Politics is history in the making.
Such were the words of Adolf Hitler in his untitled,unpublished, and
long suppressed second work written only a few years after the
publication of Mein Kampf.
Only two copies of the 200 page manuscript were originally made, and only one of these
has ever been made public. Kept strictly secret under Hitler's orders, the document was
placed in an air raid shelter in 1935 where it remained until it's discovery by an American
officer in 1945.
Written in 1928, the authenticity of the book has been verified by Josef Berg (former
employee of the Nazi publishing house Eher Verlag), and Telford Taylor (former
Brigadier General U.S.A. R., and Chief Counsel at the Nuremburg war-crimes trials) who,
after an analysis made in 1961, comments:
"If Hitler's book of 1928 is read against thebackground of the intervening years , it should
interest not scholars only, but the general reader.
FOREWORD
In August, 1925, on the occasion of the writing of the second volume, I formulated the fundamental ideas of a
National Socialist foreign policy, in the brief time afforded by the circumstances. Within the framework of that
book I dealt especially with the question of the Southern Tyrol, which gave rise to attacks against the
Movement as violent as they were groundless. In 1926, 1 found myself forced to have this part of the second
volume published as a special edition. I did not believe that by so doing I would convert those opponents who,
in the hue and cry over the Southern Tyrol, saw primarily a welcome means for the struggle against the hated
National Socialist Movement. Such people cannot be taught better because the question of truth or error, right
or wrong, plays absolutely no part for them. As soon as an issue seems suitable for exploitation, partly for
political party purposes, partly even for their highly personal interests, the truthfulness or Tightness of the matter
at hand is altogether irrelevant. This is all the more the case if they can thereby inflict damage on the cause of
the general awakening of our Folk. For the men responsible for the destruction of Germany, dating from the
time of the collapse, are her present rulers, and their attitude of that time has not changed in any respect up to
now. Just as at that time they cold heartedly sacrificed Germany for the sake of doctrinaire party views or for
their own selfish advantage, today they likewise vent their hatred against anyone who contradicts their interests,
even though he may have, a thousandfold, all the grounds for a German resurgence on his side. Even more. As
soon as they believe the revival of our Folk, represented by a certain name, can be seen, they usually take a
position against everything that could emanate from such a name. The most useful proposals, indeed the most
patently correct suggestions, are boycotted simply because their spokesman, as a name, seems to be linked to
general ideas which they presume they must combat on the basis of their political party and personal views. To
want to convert such people is hopeless.
Hence in 1926, when my brochure on the Southern Tyrol was printed, I naturally gave not a second's thought to
the idea that I could make an impression on those who, in consequence of their general philosophical and
political attitude, already regarded me as their most vehement opponent. At that time I did entertain the hope
that at least some of them, who were not at the outset malicious opponents of our National Socialist foreign
policy, would first examine our view in this field and judge it afterward. Without a doubt this has also happened
in many cases. Today I can point out with satisfaction that a great number of men, even among those in public
political life, have revised their former attitude with respect to German foreign policy. Even when they believed
they could not side with our standpoint in particulars, they nevertheless recognised the honourable intentions
that guide us here. During the last two years, of course, it has become clearer to me that my writing of that time
was in fact structured on general National Socialist insights as a premise. It also became clearer that many do
not follow us, less out of ill will than because of a certain inability. At that time, within the narrowly drawn
limits, it was not possible to give a real fundamental proof of the soundness of our National Socialist conception
of foreign policy. Today I feel compelled to make up for this. For not only have the attacks of the enemy been
intensified in the last few years, but through them the great camp of the indifferent has also been mobilised to a
certain degree. The agitation that has been systematically conducted against Italy for the past five years
threatens slowly to bear fruit: resulting in the possible death and destruction of the last hopes of a German
resurgence.
Thus, as has often happened in other matters, the National Socialist Movement in its foreign policy position
stands completely alone and isolated within the community of the German Folk and its political life. The attacks
of the general enemies of our Folk and Fatherland are joined inside the country by the proverbial stupidity and
ineptitude of the bourgeois national parties, the indolence of the broad masses, and by cowardice, as a
particularly powerful ally: the cowardice that we can observe today among those who by their very nature are
incapable of putting up any resistance to the Marxist plague, and who, for this reason, consider themselves
downright lucky to bring their voices to the attention of public opinion in a matter which is less dangerous than
the struggle against Marxism, and which nevertheless looks and sounds like something similar to it. For when
they raise their clamour over the Southern Tyrol today, they seem to serve the interests of the national struggle,
just as, conversely, they come as close as they can to standing aside from a real struggle against the worst
internal enemies of the German nation. These patriotic, national, and also in part Folkish champions, however,
find it considerably easier to launch their war cry against Italy in Vienna or Miinchen under benevolent support
and in union with Marxist betrayers of their Folk and Fatherland, rather than fight an earnest war against these
very elements. Just as so much nowadays has become appearance, the whole national pretence by these people
has for a long time been only an outward show which, to be sure, gratifies them, and which a great part of our
Folk does not see through.
Against this powerful coalition, which from the most varied points of view is seeking to make the question of
the Southern Tyrol the pivot of German foreign policy, the National Socialist Movement fights by unswervingly
advocating an alliance with Italy against the ruling Francophile tendency. Thereby the Movement, in
contradistinction to the whole of public opinion in Germany, emphatically points out that the Southern Tyrol
neither can nor should be an obstacle to this policy. This view is the cause of our present isolation in the sphere
of foreign policy and of the attacks against us. Later, to be sure, it will ultimately be the cause of the resurgence
of the German nation.
I write this book in order to substantiate this firmly held conception in detail and to make it understandable. The
less importance I attach to being understood by the enemies of the German Folk, the more I feel the duty of
exerting myself to present and to point out the fundamental National Socialist idea of a real German foreign
policy to the national minded elements of our Folk as such, who are only badly informed or badly led. I know
that, after a sincere examination of the conception presented here, many of them will give up their previous
positions and find their way into the ranks of the National Socialist Freedom Movement of the German Nation.
They will thus strengthen that force which one day will bring about the final settlement with those who cannot
be taught because their thought and action are determined not by the happiness of their Folk, but by the interests
of their party or of their own person.
chapter 1
WAR AND PEACE
Politics is history in the making. History itself is the presentation of the course of a Folk's struggle for existence.
I deliberately use the phrase struggle for existence here because, in truth, that struggle for daily bread, equally in
peace and war, is an eternal battle against thousands upon thousands of resistances, just as life itself is an eternal
struggle against death. For men know as little why they live as does any other creature of the world. Only life is
filled with the longing to preserve itself. The most primitive creature knows only the instinct of the self
preservation of its own, in creatures standing higher in the scale it is transferred to wife and child, and in those
standing still higher to the entire species. While, apparently, man often surrenders his own instinct of self
preservation for the sake of the species, in truth he nevertheless serves it to the highest degree. For not seldom
the preservation of the life of a whole Folk, and with this of the individual, lies only in this renunciation by the
individual. Hence the sudden courage of a mother in the defence of her young and the heroism of a man in the
defence of his Folk. The two powerful life instincts, hunger and love, correspond to the greatness of the instinct
for self preservation. While the appeasement of eternal hunger guarantees self preservation, the satisfaction of
love assures the continuance of the race. In truth these two drives are the rulers of life. And even though the
fleshless aesthete may lodge a thousand protests against such an assertion, the fact of his own existence is
already a refutation of his protest. Nothing that is made of flesh and blood can escape the laws which
determined its coming into being. As soon as the human mind believes itself to be superior to them, it destroys
that real substance which is the bearer of the mind.
What, however, applies to individual man also applies to nations. A nation is only a multitude of more or less
similar individual beings. Its strength lies in the value of the individual beings forming it as such, and in the
character and the extent of the sameness of these values. The same laws which determine the life of the
individual, and to which he is subject, are therefore also valid for the Folk. Self preservation and continuance
are the great urges underlying all action, as long as such a body can still claim to be healthy. Therefore, even the
consequences of these general laws of life will be similar among Folks, as they are among individuals
If, for every creature on this Earth, the instinct of self preservation, in its twin goals of self maintenance and
continuance, exhibits the most elementary power, nevertheless the possibility of satisfaction is limited, so the
logical consequence of this is a struggle in all its forms for the possibility of maintaining this life, that is, the
satisfaction of the instinct for self preservation.
Countless are the species of all the Earth's organisms, unlimited at any moment in individuals is their instinct
for self preservation as well as the longing for continuance, yet the space in which the whole life process takes
place is limited. The struggle for existence and continuance in life waged by billions upon billions of organisms
takes place on the surface of an exactly measured sphere. The compulsion to engage in the struggle for
existence lies in the limitation of the living space; but in the life struggle for this living space lies also the basis
for evolution .
In the times before man, world history was primarily a presentation of geological events: the struggle of natural
forces with one another, the creation of an inhabitable surface on this planet, the separation of water from land,
the formation of mountains, of plains, and of the seas. This is the world history of this time. Later, with the
emergence of organic life, man's interest concentrated on the process of becoming and the passing away of its
thousandfold forms. And only very late did man finally become visible to himself, and thus by the concept of
world history he began to understand first and foremost only the history of his own becoming, that is, the
presentation of his own evolution. This evolution is characterised by an eternal struggle of men against beasts
and against men themselves. From the invisible confusion of the organisms there finally emerged formations:
Clans, Tribes, Folks, States. The description of their origins and their passing away is but the representation of
an eternal struggle for existence.
If, however, politics is history in the making, and history itself the presentation of the struggle of men and
nations for self preservation and continuance, then politics is, in truth, the execution of a nation's struggle for
existence. But politics is not only the struggle of a nation for its existence as such; for us men it is rather the art
of carrying out this struggle .
Since history as the representation of the hitherto existing struggles for existence of nations is at the same time
the petrified representation of politics prevailing at a given moment, it is the most suitable teacher for our own
political activity.
If the highest task of politics is the preservation and the continuance of the life of a Folk, then this life is the
eternal stake with which it fights, for which and over which this struggle is decided. Hence its task is the
preservation of a substance made of flesh and blood. Its success is the making possible of this preservation. Its
failure is the destruction, that is, the loss of this substance. Consequently, politics is always the leader of the
struggle for existence, the guide of the same, its organiser, and its efficacy will, regardless of how man formally
designates it, carry with it the decision as to the life or death of a Folk .
It is necessary to keep this clearly in view because, with this, the two concepts — a policy of peace or war —
immediately sink into nothingness. Since the stake over which politics wrestles is always life itself, the result of
failure or success will likewise be the same, regardless of the means with which politics attempts to carry out
the struggle for the preservation of the life of a Folk. A peace policy that fails leads just as directly to the
destruction of a Folk, that is, to the extinction of its substance of flesh and blood, as a war policy that
miscarries. In the one case just as in the other, the plundering of the prerequisites of life is the cause of the dying
out of a Folk. For nations have not become extinct on battlefields; lost battles rather have deprived them of the
means for the preservation of life, or, better expressed, have led to such a deprivation, or were not able to
prevent it.
Indeed, the losses which arise directly from a war are in no way proportionate to the losses deriving from a
Folk's bad and unhealthy life as such. Silent hunger and evil vices in ten years kill more people than war could
finish off in a thousand years. The cruellest war, however, is precisely the one which appears to be most
peaceful to presentday humanity, namely the peaceful economic war. In its ultimate consequences, this very war
leads to sacrifices in contrast to which even those of the World War shrink to nothing. For this war affects not
only the living but grips above all those who are about to be born. Whereas war at most kills off a fragment of
the present, economic warfare murders the future. A single year of birth control in Europe kills more people
than all those who fell in battle, from the time of the French Revolution up to our day, in all the wars of Europe,
including the World War. But this is the consequence of a peaceful economic policy which has overpopulated
Europe without preserving the possibility of a further healthy development for a number of nations.
In general, the following should also be stated:
As soon as a Folk forgets that the task of politics is to preserve its life with all means and according to all
possibilities, and instead aims to subject politics to a definite mode of action, it destroys the inner meaning of
the art of leading a Folk in its fateful struggle for freedom and bread.
A policy which is fundamentally bellicose can keep a Folk removed from numerous vices and pathological
symptoms, but it cannot prevent a change of the inner values in the course of many centuries. If it becomes a
permanent phenomenon, war contains an inner danger in itself, which stands out all the more clearly the more
dissimilar are the fundamental racial values which constitute a nation. This already applied to all the known
States of antiquity, and applies especially today to all European States. The nature of war entails that, through a
thousandfold individual processes, it leads to a racial selection within a Folk, which signifies a preferential
destruction of its best elements. The call to courage and bravery finds its response in countless individual
reactions, in that the best and most valuable racial elements again and again voluntarily come forward for
special tasks, or they are systematically cultivated through the organisational method of special formations.
Military leadership of all times has always been dominated by the idea of forming special legions, chosen elite
troops for guard regiments and assault battalions. Persian palace guards, Alexandrian elite troops, Roman
legions of Praetorians, lost troops of mercenaries, the guard regiments of Napoleon and Frederick The Great,
the assault battalions, submarine crews and flying corps of the World War owed their origin to the same idea
and necessity of seeking out of a great multitude of men, those with the highest aptitude for the performance of
correspondingly high tasks, and bringing them together into special formations. For originally every guard was
not a drill corps but a combat unit. The glory attached to membership in such a community led to the creation of
a special esprit de corps which subsequently, however, could freeze and ultimately end up in sheer formalities.
Hence not seldom such formations will have to bear the greatest blood sacrifices; that is to say, the fittest are
sought out from a great multitude of men and led to war in concentrated masses. Thus the percentage of the best
dead of a nation is disproportionately increased, while conversely the percentage of the worst elements is able to
preserve itself to the highest degree. Over against the extremely idealistic men who are ready to sacrifice their
own lives for the Folkish Community, stands the number of those most wretched egoists who view the
preservation of their own mere personal life likewise as the highest task of this life. The hero dies, the criminal
is preserved. This appears self evident to an heroic age, and especially to an idealistic youth. And this is good,
because it is the proof of the still present value of a Folk. The true statesman must view such a fact with
concern, and take it into account. For what can easily be tolerated in one war, in a hundred wars leads to the
slow bleeding away of the best, most valuable elements of a nation. Thereby victories will indeed have been
won, but in the end there will no longer be a Folk worthy of this victory. And the pitifulness of the posterity,
which to many seems incomprehensible, not seldom is the result of the successes of former times.
Therefore, wise political leaders of a Folk will never see in war the aim of the life of a Folk, but only a means
for the preservation of this life. It must educate the human material entrusted to it to the highest manhood, but
rule it with the highest conscientiousness. If necessary, when a Folk's life is at stake, they should not shrink
from daring to shed blood to the utmost, but they must always bear in mind that peace must one day again
replace this blood. Wars which are fought for aims that, because of their whole nature, do not guarantee a
compensation for the blood that has been shed, are sacrileges committed against a nation, a sin against a Folk's
future.
Eternal wars, however, can become a terrible danger among a Folk which possesses such unequal elements in
its racial composition that only part of them may be viewed as Statepreserving, as such, and therefore,
especially, creative culturally. The culture of European Folks rests on the foundations which its infusion of
Nordic blood has created in the course of centuries. Once the last remains of this Nordic blood are eliminated,
the face of European culture will be changed, the value of the States decreasing, however, in accordance with
the sinking value of the Folks.
A policy which is fundamentally peaceful, on the other hand, would at first make possible the preservation of its
best blood carriers, but on the whole it would educate the Folk to a weakness which, one day, must lead to
failure, once the basis of existence of such a Folk appears to be threatened. Then, instead of fighting for daily
bread, the nation rather will cut down on this bread and, what is even more probable, limit the number of people
either through peaceful emigration or through birth control, in order in this way to escape an enormous distress.
Thus the fundamentally peaceful policy becomes a scourge for a Folk. For what, on the one hand, is effected by
permanent war, is effected on the other by emigration. Through it a Folk is slowly robbed of its best blood in
hundreds of thousands of individual life catastrophes. It is sad to know that our whole national political wisdom,
insofar as it does not see any advantage at all in emigration, at most deplores the weakening of the number of its
own people, or at best speaks of a cultural fertiliser which is thereby given to other States. What is not perceived
is the worst. Since the emigration does not proceed according to territory, nor according to age categories, but
instead remains subject to the free rule of fate, it always drains away from a Folk the most courageous and the
boldest people, the most determined and most prepared for resistance. The peasant youth who emigrated to
America 150 years ago was as much the most determined and most adventurous man in his village as the
worker who today goes to Argentina. The coward and weakling would rather die at home than pluck up the
courage to earn his bread in an unknown, foreign land. Regardless whether it is distress, misery, political
pressure or religious compulsion that weighs on people, it will always be those who are the healthiest and the
most capable of resistance who will be able to put up the most resistance. The weakling will always be the first
to subject himself. His preservation is generally as little a gain for the victor as the stay at homes are for the
mother country. Not seldom, therefore, the law of action is passed on from the mother country to the colonies,
because there a concentration of the highest human values has taken place in a wholly natural way. However,
the positive gain for the new country is thus a loss for the mother country. As soon as a Folk once loses its best,
strongest and most natural forces through emigration in the course of centuries, it will hardly be able any more
to muster the inner strength to put up the necessary resistance to fate in critical times. It will then sooner grasp
at birth control. Even here the loss in numbers is not decisive, but the terrible fact that, through birth control, the
highest potential values of a Folk are destroyed at the very outset. For the greatness and future of a Folk is
determined through the sum of its capacities for the highest achievements in all fields. But these are personality
values which do not appear linked to primogeniture. If we were to strike off from our German cultural life, from
our science, indeed from our whole existence as such, all that which was created by men who were not first
born sons, then Germany would hardly be a Balkan State. The German Folk would no longer have any claim to
being valued as a cultural Folk. Moreover, it must be considered that, even in the case of those men who as first
born nevertheless accomplished great things for their Folk, it must first be examined whether one of their
ancestors at least had not been a first born. For when in his whole ancestral series the chain of the first born
appears as broken just once [one man], then he also belongs to those who would not have existed had our
forefathers always paid homage to this principle. In the life of nations, however, there are no vices of the past
that are [would be] right in the present.
The fundamentally peaceful policy, with the subsequent bleeding to death of a nation through emigration and
birth control, is likewise all the more catastrophic the more it involves a Folk which is made up of racially
unequal elements. For in this case as well the best racial elements are taken away from the Folk through
emigration, whereas through birth control in the homeland it is likewise those who in consequence of their
racial value have worked themselves up to the higher levels of life and society who are at first affected.
Gradually then their replenishment would follow out of the bled, inferior broad masses, and finally, after
centuries, lead to a lowering of the whole value of the Folk altogether. Such a nation will have long ceased to
possess real life vitality.
Thus a policy which is fundamentally peaceful will be precisely as harmful and devastating in its effects as a
policy which knows war as its only weapon.
Politics must fight about the life of a Folk, and for this life; moreover, it must always choose the weapons of its
struggles so that life in the highest sense of the word is served. For one does not make politics in order to be
able to die, rather one may only at times call upon men to die so that a nation can live. The aim is the
preservation of life and not heroic death, or even cowardly resignation.
Chapter 2
THE NECESSITY OF STRIFE
A Folk's struggle for existence is first and foremost determined by the following fact:
Regardless of how high the cultural importance of a Folk 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 Folk'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 animallike he becomes, until finally he regards food intake as
the one and only aim of life. Hence a Folk 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 Folk,
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 Folk 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 Folk'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 Folk more and more from the reality
of life.
But the bread which a Folk requires is conditioned by the living space at its disposal. A healthy Folk, 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 Folk 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 Folk has been its own soil.
But now we must consider the following:
The number of a Folk is a variable factor. It will always rise in a healthy Folk. Indeed, such an increase alone
makes it possible to guarantee a Folk'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 Folks have increased
their needs to such an extent that the rise in European soil productivity, which is possible from year to year
under favourable 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 Folk is variable, the soil as such, however, remains constant. This means that the increase of a Folk 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 Folk, 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 Folk. Since through it the necessary space is won for the further increase of a Folk, 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 Folk 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 Folk 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 Folk 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 manmade in such a situation which at the moment is
unfavourable 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
eternalise 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 overabundance 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 Folk can be so decimated through them that any further population
increase practically comes to a halt. The consequences of this natural adaptation of the Folk 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 Folk 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 Folkish 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 colonisation; 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 judgement 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 favourable than the analogous conditions of European nations to their living spaces. Regardless of how
Italy, or let's say Germany, carry out the internal colonisation 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 colonisation, 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 kilometre. This is an
unhealthy relation. It is impossible to feed our Folk on this basis and under this premise. Indeed it would only
create confusion to set the slogan of internal colonisation 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 Folk'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 colonisation, in the most favourable 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 Folk. It will often be harmful for a nation's foreign policy position because it
awakens hopes which can remove a Folk 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 realise that
the strength of a Folk 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 Folk 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
therefrom 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 Folk 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 Folk, 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 Folk 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 industrialisation 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 Folk
If a really vigorous Folk believes that it cannot conquer another with peaceful economic means, or if an
economically weak Folk 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 vapours 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 Folk 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 Stateforming, and robs the Folk 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 centres which look less like cultural centres, 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 bastardisation, and of race lowering, thus resulting in those purulent infection
centres in which the international Jewish racial maggots thrive and finally effect further destruction.
Precisely thereby is the way open to decay in which the inner strength of such a Folk swiftly disappears, all
racial, moral and folk values are earmarked for destruction, ideals are undermined, and in the end the
prerequisite which a Folk urgently needs in order to take upon itself the ultimate consequences of the struggle
for world markets is eliminated. Weakened by a vicious pacifism, Folks 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 Folk 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 reestablished in favour 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 Folk's struggle for existence, and if the struggle for existence of a
Folk 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 Folk's strength, the following
concluding definitions result therefrom:
Politics is the art of carrying out a Folk's struggle for its Earthly existence.
Foreign policy is the art of safeguarding the momentary, necessary living space, in quantity and quality, for a
Folk.
Domestic policy is the art of preserving the necessary employment of force for this in the form of its race value
and numbers .