illustrated papers speak more or less overtly for Bolshevik Russia because the latter is an anticapitalist State? In political matters, it is always a curse when the wish becomes father to the thought.
To be sure, it is conceivable that in Russia itself an internal change within the Bolshevik world may ensue to the extent that the Jewish element, perhaps, could be crowded out by a more or less Russian national element. Then the possibility might not be excluded that presentday Bolshevik Russia, in reality Jewish capitalistic, would be driven toward [to a] national anticapitalist tendencies. In this case, to which many things seem to point, it would be conceivable, to be sure, that Western European capitalism would seriously take a position against Russia.
But then an alliance of Germany with this Russia would also be complete insanity. For the idea that such an alliance could somehow be held secret is as unjustified as the hope to arm ourselves for the conflict through military preparations that are made quietly.
Then there would only be two real possibilities: either this alliance would be viewed by the Western European world, poising itself against Russia, as a danger, or not. If yes, then I don’t know who can seriously believe that there will be time for us to arm ourselves in a manner suitable at least to prevent a collapse in the first twenty four hours. Or do people really believe in earnest that France will wait until we have built our air defence and our tank defence? Or do they believe that this can happen secretly in a country in which treason is no longer considered shameless, but a courageous deed worthy of emulation? No, if Germany really wants to enter into an alliance with Russia against Western Europe, then Germany will again become a historic battlefield tomorrow.
On top of this, it requires an entirely uncommon fantasy to fancy that Russia could somehow come to Germany’s help, in what way I know not. The only success of such an action would be that Russia could thereby still escape a catastrophe for a certain time, as it would first break over Germany. But a popular inducement for such a struggle against Germany could hardly exist, especially in the western States. Just imagine Germany allied with a real anticapitalist Russia, and then picture how this democratic world Jewish press would mobilise all the instincts of the other nations against Germany. How, especially in France, complete harmony would immediately be established between French national chauvinism and the Jewish stock exchange press. For let one not confuse such a process with the struggle of White Russian Generals against the Bolshevism of an earlier time. In the years 1919 and 1920, national White Russia fought against the Jewish stock exchange revolution, in truth international capitalist red revolution in the highest sense. Today, however, anticapitalist Bolshevism, become national, would stand in a struggle against world Jewry. Whoever understands the importance of press propaganda, and its infinite possibilities for inciting nations and besetting people, can imagine to what orgies of hate and passion against Germany the European western nations would be whipped. For then Germany would no longer be allied with the Russia of a great, noteworthy, ethical, bold idea, but with the despoilers of the culture of mankind.
Above all, there could be no better chance for the French government to master its own inner difficulties than to undertake a fully dangerfree struggle against Germany in such a case. French national chauvinism could be all the more satisfied since then, under the protection of a new world coalition, it could come much closer to the fulfilment of the ultimate war aim. For regardless of the nature of the alliance between Germany and Russia, militarily, Germany alone would have to sustain the most terrible blows. Wholly apart from the fact that Russia does not border directly on Germany and, consequently, must itself first overrun the Polish State — even in the case of a subjugation of Poland by Russia which as such is quite improbable — in the best of circumstances such Russian help could essentially arrive on German territory only when Germany no longer existed. But the idea of a landing of Russian Divisions anywhere in Germany is completely excluded as long as England and France have complete control of the Baltic Sea. Moreover, the landing of Russian troops in Germany would fail because of countless technical deficiencies.
Thus, should a German Russian alliance some day have to undergo the test of reality, and there is no such thing as an alliance without the idea of war, Germany would be exposed to the concentrated attacks of all Western Europe without being able to provide for her own defence in a serious way.
But now there remains the question of just what meaning a German Russian alliance should have in general.
Only the one of preserving Russia from destruction and sacrificing Germany for that? Regardless of how this alliance would turn out in the end, Germany could not arrive at setting a decisive foreign policy goal. For thereby nothing would be changed regarding the fundamental vital question, indeed regarding the vital needs, of our Folk. On the contrary, Germany, thereby, would be more than ever cut off from the only rational territorial policy in order to pad out her future with the scuffle over unimportant border adjustments. For the question of space for our Folk cannot be solved either in the west or in the south of Europe.
The hope in a German Russian alliance, which haunts the minds of even many German national politicians, however, is more than questionable for still another reason.
In general, it seems self evident in national circles that we cannot very well ally ourselves with a Jewish Bolshevist Russia, since the result, according to all probability, would be a Bolshevisation of Germany.
Obviously, we do not want this. But we base ourselves on the hope that one day the Jewish character — and thereby the most fundamentally international capitalistic character of Bolshevism in Russia — might disappear in order to make place for a national communism, anticapitalist on a world scale. Then this Russia, permeated once more by national tendencies, might very well come up for consideration in terms of an alliance with Germany.
This is a very great error. It rests on an extraordinary ignorance of the psyche of the Slavic Folk Soul. This should not amaze anybody if we reflect on how little knowledge even politically minded Germany had of the spiritual conditions of her erstwhile allies. Otherwise we would never have fallen so low. If, therefore, today the national politicians in favour of friendship with Russia try to motivate their policy by reference to Bismarck’s analogous attitudes, they disregard a whole multitude of important factors which at that time, but not today, spoke in favour of Russian friendship.
The Russia which Bismarck knew was not a typical Slavic State, at least insofar as it was a question of the political leadership of the same. In general, Slavdom is lacking in Stateforming forces. In Russia especially, government formations were always attended to by foreign elements. Since the time of Peter The Great there were, above all, very many Baltic Germans who formed the skeleton and the brains of the Russian State. In the course of centuries, countless thousands of these Germans have been Russified, but only in the sense in which our own bourgeoisie, our national bourgeoisie, would like to Germanise or Teutonise Poles or Czechs. Just as in this case the new fledged German is in truth only a German speaking Pole or Czech, likewise did these artificial Russians remain German, or better, Teutons, according to their blood and hence their capabilities. Russia is indebted to this Teutonic upper stratum for her political State as well as for what little exists of her cultural value. A great Russia would neither have arisen nor would she have been able to preserve herself without this really German upper and intellectual stratum. As long as Russia had been a State with an autocratic form of government, this upper stratum, which in truth was not at all Russian, also decisively influenced the political life of the gigantic empire. Even Bismarck knew this Russia at least in part. It was with this Russia that the master of German political statesmanship had political dealings. But, even in his lifetime, the reliability and stability of Russian policy, both domestic and foreign, fluctuated precariously and became in part incalculable.
This lay in the gradual suppression of the German upper stratum. This process of the transformation of the Russian intelligentsia was caused in part by a bleeding of the Russian nation in consequence of many wars, which, as has been already mentioned in this book, primarily decimate the racially more valuable forces.
Actually the officer corps especially was for the most part non Slav by descent, but in every case not of Russian blood. On top of this came the slight increase in the upper stratum of the intelligentsia as such, and finally the artificial training by the schools of a real Russiandom with regard to blood. The slight Statepreserving value of the new Russian intelligentsia as such was grounded on blood, and revealed itself most sharply perhaps in the nihilism of the Russian universities. Most fundamentally, however, this nihilism was nothing but the opposition, determined by blood, of real Russiandom to the racially alien upper stratum.
The Pan Slavic idea was counterposed to the Russian idea of the State in proportion as Russia’s Teutonic, Stateforming upper stratum was replaced by a racially pure Russian bourgeois class. From the first hour of its birth it was Folkish, Slavish [Russian], and anti German. The anti German disposition of the newly emerging Russiandom, especially in the strata of the so called intelligentsia, however, was not only a pure reflex action against the former autocratic alien upper class in Russia, for instance, on the grounds of politically liberal modes of thought. Rather, in the most intrinsic sense, it was the protest of the Slavic nature against the German.
They are two Folk Souls which have only very little in common, whereby indeed it must first be established whether this littleness they have in common has its cause in the confusedly broken racial individual elements of
