Text: "What is Europe? There is no geographical definition of our continent, but only a national and cultural one. The urals are not the border of this Continent but alywas the line that separates the life of the West from that of the East. There was a time when Europe was that Greek Island into which Nordic tribes had penetrated in order to kindle from there for the first time a light that has since slowly but steadily begun to illuminate the world of man. And when these Greek repelled the invasion of the Persian conquerors, they were not defending their closer homeland, which was Greece, but that concept which today is called Europe. And then Europe migrated from Hellas to Rome Roman thought and Roman statesmanship were combined with the Greek spirit and culture. A world empire was created that even today has not been equalled, let alone surpassed, in its significance and perpetuating power. But when the Roman legions defended Italy against the African onslaught of Carthage in three difficult wars and finally achieved victory, it was once again not Rome they were fighting for, but the Europe of that time, which encompassed the Greco-Roman world. The next invasion against this home soil of the new human culture came from the far reaches of the East. A terrible torrent of culturless hordes poured from the interior of Asia deep into the heart of the present European continent, burning, scorching and murdering as the true scourge of the Lord. In the battle of the catalaunian Fields Roman and Germanic tribes stood together for the first time in a battle of fate of incalculable significance for a culture which, starting with the Greeks, had now spread beyond the Romans to the Germanic tribes. Europe had grown. The Occident emerged from Hellas and Rome and its defence was now for many centuries not only the task of the Romans, but above all also the task of the Germanic tribes. But to the same extent that the Occident, illuminated by Greek culture and filled with the impression of the mighty traditions of the Roman Empire, expanded its space through Germanic colonisation, the concept that we call Europe expanded spatially. No matter whether German emperors fought off invasions from the East on the Unstrut or on the Lechfeld, or Africa was pushed back from Spain in long battles, it was alywas a struggle of the nascent Europe against an environment that was foreign to it in its deepest essence. If Rome was once responsible for the creation and defence of this continent, then the Germanic tribes also took over the defence and protection of a family of peoples, which may be differentiated and divergent in its political structure and objectives, but which in the overall picture represents a blood and cultural unity that is partly the same and partly complementary. And it was from this Europe that not only a colonisation of other continents took place, but also a spiritual and cultural fertilisation, of which only those are aware who are willing to seek the truth instead of denying it." - Adolf Hitler, December 11, 1941