While the Nazis have never concealed the first of these objectives, the second was the subject for a great deal of dissimulation up to the outbreak of the present war. Typical of the false front which the Nazis presented to the outside world with reference to their foreign policy objectives are the statements made by Dr. Scurla in _Basic Principles of National Socialism With Special Reference to Foreign Countries_. Dr. Scurla quotes Hitler's speech of May 17, 1933 in which he said, "We see the European nations around us as given facts. French, Poles, etc., are our neighbor peoples, and we know that no conceivable historic occurrence could change this reality,"[98] and comments: This folk principle, which has grown out of the National Socialist ideology, implies the recognition of the independence and the equal rights of each people. We do not see how anyone can discern in this a "pan-Germanic" and imperialistic threat against our neighbors. This principle does not admit the difference between "great powers" and "minor states," between majority peoples and minorities. It means at the same time a clear rejection of any imperialism which aims at the subjugation of foreign peoples or the denationalization of alien populations. It demands the unqualified acknowledgment of the right to live of every folk, and of every folk-group, which is forced to live as a foreign group in another state. The western European national state together with its parliamentary democracy was not able to do justice to the natural and living entities, the peoples, in their struggle for existence.[99] Farther on in the same work Scurla states: Out of its fundamental ideologic view, however, Germany rejects every form of imperialism, even that of peaceful penetration. It is unable to concede to any people the authority to develop ideas and ways of living, to which then another people has to subordinate itself, even if some other order is suited to its essential nature ... It does not at all, however, consider the German order obligatory for other peoples. National Socialism, as has been said a hundred times, is exclusively the sum total of the German world-view.[100] Similar assurances by Nazi leaders were frequently made in order to induce a sense of security in neighboring countries. Hitler, for example, in a proclamation opening the party congress at Nuremberg on September 11, 1935 said: National Socialism has no aggressive intentions against any European nation. On the contrary, we are convinced that the nations of Europe must continue their characteristic national existence, as created by tradition, history and economy; if not, Europe as a whole will be destroyed.[101]