This also applied especially to the representatives of that Bavarian government policy, who, to be sure, sufficiently exhibit the nature of their brilliance by the facts of their success up to now. For the very men who continually asserted the desire to preserve Bavaria’s sovereignty, and who at the same time also had in view maintenance of the right to conduct foreign policy, should primarily have been obliged to put forth a possible foreign policy of such sort that Bavaria, thereby, could of necessity have obtained leadership of a real national opposition in Germany conceived in its grand aspects. In view of the complete inconsistency of Reich policy or of the deliberate intention to ignore all real avenues of success, it is precisely the Bavarian State that should have risen to the role of spokesman for a foreign policy which, according to human prediction, might one day have brought an end to Germany’s dreadful isolation.
But even in these circles they confronted the foreign policy conception of an association with Italy, as espoused by me, with a complete and stupid thoughtlessness. Instead of thus rising in a bold way to the role of spokesmen and guardians of the highest national German interests for the future, they preferred, from time to time, with one eye blinking toward Paris while the other was raised up to heaven, to asseverate their loyalty to the Reich on the one hand, and on the other their determination nevertheless to save Bavaria by letting the fires of Bolshevism burn out in the north. Yes, indeed, the Bavarian State has entrusted the representation of its sovereign rights to intellectual characters of a wholly special greatness.
In view of such a general mentality, it should surprise nobody that, from the very first day, my foreign policy conception encountered, if not direct rejection, at least a total lack of understanding. Frankly speaking, I expected nothing else at that time. I still took account of the general war psychosis, and strove only to instil a sober world view of foreign policy into my own Movement.
At that time, I did not yet have to endure any kind of overt attacks on account of my Italian policy. The reason for this probably lay, on the one hand, in the fact that for the moment it was held to be completely devoid of danger, and on the other that Italy herself likewise had a government subject to international influences. Indeed, in the background it was perhaps even hoped that this Italy could succumb to the Bolshevist plague, and then she would be highly welcome as an ally, at least for our Left circles.
Besides, on the Left at that time, one could not very well take a position against the elimination of war enmity, since in this very camp they were anyhow making constant efforts to extirpate the hateful, demeaning, and — for Germany — so unjustified feeling of hatred born of the War. It would not have been easy to launch a criticism against me from these circles over a foreign policy conception, which, as a prerequisite for its realisation, would after all have caused at least the removal of the war hatred between Germany and Italy.
I must, however, stress once more that perhaps the main reason why I found so little positive resistance lay for my enemies in the presumed harmlessness, enviability and thereby also the non dangerous character of my action.
This situation changed almost in one stroke when Mussolini had begun the March on Rome. As if by a magic word, the running fire of poisoning and slander against Italy by the entire Jewish press began from this hour on.
And only after the year 1922 was the Southern Tyrol question raised and made into a pivotal point of German Italian relations, whether the Southern Tyroleans themselves wanted it so or not. It did not take long before even Marxists became the representatives of a national opposition. And now one could experience the unique spectacle of Jews and Folkish Germans, Social Democrats and members of the Patriotic Leagues, communists and national bourgeois, arm in arm, spiritually marching across the Brenner in order to carry out the reconquest of this territory in mighty battles but, to be sure, without the shedding of blood. A charm of a wholly special character was further added to this bold national front by the fact that even those out and out Bavarian particularist representatives of Bavarian sovereign rights, whose spiritual forefathers over a hundred years before had surrendered the good Andreas Hofer to the French and let him be shot, also vigorously interested themselves in the freedom struggle for the country of Andreas Hofer.
Since the influence of the Jewish press gang, and the national bourgeois and patriotic dunderheads who run after them, has really succeeded in blowing up the Southern Tyrol problem to the dimensions of a vital question of the German Nation, I see myself induced to take a detailed position toward it.
As has already been emphasised, the old Austrian State had over 850000 Italians within its borders. Incidentally, the data on nationalities as established by the Austrian census was not wholly accurate. Namely, the count was not made according to the nationality of the individual, but rather according to the language he specified as spoken. Obviously this could not give a completely clear picture, but it is in the nature of the weakness of the national bourgeoisie gladly to deceive itself over the real situation. If one does not learn of a matter, or at least if it is not talked about openly, then it also does not exist. Ascertained on the basis of such a procedure, the Italians, or better, the people who spoke Italian, in large measure lived in the Tyrol. According to the census figures of the year 1910 the Tyrol had ………. inhabitants, of whom ………. percent were counted as speaking the Italian language, while the rest were counted as German or in part also Latin. Consequently around ……….
Italians were in the Arch Duchy of Tyrol. Since this whole number is allotted to the territory occupied today by Italians, the ratio of Germans to Italians in the whole part of the territory of the Tyrol occupied by Italians consequently is one of ………. Germans to ………. Italians.
It is necessary to establish this because not a few people in Germany, thanks to the mendacity of our press, have no idea at all that, in the area understood by the concept Southern Tyrol, actually two thirds of the inhabitants living there are Italians, and one third German. Thus, whoever seriously advocates the reconquest of the Southern Tyrol would bring about a change of things only to the extent that instead of having 200000 Germans under Italian rule, he would bring 400000 Italians under German rule.
To be sure, the German element in the Southern Tyrol is now concentrated primarily in the northern part, whereas the Italian element inhabits the south. Thus if someone would find a solution that is just in a national sense, he must first of all completely exclude the concept Southern Tyrol from the general discussion. For one cannot war on the Italians on moral grounds because they have taken an area in which 200000 Germans live next to 400000 Italians if we ourselves, conversely, want to win this territory again for Germany as a redress of this injustice, that is, if we want to commit a still greater injustice than is the case with Italy.