estimated for the future on the basis of its momentary life expression, but according to the forces which it has so often shown in its former history and which, perhaps, it can again show tomorrow.
Thus, just as Italy’s friendship is worth a sacrifice on Germany’s part, German friendship is worth just as much to Italy. It would be a good fortune for both Folks if those forces in both countries who are the bearers of this knowledge could come to an understanding.
Thus, as much as the agitation against Italy in Germany is responsible for the unfortunate enmity, just as much guilt lies on Italy’s side if, in view of the fact that there is a struggle in Germany itself against this agitation, she herself as far as possible does not wrest the means from their hands.
If the sagacity of the Fascist regime one day succeeds in making 65 million Germans into friends of Italy, this will be worth more than if it educates 200000 into becoming bad Italians.
Likewise unsound was the Italian stand prohibiting the union of Austria with Germany. The very fact that France primarily espoused this prohibition perforce should have led Rome to take an opposite position. For France itself did not take this step in order to benefit Italy, but much more rather in the hope of being able to inflict harm on her thereby. There are primarily two reasons which induced France to push through the prohibition of the union: first, because thereby she wanted to prevent a strengthening of Germany, and second, because she is convinced that some day she can, in the Austrian State, acquire a member for the French European alliance. So Rome should not deceive itself that French influence in Vienna is considerably more decisive even than the German, not to speak of the Italian. The French attempt to transfer the League Of Nations to Vienna, if possible, stems only from the intention to strengthen the cosmopolitan character of this city as such, and to bring it into contact with a country whose character and culture finds a stronger response in the presentday Viennese atmosphere than does that of the German Reich.
As seriously intended as are the tendencies toward a union in the Austrian provinces as such, just as little are they taken seriously in Vienna. On the contrary, if in Vienna they really operate with the idea of a union, it is always only in order to extricate themselves from some financial difficulty, since France then is always sooner ready to lend a hand to the creditor State. Gradually, however, this very idea of a union will dry up in proportion as an inner consolidation of the Austrian federation occurs and Vienna regains its full dominating position. On top of this, the political development in Vienna assumes an increasingly anti Italian and especially anti Fascist character, whereas Austrian Marxism has at all times made no bones about its strong sympathy for France.
Thus the fact that at that time the union fortunately was prevented, and in part with Italian help, will some day lead to the insertion of the missing link between Prague and Yugoslavia into the French alliance system.
For Italy, however, the prevention of the Austrian union with Germany had been wrong even on psychological grounds. The smaller the fragmented Austrian State remained, the more limited naturally also were its foreign policy aims. A foreign policy goal, conceived on a grand scale, could not be expected from a State structure which has scarcely ………. square kilometres of territory, and hardly ………. million inhabitants. If German Austria had been annexed to Germany in the year 1919-1920, the tendency of her political thought would gradually have been determined by the great political aims of Germany, which were at least possible, that is, for a nation of almost 70000000. Preventing this at that time removed foreign policy thinking from greater aims, and limited it to small old Austrian reconstruction ideas. Only thus was it possible that the Southern Tyrol question could have at all grown to such an importance. For as small as the Austrian State was as such, it was at least large enough to be the bearer of a foreign policy idea which was in keeping with its smallness, just as, conversely, it could slowly poison the political thinking of all Germany. The more limited the political ideas of the Austrian State become in consequence of its territorial limitation, the more will they sprout into problems which can certainly have an importance for this State, but which cannot be viewed as decisive for the shaping of a German foreign policy for the German Nation.
Italy should espouse a union of Austria with Germany if for no other reason than to cut across the French alliance system in Europe. She should further also do this, however, in order to present other tasks to the German border policy germinated in consequence of her incorporation in a great Reich.
Moreover, the reasons which once induced Italy to take a stand against the union are not quite clear. Neither presentday Austria nor presentday Germany can be considered a military adversary of Italy for the time being.
But if France succeeds in bringing a general alliance in Europe into being against Italy, in which Austria and Germany take part, the military situation as such will not at all change whether Austria is independent or whether she is with Germany. Moreover one cannot actually speak of a real independence with so small a structure anyhow. Austria will always [They will always] hang on to the strings of a large power of some kind.
Switzerland cannot in the least prove the opposite, since as a State she possesses her own possibilities of existence, even if on the basis of tourist traffic. For Austria this is already impossible in consequence of the disproportion of the capital of this country to the size of the whole population. Regardless, however, what attitude Austria itself assumes toward Italy, in the very fact of her existence there already lies an easing of the military strategic position of Czechoslovakia which one day, one way or another, can make itself noticeable vis-
a-vis Italy’s natural ally as such, Hungary.
For the Italians, military and political reasons would speak in favour of regarding prohibition of the union as at least without importance, if not as something which answers the purpose.
I cannot conclude this chapter without establishing in detail who in fact bears the guilt that a Southern Tyrol question exists altogether.
For us National Socialists, politically, the decision has been reached. And at least I — who am most violently opposed to millions of Germans being dragged to a battlefield on which to bleed to death for the interests of France without a gain thereby accruing to Germany which would in some way be consonant with the blood sacrifice — I also refuse to recognise the standpoint of national honour as being decisive here. For on the basis of this viewpoint I would sooner have to march against France, which by her whole conduct has offended German honour in quite a different way, than Italy. I have already enlarged in the introduction to this book on the possibility of formulating a foreign policy on the basis of national honour, so there is no further need to take a position toward it. If now the attempt is made in our protest groups to present this attitude of ours as a betrayal or a renunciation of the Southern Tyrol, this can only be correct if, without our attitude, Southern Tyrol would either have not been lost altogether, or were about to return to the other Tyrol in the predictable future.
Therefore I see myself forced once more to establish in this exposition precisely who it was that betrayed the Southern Tyrol, and through whose measures it was lost to Germany.
The Southern Tyrol was betrayed and lost by the activity of those parties who, in long work for peace, weakened, or completely refused, the armament to the German Folk which it needed to assert itself in Europe, and by so doing robbed the German Folk of the necessary power for victory and thereby of the preservation of the Southern Tyrol at the critical hour.
Those parties who, in long work for peace, undermined the moral and ethical foundation of our Folk and, above all, destroyed faith in the right to self defence.
Thus the Southern Tyrol was also betrayed by those parties, which as so called Statepreserving and national parties, looked on this activity with indifference or, at least, without opposing a serious resistance. Albeit indirectly, they too are accessories to the weakening of our Folk’s armament.
The Southern Tyrol was betrayed and lost by the activity of those political parties who reduced the German Folk to being the stooge of the Habsburg big power idea. And who, instead of setting before German foreign policy the aim of the national unification of our Folk, viewed the preservation of the Austrian State as the mission of the German nation. Who, therefore, also in peacetime, for decades merely looked on as the Habsburgs systematically carried out their work of de Germanisation, indeed furnishing them assistance. Thereby they are coresponsible for neglecting the solution of the Austrian question by Germany itself, or at least by the decisive cooperation of Germany. In such a case the Southern Tyrol could have certainly been preserved for the German Folk.
The Southern Tyrol was lost in consequence of the general aimlessness and planlessness of German foreign policy which in the year 1914 extended also to the establishment of reasonable war aims, or prevented this.
The Southern Tyrol was betrayed by all those who, during the course of the War, did not cooperate to the utmost in strengthening German resistance and aggressive power. As well as by the parties which deliberately paralysed the German power of resistance, as well as those who tolerated this paralysis.
The Southern Tyrol was lost in consequence of the inability, even during the War, to undertake a new orientation of German foreign policy and to save the German element of the Austrian State by renouncing the
