by Adolf Hitler
Bourgeois national State policy. But if this reaction to the Italian step had already been an unforgivable absurdity during the War, the preservation of this emotional reaction to the Italian step after the War was a still greater, capital stupidity.
To be sure, Italy was in the coalition of victor States even after the War, and hence also on the side of France.
But this was natural, for Italy had certainly not entered the War out of pro French feelings. The determining force which drove the Italian Folk to it was exclusively the hatred against Austria and the visible possibility of being able to benefit their own Italian interests. This was the reason for the Italian step, and not any kind of fantastic emotional feeling for France. As a German one can be deeply pained that Italy took far reaching steps now that the collapse of her hated centuries old enemy has taken place, but one must not let it deprive his mind of sound reason. Fate had changed. Once Austria had more than 800000 Italians under her rule, and now 200000
Austrians fell under Italy’s rule. The cause of our pain is that these 200000 who interest us are of German nationality.
Neither the future aims of a national nor of a Folkishly conceived Italian policy are fulfilled by the elimination of the eternally latent Austrian Italian conflict. On the contrary, the enormous increase of the self consciousness and power consciousness of the Italian Folk by the war, and especially by Fascism, will only increase its strength to pursue greater aims. Thus the natural conflicts of interest between Italy and France will increasingly appear. We could have counted on that and hoped for it as early as the year 1920. As a matter of fact, the first signs of an internal disharmony between the two States were already visible at that time. Whereas the Southern Slav instincts for a further curtailment of the Austrian German element were sure of France’s undivided sympathy, the Italian attitude already at the time of the liberation of Carinthia from the Slavs was at least very well disposed toward the German element. This inner shift vis-à-vis Germany was also displayed in the attitude of the Italian commissions in Germany itself, most pointedly on the occasion of the struggles in Upper Silesia.
At any rate, at that time one could already discern the beginning of an inner estrangement, albeit only faint at first, between the two Latin nations. According to all human logic and reason, and on the basis of all the experiences of history hitherto, this estrangement must increasingly deepen and one day end in an overt struggle.
Whether she likes it or not, Italy will have to fight for her State’s existence and future against France, just as Germany itself. It is not necessary for this that France always be in the foreground of operations. But she will pull the wires of those whom she has cleverly brought into a state of financial and military dependence on her, or with whom she seems to be linked by parallel interests. The Italian French conflict can just as well begin in the Balkans, as it may find its end on the lowlands of Lombardy.
In view of this compelling probability of a later enmity of Italy with France, already in the year 1920 this very State came under consideration primarily as a future ally for Germany. The probability increased to certainty when, with the victory of Fascism, the weak Italian Government, which ultimately was subject to international influences, was eliminated, and a regime took its place which had nailed the exclusive representation of Italian interests as a slogan on its banners. A weak Italian democratic bourgeois government, by disregarding Italy’s real future tasks, could perhaps have maintained an artificial relation with France. But a nationally conscious and responsible Italian regime, never. The struggle of the Third Rome for the future of the Italian Folk acquired its historic declaration on the day when the FASCES became the symbol of the Italian State. Thus one of the two Latin nations will have to leave its place in the Mediterranean Sea, whereas the other will acquire supremacy as the prize of this struggle.
As a nationally conscious and rationally thinking German, I firmly hope and strongly wish that this State may be Italy and not France.
Thereby my attitude toward Italy will be induced by motives of future expectations, and not by sterile reminiscences of the War.
The standpoint, Declarations Of War Are Accepted Here, as an inscription on troop transports, was a good sign of the victorious confidence of the peerless Old Army. As a political proclamation, however, it is a mad stupidity. Today it is even more mad if one takes the position that, for Germany, no ally can warrant consideration which stood on the enemy’s side in the World War and shared in the spoils of the World War at our expense. If Marxists, Democrats and Centrists raise such a thought to a leitmotif of their political activity, this is clearly for the reason that this most degenerate coalition does not desire a resurgence of the German Nation ever. But if national bourgeois and Fatherland circles take over such ideas, then that’s the limit. For let one name any power at all which could possibly be an ally in Europe and which has not enriched itself territorially at our expense or that of our allies of that time. On the basis of this standpoint, France is excluded from the outset because she stole Alsace-Lorraine and wants to steal the Rhineland, Belgium because it possesses Eupen and Malmedy, England because, even if she does not possess our colonies, at least she administers them in large part. And any child knows what this means in the life of nations. Denmark is excluded because she took North Schleswig, Poland because she is in possession of West Prussia and Upper Silesia and parts of East Prussia, Czechoslovakia because she oppresses almost four million Germans, Rumania because she likewise has annexed more than a million Germans, Yugoslavia because she has nearly 600000 Germans, and Italy because today she calls the Southern Tyrol her own.
Thus, for our national bourgeois and patriotic circles, the alliance possibilities are altogether impossible. But then they do not need them at all. For through the flood of their protests, and the rumble of their hurrahs, they will in part stifle the resistance of the other parts of the world, and in part overthrow it. And then, without any allies, indeed without any weapons, supported only by the clamourousness of their glib tongue, they will retrieve the stolen territories, let England subsequently still be punished by God, but chastise Italy and deliver her to the deserved contempt of the whole world — so far as up to this point they have not been hanged on lamp posts by their own momentary foreign policy allies, the Bolshevist and Marxist Jews.
At the same time, it is noteworthy that our national circles of bourgeois and patriotic origin never at all realise that the strongest proof of the fallacy of their attitude toward foreign policy lies in the concurrence of Marxists, Democrats and Centrists, above all especially in the concurrence of Jewry. But one must know our German bourgeoisie well in order immediately to know why this is so. They are all infinitely happy at least to have found an issue in which the presumed unity of the German Folk seems to be effected. No matter if this concerns a stupidity. Despite this, it is infinitely comforting for a courageous bourgeois and Fatherland politician to be able to talk in tones of national struggle without receiving a punch on the jaw for it from the nearest communist. That they are spared this only for the reason that their political conception is just as sterile in national terms as it is valuable in Jewish Marxist terms, either does not occur to these people, or it is concealed in the deepest recesses of their being. The extent which the corruption of lies and cowardice has assumed among us is something unheard of.
When in the year 1920 I undertook to orient the foreign policy position of the Movement toward Italy, I at first ran into complete incomprehension on the part of national circles, as well as in so called Fatherland circles. It was simply incomprehensible to these people how, contrary to the general duty of continual protests, one could formulate a political idea which — taken practically — signified the intrinsic liquidation of one of the enmities of the World War. In general, national circles found it beyond comprehension that I did not want to place the main weight of national activity on protests which were trumpeted to the skies in front of the Feldherrnhalle in München, or somewhere else,
now against Paris, then again against London or also against Rome, but wanted to place it instead on the elimination first within Germany of those responsible for the collapse. A flaming protest demonstration against Paris also took place in München on the occasion of the Paris diktat, which, to be sure, must have caused M. Clemenceau little worry. But it induced me to elaborate with all vigour the National Socialist attitude in opposition to this protest mania. France had only done what every German could know and perforce should have known. Were I myself a Frenchman I would have supported Clemenceau as a matter of course. To bark permanently at an overpowering adversary from a distance is as undignified as it is idiotic. On the contrary, the national opposition of the Fatherland circles should have bared its teeth at those in Berlin who were responsible for, and guilty of, the terrible catastrophe of our collapse. To be sure, it was more comfortable to scream against Paris curses which could not be actualised in view of the factual conditions, than to stand up against Berlin with deeds.
This also applied especially to the representatives of that Bavarian government policy, who, to be sure, sufficiently exhibit the nature of their brilliance by the facts of their success up to now. For the very men who continually asserted the desire to preserve Bavaria’s sovereignty, and who at the same time also had in view maintenance of the right to conduct foreign policy, should primarily have been obliged to put forth a possible foreign policy of such sort that Bavaria, thereby, could of necessity have obtained leadership of a real national opposition in Germany conceived in its grand aspects. In view of the complete inconsistency of Reich policy or of the deliberate intention to ignore all real avenues of success, it is precisely the Bavarian State that should have risen to the role of spokesman for a foreign policy which, according to human prediction, might one day have brought an end to Germany’s dreadful isolation.
But even in these circles they confronted the foreign policy conception of an association with Italy, as espoused by me, with a complete and stupid thoughtlessness. Instead of thus rising in a bold way to the role of spokesmen and guardians of the highest national German interests for the future, they preferred, from time to time, with one eye blinking toward Paris while the other was raised up to heaven, to asseverate their loyalty to the Reich on the one hand, and on the other their determination nevertheless to save Bavaria by letting the fires of Bolshevism burn out in the north. Yes, indeed, the Bavarian State has entrusted the representation of its sovereign rights to intellectual characters of a wholly special greatness.
In view of such a general mentality, it should surprise nobody that, from the very first day, my foreign policy conception encountered, if not direct rejection, at least a total lack of understanding. Frankly speaking, I expected nothing else at that time. I still took account of the general war psychosis, and strove only to instil a sober world view of foreign policy into my own Movement.
At that time, I did not yet have to endure any kind of overt attacks on account of my Italian policy. The reason for this probably lay, on the one hand, in the fact that for the moment it was held to be completely devoid of danger, and on the other that Italy herself likewise had a government subject to international influences. Indeed, in the background it was perhaps even hoped that this Italy could succumb to the Bolshevist plague, and then she would be highly welcome as an ally, at least for our Left circles.
Besides, on the Left at that time, one could not very well take a position against the elimination of war enmity, since in this very camp they were anyhow making constant efforts to extirpate the hateful, demeaning, and — for Germany — so unjustified feeling of hatred born of the War. It would not have been easy to launch a criticism against me from these circles over a foreign policy conception, which, as a prerequisite for its realisation, would after all have caused at least the removal of the war hatred between Germany and Italy.
I must, however, stress once more that perhaps the main reason why I found so little positive resistance lay for my enemies in the presumed harmlessness, enviability and thereby also the non dangerous character of my action.
This situation changed almost in one stroke when Mussolini had begun the March on Rome. As if by a magic word, the running fire of poisoning and slander against Italy by the entire Jewish press began from this hour on.
And only after the year 1922 was the Southern Tyrol question raised and made into a pivotal point of German Italian relations, whether the Southern Tyroleans themselves wanted it so or not. It did not take long before even Marxists became the representatives of a national opposition. And now one could experience the unique spectacle of Jews and Folkish Germans, Social Democrats and members of the Patriotic Leagues, communists and national bourgeois, arm in arm, spiritually marching across the Brenner in order to carry out the reconquest of this territory in mighty battles but, to be sure, without the shedding of blood. A charm of a wholly special character was further added to this bold national front by the fact that even those out and out Bavarian particularist representatives of Bavarian sovereign rights, whose spiritual forefathers over a hundred years before had surrendered the good Andreas Hofer to the French and let him be shot, also vigorously interested themselves in the freedom struggle for the country of Andreas Hofer.
Since the influence of the Jewish press gang, and the national bourgeois and patriotic dunderheads who run after them, has really succeeded in blowing up the Southern Tyrol problem to the dimensions of a vital question of the German Nation, I see myself induced to take a detailed position toward it.
As has already been emphasised, the old Austrian State had over 850000 Italians within its borders. Incidentally, the data on nationalities as established by the Austrian census was not wholly accurate. Namely, the count was not made according to the nationality of the individual, but rather according to the language he specified as spoken. Obviously this could not give a completely clear picture, but it is in the nature of the weakness of the national bourgeoisie gladly to deceive itself over the real situation. If one does not learn of a matter, or at least if it is not talked about openly, then it also does not exist. Ascertained on the basis of such a procedure, the Italians, or better, the people who spoke Italian, in large measure lived in the Tyrol. According to the census figures of the year 1910 the Tyrol had ………. inhabitants, of whom ………. percent were counted as speaking the Italian language, while the rest were counted as German or in part also Latin. Consequently around ……….
Italians were in the Arch Duchy of Tyrol. Since this whole number is allotted to the territory occupied today by Italians, the ratio of Germans to Italians in the whole part of the territory of the Tyrol occupied by Italians consequently is one of ………. Germans to ………. Italians.
It is necessary to establish this because not a few people in Germany, thanks to the mendacity of our press, have no idea at all that, in the area understood by the concept Southern Tyrol, actually two thirds of the inhabitants living there are Italians, and one third German. Thus, whoever seriously advocates the reconquest of the Southern Tyrol would bring about a change of things only to the extent that instead of having 200000 Germans under Italian rule, he would bring 400000 Italians under German rule.
To be sure, the German element in the Southern Tyrol is now concentrated primarily in the northern part, whereas the Italian element inhabits the south. Thus if someone would find a solution that is just in a national sense, he must first of all completely exclude the concept Southern Tyrol from the general discussion. For one cannot war on the Italians on moral grounds because they have taken an area in which 200000 Germans live next to 400000 Italians if we ourselves, conversely, want to win this territory again for Germany as a redress of this injustice, that is, if we want to commit a still greater injustice than is the case with Italy.
Thus the call for a reconquest of the Southern Tyrol will have the same moral faults in it which we now discover in the Italian rule in the Southern Tyrol. Hence this call also loses its moral justification. With this still ot
her viewpoints can be asserted, which then must speak for a regaining of the whole Southern Tyrol. Thus on the basis of morally justified feelings we can, at most, advocate the regaining of that part which is actually inhabited by an overwhelming majority of Germans. This is a spatially limited area of ……… square kilometres. Even in this, however, there are around 190000 Germans, 64000 Italians and Latins, and 24000 other aliens, so that the completely German territory encompasses hardly 160000 Germans.
At the present time there is hardly a border which does not cut Germans off from the Motherland just as in the Southern Tyrol. Indeed, in Europe alone, not less than ……… million Germans all told are separated from the Reich. Of these, ……… million live under out and out alien rule, and only ……… million in German Austria and Switzerland, though under conditions that at least for the moment pose no threat to the nationality. At the same time, here are a whole series of cases involving aggregates of a quite different numerical character as compared to our Folkdom in the Southern Tyrol.
As terrible as this fact is for our Folk, just so guilty of it are those who today raise their hue and cry over the Southern Tyrol. Just as little, at any rate, can we make the fate of all the rest of the Reich dependent simply on the interests of these lost territories, let alone on the wishes of one of them, even by taking over a purely bourgeois border policy.