Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler

alance ' Aberdeen domestic production and demand in all fields, they make the Subsistence
of the people as a whole more or less independent foreign countries, and thus help to secure
the freedom of the stite and the independence of the nation, particularly in difficult Periods.
It must be said that such a territorial policy cannot be fulfilled in the Cameroons, but today
almost exclusively in Europe. We must, therefore, coolly and objectively adopt the standpoint
that it can certainly not be the intention of Heaven to give one people fifty times as much
land and soil in this world as another. In this case we must not let political boundaries
obscure for us the boundaries of eternal justice. If this earth really has room for all to live in,
let us be given the soil we need for our livelihood.
True, they will no t willingly do this. But then the law of selfpreservaion goes into effect; and
what is refused to amicable methods, it is up to the fist to take. If our forefathers had let
their decisions depend on the same pacifistic nonsense as our contemporaries, we should
possess only a third of our present territory; but in that case there would scarcely be any
German people for us to worry about in Europe today. No-it is to our natural determination
to fight for our own existence that we owe the two Ostmarks of the Reich and hence that
inner strength arising from the greatness of our state and national territory which alone has
enabled us to exist up to the present.
And for another reason this would have been the correct solution
Today many European states are like pyramids stood on their heads. Their European area is
absurdly small in comparison to their weight of colonies, foreign trade, etc. We may say:
summit in Europe, base in the whole world; contrasting with the American Union which
possesses its base in its own continent and touches the rest of the earth only with its
summit. And from this comes the immense inner strength of this state and the weakness of
most European colonial powers.
Nor is England any proof to the contrary, since in consideration of the British Empire we too
easily forget the Anglo-Saxon world as such. The position of England, if only because of her
linguistic and cultural bond with the American Union, can be compared to no other state in
Europe.
For Germany, consequently, the only possibility for carrying out a healthy territorial policy
lay in the acquisition of new land in Europe itself. Colonies cannot serve this purpose unless
they seem in large part suited for settlement by Europeans. But in the nineteenth century
such colonial territories were no longer obtainable by peaceful means. Consequently, such a
colonial policy could only have been carried out by means of a hard struggle which, however,
would have been carried on to much better purpose, not for territories outside of Europe, but
for land on the home continent itself.
Such a decision, it is true, demands undivided devotion. It is not permissible to approach
with half measures or even with hesitation a task whose execution seems possible only by
the harnessing of the very last possible ounce of energy. This means that the entire political
leadership of the Reich should have devoted itself to this exclusive aim; never should any
step have been taken, guided by other considerations than the recognition of this task and
its requirements. It was indispensable to see dearly that this aim could be achieved only by
struggle, and consequently to face the contest of arms with calm and composure.
All alliances, therefore, should have been viewed exclusively from this standpoint and judged
according to their possible utilization. If land was desired in Europe, it could be obtained by
and large only at the expense of Russia, and this meant that the new Reich must again set
itself on the march along the road of the Teutonic Knights of old, to obtain by the German
sword sod for the German plow and daily bread for the nation.
For such a policy there was but one ally in Europe: England.
With England alone was it possible, our rear protected, to begin the new Germanic march.
Our right to do this would have been no less than the right of our forefathers. None of our