by Adolf Hitler
The rule of six thousand Spartans over three hundred and fifty thousand Helots was only thinkable in consequence of the high racial value of the Spartans. But this was the result of a systematic race preservation; thus Sparta must be regarded as the first Folkish State. The exposure of sick, weak, deformed children, in short their destruction, was more decent and in truth a thousand times more humane than the wretched insanity of our day which preserves the most pathological subject, and indeed at any price, and yet takes the life of a hundred thousand healthy children in consequence of birth control or through abortions, in order subsequently to breed a race of degenerates burdened with illnesses.
Hence it can be said in general that the limitation of the population through distress and human agencies may very well lead to an approximate adaptation to the inadequate living space, but the value of the existing human material is constantly lowered and indeed ultimately decays.
The second attempt to adapt the population size to the soil lies in emigration, which so long as it does not take place tribally, likewise leads to a devaluation of the remaining human material.
Human birth control wipes out the bearer of the highest values, emigration destroys the value of the average.
There are still two other ways by which a nation can try to balance the disproportion between population and territory. The first is called increasing the domestic productivity of the soil, which as such has nothing to do with so called internal colonisation; the second the increase of commodity production and the conversion of the domestic economy into an export economy.
The idea of increasing the yield of the soil within borders that have been fixed once and forever is an old one.
The history of human cultivation of the soil is one of permanent progress, permanent improvement and therefore of increasing yields. While the first part of this progress lay in the field of methods of soil cultivation as well as in the construction of settlements, the second part lies in increasing the value of the soil artificially through the introduction of nutritious matter that is lacking or insufficient. This line leads from the hoe of former times up to the modern steam plough, from stable manure up to present artificial fertilisers. Without doubt the productivity of the soil has thereby been infinitely increased. But it is just as certain that there is a limit somewhere. Especially if we consider that the living standard of cultured man is a general one, which is not determined by the amount of a nation’s commodities available to the individual; rather it is just as much subject to the judgement of surrounding countries and, conversely, is established through the conditions within them. The present day European dreams of a living standard which he derives as much from the potentialities of Europe as from the actual conditions prevailing in America. International relations between nations have become so easy and close through modern technology and the communication it makes possible, that the European, often without being conscious of it, applies American conditions as a standard for his own life. But he thereby forgets that the relation of the population to the soil surface of the American continent is infinitely more favourable than the analogous conditions of European nations to their living spaces. Regardless of how Italy, or let’s say Germany, carry out the internal colonisation of their soil, regardless of how they increase the productivity of their soil further through scientific and methodical activity, there always remains the disproportion of the number of their population to the soil as measured against the relation of the population of the American Union to the soil of the Union. And if a further increase of the population were possible for Italy or Germany through the utmost industry, then this would be possible in the American Union up to a multiple of theirs. And when ultimately any further increase in these two European countries is no longer possible, the American Union can continue to grow for centuries until it will have reached the relation that we already have today.
The effects that it is hoped to achieve through internal colonisation, in particular, rest on a fallacy. The opinion that we can bring about a considerable increase in the productivity of the soil is false. Regardless of how, for example, the land is distributed in Germany, whether in large or in small peasant holdings, or in plots for small settlers, this does not alter the fact that there are, on the average, 136 people to one square kilometre. This is an unhealthy relation. It is impossible to feed our Folk on this basis and under this premise. Indeed it would only create confusion to set the slogan of internal colonisation before the masses, who will then latch their hopes onto it and thereby think to have found a means of doing away with their present distress. This would not at all be the case. For the distress is not the result of a wrong kind of land distribution, say, but the consequence of the inadequate amount of space, on the whole, at the disposal of our nation today.
By increasing the productivity of the soil, however, some alleviation of a Folk’s lot could be achieved. But in the long run this would never exempt it from the duty to adapt the nation’s living space, become insufficient, to the increased population. Through internal colonisation, in the most favourable circumstances, only amelioration in the sense of social reform and justice could take place. It is entirely without importance as regards the total sustenance of a Folk. It will often be harmful for a nation’s foreign policy position because it awakens hopes which can remove a Folk from realistic thinking. The ordinary, respectable citizen will then really believe that he can find his daily bread at home through industry and hard work, rather than realise that the strength of a Folk must be concentrated in order to win new living space.
Economics, which especially today is regarded by many as the saviour from distress and care, hunger and misery, under certain preconditions can give a Folk possibilities for existence which lie outside its relation to its own soil. But this is linked to a number of prerequisites of which I must make brief mention here.
The sense of such an economic system lies in the fact that a nation produces more of certain vital commodities than it requires for its own use. It sells this surplus outside its own national community, and with the proceeds therefrom it procures those foodstuffs and also the raw materials which it lacks. Thus this kind of economics involves not only a question of production, but in at least as great a degree a question of selling. There is much talk, especially at the present time, about increasing production, but it is completely forgotten that such an increase is of value only as long as a buyer is at hand. Within the circle of a nation’s economic life, every increase in production will be profitable to the degree that it increases the number of goods which are thus made available to the individual. Theoretically, every increase in the industrial production of a nation must lead to a reduction in the price of commodities and in turn to an increased consumption of them, and consequently put the individual Folk Comrade in a position to own more vital commodities. In practice, however, this in no way changes the fact of the inadequate sustenance of a nation as a result of insufficient soil. For, to be sure, we can increase certain industrial outputs, indeed many times over, but not the production of foodstuffs. Once a nation suffers from this need, an adjustment can take place only if a part of its industrial overproduction can be exported in order to compensate from the outside for the foodstuffs that are not available in the homeland. But an increase in production having this aim achieves the desired success only when it finds a buyer, and indeed a buyer outside the country. Thus we stand before the question of the sales potential, that is, the market, a question of towering importance.
The present world commodity market is not unlimited. The number of industrially active nations has steadily increased. Almost all European nations suffer from an inadequate and unsatisfactory relation between soil and population. Hence they are dependent on world export. In recent years the American Union has turned to export, as has also Japan in the east. Thus a struggle automatically begins for the limited markets, which becomes tougher the more numerous the industrial nations become and, conversely, the more the markets shrink. For while on
the one hand the number of nations struggling for world markets increases, the commodity market itself slowly diminishes, partly in consequence of a process of self industrialisation on their own power, partly through a system of branch enterprises which are more and more coming into being in such countries out of sheer capitalist interest. For we should bear the following in mind: the German Folk, for example, has a lively interest in building ships for China in German dockyards, because thereby a certain number of men of our nationality get a chance to feed themselves which they would not have on our own soil, which is no longer sufficient. But the German Folk has no interest, say, in a German financial group or even a German factory opening a so called branch dockyard in Shanghai which builds ships for China with Chinese workers and foreign steel, even if the corporation earns a definite profit in the form of interest or dividend. On the contrary, the result of this will be only that a German financial group earns so and so many million, but, as a result of the orders lost, a multiple of this amount is withdrawn from the German national economy.
The more pure capitalist interests begin to determine the present economy, the more the general viewpoints of the financial world and the stock exchange achieve a decisive influence here, the more will this system of branch establishments reach out and thus artificially carry out the industrialisation of former commodity markets and especially curtail the export possibilities of the European mother countries. Today many can still afford to smile over this future development, but as it makes further strides, within thirty years people in Europe will groan under its consequences
The more market difficulties increase, the more bitterly will the struggle for the remaining ones be waged.
Although the primary weapons of this struggle lie in pricing and in the quality of the goods with which nations competitively try to undersell each other, in the end the ultimate weapons even here lie in the sword. The so called peaceful economic conquest of the world could take place only if the Earth consisted of purely agrarian nations and but one industrially active and commercial nation. Since all great nations today are industrial nations, the so called peaceful economic conquest of the world is nothing but the struggle with means which will remain peaceful for as long as the stronger nations believe they can triumph with them, that is, in reality for as long as they are able to kill the others with peaceful economics. For this is the real result of the victory of a nation with peaceful economic means over another nation. Thereby one nation receives possibilities of survival and the other nation is deprived of them. Even here what is at stake is always the substance of flesh and blood, which we designate as a Folk
If a really vigorous Folk believes that it cannot conquer another with peaceful economic means, or if an economically weak Folk does not wish to let itself be killed by an economically stronger one, as the possibilities for its sustenance are slowly cut off, then in both cases [it will seize the sword] the vapours of economic phraseology will be suddenly torn asunder, and war, that is the continuation of politics with other means, steps into its place.
The danger to a Folk of economic activity in an exclusive sense lies in the fact that it succumbs only too easily to the belief that it can ultimately shape its destiny through economics. Thus the latter from a purely secondary place moves forward to first place, and finally is even regarded as Stateforming, and robs the Folk of those very virtues and characteristics which in the last analysis make it possible for Nations and States to preserve life on this Earth.
A special danger of the so called peaceful economic policy, however, lies above all in the fact that it makes possible an increase in the population, which finally no longer stands in any relation to the productive capacity of its own soil to support life. This overfilling of an inadequate living space with people not seldom also leads to the concentration of people in work centres which look less like cultural centres, and rather more like abscesses in the national body in which all evil, vices and diseases seem to unite. Above all, they are breeding grounds of blood mixing and bastardisation, and of race lowering, thus resulting in those purulent infection centres in which the international Jewish racial maggots thrive and finally effect further destruction.
Precisely thereby is the way open to decay in which the inner strength of such a Folk swiftly disappears, all racial, moral and folk values are earmarked for destruction, ideals are undermined, and in the end the prerequisite which a Folk urgently needs in order to take upon itself the ultimate consequences of the struggle for world markets is eliminated. Weakened by a vicious pacifism, Folks will no longer be ready to fight for markets for their goods with the shedding of their blood. Hence, as soon as a stronger nation sets the real strength of political power in the place of peaceful economic means, such nations will collapse Then their own delinquencies will take revenge. They are overpopulated, and now in consequence of the loss of all the real basic requirements they no longer have any possibility of being able to feed their overgrown mass of people adequately. They have no strength to break the chains of the enemy, and no inner value with which to bear their fate with dignity. Once they believed they could live, thanks to their peaceful economic activity, and renounce the use of violence. Fate will teach them that in the last analysis a Folk is preserved only when population and living space stand in a definite natural and healthy relation to each other. Further, this relation must be examined from time to time, and indeed must be reestablished in favour of the population to the very same degree that it shifts unfavourably with respect to the soil.
For this, however, a nation needs weapons. The acquisition of soil is always linked with the employment of force.
If the task of politics is the execution of a Folk’s struggle for existence, and if the struggle for existence of a Folk in the last analysis consists of safeguarding the necessary amount of space for nourishing a specific population, and if this whole process is a question of the employment of a Folk’s strength, the following concluding definitions result therefrom:
Politics is the art of carrying out a Folk’s struggle for its Earthly existence.
Foreign policy is the art of safeguarding the momentary, necessary living space, in quantity and quality, for a Folk.
Domestic policy is the art of preserving the necessary employment of force for this in the form of its race value and numbers
Chapter 3
RACE AND WILL IN THE STRUGGLE FOR POWER
Here at this point I want to discuss that bourgeois concept which views power chiefly as a nation’s supply of weapons, and, to a lesser degree, perhaps also the army as an organisation. If the concept of these people were pertinent, that is, if the power of a nation really lay in its possession of arms and in its army as such, then a nation which has lost its army and weapons through any reasons whatsoever must be done for permanently.
These bourgeois politicians themselves hardly believe that. By their very doubt of this they admit that weapons and army organisation are things which can be replaced; and that consequently they are not of a primary character, that there is something which stands above them, and which at least is also the source of their power.
And so it is. Weapons and army forms are destructible and are replaceable. As great as their importance perhaps is for the moment, just so is it limited when viewed over longer periods of time. What is ultimately decisive in the life of a Folk is the will to self preservation, and the living forces that are at its disposal for this purpose.
Weapons can rust, forms can be outdated; the will itself can always renew both and move a Folk into the form required by the need of the moment. The fact that we Germans had to give up our arms is of very slight importance, insofar as I look at the material side of it. And yet this is the only thing our bourgeois politicians see. What is depressing about the surrender of our arms, at most, lies in the attendant circumstances in which it took place, in the attitude which it made possible, as well as in the wretched manner of doing it which we experienced. It is outweighed by the destruction of the o
rganisation of our Army. But even there the major misfortune is not the elimination of the organisation as the bearer of the weapons we possess, but rather the abolition of an institution for the training of our Folk to manliness, which was possessed by no other State in the world, and which, indeed, no Folk needed more than our Germans. The contribution of our Old Army to the general disciplining of our Folk for the highest achievements in all fields is incommensurable. Precisely our Folk, which in its racial fragmentation so very much lacks qualities which, for example, characterise the English
— a determined sticking together in time of danger — has received at least a part of this, which in other nations is a natural, instinctive endowment, by way of its training through the army. The people who chatter so happily about socialism do not at all realise that the highest socialist organisation of all has been the German Army.
This is also the reason for the fierce hatred of the typical capitalistically inclined Jews against an organisation in which money is not identical with position, dignity, to say nothing of honour, but rather with achievement; and in which the honour of belonging among people of a certain accomplishment is more greatly appreciated than the possession of property and riches. This is a conception which to Jews seems as alien as it is dangerous, and which, if only it became the general patrimony of a Folk, would signify an immunising defence against every further Jewish danger. If, for example, an Officer’s rank in the Army could be bought, this would be comprehensible to Jews. They cannot understand an organisation — indeed they find it weird — which surrounds with honour a man who either possesses no property at all, or whose income is only a fragment of that of another man who precisely in this organisation is neither honoured nor esteemed. But therein lay the chief strength of this incomparable old institution which unfortunately in the last thirty years of peace, however, also showed signs of slowly becoming corroded. As soon as it became fashionable for individual Officers, especially of noble descent, to pair off with, of all things, department store Jewesses, a danger arose for the Old Army which, if the same development continued, might have some day grown into a great evil. At any rate, in the times of Kaiser Wilhelm I, there was no understanding for such events. Nevertheless, all in all, the Germany Army at the turn of the century was the most magnificent organisation in the world, and its effect on our German Folk one that was more than beneficial. The breeding ground of German discipline, German efficiency, forthright disposition, frank courage, bold aggressiveness, tenacious persistence and granite honourableness.