“History and the task of the future no longer mean a struggle between classes, no longer a struggle between Church dogma and dogma, but the dispute between blood and blood, race and race, people and people. And this means: A struggle between psychologies.”
Consequently, Rosenberg had, in any case, no ideas of genocide as Raphael Lemkin expounds in Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, Page 81, where he ends the above quotation after the words “race and race, people and people,” but he believed in a struggle between psychologies, in other words, spiritual controversy.
I mention this spiritual trend in order to explain the peculiar fact in National Socialism that political considerations born of the intellect often gave way before the pathos of will and faith. In Rosenberg’s case this danger did not appear so much since in making everything revolve around the “soil,” that is, the fatherland, and its history and peasantry as the force from which springs the essence of a race, he remains in the sphere of life’s realities. Perhaps unaware of it himself, he was nevertheless borne upward by this current. The question arises as to what effects this ideology had on political life.
It is clear that the emphasis on will and faith gave special weight to political demands. After the Treaty of Versailles the political demands of Germany were aimed at recovering freedom and equality among the peoples as a still fettered great power. This had been the objective of German statesmen even before Hitler. The other great powers had certain misgivings about recognizing Germany again as such. Rosenberg fought to remove these misgivings. His weapon was his pen. The Tribunal has allowed me to present in evidence a group of excerpts from Rosenberg’s speeches and writings. I submitted it in my Document Book 1, Volume II. In view of the quantity of material and of my intention to submit only the most important matter, I depend on the Court’s being familiar with my document book.
In the first place I wish to call attention to the effect which these works had on German youth. I may recall the witness Von Schirach’s testimony. I repeat verbally:
“At conventions of youth leaders, at which he spoke once a year, Rosenberg chiefly chose educational, character-building subjects. I remember, for instance, that he spoke on loneliness and comradeship, personality and honor, and so forth. At these conventions of leaders he did not deliver any speeches against Jews. As far as I remember, he did not touch on the religious problem of youth either, in any case not to the best of my memory. Mostly I heard him talk on such subjects as I have just mentioned before.”
The attitude of youth was actually better than before the taking over of power. Idleness, the root of all evil, had ceased and had been replaced by work, the fulfillment of duty, the aiming at ideals, patriotism, and the will to get ahead. It was a fatality here too, that through Hitler’s policy these values were directed in the wrong manner.
The charges by the Prosecution that Rosenberg was the advocate of a conspiracy against peace, of racial hatred, of the elimination of human rights, of tyranny, of a rule of horror, violence, and illegality, of unbridled nationalism and militarism, of a German master race, I could already refute by pointing to the excerpts from The Myth of the 20th Century, which the Prosecution itself has submitted as evidence for the truth of its assertions. In reply to this, in order to refute this assertion by the Prosecution, I want to point in particular to the following facts: To prove Rosenberg’s honest struggle for the peaceful existence of nations side by side I wish to refer to his speech in Rome in November 1932 before the Royal Academy of Rome (reproduced in Blood and Honor, Document Book 1, Page 150). In his speech in Rome Rosenberg pointed to the fateful significance of the four great powers and proclaimed—I quote his words:
“Therefore he who strives in earnest to create a Europe which shall be an organic unit with a pronounced multiplicity of form and not merely a crude summation, must acknowledge the four great nationalisms as given to us by fate and must, therefore, seek to give fulfillment to the force radiating from their core. The destruction of one of these centers by any power would not result in a ‘Europe,’ but would bring about chaos in which the other centers of culture would also have to perish. In reverse it is only the triumph of the radiations in those directions where the four great forces do not come into conflict with each other which would result in the most dynamic force of creative being and organic peace, not an explosive forced situation such as prevails today, whereby it would guarantee to the small nations more security than appears possible today in the struggle against elementary force.”
To this line of thought Rosenberg, as Chief of the Foreign Political Office of the Party, remained true. Unfortunately, he could only work for it through his words. No witness could confirm in this courtroom that Rosenberg had any influence on actual foreign policy, whether it was directed by Neurath, Ribbentrop, Göring, or Hitler himself. Neither in the Austrian, nor in the Czech, nor in the Polish, nor in the Russian subject matter has his name been mentioned in connection with the charge of participation in aggressive wars. Everywhere he was placed before accomplished facts. In the war against the Soviet Union he received his orders only when the war against Russia had already been established as an acute possibility. He did not stir up the Norwegian campaign, but passed on personal information in accordance with his duty.