Quotes from Hitler's Second Book (Zweites Buch)

All the quotations are sourced from Salvator Attanasio translation of Hitler's book which was originally published in 1961. The book can be downloaded here:

https://archive.org/details/pdfy-0IryYbwVIPGFodSS. The book is also sometimes referred to as Hitler's Secret Book or as Hitler's Second Book.

Sources along each quote usually refer to one of those but for no reason other than to make sure that this web-page shows up #1 when people search for quotes relating to this book.

In 1926, I 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 rightness 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. Adolf Hitler. Zweites Buch

I know well that even our highest success will not create a hundred percent happiness, for in view of human imperfection and the general circumstances conditioned by it, ultimate perfection always lies only in programmatic theory.

I also know, further, that no success can be achieved without sacrifice, just as no battle can be fought without losses. But the awareness of the incompleteness of a success will never be able to keep me from preferring such an incomplete success to the perceived complete downfall.

I will then strain every nerve to try to offset what is lacking in the probability of success or the extent of success through greater determination, and to communicate this spirit to the movement which I lead.

Today we are fighting against an enemy front through which we must and will break. We calculate our own sacrifices, weigh the extent of the possible success and will stride forward to the attack, regardless of whether it will come to a halt ten or a thousand kilometers behind the present lines.

For wherever our success ends, it will always be only the point of departure for a new struggle. Adolf Hitler. Hitler's Second Book

General Philosophy

Just as in ordinary life a man with a fixed life-goal that he tries to achieve at all events will always be superior to others who live aimlessly, exactly likewise is it in the life of nations. Adolf Hitler. Zweites Buch

Regardless of how high the cultural importance of a people 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 people'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 people can quite well endure a certain limitation of material goals, as long as it is given compensation in the form of active ideals. Adolf Hitler. Hitler's Secret Book

Whoever will not be a hammer in history, will be an anvil.

In all its development up to now our German people has had a choice only between these two possibilities. When it itself wanted to make history, and accordingly joyfully and boldly staked all, then it was still the hammer.

When it believed that it could renounce the obligations of the struggle for existence it remained, up to now, the anvil on which others fought out their struggle for existence, or it itself served the alien world as nutriment. Adolf Hitler. Hitler's Second Book

Only under the forge-hammer of world history do a people's eternal values become the steel and iron with which history is made.

But he who avoids battles will never attain the strength to fight battles. And he who never fights battles will never be the heir of those who struggle with each other in a military conflict.

For the previous heirs of world history were not, for instance, peoples with cowardly concepts of neutrality but young peoples with better swords.

Neither antiquity nor the Middle Ages nor modern times knows even a single example of any power-states coming into being save in permanent struggle. Adolf Hitler. Hitler's Secret Book

General European democracy will either be replaced by a system of Jewish-Marxist Bolshevism, to which all states will succumb one after the other, or by a system of free and unlinked national states who in the free play of forces will set their stamp on Europe in accordance with the number and importance of their specific folkdom. Adolf Hitler. Hitler's Second Book

Once a nation 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.

[...]

Compare the army organization, 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.

[...]

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. Adolf Hitler. Zweites Buch

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 people 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 people 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 at most, 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 people to manliness, which was possessed by no other state in the world and which, indeed, no people needed more than our Germans.

[...]

Thus, to be sure, our German people have 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 people, the destroyed inner value. For in opposition to the present bourgeois conception that the Treaty of Versailles has deprived our people 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 people's highest sources of power.

For the source of a people'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 people as such, through the existence of the highest individual personality values, as well as through its healthy attitude toward the idea of self-preservation. Adolf Hitler. Hitler's Second Book

No army with a high intrinsic value can be trained, if the preparation for war is not the aim of its existence. There are no armies for the maintenance of peace, but rather only for the victorious fighting of wars to the end. The more, in short, one tries finally to unhinge the Reichswehr [Reich Defense] from the inheritance of the old army, the more will it itself lose all traditions.

[...]

The German Reichswehr departs from the tradition of this glory in proportion as from year to year it ceases to be a representative of the national idea. The more it finally kills the conscious, national, hence nationalistic spirit in its own ranks, and removes its representatives, in order to give their posts to democrats and altogether ordinary ambitious persons, all the more will it become alien to the people.

[...]

Any military organization as such is deeply hated by this part of the German people, as long as it is indeed military and not the burglar-protection agency of international-pacifistic stock-exchange interests.

The only part to which an army can have an inner relationship in a militarily valuable sense, is that nationally conscious core of our people which not only thinks in a soldierly manner out of tradition, but rather, out of national love, is also the only part ready to wear the gray tunic in defense of honor and freedom.

It is necessary, however, that a military body maintain intimate relations with those from whom it itself in the hour of need can supplement itself and not with those who betray it at every opportunity. Hence the present leaders of our so-called Reichswehr can act as democratically as they please, nevertheless they will thereby never attain to a closer bond with the German people, because the German people for which this is appropriate is not to be found in the democratic camp. Adolf Hitler. Zweites Buch

Today there are not a few men, especially the so-called educated ones, who, when they finally make up their minds to fall in line with a certain action or even to promote it, first carefully weigh the percentage of the probability of its success, in order then to calculate the extent of their active involvement likewise on the basis of this percentage.

Thus this means: because, for example, any decision on foreign policy or domestic policy is not completely satisfying and hence does not seem certain to succeed, one should also not espouse it unreservedly with the full dedication of all his powers.

These unhappy souls have no understanding at all of the fact that, on the contrary, a decision which I deem to be necessary, whose success however does not seem completely assured, or whose success will offer only a partial satisfaction, must be fought for with an increased energy so that what it lacks in the possibility of success in percentage points, must be made up for in the energy of its execution. Adolf Hitler. Hitler's Secret Book

The Pan European Movement rests on the fundamental basic error that human values can be replaced by human numbers. This is a purely mechanical conception of history which avoids an investigation of all shaping forces of life, in order, in their stead, to see in numerical majorities the creative sources of human culture as well as the formative factors of history. This conception is in keeping with the senselessness of our western democracy as with the cowardly pacifism of our high economic circles. It is obvious that it is the ideal of all inferior or half breed bastards. Likewise, that the Jew especially welcomes such a conception. For, logically pursued, it leads to racial chaos and confusion, to a bastardisation and Negrification of cultural mankind, and thereby ultimately to such a lowering of its racial value that the Hebrew who has kept free of this can slowly rise to world domination. At least, he fancies that ultimately he will be able to develop into the brain of this mankind which has become worthless. Hitler's Second Book

Contemporary Germany

A peace policy that fails leads just as directly to the destruction of a people, 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 people. 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 people'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 cruelest war, however, is precisely the one which appears to be most peaceful to present-day 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. Adolf Hitler. Zweites Buch

The collapse which the German people suffered in 1918 lies, as I want once more to establish here, not in the overthrow of its military organization, or in the loss of its weapons, but rather in its inner decay which was revealed at the time and which is today increasingly apparent.

This inner decay lies just as much in respect to the worsening of its racial value as in the loss of all those virtues which condition the greatness of a people, guarantee its existence and promote its future.

Blood value, the idea of personality and the instinct for self-preservation slowly threatened to be lost to the German people.

Internationalism triumphs in its stead and destroys our folk-value. Democracy spreads by stifling the idea of personality, and in the end, an evil pacifistic liquid manure poisons the mentality which favors bold self-preservation.

We see the effects of this vice of mankind appear in the whole life of our people. Not only does it make itself noticeable in the field of political concerns, no, but also in that of economy, and not least in that of our cultural life, so that if it is not brought to a halt once and for all our people will be excluded from the number of nations with a future. The great domestic task of the future lies in the elimination of these general symptoms of the decay of our people. This is the mission of the National Socialist movement. A new nation must arise from this work which overcomes even the worst evils of the present, the cleavage between the classes, for which the bourgeoisie and Marxism are equally guilty. Adolf Hitler. Hitler's Secret Book

Since those who were responsible for arranging the November crime have become qualified to govern, it is no longer the interests of the German nation which are represented but instead those of the wrongly acting parties.

In general we cannot very well expect the promotion of Germany's vital needs by people to whom the fatherland and the nation are but means to an end and which, if necessary, they shamelessly sacrifice for their own interests.

Indeed, the instinct of self-preservation of these people and parties, so often visible, in truth by itself speaks against any resurgence of the German nation, since the freedom-struggle for German honor perforce would mobilize forces which must lead to the fall and destruction of the former defilers of German honor. Adolf Hitler. Zweites Buch

Let there be no talk in present-day Germany, above all, of national honor, let no one try to make himself conspicuous, as though one could preserve the national honor outwardly by any kind of rhetorical barking.

No, this cannot be done, and for the reason that it is no longer there. And by no means is it no longer there because we lost the war or because the French occupied Alsace-Lorraine, or the Poles stole Upper Silesia or the Italians took the South Tyrol.

No, the national honor is no longer there because the German people, in the most difficult time of its struggle for existence, exposed to the light of day a lack of character, an unabashed servility, a dog-like, crawling fawning that can only be called shameless.

For the reason that we subjected ourselves miserably without being forced to do so, indeed because the leaders of this people, against eternal historical truth and our own knowledge, themselves assumed the war guilt, and indeed burdened our whole people with it, because there was no oppression by the enemy which would have not found thousands of creatures as willing helpers among our people.

Because, conversely, there were those who shamelessly reviled the time of the great deeds of our people, spat upon the most glorious flag of all times, indeed defiled it with dirt, tore the cockades from home-coming soldiers before whom the world had trembled, pelted the flag with mud balls, ripped off ribbons and badges of honor and degraded a thousandfold even the memory of Germany's greatest period.

No enemy had so reviled the German army as it was defiled by the representatives of the November crime. No enemy had disputed the greatness of the commanders of the German army as much as they were calumniated by the scoundrel-like representatives of the new idea of government. And which was more certain dishonor for our people: the occupation of German areas by the enemy, or the cowardice with which our bourgeoisie surrendered the German Reich to an organization of pimps, pickpockets, deserters, black marketeers and hack journalists? Let not the gentlemen prattle now about German honor, as long as they bow under the rule of dishonor. They have no right to want to conduct a foreign policy in the name of national honor, if the domestic policy is one characterized by the most anti-nationalist shamelessness which has ever afflicted a great nation.

Whoever wants to act in the name of German honor today must first launch a merciless war against the infernal defilers of German honor.

They are not the enemies of yore, but they are the representatives of the November crime. That collection of Marxist, democratic-pacifistic, destructive traitors of our country who pushed our people into its present state of powerlessness. Adolf Hitler. Zweites Buch

No state leadership will be able to have great successes, if the people 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 people possess heroism, which it itself does not educate to heroism. Just as internationalism harms and thereby weakens the existing race value, and just as democracy destroys the personality value, so pacifism paralyzes the natural strength of the self-preservation of peoples.

[...]

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 people.

People and state have become two different concepts. It will be the task of the National Socialist movement to bring about a fundamental change in this regard. Adolf Hitler. Hitler's Secret Book

Germany had become a democratic state, and even though the leaders of the Reich were subject to imperial decisions, nevertheless these decisions could escape only with difficulty the impact of that general opinion which found its particular expression in the parliamentary institution. The makers of that body were the political parties as well as the press, which in turn themselves received their ultimate instructions from a few recognizable wire-pullers.

Thereby the interests of the nation receded more and more into the background in comparison to the interests of definite and special groups.

This was all the more the case, since only little clarity on the real interests of the nation prevailed among the broadest circles of public opinion, whereas, conversely, the interests of definite political parties or of the newspaper world were much more concrete since Germany was now indeed a national state.

But the concept of a national attitude was in the end only a purely governmental-patriotic-dynastic one. It had almost nothing to do with Völkisch insights. Hence a general vagueness prevailed as to the future and as to the directional goal of a future foreign policy. Viewed from a national standpoint the next task of the state, after the completion of its inner state structure, should have been the resumption and the final achievement of national unity. Adolf Hitler. Zweites Buch

In the period of the last twenty years before the war the metropolitan press in Vienna was already much more oriented along pro-French rather than pro-German lines. The press of the Slavic provinces, however, was deliberately hostile to Germany.

In proportion as Slavism was culturally fostered to the utmost by the Hapsburgs, and now acquired focal points of its own national culture in their capitals, it also gave rise to centers having a special political will of their own.

It is an historical punishment for the House of Hapsburg not to have seen that one day this national hatred, which was first mobilized against the Germans, would devour the Austrian state itself.

But for Germany the alliance with Austria became especially senseless the moment when, thanks to the influence of the German-Austrian Marxists, treasonable to the Volk, so-called universal suffrage finally broke the hegemony of Germanism in the Austrian state.

[...]

Once universal suffrage became the foundation of Austrian parliamentary representation, the situation of the Germans became hopeless, the more so since the clerical parties wanted a deliberate representation of the national viewpoints as little as did the Marxists, who deliberately betrayed them.

The same Social Democrats who today hypocritically talk about Germanism in the South Tyrol betrayed and sold out Germanism in old Austria in the most shameless way at every opportunity that offered itself. They always stood on the side of the enemies of our people.

The most impertinent Czech arrogance has always found its representatives in so-called German Social Democracy. Every oppressive act directed against Germany found their approbation. And every example of a German deterioration saw the German Social Democrats as collaborators.

Under such circumstances what could Germany still expect from a state whose political leadership, insofar as it was specifically expressed in parliament, was four-fifths consciously and deliberately anti-German? Adolf Hitler. Hitler's Secret Book

National Socialism

I am a German nationalist. This means that I proclaim my nationality. My whole thought and action belongs to it.

I am a socialist. I see no class and no social estate before me, but that community of people who are linked by blood, united by a language, and subject to a same general fate.

I love this people and hate only the majority of the moment, because I view the latter to be just as little representative of the greatness of my people as it is of its happiness.

The National Socialist movement which I lead today views its goal as the liberation of our people within and without. Domestically, it aims to give our people those forms of life which seem to be suitable to its nature and to be a benefit to it as the expression of this nature.

It aims thereby to preserve the character of this people and to further cultivate it through the systematic fostering of its best men and best virtues. Adolf Hitler. Zweites Buch

The average man has the greatest fear of death and in reality thinks of it most rarely. The important man concerns himself with it most emphatically and nevertheless fears it the least. The one lives blindly from day to day, sins heedlessly, in order suddenly to collapse before the inevitable. The other observes its coming most carefully and, to be sure, looks it in the eye with calm and composure.

Such is exactly the case in the lives of nations. It is often terrible to see how little men want to learn from history, how with such imbecilic indifference they gloss over their experiences, how thoughtlessly they sin without considering that it is precisely through their sins that so and so many nations and states have perished, indeed vanished from the earth.

And indeed how little they concern themselves with the fact that even for the short time-span for which we possess an insight into history, states and nations have arisen which were sometimes almost gigantic in size but which two thousand years later vanished without a trace, that world powers once ruled cultural spheres of which only sagas give us any information, that giant cities have sunk into ruins, and that their rubble-heap has hardly survived to show presentday mankind at least the site at which they were located.

The cares, hardships and sufferings of these millions and millions of individual men, who as a living substance were at one time the bearers and victims of these events, are almost beyond all imagination. Unknown men. Unknown soldiers of history.

And truly, how indifferent is the present. How unfounded its eternal optimism and how ruinous its willful ignorance, its incapacity to see and its unwillingness to learn.

And if it depended on the broad masses, the game of the child playing with the fire with which he is unfamiliar would repeat itself uninterruptedly and also to an infinitely greater extent.

Hence it is the task of men who feel themselves called as educators of a people to learn on their own from history and to apply their knowledge practically, without regard to the view, understanding, ignorance or even the refusal of the mass.

[...]

The National Socialist movement would have no right to regard itself as a truly great phenomenon in the life of the German people, if it could not muster the courage to learn from the experiences of the past, and to force the laws of life it represents on the German people despite all resistance. Adolf Hitler. Zweites Buch

The importance of the blood value of a people, however, only becomes totally effective when this value is recognized by a people, properly valued and appreciated.

Peoples who do not understand this value, or who no longer have a feeling for it, will therefore also begin to lose it, due to a lack of a natural instinct.

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 under estimation of one's own cultural values as against alien peoples.

Once a people 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 hodge-podge 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 people. 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 people is also ineffective, if not indeed endangered, as long as a people 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 people must pervade and determine the whole life and action of a people. Adolf Hitler. Hitler's Secret Book

Human birth control wipes out the bearer of the highest values, emigration destroys the value of the average. Adolf Hitler. Hitler's Secret Book

If this condition [dysgenic birth rates] should continue for just several hundred years, our German people would be, at the least, so weakened in its general importance that it would no longer be able to raise any kind of claim to be called a people of world consequence.

In any case, it will no longer be in a position to keep pace with the deeds of the considerably younger, healthier American people. Then, because of a great number of causes, we ourselves will experience what not a few old cultural peoples prove in their historical development.

Through their vices, and in consequence of their thoughtlessness, the Nordic blood-bearer was slowly eliminated as the most racially valuable element of the bearers of culture and founders of states, and thereby they left behind a human hodgepodge of such slight intrinsic importance that the law of action was wrested from their hands to pass over to other younger and healthier peoples.

All of southeast Europe, especially the still older cultures of Asia Minor and Persia, as well as those of the Mesopotamian lowlands provide classroom examples of the course of this process.

Thus, just as here history was slowly shaped by the racially more valuable peoples of the Occident, the danger likewise arises that the importance of racially inferior Europe slowly is leading to a new determination of the world's fate by the people of the North American continent.

That this danger threatens all Europe has, after all, already been perceived by some today. Only few of them wish to understand what it means for Germany. Our people, if it lives with the same political thoughtlessness in the future as in the past, will have to renounce its claim to world importance once and for all. Racially, it will increasingly atrophy until it finally sinks to degenerate, animallike feed bags lacking as well the memory of past greatness.

[...]

This will be the end of the life of a people whose history has been two thousand years of world history. This fate will no longer be changed with stupid national-bourgeois phrases whose practical senselessness and worthlessness must already have been proved by the success of development up to now.

Only a new reformation movement, which sets a conscious knowl edge against racial thoughtlessness and draws all the conclusions from this knowledge, can still snatch our people back from this abyss.

It will be the task of the National Socialist movement to carry over into a policy applied in practice the knowledge and scientific insights of race theory, either already existing or in the course of development, as well as the world history clarified through it. Adolf Hitler. Hitler's Second Book

Lebensraum (Living Space)

Already in the pre-war period, the future of the German people was a question of solving the problem of their sustenance. The German people could no longer find their daily bread within their existing territory.

All industry and competence, as well as all scientific methods of soil cultivation could at best alleviate the distress somewhat, but ultimately they could not prevent it.

Even in the years of exceptionally good harvests they no longer could completely cover their own food requirements. During average or bad harvests they were already dependent on imports to a considerable degree. Even the raw material supply of many industries ran into serious difficulties and could be procured only abroad.

There were various ways to overcome this distress. Emigration and birth control had to be categorically rejected even from the standpoint of the national state of that time. In this case the knowledge of biological consequences was less decisive than the fear of numerical decimation. Thus for the Germany of that time only two possibilities existed for securing the nation's preservation for a future time without having to limit the population itself.

Either an effort had to be made to solve the need for space, that is, to acquire new soil, or the Reich had to be converted into a great export firm. This meant that the production of certain commodities was to be increased beyond domestic needs, in order to be able to exchange them for foodstuffs and raw materials by way of export. Adolf Hitler. Zweites Buch

Germany in fact was always an overpopulated area. On the one hand this lay in the hemmed-in position of the German nation in Central Europe, on the other in the cultural and actual importance of this people and its human fertility.

Since the time of its entry into world history, the German people have always found themselves in need of space. Indeed, its first political emergence was forced primarily by that need.

Since the beginning of the Völkerwanderung [The age of the great migrations of the Germanic peoples] our people have never been able to settle this need for space, except through conquest by the sword or through a reduction of its own population. This reduction of the population was sometimes effected through hunger, sometimes through emigration, and at times through endless, unfortunate wars. In recent times it has been effected by voluntary birth control. Adolf Hitler. Hitler's Second Book

The German borders of the year 1914 were borders which presented something incomplete in exactly the same way as the borders of all nations are at all times incomplete.

The territorial distribution of the world at any time is the momentary result of a struggle and a development which by no means is concluded, but one which clearly continues further.

It is stupid to take the border of any sample year in a nation's history and offhand to represent it as a political aim.

We can, of course, present the border of the year 1648 or that of 1312, etc., just as well as the border of the year 1914. This all the more so as indeed the border of the year 1914 was not satisfactory in a national, military or geopolitical sense.

It was only the momentary situation in our people's struggle for existence which has been going on for centuries. And even if the World War had not occurred, this struggle would not have had its end in 1914 If the German people had in fact achieved the restoration of the borders of the year 1914, the sacrifices of the World War would have been no less in vain. Adolf Hitler. Hitler's Second Book

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 people.

Since through it the necessary space is won for the further in crease of a people, 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 plow. 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 people the earth which it wanted to cultivate industriously and honestly for itself so that its children might someday be provided with their daily bread.

For this earth 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 conquering it, the strength to preserve it, and the industry to put it to the plow. Adolf Hitler. Zweites Buch

Every healthy, vigorous people sees nothing sinful in territorial acquisition, but something quite in keeping with nature. The modern pacifist who denies this holy right might 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 people 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.

[...]

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 eternalize the wealth of certain men, the greatness of certain business enterprises, and for this purpose eliminate the play of free forces, competition. Adolf Hitler. Hitler's Secret Book

Consequently of all the Germans in the world there are only [94,428,430] millions within the present Reich territory, who represent [66.19] per cent of the total number of our people altogether.

Of the Germans not united with the motherland, in consequence of the slow loss of dedicated racial comrades the [...] must be regarded, [...], that is, a total number of approximately [...] million Germans find themselves in a situation which in all human probability will one day cause their de-Germanization.

In no case, however, will they be able to take further part in the motherland's fateful struggle in any kind of decisive form, and just as little, too, in the cultural development of their people.

Whatever the German element individually accomplishes in North America, it will not be reckoned to the benefit of the German people as such, but adds to the cultural aggregate of the American Union.

Here the Germans are really only the cultural fertilizers for other peoples. Indeed, in reality the greatness of these nations is, in general, often to be ascribed to the high percentage of German contributions and accomplishments.

Once we keep the size of this constant loss of people in view, we will immediately be able to estimate the slight importance of the border policy sponsored by the bourgeois world.

Even if a German foreign policy were to restore the borders of the year 1914, the percentage of Germans living within the Reich territory, that is belonging to our nation, would rise despite this only from [66.19] per cent to [69.15] per cent. Thus the possibility of enlarging this percentage considerably could hardly be in question any more.

If, notwithstanding, the German element abroad wants to remain true to the nation, this can at the outset be only a question of a language and cultural loyalty, in that the more it rises to a consciously manifested feeling of belongingness, the more does the motherland of the German nation honor the German name in the dignity of her representatives.

Thus the more Germany as a Reich transmits a mark of the greatness of the German people to the world, the more will the German element conclusively lost to the state receive a stimulus at least to take pride in belonging spiritually to this people. On the other hand, the more wretchedly the motherland herself attends to her interests, and accordingly transmits a bad impression abroad, the weaker will the inner inducement be felt to belong to such a people. Since the German people does not consist of Jews, the German element, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries, nevertheless and unfortunately will increasingly be anglicized and presumably likewise be lost to our people, spiritually and ideologically as well. Just as its practical work accomplishments are already lost to them. Adolf Hitler. Hitler's Second Book

Economics

The more a nation accepts the belief that it can maintain its life only through peaceful economic activity, the more will its very economy be surrendered to collapse.

For, ultimately, economics, as a purely secondary matter in national life, is linked to the primary existence of a strong state. The sword had to stand before the plow, and an army before economics. Adolf Hitler. Hitler's Second Book

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-industrialization 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 people, 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 people 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.

[...]

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. Adolf Hitler. Zweites Buch

It is hoped to raise the export capacity through an increase of production and thereby be able to provide adequately for import needs. Only it is completely forgotten that for Germany this whole problem, as has already been stressed, is not at all a problem of increasing production but rather a question of sales possibility; and that the export difficulties would not at all be obviated by a reduction of German production costs as, again, our bourgeois sly dogs presume.

Because inasmuch as this, in itself, is only partly possible in consequence of our limited domestic market, making German export commodities able to compete by lowering production costs—for instance, through the dismantling of our social legislation, and the duties and burdens resulting therefrom—it will only bring us thither, where we had landed on August 4, 1914. Adolf Hitler. Zweites Buch

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 over filling 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 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 people swiftly disappears, all racial, moral and folk values are earmarked for destruction, ideals are undermined, and in the end the prerequisite which a people urgently needs in order to take upon itself the ultimate consequences of the struggle for world markets is eliminated. Adolf Hitler. Hitler's Secret Book

A people which no longer needs to shunt off its rising rural generations into the big cities as factory workers, but which instead can settle them as free peasants on their own soil, will open up a domestic sales market to German industry which can gradually remove and exempt it from the frenzied struggle and scramble for the so-called place in the sun in the rest of the world.

It is the foreign policy task of the National Socialist movement to prepare and ultimately to carry out this development. It must also place foreign policy in the service of the reorganization of our folkdom on the basis of its philosophical range of ideas. Even here it must anchor the principle that we do not fight for systems but for a living people, that is for flesh and blood, which must be preserved and whose daily bread must not be lacking so that in consequence of its physical health it can also be healthy spiritually. Adolf Hitler. Hitler's Second Book

Foreign Policy

If the task of domestic policy—besides the obvious one of satisfying the so-called questions of the day—must be the steeling and strengthening of a nation by means of a systematic cultivation and promotion of its inner values, then the task of foreign policy is to correspond to and collaborate with this policy in order to create and to secure the vital prerequisites abroad.

A healthy foreign policy, therefore, will always keep the winning of the basis of a people's sustenance immovably in sight as its ultimate goal. Domestic policy must secure the inner strength of a people so that it can assert itself in the sphere of foreign policy.

Foreign policy must secure the life of a people for its domestic political development. Hence domestic policy and foreign policy are not only most closely linked, but must also mutually complement one another. Adolf Hitler. Hitler's Second Book

The moment the foreign policy aim no longer signified a struggle for the German people's interests but rather the preservation of world peace, we lost the ground under our feet. Adolf Hitler. Hitler's Secret Book

In terms of foreign policy the National Socialist movement is distinguished from previous bourgeois parties by, for example, the following: The foreign policy of the national bourgeois world has in truth always been only a border policy; as against that, the policy of the National Socialist movement will always be a territorial one.

In its boldest plans, for example, the German bourgeoisie will aspire to the unification of the German nation, but in reality it will finish with a botched-up regulation of the borders.

The National Socialist movement, on the contrary, will always let its foreign policy be determined by the necessity to secure the space necessary to the life of our people.

It knows no Germanizing or Teutonizing, as in the case of the national bourgeoisie, but only the spread of its own people.

It will never see in the subjugated, so-called Germanized, Czechs or Poles as a national, let alone Völkisch, strengthening, but only the racial weakening of our people.

For its national conception is not determined by earlier patriotic ideas of government, but rather by Völkisch, racial insights. Adolf Hitler. Hitler's Secret Book

Wise political leaders of a people will never see in war the aim of the life of a people, 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 people'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 people's future. Adolf Hitler. Hitler's Second Book

America

There now appears as a dynamic actor in world history a new state which, as a truly European colony, has for centuries received the best Nordic forces of Europe by way of emigration; aided by the community of their original blood, these have built a new, fresh community of the highest racial value.

It is no accident that the American Union is the state in which at the present time most inventions are being made by far, some of which are of an incredible boldness.

Americans, as a young, racially select people, confront old Europe which has continually lost much of its best blood through war and emigration. Just as little as one can equate the accomplishment of one thousand degenerate Levantines in Europe, say in Crete, with the accomplishment of one thousand racially still more valuable Germans or Englishmen, so can one just as little equate the accomplishment of one thousand racially questionable Europeans to the capacity of one thousand racially highly valuable Americans.

Only a conscious Völkisch race policy would be able to save European nations from losing the law of action to America, in consequence of the inferior value of European peoples vis-à-vis the American people.

[...]

The danger is especially great since, because of the complete indifference on our side, the American Union itself, inspired by the teachings of its own ethnologists, has established special standards for immigration.

By making entry to American soil dependent on definite racial prerequisites on the one hand, as well as on the definite physical health of the individual as such, bleeding Europe of its best people has, indeed, perforce been legally regulated. This is something which our whole so-called national bourgeois world and all its economic politicians either do not see or, at least, will not hear of because it is unpleasant to them and because it is much cheaper to pass over these things with a couple of general national phrases. Adolf Hitler. Hitler's Secret Book

At any rate, the World War has proven one thing explicitly: who-ever conducts himself as a neutral in great world-historical conflicts may perhaps at first make a little business, but in terms of power politics he will thereby ultimately also be excluded from a co-determination of the world's fate.

Thus, had the American Union preserved her neutrality in the World War, today she would be regarded as a power of the second rank regardless of whether England or Germany had emerged as a victor. By entering the war she raised herself to England's naval strength, but in international-political terms marked herself as a power of decisive importance.

Since her entry into the World War the American Union is appraised in a completely different way. It lies in the nature of mankind's forgetfulness no longer to know, after only a short time, what the general judgment of a situation had been only a few years before.

Just as today we detect a complete disregard of Germany's former greatness in the speeches of many foreign statesmen, just as little, conversely, can we appraise the extent of the increase in value that the American Union has experienced in our judgment since her entry into the World War.

[...]

The German can ponder this with or without bitterness. It is important to learn from history, especially if its teachings speak to us in such a compelling way.

Thus the belief that through a prudent, reserved neutrality vis-à-vis the developing conflicts in Europe and elsewhere one can some day reap the benefits thereof as a laughing third is false and idiotic.

In general freedom is preserved neither by begging nor by cheating. And also not by work and industry but exclusively by struggle, and indeed by one's own struggle. Adolf Hitler. Zweites Buch

There is no need to refute the opinion that just because a fusion of peoples of different nationalities has taken place in the American Union, this must also be possible in Europe.

The American Union, to be sure, has brought people of different nationalities together into a young nation. But closer scrutiny discloses that the overwhelming majority of these different ethnic groups racially belong to similar or at least related basic elements.

For since the emigration process in Europe was a selection of the fittest, this fitness in all European peoples lying primarily in the Nordic admixture, the American Union, in fact, has drawn to itself the scattered Nordic elements from among peoples who were very different as such.

[...]

The American Union's power of assimilation has failed vis-à-vis the Chinese as well as vis-à-vis the Japanese element. They also sense this well and know it, and therefore they would best prefer to exclude these alien bodies from immigration.

[...]

That the American Union feels itself to be a Nordic-German state and in no way an international mishmash of peoples further emerges from the manner in which it allots immigration quotas to European nations.

Scandinavians, that is, Swedes, Norwegians, further Danes, then English-men, and finally Germans, are allotted the greatest contingents. Romanians and Slavs very little, Japanese and Chinese they would prefer to exclude altogether. Adolf Hitler. Zweites Buch

England

That England has a clear foreign policy goal is proved by the fact of the existence and therewith of the rise of this giant empire.

Let no one fancy, after all, that a world empire can ever be forged without a clear will thereto.

Obviously not every single member of such a nation goes to work everyday with the idea of setting a great foreign policy goal, but in a completely natural way even an entire people will be gripped by such a goal so that even the unconscious acts of individuals nevertheless lie in the general line of the aim that has been set and actually benefit it.

Indeed the general political goal will slowly stamp itself on the very character of such a people, and the pride of the present-day Englishman is no different from the pride of the former Romans.

The opinion that a world empire owes its rise to chance, or that the events which conditioned its establishment, were lucky and accidental historical processes, is false.

Ancient Rome owed its greatness, exactly as does present-day England, to the soundness of Moltke's assertion that in the long run luck is always with the fit. This fitness of a people in no way lies only in racial value, but also in the ability and skill with which these values are applied.

A world empire of the size of ancient Rome, or of present-day Great Britain, is always the result of a marriage between the highest race value and the clearest political aim. As soon as one of these two factors begins to be lacking, first a weakening sets in and ultimately perhaps even a decline.

Present-day England's aim is conditioned by the race value of Anglo-Saxonism as such and by her insular position. It lay in the race value of Anglo-Saxonism to strive for territorial space. Of necessity this drive could find fulfillment only outside present-day Europe.

Not that the English had not, from time to time, also attempted to take soil in Europe for their expansionist lusts. But all these enterprises failed because of the fact that they were opposed by states which at that time were of a no less great racial fitness. Adolf Hitler. Zweites Buch

Germany motivated her claim to colonies with her ability and her desire to spread German culture. As such it was nonsense.

For culture, which is the general life-expression of a definite people, cannot be transmitted to another people with wholly other psychic prerequisites. This may, at best, go with a so-called international civilization which stands in the same relation to culture as jazz music to a Beethoven symphony.

[...]

England needed markets and sources of raw material for her commodities and she secured these markets for herself through power politics. This is the sense of English colonial policy.

If later even England nevertheless mouthed the word culture, it was only from a purely propagandistic viewpoint, so that she also could morally embroider her own exceedingly sober actions somewhat.

In reality the living conditions of the savages were a matter of complete indifference to the English as long, and to the extent, that they did not affect the living conditions of the English themselves.

That later still other ideas, of a political prestige character, were linked with colonies of the size of India is conceivable and understandable.

But no one can dispute that, for instance, Indian interests never determined English living conditions, but instead English living conditions determined India's.

Likewise it cannot be disputed that even in India the Englishman does not set up any cultural institution of any kind so that, for instance, the natives may share in English culture but rather so that, at best, the Englishman can draw more benefits from his colonies.

Or does one believe that England brought railroads to India just to put Indians in possession of European transport possibilities and not in order to make possible a better utilization of the colony as well as to guarantee an easier domination?

If today in Egypt, England again follows in the footsteps of the Pharaohs and stores the water of the Nile by means of gigantic dams, it is certainly not done in order to make the earthly life of the poor fellah easier, but only in order to make English cotton independent of the American monopoly.

But these are all viewpoints which Germany never dared to think about openly in her colonial policy. The English were the educators of the natives for England's interests, the German was the teacher. That in the end the natives might have felt better with us than they did under the English would, for a normal Englishman, be far from speaking for our kind of colonization policy but surely for that of the English instead. Adolf Hitler. Hitler's Secret Book

Italy and Southern Tyrol

Like the German people the Italian people lives on a small soil surface which in part is scantily fertile. For centuries, indeed many centuries, this overpopulation has forced Italy to a permanent export of people.

Even though a great part of these emigrants, as seasonal laborers, return to Italy in order to live there on their savings, this leads more than ever to a further aggravation of the situation.

Not only is the population problem not solved thereby, but it is sharpened rather. Just as Germany through her export of goods fell into a state of dependence on the ability, potentiality and willingness of other powers and countries to receive these goods, likewise and exactly did Italy with her export of people.

In both cases a closing of the receiving market, resulting from events of any kind whatsoever, perforce led to catastrophic consequences within these countries.

Hence Italy's attempt to master the problem of sustenance through an increase of her industrial activity cannot lead to any ultimate success because, at the outset, the lack of natural raw materials in the Italian motherland robs her in great measure of the required ability to compete.

Just as in Italy the conceptions of a formal bourgeois national policy are being overcome and a Völkisch feeling of responsibility is taking its place, likewise will this state also be forced to deviate from its former political conceptions in order to turn to a territorial policy on a grand scale. Adolf Hitler. Zweites Buch

Just as fascism has given the Italian people a new value, likewise the value of the German people must not be estimated for the future on the basis of its momentary life-expression, but according to the forces which it has so often shown in its former history and which, perhaps, it can again show tomorrow. Adolf Hitler. Hitler's Secret Book

The more proud and independent, the more national the Italian people becomes, the less will it in its development ever come into conflict with Germany. ... A national-conscious Germany and an equally proud Italy will also ultimately be able to close the wounds left behind by the World War in the understanding of their friendship based on their frank and mutual community of interests. ... Only a National Socialist Germany will find the way to a final understanding with a fascist Italy and finally eliminate the danger of war between the two peoples. Adolf Hitler. Zweites Buch

Why Italy today can primarily be considered as an ally for Germany is connected with the fact that this country is the only one whose domestic and foreign policy is determined by purely Italian national interests.

These Italian national interests are the only ones which do not contradict German interests and, conversely, German interests do not run counter to them. Adolf Hitler. Hitler's Secret Book

[Referring to 200,000 Germans in Italy] If the sagacity of the fascist regime one day succeeds in making 65 million Germans into friends of Italy this will be worth more than if it educates 200,000 into becoming bad Italians. Adolf Hitler. Hitler's Second Book

The South Tyrol, or better, the German element in the South Tyrol, must remain preserved for the German people, but in Germany itself, through their insane policy of anti-national dishonor, of general corruption and of obsequiousness to the international financial lords, they murder more than double the people that the South Tyrol numbers as German inhabitants.

They are silent about the 17,000–22,000 people driven to suicide on an average in recent years by their catastrophic policies, although this number with children included, likewise amounts in ten years alone, to more than the South Tyrol numbers in German inhabitants.

They foster emigration and Herr Stresemann's national bourgeoisie characterizes the increase of the emigration quota as an enormous foreign policy success.

And yet this means that every four years Germany loses more people than the South Tyrol numbers as inhabitants of German nationality. But in abortions and birth control, year for year, they murder almost double the number of people of German nationality in the South Tyrol all together.

And this pack arrogates to itself the moral right to speak on behalf of the interests of the German element abroad. Adolf Hitler. Hitler's Second Book

France

...in proportion as France declines in her own people's power, this state proceeds to the opening up of her reservoir of black people. Thus a danger of unimaginable proportions draws near for Europe.

The idea of French Negroes, who can contaminate white blood, on the Rhine as cultural guards against Germany is so monstrous that it would have been regarded as completely impossible only a few decades ago.

Surely France itself would suffer the greatest harm through this blood-pollution, but only if the other European nations remain conscious of the value of their white race.

[...]

... this completely non-French black army indeed vouchsafes a certain defense against communist demonstrations, since utter subordination in all situations will be easier to preserve in an army which is not at all linked by blood to the French people. Adolf Hitler. Hitler's Second Book

Russia

The Russia which Bismarck knew was not a typical Slavic state, at least insofar as it was a question of the political leadership of the same.

In general, Slavdom is lacking in state-forming forces. In Russia especially government formations were always attended to by foreign elements.

Since the time of Peter the Great there were, above all, very many Germans (Balts!) who formed the skeleton and the brains of the Russian state. In the course of centuries countless thousands of these Germans have been Russified but only in the sense in which our own bourgeoisie, our national bourgeoisie, would like to Germanize or Teutonize Poles or Czechs.

Just as in this case the new-fledged "German" is in truth only a Germanspeaking Pole or Czech, likewise did these artificial Russians remain German, or better, Teutons, according to their blood and hence their capabilities.

Russia is indebted to this Teutonic upper stratum for her political state as well as for what little exists of her cultural value. A great Russia would neither have arisen nor would she have been able to preserve herself without this really German upper and intellectual stratum. As long as Russia had been a state with an autocratic form of government this upper stratum, which in truth was not at all Russian, also decisively influenced the political life of the gigantic empire.

Even Bismarck knew this Russia at least in part. It was with this Russia that the master of German political statesmanship had political dealings. Adolf Hitler. Zweites Buch