Hitler’s Second Book Read online

  Hitler’s Second Book

  Adolf Hitler

  Gerhard L. Weinberg

  From Publishers Weekly

  In 1958, while directing the microfilming and organization of a trove of archives that the U.S. forces had taken from the Nazis at the end of WWII, historian Weinberg (A World at Arms) discovered the manuscript of a second book that Hitler had written but never published. The manuscript was published in German in 1961, accompanied by Weinberg’s annotations, but this is the first authoritative English version (a pirated and poor translation appeared in the 1960s). The text bears all of Hitler's hallmarks: rambling thoughts, half-baked ideas, pedantic writing-along with a terrifying, sustained belief in war and violence as the means to ensure that Germans would flourish. Compared to Mein Kampf, there are fewer pages devoted to Jews. Nonetheless, what comes across most strongly is Hitler’s abiding commitment to the principle of race and his identification of Jews as the enemy that threatened to undo all that Germans had created. Hitler dwells at length on foreign policy, and outlines a strategy of alliance with Fascist Italy and Great Britain. (He actually believed that Britain would accept a German-dominated European continent so long as Germany did not challenge the overseas British empire.) He also foresees an inevitable clash with the United States. This provides solid historical background on Hitler's thinking in the late 1920s, when his party was nothing more than a tiny, radical sect. Weinberg provides helpful notes and a very informative introduction.

  Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

  * * *

  “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  Such were the words of Adolf Hitler in his untitled, unpublished, and long suppressed second work written only a few years after the publication of Mein Kampf.

  Only two copies of the 200 page manuscript were originally made, and only one of these has ever been made public.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 the background of the intervening years, it should interest not scholars only, but the general reader.”*

  *as quoted by http://www.pharo.com/lost&found.htm

  HITLER’S SECOND BOOK

  The Unpublished Sequel to Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler

  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, 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. 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 München 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 thro
ugh.

  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 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.

  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.