Politica estera rivoluzionaria (Paetel, Karl Otto)

Dal manifesto del nazional bolscevismo

La concezione rivoluzionario-nazionalista della politica estera è quindi chiara: un fronte contro Versailles, che significa un fronte contro l'Occidente e i suoi satelliti orientali e sudorientali. Il che implica riprendere il vecchio slogan di Brockdorff-Rantzau: "Contro il capitalismo e l'imperialismo". * Uno slogan per il quale le parole di Moltke † non possono essere vere: "È dura essere un patriota in Germania, perché uno è ... dimenticato." - Eppure è, ciò nonostante, il viandante della nostra volontà insurrezionale. 

Significa formare una comunità di combattenti con l'avversario del mondo di Versailles: la Russia. Solo alleandosi con la Russia, che come prima potenza mondiale socialista sarà un alleato naturale per una Germania socialista, la questione orientale tedesca può essere risolta, la quale allo stesso tempo determinerà l'esistenza della Polonia.(68)

Lo stesso fronte comprende tutti i popoli oppressi della Terra [alle unterdrückten Völker der Erde]. Al posto di una politica coloniale, la "Lega delle nazioni oppresse" dovrà essere sotto la guida tedesca ‡.

Queste sono le prime linee politiche - il tutto mentre l'NSDAP è in simpatia razziale con l'Inghilterra, pieno di risentimento e romanticismo, la sua politica anti-russa un atteggiamento mercenario capitalistico, la sua esclusiva agenda italiana suggestiva di ossessione dogmatica. 

Così esistono oggi i fronti nel mondo, creati dalla lotta di classe delle nazioni.

La politica estera di un Volk è invariabilmente condizionata in parte da quella lotta; ciò che gli altri fanno o non fanno non è mai una dottrina, ma sempre una questione di opportunità.(69) Quindi questa politica non può essere fatta da una Germania di Hindenburg o Hitler, ma può nascere solo da una Germania rivoluzionaria.

Fonte:

Dal Manifesto Nazional Bolscevico scritto da Karl Otto Paetel nel 1933

Note:

68) On the question of Poland, compare for example Engels’s letter to Marx, 23rd May 1851: “The more I think about history, the clearer it becomes to me that the Poles are a dissolving nation [eine nation fondue], who can only continue to serve a purpose until Russia itself has entered the agrarian revolution. From that moment on Poland will have absolutely no raison d’être anymore. The Poles have never done anything but play at idiotic – if daring – pranks. Nor can a single moment be cited when Poland successfully represented progress or did anything of historical significance in comparison with Russia… Fortunately, in the Rheinischen Zeitung, we did not assume any positive commitments towards Poland… Conclusion: To remove the Poles in the West, fob them off with promises of Riga and Odessa and, in the event the Russians are to be mobilized, to ally with them and compel the Poles to yield. Every inch of the frontier between Memel and Krakow that we cede to the Poles completely ruins this already miserably weak border militarily, and will leave exposed the entire Baltic coast as far as Stettin [Szczecin].” - Riazanov, p. 184, “Karl Marx and Engels on the Polish Question” [“Karl Marx und Engels über die Polenfrage”] Archive f.d.Ge.D.Soz.B.6.

69) Russia’s non-aggression pacts are indeed anything but gratifying for Germany, but they are completely the fault of the Western-oriented German foreign policy. An alliance-ready socialist Germany alone is capable of liquidating them. 

Note del traduttore inglese

* Paetel is quoting from Brockdorff-Rantzau’s letter of resignation to President Ebert on 20 June, 1919: “The clear, unambiguous espousal of a policy of democratic self-determination and of social justice will in the future be the raison d’être of the German people; this raison d’être and the declaration of uncompromising war against capitalism and imperialism, whose handiwork is the proposed peace of our enemies [Versailles], vouchsafe it a great future.” 

† Paetel here is quoting a remark which General Helmuth von Moltke the Elder made in an 1841 essay “The Western Boundary” (“Die Westliche Grenzfrage”) about Don Dietrich, Mayor of Strasburg. Moltke the Elder was (and still is) a famous German military figure – Chief of the Prussian and German General Staffs, he was responsible for a string of military victories through the mid-to-late 1800s and made significant intellectual contributions to the fields of military strategy and theory. 

‡ The ‘League of Oppressed Nations’ (sometimes ‘League of Oppressed Peoples’ – Paetel in the German uses “Bund der unterdrückten Nationen”) was an alternative approach to foreign policy advocated in some circles of the nationalist movement. In contrast to the idea of a colonial policy (whether directed towards Germany’s old acquisitions in Africa and Oceania, or towards “the East”), advocates of a ‘League’ instead argued that Germany as a victim of ‘Western imperialism’ (i.e. through the Versailles Treaty) should form an international alliance with other oppressed nations, thus uniting the ‘proletarian nations’ of the oppressed parts of the world against the ‘plutocratic nations’ of the West. Typically the ‘League’ concept included those peoples and nations currently colonized by the Western powers, such as China and Egypt, with the implication being that Germany’s support for non-European national liberation movements would thus have the additional effect of weakening the strength of imperial nations such as Britain and France. Another implication, admitted openly by Paetel here, is that Germany would be a natural leader for such a group. The concept had a fairly long history – Hitler discusses it dismissively in Vol I., Ch. 14 of Mein Kampf, relating that it was a popular subject of discussion in völkisch the 1920-21 period. Gregor Strasser also advocated for a ‘League’ until his foreign policy convictions began to shift after 1926, and the idea continued to remain popular among anti-imperialist nationalists, such as in the circles around Otto Strasser and Ernst Niekisch.