fusing of further
territories.
Bismarck achieved his life goal. He solved the German
question, eliminated the Habsburg Hohenzollern dualism,
raised Prussia to German hegemony, subsequently united
the Nation, consolidated the new Reich within the limits
of the possible of that time, and worked out the
military defense in such a way that this whole process
of newly establishing the German Reich internally, which
indeed necessarily took decades, could not be disrupted
in essentials by anybody. Thus the more Bismarck could,
as the aged old Reich Chancellor, look back on a
finished life work, the less did this work signify the
end of the life of the German Nation. Through Bismarck's
founding of the new Reich, the German nation, after
centuries of governmental decay, had again found an
organic form which not only united the German Folk, but
also endowed this united Folk with an expression of
vigor which was as real as it was ideal. If the flesh
and blood of this Folk was the substance whose
preservation in this world had to be sought, the
instrument of power through which the Nation could
henceforth again attend to its right to life in the
framework of the rest of the world had come into being
with the new Reich. The task of the post Bismarck period
was to resolve what further step had to be taken in the
interest of preserving the substance of the German
Folk.
Hence the further detailed political work depended on
these decisions, which had to be of a fundamental
character and which thereby signified the setting of a
new goal. Hence this means: Just as Bismarck, as an
individual man, had resolved to set a goal for his
political action, which only then allowed him to act
from situation to situation according to all
possibilities, in order to arrive at this goal, so did
the post Bismarck period also have to set itself a
definite goal, as necessary as it was possible, whose
achievement imperatively promoted the interests of the
German Folk, and for the achievement of which one could
then likewise utilize all possibilities, beginning with
the arts of diplomacy up to the art of war.
The setting of this goal, however, was left undone. It
is not necessary, and indeed hardly possible, to specify
all the causes of this neglect. The principal reason
lies first of all in the lack of a really brilliant,
towering political personality. But reasons which partly
lie in the very nature of the founding of the new Reich
weigh almost as heavily in the scales. Germany had
become a democratic State, and even though the leaders
of the Reich were subject to imperial decisions,
nevertheless these decisions themselves could escape
only with difficulty the impact of that general opinion
which found its particular expression in the
parliamentary institution, the makers of which were the
political parties as well as the press, which in turn
themselves received their ultimate instructions from a
few recognizable wire-pullers. Thereby the interests of
the nation receded more and more into the background in
comparison to the interests of definite and special
groups. This was all the more the case, since only
little clarity on the real interests of the nation
prevailed among the broadest circles of public opinion,
whereas, conversely, the interests of definite political
parties or of the newspaper world were much more
concrete since Germany was now indeed a national State.
But the concept of a national attitude was in the end
only a purely governmental patriotic dynastic one. It
had almost nothing to do with Folkish insights. Hence a
general vagueness prevailed as to the future and as to
the directional goal of a future foreign policy. Viewed
from a national standpoint, the next task of the State,
after the completion of its inner State structure,
should have been the resumption and the final
achievement of national unity. No foreign policy aim
could have been more obvious for the strictly formal
national State of that time than the annexation of those
German areas in Europe which, partly through their
former history, had to be an obvious part not only of
the German nation but of a German Reich. Nevertheless
such an obvious goal had not been set because, apart
from other resistances, the so called national concept
was much too vague, little thought through and worked
out, to be able to motivate such a step sufficiently by
itself. To have kept in view and carried out, with all
means, the incorporation of the German element of the
old eastern frontier of the Reich as the next aim would
have run counter to patriotic legitimist ideas, as well
as counter to feelings of poorly defined sympathies.
The venerable House Of Habsburg, to be sure, would
thereby have lost its throne. All beer table patriotism
would also have been most grievously offended, but
nevertheless this would have been the only reasonable
next aim which the new Reich could set for itself--that
is, from the point of view of a so called National
State. Not only because through it Germans living in the
area of the Reich would have considerably increased
numerically, which naturally would have also been
expressed militarily, but at that time we could have
rescued that, the loss of which we deplore today. Had
Germany herself joined in the partition of the
impossible Habsburg State, indeed had she presented this
partition to herself as her own political aim for
national political reasons, Europe's whole development
would have taken another path. Germany would not have
made enemies out of a whole number of States which in
themselves had nothing against Germany, and in the south
the frontiers of the Reich would not run across the
Brenner. At least the predominantly German part of the
Southern Tyrol would be in Germany today.
But that this was prevented lay not only in the lack of
a national concept at that time, but just as much in the
definite interests of definite groups. Centrist circles
under all circumstances desired a policy aimed at
preserving the so called catholic Habsburg State, in
connection with which they talked mendaciously about
clan brothers, whereas they knew very well that in the
Habsburg monarchy these clan brothers were slowly but
surely being driven to the wall and robbed of their
membership in the clan. But for the Center, German
viewpoints were not a standard, indeed not even in
Germany proper. The gentlemen were fonder of any Pole,
any Alsatian traitor and Francophile than they were of
the German who did not want to join such a criminal
organization. Under the pretext of representing catholic
interests, this party even in peacetime had lent a
helping hand to harm and ruin the major bulwark of a
real Christian world view, Germany, in all possible
ways. And this most mendacious party did not even shrink
from going arm in arm, in the closest friendship, with
avowed deniers of god, atheists, blasphemers of
religion, as long as they believed they could thereby
harm the German National State and the German Folk.
Thus in the establishment of the insane German foreign
policy, the Center, the Christian catholic pious Center,
had Jewish god denying Marxists as loving allies at its
side.
For just as the Center did everything it could to
protect itself against any anti Habsburg policy, the
Social Democrats, as the then representatives of the
Marxist world view, did exactly the same, albeit for
other reasons. To be sure, the ultimate intention in
both parties was the same: to harm Germany as much as
possible. The weaker the State, the more unlimited
becomes domination of these parties, and therefore the
greater advantage to their leaders.
If the Old Reich wanted to resume the unification of the
German element in Europe on the basis of national
political viewpoints, then the dissolution of the
Habsburg conglomeration of States, necessarily linked to
it, entailed a new grouping of European powers. It was
self evident that such a dissolution of the Habsburg
State was inconceivable without entering into relations
with other States which had to pursue similar interests.
Thus a European coalition for the achievement of this
goal, by pursuing all possibilities thereto, would
automatically have come into being, which would have
determined Europe's fate at least for the next decades.
To be sure, the Triple Alliance had first to be
liquidated in fact. I say in fact, because in practice
the liquidation had already been accomplished long ago.
The alliance with Austria had a real meaning for Germany
as long as through this alliance she could hope to get
additional power in the hour of danger. It became
senseless from the moment in which the additional power
was smaller than Germany's military burden brought about
by this alliance. Properly considered, this was the case
from the very first day of the Triple Alliance, if, for
example, Russia were to become Germany's enemy in
consequence of this Alliance, or on the basis of this
Alliance. Bismarck had also pondered this most
scrupulously and therefore saw himself induced to
conclude the so called Reinsurance Treaty with Russia.
Briefly, the sense of the Reinsurance Treaty was that,
if Germany should be pushed into a conflict with Russia
through the Alliance, she would drop Austria. Thus
Bismarck had already perceived the problematic
importance of the Triple Alliance in his time, and, in
accordance with his art of the possible, he had taken
the necessary precautions to meet all circumstances.
In its time, this Reinsurance Treaty contributed to the
banishment of the greatest German statesman of our age.
As a matter of fact, the situation feared by Bismarck
had already arisen in the beginning of the 1890s after
the occupation of Bosnia by Austria-Hungary, and in
consequence of the powerfully inflamed Pan Slav movement
arising therefrom. The alliance with Austria had brought
enmity with Russia.
This enmity with Russia, however, was the reason why
Marxists, even though they were not in accord with
German foreign policy, nevertheless in reality used
every means to make another one impossible.
Thus Austria's relation to Italy as such always remained
the same. Formerly Italy had entered the Triple Alliance
as a precaution against France, but not out of love for
Austria. On the contrary, Bismarck even here had
correctly perceived the inner cordiality of the Italian
Austrian relationship when he asserted that there were
only two possibilities between Austria and Italy: either
an alliance or war. In Italy--aside from a few
Francophile fanatics--a real sympathy existed only for
Germany. And this was also understandable. It speaks for
the completely bottomless lack of political training and
the political ignorance of the German Folk, especially
of its so called bourgeois national intelligentsia, that
they believed they could carry over the Triple Alliance,
based on political law, to the sphere of friendly
inclinations. This was not even the case between Germany
and Austria, for even here the Triple Alliance, or more
correctly, the alliance with Germany, was humanly
anchored only in the hearts of a relatively small part
of the Germans in Austria. The Habsburg’s would have
never made their way to the Triple Alliance if any other
possibility of preserving their corpse of a State had
existed. When in the July days of 1870 the German Folk
were inflamed with indignation over France's
unprecedented provocations and hastened to the old
battlefields in defense of the German Rhine, in Vienna
it was hoped that the hour to revenge Sadowa had come.
Conferences followed one another in rapid succession,
one crown council alternated with another, couriers flew
hither and thither, and the first call up of the
reserves was issued when suddenly, to be sure, the first
communiqués from the theatres of war also began to
arrive. And when Weissenburg was followed by a Wörth,
and Wörth by a Gravelotte, a Metz, a Mars la Tour, and
finally a Sedan, then the Habsburg’s, under the pressure
of the suddenly released clamor of the new German
opinion, first began to discover their German heart. If
at that time Germany had lost only the first battles,
the Habsburg’s, and with them Austria, would have done
the very thing for which they later greatly reproached
Italy. And that which, moreover, they not only intended
to do in the World War for the second time, but actually
perpetrated as the basest betrayal of the State which
had unsheathed its sword for them. For the sake and on
account of this State, Germany had taken the worst
bloody hardships upon herself, and she was betrayed not
only in a thousand individual cases by this State, but
finally by the representative of the State himself, all
things and truths about which our bourgeois national
patriots prefer to keep silent, in order to be able to
shriek against Italy today. When later the House Of
Habsburg crept into the Triple Alliance, it was really
only because without the Triple Alliance this House
would long ago have been swept to where it finds itself
today. When I once more examine the sins of this House
in the history of the German Folk, to me it seems
distressing that this time the mills of god were
propelled by forces which lay outside the German Folk.
But thus the Habsburg’s also had every reason to want
the alliance, especially with Germany, because this
alliance in reality indeed surrendered Germanism in
Austria. The denationalization policy of the Habsburg’s
in Austria, their Czechisation and Slavisation of German
elements, would have never become possible, if the Reich
itself had not held its moral shield over it. Because
what right did the German Austrian have to protest, and
on national grounds, against a State policy to which
corresponded the quintessence of the German national
idea, as it was embodied in the Reich for the German
Austrian? And, conversely, could Germany now exert any
pressure at all to prevent the slow de Germanization in
Austria, if after all the Habsburg’s themselves were the
allies of the Reich? We must know the weakness of the
political leaders of the Reich in order to know that
anything else would sooner have been possible rather
than an attempt to exercise a real energetic influence
on the ally which would have affected her domestic
affairs. The wily Habsburg’s knew this well, just as, in
general, Austrian diplomacy was toweringly superior to
the German in artfulness and craftiness. And,
conversely, these very Germans, as though stricken with
blindness, seemed not to have the remotest idea of
events and conditions inside the country of their ally.
Only the War may have opened the eyes of most people.
Thus the very alliance based friendship of the
Habsburg’s for Germany was all the more fateful since,
through it, the ultimate undermining of the prerequisite
for this alliance was guaranteed. For now that the
Habsburg’s were in a position to wipe out Germanism in
Austria at their leisure and without having to worry
about German interference, the worth of this whole
alliance for Germany herself became increasingly
problematic. What meaning should an alliance have for
Germany which was not earnestly intended by the ruling
house -- for the House Of Habsburg had never thought to
regard German interests as taken for granted in the
matter of the alliance, so that the few real friends of
this alliance perforce slowly fell prey to de
Germanization. For in the rest of Austria the alliance
was viewed with indifference at best, but in most cases
it was inwardly hated. In the period of the last twenty
years before the War, the metropolitan press in Vienna
was already much more oriented along pro French rather
than pro German lines. The press of the Slavic
provinces, however, was deliberately hostile to Germany.
In proportion as Slavism was culturally fostered to the
utmost by the Habsburg’s, and now acquired focal points
of its own national culture in their capitals, it also
gave rise to centers having a special political will of
their own. It is an historical punishment for the House
Of Habsburg not to have seen that one day this national
hatred, which was first mobilized against the Germans,
would devour the Austrian State itself. But for Germany
the alliance with Austria became especially senseless
the moment when, thanks to the influence of the German
Austrian Marxists, treasonable to the Folk, so called
universal suffrage finally broke the hegemony of
Germanism in the Austrian State. For actually indeed the
Germans numbered only a third of the population of
Cisleithania, that is, of the Austrian half of the
Austrian Hungarian State. Once universal suffrage became
the foundation of Austrian parliamentary representation,
the situation of the Germans became hopeless, the more
so since the clerical parties wanted a deliberate
representation of the national viewpoints as little as
did the Marxists, who deliberately betrayed them. The
same Social Democrats who today hypocritically talk
about Germanism in the Southern Tyrol betrayed and sold
out Germanism in old Austria in the most shameless way
at every opportunity that offered itself. They always
stood on the side of the enemies of our Folk. The most
impertinent Czech arrogance has always found its
representatives in so called German Social Democracy.
Every oppressive act directed against Germany found
their approbation. And every example of a German
deterioration saw the German Social Democrats as
collaborators. Under such circumstances what could
Germany still expect from a State whose political
leadership, insofar as it was specifically expressed in
parliament, was four fifths consciously and deliberately
anti German?
The advantages of the alliance with Austria lay really
only on Austria's side, whereas Germany had to bear the
disadvantages. And these were not few.
The nature of the Austrian State entailed that a whole
number of surrounding States had Austria's dissolution
in view as the goal of their national policy. For what
post Bismarckian Germany was never able to bring about
had been done by even the smallest Balkan States;
namely, setting a definite foreign policy goal, which
they tried to achieve with, and according to, all the
possibilities at hand. All these to some extent freshly
arisen national States, lying on Austria's borders, saw
their highest future political task as the liberation of
the racial comrades who ethnically belonged to them, but
who lived under the scepter of Austria and the
Habsburg’s. It was self evident that this liberation
could take place only through military action. Likewise
that this must necessarily lead to Austria's
dissolution. The Austrians' own power of resistance
constituted an obstacle to this all the less so as they
were dependent primarily on those who were to be
liberated. In case of a coalition war of Russia,
Rumania, and Serbia against Austria, the Northern Slav
and Southern Slav elements would fall from the outset
outside the frame of Austrian resistance, so that at
best Germans and Magyars would remain as the bearers of
the main struggle. Now, experience shows that the
elimination of specific fighting forces on Folkish
grounds leads to disintegration and thus to a complete
paralysis of Austria's front. By herself Austria would
have been able to offer only little resistance to such a
general offensive war. This was known in Russia as well
as in Serbia, and very well known in Rumania Thus what
really supported Austria was only her mighty ally, on
whom she was able to steady herself. But what was more
natural than that by this time the idea should form in
the brains of the leading anti Austrian statesmen, as
well as in public opinion, that the way to Vienna must
lead through Berlin?
The more States there were which fancied to inherit
Austria and could not do so in consequence of the
military partnership, all the more were the States which
Germany herself necessarily incurred as enemies.
At the turn of the century the weight of these enemies,
set against Germany because of Austria, was already
several times greater than the possible armed help that
Austria could ever furnish Germany. Thus the inner
meaning of this alliance policy was converted exactly
into its opposite.
The matter was complicated still further by the third
member of the alliance, Italy. As has already been
mentioned, Italy's relation to Austria was never a
matter of cordiality, and hardly one of reason, but
actually only the result and the consequence of an
overwhelming necessity. The Italian Folk primarily, and
the Italian intelligentsia, were always able to rally
sympathy for Germany. At the turn of the century every
ground already existed for an alliance of Italy with
Germany alone. The opinion that Italy as such would be a
faithless ally is so stupid and dumb that armchair
politicians can serve it only to our nonpolitical so
called national bourgeoisie. The most shattering
counter-proof is provided by the history of our own
Folk, namely, the time when Italy had once been allied
with Germany against Austria, of course. To be sure, the
Germany of that time was the Prussia led by Bismarck's
genius, and not that led by the political incapacity of
the later bunglers of the mishandled Reich. Certainly
the Italy of that time had suffered defeats in battles
on land and sea, but she honorably fulfilled the
obligations of her alliance, as Austria did not do in
the World War, into which she had pushed Germany. For at
that time, when Italy was offered a separate peace which
would have given her everything which she was able to
achieve only later, she proudly and indignantly rejected
it despite the military defeats she had suffered,
whereas the Austrian government leaders not only coveted
such a separate peace, but were ready to drop Germany
completely. If this did not come to pass, the reason for
it did not lie in the Austrian State's strength of
character but rather in the nature of the demands which
the enemy made upon her and which in practice signified
her disintegration. The fact that Italy suffered
military defeats in 1866 could not really be viewed as a
sign of faithlessness to the alliance. For certainly she
would have preferred gathering victories to defeats, but
the Italy of that time could not indeed be compared to
Germany then and even later, because she lacked that
very superior power of military crystallization which
Germany had in Prussia. A German Union without the base
of the Prussian military power would have identically
succumbed to the attack of so old and not yet nationally
dismembered a military power such as Austria possessed,
as was the case with regard to Italy. But the essential
thing lay in the fact that the Italy of that time made
possible the decision in Bohemia in favor of the later
German Reich, by tying up a considerable and great part
of the Austrian army. For whoever bears in mind the
critical situation on the day of the battle of
Königgrätz cannot assert that it would have been a
matter of indifference to Germany's fate, whether
Austria had been on the battlefield with an additional
140000 men, as she could have done on the strength of
Italian commitment.
That naturally the Italy of that time did not conclude
this alliance in order to make possible the national
unity of the German Folk, but rather that of the
Italians, is understood. It really requires the
proverbial political naivete of a patriotic leaguer to
be able to see cause for reproach or for slander in
that. The idea of obtaining an alliance which from the
outset possesses only prospects of success or gain is a
childish stupidity. For the Italians had exactly the
same right to make the same reproach to the Prussia of
that time and to Bismarck himself, namely, that they had
concluded the alliance not for love of Italy but also in
pursuit of their own interests.
Unfortunately, I am inclined to say, it is humiliating
that this stupidity is committed only north of the Alps
and not also to the south of them.
Such a stupidity becomes understandable only if we
consider the Triple Alliance, or better still, the
alliance between Germany and Austria, which really is a
rare case wherein one State, Austria, obtains everything
from an alliance and the other, Germany, nothing at all.
An alliance in which one party stakes its interests and
the other its shining armor. The one has a cold
purposefulness and the other a Nibelungen loyalty. At
least this has happened only once in history to such an
extent and in this way, and Germany has received the
most terrible returns for this kind of political State
leadership and alliance policy.
Thus if the alliance with Italy, insofar as it concerned
Austria's relation with Italy, was of the most dubious
value from the outset, this was not so much because with
Italy, say, it could involve a fundamentally wrong
partner, but because for Italy this very alliance with
Austria did not promise a single reciprocal value.
Italy was a national State. Her future necessarily had
to lie on the shores of the Mediterranean. Thus every
neighboring State is more or less an obstacle for the
development of this national State. If in addition we
take into account that Austria herself had over 800000
Italians within her borders, and further that these same
Habsburg’s--who on the one hand surrendered the Germans
to Slavisation, on the other hand understood very well
how to play Slavs and Germans against Italians--had
every interest in slowly denationalizing these 800000
Italians, then the future task of Italian foreign policy
was hardly in doubt. It had to be an anti Austrian one,
as pro German as it could be. And this policy also found
the liveliest support, indeed a glowing enthusiasm,
among the Italian Folk itself. For the wrongs that the
Habsburgers--and Austria was their political weapon for
this--had committed against Italy in the course of the
centuries, seen from an Italian viewpoint, cried out to
heaven. For centuries Austria had been the obstacle to
Italy's unification; again and again the Habsburg’s had
supported corrupt Italian dynasties; indeed even at the
turn of the century hardly a party congress of the
clerical and Christian social movement closed with
anything but a demand that Rome be restored to the Holy
Father. No bones were made about the fact that this was
regarded as a task of Austrian policy; but on the other
hand they had the impertinence to expect that people in
Italy perforce exhibit a ringing enthusiasm over the
alliance with Austria. Thus Austrian policy toward Italy
in the course of the centuries had by no means always
used kid gloves. What France had been for centuries to
Germany, Austria was for centuries to Italy. The
northern Italian lowlands were always the field of
operations on which the Austrian State showed its policy
of friendship toward Italy. Croatian regiments and
Panduren were the culture-bringers and bearers of
Austrian civilization, and it is a pity that all this
has, in part, also clung to the German name. If today we
frequently hear an arrogant deprecation, indeed a
contemptuous insulting of German culture on Italian
lips, then for this the German Folk must thank that
State which was camouflaged as German on the outside,
but which exposed the character of its inner being to
the Italian through a coarse soldiery who in their own
Austrian State were viewed by the beneficiaries thereof
as a true scourge of god. The battle fame of the
Austrian Army was in part built on successes which
necessarily aroused the undying hatred of the Italians
for all time.
It was a misfortune for Germany never to have understood
this, a misfortune, on the contrary, to have covered it
up indirectly, if not directly. For thus did Germany
lose the State which, as matters then stood, could have
become our most loyal ally, as it once had been a very
dependable ally for Prussia.
Thus the attitude of the broadest public opinion in
Austria on the occasion of the war in Tripoli was
especially decisive for Italy's inner relation to
Austria. That Vienna should look askance at the Italian
attempt to set foot in Albania was still understandable
in view of the state of affairs. Austria thought her own
interests were being threatened there. But the general
and decidedly artificial incitement against Italy when
the latter set out to conquer Tripoli was
incomprehensible. The Italian step, however, was
self-evident. No man could blame the Italian Government
if it attempted to carry the Italian flag to areas,
which by their very location had to be the acknowledged
colonial area for Italy. Not only because the young
Italian colonists fell into the footsteps of the ancient
Romans, but the Italian action should have been welcome
precisely to Germany and Austria for still another
reason. The more Italy was engaged in North Africa, the
more the natural oppositions between Italy and France
would perforce one day develop. A superior German State
leadership, at least, should have sought with all means
to create difficulties for the threatening spread of
French hegemony over North Africa, and in general to the
French opening up of the Dark Continent, even in
consideration of the possible military strengthening of
France also on European battlefields. For the French
governments, and especially their military leaders, left
no doubt at all that for them the African colonies
actually had another importance other than just being
showpieces of French civilization. For a long time they
had already seen in them a reservoir for soldiers for
the next European contest of arms. That this could take
place only with Germany was likewise clear. What would
have been more natural, then, from a German point of
view than to favor every interference of another power,
especially if this other power was her own ally.
Moreover, the French nation was sterile and had no need
for enlarging its living space, whereas the Italian
Folk, exactly like the German, had to find a way out
somewhere. Let no one say that this would have involved
a theft committed against Turkey. For then all colonies
are indeed stolen areas. Only, without them the European
cannot live. We had no interest, and should not have had
any, in bringing about an estrangement with Italy out of
a completely unreal sympathetic feeling for Turkey. If
ever there was a foreign political action in which
Austria and Germany could have fully stood behind Italy,
this was precisely it. It was simply scandalous how the
Austrian press of that time, indeed all public opinion,
behaved toward an Italian action whose ultimate aim was
nothing but the annexation of Bosnia Herzegovina by
Austria herself. A hate suddenly flared up at that time
which showed the real inner disposition of this Austrian
Italian relation all the more clearly, since there had
been no actual grounds for it at all. I was in Vienna at
that time and was inwardly disgusted by the stupid as
well as shameless way in which the ally was stabbed in
the back then. Thus, under such circumstances, to demand
from this very ally a loyalty that in reality would have
been Italy's suicide, is at least as incomprehensible as
it is naive. For in addition there is the following:
Italy's natural military geographical situation will
always force this State to formulate a policy which does
not bring it into conflict with a superior naval power,
to which the Italian fleet and fleets allied with it
would not be in a position, human foresight indicates,
to put up any resistance.
As long as England possesses uncontested supremacy on
the seas, and as long as this hegemony can still be
strengthened by a Mediterranean French fleet, without
Italy and her allies being able to make a promising
resistance, Italy can never assume an anti-English
attitude. We must not demand from the leaders of a State
that, out of an idiotic sympathy for another State whose
reciprocal love had been clearly shown precisely by the
war in Tripoli, they end by surrendering their own Folk
to certain destruction. Anyone who subjects the coastal
conditions of the Italian State to the most cursory
examination must immediately arrive at the conviction
that a struggle against England on Italy's part under
prevailing circumstances is not only hopeless but
absurd. Thus Italy found herself in exactly the same
situation as Germany had likewise found herself; namely,
just as for Bismarck, once the risk of war with Russia,
caused by Austria, appeared so monstrous to him that in
such an eventuality he committed himself, through the
famous Reinsurance Treaty, to disregard the matter of
the otherwise existing alliance, likewise for Italy the
alliance with Austria was also untenable the moment she
made an enemy of England as a result of it. Anyone who
does not want to grasp or understand this is incapable
of thinking politically, and therefore, at best, capable
of making policy in Germany. But the German Folk sees
the result of the policy of this sort of people before
it, and must bear the consequences.
All these are aspects that had to lower the value of the
alliance with Austria to a minimum. For it was thereby
certain that Germany, because of her alliance with
Austria, would also presumably make enemies, besides
Russia, of Rumania, Serbia and Italy. For, as has been
said, there is no alliance that can be built on the
basis of ideal sympathies or ideal loyalty or ideal
gratitude. Alliances will be all the stronger, the more
the individual contracting parties may hope to derive
private advantages from them. It is fantastic to wish to
form an alliance on any other basis. I would never
expect Italy to enter into an alliance with Germany out
of sympathy for Germany, out of love for Germany, with
the intention of thereby procuring an advantage for
Germany. Just as little would I ever want to enter into
a contractual relationship out of love for another
State, out of sympathy for it, or out of a desire to
serve it. If today I advocate an alliance between Italy
and Germany, I do so only because I believe that both
States can thereby achieve useful advantages. Both
States would prosper as a result.
The advantage of the Triple Alliance lay exclusively on
Austria's side. Certainly, in consequence of the
determining factors in the policy of the individual
States, only Austria could be the beneficiary of this
alliance. For by its whole nature the Triple Alliance
had no aggressive tendency. It was a defensive alliance
which at the utmost, according to its provisions, was
only supposed to safeguard the preservation of the
STATVS QVO. Germany and Italy, in consequence of the
impossibility of feeding their populations, were
compelled to pursue an aggressive policy. Only Austria
had to be happy to preserve at least the corpse of a
State which, in itself, was already impossible. Since
Austria's own defensive power would never have sufficed
for this, through the Triple Alliance, the offensive
forces of Germany and Italy were harnessed in the
service of maintaining the Austrian State. Germany
remained in the harness and thereby perished, Italy
leapt out of it and saved herself. Only a man for whom
politics is not the duty of preserving the life of a
Folk with all means and according to all possibilities
could want to censure such an action.
Even if Old Germany as a formal National State had set
herself only the further unification of the German
Nation as a goal, the Triple Alliance should perforce
have been dropped instantaneously, respectively the
relation with Austria changed. She would thereby have
been spared from incurring a number of enmities which in
no way could be compensated by the employment of
Austrian strength. Thus even pre War Germany should no
longer have let her foreign policy be determined by
purely formal national viewpoints, if these did not lead
to necessary Folkish goals.
Already in the pre War period, the future of the German
Folk was a question of solving the problem of their
sustenance. The German Folk could no longer find their
daily bread within their existing territory. All
industry and competence, as well as all scientific
methods of soil cultivation, could at best alleviate the
distress somewhat, but ultimately they could not prevent
it. Even in the years of exceptionally good harvests
they no longer could completely cover their own food
requirements. During average or bad harvests they were
already dependent on imports to a considerable degree.
Even the raw material supply of many industries ran into
serious difficulties, and could be procured only abroad.
There were various ways to overcome this distress.
Emigration and birth control had to be categorically
rejected even from the standpoint of the National State
of that time. In this case the knowledge of biological
consequences was less decisive than the fear of
numerical decimation. Thus, for the Germany of that
time, only two possibilities existed for securing the
nation's preservation for a future time without having
to limit the population itself. Either an effort had to
be made to solve the need for space, that is, to acquire
new soil, or the Reich had to be converted into a great
export firm. This meant that the production of certain
commodities was to be increased beyond domestic needs,
in order to be able to exchange them for foodstuffs and
raw materials by way of export. The knowledge of the
necessity of an enlargement of German living area
existed, albeit at least partly at that time. It was
believed that the best way to act in this sense was to
lead Germany into the ranks of the great colonial
Folks.
In reality, however, a flaw in the inner logic was
already present in the form of the execution of this
idea. For the sense of a sound territorial policy lies
in the fact that a Folk's living space is enlarged by
allotting new areas for settlement to the surplus of the
population which, then, if it is not to take on the
character of an emigration, must be in close political
and governmental relation with the mother country. This
no longer applied to the colonies which were still at
all available at the end of the nineteenth century.
Their distance in space as well, particularly as the
climatic conditions of these areas by themselves
prevented settlement such as the English had previously
been able to carry out in their American colonies, the
Dutch in South Africa, and again the English in
Australia. Added to this was the whole character of the
inner establishment of German colonial policy. Thereby
the problem of settlement receded entirely into the
background in order to put in their place business
interests which were identical with the general
interests of the German Folk only in the smallest
measure. Thus from the beginning the value of German
colonies lay more in the possibility of obtaining
certain markets, which by providing different colonial
products and partly also raw materials, would make the
German economy independent of foreign countries. This
would have surely succeeded up to a certain degree in
the future, but it would not in the least have resolved
the problem of Germany's overpopulation, unless it was
decided to guarantee the sustenance of the German Folk
fundamentally through an increase of its export economy.
Then naturally the German colonies, through the more
favorable delivery of raw materials, could one day give
the different industries a greater capacity to compete
on the international markets. Thus German colonial
policy in the deepest sense was indeed no territorial
policy, but had become an instrument of German economic
policy. Actually, even the numerically direct relief of
German internal overpopulation through the settlement of
the colonies was completely insignificant.
If in addition one wanted to go over to a real
territorial policy, then the colonial policy pursued
before the War was all the more senseless, as it could
not lead to a relief of German overpopulation.
Conversely, however, one day, all human foresight
indicates, its very execution necessitated the same
staking of blood as would have been required in the
worst cases for a really useful territorial policy. For
while this kind of German colonial policy in the most
favorable situation could bring only a strengthening of
the German economy, one day it had to become a cause for
a physical conflict with England. For a German world
economic policy could never avoid a decisive struggle
with England. Export industry, world trade, colonies and
merchant marine had then to be protected with the sword
from that power which, for the same viewpoint of self
preservation as Germany's, had long ago seen itself
forced to embark upon this path. Therefore, this
peaceful economic struggle for the conquest of a place
in the sun could take place for just as long as England
could count on bringing about the collapse of German
competition with purely economic means, because then we
would never emerge from the shade. But if Germany
succeeded in pushing England back in this peaceful
economic way, it was self evident that the resistance of
bayonets would replace the phantom of this peaceful
economic conquest of the world.
Without doubt, it was, however, a political idea to
allow the German Folk the increase of its number
through the increase of industrial production and sale
on the international world market. This idea was not
Folkish, but it corresponded to the prevailing ideas of
the bourgeois national world of that time. This way
could be traveled in any case, only it then placed a
wholly definite and narrowly outlined duty on German
foreign policy: the end of German world trade policy
could only be war with England. But then the task of
German foreign policy was to arm itself, through
farseeing alliance measures, for a conflict with a State
which on the basis of an experience of more than a
hundred years itself would not neglect to bring about a
general mobilization of allied States. If Germany wanted
to defend her industrial and economic policy against
England, then she first had to seek to cover her rear
with Russia. Russia then was the only State that could
be considered a valuable ally, because she alone had no
need to be essentially opposed to Germany, at least for
the moment. To be sure the selling price for this
Russian alliance, as matters stood, could lie only in
giving up the alliance with Austria. For then the dual
alliance with Austria was madness, indeed insanity. Only
when Germany's rear was completely covered by Russia
could she pass over to a maritime policy which
deliberately aimed at the day of reckoning. Only then
could Germany also commit the enormous means necessary
for the completion of a fleet that, not being up to date
in all details, lagged five years behind, especially in
speed and thereby displacement.
But the entanglement in the Austrian alliance was so
great that a solution could no longer be found, and
Russia, which had begun to orient herself anew after the
Russian Japanese war, had to be repelled for good. But
thereby the whole German economic and colonial policy
was a more than dangerous game. The fact was that
Germany indeed also shunned the final settlement with
England, and accordingly for years her attitude was
determined by the principle of not antagonizing the
adversary. This determined all German decisions which
would have been necessary for the defense of German
economic and colonial policy, until, on August 4th,
1914, the English declaration of war brought an end to
this unfortunate period of German blindness.
Had Germany of that time been ruled less by bourgeois
national than by Folkish viewpoints, only the other
path to a solution of German distress would have been
considered, namely, that of a large scale territorial
policy in Europe itself.
Hence the German colonial policy which necessarily had
to bring us into conflict with England, whereby France
could always be regarded as siding with the enemy, was
especially unreasonable for Germany because our European
base was weaker than any other colonial Folk of world
political importance. For ultimately the fate of the
colonies was obviously decided in Europe. In consequence
every German foreign policy was directed primarily
toward strengthening and safeguarding Germany's military
position in Europe. Thus we could expect only little
decisive help from our colonies. Conversely, every
broadening of our European territorial base
automatically would have led to a strengthening of our
position. It is not the same, if a Folk has a closed
area of settlement of 560000, or, let us say, one
million square kilometers. Wholly apart from the
difficulty, in the case of war, of sustenance, which
should remain as independent as possible from the
effects of enemy action, military protection already
resides in the size of the territory, and to that extent
our operations, which force us to wage wars on our own
soil, will be considerably easier to bear.
In general, then, a certain defense against rash attacks
lies in the size of a State territory.
Above all, however, only through a territorial policy in
Europe can the human resources shifted there be
preserved for our Folk, including their military
utilization. An additional 500000 square kilometers in
Europe can provide new homesteads for millions of German
peasants, and make available millions of soldiers to the
power of the German Folk for the moment of decision.
The only area in Europe that could be considered for
such a territorial policy therefore was Russia. The
thinly settled western border regions that already once
had received German colonists as bringers of culture,
could likewise be considered for the new territorial
policy of the German Nation. Therefore the aim of German
foreign policy unconditionally had to be to free its
rear against England and conversely to isolate Russia as
much as possible. Then, with a dauntless logic, we had
to give up our economic and world trade policy, and if
necessary completely give up the fleet, in order to
concentrate the nation's whole strength again on the
Land Army as once before. Then, more than ever, the
alliance with Austria had to be dropped, for nothing
more would stand in the way of an isolation of Russia
than a State whose defense was guaranteed by Germany,
whose partition was desired by a whole number of
European powers, but which they would have been able to
carry out only in an alliance with Russia. Since these
States had recognized in Germany the greatest defense of
Austria's preservation, all the more were they forced to
be against Russia's isolation, as the Czarist Empire
more than ever could appear to them as the only possible
power factor for the final destruction of Austria.
It was obvious, however, that all these States
especially could not wish for a strengthening of
Austria's only defense at the cost of the strongest
enemy of the Habsburg State.
For in this case, too, France would have always sided
with Germany's enemy, the possibility of forming an anti
German coalition would always have been present, unless
we decided to liquidate the alliance with Austria at the
end of the century, and surrender the Austrian State to
its fate, but thereby save the German areas for the
Reich. Something different happened. Germany wanted
world peace. Therefore she avoided a territorial policy
which as such could only have been fought out
aggressively, and ultimately turned to a limitless
economic and trade policy. We thought to conquer the
world with peaceful economic means, and thereby we
supported ourselves neither on one nor another power,
but instead clung all the more doggedly to the dying
Habsburg State the more a general political isolation
resulted therefrom. Broad circles within Germany
welcomed this, partly out of real political incompetence
and also partly out of wrongly understood patriotic
legitimist ideas, and finally also partly in the hope,
still nourished, that the hated Hohenzollern Empire
could one day be thereby led to collapse.
When the World War burst forth blood-red on August 2nd,
1914, the pre War alliance policy had as a matter of
fact already suffered its actual defeat. In order to
help Austria, Germany had been pushed into a war which
then was to revolve only around her own existence. Her
enemies were the adversaries of her world trade as well
as of her general greatness altogether, and those who
were awaiting the fall of Austria. Her friends, the
impossible Austrian Hungarian State structure on the one
side and the constantly weak and ailing Turkey on the
other. Italy, however, took the step that Germany
perforce should have taken and carried out herself, had
her destiny been guided by the genius of a Bismarck
instead of weak philosophers and bragging
hurrah!-patriots. The fact that later Italy finally
undertook an offensive against a former ally, again
merely matched Bismarck's prophetic foresight, namely,
that only two conditions could exist at all between
Italy and Austria: an alliance or war.
Back to book INDEX
Chapter 8: Military Power and
the Fallacy of Border Restoration as Aim
On November 11th, 1918, the
armistice was signed in the forest of Compiègne. For
this, fate had chosen a man who was one of those bearing
major guilt for the collapse of our Folk. Matthias
Erzberger, deputy of the Center, and according to
various assertions the bastard son of a servant girl and
a Jewish employer, was the German negotiator who affixed
his name to a document which, compared and measured
against the four and a half years of heroism of our
Folk, seems incomprehensible if we do not assume the
deliberate intention to bring about Germany's
destruction.
Matthias Erzberger himself had been a petty bourgeois
annexationist, that is, one of those men who, especially
at the beginning of the war, had tried to remedy the
lack of an official war aim in their own way and manner.
For even though in August, 1914, the entire German Folk
instinctively felt that this struggle involved their
being or non being, nevertheless once the flames of the
first enthusiasm were extinguished, they were not in any
way clear either about the threatening non being, or the
necessity of remaining in being. The enormity of the
idea of a defeat and its consequences was slowly blotted
out through a propaganda which had complete free rein
within Germany, and which twisted or altogether denied
the real aims of the Entente in a way that was as adroit
as it was mendacious. In the second and especially in
the third year of the War, it had also succeeded to some
extent in removing the fear of defeat from the German
Folk, since, thanks to this propaganda, people no
longer believed in the enemy's annihilatory will. This
was all the more terrible as, conversely, nothing was
allowed to be done which could inform the Folk of the
minimum that had to be achieved in the interests of its
future self preservation, and as a reward for its
unprecedented sacrifices. Hence the discussion over a
possible war aim took place only in more or less
irresponsible circles and acquired the expression of the
mode of thought as well as the general political ideas
of its respective representatives. While the sly
Marxists, who had an exact knowledge of the paralyzing
effect of a lack of a definite war aim, forbade
themselves to have one altogether, and for that matter
talked only about the reestablishment of peace without
annexations and reparations, at least some of the
bourgeois politicians sought to respond to the enormity
of the bloodshed and the sacrilege of the attack with
definite counter-demands. All these bourgeois proposals
were purely border rectification’s and had nothing at
all to do with geopolitical ideas. At best they still
thought of satisfying the expectations of German princes
who were unemployed at the time by the formation of
buffer States. Thus even the founding of the Polish
State appeared as a wise decision in national political
terms to the bourgeois world, aside from a few
exceptions. Individuals pushed economic viewpoints to
the foreground according to which the border had to be
formed; for example, the necessity of winning the ore
basin of Longwy and Briey; other strategic opinions, for
example, the necessity of possessing the Belgian
fortresses on the Meuse River, and so on.
It should be self evident that this was no aim for a
State engaged in a war against twenty six States, in
which the former had to take upon itself one of the most
unprecedented blood-sheddings in history, while at home
an entire Folk was literally surrendered to hunger. The
impossibility of justifying the necessity for enduring
the War helped to bring about its unfortunate outcome.
Hence when the collapse took place in the homeland, a
knowledge of war aims existed even less, as their former
weak representatives had meanwhile moved further away
from their former meager demands. And this was quite
understandable. For to want to conduct a war of this
unprecedented extent so that the borders instead of
running through Herbesthal should run through Liége, or
so that instead of a Czarist commissar or governor, a
German prince could be installed as potentate over some
Russian province or other, would have been really
irresponsible and monstrous. It lay in the nature of
German war aims, so far as they were at all subject to
discussion, that they were later altogether denied.
Truly for such baubles a Folk should not have been kept
for even an hour longer in a war whose battlefields had
slowly become an inferno.
The sole war aim that the monstrous bloodshed would have
been worthy of could consist only in the assurance to
German soldiers of so and so many hundred thousand
square kilometers, to be allotted to front line fighters
as property, or to be placed at the disposal of a
general colonization by Germans. With that the War would
have quickly lost the character of an imperial
enterprise, and instead would have become a cause of the
German Folk. For, after all, the German grenadiers
really had not shed their blood so that Poles might
acquire a State, or so that a German Prince might be set
on a plush covered throne.
Thus in 1918 we stood at the end of a completely
senseless and aimless squandering of the most precious
German blood. Once more had our Folk infinitely staked
its heroism, courageous sacrifice, indeed defiance of
death and joyousness in responsibility, and nevertheless
been forced to leave the battlefields weakened and
beaten. Victorious in a thousand battles and skirmishes,
and in the end nevertheless defeated by those who had
been beaten. This was the handwriting on the wall for
the German domestic and foreign policy of the pre War
time and the four and a half years of the bloody
struggle itself.
Now after the collapse there arose the alarmed question,
whether our German Folk had learned anything from this
catastrophe, whether those who had deliberately betrayed
it up to this time would still determine its fate,
whether those who had so pitifully failed until this
time would henceforth also dominate the future with
their phrases, or whether finally our Folk would be
educated to a new way of thinking about domestic and
foreign policy and shift its action accordingly.
For if a miracle does not take place for our Folk, its
path will be one of ultimate doom and destruction.
What is Germany's present situation? And what are the
prospects for her future? And what kind of a future will
this be?
The collapse which the German Folk suffered in 1918
lies, as I want once more to establish here, not in the
overthrow of its military organization, or in the loss
of its weapons, but rather in its inner decay which was
revealed at that time, and which today increasingly
appears. This inner decay lies just as much in respect
to the worsening of its racial value as in the loss of
all those virtues which condition the greatness of a
Folk, guarantee its existence, and promote its future.
Blood value, the idea of personality, and the instinct
for self preservation, slowly threatened to be lost to
the German Folk. Internationalism triumphs in its stead
and destroys our Folk value, democracy spreads by
stifling the idea of personality, and in the end an evil
pacifistic liquid manure poisons the mentality favoring
bold self preservation. We see the effects of this vice
of mankind appear in the whole life of our Folk. Not
only does it make itself noticeable in the field of
political concerns, no, but also in that of economy, and
not least in that of our cultural life, so that, if it
is not brought to a halt once and for all, our Folk
will be excluded from the number of nations with a
future.
The great domestic task of the future lies in the
elimination of these general symptoms of the decay of
our Folk. This is the mission of the National Socialist
Movement. A new nation must arise from this work which
overcomes even the worst evils of the present, the
cleavage between the classes, for which the bourgeoisie
and Marxism are equally guilty.
The aim of this reform work of a domestic political kind
must finally be the regaining of our Folk's strength
for the prosecution of its struggle for existence and
thereby the strength to represent its vital interests
abroad.
Our foreign policy is also presented by this with a task
that it must fulfil. For the more domestic policy must
furnish the Folkish instrument of strength to foreign
policy, the more must also foreign policy, through the
actions and measures it adopts, promote and support the
formation of this instrument.
If the foreign policy task of the old bourgeois national
State had primarily been that of the further unification
in Europe of those belonging to the German Nation in
order then to work up to a higher territorial policy
viewed in Folkish terms, then the foreign policy task
of the post War period must at the outset be one that
promotes the forging of the internal instrument of
power. For the foreign policy aspirations of the pre War
period had at their disposal a State that perhaps was
not very highly exigent in a Folkish sense, but which
had a wonderful Army establishment. Even if Germany of
that time had long since ceased to place such an
emphasis on the military, as for example Old Prussia,
and therefore was outmatched by other States, especially
in the extent of the Army organization, nevertheless the
inner quality of the Old Army was incomparably superior
to all other similar institutions. At that time this
best instrument of the art of war stood at the disposal
of a State leadership with a bold foreign policy. In
consequence of this instrument as well as of the general
high esteem which it enjoyed, the freedom of our Folk
was not only a result of our factually proved strength,
but rather of the general credit that we possessed in
consequence of this remarkable Army instrument, as well
as partly in consequence of the rest of the extremely
clean State apparatus. The German Folk no longer
possesses this most important instrument for the defense
of a nation's interests, or at least it possesses it to
a completely insufficient extent, and very far removed
from the foundation which conditioned its former
strength.
The German Folk has acquired a mercenary Army. In
Germany, these mercenary troops run the danger of
sinking to the level of policemen armed with special
technical weapons. The comparison of the German
mercenary Army with the English turns out unfavorably to
the Germans. The English mercenary army was always the
bearer of England's military defense and aggressive
ideas as well as of her military tradition. In her
mercenary troops and the militia system peculiar to her,
England possessed the Army organization which, in view
of her insular position sufficed, indeed seemed suitable
for fighting to the finish for England's vital
interests. The idea of manifesting English power of
resistance in such a form in no way sprang from
cowardice, in order thereby to be able to spare shedding
the blood of the English Folk. On the contrary, England
fought with mercenaries as long as they sufficed for the
defense of England's interests. She called for
volunteers immediately the struggle required a greater
commitment. She introduced general military conscription
immediately the needs of the country demanded it. For
regardless of how the momentary organization of the
English power of resistance looked, it was always
committed in a dauntless struggle for England. And the
formal army organization in England was always only an
instrument for the defense of English interests,
committed with a will, which did not even shrink, if
necessary, from demanding the blood of the whole nation.
Wherever England's interests were decisively at stake,
she at any rate knew how to preserve a hegemony that,
considered purely technically, goes as far as the demand
for a two power standard. If we compare the infinitely
responsible [solicitous] care shown here with the
frivolousness with which Germany, and national bourgeois
Germany at that, neglected her armaments in the pre War
period, we must still today be gripped by a deep
sadness. Just as England knew that her future, indeed
her existence, depended on the strength of her fleet, so
should this bourgeois national Germany have known that
the existence and future of the German Reich depended on
the strength of our land power. In Europe, Germany
should have had to counter the two power standard on
land to the two power standard on the seas. And just as
England with an iron determination saw a reason for
going to war at every violation of this standard, so did
Germany have to prevent every attempt in Europe to
outflank her army through France and Russia by a
military decision, even one which had to be
precipitated, and for which more than one favorable
opportunity had presented itself. Even here this
bourgeoisie misused one of Bismarck's utterances in a
most senseless way.
Bismarck's assertion that he did not intend to wage
preventive war was joyfully seized upon by all weak,
lazy and also irresponsible armchair politicians as a
cover for the disastrous consequences of their anything
goes policy. Only thereby they completely forgot that
all three wars which Bismarck had conducted were wars
which, at least according to the conceptions of these
anti preventive war peace philosophers, could have been
avoided. Consider, for example, what insults by Napoleon
III in 1870 would have to be heaped on the German
Republic of today for it to decide to request M.
Benedetti to moderate his tone somewhat. Neither
Napoleon nor the whole French Folk would ever have been
able to incite the German Republic of today to a Sedan:
or does one believe that if Bismarck had not wanted a
decision, the war of 1866 could not have been prevented?
Now here it can be objected that this was a question of
wars with clearly set aims, and not of a kind whose only
ground lies in the fear of an attack by the enemy. But
in reality this is only word splitting. Because Bismarck
was convinced that the struggle with Austria was
inevitable, he prepared himself for it and carried it
through when the occasion suited Prussia. The reform of
the French army by Marshal Niel made clearly perceptible
the intention to give French policy and French
chauvinism a forceful weapon for an attack against
Germany. As a matter of fact, it would doubtless have
been possible for Bismarck to bring the conflict to some
kind of a peaceful solution in 1870. But it was more
expedient for him to fight it out to the finish at a
time when the French army organization had not yet
arrived at its full efficiency. Moreover, all these
interpretations of Bismarckian utterances suffer from
one thing, namely, they confuse Bismarck the diplomat
with a republican parliamentarian. How Bismarck himself
judged such utterances is best shown in his reply to a
questioner before the outbreak of the Prussian Austrian
War, who would have very much liked to know whether
Bismarck really intended to attack Austria, whereupon
the latter, with an impervious expression, replied: No,
I have no intention of attacking Austria, but neither
would I have the intention of telling them, in case I
wanted to attack her.
Moreover, the hardest war that had ever been fought by
Prussia was a preventive war. When Frederick The Great
had received final knowledge of the intention of his old
enemies, through a scribbler soul, he did not wait until
the others attacked, on the grounds of a fundamental
rejection of a preventive war, but went immediately over
to the attack himself.
For Germany, any violation of the two power standard of
necessity should have been a cause for a preventive war.
For what would it have been easier to answer before
history: for a preventive war in 1904, which could have
defeated France when Russia seemed to be entangled in
Eastern Asia, or for the World War which ensued from
this neglect, and which required many times the blood,
and plunged our Folk into the abyss of defeat?
England never had such scruples. Her two power standard
on the seas seemed to be the prerequisite for the
preservation of English independence. As long as she had
the strength, she allowed no change to be made in this
situation. When, however, this two power standard was
given up after the World War, it was then only under the
pressure of circumstances which were stronger than any
contrary British intention. With the American Union, a
new power of such dimensions has come into being as
threatens to upset the whole former power and orders of
rank of the States.
At any rate, up to now the English fleet was always the
most striking proof, regardless of how the form of the
organization of the land army looked, that decisively
determined England's will to self preservation. This was
the reason why the English mercenary army never acquired
the bad characteristics of other mercenary troops. It
was a fighting military body of wonderful individual
training, with excellent weapons, and a conception of
service which viewed it as a sport. Thus what endowed
this small body of troops with a special importance was
the direct contact with the visible manifestations in
life of the British world empire. As this mercenary army
had fought for England's greatness in almost all parts
of the world, it had thereby in like measure also come
to know England's greatness. The men who now in Southern
Africa, now in Egypt, and at times in India, represented
England's interests as the possessors of her military
prestige, through this also received an indelible
impression of the immense greatness of the British
IMPERIVM.
Such an opportunity is completely lacking to the
present-day German mercenary troops. Indeed, the more we
feel ourselves induced to make concessions to this
spirit in the small Army itself, under the pressure of
pacifistic parliamentary majorities, which in reality
represent traitors to their Folk and country, it
gradually ceases to be an instrument of war. Instead it
becomes a police corps for the maintenance of peace and
order, which means, in reality, of peaceful subjugation.
No army with a high intrinsic value can be trained, if
the preparation for war is not the aim of its existence.
There are no armies for the maintenance of peace, but
rather only for the victorious fighting of wars to the
end. The more, in short, one tries finally to unhinge
the Reich Defence from the tradition of the Old Army,
the more it lose its traditions. For with troops, the
value of a tradition does not lie in a few successful
quelling of internal strike revolts, or in preventing
the plundering of foodstuffs, but in the glory gained
through victorious battles. In reality, however, the
German Reich Defence departs from the tradition of this
glory in proportion as from year to year it ceases to be
a representative of the national idea. The more it
finally kills the conscious, national, hence
nationalistic spirit in its own ranks, and removes its
representatives, in order to give their posts to
democrats and altogether ordinary ambitious persons, all
the more will it become alien to the Folk. Let the sly
gentlemen not fancy that they can make contact with the
Folk by concessions to the pacifistic democratic part
of our Folk. Any military organization as such is
deeply hated by this part of the German Folk, as long
as it is indeed military and not the burglar protection
agency of international pacifistic stock exchange
interests. The only part to which an army can have an
inner relationship in a militarily valuable sense, is
that nationally conscious core of our Folk which not
only thinks in a soldierly manner out of tradition, but
rather, out of national love, is also the only part
ready to wear the gray tunic in defense of honor and
freedom. It is necessary, however, that a military body
maintain intimate relations with those from whom it
itself in the hour of need can supplement itself, and
not with those who betray it at every opportunity. Hence
the present leaders of our so called Reich Defence can
act as democratically as they please; nevertheless, they
will thereby never attain to a closer bond with the
German Folk, because the German Folk for which this is
appropriate is not to be found in the democratic camp.
Since, however, the former Chief Of The German Reich
Defence especially, General von Seeckt, not only did not
put up any resistance to the removal of hardened,
deliberately national minded Officers, but rather even
[himself] advocated it, they themselves finally created
the instrument which dropped him with a relatively light
heart. Since General von Seeckt's retirement, however,
the democratic pacifistic influence has been tirelessly
active in order to make out of the Defence Force that
which the present rulers of the State have in their
minds as the most beautiful ideal: a republican
democratic parliamentary guard.
Obviously a foreign policy cannot be conducted with such
an instrument.
Hence today the first task of German domestic policy
ought to be that of giving the German Folk a military
organization suitable to its national strength. Since
the forms of the present Defence Force could never
suffice for this goal, and, conversely, are determined
by foreign policy motives, it is the task of German
foreign policy to bring about all the possibilities that
could permit the reorganization of a German National
Army. For that must be the immovable aim of any
political leadership in Germany, so that one day the
mercenary Army will again be replaced by a truly German
National Army.
For just as the purely technical military qualities of
the present are superior, so must the general qualities
of the German Defence Force deteriorate in their
development in the future. The former without doubt is
to be credited to General von Seeckt and to the Defence
Force's Officers' Corps altogether. Thus the German
Defence Force could really be the Army framework for the
future German National Army. Just as, in general, the
task of the Defence Force itself must be, by the
educational stress placed on the national fighting task,
to train the mass of Officers and Sergeants for the
later National Army.
No true national thinking German can dispute that this
aim must be held immovably in sight. Even less can he
dispute that its execution is possible only if the
nation's foreign policy leaders assure the general
necessary prerequisites.
Thus the first task of German foreign policy is
primarily the creation of conditions which make possible
the resurrection of a German Army. For only then will
our Folk's vital needs be able to find their practical
representation.
Fundamentally, however, it must be further observed that
the political actions which are to guarantee the
resurrection of a German Army must lie in the framework
of a necessary future development for Germany as such.
Hence there is no need to stress that a change of the
present army organization, wholly apart from the present
internal political situation as well as for reasons of
foreign policy, cannot materialize as long as purely
German interests and German viewpoints alone speak for
such a change.
It lay in the nature of the World War and in the
intention of Germany's main enemies, to carry out the
liquidation of this greatest battle action of the Earth
in such a way that as many States as possible would be
interested in its perpetuation. This was achieved
through a system of distribution of territories, in
which even States with otherwise divergent desires and
aims were held together in a solid antagonism by the
fear that they could in that case suffer losses through
a Germany once more become strong.
For, if ten years after the World War it is still
possible, against all the experience of world history,
to maintain a kind of coalition of the victor States,
the reason lies only in the fact, glorious for Germany,
of the recollection of that struggle in which our
Fatherland had stood up to twenty six States all
together.
Thus it will also last as long as the fear of suffering
losses through a resurrected German power Reich is
greater than the difficulties between these States. And
it is further obvious that it will last as long as no
will exists anywhere to allow the German Folk a
rearmament which can be viewed as a threat by these
victor States. On the basis of the knowledge that,
first, a real representation of German vital interests
in the future cannot take place through an inadequate
German Defence Force but rather only through a German
National Army, that, second, the formation of a German
National Army is impossible for as long as the present
foreign policy strangulation of Germany does not
slacken, third, that a change of foreign policy
obstacles to the organization of a National Army appears
possible only if such a new formation is not in general
felt as a threat, the following fact emerges with
respect to a German foreign policy possible at this
time:
Under no circumstances must present-day Germany see her
foreign policy in terms of a formal border policy. Once
the principle of the restoration of the borders of the
year 1914 is laid down as the set goal of foreign
policy, Germany will face a closed phalanx of her former
enemies. Then any possibility is excluded of setting up
another Army which serves our interests more, as against
the one whose definite form was determined by the peace
treaty. Hence the foreign policy slogan of restoration
of the borders has become a mere phrase, because it can
never be realized for the lack of the necessary strength
for this.
It is characteristic that precisely the so called German
bourgeoisie, again headed by the patriotic leagues, has
made its way to this most stupid foreign policy aim.
They know that Germany is powerless. They know further
that, wholly apart from our internal decline, military
means would be required for the restoration of our
borders, and they know further that we do not possess
these means as a result of the peace treaty, and also
that we cannot acquire them in consequence of the solid
front of our enemies. But nevertheless they proclaim a
foreign policy slogan which precisely because of its
essential character forever removes the possibility of
achieving those means of power which would be necessary
in order to carry out the slogan. This is what is called
bourgeois statesmanship, and in its fruits that we see
before us it exhibits the incomparable spirit that
dominates it.
The Prussia of that time required only seven years, from
1806 to 1813, for her resurgence. In the same time
bourgeois statesmanship, in union with Marxism, has led
Germany up to Locarno. Which is a great success in the
eyes of the present bourgeois Bismarck, Herr Stresemann,
because it offers the possible, which even the above
mentioned Herr Stresemann could achieve. And politics is
the art of the possible. If Bismarck had ever imagined
that fate would have damned him to endorse with this
utterance the statesmanlike qualities of Herr
Stresemann, he would have surely omitted the utterance,
or in a very small note he would have denied Herr
Stresemann the right to refer to it.
Thus the slogan of the restoration of the German borders
as an aim for the future is doubly stupid and dangerous,
because, in reality, it in no way encompasses any useful
aim worth striving for. The German borders of the year
1914 were borders which presented something incomplete
in exactly the same way as the borders of all nations
are at all times incomplete. The territorial
distribution of the world at any time is the momentary
result of a struggle and a development which by no means
is concluded, but one which clearly continues further.
It is stupid to take the border of any sample year in a
nation's history, and, offhand, to represent it as a
political aim. We can, of course, present the border of
the year 1648, or that of 1312, and so on, just as well
as the border of the year 1914. This all the more so as
indeed the border of the year 1914 was not satisfactory
in a national, military or geopolitical sense. It was
only the momentary situation in our Folk's struggle for
existence which has been going on for centuries. And
even if the World War had not occurred, this struggle
would not have had its end in 1914. If the German Folk
had in fact achieved the restoration of the borders of
the year 1914, the sacrifices of the World War would
have been no less in vain. But also, there would not be
the slightest gain for our Folk's future in such a
restoration. This purely formal border policy of our
national bourgeoisie is just as unsatisfactory in its
possible end result as it is intolerably dangerous.
Indeed it need not even be covered by the dictum of the
art of the possible, for this is, above all, only a
theoretical phrase, which nevertheless seems suitable to
destroy every practical possibility.
As a matter of fact, such a foreign policy aim also
cannot stand up to a real critical examination. Hence
attempts are made to motivate it less on logical grounds
than on grounds of national honor. National honor
requires that we restore the borders of the year 1914.
This is the tenor of the discussions at the beer
evenings which the representatives of national honor
hold on all sides. First of all, national honor has
nothing to do with the obligation to conduct a stupid
and impossible foreign policy. For the result of a bad
foreign policy can be the loss of a Folk's freedom,
whose consequence is slavery, and which certainly cannot
be viewed as a condition of national honor. To be sure a
certain degree of national dignity and honor can still
be preserved under oppression, but then this is not a
question of shouting or national phrases, and so on,
but, on the contrary, the expression which is to be
found in the decorum with which a Folk bears its fate.
Let there be no talk in present-day Germany, above all,
of national honor, let no one try to make himself
conspicuous, as though one could preserve the national
honor outwardly by any kind of rhetorical barking. No,
this cannot be done, and for the reason that it is no
longer there. And by no means is it no longer there
because we lost the War, or because the French occupied
Alsace-Lorraine, or the Poles stole Upper Silesia, or
the Italians took the Southern Tyrol. No, the national
honor is no longer there because the German Folk, in
the most difficult time of its struggle for existence,
exposed to the light of day a lack of character, an
unabashed servility, a dog like crawling fawning that
can only be called shameless. For the reason that we
subjected ourselves miserably without being forced to do
so, indeed because the leaders of this Folk, against
eternal historical truth and our own knowledge,
themselves assumed the war guilt, and indeed burdened
our whole Folk with it, because there was no oppression
by the enemy which would have not found thousands of
creatures as willing helpers among our Folk. Because,
conversely, there were those who shamelessly reviled the
time of the great deeds of our Folk, spat upon the most
glorious flag of all times, indeed defiled it with dirt,
tore the cockades from home coming soldiers before whom
the world had trembled, pelted the flag with mud balls,
ripped off ribbons and badges of honor, and degraded a
thousand-fold even the memory of Germany's greatest
period. No enemy had so reviled the German Army as it
was defiled by the representatives of the November
crime. No enemy had disputed the greatness of the
Commanders of the German Army as much as they were
calumniated by the scoundrel representatives of the new
idea of government. And which was more certain dishonor
for our Folk: the occupation of German areas by the
enemy, or the cowardice with which our bourgeoisie
surrendered the German Reich to an organization of
pimps, pickpockets, deserters, black marketer’s and hack
journalists? Let not the gentlemen prattle now about
German honor, as long as they bow under the rule of
dishonor. They have no right to want to conduct a
foreign policy in the name of national honor, if the
domestic policy is one characterized by the most
anti-nationalist shamelessness which has ever afflicted
a great nation.
Whoever wants to act in the name of German honor today
must first launch a merciless war against the infernal
defilers of German honor. They are not the enemies of
yore, but they are the representatives of the November
crime. That collection of Marxist, democratic
pacifistic, destructive traitors of our country who
pushed our Folk into its present state of
powerlessness.
To revile former enemies in the name of national honor
and recognize the shameless allies of this enemy as the
rulers within their own country--that suits the national
dignity of this present-day so called national
bourgeoisie.
I frankly confess that I could reconcile myself to any
of the former enemy, but that my hatred against the
betrayers of our own Folk in our ranks is and remains
irreconcilable.
What the enemy inflicted on us is grievous and deeply
humiliating to us, but the wrong committed by the men of
the November crime is the most dishonorable, the basest
crime of all times. I am helping to make amends for
German honor by striving to bring about a situation in
which these creatures will some day be called to
account.
I must, however, reject the idea that any other grounds
could be a standard for the ordering of foreign policy
save that of the responsibility of securing the freedom
and the future of the life of our Folk.
The whole senselessness of the patriotic national
bourgeois border policy shows itself on the basis of the
following consideration: If the avowal of German as the
mother tongue is used as a basis, the German nation
numbers .......... Folk.
Of this figure, .......... millions are in the mother
country.
In which .....Consequently, of all the Germans in the
world, there are only .......... millions within the
present Reich territory, who represent ..........
percent of the total number of our Folk altogether.
Back to book INDEX
Chapter 9: Hopelessness of a
Solution
Of the Germans not united
with the motherland, in consequence of the slow loss of
dedicated racial comrades, the following must be
regarded, that is, a total number of approximately
.......... million Germans find themselves in a
situation which, in all human probability, will one day
cause their de-Germanization. In no case, however, will
they be able to take further part in the motherland's
fateful struggle in any kind of decisive form, and just
as little, too, in the cultural development of their
Folk. Whatever the German element individually
accomplishes in North America, it will not be reckoned
to the benefit of the German Folk as such, but adds to
the cultural aggregate of the American Union. Here the
Germans are really only the cultural fertilizers for
other Folks. Indeed, in reality, the greatness of these
nations is, in general, not seldom to be ascribed to the
high percentage of German contributions and
accomplishments.
Once we keep the size of this constant loss of people in
view, we will immediately be able to estimate the slight
importance of the border policy sponsored by the
bourgeois world.
Even if a German foreign policy were to restore the
borders of the year 1914, the percentage of Germans
living within the Reich territory, that is, belonging to
our nation, would rise despite this only, from
.......... percent to .......... percent. Thus the
possibility of enlarging this percentage considerably
could hardly be in question any more.
If, notwithstanding, the German element abroad wants to
remain true to the nation, this can at the outset be
only a question of a language and cultural loyalty, in
that the more it rises to a consciously manifested
feeling of belonging, the more does the motherland of
the German nation honor the German name in the dignity
of her representatives.
Thus the more Germany as a Reich transmits a mark of the
greatness of the German Folk to the world, the more
will the German element conclusively lost to the State
receive a stimulus at least to take pride in belonging
spiritually to this Folk. On the other hand, the more
wretchedly the motherland herself attends to her
interests, and accordingly transmits a bad impression
abroad, the weaker will the inner inducement be felt to
belong to such a Folk.
Since the German Folk does not consist of Jews, the
German element, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries,
nevertheless and unfortunately will increasingly be
anglicized and presumably likewise be lost to our Folk,
spiritually and ideologically as well. Just as its
practical work accomplishments are already lost to them.
Insofar, however, as it is a matter of the fate of those
Germans who were broken off from the German Nation by
the events of the World War and the peace treaty, it
must be said that their fate and future is a question of
regaining the motherland's political power. Lost
territories will not be retrieved by protest actions,
but rather by a victorious sword. Thus, whoever today
desires the liberation of any territory whatsoever in
the name of national honor must also be ready to stake
all, with iron and blood, for the liberation, otherwise
such a chatterbox should keep his mouth shut. Along with
this, to be sure, follows the duty also of carefully
considering whether we possess the power to carry out
such a struggle, and secondly whether the blood risked
leads, or can lead, to the desired success, and thirdly,
whether the success achieved matches the blood that must
be staked.
I most solemnly protest against the claim that a duty of
national honor exists which compels us to have two
million men bleed to death on the battlefield in order
that, under the most favorable result, we may be able to
enter a total of a quarter million men, women and
children on our books. This is not national honor that
is made manifest here, but rather a lack of principle,
or madness. It is no national honor, however, for a
Folk to be ruled by madmen.
Certainly a great Folk will protect even its last
citizen with collective action. But it is an error to
impute this to sentiment to honour, rather than
primarily to a sagacious insight and human experience.
As long as a nation tolerates an injustice that is
inflicted on some of its citizens, it will slowly but
increasingly weaken its own position, since such a
tolerance would serve the inner strengthening of an
aggressive minded enemy just as it grinds down trust in
the strength of one's own State. We know all too well
what the consequences are in history of a constant
yielding in little things, not to know how to be able to
judge the necessary consequences in big things. Hence a
solicitous State leadership will all the more preferably
attend to the interests of its citizens in the smallest
things, as with that the risk of its own commitment is
reduced in proportion as that of the adversary rises. If
today in any State an injustice is committed against an
English citizen, and England undertakes her citizen's
defense, the danger of England being involved in a war
on account of this one Englishman is no greater for
England than for the other State, which inflicts the
injustice. Hence the firm action of a government
respected as such in defense of even a single person is
altogether not an unbearable risk, since indeed the
other State will have just as little interest in
starting a war on account of a trifling injustice that
may have been inflicted on a single person. A general
conception of honor has been formulated on the basis of
this knowledge and the thousand year old application of
this principle, namely, that a powerful State take every
individual citizen under its protection and defend him
with all its might. Further, through the nature of
European hegemony, a certain practice has been developed
in the course of time to demonstrate this conception of
honor in more or less cheap examples, so as to raise the
prestige of individual European States, or at least to
give it a certain stability. As soon as an alleged, or
even faked, injustice was committed against a Frenchman
or an Englishman in certain countries that were weak and
less powerful militarily, this subject's defense with
armed power was undertaken. That is to say, a couple of
warships put on a military demonstration, which in the
worst cases was firing practice with live ammunition, or
an expeditionary force of some kind was landed with
which the power to be punished was to be chastised. Not
seldom, at the same time, the wish that thus an excuse
for intervention might be obtained, was father to the
thought. It would probably never occur to the English
even to exchange a note with North America on account of
a trifling incident for which they would take bloody
revenge on Liberia.
Thus, the more the defense of the individual citizen is
undertaken on grounds of pure expediency and with every
means in a strong State, the less can a Reich, made
completely defenseless and powerless, be expected to
undertake a foreign policy step on the grounds of so
called national honor, which perforce must lead, after
all, to the destruction of its last prospects for the
future. For if the German Folk justifies its present
border policy, espoused in the so called national
circles, by the necessity of representing German honor,
the result will not be the redemption of German honor,
but rather the externalization of German dishonor. That
is to say, it is not at all dishonorable to have lost
territories, but it is dishonorable to conduct a policy
which must needs lead to a complete enslavement of one's
own Folk. And all this only so as to be able to give
vent to just ugly talk and to avoid action. For this is
just a question of empty talk. If we really wanted to
establish a policy having national honor as its goal,
then we must at least entrust this policy to persons
worthy of esteem according to all common notions of
honor. As long, however, as German domestic and foreign
policy is conducted by forces which, with cynical
smirks, proclaim in the Reich Parliament that for them
there exists no Fatherland called Germany, for just so
long will it be the first task of these national
bourgeois and patriotic phrase mongering heroes merely
to secure the simplest recognition of the idea of
national honor in Germany through their domestic policy.
But why do they not do it; indeed, on the contrary, why
do they enter coalitions with avowed betrayers of the
country at the expense of this so called national honor?
Because otherwise a difficult struggle would be
necessary, whose outcome they view with small
confidence, and which, indeed, could lead to the
destruction of their own existence. To be sure, this
private existence of theirs is holier than the defense
of national honor within the country. Yet they gladly
risk the nation's future existence for a couple of
phrases.
The national border policy becomes downright senseless
if we look beyond both the afflictions and tasks of the
present to the necessity of shaping a life for our Folk
in the future.
Hence the border policy of our bourgeois patriotic
Fatherland circles is especially senseless because it
requires the greatest blood stakes, and yet contains the
smallest prospects for our Folk's future.
The German Nation is less in a position today than in
the years of peace to nourish itself on its own
territory. All the attempts--either through increasing
land yields as such, or by cultivating the last fallow
lands--to bring about an increase of the German
production of foodstuffs, did not enable our Folk to
nourish itself from its own soil. In fact, the Folk
mass now living in Germany can no longer be satisfied
with the yield of our soil. Every further increase of
these yields, however, would not be applied to the
benefit of the increment to our population, but instead
would be completely spent in satisfying the increase of
the general living requirements of individuals. A model
living standard is created here which is primarily
determined by a knowledge of conditions and of life in
the American Union. Just as the living requirements of
rural communities rise as a result of the slow awareness
and the influence of life in the big cities, so do the
living requirements of entire nations rise under the
influence of the life of better situated and richer
nations. Not seldom a people's living standard, which
thirty years before would have appeared as a maximum, is
regarded as inadequate simply for the reason that in the
meanwhile knowledge has been acquired about the living
standard of another Folk. Just as in general, man, even
in the lowest circles, takes for granted appointments
which eighty years before were unheard of luxuries even
for the upper classes. The more space is bridged through
modern technology, and especially communication, and
nations are brought closer together, the more intensive
their mutual relations become, the more also will living
conditions reciprocally leave their mark on each other
and seek to approximate one another. It is an erroneous
opinion that in the long run one can hold a Folk of a
definite cultural capacity and also of a real cultural
importance to an otherwise generally valid living
standard by an appeal to perceptible facts or even to
ideals. The broad masses especially will show no
understanding of this. They feel the hardship; either
they grumble against those who in their opinion are
responsible -- something which is dangerous at least in
democratic States, since thereby they provide the
reservoir for all attempts at revolutionary upheavals --
or through their own measures they try to bring about a
rectification as they understand it and as it arises
from their own insight. The fight against the child
begins. They want to lead a life like others, and
cannot. What is more natural than that the
responsibility is put on large families, in which no joy
is taken any more, and which are limited as much as
possible as a burdensome evil.
Hence it is false to believe that the German Folk in
the future could acquire an increase in number by an
increase of its domestic agricultural production. In the
most favorable of cases, the upshot is only a
satisfaction of the increased living requirements as
such. But since the increase of these living
requirements is dependent on the living standard of
other nations which, however, stand in a much more
favorable relation of population to land, they, in the
future, too will be far ahead in their living equipment.
Consequently this stimulus will never die out, and one
day either a discrepancy will arise between the living
standard of these Folks and those poorly provided with
land, or the latter will be forced, or believe
themselves forced, to reduce their number even further.
The German Folk's prospects are hopeless. Neither the
present living space, nor that achieved by a restoration
of the borders of 1914, will allow us to lead a life
analogous to that of the American Folk. If we want
this, either our Folk's territory must be considerably
enlarged, or the German economy will again have to
embark on paths already known to us since the pre War
period. Power is necessary in both cases. Specifically,
first of all, in the sense of a restoration of our
Folk's inner strength, and then in a military mounting
of this strength.
Presentday National Germany, which sees the fulfillment
of the national task in its limited border policy,
cannot deceive herself that the problem of the nation's
sustenance will in any way be solved thereby. For even
the utmost success of this policy of the restoration of
the borders of 1914 would bring only a renewal of the
economic situation of the year 1914. In other words, the
question of sustenance that then, as now, was completely
unsolved, will imperiously force us onto the tracks of
world economy and world export. As a matter of fact, the
German bourgeoisie, and the so called national leagues
with it, also think only in economic political terms.
Production, export and import are the catchwords with
which they juggle and from which they hope for the
Nation's salvation in the future. It is hoped to raise
the export capacity through an increase of production,
and thereby be able to provide adequately for import
needs. Only it is completely forgotten that for Germany
this whole problem, as has already been stressed, is not
at all a problem of increasing production, but rather a
question of sales possibility; and that the export
difficulties would not at all be obviated by a reduction
of German production costs as, again, our bourgeois sly
dogs presume. Because, inasmuch as this, in itself, is
only partly possible in consequence of our limited
domestic market, making German export commodities able
to compete by lowering production costs -- for instance,
through the dismantling of our social legislation, and
the duties and burdens resulting therefrom -- it will
only bring us thither, where we had landed on August
4th, 1914. It really is part of the whole incredible
bourgeois national naivete to presume that England would
or ever could tolerate a German competition dangerous to
her. Yet, these are the very same people who well know,
and who always stress, that Germany did not want a war
in 1914, but that instead she was literally pushed into
it. And that it was England who, out of sheer
competitive envy, gathered together former enemies and
let loose against Germany. Today, however, these
incorrigible economic dreamers imagine that England,
after having risked the whole existence of her world
empire in the monstrous four and one half year World
War, and in which she remained the victor, will now view
German competition differently than at that time. As if
for England this whole question were a sporting matter.
No. For decades before the War, England had tried to
break the threatening German economic competition, the
growing German maritime trade, and so on, with economic
countermeasures. Only when they were forced to
understand that this would not succeed, and when on the
contrary Germany, by building her Navy, showed that she
was actually determined to carry out her economic
warfare to the extent of the peaceful conquest of the
world, did England as a last resort invoke violence. And
now, after she has remained the victor, they think they
can play the game all over again; whereas, on top of all
this, Germany today is not at all in a position to throw
any kind of power factor into the scales, thanks indeed
to her domestic and foreign policy.
The attempt to restore our Folk's sustenance and to be
able to maintain it by the increase of our production
and by reducing the costs of the same, ultimately will
fail for the reason that we cannot undertake the final
consequence of this struggle because of the lack of
military power. Thus the end would be a collapse of the
German Folk's sustenance and of all these hopes along
with it.
Entirely aside from the fact, too, that now even the
American Union is emerging in all fields as the sharpest
competitor to all European nations fighting as export
nations for the world's markets. The size and the wealth
of her domestic market permits production figures and
thereby production equipment which so reduce
manufacturing costs that, despite enormous wages, it no
longer seems possible to undercut her prices. Here the
development of the automobile industry may be considered
as a warning example. Not only because we Germans, for
instance, despite our laughable wages, are not in a
position, even only to a degree, to export successfully
against American competition, but we must also look on
as American cars spread alarmingly even to our own
country. This is possible only because the size of her
domestic market, her wealth in purchasing power and also
in raw materials, guarantees the American automobile
industry domestic sales figures which alone make
possible manufacturing methods which in Europe would be
impossible in consequence of the lack of these domestic
sales potentials. The consequence of this is the
enormous export possibilities of the American automobile
industry. Thus here it is a question of the general
motorizing of the world that is a matter of
incommensurable importance for the future. For the
replacement of human and animal power by motors is only
at the beginning of its development, whose end cannot at
all be foreseen today. At any rate, for the American
Union, the modern automobile industry is on the whole at
the forefront of all other industries. Thus in many
other areas, our continent will increasingly appear as
an economic factor, in an aggressive form, and thereby
help to sharpen the struggle for the sales market. From
an examination of all factors, especially in view of the
limitation of our own raw materials and the ensuing
threatening dependence on other countries, Germany's
future perforce appears very gloomy and sad. But even if
Germany were to master all her increasing economic
difficulties, she would still be in the same spot as she
had already been on August 4th, 1914. The ultimate
decision as to the outcome of the struggle for the world
market will lie in power, and not in economics.
It has been our curse, however, that even in peacetime a
great part of the national bourgeoisie, precisely, was
permeated by the idea that power could be renounced
through an economic policy. Today, its chief
representatives are also to be sought in those more or
less pacifistic circles who, as the adversaries and
enemies of all heroic, Folkish virtues, would be glad
to see a State-preserving, indeed even a State-forming,
strength in economics. But the more a Folk accepts the
belief that it can maintain its life only through
peaceful economic activity, the more will its very
economy be surrendered to collapse. For, ultimately,
economics, as a purely secondary matter in national
life, is linked to the primary existence of a strong
State. The sword had to stand before the plough, and an
Army before economics.
If it is believed that we can renounce this in Germany,
our Folk's sustenance will be wrecked.
As soon, however, as a Folk in general once impregnates
its life with the thought that it can find its daily
subsistence through peaceful economic activity alone,
the less will it think of a violent solution in case
this attempt should fail; on the contrary, it will then
all the more try to take the easiest path to overcome
the miscarriage of the economy without thereby having to
risk its blood. As a matter of fact, Germany already
finds herself in the middle of this situation.
Emigration and birth control are the medicines
recommended for our nation's salvation by the
representatives of pacifistic economic policy and the
Marxist view of the State.
The result of following these counsels, especially for
Germany, will be of the most fateful importance. Germany
is racially composed of so many unequal constituent
elements that a permanent emigration perforce will
remove from our Nation people who have the greatest
capacity for resistance, who are the boldest and most
determined. These, above all, like the Vikings of yore,
will also today be the bearers of Nordic blood. This
slow diminution of the Nordic element leads to a
lowering of our general race value and thus to a
weakening of our technical, cultural, and also civic
political productive forces. Hence, the consequences of
this weakening will be especially grievous for the
future, because there now appears as a dynamic actor in
world history a new State, which, as a truly European
colony, has for centuries received the best Nordic
forces of Europe by way of emigration; aided by the
community of their original blood, these have built a
new, fresh community of the highest racial value. It is
no accident that the American Union is the State in
which at the present time most inventions are being made
by far, some of which are of an incredible boldness.
Americans, as a young, racially select Folk, confront
Old Europe, which has continually lost much of its best
blood through war and emigration. Just as little as one
can equate the accomplishment of one thousand degenerate
Levantines in Europe, say in Crete, with the
accomplishment of one thousand racially still more
valuable Germans or Englishmen, so can one just as
little equate the accomplishment of one thousand
racially questionable Europeans to the capacity of one
thousand racially highly valuable Americans. Only a
conscious Folkish race policy would be able to save
European nations from losing the law of action to
America, in consequence of the inferior value of
European Folks vis-à-vis the American Folk. If in
place of this, however, the German Folk, along with a
bastardization systematically conducted by Jews with
inferior human material and a lowering of its racial
value as such caused thereby, also lets its best
blood-bearers be taken away by a continuation of
emigration in hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of
individual specimens, it will slowly sink to the level
of an equally inferior race, and hence to that of an
incompetent and valueless Folk. The danger is
especially great since, because of the complete
indifference on our side, the American Union itself,
inspired by the teachings of its own ethnologists, has
established special standards for immigration. By making
entry to American soil dependent on definite racial
prerequisites on the one hand, as well as on the
definite physical health of the individual as such,
bleeding Europe of its best people has, indeed, perforce
been legally regulated. This is something which our
whole so called national bourgeois world and all its
economic politicians either do not see, or, at least,
will not hear of because it is unpleasant to them, and
because it is much cheaper to pass over these things
with a couple of general national phrases.
To this lowering, imposed by Nature, of the general
value of our Folk by forced emigration in consequence
of our economic policy, is added birth control as a
second disadvantage. I have already set forth the
consequences of the fight against the child. They lie in
a reduction of the count of individuals brought to life,
so that a further selection cannot take place. On the
contrary, people take pains that all who are once born
are kept alive under any circumstances. Since, however,
ability, energy, and so on, are not necessarily
connected with the first born, but instead become
visible in each case only in the course of the struggle
for existence, the possibility of a weeding out and a
selection according to such criteria is removed. Nations
become impoverished in talents and energies. Again, this
is especially bad in nations in which the dissimilarity
of basic racial elements extends even into families. For
then, according to the Mendelian Law Of Division, a
separation takes place in every family which can partly
be attributed to one racial side, partly to the other.
If, however, these racial values vary in their
importance for a Folk, then even the value of the
children of one family already will be dissimilar on
racial grounds. Since the firstborn in no way must grow
according to the racially valuable sides of both
parents, it lies in the interest of a nation that later
life at least search out the more racially valuable from
among the total number of children, through the struggle
for existence, and preserve them for the nation and,
conversely, put the nation in the possession of the
accomplishments of these racially valuable individuals.
But if man himself prevents the procreation of a greater
number of children and limits himself to the firstborn
or at least to the second-born, he will nevertheless
want to preserve especially these inferior racial
elements of the nation, even if these do not possess the
most valuable characteristics. Thus he artificially
hinders nature's process of selection, he prevents it,
and thereby helps to impoverish a nation of powerful
personalities. He destroys the peak value of a Folk.
The German Folk which, as such, does not have that
average value, as for example the English, will be
especially dependent on personality values. The
extraordinary extremes that we can observe everywhere in
our Folk are only the after effects of our disruption,
determined by blood, into superior and inferior racial
elements. In general, the Englishman will have a better
average. Perhaps he will never arrive at the harmful
depths of our Folk, but also never at its heights of
brilliance. Therefore, his life will move along a more
average line and be filled with a greater steadiness. In
contrast, German life in everything is infinitely
unstable and restless and acquires its importance only
by its extraordinarily high achievements, through which
we make amends for the disquieting aspects of our
Nation. Once, however, the personal bearers of these
high achievements are removed through an artificial
system, these very achievements cease. Then our Folk
moves toward a permanent pauperization of personality
values, and thereby to a lowering of its whole cultural
and spiritual importance.
If this condition should continue for just several
hundred years, our German Folk would be, at the least,
so weakened in its general importance that it would no
longer be able to raise any kind of claim to be called a
Folk of world consequence. In any case, it will no
longer be in a position to keep pace with the deeds of
the considerably younger, healthier American Folk.
Then, because of a great number of causes, we ourselves
will experience what not a few old cultural Folks prove
in their historical development. Through their vices,
and in consequence of their thoughtlessness, the Nordic
blood-bearer was slowly eliminated as the most racially
valuable element of the bearers of culture and founders
of States, and thereby they left behind a human
hodgepodge of such slight intrinsic importance that the
law of action was wrested from their hands to pass over
to other younger and healthier Folks.
All of south eastern Europe, especially the still older
cultures of Asia Minor and Persia, as well as those of
the Mesopotamian lowlands, provide classroom examples of
the course of this process. Thus, just as here history
was slowly shaped by the racially more valuable Folks
of the Occident, the danger likewise arises that the
importance of racially inferior Europe slowly is leading
to a new determination of the world's fate by the Folk
of the North American continent.
That this danger threatens all Europe has, after all,
already been perceived by some today. Only few of them
wish to understand what it means for Germany. Our Folk,
if it lives with the same political thoughtlessness in
the future as in the past, will have to renounce its
claim to world importance once and for all. Racially, it
will increasingly atrophy until it finally sinks to
degenerate, animal-like feed bags lacking as well the
memory of past greatness. As a State in the future order
of World States, they will at best be like that which
Switzerland and Holland have been in Europe up to now.
This will be the end of the life of a Folk whose
history has been two thousand years of world history.
This fate will no longer be changed with stupid national
bourgeois phrases whose practical senselessness and
worthlessness must already have been proved by the
success of development up to now. Only a new reformation
movement, which sets a conscious knowledge against
racial thoughtlessness and draws all the conclusions
from this knowledge, can still snatch our Folk back
from this abyss.
It will be the task of the National Socialist Movement
to carry over into a policy applied in practice the
knowledge and scientific insights of race theory, either
already existing or in the course of development, as
well as the world history clarified through it.
Since today Germany's economic fate vis-à-vis America is
in fact also the fate of other nations in Europe, there
is again a movement of credulous followers, especially
among our Folk, who want to oppose a European union to
the American Union in order thereby to prevent a
threatening world hegemony of the North American
continent.
For these people, the Pan European Movement, at least at
first sight, really seems to have much that is alluring
about it. Indeed, if we could judge world history
according to economic viewpoints, it could even be
pertinent. Two are always more than one for the mechanic
of history, and thus for the mechanical politician. But
values, not numbers, are decisive in the life of
nations. That the American Union was able to achieve
such a threatening height is not based on the fact that
.......... million people form a State there, but on the
fact that .......... square kilometers of the most
fertile and the richest soil is inhabited by ..........
million people of the highest race value. That these
people form a State has a heightened importance for the
other parts of the world, despite the territorial size
of their living area, insofar as an organization, all
encompassing, exists thanks to which, indeed, the
racially conditioned individual value of these people,
can find a compact deployment of collective forces for
fighting through the struggle for existence.
If this were not correct, if the importance of the
American Union thus lay in the size of the population
alone, or else in the size of the territory, or in the
relation in which this territory stands to the size of
the population, then Russia would be at least as
dangerous for Europe. Present-day Russia encompasses
.......... million people on .......... million square
kilometers. These people are also comprised in a State
structure whose value, taken traditionally, would have
to be even higher than that of the American Union.
Despite this, however, it would never occur to anybody
to fear a Russian hegemony over the world for this
reason. No such inner value is attached to the number of
the Russian people, so that this number could become a
danger for the freedom of the world. At least never in
the sense of an economic and power political rule of the
other parts of the globe, but at best in the sense of an
inundation of disease bacilli which at the moment have
their focus in Russia. If, however, the importance of
the threatening American position of hegemony seems to
be conditioned primarily by the value of the American
Folk, and then only secondarily by the size of this
Folk's given living space and the favorable relation
between population and soil resulting therefrom, this
hegemony will not be eliminated by a purely formal
numerical unification of European nations, so far as
their inner value is not higher than that of the
American Union. Otherwise, present day Russia would
necessarily appear as the greatest danger to this
American Union, as would China, still more, which is
inhabited by over 400 million people.
Thus, first and foremost, the Pan European Movement
rests on the fundamental basic error that human values
can be replaced by human numbers. This is a purely
mechanical conception of history which avoids an
investigation of all shaping forces of life, in order,
in their stead, to see in numerical majorities the
creative sources of human culture as well as the
formative factors of history. This conception is in
keeping with the senselessness of our western democracy
as with the cowardly pacifism of our high economic
circles. It is obvious that it is the ideal of all
inferior or half breed bastards. Likewise, that the Jew
especially welcomes such a conception. For, logically
pursued, it leads to racial chaos and confusion, to a
bastardization and Negrification of cultural mankind,
and thereby ultimately to such a lowering of its racial
value that the Hebrew who has kept free of this can
slowly rise to world domination. At least, he fancies
that ultimately he will be able to develop into the
brain of this mankind which has become worthless. Aside
from this fundamental basic error of the Pan European
Movement, even the idea of a unification of European
States, forced by a general insight emerging from a
threatened distress, is a fantastic, historically
impossible childishness. Thereby, I do not mean to say
that such a unification under a Jewish protectorate and
Jewish impulsion as such would not be possible from the
outset, but only that the result could not match the
hopes for which the whole monkey business sets the
stage.
Let no one believe that such a European coalition could
mobilize any strength that would manifest itself
externally. It is an old experience that a lasting
unification of nations can take place only if it is a
question of nations which are racially equivalent and
related as such, and if, secondly, their unification
takes place in the form of a slow process of struggle
for hegemony. Thus did Rome once subjugate the Latin
States one after the other, until finally her strength
sufficed to become the crystallization point of a world
empire. But this is likewise the history of the birth of
the English World Empire. Thus, further, did Prussia put
an end to the dismemberment of Germany, and thus only in
this way could a Europe one day rise that could attend
to the interests of its population in a compact
governmental form. But--this would only be the result of
a centuries long struggle, since an infinite quantity of
old customs and traditions must be overcome and an
assimilation of Folks who are already extraordinarily
divergent racially would have to materialize. The
difficulty, then, of giving a unitary State language to
such a structure can likewise be solved only in a
centuries long process.
However all this would not be the realization of the
present Pan European train of thought, but rather the
success of the struggle for existence of the strongest
nations of Europe. And what remained would as little be
a Pan Europe as, for instance, the unification of the
Latin States formerly was a Pan Latinization. The power
which at that time had fought through this unification
process in centuries long battles gave its name forever
to the whole structure. And the power which would create
a Pan Europe along such natural ways would thereby at
the same time rob it of the designation Pan Europe.
But even in such a case, the desired success would not
materialize. For once any European great power
today--and naturally it could involve only a power which
was valuable according to its Folkdom, that is,
racially important--brings Europe to unity along these
lines, the final completion of this unity would signify
the racial submersion of its founders, and thereby
remove even the last value from the whole structure. It
would never be possible thereby to create a structure
which could bear up against the American Union. In the
future only the State which has understood how to raise
the value of its Folkdom and to bring it to the most
expedient State form for this, through its inner life as
well as through its foreign policy, will be able to face
up to North America. By posing such a solution as
possible, a whole number of States will be able to
participate, which can and will lead to a heightened
fitness if for no other reason than the mutual
competition.
It is again the task of the National Socialist Movement
to strengthen and to prepare to the utmost its own
Fatherland itself for this task. The attempt, however,
to realize the Pan European idea through a purely formal
unification of European nations, without having to be
forced in centuries long struggles by a European ruling
power, would lead to a structure whose whole strength
and energy would be absorbed by the inner rivalries and
disputes exactly as formerly the strength of the German
clans in the German Union. Only when the internal German
question had been finally solved through Prussia's power
superiority could a commitment of the Nation's united
strength beyond its borders ensue. It is frivolous,
however, to believe that the contest between Europe and
America will always be only of a peaceful economic
nature, if economic motives develop into determining
vital factors. In general, it lay in the nature of the
rise of the North American State that at first it could
exhibit little interest in foreign policy problems. Not
only in consequence of the lack of a long governmental
tradition, but rather simply in consequence of the fact
that within the American continent itself
extraordinarily large areas stood at the disposal of
man's natural urge for expansion. Hence, the policy of
the American Union, from the moment of breaking away
from the European mother State to most recent times, was
primarily a domestic one. Indeed, the struggles for
freedom were themselves at bottom nothing but the
shaking off of foreign policy commitments in favor of a
life viewed exclusively in terms of domestic policy. In
proportion as the American Folk increasingly fulfil the
tasks of internal colonization, the natural, activist
urge that is peculiar to young nations will turn
outward. But then the surprises which the world may
perchance still experience could least of all be
seriously opposed by a pacifistic democratic Pan
European hodgepodge State. According to the conception
of that everybody's bastard, Coudenhove, this Pan Europe
would one day play the same role vis-à-vis the American
Union, or a nationally awakened China that was formerly
played by the old Austrian State vis-à-vis Germany or
Russia.
Really, there is no need to refute the opinion that just
because a fusion of Folks of different nationalities
has taken place in the American Union, this must also be
possible in Europe. The American Union, to be sure, has
brought people of different nationalities together into
a young nation. But closer scrutiny discloses that the
overwhelming majority of these different ethnic groups
racially belong to similar or at least related basic
elements. For since the emigration process in Europe was
a selection of the fittest, this fitness in all European
Folks lying primarily in the Nordic admixture, the
American Union, in fact, has drawn to itself the
scattered Nordic elements from among Folks who were
very different as such. If, in addition, we take into
account that it involved people who were not the bearers
of any kind of theory of government, and consequently
were not burdened by any kind of tradition, and,
further, the dimensions of the impact of the new world
to which all people are more or less subject, it becomes
understandable why a new nation, made up of peoples from
all European countries, could arise in less than two
hundred years. It must be considered, however, that
already in the last century this fusion process became
more difficult in proportion as, under the pressure of
need, Europeans went to North America, who, as members
of European national States, not only felt themselves
united with them Folkishly for the future, but who
particularly prized their national tradition more highly
than citizenship in their new homeland. Moreover, even
the American Union has not been able to fuse people of
alien blood who are stamped with their own national
feeling or race instinct. The American Union's power of
assimilation has failed vis-à-vis the Chinese as well as
vis-à-vis the Japanese element. They also sense this
well and know it, and therefore they would best prefer
to exclude these alien bodies from immigration. But
thereby American immigration policy itself confirms that
the earlier fusion presupposed peoples of definite equal
race foundations, and immediately miscarried as soon as
it involved people who were fundamentally different.
That the American Union itself feels itself to be a
Nordic German State, and in no way an international
mishmash of Folks, further emerges from the manner in
which it allots immigration quotas to European nations.
Scandinavians, that is, Swedes, Norwegians, further
Danes, then Englishmen, and finally Germans, are
allotted the greatest contingents. Rumanians and Slavs
very little, Japanese and Chinese they would prefer to
exclude altogether. Consequently, it is a Utopia to
oppose a European coalition or a Pan Europe, consisting
of Mongols, Slavs, Germans, Latinos, and so on, in which
all others than Teutons would dominate, as a factor
capable of resistance, to this racially dominant, Nordic
State. A very dangerous Utopia, to be sure, if we
consider that again countless Germans see a rosy future
for which they will not have to make the most grievous
sacrifices. That this Utopia of all things came out of
Austria is not without a certain comedy. For, after all,
this State and its fate is the liveliest example of the
enormous strength of structures artificially glued
together but which are unnatural in themselves. It is
the rootless spirit of the old imperial city of Vienna,
that hybrid city of the Orient and the Occident, which
thereby speaks to us.
Back to book INDEX
Chapter 10: On Necessity of an
Active Foreign Policy
Summing up, therefore, it
can be reiterated that our bourgeois national policy,
the foreign policy aim of which is the restoration of
the borders of the year 1914, is senseless and indeed
catastrophic. It perforce brings us into conflict with
all the States that took part in the World War. Thus it
guarantees the continuance of the coalition of victors,
which is slowly choking us. It thereby always assures
France a favorable official opinion in other parts of
the world for her eternal proceedings against Germany.
Even were it successful, it would signify nothing at all
for Germany's future in its results, and nevertheless
compel us to fight with blood and steel. Further, it
altogether prevents in particular any stability of
German foreign policy.
It was characteristic of our pre War policy that it
necessarily gave an outside observer the image of
decisions often as wavering as they were
incomprehensible. If we disregard the Triple Alliance,
the maintenance of which could not be a foreign policy
aim but only a means to such an aim, we can discover no
stable idea in the leaders of our Folk's fate in the
pre War period. This is naturally incomprehensible. The
moment the foreign policy aim no longer signified a
struggle for the German Folk's interests, but rather
the preservation of world peace, we lost the ground
under our feet. I can certainly outline a Folk's
interests, establish them, and, regardless of how the
possibilities of their advocacy stand, I can
nevertheless keep the great aim uninterruptedly in view.
Gradually the rest of mankind will also acquire a
general knowledge of a nation's special, definite, chief
foreign policy ideas. This then offers the possibility
of regulating mutual relations in a permanent way,
either in the sense of an intended resistance against
the known operation of such a power, or a reasonable
awareness of it, or also in the sense of an
understanding, since, perhaps, one's own interests can
be achieved along a common path.
This stability in foreign policy can be established with
a whole series of European States. For long periods of
her existence, Russia exhibited definite foreign policy
aims which dominated her whole activity. In the course
of the centuries, France has always represented the same
foreign policy aims regardless who embodied political
power in Paris at the moment. We may speak of England
not only as a State with a traditional diplomacy, but
above all as a State with a foreign policy idea become a
tradition. With Germany, such an idea could be discerned
only periodically in the Prussian State. We see Prussia
fulfil her German mission in the short period of the
Bismarckian statecraft, but thereafter any foreign
policy aim staked out far in advance came to an end. The
new German Reich, especially after Bismarck's
retirement, no longer had such an aim since the slogan
of preserving peace, that is, of maintaining a given
situation, does not possess any kind of stable content
or character. Just as any passive slogan is doomed in
reality to be the plaything of an aggressive will. Only
he who himself wants to act can also determine his
action according to his will. Hence the Triple Entente,
which wanted to act, also had all the advantages which
lie in the self-determination of action, whereas the
Triple Alliance through its contemplative tendency to
preserve world peace was at a disadvantage to the same
degree. Thus the timing and opening of a war was
established by nations with a definite foreign policy
aim, whereas, conversely, the Triple Alliance powers
were surprised by it at an hour that was everything but
favorable. If we in Germany ourselves had had even the
slightest bellicose intention, it would have been
possible through a number of measures, which could have
been carried out without effort, to have given another
face to the start of the War. But Germany never had a
definite foreign policy aim in view, she never thought
of any kind of aggressive steps for the realization of
this aim, and consequently events caught her by
surprise.
From Austria-Hungary we could hope for no other foreign
policy aim as such, save that of wriggling through the
hazards of European politics, so that the rotten State
structure as much as possible nowhere bumps into
anything, in order thus to conceal from the world the
real inner character of this monstrous corpse of a
State. The German national bourgeoisie, which alone is
under discussion here--since international Marxism as
such has no other aim but Germany's destruction -- even
today has learned nothing from the past. Even today it
does not feel the necessity of setting for the nation a
foreign policy aim that may be regarded as satisfactory,
and thereby give our foreign policy endeavors a certain
stability for a more or less long time. For only if such
a possible foreign policy goal appears fundamentally
staked out can we discuss in detail the possibilities
that can lead to success. Only then does politics enter
the stage of the art of the possible. As long, however,
as this whole political life is not dominated by any
leading idea, individual actions will not have the
character of utilizing all possibilities for the
achievement of a certain success as such. Instead, they
are but individual stations along the way of an aimless
and plan-less muddling through from today to tomorrow.
Above all is lost that certain persistence which the
execution of great aims always requires; that is: one
will try this today and that tomorrow, and the day after
one will have this foreign policy possibility in view,
and suddenly pay homage to a wholly opposite
intention--insofar, that is, as this visible confusion
as confusion is not actually in keeping with the wish of
that power which rules Germany today, and in truth does
not wish for a resurgence of our Folk ever. Only
international Jewry can possess a lively interest in a
German foreign policy which by its continual, seemingly
irrational, sudden transitions, lacks that clear plan,
and which, as its only justification, at best asserts:
Indeed, we too naturally don't know what should be done,
but we do something precisely because something must be
done. Yes, not seldom can we actually hear that these
men are so little convinced of the inner sense of their
foreign policy actions that, as highest motivation, they
can only inquire whether somebody else may know a better
one. This is the foundation on which the statecraft of a
Gustav Stresemann rests.
In contrast, precisely today more than ever is it
necessary for the German Folk to set itself a foreign
policy goal which meets its real inner needs and,
conversely, guarantees an unconditional stability to its
foreign policy activity for the humanly predictable
proximate period of time. For only if our Folk
fundamentally determines and persistently fights for its
interests in such a way, can it hope to induce this or
that State whose interests are not opposed to ours, now
at last established, and which indeed may even be
parallel, to enter into a closer union with Germany. For
the idea of wanting to solve our Folk's distress
through the League Of Nations is exactly as unjustified
as it was to let the German question be decided by the
Frankfurt Federal Parliament.
The satisfied nations dominate the League Of Nations.
Indeed, it is their instrument. To a large measure they
have no interest in allowing a change in the territorial
distribution of the globe, unless it again appeals to
their interests. And while they talk about the rights of
small nations, in reality it is only the interests of
the largest they have in view.
If Germany again wants to achieve a real freedom so
that, under its blessing, she can give the German Folk
its daily bread, she must take the measures thereto
outside the Parliament Of The League Of Nations in
Geneva. But then, for the lack of sufficient strength,
it will be necessary that she find allies who can
believe that they may also serve their own interests by
going along with Germany. Such a situation, however,
will never arise if Germany's real foreign policy aim
has not become fully clear to these nations. And, above
all, Germany by herself will never acquire the strength
and inner force for that persistence necessary, alas, to
sweep away the obstacles of world history. For then one
will never learn how to have patience in particulars,
and also to renounce them if necessary, in order finally
to be able to achieve the vitally necessary aim on a
large scale. For even among allies, relations will never
be completely frictionless. Disturbances of reciprocal
relations can arise over and over again to assume
threateningly dangerous forms if the strength to
overcome these petty unpleasantness and obstacles does
not lie in the very dimensions of the foreign policy aim
ultimately staked out. Here the French national
leadership of the pre War decades may serve as an
exemplary model. How it lightly passed over small
matters, indeed, even remained silent before the most
bitter events, so as not to lose the possibility of
organizing a war of revenge against Germany, in such
contrast to our eternally bawling hurrah!-patriots, and,
consequently, their frequent barking at the moon.
The staking out of a clear foreign policy aim appears as
important, furthermore, for the reason that, otherwise,
the representatives of other interests among one's own
Folk will always find it possible to confuse public
opinion, and to make, and in part even provoke, petty
incidents into a cause for the radical change of opinion
on foreign policy. Thus, out of the petty disputes which
result from conditions themselves or which are
artificially fabricated, France will again and again try
to bring about ill feeling, indeed estrangement, among
nations which, by the whole nature of their real vital
interests, would be dependent upon each other, and which
perforce would have to take a stand against France in
concert. Such attempts, however, will be successful only
if in consequence of the lack of an unshakeable
political aim, one's own political actions do not
possess a true stability, and above all, because
persistence in the preparation of measures serviceable
to the fulfillment of one's own political aim is also
lacking.
The German Folk, which possesses neither a foreign
policy tradition nor a foreign policy aim, will by
itself rather be inclined to pay homage to Utopian
ideals, and thereby neglect its real vital interest. For
what has our Folk not raved over in the last hundred
years? Now it was Greeks whom we wanted to save from the
Turks, then Turks on whom we bestowed our affection
against Russians and Italians, after which our Folk
again found an enchantment in waxing enthusiastic over
Polish freedom fighters, and then in indulging their
feelings for the Boers, and so on. But what have all the
most stupid soulful gushiness, as incompetent
politically as they were garrulous, cost our Folk?
Thus the relation to Austria, as was emphasized with
special pride, was not one of practical understanding,
but a true inner alliance of the heart. If only reason
instead of the heart had spoken at this time, and
understanding had decided, Germany would be saved today.
But for the very reason that we are the kind of a Folk
which lets its political actions be determined too
little according to the grounds of a really reasonable,
rational insight--for which reason we cannot look back
on any great political tradition--we must, at least for
the future, give our Folk an unshakeable foreign policy
aim which seems suitable for making the political
measures of the State leadership understandable to the
broad masses in their particulars. Only thus will it be
ultimately possible that millions with a divining faith
will stand behind a government leadership which carries
out decisions which in their particulars may have
something painful about them. This is a prerequisite for
bringing about a mutual understanding between the Folk
and the State leadership and, to be sure, also a
prerequisite for anchoring the State leadership itself
in a certain tradition. It will not do that every German
government have its own foreign policy goal. One can
quarrel only over the means, one can dispute over them,
but the goal itself must be established as unchangeable
once and for all. Then politics can become the great art
of the possible, that is, it is reserved to the
brilliant abilities of the individual government leaders
to perceive the possibilities, from instance to
instance, of bringing the Folk and the Reich nearer to
its foreign policy aim.
This setting of a foreign policy goal is altogether non
existent in present-day Germany. Hence the unguided,
wavering and unsure manner of attending to our Folk's
interests becomes understandable, as does also the whole
confusion of our public opinion. Hence also the
incredible capers of our foreign policy which always end
unhappily without the Folk being even at least capable
of judging the persons responsible and really calling
them to account. No, one does not know what to do.
To be sure there are not a few people today who fully
believe we should do nothing. They boil down their
opinion to the effect that Germany today must be clever
and reserved, that she engage herself nowhere, that we
must keep the development of events well in view but
ourselves not take part in them, in order, one day, to
assume the role of the laughing third one, who reaps the
benefits, while the other two quarrel.
Yes, yes, our present bourgeois statesmen are so clever
and wise. A political judgement which is troubled by no
knowledge of history. There are not a few proverbs which
have become a real curse for our Folk. For example, the
wiser one yields, or clothes make the man, or one can
get through the whole land with hat in hand, or when two
fight, the third rejoices.
In the life of nations, at least, the last proverb
applies only in a wholly conditional sense. [And this
for the following reason] Namely, if two quarrel
hopelessly within a nation, then a third who is outside
a nation can win. In the life of nations with one
another, however, the ultimate success will be had by
States which deliberately engage in disputes because the
possibility of increasing their strength lies only in a
quarrel. There is no historical event in the world that
cannot be judged from two points of view. The neutrals
on one side always confront the interventionist on the
other. And, in general, the neutrals will always get the
worst of it, whereas the interventionists rather can
claim the benefits for themselves, insofar, indeed, as
the party on which they wagered does not lose.
In the life of nations this means the following: If two
mighty powers quarrel on this globe, the more or less
small or large surrounding States either can take part
in this struggle, or keep their distance from it. In one
case the possibility of a gain is not excluded, insofar
as the participation takes place on the side which
carries off the victory. Regardless who wins, however,
the neutrals will have no other fate save enmity with
the remaining victor State. Up to now none of the
globe's great States has arisen on the basis of
neutrality as a principle of political action, but only
through struggle. If towering power States as such are
on Earth, all that remains for small States to do is
either to renounce their future altogether, or to fight
with the more favorable coalition and under its
protection, and thus increase their own strength. For
the role of the laughing third always presupposes that
this third already has a power. But whoever is always
neutral will never achieve power. For to the extent that
a Folk's power lies in its inner value, the more does
it find its ultimate expression in the organizational
form of a Folk's fighting forces on the battlefield,
created by the will of this inner value. This form,
however, will never rise if it is not put to the test
from time to time. Only under the forge hammer of world
history do a Folk's eternal values become the steel and
iron with which history is made. But he who avoids
battles will never attain the strength to fight battles.
And he who never fights battles will never be the heir
of those who struggle with each other in a military
conflict. For the previous heirs of world history were
not, for instance, Folks with cowardly concepts of
neutrality, but young Folks with better swords. Neither
Antiquity nor the Middle Ages nor modern times knows
even a single example of any power States coming into
being save in permanent struggle. Up to now, however,
the historical heirs have always been power States. In
the life of nations, to be sure, even a third can be the
heir when two quarrel. But then from the very outset
this third is already the power that deliberately lets
two other powers quarrel in order to defeat them once
and for all later without a great sacrifice on its part.
Thereby neutrality loses the character of passive non
participation in events altogether, and instead assumes
that of a conscious political operation. Obviously no
sagacious State leadership will begin a struggle without
weighing the size of its possible stakes and comparing
it with the size of the adversary's stakes. But if it
has perceived the impossibility of being able to fight
against a certain powers, all the more so will it be
forced to try to fight together with this power. For
then the strength of the hitherto weaker power can
eventually grow out of this common struggle, in order if
necessary to fight for is own vital interests also
against the latter. Let no one say that then no power
would enter into an alliance with a State which some day
itself might become a danger. Alliances do not present
policy aims, but only means to the aims. We must make
use of them today even if we know a hundred times that
the later development can possibly lead to the opposite.
There is no alliance that lasts forever. Happy the
nations which, in consequence of the complete divergence
of their interests, can enter into an alliance
relationship for a definite time without being forced to
a mutual conflict after the cessation of the same. But a
weak State especially, which wants to achieve power and
greatness, must always try to take an active part in the
general political events of world history.
When Prussia entered her Silesian War, this too was a
relatively secondary phenomenon alongside the violent
dispute between England and France, which at that time
was already in full swing. Perhaps Frederick The Great
can be reproached for having pulled English chestnuts
out of the fire. But would the Prussia ever have arisen
with which a Bismarck could create a new Reich, if at
that time a Hohenzollern prince had sat on the throne
who, in the knowledge of the future greater evens of
world history, preserved his Prussia in a State of pious
neutrality? The three Silesian Wars brought Prussia more
than Silesia. On these battlefields grew those Regiments
which in the future were to carry the German banners
from Weissenburg and Wörth up to Sedan, in order finally
to greet the new emperor of the new Reich in the Hall Of
Mirrors in the Palace Of Versailles. Prussia at that
time was certainly a small State, unimportant in
population and territorial size. But by leaping into the
middle of the great actions of world history, this
little State had obtained for itself a legitimization
for the founding of the later German Reich.
And once, even the neutralists triumphed in the Prussian
State. This was in the period of Napoleon I. At that
time it was believed at first that Prussia could remain
neutral, and for this she was later punished with the
most terrible defeat. Both conceptions confronted one
another sharply even in the year 1812. The one for
neutrality, and the other, headed by Baron vom Stein,
for intervention. The fact that the neutralists won out
in 1812 cost Prussia and Germany infinite blood and
brought them infinite suffering. And the fact that at
last in 1813 the interventionists broke through saved
Prussia. The World War gave the clearest answer to the
opinion that one can achieve political success by
preserving a careful neutrality as a third power. What
have the neutrals of the World War achieved practically?
Were they the laughing third one, for instance? Or does
one believe that, in a similar event, Germany would play
another role? And let no one think that the reason for
this lies only in the magnitude of the World War. No, in
the future, all wars, insofar as they involve great
nations, will be Folk's wars of the most gigantic
dimensions. As a neutral State in any other European
conflict, Germany, however, would possess no more
importance than Holland or Switzerland or Denmark, and
so on, in the World War. Does one really think that
after the event we would get out of nowhere the strength
to play the role against the remaining victor which we
did not venture to play in a union with one of the two
combatants? At any rate, the World War has proven one
thing explicitly: whoever conducts himself as a neutral
in great world historical conflicts, may perhaps at
first make a little business, but, in terms of power
politics, he will thereby ultimately also be excluded
from a codetermination of the world's fate.
Thus, had the American Union preserved her neutrality in
the World War, today she would be regarded as a power of
the second rank, regardless of whether England or
Germany had emerged as a victor. By entering the War,
she raised herself to England's naval strength, but in
international political terms marked herself as a power
of decisive importance. Since her entry into the World
War the American Union is appraised in a completely
different way. It lies in the nature of mankind's
forgetfulness no longer to know [to forget], after only
a short time, what the general judgement of a situation
had been only a few years before. Just as today we
detect a complete disregard of Germany's former
greatness in the speeches of many foreign statesmen,
just as little, conversely, can we appraise the extent
of the increase in value that the American Union has
experienced in our judgement since her entry into the
World War. This is also the most compelling
statesmanlike justification for Italy's entry into the
War against her former allies. Had Italy not taken this
step, she would now share the role of Spain, no matter
how the dice had rolled. The fact that she carried out
the much criticized step to an active participation in
the World War brought a rise in her position and a
strengthening of the same which has found its ultimate
crowning expression in Fascism. Without her entry into
the War, the latter would have been a completely
unthinkable phenomenon.
The German can ponder this with or without bitterness.
It is important to learn from history, especially if its
teachings speak to us in such a compelling way.
Thus the belief that through a prudent, reserved
neutrality vis-à-vis the developing conflicts in Europe
and elsewhere, one can some day reap the benefits
thereof as a laughing third one, is false and idiotic.
In general, freedom is preserved neither by begging nor
by cheating. And also not by work and industry, but
exclusively by struggle, and indeed by one's own
struggle. Thus it is very easily possible that more
weight is attached to the will than to the deed. Not
seldom, in the framework of a wise alliance policy,
nations have achieved successes unrelated to the success
of their arms. But fate does not always measure a nation
which boldly stakes its life according to the dimensions
of its deeds, but rather, very frequently, according to
the dimensions of its will. The history of Italian
unification in the nineteenth century is noteworthy for
this. But the World War also shows how a whole number of
States can achieve extraordinary political successes
less through their military accomplishments [successes]
than through the foolhardy boldness with which they take
sides and the doggedness with which they hold out. If
Germany wants to put an end to her period of enslavement
by all, she must under all circumstances actively try to
enter into a combination of powers in order to
participate in the future shaping of European life in
terms of power politics.
The objection that such participation contains a
grievous risk is correct. But, after all, does one
really believe that we will achieve freedom without
taking a risk? Or does one think that there has ever
been a deed of world history which was not linked with a
risk? Was Frederick The Great's decision, for instance,
to participate in the first Silesian War, not linked
with a risk? Or did Germany's unification by Bismarck
entail no dangers? No, a thousand times no! Beginning
with man's birth up to his death, everything is
questionable. Only death seems certain. But for this
very reason the ultimate commitment is not the worst for
the reason that one day, in one way or another, it will
be demanded.
Naturally it is a matter of political sagacity to choose
the stake in such a way that it yields the highest
possible gain. But not to stake anything at all for
fear, perhaps, of picking the wrong horse means to
renounce a Folk's future. The objection that such an
action may have the character of a risky gamble can most
easily be refuted by simple reference to previous
historical experience. By a risky gamble we understand a
game in which from the outset the chances of winning are
subject to the fate of chance. This will never be the
case in politics. For the more the ultimate decision
lies in the darkness of the future, the more is the
conviction of the possibility or impossibility of a
success erected on humanly perceptible factors. The task
of a nation's political leadership is to weigh these
factors. The result of this examination, then, must also
lead to a decision. Thus this decision is consonant with
one's own insight, and is sustained by faith in possible
success on the basis of this insight. Hence I can just
as little call a politically decisive deed a risky
gamble, just because its outcome is not one hundred
percent certain, as an operation undertaken by a surgeon
the outcome of which likewise will not necessarily be
successful. From time immemorial it has always been in
keeping with the nature of great men to execute deeds
whose success is even doubtful and indefinite with the
utmost energy, if the necessity thereof as such lay
before them, and if after a mature examination of all
conditions this very action alone could be considered.
The joy of responsibility in the framing of great
decisions in the struggles of nations will, of course,
be all the greater the more the actors, by observation
of their Folk, can conclude that even a miscarriage
will not be able to destroy the nation's vital strength.
For in the long run a Folk, inwardly healthy at its
core, can never be effaced through defeats on the
battlefield. Thus insofar as a Folk possesses this
inner health, with the prerequisite of a sufficient
racial importance, the courage for difficult
undertakings can be the greater since even the failure
of the same would not, by far, signify the downfall of
such a Folk. And here Clausewitz is right, when in his
principles he asserts that, with a healthy Folk, such a
defeat may repeatedly lead to a later resurgence, and
that, conversely, only cowardly subjection, that is, a
supine surrender to fate, can lead to ultimate
destruction. The neutrality, however, which is today
recommended to our Folk as the only action possible, is
really nothing but a volition-less surrender to a fate
determined by foreign powers. And only therein lies the
symptom and the possibility of our decline. If, on the
contrary, our Folk itself had undertaken abortive
attempts to achieve freedom, a factor that could be
beneficial to our Folk's strength would lie in the very
manifestation of this attitude. For let it not be said
that it is political sagacity which holds us back from
such steps. No, it is a wretched cowardice and a lack of
principle which in this case, as so often in history,
one tries to confuse with intelligence. Obviously a
Folk under the duress of foreign powers can be forced
by circumstances to endure years of foreign oppression.
But the less a Folk can seriously do outwardly against
overpowering forces, the more, however, will its
internal life press toward freedom and leave nothing
untried that could be suitable for changing the
momentarily given condition one day by staking such a
Folk's entire strength. One will then endure the yoke
of a foreign conqueror, but with clenched fists and
gritted teeth, waiting for the hour which offers the
first opportunity of shaking off the tyrant. Something
like this can be possible under the pressure of
conditions. But what presents itself today as political
sagacity, however, is as a matter of fact a spirit of
voluntary subjection, of unprincipled renunciation of
any resistance, indeed the shameless persecution of
those who dare to think of such a resistance and whose
work obviously could serve their Folk's resurgence. It
is the spirit of inner self disarmament, of the
destruction of all moral factors which one day could
serve a resurrection of this Folk and State. This
spirit can really not give itself the airs of political
sagacity, for actually it is a State destroying
dishonorableness.
And, to be sure, this spirit must hate every attempt at
an active participation of our Folk in future European
developments, because the necessity of a struggle
against this spirit indeed lies in the mere attempt at
such a participation.
If, however, a State leadership seems to be affected by
this corrupting spirit, it becomes the task of the
opposition which perceives, represents and thus espouses
a Folk's real vital forces to inscribe the struggle
[the education] for national resurgence, and through it
for national honor, on its banners. And it must not let
itself be intimidated by the assertion that foreign
policy is the task of responsible State leadership, for
there has not been such a responsible leadership for a
long time. On the contrary, it must adhere to the
conception that, besides the formal laws of momentary
governments, there exist eternal obligations which
compel every member of a nation to do what is perceived
as necessary for the existence of the Folkish
Community. Even if this stands a thousand times in
opposition to the intentions of bad and incompetent
governments.
Hence precisely in Germany today the highest obligation
should devolve on the so called National Opposition, in
view of the unworthiness of the general leadership of
our Folk to establish a clear foreign policy aim, and
to prepare and educate our Folk for the execution of
these ideas. Primarily, it must launch the sharpest war
against the hope, widely spread today, that our fate can
be changed somewhat by active cooperation with the
League Of Nations. In general, it must see to it that
our Folk gradually realizes that we must not expect an
amelioration of the German situation from institutions
the representatives of which are the interested parties
in our present misfortune. Further, it must deepen the
conviction that all social aspirations are Utopian
promises devoid of any real worth without the regaining
of German freedom. It must further bring our Folk the
knowledge that, for this freedom, one way or another,
only the staking of its own strength can be considered.
And that, consequently, our whole domestic and foreign
policy must be such that by virtue of it our Folk's
inner strength grows and increases. Finally, it must
enlighten the Folk to the effect that this staking of
strength must take place for a really worthwhile aim,
and that for this purpose we cannot go forward to meet
our fate alone, but will need allies.
Back to book INDEX
Chapter 11: Germany and Russia
The size of the possible
military commitment as well as the relation of this
means of power to those of the surrounding States is of
decisive importance for the question of the future
shaping of German foreign policy, apart from the inner
power of our Folk, of its strength and assessment of
character.
I need not express myself further on the moral inner
weakness of our present day Folk in this work. Our
general weaknesses which are in part grounded in a
matter of blood, and in part lie in the nature of our
present governmental organization, or must be attributed
to the effects of our poor leadership, are perhaps less
familiar to the German public than, unfortunately, they
are to the rest of the world, which knows them well.
Most of the measures of our oppressors are occasioned by
knowledge of this weakness. But with all acknowledgment
of the factual conditions, it should still never be
forgotten that the same people of today hardly ten years
ago accomplished deeds unrivalled in history. The German
Folk which at the moment leaves such a depressing
impression has, nevertheless, more than once proved its
powerful merit in world history. The World War itself is
the most glorious evidence of our Folk's heroism and
spirit of sacrifice, of its death defying discipline and
its brilliant capability in thousands upon thousands of
areas in the organization of its life. Its purely
military leadership has also achieved immortal
successes. Only the political leadership has failed. It
was already the precursor of that of today, even so much
worse.
Today the inner qualities of our Folk may be a
thousand-fold unsatisfactory, but in one blow they will
yield another image, as soon as another fist takes the
reins of events in order to lead our Folk out of its
present decline.
In our own history, we see how wonderful is precisely
our Folk's capacity for transformation. Prussia in 1806
and Prussia in 1813. What a difference! In 1806, the
State characterized by the most abject capitulation
everywhere, an unheard of wretchedness in the civic
attitude, and in 1813 the State characterized by the
most glowing hatred against foreign domination and a
sense of patriotic sacrifice for one's own Folk, the
most heroic will to fight for freedom! What, in truth,
has changed since then? The Folk? No, in its inner
essence it has remained as before, only its leadership
had come into other hands. A new spirit followed the
weakness of the Prussian governmental administration and
the ossified and aged leadership of the post Frederick
period. Baron vom Stein and Gneisenau, Scharnhorst,
Clausewitz and Blücher were the representatives of the
new Prussia. And the world in a few months had again
forgotten that seven years before this Prussia had
undergone the experience of Jena. And was it, for
instance, otherwise before the founding of the Reich?
Hardly a decade was required for a new Reich, which in
the eyes of many seemed to be the most powerful
embodiment of German power and mastery, to arise out of
the German decline, the German disunity, and the general
political dishonorableness. A single head, towering
above all, had restored freedom of development to the
German genius in a battle against the mediocrity of the
majority. Let us dispense with Bismarck in our history,
and only wretched mediocrity would fill the most
glorious period for our Folk in centuries.
Just as the German Folk could in a few years be hurled
down from its unprecedented greatness, by the mediocrity
of its leadership, into its present chaos, so can it be
pulled up again by an iron fist. Its inner value will
then make its appearance so visibly before the entire
world that merely the actuality of its existence must
compel a regard for and an appraisal of this fact.
If at the start, however, this value is a slumbering
one, it is more than ever necessary to provide clarity
on Germany's real power value existing at the moment.
I have already tried to draw a brief picture of the
momentary German instrument of military power, the Reich
Defence. Here I wish to sketch Germany's general
military situation in relation to the surrounding world.
Germany at the present time is encircled by three power
factors or power groups.
England, Russia and France are at present, militarily,
the most threatening of Germany's neighbors. At the same
time, French power appears strengthened by a system of
European alliances which reach from Paris to Belgrade
via Warsaw and Prague.
Germany lies wedged between these States, with
completely open borders. What is especially threatening
thereby is that the western border of the Reich runs
through Germany's greatest industrial region. This
western border, however, in consequence of its length
and of the lack of all real natural barriers, offers
only a few possibilities for defense by a State whose
military means seem most extremely limited. Even the
Rhine cannot be viewed as a fully effective line of
military resistance. Not only because the possibility of
finding the necessary technical preparations for this
has been taken away from Germany by the peace treaties,
but because the river itself offers even fewer obstacles
to the passage of armies with modern equipment than the
slight means of German defense which must be dispersed
over too long a front. Moreover, this river runs through
Germany's greatest industrial area, and consequently a
struggle over it from the outset would mean the
destruction of the industrial areas and factories
technically most important for national defense. But if
in consequence of a French German conflict
Czechoslovakia should come under consideration as a
further opponent of Germany, a second great industrial
region, Saxony, which could be useful industrially for
the conduct of the war, would be exposed to the greatest
danger of war. Here too the border, without natural
defense, runs down to Bavaria, so broadly and openly
that the prospect of a resistance promising success can
hardly be considered. If Poland also were to take part
in such a war, the entire eastern border in addition,
apart from a few inadequate fortifications, would be
defenseless against attack.
Whereas on the one hand the German borders are
militarily indefensible and are surrounded openly in
long lines by enemies, our North Sea coast is especially
small and confined. The naval power for its defense is
laughable, and completely worthless as such. The Fleet
which we claim today, beginning with our so called
battleships, is at best the finest target material for
enemy firing practice. The two newly built ships, light
cruisers, modern in themselves, have no decisive value,
indeed not even an apparent one. The Fleet we are
allowed is inadequate even for the Baltic Sea. All in
all, the only value of our Fleet is at most that of a
floating gunnery school. Thus, in case of a conflict
with any naval power, not only would German trade be
ended in a moment, but there would also be the danger of
landings.
The entire problem of our military situation stems from
this other consideration:
Berlin, the Reich's capital, is barely 175 kilometers
from the Polish border. It lies scarcely 190 kilometers
from the nearest Czech border, just as far as the
distance between Wismar and the Stettin Lagoon as the
crow flies. Thus this means that Berlin can be reached
by modern aircraft in less than one hour from these
borders. If we draw a line stretching 60 kilometers east
of the Rhine River, within it will lie almost the entire
western German industrial region. From Frankfurt to
Dortmund there is hardly one major German industrial
locality which does not lie within this zone. As long as
France occupies a part of the left bank of the Rhine,
she is in a position to push forward by aircraft into
the heart of our western German industrial region in
hardly 30 minutes. Munich is just as far from the Czech
borders as Berlin is from the Polish and Czech borders.
Czech military aircraft would need approximately 60
minutes to reach Munich, 40 minutes to Nuremberg, 30
minutes to reach Regensburg; even Augsburg lies only 200
kilometers from the Czech border, and consequently could
also be easily reached in scarcely an hour by
present-day airplanes. As the crow flies, however,
Augsburg is almost as distant from the Czech border as
it is from the French border. From Augsburg to Straßburg
the line of flight is 230 kilometers, but it is only 210
kilometers to the nearest French border. Hence Augsburg
also lies within a zone which can be reached by hostile
aircraft in an hour. Indeed, if we examine the German
border from this point of view, it turns out that within
an hour's flight time the following can be reached: the
entire industrial region in western Germany, including
Osnabrück, Bielefeld, Kassel, Würzburg, Stuttgart, Ulm,
Augsburg. In the east: Munich, Augsburg, Würzburg,
Magdeburg, Berlin, Stettin. In other words, with the
present situation of the German borders, there is only a
very small area embracing a few square kilometers which
could not be visited by hostile aircraft within the
first hour.
Hence France must be considered as the most dangerous
enemy because she alone, thanks to her alliances, is in
a position to be able to threaten almost the whole of
Germany with aircraft, even an hour after the outbreak
of a conflict.
At the present time, the military counteractions Germany
could take against the application of this weapon, all
in all, are quite nil. This single observation already
shows the hopeless situation into which a German
resistance against France, based only on itself, must
land at once. Whoever has himself been often subjected
in the field to the effects of an enemy air attack best
knows how to appraise especially the moral effects
resulting therefrom.
But Hamburg and Bremen, too, in general all our coastal
cities, would today no longer escape this fate since the
large navies have the possibility of bringing floating
landing places very close to the coast by means of
aircraft carriers.
But Germany today not only has no technically effective
weapons in a sufficient amount to oppose to air attacks.
Even otherwise the purely technical equipment of our
small Reich Defence is hopelessly inferior to that of
our enemy. The lack of heavy artillery might be put up
with more easily than the lack of a really promising
possibility of defense against armored tanks. If Germany
today were thrust into a war against France and her
allies without beforehand being in a position to be able
to find at least the most necessary preparations for
defense, the issue would be decided in a few days on the
basis of the purely technical superiority of our
adversaries. Measures required for defense against such
a hostile attack could no longer be taken during the
struggle itself.
Likewise false is the opinion that we will be able to
put up a resistance, at least for a certain time, by
improvised means, since these very improvisations
already require a certain amount of time which is no
longer available in case of a conflict. For events would
roll more quickly and thereby produce more facts than
there would be time left for us to organize
countermeasures against these events. Hence, from
whatever side we consider the possibilities of foreign
policy, for Germany one case must in principle be
excluded: we will never be able to proceed against the
forces now mobilized in Europe by relying only on our
military means. Thus any combination that brings Germany
into conflict with France, England, Poland and
Czechoslovakia, and so on, without beforehand giving her
the possibility of a thorough preparation, is therefore
void.
This fundamental perception is important because there
are still among us in Germany, even today, well meaning,
national minded men who in all earnestness believe that
we must enter into an association with Russia.
Even if considered only from a purely military point of
view, such an idea is not viable or catastrophic for
Germany.
Just as before the year 1914, today also we can assume
as unconditionally established for always that in any
conflict involving Germany, regardless on what grounds,
regardless for what reasons, France will always be our
adversary. Whatever European combinations may emerge in
the future, France will always take part in them in a
manner hostile to Germany. This lies in the
traditionally anchored intention of French foreign
policy. It is false to believe that the outcome of the
War has changed anything on this score. On the contrary,
the World War did not bring about for France the
complete fulfillment of the war aim she had in mind. For
this aim was by no means only the regaining of
Alsace-Lorraine, but, on the contrary, Alsace-Lorraine
itself represents only a small step in the direction of
the goal of French foreign policy. That the possession
of Alsace-Lorraine in no way abolished the tendencies of
French policy, aggressively directed against Germany, is
most strikingly proved by the fact that at the very time
France possessed Alsace-Lorraine, the tendency of French
foreign policy directed against Germany was,
nevertheless, already in existence. The year 1870 showed
more clearly than the year 1914 what France ultimately
intended. At that time no need was felt to veil the
aggressive character of French foreign policy. In the
year 1914, perhaps made wise by experiences, perhaps
also influenced by England, the French considered it
more correct to profess general ideals of humanity on
the one hand, and to limit their aim to Alsace-Lorraine
on the other. These tactical considerations, however,
did not in the least signify an inner deflection from
the former goals of French policy, but only a
concealment of the same. Afterward, as before, the
leading idea of French foreign policy was the conquest
of the Rhine River borders, whereby the mutilation of
Germany into individual States, linked as loosely as
possible to each other, was viewed as the best defense
of this border. That this safeguarding of France in
Europe, achieved thereby, was to serve the fulfillment
of greater world political aims, does not alter the fact
that for Germany these French continental political
intentions are a question of life and death.
As a matter of fact, indeed, France also had never taken
part in a coalition in which German interests in any way
would have been promoted. In the last three hundred
years, Germany had been attacked by France twenty nine
times all told up to 1870. A fact which, on the eve of
the Battle Of Sedan, moved Bismarck to oppose the French
General Wimpffen most sharply when the latter tried to
achieve a mitigation of the terms of surrender. It was
Bismarck at that time who, in response to the
declaration that France would not forget a German
concession but would remember it gratefully forever in
the future, immediately stood up and confronted the
French negotiator with the hard, naked facts of history.
Bismarck stressed, in this sense, that France had
attacked Germany so often in the last three hundred
years, regardless of the prevailing form of government,
that for all the future he was convinced that regardless
how the capitulation was formulated, France would
immediately attack Germany anew as soon as she felt
strong enough for it, either through her own strength or
through the strength of allies.
Thereby Bismarck had more correctly appraised French
mentality than our present political leaders of Germany.
He could do this because he, who himself had a policy
aim in view, could also have an inner understanding of
the policy goals others set themselves. For Bismarck the
intention of French foreign policy was clearly
established. It is incomprehensible to our present day
leaders, however, because they are lacking in every
clear political idea.
If, moreover, France, on the occasion of her entry into
the World War, had only the intention of regaining
Alsace-Lorraine as a definite aim, the energy of the
French war leadership would not have been nearly what it
was. The political leadership, especially, would not
have come around to a determination which seemed worthy
of the greatest admiration during many situations during
the World War. It lay, however, in the nature of this
greatest coalition war of all times that a complete
fulfillment of all wishes was all the less possible
since the internal interests of the participant nations
themselves had exhibited very great divergences. The
French intention [desire] of a complete effacement of
Germany in Europe still stood opposed to the English
desire to prevent an unconditional French position of
hegemony, as much as such a one for Germany.
Thus, for the curtailment of French war aims, it was
important that the German collapse take place in forms
that did not yet make public opinion fully aware of the
whole dimension of the catastrophe. In France they had
come to know the German Grenadier in such a way that
only with hesitation could they look forward to a
possibility that France might be forced to step forth
alone for the fulfillment of her ultimate political
goal. Later, however, under the impact of Germany's
inner defeat, now become generally visible, when they
might have been more determined on such an action, the
war psychosis in the other parts of the world had
already so widely abated that a unilateral action by
France for a final aim of such magnitude could no longer
have been carried out without opposition on the part of
her former allies.
Thereby we are not saying that France renounced her aim.
On the contrary, she will try as persistently as before
to achieve in the future what the present prevented.
France will also in the future, as soon as she feels
capable of this through her own power or the power of
her allies, attempt to dissolve Germany, and try to
occupy the bank of the Rhine River in order in this way
to be able to commit French strength elsewhere with no
threat to her rear. That thereby France is not in the
least irritated in her intention by changes in the forms
of German Government is all the more comprehensible
since the French Folk itself, indeed, without any
regard to its constitutions of the moment, clings
equally to its foreign policy ideas. A Folk which
itself always pursues a definite foreign policy goal,
paying no regard as to whether as rulers it has a
republic or a monarchy, bourgeois democracy or a Jacobin
terror, will have no understanding that another Folk,
perhaps by a change of its form of government, could
also undertake a change of its foreign policy aims.
Hence nothing will change France's attitude to Germany
as such, regardless whether in Germany an Reich or a
Republic represents the nation, or even socialist terror
rules the State.
Obviously, France is not indifferent vis-à-vis German
events, but at the same time her attitude is determined
only by the probability of a greater success, that is,
of a facilitation of its foreign policy action by a
definite German form of government. France will wish
Germany the constitution which will leave France to
expect the least resistance to Germany's destruction.
If, therefore, the German Republic as a special sign of
its value tries to induce French friendship, in reality
this is the most devastating certificate of its
incapacity. For it is welcomed in Paris only because
France regards it as poor in values for Germany. In no
way is it thereby said that France will confront this
German Republic otherwise than as it has in analogous
conditions of our governmental weakness in past times.
On the Seine River they were always fonder of German
weakness than German strength because it seemed to
guarantee France's foreign policy activity an easier
success.
This French tendency will in no way be changed by the
fact that the French Folk suffer from no lack of
territory. For in France policy for centuries has least
been determined by sheer economic distress, but much
more by impulses of feeling. France is a classic example
of the fact that the sense of a healthy territorial gain
policy can easily change over into its opposite, once
Folkish principles are no longer determining, and so
called governmental national principles take their
place. French national chauvinism has departed from
Folkish points of view to such an extent that, for the
gratification of a mere power titillation, they Negrify
their own blood just to maintain the character of a
grand nation numerically. Hence France will also be an
eternal disturber of world peace for as long as a
decisive and fundamental lesson is not administered to
this Folk some day. Moreover, nobody has better
characterized the nature of French vanity than
Schopenhauer with his utterance: Africa has its monkeys,
Europe has its French.
French foreign policy has always received its inner
impulse from this mixture of vanity and megalomania. Who
in Germany wants to wait and hope that, the more France
is estranged from rational clear thinking, in
consequence of her general Negrification, she will yet
one day undertake a change in her disposition and
intentions toward Germany? No, regardless of how the
next development in Europe proceeds, France, by
utilizing momentary German weaknesses and all the
diplomatic and military possibilities at her disposal,
will always seek to inflict harm on us and to split our
Folk so that she can ultimately bring it to a complete
disintegration.
Hence for Germany any coalition which does not signify a
binding of France is by itself impermissible.
The belief in a German Russian understanding is in
itself fantastic as long as a regime rules in Russia
that is permeated by only one aim: to carry over the
Bolshevist poisoning to Germany. It is natural,
therefore, for communist elements to agitate for a
German Russian alliance. They thereby hope, rightfully,
to be able to lead Germany herself to Bolshevism. It is
incomprehensible, however, if national Germans believe
that it is possible to achieve an understanding with a
State whose greatest interest is the destruction of this
very national Germany. Obviously, should such an
alliance finally come into being today, its result would
be the complete rule of Jewry in Germany exactly as in
Russia. Likewise incomprehensible is the opinion that
one can wage a war against the capitalist Western
European world with this Russia. For, in the first
place, present-day Russia is anything but an
anti-capitalist State. It is, to be sure, a country that
has destroyed its own national economy, but,
nevertheless, only in order to give international
finance capital the possibility of an absolute control.
If this were not so, how could it be, secondly, that the
very capitalist world in Germany takes a position in
favor of such an alliance? It is after all the Jewish
press organs of the most outspoken stock exchange
interests who espouse the cause of a German Russian
alliance in Germany. Does one really believe that the
Berlin Daily Paper or the Frankfurt Times and all their
illustrated papers speak more or less overtly for
Bolshevik Russia because the latter is an
anti-capitalist State? In political matters, it is
always a curse when the wish becomes father to the
thought.
To be sure, it is conceivable that in Russia itself an
internal change within the Bolshevik world may ensue to
the extent that the Jewish element, perhaps, could be
crowded out by a more or less Russian national element.
Then the possibility might not be excluded that
present-day Bolshevik Russia, in reality Jewish
capitalistic, would be driven toward [to a] national
anti-capitalist tendencies. In this case, to which many
things seem to point, it would be conceivable, to be
sure, that Western European capitalism would seriously
take a position against Russia. But then an alliance of
Germany with this Russia would also be complete
insanity. For the idea that such an alliance could
somehow be held secret is as unjustified as the hope to
arm ourselves for the conflict through military
preparations that are made quietly.
Then there would only be two real possibilities: either
this alliance would be viewed by the Western European
world, poising itself against Russia, as a danger, or
not. If yes, then I don't know who can seriously believe
that there will be time for us to arm ourselves in a
manner suitable at least to prevent a collapse in the
first twenty four hours. Or do people really believe in
earnest that France will wait until we have built our
air defense and our tank defense? Or do they believe
that this can happen secretly in a country in which
treason is no longer considered shameless, but a
courageous deed worthy of emulation? No, if Germany
really wants to enter into an alliance with Russia
against Western Europe, then Germany will again become a
historic battlefield tomorrow. On top of this, it
requires an entirely uncommon fantasy to fancy that
Russia could somehow come to Germany's help, in what way
I know not. The only success of such an action would be
that Russia could thereby still escape a catastrophe for
a certain time, as it would first break over Germany.
But a popular inducement for such a struggle against
Germany could hardly exist, especially in the western
States. Just imagine Germany allied with a real
anti-capitalist Russia, and then picture how this
democratic world Jewish press would mobilize all the
instincts of the other nations against Germany. How,
especially in France, complete harmony would immediately
be established between French national chauvinism and
the Jewish stock exchange press. For let one not confuse
such a process with the struggle of White Russian
Generals against the Bolshevism of an earlier time. In
the years 1919 and 1920, national White Russia fought
against the Jewish stock exchange revolution, in truth
international capitalist red revolution in the highest
sense. Today, however, anti-capitalist Bolshevism,
become national, would stand in a struggle against world
Jewry. Whoever understands the importance of press
propaganda, and its infinite possibilities for inciting
nations and besetting people, can imagine to what orgies
of hate and passion against Germany the European western
nations would be whipped. For then Germany would no
longer be allied with the Russia of a great, noteworthy,
ethical, bold idea, but with the despoilers of the
culture of mankind.
Above all, there could be no better chance for the
French government to master its own inner difficulties
than to undertake a fully danger-free struggle against
Germany in such a case. French national chauvinism could
be all the more satisfied since then, under the
protection of a new world coalition, it could come much
closer to the fulfillment of the ultimate war aim. For
regardless of the nature of the alliance between Germany
and Russia, militarily, Germany alone would have to
sustain the most terrible blows. Wholly apart from the
fact that Russia does not border directly on Germany
and, consequently, must itself first overrun the Polish
State -- even in the case of a subjugation of Poland by
Russia which as such is quite improbable -- in the best
of circumstances such Russian help could essentially
arrive on German territory only when Germany no longer
existed. But the idea of a landing of Russian Divisions
anywhere in Germany is completely excluded as long as
England and France have complete control of the Baltic
Sea. Moreover, the landing of Russian troops in Germany
would fail because of countless technical deficiencies.
Thus, should a German Russian alliance some day have to
undergo the test of reality, and there is no such thing
as an alliance without the idea of war, Germany would be
exposed to the concentrated attacks of all Western
Europe without being able to provide for her own defense
in a serious way.
But now there remains the question of just what meaning
a German Russian alliance should have in general. Only
the one of preserving Russia from destruction and
sacrificing Germany for that? Regardless of how this
alliance would turn out in the end, Germany could not
arrive at setting a decisive foreign policy goal. For
thereby nothing would be changed regarding the
fundamental vital question, indeed regarding the vital
needs, of our Folk. On the contrary, Germany, thereby,
would be more than ever cut off from the only rational
territorial policy in order to pad out her future with
the scuffle over unimportant border adjustments. For the
question of space for our Folk cannot be solved either
in the west or in the south of Europe.
The hope in a German Russian alliance, which haunts the
minds of even many German national politicians, however,
is more than questionable for still another reason.
In general, it seems self evident in national circles
that we cannot very well ally ourselves with a Jewish
Bolshevist Russia, since the result, according to all
probability, would be a Bolshevization of Germany.
Obviously, we do not want this. But we base ourselves on
the hope that one day the Jewish character--and thereby
the most fundamentally international capitalistic
character of Bolshevism in Russia--might disappear in
order to make place for a national communism,
anti-capitalist on a world scale. Then this Russia,
permeated once more by national tendencies, might very
well come up for consideration in terms of an alliance
with Germany.
This is a very great error. It rests on an extraordinary
ignorance of the psyche of the Slavic Folk Soul. This
should not amaze anybody if we reflect on how little
knowledge even politically minded Germany had of the
spiritual conditions of her erstwhile allies. Otherwise
we would never have fallen so low. If, therefore, today
the national politicians in favor of friendship with
Russia try to motivate their policy by reference to
Bismarck's analogous attitudes, they disregard a whole
multitude of important factors which at that time, but
not today, spoke in favor of Russian friendship.
The Russia which Bismarck knew was not a typical Slavic
State, at least insofar as it was a question of the
political leadership of the same. In general, Slavdom is
lacking in State-forming forces. In Russia especially,
government formations were always attended to by foreign
elements. Since the time of Peter The Great there were,
above all, very many Baltic Germans who formed the
skeleton and the brains of the Russian State. In the
course of centuries, countless thousands of these
Germans have been Russified, but only in the sense in
which our own bourgeoisie, our national bourgeoisie,
would like to Germanize or Teutonize Poles or Czechs.
Just as in this case the new fledged German is in truth
only a German speaking Pole or Czech, likewise did these
artificial Russians remain German, or better, Teutons,
according to their blood and hence their capabilities.
Russia is indebted to this Teutonic upper stratum for
her political State as well as for what little exists of
her cultural value. A great Russia would neither have
arisen nor would she have been able to preserve herself
without this really German upper and intellectual
stratum. As long as Russia had been a State with an
autocratic form of government, this upper stratum, which
in truth was not at all Russian, also decisively
influenced the political life of the gigantic empire.
Even Bismarck knew this Russia at least in part. It was
with this Russia that the master of German political
statesmanship had political dealings. But, even in his
lifetime, the reliability and stability of Russian
policy, both domestic and foreign, fluctuated
precariously and became in part incalculable. This lay
in the gradual suppression of the German upper stratum.
This process of the transformation of the Russian
intelligentsia was caused in part by a bleeding of the
Russian nation in consequence of many wars, which, as
has been already mentioned in this book, primarily
decimate the racially more valuable forces. Actually the
officer corps especially was for the most part non Slav
by descent, but in every case not of Russian blood. On
top of this came the slight increase in the upper
stratum of the intelligentsia as such, and finally the
artificial training by the schools of a real Russiandom
with regard to blood. The slight State-preserving value
of the new Russian intelligentsia as such was grounded
on blood, and revealed itself most sharply perhaps in
the nihilism of the Russian universities. Most
fundamentally, however, this nihilism was nothing but
the opposition, determined by blood, of real Russiandom
to the racially alien upper stratum.
The Pan Slavic idea was counter-posed to the Russian
idea of the State in proportion as Russia's Teutonic,
State-forming upper stratum was replaced by a racially
pure Russian bourgeois class. From the first hour of its
birth it was Folkish, Slavish [Russian], and anti
German. The anti German disposition of the newly
emerging Russiandom, especially in the strata of the so
called intelligentsia, however, was not only a pure
reflex action against the former autocratic alien upper
class in Russia, for instance, on the grounds of
politically liberal modes of thought. Rather, in the
most intrinsic sense, it was the protest of the Slavic
nature against the German. They are two Folk-Souls
which have only very little in common, whereby indeed it
must first be established whether this smallness they
have in common has its cause in the confusedly broken
racial individual elements of which the Russian as well
as the German Folk seems to be constituted. Thus what
is common to us and to the Russians is as little
consonant with the German as with the Russian character
but, instead, is to be ascribed only to our mixture of
bloods which has brought just as many eastern Slavic
elements to Germany as Nordic German ones to Russia. But
if as a test of the two spiritual endowments we were to
take a purely Nordic German, from Westphalia let us say,
and place a purely Slavic Russian opposite to him, an
infinite chasm would yawn between these two
representatives of the two Folks. Actually the Slavic
Russian Folk has always felt this, and has therefore
always had an instinctive antipathy toward the German.
Solid thoroughness as well as the cold logic of sober
thought, are something which the real Russian inwardly
finds unsympathetic and in part even incomprehensible.
Our sense of order will not only find no reciprocal
love, but will always elicit aversion. What with us is
felt as something self evident is for the Russian,
however, an affliction, since it represents a
restriction of his natural, differently structured
spiritual and instinctual life. Hence Slavic Russia will
feel itself drawn more and more to France. And indeed to
an increasing degree, since the Frankish Nordic element
is also being suppressed in France. The facile,
superficial, more or less effeminate French life was
more able to fascinate the Slav because inwardly it is
closer to him than the severity’s of our German struggle
for existence. Hence it is no accident if Pan Slavic
Russia waxes politically enthusiastic over France,
exactly as the Russian intelligentsia of Slavic blood
found in Paris the Mecca of its own needs for
civilization.
The process of the rise of a Russian national
bourgeoisie at the same time caused [signified] an inner
alienation of this new Russia vis-à-vis Germany, which
now could no longer build on a racially related Russian
upper stratum.
As a matter of fact, already at the turn of the century,
the anti German orientation of the representatives of
the Folkish Pan Slav idea was so strong and its
influence on Russian policy had grown to such an extent
that even Germany's more than decent attitude vis-à-vis
Russia, on the occasion of the Russian Japanese war,
could no longer check the further estrangement of the
two States. Then came the World War which to no little
extent had also been kindled by the Pan Slavist
agitation. The real governmental Russia, insofar as it
had been represented by the erstwhile upper stratum,
therefore could hardly put in a word anymore.
The World War itself then brought about a further [the
last] bleeding of Russia's Nordic German elements, and
the last remains were finally extirpated by the
Revolution and Bolshevism. It was not as if the Slav
race instinct had deliberately carried out the struggle
for the extermination of the former non Russian upper
stratum by itself. No, it had acquired new leaders
meantime in Jewry. Jewry, pressing toward the upper
strata and therefore toward supreme leadership, has
exterminated the former alien upper class with the help
of the Slav race instinct. Thus it is a quite
understandable process if Jewry has taken over the
leadership of all areas of Russian life with the
Bolshevik revolution, since by itself and out of itself
Slavdom is altogether lacking in any organizing ability
and thereby also in any State-forming and
State-preserving power. Take away all the elements which
are not purely Slavic from Slavdom, and it will
immediately succumb to disintegration as a State. To be
sure, fundamentally, any formation of States may at
first have its innermost inducement in the encounter
between Folks of a higher and lower order, whereby the
bearers of the higher blood value--for reasons of self
preservation--develop a definite community spirit which
first allows them the possibility of an organization and
a rule over inferior Folks. Only the overcoming of
common tasks compels the adoption of organizational
forms. But the difference between the State-forming and
the non State-forming elements lies precisely in the
fact that the formation of an organization for the
preservation of their stock vis-à-vis other types
becomes possible for the former, whereas the non
State-forming incompetents are not capable by themselves
of finding those organizational forms which would
guarantee their existence vis-à-vis others.
Thus present-day Russia or, better said, present-day
Slavdom of Russian nationality, has received as master
the Jew, who first eliminated the former upper stratum,
and now must prove his own State-forming power. In view
of the endowment of Jewry, which after all is only
destructive, it will operate even here only as the
historical ferment of decomposition. It has summoned to
its help spirits of which it can no longer rid itself,
and the struggle of the inwardly anti State Pan Slav
idea against the Bolshevist Jewish State idea will end
with the destruction of Jewry. What will then remain
will be a Russia as insignificant in governmental power
as she will be deeply rooted in an anti German attitude.
Since this State will no longer possess a
State-preserving upper stratum anchored anywhere, it
will become a source of eternal unrest and eternal
insecurity. A gigantic land area will thus be
surrendered to the most variegated fate, and instead of
stabilization of relations between States on Earth, a
period of the most restless changes will begin.
Thus the first phase of these developments will be that
the most different nations of the world will try to
enter into relations with this enormous complex of
States in order thereby to bring about a strengthening
of their own position and intentions. But such an
attempt will always be linked to the effort also to
exert their own intellectual and organizational
influence on Russia at the same time. Germany may not
hope to come up for consideration in any way during this
development. The whole mentality of present-day and
future Russia is opposed to this. For the future, an
alliance of Germany with Russia has no sense for
Germany, neither from the standpoint of sober
expediency, nor from that of human community. On the
contrary, it is good fortune for the future that this
development has taken place in just this way because,
thereby, a spell has been broken which would have
prevented us from seeking the goal of German foreign
policy there where it solely and exclusively can lie:
territory in the east.
Back to book INDEX
Chapter 12: German Foreign
Policy
In view of Germany's
hopeless military situation, the following must be borne
in mind in the formulation of future German foreign
policy. Germany cannot bring about a change in her
present situation by herself, so far as this must ensue
by means of military power. Germany cannot hope that a
change of her situation will emerge through measures
taken by the League Of Nations, as long as the
determining representatives of this institution are at
the same time the parties interested in Germany's
destruction. Germany cannot hope to change her present
situation through a combination of powers which brings
her into conflict with the French system of alliances
surrounding Germany, without first acquiring the
possibility of eliminating her sheer military
powerlessness so that, in case the commitments of the
alliance go into effect, she may be able to come forward
immediately with the prospect of military success
Germany cannot hope to find such a combination of powers
as long as her ultimate foreign policy aim does not seem
clearly established, and, at the same time does not
contradict the interests of those States which can be
considered in terms of an alliance with Germany--indeed,
even appear serviceable to them.
Germany cannot hope that these States can be found
outside the League Of Nations. On the contrary, her only
hope must consist in her eventual success in extricating
individual States from the coalition of victor States,
and building a new group of interested parties with new
aims which cannot be realized through the League Of
Nations because of its whole nature. Germany may only
hope to achieve success in this way if she finally
renounces her former vacillating seesaw policy, and
fundamentally decides upon a single direction, and at
the same time assumes and bears all the consequences.
Germany should never hope to make world history through
alliances with nations whose military value seems
sufficiently characterized by the fact of their former
defeats, or whose general racial importance, is
inferior. For the struggle for the regaining of German
freedom will thereby again raise German history to the
level of world history. Germany should never forget for
a moment that regardless how, and along what ways, she
thinks to change her fate, France will be her enemy, and
that France from the outset can count on any combination
of powers that turns against Germany.
Back to book INDEX
Chapter 13: German Goals
We cannot examine Germany's
foreign policy possibilities without first possessing
clarity on what we want in Germany itself, that is, on
how Germany itself thinks to shape her future. Further,
we must then try to determine clearly the foreign policy
goals of those powers in Europe which, as members of the
coalition of victors, are important as world powers.
I have already dealt with Germany's various foreign
policy possibilities in this book. Nevertheless, I shall
once more briefly present the possible foreign policy
goals so that they may yield a basis for the critical
examination of the relations of these individual foreign
policy aims to those of other European States.
1) Germany can renounce setting a foreign policy goal
altogether. This means that, in reality, she can decide
for anything and need be committed to nothing at all.
Thus in the future she will continue the policy of the
last thirty years, but under other conditions. If now
the world consisted just of States with a similar
political aimlessness, Germany could at least endure
this even though it could hardly be justified. But this
is not at all the case. Thus, just as in ordinary life a
man with a fixed life goal that he tries to achieve at
all events will always be superior to others who live
aimlessly, exactly likewise is it in the life of
nations. But, above all, this is far from saying that a
State without a political goal is in the position to
avoid dangers that such a goal may bring in its train.
For just as it seems exempt from an active function, in
consequence of its own political aimlessness, in its
very passiveness it can also just as easily become the
victim of the political aims of others. For the action
of a State is not only determined by its own will, but
also by that of others, with the sole difference that in
one case it itself can determine the law of action,
whereas in the other case the latter is forced upon it.
Not to want a war because of a peaceful sentiment, is
far from saying that it can also be avoided. And to
avoid a war at any price is far from signifying saving
life in the face of death.
Germany's situation in Europe today is such that she is
far from allowing herself to hope that she may go
forward to a condition of contemplative peace with her
own political aimlessness. No such possibility exists
for a nation located in the heart of Europe. Either
Germany itself tries actively to take part in the
shaping of life, or she will be a passive object of the
life-shaping activity of other nations. All the sagacity
hitherto supposedly able to extricate nations from
historical dangers through declarations of a general
disinterest has, up to now, always shown itself to be an
error as cowardly as it is stupid. Whoever will not be a
hammer in history, will be an anvil. In all its
development up to now, our German Folk has had a choice
only between these two possibilities. When it itself
wanted to make history, and accordingly joyfully and
boldly staked all, then it was still the hammer. When it
believed that it could renounce the obligations of the
struggle for existence, it remained, up to now, the
anvil on which others fought out their struggle for
existence, or it itself served the alien world as
nutriment. Hence, if Germany wants to live, she must
take the defense of this life upon herself, and even
here the best parry is a thrust. Indeed, Germany may not
hope at all that she can still do something for shaping
her own life, if she does not make a strong effort to
set a clear foreign policy aim which seems suitable for
bringing the German struggle for existence into an
intelligent relation to the interests of other nations.
If we do not do this, however, aimlessness on a large
scale will cause lack of planing in particulars. This
lack of planing will gradually turn us into a second
Poland in Europe. In the very proportion that we let our
own forces become weaker, thanks to our general
political defeatism, and the only activity of our life
is spent in a mere domestic policy, we will sink to
being a puppet of historical events whose motive forces
spring from the struggle for existence and for their
interests waged by other nations.
Moreover, nations which are not able to take clear
decisions over their own future and accordingly would
like best of all not to participate in the game of world
development, will be viewed by all the other players as
a spoilsport and equally hated. Indeed, it can even
happen that, on the contrary, the lack of planing of
individual political actions, grounded in the general
foreign policy aimlessness, is regarded as a very shrewd
impenetrable game and responded to accordingly. It was
this which befell us as a misfortune in the pre War
period. The more impenetrable, because they were
incomprehensible, were the political decisions of the
German Governments of that time, the more suspicious
they seemed. And all the more, therefore, were
especially dangerous ideas suspected behind the most
stupid step.
Thus, if today Germany no longer makes an effort to
arrive at a clear political goal, in practice she
renounces all possibilities of a revision of her present
fate, without in the least being able to avoid future
dangers.
2) Germany desires to effect the sustenance of the
German Folk by peaceful economic means, as up to now.
Accordingly, even in the future, she will participate
most decisively in world industry, export and trade.
Thus she will again want a great merchant fleet, she
will want coaling stations and bases in other parts of
the world, and finally she will want not only
international sales markets, but also her own sources of
raw material, if possible, in the form of colonies. In
the future such a development will necessarily have to
be protected, especially by maritime means of power.
This whole political goal for the future is a Utopia,
unless England is seen as defeated beforehand. It
establishes anew all the causes which in 1914 resulted
in the World War. Any attempt by Germany to renew her
past along this way must end with England's mortal
enmity, alongside which France may be reckoned as a most
certain partner from the outset.
From a Folkish standpoint setting, this foreign policy
aim is calamitous, and it is madness from the point of
view of power politics.
3) Germany establishes the restoration of the borders of
the year 1914 as her foreign policy aim.
This goal is insufficient from a national standpoint,
unsatisfactory from a military point of view, impossible
from a Folkish standpoint with its eye on the future,
and mad from the viewpoint of its consequences. Thereby,
even in the future, Germany would have the whole
coalition of former victors against her in a compact
front. In view of our present military position, which
with a continuation of the present situation will worsen
from year to year, just how we are to restore the old
borders is the impenetrable secret of our national
bourgeois and patriotic government politicians.
4) Germany decides to go over to a clear, farseeing
territorial policy. Thereby she abandons all attempts at
world industry and world trade, and instead concentrates
all her strength in order, through the allotment of
sufficient living space for the next hundred years to
our Folk, also to prescribe a path of life. Since this
territory can be only in the east, the obligation to be
a naval power also recedes into the background. Germany
tries anew to champion her interests through the
formation of a decisive power on land.
This aim is equally in keeping with the highest national
as well as Folkish requirements. It likewise
presupposes great military power means for its
execution, but does not necessarily bring Germany into
conflict with all European great powers. As surely as
France here will remain Germany's enemy, just as little
does the nature of such a political aim contain a reason
for England, and especially for Italy, to maintain the
enmity of the World War.
Back to book INDEX
Chapter 14: England as an Ally
It is fitting to review the
great foreign aims of the other European powers for a
closer understanding of the possibilities just adduced.
In part these aims are recognizable in the previous
activity and efficacy of these States, in part they are
virtually laid down programmatically, and otherwise lie
in vital needs that are so clearly recognizable that
even if the States momentarily embark on other paths,
the compulsion of a harsher reality necessarily leads
them back to these aims.
That England has a clear foreign policy goal is proved
by the fact of the existence and therewith of the rise
of this giant empire. Let no one fancy, after all, that
a world empire can ever be forged without a clear will
thereto. Obviously not every single member of such a
nation goes to work every day with the idea of setting a
great foreign policy goal, but in a completely natural
way even an entire Folk will be gripped by such a goal
so that even the unconscious acts of individuals
nevertheless lie in the general line of the aim that has
been set and actually benefit it. Indeed the general
political goal will slowly stamp itself on the very
character of such a Folk, and the pride of the
present-day Englishman is no different from the pride of
the former Romans. The opinion that a world empire owes
its rise to chance, or that, at least, the events which
conditioned its establishment were accidental historical
processes which always turned out luckily for a nation,
is false. Ancient Rome owed its greatness, exactly as
does present-day England, to the soundness of Moltke's
assertion that in the long run luck is always with the
fit. This fitness of a Folk in no way lies only in
racial value, but also in the ability and skill with
which these values are applied. A world empire of the
size of ancient Rome, or of present day Great Britain,
is always the result of a marriage between the highest
race value and the clearest political aim. As soon as
one of these two factors begins to be lacking, first a
weakening sets in, and ultimately perhaps even a
decline.
Present-day England's aim is conditioned by the race
value of Anglo-Saxonism as such, and by her insular
position. It lay in the race value of Anglo-Saxonism to
strive for territorial space. Of necessity, this drive
could find fulfillment only outside present-day Europe.
Not that the English had not, from time to time, also
attempted to take soil in Europe for their expansionist
lusts. But all these enterprises failed because of the
fact that they were opposed by States which at that time
were of a no less great racial fitness. Later English
expansion in the so called colonies led at the outset to
an extraordinary increase of English maritime life. It
is interesting to see how England, which at first
exported men, ultimately went over to the export of
commodities, and thereby weakened her own agriculture.
Although now a great part of the English Folk, indeed
the average in general, is inferior to the German peak
value, nevertheless the centuries old tradition of this
Folk has become so much part of its own flesh and blood
that vis-à-vis our own German Folk it possesses
considerable political advantages. If today the globe
has an English world empire, then for the time being
there is also no Folk which, on the grounds of its
general civic political characteristics as well as its
average political sagacity, would be more fitted for it.
The fundamental idea which dominated English colonial
policy, on the one hand, was to find a territorial
market for English human material and to keep the latter
in a governmental relation with the Motherland; and, on
the other hand, to secure the English economy's markets
and sources of raw material. It is understandable that
the Englishman is convinced that the German cannot
colonize, just as it is understandable, conversely, that
the German believes the same about the Englishman. Both
Folks take different standpoints in judging colonizing
capacities. Thus the English standpoint was infinitely
more practical, more sober, and the German standpoint
more romantic. When Germany strove for her first
colonies, she was already a military State in Europe and
thereby a power State of the first rank. She had wrested
the title of a world power through imperishable
accomplishments in all fields of human culture as well
as in that of military skill. It was now noteworthy that
especially in the nineteenth century a general impulse
toward colonies permeated all nations, whereas the
original leading idea had already fully declined.
For example, Germany motivated her claim to colonies
with her ability and her desire to spread German
culture. As such it was nonsense. For culture, which is
the general life expression of a definite Folk, cannot
be transmitted to another Folk with wholly other
psychic prerequisites. This may, at best, go with a so
called international civilization which stands in the
same relation to culture as jazz music to a Beethoven
symphony. But wholly apart from this, it would never
have occurred to an Englishman at the time England's
colonies were founded to motivate his actions otherwise
than with the very real and sober advantages which they
might bring with them. If later England espoused the
freedom of the seas or of oppressed nations, it was
never for the purpose of justifying her colonial
activity, but to destroy ugly competitors. Hence English
colonial activity was perforce successful in part
because of the most natural reasons. For the less the
Englishman ever gave a thought to such a notion as
wanting to impose English culture or English breeding on
savages, the more sympathetic did such a government
necessarily seem to savages who were absolutely not
hungry for culture.
On top of this, to be sure, there was also the whip
which one likewise could all the sooner use, since
thereby one did not run the danger of departing from a
cultural mission. England needed markets and sources of
raw material for her commodities, and she secured these
markets for herself through power politics. This is the
sense of English colonial policy. If later even England
nevertheless mouthed the word culture, it was only from
a purely propagandistic viewpoint, so that she also
could morally embroider her own exceedingly sober
actions somewhat. In reality the living conditions of
the savages were a matter of complete indifference to
the English as long, and to the extent, that they did
not affect the living conditions of the English
themselves. That later still other ideas, of a political
prestige character, were linked with colonies of the
size of India is conceivable and understandable. But no
one can dispute that, for instance, Indian interests
never determined English living conditions, but instead
English living conditions determined India's. Likewise
it cannot be disputed that even in India the Englishman
does not set up any cultural institution of any kind so
that, for instance, the natives may share in English
culture, but rather so that, at best, the Englishman can
draw more benefits from his colonies. Or does one
believe that England brought railroads to India just to
put Indians in possession of European transport
possibilities, and not in order to make possible a
better utilization of the colony as well as to guarantee
an easier domination? If today in Egypt England again
follows in the footsteps of the Pharaohs and stores the
water of the Nile by means of gigantic dams, it is
certainly not done in order to make the Earthly life of
the poor fellow easier, but only in order to make
English cotton independent of the American monopoly. But
these are all viewpoints which Germany never dared to
think about openly in her colonial policy. The English
were the educators of the natives for England's
interests, the German was the teacher. That in the end
the natives might have felt better with us than they did
under the English would, for a normal Englishman, be far
from speaking for our kind of colonization policy, but
surely for that of the English instead.
This policy of a gradual conquest of the world, in which
economic power and political strength always went hand
in hand, conditioned England's position vis-à-vis other
States. The more England grew into her colonial policy,
the more she required dominion over the seas, and the
more she achieved dominion over the seas, the more, in
consequence of this, she became again a colonial power.
But then also, the more jealously did she finally begin
to watch that nobody competed with her for dominion of
the seas or of colonial possessions.
There is a very erroneous and widespread notion,
especially in Germany, according to which England would
immediately fight against any European hegemony. As a
matter of fact this is not correct. England actually
concerned herself very little with European conditions
as long as no threatening world competitor arose from
them, so that she always viewed the threat as lying in a
development which must one day cut across her dominion
over the seas and colonies.
There is no conflict of England in Europe in which the
former did not have to protect her trade and overseas
interests. The struggles against Spain, Holland and
later France had their ground not in the threatening
military might of these States as such, but only in the
way this power was founded as well as in the effects of
the same. If Spain had not been an overseas power and
thereby a power in competition with England, the latter
would presumably have taken little notice of Spain. The
same applies to Holland. And even England's later
gigantic struggle against France was never waged against
Napoleon's continental France, but rather against
Napoleonic France which viewed her continental policy
only as a springboard and as a basis for greater,
altogether non continental aims. In general, France,
given her geographical position, will be the power most
threatening to England. It was perhaps the only State in
which even a limited continental development could
contain dangers for England's future. It is all the more
noteworthy and instructive for us Germans that despite
this, England decided to enter the World War together
with France. It is instructive because it proves that,
despite all the steadfast adherence to the great
fundamental ideas of English foreign policy, momentary
existing possibilities are always taken into account
there and never renounced merely because a threat to
England could likewise rise from one of them in the near
or distant future. Our German God Punish England
politicians are always of the opinion, to wit, that a
good relationship with England in the future must always
founder on the fact that England would never seriously
give a thought to promoting Germany's interests by an
alliance with her in order to see Germany counterpoised
to her again one day as a dangerous and threatening
power. Obviously England will not conclude an alliance
to promote Germany's interests, but only in order to
foster British interests. But up to now England has
provided many examples that she could, very often,
couple the representation of her interests with the
representation of the interests of other nations. And
that then she had recourse to alliances, although
according to human prediction, even these were bound to
change into later enmity. For divorces sooner or later
underlie political marriages, since, indeed, they do not
serve the representation of the common interests of both
sides, but instead aim only with common means at
promoting or defending the interests of two States
which, as such, are different, but which for the time
being are not opposed.
England's relations vis-à-vis Prussia prove that she
does not fundamentally oppose resistance to a European
great power of superior military importance, as long as
the foreign policy aims of this power are manifestly of
a purely continental character. Or will one dispute that
under Frederick The Great, Prussian military power was
beyond all doubt by far the strongest in Europe? Let no
one believe that England did not fight against the
Prussia of that time only for the reason that, despite
its military hegemony, she had to be numbered among the
smaller States in terms of territorial size in Europe.
Not at all. For when England herself had previously
fought out her wars against the Dutch, Dutch territory
in Europe was still considerably smaller than the
Prussia of late Frederickian time. And one could really
not talk of a threatening hegemony or dominant power
position on the part of Holland. If nevertheless England
pressed Holland hard in decades long struggles, the
reason lay exclusively only in the thwarting of
England's dominion of the sea and trade by Holland, as
well as in the general colonial activity of the Dutch.
Thus one should not deceive oneself: if the Prussian
State had not so exclusively dedicated itself to purely
continental aims, it would at all times have had England
as its sharpest enemy regardless of the size of
Prussia's purely military means in Europe, or the danger
of a hegemonization of Europe by Prussia. Our national
patriotic politicians, who do little thinking, have not
seldom bitterly reproached the successors of the great
Elector for neglecting the overseas possessions brought
into being by the Elector, indeed for surrendering them
and thereby having no interest in the maintenance and
further construction of a Brandenburg Prussian fleet. It
was Prussia's good fortune, and later Germany's, that
this was the case.
Nothing speaks so well for the outstanding
statesmanship, especially of Frederick William I, than
the fact that, with all the scanty and surely infinitely
limited means of the small Prussian State, he
concentrated exclusively on the promotion of the Land
Army. Not only for the reason that through it this small
State could maintain a superior position in one weapon,
but was thereby also spared England's enmity. A Prussia
following in Holland's footsteps would not have been
able to fight the three Silesian Wars, with England as
an added enemy at her back. Aside from the fact that any
achievement of a real naval standing by the small
Prussian State would necessarily miscarry in the long
run in consequence of the territorial base of the
motherland which was exceedingly limited and unfavorably
situated in a military sense. Even at that time it would
have been child's play for the English to rid themselves
of a dangerous competitor in Europe through a general
coalition war. In general the fact that the later
Prussia could develop out of little Brandenburg and in
turn a new German Reich out of the later Prussia was due
only to that sagacious insight into the real power
relations as well as into the possibilities of the
Prussia of that time, so that the Hohenzollerns, up to
the time of Bismarck, limited themselves almost
exclusively to a strengthening of land power. It was the
only clear, consequential policy. If German Prussia and
then later Germany in general wanted to go toward a
future, it could only be guaranteed by a supremacy on
land which matched the English supremacy on the seas. It
was Germany's misfortune that we slowly moved away from
this insight and built up our land power insufficiently
and instead went over to a naval policy whose end result
had been inadequate anyway. Even the Germany of the post
Bismarckian period could not afford the luxury of
creating and maintaining a superior armament on land and
sea simultaneously. It has been one of the most
important principles of all times that a nation
recognize which weapon is most necessary and
indispensable for the preservation of its existence, and
then promote it to the extreme by staking all its means
on it. England recognized and followed this principle.
For England, dominion of the seas was really the
substance of her existence. Even the most brilliant
military periods on the mainland, the most glorious
wars, the most matchless military decisions, could not
move the English to see in land power for England
anything but something ultimately subordinate, and to
concentrate the whole strength of the nation on the
maintenance of a superior dominion of the seas. In
Germany, to be sure, we let ourselves be swept along by
the great colonial waves of the nineteenth century,
strengthened perhaps by romantic memories of the old
Hansa as well as driven by the peaceful economic policy,
to shelve the exclusive promotion of the Land Army and
to take up the construction of a Fleet. This policy
acquired its final expression in the proposition, as
preposterous as it was calamitous: Our future lies on
the water. No, exactly to the contrary, it lay and lies
for us in Europe on land, just as exactly as the causes
of our decline will always be of a purely continental
character: our unfortunate territorial and terrible
military geographical position.
As long as Prussia limited herself to purely European
aims in her foreign policy aspirations, she had no
serious danger to fear from England. The objection that
nevertheless a pro French mood already prevailed in
England in the year 1870-71 is not relevant, and in any
case signifies nothing at all. For at that time a pro
German attitude prevailed just as much in England;
indeed France's action was branded as a sacrilege from
the pulpit in English churches. Moreover, it was the
official attitude adopted which is decisive. For it is
entirely obvious that France will indeed have continual
sympathies in a State of England's importance, all the
more so as the influence of a country's press is not
seldom exerted through foreign capital. France has
always known how to mobilize sympathy for herself
adroitly. Thus she has always played Paris as her most
remarkable auxiliary weapon. But this did not take place
only in England, for instance, but even in Germany. In
the very middle of the war, in the year 70/71, a not
small clique was to be found in Berlin society, indeed
at the Berlin court, who made no bones about their pro
French sympathies. At any rate they knew how to postpone
the bombardment of Paris for a long time. And it is
humanly understandable that English circles should have
viewed German military success with mixed joy. But in
any case they could not move the official attitude of
the British government toward an intervention. Even the
opinion that this is to be ascribed only to the fact
that the rear was covered by Russia, which Bismarck had
assured, changes nothing. For this covering of the rear
was thought of primarily against Austria. If, however,
England had given up her neutral attitude at that time,
even Russia's covering of the rear would not have been
able to avert an immense conflagration. For then Austria
would naturally have been involved and, one way or the
other, the success of the year 1871 would hardly have
come to pass. As a matter of fact Bismarck had a
continual quiet fear of meddling by other States not
only in the war, but even in the peace negotiations. For
what took place several years later vis-à-vis Russia,
the intervention of other powers, could have been staged
against Germany by England just as well.
The course of the anti-German attitude of the English
can be exactly followed. It parallels our development on
the seas, rises with our colonial activity to an overt
antipathy, and finally ends up with our naval policy in
a frank hatred. One cannot take it amiss that in England
a really solicitous State leadership scented a
threatening danger for the future in this development of
a Folk as efficient as the Germans. We must never apply
our German sins of omission as a measure for judging the
actions of others. The frivolousness with which post
Bismarckian Germany allowed her position in terms of
power politics to be threatened in Europe by France and
Russia, without undertaking any serious countermeasures,
far from allows us to impute similar neglect to other
powers or to denounce them in moral indignation, if
indeed they attend to the vital needs of their Folks
better.
If pre War Germany had decided upon a continuance of the
former Prussian continental policy instead of her
peaceful world and economic policy with its fateful
repercussions, then first of all she could have raised
her land power to that superior height formerly enjoyed
by the Prussian State, and secondly she need not have
feared an unconditional enmity with England. For this
much is sure: if Germany had used all the enormous means
which she squandered on the Fleet for the strengthening
of her Land Army, then her interests might have been
fought for in a different way, at least on the decisive
European battlefields. And the Nation would have been
spared seeing a Land Army, worse than inadequately
armed, slowly bleed to death against an overwhelming
world coalition, while the Navy, at least in its
decisive combat units, rusted away in the harbors in
order finally to terminate its existence in a more than
ignominious surrender. Let us not find excuses for the
leaders, but have the courage rather to admit that this
lay in the very nature of such a weapon for us. For at
the same time the Field Army was pulled out of one
battle and hurled into another without regard to losses
and any other hardships. The Land Army was really the
German weapon, grown out of a hundred year tradition,
but in the end our Fleet was only a romantic plaything,
a parade piece that was built for its own sake, and
which again for its own sake could not be risked. The
whole benefit which it brought us is disproportionate to
the terrible enmity with which it saddled us.
If Germany had not taken this development, at the turn
of the century we still could have reached an
understanding with England, which at that time was ready
for one. To be sure, such an understanding would have
lasted only if had been accompanied by a fundamental
shift in our foreign policy goal. Even at the turn of
the century Germany could have decided upon a resumption
of the former Prussian continental policy, and, together
with England, prescribed the further development of
world history. The objection of our eternal temporizers
and doubters that this would nevertheless have been
uncertain is based on nothing but personal opinions.
English history up to now speaks against it in any case.
By what right can such doubters presume that Germany
could not have played the same role as Japan? The stupid
phrase that Germany thereby would have hauled England's
chestnuts out of the fire could just as much be applied
to Frederick The Great who, ultimately, on European
battlefields, helped to facilitate England's conflicts
with France outside Europe. It is almost stupid to cite
the further objection that nevertheless England one day
would have gone against Germany. For then even in such a
case Germany's position, following a successful defeat
of Russia in Europe, would be better than it was at the
start of the World War. On the contrary, if the Russian
Japanese war had been fought in Europe between Germany
and Russia, Germany would have received such a purely
moral increase in power that, for the next thirty years,
every other European power would have carefully weighed
whether to break the peace and let itself be incited
into a coalition against Germany. But all these
objections always spring from the mentality of pre War
Germany which itself as an opposition knew everything,
but did nothing.
The fact is, at that time England made an approach to
Germany, and there is the further fact that Germany for
her part could not make up her mind to emerge from the
mentality of this eternal temporizing and hesitation and
come to a clear stand. What Germany refused at that time
was solicitously tended to by Japan, and thereby she
achieved the fame of a world power in a relatively cheap
way. If nobody in Germany wanted to do this under any
circumstances, then we necessarily should have joined
the other side. Then we could have utilized the year
1904 or 1905 in a conflict with France, and had Russia
at our rear. But these temporizers and procrastinators
wanted that just as little. Out of sheer caution, sheer
hesitation and sheer knowledge, they were never able to
establish what they really wanted at any hour. And only
therein lies the superiority of English statesmanship,
for that country is not ruled by such smart-alecks who
can never brace themselves for an action, but by men who
think naturally and for whom politics most surely is an
art of the possible, but who also take all possibilities
by the forelock, and really strike with them.
Once Germany, however, had shunned such a fundamental
understanding with England, which, as already noted,
would have made durable sense only if in Berlin a clear
continental territorial political aim had been arrived
at, England began to organize the world resistance
against the country threatening British interests as
regards her dominion of the seas.
The World War did not proceed as had been thought at the
beginning in view of our Folk's military efficiency,
which was not presumed to be what it was even in
England. To be sure, Germany was finally overcome, but
only after the American Union had made its appearance on
the battlefield, and Germany had lost the support of her
rear in consequence of the internal collapse of the
homeland. But the actual English war aim had not been
achieved thereby. Indeed, the German threat to English
supremacy on the seas was eliminated, but the American
threat, with a considerably stronger base, took its
place. In the future the greatest danger to England
would not be in Europe any more at all, but in North
America. In Europe itself at this time, France is the
State that is most dangerous to England. Her military
hegemony has an especially threatening significance for
England, in consequence of the geographical position
which France occupies vis-à-vis England. Not only for
the reason that a great number of vitally important
English centers seems to be almost defenselessly exposed
to French aerial attacks, but even by means of artillery
fire a number of English cities can be reached from the
French coast. Indeed, if modern technology succeeds in
producing a considerable increase in the firing power of
the heaviest artillery, then a bombardment of London
from the French mainland does not lie beyond the limits
of the possible. But it is even more important that a
French submarine war against England would possess a
wholly different basis than the earlier German one
during the World War. France's broad encampment on two
seas would make it very difficult to carry out sealing
off measures which could be easily successful vis-à-vis
the confined triangle of water.
Whoever in present-day Europe tries to find natural
enemies against England will always chance upon France
and Russia: France as a power with continental political
aims, which in truth, however, are only a cover for very
widely demarcated intentions of a general international
political character; Russia as a threatening enemy of
India and the possessor of oil sources which today have
the same importance once possessed by iron and coal
mines in past centuries. If England herself remains true
to her great world political aims, her potential
opponents will be France and Russia in Europe, and, in
the other parts of the world, especially the American
Union in the future.
In contrast no inducement exists to make eternal
England's enmity against Germany. Otherwise English
foreign policy would be determined by motives that lie
far beyond all real logic, and therefore could have a
decisive influence on the determination of the political
relations among nations perhaps only in the head of a
German professor. No, in the future, in England
positions in accordance with purely expedient points of
view will be taken up just as soberly as has happened
for three hundred years. And just as for three hundred
years allies could become England's enemies and enemies
again become allies, so will this also be the case in
the future as long as general and particular necessities
call for it. If, however, Germany comes to a
fundamentally new political orientation which no longer
contradicts England's sea and trade interests, but
spends itself in continental aims, then a logical ground
for England's enmity, which would then be just hostility
for hostility's sake, would no longer exist. For even
the European balance of power interests England only as
long as it hinders the development of a world trade and
sea power that may threaten England. There is no foreign
policy leadership at all which is less determined by
doctrines that bear no relation to life's realities than
the English. A world empire does not come into being by
means of a sentimental or purely theoretical policy.
Hence the sober perception of British interests will be
determining for English foreign policy in the future
too. Whoever cuts across these interests will thereby
also be England's enemy in the future. Whoever does not
touch them, his existence will also not be touched by
England. And whoever can be useful to her from time to
time will be invited on England's side regardless of
whether he had been an enemy in the past or perhaps can
again become one in the future. Only a bourgeois
national German politician can manage to refuse a useful
alliance for the reason that later, perhaps, it can end
in enmity. To impute such an idea to an Englishman is an
insult to the political instinct of this Folk.
Naturally if Germany does not set herself any political
goal, and we muddle through lacking a plan from one day
to the other as up to now without any guiding thought;
or if this goal lies in the restoration of the borders
and territorial conditions of the year 1914 and thereby
in the end lands into a policy of world trade,
colonization and naval power, England's future enmity
with us will indeed be certain. Then Germany will
suffocate economically under her Dawes burdens,
politically decay under her Locarno treaties, and
increasingly weaken racially in order finally to
terminate her life as a second Holland or a second
Switzerland in Europe. This can certainly be achieved by
our bourgeois national and patriotic armchair
politicians; for this all they need do is continue
further along their present path of phrase mongering,
shooting off their mouths in protests, making war on all
Europe, and then crawling cravenly into a hole before
every act. This then is what the national bourgeois
patriotic policy of Germany's resurgence means. Thus,
just as our bourgeoisie in the course of barely sixty
years has known how to degrade and to compromise the
national concept, so in its decline does it destroy the
beautiful concept of the Fatherland by degrading it also
to a mere phrase in its patriotic leagues.
To be sure, yet another important factor emerges in
regard to England's attitude toward Germany: the
decisive influence world Jewry also possesses in
England. Just as surely as Anglo-Saxonism itself can
overcome its war psychosis vis-à-vis Germany, world
Jewry just as surely will neglect nothing to keep the
old enmities alive so as to prevent a pacification of
Europe from materializing, and thereby enable it to set
its Bolshevist destructive tendencies into motion amid
the confusion of a general unrest.
We cannot discuss world policy without taking this most
terrible power into account. Therefore I will deal
especially with this problem further in this book.
Back to book INDEX
Chapter 15: Italy as an Ally
Certainly if England is
under no compulsion to maintain her wartime enmity
toward Germany forever on grounds of principle, Italy
has even less grounds to do so. Italy is the second
State in Europe that must not be fundamentally hostile
to Germany. Indeed, her foreign policy aims need not
cross with Germany's at all. On the contrary, with no
other State does Germany have perhaps more interests in
common than precisely with Italy, and conversely.
At the same time that Germany tried to achieve a new
national unification, the same process also took place
in Italy. To be sure, the Italians lacked a central
power of gradually growing, and ultimately towering,
importance, such as Germany in the making possessed in
Prussia. But as German unification was primarily opposed
by France and Austria as true enemies, so likewise did
the Italian unification movement also have to suffer
most under these two powers. The chief cause, of course,
lay with the Habsburg State which must have and did have
a vital interest in the maintenance of Italy's internal
dismemberment. Since a State of the size of
Austria-Hungary is unthinkable without direct access to
the sea, and the only territory which could be
considered for this--at least in regard to its
cities--was inhabited by Italians, Austria necessarily
disapprovingly opposed the rise of a united Italian
State for fear of the possible loss of this territory in
case of the founding of an Italian national State. At
that time even the boldest political aim of the Italian
Folk could lie only in its national unification. This
then perforce also conditioned the foreign policy
attitude. Hence as Italian unification [that through
Savoys] slowly took shape, Cavour, its brilliant great
statesman, utilized all possibilities which could serve
this particular aim. Italy owes the possibility of her
unification to an extraordinarily cleverly chosen
alliance policy. Its aim was primarily to bring about
the paralysis of the chief enemy of unification,
Austria-Hungary, indeed finally to induce this State to
leave the north Italian provinces. Withal, even after
the conclusion of the provisional unification of Italy,
there were more than 800000 Italians in Austria-Hungary
alone. The national aim of the further unification of
people of Italian nationality was at first bound to
undergo a postponement when, for the first time, there
began to arise the dangers of an Italian French
estrangement. Italy decided to enter the Triple
Alliance, chiefly in order to gain time for her inner
consolidation.
The World War at last brought Italy into the camp of the
Entente for reasons that I have already discussed.
Thereby Italian unity had been carried a powerful step
forward. Even today, however, it is not yet completed.
For the Italian State, though, the great event was the
elimination of the hated Habsburg empire. To be sure,
its place was taken by a Southern Slav structure which
already presented a danger hardly less great for Italy
on the basis of general national viewpoints.
For just as little as the bourgeois national and purely
border policy conception in Germany could in the long
run satisfy our Folk's vital needs, equally little
could the purely bourgeois national unification policy
of the Italian State satisfy the Italian Folk.
Like the German Folk, the Italian Folk lives on a
small soil surface which in part is scantily fertile.
For centuries, indeed many centuries, this
overpopulation has forced Italy to a permanent export of
people. Even though a great part of these emigrants, as
seasonal laborers, return to Italy in order to live
there on their savings, this leads more than ever to a
further aggravation of the situation. Not only is the
population problem not solved thereby, but it is
sharpened rather. Just as Germany through her export of
goods fell into a state of dependence on the ability,
potentiality and willingness of other powers and
countries to receive these goods, likewise and exactly
did Italy with her export of people. In both cases a
closing of the receiving market, resulting from events
of any kind whatsoever, perforce led to catastrophic
consequences within these countries.
Hence Italy's attempt to master the problem of
sustenance through an increase of her industrial
activity cannot lead to any ultimate success because, at
the outset, the lack of natural raw materials in the
Italian Motherland robs her in great measure of the
required ability to compete.
Just as in Italy the conceptions of a formal bourgeois
national policy are being overcome and a Folkish
feeling of responsibility is taking its place, likewise
will this State also be forced to deviate from its
former political conceptions in order to turn to a
territorial policy on a grand scale.
The shore basins of the Mediterranean Sea constitute,
and hence remain, the natural area of Italian expansion.
The more present-day Italy departs from her former
unification policy and goes over to an imperialist
policy, the more will she fall into the ways of ancient
Rome, not out of any presumption to power, but out of
deep, internal necessities. If today Germany seeks soil
in Eastern Europe, this is not the sign of an
extravagant hunger for power, but only the consequence
of her need for territory. And if today Italy seeks to
enlarge her influence on the shores of the Mediterranean
basin and ultimately aims to establish colonies, it is
also only the release ensuing from sheer necessity, out
of a natural defense of interests. If the German pre War
policy had not been struck with total blindness, it
would necessarily have supported and fostered this
development with every means. Not only because it would
have meant a natural strengthening of an ally, but
because it might perhaps have offered the only
possibility of drawing Italian interests away from the
Adriatic Sea and thereby lessened the sources of
irritation with Austria-Hungary. Such a policy, in
addition, would have stiffened the most natural enmity
which can ever exist, namely that between Italy and
France, the repercussions of which would have
strengthened the Triple Alliance in a favorable sense.
It was Germany's misfortune that at that time not only
did the Reich leadership flatly fail in this respect,
but that, above all, public opinion--led on by insane
German national patriots and foreign policy
dreamers--took a stand against Italy. Especially,
moreover, for the reason that Austria discovered
something unfriendly about the Italian operation in
Tripoli. At that time, however, it appertained to the
political wisdom of our national bourgeoisie to back
every stupidity or baseness of Viennese diplomacy,
indeed if possible to undertake stupid and base acts
itself, in order thereby to demonstrate the inner
harmony and solidarity of this cordial alliance before
the world in the best possible way.
Now Austria-Hungary is wiped out. But Germany has even
less cause than before to regret a development of Italy
which one day must necessarily proceed at the expense of
France. For the more present-day Italy discovers her
highest Folkish tasks, and the more, accordingly, she
goes over to a territorial policy conceived along Roman
lines, the more must she run into the opposition of her
greatest competitor in the Mediterranean Sea, France.
France will never tolerate Italy's becoming the leading
power in the Mediterranean. She will try to prevent
this, either through her own strength, or through a
system of alliances. France will lay obstacles in the
path of Italy's development wherever possible, and
finally she will not shrink from recourse to violence.
Even the so-called kinship of these two Latin nations
will change nothing on this score, for it is no closer
than the kinship between England and Germany.
On top of that, in proportion as France declines in her
own Folk's power, this State proceeds to the opening up
of her reservoir of ni**ers. Thus a danger of
unimaginable proportions draws near for Europe. The idea
of French ni**ers, who can contaminate white blood, on
the Rhine as cultural guards against Germany, is so
monstrous that it would have been regarded as completely
impossible only a few decades ago. Surely France itself
would suffer the greatest harm through this blood
pollution, but only if the other European nations remain
conscious of the value of their white race. Viewed in
purely military terms, France can very well supplement
her European formations, and, as the World War has
shown, also commit them effectively. Finally, this
completely non French ni**er army indeed vouchsafes a
certain defense against communist demonstrations, since
utter subordination in all situations will be easier to
preserve in an army which is not at all linked by blood
to the French Folk. This development entails its
greatest danger for Italy first of all. If the Italian
Folk wants to shape its future according to its own
interests, it will ultimately have ni**er armies,
mobilized by France, as its enemy. Thus it cannot in the
least lie in Italy's interest to be in a state of enmity
with Germany, something which even in the best of cases
cannot make a profitable contribution to the shaping of
Italian life in the future. On the contrary, if any
State can finally bury war enmity, this State is Italy.
Italy has no inherent interest in a further oppression
of Germany if, for the future, both States want to
attend to their most natural tasks. Bismarck had already
perceived this fortunate circumstance. More than once
did he confirm the complete parallel between German and
Italian interests. It was he who even then pointed out
that the Italy of the future must seek her development
on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, and it was he
who further ascertained the harmony of German and
Italian interests by stressing that only France could
think of disturbing this shaping of Italian life,
whereas Germany was bound to welcome it from her
viewpoint. Actually in the whole future he sees no
necessary cause for an estrangement, let alone enmity,
between Italy and Germany. If Bismarck rather than
Bethmann Hollweg had guided Germany's destiny before the
World War, indeed, even this terrible enmity, incurred
only on account of Austria, would never have come to
pass.
Moreover, with Italy as with England, it is a positive
fact that a continental expansion of Germany in Northern
Europe is no threat, and thereby can give no cause for
an estrangement by Italy against Germany. Conversely,
for Italy the most natural interests speak against any
further increase of French hegemony in Europe. Hence
Italy, above all, would warrant consideration in terms
of an alliance relation with Germany.
The enmity with France has already become obvious ever
since Fascism in Italy brought a new idea of the State
and with it a new will to the life of the Italian Folk.
Therefore France, through a whole system of alliances,
is not only trying to strengthen herself for a possible
conflict with Italy, but also to hamper and separate
Italy's possible friends. The French aim is clear. A
French system of States is to be built that reaches from
Paris via Warsaw, Prague, Vienna, up to Belgrade. The
attempt to draw Austria into this system is in no way as
hopeless as it may seem at first sight. In view of the
dominating character of the influence which Vienna with
its two million inhabitants exerts over the rest of
Austria, which encompasses only six million people, this
country's policy will always be determined primarily by
Vienna. The fact that an alliance with Paris is far more
likely as such than one with Italy lies in the
cosmopolitan nature of Vienna which has been revealed
even more pointedly in the last decade. This was already
taken care of by the manipulation of public opinion
guaranteed by the Vienna press. But this activity
threatens to become especially effective since this
press, with the help of the clamor over the Southern
Tyrol, has also succeeded in stirring up the completely
clueless bourgeois national province against Italy. Thus
a danger of an incommensurable extent draws near. For
the Germans, more than any other Folk, can be brought
to the most incredible, in reality truly suicidal,
decisions by the agitation press campaign conducted
consistently over many years.
If, however, France succeeds in fitting Austria into the
chain of her friendship, Italy one day will be forced
into a two front war, or she must again renounce a real
representation of the interests of the Italian Folk. In
both cases for Germany there is the danger that a
possible German ally is finally excluded for an
unpredictable period of time, and that France thus
increasingly becomes the master of Europe's fate.
Let no one indulge in any illusions as to what this
entails for Germany. Our bourgeois national border
politicians and protesters from the patriotic leagues
will then have their hands full in order again, in the
name of national honor, to eliminate the traces of the
mistreatments which they would have to endure from
France, thanks to their farsighted policy.
Since the National Socialist Movement concerns itself
with ideas of foreign policy, I have tried to educate it
to become a bearer of a clear foreign policy aim by a
consideration of all the arguments discussed. It is
unjust to raise the reproach that this is primarily the
task of the Government, in a State, first of all, the
official governments of which come from the bosom of
parties who neither have any cognizance of Germany nor
want a happy future for this Germany. Since those who
were responsible for arranging the November crime have
become qualified to govern, it is no longer the
interests of the German Nation which are represented,
but instead those of the wrongly acting parties. In
general we cannot very well expect the promotion of
Germany's vital needs by people to whom the Fatherland
and the Nation are but means to an end, and which, if
necessary, they shamelessly sacrifice for their own
interests. Indeed, the instinct of self preservation of
these people and parties, so often visible, in truth by
itself speaks against any resurgence of the German
Nation, since the freedom struggle for German honor
perforce would mobilize forces which must lead to the
fall and destruction of the former defilers of German
honor. There is no such thing as a struggle for freedom
without a general national resurgence. But a resurgence
of the national conscience and the national honor is
unthinkable without first bringing those responsible for
the previous degradation to justice. The naked instinct
of self preservation will force these degenerate
elements and their parties to thwart all steps that
could lead to a real resurrection of our Folk. And the
seeming insanity of many acts of these Herostrats of our
Folk, once we properly gauge the inner motives, becomes
a planned, adroit, albeit infamous and contemptible,
action.
In a time such as this when public life acquires its
shape from parties of this kind and is represented
solely by people of inferior character, it is the duty
of a national reform Movement to go its own way even in
foreign policy which some day, according to all human
prediction and reason, must lead to the success and
happiness of the Fatherland. Hence, so far as the
reproach of conducting a policy that does not correspond
to official foreign policy comes from the Marxist
democratic Center camp, it can be set aside with the
contempt it deserves. But if bourgeois national and so
called Fatherland circles raise it, this is really only
the expression and the symbol of the state of mind of
professional joiners which exerts itself only in
protests, and simply cannot seriously grasp that another
movement possesses the indestructible will ultimately to
become a power, and that in a prevision of this fact it
already undertakes the necessary education of this
power.
Since the year 1920 I have tried with all means and most
persistently to accustom the National Socialist Movement
to the idea of an alliance among Germany, Italy and
England. This was very difficult, especially in the
first years after the War, since the God Punish England
standpoint, first and foremost, still robbed our Folk
of any capacity for clear and sober thinking in the
sphere of foreign policy, and continued to hold it
prisoner.
The situation of the young Movement was infinitely
difficult even vis-à-vis Italy, especially since an
unprecedented reorganization of the Italian Folk set in
under the leadership of the brilliant statesman Benito
Mussolini, which drew the protest of all the States
directed by Freemasonry. For whereas up to the year 1922
the fabricators of official German opinion took
altogether no notice of the sufferings of those parts of
our Folk severed from Germany through their crimes,
they now suddenly began to honor the Southern Tyrol with
their attention. With all the means of a cunning
journalism and a mendacious dialectic, the Southern
Tyrol problem was blown up into a question of
extraordinary importance so that, in the end, Italy
incurred a proscription in Germany and Austria conferred
on none other of the victor States. If the National
Socialist Movement honestly wanted to represent its
foreign policy mission, sustained by the conviction of
the unconditional necessity of the same, it could not
draw back from the struggle against this system of lies
and confusion. Thus at the same time it could not count
on any allies, but instead had to be guided by the idea
that one should sooner renounce a cheap popularity
rather than act against a perceived truth, a necessity
that lay before one, and the voice of one's conscience.
And even if one would thereby be defeated, this would
still be more honorable than to participate in a crime
that had been seen through.
When in the year 1920 I pointed to the possibility of a
later association with Italy, all the prerequisites
thereto, at least at first, actually seemed to be
lacking. Italy was in the circle of the victor States,
and shared in the actual or merely presumed advantages
of this situation. In the years 1919 and 1920 there
seemed no prospect at all that the inner structure of
the Entente would loosen in any predictable time. The
powerful world coalition still placed a great value on
showing that it was a self sufficient guarantor of the
victory and thus also of the peace. The difficulties
which had already come to light in connection with the
drawing up of the peace treaties came all the less to
the consciousness of a broad public opinion since the
directors of an adroitly staged production knew how to
preserve the impression of complete unity, at least
outwardly. This common action was based just as much on
the public opinion which had been created by a generally
homogeneous war propaganda as it was on the still
insecure fear of the German giant. Only slowly did the
outside world get a glimpse of the dimensions of
Germany's inner decay. A further reason contributed to
the seemingly almost indissoluble solidarity of the
victor States: the hope of the individual States that
they would thus not be overlooked when the time came to
share the spoils. Finally there was the further fear
that if at that time a State should actually withdraw,
Germany's fate, nevertheless, would have taken no other
course, and then perhaps France alone would be the sole
beneficiary of our collapse. For in Paris they naturally
never gave a thought to bringing about a change in the
attitude toward Germany which had been set in motion
during the War. For me the peace is the continuation of
the war. With this statement, white haired old
Clemenceau expressed the French Folk's real intentions.
The complete lack of planning of German intentions
confronted this, at least seeming, inner solidity of the
coalition of victors, the immovable aim of which,
inspired by France, was the complete annihilation of
Germany even after the event. Next to the contemptible
villainy of those who in their country, against all
truth and against their own conscience, put the blame
for the war on Germany and insolently deduced a
justification for the enemy's extortion’s therefrom,
stood a partly intimidated, partly uncertain national
side which believed that now after the ensuing collapse
it could help matters by means of the most painful
possible reconstruction of the nation's past. We lost
the war in consequence of a lack of national passion
against our enemies. The opinion in national circles was
that we must replace this harmful deficiency and anchor
this hatred against the former enemies in the peace. At
the same time it was noteworthy that, from the start,
this hatred was concentrated more against England, and
later Italy, than against France. Against England
because, thanks to the Bethmann Hollwegian soporific
policy, nobody had believed in a war with England up to
the last hour. Therefore her entry into the war was
viewed as an extraordinarily shameful crime against
loyalty and faith. In the case of Italy the hatred was
even more understandable in view of the political
thoughtlessness of our German Folk. They had been so
imprisoned in the mist and fog of the Triple Alliance by
official government circles that even Italy's
non-intervention for the benefit of Austria-Hungary and
Germany was viewed as a breach of loyalty. And they saw
a boundless perfidy in the later joining up of the
Italian Folk with our enemies. This accumulated hatred
was discharged in the typically bourgeois national
fulmination and battle cry: God Punish England. Since
God is just as much on the side of the stronger and the
more determined, as well as preferably on the side of
those who are cleverer, he manifestly refused to inflict
this punishment.
Nevertheless, at least during the war, whipping up of
our national passion by every means was not only allowed
but obviously called for. It was only a hindrance in
that we were blinded by it to the real actualities,
although the passion was never fanned too high among us.
In politics there is no standpoint of contrariness, and
therefore, even during the War, it was wrong to draw no
other consequences, especially from Italy's entry into
the world coalition, except those of a flaming anger and
indignation. For, on the contrary, we should have had
the duty then especially to keep on reexamining the
possibilities of the situation in order to come to those
decisions that might have warranted consideration for
saving the threatened German Nation. For with Italy's
entry into the front of the Entente, an extraordinary
aggravation of the war situation was unavoidable, not
only in consequence of the increase in terms of arms
which the Entente acquired, but much more rather in
consequence of the moral strengthening which necessarily
lay in the emergence of such a power on the side of the
world coalition being formed, especially for France. In
terms of duty, the Nation's political leaders at that
time perforce should have decided, cost what it may, to
put an end to the two front and three front war. Germany
was not responsible for the further maintenance of the
corrupt, slovenly Austrian State. Nor did the German
soldier fight for the family power policy of the
hereditary House Of Habsburg. This at best lay in the
mind of our non combatant hurrah!-shouters, but not in
that of those at the front shedding their blood. The
sufferings and hardships of the German musketeers were
already immeasurable in the year 1915. These sufferings
could be demanded for the future and the preservation of
our German Folk, but not for the salvation of the
Habsburg big power megalomania. It was a monstrous idea
to let millions of German soldiers bleed in a hopeless
war only so that a dynasty could preserve a State, the
most private dynastic interests of which for centuries
had been anti German. This insanity will become
completely understandable to us in its entirety only if
we keep in view that the best German blood had to be
shed so that, in the most favorable case, the Habsburgs
might again have another chance to denationalize the
German Folk in peacetime. We not only had to undertake
the most monstrous bloodshed on two fronts for this
madness, which screamed to heaven, no, we were even duty
bound again and again to fill the holes which treason
and corruption had torn in our worthy ally's front with
German flesh and blood. And thereby we made this
sacrifice for a dynasty which itself was ready to leave
its all sacrificing ally in the lurch at the first
opportunity which offered itself. And who indeed later
did just this. To be sure, our bourgeois national
Fatherland patriots speak as little of the betrayal as
they do of the continuous betrayal of the Austrian
troops of Slavic nationality allied with us, who went
over to the enemy's side in whole regiments and
brigades, in order finally in their own legions to join
the fight against those who had been dragged into this
dreadful misfortune by the operations of their State.
Moreover, by itself, Austria-Hungary would never have
participated in a war which might have involved Germany.
That here or there some perhaps really believed to gain
protection from the Triple Alliance, grounded in
reciprocity, can be ascribed only to the boundless
ignorance of Austrian conditions which generally
prevailed in Germany. The worst disappointment for
Germany would have materialized had the World War broken
out on account of Germany. The Austrian State, with its
Slav majority and with its Habsburg Ruling House,
fundamentally anti German and anti Reich oriented, would
never have taken up arms to defend and assist Germany
against all the rest of the world, as Germany stupidly
did. As a matter of fact, vis-à-vis Austria-Hungary,
Germany had but one duty to fulfil, namely: to save the
German element of this State by all means, and to
eliminate the most degenerate, most guilt laden dynasty
that the German Folk ever had to endure.
For Germany, Italy's entry into the World War perforce
should have been the occasion for a fundamental revision
of her attitude vis-à-vis Austria-Hungary. It is not a
political act, let alone an expression of the sagacity
and competence of political leaders, in such a case to
find no other answer than sullen indignation and
impotent rage. Such a thing is usually harmful even in
private life, but in political life it is worse than a
crime. It is an act of stupidity.
And even if this attempt at a change of the former
German attitude had led to no success, it at least would
have absolved the nation's political leadership from the
guilt of not having tried it. In any case, after Italy's
entry into the World War, Germany should have tried to
put an end to the two front war. She should then have
striven for a separate peace with Russia, not only on
the basis of a renunciation of any utilization of the
successes in the east already achieved by German arms,
but even, if necessary, of a sacrifice of
Austria-Hungary. Only the complete dissociation of
German policy from the task of saving the Austrian State
and its exclusive concentration on the task of helping
the German Folk could still afford a possibility of
victory, according to human appraisals. Moreover, with
the demolition of Austria-Hungary, the incorporation of
nine million German Austrians into the Reich as such
would have been a more worthwhile success before history
and for our Folk's future than the gain, doubtful in
its consequences, of a few French coal and iron mines.
But it must be stressed again and again that the task --
even of a German foreign policy that is only bourgeois
national -- should not have been the preservation of the
Habsburg State, but exclusively the salvation of the
German Nation, including the nine million Germans in
Austria. Otherwise nothing else at all, indeed
absolutely nothing else.
As is known, the reaction of the Reich's leaders to the
situation created by Italy's entry into the World War
was quite different. They tried more than ever to save
the Austrian State with its deserting Slavic brothers of
the alliance by staking German blood in a still greater
measure, and, in the homeland, by calling down heaven's
revenge on the faithless erstwhile ally. In order to cut
themselves off from any possibility of ending the two
front war, they let the artful and cunning Vienna
diplomacy induce them to found the Polish State. Thereby
any hope of arriving at an understanding with Russia,
which naturally could have been obtained at the expense
of Austria-Hungary, was shrewdly prevented by the
Habsburg’s. Thus the German soldier from Bavaria,
Pomerania, Westphalia, Thuringia and East Prussia, from
Brandenburg, Saxony and from the Rhine, was given the
high honor, in the most terrible, bloody battles of
world history, to sacrifice his life by the hundreds of
thousands, not for the salvation [formation] of the
German Nation, but for the formation of a Polish State
to which, in case of a favorable outcome of the World
War, the Habsburg’s would have given a representative,
and which then would have been an eternal enemy for
Germany.
Bourgeois national State policy. But if this reaction to
the Italian step had already been an unforgivable
absurdity during the War, the preservation of this
emotional reaction to the Italian step after the War was
a still greater, capital stupidity.
To be sure, Italy was in the coalition of victor States
even after the War, and hence also on the side of
France. But this was natural, for Italy had certainly
not entered the War out of pro French feelings. The
determining force which drove the Italian Folk to it
was exclusively the hatred against Austria and the
visible possibility of being able to benefit their own
Italian interests. This was the reason for the Italian
step, and not any kind of fantastic emotional feeling
for France. As a German one can be deeply pained that
Italy took far reaching steps now that the collapse of
her hated centuries old enemy has taken place, but one
must not let it deprive his mind of sound reason. Fate
had changed. Once Austria had more than 800000 Italians
under her rule, and now 200000 Austrians fell under
Italy's rule. The cause of our pain is that these 200000
who interest us are of German nationality.
Neither the future aims of a national nor of a
Folkishly conceived Italian policy are fulfilled by the
elimination of the eternally latent Austrian Italian
conflict. On the contrary, the enormous increase of the
self consciousness and power consciousness of the
Italian Folk by the war, and especially by Fascism,
will only increase its strength to pursue greater aims.
Thus the natural conflicts of interest between Italy and
France will increasingly appear. We could have counted
on that and hoped for it as early as the year 1920. As a
matter of fact, the first signs of an internal
disharmony between the two States were already visible
at that time. Whereas the Southern Slav instincts for a
further curtailment of the Austrian German element were
sure of France's undivided sympathy, the Italian
attitude already at the time of the liberation of
Carinthia from the Slavs was at least very well disposed
toward the German element. This inner shift vis-à-vis
Germany was also displayed in the attitude of the
Italian commissions in Germany itself, most pointedly on
the occasion of the struggles in Upper Silesia. At any
rate, at that time one could already discern the
beginning of an inner estrangement, albeit only faint at
first, between the two Latin nations. According to all
human logic and reason, and on the basis of all the
experiences of history hitherto, this estrangement must
increasingly deepen and one day end in an overt
struggle. Whether she likes it or not, Italy will have
to fight for her State's existence and future against
France, just as Germany itself. It is not necessary for
this that France always be in the foreground of
operations. But she will pull the wires of those whom
she has cleverly brought into a state of financial and
military dependence on her, or with whom she seems to be
linked by parallel interests. The Italian French
conflict can just as well begin in the Balkans, as it
may find its end on the lowlands of Lombardy.
In view of this compelling probability of a later enmity
of Italy with France, already in the year 1920 this very
State came under consideration primarily as a future
ally for Germany. The probability increased to certainty
when, with the victory of Fascism, the weak Italian
Government, which ultimately was subject to
international influences, was eliminated, and a regime
took its place which had nailed the exclusive
representation of Italian interests as a slogan on its
banners. A weak Italian democratic bourgeois government,
by disregarding Italy's real future tasks, could perhaps
have maintained an artificial relation with France. But
a nationally conscious and responsible Italian regime,
never. The struggle of the Third Rome for the future of
the Italian Folk acquired its historic declaration on
the day when the FASCES became the symbol of the Italian
State. Thus one of the two Latin nations will have to
leave its place in the Mediterranean Sea, whereas the
other will acquire supremacy as the prize of this
struggle.
As a nationally conscious and rationally thinking
German, I firmly hope and strongly wish that this State
may be Italy and not France. Thereby my attitude toward
Italy will be induced by motives of future expectations,
and not by sterile reminiscences of the War. The
standpoint, Declarations Of War Are Accepted Here, as an
inscription on troop transports, was a good sign of the
victorious confidence of the peerless Old Army. As a
political proclamation, however, it is a mad stupidity.
Today it is even more mad if one takes the position
that, for Germany, no ally can warrant consideration
which stood on the enemy's side in the World War and
shared in the spoils of the World War at our expense. If
Marxists, Democrats and Centrists raise such a thought
to a leitmotif of their political activity, this is
clearly for the reason that this most degenerate
coalition does not desire a resurgence of the German
Nation ever. But if national bourgeois and Fatherland
circles take over such ideas, then that's the limit. For
let one name any power at all which could possibly be an
ally in Europe and which has not enriched itself
territorially at our expense or that of our allies of
that time. On the basis of this standpoint, France is
excluded from the outset because she stole
Alsace-Lorraine and wants to steal the Rhineland,
Belgium because it possesses Eupen and Malmedy, England
because, even if she does not possess our colonies, at
least she administers them in large part. And any child
knows what this means in the life of nations. Denmark is
excluded because she took North Schleswig, Poland
because she is in possession of West Prussia and Upper
Silesia and parts of East Prussia, Czechoslovakia
because she oppresses almost four million Germans,
Rumania because she likewise has annexed more than a
million Germans, Yugoslavia because she has nearly
600000 Germans, and Italy because today she calls the
Southern Tyrol her own.
Thus, for our national bourgeois and patriotic circles,
the alliance possibilities are altogether impossible.
But then they do not need them at all. For through the
flood of their protests, and the rumble of their
hurrahs, they will in part stifle the resistance of the
other parts of the world, and in part overthrow it. And
then, without any allies, indeed without any weapons,
supported only by the paucity of their glib tongue, they
will retrieve the stolen territories, let England
subsequently still be punished by God, but chastise
Italy and deliver her to the deserved contempt of the
whole world--so far as up to this point they have not
been hanged on lamp posts by their own momentary foreign
policy allies, the Bolshevist and Marxist Jews.
At the same time, it is noteworthy that our national
circles of bourgeois and patriotic origin never at all
realize that the strongest proof of the fallacy of their
attitude toward foreign policy lies in the concurrence
of Marxists, Democrats and Centrists, above all
especially in the concurrence of Jewry. But one must
know our German bourgeoisie well in order immediately to
know why this is so. They are all infinitely happy at
least to have found an issue in which the presumed unity
of the German Folk seems to be effected. No matter if
this concerns a stupidity. Despite this, it is
infinitely comforting for a courageous bourgeois and
Fatherland politician to be able to talk in tones of
national struggle without receiving a punch on the jaw
for it from the nearest communist. That they are spared
this only for the reason that their political conception
is just as sterile in national terms as it is valuable
in Jewish Marxist terms, either does not occur to these
people, or it is concealed in the deepest recesses of
their being. The extent which the corruption of lies and
cowardice has assumed among us is something unheard of.
When in the year 1920 I undertook to orient the foreign
policy position of the Movement toward Italy, I at first
ran into complete incomprehension on the part of
national circles, as well as in so called Fatherland
circles. It was simply incomprehensible to these people
how, contrary to the general duty of continual protests,
one could formulate a political idea which--taken
practically--signified the intrinsic liquidation of one
of the enmities of the World War. In general, national
circles found it beyond comprehension that I did not
want to place the main weight of national activity on
protests which were trumpeted to the skies in front of
the Feldherrnhalle in Munich, or somewhere else, now
against Paris, then again against London or also against
Rome, but wanted to place it instead on the elimination
first within Germany of those responsible for the
collapse. A flaming protest demonstration against Paris
also took place in Munich on the occasion of the Paris
diktat, which, to be sure, must have caused M.
Clemenceau little worry. But it induced me to elaborate
with all vigor the National Socialist attitude in
opposition to this protest mania. France had only done
what every German could know and perforce should have
known. Were I myself a Frenchman I would have supported
Clemenceau as a matter of course. To bark permanently at
an overpowering adversary from a distance is as
undignified as it is idiotic. On the contrary, the
national opposition of the Fatherland circles should
have bared its teeth at those in Berlin who were
responsible for, and guilty of, the terrible catastrophe
of our collapse. To be sure, it was more comfortable to
scream against Paris curses which could not be
actualized in view of the factual conditions, than to
stand up against Berlin with deeds. This also applied
especially to the representatives of that Bavarian
government policy, who, to be sure, sufficiently exhibit
the nature of their brilliance by the facts of their
success up to now.
For the very men who continually asserted the desire to
preserve Bavaria's sovereignty, and who at the same time
also had in view maintenance of the right to conduct
foreign policy, should primarily have been obliged to
put forth a possible foreign policy of such sort that
Bavaria, thereby, could of necessity have obtained
leadership of a real national opposition in Germany
conceived in its grand aspects. In view of the complete
inconsistency of Reich policy or of the deliberate
intention to ignore all real avenues of success, it is
precisely the Bavarian State that should have risen to
the role of spokesman for a foreign policy which,
according to human prediction, might one day have
brought an end to Germany's dreadful isolation. But even
in these circles they confronted the foreign policy
conception of an association with Italy, as espoused by
me, with a complete and stupid thoughtlessness. Instead
of thus rising in a bold way to the role of spokesmen
and guardians of the highest national German interests
for the future, they preferred, from time to time, with
one eye blinking toward Paris while the other was raised
up to heaven, to asseverate their loyalty to the Reich
on the one hand, and on the other their determination
nevertheless to save Bavaria by letting the fires of
Bolshevism burn out in the north. Yes, indeed, the
Bavarian State has entrusted the representation of its
sovereign rights to intellectual characters of a wholly
special greatness. In view of such a general mentality,
it should surprise nobody that, from the very first day,
my foreign policy conception encountered, if not direct
rejection, at least a total lack of understanding.
Frankly speaking, I expected nothing else at that time.
I still took account of the general war psychosis, and
strove only to instill a sober worldview of foreign
policy into my own Movement.
At that time, I did not yet have to endure any kind of
overt attacks on account of my Italian policy. The
reason for this probably lay, on the one hand, in the
fact that for the moment it was held to be completely
devoid of danger, and on the other that Italy herself
likewise had a government subject to international
influences. Indeed, in the background it was perhaps
even hoped that this Italy could succumb to the
Bolshevist plague, and then she would be highly welcome
as an ally, at least for our Left circles.
Besides, on the Left at that time, one could not very
well take a position against the elimination of war
enmity, since in this very camp they were anyhow making
constant efforts to extirpate the hateful, demeaning,
and--for Germany--so unjustified feeling of hatred born
of the War. It would not have been easy to launch a
criticism against me from these circles over a foreign
policy conception, which, as a prerequisite for its
realization, would after all have caused at least the
removal of the war hatred between Germany and Italy.
I must, however, stress once more that perhaps the main
reason why I found so little positive resistance lay for
my enemies in the presumed harmlessness, and thereby
also the non dangerous character of my action.
This situation changed almost in one stroke when
Mussolini had begun the March on Rome. As if by a magic
word, the running fire of poisoning and slander against
Italy by the entire Jewish press began from this hour
on. And only after the year 1922 was the Southern Tyrol
question raised and made into a pivotal point of German
Italian relations, whether the Southern Tyrolean’s
themselves wanted it so or not. It did not take long
before even Marxists became the representatives of a
national opposition. And now one could experience the
unique spectacle of Jews and Folkish Germans, Social
Democrats and members of the Patriotic Leagues,
communists and national bourgeois, arm in arm,
spiritually marching across the Brenner in order to
carry out the re-conquest of this territory in mighty
battles but, to be sure, without the shedding of blood.
A charm of a wholly special character was further added
to this bold national front by the fact that even those
out and out Bavarian particularistic representatives of
Bavarian sovereign rights, whose spiritual forefathers
over a hundred years before had surrendered the good
Andreas Hofer to the French and let him be shot, also
vigorously interested themselves in the freedom struggle
for the country of Andreas Hofer.
Since the influence of the Jewish press gang, and the
national bourgeois and patriotic dunderheads who run
after them, has really succeeded in blowing up the
Southern Tyrol problem to the dimensions of a vital
question of the German Nation, I see myself induced to
take a detailed position toward it.
As has already been emphasized, the old Austrian State
had over 850000 Italians within its borders.
Incidentally, the data on nationalities as established
by the Austrian census was not wholly accurate. Namely,
the count was not made according to the nationality of
the individual, but rather according to the language he
specified as spoken. Obviously this could not give a
completely clear picture, but it is in the nature of the
weakness of the national bourgeoisie gladly to deceive
itself over the real situation. If one does not learn of
a matter, or at least if it is not talked about openly,
then it also does not exist. Ascertained on the basis of
such a procedure, the Italians, or better, the people
who spoke Italian, in large measure lived in the Tyrol.
According to the census figures of the year 1910 the
Tyrol had .......... inhabitants, of whom ..........
percent were counted as speaking the Italian language,
while the rest were counted as German or in part also
Latin. Consequently around .......... Italians were in
the Arch Duchy of Tyrol. Since this whole number is
allotted to the territory occupied today by Italians,
the ratio of Germans to Italians in the whole part of
the territory of the Tyrol occupied by Italians
consequently is one of .......... Germans to ..........
Italians.
It is necessary to establish this because not a few
people in Germany, thanks to the mendacity of our press,
have no idea at all that, in the area understood by the
concept Southern Tyrol, actually two thirds of the
inhabitants living there are Italians, and one third
German. Thus, whoever seriously advocates the
re-conquest of the Southern Tyrol would bring about a
change of things only to the extent that instead of
having 200000 Germans under Italian rule, he would bring
400000 Italians under German rule.
To be sure, the German element in the Southern Tyrol is
now concentrated primarily in the northern part, whereas
the Italian element inhabits the south. Thus if someone
would find a solution that is just in a national sense,
he must first of all completely exclude the concept
Southern Tyrol from the general discussion. For one
cannot war on the Italians on moral grounds because they
have taken an area in which 200000 Germans live next to
400000 Italians if we ourselves, conversely, want to win
this territory again for Germany as a redress of this
injustice, that is, if we want to commit a still greater
injustice than is the case with Italy.
Thus the call for a re-conquest of the Southern Tyrol
will have the same moral faults in it which we now
discover in the Italian rule in the Southern Tyrol.
Hence this call also loses its moral justification. With
this still other viewpoints can be asserted, which then
must speak for a regaining of the whole Southern Tyrol.
Thus on the basis of morally justified feelings we can,
at most, advocate the regaining of that part which is
actually inhabited by an overwhelming majority of
Germans. This is a spatially limited area of ..........
square kilometers. Even in this, however, there are
around 190000 Germans, 64000 Italians and Latinos, and
24000 other aliens, so that the completely German
territory encompasses hardly 160000 Germans.
At the present time there is hardly a border which does
not cut Germans off from the Motherland just as in the
Southern Tyrol. Indeed, in Europe alone, not less than
.......... million Germans all told are separated from
the Reich. Of these, .......... million live under out
and out alien rule, and only .......... million in
German Austria and Switzerland, though under conditions
that at least for the moment pose no threat to the
nationality. At the same time, here are a whole series
of cases involving aggregates of a quite different
numerical character as compared to our Folkdom in the
Southern Tyrol. As terrible as this fact is for our
Folk, just so guilty of it are those who today raise
their hue and cry over the Southern Tyrol. Just as
little, at any rate, can we make the fate of all the
rest of the Reich dependent simply on the interests of
these lost territories, let alone on the wishes of one
of them, even by taking over a purely bourgeois border
policy.
For one thing must first of all be rejected most
sharply: there is no Holy German Folk in the Southern
Tyrol, as the Patriotic Leaguers foolishly prattle.
Rather, all who must be reckoned as belonging to German
Folkdom must be equally holy to it. It won't do to
appraise a Southern Tyrolean higher than a Silesian,
East Prussian or West Prussian who is enslaved under
Polish rule. It also won't do to regard a German in
Czechoslovakia as more worthwhile than a German in the
Saar territory or also in Alsace-Lorraine. The right to
grade the German element of the severed territories
according to special values could, at best, grow out of
an analytical examination of their specific decisive and
dominant fundamental racial values. But this is the very
measure which the protest groups against Italy apply
least of all. For the Tyroleans in the territories now
separated too, it could yield no higher credit factor
than, let's say, for an East or a West Prussian.
Now the foreign policy task of the German Reich as such
cannot be determined by the interests of the parts split
off from the Reich. For in reality these interests will
not be served thereby, since practical help indeed
presupposes the regained power of the Motherland. Hence
the sole viewpoint that warrants consideration in regard
to the foreign policy position can be only that of the
fastest and earliest restoration of the independence and
freedom of the remaining part of the Nation united under
a Government. In other words, this means that even if a
German foreign policy were cognizant of no aim other
than the salvation of the Holy Folk In Southern Tyrol,
that is, the 190000 Germans who can really come under
consideration, first the prerequisite thereto would be
the achievement of Germany's political independence as
well as means of military power. For it should be rather
clear, after all, that the Austrian protest State will
not wrest the Southern Tyrol from the Italians. But it
must be equally clear that even if German foreign policy
knew no aim other than the actual liberation of the
Southern Tyrol, its actions must especially then be
determined by such viewpoints and factors which
guarantee the regaining of the means of political and
military power. Thus we should surely not place the
Southern Tyrol in the focal point of foreign policy
considerations, but, on the contrary, especially then
must we be dominated and guided by those ideas which in
fact allow us to smash the existing world coalition
directed against Germany. For ultimately, even through
Germany, the Southern Tyrol will not be restored to the
German element by the droning of a Tibetan prayer wheel
of protests and indignation, but by the commitment of
the sword.
Thus, if Germany herself were to have this aim, she must
nevertheless ever and again look first of all for an
ally who would furnish help for the gaining of German
power. Now one can say that France could be considered
in this case. As a National Socialist, I however oppose
this most sharply.
It may well be that France would declare herself ready
to allow Germany to march with her as an ally against
Italy. Indeed, it can even be that, in gracious
recognition of our blood sacrifice, and as meager
bandages for our wounds, they would award the Southern
Tyrol to us. But what would such a victory mean for
Germany? Could our Nation, for instance, live then
because it possesses 200000 more Southern Tyroleans? Or
does one not believe that France, once she has defeated
her Latin competitor in the Mediterranean with German
military help, would surely turn once more against
Germany? Or in any case that she would surely pursue her
old political aim of the liquidation of Germany?
No, if for Germany there remains any choice between
France and Italy, then, according to all human reason,
Italy alone warrants consideration for Germany. For a
victory with France over Italy will bring us the
Southern Tyrol and a stronger France to boot as a
subsequent enemy. A victory over France with Italy's
help will bring us Alsace-Lorraine at the least, and at
most, the freedom to carry out a genuine large scale
territorial policy. And in the long run it is through
this alone that Germany can live in the future, and not
through Southern Tyrol. Nor will it do to choose one
among all the severed territories, and indeed the one
most unimportant to us in a vital sense, and to stake
the total interests of a nation of 70000000 people,
actually to renounce its future, just so that wretched
fantastic German hurrah!-patriots can obtain a momentary
gratification. And all this on account of a sheer
phantom, for in reality the Southern Tyrol would be as
little helped thereby as it is now.
The National Socialist Movement as such must educate the
German Folk to the effect that it must not shrink from
staking its blood for the sake of shaping its life. But,
likewise, our Folk must be educated to the effect that
such a staking of their blood, at least in future
history, must never again take place for the sake of
phantoms. Let our protest patriots and Fatherland
Leaguers for once please say how they envisage the
re-conquest of the Southern Tyrol other than by military
violence. Let them, for once, summon up the honesty to
avow, if they seriously believe it, that one day
Italy--made mellow simply by their verbiage and heated
protests--will hand over the Southern Tyrol, or whether
they are not also convinced that a State with some
existing national consciousness will give up a territory
for which it had fought for four long years only under
the compulsion of a military decision. Let them not
always prattle that we, or I, had renounced the Southern
Tyrol. These infamous liars know very well that, at
least as far as regards my own person, I fought at the
Front at the time when the fate of the Southern Tyrol
was being decided, something which not a few of the
present-day meeting protesters neglected to do at that
time. And that at the same time, however, the forces
with which our Patriotic Leaguers and National
bourgeoisie make a common foreign policy and agitate
against Italy, sabotaged the victory with every means,
that international Marxism, democracy and the Center
even in peacetime neglected nothing in order to weaken
and paralyze the military power of our Folk, and that
finally they organized a revolution during the War which
necessarily led to the collapse of the German Homeland
and with it of the German Army. The Southern Tyrol was
also lost to the German Folk through the activity of
these people, and the accursed weakness and impotence of
our present-day bourgeois manic protesters. It is a
contemptible falsification on the part of these so
called national patriots if today they talk about a
renunciation of the Southern Tyrol. No, dear gentlemen,
don't twist and squirm in such a cowardly way over the
right word. Don't be too cowardly to come right out and
say that today it could only be a question of the
conquest of the Southern Tyrol. For the renunciation,
gentlemen of the National Leagues, was effected by your
worthy present-day allies, the one time Marxist
betrayers of their country, with all legal governmental
forms. And the only ones who had the courage to take an
open position against this crime at that time were not
you, esteemed National Leaguers and bourgeois
diplomatists, but rather the small National Socialist
Movement and primarily myself.
Indeed, sirs, when you were so quiet that nobody in
Germany had an idea of your existence, so deeply had you
crawled off into your mouse holes, it was then in the
years 1919 and 1920 that I came forth against the shame
of signing the peace treaties--and not secretly, behind
four walls, but publicly. At that time, however, you
were still so cowardly that never once did you dare to
come to one of our meetings for fear of being cudgeled
by your present foreign policy allies, the Marxist
street tramps. The men who signed the Peace Treaty Of
Saint Germain were as little National Socialists as the
signers of the Peace Treaty Of Versailles. They were the
members of the parties who, by this signing, merely
capped their decades long betrayal of their country.
Whoever today wants to change the fate of the Southern
Tyrol in any way cannot renounce anything that was
already renounced in all forms by the present-day
protesters. At most he can only re-conquer it.
I am most fanatically opposed to this, to be sure, and I
announce the most extreme resistance to this endeavor,
and I shall fight with the utmost fanaticism against the
men who are trying to drive our Folk into this
adventure, as bloody as it is insane. I did not learn
about the War at a restaurant table reserved for regular
customers. Nor was I, in this War, one of those who had
to give orders or to command. I was an ordinary soldier
who was given orders for four and a half years, and who
nevertheless honorably and truly fulfilled his duty. But
I thereby had the good fortune to know war as it is, and
not as one would like to see it. As a simple soldier,
who had known only its dark sides, I was for this war up
to the last hour because I was convinced that the
salvation of our Folk could lie only in victory. Since,
however, there is now a peace which others have
perpetrated, I fight to the utmost against a war which
would not benefit the German Folk, but instead only
those who once before sacrilegiously traded the blood
sacrifice of our Folk for their interests. I am of the
conviction that one day I will not be lacking in the
determination, to bear the responsibility even, if
necessary, of staking the blood of the German Folk. But
I fight against even a single German being dragged off
to a battlefield, for fools or criminals to nourish
their plans on his blood. Whoever reflects on the
unprecedented horror and the frightful misery of a
modern war, or considers the boundless demands on the
nervous stamina of a Folk, must take fright at the idea
that such a sacrifice could be demanded for a success
which in the most favourable case could never be
consonant with this enormous effort. And I also know
that if today the people of the Southern Tyrol, so far
as it thinks along exclusively German lines, were
gathered in one front and the hundreds and hundreds of
thousands of dead which our Nation would have to lay
down in a struggle for their sake were to appear before
these spectators, 300000 hands would rise protectively
toward heaven, and the foreign policy of the National
Socialists would be justified.
What is most terrible about all this is that they play
with this dreadful possibility without ever giving a
thought to really wanting to help the Southern
Tyroleans.
Since the struggle over the Southern Tyrol is being
waged today by those who once surrendered all Germany to
ruin, even the Southern Tyrol is to them only a means to
an end which they use with ice cold unscrupulousness in
order to be able to gratify their infamous anti
German--in the most extreme sense of the
word--instincts. It is the hate against the present-day
nationally conscious Italy, and it is above all a hatred
of the new political idea of this country, and most of
all hatred against the towering Italian statesman, which
induces them to stir up German public opinion with the
help of the Southern Tyrol. For, in reality, how
indifferent after all are these elements to the German
Folk. While they lament the Southern Tyrol's fate with
crocodile tears in their eyes, they are driving all
Germany toward a fate that is worse than that of the
partitioned territory. While they protest against Italy
in the name of national culture, they pollute the
culture of the German nation within, destroy our whole
cultural sensibility, poison the instinct of our Folk,
and annihilate even the accomplishments of earlier
times. Does an age which inside the country has
depressed our whole theatre, our literature, our plastic
arts to the level of swine, have the right to step forth
against present-day Italy, or to protect German culture
from her in the name of culture? The gentlemen of the
Bavarian People's Party, the German Nationalists, and
even the Marxist defilers of culture, are concerned
about the German culture of the Southern Tyrol, but,
undisturbed, they let the culture of the Homeland be
insulted by the most wretched bungling works, and
surrender the German stage to the race shame of a Jonny
Spielt Auf. And, hypocritically, they lament the
oppression of German cultural life in the Southern
Tyrol, while they themselves most cruelly persecute
those in the Homeland who want to protect German culture
from a deliberate and intentional destruction. Here the
Bavarian People's Party incites the State power against
those who raise a protest against the infamous
defilement of our Folk's culture. What do these
solicitous protectors of German culture in the Southern
Tyrol do in Germany itself for the defense of German
culture? They have let the theatre sink to the level of
a brothel, into sites of demonstrated race defilement,
and destroyed all the foundations of our Folk Life with
movies holding honesty and morality up to ridicule; they
connive at the cubist and dadaists infatuation of our
plastic art, they themselves protect the fabricators of
this base deception or madness, they let German
literature sink into mud and filth, and surrender the
whole intellectual life of our Folk to international
Jewry. And the same contemptible pack is so brazen faced
as to stand up for German culture in the Southern Tyrol,
whereby the only aim they have in mind, naturally, is to
incite two cultured Folks against each other so that in
the end they can all the more easily reduce them to the
level of their own cultural wretchedness.
Thus is it in everything, however.
They complain about the persecution of the Germans in
the Southern Tyrol, and they are the same people who in
Germany most cruelly wage war on anyone who understands
being national as something other than defenselessly
surrendering his Folk to syphilization by Jews and
Negroes. The same people who call for the freedom of
conscience of Germans in the Southern Tyrol oppress it
in Germany itself in the meanest way. Never before has
the freedom of expression of one's national outlook in
Germany been so muzzled as under the rule of these
mendacious party riffraff who presume to break a lance
for the rights of conscience and national freedoms, of
all things, in the Southern Tyrol. They wail over every
injustice that is inflicted on a German in the Southern
Tyrol, but they are silent about the murders that these
Marxist street tramps commit from month to month in
Germany against national elements. And the whole fine
national bourgeoisie including the Fatherland protesters
shares their silence. In a single year--that is to say,
only five months of this year have gone by--nine men
from the ranks of the National Socialist Movement alone
were murdered under circumstances that in part were
bestial, and over six hundred wounded. This entire
mendacious brood is silent about this, but how they
would roar if Fascism committed only one such deed
against the German element in the Southern Tyrol. How
they would summon the whole world to revolt if only one
German in the Southern Tyrol were slaughtered by
Fascists under conditions similar to those which the
Marxist murder riffraff employs in Germany, without this
calling forth the indignation of this fine phalanx for
the salvation of the German Folk. And how indeed these
same people, who solemnly protest against the government
persecution of the German element in the Southern Tyrol,
persecute the Germans who inconvenience them in Germany
itself. Beginning with the U-boat heroes up to the
saviors of Upper Silesia, the men who first staked their
blood for Germany--how they dragged them in chains
before the courts and finally sentenced them to the
penitentiary, all because they had sacrificed their
lives hundreds upon hundreds of times out of a fervent
love for the Fatherland, whereas this contemptible
riffraff of protesters had crawled off somewhere where
they could not be found. Let them total the sentences
that have been imposed in Germany for acts which in a
national conscious State would be rewarded with the
highest decorations. If Italy today puts a German in the
Southern Tyrol in jail, the whole German national and
Marxist newspaper pack straightaway screams bloody
murder. But they completely overlook that in Germany one
can go to jail for months merely on the basis of a
denunciation, that house searches, violation of the
mails, telephone tapping--that is, sheer
anti-constitutional deprivation of the personal freedoms
guaranteed by the civil rights of this State--are the
order of the day. And let not our so called national
parties say that this is possible only in Marxist
Prussia. First of all, they fraternize arm in arm with
these same Marxists in regard to foreign policy, and,
second, they have taken the same part in the oppression
of a real, self conscious nationalism. In national
Bavaria they placed the mortally ill Dietrich Eckart
[note 12] in so called protective custody, despite the
available medical testimony, without even the trace of
any wrongdoing on his part save, at most, that of his
incorruptible national outlook. And he was kept in such
custody for so long that he finally collapsed, and died
two days after his release. Moreover, he was Bavaria's
greatest poet. Of course he was a national German and
had not perpetrated any Jonny Spielt Auf, and in
consequence he did not exist for these fighters for the
national culture. Just as these national patriots first
murdered him, likewise did they kill his work with
silence, for after all he was a German and a good
Bavarian in addition, and no international Jew polluter
of Germany. In that case he would have been holy to this
league of patriots, but here they acted in accordance
with their national bourgeois outlook, and the open
statement in the Munich police administration: Croak,
national pig! But these are the same German conscious
elements who mobilize the indignation of the world when
someone in Italy stupidly does no more than throw a
German in jail.
When a few Germans were expelled from the Southern
Tyrol, these people again summoned the German Folk to
blazing indignation. They forgot only to add, however,
that the greatest incitement was being directed against
Germans in Germany itself. Under a bourgeois national
government, national Bavaria has expelled dozens and
dozens of Germans, and all only because they did not
politically suit the corrupt ruling bourgeois stratum in
consequence of their uncompromising nationalism.
Suddenly one no longer took cognizance of the clan
brotherhood with German Austria, but only of the
foreigner. But it was not at all limited to the
expulsion of so called alien Germans. No, these same
bourgeois national hypocrites who hurl flaming protests
against Italy because a German is expelled from the
Southern Tyrol and packed off to another province, have
expelled from Bavaria dozens and dozens of Germans with
German citizenship who fought for Germany in the German
Army for four and a half years, and who had been
severely wounded, and won the highest decorations.
Indeed, this is how these bourgeois national hypocrites
look who now bluster indignantly against Italy, whereas
they themselves have burdened themselves with shame upon
shame among their own Folk. They moan over the
denationalization in Italy, and at the same time they
denationalize the German Folk in their own Homeland.
They fight against anyone who opposes poisoning of our
Folk with regard to blood, indeed they persecute every
German who does battle against the de Germanization,
Negrification, and Judaisation of our Folk in the big
cities, which they themselves instigate and sponsor, and
in the most shameless and ruthless way. And by means of
the mendacious allegation of a danger to religious
establishments, they try to send them to jail.
When an overexcited Italian in Merano damaged the
Empress Elizabeth's Monument there, they raised a wild
clamor, and could not be pacified even though an Italian
court punished the culprit with two months in prison.
That the monuments and mementos of the past greatness of
our Folk are uninterruptedly defiled in Germany itself,
interests them not at all. That France has almost
entirely destroyed all monuments recalling Germany in
Alsace-Lorraine is a matter of indifference to them. It
does not excite them that the Poles systematically lay
waste to everything that even reminds one of the name of
Germany. Indeed, they do not get excited over the fact
that this very month in Bromberg the Bismarck Tower was
officially demolished by the Government--all this leaves
these champions of the national honor of our Folk cold.
Woe, however, if something like this were the case in
the Southern Tyrol. For this has suddenly become a Holy
Land for them. But the Fatherland itself, the Homeland,
it can go to hell.
Certainly, on the Italian side, more than one unwise
action has taken place in the Southern Tyrol, and the
attempt to denationalize the German element
systematically is just as impolitic as its result is
questionable. But those who are in part guilty of all
this and who, as a matter of fact, know nothing of a
national honor of their Folk, have no right to protest
against this. Instead, this right belongs only to those
who up to now really fought for German interests and
German honor. In Germany this was exclusively the
National Socialist Movement.
The whole inner mendacity of the agitation against Italy
becomes apparent if the actions of the Italians are
compared with the actions that the French, Poles,
Belgians, Czechs, Rumanians and Southern Slavs have
perpetrated against the German element. That France has
expelled more than a quarter million Germans altogether
from Alsace-Lorraine, that is, more people than the
Southern Tyrol numbers as inhabitants, means not a rap
to them. And that the French today are trying to
extirpate every trace of German nationality in
Alsace-Lorraine does not prevent them from fraternizing
with France, even when continuous blows on the jaw are
the answer from Paris. That the Belgians persecute the
German element with a matchless fanaticism; that the
Poles have massacred over 17000 Germans, in part under
downright bestial attendant circumstances, gives them no
cause for excitement; that they, finally, expelled tens
of thousands from house and home, with hardly a shirt on
their backs, and drove them across the border, are
things that cannot make our bourgeois and Fatherland
protest swindlers fly into a passion. Indeed, whoever
wants to know the real disposition of this pack must
only recall the way and manner in which the refugees
were welcomed even then. Their hearts, at that time,
bled as little as they do now when those tens of
thousands of unfortunate expellees again found
themselves on the soil of their dear Homeland, in part
in veritable concentration camps, and were being shunted
from place to place like Gypsies. In my mind's eye I
still see before me the time when the first Ruhr
refugees came to Germany, and then were shunted from
police administration to police administration as if
they were hardened criminals. No, then the hearts of
these representatives and defenders of the national
element in the Southern Tyrol did not bleed. But if a
single German in the Southern Tyrol itself is expelled
by the Italians, or some other injustice is inflicted on
him, they tremble with righteous resentment and
indignation over this unexampled crime against culture
and over this greatest barbarism that the world has ever
seen. How they say then: Never before and nowhere else
before has the German element been so oppressed with
such terrible and tyrannical methods as in this country.
Indeed, but only with one exception, that is, namely,
Germany itself, through your own tyranny.
The Southern Tyrol, or better, the German element in the
Southern Tyrol, must remain preserved for the German
Folk, but in Germany itself, through their insane
policy of non national dishonorableness, of general
corruption, and of obsequiousness to the international
financial lords, they murder more than double the people
that the Southern Tyrol numbers as German inhabitants.
They are silent about the 17,000-22,000 people driven to
suicide yearly on average in recent years by their
catastrophic policies, although this number, with
children included, likewise amounts in ten years alone,
to more than the Southern Tyrol numbers in German
inhabitants. They foster emigration, and Herr
Stresemann's national bourgeoisie characterizes the
increase of the emigration quota as an enormous foreign
policy success. And yet this means that every four years
Germany loses more people than the Southern Tyrol
numbers as inhabitants of German nationality. But in
abortions and birth control, year for year, they murder
almost double the number of people of German nationality
in the Southern Tyrol all together. And this pack
arrogates to itself the moral right to speak on behalf
of the interests of the German element abroad.
Or this national official Germany wails over the
denationalization of our language in the Southern Tyrol,
but in Germany itself they de Germanize the German names
in Czechoslovakia, in Alsace-Lorraine, and so on, in all
official ways and manners. Indeed, official travel
guides are published in which even the German names of
cities in Germany are Czechized for the sake of the
Czechs. This is all in order. Only when the Italians
changed the holy name Brenner into Brennero was this an
occasion to demand the most fervent resistance. And it
is a spectacle not to be missed when such a bourgeois
patriot begins to blaze with indignation, when one knows
well that it is all a comedy. To simulate national
passion suits our passionless, putrefied bourgeoisie as
exactly as when an old whore mimics love. It is all only
an artificial sham, and at its worst this is proved most
correctly if such an excitement has its homeland in
Austria. The black-gold legitimistic element, to whom
formerly the German element in the Tyrol was completely
a matter of indifference, now joins in a holy national
indignation. Something of this kind electrifies all
petty bourgeois associations, especially if they then
hear that the Jews are also cooperating. This means that
they themselves protest because they know that this
time, exceptionally for once, they are permitted to
shout their national feelings out loud--without being
done in by the press Jews. On the contrary: it is after
all fine for an upright national bourgeois man to appeal
for a national struggle, and at the same time even be
praised by Moses Israel Abrahamson. Indeed, even more.
The Jewish gazettes scream along with them, and with
this for the first time the real bourgeois national
German unity front is established, from Krotoschin via
Vienna up to Innsbruck, and our German Folk, so
politically stupid, lets itself be taken in by this show
exactly as once before German diplomacy and our German
Folk let themselves be duped and misused by the
Habsburg’s.
Germany once before had let her foreign policy be
determined exclusively by Austrian interests. The
punishment for this was something terrible. Woe, if the
young German nationalism lets its future policy be
determined by the theatrical babblers of the putrid
bourgeois elements, or indeed by the Marxist enemies of
Germany. And woe if, at the same time, in complete
misunderstanding of the real driving forces of the
Austrian State in Vienna, it again receives its
directives from there. It will be the task of the
National Socialist Movement to prepare an end to this
theatrical hue and cry, and to choose sober reason as
the ruler of future German foreign policy. To be sure,
Italy also bears guilt for this whole development. I
would view it as stupid and politically childish to
rebuke the Italian State for the fact that it pushed its
borders up to the Brenner on the occasion of the
Austrian collapse. The motives that dominated it at that
time were no more base than the motives which once
determined bourgeois annexations politicians, including
Herr Stresemann and Herr Erzberger, to prop the German
borders against the Belgian Meuse fortresses. At all
times a responsible, thinking and acting government will
make an effort to find strategically natural and secure
frontiers. Surely, Italy did not annex the Southern
Tyrol in order thus to come into possession of a couple
of hundred thousand Germans, and surely the Italians
would have preferred it if only Italians lived in this
territory in place of these Germans. For, as a matter of
fact, it was never strategic considerations primarily
which induced them to place the borders over the
Brenner. But no State would have acted differently in a
similar situation. Hence it is aimless to criticize this
shaping of the borders as such, since ultimately every
State must determine its natural borders according to
its own interests and not others. To the extent that the
possession of the Brenner may serve military interests
and strategic purposes, it is irrelevant whether or not
200000 Germans live within this strategically
established and secured border as such, if the
population of the country encompasses 42 million people,
and a militarily effective adversary on this very border
does not come in for consideration. It would have been
wiser to have spared these 200000 Germans any
compulsion, rather than to have forcibly tried to
instill an outlook the result of which, according to
experience, is generally without value. Also a Folkdom
cannot be extirpated in twenty or thirty years,
regardless of the methods employed, and whether one
wants or does not want this. On the Italian side, one
can answer with a certain appearance of right that this
was not intended at first, and that it developed
necessarily by itself as a consequence of the
provocative attempts at a continuous interference in
domestic Italian affairs on the part of Austrian and
German external forces, and of the repercussions evoked
therefrom on the Southern Tyroleans themselves. This is
correct, for, as a matter of fact, the Italians at first
welcomed the German element in the Southern Tyrol very
honestly and loyally. But as soon as Fascism arose in
Italy, the agitation against Italy in Germany and
Austria began on grounds of principle, and now led to an
increasing heightening of mutual irritability which in
the Southern Tyrol finally had to lead to consequences
we see today. Most unfortunate in this was the influence
of the Andreas Hofer Association which, instead of
strongly recommending sagacity to the Germans in the
Southern Tyrol, and making it clear to them that their
mission was to build a bridge between Germany and Italy,
aroused hopes in the Southern Tyroleans beyond any
possibility of realization, but which, however, were
bound to lead to incitements and thereby to rash steps.
It is primarily the fault of this Association if
conditions were carried to an extreme. Whoever like
myself had many opportunities to know important members
of this Association personally as well must be amazed
over the irresponsibility with which an Association with
so little real active strength could do so much damage.
For when I see the different leading figures in my
mind's eye, and think of one of them in particular who
had his office in the Munich police administration, then
I grow angry at the thought that men who would never
bring their own blood and skins to the market occasioned
a development which in its ultimate consequence must end
with a bloody conflict.
It is also correct that no understanding at all over the
Southern Tyrol can exist with the real wire-puller’s of
this agitation against Italy, since to these elements
the Southern Tyrol as such is a matter of indifference
as much as is the German Nation in general. Indeed it is
only a question of a suitable means for sowing confusion
and stirring up public opinion, especially in Germany,
against Italy. For this is what concerns these
gentlemen. Hence there is a certain ground for
justification in the Italian objection that, regardless
of what the treatment of Germans in the Southern Tyrol
may be, these people will always find something suitable
for their agitation, because they want precisely this.
But for the very reason that in Germany today, exactly
as in Italy, certain elements have an interest in
thwarting an understanding between both Nations with all
means, it would be the duty of wisdom to remove these
means from them as far as possible, even despite the
danger that they will try further. The opposite would
make sense only if there were altogether nobody in
Germany who had the courage to speak for an
understanding in opposition to this agitation. This,
however, is not the case. On the contrary, the more
present-day Italy by itself seeks to avoid impolitic
incidents, the easier will it become for Italy's friends
in Germany to expose the hate inciters, to unmask the
sanctimoniousness of their reasons, and to put a stop to
their Folk poisoning activity. But if in Italy they
really believe that they cannot compromise in some way,
in view of all the clamor and the demands of foreign
organizations, without this looking like a capitulation
rather, and possibly further increasing the arrogance of
these elements, then ways could be found. Indeed such an
obligingness could be fundamentally ascribed to those
who not only are not involved in this agitation but, on
the contrary, are the friends of an understanding with
Italy and Germany, and themselves lead the sharpest
struggle against the poisoner’s of public opinion in
Germany.
The foreign policy aim of the National Socialist
Movement has nothing to do either with an economic or
bourgeois border policy. Our Folkish territorial aim,
in the future as well, will assign the German Folk a
development that need never bring it into conflict with
Italy. We will also never sacrifice the blood of our
Folk in order to bring about small border
rectifications, but only for territory in order to win a
further expansion and sustenance for our Folk. This aim
drives us eastward. The east coasts of the Baltic Sea
are for Germany what the Mediterranean Sea is to Italy.
Germany's mortal enemy for any further development,
indeed even for the mere maintenance of the unity of our
Reich, is France, exactly as she is for Italy. The
National Socialist Movement will never fall into a
superficial insipid hurrah! cry. It will not rattle the
sword. Its leaders, almost without exception, have
learned about war as it is in reality and truth.
Therefore, it will never shed blood for any other aims
save those that are serviceable to the whole future
development of our Folk. Hence it also refuses to
provoke a war with Italy for the sake of a border
rectification, which is laughable in view of the German
fragmentation in Europe. On the contrary, it wants to
put an end for all the future to these unfortunate
Teutonic marches to the south, and wants the advocacy of
our interests to take place in a direction which makes
the elimination of its need for territory appear
possible to our Folk. By thus delivering Germany from
the period of her present enslavement and servitude, we
also fight above all for her restoration and thus in the
interest of German honor. If present-day Italy believes
that a change in various measures in the Southern Tyrol
would be viewed as a capitulation before foreign
interference, without in the end leading to the desired
understanding, then let her undertake this shift
exclusively for the sake of those in Germany who
themselves are for an understanding with
Italians--thereby openly justifying them--and who not
only reject being identified with the agitators against
it, but who, indeed, have fought the sharpest struggle
against these elements for years and who recognize the
sovereign rights of the Italian State as existing, as a
matter of course.
It is just as little a matter of indifference to Germany
whether she keeps Italy as a friend, as it also is to
Italy. Just as Fascism has given the Italian Folk a new
value, likewise the value of the German Folk must not
be estimated for the future on the basis of its
momentary life expression, but according to the forces
which it has so often shown in its former history and
which, perhaps, it can again show tomorrow.
Thus, just as Italy's friendship is worth a sacrifice on
Germany's part, German friendship is worth just as much
to Italy. It would be a good fortune for both Folks if
those forces in both countries who are the bearers of
this knowledge could come to an understanding. Thus, as
much as the agitation against Italy in Germany is
responsible for the unfortunate enmity, just as much
guilt lies on Italy's side if, in view of the fact that
there is a struggle in Germany itself against this
agitation, she herself as far as possible does not wrest
the means from their hands.
If the sagacity of the Fascist regime one day succeeds
in making 65 million Germans into friends of Italy, this
will be worth more than if it educates 200000 into
becoming bad Italians.
Likewise unsound was the Italian stand prohibiting the
union of Austria with Germany. The very fact that France
primarily espoused this prohibition perforce should have
led Rome to take an opposite position. For France itself
did not take this step in order to benefit Italy, but
much more rather in the hope of being able to inflict
harm on her thereby. There are primarily two reasons
which induced France to push through the prohibition of
the union: first, because thereby she wanted to prevent
a strengthening of Germany, and second, because she is
convinced that some day she can, in the Austrian State,
acquire a member for the French European alliance. So
Rome should not deceive itself that French influence in
Vienna is considerably more decisive even than the
German, not to speak of the Italian. The French attempt
to transfer the League Of Nations to Vienna, if
possible, stems only from the intention to strengthen
the cosmopolitan character of this city as such, and to
bring it into contact with a country whose character and
culture finds a stronger response in the present-day
Viennese atmosphere than does that of the German Reich.
As seriously intended as are the tendencies toward a
union in the Austrian provinces as such, just as little
are they taken seriously in Vienna. On the contrary, if
in Vienna they really operate with the idea of a union,
it is always only in order to extricate themselves from
some financial difficulty, since France then is always
sooner ready to lend a hand to the creditor State.
Gradually, however, this very idea of a union will dry
up in proportion as an inner consolidation of the
Austrian federation occurs and Vienna regains its full
dominating position. On top of this, the political
development in Vienna assumes an increasingly
anti-Italian and especially anti Fascist character,
whereas Austrian Marxism has at all times made no bones
about its strong sympathy for France. Thus the fact that
at that time the union fortunately was prevented, and in
part with Italian help, will some day lead to the
insertion of the missing link between Prague and
Yugoslavia into the French alliance system.
For Italy, however, the prevention of the Austrian union
with Germany had been wrong even on psychological
grounds. The smaller the fragmented Austrian State
remained, the more limited naturally also were its
foreign policy aims. A foreign policy goal, conceived on
a grand scale, could not be expected from a State
structure which has scarcely .......... square
kilometers of territory, and hardly .......... million
inhabitants. If German Austria had been annexed to
Germany in the year 1919-1920, the tendency of her
political thought would gradually have been determined
by the great political aims of Germany, which were at
least possible, that is, for a nation of almost
70,000,000. Preventing this at that time removed foreign
policy thinking from greater aims, and limited it to
small old Austrian reconstruction ideas. Only thus was
it possible that the Southern Tyrol question could have
at all grown to such an importance. For as small as the
Austrian State was as such, it was at least large enough
to be the bearer of a foreign policy idea which was in
keeping with its smallness, just as, conversely, it
could slowly poison the political thinking of all
Germany. The more limited the political ideas of the
Austrian State become in consequence of its territorial
limitation, the more will they sprout into problems
which can certainly have an importance for this State,
but which cannot be viewed as decisive for the shaping
of a German foreign policy for the German Nation.
Italy should espouse a union of Austria with Germany if
for no other reason than to cut across the French
alliance system in Europe. She should further also do
this, however, in order to present other tasks to the
German border policy germinated in consequence of her
incorporation in a great Reich.
Moreover, the reasons which once induced Italy to take a
stand against the union are not quite clear. Neither
present-day Austria nor present-day Germany can be
considered a military adversary of Italy for the time
being. But if France succeeds in bringing a general
alliance in Europe into being against Italy, in which
Austria and Germany take part, the military situation as
such will not at all change whether Austria is
independent or whether she is with Germany. Moreover one
cannot actually speak of a real independence with so
small a structure anyhow. They [Austria] will always
hang on to the strings of a large power of some kind.
Switzerland cannot in the least prove the opposite,
since as a State she possesses her own possibilities of
existence, even if on the basis of tourist traffic. For
Austria this is already impossible in consequence of the
disproportion of the capital of this country to the size
of the whole population. Regardless, however, what
attitude Austria itself assumes toward Italy, in the
very fact of her existence there already lies an easing
of the military strategic position of Czechoslovakia
which one day, one way or another, can make itself
noticeable vis-à-vis Italy's natural ally as such,
Hungary.
For the Italians, military and political reasons would
speak in favor of regarding prohibition of the union as
at least without importance, if not as something which
answers the purpose. I cannot conclude this chapter
without establishing in detail who in fact bears the
guilt that a Southern Tyrol question exists altogether.
For us National Socialists, politically, the decision
has been reached. And at least I--who am most violently
opposed to millions of Germans being dragged to a
battlefield on which to bleed to death for the interests
of France without a gain thereby accruing to Germany
which would in some way be consonant with the blood
sacrifice--I also refuse to recognize the standpoint of
national honor as being decisive here. For on the basis
of this viewpoint I would sooner have to march against
France, which by her whole conduct has offended German
honor in quite a different way, than Italy. I have
already enlarged in the introduction to this book on the
possibility of formulating a foreign policy on the basis
of national honor, so there is no further need to take a
position toward it. If now the attempt is made in our
protest groups to present this attitude of ours as a
betrayal or a renunciation of the Southern Tyrol, this
can only be correct if, without our attitude, Southern
Tyrol would either have not been lost altogether, or
were about to return to the other Tyrol in the
predictable future.
Therefore I see myself forced once more to establish in
this exposition precisely who it was that betrayed the
Southern Tyrol, and through whose measures it was lost
to Germany.
The Southern Tyrol was betrayed and lost by the activity
of those parties who, in long work for peace, weakened,
or completely refused, the armament to the German Folk
which it needed to assert itself in Europe, and by so
doing robbed the German Folk of the necessary power for
victory and thereby of the preservation of the Southern
Tyrol at the critical hour.
Those parties who, in long work for peace, undermined
the moral and ethical foundation of our Folk and, above
all, destroyed faith in the right to self defense.
Thus the Southern Tyrol was also betrayed by those
parties, which as so called State-preserving and
national parties, looked on this activity with
indifference or, at least, without opposing a serious
resistance. Albeit indirectly, they too are accessories
to the weakening of our Folk's armament.
The Southern Tyrol was betrayed and lost by the activity
of those political parties who reduced the German Folk
to being the stooge of the Habsburg big power idea. And
who, instead of setting before German foreign policy the
aim of the national unification of our Folk, viewed the
preservation of the Austrian State as the mission of the
German nation. Who, therefore, also in peacetime, for
decades merely looked on as the Habsburg’s
systematically carried out their work of de
Germanization, indeed furnishing them assistance.
Thereby they are co-responsible for neglecting the
solution of the Austrian question by Germany itself, or
at least by the decisive cooperation of Germany. In such
a case the Southern Tyrol could have certainly been
preserved for the German Folk.
The Southern Tyrol was lost in consequence of the
general aimlessness and lack of planning of German
foreign policy which in the year 1914 extended also to
the establishment of reasonable war aims, or prevented
this.
The Southern Tyrol was betrayed by all those who, during
the course of the War, did not cooperate to the utmost
in strengthening German resistance and aggressive power.
As well as by the parties which deliberately paralyzed
the German power of resistance, as well as those who
tolerated this paralysis.
The Southern Tyrol was lost in consequence of the
inability, even during the War, to undertake a new
orientation of German foreign policy and to save the
German element of the Austrian State by renouncing the
maintenance of the Habsburg great power State. The
Southern Tyrol was lost and betrayed by the activity of
those who, during the War, by raising the sham hope of a
peace without victory, broke the German Folk's moral
power of resistance, and who instead of a manifestation
of the will to wage the War, brought about a peace
resolution that was catastrophic for Germany.
The Southern Tyrol was lost by the betrayal of those
parties and men who even during the War lied to the
German Folk about the non existence of Entente
imperialistic aims, and thereby duped our Folk,
estranged it from the unconditional necessity of
resistance, and ultimately induced it to believe the
Entente more than those who raised their voices in
warning at home.
The Southern Tyrol was further lost by the grinding down
of the Front, attended to by the Homeland, and by the
infection of German thinking by the fraudulent
declarations of Woodrow Wilson. The Southern Tyrol was
betrayed and was lost by the activity of parties and men
who, beginning with conscientious objection to military
service up to the organization of munitions strikes,
robbed the Army of the feeling of the incontestable
necessity of its struggle and victory.
The Southern Tyrol was betrayed and lost by the
organization and the execution of the November crime, as
well as by the contemptible and cowardly tolerance of
this ignominy by the so called State-preserving national
forces.
The Southern Tyrol was lost and betrayed by the
shameless acts of the men and parties who, after the
collapse, defiled Germany's honor, destroyed the esteem
of our Folk before the world, and only thereby
encouraged our adversaries to the enormity of their
demands. It was further lost by the contemptible
cowardice of the national bourgeois parties and
patriotic leagues who dishonorably capitulated
everywhere before the terror of baseness and villainy.
The Southern Tyrol was finally lost and betrayed by the
signing of the peace treaties, and with this by the
legal recognition of the loss also of this area.
All the German parties together are guilty of all this.
Some have knowingly and intentionally destroyed Germany,
and others in their proverbial incapacity and in their
cowardice, which cries out to heaven, not only did
nothing to stop the destroyers of Germany's future, but,
on the contrary, they actually played into the hands of
these enemies of our Folk by the incapacity of their
direction of domestic and foreign policy. Never before
has a Folk been driven, like the German Folk, to ruin
by such a marriage of baseness, villainy, cowardice and
stupidity.
In these days we have been afforded a glimpse into the
activities and effectiveness of this old Germany in the
field of foreign policy by the publication of the War
Memoirs of the head of the American intelligence
service, Mister Flynn.
I let a bourgeois democratic organ speak on this matter
only for the purpose of a broader understanding.
(26th Of June, 1928) - How America Entered The War
Flynn Writes About The Diplomatic Secret Service - By F.
W. Elven, Correspondent Of The Munich Latest News --
Cincinnati, Mid June William J. Flynn has published a
part of his War Memoirs in the weekly Liberty, which is
much read here. During the war, Flynn was the Head Of
The United States Secret Service. The Service
encompasses the whole country, and is brilliantly
organized. In peacetime it primarily provides for the
personal security of the President. Its attention is
enjoyed by whatever else in the national capital is in
need of protection, or thinks it needs so. It keeps
under surveillance all doubtful elements somehow
suspected of connections with political tendencies
hostile to the government and its spokesmen. During the
war its principal task was to keep an eye on those who
more or less loudly had made themselves noticeable in
opposition to the war, or who merely were suspected of
not being in agreement with the Wilsonian war policy.
Germans also enjoyed its special care, and at that time
many fell into the traps which had been laid everywhere
by the Federal Secret Service.
From Flynn's memoirs, however, we learn that the Secret
Service had been assigned an important mission even
before our entry into the war. In the year 1915, a full
two years before the declaration of war, the most
efficient telephone expert was summoned to Washington
and assigned the task of arranging the leading telephone
wires to the German and Austrian embassies in such a way
that Secret Service officials could tap every
conversation from any source that was held between the
ambassadors and their personnel, as well as every
conversation emanating from the embassy offices. A room
was set up with which all the wires were linked in such
an ingenious way that not even a single conversation
could be missed. Service men sat in this room day and
night, dictating the overheard conversations to the
stenographers seated beside them. Every night the head
of the Secret Service Bureau, that is, the author of the
article in Liberty, received a stenographic report of
all the conversations held in the preceding twenty four
hours, so that on the very same evening he was able to
communicate everything important to the State Department
and to President Wilson.
Let us bear in mind the time this installation was
created, at the beginning of the year 1915, that is, at
the time when the United States still lived in peace
with Germany and Austria-Hungary, and Wilson never tired
of giving assurances that he harbored no hostile
intentions against Germany. It was also the time when
the German Ambassador in Washington, Count Bernstorff,
neglected no opportunity to show due appreciation of
Wilson's friendly disposition and feelings for Germany
and the German Folk. It was also the time when Wilson
gave his confidant Baruch instructions to begin the
gradual mobilization of industry for war; also the time
in which it became increasingly obvious, as the American
historian Harry Elmer Barnes also sets forth in his book
On The Origins Of The Great War, that Wilson was firmly
decided to enter the war, and postponed the execution of
his bellicose plans only because public opinion first
had to be won over for these plans.
Flynn's memoirs must finally remove the ground from the
foolish chatter that Wilson was pushed into the war
against his will by German submarine warfare. The
tapping of the telephone wires leading to the German
embassy took place with his knowledge. We also learn
this from Flynn's memoirs. The author adds that the
material thus gathered against Germany contributed
considerably to the eventual break. This can prove only
that this put means in Wilson's hands to win public
opinion for the war long planned by him. And in fact
this material was wholly and ideally suited for it. The
Memoirs confirm to the fullest extent what unfortunately
must still be said, that Germany at that time was
represented in Washington in a downright incredibly
incompetent and incredibly unworthy way. If we hear that
in one passage Flynn writes that the stenographic
reports prepared for him daily contained enough material
to keep a divorce lawyer busy for months on end, then we
get a general idea of what went on. The Secret Service
maintained women agents in Washington and New York whose
job it was to sound out the members of the German
Embassy, Bernstorff included, whenever anything
important happened. One of these woman agents kept a
better class apartment in Washington in which the
gentlemen met their ladies, and where occasionally even
Secretary Of State Lansing dropped in to hear what was
new. On New Year's Day, 1916, when the news of the
sinking of the liner Persia became known in the national
capital, Bernstorff telephoned five women one after the
other in order to make sweet compliments to them and to
receive similar compliments in return, although in view
of the mood which news of the sinking of the Persia had
left behind in the State Department and the White House,
he really could not have been lacking in more serious
pursuits.
One of the ladies complimented Bernstorff on the fact
that he was a great lover, and always would be, even
were he a hundred years old. The rest of the gentlemen
of the embassy were not differently built. One, whom
Flynn designates as the best diplomatic aide in the
embassy, had a lady friend in New York, a married woman,
with whom he had a daily telephone conversation which
each time cost the German Reich twenty dollars, and whom
he visited frequently. He told her about everything that
happened, and she then took care to bring this
information to the right places. Even quite vulgar
remarks about Wilson and his consort were made during
the telephone conversations, and thus we can without
difficulty imagine that thereby the mood of the White
House vis-à-vis Germany did not get any friendlier. From
the conversation held at the beginning of March, 1916,
we learn how little the embassy knew about the country
and the Folk, and with what childish plans it concerned
itself. At that time a bill introduced by Senator Gore
lay before Congress to the effect that a proclamation be
issued warning the American Folk not to use armed
commercial vessels. President Wilson most bitterly
fought against the proposal. He needed the loss of
American lives in order to incite feelings against
Germany. People in the German embassy knew that the
prospects of the bill were not favorable, so they
earnestly concerned themselves with plans to buy
Congress. Only at first they did not know where to get
the money. On March 3rd, the Senate decided to postpone
the Gore Bill provisionally. The vote in the House was
supposed to follow a few days later. So the plan first
to buy the House was further eagerly pursued, but in
this case at least Bernstorff was reasonable enough to
advise against the plan decisively.
The reading of the Flynn article must leave a feeling of
deep indignation in the veins of every man of healthy
German blood, not only over Wilson's treacherous policy,
but rather, and especially, over the incredible
stupidity with which the German Embassy played into the
hands of this policy. Wilson duped Bernstorff more and
more from day to day. When Colonel House, his adviser,
returned from his European journey in May, 1916,
Bernstorff traveled to New York to meet him there.
Wilson, however, who vis-à-vis Bernstorff had acted as
though he had no objections to this meeting, secretly
instructed House not to have anything to do with the
Count, and to avoid him at all events. Thus it happened.
Bernstorff waited in New York in vain. Then he went to a
nearby beach and let himself be photographed in a
bathing suit with two lady friends in a very intimate
position. The photo accompanies Flynn's article. At that
time it fell into the hands of the Russian Ambassador
Bakhmateff, who had it enlarged and sent it to London,
where it was published in the newspapers under the
caption, The Dignified Ambassador, and it rendered a
capital service to Allied propaganda.
This is what the Munich Latest News writes now. The man
thus characterized, however, was a typical
representative of German foreign policy before the War,
just as he is also the typical representative of the
German foreign policy of the Republic. This fellow, who
would have been sentenced to hanging by a political
tribunal in any other State, is the German
representative at the League Of Nations in Geneva.
These men bear the guilt and the responsibility for
Germany's collapse, and, therefore, also for the loss of
the Southern Tyrol. And with them the guilt falls on all
parties and men who either caused such conditions, or
covered them up, or also tacitly countenanced them or
did not fight against them in the sharpest manner.
The men, however, who today brazenly try to deceive
public opinion anew, and would like to aver that others
are guilty of the loss of the Southern Tyrol, must first
give a detailed accounting of what they have done for
its preservation. As for my person, at any rate, I can
proudly declare that, since the time that I became a
man, I have always been for the strengthening of my
Folk. And when the War came, I fought on the German
Western Front for four and a half years, and since its
end I have been fighting against the corrupt creatures
whom Germany can thank for this disaster. Since that
time I have entered into no compromise with the
betrayers of the German Fatherland, either in domestic
or foreign policy matters, but immovably proclaim their
destruction one day as the aim of my life's work, and
the mission of the National Socialist Movement.
I can all the more calmly endure the yelping of the
cowardly bourgeois curs as well as that of the Patriotic
Leaguers, as I know the average poltroon of these
creatures, for me unspeakably contemptible, all too
well. That they also know me is the reason for their hue
and cry.
Back to book INDEX
Chapter 16: Summary
As a National Socialist, I
see in Italy to begin with the first possible ally of
Germany who can step out of the camp of the old
coalition of enemies, without this alliance signifying
an immediate war for Germany for which we are not
equipped militarily. According to my conviction, this
alliance will be of great benefit to Germany and Italy
alike. Even if its direct benefit should ultimately no
longer exist, it will never become detrimental, as long
as both nations represent their interests in the highest
sense of the word. As long as Germany views the
maintenance of the freedom and independence of our Folk
as the supreme aim of her foreign policy and wants to
secure this Folk the prerequisite for its daily life,
for so long will its foreign policy thinking be
determined by our Folk's territorial need. And for so
long will we not be able to have any internal or
external inducement to fall into enmity with a State
which does not in the least stand obstructively in our
way.
And as long as Italy wants to serve her real vital needs
as a truly national State, for just so long will she,
likewise attending to her territorial needs, have to
base her political thought and action on the enlargement
of Italian soil. The more proud and independent, the
more national the Italian Folk becomes, the less will
it in its development ever come into conflict with
Germany.
The areas of interest of these two countries, in a most
fortunate way, lie so widely apart from each other that
there are no natural areas of irritation.
A national conscious Germany and an equally proud Italy
will also ultimately be able to close the wounds left
behind by the World War in the understanding of their
friendship based on their frank and mutual community of
interests.
Southern Tyrol will thus some day have to fulfil a lofty
mission in the service of both peoples. If the Italians
and the Germans of this territory, once filled with a
responsibility for their own Folkdom, perceive and
understand the great tasks that Italy and Germany have
to solve, the petty disputes of the day will recede
vis-à-vis the higher mission of building a bridge of
frank, reciprocal understanding on the former borders of
Germany and Italy.
I know that, under the current regimes in Germany, this
is as exactly as impossible as it would be under a non
Fascist regime in Italy. For the forces which determine
German policy today do not desire any German resurgence,
but our destruction. They likewise want the destruction
of the present-day Italian Fascist State, and therefore
will leave nothing untried in order to sink both nations
into hate and hostility. France will seize upon any such
manifestation, be it only an act of thoughtlessness, and
use it to her own advantage with a thousand joys.
Only a National Socialist Germany will find the way to a
final understanding with a Fascist Italy, and finally
eliminate the danger of war between the two Folk. For
this old Europe was always a territory that was
dominated by political systems, and this will not be
otherwise at least for the humanly predictable future.
General European democracy will either be replaced by a
system of Jewish Marxist Bolshevism, to which all States
will succumb one after the other, or by a system of free
and unlinked national States, who, in the free play of
forces, will set their stamp on Europe in accordance
with the number and importance of their specific
Folkdom. It is also not good for Fascism to exist
isolated in Europe as an idea. Either the world of ideas
from which it stems is generalized, or Italy will one
day again succumb to the general ideas of another
Europe.
Thus, if we submit Germany's foreign policy
possibilities to a closer examination, only two States
remain in Europe as possible valuable allies for the
future: Italy and England. Italy's relation to England
itself is already a good one today, and, for reasons
which I have discussed in another passage, will hardly
be clouded in the immediate future. This, too, has
nothing to do with mutual sympathies, but rests, on the
Italian side above all, on a rational appraisal of the
actual power relations. Thus an aversion to a boundless
and unlimited French hegemony in Europe is common to
both States. For Italy: because her most vital European
interests are threatened; for England: because an
over-powerful France in Europe can inflict a new threat
on England's present-day naval and world supremacy which
in itself is no longer completely unquestionable.
That already today probably Spain and Hungary are also
to be reckoned as belonging to this community of
interests, even if only tacitly, lies grounded in
Spain's aversion to French colonial activity in North
Africa, as well as in Hungary's hostility to Yugoslavia,
which is at the same time supported by France.
If Germany would succeed in taking part in a new State
coalition in Europe, which either must lead to a shift
of emphasis in the League Of Nations itself, or allow
decisive power factors altogether outside the League Of
Nations to develop, then the first domestic political
prerequisite for a later active foreign policy would be
realizable. The state of disarmament imposed on us by
the Versailles treaty and thus our practical
defenselessness could come to an end, albeit slowly.
This is possible only if the coalition of victors itself
quarrels over this question, but never, however, in an
alliance with Russia, let alone in a union with other so
called oppressed nations, against the front of the
coalition of the former victor States that encircle us.
Then in the far future it may be possible to think of a
new association of nations, consisting of individual
States with a high national value, which could then
stand up to the threatening overwhelming of the world by
the American Union. For it seems to me that the
existence of English world rule inflicts less hardships
on present-day nations than the emergence of an American
world rule. Pan Europe cannot be summoned to the
solution of this problem, but only a Europe with free
and independent national States whose areas of interest
are divergent and precisely delimited.
Only then can the time ripen for Germany, secured by a
France pushed back within her own boundaries, and
supported by her Army born anew, to lead the way toward
the elimination of her territorial need. Once our Folk,
however, will have grasped this great geopolitical aim
in the east, the consequence will not only be clarity
regarding German foreign policy, but also stability, at
least for a humanly predictable time, will make it
possible to avoid political insanity’s like those which
ultimately entangled our Folk in the World War. And
then we will also have ultimately overcome the period of
this petty daily clamor and of the completely sterile
economic and border policy.
Germany then, also domestically, will have to take steps
toward the strongest concentration of her means of
power. She will have to realize that armies and navies
are set up and organized, not along romantic lines, but
according to practical requirements. Then she will
automatically select as our greatest task the formation
of a superior strong Land Army, since our future as a
matter of fact does not lie on the water, but in Europe
rather.
Only if we will have completely perceived the meaning of
this proposition and put an end to our Folk's
territorial need, in the east and on the largest scale,
along the lines of this perception will German economy
also cease to be a factor of world unrest which brings a
thousand dangers down upon us. It will then at least
serve the satisfaction of our domestic needs in their
major aspects. A Folk which no longer needs to shunt
off its rising rural generations into the big cities as
factory workers, but which instead can settle them as
free peasants on their own soil, will open up a domestic
sales market to German industry which can gradually
remove and exempt it from the frenzied struggle and
scramble for the so called place in the sun in the rest
of the world.
It is the foreign policy task of the National Socialist
Movement to prepare and ultimately to carry out this
development. It must also place foreign policy in the
service of the reorganization of our Folkdom on the
basis of its world view range of ideas. Even here it
must anchor the principle that we do not fight for
systems but for a living Folk, that is, for flesh and
blood, which must be preserved, and whose daily bread
must not be lacking so that in consequence of its
physical health it can also be healthy spiritually.
Just as it must step over a thousand obstacles,
misunderstandings and malignity’s in its struggle for
reform in its domestic policy, likewise in foreign
policy must it also clear away not only the conscious
betrayal of the country by Marxism, but also the rubbish
heap of worthless, indeed harmful phrases and ideas of
our national, bourgeois world. Thus the less
understanding there will be for the significance of our
struggle at the moment, all the more powerful will be
its success some day.
Why Italy today can primarily be considered as an ally
for Germany is connected with the fact that this country
is the only one whose domestic and foreign policy is
determined by purely Italian national interests. These
Italian national interests are the only ones which do
not contradict German interests, and, conversely, German
interests do not run counter to them. And this is
important not only for factual reasons, but also on the
basis of the following:
The war against Germany was fought by an overpowering
world coalition in which only a part of the States could
have a direct interest in Germany's destruction. In not
a few countries, the shift to war was brought by
influences which in no way sprang from the real domestic
interests of these nations, or even which could also be
to their benefit. A monstrous war propaganda began to
befog public opinion of these Folks, and to stir them
into enthusiasm for a war which for these very Folks in
part could not bring any gain at all, and indeed
sometimes ran downright counter to their real interests.
International world Jewry was the power which instigated
this enormous war propaganda. For as senseless as the
participation in the War by many of these nations may
have been, seen from the viewpoint of their own
interests, it was just as meaningful and logically
correct seen from the viewpoint of the interests of
world Jewry. It is not my task here to enter into a
discussion of the Jewish question as such. This cannot
take place in the framework of a necessarily brief and
compressed presentation. The following is said here only
[so much] in the interests of a better understanding:
Jewry is a Folk with a racial core that is not wholly
unitary. Nevertheless, as a Folk, it has special
intrinsic characteristics that separate it from all
other Folks living on the globe. Jewry is not a
religious community, but the religious bond between
Jews; rather is in reality the momentary governmental
system of the Jewish Folk. The Jew has never had a
territorially bounded State of his own in the manner of
Aryan States. Nevertheless, his religious community is a
real State, since it guarantees the preservation, the
increase and the future of the Jewish Folk. But this is
solely the task of the State. That the Jewish State is
subject to no territorial limitation, as is the case
with Aryan States, is connected with the character of
the Jewish Folk, which is lacking in the productive
forces for the construction and preservation of its own
territorial State.
Just as every Folk as a basic tendency of all its
Earthly actions possesses a mania for self preservation
as its driving force, likewise is it exactly so with
Jewry, too. Only here, in accord with their basically
different dispositions, the struggle for existence of
Aryan Folks and Jewry is also different in its forms.
The foundation of the Aryan struggle for life is the
soil, which he cultivates, and which provides the
general basis for an economy satisfying primarily its
own needs within its own orbit through the productive
forces of its own Folk.
Because of the lack of productive capacities of its own,
the Jewish Folk cannot carry out the construction of a
State, viewed in a territorial sense, but as a support
of its own existence it needs the work and creative
activities of other nations. Thus the existence of the
Jew himself becomes a parasitical one within the lives
of other Folks. Hence the ultimate goal of the Jewish
struggle for existence is the enslavement of
productively active Folks. In order to achieve this
goal, which in reality has represented Jewry's struggle
for existence at all times, the Jew makes use of all
weapons that are in keeping with the whole complex of
his character.
Therefore in domestic politics within the individual
nations he fights first for equal rights and later for
superior rights. The characteristics of cunning,
intelligence, astuteness, knavery, dissimulation, and so
on, rooted in the character of his Folkdom, serve him
as weapons thereto. They are as much stratagems in his
war of survival as those of other Folks in combat.
In foreign policy, he tries to bring nations into a
state of unrest, to divert them from their true
interests, and to plunge them into reciprocal wars, and
in this way gradually rise to mastery over them with the
help of the power of money and propaganda.
His ultimate goal is the denationalization, the
promiscuous bastardization of other Folks, the lowering
of the racial levy of the highest Folks, as well as the
domination of this racial mishmash through the
extirpation of the Folkish intelligentsia and its
replacement by the members of his own Folk.
The end of the Jewish world struggle therefore will
always be a bloody Bolshevization. In truth, this means
the destruction of all the intellectual upper classes
linked to their Folks so that he can rise to become the
master of a mankind become leaderless. Stupidity,
cowardice and baseness, therefore, play into his hands.
In bastards he secures for himself the first openings
for the penetration of an alien nation.
Hence the result of Jewish domination is always the ruin
of all culture, and finally the madness of the Jew
himself. For he is a parasite of nations, and his
victory signifies his own end as much as the death of
his victim.
With the collapse of the ancient world, the Jews
encountered young, in part still completely unspoiled,
Folks, sure in racial instinct, who protected
themselves against being infiltrated by them. He was a
foreigner, and all his lies and dissimulation helped him
little for nearly one and a half thousand years.
It was the feudal domination and the government of the
princes which first created a general situation which
allowed him to attach himself to the struggle of an
oppressed social class, indeed to make this struggle his
own in a short time. He received civil equality with the
French Revolution. With that the bridge was constructed
over which he could stride to the conquest of political
power within nations. The nineteenth century gave him a
dominating position within the economy of nations
through the building up of loan capital, based on ideas
regarding interest. Finally, through the subterfuge of
stock holdings, he placed himself in possession of a
great part of the production sites, and with the help of
the stock exchange he gradually became not only the
ruler of public economic life, but ultimately also of
political life. He supported this rule by means of the
intellectual contamination of nations with the help of
Freemasonry as well as by the work of the press become
dependent upon him. He found the potential strength for
the destruction of the bourgeois intellectual regime in
the newly rising fourth estate of the handicraftsmen,
just as once before the bourgeoisie had been the means
for the demolition of feudal domination. At the same
time, bourgeois stupidity and dishonest lack of
principle, avarice and cowardice worked into his hands.
He formed the vocational estate of the handicraftsmen
into a special class, which he now allowed to take up
the struggle against the national intelligentsia.
Marxism became the spiritual father of the Bolshevik
revolution. It is the weapon of terror which the Jew now
applies ruthlessly and brutally. The economic conquest
of Europe by the Jews was pretty much completed around
the turn of the century, and now he began to safeguard
it politically. That means, the first attempts to
extirpate the national intelligentsia were undertaken in
the form of revolutions.
He utilized the tensions between European nations, which
are in great part to be ascribed to their general need
for territory with the consequences which arise
therefrom, for his own advantage by systematically
inciting them to the World War.
The aim is the destruction of inherently anti Semitic
Russia as well as the destruction of the German Reich
which, in the administration and the Army, still offers
resistance to the Jew. The further aim is the overthrow
of those dynasties which had not yet been made subject
to a democracy dependent upon and led by Jews.
This Jewish war aim has at least in part been completely
achieved. Czarism and Kaiserism in Germany were
eliminated. With the help of the Bolshevik Revolution,
the Russian upper classes and also the Russian national
intelligentsia were murdered and completely extirpated
amid inhuman agonies and atrocities. For the Russian
Folk, the total number of victims of this Jewish
struggle for hegemony in Russia amounted to 28-30
million people in number of dead. This is fifteen times
more than the World War cost Germany. After the
successful Revolution, he completely tore down [further]
the bonds of order, of morality, of custom, and so on,
abolished marriage as a lofty institution, and instead
proclaimed a general copulation with the aim of breeding
a general inferior human mishmash, by way of a chaotic
bastardization, which by itself would be incapable of
leadership and which ultimately would no longer be able
to do without the Jews as its only intellectual element.
The future will show to what extent this has succeeded,
and to what extent now forces of a natural reaction can
still bring about a change of this most terrible crime
of all times against mankind. At the moment, he exerts
himself to lead the remaining States toward the same
condition. Thereby he is supported and covered in his
strivings and his actions by the bourgeois national
parties of the so called National Fatherland Leagues,
whereas Marxism, democracy, and the so called Christian
Center, emerge as aggressive shock troops. The bitterest
struggle for the victory of Jewry at the present time is
being waged in Germany. Here it is the National
Socialist Movement which alone has taken upon itself the
struggle against this execrable crime against mankind.
In all European States at the moment, a struggle, in
part quiet and violent, albeit often under wraps, is
being waged for political power.
Outside Russia, this struggle has first been decided in
France. There the Jew, favored by a number of
circumstances, has entered into a community of interests
with French national chauvinism. Since then Jewish stock
exchanges and French bayonets have been allies. This
struggle is undecided in England. There the Jewish
invasion still meets with an old British tradition. The
instincts of Anglo-Saxondom are still so sharp and alive
that one cannot speak of a complete victory of Jewry,
but rather, in part, the latter is still forced to
adjust its interests to those of the English. If the Jew
were to triumph in England, English interests would
recede into the background, just as in Germany today
German interests no longer are decisive, but rather
Jewish interests. On the other hand, if the Briton
triumphs, then a shift of England's attitude vis-à-vis
Germany can still take place.
The struggle of Jewry for its hegemony is also decided
in Italy. With the victory of Fascism in Italy, the
Italian Folk has triumphed. Even if the Jew is
compelled to try to adjust himself to Fascism in Italy
today, his attitude toward Fascism outside Italy
nevertheless reveals his inner view of it. Only her own
national interest is decisive and determining for
Italy's fate, since the memorable day when the Fascist
legions marched on Rome. The struggle of Jewry for its
hegemony is also decided in Italy. With the victory of
Fascism in Italy, the Italian Folk has triumphed. Even
if the Jew is compelled to try to adjust himself to
Fascism in Italy today, his attitude toward Fascism
outside Italy nevertheless reveals his inner view of it.
Only her own national interest is decisive and
determining for Italy's fate, since the memorable day
when the Fascist legions marched on Rome.
For this reason also no State is better suited than
Italy as an ally for Germany. It is consonant only with
the bottomless stupidity and dissembling baseness of our
so called Folkish representatives that they reject the
only State that today is ruled along national lines, and
as authentic German Folkish elements they prefer to
enter a world coalition with Jews. It is fortunate that
the time of these fools is played out in Germany. Thus
the German Folkish concept is released from the embrace
of these creatures, as petty as they are pitiful. It
will infinitely gain thereby.
1928
Back to book INDEX
A note by
Radio Islam:
Quote by Adolf Hitler on the Jews, from the summary at the end of the book,
written in 1928:
"The economic conquest of Europe by the Jews was pretty much
completed around the turn of the century, and now he began
to safeguard it politically. That means, the first attempts
to extirpate the national intelligentsia were undertaken in
the form of revolutions.
He utilized the tensions between European nations, which are
in great part to be ascribed to their general need for
territory with the consequences which arise therefrom, for
his own advantage by systematically inciting them to the
World War [One].
The aim is the destruction of inherently anti-Semitic Russia
as well as the destruction of the German
Reich which in the administration and the army still
offers
resistance to the Jew. The further aim is the
overthrow of those dynasties which had not yet been made
subject to a democracy dependent upon and led by Jews.
This Jewish war aim has at least in part been completely
achieved. Czarism and Kaiserism in Germany were eliminated.
With the help of the Bolshevik revolution the Russian upper
classes and also the Russian national intelligentsia were
murdered and completely extirpated amid inhuman agonies and
atrocities. For the Russian people the total number of
victims of this Jewish struggle for hegemony in Russia
amounted to 28-30 million people in number of dead. This is
fifteen times more than the World War cost Germany. After
the successful revolution he completely tore down [further]
the bonds of order, of morality, of custom, etc., abolished
marriage as a lofty institution and instead proclaimed a
general copulation with the aim of breeding a general
inferior human mish-mash, by way of a chaotic
bastardization, which by itself would be incapable of
leadership and which ultimately would no longer be able to
do without the Jews as its only intellectual element."
The last sentence: "After the successful revolution
he [the Jew] completely
tore down the bonds of order, of
morality, of custom, etc., abolished marriage as a lofty
institution and instead proclaimed a general copulation with the
aim of breeding a general inferior human mish-mash, by way of a
chaotic bastardization, which by itself would be incapable of
leadership and which ultimately would no longer be able to do
without the Jews as its only intellectual element."
- rings as true as ever, observing the doings of the agents of
Judaism in Western Europe and the U.S. and their
Hollywoodism
indoctrination/dumbification campaigns.
Jewish agent Count R. N. Courdenhove-Kalergi
- seen by many as the father of the modern European Union - in his
1925 book "Practical
Idealism" (Praktischer Idealismus), envisioned a future
where the Europeans were to become "Eurasian-Negroid"
"mongrels",
in contrast to "Europe's spiritual leader
race the Jews...".
|
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