Who can walk through Rome or Florence without being overcome by thoughts of the fate that would have befallen these unparalleled monuments to human art and culture had Mussolini and his Fascism not managed to save Italy from Bolshevism!
Germany faced the same danger. Here National Socialism achieved the miracle of salvation. In the imagination of countless people of all races, the belief in a new Renaissance in our time is linked to these two states. The solidarity of these two regimes is thus more than a matter of selfish utilitarianism.
In this solidarity lies Europe's salvation from the threat of Bolshevist destruction. When Italy was involved in its heroic fight for its right to live in Abyssinia, Germany stood by its side as a friend. And in 1938, Fascist Italy repaid us this friendship in rich measure.
Let no one in the world make any mistake about the decision that National Socialist Germany has made vis-à-vis this friend. It can only serve peace if there is no doubt that a war against Italy today, for whatever reason it is instigated, will call Germany to the side of this friend.
Most of all, let no one be counseled otherwise by those isolated bourgeois weaklings who vegetate in every country and cannot understand that within the life of a people, courage and honor can easily exist alongside cowardice as the imparter of wisdom.
As far as National Socialist Germany is concerned, it knows what fate would befall it if an international power ever succeeded in bringing Fascist Italy to its knees, under whatever pretense.
We understand the consequences and look at them unflinchingly. The fate of Prussia between 1805 and 1806 will not be repeated a second time in German history. The weaklings who advised the King of Prussia in 1805 are not dispensing counsel in Germany today. The National Socialist state recognizes the dangers and is determined to prepare to fight them.
I know that our own Wehrmacht is equal to the toughest military demands, and so is Italy's military power. For just as the German military of today cannot be judged by, for example, the standards of the old federal army [Bundesarmee] from circa 1848, modern Italy under Fascism cannot be judged by the standards of a time when Italy was fragmented as a state.
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