Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler

I had come to know this state formation better than the so-called official 'diplomats,' who
blindly, as almost always, rushed headlong toward catastrophe; for the mood of the people
was always a mere discharge of what was funneled into public opinion from above. But the
people on top made a cult of the 'ally,' as if it were the Golden Calf. They hoped to replace by
cordiality what was lacking in honesty. And words were always taken for coin of the realm.
Even in Vienna I had been seized with anger when I reflected on the disparity appearing from
time to time between the speeches of the official statesmen and the content of the Viennese
press. And yet Vienna, in appearance at least, was still a German city. How different it was if
you left Vienna, or rather German-Austria, and went to the Slavic provinces of the Empire !
You had only to take up the Prague newspapers to find out what they thought of the whole
exalted hocus-pocus of the Triple Alliance. There there was nothing but bitter scorn and
mockery for this 'masterpiece of statecraft.' In the midst of peace, with both emperors
pressing kisses of friendship on each other's foreheads, the Czechs made no secret of the fact
that this alliance would be done for on the day when an attempt should be made to translate
it from the moonbeams of the Nibelungen ideal into practical reality.
What excitement seized these same people several years later when the time finally came for
the alliances to show their worth and Italy leapt out of the triple pact, leaving her two
comrades in the lurch, and in the end even becoming their enemy ! That anyone even for a
moment should have dared to believe in the possibility of such a miracle-to wit, the mirade
that Italy would fight side by side with Austria-could be nothing but incomprehensible to
anyone who was not stricken with diplomatic blindness. But in Austria things were not a
hair's-breadth different.
In Austria the only exponents of the alliance idea were the Habsburgs and the Germans. The
Habsburgs, out of calculation and compulsion; the Germans, from good faith and politicalstupidity.
From good faith, for they thought that by the Triple Alliance they were performing a
great service for the German Reich itself, helping to strengthen and secure it; from political
stupidity, because neither did the first-mentioned occur, but on the contrary, they thereby
helped to chain the Reich to the corpse of a state which would inevitably drag them both into
the abyss, and above all because they themselves, solely by virtue of this alliance, fell more
and more a prey to de-Germanization. For by the alliance with the Reich, the Habsburgs
thought they could be secure against any interference from this side, which unfortunately
was the case, and thus they were able far more easily and safely to carry through their
internal policy of slowly eliminating Germanism. Not only that in view of our well-known '
objectivity' they had no need to fear any intervention on the part of the Reich government,
but, by pointing to the alliance, they could also silence any embarrassing voice among the
Austrian-Germans which might rise in German quarters against Slavization of an excessively
disgraceful character.
For what was the German in Austria to do if the Germans of the Reich recognized and
expressed confidence in the Habsburg government? Should he offer resistance and be
branded by the entire German public as a traitor to his own nationality? When for decades
he had been making the most enormous sacrifices precisely for his nationality!
But what value did this alliance have, once Germanism had been exterminated in the
Habsburg monarchy? Wasn't the value of the Triple Alliance for Germany positively
dependent on the preservation of German predominance in Austria? Or did they really
believe that they could live in an alliance with a SlavicHabsburg Empire?
The attitude of official German diplomacy and of all public opinion toward the internal
Austrian problem of nationalities was beyond stupidity, it was positively insane ! They
banked on an alliance, made the future and security of a people of seventy millions
dependent on it-and looked on while the sole basis for this alliance was from year to year,
inexorably and by plan, being destroyed in the partner-nation. The day was bound to come
when a ' treaty ' with Viennese diplomacy would remain, but the aid of an allied empire
would be lost.