Hitler’s Second Book

by Adolf Hitler

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

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

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

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

  For these people, the Pan European Movement, at least at first sight, really seems to have much that is alluring about it. Indeed, if we could judge world history according to economic viewpoints, it could even be pertinent.

  Two are always more than one for the mechanic of history, and thus for the mechanical politician. But values, not numbers, are decisive in the life of nations. That the American Union was able to achieve such a threatening height is not based on the fact that ……… million people form a State there, but on the fact that ……… square kilometres of the most fertile and the richest soil is inhabited by ……… million people of the highest race value.

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

  If this were not correct, if the importance of the American Union thus lay in the size of the population alone, or else in the size of the territory, or in the relation in which this territory stands to the size of the population, then Russia would be at least as dangerous for Europe. Presentday Russia encompasses ……… million people on ……… million square kilometres. These people are also comprised in a State structure whose value, taken traditionally, would have to be even higher than that of the American Union. Despite this, however, it would never occur to anybody to fear a Russian hegemony over the world for this reason. No such inner value is attached to the number of the Russian people, so that this number could become a danger for the freedom of the world. At least never in the sense of an economic and power political rule of the other parts of the globe, but at best in the sense of an inundation of disease bacilli which at the moment have their focus in Russia.

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

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

  Aside from this fundamental basic error of the Pan European Movement, even the idea of a unification of European States, forced by a general insight emerging from a threatened distress, is a fantastic, historically impossible childishness. Thereby, I do not mean to say that such a unification under a Jewish protectorate and Jewish impulsion as such would not be possible from the outset, but only that the result could not match the hopes for which the whole monkey business sets the stage. Let no one believe that such a European coalition could mobilise any strength that would manifest itself externally. It is an old experience that a lasting unification of nations can take place only if it is a question of nations which are racially equivalent and related as such, and if, secondly, their unification takes place in the form of a slow process of struggle for hegemony.

  Thus did Rome once subjugate the Latin States one after the other, until finally her strength sufficed to become the crystallisation point of a world empire. But this is likewise the history of the birth of the English World Empire. Thus, further, did Prussia put an end to the dismemberment of Germany, and thus only in this way could a Europe one day rise that could attend to the interests of its population in a compact governmental form.

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

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

  But even in such a case, the desired success would not materialise. For once any European great power today —

  and naturally it could involve only a power which was valuable according to its Folkdom, that is, racially important — brings Europe to unity along these lines, the final completion of this unity would signify the racial submersion of its founders, and thereby remove even the last value from the whole structure. It would never be possible thereby to create a structure which could bear up against the American Union.

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

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

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

  Really, there is no need to refute the opinion that just because a fusion of Folks of different nationalities has taken place in the American Union, this must also be possible in Europe. The American Union, to be sure, has brought people of different nationalities together into a young nation. But closer scrutiny discloses that the overwhelming majority of these different ethnic groups racially belong to similar or at least related basic elements. For since the emigration process in Europe was a selection of the fittest, this fitness in all European Folks lying primarily in the Nordic admixture, the American Union, in fact, has drawn to itself the scattered Nordic elements from among Folks who were very different as such. If, in addition, we take into account that it involved people who were not the bearers of any kind of theory of government, and consequently were not burdened by any kind of tradition, and, further, the dimensions of the impact of the new world to which all people are more or less subject, it becomes understandable why a new nation, made up of peoples from all European countries, could arise in less than two hundred years. It must be considered, however, that already in the last century this fusion process became more difficult in proportion as, under the pressure of need, Europeans went to North America, who, as members of European national States, not only felt themselves united with them Folkishly for the future, but who particularly prized their national tradition more highly than citizenship in their new homeland. Moreover, even the American Union has not been able to fuse people of alien blood who are stamped with their own national feeling or race instinct. The American Union’s power of assimilation has failed vis-à-vis the Chinese as well as vis-à-vis the Japanese element. They also sense this well and know it, and therefore they would best prefer to exclude these alien bodies from immigration. But thereby American immigration policy itself confirms that the earlier fusion presupposed peoples of definite equal race foundations, and immediately miscarried as soon as it involved people who were fundamentally different. That the American Union itself feels itself to be a Nordic German State, and in no way an international mishmash of Folks, further emerges from the manner in which it allots immigration quotas to European nations.

  Scandinavians, that is, Swedes, Norwegians, further Danes, then Englishmen, and finally Germans, are allotted the greatest contingents. Rumanians and Slavs very little, Japanese and Chinese they would prefer to exclude altogether. Consequently, it is a Utopia to oppose a European coalition or a Pan Europe, consisting of Mongols, Slavs, Germans, Latins, and so on, in which all others than Teutons would dominate, as a factor capable of resistance, to this racially dominant, Nordic State. A very dangerous Utopia, to be sure, if we consider that again countless Germans see a rosy future for which they will not have to make the most grievous sacrifices.

  That this Utopia of all things came out of Austria is not without a certain comedy. For, after all, this State and its fate is the liveliest example of the enormous strength of structures artificially glued together but which are unnatural in themselves. It is the rootless spirit of the old imperial city of Vienna, that hybrid city of the Orient and the Occident, which thereby speaks to us.

  Chapter 10

  ON NECESSITY FOR AN ACTIVE FOREIGN POLICY

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

  It was characteristic of our pre War policy that it necessarily gave an outside observer the image of decisions often as wavering as they were incomprehensible. If we disregard the Triple Alliance, the maintenance of which could not be a foreign policy aim but only a means to such an aim, we can discover no stable idea in the leaders of our Folk’s fate in the pre War period. This is naturally incomprehensible. The moment the foreign policy aim no longer signified a struggle for the German Folk’s interests, but rather the preservation of world peace, we lost the ground under our feet. I can certainly outline a Folk’s interests, establish them, and, regardless of how the possibilities of their advocacy stand, I can nevertheless keep the great aim uninterruptedly in view. Gradually the rest of mankind will also acquire a general knowledge of a nation’s special, definite, chief foreign policy ideas.

  This then offers the possibility of regulating mutual relations in a permanent way, either in the sense of an intended resistance against the known operation of such a power, or a reasonable awareness of it, or also in the sense of an understanding, since, perhaps, one’s own interests can be achieved along a common path.

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

  From Austria-Hungary we could hope for no other foreign policy aim as such, save that of wriggling through the hazards of European politics, so that the rotten State structure as much as possible nowhere bumps into anything, in order thus to conceal from the world the real inner character of this monstrous corpse of a State.

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