Hitler’s Second Book

by Adolf Hitler

  If Germany had not taken this development, at the turn of the century we still could have reached an understanding with England, which at that time was ready for one. To be sure, such an understanding would have lasted only if had been accompanied by a fundamental shift in our foreign policy goal. Even at the turn of the century Germany could have decided upon a resumption of the former Prussian continental policy, and, together with England, prescribed the further development of world history. The objection of our eternal temporisers and doubters that this would nevertheless have been uncertain is based on nothing but personal opinions. English history up to now speaks against it in any case. By what right can such doubters presume that Germany could not have played the same role as Japan? The stupid phrase that Germany thereby would have hauled England’s chestnuts out of the fire could just as much be applied to Frederick The Great who, ultimately, on European battlefields, helped to facilitate England’s conflicts with France outside Europe. It is almost stupid to cite the further objection that nevertheless England one day would have gone against Germany. For then even in such a case Germany’s position, following a successful defeat of Russia in Europe, would be better than it was at the start of the World War. On the contrary, if the Russian Japanese war had been fought in Europe between Germany and Russia, Germany would have received such a purely moral increase in power that, for the next thirty years, every other European power would have carefully weighed whether to break the peace and let itself be incited into a coalition against Germany. But all these objections always spring from the mentality of pre War Germany which itself as an opposition knew everything, but did nothing.

  The fact is, at that time England made an approach to Germany, and there is the further fact that Germany for her part could not make up her mind to emerge from the mentality of this eternal temporising and hesitation and come to a clear stand. What Germany refused at that time was solicitously tended to by Japan, and thereby she achieved the fame of a world power in a relatively cheap way.

  If nobody in Germany wanted to do this under any circumstances, then we necessarily should have joined the other side. Then we could have utilised the year 1904 or 1905 in a conflict with France, and had Russia at our rear. But these temporisers and delayers wanted that just as little. Out of sheer caution, sheer hesitation and sheer knowledge, they were never able to establish what they really wanted at any hour. And only therein lies the superiority of English statesmanship, for that country is not ruled by such smartalecks who can never brace themselves for an action, but by men who think naturally and for whom politics most surely is an art of the possible, but who also take all possibilities by the forelock, and really strike with them.

  Once Germany, however, had shunned such a fundamental understanding with England, which, as already noted, would have made durable sense only if in Berlin a clear continental territorial political aim had been arrived at, England began to organise the world resistance against the country threatening British interests as regards her dominion of the seas.

  The World War did not proceed as had been thought at the beginning in view of our Folk’s military efficiency, which was not presumed to be what it was even in England. To be sure, Germany was finally overcome, but only after the American Union had made its appearance on the battlefield, and Germany had lost the support of her rear in consequence of the internal collapse of the homeland. But the actual English war aim had not been achieved thereby. Indeed, the German threat to English supremacy on the seas was eliminated, but the American threat, with a considerably stronger base, took its place. In the future the greatest danger to England would not be in Europe any more at all, but in North America. In Europe itself at this time, France is the State that is most dangerous to England. Her military hegemony has an especially threatening significance for England, in consequence of the geographical position which France occupies vis-à-vis England. Not only for the reason that a great number of vitally important English centres seems to be almost defencelessly exposed to French aerial attacks, but even by means of artillery fire a number of English cities can be reached from the French coast. Indeed, if modern technology succeeds in producing a considerable increase in the firing power of the heaviest artillery, then a bombardment of London from the French mainland does not lie beyond the limits of the possible. But it is even more important that a French submarine war against England would possess a wholly different basis than the earlier German one during the World War. France’s broad encampment on two seas would make it very difficult to carry out sealing off measures which could be easily successful vis-à-vis the confined triangle of water.

  Whoever in presentday Europe tries to find natural enemies against England will always chance upon France and Russia: France as a power with continental political aims, which in truth, however, are only a cover for very widely demarcated intentions of a general international political character; Russia as a threatening enemy of India and the possessor of oil sources which today have the same importance once possessed by iron and coal mines in past centuries.

  If England herself remains true to her great world political aims, her potential opponents will be France and Russia in Europe, and, in the other parts of the world, especially the American Union in the future.

  n contrast no inducement exists to make eternal England’s enmity against Germany. Otherwise English foreign policy would be determined by motives that lie far beyond all real logic, and therefore could have a decisive influence on the determination of the political relations among nations perhaps only in the head of a German professor. No, in the future, in England positions in accordance with purely expedient points of view will be taken up just as soberly as has happened for three hundred years. And just as for three hundred years allies could become England’s enemies and enemies again become allies, so will this also be the case in the future as long as general and particular necessities call for it. If, however, Germany comes to a fundamentally new political orientation which no longer contradicts England’s sea and trade interests, but spends itself in continental aims, then a logical ground for England’s enmity, which would then be just hostility for hostility’s sake, would no longer exist. For even the European balance of power interests England only as long as it hinders the development of a world trade and sea power that may threaten England. There is no foreign policy leadership at all which is less determined by doctrines that bear no relation to life’s realities than the English. A world empire does not come into being by means of a sentimental or purely theoretical policy.

  Hence the sober perception of British interests will be determining for English foreign policy in the future too.

  Whoever cuts across these interests will thereby also be England’s enemy in the future. Whoever does not touch them, his existence will also not be touched by England. And whoever can be useful to her from time to time will be invited on England’s side regardless of whether he had been an enemy in the past or perhaps can again become one in the future.

  Only a bourgeois national German politician can manage to refuse a useful alliance for the reason that later, perhaps, it can end in enmity. To impute such an idea to an Englishman is an insult to the political instinct of this Folk.

  Naturally if Germany does not set herself any political goal, and we muddle through planlessly from one day to the other as up to now without any guiding thought; or if this goal lies in the restoration of the borders and territorial conditions of the year 1914 and thereby in the end lands into a policy of world trade, colonisation and naval power, England’s future enmity with us will indeed be certain. Then Germany will suffocate economically under her Dawes burdens, politically decay under her Locarno treaties, and increasingly weaken racially in order finally to terminate her life as a second Holland or a second Switzerland in Europe. This can certainly be achieved by our bourgeois national and patriotic armchair politicians; for this all they need do is continue further along their present path of phrase mongering, shooting off their mouths in prote
sts, making war on all Europe, and then crawling cravenly into a hole before every act. This then is what the national bourgeois patriotic policy of Germany’s resurgence means. Thus, just as our bourgeoisie in the course of barely sixty years has known how to degrade and to compromise the national concept, so in its decline does it destroy the beautiful concept of the Fatherland by degrading it also to a mere phrase in its patriotic leagues.

  To be sure, yet another important factor emerges in regard to England’s attitude toward Germany: the decisive influence world Jewry also possesses in England. Just as surely as Anglosaxonism itself can overcome its war psychosis vis-à-vis Germany, world Jewry just as surely will neglect nothing to keep the old enmities alive so as to prevent a pacification of Europe from materialising, and thereby enable it to set its Bolshevist destructive tendencies into motion amid the confusion of a general unrest.

  We cannot discuss world policy without taking this most terrible power into account. Therefore I will deal especially with this problem further in this book.

  Chapter 15

  ITALY AS AN ALLY

  Certainly if England is under no compulsion to maintain her wartime enmity toward Germany forever on grounds of principle, Italy has even less grounds to do so. Italy is the second State in Europe that must not be fundamentally hostile to Germany. Indeed, her foreign policy aims need not cross with Germany’s at all. On the contrary, with no other State does Germany have perhaps more interests in common than precisely with Italy, and conversely.

  At the same time that Germany tried to achieve a new national unification, the same process also took place in Italy. To be sure, the Italians lacked a central power of gradually growing, and ultimately towering, importance, such as Germany in the making possessed in Prussia. But as German unification was primarily opposed by France and Austria as true enemies, so likewise did the Italian unification movement also have to suffer most under these two powers. The chief cause, of course, lay with the Habsburg State which must have and did have a vital interest in the maintenance of Italy’s internal dismemberment. Since a State of the size of Austria-Hungary is unthinkable without direct access to the sea, and the only territory which could be considered for this — at least in regard to its cities — was inhabited by Italians, Austria necessarily disapprovingly opposed the rise of a united Italian State for fear of the possible loss of this territory in case of the founding of an Italian national State. At that time even the boldest political aim of the Italian Folk could lie only in its national unification. This then perforce also conditioned the foreign policy attitude. Hence as Italian unification [that through Savoys]

  slowly took shape, Cavour, its brilliant great statesman, utilised all possibilities which could serve this particular aim. Italy owes the possibility of her unification to an extraordinarily cleverly chosen alliance policy. Its aim was primarily to bring about the paralysis of the chief enemy of unification, Austria-Hungary, indeed finally to induce this State to leave the north Italian provinces. Withal, even after the conclusion of the provisional unification of Italy, there were more than 800000 Italians in Austria-Hungary alone. The national aim of the further unification of people of Italian nationality was at first bound to undergo a postponement when, for the first time, there began to arise the dangers of an Italian French estrangement. Italy decided to enter the Triple Alliance, chiefly in order to gain time for her inner consolidation.

  The World War at last brought Italy into the camp of the Entente for reasons that I have already discussed.

  Thereby Italian unity had been carried a powerful step forward. Even today, however, it is not yet completed.

  For the Italian State, though, the great event was the elimination of the hated Habsburg empire. To be sure, its place was taken by a Southern Slav structure which already presented a danger hardly less great for Italy on the basis of general national viewpoints.

  For just as little as the bourgeois national and purely border policy conception in Germany could in the long run satisfy our Folk’s vital needs, equally little could the purely bourgeois national unification policy of the Italian State satisfy the Italian Folk.

  Like the German Folk, the Italian Folk lives on a small soil surface which in part is scantily fertile. For centuries, indeed many centuries, this overpopulation has forced Italy to a permanent export of people. Even though a great part of these emigrants, as seasonal labourers, return to Italy in order to live there on their savings, this leads more than ever to a further aggravation of the situation. Not only is the population problem not solved thereby, but it is sharpened rather. Just as Germany through her export of goods fell into a state of dependence on the ability, potentiality and willingness of other powers and countries to receive these goods, likewise and exactly did Italy with her export of people. In both cases a closing of the receiving market, resulting from events of any kind whatsoever, perforce led to catastrophic consequences within these countries.

  Hence Italy’s attempt to master the problem of sustenance through an increase of her industrial activity cannot lead to any ultimate success because, at the outset, the lack of natural raw materials in the Italian Motherland robs her in great measure of the required ability to compete.

  Just as in Italy the conceptions of a formal bourgeois national policy are being overcome and a Folkish feeling of responsibility is taking its place, likewise will this State also be forced to deviate from its former political conceptions in order to turn to a territorial policy on a grand scale.

  The shore basins of the Mediterranean Sea constitute, and hence remain, the natural area of Italian expansion.

  The more presentday Italy departs from her former unification policy and goes over to an imperialist policy, the more will she fall into the ways of ancient Rome, not out of any presumption to power, but out of deep, internal necessities. If today Germany seeks soil in Eastern Europe, this is not the sign of an extravagant hunger for power, but only the consequence of her need for territory. And if today Italy seeks to enlarge her influence on the shores of the Mediterranean basin and ultimately aims to establish colonies, it is also only the release ensuing from sheer necessity, out of a natural defence of interests. If the German pre War policy had not been struck with total blindness, it would necessarily have supported and fostered this development with every means. Not only because it would have meant a natural strengthening of an ally, but because it might perhaps have offered the only possibility of drawing Italian interests away from the Adriatic Sea and thereby lessened the sources of irritation with Austria-Hungary. Such a policy, in addition, would have stiffened the most natural enmity which can ever exist, namely that between Italy and France, the repercussions of which would have strengthened the Triple Alliance in a favourable sense.

  It was Germany’s misfortune that at that time not only did the Reich leadership flatly fail in this respect, but that, above all, public opinion — led on by insane German national patriots and foreign policy dreamers — took a stand against Italy. Especially, moreover, for the reason that Austria discovered something unfriendly about the Italian operation in Tripoli. At that time, however, it appertained to the political wisdom of our national bourgeoisie to back every stupidity or baseness of Viennese diplomacy, indeed if possible to undertake stupid and base acts itself, in order thereby to demonstrate the inner harmony and solidarity of this cordial alliance before the world in the best possible way.

  Now Austria-Hungary is wiped out. But Germany has even less cause than before to regret a development of Italy which one day must necessarily proceed at the expense of France. For the more presentday Italy discovers her highest Folkish tasks, and the more, accordingly, she goes over to a territorial policy conceived along Roman lines, the more must she run into the opposition of her greatest competitor in the Mediterranean Sea, France.

  France will never tolerate Italy’s becoming the leading power in the Mediterranean. She will try to prevent this, either through her own strength, or through a system of alliances. F
rance will lay obstacles in the path of Italy’s development wherever possible, and finally she will not shrink from recourse to violence. Even the so called kinship of these two Latin nations will change nothing on this score, for it is no closer than the kinship between England and Germany.

  On top of that, in proportion as France declines in her own Folk’s power, this State proceeds to the opening up of her reservoir of niggers. Thus a danger of unimaginable proportions draws near for Europe. The idea of French niggers, who can contaminate white blood, on the Rhine as cultural guards against Germany, is so monstrous that it would have been regarded as completely impossible only a few decades ago. Surely France itself would suffer the greatest harm through this blood pollution, but only if the other European nations remain conscious of the value of their white race. Viewed in purely military terms, France can very well supplement her European formations, and, as the World War has shown, also commit them effectively. Finally, this completely non French nigger army indeed vouchsafes a certain defence against communist demonstrations, since utter subordination in all situations will be easier to preserve in an army which is not at all linked by blood to the French Folk. This development entails its greatest danger for Italy first of all. If the Italian Folk wants to shape its future according to its own interests, it will ultimately have nigger armies, mobilised by France, as its enemy. Thus it cannot in the least lie in Italy’s interest to be in a state of enmity with Germany, something which even in the best of cases cannot make a profitable contribution to the shaping of Italian life in the future. On the contrary, if any State can finally bury war enmity, this State is Italy. Italy has no inherent interest in a further oppression of Germany if, for the future, both States want to attend to their most natural tasks.