HITLER'S WORLD THEORY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22402, 24 April 1936, Page 1 (Supplement)

HITLER'S WORLD THEORY

Germany's Objectives

By KOTARE

JJITLER has unbounded faith ill the spoken word. He believes that no leader can really lead unless he has the power to sway audiences by he magic of his oratory. The man who in the end gets his way with the public is the man that can stand before the crowd and compel them to think as he thinks and feel as he feels. It is personal contact and personal influence, in the atmosphere created by the mob psychology. A cloistered intellectualism, appealing in cold blood through the press or through literature, will never, he thinks, make the impression, upon the public mind that issues in swift, determined, united action. Unashamedly he claims the first place for the demagogue who can play upon his audiences like the skilled musician on his instrument. It so happens that modern invention has placed at his disposal the means of multiplying his voice. He mocks at the Parliamentarian who drones away in the quiet atmosphere of a councilchamber to a company more or less somnolent, and concerned not bo much, with what he is saying as with what they are going to say later on. His field is the public arena, he himself athrill and aglow with his oratorical fervour, and the microphone carrying his voice throughout the country and throughout the world. The radio is his medium, and magnificently has he made use of it. . Lloyd George With these views it is natural that among modern statesmen he ranks Mr. Lloyd George ■ very high. He has occasion in his book to speak very scathingly of German policy and German attitudes before and after the war. He can see, with that intense clarity of his, the mistakes the German leaders made. One of them was their underestimate of Lloyd George. "It is all one with the silly ignorance of the world shown by our German intelligentsia that they believe a writer is bound to be an orator's superior in intellect." He mentions that it was the custom in Germany to examine under "a, microscope Lloyd George's speeches during the war, and show how inferior they were in intellect and knowledge to the speeches of the German leaders. He secured a volume of the Welshman's speeches and "had to laugh aloud at the thought that an ordinary German quill-driver failed to see the point of those psychological masterpieces in the way of influencing the public." Hitler does not often praise. But it is plain that he has made Lloyd George one of his models. He aims at using his powers of moving the crowd to win the control over the general public necessary for carrying through his national and international policy'. All his power is based on his success in this field. That is why the outsider beyond the reach of his voice's spell persists in underestimating Hitler's power. Only those within range of his personal magnetism can respond to his influence. Preparing the Way His other great admiration is for Mussolini. "The quality which ranks Mussolini with the world's great men is his determination not to share Italy with Marxism, but to save his country by giving enemies of the nation over to destruction. How dwarfish our sham statesmen in Germany appear in comparison with him." Unfortunately, Hitler easily persuades himself that the enemies of the German nation are all those that do not agree in every respect with him. He will have a clear field, even if he makes a desert to secure it. No voice but his must ring throughout the land. When he achieves his goal of world-dominance he will apply the same principles. A world-theory must be intolerant, he declares. It cannot brook opposition. And in the meantime he regiments the life of Germany for its later function of worldleadership. Power is the only thing man in the end will obey. Ideas are futile unless they have sufficient force to compel their acceptance. Man, he considers, is made like that. And truth is tested not by the intellect, but by the ability of those that hold it to make others accept it. So he comes to the practical consequences of his faith for Europe and the world. He has won in Germany because he developed a solid fighting organisation to back his ideas. Germany will win the world-struggle when it is strong enough to perform the same service on the wider field. More Boom in Europe And first of all Germany must have more room in Europe. Although, in the Nazi manifesto issued from Munich in 1920 one of the twenty-five demands was for colonies, in his personal pronouncement Hitler emphatically declares that Germany at present has no use for colonies. Ker expansion must be in Europe. He condemns bitterly the lack of clear objectives that muddled German policy in pre-war days. The old leaders spread themselves on a general policy of expansion without focussing their efforts on a single clearly defined goal. If, he says, Germany's aim was territorial expansion in Europe, then her one sensible course was an alliance with Britain, who would have held the ring and let her achieve her ends in fields that did not conflict with British interests. With the British Navy behind her she could have enlarged her European borders. But if, on the other hand, her idea was to gain colonies, she should have faced the necessity of conflict with Britain and used all her skill in organising an alliance with Russia. In the end she found both Britain-and Russia against her, and emerged from the war seriously diminished in territory, and without a single colony. If this still represents the German view any attempt to secure a British alliance may indicate that plans are in train for development in Europe; if Germany makes overtures to Russia we may expect a policy of colonial expansion. The Right to Possess What is in Hitler's mind is embodied in the final paragraphs of his book. "No nation on earth holds a square yard of territory by any right derived from heaven. Frontiers are made and altered by human agency alone. Strength solely constitutes the right to possess. However much we recognise to-day the necessity of an agreement with France, it will be useless in the long run if our general objective in foreign policy is to be sacrificed for the sake it." *Germany ? he says, must have more space in Europe. "The acquisition of colonies will not solve that question —nothing, in fact, but the gain of territory for settlement which will not only keep the new settlers in close communication with the land of their origin, but will guarantee to the combination all the advantages arising from the size of the united whole." So he turns for the present from overseas territorial expansion. Germany's chief work is to be done i* Europe. Later, who know»j&