Mein Kampf
internal colonization and the similar eventual effect produced by a limitation of breeding lead to an extremely unfavorable military situation for the nation in question.
The size of a people’s home territory is in itself an important factor in its outward security. The greater the space at a people’s disposal, the greater too is its natural protection; for military decisions can be gained more quickly, more easily, more effectively and more completely against peoples in small, constricted territories than is possible against territorially extensive states. The large size of a state’s territory, that is, does offer a certain protection against offhand attacks, since any conquest could be accomplished only after long and severe struggles, so that the risk involved in a wanton assault will seem too great unless there are quite extraordinary reasons for it. That is to say, the very size of a state is a reason why its people can more easily preserve its freedom and independence, while conversely the smallness of such a country makes it absolutely provoke appropriation.
The first two possibilities of striking a balance between the rising population and the static amount of land were in fact opposed by so-called nationalist circles in Germany. The reasons for this attitude were, it is true, different from those given above; people were hostile to limitation of births chiefly through a certain moral feeling; they indignantly denounced internal colonization because they scented in it an attack against the great landholders, and saw here the beginning of a general struggle against private property as such. Considering the form in which this second doctrine of salvation in particular was advocated, they were in fact probably quite right in their assumption.
So far as the great masses were concerned, the defense was not very skillful, and by no means went to the heart of the problem.
There now remained but two ways to assure the rising population of work and bread.
3. Either new land could be acquired on which to push off the
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