22 Getting His Nazis in Line

"Hitler Versus National Socialism" is the title of chapter 25 of Konrad Heiden's 1944 book, Der Fuehrer.  See the bottom for previous posts.

1. "Up till then the National Socialists had 'behaved like fools, overthrowing everything' -- and stolen and blackmailed in the process... This must stop; and such methods were no longer needed because the party had already won uncontested power: 'The party has now become the state'" (651).

After the power of Hitler was secured, some of his strongest and most forceful allies, because of their extremism, became liabilities. Rudolf Hess had predicted this phase: "to attain the goal the Leader would 'trample his closest friends'" (631).

"At the height of his victory, the victor retreated in many places, seemingly of his own free will, changed his plans, disappointed his own followers, adapted himself to necessity. And the secret of political victory is contained in this Hegelian necessity: to know what one wants, and to want what the people want, but do not yet know" (653).

2. What were these reversals of course? One was a kind of temporary reconciliation with religion. To many of Hitler's followers, "only faith in their fatherland had retained any meaning, their own nation had become God" (631). Some insisted that German religion must free itself from Jewish Biblical tradition. In 1922, Hitler had called the Old Testament, "Satan's Bible." Hitler had once been convinced that Jesus himself was not a Jew but the son of a Greek soldier in the Roman army.

Yet some Nazi's thought that Hitler still had some sentiment for the Catholic church. For the Catholic Church's part, it increasingly withdrew from politics, hoping to keep its spiritual power intact. "Step by step, the Catholic Church abandoned political resistance to National Socialism" (633).

The Catholic Church and Hitler reach an agreement. German clergy would be forbidden to engage in political activity, and the Church would be taken under the "Protection" of National Socialism. "Many German Catholics felt more humiliated than protected by this treaty," the Concordat. But at least the Church would keep cloisters, schools, hospitals, and clergy.

There was some initial resistance in mid-1933. At first the Catholic Church refused to agree that non-Aryans were not German. At first the Protestant church elected someone abhorrent to the Nazis--a man who ran a home for the mentally ill. Hitler thought these should be exterminated for the purity of the race.

But by July a Nazi was in charge and swastika flags were raised over the Protestant churches of Germany.

Yet when Hindenberg protested the way Goring was treating the Protestant Church in Prussia, Hitler had him back off. "To the pious Christians it seemed a victory that the Holy Scriptures and writings of the reformers would remain the foundation of the Protestant faith" (648).

Hitler seemed to know just when to retreat. "As a born politician, he had recognized the decisive instant between stubborn persistance and inevitable retreat more clearly than had his co-workers" (648). Of course he would eventually have his way.

As this flood of victory was taking place, "it still seemed uncertain how far National Socialism would go in the breaking of resistance... Hitler himself was not clear how far he could go and how far he wanted to go" (638). He zig-zagged and felt his way around, back and forth, here a little, there a little.

3. Hitler had a sense that at some point revolution would have to stop and they would have to rule. Goebbels was already speaking of a "third Reich," after the Holy Roman Empire and the Bismarck Empire.

So after having had so much "socialist" rhetoric, Hitler would keep capitalism intact for the moment. So many had wanted a "second revolution," one that would be economic in nature.

Competency now seemed more important than loyalty to those who put him in control. "A businessman must not be deposed if he is a good businessman but not yet a National Socialist; and especially if the National Socialist who is put in his place understands nothing of economic affairs" (650). So much for the socialist revolution.

Hitler believed in private property for the true German. He changed the meaning of the words. Socialism for him meant that one man's property would be equal in importance and dignity to another's. What was held in common was the common good, and having some businesses was for the common good.

Most of all, he was lost if he did not make the workers workers again. Hitler rebuffed the armed bohemians in the name of competency and then he betrayed the middle class to keep the loyalty of the workers. "With all the strength of his changeable nature, Hitler led the campaign for the economic age he had so despised" (649).

"The important thing is not programs and ideas," Hitler now said, "but daily bread for seventy million people" (650).

4. Hitler was far more interested in shaping the Weltanschauung or "worldview" of the people. He wanted to shape a common mental attitude among the people, a commitment to the German ideal, the German race, and the German nation. Others could handle the details.

And of course there were the Hitler youth. He aimed to uproot the youth and tear them away from their families. "And so we shall take the children away from you and educate them to be what is necessary for the German people" (644). His opponents would eventually pass away, "and after you will come the youth which knows nothing else."

Previously on Hitler:

• How to Take Over the World
• Bands of Restless Men
• Hitler was a Loser
• Rallies with the Rabid
• Waging War against His People
• The Art of Propaganda
• His Brand Is Crisis
• Big Words for a Coward
• Prophecies of the Antichrist
• Germany's Return from Despair
• Fatherland Security
• Hitler's Philosophy
• Destroying Democracy with Democracy
• He's Horrible to Work With
• Putting on a Show
• Maneuvering Toward Power
• Narrow Misses With Hitler
• Hitler Becomes Chancellor (chap 21)
• The Reichstag Fire (chap 22)
• Step by Step Coup (chap 23)
• Manipulating Peace (chap 24)

21. Conquest by Peace

"Conquest by Peace" is the title of chapter 24 of Konrad Heiden's 1944 book, Der Fuehrer.  See the bottom for previous posts.

1. Make no mistake, there is no love for Hitler in this chapter. But perhaps there was a hint of admiration for the talent of an evil man at one skill. And indeed, although Hitler was presiding over the murder and oppression of swaths of his own people, he managed to calm a nervous world with talk of peace.

One of the most striking comments of Heiden is that Hitler may have even believed himself. We are not looking for the Germanization of the world, he told the world. They did not want war. They needed peace. Hitler agreed with the proposal of US President Roosevelt when he argued that the nations of Europe should only keep a defensive military but do away with offensive weapons like planes, tanks, and such.

Germany only wanted the right of self-determination, the right to truly be German. They did not begrudge the rest of the world its own right to be French or British or Italian or Russia. "Germany does not think of an attack, but of her security" (620), said the new dictator of Germany.

Perhaps Hitler even believed it in the moment. But it was not in his nature. You cannot believe what people like Hitler say. You have to see beyond what they even see of themselves to their true nature and destiny, which is the destruction of all around them.

2. The world wanted to believe Hitler. Perhaps in his more honest moments, he was doing with peace what he did with democracy. Having used democracy to destroy democracy, now he would use peace to destroy peace.

He did not have an army, he said. The SA are not an army, he said. War would not bring the much needed peace to Europe. What would bring peace, according to Hitler, was letting each national entity be itself, and Germany would not begrudge other nationalities from doing the same. "She wants nothing for herself which she is not willing to give others" (621).

"An extraordinary number of people were immediately convinced" (624). Hitler had done it again. He had changed his message to fit the expediency of the moment. "Facts were powerless against the tone of truth in Hitler's speeches" (624). "With his peace speech Hitler had immediately become the most powerful and most widely heard speaker in the world" (625).

"Fate, for a moment at least, put it in his power to say what the world felt" (627). Even President Roosevelt was enthusiastic about Hitler's vision for peace.

3. Meanwhile, parliaments and democracies were fading away all over Europe. Mussolini was already a dictator in Italy. The leader of Poland had slowly taken the role of a dictator. The leader in Austria, in a dispute over the rules of parliament, sent parliament home and never called it back. Only Czechoslovakia remained a democracy, isolated in eastern Europe.

"While incomprehensible and hideous things kept happening in Germany, which foreboded nothing good for the future of the rest of the world, Hitler's policy toward foreign countries was of a suppleness, indeed a compliancy, which should have aroused amazement, except for the fact that people see only what they expect and perceive the new only after it has become customary" (614).

Take-Aways

• Never trust the word of a madman wanting to lead, even when in his own mind he is speaking truthfully.
• The rising dictator, still gaining power, can lull his opponents into a self-defeating acquiescence because they do not want to face the need for painful action while it is still possible.
• People only see what they want to see, until they get used to the new normal, when they then deny that anything is truly wrong. Frogs will deny that the temperature is dangerously rising until they have become used to the boiling water.

Previously on Hitler:

• How to Take Over the World
• Bands of Restless Men
• Hitler was a Loser
• Rallies with the Rabid
• Waging War against His People
• The Art of Propaganda
• His Brand Is Crisis
• Big Words for a Coward
• Prophecies of the Antichrist
• Germany's Return from Despair
• Fatherland Security
• Hitler's Philosophy
• Destroying Democracy with Democracy
• He's Horrible to Work With
• Putting on a Show
• Maneuvering Toward Power
• Narrow Misses With Hitler
• Hitler Becomes Chancellor (chap 21)
• The Reichstag Fire (chap 22)
• Step by Step Coup (chap 23)

Third Reich 1

1. Started reading The Coming of the Third Reich last night. It's the first of three volumes in a series on the entire sweep of the Nazi movement in the early twentieth century. This particular volume has to do with the rise of Nazis to power.

2. Evans starts with Otto von Bismarck, who unified his power over Prussia in 1871. Bismarck was idealized as the model German leader in the fifty years that followed. As is often the case, the myth of the man remembered was not always exactly the man himself (reminds me of how Reagan is sometimes made to look like a Tea Party Republican).

Bismarck was remembered as being ruthless and deceptive, a Machiavellian statesman for whom the end justified the means. He was remembered as a man of force who made his own reality, a conservative German reality. He was the "wild man of German conservatism, given to brutal statements and violent actions, never afraid to state with forceful clarity what more cautious spirits were afraid to say out loud" (2).

One person in 1915, in the middle of WW1, described the memory of the "Iron Chancellor" as "like a strong fellow, who has two good fists at his disposal, one for each opponent" (3).

3. There's no doubt that Bismarck was a conservative. There's no doubt that he was at times ruthless in advancing German interests. He is responsible for establishing the second German Reich in 1871, a rule over Germany, parts of France, Denmark, parts of Poland, and so forth that would last almost fifty years until it was ended by defeat at the end of World War 1.

There was, however, another side to him that was not remembered or much popularized. "He was not the reckless, risk-taking gambler of later legend" (3). He dealt in the "art of the possible." He said, "A statesman cannot create anything himself. He must wait and listen until he hears the steps of God sounding through events; then leap up and grab the hem of his garment."

Not popularized was the fact that he also served as a restraining force to the power of the military. The power of the military at the time in Germany was much as the power of the military currently seems to be in Egypt. After the conquests against the Danes, the French, and other German territories, the military would have enjoyed continuing. Bismarck tried to maintain the peace of Europe in the aftermath of these adventures. He did not seize colonial territory out of thirst but somewhat reluctantly, while others were looking to compete with the glorious takings of the British and others.

4. Germany came close to something like democracy in the revolutions of 1848. The liberals were clamoring for a Constitution like America, the French, and other countries had. They wanted the right to a trial by jury in an open court. They wanted equality before the law. They wanted freedom of business and the removal of censorship from freedom of the press. They wanted the right to assemble. "Germany reached its turning point and failed to turn" (5).

Nevertheless, after these "liberals" were defeated, the people did get some of these. They were given parliaments. Under Bismarck there was the birth of the Reichstag, the parliament for all the German states. But the chancellor controlled the military. The Reich Chancellor controlled when there was war and when there was peace.

Bismarck legitimized violence as the preferred path for political goals. "The great questions of the day," he said, "are not decided by speeches and majority resolutions... but by iron and blood" (8). Not exactly the American way. When he was in charge, martial law was the name of the game. Politicians and legislatures of the time lived, as it were, under the permanent threat of coup d'etat (9).

If there were protests, the police treated people more as enemies than as fellow citizens. Many of the police and other civil servants were in fact former military, indoctrinated in a way of life of force. The German army in the 1800s engaged in genocide in Namibia. They behaved like conquerors in the French and other territories they had conquered, not as if they had incorporated new people into a common land.

5. There were six political parties who differed quite widely from each other. This pendulum of extremes seems to have created a fundamental instability. Catholics were targeted and imprisoned in the 1870s in a "struggle for culture." The "liberals" were happy to see these traditionalists squelched. And after things eased up, the "Center" party of mostly catholics would be strongly anti-liberal.

Bismarck similarly stomped on the socialists. In a tactic Hitler would later used, he falsely blamed them for a couple assassination attempts and used the public outrage as an opportunity to oppress them. [Reminds me of Trump trying to suggest that Sanders is somehow responsible for the protests at his rallies or that it was a Muslim extremist who tried to storm his stage. Look for him to try to manipulate the American people in this way in the days to come. Wouldn't it be interesting if there were some kind of "terrorist attack" for him to take advantage of in the days right before the election?]

Lenin made fun of the German socialists saying they would never launch a successful revolution because "when they came to storm the railway stations they would line up in an orderly queue to buy platform tickets first" (15).

So Germany was racked by internal tensions and widely differing factions in the lead up to the first world war. It was controlled by a strong hierarchy that was associated with the military and considered use of force business as usual. It had political parties characterized by extreme views who hated each other and did not work together.

Here endeth the first chapter, "The Legacy of the Past."

Visit to Dachau

Went to Dachau with the family yesterday. Third time I've visited but had a guide this time. I shouldn't be surprised that a people could do such things. After all, it still goes on around the world today. It could happen anywhere under the right conditions--economic despair, someone who comes along and makes you feel special as a nation, someone who feeds your insecurity about all the foreigners around, a need to bring order to society and squelch rampant liberalism.

Then a communist burns down parliament.  There's a declaration of martial law. Camps are set up to remove the lawless from the flow of society, to re-educate those who can be re-educated and put the rest to work. The sadists who are always present in society gravitate to such camps. Doctors do experiments on criminal guinea pigs for the benefit of the troops.

No modern society is so evolved that it could not happen again anywhere.

White Rose vs. Hitler

Often mid-morning, I take the underground one station south of the university to Odeonsplatz, where I get my daily grande Filtercaffee at Starbucks with "kleinen Platz" for Kondensmilch.  I liked Odeonsplatz the first time I saw it, with its gaudy gold church and the palisade behind Starbucks where there is the start of the Englisher Garten.



What I didn't realize till today was that it was here at Odeonsplatz that Hitler's fumbled "putsch" came to an end in 1923.  And I also didn't realize that an area I regularly cross on my way to Starbucks was a cafe Hilter used to frequent before he came to power.

The garden with the palisades is the Hofgarten, which has a monument to the White Rose movement, a group of students (and a philosophy professor) from the University of Munich who distributed leaflets against Hitler from 1942-43.



All three of these were beheaded by guillotine after they were caught (Hans and Sophie Scholl, Christoph Probst), along with others.  A stupid janitor turned them in.  Let his name stand here in disgrace: Jakob Schmidt.  Sophie flung a last bit of leaflets into the air in the atrium of the university, again, a place I walked through even today.  Janitor probably didn't like her making a mess... turned them into the Gestapo.

I thought it was a story worth telling.  And how bizarre to move through places with such significance for three months and not know it!  I think I'll seek out the White Rose monument tomorrow when I go for my daily Starbucks...

Berlin: A Torturous History

Quick trip to Berlin in a roundabout trip home from orientation.  What a torturous history this city has had! I can't think of any other city with quite so dramatic a past in the last 100 years.

Reichstag
This building from which Hitler ruled was practically a vacant lot when I first visited in 1995, not long after the wall came down.  This was the place where the Soviet soldier famously planted the Russian flag in 1945.

 1946

today

Church of Remembrance

These remains of the original Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtnis Kirche are currently hidden under restoration, but they are a reminder of the relentless bombing we did of Germany until Hitler was finally defeated.  I asked a friend yesterday where the bunker was where he committed suicide and I guess it is kept a secret so that no one will make it into a shrine.  What a complete loser Hitler was, this man that ran the German people--not even really his people since he was Austrian--into the ground.

Berlin Wall
As if getting bombed to bits wasn't enough punishment for the citizens of Berlin, they were then divided into east and west by the Russians until finally the Berlin Wall was built in 1961. There's a line in the road now that runs in front of the Brandenburg Gate where the wall and the beginning of No Man's Land used to be.  The wall came down of course in 1989.

Alexanderplatz
One of the most bustling places in town now is the Alexanderplatz in what was formerly East Berlin.  I saw that they are now line jumping from the top of the Park City Hotel where we stayed last time for several days in 2004.  The Eastern part of the city is now far more integrated into the city than when I first visited in 1995.  Unification was in 1990.

So ruled by Hitler, bombed to bits by the Allies, divided by the Russians, unified again in 1990.  I don't think even Jerusalem can claim such a torturous history these last seventy years.

The Night of Broken Glass

Tonight marks the seventieth anniversary of Kristallnackt, the night of broken glass in Nazi Germany. In response to the death of a German diplomat shot by a Jew in the German embassy in Paris, the Nazis systematically and unsystematically killed 92 Jews, burned 1000 synagogues and thousands of Jewish businesses, and arrested and deported 30,000 Jewish men to concentration camps. The man in Paris was protesting the overnight deportation of 12,000 Jews to Poland, which had taken place on October 18.

It was a decisive moment in the turn toward the Holocaust and in the severing of diplomatic relations that would eventually landslide into World War 2.

No nation should think itself incapable of such atrocities toward a group. We see it now in Darfur. We saw it in Rwanda. We saw it in those who lynched "blacks" before we allowed that they might be African-Americans. And we saw it in those who wanted to make sure the "coloreds" stayed out of their schools, sat at the back of the bus, and used a different water fountain.

The feeling of many Americans toward Muslims after 9-11 was not dissimilar in kind although thankfully it never reached the same degree. The attitudes of many toward Mexican immigrants is of the same kind. The excuses always change for why we justify hatred toward the other, but the underlying emotion is exactly the same. The emotion of the person who hates the illegal Mexican immigrant is the same as the emotion of the German who hated the Polish immigrant in 1938.

The next generation is born without memory. Each child born could just as easily become a Nazi or a terrorist as a Ghandi or ambassador. Each child could just as well be an ancient Egyptian, a twenty-first century American, or a tribesman in eighteenth century Africa.

None of us is better than any of these, just because of when and where we were born. And any advance that we enjoy or profess today could be lost within a generation.