The Ideological Origins of Nazi Imperialism by Smith Woodruff D.;

Author:Smith, Woodruff D.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press USA - OSO
Published: 1986-10-15T16:00:00+00:00

Weltpolitik and War Aims

The continuity that Fischer emphasizes between prewar German foreign policy and imperialist thinking, on the one hand, and official war-aims planning, on the other hand, resided largely in Weltpolitik. The first tentative draft of a war-aims position produced by Chancellor von Bethmann Hollweg’s office after the outbreak of hostilities in 1914 was the famous “September Program.” Fischer describes this program as “the essential basis of Germany’s war aims right up to the end of the war”; it contained an admirable summary of the practical aims of Weltpolitik in the immediate prewar years.6 To these aims were added a number of specific items reflecting particular military and heavy-industrial interests. Conspicuously absent was any substantial reference to the traditional central concerns of Lebensraum: colonial expansion for purposes of settlement, eastward expansion of Germany’s borders to accommodate German peasant farms, expansion as a limiting response to economic change.

A key feature of the September Program, as it was of practically all efforts by the Chancery and Foreign Office to produce a general war-aims plan, was the central European economic union—a concept that gained a popular nickname, Mitteleuropa, when a relatively restrained version of it was publicized by Friedrich Naumann in his famous book with that title in 1915.7 Naumann’s proposals and most of the presentations of the Mitteleuropa idea emanating from government offices during the first years of the war—including the September Program—followed the same general lines as economic imperialist formulations of the idea back to the time of List.8 The economic union would rest on a grand division of labor in which Germany would act as the industrial center, technological innovator, and source of capital and overall direction. Each of the peripheral component regions would specialize in a particular range of production, especially of primary and agricultural goods; at the same time, each would act as a secure investment area for German capital. The union would protect its members from excessive competition and permit capital to be invested more economically and rationally; fear that investments would be taken over by foreign rivals would be eliminated. Although Germany would be the main obvious beneficiary of such a system, most of its proponents argued that it would have manifold positive advantages for its other members as well, especially Austria-Hungary. Mitteleuropa was represented in its broadest terms both before and during the war by Walther Rathenau as a necessary concomitant to the next stage of capitalist economic development—a structure that would protect a major sector of the world’s economy against the shocks of international business fluctuations and provide a framework within which the system of rational economic management that was the hallmark of advanced corporate capitalism could be extended to the national and regional economies.9 The adherence of countries such as the Netherlands and perhaps France to the union would also bring in their colonies, which would be vital adjuncts to the whole scheme.

The different Weltpolitik-style versions of Mitteleuropa varied with respect to the proposed composition of the economic union. The September Program,

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