For Germany, Italy’s entry into the World War perforce should have been the occasion for a fundamental revision of her attitude vis-à-vis Austria-Hungary. It is not a political act, let alone an expression of the sagacity and competence of political leaders, in such a case to find no other answer than sullen indignation and impotent rage. Such a thing is usually harmful even in private life, but in political life it is worse than a crime. It is an act of stupidity.
And even if this attempt at a change of the former German attitude had led to no success, it at least would have absolved the nation’s political leadership from the guilt of not having tried it. In any case, after Italy’s entry into the World War, Germany should have tried to put an end to the two front war. She should then have striven for a separate peace with Russia, not only on the basis of a renunciation of any utilisation of the successes in the east already achieved by German arms, but even, if necessary, of a sacrifice of Austria-Hungary. Only the complete dissociation of German policy from the task of saving the Austrian State and its exclusive concentration on the task of helping the German Folk could still afford a possibility of victory, according to human appraisals.
Moreover, with the demolition of Austria-Hungary, the incorporation of nine million German Austrians into the Reich as such would have been a more worthwhile success before history and for our Folk’s future than the gain, doubtful in its consequences, of a few French coal and iron mines. But it must be stressed again and again that the task — even of a German foreign policy that is only bourgeois national — should not have been the preservation of the Habsburg State, but exclusively the salvation of the German Nation, including the nine million Germans in Austria. Otherwise nothing else at all, indeed absolutely nothing else.
As is known, the reaction of the Reich’s leaders to the situation created by Italy’s entry into the World War was quite different. They tried more than ever to save the Austrian State with its deserting Slavic brothers of the alliance by staking German blood in a still greater measure, and, in the homeland, by calling down heaven’s revenge on the faithless erstwhile ally. In order to cut themselves off from any possibility of ending the two front war, they let the artful and cunning Vienna diplomacy induce them to found the Polish State. Thereby any hope of arriving at an understanding with Russia, which naturally could have been obtained at the expense of Austria-Hungary, was shrewdly prevented by the Habsburgs. Thus the German soldier from Bavaria, Pomerania, Westphalia, Thüringia and East Prussia, from Brandenburg, Saxony and from the Rhine, was given the high honour, in the most terrible, bloody battles of world history, to sacrifice his life by the hundreds of thousands, not for the salvation [formation] of the German Nation, but for the formation of a Polish State to which, in case of a favourable outcome of the World War, the Habsburgs would have given a representative, and which then would have been an eternal enemy for Germany.
Bourgeois national State policy. But if this reaction to the Italian step had already been an unforgivable absurdity during the War, the preservation of this emotional reaction to the Italian step after the War was a still greater, capital stupidity.
To be sure, Italy was in the coalition of victor States even after the War, and hence also on the side of France.
But this was natural, for Italy had certainly not entered the War out of pro French feelings. The determining force which drove the Italian Folk to it was exclusively the hatred against Austria and the visible possibility of being able to benefit their own Italian interests. This was the reason for the Italian step, and not any kind of fantastic emotional feeling for France. As a German one can be deeply pained that Italy took far reaching steps now that the collapse of her hated centuries old enemy has taken place, but one must not let it deprive his mind of sound reason. Fate had changed. Once Austria had more than 800000 Italians under her rule, and now 200000