Section I in Goerdeler's memorandum ‘The Aim’ is headed ‘The Totality of Policy’ (Die Totalität der Politik) in reference to General Erich Ludendorff's doctrine of Total War.

Much like Moltke's 1940–1941 drafts, but in rich and emotional language unlike Moltke's dry, legal idiom, the memorandum addresses the fundamental issues facing human society and the state – the natural environment; provision for material and spiritual needs; freedom of scientific enquiry; freedom of religion, law, and justice; patriotism; human virtues; and the grand principle of subordination to divine guidance. Policy (Politik) must encompass all of these premises, and it must seek a balance of interests instead of an unscrupulous use of power. Policy must also remain in control during war: ‘There is not a totality of war as such, there is only a totality of policy in war as in peace’. The discourse about Total War in the sense that in war any means were legitimate had been possible in the last fifty years only because policy had failed. The aim was the balance of peace.

These principles are followed by a first historical tour d'horizon, describing the policies of Bismarck's successors as having abandoned the comprehensive meaning of policy, of having become ‘naïve, superficial and frivolous’, and generally describing human affairs as characterised by gains in intellectual liberty on the one hand and loss of humility leading to hubris on the other hand. Divine and natural laws must be acknowledged and honoured. Foreign-policy and domestic-policy aims must be based upon them.