[MANICKILLAZ]

TODAY it seems to me providential that Fate should have chosen Braunau on the Inn as my birthplace. For this little town lies on the boundary between two German states which we of the younger generation at least have made it our life work to reunite by every means at our disposal.German-Austria must return to the great German mother country, and not because of any economic considerations. No, and again no: even if such a union were unimportant from an economic point of view; yes, even if it were harmful, it must nevertheless take place. One blood demands one Reich. Never will the German nation possess the moral right to engage in colonial politics until, at least, it embraces its own sons within a single state. Only when the Reich borders include the very last German, but can no longer guarantee As the so-called national parties were without influence, because they had no force which could effectively demonstrate in the street, the Leagues of Defence could not exercise any influence because they had no political idea and especially because they had no definite political aim in view.The success which Marxism once attained was due to perfect co-operation between political purposes and ruthless force. What deprived nationalist Germany of all practical hopes of shaping German development was the lack of a determined co-operation between brute force and political aims wisely chosen.Whatever may have been the aspirations of the 'national' parties, they had no force whatsoever to fight for these aspirations, least of all in the streets.In the fourth place, South Tyrol was betrayed by those parties and their adherents who put their signatures to the disgraceful treaties of Versailles and St. Germain.And so the matter stands, my brave gentlemen, who make your protests only with words.The third great success of our political activity lies in the formation of the Prussian state and the resultant cultivation of a special state idea, as also of the German army's instinct of selfpreservation and self-defense, adapted to the modern world and put into organized form. The development of the idea of individual militancy into the duty of national militancy [conscription] has grown out of every state formation and every state conception. The significance of this development cannot be overestimated. Through the discipline of the Prussian army organism, the German people, shot through with hyperindividualism by their racial divisions, won back at least a part of the capacity for organization which they had long since lost. What other peoples still primitively possess in their herd community instinct, we, partially at least, regained artificially for our national community through the process of military training. Hence the elimination of universal conscription- which for dozens of other peoples might be a matter of no importance-is for us fraught with the gravest consequences. Ten German generations without corrective and educational military training, left to the evil effects of their racial and hence philosophical division-and our nation would really have lost the last remnant of an independent existence on this planet. Only through individual men, in the bosom of foreign nations, could the German spirit make its contribution to culture, and its origin would not even be recognized. Cultural fertilizer, until the last remnant of Aryan-Nordic blood in us would be corrupted or extinguished.It is noteworthy that the significance of these real political successes won by our nation in its struggles, enduring more than a thousand years, were far better understood and appreciated by our adversaries than by ourselves. Even today we still rave about a heroism which robbed our people of millions of its noblest blood-bearers, but in its ultimate result remained totally fruitless.The distinction between the real political successes of our people and the national blood spent for fruitless aims is of the greatest importance for our conduct in the present and the future.We National Socialists must never under any circumstances join in the foul hurrah patriotism of our present bourgeois world. In particular it is mortally dangerous to regard the last pre-War developments as binding even in the slightest degree for our own course. From the whole historical development of the nineteenth century, not a single obligation can be derived which was grounded in this period itself. In contrast to the conduct of the representatives of this period, we must again profess the highest aim of all foreign policy, to wit: to bring the soil into harmony with the population Yes, from the past we can only learn that, in setting an objective for our political activity, we must proceed in two directions: Land and soil as the goal of ourforeign policy, and a new philosophically established, uniform foundation as the aim of political activity at home.I still wish briefly to take a position on the question as to what extent the demand for soil and territory seems ethically and morally justified. This is necessary, since unfortunately, even in socalled folkish circles, all sorts of unctuous bigmouths step forward, endeavoring to set the rectification of the injustice of 1918 as the aim of the German nation's endeavors in the field of foreign affairs, but at the same time find it necessary to assure the whole world of folkish brotherhood and sympathy.I should like to make the following preliminary remarks: The demand for restoration of the frontiers of 1914 is a political absurdity of ssxch proportions and consegsxences as to make it seem a crime. Quite aside from the fact that the Reich's frontiers in 19X4 were anything but logical. For in reality they were neither complete in the sense of embracing the people of German nationality, nor sensible with regard to geomilitary expediency. They were not the result of a considered political action, but momentary frontiers in a political struggle that was by no means concluded; partly, in fact, they were the results of chance. With equal right and in many cases with more right, some other sample year of German history could be picked out, and the restoration of the conditions at that time declared to be the aim of an activity in foreign affairs. The above demand is entirely suited to our bourgeois society, which here as elsewhere does not possess a single creative political idea for the future, but lives only in the past, in fact, in the most immediate past; for even their backward gaze does not extend beyond their own times. The law of inertia binds them to a given situation and causes them to resist any change in it, but without ever increasing the activity of this opposition beyond the mere power of perseverance. So it is obvious that the political horizon of these people does not extend beyond the year 1914. By proclaiming the restoration of those borders as the political aim of their activity, they keep mending the crumbling league of our adversaries. Only in this way can it be explained that eight years after a world struggle in which states, some of which had the most heterogeneous desires, took part, the coalition of the victors of those days can still maintain itself in a more or less unbroken form.All these states were at one time beneficiaries of the German collapse. Fear of our strength caused the greed and envy of the individual great powers among themselves to recede. By grabbing as much of the Reich as they could, they found the best guard against a future uprising. A bad conscience and fear of our people's strength is still the most enduring cement to hold together the various members of this alliance.And we do not disappoint them. By setting up the restoration of the borders of 1914 as a political program for Germany, our bourgeoisie frighten away every pa rtner who might desire to leave the league of our enemies, since he must inevitably fear to be attacked singly and thereby lose the protection of his individual fellow allies. Each single state feels concerned and threatened by this slogan.Moreover, it is senseless in two respects:(1) because the instruments of power are lacking to remove it from the vapors of club evenings into reality; and(2) because, if it could actually be realized, the outcome would again be so pitiful that, by God, it would not be worth while to risk the blood of our people for this.For it should scarcely seem questionable to anyone that ever the restoration of the frontiers of 1914 could be achieved only by blood. Only childish and naive minds can lull themselves in the idea that they can bring about a correction of Versailles by wheedling and begging. Quite aside from the fact that such an attempt would presuppose a man of Talleyrand's talents, which we do not possess. One half of our political figures consist of extremely sly, but equally spineless elements which are hostile toward our nation to begin with, while the other is composed of goodnatured, harmless, and easy-going soft-heads. Moreover, the times have changed since the Congress of Vienna: Today it is not princes and princes' mistresses who haggle and bargain over state borders; it is the inexorable Jew who struggles for his domination over the nations. No nation can remove this hand from its throat except by the sword. Only the assembled and concentrated might of a national passion rearing up in its strength can defy the international enslavement of peoples. Such a process is and remains a bloody one.If, however, we harbor the conviction that the German future, regardless what happens, demands the supreme sacrifice, quite aside from all considerations of political expediency as such, we must set up an aim worthy of this sacrifice and fight for it.The boundaries of the year 1914 mean nothing at all for the German future. Neither did they provide a defense of the past, nor would they contain any strength for the future. Through them the German nation will neither achieve its inner integrity, nor will its sustenance be safeguarded by them, nor do these boundaries, viewed from the military standpoint, seem expedient or even satisfactory, nor finally can they improve the relation in which we at present find ourselves toward the other world powers, or, better expressed, the real world powers. The lag behind England will not be caught up, the magnitude of the Union will not be achieved; not even France would experience a material diminution of her world-political importance.Only one thing would be certain: even with a favorable outcome, such an attempt to restore the borders of 1914 would lead to a further bleeding of our national body, so much so that there would be no worth-while blood left to stake for the decisions and actions really to secure the nation's future. On the contrary, drunk with such a shallow success, we should renounce any further goals, all the more readily as 'national honor' would be repaired and, for the moment at least, a few doors would have been reopened to commercial development.As opposed to this, we National Socialists must hold unflinchingly to our aim in foreign policy, namely, to secure for the German people the land and soil to which they are entitled on this earth. And this action is the only one which, before God and our German posterity, would make any sacrifice of blood seem justified: before God, since we have been put on this earth with the mission of eternal struggle for our daily bread, beings who receive nothing as a gift, and who owe their position as lords of the earth only to the genius and the courage with which they can conquer and defend it; and before our German posterity in so far as we have shed no citizen's blood out of which a thousand others are not bequeathed to posterity. The soil on which some day German generations of peasants can beget powerful sons will sanction the investment of the sons of today, and will some day acquit the responsible statesmen of blood-guilt and sacrifice of the people, even if they are persecuted by their contemporaries.And I must sharply attack those folkish pen-pushers who claim to regard such an acquisition of soil as a 'breach of sacred human rights' and attack it as such in their scribblings. One never knows who stands behind these fellows. But one thing is certain, that the confusion they can create is desirable and convenient to our national enemies. By such an attitude they help to weaken and destroy from within our people's will for the only correct way of defending their vital needs. For no people on this earth possesses so much as a square yard of territory on the strength of a higher will or superior right. Just as Germany's frontiers are fortuitous frontiers, momentary frontiers in the current political struggle of any period, so are the boundaries of other nations' living space. And just as the shape of our earth's Furnace can seem immutable as granite only to the thoughtless soft-head, but in reality only represents at each period an apparent pause in a continuous development, created by the mighty forces of Nature in a process of continuous growth, only to be transformed or destroyed tomorrow by greater forces, likewise the boundaries of living spaces in the life of nations.State boundaries are made by man and changed by man.The fact that a nation has succeeded in acquiring an undue amount of soil constitutes no higher obligation that it should be recognized eternally. At most it proves the strength of the conquerors and the weakness of the nations. And in this case, right lies in this strength alone. If the German nation today, penned into an impossible area, faces a lamentable future, this is no more a commandment of Fate than revolt against this state of affairs constitutes an affront to Fate. No more than any higher power has promised another nation more territory than the Gerrnan nation, or is offended by the fact of this unjust distribution of the soil. Just as our ancestors did not receive the soil on which we live today as a gift from Heaven, but had to fight for it at the risk of their lives, in the future no folkish grace will win soil for us and hence life for our people, but only the might of a victorious sword.Much as all of us today recognize the necessity of a reckoning with France, it would remain ineffectual in the long run if it represented the whole of our aim in foreign policy. It can and will achieve meaning only if it offers the rear cover for an enlargement of our people's living space in Europe. For it is not in colonial acquisitions that we must see the solution of this problem, but exclusively in the acquisition of a territory for settlement, which will enhance the area of the mother country, and hence not only keep the new settlers in the most intimate community with the land of their origin, but secure for the total area those advantages which lie in its unified magnitude.The folkish movement must not be the champion of other peoples, but the vanguard fighter of its own. Otherwise it is superfluous and above all has no right to sulk about the past. For in that case it is behaving in exactly tbe same wav. The old German policy was wrongly determined by dynastic considerations, and the future policy must not be directed by cosmopolitan folkish drivel. In particular, we are not constables guarding the well-known 'poor little nations,' but soldiers of our own nation.But we National Socialists must go further. The right to possess soil can become a duty if without extension of its soil a great nation seems doomed to destruction. And most especially when not some little negro nation or other is involved, but the Germanic mother of life, which has given the present-day world its cultural picture. Germany will either be a world power or there will be no Germany. And for world power she needs that magnitude which will give her the position she needs in the present period, and life to her citizens.And so we National Socialists consciously draw a line beneath the foreign policy tendency of our pre-War period. We take up where we broke off six hundred years ago. We stop the endless German movement to the south and west, and turn our gaze toward the land in the east. At long last we break of the colonial and commercial policy of the pre-War period and shift to the soil policy of the future.If we speak of soil in Europe today, we can primarily have in mind only Russia and her vassal border states.Here Fate itself seems desirous of giving us a sign. By handing P ussia to Bolshevism, it robbed the Russian nation of that intelligentsia which previously brought about and guaranteed its existence as a state. For the organization of a Russian state formation was not the result of the political abilities of the Slavs in Russia, but only a wonderful example of the state-forming efficacity of the German element in an inferior race. Numerous mighty empires on earth have been created in this way. Lower nations led by Germanic organizers and overlords have more than once grown to be mighty state formations and have endured as long as the racial nudeus of the creative state race maintained itself. For centuries Russia drew nourishment from this Germanic nucleus of its upper leading strata. Today it can be regarded as almost totally exterminated and extinguished. It has been replaced by the Jew. Impossible as it is for the Russian by himself to shake off the yoke of the Jew by his own resources, it is equally impossible for the Jew to maintain the mighty empire forever. He himself is no element of organization, but a ferment of decomposition. The Persian I empire in the east is ripe for collapse. And the end of Jewish rule in Russia will also be the end of Russia as a state. We have been chosen by Fate as witnesses of a catastrophe which will be the mightiest confirmation of the soundness of the folkish theory.Our task, the mission of the National Socialist movement, is to bring our own people to such political insight that they will not see their goal for the future in the breath-taking sensation of a new Alexander's conquest, but in the industrious work of the German plow, to which the sword need only give soil.It goes without saying that the Jews announce the sharpest resistance to such a policy. Better than anyone else they sense the significance of this action for their own future. This very fact should teach all really national-minded men the correctness of such a reorientation. Unfortunately, the opposite is the case. Not only in German-National, but even in 'folkish' circles, the idea of such an eastern policy is violently attacked, and, as almost always in such matters, they appeal to a higher authority. The spirit of Bismarck is cited to cover a policy which is as senseless as it is impossible and in the highest degree harmful to the German nation. Bismarck in his time, they say, always set store on good relations with Russia. This, to a certain extent, is true. But they forget to mention that he set just as great store on good relations with Italy, for example; in fact, that the same Herr von Bismarck once made an alliance with Italy in order to finish off Austria the more easily. Why, then, don't they continue this policy? 'Because the Italy of today is not the Italy of those days,' they will say. Very well. But then, honored sirs, will you permit the objection that present-day Russia is not the Russia of those days either? It never entered Bismarck's head to lay down a political course tactically and theoretically for all time. In this respect he was too much master of the moment to tie his hands in such a way. The question, therefore, most not be: What did Bismarsk do in his time? But rather: What would he do today? And this question is easier to answer. With his political astuteness, he would never ally himself unth a state that is downed to destruction.Furthermore, Bismarck even then viewed the German colonial and commercial policy with mixed feelings, since for the moment he was concerned only with the surest method of internally consolidating the state formation he had created. And this was the only reason why at that time he welcomed the Russian rear cover, which gave him a free hand in the west. But what was profitable to Germany then would be detrimental today.As early as 1920- 21, when the young National Socialist movement began slowly to rise above the political horizon, and here and there was referred to as the movement for German freedom, the party was approached by various quarters with an attempt to create a certain bond between it and the movements for freedom in other countries. This was in the line of the ' League of Oppressed Nations,' propagated by many. Chiefly involved were representatives of various Balkan states, and some from Egypt and India, who as individuals always impressed me as pompous big-mouths without any realistic background. But there were not a few Germans, especially in the nationalist camp, who let themselves be dazzled by such inflated Orientals and readily accepted any old Indian or Egyptian student from God knows where as a 'representative' of India or Egypt. These people never realized that they were usually dealing with persons who had absolutely nothing behind them, and above all were authorized by no one to conclude any pact with anyone, so that the practical result of any relations with such elements was nil, unless the time wasted were booked as a special loss. I always resisted such attempts. Not only that I had better things to do than twiddle away weeks in fruitless 'conferences,' but even if these men had been authorized representatives of such nations, I regarded the whole business as useless, in fact, harmful.Even in peacetime it was bad enough that the German alliance policy, for want of any aggressive intentions of our own, ended in a defensive union of ancient states, pensioned by world history. The alliance with Austria as well as Turkey had little to be said for them. While the greatest military and industrial states on earth banded into an active aggressive union, we collected a few antique, impotent state formations and with this decaying rubbish attempted to face an active world coalition. Germany received a bitter accounting for this error in foreign policy. But this accounting does not seem to have been bitter enough to prevent our eternal dreamers from falling headlong into the same error. For the attempt to disarm the almighty victors through a 'league of Oppressed Nations' is not only ridiculous, but catastrophic as well. It is catastrophic because it distracts our people again and again from the practical possibilities, making them devote themselves to imaginative, yet fruitless hopes and illusions. The German of today really resembles the drowning man who grasps at every straw. And this can apply even to men who are otherwise exceedingly well educated. If any will-o'-the-wisp of hope, however unreal, turns up anywhere, these men are off at a trot, chasing after the phantom. Whether it is a League of Oppressed Nations, a League of Nations, or any other fantastic new invention, it will be sure to find thousands of credulous souls.I still remember the hopes, as childish as they were incomprehensible, which suddenly arose in folkish circles in 1920-21, to the effect that British power was on the verge of collapse in India. Some Asiatic jugglers, for all I care they may have been real 'fighters for Indian freedom,' who at that time were wandering around Europe, had managed to sell otherwise perfectly reasonable people the idee fixe that the British Empire, which has its pivot in India, was on the verge of collapse at that very point. Of course, it never entered their heads that here again their own wish was the sole father of all their thoughts. No more did the inconsistency of their own hopes. For by expecting the end of the British Empire to follow from a collapse of British rule in India, they themselves admitted that India was of the most paramount importance to England.It is most likely, however, that this vitally important question is not a profound secret known only to German-folkish prophets; presumably it is known also to the helmsmen of English destiny. It is really childish to suppose that the men in England cannot correctly estimate the importance of the Indian Empire for the British world union. And if anyone imagines that England would let India go without staking her last drop of blood, it is only a sorry sign of absolute failure to learn from the World War, and of total misapprehension and ignorance on the score of AngloSaxon determination. It is, furthermore, a proof of the German's total ignorance regarding the whole method of British penetration and administration of this empire. England will lose India either if her own administrative machinery falls a prey to racial decomposition (which at the moment is completely out of the question in India) or if she is bested by the sword of a powerful enemy. Indian agitators, however, will never achieve this. How hard it is to best England, we Germans have sufficiently learned. Quite aside from the fact that I, as a man of Germanic blood, would, in spite of everything, rather see India under English rule than under any other.Just as lamentable are the hopes in any mythical uprising in Egypt. The 'Goly War' can give our German Schafkopf players the pleasant thrill of thinking that now perhaps others are ready to shed their blood for us-for this cowardly speculation, to tell the truth, has always been the silent father of all hopes; in realityit would come to an infernal end under the fire of English machinegun companies and the hail of fragmentation bombs.It just happens to be impossible to overwhelm with a coalition of cripples a powerful state that is determined to stake, if necessary, its last drop of blood for its existence. As a folkish man, who appraises the value of men on a racial basis, I am prevented by mere knowledge of the racial inferiority of these so-called 'oppressed nations' from linking the destiny of my own people with theirs.And today we must take exactly the same position toward Russia. Present-day Russia, divested of her Germanic upper stratum, is, quite aside from the private intentions of her new masters, no ally for the German nation's fight for freedom. Considered frown the purely military angle, the relations would be simply catastrophic in case of war between Germany and Russia and Western Europe, and probably against all the rest of the world. The struggle would take place, not on Russian, but on German soil, and Germany would not be able to obtain the least effective support from Russia. The present German Reich's instruments of power are so lamentable and so useless for a foreign war, that no defense of our borders against Western Europe, including England, would be practicable, and particularly the German industrial region would lie defenselessly exposed to the concentrated aggressive arms of our foes. There is the additional fact that between Germany and Russia there lies the Polish state, completely in French hands. In case of a war between Germany and Russia and Western Europe, Russia would first have to subdue Poland before the first soldier could be sent to the western front. Yet it is not so much a question of soldiers as of technical armament. In this respect, the World War situation would repeat itself, only much more horribly. Just as German industry was then drained for our glorious allies, and, technically speaking, Germany had to fight the war almost single-handed, likewise in this struggle Russia would be entirely out of the picture as a technical factor. We could oppose practically nothing to the general motorization of the worth which in the next war will manifest itself overwhelmingly and decisively. For not only that Germany herself has remained shamefully backward in this all-important field, but from the little she possesses she would have to sustain Russia, which even today cannot claim possession of a single factory capable of producing a motor vehicle that really runs. Thus, such a war would assume the character of a plain massacre. Germany's youth would be bled even more than the last time, for as always the burden of the fighting would rest only upon us, and the result would be inevitable defeat.But even supposing that a miracle should occur and that such a struggle did not end with the total annihilation of Germany, the ultimate outcome would only be that the German nation, bled white, would remain as before bounded by great military states and that her real situation would hence have changed in no way.Let no one argue that in concluding an alliance with Russia we need not immediately think of war, or, if we did, that we could thoroughly prepare for it. An alliance whose aim does not embrace a plan for war is senseless and worthless. Alliances are concluded only for struggle. And even if the clash should be never so far away at the moment when the pact is concluded, the prospect of a military involvement is nevertheless its cause. And do not imagine that any power would ever interpret the meaning of such an alliance in any other way. Either a German-Russian coalition would remain on paper, or from the letter of the treaty it would be translated into visible reality-and the rest of the world would be warned. How nalve to suppose that in such a case England and France would wait a decade for the German-Russian alliance to complete its technical preparations. No, the storm would break over Germany with the speed of lightning.And so the very fact of the conclusion of an alliance with Russia embodies a plan for the next war. Its outcome would be the end of Germany.On top of this there is the following:1. The present rulers of Russia have no idea of honorably entering into an alliance, let alone observing one.Never forget that the rulers of present-day Russia are common blood-stained criminals; that they are the scum of humanity which, favored by circumstances, overran a great state in a tragic hour, slaughtered and wiped out thousands of her leading ir.telligentsia in wild blood lust, and now for almost ten years have been carrying on the most cruel and tyrannical regime of all time. Furthermore, do not forget that these rulers belong to a race which combines, in a rare mixture, bestial cruelty and an inconceivable gift for lying, and which today more than ever is conscious of a mission to impose its bloody oppression on the whole world. Do not forget that the international Jew who completely dominates Russia today regards Germany, not as an ally, but as a state destined to the same fate. And you do not make pacts with anyone whose sole interest is the destruction of his partner. Above all, you do not make them with elements to whom no pact would be sacred, since they do not live in this world as representatives of honor and sincerity, but as champions of deceit, lies, theft, plunder, and rapine. If a man believes that he can enter into profitable connections with parasites, he is like a tree trying to conclude for its own profit an agreement with a mistletoe.2. The danger to which Russia succumbed is always present for Germany. Only a bourgeois simpleton is capable of imagining that Bolshevism has been exorcised. With his superficial thinking he has no idea that this is an instinctive process; that is, the striving of the Jewish people for world domination, a process which is just as natural as the urge of the Anglo-Saxon to seize domination of the earth. And just as the Anglo-Saxon pursues this course in his own way and carries on the fight with his own weapons, likewise the Jew. He goes his way, the way of sneaking in among the nations and boring from within, and he fights with his weapons, with lies and slander, poison and corruption, intensifying the struggle to the point of bloodily exterminating his hated foes. In Russian Bolshevism we must see the attempt undertaken by the Jews in the twentieth century to achieve world domination. Just as in other epochs they strove to reach the same goal by other, though inwardly related processes. Their endeavor lies profoundly rooted in their essential nature. No more than another nation renounces of its own accord the pursuit of its impulse for the expansion of its power and way of life, but is compelled by outward circumstances or else succumbs to impotence due to the symptoms of old age, does the Jew break off his road to world dictatorship out of voluntary renunciation, or because he represses his eternal urge. He, too, will either be thrown back in his course by forces lying outside himself, or all his striving for world domination will be ended by his own dying out. But the impotence of nations, their own death from old age, arises from the abandonment of their blood purity. And this is a thing that the Jew preserves better than any other people on earth. And so he advances on his fatal road until another force comes forth to oppose him, and in a mighty struggle hurls the heaven-stormer back to Lucifer.Germany is today the next great war aim of Bolshevism. It requires all the force of a young missionary idea to raise our people up again, to free them from the snares of this international serpent, and to stop the inner contamination of our blood, in order that the forces of the nation thus set free can be thrown in to safeguard our nationality, and thus can prevent a repetition of the recent catastrophes down to the most distant future. If we pursue this aim, it is sheer lunacy to ally ourselves with a power whose master is the mortal enemy of our future. How can we expect to free our own people from the fetters of this poisonous embrace if we walk right into it? How shall we explain Bolshevism to the German worker as an accursed crime against humanity if we ally ourselves with the organizations of this spawn of hell, thus recognizing it in the larger sense? By what right shall we condemn a member of the broad masses for his sympathy with an outlook if the very leaders of the state choose the representatives of this outlook for allies?The fight against Jewish world Bolshevization requires a clear attitude toward Soviet Russia. thou cannot drive out the Devil with Beelsebub.If today even folkish circles rave about an alliance with Russia, they should just look around them in Germany and see whose support they find in their efforts. Or have folkish men lately begun to view an activity as beneficial to the German people which is recommended and promoted by the international Marxist press? Since when do folkish men fight with armor held out to them by a Jewish squire?There is one main charge that could be raised against the old German Reich with regard to its alliance policy: not, however, that it failed to maintain good relations with Russia, but only that it ruined its relations with everyone by continuous shilly-shallying, in the pathological weakness of trying to preserve world peace at any price.I openly confess that even in the pre-War period I would have thought it sounder if Germany, renouncing her senseless colonial policy and renouncing her merchant marine and war fleet, had concluded an alliance with England against Russia, thus passing from a feeble global policy to a determined European policy of territorial acquisition on the continent.I have not forgotten the insolent threat which the pan-Slavic Russia of that time dared to address to Germany; I have not forgotten the constant practice mobilizations, whose sole purpose was an affront to Germany; I cannot forget the mood of public opinion in Russia, which outdid itself in hateful outbursts against our people and our Reich; I cannot forget the big Russian newspapers, which were always more enthusiastic about France than about us.But in spite of all that, before the War there would still have been a second way: we could have propped ourselves on Russia and turned against England.Today conditions are different. If before the War we could have choked down every possible sentiment and gone with Russia, today it is no longer possible. The hand of the world clock has moved forward since then, and is loudly striking the hour in which the destiny of our nation must be decided in one way or another. The process of consolidation in which the great states of the earth are involved at the moment is for us the last warning signal to stop and search our hearts, to lead our people out of the dream world back to hard reality, and show them the way to the future which alone will lead the old Reich to a new golden age.If the National Socialist movement frees itself from all illusions with regard to this great and all-important task, and accepts reason as its sole guide, the catastrophe of 1918 can some day become an infinite blessing for the future of our nation. Out of this collapse our nation will arrive at a complete reorientation of its activity in foreign relations, and, furthermore, reinforced within by its new philosophy of life, will also achieve outwardly a final stabilization of its foreign policy. Then at last it will acquire what England possesses and even Russia possessed, and what again and again induced France to make the same decisions, essentially correct from the viewpoint of her own interests, to wit: A political testament.The political testament of the German nation to govern its outward activity for all time should and must be:Never suffer the rise of two continental powers in Europe. Regard any attempt to organize a second military power on the German frontiers, even if only in the form of creating a state capable of military strength, as an attack on Germany, and in it see not only the right, but also the duty, to employ all means up to armed force to prevent the rise of such a state, or, if one has already arisen, to smash it again.-See to it that the strength of our nation is founded, not on colonies, but on the soil of our European homeland. Never regard the Reich as secure unless for centuries to come it can give every scion of our people his own parcel of soil. Never forget that the most sacred right on this earth is a man's right to have earth to till with his own hands, and the most sacred sacrifice the blood that a man sheds for this earth.I should not like to conclude these reflections without pointing once again to the sole alliance possibility which exists for us at the moment in Europe. In the previous chapter on the alliance problem I have already designated England and Italy as the only two states in Europe with which a closer relationship would be desirable and promising for us. Here I shall briefly touch on the military importance of such an alliance.The military consequences of concluding this alliance would in every respect be the opposite of the consequences of an alliance with Russia. The most important consideration, first of all, is the fact that in itself an approach so England and Italy in no way conjures up a war danger. France, the sole power which could conceivably oppose the alliance, would not be in a position to do so. And consequently the alliance would give Germany the possibility of peacefully making those preparations for a reckoning with France, vhich would have to be made in any event within the scope of such a coalition. For the significant feature of such an alliance lies precisely in the fact that upon its conclusion Germany would not suddenly be exposed to a hostile invasion, but that the opposing alliance would break of its own accord; the Entente, to which we owe such infinite misfortune, would be dissolved, and hence France, the mortal enemy of our nation, would be isolated. Even if this success is limited at first to moral effect, it would suffice to give Germany freedom of movement to an extent which today is scarcely conceivable. For the law of action would be in the hands of the new European AngloXermanItalian alliance and no longer with France.The further result would be that at one stroke Germany would be freed from her unfavorable strategic position. The most powerful protection on our fiank on the one hand, complete guaranty of our food and raw materials on the other, would be the beneficial effect of the new constellation of states.But almost more important would be the fact that the new league would embrace states which in technical productivity almost complement one another in many respects. For the first time Germany would have allies who would not drain our own economy like leeches, but could and would contribute their share to the richest supplementation of our technical armament.And do not overlook the final fact that in both cases we should be dealing with allies who cannot be compared with Turkey or present-day Russia. The greatest world power on earth and a youthful national state would offer different premises for a struggle in Europe than the putrid state corpses with which Germany allied herself in the last war.Assuredly, as I emphasized in the last chapter, the difficulties opposing such an alliance are great. But was the formation of the Entente, for instance, any less difficult? What the genius of a Ring Edward VII achieved, in part almost counter to natural interests, we, too, must and will achieve, provided we are so inspired by our awareness of the necessity of such a development that with astute self-control we determine our actions accordingly. And this will become possible in the moment when, imbued with admonishing distress,l we pursue, not the diplomatic aimlessness of the last decades, but a conscious and determined course, and stick to it. Neither western nor eastern orientation must be the future goal of our foreign policy, but an eastern policy in the sense of acquiring the necessary soil for our German people. Since for this we require strength, and since France, the mortal enemy of our nation, inexorably strangles us and robs us of our strength, we must take upon ourselves every sacrifice whose consequences are cakulated to contribute to the annihilation of French efforts toward hegemony in Europe. Today every power is our natural ally, which like us feels French domination on the continent to be intolerable. No path to such a power can be too hard for us, and no renunciation can seem unutterable if only the end result of ers the possibility of downing our grimmest enemy. Then, if we can cauterize and close the biggest wound, we can calmly leave the cure of our slighter wounds to the soothing effects of time.Today, of course, we are subjected to the hateful yapping of the enemies of our people within. We National Socialists must never let this divert us from proclaiming what in our innermost conviction is absolutely necessary. Today, it is true, we must brace ourselves against the current of a public opinion confounded by Jewish guile exploiting German gullibility; sometimes, it is true, the waves break harshly and angrily about us, but he who swims with the stream is more easily overlooked than he who bucks the waves. Today we are a reef; in a few years Fate may raise us up as a dam against which the general stream will break, and flow into a new bed.It is, therefore, necessary that the National Socialist movement be recognized and established in the eyes of all as the champion of a definite political purpose. Whatever Heaven may have in store for us, let men recognize us by our very visor!Once we ourselves recognize the crying need which must determine our conduct in foreign affairs, from this knowledge will flow the force of perseverance which we sometimes need when, beneath the drumfire of our hostile press hounds, one or another of us is seized with fear and there creeps upon him a faint desire to grant a concession at least in some field, and howl with the wolves, in order not to have everyone against him.THE ARMISTICE of November, 1918, ushered in a policy which in all human probability was bound to lead gradually to total submission. Historical examples of a similar nature show that nations which lay down their arms without compelling reasons prefer in the ensuing period to accept the greatest humiliations and extortions rather than attempt to change their fate by a renewed appeal to force.This is humanly understandable. A shrewd victor will, if possible, always present his demands to the vanquished in installments. And then, with a nation that has lost its character-and this is the case of every one which voluntarily submits-he can be sure that it will not regard one more of these individual oppressions as an adequate reason for taking up arms again. 'The more extortions are willingly accepted in this way, the more unjustified it strikes people finally to take up the defensive against a new, apparently isolated, though constantly recurring, oppression, especially when, all in all, so much more and greater misfortune has already been borne in patient silence.The fall of Carthage is the most horrible picture of such a slow execution of a people through its own deserts.That is why Clausewitz in his Drei Bekenntnisse incomparably singles out this idea and nails it fast for all time, when he says:'That the stain of a cowardly submission can never be effaced; that this drop of poison in the blood of a people is passed on to posterity and will paralyze and undermine the strength of later generations'; that, on the other hand, 'even the loss of this freedom after a bloody and honorable struggle assures the rebirth of a people and is the seed of life from which some day a new tree will strike fast roots.'Of course, a people that has lost all honor and character will not concern itself with such teachings. For no one who takes them to heart can sink so low; only he who forgets them, or no longer wants to know them, collapses. Therefore, we must not expect those who embody a spineless submission suddenly to look into their hearts and, on the basis of reason and all human experience, begin to act differently than before. On the contrary, it is these men in particular who will dismiss all such teachings until either the nation is definitely accustomed to its yoke of slavery or until better forces push to the surface, to wrest the power from the hands of the infamous spoilers. In the first case these people usually do not feel so badly, since not seldom they are appointed by the shrewd victors to the office of slave overseer, which these spineless natures usually wield more mercilessly over their people than any foreign beast put in by the enemy himself.The development since 1918 shows us that in Germany the hope of winning the victor's favor by voluntary submission unfortunately determines the political opinions and the actions of the broad masses in the most catastrophic way. I attach special importance to emphasizing the broad masses, because I cannot bring myself to profess the belief that the commissions and omissions of our people's leaders are attributable to the same ruinous lunacy. As the leadership of our destinies has, since the end of the War, been quite openly furnished by Jews, we really cannot assume that faulty knowledge alone is the cause of our misfortune; we must, on the contrary, hold the conviction that conscious purpose is destroying our nation. And once we examine the apparent madness of our nation's leadership in the field of foreign affairs from this standpoint, it is revealed as the subtlest, ice-cold logic, in the service of the Jewish idea and struggle for world conquest. And thus, it becomes understandable that the same time-span, which from 1806 to 1813 sufficed to imbue a totally collapsed Prussia with new vital energy and determination for struggle, today has not only elapsed unused, but, on the contrary, has led to an ever-greater weakening of our state.Seven years after November, 1918, the Treaty of Locarno was signed.The course of events was that indicated above: Once the disgraceful armistice had been signed, neither the energy nor the courage could be summoned suddenly to oppose resistance to our foes' repressive measures, which subsequently were repeated over and over. Our enemies were too shrewd to demand too much at once. They always limit their extortions to the amount which, in their opinion-and that of the German leadership- would at the moment be bearable enough so that an explosion of popular feeling need not be feared. But the more of these individual dictates had been signed, the less justified it seemed, because of a single additional extortion or exacted humiliation, to do the thing that had not been done because of so many others: to offer resistance. For this is the ' drop of poison ' of which Clausewitz speaks: the spinelessness which once begun must increase more and more and which gradually becomes the foulest heritage, burdening every future decision. It can become a terrible lead weight, a weight which a nation is not likely to shake off, but which finally drags it down into the existence of a slave race.Thus, in Germany edicts of disarmament alternated with edicts of enslavement, political emasculation with economic pillage, and finally created that moral spirit which can regard the Dawes Plan as a stroke of good fortune and the Treaty of Locarno as a success. Viewing all this from a higher vantagepoint, we can speak of one single piece of good fortune in all this misery, which is that, though men can be befuddled, the heavens cannot be bribed. For their blessing remained absent: since then hardship and care have been the constant companions-of our people, and our one faithful ally has been misery. Destiny made no exception in this case, but gave us what we deserved. Since we no longer know how to value honor, it teaches us at least to appreciate freedom in the matter of bread. By now people have learned to cry out for bread, but one of these days they will pray for freedom.Bitter as was the collapse of our nation in the years after 1918, and obvious at that very time, every man who dared prophesy even then what later always materialized was violently and resolutely persecuted. Wretched and bad as the leaders of our nation were, they were equally arrogant, and especially when it came to ridding themselves of undesired, because unpleasant, prophets. We were treated to- the spectacle (as we still are today!) of the greatest parliamentary thick-heads, regular saddlers and glovemakers-and not only by profession, which in itself means nothing-suddenly setting themselves on the pedestal of statesmen, from which they could lecture down at plain ordinary mortals. It had and has nothing to do with the case that such a ' statesman ' by the sixth month of his activity is shown up as the most incompetent windbag, the butt of everyone's ridicule and contempt, that he doesn't know which way to turn and has provided unmistakable proof of his total incapacity ! No, that makes no difference, on the contrary: the more lacking the parliamentary statesmen of this Republic are in real accomplishment, the more furiously they persecute those who expect accomplishments from them, who have the audacity to point out the failure of their previous activity and predict the failure of their future moves. But if once you finally pin down one of these parliamentary honorables, and this political showman really cannot deny the collapse of his whole activity and its results any longer, they find thousands and thousands of grounds for excusing their lack of success, and there is only one that they will not admit, namely, that they themselves are the main cause of all evil.By the winter of 1922-23, at the latest, it should have been generally understood that even after the conclusion of peace France was still endeavoring with iron logic to achieve the war aim she had originally had in mind. For no one will be likely to believe that France poured out the blood of her people- never too rich to begin with-for four and a half years in the most decisive struggle of her history, only to have the damage previously done made good by subsequent reparations. Even Alsace-Lorraine in itself would not explain the energy with which the French carried on the War, if it had not been a part of French foreign policy's really great political program for the future. And this goal is: the dissolution of Germany into a hodge-podge of little states. That is what chauvinistic France fought for, though at the same time in reality it sold its people as mercenaries to the international world Jew. This French war aim would have been attainable by the War alone if, as Paris had first hoped, the struggle had taken place on German soil. Suppose that the bloody battles of the World War had been fought, not on the Somme, in Flanders, in Artois, before Warsaw, Nijni-Novgorod, Kovno, Riga, and all the other places, but in Germany, on the Ruhr and the Main, on the Elbe, at Hanover, Leipzig, Nuremberg, etc., and you will have to agree that this would have offered a possibility of breaking up Germany. It is very questionable whether our young federative state could for four and a half years have survived the same test of strain as rigidly centralized France, oriented solely toward her uncontested center in Paris. The fact that this gigantic struggle of nations occurred outside the borders of our fatherland was not only to the immortal credit of the old army, it was also the greatest good fortune for the German future. It is my firm and heartfelt conviction, and sometimes almost a source of anguish to me, that otherwise there would long since have been no German Reich, but only ' German states.' And this is the sole reason why the blood of our fallen friends and brothers has at least not Bowed entirely in vain.Thus everything turned out differently! True, Germany collapsed like a flash in November, 1918. But when the catastrophe occurred in the homeland, our field armies were still deep in enemy territory. The first concern of France at that time was not the dissolution of Germany, but: How shall we get the German armies out of France and Belgium as quickly as possible? And so the first task of the heads of state in Paris for concluding the World War was to disarm the German armies and if possible drive them back to Germany at once; and only after that could they devote themselves to the fulfillment of their real and original war aim. In this respect, to be sure, France was already paralyzed. For England the War had really been victoriously concluded with the annihilation of Germany as a colonial and commercial power and her reduction to the rank of a second-class state. Not only did the English possess no interest in the total extermination of the German state; they even had every reason to desire a rival against France in Europe for the future. Hence the French political leaders had to continue with determined peacetime labor what the War had begun, and Clemenceau's utterance, that for him the peace was only the continuation of the War, took on an increased significance.Persistently, on every conceivable occasion, they had to shatter the structure of the Reich. By the imposition of one disarmament note after another, on the one hand, and by the economic extortion thus made possible, on the other hand, Paris hoped slowly to disjoint the Reich structure. The more rapidly national honor withered away in Germany, the sooner could economic pressure and unending poverty lead to destructive political effects. Such a policy of political repression and economic plunder, carried on for ten or twenty years, must gradually ruin even the best state structure and under certain circumstances dissolve it. And thereby the French war aim would finally be achieved.By the winter of 1922-23 this must long since have been recognized as the French intent. Only two possibilities remained: We might hope gradually to blunt the French will against the tenacity of the German nation, or at long last to do what would have to be done in the end anyway, to pull the helm of the Reich ship about on some particularly crass occasion, and ram the enemy. This, to be sure, meant a life-and-death struggle, and there existed a prospect of life only if previously we succeeded in isolating France to such a degree that this second war would not again constitute a struggle of Germany against the world, but a defense of Germany against a France which was constantly disturbing the world and its peace.I emphasize the fact, and I am firmly convinced of it, that this second eventuality must and will some day occur, whatever happens. I never believe that France's intentions toward us could ever change, for in the last analysis they are merely in line with the self-preservation of the French nation. If I were a Frenchman, and if the greatness of France were as dear to me as that of Germany is sacred, I could not and would not act any differently from Clemenceau. The French nation, slowly dying out, not only with regard to population, but particularly with regard to its best racial elements, can in the long run retain its position in the world only if Germany is shattered. French policy may pursue a thousand detours; somewhere in the end there will be this goal, the fulfillment of ultimate desires and deepest longing. And it is false to believe that a purely passive will, desiring only to preserve itself, can for any length of time resist a will that is no less powerful, but proceeds actively. As long as the eternal conflict between Germany and France is carried on only in the form of a German defense against French aggression, it will never be decided, but from year to year, from century to century, Germany will lose one position after another. Follow the movements of the German language frontier beginning with the twelfth century until today, and you will hardly be able to count on the success of an attitude and a development which has done us so much damage up till now.Only when this is fully understood in Germany, so that the vital will of the German nation is no longer allowed to languish in purely passive defense, but is pulled together for a final active reckoning with France and thrown into a last decisive struggle with the greatest ultimate aims on the German side- only then will we be able to end the eternal and essentially so fruitless struggle between ourselves and France; presupposing, of course, that Germany actually regards the destruction of France as only a means which will afterward enable her finally to give our people the expansion made possible elsewhere. Today we count eighty million Germans in Europe! This foreign policy will be acknowledged as correct only if, after scarcely a hundred years, there are two hundred and fifty million Germans on this continent, and not living penned in as factory coolies for the rest of the world, but: as peasants and workers, who guarantee each other's livelihood by their labor.In December, 1922, the situation between Germany and France again seemed menacingly exacerbated. France was contemplating immense new extortions, and needed pledges for them. The economic pillage had to be preceded by a political pressure and it seemed to the French that only a violent blow at the nerve center of our entire German life would enable them to subject our 'recalcitrant' people to a sharper yoke. With the occupation of the Roar, the French hoped not only to break the moral backbone of Germany once and for all, but to put us into an embarrassing economic situation in which, whether we liked it or not, we would have to assume every obligation, even the heaviest.It was a question of bending and breaking. Germany bent at the very outset, and ended up by breaking completely later.With the occupation of the Ruhr, Fate once again held out a hand to help the German people rise again. For what at the first moment could not but seem a great misfortune embraced on closer inspection an infinitely promising opportunity to terminate all German misery.From the standpoint of foreign relations, the occupation of the Ruhr for the first time really alienated England basically from France, and not only in the circles of British diplomacy which had concluded, examined, and maintained the French alliance as such only with the sober eye of cold calculators, but also in the broadest circles of the English people. The English economy in particular viewed with ill-concealed displeasure this new and incredible strengthening of French continental power. For not only that France, from the purely politico-military point of view, now assumed a position in Europe such as previously not even Germany had possessed, but, economically as well, she now obtained economic foundations which almost combined a position of economic monopoly with her capacity for political competition. The largest iron mines and coal fields in Europe were thus united in the hands of a nation which, in sharp contrast to Germany, had always defended its vital interests with equal determination and activism, and which in the Great War had freshly reminded the whole world of its military reliability. With the occupation of the Ruhr coal fields by France, England's entire gain through the War was wrested from her hands, and the victor was no longer British diplomacy so industrious and alert, but Marshal Foch and the France he represented.In Italy, too, the mood against France, which, since the end of the War, had been by no means rosy to begin with, shifted to a veritable hatred. It was the great, historical moment in which the allies of former days could become the enemies of tomorrow. If things turned out differently and the allies did not, as in the second Balkan War, suddenly break into a sudden feud among themselves, this was attributable only to the circumstance that Germany simply had no Enver Pasha, but a Reich Chancellor Cuno.Yet not only from the standpoint of foreign policy, but of domestic policy as well, the French assault on the Ruhr held great future potentialities for Germany. A considerable part of our people which, thanks to the incessant influence of our lying press, still regarded France as the champion of progress and liberalism, was abruptly cured of this lunatic delusion. Just as the year 1914 had dispelled the dreams of international solidarity between peoples from the heads of our German workers and led them suddenly back into the world of eternal struggle, throughout which one being feeds on another and the death of the weaker means the life of the stronger, the spring of 1923 did likewise.When the Frenchman carried out his threats and finally, though at first cautiously and hesitantly, began to move into the lower German coal district, a great decisive hour of destiny had struck for Germany. If in this moment our people combined a change of heart with a shift in their previous attitude, the Ruhr could become a Napoleonic Moscow for France. There were only two possibilities: Either we stood for this new offense and did nothing, or, directing the eyes of the German people to this land of glowing smelters and smoky furnaces, we inspired them with a glowing will to end this eternal disgrace and rather take upon themselves the terrors of the moment than bear an endless terror one moment longer.To have discovered a third way was the immortal distinction of Reich Chancellor Cuno, to have admired it and gone along, the still more glorious distinction of our German bourgeois parties.Here I shall first examine the second course as briefly as possible.With the occupation of the Ruhr, France had accomplished a conspicuous breach of the Versailles Treaty. In so doing, she had also put herself in conflict with a number of signatory powers, and especially with England and Italy. France could no longer hope for any support on the part of these states for her own selfish campaign of plunder: She herself, therefore, had to bring the adventure-and that is what it was at first-to some happy conclusion. For a national German government there could be but a single course, that which honor prescribed. It was certain that for the present France could not be opposed by active force of arms; but we had to realize clearly that any negotiations, unless backed by power, would be absurd and fruitless. Without the possibility of active resistance, it was absurd to adopt the standpoint: 'We shall enter into no negotiations'; but it was even more senseless to end by entering into negotiations after all, without having meanwhile equipped ourselves with power.Not that we could have prevented the occupation of the Ruhr by military measures. On