From 9th to 11nth August 1941
Organisation of the Eastern Territories—Europe, a racial entity—The Swiss Innkeeper—Battles of attrition—Britain the ideal ally vs. the United States.
What India was for England, the territories of Russia will be for us. If only I could make the German people understand what this space means for our future! Colonies are a precarious possession, but this ground is safely ours. Europe is not a geographic entity, it’s a racial entity. We understand now why the Chinese shut themselves up behind a wall to protect themselves against the eternal attacks of the Mongols. One could sometimes wish that a huge wall might protect the new territories of the East against the masses of Central Asia; but that’s contrary to the teachings of history. The fact is that a too great feeling of security provokes, in the long run, a relaxation of forces. I think the best wall will always be a wall of human chests!
If any people has the right to proceed to evacuations, it is we, for we’ve often had to evacuate our own population. Eight hundred thousand men had to emigrate from East Prussia alone. How humanely sensitive we are is shown by the fact that we consider it a maximum of brutality to have liberated our country from six hundred thousand Jews. And yet we accepted, without recrimination, and as something inevitable, the evacuation of our own compatriots! We must no longer allow Germans to emigrate to America.
On the contrary, we must attract the Norwegians, the Swedes, the Danes and the Dutch into our Eastern territories. They’ll become members of the German Reich. Our duty is methodically to pursue a racial policy. We’re compelled to do so, if only to combat the degeneration which is beginning to threaten us by reason of unions that in a way are consanguineous.
As for the Swiss, we can use them, at the best, as hotel- keepers.
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World history knows three battles of annihilation : Cannae, Sedan and Tannenberg. We can be proud that two of them were fought by German armies. To-day we can add to them our battles in Poland and the West, and those which we’re now fighting in the East. All the rest have been battles of pursuit, including Waterloo.
We have a false picture of the battle of the Teutoberg forest. The romanticism of our teachers of history has played its part in that. At that period, it was not in fact possible, any more than to-day, to fight a battle in a forest.
I shall no longer be there to see it, but I rejoice on behalf of the German people at the idea that one day we will see England and Germany marching together against America.
Germany and England will know what each of them can expect of her partner, and then we shall have found the ally whom we need. They have an unexampled cheek, these English! It doesn’t prevent me from admiring them. In this sphere, they still have a lot to teach us.