Reck-Malleczewen on nationalism

Another German anti-Nazi conservative was Friedrich Percyval Reck-Malleczewen, author of Diary of a Man in Despair (English translation 1970). Reck-Malleczewen was of Prussian aristocratic background but seems to have preferred Bavaria, where he had an estate. He did not conceal his loathing of the Nazis when he thought it dishonourable to do so, and not surprisingly ended up with a bullet to the neck in Dachau in 1945. His translator, Paul Rubens, compares him to Dostoyevsky, Kafka and Orwell.

Reck-Malleczewen appears to have been decisively soured on political nationalism by the experience of Nazism.

. . . I cannot overlook the fact that a European psychosis is nearing its end [1940] in the dance of death that is going on in Germany, the psychosis of nationalism, and that Europe must now decide either to destroy it, or be itself destroyed.
      Why must I honor as a force, foreseen at the time of the creation of the world, an idea—nationalism—which the builders of the cathedrals in Germany's greatest period had never heard of, which, indeed, never existed before 1789 and which the Nazis, who otherwise pose as the great liquidators of the French Revolution, have "re-created" out of dusty old scrolls?
      Why must I equate with basic human feelings like love and hate a philosophy which put an aura of heroism around mercantilism and the bourgeois drive for power, and which is today as rancid and flat as the whole of Rousseau. Nationalism is as tattered and dust-covered as the banner of Girondism itself, which great Carlyle called the worst of all time. It was possible only at a time of generalized atheism, and purposelessness, and brute force. Of course, I.G. Farben welcomed Hitler—he provided their poison factory with the aura of a philosophy! [This possibly refers to the unpleasant synthetic foodstuffs produced under the Nazis' self-sufficiency drive, which the author thinks may have caused a sudden doubling of the incidence of cancer in Germany.]
      The businessmen from the Ruhr were well aware of what they were doing when they hired this somber bandit. But should I pretend that I feel myself closer to a German coachman than to the French historian with whom I have been corresponding for decades, to keep this mercantilist ideology from going entirely to shreds? Am I supposed to make no protest when this same nationalism, supposedly the specially ordained protector of all the chief treasures of our national heritage, then turns about and grossly, cynically toys with these as only a barbarian would do?
      What price a forest if the "national" interest calls for a cellulose factory? Or a German cathedral that stands in the way of an autobahn? What is the value of a tiny remnant of the German soul when aggression is in the works and an entire nation is being systematically turned into cavemen—when their spiritual center is to be destroyed, and they are to be turned into an amorphous mass, whose only form is formlessness itself?
      But we must be completely clear: Why, if nationalism really is one of the basic impelling forces of mankind, as its apologists contend, was it discovered in such comparatively recent times as the French Revolution? How is it that this "basic force" did not exist in the days of the Song of the Niebelungs? And how does one explain the fact that in 1400 there was a German nation, but no nationalism—while today, when nationalism is in full bloom, even Goebbels gags a little at the statement that this conglomeration of wage earners, sergeants-gone-berserk, and virgin-typists is a nation? If nationalism is truly the hallmark of a people in the prime of its youth and energies, how does it happen that under its aegis morality decays, ancient customs die out—that men are uprooted, the steadfast derided, the thoughtful branded, the rivers poisoned, and the forests destroyed? (Diary, pp 109–111)

Nationalism, no matter how loudly defended today, is almost finished, and the coup de grace will come in this most moblike of all wars. Tomorrow it will be behind us, an ugly, sweaty dream. The idea of a united Europe was not always upheld by me, but I know now that we can no longer afford the luxury of considering it a mere idea. Europe must either make any further wars impossible, or this cradle of great ideas will see its cathedrals pulverized, and its landscape turned into a plain. (p. 113)

Nationalism: a state of mind in which you do not love your own country as much as you hate somebody else's. (p. 149)

Reck-Malleczewen is here using a very broad brush. He does not seem to acknowledge (as would Hermann Rauschning) that the Nazi version of nationalism may be essentially different from nationalism in general: both are sweepingly condemned. In particular, if I understand him correctly, nationalism implies economic policies aimed at self-sufficiency, and is therefore an ideology for businessmen; but this also implies unnecessary industrialization and destruction of the natural environment that nationalists supposedly cherish so much. In his reference to the German coachman versus the French historian, he even seems to be going beyond a rejection of nationalism as a political ideology, into the rejection of the idea that one's personal loyalties should be to one's national community.

These ideas of Reck-Malleczewen's do not strike me as worked out particularly well; they seem more like first intellectual impressions on the subject. They do provide a striking example of how Nazism rendered the concept of nationalism loathsome in the eyes of sensitive Europeans, even conservative ones, and made European political union seem an imperative.

(Thanks to Hugh at Jihadwatch for this reference.)