Zweites Buch

Zweites Buch
Author Adolf Hitler
Country Germany
Language German
Genre Autobiography, Political theory
Pages 720
Preceded by Mein Kampf

The Zweites Buch (pronounced [ˈtsvaɪ̯təs buːχ], "Second Book") is an unedited transcript of Adolf Hitler's thoughts on foreign policy written in 1928; it was written after Mein Kampf and was not published in his lifetime. The Zweites Buch was not published in 1928 because "Mein Kampf" did not sell well at that time and Hitler's publisher, Franz-Eher-Verlag, told Hitler that a second book would hinder sales even more.[1]

Contents

The arrangement of chapters is as follows:

Zweites Buch and Mein Kampf

There are a number of similarities and differences between Zweites Buch and Mein Kampf. As in Mein Kampf, Hitler declared that the Jews were his eternal and most dangerous opponents. As in Mein Kampf, Hitler outlined what the German historian Andreas Hillgruber has called his Stufenplan ("stage-by-stage plan"). Hitler himself never used the term Stufenplan, which was coined by Hillgruber in his 1965 book Hitlers Strategie. Briefly, the Stufenplan called for three stages. In the first stage, there would be a massive military build-up, the overthrow of the "shackles" of the Treaty of Versailles, and the forming of alliances with Fascist Italy and the British Empire. The second stage would be a series of fast, "lightning wars" in conjunction with Italy and Britain against France and whichever of her allies in Eastern Europe—such as Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania and Yugoslavia—chose to stand by her. The third stage would be a war to obliterate what Hitler considered to be the "Judeo-Bolshevik" regime in the Soviet Union.

In contrast to Mein Kampf, in Zweites Buch Hitler added a fourth stage to the Stufenplan. He insinuated that in the far future a struggle for world domination might take place between the United States and a European alliance comprising a "new association of nations, consisting of individual states with high national value".[2] Zweites Buch also offers a different perspective on the U.S. than that outlined in Mein Kampf. In the latter, Hitler declared that Germany's most dangerous opponent on the international scene was the Soviet Union; in Zweites Buch, Hitler declared that for immediate purposes, the Soviet Union was still the most dangerous opponent, but that in the long-term, the most dangerous potential opponent was the U.S.[3]

Ideas on international relations

Of all Germany's potential enemies, Hitler ranked the U.S. as the most dangerous. By contrast, Hitler saw the UK as a fellow "Aryan" power that in exchange for Germany's renunciation of naval and colonial ambitions would ally itself with Germany. France, in Hitler's opinion, was rapidly "Negroizing" itself. The majority of Americans were in Hitler's view "Aryans", albeit Aryans ruled by what Hitler saw as a Jewish plutocracy. In Hitler's point of view, it was this combination of "Aryan" might, coupled with a more competent "Jewish rule" which made the U.S. so dangerous.

United Kingdom

In Zweites Buch, Hitler called for an Anglo-German alliance based on political expediency as well as the notion that the two Germanic powers were natural allies. In Zweites Buch, Hitler argued that the alleged British striving for a balance of power leading to an Anglo-German alliance would not conflict with his goal of Germany being the dominant continental power because it was wrong to believe that "England fought every hegemonic power immediately", but rather was prepared to accept dominant states whose aims were "obviously and purely continental in nature".[4] Hitler went on to write that "Of course no one in Britain will conclude an alliance for the good of Germany, but only in the furtherance of British interests."[5] Nonetheless, because Hitler believed that there was an ongoing struggle between the "Jewish invasion" and the "old British tradition" for the control of Britain, Hitler believed the chances for Anglo-German alliance to be good provided the "Jewish invasion" was resisted successfully.[6] Hitler hedged somewhat, however, by claiming that

The instincts of Anglo-Saxondom are still so sharp and alive that one cannot speak of a complete victory of Jewry, but rather, in part the latter is still forced to adjust its interests to those of the English. If the Jew were to triumph in England, English interests would recede into the background.... [But] if the Briton triumphs then a shift of England's attitude vis-à-vis Germany can still take place."[6]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Cf. Adam Tooze (2007): The Wages of Destruction – The Making & Breaking of the Nazi Economy. London. p. 13.
  2. ↑ Hitler, Adolf; Weinberg, Gerhard L. (editor) (2003). Hitler's second book: the unpublished sequel to Mein Kampf, p. 227. Enigma.
  3. ↑ Hillgruber, Andreas Germany and the Two World Wars, Harvard University Press: Cambridge, 1981 pages 50–51
  4. ↑ Jäckel, Eberhard Hitler's World View page 41
  5. ↑ Strobl, Gerwin The Germanic Isle page 43.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Leitz, Christian Nazi Foreign Policy page 35

References

External links