“For the establishment of superior types of civilization the members of inferior races formed one of the most essential prerequisites . . . .”
And in a later passage in Mein Kampf, at Page 344, Hitler applies these general ideas to Germany:
“If in its historical development the German people had possessed the unity of the herd by which other people have so much benefited, then the German Reich would probably be mistress of the globe today. World history would have taken another course, and in this case no man can tell if what many blinded pacifists hope to attain by petitioning, whining, and crying may not have been reached in this way: namely, a peace which would not be based upon the waving of olive branches by tearful misery-mongering of pacifist old women, but a peace that would be guaranteed by the triumphant sword of a people endowed with the power to master the world and administer it in the service of a higher civilization.”
In these passages which I have quoted, the Tribunal will have noticed Hitler’s love of war and scorn of those whom he described as pacifists. The underlying message of the whole of this book, which appears again and again, is: Firstly, that the struggle for existence requires the organization and use of force; secondly, that the Aryan German is superior to other races and has the right to conquer and rule them; thirdly, that all doctrines which preach peaceable solutions of international problems represent a disastrous weakness in the nation that adopts them.
Implicit in the whole of the argument is a fundamental and arrogant denial of the possibility of any rule of law in international affairs.
It is in the light of the general doctrines of Mein Kampf that I invite the Tribunal to consider the more definite passages in which Hitler deals with specific problems of German foreign policy.
The very first page of the book contains a remarkable forecast of Nazi policy. It reads—Page 1, Column 1:
“German Austria must be restored to the great German motherland; and not, indeed, on any grounds of economic calculation whatsoever. No, no. Even if the union were a matter of economic indifference, and even if it were to be disadvantageous from the economic standpoint, still it ought to take place. People of the same blood should be in the same Reich. The German people will have no right to engage in a colonial policy until they shall have brought all their children together in one state. When the territory of the Reich embraces all the Germans and finds itself unable to assure them a livelihood, only then can the moral right arise from the need of the people, to acquire foreign territory. The plough is then the sword; and the tears of war will produce the daily bread for the generations to come.”
Hitler in this book also roundly declares that the mere restoration of Germany’s frontiers as they were in 1914 would be wholly insufficient for his purposes. At Page 553 he writes:
“In regard to this point I should like to make the following statement: To demand that the 1914 frontiers should be restored is a glaring political absurdity that is fraught with such consequences as to make the claim itself appear criminal. The confines of the Reich as they existed in 1914 were thoroughly illogical because they were not really complete, in the sense of including all the members of the German nation. Nor were they reasonable, in view of the geographical exigencies of military defense. They were not the consequences of a political plan which had been well considered and carried out, but they were temporary frontiers established in virtue of a political struggle that had not been brought to a finish; and indeed, they were partly the chance result of circumstances.”