Adolf Hitler und das Selbstbestimmungsrecht der Völker Adolf Hitler and the Peoples′ Right to Self-Determination

Abstract

In Hitler’s expansionist conception of foreign policy, which aimed at “Lebensraum” and ethnic homogeneity, there was no room for a right of peoples (nations) to self-determination. It was precisely his scorn for this supposed right which enabled him to recognize and to use it for what it has always been and still is: a means for an end which enables the underdog to weaken the powerful. The first to use it successfully was Lenin. After the October Revolution he claimed it not only for the peoples of the Russian Empire but for all the peoples in the world. His propagandistic success was overwhelming, so that Woodrow Wilson at least in part assumed his view, although Wilson’s conception of self-determination originally had been comparatively harmless from the point of view of foreign policy: for him, self-determination originally was democratic self-government, not the right to secessionist independence. Thus he used the right of self-determination as an instrument of the victors – and it aversely effected their position. Their territorial claims became subject to the people’s will as a restricting condition. They were not prepared fully to accept this consequence, for example with regard to a plebiscite on the question of Austria’s “Anschluß”. Hitler dexterously exploited these weaknesses. In 1935, with the Saar Plebiscite, and in 1938, with the annexation of Austria and the Sudeten he was able to claim the right to self-determination for himself, while his enemies could only point to their victor’s right – a title which was gradually losing its legitimacy. In consequence, not only did the victors of the Second World War build the post-war order without any reference to a right of self-determination, they even blatantly ignored it. The right to self-determination experienced its revival only in the course of decolonisation.