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7th February 1945
Any people which desires to prosper should remain linked to its own soil. A man should never lose contact with the soil upon which he had the honour of being born. He should not go away except for a short while and always with the intention of returning. The British who became colonizers of necessity, and who, indeed, were great colonizers, have generally obeyed this rule.
As far as continental people are concerned, I am sure that it is important that they should expand only in those directions where it is certain that the soil of conquerors and conquered are contiguous.
This need to become properly enrooted applies to all continental peoples and particularly, in my opinion to the German people. And that most probably explains why we have never really felt the urge to become colonizers. A glance at history, both ancient and modern, will show that overseas enterprises have always in the long run impoverished those who undertook them. They have all, in the end, been exhausted by their efforts; and, in the inevitable nature of things, they have all succumbed to forces to which either they have themselves given birth or which they have themselves re-awakened. What better example of this than the Greeks?
What was true for the ancient Greeks remains equally true for all Europeans in modern times. To prosper, a people must concentrate its efforts on its own country. A scrutiny of any reasonably long period of history will reveal facts which confirm the truth of this contention.
Spain, France and Britain have all enfeebled, devitalized and drained themselves in these vain colonial enterprises. The continents to which Spain and Britain gave birth, which they created piece by piece, have today acquired a completely independent way of life and a completely egoistical outlook. Even so, they are but artificial worlds, with neither a soul, a culture or a civilization of their own; and judged from that point of view, they are nothing more than excrescences.
It is, of course, possible to make out a case for the success achieved in peopling continents which before had been empty. The United States and Australia afford good examples. Success, certainly - but only on the material side. They are artificial edifices, bodies without age, of which it is impossible to say whether they are still in a state of infancy or whether they have already been touched by senility. In those continents which were inhabited, failure has been even more marked. In them, the white races have imposed their will by force, and the influence they have had on the native inhabitants has been negligible; the Hindus have remained Hindus, the Chinese have remained Chinese, and the Moslems are still Moslems. There have been no profound transformations, and such changes as have occurred are less marked in the religious field, notwithstanding the tremendous efforts of the Christian missionaries, than in any other. There have been a few odd conversions the sincerity of which are open to considerable doubt-except, perhaps in the case of a few simpletons and mentally deficients. The white races did, of course, give some things to the natives, and they were the worst gifts that they could possibly have made, those plagues of our own modern world-materialism, fanaticism, alcoholism and syphilis. For the rest, since these peoples possessed qualities of their own which were superior to anything we could offer them, they have remained essentially unchanged. Where imposition by force was attempted, the results were even more disastrous, and common sense, realizing the futility of such measures, should preclude any recourse to their introduction. One solitary success must be conceded to the colonizers: everywhere they have succeeded in arousing hatred, a hatred that urges these peoples, awakened from their slumbers by us, to rise and drive us out. Indeed, it looks almost as though they had awakened solely and simply for that purpose! Can anyone assert that colonization has increased the number of Christians in the world? Where are those conversions en masse which mark the success of Islam? Here and there one finds isolated islets of Christians, Christians in name, that is, rather than by conviction; and that is the sum total of the successes of this magnificent Christian religion, the guardian of supreme Truth!
Taking everything into consideration, Europe's policy of colonization has ended in a complete failure. I have not forgotten the one instance of apparent success, but a success that is purely material, and it is of that monster which calls itself the United States that I wish to talk. And monster is the only possible name for it! At a time when the whole of Europe - their own mother - is fighting desperately to ward off the bolshevist peril, the United States, guided by the Jew-ridden Roosevelt, can think of nothing better to do than to place their fabulous material resources at the disposal of these Asiatic barbarians, who are determined to strangle her. Looking back, I am deeply distressed at the thought of those millions of Germans, men of good faith, who emigrated to the United States and who are now the backbone of the country. For these men, mark you, are not merely good Germans, lost to their fatherland; rather, they have become enemies, more implacably hostile than any others. The German emigrant retains, it is true, his qualities of industry and hard work, but he very quickly loses his soul. There is nothing more unnatural than a German who has become an expatriate.
In the future we must guard against these haemorrhages of German blood. It is eastwards, only and always eastwards, that the veins of our race must expand. It is the direction which Nature herself has decreed for the expansion of the German peoples. The rigorous climate with which the East confronts them allows them to retain their qualities as hardy and virile men; and the vivid contrasts they find there helps to keep fresh their love and their longing for their own country. Transplant a German to Kiev, and he remains a perfect German. But transplant him to Miami, and you make a degenerate of him - in other words, an American.
Since colonization is not an activity which Germans feel called upon to pursue, Germany should never make common cause with the colonizing nations and should always abstain from supporting them in their colonial aspirations. What we want, is a Monroe doctrine in Europe. `Europe for the Europeans!' a doctrine, the corollary of which should be that Europeans refrain from meddling in the affairs of other continents.
The descendants of the convicts in Australia should inspire in us nothing but a feeling of supreme indifference. If their vitality is not strong enough to enable them to increase at a rate proportionate to the size of the territories they occupy, that is their own look out, and it is no use their appealing to us for help. For my own part, I have no objection at all to seeing the surplus populations of prolific Asia being drawn, as to a magnet, to their empty spaces. Let them all work out their own salvation! And let me repeat - it is nothing to do with us.
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