Chapter 14:

Eastern Orientation or Eastern Policy

There are two reasons which induce me to submit to a special examination the relation of Germany to Russia:

1. Here perhaps we are dealing with the most decisive concern of all German foreign affairs; and
2. This question is also the touchstone for the political capacity of the young National Socialist movements to think clearly and to act correctly.

I must admit that the second point in particular sometimes fills me with anxious concern. Since our young movement does not obtain membership material from the camp of the indifferent, but chiefly from very extreme outlooks, it is only too natural if these people, in the field of understanding foreign affairs as in other fields, are burdened with the preconceived ideas or feeble understanding of the circles to which they previously belonged, both politically and philosophically. And this by no means applies only to the man who comes to us from the Left. On the contrary. Harmful as his previous instruction with regard to such problems might be, in part at least it was not infrequently balanced by an existing remnant of natural and healthy instinct. Then it was only necessary to substitute a better attitude for the influence that was previously forced upon him, and often the essentially healthy instinct and impulse of self­preservation that still survived in him could be regarded as our best ally.It is much harder, on the other hand, to induce dear political thinking in a man whose previous education in this field was no less devoid of any reason and logic, but on top of all this had also sacrified his last remnant of natural instinct on the altar of objectivity. Precisely the members of our so­called intelligentsia are the hardest to move to a really clear and logical defense of their interests and the interests of their nation. They are not only burdened with a dead weight of the most senseless conceptions and prejudices, but what makes matters completely intolerable is that they have lost and abandoned all healthy instinct of selfpreservation. The National Socialist movement is compelled to endure hard struggles with these people, hard because, despite total incompetence, they often unfortunately are afflicted with an amazing conceit, which causes them to look down without the slightest inner justification upon other people, for the most part healthier than they. Supercilious, arrogant knowit­alls, without any capacity for cool testing and weighing, which, in turn, must be recognized as the pre­condition for any will and action in the field of foreign affairs.Since these very circles are beginning today to divert the tendency of our foreign policy in the most catastrophic way from any real defense of the folkish interests of our people, placing it instead in the service of their fantastic ideology, I feel it incumbent upon me to discuss for my supporters the most important question in the field of foreign affairs, our relation to Russia, in particular, and as thoroughly as is necessary for the general understanding and possible in the scope of such a work But first I would like to make the following introductory remarks:If under foreign policy we must understand the regulation of a nation’s relations with the rest of the world, the manner of this regulation will be determined by certain definite facts. As National Socialists we can, furthermore, establish the following principle concerning the nature of the foreign policy of a folkish state:The foreign policy of the fokish state must safeguard the existence on this planet of the race embodied in the state, by creating a healthy, viable natural relation between the nation’s population and growth on the one hand and the quantity and quality of its soil on the other hand.As a healthy relation we may regard only that condition which assures the sustenance of a people on its own soil. Every other condition, even if it endures for hundreds, nay, thousands of years, is nevertheless unhealthy and will sooner or later lead to the injury if not annihilation of the people in question.Only an adequately large space on this earth assures a nation of freedom of existence.Moreover, the necessary size of the territory to be settled cannot be judged exclusively on the basis of present requirements, not even in fact on the basis of the yield of the soil compared to the population. For, as I explained in the first volume, under ‘German Alliance Policy Before the War,’ in addition to its importance as a direct source of a people’s food, another significance, that is, a military and political one, must be attributed to the area of a state. If a nation’s sustenance as such is assured by the amount of its soil, the safeguarding of the existing soil itself must also be borne in mind. This lies in the general power­political strength of the state, which in turn to no small extent is determined by geomilitary considerations.Hence, the German nation can defend its future only as a world power. For more than two thousand years the defense of our people’s interests, as we should designate our more or less fortunate activity in the field of foreign affairs, was world history. We ourselves were witnesses to this fact: for the gigantic struggle of the nations in the years 1914­1918 was only the struggle of the German people for its existence on the globe, but we designated the type of event itself as a World War.The German people entered this struggle as a supposed world power. I say here ‘supposed,’ for in reality it was none. If the German nation in 1914 had had a different relation between area and population, Germany would really have been a world power, and the War, aside from all other factors, could have been terminated favorably.Germany today is no world power. Even if our momentary military impotence were overcome, we should no longer have any claim to this title. What can a formation, as miserable in its relation of population to area as the German Reich today, mean on this planet? In an era when the earth is gradually being divided up among states, some of which embrace almost entire continents, we cannot speak of a world power in connection with a formation whose political mother country is limited to the absurd area of five hundred thousand square kilometers. From the purely territorial point of view, the area of the German Reich vanishes completely as compared with that of the socalled world powers. Let no one cite England as a proof to the contrary, for England in reality is merely the great capital of the British world empire which calls nearly a quarter of the earth’s surface its own. In addition, we must regard as giant states, first of all the American Union, then Russia and China. All are spatial formations having in part an area more than ten times greater than the present German Reich. And even France must be counted among these states. Not only that she complements her army to an ever­increasing degree from her enormous empire’s reservoir of colored humanity, but racially as well, she is making such great progress in negrification that we can actually speak of an African state arising on European soil. The colonial policy of present­day France cannot be compared with that of Germany in the past. If the development of France in the present style were to be continued for three hundred years, the last remnants of Frankish blood would be submerged in the developing EuropeanAfrican mulatto state. An immense self­contained area of settlement from the Rhine to the Congo, filled with a lower race gradually produced from continuous bastardization.This distinguishes French colonial policy from the old German one.The former German colonial policy, like everything we did, was carried out by halves. It neither increased the settlement area of the German Reich, nor did it undertake any attempt­ criminal though it would have been­to strengthen the Reich by the use of black blood. The Askaris in German East Africa were a short, hesitant step in this direction. Actually they served only for the defense of the colonies themselves. The idea of bringing black troops into a European battlefield, quite aside from its practical impossibility in the World War, never existed even as a design to be realized under more favorable circumstances, while, on the contrary, it was always regarded and felt by the French as the basic reason for their colonial activity.Thus, in the world today we see a number of power states, some of which not only far surpass the strength of our German nation in population, but whose area above all is the chief support of their political power. Never has the relation of the German Reich to other existing world states been as unfavorable as at the beginning of our history two thousand years ago and again today. Then we were a young people, rushing headlong into a world of great crumbling state formations, whose last giant, Rome, we ourselves helped to fell. Today we find ourselves in a world of great power states in process of formation, with our own Reich sinking more and more into insignificance.We must bear this bitter truth coolly and soberly in mind. We must follow and compare the German Reich through the centuries in its relation to other states with regard to population and area. I know that everyone will then come to the dismayed conclusion which I have stated at the beginning of this discussion: Germany is no longer a world power, regardless whether she is strong or weak from the military point of view.We have lost all proportion to the other great states of the earth, and this thanks only to the positively catastrophic leadership of our nation in the field of foreign affairs, thanks to our total failure to be guided by what I should almost call a testamentary aim in foreign policy, and thanks to the loss of any healthy instinct and impulse of self­preservation.If the National Socialist movement really wants to be consecrated by history with a great mission for our nation, it must be permeated by knowledge and filled with pain at our true situation in this world; boldly and conscious of its goal, it must take up the struggle against the aimlesmess and incompetence which have hitherto guided our German nation in the line of foreign affairs. Then, without consideration of ‘traditions’ and prejudices, it must find the courage to gather our people and their strength for an advance along the road that will lead this people from its present restricted living space to new land and soil, and hence also free it from the danger of vanishing frotn the earth or of serving others as a slave nation.The National Socialist movement must strive to eliminate the disproportion between our population and our area­viewing this latter as a source of food as well as a basis for power politicsbetween our historical past and the hopelessness of our present impotence. And in this it must remain aware that we, as guardians of the highest humanity on this earth, are bound by the highest obligation, and the more it strives to bring the German people to racial awareness so that, in addition to breeding dogs, horses, and cats, they will have mercy on their own blood, the more it will be able to meet this obligation.If I characterize German policy up to now as aimless and incompetent, the proof of my assertion lies in the actual failure of this policy. If our people had been intellectually inferior or cowardly, the results of its struggle on the earth could not be worse than what we see before us today. Neither must the development of the last decades before the War deceive us on this score; for we cannot measure the strength of an empire by itself, but only by comparison with other states. And just such a comparison furnishes proof that the increase in strength of the other states was not only more even, but also greater in its ultimate effect; that consequently, despite its apparent rise, Germany’s road actually diverged more and more from that of the other states and fell far behind; in short, the difference in magnitudes increased to our disfavor. Yes, as time went on, we fell behind more and more even in population. But since our people is certainly excelled by none on earth in heroism, in fact, all in all has certainly given the most blood of all the nations on earth for the preservation of its existence, the failure can reside only in the mistaken way in which it was given.If we examine the political experiences of our people for more than a thousand years in this connection, passing all the innumerable wars and struggles in review and examining the present end result they created, we shall be forced to admit that this sea of blood has given rise to only three phenomena which we are justified in claiming as enduring fruits of clearly defined actions in the field of foreign and general politics:

• The colonization of the Ostmark, carried out mostly

by Bavarians;

• the acquisition and penetration of the territory east

of the Elbe; and

• the organization by the Hohenzollerns of the Brandenburg­Prussian state as a model and nucleus for crystallization of a new Reich.

An instructive warning for the future!The first two great successes of our foreign policy have remained the most enduring. Without them our nation today would no longer have any importance at all. They were the first, but unfortunately the only successful attempt to bring the rising population into harmony with the quantity of our soil. And it must be regarded as truly catastrophic that our German historians have never been able to estimate correctly these two achievements which are by far the greatest and most significant for the future, but by contrast have glorified everything conceivable, praised and admired fantastic heroism, innumerable adventurous wars and struggles, instead of finally recognizing how unimportant most of these events have been for the nation’s great line of development.The third great success of our political activity lies in the formation of the Prussian state and the resultant cultivation of a special state idea, as also of the German army’s instinct of selfpreservation and self­defense, adapted to the modern world and put into organized form. The development of the idea of individual militancy into the duty of national militancy conscription has grown out of every state formation and every state conception. The significance of this development cannot be overestimated. Through the discipline of the Prussian army organism, the German people, shot through with hyperindividualism by their racial divisions, won back at least a part of the capacity for organization which they had long since lost. What other peoples still primitively possess in their herd community instinct, we, partially at least, regained artificially for our national community through the process of military training. Hence the elimination of universal conscription­ which for dozens of other peoples might be a matter of no importance­is for us fraught with the gravest consequences. Ten German generations without corrective and educational military training, left to the evil effects of their racial and hence philosophical division­and our nation would really have lost the last remnant of an independent existence on this planet. Only through individual men, in the bosom of foreign nations, could the German spirit make its contribution to culture, and its origin would not even be recognized. Cultural fertilizer, until the last remnant of AryanNordic blood in us would be corrupted or extinguished.It is noteworthy that the significance of these real political successes won by our nation in its struggles, enduring more than a thousand years, were far better understood and appreciated by our adversaries than by ourselves. Even today we still rave about a heroism which robbed our people of millions of its noblest blood­bearers, but in its ultimate result remained totally fruitless.The distinction between the real political successes of our people and the national blood spent for fruitless aims is of the greatest importance for our conduct in the present and the future.We National Socialists must never under any circumstances join in the foul hurrah patriotism of our present bourgeois world. In particular it is mortally dangerous to regard the last pre­War developments as binding even in the slightest degree for our own course. From the whole historical development of the nineteenth century, not a single obligation can be derived which was grounded in this period itself. In contrast to the conduct of the representatives of this period, we must again profess the highest aim of all foreign policy, to wit: to bring the soil into harmony with the population Yes, from the past we can only learn that, in setting an objective for our political activity, we must proceed in two directions: Land and soil as the goal of ourforeign policy, and a new philosophically established, uniform foundation as the aim of political activity at home.