I was summoned to present myself two days later at Linz, which is 200 kilometers away. To make sure I would comply, the Munich police arrested me. Later it turned out that they had been sitting on the summons for some time but had failed to deliver it. This worked in my favor because I could argue that the time I was given was too short to put my affairs in order. I appealed to the Austrian Consulate, which showed some sympathy for my situation. I asked the people in Linz for a deferment, only to have my request rejected. However, their answering telegram only arrived on the morning of 21 January, the day after the one I was supposed to present myself. Thereupon I asked for permission to present myself on 5 February. This time my request was granted, and the place changed to Salzburg, which was much closer to where I lived.
To explain what had happened, I sent the authorities a letter three and a half pages long. Naturally I could not inform them of the real reason for my decision to leave Austria and, with it, its armed forces, since doing so would only have made my situation worse. Instead I said that my failure to register for service in 1909 had been due to my bitter circumstances at the time; also that I had written to them retroactively in February 1910. Having received no response, I assumed everything was in order and had almost forgotten about the matter. I reminded them that, though an orphan and in a difficult situation, I had never been accused of any crime and had always kept my name clean. In the event, my humble efforts proved to be superfluous. On 5 February I took the train—at the consulate’s expense—to Salzburg and presented myself as I had been ordered to do. I was examined and found physically unfit to serve, whereupon I was happy to return to Munich and resume my life.
I cannot vouch that every line I later wrote in Mein Kampf was already germinating in my mind at that time. That is just not the way memory, mine included, works. I did, however, find my attention increasingly directed toward foreign policy. Nor was there any cause for surprise in this. The Austrian monarchy had its enemies. The most important one was Russia, with which it was deeply embroiled in the Balkans. Another enemy was Italy, which, despite being a formal ally, was always looking for an opportunity to snatch South Tyrol, Dalmatia, and God knows what other territorial morsels. As I wrote earlier, though, the most important problems from which Austria suffered were internal.
The situation of the Reich was, or at any rate appeared to be, quite different. To this day, there are those who consider the Wilhelmine period the happiest one in the whole of German history. The treasonous idea of multi-kulti (multiculturalism) was so far in the future as to be unimaginable. The Jews apart, there were, as yet, few foreigners around. The country was superbly looked after, prosperous, and bursting to the seams with growth. Its army was far and away the best in the world, and its science and technology were widely respected.
Here in Hell I happened to come across a Sears and Roebuck Catalog for the year 1903. Leafing through it, I quickly learned that, in the U.S. at that time, the best way to praise any kind of product was to put the word “German” in front of its name. As, for example, in the case of the so-called “Heidelberg belt,” a device supposed to restore sexual vigor by sending electric shocks through the male organ! Or take a look at Erskine Childer’s best-seller, The Riddle of the Sands, which was published in the same year. It will not take you long to learn how much he admired the Kaiser, whom he actually called “a splendid chap.” Many other Englishmen agreed.
There were cracks in the structure, particularly the Reichstag, which never stopped cackling and obstructing Wilhelm in any way it could. But these only became really serious during the World War and after it had ended. At this point I want to put it on record that foreign policy, whether waged by diplomatic methods or by armed force, is a brutal struggle for existence that has neither beginning nor end. To think, as many who observed Germany’s prosperity did, that it can be waged, let alone won, by purely commercial means is an illusion, and a very dangerous one at that. No better illustration of this fact may be found than the rise, first of England and then of the United States. It is true that, partly because they were favored by geography, both were and are great trading nations. But it is also true that neither showed the slightest hesitation in using armed force whenever it saw the need to do so. As the English themselves said of themselves, trade followed the flag. Any attempt to deny this truth can only be characterized by a single world: absurd.
While the need for struggle forms an integral part of my Weltanschauung, it is not I who invented it. It is a fundamental law of nature. It was discovered at least as long ago as Heraclitus in the fifth century B.C. Wasn’t it he who first said that war was the father of everything? So pervasive is it that nations, every single nation that has ever existed or will ever exist, must engage in it willingly or unwillingly. It is, so to speak, the way in which nature exercises its justice. In the long run it always is the stronger party that survives and prospers. Whereas the weaker one is defeated if it is lucky and subjugated and perhaps exterminated if it is not. To be sure, strength is made up of several factors. Among them are racial makeup (what, a hundred years later, mealy-mouthed people like to call ethnicity), numbers, geography, economics, industrial and technical development, and so on. And yet, as Schopenhauer taught, at the center of everything there is the will. The one thing for which there is no substitute; and without which all the rest are more or less worthless.
The first pillar of German foreign policy I came to criticize after my move to Munich was the alliance with Austria. I need hardly repeat that I, as someone who had been a German nationalist practically from birth on, would have liked nothing better than to see the Germans in the land where I was born united with their brethren in the Reich. What I had not anticipated was the extent to which people in the latter misunderstood the Habsburg Dynasty. Uniting with the Reich was the last thing Austria’s ruling classes wanted. To the contrary, their survival depended on their ability to keep the two countries apart for as long as possible. It was only their fear of Russia, which in itself was perfectly justified, which induced them to ally themselves with Germany. The Reich-Germans also failed to appreciate the weakness of the monarchy and, in particular, that of the German element in it. Owing to its much lower birthrate, that element was losing power year by year. A nation that commits suicide in this way is doomed, and any others who ally themselves with it will suffer.
Unlike the Germans in Austria, the Reich-Germans were bursting with vitality. The population, which in 1871 had stood at 41 million, had now reached 68 million and was still growing fast. How to feed the hundreds of thousands being added each year? By bringing down the birthrate? Doing so might indeed have been possible. But only at the cost of seeing the country drop from the list of great powers and turn into some kind of larger Switzerland. We quite likely would have lost control of our destiny and become a protégé of Russia, whose population, estimated at 166 million, was increasing even faster than ours. That, incidentally, was what Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg, “the Philosopher of Howenfinow,” as, after his estate in Brandenburg, he was known, believed and feared. Even at the time, the joys of such “protection” could be seen all too plainly in Poland, which had been experiencing it for over a hundred years. After 1945, the whole of Eastern Europe, including parts of Germany itself, learned to know and appreciate them.
Another oft-discussed possibility was internal colonization, such as by opening new land for cultivation, increasing our industry, and exporting and importing. Our neighbors, the Netherlands, provided a very good example of this method. Such colonization might indeed present a solution—for some time at any rate. The more so because it goes well with our people’s innate pacifism and preference for a half-slumbering existence. Not for nothing do foreigners often poke fun at our Schlafmütze (nightcaps). But there clearly were, and are, limits. Not every soil can be made to yield the crops people need. And what soil can be made to do so will, sooner or later, be exhausted.
From 1914 to 1918, the fact that we were cut off from our sources
of fertilizer in Chile produced dire results for the health of our people. Estimates put the number of those who died because of the English blockade at anything between 424,000 and 763,000. Many of them were children and old people. If this reminds anyone of the problems we are periodically having in obtaining natural gas from Russia, then that is as it should be. Furthermore, a state which adopts such methods is like a man on a treadmill. That is due not only to the number of people constantly increasing, but, what is just as important, the way in which their demands for higher standards of living also keep growing. The final outcomes must always be unemployment, poverty, and hunger—or, as people like to call it today, an “economic crisis.” I shall discuss the crisis of 1929-32 later in this volume. At this point, all I want to say is that such a one is quite capable of shaking the country to its very foundations. Unless proper foresight is exercised and preventive measures are taken, it can very well lead to the outbreak of diseases and mass starvation. Not to mention civil war.
Given its position in the center of Europe, Germany had always embraced a continental—some would say provincial—outlook. That was as true of the old Reich as it later became of both the most important German states, Austria and Prussia. To be sure, Frederick II took an interest in the New World. But there was little he, or, for that matter, his Hapsburg enemy Maria Theresa, could do about it. Hamburg, long a great commercial and seafaring center, was an exception. It was not always a welcome one though, since its citizens tended toward cosmopolitanism. Later, they had some trouble understanding why anti-Semitism was as vital to our well-being as it was. At any rate Hamburg only represented a drop in the German bucket. Of the states in that bucket, none ever built a proper navy or set out to acquire oversea colonies as Spain, France, England, and even little Portugal, the Netherlands, and Belgium all did.
At the turn of the century things changed. Everyone started talking of Weltpolitik. AKA geopolitics in non-German speaking countries. The term, and the science for which it stands, surfaced for the first time in the 1890s. Their most important exponent was not a German but an Englishman, Halford Mackinder. It was from Mackinder, who in his own way was a genuine genius, that everyone else took their cue. Among them were our own worthy Karl Haushofer and his onetime student Rudolf Hess.
During the years leading up to the war, as well as the war itself, the term Weltpolitik was on everyone’s lips. After 1918, it all but disappeared from the printed page. Later, during my time as Chancellor, it underwent a moderate revival. After World War II, it again disappeared, only to experience a second revival after 1960. By that time, though, its meaning had been thoroughly changed. It no longer referred to Germany. Defeated, humiliated, and dismembered, our poor country hardly any more had the power to engage in any kind of foreign policy at all. Reduced to Kettenhunde, dogs on a chain, all its two parts could do was bark at each other while hiding under the wing of their respective masters, the U.S. and the USSR. Thus the frequency with which authors used the term, and the way in which they did so, faithfully reflected Germany’s foreign policy as well as the none-too honorable position it was holding in the world.
Weltpolitik both summed up the foreign policy of Wilhelm II and reflected it. Wilhelm was highly intelligent and highly energetic. However, initially, at any rate he was also young. And headstrong, and flamboyant, and, some would say, unstable. He was always speaking of “Huns”—a term, incidentally, that did us immense damage during the World War—sharp swords and shining armor. But he did not really mean it. He liked maneuvers, in which he could cut a splendid figure, much better than he liked war. He also rejected the sagacious advice of Bismarck, of whom he rid himself soon after assuming the throne. Indiscriminately lashing out in all directions, he sought to increase Germany’s power in every quarter of the globe, however remote and unimportant. As he kept telling anyone who would and would not listen, “Germany’s future is on the water.” Never mind that, according to Reichskanzler Bernard von Bulow, who often accompanied him on the imperial yacht, he tended to suffer from seasickness.
I thought then, and I continued thinking to the last day of my earthly existence, that this policy was wrong. First, geography itself dictated that our chief competitors and enemies should be the French, la grande nation as they liked to call themselves, on one hand and the Russians on the other. Starting in 1892, when they signed a formal alliance, they encircled Germany from both the west and the east and were always threatening to overwhelm it. True, we were not entirely without allies. Austria-Hungary apart, they included Italy as well as much weaker ones in the form of Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey. Italy and Romania ended by treacherously switching to the other side. The rest were not worth a fig. They did not help us; instead, we had to help them. We ended up sending some of our troops to fight as far afield as Iraq.
Under such circumstances, to aim at overseas expansion and thereby to add England, and later the U.S., which came to the assistance of its former mistress, to our enemies was sheer lunacy. Throughout the days of the Second Reich, all this policy achieved was to acquire for us a few worthless pieces of land in Africa and East Asia. Instead of adding to our resources, all proved a drain on them. Far away as they were, none could be defended by force of arms if necessary. When the time came, the heroic resistance of some of our people in them—first and foremost, General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck in East Africa—was of no avail. Even worse was the megalomaniac attempt to engage in an arms race with both France and Russia (on land) and England (at sea) at the same time. Such a policy ran contrary to the most elementary principles of strategy. It could only end in disaster, as it eventually did.
Briefly, the only solution to our problems, one which states and nations have always used, was territorial expansion. Not overseas, as Wilhelm and his advisers hoped, but right here in Europe. To the east of us there were the immense spaces occupied by the Slavs, principally Poles, Balts, and, of course, Russians and Ukrainians. They might be numerous, but they were also racially inferior, weak, underdeveloped, and ill governed. To be convinced of this, all one had to do was to look at the difference between prosperous West and East Prussia on one hand and the lands known as “Congress Poland” on the other. Not for nothing did we Germans speak of polnische Wirtschaft (Polish economy) and polnische Versager (Polish blunderers). In today’s Germany using these expressions is strictly verboten. But here in Hell, thank Satan, using them and some others like them is perfectly in order.
Our entire foreign policy, our choice of allies, and our armament should have reflected this necessity. Instead, in many ways we did just the opposite from what was required. A few people, such as then Colonel Erich Ludendorff, questioned the policies we had adopted and demanded that the army be expanded to cope with our two most important enemies. However, amidst the constant cries of “hurrah” so characteristic of Wilhelmine Germany, no one paid any attention to him. Instead, he was dismissed from the General Staff, where he had been in charge for the critically important Department of Mobilization, and was sent to command an infantry regiment! Had it been up to the Reichstag, in fact, the military career of one of the greatest German commanders of all times would have ended then and there. Ludendorff himself was convinced it would.
Kershaw and others have spilled large amounts of ink trying to find out precisely when, where, and why the various elements of my Weltanschauung were formed. So let me repeat: I cannot vouch that every one of these ideas was ripe in my young mind before the World War broke out, let alone that all the pieces of the puzzle had fallen into place, creating the rocklike, seamless whole they later became. That had to wait until the time of my imprisonment at Landsberg and even later. However, as far as my limited knowledge allowed, I had already begun thinking seriously about them and arrived at certain conclusions. Looking back from the vantage point provided by the post-1918 years, it seemed to me as if Providence itself was beckoning us to march in this direction. I shall have more to say about this later in the present volume.
4. The W
orld War
Interestingly enough, few, if any, of my “serious” biographers have ever heard a shot fired in anger. That already applied to one of the first, a man who was not only a Jew, but a liar to boot. Yet his manifest unreliability did not prevent his book, bristling with falsehoods as it does, from being used against me by all the rest. To the contrary, they were attracted to it like flies to a sack full of rotting trash.
Out of the two best-known post-1945 German ones one, Sebastian Haffner, betrayed his Motherland by absconding to England in 1937 just as it was his turn to be called up. The other, Joachim Fest, was born too late to see action. So was a third, Peter Longrich. Accidentally or not, neither of my two major English biographers, Alan Bullock and the aforementioned Kershaw, served. Nor did another well-known English historian, Richard Evans, who wrote no fewer than three volumes about the Third Reich. John Tolland, the American author of a supposedly “classic, definitive” biography, did spend seven years wearing a captain’s uniform. However, at no time during the critical years from 1942 to 1945 did he set foot outside the Continental U.S. One author, the Australian John Williams, devoted an entire book to my service in the World War. But even he never came close to a real-life trench. Scant wonder that what they and many others who followed in their footsteps had to say about me is often misleading. Specifically, not one of them really understood the impact the war had on me as well as so many other front-soldiers of my generation.
The feeling that war, if not a world war (the term Weltkrieg itself only appeared for the first time in 1911) then a smaller one, was about to break out had been widespread in Europe for quite some years before 1914. The Continent, as the saying goes, was a powder keg waiting for a spark to explode it. Luckily, the spark, when it came, hit Austria first of all. Had it not been for that fact, Germany would have entered the war, which was inevitable, without any allies at all. That is not to say that I blame Austria. As everyone knows, and as a recent volume (Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers, 2014) has confirmed once again, the Serbs, assisted by the Russians, had long been giving the government in Vienna as much trouble as they could. All the assassination of Franz Ferdinand did was to push it, much against its will, to the point where it had to act. Surely any other government worth its salt would have done the same.
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