Das geheime Buch: November 2015

Das Geheime Buch - Race and Will

Here at this point I want to discuss that bourgeois concept which views power chiefly as a nation's supply of weapons, and, to a lesser degree, perhaps also the army as an organization.
If the concept of these people were pertinent, that is, if the power of a nation really lay in its possession of arms and in its army as such, then a nation which has lost its army and weapons through any reasons whatsoever must be done for permanently.
These bourgeois politicians themselves hardly believe that.
By their very doubt of this they admit that weapons and army organization are things which can be replaced; and that consequently they are not of a primary character, that there is something which stands above them, and which at least is also the source of their power.
And so it is.
Weapons and army forms are destructible and are replaceable.
As great as their importance perhaps is for the moment, just so is it limited when viewed over longer periods of time.
What is ultimately decisive in the life of a Volk is the will to self preservation, and the living forces that are at its disposal for this purpose.
Weapons can rust, forms can be outdated; the will itself can always renew both and move a Volk into the form required by the need of the moment.
The fact that we Germans had to give up our arms is of very slight importance, insofar as I look at the material side of it.
And yet this is the only thing our bourgeois politicians see.
What is depressing about the surrender of our arms, at most, lies in the attendant circumstances in which it took place, in the attitude which it made possible, as well as in the wretched manner of doing it which we experienced.
It is outweighed by the destruction of the organization of our Army.
But even there the major misfortune is not the elimination of the organization as the bearer of the weapons we possess, but rather the abolition of an institution for the training of our Volk to manliness, which was possessed by no other State in the world, and which, indeed, no Volk needed more than our Germans.
The contribution of our Old Army to the general disciplining of our Volk for the highest achievements in all fields is incommensurable.
Precisely our Volk, which in its racial fragmentation so very much lacks qualities which, for example, characterize the English - a determined sticking together in time of danger -- has received at least a part of this, which in other nations is a natural, instinctive endowment, by way of its training through the army.
The people who chatter so happily about socialism do not at all realize that the highest socialist organization of all has been the German Army.
This is also the reason for the fierce hatred of the typical capitalistically inclined Jews against an organization in which money is not identical with position, dignity, to say nothing of honor, but rather with achievement; and in which the honor of belonging among people of a certain accomplishment is more greatly appreciated than the possession of property and riches.
This is a conception which to Jews seems as alien as it is dangerous, and which, if only it became the general patrimony of a Volk, would signify an immunizing defense against every further Jewish danger.
If, for example, an Officer's rank in the Army could be bought, this would be comprehensible to Jews.
They cannot understand an organization - indeed they find it weird - which surrounds with honor a man who either possesses no property at all, or whose income is only a fragment of that of another man who precisely in this organization is neither honored nor esteemed.
But therein lay the chief strength of this incomparable old institution which unfortunately in the last thirty years of peace, however, also showed signs of slowly becoming corroded.
As soon as it became fashionable for individual Officers, especially of noble descent, to pair off with, of all things, department store Jewesses, a danger arose for the Old Army which, if the same development continued, might have some day grown into a great evil.

Kaiser Wilhelm I

At any rate, in the times of Kaiser Wilhelm I, there was no understanding for such events. Nevertheless, all in all, the Germany Army at the turn of the century was the most magnificent organization in the world, and its effect on our German Volk one that was more than beneficial.
The breeding ground of German discipline, German efficiency, forthright disposition, frank courage, bold aggressiveness, tenacious persistence and granite honorableness.
The conception of honor of a whole profession slowly but imperceptibly became the general patrimony of a whole Volk. That this organization was destroyed through the Peace Treaty Of Versailles was all the worse for our Volk, as our internal enemies thereby finally received a free path for effecting their worst intentions. But our incompetent bourgeoisie, for lack of any genius and ability to improvise, could not even find the most primitive substitute.
Thus, to be sure, our German Volk has lost possession of arms and their bearer.
But this has been the case countless times in the history of nations, without the latter having perished because of it.
On the contrary: nothing is easier to replace than a loss of weapons and every organizational form can again be created or renewed.
What is irreplaceable is the spoiled blood of a Volk, the destroyed inner value.
For in opposition to the present bourgeois conception that the Treaty Of Versailles has deprived our Volk of arms, I can reply only that the real lack of weapons lies in our pacifistic democratic poisoning, as well as in internationalism, which destroys and poisons our Volk's highest sources of power.
For the source of a Volk's whole power does not lie in its possession of weapons or in the organization of its army, but in its inner value which is represented through its racial significance, that is, the racial value of a Volk as such, through the existence of the highest individual personality values, as well as through its healthy attitude toward the idea of self preservation.
In coming before the public as National Socialists with this conception of the real strength of a Volk, we know that today the whole of public opinion is against us.
But this is indeed the deepest meaning of our new doctrine, which as a world view separates us from others.
Since our point of departure is that one Volk is not equal to another, the value of a Volk is also not equal to the value of another Volk.
If, however, the value of a Volk is not equal to another, then every Volk, apart from the numerical value deriving from its count, still has a specific value which is peculiar to it, and which cannot be fully like that of any other Volk.
The expressions of this specific, special value of a Volk can be of the most varied kind and be in the most varied fields; but collected together they result in a standard for the general valuation of a Volk.
The ultimate expression of this general valuation is the historical, cultural image of a Volk, which reflects the sum of all the radiations of its blood value or of the race values united in it.
This special value of a Volk, however, is in no way merely aesthetic cultural, but a general life value as such.
For it forms the life of a Volk in general, molds and shapes it and, therefore, also provides all those forces which a Volk can muster in order to overcome the resistances of life.
For every cultural deed, viewed in human terms, is in truth a defeat for the hitherto existing barbarism, every cultural creation thereby is a help to man's ascent above his formerly drawn limitations, and thereby a strengthening of the position of these Volks.
Thus a power for the assertion of life truly also lies in the cultural values of a Volk.
Consequently the greater the inner powers of a Volk in this direction, the stronger also the countless possibilities for the assertion of life in all fields of the struggle for existence. Consequently the higher the race value of a Volk, the greater its general life value [through] which it can stake in favor of its life, in the struggle and strife with other Volks. The importance of the blood value of a Volk, however, only becomes totally effective when this value is recognized by a Volk, properly valued and appreciated. Volks who do not understand this value or who no longer have a feeling for it for lack of a natural instinct, thereby also immediately begin to lose it. Blood mixing and lowering of the race are then the consequences which, to be sure, at the beginning are not seldom introduced through a so called predilection for things foreign, which in reality is an underestimation of one's own cultural values as against alien Volks.
Once a Volk no longer appreciates the cultural expression of its own spiritual life conditioned through its blood, or even begins to feel ashamed of it, in order to turn its attention to alien expressions of life, it renounces the strength which lies in the harmony of its blood and the cultural life which has sprung from it.
It becomes torn apart, unsure in its judgment of the world picture and its expressions, loses the perception and the feeling for its own purposes, and in place of this it sinks into a confusion of international ideas, conceptions, and the cultural hodgepodge springing from them.
Then the Jew can make his entry in any form, and this master of international poisoning and race corruption will not rest until he has thoroughly uprooted and thereby corrupted such a Volk.
The end is then the loss of a definite unitary race value and as a result, the final decline.
Hence every existing race value of a Volk is also ineffective, if not indeed endangered, as long as a Volk does not consciously remind itself of its own and nurse it with great care, building and basing all its hopes primarily on it.
For this reason, international mindedness is to be regarded as the mortal enemy of these values.
In its place the profession of faith in the value of one's own Volk must pervade and determine the whole life and action of a Volk.
The more the truly eternal factor for the greatness and the importance of a Volk is sought in the Volk value, the less will this value as such achieve a total effectiveness if the energies and talents of a Volk, at first slumbering, do not find the man who will awaken it.
For so little as mankind, which is made up of different race values, possesses a uniform average value, just as little is the personality value within a Volk the same among all members.
Every deed of a Volk, in whatever field it might be, is the result of the creative activity of a personality. No distress can be redressed solely by the wishes of those affected by it, as long as this general wish does not find its solution in a man chosen from a Volk for this task.
Majorities have never wrought creative achievements.
Never have they given discoveries to mankind.
The individual person has always been the originator of human progress. Indeed a Volk of a definite inner race value, so far as this value is generally visible in its cultural or other achievements, must at the outset possess the personality values, for without their emergence and creative activity the cultural image of that Volk would never have come into being, and therefore the possibility of any inference as to the inner value of such a Volk would be lacking.
When I mention the inner value of a Volk, I appraise it out of the sum of achievements lying before my eyes, and thereby at the same time I confirm the existence of the specific personality values which acted as the representatives of the race value of a Volk and created the cultural image. As much as race value and personality value seem to be linked together, because a racially valueless Volk cannot produce important creative personalities from this source - as, conversely, it seems impossible to infer, for example, the existence of race value from the lack of creative personalities and their achievements - just as much can a Volk, nevertheless, by the nature of the formal construction of its organism, of the Volk Community or of the State, promote the expression of its personality values, or at least facilitate it, or indeed even prevent it.
Once a Volk installs the majority as the rulers of its life, that is to say, once it introduces present day democracy in the western conception, it will not only damage the importance of the concept of personality, but block the effectiveness of the personality value.
Through a formal construction of its life, it prevents the rise and the work of individual creative persons.
For this is the double curse of the democratic parliamentary system prevailing today: not only is it itself incapable of bringing about really creative achievements, but it also prevents the emergence and thereby the work of those men who somehow threateningly rise above the level of the average.
In all times the man whose greatness lies above the average measure of the general stupidity, inadequacy, cowardice, and arrogance too, has always appeared most threatening to the majority.
Add to this that, through democracy, inferior persons must, almost as a law, become leaders, so that this system applied logically to any institution devalues the whole mass of leaders, insofar as one can call them that at all.
This resides in the irresponsibility lying in the nature of democracy.
Majorities are phenomena that are too elusive to be grasped so that they can somehow be charged with responsibility.
The leaders set up by them are in truth only executors of the will of the majorities.
Hence their task is less that of producing creative plans or ideas, in order to carry them out with the support of an available administrative apparatus, than it is to collect the momentary majorities required for the execution of definite projects.
Thus the majorities are adjusted less to the projects than the projects are to the majorities.
No matter what the result of such an action may be, there is no one who can be held concretely accountable.
This is all the more so as each decision that is actually adopted is the result of numerous compromises, which each will also exhibit in its character and content.
Who then is to be made responsible for it ?
Once a purely personally drawn responsibility is eliminated, the most compelling reason for the rise of a vigorous leadership falls away.
Compare the army organization [institution], oriented to the highest degree toward authority and responsibility of the individual person, with our democratic civil institutions, especially in relation to the results of the leadership training on both sides, and you will be horrified.
In one case an organization of men who are as courageous and joyous in responsibility as they are competent in their tasks, and in the other, incompetents too cowardly to assume responsibility.
For four and a half years the German Army organization withstood the greatest coalition of enemies of all times.
The civil, democratically decomposed domestic leadership literally collapsed at the first thrust of a few hundred ragamuffins and deserters.
The pitiful lack of really great leading minds among the German Volk finds its most simple explanation in the desolate disintegration which we see before us through the democratic parliamentary system which is slowly corroding our whole public life.
Nations must decide.
Either they want majorities or brains.
The two are never compatible.
Up to now, however, brains have always created greatness on this Earth, and what they created was again destroyed mostly through majorities.
Thus, on the basis of its general race value, a Volk can certainly entertain a justified hope that it can bring real minds into existence.
But then it must seek forms in the mode of construction of its national body which do not artificially, indeed systematically, restrict such brains in their activity, and erect a wall of stupidity against them, in short, which prevent them from achieving efficacy.
Otherwise one of the most powerful sources of a Volk's strength is blocked.
The third factor of the strength of a Volk is its healthy natural instinct for self preservation.
From it result numerous heroic virtues, which by themselves make a Volk take up the struggle for life.
No State leadership will be able to have great successes, if the Volk whose interests it must represent is too cowardly and wretched to stake itself for these interests.
No State leadership, of course, can expect that a Volk possess heroism, which it itself does not educate to heroism.
Just as internationalism harms and thereby weakens the existing race value, and as democracy destroys the personality value, so pacifism paralyzes the natural strength of the self preservation of Volks.
These three factors - the race value as such, the existing personality values, as well as the healthy instinct of self preservation - are the sources of strength, from which a wise and bold domestic policy time and again can draw the weapons which are necessary for the self assertion of a Volk.
Then the army establishments and the technical questions regarding weapons always find the solutions suitable to support a Volk in the hard struggle for freedom and daily bread. If the domestic leadership of a Volk loses sight of this standpoint, or believes that it must arm for the struggle in terms of weapon technique only, it can achieve as much momentary success as it pleases, but the future does not belong to such a Volk.
Hence the limited preparation for a war was never the task of truly great legislators and statesmen of this Earth, but rather the unlimited inner and thorough training of a Volk, so that its future could be secured almost as by law, according to all human reason. Then even wars lose the isolated character of more or less immense surprises, but instead are integrated into a natural, indeed self evident, system of fundamental, well grounded, permanent development of a Volk.
That present State leaders pay little attention to this viewpoint is partly due to the nature of democracy, to which they owe their very existence, but secondly to the fact that the State has become a purely formal mechanism which appears to them as an aim in itself, which must not in the least coincide with the interests of a specific Volk.
Volk and State have become two different concepts.
It will be the task of the National Socialist Movement to bring about a fundamental change here.

to be continued

Das Geheime Buch - Editor's Introduction

The Zweites Buch ("Second Book"), published in English as unofficially Hitler's Secret Book (Das Geheime Buch), and then officially Hitler's Second Book, is an unedited transcript of Adolf Hitler's thoughts on foreign policy, written in 1928; it was written after 'Mein Kampf', and was not published in his lifetime.

The Zweites Buch was not published in 1928 because 'Mein Kampf' did not sell well at that time, and Hitler's publisher, Franz-Eher-Verlag, told Hitler that a second book would hinder sales even more.

Background

Hitler wrote his second book in the summer of 1928, when he was 39.
Five years before, his attempted coup - the 'Münchener Putsch' - had been put down ignominiously.
Though Hitler had escaped with a lenient prison sentence, the National Socialists would remain a fringe party for years to come.
There were also problems in Hitler's personal life.

Geli Raubal

He was embroiled in a sexually ambiguous relationship with his niece, Geli Raubal, which would end only when she committed suicide in his flat years later.
Whatever Hitler's role in her death, during the years before he began to enjoy the compensating stimulus of power, he struck his close associates as a lonely, morose bachelor.
In the general election on May 20, 1928, the National Socialists received fewer than one million votes, and took only 12 seats in the Reichstag, out of 401.
At the time, Social Democrat made damaging accusations that Hitler had received money from Mussolini, and that this had induced him to ignore Italian oppression of the German-speaking minority in the border province of South Tyrol.
Though the NSDAP claimed victory, the election revealed that their foreign policy, in particular, lacked coherence and popular appeal.
Hitler decided to put his thoughts on paper, and spent much of June and July dictating the manuscript that we now know as his "second book".

Zweites Buch and Mein Kampf

There are a number of similarities and differences between 'Zweites Buch' and 'Mein Kampf'.

As in Mein Kampf, Hitler declared that the Jews were the eternal, and most dangerous opponents of the Aryan race.

As in 'Mein Kampf', Hitler outlined his 'Stufenplan' ("stage-by-stage plan").

Briefly, the 'Stufenplan' called for three stages.

In the first stage, there would be a massive military build-up, the overthrow of the "shackles" of the Treaty of Versailles, and the forming of alliances with Fascist Italy and the British Empire.

The second stage would be a series of fast, "lightning wars" in conjunction with Italy and Britain against France, and whichever of her allies in Eastern Europe - such as Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania and Yugoslavia - chose to stand by her.

The third stage would be a war to obliterate the "Judeo-Bolshevik" regime in the Soviet Union.

In contrast to 'Mein Kampf', in 'Zweites Buch' Hitler added a fourth stage to the Stufenplan.

He insinuated that in the far future a struggle for world domination might take place between the United States and a European alliance comprising a "new association of nations, consisting of individual states with high national value".

Zweites Buch also offers a different perspective on the U.S. than that outlined in 'Mein Kampf'.

In the latter, Hitler declared that Germany's most dangerous opponent on the international scene was the Soviet Union; in 'Zweites Buch', Hitler declared that for immediate purposes, the Soviet Union was still the most dangerous opponent, but that in the long-term, the most dangerous potential opponent was the U.S.

Lebensraum

In the first two chapters Hitler proclaimed the conquest of habitat as the main subject of the Nazi movement and gives it a far-reaching statement of reasons.

The starting point of his considerations is the "struggle for daily bread" as the basis of human society.

From this he developed his central idea of the correspondence between the population and the size of the habitat of a people.

If this is out of proportion, so is degeneration and a decline of a nation.

The struggle for adequate habitat he raises to a central principle of human history.

This fight can be fought only militarily for Hitler.

As alternatives to the struggle for living space, he sees birth control to reduce emigration to the population, the increase in food production, and exports to buy food.

All of these alternatives he rejects hereafter.

Birth control and emigration he rejects as a weakening of the people.

The increase of food production he declares insufficiently feasible.

Export is discarded, because it leads to increased struggle for markets with other nations, and therefore could only lead to the situation in which Germany stood in 1914

Foreign Policy

In the other chapters Hitler developed his thoughts on the future National Socialist foreign policy that would serve in the struggle for living space.

As in 'Mein Kampf', Hitler explains in the 'Second Book', that the Jews are the German peoples' eternal and most dangerous opponents, and tha this must be taken into consideration in considering future political plans.

In 'Mein Kampf', Hitler mentioned the US only occasionally, and even then with contempt.

They were, to him, as a "racially degenerate" society that will continue to see its demise.

By contrast, Hitler describes, in this second book, the United States as a dynamic, "racially successful" society that has eugenics, racial segregation practices and an exemplary immigration policy at the expense of "inferior" immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe.

Why this change occurred in Hitler's attitude between 1924-1928, is unknown.

Historians have noted that Hitler was notoriously poorly informed about the world outside of Germany, and at times the writing of 'Mein Kampf' probably knew little about the United States.

Hitler's knowledge of America came essentially from the Western novels of Karl May, which he had avidly read from boyhood.

This seems to have changed to 1928; Hitler, undoubtedly had heard of prosperity and industrialization in the United States, as well as by the Immigration Act of 1924, the racial segregation, and the fact that several states had the forced sterilization concept passed on mentally ill and retarded people.

Hitler stated his admiration for such measures, as well as his wish that Germany should adopt similar policies on a larger scale.

Hitler stated that the National Socialist foreign policy was to be based on 'Lebensraum' for the German people: The National Socialist Movement would always let its foreign policy be determined by the necessity to secure, for the Volk, the space necessary for the life of the Volk.

It knows no Germanising or Teutonising, as in the case of the national bourgeoisie, but only the spread of its own .

It will never see in the subjugated, so called Germanised, Czechs or Poles a national, let alone Völkisch, strengthening, but only the racial weakening of the Volk.

International Relations

Of all Germany's potential enemies, Hitler ranked the U.S. as the most dangerous.
By contrast, Hitler saw the UK as a fellow "Aryan" power that, in exchange for Germany's renunciation of naval and colonial ambitions, would ally itself with Germany.
France, in Hitler's opinion, was rapidly "Negroizing" itself.
In regard to the Soviet Union, Hitler dismissed the Russian people as being Slavic Untermenschen ("sub-humans"), incapable of intelligent thought.
Hitler consequently believed that the Russian people were ruled over by what he regarded as a gang of bloodthirsty but inept Jewish revolutionaries.
The majority of Americans were in Hitler's view "Aryans", albeit Aryans ruled by a Jewish plutocracy.
It was this combination of "Aryan" might, coupled with a more competent "Jewish rule" which made the U.S. so dangerous.

United Kingdom

In 'Zweites Buch', Hitler called for an Anglo-German alliance based on political expediency as well as the notion that the two Germanic powers were natural allies.
Hitler correctly argued that the alleged British striving for a 'balance of power', leading to an Anglo-German alliance, would not conflict with his goal of Germany being the dominant continental power because it was wrong to believe that "England fought every hegemonic power immediately", but rather was prepared to accept dominant states whose aims were "obviously and purely continental in nature".
Hitler went on to write that "Of course no one in Britain will conclude an alliance for the good of Germany, but only in the furtherance of British interests."
Nonetheless, because Hitler believed that there was an ongoing struggle between the "Jewish invasion" and the "old British tradition" for the control of Britain, Hitler believed the chances for Anglo-German alliance to be good, provided the "Jewish invasion" was resisted successfully.
Hitler hedged somewhat, however, by claiming that:

"the instincts of Anglo-Saxondom are still so sharp and alive that one cannot speak of a complete victory of Jewry, but rather, in part the latter is still forced to adjust its interests to those of the English. If the Jew were to triumph in England, English interests would recede into the background.... [But] if the Briton triumphs then a shift of England's attitude vis-à-vis Germany can still take place."

Das Geheime Buch - Chapter II - The Necessity of Strife

In this chapter Hitler provides and intriguing and forceful argument for 'Rassenhygiene' - also known as Eugenics.

Racial hygiene was a set of early twentieth century state sanctioned policies by which certain groups of individuals were allowed to procreate and others not, with the expressed purpose of promoting certain characteristics deemed to be particularly desirable. The most noteworthy example is the extensive implementation of racial hygiene policies by the Third Reich but similar policies were implemented throughout Europe, North America and Southern Africa.

The concept of racial "purity" was developed by Arthur de Gobineau. De Gobineau argued that race created culture, and that "impure" "race-mixing" leads to chaos. Racial hygiene was historically tied to traditional notions of public health, but usually with an enhanced emphasis on heredity. Francis Galton began working in 1869 in order to find a statistical science of heredity which he believed could encourage voluntary care in selecting partners, and in 1883 he introduced the term "Eugenics" for this subject, but in the early 20th century a Eugenics movement adopted ideas of Mendelian genetics and promoted 'negative eugenics', to prevent those thought to be unsuitable from having children.

The German eugenicist Alfred Ploetz introduced the term Rassenhygiene in his 'Grundlinien einer Rassenhygiene', in 1895. In its earliest incarnation it was concerned more with the declining birthrate of the German state and the increasing number of mentally ill and disabled people in state-run institutions, than with "de-Nordification" (Entnordung) which would come to dominate its philosophy in Germany from the 1920s through the second World War.

A Volk's struggle for existence is first and foremost determined by the following fact: Regardless of how high the cultural importance of a Volk may be, the struggle for daily bread stands at the forefront of all vital necessities.

To be sure, brilliant leaders can hold great goals before a Volk's eyes, so that it can be further diverted from material things in order to serve higher spiritual ideals.

In general, the merely material interest will rise in exact proportion as ideal spiritual outlooks are in the process of disappearing.

The more primitive the spiritual life of man, the more animal-like he becomes, until finally he regards food intake as the one and only aim of life.

Hence a Volk can quite well endure a certain limitation of material goals, as long as it is given compensation in the form of active ideals.

But if these ideals are not to result in the ruin of a Volk, they should never exist unilaterally at the expense of material nourishment, so that the health of the nation seems to be threatened by them.

For a starved Volk will indeed either collapse in consequence of its physical undernourishment, or perforce bring about a change in its situation.

Sooner or later, however, physical collapse brings spiritual collapse in its train.

Then all ideals also come to an end.

Thus ideals are good and healthy as long as they keep on strengthening a Volk's inner and general forces, so that in the last analysis they can again be of benefit in waging the struggle for existence.

Ideals which do not serve this purpose are evil, though they may appear a thousand times outwardly beautiful, because they remove a Volk more and more from the reality of life.

But the bread which a Volk requires is conditioned by the living space at its disposal.

A healthy Volk, at least, will always seek to find the satisfaction of its needs on its own soil.

Any other condition is pathological and dangerous, even if it makes possible the sustenance of a Volk for centuries.

World trade, world economy, tourist traffic, and so on, and so forth, are all transient means for securing a nation's sustenance.

They are dependent upon factors which are partly beyond calculation, and which, on the other hand, lie beyond a nation's power.

At all times the surest foundation for the existence of a Volk has been its own soil.

But now we must consider the following: The number of a Volk is a variable factor.

It will always rise in a healthy Volk. Indeed, such an increase alone makes it possible to guarantee a Volk's future in accordance with human calculations.

As a result, however, the demand for commodities also grows constantly.

In most cases the so called domestic increase in production can satisfy only the rising demands of mankind, but in no way the increasing population.

This applies especially to European nations.

In the last few centuries, especially in most recent times, the European Volks have increased their needs to such an extent that the rise in European soil productivity, which is possible from year to year under favorable conditions, can hardly keep pace with the growth of general life needs as such.

The increase of population can be balanced only through an increase, that is, an enlargement, of living space.

Now the number of a Volk is variable, the soil as such, however, remains constant.

This means that the increase of a Volk is a process, so self evident because it is so natural, that it is not regarded as something extraordinary.

On the other hand, an increase in territory is conditioned by the general distribution of possessions in the world; an act of special revolution, an extraordinary process, so that the ease with which a population increases stands in sharp contrast to the extraordinary difficulty of territorial changes.

Yet the regulation of the relation between population and territory is of tremendous importance for a nation's existence.

Indeed, we can justly say that the whole life struggle of a Volk, in truth, consists in safeguarding the territory it requires as a general prerequisite for the sustenance of the increasing population.

Since the population grows incessantly, and the soil as such remains stationary, tensions perforce must gradually arise which at first find expression in distress, and which for a certain time can be balanced through greater industry, more ingenious production methods, or special austerity.

But there comes a day when these tensions can no longer be eliminated by such means. Then the task of the leaders of a nation's struggle for existence consists in eliminating the unbearable conditions in a fundamental way, that is, in restoring a tolerable relation between population and territory.

In the life of nations there are several ways for correcting the disproportion between population and territory.

The most natural way is to adapt the soil, from time to time, to the increased population. This requires a determination to fight and the risk of bloodshed.

But this very bloodshed is also the only one that can be justified to a Volk.

Since through it the necessary space is won for the further increase of a Volk, it automatically finds manifold compensation for the humanity staked on the battlefield.

Thus the bread of freedom grows from the hardships of war. The sword was the path breaker for the plough.

And if we want to talk about human rights at all, then in this single case war has served the highest right of all: it gave a Volk the soil which it wanted to cultivate industriously and honestly for itself, so that its children might some day be provided with their daily bread.

For this soil is not allotted to anyone, nor is it presented to anyone as a gift.

It is awarded by Providence to people who in their hearts have the courage to take possession of it, the strength to preserve it, and the industry to put it to the plough.

Hence every healthy, vigorous Volk sees nothing sinful in territorial acquisition, but something quite in keeping with nature.

The modern pacifist who denies this holy right must first be reproached for the fact that he himself at least is being nourished on the injustices of former times.

Furthermore, there is no spot on this Earth that has been determined as the abode of a Volk for all time, since the rule of nature has for tens of thousands of years forced mankind eternally to migrate.

Finally the present distribution of possessions on the Earth has not been designed by a higher power, but by man himself.

But I can never regard a solution effected by man as an eternal value which Providence now takes under its protection and sanctifies into a law of the future.

Thus, just as the Earth's surface seems to be subject to eternal geological transformations, making organic life perish in an unbroken change of forms in order to discover the new, this limitation of human dwelling places is also exposed to an endless change.

However, many nations, at certain times, may have an interest in presenting the existing distribution of the world's territories as binding forever, for the reason that it corresponds to their interests, just as other nations can see only something generally man made in such a situation which at the moment is unfavorable to them, and which therefore must be changed with all means of human power.

Anyone who would banish this struggle from the Earth forever would perhaps abolish the struggle between men, but he would also eliminate the highest driving power for their development; exactly as if in civil life he would want to make eternal the wealth of certain men, the greatness of certain business enterprises, and for this purpose eliminate the play of free forces, competition.

The results would be catastrophic for a nation.

The present distribution of world space in a one sided way turns out to be so much in favour of individual nations that the latter perforce have an understandable interest in not allowing any further change in the present distribution of territories.

But the over-abundance of territory enjoyed by these nations contrasts with the poverty of the others, which, despite the utmost industry, are not in a position to produce their daily bread so as to keep alive.

What higher rights would one want to oppose against them if they also raise the claim to a land area which safeguards their sustenance ?... No.

The primary right of this world is the right to life, so far as one possesses the strength for this.

Hence, on the basis of this right, a vigorous nation will always find ways of adapting its territory to its population size.

Once a nation, as the result either of weakness or bad leadership, can no longer eliminate the disproportion between its increased population and the fixed amount of territory by increasing the productivity of its soil, it will necessarily look for other ways.

It will then adapt the population size to the soil.

Nature as such herself performs the first adaptation of the population size to the insufficiently nourishing soil. Here distress and misery are her devices.

A Volk can be so decimated through them that any further population increase practically comes to a halt.

The consequences of this natural adaptation of the Volk to the soil are not always the same.

First of all a very violent struggle for existence sets in, which only individuals who are the strongest and have the greatest capacity for resistance can survive.

A high infant mortality rate on the one hand and a high proportion of aged people on the other are the chief signs of a time which shows little regard for individual life.

Since, under such conditions, all weaklings are swept away through acute distress and illness, and only the healthiest remain alive, a kind of natural selection takes place.

Thus the number of a Volk can easily be subject to a limitation, but the inner value can remain, indeed it can experience an inner heightening.

But such a process cannot last for too long, otherwise the distress can also turn into its opposite.

In nations composed of racial elements that are not wholly of equal value, permanent malnutrition can ultimately lead to a dull surrender to the distress, which gradually reduces energy, and instead of a struggle which fosters a natural selection, a gradual degeneration sets in.

This is surely the case once man, in order to control the chronic distress, no longer attaches any value to an increase of his number, and resorts on his own to birth control.

For then he himself immediately embarks upon a road opposite to that taken by nature.

Whereas nature, out of the multitude of beings who are born, spares the few who are most fitted in terms of health and resistance to wage life's struggle, man limits the number of births, and then tries to keep alive those who have been born with no regard to their real value or to their inner worth.

Here his humanity is only the handmaiden of his weakness, and at the same time it is actually the cruellest destroyer of his existence.

If man wants to limit the number of births on his own, without producing the terrible consequences which arise from birth control, he must give the number of births free rein but cut down on the number of those remaining alive.

At one time the Spartans were capable of such a wise measure, but not our present, mendaciously sentimental, bourgeois patriotic nonsense.

The rule of six thousand Spartans over three hundred and fifty thousand Helots was only thinkable in consequence of the high racial value of the Spartans.

But this was the result of a systematic race preservation; thus Sparta must be regarded as the first Volkish State.

The exposure of sick, weak, deformed children, in short their destruction, was more decent and in truth a thousand times more humane than the wretched insanity of our day which preserves the most pathological subject, and indeed at any price, and yet takes the life of a hundred thousand healthy children in consequence of birth control or through abortions, in order subsequently to breed a race of degenerates burdened with illnesses.

Hence it can be said in general that the limitation of the population through distress and human agencies may very well lead to an approximate adaptation to the inadequate living space, but the value of the existing human material is constantly lowered and indeed ultimately decays.

The second attempt to adapt the population size to the soil lies in emigration, which so long as it does not take place tribally, likewise leads to a devaluation of the remaining human material.

Human birth control wipes out the bearer of the highest values, emigration destroys the value of the average.

There are still two other ways by which a nation can try to balance the disproportion between population and territory.

The first is called increasing the domestic productivity of the soil, which as such has nothing to do with so called internal colonization; the second the increase of commodity production and the conversion of the domestic economy into an export economy.

The idea of increasing the yield of the soil within borders that have been fixed once and forever is an old one.

The history of human cultivation of the soil is one of permanent progress, permanent improvement and therefore of increasing yields. While the first part of this progress lay in the field of methods of soil cultivation as well as in the construction of settlements, the second part lies in increasing the value of the soil artificially through the introduction of nutritious matter that is lacking or insufficient.

This line leads from the hoe of former times up to the modern steam plough, from stable manure up to present artificial fertilisers.

Without doubt the productivity of the soil has thereby been infinitely increased. But it is just as certain that there is a limit somewhere.

Especially if we consider that the living standard of cultured man is a general one, which is not determined by the amount of a nation's commodities available to the individual; rather it is just as much subject to the judgment of surrounding countries and, conversely, is established through the conditions within them.

The present day European dreams of a living standard which he derives as much from the potentialities of Europe as from the actual conditions prevailing in America.

International relations between nations have become so easy and close through modern technology and the communication it makes possible, that the European, often without being conscious of it, applies American conditions as a standard for his own life.

But he thereby forgets that the relation of the population to the soil surface of the American continent is infinitely more favorable than the analogous conditions of European nations to their living spaces.

Regardless of how Italy, or let's say Germany, carry out the internal colonization of their soil, regardless of how they increase the productivity of their soil further through scientific and methodical activity, there always remains the disproportion of the number of their population to the soil as measured against the relation of the population of the American Union to the soil of the Union.

And if a further increase of the population were possible for Italy or Germany through the utmost industry, then this would be possible in the American Union up to a multiple of theirs.

And when ultimately any further increase in these two European countries is no longer possible, the American Union can continue to grow for centuries until it will have reached the relation that we already have today.

The effects that it is hoped to achieve through internal colonization, in particular, rest on a fallacy.

The opinion that we can bring about a considerable increase in the productivity of the soil is false.

Regardless of how, for example, the land is distributed in Germany, whether in large or in small peasant holdings, or in plots for small settlers, this does not alter the fact that there are, on the average, 136 people to one square kilometer.

This is an unhealthy relation.

It is impossible to feed our Volk on this basis and under this premise.

Indeed it would only create confusion to set the slogan of internal colonization before the masses, who will then latch their hopes onto it and thereby think to have found a means of doing away with their present distress.

This would not at all be the case.

For the distress is not the result of a wrong kind of land distribution, say, but the consequence of the inadequate amount of space, on the whole, at the disposal of our nation today.

By increasing the productivity of the soil, however, some alleviation of a Volk's lot could be achieved.

But in the long run this would never exempt it from the duty to adapt the nation's living space, become insufficient, to the increased population.

Through internal colonization, in the most favorable circumstances, only amelioration in the sense of social reform and justice could take place.

It is entirely without importance as regards the total sustenance of a Volk.

It will often be harmful for a nation's foreign policy position because it awakens hopes which can remove a Volk from realistic thinking.

The ordinary, respectable citizen will then really believe that he can find his daily bread at home through industry and hard work, rather than realize that the strength of a Volk must be concentrated in order to win new living space.

Economics, which especially today is regarded by many as the saviour from distress and care, hunger and misery, under certain preconditions can give a Volk possibilities for existence which lie outside its relation to its own soil.

But this is linked to a number of prerequisites of which I must make brief mention here.

The sense of such an economic system lies in the fact that a nation produces more of certain vital commodities than it requires for its own use.

It sells this surplus outside its own national community, and with the proceeds it procures those foodstuffs, and also the raw materials which it lacks.

Thus this kind of economics involves not only a question of production, but in at least as great a degree a question of selling.

There is much talk, especially at the present time, about increasing production, but it is completely forgotten that such an increase is of value only as long as a buyer is at hand.

Within the circle of a nation's economic life, every increase in production will be profitable to the degree that it increases the number of goods which are thus made available to the individual.

Theoretically, every increase in the industrial production of a nation must lead to a reduction in the price of commodities and in turn to an increased consumption of them, and consequently put the individual Volk Comrade in a position to own more vital commodities.

In practice, however, this in no way changes the fact of the inadequate sustenance of a nation as a result of insufficient soil.

For, to be sure, we can increase certain industrial outputs, indeed many times over, but not the production of foodstuffs.

Once a nation suffers from this need, an adjustment can take place only if a part of its industrial overproduction can be exported in order to compensate from the outside for the foodstuffs that are not available in the homeland.

But an increase in production having this aim achieves the desired success only when it finds a buyer, and indeed a buyer outside the country.

Thus we stand before the question of the sales potential, that is, the market, a question of towering importance.

The present world commodity market is not unlimited.

The number of industrially active nations has steadily increased.

Almost all European nations suffer from an inadequate and unsatisfactory relation between soil and population.

Hence they are dependent on world export.

In recent years the American Union has turned to export, as has also Japan in the east.

Thus a struggle automatically begins for the limited markets, which becomes tougher the more numerous the industrial nations become and, conversely, the more the markets shrink.

For while on the one hand the number of nations struggling for world markets increases, the commodity market itself slowly diminishes, partly in consequence of a process of self industrialisation on their own power, partly through a system of branch enterprises which are more and more coming into being in such countries out of sheer capitalist interest.

For we should bear the following in mind: the German Volk, for example, has a lively interest in building ships for China in German dockyards, because thereby a certain number of men of our nationality get a chance to feed themselves which they would not have on our own soil, which is no longer sufficient.

But the German Volk has no interest, say, in a German financial group or even a German factory opening a so called branch dockyard in Shanghai which builds ships for China with Chinese workers and foreign steel, even if the corporation earns a definite profit in the form of interest or dividend.

On the contrary, the result of this will be only that a German financial group earns so and so many million, but, as a result of the orders lost, a multiple of this amount is withdrawn from the German national economy.

The more pure capitalist interests begin to determine the present economy, the more the general viewpoints of the financial world and the stock exchange achieve a decisive influence here, the more will this system of branch establishments reach out and thus artificially carry out the industrialization of former commodity markets and especially curtail the export possibilities of the European mother countries.

Today many can still afford to smile over this future development, but as it makes further strides, within thirty years people in Europe will groan under its consequences.

The more market difficulties increase, the more bitterly will the struggle for the remaining ones be waged.

Although the primary weapons of this struggle lie in pricing and in the quality of the goods with which nations competitively try to undersell each other, in the end the ultimate weapons even here lie in the sword.

The so called peaceful economic conquest of the world could take place only if the Earth consisted of purely agrarian nations and but one industrially active and commercial nation.

Since all great nations today are industrial nations, the so called peaceful economic conquest of the world is nothing but the struggle with means which will remain peaceful for as long as the stronger nations believe they can triumph with them, that is, in reality for as long as they are able to kill the others with peaceful economics.

For this is the real result of the victory of a nation with peaceful economic means over another nation.

Thereby one nation receives possibilities of survival and the other nation is deprived of them.

Even here what is at stake is always the substance of flesh and blood, which we designate as a Volk

If a really vigorous Volk believes that it cannot conquer another with peaceful economic means, or if an economically weak Volk does not wish to let itself be killed by an economically stronger one, as the possibilities for its sustenance are slowly cut off, then in both cases [it will seize the sword] the vapors of economic phraseology will be suddenly torn asunder, and war, that is the continuation of politics with other means, steps into its place.

The danger to a Volk of economic activity in an exclusive sense lies in the fact that it succumbs only too easily to the belief that it can ultimately shape its destiny through economics.

Thus the latter from a purely secondary place moves forward to first place, and finally is even regarded as State forming, and robs the Volk of those very virtues and characteristics which in the last analysis make it possible for Nations and States to preserve life on this Earth.

A special danger of the so called peaceful economic policy, however, lies above all in the fact that it makes possible an increase in the population, which finally no longer stands in any relation to the productive capacity of its own soil to support life.

This overfilling of an inadequate living space with people not seldom also leads to the concentration of people in work centers which look less like cultural centers, and rather more like abscesses in the national body in which all evil, vices and diseases seem to unite.

Above all, they are breeding grounds of blood mixing and bastardization, and of race lowering, thus resulting in those purulent infection centers in which the international Jews thrive, and finally effect further destruction.

Precisely thereby is the way open to decay in which the inner strength of such a Volk swiftly disappears, all racial, moral and Volk values are earmarked for destruction, ideals are undermined, and in the end the prerequisite which a Volk urgently needs in order to take upon itself the ultimate consequences of the struggle for world markets is eliminated.

Weakened by a vicious pacifism, Volks will no longer be ready to fight for markets for their goods with the shedding of their blood.

Hence, as soon as a stronger nation sets the real strength of political power in the place of peaceful economic means, such nations will collapse.

Then their own delinquencies will take revenge.

They are overpopulated, and now in consequence of the loss of all the real basic requirements they no longer have any possibility of being able to feed their overgrown mass of people adequately.

They have no strength to break the chains of the enemy, and no inner value with which to bear their fate with dignity.

Once they believed they could live, thanks to their peaceful economic activity, and renounce the use of violence.

Fate will teach them that in the last analysis a Volk is preserved only when population and living space stand in a definite natural and healthy relation to each other.

Further, this relation must be examined from time to time, and indeed must be re-established in favor of the population to the very same degree that it shifts unfavourably with respect to the soil.

For this, however, a nation needs weapons.

The acquisition of soil is always linked with the employment of force.

If the task of politics is the execution of a Volk's struggle for existence, and if the struggle for existence of a Volk, in the last analysis, consists of safeguarding the necessary amount of space for nourishing a specific population, and if this whole process is a question of the employment of a Volk's strength, the following concluding definitions result ….

Politics is the art of carrying out a Volk's struggle for its Earthly existence.

Foreign policy is the art of safeguarding the momentary, necessary living space, in quantity and quality, for a Volk.

Domestic policy is the art of preserving the necessary employment of force for this in the form of its race value and numbers.