New Order (Nazism) - Future Wars Against Asia

Future Wars Against Asia

Although pursuing an alliance based on Realpolitik with Imperial Japan in the battle against the "Western Plutocracies" and Soviet Bolshevism, the Nazi leadership ultimately considered this cooperation only temporary in nature. The racial ideology of Nazism predicted that the fate of human civilization depended on the ultimate triumph of the Germanic-Nordic peoples, and in fact the populous Asian continent was seen as the greatest threat to hegemony of the white race. The Japanese people were characterized as 'culture-bearers', meaning they could make use of the technological and civilizational achievements of the Aryan race and by so doing maintain an advanced society, but could not truly create 'culture' themselves. Gerhard Weinberg asserts that the historical evidence points to the conclusion that Hitler, like he had done with the Soviets in the 1939-1941 period, employed a tactic of conceding to the Japanese whatever they desired until they in turn could be defeated in a subsequent war. In early 1942, Hitler is quoted saying to Ribbentrop: "We have to think in terms of centuries. Sooner or later there will have to be a showdown between the white and the yellow races."

In July 1941, as plans were being laid out for post-Barbarossa military operations, the German Navy command was not ready to exclude the possibility of a war between Germany and Japan. In 1942, NSDAP official Erhard Wetzel (Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories) predicted that "the self-determination of the numerically strong Asian peoples after this war" would challenge German-controlled Europe with Japanese instigation, and stated that "a Greater Asia and an independent India are formations that dispose over hundreds of millions of inhabitants. A German world power with 80 or 85 million Germans by contrast is numerically too weak". Wetzel further pondered on Germany's choices on the population policies in occupied Russia: if the Russians were restricted to having as few children as possible in the interest of German colonization, this would further "weaken the white race in view of the dangers of Asia".

As the Japanese were conquering one European colonial territory after another in Asia and Oceania, and seemingly poised to take over Australia and New Zealand as well, Hitler further believed that the white race would disappear altogether from these regions, which he viewed as a turning point in history. He was relieved that Japan had entered the war on Germany's side, however, as he had long hoped to use that country as a strategic counterweight against the United States, but also because Japanese hegemony in East Asia and the Pacific would guarantee both countries' security against other powers. Looking into the future, he remarked that "There's one thing Japan and Germany have in common; both of us need fifty to a hundred years for purposes of digestion: we for Russia, they for the Far East".

During his speech at the meeting of SS major-Generals at Posen on October 4, 1943, Heinrich Himmler commented on the future conflicts between Nazi-controlled Europe and Asia:

Himmler addressed this apocalyptic vision in an earlier speech given to SS generals at the University of Kharkiv, Ukraine in April 1943. He first spoke on the necessity of the war against the USSR and Jewry: