Hermann Rauschning (5)

The role of the military

Rauschning deals at some length with the complicity of the German army with Nazism. His point of view here is rather different from what we are used to in the English-speaking world, with our long tradition—at least up to this point—of constitutional stability and supremacy of the civilian authorities. German constitutional democracy was a novelty, and had evidently broken down by the end of the Weimar Republic; and the German conservatives had never believed in democracy in the first place. In the absence of constitutional legitimacy, there is no absolute requirement that the military keep out of politics. The question is rather what principles it should follow in deciding whether to intervene. Rauschning supplies an interesting answer:

The resolve of the army to intervene in political developments and direct their course is to be explained simply by the recognition of its duty to guarantee the security and the military efficiency of the nation. There is no justification for attributing to the heads of the army any other motives than those connected with their professional duty, though this always included the summons to the leadership of the nation at a time of emergency.

. . . . Amid the tendencies to general dissolution, the army is everywhere the last refuge of the state. (pp 136–137.)

This implies that the German army had a professional duty to remove Nazism, which was leading Germany into reckless military adventures and revolutionary chaos. In fact, not only did the army acquiesce in the Nazi régime, it was itself "the strongest revolutionizing influence in Germany" (p. 132).

The First World War, Rauschning says, destroyed the traditional conservative ethos of the German army, which regarded war as a last resort. The habits of expediency learned during the war produced an officer corps that saw craftiness as its principal virtue. Because the war was a total one, it also introduced the idea of the need for a "permanent mobilization of the whole nation". Such an ideology of "all-comprehending militarism", of the subordination of peacetime life to the requirements of national defence, is highly compatible with Nazism. (As Rauschning emphasizes, permanent mobilization is actually likely to lead eventually to the exhaustion of national strength, but presumably this was not apparent to everyone in the military leadership, or it was regarded as too long-term a problem to worry about.)

Thus the new phenomenon of total war posed a fundamental dilemma. If the army was to retain its traditional moral basis, it would have to abandon the concept of permanent mobilization; yet this would leave Germany militarily vulnerable. (The solution to this would appear to have been some form of international arms limitation arrangement, but the institutions necessary for this did not yet exist. The League of Nations, the first major attempt to limit national sovereignty, was seriously flawed, as Mussolini and Hitler demonstrated.) As a result the army was irremediably split on the question of whether the revolutionary development towards total national mobilization should be opposed or supported. In such circumstances it could readily be dominated by the Nazis. Despite this, the army regarded the Nazi Party as a mere instrument that it could use for craftily guiding civilian politics, for ruling from behind the scenes without provoking popular opposition. This was a a "very superficial judgment of National Socialism" and a "disastrous subordination of broad policy to opportunist considerations of tactics" (p. 140).

As Hitler succeeded in bringing about the rearmament of Germany in violation of the Versailles Treaty, and later won astounding military successes in the first part of the war, the army succumbed to the temptation of power and fell into line behind the Nazi leadership. Only when military catastrophe loomed, in 1944, did the officer corps stir itself to make an unsuccessful bid to remove Hitler from power.

Hermann Rauschning (4)

The suicide of the old order

The German conservatives do not come off well in Rauschning's book, where he writes that "it is mainly to the monarchist elements that Germany owes her present [1938] condition" (p. 111), referring principally to the deal of January 1933 which saw Hitler given the Chancellorship. Subsequently, the Army also failed to intervene to remove Hitler from power.

There were three basic reasons for this failure of the moderate right: the conservatives underestimated the Nazis' tactical abilities and ruthlessness; they were remarkably blind to the fact that the Nazi movement was inherently revolutionary, not conservative, in character; and finally, many of them tended to some extent to share basic Nazi views, despite the complete incompatibility of Nazism with genuine conservatism. Thus the conservatives succeeded not only in bringing to power a monstrous régime, but in discrediting traditional conservatism in Germany, perhaps for all time. Germany today has disowned its past—not just the Nazi period—probably more than any other Western country.

The most disturbing aspect of the conservatives' role is the convergence of Nazi and "conservative" thinking. Since the mid-nineteenth century, Rauschning says, German conservatism has been "decaying and degenerating" (p. 106). The conservatives have been losing their traditional values, which have been eaten away by the prevailing scepticism, and moving instead in the direction of nihilism. German monarchism fell into a "complete scepticism as to the relevance of spiritual and moral forces to practical politics" (p. 111). The Christian tradition of the former ruling classes was replaced by "ideas of power and interest" (p. 110). . . . CONTINUE

Rauschning cites conservative writers such as Ernst Jünger and Carl Schmitt as carrying some blame for this nihilist tendency. Within Nazi Germany, Jünger somehow managed to publish a thinly veiled denunciation of Hitler, and he remained a respected figure after the war. Yet Rauschning claims (without arguing the matter) that Jünger's philosophy of "dynamism" is essentially that of the Nazis. Carl Schmitt, a Conservative who later went over to Nazism, is treated at greater length.

Schmitt's view appears to be that what we call human society no longer exists in an era of control of the masses. There remains only an upper class of ruling officials at the head of the masses usefully organized down to the smallest detail. A revolution will thus amount simply to a change in the personnel of the ruling upper class; any accompanying disorders will be immaterial. In the first steps taken by the National Socialists after coming to power, the Nationalists and Conservatives saw only the establishment of the officials and the ruling class in power and an organization and control of the masses which was proceeding in an extremely chaotic way but was at least clearly destined to last. (p. 107.)

. . . long before 1933 . . . Carl Schmitt [went] beyond the retrogressive revision of the Constitution and the abolition of the franchise to the rejection of the whole "chimaera" of a State based on the laws. The revolutionary democratic legislator who builds up the State on the basis of an ideology gives place in his conception to the man of violence, who by the force of his own will gives the State the stamp of a dictatorship . . . . Here are plain links with National Socialism, the popular National Socialism of the first phase, with its nationalist doctrine. Along these lines the middle-class man and the pan-German of the old style come to approval of the methods of tyranny, of the character of the new dictator, tyrant, and usurper. In this conception his methods are only despotic on the surface, but in reality salutary and necessary. Terrorism included, they are necessary to constrain the nation to unity and higher insight and Germandom. (pp 108–109.)

Another source of the erosion of values in conservatism, Rauschning notes, was the military, which carried wartime ideas of expediency into peacetime political life through the personal connections between the officer corps and the Conservative leadership (p. 115).

In Rauschning's estimation there did exist Conservatives who would have been capable of successful national leadership under the conditions of the German crisis, but these were rejected by their own party as "ideologists and dreamers" (p. 114). An "entirely un-Conservative politician", Hugenberg, came to the head of the reactionary parties and inspired in them a "crude and unthinking materialism", the "belief in the ability of a suitable political machine to achieve any and every political task" (p. 116). Such "realism" is actually deeply unrealistic: "A policy of national renewal and reconstruction cannot grow to fruition in the absence of the only soil in which it can thrive, loyalty and justice and freedom." Nor, Rauschning suggests, is such unrealism limited to German conservatism.

In our day there is a sort of international understanding between reactionaries. All are proceeding along the same fatal course of self-destruction. By their abandonment of the principles on which their whole existence depends, they are destroying the basis of their existence more thoroughly and more rapidly than the extremest of their political opponents could have done . . . . The great financiers, in their support of political dynamism, overlook the fact that they can continue to live at the expense of that movement only so long as there still remain free democracies to be reduced to dictatorships, and that they are assisting the very authorities that are restricting the field of independent enterprise. And in the same way all the groups that profess Conservatism are training and nurturing the very element that intends to overthrow them. (p. 117.)

Hermann Rauschning (3)

England and Israel

(This is not really part of the main point of this series of posts, but I can't resist putting it in anyway.) Rauschning describes a dislike of England on the part of the Nazis, associated not with its geopolitical position but with its national culture, which the Nazis saw as too closely akin to Judaism.

The German dislike of England is derived directly from the ideas of anti-Semitism. The Englishman in his Puritanism, saturated with the spirit of the Old Testament, has become the chief representative of the capitalism which, in the eyes of National Socialists, is the principal Jewish achievement; thus, the British Empire is a Jewish empire, an empire in which the typically Jewish way of thinking, guidance by economic considerations . . . dominates. The Liberalism of the English mind is the essential and almost insuperable obstacle to an alliance between Germany and England . . . . The English through their Puritans have become the nation that appropriated the promise to Israel . . . . England has made this identification of economic success with the blessing of God the ethical framework of her public morality and civic virtues. England is Judah. This is the character the national propaganda against England will one day assume, when it is found necessary in the Third Reich to prepare for a struggle (Germany's Revolution of Destruction, p. 205).

One cannot help thinking that the Nazis had a point here, and that such observations are even more apt in the case of the United States—which has been so congenial to Jews that they may be disappearing into the Gentile population. Many Jews do regard "the Anglosphere" as their natural home, or their second home after the State of Israel itself. One might also mention the Unitarian form of Christianity that became prominent among the ruling classes in both England and the U.S. in the 18^th–19^th centuries. Of course, what the Nazis failed to recognize was that merchants can turn into warriors. The English, Americans and more recently the Jews all turned out to be formidable fighters when they were pushed far enough, beating the militaristic peoples at their own game.

In view of this basic affinity between England and Israel, the recent upsurge of anti-Semitism in England, and the spectacle of planeloads of British Jews, no longer so welcome in their native land, making aliyah to Israel during wartime, seems one more sign that England has slipped her traditional moorings.

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Update (09/18): From February 2005, an intellectual bombshell of a review by Spengler of a book by Orthodox Jewish theologian Michael Wyschogrod, Abraham's Promise. Wyschogrod offers "a way for Christians to think of themselves as a special case of Judaism", and there is some interest in this idea among American Protestant theologians. Spengler, who is an extremely smart person, thinks that "this might be one of the most important books of the 21st century." He (Spengler) regards American Evangelical Protestantism as the most viable form of Christianity at the present time, and therefore as crucial to the survival of Western culture. Evangelical Christianity is so far not a political movement, but in light of Wyschogrod's ideas there seems to be "a chance that the US might return to the world view of its founders: that of a Chosen People in a Promised Land. If that occurs, the world will be a different place." The reconciliation of Christianity and Judaism would be no small thing either, though I suppose that sectarian divisions may appear even between very similar religious groups.

Hermann Rauschning (2)

The essence of Nazism

Nazism succeeded by disguising itself as an ally to a wide variety of Germans, even where this required obvious self-contradiction, as in the case of monarchists and socialists. Adding to this confusion, many members of the Nazi party itself, especially at the lower levels of the hierarchy and in the earlier years of the movement, would also have been taken in by such disguises. Which of these self-portrayals was the genuine one? Rauschning says that at its core, National Socialism was neither nationalist (right-wing) nor socialist (left-wing), but nihilist: concerned with the pursuit and celebration of unlimited power and energy for their own sake, with the liberating effect of violence, and with the elimination of ethical constraints. Every positive value was seen by Nazism as an obstacle to its open-ended domination, and therefore systematically demolished. The public Nazi ideology was merely a rationalization of the use of force. Nazism achieved power "almost without the slightest tangible ideas of what it was going to do" with it (Germany's Revolution of Destruction, p. 24). Neither nationalism nor even racism is an essential feature of mature Nazism.

This nihilism put Nazism in diametric opposition to conservatism properly so-called, whose own core is the concern for the preservation of traditional values, especially those deriving from Christianity. Conservatism and Nazism are both anti-liberal, but conservatives oppose liberalism as the destroyer of values, while Nazism seeks in effect to complete the work of liberalism, by destroying those values which remain after liberalism has collapsed, so that it can erect a totalitarian despotism in the spiritual desert.

For the very reason that we [conservatives] acknowledge the eternal values of the nation, and of a political order rooted in the nation, we are bound to turn against this revolution, whose subversive course involves the utter destruction of all traditional spiritual standards . . . . These values are the product of the intellectual and historical unity of Western civilization . . . . Without these, Nationalism is not a conservative principle, but the implement of a destructive revolution . . . . (p. xii)

The sole ethical value within the Party was loyalty to superiors, without which the Party, which encouraged rivalry between its constituent branches as a device for mutual supervision and for refining the tactics of violent self-aggrandizement, would have instantly disintegrated into rival gangs.

Rauschning was writing at the end of the peacetime phase of the Nazi régime. The war which followed provided a different kind of environment for Nazism, permitting it to draw upon the reserves of German patriotism in much the same way as other governments fighting for their existence with the support of their people. If Hitler had not entered into war, Nazism, according to Rauschning's analysis, would have continued on its aborted path of cultural destruction within Germany, first dominating then obliterating the Church, high culture, science, the army, national customs, private property, the economy, and the family. The future would be the "all-pervading atmosphere of barracks and prison" (p. 94). Human individuality, since it could not be dominated, would have to be destroyed too. Nazism would even destroy its own élites, replacing them with a succession of more radicalized younger generations. Anti-Semitic outrages were merely a foretaste of and a training for what was in store for the whole population. Nazism acted like Bolshevism, with the difference that Bolshevism openly announced its destructive intentions, while Nazism professed to uphold what it destroyed.

One has the feeling that Orwell may have had Rauschning in mind when he wrote 1984. A basic difference between their respective visions of the future, however, is that Rauschning sees that it is impossible for a nihilist régime to be stable or long-lasting. Rauschning stresses repeatedly that it is in the nature of a nihilistic movement such as Nazism to live by devouring everything in its path, that the "permanent revolution" cannot be stopped from within until it has reduced its host society to complete exhaustion and atomization. There will be no "thousand-year Reich": long before that time has elapsed, the régime will have eaten away the foundations of its own existence. The Nazi élite itself has a strong subconscious sense of the short time left to the Reich, Rauschning asserts (p. 50). But the temporary nature of Nazism is of little consolation, because the people emerging from the ruins will be spiritually crippled, scarcely recognizable as human beings. Nazism naturally wishes to extend its power over the whole world, and if it succeeds the whole of humanity will suffer this fate.

The self-destructiveness of Nazism is not obvious, because the monster temporarily thrives on what it consumes. Every constructive value is first pressed into the service of Nazi power before it is destroyed by its subjection to base nihilism. Nazism acts very much like an addictive stimulant for the host society; its vaunted achievements are "essentially nothing more than a squandering of existing reserves" (p. 95). For example, Nazism was wrecking the economic and military institutions of Germany, but these were still strong enough to make Germany a formidable military force in World War II. Rauschning emphasizes in this connection the role of propaganda: it is a mistake, he argues, to expect that this will remain effective indefinitely. Propaganda has to be continually heightened in order to remain effective (p. 87); once it works the soil to death, the result will be complete apathy. Thus the Nazi, not the Jewish scapegoat, is the true parasitic drainer of the national life-blood (p. 99).

Rauschning now and then attempts to reason his way out of the vicious circle of progressive destruction, but in his more consistent passages, he offer little hope that Nazism can be reformed from within. A constructive political opposition grows less likely, because its leaders would require "genuine faith in the practical importance of the things of the spirit", and this is steadily being wiped out in Germany. Nor would the people, deadened to the political slogans that have been abused by Nazism, be likely to rally to such an opposition (p. 101).

Hermann Rauschning (1)

Hermann Rauschning was a German of aristocratic background who served (1933–1934) as Nazi President of the Danzig Senate, but openly turned against the Nazis and had to flee to Switzerland (1936). At the beginning of the War he published a book recounting a large number of alleged personal meetings with Hitler which was apparently phoney, a (successful) attempt to solve his personal financial problems. This episode is unfortunate, because it also tends unfairly to discredit another work of his, Germany's Revolution of Destruction (known in the U.S. as The Revolution of Nihilism), published in English in 1939. This book offers an unusually close-up view of Nazism by a thoughtful observer, a participant in the politics of the time who is also capable of intellectual detachment. It is on a much higher level than the technocrat Albert Speer's wartime memoir, for example, from what I remember of the latter.

Above all, the book should be of extraordinary interest to conservatives, because Rauschning, who was and remained a conservative, is unusually honest about the relationships between German conservatism and Nazism. As far as I am aware, there is no other book written from a conservative standpoint which shows such intellectual honesty. (Kuehnelt-Leddihn, to take a notable example, evades the issue by simply designating Nazism as "leftist" and denying that conservative aristocratic Nazis, like Rauschning, were of any significance.) Nazism probably would never have come to power without the tactical cooperation of moderate conservatives such as Rauschning, and he is fully aware of the catastrophic error for which he bears some responsibility. He not only admits this mistake, but goes on relentlessly to examine the contamination of conservative thinking itself by Nazi-like elements. This analysis may be of even greater significance today, when a number of intelligent observers see a danger of new right-wing extremist movements in response to what may well be the collapse of liberalism in Europe and/or the United States.