Thus the call for a reconquest of the Southern Tyrol will have the same moral faults in it which we now discover in the Italian rule in the Southern Tyrol. Hence this call also loses its moral justification. With this still other viewpoints can be asserted, which then must speak for a regaining of the whole Southern Tyrol. Thus on the basis of morally justified feelings we can, at most, advocate the regaining of that part which is actually inhabited by an overwhelming majority of Germans. This is a spatially limited area of ……… square kilometres. Even in this, however, there are around 190000 Germans, 64000 Italians and Latins, and 24000 other aliens, so that the completely German territory encompasses hardly 160000 Germans.
At the present time there is hardly a border which does not cut Germans off from the Motherland just as in the Southern Tyrol. Indeed, in Europe alone, not less than ……… million Germans all told are separated from the Reich. Of these, ……… million live under out and out alien rule, and only ……… million in German Austria and Switzerland, though under conditions that at least for the moment pose no threat to the nationality. At the same time, here are a whole series of cases involving aggregates of a quite different numerical character as compared to our Folkdom in the Southern Tyrol.
As terrible as this fact is for our Folk, just so guilty of it are those who today raise their hue and cry over the Southern Tyrol. Just as little, at any rate, can we make the fate of all the rest of the Reich dependent simply on the interests of these lost territories, let alone on the wishes of one of them, even by taking over a purely bourgeois border policy.
For one thing must first of all be rejected most sharply: there is no Holy German Folk in the Southern Tyrol, as the Patriotic Leaguers foolishly prattle. Rather, all who must be reckoned as belonging to German Folkdom must be equally holy to it. It won’t do to appraise a Southern Tyrolean higher than a Silesian, East Prussian or West Prussian who is enslaved under Polish rule. It also won’t do to regard a German in Czechoslovakia as more worthwhile than a German in the Saar territory or also in Alsace-Lorraine. The right to grade the German element of the severed territories according to special values could, at best, grow out of an analytical examination of their specific decisive and dominant fundamental racial values. But this is the very measure which the protest groups against Italy apply least of all. For the Tyroleans in the territories now separated too, it could yield no higher credit factor than, let’s say, for an East or a West Prussian.
Now the foreign policy task of the German Reich as such cannot be determined by the interests of the parts split off from the Reich. For in reality these interests will not be served thereby, since practical help indeed presupposes the regained power of the Motherland. Hence the sole viewpoint that warrants consideration in regard to the foreign policy position can be only that of the fastest and earliest restoration of the independence and freedom of the remaining part of the Nation united under a Government.
In other words, this means that even if a German foreign policy were cognisant of no aim other than the salvation of the Holy Folk In Southern Tyrol, that is, the 190000 Germans who can really come under consideration, first the prerequisite thereto would be the achievement of Germany’s political independence as well as means of military power. For it should be rather clear, after all, that the Austrian protest State will not wrest the Southern Tyrol from the Italians. But it must be equally clear that even if German foreign policy knew no aim other than the actual liberation of the Southern Tyrol, its actions must especially then be determined by such viewpoints and factors which guarantee the regaining of the means of political and military power. Thus we should surely not place the Southern Tyrol in the focal point of foreign policy considerations, but, on the contrary, especially then must we be dominated and guided by those ideas which in fact allow us to smash the existing world coalition directed against Germany. For ultimately, even through Germany, the Southern Tyrol will not be restored to the German element by the droning of a Tibetan prayer wheel of protests and indignation, but by the commitment of the sword.
Thus, if Germany herself were to have this aim, she must nevertheless ever and again look first of all for an ally who would furnish help for the gaining of German power. Now one can say that France could be considered in this case. As a National Socialist, I however oppose this most sharply.
It may well be that France would declare herself ready to allow Germany to march with her as an ally against Italy. Indeed, it can even be that, in gracious recognition of our blood sacrifice, and as meagre bandages for our wounds, they would award the Southern Tyrol to us. But what would such a victory mean for Germany? Could our Nation, for instance, live then because it possesses 200000 more Southern Tyroleans? Or does one not believe that France, once she has defeated her Latin competitor in the Mediterranean with German military help, would surely turn once more against Germany? Or in any case that she would surely pursue her old political aim of the liquidation of Germany?
No, if for Germany there remains any choice between France and Italy, then, according to all human reason, Italy alone warrants consideration for Germany. For a victory with France over Italy will bring us the Southern Tyrol and a stronger France to boot as a subsequent enemy. A victory over France with Italy’s help will bring us Alsace-Lorraine at the least, and at most, the freedom to carry out a genuine large scale territorial policy. And in the long run it is through this alone that Germany can live in the future, and not through Southern Tyrol. Nor will it do to choose one among all the severed territories, and indeed the one most unimportant to us in a vital sense, and to stake the total interests of a nation of 70000000 people, actually to renounce its future, just so that wretched fantastic German hurrah!-patriots can obtain a momentary gratification. And all this on account of a sheer phantom, for in reality the Southern Tyrol would be as little helped thereby as it is now.
The National Socialist Movement as such must educate the German Folk to the effect that it must not shrink from staking its blood for the sake of shaping its life. But, likewise, our Folk must be educated to the effect that such a staking of their blood, at least in future history, must never again take place for the sake of phantoms.
Let our protest patriots and Fatherland Leaguers for once please say how they envisage the reconquest of the Southern Tyrol other than by military violence. Let them, for once, summon up the honesty to avow, if they seriously believe it, that one day Italy — made mellow simply by their verbiage and heated protests — will hand over the Southern Tyrol, or whether they are not also convinced that a State with some existing national consciousness will give up a territory for which it had fought for four long years only under the compulsion of a military decision. Let them not always prattle that we, or I, had renounced the Southern Tyrol. These infamous liars know very well that, at least as far as regards my own person, I fought at the Front at the time when the fate of the Southern Tyrol was being decided, something which not a few of the presentday meeting protesters neglected to do at that time. And that at the same time, however, the forces with which our Patriotic Leaguers and National bourgeoisie make a common foreign policy and agitate against Italy, sabotaged the victory with every means, that international Marxism, democracy and the Centre even in peacetime neglected nothing in order to weaken and paralyse the military power of our Folk, and that finally they organised a revolution during the War which necessarily led to the collapse of the German Homeland and with it of the German Army.