Mein Kampf aka My Struggle

• weidev

  10 May 04, 04:57

  Anyone who takes the trouble to glance back and follow Germany's leadership in foreign policy since the revolution will, in view of the constant and incomprehensible failure of our governments, be unable to do otherwise than take his head in his hands, and either simply despair or, in flaming indignation, declare war on such a r¨¦gime. These actions no longer have anything in common with lack of understanding: for what would have seemed unthinkable to any thinking brain has been done by these intellectual Cyclopses of our November parties: they have courted France's favor. Yes, indeed, in all these years, with the touching simplicity of incorrigible dreamers, they have tried again and again to make friends with France; over and over again they have bowed and scraped before the 'great nation'; in every shrewd trick of the French hangman they have felt justified in seeing the first sign of a visible change of attitude. Our real political wirepullers, of course, never harbored this insane belief. For them currying favor with France was only the obvious means of sabotaging every practical alliance policy. They were never in doubt as to the aims of France and her men behind the scenes. What compelled them to act as if they nevertheless honestly believed in the possibility of a change in the fate of Germany was the sober realization that otherwise our people would take things into their own hands.
  
  Even for us, of course, it is hard to represent England as a possible future ally in the ranks of our own movement. Again and again our Jewish press has known how to concentrate special hatred on England, and many a good German simpleton has fallen into the Jewish snare with the greatest willingness, drooled about 'strengthening' German sea power, protested against the rape of our colonies, recommended their reconquest, and thus helped furnish the material which the Jewish scoundrel could pass on to his fellow Jews in England for practical propagandist use. For it should gradually dawn even on our political bourgeois simpletons that what we have to fight for today is not 'sea power,' etc. The orientation of the German national strength toward this aim, without the most thoroughgoing previous securing of our position in Europe, was an absurdity even before the War. Today such a hope must be counted among those stupidities which in the field of politics are characterized as crimes.
  
  Sometimes it was really maddening to be compelled to look on as the Jewish wirepullers succeeded in occupying our people with things that are today of the most secondary nature, inciting them to demonstrations and protests, while at the same time France was tearing piece after piece out of the flesh of our national body, and the foundations of our independence were systematically taken away from us.
  
  Here I must recall a special hobby which in these years the Jew rode with amazing adroitness: the South Tyrol.
  
  Yes, the South Tyrol. If I here concern myself with this particular question, it is not least to settle accounts with that hypocritical rabble which, counting on the forgetfulness and stupidity of our broad strata, has the insolence to mimic on this point a national indignation, which is more alien especially to the parliamentary swindlers than honest conceptions of property to a magpie.
  
  I would like to emphasize that I personally am among the men who, when the fate of the South Tyrol was being decided - that is, beginning in August, 1914, up to November, 1918 - went where this territory was being actively defended - I mean the army. In those years I did my part of the fighting, not in order that the South Tyrol should be lost, but in order that it should be preserved for the fatherland just like every other German province.
• weidev

  10 May 04, 04:57

  The ones who did not do their bit at that time were the parliamentary sneak-thieves, all the politics-playing party rabble. On the contrary, while we fought in the conviction that only a victorious issue to the War would preserve this South Tyrol for the German nationality, the big-mouths of these Ephialteses agitated and plotted against victory until at last the battling Siegfried succumbed to the treacherous dagger thrust. For the preservation of the South Tyrol in German possession was naturally not guaranteed by the lying inflammatory speeches of parliamentary sharpers on the Vienna Rathausplatz or in front of the Munich Feldherrnhalle, but only by the battalions at the fighting front. Those who broke this front betrayed the South Tyrol, just as they betrayed all other German territories.
  
  And anyone who believes today that he can solve the South Tyrol question by protests, declarations, clubby parades, is either a very special scoundrel or a German petit bourgeois.
  
  We must clearly recognize the fact that the recovery of the lost territories is not won through solemn appeals to the Lord or through pious hopes in a league of Nations, but only by force of arms.
  
  And so the only question is, Who is ready to attempt the reconquest of these lost territories by defiant armed force?
  
  As far as my person is concerned, I can here assure you with a clear conscience that I could still muster up enough courage to take part in the victorious conquest of the South Tyrol at the head of a parliamentary storm battalion that ought to be formed, consisting of parliamentary big-mouths and other party leaders plus various privy councilors. God knows it would give me pleasure if suddenly a few shrapnel would burst over the heads of such a 'flaming' protest demonstration. I think if a fox were to break into a chicken-coop the cackling could hardly be worse, or the rush of the feathered fowl for safety any quicker, than the flight of such a splendid 'protest rally.'
  
  But the vile thing about the whole business is that the gentlemen themselves do not believe they can achieve anything in this way. They personally know, better than anyone else, the impossibility and innocuousness of all the fuss they are making. But they carry on as they do, because it is naturally somewhat easier to shoot off their mouths for the recovery of the South Tyrol today than it once was to fight for keeping it. Everyone does his own part; then we sacrificed our blood, and today this company sharpen their beaks.
  
  It is especially delightful, moreover, to see how Viennese legitimist circles literally bristle with their present activity for regaining the South Tyrol. Seven years ago, to be sure, their noble and exalted ruling house helped by a scoundrelly deed of treacherous perjury to make it possible for the victorious world coalition to win among other things the South Tyrol. At that time these circles supported the policy of their treacherous dynasty, and didn't care a damn about the South Tyrol or anything else. Today, of course, it is easier to take up the struggle for these territories, for today, after all, it is fought only with 'spiritual weapons,' and it is always easier to talk your throat hoarse in some 'protest meeting' - from noble, heartfelt indignation - and wear your fingers to the bone writing a newspaper article than, say, to blow up bridges during the occupation of the Ruhr.
• weidev

  10 May 04, 04:58

  The reason why in the last few years certain definite circles have made the 'South Tyrol' question the pivotal point of German-Italian relations is obvious. Jews and Habsburg legitimists have the greatest interest in preventing a German alliance policy which might lead some day to the resurrection of a free German fatherland. All this fuss today is not made for love of the South Tyrol - which it does not help but only harms - but for fear of a possible German-Italian understanding.
  
  It is quite in keeping with the general hypocrisy and slanderous tendencies of these circles when they attempt with cold and brazen gall to make things look as if we had 'betrayed' the South Tyrol.
  
  To these gentlemen let it be said with all plainness: the South Tyrol was 'betrayed ' first and foremost by every German with sound limbs who in the years 1914-1918 did not stand somewhere at the front, putting his services at the disposal of the fatherland;
  
  secondly, by every man who in those years did not help to strengthen our national body's power of resistance for the pursuit of the War and to fortify the endurance of our people for carrying through this fight to the end;
  
  thirdly, the South Tyrol was betrayed by every man who cooperated in the outbreak of the November revolution - whether directly by deed or indirectly by the cowardly toleration of the deed - and thereby smashed the weapon which alone could have saved the South Tyrol.
  
  Yes, my brave lip-service protesters, that is how things stand!
  
  Today I am guided only by the sober realization that lost territories are not won back by sharp parliamentary big-mouths and their glibness of tongue, but by a sharp sword; in other words, by a bloody fight.
  
  But I do not hesitate to declare that, now the dice have fallen, I not only regard a reconquest of the South Tyrol by war as impossible, but that I personally would reject it in the conviction that for this question the flame of national enthusiasm of the whole German people could not be achieved to a degree which would offer the premise for victory. I believe, on the contrary, that, if this blood some day were staked, it would be a crime to stake it for two hundred thousand Germans while next door more than seven millions languish under foreign domination and the vital artery of the German people runs through the hunting ground of African Negro hordes.
• weidev

  10 May 04, 04:58

  If the German nation wants to end a state of affairs that threatens its extermination in Europe, it must not fall into the error of the pre-War period and make enemies of God and the world; it must recognize the most dangerous enemy and strike at him with all its concentrated power. And if this victory is obtained through sacrifices elsewhere, the coming generations of our people will not condemn us. The more brilliant the resultant successes, the better they will appreciate the dire distress and profound cares, and the bitter decision born of them.
  
  What must guide us today is again and again the basic insight that the reconquest of a Reich's lost territories is primarily the question of regaining the political independence and power of the motherland.
  
  To make this possible and sure by an astute alliance policy is the first task of a powerful German leadership in the field of foreign affairs.
  
  Especially we National Socialists must guard against being taken in tow by the Jewish-led bourgeois patriots of the word. Heaven help us if our movement, instead of preparing for the struggle, were to spend its time in protests!
  
  The fantastic conception of the Nibelungen alliance with the Habsburg state cadaver has been the ruin of Germany. Fantastic sentimentality in the treatment of today's diplomatic possibilities is the best means of preventing our resurrection forever.
  
  *...............*...............*
  
  Here I must briefly take up those objections which apply to the three questions raised above, to wit, the questions whether anyone will
  
  first, make an alliance with the present-day Germany in her visible weakness that is clear for all to see;
  
  secondly, whether the enemy nations seem capable of such a reorientation and
  
  thirdly, whether the existing influence of the Jews is not stronger than any understanding or good intentions and will thus frustrate and nullify all plans.
• weidev

  10 May 04, 04:59

  I think I have sufficiently discussed one half of the first question. Of course, no one will make an alliance with present-day Germany. No power in the world will venture to link its destiny to a state whose government is bound to destroy all confidence. And as regards the attempt of many of our national comrades to condone the government's actions because of the wretched mentality of our people at the time, and even accept this as an excuse, we must take the sharpest position against this.
  
  It is true, the absence of character in our people for the last six years has been profoundly sad, their indifference toward the most important concerns of our nation has been truly crushing, their cowardice has sometimes cried out to high Heaven. But it must not be forgotten that we are nevertheless dealing with a people which a few years previous offered the world the most admirable example of the highest human virtues. From the August days of 1914 up to the end of the mighty conflict of nations, no people on earth revealed more manly courage, tenacious endurance, and patience in suffering than our German people which has today grown so wretched. No one will maintain that the disgrace of our present period is the characteristic expression of our nation's being. What we are compelled to experience around us and in us today is only the horrible, maddening, and infuriating influence of the perjuring deed of November 9, 1918. Here more than ever the poet's saying applies that evil begets evil. But even at the present time, our people has not entirely lost its good basic elements; they only are slumbering unawakened in the depths; and from time to time it has been possible to see, gleaming like summer lightning in an overcast firmament, virtues which the future Germany will some day remember as the first signs of an incipient recovery. More than once, thousands and thousands of young Germans have stepped forward with the self-sacrificing resolve to sacrifice their young lives freely and joyfully on the altar of the beloved fatherland, just as in 1914. Again, millions of men are diligently and industriously at work, as though the ravages of the revolution had never been. The blacksmith stands again at his anvil, the peasant guides his plow, and the scholar sits in his study, all with the same painstaking devotion to duty.
  
  The repressions on the part of our enemies no longer meet the same condoning laughter as formerly, but grieved, embittered faces. Undoubtedly a great change in sentiment has taken place.
  
  If today all this is not yet expressed in a rebirth of our people's concept of political power and instinct of self-preservation, it is the fault of those who, less by the grace of Heaven than by self appointment, have governed our people to death since 1918.
  
  Yes, if we bemoan the state of the nation today, we may ask: What has been done to improve it? Is the feeble support given by the people to the decisions of our governments - decisions which scarcely existed - only a sign of our nation's small vitality or is it not even more a sign of total failure in the handling of this precious treasure? What have our governments done to reimplant the spirit of proud self-reliance, manly defiance and wrathful hatred in this people?
  
  When in the year 1919 the German people was burdened with the peace treaty, we should have been justified in hoping that precisely through this instrument of boundless repression the cry for German freedom would have been immensely promoted. Peace treaties whose demands are a scourge to nations not seldom strike the first roll of drums for the uprising to come.
• weidev

  10 May 04, 04:59

  What could have been done with this peace treaty of Versailles?!
  
  This instrument of boundless extortion and abject humiliation might, in the hands of a willing government, have become an instrument for whipping up the national passions to fever heat. With a brilliant propagandist exploitation of these sadistic cruelties, the indifference of a people might have been raised to indignation, and indignation to blazing fury!
  
  How could every single one of these points have been burned into the brain and emotion of this people, until finally in sixty million heads, in men and women, a common sense of shame and a common hatred would have become a single fiery sea of flame, from whose heat a will as hard as steel would have risen and a cry burst forth:
  
  Give us arms again!
  
  Yes, my friends, that is what such a peace treaty would do. In the boundlessness of its oppression, the shamelessness of its demands, lies the greatest propaganda weapon for the reawakening of a nation's dormant spirits of life.
  
  For this, to be sure, from the child's primer down to the last newspaper, every theater and every movie house, every advertising pillar and every billboard, must be pressed into the service of this one great mission, until the timorous prayer of our present parlor patriots: 'Lord, make us free!' is transformed in the brain of the smallest boy into the burning plea: 'Almighty God, bless our arms when the time comes; be just as thou hast always been; judge now whether we be deserving of freedom; Lord, bless our battle!'
  
  All this was neglected and nothing was done.
  
  Who, then, will be surprised that our people is not as it should be and could be? If the rest of the world sees in us only a stooge, an obsequious dog, who gratefully licks the hands that have just beaten him?
  Certainly our capacity for alliances today is injured by our people, but most of all by its governments. They in their corruption are to blame if after eight years of the most unlimited oppression so little will for freedom is present.
  
  Much, therefore, as an active alliance policy is linked with the necessary evaluation of our people, the latter is equally dependent on the existence of a governmental power which does not want to be a handyman for foreign countries, not a taskmaster over its own strength, but a herald of the national conscience.
  
  If our people has a state leadership which sees its mission in this light, six years will not pass before a bold Reich leadership in the field of foreign affairs will dispose of an equally bold will on the part of a people thirsting for freedom.
  
  *...............*...............*
• weidev

  10 May 04, 04:59

  The second objection, the great difficulty of transforming hostile peoples into friendly allies, can be answered as follows:
  
  The general anti-German psychosis cultivated in other countries by war propaganda will inevitably continue to exist until the German Reich, through the resurrection visible to all of a German will for self-preservation, achieves the character of a state which plays on the general European chessboard and with which it is possible to play. Only when government and people seem to provide absolute guaranty of a possible fitness for alliance can one or another power, out of parallel interest, think of reshaping public opinion by the effects of propaganda. This, too, naturally requires years of shrewd continuous work. The very need of this long period for altering the sentiments of a people necessitates caution in undertaking it; that is, no one will enter upon such an activity unless he is absolutely convinced of the value of such a labor and its fruits for the future. No one will want to change the spiritual orientation of a nation on the strength of the empty bragging of some more or less witty foreign minister, without possessing a tangible guaranty of the value of a new orientation. Otherwise this would lead to a complete shattering of public opinion. The most reliable certainty for the possibility of a future alliance with a state does not lie in the bombastic phrases of individual members of the government, but in the visible stability of a definite and seemingly expedient governmental tendency, and in a public opinion with an analogous orientation. The faith in this will be the firmer, the greater the visible activity of a governing power in the field of propagandist preparation and foundation of its work, and, conversely, the more unmistakably the will of public opinion is reflected in the governmental tendency.
  
  A nation, then, will - in our situation - be regarded as fit for alliance, if government and public opinion with equal fanaticism proclaim and uphold the will to fight for freedom. This is the premise for beginning a reorientation in the public opinion of other nations, which on the basis of their knowledge are willing, in defense of their very own interests, to go a stretch of the way by the side of a partner who seems suitable to them - in other words, to conclude an alliance.
  
  But there is one thing more to be said in this connection: Since the transformation of a certain spiritual attitude in a people requires hard work in itself, and at first will not be understood by many, it is a crime and a stupidity at once, to furnish these opposing elements with: weapons for their counter-efforts by mistakes of one's own.
  
  It must be realized that it will necessarily take a certain time before a people has completely comprehended the inner purposes of a government, since explanations cannot be given regarding the final ultimate aims of certain preliminary political work, and one can only reckon either with the blind faith of the masses or the intuitive insight of the intellectually superior leader strata. But since in many people this clairvoyant political sixth sense is not present, and for political reasons explanations cannot be given, a part of the intellectual leader class will always turn against new tendencies which due to their incomprehensibility can easily be interpreted as mere experiments. Thus, the resistance of the anxious conservative elements is aroused.
• weidev

  10 May 04, 05:00

  For this reason more than any other, it becomes our highest duty to make sure that all serviceable weapons are wrested from the hands of such disturbers of mutual understanding, especially when, as in our case, we are dealing with nothing but the totally impracticable, purely fantastic babble of inflated parlor patriots and petit bourgeois caf¨¦ politicians. For on calm reflection no one will seriously deny that screaming for a new battle feet, for recovery of our colonies, etc., is in reality nothing but silly gossip' without so much as a thought of practical application. The way in which the senseless outpourings of these knights of the protest meeting, some of them innocent, some of them insane, but all of them in the silent service of our mortal enemies, are exploited in England, cannot be characterized as favorable to Germany. And so we wear ourselves out in harmful little demonstrations against God and the whole world and forget the first principle which is the premise for every success, to wit: Whatever you do, do it completely. By beefing against five or ten states, we neglect the concentration of all our will power and physical force for the thrust to the heart of our infamous enemy, and sacrifice the possibility of strengthening ourselves by an alliance for this conflict.
  
  Here, too, lies a mission for the National Socialist movement. It must teach our people to look beyond trifles and see the biggest things, not to split up over irrelevant things, and never to forget that the aim for which we must fight today is the bare existence of our people, and the sole enemy which we must strike is and remains the power which is robbing us of this existence.
  
  Some things may be profoundly painful to us. But this is far from being a ground for renouncing reason and bickering loudly and senselessly with the whole world instead of attacking the most mortal enemy in concentrated force.
  
  Furthermore, the German people has no moral right to blame the rest of the world for its conduct as long as it has not called to account the criminals who sold and betrayed their whole country. Really, it is not serious for us to curse and protest against England, Italy, etc., from a distance, and leave the scoundrels at large who, in the pay of enemy war propaganda, took away our arms, broke our moral backbone, and auctioned off the crippled Reich for thirty pieces of silver.
  
  The enemy does only what was to be predicted. We should learn from his conduct and his acts.
  
  Anyone who is really unwilling to rise to the heights of such a conception should finally bear in mind that the only thing remaining in that case is renunciation, because then any alliance policy is impossible for the future. For if we cannot ally ourselves with England because she stole our colonies, or with Italy because she has the South Tyrol, with Poland and Czechoslovakia on their merits, then, aside from France - who incidentally did steal Alsace-Lorraine from us - there would remain no one else in Europe.
  
  Whether this serves the German people is scarcely subject to doubt. The only thing that can remain in doubt is whether such an opinion is put forward by a simple dunce or by a shrewd adversary.
  
  When it comes to leaders, I always believe the latter.
• weidev

  10 May 04, 05:00

  And so, in all human probability, a transformation of the psyche of individual peoples, who have hitherto been hostile but whose true future interests lie close to our own, may very well be possible if the inner strength of our state as well as our visible will for the preservation of our existence again make us seem worthy as an ally, and, further, if awkward movements of our own, or even criminal acts, do not furnish grist for the mill of the enemies of such a future tie with nations previously hostile to us.
  
  *...............*...............*
  
  The hardest to answer is the third objection.
  
  Is it conceivable that the representatives of the real interests of the nations possible for alliance can put through their views in opposition to the will of the Jewish mortal enemy of free national states?
  
  Can the forces of traditional British statesmanship, for example, break the devastating Jewish influence or not?
  
  This question, as already stated, is very hard to answer. It depends on too many factors to permit of a conclusive judgment. One thing is certain in any case: In one country the present state power can be regarded as so stabilized and serves the interests of the country so absolutely that we can no longer speak of a really effective obstruction of political necessities by international Jewish forces.
  
  The struggle that Fascist Italy is waging, though perhaps in the last analysis unconsciously (which I personally do not believe), against the three main weapons of the Jews is the best indication that, even though indirectly, the poison fangs of this supra-state power are being torn out. The prohibition of Masonic secret societies, the persecution of the supra-national press, as well as the continuous demolition of international Marxism, and, conversely, the steady reinforcement of the Fascist state conception, will in the course of the years cause the Italian government to serve the interests of the Italian people more and more, without regard for the hissing of the Jewish world hydra.
  
  Things are more difficult in England. In this country of the 'freest democracy,¦ the Jew exerts an almost unlimited dictatorship indirectly through public opinion. And yet, even there an incessant struggle is taking place between the advocates of British state interests and the proponents of a Jewish world dictatorship.
  
  How sharply these opposites often clash could be seen most clearly for the first time after the War in the different attitude toward the Japanese problem of the British government leaders on the one hand and of the press on the other.
• weidev

  10 May 04, 05:01

  Immediately after the end of the War, the old strain in the relations of America and Japan began to reappear. Of course, the great European powers could not remain indifferent to this new war danger. No ties of kinship can prevent a certain feeling of envious concern in England toward the growth of the American Union in all fields of international economic and power politics. The former colonial country, child of the great mother, seems to be growing into a new master of the world. It is understandable that England today re-examines her old alliances with anxious concern and British statesmen gaze with trepidation toward a period in which it will no longer be said:
  
  'Britannia rules the waves!' But instead: 'The seas for the Union!'
  
  It is harder to attack the gigantic American colossus of states with the enormous wealth of its virgin soil than the wedged-in German Reich. If the dice and the ultimate decision should ever roll, England, if left to her own resources would be doomed. And so they snatch eagerly at the yellow fist and cling to an alliance which, from the racial viewpoint, is perhaps unjustifiable, but from the viewpoint of state politics nevertheless represents the sole possibility of strengthening the British world position in the face of the upsurging American continent.
  
  While the English state leadership, despite the common struggle on the European battlefields, could not resolve to relax its alliance with the Asiatic partner, the whole Jewish press fell on this alliance from behind.
  
  How is it possible that the organs of a Northcliffe, until 1918 the faithful armor-bearer of the British struggle against the German Reich, should now break their loyalty and go their own ways?
  
  The annihilation of Germany was not an English interest, but primarily a Jewish one, just as today a destruction of Japan serves British state interests less than it does the widespread desires of the leaders of the projected Jewish world empire. While England sweats to maintain her position in this world, the Jew organizes his attack for its conquest.
  
  He already sees the present-day European states as will-less tools in his fist, whether indirectly through a so-called Western democracy, or in the form of direct domination by Jewish Bolshevism. But it is not only the Old World that he holds thus enmeshed, the same fate menaces the New. It is Jews who govern the stock exchange forces of the American Union. Every year makes them more and more the controlling masters of the producers in a nation of one hundred and twenty millions; only a single great man, Ford, to their fury, still maintains full independence.
  
  With astute shrewdness they knead public opinion and make it into an instrument for their own future.
• weidev

  10 May 04, 05:01

  Already the greatest heads of Jewry see the approaching fulfillment of their testamentary prophecy about the great devouring of nations.
  
  Within this great herd of denationalized colonial territories, a single independent state might still wreck the whole work at the eleventh hour. For a Bolshevistic world can exist only if it embraces everything.
  
  If only a single state is preserved in its national strength and greatness, the world empire of Jewish satrapies, like every tyranny in this world, must succumb to the force of the national idea.
  
  Now the Jew knows only too well that in his thousand years of adaptation he may have been able to undermine European peoples and train them to be raceless bastards, but that he would scarcely be in a position to subject an Asiatic national state like Japan to this fate. Today he may mimic the German and the Englishman, the American and Frenchman, but he lacks the bridges to the yellow Asiatic. And so he strives to break the Japanese national state with the strength of similar existing formations in order to rid himself of the dangerous adversary before the last state power is transformed in his hand into a despotism over defenseless beings.
  
  In his millennial Jewish empire he dreads a Japanese national state, and, therefore, desires its annihilation even before establishing his own dictatorship.
  
  And so he incites the nations against Japan as he once did against Germany, and this is what brings it about that, while British statesmen are still striving to build on the alliance with Japan, the British-Jewish press already demands struggle against the ally, and prepares the war of annihilation under the proclamation of democracy and under the battle-cry: Down with Japanese militarism and imperialism!
  
  That is how insubordinate the Jew has become in England today.
  
  And for this reason it is there that the struggle against the Jewish world menace will begin.
  
  And again the National Socialist movement has the mightiest task to fulfill.
  
  It must open the eyes of the people on the subject of foreign nations and must remind them again and again of the true enemy of our present-day world. In place of hatred against Aryans, from whom almost everything may separate us, but with whom we are bound by common blood or the great line of a kindred culture, it must call eternal wrath upon the head of the foul enemy of mankind as the real originator of our sufferings.
  
  It must make certain that in our country, at least, the mortal enemy is recognized and that the fight against him becomes a gleaming symbol of brighter days, to show other nations the way to the salvation of an embattled Aryan humanity.
  
  For the rest, may reason be our guide, may our will be our strength. May the sacred duty to act in this way give us determinations and above all may our faith protect us.
• weidev

  10 May 04, 05:02

  End of
  Volume 2: The National Socialist Movement
  CHAPTER 13: GERMAN ALLIANCE POLICY AFTER THE WAR
• weidev

  14 May 04, 04:31

  Begin of
  Volume 2: The National Socialist Movement
  CHAPTER 14: EASTERN ORIENTATION OR EASTERN POLICY
• weidev

  14 May 04, 04:32

  There are two reasons which induce me to submit to a special examination the relation of Germany to Russia:
  
  1. Here perhaps we are dealing with the most decisive concern of all German foreign affairs; and
  
  2. This question is also the touchstone for the political capacity of the young National Socialist movements to think dearly 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 clear 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 sacrificed 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 know-it-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.
• weidev

  14 May 04, 04:32

  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 folkish 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.
• weidev

  14 May 04, 04:33

  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 so-called 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.
• weidev

  14 May 04, 04:33

  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 aimlessness 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 from 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.
• weidev

  14 May 04, 04:33

  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 self-preservation 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.
• weidev

  14 May 04, 04:34

  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 our foreign 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 so-called folkish circles, all sorts of unctuous big-mouths 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 such proportions and consequences as to make it seem a crime. Quite aside from the fact that the Reich's frontiers in 1914 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 geo-military 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.
• weidev

  14 May 04, 04:34

  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 partner 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 even 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 good-natured, 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.
• weidev

  14 May 04, 04:34

  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 surface 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 German 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.
• weidev

  14 May 04, 04:34

  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 the same way. 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 nigger 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 prewar 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 off the colonial and commercial policy of the prewar 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 Russia 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 nucleus 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 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.
• weidev

  14 May 04, 04:35

  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, must not be: What did Bismarck 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 with a state that is doomed 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.
• weidev

  14 May 04, 04:35

  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 able people the id¨¦e 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 Anglo-Saxon 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 'Holy 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 machine-gun 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.
• weidev

  14 May 04, 04:36

  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 from 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 world, 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 naïve 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.