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

BURNING HEAVENS REFLECTED IN MUD PUDDLE 93Milwaukee or Cincinnati. There are six great nations on the earth, largeparts of which live outside the political jurisdiction of the mothercountry: Indians, Chinese, Japanese, Spaniards, Italians, and finally,Germans. The principle of the 'right of nations to self-determination' hastransformed these national splinters scattered throughout the earth intopolitical dynamite, charged with intense peril whenever a power-lovingand belligerent mother country tries to use them as a weapon for itsworld policies. The National Socialists were later to maintain that inEurope alone there were thirty-three millions of such Germans, thoughthey arrived at this figure by placidly counting foreign peoples such asthe Dutch.The idea of self-determination originated in old Austria, whereGermans, Hungarians, Italians, and Slavs, of different language andnationality, lived under one crown and fought one another bitterly. Afterthe war it became a world slogan. Woodrow Wilson had taken it up; ithad served as a yardstick for the Peace of Versailles. To all Europeannations the same right of self-determination had been granted — exceptto defeated Germany. Regions inhabited by Germans had been given toforeign countries without plebiscite, consequently without selfdetermination— German South Tyrol to Italy, the so-called SudetenGermans to Czechoslovakia; and even the desire for union withGermany expressed by the German parts of Austria in 1919 had beencoldly rebuffed. From the democratic right of self-determination Hitlerforged one of his sharpest and most effective weapons in a struggle forpower, whose ultimate aims went far beyond any right of selfdetermination.The program goes on demanding 'equal rights for the German nation,''abrogation of the peace treaties of Versailles and St. Germain,' 'land andsoil [colonies]'; for the former German colonies in Africa had beentaken away by the Versailles Treaty.'Only a racial comrade' — so the program goes on — 'can be a citizen.Only a person of German blood can be a racial comrade, without regardto religion. Consequently no Jew can be a racial comrade.'Here the program shows that it means business. And it means 'Jewish'capital when it demands in point 11: 'Abolition of all income obtainedwithout work or pains; interest slavery must be broken.'