Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
Volume One - A Reckoning
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:
- 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.
I must admit that the second point in particular sometimes fills me 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.
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