Chapter XIII: German Alliance
Policy after the War
The erratic manner in which the foreign affairs of the Reich were
conducted was due to a lack of sound guiding principles for the formation of
practical and useful alliances. Not only was this state of affairs continued
after the Revolution, but it became even worse.
For the confused state of our political ideas in general
before the War may be looked upon as the chief cause of our defective
statesmanship; but in the post-War period this cause must be attributed to a
lack of honest intentions. It was natural that those parties who had fully
achieved their destructive purpose by means of the Revolution should feel that
it would not serve their interests if a policy of alliances were adopted which
must ultimately result in the restoration of a free German State. A development
in this direction would not be in conformity with the purposes of the November
crime. It would have interrupted and indeed put an end to the
internationalization of German national economy and German Labour. But what was
feared most of all was that a successful effort to make the Reich independent
of foreign countries might have an influence in domestic politics which one day
would turn out disastrous for those who now hold supreme power in the
government of the Reich. One cannot imagine the revival of a nation unless that
revival be preceded by a process of nationalization. Conversely, every
important success in the field of foreign politics must call forth a favourable
reaction at home. Experience proves that every struggle for liberty increases
the national sentiment and national self-consciousness and therewith gives rise
to a keener sensibility towards anti-national elements and tendencies. A state
of things, and persons also, that may be tolerated and even pass unnoticed in
times of peace will not only become the object of aversion when national
enthusiasm is aroused but will even provoke positive opposition, which
frequently turns out disastrous for them. In this connection we may recall the
spy-scare that became prevalent when the war broke out, when human passion
suddenly manifested itself to such a heightened degree as to lead to the most
brutal persecutions, often without any justifiable grounds, although everybody
knew that the danger resulting from spies is greater during the long periods of
peace; but, for obvious reasons, they do not then attract a similar amount of
public attention. For this reason the subtle instinct of the State parasites
who came to the surface of the national body through the November happenings
makes them feel at once that a policy of alliances which would restore the
freedom of our people and awaken national sentiment might possibly ruin their
own criminal existence.
Thus we may explain the fact that since 1918 the men who
have held the reins of government adopted an entirely negative attitude towards
foreign affairs and that the business of the State has been almost constantly
conducted in a systematic way against the interests of the German nation. For
that which at first sight seemed a matter of chance proved, on closer
examination, to be a logical advance along the road which was first publicly
entered upon by the November Revolution of 1918.
Undoubtedly a distinction ought to be made between (1) the
responsible administrators of our affairs of State, or rather those who ought
to be responsible; (2) the average run of our parliamentary politicasters, and
(3) the masses of our people, whose sheepish docility corresponds to their want
of intelligence.
The first know what they want. The second fall into line
with them, either because they have been already schooled in what is afoot or
because they have not the courage to take an uncompromising stand against a
course which they know and feel to be detrimental. The third just submit to it
because they are too stupid to understand.
While the German National Socialist Labour Party was only
a small and practically unknown society, problems of foreign policy could have
only a secondary importance in the eyes of many of its members. This was the
case especially because our movement has always proclaimed the principle, and
must proclaim it, that the freedom of the country in its foreign relations is
not a gift that will be bestowed upon us by Heaven or by any earthly Powers,
but can only be the fruit of a development of our inner forces. We must first
root out the causes which led to our collapse and we must eliminate all those
who are profiting by that collapse. Then we shall be in a position to take up
the fight for the restoration of our freedom in the management of our foreign
relations.
It will be easily understood therefore why we did not
attach so much importance to foreign affairs during the early stages of our
young movement, but preferred to concentrate on the problem of internal reform.
But when the small and insignificant society expanded and finally
grew too large for its first framework, the young organization assumed the
importance of a great association and we then felt it incumbent on us to take a
definite stand on problems regarding the development of a foreign policy. It
was necessary to lay down the main lines of action which would not only be in
accord with the fundamental ideas of our Weltanschhauung but would
actually be an expansion of it in the practical world of foreign affairs.
Just because our people have had no political education in matters
concerning our relations abroad, it was necessary to teach the leaders in the
various sections of our movement, and also the masses of the people, the chief
principles which ought to guide the development of our foreign relations. That
was one of the first tasks to be accomplished in order to prepare the ground
for the practical carrying out of a foreign policy which would win back the
independence of the nation in managing its external affairs and thus restore
the real sovereignty of the Reich.
The fundamental and guiding principles which we must
always bear in mind when studying this question is that foreign policy is only
a means to an end and that the sole end to be pursued is the welfare of our own
people. Every problem in foreign politics must be considered from this point of
view, and this point of view alone. Shall such and such a solution prove
advantageous to our people now or in the future, or will it injure their
interests? That is the question.
This is the sole preoccupation that must occupy our minds
in dealing with a question. Party politics, religious considerations,
humanitarian ideals – all such and all other preoccupations must absolutely give
way to this.
Before the War the purpose to which German foreign policy
should have been devoted was to assure the supply of material necessities for
the maintenance of our people and their children. And the way should have been
prepared which would lead to this goal. Alliances should have been established
which would have proved beneficial to us from this point of view and would have
brought us the necessary auxiliary support. The task to be accomplished is the
same today, but with this difference: In pre-War times it was a question of
caring for the maintenance of the German people, backed up by the power which a
strong and independent State then possessed, but our task today is to make our
nation powerful once again by re-establishing a strong and independent State.
The re-establishment of such a State is the prerequisite and necessary
condition which must be fulfilled in order that we may be able subsequently to
put into practice a foreign policy which will serve to guarantee the existence
of our people in the future, fulfilling their needs and furnishing them with
those necessities of life which they lack. In other words, the aim which
Germany ought to pursue today in her foreign policy is to prepare the way for
the recovery of her liberty tomorrow. In this connection there is a fundamental
principle which we must keep steadily before our minds. It is this: The
possibility of winning back the independence of a nation is not absolutely
bound up with the question of territorial reintegration but it will suffice if
a small remnant, no matter how small, of this nation and State will exist,
provided it possesses the necessary independence to become not only the vehicle
of' the common spirit of the whole people but also to prepare the way for the
military fight to reconquer the nation's liberty.
When a people who amount to a hundred million souls
tolerate the yoke of common slavery in order to prevent the territory belonging
to their State from being broken up and divided, that is worse than if such a
State and such a people were dismembered while one fragment still retained its
complete independence. Of course, the natural proviso here is that this
fragment must be inspired with a consciousness of the solemn duty that devolves
upon it, not only to proclaim persistently the inviolable unity of its
spiritual and cultural life with that of its detached members but also to
prepare the means that are necessary for the military conflict which will
finally liberate and re-unite the fragments that are suffering under
oppression.
One must also bear in mind the fact that the restoration
of lost districts which were formerly parts of the State, both ethnically and
politically, must in the first instance be a question of winning back political
power and independence for the motherland itself, and that in such cases the
special interests of the lost districts must be uncompromisingly regarded as a
matter of secondary importance in the face of the one main task, which is to
win back the freedom of the central territory. For the detached and oppressed
fragments of a nation or an imperial province cannot achieve their liberation
through the expression of yearnings and protests on the part of the oppressed
and abandoned, but only when the portion which has more or less retained its
sovereign independence can resort to the use of force for the purpose of
reconquering those territories that once belonged to the common fatherland.
Therefore, in order to reconquer lost territories the first condition
to be fulfilled is to work energetically for the increased welfare and
reinforcement of the strength of that portion of the State which has remained
over after the partition. Thus the unquenchable yearning which slumbers in the
hearts of the people must be awakened and restrengthened by bringing new forces
to its aid, so that when the hour comes all will be devoted to the one purpose
of liberating and uniting the whole people. Therefore, the interests of the
separated territories must be subordinated to the one purpose. That one purpose
must aim at obtaining for the central remaining portion such a measure of power
and might that will enable it to enforce its will on the hostile will of the
victor and thus redress the wrong. For flaming protests will not restore the
oppressed territories to the bosom of a common Reich. That can be done only
through the might of the sword.
The forging of this sword is a work that has to be done
through the domestic policy which must be adopted by a national government. To
see that the work of forging these arms is assured, and to recruit the men who
will bear them, that is the task of the foreign policy.
In the first volume of this book I discussed the
inadequacy of our policy of alliances before the War. There were four possible
ways to secure the necessary foodstuffs for the maintenance of our people. Of
these ways the fourth, which was the most unfavourable, was chosen. Instead of
a sound policy of territorial expansion in Europe, our rulers embarked on a
policy of colonial and trade expansion. That policy was all the more mistaken
inasmuch as they presumed that in this way the danger of an armed conflict
would be averted. The result of the attempt to sit on many stools at the same
time might have been foreseen. It let us fall to the ground in the midst of
them all. And the World War was only the last reckoning presented to the Reich
to pay for the failure of its foreign policy.
The right way that should have been taken in those days
was the third way I indicated: namely, to increase the strength of the Reich as
a Continental Power by the acquisition of new territory in Europe. And at the
same time a further expansion, through the subsequent acquisition of colonial
territory, might thus be brought within the range of practical politics. Of
course, this policy could not have been carried through except in alliance with
England, or by devoting such abnormal efforts to the increase of military force
and armament that, for forty or fifty years, all cultural undertakings would
have to be completely relegated to the background. This responsibility might
very well have been undertaken. The cultural importance of a nation is almost
always dependent on its political freedom and independence. Political freedom
is a prerequisite condition for the existence, or rather the creation, of great
cultural undertakings. Accordingly no sacrifice can be too great when there is
question of securing the political freedom of a nation. What might have to be
deducted from the budget expenses for cultural purposes, in order to meet
abnormal demands for increasing the military power of the State, can be
generously paid back later on. Indeed, it may be said that after a State has
concentrated all its resources in one effort for the purpose of securing its
political independence a certain period of ease and renewed equilibrium sets
in. And it often happens that the cultural spirit of the nation, which had been
heretofore cramped and confined, now suddenly blooms forth. Thus Greece
experienced the great Periclean era after the miseries it had suffered during
the Persian Wars. And the Roman Republic turned its energies to the cultivation
of a higher civilization when it was freed from the stress and worry of the
Punic Wars.
Of course, it could not be expected that a parliamentary
majority of feckless and stupid people would be capable of deciding on such a
resolute policy for the absolute subordination of all other national interests
to the one sole task of preparing for a future conflict of arms which would
result in establishing the security of the State. The father of Frederick the
Great sacrificed everything in order to be ready for that conflict; but the
fathers of our absurd parliamentarian democracy, with the Jewish hall-mark,
could not do it.
That is why, in pre-War times, the military preparation
necessary to enable us to conquer new territory in Europe was only very
mediocre, so that it was difficult to obtain the support of really helpful
allies.
Those who directed our foreign affairs would not entertain even the
idea of systematically preparing for war. They rejected every plan for the
acquisition of territory in Europe. And by preferring a policy of colonial and
trade expansion, they sacrificed the alliance with England, which was then
possible. At the same time they neglected to seek the support of Russia, which
would have been a logical proceeding. Finally they stumbled into the World War,
abandoned by all except the ill-starred Habsburgs.
The characteristic of our present foreign policy is that
it follows no discernible or even intelligible lines of action. Whereas before
the War a mistake was made in taking the fourth way that I have mentioned, and
this was pursued only in a halfhearted manner, since the Revolution not even
the sharpest eye can detect any way that is being followed. Even more than
before the War, there is absolutely no such thing as a systematic plan, except
the systematic attempts that are made to destroy the last possibility of a
national revival.
If we make an impartial examination of the situation
existing in Europe today as far as concerns the relation of the various Powers
to one another, we shall arrive at the following results:
For the past three hundred years the history of our
Continent has been definitely determined by England's efforts to keep the
European States opposed to one another in an equilibrium of forces, thus
assuring the necessary protection of her own rear while she pursued the great
aims of British world-policy.
The traditional tendency of British diplomacy ever since
the reign of Queen Elizabeth has been to employ systematically every possible
means to prevent any one Power from attaining a preponderant position over the
other European Powers and, if necessary, to break that preponderance by means
of armed intervention. The only parallel to this has been the tradition of the
Prussian Army. England has made use of various forces to carry out its purpose,
choosing them according to the actual situation or the task to be faced; but
the will and determination to use them has always been the same. The more
difficult England's position became in the course of history the more the
British Imperial Government considered it necessary to maintain a condition of
political paralysis among the various European States, as a result of their
mutual rivalries. When the North American colonies obtained their political
independence it became still more necessary for England to use every effort to
establish and maintain the defence of her flank in Europe. In accordance with
this policy she reduced Spain and the Netherlands to the position of inferior
naval Powers. Having accomplished this, England concentrated all her forces
against the increasing strength of France, until she brought about the downfall
of Napoleon Bonaparte and therewith destroyed the military hegemony of France,
which was the most dangerous rival that England had to fear.
The change of attitude in British statesmanship towards
Germany took place only very slowly, not only because the German nation did not
represent an obvious danger for England as long as it lacked national
unification, but also because public opinion in England, which had been
directed to other quarters by a system of propaganda that had been carried out
for a long time, could be turned to a new direction only by slow degrees. In
order to reach the proposed ends the calmly reflecting statesman had to bow to
popular sentiment, which is the most powerful motive-force and is at the same
time the most lasting in its energy. When the statesman has attained one of his
ends, he must immediately turn his thoughts to others; but only by degrees and
the slow work of propaganda can the sentiment of the masses be shaped into an
instrument for the attainment of the new aims which their leaders have decided
on.
As early as 1870-71 England had decided on the new stand it would
take. On certain occasions minor oscillations in that policy were caused by the
growing influence of America in the commercial markets of the world and also by
the increasing political power of Russia; but, unfortunately, Germany did not
take advantage of these and, therefore, the original tendency of British
diplomacy was only reinforced.
England looked upon Germany as a Power which was of world
importance commercially and politically and which, partly because of its
enormous industrial development, assumed such threatening proportions that the
two countries already contended against one another in the same sphere and with
equal energy. The so-called peaceful conquest of the world by commercial
enterprise, which, in the eyes of those who governed our public affairs at that
time, represented the highest peak of human wisdom, was just the thing that led
English statesmen to adopt a policy of resistance. That this resistance assumed
the form of an organized aggression on a vast scale was in full conformity with
a type of statesmanship which did not aim at the maintenance of a dubious world
peace but aimed at the consolidation of British world-hegemony. In carrying out
this policy, England allied herself with those countries which had a definite
military importance. And that was in keeping with her traditional caution in
estimating the power of her adversary and also in recognizing her own temporary
weakness. That line of conduct cannot be called unscrupulous; because such a
comprehensive organization for war purposes must not be judged from the heroic
point of view but from that of expediency. The object of a diplomatic policy
must not be to see that a nation goes down heroically but rather that it
survives in a practical way. Hence every road that leads to this goal is
opportune and the failure to take it must be looked upon as a criminal neglect
of duty.
When the German Revolution took place England's fears of a German
world hegemony came to a satisfactory end.
From that time it was not an English interest to see
Germany totally cancelled from the geographic map of Europe. On the contrary,
the astounding collapse which took place in November 1918 found British
diplomacy confronted with a situation which at first appeared untenable.
For four-and-a-half years the British Empire had fought to break the
presumed preponderance of a Continental Power. A sudden collapse now happened
which removed this Power from the foreground of European affairs. That collapse
disclosed itself finally in the lack of even the primordial instinct of
self-preservation, so that European equilibrium was destroyed within
forty-eight hours. Germany was annihilated and France became the first
political Power on the Continent of Europe.
The tremendous propaganda which was carried on during
this war for the purpose of encouraging the British public to stick it out to
the end aroused all the primitive instincts and passions of the populace and
was bound eventually to hang as a leaden weight on the decisions of British
statesmen. With the colonial, economical and commercial destruction of Germany,
England's war aims were attained. Whatever went beyond those aims was an
obstacle to the furtherance of British interests. Only the enemies of England
could profit by the disappearance of Germany as a Great Continental Power in
Europe. In November 1918, however, and up to the summer of 1919, it was not
possible for England to change its diplomatic attitude; because during the long
war it had appealed, more than it had ever done before, to the feelings of the
populace. In view of the feeling prevalent among its own people, England could
not change its foreign policy; and another reason which made that impossible
was the military strength to which other European Powers had now attained.
France had taken the direction of peace negotiations into her own hands and
could impose her law upon the others. During those months of negotiations and
bargaining the only Power that could have altered the course which things were
taking was Germany herself; but Germany was torn asunder by a civil war, and
her so-called statesmen had declared themselves ready to accept any and every
dictate imposed on them.
Now, in the comity of nations, when one nation loses its
instinct for self-preservation and ceases to be an active member it sinks to
the level of an enslaved nation and its territory will have to suffer the fate
of a colony.
To prevent the power of France from becoming too great,
the only form which English negotiations could take was that of participating
in France's lust for aggrandizement.
As a matter of fact, England did not attain the ends for
which she went to war. Not only did it turn out impossible to prevent a
Continental Power from obtaining a preponderance over the ratio of strength in
the Continental State system of Europe, but a large measure of preponderance
had been obtained and firmly established.
In 1914 Germany, considered as a military State, was
wedged in between two countries, one of which had equal military forces at its
disposal and the other had greater military resources. Then there was England's
overwhelming supremacy at sea. France and Russia alone hindered and opposed the
excessive aggrandizement of Germany. The unfavourable geographical situation of
the Reich, from the military point of view, might be looked upon as another
coefficient of security against an exaggerated increase of German power. From
the naval point of view, the configuration of the coast-line was unfavourable
in case of a conflict with England. And though the maritime frontier was short
and cramped, the land frontier was widely extended and open.
France's position is different today. It is the first
military Power without a serious rival on the Continent. It is almost entirely
protected by its southern frontier against Spain and Italy. Against Germany it
is safeguarded by the prostrate condition of our country. A long stretch of its
coast-line faces the vital nervous system of the British Empire. Not only could
French aeroplanes and long-range batteries attack the vital centres of the
British system, but submarines can threaten the great British commercial
routes. A submarine campaign based on France's long Atlantic coast and on the
European and North African coasts of the Mediterranean would have disastrous
consequences for England.
Thus the political results of the war to prevent the
development of German power was the creation of a French hegemony on the
Continent. The military result was the consolidation of France as the first
Continental Power and the recognition of American equality on the sea. The
economic result was the cession of great spheres of British interests to her
former allies and associates.
The Balkanization of Europe, up to a certain degree, was
desirable and indeed necessary in the light of the traditional policy of Great
Britain, just as France desired the Balkanization of Germany.
What England has always desired, and will continue to
desire, is to prevent any one Continental Power in Europe from attaining a
position of world importance. Therefore England wishes to maintain a definite
equilibrium of forces among the European States – for this equilibrium seems a
necessary condition of England's world-hegemony.
What France has always desired, and will continue to
desire, is to prevent Germany from becoming a homogeneous Power. Therefore
France wants to maintain a system of small German States whose forces would
balance one another and over which there should be no central government. Then,
by acquiring possession of the left bank of the Rhine, she would have fulfilled
the pre-requisite conditions for the establishment and security of her hegemony
in Europe.
The final aims of French diplomacy must be in perpetual
opposition to the final tendencies of British statesmanship.
Taking these considerations as a starting-point, anyone
who investigates the possibilities that exist for Germany to find allies must
come to the conclusion that there remains no other way of forming an alliance
except to approach England. The consequences of England's war policy were and
are disastrous for Germany. However, we cannot close our eyes to the fact that,
as things stand today, the necessary interests of England no longer demand the
destruction of Germany. On the contrary, British diplomacy must tend more and
more, from year to year, towards curbing France's unbridled lust after
hegemony. Now, a policy of alliances cannot be pursued by bearing past
grievances in mind, but it can be rendered fruitful by taking account of past
experiences. Experience should have taught us that alliances formed for
negative purposes suffer from intrinsic weakness. The destinies of nations can
be welded together only under the prospect of a common success, of common gain
and conquest, in short, a common extension of power for both contracting
parties.
The ignorance of our people on questions of foreign politics is
clearly demonstrated by the reports in the daily Press which talk about
"friendship towards Germany" on the part of one or the other foreign statesman,
whereby this professed friendship is taken as a special guarantee that such
persons will champion a policy that will be advantageous to our people. That
kind of talk is absurd to an incredible degree. It means speculating on the
unparalleled simplicity of the average German philistine when he comes to
talking politics. There is not any British, American, or Italian statesman who
could ever be described as 'pro-German'. Every Englishman must naturally be
British first of all. The same is true of every American. And no Italian
statesman would be prepared to adopt a policy that was not pro-Italian.
Therefore, anyone who expects to form alliances with foreign nations on the
basis of a pro-German feeling among the statesmen of other countries is either
an ass or a deceiver. The necessary condition for linking together the
destinies of nations is never mutual esteem or mutual sympathy, but rather the
prospect of advantages accruing to the contracting parties. It is true that a
British statesman will always follow a pro-British and not a pro-German policy;
but it is also true that certain definite interests involved in this
pro-British policy may coincide on various grounds with German interests.
Naturally that can be so only to a certain degree and the situation may one day
be completely reversed. But the art of statesmanship is shown when at certain
periods there is question of reaching a certain end and when allies are found
who must take the same road in order to defend their own interests.
The practical application of these principles at the present time
must depend on the answer given to the following questions: What States are not
vitally interested in the fact that, by the complete abolition of a German
Central Europe, the economic and military power of France has reached a
position of absolute hegemony? Which are the States that, in consideration of
the conditions which are essential to their own existence and in view of the
tradition that has hitherto been followed in conducting their foreign policy,
envisage such a development as a menace to their own future?
Finally, we must be quite clear on the following point:
France is and will remain the implacable enemy of Germany. It does not matter
what Governments have ruled or will rule in France, whether Bourbon or Jacobin,
Napoleonic or Bourgeois-Democratic, Clerical Republican or Red Bolshevik, their
foreign policy will always be directed towards acquiring possession of the
Rhine frontier and consolidating France's position on this river by disuniting
and dismembering Germany.
England did not want Germany to be a world Power. France
desired that there should be no Power called Germany. Therefore there was a
very essential difference. To-day we are not fighting for our position as a
World-Power but only for the existence of our country, for national unity and
the daily bread of our children. Taking this point of view into consideration,
only two States remain to us as possible allies in Europe - England and Italy.
England is not pleased to see a France on whose military power there
is no check in Europe, so that one day she might undertake the support of a
policy which in some way or other might come into conflict with British
interests. Nor can England be pleased to see France in possession of such
enormous coal and iron mines in Western Europe as would make it possible for
her one day to play a role in world-commerce which might threaten danger to
British interests. Moreover, England can never be pleased to see a France whose
political position on the Continent, owing to the dismemberment of the rest of
Europe, seems so absolutely assured that she is not only able to resume a
French world-policy on great lines but would even find herself compelled to do
so. The bombs which were once dropped by the Zeppelins might be multiplied by
the thousand every night. The military predominance of France is a weight that
presses heavily on the hearts of the World Empire over which Great Britain
rules.
Nor can Italy desire, nor will she desire, any further strengthening
of France's power in Europe. The future of Italy will be conditioned by the
development of events in the Mediterranean and by the political situation in
the area surrounding that sea. The reason that led Italy into the War was not a
desire to contribute towards the aggrandizement of France but rather to deal
her hated Adriatic rival a mortal blow. Any further increase of France's power
on the Continent would hamper the development of Italy's future, and Italy does
not deceive herself by thinking that racial kindred between the nations will in
any way eliminate rivalries.
Serious and impartial consideration proves that it is
these two States, Great Britain and Italy, whose natural interests not only do
not contrast with the conditions essential to the existence of the German
nation but are identical with them, to a certain extent.
But when we consider the possibilities of alliances we
must be careful not to lose sight of three factors. The first factor concerns
ourselves; the other two concern the two States I have mentioned.
Is it at all possible to conclude an alliance with Germany
as it is today? Can a Power which would enter into an alliance for the purpose
of securing assistance in an effort to carry out its own offensive aims – can
such a Power form an alliance with a State whose rulers have for years long
presented a spectacle of deplorable incompetence and pacifist cowardice and
where the majority of the people, blinded by democratic and Marxist teachings,
betray the interests of their own people and country in a manner that cries to
Heaven for vengeance? As things stand today, can any Power hope to establish
useful relations and hope to fight together for the furtherance of their common
interests with this State which manifestly has neither the will nor the courage
to move a finger even in the defence of its bare existence? Take the case of a
Power for which an alliance must be much more than a pact to guarantee a state
of slow decomposition, such as happened with the old and disastrous Triple
Alliance. Can such a Power associate itself for life or death with a State
whose most characteristic signs of activity consist of a rampant servility in
external relations and a scandalous repression of the national spirit at home?
Can such a Power be associated with a State in which there is nothing of
greatness, because its whole policy does not deserve it? Or can alliances be
made with Governments which are in the hands of men who are despised by their
own fellow-citizens and consequently are not respected abroad?
No. A self-respecting Power which expects something more
from alliances than commissions for greedy Parliamentarians will not and cannot
enter into an alliance with our present-day Germany. Our present inability to
form alliances furnishes the principle and most solid basis for the combined
action of the enemies who are robbing us. Because Germany does not defend
itself in any other way except by the flamboyant protests of our
parliamentarian elect, there is no reason why the rest of the world should take
up the fight in our defence. And God does not follow the principle of granting
freedom to a nation of cowards, despite all the implications of our 'patriotic'
associations. Therefore, for those States which have not a direct interest in
our annihilation no other course remains open except to participate in France's
campaign of plunder, at least to make it impossible for the strength of France
to be exclusively aggrandized thereby.
In the second place, we must not forget that among the
nations which were formerly our enemies mass-propaganda has turned the opinions
and feelings of large sections of the population in a fixed direction. When for
years long a foreign nation has been presented to the public as a horde of
'Huns', 'Robbers', 'Vandals', etc., they cannot suddenly be presented as
something different, and the enemy of yesterday cannot be recommended as the
ally of tomorrow.
But the third factor deserves greater attention, since it
is of essential importance for establishing future alliances in Europe.
From the political point of view it is not in the interests of Great
Britain that Germany should be ruined even still more, but such a proceeding
would be very much in the interests of the international money-markets
manipulated by the Jew. The cleavage between the official, or rather
traditional, British statesmanship and the controlling influence of the Jew on
the money-markets is nowhere so clearly manifested as in the various attitudes
taken towards problems of British foreign policy. Contrary to the interests and
welfare of the British State, Jewish finance demands not only the absolute
economic destruction of Germany but its complete political enslavement. The
internationalization of our German economic system, that is to say, the
transference of our productive forces to the control of Jewish international
finance, can be completely carried out only in a State that has been
politically Bolshevized. But the Marxist fighting forces, commanded by
international and Jewish stock-exchange capital, cannot finally smash the
national resistance in Germany without friendly help from outside. For this
purpose French armies would first have to invade and overcome the territory of
the German Reich until a state of international chaos would set in, and then
the country would have to succumb to Bolshevik storm troops in the service of
Jewish international finance.
Hence it is that at the present time the Jew is the great
agitator for the complete destruction of Germany. Whenever we read of attacks
against Germany taking place in any part of the world the Jew is always the
instigator. In peace-time, as well as during the War, the Jewish-Marxist
stock-exchange Press systematically stirred up hatred against Germany, until
one State after another abandoned its neutrality and placed itself at the
service of the world coalition, even against the real interests of its own
people.
The Jewish way of reasoning thus becomes quite clear. The
Bolshevization of Germany, that is to say, the extermination of the patriotic
and national German intellectuals, thus making it possible to force German
Labour to bear the yoke of international Jewish finance – that is only the
overture to the movement for expanding Jewish power on a wider scale and
finally subjugating the world to its rule. As has so often happened in history,
Germany is the chief pivot of this formidable struggle. If our people and our
State should fall victims to these oppressors of the nations, lusting after
blood and money, the whole earth would become the prey of that hydra. Should
Germany be freed from its grip, a great menace for the nations of the world
would thereby be eliminated.
It is certain that Jewry uses all its subterranean
activities not only for the purpose of keeping alive old national enmities
against Germany but even to spread them farther and render them more acute
wherever possible. It is no less certain that these activities are only very
partially in keeping with the true interests of the nations among whose people
the poison is spread. As a general principle, Jewry carries on its campaign in
the various countries by the use of arguments that are best calculated to
appeal to the mentality of the respective nations and are most likely to
produce the desired results; for Jewry knows what the public feeling is in each
country. Our national stock has been so much adulterated by the mixture of
alien elements that, in its fight for power, Jewry can make use of the more or
less 'cosmopolitan' circles which exist among us, inspired by the pacifist and
international ideologies. In France they exploit the well-known and accurately
estimated chauvinistic spirit. In England they exploit the commercial and
world-political outlook. In short, they always work upon the essential
characteristics that belong to the mentality of each nation. When they have in
this way achieved a decisive influence in the political and economic spheres
they can drop the limitations which their former tactics necessitated, now
disclosing their real intentions and the ends for which they are fighting.
Their work of destruction now goes ahead more quickly, reducing one State after
another to a mass of ruins on which they will erect the everlasting and
sovereign Jewish Empire.
In England, and in Italy, the contrast between the better
kind of solid statesmanship and the policy of the Jewish stock-exchange often
becomes strikingly evident.
Only in France there exists today more than ever before a
profound accord between the views of the stock-exchange, controlled by the
Jews, and the chauvinistic policy pursued by French statesmen. This identity of
views constitutes an immense, danger for Germany. And it is just for this
reason that France is and will remain by far the most dangerous enemy. The
French people, who are becoming more and more obsessed by negroid ideas,
represent a threatening menace to the existence of the white race in Europe,
because they are bound up with the Jewish campaign for world-domination. For
the contamination caused by the influx of negroid blood on the Rhine, in the
very heart of Europe, is in accord with the sadist and perverse lust for
vengeance on the part of the hereditary enemy of our people, just as it suits
the purpose of the cool calculating Jew who would use this means of introducing
a process of bastardization in the very centre of the European Continent and,
by infecting the white race with the blood of an inferior stock, would destroy
the foundations of its independent existence.
France's activities in Europe today, spurred on by the
French lust for vengeance and systematically directed by the Jew, are a
criminal attack against the life of the white race and will one day arouse
against the French people a spirit of vengeance among a generation which will
have recognized the original sin of mankind in this racial pollution.
As
far as concerns Germany, the danger which France represents involves the duty
of relegating all sentiment to a subordinate place and extending the hand to
those who are threatened with the same menace and who are not willing to suffer
or tolerate France's lust for hegemony.
For a long time yet to come there will be only two Powers
in Europe with which it may be possible for Germany to conclude an alliance.
These Powers are Great Britain and Italy.
If we take the trouble to cast a glance backwards on the
way in which German foreign policy has been conducted since the Revolution we
must, in view of the constant and incomprehensible acts of submission on the
part. of our governments, either lose heart or become fired with rage and take
up the cudgels against such a regime. Their way of acting cannot be attributed
to a want of understanding, because what seemed to every thinking man to be
inconceivable was accomplished by the leaders of the November parties with
their Cyclopean intellects. They bowed to France and begged her favour. Yes,
during all these recent years, with the touching simplicity of incorrigible
visionaries, they went on their knees to France again and again. They
perpetuaily wagged their tails before the Grande Nation. And in each
trick-o'-the-loop which the French hangmen performed with his rope they
recognized a visible change of feeling. Our real political wire-pullers never
shared in this absurd credulity. The idea of establishing a friendship with
France was for them only a means of thwarting every attempt on Germany's part
to adopt a practical policy of alliances. They had no illusions about French
aims or those of the men behind the scenes in France. What induced them to take
up such an attitude and to act as if they honestly believed that the fate of
Germany could possibly be changed in this way was the cool calculation that if
this did not happen our people might take the reins into their own hands and
choose another road.
Of course it is difficult for us to propose England as our
possible ally in the future. Our Jewish Press has always been adept in
concentrating hatred against England particularly. And many of our good German
simpletons perch on these branches which the Jews have limed to capture them.
They babble about a restoration of German sea power and protest against the
robbery of our colonies. Thus they furnish material which the contriving Jew
transmits to his clansmen in England, so that it can be used there for purposes
of practical propaganda. For our simple-minded bourgeoisie who indulge in
politics can take in only little by little the idea that today we have not to
fight for 'sea-power' and such things. Even before the War it was absurd to
direct the national energies of Germany towards this end without first having
secured our position in Europe. Such a hope today reaches that peak of
absurdity which may be called criminal in the domain of politics.
Often one becomes really desperate on seeing how the
Jewish wire-pullers succeeded in concentrating the attention of the people on
things which are only of secondary importance today, They incited the people to
demonstrations and protests while at the same time France was tearing our
nation asunder bit by bit and systematically removing the very foundations of
our national independence.
In this connection I have to think of the Wooden Horse in
the riding of which the Jew showed extraordinary skill during these years. I
mean South Tyrol.
Yes, South Tyrol. The reason why I take up this question
here is just because I want to call to account that shameful canaille who
relied on the ignorance and short memories of large sections of our people and
stimulated a national indignation which is as foreign to the real character of
our parliamentary impostors as the idea of respect for private property is to a
magpie.
I should like to state here that I was one of those who, at the time
when the fate of South Tyrol was being decided – that is to say, from August
1914 to November 1918 – took my place where that country also could have been
effectively defended, namely, in the Army. I did my share in the fighting
during those years, not merely to save South Tyrol from being lost but also to
save every other German province for the Fatherland.
The parliamentary sharpers did not take part in that
combat. The whole canaille played party politics. On the other hand, we carried
on the fight in the belief that a victorious issue of the War would enable the
German nation to keep South Tyrol also; but the loud-mouthed traitor carried on
a seditious agitation against such a victorious issue, until the fighting
Siegfried succumbed to the dagger plunged in his back. It was only natural that
the inflammatory and hypocritical speeches of the elegantly dressed
parliamentarians on the Vienna Rathaus Platz or in front of the Feldherrnhalle
in Munich could not save South Tyrol for Germany. That could be done only by
the fighting battalions at the Front. Those who broke up that fighting front
betrayed South Tyrol, as well as the other districts of Germany.
Anyone who thinks that the South Tyrol question can be
solved today by protests and manifestations and processions organized by
various associations is either a humbug or merely a German philistine.
In
this regard it must be quite clearly understood that we cannot get back the
territories we have lost if we depend on solemn imprecations before the throne
of the Almighty God or on pious hopes in a League of Nations, but only by the
force of arms.
Therefore the only remaining question is: Who is ready to
take up arms for the restoration of the lost territories?
As far as concerns myself personally, I can state with a
good conscience that I would have courage enough to take part in a campaign for
the reconquest of South Tyrol, at the head of parliamentarian storm battalions
consisting of parliamentarian gasconaders and all the party leaders, also the
various Councillors of State. Only the Devil knows whether I might have the
luck of seeing a few shells suddenly burst over this 'burning' demonstration of
protest. I think that if a fox were to break into a poultry yard his presence
would not provoke such a helter-skelter and rush to cover as we should witness
in the band of 'protesters'.
The vilest part of it all is that these talkers
themselves do not believe that anything can be achieved in this way. Each one
of them knows very well how harmless and ineffective their whole pretence is.
They do it only because it is easier now to babble about the restoration of
South Tyrol than to fight for its preservation in days gone by.
Each one plays the part that he is best capable of
playing in life. In those days we offered our blood. To-day these people are
engaged in whetting their tusks.
It is particularly interesting to note today how
legitimist circles in Vienna preen themselves on their work for the restoration
of South Tyrol. Seven years ago their august and illustrious Dynasty helped, by
an act of perjury and treason, to make it possible for the victorious
world-coalition to take away South Tyrol. At that time these circles supported
the perfidious policy adopted by their Dynasty and did not trouble themselves
in the least about the fate of South Tyrol or any other province. Naturally it
is easier today to take up the fight for this territory, since the present
struggle is waged with 'the weapons of the mind'. Anyhow, it is easier to join
in a 'meeting of protestation' and talk yourself hoarse in giving vent to the
noble indignation that fills your breast, or stain your finger with the writing
of a newspaper article, than to blow up a bridge, for instance, during the
occupation of the Ruhr.
The reason why certain circles have made the question of
South Tyrol the pivot of German-Italian relations during the past few years is
quite evident. Jews and Habsburg legitimists are greatly interested in
preventing Germany from pursuing a policy of alliance which might lead one day
to the resurgence of a free German fatherland. It is not out of love for South
Tyrol that they play this role today – for their policy would turn out
detrimental rather than helpful to the interests of that province – but through
fear of an agreement being established between Germany and Italy.
A tendency towards lying and calumny lies in the nature
of these people, and that explains how they can calmly and brazenly attempt to
twist things in such a way as to make it appear that we have 'betrayed' South
Tyrol.
There is one clear answer that must be given to these gentlemen. It
is this: Tyrol has been betrayed, in the first place, by every German who was
sound in limb and body and did not offer himself for service at the Front
during 1914–1918 to do his duty towards his country.
In the second place, Tyrol was betrayed by every man who,
during those years did not help to reinforce the national spirit and the
national powers of resistance, so as to enable the country to carry through the
War and keep up the fight to the very end.
In the third place, South Tyrol was betrayed by everyone
who took part in the November Revolution, either directly by his act or
indirectly by a cowardly toleration of it, and thus broke the sole weapon that
could have saved South Tyrol.
In the fourth place, South Tyrol was betrayed by those
parties and their adherents who put their signatures to the disgraceful
treaties of Versailles and St. Germain.
And so the matter stands, my brave gentlemen, who make
your protests only with words.
To-day I am guided by a calm and cool recognition of the
fact that the lost territories cannot be won back by the whetted tongues of
parliamentary spouters but only by the whetted sword; in other words, through a
fight where blood will have to be shed.
Now, I have no hesitations in saying that today, once the
die has been cast, it is not only impossible to win back South Tyrol through a
war but I should definitely take my stand against such a movement, because I am
convinced that it would not be possible to arouse the national enthusiasm of
the German people and maintain it in such a way as would be necessary in order
to carry through such a war to a successful issue. On the contrary, I believe
that if we have to shed German blood once again it would be criminal to do so
for the sake of liberating 200,000 Germans, when more than seven million
neighbouring Germans are suffering under foreign domination and a vital artery
of the German nation has become a playground for hordes of African negros.
If the German nation is to put an end to a state of things which
threatens to wipe it off the map of Europe it must not fall into the errors of
the pre-War period and make the whole world its enemy. But it must ascertain
who is its most dangerous enemy so that it can concentrate all its forces in a
struggle to beat him. And if, in order to carry through this struggle to
victory, sacrifices should be made in other quarters, future generations will
not condemn us for that. They will take account of the miseries and anxieties
which led us to make such a bitter decision, and in the light of that
consideration they will more clearly recognize the brilliancy of our success.
Again I must say here that we must always be guided by the
fundamental principle that, as a preliminary to winning back lost provinces,
the political independence and strength of the motherland must first be
restored.
The first task which has to be accomplished is to make
that independence possible and to secure it by a wise policy of alliances,
which presupposes an energetic management of our public affairs.
But it is just on this point that we, National
Socialists, have to guard against being dragged into the tow of our ranting
bourgeois patriots who take their cue from the Jew. It would be a disaster if,
instead of preparing for the coming struggle, our Movement also were to busy
itself with mere protests by word of mouth.
It was the fantastic idea of a Nibelungen alliance with
the decomposed body of the Habsburg State that brought about Germany's ruin.
Fantastic sentimentality in dealing with the possibilities of foreign policy
today would be the best means of preventing our revival for innumerable years
to come.
Here I must briefly answer the objections which may be
raised in regard to the three questions I have put.
1. Is it possible at all to form an alliance with the
present Germany, whose weakness is so visible to all eyes?
2. Can the ex-enemy nations change their attitude towards
Germany?
3. In other nations is not the influence of Jewry stronger than the
recognition of their own interests, and does not this influence thwart all
their good intentions and render all their plans futile?
I think that I have already dealt adequately with one of
the two aspects of the first point. Of course nobody will enter into an
alliance with the present Germany. No Power in the world would link its
fortunes with a State whose government does not afford grounds for the
slightest confidence. As regards the attempt which has been made by many of our
compatriots to explain the conduct of the Government by referring to the woeful
state of public feeling and thus excuse such conduct, I must strongly object to
that way of looking at things.
The lack of character which our people have shown during
the last six years is deeply distressing. The indifference with which they have
treated the most urgent necessities of our nation might veritably lead one to
despair. Their cowardice is such that it often cries to heaven for vengeance.
But one must never forget that we are dealing with a people who gave to the
world, a few years previously, an admirable example of the highest human
qualities. From the first days of August 1914 to the end of the tremendous
struggle between the nations, no people in the world gave a better proof of
manly courage, tenacity and patient endurance, than this people gave who are so
cast down and dispirited today. Nobody will dare to assert that the lack of
character among our people today is typical of them. What we have to endure
today, among us and around us, is due only to the influence of the sad and
distressing effects that followed the high treason committed on November 9th,
1918. More than ever before the word of the poet is true: that evil can only
give rise to evil. But even in this epoch those qualities among our people
which are fundamentally sound are not entirely lost. They slumber in the depths
of the national conscience, and sometimes in the clouded firmament we see
certain qualities like shining lights which Germany will one day remember as
the first symptoms of a revival. We often see young Germans assembling and
forming determined resolutions, as they did in 1914, freely and willingly to
offer themselves as a sacrifice on the altar of their beloved Fatherland.
Millions of men have resumed work, whole-heartedly and zealously, as if no
revolution had ever affected them. The smith is at his anvil once again. And
the farmer drives his plough. The scientist is in his laboratory. And everybody
is once again attending to his duty with the same zeal and devotion as
formerly.
The oppression which we suffer from at the hands of our
enemies is no longer taken, as it formerly was, as a matter for laughter; but
it is resented with bitterness and anger. There can be no doubt that a great
change of attitude has taken place.
This evolution has not yet taken the shape of a conscious
intention and movement to restore the political power and independence of our
nation; but the blame for this must be attributed to those utterly incompetent
people who have no natural endowments to qualify them for statesmanship and yet
have been governing our nation since 1918 and leading it to ruin.
Yes. If anybody accuses our people today he ought to be
asked: What is being done to help them? What are we to say of the poor support
which the people give to any measures introduced by the Government? Is it not
true that such a thing as a Government hardly exists at all? And must we
consider the poor support which it receives as a sign of a lack of vitality in
the nation itself; or is it not rather a proof of the complete failure of the
methods employed in the management of this valuable trust? What have our
Governments done to re-awaken in the nation a proud spirit of self-assertion,
up-standing manliness, and a spirit of righteous defiance towards its enemies?
In 1919, when the Peace Treaty was imposed on the German nation,
there were grounds for hoping that this instrument of unrestricted oppression
would help to reinforce the outcry for the freedom of Germany. Peace treaties
which make demands that fall like a whip-lash on the people turn out not
infrequently to be the signal of a future revival.
To what purpose could the Treaty of Versailles have been
exploited?
In the hands of a willing Government, how could this
instrument of unlimited blackmail and shameful humiliation have been applied
for the purpose of arousing national sentiment to its highest pitch? How could
a well-directed system of propaganda have utilized the sadist cruelty of that
treaty so as to change the indifference of the people to a feeling of
indignation and transform that indignation into a spirit of dauntless
resistance?
Each point of that Treaty could have been engraved on the
minds and hearts of the German people and burned into them until sixty million
men and women would find their souls aflame with a feeling of rage and shame;
and a torrent of fire would burst forth as from a furnace, and one common will
would be forged from it, like a sword of steel. Then the people would join in
the common cry: "To arms again!"
Yes. A treaty of that kind can be used for such a
purpose. Its unbounded oppression and its impudent demands were an excellent
propaganda weapon to arouse the sluggish spirit of the nation and restore its
vitality.
Then, from the child's story-book to the last newspaper in
the country, and every theatre and cinema, every pillar where placards are
posted and every free space on the hoardings should be utilized in the service
of this one great mission, until the faint-hearted cry, "Lord, deliver us,"
which our patriotic associations send up to Heaven today would be transformed
into an ardent prayer: "Almighty God, bless our arms when the hour comes. Be
just, as Thou hast always been just. Judge now if we deserve our freedom. Lord,
bless our struggle."
All opportunities were neglected and nothing was done.
Who will be surprised now if our people are not such as they should
be or might be? The rest of the world looks upon us only as its valet, or as a
kindly dog that will lick its master's hand after he has been whipped.
Of
course the possibilities of forming alliances with other nations are hampered
by the indifference of our own people, but much more by our Governments. They
have been and are so corrupt that now, after eight years of indescribable
oppression, there exists only a faint desire for liberty.
In order that our nation may undertake a policy of
alliances, it must restore its prestige among other nations, and it must have
an authoritative Government that is not a drudge in the service of foreign
States and the taskmaster of its own people, but rather the herald of the
national will.
If our people had a government which would look upon this
as its mission, six years would not have passed before a courageous foreign
policy on the part of the Reich would find a corresponding support among the
people, whose desire for freedom would be encouraged and intensified thereby.
The third objection referred to the difficulty of
changing the ex-enemy nations into friendly allies. That objection may be
answered as follows:
The general anti-German psychosis which has developed in
other countries through the war propaganda must of necessity continue to exist
as long as there is not a renaissance of the national conscience among the
German people, so that the German Reich may once again become a State which is
able to play its part on the chess-board of European politics and with whom the
others feel that they can play. Only when the Government and the people feel
absolutely certain of being able to undertake a policy of alliances can one
Power or another, whose interests coincide with ours, think of instituting a
system of propaganda for the purpose of changing public opinion among its own
people. Naturally it will take several years of persevering and ably directed
work to reach such a result. Just because a long period is needed in order to
change the public opinion of a country, it is necessary to reflect calmly
before such an enterprise be undertaken. This means that one must not enter
upon this kind of work unless one is absolutely convinced that it is worth the
trouble and that it will bring results which will be valuable in the future.
One must not try to change the opinions and feelings of a people by basing
one's actions on the vain cajolery of a more or less brilliant Foreign
Minister, but only if there be a tangible guarantee that the new orientation
will be really useful. Otherwise public opinion in the country dealt with may
be just thrown into a state of complete confusion. The most reliable guarantee
that can be given for the possibility of subsequently entering into an alliance
with a certain State cannot be found in the loquacious suavity of some
individual member of the Government, but in the manifest stability of a
definite and practical policy on the part of the Government as a whole, and in
the support which is given to that policy by the public opinion of the country.
The faith of the public in this policy will be strengthened all the more if the
Government organize one active propaganda to explain its efforts and secure
public support for them, and if public opinion favourably responds to the
Government's policy.
Therefore a nation in such a position as ours will be
looked upon as a possible ally if public opinion supports the Government's
policy and if both are united in the same enthusiastic determination to carry
through the fight for national freedom. That condition of affairs must be
firmly established before any attempt can be made to change public opinion in
other countries which, for the sake of defending their most elementary
interests, are disposed to take the road shoulder-to-shoulder with a companion
who seems able to play his part in defending those interests. In other words,
this means that they will be ready to establish an alliance.
For this purpose, however, one thing is necessary. Seeing
that the task of bringing about a radical change in the public opinion of a
country calls for hard work, and many do not at first understand what it means,
it would be both foolish and criminal to commit mistakes which could be used as
weapons in the hands of those who are opposed to such a change.
One must recognize the fact that it takes a long time for
a people to understand completely the inner purposes which a Government has in
view, because it is not possible to explain the ultimate aims of the
preparations that are being made to carry through a certain policy. In such
cases the Government has to count on the blind faith of the masses or the
intuitive instinct of the ruling caste that is more developed intellectually.
But since many people lack this insight, this political acumen and faculty for
seeing into the trend of affairs, and since political considerations forbid a
public explanation of why such and such a course is being followed, a certain
number of leaders in intellectual circles will always oppose new tendencies
which, because they are not easily grasped, can be pointed to as mere
experiments. And that attitude arouses opposition among conservative circles
regarding the measures in question.
For this reason a strict duty devolves upon everybody not
to allow any weapon to fall into the hands of those who would interfere with
the work of bringing about a mutual understanding with other nations. This is
specially so in our case, where we have to deal with the pretentions and
fantastic talk of our patriotic associations and our small bourgeoisie who talk
politics in the cafes. That the cry for a new war fleet, the restoration of our
colonies, etc., has no chance of ever being carried out in practice will not be
denied by anyone who thinks over the matter calmly and seriously. These
harmless and sometimes half-crazy spouters in the war of protests are serving
the interests of our mortal enemy, while the manner in which their vapourings
are exploited for political purposes in England cannot be considered as
advantageous to Germany.
They squander their energies in futile demonstrations
against the whole world. These demonstrations are harmful to our interests and
those who indulge in them forget the fundamental principle which is a
preliminary condition of all success. What thou doest, do it thoroughly.
Because we keep on howling against five or ten States we fail to concentrate
all the forces of our national will and our physical strength for a blow at the
heart of our bitterest enemy. And in this way we sacrifice the possibility of
securing an alliance which would reinforce our strength for that decisive
conflict.
Here, too, there is a mission for National Socialism to
fulfil. It must teach our people not to fix their attention on the little
things but rather on the great things, not to exhaust their energies on
secondary objects, and not to forget that the object we shall have to fight for
one day is the bare existence of our people and that the sole enemy we shall
have to strike at is that Power which is robbing us of this existence.
It
may be that we shall have many a heavy burden to bear. But this is by no means
an excuse for refusing to listen to reason and raise nonsensical outcries
against the rest of the world, instead of concentrating all our forces against
the most deadly enemy.
Moreover, the German people will have no moral right to
complain of the manner in which the rest of the world acts towards them, as
long as they themselves have not called to account those criminals who sold and
betrayed their own country. We cannot hope to be taken very seriously if we
indulge in long-range abuse and protests against England and Italy and then
allow those scoundrels to circulate undisturbed in our own country who were in
the pay of the enemy war propaganda, took the weapons out of our hands, broke
the backbone of our resistance and bartered away the Reich for thirty pieces of
silver.
The enemy did only what was expected. And we ought to learn from the
stand he took and the way he acted.
Anyone who cannot rise to the level of this outlook must
reflect that otherwise there would remain nothing else than to renounce the
idea of adopting any policy of alliances for the future. For if we cannot form
an alliance with England because she has robbed us of our colonies, or with
Italy because she has taken possession of South Tyrol, or with Poland or
Czechoslovakia, then there remains no other possibility of an alliance in
Europe except with France which, inter alia, has robbed us of Alsace and
Lorraine.
There can scarcely be any doubt as to whether this last
alternative would be advantageous to the interests of the German people. But if
it be defended by somebody one is always doubtful whether that person be merely
a simpleton or an astute rogue.
As far as concerns the leaders in these activities, I
think the latter hypothesis is true.
A change in public feeling among those nations which have
hitherto been enemies and whose true interests will correspond in the future
with ours could be effected, as far as human calculation goes, if the internal
strength of our State and our manifest determination to secure our own
existence made it clear that we should be valuable allies. Moreover, it is
necessary that our incompetent way of doing things and our criminal conduct in
some matters should not furnish grounds which may be utilized for purposes of
propaganda by those who would oppose our projects of establishing an alliance
with one or other of our former enemies.
The answer to the third question is still more difficult:
Is it conceivable that they who represent the true interests of those nations
which may possibly form an alliance with us could put their views into practice
against the will of the Jew, who is the mortal enemy of national and
independent popular States?
For instance, could the motive-forces of Great Britain's
traditional statesmanship smash the disastrous influence of the Jew, or could
they not?
This question, as I have already said, is very difficult
to answer. The answer depends on so many factors that it is impossible to form
a conclusive judgment. Anyhow, one thing is certain: The power of the
Government in a given State and at a definite period may be so firmly
established in the public estimation and so absolutely at the service of the
country's interests that the forces of international Jewry could not possibly
organize a real and effective obstruction against measures considered to be
politically necessary.
The fight which Fascist Italy waged against Jewry's three
principal weapons, the profound reasons for which may not have been consciously
understood (though I do not believe this myself) furnishes the best proof that
the poison fangs of that Power which transcends all State boundaries are being
drawn, even though in an indirect way. The prohibition of Freemasonry and
secret societies, the suppression of the supernational Press and the definite
abolition of Marxism, together with the steadily increasing consolidation of
the Fascist concept of the State – all this will enable the Italian Government,
in the course of some years, to advance more and more the interests of the
Italian people without paying any attention to the hissing of the Jewish
world-hydra.
The English situation is not so favourable. In that
country which has 'the freest democracy' the Jew dictates his will, almost
unrestrained but indirectly, through his influence on public opinion. And yet
there is a perpetual struggle in England between those who are entrusted with
the defence of State interests and the protagonists of Jewish
world-dictatorship.
After the War it became clear for the first time how
sharp this contrast is, when British statesmanship took one stand on the
Japanese problem and the Press took a different stand.
Just after the War had ceased the old mutual antipathy
between America and Japan began to reappear. Naturally the great European
Powers could not remain indifferent to this new war menace. In England, despite
the ties of kinship, there was a certain amount of jealousy and anxiety over
the growing importance of the United States in all spheres of international
economics and politics. What was formerly a colonial territory, the daughter of
a great mother, seemed about to become the new mistress of the world. It is
quite understandable that today England should re-examine her old alliances and
that British statesmanship should look anxiously to the danger of a coming
moment when the cry would no longer be: "Britain rules the waves", but rather:
"The Seas belong to the United States".
The gigantic North American State, with the enormous
resources of its virgin soil, is much more invulnerable than the encircled
German Reich. Should a day come when the die which will finally decide the
destinies of the nations will have to be cast in that country, England would be
doomed if she stood alone. Therefore she eagerly reaches out her hand to a
member of the yellow race and enters an alliance which, from the racial point
of view is perhaps unpardonable; but from the political viewpoint it represents
the sole possibility of reinforcing Britain's world position in face of the
strenuous developments taking place on the American continent.
Despite the fact that they fought side by side on the
European battlefields, the British Government did not decide to conclude an
alliance with the Asiatic partner, yet the whole Jewish Press opposed the idea
of a Japanese alliance.
How can we explain the fact that up to 1918 the Jewish
Press championed the policy of the British Government against the German Reich
and then suddenly began to take its own way and showed itself disloyal to the
Government?
It was not in the interests of Great Britain to have
Germany annihilated, but primarily a Jewish interest. And today the destruction
of Japan would serve British political interests less than it would serve the
far-reaching intentions of those who are leading the movement that hopes to
establish a Jewish world-empire. While England is using all her endeavours to
maintain her position in the world, the Jew is organizing his aggressive plans
for the conquest of it.
He already sees the present European States as pliant
instruments in his hands, whether indirectly through the power of so-called
Western Democracy or in the form of a direct domination through Russian
Bolshevism. But it is not only the old world that he holds in his snare; for a
like fate threatens the new world. Jews control the financial forces of America
on the stock exchange. Year after year the Jew increases his hold on Labour in
a nation of 120 million souls. But a very small section still remains quite
independent and is thus the cause of chagrin to the Jew.
The Jews show consummate skill in manipulating public
opinion and using it as an instrument in fighting for their own future.
The great leaders of Jewry are confident that the day is near at
hand when the command given in the Old Testament will be carried out and the
Jews will devour the other nations of the earth.
Among this great mass of denationalized countries which
have become Jewish colonies one independent State could bring about the ruin of
the whole structure at the last moment. The reason for doing this would be that
Bolshevism as a world-system cannot continue to exist unless it encompasses the
whole earth. Should one State preserve its national strength and its national
greatness the empire of the Jewish satrapy, like every other tyranny, would
have to succumb to the force of the national idea.
As a result of his millennial experience in accommodating
himself to surrounding circumstances, the Jew knows very well that he can
undermine the existence of European nations by a process of racial
bastardization, but that he could hardly do the same to a national Asiatic
State like Japan. To-day he can ape the ways of the German and the Englishman,
the American and the Frenchman, but he has no means of approach to the yellow
Asiatic. Therefore he seeks to destroy the Japanese national State by using
other national States as his instruments, so that he may rid himself of a
dangerous opponent before he takes over supreme control of the last national
State and transforms that control into a tyranny for the oppression of the
defenceless.
He does not want to see a national Japanese State in
existence when he founds his millennial empire of the future, and therefore he
wants to destroy it before establishing his own dictatorship.
And so he is busy today in stirring up antipathy towards
Japan among the other nations, as he stirred it up against Germany. Thus it may
happen that while British statesmanship is still endeavouring to ground its
policy in the alliance with Japan, the Jewish Press in Great Britain may be at
the same time leading a hostile movement against that ally and preparing for a
war of destruction by pretending that it is for the triumph of democracy and at
the same time raising the war-cry: Down with Japanese militarism and
imperialism.
Thus in England today the Jew opposes the policy of the
State. And for this reason the struggle against the Jewish world-danger will
one day begin also in that country.
And here again the National Socialist Movement has a
tremendous task before it.
It must open the eyes of our people in regard to foreign
nations and it must continually remind them of the real enemy who menaces the
world today. In place of preaching hatred against Aryans from whom we may be
separated on almost every other ground but with whom the bond of kindred blood
and the main features of a common civilization unite us, we must devote
ourselves to arousing general indignation against the maleficent enemy of
humanity and the real author of all our sufferings.
The National Socialist Movement must see to it that at
least in our own country the mortal enemy is recognized and that the fight
against him may be a beacon light pointing to a new and better period for other
nations as well as showing the way of salvation for Aryan humanity in the
struggle for its existence.
Finally, may reason be our guide and will-power our
strength. And may the sacred duty of directing our conduct as I have pointed
out give us perseverance and tenacity; and may our faith be our supreme
protection.
Policy after the War
The erratic manner in which the foreign affairs of the Reich were
conducted was due to a lack of sound guiding principles for the formation of
practical and useful alliances. Not only was this state of affairs continued
after the Revolution, but it became even worse.
For the confused state of our political ideas in general
before the War may be looked upon as the chief cause of our defective
statesmanship; but in the post-War period this cause must be attributed to a
lack of honest intentions. It was natural that those parties who had fully
achieved their destructive purpose by means of the Revolution should feel that
it would not serve their interests if a policy of alliances were adopted which
must ultimately result in the restoration of a free German State. A development
in this direction would not be in conformity with the purposes of the November
crime. It would have interrupted and indeed put an end to the
internationalization of German national economy and German Labour. But what was
feared most of all was that a successful effort to make the Reich independent
of foreign countries might have an influence in domestic politics which one day
would turn out disastrous for those who now hold supreme power in the
government of the Reich. One cannot imagine the revival of a nation unless that
revival be preceded by a process of nationalization. Conversely, every
important success in the field of foreign politics must call forth a favourable
reaction at home. Experience proves that every struggle for liberty increases
the national sentiment and national self-consciousness and therewith gives rise
to a keener sensibility towards anti-national elements and tendencies. A state
of things, and persons also, that may be tolerated and even pass unnoticed in
times of peace will not only become the object of aversion when national
enthusiasm is aroused but will even provoke positive opposition, which
frequently turns out disastrous for them. In this connection we may recall the
spy-scare that became prevalent when the war broke out, when human passion
suddenly manifested itself to such a heightened degree as to lead to the most
brutal persecutions, often without any justifiable grounds, although everybody
knew that the danger resulting from spies is greater during the long periods of
peace; but, for obvious reasons, they do not then attract a similar amount of
public attention. For this reason the subtle instinct of the State parasites
who came to the surface of the national body through the November happenings
makes them feel at once that a policy of alliances which would restore the
freedom of our people and awaken national sentiment might possibly ruin their
own criminal existence.
Thus we may explain the fact that since 1918 the men who
have held the reins of government adopted an entirely negative attitude towards
foreign affairs and that the business of the State has been almost constantly
conducted in a systematic way against the interests of the German nation. For
that which at first sight seemed a matter of chance proved, on closer
examination, to be a logical advance along the road which was first publicly
entered upon by the November Revolution of 1918.
Undoubtedly a distinction ought to be made between (1) the
responsible administrators of our affairs of State, or rather those who ought
to be responsible; (2) the average run of our parliamentary politicasters, and
(3) the masses of our people, whose sheepish docility corresponds to their want
of intelligence.
The first know what they want. The second fall into line
with them, either because they have been already schooled in what is afoot or
because they have not the courage to take an uncompromising stand against a
course which they know and feel to be detrimental. The third just submit to it
because they are too stupid to understand.
While the German National Socialist Labour Party was only
a small and practically unknown society, problems of foreign policy could have
only a secondary importance in the eyes of many of its members. This was the
case especially because our movement has always proclaimed the principle, and
must proclaim it, that the freedom of the country in its foreign relations is
not a gift that will be bestowed upon us by Heaven or by any earthly Powers,
but can only be the fruit of a development of our inner forces. We must first
root out the causes which led to our collapse and we must eliminate all those
who are profiting by that collapse. Then we shall be in a position to take up
the fight for the restoration of our freedom in the management of our foreign
relations.
It will be easily understood therefore why we did not
attach so much importance to foreign affairs during the early stages of our
young movement, but preferred to concentrate on the problem of internal reform.
But when the small and insignificant society expanded and finally
grew too large for its first framework, the young organization assumed the
importance of a great association and we then felt it incumbent on us to take a
definite stand on problems regarding the development of a foreign policy. It
was necessary to lay down the main lines of action which would not only be in
accord with the fundamental ideas of our Weltanschhauung but would
actually be an expansion of it in the practical world of foreign affairs.
Just because our people have had no political education in matters
concerning our relations abroad, it was necessary to teach the leaders in the
various sections of our movement, and also the masses of the people, the chief
principles which ought to guide the development of our foreign relations. That
was one of the first tasks to be accomplished in order to prepare the ground
for the practical carrying out of a foreign policy which would win back the
independence of the nation in managing its external affairs and thus restore
the real sovereignty of the Reich.
The fundamental and guiding principles which we must
always bear in mind when studying this question is that foreign policy is only
a means to an end and that the sole end to be pursued is the welfare of our own
people. Every problem in foreign politics must be considered from this point of
view, and this point of view alone. Shall such and such a solution prove
advantageous to our people now or in the future, or will it injure their
interests? That is the question.
This is the sole preoccupation that must occupy our minds
in dealing with a question. Party politics, religious considerations,
humanitarian ideals – all such and all other preoccupations must absolutely give
way to this.
Before the War the purpose to which German foreign policy
should have been devoted was to assure the supply of material necessities for
the maintenance of our people and their children. And the way should have been
prepared which would lead to this goal. Alliances should have been established
which would have proved beneficial to us from this point of view and would have
brought us the necessary auxiliary support. The task to be accomplished is the
same today, but with this difference: In pre-War times it was a question of
caring for the maintenance of the German people, backed up by the power which a
strong and independent State then possessed, but our task today is to make our
nation powerful once again by re-establishing a strong and independent State.
The re-establishment of such a State is the prerequisite and necessary
condition which must be fulfilled in order that we may be able subsequently to
put into practice a foreign policy which will serve to guarantee the existence
of our people in the future, fulfilling their needs and furnishing them with
those necessities of life which they lack. In other words, the aim which
Germany ought to pursue today in her foreign policy is to prepare the way for
the recovery of her liberty tomorrow. In this connection there is a fundamental
principle which we must keep steadily before our minds. It is this: The
possibility of winning back the independence of a nation is not absolutely
bound up with the question of territorial reintegration but it will suffice if
a small remnant, no matter how small, of this nation and State will exist,
provided it possesses the necessary independence to become not only the vehicle
of' the common spirit of the whole people but also to prepare the way for the
military fight to reconquer the nation's liberty.
When a people who amount to a hundred million souls
tolerate the yoke of common slavery in order to prevent the territory belonging
to their State from being broken up and divided, that is worse than if such a
State and such a people were dismembered while one fragment still retained its
complete independence. Of course, the natural proviso here is that this
fragment must be inspired with a consciousness of the solemn duty that devolves
upon it, not only to proclaim persistently the inviolable unity of its
spiritual and cultural life with that of its detached members but also to
prepare the means that are necessary for the military conflict which will
finally liberate and re-unite the fragments that are suffering under
oppression.
One must also bear in mind the fact that the restoration
of lost districts which were formerly parts of the State, both ethnically and
politically, must in the first instance be a question of winning back political
power and independence for the motherland itself, and that in such cases the
special interests of the lost districts must be uncompromisingly regarded as a
matter of secondary importance in the face of the one main task, which is to
win back the freedom of the central territory. For the detached and oppressed
fragments of a nation or an imperial province cannot achieve their liberation
through the expression of yearnings and protests on the part of the oppressed
and abandoned, but only when the portion which has more or less retained its
sovereign independence can resort to the use of force for the purpose of
reconquering those territories that once belonged to the common fatherland.
Therefore, in order to reconquer lost territories the first condition
to be fulfilled is to work energetically for the increased welfare and
reinforcement of the strength of that portion of the State which has remained
over after the partition. Thus the unquenchable yearning which slumbers in the
hearts of the people must be awakened and restrengthened by bringing new forces
to its aid, so that when the hour comes all will be devoted to the one purpose
of liberating and uniting the whole people. Therefore, the interests of the
separated territories must be subordinated to the one purpose. That one purpose
must aim at obtaining for the central remaining portion such a measure of power
and might that will enable it to enforce its will on the hostile will of the
victor and thus redress the wrong. For flaming protests will not restore the
oppressed territories to the bosom of a common Reich. That can be done only
through the might of the sword.
The forging of this sword is a work that has to be done
through the domestic policy which must be adopted by a national government. To
see that the work of forging these arms is assured, and to recruit the men who
will bear them, that is the task of the foreign policy.
In the first volume of this book I discussed the
inadequacy of our policy of alliances before the War. There were four possible
ways to secure the necessary foodstuffs for the maintenance of our people. Of
these ways the fourth, which was the most unfavourable, was chosen. Instead of
a sound policy of territorial expansion in Europe, our rulers embarked on a
policy of colonial and trade expansion. That policy was all the more mistaken
inasmuch as they presumed that in this way the danger of an armed conflict
would be averted. The result of the attempt to sit on many stools at the same
time might have been foreseen. It let us fall to the ground in the midst of
them all. And the World War was only the last reckoning presented to the Reich
to pay for the failure of its foreign policy.
The right way that should have been taken in those days
was the third way I indicated: namely, to increase the strength of the Reich as
a Continental Power by the acquisition of new territory in Europe. And at the
same time a further expansion, through the subsequent acquisition of colonial
territory, might thus be brought within the range of practical politics. Of
course, this policy could not have been carried through except in alliance with
England, or by devoting such abnormal efforts to the increase of military force
and armament that, for forty or fifty years, all cultural undertakings would
have to be completely relegated to the background. This responsibility might
very well have been undertaken. The cultural importance of a nation is almost
always dependent on its political freedom and independence. Political freedom
is a prerequisite condition for the existence, or rather the creation, of great
cultural undertakings. Accordingly no sacrifice can be too great when there is
question of securing the political freedom of a nation. What might have to be
deducted from the budget expenses for cultural purposes, in order to meet
abnormal demands for increasing the military power of the State, can be
generously paid back later on. Indeed, it may be said that after a State has
concentrated all its resources in one effort for the purpose of securing its
political independence a certain period of ease and renewed equilibrium sets
in. And it often happens that the cultural spirit of the nation, which had been
heretofore cramped and confined, now suddenly blooms forth. Thus Greece
experienced the great Periclean era after the miseries it had suffered during
the Persian Wars. And the Roman Republic turned its energies to the cultivation
of a higher civilization when it was freed from the stress and worry of the
Punic Wars.
Of course, it could not be expected that a parliamentary
majority of feckless and stupid people would be capable of deciding on such a
resolute policy for the absolute subordination of all other national interests
to the one sole task of preparing for a future conflict of arms which would
result in establishing the security of the State. The father of Frederick the
Great sacrificed everything in order to be ready for that conflict; but the
fathers of our absurd parliamentarian democracy, with the Jewish hall-mark,
could not do it.
That is why, in pre-War times, the military preparation
necessary to enable us to conquer new territory in Europe was only very
mediocre, so that it was difficult to obtain the support of really helpful
allies.
Those who directed our foreign affairs would not entertain even the
idea of systematically preparing for war. They rejected every plan for the
acquisition of territory in Europe. And by preferring a policy of colonial and
trade expansion, they sacrificed the alliance with England, which was then
possible. At the same time they neglected to seek the support of Russia, which
would have been a logical proceeding. Finally they stumbled into the World War,
abandoned by all except the ill-starred Habsburgs.
The characteristic of our present foreign policy is that
it follows no discernible or even intelligible lines of action. Whereas before
the War a mistake was made in taking the fourth way that I have mentioned, and
this was pursued only in a halfhearted manner, since the Revolution not even
the sharpest eye can detect any way that is being followed. Even more than
before the War, there is absolutely no such thing as a systematic plan, except
the systematic attempts that are made to destroy the last possibility of a
national revival.
If we make an impartial examination of the situation
existing in Europe today as far as concerns the relation of the various Powers
to one another, we shall arrive at the following results:
For the past three hundred years the history of our
Continent has been definitely determined by England's efforts to keep the
European States opposed to one another in an equilibrium of forces, thus
assuring the necessary protection of her own rear while she pursued the great
aims of British world-policy.
The traditional tendency of British diplomacy ever since
the reign of Queen Elizabeth has been to employ systematically every possible
means to prevent any one Power from attaining a preponderant position over the
other European Powers and, if necessary, to break that preponderance by means
of armed intervention. The only parallel to this has been the tradition of the
Prussian Army. England has made use of various forces to carry out its purpose,
choosing them according to the actual situation or the task to be faced; but
the will and determination to use them has always been the same. The more
difficult England's position became in the course of history the more the
British Imperial Government considered it necessary to maintain a condition of
political paralysis among the various European States, as a result of their
mutual rivalries. When the North American colonies obtained their political
independence it became still more necessary for England to use every effort to
establish and maintain the defence of her flank in Europe. In accordance with
this policy she reduced Spain and the Netherlands to the position of inferior
naval Powers. Having accomplished this, England concentrated all her forces
against the increasing strength of France, until she brought about the downfall
of Napoleon Bonaparte and therewith destroyed the military hegemony of France,
which was the most dangerous rival that England had to fear.
The change of attitude in British statesmanship towards
Germany took place only very slowly, not only because the German nation did not
represent an obvious danger for England as long as it lacked national
unification, but also because public opinion in England, which had been
directed to other quarters by a system of propaganda that had been carried out
for a long time, could be turned to a new direction only by slow degrees. In
order to reach the proposed ends the calmly reflecting statesman had to bow to
popular sentiment, which is the most powerful motive-force and is at the same
time the most lasting in its energy. When the statesman has attained one of his
ends, he must immediately turn his thoughts to others; but only by degrees and
the slow work of propaganda can the sentiment of the masses be shaped into an
instrument for the attainment of the new aims which their leaders have decided
on.
As early as 1870-71 England had decided on the new stand it would
take. On certain occasions minor oscillations in that policy were caused by the
growing influence of America in the commercial markets of the world and also by
the increasing political power of Russia; but, unfortunately, Germany did not
take advantage of these and, therefore, the original tendency of British
diplomacy was only reinforced.
England looked upon Germany as a Power which was of world
importance commercially and politically and which, partly because of its
enormous industrial development, assumed such threatening proportions that the
two countries already contended against one another in the same sphere and with
equal energy. The so-called peaceful conquest of the world by commercial
enterprise, which, in the eyes of those who governed our public affairs at that
time, represented the highest peak of human wisdom, was just the thing that led
English statesmen to adopt a policy of resistance. That this resistance assumed
the form of an organized aggression on a vast scale was in full conformity with
a type of statesmanship which did not aim at the maintenance of a dubious world
peace but aimed at the consolidation of British world-hegemony. In carrying out
this policy, England allied herself with those countries which had a definite
military importance. And that was in keeping with her traditional caution in
estimating the power of her adversary and also in recognizing her own temporary
weakness. That line of conduct cannot be called unscrupulous; because such a
comprehensive organization for war purposes must not be judged from the heroic
point of view but from that of expediency. The object of a diplomatic policy
must not be to see that a nation goes down heroically but rather that it
survives in a practical way. Hence every road that leads to this goal is
opportune and the failure to take it must be looked upon as a criminal neglect
of duty.
When the German Revolution took place England's fears of a German
world hegemony came to a satisfactory end.
From that time it was not an English interest to see
Germany totally cancelled from the geographic map of Europe. On the contrary,
the astounding collapse which took place in November 1918 found British
diplomacy confronted with a situation which at first appeared untenable.
For four-and-a-half years the British Empire had fought to break the
presumed preponderance of a Continental Power. A sudden collapse now happened
which removed this Power from the foreground of European affairs. That collapse
disclosed itself finally in the lack of even the primordial instinct of
self-preservation, so that European equilibrium was destroyed within
forty-eight hours. Germany was annihilated and France became the first
political Power on the Continent of Europe.
The tremendous propaganda which was carried on during
this war for the purpose of encouraging the British public to stick it out to
the end aroused all the primitive instincts and passions of the populace and
was bound eventually to hang as a leaden weight on the decisions of British
statesmen. With the colonial, economical and commercial destruction of Germany,
England's war aims were attained. Whatever went beyond those aims was an
obstacle to the furtherance of British interests. Only the enemies of England
could profit by the disappearance of Germany as a Great Continental Power in
Europe. In November 1918, however, and up to the summer of 1919, it was not
possible for England to change its diplomatic attitude; because during the long
war it had appealed, more than it had ever done before, to the feelings of the
populace. In view of the feeling prevalent among its own people, England could
not change its foreign policy; and another reason which made that impossible
was the military strength to which other European Powers had now attained.
France had taken the direction of peace negotiations into her own hands and
could impose her law upon the others. During those months of negotiations and
bargaining the only Power that could have altered the course which things were
taking was Germany herself; but Germany was torn asunder by a civil war, and
her so-called statesmen had declared themselves ready to accept any and every
dictate imposed on them.
Now, in the comity of nations, when one nation loses its
instinct for self-preservation and ceases to be an active member it sinks to
the level of an enslaved nation and its territory will have to suffer the fate
of a colony.
To prevent the power of France from becoming too great,
the only form which English negotiations could take was that of participating
in France's lust for aggrandizement.
As a matter of fact, England did not attain the ends for
which she went to war. Not only did it turn out impossible to prevent a
Continental Power from obtaining a preponderance over the ratio of strength in
the Continental State system of Europe, but a large measure of preponderance
had been obtained and firmly established.
In 1914 Germany, considered as a military State, was
wedged in between two countries, one of which had equal military forces at its
disposal and the other had greater military resources. Then there was England's
overwhelming supremacy at sea. France and Russia alone hindered and opposed the
excessive aggrandizement of Germany. The unfavourable geographical situation of
the Reich, from the military point of view, might be looked upon as another
coefficient of security against an exaggerated increase of German power. From
the naval point of view, the configuration of the coast-line was unfavourable
in case of a conflict with England. And though the maritime frontier was short
and cramped, the land frontier was widely extended and open.
France's position is different today. It is the first
military Power without a serious rival on the Continent. It is almost entirely
protected by its southern frontier against Spain and Italy. Against Germany it
is safeguarded by the prostrate condition of our country. A long stretch of its
coast-line faces the vital nervous system of the British Empire. Not only could
French aeroplanes and long-range batteries attack the vital centres of the
British system, but submarines can threaten the great British commercial
routes. A submarine campaign based on France's long Atlantic coast and on the
European and North African coasts of the Mediterranean would have disastrous
consequences for England.
Thus the political results of the war to prevent the
development of German power was the creation of a French hegemony on the
Continent. The military result was the consolidation of France as the first
Continental Power and the recognition of American equality on the sea. The
economic result was the cession of great spheres of British interests to her
former allies and associates.
The Balkanization of Europe, up to a certain degree, was
desirable and indeed necessary in the light of the traditional policy of Great
Britain, just as France desired the Balkanization of Germany.
What England has always desired, and will continue to
desire, is to prevent any one Continental Power in Europe from attaining a
position of world importance. Therefore England wishes to maintain a definite
equilibrium of forces among the European States – for this equilibrium seems a
necessary condition of England's world-hegemony.
What France has always desired, and will continue to
desire, is to prevent Germany from becoming a homogeneous Power. Therefore
France wants to maintain a system of small German States whose forces would
balance one another and over which there should be no central government. Then,
by acquiring possession of the left bank of the Rhine, she would have fulfilled
the pre-requisite conditions for the establishment and security of her hegemony
in Europe.
The final aims of French diplomacy must be in perpetual
opposition to the final tendencies of British statesmanship.
Taking these considerations as a starting-point, anyone
who investigates the possibilities that exist for Germany to find allies must
come to the conclusion that there remains no other way of forming an alliance
except to approach England. The consequences of England's war policy were and
are disastrous for Germany. However, we cannot close our eyes to the fact that,
as things stand today, the necessary interests of England no longer demand the
destruction of Germany. On the contrary, British diplomacy must tend more and
more, from year to year, towards curbing France's unbridled lust after
hegemony. Now, a policy of alliances cannot be pursued by bearing past
grievances in mind, but it can be rendered fruitful by taking account of past
experiences. Experience should have taught us that alliances formed for
negative purposes suffer from intrinsic weakness. The destinies of nations can
be welded together only under the prospect of a common success, of common gain
and conquest, in short, a common extension of power for both contracting
parties.
The ignorance of our people on questions of foreign politics is
clearly demonstrated by the reports in the daily Press which talk about
"friendship towards Germany" on the part of one or the other foreign statesman,
whereby this professed friendship is taken as a special guarantee that such
persons will champion a policy that will be advantageous to our people. That
kind of talk is absurd to an incredible degree. It means speculating on the
unparalleled simplicity of the average German philistine when he comes to
talking politics. There is not any British, American, or Italian statesman who
could ever be described as 'pro-German'. Every Englishman must naturally be
British first of all. The same is true of every American. And no Italian
statesman would be prepared to adopt a policy that was not pro-Italian.
Therefore, anyone who expects to form alliances with foreign nations on the
basis of a pro-German feeling among the statesmen of other countries is either
an ass or a deceiver. The necessary condition for linking together the
destinies of nations is never mutual esteem or mutual sympathy, but rather the
prospect of advantages accruing to the contracting parties. It is true that a
British statesman will always follow a pro-British and not a pro-German policy;
but it is also true that certain definite interests involved in this
pro-British policy may coincide on various grounds with German interests.
Naturally that can be so only to a certain degree and the situation may one day
be completely reversed. But the art of statesmanship is shown when at certain
periods there is question of reaching a certain end and when allies are found
who must take the same road in order to defend their own interests.
The practical application of these principles at the present time
must depend on the answer given to the following questions: What States are not
vitally interested in the fact that, by the complete abolition of a German
Central Europe, the economic and military power of France has reached a
position of absolute hegemony? Which are the States that, in consideration of
the conditions which are essential to their own existence and in view of the
tradition that has hitherto been followed in conducting their foreign policy,
envisage such a development as a menace to their own future?
Finally, we must be quite clear on the following point:
France is and will remain the implacable enemy of Germany. It does not matter
what Governments have ruled or will rule in France, whether Bourbon or Jacobin,
Napoleonic or Bourgeois-Democratic, Clerical Republican or Red Bolshevik, their
foreign policy will always be directed towards acquiring possession of the
Rhine frontier and consolidating France's position on this river by disuniting
and dismembering Germany.
England did not want Germany to be a world Power. France
desired that there should be no Power called Germany. Therefore there was a
very essential difference. To-day we are not fighting for our position as a
World-Power but only for the existence of our country, for national unity and
the daily bread of our children. Taking this point of view into consideration,
only two States remain to us as possible allies in Europe - England and Italy.
England is not pleased to see a France on whose military power there
is no check in Europe, so that one day she might undertake the support of a
policy which in some way or other might come into conflict with British
interests. Nor can England be pleased to see France in possession of such
enormous coal and iron mines in Western Europe as would make it possible for
her one day to play a role in world-commerce which might threaten danger to
British interests. Moreover, England can never be pleased to see a France whose
political position on the Continent, owing to the dismemberment of the rest of
Europe, seems so absolutely assured that she is not only able to resume a
French world-policy on great lines but would even find herself compelled to do
so. The bombs which were once dropped by the Zeppelins might be multiplied by
the thousand every night. The military predominance of France is a weight that
presses heavily on the hearts of the World Empire over which Great Britain
rules.
Nor can Italy desire, nor will she desire, any further strengthening
of France's power in Europe. The future of Italy will be conditioned by the
development of events in the Mediterranean and by the political situation in
the area surrounding that sea. The reason that led Italy into the War was not a
desire to contribute towards the aggrandizement of France but rather to deal
her hated Adriatic rival a mortal blow. Any further increase of France's power
on the Continent would hamper the development of Italy's future, and Italy does
not deceive herself by thinking that racial kindred between the nations will in
any way eliminate rivalries.
Serious and impartial consideration proves that it is
these two States, Great Britain and Italy, whose natural interests not only do
not contrast with the conditions essential to the existence of the German
nation but are identical with them, to a certain extent.
But when we consider the possibilities of alliances we
must be careful not to lose sight of three factors. The first factor concerns
ourselves; the other two concern the two States I have mentioned.
Is it at all possible to conclude an alliance with Germany
as it is today? Can a Power which would enter into an alliance for the purpose
of securing assistance in an effort to carry out its own offensive aims – can
such a Power form an alliance with a State whose rulers have for years long
presented a spectacle of deplorable incompetence and pacifist cowardice and
where the majority of the people, blinded by democratic and Marxist teachings,
betray the interests of their own people and country in a manner that cries to
Heaven for vengeance? As things stand today, can any Power hope to establish
useful relations and hope to fight together for the furtherance of their common
interests with this State which manifestly has neither the will nor the courage
to move a finger even in the defence of its bare existence? Take the case of a
Power for which an alliance must be much more than a pact to guarantee a state
of slow decomposition, such as happened with the old and disastrous Triple
Alliance. Can such a Power associate itself for life or death with a State
whose most characteristic signs of activity consist of a rampant servility in
external relations and a scandalous repression of the national spirit at home?
Can such a Power be associated with a State in which there is nothing of
greatness, because its whole policy does not deserve it? Or can alliances be
made with Governments which are in the hands of men who are despised by their
own fellow-citizens and consequently are not respected abroad?
No. A self-respecting Power which expects something more
from alliances than commissions for greedy Parliamentarians will not and cannot
enter into an alliance with our present-day Germany. Our present inability to
form alliances furnishes the principle and most solid basis for the combined
action of the enemies who are robbing us. Because Germany does not defend
itself in any other way except by the flamboyant protests of our
parliamentarian elect, there is no reason why the rest of the world should take
up the fight in our defence. And God does not follow the principle of granting
freedom to a nation of cowards, despite all the implications of our 'patriotic'
associations. Therefore, for those States which have not a direct interest in
our annihilation no other course remains open except to participate in France's
campaign of plunder, at least to make it impossible for the strength of France
to be exclusively aggrandized thereby.
In the second place, we must not forget that among the
nations which were formerly our enemies mass-propaganda has turned the opinions
and feelings of large sections of the population in a fixed direction. When for
years long a foreign nation has been presented to the public as a horde of
'Huns', 'Robbers', 'Vandals', etc., they cannot suddenly be presented as
something different, and the enemy of yesterday cannot be recommended as the
ally of tomorrow.
But the third factor deserves greater attention, since it
is of essential importance for establishing future alliances in Europe.
From the political point of view it is not in the interests of Great
Britain that Germany should be ruined even still more, but such a proceeding
would be very much in the interests of the international money-markets
manipulated by the Jew. The cleavage between the official, or rather
traditional, British statesmanship and the controlling influence of the Jew on
the money-markets is nowhere so clearly manifested as in the various attitudes
taken towards problems of British foreign policy. Contrary to the interests and
welfare of the British State, Jewish finance demands not only the absolute
economic destruction of Germany but its complete political enslavement. The
internationalization of our German economic system, that is to say, the
transference of our productive forces to the control of Jewish international
finance, can be completely carried out only in a State that has been
politically Bolshevized. But the Marxist fighting forces, commanded by
international and Jewish stock-exchange capital, cannot finally smash the
national resistance in Germany without friendly help from outside. For this
purpose French armies would first have to invade and overcome the territory of
the German Reich until a state of international chaos would set in, and then
the country would have to succumb to Bolshevik storm troops in the service of
Jewish international finance.
Hence it is that at the present time the Jew is the great
agitator for the complete destruction of Germany. Whenever we read of attacks
against Germany taking place in any part of the world the Jew is always the
instigator. In peace-time, as well as during the War, the Jewish-Marxist
stock-exchange Press systematically stirred up hatred against Germany, until
one State after another abandoned its neutrality and placed itself at the
service of the world coalition, even against the real interests of its own
people.
The Jewish way of reasoning thus becomes quite clear. The
Bolshevization of Germany, that is to say, the extermination of the patriotic
and national German intellectuals, thus making it possible to force German
Labour to bear the yoke of international Jewish finance – that is only the
overture to the movement for expanding Jewish power on a wider scale and
finally subjugating the world to its rule. As has so often happened in history,
Germany is the chief pivot of this formidable struggle. If our people and our
State should fall victims to these oppressors of the nations, lusting after
blood and money, the whole earth would become the prey of that hydra. Should
Germany be freed from its grip, a great menace for the nations of the world
would thereby be eliminated.
It is certain that Jewry uses all its subterranean
activities not only for the purpose of keeping alive old national enmities
against Germany but even to spread them farther and render them more acute
wherever possible. It is no less certain that these activities are only very
partially in keeping with the true interests of the nations among whose people
the poison is spread. As a general principle, Jewry carries on its campaign in
the various countries by the use of arguments that are best calculated to
appeal to the mentality of the respective nations and are most likely to
produce the desired results; for Jewry knows what the public feeling is in each
country. Our national stock has been so much adulterated by the mixture of
alien elements that, in its fight for power, Jewry can make use of the more or
less 'cosmopolitan' circles which exist among us, inspired by the pacifist and
international ideologies. In France they exploit the well-known and accurately
estimated chauvinistic spirit. In England they exploit the commercial and
world-political outlook. In short, they always work upon the essential
characteristics that belong to the mentality of each nation. When they have in
this way achieved a decisive influence in the political and economic spheres
they can drop the limitations which their former tactics necessitated, now
disclosing their real intentions and the ends for which they are fighting.
Their work of destruction now goes ahead more quickly, reducing one State after
another to a mass of ruins on which they will erect the everlasting and
sovereign Jewish Empire.
In England, and in Italy, the contrast between the better
kind of solid statesmanship and the policy of the Jewish stock-exchange often
becomes strikingly evident.
Only in France there exists today more than ever before a
profound accord between the views of the stock-exchange, controlled by the
Jews, and the chauvinistic policy pursued by French statesmen. This identity of
views constitutes an immense, danger for Germany. And it is just for this
reason that France is and will remain by far the most dangerous enemy. The
French people, who are becoming more and more obsessed by negroid ideas,
represent a threatening menace to the existence of the white race in Europe,
because they are bound up with the Jewish campaign for world-domination. For
the contamination caused by the influx of negroid blood on the Rhine, in the
very heart of Europe, is in accord with the sadist and perverse lust for
vengeance on the part of the hereditary enemy of our people, just as it suits
the purpose of the cool calculating Jew who would use this means of introducing
a process of bastardization in the very centre of the European Continent and,
by infecting the white race with the blood of an inferior stock, would destroy
the foundations of its independent existence.
France's activities in Europe today, spurred on by the
French lust for vengeance and systematically directed by the Jew, are a
criminal attack against the life of the white race and will one day arouse
against the French people a spirit of vengeance among a generation which will
have recognized the original sin of mankind in this racial pollution.
As
far as concerns Germany, the danger which France represents involves the duty
of relegating all sentiment to a subordinate place and extending the hand to
those who are threatened with the same menace and who are not willing to suffer
or tolerate France's lust for hegemony.
For a long time yet to come there will be only two Powers
in Europe with which it may be possible for Germany to conclude an alliance.
These Powers are Great Britain and Italy.
If we take the trouble to cast a glance backwards on the
way in which German foreign policy has been conducted since the Revolution we
must, in view of the constant and incomprehensible acts of submission on the
part. of our governments, either lose heart or become fired with rage and take
up the cudgels against such a regime. Their way of acting cannot be attributed
to a want of understanding, because what seemed to every thinking man to be
inconceivable was accomplished by the leaders of the November parties with
their Cyclopean intellects. They bowed to France and begged her favour. Yes,
during all these recent years, with the touching simplicity of incorrigible
visionaries, they went on their knees to France again and again. They
perpetuaily wagged their tails before the Grande Nation. And in each
trick-o'-the-loop which the French hangmen performed with his rope they
recognized a visible change of feeling. Our real political wire-pullers never
shared in this absurd credulity. The idea of establishing a friendship with
France was for them only a means of thwarting every attempt on Germany's part
to adopt a practical policy of alliances. They had no illusions about French
aims or those of the men behind the scenes in France. What induced them to take
up such an attitude and to act as if they honestly believed that the fate of
Germany could possibly be changed in this way was the cool calculation that if
this did not happen our people might take the reins into their own hands and
choose another road.
Of course it is difficult for us to propose England as our
possible ally in the future. Our Jewish Press has always been adept in
concentrating hatred against England particularly. And many of our good German
simpletons perch on these branches which the Jews have limed to capture them.
They babble about a restoration of German sea power and protest against the
robbery of our colonies. Thus they furnish material which the contriving Jew
transmits to his clansmen in England, so that it can be used there for purposes
of practical propaganda. For our simple-minded bourgeoisie who indulge in
politics can take in only little by little the idea that today we have not to
fight for 'sea-power' and such things. Even before the War it was absurd to
direct the national energies of Germany towards this end without first having
secured our position in Europe. Such a hope today reaches that peak of
absurdity which may be called criminal in the domain of politics.
Often one becomes really desperate on seeing how the
Jewish wire-pullers succeeded in concentrating the attention of the people on
things which are only of secondary importance today, They incited the people to
demonstrations and protests while at the same time France was tearing our
nation asunder bit by bit and systematically removing the very foundations of
our national independence.
In this connection I have to think of the Wooden Horse in
the riding of which the Jew showed extraordinary skill during these years. I
mean South Tyrol.
Yes, South Tyrol. The reason why I take up this question
here is just because I want to call to account that shameful canaille who
relied on the ignorance and short memories of large sections of our people and
stimulated a national indignation which is as foreign to the real character of
our parliamentary impostors as the idea of respect for private property is to a
magpie.
I should like to state here that I was one of those who, at the time
when the fate of South Tyrol was being decided – that is to say, from August
1914 to November 1918 – took my place where that country also could have been
effectively defended, namely, in the Army. I did my share in the fighting
during those years, not merely to save South Tyrol from being lost but also to
save every other German province for the Fatherland.
The parliamentary sharpers did not take part in that
combat. The whole canaille played party politics. On the other hand, we carried
on the fight in the belief that a victorious issue of the War would enable the
German nation to keep South Tyrol also; but the loud-mouthed traitor carried on
a seditious agitation against such a victorious issue, until the fighting
Siegfried succumbed to the dagger plunged in his back. It was only natural that
the inflammatory and hypocritical speeches of the elegantly dressed
parliamentarians on the Vienna Rathaus Platz or in front of the Feldherrnhalle
in Munich could not save South Tyrol for Germany. That could be done only by
the fighting battalions at the Front. Those who broke up that fighting front
betrayed South Tyrol, as well as the other districts of Germany.
Anyone who thinks that the South Tyrol question can be
solved today by protests and manifestations and processions organized by
various associations is either a humbug or merely a German philistine.
In
this regard it must be quite clearly understood that we cannot get back the
territories we have lost if we depend on solemn imprecations before the throne
of the Almighty God or on pious hopes in a League of Nations, but only by the
force of arms.
Therefore the only remaining question is: Who is ready to
take up arms for the restoration of the lost territories?
As far as concerns myself personally, I can state with a
good conscience that I would have courage enough to take part in a campaign for
the reconquest of South Tyrol, at the head of parliamentarian storm battalions
consisting of parliamentarian gasconaders and all the party leaders, also the
various Councillors of State. Only the Devil knows whether I might have the
luck of seeing a few shells suddenly burst over this 'burning' demonstration of
protest. I think that if a fox were to break into a poultry yard his presence
would not provoke such a helter-skelter and rush to cover as we should witness
in the band of 'protesters'.
The vilest part of it all is that these talkers
themselves do not believe that anything can be achieved in this way. Each one
of them knows very well how harmless and ineffective their whole pretence is.
They do it only because it is easier now to babble about the restoration of
South Tyrol than to fight for its preservation in days gone by.
Each one plays the part that he is best capable of
playing in life. In those days we offered our blood. To-day these people are
engaged in whetting their tusks.
It is particularly interesting to note today how
legitimist circles in Vienna preen themselves on their work for the restoration
of South Tyrol. Seven years ago their august and illustrious Dynasty helped, by
an act of perjury and treason, to make it possible for the victorious
world-coalition to take away South Tyrol. At that time these circles supported
the perfidious policy adopted by their Dynasty and did not trouble themselves
in the least about the fate of South Tyrol or any other province. Naturally it
is easier today to take up the fight for this territory, since the present
struggle is waged with 'the weapons of the mind'. Anyhow, it is easier to join
in a 'meeting of protestation' and talk yourself hoarse in giving vent to the
noble indignation that fills your breast, or stain your finger with the writing
of a newspaper article, than to blow up a bridge, for instance, during the
occupation of the Ruhr.
The reason why certain circles have made the question of
South Tyrol the pivot of German-Italian relations during the past few years is
quite evident. Jews and Habsburg legitimists are greatly interested in
preventing Germany from pursuing a policy of alliance which might lead one day
to the resurgence of a free German fatherland. It is not out of love for South
Tyrol that they play this role today – for their policy would turn out
detrimental rather than helpful to the interests of that province – but through
fear of an agreement being established between Germany and Italy.
A tendency towards lying and calumny lies in the nature
of these people, and that explains how they can calmly and brazenly attempt to
twist things in such a way as to make it appear that we have 'betrayed' South
Tyrol.
There is one clear answer that must be given to these gentlemen. It
is this: Tyrol has been betrayed, in the first place, by every German who was
sound in limb and body and did not offer himself for service at the Front
during 1914–1918 to do his duty towards his country.
In the second place, Tyrol was betrayed by every man who,
during those years did not help to reinforce the national spirit and the
national powers of resistance, so as to enable the country to carry through the
War and keep up the fight to the very end.
In the third place, South Tyrol was betrayed by everyone
who took part in the November Revolution, either directly by his act or
indirectly by a cowardly toleration of it, and thus broke the sole weapon that
could have saved South Tyrol.
In the fourth place, South Tyrol was betrayed by those
parties and their adherents who put their signatures to the disgraceful
treaties of Versailles and St. Germain.
And so the matter stands, my brave gentlemen, who make
your protests only with words.
To-day I am guided by a calm and cool recognition of the
fact that the lost territories cannot be won back by the whetted tongues of
parliamentary spouters but only by the whetted sword; in other words, through a
fight where blood will have to be shed.
Now, I have no hesitations in saying that today, once the
die has been cast, it is not only impossible to win back South Tyrol through a
war but I should definitely take my stand against such a movement, because I am
convinced that it would not be possible to arouse the national enthusiasm of
the German people and maintain it in such a way as would be necessary in order
to carry through such a war to a successful issue. On the contrary, I believe
that if we have to shed German blood once again it would be criminal to do so
for the sake of liberating 200,000 Germans, when more than seven million
neighbouring Germans are suffering under foreign domination and a vital artery
of the German nation has become a playground for hordes of African negros.
If the German nation is to put an end to a state of things which
threatens to wipe it off the map of Europe it must not fall into the errors of
the pre-War period and make the whole world its enemy. But it must ascertain
who is its most dangerous enemy so that it can concentrate all its forces in a
struggle to beat him. And if, in order to carry through this struggle to
victory, sacrifices should be made in other quarters, future generations will
not condemn us for that. They will take account of the miseries and anxieties
which led us to make such a bitter decision, and in the light of that
consideration they will more clearly recognize the brilliancy of our success.
Again I must say here that we must always be guided by the
fundamental principle that, as a preliminary to winning back lost provinces,
the political independence and strength of the motherland must first be
restored.
The first task which has to be accomplished is to make
that independence possible and to secure it by a wise policy of alliances,
which presupposes an energetic management of our public affairs.
But it is just on this point that we, National
Socialists, have to guard against being dragged into the tow of our ranting
bourgeois patriots who take their cue from the Jew. It would be a disaster if,
instead of preparing for the coming struggle, our Movement also were to busy
itself with mere protests by word of mouth.
It was the fantastic idea of a Nibelungen alliance with
the decomposed body of the Habsburg State that brought about Germany's ruin.
Fantastic sentimentality in dealing with the possibilities of foreign policy
today would be the best means of preventing our revival for innumerable years
to come.
Here I must briefly answer the objections which may be
raised in regard to the three questions I have put.
1. Is it possible at all to form an alliance with the
present Germany, whose weakness is so visible to all eyes?
2. Can the ex-enemy nations change their attitude towards
Germany?
3. In other nations is not the influence of Jewry stronger than the
recognition of their own interests, and does not this influence thwart all
their good intentions and render all their plans futile?
I think that I have already dealt adequately with one of
the two aspects of the first point. Of course nobody will enter into an
alliance with the present Germany. No Power in the world would link its
fortunes with a State whose government does not afford grounds for the
slightest confidence. As regards the attempt which has been made by many of our
compatriots to explain the conduct of the Government by referring to the woeful
state of public feeling and thus excuse such conduct, I must strongly object to
that way of looking at things.
The lack of character which our people have shown during
the last six years is deeply distressing. The indifference with which they have
treated the most urgent necessities of our nation might veritably lead one to
despair. Their cowardice is such that it often cries to heaven for vengeance.
But one must never forget that we are dealing with a people who gave to the
world, a few years previously, an admirable example of the highest human
qualities. From the first days of August 1914 to the end of the tremendous
struggle between the nations, no people in the world gave a better proof of
manly courage, tenacity and patient endurance, than this people gave who are so
cast down and dispirited today. Nobody will dare to assert that the lack of
character among our people today is typical of them. What we have to endure
today, among us and around us, is due only to the influence of the sad and
distressing effects that followed the high treason committed on November 9th,
1918. More than ever before the word of the poet is true: that evil can only
give rise to evil. But even in this epoch those qualities among our people
which are fundamentally sound are not entirely lost. They slumber in the depths
of the national conscience, and sometimes in the clouded firmament we see
certain qualities like shining lights which Germany will one day remember as
the first symptoms of a revival. We often see young Germans assembling and
forming determined resolutions, as they did in 1914, freely and willingly to
offer themselves as a sacrifice on the altar of their beloved Fatherland.
Millions of men have resumed work, whole-heartedly and zealously, as if no
revolution had ever affected them. The smith is at his anvil once again. And
the farmer drives his plough. The scientist is in his laboratory. And everybody
is once again attending to his duty with the same zeal and devotion as
formerly.
The oppression which we suffer from at the hands of our
enemies is no longer taken, as it formerly was, as a matter for laughter; but
it is resented with bitterness and anger. There can be no doubt that a great
change of attitude has taken place.
This evolution has not yet taken the shape of a conscious
intention and movement to restore the political power and independence of our
nation; but the blame for this must be attributed to those utterly incompetent
people who have no natural endowments to qualify them for statesmanship and yet
have been governing our nation since 1918 and leading it to ruin.
Yes. If anybody accuses our people today he ought to be
asked: What is being done to help them? What are we to say of the poor support
which the people give to any measures introduced by the Government? Is it not
true that such a thing as a Government hardly exists at all? And must we
consider the poor support which it receives as a sign of a lack of vitality in
the nation itself; or is it not rather a proof of the complete failure of the
methods employed in the management of this valuable trust? What have our
Governments done to re-awaken in the nation a proud spirit of self-assertion,
up-standing manliness, and a spirit of righteous defiance towards its enemies?
In 1919, when the Peace Treaty was imposed on the German nation,
there were grounds for hoping that this instrument of unrestricted oppression
would help to reinforce the outcry for the freedom of Germany. Peace treaties
which make demands that fall like a whip-lash on the people turn out not
infrequently to be the signal of a future revival.
To what purpose could the Treaty of Versailles have been
exploited?
In the hands of a willing Government, how could this
instrument of unlimited blackmail and shameful humiliation have been applied
for the purpose of arousing national sentiment to its highest pitch? How could
a well-directed system of propaganda have utilized the sadist cruelty of that
treaty so as to change the indifference of the people to a feeling of
indignation and transform that indignation into a spirit of dauntless
resistance?
Each point of that Treaty could have been engraved on the
minds and hearts of the German people and burned into them until sixty million
men and women would find their souls aflame with a feeling of rage and shame;
and a torrent of fire would burst forth as from a furnace, and one common will
would be forged from it, like a sword of steel. Then the people would join in
the common cry: "To arms again!"
Yes. A treaty of that kind can be used for such a
purpose. Its unbounded oppression and its impudent demands were an excellent
propaganda weapon to arouse the sluggish spirit of the nation and restore its
vitality.
Then, from the child's story-book to the last newspaper in
the country, and every theatre and cinema, every pillar where placards are
posted and every free space on the hoardings should be utilized in the service
of this one great mission, until the faint-hearted cry, "Lord, deliver us,"
which our patriotic associations send up to Heaven today would be transformed
into an ardent prayer: "Almighty God, bless our arms when the hour comes. Be
just, as Thou hast always been just. Judge now if we deserve our freedom. Lord,
bless our struggle."
All opportunities were neglected and nothing was done.
Who will be surprised now if our people are not such as they should
be or might be? The rest of the world looks upon us only as its valet, or as a
kindly dog that will lick its master's hand after he has been whipped.
Of
course the possibilities of forming alliances with other nations are hampered
by the indifference of our own people, but much more by our Governments. They
have been and are so corrupt that now, after eight years of indescribable
oppression, there exists only a faint desire for liberty.
In order that our nation may undertake a policy of
alliances, it must restore its prestige among other nations, and it must have
an authoritative Government that is not a drudge in the service of foreign
States and the taskmaster of its own people, but rather the herald of the
national will.
If our people had a government which would look upon this
as its mission, six years would not have passed before a courageous foreign
policy on the part of the Reich would find a corresponding support among the
people, whose desire for freedom would be encouraged and intensified thereby.
The third objection referred to the difficulty of
changing the ex-enemy nations into friendly allies. That objection may be
answered as follows:
The general anti-German psychosis which has developed in
other countries through the war propaganda must of necessity continue to exist
as long as there is not a renaissance of the national conscience among the
German people, so that the German Reich may once again become a State which is
able to play its part on the chess-board of European politics and with whom the
others feel that they can play. Only when the Government and the people feel
absolutely certain of being able to undertake a policy of alliances can one
Power or another, whose interests coincide with ours, think of instituting a
system of propaganda for the purpose of changing public opinion among its own
people. Naturally it will take several years of persevering and ably directed
work to reach such a result. Just because a long period is needed in order to
change the public opinion of a country, it is necessary to reflect calmly
before such an enterprise be undertaken. This means that one must not enter
upon this kind of work unless one is absolutely convinced that it is worth the
trouble and that it will bring results which will be valuable in the future.
One must not try to change the opinions and feelings of a people by basing
one's actions on the vain cajolery of a more or less brilliant Foreign
Minister, but only if there be a tangible guarantee that the new orientation
will be really useful. Otherwise public opinion in the country dealt with may
be just thrown into a state of complete confusion. The most reliable guarantee
that can be given for the possibility of subsequently entering into an alliance
with a certain State cannot be found in the loquacious suavity of some
individual member of the Government, but in the manifest stability of a
definite and practical policy on the part of the Government as a whole, and in
the support which is given to that policy by the public opinion of the country.
The faith of the public in this policy will be strengthened all the more if the
Government organize one active propaganda to explain its efforts and secure
public support for them, and if public opinion favourably responds to the
Government's policy.
Therefore a nation in such a position as ours will be
looked upon as a possible ally if public opinion supports the Government's
policy and if both are united in the same enthusiastic determination to carry
through the fight for national freedom. That condition of affairs must be
firmly established before any attempt can be made to change public opinion in
other countries which, for the sake of defending their most elementary
interests, are disposed to take the road shoulder-to-shoulder with a companion
who seems able to play his part in defending those interests. In other words,
this means that they will be ready to establish an alliance.
For this purpose, however, one thing is necessary. Seeing
that the task of bringing about a radical change in the public opinion of a
country calls for hard work, and many do not at first understand what it means,
it would be both foolish and criminal to commit mistakes which could be used as
weapons in the hands of those who are opposed to such a change.
One must recognize the fact that it takes a long time for
a people to understand completely the inner purposes which a Government has in
view, because it is not possible to explain the ultimate aims of the
preparations that are being made to carry through a certain policy. In such
cases the Government has to count on the blind faith of the masses or the
intuitive instinct of the ruling caste that is more developed intellectually.
But since many people lack this insight, this political acumen and faculty for
seeing into the trend of affairs, and since political considerations forbid a
public explanation of why such and such a course is being followed, a certain
number of leaders in intellectual circles will always oppose new tendencies
which, because they are not easily grasped, can be pointed to as mere
experiments. And that attitude arouses opposition among conservative circles
regarding the measures in question.
For this reason a strict duty devolves upon everybody not
to allow any weapon to fall into the hands of those who would interfere with
the work of bringing about a mutual understanding with other nations. This is
specially so in our case, where we have to deal with the pretentions and
fantastic talk of our patriotic associations and our small bourgeoisie who talk
politics in the cafes. That the cry for a new war fleet, the restoration of our
colonies, etc., has no chance of ever being carried out in practice will not be
denied by anyone who thinks over the matter calmly and seriously. These
harmless and sometimes half-crazy spouters in the war of protests are serving
the interests of our mortal enemy, while the manner in which their vapourings
are exploited for political purposes in England cannot be considered as
advantageous to Germany.
They squander their energies in futile demonstrations
against the whole world. These demonstrations are harmful to our interests and
those who indulge in them forget the fundamental principle which is a
preliminary condition of all success. What thou doest, do it thoroughly.
Because we keep on howling against five or ten States we fail to concentrate
all the forces of our national will and our physical strength for a blow at the
heart of our bitterest enemy. And in this way we sacrifice the possibility of
securing an alliance which would reinforce our strength for that decisive
conflict.
Here, too, there is a mission for National Socialism to
fulfil. It must teach our people not to fix their attention on the little
things but rather on the great things, not to exhaust their energies on
secondary objects, and not to forget that the object we shall have to fight for
one day is the bare existence of our people and that the sole enemy we shall
have to strike at is that Power which is robbing us of this existence.
It
may be that we shall have many a heavy burden to bear. But this is by no means
an excuse for refusing to listen to reason and raise nonsensical outcries
against the rest of the world, instead of concentrating all our forces against
the most deadly enemy.
Moreover, the German people will have no moral right to
complain of the manner in which the rest of the world acts towards them, as
long as they themselves have not called to account those criminals who sold and
betrayed their own country. We cannot hope to be taken very seriously if we
indulge in long-range abuse and protests against England and Italy and then
allow those scoundrels to circulate undisturbed in our own country who were in
the pay of the enemy war propaganda, took the weapons out of our hands, broke
the backbone of our resistance and bartered away the Reich for thirty pieces of
silver.
The enemy did only what was expected. And we ought to learn from the
stand he took and the way he acted.
Anyone who cannot rise to the level of this outlook must
reflect that otherwise there would remain nothing else than to renounce the
idea of adopting any policy of alliances for the future. For if we cannot form
an alliance with England because she has robbed us of our colonies, or with
Italy because she has taken possession of South Tyrol, or with Poland or
Czechoslovakia, then there remains no other possibility of an alliance in
Europe except with France which, inter alia, has robbed us of Alsace and
Lorraine.
There can scarcely be any doubt as to whether this last
alternative would be advantageous to the interests of the German people. But if
it be defended by somebody one is always doubtful whether that person be merely
a simpleton or an astute rogue.
As far as concerns the leaders in these activities, I
think the latter hypothesis is true.
A change in public feeling among those nations which have
hitherto been enemies and whose true interests will correspond in the future
with ours could be effected, as far as human calculation goes, if the internal
strength of our State and our manifest determination to secure our own
existence made it clear that we should be valuable allies. Moreover, it is
necessary that our incompetent way of doing things and our criminal conduct in
some matters should not furnish grounds which may be utilized for purposes of
propaganda by those who would oppose our projects of establishing an alliance
with one or other of our former enemies.
The answer to the third question is still more difficult:
Is it conceivable that they who represent the true interests of those nations
which may possibly form an alliance with us could put their views into practice
against the will of the Jew, who is the mortal enemy of national and
independent popular States?
For instance, could the motive-forces of Great Britain's
traditional statesmanship smash the disastrous influence of the Jew, or could
they not?
This question, as I have already said, is very difficult
to answer. The answer depends on so many factors that it is impossible to form
a conclusive judgment. Anyhow, one thing is certain: The power of the
Government in a given State and at a definite period may be so firmly
established in the public estimation and so absolutely at the service of the
country's interests that the forces of international Jewry could not possibly
organize a real and effective obstruction against measures considered to be
politically necessary.
The fight which Fascist Italy waged against Jewry's three
principal weapons, the profound reasons for which may not have been consciously
understood (though I do not believe this myself) furnishes the best proof that
the poison fangs of that Power which transcends all State boundaries are being
drawn, even though in an indirect way. The prohibition of Freemasonry and
secret societies, the suppression of the supernational Press and the definite
abolition of Marxism, together with the steadily increasing consolidation of
the Fascist concept of the State – all this will enable the Italian Government,
in the course of some years, to advance more and more the interests of the
Italian people without paying any attention to the hissing of the Jewish
world-hydra.
The English situation is not so favourable. In that
country which has 'the freest democracy' the Jew dictates his will, almost
unrestrained but indirectly, through his influence on public opinion. And yet
there is a perpetual struggle in England between those who are entrusted with
the defence of State interests and the protagonists of Jewish
world-dictatorship.
After the War it became clear for the first time how
sharp this contrast is, when British statesmanship took one stand on the
Japanese problem and the Press took a different stand.
Just after the War had ceased the old mutual antipathy
between America and Japan began to reappear. Naturally the great European
Powers could not remain indifferent to this new war menace. In England, despite
the ties of kinship, there was a certain amount of jealousy and anxiety over
the growing importance of the United States in all spheres of international
economics and politics. What was formerly a colonial territory, the daughter of
a great mother, seemed about to become the new mistress of the world. It is
quite understandable that today England should re-examine her old alliances and
that British statesmanship should look anxiously to the danger of a coming
moment when the cry would no longer be: "Britain rules the waves", but rather:
"The Seas belong to the United States".
The gigantic North American State, with the enormous
resources of its virgin soil, is much more invulnerable than the encircled
German Reich. Should a day come when the die which will finally decide the
destinies of the nations will have to be cast in that country, England would be
doomed if she stood alone. Therefore she eagerly reaches out her hand to a
member of the yellow race and enters an alliance which, from the racial point
of view is perhaps unpardonable; but from the political viewpoint it represents
the sole possibility of reinforcing Britain's world position in face of the
strenuous developments taking place on the American continent.
Despite the fact that they fought side by side on the
European battlefields, the British Government did not decide to conclude an
alliance with the Asiatic partner, yet the whole Jewish Press opposed the idea
of a Japanese alliance.
How can we explain the fact that up to 1918 the Jewish
Press championed the policy of the British Government against the German Reich
and then suddenly began to take its own way and showed itself disloyal to the
Government?
It was not in the interests of Great Britain to have
Germany annihilated, but primarily a Jewish interest. And today the destruction
of Japan would serve British political interests less than it would serve the
far-reaching intentions of those who are leading the movement that hopes to
establish a Jewish world-empire. While England is using all her endeavours to
maintain her position in the world, the Jew is organizing his aggressive plans
for the conquest of it.
He already sees the present European States as pliant
instruments in his hands, whether indirectly through the power of so-called
Western Democracy or in the form of a direct domination through Russian
Bolshevism. But it is not only the old world that he holds in his snare; for a
like fate threatens the new world. Jews control the financial forces of America
on the stock exchange. Year after year the Jew increases his hold on Labour in
a nation of 120 million souls. But a very small section still remains quite
independent and is thus the cause of chagrin to the Jew.
The Jews show consummate skill in manipulating public
opinion and using it as an instrument in fighting for their own future.
The great leaders of Jewry are confident that the day is near at
hand when the command given in the Old Testament will be carried out and the
Jews will devour the other nations of the earth.
Among this great mass of denationalized countries which
have become Jewish colonies one independent State could bring about the ruin of
the whole structure at the last moment. The reason for doing this would be that
Bolshevism as a world-system cannot continue to exist unless it encompasses the
whole earth. Should one State preserve its national strength and its national
greatness the empire of the Jewish satrapy, like every other tyranny, would
have to succumb to the force of the national idea.
As a result of his millennial experience in accommodating
himself to surrounding circumstances, the Jew knows very well that he can
undermine the existence of European nations by a process of racial
bastardization, but that he could hardly do the same to a national Asiatic
State like Japan. To-day he can ape the ways of the German and the Englishman,
the American and the Frenchman, but he has no means of approach to the yellow
Asiatic. Therefore he seeks to destroy the Japanese national State by using
other national States as his instruments, so that he may rid himself of a
dangerous opponent before he takes over supreme control of the last national
State and transforms that control into a tyranny for the oppression of the
defenceless.
He does not want to see a national Japanese State in
existence when he founds his millennial empire of the future, and therefore he
wants to destroy it before establishing his own dictatorship.
And so he is busy today in stirring up antipathy towards
Japan among the other nations, as he stirred it up against Germany. Thus it may
happen that while British statesmanship is still endeavouring to ground its
policy in the alliance with Japan, the Jewish Press in Great Britain may be at
the same time leading a hostile movement against that ally and preparing for a
war of destruction by pretending that it is for the triumph of democracy and at
the same time raising the war-cry: Down with Japanese militarism and
imperialism.
Thus in England today the Jew opposes the policy of the
State. And for this reason the struggle against the Jewish world-danger will
one day begin also in that country.
And here again the National Socialist Movement has a
tremendous task before it.
It must open the eyes of our people in regard to foreign
nations and it must continually remind them of the real enemy who menaces the
world today. In place of preaching hatred against Aryans from whom we may be
separated on almost every other ground but with whom the bond of kindred blood
and the main features of a common civilization unite us, we must devote
ourselves to arousing general indignation against the maleficent enemy of
humanity and the real author of all our sufferings.
The National Socialist Movement must see to it that at
least in our own country the mortal enemy is recognized and that the fight
against him may be a beacon light pointing to a new and better period for other
nations as well as showing the way of salvation for Aryan humanity in the
struggle for its existence.
Finally, may reason be our guide and will-power our
strength. And may the sacred duty of directing our conduct as I have pointed
out give us perseverance and tenacity; and may our faith be our supreme
protection.
Chapter XIV: Eastern Orientation
or Eastern Policy
There are two reasons which induce me to submit to a special
examination the relation of Germany to Russia:
with anxious concern. Since our young movement does not obtain membership
material from the camp of the indifferent, but chiefly from very extreme
outlooks, it is only too natural if these people, in the field of understanding
foreign affairs as in other fields, are burdened with the preconceived ideas or
feeble understanding of the circles to which they previously belonged, both
politically and philosophically. And this by no means applies only to the man
who comes to us from the Left. On the contrary. Harmful as his previous
instruction with regard to such problems might be, in part at least it was not
infrequently balanced by an existing remnant of natural and healthy instinct.
Then it was only necessary to substitute a better attitude for the influence
that was previously forced upon him, and often the essentially healthy instinct
and impulse of self-preservation that still survived in him could be regarded
as our best ally.
It is much harder, on the other hand, to induce dear
political thinking in a man whose previous education in this field was no less
devoid of any reason and logic, but on top of all this had also sacrified his
last remnant of natural instinct on the altar of objectivity. Precisely the
members of our so-called intelligentsia are the hardest to move to a really
clear and logical defense of their interests and the interests of their nation.
They are not only burdened with a dead weight of the most senseless conceptions
and prejudices, but what makes matters completely intolerable is that they have
lost and abandoned all healthy instinct of self-preservation. The National
Socialist movement is compelled to endure hard struggles with these people,
hard because, despite total incompetence, they often unfortunately are
afflicted with an amazing conceit, which causes them to look down without the
slightest inner justification upon other people, for the most part healthier
than they. Supercilious, arrogant knowit-alls, without any capacity for cool
testing and weighing, which, in turn, must be recognized as the pre-condition
for any will and action in the field of foreign affairs.
Since these very circles are beginning today to divert the
tendency of our foreign policy in the most catastrophic way from any real
defense of the folkish interests of our people, placing it instead in the
service of their fantastic ideology, I feel it incumbent upon me to discuss for
my supporters the most important question in the field of foreign affairs, our
relation to Russia, in particular, and as thoroughly as is necessary for the
general understanding and possible in the scope of such a work
But first I would like to make the following introductory
remarks:
If under foreign policy we must understand the regulation of a
nation's relations with the rest of the world, the manner of this regulation
will be determined by certain definite facts. As National Socialists we can,
furthermore, establish the following principle concerning the nature of the
foreign policy of a folkish state:
The foreign policy of the fokish state must safeguard the
existence on this planet of the race embodied in the state, by creating a
healthy, viable natural relation between the nation's population and growth on
the one hand and the quantity and quality of its soil on the other
hand.
As a healthy relation we may regard only that condition which
assures the sustenance of a people on its own soil. Every other condition, even
if it endures for hundreds, nay, thousands of years, is nevertheless unhealthy
and will sooner or later lead to the injury if not annihilation of the people
in question.
Only an adequately large space on this earth assures a
nation of freedom of existence.
Moreover, the necessary size of the territory to be
settled cannot be judged exclusively on the basis of present requirements, not
even in fact on the basis of the yield of the soil compared to the population.
For, as I explained in the first volume, under 'German Alliance Policy Before
the War,' in addition to its importance as a direct source of a people's food,
another significance, that is, a military and political one, must be attributed
to the area of a state. If a nation's sustenance as such is assured by the
amount of its soil, the safeguarding of the existing soil itself must also be
borne in mind. This lies in the general power-political strength of the state,
which in turn to no small extent is determined by geo-military
considerations.
Hence, the German nation can defend its future only as a
world power. For more than two thousand years the defense of our people's
interests, as we should designate our more or less fortunate activity in the
field of foreign affairs, was world history. We ourselves were witnesses to
this fact: for the gigantic struggle of the nations in the years 1914-1918 was
only the struggle of the German people for its existence on the globe, but we
designated the type of event itself as a World War.
The German people entered this struggle as a supposed
world power. I say here 'supposed,' for in reality it was none. If the German
nation in 1914 had had a different relation between area and population,
Germany would really have been a world power, and the War, aside from all other
factors, could have been terminated favorably.
Germany today is no world power. Even if our momentary
military impotence were overcome, we should no longer have any claim to this
title. What can a formation, as miserable in its relation of population to area
as the German Reich today, mean on this planet? In an era when the earth is
gradually being divided up among states, some of which embrace almost entire
continents, we cannot speak of a world power in connection with a formation
whose political mother country is limited to the absurd area of five hundred
thousand square kilometers.
From the purely territorial point of view, the area of the
German Reich vanishes completely as compared with that of the socalled world
powers. Let no one cite England as a proof to the contrary, for England in
reality is merely the great capital of the British world empire which calls
nearly a quarter of the earth's surface its own. In addition, we must regard as
giant states, first of all the American Union, then Russia and China. All are
spatial formations having in part an area more than ten times greater than the
present German Reich. And even France must be counted among these states. Not
only that she complements her army to an ever-increasing degree from her
enormous empire's reservoir of colored humanity, but racially as well, she is
making such great progress in negrification that we can actually speak of an
African state arising on European soil. The colonial policy of present-day
France cannot be compared with that of Germany in the past. If the development
of France in the present style were to be continued for three hundred years,
the last remnants of Frankish blood would be submerged in the developing
European-African mulatto state. An immense self-contained area of settlement
from the Rhine to the Congo, filled with a lower race gradually produced from
continuous bastardization.
This distinguishes French colonial policy from the old
German one.
The former German colonial policy, like everything we
did, was carried out by halves. It neither increased the settlement area of the
German Reich, nor did it undertake any attempt- criminal though it would have
been-to strengthen the Reich by the use of black blood. The Askaris in German
East Africa were a short, hesitant step in this direction. Actually they served
only for the defense of the colonies themselves. The idea of bringing black
troops into a European battlefield, quite aside from its practical
impossibility in the World War, never existed even as a design to be realized
under more favorable circumstances, while, on the contrary, it was always
regarded and felt by the French as the basic reason for their colonial
activity.
Thus, in the world today we see a number of power states,
some of which not only far surpass the strength of our German nation in
population, but whose area above all is the chief support of their political
power. Never has the relation of the German Reich to other existing world
states been as unfavorable as at the beginning of our history two thousand
years ago and again today. Then we were a young people, rushing headlong into a
world of great crumbling state formations, whose last giant, Rome, we ourselves
helped to fell. Today we find ourselves in a world of great power states in
process of formation, with our own Reich sinking more and more into
insignificance.
We must bear this bitter truth coolly and soberly in
mind. We must follow and compare the German Reich through the centuries in its
relation to other states with regard to population and area. I know that
everyone will then come to the dismayed conclusion which I have stated at the
beginning of this discussion: Germany is no longer a world power, regardless
whether she is strong or weak from the military point of view.
We have lost all proportion to the other great states of
the earth, and this thanks only to the positively catastrophic leadership of
our nation in the field of foreign affairs, thanks to our total failure to be
guided by what I should almost call a testamentary aim in foreign policy, and
thanks to the loss of any healthy instinct and impulse of
self-preservation.
If the National Socialist movement really wants to be
consecrated by history with a great mission for our nation, it must be
permeated by knowledge and filled with pain at our true situation in this
world; boldly and conscious of its goal, it must take up the struggle against
the aimlesmess and incompetence which have hitherto guided our German nation in
the line of foreign affairs. Then, without consideration of 'traditions' and
prejudices, it must find the courage to gather our people and their strength
for an advance along the road that will lead this people from its present
restricted living space to new land and soil, and hence also free it from the
danger of vanishing frotn the earth or of serving others as a slave
nation.
The National Socialist movement must strive to eliminate the
disproportion between our population and our area-viewing this latter as a
source of food as well as a basis for power politics-between our historical
past and the hopelessness of our present impotence. And in this it must remain
aware that we, as guardians of the highest humanity on this earth, are bound by
the highest obligation, and the more it strives to bring the German people to
racial awareness so that, in addition to breeding dogs, horses, and cats, they
will have mercy on their own blood, the more it will be able to meet this
obligation.
If I characterize German policy up to now as aimless and
incompetent, the proof of my assertion lies in the actual failure of this
policy. If our people had been intellectually inferior or cowardly, the results
of its struggle on the earth could not be worse than what we see before us
today. Neither must the development of the last decades before the War deceive
us on this score; for we cannot measure the strength of an empire by itself,
but only by comparison with other states. And just such a comparison furnishes
proof that the increase in strength of the other states was not only more even,
but also greater in its ultimate effect; that consequently, despite its
apparent rise, Germany's road actually diverged more and more from that of the
other states and fell far behind; in short, the difference in magnitudes
increased to our disfavor. Yes, as time went on, we fell behind more and more
even in population. But since our people is certainly excelled by none on earth
in heroism, in fact, all in all has certainly given the most blood of all the
nations on earth for the preservation of its existence, the failure can reside
only in the mistaken way in which it was given.
If we examine the political experiences of our people for
more than a thousand years in this connection, passing all the innumerable wars
and struggles in review and examining the present end result they created, we
shall be forced to admit that this sea of blood has given rise to only three
phenomena which we are justified in claiming as enduring fruits of clearly
defined actions in the field of foreign and general politics:
(1) The colonization of the Ostmark, carried out mostly
by Bavarians;
(2) the acquisition and penetration of the territory east
of the Elbe; and
(3) the organization by the Hohenzollerns of the
Brandenburg-Prussian state as a model and nucleus for crystallization of a new
Reich.
An instructive warning for the future!
The first two great successes of our foreign policy have
remained the most enduring. Without them our nation today would no longer have
any importance at all. They were the first, but unfortunately the only
successful attempt to bring the rising population into harmony with the
quantity of our soil. And it must be regarded as truly catastrophic that our
German historians have never been able to estimate correctly these two
achievements which are by far the greatest and most significant for the future,
but by contrast have glorified everything conceivable, praised and admired
fantastic heroism, innumerable adventurous wars and struggles, instead of
finally recognizing how unimportant most of these events have been for the
nation's great line of development.
The third great success of our political
activity lies in the formation of the Prussian state and the resultant
cultivation of a special state idea, as also of the German army's instinct of
selfpreservation and self-defense, adapted to the modern world and put into
organized form. The development of the idea of individual militancy into the
duty of national militancy [conscription] has grown out of every state
formation and every state conception. The significance of this development
cannot be overestimated. Through the discipline of the Prussian army organism,
the German people, shot through with hyperindividualism by their racial
divisions, won back at least a part of the capacity for organization which they
had long since lost. What other peoples still primitively possess in their herd
community instinct, we, partially at least, regained artificially for our
national community through the process of military training. Hence the
elimination of universal conscription- which for dozens of other peoples might
be a matter of no importance-is for us fraught with the gravest consequences.
Ten German generations without corrective and educational military training,
left to the evil effects of their racial and hence philosophical division-and
our nation would really have lost the last remnant of an independent existence
on this planet. Only through individual men, in the bosom of foreign nations,
could the German spirit make its contribution to culture, and its origin would
not even be recognized. Cultural fertilizer, until the last remnant of
Aryan-Nordic blood in us would be corrupted or extinguished.
It is noteworthy that the significance of these real
political successes won by our nation in its struggles, enduring more than a
thousand years, were far better understood and appreciated by our adversaries
than by ourselves. Even today we still rave about a heroism which robbed our
people of millions of its noblest blood-bearers, but in its ultimate result
remained totally fruitless.
The distinction between the real political successes of
our people and the national blood spent for fruitless aims is of the greatest
importance for our conduct in the present and the future.
We National Socialists must never under any circumstances
join in the foul hurrah patriotism of our present bourgeois world. In
particular it is mortally dangerous to regard the last pre-War developments as
binding even in the slightest degree for our own course. From the whole
historical development of the nineteenth century, not a single obligation can
be derived which was grounded in this period itself. In contrast to the conduct
of the representatives of this period, we must again profess the highest aim of
all foreign policy, to wit: to bring the soil into harmony with the population
Yes, from the past we can only learn that, in setting an objective for our
political activity, we must proceed in two directions: Land and soil as the
goal of ourforeign policy, and a new philosophically established, uniform
foundation as the aim of political activity at home.
I still wish briefly to take a position on the question
as to what extent the demand for soil and territory seems ethically and morally
justified. This is necessary, since unfortunately, even in socalled folkish
circles, all sorts of unctuous bigmouths step forward, endeavoring to set the
rectification of the injustice of 1918 as the aim of the German nation's
endeavors in the field of foreign affairs, but at the same time find it
necessary to assure the whole world of folkish brotherhood and
sympathy.
I should like to make the following preliminary remarks: The demand
for restoration of the frontiers of 1914 is a political absurdity of ssxch
proportions and consegsxences as to make it seem a crime. Quite aside from the
fact that the Reich's frontiers in 19X4 were anything but logical. For in
reality they were neither complete in the sense of embracing the people of
German nationality, nor sensible with regard to geomilitary expediency. They
were not the result of a considered political action, but momentary frontiers
in a political struggle that was by no means concluded; partly, in fact, they
were the results of chance. With equal right and in many cases with more right,
some other sample year of German history could be picked out, and the
restoration of the conditions at that time declared to be the aim of an
activity in foreign affairs. The above demand is entirely suited to our
bourgeois society, which here as elsewhere does not possess a single creative
political idea for the future, but lives only in the past, in fact, in the most
immediate past; for even their backward gaze does not extend beyond their own
times. The law of inertia binds them to a given situation and causes them to
resist any change in it, but without ever increasing the activity of this
opposition beyond the mere power of perseverance. So it is obvious that the
political horizon of these people does not extend beyond the year 1914. By
proclaiming the restoration of those borders as the political aim of their
activity, they keep mending the crumbling league of our adversaries. Only in
this way can it be explained that eight years after a world struggle in which
states, some of which had the most heterogeneous desires, took part, the
coalition of the victors of those days can still maintain itself in a more or
less unbroken form.
All these states were at one time beneficiaries of the
German collapse. Fear of our strength caused the greed and envy of the
individual great powers among themselves to recede. By grabbing as much of the
Reich as they could, they found the best guard against a future uprising. A bad
conscience and fear of our people's strength is still the most enduring cement
to hold together the various members of this alliance.
And we do not
disappoint them. By setting up the restoration of the borders of 1914 as a
political program for Germany, our bourgeoisie frighten away every pa rtner who
might desire to leave the league of our enemies, since he must inevitably fear
to be attacked singly and thereby lose the protection of his individual fellow
allies. Each single state feels concerned and threatened by this
slogan.
Moreover, it is senseless in two respects:
(1) because the instruments of power are lacking to
remove it from the vapors of club evenings into reality; and
(2) because, if it could actually be realized, the
outcome would again be so pitiful that, by God, it would not be worth while to
risk the blood of our people for this.
For it should scarcely seem questionable to anyone that
ever the restoration of the frontiers of 1914 could be achieved only by blood.
Only childish and naive minds can lull themselves in the idea that they can
bring about a correction of Versailles by wheedling and begging. Quite aside
from the fact that such an attempt would presuppose a man of Talleyrand's
talents, which we do not possess. One half of our political figures consist of
extremely sly, but equally spineless elements which are hostile toward our
nation to begin with, while the other is composed of goodnatured, harmless, and
easy-going soft-heads. Moreover, the times have changed since the Congress of
Vienna: Today it is not princes and princes' mistresses who haggle and bargain
over state borders; it is the inexorable Jew who struggles for his domination
over the nations. No nation can remove this hand from its throat except by the
sword. Only the assembled and concentrated might of a national passion rearing
up in its strength can defy the international enslavement of peoples. Such a
process is and remains a bloody one.
If, however, we harbor the conviction that the German
future, regardless what happens, demands the supreme sacrifice, quite aside
from all considerations of political expediency as such, we must set up an aim
worthy of this sacrifice and fight for it.
The boundaries of the year 1914 mean nothing at all for
the German future. Neither did they provide a defense of the past, nor would
they contain any strength for the future. Through them the German nation will
neither achieve its inner integrity, nor will its sustenance be safeguarded by
them, nor do these boundaries, viewed from the military standpoint, seem
expedient or even satisfactory, nor finally can they improve the relation in
which we at present find ourselves toward the other world powers, or, better
expressed, the real world powers. The lag behind England will not be caught up,
the magnitude of the Union will not be achieved; not even France would
experience a material diminution of her world-political importance.
Only one thing would be certain: even with a favorable outcome, such
an attempt to restore the borders of 1914 would lead to a further bleeding of
our national body, so much so that there would be no worth-while blood left to
stake for the decisions and actions really to secure the nation's future. On
the contrary, drunk with such a shallow success, we should renounce any further
goals, all the more readily as 'national honor' would be repaired and, for the
moment at least, a few doors would have been reopened to commercial
development.
As opposed to this, we National Socialists must hold
unflinchingly to our aim in foreign policy, namely, to secure for the German
people the land and soil to which they are entitled on this earth. And this
action is the only one which, before God and our German posterity, would make
any sacrifice of blood seem justified: before God, since we have been put on
this earth with the mission of eternal struggle for our daily bread, beings who
receive nothing as a gift, and who owe their position as lords of the earth
only to the genius and the courage with which they can conquer and defend it;
and before our German posterity in so far as we have shed no citizen's blood
out of which a thousand others are not bequeathed to posterity. The soil on
which some day German generations of peasants can beget powerful sons will
sanction the investment of the sons of today, and will some day acquit the
responsible statesmen of blood-guilt and sacrifice of the people, even if they
are persecuted by their contemporaries.
And I must sharply attack those folkish pen-pushers who
claim to regard such an acquisition of soil as a 'breach of sacred human
rights' and attack it as such in their scribblings. One never knows who stands
behind these fellows. But one thing is certain, that the confusion they can
create is desirable and convenient to our national enemies. By such an attitude
they help to weaken and destroy from within our people's will for the only
correct way of defending their vital needs. For no people on this earth
possesses so much as a square yard of territory on the strength of a higher
will or superior right. Just as Germany's frontiers are fortuitous frontiers,
momentary frontiers in the current political struggle of any period, so are the
boundaries of other nations' living space. And just as the shape of our earth's
Furnace can seem immutable as granite only to the thoughtless soft-head, but in
reality only represents at each period an apparent pause in a continuous
development, created by the mighty forces of Nature in a process of continuous
growth, only to be transformed or destroyed tomorrow by greater forces,
likewise the boundaries of living spaces in the life of nations.
State boundaries are made by man and changed by
man.
The fact that a nation has succeeded in acquiring an undue amount of
soil constitutes no higher obligation that it should be recognized eternally.
At most it proves the strength of the conquerors and the weakness of the
nations. And in this case, right lies in this strength alone. If the German
nation today, penned into an impossible area, faces a lamentable future, this
is no more a commandment of Fate than revolt against this state of affairs
constitutes an affront to Fate. No more than any higher power has promised
another nation more territory than the Gerrnan nation, or is offended by the
fact of this unjust distribution of the soil. Just as our ancestors did not
receive the soil on which we live today as a gift from Heaven, but had to fight
for it at the risk of their lives, in the future no folkish grace will win soil
for us and hence life for our people, but only the might of a victorious
sword.
Much as all of us today recognize the necessity of a reckoning with
France, it would remain ineffectual in the long run if it represented the whole
of our aim in foreign policy. It can and will achieve meaning only if it offers
the rear cover for an enlargement of our people's living space in Europe. For
it is not in colonial acquisitions that we must see the solution of this
problem, but exclusively in the acquisition of a territory for settlement,
which will enhance the area of the mother country, and hence not only keep the
new settlers in the most intimate community with the land of their origin, but
secure for the total area those advantages which lie in its unified
magnitude.
The folkish movement must not be the champion of other
peoples, but the vanguard fighter of its own. Otherwise it is superfluous and
above all has no right to sulk about the past. For in that case it is behaving
in exactly tbe same wav. The old German policy was wrongly determined by
dynastic considerations, and the future policy must not be directed by
cosmopolitan folkish drivel. In particular, we are not constables guarding the
well-known 'poor little nations,' but soldiers of our own nation.
But we National Socialists must go further. The right to
possess soil can become a duty if without extension of its soil a great nation
seems doomed to destruction. And most especially when not some little negro
nation or other is involved, but the Germanic mother of life, which has given
the present-day world its cultural picture. Germany will either be a world
power or there will be no Germany. And for world power she needs that magnitude
which will give her the position she needs in the present period, and life to
her citizens.
And so we National Socialists consciously draw a line
beneath the foreign policy tendency of our pre-War period. We take up where we
broke off six hundred years ago. We stop the endless German movement to the
south and west, and turn our gaze toward the land in the east. At long last we
break of the colonial and commercial policy of the pre-War period and shift to
the soil policy of the future.
If we speak of soil in Europe today, we can primarily
have in mind only Russia and her vassal border states.
Here Fate itself seems desirous of giving us a sign. By
handing P ussia to Bolshevism, it robbed the Russian nation of that
intelligentsia which previously brought about and guaranteed its existence as a
state. For the organization of a Russian state formation was not the result of
the political abilities of the Slavs in Russia, but only a wonderful example of
the state-forming efficacity of the German element in an inferior race.
Numerous mighty empires on earth have been created in this way. Lower nations
led by Germanic organizers and overlords have more than once grown to be mighty
state formations and have endured as long as the racial nudeus of the creative
state race maintained itself. For centuries Russia drew nourishment from this
Germanic nucleus of its upper leading strata. Today it can be regarded as
almost totally exterminated and extinguished. It has been replaced by the Jew.
Impossible as it is for the Russian by himself to shake off the yoke of the Jew
by his own resources, it is equally impossible for the Jew to maintain the
mighty empire forever. He himself is no element of organization, but a ferment
of decomposition. The Persian I empire in the east is ripe for collapse. And
the end of Jewish rule in Russia will also be the end of Russia as a state. We
have been chosen by Fate as witnesses of a catastrophe which will be the
mightiest confirmation of the soundness of the folkish theory.
Our task, the mission of the National Socialist movement,
is to bring our own people to such political insight that they will not see
their goal for the future in the breath-taking sensation of a new Alexander's
conquest, but in the industrious work of the German plow, to which the sword
need only give soil.
It goes without saying that the Jews announce the
sharpest resistance to such a policy. Better than anyone else they sense the
significance of this action for their own future. This very fact should teach
all really national-minded men the correctness of such a reorientation.
Unfortunately, the opposite is the case. Not only in German-National, but even
in 'folkish' circles, the idea of such an eastern policy is violently attacked,
and, as almost always in such matters, they appeal to a higher authority. The
spirit of Bismarck is cited to cover a policy which is as senseless as it is
impossible and in the highest degree harmful to the German nation. Bismarck in
his time, they say, always set store on good relations with Russia. This, to a
certain extent, is true. But they forget to mention that he set just as great
store on good relations with Italy, for example; in fact, that the same Herr
von Bismarck once made an alliance with Italy in order to finish off Austria
the more easily. Why, then, don't they continue this policy? 'Because the Italy
of today is not the Italy of those days,' they will say. Very well. But then,
honored sirs, will you permit the objection that present-day Russia is not the
Russia of those days either? It never entered Bismarck's head to lay down a
political course tactically and theoretically for all time. In this respect he
was too much master of the moment to tie his hands in such a way. The question,
therefore, most not be: What did Bismarsk do in his time? But rather: What
would he do today? And this question is easier to answer. With his political
astuteness, he would never ally himself unth a state that is downed to
destruction.
Furthermore, Bismarck even then viewed the German colonial
and commercial policy with mixed feelings, since for the moment he was
concerned only with the surest method of internally consolidating the state
formation he had created. And this was the only reason why at that time he
welcomed the Russian rear cover, which gave him a free hand in the west. But
what was profitable to Germany then would be detrimental today.
As early as 1920- 21, when the young National Socialist
movement began slowly to rise above the political horizon, and here and there
was referred to as the movement for German freedom, the party was approached by
various quarters with an attempt to create a certain bond between it and the
movements for freedom in other countries. This was in the line of the ' League
of Oppressed Nations,' propagated by many. Chiefly involved were
representatives of various Balkan states, and some from Egypt and India, who as
individuals always impressed me as pompous big-mouths without any realistic
background. But there were not a few Germans, especially in the nationalist
camp, who let themselves be dazzled by such inflated Orientals and readily
accepted any old Indian or Egyptian student from God knows where as a
'representative' of India or Egypt. These people never realized that they were
usually dealing with persons who had absolutely nothing behind them, and above
all were authorized by no one to conclude any pact with anyone, so that the
practical result of any relations with such elements was nil, unless the time
wasted were booked as a special loss. I always resisted such attempts. Not only
that I had better things to do than twiddle away weeks in fruitless
'conferences,' but even if these men had been authorized representatives of
such nations, I regarded the whole business as useless, in fact,
harmful.
Even in peacetime it was bad enough that the German alliance policy,
for want of any aggressive intentions of our own, ended in a defensive union of
ancient states, pensioned by world history. The alliance with Austria as well
as Turkey had little to be said for them. While the greatest military and
industrial states on earth banded into an active aggressive union, we collected
a few antique, impotent state formations and with this decaying rubbish
attempted to face an active world coalition. Germany received a bitter
accounting for this error in foreign policy. But this accounting does not seem
to have been bitter enough to prevent our eternal dreamers from falling
headlong into the same error. For the attempt to disarm the almighty victors
through a 'league of Oppressed Nations' is not only ridiculous, but
catastrophic as well. It is catastrophic because it distracts our people again
and again from the practical possibilities, making them devote themselves to
imaginative, yet fruitless hopes and illusions. The German of today really
resembles the drowning man who grasps at every straw. And this can apply even
to men who are otherwise exceedingly well educated. If any will-o'-the-wisp of
hope, however unreal, turns up anywhere, these men are off at a trot, chasing
after the phantom. Whether it is a League of Oppressed Nations, a League of
Nations, or any other fantastic new invention, it will be sure to find
thousands of credulous souls.
I still remember the hopes, as childish as they were
incomprehensible, which suddenly arose in folkish circles in 1920-21, to the
effect that British power was on the verge of collapse in India. Some Asiatic
jugglers, for all I care they may have been real 'fighters for Indian freedom,'
who at that time were wandering around Europe, had managed to sell otherwise
perfectly reasonable people the idee fixe that the British Empire, which has
its pivot in India, was on the verge of collapse at that very point. Of course,
it never entered their heads that here again their own wish was the sole father
of all their thoughts. No more did the inconsistency of their own hopes. For by
expecting the end of the British Empire to follow from a collapse of British
rule in India, they themselves admitted that India was of the most paramount
importance to England.
It is most likely, however, that this vitally important
question is not a profound secret known only to German-folkish prophets;
presumably it is known also to the helmsmen of English destiny. It is really
childish to suppose that the men in England cannot correctly estimate the
importance of the Indian Empire for the British world union. And if anyone
imagines that England would let India go without staking her last drop of
blood, it is only a sorry sign of absolute failure to learn from the World War,
and of total misapprehension and ignorance on the score of AngloSaxon
determination. It is, furthermore, a proof of the German's total ignorance
regarding the whole method of British penetration and administration of this
empire. England will lose India either if her own administrative machinery
falls a prey to racial decomposition (which at the moment is completely out of
the question in India) or if she is bested by the sword of a powerful enemy.
Indian agitators, however, will never achieve this. How hard it is to best
England, we Germans have sufficiently learned. Quite aside from the fact that
I, as a man of Germanic blood, would, in spite of everything, rather see India
under English rule than under any other.
Just as lamentable are the hopes in any mythical uprising
in Egypt. The 'Goly War' can give our German Schafkopf players the pleasant
thrill of thinking that now perhaps others are ready to shed their blood for
us-for this cowardly speculation, to tell the truth, has always been the silent
father of all hopes; in reality
it would come to an infernal end under the
fire of English machinegun companies and the hail of fragmentation
bombs.
It just happens to be impossible to overwhelm with a coalition of
cripples a powerful state that is determined to stake, if necessary, its last
drop of blood for its existence. As a folkish man, who appraises the value of
men on a racial basis, I am prevented by mere knowledge of the racial
inferiority of these so-called 'oppressed nations' from linking the destiny of
my own people with theirs.
And today we must take exactly the same position toward
Russia. Present-day Russia, divested of her Germanic upper stratum, is, quite
aside from the private intentions of her new masters, no ally for the German
nation's fight for freedom. Considered frown the purely military angle, the
relations would be simply catastrophic in case of war between Germany and
Russia and Western Europe, and probably against all the rest of the world. The
struggle would take place, not on Russian, but on German soil, and Germany
would not be able to obtain the least effective support from Russia. The
present German Reich's instruments of power are so lamentable and so useless
for a foreign war, that no defense of our borders against Western Europe,
including England, would be practicable, and particularly the German industrial
region would lie defenselessly exposed to the concentrated aggressive arms of
our foes. There is the additional fact that between Germany and Russia there
lies the Polish state, completely in French hands. In case of a war between
Germany and Russia and Western Europe, Russia would first have to subdue Poland
before the first soldier could be sent to the western front. Yet it is not so
much a question of soldiers as of technical armament. In this respect, the
World War situation would repeat itself, only much more horribly. Just as
German industry was then drained for our glorious allies, and, technically
speaking, Germany had to fight the war almost single-handed, likewise in this
struggle Russia would be entirely out of the picture as a technical factor. We
could oppose practically nothing to the general motorization of the worth which
in the next war will manifest itself overwhelmingly and decisively. For not
only that Germany herself has remained shamefully backward in this
all-important field, but from the little she possesses she would have to
sustain Russia, which even today cannot claim possession of a single factory
capable of producing a motor vehicle that really runs. Thus, such a war would
assume the character of a plain massacre. Germany's youth would be bled even
more than the last time, for as always the burden of the fighting would rest
only upon us, and the result would be inevitable defeat.
But even supposing that a miracle should occur and that
such a struggle did not end with the total annihilation of Germany, the
ultimate outcome would only be that the German nation, bled white, would remain
as before bounded by great military states and that her real situation would
hence have changed in no way.
Let no one argue that in concluding an alliance with
Russia we need not immediately think of war, or, if we did, that we could
thoroughly prepare for it. An alliance whose aim does not embrace a plan for
war is senseless and worthless. Alliances are concluded only for struggle. And
even if the clash should be never so far away at the moment when the pact is
concluded, the prospect of a military involvement is nevertheless its cause.
And do not imagine that any power would ever interpret the meaning of such an
alliance in any other way. Either a German-Russian coalition would remain on
paper, or from the letter of the treaty it would be translated into visible
reality-and the rest of the world would be warned. How nalve to suppose that in
such a case England and France would wait a decade for the German-Russian
alliance to complete its technical preparations. No, the storm would break over
Germany with the speed of lightning.
And so the very fact of the conclusion of an alliance
with Russia embodies a plan for the next war. Its outcome would be the end of
Germany.
On top of this there is the following:
1. The present rulers of Russia have no idea of honorably
entering into an alliance, let alone observing one.
Never forget that the rulers of present-day Russia are
common blood-stained criminals; that they are the scum of humanity which,
favored by circumstances, overran a great state in a tragic hour, slaughtered
and wiped out thousands of her leading ir.telligentsia in wild blood lust, and
now for almost ten years have been carrying on the most cruel and tyrannical
regime of all time. Furthermore, do not forget that these rulers belong to a
race which combines, in a rare mixture, bestial cruelty and an inconceivable
gift for lying, and which today more than ever is conscious of a mission to
impose its bloody oppression on the whole world. Do not forget that the
international Jew who completely dominates Russia today regards Germany, not as
an ally, but as a state destined to the same fate. And you do not make pacts
with anyone whose sole interest is the destruction of his partner. Above all,
you do not make them with elements to whom no pact would be sacred, since they
do not live in this world as representatives of honor and sincerity, but as
champions of deceit, lies, theft, plunder, and rapine. If a man believes that
he can enter into profitable connections with parasites, he is like a tree
trying to conclude for its own profit an agreement with a mistletoe.
2.
The danger to which Russia succumbed is always present for Germany. Only a
bourgeois simpleton is capable of imagining that Bolshevism has been exorcised.
With his superficial thinking he has no idea that this is an instinctive
process; that is, the striving of the Jewish people for world domination, a
process which is just as natural as the urge of the Anglo-Saxon to seize
domination of the earth. And just as the Anglo-Saxon pursues this course in his
own way and carries on the fight with his own weapons, likewise the Jew. He
goes his way, the way of sneaking in among the nations and boring from within,
and he fights with his weapons, with lies and slander, poison and corruption,
intensifying the struggle to the point of bloodily exterminating his hated
foes. In Russian Bolshevism we must see the attempt undertaken by the Jews in
the twentieth century to achieve world domination. Just as in other epochs they
strove to reach the same goal by other, though inwardly related processes.
Their endeavor lies profoundly rooted in their essential nature. No more than
another nation renounces of its own accord the pursuit of its impulse for the
expansion of its power and way of life, but is compelled by outward
circumstances or else succumbs to impotence due to the symptoms of old age,
does the Jew break off his road to world dictatorship out of voluntary
renunciation, or because he represses his eternal urge. He, too, will either be
thrown back in his course by forces lying outside himself, or all his striving
for world domination will be ended by his own dying out. But the impotence of
nations, their own death from old age, arises from the abandonment of their
blood purity. And this is a thing that the Jew preserves better than any other
people on earth. And so he advances on his fatal road until another force comes
forth to oppose him, and in a mighty struggle hurls the heaven-stormer back to
Lucifer.
Germany is today the next great war aim of Bolshevism. It requires
all the force of a young missionary idea to raise our people up again, to free
them from the snares of this international serpent, and to stop the inner
contamination of our blood, in order that the forces of the nation thus set
free can be thrown in to safeguard our nationality, and thus can prevent a
repetition of the recent catastrophes down to the most distant future. If we
pursue this aim, it is sheer lunacy to ally ourselves with a power whose master
is the mortal enemy of our future. How can we expect to free our own people
from the fetters of this poisonous embrace if we walk right into it? How shall
we explain Bolshevism to the German worker as an accursed crime against
humanity if we ally ourselves with the organizations of this spawn of hell,
thus recognizing it in the larger sense? By what right shall we condemn a
member of the broad masses for his sympathy with an outlook if the very leaders
of the state choose the representatives of this outlook for allies?
The fight against Jewish world Bolshevization requires a clear
attitude toward Soviet Russia. thou cannot drive out the Devil with
Beelsebub.
If today even folkish circles rave about an alliance with
Russia, they should just look around them in Germany and see whose support they
find in their efforts. Or have folkish men lately begun to view an activity as
beneficial to the German people which is recommended and promoted by the
international Marxist press? Since when do folkish men fight with armor held
out to them by a Jewish squire?
There is one main charge that could be raised against the
old German Reich with regard to its alliance policy: not, however, that it
failed to maintain good relations with Russia, but only that it ruined its
relations with everyone by continuous shilly-shallying, in the pathological
weakness of trying to preserve world peace at any price.
I openly confess
that even in the pre-War period I would have thought it sounder if Germany,
renouncing her senseless colonial policy and renouncing her merchant marine and
war fleet, had concluded an alliance with England against Russia, thus passing
from a feeble global policy to a determined European policy of territorial
acquisition on the continent.
I have not forgotten the insolent threat which the
pan-Slavic Russia of that time dared to address to Germany; I have not
forgotten the constant practice mobilizations, whose sole purpose was an
affront to Germany; I cannot forget the mood of public opinion in Russia, which
outdid itself in hateful outbursts against our people and our Reich; I cannot
forget the big Russian newspapers, which were always more enthusiastic about
France than about us.
But in spite of all that, before the War there would still
have been a second way: we could have propped ourselves on Russia and turned
against England.
Today conditions are different. If before the War we
could have choked down every possible sentiment and gone with Russia, today it
is no longer possible. The hand of the world clock has moved forward since
then, and is loudly striking the hour in which the destiny of our nation must
be decided in one way or another. The process of consolidation in which the
great states of the earth are involved at the moment is for us the last warning
signal to stop and search our hearts, to lead our people out of the dream world
back to hard reality, and show them the way to the future which alone will lead
the old Reich to a new golden age.
If the National Socialist movement frees itself from all
illusions with regard to this great and all-important task, and accepts reason
as its sole guide, the catastrophe of 1918 can some day become an infinite
blessing for the future of our nation. Out of this collapse our nation will
arrive at a complete reorientation of its activity in foreign relations, and,
furthermore, reinforced within by its new philosophy of life, will also achieve
outwardly a final stabilization of its foreign policy. Then at last it will
acquire what England possesses and even Russia possessed, and what again and
again induced France to make the same decisions, essentially correct from the
viewpoint of her own interests, to wit: A political testament.
The political testament of the German nation to govern
its outward activity for all time should and must be:
Never suffer the rise
of two continental powers in Europe. Regard any attempt to organize a second
military power on the German frontiers, even if only in the form of creating a
state capable of military strength, as an attack on Germany, and in it see not
only the right, but also the duty, to employ all means up to armed force to
prevent the rise of such a state, or, if one has already arisen, to smash it
again.-See to it that the strength of our nation is founded, not on colonies,
but on the soil of our European homeland. Never regard the Reich as secure
unless for centuries to come it can give every scion of our people his own
parcel of soil. Never forget that the most sacred right on this earth is a
man's right to have earth to till with his own hands, and the most sacred
sacrifice the blood that a man sheds for this earth.
I should not like to conclude these reflections without
pointing once again to the sole alliance possibility which exists for us at the
moment in Europe. In the previous chapter on the alliance problem I have
already designated England and Italy as the only two states in Europe with
which a closer relationship would be desirable and promising for us. Here I
shall briefly touch on the military importance of such an alliance.
The military consequences of concluding this alliance would in every
respect be the opposite of the consequences of an alliance with Russia. The
most important consideration, first of all, is the fact that in itself an
approach so England and Italy in no way conjures up a war danger. France, the
sole power which could conceivably oppose the alliance, would not be in a
position to do so. And consequently the alliance would give Germany the
possibility of peacefully making those preparations for a reckoning with
France, vhich would have to be made in any event within the scope of such a
coalition. For the significant feature of such an alliance lies precisely in
the fact that upon its conclusion Germany would not suddenly be exposed to a
hostile invasion, but that the opposing alliance would break of its own accord;
the Entente, to which we owe such infinite misfortune, would be dissolved, and
hence France, the mortal enemy of our nation, would be isolated. Even if this
success is limited at first to moral effect, it would suffice to give Germany
freedom of movement to an extent which today is scarcely conceivable. For the
law of action would be in the hands of the new European AngloXermanItalian
alliance and no longer with France.
The further result would be that at one stroke Germany
would be freed from her unfavorable strategic position. The most powerful
protection on our fiank on the one hand, complete guaranty of our food and raw
materials on the other, would be the beneficial effect of the new constellation
of states.
But almost more important would be the fact that the new
league would embrace states which in technical productivity almost complement
one another in many respects. For the first time Germany would have allies who
would not drain our own economy like leeches, but could and would contribute
their share to the richest supplementation of our technical armament.
And do not overlook the final fact that in both cases we should be
dealing with allies who cannot be compared with Turkey or present-day Russia.
The greatest world power on earth and a youthful national state would offer
different premises for a struggle in Europe than the putrid state corpses with
which Germany allied herself in the last war.
Assuredly, as I emphasized in the last chapter, the
difficulties opposing such an alliance are great. But was the formation of the
Entente, for instance, any less difficult? What the genius of a Ring Edward VII
achieved, in part almost counter to natural interests, we, too, must and will
achieve, provided we are so inspired by our awareness of the necessity of such
a development that with astute self-control we determine our actions
accordingly. And this will become possible in the moment when, imbued with
admonishing distress,l we pursue, not the diplomatic aimlessness of the last
decades, but a conscious and determined course, and stick to it. Neither
western nor eastern orientation must be the future goal of our foreign policy,
but an eastern policy in the sense of acquiring the necessary soil for our
German people. Since for this we require strength, and since France, the mortal
enemy of our nation, inexorably strangles us and robs us of our strength, we
must take upon ourselves every sacrifice whose consequences are cakulated to
contribute to the annihilation of French efforts toward hegemony in Europe.
Today every power is our natural ally, which like us feels French domination on
the continent to be intolerable. No path to such a power can be too hard for
us, and no renunciation can seem unutterable if only the end result of ers the
possibility of downing our grimmest enemy. Then, if we can cauterize and close
the biggest wound, we can calmly leave the cure of our slighter wounds to the
soothing effects of time.
Today, of course, we are subjected to the hateful yapping
of the enemies of our people within. We National Socialists must never let this
divert us from proclaiming what in our innermost conviction is absolutely
necessary. Today, it is true, we must brace ourselves against the current of a
public opinion confounded by Jewish guile exploiting German gullibility;
sometimes, it is true, the waves break harshly and angrily about us, but he who
swims with the stream is more easily overlooked than he who bucks the waves.
Today we are a reef; in a few years Fate may raise us up as a dam against which
the general stream will break, and flow into a new bed.
It is, therefore,
necessary that the National Socialist movement be recognized and established in
the eyes of all as the champion of a definite political purpose. Whatever
Heaven may have in store for us, let men recognize us by our very
visor!
Once we ourselves recognize the crying need which must
determine our conduct in foreign affairs, from this knowledge will flow the
force of perseverance which we sometimes need when, beneath the drumfire of our
hostile press hounds, one or another of us is seized with fear and there creeps
upon him a faint desire to grant a concession at least in some field, and howl
with the wolves, in order not to have everyone against him.
or Eastern Policy
There are two reasons which induce me to submit to a special
examination the relation of Germany to Russia:
- Here perhaps we are dealing with the most decisive concern of all German
foreign affairs; and
- This question is also the touchstone for the political capacity of the young
National Socialist movements to think clearly and to act correctly.
with anxious concern. Since our young movement does not obtain membership
material from the camp of the indifferent, but chiefly from very extreme
outlooks, it is only too natural if these people, in the field of understanding
foreign affairs as in other fields, are burdened with the preconceived ideas or
feeble understanding of the circles to which they previously belonged, both
politically and philosophically. And this by no means applies only to the man
who comes to us from the Left. On the contrary. Harmful as his previous
instruction with regard to such problems might be, in part at least it was not
infrequently balanced by an existing remnant of natural and healthy instinct.
Then it was only necessary to substitute a better attitude for the influence
that was previously forced upon him, and often the essentially healthy instinct
and impulse of self-preservation that still survived in him could be regarded
as our best ally.
It is much harder, on the other hand, to induce dear
political thinking in a man whose previous education in this field was no less
devoid of any reason and logic, but on top of all this had also sacrified his
last remnant of natural instinct on the altar of objectivity. Precisely the
members of our so-called intelligentsia are the hardest to move to a really
clear and logical defense of their interests and the interests of their nation.
They are not only burdened with a dead weight of the most senseless conceptions
and prejudices, but what makes matters completely intolerable is that they have
lost and abandoned all healthy instinct of self-preservation. The National
Socialist movement is compelled to endure hard struggles with these people,
hard because, despite total incompetence, they often unfortunately are
afflicted with an amazing conceit, which causes them to look down without the
slightest inner justification upon other people, for the most part healthier
than they. Supercilious, arrogant knowit-alls, without any capacity for cool
testing and weighing, which, in turn, must be recognized as the pre-condition
for any will and action in the field of foreign affairs.
Since these very circles are beginning today to divert the
tendency of our foreign policy in the most catastrophic way from any real
defense of the folkish interests of our people, placing it instead in the
service of their fantastic ideology, I feel it incumbent upon me to discuss for
my supporters the most important question in the field of foreign affairs, our
relation to Russia, in particular, and as thoroughly as is necessary for the
general understanding and possible in the scope of such a work
But first I would like to make the following introductory
remarks:
If under foreign policy we must understand the regulation of a
nation's relations with the rest of the world, the manner of this regulation
will be determined by certain definite facts. As National Socialists we can,
furthermore, establish the following principle concerning the nature of the
foreign policy of a folkish state:
The foreign policy of the fokish state must safeguard the
existence on this planet of the race embodied in the state, by creating a
healthy, viable natural relation between the nation's population and growth on
the one hand and the quantity and quality of its soil on the other
hand.
As a healthy relation we may regard only that condition which
assures the sustenance of a people on its own soil. Every other condition, even
if it endures for hundreds, nay, thousands of years, is nevertheless unhealthy
and will sooner or later lead to the injury if not annihilation of the people
in question.
Only an adequately large space on this earth assures a
nation of freedom of existence.
Moreover, the necessary size of the territory to be
settled cannot be judged exclusively on the basis of present requirements, not
even in fact on the basis of the yield of the soil compared to the population.
For, as I explained in the first volume, under 'German Alliance Policy Before
the War,' in addition to its importance as a direct source of a people's food,
another significance, that is, a military and political one, must be attributed
to the area of a state. If a nation's sustenance as such is assured by the
amount of its soil, the safeguarding of the existing soil itself must also be
borne in mind. This lies in the general power-political strength of the state,
which in turn to no small extent is determined by geo-military
considerations.
Hence, the German nation can defend its future only as a
world power. For more than two thousand years the defense of our people's
interests, as we should designate our more or less fortunate activity in the
field of foreign affairs, was world history. We ourselves were witnesses to
this fact: for the gigantic struggle of the nations in the years 1914-1918 was
only the struggle of the German people for its existence on the globe, but we
designated the type of event itself as a World War.
The German people entered this struggle as a supposed
world power. I say here 'supposed,' for in reality it was none. If the German
nation in 1914 had had a different relation between area and population,
Germany would really have been a world power, and the War, aside from all other
factors, could have been terminated favorably.
Germany today is no world power. Even if our momentary
military impotence were overcome, we should no longer have any claim to this
title. What can a formation, as miserable in its relation of population to area
as the German Reich today, mean on this planet? In an era when the earth is
gradually being divided up among states, some of which embrace almost entire
continents, we cannot speak of a world power in connection with a formation
whose political mother country is limited to the absurd area of five hundred
thousand square kilometers.
From the purely territorial point of view, the area of the
German Reich vanishes completely as compared with that of the socalled world
powers. Let no one cite England as a proof to the contrary, for England in
reality is merely the great capital of the British world empire which calls
nearly a quarter of the earth's surface its own. In addition, we must regard as
giant states, first of all the American Union, then Russia and China. All are
spatial formations having in part an area more than ten times greater than the
present German Reich. And even France must be counted among these states. Not
only that she complements her army to an ever-increasing degree from her
enormous empire's reservoir of colored humanity, but racially as well, she is
making such great progress in negrification that we can actually speak of an
African state arising on European soil. The colonial policy of present-day
France cannot be compared with that of Germany in the past. If the development
of France in the present style were to be continued for three hundred years,
the last remnants of Frankish blood would be submerged in the developing
European-African mulatto state. An immense self-contained area of settlement
from the Rhine to the Congo, filled with a lower race gradually produced from
continuous bastardization.
This distinguishes French colonial policy from the old
German one.
The former German colonial policy, like everything we
did, was carried out by halves. It neither increased the settlement area of the
German Reich, nor did it undertake any attempt- criminal though it would have
been-to strengthen the Reich by the use of black blood. The Askaris in German
East Africa were a short, hesitant step in this direction. Actually they served
only for the defense of the colonies themselves. The idea of bringing black
troops into a European battlefield, quite aside from its practical
impossibility in the World War, never existed even as a design to be realized
under more favorable circumstances, while, on the contrary, it was always
regarded and felt by the French as the basic reason for their colonial
activity.
Thus, in the world today we see a number of power states,
some of which not only far surpass the strength of our German nation in
population, but whose area above all is the chief support of their political
power. Never has the relation of the German Reich to other existing world
states been as unfavorable as at the beginning of our history two thousand
years ago and again today. Then we were a young people, rushing headlong into a
world of great crumbling state formations, whose last giant, Rome, we ourselves
helped to fell. Today we find ourselves in a world of great power states in
process of formation, with our own Reich sinking more and more into
insignificance.
We must bear this bitter truth coolly and soberly in
mind. We must follow and compare the German Reich through the centuries in its
relation to other states with regard to population and area. I know that
everyone will then come to the dismayed conclusion which I have stated at the
beginning of this discussion: Germany is no longer a world power, regardless
whether she is strong or weak from the military point of view.
We have lost all proportion to the other great states of
the earth, and this thanks only to the positively catastrophic leadership of
our nation in the field of foreign affairs, thanks to our total failure to be
guided by what I should almost call a testamentary aim in foreign policy, and
thanks to the loss of any healthy instinct and impulse of
self-preservation.
If the National Socialist movement really wants to be
consecrated by history with a great mission for our nation, it must be
permeated by knowledge and filled with pain at our true situation in this
world; boldly and conscious of its goal, it must take up the struggle against
the aimlesmess and incompetence which have hitherto guided our German nation in
the line of foreign affairs. Then, without consideration of 'traditions' and
prejudices, it must find the courage to gather our people and their strength
for an advance along the road that will lead this people from its present
restricted living space to new land and soil, and hence also free it from the
danger of vanishing frotn the earth or of serving others as a slave
nation.
The National Socialist movement must strive to eliminate the
disproportion between our population and our area-viewing this latter as a
source of food as well as a basis for power politics-between our historical
past and the hopelessness of our present impotence. And in this it must remain
aware that we, as guardians of the highest humanity on this earth, are bound by
the highest obligation, and the more it strives to bring the German people to
racial awareness so that, in addition to breeding dogs, horses, and cats, they
will have mercy on their own blood, the more it will be able to meet this
obligation.
If I characterize German policy up to now as aimless and
incompetent, the proof of my assertion lies in the actual failure of this
policy. If our people had been intellectually inferior or cowardly, the results
of its struggle on the earth could not be worse than what we see before us
today. Neither must the development of the last decades before the War deceive
us on this score; for we cannot measure the strength of an empire by itself,
but only by comparison with other states. And just such a comparison furnishes
proof that the increase in strength of the other states was not only more even,
but also greater in its ultimate effect; that consequently, despite its
apparent rise, Germany's road actually diverged more and more from that of the
other states and fell far behind; in short, the difference in magnitudes
increased to our disfavor. Yes, as time went on, we fell behind more and more
even in population. But since our people is certainly excelled by none on earth
in heroism, in fact, all in all has certainly given the most blood of all the
nations on earth for the preservation of its existence, the failure can reside
only in the mistaken way in which it was given.
If we examine the political experiences of our people for
more than a thousand years in this connection, passing all the innumerable wars
and struggles in review and examining the present end result they created, we
shall be forced to admit that this sea of blood has given rise to only three
phenomena which we are justified in claiming as enduring fruits of clearly
defined actions in the field of foreign and general politics:
(1) The colonization of the Ostmark, carried out mostly
by Bavarians;
(2) the acquisition and penetration of the territory east
of the Elbe; and
(3) the organization by the Hohenzollerns of the
Brandenburg-Prussian state as a model and nucleus for crystallization of a new
Reich.
An instructive warning for the future!
The first two great successes of our foreign policy have
remained the most enduring. Without them our nation today would no longer have
any importance at all. They were the first, but unfortunately the only
successful attempt to bring the rising population into harmony with the
quantity of our soil. And it must be regarded as truly catastrophic that our
German historians have never been able to estimate correctly these two
achievements which are by far the greatest and most significant for the future,
but by contrast have glorified everything conceivable, praised and admired
fantastic heroism, innumerable adventurous wars and struggles, instead of
finally recognizing how unimportant most of these events have been for the
nation's great line of development.
The third great success of our political
activity lies in the formation of the Prussian state and the resultant
cultivation of a special state idea, as also of the German army's instinct of
selfpreservation and self-defense, adapted to the modern world and put into
organized form. The development of the idea of individual militancy into the
duty of national militancy [conscription] has grown out of every state
formation and every state conception. The significance of this development
cannot be overestimated. Through the discipline of the Prussian army organism,
the German people, shot through with hyperindividualism by their racial
divisions, won back at least a part of the capacity for organization which they
had long since lost. What other peoples still primitively possess in their herd
community instinct, we, partially at least, regained artificially for our
national community through the process of military training. Hence the
elimination of universal conscription- which for dozens of other peoples might
be a matter of no importance-is for us fraught with the gravest consequences.
Ten German generations without corrective and educational military training,
left to the evil effects of their racial and hence philosophical division-and
our nation would really have lost the last remnant of an independent existence
on this planet. Only through individual men, in the bosom of foreign nations,
could the German spirit make its contribution to culture, and its origin would
not even be recognized. Cultural fertilizer, until the last remnant of
Aryan-Nordic blood in us would be corrupted or extinguished.
It is noteworthy that the significance of these real
political successes won by our nation in its struggles, enduring more than a
thousand years, were far better understood and appreciated by our adversaries
than by ourselves. Even today we still rave about a heroism which robbed our
people of millions of its noblest blood-bearers, but in its ultimate result
remained totally fruitless.
The distinction between the real political successes of
our people and the national blood spent for fruitless aims is of the greatest
importance for our conduct in the present and the future.
We National Socialists must never under any circumstances
join in the foul hurrah patriotism of our present bourgeois world. In
particular it is mortally dangerous to regard the last pre-War developments as
binding even in the slightest degree for our own course. From the whole
historical development of the nineteenth century, not a single obligation can
be derived which was grounded in this period itself. In contrast to the conduct
of the representatives of this period, we must again profess the highest aim of
all foreign policy, to wit: to bring the soil into harmony with the population
Yes, from the past we can only learn that, in setting an objective for our
political activity, we must proceed in two directions: Land and soil as the
goal of ourforeign policy, and a new philosophically established, uniform
foundation as the aim of political activity at home.
I still wish briefly to take a position on the question
as to what extent the demand for soil and territory seems ethically and morally
justified. This is necessary, since unfortunately, even in socalled folkish
circles, all sorts of unctuous bigmouths step forward, endeavoring to set the
rectification of the injustice of 1918 as the aim of the German nation's
endeavors in the field of foreign affairs, but at the same time find it
necessary to assure the whole world of folkish brotherhood and
sympathy.
I should like to make the following preliminary remarks: The demand
for restoration of the frontiers of 1914 is a political absurdity of ssxch
proportions and consegsxences as to make it seem a crime. Quite aside from the
fact that the Reich's frontiers in 19X4 were anything but logical. For in
reality they were neither complete in the sense of embracing the people of
German nationality, nor sensible with regard to geomilitary expediency. They
were not the result of a considered political action, but momentary frontiers
in a political struggle that was by no means concluded; partly, in fact, they
were the results of chance. With equal right and in many cases with more right,
some other sample year of German history could be picked out, and the
restoration of the conditions at that time declared to be the aim of an
activity in foreign affairs. The above demand is entirely suited to our
bourgeois society, which here as elsewhere does not possess a single creative
political idea for the future, but lives only in the past, in fact, in the most
immediate past; for even their backward gaze does not extend beyond their own
times. The law of inertia binds them to a given situation and causes them to
resist any change in it, but without ever increasing the activity of this
opposition beyond the mere power of perseverance. So it is obvious that the
political horizon of these people does not extend beyond the year 1914. By
proclaiming the restoration of those borders as the political aim of their
activity, they keep mending the crumbling league of our adversaries. Only in
this way can it be explained that eight years after a world struggle in which
states, some of which had the most heterogeneous desires, took part, the
coalition of the victors of those days can still maintain itself in a more or
less unbroken form.
All these states were at one time beneficiaries of the
German collapse. Fear of our strength caused the greed and envy of the
individual great powers among themselves to recede. By grabbing as much of the
Reich as they could, they found the best guard against a future uprising. A bad
conscience and fear of our people's strength is still the most enduring cement
to hold together the various members of this alliance.
And we do not
disappoint them. By setting up the restoration of the borders of 1914 as a
political program for Germany, our bourgeoisie frighten away every pa rtner who
might desire to leave the league of our enemies, since he must inevitably fear
to be attacked singly and thereby lose the protection of his individual fellow
allies. Each single state feels concerned and threatened by this
slogan.
Moreover, it is senseless in two respects:
(1) because the instruments of power are lacking to
remove it from the vapors of club evenings into reality; and
(2) because, if it could actually be realized, the
outcome would again be so pitiful that, by God, it would not be worth while to
risk the blood of our people for this.
For it should scarcely seem questionable to anyone that
ever the restoration of the frontiers of 1914 could be achieved only by blood.
Only childish and naive minds can lull themselves in the idea that they can
bring about a correction of Versailles by wheedling and begging. Quite aside
from the fact that such an attempt would presuppose a man of Talleyrand's
talents, which we do not possess. One half of our political figures consist of
extremely sly, but equally spineless elements which are hostile toward our
nation to begin with, while the other is composed of goodnatured, harmless, and
easy-going soft-heads. Moreover, the times have changed since the Congress of
Vienna: Today it is not princes and princes' mistresses who haggle and bargain
over state borders; it is the inexorable Jew who struggles for his domination
over the nations. No nation can remove this hand from its throat except by the
sword. Only the assembled and concentrated might of a national passion rearing
up in its strength can defy the international enslavement of peoples. Such a
process is and remains a bloody one.
If, however, we harbor the conviction that the German
future, regardless what happens, demands the supreme sacrifice, quite aside
from all considerations of political expediency as such, we must set up an aim
worthy of this sacrifice and fight for it.
The boundaries of the year 1914 mean nothing at all for
the German future. Neither did they provide a defense of the past, nor would
they contain any strength for the future. Through them the German nation will
neither achieve its inner integrity, nor will its sustenance be safeguarded by
them, nor do these boundaries, viewed from the military standpoint, seem
expedient or even satisfactory, nor finally can they improve the relation in
which we at present find ourselves toward the other world powers, or, better
expressed, the real world powers. The lag behind England will not be caught up,
the magnitude of the Union will not be achieved; not even France would
experience a material diminution of her world-political importance.
Only one thing would be certain: even with a favorable outcome, such
an attempt to restore the borders of 1914 would lead to a further bleeding of
our national body, so much so that there would be no worth-while blood left to
stake for the decisions and actions really to secure the nation's future. On
the contrary, drunk with such a shallow success, we should renounce any further
goals, all the more readily as 'national honor' would be repaired and, for the
moment at least, a few doors would have been reopened to commercial
development.
As opposed to this, we National Socialists must hold
unflinchingly to our aim in foreign policy, namely, to secure for the German
people the land and soil to which they are entitled on this earth. And this
action is the only one which, before God and our German posterity, would make
any sacrifice of blood seem justified: before God, since we have been put on
this earth with the mission of eternal struggle for our daily bread, beings who
receive nothing as a gift, and who owe their position as lords of the earth
only to the genius and the courage with which they can conquer and defend it;
and before our German posterity in so far as we have shed no citizen's blood
out of which a thousand others are not bequeathed to posterity. The soil on
which some day German generations of peasants can beget powerful sons will
sanction the investment of the sons of today, and will some day acquit the
responsible statesmen of blood-guilt and sacrifice of the people, even if they
are persecuted by their contemporaries.
And I must sharply attack those folkish pen-pushers who
claim to regard such an acquisition of soil as a 'breach of sacred human
rights' and attack it as such in their scribblings. One never knows who stands
behind these fellows. But one thing is certain, that the confusion they can
create is desirable and convenient to our national enemies. By such an attitude
they help to weaken and destroy from within our people's will for the only
correct way of defending their vital needs. For no people on this earth
possesses so much as a square yard of territory on the strength of a higher
will or superior right. Just as Germany's frontiers are fortuitous frontiers,
momentary frontiers in the current political struggle of any period, so are the
boundaries of other nations' living space. And just as the shape of our earth's
Furnace can seem immutable as granite only to the thoughtless soft-head, but in
reality only represents at each period an apparent pause in a continuous
development, created by the mighty forces of Nature in a process of continuous
growth, only to be transformed or destroyed tomorrow by greater forces,
likewise the boundaries of living spaces in the life of nations.
State boundaries are made by man and changed by
man.
The fact that a nation has succeeded in acquiring an undue amount of
soil constitutes no higher obligation that it should be recognized eternally.
At most it proves the strength of the conquerors and the weakness of the
nations. And in this case, right lies in this strength alone. If the German
nation today, penned into an impossible area, faces a lamentable future, this
is no more a commandment of Fate than revolt against this state of affairs
constitutes an affront to Fate. No more than any higher power has promised
another nation more territory than the Gerrnan nation, or is offended by the
fact of this unjust distribution of the soil. Just as our ancestors did not
receive the soil on which we live today as a gift from Heaven, but had to fight
for it at the risk of their lives, in the future no folkish grace will win soil
for us and hence life for our people, but only the might of a victorious
sword.
Much as all of us today recognize the necessity of a reckoning with
France, it would remain ineffectual in the long run if it represented the whole
of our aim in foreign policy. It can and will achieve meaning only if it offers
the rear cover for an enlargement of our people's living space in Europe. For
it is not in colonial acquisitions that we must see the solution of this
problem, but exclusively in the acquisition of a territory for settlement,
which will enhance the area of the mother country, and hence not only keep the
new settlers in the most intimate community with the land of their origin, but
secure for the total area those advantages which lie in its unified
magnitude.
The folkish movement must not be the champion of other
peoples, but the vanguard fighter of its own. Otherwise it is superfluous and
above all has no right to sulk about the past. For in that case it is behaving
in exactly tbe same wav. The old German policy was wrongly determined by
dynastic considerations, and the future policy must not be directed by
cosmopolitan folkish drivel. In particular, we are not constables guarding the
well-known 'poor little nations,' but soldiers of our own nation.
But we National Socialists must go further. The right to
possess soil can become a duty if without extension of its soil a great nation
seems doomed to destruction. And most especially when not some little negro
nation or other is involved, but the Germanic mother of life, which has given
the present-day world its cultural picture. Germany will either be a world
power or there will be no Germany. And for world power she needs that magnitude
which will give her the position she needs in the present period, and life to
her citizens.
And so we National Socialists consciously draw a line
beneath the foreign policy tendency of our pre-War period. We take up where we
broke off six hundred years ago. We stop the endless German movement to the
south and west, and turn our gaze toward the land in the east. At long last we
break of the colonial and commercial policy of the pre-War period and shift to
the soil policy of the future.
If we speak of soil in Europe today, we can primarily
have in mind only Russia and her vassal border states.
Here Fate itself seems desirous of giving us a sign. By
handing P ussia to Bolshevism, it robbed the Russian nation of that
intelligentsia which previously brought about and guaranteed its existence as a
state. For the organization of a Russian state formation was not the result of
the political abilities of the Slavs in Russia, but only a wonderful example of
the state-forming efficacity of the German element in an inferior race.
Numerous mighty empires on earth have been created in this way. Lower nations
led by Germanic organizers and overlords have more than once grown to be mighty
state formations and have endured as long as the racial nudeus of the creative
state race maintained itself. For centuries Russia drew nourishment from this
Germanic nucleus of its upper leading strata. Today it can be regarded as
almost totally exterminated and extinguished. It has been replaced by the Jew.
Impossible as it is for the Russian by himself to shake off the yoke of the Jew
by his own resources, it is equally impossible for the Jew to maintain the
mighty empire forever. He himself is no element of organization, but a ferment
of decomposition. The Persian I empire in the east is ripe for collapse. And
the end of Jewish rule in Russia will also be the end of Russia as a state. We
have been chosen by Fate as witnesses of a catastrophe which will be the
mightiest confirmation of the soundness of the folkish theory.
Our task, the mission of the National Socialist movement,
is to bring our own people to such political insight that they will not see
their goal for the future in the breath-taking sensation of a new Alexander's
conquest, but in the industrious work of the German plow, to which the sword
need only give soil.
It goes without saying that the Jews announce the
sharpest resistance to such a policy. Better than anyone else they sense the
significance of this action for their own future. This very fact should teach
all really national-minded men the correctness of such a reorientation.
Unfortunately, the opposite is the case. Not only in German-National, but even
in 'folkish' circles, the idea of such an eastern policy is violently attacked,
and, as almost always in such matters, they appeal to a higher authority. The
spirit of Bismarck is cited to cover a policy which is as senseless as it is
impossible and in the highest degree harmful to the German nation. Bismarck in
his time, they say, always set store on good relations with Russia. This, to a
certain extent, is true. But they forget to mention that he set just as great
store on good relations with Italy, for example; in fact, that the same Herr
von Bismarck once made an alliance with Italy in order to finish off Austria
the more easily. Why, then, don't they continue this policy? 'Because the Italy
of today is not the Italy of those days,' they will say. Very well. But then,
honored sirs, will you permit the objection that present-day Russia is not the
Russia of those days either? It never entered Bismarck's head to lay down a
political course tactically and theoretically for all time. In this respect he
was too much master of the moment to tie his hands in such a way. The question,
therefore, most not be: What did Bismarsk do in his time? But rather: What
would he do today? And this question is easier to answer. With his political
astuteness, he would never ally himself unth a state that is downed to
destruction.
Furthermore, Bismarck even then viewed the German colonial
and commercial policy with mixed feelings, since for the moment he was
concerned only with the surest method of internally consolidating the state
formation he had created. And this was the only reason why at that time he
welcomed the Russian rear cover, which gave him a free hand in the west. But
what was profitable to Germany then would be detrimental today.
As early as 1920- 21, when the young National Socialist
movement began slowly to rise above the political horizon, and here and there
was referred to as the movement for German freedom, the party was approached by
various quarters with an attempt to create a certain bond between it and the
movements for freedom in other countries. This was in the line of the ' League
of Oppressed Nations,' propagated by many. Chiefly involved were
representatives of various Balkan states, and some from Egypt and India, who as
individuals always impressed me as pompous big-mouths without any realistic
background. But there were not a few Germans, especially in the nationalist
camp, who let themselves be dazzled by such inflated Orientals and readily
accepted any old Indian or Egyptian student from God knows where as a
'representative' of India or Egypt. These people never realized that they were
usually dealing with persons who had absolutely nothing behind them, and above
all were authorized by no one to conclude any pact with anyone, so that the
practical result of any relations with such elements was nil, unless the time
wasted were booked as a special loss. I always resisted such attempts. Not only
that I had better things to do than twiddle away weeks in fruitless
'conferences,' but even if these men had been authorized representatives of
such nations, I regarded the whole business as useless, in fact,
harmful.
Even in peacetime it was bad enough that the German alliance policy,
for want of any aggressive intentions of our own, ended in a defensive union of
ancient states, pensioned by world history. The alliance with Austria as well
as Turkey had little to be said for them. While the greatest military and
industrial states on earth banded into an active aggressive union, we collected
a few antique, impotent state formations and with this decaying rubbish
attempted to face an active world coalition. Germany received a bitter
accounting for this error in foreign policy. But this accounting does not seem
to have been bitter enough to prevent our eternal dreamers from falling
headlong into the same error. For the attempt to disarm the almighty victors
through a 'league of Oppressed Nations' is not only ridiculous, but
catastrophic as well. It is catastrophic because it distracts our people again
and again from the practical possibilities, making them devote themselves to
imaginative, yet fruitless hopes and illusions. The German of today really
resembles the drowning man who grasps at every straw. And this can apply even
to men who are otherwise exceedingly well educated. If any will-o'-the-wisp of
hope, however unreal, turns up anywhere, these men are off at a trot, chasing
after the phantom. Whether it is a League of Oppressed Nations, a League of
Nations, or any other fantastic new invention, it will be sure to find
thousands of credulous souls.
I still remember the hopes, as childish as they were
incomprehensible, which suddenly arose in folkish circles in 1920-21, to the
effect that British power was on the verge of collapse in India. Some Asiatic
jugglers, for all I care they may have been real 'fighters for Indian freedom,'
who at that time were wandering around Europe, had managed to sell otherwise
perfectly reasonable people the idee fixe that the British Empire, which has
its pivot in India, was on the verge of collapse at that very point. Of course,
it never entered their heads that here again their own wish was the sole father
of all their thoughts. No more did the inconsistency of their own hopes. For by
expecting the end of the British Empire to follow from a collapse of British
rule in India, they themselves admitted that India was of the most paramount
importance to England.
It is most likely, however, that this vitally important
question is not a profound secret known only to German-folkish prophets;
presumably it is known also to the helmsmen of English destiny. It is really
childish to suppose that the men in England cannot correctly estimate the
importance of the Indian Empire for the British world union. And if anyone
imagines that England would let India go without staking her last drop of
blood, it is only a sorry sign of absolute failure to learn from the World War,
and of total misapprehension and ignorance on the score of AngloSaxon
determination. It is, furthermore, a proof of the German's total ignorance
regarding the whole method of British penetration and administration of this
empire. England will lose India either if her own administrative machinery
falls a prey to racial decomposition (which at the moment is completely out of
the question in India) or if she is bested by the sword of a powerful enemy.
Indian agitators, however, will never achieve this. How hard it is to best
England, we Germans have sufficiently learned. Quite aside from the fact that
I, as a man of Germanic blood, would, in spite of everything, rather see India
under English rule than under any other.
Just as lamentable are the hopes in any mythical uprising
in Egypt. The 'Goly War' can give our German Schafkopf players the pleasant
thrill of thinking that now perhaps others are ready to shed their blood for
us-for this cowardly speculation, to tell the truth, has always been the silent
father of all hopes; in reality
it would come to an infernal end under the
fire of English machinegun companies and the hail of fragmentation
bombs.
It just happens to be impossible to overwhelm with a coalition of
cripples a powerful state that is determined to stake, if necessary, its last
drop of blood for its existence. As a folkish man, who appraises the value of
men on a racial basis, I am prevented by mere knowledge of the racial
inferiority of these so-called 'oppressed nations' from linking the destiny of
my own people with theirs.
And today we must take exactly the same position toward
Russia. Present-day Russia, divested of her Germanic upper stratum, is, quite
aside from the private intentions of her new masters, no ally for the German
nation's fight for freedom. Considered frown the purely military angle, the
relations would be simply catastrophic in case of war between Germany and
Russia and Western Europe, and probably against all the rest of the world. The
struggle would take place, not on Russian, but on German soil, and Germany
would not be able to obtain the least effective support from Russia. The
present German Reich's instruments of power are so lamentable and so useless
for a foreign war, that no defense of our borders against Western Europe,
including England, would be practicable, and particularly the German industrial
region would lie defenselessly exposed to the concentrated aggressive arms of
our foes. There is the additional fact that between Germany and Russia there
lies the Polish state, completely in French hands. In case of a war between
Germany and Russia and Western Europe, Russia would first have to subdue Poland
before the first soldier could be sent to the western front. Yet it is not so
much a question of soldiers as of technical armament. In this respect, the
World War situation would repeat itself, only much more horribly. Just as
German industry was then drained for our glorious allies, and, technically
speaking, Germany had to fight the war almost single-handed, likewise in this
struggle Russia would be entirely out of the picture as a technical factor. We
could oppose practically nothing to the general motorization of the worth which
in the next war will manifest itself overwhelmingly and decisively. For not
only that Germany herself has remained shamefully backward in this
all-important field, but from the little she possesses she would have to
sustain Russia, which even today cannot claim possession of a single factory
capable of producing a motor vehicle that really runs. Thus, such a war would
assume the character of a plain massacre. Germany's youth would be bled even
more than the last time, for as always the burden of the fighting would rest
only upon us, and the result would be inevitable defeat.
But even supposing that a miracle should occur and that
such a struggle did not end with the total annihilation of Germany, the
ultimate outcome would only be that the German nation, bled white, would remain
as before bounded by great military states and that her real situation would
hence have changed in no way.
Let no one argue that in concluding an alliance with
Russia we need not immediately think of war, or, if we did, that we could
thoroughly prepare for it. An alliance whose aim does not embrace a plan for
war is senseless and worthless. Alliances are concluded only for struggle. And
even if the clash should be never so far away at the moment when the pact is
concluded, the prospect of a military involvement is nevertheless its cause.
And do not imagine that any power would ever interpret the meaning of such an
alliance in any other way. Either a German-Russian coalition would remain on
paper, or from the letter of the treaty it would be translated into visible
reality-and the rest of the world would be warned. How nalve to suppose that in
such a case England and France would wait a decade for the German-Russian
alliance to complete its technical preparations. No, the storm would break over
Germany with the speed of lightning.
And so the very fact of the conclusion of an alliance
with Russia embodies a plan for the next war. Its outcome would be the end of
Germany.
On top of this there is the following:
1. The present rulers of Russia have no idea of honorably
entering into an alliance, let alone observing one.
Never forget that the rulers of present-day Russia are
common blood-stained criminals; that they are the scum of humanity which,
favored by circumstances, overran a great state in a tragic hour, slaughtered
and wiped out thousands of her leading ir.telligentsia in wild blood lust, and
now for almost ten years have been carrying on the most cruel and tyrannical
regime of all time. Furthermore, do not forget that these rulers belong to a
race which combines, in a rare mixture, bestial cruelty and an inconceivable
gift for lying, and which today more than ever is conscious of a mission to
impose its bloody oppression on the whole world. Do not forget that the
international Jew who completely dominates Russia today regards Germany, not as
an ally, but as a state destined to the same fate. And you do not make pacts
with anyone whose sole interest is the destruction of his partner. Above all,
you do not make them with elements to whom no pact would be sacred, since they
do not live in this world as representatives of honor and sincerity, but as
champions of deceit, lies, theft, plunder, and rapine. If a man believes that
he can enter into profitable connections with parasites, he is like a tree
trying to conclude for its own profit an agreement with a mistletoe.
2.
The danger to which Russia succumbed is always present for Germany. Only a
bourgeois simpleton is capable of imagining that Bolshevism has been exorcised.
With his superficial thinking he has no idea that this is an instinctive
process; that is, the striving of the Jewish people for world domination, a
process which is just as natural as the urge of the Anglo-Saxon to seize
domination of the earth. And just as the Anglo-Saxon pursues this course in his
own way and carries on the fight with his own weapons, likewise the Jew. He
goes his way, the way of sneaking in among the nations and boring from within,
and he fights with his weapons, with lies and slander, poison and corruption,
intensifying the struggle to the point of bloodily exterminating his hated
foes. In Russian Bolshevism we must see the attempt undertaken by the Jews in
the twentieth century to achieve world domination. Just as in other epochs they
strove to reach the same goal by other, though inwardly related processes.
Their endeavor lies profoundly rooted in their essential nature. No more than
another nation renounces of its own accord the pursuit of its impulse for the
expansion of its power and way of life, but is compelled by outward
circumstances or else succumbs to impotence due to the symptoms of old age,
does the Jew break off his road to world dictatorship out of voluntary
renunciation, or because he represses his eternal urge. He, too, will either be
thrown back in his course by forces lying outside himself, or all his striving
for world domination will be ended by his own dying out. But the impotence of
nations, their own death from old age, arises from the abandonment of their
blood purity. And this is a thing that the Jew preserves better than any other
people on earth. And so he advances on his fatal road until another force comes
forth to oppose him, and in a mighty struggle hurls the heaven-stormer back to
Lucifer.
Germany is today the next great war aim of Bolshevism. It requires
all the force of a young missionary idea to raise our people up again, to free
them from the snares of this international serpent, and to stop the inner
contamination of our blood, in order that the forces of the nation thus set
free can be thrown in to safeguard our nationality, and thus can prevent a
repetition of the recent catastrophes down to the most distant future. If we
pursue this aim, it is sheer lunacy to ally ourselves with a power whose master
is the mortal enemy of our future. How can we expect to free our own people
from the fetters of this poisonous embrace if we walk right into it? How shall
we explain Bolshevism to the German worker as an accursed crime against
humanity if we ally ourselves with the organizations of this spawn of hell,
thus recognizing it in the larger sense? By what right shall we condemn a
member of the broad masses for his sympathy with an outlook if the very leaders
of the state choose the representatives of this outlook for allies?
The fight against Jewish world Bolshevization requires a clear
attitude toward Soviet Russia. thou cannot drive out the Devil with
Beelsebub.
If today even folkish circles rave about an alliance with
Russia, they should just look around them in Germany and see whose support they
find in their efforts. Or have folkish men lately begun to view an activity as
beneficial to the German people which is recommended and promoted by the
international Marxist press? Since when do folkish men fight with armor held
out to them by a Jewish squire?
There is one main charge that could be raised against the
old German Reich with regard to its alliance policy: not, however, that it
failed to maintain good relations with Russia, but only that it ruined its
relations with everyone by continuous shilly-shallying, in the pathological
weakness of trying to preserve world peace at any price.
I openly confess
that even in the pre-War period I would have thought it sounder if Germany,
renouncing her senseless colonial policy and renouncing her merchant marine and
war fleet, had concluded an alliance with England against Russia, thus passing
from a feeble global policy to a determined European policy of territorial
acquisition on the continent.
I have not forgotten the insolent threat which the
pan-Slavic Russia of that time dared to address to Germany; I have not
forgotten the constant practice mobilizations, whose sole purpose was an
affront to Germany; I cannot forget the mood of public opinion in Russia, which
outdid itself in hateful outbursts against our people and our Reich; I cannot
forget the big Russian newspapers, which were always more enthusiastic about
France than about us.
But in spite of all that, before the War there would still
have been a second way: we could have propped ourselves on Russia and turned
against England.
Today conditions are different. If before the War we
could have choked down every possible sentiment and gone with Russia, today it
is no longer possible. The hand of the world clock has moved forward since
then, and is loudly striking the hour in which the destiny of our nation must
be decided in one way or another. The process of consolidation in which the
great states of the earth are involved at the moment is for us the last warning
signal to stop and search our hearts, to lead our people out of the dream world
back to hard reality, and show them the way to the future which alone will lead
the old Reich to a new golden age.
If the National Socialist movement frees itself from all
illusions with regard to this great and all-important task, and accepts reason
as its sole guide, the catastrophe of 1918 can some day become an infinite
blessing for the future of our nation. Out of this collapse our nation will
arrive at a complete reorientation of its activity in foreign relations, and,
furthermore, reinforced within by its new philosophy of life, will also achieve
outwardly a final stabilization of its foreign policy. Then at last it will
acquire what England possesses and even Russia possessed, and what again and
again induced France to make the same decisions, essentially correct from the
viewpoint of her own interests, to wit: A political testament.
The political testament of the German nation to govern
its outward activity for all time should and must be:
Never suffer the rise
of two continental powers in Europe. Regard any attempt to organize a second
military power on the German frontiers, even if only in the form of creating a
state capable of military strength, as an attack on Germany, and in it see not
only the right, but also the duty, to employ all means up to armed force to
prevent the rise of such a state, or, if one has already arisen, to smash it
again.-See to it that the strength of our nation is founded, not on colonies,
but on the soil of our European homeland. Never regard the Reich as secure
unless for centuries to come it can give every scion of our people his own
parcel of soil. Never forget that the most sacred right on this earth is a
man's right to have earth to till with his own hands, and the most sacred
sacrifice the blood that a man sheds for this earth.
I should not like to conclude these reflections without
pointing once again to the sole alliance possibility which exists for us at the
moment in Europe. In the previous chapter on the alliance problem I have
already designated England and Italy as the only two states in Europe with
which a closer relationship would be desirable and promising for us. Here I
shall briefly touch on the military importance of such an alliance.
The military consequences of concluding this alliance would in every
respect be the opposite of the consequences of an alliance with Russia. The
most important consideration, first of all, is the fact that in itself an
approach so England and Italy in no way conjures up a war danger. France, the
sole power which could conceivably oppose the alliance, would not be in a
position to do so. And consequently the alliance would give Germany the
possibility of peacefully making those preparations for a reckoning with
France, vhich would have to be made in any event within the scope of such a
coalition. For the significant feature of such an alliance lies precisely in
the fact that upon its conclusion Germany would not suddenly be exposed to a
hostile invasion, but that the opposing alliance would break of its own accord;
the Entente, to which we owe such infinite misfortune, would be dissolved, and
hence France, the mortal enemy of our nation, would be isolated. Even if this
success is limited at first to moral effect, it would suffice to give Germany
freedom of movement to an extent which today is scarcely conceivable. For the
law of action would be in the hands of the new European AngloXermanItalian
alliance and no longer with France.
The further result would be that at one stroke Germany
would be freed from her unfavorable strategic position. The most powerful
protection on our fiank on the one hand, complete guaranty of our food and raw
materials on the other, would be the beneficial effect of the new constellation
of states.
But almost more important would be the fact that the new
league would embrace states which in technical productivity almost complement
one another in many respects. For the first time Germany would have allies who
would not drain our own economy like leeches, but could and would contribute
their share to the richest supplementation of our technical armament.
And do not overlook the final fact that in both cases we should be
dealing with allies who cannot be compared with Turkey or present-day Russia.
The greatest world power on earth and a youthful national state would offer
different premises for a struggle in Europe than the putrid state corpses with
which Germany allied herself in the last war.
Assuredly, as I emphasized in the last chapter, the
difficulties opposing such an alliance are great. But was the formation of the
Entente, for instance, any less difficult? What the genius of a Ring Edward VII
achieved, in part almost counter to natural interests, we, too, must and will
achieve, provided we are so inspired by our awareness of the necessity of such
a development that with astute self-control we determine our actions
accordingly. And this will become possible in the moment when, imbued with
admonishing distress,l we pursue, not the diplomatic aimlessness of the last
decades, but a conscious and determined course, and stick to it. Neither
western nor eastern orientation must be the future goal of our foreign policy,
but an eastern policy in the sense of acquiring the necessary soil for our
German people. Since for this we require strength, and since France, the mortal
enemy of our nation, inexorably strangles us and robs us of our strength, we
must take upon ourselves every sacrifice whose consequences are cakulated to
contribute to the annihilation of French efforts toward hegemony in Europe.
Today every power is our natural ally, which like us feels French domination on
the continent to be intolerable. No path to such a power can be too hard for
us, and no renunciation can seem unutterable if only the end result of ers the
possibility of downing our grimmest enemy. Then, if we can cauterize and close
the biggest wound, we can calmly leave the cure of our slighter wounds to the
soothing effects of time.
Today, of course, we are subjected to the hateful yapping
of the enemies of our people within. We National Socialists must never let this
divert us from proclaiming what in our innermost conviction is absolutely
necessary. Today, it is true, we must brace ourselves against the current of a
public opinion confounded by Jewish guile exploiting German gullibility;
sometimes, it is true, the waves break harshly and angrily about us, but he who
swims with the stream is more easily overlooked than he who bucks the waves.
Today we are a reef; in a few years Fate may raise us up as a dam against which
the general stream will break, and flow into a new bed.
It is, therefore,
necessary that the National Socialist movement be recognized and established in
the eyes of all as the champion of a definite political purpose. Whatever
Heaven may have in store for us, let men recognize us by our very
visor!
Once we ourselves recognize the crying need which must
determine our conduct in foreign affairs, from this knowledge will flow the
force of perseverance which we sometimes need when, beneath the drumfire of our
hostile press hounds, one or another of us is seized with fear and there creeps
upon him a faint desire to grant a concession at least in some field, and howl
with the wolves, in order not to have everyone against him.