Now, as regards Rosenberg’s speeches and writings on the problems of general foreign policy, he advocated the Anschluss of the Austrians, who had been forcibly excluded from the Reich, as a demand born of the right to self-determination which had been proclaimed by the Allies themselves. The revision of Versailles was a postulate of justice against a violation of the Treaty of 11 November 1918. To advocate the German Armed Forces was, in view of the nondisarmament of the other powers, a defense of the solemnly promised equality of rights.
I shall now take up the charge of racial hatred.
Rosenberg’s opinions in regard to the race question were the result of racial research of international scientists. Rosenberg repeatedly asserts (I refer again to the opinion stated in Document Book 1, Volume II) that the purpose of his racial political demands was not contempt of race, but respect for it. I quote Page 70:
“The leading moral idea of an approach to world history based on the laws of heredity belongs to our times and to our generation, being in full accord with the true spirit of the modern eugenics movement with regard to patriotism, that is, the upholding and expansion of the spiritually, morally, intellectually, and physically best hereditary forces for our fatherland: only in this way can we preserve our institutions for all future times.”
These words embody the main theme of his demands, though their originator was not Rosenberg, but Henry Fairfield Osborn, Professor at Columbia University, who wrote them in discussion of the book by his colleague in science, Madison Grant, The Decline of the Great Race. This research, long before the existence of the Third Reich, led to eugenic legislation in other countries, in particular to the American Immigration Law of 26 May 1924, which was aimed at a strong reduction of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe while favoring those from the north and west of Europe.
I do not think I have to say that I am not hereby defending the murders of those mentally diseased in Germany as an alleged eugenic measure. With this measure, too, Rosenberg did not have the slightest connection.
For Rosenberg it was a question of the spiritual strengthening and consolidation of the German nation, indeed of the Aryan race. He would like to have his ideology considered in that light, above all The Myth of the 20th Century. His preaching of the significance of race in history did not call—I stress this again—for race contempt, but for consideration and respect of race, and demanded the acknowledgment of the racial idea only by the German people, not by other nations. He considered the Aryan nations as the leading ones in history. And if in doing so he underestimated the significance of other races, as for instance the Semitic ones, he, in his praise of Aryan races, did not think of the German nation alone, but of the European nations in general. I refer to his speech in Rome of November 1932.
I am keeping within the framework of historical truth in pointing to the fact that anti-Judaism is not an invention of National Socialism. For thousands of years the Jewish question has been the minority problem of the world. It has an irrational character which can be understood to some extent only in connection with the Bible. Rosenberg was a convinced anti-Semite, who in writing and speech gave expression to his convictions and their foundations. I have already emphasized that even such different personalities as Von Papen, Von Neurath, and Raeder are still of the opinion that the predominance of the Jewish element in the entire public life had reached such proportions that a change had to come about in this respect. The concrete result of that predominance, the fact that the Jews in Germany when attacked knew how to repay in kind, sharpened the anti-Semitic fight before the accession to power.
I wanted to present to the Tribunal a selection of Jewish literary attacks on the national feeling at that time, but the Tribunal ruled that my application was irrelevant; as these writings were not introduced as evidence I cannot speak about them. It is, however, an injustice to Rosenberg to assert that blind hatred of the Jewish race had goaded him into that controversy. He had before his eyes concrete factual evidence of the disintegrating activities of Jews.
It appeared as if the Party program of placing Jews under a generous law of aliens would be realized. It is true that Goebbels at that time arranged a one-day boycotting of Jewish stores. Rosenberg, however, in his speech of 28 June 1933, the anniversary of the Versailles Treaty, in the assembly hall of the Reichstag in the Kroll Opera House, declared that it was no longer necessary that in the capital of the Reich 74 percent of all lawyers should be Jews, and that 80 to 90 percent of the physicians in Berlin hospitals should be Jewish; about 30 percent of Jewish lawyers in Berlin would suffice amply. In his speech at the Party Rally in September 1933 Rosenberg stated in addition, and I quote: