Territorial Expansion Plan

Against all this we, National Socialists, must stick firmly to the aim that we have set for our foreign policy; namely, that the German people must be assured the territorial area which is necessary for it to exist on this earth.

And only for such action as is undertaken to secure those ends can it be lawful in the eyes of God and our German posterity to allow the blood of our people to be shed once again.

Before God, because we are sent into this world with the commission to struggle for our daily bread, as creatures to whom nothing is donated and who must be able to win and hold their position as lords of the earth only through their own intelligence and courage. And this justification must be established also before our German posterity, on the grounds that for each one who has shed his blood the life of a thousand others will be guaranteed to posterity.

The territory on which one day our German peasants will be able to bring forth and nourish their sturdy sons will justify the blood of the sons of the peasants that has to be shed today. And the statesmen who will have decreed this sacrifice may be persecuted by their contemporaries, but posterity will absolve them from all guilt for having demanded this offering from their people.

Some nationalist scribes pretend that such territorial extension would be a “violation of the sacred rights of man”

These scribes contribute criminally to weaken from the inside and to destroy the will of our people to promote their own vital interests by the only effective means that can be used for that purpose.

For no nation on earth possesses a square yard of ground and soil by decree of a higher Will and in virtue of a higher Right. The German frontiers are the outcome of chance, and are only temporary frontiers that have been established as the result of political struggles which took place at various times. The same is also true of the frontiers which demarcate the territories on which other nations live. And just as only an imbecile could look on the physical geography of the globe as fixed and unchangeable–for in reality it represents a definite stage in a given evolutionary epoch which is due to the formidable forces of Nature and may be altered to-morrow by more powerful forces of destruction and change–so, too, in the lives of the nations the confines which are necessary for their sustenance are subject to change.

State frontiers are established by human beings and may be changed by human beings. The fact that a nation has acquired an enormous territorial area is no reason why it should hold that territory perpetually. At most, the possession of such territory is a proof of the strength of the conqueror and the weakness of those who submit to him. And in this strength alone lives the right of possession. If the German people are imprisoned within an impossible territorial area and for that reason are face to face with a miserable future, this is not by the command of Destiny, and the refusal to accept such a situation is by no means a violation of Destiny’s laws. For just as no Higher Power has promised more territory to other nations than to the German, so it cannot be blamed for an unjust distribution of the soil. The soil on which we now live was not a gift bestowed by Heaven on our forefathers. But they had to conquer it by risking their lives. So also in the future our people will not obtain territory, and therewith the means of existence, as a favour from any other people, but will have to win it by the power of a triumphant sword.

To-day we are all convinced of the necessity of regulating our situation in regard to France; but our success here will be ineffective in its broad results if the general aims of our foreign policy will have to stop at that. It can have significance for us only if it serves to cover our flank in the struggle for that extension of territory which is necessary for the existence of our people in Europe. For colonial acquisitions will not solve that question. It can be solved only by the winning of such territory for the settlement of our people as will extend the area of the motherland and thereby will not only keep the new settlers in the closest communion with the land of their origin, but will guarantee to this territorial ensemble the advantages which arise from the fact that in their expansion over greater territory the people remain united as a political unit. The National Movement must not be the advocate for other nations, but the protagonist for its own nation. Otherwise it would be something superfluous and, above all, it would have no right to clamour against the action of the past; for then it would be repeating the action of the past. The old German policy suffered from the mistake of having been determined by dynastic considerations. The new German policy must not follow the sentimentality of cosmopolitan patriotism. Above all, we must not form a police guard for the famous ‘poor small nations’; but we must be the soldiers of the German nation.

We National Socialists have to go still further.

The right to territory may become a duty when a great nation seems destined to go under unless its territory be extended. And that is particularly true when the nation in question is not some little group of negro people but the Germanic mother of all the life which has given cultural shape to the modern world. Germany will either become a World Power or will not continue to exist at all. But in order to become a World Power it needs that territorial magnitude which gives it the necessary importance to-day and assures the existence of its citizens.

Therefore we National Socialists have purposely drawn a line through the line of conduct followed by pre-War Germany in foreign policy.

We put an end to the perpetual Germanic march towards the South and West of Europe and turn our eyes towards the lands of the East. We finally put a stop to the colonial and trade policy of pre-War times and pass over to the territorial policy of the future. But when we speak of new territory in Europe to-day we must principally think of Russia and the border States subject to her.

Destiny itself seems to wish to point out the way for us here. In delivering Russia over to Bolshevism, Fate robbed the Russian people of that intellectual class which had once created the Russian State and were the guarantee of its existence. For the Russian State was not organized by the constructive political talent of the Slav element in Russia, but was much more a marvellous exemplification of the capacity for State-building possessed by the Germanic element in a race of inferior worth.

Thus were many powerful Empires created all over the earth. More often than once inferior races with Germanic organizers and rulers as their leaders became formidable States and continued to exist as long as the racial nucleus remained which had originally created each respective State. For centuries Russia owed the source of its livelihood as a State to the Germanic nucleus of its governing class. But this nucleus is now almost wholly broken up and abolished. The Jew has taken its place. Just as it is impossible for the Russian to shake off the Jewish yoke by exerting his own powers, so, too, it is impossible for the Jew to keep this formidable State in existence for any long period of time. He himself is by no means an organizing element, but rather a ferment of decomposition. This colossal Empire in the East is ripe for dissolution. And the end of the Jewish domination in Russia will also be the end of Russia as a State. We are chosen by Destiny to be the witnesses of a catastrophe which will afford the strongest confirmation of the nationalist theory of race.

But it is our task, and it is the mission of the National Socialist Movement, to develop in our people that political mentality which will enable them to realize that the aim which they must set to themselves for the fulfilment of their future must not be some wildly enthusiastic adventure in the footsteps of Alexander the Great but industrious labour with the German plough, for which the German sword will provide the soil. That the Jew should declare himself bitterly hostile to such a policy is only quite natural. For the Jews know better than any others what the adoption of this line of conduct must mean for their own future. That fact alone ought to teach all genuine nationalists that this new orientation is the right and just one. But, unfortunately, the opposite is the case. Not only among the members of the German-National Party but also in purely nationalist circles violent opposition is raised against this Eastern policy. And in connection with that opposition, as in all such cases, the authority of great names is appealed to. The spirit of Bismarck is evoked in defence of a policy which is as stupid as it is impossible, and is in the highest degree detrimental to the interests of the German people. They say that Bismarck laid great importance on the value of good relations with Russia.

To a certain extent, that is true. But they quite forget to add that he laid equal stress on the importance of good relations with Italy, for example. Indeed, the same Herr von Bismarck once concluded an alliance with Italy so that he might more easily settle accounts with Austria. Why is not this policy now advocated? They will reply that the Italy of to-day is not the Italy of that time. Good. But then, honourable sirs, permit me to remind you that the Russia of to-day is no longer the Russia of that time. Bismarck never laid down a policy which would be permanently binding under all circumstances and should be adhered to on principle. He was too much the master of the moment to burden himself with that kind of obligation. Therefore, the question ought not to be what Bismarck then did, but rather what he would do to-day. And that question is very easy to answer. His political sagacity would never allow him to ally himself with a State that is doomed to disappear.

Moreover, Bismarck looked upon the colonial and trade policy of his time with mixed feelings, because what he most desired was to assure the best possibilities of consolidating and internally strengthening the state system which he himself had created. That was the sole ground on which he then welcomed the Russian defence in his rear, so as to give him a free hand for his activities in the West. But what was advantageous then to Germany would now be detrimental.

As early as 1920-21, when the young movement began slowly to appear on the political horizon and movements for the liberation of the German nation were formed here and there, the Party was approached from various quarters in an attempt to bring it into definite connection with the liberationist movements in other countries. This was in line with the plans of the ‘League of Oppressed Nations’, which had been advertised in many quarters and was composed principally of representatives of some of the Balkan States and also of Egypt and India. These always impressed me as charlatans who gave themselves big airs but had no real background at all.

Not a few Germans, however, especially in the nationalist camp, allowed themselves to be taken in by these pompous Orientals, and in the person of some wandering Indian or Egyptian student they believed at once that they were face to face with a ‘representative’ of India or Egypt. They did not realize that in most cases they were dealing with persons who had no backing whatsoever, who were not authorized by anybody to conclude any sort of agreement whatsoever; so that the practical result of every negotiation with such individuals was negative and the time spent in such dealings had to be reckoned as utterly lost. I was always on my guard against these attempts. Not only that I had something better to do than to waste weeks in such sterile ‘discussions’, but also because I believed that even if one were dealing with genuine representatives that whole affair would be bound to turn out futile, if not positively harmful.

In peace-time, the policy of alliances lamentably had no aggressive aims in view.

And so it ended in a defensive association with antiquated States.

• The alliance with Austria, and Turkey, was not much to be joyful about.

While the great military and industrial States of the earth had come together in a league for purposes of active aggression, a few old and effete States were collected, and with this antique bric-à-brac an attempt was made to face an active world coalition. Germany had to pay dearly for that mistaken foreign policy and yet not dearly enough to prevent our incorrigible visionaries from falling back into the same error again. For the attempt to make possible the disarmament of the all-powerful victorious States through a ‘League of Oppressed Nations’ is not only ridiculous but disastrous. It is disastrous because in that way the German people are again being diverted from real possibilities, which they abandon for the sake of fruitless hopes and illusions. In reality the German of to-day is like a drowning man that clutches at any straw which may float beside him.

And one finds people doing this who are otherwise highly educated. Wherever some will-o’-thewisp of a fantastic hope appears these people set off immediately to chase it. Let this be a League of Oppressed Nations, a League of Nations, or some other fantastic invention, thousands of ingenuous souls will always be found to believe in it. I remember well the childish and incomprehensible hopes which arose suddenly in nationalist circles in the years 1920-21 to the effect that England was just nearing its downfall in India.

A few Asiatic mountebanks, who put themselves forward as “the champions of Indian Freedom”, then began to peregrinate throughout Europe and succeeded in inspiring otherwise quite reasonable people with the fixed notion that the British World Empire, which had its pivot in India, was just about to collapse there. They never realized that their own wish was the father of all these ideas. Nor did they stop to think how absurd their wishes were. For inasmuch as they expected the end of the British Empire and of England’s power to follow the collapse of its dominion over India, they themselves admitted that India was of the most outstanding importance for England.