Zweites Buch (Secret book) 



Adolf Hitler's Sequel to Mein Kampf 
"Politics is history in the making." 

Such were the words of Adolf Hitler in his untitled, unpublished and 
long suppressed second work written only a few years after the 
publication of Mein Kampf. 


Only two copies of the 200 page manuscript were originally made and only one of these 
has ever been made public. Kept strictly secret under Hitler's orders, the document was 
placed in an air raid shelter in 1935, where it remained until its discovery by an American 
officer in 1945. 

Written in 1928, the authenticity of the book has been verified by Josef Berg (former 
employee of the Nazi publishing house Eher Verlag) and Telford Taylor (former 
Brigadier General U.S.A.R., and Chief Counsel at the Nuremburg war crimes trials) who, 
after an analysis made in 1961, commented: 

"If Hitler's book of 1928 is read against the background of the intervening years, it should 
interest not scholars only, but the general reader." 























FOREWORD 


In August, 1925, on the occasion of the writing of the second volume, I formulated the fundamental ideas of a 
National Socialist foreign policy, in the brief time afforded by the circumstances. Within the framework of that 
book I dealt especially with the question of the Southern Tyrol, which gave rise to attacks against the 
Movement as violent as they were groundless. In 1926,1 found myself forced to have this part of the second 
volume published as a special edition. I did not believe that by so doing I would convert those opponents who, 
in the hue and cry over the Southern Tyrol, saw primarily a welcome means for the struggle against the hated 
National Socialist Movement. Such people cannot be taught better because the question of truth or error, right 
or wrong, plays absolutely no part for them. As soon as an issue seems suitable for exploitation, partly for 
political party purposes, partly even for their highly personal interests, the truthfulness or rightness of the matter 
at hand is altogether irrelevant. This is all the more the case if they can thereby inflict damage on the cause of 
the general awakening of our Folk. For the men responsible for the destruction of Germany, dating from the 
time of the collapse, are her present rulers, and their attitude of that time has not changed in any respect up to 
now. Just as at that time they cold heartedly sacrificed Germany for the sake of doctrinaire party views or for 
their own selfish advantage, today they likewise vent their hatred against anyone who contradicts their interests, 
even though he may have, a thousandfold, all the grounds for a German resurgence on his side. Even more. As 
soon as they believe the revival of our Folk, represented by a certain name, can be seen, they usually take a 
position against everything that could emanate from such a name. The most useful proposals, indeed the most 
patently correct suggestions, are boycotted simply because their spokesman, as a name, seems to be linked to 
general ideas which they presume they must combat on the basis of their political party and personal views. To 
want to convert such people is hopeless. 

Hence in 1926, when my brochure on the Southern Tyrol was printed, I naturally gave not a second's thought to 
the idea that I could make an impression on those who, in consequence of their general philosophical and 
political attitude, already regarded me as their most vehement opponent. At that time I did entertain the hope 
that at least some of them, who were not at the outset malicious opponents of our National Socialist foreign 
policy, would first examine our view in this field and judge it afterward. Without a doubt this has also happened 
in many cases. Today I can point out with satisfaction that a great number of men, even among those in public 
political life, have revised their former attitude with respect to German foreign policy. Even when they believed 
they could not side with our standpoint in particulars, they nevertheless recognised the honourable intentions 
that guide us here. During the last two years, of course, it has become clearer to me that my writing of that time 
was in fact structured on general National Socialist insights as a premise. It also became clearer that many do 
not follow us, less out of ill will than because of a certain inability. At that time, within the narrowly drawn 
limits, it was not possible to give a real fundamental proof of the soundness of our National Socialist conception 
of foreign policy. Today I feel compelled to make up for this. For not only have the attacks of the enemy been 
intensified in the last few years, but through them the great camp of the indifferent has also been mobilised to a 
certain degree. The agitation that has been systematically conducted against Italy for the past five years 
threatens slowly to bear fruit: resulting in the possible death and destruction of the last hopes of a German 
resurgence. 

Thus, as has often happened in other matters, the National Socialist Movement in its foreign policy position 
stands completely alone and isolated within the community of the German Folk and its political life. The attacks 
of the general enemies of our Folk and Fatherland are joined inside the country by the proverbial stupidity and 



ineptitude of the bourgeois national parties, the indolence of the broad masses, and by cowardice, as a 
particularly powerful ally: the cowardice that we can observe today among those who by their very nature are 
incapable of putting up any resistance to the Marxist plague, and who, for this reason, consider themselves 
downright lucky to bring their voices to the attention of public opinion in a matter which is less dangerous than 
the struggle against Marxism, and which nevertheless looks and sounds like something similar to it. For when 
they raise their clamour over the Southern Tyrol today, they seem to serve the interests of the national struggle, 
just as, conversely, they come as close as they can to standing aside from a real struggle against the worst 
internal enemies of the German nation. These patriotic, national, and also in part Folkish champions, however, 
find it considerably easier to launch their war cry against Italy in Vienna or Miinchen under benevolent support 
and in union with Marxist betrayers of their Folk and Fatherland, rather than fight an earnest war against these 
very elements. Just as so much nowadays has become appearance, the whole national pretence by these people 
has for a long time been only an outward show which, to be sure, gratifies them, and which a great part of our 
Folk does not see through. 

Against this powerful coalition, which from the most varied points of view is seeking to make the question of 
the Southern Tyrol the pivot of German foreign policy, the National Socialist Movement fights by unswervingly 
advocating an alliance with Italy against the ruling Francophile tendency. Thereby the Movement, in 
contradistinction to the whole of public opinion in Germany, emphatically points out that the Southern Tyrol 
neither can nor should be an obstacle to this policy. This view is the cause of our present isolation in the sphere 
of foreign policy and of the attacks against us. Later, to be sure, it will ultimately be the cause of the resurgence 
of the German nation. 

I write this book in order to substantiate this firmly held conception in detail and to make it understandable. The 
less importance I attach to being understood by the enemies of the German Folk, the more I feel the duty of 
exerting myself to present and to point out the fundamental National Socialist idea of a real German foreign 
policy to the national minded elements of our Folk as such, who are only badly informed or badly led. I know 
that, after a sincere examination of the conception presented here, many of them will give up their previous 
positions and find their way into the ranks of the National Socialist Freedom Movement of the German Nation. 
They will thus strengthen that force which one day will bring about the final settlement with those who cannot 
be taught because their thought and action are determined not by the happiness of their Folk, but by the interests 
of their party or of their own person. 



Chapter 1 


WAR AND PEACE 


Politics is history in the making. History itself is the presentation of the course of a Folk's struggle for existence. 
I deliberately use the phrase struggle for existence here because, in truth, that struggle for daily bread, equally in 
peace and war, is an eternal battle against thousands upon thousands of resistances, just as life itself is an eternal 
struggle against death. For men know as little why they live as does any other creature of the world. Only life is 
filled with the longing to preserve itself. The most primitive creature knows only the instinct of the self 
preservation of its own, in creatures standing higher in the scale it is transferred to wife and child, and in those 
standing still higher to the entire species. While, apparently, man often surrenders his own instinct of self 
preservation for the sake of the species, in truth he nevertheless serves it to the highest degree. For not seldom 
the preservation of the life of a whole Folk, and with this of the individual, lies only in this renunciation by the 
individual. Hence the sudden courage of a mother in the defence of her young and the heroism of a man in the 
defence of his Folk. The two powerful life instincts, hunger and love, correspond to the greatness of the instinct 
for self preservation. While the appeasement of eternal hunger guarantees self preservation, the satisfaction of 
love assures the continuance of the race. In truth these two drives are the rulers of life. And even though the 
fleshless aesthete may lodge a thousand protests against such an assertion, the fact of his own existence is 
already a refutation of his protest. Nothing that is made of flesh and blood can escape the laws which 
determined its coming into being. As soon as the human mind believes itself to be superior to them, it destroys 
that real substance which is the bearer of the mind. 

What, however, applies to individual man also applies to nations. A nation is only a multitude of more or less 
similar individual beings. Its strength lies in the value of the individual beings forming it as such, and in the 
character and the extent of the sameness of these values. The same laws which determine the life of the 
individual, and to which he is subject, are therefore also valid for the Folk. Self preservation and continuance 
are the great urges underlying all action, as long as such a body can still claim to be healthy. Therefore, even the 
consequences of these general laws of life will be similar among Folks, as they are among individuals 

If, for every creature on this Earth, the instinct of self preservation, in its twin goals of self maintenance and 
continuance, exhibits the most elementary power, nevertheless the possibility of satisfaction is limited, so the 
logical consequence of this is a struggle in all its forms for the possibility of maintaining this life, that is, the 
satisfaction of the instinct for self preservation. 

Countless are the species of all the Earth's organisms, unlimited at any moment in individuals is their instinct 
for self preservation as well as the longing for continuance, yet the space in which the whole life process takes 
place is limited. The struggle for existence and continuance in life waged by billions upon billions of organisms 
takes place on the surface of an exactly measured sphere. The compulsion to engage in the struggle for 
existence lies in the limitation of the living space; but in the life struggle for this living space lies also the basis 
for evolution 

In the times before man, world history was primarily a presentation of geological events: the struggle of natural 
forces with one another, the creation of an inhabitable surface on this planet, the separation of water from land, 
the formation of mountains, of plains, and of the seas. This is the world history of this time. Later, with the 
emergence of organic life, man's interest concentrated on the process of becoming and the passing away of its 



thousandfold forms. And only very late did man finally become visible to himself, and thus by the concept of 
world history he began to understand first and foremost only the history of his own becoming, that is, the 
presentation of his own evolution. This evolution is characterised by an eternal struggle of men against beasts 
and against men themselves. From the invisible confusion of the organisms there finally emerged formations: 
Clans, Tribes, Folks, States. The description of their origins and their passing away is but the representation of 
an eternal struggle for existence. 

If, however, politics is history in the making, and history itself the presentation of the struggle of men and 
nations for self preservation and continuance, then politics is, in truth, the execution of a nation's struggle for 
existence. But politics is not only the struggle of a nation for its existence as such; for us men it is rather the art 
of carrying out this struggle 

Since history as the representation of the hitherto existing struggles for existence of nations is at the same time 
the petrified representation of politics prevailing at a given moment, it is the most suitable teacher for our own 
political activity. 

If the highest task of politics is the preservation and the continuance of the life of a Folk, then this life is the 
eternal stake with which it fights, for which and over which this struggle is decided. Hence its task is the 
preservation of a substance made of flesh and blood. Its success is the making possible of this preservation. Its 
failure is the destruction, that is, the loss of this substance. Consequently, politics is always the leader of the 
struggle for existence, the guide of the same, its organiser, and its efficacy will, regardless of how man formally 
designates it, carry with it the decision as to the life or death of a Folk 

It is necessary to keep this clearly in view because, with this, the two concepts — a policy of peace or war — 
immediately sink into nothingness. Since the stake over which politics wrestles is always life itself, the result of 
failure or success will likewise be the same, regardless of the means with which politics attempts to carry out 
the struggle for the preservation of the life of a Folk. A peace policy that fails leads just as directly to the 
destruction of a Folk, that is, to the extinction of its substance of flesh and blood, as a war policy that 
miscarries. In the one case just as in the other, the plundering of the prerequisites of life is the cause of the dying 
out of a Folk. For nations have not become extinct on battlefields; lost battles rather have deprived them of the 
means for the preservation of life, or, better expressed, have led to such a deprivation, or were not able to 
prevent it. 

Indeed, the losses which arise directly from a war are in no way proportionate to the losses deriving from a 
Folk's bad and unhealthy life as such. Silent hunger and evil vices in ten years kill more people than war could 
finish off in a thousand years. The cruellest war, however, is precisely the one which appears to be most 
peaceful to presentday humanity, namely the peaceful economic war. In its ultimate consequences, this very war 
leads to sacrifices in contrast to which even those of the World War shrink to nothing. For this war affects not 
only the living but grips above all those who are about to be born. Whereas war at most kills off a fragment of 
the present, economic warfare murders the future. A single year of birth control in Europe kills more people 
than all those who fell in battle, from the time of the French Revolution up to our day, in all the wars of Europe, 
including the World War. But this is the consequence of a peaceful economic policy which has overpopulated 
Europe without preserving the possibility of a further healthy development for a number of nations. 

In general, the following should also be stated: 


As soon as a Folk forgets that the task of politics is to preserve its life with all means and according to all 



possibilities, and instead aims to subject politics to a definite mode of action, it destroys the inner meaning of 
the art of leading a Folk in its fateful struggle for freedom and bread. 


A policy which is fundamentally bellicose can keep a Folk removed from numerous vices and pathological 
symptoms, but it cannot prevent a change of the inner values in the course of many centuries. If it becomes a 
permanent phenomenon, war contains an inner danger in itself, which stands out all the more clearly the more 
dissimilar are the fundamental racial values which constitute a nation. This already applied to all the known 
States of antiquity, and applies especially today to all European States. The nature of war entails that, through a 
thousandfold individual processes, it leads to a racial selection within a Folk, which signifies a preferential 
destruction of its best elements. The call to courage and bravery finds its response in countless individual 
reactions, in that the best and most valuable racial elements again and again voluntarily come forward for 
special tasks, or they are systematically cultivated through the organisational method of special formations. 
Military leadership of all times has always been dominated by the idea of forming special legions, chosen elite 
troops for guard regiments and assault battalions. Persian palace guards, Alexandrian elite troops, Roman 
legions of Praetorians, lost troops of mercenaries, the guard regiments of Napoleon and Frederick The Great, 
the assault battalions, submarine crews and flying corps of the World War owed their origin to the same idea 
and necessity of seeking out of a great multitude of men, those with the highest aptitude for the performance of 
correspondingly high tasks, and bringing them together into special formations. For originally every guard was 
not a drill corps but a combat unit. The glory attached to membership in such a community led to the creation of 
a special esprit de corps which subsequently, however, could freeze and ultimately end up in sheer formalities. 
Hence not seldom such formations will have to bear the greatest blood sacrifices; that is to say, the fittest are 
sought out from a great multitude of men and led to war in concentrated masses. Thus the percentage of the best 
dead of a nation is disproportionately increased, while conversely the percentage of the worst elements is able to 
preserve itself to the highest degree. Over against the extremely idealistic men who are ready to sacrifice their 
own lives for the Folkish Community, stands the number of those most wretched egoists who view the 
preservation of their own mere personal life likewise as the highest task of this life. The hero dies, the criminal 
is preserved. This appears self evident to an heroic age, and especially to an idealistic youth. And this is good, 
because it is the proof of the still present value of a Folk. The true statesman must view such a fact with 
concern, and take it into account. For what can easily be tolerated in one war, in a hundred wars leads to the 
slow bleeding away of the best, most valuable elements of a nation. Thereby victories will indeed have been 
won, but in the end there will no longer be a Folk worthy of this victory. And the pitifulness of the posterity, 
which to many seems incomprehensible, not seldom is the result of the successes of former times. 

Therefore, wise political leaders of a Folk will never see in war the aim of the life of a Folk, but only a means 
for the preservation of this life. It must educate the human material entrusted to it to the highest manhood, but 
rule it with the highest conscientiousness. If necessary, when a Folk's life is at stake, they should not shrink 
from daring to shed blood to the utmost, but they must always bear in mind that peace must one day again 
replace this blood. Wars which are fought for aims that, because of their whole nature, do not guarantee a 
compensation for the blood that has been shed, are sacrileges committed against a nation, a sin against a Folk's 
future. 

Eternal wars, however, can become a terrible danger among a Folk which possesses such unequal elements in 
its racial composition that only part of them may be viewed as Statepreserving, as such, and therefore, 
especially, creative culturally. The culture of European Folks rests on the foundations which its infusion of 
Nordic blood has created in the course of centuries. Once the last remains of this Nordic blood are eliminated, 
the face of European culture will be changed, the value of the States decreasing, however, in accordance with 
the sinking value of the Folks. 



A policy which is fundamentally peaceful, on the other hand, would at first make possible the preservation of its 
best blood carriers, but on the whole it would educate the Folk to a weakness which, one day, must lead to 
failure, once the basis of existence of such a Folk appears to be threatened. Then, instead of fighting for daily 
bread, the nation rather will cut down on this bread and, what is even more probable, limit the number of people 
either through peaceful emigration or through birth control, in order in this way to escape an enormous distress. 
Thus the fundamentally peaceful policy becomes a scourge for a Folk. For what, on the one hand, is effected by 
permanent war, is effected on the other by emigration. Through it a Folk is slowly robbed of its best blood in 
hundreds of thousands of individual life catastrophes. It is sad to know that our whole national political wisdom, 
insofar as it does not see any advantage at all in emigration, at most deplores the weakening of the number of its 
own people, or at best speaks of a cultural fertiliser which is thereby given to other States. What is not perceived 
is the worst. Since the emigration does not proceed according to territory, nor according to age categories, but 
instead remains subject to the free rule of fate, it always drains away from a Folk the most courageous and the 
boldest people, the most determined and most prepared for resistance. The peasant youth who emigrated to 
America 150 years ago was as much the most determined and most adventurous man in his village as the 
worker who today goes to Argentina. The coward and weakling would rather die at home than pluck up the 
courage to earn his bread in an unknown, foreign land. Regardless whether it is distress, misery, political 
pressure or religious compulsion that weighs on people, it will always be those who are the healthiest and the 
most capable of resistance who will be able to put up the most resistance. The weakling will always be the first 
to subject himself. His preservation is generally as little a gain for the victor as the stay at homes are for the 
mother country. Not seldom, therefore, the law of action is passed on from the mother country to the colonies, 
because there a concentration of the highest human values has taken place in a wholly natural way. However, 
the positive gain for the new country is thus a loss for the mother country. As soon as a Folk once loses its best, 
strongest and most natural forces through emigration in the course of centuries, it will hardly be able any more 
to muster the inner strength to put up the necessary resistance to fate in critical times. It will then sooner grasp 
at birth control. Even here the loss in numbers is not decisive, but the terrible fact that, through birth control, the 
highest potential values of a Folk are destroyed at the very outset. For the greatness and future of a Folk is 
determined through the sum of its capacities for the highest achievements in all fields. But these are personality 
values which do not appear linked to primogeniture. If we were to strike off from our German cultural life, from 
our science, indeed from our whole existence as such, all that which was created by men who were not first 
bom sons, then Germany would hardly be a Balkan State. The German Folk would no longer have any claim to 
being valued as a cultural Folk. Moreover, it must be considered that, even in the case of those men who as first 
bom nevertheless accomplished great things for their Folk, it must first be examined whether one of their 
ancestors at least had not been a first bom. For when in his whole ancestral series the chain of the first bom 
appears as broken just once [one man], then he also belongs to those who would not have existed had our 
forefathers always paid homage to this principle. In the life of nations, however, there are no vices of the past 
that are [would be] right in the present. 

The fundamentally peaceful policy, with the subsequent bleeding to death of a nation through emigration and 
birth control, is likewise all the more catastrophic the more it involves a Folk which is made up of racially 
unequal elements. For in this case as well the best racial elements are taken away from the Folk through 
emigration, whereas through birth control in the homeland it is likewise those who in consequence of their 
racial value have worked themselves up to the higher levels of life and society who are at first affected. 
Gradually then their replenishment would follow out of the bled, inferior broad masses, and finally, after 
centuries, lead to a lowering of the whole value of the Folk altogether. Such a nation will have long ceased to 
possess real life vitality. 


Thus a policy which is fundamentally peaceful will be precisely as harmful and devastating in its effects as a 
policy which knows war as its only weapon. 



Politics must fight about the life of a Folk, and for this life; moreover, it must always choose the weapons of its 
struggles so that life in the highest sense of the word is served. For one does not make politics in order to be 
able to die, rather one may only at times call upon men to die so that a nation can live. The aim is the 
preservation of life and not heroic death, or even cowardly resignation. 



Chapter 2 


THE NECESSITY OF STRIFE 


A Folk's struggle for existence is first and foremost determined by the following fact: 

Regardless of how high the cultural importance of a Folk may be, the struggle for daily bread stands at the 
forefront of all vital necessities. To be sure, brilliant leaders can hold great goals before a Folk's eyes, so that it 
can be further diverted from material things in order to serve higher spiritual ideals. In general, the merely 
material interest will rise in exact proportion as ideal spiritual outlooks are in the process of disappearing. The 
more primitive the spiritual life of man, the more animallike he becomes, until finally he regards food intake as 
the one and only aim of life. Hence a Folk can quite well endure a certain limitation of material goals, as long as 
it is given compensation in the form of active ideals. But if these ideals are not to result in the ruin of a Folk, 
they should never exist unilaterally at the expense of material nourishment, so that the health of the nation 
seems to be threatened by them. For a starved Folk will indeed either collapse in consequence of its physical 
undernourishment, or perforce bring about a change in its situation. Sooner or later, however, physical collapse 
brings spiritual collapse in its train. Then all ideals also come to an end. Thus ideals are good and healthy as 
long as they keep on strengthening a Folk's inner and general forces, so that in the last analysis they can again 
be of benefit in waging the struggle for existence. Ideals which do not serve this purpose are evil, though they 
may appear a thousand times outwardly beautiful, because they remove a Folk more and more from the reality 
of life. 

But the bread which a Folk requires is conditioned by the living space at its disposal. A healthy Folk, at least, 
will always seek to find the satisfaction of its needs on its own soil. Any other condition is pathological and 
dangerous, even if it makes possible the sustenance of a Folk for centuries. World trade, world economy, tourist 
traffic, and so on, and so forth, are all transient means for securing a nation's sustenance. They are dependent 
upon factors which are partly beyond calculation, and which, on the other hand, lie beyond a nation's power. At 
all times the surest foundation for the existence of a Folk has been its own soil. 

But now we must consider the following: 

The number of a Folk is a variable factor. It will always rise in a healthy Folk. Indeed, such an increase alone 
makes it possible to guarantee a Folk's future in accordance with human calculations. As a result, however, the 
demand for commodities also grows constantly. In most cases the so called domestic increase in production can 
satisfy only the rising demands of mankind, but in no way the increasing population. This applies especially to 
European nations. In the last few centuries, especially in most recent times, the European Folks have increased 
their needs to such an extent that the rise in European soil productivity, which is possible from year to year 
under favourable conditions, can hardly keep pace with the growth of general life needs as such. The increase of 
population can be balanced only through an increase, that is, an enlargement, of living space. Now the number 
of a Folk is variable, the soil as such, however, remains constant. This means that the increase of a Folk is a 
process, so self evident because it is so natural, that it is not regarded as something extraordinary. On the other 
hand, an increase in territory is conditioned by the general distribution of possessions in the world; an act of 
special revolution, an extraordinary process, so that the ease with which a population increases stands in sharp 
contrast to the extraordinary difficulty of territorial changes. 



Yet the regulation of the relation between population and territory is of tremendous importance for a nation's 
existence. Indeed, we can justly say that the whole life struggle of a Folk, in truth, consists in safeguarding the 
territory it requires as a general prerequisite for the sustenance of the increasing population. Since the 
population grows incessantly, and the soil as such remains stationary, tensions perforce must gradually arise 
which at first find expression in distress, and which for a certain time can be balanced through greater industry, 
more ingenious production methods, or special austerity. But there comes a day when these tensions can no 
longer be eliminated by such means. Then the task of the leaders of a nation's struggle for existence consists in 
eliminating the unbearable conditions in a fundamental way, that is, in restoring a tolerable relation between 
population and territory. 

In the life of nations there are several ways for correcting the disproportion between population and territory. 
The most natural way is to adapt the soil, from time to time, to the increased population. This requires a 
determination to fight and the risk of bloodshed. But this very bloodshed is also the only one that can be 
justified to a Folk. Since through it the necessary space is won for the further increase of a Folk, it automatically 
finds manifold compensation for the humanity staked on the battlefield. Thus the bread of freedom grows from 
the hardships of war. The sword was the path breaker for the plough. And if we want to talk about human rights 
at all, then in this single case war has served the highest right of all: it gave a Folk the soil which it wanted to 
cultivate industriously and honestly for itself, so that its children might some day be provided with their daily 
bread. For this soil is not allotted to anyone, nor is it presented to anyone as a gift. It is awarded by Providence 
to people who in their hearts have the courage to take possession of it, the strength to preserve it, and the 
industry to put it to the plough. 

Hence every healthy, vigorous Folk sees nothing sinful in territorial acquisition, but something quite in keeping 
with nature. The modern pacifist who denies this holy right must first be reproached for the fact that he himself 
at least is being nourished on the injustices of former times. Furthermore, there is no spot on this Earth that has 
been determined as the abode of a Folk for all time, since the rule of nature has for tens of thousands of years 
forced mankind eternally to migrate. Finally the present distribution of possessions on the Earth has not been 
designed by a higher power, but by man himself. But I can never regard a solution effected by man as an eternal 
value which Providence now takes under its protection and sanctifies into a law of the future. Thus, just as the 
Earth's surface seems to be subject to eternal geological transformations, making organic life perish in an 
unbroken change of forms in order to discover the new, this limitation of human dwelling places is also exposed 
to an endless change. However, many nations, at certain times, may have an interest in presenting the existing 
distribution of the world's territories as binding forever, for the reason that it corresponds to their interests, just 
as other nations can see only something generally manmade in such a situation which at the moment is 
unfavourable to them, and which therefore must be changed with all means of human power. Anyone who 
would banish this struggle from the Earth forever would perhaps abolish the struggle between men, but he 
would also eliminate the highest driving power for their development; exactly as if in civil life he would want to 
eternalise the wealth of certain men, the greatness of certain business enterprises, and for this purpose eliminate 
the play of free forces, competition. The results would be catastrophic for a nation. 

The present distribution of world space in a one sided way turns out to be so much in favour of individual 
nations that the latter perforce have an understandable interest in not allowing any further change in the present 
distribution of territories. But the overabundance of territory enjoyed by these nations contrasts with the poverty 
of the others, which, despite the utmost industry, are not in a position to produce their daily bread so as to keep 
alive. What higher rights would one want to oppose against them if they also raise the claim to a land area 
which safeguards their sustenance? 


No. The primary right of this world is the right to life, so far as one possesses the strength for this. Hence, on 



the basis of this right, a vigorous nation will always find ways of adapting its territory to its population size. 


Once a nation, as the result either of weakness or bad leadership, can no longer eliminate the disproportion 
between its increased population and the fixed amount of territory by increasing the productivity of its soil, it 
will necessarily look for other ways. It will then adapt the population size to the soil. 

Nature as such herself performs the first adaptation of the population size to the insufficiently nourishing soil. 
Here distress and misery are her devices. A Folk can be so decimated through them that any further population 
increase practically comes to a halt. The consequences of this natural adaptation of the Folk to the soil are not 
always the same. First of all a very violent struggle for existence sets in, which only individuals who are the 
strongest and have the greatest capacity for resistance can survive. A high infant mortality rate on the one hand 
and a high proportion of aged people on the other are the chief signs of a time which shows little regard for 
individual life. Since, under such conditions, all weaklings are swept away through acute distress and illness, 
and only the healthiest remain alive, a kind of natural selection takes place. Thus the number of a Folk can 
easily be subject to a limitation, but the inner value can remain, indeed it can experience an inner heightening. 
But such a process cannot last for too long, otherwise the distress can also turn into its opposite. In nations 
composed of racial elements that are not wholly of equal value, permanent malnutrition can ultimately lead to a 
dull surrender to the distress, which gradually reduces energy, and instead of a struggle which fosters a natural 
selection, a gradual degeneration sets in. This is surely the case once man, in order to control the chronic 
distress, no longer attaches any value to an increase of his number, and resorts on his own to birth control. For 
then he himself immediately embarks upon a road opposite to that taken by nature. Whereas nature, out of the 
multitude of beings who are born, spares the few who are most fitted in terms of health and resistance to wage 
life's struggle, man limits the number of births, and then tries to keep alive those who have been born with no 
regard to their real value or to their inner worth. Here his humanity is only the handmaiden of his weakness, and 
at the same time it is actually the cruellest destroyer of his existence. If man wants to limit the number of births 
on his own, without producing the terrible consequences which arise from birth control, he must give the 
number of births free rein but cut down on the number of those remaining alive. At one time the Spartans were 
capable of such a wise measure, but not our present, mendaciously sentimental, bourgeois patriotic nonsense. 
The rule of six thousand Spartans over three hundred and fifty thousand Helots was only thinkable in 
consequence of the high racial value of the Spartans. But this was the result of a systematic race preservation; 
thus Sparta must be regarded as the first Folkish State. The exposure of sick, weak, deformed children, in short 
their destruction, was more decent and in truth a thousand times more humane than the wretched insanity of our 
day which preserves the most pathological subject, and indeed at any price, and yet takes the life of a hundred 
thousand healthy children in consequence of birth control or through abortions, in order subsequently to breed a 
race of degenerates burdened with illnesses. 

Hence it can be said in general that the limitation of the population through distress and human agencies may 
very well lead to an approximate adaptation to the inadequate living space, but the value of the existing human 
material is constantly lowered and indeed ultimately decays. 

The second attempt to adapt the population size to the soil lies in emigration, which so long as it does not take 
place tribally, likewise leads to a devaluation of the remaining human material. 

Human birth control wipes out the bearer of the highest values, emigration destroys the value of the average. 

There are still two other ways by which a nation can try to balance the disproportion between population and 
territory. The first is called increasing the domestic productivity of the soil, which as such has nothing to do 
with so called internal colonisation; the second the increase of commodity production and the conversion of the 



domestic economy into an export economy. 


The idea of increasing the yield of the soil within borders that have been fixed once and forever is an old one. 
The history of human cultivation of the soil is one of permanent progress, permanent improvement and 
therefore of increasing yields. While the first part of this progress lay in the field of methods of soil cultivation 
as well as in the construction of settlements, the second part lies in increasing the value of the soil artificially 
through the introduction of nutritious matter that is lacking or insufficient. This line leads from the hoe of 
former times up to the modem steam plough, from stable manure up to present artificial fertilisers. Without 
doubt the productivity of the soil has thereby been infinitely increased. But it is just as certain that there is a 
limit somewhere. Especially if we consider that the living standard of cultured man is a general one, which is 
not determined by the amount of a nation's commodities available to the individual; rather it is just as much 
subject to the judgement of surrounding countries and, conversely, is established through the conditions within 
them. The present day European dreams of a living standard which he derives as much from the potentialities of 
Europe as from the actual conditions prevailing in America. International relations between nations have 
become so easy and close through modern technology and the communication it makes possible, that the 
European, often without being conscious of it, applies American conditions as a standard for his own life. But 
he thereby forgets that the relation of the population to the soil surface of the American continent is infinitely 
more favourable than the analogous conditions of European nations to their living spaces. Regardless of how 
Italy, or let's say Germany, carry out the internal colonisation of their soil, regardless of how they increase the 
productivity of their soil further through scientific and methodical activity, there always remains the 
disproportion of the number of their population to the soil as measured against the relation of the population of 
the American Union to the soil of the Union. And if a further increase of the population were possible for Italy 
or Germany through the utmost industry, then this would be possible in the American Union up to a multiple of 
theirs. And when ultimately any further increase in these two European countries is no longer possible, the 
American Union can continue to grow for centuries until it will have reached the relation that we already have 
today. 

The effects that it is hoped to achieve through internal colonisation, in particular, rest on a fallacy. The opinion 
that we can bring about a considerable increase in the productivity of the soil is false. Regardless of how, for 
example, the land is distributed in Germany, whether in large or in small peasant holdings, or in plots for small 
settlers, this does not alter the fact that there are, on the average, 136 people to one square kilometre. This is an 
unhealthy relation. It is impossible to feed our Folk on this basis and under this premise. Indeed it would only 
create confusion to set the slogan of internal colonisation before the masses, who will then latch their hopes 
onto it and thereby think to have found a means of doing away with their present distress. This would not at all 
be the case. For the distress is not the result of a wrong kind of land distribution, say, but the consequence of the 
inadequate amount of space, on the whole, at the disposal of our nation today. 

By increasing the productivity of the soil, however, some alleviation of a Folk's lot could be achieved. But in 
the long run this would never exempt it from the duty to adapt the nation's living space, become insufficient, to 
the increased population. Through internal colonisation, in the most favourable circumstances, only 
amelioration in the sense of social reform and justice could take place. It is entirely without importance as 
regards the total sustenance of a Folk. It will often be harmful for a nation's foreign policy position because it 
awakens hopes which can remove a Folk from realistic thinking. The ordinary, respectable citizen will then 
really believe that he can find his daily bread at home through industry and hard work, rather than realise that 
the strength of a Folk must be concentrated in order to win new living space. 

Economics, which especially today is regarded by many as the saviour from distress and care, hunger and 
misery, under certain preconditions can give a Folk possibilities for existence which lie outside its relation to its 



own soil. But this is linked to a number of prerequisites of which I must make brief mention here. 


The sense of such an economic system lies in the fact that a nation produces more of certain vital commodities 
than it requires for its own use. It sells this surplus outside its own national community, and with the proceeds 
therefrom it procures those foodstuffs and also the raw materials which it lacks. Thus this kind of economics 
involves not only a question of production, but in at least as great a degree a question of selling. There is much 
talk, especially at the present time, about increasing production, but it is completely forgotten that such an 
increase is of value only as long as a buyer is at hand. Within the circle of a nation's economic life, every 
increase in production will be profitable to the degree that it increases the number of goods which are thus made 
available to the individual. Theoretically, every increase in the industrial production of a nation must lead to a 
reduction in the price of commodities and in turn to an increased consumption of them, and consequently put 
the individual Folk Comrade in a position to own more vital commodities. In practice, however, this in no way 
changes the fact of the inadequate sustenance of a nation as a result of insufficient soil. For, to be sure, we can 
increase certain industrial outputs, indeed many times over, but not the production of foodstuffs. Once a nation 
suffers from this need, an adjustment can take place only if a part of its industrial overproduction can be 
exported in order to compensate from the outside for the foodstuffs that are not available in the homeland. But 
an increase in production having this aim achieves the desired success only when it finds a buyer, and indeed a 
buyer outside the country. Thus we stand before the question of the sales potential, that is, the market, a 
question of towering importance. 

The present world commodity market is not unlimited. The number of industrially active nations has steadily 
increased. Almost all European nations suffer from an inadequate and unsatisfactory relation between soil and 
population. Hence they are dependent on world export. In recent years the American Union has turned to 
export, as has also Japan in the east. Thus a struggle automatically begins for the limited markets, which 
becomes tougher the more numerous the industrial nations become and, conversely, the more the markets 
shrink. For while on the one hand the number of nations struggling for world markets increases, the commodity 
market itself slowly diminishes, partly in consequence of a process of self industrialisation on their own power, 
partly through a system of branch enterprises which are more and more coming into being in such countries out 
of sheer capitalist interest. For we should bear the following in mind: the German Folk, for example, has a 
lively interest in building ships for China in German dockyards, because thereby a certain number of men of our 
nationality get a chance to feed themselves which they would not have on our own soil, which is no longer 
sufficient. But the German Folk has no interest, say, in a German financial group or even a German factory 
opening a so called branch dockyard in Shanghai which builds ships for China with Chinese workers and 
foreign steel, even if the corporation earns a definite profit in the form of interest or dividend. On the contrary, 
the result of this will be only that a German financial group earns so and so many million, but, as a result of the 
orders lost, a multiple of this amount is withdrawn from the German national economy. 

The more pure capitalist interests begin to determine the present economy, the more the general viewpoints of 
the financial world and the stock exchange achieve a decisive influence here, the more will this system of 
branch establishments reach out and thus artificially carry out the industrialisation of former commodity 
markets and especially curtail the export possibilities of the European mother countries. Today many can still 
afford to smile over this future development, but as it makes further strides, within thirty years people in Europe 
will groan under its consequences 

The more market difficulties increase, the more bitterly will the struggle for the remaining ones be waged. 
Although the primary weapons of this struggle lie in pricing and in the quality of the goods with which nations 
competitively try to undersell each other, in the end the ultimate weapons even here lie in the sword. The so 
called peaceful economic conquest of the world could take place only if the Earth consisted of purely agrarian 



nations and but one industrially active and commercial nation. Since all great nations today are industrial 
nations, the so called peaceful economic conquest of the world is nothing but the struggle with means which 
will remain peaceful for as long as the stronger nations believe they can triumph with them, that is, in reality for 
as long as they are able to kill the others with peaceful economics. For this is the real result of the victory of a 
nation with peaceful economic means over another nation. Thereby one nation receives possibilities of survival 
and the other nation is deprived of them. Even here what is at stake is always the substance of flesh and blood, 
which we designate as a Folk 

If a really vigorous Folk believes that it cannot conquer another with peaceful economic means, or if an 
economically weak Folk does not wish to let itself be killed by an economically stronger one, as the possibilities 
for its sustenance are slowly cut off, then in both cases [it will seize the sword] the vapours of economic 
phraseology will be suddenly torn asunder, and war, that is the continuation of politics with other means, steps 
into its place. 

The danger to a Folk of economic activity in an exclusive sense lies in the fact that it succumbs only too easily 
to the belief that it can ultimately shape its destiny through economics. Thus the latter from a purely secondary 
place moves forward to first place, and finally is even regarded as Stateforming, and robs the Folk of those very 
virtues and characteristics which in the last analysis make it possible for Nations and States to preserve life on 
this Earth. 

A special danger of the so called peaceful economic policy, however, lies above all in the fact that it makes 
possible an increase in the population, which finally no longer stands in any relation to the productive capacity 
of its own soil to support life. This overfilling of an inadequate living space with people not seldom also leads 
to the concentration of people in work centres which look less like cultural centres, and rather more like 
abscesses in the national body in which all evil, vices and diseases seem to unite. Above all, they are breeding 
grounds of blood mixing and bastardisation, and of race lowering, thus resulting in those purulent infection 
centres in which the international Jewish racial maggots thrive and finally effect further destruction. 

Precisely thereby is the way open to decay in which the inner strength of such a Folk swiftly disappears, all 
racial, moral and folk values are earmarked for destruction, ideals are undermined, and in the end the 
prerequisite which a Folk urgently needs in order to take upon itself the ultimate consequences of the struggle 
for world markets is eliminated. Weakened by a vicious pacifism, Folks will no longer be ready to fight for 
markets for their goods with the shedding of their blood. Hence, as soon as a stronger nation sets the real 
strength of political power in the place of peaceful economic means, such nations will collapse Then their own 
delinquencies will take revenge. They are overpopulated, and now in consequence of the loss of all the real 
basic requirements they no longer have any possibility of being able to feed their overgrown mass of people 
adequately. They have no strength to break the chains of the enemy, and no inner value with which to bear their 
fate with dignity. Once they believed they could live, thanks to their peaceful economic activity, and renounce 
the use of violence. Fate will teach them that in the last analysis a Folk is preserved only when population and 
living space stand in a definite natural and healthy relation to each other. Further, this relation must be 
examined from time to time, and indeed must be reestablished in favour of the population to the very same 
degree that it shifts unfavourably with respect to the soil. 

For this, however, a nation needs weapons. The acquisition of soil is always linked with the employment of 
force. 


If the task of politics is the execution of a Folk's struggle for existence, and if the struggle for existence of a 
Folk in the last analysis consists of safeguarding the necessary amount of space for nourishing a specific 



population, and if this whole process is a question of the employment of a Folk's strength, the following 
concluding definitions result therefrom: 

Politics is the art of carrying out a Folk's struggle for its Earthly existence. 

Foreign policy is the art of safeguarding the momentary, necessary living space, in quantity and quality, for a 
Folk. 

Domestic policy is the art of preserving the necessary employment of force for this in the form of its race value 
and numbers 



Chapter 3 


RACE AND WILL IN THE STRUGGLE LOR POWER 


Here at this point I want to discuss that bourgeois concept which views power chiefly as a nation's supply of 
weapons, and, to a lesser degree, perhaps also the army as an organisation. If the concept of these people were 
pertinent, that is, if the power of a nation really lay in its possession of arms and in its army as such, then a 
nation which has lost its army and weapons through any reasons whatsoever must be done for permanently. 
These bourgeois politicians themselves hardly believe that. By their very doubt of this they admit that weapons 
and army organisation are things which can be replaced; and that consequently they are not of a primary 
character, that there is something which stands above them, and which at least is also the source of their power. 
And so it is. Weapons and army forms are destructible and are replaceable. As great as their importance perhaps 
is for the moment, just so is it limited when viewed over longer periods of time. What is ultimately decisive in 
the life of a Folk is the will to self preservation, and the living forces that are at its disposal for this purpose. 
Weapons can rust, forms can be outdated; the will itself can always renew both and move a Folk into the form 
required by the need of the moment. The fact that we Germans had to give up our arms is of very slight 
importance, insofar as I look at the material side of it. And yet this is the only thing our bourgeois politicians 
see. What is depressing about the surrender of our arms, at most, lies in the attendant circumstances in which it 
took place, in the attitude which it made possible, as well as in the wretched manner of doing it which we 
experienced. It is outweighed by the destruction of the organisation of our Army. But even there the major 
misfortune is not the elimination of the organisation as the bearer of the weapons we possess, but rather the 
abolition of an institution for the training of our Folk to manliness, which was possessed by no other State in the 
world, and which, indeed, no Folk needed more than our Germans. The contribution of our Old Army to the 
general disciplining of our Folk for the highest achievements in all fields is incommensurable. Precisely our 
Folk, which in its racial fragmentation so very much lacks qualities which, for example, characterise the English 
— a determined sticking together in time of danger — has received at least a part of this, which in other nations is 
a natural, instinctive endowment, by way of its training through the army. The people who chatter so happily 
about socialism do not at all realise that the highest socialist organisation of all has been the German Army. 

This is also the reason for the fierce hatred of the typical capitalistically inclined Jews against an organisation in 
which money is not identical with position, dignity, to say nothing of honour, but rather with achievement; and 
in which the honour of belonging among people of a certain accomplishment is more greatly appreciated than 
the possession of property and riches. This is a conception which to Jews seems as alien as it is dangerous, and 
which, if only it became the general patrimony of a Folk, would signify an immunising defence against every 
further Jewish danger. If, for example, an Officer's rank in the Army could be bought, this would be 
comprehensible to Jews. They cannot understand an organisation — indeed they find it weird — which surrounds 
with honour a man who either possesses no property at all, or whose income is only a fragment of that of 
another man who precisely in this organisation is neither honoured nor esteemed. But therein lay the chief 
strength of this incomparable old institution which unfortunately in the last thirty years of peace, however, also 
showed signs of slowly becoming corroded. As soon as it became fashionable for individual Officers, especially 
of noble descent, to pair off with, of all things, department store Jewesses, a danger arose for the Old Army 
which, if the same development continued, might have some day grown into a great evil. At any rate, in the 
times of Kaiser Wilhelm I, there was no understanding for such events. Nevertheless, all in all, the Germany 
Army at the turn of the century was the most magnificent organisation in the world, and its effect on our 
German Folk one that was more than beneficial. The breeding ground of German discipline, German efficiency, 
forthright disposition, frank courage, bold aggressiveness, tenacious persistence and granite honourableness. 

The conception of honour of a whole profession slowly but imperceptibly became the general patrimony of a 



whole Folk. 


That this organisation was destroyed through the Peace Treaty Of Versailles was all the worse for our Folk, as 
our internal enemies thereby finally received a free path for effecting their worst intentions. But our 
incompetent bourgeoisie, for lack of any genius and ability to improvise, could not even find the most primitive 
substitute. 

Thus, to be sure, our German Folk has lost possession of arms and their bearer. But this has been the case 
countless times in the history of nations, without the latter having perished because of it. On the contrary: 
nothing is easier to replace than a loss of weapons and every organisational form can again be created or 
renewed. What is irreplaceable is the spoiled blood of a Folk, the destroyed inner value. 

For in opposition to the present bourgeois conception that the Treaty Of Versailles has deprived our Folk of 
arms, I can reply only that the real lack of weapons lies in our pacifistic democratic poisoning, as well as in 
internationalism, which destroys and poisons our Folk's highest sources of power. For the source of a Folk's 
whole power does not lie in its possession of weapons or in the organisation of its army, but in its inner value 
which is represented through its racial significance, that is, the racial value of a Folk as such, through the 
existence of the highest individual personality values, as well as through its healthy attitude toward the idea of 
self preservation. 

In coming before the public as National Socialists with this conception of the real strength of a Folk, we know 
that today the whole of public opinion is against us. But this is indeed the deepest meaning of our new doctrine, 
which as a world view separates us from others. 

Since our point of departure is that one Folk is not equal to another, the value of a Folk is also not equal to the 
value of another Folk. If, however, the value of a Folk is not equal to another, then every Folk, apart from the 
numerical value deriving from its count, still has a specific value which is peculiar to it, and which cannot be 
fully like that of any other Folk. The expressions of this specific, special value of a Folk can be of the most 
varied kind and be in the most varied fields; but collected together they result in a standard for the general 
valuation of a Folk. The ultimate expression of this general valuation is the historical, cultural image of a Folk, 
which reflects the sum of all the radiations of its blood value or of the race values united in it. 

This special value of a Folk, however, is in no way merely aesthetic cultural, but a general life value as such. 

For it forms the life of a Folk in general, moulds and shapes it and, therefore, also provides all those forces 
which a Folk can muster in order to overcome the resistances of life. For every cultural deed, viewed in human 
terms, is in truth a defeat for the hitherto existing barbarism, every cultural creation [thereby] a help to man's 
ascent above his formerly drawn limitations and thereby a strengthening of the position of these Folks. Thus a 
power for the assertion of life truly also lies in the so called cultural values of a Folk. Consequently the greater 
the inner powers of a Folk in this direction, the stronger also the countless possibilities for the assertion of life 
in all fields of the struggle for existence. Consequently the higher the race value of a Folk, the greater its general 
life value [through] which it can stake in favour of its life, in the struggle and strife with other Folks. 

The importance of the blood value of a Folk, however, only becomes totally effective when this value is 
recognised by a Folk, properly valued and appreciated. Folks who do not understand this value or who no 
longer have a feeling for it for lack of a natural instinct, thereby also immediately begin to lose it. Blood mixing 
and lowering of the race are then the consequences which, to be sure, at the beginning are not seldom 
introduced through a so called predilection for things foreign, which in reality is an underestimation of one's 



own cultural values as against alien Folks. Once a Folk no longer appreciates the cultural expression of its own 
spiritual life conditioned through its blood, or even begins to feel ashamed of it, in order to turn its attention to 
alien expressions of life, it renounces the strength which lies in the harmony of its blood and the cultural life 
which has sprung from it. It becomes torn apart, unsure in its judgement of the world picture and its 
expressions, loses the perception and the feeling for its own purposes, and in place of this it sinks into a 
confusion of international ideas, conceptions, and the cultural hodgepodge springing from them. Then the Jew 
can make his entry in any form, and this master of international poisoning and race corruption will not rest until 
he has thoroughly uprooted and thereby corrupted such a Folk. The end is then the loss of a definite unitary race 
value and as a result, the final decline. 

Hence every existing race value of a Folk is also ineffective, if not indeed endangered, as long as a Folk does 
not consciously remind itself of its own and nurse it with great care, building and basing all its hopes primarily 
on it. 

For this reason, international mindedness is to be regarded as the mortal enemy of these values. In its place the 
profession of faith in the value of one's own Folk must pervade and determine the whole life and action of a 
Folk. 

The more the truly eternal factor for the greatness and the importance of a Folk is sought in the Folk value, the 
less will this value as such achieve a total effectiveness if the energies and talents of a Folk, at first slumbering, 
do not find the man who will awaken it. 

For so little as mankind, which is made up of different race values, possesses a uniform average value, just as 
little is the personality value within a Folk the same among all members. Every deed of a Folk, in whatever field 
it might be, is the result of the creative activity of a personality. No distress can be redressed solely by the 
wishes of those affected by it, as long as this general wish does not find its solution in a man chosen from a Folk 
for this task. Majorities have never wrought creative achievements. Never have they given discoveries to 
mankind. The individual person has always been the originator of human progress. Indeed a Folk of a definite 
inner race value, so far as this value is generally visible in its cultural or other achievements, must at the outset 
possess the personality values, for without their emergence and creative activity the cultural image of that Folk 
would never have come into being, and therefore the possibility of any inference as to the inner value of such a 
Folk would be lacking. When I mention the inner value of a Folk, I appraise it out of the sum of achievements 
lying before my eyes, and thereby at the same time I confirm the existence of the specific personality values 
which acted as the representatives of the race value of a Folk and created the cultural image. As much as race 
value and personality value seem to be linked together, because a racially valueless Folk cannot produce 
important creative personalities from this source — as, conversely, it seems impossible to infer, for example, the 
existence of race value from the lack of creative personalities and their achievements — just as much can a Folk, 
nevertheless, by the nature of the formal construction of its organism, of the Folk Community or of the State, 
promote the expression of its personality values, or at least facilitate it, or indeed even prevent it. 

Once a Folk installs the majority as the rulers of its life, that is to say, once it introduces presentday democracy 
in the western conception, it will not only damage the importance of the concept of personality, but block the 
effectiveness of the personality value. Through a formal construction of its life, it prevents the rise and the work 
of individual creative persons 

For this is the double curse of the democratic parliamentary system prevailing today: not only is it itself 
incapable of bringing about really creative achievements, but it also prevents the emergence and thereby the 
work of those men who somehow threateningly rise above the level of the average. In all times the man whose 



greatness lies above the average measure of the general stupidity, inadequacy, cowardice, and arrogance too, 
has always appeared most threatening to the majority. Add to this that, through democracy, inferior persons 
must, almost as a law, become leaders, so that this system applied logically to any institution devaluates the 
whole mass of leaders, insofar as one can call them that at all. This resides in the irresponsibility lying in the 
nature of democracy. Majorities are phenomena that are too elusive to be grasped so that they can somehow be 
charged with responsibility. The leaders set up by them are in truth only executors of the will of the majorities. 
Hence their task is less that of producing creative plans or ideas, in order to carry them out with the support of 
an available administrative apparatus, than it is to collect the momentary majorities required for the execution of 
definite projects. Thus the majorities are adjusted less to the projects than the projects are to the majorities. No 
matter what the result of such an action may be, there is no one who can be held concretely accountable. This is 
all the more so as each decision that is actually adopted is the result of numerous compromises, which each will 
also exhibit in its character and content. Who then is to be made responsible for it? 

Once a purely personally drawn responsibility is eliminated, the most compelling reason for the rise of a 
vigorous leadership falls away. Compare the army organisation [institution], oriented to the highest degree 
toward authority and responsibility of the individual person, with our democratic civil institutions, especially in 
relation to the results of the leadership training on both sides, and you will be horrified. In one case an 
organisation of men who are as courageous and joyous in responsibility as they are competent in their tasks, and 
in the other, incompetents too cowardly to assume responsibility. For four and a half years the German Army 
organisation withstood the greatest coalition of enemies of all times. The civil, democratically decomposed 
domestic leadership literally collapsed at the first thrust of a few hundred ragamuffins and deserters. 

The pitiful lack of really great leading minds among the German Folk finds its most simple explanation in the 
desolate disintegration which we see before us through the democratic parliamentary system which is slowly 
corroding our whole public life. 

Nations must decide. Either they want majorities or brains. The two are never compatible. Up to now, however, 
brains have always created greatness on this Earth, and what they created was again destroyed mostly through 
majorities. 

Thus, on the basis of its general race value, a Folk can certainly entertain a justified hope that it can bring real 
minds into existence. But then it must seek forms in the mode of construction of its national body which do not 
artificially, indeed systematically, restrict such brains in their activity, and erect a wall of stupidity against them, 
in short, which prevent them from achieving efficacy. 

Otherwise one of the most powerful sources of a Folk's strength is blocked. 

The third factor of the strength of a Folk is its healthy natural instinct for self preservation. From it result 
numerous heroic virtues, which by themselves make a Folk take up the struggle for life. No State leadership will 
be able to have great successes, if the Folk whose interests it must represent is too cowardly and wretched to 
stake itself for these interests. No State leadership, of course, can expect that a Folk possess heroism, which it 
itself does not educate to heroism. Just as internationalism harms and thereby weakens the existing race value, 
and as democracy destroys the personality value, so pacifism paralyses the natural strength of the self 
preservation of Folks. 


These three factors — the race value as such, the existing personality values, as well as the healthy instinct of 
self preservation — are the sources of strength, from which a wise and bold domestic policy time and again can 



draw the weapons which are necessary for the self assertion of a Folk. Then the army establishments and the 
technical questions regarding weapons always find the solutions suitable to support a Folk in the hard struggle 
for freedom and daily bread. 

If the domestic leadership of a Folk loses sight of this standpoint, or believes that it must arm for the struggle in 
terms of weapon technique only, it can achieve as much momentary success as it pleases, but the future does not 
belong to such a Folk. Hence the limited preparation for a war was never the task of truly great legislators and 
statesmen of this Earth, but rather the unlimited inner and thorough training of a Folk, so that its future could be 
secured almost as by law, according to all human reason. Then even wars lose the isolated character of more or 
less immense surprises, but instead are integrated into a natural, indeed self evident, system of fundamental, 
well grounded, permanent development of a Folk. 

That present State leaders pay little attention to this viewpoint is partly due to the nature of democracy, to which 
they owe their very existence, but secondly to the fact that the State has become a purely formal mechanism 
which appears to them as an aim in itself, which must not in the least coincide with the interests of a specific 
Folk. Folk and State have become two different concepts. It will be the task of the National Socialist Movement 
to bring about a fundamental change here. 



Chapter 4 


ELEMENTS OF FOREIGN POLICY 


Consequently if the task of domestic policy — besides the obvious one of satisfying the so called questions of 
the day — must be the steeling and strengthening of a nation by means of a systematic cultivation and promotion 
of its inner values, the task of foreign policy is to correspond to and collaborate with this policy in order to 
create and to secure the vital prerequisites abroad. A healthy foreign policy, therefore, will always keep the 
winning of the basis of a Folk's sustenance immovably in sight as its ultimate goal. Domestic policy must secure 
the inner strength of a Folk so that it can assert itself in the sphere of foreign policy. Foreign policy must secure 
the life of a Folk for its domestic political development. Hence domestic policy and foreign policy are not only 
most closely linked, but must also mutually complement one another. The fact that in the great conjunctures of 
human history domestic policy as well as foreign policy has paid homage to other principles is not at all a proof 
of soundness, but rather proves the error of such action. Innumerable Nations and States have perished as a 
warning example to us, because they did not follow the above mentioned elementary principles. How little man 
thinks of the possibility of death during his life is a noteworthy fact. And how little he arranges the details of his 
life in accordance with the experiences that innumerable men before him had to have and which, as such, are all 
known to him. There are always exceptions who bear this in mind and who, by virtue of their personality, try to 
force on their fellow men the laws of life that lay at the base of the experiences of past epochs. Hence it is 
noteworthy that innumerable hygienic measures which perforce redound to the advantage of a Folk, and which 
individually are uncomfortable, must be formally forced upon the main body of a Folk through the autocratic 
standing of individual persons, in order however to disappear again when the authority of the personality is 
extinguished through the mass insanity of democracy. The average man has the greatest fear of death and in 
reality thinks of it most rarely. The important man concerns himself with it most emphatically, and nevertheless 
fears it the least. The one lives blindly from day to day, sins heedlessly, in order suddenly to collapse before the 
inevitable. The other observes its coming most carefully and, to be sure, looks it in the eye with calm and 
composure. 

Such is exactly the case in the lives of nations. It is often terrible to see how little men want to learn from 
history, how with such imbecilic indifference they gloss over their experiences, how thoughtlessly they sin 
without considering that it is precisely through their sins that so and so many Nations and States have perished, 
indeed vanished from the Earth. And indeed how little they concern themselves with the fact that even for the 
short time span for which we possess an insight into history, States and Nations have arisen which were 
sometimes almost gigantic in size, but which two thousand years later vanished without a trace, that world 
powers once ruled cultural spheres of which only Sagas give us any information, that giant cities have sunk into 
mins, and that their rubble heap has hardly survived to show presentday mankind at least the site on which they 
were located. The cares, hardships and sufferings of these millions and millions of individual men, who as a 
living substance were at one time the bearers and victims of these events, are almost beyond all imagination. 
Unknown men. Unknown soldiers of history. And truly, how indifferent is the present. How unfounded its 
eternal optimism, and how ruinous its wilful ignorance, its incapacity to see, and its unwillingness to learn. And 
if it depended on the broad masses, the game of the child playing with the fire with which he is unfamiliar 
would repeat itself unintermptedly and also to an infinitely greater extent. Hence it is the task of men who feel 
themselves called as educators of a Folk to learn on their own from history, and to apply their knowledge in a 
practical manner [now], without regard to the view, understanding, ignorance or even the refusal of the mass. 
The greatness of a man is all the more important, the greater his courage, in opposition to a generally prevailing 
but ruinous view, to lead by his better insight to general victory. His victory will appear all the greater, the more 



enormous the resistances which had to be overcome, and the more hopeless the struggle seemed at first. 


The National Socialist Movement would have no right to regard itself as a truly great phenomenon in the life of 
the German Folk, if it could not muster the courage to learn from the experiences of the past, and to force the 
laws of life it represents on the German Folk despite all resistance. As powerful as its inner reform work will be 
in this connection, equally it must [may] never forget that in the long run there will be no resurgence of our Folk 
if its activity in the sphere of foreign policy does not succeed in securing the general precondition for the 
sustenance of our Folk. Hence it has become the fighter for freedom and bread in the highest sense of the word. 
Freedom and bread is the simplest and yet, in reality, the greatest foreign policy slogan that can exist for any 
Folk: the freedom of being able to order and regulate the life of a Folk, according to its own interests, and the 
bread that this Folk requires for its existence. 

If today, therefore, I come forward as a critic of our Folk's leadership in the sphere of foreign policy both past 
and present, I am aware that the errors which I see today have also been seen by others. What distinguishes me 
from the latter perhaps is only the fact that in most cases it has only involved critical perceptions having no 
practical consequences, whereas, on the basis of my insight into the errors and faults of former and present 
German domestic and foreign policy, I strive to deduce proposals for a change and improvement and to forge 
the instrument with which these changes and improvements can some day be realised. 

For example, the foreign policy of the Wilhelminian period was in many cases viewed by not a few people as 
catastrophic and characterised accordingly. Innumerable warnings came, especially from the circles of the Pan 
German League of that time, which were justified in the highest sense of the word. I can put myself in the tragic 
situation that befell all these men who raised their voices in warning, and who saw how and in what a Folk 
perishes, and yet were not able to help. In the last decades of the unfortunate foreign policy of the pre War 
period in Germany, parliament, that is, democracy, was not powerful enough to choose the heads for the 
political leadership of the Reich by itself. This was still an imperial right, whose formal existence no one yet 
dared to shake. But the influence of democracy had grown so strong, however, that a certain direction already 
seemed to be prescribed to the imperial decisions. Hence this had disastrous consequences, for now a national 
minded man who raised his voice in warning, on the one hand, could no longer count on being invested with a 
very responsible post against the pronounced tendency of democracy, whereas, conversely, on the basis of 
general patriotic ideas, he could not fight against His Majesty The Kaiser with the final weapon of opposition. 
The idea of a March On Rome in pre War Germany would have been absurd. Thus the national opposition 
found itself in the worst of situations. Democracy had not yet triumphed, but it already stood in a furious 
struggle against the monarchic conceptions of government. The monarchical State itself responded to the 
struggle of democracy, not with the determination to destroy the latter, but rather with endless concessions. 
Anyone who at that time took a stand against one of the two institutions ran the danger of being attacked by 
both. Anyone who opposed an imperial decision on national grounds was proscribed by patriotic circles as 
much as he was abused by the adherents of democracy. Anyone who took a position against democracy was 
fought by democracy and left in the lurch by the patriots. Indeed, he ran the danger of being most ignominiously 
betrayed by German officialdom in the wretched hope that through such a sacrifice it could gain Jehovah's 
approval, and temporarily stop the yelping of the pack of Jewish press hounds. Under the conditions of that 
time, there was no prospect at hand of making one's way to a responsible position in the leadership of the 
German Government against the will of the democrats or against the will of His Majesty The Kaiser, and 
thereby being able to change the course of foreign policy. Further, this led to the fact that German foreign 
policy could be contested exclusively on paper, which consequently launched a criticism that necessarily took 
on the characteristic features of journalism, the longer it continued. The consequence of this, however, was that 
increasingly less value was placed on positive proposals, in view of the lack of any possibility of their 
realisation, whereas the purely critical consideration of foreign policy occasioned the innumerable objections 
that one could adduce in all their fullness, all the more so because it was hoped that thereby one could 



overthrow the bad regime responsible. To be sure this was not achieved by the critics of that time. It was not the 
regime of that time which was overthrown, but the German Reich and consequently the German Folk. What 
they had foretold for decades had now come to pass. We cannot think of these men without a deep compassion, 
men condemned by fate to foresee a collapse for twenty years, and who now, having not been heeded and hence 
in no position to be of help, had to live to see their Folk's most tragic catastrophe. 

Aged in years, care worn and embittered, and yet full of the idea that, now, after the overthrow of the Imperial 
Government, they had to help, they again tried to make their influence felt for the resurgence of our Folk. For 
ever so many reasons this was futile, to be sure. 

When the revolution shattered the Imperial sceptre and raised democracy to the throne, the critics of that time 
were as far from the possession of a weapon with which to overthrow democracy as formerly they had been 
from being able to influence the Imperial Government. In their decades of activity, they had been geared so 
much to a purely literary treatment of these problems that they not only lacked the real means of power to 
express their opinion on a situation which was only a reaction to the shouting in the streets; they had also lost 
the capacity to try to organise a manifestation of power which had to be more than a wave of written protests if 
it were to be really effective. They had all seen the germ and the cause of the decline of the German Reich in the 
old parties. With a sense of their own inner cleanliness, they had to scorn the suggestion that they too now 
wanted to play the game of the political parties. And yet, they could carry out their view in practice only if a 
large number gave them the opportunity of representing it. And even though they wanted a thousand times to 
smash the political parties, they still indeed first had to form a party which viewed its task as that of smashing 
the other parties. That such did not come to pass was due to the following reasons: the more the political 
opposition of these men was forced to express itself purely journalistically, the more it adopted a criticism 
which, though it exposed all the weaknesses of the system of that time and shed light on the defects of the 
individual foreign policy measures, failed to produce positive proposals because these men lacked any 
possibility of personal responsibility, especially since in political life there is naturally no action which does not 
have its dark as well as its bright sides. There is no political combination in foreign policy that we can ever 
regard as completely satisfactory. For as matters stood then, the critic, forced to view his main task as the 
elimination of a regime recognised as altogether incompetent, had no occasion, outside of the useful critical 
consideration of this regime's actions, to come forward with positive proposals, which in consequence of the 
objections attached to them could just as easily have been subjected to a critical elucidation. The critic will 
never want to weaken the impact of his criticism by bringing forward proposals which themselves could be 
subjected to criticism. Gradually, however, the purely critical thinking of those who then represented the 
national opposition became such a second nature that even today they consider domestic and foreign policy 
critically, and deal with it only critically. Most of them have remained critics, who therefore cannot even today 
make their way to a clear, unambiguous, positive decision, neither in domestic nor in foreign policy, partly 
because of their insecurity and irresoluteness, partly because of their fear of thereby furnishing the enemy with 
ready ammunition for criticism of themselves. Thus they would like to bring about improvements in a thousand 
things, and yet cannot decide upon taking a single step because even this very step is not completely 
satisfactory, and possesses doubtful points; in short it has its darker sides which they perceive and which make 
them fearful. Now, leading a nation from a deep and difficult illness is not a question of finding a prescription 
that itself is completely free of poison; not seldom it involves destroying a poison through an antidote. In order 
to eliminate conditions recognised as deadly we must have the courage to make and carry out decisions which 
contain dangers in themselves. As a critic I have the right to examine all the possibilities of a foreign policy and 
to take them apart in detail according to the doubtful aspects or possibilities they bear in themselves. As the 
political leader, however, who wants to make history, I must decide upon one way, even if sober consideration a 
thousand times tells me that it entails certain dangers and that it also will not lead to a completely satisfying 
end. Hence I cannot renounce the possibility of success because it is not a hundred percent certain. I must 
neglect no step for the reason that perhaps it will not be a full one, if the spot in which I momentarily find 



myself might bring my unconditional death the next instant. Neither, therefore, may I renounce a political action 
for the reason that, besides benefiting my Folk, it will also benefit another Folk. Indeed, I may never do this 
when the benefit to the other Folk will be greater than that to my own, and when in the case of a failure to take 
action the misfortune of my Folk remains with absolute certainty. 

Indeed, right now I encounter the most stubborn resistance in the purely critical way of viewing things that 
many people have. They recognise this and this and this as good and as correct, but despite this they cannot join 
us because this and this and this is dubious. They know that Germany and our Folk will perish, but they cannot 
join the rescue action because here, too, they detect this or that which is at least a blemish that mars its beauty. 

In short, they see the decline and cannot muster up the strength of determination to battle against it, because in 
the resistance and in this deed itself they already again begin to smell out some possible objection or other. 

This deplorable mentality owes its existence to [springs from] a still further evil. Today there are not a few men, 
especially the so called educated ones, who, when they finally make up their minds to fall in line with a certain 
action or even to promote it, first carefully weigh the percentage of the probability of its success, in order then 
to calculate the extent of their active involvement likewise on the basis of this percentage. Thus this means: 
because, for example, any decision on foreign policy or domestic policy is not completely satisfying and hence 
does not seem certain to succeed, one should also not espouse it unreservedly with the full dedication of all his 
powers. These unhappy souls have no understanding at all of the fact that, on the contrary, a decision which I 
deem to be necessary, whose success however does not seem completely assured, or whose success will offer 
only a partial satisfaction, must be fought for with an increased energy so that what it lacks in the possibility of 
success in percentage points, must be made up for in the energy of its execution. Thus only one question is to be 
examined: whether a situation demands a definite decision or not. If such a decision is established and 
recognised as incontestably necessary, then its execution must be carried out with the most brutal ruthlessness 
and the highest employment of strength even if the ultimate result will be a thousand times unsatisfactory or in 
need of improvement or possibly will meet with only a small percentage of probability of success. 

If a man appears to have cancer and is unconditionally doomed to die, it would be senseless to refuse an 
operation, because the percentage of the possibility of success is slight, and because the patient, even should it 
be successful, will not be a hundred percent healthy. It would be still more senseless were the surgeon to 
perform the operation itself only with limited or partial energy in consequence of these limited possibilities. But 
it is this senselessness that these men expect uninterruptedly in domestic and foreign policy matters. Because 
the success of a political operation is not fully assured or will not be completely satisfactory in result, not only 
do they renounce its execution, but expect, should it take place nevertheless, that at least it will ensue only with 
restrained power, without a complete dedication, and always in silent hope that perhaps they can keep a little 
loophole open through which to make their retreat. This is the soldier who is attacked by a tank on an open 
battlefield and who, in view [in consequence] of the uncertainty of the success of his resistance, conducts it at 
the outset with only half his strength. His little loophole is flight, and certain death is his end. 

No, the German Folk is today attacked by a pack of booty hungry enemies from within and without. The 
continuation of this state of affairs is our death. We must seize every possibility of breaking it, even if its result 
may a thousand times likewise have its weaknesses or objectionable sides as such. And every such possibility 
must therefore be fought out with the utmost energy. 

The success of the battle of Leuthen was uncertain, but it was necessary to fight it. Frederick The Great did not 
win because he went toward the enemy with only half his strength, but because he compensated for the 
uncertainty of success by the abundance of his genius, the boldness and determination of his troop dispositions, 
and the derring do of his regiments in battle. 



I'm afraid, indeed, that I will never be understood by my bourgeois critics, at least as long as success does not 
prove to them the soundness of our action. Here the man of the Folk has a better counsellor. He sets the 
assurance of his instinct and the faith of his heart in place of the sophistry of our intellectuals. 

If I deal with foreign policy in this work, however, I do so not as a critic, but as the Leader Of The National 
Socialist Movement, which I know will some day make history. If I am, therefore, nevertheless forced to 
consider the past and the present critically, it is only for the purpose of establishing the only positive way, and 
to make it appear understandable. Just as the National Socialist Movement not only criticises domestic policy, 
but possesses its own philosophically grounded Program, likewise in the sphere of foreign policy it must not 
only recognise what others have done wrongly, but deduce its own action on the basis of this knowledge. 

Thus I know well that even our highest success will not create a hundred percent happiness, for in view of 
human imperfection and the general circumstances conditioned by it, ultimate perfection always lies only in 
programmatic theory. I also know, further, that no success can be achieved without sacrifice, just as no battle 
can be fought without losses. But the awareness of the incompleteness of a success will never be able to keep 
me from preferring such an incomplete success to the perceived complete downfall. I will then strain every 
nerve to try to offset what is lacking in the probability of success or the extent of success through greater 
determination, and to communicate this spirit to the Movement led by me. Today we are fighting against an 
enemy front which we must and will break through. We calculate our own sacrifices, weigh the extent of the 
possible success, and will stride forward to the attack, regardless of whether it will come to a halt ten or a 
thousand kilometres behind the present lines. For wherever our success ends, it will always be only the point of 
departure for a new struggle. 



Chapter 5 


NATIONAL SOCIALIST FOREIGN POLICY 


I am a German nationalist. This means that I proclaim my nationality. My whole thought and action belongs to 
it. I am a socialist. I see no class and no social estate before me, but that community of the Folk, made up of 
people who are linked by blood, united by a language, and subject to a same general fate. I love this Folk and 
hate only its majority of the moment, because I view the latter to be just as little representative of the greatness 
of my Folk as it is of its happiness. 

The National Socialist Movement which I lead today views its goal as the liberation of our Folk within and 
without. It aims to give our Folk domestically those forms of life which seem to be suitable to its nature and to 
be a benefit to it as the expression of this nature. It aims thereby to preserve the character of this Folk and to 
further cultivate it through the systematic fostering of its best men and best virtues. It fights for the external 
freedom of this Folk, because only under freedom can this life find that form which is serviceable to its Folk. It 
fights for the daily bread of this Folk because it champions [in hunger] this Folk's right to life. It fights for the 
required space, because it represents this Folk's right to life. 

By the concept domestic policy the National Socialist Movement therefore understands the promotion, 
strengthening and consolidation of the existence of our Folk through the introduction of forms and laws of life 
which correspond to the nature of our Folk, and which can bring its fundamental powers to full effectiveness. 

By the concept foreign policy it understands the safeguarding of this development through the preservation of 
freedom and the creation of the most necessary prerequisites for life. 

Thus, in terms of foreign policy, the National Socialist Movement is distinguished from previous bourgeois 
parties by, for example, the following: The foreign policy of the national bourgeois world has in truth always 
been only a border policy; as against that, the policy of the National Socialist Movement will always be a 
territorial one. In its boldest plans, for example, the German bourgeoisie will aspire to the unification of the 
German nation, but in reality it will finish with a botched up regulation of the borders. 

The National Socialist Movement, on the contrary, will always let its foreign policy be determined by the 
necessity to secure the space necessary to the life of our Folk. It knows no Germanising or Teutonising, as in the 
case of the national bourgeoisie, but only the spread of its own Folk. It will never see in the subjugated, so 
called Germanised, Czechs or Poles a national, let alone Folkish, strengthening, but only the racial weakening 
of our Folk. For its national conception is not determined by earlier patriotic ideas of government, but rather by 
Folkish, racial insights. Thus the point of departure of its thinking is wholly different from that of the bourgeois 
world. Hence much of what seems to the national bourgeoisie like the political success of the past and present, 
is for us either a failure or the cause of a later misfortune. And much that we regard as self evident seems 
incomprehensible or even monstrous to the German bourgeoisie. Nevertheless a part of German youth, 
especially from bourgeois circles, will be able to understand me. Neither I nor the National Socialist Movement 
figure to find any support whatsoever in the circles of the political national bourgeoisie, active at present, but 
we certainly know that at least a part of the youth will find its way into our ranks. 



For them. 



Chapter 6 


GERMAN NEEDS AND AIMS 


The question of a nation's foreign policy is determined by factors which lie partly within a nation, and partly 
given by the environment. In general the internal factors are the basis for the necessity of a definite foreign 
policy as well as for the amount of strength required for its execution. Folks living on an impossible soil surface 
fundamentally will tend to enlarge their territory, consequently their living space, at least as long as they are 
under healthy leadership. This process, originally grounded only in the concern over sustenance, appeared so 
beneficent in its felicitous solution that it gradually attained the fame of success. This means that the 
enlargement of space, at first grounded in pure expediencies, became in the course of mankind's development a 
heroic deed, which then also took place even when the original preconditions or inducements were lacking. 
Later, the attempt to adapt the living space to increased population turned into unmotivated wars of conquest, 
which in their very lack of motivation contained the germ of the subsequent reaction. Pacifism is the answer to 
it. Pacifism has existed in the world ever since there have been wars whose meaning no longer lay in the 
conquest of territory for a Folk's sustenance. Since then it has been war's eternal companion. It will again 
disappear as soon as war ceases to be an instrument of booty hungry or power hungry individuals or nations, 
and as soon as it again becomes the ultimate weapon with which a Folk fights for is daily bread. 

Even in the future the enlargement of a Folk's living space for the winning of bread will require staking the 
whole strength of the Folk. If the task of domestic policy is to prepare this commitment of the Folk's strength, 
the task of a foreign policy is to wield this strength in such a manner that the highest possible success seems 
assured. This, of course, is not conditioned only by the strength of the Folk, ready for action at any given time, 
but also by the power of the resistances. The disproportion in strength between Folks struggling with one 
another for land leads repeatedly to the attempt, by way of alliances, either to emerge as conquerors themselves 
or to put up resistance to the overpowerful conqueror. 

This is the beginning of the policy of alliances. 

After the victorious war of 1870-1871, the German Folk achieved a position of infinite esteem in Europe. 
Thanks to the success of Bismarckian statesmanship and Prussian German military accomplishments, a great 
number of German States, which heretofore had been only loosely linked, and which, indeed, had not seldom in 
history faced each other as enemies, were brought together in one Reich. A province of the old German Reich, 
lost 170 years before, permanently annexed at that time by France after a brief predatory war, came back to the 
mother country. Numerically thereby the greatest part of the German nation, at least in Europe, was 
amalgamated in a unitary State structure. It was cause for concern that ultimately this State structure included 

.million Poles and.Alsatians and Lorrainers become Frenchmen. This did not correspond either 

with the idea of a National or of a Folkish State. The national State of bourgeois conception must at least secure 
the unity of the State language, indeed down to the last school and the last street sign. Further it must include 
the German idea in the education and life of these Folk and make them the bearers of this idea. 

There have been weak attempts at this; perhaps it was never seriously wanted and in practice the opposite has 
been achieved 





The Folkish State, conversely, must under no conditions annex Poles with the intention of wanting to make 
Germans out of them some day. On the contrary, it must muster the determination either to seal off these alien 
racial elements, so that the blood of its own Folk will not be corrupted again, or it must without further ado 
remove them and hand over the vacated territory to its own National Comrades. 

That the bourgeois national State was not capable of such a deed is obvious. Neither had anyone ever thought 
about it, nor would anyone ever have done such a thing. But even if there had been a will to do this, there would 
not have been sufficient strength to carry it out, less because of the repercussions in the rest of the world than 
because of the complete lack of understanding that such an action would have found in the ranks of the so called 
national bourgeoisie. The bourgeois world had once presumed it could overthrow the feudal world, whereas in 
reality it continued the latter's mistakes through bourgeois grocers, lawyers, and journalists. It has never 
possessed an idea of its own, but indeed a measureless conceit and money. 

But a world cannot be conquered with this alone, nor another one built. Hence the period of bourgeois rule in 
world history will be as brief as it is indecently contemptible. 

Thus, right from its foundation, the German Reich had also assimilated toxins into the new State structure 
whose deleterious effect could all the less be evaded as bourgeois equality, to top things off, gave Jews the 
possibility of using them as their surest shock troops. 

Aside from that, the Reich nevertheless encompassed only a part of the German Nation, even though the largest. 
It would have been self evident that even if the new State had not possessed any great foreign policy aim of a 
Folkish character, at least as a so called bourgeois national State it should have kept in view further unification 
and consolidation of the German Nation, as its minimum foreign policy aim. This was something that the 
bourgeois national Italian State never forgot. 

Thus the German Folk had obtained a National State which in reality did not completely encompass the Nation. 

Thus the new borders of the Reich, viewed in a national political sense, were incomplete. They ran straight 
across German language areas, and even through parts which, at least formerly, had belonged to the German 
Union, even if in an informal way. 

But these new borders of the Reich were even more unsatisfactory from a military viewpoint. Everywhere were 
unprotected, open areas which, especially in the West, were, in addition, of decisive importance for the German 
economy, extending far beyond the border areas. These borders were all the more unsuitable in a military 
political sense, since grouped around Germany were several great States with foreign policy aims as aggressive 
as their military means were plentiful. Russia in the east, France in the west. Two military States, one of which 
cast covetous glances at Eastern and Western Prussia, while the other tirelessly pursued its centuries old foreign 
policy goal for the erection of a frontier on the Rhine. In addition there was England, the mightiest maritime 
power of the world. The more extensive and unprotected the German land borders were in the east and west, the 
more restricted, by contrast, was the possible operational basis of a naval war. Nothing had made the fight 
against German submarine warfare easier than the spatially conditioned restriction of its port areas. It was easier 
to close off and patrol the triangle shaped body of water than would have been the case with a coast, say, 600 or 
800 kilometres long. Taken all in all, the new borders of the Reich as such were not at all satisfactory from a 
military point of view. Nowhere was there a natural obstacle or a natural defence. As against this, however, 
everywhere were highly developed power States with hostile thoughts in the back of their minds. The 
Bismarckian premonition that the new Reich founded by him would once again have to be protected with the 



sword was most deeply justified. Bismarck expressed what was fulfilled forty five years later. 

As little satisfactory as the new Reich borders could be in a national and military political sense, they were 
nevertheless even still more unsatisfactory from the standpoint of the possibility of sustenance of the German 
Folk. 

Germany in fact was always an overpopulated area. On the one hand this lay in the hemmed in position of the 
German nation in Central Europe, on the other in the cultural and actual importance of this Folk and its purely 
human fertility. Since its historical entry into world history, the German Folk has always found itself in need of 
space. Indeed, its first political emergence was forced primarily by that need. Since the beginning of the 
migration of Folks, our Folk has never been able to settle this need for space, except through conquest by the 
sword or through a reduction of its own population. This reduction of the population was sometimes effected 
through hunger, sometimes through emigration, and at times through endless, unfortunate wars. In recent times 
it has been effected by voluntary birth control. 

The wars of the years 1864, 1866 and 1870-71, had their meaning in the national political unification of a part 
of the German Folk and thus in the final end of German State political fragmentation. The black, white, red flag 
of the new Reich therefore did not have the slightest ideological meaning, but rather a German national one in 
the sense that it overcame the former State political fragmentation. Thus the black, white, red flag became a 
symbol of the German Federal State which had overcome the fragmentation. The fact that, notwithstanding and 
despite its youth, it enjoyed a positively idolatrous veneration, lay in the manner of its baptism, for indeed the 
very birth of the Reich towered infinitely above otherwise similar events. Three victorious wars, the last of 
which became a literal miracle of German statesmanship, German military leadership, and German heroism, are 
the deeds from which the new Reich was bom. And when it finally announced its existence to the surrounding 
world in the imperial proclamation, through its greatest imperial herald, the thunder and rumbling of the 
batteries at the front surrounding Paris reechoes in the blare and the flourish of the trumpets. 

Never before had an Empire been proclaimed in such a fashion. 

But the black, white, red flag appeared to the German Folk as the symbol of this unique event exactly as the 
black, red and yellow flag is and will remain a symbol of the November Revolution. 

As much as the individual German States increasingly fused with one another under this banner, and as much as 
the new Reich secured their State political prestige and recognition abroad, the founding of the Reich still did 
not change anything with regard to the major need, our Folk's lack of territory. The great military political deeds 
of our Folk had not been able to give the German Folk a border within which it would have been able to secure 
its sustenance by itself. On the contrary: in proportion as the esteem of German nationality rose through the new 
Reich, it became all the more difficult for the individual German to turn his back on such a State as an emigrant, 
whereas, conversely, a certain national pride and a joy in life, which we find almost incomprehensible today, 
taught that large families were a blessing rather than a burden. 

After 1870-1871 there was a visibly rapid increase in the German population. In part its sustenance was covered 
through the utmost industry and great scientific efficiency with which the German now cultivated his fields 
within the secured frontiers of his Folk. But a great part, if not the greatest, of the increase in German soil 
productivity was swallowed up by an at least equally great increase of the general living requirements which the 
citizen of the new State now likewise claimed. The nation of sauerkraut eaters and potato annihilators, as the 
French derisively characterised it, now slowly began to adjust its living standard to that of other Folks in the 



world. Thus only a part of the yield of the increase of German agriculture was available for the net population 
increase. 

As a matter of fact, the new Reich never knew how to banish this need. Even in the new Reich, at first, an 
attempt was made to keep the relation between population and land within tolerable limits through a permanent 
emigration. For the most shattering proof of the soundness of our assertion of the towering importance of the 
relation between population and land lies in the fact that, in consequence of this disproportion, specifically in 
Germany during the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s, the distress led to an epidemic of emigration which even at the 
beginning of the 1890s had swollen to a figure of nearly one and a quarter million people a year. 

Thus the problem of the sustenance of the German Folk had not been solved for the existing human mass, not 
even by the foundation of the new Reich. A further increase of the German Nation, however, could not take 
place without such a solution. Regardless of how such a solution might turn out, it had to be found in any case. 
Hence the most important problem of German foreign policy after 1870-1871 had to be the question of solving 
the problem of sustenance. 



Chapter 7 


POLICIES OF THE SECOND REICH 


Among Bismarck's innumerable utterances there is hardly another which the bourgeois political world 
could have been more fond of quoting than the one that politics is the art of the possible. The smaller the 
political minds which had to administer the legacy of the great man, the greater the force of attraction 
this utterance possessed. For with this proposition, to be sure, they could embroider, indeed justify even 
the most wretched political bunglers, by simply appealing to the great man and trying to prove that, for 
the moment, it was impossible to do other than what was being done, that politics was the art of the 
possible, and that consequently they were acting with a Bismarckian spirit and in a Bismarckian sense. 
Thereby even a Herr Stresemann can receive some sort of an Olympian wreath to put around his head 
which, if not really Bismarckian, is at least bald. 

Bismarck had an exactly demarcated and clearly outlined political goal before his eyes. It is an 
impudence to want to saddle him with the idea that he achieved his life work only through an 
accumulation of specific political possibilities, and not through a mastery of specific momentary 
situations with an eye on a visualised political aim. This political aim of Bismarck was to: 

Solve the Gennan question through blood and iron 

Eliminate the Habsburg Hohenzollem dualism 

Form a new German Reich under Prussian Hohenzollem leadership 

Arrange the highest possible external security of this Reich 

Organise its inner administration on the Prussian model. 


In the pursuit of this aim, Bismarck utilised every opportunity, and worked through the diplomatic art as 
long as it promised success; he threw the sword into the scales if force alone was in a position to bring 
about a decision. A master of politics, for whom the operational sphere extended from the parquet floors 
of drawing rooms to the blood soaked earth of battlefields. 

Such was the master of the politics of possibilities. 

His successors have neither a political aim nor even a political idea. In contrast to him they muddle 
through from today to tomorrow and from tomorrow to the day after, and then with conceited insolence 
quote that man — whom partly they themselves, partly their spiritual predecessors had occasioned the 
most difficult concerns and most bitter battles — in order to present their politically senseless and 
aimless, ruinous stammering as the art of the possible. 

When, in his three wars, Bismarck set up the new Reich — all due, however, to his brilliant political 
activity — this was actually the highest achievement that could be realised at that time. But this was only 
the indispensable, necessary prerequisite for any future political representation of the vital interests of 
our Folk. For without the creation of the new Reich, the German Folk would have never discovered the 
power structure without which the fateful struggle could not be carried on in the future too. It was 
equally clear that at the outset the new Reich certainly had to be joined together on the battlefield, but 
that internally the component States first had to grow accustomed to each other. Years of adjustment had 
to pass before this consolidation of German States into a Union could in the first instance result in a real 
Federal State. This was when the Iron Chancellor discarded the cuirassier's boot in order then, with 



infinite cleverness, patience, and with a wise understanding and a wonderful sensitivity, to replace the 
pressure of Prussian hegemony by the power of trust. The achievement of making a coalition of States, 
formed on the battlefield, into a Reich interconnected in a touching love, belongs with the greatest ever 
brought about by the art of politics. 

That Bismarck at first limited himself to this was just as much due to the wisdom of his insight, as it was 
the good fortune of the German Nation. These years of the inner peaceful construction of the new Reich 
were necessary, if one was not to succumb to a mania for conquest whose results would have been all 
the more uncertain, since the executive power within the Reich itself was still lacking in that 
homogeneity which would have been a prerequisite for the fusing of further territories. 

Bismarck achieved his life goal. He solved the Gennan question, eliminated the Habsburg Hohenzollern 
dualism, raised Prussia to Gennan hegemony, subsequently united the Nation, consolidated the new 
Reich within the limits of the possible of that time, and worked out the military defence in such a way 
that this whole process of newly establishing the German Reich internally, which indeed necessarily 
took decades, could not be disrupted in essentials by anybody. 

Thus the more Bismarck could, as the aged old Reich Chancellor, look back on a finished life work, the 
less did this work signify the end of the life of the German Nation. Through Bismarck's founding of the 
new Reich, the German nation, after centuries of governmental decay, had again found an organic form 
which not only united the Gennan Folk, but also endowed this united Folk with an expression of vigour 
which was as real as it was ideal. If the flesh and blood of this Folk was the substance whose 
preservation in this world had to be sought, the instrument of power through which the Nation could 
henceforth again attend to its right to life in the framework of the rest of the world had come into being 
with the new Reich. 

The task of the post Bismarck period was to resolve what further step had to be taken in the interest of 
preserving the substance of the Gennan Folk. 

Hence the further detailed political work depended on these decisions, which had to be of a fundamental 
character and which thereby signified the setting of a new goal. Hence this means: Just as Bismarck, as 
an individual man, had resolved to set a goal for his political action, which only then allowed him to act 
from situation to situation according to all possibilities, in order to anive at this goal, so did the post 
Bismarck period also have to set itself a definite goal, as necessary as it was possible, whose 
achievement imperatively promoted the interests of the Gennan Folk, and for the achievement of which 
one could then likewise utilise all possibilities, beginning with the arts of diplomacy up to the art of war. 

The setting of this goal, however, was left undone. 

It is not necessary, and indeed hardly possible, to specify all the causes of this neglect. The principal 
reason lies first of all in the lack of a really brilliant, towering political personality. But reasons which 
partly lie in the very nature of the founding of the new Reich weigh almost as heavily in the scales. 
Germany had become a democratic State, and even though the leaders of the Reich were subject to 
imperial decisions, nevertheless these decisions themselves could escape only with difficulty the impact 
of that general opinion which found its particular expression in the parliamentary institution, the makers 
of which were the political parties as well as the press, which in turn themselves received their ultimate 
instructions from a few recognisable wire pullers. Thereby the interests of the nation receded more and 
more into the background in comparison to the interests of definite and special groups. This was all the 
more the case, since only little clarity on the real interests of the nation prevailed among the broadest 
circles of public opinion, whereas, conversely, the interests of definite political parties or of the 



newspaper world were much more concrete since Germany was now indeed a national State. But the 
concept of a national attitude was in the end only a purely governmental patriotic dynastic one. It had 
almost nothing to do with Folkish insights. Hence a general vagueness prevailed as to the future and as 
to the directional goal of a future foreign policy. Viewed from a national standpoint, the next task of the 
State, after the completion of its inner State structure, should have been the resumption and the final 
achievement of national unity. No foreign policy aim could have been more obvious for the strictly 
formal national State of that time than the annexation of those German areas in Europe which, partly 
through their former history, had to be an obvious part not only of the German nation but of a German 
Reich. Nevertheless such an obvious goal had not been set because, apart from other resistances, the so 
called national concept was much too vague, little thought through and worked out, to be able to 
motivate such a step sufficiently by itself. To have kept in view and carried out, with all means, the 
incorporation of the German element of the old eastern frontier of the Reich as the next aim would have 
run counter to patriotic legitimist ideas, as well as counter to feelings of poorly defined sympathies. 

The venerable House Of Habsburg, to be sure, would thereby have lost its throne. All beer table 
patriotism would also have been most grievously offended, but nevertheless this would have been the 
only reasonable next aim which the new Reich could set for itself — that is, from the point of view of a 
so called National State. Not only because through it Germans living in the area of the Reich would have 
considerably increased numerically, which naturally would have also been expressed militarily, but at 
that time we could have rescued that, the loss of which we deplore today. Had Germany herself joined in 
the partition of the impossible Habsburg State, indeed had she presented this partition to herself as her 
own political aim for national political reasons, Europe's whole development would have taken another 
path. Germany would not have made enemies out of a whole number of States which in themselves had 
nothing against Germany, and in the south the frontiers of the Reich would not run across the Brenner. 
At least the predominantly Gennan part of the Southern Tyrol would be in Germany today. 

But that this was prevented lay not only in the lack of a national concept at that time, but just as much in 
the definite interests of definite groups. Centrist circles under all circumstances desired a policy aimed at 
preserving the so called catholic Habsburg State, in connection with which they talked mendaciously 
about clan brothers, whereas they knew very well that in the Habsburg monarchy these clan brothers 
were slowly but surely being driven to the wall and robbed of their membership in the clan. But for the 
Centre, German viewpoints were not a standard, indeed not even in Germany proper. The gentlemen 
were fonder of any Pole, any Alsatian traitor and Francophile than they were of the Gennan who did not 
want to join such a criminal organisation. Linder the pretext of representing catholic interests, this party 
even in peacetime had lent a helping hand to hann and ruin the major bulwark of a real Christian world 
view, Germany, in all possible ways. And this most mendacious party did not even shrink from going 
ann in arm, in the closest friendship, with avowed deniers of god, atheists, blasphemers of religion, as 
long as they believed they could thereby hann the German National State and the German Folk. 

Thus in the establishment of the insane German foreign policy, the Centre, the Christian catholic pious 
Centre, had Jewish god denying Marxists as loving allies at its side. 

For just as the Centre did everything it could to protect itself against any anti Habsburg policy, the 
Social Democrats, as the then representatives of the Marxist world view, did exactly the same, albeit for 
other reasons. To be sure, the ultimate intention in both parties was the same: to harm Gennany as much 
as possible. The weaker the State, the more unlimited becomes domination of these parties, and 
therefore the greater advantage to their leaders. 


If the Old Reich wanted to resume the unification of the Gennan element in Europe on the basis of 
national political viewpoints, then the dissolution of the Habsburg conglomeration of States, necessarily 



linked to it, entailed a new grouping of European powers. It was self evident that such a dissolution of 
the Habsburg State was inconceivable without entering into relations with other States which had to 
pursue similar interests. Thus a European coalition for the achievement of this goal, by pursuing all 
possibilities thereto, would automatically have come into being, which would have detennined Europe's 
fate at least for the next decades. 

To be sure, the Triple Alliance had first to be liquidated in fact. I say in fact, because in practice the 
liquidation had already been accomplished long ago. 

The alliance with Austria had a real meaning for Gennany as long as through this alliance she could 
hope to get additional power in the hour of danger. It became senseless from the moment in which the 
additional power was smaller than Germany's military burden brought about by this alliance. Properly 
considered, this was the case from the very first day of the Triple Alliance, if, for example, Russia were 
to become Germany's enemy in consequence of this Alliance, or on the basis of this Alliance. Bismarck 
had also pondered this most scrupulously and therefore saw himself induced to conclude the so called 
Reinsurance Treaty with Russia. Briefly, the sense of the Reinsurance Treaty was that, if Gennany 
should be pushed into a conflict with Russia through the Alliance, she would drop Austria. Thus 
Bismarck had already perceived the problematic importance of the Triple Alliance in his time, and, in 
accordance with his art of the possible, he had taken the necessary precautions to meet all circumstances. 

In its time, this Reinsurance Treaty contributed to the banishment of the greatest German statesman of 
our age. 

As a matter of fact, the situation feared by Bismarck had already arisen in the beginning of the 1890s 
after the occupation of Bosnia by Austria-Hungary, and in consequence of the powerfully inflamed Pan 
Slav movement arising therefrom. The alliance with Austria had brought enmity with Russia. 

This enmity with Russia, however, was the reason why Marxists, even though they were not in accord 
with German foreign policy, nevertheless in reality used every means to make another one impossible. 

Thus Austria's relation to Italy as such always remained the same. Formerly Italy had entered the Triple 
Alliance as a precaution against France, but not out of love for Austria. On the contrary, Bismarck even 
here had correctly perceived the inner cordiality of the Italian Austrian relationship when he asserted 
that there were only two possibilities between Austria and Italy: either an alliance or war. In Italy — 
aside from a few Francophile fanatics — a real sympathy existed only for Gennany. And this was also 
understandable. It speaks for the completely bottomless lack of political training and the political 
ignorance of the German Folk, especially of its so called bourgeois national intelligentsia, that they 
believed they could carry over the Triple Alliance, based on political law, to the sphere of friendly 
inclinations. This was not even the case between Germany and Austria, for even here the Triple 
Alliance, or more correctly, the alliance with Germany, was humanly anchored only in the hearts of a 
relatively small part of the Gennans in Austria. The Habsburgs would have never made their way to the 
Triple Alliance if any other possibility of preserving their corpse of a State had existed. When in the July 
days of 1870 the German Folk were inflamed with indignation over France's unprecedented 
provocations and hastened to the old battlefields in defence of the German Rhine, in Vienna it was 
hoped that the hour to revenge Sadowa had come. Conferences followed one another in rapid 
succession, one crown council alternated with another, couriers flew hither and thither, and the first call 
up of the reserves was issued when suddenly, to be sure, the first communiques from the theatres of war 
also began to arrive. And when Weissenburg was followed by a Worth, and Worth by a Gravelotte, a 
Metz, a Mars la Tour, and finally a Sedan, then the Habsburgs, under the pressure of the suddenly 
released clamour of the new German opinion, first began to discover their Gennan heart. If at that time 



Germany had lost only the first battles, the Habsburgs, and with them Austria, would have done the very 
thing for which they later greatly reproached Italy. And that which, moreover, they not only intended to 
do in the World War for the second time, but actually perpetrated as the basest betrayal of the State 
which had unsheathed its sword for them. For the sake and on account of this State, Germany had taken 
the worst bloody hardships upon herself, and she was betrayed not only in a thousand individual cases 
by this State, but finally by the representative of the State himself, all things and truths about which our 
bourgeois national patriots prefer to keep silent, in order to be able to shriek against Italy today. 

When later the House Of Habsburg crept into the Triple Alliance, it was really only because without the 
Triple Alliance this House would long ago have been swept to where it finds itself today. When I once 
more examine the sins of this House in the history of the German Folk, to me it seems distressing that 
this time the mills of god were propelled by forces which lay outside the Gennan Folk. 

But thus the Habsburgs also had every reason to want the alliance, especially with Germany, because 
this alliance in reality indeed surrendered Gennanism in Austria. The denationalisation policy of the 
Habsburgs in Austria, their Czechisation and Slavisation of German elements, would have never become 
possible, if the Reich itself had not held its moral shield over it. Because what right did the German 
Austrian have to protest, and on national grounds, against a State policy to which corresponded the 
quintessence of the Gennan national idea, as it was embodied in the Reich for the Gennan Austrian? 
And, conversely, could Germany now exert any pressure at all to prevent the slow de Germanisation in 
Austria, if after all the Habsburgs themselves were the allies of the Reich? We must know the weakness 
of the political leaders of the Reich in order to know that anything else would sooner have been possible 
rather than an attempt to exercise a real energetic influence on the ally which would have affected her 
domestic affairs. The wily Habsburgs knew this well, just as, in general, Austrian diplomacy was 
toweringly superior to the German in artfulness and craftiness. And, conversely, these very Germans, as 
though stricken with blindness, seemed not to have the remotest idea of events and conditions inside the 
country of their ally. Only the War may have opened the eyes of most people. 

Thus the very alliance based friendship of the Habsburgs for Germany was all the more fateful since, 
through it, the ultimate undermining of the prerequisite for this alliance was guaranteed. For now that 
the Habsburgs were in a position to wipe out Germanism in Austria at their leisure and without having to 
worry about German interference, the worth of this whole alliance for Germany herself became 
increasingly problematic. What meaning should an alliance have for Germany which was not earnestly 
intended by the ruling house — for the House Of Habsburg had never thought to regard Gennan interests 
as taken for granted in the matter of the alliance, so that the few real friends of this alliance perforce 
slowly fell prey to de Germanisation. For in the rest of Austria the alliance was viewed with indifference 
at best, but in most cases it was inwardly hated. 

In the period of the last twenty years before the War, the metropolitan press in Vienna was already much 
more oriented along pro French rather than pro German lines. The press of the Slavic provinces, 
however, was deliberately hostile to Germany. In proportion as Slavism was culturally fostered to the 
utmost by the Habsburgs, and now acquired focal points of its own national culture in their capitals, it 
also gave rise to centres having a special political will of their own. It is an historical punishment for the 
House Of Habsburg not to have seen that one day this national hatred, which was first mobilised against 
the Germans, would devour the Austrian State itself. But for Germany the alliance with Austria became 
especially senseless the moment when, thanks to the influence of the Gennan Austrian Marxists, 
treasonable to the Folk, so called universal suffrage finally broke the hegemony of Germanism in the 
Austrian State. For actually indeed the Germans numbered only a third of the population of Cisleithania, 
that is, of the Austrian half of the Austrian Hungarian State. Once universal suffrage became the 
foundation of Austrian parliamentary representation, the situation of the Germans became hopeless, the 



more so since the clerical parties wanted a deliberate representation of the national viewpoints as little as 
did the Marxists, who deliberately betrayed them. The same Social Democrats who today hypocritically 
talk about Germanism in the Southern Tyrol betrayed and sold out Germanism in old Austria in the most 
shameless way at every opportunity that offered itself. They always stood on the side of the enemies of 
our Folk. The most impertinent Czech arrogance has always found its representatives in so called 
Gennan Social Democracy. Every oppressive act directed against Germany found their approbation. 

And every example of a Gennan deterioration saw the Gennan Social Democrats as collaborators. 

Under such circumstances what could Gennany still expect from a State whose political leadership, 
insofar as it was specifically expressed in parliament, was four fifths consciously and deliberately anti 
German? 

The advantages of the alliance with Austria lay really only on Austria's side, whereas Germany had to 
bear the disadvantages. And these were not few. 

The nature of the Austrian State entailed that a whole number of sunounding States had Austria's 
dissolution in view as the goal of their national policy. For what post Bismarckian Germany was never 
able to bring about had been done by even the smallest Balkan States; namely, setting a definite foreign 
policy goal, which they tried to achieve with, and according to, all the possibilities at hand. All these to 
some extent freshly arisen national States, lying on Austria's borders, saw their highest future political 
task as the liberation of the racial comrades who ethnically belonged to them, but who lived under the 
sceptre of Austria and the Habsburgs. It was self evident that this liberation could take place only 
through military action. Likewise that this must necessarily lead to Austria's dissolution. The Austrians' 
own power of resistance constituted an obstacle to this all the less so as they were dependent primarily 
on those who were to be liberated. In case of a coalition war of Russia, Rumania, and Serbia against 
Austria, the Northern Slav and Southern Slav elements would fall from the outset outside the frame of 
Austrian resistance, so that at best Gennans and Magyars would remain as the bearers of the main 
struggle. Now, experience shows that the elimination of specific fighting forces on Folkish grounds 
leads to disintegration and thus to a complete paralysis of Austria's front. By herself Austria would have 
been able to offer only little resistance to such a general offensive war. This was known in Russia as 
well as in Serbia, and very well known in Rumania Thus what really supported Austria was only her 
mighty ally, on whom she was able to steady herself. But what was more natural than that by this time 
the idea should fonn in the brains of the leading anti Austrian statesmen, as well as in public opinion, 
that the way to Vienna must lead through Berlin? 

The more States there were which fancied to inherit Austria and could not do so in consequence of the 
military partnership, all the more were the States which Gennany herself necessarily incurred as 
enemies. 

At the turn of the century the weight of these enemies, set against Gennany because of Austria, was 
already several times greater than the possible armed help that Austria could ever furnish Germany. 

Thus the inner meaning of this alliance policy was converted exactly into its opposite. 

The matter was complicated still further by the third member of the alliance, Italy. As has already been 
mentioned, Italy's relation to Austria was never a matter of cordiality, and hardly one of reason, but 
actually only the result and the consequence of an overwhelming necessity. The Italian Folk primarily, 
and the Italian intelligentsia, were always able to rally sympathy for Gennany. At the turn of the century 
every ground already existed for an alliance of Italy with Gennany alone. The opinion that Italy as such 
would be a faithless ally is so stupid and dumb that armchair politicians can serve it only to our 
unpolitical so called national bourgeoisie. The most shattering counterproof is provided by the history of 



our own Folk, namely, the time when Italy had once been allied with Gennany against Austria, of 
course. To be sure, the Germany of that time was the Prussia led by Bismarck's genius, and not that led 
by the political incapacity of the later bunglers of the mishandled Reich. 

Certainly the Italy of that time had suffered defeats in battles on land and sea, but she honourably 
fulfilled the obligations of her alliance, as Austria did not do in the World War, into which she had 
pushed Germany. For at that time, when Italy was offered a separate peace which would have given her 
everything which she was able to achieve only later, she proudly and indignantly rejected it despite the 
military defeats she had suffered, whereas the Austrian government leaders not only coveted such a 
separate peace, but were ready to drop Germany completely. If this did not come to pass, the reason for 
it did not lie in the Austrian State's strength of character but rather in the nature of the demands which 
the enemy made upon her and which in practice signified her disintegration. The fact that Italy suffered 
military defeats in 1866 could not really be viewed as a sign of faithlessness to the alliance. For certainly 
she would have preferred gathering victories to defeats, but the Italy of that time could not indeed be 
compared to Germany then and even later, because she lacked that very superior power of military 
crystallisation which Germany had in Prussia. A Gennan Union without the base of the Prussian military 
power would have identically succumbed to the attack of so old and not yet nationally dismembered a 
military power such as Austria possessed, as was the case with regard to Italy. But the essential thing lay 
in the fact that the Italy of that time made possible the decision in Bohemia in favour of the later German 
Reich, by tying up a considerable and great part of the Austrian army. For whoever bears in mind the 
critical situation on the day of the battle of Koniggratz cannot assert that it would have been a matter of 
indifference to Gennany's fate, whether Austria had been on the battlefield with an additional 140000 
men, as she could have done on the strength of Italian commitment. 

That naturally the Italy of that time did not conclude this alliance in order to make possible the national 
unity of the German Folk, but rather that of the Italians, is understood. It really requires the proverbial 
political naivete of a patriotic leaguer to be able to see cause for reproach or for slander in that. The idea 
of obtaining an alliance which from the outset possesses only prospects of success or gain is a childish 
stupidity. For the Italians had exactly the same right to make the same reproach to the Prussia of that 
time and to Bismarck himself, namely, that they had concluded the alliance not for love of Italy but also 
in pursuit of their own interests. Unfortunately, I am inclined to say, it is humiliating that this stupidity is 
committed only north of the Alps and not also to the south of them. 

Such a stupidity becomes understandable only if we consider the Triple Alliance, or better still, the 
alliance between Germany and Austria, which really is a rare case wherein one State, Austria, obtains 
everything from an alliance and the other, Germany, nothing at all. An alliance in which one party stakes 
its interests and the other its shining armour. The one has a cold purposefulness and the other a 
Nibelungen loyalty. At least this has happened only once in history to such an extent and in this way, 
and Gennany has received the most terrible returns for this kind of political State leadership and alliance 
policy. 

Thus if the alliance with Italy, insofar as it concerned Austria's relation with Italy, was of the most 
dubious value from the outset, this was not so much because with Italy, say, it could involve a 
fundamentally wrong partner, but because for Italy this very alliance with Austria did not promise a 
single reciprocal value. 

Italy was a national State. Her future necessarily had to lie on the shores of the Mediterranean. Thus 
every neighbouring State is more or less an obstacle for the development of this national State. If in 
addition we take into account that Austria herself had over 800000 Italians within her borders, and 
further that these same Habsburgs — who on the one hand surrendered the Germans to Slavisation, on 



the other hand understood very well how to play Slavs and Germans against Italians — had every interest 
in slowly denationalising these 800000 Italians, then the future task of Italian foreign policy was hardly 
in doubt. It had to be an anti Austrian one, as pro German as it could be. And this policy also found the 
liveliest support, indeed a glowing enthusiasm, among the Italian Folk itself. For the wrongs that the 
Habsburgers — and Austria was their political weapon for this — had committed against Italy in the 
course of the centuries, seen from an Italian viewpoint, cried out to heaven. For centuries Austria had 
been the obstacle to Italy's unification; again and again the Habsburgs had supported corrupt Italian 
dynasties; indeed even at the turn of the century hardly a party congress of the clerical and Christian 
social movement closed with anything but a demand that Rome be restored to the Holy Father. No bones 
were made about the fact that this was regarded as a task of Austrian policy; but on the other hand they 
had the impertinence to expect that people in Italy perforce exhibit a ringing enthusiasm over the 
alliance with Austria. Thus Austrian policy toward Italy in the course of the centuries had by no means 
always used kid gloves. What France had been for centuries to Germany, Austria was for centuries to 
Italy. The northern Italian lowlands were always the field of operations on which the Austrian State 
showed its policy of friendship toward Italy. Croatian regiments and Panduren were the culture bringers 
and bearers of Austrian civilisation, and it is a pity that all this has, in part, also clung to the Gennan 
name. If today we frequently hear an arrogant deprecation, indeed a contemptuous insulting of German 
culture on Italian lips, then for this the German Folk must thank that State which was camouflaged as 
German on the outside, but which exposed the character of its inner being to the Italian through a coarse 
soldiery who in their own Austrian State were viewed by the beneficiaries thereof as a true scourge of 
god. The battle fame of the Austrian Army was in part built on successes which necessarily aroused the 
undying hatred of the Italians for all time. 

It was a misfortune for Gennany never to have understood this, a misfortune, on the contrary, to have 
covered it up indirectly, if not directly. For thus did Germany lose the State which, as matters then stood, 
could have become our most loyal ally, as it once had been a very dependable ally for Prussia. 

Thus the attitude of the broadest public opinion in Austria on the occasion of the war in Tripoli was 
especially decisive for Italy's inner relation to Austria. That Vienna should look askance at the Italian 
attempt to set foot in Albania was still understandable in view of the state of affairs. Austria thought her 
own interests were being threatened there. But the general and decidedly artificial incitement against 
Italy when the latter set out to conquer Tripoli was incomprehensible. The Italian step, however, was 
self evident. No man could blame the Italian Government if it attempted to carry the Italian flag to areas 
which by their very location had to be the acknowledged colonial area for Italy. Not only because the 
young Italian colonists fell into the footsteps of the ancient Romans, but the Italian action should have 
been welcome precisely to Germany and Austria for still another reason. The more Italy was engaged in 
North Africa, the more the natural oppositions between Italy and France would perforce one day 
develop. A superior German State leadership, at least, should have sought with all means to create 
difficulties for the threatening spread of French hegemony over North Africa, and in general to the 
French opening up of the Dark Continent, even in consideration of the possible military strengthening of 
France also on European battlefields. For the French governments, and especially their military leaders, 
left no doubt at all that for them the African colonies actually had another importance other than just 
being showpieces of French civilisation. For a long time they had already seen in them a reservoir for 
soldiers for the next European contest of arms. That this could take place only with Germany was 
likewise clear. What would have been more natural, then, from a German point of view than to favour 
every interference of another power, especially if this other power was her own ally. Moreover, the 
French nation was sterile and had no need for enlarging its living space, whereas the Italian Folk, 
exactly like the German, had to find a way out somewhere. Let no one say that this would have involved 
a theft committed against Turkey. For then all colonies are indeed stolen areas. Only, without them the 
European cannot live. We had no interest, and should not have had any, in bringing about an 



estrangement with Italy out of a completely unreal sympathetic feeling for Turkey. If ever there was a 
foreign political action in which Austria and Germany could have fully stood behind Italy, this was 
precisely it. It was simply scandalous how the Austrian press of that time, indeed all public opinion, 
behaved toward an Italian action whose ultimate aim was nothing but the annexation of Bosnia 
Herzegovina by Austria herself. A hate suddenly flared up at that time which showed the real inner 
disposition of this Austrian Italian relation all the more clearly, since there had been no actual grounds 
for it at all. I was in Vienna at that time and was inwardly disgusted by the stupid as well as shameless 
way in which the ally was stabbed in the back then. Thus, under such circumstances, to demand from 
this very ally a loyalty which in reality would have been Italy's suicide, is at least as incomprehensible as 
it is naive. 

For in addition there is the following: Italy's natural military geographical situation will always force 
this State to fonnulate a policy which does not bring it into conflict with a superior naval power, to 
which the Italian fleet and fleets allied with it would not be in a position, human foresight indicates, to 
put up any resistance. As long as England possesses uncontested supremacy on the seas, and as long as 
this hegemony can still be strengthened by a Mediterranean French fleet, without Italy and her allies 
being able to make a promising resistance, Italy can never assume an anti English attitude. We must not 
demand from the leaders of a State that, out of an idiotic sympathy for another State whose reciprocal 
love had been clearly shown precisely by the war in Tripoli, they end by surrendering their own Folk to 
certain destruction. Anyone who subjects the coastal conditions of the Italian State to the most cursory 
examination must immediately arrive at the conviction that a struggle against England on Italy's part 
under prevailing circumstances is not only hopeless but absurd. Thus Italy found herself in exactly the 
same situation as Germany had likewise found herself; namely, just as for Bismarck, once the risk of 
war with Russia, caused by Austria, appeared so monstrous to him that in such an eventuality he 
committed himself, through the famous Reinsurance Treaty, to disregard the matter of the otherwise 
existing alliance, likewise for Italy the alliance with Austria was also untenable the moment she made an 
enemy of England as a result of it. Anyone who does not want to grasp or understand this is incapable of 
thinking politically, and therefore, at best, capable of making policy in Germany. But the German Folk 
sees the result of the policy of this sort of people before it, and must bear the consequences. 

All these are aspects that had to lower the value of the alliance with Austria to a minimum. For it was 
thereby certain that Germany, because of her alliance with Austria, would also presumably make 
enemies, besides Russia, of Rumania, Serbia and Italy. For, as has been said, there is no alliance that can 
be built on the basis of ideal sympathies or ideal loyalty or ideal gratitude. Alliances will be all the 
stronger, the more the individual contracting parties may hope to derive private advantages from them. It 
is fantastic to wish to fonn an alliance on any other basis. I would never expect Italy to enter into an 
alliance with Gennany out of sympathy for Germany, out of love for Gennany, with the intention of 
thereby procuring an advantage for Germany. Just as little would I ever want to enter into a contractual 
relationship out of love for another State, out of sympathy for it, or out of a desire to serve it. If today I 
advocate an alliance between Italy and Gennany, I do so only because I believe that both States can 
thereby achieve useful advantages. Both States would prosper as a result. 

The advantage of the Triple Alliance lay exclusively on Austria's side. Certainly, in consequence of the 
determining factors in the policy of the individual States, only Austria could be the beneficiary of this 
alliance. For by its whole nature the Triple Alliance had no aggressive tendency. It was a defensive 
alliance which at the utmost, according to its provisions, was only supposed to safeguard the 
preservation of the STATVS QVO. Germany and Italy, in consequence of the impossibility of feeding 
their populations, were compelled to pursue an aggressive policy. Only Austria had to be happy to 
preserve at least the corpse of a State which, in itself, was already impossible. Since Austria's own 
defensive power would never have sufficed for this, through the Triple Alliance, the offensive forces of 



Germany and Italy were harnessed in the service of maintaining the Austrian State. Gennany remained 
in the harness and thereby perished, Italy leapt out of it and saved herself. Only a man for whom politics 
is not the duty of preserving the life of a Folk with all means and according to all possibilities could 
want to censure such an action. 

Even if Old Germany as a formal National State had set herself only the further unification of the 
German Nation as a goal, the Triple Alliance should perforce have been dropped instantaneously, 
respectively the relation with Austria changed. She would thereby have been spared from incurring a 
number of enmities which in no way could be compensated by the employment of Austrian strength. 

Thus even pre War Germany should no longer have let her foreign policy be detennined by purely 
formal national viewpoints, if these did not lead to necessary Folkish goals. 

Already in the pre War period, the future of the German Folk was a question of solving the problem of 
their sustenance. The German Folk could no longer find their daily bread within their existing territory. 
All industry and competence, as well as all scientific methods of soil cultivation, could at best alleviate 
the distress somewhat, but ultimately they could not prevent it. Even in the years of exceptionally good 
harvests they no longer could completely cover their own food requirements. During average or bad 
harvests they were already dependent on imports to a considerable degree. Even the raw material supply 
of many industries ran into serious difficulties, and could be procured only abroad. 

There were various ways to overcome this distress. Emigration and birth control had to be categorically 
rejected even from the standpoint of the National State of that time. In this case the knowledge of 
biological consequences was less decisive than the fear of numerical decimation. Thus, for the Gennany 
of that time, only two possibilities existed for securing the nation's preservation for a future time without 
having to limit the population itself. Either an effort had to be made to solve the need for space, that is, 
to acquire new soil, or the Reich had to be converted into a great export firm. This meant that the 
production of certain commodities was to be increased beyond domestic needs, in order to be able to 
exchange them for foodstuffs and raw materials by way of export. 

The knowledge of the necessity of an enlargement of German living area existed, albeit at least partly at 
that time. It was believed that the best way to act in this sense was to lead Gennany into the ranks of the 
great colonial Folks. In reality, however, a flaw in the inner logic was already present in the form of the 
execution of this idea. For the sense of a sound tenitorial policy lies in the fact that a Folk's living space 
is enlarged by allotting new areas for settlement to the surplus of the population which, then, if it is not 
to take on the character of an emigration, must be in close political and governmental relation with the 
mother country. This no longer applied to the colonies which were still at all available at the end of the 
nineteenth century. Their distance in space as well, particularly as the climatic conditions of these areas 
by themselves prevented settlement such as the English had previously been able to carry out in their 
American colonies, the Dutch in South Africa, and again the English in Australia. Added to this was the 
whole character of the inner establishment of German colonial policy. Thereby the problem of 
settlement receded entirely into the background in order to put in their place business interests which 
were identical with the general interests of the Gennan Folk only in the smallest measure. Thus from the 
beginning the value of German colonies lay more in the possibility of obtaining certain markets, which 
by providing different colonial products and partly also raw materials, would make the German 
economy independent of foreign countries. 

This would have surely succeeded up to a certain degree in the future, but it would not in the least have 
resolved the problem of Germany's overpopulation, unless it was decided to guarantee the sustenance of 
the Gennan Folk fundamentally through an increase of its export economy. Then naturally the German 



colonies, through the more favourable delivery of raw materials, could one day give the different 
industries a greater capacity to compete on the international markets. Thus Gennan colonial policy in the 
deepest sense was indeed no territorial policy, but had become an instrument of German economic 
policy. Actually, even the numerically direct relief of German internal overpopulation through the 
settlement of the colonies was completely insignificant. 

If in addition one wanted to go over to a real territorial policy, then the colonial policy pursued before 
the War was all the more senseless, as it could not lead to a relief of German overpopulation. 

Conversely, however, one day, all human foresight indicates, its very execution necessitated the same 
staking of blood as would have been required in the worst cases for a really useful territorial policy. For 
while this kind of German colonial policy in the most favourable situation could bring only a 
strengthening of the Gennan economy, one day it had to become a cause for a physical conflict with 
England. For a German world economic policy could never avoid a decisive struggle with England. 
Export industry, world trade, colonies and merchant marine had then to be protected with the sword 
from that power which, for the same viewpoint of self preservation as Gennany's, had long ago seen 
itself forced to embark upon this path. Therefore, this peaceful economic struggle for the conquest of a 
place in the sun could take place for just as long as England could count on bringing about the collapse 
of German competition with purely economic means, because then we would never emerge from the 
shade. But if Germany succeeded in pushing England back in this peaceful economic way, it was self 
evident that the phantom of this peaceful economic conquest of the world would be replaced by the 
resistance of bayonets. 

Without doubt, it was, however, a political idea to allow the Gennan Folk the increase of its number 
through the increase of industrial production and sale on the international world market. This idea was 
not Folkish, but it corresponded to the prevailing ideas of the bourgeois national world of that time. This 
way could be travelled in any case, only it then placed a wholly definite and narrowly outlined duty on 
German foreign policy: the end of Gennan world trade policy could only be war with England. But then 
the task of German foreign policy was to ann itself, through farseeing alliance measures, for a conflict 
with a State which on the basis of an experience of more than a hundred years itself would not neglect to 
bring about a general mobilisation of allied States. If Germany wanted to defend her industrial and 
economic policy against England, then she first had to seek to cover her rear with Russia. Russia then 
was the only State which could be considered a valuable ally, because she alone had no need to be 
essentially opposed to Germany, at least for the moment. To be sure the selling price for this Russian 
alliance, as matters stood, could lie only in giving up the alliance with Austria. For then the dual alliance 
with Austria was madness, indeed insanity. Only when Germany's rear was completely covered by 
Russia could she pass over to a maritime policy which deliberately aimed at the day of reckoning. Only 
then could Germany also commit the enonnous means necessary for the completion of a fleet which, not 
being up to date in all details, lagged five years behind, especially in speed and thereby displacement. 

But the entanglement in the Austrian alliance was so great that a solution could no longer be found, and 
Russia, which had begun to orient herself anew after the Russian Japanese war, had to be repelled for 
good. But thereby the whole Gennan economic and colonial policy was a more than dangerous game. 
The fact was that Gennany indeed also shunned the final settlement with England, and accordingly for 
years her attitude was determined by the principle of not antagonising the adversary. This determined all 
Gennan decisions which would have been necessary for the defence of German economic and colonial 
policy, until, on August 4th, 1914, the English declaration of war brought an end to this unfortunate 
period of German blindness. 



Had Germany of that time been ruled less by bourgeois national than by Folkish viewpoints, only the 
other path to a solution of German distress would have been considered, namely, that of a large scale 
territorial policy in Europe itself. 

Hence the German colonial policy which necessarily had to bring us into conflict with England, whereby 
France could always be regarded as siding with the enemy, was especially unreasonable for Germany 
because our European base was weaker than any other colonial Folk of world political importance. For 
ultimately the fate of the colonies was obviously decided in Europe. In consequence every German 
foreign policy was directed primarily toward strengthening and safeguarding Gennany's military 
position in Europe. Thus we could expect only little decisive help from our colonies. Conversely, every 
broadening of our European territorial base automatically would have led to a strengthening of our 
position. It is not the same, if a Folk has a closed area of settlement of 560000, or, let us say, one million 
square kilometres. Wholly apart from the difficulty, in the case of war, of sustenance, which should 
remain as independent as possible from the effects of enemy action, military protection already resides 
in the size of the territory, and to that extent our operations, which force us to wage wars on our own 
soil, will be considerably easier to bear. 

In general, then, a certain defence against rash attacks lies in the size of a State territory. 

Above all, however, only through a territorial policy in Europe can the human resources shifted there be 
preserved for our Folk, including their military utilisation. An additional 500000 square kilometres in 
Europe can provide new homesteads for millions of Gennan peasants, and make available millions of 
soldiers to the power of the German Folk for the moment of decision. 

The only area in Europe that could be considered for such a territorial policy therefore was Russia. The 
thinly settled western border regions which already once had received Gennan colonists as bringers of 
culture, could likewise be considered for the new territorial policy of the Gennan Nation. Therefore the 
aim of German foreign policy unconditionally had to be to free its rear against England and conversely 
to isolate Russia as much as possible. Then, with a dauntless logic, we had to give up our economic and 
world trade policy, and if necessary completely give up the fleet, in order to concentrate the nation’s 
whole strength again on the Land Army as once before. Then, more than ever, the alliance with Austria 
had to be dropped, for nothing more would stand in the way of an isolation of Russia than a State whose 
defence was guaranteed by Gennany, whose partition was desired by a whole number of European 
powers, but which they would have been able to carry out only in an alliance with Russia. Since these 
States had recognised in Germany the greatest defence of Austria's preservation, all the more were they 
forced to be against Russia's isolation, as the Czarist Empire more than ever could appear to them as the 
only possible power factor for the final destruction of Austria. 

It was obvious, however, that all these States especially could not wish for a strengthening of Austria's 
only defence at the cost of the strongest enemy of the Habsburg State. 

For in this case, too, France would have always sided with Gennany's enemy, the possibility of forming 
an anti Gennan coalition would always have been present, unless we decided to liquidate the alliance 
with Austria at the end of the century, and surrender the Austrian State to its fate, but thereby save the 
German areas for the Reich. 

Something different happened. Germany wanted world peace. Therefore she avoided a tenitorial policy 
which as such could only have been fought out aggressively, and ultimately turned to a limitless 
economic and trade policy. We thought to conquer the world with peaceful economic means, and 
thereby we supported ourselves neither on one nor another power, but instead clung all the more 



doggedly to the dying Habsburg State the more a general political isolation resulted therefrom. Broad 
circles within Germany welcomed this, partly out of real political incompetence and also partly out of 
wrongly understood patriotic legitimist ideas, and finally also partly in the hope, still nourished, that the 
hated Hohenzollern Empire could one day be thereby led to collapse. 

When the World War burst forth bloodred on August 2nd, 1914, the pre War alliance policy had as a 
matter of fact already suffered its actual defeat. In order to help Austria, Gennany had been pushed into 
a war which then was to revolve only around her own existence. Her enemies were the adversaries of 
her world trade as well as of her general greatness altogether, and those who were awaiting the fall of 
Austria. Her friends, the impossible Austrian Hungarian State structure on the one side and the 
constantly weak and ailing Turkey on the other. Italy, however, took the step that Germany perforce 
should have taken and carried out herself, had her destiny been guided by the genius of a Bismarck 
instead of weak philosophers and bragging hurrah!-patriots. The fact that later Italy finally undertook an 
offensive against a former ally, again merely matched Bismarck's prophetic foresight, namely, that only 
two conditions could exist at all between Italy and Austria: an alliance or war. 



Chapter 8 


MILITARY POWER AND FALLACY OF 
BORDER RESTORATION AS GOAL 


On November 11th, 1918, the armistice was signed in the forest of Compiegne. For this, fate had chosen a man 
who was one of those bearing major guilt for the collapse of our Folk. Matthias Erzberger, deputy of the Centre, 
and according to various assertions the bastard son of a servant girl and a Jewish employer, was the German 
negotiator who affixed his name to a document which, compared and measured against the four and a half years 
of heroism of our Folk, seems incomprehensible if we do not assume the deliberate intention to bring about 
Germany's destruction. 

Matthias Erzberger himself had been a petty bourgeois annexationist, that is, one of those men who, especially 
at the beginning of the war, had tried to remedy the lack of an official war aim in their own way and manner. 

For even though in August, 1914, the entire German Folk instinctively felt that this struggle involved their 
being or non being, nevertheless once the flames of the first enthusiasm were extinguished, they were not in any 
way clear either about the threatening non being, or the necessity of remaining in being. The enormity of the 
idea of a defeat and its consequences was slowly blotted out through a propaganda which had complete free rein 
within Germany, and which twisted or altogether denied the real aims of the Entente in a way that was as adroit 
as it was mendacious. In the second and especially in the third year of the War, it had also succeeded to some 
extent in removing the fear of defeat from the German Folk, since, thanks to this propaganda, people no longer 
believed in the enemy's annihilatory will. This was all the more terrible as, conversely, nothing was allowed to 
be done which could inform the Folk of the minimum that had to be achieved in the interests of its future self 
preservation, and as a reward for its unprecedented sacrifices. Hence the discussion over a possible war aim 
took place only in more or less irresponsible circles and acquired the expression of the mode of thought as well 
as the general political ideas of its respective representatives. While the sly Marxists, who had an exact 
knowledge of the paralysing effect of a lack of a definite war aim, forbade themselves to have one altogether, 
and for that matter talked only about the reestablishment of peace without annexations and reparations, at least 
some of the bourgeois politicians sought to respond to the enormity of the bloodshed and the sacrilege of the 
attack with definite counterdemands. All these bourgeois proposals were purely border rectifications and had 
nothing at all to do with geopolitical ideas. At best they still thought of satisfying the expectations of German 
princes who were unemployed at the time by the formation of buffer States. Thus even the founding of the 
Polish State appeared as a wise decision in national political terms to the bourgeois world, aside from a few 
exceptions. Individuals pushed economic viewpoints to the foreground according to which the border had to be 
formed; for example, the necessity of winning the ore basin of Fongwy and Briey; other strategical opinions, for 
example, the necessity of possessing the Belgian fortresses on the Meuse River, and so on. 

It should be self evident that this was no aim for a State engaged in a war against twenty six States, in which the 
former had to take upon itself one of the most unprecedented bloodsheddings in history, while at home an entire 
Folk was literally surrendered to hunger. The impossibility of justifying the necessity for enduring the War 
helped to bring about its unfortunate outcome. 

Hence when the collapse took place in the homeland, a knowledge of war aims existed even less, as their former 
weak representatives had meanwhile moved further away from their former meagre demands. And this was 



quite understandable. For to want to conduct a war of this unprecedented extent so that the borders instead of 
running through Herbesthal should run through Liege, or so that instead of a Czarist commissar or governor, a 
German princeling could be installed as potentate over some Russian province or other, would have been really 
irresponsible and monstrous. It lay in the nature of German war aims, so far as they were at all subject to 
discussion, that they were later altogether denied. Truly for such baubles a Folk should not have been kept for 
even an hour longer in a war whose battlefields had slowly become an inferno. 

The sole war aim that the monstrous bloodshed would have been worthy of could consist only in the assurance 
to German soldiers of so and so many hundred thousand square kilometres, to be allotted to front line fighters as 
property, or to be placed at the disposal of a general colonisation by Germans. With that the War would have 
quickly lost the character of an imperial enterprise, and instead would have become a cause of the German Folk. 
For, after all, the German grenadiers really had not shed their blood so that Poles might acquire a State, or so 
that a German Prince might be set on a plush covered throne. 

Thus in 1918 we stood at the end of a completely senseless and aimless squandering of the most precious 
German blood. 

Once more had our Folk infinitely staked its heroism, courageous sacrifice, indeed defiance of death and 
joyousness in responsibility, and nevertheless been forced to leave the battlefields weakened and beaten. 
Victorious in a thousand battles and skirmishes, and in the end nevertheless defeated by those who had been 
beaten. This was the handwriting on the wall for the German domestic and foreign policy of the pre War time 
and the four and a half years of the bloody struggle itself. 

Now after the collapse there arose the alarmed question, whether our German Folk had learned anything from 
this catastrophe, whether those who had deliberately betrayed it up to this time would still determine its fate, 
whether those who had so pitifully failed until this time would henceforth also dominate the future with their 
phrases, or whether finally our Folk would be educated to a new way of thinking about domestic and foreign 
policy and shift its action accordingly. 

For if a miracle does not take place for our Folk, its path will be one of ultimate doom and destruction. 

What is Germany's present situation? And what are the prospects for her future? And what kind of a future will 
this be? 

The collapse which the German Folk suffered in 1918 lies, as I want once more to establish here, not in the 
overthrow of its military organisation, or in the loss of its weapons, but rather in its inner decay which was 
revealed at that time, and which today increasingly appears. This inner decay lies just as much in respect to the 
worsening of its racial value as in the loss of all those virtues which condition the greatness of a Folk, guarantee 
its existence, and promote its future. 

Blood value, the idea of personality, and the instinct for self preservation, slowly threatened to be lost to the 
German Folk. Internationalism triumphs in its stead and destroys our Folk value, democracy spreads by stifling 
the idea of personality, and in the end an evil pacifistic liquid manure poisons the mentality favouring bold self 
preservation. We see the effects of this vice of mankind appear in the whole life of our Folk. Not only does it 
make itself noticeable in the field of political concerns, no, but also in that of economy, and not least in that of 
our cultural life, so that, if it is not brought to a halt once and for all, our Folk will be excluded from the number 
of nations with a future. 



The great domestic task of the future lies in the elimination of these general symptoms of the decay of our Folk. 
This is the mission of the National Socialist Movement. A new nation must arise from this work which 
overcomes even the worst evils of the present, the cleavage between the classes, for which the bourgeoisie and 
Marxism are equally guilty. 

The aim of this reform work of a domestic political kind must finally be the regaining of our Folk's strength for 
the prosecution of its struggle for existence and thereby the strength to represent its vital interests abroad. 

Our foreign policy is also presented by this with a task that it must fulfil. For the more domestic policy must 
furnish the Folkish instrument of strength to foreign policy, the more must also foreign policy, through the 
actions and measures it adopts, promote and support the formation of this instrument. 

If the foreign policy task of the old bourgeois national State had primarily been that of the further unification in 
Europe of those belonging to the German Nation in order then to work up to a higher territorial policy viewed in 
Folkish terms, then the foreign policy task of the post War period must at the outset be one that promotes the 
forging of the internal instrument of power. For the foreign policy aspirations of the pre War period had at their 
disposal a State that perhaps was not very highly exigent in a Folkish sense, but which had a wonderful Army 
establishment. Even if Germany of that time had long since ceased to place such an emphasis on the military, as 
for example Old Prussia, and therefore was outmatched by other States, especially in the extent of the Army 
organisation, nevertheless the inner quality of the Old Army was incomparably superior to all other similar 
institutions. At that time this best instrument of the art of war stood at the disposal of a State leadership with a 
bold foreign policy. In consequence of this instrument as well as of the general high esteem which it enjoyed, 
the freedom of our Folk was not only a result of our factually proved strength, but rather of the general credit 
that we possessed in consequence of this remarkable Army instrument, as well as partly in consequence of the 
rest of the exemplarily clean State apparatus. 

The German Folk no longer possesses this most important instrument for the defence of a nation's interests, or 
at least it possesses it to a completely insufficient extent, and very far removed from the foundation which 
conditioned its former strength. 

The German Folk has acquired a mercenary Army. In Germany, these mercenary troops run the danger of 
sinking to the level of policemen armed with special technical weapons. The comparison of the German 
mercenary Army with the English turns out unfavourably to the Germans. The English mercenary army was 
always the bearer of England's military defence and aggressive ideas as well as of her military tradition. In her 
mercenary troops and the militia system peculiar to her, England possessed the Army organisation which, in 
view of her insular position sufficed, indeed seemed suitable for fighting to the finish for England's vital 
interests. The idea of manifesting English power of resistance in such a form in no way sprang from cowardice, 
in order thereby to be able to spare shedding the blood of the English Folk. On the contrary. England fought 
with mercenaries as long as they sufficed for the defence of England's interests. She called for volunteers 
immediately the struggle required a greater commitment. She introduced general military conscription 
immediately the needs of the country demanded it. For regardless of how the momentary organisation of the 
English power of resistance looked, it was always committed in a dauntless struggle for England. And the 
formal army organisation in England was always only an instrument for the defence of English interests, 
committed with a will, which did not even shrink, if necessary, from demanding the blood of the whole nation. 
Wherever England's interests were decisively at stake, she at any rate knew how to preserve a hegemony which, 
considered purely technically, goes as far as the demand for a two power standard. If we compare the infinitely 
responsible [solicitous] care shown here with the frivolousness with which Germany, and national bourgeois 



Germany at that, neglected her armaments in the pre War period, we must still today be gripped by a deep 
sadness. Just as England knew that her future, indeed her existence, depended on the strength of her fleet, so 
should this bourgeois national Germany have known that the existence and future of the German Reich 
depended on the strength of our land power. In Europe, Germany should have had to counter the two power 
standard on land to the two power standard on the seas. And just as England with an iron determination saw a 
reason for going to war at every violation of this standard, so did Germany have to prevent every attempt in 
Europe to outflank her army through France and Russia by a military decision, even one which had to be 
precipitated, and for which more than one favourable opportunity had presented itself. Even here this 
bourgeoisie misused one of Bismarck's utterances in a most senseless way. Bismarck's assertion that he did not 
intend to wage preventive war was joyfully seized upon by all weak, energyless and also irresponsible armchair 
politicians as a cover for the disastrous consequences of their anything goes policy. Only thereby they 
completely forgot that all three wars which Bismarck had conducted were wars which, at least according to the 
conceptions of these anti preventive war peace philosophers, could have been avoided. Consider, for example, 
what insults by Napoleon III in 1870 would have to be heaped on the German Republic of today for it to decide 
to request M. Benedetti to moderate his tone somewhat. Neither Napoleon nor the whole French Folk would 
ever have been able to incite the German Republic of today to a Sedan: or does one believe that if Bismarck had 
not wanted a decision, the war of 1866 could not have been prevented? Now here it can be objected that this 
was a question of wars with clearly set aims, and not of a kind whose only ground lies in the fear of an attack by 
the enemy. But in reality this is only word splitting. Because Bismarck was convinced that the struggle with 
Austria was inevitable, he prepared himself for it and carried it through when the occasion suited Prussia. The 
reform of the French army by Marshal Niel made clearly perceptible the intention to give French policy and 
French chauvinism a forceful weapon for an attack against Germany. As a matter of fact, it would doubtless 
have been possible for Bismarck to bring the conflict to some kind of a peaceful solution in 1870. But it was 
more expedient for him to fight it out to the finish at a time when the French army organisation had not yet 
arrived at its full efficiency. Moreover, all these interpretations of Bismarckian utterances suffer from one thing, 
namely, they confuse Bismarck the diplomat with a republican parliamentarian. How Bismarck himself judged 
such utterances is best shown in his reply to a questioner before the outbreak of the Prussian Austrian War, who 
would have very much liked to know whether Bismarck really intended to attack Austria, whereupon the latter, 
with an impervious expression, replied: No, I have no intention of attacking Austria, but neither would I have 
the intention of telling them, in case I wanted to attack her. 

Moreover, the hardest war that had ever been fought by Prussia was a preventive war. When Frederick The 
Great had received final knowledge of the intention of his old enemies, through a scribbler soul, he did not wait 
until the others attacked, on the grounds of a fundamental rejection of a preventive war, but went immediately 
over to the attack himself. 

For Germany, any violation of the two power standard of necessity should have been a cause for a preventive 
war. For what would it have been easier to answer before history: for a preventive war in 1904, which could 
have defeated France when Russia seemed to be entangled in Eastern Asia, or for the World War which ensued 
from this neglect, and which required many times the blood, and plunged our Folk into the abyss of defeat? 

England never had such scruples. Her two power standard on the seas seemed to be the prerequisite for the 
preservation of English independence. As long as she had the strength, she allowed no change to be made in this 
situation. When, however, this two power standard was given up after the World War, it was then only under 
the pressure of circumstances which were stronger than any contrary British intention. With the American 
Union, a new power of such dimensions has come into being as threatens to upset the whole former power and 
orders of rank of the States. 



At any rate, up to now the English fleet was always the most striking proof, regardless of how the form of the 
organisation of the land army looked, that decisively determined England's will to self preservation. This was 
the reason why the English mercenary army never acquired the bad characteristics of other mercenary troops. It 
was a fighting military body of wonderful individual training, with excellent weapons, and a conception of 
service which viewed it as a sport. Thus what endowed this small body of troops with a special importance was 
the direct contact with the visible manifestations in life of the British world empire. As this mercenary army had 
fought for England's greatness in almost all parts of the world, it had thereby in like measure also come to know 
England's greatness. The men who now in Southern Africa, now in Egypt, and at times in India, represented 
England's interests as the possessors of her military prestige, through this also received an indelible impression 
of the immense greatness of the British IMPERIVM. 

Such an opportunity is completely lacking to the presentday German mercenary troops. Indeed, the more we 
feel ourselves induced to make concessions to this spirit in the small Army itself, under the pressure of 
pacifistic parliamentary majorities, which in reality represent traitors to their Folk and country, it gradually 
ceases to be an instrument of war. Instead it becomes a police corps for the maintenance of peace and order, 
which means, in reality, of peaceful subjugation. No army with a high intrinsic value can be trained, if the 
preparation for war is not the aim of its existence. There are no armies for the maintenance of peace, but rather 
only for the victorious fighting of wars to the end. The more, in short, one tries finally to unhinge the Reich 
Defence from the tradition of the Old Army, the more will it itself become traditionless. For with troops, the 
value of a tradition does not lie in a few successful quellings of internal strike revolts, or in preventing the 
plundering of foodstuffs, but in the glory gained through victorious battles. In reality, however, the German 
Reich Defence departs from the tradition of this glory in proportion as from year to year it ceases to be a 
representative of the national idea. The more it finally kills the conscious, national, hence nationalistic spirit in 
its own ranks, and removes its representatives, in order to give their posts to democrats and altogether ordinary 
ambitious persons, all the more will it become alien to the Folk. Let the sly gentlemen not fancy that they can 
make contact with the Folk by concessions to the pacifistic democratic part of our Folk. Any military 
organisation as such is deeply hated by this part of the German Folk, as long as it is indeed military and not the 
burglar protection agency of international pacifistic stock exchange interests. The only part to which an army 
can have an inner relationship in a militarily valuable sense, is that nationally conscious core of our Folk which 
not only thinks in a soldierly manner out of tradition, but rather, out of national love, is also the only part ready 
to wear the grey tunic in defence of honour and freedom. It is necessary, however, that a military body maintain 
intimate relations with those from whom it itself in the hour of need can supplement itself, and not with those 
who betray it at every opportunity. Hence the present leaders of our so called Reich Defence can act as 
democratically as they please; nevertheless, they will thereby never attain to a closer bond with the German 
Folk, because the German Folk for which this is appropriate is not to be found in the democratic camp. Since, 
however, the former Chief Of The German Reich Defence especially, General von Seeckt, not only did not put 
up any resistance to the removal of hardened, deliberately national minded Officers, but rather even [himself] 
advocated it, they themselves finally created the instrument which dropped him with a relatively light heart. 

Since General von Seeckt's retirement, however, the democratic pacifistic influence has been tirelessly active in 
order to make out of the Defence Force that which the present rulers of the State have in their minds as the most 
beautiful ideal: a republican democratic parliamentary guard. 

Obviously a foreign policy cannot be conducted with such an instrument. 

Hence today the first task of German domestic policy ought to be that of giving the German Folk a military 
organisation suitable to its national strength. Since the forms of the present Defence Force could never suffice 
for this goal, and, conversely, are determined by foreign policy motives, it is the task of German foreign policy 



to bring about all the possibilities that could permit the reorganisation of a German National Army. For that 
must be the immovable aim of any political leadership in Germany, so that one day the mercenary Army will 
again be replaced by a truly German National Army. 

For just as the purely technical military qualities of the present are superior, so must the general qualities of the 
German Defence Force deteriorate in their development in the future. The former without doubt is to be credited 
to General von Seeckt and to the Defence Force's Officers' Corps altogether. Thus the German Defence Force 
could really be the Army framework for the future German National Army. Just as, in general, the task of the 
Defence Force itself must be, by the educational stress placed on the national fighting task, to train the mass of 
Officers and Sergeants for the later National Army. 

No true national thinking German can dispute that this aim must be held immovably in sight. Even less can he 
dispute that its execution is possible only if the nation's foreign policy leaders assure the general necessary 
prerequisites. 

Thus the first task of German foreign policy is primarily the creation of conditions which make possible the 
resurrection of a German Army. For only then will our Folk's vital needs be able to find their practical 
representation. 

Fundamentally, however, it must be further observed that the political actions which are to guarantee the 
resurrection of a German Army must lie in the framework of a necessary future development for Germany as 
such. 

Hence there is no need to stress that a change of the present army organisation, wholly apart from the present 
internal political situation as well as for reasons of foreign policy, cannot materialise as long as purely German 
interests and German viewpoints alone speak for such a change. 

It lay in the nature of the World War and in the intention of Germany's main enemies, to carry out the 
liquidation of this greatest battle action of the Earth in such a way that as many States as possible would be 
interested in its perpetuation. This was achieved through a system of distribution of territories, in which even 
States with otherwise divergent desires and aims were held together in a solid antagonism by the fear that they 
could in that case suffer losses through a Germany once more become strong. 

For, if ten years after the World War it is still possible, against all the experience of world history, to maintain a 
kind of coalition of the victor States, the reason lies only in the fact, glorious for Germany, of the recollection of 
that struggle in which our Fatherland had stood up to twenty six States all together. 

Thus it will also last as long as the fear of suffering losses through a resurrected German power Reich is greater 
than the difficulties between these States. And it is further obvious that it will last as long as no will exists 
anywhere to allow the German Folk a rearmament which can be viewed as a threat by these victor States. On 
the basis of the knowledge that, first, a real representation of German vital interests in the future cannot take 
place through an inadequate German Defence Force but rather only through a German National Army, that, 
second, the formation of a German National Army is impossible for as long as the present foreign policy 
strangulation of Germany does not slacken, third, that a change of foreign policy obstacles to the organisation of 
a National Army appears possible only if such a new formation is not in general felt as a threat, the following 
fact emerges with respect to a German foreign policy possible at this time: 



Under no circumstances must presentday Germany see her foreign policy in terms of a formal border policy. 
Once the principle of the restoration of the borders of the year 1914 is laid down as the set goal of foreign 
policy, Germany will face a closed phalanx of her former enemies. Then any possibility is excluded of setting 
up another Army which serves our interests more, as against the one whose definite form was determined by the 
peace treaty. Hence the foreign policy slogan of restoration of the borders has become a mere phrase, because it 
can never be realised for the lack of the necessary strength for this. 

It is characteristic that precisely the so called German bourgeoisie, again headed by the patriotic leagues, has 
made its way to this most stupid foreign policy aim. They know that Germany is powerless. They know further 
that, wholly apart from our internal decline, military means would be required for the restoration of our borders, 
and they know further that we do not possess these means as a result of the peace treaty, and also that we cannot 
acquire them in consequence of the solid front of our enemies. But nevertheless they proclaim a foreign policy 
slogan which precisely because of its essential character forever removes the possibility of achieving those 
means of power which would be necessary in order to carry out the slogan. 

This is what is called bourgeois statesmanship, and in its fruits that we see before us it exhibits the 
incomparable spirit that dominates it. 

The Prussia of that time required only seven years, from 1806 to 1813, for her resurgence. In the same time 
bourgeois statesmanship, in union with Marxism, has led Germany up to Locarno. Which is a great success in 
the eyes of the present bourgeois Bismarck, Herr Stresemann, because it offers the possible, which even the 
above mentioned Herr Stresemann could achieve. And politics is the art of the possible. If Bismarck had ever 
imagined that fate would have damned him to endorse with this utterance the statesmanlike qualities of Herr 
Stresemann, he would have surely omitted the utterance, or in a very small note he would have denied Herr 
Stresemann the right to refer to it. 

Thus the slogan of the restoration of the German borders as an aim for the future is doubly stupid and 
dangerous, because, in reality, it in no way encompasses any useful aim worth striving for. 

The German borders of the year 1914 were borders which presented something incomplete in exactly the same 
way as the borders of all nations are at all times incomplete. The territorial distribution of the world at any time 
is the momentary result of a struggle and a development which by no means is concluded, but one which clearly 
continues further. It is stupid to take the border of any sample year in a nation's history, and, offhand, to 
represent it as a political aim. We can, of course, present the border of the year 1648, or that of 1312, and so on, 
just as well as the border of the year 1914. This all the more so as indeed the border of the year 1914 was not 
satisfactory in a national, military or geopolitical sense. It was only the momentary situation in our Folk's 
struggle for existence which has been going on for centuries. And even if the World War had not occurred, this 
struggle would not have had its end in 1914. 

If the German Folk had in fact achieved the restoration of the borders of the year 1914, the sacrifices of the 
World War would have been no less in vain. But also, there would not be the slightest gain for our Folk's future 
in such a restoration. This purely formal border policy of our national bourgeoisie is just as unsatisfactory in its 
possible end result as it is intolerably dangerous. Indeed it need not even be covered by the dictum of the art of 
the possible, for this is, above all, only a theoretical phrase, which nevertheless seems suitable to destroy every 
practical possibility. 


As a matter of fact, such a foreign policy aim also cannot stand up to a real critical examination. Hence attempts 



are made to motivate it less on logical grounds than on grounds of national honour. 


National honour requires that we restore the borders of the year 1914. This is the tenor of the discussions at the 
beer evenings which the representatives of national honour hold on all sides. 

First of all, national honour has nothing to do with the obligation to conduct a stupid and impossible foreign 
policy. For the result of a bad foreign policy can be the loss of a Folk's freedom, whose consequence is slavery, 
and which certainly cannot be viewed as a condition of national honour. To be sure a certain degree of national 
dignity and honour can still be preserved under oppression, but then this is not a question of shouting or national 
phrases, and so on, but, on the contrary, the expression which is to be found in the decorum with which a Folk 
bears its fate. 

Let there be no talk in presentday Germany, above all, of national honour, let no one try to make himself 
conspicuous, as though one could preserve the national honour outwardly by any kind of rhetorical barking. No, 
this cannot be done, and for the reason that it is no longer there. And by no means is it no longer there because 
we lost the War, or because the French occupied Alsace-Lorraine, or the Poles stole Upper Silesia, or the 
Italians took the Southern Tyrol. No, the national honour is no longer there because the German Folk, in the 
most difficult time of its struggle for existence, exposed to the light of day a lack of character, an unabashed 
servility, a dog l ik e crawling fawning that can only be called shameless. For the reason that we subjected 
ourselves miserably without being forced to do so, indeed because the leaders of this Folk, against eternal 
historical truth and our own knowledge, themselves assumed the war guilt, and indeed burdened our whole Folk 
with it, because there was no oppression by the enemy which would have not found thousands of creatures as 
willing helpers among our Folk. Because, conversely, there were those who shamelessly reviled the time of the 
great deeds of our Folk, spat upon the most glorious flag of all times, indeed defiled it with dirt, tore the 
cockades from home coming soldiers before whom the world had trembled, pelted the flag with mud balls, 
ripped off ribbons and badges of honour, and degraded a thousandfold even the memory of Germany's greatest 
period. No enemy had so reviled the German Army as it was defiled by the representatives of the November 
crime. No enemy had disputed the greatness of the Commanders of the German Army as much as they were 
calumniated by the scoundrelly representatives of the new idea of government. And which was more certain 
dishonour for our Folk: the occupation of German areas by the enemy, or the cowardice with which our 
bourgeoisie surrendered the German Reich to an organisation of pimps, pickpockets, deserters, black marketeers 
and hack journalists? Let not the gentlemen prattle now about German honour, as long as they bow under the 
rule of dishonour. They have no right to want to conduct a foreign policy in the name of national honour, if the 
domestic policy is one characterised by the most antinationalist shamelessness which has ever afflicted a great 
nation. 

Whoever wants to act in the name of German honour today must first launch a merciless war against the 
infernal defilers of German honour. They are not the enemies of yore, but they are the representatives of the 
November crime. That collection of Marxist, democratic pacifistic, destructive traitors of our country who 
pushed our Folk into its present state of powerlessness. 

To revile former enemies in the name of national honour and recognise the shameless allies of this enemy as the 
rulers within their own country — that suits the national dignity of this presentday so called national bourgeoisie. 

I frankly confess that I could reconcile myself to any of the former enemy, but that my hatred against the 
betrayers of our own Folk in our ranks is and remains irreconcilable. 



What the enemy inflicted on us is grievous and deeply humiliating to us, but the wrong committed by the men 
of the November crime is the most dishonourable, the basest crime of all times. I am helping to make amends 
for German honour by striving to bring about a situation in which these creatures will some day be called to 
account. 

I must, however, reject the idea that any other grounds could be a standard for the ordering of foreign policy 
save that of the responsibility of securing the freedom and the future of the life of our Folk. 

The whole senselessness of the patriotic national bourgeois border policy shows itself on the basis of the 
following consideration: 

If the avowal of German as the mother tongue is used as a basis, the German nation numbers.Folk. 

Of this figure,.millions are in the mother country. 

In which.Consequently, of all the Germans in the world, there are only.millions within the present 

Reich territory, who represent.percent of the total number of our Folk altogether. 








Chapter 9 


HOPELESSNESS OF AN ECONOMIC SOLUTION 


Of the Germans not united with the motherland, in consequence of the slow loss of dedicated racial comrades, 

the following must be regarded, that is, a total number of approximately.million Germans find 

themselves in a situation which, in all human probability, will one day cause their de-Germanisation. In no case, 
however, will they be able to take further part in the motherland's fateful struggle in any kind of decisive form, 
and just as little, too, in the cultural development of their Folk. Whatever the German element individually 
accomplishes in North America, it will not be reckoned to the benefit of the German Folk as such, but adds to 
the cultural aggregate of the American Union. Here the Germans are really only the cultural fertilisers for other 
Folks. Indeed, in reality, the greatness of these nations is, in general, not seldom to be ascribed to the high 
percentage of German contributions and accomplishments. 

Once we keep the size of this constant loss of people in view, we will immediately be able to estimate the slight 
importance of the border policy sponsored by the bourgeois world. 

Even if a German foreign policy were to restore the borders of the year 1914, the percentage of Germans living 

within the Reich territory, that is, belonging to our nation, would rise despite this only, from.percent to 

.percent. Thus the possibility of enlarging this percentage considerably could hardly be in question any 

more. 

If, notwithstanding, the German element abroad wants to remain true to the nation, this can at the outset be only 
a question of a language and cultural loyalty, in that the more it rises to a consciously manifested feeling of 
belongingness, the more does the motherland of the German nation honour the German name in the dignity of 
her representatives. 

Thus the more Germany as a Reich transmits a mark of the greatness of the German Folk to the world, the more 
will the German element conclusively lost to the State receive a stimulus at least to take pride in belonging 
spiritually to this Folk. On the other hand, the more wretchedly the motherland herself attends to her interests, 
and accordingly transmits a bad impression abroad, the weaker will the inner inducement be felt to belong to 
such a Folk. 

Since the German Folk does not consist of Jews, the German element, especially in Anglosaxon countries, 
nevertheless and unfortunately will increasingly be anglicised and presumably likewise be lost to our Folk, 
spiritually and ideologically as well. Just as its practical work accomplishments are already lost to them. 

Insofar, however, as it is a matter of the fate of those Germans who were broken off from the German Nation by 
the events of the World War and the peace treaty, it must be said that their fate and future is a question of 
regaining the motherland's political power. 

Lost territories will not be retrieved by protest actions, but rather by a victorious sword. Thus, whoever today 
desires the liberation of any territory whatsoever in the name of national honour must also be ready to stake all, 
with iron and blood, for the liberation, otherwise such a chatterbox should keep his mouth shut. Along with this, 






to be sure, follows the duty also of carefully considering whether we possess the power to carry out such a 
struggle, and secondly whether the blood risked leads, or can lead, to the desired success, and thirdly, whether 
the success achieved matches the blood that must be staked. 

I most solemnly protest against the claim that a duty of national honour exists which compels us to have two 
million men bleed to death on the battlefield in order that, under the most favourable result, we may be able to 
enter a total of a quarter million men, women and children on our books. This is not national honour that is 
made manifest here, but rather a lack of principle, or madness. It is no national honour, however, for a Folk to 
be ruled by madmen. 

Certainly a great Folk will protect even its last citizen with collective action. But it is an error to impute this to 
sentiment to honour, rather than primarily to a sagacious insight and human experience. As long as a nation 
tolerates an injustice that is inflicted on some of its citizens, it will slowly but increasingly weaken its own 
position, since such a tolerance would serve the inner strengthening of an aggressive minded enemy just as it 
grinds down trust in the strength of one's own State. We know all too well what the consequences are in history 
of a constant yielding in little things, not to know how to be able to judge the necessary consequences in big 
things. Hence a solicitous State leadership will all the more preferably attend to the interests of its citizens in the 
smallest things, as with that the risk of its own commitment is reduced in proportion as that of the adversary 
rises. If today in any State an injustice is committed against an English citizen, and England undertakes her 
citizen's defence, the danger of England being involved in a war on account of this one Englishman is no greater 
for England than for the other State, which inflicts the injustice. Hence the firm action of a government 
respected as such in defence of even a single person is altogether not an unbearable risk, since indeed the other 
State will have just as little interest in starting a war on account of a trifling injustice that may have been 
inflicted on a single person. A general conception of honour has been formulated on the basis of this knowledge 
and the thousand year old application of this principle, namely, that a powerful State take every individual 
citizen under its protection and defend him with all its might. 

Further, through the nature of European hegemony, a certain practice has been developed in the course of time 
to demonstrate this conception of honour in more or less cheap examples, so as to raise the prestige of 
individual European States, or at least to give it a certain stability. As soon as an alleged, or even faked, 
injustice was committed against a Frenchman or an Englishman in certain countries that were weak and less 
powerful militarily, this subject's defence with armed power was undertaken. That is to say, a couple of 
warships put on a military demonstration, which in the worst cases was firing practice with live ammunition, or 
an expeditionary force of some kind was landed with which the power to be punished was to be chastised. Not 
seldom, at the same time, the wish that thus an excuse for intervention might be obtained, was father to the 
thought. 

It would probably never occur to the English even to exchange a note with North America on account of a 
trifling incident for which they would take bloody revenge on Liberia. 

Thus, the more the defence of the individual citizen is undertaken on grounds of pure expediency and with 
every means in a strong State, the less can a Reich, made completely defenceless and powerless, be expected to 
undertake a foreign policy step on the grounds of so called national honour, which perforce must lead, after all, 
to the destruction of its last prospects for the future. For if the German Folk justifies its present border policy, 
espoused in the so called national circles, by the necessity of representing German honour, the result will not be 
the redemption of German honour, but rather the externalisation of German dishonour. That is to say, it is not at 
all dishonourable to have lost territories, but it is dishonourable to conduct a policy which must needs lead to a 
complete enslavement of one's own Folk. And all this only so as to be able to give vent to just ugly talk and to 



avoid action. For this is just a question of empty talk. If we really wanted to establish a policy having national 
honour as its goal, then we must at least entrust this policy to persons worthy of esteem according to all 
common notions of honour. As long, however, as German domestic and foreign policy is conducted by forces 
which, with cynical smirks, proclaim in the Reich Parliament that for them there exists no Fatherland called 
Germany, for just so long will it be the first task of these national bourgeois and patriotic phrase mongering 
heroes merely to secure the simplest recognition of the idea of national honour in Germany through their 
domestic policy. But why do they not do it; indeed, on the contrary, why do they enter coalitions with avowed 
betrayers of the country at the expense of this so called national honour? Because otherwise a difficult struggle 
would be necessary, whose outcome they view with small confidence, and which, indeed, could lead to the 
destruction of their own existence. To be sure, this private existence of theirs is holier than the defence of 
national honour within the country. Yet they gladly risk the nation's future existence for a couple of phrases. 

The national border policy becomes downright senseless if we look beyond both the afflictions and tasks of the 
present to the necessity of shaping a life for our Folk in the future. 

Hence the border policy of our bourgeois patriotic Fatherland circles is especially senseless because it requires 
the greatest blood stakes, and yet contains the smallest prospects for our Folk's future. 

The German Nation is less in a position today than in the years of peace to nourish itself on its own territory. 

All the attempts — either through increasing land yields as such, or by cultivating the last fallow lands — to 
bring about an increase of the German production of foodstuffs, did not enable our Folk to nourish itself from 
its own soil. In fact, the Folk mass now living in Germany can no longer be satisfied with the yield of our soil. 
Every further increase of these yields, however, would not be applied to the benefit of the increment to our 
population, but instead would be completely spent in satisfying the increase of the general living requirements 
of individuals. A model living standard is created here which is primarily determined by a knowledge of 
conditions and of life in the American Union. Just as the living requirements of rural communities rise as a 
result of the slow awareness and the influence of life in the big cities, so do the living requirements of entire 
nations rise under the influence of the life of better situated and richer nations. Not seldom a people's living 
standard, which thirty years before would have appeared as a maximum, is regarded as inadequate simply for 
the reason that in the meanwhile knowledge has been acquired about the living standard of another Folk. Just as 
in general, man, even in the lowest circles, takes for granted appointments which eighty years before were 
unheard of luxuries even for the upper classes. The more space is bridged through modem technology, and 
especially communication, and nations are brought closer together, the more intensive their mutual relations 
become, the more also will living conditions reciprocally leave their mark on each other and seek to 
approximate one another. It is an erroneous opinion that in the long run one can hold a Folk of a definite 
cultural capacity and also of a real cultural importance to an otherwise generally valid living standard by an 
appeal to perceptible facts or even to ideals. The broad masses especially will show no understanding of this. 
They feel the hardship; either they grumble against those who in their opinion are responsible — something 
which is dangerous at least in democratic States, since thereby they provide the reservoir for all attempts at 
revolutionary upheavals — or through their own measures they try to bring about a rectification as they 
understand it and as it arises from their own insight. The fight against the child begins. They want to lead a life 
like others, and cannot. What is more natural than that the responsibility is put on large families, in which no 
joy is taken any more, and which are limited as much as possible as a burdensome evil. 

Hence it is false to believe that the German Folk in the future could acquire an increase in number by an 
increase of its domestic agricultural production. In the most favourable of cases, the upshot is only a satisfaction 
of the increased living requirements as such. But since the increase of these living requirements is dependent on 
the living standard of other nations which, however, stand in a much more favourable relation of population to 



land, they, in the future, too will be far ahead in their living equipment. Consequently this stimulus will never 
die out, and one day either a discrepancy will arise between the living standard of these Folks and those poorly 
provided with land, or the latter will be forced, or believe themselves forced, to reduce their number even 
further. 

The German Folk's prospects are hopeless. Neither the present living space, nor that achieved by a restoration of 
the borders of 1914, will allow us to lead a life analogous to that of the American Folk. If we want this, either 
our Folk's territory must be considerably enlarged, or the German economy will again have to embark on paths 
already known to us since the pre War period. Power is necessary in both cases. Specifically, first of all, in the 
sense of a restoration of our Folk's inner strength, and then in a military mounting of this strength. 

Presentday National Germany, which sees the fulfilment of the national task in its limited border policy, cannot 
deceive herself that the problem of the nation's sustenance will in any way be solved thereby. For even the 
utmost success of this policy of the restoration of the borders of 1914 would bring only a renewal of the 
economic situation of the year 1914. In other words, the question of sustenance which then, as now, was 
completely unsolved, will imperiously force us onto the tracks of world economy and world export. As a matter 
of fact, the German bourgeoisie, and the so called national leagues with it, also think only in economic political 
terms. Production, export and import are the catchwords with which they juggle and from which they hope for 
the Nation's salvation in the future. It is hoped to raise the export capacity through an increase of production, 
and thereby be able to provide adequately for import needs. Only it is completely forgotten that for Germany 
this whole problem, as has already been stressed, is not at all a problem of increasing production, but rather a 
question of sales possibility; and that the export difficulties would not at all be obviated by a reduction of 
German production costs as, again, our bourgeois sly dogs presume. Because, inasmuch as this, in itself, is only 
partly possible in consequence of our limited domestic market, making German export commodities able to 
compete by lowering production costs — for instance, through the dismantling of our social legislation, and the 
duties and burdens resulting therefrom — it will only bring us thither, where we had landed on August 4th, 1914. 
It really is part of the whole incredible bourgeois national naivete to presume that England would or ever could 
tolerate a German competition dangerous to her. Yet, these are the very same people who well know, and who 
always stress, that Germany did not want a war in 1914, but that instead she was literally pushed into it. And 
that it was England who, out of sheer competitive envy, gathered together former enemies and let loose against 
Germany. Today, however, these incorrigible economic dreamers imagine that England, after having risked the 
whole existence of her world empire in the monstrous four and one half year World War, and in which she 
remained the victor, will now view German competition differently than at that time. As if for England this 
whole question were a sporting matter. No. For decades before the War, England had tried to break the 
threatening German economic competition, the growing German maritime trade, and so on, with economic 
countermeasures. Only when they were forced to understand that this would not succeed, and when on the 
contrary Germany, by building her Navy, showed that she was actually determined to carry out her economic 
warfare to the extent of the peaceful conquest of the world, did England as a last resort invoke violence. And 
now, after she has remained the victor, they think they can play the game all over again; whereas, on top of all 
this, Germany today is not at all in a position to throw any kind of power factor into the scales, thanks indeed to 
her domestic and foreign policy. 

The attempt to restore our Folk's sustenance and to be able to maintain it by the increase of our production and 
by reducing the costs of the same, ultimately will fail for the reason that we cannot undertake the final 
consequence of this struggle because of the lack of military power. Thus the end would be a collapse of the 
German Folk's sustenance and of all these hopes along with it. Entirely aside from the fact, too, that now even 
the American Union is emerging in all fields as the sharpest competitor to all European nations fighting as 
export nations for the world's markets. The size and the wealth of her domestic market permits production 
figures and thereby production equipment which so reduce manufacturing costs that, despite enormous wages, it 



no longer seems possible to undercut her prices. Here the development of the automobile industry may be 
considered as a warning example. Not only because we Germans, for instance, despite our laughable wages, are 
not in a position, even only to a degree, to export successfully against American competition, but we must also 
look on as American cars spread alarmingly even to our own country. This is possible only because the size of 
her domestic market, her wealth in purchasing power and also in raw materials, guarantees the American 
automobile industry domestic sales figures which alone make possible manufacturing methods which in Europe 
would be impossible in consequence of the lack of these domestic sales potentials. The consequence of this is 
the enormous export possibilities of the American automobile industry. Thus here it is a question of the general 
motorising of the world that is a matter of incommensurable importance for the future. For the replacement of 
human and animal power by motors is only at the beginning of its development, whose end cannot at all be 
foreseen today. At any rate, for the American Union, the modern automobile industry is on the whole at the 
forefront of all other industries. 

Thus in many other areas, our continent will increasingly appear as an economic factor, in an aggressive form, 
and thereby help to sharpen the struggle for the sales market. From an examination of all factors, especially in 
view of the limitation of our own raw materials and the ensuing threatening dependence on other countries, 
Germany's future perforce appears very gloomy and sad. 

But even if Germany were to master all her increasing economic difficulties, she would still be in the same spot 
as she had already been on August 4th, 1914. The ultimate decision as to the outcome of the struggle for the 
world market will lie in power, and not in economics. 

It has been our curse, however, that even in peacetime a great part of the national bourgeoisie, precisely, was 
permeated by the idea that power could be renounced through an economic policy. Today, its chief 
representatives are also to be sought in those more or less pacifistic circles who, as the adversaries and enemies 
of all heroic, Folkish virtues, would be glad to see a Statepreserving, indeed even a Stateforming, strength in 
economics. But the more a Folk accepts the belief that it can maintain its life only through peaceful economic 
activity, the more will its very economy be surrendered to collapse. For, ultimately, economics, as a purely 
secondary matter in national life, is linked to the primary existence of a strong State. The sword had to stand 
before the plough, and an Army before economics. 

If it is believed that we can renounce this in Germany, our Folk's sustenance will be wrecked. 

As soon, however, as a Folk in general once impregnates its life with the thought that it can find its daily 
subsistence through peaceful economic activity alone, the less will it think of a violent solution in case this 
attempt should fail; on the contrary, it will then all the more try to take the easiest path to overcome the 
miscarriage of the economy without thereby having to risk its blood. As a matter of fact, Germany already finds 
herself in the middle of this situation. Emigration and birth control are the medicines recommended for our 
nation's salvation by the representatives of pacifistic economic policy and the Marxist view of the State. 

The result of following these counsels, especially for Germany, will be of the most fateful importance. Germany 
is racially composed of so many unequal constituent elements that a permanent emigration perforce will remove 
from our Nation people who have the greatest capacity for resistance, who are the boldest and most determined. 
These, above all, like the Vikings of yore, will also today be the bearers of Nordic blood. This slow diminution 
of the Nordic element leads to a lowering of our general race value and thus to a weakening of our technical, 
cultural, and also civic political productive forces. Hence, the consequences of this weakening will be especially 
grievous for the future, because there now appears as a dynamic actor in world history a new State, which, as a 
truly European colony, has for centuries received the best Nordic forces of Europe by way of emigration; aided 



by the community of their original blood, these have built a new, fresh community of the highest racial value. It 
is no accident that the American Union is the State in which at the present time most inventions are being made 
by far, some of which are of an incredible boldness. Americans, as a young, racially select Folk, confront Old 
Europe, which has continually lost much of its best blood through war and emigration. Just as little as one can 
equate the accomplishment of one thousand degenerate Levantines in Europe, say in Crete, with the 
accomplishment of one thousand racially still more valuable Germans or Englishmen, so can one just as little 
equate the accomplishment of one thousand racially questionable Europeans to the capacity of one thousand 
racially highly valuable Americans. Only a conscious Folkish race policy would be able to save European 
nations from losing the law of action to America, in consequence of the inferior value of European Folks vis-a- 
vis the American Folk. If in place of this, however, the German Folk, along with a bastardisation systematically 
conducted by Jews with inferior human material and a lowering of its racial value as such caused thereby, also 
lets its best bloodbearers be taken away by a continuation of emigration in hundreds upon hundreds of 
thousands of individual specimens, it will slowly sink to the level of an equally inferior race, and hence to that 
of an incompetent and valueless Folk. The danger is especially great since, because of the complete indifference 
on our side, the American Union itself, inspired by the teachings of its own ethnologists, has established special 
standards for immigration. By making entry to American soil dependent on definite racial prerequisites on the 
one hand, as well as on the definite physical health of the individual as such, bleeding Europe of its best people 
has, indeed, perforce been legally regulated. This is something which our whole so called national bourgeois 
world and all its economic politicians either do not see, or, at least, will not hear of because it is unpleasant to 
them, and because it is much cheaper to pass over these things with a couple of general national phrases. 

To this lowering, imposed by Nature, of the general value of our Folk by forced emigration in consequence of 
our economic policy, is added birth control as a second disadvantage. I have already set forth the consequences 
of the fight against the child. They lie in a reduction of the count of individuals brought to life, so that a further 
selection cannot take place. On the contrary, people take pains that all who are once born are kept alive under 
any circumstances. Since, however, ability, energy, and so on, are not necessarily connected with the first born, 
but instead become visible in each case only in the course of the struggle for existence, the possibility of a 
weeding out and a selection according to such criteria is removed. Nations become impoverished in talents and 
energies. Again, this is especially bad in nations in which the dissimilarity of basic racial elements extends even 
into families. For then, according to the Mendelian Law Of Division, a separation takes place in every family 
which can partly be attributed to one racial side, partly to the other. If, however, these racial values vary in their 
importance for a Folk, then even the value of the children of one family already will be dissimilar on racial 
grounds. Since the firstborn in no way must grow according to the racially valuable sides of both parents, it lies 
in the interest of a nation that later life at least search out the more racially valuable from among the total 
number of children, through the struggle for existence, and preserve them for the nation and, conversely, put the 
nation in the possession of the accomplishments of these racially valuable individuals. But if man himself 
prevents the procreation of a greater number of children and limits himself to the firstborn or at least to the 
secondborn, he will nevertheless want to preserve especially these inferior racial elements of the nation, even if 
these do not possess the most valuable characteristics. Thus he artificially hinders nature's process of selection, 
he prevents it, and thereby helps to impoverish a nation of powerful personalities. He destroys the peak value of 
a Folk. 

The German Folk which, as such, does not have that average value, as for example the English, will be 
especially dependent on personality values. The extraordinary extremes that we can observe everywhere in our 
Folk are only the after effects of our disruption, determined by blood, into superior and inferior racial elements. 
In general, the Englishman will have a better average. Perhaps he will never arrive at the harmful depths of our 
Folk, but also never at its heights of brilliance. Therefore, his life will move along a more average line and be 
filled with a greater steadiness. In contrast, German life in everything is infinitely unstable and restless and 
acquires its importance only by its extraordinarily high achievements, through which we make amends for the 



disquieting aspects of our Nation. Once, however, the personal bearers of these high achievements are removed 
through an artificial system, these very achievements cease. Then our Folk moves toward a permanent 
pauperisation of personality values, and thereby to a lowering of its whole cultural and spiritual importance. 

If this condition should continue for just several hundred years, our German Folk would be, at the least, so 
weakened in its general importance that it would no longer be able to raise any kind of claim to be called a Folk 
of world consequence. In any case, it will no longer be in a position to keep pace with the deeds of the 
considerably younger, healthier American Folk. Then, because of a great number of causes, we ourselves will 
experience what not a few old cultural Folks prove in their historical development. Through their vices, and in 
consequence of their thoughtlessness, the Nordic bloodbearer was slowly eliminated as the most racially 
valuable element of the bearers of culture and founders of States, and thereby they left behind a human 
hodgepodge of such slight intrinsic importance that the law of action was wrested from their hands to pass over 
to other younger and healthier Folks. 

All of south eastern Europe, especially the still older cultures of Asia Minor and Persia, as well as those of the 
Mesopotamian lowlands, provide classroom examples of the course of this process. 

Thus, just as here history was slowly shaped by the racially more valuable Folks of the Occident, the danger 
likewise arises that the importance of racially inferior Europe slowly is leading to a new determination of the 
world's fate by the Folk of the North American continent. 

That this danger threatens all Europe has, after all, already been perceived by some today. Only few of them 
wish to understand what it means for Germany. Our Folk, if it lives with the same political thoughtlessness in 
the future as in the past, will have to renounce its claim to world importance once and for all. Racially, it will 
increasingly atrophy until it finally sinks to degenerate, animallike feed bags lacking as well the memory of past 
greatness. As a State in the future order of World States, they will at best be like that which Switzerland and 
Holland have been in Europe up to now. 

This will be the end of the life of a Folk whose history has been two thousand years of world history. 

This fate will no longer be changed with stupid national bourgeois phrases whose practical senselessness and 
worthlessness must already have been proved by the success of development up to now. Only a new 
reformation movement, which sets a conscious knowledge against racial thoughtlessness and draws all the 
conclusions from this knowledge, can still snatch our Folk back from this abyss. 

It will be the task of the National Socialist Movement to carry over into a policy applied in practice the 
knowledge and scientific insights of race theory, either already existing or in the course of development, as well 
as the world history clarified through it. 

Since today Germany's economic fate vis-a-vis America is in fact also the fate of other nations in Europe, there 
is again a movement of credulous followers, especially among our Folk, who want to oppose a European union 
to the American Union in order thereby to prevent a threatening world hegemony of the North American 
continent. 

For these people, the Pan European Movement, at least at first sight, really seems to have much that is alluring 
about it. Indeed, if we could judge world history according to economic viewpoints, it could even be pertinent. 
Two are always more than one for the mechanic of history, and thus for the mechanical politician. But values, 



not numbers, are decisive in the life of nations. That the American Union was able to achieve such a threatening 

height is not based on the fact that.million people form a State there, but on the fact that.square 

kilometres of the most fertile and the richest soil is inhabited by.million people of the highest race value. 

That these people form a State has a heightened importance for the other parts of the world, despite the 
territorial size of their living area, insofar as an organisation, all encompassing, exists thanks to which, indeed, 
the racially conditioned individual value of these people, can find a compact deployment of collective forces for 
fighting through the struggle for existence. 

If this were not correct, if the importance of the American Union thus lay in the size of the population alone, or 
else in the size of the territory, or in the relation in which this territory stands to the size of the population, then 

Russia would be at least as dangerous for Europe. Presentday Russia encompasses.million people on 

.million square kilometres. These people are also comprised in a State structure whose value, taken 

traditionally, would have to be even higher than that of the American Union. Despite this, however, it would 
never occur to anybody to fear a Russian hegemony over the world for this reason. No such inner value is 
attached to the number of the Russian people, so that this number could become a danger for the freedom of the 
world. At least never in the sense of an economic and power political rule of the other parts of the globe, but at 
best in the sense of an inundation of disease bacilli which at the moment have their focus in Russia. 

If, however, the importance of the threatening American position of hegemony seems to be conditioned 
primarily by the value of the American Folk, and then only secondarily by the size of this Folk's given living 
space and the favourable relation between population and soil resulting therefrom, this hegemony will not be 
eliminated by a purely formal numerical unification of European nations, so far as their inner value is not higher 
than that of the American Union. Otherwise, present day Russia would necessarily appear as the greatest danger 
to this American Union, as would China, still more, which is inhabited by over 400 million people. 

Thus, first and foremost, the Pan European Movement rests on the fundamental basic error that human values 
can be replaced by human numbers. This is a purely mechanical conception of history which avoids an 
investigation of all shaping forces of life, in order, in their stead, to see in numerical majorities the creative 
sources of human culture as well as the formative factors of history. This conception is in keeping with the 
senselessness of our western democracy as with the cowardly pacifism of our high economic circles. It is 
obvious that it is the ideal of all inferior or half breed bastards. Likewise, that the Jew especially welcomes such 
a conception. For, logically pursued, it leads to racial chaos and confusion, to a bastardisation and Negrification 
of cultural mankind, and thereby ultimately to such a lowering of its racial value that the Hebrew who has kept 
free of this can slowly rise to world domination. At least, he fancies that ultimately he will be able to develop 
into the brain of this mankind which has become worthless. 

Aside from this fundamental basic error of the Pan European Movement, even the idea of a unification of 
European States, forced by a general insight emerging from a threatened distress, is a fantastic, historically 
impossible childishness. Thereby, I do not mean to say that such a unification under a Jewish protectorate and 
Jewish impulsion as such would not be possible from the outset, but only that the result could not match the 
hopes for which the whole monkey business sets the stage. Let no one believe that such a European coalition 
could mobilise any strength that would manifest itself externally. It is an old experience that a lasting 
unification of nations can take place only if it is a question of nations which are racially equivalent and related 
as such, and if, secondly, their unification takes place in the form of a slow process of struggle for hegemony. 
Thus did Rome once subjugate the Latin States one after the other, until finally her strength sufficed to become 
the crystallisation point of a world empire. But this is l ik ewise the history of the birth of the English World 
Empire. Thus, further, did Prussia put an end to the dismemberment of Germany, and thus only in this way 
could a Europe one day rise that could attend to the interests of its population in a compact governmental form. 








But — this would only be the result of a centuries long struggle, since an infinite quantity of old customs and 
traditions must be overcome and an assimilation of Folks who are already extraordinarily divergent racially 
would have to materialise. The difficulty, then, of giving a unitary State language to such a structure can 
likewise be solved only in a centuries long process. 

However all this would not be the realisation of the present Pan European train of thought, but rather the 
success of the struggle for existence of the strongest nations of Europe. And what remained would as little be a 
Pan Europe as, for instance, the unification of the Latin States formerly was a Pan Latinisation. The power 
which at that time had fought through this unification process in centuries long battles gave its name forever to 
the whole structure. And the power which would create a Pan Europe along such natural ways would thereby at 
the same time rob it of the designation Pan Europe. 

But even in such a case, the desired success would not materialise. For once any European great power today — 
and naturally it could involve only a power which was valuable according to its Folkdom, that is, racially 
important — brings Europe to unity along these lines, the final completion of this unity would signify the racial 
submersion of its founders, and thereby remove even the last value from the whole structure. It would never be 
possible thereby to create a structure which could bear up against the American Union. 

In the future only the State which has understood how to raise the value of its Folkdom and to bring it to the 
most expedient State form for this, through its inner life as well as through its foreign policy, will be able to 
face up to North America. By posing such a solution as possible, a whole number of States will be able to 
participate, which can and will lead to a heightened fitness if for no other reason than the mutual competition. 

It is again the task of the National Socialist Movement to strengthen and to prepare to the utmost its own 
Fatherland itself for this task. 

The attempt, however, to realise the Pan European idea through a purely formal unification of European 
nations, without having to be forced in centuries long struggles by a European ruling power, would lead to a 
structure whose whole strength and energy would be absorbed by the inner rivalries and disputes exactly as 
formerly the strength of the German clans in the German Union. Only when the internal German question had 
been finally solved through Prussia's power superiority could a commitment of the Nation's united strength 
beyond its borders ensue. It is frivolous, however, to believe that the contest between Europe and America will 
always be only of a peaceful economic nature, if economic motives develop into determining vital factors. In 
general, it lay in the nature of the rise of the North American State that at first it could exhibit little interest in 
foreign policy problems. Not only in consequence of the lack of a long governmental tradition, but rather 
simply in consequence of the fact that within the American continent itself extraordinarily large areas stood at 
the disposal of man's natural urge for expansion. Hence, the policy of the American Union, from the moment of 
breaking away from the European mother State to most recent times, was primarily a domestic one. Indeed, the 
struggles for freedom were themselves at bottom nothing but the shaking off of foreign policy commitments in 
favour of a life viewed exclusively in terms of domestic policy. In proportion as the American Folk increasingly 
fulfil the tasks of internal colonisation, the natural, activist urge that is peculiar to young nations will turn 
outward. But then the surprises which the world may perchance still experience could least of all be seriously 
opposed by a pacifistic democratic Pan European hodgepodge State. According to the conception of that 
everybody's bastard, Coudenhove, this Pan Europe would one day play the same role vis-a-vis the American 
Union, or a nationally awakened China that was formerly played by the old Austrian State vis-a-vis Germany or 
Russia. 


Really, there is no need to refute the opinion that just because a fusion of Folks of different nationalities has 



taken place in the American Union, this must also be possible in Europe. The American Union, to be sure, has 
brought people of different nationalities together into a young nation. But closer scrutiny discloses that the 
overwhelming majority of these different ethnic groups racially belong to similar or at least related basic 
elements. For since the emigration process in Europe was a selection of the fittest, this fitness in all European 
Folks lying primarily in the Nordic admixture, the American Union, in fact, has drawn to itself the scattered 
Nordic elements from among Folks who were very different as such. If, in addition, we take into account that it 
involved people who were not the bearers of any kind of theory of government, and consequently were not 
burdened by any kind of tradition, and, further, the dimensions of the impact of the new world to which all 
people are more or less subject, it becomes understandable why a new nation, made up of peoples from all 
European countries, could arise in less than two hundred years. It must be considered, however, that already in 
the last century this fusion process became more difficult in proportion as, under the pressure of need, 
Europeans went to North America, who, as members of European national States, not only felt themselves 
united with them Folkishly for the future, but who particularly prized their national tradition more highly than 
citizenship in their new homeland. Moreover, even the American Union has not been able to fuse people of 
alien blood who are stamped with their own national feeling or race instinct. The American Union's power of 
assimilation has failed vis-a-vis the Chinese as well as vis-a-vis the Japanese element. They also sense this well 
and know it, and therefore they would best prefer to exclude these alien bodies from immigration. But thereby 
American immigration policy itself confirms that the earlier fusion presupposed peoples of definite equal race 
foundations, and immediately miscarried as soon as it involved people who were fundamentally different. That 
the American Union itself feels itself to be a Nordic German State, and in no way an international mishmash of 
Folks, further emerges from the manner in which it allots immigration quotas to European nations. 
Scandinavians, that is, Swedes, Norwegians, further Danes, then Englishmen, and finally Germans, are allotted 
the greatest contingents. Rumanians and Slavs very little, Japanese and Chinese they would prefer to exclude 
altogether. Consequently, it is a Utopia to oppose a European coalition or a Pan Europe, consisting of Mongols, 
Slavs, Germans, Latins, and so on, in which all others than Teutons would dominate, as a factor capable of 
resistance, to this racially dominant, Nordic State. A very dangerous Utopia, to be sure, if we consider that 
again countless Germans see a rosy future for which they will not have to make the most grievous sacrifices. 
That this Utopia of all things came out of Austria is not without a certain comedy. For, after all, this State and 
its fate is the liveliest example of the enormous strength of structures artificially glued together but which are 
unnatural in themselves. It is the rootless spirit of the old imperial city of Vienna, that hybrid city of the Orient 
and the Occident, which thereby speaks to us. 



Chapter 10 


ON NECESSITY FOR AN ACTIVE FOREIGN POLICY 


Summing up, therefore, it can be reiterated that our bourgeois national policy, the foreign policy aim of which is 
the restoration of the borders of the year 1914, is senseless and indeed catastrophic. It perforce brings us into 
conflict with all the States which took part in the World War. Thus it guarantees the continuance of the coalition 
of victors which is slowly choking us. It thereby always assures France a favourable official opinion in other 
parts of the world for her eternal proceedings against Germany. Even were it successful, it would signify nothing 
at all for Germany's future in its results, and nevertheless compel us to fight with blood and steel. Further, it 
altogether prevents in particular any stability of German foreign policy. 

It was characteristic of our pre War policy that it necessarily gave an outside observer the image of decisions 
often as wavering as they were incomprehensible. If we disregard the Triple Alliance, the maintenance of which 
could not be a foreign policy aim but only a means to such an aim, we can discover no stable idea in the leaders 
of our Folk's fate in the pre War period. This is naturally incomprehensible. The moment the foreign policy aim 
no longer signified a struggle for the German Folk's interests, but rather the preservation of world peace, we lost 
the ground under our feet. I can certainly outline a Folk's interests, establish them, and, regardless of how the 
possibilities of their advocacy stand, I can nevertheless keep the great aim uninterruptedly in view. Gradually the 
rest of mankind will also acquire a general knowledge of a nation's special, definite, chief foreign policy ideas. 
This then offers the possibility of regulating mutual relations in a permanent way, either in the sense of an 
intended resistance against the known operation of such a power, or a reasonable awareness of it, or also in the 
sense of an understanding, since, perhaps, one's own interests can be achieved along a common path. 

This stability in foreign policy can be established with a whole series of European States. For long periods of her 
existence, Russia exhibited definite foreign policy aims which dominated her whole activity. In the course of the 
centuries, France has always represented the same foreign policy aims regardless who embodied political power 
in Paris at the moment. We may speak of England not only as a State with a traditional diplomacy, but above all 
as a State with a foreign policy idea become a tradition. With Germany, such an idea could be discerned only 
periodically in the Prussian State. We see Prussia fulfil her German mission in the short period of the 
Bismarckian statecraft, but thereafter any foreign policy aim staked out far in advance came to an end. The new 
German Reich, especially after Bismarck's retirement, no longer had such an aim since the slogan of preserving 
peace, that is, of maintaining a given situation, does not possess any kind of stable content or character. Just as 
any passive slogan is doomed in reality to be the plaything of an aggressive will. Only he who himself wants to 
act can also determine his action according to his will. Hence the Triple Entente, which wanted to act, also had 
all the advantages which lie in the self determination of action, whereas the Triple Alliance through its 
contemplative tendency to preserve world peace was at a disadvantage to the same degree. Thus the timing and 
opening of a war was established by nations with a definite foreign policy aim, whereas, conversely, the Triple 
Alliance powers were surprised by it at an hour that was everything but favourable. If we in Germany ourselves 
had had even the slightest bellicose intention, it would have been possible through a number of measures, which 
could have been carried out without effort, to have given another face to the start of the War. But Germany never 
had a definite foreign policy aim in view, she never thought of any kind of aggressive steps for the realisation of 
this aim, and consequently events caught her by surprise. 


From Austria-Hungary we could hope for no other foreign policy aim as such, save that of wriggling through the 



hazards of European politics, so that the rotten State structure as much as possible nowhere bumps into anything, 
in order thus to conceal from the world the real inner character of this monstrous corpse of a State. 


The German national bourgeoisie, which alone is under discussion here — since international Marxism as such 
has no other aim but Germany's destruction — even today has learned nothing from the past. Even today it does 
not feel the necessity of setting for the nation a foreign policy aim that may be regarded as satisfactory, and 
thereby give our foreign policy endeavours a certain stability for a more or less long time. For only if such a 
possible foreign policy goal appears fundamentally staked out can we discuss in detail the possibilities that can 
lead to success. Only then does politics enter the stage of the art of the possible. As long, however, as this whole 
political life is not dominated by any leading idea, individual actions will not have the character of utilising all 
possibilities for the achievement of a certain success as such. Instead, they are but individual stations along the 
way of an aimless and planless muddling through from today to tomorrow. Above all is lost that certain 
persistence which the execution of great aims always requires; that is: one will try this today and that tomorrow, 
and the day after one will have this foreign policy possibility in view, and suddenly pay homage to a wholly 
opposite intention — insofar, that is, as this visible confusion as confusion is not actually in keeping with the 
wish of that power which rules Germany today, and in truth does not wish for a resurgence of our Folk ever. 

Only international Jewry can possess a lively interest in a German foreign policy which by its continual, 
seemingly irrational, sudden transitions, lacks that clear plan, and which, as its only justification, at best asserts: 
Indeed, we too naturally don't know what should be done, but we do something precisely because something 
must be done. Yes, not seldom can we actually hear that these men are so little convinced of the inner sense of 
their foreign policy actions that, as highest motivation, they can only inquire whether somebody else may know 
a better one. This is the foundation on which the statecraft of a Gustav Stresemann rests. 

In contrast, precisely today more than ever is it necessary for the German Folk to set itself a foreign policy goal 
which meets its real inner needs and, conversely, guarantees an unconditional stability to its foreign policy 
activity for the humanly predictable proximate period of time. For only if our Folk fundamentally determines 
and persistently fights for its interests in such a way, can it hope to induce this or that State whose interests are 
not opposed to ours, now at last established, and which indeed may even be parallel, to enter into a closer union 
with Germany. For the idea of wanting to solve our Folk's distress through the Feague Of Nations is exactly as 
unjustified as it was to let the German question be decided by the Frankfurt Federal Parliament. 

The satisfied nations dominate the Feague Of Nations. Indeed, it is their instrument. To a large measure they 
have no interest in allowing a change in the territorial distribution of the globe, unless it again appeals to their 
interests. And while they talk about the rights of small nations, in reality it is only the interests of the largest they 
have in view. 

If Germany again wants to achieve a real freedom so that, under its blessing, she can give the German Folk its 
daily bread, she must take the measures thereto outside the Parliament Of The Feague Of Nations in Geneva. But 
then, for the lack of sufficient strength, it will be necessary that she find allies who can believe that they may 
also serve their own interests by going along with Germany. Such a situation, however, will never arise if 
Germany's real foreign policy aim has not become fully clear to these nations. And, above all, Germany by 
herself will never acquire the strength and inner force for that persistence necessary, alas, to sweep away the 
obstacles of world history. For then one will never learn how to have patience in particulars, and also to 
renounce them if necessary, in order finally to be able to achieve the vitally necessary aim on a large scale. For 
even among allies, relations will never be completely frictionless. Disturbances of reciprocal relations can arise 
over and over again to assume threateningly dangerous forms if the strength to overcome these petty 
unpleasantnesses and obstacles does not lie in the very dimensions of the foreign policy aim ultimately staked 
out. Here the French national leadership of the pre War decades may serve as an exemplary model. How it 
lightly passed over small matters, indeed, even remained silent before the most bitter events, so as not to lose the 



possibility of organising a war of revenge against Germany, in such contrast to our eternally bawling hurrah!- 
patriots, and, consequently, their frequent barking at the moon. 


The staking out of a clear foreign policy aim appears as important, furthermore, for the reason that, otherwise, 
the representatives of other interests among one's own Folk will always find it possible to confuse public 
opinion, and to make, and in part even provoke, petty incidents into a cause for the radical change of opinion on 
foreign policy. Thus, out of the petty disputes which result from conditions themselves or which are artificially 
fabricated, France will again and again try to bring about ill feeling, indeed estrangement, among nations which, 
by the whole nature of their real vital interests, would be dependent upon each other, and which perforce would 
have to take a stand against France in concert. Such attempts, however, will be successful only if in consequence 
of the lack of an unshakeable political aim, one's own political actions do not possess a true stability, and above 
all, because persistence in the preparation of measures serviceable to the fulfilment of one's own political aim is 
also lacking. 

The German Folk, which possesses neither a foreign policy tradition nor a foreign policy aim, will by itself 
rather be inclined to pay homage to Utopian ideals, and thereby neglect its real vital interest. For what has our 
Folk not raved over in the last hundred years? Now it was Greeks whom we wanted to save from the Turks, then 
Turks on whom we bestowed our affection against Russians and Italians, after which our Folk again found an 
enchantment in waxing enthusiastic over Polish freedom fighters, and then in indulging their feelings for the 
Boers, and so on. But what have all these most stupid soulful gushings, as incompetent politically as they were 
garrulous, cost our Folk? 

Thus the relation to Austria, as was emphasised with special pride, was not one of practical understanding, but a 
true inner alliance of the heart. If only reason instead of the heart had spoken at this time, and understanding had 
decided, Germany would be saved today. But for the very reason that we are the kind of a Folk which lets its 
political actions be determined too little according to the grounds of a really reasonable, rational insight — for 
which reason we cannot look back on any great political tradition — we must, at least for the future, give our 
Folk an unshakeable foreign policy aim which seems suitable for making the political measures of the State 
leadership understandable to the broad masses in their particulars. Only thus will it be ultimately possible that 
millions with a divining faith will stand behind a government leadership which carries out decisions which in 
their particulars may have something painful about them. This is a prerequisite for bringing about a mutual 
understanding between the Folk and the State leadership and, to be sure, also a prerequisite for anchoring the 
State leadership itself in a certain tradition. It will not do that every German government have its own foreign 
policy goal. One can quarrel only over the means, one can dispute over them, but the goal itself must be 
established as unchangeable once and for all. Then politics can become the great art of the possible, that is, it is 
reserved to the brilliant abilities of the individual government leaders to perceive the possibilities, from instance 
to instance, of bringing the Folk and the Reich nearer to its foreign policy aim 

This setting of a foreign policy goal is altogether non existent in presentday Germany. Hence the unguided, 
wavering and unsure manner of attending to our Folk's interests becomes understandable, as does also the whole 
confusion of our public opinion. Hence also the incredible capers of our foreign policy which always end 
unhappily without the Folk being even at least capable of judging the persons responsible and really calling them 
to account. No, one does not know what to do. 

To be sure there are not a few people today who fully believe we should do nothing. They boil down their 
opinion to the effect that Germany today must be clever and reserved, that she engage herself nowhere, that we 
must keep the development of events well in view but ourselves not take part in them, in order, one day, to 
assume the role of the laughing third one, who reaps the benefits, while the other two quarrel. 



Yes, yes, our present bourgeois statesmen are so clever and wise. A political judgement which is troubled by no 
knowledge of history. There are not a few proverbs which have become a real curse for our Folk. For example, 
the wiser one yields, or clothes make the man, or one can get through the whole land with hat in hand, or when 
two fight, the third rejoices. 

In the life of nations, at least, the last proverb applies only in a wholly conditional sense. [And this for the 
following reason] Namely, if two quarrel hopelessly within a nation, then a third who is outside a nation can 
win. In the life of nations with one another, however, the ultimate success will be had by States which 
deliberately engage in disputes because the possibility of increasing their strength lies only in a quarrel. There is 
no historical event in the world that cannot be judged from two points of view. The neutrals on one side always 
confront the interventionist on the other. And, in general, the neutrals will always get the worst of it, whereas the 
interventionists rather can claim the benefits for themselves, insofar, indeed, as the party on which they wagered 
does not lose. 

In the life of nations this means the following: If two mighty powers quarrel on this globe, the more or less small 
or large surrounding States either can take part in this struggle, or keep their distance from it. In one case the 
possibility of a gain is not excluded, insofar as the participation takes place on the side which carries off the 
victory. Regardless who wins, however, the neutrals will have no other fate save enmity with the remaining 
victor State. Up to now none of the globe's great States has arisen on the basis of neutrality as a principle of 
political action, but only through struggle. If towering power States as such are on Earth, all that remains for 
small States to do is either to renounce their future altogether, or to fight with the more favourable coalition and 
under its protection, and thus increase their own strength. For the role of the laughing third always presupposes 
that this third already has a power. But whoever is always neutral will never achieve power. For to the extent that 
a Folk's power lies in its inner value, the more does it find its ultimate expression in the organisational form of a 
Folk's fighting forces on the battlefield, created by the will of this inner value. This form, however, will never 
rise if it is not put to the test from time to time. Only under the forge hammer of world history do a Folk's eternal 
values become the steel and iron with which history is made. But he who avoids battles will never attain the 
strength to fight battles. And he who never fights battles will never be the heir of those who struggle with each 
other in a military conflict. For the previous heirs of world history were not, for instance, Folks with cowardly 
concepts of neutrality, but young Folks with better swords. Neither Antiquity nor the Middle Ages nor modem 
times knows even a single example of any power States coming into being save in permanent struggle. Up to 
now, however, the historical heirs have always been power States. In the life of nations, to be sure, even a third 
can be the heir when two quarrel. But then from the very outset this third is already the power which deliberately 
lets two other powers quarrel in order to defeat them once and for all later without a great sacrifice on its part. 
Thereby neutrality loses the character of passive non participation in events altogether, and instead assumes that 
of a conscious political operation. Obviously no sagacious State leadership will begin a struggle without 
weighing the size of its possible stakes and comparing it with the size of the adversary's stakes. But if it has 
perceived the impossibility of being able to fight against a certain powers, all the more so will it be forced to try 
to fight together with this power. For then the strength of the hitherto weaker power can eventually grow out of 
this common struggle, in order if necessary to fight for is own vital interests also against the latter. Let no one 
say that then no power would enter into an alliance with a State which some day itself might become a danger. 
Alliances do not present policy aims, but only means to the aims. We must make use of them today even if we 
know a hundred times that the later development can possibly lead to the opposite. There is no alliance that lasts 
forever. Happy the nations which, in consequence of the complete divergence of their interests, can enter into an 
alliance relationship for a definite time without being forced to a mutual conflict after the cessation of the same. 
But a weak State especially, which wants to achieve power and greatness, must always try to take an active part 
in the general political events of world history. 



When Prussia entered her Silesian War, this too was a relatively secondary phenomenon alongside the violent 
dispute between England and France, which at that time was already in full swing. Perhaps Frederick The Great 
can be reproached for having pulled English chestnuts out of the fire. But would the Prussia ever have arisen 
with which a Bismarck could create a new Reich, if at that time a Hohenzollern prince had sat on the throne 
who, in the knowledge of the future greater evens of world history, preserved his Prussia in a State of pious 
neutrality? The three Silesian Wars brought Prussia more than Silesia. On these battlefields grew those 
Regiments which in the future were to carry the German banners from Weissenburg and Worth up to Sedan, in 
order finally to greet the new emperor of the new Reich in the Hall Of Mirrors in the Palace Of Versailles. 
Prussia at that time was certainly a small State, unimportant in population and territorial size. But by leaping into 
the middle of the great actions of world history, this little State had obtained for itself a legitimisation for the 
founding of the later German Reich. 

And once, even the neutralists triumphed in the Prussian State. This was in the period of Napoleon I. At that time 
it was believed at first that Prussia could remain neutral, and for this she was later punished with the most 
terrible defeat. Both conceptions confronted one another sharply even in the year 1812. The one for neutrality, 
and the other, headed by Baron vom Stein, for intervention. The fact that the neutralists won out in 1812 cost 
Prussia and Germany infinite blood and brought them infinite suffering. And the fact that at last in 1813 the 
interventionists broke through saved Prussia. 

The World War gave the clearest answer to the opinion that one can achieve political success by preserving a 
careful neutrality as a third power. What have the neutrals of the World War achieved practically? Were they the 
laughing third one, for instance? Or does one believe that, in a similar event, Germany would play another role? 
And let no one think that the reason for this lies only in the magnitude of the World War. No, in the future, all 
wars, insofar as they involve great nations, will be Folk's wars of the most gigantic dimensions. As a neutral 
State in any other European conflict, Germany, however, would possess no more importance than Holland or 
Switzerland or Denmark, and so on, in the World War. Does one really think that after the event we would get 
out of nowhere the strength to play the role against the remaining victor which we did not venture to play in a 
union with one of the two combatants? 

At any rate, the World War has proven one thing explicitly: whoever conducts himself as a neutral in great world 
historical conflicts, may perhaps at first make a little business, but, in terms of power politics, he will thereby 
ultimately also be excluded from a codetermination of the world's fate. 

Thus, had the American Union preserved her neutrality in the World War, today she would be regarded as a 
power of the second rank, regardless of whether England or Germany had emerged as a victor. By entering the 
War, she raised herself to England's naval strength, but in international political terms marked herself as a power 
of decisive importance. Since her entry into the World War the American Union is appraised in a completely 
different way. It lies in the nature of mankind's forgetfulness no longer to know [to forget], after only a short 
time, what the general judgement of a situation had been only a few years before. Just as today we detect a 
complete disregard of Germany's former greatness in the speeches of many foreign statesmen, just as little, 
conversely, can we appraise the extent of the increase in value that the American Union has experienced in our 
judgement since her entry into the World War. 

This is also the most compelling statesmanlike justification for Italy's entry into the War against her former 
allies. Had Italy not taken this step, she would now share the role of Spain, no matter how the dice had rolled. 
The fact that she carried out the much criticised step to an active participation in the World War brought a rise in 
her position and a strengthening of the same which has found its ultimate crowning expression in Fascism. 
Without her entry into the War, the latter would have been a completely unthinkable phenomenon. 



The German can ponder this with or without bitterness. It is important to leam from history, especially if its 
teachings speak to us in such a compelling way. 


Thus the belief that through a prudent, reserved neutrality vis-a-vis the developing conflicts in Europe and 
elsewhere, one can some day reap the benefits thereof as a laughing third one, is false and idiotic. In general, 
freedom is preserved neither by begging nor by cheating. And also not by work and industry, but exclusively by 
struggle, and indeed by one's own struggle. Thus it is very easily possible that more weight is attached to the will 
than to the deed. Not seldom, in the framework of a wise alliance policy, nations have achieved successes 
unrelated to the success of their arms. But fate does not always measure a nation which boldly stakes its life 
according to the dimensions of its deeds, but rather, very frequently, according to the dimensions of its will. The 
history of Italian unification in the nineteenth century is noteworthy for this. But the World War also shows how 
a whole number of States can achieve extraordinary political successes less through their military 
accomplishments [successes] than through the foolhardy boldness with which they take sides and the 
doggedness with which they hold out. 

If Germany wants to put an end to her period of enslavement by all, she must under all circumstances actively 
try to enter into a combination of powers in order to participate in the future shaping of European life in terms of 
power politics. 

The objection that such participation contains a grievous risk is correct. But, after all, does one really believe that 
we will achieve freedom without taking a risk? Or does one think that there has ever been a deed of world 
history which was not linked with a risk? Was Frederick The Great's decision, for instance, to participate in the 
first Silesian War, not linked with a risk? Or did Germany's unification by Bismarck entail no dangers? No, a 
thousand times no! Beginning with man's birth up to his death, everything is questionable. Only death seems 
certain. But for this very reason the ultimate commitment is not the worst for the reason that one day, in one way 
or another, it will be demanded. 

Naturally it is a matter of political sagacity to choose the stake in such a way that it yields the highest possible 
gain. But not to stake anything at all for fear, perhaps, of picking the wrong horse means to renounce a Folk's 
future. The objection that such an action may have the character of a risky gamble can most easily be refuted by 
simple reference to previous historical experience. By a risky gamble we understand a game in which from the 
outset the chances of winning are subject to the fate of chance. This will never be the case in politics. For the 
more the ultimate decision lies in the darkness of the future, the more is the conviction of the possibility or 
impossibility of a success erected on humanly perceptible factors. The task of a nation's political leadership is to 
weigh these factors. The result of this examination, then, must also lead to a decision. Thus this decision is 
consonant with one's own insight, and is sustained by faith in possible success on the basis of this insight. Hence 
I can just as little call a politically decisive deed a risky gamble, just because its outcome is not one hundred 
percent certain, as an operation undertaken by a surgeon the outcome of which likewise will not necessarily be 
successful. From time immemorial it has always been in keeping with the nature of great men to execute deeds 
whose success is even doubtful and indefinite with the utmost energy, if the necessity thereof as such lay before 
them, and if after a mature examination of all conditions this very action alone could be considered. 

The joy of responsibility in the framing of great decisions in the struggles of nations will, of course, be all the 
greater the more the actors, by observation of their Folk, can conclude that even a miscarriage will not be able to 
destroy the nation's vital strength. For in the long run a Folk, inwardly healthy at its core, can never be effaced 
through defeats on the battlefield. Thus insofar as a Folk possesses this inner health, with the prerequisite of a 
sufficient racial importance, the courage for difficult undertakings can be the greater since even the failure of the 
same would not, by far, signify the downfall of such a Folk. And here Clausewitz is right, when in his principles 



he asserts that, with a healthy Folk, such a defeat may repeatedly lead to a later resurgence, and that, conversely, 
only cowardly subjection, that is, a supine surrender to fate, can lead to ultimate destruction. The neutrality, 
however, which is today recommended to our Folk as the only action possible, is really nothing but a volitionless 
surrender to a fate determined by foreign powers. And only therein lies the symptom and the possibility of our 
decline. If, on the contrary, our Folk itself had undertaken abortive attempts to achieve freedom, a factor that 
could be beneficial to our Folk's strength would lie in the very manifestation of this attitude. For let it not be said 
that it is political sagacity which holds us back from such steps. No, it is a wretched cowardice and a lack of 
principle which in this case, as so often in history, one tries to confuse with intelligence. Obviously a Folk under 
the duress of foreign powers can be forced by circumstances to endure years of foreign oppression. But the less a 
Folk can seriously do outwardly against overpowering forces, the more, however, will its internal life press 
toward freedom and leave nothing untried that could be suitable for changing the momentarily given condition 
one day by staking such a Folk's entire strength. One will then endure the yoke of a foreign conqueror, but with 
clenched fists and gritted teeth, waiting for the hour which offers the first opportunity of shaking off the tyrant. 
Something like this can be possible under the pressure of conditions. But what presents itself today as political 
sagacity, however, is as a matter of fact a spirit of voluntary subjection, of unprincipled renunciation of any 
resistance, indeed the shameless persecution of those who dare to think of such a resistance and whose work 
obviously could serve their Folk's resurgence. It is the spirit of inner self disarmament, of the destruction of all 
moral factors which one day could serve a resurrection of this Folk and State. This spirit can really not give itself 
the airs of political sagacity, for actually it is a State destroying dishonourableness. 

And, to be sure, this spirit must hate every attempt at an active participation of our Folk in future European 
developments, because the necessity of a struggle against this spirit indeed lies in the mere attempt at such a 
participation. 

If, however, a State leadership seems to be affected by this corrupting spirit, it becomes the task of the 
opposition which perceives, represents and thus espouses a Folk's real vital forces to inscribe the struggle [the 
education] for national resurgence, and through it for national honour, on its banners. And it must not let itself be 
intimidated by the assertion that foreign policy is the task of responsible State leadership, for there has not been 
such a responsible leadership for a long time. On the contrary, it must adhere to the conception that, besides the 
formal laws of momentary governments, there exist eternal obligations which compel every member of a nation 
to do what is perceived as necessary for the existence of the Folkish Community. Even if this stands a thousand 
times in opposition to the intentions of bad and incompetent governments. 

Hence precisely in Germany today the highest obligation should devolve on the so called National Opposition, in 
view of the unworthiness of the general leadership of our Folk to establish a clear foreign policy aim, and to 
prepare and educate our Folk for the execution of these ideas. Primarily, it must launch the sharpest war against 
the hope, widely spread today, that our fate can be changed somewhat by active cooperation with the League Of 
Nations. In general, it must see to it that our Folk gradually realises that we must not expect an amelioration of 
the German situation from institutions the representatives of which are the interested parties in our present 
misfortune. Further, it must deepen the conviction that all social aspirations are Utopian promises devoid of any 
real worth without the regaining of German freedom. It must further bring our Folk the knowledge that, for this 
freedom, one way or another, only the staking of its own strength can be considered. And that, consequently, our 
whole domestic and foreign policy must be such that by virtue of it our Folk's inner strength grows and 
increases. Finally, it must enlighten the Folk to the effect that this staking of strength must take place for a really 
worthwhile aim, and that for this purpose we cannot go forward to meet our fate alone, but will need allies. 



Chapter 11 


GERMANY AND RUSSIA 


The size of the possible military commitment as well as the relation of this means of power to those of the 
surrounding States is of decisive importance for the question of the future shaping of German foreign policy, 
apart from the inner power of our Folk, of its strength and assessment of character. 

I need not express myself further on the moral inner weakness of our presentday Folk in this work. Our general 
weaknesses which are in part grounded in a matter of blood, and in part lie in the nature of our present 
governmental organisation, or must be attributed to the effects of our poor leadership, are perhaps less familiar 
to the German public than, unfortunately, they are to the rest of the world, which knows them well. Most of the 
measures of our oppressors are occasioned by knowledge of this weakness. But with all acknowledgment of the 
factual conditions, it should still never be forgotten that the same people of today hardly ten years ago 
accomplished deeds unrivalled in history. The German Folk which at the moment leaves such a depressing 
impression has, nevertheless, more than once proved its powerful merit in world history. The World War itself 
is the most glorious evidence of our Folk's heroism and spirit of sacrifice, of its death defying discipline and its 
brilliant capability in thousands upon thousands of areas in the organisation of its life. Its purely military 
leadership has also achieved immortal successes. Only the political leadership has failed. It was already the 
precursor of that of today, even so much worse. 

Today the inner qualities of our Folk may be a thousandfold unsatisfactory, but in one blow they will yield 
another image, as soon as another fist takes the reins of events in order to lead our Folk out of its present 
decline. 

In our own history, we see how wonderful is precisely our Folk's capacity for transformation. Prussia in 1806 
and Prussia in 1813. What a difference! In 1806, the State characterised by the most abject capitulation 
everywhere, an unheard of wretchedness in the civic attitude, and in 1813 the State characterised by the most 
glowing hatred against foreign domination and a sense of patriotic sacrifice for one's own Folk, the most heroic 
will to fight for freedom! What, in truth, has changed since then? The Folk? No, in its inner essence it has 
remained as before, only its leadership had come into other hands. A new spirit followed the weakness of the 
Prussian governmental administration and the ossified and aged leadership of the post Frederick period. Baron 
vom Stein and Gneisenau, Scharnhorst, Clausewitz and Bliicher were the representatives of the new Prussia. 
And the world in a few months had again forgotten that seven years before this Prussia had undergone the 
experience of Jena. 

And was it, for instance, otherwise before the founding of the Reich? Hardly a decade was required for a new 
Reich, which in the eyes of many seemed to be the most powerful embodiment of German power and mastery, 
to arise out of the German decline, the German disunity, and the general political dishonourableness. A single 
head, towering above all, had restored freedom of development to the German genius in a battle against the 
mediocrity of the majority. Let us dispense with Bismarck in our history, and only wretched mediocrity would 
fill the most glorious period for our Folk in centuries. 

Just as the German Folk could in a few years be hurled down from its unprecedented greatness, by the 
mediocrity of its leadership, into its present chaos, so can it be pulled up again by an iron fist. Its inner value 



will then make its appearance so visibly before the entire world that merely the actuality of its existence must 
compel a regard for and an appraisal of this fact. 


If at the start, however, this value is a slumbering one, it is more than ever necessary to provide clarity on 
Germany's real power value existing at the moment. 

I have already tried to draw a brief picture of the momentary German instrument of military power, the Reich 
Defence. Here I wish to sketch Germany's general military situation in relation to the surrounding world. 

Germany at the present time is encircled by three power factors or power groups. 

England, Russia and France are at present, militarily, the most threatening of Germany's neighbours. At the 
same time, French power appears strengthened by a system of European alliances which reach from Paris to 
Belgrade via Warsaw and Prague. 

Germany lies wedged between these States, with completely open borders. What is especially threatening 
thereby is that the western border of the Reich runs through Germany's greatest industrial region. This western 
border, however, in consequence of its length and of the lack of all real natural barriers, offers only a few 
possibilities for defence by a State whose military means seem most extremely limited. Even the Rhine cannot 
be viewed as a fully effective line of military resistance. Not only because the possibility of finding the 
necessary technical preparations for this has been taken away from Germany by the peace treaties, but because 
the river itself offers even fewer obstacles to the passage of armies with modern equipment than the slight 
means of German defence which must be dispersed over too long a front. Moreover, this river runs through 
Germany's greatest industrial area, and consequently a struggle over it from the outset would mean the 
destruction of the industrial areas and factories technically most important for national defence. But if in 
consequence of a French German conflict Czechoslovakia should come under consideration as a further 
opponent of Germany, a second great industrial region, Saxony, which could be useful industrially for the 
conduct of the war, would be exposed to the greatest danger of war. Here too the border, without natural 
defence, runs down to Bavaria, so broadly and openly that the prospect of a resistance promising success can 
hardly be considered. If Poland also were to take part in such a war, the entire eastern border in addition, apart 
from a few inadequate fortifications, would be defenceless against attack. 

Whereas on the one hand the German borders are militarily indefensible and are surrounded openly in long lines 
by enemies, our North Sea coast is especially small and confined. The naval power for its defence is laughable, 
and completely worthless as such. The Fleet which we claim today, beginning with our so called battleships, is 
at best the finest target material for enemy firing practice. The two newly built ships, light cruisers, modem in 
themselves, have no decisive value, indeed not even an apparent one. The Fleet we are allowed is inadequate 
even for the Baltic Sea. All in all, the only value of our Fleet is at most that of a floating gunnery school. 

Thus, in case of a conflict with any naval power, not only would German trade be ended in a moment, but there 
would also be the danger of landings. 

The entire unpropitiousness of our military situation stems from this other consideration: 

Berlin, the Reich's capital, is barely 175 kilometres from the Polish border. It lies scarcely 190 kilometres from 
the nearest Czech border, just as far as the distance between Wismar and the Stettin Fagoon as the crow flies. 
Thus this means that Berlin can be reached by modern aircraft in less than one hour from these borders. If we 



draw a line stretching 60 kilometres east of the Rhine River, within it will lie almost the entire western German 
industrial region. From Frankfurt to Dortmund there is hardly one major German industrial locality which does 
not lie within this zone. As long as France occupies a part of the left bank of the Rhine, she is in a position to 
push forward by aircraft into the heart of our western German industrial region in hardly 30 minutes. Mime hen 
is just as far from the Czech borders as Berlin is from the Polish and Czech borders. Czech military aircraft 
would need approximately 60 minutes to reach Miinchen, 40 minutes to Nuremberg, 30 minutes to reach 
Regensburg; even Augsburg lies only 200 kilometres from the Czech border, and consequently could also be 
easily reached in scarcely an hour by presentday aeroplanes. As the crow flies, however, Augsburg is almost as 
distant from the Czech border as it is from the French border. From Augsburg to StraBburg the line of flight is 
230 kilometres, but it is only 210 kilometres to the nearest French border. Hence Augsburg also lies within a 
zone which can be reached by hostile aircraft in an hour. Indeed, if we examine the German border from this 
point of view, it turns out that within an hour's flight time the following can be reached: the entire industrial 
region in western Germany, including Osnabriick, Bielefeld, Kassel, Wurzburg, Stuttgart, Ulm, Augsburg. In 
the east: Miinchen, Augsburg, Wurzburg, Magdeburg, Berlin, Stettin. In other words, with the present situation 
of the German borders, there is only a very small area embracing a few square kilometres which could not be 
visited by hostile aircraft within the first hour. 

Hence France must be considered as the most dangerous enemy because she alone, thanks to her alliances, is in 
a position to be able to threaten almost the whole of Germany with aircraft, even an hour after the outbreak of a 
conflict. 

At the present time, the military counteractions Germany could take against the application of this weapon, all 
in all, are quite nil. 

This single observation already shows the hopeless situation into which a German resistance against France, 
based only on itself, must land at once. Whoever has himself been often subjected in the field to the effects of 
an enemy air attack best knows how to appraise especially the moral effects resulting therefrom. 

But Hamburg and Bremen, too, in general all our coastal cities, would today no longer escape this fate since the 
large navies have the possibility of bringing floating landing places very close to the coast by means of aircraft 
carriers. 

But Germany today not only has no technically effective weapons in a sufficient amount to oppose to air 
attacks. Even otherwise the purely technical equipment of our small Reich Defence is hopelessly inferior to that 
of our enemy. The lack of heavy artillery might be put up with more easily than the lack of a really promising 
possibility of defence against armoured tanks. If Germany today were thrust into a war against France and her 
allies without beforehand being in a position to be able to find at least the most necessary preparations for 
defence, the issue would be decided in a few days on the basis of the purely technical superiority of our 
adversaries. Measures required for defence against such a hostile attack could no longer be taken during the 
struggle itself. 

Likewise false is the opinion that we will be able to put up a resistance, at least for a certain time, by improvised 
means, since these very improvisations already require a certain amount of time which is no longer available in 
case of a conflict. For events would roll more quickly and thereby produce more facts than there would be time 
left for us to organise countermeasures against these events. 

Hence, from whatever side we consider the possibilities of foreign policy, for Germany one case must in 



principle be excluded: we will never be able to proceed against the forces now mobilised in Europe by relying 
only on our military means. Thus any combination which brings Germany into conflict with France, England, 
Poland and Czechoslovakia, and so on, without beforehand giving her the possibility of a thorough preparation, 
is therefore void. 

This fundamental perception is important because there are still among us in Germany, even today, well 
meaning, national minded men who in all earnestness believe that we must enter into an association with 
Russia. 

Even if considered only from a purely military point of view, such an idea is unviable or catastrophic for 
Germany 

Just as before the year 1914, today also we can assume as unconditionally established for always that in any 
conflict involving Germany, regardless on what grounds, regardless for what reasons, France will always be our 
adversary. Whatever European combinations may emerge in the future, France will always take part in them in 
a manner hostile to Germany. This lies in the traditionally anchored intention of French foreign policy. It is 
false to believe that the outcome of the War has changed anything on this score. On the contrary, the World War 
did not bring about for France the complete fulfilment of the war aim she had in mind. For this aim was by no 
means only the regaining of Alsace-Forraine, but, on the contrary, Alsace-Forraine itself represents only a small 
step in the direction of the goal of French foreign policy. That the possession of Alsace-Forraine in no way 
abolished the tendencies of French policy, aggressively directed against Germany, is most strikingly proved by 
the fact that at the very time France possessed Alsace-Forraine, the tendency of French foreign policy directed 
against Germany was, nevertheless, already in existence. The year 1870 showed more clearly than the year 
1914 what France ultimately intended. At that time no need was felt to veil the aggressive character of French 
foreign policy. In the year 1914, perhaps made wise by experiences, perhaps also influenced by England, the 
French considered it more correct to profess general ideals of humanity on the one hand, and to limit their aim 
to Alsace-Forraine on the other. These tactical considerations, however, did not in the least signify an inner 
deflection from the former goals of French policy, but only a concealment of the same. Afterward, as before, the 
leading idea of French foreign policy was the conquest of the Rhine River borders, whereby the mutilation of 
Germany into individual States, linked as loosely as possible to each other, was viewed as the best defence of 
this border. That this safeguarding of France in Europe, achieved thereby, was to serve the fulfilment of greater 
world political aims, does not alter the fact that for Germany these French continental political intentions are a 
question of life and death. 

As a matter of fact, indeed, France also had never taken part in a coalition in which German interests in any way 
would have been promoted. In the last three hundred years, Germany had been attacked by France twenty nine 
times all told up to 1870. A fact which, on the eve of the Battle Of Sedan, moved Bismarck to oppose the 
French General Wimpffen most sharply when the latter tried to achieve a mitigation of the terms of surrender. It 
was Bismarck at that time who, in response to the declaration that France would not forget a German 
concession but would remember it gratefully forever in the future, immediately stood up and confronted the 
French negotiator with the hard, naked facts of history. Bismarck stressed, in this sense, that France had 
attacked Germany so often in the last three hundred years, regardless of the prevailing form of government, that 
for all the future he was convinced that regardless how the capitulation was formulated, France would 
immediately attack Germany anew as soon as she felt strong enough for it, either through her own strength or 
through the strength of allies. 


Thereby Bismarck had more correctly appraised French mentality than our present political leaders of Germany. 
He could do this because he, who himself had a policy aim in view, could also have an inner understanding of 



the policy goals others set themselves. For Bismarck the intention of French foreign policy was clearly 
established. It is incomprehensible to our presentday leaders, however, because they are lacking in every clear 
political idea. 


If, moreover, France, on the occasion of her entry into the World War, had only the intention of regaining 
Alsace-Lorraine as a definite aim, the energy of the French war leadership would not have been nearly what it 
was. The political leadership, especially, would not have come around to a determination which seemed worthy 
of the greatest admiration during many situations during the World War. It lay, however, in the nature of this 
greatest coalition war of all times that a complete fulfilment of all wishes was all the less possible since the 
internal interests of the participant nations themselves had exhibited very great divergences. The French 
intention [desire] of a complete effacement of Germany in Europe still stood opposed to the English desire to 
prevent an unconditional French position of hegemony, as much as such a one for Germany. 

Thus, for the curtailment of French war aims, it was important that the German collapse take place in forms that 
did not yet make public opinion fully aware of the whole dimension of the catastrophe. In France they had come 
to know the German Grenadier in such a way that only with hesitation could they look forward to a possibility 
that France might be forced to step forth alone for the fulfilment of her ultimate political goal. Eater, however, 
under the impact of Germany's inner defeat, now become generally visible, when they might have been more 
determined on such an action, the war psychosis in the other parts of the world had already so widely abated 
that a unilateral action by France for a final aim of such magnitude could no longer have been carried out 
without opposition on the part of her former allies. 

Thereby we are not saying that France renounced her aim. On the contrary, she will try as persistently as before 
to achieve in the future what the present prevented. France will also in the future, as soon as she feels capable of 
this through her own power or the power of her allies, attempt to dissolve Germany, and try to occupy the bank 
of the Rhine River in order in this way to be able to commit French strength elsewhere with no threat to her 
rear. That thereby France is not in the least irritated in her intention by changes in the forms of German 
Government is all the more comprehensible since the French Folk itself, indeed, without any regard to its 
constitutions of the moment, clings equally to its foreign policy ideas. A Folk which itself always pursues a 
definite foreign policy goal, paying no regard as to whether as rulers it has a republic or a monarchy, bourgeois 
democracy or a Jacobin terror, will have no understanding that another Folk, perhaps by a change of its form of 
government, could also undertake a change of its foreign policy aims. Hence nothing will change France's 
attitude to Germany as such, regardless whether in Germany an Reich or a Republic represents the nation, or 
even socialist terror rules the State. 

Obviously, France is not indifferent vis-a-vis German events, but at the same time her attitude is determined 
only by the probability of a greater success, that is, of a facilitation of its foreign policy action by a definite 
German form of government. France will wish Germany the constitution which will leave France to expect the 
least resistance to Germany's destruction. If, therefore, the German Republic as a special sign of its value tries 
to induce French friendship, in reality this is the most devastating certificate of its incapacity. For it is 
welcomed in Paris only because France regards it as poor in values for Germany. In no way is it thereby said 
that France will confront this German Republic otherwise than as it has in analogous conditions of our 
governmental weakness in past times. On the Seine River they were always fonder of German weakness than 
German strength because it seemed to guarantee France's foreign policy activity an easier success. 

This French tendency will in no way be changed by the fact that the French Folk suffer from no lack of 
territory. For in France policy for centuries has least been determined by sheer economic distress, but much 
more by impulses of feeling. France is a classic example of the fact that the sense of a healthy territorial gain 



policy can easily change over into its opposite, once Folkish principles are no longer determining, and so called 
governmental national principles take their place. French national chauvinism has departed from Folkish points 
of view to such an extent that, for the gratification of a mere power titillation, they Negrify their own blood just 
to maintain the character of a grand nation numerically. Hence France will also be an eternal disturber of world 
peace for as long as a decisive and fundamental lesson is not administered to this Folk some day. Moreover, 
nobody has better characterised the nature of French vanity than Schopenhauer with his utterance: Africa has its 
monkeys, Europe has its French. 

French foreign policy has always received its inner impulse from this mixture of vanity and megalomania. Who 
in Germany wants to wait and hope that, the more France is estranged from rational clear thinking, in 
consequence of her general Negrification, she will yet one day undertake a change in her disposition and 
intentions toward Germany? 

No, regardless of how the next development in Europe proceeds, France, by utilising momentary German 
weaknesses and all the diplomatic and military possibilities at her disposal, will always seek to inflict harm on 
us and to split our Folk so that she can ultimately bring it to a complete disintegration. 

Hence for Germany any coalition which does not signify a binding of France is by itself impermissible. 

The belief in a German Russian understanding is in itself fantastic as long as a regime rules in Russia which is 
permeated by only one aim: to carry over the Bolshevist poisoning to Germany. It is natural, therefore, for 
communist elements to agitate for a German Russian alliance. They thereby hope, rightfully, to be able to lead 
Germany herself to Bolshevism. It is incomprehensible, however, if national Germans believe that it is possible 
to achieve an understanding with a State whose greatest interest is the destruction of this very national 
Germany. Obviously, should such an alliance finally come into being today, its result would be the complete 
rule of Jewry in Germany exactly as in Russia. Fikewise incomprehensible is the opinion that one can wage a 
war against the capitalist Western European world with this Russia. For, in the first place, presentday Russia is 
anything but an anticapitalist State. It is, to be sure, a country that has destroyed its own national economy, but, 
nevertheless, only in order to give international finance capital the possibility of an absolute control. If this were 
not so, how could it be, secondly, that the very capitalist world in Germany takes a position in favour of such an 
alliance? It is after all the Jewish press organs of the most outspoken stock exchange interests who espouse the 
cause of a German Russian alliance in Germany. Does one really believe that the Berlin Daily Paper or the 
Frankfurt Times and all their illustrated papers speak more or less overtly for Bolshevik Russia because the 
latter is an anticapitalist State? In political matters, it is always a curse when the wish becomes father to the 
thought. 

To be sure, it is conceivable that in Russia itself an internal change within the Bolshevik world may ensue to the 
extent that the Jewish element, perhaps, could be crowded out by a more or less Russian national element. Then 
the possibility might not be excluded that presentday Bolshevik Russia, in reality Jewish capitalistic, would be 
driven toward [to a] national anticapitalist tendencies. In this case, to which many things seem to point, it would 
be conceivable, to be sure, that Western European capitalism would seriously take a position against Russia. 

But then an alliance of Germany with this Russia would also be complete insanity. For the idea that such an 
alliance could somehow be held secret is as unjustified as the hope to arm ourselves for the conflict through 
military preparations that are made quietly. 

Then there would only be two real possibilities: either this alliance would be viewed by the Western European 
world, poising itself against Russia, as a danger, or not. If yes, then I don't know who can seriously believe that 
there will be time for us to arm ourselves in a manner suitable at least to prevent a collapse in the first twenty 



four hours. Or do people really believe in earnest that France will wait until we have built our air defence and 
our tank defence? Or do they believe that this can happen secretly in a country in which treason is no longer 
considered shameless, but a courageous deed worthy of emulation? No, if Germany really wants to enter into an 
alliance with Russia against Western Europe, then Germany will again become a historic battlefield tomorrow. 
On top of this, it requires an entirely uncommon fantasy to fancy that Russia could somehow come to 
Germany's help, in what way I know not. The only success of such an action would be that Russia could thereby 
still escape a catastrophe for a certain time, as it would first break over Germany. But a popular inducement for 
such a struggle against Germany could hardly exist, especially in the western States. Just imagine Germany 
allied with a real anticapitalist Russia, and then picture how this democratic world Jewish press would mobilise 
all the instincts of the other nations against Germany. How, especially in France, complete harmony would 
immediately be established between French national chauvinism and the Jewish stock exchange press. For let 
one not confuse such a process with the struggle of White Russian Generals against the Bolshevism of an earlier 
time. In the years 1919 and 1920, national White Russia fought against the Jewish stock exchange revolution, in 
truth international capitalist red revolution in the highest sense. Today, however, anticapitalist Bolshevism, 
become national, would stand in a struggle against world Jewry. Whoever understands the importance of press 
propaganda, and its infinite possibilities for inciting nations and besetting people, can imagine to what orgies of 
hate and passion against Germany the European western nations would be whipped. For then Germany would 
no longer be allied with the Russia of a great, noteworthy, ethical, bold idea, but with the despoilers of the 
culture of mankind. 

Above all, there could be no better chance for the French government to master its own inner difficulties than to 
undertake a fully dangerfree struggle against Germany in such a case. French national chauvinism could be all 
the more satisfied since then, under the protection of a new world coalition, it could come much closer to the 
fulfilment of the ultimate war aim. For regardless of the nature of the alliance between Germany and Russia, 
militarily, Germany alone would have to sustain the most terrible blows. Wholly apart from the fact that Russia 
does not border directly on Germany and, consequently, must itself first overrun the Polish State — even in the 
case of a subjugation of Poland by Russia which as such is quite improbable — in the best of circumstances such 
Russian help could essentially arrive on German territory only when Germany no longer existed. But the idea of 
a landing of Russian Divisions anywhere in Germany is completely excluded as long as England and France 
have complete control of the Baltic Sea. Moreover, the landing of Russian troops in Germany would fail 
because of countless technical deficiencies. 

Thus, should a German Russian alliance some day have to undergo the test of reality, and there is no such thing 
as an alliance without the idea of war, Germany would be exposed to the concentrated attacks of all Western 
Europe without being able to provide for her own defence in a serious way. 

But now there remains the question of just what meaning a German Russian alliance should have in general. 
Only the one of preserving Russia from destruction and sacrificing Germany for that? Regardless of how this 
alliance would turn out in the end, Germany could not arrive at setting a decisive foreign policy goal. For 
thereby nothing would be changed regarding the fundamental vital question, indeed regarding the vital needs, of 
our Folk. On the contrary, Germany, thereby, would be more than ever cut off from the only rational territorial 
policy in order to pad out her future with the scuffle over unimportant border adjustments. For the question of 
space for our Folk cannot be solved either in the west or in the south of Europe. 

The hope in a German Russian alliance, which haunts the minds of even many German national politicians, 
however, is more than questionable for still another reason. 


In general, it seems self evident in national circles that we cannot very well ally ourselves with a Jewish 



Bolshevist Russia, since the result, according to all probability, would be a Bolshevisation of Germany. 
Obviously, we do not want this. But we base ourselves on the hope that one day the Jewish character — and 
thereby the most fundamentally international capitalistic character of Bolshevism in Russia — might disappear 
in order to make place for a national communism, anticapitalist on a world scale. Then this Russia, permeated 
once more by national tendencies, might very well come up for consideration in terms of an alliance with 
Germany. 

This is a very great error. It rests on an extraordinary ignorance of the psyche of the Slavic Folk Soul. This 
should not amaze anybody if we reflect on how little knowledge even politically minded Germany had of the 
spiritual conditions of her erstwhile allies. Otherwise we would never have fallen so low. If, therefore, today the 
national politicians in favour of friendship with Russia try to motivate their policy by reference to Bismarck's 
analogous attitudes, they disregard a whole multitude of important factors which at that time, but not today, 
spoke in favour of Russian friendship. 

The Russia which Bismarck knew was not a typical Slavic State, at least insofar as it was a question of the 
political leadership of the same. In general, Slavdom is lacking in Stateforming forces. In Russia especially, 
government formations were always attended to by foreign elements. Since the time of Peter The Great there 
were, above all, very many Baltic Germans who formed the skeleton and the brains of the Russian State. In the 
course of centuries, countless thousands of these Germans have been Russified, but only in the sense in which 
our own bourgeoisie, our national bourgeoisie, would like to Germanise or Teutonise Poles or Czechs. Just as in 
this case the new fledged German is in truth only a German speaking Pole or Czech, likewise did these artificial 
Russians remain German, or better. Teutons, according to their blood and hence their capabilities. Russia is 
indebted to this Teutonic upper stratum for her political State as well as for what little exists of her cultural 
value. A great Russia would neither have arisen nor would she have been able to preserve herself without this 
really German upper and intellectual stratum. As long as Russia had been a State with an autocratic form of 
government, this upper stratum, which in truth was not at all Russian, also decisively influenced the political 
life of the gigantic empire. Even Bismarck knew this Russia at least in part. It was with this Russia that the 
master of German political statesmanship had political dealings. But, even in his lifetime, the reliability and 
stability of Russian policy, both domestic and foreign, fluctuated precariously and became in part incalculable. 
This lay in the gradual suppression of the German upper stratum. This process of the transformation of the 
Russian intelligentsia was caused in part by a bleeding of the Russian nation in consequence of many wars, 
which, as has been already mentioned in this book, primarily decimate the racially more valuable forces. 
Actually the officer corps especially was for the most part non Slav by descent, but in every case not of Russian 
blood. On top of this came the slight increase in the upper stratum of the intelligentsia as such, and finally the 
artificial training by the schools of a real Russiandom with regard to blood. The slight Statepreserving value of 
the new Russian intelligentsia as such was grounded on blood, and revealed itself most sharply perhaps in the 
nihilism of the Russian universities. Most fundamentally, however, this nihilism was nothing but the opposition, 
determined by blood, of real Russiandom to the racially alien upper stratum. 

The Pan Slavic idea was counterposed to the Russian idea of the State in proportion as Russia's Teutonic, 
Stateforming upper stratum was replaced by a racially pure Russian bourgeois class. From the first hour of its 
birth it was Folkish, Slavish [Russian], and anti German. The anti German disposition of the newly emerging 
Russiandom, especially in the strata of the so called intelligentsia, however, was not only a pure reflex action 
against the former autocratic alien upper class in Russia, for instance, on the grounds of politically liberal 
modes of thought. Rather, in the most intrinsic sense, it was the protest of the Slavic nature against the German. 
They are two Folk Souls which have only very little in common, whereby indeed it must first be established 
whether this littleness they have in common has its cause in the confusedly broken racial individual elements of 
which the Russian as well as the German Folk seems to be constituted. Thus what is common to us and to the 
Russians is as little consonant with the German as with the Russian character but, instead, is to be ascribed only 



to our mixture of bloods which has brought just as many eastern Slavic elements to Germany as Nordic German 
ones to Russia. 


But if as a test of the two spiritual endowments we were to take a purely Nordic German, from Westphalia let us 
say, and place a purely Slavic Russian opposite to him, an infinite chasm would yawn between these two 
representatives of the two Folks. Actually the Slavic Russian Folk has always felt this, and has therefore always 
had an instinctive antipathy toward the German. Solid thoroughness as well as the cold logic of sober thought, 
are something which the real Russian inwardly finds unsympathetic and in part even incomprehensible. Our 
sense of order will not only find no reciprocal love, but will always elicit aversion. What with us is felt as 
something self evident is for the Russian, however, an affliction, since it represents a restriction of his natural, 
differently structured spiritual and instinctual life. Hence Slavic Russia will feel itself drawn more and more to 
France. And indeed to an increasing degree, since the Frankish Nordic element is also being suppressed in 
France. The facile, superficial, more or less effeminate French life was more able to fascinate the Slav because 
inwardly it is closer to him than the severities of our German struggle for existence. Hence it is no accident if 
Pan Slavic Russia waxes politically enthusiastic over France, exactly as the Russian intelligentsia of Slavic 
blood found in Paris the Mecca of its own needs for civilisation. 

The process of the rise of a Russian national bourgeoisie at the same time caused [signified] an inner alienation 
of this new Russia vis-a-vis Germany, which now could no longer build on a racially related Russian upper 
stratum. 

As a matter of fact, already at the turn of the century, the anti German orientation of the representatives of the 
Folkish Pan Slav idea was so strong and its influence on Russian policy had grown to such an extent that even 
Germany's more than decent attitude vis-a-vis Russia, on the occasion of the Russian Japanese war, could no 
longer check the further estrangement of the two States. Then came the World War which to no little extent had 
also been kindled by the Pan Slavist agitation. The real governmental Russia, insofar as it had been represented 
by the erstwhile upper stratum, therefore could hardly put in a word anymore. 

The World War itself then brought about a further [the last] bleeding of Russia's Nordic German elements, and 
the last remains were finally extirpated by the Revolution and Bolshevism. It was not as if the Slav race instinct 
had deliberately carried out the struggle for the extermination of the former non Russian upper stratum by itself. 
No, it had acquired new leaders meantime in Jewry. Jewry, pressing toward the upper strata and therefore 
toward supreme leadership, has exterminated the former alien upper class with the help of the Slav race instinct. 
Thus it is a quite understandable process if Jewry has taken over the leadership of all areas of Russian life with 
the Bolshevik revolution, since by itself and out of itself Slavdom is altogether lacking in any organising ability 
and thereby also in any Stateforming and Statepreserving power. Take away all the elements which are not 
purely Slavic from Slavdom, and it will immediately succumb to disintegration as a State. To be sure, 
fundamentally, any formation of States may at first have its innermost inducement in the encounter between 
Folks of a higher and lower order, whereby the bearers of the higher blood value — for reasons of self 
preservation — develop a definite community spirit which first allows them the possibility of an organisation 
and a rule over inferior Folks. Only the overcoming of common tasks compels the adoption of organisational 
forms. But the difference between the Stateforming and the non Stateforming elements lies precisely in the fact 
that the formation of an organisation for the preservation of their stock vis-a-vis other types becomes possible 
for the former, whereas the non Stateforming incompetents are not capable by themselves of finding those 
organisational forms which would guarantee their existence vis-a-vis others. 

Thus presentday Russia or, better said, presentday Slavdom of Russian nationality, has received as master the 
Jew, who first eliminated the former upper stratum, and now must prove his own Stateforming power. In view 



of the endowment of Jewry, which after all is only destructive, it will operate even here only as the historical 
ferment of decomposition. It has summoned to its help spirits of which it can no longer rid itself, and the 
struggle of the inwardly anti State Pan Slav idea against the Bolshevist Jewish State idea will end with the 
destruction of Jewry. What will then remain will be a Russia as insignificant in governmental power as she will 
be deeply rooted in an anti German attitude. Since this State will no longer possess a Statepreserving upper 
stratum anchored anywhere, it will become a source of eternal unrest and eternal insecurity. A gigantic land 
area will thus be surrendered to the most variegated fate, and instead of stabilisation of relations between States 
on Earth, a period of the most restless changes will begin. 

Thus the first phase of these developments will be that the most different nations of the world will try to enter 
into relations with this enormous complex of States in order thereby to bring about a strengthening of their own 
position and intentions. But such an attempt will always be linked to the effort also to exert their own 
intellectual and organisational influence on Russia at the same time. 

Germany may not hope to come up for consideration in any way during this development. The whole mentality 
of presentday and future Russia is opposed to this. For the future, an alliance of Germany with Russia has no 
sense for Germany, neither from the standpoint of sober expediency, nor from that of human community. On 
the contrary, it is good fortune for the future that this development has taken place in just this way because, 
thereby, a spell has been broken which would have prevented us from seeking the goal of German foreign 
policy there where it solely and exclusively can lie: territory in the east. 



Chapter 12 


GERMAN FOREIGN POLICY 


In view of Germany's hopeless military situation, the following must be borne in mind in the formulation of 
future German foreign policy. 

Germany cannot bring about a change in her present situation by herself, so far as this must ensue by means of 
military power. Germany cannot hope that a change of her situation will emerge through measures taken by the 
League Of Nations, as long as the determining representatives of this institution are at the same time the parties 
interested in Germany's destruction. Germany cannot hope to change her present situation through a 
combination of powers which brings her into conflict with the French system of alliances surrounding Germany, 
without first acquiring the possibility of eliminating her sheer military powerlessness so that, in case the 
commitments of the alliance go into effect, she may be able to come forward immediately with the prospect of 
military success 

Germany cannot hope to find such a combination of powers as long as her ultimate foreign policy aim does not 
seem clearly established, and, at the same time does not contradict the interests of those States which can be 
considered in terms of an alliance with Germany — indeed, even appear serviceable to them. 

Germany cannot hope that these States can be found outside the League Of Nations. On the contrary, her only 
hope must consist in her eventual success in extricating individual States from the coalition of victor States, and 
building a new group of interested parties with new aims which cannot be realised through the League Of 
Nations because of its whole nature. Germany may only hope to achieve success in this way if she finally 
renounces her former vacillating seesaw policy, and fundamentally decides upon a single direction, and at the 
same time assumes and bears all the consequences. 

Germany should never hope to make world history through alliances with nations whose military value seems 
sufficiently characterised by the fact of their former defeats, or whose general racial importance, is inferior. For 
the struggle for the regaining of German freedom will thereby again raise German history to the level of world 
history. Germany should never forget for a moment that regardless how, and along what ways, she thinks to 
change her fate, France will be her enemy, and that France from the outset can count on any combination of 
powers that turns against Germany. 



Chapter 13 


GERMAN GOALS 


We cannot examine Germany's foreign policy possibilities without first possessing clarity on what we want in 
Germany itself, that is, on how Germany itself thinks to shape her future. Further, we must then try to determine 
clearly the foreign policy goals of those powers in Europe which, as members of the coalition of victors, are 
important as world powers. 

I have already dealt with Germany's various foreign policy possibilities in this book. Nevertheless, I shall once 
more briefly present the possible foreign policy goals so that they may yield a basis for the critical examination 
of the relations of these individual foreign policy aims to those of other European States. 

1) Germany can renounce setting a foreign policy goal altogether. This means that, in reality, she can decide for 
anything and need be committed to nothing at all. 

Thus in the future she will continue the policy of the last thirty years, but under other conditions. If now the 
world consisted just of States with a similar political aimlessness, Germany could at least endure this even 
though it could hardly be justified. But this is not at all the case. Thus, just as in ordinary life a man with a fixed 
life goal that he tries to achieve at all events will always be superior to others who live aimlessly, exactly 
likewise is it in the life of nations. But, above all, this is far from saying that a State without a political goal is in 
the position to avoid dangers which such a goal may bring in its train. For just as it seems exempt from an 
active function, in consequence of its own political aimlessness, in its very passiveness it can also just as easily 
become the victim of the political aims of others. For the action of a State is not only determined by its own 
will, but also by that of others, with the sole difference that in one case it itself can determine the law of action, 
whereas in the other case the latter is forced upon it. Not to want a war because of a peaceful sentiment, is far 
from saying that it can also be avoided. And to avoid a war at any price is far from signifying saving life in the 
face of death. 

Germany's situation in Europe today is such that she is far from allowing herself to hope that she may go 
forward to a condition of contemplative peace with her own political aimlessness. No such possibility exists for 
a nation located in the heart of Europe. Either Germany itself tries actively to take part in the shaping of life, or 
she will be a passive object of the lifeshaping activity of other nations. All the sagacity hitherto supposedly able 
to extricate nations from historical dangers through declarations of a general disinterest has, up to now, always 
shown itself to be an error as cowardly as it is stupid. Whoever will not be a hammer in history, will be an anvil. 
In all its development up to now, our German Folk has had a choice only between these two possibilities. When 
it itself wanted to make history, and accordingly joyfully and boldly staked all, then it was still the hammer. 
When it believed that it could renounce the obligations of the struggle for existence, it remained, up to now, the 
anvil on which others fought out their struggle for existence, or it itself served the alien world as nutriment. 

Hence, if Germany wants to live, she must take the defence of this life upon herself, and even here the best 
parry is a thrust. Indeed, Germany may not hope at all that she can still do something for shaping her own life, if 
she does not make a strong effort to set a clear foreign policy aim which seems suitable for bringing the German 
struggle for existence into an intelligent relation to the interests of other nations. 



If we do not do this, however, aimlessness on a large scale will cause planlessness in particulars. This 
planlessness will gradually turn us into a second Poland in Europe. In the very proportion that we let our own 
forces become weaker, thanks to our general political defeatism, and the only activity of our life is spent in a 
mere domestic policy, we will sink to being a puppet of historical events whose motive forces spring from the 
struggle for existence and for their interests waged by other nations. 

Moreover, nations which are not able to take clear decisions over their own future and accordingly would like 
best of all not to participate in the game of world development, will be viewed by all the other players as a 
spoilsport and equally hated. Indeed, it can even happen that, on the contrary, the planlessness of individual 
political actions, grounded in the general foreign policy aimlessness, is regarded as a very shrewd impenetrable 
game and responded to accordingly. It was this which befell us as a misfortune in the pre War period. The more 
impenetrable, because they were incomprehensible, were the political decisions of the German Governments of 
that time, the more suspicious they seemed. And all the more, therefore, were especially dangerous ideas 
suspected behind the most stupid step. 

Thus, if today Germany no longer makes an effort to arrive at a clear political goal, in practice she renounces all 
possibilities of a revision of her present fate, without in the least being able to avoid future dangers. 

2) Germany desires to effect the sustenance of the German Folk by peaceful economic means, as up to now. 
Accordingly, even in the future, she will participate most decisively in world industry, export and trade. Thus 
she will again want a great merchant fleet, she will want coaling stations and bases in other parts of the world, 
and finally she will want not only international sales markets, but also her own sources of raw material, if 
possible, in the form of colonies. In the future such a development will necessarily have to be protected, 
especially by maritime means of power. 

This whole political goal for the future is a Utopia, unless England is seen as defeated beforehand. It establishes 
anew all the causes which in 1914 resulted in the World War. Any attempt by Germany to renew her past along 
this way must end with England's mortal emnity, alongside which France may be reckoned as a most certain 
partner from the outset. 

From a Folkish standpoint setting, this foreign policy aim is calamitous, and it is madness from the point of 
view of power politics. 

3) Germany establishes the restoration of the borders of the year 1914 as her foreign policy aim. 

This goal is insufficient from a national standpoint, unsatisfactory from a military point of view, impossible 
from a Folkish standpoint with its eye on the future, and mad from the viewpoint of its consequences. Thereby, 
even in the future, Germany would have the whole coalition of former victors against her in a compact front. In 
view of our present military position, which with a continuation of the present situation will worsen from year 
to year, just how we are to restore the old borders is the impenetrable secret of our national bourgeois and 
patriotic government politicians. 

4) Germany decides to go over to a clear, farseeing territorial policy. Thereby she abandons all attempts at 
world industry and world trade, and instead concentrates all her strength in order, through the allotment of 
sufficient living space for the next hundred years to our Folk, also to prescribe a path of life. Since this territory 
can be only in the east, the obligation to be a naval power also recedes into the background. Germany tries anew 



to champion her interests through the formation of a decisive power on land. 


This aim is equally in keeping with the highest national as well as Folkish requirements. It likewise presupposes 
great military power means for its execution, but does not necessarily bring Germany into conflict with all 
European great powers. As surely as France here will remain Germany's enemy, just as little does the nature of 
such a political aim contain a reason for England, and especially for Italy, to maintain the enmity of the World 
War. 



Chapter 14 


ENGLAND AS AN ALLY 


It is fitting to review the great foreign aims of the other European powers for a closer understanding of the 
possibilities just adduced. In part these aims are recognisable in the previous activity and efficacy of these 
States, in part they are virtually laid down programmatically, and otherwise lie in vital needs that are so clearly 
recognisable that even if the States momentarily embark on other paths, the compulsion of a harsher reality 
necessarily leads them back to these aims. 

That England has a clear foreign policy goal is proved by the fact of the existence and therewith of the rise of 
this giant empire. Let no one fancy, after all, that a world empire can ever be forged without a clear will thereto. 
Obviously not every single member of such a nation goes to work every day with the idea of setting a great 
foreign policy goal, but in a completely natural way even an entire Folk will be gripped by such a goal so that 
even the unconscious acts of individuals nevertheless lie in the general line of the aim that has been set and 
actually benefit it. Indeed the general political goal will slowly stamp itself on the very character of such a Folk, 
and the pride of the presentday Englishman is no different from the pride of the former Romans. The opinion 
that a world empire owes its rise to chance, or that, at least, the events which conditioned its establishment were 
accidental historical processes which always turned out luckily for a nation, is false. Ancient Rome owed its 
greatness, exactly as does presentday England, to the soundness of Moltke's assertion that in the long run luck is 
always with the fit. This fitness of a Folk in no way lies only in racial value, but also in the ability and skill with 
which these values are applied. A world empire of the size of ancient Rome, or of present day Great Britain, is 
always the result of a marriage between the highest race value and the clearest political aim. As soon as one of 
these two factors begins to be lacking, first a weakening sets in, and ultimately perhaps even a decline. 

Presentday England's aim is conditioned by the race value of Anglosaxonism as such, and by her insular 
position. It lay in the race value of Anglosaxonism to strive for territorial space. Of necessity, this drive could 
find fulfilment only outside presentday Europe. Not that the English had not, from time to time, also attempted 
to take soil in Europe for their expansionist lusts. But all these enterprises failed because of the fact that they 
were opposed by States which at that time were of a no less great racial fitness. Later English expansion in the 
so called colonies led at the outset to an extraordinary increase of English maritime life. It is interesting to see 
how England, which at first exported men, ultimately went over to the export of commodities, and thereby 
weakened her own agriculture. Although now a great part of the English Folk, indeed the average in general, is 
inferior to the German peak value, nevertheless the centuries old tradition of this Folk has become so much part 
of its own flesh and blood that vis-a-vis our own German Folk it possesses considerable political advantages. If 
today the globe has an English world empire, then for the time being there is also no Folk which, on the grounds 
of its general civic political characteristics as well as its average political sagacity, would be more fitted for it. 

The fundamental idea which dominated English colonial policy, on the one hand, was to find a territorial market 
for English human material and to keep the latter in a governmental relation with the Motherland; and, on the 
other hand, to secure the English economy's markets and sources of raw material. It is understandable that the 
Englishman is convinced that the German cannot colonise, just as it is understandable, conversely, that the 
German believes the same about the Englishman. Both Folks take different standpoints in judging colonising 
capacities. Thus the English standpoint was infinitely more practical, more sober, and the German standpoint 
more romantic. When Germany strove for her first colonies, she was already a military State in Europe and 



thereby a power State of the first rank. She had wrested the title of a world power through imperishable 
accomplishments in all fields of human culture as well as in that of military skill. It was now noteworthy that 
especially in the nineteenth century a general impulse toward colonies permeated all nations, whereas the 
original leading idea had already fully declined. For example, Germany motivated her claim to colonies with 
her ability and her desire to spread German culture. As such it was nonsense. For culture, which is the general 
life expression of a definite Folk, cannot be transmitted to another Folk with wholly other psychic prerequisites. 
This may, at best, go with a so called international civilisation which stands in the same relation to culture as 
jazz music to a Beethoven symphony. But wholly apart from this, it would never have occurred to an 
Englishman at the time England's colonies were founded to motivate his actions otherwise than with the very 
real and sober advantages which they might bring with them. If later England espoused the freedom of the seas 
or of oppressed nations, it was never for the purpose of justifying her colonial activity, but to destroy ugly 
competitors. Hence English colonial activity was perforce successful in part because of the most natural 
reasons. For the less the Englishman ever gave a thought to such a notion as wanting to impose English culture 
or English breeding on savages, the more sympathetic did such a government necessarily seem to savages who 
were absolutely not hungry for culture. On top of this, to be sure, there was also the whip which one likewise 
could all the sooner use, since thereby one did not run the danger of departing from a cultural mission. England 
needed markets and sources of raw material for her commodities, and she secured these markets for herself 
through power politics. This is the sense of English colonial policy. If later even England nevertheless mouthed 
the word culture, it was only from a purely propagandistic viewpoint, so that she also could morally embroider 
her own exceedingly sober actions somewhat. In reality the living conditions of the savages were a matter of 
complete indifference to the English as long, and to the extent, that they did not affect the living conditions of 
the English themselves. That later still other ideas, of a political prestige character, were linked with colonies of 
the size of India is conceivable and understandable. But no one can dispute that, for instance, Indian interests 
never determined English living conditions, but instead English living conditions determined India's. Likewise 
it cannot be disputed that even in India the Englishman does not set up any cultural institution of any kind so 
that, for instance, the natives may share in English culture, but rather so that, at best, the Englishman can draw 
more benefits from his colonies. Or does one believe that England brought railroads to India just to put Indians 
in possession of European transport possibilities, and not in order to make possible a better utilisation of the 
colony as well as to guarantee an easier domination? If today in Egypt England again follows in the footsteps of 
the Pharaohs and stores the water of the Nile by means of gigantic dams, it is certainly not done in order to 
make the Earthly life of the poor fellah easier, but only in order to make English cotton independent of the 
American monopoly. But these are all viewpoints which Germany never dared to think about openly in her 
colonial policy. The English were the educators of the natives for England's interests, the German was the 
teacher. That in the end the natives might have felt better with us than they did under the English would, for a 
normal Englishman, be far from speaking for our kind of colonisation policy, but surely for that of the English 
instead. 

This policy of a gradual conquest of the world, in which economic power and political strength always went 
hand in hand, conditioned England's position vis-a-vis other States. The more England grew into her colonial 
policy, the more she required dominion over the seas, and the more she achieved dominion over the seas, the 
more, in consequence of this, she became again a colonial power. But then also, the more jealously did she 
finally begin to watch that nobody competed with her for dominion of the seas or of colonial possessions. 

There is a very erroneous and widespread notion, especially in Germany, according to which England would 
immediately fight against any European hegemony. As a matter of fact this is not correct. England actually 
concerned herself very little with European conditions as long as no threatening world competitor arose from 
them, so that she always viewed the threat as lying in a development which must one day cut across her 
dominion over the seas and colonies. 



There is no conflict of England in Europe in which the former did not have to protect her trade and overseas 
interests. The struggles against Spain, Holland and later France had their ground not in the threatening military 
might of these States as such, but only in the way this power was founded as well as in the effects of the same. 

If Spain had not been an overseas power and thereby a power in competition with England, the latter would 
presumably have taken little notice of Spain. The same applies to Holland. And even England's later gigantic 
struggle against France was never waged against Napoleon's continental France, but rather against Napoleonic 
France which viewed her continental policy only as a springboard and as a basis for greater, altogether non 
continental aims. In general, France, given her geographical position, will be the power most threatening to 
England. It was perhaps the only State in which even a limited continental development could contain dangers 
for England's future. It is all the more noteworthy and instructive for us Germans that despite this, England 
decided to enter the World War together with France. It is instructive because it proves that, despite all the 
steadfast adherence to the great fundamental ideas of English foreign policy, momentary existing possibilities 
are always taken into account there and never renounced merely because a threat to England could likewise rise 
from one of them in the near or distant future. Our German God Punish England politicians are always of the 
opinion, to wit, that a good relationship with England in the future must always founder on the fact that England 
would never seriously give a thought to promoting Germany's interests by an alliance with her in order to see 
Germany counterposed to her again one day as a dangerous and threatening power. Obviously England will not 
conclude an alliance to promote Germany's interests, but only in order to foster British interests. But up to now 
England has provided many examples that she could, very often, couple the representation of her interests with 
the representation of the interests of other nations. And that then she had recourse to alliances, although 
according to human prediction, even these were bound to change into later enmity. For divorces sooner or later 
underlie political marriages, since, indeed, they do not serve the representation of the common interests of both 
sides, but instead aim only with common means at promoting or defending the interests of two States which, as 
such, are different, but which for the time being are not opposed. 

England's relations vis-a-vis Prussia prove that she does not fundamentally oppose resistance to a European 
great power of superior military importance, as long as the foreign policy aims of this power are manifestly of a 
purely continental character. Or will one dispute that under Frederick The Great, Prussian military power was 
beyond all doubt by far the strongest in Europe? Let no one believe that England did not fight against the 
Prussia of that time only for the reason that, despite its military hegemony, she had to be numbered among the 
smaller States in terms of territorial size in Europe. Not at all. For when England herself had previously fought 
out her wars against the Dutch, Dutch territory in Europe was still considerably smaller than the Prussia of late 
Frederickian time. And one could really not talk of a threatening hegemony or dominant power position on the 
part of Holland. If nevertheless England pressed Holland hard in decades long struggles, the reason lay 
exclusively only in the thwarting of England's dominion of the sea and trade by Holland, as well as in the 
general colonial activity of the Dutch. Thus one should not deceive oneself: if the Prussian State had not so 
exclusively dedicated itself to purely continental aims, it would at all times have had England as its sharpest 
enemy regardless of the size of Prussia's purely military means in Europe, or the danger of a hegemonisation of 
Europe by Prussia. Our national patriotic politicians, who do little thinking, have not seldom bitterly reproached 
the successors of the great Elector for neglecting the overseas possessions brought into being by the Elector, 
indeed for surrendering them and thereby having no interest in the maintenance and further construction of a 
Brandenburg Prussian fleet. It was Prussia's good fortune, and later Germany's, that this was the case. 

Nothing speaks so well for the outstanding statesmanship, especially of Frederick William I, than the fact that, 
with all the scanty and surely infinitely limited means of the small Prussian State, he concentrated exclusively 
on the promotion of the Land Army. Not only for the reason that through it this small State could maintain a 
superior position in one weapon, but was thereby also spared England's enmity. A Prussia following in 
Holland's footsteps would not have been able to fight the three Silesian Wars, with England as an added enemy 
at her back. Aside from the fact that any achievement of a real naval standing by the small Prussian State would 



necessarily miscarry in the long run in consequence of the territorial base of the motherland which was 
exceedingly limited and unfavourably situated in a military sense. Even at that time it would have been child's 
play for the English to rid themselves of a dangerous competitor in Europe through a general coalition war. In 
general the fact that the later Prussia could develop out of little Brandenburg and in turn a new German Reich 
out of the later Prussia was due only to that sagacious insight into the real power relations as well as into the 
possibilities of the Prussia of that time, so that the Hohenzollems, up to the time of Bismarck, limited 
themselves almost exclusively to a strengthening of land power. It was the only clear, consequential policy. If 
German Prussia and then later Germany in general wanted to go toward a future, it could only be guaranteed by 
a supremacy on land which matched the English supremacy on the seas. It was Germany's misfortune that we 
slowly moved away from this insight and built up our land power insufficiently and instead went over to a naval 
policy whose end result had been inadequate anyway. Even the Germany of the post Bismarckian period could 
not afford the luxury of creating and maintaining a superior armament on land and sea simultaneously. It has 
been one of the most important principles of all times that a nation recognise which weapon is most necessary 
and indispensable for the preservation of its existence, and then promote it to the extreme by staking all its 
means on it. England recognised and followed this principle. For England, dominion of the seas was really the 
substance of her existence. Even the most brilliant military periods on the mainland, the most glorious wars, the 
most matchless military decisions, could not move the English to see in land power for England anything but 
something ultimately subordinate, and to concentrate the whole strength of the nation on the maintenance of a 
superior dominion of the seas. In Germany, to be sure, we let ourselves be swept along by the great colonial 
waves of the nineteenth century, strengthened perhaps by romantic memories of the old Hansa as well as driven 
by the peaceful economic policy, to shelve the exclusive promotion of the Land Army and to take up the 
construction of a Fleet. This policy acquired its final expression in the proposition, as preposterous as it was 
calamitous: Our future lies on the water. No, exactly to the contrary, it lay and lies for us in Europe on land, just 
as exactly as the causes of our decline will always be of a purely continental character: our unfortunate 
territorial and terrible military geographical position. 

As long as Prussia limited herself to purely European aims in her foreign policy aspirations, she had no serious 
danger to fear from England. The objection that nevertheless a pro French mood already prevailed in England in 
the year 1870-71 is not relevant, and in any case signifies nothing at all. For at that time a pro German attitude 
prevailed just as much in England; indeed France's action was branded as a sacrilege from the pulpit in English 
churches. Moreover, it was the official attitude adopted which is decisive. For it is entirely obvious that France 
will indeed have continual sympathies in a State of England's importance, all the more so as the influence of a 
country's press is not seldom exerted through foreign capital. France has always known how to mobilise 
sympathy for herself adroitly. Thus she has always played Paris as her most remarkable auxiliary weapon. But 
this did not take place only in England, for instance, but even in Germany. In the very middle of the war, in the 
year 70/71, a not small clique was to be found in Berlin society, indeed at the Berlin court, who made no bones 
about their pro French sympathies. At any rate they knew how to postpone the bombardment of Paris for a long 
time. And it is humanly understandable that English circles should have viewed German military success with 
mixed joy. But in any case they could not move the official attitude of the British government toward an 
intervention. Even the opinion that this is to be ascribed only to the fact that the rear was covered by Russia, 
which Bismarck had assured, changes nothing. For this covering of the rear was thought of primarily against 
Austria. If, however, England had given up her neutral attitude at that time, even Russia's covering of the rear 
would not have been able to avert an immense conflagration. For then Austria would naturally have been 
involved and, one way or the other, the success of the year 1871 would hardly have come to pass. As a matter of 
fact Bismarck had a continual quiet fear of meddling by other States not only in the war, but even in the peace 
negotiations. For what took place several years later vis-a-vis Russia, the intervention of other powers, [note 10] 
could have been staged against Germany by England just as well. 


The course of the anti German attitude of the English can be exactly followed. It parallels our development on 



the seas, rises with our colonial activity to an overt antipathy, and finally ends up with our naval policy in a 
frank hatred. One cannot take it amiss that in England a really solicitous State leadership scented a threatening 
danger for the future in this development of a Folk as efficient as the Germans. We must never apply our 
German sins of omission as a measure forjudging the actions of others. The frivolousness with which post 
Bismarckian Germany allowed her position in terms of power politics to be threatened in Europe by France and 
Russia, without undertaking any serious countermeasures, far from allows us to impute similar neglect to other 
powers or to denounce them in moral indignation, if indeed they attend to the vital needs of their Folks better. 

If pre War Germany had decided upon a continuance of the former Prussian continental policy instead of her 
peaceful world and economic policy with its fateful repercussions, then first of all she could have raised her 
land power to that superior height formerly enjoyed by the Prussian State, and secondly she need not have 
feared an unconditional enmity with England. For this much is sure: if Germany had used all the enormous 
means which she squandered on the Fleet for the strengthening of her Fand Army, then her interests might have 
been fought for in a different way, at least on the decisive European battlefields. And the Nation would have 
been spared seeing a Fand Army, worse than inadequately armed, slowly bleed to death against an 
overwhelming world coalition, while the Navy, at least in its decisive combat units, rusted away in the harbours 
in order finally to terminate its existence in a more than ignominious surrender. Fet us not find excuses for the 
leaders, but have the courage rather to admit that this lay in the very nature of such a weapon for us. For at the 
same time the Field Army was pulled out of one battle and hurled into another without regard to losses and any 
other hardships. The Fand Army was really the German weapon, grown out of a hundred year tradition, but in 
the end our Fleet was only a romantic plaything, a parade piece that was built for its own sake, and which again 
for its own sake could not be risked. The whole benefit which it brought us is disproportionate to the terrible 
enmity with which it saddled us. 

If Germany had not taken this development, at the turn of the century we still could have reached an 
understanding with England, which at that time was ready for one. To be sure, such an understanding would 
have lasted only if had been accompanied by a fundamental shift in our foreign policy goal. Even at the turn of 
the century Germany could have decided upon a resumption of the former Prussian continental policy, and, 
together with England, prescribed the further development of world history. The objection of our eternal 
temporisers and doubters that this would nevertheless have been uncertain is based on nothing but personal 
opinions. English history up to now speaks against it in any case. By what right can such doubters presume that 
Germany could not have played the same role as Japan? The stupid phrase that Germany thereby would have 
hauled England's chestnuts out of the fire could just as much be applied to Frederick The Great who, ultimately, 
on European battlefields, helped to facilitate England's conflicts with France outside Europe. It is almost stupid 
to cite the further objection that nevertheless England one day would have gone against Germany. For then even 
in such a case Germany's position, following a successful defeat of Russia in Europe, would be better than it 
was at the start of the World War. On the contrary, if the Russian Japanese war had been fought in Europe 
between Germany and Russia, Germany would have received such a purely moral increase in power that, for 
the next thirty years, every other European power would have carefully weighed whether to break the peace and 
let itself be incited into a coalition against Germany. But all these objections always spring from the mentality 
of pre War Germany which itself as an opposition knew everything, but did nothing. 

The fact is, at that time England made an approach to Germany, and there is the further fact that Germany for 
her part could not make up her mind to emerge from the mentality of this eternal temporising and hesitation and 
come to a clear stand. What Germany refused at that time was solicitously tended to by Japan, and thereby she 
achieved the fame of a world power in a relatively cheap way. 


If nobody in Germany wanted to do this under any circumstances, then we necessarily should have joined the 



other side. Then we could have utilised the year 1904 or 1905 in a conflict with France, and had Russia at our 
rear. But these temporisers and delayers wanted that just as little. Out of sheer caution, sheer hesitation and 
sheer knowledge, they were never able to establish what they really wanted at any hour. And only therein lies 
the superiority of English statesmanship, for that country is not ruled by such smartalecks who can never brace 
themselves for an action, but by men who think naturally and for whom politics most surely is an art of the 
possible, but who also take all possibilities by the forelock, and really strike with them. 

Once Germany, however, had shunned such a fundamental understanding with England, which, as already 
noted, would have made durable sense only if in Berlin a clear continental territorial political aim had been 
arrived at, England began to organise the world resistance against the country threatening British interests as 
regards her dominion of the seas. 

The World War did not proceed as had been thought at the beginning in view of our Folk's military efficiency, 
which was not presumed to be what it was even in England. To be sure, Germany was finally overcome, but 
only after the American Union had made its appearance on the battlefield, and Germany had lost the support of 
her rear in consequence of the internal collapse of the homeland. But the actual English war aim had not been 
achieved thereby. Indeed, the German threat to English supremacy on the seas was eliminated, but the 
American threat, with a considerably stronger base, took its place. In the future the greatest danger to England 
would not be in Europe any more at all, but in North America. In Europe itself at this time, France is the State 
that is most dangerous to England. Her military hegemony has an especially threatening significance for 
England, in consequence of the geographical position which France occupies vis-a-vis England. Not only for 
the reason that a great number of vitally important English centres seems to be almost defencelessly exposed to 
French aerial attacks, but even by means of artillery fire a number of English cities can be reached from the 
French coast. Indeed, if modem technology succeeds in producing a considerable increase in the firing power of 
the heaviest artillery, then a bombardment of London from the French mainland does not lie beyond the limits 
of the possible. But it is even more important that a French submarine war against England would possess a 
wholly different basis than the earlier German one during the World War. France's broad encampment on two 
seas would make it very difficult to carry out sealing off measures which could be easily successful vis-a-vis the 
confined triangle of water. 

Whoever in presentday Europe tries to find natural enemies against England will always chance upon France 
and Russia: France as a power with continental political aims, which in truth, however, are only a cover for very 
widely demarcated intentions of a general international political character; Russia as a threatening enemy of 
India and the possessor of oil sources which today have the same importance once possessed by iron and coal 
mines in past centuries. 

If England herself remains true to her great world political aims, her potential opponents will be France and 
Russia in Europe, and, in the other parts of the world, especially the American Union in the future. 

n contrast no inducement exists to make eternal England's enmity against Germany. Otherwise English foreign 
policy would be determined by motives that lie far beyond all real logic, and therefore could have a decisive 
influence on the determination of the political relations among nations perhaps only in the head of a German 
professor. No, in the future, in England positions in accordance with purely expedient points of view will be 
taken up just as soberly as has happened for three hundred years. And just as for three hundred years allies 
could become England's enemies and enemies again become allies, so will this also be the case in the future as 
long as general and particular necessities call for it. If, however, Germany comes to a fundamentally new 
political orientation which no longer contradicts England's sea and trade interests, but spends itself in 
continental aims, then a logical ground for England's enmity, which would then be just hostility for hostility's 



sake, would no longer exist. For even the European balance of power interests England only as long as it 
hinders the development of a world trade and sea power that may threaten England. There is no foreign policy 
leadership at all which is less determined by doctrines that bear no relation to life's realities than the English. A 
world empire does not come into being by means of a sentimental or purely theoretical policy. 

Hence the sober perception of British interests will be determining for English foreign policy in the future too. 
Whoever cuts across these interests will thereby also be England's enemy in the future. Whoever does not touch 
them, his existence will also not be touched by England. And whoever can be useful to her from time to time 
will be invited on England's side regardless of whether he had been an enemy in the past or perhaps can again 
become one in the future. 

Only a bourgeois national German politician can manage to refuse a useful alliance for the reason that later, 
perhaps, it can end in enmity. To impute such an idea to an Englishman is an insult to the political instinct of 
this Folk. 

Naturally if Germany does not set herself any political goal, and we muddle through planlessly from one day to 
the other as up to now without any guiding thought; or if this goal lies in the restoration of the borders and 
territorial conditions of the year 1914 and thereby in the end lands into a policy of world trade, colonisation and 
naval power, England's future enmity with us will indeed be certain. Then Germany will suffocate economically 
under her Dawes burdens, politically decay under her Locarno treaties, and increasingly weaken racially in 
order finally to terminate her life as a second Holland or a second Switzerland in Europe. This can certainly be 
achieved by our bourgeois national and patriotic armchair politicians; for this all they need do is continue 
further along their present path of phrase mongering, shooting off their mouths in protests, making war on all 
Europe, and then crawling cravenly into a hole before every act. This then is what the national bourgeois 
patriotic policy of Germany's resurgence means. Thus, just as our bourgeoisie in the course of barely sixty years 
has known how to degrade and to compromise the national concept, so in its decline does it destroy the 
beautiful concept of the Fatherland by degrading it also to a mere phrase in its patriotic leagues. 

To be sure, yet another important factor emerges in regard to England's attitude toward Germany: the decisive 
influence world Jewry also possesses in England. Just as surely as Anglosaxonism itself can overcome its war 
psychosis vis-a-vis Germany, world Jewry just as surely will neglect nothing to keep the old enmities alive so as 
to prevent a pacification of Europe from materialising, and thereby enable it to set its Bolshevist destructive 
tendencies into motion amid the confusion of a general unrest. 

We cannot discuss world policy without taking this most terrible power into account. Therefore I will deal 
especially with this problem further in this book. 



Chapter 15 


ITALY AS AN ALLY 


Certainly if England is under no compulsion to maintain her wartime enmity toward Germany forever on 
grounds of principle, Italy has even less grounds to do so. Italy is the second State in Europe that must not be 
fundamentally hostile to Germany. Indeed, her foreign policy aims need not cross with Germany's at all. On the 
contrary, with no other State does Germany have perhaps more interests in common than precisely with Italy, 
and conversely. 

At the same time that Germany tried to achieve a new national unification, the same process also took place in 
Italy. To be sure, the Italians lacked a central power of gradually growing, and ultimately towering, importance, 
such as Germany in the making possessed in Prussia. But as German unification was primarily opposed by 
France and Austria as true enemies, so l ik ewise did the Italian unification movement also have to suffer most 
under these two powers. The chief cause, of course, lay with the Habsburg State which must have and did have a 
vital interest in the maintenance of Italy's internal dismemberment. Since a State of the size of Austria-Hungary 
is unthinkable without direct access to the sea, and the only territory which could be considered for this — at 
least in regard to its cities — was inhabited by Italians, Austria necessarily disapprovingly opposed the rise of a 
united Italian State for fear of the possible loss of this territory in case of the founding of an Italian national 
State. At that time even the boldest political aim of the Italian Folk could lie only in its national unification. This 
then perforce also conditioned the foreign policy attitude. Hence as Italian unification [that through Savoys] 
slowly took shape, Cavour, its brilliant great statesman, utilised all possibilities which could serve this particular 
aim. Italy owes the possibility of her unification to an extraordinarily cleverly chosen alliance policy. Its aim 
was primarily to bring about the paralysis of the chief enemy of unification, Austria-Hungary, indeed finally to 
induce this State to leave the north Italian provinces. Withal, even after the conclusion of the provisional 
unification of Italy, there were more than 800000 Italians in Austria-Hungary alone. The national aim of the 
further unification of people of Italian nationality was at first bound to undergo a postponement when, for the 
first time, there began to arise the dangers of an Italian French estrangement. Italy decided to enter the Triple 
Alliance, chiefly in order to gain time for her inner consolidation. 

The World War at last brought Italy into the camp of the Entente for reasons that I have already discussed. 
Thereby Italian unity had been carried a powerful step forward. Even today, however, it is not yet completed. 

For the Italian State, though, the great event was the elimination of the hated Habsburg empire. To be sure, its 
place was taken by a Southern Slav structure which already presented a danger hardly less great for Italy on the 
basis of general national viewpoints. 

For just as little as the bourgeois national and purely border policy conception in Germany could in the long run 
satisfy our Folk's vital needs, equally little could the purely bourgeois national unification policy of the Italian 
State satisfy the Italian Folk. 

Fike the German Folk, the Italian Folk lives on a small soil surface which in part is scantily fertile. For centuries, 
indeed many centuries, this overpopulation has forced Italy to a permanent export of people. Even though a great 
part of these emigrants, as seasonal labourers, return to Italy in order to live there on their savings, this leads 
more than ever to a further aggravation of the situation. Not only is the population problem not solved thereby, 
but it is sharpened rather. Just as Germany through her export of goods fell into a state of dependence on the 



ability, potentiality and willingness of other powers and countries to receive these goods, likewise and exactly 
did Italy with her export of people. In both cases a closing of the receiving market, resulting from events of any 
kind whatsoever, perforce led to catastrophic consequences within these countries. 


Hence Italy's attempt to master the problem of sustenance through an increase of her industrial activity cannot 
lead to any ultimate success because, at the outset, the lack of natural raw materials in the Italian Motherland 
robs her in great measure of the required ability to compete. 

Just as in Italy the conceptions of a formal bourgeois national policy are being overcome and a Folkish feeling of 
responsibility is taking its place, likewise will this State also be forced to deviate from its former political 
conceptions in order to turn to a territorial policy on a grand scale. 

The shore basins of the Mediterranean Sea constitute, and hence remain, the natural area of Italian expansion. 

The more presentday Italy departs from her former unification policy and goes over to an imperialist policy, the 
more will she fall into the ways of ancient Rome, not out of any presumption to power, but out of deep, internal 
necessities. If today Germany seeks soil in Eastern Europe, this is not the sign of an extravagant hunger for 
power, but only the consequence of her need for territory. And if today Italy seeks to enlarge her influence on 
the shores of the Mediterranean basin and ultimately aims to establish colonies, it is also only the release ensuing 
from sheer necessity, out of a natural defence of interests. If the German pre War policy had not been struck with 
total blindness, it would necessarily have supported and fostered this development with every means. Not only 
because it would have meant a natural strengthening of an ally, but because it might perhaps have offered the 
only possibility of drawing Italian interests away from the Adriatic Sea and thereby lessened the sources of 
irritation with Austria-Hungary. Such a policy, in addition, would have stiffened the most natural enmity which 
can ever exist, namely that between Italy and France, the repercussions of which would have strengthened the 
Triple Alliance in a favourable sense. 

It was Germany's misfortune that at that time not only did the Reich leadership flatly fail in this respect, but that, 
above all, public opinion — led on by insane German national patriots and foreign policy dreamers — took a 
stand against Italy. Especially, moreover, for the reason that Austria discovered something unfriendly about the 
Italian operation in Tripoli. At that time, however, it appertained to the political wisdom of our national 
bourgeoisie to back every stupidity or baseness of Viennese diplomacy, indeed if possible to undertake stupid 
and base acts itself, in order thereby to demonstrate the inner harmony and solidarity of this cordial alliance 
before the world in the best possible way. 

Now Austria-Hungary is wiped out. But Germany has even less cause than before to regret a development of 
Italy which one day must necessarily proceed at the expense of France. For the more presentday Italy discovers 
her highest Folkish tasks, and the more, accordingly, she goes over to a territorial policy conceived along Roman 
lines, the more must she run into the opposition of her greatest competitor in the Mediterranean Sea, France. 
France will never tolerate Italy's becoming the leading power in the Mediterranean. She will try to prevent this, 
either through her own strength, or through a system of alliances. France will lay obstacles in the path of Italy's 
development wherever possible, and finally she will not shrink from recourse to violence. Even the so called 
kinship of these two Fatin nations will change nothing on this score, for it is no closer than the kinship between 
England and Germany. 

On top of that, in proportion as France declines in her own Folk's power, this State proceeds to the opening up of 
her reservoir of niggers. Thus a danger of unimaginable proportions draws near for Europe. The idea of French 
niggers, who can contaminate white blood, on the Rhine as cultural guards against Germany, is so monstrous 
that it would have been regarded as completely impossible only a few decades ago. Surely France itself would 



suffer the greatest harm through this blood pollution, but only if the other European nations remain conscious of 
the value of their white race. Viewed in purely military terms, France can very well supplement her European 
formations, and, as the World War has shown, also commit them effectively. Finally, this completely non French 
nigger army indeed vouchsafes a certain defence against communist demonstrations, since utter subordination in 
all situations will be easier to preserve in an army which is not at all linked by blood to the French Folk. This 
development entails its greatest danger for Italy first of all. If the Italian Folk wants to shape its future according 
to its own interests, it will ultimately have nigger armies, mobilised by France, as its enemy. Thus it cannot in 
the least lie in Italy's interest to be in a state of enmity with Germany, something which even in the best of cases 
cannot make a profitable contribution to the shaping of Italian life in the future. On the contrary, if any State can 
finally bury war enmity, this State is Italy. Italy has no inherent interest in a further oppression of Germany if, 
for the future, both States want to attend to their most natural tasks. 

Bismarck had already perceived this fortunate circumstance. More than once did he confirm the complete 
parallel between German and Italian interests. It was he who even then pointed out that the Italy of the future 
must seek her development on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, and it was he who further ascertained the 
harmony of German and Italian interests by stressing that only France could think of disturbing this shaping of 
Italian life, whereas Germany was bound to welcome it from her viewpoint. Actually in the whole future he sees 
no necessary cause for an estrangement, let alone enmity, between Italy and Germany. If Bismarck rather than 
Bethmann Hollweg had guided Germany's destiny before the World War, indeed, even this terrible enmity, 
incurred only on account of Austria, would never have come to pass. 

Moreover, with Italy as with England, it is a positive fact that a continental expansion of Germany in Northern 
Europe is no threat, and thereby can give no cause for an estrangement by Italy against Germany. Conversely, 
for Italy the most natural interests speak against any further increase of French hegemony in Europe. 

Hence Italy, above all, would warrant consideration in terms of an alliance relation with Germany. 

The enmity with France has already become obvious ever since Fascism in Italy brought a new idea of the State 
and with it a new will to the life of the Italian Folk. Therefore France, through a whole system of alliances, is not 
only trying to strengthen herself for a possible conflict with Italy, but also to hamper and separate Italy's possible 
friends. The French aim is clear. A French system of States is to be built that reaches from Paris via Warsaw, 
Prague, Vienna, up to Belgrade. The attempt to draw Austria into this system is in no way as hopeless as it may 
seem at first sight. In view of the dominating character of the influence which Vienna with its two million 
inhabitants exerts over the rest of Austria, which encompasses only six million people, this country's policy will 
always be determined primarily by Vienna. The fact that an alliance with Paris is far more likely as such than 
one with Italy lies in the cosmopolitan nature of Vienna which has been revealed even more pointedly in the last 
decade. This was already taken care of by the manipulation of public opinion guaranteed by the Vienna press. 
But this activity threatens to become especially effective since this press, with the help of the clamour over the 
Southern Tyrol, has also succeeded in stirring up the completely instinctless bourgeois national province against 
Italy. Thus a danger of an incommensurable extent draws near. For the Germans, more than any other Folk, can 
be brought to the most incredible, in reality truly suicidal, decisions by an agitational press campaign conducted 
consistently over many years. 

If, however, France succeeds in fitting Austria into the chain of her friendship, Italy one day will be forced into a 
two front war, or she must again renounce a real representation of the interests of the Italian Folk. In both cases 
for Germany there is the danger that a possible German ally is finally excluded for an unpredictable period of 
time, and that France thus increasingly becomes the master of Europe's fate. 



Let no one indulge in any illusions as to what this entails for Germany. Our bourgeois national border politicians 
and protesters from the patriotic leagues will then have their hands full in order again, in the name of national 
honour, to eliminate the traces of the mistreatments which they would have to endure from France, thanks to 
their farsighted policy. 

Since the National Socialist Movement concerns itself with ideas of foreign policy, I have tried to educate it to 
become a bearer of a clear foreign policy aim by a consideration of all the arguments discussed. It is unjust to 
raise the reproach that this is primarily the task of the Government, in a State, first of all, the official 
governments of which come from the bosom of parties who neither have any cognisance of Germany nor want a 
happy future for this Germany. Since those who were responsible for arranging the November crime have 
become qualified to govern, it is no longer the interests of the German Nation which are represented, but instead 
those of the wrongly acting parties. In general we cannot very well expect the promotion of Germany's vital 
needs by people to whom the Fatherland and the Nation are but means to an end, and which, if necessary, they 
shamelessly sacrifice for their own interests. Indeed, the instinct of self preservation of these people and parties, 
so often visible, in truth by itself speaks against any resurgence of the German Nation, since the freedom 
struggle for German honour perforce would mobilise forces which must lead to the fall and destruction of the 
former defilers of German honour. There is no such thing as a struggle for freedom without a general national 
resurgence. But a resurgence of the national conscience and the national honour is unthinkable without first 
bringing those responsible for the previous degradation to justice. The naked instinct of self preservation will 
force these degenerate elements and their parties to thwart all steps that could lead to a real resurrection of our 
Folk. And the seeming insanity of many acts of these Herostrats of our Folk, once we properly gauge the inner 
motives, becomes a planned, adroit, albeit infamous and contemptible, action. 

In a time such as this when public life acquires its shape from parties of this kind and is represented solely by 
people of inferior character, it is the duty of a national reform Movement to go its own way even in foreign 
policy which some day, according to all human prediction and reason, must lead to the success and happiness of 
the Fatherland. Hence, so far as the reproach of conducting a policy that does not correspond to official foreign 
policy comes from the Marxist democratic Centre camp, it can be set aside with the contempt it deserves. But if 
bourgeois national and so called Fatherland circles raise it, this is really only the expression and the symbol of 
the state of mind of professional joiners which exerts itself only in protests, and simply cannot seriously grasp 
that another movement possesses the indestructible will ultimately to become a power, and that in a prevision of 
this fact it already undertakes the necessary education of this power. 

Since the year 1920 I have tried with all means and most persistently to accustom the National Socialist 
Movement to the idea of an alliance among Germany, Italy and England. This was very difficult, especially in 
the first years after the War, since the God Punish England standpoint, first and foremost, still robbed our Folk 
of any capacity for clear and sober thinking in the sphere of foreign policy, and continued to hold it prisoner. 

The situation of the young Movement was infinitely difficult even vis-a-vis Italy, especially since an 
unprecedented reorganisation of the Italian Folk set in under the leadership of the brilliant statesman Benito 
Mussolini, which drew the protest of all the States directed by Freemasonry. For whereas up to the year 1922 the 
fabricators of official German opinion took altogether no notice of the sufferings of those parts of our Folk 
severed from Germany through their crimes, they now suddenly began to honour the Southern Tyrol with their 
attention. With all the means of a cunning journalism and a mendacious dialectic, the Southern Tyrol problem 
was blown up into a question of extraordinary importance so that, in the end, Italy incurred a proscription in 
Germany and Austria conferred on none other of the victor States. If the National Socialist Movement honestly 
wanted to represent its foreign policy mission, sustained by the conviction of the unconditional necessity of the 
same, it could not draw back from the struggle against this system of lies and confusion. Thus at the same time it 
could not count on any allies, but instead had to be guided by the idea that one should sooner renounce a cheap 



popularity rather than act against a perceived truth, a necessity that lay before one, and the voice of one's 
conscience. And even if one would thereby be defeated, this would still be more honourable than to participate 
in a crime that had been seen through. 


When in the year 1920 I pointed to the possibility of a later association with Italy, all the prerequisites thereto, at 
least at first, actually seemed to be lacking. Italy was in the circle of the victor States, and shared in the actual or 
merely presumed advantages of this situation. In the years 1919 and 1920 there seemed no prospect at all that the 
inner structure of the Entente would loosen in any predictable time. The powerful world coalition still placed a 
great value on showing that it was a self sufficient guarantor of the victory and thus also of the peace. The 
difficulties which had already come to light in connection with the drawing up of the peace treaties came all the 
less to the consciousness of a broad public opinion since the directors of an adroitly staged production knew how 
to preserve the impression of complete unity, at least outwardly. This common action was based just as much on 
the public opinion which had been created by a generally homogeneous war propaganda as it was on the still 
insecure fear of the German giant. Only slowly did the outside world get a glimpse of the dimensions of 
Germany's inner decay. A further reason contributed to the seemingly almost indissoluble solidarity of the victor 
States: the hope of the individual States that they would thus not be overlooked when the time came to share the 
spoils. Finally there was the further fear that if at that time a State should actually withdraw, Germany's fate, 
nevertheless, would have taken no other course, and then perhaps France alone would be the sole beneficiary of 
our collapse. For in Paris they naturally never gave a thought to bringing about a change in the attitude toward 
Germany which had been set in motion during the War. For me the peace is the continuation of the war. With 
this statement, white haired old Clemenceau expressed the French Folk's real intentions. 

The complete planlessness of German intentions confronted this, at least seeming, inner solidity of the coalition 
of victors, the immovable aim of which, inspired by France, was the complete annihilation of Germany even 
after the event. Next to the contemptible villainy of those who in their country, against all truth and against their 
own conscience, put the blame for the war on Germany and insolently deduced a justification for the enemy's 
extortions therefrom, stood a partly intimidated, partly uncertain national side which believed that now after the 
ensuing collapse it could help matters by means of the most painful possible reconstruction of the nation's past. 
We lost the war in consequence of a lack of national passion against our enemies. The opinion in national circles 
was that we must replace this harmful deficiency and anchor this hatred against the former enemies in the peace. 
At the same time it was noteworthy that, from the start, this hatred was concentrated more against England, and 
later Italy, than against France. Against England because, thanks to the Bethmann Hollwegian soporific policy, 
nobody had believed in a war with England up to the last hour. Therefore her entry into the war was viewed as 
an extraordinarily shameful crime against loyalty and faith. In the case of Italy the hatred was even more 
understandable in view of the political thoughtlessness of our German Folk. They had been so imprisoned in the 
mist and fog of the Triple Alliance by official government circles that even Italy's non intervention for the 
benefit of Austria-Hungary and Germany was viewed as a breach of loyalty. And they saw a boundless perfidy 
in the later joining up of the Italian Folk with our enemies. This accumulated hatred was discharged in the 
typically bourgeois national fulmination and battle cry: God Punish England. Since God is just as much on the 
side of the stronger and the more determined, as well as preferably on the side of those who are cleverer, he 
manifestly refused to inflict this punishment. Nevertheless, at least during the war, whipping up of our national 
passion by every means was not only allowed but obviously called for. It was only a hindrance in that we were 
blinded by it to the real actualities, although the passion was never fanned too high among us. In politics there is 
no standpoint of contrariness, and therefore, even during the War, it was wrong to draw no other consequences, 
especially from Italy's entry into the world coalition, except those of a flaming anger and indignation. For, on the 
contrary, we should have had the duty then especially to keep on reexamining the possibilities of the situation in 
order to come to those decisions that might have warranted consideration for saving the threatened German 
Nation. For with Italy's entry into the front of the Entente, an extraordinary aggravation of the war situation was 
unavoidable, not only in consequence of the increase in terms of arms which the Entente acquired, but much 



more rather in consequence of the moral strengthening which necessarily lay in the emergence of such a power 
on the side of the world coalition being formed, especially for France. In terms of duty, the Nation's political 
leaders at that time perforce should have decided, cost what it may, to put an end to the two front and three front 
war. Germany was not responsible for the further maintenance of the corrupt, slovenly Austrian State. Nor did 
the German soldier fight for the family power policy of the hereditary House Of Habsburg. This at best lay in the 
mind of our non combatant hurrahhshouters, but not in that of those at the front shedding their blood. The 
sufferings and hardships of the German musketeers were already immeasurable in the year 1915. These 
sufferings could be demanded for the future and the preservation of our German Folk, but not for the salvation of 
the Habsburg big power megalomania. It was a monstrous idea to let millions of German soldiers bleed in a 
hopeless war only so that a dynasty could preserve a State, the most private dynastic interests of which for 
centuries had been anti German. This insanity will become completely understandable to us in its entirety only if 
we keep in view that the best German blood had to be shed so that, in the most favourable case, the Habsburgs 
might again have another chance to denationalise the German Folk in peacetime. We not only had to undertake 
the most monstrous bloodshed on two fronts for this madness, which screamed to heaven, no, we were even duty 
bound again and again to fill the holes which treason and corruption had torn in our worthy ally's front with 
German flesh and blood. And thereby we made this sacrifice for a dynasty which itself was ready to leave its all 
sacrificing ally in the lurch at the first opportunity which offered itself. And who indeed later did just this. To be 
sure, our bourgeois national Fatherland patriots speak as little of the betrayal as they do of the continuous 
betrayal of the Austrian troops of Slavic nationality allied with us, who went over to the enemy's side in whole 
regiments and brigades, in order finally in their own legions to join the fight against those who had been dragged 
into this dreadful misfortune by the operations of their State. Moreover, by itself, Austria-Hungary would never 
have participated in a war which might have involved Germany. That here or there some perhaps really believed 
to gain protection from the Triple Alliance, grounded in reciprocity, can be ascribed only to the boundless 
ignorance of Austrian conditions which generally prevailed in Germany. The worst disappointment for Germany 
would have materialised had the World War broken out on account of Germany. The Austrian State, with its 
Slav majority and with its Habsburg Ruling House, fundamentally anti German and anti Reich oriented, would 
never have taken up arms to defend and assist Germany against all the rest of the world, as Germany stupidly 
did. As a matter of fact, vis-a-vis Austria-Hungary, Germany had but one duty to fulfil, namely: to save the 
German element of this State by all means, and to eliminate the most degenerate, most guilt laden dynasty that 
the German Folk ever had to endure. 

For Germany, Italy's entry into the World War perforce should have been the occasion for a fundamental 
revision of her attitude vis-a-vis Austria-Hungary. It is not a political act, let alone an expression of the sagacity 
and competence of political leaders, in such a case to find no other answer than sullen indignation and impotent 
rage. Such a thing is usually harmful even in private life, but in political life it is worse than a crime. It is an act 
of stupidity. 

And even if this attempt at a change of the former German attitude had led to no success, it at least would have 
absolved the nation's political leadership from the guilt of not having tried it. In any case, after Italy's entry into 
the World War, Germany should have tried to put an end to the two front war. She should then have striven for a 
separate peace with Russia, not only on the basis of a renunciation of any utilisation of the successes in the east 
already achieved by German arms, but even, if necessary, of a sacrifice of Austria-Hungary. Only the complete 
dissociation of German policy from the task of saving the Austrian State and its exclusive concentration on the 
task of helping the German Folk could still afford a possibility of victory, according to human appraisals. 

Moreover, with the demolition of Austria-Hungary, the incorporation of nine million German Austrians into the 
Reich as such would have been a more worthwhile success before history and for our Folk's future than the gain, 
doubtful in its consequences, of a few French coal and iron mines. But it must be stressed again and again that 
the task — even of a German foreign policy that is only bourgeois national — should not have been the 



preservation of the Habsburg State, but exclusively the salvation of the German Nation, including the nine 
million Germans in Austria. Otherwise nothing else at all, indeed absolutely nothing else. 


As is known, the reaction of the Reich's leaders to the situation created by Italy's entry into the World War was 
quite different. They tried more than ever to save the Austrian State with its deserting Slavic brothers of the 
alliance by staking German blood in a still greater measure, and, in the homeland, by calling down heaven's 
revenge on the faithless erstwhile ally. In order to cut themselves off from any possibility of ending the two front 
war, they let the artful and cunning Vienna diplomacy induce them to found the Polish State. Thereby any hope 
of arriving at an understanding with Russia, which naturally could have been obtained at the expense of Austria- 
Hungary, was shrewdly prevented by the Habsburgs. Thus the German soldier from Bavaria, Pomerania, 
Westphalia, Thuringia and East Prussia, from Brandenburg, Saxony and from the Rhine, was given the high 
honour, in the most terrible, bloody battles of world history, to sacrifice his life by the hundreds of thousands, 
not for the salvation [formation] of the German Nation, but for the formation of a Polish State to which, in case 
of a favourable outcome of the World War, the Habsburgs would have given a representative, and which then 
would have been an eternal enemy for Germany. 

Bourgeois national State policy. But if this reaction to the Italian step had already been an unforgivable 
absurdity during the War, the preservation of this emotional reaction to the Italian step after the War was a still 
greater, capital stupidity. 

To be sure, Italy was in the coalition of victor States even after the War, and hence also on the side of France. 

But this was natural, for Italy had certainly not entered the War out of pro French feelings. The determining 
force which drove the Italian Folk to it was exclusively the hatred against Austria and the visible possibility of 
being able to benefit their own Italian interests. This was the reason for the Italian step, and not any kind of 
fantastic emotional feeling for France. As a German one can be deeply pained that Italy took far reaching steps 
now that the collapse of her hated centuries old enemy has taken place, but one must not let it deprive his mind 
of sound reason. Fate had changed. Once Austria had more than 800000 Italians under her rule, and now 200000 
Austrians fell under Italy's rule. The cause of our pain is that these 200000 who interest us are of German 
nationality. 

Neither the future aims of a national nor of a Folkishly conceived Italian policy are fulfilled by the elimination 
of the eternally latent Austrian Italian conflict. On the contrary, the enormous increase of the self consciousness 
and power consciousness of the Italian Folk by the war, and especially by Fascism, will only increase its 
strength to pursue greater aims. Thus the natural conflicts of interest between Italy and France will increasingly 
appear. We could have counted on that and hoped for it as early as the year 1920. As a matter of fact, the first 
signs of an internal disharmony between the two States were already visible at that time. Whereas the Southern 
Slav instincts for a further curtailment of the Austrian German element were sure of France's undivided 
sympathy, the Italian attitude already at the time of the liberation of Carinthia from the Slavs was at least very 
well disposed toward the German element. This inner shift vis-a-vis Germany was also displayed in the attitude 
of the Italian commissions in Germany itself, most pointedly on the occasion of the struggles in Upper Silesia. 

At any rate, at that time one could already discern the beginning of an inner estrangement, albeit only faint at 
first, between the two Fatin nations. According to all human logic and reason, and on the basis of all the 
experiences of history hitherto, this estrangement must increasingly deepen and one day end in an overt struggle. 
Whether she likes it or not, Italy will have to fight for her State's existence and future against France, just as 
Germany itself. It is not necessary for this that France always be in the foreground of operations. But she will 
pull the wires of those whom she has cleverly brought into a state of financial and military dependence on her, or 
with whom she seems to be linked by parallel interests. The Italian French conflict can just as well begin in the 
Balkans, as it may find its end on the lowlands of Fombardy. 



In view of this compelling probability of a later enmity of Italy with France, already in the year 1920 this very 
State came under consideration primarily as a future ally for Germany. The probability increased to certainty 
when, with the victory of Fascism, the weak Italian Government, which ultimately was subject to international 
influences, was eliminated, and a regime took its place which had nailed the exclusive representation of Italian 
interests as a slogan on its banners. A weak Italian democratic bourgeois government, by disregarding Italy's real 
future tasks, could perhaps have maintained an artificial relation with France. But a nationally conscious and 
responsible Italian regime, never. The struggle of the Third Rome for the future of the Italian Folk acquired its 
historic declaration on the day when the FASCES became the symbol of the Italian State. Thus one of the two 
Latin nations will have to leave its place in the Mediterranean Sea, whereas the other will acquire supremacy as 
the prize of this struggle. 

As a nationally conscious and rationally thinking German, I firmly hope and strongly wish that this State may be 
Italy and not France. 

Thereby my attitude toward Italy will be induced by motives of future expectations, and not by sterile 
reminiscences of the War. 

The standpoint, Declarations Of War Are Accepted Here, as an inscription on troop transports, was a good sign 
of the victorious confidence of the peerless Old Army. As a political proclamation, however, it is a mad 
stupidity. Today it is even more mad if one takes the position that, for Germany, no ally can warrant 
consideration which stood on the enemy's side in the World War and shared in the spoils of the World War at 
our expense. If Marxists, Democrats and Centrists raise such a thought to a leitmotif of their political activity, 
this is clearly for the reason that this most degenerate coalition does not desire a resurgence of the German 
Nation ever. But if national bourgeois and Fatherland circles take over such ideas, then that's the limit. For let 
one name any power at all which could possibly be an ally in Europe and which has not enriched itself 
territorially at our expense or that of our allies of that time. On the basis of this standpoint, France is excluded 
from the outset because she stole Alsace-Lorraine and wants to steal the Rhineland, Belgium because it 
possesses Eupen and Malmedy, England because, even if she does not possess our colonies, at least she 
administers them in large part. And any child knows what this means in the life of nations. Denmark is excluded 
because she took North Schleswig, Poland because she is in possession of West Prussia and Upper Silesia and 
parts of East Prussia, Czechoslovakia because she oppresses almost four million Germans, Rumania because she 
l ik ewise has annexed more than a million Germans, Yugoslavia because she has nearly 600000 Germans, and 
Italy because today she calls the Southern Tyrol her own. 

Thus, for our national bourgeois and patriotic circles, the alliance possibilities are altogether impossible. But 
then they do not need them at all. For through the flood of their protests, and the rumble of their hurrahs, they 
will in part stifle the resistance of the other parts of the world, and in part overthrow it. And then, without any 
allies, indeed without any weapons, supported only by the clamourousness of their glib tongue, they will retrieve 
the stolen territories, let England subsequently still be punished by God, but chastise Italy and deliver her to the 
deserved contempt of the whole world — so far as up to this point they have not been hanged on lamp posts by 
their own momentary foreign policy allies, the Bolshevist and Marxist Jews. 

At the same time, it is noteworthy that our national circles of bourgeois and patriotic origin never at all realise 
that the strongest proof of the fallacy of their attitude toward foreign policy lies in the concurrence of Marxists, 
Democrats and Centrists, above all especially in the concurrence of Jewry. But one must know our German 
bourgeoisie well in order immediately to know why this is so. They are all infinitely happy at least to have found 
an issue in which the presumed unity of the German Folk seems to be effected. No matter if this concerns a 
stupidity. Despite this, it is infinitely comforting for a courageous bourgeois and Fatherland politician to be able 




to talk in tones of national struggle without receiving a punch on the jaw for it from the nearest communist. That 
they are spared this only for the reason that their political conception is just as sterile in national terms as it is 
valuable in Jewish Marxist terms, either does not occur to these people, or it is concealed in the deepest recesses 
of their being. The extent which the corruption of lies and cowardice has assumed among us is something 
unheard of. 

When in the year 1920 I undertook to orient the foreign policy position of the Movement toward Italy, I at first 
ran into complete incomprehension on the part of national circles, as well as in so called Fatherland circles. It 
was simply incomprehensible to these people how, contrary to the general duty of continual protests, one could 
formulate a political idea which — taken practically — signified the intrinsic liquidation of one of the enmities of 
the World War. In general, national circles found it beyond comprehension that I did not want to place the main 
weight of national activity on protests which were trumpeted to the skies in front of the Feldhermhalle in 
Munchen, or somewhere else, now against Paris, then again against London or also against Rome, but wanted to 
place it instead on the elimination first within Germany of those responsible for the collapse. A flaming protest 
demonstration against Paris also took place in Munchen on the occasion of the Paris diktat, which, to be sure, 
must have caused M. Clemenceau little worry. But it induced me to elaborate with all vigour the National 
Socialist attitude in opposition to this protest mania. France had only done what every German could know and 
perforce should have known. Were I myself a Frenchman I would have supported Clemenceau as a matter of 
course. To bark permanently at an overpowering adversary from a distance is as undignified as it is idiotic. On 
the contrary, the national opposition of the Fatherland circles should have bared its teeth at those in Berlin who 
were responsible for, and guilty of, the terrible catastrophe of our collapse. To be sure, it was more comfortable 
to scream against Paris curses which could not be actualised in view of the factual conditions, than to stand up 
against Berlin with deeds. 

This also applied especially to the representatives of that Bavarian government policy, who, to be sure, 
sufficiently exhibit the nature of their brilliance by the facts of their success up to now. For the very men who 
continually asserted the desire to preserve Bavaria's sovereignty, and who at the same time also had in view 
maintenance of the right to conduct foreign policy, should primarily have been obliged to put forth a possible 
foreign policy of such sort that Bavaria, thereby, could of necessity have obtained leadership of a real national 
opposition in Germany conceived in its grand aspects. In view of the complete inconsistency of Reich policy or 
of the deliberate intention to ignore all real avenues of success, it is precisely the Bavarian State that should have 
risen to the role of spokesman for a foreign policy which, according to human prediction, might one day have 
brought an end to Germany's dreadful isolation. 

But even in these circles they confronted the foreign policy conception of an association with Italy, as espoused 
by me, with a complete and stupid thoughtlessness. Instead of thus rising in a bold way to the role of spokesmen 
and guardians of the highest national German interests for the future, they preferred, from time to time, with one 
eye blinking toward Paris while the other was raised up to heaven, to asseverate their loyalty to the Reich on the 
one hand, and on the other their determination nevertheless to save Bavaria by letting the fires of Bolshevism 
burn out in the north. Yes, indeed, the Bavarian State has entrusted the representation of its sovereign rights to 
intellectual characters of a wholly special greatness. 

In view of such a general mentality, it should surprise nobody that, from the very first day, my foreign policy 
conception encountered, if not direct rejection, at least a total lack of understanding. Frankly speaking, I 
expected nothing else at that time. I still took account of the general war psychosis, and strove only to instil a 
sober world view of foreign policy into my own Movement. 


At that time, I did not yet have to endure any kind of overt attacks on account of my Italian policy. The reason 




for this probably lay, on the one hand, in the fact that for the moment it was held to be completely devoid of 
danger, and on the other that Italy herself likewise had a government subject to international influences. Indeed, 
in the background it was perhaps even hoped that this Italy could succumb to the Bolshevist plague, and then she 
would be highly welcome as an ally, at least for our Left circles. 

Besides, on the Left at that time, one could not very well take a position against the elimination of war enmity, 
since in this very camp they were anyhow making constant efforts to extirpate the hateful, demeaning, and — for 
Germany — so unjustified feeling of hatred born of the War. It would not have been easy to launch a criticism 
against me from these circles over a foreign policy conception, which, as a prerequisite for its realisation, would 
after all have caused at least the removal of the war hatred between Germany and Italy. 

I must, however, stress once more that perhaps the main reason why I found so little positive resistance lay for 
my enemies in the presumed harmlessness, enviability and thereby also the non dangerous character of my 
action. 

This situation changed almost in one stroke when Mussolini had begun the March on Rome. As if by a magic 
word, the running fire of poisoning and slander against Italy by the entire Jewish press began from this hour on. 
And only after the year 1922 was the Southern Tyrol question raised and made into a pivotal point of German 
Italian relations, whether the Southern Tyroleans themselves wanted it so or not. It did not take long before even 
Marxists became the representatives of a national opposition. And now one could experience the unique 
spectacle of Jews and Folkish Germans, Social Democrats and members of the Patriotic Leagues, communists 
and national bourgeois, arm in arm, spiritually marching across the Brenner in order to carry out the reconquest 
of this territory in mighty battles but, to be sure, without the shedding of blood. A charm of a wholly special 
character was further added to this bold national front by the fact that even those out and out Bavarian 
particularist representatives of Bavarian sovereign rights, whose spiritual forefathers over a hundred years before 
had surrendered the good Andreas Hofer to the French and let him be shot, also vigorously interested themselves 
in the freedom struggle for the country of Andreas Hofer. 

Since the influence of the Jewish press gang, and the national bourgeois and patriotic dunderheads who run after 
them, has really succeeded in blowing up the Southern Tyrol problem to the dimensions of a vital question of the 
German Nation, I see myself induced to take a detailed position toward it. 

As has already been emphasised, the old Austrian State had over 850000 Italians within its borders. Incidentally, 
the data on nationalities as established by the Austrian census was not wholly accurate. Namely, the count was 
not made according to the nationality of the individual, but rather according to the language he specified as 
spoken. Obviously this could not give a completely clear picture, but it is in the nature of the weakness of the 
national bourgeoisie gladly to deceive itself over the real situation. If one does not leam of a matter, or at least if 
it is not talked about openly, then it also does not exist. Ascertained on the basis of such a procedure, the 
Italians, or better, the people who spoke Italian, in large measure lived in the Tyrol. According to the census 

figures of the year 1910 the Tyrol had.inhabitants, of whom.percent were counted as speaking the 

Italian language, while the rest were counted as German or in part also Latin. Consequently around. 

Italians were in the Arch Duchy of Tyrol. Since this whole number is allotted to the territory occupied today by 
Italians, the ratio of Germans to Italians in the whole part of the territory of the Tyrol occupied by Italians 
consequently is one of.Germans to.Italians. 

It is necessary to establish this because not a few people in Germany, thanks to the mendacity of our press, have 
no idea at all that, in the area understood by the concept Southern Tyrol, actually two thirds of the inhabitants 
living there are Italians, and one third German. Thus, whoever seriously advocates the reconquest of the 








Southern Tyrol would bring about a change of things only to the extent that instead of having 200000 Germans 
under Italian rule, he would bring 400000 Italians under German rule. 


To be sure, the German element in the Southern Tyrol is now concentrated primarily in the northern part, 
whereas the Italian element inhabits the south. Thus if someone would find a solution that is just in a national 
sense, he must first of all completely exclude the concept Southern Tyrol from the general discussion. For one 
cannot war on the Italians on moral grounds because they have taken an area in which 200000 Germans live next 
to 400000 Italians if we ourselves, conversely, want to win this territory again for Germany as a redress of this 
injustice, that is, if we want to commit a still greater injustice than is the case with Italy. 

Thus the call for a reconquest of the Southern Tyrol will have the same moral faults in it which we now discover 
in the Italian rule in the Southern Tyrol. Hence this call also loses its moral justification. With this still other 
viewpoints can be asserted, which then must speak for a regaining of the whole Southern Tyrol. Thus on the 
basis of morally justified feelings we can, at most, advocate the regaining of that part which is actually inhabited 

by an overwhelming majority of Germans. This is a spatially limited area of.square kilometres. Even in 

this, however, there are around 190000 Germans, 64000 Italians and Latins, and 24000 other aliens, so that the 
completely German territory encompasses hardly 160000 Germans. 

At the present time there is hardly a border which does not cut Germans off from the Motherland just as in the 

Southern Tyrol. Indeed, in Europe alone, not less than.million Germans all told are separated from the 

Reich. Of these,.million live under out and out alien rule, and only.million in German Austria and 

Switzerland, though under conditions that at least for the moment pose no threat to the nationality. At the same 
time, here are a whole series of cases involving aggregates of a quite different numerical character as compared 
to our Folkdom in the Southern Tyrol. 

As terrible as this fact is for our Folk, just so guilty of it are those who today raise their hue and cry over the 
Southern Tyrol. Just as little, at any rate, can we make the fate of all the rest of the Reich dependent simply on 
the interests of these lost territories, let alone on the wishes of one of them, even by taking over a purely 
bourgeois border policy. 

For one thing must first of all be rejected most sharply: there is no Holy German Folk in the Southern Tyrol, as 
the Patriotic Leaguers foolishly prattle. Rather, all who must be reckoned as belonging to German Folkdom must 
be equally holy to it. It won't do to appraise a Southern Tyrolean higher than a Silesian, East Prussian or West 
Prussian who is enslaved under Polish rule. It also won't do to regard a German in Czechoslovakia as more 
worthwhile than a German in the Saar territory or also in Alsace-Lorraine. The right to grade the German 
element of the severed territories according to special values could, at best, grow out of an analytical 
examination of their specific decisive and dominant fundamental racial values. But this is the very measure 
which the protest groups against Italy apply least of all. For the Tyroleans in the territories now separated too, it 
could yield no higher credit factor than, let's say, for an East or a West Prussian. 

Now the foreign policy task of the German Reich as such cannot be determined by the interests of the parts split 
off from the Reich. For in reality these interests will not be served thereby, since practical help indeed 
presupposes the regained power of the Motherland. Hence the sole viewpoint that warrants consideration in 
regard to the foreign policy position can be only that of the fastest and earliest restoration of the independence 
and freedom of the remaining part of the Nation united under a Government. 

In other words, this means that even if a German foreign policy were cognisant of no aim other than the 
salvation of the Holy Folk In Southern Tyrol, that is, the 190000 Germans who can really come under 







consideration, first the prerequisite thereto would be the achievement of Germany's political independence as 
well as means of military power. For it should be rather clear, after all, that the Austrian protest State will not 
wrest the Southern Tyrol from the Italians. But it must be equally clear that even if German foreign policy knew 
no aim other than the actual liberation of the Southern Tyrol, its actions must especially then be determined by 
such viewpoints and factors which guarantee the regaining of the means of political and military power. Thus we 
should surely not place the Southern Tyrol in the focal point of foreign policy considerations, but, on the 
contrary, especially then must we be dominated and guided by those ideas which in fact allow us to smash the 
existing world coalition directed against Germany. For ultimately, even through Germany, the Southern Tyrol 
will not be restored to the German element by the droning of a Tibetan prayer wheel of protests and indignation, 
but by the commitment of the sword. 

Thus, if Germany herself were to have this aim, she must nevertheless ever and again look first of all for an ally 
who would furnish help for the gaining of German power. Now one can say that France could be considered in 
this case. As a National Socialist, I however oppose this most sharply. 

It may well be that France would declare herself ready to allow Germany to march with her as an ally against 
Italy. Indeed, it can even be that, in gracious recognition of our blood sacrifice, and as meagre bandages for our 
wounds, they would award the Southern Tyrol to us. But what would such a victory mean for Germany? Could 
our Nation, for instance, live then because it possesses 200000 more Southern Tyroleans? Or does one not 
believe that France, once she has defeated her Latin competitor in the Mediterranean with German military help, 
would surely turn once more against Germany? Or in any case that she would surely pursue her old political aim 
of the liquidation of Germany? 

No, if for Germany there remains any choice between France and Italy, then, according to all human reason, 

Italy alone warrants consideration for Germany. For a victory with France over Italy will bring us the Southern 
Tyrol and a stronger France to boot as a subsequent enemy. A victory over France with Italy's help will bring us 
Alsace-Lorraine at the least, and at most, the freedom to carry out a genuine large scale territorial policy. And in 
the long run it is through this alone that Germany can live in the future, and not through Southern Tyrol. Nor 
will it do to choose one among all the severed territories, and indeed the one most unimportant to us in a vital 
sense, and to stake the total interests of a nation of 70000000 people, actually to renounce its future, just so that 
wretched fantastic German hurrah!-patriots can obtain a momentary gratification. And all this on account of a 
sheer phantom, for in reality the Southern Tyrol would be as little helped thereby as it is now. 

The National Socialist Movement as such must educate the German Folk to the effect that it must not shrink 
from staking its blood for the sake of shaping its life. But, likewise, our Folk must be educated to the effect that 
such a staking of their blood, at least in future history, must never again take place for the sake of phantoms. 

Let our protest patriots and Fatherland Leaguers for once please say how they envisage the reconquest of the 
Southern Tyrol other than by military violence. Let them, for once, summon up the honesty to avow, if they 
seriously believe it, that one day Italy — made mellow simply by their verbiage and heated protests — will hand 
over the Southern Tyrol, or whether they are not also convinced that a State with some existing national 
consciousness will give up a territory for which it had fought for four long years only under the compulsion of a 
military decision. Let them not always prattle that we, or I, had renounced the Southern Tyrol. These infamous 
liars know very well that, at least as far as regards my own person, I fought at the Front at the time when the fate 
of the Southern Tyrol was being decided, something which not a few of the presentday meeting protesters 
neglected to do at that time. And that at the same time, however, the forces with which our Patriotic Leaguers 
and National bourgeoisie make a common foreign policy and agitate against Italy, sabotaged the victory with 
every means, that international Marxism, democracy and the Centre even in peacetime neglected nothing in 



order to weaken and paralyse the military power of our Folk, and that finally they organised a revolution during 
the War which necessarily led to the collapse of the German Homeland and with it of the German Army. 

The Southern Tyrol was also lost to the German Folk through the activity of these people, and the accursed 
weakness and impotence of our presentday bourgeois manic protesters. It is a contemptible falsification on the 
part of these so called national patriots if today they talk about a renunciation of the Southern Tyrol. No, dear 
gentlemen, don't twist and squirm in such a cowardly way over the right word. Don't be too cowardly to come 
right out and say that today it could only be a question of the conquest of the Southern Tyrol. For the 
renunciation, gentlemen of the National Leagues, was effected by your worthy presentday allies, the one time 
Marxist betrayers of their country, with all legal governmental forms. And the only ones who had the courage to 
take an open position against this crime at that time were not you, esteemed National Leaguers and bourgeois 
diplomatists, but rather the small National Socialist Movement and primarily myself. Indeed, sirs, when you 
were so quiet that nobody in Germany had an idea of your existence, so deeply had you crawled off into your 
mouse holes, it was then in the years 1919 and 1920 that I came forth against the shame of signing the peace 
treaties — and not secretly, behind four walls, but publicly. At that time, however, you were still so cowardly that 
never once did you dare to come to one of our meetings for fear of being cudgelled by your present foreign 
policy allies, the Marxist street tramps. 

The men who signed the Peace Treaty Of Saint Germain were as little National Socialists as the signers of the 
Peace Treaty Of Versailles. They were the members of the parties who, by this signing, merely capped their 
decades long betrayal of their country. Whoever today wants to change the fate of the Southern Tyrol in any way 
cannot renounce anything that was already renounced in all forms by the presentday protesters. At most he can 
only reconquer it. 

I am most fanatically opposed to this, to be sure, and I announce the most extreme resistance to this endeavour, 
and I shall fight with the utmost fanaticism against the men who are trying to drive our Folk into this adventure, 
as bloody as it is insane. I did not leam about the War at a restaurant table reserved for regular customers. Nor 
was I, in this War, one of those who had to give orders or to command. I was an ordinary soldier who was given 
orders for four and a half years, and who nevertheless honourably and truly fulfilled his duty. But I thereby had 
the good fortune to know war as it is, and not as one would like to see it. As a simple soldier, who had known 
only its dark sides, I was for this war up to the last hour because I was convinced that the salvation of our Folk 
could lie only in victory. Since, however, there is now a peace which others have perpetrated, I fight to the 
utmost against a war which would not benefit the German Folk, but instead only those who once before 
sacrilegiously traded the blood sacrifice of our Folk for their interests. I am of the conviction that one day I will 
not be lacking in the determination, to bear the responsibility even, if necessary, of staking the blood of the 
German Folk. But I fight against even a single German being dragged off to a battlefield, for fools or criminals 
to nourish their plans on his blood. Whoever reflects on the unprecedented horror and the frightful misery of a 
modern war, or considers the boundless demands on the nervous stamina of a Folk, must take fright at the idea 
that such a sacrifice could be demanded for a success which in the most favourable case could never be 
consonant with this enormous effort. And I also know that if today the people of the Southern Tyrol, so far as it 
thinks along exclusively German lines, were gathered in one front and the hundreds and hundreds of thousands 
of dead which our Nation would have to lay down in a struggle for their sake were to appear before these 
spectators, 300000 hands would rise protectingly toward heaven, and the foreign policy of the National 
Socialists would be justified. 

What is most terrible about all this is that they play with this dreadful possibility without ever giving a thought 
to really wanting to help the Southern Tyroleans. 



Since the struggle over the Southern Tyrol is being waged today by those who once surrendered all Germany to 
ruin, even the Southern Tyrol is to them only a means to an end which they use with ice cold unscrupulousness 
in order to be able to gratify their infamous anti German — in the most extreme sense of the word — instincts. It 
is the hate against the presentday nationally conscious Italy, and it is above all a hatred of the new political idea 
of this country, and most of all hatred against the towering Italian statesman, which induces them to stir up 
German public opinion with the help of the Southern Tyrol. For, in reality, how indifferent after all are these 
elements to the German Folk. While they lament the Southern Tyrol's fate with crocodile tears in their eyes, they 
are driving all Germany toward a fate which is worse than that of the partitioned territory. While they protest 
against Italy in the name of national culture, they pollute the culture of the German nation within, destroy our 
whole cultural sensibility, poison the instinct of our Folk, and annihilate even the accomplishments of earlier 
times. Does an age which inside the country has depressed our whole theatre, our literature, our plastic arts to the 
level of swine, have the right to step forth against presentday Italy, or to protect German culture from her in the 
name of culture? The gentlemen of the Bavarian People's Party, the German Nationalists, and even the Marxist 
defilers of culture, are concerned about the German culture of the Southern Tyrol, but, undisturbed, they let the 
culture of the Homeland be insulted by the most wretched bungling works, and surrender the German stage to 
the race shame of a Jonny Spielt Auf [note 11]. And, hypocritically, they lament the oppression of German 
cultural life in the Southern Tyrol, while they themselves most cruelly persecute those in the Homeland who 
want to protect German culture from a deliberate and intentional destruction. Here the Bavarian People's Party 
incites the State power against those who raise a protest against the infamous defilement of our Folk's culture. 
What do these solicitous protectors of German culture in the Southern Tyrol do in Germany itself for the defence 
of German culture? They have let the theatre sink to the level of a brothel, into sites of demonstrated race 
defilement, and destroyed all the foundations of our Folk Life with movies holding honesty and morality up to 
ridicule; they connive at the cubistic and dadaistic infatuation of our plastic art, they themselves protect the 
fabricators of this base deception or madness, they let German literature sink into mud and filth, and surrender 
the whole intellectual life of our Folk to international Jewry. And the same contemptible pack is so brazen faced 
as to stand up for German culture in the Southern Tyrol, whereby the only aim they have in mind, naturally, is to 
incite two cultured Folks against each other so that in the end they can all the more easily reduce them to the 
level of their own cultural wretchedness. 

Thus is it in everything, however. 

They complain about the persecution of the Germans in the Southern Tyrol, and they are the same people who in 
Germany most cruelly wage war on anyone who understands being national as something other than 
defencelessly surrendering his Folk to syphilisation by Jews and Negroes. The same people who call for the 
freedom of conscience of Germans in the Southern Tyrol oppress it in Germany itself in the meanest way. Never 
before has the freedom of expression of one's national outlook in Germany been so muzzled as under the rule of 
these mendacious party riffraff who presume to break a lance for the rights of conscience and national freedoms, 
of all things, in the Southern Tyrol. They wail over every injustice that is inflicted on a German in the Southern 
Tyrol, but they are silent about the murders that these Marxist street tramps commit from month to month in 
Germany against national elements. And their silence is shared by the whole fine national bourgeoisie including 
the Fatherland protesters. In a single year — that is to say, only five months of this year have gone by — nine men 
from the ranks of the National Socialist Movement alone were murdered under circumstances that in part were 
bestial, and over six hundred wounded. This entire mendacious brood is silent about this, but how they would 
roar if only one such deed were committed by Fascism against the German element in the Southern Tyrol. How 
they would summon the whole world to revolt if only one German in the Southern Tyrol were slaughtered by 
Fascists under conditions similar to those which the Marxist murder riffraff employs in Germany, without this 
calling forth the indignation of this fine phalanx for the salvation of the German Folk. And how indeed these 
same people, who solemnly protest against the government persecution of the German element in the Southern 
Tyrol, persecute the Germans who inconvenience them in Germany itself. Beginning with the U-boat heroes up 



to the saviours of Upper Silesia, the men who first staked their blood for Germany — how they dragged them in 
chains before the courts and finally sentenced them to the penitentiary, all because they had sacrificed their lives 
hundreds upon hundreds of times out of a fervent love for the Fatherland, whereas this contemptible riffraff of 
protesters had crawled off somewhere where they could not be found. Let them total the sentences which have 
been imposed in Germany for acts which in a national conscious State would be rewarded with the highest 
decorations. If Italy today puts a German in the Southern Tyrol in jail, the whole German national and Marxist 
newspaper pack straightaway screams bloody murder. But they completely overlook that in Germany one can go 
to jail for months merely on the basis of a denunciation, that house searches, violation of the mails, telephone 
tapping — that is, sheer anticonstitutional deprivation of the personal freedoms guaranteed by the civil rights of 
this State — are the order of the day. And let not our so called national parties say that this is possible only in 
Marxist Prussia. First of all, they fraternise arm in arm with these same Marxists in regard to foreign policy, and, 
second, they have taken the same part in the oppression of a real, self conscious nationalism. In national Bavaria 
they placed the mortally ill Dietrich Eckart [note 12] in so called protective custody, despite the available 
medical testimony, without even the trace of any wrongdoing on his part save, at most, that of his incorruptible 
national outlook. And he was kept in such custody for so long that he finally collapsed, and died two days after 
his release. Moreover, he was Bavaria's greatest poet. Of course he was a national German and had not 
perpetrated any Jonny Spielt Auf, and in consequence he did not exist for these fighters for the national culture. 
Just as these national patriots first murdered him, likewise did they kill his work with silence, for after all he was 
a German and a good Bavarian in addition, and no international Jew polluter of Germany. In that case he would 
have been holy to this league of patriots, but here they acted in accordance with their national bourgeois outlook, 
and the open statement in the Miinchen police administration: Croak, national pig! But these are the same 
German conscious elements who mobilise the indignation of the world when someone in Italy stupidly does no 
more than throw a German in jail. 

When a few Germans were expelled from the Southern Tyrol, these people again summoned the German Folk to 
blazing indignation. They forgot only to add, however, that the greatest incitement was being directed against 
Germans in Germany itself. Under a bourgeois national government, national Bavaria has expelled dozens and 
dozens of Germans, and all only because they did not politically suit the corrupt ruling bourgeois stratum in 
consequence of their uncompromising nationalism. Suddenly one no longer took cognisance of the clan 
brotherhood with German Austria, but only of the foreigner. But it was not at all limited to the expulsion of so 
called alien Germans. No, these same bourgeois national hypocrites who hurl flaming protests against Italy 
because a German is expelled from the Southern Tyrol and packed off to another province, have expelled from 
Bavaria dozens and dozens of Germans with German citizenship who fought for Germany in the German Army 
for four and a half years, and who had been severely wounded, and won the highest decorations. Indeed, this is 
how these bourgeois national hypocrites look who now bluster indignantly against Italy, whereas they 
themselves have burdened themselves with shame upon shame among their own Folk. 

They moan over the denationalisation in Italy, and at the same time they denationalise the German Folk in their 
own Homeland. They fight against anyone who opposes poisoning of our Folk with regard to blood, indeed they 
persecute every German who does battle against the de Germanisation, Negrification, and Judaisation of our 
Folk in the big cities, which they themselves instigate and sponsor, and in the most shameless and ruthless way. 
And by means of the mendacious allegation of a danger to religious establishments, they try to send them to jail. 

When an overexcited Italian in Merano damaged the Empress Elizabeth's Monument there, they raised a wild 
clamour, and could not be pacified even though an Italian court punished the culprit with two months in prison. 
That the monuments and mementos of the past greatness of our Folk are uninterruptedly defiled in Germany 
itself, interests them not at all. That France has almost entirely destroyed all monuments recalling Germany in 
Alsace-Lorraine is a matter of indifference to them. It does not excite them that the Poles systematically lay 
waste to everything that even reminds one of the name of Germany. Indeed, they do not get excited over the fact 



that this very month in Bromberg [note 13] the Bismarck Tower was officially demolished by the Government — 
all this leaves these champions of the national honour of our Folk cold, [note 15] Woe, however, if something 
l ik e this were the case in the Southern Tyrol. For this has suddenly become a Holy Land for them. But the 
Fatherland itself, the Homeland, it can go to hell. 

Certainly, on the Italian side, more than one unwise action has taken place in the Southern Tyrol, and the attempt 
to denationalise the German element systematically is just as impolitic as its result is questionable. But those 
who are in part guilty of all this and who, as a matter of fact, know nothing of a national honour of their Folk, 
have no right to protest against this. Instead, this right belongs only to those who up to now really fought for 
German interests and German honour. In Germany this was exclusively the National Socialist Movement. 

The whole inner mendacity of the agitation against Italy becomes apparent if the actions of the Italians are 
compared with the actions that the French, Poles, Belgians, Czechs, Rumanians and Southern Slavs have 
perpetrated against the German element. That France has expelled more than a quarter million Germans 
altogether from Alsace-Lorraine, that is, more people than the Southern Tyrol numbers as inhabitants, means not 
a rap to them. And that the French today are trying to extirpate every trace of German nationality in Alsace- 
Lorraine does not prevent them from fraternising with France, even when continuous blows on the jaw are the 
answer from Paris. That the Belgians persecute the German element with a matchless fanaticism; that the Poles 
have massacred over 17000 Germans, in part under downright bestial attendant circumstances, gives them no 
cause for excitement; that they, finally, expelled tens of thousands from house and home, with hardly a shirt on 
their backs, and drove them across the border, are things that cannot make our bourgeois and Fatherland protest 
swindlers fly into a passion. Indeed, whoever wants to know the real disposition of this pack must only recall the 
way and manner in which the refugees were welcomed even then. Their hearts, at that time, bled as little as they 
do now when those tens of thousands of unfortunate expellees again found themselves on the soil of their dear 
Homeland, in part in veritable concentration camps, and were being shunted from place to place like Gypsies. In 
my mind's eye I still see before me the time when the first Ruhr refugees came to Germany, and then were 
shunted from police administration to police administration as if they were hardened criminals. No, then the 
hearts of these representatives and defenders of the national element in the Southern Tyrol did not bleed. But if a 
single German in the Southern Tyrol itself is expelled by the Italians, or some other injustice is inflicted on him, 
they tremble with righteous resentment and indignation over this unexampled crime against culture and over this 
greatest barbarism that the world has ever seen. How they say then: Never before and nowhere else before has 
the German element been so oppressed with such terrible and tyrannical methods as in this country. Indeed, but 
only with one exception, that is, namely, Germany itself, through your own tyranny. 

The Southern Tyrol, or better, the German element in the Southern Tyrol, must remain preserved for the German 
Folk, but in Germany itself, through their insane policy of non national dishonourableness, of general corruption, 
and of obsequiousness to the international financial lords, they murder more than double the people that the 
Southern Tyrol numbers as German inhabitants. They are silent about the 17000-22000 people driven to suicide 
yearly on average in recent years by their catastrophic policies, although this number, with children included, 
likewise amounts in ten years alone, to more than the Southern Tyrol numbers in German inhabitants. They 
foster emigration, and Herr Stresemann's national bourgeoisie characterises the increase of the emigration quota 
as an enormous foreign policy success. And yet this means that every four years Germany loses more people 
than the Southern Tyrol numbers as inhabitants of German nationality. But in abortions and birth control, year 
for year, they murder almost double the number of people of German nationality in the Southern Tyrol all 
together. And this pack arrogates to itself the moral right to speak on behalf of the interests of the German 
element abroad. 


Or this national official Germany wails over the denationalisation of our language in the Southern Tyrol, but in 
Germany itself they de Germanise the German names in Czechoslovakia, in Alsace-Lorraine, and so on, in all 




official ways and manners. Indeed, official travel guides are published in which even the German names of cities 
in Germany are Czechised for the sake of the Czechs. This is all in order. Only when the Italians changed the 
holy name Brenner into Brennero was this an occasion to demand the most fervent resistance. And it is a 
spectacle not to be missed when such a bourgeois patriot begins to blaze with indignation, when one knows well 
that it is all a comedy. To simulate national passion suits our passionless, putrefied bourgeoisie as exactly as 
when an old whore mimics love. It is all only an artificial sham, and at its worst this is proved most correctly if 
such an excitement has its homeland in Austria. The black-gold legitimistic element, to whom formerly the 
German element in the Tyrol was completely a matter of indifference, now joins in a holy national indignation. 
Something of this kind electrifies all petty bourgeois associations, especially if they then hear that the Jews are 
also cooperating. This means that they themselves protest because they know that this time, exceptionally for 
once, they are permitted to shout their national feelings out loud — without being done in by the press Jews. On 
the contrary: it is after all fine for an upright national bourgeois man to appeal for a national struggle, and at the 
same time even be praised by Moses Israel Abrahamson. Indeed, even more. The Jewish gazettes scream along 
with them, and with this for the first time the real bourgeois national German unity front is established, from 
Krotoschin via Vienna up to Innsbruck, and our German Folk, so politically stupid, lets itself be taken in by this 
show exactly as once before German diplomacy and our German Folk let themselves be duped and misused by 
the Habsburgs. 

Germany once before had let her foreign policy be determined exclusively by Austrian interests. The punishment 
for this was something terrible. Woe, if the young German nationalism lets its future policy be determined by the 
theatrical babblers of the putrid bourgeois elements, or indeed by the Marxist enemies of Germany. And woe if, 
at the same time, in complete misunderstanding of the real driving forces of the Austrian State in Vienna, it 
again receives its directives from there. It will be the task of the National Socialist Movement to prepare an end 
to this theatrical hue and cry, and to choose sober reason as the ruler of future German foreign policy. 

To be sure, Italy also bears guilt for this whole development. I would view it as stupid and politically childish to 
rebuke the Italian State for the fact that it pushed its borders up to the Brenner on the occasion of the Austrian 
collapse. The motives that dominated it at that time were no more base than the motives which once determined 
bourgeois annexationist politicians, including Herr Stresemann and Herr Erzberger, to prop the German borders 
against the Belgian Meuse fortresses. At all times a responsible, thinking and acting government will make an 
effort to find strategically natural and secure frontiers. Surely, Italy did not annex the Southern Tyrol in order 
thus to come into possession of a couple of hundred thousand Germans, and surely the Italians would have 
preferred it if only Italians lived in this territory in place of these Germans. For, as a matter of fact, it was never 
strategic considerations primarily which induced them to place the borders over the Brenner. But no State would 
have acted differently in a similar situation. Hence it is aimless to criticise this shaping of the borders as such, 
since ultimately every State must determine its natural borders according to its own interests and not others. To 
the extent that the possession of the Brenner may serve military interests and strategic purposes, it is irrelevant 
whether or not 200000 Germans live within this strategically established and secured border as such, if the 
population of the country encompasses 42 million people, and a militarily effective adversary on this very border 
does not come in for consideration. It would have been wiser to have spared these 200000 Germans any 
compulsion, rather than to have forcibly tried to instil an outlook the result of which, according to experience, is 
generally without value. Also a Folkdom cannot be extirpated in twenty or thirty years, regardless of the 
methods employed, and whether one wants or does not want this. On the Italian side, one can answer with a 
certain appearance of right that this was not intended at first, and that it developed necessarily by itself as a 
consequence of the provocative attempts at a continuous interference in domestic Italian affairs on the part of 
Austrian and German external forces, and of the repercussions evoked therefrom on the Southern Tyroleans 
themselves. This is correct, for, as a matter of fact, the Italians at first welcomed the German element in the 
Southern Tyrol very honestly and loyally. But as soon as Fascism arose in Italy, the agitation against Italy in 
Germany and Austria began on grounds of principle, and now led to an increasing heightening of mutual 



irritability which in the Southern Tyrol finally had to lead to consequences we see today. Most unfortunate in 
this was the influence of the Andreas Hofer Association which, instead of strongly recommending sagacity to 
the Germans in the Southern Tyrol, and making it clear to them that their mission was to build a bridge between 
Germany and Italy, aroused hopes in the Southern Tyroleans beyond any possibility of realisation, but which, 
however, were bound to lead to incitements and thereby to rash steps. It is primarily the fault of this Association 
if conditions were carried to an extreme. Whoever like myself had many opportunities to know important 
members of this Association personally as well must be amazed over the irresponsibility with which an 
Association with so little real active strength could do so much damage. For when I see the different leading 
figures in my mind's eye, and think of one of them in particular who had his office in the M Line hen police 
administration, then I grow angry at the thought that men who would never bring their own blood and skins to 
the market occasioned a development which in its ultimate consequence must end with a bloody conflict. 

It is also correct that no understanding at all over the Southern Tyrol can exist with the real wire pullers of this 
agitation against Italy, since to these elements the Southern Tyrol as such is a matter of indifference as much as 
is the German Nation in general. Indeed it is only a question of a suitable means for sowing confusion and 
stirring up public opinion, especially in Germany, against Italy. For this is what concerns these gentlemen. 

Hence there is a certain ground for justification in the Italian objection that, regardless of what the treatment of 
Germans in the Southern Tyrol may be, these people will always find something suitable for their agitation, 
because they want precisely this. But for the very reason that in Germany today, exactly as in Italy, certain 
elements have an interest in thwarting an understanding between both Nations with all means, it would be the 
duty of wisdom to remove these means from them as far as possible, even despite the danger that they will try 
further. The opposite would make sense only if there were altogether nobody in Germany who had the courage 
to speak for an understanding in opposition to this agitation. This, however, is not the case. On the contrary, the 
more presentday Italy by itself seeks to avoid impolitic incidents, the easier will it become for Italy's friends in 
Germany to expose the hate inciters, to unmask the sanctimoniousness of their reasons, and to put a stop to their 
Folk poisoning activity. But if in Italy they really believe that they cannot compromise in some way, in view of 
all the clamour and the demands of foreign organisations, without this looking like a capitulation rather, and 
possibly further increasing the arrogance of these elements, then ways could be found. Indeed such an 
obligingness could be fundamentally ascribed to those who not only are not involved in this agitation but, on the 
contrary, are the friends of an understanding with Italy and Germany, and themselves lead the sharpest struggle 
against the poisoners of public opinion in Germany. 

The foreign policy aim of the National Socialist Movement has nothing to do either with an economic or 
bourgeois border policy. Our Folkish territorial aim, in the future as well, will assign the German Folk a 
development which need never bring it into conflict with Italy. We will also never sacrifice the blood of our Folk 
in order to bring about small border rectifications, but only for territory in order to win a further expansion and 
sustenance for our Folk. This aim drives us eastward. The east coasts of the Baltic Sea are for Germany what the 
Mediterranean Sea is to Italy. Germany's mortal enemy for any further development, indeed even for the mere 
maintenance of the unity of our Reich, is France, exactly as she is for Italy. The National Socialist Movement 
will never fall into a superficial insipid hurrah! cry. It will not rattle the sword. Its leaders, almost without 
exception, have learned about war as it is in reality and truth. Therefore, it will never shed blood for any other 
aims save those which are serviceable to the whole future development of our Folk. Hence it also refuses to 
provoke a war with Italy for the sake of a border rectification, which is laughable in view of the German 
fragmentation in Europe. On the contrary, it wants to put an end for all the future to these unfortunate Teutonic 
marches to the south, and wants the advocacy of our interests to take place in a direction which makes the 
elimination of its need for territory appear possible to our Folk. By thus delivering Germany from the period of 
her present enslavement and servitude, we also fight above all for her restoration and thus in the interest of 
German honour. 



If presentday Italy believes that a change in various measures in the Southern Tyrol would be viewed as a 
capitulation before foreign interference, without in the end leading to the desired understanding, then let her 
undertake this shift exclusively for the sake of those in Germany who themselves are for an understanding with 
Italians — thereby openly justifying them — and who not only reject being identified with the agitators against it, 
but who, indeed, have fought the sharpest struggle against these elements for years and who recognise the 
sovereign rights of the Italian State as existing, as a matter of course. 

It is just as little a matter of indifference to Germany whether she keeps Italy as a friend, as it also is to Italy. Just 
as Fascism has given the Italian Folk a new value, likewise the value of the German Folk must not be estimated 
for the future on the basis of its momentary life expression, but according to the forces which it has so often 
shown in its former history and which, perhaps, it can again show tomorrow. 

Thus, just as Italy's friendship is worth a sacrifice on Germany's part, German friendship is worth just as much to 
Italy. It would be a good fortune for both Folks if those forces in both countries who are the bearers of this 
knowledge could come to an understanding. 

Thus, as much as the agitation against Italy in Germany is responsible for the unfortunate enmity, just as much 
guilt lies on Italy's side if, in view of the fact that there is a struggle in Germany itself against this agitation, she 
herself as far as possible does not wrest the means from their hands. 

If the sagacity of the Fascist regime one day succeeds in making 65 million Germans into friends of Italy, this 
will be worth more than if it educates 200000 into becoming bad Italians. 

Likewise unsound was the Italian stand prohibiting the union of Austria with Germany. The very fact that France 
primarily espoused this prohibition perforce should have led Rome to take an opposite position. For France itself 
did not take this step in order to benefit Italy, but much more rather in the hope of being able to inflict harm on 
her thereby. There are primarily two reasons which induced France to push through the prohibition of the union: 
first, because thereby she wanted to prevent a strengthening of Germany, and second, because she is convinced 
that some day she can, in the Austrian State, acquire a member for the French European alliance. So Rome 
should not deceive itself that French influence in Vienna is considerably more decisive even than the German, 
not to speak of the Italian. The French attempt to transfer the League Of Nations to Vienna, if possible, stems 
only from the intention to strengthen the cosmopolitan character of this city as such, and to bring it into contact 
with a country whose character and culture finds a stronger response in the presentday Viennese atmosphere 
than does that of the German Reich. 

As seriously intended as are the tendencies toward a union in the Austrian provinces as such, just as little are 
they taken seriously in Vienna. On the contrary, if in Vienna they really operate with the idea of a union, it is 
always only in order to extricate themselves from some financial difficulty, since France then is always sooner 
ready to lend a hand to the creditor State. Gradually, however, this very idea of a union will dry up in proportion 
as an inner consolidation of the Austrian federation occurs and Vienna regains its full dominating position. On 
top of this, the political development in Vienna assumes an increasingly anti Italian and especially anti Fascist 
character, whereas Austrian Marxism has at all times made no bones about its strong sympathy for France. 

Thus the fact that at that time the union fortunately was prevented, and in part with Italian help, will some day 
lead to the insertion of the missing link between Prague and Yugoslavia into the French alliance system. 


For Italy, however, the prevention of the Austrian union with Germany had been wrong even on psychological 



grounds. The smaller the fragmented Austrian State remained, the more limited naturally also were its foreign 
policy aims. A foreign policy goal, conceived on a grand scale, could not be expected from a State structure 

which has scarcely.square kilometres of territory, and hardly.million inhabitants. If German 

Austria had been annexed to Germany in the year 1919-1920, the tendency of her political thought would 
gradually have been determined by the great political aims of Germany, which were at least possible, that is, for 
a nation of almost 70000000. Preventing this at that time removed foreign policy thinking from greater aims, and 
limited it to small old Austrian reconstruction ideas. Only thus was it possible that the Southern Tyrol question 
could have at all grown to such an importance. For as small as the Austrian State was as such, it was at least 
large enough to be the bearer of a foreign policy idea which was in keeping with its smallness, just as, 
conversely, it could slowly poison the political thinking of all Germany. The more limited the political ideas of 
the Austrian State become in consequence of its territorial limitation, the more will they sprout into problems 
which can certainly have an importance for this State, but which cannot be viewed as decisive for the shaping of 
a German foreign policy for the German Nation. 

Italy should espouse a union of Austria with Germany if for no other reason than to cut across the French 
alliance system in Europe. She should further also do this, however, in order to present other tasks to the German 
border policy germinated in consequence of her incorporation in a great Reich. 

Moreover, the reasons which once induced Italy to take a stand against the union are not quite clear. Neither 
presentday Austria nor presentday Germany can be considered a military adversary of Italy for the time being. 
But if France succeeds in bringing a general alliance in Europe into being against Italy, in which Austria and 
Germany take part, the military situation as such will not at all change whether Austria is independent or 
whether she is with Germany. Moreover one cannot actually speak of a real independence with so small a 
structure anyhow. Austria will always [They will always] hang on to the strings of a large power of some kind. 
Switzerland cannot in the least prove the opposite, since as a State she possesses her own possibilities of 
existence, even if on the basis of tourist traffic. For Austria this is already impossible in consequence of the 
disproportion of the capital of this country to the size of the whole population. Regardless, however, what 
attitude Austria itself assumes toward Italy, in the very fact of her existence there already lies an easing of the 
military strategic position of Czechoslovakia which one day, one way or another, can make itself noticeable vis- 
a-vis Italy's natural ally as such, Hungary. 

For the Italians, military and political reasons would speak in favour of regarding prohibition of the union as at 
least without importance, if not as something which answers the purpose. 

I cannot conclude this chapter without establishing in detail who in fact bears the guilt that a Southern Tyrol 
question exists altogether. 

For us National Socialists, politically, the decision has been reached. And at least I — who am most violently 
opposed to millions of Germans being dragged to a battlefield on which to bleed to death for the interests of 
France without a gain thereby accruing to Germany which would in some way be consonant with the blood 
sacrifice — I also refuse to recognise the standpoint of national honour as being decisive here. For on the basis of 
this viewpoint I would sooner have to march against France, which by her whole conduct has offended German 
honour in quite a different way, than Italy. I have already enlarged in the introduction to this book on the 
possibility of formulating a foreign policy on the basis of national honour, so there is no further need to take a 
position toward it. If now the attempt is made in our protest groups to present this attitude of ours as a betrayal 
or a renunciation of the Southern Tyrol, this can only be correct if, without our attitude, Southern Tyrol would 
either have not been lost altogether, or were about to return to the other Tyrol in the predictable future. 





Therefore I see myself forced once more to establish in this exposition precisely who it was that betrayed the 
Southern Tyrol, and through whose measures it was lost to Germany. 


The Southern Tyrol was betrayed and lost by the activity of those parties who, in long work for peace, 
weakened, or completely refused, the armament to the German Folk which it needed to assert itself in Europe, 
and by so doing robbed the German Folk of the necessary power for victory and thereby of the preservation of 
the Southern Tyrol at the critical hour. 

Those parties who, in long work for peace, undermined the moral and ethical foundation of our Folk and, above 
all, destroyed faith in the right to self defence. 

Thus the Southern Tyrol was also betrayed by those parties, which as so called Statepreserving and national 
parties, looked on this activity with indifference or, at least, without opposing a serious resistance. Albeit 
indirectly, they too are accessories to the weakening of our Folk's armament. 

The Southern Tyrol was betrayed and lost by the activity of those political parties who reduced the German Folk 
to being the stooge of the Habsburg big power idea. And who, instead of setting before German foreign policy 
the aim of the national unification of our Folk, viewed the preservation of the Austrian State as the mission of 
the German nation. Who, therefore, also in peacetime, for decades merely looked on as the Habsburgs 
systematically carried out their work of de Germanisation, indeed furnishing them assistance. Thereby they are 
coresponsible for neglecting the solution of the Austrian question by Germany itself, or at least by the decisive 
cooperation of Germany. In such a case the Southern Tyrol could have certainly been preserved for the German 
Folk. 

The Southern Tyrol was lost in consequence of the general aimlessness and planlessness of German foreign 
policy which in the year 1914 extended also to the establishment of reasonable war aims, or prevented this. 

The Southern Tyrol was betrayed by all those who, during the course of the War, did not cooperate to the utmost 
in strengthening German resistance and aggressive power. As well as by the parties which deliberately paralysed 
the German power of resistance, as well as those who tolerated this paralysis. 

The Southern Tyrol was lost in consequence of the inability, even during the War, to undertake a new orientation 
of German foreign policy and to save the German element of the Austrian State by renouncing the maintenance 
of the Habsburg great power State. 

The Southern Tyrol was lost and betrayed by the activity of those who, during the War, by raising the sham hope 
of a peace without victory, broke the German Folk's moral power of resistance, and who instead of a 
manifestation of the will to wage the War, brought about a peace resolution that was catastrophic for Germany. 

The Southern Tyrol was lost by the betrayal of those parties and men who even during the War lied to the 
German Folk about the non existence of Entente imperialistic aims, and thereby duped our Folk, estranged it 
from the unconditional necessity of resistance, and ultimately induced it to believe the Entente more than those 
who raised their voices in warning at home. 

The Southern Tyrol was further lost by the grinding down of the Front, attended to by the Homeland, and by the 
infection of German thinking by the fraudulent declarations of Woodrow Wilson. 



The Southern Tyrol was betrayed and was lost by the activity of parties and men who, beginning with 
conscientious objection to military service up to the organisation of munitions strikes, robbed the Army of the 
feeling of the incontestable necessity of its struggle and victory. 

The Southern Tyrol was betrayed and lost by the organisation and the execution of the November crime, as well 
as by the contemptible and cowardly tolerance of this ignominy by the so called Statepreserving national forces. 

The Southern Tyrol was lost and betrayed by the shameless acts of the men and parties who, after the collapse, 
defiled Germany's honour, destroyed the esteem of our Folk before the world, and only thereby encouraged our 
adversaries to the enormity of their demands. It was further lost by the contemptible cowardice of the national 
bourgeois parties and patriotic leagues who dishonourably capitulated everywhere before the terror of baseness 
and villainy. 

The Southern Tyrol was finally lost and betrayed by the signing of the peace treaties, and with this by the legal 
recognition of the loss also of this area. 

All the German parties together are guilty of all this. Some have knowingly and intentionally destroyed 
Germany, and others in their proverbial incapacity and in their cowardice, which cries out to heaven, not only 
did nothing to stop the destroyers of Germany's future, but, on the contrary, they actually played into the hands 
of these enemies of our Folk by the incapacity of their direction of domestic and foreign policy. Never before 
has a Folk been driven, like the German Folk, to ruin by such a marriage of baseness, villainy, cowardice and 
stupidity. 

In these days we have been afforded a glimpse into the activities and effectiveness of this old Germany in the 
field of foreign policy by the publication of the War Memoirs of the head of the American intelligence service, 
Mister Flynn [note 14]. 

I let a bourgeois democratic organ speak on this matter only for the purpose of a broader understanding. 

(26th Of June, 1928) 

How America Entered The War 

Flynn Writes About The Diplomatic Secret Service — By F. W. Elven, Correspondent Of The Miinchen Latest 
News — Cincinnati, Mid June 

William J. Flynn has published a part of his War Memoirs in the weekly Liberty, which is much read here. 
During the war, Flynn was the Head Of The United States Secret Service. The Service encompasses the whole 
country, and is brilliantly organised. In peacetime it primarily provides for the personal security of the President. 
Its attention is enjoyed by whatever else in the national capital is in need of protection, or thinks it needs so. It 
keeps under surveillance all doubtful elements somehow suspected of connections with political tendencies 
hostile to the government and its spokesmen. During the war its principal task was to keep an eye on those who 
more or less loudly had made themselves noticeable in opposition to the war, or who merely were suspected of 
not being in agreement with the Wilsonian war policy. Germans also enjoyed its special care, and at that time 
many fell into the traps which had been laid everywhere by the Federal Secret Service. 


From Flynn's memoirs, however, we learn that the Secret Service had been assigned an important mission even 
before our entry into the war. In the year 1915, a full two years before the declaration of war, the most efficient 



telephone expert was summoned to Washington and assigned the task of arranging the leading telephone wires 
to the German and Austrian embassies in such a way that Secret Service officials could tap every conversation 
from any source that was held between the ambassadors and their personnel, as well as every conversation 
emanating from the embassy offices. A room was set up with which all the wires were linked in such an 
ingenious way that not even a single conversation could be missed. Service men sat in this room day and night, 
dictating the overheard conversations to the stenographers seated beside them. Every night the head of the Secret 
Service Bureau, that is, the author of the article in Liberty, received a stenographic report of all the conversations 
held in the preceding twenty four hours, so that on the very same evening he was able to communicate 
everything important to the State Department and to President Wilson. 

Let us bear in mind the time this installation was created, at the beginning of the year 1915, that is, at the time 
when the United States still lived in peace with Germany and Austria-Hungary, and Wilson never tired of giving 
assurances that he harboured no hostile intentions against Germany. It was also the time when the German 
Ambassador in Washington, Count Bernstorff, neglected no opportunity to show due appreciation of Wilson's 
friendly disposition and feelings for Germany and the German Lolk. It was also the time when Wilson gave his 
confidant Baruch instructions to begin the gradual mobilisation of industry for war; also the time in which it 
became increasingly obvious, as the American historian Harry Elmer Bames also sets forth in his book On The 
Origins Of The Great War, that Wilson was firmly decided to enter the war, and postponed the execution of his 
bellicose plans only because public opinion first had to be won over for these plans. 

Llynn's memoirs must finally remove the ground from the foolish chatter that Wilson was pushed into the war 
against his will by German submarine warfare. The tapping of the telephone wires leading to the German 
embassy took place with his knowledge. We also learn this from Llynn's memoirs. The author adds that the 
material thus gathered against Germany contributed considerably to the eventual break. This can prove only that 
this put means in Wilson's hands to win public opinion for the war long planned by him. And in fact this 
material was wholly and ideally suited for it. The Memoirs confirm to the fullest extent what unfortunately must 
still be said, that Germany at that time was represented in Washington in a downright incredibly incompetent 
and incredibly unworthy way. If we hear that in one passage Llynn writes that the stenographic reports prepared 
for him daily contained enough material to keep a divorce lawyer busy for months on end, then we get a general 
idea of what went on. 

The Secret Service maintained women agents in Washington and New York whose job it was to sound out the 
members of the German Embassy, Bernstorff included, whenever anything important happened. One of these 
woman agents kept a better class apartment in Washington in which the gentlemen met their ladies, and where 
occasionally even Secretary Of State Lansing dropped in to hear what was new. On New Year's Day, 1916, 
when the news of the sinking of the liner Persia became known in the national capital, Bernstorff telephoned five 
women one after the other in order to make sweet compliments to them and to receive similar compliments in 
return, although in view of the mood which news of the sinking of the Persia had left behind in the State 
Department and the White House, he really could not have been lacking in more serious pursuits. 

One of the ladies complimented Bernstorff on the fact that he was a great lover, and always would be, even were 
he a hundred years old. The rest of the gentlemen of the embassy were not differently built. One, whom Llynn 
designates as the best diplomatic aide in the embassy, had a lady friend in New York, a married woman, with 
whom he had a daily telephone conversation which each time cost the German Reich twenty dollars, and whom 
he visited frequently. He told her about everything that happened, and she then took care to bring this 
information to the right places. Even quite vulgar remarks about Wilson and his consort were made during the 
telephone conversations, and thus we can without difficulty imagine that thereby the mood of the White House 
vis-a-vis Germany did not get any friendlier. 



From the conversation held at the beginning of March, 1916, we learn how little the embassy knew about the 
country and the Folk, and with what childish plans it concerned itself. At that time a bill introduced by Senator 
Gore lay before Congress to the effect that a proclamation be issued warning the American Folk not to use 
armed commercial vessels. President Wilson most bitterly fought against the proposal. He needed the loss of 
American lives in order to incite feelings against Germany. People in the German embassy knew that the 
prospects of the bill were not favourable, so they earnestly concerned themselves with plans to buy Congress. 
Only at first they did not know where to get the money. On March 3rd, the Senate decided to postpone the Gore 
Bill provisionally. The vote in the House was supposed to follow a few days later. So the plan first to buy the 
House was further eagerly pursued, but in this case at least Bemstorff was reasonable enough to advise against 
the plan decisively. 

The reading of the Flynn article must leave a feeling of deep indignation in the veins of every man of healthy 
German blood, not only over Wilson's treacherous policy, but rather, and especially, over the incredible stupidity 
with which the German Embassy played into the hands of this policy. Wilson duped Bemstorff more and more 
from day to day. When Colonel House, his adviser, returned from his European journey in May, 1916, 

Bemstorff travelled to New York to meet him there. Wilson, however, who vis-a-vis Bemstorff had acted as 
though he had no objections to this meeting, secretly instructed House not to have anything to do with the Count, 
and to avoid him at all events. Thus it happened. Bemstorff waited in New York in vain. Then he went to a 
nearby beach and let himself be photographed in a bathing suit with two lady friends in a very intimate position. 
The photo accompanies Flynn's article. At that time it fell into the hands of the Russian Ambassador 
Bakhmateff, who had it enlarged and sent it to London, where it was published in the newspapers under the 
caption, The Dignified Ambassador, and it rendered a capital service to Allied propaganda. 

This is what the Miinchen Latest News writes now. The man thus characterised, however, was a typical 
representative of German foreign policy before the War, just as he is also the typical representative of the 
German foreign policy of the Republic. This fellow, who would have been sentenced to hanging by a political 
tribunal in any other State, is the German representative at the League Of Nations in Geneva. 

These men bear the guilt and the responsibility for Germany's collapse, and, therefore, also for the loss of the 
Southern Tyrol. And with them the guilt falls on all parties and men who either caused such conditions, or 
covered them up, or also tacitly countenanced them or did not fight against them in the sharpest manner. 

The men, however, who today brazenly try to deceive public opinion anew, and would like to aver that others 
are guilty of the loss of the Southern Tyrol, must first give a detailed accounting of what they have done for its 
preservation. 

As for my person, at any rate, I can proudly declare that, since the time that I became a man, I have always been 
for the strengthening of my Lolk. And when the War came, I fought on the German Western Lront for four and a 
half years, and since its end I have been fighting against the corrupt creatures whom Germany can thank for this 
disaster. Since that time I have entered into no compromise with the betrayers of the German Latherland, either 
in domestic or foreign policy matters, but immovably proclaim their destruction one day as the aim of my life's 
work, and the mission of the National Socialist Movement. 

I can all the more calmly endure the yelping of the cowardly bourgeois curs as well as that of the Patriotic 
Leaguers, as I know the average poltroon of these creatures, for me unspeakably contemptible, all too well. That 
they also know me is the reason for their hue and cry. 



Chapter 16 


SUMMARY 


As a National Socialist, I see in Italy to begin with the first possible ally of Germany who can step out of the 
camp of the old coalition of enemies, without this alliance signifying an immediate war for Germany for which 
we are not equipped militarily. 

According to my conviction, this alliance will be of great benefit to Germany and Italy alike. Even if its direct 
benefit should ultimately no longer exist, it will never become detrimental, as long as both nations represent 
their interests in the highest sense of the word. As long as Germany views the maintenance of the freedom and 
independence of our Folk as the supreme aim of her foreign policy and wants to secure this Folk the 
prerequisite for its daily life, for so long will its foreign policy thinking be determined by our Folk's territorial 
need. And for so long will we not be able to have any internal or external inducement to fall into enmity with a 
State which does not in the least stand obstructively in our way. 

And as long as Italy wants to serve her real vital needs as a truly national State, for just so long will she, 
likewise attending to her territorial needs, have to base her political thought and action on the enlargement of 
Italian soil. The more proud and independent, the more national the Italian Folk becomes, the less will it in its 
development ever come into conflict with Germany. 

The areas of interest of these two countries, in a most fortunate way, lie so widely apart from each other that 
there are no natural areas of irritation. 

A national conscious Germany and an equally proud Italy will also ultimately be able to close the wounds left 
behind by the World War in the understanding of their friendship based on their frank and mutual community of 
interests. 

Southern Tyrol will thus some day have to fulfil a lofty mission in the service of both peoples. If the Italians and 
the Germans of this territory, once filled with a responsibility for their own Folkdom, perceive and understand 
the great tasks that Italy and Germany have to solve, the petty disputes of the day will recede vis-a-vis the 
higher mission of building a bridge of frank, reciprocal understanding on the former borders of Germany and 
Italy. 

I know that, under the current regimes in Germany, this is as exactly as impossible as it would be under a non 
Fascist regime in Italy. For the forces which determine German policy today do not desire any German 
resurgence, but our destruction. They likewise want the destruction of the presentday Italian Fascist State, and 
therefore will leave nothing untried in order to sink both nations into hate and hostility. France will seize upon 
any such manifestation, be it only an act of thoughtlessness, and use it to her own advantage with a thousand 
joys. 

Only a National Socialist Germany will find the way to a final understanding with a Fascist Italy, and finally 
eliminate the danger of war between the two Folks. For this old Europe was always a territory that was 
dominated by political systems, and this will not be otherwise at least for the humanly predictable future. 
General European democracy will either be replaced by a system of Jewish Marxist Bolshevism, to which all 



States will succumb one after the other, or by a system of free and unlinked national States, who, in the free 
play of forces, will set their stamp on Europe in accordance with the number and importance of their specific 
Folkdom. 

It is also not good for Fascism to exist isolated in Europe as an idea. Either the world of ideas from which it 
stems is generalised, or Italy will one day again succumb to the general ideas of another Europe. 

Thus, if we submit Germany's foreign policy possibilities to a closer examination, only two States remain in 
Europe as possible valuable allies for the future: Italy and England. Italy's relation to England itself is already a 
good one today, and, for reasons which I have discussed in another passage, will hardly be clouded in the 
immediate future. This, too, has nothing to do with mutual sympathies, but rests, on the Italian side above all, 
on a rational appraisal of the actual power relations. Thus an aversion to a boundless and unlimited French 
hegemony in Europe is common to both States. For Italy: because her most vital European interests are 
threatened; for England: because an overpowerful France in Europe can inflict a new threat on England's 
presentday naval and world supremacy which in itself is no longer completely unquestionable. 

That already today probably Spain and Hungary are also to be reckoned as belonging to this community of 
interests, even if only tacitly, lies grounded in Spain's aversion to French colonial activity in North Africa, as 
well as in Hungary's hostility to Yugoslavia, which is at the same time supported by France. 

If Germany would succeed in taking part in a new State coalition in Europe, which either must lead to a shift of 
emphasis in the League Of Nations itself, or allow decisive power factors altogether outside the League Of 
Nations to develop, then the first domestic political prerequisite for a later active foreign policy would be 
realisable. The weaponlessness imposed on us by the Versailles treaty and thus our practical defencelessness 
could come to an end, albeit slowly. This is possible only if the coalition of victors itself quarrels over this 
question, but never, however, in an alliance with Russia, let alone in a union with other so called oppressed 
nations, against the front of the coalition of the former victor States that encircle us. 

Then in the far future it may be possible to think of a new association of nations, consisting of individual States 
with a high national value, which could then stand up to the threatening overwhelming of the world by the 
American Union. For it seems to me that the existence of English world rule inflicts less hardships on 
presentday nations than the emergence of an American world rule. 

Pan Europe cannot be summoned to the solution of this problem, but only a Europe with free and independent 
national States whose areas of interest are divergent and precisely delimited. 

Only then can the time ripen for Germany, secured by a France pushed back within her own boundaries, and 
supported by her Army born anew, to lead the way toward the elimination of her territorial need. Once our Folk, 
however, will have grasped this great geopolitical aim in the east, the consequence will not only be clarity 
regarding German foreign policy, but also stability, at least for a humanly predictable time, will make it possible 
to avoid political insanities like those which ultimately entangled our Folk in the World War. And then we will 
also have ultimately overcome the period of this petty daily clamour and of the completely sterile economic and 
border policy. 


Germany then, also domestically, will have to take steps toward the strongest concentration of her means of 
power. She will have to realise that armies and navies are set up and organised, not along romantic lines, but 
according to practical requirements. Then she will automatically select as our greatest task the formation of a 



superior strong Land Army, since our future as a matter of fact does not lie on the water, but in Europe rather. 


Only if we will have completely perceived the meaning of this proposition and put an end to our Folk's 
territorial need, in the east and on the largest scale, along the lines of this perception will German economy also 
cease to be a factor of world unrest which brings a thousand dangers down upon us. It will then at least serve 
the satisfaction of our domestic needs in their major aspects. A Folk which no longer needs to shunt off its 
rising rural generations into the big cities as factory workers, but which instead can settle them as free peasants 
on their own soil, will open up a domestic sales market to German industry which can gradually remove and 
exempt it from the frenzied struggle and scramble for the so called place in the sun in the rest of the world. 

It is the foreign policy task of the National Socialist Movement to prepare and ultimately to carry out this 
development. It must also place foreign policy in the service of the reorganisation of our Folkdom on the basis 
of its world view range of ideas. Even here it must anchor the principle that we do not fight for systems but for a 
living Folk, that is, for flesh and blood, which must be preserved, and whose daily bread must not be lacking so 
that in consequence of its physical health it can also be healthy spiritually. 

Just as it must step over a thousand obstacles, misunderstandings and malignities in its struggle for reform in its 
domestic policy, likewise in foreign policy must it also clear away not only the conscious betrayal of the 
country by Marxism, but also the rubbish heap of worthless, indeed harmful phrases and ideas of our national, 
bourgeois world. Thus the less understanding there will be for the significance of our struggle at the moment, all 
the more powerful will be its success some day. 

Why Italy today can primarily be considered as an ally for Germany is connected with the fact that this country 
is the only one whose domestic and foreign policy is determined by purely Italian national interests. These 
Italian national interests are the only ones which do not contradict German interests, and, conversely, German 
interests do not run counter to them. And this is important not only for factual reasons, but also on the basis of 
the following: 

The war against Germany was fought by an overpowering world coalition in which only a part of the States 
could have a direct interest in Germany's destruction. In not a few countries, the shift to war was brought by 
influences which in no way sprang from the real domestic interests of these nations, or even which could also be 
to their benefit. A monstrous war propaganda began to befog public opinion of these Folks, and to stir them into 
enthusiasm for a war which for these very Folks in part could not bring any gain at all, and indeed sometimes 
ran downright counter to their real interests. 

International world Jewry was the power which instigated this enormous war propaganda. For as senseless as 
the participation in the War by many of these nations may have been, seen from the viewpoint of their own 
interests, it was just as meaningful and logically correct seen from the viewpoint of the interests of world Jewry. 

It is not my task here to enter into a discussion of the Jewish question as such. This cannot take place in the 
framework of a necessarily brief and compressed presentation. The following is said here only [so much] in the 
interests of a better understanding: 

Jewry is a Folk with a racial core that is not wholly unitary. Nevertheless, as a Folk, it has special intrinsic 
characteristics which separate it from all other Folks living on the globe. Jewry is not a religious community, 
but the religious bond between Jews; rather is in reality the momentary governmental system of the Jewish 
Folk. The Jew has never had a territorially bounded State of his own in the manner of Aryan States. 



Nevertheless, his religious community is a real State, since it guarantees the preservation, the increase and the 
future of the Jewish Folk. But this is solely the task of the State. That the Jewish State is subject to no territorial 
limitation, as is the case with Aryan States, is connected with the character of the Jewish Folk, which is lacking 
in the productive forces for the construction and preservation of its own territorial State. 

Just as every Folk as a basic tendency of all its Earthly actions possesses a mania for self preservation as its 
driving force, likewise is it exactly so with Jewry, too. Only here, in accord with their basically different 
dispositions, the struggle for existence of Aryan Folks and Jewry is also different in its forms. The foundation of 
the Aryan struggle for life is the soil, which he cultivates, and which provides the general basis for an economy 
satisfying primarily its own needs within its own orbit through the productive forces of its own Folk. 

Because of the lack of productive capacities of its own, the Jewish Folk cannot carry out the construction of a 
State, viewed in a territorial sense, but as a support of its own existence it needs the work and creative activities 
of other nations. Thus the existence of the Jew himself becomes a parasitical one within the lives of other Folks. 
Hence the ultimate goal of the Jewish struggle for existence is the enslavement of productively active Folks. In 
order to achieve this goal, which in reality has represented Jewry's struggle for existence at all times, the Jew 
makes use of all weapons that are in keeping with the whole complex of his character. 

Therefore in domestic politics within the individual nations he fights first for equal rights and later for superior 
rights. The characteristics of cunning, intelligence, astuteness, knavery, dissimulation, and so on, rooted in the 
character of his Folkdom, serve him as weapons thereto. They are as much stratagems in his war of survival as 
those of other Folks in combat. 

In foreign policy, he tries to bring nations into a state of unrest, to divert them from their true interests, and to 
plunge them into reciprocal wars, and in this way gradually rise to mastery over them with the help of the power 
of money and propaganda. 

His ultimate goal is the denationalisation, the promiscuous bastardisation of other Folks, the lowering of the 
racial levy of the highest Folks, as well as the domination of this racial mishmash through the extirpation of the 
Folkish intelligentsia and its replacement by the members of his own Folk. 

The end of the Jewish world struggle therefore will always be a bloody Bolshevisation. In truth, this means the 
destruction of all the intellectual upper classes linked to their Folks so that he can rise to become the master of a 
mankind become leaderless. 

Stupidity, cowardice and baseness, therefore, play into his hands. In bastards he secures for himself the first 
openings for the penetration of an alien nation. 

Hence the result of Jewish domination is always the ruin of all culture, and finally the madness of the Jew 
himself. For he is a parasite of nations, and his victory signifies his own end as much as the death of his victim. 

With the collapse of the ancient world, the Jews encountered young, in part still completely unspoiled, Folks, 
sure in racial instinct, who protected themselves against being infiltrated by them. He was a foreigner, and all 
his lies and dissimulation helped him little for nearly one and a half thousand years. 


It was the feudal domination and the government of the princes which first created a general situation which 



allowed him to attach himself to the struggle of an oppressed social class, indeed to make this struggle his own 
in a short time. He received civil equality with the French Revolution. With that the bridge was constructed over 
which he could stride to the conquest of political power within nations. 

The nineteenth century gave him a dominating position within the economy of nations through the building up 
of loan capital, based on ideas regarding interest. Finally, through the subterfuge of stock holdings, he placed 
himself in possession of a great part of the production sites, and with the help of the stock exchange he 
gradually became not only the ruler of public economic life, but ultimately also of political life. He supported 
this rule by means of the intellectual contamination of nations with the help of Freemasonry as well as by the 
work of the press become dependent upon him. He found the potential strength for the destruction of the 
bourgeois intellectual regime in the newly rising fourth estate of the handicraftsmen, just as once before the 
bourgeoisie had been the means for the demolition of feudal domination. At the same time, bourgeois stupidity 
and dishonest lack of principle, avarice and cowardice worked into his hands. He formed the vocational estate 
of the handicraftsmen into a special class, which he now allowed to take up the struggle against the national 
intelligentsia. Marxism became the spiritual father of the Bolshevik revolution. It is the weapon of terror which 
the Jew now applies ruthlessly and brutally. 

The economic conquest of Europe by the Jews was pretty much completed around the turn of the century, and 
now he began to safeguard it politically. That means, the first attempts to extirpate the national intelligentsia 
were undertaken in the form of revolutions. 

He utilised the tensions between European nations, which are in great part to be ascribed to their general need 
for territory with the consequences which arise therefrom, for his own advantage by systematically inciting 
them to the World War. 

The aim is the destruction of inherently anti Semitic Russia as well as the destruction of the German Reich 
which, in the administration and the Army, still offers resistance to the Jew. The further aim is the overthrow of 
those dynasties which had not yet been made subject to a democracy dependent upon and led by Jews. 

This Jewish war aim has at least in part been completely achieved. Czarism and Kaiserism in Germany were 
eliminated. With the help of the Bolshevik Revolution, the Russian upper classes and also the Russian national 
intelligentsia were murdered and completely extirpated amid inhuman agonies and atrocities. For the Russian 
Folk, the total number of victims of this Jewish struggle for hegemony in Russia amounted to 28-30 million 
people in number of dead. This is fifteen times more than the World War cost Germany. After the successful 
Revolution, he completely tore down [further] the bonds of order, of morality, of custom, and so on, abolished 
marriage as a lofty institution, and instead proclaimed a general copulation with the aim of breeding a general 
inferior human mishmash, by way of a chaotic bastardisation, which by itself would be incapable of leadership 
and which ultimately would no longer be able to do without the Jews as its only intellectual element. 

The future will show to what extent this has succeeded, and to what extent now forces of a natural reaction can 
still bring about a change of this most terrible crime of all times against mankind. 

At the moment, he exerts himself to lead the remaining States toward the same condition. Thereby he is 
supported and covered in his strivings and his actions by the bourgeois national parties of the so called National 
Fatherland Feagues, whereas Marxism, democracy, and the so called Christian Centre, emerge as aggressive 
shock troops. 



The bitterest struggle for the victory of Jewry at the present time is being waged in Germany. Here it is the 
National Socialist Movement which alone has taken upon itself the struggle against this execrable crime against 
mankind. 

In all European States at the moment, a struggle, in part quiet and violent, albeit often under wraps, is being 
waged for political power. 

Outside Russia, this struggle has first been decided in France. There the Jew, favoured by a number of 
circumstances, has entered into a community of interests with French national chauvinism. Since then Jewish 
stock exchanges and French bayonets have been allies. 

This struggle is undecided in England. There the Jewish invasion still meets with an old British tradition. The 
instincts of Anglosaxondom are still so sharp and alive that one cannot speak of a complete victory of Jewry, 
but rather, in part, the latter is still forced to adjust its interests to those of the English. 

If the Jew were to triumph in England, English interests would recede into the background, just as in Germany 
today German interests no longer are decisive, but rather Jewish interests. On the other hand, if the Briton 
triumphs, then a shift of England's attitude vis-a-vis Germany can still take place. 

The struggle of Jewry for its hegemony is also decided in Italy. With the victory of Fascism in Italy, the Italian 
Folk has triumphed. Even if the Jew is compelled to try to adjust himself to Fascism in Italy today, his attitude 
toward Fascism outside Italy nevertheless reveals his inner view of it. Only her own national interest is decisive 
and determining for Italy's fate, since the memorable day when the Fascist legions marched on Rome.The 
struggle of Jewry for its hegemony is also decided in Italy. With the victory of Fascism in Italy, the Italian Folk 
has triumphed. Even if the Jew is compelled to try to adjust himself to Fascism in Italy today, his attitude 
toward Fascism outside Italy nevertheless reveals his inner view of it. Only her own national interest is decisive 
and determining for Italy's fate, since the memorable day when the Fascist legions marched on Rome. 

For this reason also no State is better suited than Italy as an ally for Germany. It is consonant only with the 
bottomless stupidity and dissembling baseness of our so called Folkish representatives that they reject the only 
State that today is ruled along national lines, and as authentic German Folkish elements they prefer to enter a 
world coalition with Jews. It is fortunate that the time of these fools is played out in Germany. Thus the German 
Folkish concept is released from the embrace of these creatures, as petty as they are pitiful. It will infinitely gain 
thereby.