The success of the battle of Leuthen was uncertain, but it was necessary to fight it. Frederick The Great did not win because he went toward the enemy with only half his strength, but because he compensated for the uncertainty of success by the abundance of his genius, the boldness and determination of his troop dispositions, and the derring do of his regiments in battle.
I’m afraid, indeed, that I will never be understood by my bourgeois critics, at least as long as success does not prove to them the soundness of our action. Here the man of the Folk has a better counsellor. He sets the assurance of his instinct and the faith of his heart in place of the sophistry of our intellectuals.
If I deal with foreign policy in this work, however, I do so not as a critic, but as the Leader Of The National Socialist Movement, which I know will some day make history. If I am, therefore, nevertheless forced to consider the past and the present critically, it is only for the purpose of establishing the only positive way, and to make it appear understandable. Just as the National Socialist Movement not only criticises domestic policy, but possesses its own philosophically grounded Program, likewise in the sphere of foreign policy it must not only recognise what others have done wrongly, but deduce its own action on the basis of this knowledge.
Thus I know well that even our highest success will not create a hundred percent happiness, for in view of human imperfection and the general circumstances conditioned by it, ultimate perfection always lies only in programmatic theory. I also know, further, that no success can be achieved without sacrifice, just as no battle can be fought without losses. But the awareness of the incompleteness of a success will never be able to keep me from preferring such an incomplete success to the perceived complete downfall. I will then strain every nerve to try to offset what is lacking in the probability of success or the extent of success through greater determination, and to communicate this spirit to the Movement led by me. Today we are fighting against an enemy front which we must and will break through. We calculate our own sacrifices, weigh the extent of the possible success, and will stride forward to the attack, regardless of whether it will come to a halt ten or a thousand kilometres behind the present lines. For wherever our success ends, it will always be only the point of departure for a new struggle.
Chapter 5
NATIONAL SOCIALIST FOREIGN POLICY
I am a German nationalist. This means that I proclaim my nationality. My whole thought and action belongs to it. I am a socialist. I see no class and no social estate before me, but that community of the Folk, made up of people who are linked by blood, united by a language, and subject to a same general fate. I love this Folk and hate only its majority of the moment, because I view the latter to be just as little representative of the greatness of my Folk as it is of its happiness.
The National Socialist Movement which I lead today views its goal as the liberation of our Folk within and without. It aims to give our Folk domestically those forms of life which seem to be suitable to its nature and to be a benefit to it as the expression of this nature. It aims thereby to preserve the character of this Folk and to further cultivate it through the systematic fostering of its best men and best virtues. It fights for the external freedom of this Folk, because only under freedom can this life find that form which is serviceable to its Folk. It fights for the daily bread of this Folk because it champions [in hunger] this Folk’s right to life. It fights for the required space, because it represents this Folk’s right to life.
By the concept domestic policy the National Socialist Movement therefore understands the promotion, strengthening and consolidation of the existence of our Folk through the introduction of forms and laws of life which correspond to the nature of our Folk, and which can bring its fundamental powers to full effectiveness.
By the concept foreign policy it understands the safeguarding of this development through the preservation of freedom and the creation of the most necessary prerequisites for life.
Thus, in terms of foreign policy, the National Socialist Movement is distinguished from previous bourgeois parties by, for example, the following: The foreign policy of the national bourgeois world has in truth always been only a border policy; as against that, the policy of the National Socialist Movement will always be a territorial one. In its boldest plans, for example, the German bourgeoisie will aspire to the unification of the German nation, but in reality it will finish with a botched up regulation of the borders.
The National Socialist Movement, on the contrary, will always let its foreign policy be determined by the necessity to secure the space necessary to the life of our Folk. It knows no Germanising or Teutonising, as in the case of the national bourgeoisie, but only the spread of its own Folk. It will never see in the subjugated, so called Germanised, Czechs or Poles a national, let alone Folkish, strengthening, but only the racial weakening of our Folk. For its national conception is not determined by earlier patriotic ideas of government, but rather by Folkish, racial insights. Thus the point of departure of its thinking is wholly different from that of the bourgeois world. Hence much of what seems to the national bourgeoisie like the political success of the past and present, is for us either a failure or the cause of a later misfortune. And much that we regard as self evident seems incomprehensible or even monstrous to the German bourgeoisie. Nevertheless a part of German youth, especially from bourgeois circles, will be able to understand me. Neither I nor the National Socialist Movement figure to find any support whatsoever in the circles of the political national bourgeoisie, active at present, but we certainly know that at least a part of the youth will find its way into our ranks.
For them.
Chapter 6
GERMAN NEEDS AND AIMS
The question of a nation’s foreign policy is determined by factors which lie partly within a nation, and partly given by the environment. In general the internal factors are the basis for the necessity of a definite foreign policy as well as for the amount of strength required for its execution. Folks living on an impossible soil surface fundamentally will tend to enlarge their territory, consequently their living space, at least as long as they are under healthy leadership. This process, originally grounded only in the concern over sustenance, appeared so beneficent in its felicitous solution that it gradually attained the fame of success. This means that the enlargement of space, at first grounded in pure expediencies, became in the course of mankind’s development a heroic deed, which then also took place even when the original preconditions or inducements were lacking.
Later, the attempt to adapt the living space to increased population turned into unmotivated wars of conquest, which in their very lack of motivation contained the germ of the subsequent reaction. Pacifism is the answer to it. Pacifism has existed in the world ever since there have been wars whose meaning no longer lay in the conquest of territory for a Folk’s sustenance. Since then it has been war’s eternal companion. It will again disappear as soon as war ceases to be an instrument of booty hungry or power hungry individuals or nations, and as soon as it again becomes the ultimate weapon with which a Folk fights for is daily bread.
Even in the future the enlargement of a Folk’s living space for the winning of bread will require staking the whole strength of the Folk. If the task of domestic policy is to prepare this commitment of the Folk’s strength, the task of a foreign policy is to wield this strength in such a manner that the highest possible success seems assured. This, of course, is not conditioned only by the strength of the Folk, ready for action at any given time, but also by the power of the resistances. The disproportion in strength between Folks struggling with one another for land leads repeatedly to the attempt, by way of alliances, either to emerge as conquerors themselves or to put up resistance to the overpowerful conqueror.
This is the beginning of the policy of alliances.
After the victorious war of 1870-1871, the German Folk achieved a position of infinite esteem in Europe.
Thanks to the success of Bismarckian statesmanship and Prussian German military accomplishments, a great number of German States, which heretofore had been only loosely linked, and which, indeed, had not seldom in history faced each other as enemies, were brought together in one Reich. A province of the old German Reich, lost 170 years before, permanently annexed at that time by France after a brief predatory war, came back
