by Adolf Hitler
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 born 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 born nevertheless accomplished great things for their Folk, it must first be examined whether one of their ancestors at least had not been a first born. For when in his whole ancestral series the chain of the first born 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 prod
uctivity 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.