Thirdly and lastly, this alliance inevitably involved an infinite peril for Germany, because a great power actually hostile to Bismarck’s Reich could at any time easily succeed in mobilizing a whole series of states against Germany, since it was in a position to promise each of them enrichment at the expense of our Austrian ally.

The whole East of Europe could be stirred up against the Danubian monarchy­particularly Russia and Italy. Never would the world coalition which had been forming since the initiating efforts of King Edward have come into existence if Austria as Germany’s ally had not represented too tempting a legacy. This alone made it possible to bring states with otherwise so heterogeneous desires and aims into a single offensive front. Each one could hope that in case of a general action against

Germany it, too, would achieve enrichment at Austria’s expense. The danger was enormously increased by the fact that Turkey seemed to be a silent partner in this unfortunate alliance.

International Jewish world finance needed these lures to enable it to carry out its long­desired plan for destroying the Germany which thus far did not submit to its widespread superst3te control of finance and economics. Only in this way could they forge a coalition made strong and courageous by the sheer numbers of the gigantic armies now on the march and prepared to attack the horny Siegfried at last.

The alliance with the Habsburg monarchy, which even in Austria had filled me with dissatisfaction, now became the source of long inner trials which in the time to come reinforced me even more in the opinion I had already conceived.

Even then, among those few people whom I frequented I made no secret of my conviction that our catastrophic alliance with a state on the brink of ruin would also lead to a fatal collapse of Germany unless we knew enough to release ourselves from it on time. This conviction of mine was firm as a rock, and I did not falter ill it for one moment when at last the storm of the World War seemed to have excluded all reasonable thought and a frenzy of enthusiasm had seized even those quarters for which there should have been only the coldest consideration of reality. And while I myself was at the front, I put forwards whenever these problems were discussed, my opinion that the alliance had to be broken off, the quicker the better for the German nation, and that the sacrifice of the Habsburg monarchy would be no sacrifice at all to make if Germany thereby could achieve a restriction of her adversaries; for it was not for the preservation of a debauched dynasty that the millions had donned the steel helmet, but for the salvation of the German nation.

On a few occasions before the War it seemed as though, in one camp at least, a gentle doubt was arising as to the correctness of the alliance policy that had been chosen. German conservative circles began from time to time to warn against excessive confidence, but, like everything else that was sensible, this was thrown to the winds. They were convinced that they were on the path to a world ‘ conquest,’ whose success would be tremendous and which would entail practically no sacrifices.

There was nothing for those not in authority to do but to watch in silence why and how the ‘ authorities’ marched straight to destruction, drawing the dear people behind them like the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

The deeper cause that made it possible to represent the absurdity of an ‘ economic conquest ‘ as a practical political method, and the preservation of ‘world peace’ as a political goal for a whole people, and even to make these things intelligible, lay in the general sickening of our whole political thinking.

With the victorious march of German technology and industry, the rising successes of German commerce, the realization was increasingly lost that all this was only possible on the basis of a strong state. On the contrary, many circles went so far as to put forward the conviction that the state owed its very existence to these phenomena, that the state itself Drimarilv represented an economic institution, that it could be governed according to economic requirements, and that its very existence depended on economics, a state of affairs which was regarded and glorified as by far the healthiest and most natural.

But the state has nothing at all to do with any definite economic conception or development.

It is not a collection of economic contracting parties in a definite delimited living space for the fulfillment of economic tasks, but the organization of a community of physically and psychologically similar living beings for the better facilitation of the maintenance of their species and the achievement of the aim which has been allotted to this species by Providence. This and nothing else is the aim and meaning of a state. Economics is only one of the many instruments required for the achievement of this aim. It is never the cause or the aim of a state unless this state is based on a false, because unnatural, foundation to begin with. Only in this way can it be explained that the state as such does not necessarily presuppose territorial limitation. This will be necessary only among the peoples who want to secure the maintenance of their national comrades by their own resources; in other words, are prepared to fight the struggle for existence by their own labor. Peoples who can sneak their way into the rest of mankind like drones, to make other men work for them under all sorts of pretexts, can form states even without any definitely delimited living space of their own. This applies first and foremost to a people under whose parasitism the whole of honest humanity is suffering, today more than ever: the Jews.

The Jewish state was never spatially limited in itself, but universally unlimited as to space, though restricted in the sense of embracing but one race. Consequently, this people has always formed a state within states. It is one of the most ingenious tricks that was ever devised, to make this state sail under the fiag of ‘religion,’ thus assuring it of the tolerance which the Aryan is always ready to accord a religious creed. For actually the Mosaic religion is nothing other than a doctrine for the preservation of the Jewish race. It therefore embraces almost all sociological, political, and economic fields of knowledge which can have any bearing on this function.

The urge to preserve the species is the first cause for the formation of human communities; thus the state is a national organism and not an economic organization. A difference which is just as large as it is incomprehensible, particularly to our socalled ‘ statesmen ‘ of today. That is why they think they can build up the state through economics while in reality it results and always will result solely from the action of those qualities which lie in line with the will to preserve the species and race. And these are always heroic virtues and never the egoism of shopkeepers, since the preservation of the existence of a species presupposes a spirit of sacrifice in the individual. The sense of the poet’s words, ‘If you will not stake your life, you will win no life,’ is that the sacrifice of personal existence is necessary to secure the preservation of the species. Thus, the most sensible prerequisite for the formation and preservation of a state is the presence of a certain feeling of cohesion based on similarity of nature and species, and a willingness to stake everything on it with all possible means, something which in peoples with soil of their own will create heroic virtues, but in parasites will create lying hypocrisy and malignant cruelty, or else these qualities must already be present as the necessary and demonstrable basis for their existence as a state so different in form. The formation of a state, originally at least, will occur through the exercise of these qualities, and in the subsequent struggle for selfpreservation those nations will be defeated­ that is, will fall a prey to subjugation and thus sooner or later die out which in the mutual struggle possess the smallest share of heroic virtues, or are not equal to the lies and trickery of the hostile parasite. But in this case, too, this must almost always be attributed less to a lack of astuteness than to a lack of determination and courage, which only tries to conceal itself beneath a cloak of humane convictions.

How little the state­forming and state­preserving qualities are connected with economics is most clearly shown by the fact that the inner strength of a state only in the rarest cases coincides with so­called economic prosperity, but that the latter, in innumerable cases, seems to indicate the state’s approaching decline. If the formation of human societies were primarily attributable to economic forces or even impulses, the highest economic development would have to mean the greatest strength of the state and not the opposite.

Belief in the state­forming and state­preserving power of economics seems especially incomprehensible when it obtains in a country which in all things clearly and penetratingly shows the historic reverse. Prussia, in particular, demonstrates with marvelous sharpness that not material qualities but ideal virtues alone make possible the formation of a state. Only under their protection can economic life flourish, until with the collapse of the pure state­forming faculties the economy collapses too; a process which we can observe in so terrible and tragic a form right now. The material interests of man can always thrive best as long as they remain in the shadow of heroic virtues; but as soon as they attempt to enter the primary sphere of existence, they destroy the basis for their own existence.

Always when in Germany there was an upsurge of political power, the economic conditions began to improve; but always when economics became the sole content of our people’s life, stifling the ideal virtues, the state collapsed and in a short time drew economic life along with it.

If, however, we consider the question, what, in reality, are the state­forming or even state­preserving forces, we can sum them up under one single head: the ability and will of the individual to sacrifice himself for the totality. That these virtues have nothing at all to do with economics can be seen from the simple realization that man never sacrifices himself for the latter, or, in other words: a man does not die for business, but only for ideals. Nothing proved the Englishman’s superior psychological knowledge of the popular soul better than the motivation which he gave to his struggle. While we fought for bread, England fought for ‘freedom’; and not even for her own, no, for that of the small nations. In our country we laughed at this effrontery, or were enraged at it, and thus only demonstrated how emptyheaded and stupid the so­called statesmen of Germany had becorne even before the War. We no longer had the slightest idea concerning the essence of the force which can lead men to their death of their own free will and decision.

In 1914 as long as the German people thought they were fighting for ideals, they stood firm; but as soon as they were told to fight for their daily bread, they preferred to give up the game.

And our brilliant ‘statesmen’ were astonished at this change in attitude. It never became clear to them that from the moment when a man begins to fight for an economic interest, he avoids death as much as possible, since death wo lid forever deprive him of his reward for fighting. Anxiety for the rescue of her own child makes a heroine of even the feeblest mother, and only the struggle for the preservation of the species and the hearth, or the state that protects it, has at all times driven men against the spears of their enemies.

The following theorem may be established as an eternally valid truth:

Never yet has a state been founded by peaceful economic means, but always and exclusively by the instincts of preservation of the species regardless whether these are found in the province of heroic virtue or of cunning craftiness; the one results in Aryan states based on work and culture, the other in Jewish colonies of parasites. As soon as economics as such begins to choke out these Instincts in a people or in a state, it becomes the seductive cause of subjugation and oppression.

The belief of pre­war days that the world could be peacefully opened up to, let alone conquered for, the German people by a commercial and colonial policy was a classic sign of the loss of real state­forming and state­preserving virtues and of all the insight, will power, and active determination which follow from them; the penalty for this, inevitable as the law of nature, was the World War with its consequences.

For those who do not look more deeply into the matter, this attitude of the German nation­for it was really as good as general­could only represent an insoluble riddle: for was not Germany above all other countries a marvelous example of an empire which had risen from foundations of pure political power? Prussia, the germ­cell of the Empire, came into being through resplendent heroism and not through financial operations or commercial deals, and the Reich itself in turn was only the glorious reward of aggressive political leadership and the death defying courage of its soldiers. How could this very German people have succumbed to such a sickening of its political instinct? For here we face, not an isolated phenomenon, but forces of decay which in truly terrifying number soon began to flare up like will­o’­the­wisps, brushing up and down the body politic, or eating like poisonous abscesses into the nation, now here and now there. It seemed as though a continuous stream of poison was being driven into the outermost blood­vessels of this once heroic body by a mysterious power, and was inducing progressively greater paralysis of sound reason and the simple instinct of selfpreservation .

As innumerable times I passed in review all these questions, arising through my position on the German alliance policy and the economic policy of the Reich in the years 1912 to 1914­the only remaining solution to the riddle became to an everincreasing degree that power which, from an entirely different viewpoint, I had come to know earlier in Vienna: the Marxist doctrine and philosophy, and their organizational results.

For the second time I dug into this doctrine of destruction­ this time no longer led by the impressions and effects of my daily associations, but directed by the observation of general processes of political life. I again immersed myself in the theoretical literature of this new world, attempting to achieve clarity concerning its possible effects, and then compared it with the actual phenomena and events it brings about in political, cultural, and economic life.

Now for the first time I turned my attention to the attempts to master this world plague.

I studied Bismarck’s Socialist legislation 1 in its intention struggle, and success. Gradually I obtained a positively granite foundation for my own conviction, so that since that time I have never been forced to undertake a shift in my own inner view on this question. Likewise the relation of Marxism to the Jews was submitted to further thorough examination.

Though previously in Vienna, Germany above all had seemed to me an unshakable colossus, now anxious misgivings sometimes entered my mind. In silent solitude and in the small circles of my acquaintance, I was filled with wrath at German foreign policy and likewise with what seemed to me the incredibly frivolous way in which the most important problem then existing for Germany, Marxism, was treated. It was really beyond me how people could rush so blindly into a danger whose effects, pursuant to the Marxists’ own intention, were bound some day to be monstrous. Even then, among my acquaintance, just as today on a large scale, I warned against the phrase with which all wretched cowards comfort themselves: ‘Nothing can happen to us!’ This pestilential attitude had once been the downfall of a gigantic empire. Could anyone believe that Germany alone was not subject to exactly the same laws as all other human organisms?

In the years 1913 and 1914, I, for the first time in various circles which today in part faithfully support the National Socialist movement, expressed the conviction that the question of the future of the German nation was the question of destroying Marxism.

In the catastrophic German alliance policy I saw only one of the consequences called forth by the disruptive work of this doctrine; for the terrible part of it was that this poison almost invisibly destroyed all the foundations of a healthy conception of economy and state, and that often those affected by it did not themselves realize to what an extent their activities and desires emanated from this philosophy srhich they otherwise sharply ejected.

The internal decline of the German nation had long since begun, yet, as so often in life, people had not achieved clarity concerning the force that was destroying their existence. Sometimes they tinkered around with the disease, but confused the forms of the phenomenon with the virus that had caused it. Since they did not know or want to know the cause, the struggle against Malsisrs was no better than bungling quackery.