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 Munchen, 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 Munchen 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
