GERMAN POLICY OF ALLIANCES AFTER THE WAR THE fecklessness of the Reich in the domain of foreign policy, and its failure to follow the right principles in its policy of alliances, was not only con¬ tinued after the Revolution, but continued in a worse form. For if before the War confusion of ideas in politics may be taken as the first cause of the bad State leadership in foreign affairs, after the War, on the other hand, it was honest intention that was lacking. It was obvious that the Party which had achieved its destructive aims by means of the Revolution would not be interested in a policy of alliances, the object of which was reconstruction of the free German State.
As long as the National Socialist German Workers’ Party was but a small and little-known society, problems of foreign policy would seem of inferior importance in the eyes of many of our adherents. And, indeed, the one essential preliminary to a struggle for freedom against the foreigner is removal of the causes of our collapse, and destruction of those who are profiting by it.
But from the moment that the small and insig¬ nificant society widened its sphere of operations, and attained the importance of a great association, it quickly became necessary to take note of the developments in foreign politics. We had to decide on principles, which should not only not be in contradiction of our fundamental views, but should actually be an expres¬ sion of them.
The essential and basic idea which is ever before us in considering this question is that foreign policy is but a means to an end. But the end is exclusively Q 24 I encouragement of our own nationality. No suggestion in foreign politics may be prompted by any considera¬ tion other than