all that the inner structure of the Entente would loosen in any predictable time. The powerful world coalition still placed a great value on showing that it was a self sufficient guarantor of the victory and thus also of the peace. The difficulties which had already come to light in connection with the drawing up of the peace treaties came all the less to the consciousness of a broad public opinion since the directors of an adroitly staged production knew how to preserve the impression of complete unity, at least outwardly. This common action was based just as much on the public opinion which had been created by a generally homogeneous war propaganda as it was on the still insecure fear of the German giant. Only slowly did the outside world get a glimpse of the dimensions of Germany’s inner decay. A further reason contributed to the seemingly almost indissoluble solidarity of the victor States: the hope of the individual States that they would thus not be overlooked when the time came to share the spoils. Finally there was the further fear that if at that time a State should actually withdraw, Germany’s fate, nevertheless, would have taken no other course, and then perhaps France alone would be the sole beneficiary of our collapse. For in Paris they naturally never gave a thought to bringing about a change in the attitude toward Germany which had been set in motion during the War. For me the peace is the continuation of the war. With this statement, white haired old Clemenceau expressed the French Folk’s real intentions.
The complete planlessness of German intentions confronted this, at least seeming, inner solidity of the coalition of victors, the immovable aim of which, inspired by France, was the complete annihilation of Germany even after the event. Next to the contemptible villainy of those who in their country, against all truth and against their own conscience, put the blame for the war on Germany and insolently deduced a justification for the enemy’s extortions therefrom, stood a partly intimidated, partly uncertain national side which believed that now after the ensuing collapse it could help matters by means of the most painful possible reconstruction of the nation’s past.
We lost the war in consequence of a lack of national passion against our enemies. The opinion in national circles was that we must replace this harmful deficiency and anchor this hatred against the former enemies in the peace.
At the same time it was noteworthy that, from the start, this hatred was concentrated more against England, and later Italy, than against France. Against England because, thanks to the Bethmann Hollwegian soporific policy, nobody had believed in a war with England up to the last hour. Therefore her entry into the war was viewed as an extraordinarily shameful crime against loyalty and faith. In the case of Italy the hatred was even more understandable in view of the political thoughtlessness of our German Folk. They had been so imprisoned in the mist and fog of the Triple Alliance by official government circles that even Italy’s non intervention for the benefit of Austria-Hungary and Germany was viewed as a breach of loyalty. And they saw a boundless perfidy in the later joining up of the Italian Folk with our enemies. This accumulated hatred was discharged in the typically bourgeois national fulmination and battle cry: God Punish England. Since God is just as much on the side of the stronger and the more determined, as well as preferably on the side of those who are cleverer, he manifestly refused to inflict this punishment. Nevertheless, at least during the war, whipping up of our national passion by every means was not only allowed but obviously called for. It was only a hindrance in that we were blinded by it to the real actualities, although the passion was never fanned too high among us. In politics there is no standpoint of contrariness, and therefore, even during the War, it was wrong to draw no other consequences, especially from Italy’s entry into the world coalition, except those of a flaming anger and indignation. For, on the contrary, we should have had the duty then especially to keep on reexamining the possibilities of the situation in order to come to those decisions that might have warranted consideration for saving the threatened German Nation. For with Italy’s entry into the front of the Entente, an extraordinary aggravation of the war situation was unavoidable, not only in consequence of the increase in terms of arms which the Entente acquired, but much more rather in consequence of the moral strengthening which necessarily lay in the emergence of such a power on the side of the world coalition being formed, especially for France. In terms of duty, the Nation’s political leaders at that time perforce should have decided, cost what it may, to put an end to the two front and three front war. Germany was not responsible for the further maintenance of the corrupt, slovenly Austrian State. Nor did the German soldier fight for the family power policy of the hereditary House Of Habsburg. This at best lay in the mind of our non combatant hurrah!-shouters, but not in that of those at the front shedding their blood. The sufferings and hardships of the German musketeers were already immeasurable in the year 1915. These sufferings could be demanded for the future and the preservation of our German Folk, but not for the salvation of the Habsburg big power megalomania. It was a monstrous idea to let millions of German soldiers bleed in a hopeless war only so that a dynasty could preserve a State, the most private dynastic interests of which for centuries had been anti German. This insanity will become completely understandable to us in its entirety only if we keep in view that the best German blood had to be shed so that, in the most favourable case, the Habsburgs might again have another chance to denationalise the German Folk in peacetime. We not only had to undertake the most monstrous bloodshed on two fronts for this madness, which screamed to heaven, no, we were even duty bound again and again to fill the holes which treason and corruption had torn in our worthy ally’s front with German flesh and blood. And thereby we made this sacrifice for a dynasty which itself was ready to leave its all sacrificing ally in the lurch at the first opportunity which offered itself. And who indeed later did just this. To be sure, our bourgeois national Fatherland patriots speak as little of the betrayal as they do of the continuous betrayal of the Austrian troops of Slavic nationality allied with us, who went over to the enemy’s side in whole regiments and brigades, in order finally in their own legions to join the fight against those who had been dragged into this dreadful misfortune by the operations of their State. Moreover, by itself, Austria-Hungary would never have participated in a war which might have involved Germany. That here or there some perhaps really believed to gain protection from the Triple Alliance, grounded in reciprocity, can be ascribed only to the boundless ignorance of Austrian conditions which generally prevailed in Germany. The worst disappointment for Germany would have materialised had the World War broken out on account of Germany. The Austrian State, with its Slav majority and with its Habsburg Ruling House, fundamentally anti German and anti Reich oriented, would never have taken up arms to defend and assist Germany against all the rest of the world, as Germany stupidly did. As a matter of fact, vis-a-vis Austria-Hungary, Germany had but one duty to fulfil, namely: to save the German element of this State by all means, and to eliminate the most degenerate, most guilt laden dynasty that the German Folk ever had to endure.
For Germany, Italy’s entry into the World War perforce should have been the occasion for a fundamental revision of her attitude vis-a-vis Austria-Hungary. It is not a political act, let alone an expression of the sagacity and competence of political leaders, in such a case to find no other answer than sullen indignation and impotent rage. Such a thing is usually harmful even in private life, but in political life it is worse than a crime. It is an act of stupidity.
And even if this attempt at a change of the former German attitude had led to no success, it at least would have absolved the nation’s political leadership from the guilt of not having tried it. In any case, after Italy’s entry into the World War, Germany should have tried to put an end to the two front war. She should then have striven for a separate peace with Russia, not only on the basis of a renunciation of any utilisation of the successes in the east already achieved by German arms, but even, if necessary, of a sacrifice of Austria-Hungary. Only the complete dissociation of German policy from the task of saving the Austrian State and its exclusive concentration on the task of helping the German Folk could still afford a possibility of victory, according to human appraisals.
Moreover, with the demolition of Austria-Hungary, the incorporation of nine million German Austrians into the Reich as such would have been a more worthwhile success before history and for our Folk’s future than the gain, doubtful in its consequences, of a few French coal and iron mines. But it must be stressed again and again that the task — even of a German foreign policy that is only bourgeois national — should not have been the preservation of the Habsburg State, but exclusively the salvation of the German Nation, including the nine million Germans in Austria. Otherwise nothing else at all, indeed absolutely nothing else.
As is known, the reaction of the Reich’s leaders to the situation created by Italy’s entry into the World War was quite different. They tried more than ever to save the Austrian State with its deserting Slavic brothers of the alliance by staking German blood in a still greater measure, and, in the homeland, by calling down heaven’s revenge on the faithless erstwhile ally. In order to cut themselves off from any possibility of ending the two front war, they let the artful and cunning Vienna diplomacy induce them to found the Polish State. Thereby any hope of arriving at an understanding with Russia, which naturally could have been obtained at the expense of Austria- Hungary, was shrewdly prevented by the Habsburgs. Thus the German soldier from Bavaria, Pomerania, Westphalia, Thuringia and East Prussia, from Brandenburg, Saxony and from the Rhine, was given the high
