Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

THE UPROOTED AND DISINHERITED 325favors. Hitler also believed that the British-American war was silentlydeveloping. As early as Mein Kampf, he had predicted that Englandwould join with Japan against the United States: England 'grasps avidlyat the yellow fist and clings to an alliance which, racially conceived, isperhaps indefensible, but politically offers the sole possibility ofstrengthening the British world position against the rising Americancontinent.'The English-American world war will bring Germany's hour, Hitlerdeclared now in January, 1930.All Europe is moving toward a hard fate if American expansionisteconomic activity is not stopped somewhere and some time. But theBritish Empire will be struck hardest of all by this development. . . .And here begins the British attempt to put a stop to so-called 'armament'by means of agreements, not because they think they can avoid a futureconflict with America, in this way, but because they think thepreservation of the present ratio between the two fleets is morefavorable for England than a boundless armament race, in whichEngland might lose her breath sooner than the American Union. . . .Regardless how the naval conference turns out, the actual causes of theBritish-American controversy will not be touched by it, for they lie fardeeper and can neither be treated nor far less settled at the conferencetable.The coming war between England and America! Hitler has seldomreferred to this possibility, but up to 1930 he looked upon it as acertainty, and his foreign policy, however much it changed in otherthings, always has been based on this tacit premise. In the above-quotedarticle he continues:We Germans have no reason to desire even in the slightest that eventsof any kind whatsoever will preserve a 'world peace' whose sole result,as recent events show, is to make possible, to encourage in fact the mosthorrible plundering and exploitation of our people. . . . Germany canharbor only the single ardent desire, that over every conference the spiritof misfortune should reign, that discord should arise from it, and thatfinally in blood and fire there should be an end to a world peace whichotherwise will be the end of our people! And for the more distant futurewe might hope that in this struggle an opportunity arise for Germany toplay a part in world-historical events.