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BRARY
Alfred Univer
Alfred, New York \
NATIONAL SOCIALISM AND THE RELIGION
OF NATURE
‘
NATIONAL
SOCIALISM AN1)
THE RELIGION
OF NATURE
ROBERT A. POIS

ST. MARTIN'S PRESS

New York
© 1986 Robert A. Pois
All rights reserved. For information, write:
Scholarly & Reference Division,
St. Martin’s Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
First published in the United States of America in 1986
Printed in Great Britain

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Pois, Robert A.
National socialism and the religion of nature.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. National socialism—Religious aspects. 2. Nature
Religious aspects. 3. Germany—Religion—20th century.
I. Title.
BL980.G3P65 1986 299'.93 85-27615
ISBN 0-312-55958-5
CONTENTS

Foreword and Acknowledgements

Introduction 1
1. Ideology, Weltanschauung', and Religion 6
2. The Role of Ideology in the Historical Analysis of
National Socialism, and the Question of Nazi
Ideology as Religion 13
3. Man in the Natural World: The National Socialist
Religion of Nature 34
4. The National Socialist Religion in Power: The
Sanctification of National Life 66
5. The Natural, Authentic Man and the Road to
Auschwitz 117
6. The Terror of History and the Mythus of an Idealised
Past 137
7. Conclusion 149
Appendix: The National Socialist Religion and the
German People 161
Bibliography 175
Index 182

v
For Anne Marie
FOREWORD AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work is concerned with National Socialism and that religion of nature
to which, in the eyes of those most important to the movement, it was
supposed to approximate. It was a religion which was born of cultural,
social, and psychological circumstances that have to be described as being
largely 'German.' Yet, its vision — the appeal that it had for at least
the fully-initiated — went so far beyond the concerns and demands that
were largely responsible for the support it received from the German
public, that the vital core of the National Socialist religion had always
to remain secret. Except occasionally, this work will not be concerned
with Nazi ritualism and ceremony. Enough attention already has been
devoted to these themes. Rather, it will be focused on the ‘vision’; a
view of humankind as part and parcel of nature which allowed for a fusion
of idealism and pragmatism absolutely singular in its nature and effec¬
tiveness. The religion informed by this vision could, and indeed had,
to accommodate itself to the most banal of petty bourgeois usages. In
fact, these had to be sanctified in the name of that higher purpose which,
except for those who were viewed as embodying it, had to remain shroud¬
ed in mystery.
In dealing with this topic, the following organisation has been used.
In the first chapter, the terms religion, ideology, and Weltanschauung
are considered. Here, the author is not so much concerned with pro¬
viding strict definitions of them. Such, at least with regard to their ap¬
plication to modern ‘secular religiosity,’ will always remain both elusive
and illusive. Rather, the author provides a rough framework within which
interrelationships and interactions in the context of National Socialist
‘religiosity’ can be described. A second chapter is concerned with the
question of why it is crucial to appreciate the religious qualities of
National Socialism; why, in fact, approaching it from any other perspec¬
tive raises far more problems than it solves. In the next three chapters,
we will focus upon the National Socialist religion of nature itself, the
religion in power and the sanctification of national life that this entailed,
and finally, the confrontation between self-proclaimed ‘natural,’ authentic
human beings and so-called ‘enemies of life.’ Of crucial concern here
is how easy it can be for individuals who believe that all actions under¬
taken by them — as self-proclaimed bearers of naturally-grounded truths
— are ipso facto valid, to transform reality and thus bring it around to

Vll
viii Foreword and Acknowledgements

approximate their conceptions of it. At the same time, the vitiating

weakness of a pragmatic/idealistic religion which, by its very nature,
must justify itself through constant success, will be demonstrated.
The final two chapters deal with questions of an admittedly more
hypothetical nature. In Chapter 6 the author considers the question of
the 'terror of history,’ as Mircea Eliade has described it. Here, we will
be looking at National Socialism as both resulting from and embodying
the search for what Eliade has called 'sacred time.’ Of importance here
is the extremely seductive nature of any faith which allows, in fact
demands, that one step out of history. In the final chapter, the conclu¬
sion, the author deals with what he perceives to be the relevance of the
National Socialist religion of nature for our own time. This chapter, writ¬
ten out of a sense of anger and frustration, is quite polemical in nature.
It is, in large measure, a critique of modern nationalism, particularly
that variety of it that has survived in the West, and the ideology of liberal
capitalism that is inextricably intertwined with it. While not in full agree¬
ment with him, I owe much here to the analyses of Dr Richard Ruben-
stein. In the Appendix, we will be concerned with an issue that has been
touched on in several places throughout the work, but never considered
in any detail. This is the question of the relationship between the Na¬
tional Socialist religion of nature and the German people. Also, I will
address the issue of whether such a relationship can ever be determined
with any degree of precision.
In researching and completing this work, I am indebted to the Univer¬
sity of Colorado Council on Research and Creative Work, which provided
a Faculty Fellowship for the summer and fall of 1976, and a grant-in-
aid for the spring of 1985, and to College of Arts and Sciences Dean
Everly B. Fleischer who provided for my sabbatical leave for the spring,
1985. During my 1976 visits, the staffs of the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz
and the InstitutfurZeitgeschichte in Munich were always courteous and
helpful. I am also indebted to the personnel of the UCLA library, where
I did research while a visiting professor during the 1977-1978 academic
year. The interlibrary loan office of the Norlin Library at Colorado
University, Boulder, an office which, from time to time, I virtually
haunted, was always patient and most helpful, and I am most grateful
for the assistance of reference librarian Ms Ruth Friedman. In the spring
of 1985,1 visited the Wiener Library in London for the first time. I owe
the people there a great deal, and in ways which go rather beyond the
usual concerns and activities associated with archives. I will go into this
a bit later in the Foreword. The encouragement and courtesy of the
humanities editor of Croom Helm Ltd, Mr Richard Stoneman, have been
 Foreword and Acknowledgements ix

appreciated throughout, and his confidence in my work has been impor¬

tant in sustaining my own. I owe much to Alex McIntosh, copy-editor
sans pareii, readers of this work, probably even more. I am indebted
to Transaction Press, which gave me permission to utilise materials con¬
tained in Political Symbolism and Modern Europe (1982).
I know that the most influential person in my intellectual — and oc¬
casionally, even emotional — life has been my Doktorvater George L.
Mosse. Even beyond the immense support and encouragement he has
always provided for me, there has been the occasional challenge. For
example, his response to learning of my interest in psychohistory — ‘You
must be kidding!’ — will be long remembered and treasured, as will,
of course the very serious questions he raised about the psychohistorical
method. Above all, though, there is his example, and here the career
of a man who has written perceptively and well on topics ranging from
the Reformation to 19th Century sexuality, with ground-breaking con¬
tributions to our knowledge of the European radical right and political
symbolism along the way, must speak for itself — and for him.
I have benefited more than I can say, even in an extended essay, from
the friendship and support of Peter Loewenberg and George M. Kren.
Even before I got to know him personally, Peter Loewenberg’s pioneering
work in psychohistory excited me to the point of learning all that I could
about it and, in fact, making use of the approach in my own work. I
am continually learning from him the potentialities contained within
psychohistory, and its limits as well, particularly for one without for¬
mal clinical training. In part, this is why the author has not utilised the
psychohistorical method in the present work. Getting to know Peter per¬
sonally has been both meaningful and pleasurable for me. George M.
Kren, one of this country’s most distinguished scholars of the Holocaust,
has offered a continual challenge to my, in part Freudian assumption,
that the triumph of reason over instinct will somehow crown the evolu¬
tion of humanism. Also one who has made use of psychohistory, he has
been both a guide and sober analyst of the method’s limitations. While
important, all of this takes second place to his friendship.
I owe much to David L. Gross, whose analytical abilities, particu¬
larly with regard to the vexed issues of cultural criticism, are second
to none. Boyd H. Hill, Jr. has offered much in the way of personal and
intellectual support during times of personal travail and great doubt.
Robert Schulzinger has shown both friendship and an interest in my work,
little realising that he would be called upon to read some of it. His sug¬
gestions and criticisms were of great value. As is the case with all
teachers, I owe much to a number of students whose comments.
X Foreword and Acknowledgements

criticisms, and original ideas on themes central to this work have been
most helpful. Recognising the injustice involved, I can mention but a
few _ Frank Gordon, John Stovall, Tom Gordon, Jan Schweninger,
David Harrison, Irene Gagel and, one ‘from years back,' when some
of the ideas contained herein were ‘gleams in their father s eyes, Tim
Keck.
Ms. Sandy Marsh, departmental staff assistant, was of invaluable
assistance in preparing this manuscript for publication. Without her hard
work, and that of Ms Margaret Benshoff-Holler. Ms Veta Hartman, Mr
Burt Rashbaum and Ms Patricia D Murphy (often under very trying con¬
ditions), there would have been no book at all. I owe them far more
than the bottles that were passed out when the manuscript was completed.
When in London, I partook of the hospitality of Mrs Katherine De\ey
and Mr Stanley and Mrs Penny Lowry. I was, and am, very appreciative
of this, and also of their providing delightful empirical evidence that some
of my most cherished assumptions about British cuisine were wrong.
Earlier, I mentioned how much I owe, in a variety of ways, to the
personnel of the Wiener Library. They were unfailingly helpful, offer¬
ing suggestions about documents I did not even know existed. More than
that, though, the director of the Library, Mrs Christa W ichmann. and
her assistant, Mrs Alexandra Leas, provided an atmosphere of uncom¬
mon courtesy and consideration in which to work. I was both astounded
and gratified at Mrs Leas’ providing tea, at about 4.00 p.m. of course,
for those working in the Library. At odd moments, in every sense of
the word, I suppose, I would talk to Mrs Wichmann about some of my
curious obsessions — steam locomotives and the creature up in Loch
Ness. From that point on, Mrs Wichmann presented me. almost every
day, with articles about steam trains she clipped from the newspapers.
I knew that nothing unusual was occurring at Loch Ness for. no doubt,
she would have told me of it. In an archive filled with documents pro¬
duced by, or related to, the greatest horror of the twentieth century, these
extraordinary people, one of whom had her own, very immediate ex¬
perience of this horror, provided a warmth that I have never experienc¬
ed in an academic setting and, for that matter, not all that many ‘personal'
settings either. Mrs Wichmann and Mrs Leas are wonderful people, and
my expressions of gratitude must be meagre in comparison to what I
owe them, in so many ways.
My wife Anne Marie, whose support has been indispensible, is now
working on a doctoral dissertation concerning the Women’s International
League for Peace and Freedom. Long ago, the women of this organisa¬
tion recognised that only with the elimination of murderous, obscene
 Foreword and Acknowledgements xi

nationalism will war itself be abolished. Out of reason-informed com¬

passion, these were, and are, the true students of Realpolitik. 1 hope that
my work will help to shed some light on a sick past, awash in nationalist
fantasies whose expression could only be murder. My wife’s work will
describe and analyse an organisation of women; the translation of their
‘fantasy’ into reality is our only hope.

Robert A Pois
Boulder, Colorado
INTRODUCTION

In recent years, a variety of individuals have expressed the fear that the
National Socialist phenomenon and attendant events, often referred to
collectively as ‘The Holocaust’, are in danger of being trivialised. Most
assuredly, such already has occurred, at least to some degree. Terms
such as ‘genocide,’ ‘Nazi,’ and even ‘Holocaust’ itself are increasingly
used so loosely as to rob them of significance or even meaning and, only
forty years after the end of World War II, gas chamber and crematoria
jokes have taken their place alongside kindred ones concerned with throw¬
ing Christians to lions and enslaving blacks. This, of course, is a sure
sign that the experience has been ‘assimilated’ at least in so far as its
ability to prick the public conscience is in any way concerned. Indeed,
outside of specialists and those with perhaps more personal interests in
these subjects, the only souls seemingly concerned with the singularity
of Nazism and related phenomena are the collectors of World War II
German military medals, SS insignia, daggers, and other bits of
memorabilia.
Trivialising of events is, of course, a very human tendency, and it
is hardly confined to the question of Nazism — the primary victims of
which were, after all, a minority group which has never been particularly
well-liked — nor, for that matter, to the atrocities perpetrated upon the
early Christians or black slaves. Some time ago, or so it now seems,
11 November used to be designated as ‘Armistice Day’ and, at least in
some American public schools, students would be required to stand and
face east, towards France. This was done at 11.00 a.m. local time, sup¬
posedly the hour at which the armistice was signed, and the quite literal
‘eleventh hour’ aspect of it all was thus supposed to be impressed upon
young still formative minds. As time went on, civic consciousness became
impressed by the fact that another World War had supervened and this,
plus Cold War adventures and the Korean conflict, were responsible for
turning ‘Armistice Day’ into ‘Veterans Day’. Of course, this was
understandable and, perhaps in keeping with the symbolic usages atten¬
dant upon national memory, even necessary. Yet, the singularity of World
War I which, for soldiers, remains as probably the most brutal, and
brutalising, of all wars, has been lost. The same, of course, is occurring
with regard to Nazism and the Holocaust, either as understandably
anguished and indignant members of one or the other oppressed group

1
2 Introduction

put forth claims that it has suffered a fate analogous to that of the Jews
of Europe, or as distressed theologians of all persuasions turn the hor¬
rors of World War II into universal theological metaphor.
To a great extent, this work will be concerned with the ‘singularity’
of the Nazi phenomenon. In this regard, the author, while generally leav¬
ing ‘theology’ alone, will be concerned with National Socialism as a
‘religion of nature,’ and with how the leading representatives of this
‘religion’ sought to bring something that we can call ‘objective reality'
into conformity with its underlying precepts. While a general Western
malaise regarding modernity and the conquest of nature provides the
general background for it, a variety of traditions and circumstances
which, taken together, can be described as "German, determined the
basic ideational content of the National Socialist "religion ot nature and
why and when its rebellion against Judaeo-Christian usages took place.
Singular with regard to time and place, German National Socialism was
also such in the zeal, fanaticism if you wish, with which its leading ex¬
ponents attempted to translate its leading precepts into reality or, as stated
above, with which such individuals struggled — until the end, successfully
in their own eyes — to bring reality into conformity with these precepts.
The very significance of this enterprise necessitated that, even though
National Socialism was a ‘mass movement’ and thus the product of mass
concerns and/or pathologies, the ultimate goals of the "religion, i.e.,
what it in the end meant to accomplish and how it would bring this about,
remain largely secret. While assuming that many Germans knew far more
about what transpired during the Nazi period than they would later ad¬
mit — or at least knew enough to determine that they could know no
more — I believe that the fundamental concerns of at least the leader¬
ship were such that most Germans could not be allowed to know much
of them. The individual German may have voted National Socialist or
lent the movement support because such a person was afraid of the com¬
munists, anti-Semitic, alienated from the Republic, furiously revanchist,
or simply disgusted with a moribund and chaotic status quo. As is well
known, the Nazis were quite adept at appealing to a variety of groups
and interests and were extraordinary political tacticians. Under certain
circumstances, the movement or various of its representatives, could even
appeal to established ‘Christian’ principles and institutions. Ultimately
though, those who mattered in the movement were concerned with bring¬
ing into being a timeless reality, immune from the traumas of history;
a reality within which biological mysteries would attain concrete expres¬
sion. Aspects of this, of course had to be resonant with certain widely-
held needs. The grandly hideous core, however, had to remain, at least
 Introduction 3

for the present, the preserve of those whom a non-transcendent Pro¬

vidence had designated prophets of the new reality and of the ‘new men’
who would represent its highest forms.
It is always fashionable, I realise, while recognising the ‘singular’
aspects of National Socialism, to draw alarming parallels and analogies
between at least elements of the movement and current phonemena. For
those on the far left, this can be done almost naturally, that is, with a
certain measure of ideological consistency. For that most harassed group
of all, ‘liberals,’ there is a certain amount of masochistic satisfaction
in it. Sometimes ‘far left,’ at least in an American context in which it
is easy to be such, and more often than not ‘liberal’ (although hopefully
not masochistic, at least politically), I must confess that I see certain
parallels and analogies — although how ‘alarming’ they are is a matter
of opinion — between elements of the National Socialist ‘religion’ and
contemporary phenomena. The ‘naturalism’ of the former certainly has
parallels with a sort of fuzzy nature-mysticism which can be observed
throughout the West, perhaps, most prominently, in the United States.
Thus, in its anti-Judaeo-Christian emphasis upon the sanctity of nature,
‘National Socialism’ has to be seen as symptomatic of a general, perhaps
largely unconscious, discomfiture with the Judaeo-Christian tradition,
something which attained political expression in Germany but can hardly
be seen as confined to it. Of greater significance, though, are certain
elements of National Socialism which must be seen as generic to modem
nationalism in the West. These are (1) what can be called a ‘flight from
history,’ or ‘flight from transcendence’; (2) a sanctification of national
life; and (3) the acceptance, and virtual sanctification, of a presumed
‘natural order of things.’ It is the author’s contention that, while these
elements may have been implicit in all nationalisms from their respec¬
tive inceptions, they have attained articulation only in this century, and
probably since World War I. In the concluding chapter, I will attempt
to show how there can be functional analogies between current forms
of political expression supposedly grounded in formal adherence to the
Judaeo-Christian tradition and those of a movement which, both
hypothetically and in practice, was proudly antithetical to the most
humanistically meaningful aspects of this tradition. As can no doubt be
anticipated, the shared ‘rallying point’ will be a rejection of humanism
and transcendence.
At several points in this work, the author will bring up the question
of psychohistory, and psychohistorical approaches to the National
Socialist phenomenon. As a rule, although he has both defended and
utilised this approach in the past, the author will only refer to it in this
4 Introduction

work. Further, he will point out what he perceives to be improper or

problematical uses of this method. In so doing, he is not in any sense
attempting to denigrate psychohistorical approaches, or even to play down
their significance in offering new approaches to the National Socialist
phenomenon. Indeed, as will become plain, he is of the opinion that pro¬
bably the ultimately most satisfying explanations of why certain aspects
of National Socialism were critical both in bringing the movement to
power and holding it together in the face of the most hideous imaginable
of self-imposed tasks will be offered by those able to bring to bear a
considerable knowledge of psychology. The same would hold, and pro¬
bably to an even greater degree, with regards to the extraordinary
resonance that Hitler was able to have within the German people.
It is true that, particularly in recent years, Freudian psychoanalysis,
for many the substructure of what they perceive to be the most penetrating
and historically meaningful forms of psychohistory, has been under heavy
attack. Of particular importance here have been attacks upon its
theoretical underpinnings as a supposed ‘scientific' enterprise. It is pro¬
bably true that Freud and particularly many of those who followed him
were much too sanguine about the presumed ‘scientific’ nature of their
obviously subjective excursions into subjectivity. The manifestly sub¬
jective character of ‘depth psychology' itself suggests that any variety
of ‘metapsychology,’ and such, of course, is generic to the
psychoanalytical enterprise, can often appear to be a contradiction in
terms. Here, I think that a comparison with the Marxist method is ap¬
posite. In many respects, the philosophical foundations of Marxism as
an ‘ism’, i.e., as an ideology, are weak and riven with contradiction.
Thus, as a ‘metahistorical’ system of explanation, it often raises more
problems than it solves. Yet, the questions posed by the Marxist method
and the answers it can provide have proved to be of immense value,
and the historical enterprise would be all the poorer without them. The
same, I think, can be said of psychoanalysis in a clinical context, and
the psychohistorical approaches informed by it. Its ‘scientific’ (or
‘philosophical’) foundations might be questionable, or even very shaky,
and Freud himself, in his later years, became somewhat pessimistic as
to its abilities to effect ‘cures.’ It is, however, as a humanistic endeavour,
in its emphasis upon reason-informed empathetic understanding, that
psychoanalysis has raised the most penetrating questions and offered the
most meaningful answers. It is the humanism of psychoanalysis that has
attracted historians. Empathetic understanding is of fundamental impor¬
tance in attaining that synoptic knowledge which must be the goal of
any meaningful historical enterprise. Whether or not psychoanalysis rests
 Introduction 5

upon firm scientific foundations, it has provided, and will continue to

provide, much of value with regard to human self-understanding. For
history as a whole, a field which is never at its best when it purports
to offer ‘scientific’ explanations, the psychohistorical approach has done,
and will continue to do, the same.
Yet, while it is my belief that a general defence of psychohistory is
in order, I have not utilised any sort of psychohistorical approach in this
work. There are two reasons for this. First of all, I am at a point in
my own historical education when, if further use is to be made of such
an approach, it will be necessary for me to vastly increase my knowledge
of psychoanalysis proper. This will necessitate formal training and with
it some form of practical experience. In a word, without that requisite
training as a ‘lay analyst’ I have gone about as far as I can with
psychohistorical explanations. The second, less formally ‘subjective’
reason, for not utilising psychohistory in this work is that I think that
it is absolutely crucial to understand what the National Socialist ideology
‘meant’ in the conscious realm of human affairs and fantasies. In a word,
even if a psychohistorical approach can offer one or the other hypothesis
as to the ‘underlying’ meaning of an ideology — or, more precisely,
as we will be considering it, a variety of ‘secular religion’ — it behoves
us to gain as great an understanding as possible of what historical actors
thought that they were doing. Even if words must, in the end, be seen
as attenuated metaphors or rationalisations for underlying concerns
ultimately accessible only to some form of depth analysis, students of
history cannot deprecate them as being ‘merely’ this. An underlying thesis
of this work is that, as some have pointed out, human beings are always
more ‘religious’ than they think they are. Even if religious quests are
mere sublimations, they are often intensely powerful ones, and the ‘ideas’
which sustain or are generated by them, however abstract or absurd,
can be as real, or more so, than economic indices, voting statistics, bomb-
blasted landscapes, or piles of yellowed, desiccated corpses. Such is a
crucial lesson bequeathed us by the National Socialist experience, a lesson
continuously articulated in the alternately absurd or murderous religious
quests that prevail in a variety of obsolete nationalisms. Unlike that couple
hallowed by Christian mythos, the ‘rough beast’ which ‘slouches towards
Bethlehem to be born’ has never lacked for shelter.
 IDEOLOGY, WELTANSCHAUUNG AND
1 RELIGION

German National Socialism was one of the most successful political

movements of the twentieth century. With regard to the enthusiasm
generated by it and the willingness of millions of people to put their lives
on the line for National Socialist principles, it was a phenomenon which
has no parallel in recent history. Explanations for the success enjoyed
by Adolf Hitler have run the gamut from those favouring clever use of
propaganda and mass manipulation to those which suggest that he was
an embodiment of the devil himself, a veritable creature who was
- somehow able to tap a subterranean reservoir of diseased impulses and
perversions. Psychohistorians have offered us tantalising hypotheses of
how Hitler’s own perversions were or came to be congruent with those
of the German nation as a whole and, in so doing, they have performed
a useful service in helping to obliterate the distinction between individual¬
ity and general forces that has plagued the historical profession ever since
historicists raised the issue during the halcyon Rankean days of the nine¬
teenth century.
It is the opinion of this writer that, in the final analysis, major historical
— and, for that matter historiographical — problems such as those posed
by the National Socialist phenomenon can best be explained by those
historians who approach them armed with a fairly substantive knowledge
of psychology. At the same time, though, one must appreciate the fact
that, even if certain phylogenetic forces can be seen as being ultimately
responsible for political and social actions, the actors of history, the so-
called ‘common people,’ statesmen, generals, and political leaders, must
assume that they are acting in terms of conscious motivation. Ideologies,
religions, even mundane economic and political motives, might well be
reducible to forces that the traditional instruments of the historical
discipline cannot explicate. Nevertheless, people most certainly believe
that they act in conformity with certain beliefs. Dedicated National
Socialists represent excellent examples of this.
If we are to understand the historical significance of National
Socialism, we cannot view it as being something demonic or, and this
is of crucial importance, as being only the recrudescence of certain
generally held prejudices and political viewpoints, although these cer¬
tainly were crucial, particularly with regard to the relationship between

6
 Ideology, Weltanschauung and Religion 7

the movement and the German people as a whole. In a word, we must

press beyond the phrase ‘National Socialism’, in some respects an idea
which had a well-established pedigree in German political theory, and
determine just what it was the National Socialists themselves thought
that they represented. Before proceeding further, however, it is necessary
to provide, if not precise definitions, then at least regulative descrip¬
tions of three important terms: ideology, Weltanschauung, and religion.
According to Hannnah Arendt, an ideology ‘is quite literally what
its name indicates: it is the logic of an idea. Its subject matter is history,
to which the ‘idea’ is applied; the result of this application is not a body
of statements about something that is, but the unfolding of a process which
is constant change.1 Most assuredly, I think, we can easily agree that
an ideology is ‘the logic of an idea.’ The second portion of Arendt’s
definition must give us pause, particularly if we focus upon the prac¬
tical aspect of the ideology, namely its role in day-to-day politics. In
any case, while drawing of a well-defined line between being and becom¬
ing might have philosophical significance, its political purpose would
put such a process under a cloud.
Otto Rank, although at times utilising the term ideology in a very
loose way, e.g., referring, at one point in his writings, to an ‘ideology
of masochism,’ has provided a remarkably concise and useful descrip¬
tion of the term. For him, ideology was a ‘genetic explanation of existing
conditions, but at the same time a psychological interpretation of the
same and an ideological indication as to their future reorganization.’2
Most particularly with regards to that often obscure but none the less
real point at which political, cultural, and social considerations meet and
interpenetrate, this description is, I think, not only of heuristic value
(a much overused term in an age of methodological uncertainties) but
indeed valid.
The term Weltanschauung is a rather vexed one. German/English dic¬
tionaries offer ‘ideology’ as a translation of Weltanschauung, while
various political commentators, several of whom we will consider in due
course, consider Weltanschauung to be descriptive of a rather rough
system of beliefs at some remove from those more finely developed ones
which constitute a full-blown ideology. In a word, for many commen¬
tators, a Weltanschauung has to be seen as, quite literally, a ‘world view,’
i.e., any particular stance assumed by an individual or group of in¬
dividuals towards the world. Arendt, whose view on ideology we already
have considered, rather obfuscates the problem by at first talking about
‘an ideology and its Weltanschauung', and then about ‘The
Weltanschauungen and ideologies of the nineteenth century’.3 If we
8 Ideology, Weltanschauung and Religion

examine these statements closely, however, we can determine that, for

Arendt, a Weltanschauung could serve as the point of departure for an
ideology or it could remain somewhat less well-defined. Peter L. Berger
has spoken of ‘religious or quasi-religious Weltanschauungen . . . engag¬
ed in pluralistic competition in our society’, thus suggesting that there
can be a veritable manifold of ‘world-views’.4 For our purposes, I think
that we can relate Weltanschauung to ideology in the following man¬
ner: the world-view of a figure or figures central to National Socialism
could achieve full articulation only through establishment of an ideology,
i.e., ‘a genetic explanation of existing conditions’. Mein Kampfin large
measure represented just such an attempt, while Alfred Rosenberg s
tedious Mythus des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts was a somewhat more
stilted version of the effort. More often than not. National Socialism
tended to prefer the term Weltanschauung as offering a greater degree
of flexibility. At the same time, though, we must appreciate that for
National Socialists, ideology and Weltanschauung were often used in¬
terchangeably, and, from time to time, we will be doing the same.
With the term ‘religion,’ we are confronted with a variety of pro¬
blems, none of which can be satisfactorily resolved in a work of this
nature. Dictionary definitions stretch the term between a rather formalised
pole emphasising relationships between man and presumed deities and
those concerns posed by mortality, and a more liberal although scarceK
more comforting one — emphasising dedication to various concerns or
ideals. Peter Berger in his earlier work. The Sacred Canopy, defined
religion as ‘the human enterprise by which a sacred cosmos is establish¬
ed’.5 In a general way, most concerned with the matter probably would
accept this definition. In any case, however, psychologists, an¬
thropologists and sociologists are not, and perhaps cannot, be satisfied
by formalistic definitions of religion, particularly in view of the challenges
posed by modern pluralistic pressures and by increased knowledge of
non-Western cultures. Indeed, Professor Berger already has pointed out
a problem one has to face when posing the concept of religion against
another one, that of Weltanschauung. As we recall, he spoke of ‘religious
or quasi-religious Weltanschauungen'. Thus, there are religious ‘world-
views’, and, seen from this angle, religion can be seen as the expression
of a nexus of attitudes. Otto Rank presented us with another problem
when he defined religion as ‘the collective ideology par excellence, which
can only spring from a powerful group-need and mass-consciousness,
which itself springs from the need of the individual for dependence and
implies his subjugation to higher forces’.6 Now, religion is being view¬
ed as a form of ideology. Particularly in view of the fact that common
 Ideology, Weltanschauung and Religion 9

folk wisdom often declares ideology to be a sort of secularised religion,

this statement by Rank — even when we bear in mind that he tended
to use the term ideology rather loosely — must have a disquieting effect.
Religion, thus, can be many things. One can use the term to describe
a formal institution, defined in terms of precept and organisation. Or
religion can be viewed as being a particular form assumed by crucial
psychic needs. Here it can be seen as embodying a given Weltanschauung
or ideology. Of course, religion also can be all of these things at once.
Perhaps not surprisingly, we appear to be dealing with a term which,
over the years, has become increasingly difficult to pin down; certainly
more so, in any case, than ideology or even Weltanschauung. None the
less, there are generalisations we can make about it. First of all, as the
anthropologist Mary Douglas has pointed out in her thought-provoking
work. Natural Symbols, we can describe the role of religion as that of
‘a technology for overcoming risk’.7 Professor Douglas was firm in
stating that the notion that even so-called ‘primitive people’ are inherently
deeply religious is simply false.8 However, the author went on to say,
‘There is no person whose life does not need to unfold in a coherent
symbolic system’.9 Thus, what has emerged here is a description of
religion as being some form of ‘technology for overcoming risk’ which
necessarily expresses itself in a ‘coherent symbolic system’. Each of the
several ‘technologies’, to say nothing of the ‘symbolic systems’ has to
be the product of, and responsive to, given, time-conditioned cultural
needs and, throughout her work, Professor Douglas is careful not to fall
back upon putative ‘universal’ religious demands of an aggressively
specific nature. Yet, there are posited certain general needs which call
forth solutions, or at least attitudes, which we can view as ‘religious’.
These can find expression in fully-articulated systems (so-called ‘organis¬
ed religions’) or more loosely-defined and, at times, very loosely struc¬
tured patterns of belief, patterns which none the less, constitute what
Berger has called a ‘sacred cosmos’.
When all is said and done, however, we find ourselves still confront¬
ing a term most elusive in nature. Accepting Professor Douglas’s defini¬
tion, or at least description, of religion as a ‘technology for overcoming
risk,’ we can, at the same time, see that a well-developed Weltanschauung
or ideology can perform the same function. Thus — we are driven back
to the point raised by other commentators — namely, that religion can
be seen as being a particular mode assumed by either of these two pat¬
terns of thought.
In this work, we will be concerned in part with the question of cer¬
tain values which have been perceived as being of singular importance
10 Ideology, Weltanschauung and Religion

in the Judaeo-Christian religious tradition. These values have served,

at least formally, to provide axiological if not ethical guidelines for
Western civilisation and have been the unconscious legacy for millions
whose devotion to the tradition has been limited. The greater portion
of our analysis, however, will be devoted to analysing that National
Socialist ideology — or Weltanschauung as it is usually described —
which, in very crucial ways, challenged the Judaeo-Christian tradition.
Thus far, we seem to have established that while some distinction can
be made between ideology and Weltanschauung, matters become very
much clouded when we pose religion against these two terms. What,
then, are we talking about when we speak of a National Socialist challenge
to a religious tradition?
First of all, we may recognize that one can have a religious
Weltanschauung without having access to or accepting a fully-articulated
religious tradition. In my opinion, Adolf Hitler and others of importance
in the National Socialist movement had just such a ‘world-view,’ this
despite the fact that many commentators on National Socialism have main¬
tained that the movement was dominated exclusively by a sort of nihilistic
biologism. As mentioned above, this writer also thinks that the aforemen¬
tioned Weltanschauung had to express itself in the form of an ideology
in order to find as full as possible articulation within a given
cultural/political context. We will be talking, however, of a National
Socialist religion, suggesting that there is, after all, a difference between
religion and ideology; that, at a certain point, the ‘need of the individual
for . . . subjugation to higher forces’ attains expression in an ideational
form rather beyond those spanned even by Otto Rank's liberal defini¬
tion of ideology.
Here, we must see that, according to Rank’s aforementioned descrip¬
tion of ideology, there was to be no recourse to mystery, no calling upon
forces unknown. As Rank pointed out, however, in his ‘Modern Educa¬
tion’ essay, religion’s greatest drawing card is the fact that it ‘admits
the Unknown, indeed, recognises it as the chief factor instead of pretend¬
ing an omniscience that we do not possess’.10 Thus, for Rank, probably
of non-Marxists the most strident in identifying religion as a form of
ideology, there was an ideational gap between the two which he never
overcame. As I see it, while National Socialists either rejected or ignored
supernaturalism — not mysticism, but the literal belief in some sort of
deity above nature, as is characteristic of Judaeo-Christian thought —
they were strong believers in a religion of nature heavily mystical in con¬
tent. Here, we must bear in mind Peter Berger’s definition of mystic¬
ism — ‘any religious practice or doctrine that asserts the ultimate
 Ideology, Weltanschauung and Religion 11

unity of man and the divine’. 11 It was this mysticism which both com¬
plemented and reinforced the crude scientism which so often has been
singled out as being of central importance to National Socialist thought;
and, at the same time, it allowed for a fusion of this scientism (or
biologism, as it can be called) with perceived timeless mystery. Such
a fusion was necessary if certain avowed principles of the Judaeo-
Christian tradition, also grounded in mystery, were to be challenged.
The author believes that, if one takes the writings, speeches, and
memoranda of leading National Socialists seriously, the following rela¬
tionship between Weltanschauung ideology and religion existed:
Weltanschauung, something which they saw as achieving increasing ar¬
ticulation in the form of ideology, embodied a set of principles religious
in nature. In a word, the National Socialist ‘revolution of spirit,’ to use
a phrase often, and accurately, associated with National Socialism, was
ultimately a true religious rebellion or, at the very least, assertion of
religious values antithetical to the Judaeo-Christian tradition.12 Of course,
this interpretation of National Socialism is not entirely original. In the
opinion of the author, however, there has never been a satisfactory
analysis of this religion. This has not been done either because National
Socialism as a religion of nature has not been taken seriously, or because
investigation of such a religion could lead to extremely disquieting con¬
clusions. As has been suggested earlier, the conclusion reached by this
writer is that National Socialism was a religion of nature, one that was
rooted in fundamental existential concerns of alienated, twentieth cen¬
tury man. Its content was German, but the form it assumed could well
prove to be congruent with the spiritual needs of all people who, reject¬
ing Marxist solutions necessitating class-warfare, have been unable to
deal successfully with the necessarily alienating character of modern
society. In a word, National Socialism was one response to a general
problem which has haunted Western bourgeois culture during the in¬
dustrial and, for that matter, post-industrial age.
It should be obvious that conclusions of this nature do not indicate
approval of National Socialism. In its claim to be rooted in fundamental
‘laws of life,’ and in its strident demand that all whom it saw as living
outside of such laws be exterminated, the National Socialist Movement
manifested an arrogance unequalled by any other modern mass political
movement. In the statements and writings of National Socialists’
ideologues, we can see that hubris so often characteristic of educated
barbarism. Nevertheless, the religious claim of National Socialism can¬
not be dismissed as ideological window dressing or reification. In it,
one can see longings and concerns that, as much as the Judaeo-Christian
12 Ideology, Weltanschauung and Religion

tradition which National Socialism sought to supplant, have been the

spiritual legacy of Wesern man. At the same time, though, these long¬
ings and concerns achieved an expression that was absolutely unique to
National Socialism. Whether this will remain the case, of course, is for
our and future generations to decide. This brief work is concerned with
delineating certain problems and approaches which the author thinks are
of value in determining why National Socialist leaders thought that their
movement was able to speak to the needs of so many people.

Notes

1. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York, Harcourt Brace

Jovanovich, 1973), p. 469. Emphasis is Arendt's.
2. Otto Rank, ‘Modem Education’ in Rank, The Myth of the Birth of the Hero and
Other Writings (ed.) Philip Freund (New York, Vintage Books 1964). p. 248. Fred Weins¬
tein, in his The Dynamics of Nazism: Leadership, Ideology, and the Holocaust. (New York,
Academic Press 1980), has provided a definition somewhat similar to Rank's. ‘Ideology
is the structure and systematic form of high and low level (theoretical, philosophical, and
common sense) language that people employ without reflection to explain all kinds ot an¬
ticipated and unanticipated, favorable and unfavorable events', (p. 119). For reasons of
economy, I prefer Rank’s definition.
3. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, p. 470
4. Peter L. Berger, Facing up to Modernity (New York, Basic Books 1977), p. 27.
5. Peter L. Berger. The Sacred Canopy, Elements of the Sociological Theory of Religion
(New York, Doubleday 1967), p. 26.
6. From Rank, ‘Art and Artist,’ in The Myth of the Birth of the Hero, p. 122
7. Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology (New York, Pan¬
theon Books 1970) p. 126. In The Sacred Canopy, Berger has described the social use
of religion as that of being ‘a shield against terror', (p. 22).
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., p. 50.
10. Rank, ‘Modem Education’ in Rank, The Myth of the Birth of the Hero, p. 253.
Emphasis is Rank’s.
11. Peter L. Berger, A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the
Supernatural (New York, Doubleday 1969), p. 111.
12. While a variety of scholars have dealt in vary ing degrees with religious elements
in National Socialism, James M. Rhodes, in his The Hiller Movement: A Modem Millenarian
Revolution (Stanford, Stanford University Press 1980), has presented us with perhaps the
most thorough going work on this topic. Taking his point of departure from the writings
of Norman Cohn and Eric Voegelin, he has emphasised millenarian aspects of National
Socialism which he sees as being in the mainstream of those heretical offshoots of Chris¬
tianity that can be traced back to third century Manichaeism. In the opinion of this writer
(and others), there was a strong streak of millenarianism in National Socialism in general
and Adolf Hitler’s view of himself in particular. Nevertheless, it is his contention that
those elements of ‘Christianity’ (heretical or otherwise) that one can discern in National
Socialism were subsumed under or received their axiological content from a ‘religion’
essentially antithetical to the Judaeo-Christian tradition.
 2 THE ROLE OF IDEOLOGY IN THE HISTORICAL
ANALYSIS OF NATIONAL SOCIALISM AND THE
QUESTION OF NAZI IDEOLOGY AS RELIGION

For many historians and political commentators, it has been and will
continue to be extraordinarily difficult to believe that individuals and
movements, perceived of as being evil, mean what they say. This stems
from several obvious factors. First of all, it is perhaps easier to combat
or condemn perceived dictatorial or totalitarian organisations and in¬
dividuals if one can view tham as simply lying, i.e., as being stridently
disingenuous in describing goals and purposes. Of probably greater im¬
portance, however, is the fact that those who, perhaps correctly, view
themselves as being creatures of goodwill, find it inordinately difficult
to accept the notion that such organisations and individuals seriously
believed or believe in the necessity, even the moral correctness, of ac¬
tions which are reprehensible in the eyes of rational human beings. In
a world which, since the end of the Middle Ages, has been dominated
by a nominalistic frame of mind, it is far easier to believe that dictators
and organisations of a low repute are motivated more by concerns of
personal gain and expediency rather than by commitments to perceived
historical needs or ideals. To be sure, believers in everything from
segregation to lycanthropy are often removed from ethical hooks through
the warm-hearted assertion that: ‘Well at least he means what he says.
He is really an honest person after all.’ At that point, however, at which
belief has somehow been transformed into action, people tend to step
back and begin casting about for ulterior motives — anything to preserve
the implausible notion that evil -doers (if not necessarily evi\-thinkers)
are inherently dishonest mountebanks who were, as one initially
suspected, really lying all along. Implied here, of course, is a massive
gap between thought and action, one which inevitably is filled by
ideologically-tinctured hypotheses.
The Nazi phenomenon, something which apparently will remain
jammed in humanity’s throat as a sort of perversely unassimilable bolus,
lends itself to the sort of mental juggling thus described. After initially
dismissing those who argue that the World War II Nazi atrocities never
took place with the contempt that such souls roundly merit, we must
deal with arguments which, for the historian, are far more crucial. While,
as we will see, these arguments will take several forms, they all can

13
14 The Role of Ideology in the Historical Analysis

be reduced, in the final analysis, to the following fundamental assump¬

tion: the National Socialist ideology, as expressed by Hitler, various high
National Socialist party officials, and the SS, was either a sham or, at
most, a poorly-contrived rationalisation tor motives rooted in economic
self-interest, personal aggrandizement, or nihilistic drives towards self-
destruction, essentially opaque to meaningful historical investigation.
The first systematic ideological investigation, undertaken by Hitler s
former party-comrade, Hermann Rauschning, resulted in the conclusion
that the Fiihrer and his movement were essentially nihilistic in character.1
After the conclusion of World War II, the ageing, albeit still respected,
historian Friedrich Meinecke threw his weight behind this interpreta¬
tion.2 More recent interpreters, such as Martin Broszat. have continued
to uphold this point of view. In Broszat's opinion. Hitler's ideology was
‘an uncommitted fanaticism, without content, believing only in its own
irresistible momentum'.3 A more subtle and, I think, in part valid per¬
mutation of this argument has been offered by Aryeh Unger In his well-
argued work on totalitarian parties in the Soviet Union and Nazi Ger¬
many, he declared that ‘The fundamental purpose of national socialism
was to set the nation in motion’, and that, bearing this goal in mind,
the ‘truth’ of the National Socialist Weltanschauung, much less whether
or not the population as a whole assimilated it, were matters of small
importance.4 ‘On the whole . . .’, Unger maintained, ‘the ideological
fervour of the Nazis was of a relatively low intensity'.' Indeed, totalitarian
rulers in general were not concerned with bringing about ‘widespread
ideological sophistication' among their peoples. Rather, such ideologies
were ‘disbursed in small doses, to a limited group of people, and under
conditions of maximum control’.6 In view of the well-known caution
exhibited by the National Socialist regime in dealing with the conven¬
tional state apparatus, organised religion and so on. it would appear that
Unger’s description has much to offer.
It can also be maintained that more recent psychohistorical interpreta¬
tions of Hitler in particular are akin to those which view him and his
movement as being essentially nihilistic, i.e., ahistorical, in character.
Indeed, one of the most distinguished historians of the Nazi phenomenon,
George L. Mosse has declared that to interpret Hitler's actions as being
those of a psychopath provides ‘a very facile explanation because if Hitler
were a psychopath why don’t we study psychoanalysis instead of
politics?’7 Here, a most important point with regard to so-called
‘psychohistorical’ explanations has been made; viz., if one focuses upon
the political leader and political action as being au fond informed by
idiosyncratic psychopathology, then the very singularity of such
 The Role of Ideology in the Historical Analysis 15

phenomena would preclude any sort of meaningful historical investi¬

gation. Thus, explanations which are of immense phylogenetic
significance to one imbued with the hypotheses and methodological
approaches of psychoanalysis, can become, if utilised in too reductionist
a manner, ahistorical ones for the historian, and nihilism once more has
entered the picture. In this regard, it must be pointed out that it is the
author's opinion that true ‘psychohistorians’ are not overly reduction¬
ist.
The ‘personal aggrandisement' argument, one which informs the in¬
terpretations of historians such as Alan Bullock and Hugh Trevor-Roper,
has within it that tendency towards viewing Hitler and ancillary
phenomena as idiosyncratic in character.8 Involved here is an unconscious
but nevertheless quite real tendency towards radical historicism, i.e.,
an absolutising of the moment. In this process, emphasis is necessarily
placed upon Hitler as demon, and the movement he headed as the pro¬
duct of someone singularly demonic in his efforts to attain aggrandize¬
ment no matter what the cost. It is obvious that here, too, questions of
ideology become of secondary importance.
Approaches which emphasise the nihilistic or opportunistic character
of Hitler and the National Socialist party or seek to explain these
phenomena in terms of the Fiihrer’s personal psychopathology or sim¬
ple power cravings are at that end of the spectrum — and often rather
off it — of historical investigation that one can call individualising or,
under certain circumstances, historicist. At the opposite end of this spec¬
trum, at least hypothetically, there is that approach which seeks to ex¬
plain Hitler and National Socialism as representing exponents of even
greater forces, i.e., those of a large scale capitalism thrown on the defen¬
sive by crises grounded in internal systemic contradictions. According
to this view, held largely, but by no means exclusively, by Marxists,
Hitler came to power as the result of a panic-stricken bourgeoisie’s ef¬
forts to save a system, bankrupt morally as well as ecomically, from
total collapse.9 In a word, Nazism, from this perspective, is seen as the
creature of a degenerating and degenerative capitalism and its so-called
‘ideology’ must be viewed as being so much window-dressing for the
desires of a class eager to assure its position — if necessary, through
war and genocide. Recently, there have appeared somewhat more
sophisticated versions of this argument.10 Further, individuals like
Wilhelm Reich and adherents to the so-called ‘Frankfurt School’ — at
least by their own standards, Marxists all — have provided, in such works
as The Mass Psychology of Fascism and The Authoritarian Personality,
interpretations of the Nazi phenomenon in which the roles of symbol
16 The Role of Ideology in the Historical Analysis

and myth, vital ingredients in the Nazi ideology, are emphasised." Here,
of course, the authors are concerned with demonstrating how perver¬
sions which they see as characteristic of bourgeois society — and not
man’s phylogenetic heritage, as Freud would have had us believe — are
responsible for a singularly pernicious form of false consciousness
apotheosised by the National Socialist ideology. In this context, obvious¬
ly, a great deal of attention has been paid to the ideology. It is equally
obvious, however, that, for such people as Reich and Theodor Adorno,
ideology has to be, as for any Marxist, viewed as being a superstruc-
tural manifestation. To be sure, the usual, rather prosaic Marxist socio¬
economic substructure has been weighted down with a large consign¬
ment of Freudian ballast. Nevertheless, in the final analysis, Nazi
ideology, for all of its singular symbolism and use of myth, must be
seen as representing a variety of false consciousness in the traditional
Marxist sense, albeit one honed against the whetstone of peculiarly twen¬
tieth century chiliastic drives.
From the point of view of Marxists, then — and, indeed, from that
of any group of historians who choose to place primary emphasis upon
the Nazi revolution as representing some sort of bourgeois counterrevolu¬
tion — the role of ideology in National Socialism has to be seen as being
of secondary interest. More recent Marxist writings on National Socialism
and people like Reich and Adorno have proffered modifications of this
approach; but, to remain within the Marxist fold, they can be only
modifications.
Most historians, of course, are neither psychohistorians nor adherents
to the Marxist interpretation(s) of why Hitler came to power or, more
important for our purposes, what he wanted to do once he obtained it.
Rather, their work tends to be informed by a sort of ‘commonsense’ ap¬
proach to the problem; viz., the Nazi ideology was so bizarre in nature
that, in the final analysis, one cannot take it all that seriously. Again
in this context, we can observe the usual reaction of ‘people of good¬
will’: Hitler was a madman or, at any rate, a rather singular individual.
There was no doubt that he hated Jews and other perceived enemies.
However, there cannot be, or perhaps even should not be, talk of his
hateful beliefs constituting any sort of meaningful ideology. To be sure,
he was able to get quite a few like-thinking individuals together, this
in order to implement his ideas into actions but what held them together,
essentially anti-Semitism, was no more ideological than a ‘common
obscenity’.12 In the final analysis, then, the Nazi phenomenon has to
be observed as representing a terrible balance between one man’s per¬
sonal pathology and certain social, economic, and political conditions
 The Role of Ideology in the Historical Analysis 17

which allowed him to translate this pathology into action. To take the
ideology seriously would, in effect, be giving an obscene caricature of
political thought far more credit than it deserves.
Yet we must appreciate the fact that, even if we accept a point of
view, e.g., psychohistorical or Marxist, or the so-called ‘commonsen-
sical' one in which ideology’s role is either made secondary or almost
beside the point, we must appreciate the terrible fact that, whether or
not they were enslaved by false consciousness or merely the unreflect¬
ing catspaws of unfathomable phylogenetic forces, millions of outward¬
ly sane and, in many cases, personally decent (at least as they perceived
themselves) human beings fought and died for a system of beliefs —
an ideology or, as it was often referred to, a Weltanschauung. In other
words, even if we are going to be thoroughly nominalistic about it, and
declare that, at best, the Nazi ideology served only as some sort of ra¬
tionalisation for actions undertaken in the service of more deep-seated
underlying motives, this was a most powerful rationalisation indeed.
In fact, those who present cogent and, to some extent, persuasive
arguments that ideology was of secondary importance in the Nazi move¬
ment and thus of secondary importance for those seeking to understand
it, often find themselves in rather awkward positions in their attempts
to discern reasons for the success of the National Socialist movement.
As an example of this, we can consider Leonard Schapiro’s extremely
interesting observation that, in all totalitarian states, the role of ideology
was to neutralise ‘by ideological justifications the serious moral revul¬
sion against the atrocities and brutalities perpetrated by the Leader’.13
In this capacity, then, the ideology served to direct the hatred of people
against certain classes or groups while at the same time justifying that
terrror ‘upon which all arbitrary government relies for its survival and
endurance’.14 A few pages earlier, however, Schapiro made the follow¬
ing observations about the character of the National Socialist regime:

If Fascism was a part enacted in public, National Socialism was

necromancy; its reliance on symbolism, myth, mass hypnosis, and
ritual was much greater.15

Hitler, Schapiro declared, used ‘methods of necromancy to mobilise mass

hysteria and to induce crowd hypnosis’, successful to a degree unknown
since ‘the manifestations of religious dementia in the Middle Ages’.16
At this point, we must ask ourselves what is meant by ‘ideological
justifications’ and by ‘necromancy’? Obviously, Professor Schapiro is
utilising these terms in a manner to suggest that they were primarily
18 The Role of Ideology in the Historical Analysis

agitational devices, deliberately designed to play upon the emotions of

what would have to be referred to as ‘the mob.’ They were, so the argu¬
ment must go, gimmicks, artifices, the use ot which was to assure popular
support for an ‘arbitrary government' which was, in the final analysis.
Hitler himself. This argument raises more questions than it answers.
First of all, is there a covering term which can be utilised to include
such words as ‘necromancy’, ‘symbolism’, ‘myth’, ‘mass hypnosis’, and
‘ritual’? In this regard, we must assume that the presumed agitational
elements mentioned above were not selected at random, but, rather were
congruent with certain perceived needs and fears. In a word. Hitler,
Goebbels, et al. were providing an emotional program — an emotional
program which, because it was concerned with the maintenance ot and
justification for, power, was, at the same time, a political one. It is ob¬
vious here that Professor Schapiro is referring to an ideology. Further,
in order for an ideology to be effective, i.e., for it to be an ideology
in any meaningful sense of the word, it ‘must appeal to the deep instincts
of the mass of the people, to their traditions, their emotions, their hatreds,
fears and hopes’.17 If a regime, e.g.. Hitler’s was dependent upon such
a device — assuming, for sake of argument, that it was simply that —
then we must ask ourselves whether such can be viewed as being mere¬
ly one means, among others, of perpetuating its rule, or rather, w hether
the very success of the movement itself, at least in its own eyes, was
contingent upon that ideology which somehow appealed 'to the deep in¬
stincts of the mass of the people’.
To all of this, the rejoinder could be made that the Nazi leadership
itself did not take its symbolism, myth, ritual, etc., seriously. In this
case, we would be confronted with an Orwellian situation in which the
mass-supported campaigns of Oceania against the Eurasian enemy were
merely devices to allow a regime to hold on to power. In the end. then,
the ideology would be a weapon in the service of pervasive nihilism:
If this were true then there could be no doubt that, for the leadership,
‘National Socialism in Germany became the sinister embodiment of a
dynamic nihilism devoid of ideological commitment’.18 Here, though,
we must remember what Unger maintained. While, unlike Schapiro,
deprecating the notion that the regime was interested in imbuing the
population as a whole with ideological fervour, he had suggested that,
for a small group of people, the ideology was indeed important, so im¬
portant that it had to be made available to the masses ‘in small doses’.
For Schapiro, there was an ideology for public consumption, this to main¬
tain the Hitler regime in power. For Unger, while ideological proselytis¬
ing was of secondary importance, there had to have been a hard core
 The Role of Ideology in the Historical Analysis 19

of true believers. Each of these two extremely perspicacious

commentators upon totalitarian movements and institutions thus made
ideology central to the National Socialist phenomenon, even though each
‘placed' the ideology in a different position relative to the leadership
of the movement.
The same problem seems to have haunted those who have maintain¬
ed that, in National Socialist Germany, the naked will of the Fiihrer was
of central importance, while ideology was something that had been placed
‘in the service of the will’.19 As we shall see, there is a great deal that
can be said on behalf of this viewpoint. For our present purposes, though,
it is interesting to note that, in another work, Buchheim found it necessary
to pose the following question: Why do men stick it out and do evil deeds
if no real punishment threatens them and if they have not been disposed
to do such things earlier?20 There was, Buchheim maintained, a very
human need for a person ‘to prove himself in his social environment
and correspond to its fundamental viewpoints and rules of conduct’.21
Further, doubts or moral objections such an individual might have could
be quashed through telling oneself that any abhorrence felt with regards
to a particular action was based on a subjective lack of appreciation for
and understanding of the doctrine involved.22 In narrowing his discus¬
sion to focus upon the Nazi SS, Buchheim dilated further on the ques¬
tion of doctrine and ideology. People who entered the SS left the realm
of state citizenship and entered the realm of ideology. ‘All declared
ideological consent through their entrance and declared themselves ready
to do more than their duty’.23
Thus, for this distinguished historian, one who adhered to the easily
defendable notion that the Nazi ideology itself was subordinate to the
will of the Fiihrer, ideology provided at the very least substantive
rationalisation for actions that otherwise would have to have been view¬
ed as reprehensible by those undertaking them. To be absolutely fair
about it, we have to note that Buchheim never maintained that the average
SS-man or woman was an enthusiastic ideologue. Nevertheless, the
ideology was there, providing at times vague, but none the less quite
real, ideational and axiological purpose to the same extent that the average
citizen in the Western world usually attempts to bring his behaviour into
conformity with some dimly-sensed ten commandments.
For some observers, ideas were of central importance in grasping the
significance of Hitler in particular and National Socialism in general.
However, ideology was not, the claim here being that while certain
substantive ideas were involved in National Socialist hypotheses and ac¬
tions, they were never brought together into anything resembling a
20 The Role of Ideology in the Historical Analysis

pattern. Students of the National Socialist phenomenon who take this

point of view often draw a sharp distinction between Weltanschauung
and ideology, pointing out correctly that Hitler himselt usually utilised
the former term whenever the subject of ideational content and purpose
came under consideration. Here, Eberhard Jiickel wrote an extremely
significant work devoted exclusively to determining the main elements
of Hitler's Weltanschauung. At times, though. Professor Jiickel appeared
to have been most uncertain as to the importance of even a Weltan¬
schauung in determining the reasons for Hitler's effectiveness. By itself,
Jiickel maintained, the fact that Hitler had a definite Weltanschauung
tells us little since everybody, even the mentally ill. has a definite way
of looking at the world.24 Towards the conclusion of his work the author
declared that, while his Weltanschauung was not the source of his effec¬
tiveness, an understanding of who Hitler was and what he did necessitated
our bearing his Weltanschauung in mind.25 Throughout his work,
however, Jiickel presented points which, while not contradicting what
he had to say as to the relative insignificance of Hitler's Weltanschauung
taken by itself, nevertheless raised some questions. Probably the most
important of these revolve around Jackel's justifiable contention that,
while Hitler's foreign policy concepts changed quite a bit, ‘the racial-
political [policy] remained astonishingly consistent'.26 As early as 1921,
the author pointed out. Hitler had suggested that Jews be thrown into
concentration camps.27 From beginning to end. Hitler saw the Jewish
question as being the central aspect or mission of his general political
task.28 Thus, although Jiickel saw other factors such as terror and pro¬
paganda as being of decisive importance in determining Hitler's suc¬
cess, one would have to conclude that these mechanical elements served
to provide the means by which a Weltanschauung was translated into
action. Certainly without Hitler's Weltanschauung, the necessity for the
existence of various party and state institutions would have been obviated.
Furthermore, even if we accept the notion that there is a meaningful
difference between ideology and Weltanschauung, we can still raise the
question of just how meaningful this difference was in so far as Hitler
and National Socialism were concerned. A scholar who has studied Alfred
Rosenberg pointed out that ‘Unlike ideology which is usually applied
to views held collectively, Weltanschauung in its primitive sense, need
mean no more than the outlook of an individual on the world around
him’.2''. There can be no doubt that, as indicated earlier. Rosenberg and
Hitler often confused these terms. At the same time, though, there can
also be little doubt that they did attempt to impose their world view(s)
on the world around them, albeit, in ‘small doses'.-,u Further, Professor
 The Role of Ideology in the Historical Analysis 21

Cecil maintained, the Nazis did attempt to create an ideology — accept¬

ing the tact that they did not have one before they came to power —
and were concerned ‘to unify, at least to some extent, the disparate
Weltanschauungen of their followers. They never succeeded in doing
so, any more than they succeeded in creating a fully totalitarian state;
but that they aimed to do both can scarcely be in dispute’.31
We will have cause to question the Nazis’ commitment to a so-called
‘fully totalitarian state'. For the moment, however, we must see that
Professor Cecil’s reflections are'suggestive of the following process:
Hitler, Rosenberg, inter alia had definite world views which constituted
a sort of core-structure of the Nazi ideational world. As time went on,
they were driven to develop disparate Weltanschauungen into a more
cohesive structure; in other words, they were driven to construct an
ideology. For Cecil, this concern was absolutely central to the thinking
of leading National Socialists. At any rate, even if we accept Professor
Cecil’s distinction between Weltanschauung and ideology (and, it must
be emphasised again that Weltanschauung is often translated as ideology),
the question at hand was largely ideological in nature, the concern being
to develop what could have been construed as a singular, if not idiosyn¬
cratic, world view into an ideology.
We have considered viewpoints on the role and function of National
Socialist ideology in order to establish two points, one of then rather
obvious, the other perhaps less so. First of all, opinion on the role and
function of ideology in the National Socialist movement is and no doubt
will continue to be, quite varied. Secondly, even individuals who seem
to deprecate such a role, or confine it to being of secondary importance,
invariably reserve a place for ideology, furthermore, a place from which
it appeared to exercise a great deal of influence and authority.
For the historian seeking to apply categories of critical understand¬
ing to the Nazi phenomenon, removal of ideology as a valid heuristic
concept, or, at times, even relegating it to second place, can raise ex¬
tremely severe problems. An implied gap between thought and action
can allow ahistorical nihilism to insinuate itself into the process, thus
obfuscating if not obliterating the role of historical analysis. Or, through
overemphasis upon Hitler as being an individual singular in his demonic
characteristics, we can lose sight of him as a historical creature, one
whose historicity, even accepting its uniqueness, is of concern to us only
as it was engaged in rationally deducible symbiosis with the larger
historicity of his time and place.
For example, we may assume that psychohistorians are correct when
they maintain that ultimately all ideologies are reducible to stereotyped
22 The Role of Ideology in the Historical Analysis

patterns of displacement, sublimation, and projection. What makes

psychohistorians historians, however, has to be their ability to see how,
perhaps even why, a particular pattern of myth, ritual and symbolism
which, taken together, we can refer to as manifestations of an ideology
(or, perhaps even the ideology in itself), served as a vehicle for the ex¬
pression of certain phylogenetic drives. In this regard, Richard A.
Koenigsberg made a most interesting statement. In his study. Hitler s
Ideology: A Study in Psychoanalytic Sociology, he is concerned with
determining the psychological roots of Hitler's ideas. He is particularly
interested in those statements of Hitler’s which contained 'primary pro¬
cess imagery', in other words, statements in which Hitler s perceptions
of reality found concrete embodiment.32 In considering this concern.
Professor Koenigsberg states that ‘In so far as we have focused upon
Hitler’s perception of reality rather than upon his behavior, the present
work is not, essentially, an historical study .' In a word. Professor
Koenigsberg has made the rather obvious point that the historian's
primary task is to study human behaviour, not from the point of view
of a psychologist, who is eager to demonstrate how individual idiosyn-
cracy somehow embodies or reflects metapsychological drives or patho¬
logies, but from an angle useful for one concerned with individuals as
political, cultural and economic actors, most important of all, with peo¬
ple acting within the context of a given time and place.
For the historian ideologies are points of departure for action and,
when the bearers of an ideology seem to have translated its most impor¬
tant tenets into reality, the role of such an ideology must become of ever
greater importance. Even if the historian accepts than an ideology, in
order to be effective, must offer the individual 'a means whereby his
fantasies might be expressed and discharged on the level of social real¬
ity', he does so knowing that his or her task as an historian is to deter¬
mine how particular myths, rituals and patterns of symbolism provided
such means at a given time.34 In a word, the question of ‘primary pro¬
cess imagery’ and related concerns must be left to the psychologist, even
if, in a thoroughly reductionist manner, psychological causes are perceiv¬
ed as primary, or unmoved movers. The historian might have to accept
that ideology provided the means for the 'expression and discharge' of
a fantasy shared by members of a culture.35 The roots of the fantasy
might well be sunk deeply into phylogenesis; but, for various reasons,
people need ideologies, even if only to cloak their true motives, and the
various time-conditioned forms these ideologies take and their relation(s)
to conscious political and social action make them of singular impor¬
tance in illuminating individuals as historical actors. For any historian
 The Role of Ideology in the Historical Analysis 23

— perhaps most especially for the psychohistorian — ideology as a

repository of time-conditioned myths and symbolic forms is of pivotal
importance.
Going back to the beginning of this chapter, we recall that a primary
reason why many observers of the Nazi phenomenon find it difficult to
devote serious attention to the Hitlerian ideology is that somehow they
do not wish to believe that the Hitlers, Rosenbergs and Himmlers often
meant what they said and that, further, and most significantly, that what
occurred during the twelve nightmare years 1933-45 in large measure
resulted from the implementation of certain fundamental ideological prin¬
ciples. In some ways, it is far easier to fall back upon ahistorical
arguments than to accept the fact that presumed ‘men of bad will’ were
just as sincere in their commitment to principle as were their more ad¬
mirable opponents.
Ultra-reductionist Marxist and psychological arguments — the latter
potentially as ahistorical in nature as ones which fall back upon nihilism
as representing the source and goal of National Socialism — can also
serve the same purpose as those more ‘commonsensical’ arguments which
reject ideology out of hand because it sounds far-fetched or absurd: they
allow for the luxury of denying that people meant what they said or of
assuming that even if they did mean it, such statements were in large
measure irrelevant. People can thus be viewed as victimised by their
consciousness or as having temporarily lost rational control over irra¬
tional longings and impulses. Never has the Enlightenment grounding
of Marxist and Freudian social criticisms been so clearly revealed as
in their approaches to National Socialism. For the historian, confront¬
ing a phenomenon whose central ideological precepts were never aban¬
doned and which were indeed translated into reality once the movement
attained power, it is absolutely necessary to accept the sombre fact that,
even if committed Nazis did not in an ultimate sense say what they meant,
they most assuredly meant what they said.
‘I do not need the bourgeoisie’. Hitler stated in a 1931 interview, ‘the
bourgeoisie needs me and my movement’. As he saw it, what allowed
the NSDAP to attain spiritual ascendancy over traditional politically mori¬
bund German bourgeois circles was ‘the totality of its ideology’.36 There
were substantial portions of the Twenty-Five Point Program of February,
1920 which were abandoned completely. In referring to ideology,
however, Hitler was hardly referring to this. Rather, he was focusing
upon certain core elements, the ultimate significance of which might well
have been known only to him. In any case, Hitler was at least partially
correct. As we will see, the Nazis came to power and exercised power
24 The Role of Ideology in the Historical Analysis

successfully largely because of the pragmatic aspects of their ideology,

elements which proved to be congruent with sensed social and cultural
needs. Those deeper, underlying elements which were responsible for
the birth of the whole ideology in the first place were reflected in its
core, something which was believed in by the ‘true believers , even if
it could not be fully articulated by the common people as a whole.
It has not been unusual, even for people who do not take the role
of Nazi ideology in the rise of Hitler to power very seriously, to suggest
that, in its rallies, ceremonies, and propaganda techniques, the National
Socialists presented themselves as the bearers of a new religion. In this
context Hitler is perceived as having either thought of himself or
wishing others to think of him — as the German messiah. An astute
analyst of Nazi propaganda has described this in the following manner.

The Fiihrer was at once Father, Son and Holy Ghost. He was the
Father because his essence was cosmic and he was sent to earth on
a mission which was both of this world and beyond it. He rode the
wave of the historical dialectic, which would culminate in the vic¬
tory of Aryan man, and as the awakened Barbarossa he fulfilled the
prophecies of the German right wing who longed for a ‘great one
come from above’. He was also the Son, the Son ot Providence, who
in his infinite Wisdom had created the Aryan Volk. As such it was
Hitler’s role to lead his people along the paths to greatness, a way
fraught with danger and one which might demand that they perish
in their own flame in the service of the higher ideal. The Nazi parallel
to the Christian concept of the Holy Ghost was the spirit of Providence,
reflected in the mystical source and life spirit of the Volk. Hitler was
at once of this world and beyond. His flesh was the flesh of the Volk,
and his spirit was their own life spirit.1'

What has been described here is the so-called ‘Fiihrer cult’, a

phenomenon which often has been taken to constitute Nazism s substitute
religion, i.e., the replacing of Judaeo-Christian forms by a sort of
paganism necessarily swathed, or perhaps even embodied, in certain
Christian usages. Here, emphasis has been placed not so much upon a
Nazi ideology, i.e., system of beliefs, but rather upon Hitler's will. The
Nazis thus 'made God manipulatable by equating him with man’s ‘inner
voice’ (the ‘voice of the blood’); the Providence so often appealed to
by Hitler was identified with his will’.38 There can be no doubt that
observers who have focused upon the phenomenon of the ‘Hitler cult’,
particularly with regard to the question of mass appeal, have a most valid
 The Role of Ideology in the Historical Analysis 25

point, one with which any historian can scarcely take issue. In fact, later
on in this book, we will be devoting considerable attention to the
phenomenon of the ‘Hitler cult’. It is certainly true that the success of
Hitler and National Socialism can to some degree be viewed as having
been due to a combination of a people's yearning for a saviour with
clever, manipulative devices designed to persuade this people that one
had indeed arrived. It is this writer’s contention, however, that while
National Socialism’s ability to grab and hold on to power was in part
due to factors attached to a ‘Fiihrer cult’, its program of mass destruc¬
tion, unparalleled in its wedding of idealism to brutality, did not stem
from a blind worship of the Fiihrer. Rather, one must look to a genuine
overturning of religious values and symbolism of which the Fiihrer cult
was perhaps the most crucial part but, a part none the less. In focusing
upon this, we must bear in mind a most cogent observation of Mosse’s.
Toward the end of his The Nationalization of the Masses, a book con¬
cerned with political symbolism, the following phrase appeared:

We have been concerned with a cultural phenomenon which cannot

be subsumed under the traditional canons of political theory. For it
was not constructed as a logical and coherent system that could be
understood through a rational analysis of philosophical writings. The
phenomenon which has been our concern was a secular religion, the
continuation from primitive and Christian times of viewing the world
through myth and symbol, acting out one’s hopes and fears within
ceremonial and liturgical forms.39

James M. Rhodes, in his penetrating and thought-provoking work.

The Hitler Movement, has picked up, as mentioned earlier, on the
millenarian aspects of National Socialism and, while tying these into
heretical variants of Christianity, nevertheless complements Mosse’s ap¬
proach through his term ‘secular apocalyptic movement’.40 Of impor¬
tance here are such terms as ‘secular religion’, and ‘secular apocalyptic
movement’, ones which often have been rather overused, most particular¬
ly in dealing with Marxism.41 In this context, however, they point not
only to the form of National Socialism, something which, as has been
pointed out by Mosse and others, had at times to approximate traditional
Christian modes, but to its content as well.
What Mosse has said is especially disturbing because it suggests that
many of those elements which constituted the ideational substructure of
National Socialism were part and parcel of modern efforts to retain a
basic piety with regards to the world and one’s role in it in the face
26 The Role of Ideology in the Historical Analysis

of all those monstrous obstacles and challenges posed by an increasing¬

ly impersonal and deracinated modern civilization. Nazi ideology, then,
cannot only be viewed as something which a radicalised few sought to
impose upon a supine and morally anesthetised population. It was, rather,
an expression of a pious quest for the natural and authentic. In the modem
world, an ideology could articulate the concerns traditionally assigned
to trascendentalism-bound religion, this due to the tact that ‘popular piety
and modern ideology are not so far removed from each other .4_ In a
word, we are concerned with something far more disturbing than some
sort of idiosyncratic ‘worship’ of a Providentially-ordained Fuhrer. We
are concerned with a quest for religious verities which, in a time of in¬
creasing secularisation, had to articulate itself in ideological form. Thus,
while National Socialism has to be viewed as fundamentally German in
content, its form was, to a significant degree, determined by certain
wellnigh universal human concerns.
The increasing sense of alienation in a burgeoning industrialised and
urban society has been the subject of innumerable social and cultural
studies. Accompanying this process was the continuous subjugation of
nature by man. While, on the whole, humanity benefited materially from
industrialisation and man’s increasing mastery over nature, the price for
such developments was high. An increasing sense of estrangement from
nature, combined with a growing revulsion against technological, ur¬
banised society, was responsible for a general reaction against modern¬
ity. This reaction was particularly strong in Germany, where
industrialisation had occurred at an unusually frenetic pace, but the fear
which subsisted at the base of this reaction could be observed, particularly
in bourgeois circles, throughout the West.43 The idea of mastery over
nature had ‘long been immersed in the darker side of the human psyche’
and associated with ‘evil, guilt, and fear'.44 Ironically enough, that Faus¬
tian paganism which has been viewed as apotheosising man’s desire to
grasp the totality of the natural world can be traced back to the Judaeo-
Christian tradition which, while imposing ethical obligations upon man
with regard to his lordship over the earth, nevertheless placed the earth
and all its natural resources and non-human inhabitants at his disposal.45
In order for man to assert his authority over the earth, the Judaeo-
Christian tradition had to in effect despiritualise nature, removing divinity
from it through the establishment of a transcendental God.46 In the sharp
dualism between nature and spirit, a sense of magic seemed to have been
removed from man’s environment.
We cannot gainsay the fact that the Judaeo-Christian tradition has pro¬
vided satisfactory solutions to the needs of millions for quite some time.
 The Role of Ideology in the Historical Analysis 27

Beginning with modern times, however, that 'despiritualisation’ of the

world ot nature had been implicit in this tradition became translated into
reality and, in a world in which mystery seemed increasingly to be replac¬
ed by the mundane, those anti-transcendental elements that always had
existed as alter ego to the mainstream of Western religious speculation
came more and more to the fore. As the 'other-worldly’ paradise posited
by Judaeo-Christian speculation seemed to become increasingly irrele¬
vant to human needs, it came to be replaced by the ‘modern utopia . . .
man-made paradise on earth’.47 Particularly with the emergence of
modern, mass society — the industrial age — humankind’s perceived
mastery over nature has been responsible for a variety of utopianism
which emphasises the hallowed character of an assumed natural order.
In this regard, some observations of Thorstein Veblen seem clearly ap¬
posite. Writing on the eve of World War I, this shrewd, at times in¬
furiatingly provocative, critic of modem society remarked that the ‘feeling
of maladjustment and discomfort that he sensed as a response to the
machine age, was often articulated in the call for a ‘return to Nature’.48
Further, he observed that harassed ‘laymen’ were ‘seek[ing] respite in
the fog of occult and esoteric faiths and cults’.49
While concerns about problems posed by humankind’s increasing
mastery over nature have increasingly been shared by ever larger groups
of people embracing a plethora of ideologies, the most consistent ‘pro¬
natural order’ response found political embodiment on the radical right.50
Virtually all Fascist groups placed a great deal of emphasis on dynamism,
upon the emergence and cultivation of a sort of ‘natural man’ who, though
objectively bourgeois in nature, would be liberated from the shackles
of decadent bourgeois civilisation and would impose the stamp of his
authentic will upon all of humanity. The ‘blood and soil’ motif was a
fairly general one, early members of the Legion of the Archangel
Michael, later the Rumanian Iron Guard, carrying this to logical, if
perhaps sartorially discomfiting, conclusions by having bags of Tran¬
sylvanian soil hung about their necks. However, German National
Socialism was unique in a very crucial aspect: in it, the rebellion against
the Judaeo-Christian concept of the role of man vis a vis nature achiev¬
ed expression in a genuine religion of nature. This is not to deny that,
in National Socialist ritual and ceremony, certain Christian forms were
used and, in fact, had to have been used. Nevertheless, the content of
the National Socialist ideology, an ideology which we will see must be
viewed as religion articulated in secular, i.e., ‘ideological’, form, was
anti-Judaeo-Christian in character. Of pivotal importance here was the
National Socialist view of the natural world and man’s role in it.
28 The Role of Ideology in the Historical Analysis

Before we continue any further, it is necessary to point out that many

observers of so-called ‘totalitarian systems’ have maintained that all of
these systems are characterised by the tendency to blur the distinction
between religious and secular areas, with the ruler assuming the role
of being a kind of substitute church.51 Just as there were prayers to Hitler,
so there were prayers to Stalin and, indeed, even after the death of Stalin,
the Communist rulers of Russia have come to recognise that people need¬
ed quasi-religious ceremony and festival.52 The Nazi religion, however,
was singular in its effort to consciously supplant Judaeo-Christian forms,
and to offer in their place a religion of nature congruent with the perceived
needs of a people uprooted from nature. In the Soviet Union, attempts
have periodically been made to constrain religious influences if not, at
times, to abolish them.
It is of some importance to note, however, that the Marxist tradition,
with its strongly humanistic overtones and its emphasis upon the singular¬
ity of the creative human spirit — to say nothing of its own permutation
of chiliasm — was very much rooted in that Judaeo-Christian tradition
which it has felt constrained to combat in the name of ideological purity.
This sharply separates, always hypothetically and usually in practice,
the Soviet Communist approach towards religion from that of the National
Socialists. In sum, the Marxist approach to religion, hypothetically and
in practice, must be seen as emerging dialectically from an ideational
background itself Judaeo-Christian in character. Thus, the Marxist an¬
tipathy to religion cannot be viewed as representing a rebellion against
it, even if one bears in mind such quasi-pagan absurdities as worship
of Stalin and the placing on permanent display of an at least partially
authentic Lenin. Nazism was most definitely a rebellion against the
Judaeo-Christian tradition.
Whilst Hitler in due course felt secure enough to move against the
Jews, the Nazi regime generally stayed away from formal doctrinal
disputes with the Catholic and Lutheran Churches. Nevertheless, we will
be able to see strong evidence that the eventual goal of National Socialism
had to have been the extirpation of the entire Judaeo-Christian tradition,
and that only pragmatic demands imposed by social, political and logistic
realities prevented the regime from undertaking an anti-Christian
Kulturkampf far more pervasive than anything Bismarck could have im¬
agined. Also, and perhaps this is of primary importance, the National
Socialist regime survived for but twelve years, hardly enough time to
undertake, much less complete, a sustained campaign against Christianity.
Thus, the average religious German continued to go to church and to
pray to the traditional God of battles. Individual clergymen who spoke
 The Role of Ideology in the Historical Analysis 29

out against the National Socialist regime or, more rarely, actively sought
to overthrow it, were imprisoned and in many cases killed. Despite this,
however, open battle against Christianity was precluded by the various
factors mentioned earlier. In fact, the churches remained strong enough
to take the offensive occasionally, e.g., in publicly condemning the
euthanasia program.58
In this work we will not be primarily concerned, except in the appen¬
dix, with the reaction of the vast mass of German citizenry to specific
aspects of the National Socialist religion of nature, a religion which many
Nazis sincerely believed would serve to liberate a putative ‘Aryan man’
from the shackles of a superannuated Judaeo-Christian tradition, one
which was castigated as alienating and unnatural. Rather, we will be
focusing primarily upon those who viewed themselves as the bearers of
the new religion of nature, i.e.. Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Alfred
Rosenberg, Robert Wagner, Ernst Krieck, Paul Josef Goebels and others;
in a word, with those individuals who saw themselves as having to educate
the German nation in particular and ‘Aryan man’ in general to the
awesome historical and ethical tasks imposed upon them by nature ex¬
pressing itself in the mysteries of the blood. The philosophical language
of the religion of nature which provided the ideational background for
the Nazi actions was German. In its frequent call for an ‘embracing of
life’ strong, quasi-Nietzschean overtones are obvious, and in its emphasis
on the supremacy of nature and in its expression in organic, volkisch
forms, elements usually and correctly associated with German roman¬
ticism are in evidence. Furthermore, those forces of demoralisation and
mass hysteria which swept the National Socialist movement into power
were characteristic of a country in which liberal experimentation with
constitutionalism and pluralism had not provided for the very real emo¬
tional needs of a people utterly unaccustomed to assuming political
responsibility. Also, it is well to point out that the concept of ‘national
socialism,’ if not necessarily the precise phrase, had played an impor¬
tant role in German political speculation for many years.54 Hence, when
we consider National Socialism per se, we will be examining a
phenomenon which, at least in so far as ideational contents are concern¬
ed, could only have arisen in Germany.
We must not, however, lose sight of the fact that, in its concern that
man, or at least Aryan man, regain his place in the natural order of things,
National Socialism was simply, albeit in a more pointed fashion, ex¬
pressing the wishes of a substantial portion of Western humanity. The
‘return to nature,’ a drive which is at least as strong in our time as it
was in the 1920s and 1930s, can be understood in purely phylogenetic
30 The Role of Ideology in the Historical Analysis

terms.55 Nevertheless, even if we determine that it is due to a regres¬

sion to a stage of ‘primitive narcissism’ brought about by socio-cultural
pressures too strong for the self-consciously alienated individual to resist,
the conscious politicalisation of this return was, at least in part, respon¬
sible for the triumph of a movement that, in the final analysis, provided
solutions which a substantial number of people thought, or perhaps bet¬
ter,/^ satisfying. After all, a community of human beings living at one
with nature, healthy and wholesome, represented and, for many, still
represents, a goal worthy of immense sacrifice, most particularly when
the greatest burden of this sacrifice was to be borne by a group or groups
singled out as being ‘unnatural’ or subsisting only at the lowest levels
of life.
To be sure, as mentioned before, the German people as a whole did
not and could not have known what the completed form of the Nazi
religion of nature was to have been. Perhaps we can say that even most
Nazis themselves did not know this. The people had to be only gradu¬
ally introduced to that new religion which, to use a phrase much favoured
by Nazi ideologues, ‘in keeping with the laws of life' showed the way
to a true utopia. As mentioned above, we will be concerned mainly with
the ‘official’ efforts, arguments, and rationalisations which, taken
together, constituted the National Socialist religion of nature as leading
Nazis perceived it to have been. Yet we must acknowledge the disturb¬
ing fact that, although the German people were in ignorance of much
of what their leaders had in mind, what they did know — or were allow¬
ed to know — of it seemed not to have distressed them very much. Part
of this, of course, was due to the fact that years of cultural conditioning
had to some extent prepared them for something like National Socialism.
However, we must appreciate another fact; namely, that the National
Socialist call for the establishment of a utopian community, the Volksge-
meinschaft, rooted in a perceived natural order, an element of the
‘religion’ which was widely touted to the average people as a whole,
reflected a certain extremely attractive dream historically very promi¬
nent in several forms of bourgeois ideology. The overcoming of aliena¬
tion, not through some hideous form of class war, but rather through
a revolution of consciousness, the result of which would be a new sense
of rootedness and belonging, has constituted and will continue to con¬
stitute a substantial portion of the emotional legacy bequeathed to us as
a result of the development of civilization. One can condemn so self-
serving and essentially backward-looking a dream as being indicative
of false consciousness. As Mosse put it, however, ‘usually people have
false rather than true consciousness . . . [and] history is still made by
 The Role of Ideology in the Historical Analysis 31

people based on people . . .’56

To cut through false consciousness we must initially come to appreciate
the awesome power of those ideas and ideals through which it has
obtained expression. In focusing upon National Socialism as the National
Socialists themselves saw it, i.e., as a body of thought that, in the final
analysis, would replace the Judaeo-Christian tradition, we will consider
an, up to now, singular attempt to establish a nature-bound ‘sacred
cosmos’; a ‘technology for overcoming risk’ that could have arisen only
in a technological age. In so doing, we will perhaps be better able to
appreciate the dangers inherent in any sort of doctrine which attempts
to grasp life in its wholeness and hence to end history.

Notes

1. This was the concern, of course, of his The Revolution of Nihilism: A Warning
to the West (New York, Longmans Green and Co., 1939)
2. Friedrich Meinecke, ‘Zusammenarbeit,’ in Politische Schriften und Reden, Georg
Kotowski, Herausgegeber, (Darmstadt, Toeche-Mittler, 1958) p. 488.
3. Martin Broszat, German National Socialism 1919-1945, translated from the Ger¬
man by Kurt Rosenbaum and Inge Pauli Boehm, (Santa Barbara, California, Clio Press,
1966), p. 59.
4. Aryeh L. Unger, The Totalitarian Party: Party and People in Nazi Germany and
Soviet Russia (London, Cambridge University Press, 1974), p. 39.
5. Ibid., p. 41
6. Ibid., p. 43.
7. George L. Mosse, Nazism: A Historical and Comparative Analysis of National
Socialism (New Brunswick, New Jersey, Transaction Press, 1978), p. 67.
8. Such an argument informs the still most valuable work of Bullock, Hitler: A Study
in Tyranny, revised edition (New York, Harper and Row, 1964). In his introduction to
Hitler’s Secret Conversations, 1941-1944, Professor Trevor-Roper maintained that Hitler
was concerned only with obtaining and holding onto power. He was, according to this
view, a total materialist for whom ideals and moral values did not exist. See, Adolf Hitler,
Hitler’s Secret Conversations, 1941-1944, with an introductory essay on The Mind of Adolf
Hitler, by H. R. Trevor-Roper, translated from the German by Norman Cameron and
R. H. Stevens, (New York, Farrar, Strauss and Young, 1953), pp. xxviii-xxix.
9. An early example of a naive Marxist interpretation was Albert Norden, Lehren
deutscher Geschichte: Zur politischen Rolle des Finanzkapitals und der Junker (Berlin,
Dietz, 1947). A somewhat more sophisticated work is offered by Eberhard Czichon Wer
verhalf Hitler zur Macht? Zum Anted der deutschen Industrie in der Zerstorung der Weimarer
Republik (Koln, Paul-Rugenstein, 1967). Also see Franz Neumann Behemoth: The Struc¬
ture and Practice of National Socialism (New York, Harper and Row, 1942). For non-
Marxist writers who essentially support the Marxist position on the role of capitalism in
the rise of National Socialism to power, see George Hallgarten, Hitler, Reichswehr and
Industrie: Zur Geschichte der Jahre 1918-1933 (Frankfurt, Europaische Verlagsanstalt,
1955), and Arthur Schweitzer, Big Business in the Third Reich (Bloomington, Indiana,
University of Indiana Press, 1964). Most Marxist arguments regarding the role of big
buisness in the rise of Hitler have been effectively attacked by Henry Ashby Turner, Jr
in his Big Business and the Rise of Hitler (New York, Oxford University Press, 1985).
10. See Anson G. Rabinbach, ‘Toward a Marxist Theory of Fascism and National
32 The Role of Ideology in the Historical Analysis

Socialism: A Report on Developments in West Germany,' in New German Critique, 1974,

3, Winter.
11. See Theodor Adorno et at.. The Authoritarian Personality (New York, Norton
Library, 1950). and Wilheim Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, translated from
the German by Vincent R. Carfagno (New York, The Noonday Press, 1970).
12. This phrase appears in Peter H. Merkl’s most interesting quantitative study, Political
Violence under the Swastika: 581 Early Nazis (Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton Univer¬
sity Press, 1975), p. 448.
13. Leonard Schapiro, Totalitarianism (New York and London, Praeger, 1972), p. 57.
14. Ibid., p. 58.
15. Ibid., p. 50.
16. Ibid., p. 53.
17. Ibid., p. 48.
18. Broszat, German National Socialism, p. 89.
19. Hans Buchheim, Totalitarian Rule: Its Nature and Characteristics, translated from
the German by Ruth Hein, (Middletown, Connecticut, Wesleyan University Press, 1968),
p. 19.
20. Hans Buchheim et al., Anatomic des SS- Staates. Band 1., Hans Buchheim, Die
SS-das Herrschaftsinstrument, Befehl und Gehorsam. (Munchen, Deutscher Taschenbuch
Verlag, 1967), p. 306.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid., p. 307
23. Ibid., p. 312. Emphasis is Buchheim's.
24. Eberhard Jacket, Hitlers Weltanschauung (Tubingen, R. Wunderlich, 1969).
25. Ibid., p. 159-60.
26. Ibid., p. 65.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid., p. 67.
29. Robert Cecil, The Myth of the Master Race: Alfred Rosenberg and Nazi Ideology
(London, B. T. Batsford, 1972), p. 61.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid., p. 62.
32. Richard A. Koenigsberg, Hitler’s Ideology: A Study in Psychoanalytic Sociology
(New York, Library of Social Services, 1975), p. 3. The emphasis is Koenigsberg's.
33. Ibid., p. 4. The emphasis is Koenigsberg's.
34. Ibid., p. 85. The emphasis is Koenigsberg's.
35. Ibid., p. 86. The emphasis is Koenigsberg's.
36. Adolf Hitler, Secret Conversations with Hitler: The Two Newly-Discovered 1931
Interviews, edited by Edouard Calic, with a foreword by Goto Mann; translated from the
German by Richard Berry, (New York, John Day Co., 1971), p. 22.
37. Jay W. Baird, The Mythical World of Nazi War Propaganda: 1939-1945, (Min¬
neapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1974), p. 10.
38. Buchheim, Totalitarian Rule, p. 20.
39. George L. Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses: Political Symbolism and
Mass Movements in Germany from the Napoleonic Wars through the Third Reich (New
York, Howard Fertig, Inc., 1975), p. 214. Professor Mosse, in his Towards the Final
Solution, has suggested that the much-utilised term 'metapolitics,' something which ap¬
peared after the writings of Gobineau became well-know n, was suggestive of that process
by which the political life of a nation becomes transformed into a ‘secular religion’. See
George L. Mosse, Towards the Final Solution: A History of European Racism (New York,
Howard Fertig, Inc., 1978), p. 65.
40. James M. Rhodes. The Hitler Movement: A Modem Millenarian Revolution (Stan¬
ford, Stanford University Press, 1980), pp. 17-18, 30ff., 197-8.
41. Jean-Pierre Sironneau, in his Secularisation et religions politiques, (The Hague,
Paris, New York, Mouton, 1982), considers both Nazism and 'Leninism, Stalinism’ in
 The Role of Ideology in the Historical Analysis 33

religious terms. We will consider this work in another context.

42. Mosse, Nazism, p. 27.
43. The books on this subject are legion. Three of the most noteworthy are: Hans Kohn,
The Mind of Germany (New York, Harper and Row, 1960), George L. Mosse, The Crisis
of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (New York, Grosset and Dunlap,
1964) , Fritz Stern. The Politics of Cultural Despair (New York, Doubleday, Anchor Books,
1965) .
44. William Leiss, The Domination Oyer Nature (New York, S. Braziller, 1972), p. 44.
45. Ibid., p. 29, pp. 34-5.
46. Ibid., p. 181. Max Weber’s phrase ‘disenchantment of the world’ has been used
by Peter Berger in the Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion,
(New York. Doubleday, 1967), p. 111. For another most interesting interpretation as to
the effects attendant upon what he called the ‘secularization’ or ‘disenchantment’ of the
world, see Richard L. Rubenstein, The Cunning of History: Mass Death and the American
Future (New York, Harper and Row, 1975), pp. 27-8. This theme has been more fully
developed in Richard L. Rubenstein, The Age of Triage: Fear and Hope in an Overcrowded
World (Boston, Beacon Press, 1983).
47. Frank E. and Fritizie P. Manuel, ‘Sketch for a Natural History of Paradise,’ in
Clifford Geertz (ed.) Myth, Symbol, and Culture (New York, Norton Library, 1972), p. 120.
48. Thorstein Veblen, The Instinct of Workmanship and the State of the Industrial Arts
(New York. Macmillan Co., 1914), p. 319.
49. Ibid., p. 333.
50. Leiss has an interesting if somewhat general discussion of this phenomenon on
page 172 of his The Domination Over Nature.
51. Schapiro, Totalitarianism, pp. 64-5.
52. Unger, The Totalitarian Party, pp. 188-91.
53. The Catholic Church in particular figured stongly in this fight. See Karl Dietrich
Bracher, The German Dictatorship, translated from the German by Jean Steinberg, (New
York, Praeger, 1972), p. 384.
54. The idea of a ‘national socialist’ Volksgemeinschaft can be found in rudimentary
form in some of the writings of the German Idealist philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte.
Ferdinand Lassalle's notion of state socialism approximated to this idea, while the National-
Social Union of the German theologian and political speculator Friedrich Naumann was
briefly prominent towards the end of the 19th Century. Many prominent German liberals,
such as Max Weber, Theodor Heuss, and Freidrich Meinecke were greatly influenced
by Naumann.
55. Leon Poliakov, The Aryan Myth: A History of Racist and Nationalist Ideas in Europe,
translated from the French by Edmund Howard, (New York, Basic Books, 1974), p. 329.
56. Mosse, Nazism, p. 117.
 3 MAN IN THE NATURAL WORLD: THE
NATIONAL SOCIALIST RELIGION OF NATURE

How can you find any pleasure, Herr Kersten, in shooting behind
cover at poor creatures browsing on the edge of a wood, innocent,
defenceless and unsuspecting? Properly considered, it’s pure murder
. . . Nature is so marvellously beautiful and every animal has a right
to live . . . You will find this respect for animals in all Indo-Germanic
peoples. It was of extraordinary interest to me to hear recently that
even today Buddhist monks, when they pass through a wood in the
evening, carry a bell with them, to make any woodland animals they
might meet keep away, so that no harm will come to them. But with
us every slug is trampled on, every worm is destroyed.1

The romantic origins of much of what is considered to be central to

National Socialist ideology have been obvious to historians and political
analysts for quite some time. American observers in particular have tend¬
ed, with considerable justification, to emphasize the politicalisation of
romanticism as being, at least in degree, that singularly German
phenomenon which constituted an important step in the direction of
Hitler’s coming to power in 1933.7 In the opinion of this writer, there
is very little reason to dispute the findings of these writers and each of
them has made an important contribution to our understanding of how
an apparently ingenuous permutation of mysticism could be developed
in such a fashion as to provide justification for racism and mass-murder.
It is also beyond dispute that, in so far as its ideational contents were
concerned, Nazism was, in many ways, uniquely German — a product
of German historical and psychological circumstances.
As we have seen in the previous chapter, it has not been unusual for
historians to comment upon certain religious characteristics of the
National Socialist movement. Here, the Fiihrer cult, such things as
Hitler’s extraordinary charismatic appeal to the mob, the nature of the
Nuremberg party rallies, and the neopaganism of Himmler and his SS
have been emphasised.3 From time to time, authors have pointed to an
aspect of National Socialist religious thought which existed as a legacy
of Nazism’s romantic heritage, viz., a pronounced interest in nature.4
As a rule, however, this is a topic which has been touched upon rather
lightly. Perhaps this should not be viewed as being particularly strange.
34
 Man in the Natural World 35

After all, in our largely nominalistic world, serious consideration of even

the better-known (or perhaps better -publicised) aspects of Nazi ideology
can be considered unusual, to say nothing of these more arcane elements
which, either because of their ideational content or mundane cir¬
cumstances, never attained implementation. Yet historians, particularly
American historians, have been quick to pick up on any so-called ‘red
thread' which can be discerned throughout the history of National
Socialism. This being the case, one wonders why so little attention has
been paid to the most interesting view that the leading ideologues of Nazi
Germany had with regard to humankind’s place in the natural world.
It is the opinion of this writer that, outside of the fact that, as mentioned
earlier, some historians probably do not take this (or, in some cases any)
aspect of Nazi ideology very seriously, there is another reason why Nazi
concerns with a so-called ‘natural’ religion have not been considered
to any significant degree. The reason is the following: in the character
and tone of the Nazi approach one can readily apprehend — as we have
already in part seen — elements which demonstrate that, in certain crucial
aspects. National Socialism was very much in the mainstream not only
of German but of Western philosophical and religious developments. Un¬
consciously, perhaps, people are a bit uncomfortable with this.
That, for one reason or another, man needs religion, even if the
religion is an extremely loosely-organised symbolic or ritualistic system,
is sometimes so widely accepted as to be almost bromidic. Like most
bromides, of course, so blandly acceptable a statement is open to attack,
and generations of Marxists and Freudians have done their best.
However, Marx’s drawing of a wellnigh ontological line between Ent-
stehungsgeschichte and true ‘human’ history and Freud’s occasional
excursions into Comtean-like metahistorical speculations indicate the pro¬
blems that confronted even these two seminal minds in attempting to
adhere to their respective injunctions to dispense with the insidious
‘opiate’ or archaic ‘illusion.’ In any case, it would appear that up until
now, and for the foreseeable future, people have needed and will con¬
tinue to need some sort of recourse to a posited supermundane being
or realm, however ill-defined it might be — this in order to provide ex¬
istential and/or axiological content to existence. At the same time, though,
it would be grossly erroneous to assume that Western man’s need for
such a recourse has been met or will be met in the future by adherence
to that supposed foundation of Western civilization, the Judaeo-Christian
tradition. For while it is true that this tradition has been at least nomin¬
ally the tradition of the so-called ‘West’, it has within it certain funda¬
mental characteristics with which human beings cannot be entirely
 36 Man in the Natural World

comfortable, particularly during periods in which a sense of estrange¬

ment from nature and from one’s fellow beings prevails. Of crucial im¬
portance for this essay are the following two: (1) The line drawn by this
tradition between life and death (or earth and ‘heaven ), and (2) the line
drawn between man and nature.
As Ernst Cassirer has pointed out, primitive man, in the face of
numberless challenges from an often hostile world, could not accept the
reality of death. In fact, as Cassirer would have it. primitive religion,
in its belief in the continuity of life is ‘the strongest and most energetic
affirmation of life that we find in human culture.5
We have seen that Mary Douglas rejected the notion that ‘primitive
people’ are inherently deeply religious.6 However, as we have also seen,
the author went on to say, ‘There is no person whose life does not need
to unfold in a coherent symbolic system’.7 In various circumstances,
‘coherent symbolic system[s]’ assume the forms of well-articulated
- religions. Naturally, any given religion has to be seen as the product
of specific time-bound cultural and social needs. In this context, Douglas
described the religion of a New Guinea tribe, the Garia, a people who
had a very loose, pragmatic view of the universe and of religion, one
which pretty much precluded the use of those moral restraints usually
associated with religious beliefs. However, in a world in which, accord¬
ing to Cassirer, people strive to overcome death or, at the very least,
deal with it in a manner which diminishes its impact, any pattern of
religious beliefs, no matter how sketchy or ill-defined its symbolic con¬
tent might be, must be a partial articulation of a primal urge to
‘overcome] risk’. The gap posed by death, that cold, ultimately dis¬
quieting frontier between finite and infinite, was the primary challenge
to which religions, even the most pragmatic and nonnormative of them,
had to respond.
While it is true that at times more emphasis is placed on the hyphen
than on either Judaeo or Christian, one cannot gainsay the fact that, for
both Jews and Christians, an hiatus between finite man and an infinite
God does exist and that this hiatus must necessarily be described by the
term ‘death’.9 Of course, the Judaeo-Christian tradition, like many others,
accepts the immortality of the soul and indeed life itself is in large measure
rationalised through an assumed justification or condemnation of one’s
particular life that is to take place in some period or level of existence
to come. There would appear to be, however, some psychic mechanism,
that refuses to be comforted by such assumptions. Simply put —
humankind seems to be unable to accept its finiteness, the ontological
border of which is death.10 If we accept Cassirer's contention that man
 Man in the Natural World 37

originally ‘became religious' precisely to avoid having to confront death

(through denying its reality), then we must see that the Judaeo-Christian
tradition does not satisfactorily deal with at times impalpable but, none
the less, real psychic needs.
The line drawn between humankind and nature by the Judaeo-Christian
tradition is due primarily to the influence of the Mosaic Code, something
which caused Hegel (and quite a few others less kindly disposed towards
Judaism) to condemn the Jewish faith as being too abstract and unnatural.
However, orthodox Christianity has not — nor could it have — dispens¬
ed with this code, something by virtue of which human beings are elevated
to the position of being, as the psalmist put it, Tittle lower than the
angels.' To be sure, humans have awesome responsibilities to nature.
None of God's creatures can be taken for granted, and a substantial por¬
tion of orthodox Jewish family life has had to revolve around the stringent
injunction that one must not eat a calf in its mother’s milk. One cannot
deny, however, that the general attitude towards nature central to Judaism
— and through Judaism, to Christianity also, albeit to a somewhat lesser
degree — is the one which sees it as being apart from God. Humankind,
of course, is as well. Nevertheless, by being made in the image of the
divine, humans must be seen as being ontologically superior to nature.11
The responsibilities inherent in so elevated but uncomfortable a posi¬
tion, i.e., ensconced somewhere between the natural world and the
Kingdom of God, must be great indeed and, as is to be expected, humans
have rebelled against this demanding role. Indeed, according to some
observers, such neo-pagan revivals as the search for Aryan roots and,
most importantly, National Socialism, can be viewed as being in large
measure rebellions of this nature.12 It is no great secret that today, in
most Western countries, many appear to be in full flight from the two
rather stringent principles described above, viz., the acceptance of there
being a qualitative distinction between an infinite God and finite humans
(and hence, acceptance of the reality of death), and avowal of man’s
divinely-determined separation from nature. This will be considered again
later in this work. For now, we must turn to those aspects of the National
Socialist religion germane to this discussion.
Of course, National Socialism did not survive long enough to imple¬
ment some of the more thoroughgoing anti-Christian aspects of its
ideology (or perhaps, to be doubly cautious, ''Weltanschauung' ought
to be utilised, even if most of the individuals whose writings and com¬
ments we will be considering often blurred the distinction between the
two terms). None the less, there can be no doubt that the views to be
examined were taken seriously, at times painfully so, by those National
38 Man in the Natural World

Socialists who either created policy or were in positions to affect it. Fur¬
thermore, it is the contention of this writer that the National Socialist
approach to religion was one which could and did serve to rationalise
mass-murder.
In Mein Kampf, Hitler was not concerned with outlining any part of
a National Socialist religion (at least not consciously so) to a major degree.
Indeed, he often wallowed in a glutinous mixture of self-pity and cultural
despair. However, a foreshadowing of what would become the National
Socialist 'religion of nature’ was certainly present. Of importance here
was Hitler’s deprecation of the role of humanity in a universe run ac¬
cording to pitiless natural laws. In decrying pacifism as being contrary
to established natural laws of survival. Hitler made the following
statement:

At this point, someone or other may laugh, but this planet once mov¬
ed through the ether for millions of years without human beings and
it can do so again some day if men forget they owe their higher ex¬
istence, not to the ideas of a few crazy ideologists, but to the
knowledge and ruthless application of Nature’s stem and rigid laws.13

Throughout Hitler’s political career he would continually emphasise the

importance of recognising nature’s power over man. He scoffed at the
notion of humans ever having the ability to ‘control’ or ‘rule over' nature.
In the Secret Conversations, the following statement — presumably made
on the night of 11-12 July 1941 — appeared:

At the end of the last century the progress of science and technique
led liberalism astray into proclaiming man’s mastery of nature and
announcing that he would soon have dominion over space. But a sim¬
ple storm is enough — and everything collapses like a pack of cards.14

In this statement, which obviously has more than a grain of truth in it.
Hitler sounded remarkably like contemporary environmentalists who,
with ample reason, proclaim that a sharp-tempered Mother Nature, weary
of pitiful man’s toying with her inflexible laws, will eventually avenge
herself upon those who, at least since the onset of industrialisation, have
tried her patience. In any case, a belief in certain fixed laws of nature,
to which man must continuously render obedience, always remained an
important aspect of Hitler’s Weltanschauung. Man was part of nature,
and there was nothing that suggested that there was any essence which
elevated him above it. ‘The earth continues to go round, whether it’s
 Man in the Natural World 39

the man who kills the tiger or the tiger who eats the man. The stronger
asserts his will, it’s the law of nature. The world doesn’t change; its
laws are eternal’.15 In this context, Hitler found it extremely easy to
supplant hoary religious axioms with a simple belief in putatively un¬
changing natural laws. For National Socialists, it was of no importance
at all that one reflect upon the world to come. All that was necessary
was that man ‘conform to the laws of nature’.16 Here, Hitler tempered
the adherence to a romantic sort of Lebensphilosophie often associated
with National Socialism by introducing a cold dose of nineteenth cen¬
tury scientism. In declaring that man must necessarily live in conform¬
ity with the laws of nature, formal religious worship was out of the
question. The primary ambition of National Socialism was ‘to construct
a doctrine that is nothing more than a homage to reason’.17 Further, ‘The
man who lives in communion with nature necessarily finds himself in
opposition to the Churches. And that’s why they’re heading for ruin —
for science is bound to win’.18
In these statements, one can observe several important elements: (1)
a sanctification of nature (this despite Hitler’s general opposition to ‘wor¬
ship,’ at least in a formal religious context), and (2) an absolute belief
in the supremacy of science over any form of religious belief. In a way,
Hitler can be seen as being a sort of updated version of Turgenev’s
Bazaroff, i.e., a firm believer in the inviolability of natural laws, and
a lover of those means collected under the rubric ‘science’ used to un¬
cover them. Indeed, Hitler’s apparent tendencies towards a sort of
biologism have caused some analysers of National Socialism to suggest
that Hitler had no ideology but rather was devoted to a crude nexus of
naturalistic beliefs. For Hannah Arendt, the ultimate purpose of the Nazis
was to turn men into beasts, while for Ernst Nolte, Hitler — here at
one with Fascists as a whole — sought to guard against human develop¬
ment, i.e., transcendence, through embedding man in a thoroughgoing
naturalism, devoid of spiritual content of any kind.19 While National
Socialism was fiercely anti-transcendental, this view is not entirely ac¬
curate. For underlying all of this ‘scientific naturalism’ was a belief in
a variety of what one could call ‘natural mysteries’ and in the emergence
of a new age, one to be ushered in by some sort of ‘great world transfor¬
mation’ whose precise character eluded scientific observation and
measurement.20 There was soon to be a turning point in history, a belief
which Rauschning saw as constituting the cornerstone of Hitler’s
‘biological mysticism’.21 What Hitler had done was to wed a putatively
scientific view of the universe to a form of pantheistic mysticism
presumably congruent with adherence to ‘natural laws’. In this, he bore
 40 Man in the Natural World

a marked resemblence to such Darwinians as Ernst Haeckel who, as is

well known, informed their scientific endeavours with large doses of
romanticism (at the same time, as we shall see later. Hitler in particular
and ideologically-concerned Nazis in general were opposed to Darwi¬
nian theories of evolution). Throughout the writings, not only of Hitler,
but of most Nazi ideologues, one can discern a fundamental deprecation
of human vis-a-vis nature, and, as a logical corollary to this, an attack
upon human efforts to master nature. The formerly liberal then dedicated
Nazi educator and ideologue Ernst Krieck best expressed this in attack¬
ing man’s ‘hubris and guilt’ in seeking to master nature, an attempt which
could only destroy the ‘natural foundations of his life’ as well as those
of the community.22
The fact, however, that man as a whole has to stand in subservience
to nature did not obviate the possibility that some men in general could
emerge as superior. Indeed, Hitler firmly believed in the emergence of
' a new ‘type’ of man, one who, in conforming to the laws of nature in
fact represented a sort of apotheosis of natural development. We will
examine this phenomenon in detail later. For now, we must bear in mind
that Hitler, who often expressed himself in savage, naturalistic attacks
upon the very concept of humanity, nevertheless had to believe in the
emergence of a new human type, development of which constituted a
substantial portion of the Nazi ideology. Sounding — although acciden¬
tally so — quite Hegelian, Hitler could proclaim that, in the triumph
of the new authentic man, one could see proof that ‘Man is God in the
making’.23 In a very real sense Hitler and the National Socialist move¬
ment perceived themselves as being virtual mediators between man —
or at least a group of men — and a savage natural world, understanding
of which was absolutely fundamental to the preservation and advance¬
ment of the existence of the community. So profound a position allow¬
ed, in fact demanded, that the mediators make awesome and far-reaching
decisions on behalf of this community.
It was Hitler’s belief in (1) the existence of, as he expressed in Mein
Kampf, ‘stern and rigid’ natural laws, and (2) the necessity for men to
apply them to areas of human existence, which of course allowed him
to declare that the preservation of inferior human races was against nature
herself. ‘Nature,’ he said, ‘. . . usually makes certain corrective deci¬
sions with regard to the racial purity of earthly creatures. She has little
love for bastards’.24 A further, for Hitler perhaps more important, pur¬
pose was served. This was his ability to rationalise the emergence of
the true political leader on the basis of a sort of crudely-apprehended
‘natural selection’. As he put it: ‘Natural development finally brought
 Man in the Natural World 41

the best man to the place where he belonged. This will always be so
and will eternally remain so, as it always has been so . . . the most power¬
ful and swiftest . . . [will] be recognised, and will be the victor’.25
In these lines. Hitler was not talking about religion per se. However,
he had virtually deified nature and he most assuredly identified God (or
Providence) with it. In this, he was at one with Alfred Rosenberg whose
works, Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts, contained somewhat detailed
descriptions of what the ‘Nordic’ religion was and, of equal importance,
how it differed from the Judaeo-Christian religion conception. Before
considering Rosenberg’s views on the matter, perhaps one should come
down heavily on the side of disclaimer. After all, as Joachim Fest has
pointed out, few people seemed to take Rosenberg’s at times ponderous
musings very seriously, particularly after the Nazis came to power.26
Hitler himself, who usually enjoyed posing as a sort of latter-day,
Renaissance-man, admitted that he could read very little of the Mythus.
Furthermore, it is of some interest to note that, at least at one point in
his political career, Hitler was adamant in stating that Rosenberg’s work
should not be regarded ‘as an expression of the official doctrine of the
Party’.27 The very term ‘Mythus’ seems to have bothered him, particular¬
ly inasmuch as ‘A National Socialist should affirm that to the myth of
the nineteenth century he opposes the faith and science of our times’.28
Nevertheless, Rosenberg’s view of religion was one which, either because
of or in spite of him, was widely held by most committed National
Socialists.29
In the Mythus, Rosenberg sharply distinguished between the religion
of the Jews (and, to the extent that much of it was carried over into the
New Testament, orthodox Christianity as well) and what he liked to refer
to as ‘Nordic religion’. In this regard, he ridiculed belief in ‘a remote
and fearful God, enthroned over all’, the Jahweh of the so-called Old
Testament ‘. . .to whom one prays in fear and praises in trembling’.30
Of importance for him was the rejection of what he called the ‘monstrous
principle’ which declared that God created the world from nothing. This
Jewish idea which, according to Rosenberg, constituted the foundation
of Catholic beliefs as well, was rooted in a pernicious dualism. God
created a world that was separate from Him. In Rosenberg’s eyes, such
a world was an unnatural one, since nature and her rules were being
relegated to a secondary position. Belief in the Judaeo-Christian dualism
could only lead to a situation in which the ‘natural-grown Being of nature’
would be crippled. ‘These spiritual and racial cripples will then be col¬
lected under the Catholic roof.31 Rosenberg opposed to this an
Aryan/Nordic race soul, whose basic religious tenets were rooted in India.
42 Man in the Natural World

Of fundamental importance here was a monistic tradition in which an

eternal ‘order principle" struggled against chaos.
The ordering principle to which Rosenberg referred was, of course,
nature itself, the form in which Providence found its only expression.
In his view, Aryan man did not really relate to any sort of extrinsic or
transcendental deity. Rather, as a creature of nature, the ordering prin¬
ciple of life lived within him, conferring upon him an at least racial im¬
mortality. \ . . Odin was and is dead’, according to Rosenberg.
‘However, the Gentian mystic discovered this “strength from above"
in his own soul. Divine Valhalla arose from the infinite, misty vastness
buried in the human breast’.32 For obvious reasons, the late-Medieval
German mystic, Meister Eckhart, was a great favourite of Rosenberg.
Rosenberg differed from Hitler in that he was much more seriously
concerned with creating (or, perhaps in his eyes, rediscovering) a Mythus
which could serve those purposes normally assigned to orthodox religion.
For Hitler, far more attuned to political realities than his more esoteric
colleague, religious concerns were always tied to those of a practical
nature. Hitler and Rosenberg were one. however, in their deification
of nature and in the belief that adherence to certain natural qualities
elevated some men above all others, indeed, served to make them ‘im¬
mortal." Rosenberg, in his sustained attacks on the Judaeo-Christian tradi¬
tion, went somewhat further than Hitler in so far as theological issues
were concerned. None the less, their respective emphases upon a sort
of natural religion, in Rosenberg’s case defined as being monistic in
nature, were to receive substantive support over the years.
Of great importance for the National Socialist ideologues was the
bringing together of so-called ‘religious' and ‘scientific" concerns. The
important thing here was that aspect of the National Socialist
Weltanschauung which, through its deification of nature itself, seemed
to allow for a bridging of the gap between spirit and matter. According
to a book concerned with biological instruction, the teaching of this sub¬
ject had to place emphasis on the total view of things. ‘The metabolic
changes in a closed biotic community reveal a meaningful plan in the
greater occurrences of nature.’ Thus, it was possible to arrive ‘at a con¬
cept of nature that does not conflict with religious experience, whereas
this was necessarily the case with the former purely mechanistic at¬
titude’.33 The study of man, anthropology, had to take place within a
biological context. Further, anthropocentric views in general had to be
rejected. They would be valid only ‘if it is assumed that nature has been
created only for man. We decisively reject this attitude. According to
our conception of nature, man is a link in the chain of living nature just
 Man in the Natural World 43

as any other organism’.34

The ’chain of living nature’ of which man was but a link was viewed
as being congruent with the National Socialist Weltanschauung. This
word received a fairly lucid definition in a term-handbook which was
to be used in the well-known SS Junkerschule at Bad Tolz.33 The defini¬
tion was as follows: ‘to observe all things in this life from a standpoint
and to live according to it.’36 After providing definitions for various terms
— race, Volk, etc. — the general thrust of the work was revealed in a
most interesting ‘response’ to the phrase ‘humanity’ (‘Menschheit’): ‘The
concept of humanity is biological nonsense. ’ After all, in the natural world
there was no 'Tierheit'.37. Man, species-man, that is, and not human¬
ity, was part of nature, a fact recognised by the National Socialist
Weltanschauung. This Weltanschauung was a dynamic one that did not
recognise 'Ruhe' (‘Rest’). ‘In this regard’, the pamphlet went on, ‘nature
gives us the best examples’. All of life was struggle and hence the Na¬
tional Socialist Weltanschauung was simply a recognition of natural
laws.38 Whether or not it was supposed to be a statement of SS policy
or a sort of axiological charge to the Nordic world in general, the follow¬
ing statement is of some interest; ‘Therefore the body must assimilate
itself to the environment; certainly in wearing apparel, dress and
temperature’.39
What was being emphasised here was the cruel struggle for existence,
one in which the most natural of peoples would survive. Nature was mer¬
ciless and showed no pity to those who could not respond to her, at times,
seemingly overwhelming challenges. In such a struggle, there was no
room for pity because ‘pity obscures the principle of selection’.40 At
the same time, though, a traditional assumption of those who accepted
fundamental Darwinian principles, i.e., descent from a common ancestor,
had to be dispensed with. ‘It is a completely false conception that man
has descended from apes. Therefore, that man and apeman stem from
a [common] source.’41 So, as the Bad Tolz handbook envisioned it, life
was a struggle between the several major races, the most ‘natural’ of
which would win. In this context, the so-called ‘Christian
Weltanschauung' would appear to be singularly inappropriate, based as
it was on a ‘false division’ between body and soul and also on the assump¬
tion that all bodies and all souls were somehow equal before God. ‘We
say that souls, bodies, and God belong together.’42 Again, a form of
immortality had been assumed.
Thus, as the National Socialist ideologue saw it, religion and science
had been bound together in a Weltanschauung that was itself congruent
with a nature of which it was the highest possible expression. This
44 Man in the Natural World

Weltanschauung was neither overly-spiritual or overly-materialistic, but

rather could be summed up in the engaging phrase (‘Everything is Life )
'Alles ist Lehen or, as was often more simply written, ‘Natur . Spiritual,
i.e. overly spiritual people captured by traditional religious beliefs, believ¬
ed in the one God who created a world which He now ruled with caprice
and harshness. Materialists were either coldly deistic or out-and-out
atheists. However, the ‘life-affirming’ (to use a favourite phrase) Na¬
tional Socialists’ Weltanschauung saw God’s power and Nature s power
as being one and the same thing. To ask for the source of life itself would
be absurd. Its beginnings were unclear. But we do know, as the Bad
Tolz document put it, that ‘we are the bearers and shapers of eternal
life’.43 Since the gap between spiritual and mundane worlds has been
bridged by the National Socialist Weltanschauung, and since a nature-
bound people was, by definition, bound to the highest of spiritual prin¬
ciples then it indeed followed that the ‘ Volk is the religion of our time ’.4 4
Amidst the crudely pantheistic and proto-existentialist verbiage, one
idea emerged with some clarity, viz., that National Socialism was based
upon a ‘life-affirming’ principle which was the principle of nature itself.
The writings of Hitler and Rosenberg, and the Bad Tolz document itself,
all point to this. This is seen in an address by Pg. (party comrade) Dr.
Brachmann is seen at the Religionswissenschaftliche Institut at Halle. The
topic of this lecture (the date for which, unfortunately, is not available,
but it probably was given between 1934 and 1936) concerned the conflict¬
ing ideologies of East and West. Throughout the address, Brachmann
attacked the ‘other-worldliness’ and legalisms that he saw as inherent
in the Eastern, i.e., Judaeo-Christian tradition. Eastern religion was based
on restrictions and fear. It was based on a spiritual condition which had
lost the instinct for life (or perhaps, it had never had it in the first place).45
Oriental religiosity, according to Brachmann. was, in all of its forms
(but most particularly in Judaism and Pauline Christianity) based upon
a ‘denial of everything living’.46 There was, withal, a virtual fear of
life itself. Such a conception of life, one which seemed to emphasise
its emptiness next to the almost opulent grandeur of God, was suitable
for a nomadic people, unhappily rootless in the wastes of Asia. To this,
Brachmann opposed the rooted, farming life, one which was respons¬
ible for a view of the world in which all so-called material elements —
the soil, cattle, etc. — were seen as holy. In other words, according to
Brachmann, what was holy for the rooted — and presumably, Nordic-
European farmer — did not serve to separate men from nature.47
Unfortunately, through the triumph of the Judaeo-Christian tradition
and thus of the Jewish God — a perniciously capricious one at that —
 Man in the Natural World 45

the European spirit had been enslaved by religious principles inherently

foreign to it. The healthy ‘peasant religion’ was just now beginning to
emerge. As an example of the sort of spirit that it would have to com¬
bat, Brachmann provided Moses who, before he could marry the daughter
of Jethro, had to circumcise himself, i.e., sacrifice his manhood to a
'God of the wastes'.48 Unfortunately, it was this type of God who,
through John the Baptist, was brought into the New Testament itself.
A religious Weltanschauung of this nature, i.e., one based on fear of
a God of caprice, was necessarily dependent upon revelation. The Indo-
Germanic religious Weltanschauung, however, took its point of depar¬
ture from men and was apotheosised in that German sense of ‘inward¬
ness’ which was responsible for, among other things, attempting to bring
certain aspects of the Judaeo-Christian tradition back into harmony with
nature through the Cult of the Virgin Mary. The robust glorification of
mother and child, Brachmann stated, was hardly characteristic of the
oriental world.49 When we ‘give thanks’, it must be not to some
capriciously tyrannical God of the wastes, but rather to that which
demonstrates to us the congruity of ‘man and life’.50
According to Alex Elbertzhagen, Nordic religiosity was in fact em¬
bodied in ' unreflective, joyful creation, and struggle1. Confident in its
‘right and strength1, it was ‘the immediate experience of the immediate
power of God1,51 It was this variety of religious experience, rooted in
and reflective of life itself, which was responsible for the Nordic race’s
being the most creative on earth.52 For such an experience necessarily
called for heroic men who, confident of the power of God which surged
within them, strove mightily against the seeming ‘limits of humanity’.53
Nordic religion was indeed a religion of ‘God-men’. Naturally, Elbert¬
zhagen was aware that such teachings were not exactly congruent with
established Christian beliefs. Indeed, he maintained, the teaching of this
‘Nordic religion’ and of the values which flowed from it, could hardly
be entrusted to the established clergy. Rather, he thought, such would
have to be the task of school teachers educated for that purpose.54
The National Socialist Weltanschauung was celebrated as providing
for a true ‘religion of life’. The old dualisms could now be overthrown
and, in their place, one could posit something for which such hoary
precursors of National Socialism as Wilhelm Marr, Eugen Duhring, and
Houston Stewart Chamberlain had argued — a religious belief congruent
with those laws of nature in terms of which a true (‘Folk Community’)
Volksgemeinschaft would develop to fruition. The liberation from Judaeo-
Christian dogma would be apotheosised in the transcendence of — to
use a phrase well-known at the time — ‘life alien’ usages. In an SS
46 Man in the Natural World

document of 1936, (‘The Historical Development of the Essence of the

German Reich’) Die geschichtliche Entwicklung der deutschen Reich-
sein, several songs to be sung at SS festivals were suggested. One of
them captured the sense of liberation from the Judaeo-Christian tradi¬
tion. In Asian wastes, i.e., the Holy Land,

Verblutete deutsche Wehr

Die Zeit verging, doch der Pfaffe blieb.
Den Volk die Seele zu rauben,
Und ob er es romisch, Lutherisch trieb,
Er lehrte den judischen Glauben.55

(German might has bled to death

Time passed yet the priest remained
to rob the people of its soul
And whether he proselytised Roman or Lutheran
He taught the Jewish faith)

A second song, entitled ‘Juden raus, Papst Hinaus’, (Jews out, away
with the Pope’) developed this theme a bit further:

Nein, wir haben nicht geblutet namenlos und ohne Ruhm,

Das der deutchen Art verjudet weiter durch der Christendum.

(No, we have not bled anonymous and without fame.

So that the German race will be Judaised through Christendom again)

Now, the German Volk had been liberated from Judaeo-Christian

enslavement (‘Wir sind frei von Berge Sinai’), and there was no further
need for a church since German men and women would be living in ac¬
cord with the laws of nature (‘Sonnenrad fuhrt uns allein’)56 (The Sun
alone guides us’).
At times, the Nazis seemed uncertain as to precisely which aspects
of the Judaeo-Christian tradition they found most disturbing. Often, it
was that ‘Other-worldiness’ so strongly attacked by Brachmann. At other
times, though, the Nazis focused their attacks upon what they perceived
to be the mundane and materialistic aspects of Judaism in particular,
declaring, as expressed in a memorandum from Rosenberg’s office, that
what should be emphasised in ideological training was the ‘oriental’,
mundane character of the Jewish dogma, something which, if believed
in by enough people, had eventually to lead to Jewish political as well
as spiritual domination.57 Despite such apparent uncertainties, however,
there can be little doubt that the Nazis were quite sincere in seeing
themselves as rebels against the Judaeo-Christian tradition.
 Man in the Natural World 47

According to J. Spelter all ‘established’ world religions were

characterised by emphases on ‘cosmopolitanism’ or teachings of the
'equality of all men58 Christianity, however, in which ‘Jehovah’s flaming
hatred covered itself with the cloak of love,’ was especially pernicious
since it amounted to a triumph of Judaism, albeit in veiled form.59
The significance of the National Socialist theological revolution (for
such it was) can perhaps be disputed. After all, despite the Bad Tolz
documents, the rather simplistic, if not simple-minded, attacks on the
Judaeo-Christian tradition, and the various Hitler Jugend sun and fire
festivals, Germany remained nominally ‘Christian’ and the desires of
some, such as Martin Bormann, that wars be declared on Christianity
were never implemented, if only because there was not enough oppor¬
tunity to do so. Moreover, as we will see, various Christian believers
sought accommodation between Christian and National Socialist prin¬
ciples. It is obvious, however, that leading National Socialists assumed
a fundamentally anti-Christian (to say nothing of /wdaeo-Christian) stance
and were able to rationalise many of their actions in terms of it. Hitler
may have mocked Rosenberg for his garbled neologisms, and Bormann
might well have despised minor party philosophers such as Brachmann,
Krieck, and Wagner (to say nothing of the ‘major’ one, Rosenberg).
All were united, however, in the belief that National Socialism
represented a new Lehensphilosophie in which a fundamental understand¬
ing of the laws of life made it possible for science and religion to be
brought together and the cleft between heaven and earth bridged.
We can get a good idea of this by considering some comments of
Martin Bormann. In a 1942 piece on National Socialism and Christian¬
ity, he emphasised the incompatibility of ‘National Socialist and Chris¬
tian concepts’. National Socialism, Bormann declared, was based on
‘scientific foundations’, while Christianity’s principles, laid down almost
two thousand years ago, ‘have increasingly stiffened into life-alien
dogmas’.60 National Socialism must always be guided by science and,in¬
stead of conceiving of God as being some sort of ‘manlike being’ sitting
up somewhere in the heavens, the new Weltanschauung viewed it as some
sort of force, one which governed heavenly spheres other than our ‘unim¬
portant earth’.61

The assertion that this world-force can worry about the fate of every
individual, every bacillus on earth, and that it can be influenced by
so-called prayer or other astonishing things is based either on a suitable
dose of naivete or on outright commercial effrontery.62

The ‘God’ in which Bormann believes was (and is) the God of a fairly
48 Man in the Natural World

substantial number of people. In part, Bormann’s remarks were written

in the spirit of that agnosticism that has become the prevailing mood
of modern life. At the same time, though, Bormann was deprecating
the notion of the divinity of man, there being no ‘manlike being in whose
image he had been created. In place of divine humanity and a presumably
superannuated God, there was life itself, whose fundamental scientific
truths had been grasped in National Socialism. The somewhat more
mystically-inclined Heinrich Himmler persistently attacked Christian¬
ity for its notion that men should dominate the world. In place ot this
he offered a presumably ‘old German’ belief in the interrelationship bet¬
ween macro- and microcosms. ‘Man’, Himmler maintained in a 9 June
1942 speech to SS chiefs in Berlin, ‘is nothing special’. All that he was
was a piece of earth.63
Naturally, in all of this there was the implicit or explicit notion that
while 'man' was nothing, some men were unto gods. These were those
humans fortunate enough to be endowed with a Weltanschauung rooted
in the laws of nature itself. Such people carried within themselves a life-
bound idealism. This notion came out quite strongly in a 17 February
1944 speech of the Reich Governor of Baden, Robert Wagner, at the
University of Strassburg. During the course of his address, Wagner posed
‘the ideas and the idealism of the National Socialist Weltanschauung
against the suicidal struggle of the democratic historical era', an era
characterised, as he saw it, by materialistic self-seeking.64 Men, Wagner
maintained, ‘cannot build their concepts of life upon foundations of
egotistical wishes or abstract theories alien to life [weltfremden], but only
upon recognizable laws of nature’.65 There had been the call ‘back to
nature’ and now this process had been completed by National Socialism
and by Adolf Hitler. National Socialism, then, was nothing else than
the grasping of natural laws through ‘a spirit of genius' (Hitler's
presumably).66 Again and again, Wagner came back to the theme that
the National Socialist Weltanschauung was ‘nothing but,’ or ‘nothing
other’ than ‘authentic, true knowledge or. better said, knowledge of
nature’. In fact, so closely did the Weltanschauung of Hitler adhere to
the laws of life, that it was itself in a state of perpetual development.

The Fiihrer has consciously avoided allowing his National Socialism

to develop into a stationary doctrine. It should and it must remain
[a] revolutionary idea. Each doctrine leads all too easily to dogmatism
and through that to alienation from the world [Weltfremden].6''

In these lines, Pg. Wagner captured something that helps to explain the
extraordinary success of the National Socialist ideology, viz., that
 Man in the Natural World 49

impressive balance between belief in posited eternal natural truths and

a pragmatism which allowed for a great deal of flexibility in determin¬
ing how such truths should be applied to the human world. Not since
Thomas Miintzer espoused his belief in a ‘continuous revelation’ had
so convenient a method of adjusting ‘infinite laws’ to finite conditions
been adopted.
It is in this context that we can consider a most interesting
phenomenon; the so called ‘Hitler Cult,’ for good reason viewed as being
at the very heart of National Socialism. Here, Hitler’s use of language
is most instructive. As has often been pointed out, there often appeared
to be a deliberate use of Christian imagery by Hitler, an imagery which
conjured up ideas of his being a messiah. ‘Thou art in me and I in thou’,
he proclaimed in a speech of 7 May 1933. ‘So as I am yours, so you
are mine. Just as I can have no other goal but to make Germany strong
and free again, so must your will bind itself with mine’.68 The impact
of such imagery on youth could be particularly strong. Hence, in a 2
September 1933 speech to the Hitler Jug end, the following langauge must
have made an immense impression: ‘You, my young people, you are
the living Germany of the future; not an empty idea, no pallid scheme,
but you are blood of our blood, flesh of our flesh, spirit of our spirit
— you are the regeneration of our people’.69 Important throughout
Hitler’s speeches was the notion of redemption with, of course, party
and Fiihrer being the source of it. ‘The guilt of our people is extinguish¬
ed’, he proclaimed in a 3 September 1933 speech to assembled SA and
SS men; 'the desecration atoned for, the shame is conquered. The men
of November are fallen and their power is past. ’7 0 There can be no ques¬
tion that, for those familiar with and respectful of, biblical langauge,
the impact of such exhortations must have been enormous. Hitler himself
was probably at least as deeply moved by them as anybody else. Yet,
while certainly utilising biblical jeremiad and exhortation whenever he
thought it to be of value. Hitler was always careful to draw a sharp line
between the sort of spirituality which he saw as informing his move¬
ment and conventional, organised religion. This was most clearly ex¬
pressed in a party day speech in Nuremberg, given on 6 September 1938.
Perhaps because he was in the middle of the Sudeten crisis, this address
was most stringent in tone. After declaring that Germany must be cleansed
of all parasites and that, in the process of the struggle against ‘the inter¬
national Jewish world enemy’, ‘eternal values of blood and soil’ had
to be elevated to be the ‘ruling laws of our life’, Hitler proceeded to
draw a line between National Socialism and Christianity.71
In this regard, Hitler spoke of the mystery of Christianity, a faith which
50 Man in the Natural World

throve in dark buildings filled with shadows. He did not want to fill the
German people ‘with a mysticism which lies outside the purpose and
goal of our teaching’.72 National Socialism, Hitler declared, was to be
a ‘ Volkshewegung’, but ‘under no conditions a Kultbewegung. Under
no circumstances was a mystery cult for the German people to be
created.73 The National Socialist movement preserved God’s work and
carried out the will of God not in the twilight world of the cult ‘but before
the open countenance of the Master’.74 These are very revealing words.
Hitler was in fact telling his audience that there were to be no more
‘mysteries’ in the Christian sense (although timeless ‘mysteries of the
blood’ would remain, of course). Rather, in the National Socialist move¬
ment, one in which the ‘principle of life’, attained continuous affirma¬
tion, secular and spiritual worlds had been fused. There was really no
need to appeal to any external force. Providence would be revealed in
those actions undertaken by the movement; a movement which, embody¬
ing within itself laws of life revealed in nature, was in fact acting as
Providence. Hence, any acts committed by the National Socialist move¬
ment in general or by Hitler in particular were justified by the very fact
of their being committed in the first place. While the Nazis never pro¬
claimed themselves, as Italian Fascists often did, as being pragmatists,
there was a strong pragmatic core that subsisted at the centre of their
ideology.
J. P. Stern has talked of ‘a situation of total immanence’ in which
everyone ‘including Hitler himself, fully believed in the image they have
created’.75 Here, in referring to the colour and pageantry of Nazi
ceremonies, such as that described in the previous chapter. Stern has
a most cogent point to make. Of immense importance here is the author’s
suggestion that in Nazi ceremonies image became reality, a necessary
component of any religious ceremony. We must, however, suggest that
Stern really did not go far enough. In its revolution against the Judaeo-
Christian tradition. National Socialism, regardless of its calling upon
religious imagery essentially Christian in character, had to reject the tradi¬
tional notions of God and messiah. In this regard. I think it is of impor¬
tance to bear in mind Professor Rhodes’ injunction that in order to
understand what the Nazis were about we must take their conceptions
of themselves and their mission seriously.76 If one does that, it becomes
plain, for this writer, that the millenarian concerns which Rhodes, quite
understandably, views as being of ultimate importance with regard to
the ideational content of National Socialism, served facilitatory purposes
within the context of an aM/'-Christian religion, a religion of nature.
Adherence to such could only have conjured forth dualistic images of
 Man in the Natural World 51

a movement striving to follow some sort of divinely prescribed program.

Being 'rooted in life itself,' there was no need to do so and the symbol,
the image, or however one wishes to describe the several aspects of
National Socialistic ideology, had to be real; as real as the brick and
concrete crematoria which were its technological expression. In a word,
while ceremonial occasions obviously brought forth symbol and imagery
in concentrated form — while at the same time transforming them into
reality — all public activities of the National Socialists were informed
by this process. In the pursuit of Lebensraum in the East and the final
solution we can clearly see this process — myth, expressed in archetypal
imagery, had become real.
Naturally, in all of this, the role of Hitler was central. As far as the
German people are concerned, the impact he had as an orator was im¬
mense, and need not be discussed here. Furthermore, for many Ger¬
mans, he became increasingly identified with the Fatherland even as they
rejected a party increasingly viewed as incompetent and/or corrupt. For
our purposes, though,it was Hitler’s place within the symbolic structure
of the National Socialist Religion that is crucial. For example, in the
SS Namensweihe ceremony (baptism), something which in form was
similar to its Christian counterpart but in content amply reflected the
blood-and-soil Mythus of Himmler’s organisation, a picture of Hitler as
the new Christ stood in the middle of an altar decorated with swastikas.77
Bearing this extraordinary image in mind, it is not at all surprising that
Himmler and others in high SS circles saw Hitler as in fact taking the
place of Christ. Here, the Fiihrer Mythus had indeed become a ‘Fiihrer
Cult’, and Himmler himself often referred to Hitler as a 'Gottmensch' ,78
Hitler’s reaction to all of this preternatural adoration was humbly to deny
that he was a messiah. 'To those . . . who, in their enthusiasm for the
regeneration of our nation, go too far and hail me as a Prophet, a se¬
cond Mahommed or a second Messiah, I can only retort that I can find
no trace of any resemblance in myself to a Messiah.’79 Whether Hitler
was being genuinely or falsely modest must remain uncertain. In any
case, the point can be made that, bearing in mind the character of the
National Socialist religion of nature, the notion of a ‘messiah’ had become
superfluous. With the overcoming, as they saw it, of the dualism bet¬
ween natural and supernatural, the Nazis had provided for a sanctifica¬
tion of the mundane, e.g., military campaigns, mechanical-like slaughter
of ‘natural enemies’, which allowed for the most coldly technological
methods to serve the needs of a community awash in naturalistic, petty
bourgeois bathos. In such a situation, the need for a messiah serving
the ‘traditional’ role of mediating between man and God had been
52 Man in the Natural World

obviated. There was no need for Himmler's ‘Gottmensch' to die on the

eross for Germany’s sins despite Hitler's own occasional use of biblical
imagery.
Yet there can be no doubt that, as indicated earlier, for many ordinary
Germans. Hitler was Germany and whatever positive they saw in National
Socialism was identified with him. Certainly, in ‘crisis' situations such
as those posed by war. this would be of crucial importance.8 Further¬
more, within the ranks of the party faithful (in every sense of the word)
the adulation of Hitler could attain proportions so extraordinary that,
to explain it. the historian has to surrender a substantial portion of his
‘territory' to the psychiatrist, or, better, psychohistorian. At the very
least, the power of Hitler's personality was such as to compel those
around him to accept ‘his definition of reality, of the sources and pur¬
poses of struggle, of his definition of the enemy and how the enemy was
to be treated’.81 Moreover, while it is true that Hitler was not respons¬
ible for every element that would attach itself to the National Socialist
religion, it is also true that nothing in the contributions of Rosenberg.
Darre or Himmler contradicted the guiding principles of Hitler's own
Weltanschauung.*2 In all events, the extraordinary ability of Hitler to
define not merely ideological reality, but reality as a whole, for all who
were in his presence, has caused one author to describe this ability as
follows: ‘We are very much in the presence of a total invasion of the
personality by a consecrated object . . ' There can be no doubt that,
besides serving purposes of social control, the prayers to Hitler created,
especially for German youth, by National Socialist religious zealots, ex¬
pressed that genuine sense of awe which many felt for their Fiihrer. at
the very least a forerunner of that ‘new man' who would emerge as both
the bearer and product of National Socialist religiosity.84 Thus could
Himmler, who was much impressed by the Eastern religions, draw upon
a description of the ‘redeemer’ found in the Bhagavad-Gita. in making
the following extraordinary statement:

This passage is absolutely made for the Fiihrer ... He rose up out
of our deepest need, when the German people had come to a dead
end ... It has been ordained by Karma of the Germanic world that
he should wage war against the East [!] and save the Germanic peoples
— a figure of the greatest brilliance has become incarnate in his
person.85

While Himmler's panegyrics might have been atypical, there can be

no doubt that Hitler's singularity was believed in by all convinced
National Socialists. This was certainly reflected in National Socialist art
 Man in the Natural World 53

where Hitler, unlike the Stalin depicted in Soviet Socialist Realist works,
was always pictured either alone, or as the central figure. Emphasis was
always placed not upon certain disarming (in every sense of the word)
avuncular qualities, as was the case with Stalin, but upon a sort of ‘im¬
personal’ ‘(unpersonlich) aspect which rendered him spiritually inac¬
cessible.86
While there can be no question as to the significance of a ‘Hitler Cult',
nor as to its importance in the Nazi ideology, we must not allow ourselves
to be totally absorbed by its more idiosyncratic and bizarre aspects. The
‘cult’ itself must be seen as representing only an aspect — albeit a most
important one — of the National Socialist concept of the natural religion.
‘Cult’, after all, brings to mind visions of obscure rites and arcane rituals.
Hitler, in distinguishing between National Socialism and traditional
religion, was rather to the point. While the German people were not view¬
ed as being politically mature enough to have precise knowledge of such
events as the ‘Final Solution’, although they had been prepared for it
to the greatest degree possible, Nazi pronouncements and policies were
supposed to be interpreted as being in strict conformity with the laws
of life. As Hitler and others saw it, living according to such laws was
not easy. Human beings seemed to be perversely determined to rebel
against them. Even with regard to diet, where men seemed to be deter¬
mined to destroy themselves by eating meat, human beings ‘alone among
the living creatures, try to deny the laws of nature'.87 However, when
such laws are discovered, and if people are determined to live accord¬
ing to them, then everything can fall into place with relative ease.
This was, as Hitler saw it, particularly the case with regard to the
‘natural’ role of women. ‘The phrase of women-emancipation is a phrase
discovered only by the Jewish intellect, and its content is stamped by
the same spirit’. Hitler proclaimed in a 8 September 1934 speech to the
NS Frauenschaft,88 The German woman did not have to emancipate
herself from German life. After all, nature had provided for her in that
capacity.89 Hitler, mostly privately, but occasionally publicly, admitted
that he detested women in politics. At the same time, though, there was
that sphere of activity, sanctified by nature, that was woman’s. ‘With
each child which she brings into the world for the nation, she is fighting
her struggle for the nation.’90 To be sure, the man must represent his
people, but the woman did the same for the family, and her equality
was assured because ‘she, in those areas of life determined for her by
nature, [should] receive every deep respect due to her’.91 Despite Hitler's
well-known contempt for them as being socially uncreative, irrational
creatures, there is little doubt that he was sincere in his belief that nature
54 Man in the Natural World

(the ‘laws of life’) had provided for a sanctified area of activity for
women. In the following chapter, we will consider this issue at greater
length.
Opposition to pronouncements such as those mentioned above could
only reveal, as Alfred Rosenberg put it in a speech of 3 March 1938,
an obstinacy indicative of a desire to ‘reverse nature,’ since the new ‘laws
of life’ (Lebensgesetze) of the German nation were grounded in a recogni¬
tion of general ‘laws of life’.92 Leading National Socialists were par¬
ticularly critical of scholars who, ensconced in their respective
specialities, refused to participate whole-heartedly in the National
Socialist revolution. They were accused of ‘drawing back from life’,
of dealing with specialised and distant things ‘without an inner participa¬
tion in the great struggles of the German Volk' 9' The highest praise
that Robert Ley could assign Hitler was that ‘He affirms life’, and, in
so doing brought out the best in all of his people/4 The philosophy of
National Socialism, as represented by its Fiihrer, had to be true and could
not be contrary to any variety of scientific knowledge because, as Ernst
Krieck put it, it stemmed from ‘simple elemental truths and elemental
conceptions constructed on foundations given by nature'. Indeed, the
biological Weltanschauung of the National Socialist movement
‘embraced] [the] concept of ‘life’ in its total width and depth’.95
In all of this, one must not assume that there was an absolutely
monolithic National Socialist ideology, consistent in all details and
adhered to in lock-step fashion by all National Socialists. While, as men¬
tioned before, no ideologue deviated to any significant degree from the
major principle of Hitler’s Weltanschauung, there were disagreements
on various points and, quite often, downright petty quarreling between
leading exponents. As is well known, Rosenberg and Goebbels often
disagreed and the former was often quite critical of Ernst Krieck’s ap¬
proaches to philosophy and science. All National Socialists, however,
agreed on one fundamental principle: in their philosophy of “life’, certain
perceived weaknesses, ‘unnatural’ in character, of the Judaeo-Christian
tradition had been overthrown. How this could affect social attitudes was
revealed in an extraordinary article, written by SS Unterstunnfiihrer Prof.
Eckhardt, that appeared in the journal of the SS, Das Schwarze Korps,
on 22 May 1935. In this article, Eckhardt pointed out that, in pre-
Christian times, Nordic man had recognised that homosexuality and
cowardice went together. As a consequence of this realisation, homosex¬
uals had been executed. Only with the coming of Christianity which killed
men because of sins against God rather than sins against the race, did
the Nordic race lose sight of ancient customs rooted in nature.96
 Man in the Natural World 55

In this extremely important statement, the true meaning of the Nazi

religion of nature is revealed. ‘Unnatural’ attitudes towards perceived
unnatural acts had to have resulted when one believes in and prays to
the distant Christian God. The ‘true’ God — and Himmler insisted that
every SS man believe in Him — lived within a race-bound nation thus
sanctified by nature itself.97 If the SS, which was, after all, the elite
of nature-bound Nordic man, decided that certain practices and attitudes
were ‘unnatural,’ then such had to be the case or so far-reaching a deci¬
sion could not have been made. While obviously the Jews were the target
of greatest importance, the ‘unnatural’ quality of Christianity, a religion
which Himmler described as ‘a perverse Weltanschauung estranged from
life’, and ‘the greatest pestilence in history which has befallen us’, is
something which Nazi ideologues emphasised over and over again.98
Only when so inherently degenerate and unnatural a religion prevailed,
could homosexuals, ‘a danger to the national health’, be tolerated, and
not be drowned in bogs, as healthy Nordic ancestors once had dealt with
them.99
The ‘Hitler cult’ played a crucial role in the ideology. We must ap¬
preciate, however, the fact that, while Hitler as head of the National
Socialist party no doubt encouraged the emergence of a series of basic
attitudes necessarily at least congruent with his own, he did not demand
that flood of literature extolling the new, natural religion which appeared
during the Nazi reign of power. The writings of such people as Bor-
mann, Rosenberg, Krieck and many other lesser-known ideologues, point
to certain basic and deep-seated concerns of which Hitler’s own influential
beliefs were but a part.
As we have thus far considered it, the National Socialist ‘religion’
emphasised two fundamental points: (1) the necessity of overcoming the
gap between worldly and other-worldly (and hence, between the tradi¬
tional realms of ‘science’ and ‘religion’) and (2) the necessity of seeing
man as being part of nature, and thus subject to the pitiless judgement
of natural law. In the first instance, the National Socialist Weltanschauung
emphasised a very crude sort of Hegelianism, viz., man’s seeking of
infinitude within his own breast. Where the National Socialists differed
from Hegel, of course, was in their insistence that not all men could
do this, since some, indeed, most of them, adhered to weltfremden doc¬
trines, e.g., the Judaeo-Christian tradition, which in turn pointed to a
lack of soulish, i.e., natural, qualities. Thus, point (2), the emphasis
upon man’s role in and of nature was, at least in the eyes of National
Socialists, inextricably intertwined with point (1). Having produced, as
they saw it, a Weltanschauung that allowed two of the most disturbing
56 Man in the Natural World

dualisms in human existence to be overcome, i.e., the gaps between body

and spirit and man and nature, it is not surprising that Nazi ideologists
took their beliefs extremely seriously.
Under these circumstances, it can be easily understood why a
September 1940 quarrel, originating in the Graberfursorge (‘Graves
Welfare’) office of the SS — a dispute over whether the graves of fallen
SS men should be marked with a so-called ‘Tyr-rune’ or a ‘Man-rune’
— eventually ended up involving the attention of Himmler himself.100
One can also appreciate why, at a time when the war was all but lost
— 15 December 1944 — Rosenberg could still be so deeply concerned
over the correct appreciation of the significance of the National Socialist
Weltanschauung, that he would send a 12-page Schulungsbrief on the
subject to the SD (Security Semce) office.101 No doubt for the individual
German soldier, by 1944 fighting desperately against impossible odds,
the Weltanschauung issue might well have appeared to be a somewhat
irrelevant one. But, from the point of view of those who mattered, i.e.,
the National Socialist leadership, it could not have been for, au fond,
the war that they had chosen to bring upon Europe was in large measure
concerned with the triumph of a Weltanschauung which embodied the
hopes and ambitions of some of those estranged from Judaeo-Christian
tenets.
It has been customary to view the National Socialist movement as
crowning a series of trends and events which marked Germany’s
‘rebellion’ against the West.102 To an extent, such an opinion is support¬
able, particularly if one bears in mind that, at least until after World
War II, Germany although contributing far more than her share to
Western culture, was in some respects — economic, social and political
— not really a West European nation at all. Furthermore, Nazism, as
in large measure the result of a form of political romanticism that self¬
consciously defined itself against prevailing Western traditions, was
something that could have arisen only in Germany. However, if by
‘rebellion against the West’ we mean ‘rebellion against the Judaeo-
Christian tradition’, then we must see that the National Socialist
Weltanschauung embodied within it elements that have existed as Western
civilisation’s alter ego from time to time.
Joachim of Fiore was only one representative, albeit perhaps the most
intellectually respectable, of a chiliastic tradition which, while not con¬
sciously anti-Christian (indeed, those prominent in it often claimed to
be the true Christians), nevertheless was most uncomfortable with the
orthodox Christian view of eschatology and life eternal. A succession
of false messiahs and embodiments of the Holy Ghost, from Montanus
 Man in the Natural World 57

of Phrygia to the pseudo-Baldwin of Flanders, sought to demonstrate

that the Kingdom of Death could be transcended in the here-and-now
and spiritual truth realised through violent social action. The Manichean
tradition, never completely reconciled to the delicate and, at times, seem¬
ingly artificial balance, between body and spirit proffered by the Judaeo-
Christian tradition, denounced it altogether in favour of a permutation
of Gnosticism, something that had to occasion the barbaric Albigensian
Crusade of the 13th Century.103 Theosophical societies, spiritualists, and
purveyors of various forms of Eastern mysticism are as prominent as
ever before throughout the West and in some places, e.g., the United
States, probably more so than previously. The Judaeo-Christian tradi¬
tion remains as the ‘official’ tradition of Western Civilisation, but for
many its hold has come to be rather tenuous.
Hitler, while despising the renewal of old Germanic customs suggested
by such people as Rosenberg and, contrary to popular belief, no great
believer in astrology, most assuredly believed in the transcendence of
the body/soul dichotomy through capturing a ‘world-affirming’ life
source, a possibility for Aryans if for nobody else.104 This belief was
shared by all of those in the National Socialist movement who were pro¬
minent in ideological concerns. While specifically German historical cir¬
cumstances and conditions were responsible for bringing the National
Socialists to power, that element of the National Socialist Weltanschauung
which rejected the Judaeo-Christian separation between finite and in¬
finite — and hence implicitly rejected the reality of death — had a long
pedigree in the history of Western Civilisation. That there could be such
a tradition should not be particularly startling if one accepts Cassirer’s
contention that the rejection of death constituted the primary motive for
primitive man’s turning to religion in the first place.
From the point of view of those living in the last decades of the twen¬
tieth century, the second element of the National Socialist
Weltanschauung which we have considered — emphasis upon man’s role
in and of nature — is perhaps of greater importance. Here too, the Nazi
ideologists were drawing upon a long and well-established tradition. The
dichotomy between a human world, inherently divine due to man’s be¬
ing made in God’s image, and a natural world, over which man
presumably has some degree of control, has never been a particularly
comfortable one with which to live. First of all, as we have seen, the
axiological charge to man, as a singularly divine creature, situated
somewhere between heaven and earth, is an immense one. Secondly,
the notion that humans, having certain powers over nature, are themselves
responsible for it in some way (rather than simply adjusting to certain
58 Man in the Natural World

‘natural laws’ beyond their control), places a great burden upon them.
It has been, and is, a far easier choice to see man as not being apart
from nature, much less above it, but of nature. This approach is one
that has not been confined to woebegone romantics in full flight from
modernity. Indeed, as Leon Poliakov has pointed out, the stripping of
man of his divinity began with the crude scientism of the
Enlightenment.103
Of course, for such thinkers as Linnaeus, Buffon, Voltaire, Meiners,
and Kant there was a natural order of men just as there was of animals
and things. In other words, while all men were part of nature, some were
higher up on the developmental ladder than others. With the rise of
modern nationalism and its partial reinforcement through the develop¬
ment of the Aryan myth, something for which the Frenchman Gobineau
was to some extent responsible, the crude scientism of eighteenth cen¬
tury phylogenetic speculation was in part replaced by more baldly
ethnocentric concerns. In all of this, the New World made no mean con¬
tribution of its own. Gobineau’s writings, at first not taken terribly
seriously in France, were translated into English in order to justify the
existence of slavery, and the American war against Mexico, 1846-48,
was to a great extent rationalized in racial terms.106 By the end of the
nineteenth century, the ‘scientific’ explanations of Enlightment thinkers
were supplanted by those provided by proto-anthropologists, geographical
determinists, theosophists, and phrenologists. While the Western peoples
remained officially committed to the Judaeo-Christian tradition, and in¬
deed, often rationalised imperialism in its name, the Mosaic code cen¬
tral to this tradition was being strenuously attacked from all sides. Vulgar
interpretations of the Darwinian tradition were useful, of course, in these
efforts though, as we have seen, the submergence of man in the world
of nature antedated these to a great extent.
Though for the most part eschewing notions of race and racial
supremacy, modern environmental concerns are in part rooted in this
general tradition. As we have seen. National Socialist ideologues were
in no small way concerned that man, or at least some men, live in har¬
mony with the environment and, appreciating the fact that this is obviously
necessary, we must recognise that just because something happens to
have been emphasised by people as despicable as the Nazis does not make
it wrong. Man is, at least in part, rooted in the natural world, a world
too often viewed as being a simple object for exploitation. In their own
version of the ‘natural religion;’ however, i.e., their Lebensphilosphie,
the National Socialists exemplified a pernicious tendency that must be
of special concern for anyone who chooses to see man as a product of
 Man in the Natural World 59

some deified nature, and nothing more than that.

It is only with the reduction of men to being simple products of nature
or, in Himmler’s eyes, pieces of earth, that the following description
of a people could have been offered:

From all this it follows that Judaism is part of the organism of mankind
just as, let us say, certain bacteria are part of man’s body, and indeed
the Jews are as necessary as bacteria . . . mankind needs the Jewish
strain in order to preserve its vitality until its earthly mission is fulfill¬
ed. ... It will collapse only when all mankind is redeemed.107

Only with the overthrow of the Mosaic code could Goebbels have
described a people in the following manner: 'Judentum', he said, was
not just a nation, ‘it is a singular, social-parasitic phenomenon’, a poisoner
of other cultures.108 In the end, of course, ‘social-parasitic’ phenomena
could only be dealt with in extremely radical ways. This being the case,
the presumed bearers of life had to become purveyors of death, and the
most idealistic of them wore the death’s head as a sort of absolving
talisman. Finite beings can never, of course, ‘embrace life’; but, they
can fetishise death, and the successful wedding of the most banal of pretty
bourgeois attitudes and usages to a morbidity which, even today, ex¬
cites awe, if not occasionally admiration, was no small achievement.
Justifiably, the ultimate expression of that negativity which was the core
of National Socialist ‘life-bound’ nationalism, is viewed as policies of
extermination. Yet, at all times, it would seem that the most important
of the ‘life-affirming’ bearers of National Socialist religious principles
were always at their best in the valley of the shadow.109

Notes

1. Felix Kersten, The Kersten Memoirs 1940-1945, with an Introduction by H.R.

Trevor-Roper, translated from the German by Constantine Fitzgibbon and James Oliver
(London, Macmillan Co., 1956; New York, 1957), pp. 115-7.
2. See, among others, Peter Viereck, Metapolitics: The Roots of the Nazi Mind, (New
York, Capricorn, 1961); Hans Kohn, The Mind of Germany (New York, Harper and Row,
1960); Fritz Stem, The Politics of Cultural Despair (New York, Doubleday, Anchor Books,
1965); and George L. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology (New York, Grosset and
Dunlap, 1964). In his excellent psychohistorical study. The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler,
Robert G.L. Waite has recently (Basic Books, 1977) reemphasised romanticism as con¬
stituting a major portion of the intellectual background both for National Socialism in general
and for Hitler’s very personal sublimations.
3. With regard to the questions of mass symbolism and the National Socialist religion,
the following works are of importance. An excellent description of Hitler’s impact on the
mob is to be found in William L. Shirer’s Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Cor¬
respondent 1934-1941 (New York, Penguin, 1941), pp. 14-16. An important discussion
60 Man in the Natural World

of Hitler’s mass appeal can be found in Walter C. Langer. The Mind of Adolf Hitter (New
York, Basic Books, 1973), see especially pp. 206-10. Albert Speer’s memoirs. Inside
the Third Reich, translated from the German by Richard and Clara Winston (New York,
Macmillan Co., 1970), are still probably the best source for anyone interested in investigating
the planning and actual staging of the Nuremberg rallies: see pp. 27-8 and 58-9 in par¬
ticular. On Himmler's religious concerns. Josef Ackerman, Heinrich Himmler als Ideologe
(Gottingen, Musterschmidt, 1970). offers numerous observations and insights. Also see
Willi Frischauer, Himmler, The Evil Genius of the Third Reich (Boston. Beacon Press,
1953), pp. 40-2 in particular; Roger Manvell and Heinrich Fraenkel. Heinrich Himmler
(London. New English Library, 1965). especially the discussions on pp. 46-9 and 177-8;
Heinz Hohne, The Order of the Death s Head: The Story of Hitler s SS. translated from
the German by Richard Berry (New York, Ballantine Books. 1970), in particular pp. 144-5.
153-5; Reichsfuhrer! Briefe an und von Himmler, herausgegeben von Helmut Heiber (Stut¬
tgart, Deutsche Verlagsanslalt. 1968), particularly pp. 11 -12 of Heiber’s excellent introduc¬
tion. George L. Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses (New York. Howard Fertig.
Inc., 1975), is a most interesting study of the background for National Socialist symbolism.
See also his Towards the Final Solution: A History of European Racism (New York. Howard
Fertig, Inc., 1978). J.P. Stem, Hitler: The Fiihrer and the People (Berkeley, University
of California Press, 1974), has much to say about the religious appeal of Hitler. Friedrich
Heer’s Der Glaube des Adolf Hitler: Anatomie einen Politischen Religiositat (Munchen.
Bechtle, 1968). does much with Hitler’s use of Christian symbolism. Robert G.L. Waite,
in his The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler (New York, Basic Books, 1977). makes ample
use of Heer’s interpretations. As mentioned before, the most systematic study thus far
of National Socialism as a religion is James M. Rhodes. The Hitler Movement: A Modem
Millenarian Revolution (Stanford. Stanford University Press. 1980). Jean-Pierre Siron-
neau. Secularisation et religionspolitiques (The Hague. Paris, New York. Mouton. 1982)
allows the reader to compare Nazism to ‘Leninism-Stalinism’. Fred Weinstein. The
Dynamics of Nazism, Leadership, Ideology, and the Holocaust (New York. Academic Press.
1980), applies social-psychological approaches to the question of secular religion and the
Hitler cult.
4. As an example of this, see Frischauer, The Evil Genius, p. 26.
5. Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture
(New York, Doubleday, 1953), p. 112.
6. Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology (New York. Pan¬
theon Books, 1970), p.x.
7. Ibid., p. 50.
8. Ibid., p. 126.
9. Of course, in the Christian tradition, Christ is God-as-Man. i.e.. the infinite becom¬
ing finite in order to suffer for the accumulated sins of humanity. However, orthodox Chris¬
tianity does not, and indeed cannot, see this as pointing to a substantial identification of
man and God. Both Joachim of Fiore (1145-1202) and G.W.F. Hegel are often pointed
out as having done this. But Hegel was talking about man’s discovering infinitude in the
species while Joachim, through his ’Age of the Spirit’, which presumably would usher
in the millenium, found it relatively easy to dispense with Christ, and hence, of course,
with the orthodox Christian tradition, altogether. For a brief but pithy consideration of
some of the problems raised by Joachim of Fiore’s flirtations with chiliastic thinking see
Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millenium (New York. Harper and Row, 1961), pp.
98-101.
10. The classic, modern study of this problem is Sigmund Freud's, 'Thoughts for the
Times on War and Death’, Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works, volume
XIV, edited by James Strachey (London, The Hogarth Press, 1957). Freud’s contention
that man simply cannot envision his own death except by observing it as a spectator (and
hence not being really dead) has been modified to some extent by Robert Jay Lifton in
his History of Human Sumval (New York, Random House, 1971). See particularly his
discussion on pp. 172-3. In this regard it is interesting, and perhaps instructive, to
 Man in the Natural World 61

consider that at least one psychoanalytic interpreter of Hitler’s ideology has suggested that,
in his efforts to preserve the nation and hold it together. Hitler was attempting to nullify
the death instinct and, in fact, to render it 'inoperative'. See Richard A. Koenigsberg,
Hitler’s Ideology: A Study in Psychoanalytic Sociology (New York, Library of Social
Sciences, 1975), p. 12. Emphasis is Koenigsberg's.
11. The Old Testament distinction between men and animals is very well demonstrated
in the Book of Judges, 7, where Gideon has been enjoined by God to employ a most in¬
teresting test in determining who was to be selected to fight the Midianites. Ten thousand
men were taken to the banks of a river and told to drink from it. The three hundred who
used their hands to bring water to their mouths were chosen. The nine thousand seven
hundred others, who bent down and, wjth their tongues, lapped up the water ‘as a dog’,
were not selected. Obviously, to drink water ‘as a dog’ was to suggest that one did not
really view oneself as human and hence was a potential candidate for slavery.
12. As an example of this see Leon Poliakov, The Aryan Myth, translated from the
French by Edmond Howard (New York, Basic Books, 1974), pp. 329-30. On the pro¬
blems created by the Jewish ‘God of conscience’, who demanded control over ‘natural’
instincts and was opposed to somewhat more pliable gods of nature, see Bernhard Berliner’s
essay ‘On Some Religious Motives of Anti-Semitism’ in Ernst Simmel (ed.), Anti-Semitism:
A Social Disease (New York, International Universities Press, 1946), pp. 79-84.
13. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, translated from the German by Ralph Manheim (Boston,
Houghton Mifflin, 1943), p. 288.
14. Adolf Hitler, Secret Conversations, 1941-1944. With an introductory essay on
The Mind of Adolf Hitler, by H.R. Trevor-Roper, translated by Norman Cameron and
R.H. Stevens (New York, Farrar, Straus and Young, 1953), p. 5.
15. Ibid., p. 33, conversation of 12 September 1941.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid., p. 51, conversation of 14 October 1941.
19. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York, Harcourt, Brace,
Jovanovich, 1973), pp. 178-80. Ernst Nolte, Three Faces of Fascism translated from the
German by Leile Vennewitz (New York, New American Library, 1969), pp. 527-32.
20. Hermann Rauschning, Hitler Speaks: A Series of Political Conversations with Adolph
Hitler on His Real Aims (London, Heinemann, 1939), p. 114.
21. Ibid., p. 240.
22. Ernst Krieck, Volkische-Politische Anthropologie, Band II — Das Handeln und
die Ordnungen (Leipzig, Armanen Verlag, 1937), p. 147.
23. Rauschning, Hitler Speaks, p. 242. James P. Rhodes, in The Hitler Movement,
has used the notion of man as ‘God in the making’ to emphasise National Socialism’s link
to millenarianism. See Rhodes, p. 77. Hitler once mentioned to Speer that he thought that
either the Muslim or Shinto faith would have been more suitable for what he had in mind
for Germany. See Speer, Inside the Third Reich, p. 114.
24. Ibid., p. 400.
25. Ibid., p. 512. Emphasis is Hitler’s.
26. Joachim Fest, The Face of the Third Reich: Portraits of the Nazi Leadership,
translated from the German by Michael Bullock (New York, Pantheon Books, 1970), pp.
165-70, p. 174.
27. Hitler, Secret Conversations, conversation of 11 April 1942, p. 342.
28. Ibid.
29. By ‘committed National Socialists’, one means those who fundamentally accepted
the Nazi ideology or Weltanschauung to the point of utilising it at the very least to ra¬
tionalise the activities undertaken by the National Socialist Party and the state which serv¬
ed as its vehicle. A quantitative study which has called into question some of the basic
assumptions regarding National Socialism nevertheless has confirmed that the most fun¬
damental aspect of the Nazi Weltanschauung, political anti-Semitism, was the most
62 Man in the Natural World

important conscious motivating factor for those of prominence in the movement. See Peter
H. Mcrkl, Political Violence Under the Swastika: 581 Early Nazis (Princeton, Princeton
University Press, 1975), pp. 503-4, 628.
30. Alfred Rosenberg, Selected Writings, translated and edited by R. Pots (London,
Jonathan Cape, 1970), p. 114.
31. Ibid., p. 117.
32. Ibid , p. 119.
33. Paul Brohmer, Biologieunterricht und volkische Erziehung (Frankfurt, n.p., 1933)
as quoted in George L. Mosse (ed.), Nazi Culture (New York, Grosset and Dunlap. 1965),
pp. 83-4.
34. Ibid., p. 87. For another example of the National Socialist effort to root man firmly
within the natural world, see Alfred Baeumler s 1939 lecture in which the nineteenth cen¬
tury ‘racial scientist’ Ludwig Woltmann was extolled for recognising that man must be
understood as apart of nature ’. Institut fur Zeitgeschichte. reel no. MA 608. frame 55871
Emphasis is Baeumler’s.
35. This school was established in 1932. From 1935 on, units that would become part
of the Waffen SS were trained there. The date of this handbook is not known, but, internal
evidence would suggest 1936.
36. Untitled material concerning Weltanschauliche Erziehung, Institute fur
Zeitgeschichte, reel no. MA 332, frame 2656648.
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid., 2656651.
39. Ibid., 2656652.
40. Ibid., 2656653.
41. Ibid., 2656652. Obviously, if one believed or believes in the superiority of a given
race, the common ancestor theory had to be combatted. It is a weakness of Daniel Gasman s
The Scientific Origins of National Socialism (New York and London, MacDonald and
American Elsevier, 1971), which is concerned with trying to establish links between Ernst
Haeckel’s Monist League and National Socialism, that the author never really considers
this problem in depth. For a sensitive treatment of the issue, see Gunter Altner,
Weltanschauliche Hintergrunde der Rassenlehre des Dritten Reichs. Zum Problem einer
umfassenden Anthropologie (Zurich, EVZ Verlag, 1968), pp. 23-5.
42. Ibid., 2656652.
43. Ibid., 2656673. At least one author has tried to establish a link between the ‘Life
Worship’ of the National Socialists and German tribal worship of the 'Earth Mother’. See
Sironneau, Secularisation et religions politiques, p. 535.
44. Ibid.
45. Institut fur Zeitgeschichte, reel no. MA 45 1172, 250-C-10/5, pp. 3-4.
46. Ibid., 6.
47. Ibid., 8.
48. Ibid., 9.
49. Ibid., 13.
50. Ibid., 16.
51. Alex Elbertzhagen, Kampf urn Gofi in der religiosen Erziehung (Leipzig, Armanan
Verlag, 1934), p. 21. Emphasis is Elbertzhagen’s.
52. Ibid., p. 22.
53. Ibid., pp. 22-3
54. Ibid., p. 25.
55. Bundesarchiv, Sammlung-Schumacher, Gruppe XIV. Nr. 447.
56. Ibid. Of course, various forms of sun and fire worship had been of some significance
in earlier youth and vdlkisch movements. See George L. Mosse, The Crisis of German
Ideology (New York, Grosset and Dunlop, 1964), and Walter Laqueur, Young Germany
(New York, Basic Books, 1962).
57. Institut fur Zeitgeschichte, Mitteilungen zur Weltanschaulichen Lage, 2 Okt., 1936,
 Man in the Natural World 63

reel no. MA 603, frames 20474-20476.

58. Dr J. Spelter, Der deutsche Erzieher als Lehrer der Rassenkunde (Landsberg, Verlag
Pfeiffer and Co., 1937), p. 32.
59. Ibid. See also, pp. 40-1. Emphasis is Spelter’s.
60. Martin Bormann, from Kirchliches Jahrbuch fur die evangelische Kirche im
Deutschland, 1933-44, herausgeben von Joachim Beckmann (Gutersloh, n.p., 1948), as
quoted in Mosse, Nazi Culture, p. 244.
61. Ibid., pp. 244-5.
62. Ibid., p. 245.
63. Heinrich Himmler, Himmler: Geheimreden: 1933 bis 1945, herausgegeben von
Bradley F. Smith und Agnes F. Peterson (Frankfurt/M, Berlin, Propylaen Verlag, 1974),
p. 160.
64. Institut fur Zeitgeschichte, reel no. MA 138/1, frame 301767.
65. Ibid.
66. Ibid., 301768.
67. Ibid., 301789.
68. Max Domains, Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen 1932-1945, Band I, Erster Halb-
band 1932-34 (Miinchen, Suddeutsche Verlag, 1965), p. 266.
69. Ibid., p. 298.
70. Ibid., p. 299. For an interesting treatment of Hitler’s use of Christian imagery
and of his interest in the structure and discipline of the Catholic Church, see Friedrich
Heer, Der Glaube des Adolf Hitler. In the opinion of this writer. Professor Heer takes
Hitler’s interest in Christian usages far too seriously. Rhodes, in his above-mentioned work,
places emphasis on the role of revelation, particularly with regards to Hitler’s view of
himself. See Rhodes, The Hitler Movement, p. 38ff.
71. Domarus Zweiter Halbband 1934-38, p. 890.
72. Ibid., p. 893.
73. Ibid.
74. Ibid., p. 894.
75. J. P. Stem, Hitler, The Fiihrer and the People (Berkeley, University of California
Press, 1974), p. 89.
76. Rhodes, The Hitler Movement, p. 14.
77. An excellent description of the ceremony is to be found in Josef Ackerman, Heinrich
Himmler als Ideologe (Gottingen, Musterschmidt, 1970), pp. 85-7
78. Ibid., p. 78.
79. Hitler, Secret Conversations, conversation of May 1942, p. 375.
80. Ian Kershaw’s Der Hitler-Mythos: Volksmeinung und Propaganda im Dritten Reich
(Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlag-Amstalt, 1980), which is focused primarily on Bavaria, of¬
fers an interesting treatment of this issue. We will be making further use of this work
later on in the book.
81. Weinstein, The Dynamics of Nazism, p. 131.
82. Sironneau, Secularisation et religions politiques, p. 270. Some have maintained
that the role of Hitler with regard to the National Socialist ideology has been overem¬
phasised. See John Hiden and John Farquharson, Explaining Hitler’s Germany (Totowa,
New Jersey, Barnes and Noble, 1983), p. 33.
83. Sironneau, p. 249.
84. An example of such prayers is to be found in ibid., p. 330.
85. Kersten, The Kersten Memoirs, p. 152.
86. Joachim Petsch, Kunst in Dritten Reich, Architektur, Plastic, Malerei (Koln, Vista
Point Verlag, 1983), p. 10.
87. Hitler, Secret Conversations, conversation of night of 28th-29th December 1941,
p. 125.
88. Domarus, Hitler, Einster Halbband, p. 450.
89. Ibid.
90. Ibid.
64 Man in the Natural World

91. Ibid.
92. Institut fur Zeitgeschichte, reel number MA 603, frame 20197, Stoat und Partei
zur Weltanschaulichen Lage, 11.3.1938.
93. Alfred Rosenberg, ‘Alfred Rosenberg iiber die Aufgaben der nationalsozialistischen
Lehrens’, in Volkischer Beobachter, Berliner Ausgabe, Nr. 301,51 .Jahrgang, 28 Oktober
1938, S.I.
94. Robert Ley, ‘Der Fiihrer’, in ibid.. Nr. 295, 51.Jahrgang, 22 Oktober 1938, S.2.
95. Ernst Krieck, Volkische-Politische Anthropologie, Band I, Die Wirklichkeit (Leip¬
zig, 1938), p. v.
96. Professor Eckhardt, ‘Widematiirliche Unzucht ist Todeswurdig,’ in Das Schwarze
Korps, 12. Folge, 2. Jahrgang, 22 Mai 1935, in Helmut Heiber and Hildegard von Kotze,
Facsimile Querschnitt durch das Schwarze Korps (Munchen, Scherz, 1968), pp. 60-1.
97. Kersten, Kersten Memoirs, p. 150.
98. Ackerman, Heinrich Himmler, p. 92.
99. Kersten, Kersten Memoirs, p. 57.
100. After an exchange of communications between an apparent expert in this area,
a man named Willigut, and R. Brandt of Himmler’s office, Himmler decided that SS graves
should be marked either with a traditional cross or with a ‘Man rune’. The reason for
choosing the latter was that it was a ‘Lebens-rune', suggestive of immortal life for those
fallen for the Fatherland. The ‘Tyre-rune', while suggestive of an eternal Kreislauf, did
not convey so optimistic a prospect for the individual soldier. See Bundesarchiv, Sammlung-
Schumacher, Gruppe XIV, Nr. 447.
101. Institut fiir Zeitgeschichte, Reel no. MA 558, frames 9380476-9380488. To put
this in some perspective, we can recall that this letter was dispatched just one day before
the ill-fated Ardennes counter offensive was launched.
102. The number of authors and historians who have adhered to this viewpoint is legion.
A.J.P. Taylor, William L. Shirer, Hermann Rauschning, Peter Viereck, Hans Kohn and
Louis Snyder are perhaps the best known of them.
103. As mentioned above. Professor Rhodes, in his The Hitler Movement, attempted
to tie National Socialism directly into this Millenial tradition. Large numbers of occultists
who seek to explain Nazism in terms of various uncouth, supernatural forces believe that
there is a connection between Hitler and the Albigensians. As an example of this, see Jean-
Michel Angebert's The Occult and the Third Reich, translated by Lewis A. M. Swinberg
(New York, Macmillan, 1974).
104. On Hitler’s dislikes regarding old Germanic customs, see George L. Mosse, The
Nationalization of the Masses, p. 183. Hitler’s belief in life-forces is discussed on pp.
197-9 of this book. On Hitler’s rejection of astrology, see page 473 of his Secret Conver¬
sations, one recorded on 19 July 1942, where he denounced The horoscope in which
Anglo-Saxons in particular have great faith’ as a ‘swindle’. Also, Waite's The Psychopathic
God, p. 435. Apparently, the National Socialist party as a whole was concerned with sup¬
pressing some of the occultism that seemed to have gained new strength with the coming
to power of the movement. In an unsigned article in the Vdlkischer Beobachter, it was
claimed that the ancient German view of the heavens, inherently dynamic as it was, did
not allow for a belief in astrology. See ‘Astrologie warden Germanen Fremd’, in Volkischer
Beobachter, Berliner Ausgabe, Nr. 19. 52.Jahrgang, 19 Januar 1939. S.5.
105. Poliakov, The Aryan Myth, Chapter 8.
106. Gobineau had been somewhat pessimistic about the survival of the Aryan race.
However, defenders of American slavery, as one might imagine, preferred happy endings.
Hence, Gobineau’s writings were edited by Holz, his translator, in such a fashion as to
create one. As is well known, slavery’s defenders often did utilise Biblical arguments to
support their case. However, the Bible also served the abolitionist cause as well. Arguments
rooted in so-called ‘scientific racism' could be countered only by formal scientific analyses,
the sorts of things with which the average person would not be concerned.
107. Alfred Rosenberg, Dietrich Eckart: Ein Vermdchtnis (Munchen, 1928), in George
 Man in the Natural World 65

L. Mosse, Nazi Culture, p. 77.

108. Taken from a letter sent to all Gauleiters — for purposes of propaganda — dated
30 September 1941, Bundesarchiv, Sammlung-Schumacher, GruppeXIII, 382. Of course,
as is well-known, the viewing of Jews as representing some sort of disease had ample
precedents, particularly in the writings of Paul de Lagarde.
109. For a most perceptive and disquieting discussion of this see Saul Freidlander,
Reflections of Nazism: An Essay on Kitsch and Death, translated from the French by Thomas
Weyr (New York, Harper and Row, 1984), pp. 41-6.
 THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST RELIGION IN
4 POWER: THE SANCTIFICATION OF NATIONAL
LIFE

In the previous chapter we were primarily concerned with the ideational

content of the National Socialist religion. While occasional references
were made to the consequences attendant upon the translation of the
several principles under consideration into power, this was an area that
was left largely untreated. We must now concern ourselves with several
crucial aspects of the National Socialist rule in Germany, the sum of
which can be described as constituting the ‘sanctification of national life’.
In this regard, we will be looking at five general areas: (1) the relation-
- ship of the National Socialist religion to the state; (2) the National Socialist
approach to knowledge; (3) the National Socialist approach to aesthetics;
(4) the necessity for the National Socialist religion to perpetuate a state
of bourgeois stasis, and (5) how this religion faced up to the awesome
challenges posed by war. The major campaign of National Socialism,
i.e., that mounted against the Jews, will largely be left to the following
chapter, although obviously we will be considering it to a limited extent
in this one.
It is a commonplace to view modern history as in large measure
representing the triumph of the state over the several forms of organised
religion which have been considered as providing the spiritual founda¬
tions of civilisation in the West. The increasingly secularised character
of this civilisation has been commented upon ad infinitum, and for very
good reason. Most assuredly, traditional religious forms have withered
in the face of the increasing application of science and technology to
life. Often, the emergence of the so-called ‘totalitarian state,’ in the guise
of Soviet Russia (at least during the Stalinist period), Hitlerite Germany,
or — more rarely — Mussolini’s Italy, has been viewed as somehow
crowning a pattern of development which has seen the modern state
accrue more and more power unto itself while, at the same time, in¬
creasingly infringing upon those spiritual realms which, according to
liberal precepts, ought to be left to the individual or at least to religious
rather than secular agencies. The writer will not be making any obser¬
vations with regard to the Soviet Union or to Fascist Italy. In consider¬
ing National Socialist Germany, however, it is his contention that Hitler
was concerned with reversing a trend that had prevailed in Germany in

66
 The National Socialist Religion in Power 67

particular and in the West in general, viz., the continuous growth of state
power at the expense of religious principles and that, in fact, there was
no totalitarian state in National Socialist Germany. Rather, that, in large
measure, the state was supposed to be merely an instrument — and at
times a not very significant one — by virtue of which the religion of
National Socialism was applied to national life.
In his work Totalitarianism Professor Schapiro made the extremely
important point that Hitler’s ideology never really ‘exalted the state’,
instead choosing to view it as an instrument of a party headed by himself,
i.e., the state derived what significance it had as an expression of his
own will.1 With the triumph of Hitler in 1933 ‘The victory over the state
was complete’.2 In fact, Schapiro went so far as to declare that to use
the term ‘totalitarian state’ was to use ‘a contradiction in terms’.3 Fur¬
thermore, that most perspicacious commentator upon Nazism in particular
and totalitarianism in general. Professor Hans Buchheim, has pointed
out that, in National Socialist eyes

... the bearer of political power is not the state, as an impersonal

unit, but this is given to the Fiihrer as the executor of common volkisch
will.4

Indeed, Buchheim maintained, political theoreticians in the Third Reich

were concerned with ‘destateifying public life’ and replacing state author¬
ity with the Fiihrerprinzip.5 The so-called ‘Gestapo’ (‘Secret State
Police’) was not really a state police at all, according to Buchheim, while
the SS ‘in a constitutional organisational sense . . . never had anything
to do with the Wehrmacht. The Wehmacht was an organ of state power,
the Waffen-SS an organ of the Fiihrer’s power.’6
As for the Nazis themselves, it is important to point out that they
generally did not accept the notion of the total, or ‘totalitarian’ state.
According to one National Socialist theorist, what had appeared with
Hitler’s coming to power was a totality of leadership, not a totality of
state in any form.1 Indeed, fully recognising that creative politicians
shaped the state and not the other way around, one had to observe that,
with the coming to power of National Socialism, the state was no longer
in the centre of public life but was now on the edge of ‘political-historical
events’.8 How much the Nazis succeeded either in taking over the state
completely, or relegating it to being an institution of little significance
in all areas of political activity is open to debate. What cannot be ques¬
tioned are two facts: (1) that, as far as the Nazis themselves were con¬
cerned, the state was an institution that had only instrumental purposes,
and (2) that the activity which was central to National Socialist goals.
 68 The National Socialist Religion in Power

i.e., the implementation of racial politics, had to be carried on outside

the formal state structure. Certainly, for Hitler, the state always had been
an institution which, contrary to the teachings of generations of German
philosophers and political theorists, had a purely instrumental function.
In Mein Kampf, we find the following:

the state represents no end, but a means. It is, to be sure, the premise
for the formation of a higher human culture, but not its cause, which
lies exclusively in the existence of a race capable of culture.9

In so far as the National Socialist movement itself was concerned,

particularly to the degree that Hitler viewed it as ‘revolutionary’, the
state could not be allowed, through ‘jurists and law-makers’, to inhibit
it.10 In a secret speech to Nazi officials on 23 November 1937, Hitler
was quite specific in declaring that ‘Today, a new basis for [the] state
has been established, [one] whose characteristic is that it does not see
. its foundation in Christendom or in state thought but primarily in the
unified Volksgemeinschaft1 This speech was highly significant because
it revealed that Hitler was decisively breaking with traditional concepts
of the state. Most instructive, for our purposes, was his break with the
traditional Christian justifications for the state. That this was done not
to strengthen the state vis-a-vis religion but rather to assure the triumph
of volkisch life principles was clearly revealed in a statement made by
Hitler in 1938.

I would like to be certain that the struggle against the internal enemies
of the nation will never be damaged in a moral bureaucracy or by
its inadequacies but [that] there, where the formal bureaucracy of the
state should prove itself to be unsuitable to solve a problem, the Ger¬
man nation will set in action its living organizations in order to assist
in the breakthrough of its life’s necessities. What the state, accord¬
ing to its essence, is not in the position of solving will be solved
through the movement. For even the state is only [one] of the organiza¬
tional forms of volksich life, conducted and dominated ... by the
immediate expression of volkisch life will — the party, the National
Socialist movement.12

Hitler believed, as we can see. that the state had a particular character
or ‘essence’ which might have prohibited it from actively combatting
‘internal enemies of the nation.' Rather, what was needed to provide
for the ‘breakthrough of its [the German nation’s] life necessities was
the action of the National Socialist movement, that ‘living’ element of
the people’s political expression. The struggle against internal enemies.
 The National Socialist Religion in Power 69

a struggle that might well necessitate measures of the most extreme kind,
concerned life itself. Only that movement itself rooted in the laws of
life was spiritually equipped to carry out such actions as might be deem¬
ed necessary to preserve the integrity of the German people. These ac¬
tions subsisted at the very heart of the National Socialist revolution —
in fact, some have maintained that they were the revolution — and the
traditional impedimenta of a ‘moral’ state (as reflected in a ‘moral’
bureaucracy) made it singularly ill-suited for the tasks at hand.13 It might
very well be true that ‘totalitarianism’ in any form was inherently an¬
tithetical to the state, inasmuch as the latter, through various constitu¬
tional arrangements, does not lend itself to the singularly extra-legal
activities of the totalitarian leader or leadership clique. National
Socialism, however, a movement which, in its own eyes, apotheosised
the unfolding of natural developments, could and did press a wellnigh
religious claim against the state.
The ‘National Socialist Weltanschauung,' defined as ‘the all-
embracing attitude of the German race’ was perceived as being ground¬
ed in a fusion of scientific confirmation and religious affirmation.24 State
forms might change, but the nation and its Weltanschauung, both rooted
in nature and finding their natural expressions in the Fuhrerprinzip, re¬
mained.15 Thus, the formal, quite conscious assault of the National
Socialist movement upon state power was undertaken not only to assure
the personal and idiosyncratic power-needs of the Fiihrer. The religion-
grounded Weltanschauung — an important expression of which was the
annihilation of perceived natural enemies of the Nordic peoples — ab¬
solutely necessitated the abolition of that ‘state-worship’ so often iden¬
tified with German political history. Indeed, when viewed against the
background of National Socialist religiosity, such worship could well
have been viewed as blasphemous. Religiously-grounded undertakings,
for example, the annihilation of the Jews, thus had to take place outside
any formal control and, of course, in secret. The most that could be asked
of the ‘state’ was that it help to facilitate such operations, something
that it was willing to do so long as they were shrouded in conscience-
salving euphemism. Most certainly, if such were done the ‘state’ would
hardly be so untoward as to inquire as to the fate of those whose exter¬
mination was deemed necessary in keeping with the laws of life.16
Obviously, a German state remained and, to the degree that ministerial
posts and bureaucratic positions were staffed by National Socialists, we
can speak of the ‘National Socialist state.’ At the same time, as many
have noted, party and state could and did run afoul of each other from
time to time. Certainly, it was Hitler’s purpose that, to the greatest degree
70 The National Socialist Religion in Power

possible, the state apparatus be dominated by members of his movement.

One cannot gainsay the fact, however, that hypothetically and, as it turned
out, in practice, those programs consonant with the broader ideological
interests of the Nazi movement were formulated and, to some extent,
took place largely outside the state. The obedience and willingness to
follow orders unquestioningly which one associates with a sort of
stereotyped Prussian civil servant had their roles to play, of course. Fur¬
ther, there can be little doubt that many conservative, bourgeois Ger¬
mans voted for National Socialism and thereafter lent it strong support
because they associated ‘traditional German values of order and respect
for state authority with the movement. For the Nazis themselves, though,
these were merely means to the grandiose end of translating into power
beliefs central to their naturalistic religion. Hitler had in fact, at least
in part, succeeded in reversing a well-established trend and. with his
triumph and that of the National Socialist movement, religious idealism
was to supplant that traditional statism so often identified with Western
Civilisation in general and, in more exaggerated form, with Germany
in particular.
Yet, as we have seen, this was not a religion in the traditional Judaeo-
Christian meaning of the word (although, as we have seen. Hitler and
at least some of his colleagues often utilised the language and some of
the ritualistic forms of Christianity). In its fusion of a wellnigh positivistic
view of science with general mystical and pantheistic concerns usually
and correctly associated with Germany’s romantic past. National
Socialism proffered a religion of nature necessarily secular in many ways.
This allowed for a singular variety of pragmatism to inform the attitudes
and actions of the National Socialists. As we shall see, this pragmatism
— something that did not have to appear artificial or forced, since it was
a reasonable corollary of the religion of nature — proved to be a most
convenient implement in rallying intellectual and 'scientific' support for
National Socialism.
The fact that the state was observed as receiving a mandate of sorts
from the National Socialist Weltanschauung suggested to many that
National Socialist education had to be strengthened. A new type of in¬
dividual had to be the ultimate goal of the National Socialist revolution,
‘a Volk-bound German man’.17 The restructuring of the German state
in particular and German political life in general necessitated that areas
of scientific endeavour be brought under the guiding principle of the
National Socialist ideology. Since the National Socialist ideology was
rooted in life-sustaining religious principles, it quite naturally followed
that distinctions between the political expression of this ideology and
 The National Socialist Religion in Power 71

hallowed ‘spiritual’ and ‘scientific’ realms had to be abolished. It was

in this context that the very real pragmatism inherent in National
Socialism came to the fore.
When the term ‘pragmatism’ is used, it is not done so with reference
to philosophical pragmatism a la Charles Peirce, William James or John
Dewey. Nor can one claim that National Socialist pragmatism was
precisely analogous to that of Fascism in general. Fascists often grounded
their usually disingenuous use of the term in simplistic notions of ‘ac¬
tion for action’s sake.’ There were certainly resemblances between the
National Socialist use of pragmatism and that of Fascists in general. For
National Socialists, however, pragmatism was sewn into the very fabric
of their secular religion. It was not something that had to be imposed
upon it in any extrinsic manner, especially not in realms hypothetically
the preserve of the intellectual community.
In assuming that there was a fundamental difference between the
realms of spirit and of politics, one had to posit a fundamental distinc¬
tion between some sort of metaphysically-grounded ‘mind’ and a mun¬
dane world of practical activity. As is well known, such a distinction
had been assumed by generations of German philosophical and political
speculators. Furthermore, it has to be recognised that the preservation
of precisely such a distinction had allowed numberless German
Kulturmenschen to sit back in abstract diffidence while the National
Socialist movement struggled for and eventually attained power. With
the National Socialists in power, however, it became incumbent upon
the party faithful to make certain that, to the greatest degree possible,
the intellectual life of the community was subject to basic life-grounded
principles, recognition of which had served to restrict the role of the
state. After all, the National Socialist movement, grounded in life itself,
had to represent an essential reconciliation between the two apparently
dissimilar but in reality identical forms of life-expression, practical and
spiritual. In a word, there could be no distinction between the world
of mind, as this embodied the ideational contents of the laws of life and
the world of the deed, as this was represented in the National Socialist
movement. For men who lived in conformity with nature, i.e., Nordic
men, the two worlds were one and the same. Thus, there could never
be a contradiction between science and the goals of National Socialism
‘because these [the goals] have been built up from practical knowledge
of the laws of nature and history’.18 The National Socialist takeover of
political power hardly constituted the end of the struggle. Rather, it was
‘ but the foundation for the restructuring of all areas of life according
to the living principles of the National Socialist Weltanschauung'9 The
72 The National Socialist Religion in Power

National Socialist movement recognised that man was part of a natural

and historical order; that he did not live ‘on an island ot sacred con¬
templation ... but in the midst of happening [Geschehen] itself’.20
This being the case, thoughts of some sort of timeless objectivity on
the part of science had to be abandoned as being disingenuous. The
National Socialist Weltanschauung emerged from life. Any true science
was possible only on ‘the basis of a living Weltanschauung'. It was
Weltanschauung that bound science to life.21 Thus, for National
Socialists, it was commonsensical(!) that adherence to scientific prin¬
ciples had to be congruent with faith in the National Socialist ideology.
This being the ‘case’, it was no wonder that intellectuals and scientists
who failed to adhere to National Socialist precepts could be viewed, as
the Fiihrer himself put it, as ‘degenerate’ representatives of a ‘degenerate
science’, as ‘estranged from life’.22 Such intellectuals and scientists
represented a phoney academic ‘impotent neutrality’ since they bore ‘no
relation to political reality and to the fateful struggle of the nation .23
According to Heinz Wolff, Nazi student leader, the very notion of ‘ob¬
jectivity’, rooted as it was in scientific liberalism, encouraged people
to forget that science was made by ‘living men,’ by ‘men of flesh and
blood’.24
It is important to point out that, in declaring scientific objectivity to
be impossible. National Socialist ideologues were paralleling a variety
of thinking which some have seen as having first emerged w ith the 1935
work of the Polish Jewish physician Ludwick Fleck. In this work. Genesis
and Development of a Scientific Fact, which was concerned with cor¬
relating concepts of syphilis and those epistemological conclusions drawn
from them with the theory underlying the Wassermann reaction. Fleck
made the point that all knowledge, even the most ‘scientific’, was really
social knowledge. In a word, preconceived concepts have to shape even
the most ‘objective’ scientific hypothesising and experimentation. ‘Any
kind of learning’, he said, ‘is connected with some tradition and society,
and words and customs already suffice to form a collective bond’.25 Thus,
there could be no talk of a ‘value-free’ or ‘objective science’. Fleck’s
work was little known at the time, and even if it had been, the Jewish
pedigree of the author would probably have prevented National Socialists
from taking it very seriously, even if they had understood it. None the
less, it is obvious that the sort of ‘relativism’ involved here — an ap¬
proach to what has come to be called the ‘sociology of knowledge’ that
more recently has been crowned by the work of Thomas Kuhn — can
be subject to radical misuse. This is particularly true, of course, if
relativistic interpretations of knowledge are placed at the disposal of
 The National Socialist Religion in Power 73

people who, in the end, are guided by absolutes of which only they have
complete knowledge. Fleck himself was in both the Auschwitz and
Buchenwald camps, and both of his sisters and their families were ex¬
terminated. Spared because of his medical knowledge, Fleck survived
the war. Whether he ever reflected upon National Socialist application
of hypotheses analogous to his own is uncertain.
In any case, Nazi ideologues attacked scientific and intellecutal ob¬
jectivity not only because they saw it as an impossibility. For them, it
was essentially irrelevant to the grandiose life-struggles being undertaken
by the German nation in particular and by Nordic man in general. This
was particularly the case since the tendentiousness of National Socialism
was justified through the claim that it bore those life-principles which
constituted the very foundation of scientific investigation in the first place.
For a teacher, it would now be necessary to demonstrate that he or she
had earned the right to enjoy freedom of teaching by showing strength
of character.26 Naturally, what was meant by ‘strength of character’ was
the individual's willingness to adhere to that which stemmed from the
life-source of all knowledge, the National Socialist Weltanschauung. The
‘age of liberal dissolution and sham-freedom’ was past, Ernst Krieck
declared, and a new age of active participation of institutions of higher
learning in the life of the nation was dawning.27 ‘Academic freedom’
in the old sense, something that had reflected lack of concern and
character, was to be eliminated. For Martin Heidegger, ‘academic
freedom’ had meant ‘unconcern’. It had been a ‘capricious exercise of
intentions and inclinations [and] was noncommitment’.28 For knowledge
to have any meaning to it at all, these National Socialist critics were
saying, it had to be relevant to the needs of the time, needs which
necessarily were determined by that movement rooted in the laws of life
which, after all, constituted the source for all knowledge. It is here that
we can observe that wedding of pragmatism to idealism that we have
mentioned earlier. Since the National Socialist movement embodied life-
principles it alone could determine what aspects of knowledge served
these principles, indeed, in reality, what aspects in fact constituted
knowledge at all. Just as the state apart from the National Socialist
Weltanschauung, was a lifeless mechanism, devoid of meaning, so was
knowledge also devoid of life, i.e., in reality, not knowledge at all, unless
it served the purposes of the National Socialist movement. Thus, the
National Socialist regime, which has often been described as having its
spiritual roots sunk deep into Biedermeirisch soil, could actively en¬
courage modern scientific developments, since these would serve the
vital task of defending the National Socialist Weltanschauung. Further,
74 The National Socialist Religion in Power

because of the material necessities involved in translating this into real¬

ity, ideological pressures in various areas of education had to be soft
pedalled. At the same time, adherence to the Maws of life’ would dictate
that in areas such a philosophy, the social sciences, and so on, the Nazi
leadership could determine which approaches were life-sustaining and
which were not. In all of this the term relevance , something that has
become a most fashionable one in the United States in recent years, was
of singular importance. What was irrelevant to the Nazis was that varie¬
ty of knowledge that indicated lack of commitment and ‘liberal’ indif¬
ference to the interests of the whole. The natural religion of National
Socialism achieved practical expression in the sanctification of the nation.
With the turning of the German nation into a sanctified Volksge-
meinschaft, knowledge that did not serve the interests of this commun¬
ity was not merely extraneous, it was heretical.
Despite, however, the obviously strong hypothetical basis for it there
never was a truly systematic National Socialist policy on higher educa¬
tion. To be sure, there was no lack of sympathy for National Socialism
in academic circles, and the actual purging of Jewish faculty was often
greeted with enthusiasm. There was, among some, even the joyful an¬
ticipation that patterns of thought deemed specifically Jewish, e.g.
relativity theory and psychoanalysis, would also be purged, and to some
extent this was done.29 Yet particularly in technical areas ‘experts' were
needed, and this was especially the case if National Socialist ideals were
to be implemented through military adventures. This, plus almost con¬
tinuous quarreling between those concerned with the establishment of
educational policy — Alfred Rosenberg, Rudolf Hess, Minister of Educa¬
tion Bernhard Rust and the educator-tumed-ideologue Ernst Krieck —
allowed for a certain degree of ‘scientific freedom’ to prevail in the
universities.30 Again, we can observe that pragmatism which we have
noted as a crucial element in the National Socialist religion. Since this
faith had to be introduced to the German people as a whole ‘in small
doses’ why disturb matters unduly? Particularly in technical areas, ex¬
perts were needed, and, so long as educators and scientists were willing
to go along with the general policies of the regime or, as was usually
the case, paid little attention to them, why ‘rock the boat’?
In areas, however, which can be described as having been not of im¬
mediate importance, certain measures could be undertaken. In 1935, for
example, the ageing editor of the Historische Zeitschrift, Friedrich
Meinecke, was replaced by a true National Socialist historian, Alexander
von Muller. To some extent, Meinecke had attempted to accommodate
both himself and his historical thinking to National Socialist historical
 The National Socialist Religion in Power 75
9

fantasies; but, it had not been enough and besides, an alarming number
of his students had been Jewish.31 In the area of psychology, as indicated
above, psychoanalysis, a decidedly Jewish enterprise, was purged, along,
of course, with no small number of its practitioners. This must bring
up the obvious question: if the National Socialist regime had survived
for a longer period of time, would it have made serious efforts to bring
all knowledge into conformity with an educational policy supposedly
reflective of ‘laws of life'? This is a question which cannot be answered
with certainty. Yet there can be no doubt that the Nazis believed that
they had discovered and were acting in terms of such ‘laws.’ As dif¬
ficult as it is to imagine a ‘German physics’, or a ‘German biology’,
it is equally difficult to imagine a successful, long-term National Socialist
regime refraining from far-ranging attempts to bring reality further into
congruence with assumed beliefs.
As mentioned earlier. National Socialist attacks upon ‘scientific ob¬
jectivity’, as vulgar as they were, revealed a questioning of the very basis
of scientific judgement that was and still is generic, if not necessarily
to scientific establishments as a whole, then at least to many engaged
in that enterprise which might be called ‘philosophy of science’. Fur¬
ther. as Nancy Stepan has recently pointed out, the history of at least
the biological sciences reveals that there is a measure of truth in this.
Not only hypothesising, but even experimentation and the evaluation of
results thus obtained were greatly influenced by the overriding belief
in assumed natural differences between the races.32 Stepan has focused
mainly upon British biology, and most of her emphasis has been on ap¬
plication of hypotheses stemming from evolutionary and genetic specula¬
tion. Yet, based on the evidence, she thought it apposite to make the
following assertion about the overriding influence of racial thinking upon
the sciences in general. ‘Its long life testifies to the deep psychological
need Western Europeans, scientists among them, seem to have felt to
divide and rank human groups, and measure them negatively against an
idealised, romanticised picture of themselves.’33 To no small degree,
it would seem, the processes of generalisation central to scientific
endeavours have been influenced on a broad scale by commonly held
beliefs, and the assertions made by Dr. Fleck in the 1930s would seem
to have been overly modest. Under the circumstances, what would have
occurred in a situation of total control — something that never prevailed
in the Third Reich — dominated by a religious movement which not only
accepted but glorified scientific subjectivism in the name of sacred racial
absolutes can only be imagined. As we will see later, less scientifically-
gifted sorts would find it very easy to restructure an environment of
76 The National Socialist Religion in Power

extermination along those lines conveniently provided by racial

assumptions.
An area in which National Socialist life-principles could be. and were,
applied with rigour was the field of aesthetics. Here, we are not going
to be concerned with Nazi art policy per se; this is a subject that has
been covered rather thoroughly elsewhere.'4 Rather, we will be address¬
ing a question of particular importance with regard to the National
Socialist religion, viz., that of how this policy represented a logical ex¬
tension of certain fundamental principles into an area usually observed
as being characterised by at least a modicum of independence.
A common — and certainly justifiable — approach to studying the
art policies of so-called ‘totalitarian' regimes is to emphasise the areas
of propaganda and social control. Certainly, these concerns were of im¬
portance in National Socialist art policy. We must understand, however,
that the National Socialists, representing as they saw it natural, life-
affirming forces, were able to bring to bear that argument which we have
observed in other realms of life: anything that is estranged from the com¬
munity is estranged from life. Thus, artists who appeared to be self¬
consciously alienated from the warm-hearted collectivity of the Volksge-
meinschaft were not really creating art at all, since art had to represent
and affirm life.
Artists who articulated individuality through their works had to be
perceived as being isolated souls, uprooted from the folk-community
which had supplied art's life blood in the first place. If one considers
certain aspects of National Socialist ‘art criticism,' one can be struck
by a certain ‘democratic’ aspect to it. Art should be for the ‘people’,
and the ‘people’ had to be the final judge. Kurt Karl Eberlein pushed
this to logical conclusions, when he declared that any art that did not
throb with the values of land and community smacked of ‘culture', and.
as such, was ‘alien to the people’.35 This, he thought, was the fate of
all art ‘cut off from blood and soil'.36 While Eberlein's views were, even
by National Socialist standards, rather hyperbolic, his emphasis upon
the folk-bound nature of artistic creativity was consonant with that of
all National Socialists. Crucial here is the notion of art as ‘affirmation’;
in the end, a people’s affirmation of itself. Here, Adolf Dresler's remarks
are apposite. ‘Art', he said, ‘is the life-expression of a people. Hence,
the people must demand that art be a reflection and authentic represen¬
tation [Richtsbild1 of its soul'.37 Furthermore, ‘each phenomenon in the
life of a people’ had to be represented in a manner that best approx¬
imated its ‘world-view (rootedl longings’.38 In a somewhat earlier work,
Paul Schultze-Naumberg also spoke of such ‘longings’ and, according
 The National Socialist Religion in Power 77

to him, the most crucial of them, the ‘point of departure’ for all German
art, had to be ‘the heroic man’, for Germans, one necessarily Nordic.39
Now, after a degenerate liberal age, one characterised by that toleration
of the inferior and the ugly dictated by a ‘misunderstood Caritas’, so
extraordinary a being would indeed become ‘the point of departure’ for
all art, the most crucial aspect of which, according to Schulze-Naumberg
(following the lead provided gratis by Hitler) was architecture.40 In any
case, it was ‘youth and the spirit in which it grows up’ that would pro¬
vide the best assurance that an art grounded in ‘blood and soil’ (the only
true art, after all), ‘will find its true face’.41
In such a situation, there was little room for any variety of artistic
‘formalism’, or, except of course for those judgements to be made at
such celebrations of philistinism as the ‘Exhibition of Degenerate Art’
in July 1937, formal art criticism. Art criticism, particularly if it was
brought to bear against the proliferation of vacuous Nordic nudes and
their muscle-bound defenders which increasingly were emerging as
aesthetic representatives of the new, ‘Aryan man’, was cynical and
degenerative. As Paul Josef Goebbels put it, in an edict of 27 November
1936 which banned art criticism altogether, it was representative ‘of the
time of the Jewish domination of art’.42 Criticism simply confused the
people who ought, Goebbels declared, to be allowed to form their own
opinions on what constituted true art. In this regard, Alfred Rosenberg
who, from time to time, disagreed with Goebbels over what constituted
‘Nordic’ or ‘Aryan' art, certainly agreed with him. The standard of opi¬
nion to be brought to bear in judging the worth of a piece of art could
be that of ‘'any healthy SA man’.43 In all matters aesthetic, the voice
of the people — a voice of which the National Socialist movement was
the highest possible amplification — had to prevail. As Hitler declared,
the artist could not be an artist if he created only for himself. He created
not only for some narrow, artificial clique, but as everyone did, for the
people.44
In any case, if the Volk is perceived as life-bearing, all true art has
to be Volkskunst. For Goebbels, in a speech of 15 November 1933, the
artist attained creative life ‘in the life of the Volk’. What the Minister
of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment stated was that the artist — while
dependent upon certain ‘eternal laws’ for his talent — actualised his poten¬
tial in the body of the Volk, that entity which had provided him with
the spiritual contents of his art in the first place.45 From this, it was
only natural that Goebbels drew the following conclusion (expressed in
a speech of 17 June 1939, upon the occasion of the second annual Reich
Theatre Festival Week): ‘It is not true that the artist is unpolitical, for
78 The National Socialist Religion in Power

political means nothing else but to serve the public with understanding’.4'’
In this extraordinary statement one can see with clarity how National
Socialism, in its own mind, was able to bring together the practical realm
of politics and that of creativity. In reality, the two were not ‘merely’
inextricably intertwined, but were in fact the same. To create was a
political act because creativity, to he creative, involved serving ‘the public
with understanding’. By the same token, politics partook ot the aesthetic.
In fact, the National Socialist movement was adamant in viewing politics,
i.e., serving the people, as a work of art. Thus, when Goebbels stated
that the artist was not interested in bloodless figures of the intellect, but
with Life, he was not talking about a van Gogh-like grasping for infinity
within appearances, but about art as politics.47 Naturally, by politics,
Goebbels was not referring to the give-and-take of interest-clashing, but
to the policies which were expressions of the National Socialist life
principle.
Parenthetically, the objection can be made that one ought not to take
the speeches and writing of Goebbels seriously. After all, he was
‘Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment’. Yet if one considers
the tone and content of his diaries one has to accept the fact that, for
him, even as a disseminator of propaganda, there was a marked identifi¬
cation with the salient principles of National Socialism. Goebbels’ ad¬
mitted cynicism was always counterbalanced by what he at least saw as a
fundamental idealism and by his occasional anger at the German people
in general and the party in particular for being unable to live up to it.
Consideration of the National Socialist approach to aesthetics points
out an interesting phenomenon; ‘politics’ were viewed as being rooted
in mystery, as almost aesthetic in nature. On the other hand, as we have
seen, aesthetics could not be a mysterious, individual matter. In a 19
July 1937 speech delivered at the opening of the ‘Exhibition of Degenerate
Art’ at the House of German Art in Munich, Hitler underscored this
attitude towards aesthetics. During the course of his usual tirade against
modern art and its supporters — ‘Bolshevist art collectors or their literary
children’ — Hitler strongly condemned such notions as ‘inner ex¬
perience’. ‘Whether someone has a strong will or an inner experience
he proves through his work and not through garrulous words’.48 In a
word, art obtained its justification as art by externalising itself in mun¬
dane forms, forms amenable to the understanding of every member of
the Volksgemeinschaft.

With the opening of this exhibition . . . [there is] the beginning of

the end of German art insanity and accordingly the cultural annihilation
 The National Socialist Religion in Power 79

of our people. From now on, we will conduct an inexorable work

of purification against the last elements of our cultural degeneration.49

With these words. Hitler began a thorough-going attack upon modern

art which, as is well-known, resulted in the virtual banishment of all
of its forms from the Third Reich. It is instructive to note, however,
that Hitler was not only referring to modern art when he spoke of ‘Ger¬
man art insanity’. In a much broader sense, he was condemning what
he saw as necessarily resulting from the artistic ‘inner experience’, i.e.,
from something which, extraneous to the life of the Volk, or perhaps
representing something that was downright hostile to it, was not, indeed
could not have been, art. Most assuredly, if such pernicious forms were
allowed to thrive, the ‘cultural annihilation’ of the German people was
assured. In a world of Mythus-grounded politics, art had to be mundane.
If an artist refused to adhere to the aesthetic principles laid down by
National Socialism, then indeed there had to be something wrong with
him. As Hitler put it,

I have inexorably adhered to the following principle: If some self-

styled artist submits trash for the Munich exhibition, then he is either
a swindler, in which case he should be put in prison; or he is a mad¬
man, in which case he should be put in an asylum; or he is a
degenerate, in which case he must be sent to a concentration camp
to be ‘re-educated’ and taught the dignity of honest labour. In this
way I have ensured that the Munich exhibition is avoided like the
plague by the inefficient.50

It is important to point out that, while what became the official National
Socialist agency concerned with art-policy, the Reichskulturkammer, was
quite adamant in declaring what did not constitute folk-art (and hence,
in reality, what was not art), and while the head of the section on ‘Fine
Arts’ Adolf Ziegler, offered certain examples of what healthy ‘Aryan’
art ought to be, there was no ‘official style’ per se. Yet one was not
necessary, at least not after the massive assault undertaken against that
perceived of as degenerate. From around 1936 onwards there was a
veritable and, for the most part, spontaneous outpouring of paintings
and sculpture which conformed rather neatly to National Socialist canons,
often not clearly articulated, of what true ‘folk art’ ought to be. A fine
summary of the paintings has been provided by Sybil Milton.

romantic landscape paintings; peasants with large families; suckling

80 The National Socialist Religion in Power

infants in their mothers’ arms; formal portraits of leading Nazi per¬

sonalities, especially Hitler; stylized Nordic racial prototypes in heroic
military or athletic poses; pseudo-erotic classical allegories of nude
female ‘muses’; still lifes; genre paintings; and flatout plagiarisms
of the Old Masters.51

Certainly, if, as Adolf Dresler believed, degenerate art had reflected a

decline in traditional family values, the new ‘National Socialist Art would
reflect that wholesomeness that was being restored in Germany.52 It may
have been true that, as the New York Times reported, there were three
times as many patrons of the ‘Degenerate Art exhibition as of the
‘German-Aryan Art’ one which appeared at the same time.5 ' There can
be no question, however, but that the ‘call for an art form represen¬
tative of those ‘folk-values’ constitutive of the new ‘Aryan man’ brought
forth a strong answer. As Expressionist, Post-Expressionist, and Dada
‘degenerates’ either fled into exile or, like Emil Nolde, originally a strong
supporter of National Socialism, went ‘underground’, a new,
‘wholesome’ art, from which all varieties of egotistical aesthetic in¬
dividualism had been expunged, took their place.54 We can never know
for certain the degree to which, in the eyes of those relatively small
number of folk interested in art, Arno Brecker’s monumental sculptures,
or the paintings of Paul Keck or Elk Eber took the place vacated by those
identified with a more degenerate age. We can say that, to all intents
and purposes, an ‘Aryan art’ rendered immune from criticism, became,
without significant protest, the chosen an in which the general sanctifica¬
tion of national life was presumably reflected. As suggested above, there
could be no place for any sort of artistic individualism, something which,
in its very essence, suggested estrangement from national health, and
thus was ‘anti-natural’ as well.
With so obvious (and necessary) an emphasis upon true art as ‘natural,’
it is hardly surprising that in the offical guide-book for the exhibition
of Degenerate Art, non-representational examples were deemed as ‘con¬
summated insanity’ (‘vollendeter Wahnsinn r).5S The exhibition had been
divided into nine parts concerned with a variety of representations of
artistic decadence. Here, paintings were classified according to sloppy
workmanship (group number one), moral degeneration (group number
five), and ‘Deadening of the last Remnant of any Race Consciousness’
(group number six), the influence of Jews upon art (group number eight),
and so on. Yet, despite these engaging themes, it was the non-
representational art brought together in the final ‘grouping’, number nine,
that was supposed to ‘crown’ the exhibition. Here the editor of the guide.
 The National Socialist Religion in Power 81

Fritz Kaiser, pulled out all the stops. Such completely sick ‘works’, he
cried, were hardly works of art at all. One could not be content with
just laughing at them but had to combat this ‘art’ and the spirit respons¬
ible for these works ‘ with rage\ib For the bearers of those values which
both came out of and advanced a national community sanctified by nature,
what represented the epitome of self-serving subjectivism had to be view¬
ed as unnatural. Or, if there was some place for them in the natural world,
they were at the lowest possible level. It was the art of psychotics or
savages.
‘There is no place for cultural Neanderthalers in the twentieth cen¬
tury’, Hitler proclaimed in a speech of 10 July 1938, ‘at least not in
national socialist Germany’.57 True genius did not necessarily mean in¬
sanity, or anything approaching it: quite simply, it was measured in better-
than-average works.58 Furiously, Hitler lashed out against Dada, Cubist,
and various other ‘modern painters.’ In contrast to them, the Greeks and
Romans produced art that, after 2000 years, still brings forth feelings
of awe. It is with this art that one could find ‘a standard for the tasks
and accomplishments of our own time’.59 As is well known, Hitler’s
own artistic tastes, (at least those displayed publicly) and apparently with
the possible exception of Goebbels, those of most of the important
members of the National Socialist party, were Biedermeirisch in the ex¬
treme. They preferred paintings that one could expect to find hanging
in youth hostels or dentists’ offices. Quite naturally, the National Socialist
rulers, being in a position to do so, could impose their own, extremely
conservative tastes, upon the nation. Furthermore, as has been pointed
out accurately and often, rulers striving to attain ‘totalitarian’ rule can¬
not suffer alienated, spiritually unassimilable souls to express themselves
in print, music, stone or canvas. In this context, parallels have been drawn
— some of them quite misleading, others not — between National
Socialist art policy and that of the Soviet Union.60
It must be seen, however, that that sanctification of the German nation
which was a logical corollary of the National Socialist natural religion,
at the very least provided a convenient rationalisation for the imposition
of conservative canons of art criticism. A ‘modern artist’, one who, for
example paints blue horses or abstract forms, would not be serving the
interests of the nation. As Goebbels had put it, by not performing a
political act, he or she would not be performing an aesthetic act. That
which could be viewed as ‘unnatural’ by the vast mass of German
citizenry — and the average German, like the average individual all over
the world, most certainly did not care for ‘modem’, ‘abstract’, or ‘non-
representational’ art — obviously was not in keeping with those life-
82 The National Socialist Religion in Power

affirming forces, adherence to which was necessary it art was to be art.

Thus, it was absolutely necessary that the National Socialist revolution
reject ‘modern’ art in any form and, for its aesthetic, utilise a forced,
at times virtually hackneyed, realism which expressed itself in lithe
Nordic bodies, happy harvest scenes and columns of victorious troops.
It is certainly true that such art can be viewed as serving the sole in¬
terest of social control. Nevertheless, it was ideologically consistent that
the National Socialists place emphasis upon a fundamental bourgeois con¬
servatism as constituting an important aspect of their revolution . That
‘revolution of spirit’, the object of which was to bring into being a nature-
bound Volksgemeinschaft (while, of course annihilating all those who
represented an affront to such a community), could not be undone by
individuals who, though they also might have viewed themselves as
revolutionaries in their several fields, drew upon spiritual resources anti¬
natural in character.
Seen in this context. Hitler was being perfectly consistent when he
stated that anyone whose work displeased him was a criminal or a
madman. It is certainly true that, a Herbert Read put it, ‘Whenever the
blood of martyrs stains the ground, there you will find a doric column
or perhaps a statue of Minerva’ .61 For the National Socialist movement,
however, itself concerned with aesthetics in so many ways, an art policy
rooted in nineteenth century, self-satisfied bourgeois philistinism was
absolutely essential if the, to it, most important revolution of all were
to be advanced — that one which would bring Aryan man into harmony
with those life-forces which set him apart from all others.
Of course, the SS-man was supposed to be the prototype of the ‘New
Man’ of National Socialism, if not the very being himself. It is not
surprising, therefore, that at least some in this organisation were extreme¬
ly sensitive to the close relationship between artistic representation of
this extraordinary being and the actual SS-man and his activities (at least
those activities more publicly acknowledged). In the second-to-last year
of the ‘Thousand Year Reich’ there appeared a work entitled German
Artists and the SS. It was introduced by Ohergruppenfuhrer Gottlob
Berger, who took time off from what must have been his increasingly
frustrating job as head of Waffen SS recruitment, to do so.

It is the goal of the SS to involve the highest volkisch life-values

of honour and truth in each decision and in every deed. If, how¬
ever, art is the expression of the will to struggle of our time, so
will it be filled with the same life-values which are also striven for
as a final fixed aim by the SS. Each picture, each drawing, each
 The National Socialist Religion in Power 83

sculpture documents the sense of this struggle in which the SS man

participates.62

What followed in this most curious book were photo-reproductions of

paintings that evidently had appeared either at an exhibition sponsored
by the SS or at perhaps a variety of exhibitions which had then been
culled for styles and themes appropriate to the assumed spiritual and
physical tone of the organisation. In any case, the SS organisation had
been presented with a variety of works which mirrored or embodied its
nature, its struggles, the goals for which it fought, and the petty-bourgeois
bathos which was so often the dialectical counterpoint of its almost
unmeasurable brutality. Several of these works will now be described.
In Th. C. Protzen’s painting ‘SS Junkerschule Bad Tolz SS', the train¬
ing school for the Waffen SS is depicted in its almost poignantly bucolic
setting. Set amidst a gentle forest and against the awe-inspiring Bavarian
Alps, there is a distinctly religious aspect to this painting. Here, in gran-
doise buildings which somehow seem to belong in a landscape blessed
by Providence, SS warriors are being trained to carry out their sacred
tasks. Indeed, there can be little doubt that the artist was striving to bring
together nature and that sanctified organisation of which it was the highest
representation. In his own contribution to National Socialist ‘aesthetic
theory’, Franz Rodens made the claim that in the at times disquieting
landscapes of Caspar David Friedrich (a romantic painter with a
somewhat greater claim to artistic permanence than Th. C. Protzen) one
could sense a racially-conditioned quality which provided for ‘ a totally
new relationship to nature’.63 While Friedrich made his own contribu¬
tions to the rising German nationalism of the Napoleonic era, he might
have been somewhat surprised at this evaluation. There can be no doubt,
though, that the sanctification of nature through nationalism (and vice-
versa) was definitely a goal of Mr Protzen. In Fritz Klimsch’s classical
sculptured rendition of Nordic beauty, ‘Youth’ (‘Jugend’), there was
a depiction of young womanhood which ‘elevates her to the ideal pic¬
ture [or ‘prototype’; the term ‘Idealbild’ could be translated that way
as well] of our race’.64 The almost stultifying sentimentality of ‘Our Faith
— Our Victory’ (‘Unser Glaube — Unser Sieg') a contribution of Frid
Kocks which shows a handsome SS warrior dreaming of a tender, almost
childlike young woman, was counterbalanced by a coarsely brutal, almost
comic-book like, drawing by Hans Schweitzer-Mjolnir, ‘Waffen-SS
Champions Against the World Enemy’ (‘ Waffen SS Vorkampfer gegen
den Weltfeind'). The unnamed editor of German Artists and the SS was
most certainly attempting to make the following points: the SS trooper
84 The National Socialist Religion in Power

who dreamed of a Gretchen-like unsullied beauty awaiting him at home,

would undertake the most brutal of campaigns in her defence. Defeat
of the Soviet apeman, over whom the troopers with classical visages are
triumphantly advancing, is necessary if the New Aryan Man. a being
sanctified by nature, is to emerge. While, as mentioned earlier, there
never was an official statement as to what the style of true National
Socialist art had to be, the representative works drawn from a collection
apparently dear to at least the SS leadership reveal what National
Socialists thought ‘true’ art, i.e., what Adolf Dresler described as ‘authen¬
tic representation’ of the national soul, ought to look like . In this regard,
it is of interest to bear in mind that, as a commentator upon National
Socialist art and Soviet Socialist Realism has stated. National Socialist
art was not concerned with ‘reality as such, i.e., with some sort of
‘realism’ much less ‘naturalism’. Rather, it was concerned with captur¬
ing some sort of higher ‘truth’ {'Wahrheit').6* Much more than Socialist
Realism, at least as it developed through the Stalinist period and for a
while thereafter, National Socialist art was concerned with wellnigh
‘sacred topics’. In view of its concern with capturing the essence of that
providentially-ordained ‘New Man,’ this is not surprising.
A more ‘popular’ effort at artistically representing the ‘New Aryan
Man’ and his historical and contemporary world was the ‘Stan-
dartenkalender published primarily for SA and SS faithful, but available
for all who wanted it, by the Nazi publishing house, Franz Eher of
Munich. Each page of the calendar consisted of three or four days of
a month and under each date there was recorded an event crucial in Ger¬
man history, or the history of the National Socialist Party, or a day of
birth or death of a figure crucial in a Nazified German history. Under
the dates and the recorded occurrences there was a picture, generally
of some scene perceived as somehow being representative of the ‘New
Order’ or some important statement, e.g.. a longwinded and almost em¬
barrassingly sentimental tribute to mothers for the May 1937 segment
ending in Mothers’ Day, which we will consider later. When page¬
consuming utterances such as that for Mothers’ Day were not presented,
pictures were often accompanied by appropriate quotations. It is not sur¬
prising, in view of the National Socialist search for spiritual roots, that
quotations from Meister Eckhart and the Eddas (presumably reflecting
the spirit of the ‘original’ Aryans) could be found, along with those from
more conventional anti-Semites such as Martin Luther, and from Nazi
leaders. Throughout the calendar, depending of course, on ‘key’ dates
and occurrences, scenes of rural peace, industrial vigour, or youthful
enthusiasm vied with sterner representations of the armed forces, or with
 The National Socialist Religion in Power 85

Himmler himself, in the case under consideration addressing SS leaders

in Frankfurt-am-Oder. Himmler, along with a noteworthy quotation from
him, was featured because the lead date of the 1937 calendar was 7 Oc¬
tober 1900, the birthday of the Reichsfuhrer-SS. The quotation can be
rendered as follows: 'The truth is a concern of the heart; never of the
intellect. The intellect is inclined to stumble; the heart must always beat
the same pulse, and if it ceases then a person dies, exactly as a people
when it breaks faith'.66 This quotation, which aptly demonstrates how
unabashed romanticism can be put at the disposal of police bureaucrats
always striving for greater efficiency, and the perhaps disquieting
photograph under which it was placed, can be compared to an offering
of two weeks earlier. Here, the most tranquil of scenes imaginable, ‘In
the Liineburger Heath’, complete with sheep lounging about under trees,
had been presented.
As was the case with German Artists and the SS, the Standarten-
kalender, albeit in a more ‘popular’ manner, offered a mixture of nature-
bound romanticism, ideological sternness, and outright sentimentality.
Somehow, one was to sense a striving, a vision, one whose ultimate
meaning was perhaps inaccessible to all but the most-initiated, but whose
presence could be seen in all aspects of the daily life of a people elected
by Providence to be bearers of eternal truths. A ‘revolution of the spirit’
was thus complemented by, if not grounded in, that sacred stasis which
testified to the sanctification of national life.
The National Socialist commitment to stasis in areas other than art
has been commented upon quite often and in many different contexts.
What is meant by stasis is not that the Nazis were committed to such
policies as ‘no growth’ or to preserving some sort of countryside/village
idyll. Indeed, during the National Socialist reign, small farms continued
to disappear, cities continued to grow, and industry developed at a marked
pace.67 However, during the National Socialist years in Germany, there
was no meaningful change in the class structure of German society and
no substantive alterations in those patterns of development associated
with bourgeois, industrialised Germany. Often such lacks have been singl¬
ed out as pointing to a disingenuousness on the part of Germany’s
National Socialist rulers. The lack of social change, to say nothing of
actual revolution, has been seen as proof that Hitler came to power simply
to preserve the bourgeois status quo, and thus that, knowingly or not,
he was simply a tool of capitalist powers. Ignoring all of those problems
of interpretation inherent in vulgar Marxist hypotheses on National
Socialism, one must come to the conclusion that, while there certainly
was a large degree of disingenuousness in National Socialism’s use of
86 The National Socialist Religion in Power

the term ‘revolution’, lack of revolution and adherence to stasis were

of crucial importance to the implementation of Nazi policies, most par¬
ticularly those central to the National Socialist religion.
As the Nazis saw it, theirs was ‘a revolution of spirit’ the primary
purpose of which was to make Aryan man conscious of his place in a
natural world filled with enemies. In order that Aryan man celebrated
by National Socialist aesthetics assume his proper place in such a world,
the eradication of these enemies had to occur; ‘biological mysticism ,
as Rauschning put it, dictating the necessity of such a solution. Under
such conditions, questions of radical departures in formal social rela¬
tionships, patterns of ownership and distribution and so on were both
distracting and beside the point. They were beside the point because,
with the National Socialist movement in power, a great natural truth had
been realised and the German nation placed under the suzerainty of the
laws of life. If all actions of the National Socialist regime were in con¬
formity with such laws, then revolution was being continuously carried
out under conditions of a radical immanency, i.e., a state in which every
event or deed which followed from National Socialist policy was an ex¬
pression of mystically grounded truth, and thus sanctified through its
very occurrence.
Not only the pursuit of knowledge, artistic creativity and other
presumably more esoteric realms were thus sanctified. Even presumably
‘mundane’ events usually associated with the more pedestrian aspects
of modern society supposedly pulsed with that excitement attendant upon
the actualisation of spiritual potential. Speaking at a construction site.
Hitler expressed this notion most clearly: ‘Perhaps the greatest miracle
of our time is [that] buildings arise, factories are established again, streets
are laid out, railway stations constructed, but over all there grows up
a new German man:!’68 The new German man was defined in terms
of his activities, activities which, because they were being undertaken
by new men acting in conformity with the laws of life, were sanctified.
For this new man there were no problems that could not be solved. New
cities would be built; inexpensive cars would be made available to the
German people. Such activities, which German romantics would have
viewed as representing alarming concessions to Western materialistic
civilisation, were positive ones, indicative of the fact that, for nature-
bound Aryan humanity, nothing was impossible.
As one can imagine, the National Socialist ideology had an extraor¬
dinary advantage — it could allow any petty-bourgeois bromide or smug
philistine attitude to be sanctified through the divinity of life itself. At
an exhibition dedicated to the German woman, Alfred Rosenberg made
 The National Socialist Religion in Power 87

the observation that the National Socialist movement recognised this

woman as constituting the ‘life-source’ of the German people. It had
been the German woman that had protected the ‘racial intactness’
(Unversehrtheit) of ‘our volkisch life’, and the National Socialist
Weltanschauung grasped this role for the first time.69 ‘You, the German
mothers, are the life-source of the German people’, Wilhelm Frick pro¬
claimed. ‘In your loving and tender hands lie the fate and future of the
German nation’.70 The thanks of German soldiers, presumably being
proffered at that time, to their mothers were the most beautiful expres¬
sions of gratitude of the German nation.71
National Socialist emphasis upon motherhood and the family has been
commented upon often. Involved was not merely a propaganda ploy
and/or some smooth attempt at social intergration, although these most
certainly had roles to play. Of far greater importance was the perceived
role that women had in that sanctification of national life that was cen¬
tral to National Socialist concerns. The woman, in Nazi eyes, would
continue to fulfill tasks for which nature had prepared her. She would
be wife and mother. However, through grasping basic natural principles,
the movement could liberate women from a sense of worthlessness by
making them aware of the life-sustaining character of their roles. Thus,
while accepted feminine activities would proceed as before, the carry¬
ing out of these activities while conscious of their sacred purpose elevated
women to the position of being racial comrades and fellow battlers for
the National Socialist world order. The syrupy sentimentality of
‘Mothers’ Day’ became as profound an expression of the sacred nature
of Aryan life as a work of art.
Yet, while the ‘life-bearing’, i.e., familial and procreative, functions
of womanhood were exalted by the National Socialist regime, the ‘new
German woman’ was supposed to be a race comrade in every sense of
the word. While not to the same degree as the ‘new German man’ —
for such would amount to that ‘masculinising’ of the woman identified
with despised feminists — she was to be hardened. The ‘new German
woman’, eschewing the soft fashions, lipstick and rouge identified with
her decadent Western counterpart, was to be an athlete. The ‘social butter¬
fly’ of the old days was to be replaced by a lithe, tanned creature of
nature who preferred javelin-throwing to dancing, and whose feminity
would not be affronted by occasional excursions in marching boots.72
The emphasis upon a sort of ‘physical liberation’ of German women,
as well as upon a certain shared comradeship in struggle, added, or seem¬
ed to add, a significant dimension to the housewife/mother role central
to the National Socialist view of women, and convinced some, largely
88 The National Socialist Religion in Power

of middle class origin, that women had a future with National Socialism.73
Particularly since the position of women had not altered significantly
during the Weimar period, even with the presumed assistance of a liberal
constitution, a movement which not only exalted women in the time-
honoured traditional roles, but seemed to offer the sort of physical libera¬
tion described above, had to have proved attractive, despite the obvious
misogyny displayed by many, from the Fiihrer on down, with regard
to women’s role in politics.74
Also, it is crucial to recognise that, at least for some Nazis, the most
prominent of whom was Heinrich Himmler, the traditional, bourgeois
home, at least with regard to women’s functions in it, had to be challenged
in the name of that assumed ‘higher morality’ attached to the breeding
of a superior race. The Lebensbom experiment, whose importance is
still open to debate, represented a radical departure from traditional
bourgeois home-values, particularly as concerned women. Yet even in
his efforts, as some saw it, to encourage illegitimacy in the name of racial
advancement, the Reischsfiihrer SS could not be completely consistent,
and always feared the consequences of disrupting, much less damaging,
German family life in general.75 Even his famous ‘Chosen Women'
(Hohen Frauen) were to be intellectually and physically groomed to serve,
in the end, traditional functions of supporting ‘their men' and pro¬
creation.76
In the end, and to an extent which would hinder the utilisation of Ger¬
man women in the war effort, the ‘traditional’ view of women, i.e., as
homemakers and mothers — and, Lebensbom to the contrary, usually
within the accustomed hearth-bound family — emerged as predominant.”
Athleticism and various activities which could be described as being
vaguely ‘paramilitary’ might have been encouraged, and women did play
a role in anti-aircraft defence and as air raid wardens once the war became
serious. Yet, athletic prowess and various quasi-military roles really came
to be viewed either as preparation and conditioning for the bringing of
healthy children into the world, or as extensions of a sort of ‘nurturing’
role.78 To a surprising degree, it would seem, the petty-bourgeois con¬
ceptions of women which often found articulation in the most banal of
pronouncements imaginable reflected deeply held beliefs on the part of
the National Socialist leadership. Women who had believed that National
Socialism, despite its known misogyny, could somehow serve as a road
for advancement had to have been disappointed as the realities of their
situation became clear. As in the case of Jews and various others deem¬
ed inferior ‘biology was indeed destiny’ and ‘although women joined
the vast array of women’s organisations and heard themselves praised
 The National Socialist Religion in Power 89

by hours of propaganda, they remained only privates in a civilian army

commanded by Nazi men’.79 On the other hand, there can be little doubt
that German women as a whole, much like their menfolk, found the ex¬
altation, by National Socialists, of traditional female activities, and of
home life in general, to be of comfort. As Gerda Lerner has pointed
out, ‘ideology and prescription internalised by both women and men’
has played what has to be seen as a ‘causative’ role in determining gender
relations throughout the world. How much more had this to be the case
when the most moralistic petty-bourgeois ‘ideology and prescription’ was
part and parcel of a supposedly religious revolution of values.80 For most
National Socialists, at least petty-bourgeois in attitude, if not, strictly
speaking, in background, moralistic jeremiads in defence of the ‘tradi¬
tional’ roles of women came naturally and were, of course, of immense
agitational value. National life most assuredly must appear to be ‘sanc¬
tified’ when commonly-held usages and attendant beliefs are turned into
articles of faith. As regards women, it was precisely just such an ‘arti¬
cle’ that, in the end, her primary task was one aptly portrayed by H.
A. Biihler in his painting ‘Homecoming’ (Heimkehr) which shows an
exhausted soldier burying his head in the lap of his wife or girlfriend;
the succouring of menfolk fighting for a movement in which she had
to remain a ‘private’. A traditional ‘Womanly Role’ had been sanctified.
In this regard, it is perhaps fitting that we conclude our consideration
of the National Socialist religion and German women with lines taken
from the Standartenkalender, for 6-9 May 1937. Sunday, 9 May, was
‘Mother's day’ and a poem by the eminently forgettable Otto Paust was
provided for the occasion. The poem was entitled ‘Mother Means
Homeland’ (‘Mutter heisst Heimat’), and the author has provided what
he thinks to be key lines of this piece, confident that, in this case, ab¬
solutely nothing whatsoever has been lost in translation.81

Mother! From your sheltering womb

sprang our life — we grew tall.
Mother! In your helping hand
we found in wonderland
homeland . . .

After a few lines in which the poet expresses his conviction that homeland
means family and happiness and mother means thankfulness for all things
great and beautiful, upon which all must fasten their gaze and expecta¬
tions, the piece continues:
90 The National Socialist Religion in Power

Mother means yet more: [it] means Fatherland.

Mother means love and flaming bond
for brother and sister of every class.
To serve the homeland, deeply, bravely and true,
means: loving you, Mother, in sacred awe.
You gave us life — we became Nation.
From you grew the future in daughter and son.
Mother! From your sheltering womb
grew Germany’s life — Germany grows tall.
Mother! In your helping hand
the Volk finds, in wonderland
Homeland.

Although there are no doubt others of this genre to be found in other

languages, it is doubtful if any poet, no matter how awash in bathos he
might have been, has ever succeeded in producing a piece in which pro-
creative and conventionally-nurturing functions have been, quite liter¬
ally, sanctified to the degree that they have been in this one offering.
Probably, though, the most crucial line must be ‘Mother means yet more:
[it] means Fatherland’. In a word, the most important value of
Motherhood was nurturing the Fatherland; that tradition-bound Volk,
in the end aggressively masculine in character, which was sanctified by.
those same timeless truths embodied in motherhood. The poem began
with emphasis upon mother and children. It ends with these children part
of a timeless Volk finding, ‘in wonderland' its timeless homeland. Again,
we can see — particularly bearing in mind the presumed readers of the
poem — how sanctified tradition, gilded over with thick layers of sen¬
timentality, could be put into the service of a movement which, in the
days ahead, would slaughter large numbers of women and children for
the most ‘idealistic’ of motives.
It was the sanctification of traditional social institutions and petty-
bourgeois morality which found expression in the National Socialist
movement that allowed its adherents to declare (and probably believe)
that charges that the Nazis were modern-day heathens were totally false.
Goebbels, in a 4 December 1935 speech in Saarbriicken, attacked peo¬
ple who made such accusations.

Is it heathen that one restores the ethos of the family? And restores
a sense and purpose to life to the worker? Is it heathen to once more
build up a state on moral principles, to drive out Godlessness and
to cleanse theatre and film from the contamination and plague of
Jewish-liberal Marxism — is this heathen!*1
 The National Socialist Religion in Power 91

As a matter of fact, the propaganda minister maintained, through such

activities and through the Nazi Winterhilfe charities, the National Socialist
movement was actually practising Christianity.83 Indeed, some
clergymen, impressed by the moralistic idealism of the Nazis, drew
parallels between the Christian religion and the National Socialist
Weltanschauung. Like Christianity, as one eminent Protestant theologian
Cajus Fabricius put it. National Socialism had not gained its view of
the world from any system of philosophy ‘but from the stern realities
of life. One fact in this struggle for existence has become an overpowering
reality to them — the Fiihrer.’84 As one might expect, Cajus Fabricius
drew a distinction between Weltanschauung and religion, maintaining
that National Socialism definitely had no religious pretensions.85 He no
doubt would have been distressed to learn of what Hilter — who, accor¬
ding to Goebbels in a 8 April 1941 entry in his diaries, once declared
that it ‘had crippled all that is noble in humanity’86 — really thought
of Christianity. It is important to note, however, that, in its presumed
grasping of life in its totality. National Socialism’s exaltation of pious,
Volk-bound morality allowed it to gain a great deal of support from in¬
dividuals and groups which did not accept or could not have accepted
the major underlying principles of the movement’s own very real religious
tenets. Once again, we can reflect upon the pragmatic character of this
presumably most idealistic of political movements. One of the advan¬
tages that a ‘revolution of the spirit’ must always have over that formal
class revolution espoused by the Marxist left is that, under most cir¬
cumstances, the individual race-comrade can decide just how far this
revolution is to be carried, at least from the point of view of his own
participation in it.
The sanctification of national life that resulted from application of
National Socialist principles to Germany allowed the movement to define
pragmatic political actions in thoroughly idealistic terms. In a word, Nazi
attitudes and policies towards the state, towards the pursuit of knowledge,
and towards art, as well as the movement’s general adherence to a petty-
bourgeois morality, were justified simply by virtue of their existence.
In the natural religion of National Socialism, the dichotomy between ‘is’
and ‘ought’ had been bridged, but in a fashion rather unanticipated by
the great Hegel, who, as is known, spent a considerable portion of his
intellectual life engaged in the same enterprise. The fact that a petty-
bourgeois morality, to some extent rooted in the Judaeo-Christian tradi¬
tion, could successfully be placed at the service of a cause engaged in
uprooting this tradition, root and branch, testifies to the congruence of
National Socialist ideals with certain perceived needs of modern life.
92 The National Socialist Religion in Power

In order that the National Socialist religion of life be successfully

translated into reality, it was necessary that the greatest war of history
be fought. In reality, there was one unified war, of which the general
race-war against ‘international Judaism and more mundane forms of
combat were constituent parts. Nevertheless, while acknowledging that
campaigns such as the 1940 Battle of France, the Battle of Britain of
the same year, and the later campaigns in Russia were, or came to be,
viewed by Nazi ideologues as being part and parcel of a general war
of annihilation against Jewry, it is obvious that different sets of demands
were posed by different varieties of combat. The war of annihilation
against a largely unarmed Jewish population required a different ap¬
proach, and different patterns of rationalisation, than did warfare in the
conventional sense. While these two aspects of Nazi warfare cannot be
entirely separated, we will consider the ‘campaign’ against the Jews at
length in the following chapter. For now, we must focus upon how Na¬
tional Socialist principles were applied to so-called ‘conventional’ war¬
fare, i.e., that involving the usual, mundane impedimenta of modem
war — planes, tanks, artillery pieces and so on — and, of great impor¬
tance, how these principles bore up under stress. Consequently, we will
be focusing on the response of the National Socialist leadership to those
situations which the German people had to confront when the war became
‘serious,’ i.e., from the beginning of the Russian campaign in June 1941,
until the end of the war. Quite naturally, it is of immense interest to
observe how a so-called ‘life-affirming’ Weltanschauung, presumably
rooted in the laws of life as they are expressed in nature, confronted
serious and unpleasant situations posed by real events.
How committed National Socialists would respond to the increasing¬
ly severe demands posed by war was in large measure revealed in an
article in the Volkischer Beobachter of 25 February 1941. To put this
in some perspective, we must recall that, by this date, the German Luft¬
waffe had sustained its first major defeat in the Battle of Britain. The
campaign against the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa, was in the
final planning stages and campaigns in North Africa were about to begin
(an at that time unanticipated operation in the Balkans against Yugoslavia
and Greece would be undertaken beginning on 6 April 1941). The arti¬
cle was concerned with the original Twenty Five Point Program of the
National Socialist German Workers’ Party which had appeared on 25
February 1920. This program, it was declared, was not like others, it
was not just ink on paper. On the contrary, ‘it lives and flows in the
blood of the German race’.87 Indeed, the party program was one of the
weapons with which Germany ‘was beating England’.88
 The National Socialist Religion in Power 93

There are several pertinent remarks that can be made about this arti¬
cle. First of all, by 1941 it was obvious that a substantial number of
the twenty-five points had never been translated into action, nor was it
likely that they ever would be. This was particularly true with regard
to the so-called ‘socialist’ aspects of the program. Yet, according to the
article, the program ‘lives and flows in the blood of the German race’.
In part, so baldly melodramatic a statement can be viewed as being in¬
formed by certain mundane propagandistic concerns. There is another
angle, however, from which it can be considered. Since the National
Socialist program was rooted in the very life-concerns of the German
people, precise implementation of every one of the twenty-five points
was unnecessary. All that really mattered was the Aryan life-spirit which
informed the program as a whole. Since the program was created by
a party which in essence was the German people, it was — as an entity
which in toto was greater than the sum of its parts — always being ac-
tualised, most particularly in the extraordinarily successful policies of
the Fiihrer. Once again, we can see how National Socialist idealism could
so easily express itself in the pragmatic idiom, a process which follow¬
ed logically and almost effortlessly from the fundamental character of
the religion of nature. In essence, what was being said was that any sort
of National Socialist action was the party program incarnate.
The military successes enjoyed by the Nazi war machine — with the
rather major exception of the defeat over Great Britain — allowed for
the facile identification of National Socialist ideology with day-to-day
political and military events. Under certain conditions, National Socialist
propaganda — a term which perhaps ought not to be used in too glib
a fashion, since, more often than not, the National Socialist leadership
itself tended to believe what it was conveying to the German people —
was able to declare that military events were demonstrating the emergence
of a Nazi ‘new man’, awesome in depth of character and absolutely
fearless in batttle. Two examples of this, described very well by Jay
Baird, will suffice. On 9 April 1940, Germany conquered Denmark and
undertook a campaign to conquer Norway, In Norway, heavy fighting
centred upon the vital port of Narvik, which served Germany as a ship¬
ping point for much-needed Swedish iron ore. A small contingent of Ger¬
man troops, reinforced only by the surviving crew members of German
destroyers sunk during naval engagements with the Royal Navy, suc¬
ceeded in holding off a far larger Allied force. Against great odds, the
commander of this force, General Major Eduard Dietl utterly frustrated
Allied efforts in the Narvik area (not to deprive General Major Dietl
of his due, but this would appear to have been a very easy thing to do
94 The National Socialist Religion in Power

in 1940).89 For Goebbels, Dietl symbolised the Nazi ‘new man’, fearless
in combat and capable of Fighting successfully against unimaginable
odds.90
1940 was a good year for the emergence of ‘new. National Socialist
men’. On 10 May 1940, while more conventional German army units
were crashing over the borders of the Netherlands, Belgium and Lux¬
embourg, glider detachments landed near Fort Eban Emael and several
bridges, keys to the Albert Canal portion of the Belgian defence system.
The fort was to have delayed the German advance for almost a week.
It fell in 36 hours to 85 men who, armed with grenades, flame-throwers
and hollow-charge explosives, were able to subdue a garrison which,
depending on the source, numbered anywhere from 800 to 1200 men,
until reinforcements could arrive to seal the victory. The rest of the glider
detachments were able to secure most of the Albert Canal bridges in¬
tact.91 Total losses for the plucky little band which neutralised Eben
Emael were six dead, 19 wounded while the units which secured the
bridges lost only 38 dead. The overall commander of the operation. Cap¬
tain Walter Koch, was depicted by Goebbels as representing the same
type of new. National Socialist man as had General Major Dietl. Koch
knew no fear of any man, was possessed of depth of character and was
absolutely honourable.92
What was significant about these men, from the point of view of the
National Socialist ideology was the ‘fact’ that they were living manifesta¬
tions of those principles that constituted the substructure of this ideology.
They were the ‘new man’ in the making, a man whose very existence
testified to the effectiveness of a Weltanschauung grounded in natural
laws of life. Truly, as National Socialists saw it, such people as Dietl
and Koch were living the National Socialist ideology, and no amount
of reflection upon the truth or falsehood of this ideology could detract
from this. The party program, or most assuredly the spirit that was em¬
bodied in it, lived in the astonishingly successful exploits of German
soldiery. Point by point fulfillment of the program, with the notable ex¬
ception of those aspects of it concerned with racial policy, was unim¬
portant so long as its spirit was realised in combat (later, as we shall
see. Hitler himself would have a few comments to make upon the matter).
As mentioned earlier, with the invasion of the Soviet Union on 22
June 1941, National Socialist religious principles were to be subjected
to a strain hitherto unknown. First of all, this was a clash between life-
bound principles and those which subsisted at the base of an ideology
devoid of life. This was a campaign, as a Volkischer Beobachter article
of 19 July 1941 put it, against the new Soviet man, something that had
 The National Socialist Religion in Power 95

emerged out of a ‘political retort’.93 The unified German people was

confronting a variety of peoples held together only by autocracy and or¬
thodoxy. Bolshevism had thoroughly atomised these peoples who were
either incredibly stupid or ‘fanatical slaves in a completely soulless
system’.94 In this article, there is the obvious belief that the Russian cam¬
paign represented a clash between a ‘soulless system’ and a
Weltanschauung which expressed itself in idealistic terms. None the less,
even the most optimistic Nazis were fully cognisant of the fact that they
had embarked upon a course of action which was risky in the extreme.
This would quite literally be a campaign to the death.
To the awesome challenges posed by the Russian campaign, one had
to offer increasing amounts of idealism, something which demanded
‘more than the fulfillment of duty’.95 Everyone, SA man (Victor Lutze,
author of this article, headed the now virtually powerless SA) and fac¬
tory worker, had to go beyond the call of duty. Furthermore, as many
high Nazi officials pointed out, with the Russian campaign it was no
longer a question of mere German idealism. All of Aryan Europe was
united in a campaign against Jewish/Bolshevik barbarism. As Gunter
d’Alquen, Hauptsturmfuhrer of the Waffen SS put it, those Norwegians,
Danes and Flemings and Dutch who served and fell with honour in the
Waffen SS knew that they were ‘soldiers of Adolf Hitler in the struggle
for the victory of National Socialism — the clear expression of the great
Germanic idea’.96
The emphasis upon a clash of ideas, or ideals, particularly important
once Germany found herself at war with, at first, the Soviet Union and
then the United States, was evident in Wolfgang Willrich’s edited work,
Of the Reich’s Soldiers (Des Reiches Soldaten). In this work, portraits
of earlier military heroes, such as Died and the Luftwaffe ace, Werner
Molders, were presented, along with one of the greatest hero of all, of
course, Adolf Hitler. In the introduction to this book, Willrich offered
the following comparison of the respective ideals animating the oppos¬
ing armies:

There, the power of gold with the claim to world domination, pushes
for a struggle of annihilation; here, the idea of the Reich calls for
a just world order. There, the Jew, hating out of his ugliness, rules
over the commercial greed and blind lust for domination of the Anglo-
Saxon world powers and their vassals, and over the fanatical and in¬
cited wretched masses of Red Russia; here, a new Europe, borne by
racial pride and dedicated to [its] traditional culture should gather itself
around the Reich, battling for its independence from World Jewry
96 The National Socialist Religion in Power

in all areas and securing its own creative race character from decay.97

Truly, Willrich implied, idealism had to triumph over materialism; good

over evil. Here, the role of family ethics, particularly strong in rural
settings, with the strong emphasis upon the elevated position of the
‘woman and her ethically decisive influence in the family’ was crucial,
and it was no accident that many who bore the Knight’s Cross came from
such backgrounds.9* All of the values embodied in National Socialism
were now being put to the sternest of tests. The emphasis upon the sever¬
ity of the tests imposed upon Germany, particularly since the beginning
of the Russian campaign, was emphasised by Walther Troge, in his edited
book of wartime art. In this regard, he pointed out that ‘all works which
originated in Russia or under the influence of the eastern front experience
are . . . harder, more biting and perhaps more gruesome’. This had to
be so if wartime art was to remain true in depicting the exigencies im¬
posed by a harsher struggle.99 In Troge, perhaps more than in Willrich,
one can sense an emphasis upon grim determination, something that was
reflected in a painting by R. Lipsus which depicted German Troops ad¬
vancing across a muddy steppe, under a leaden sky. The Russian cam¬
paign, a war which truly had become a ‘world’ one — these would be
the ultimate tests for the German people as bearers of National Socialist
ideals.
With the beginning of the Russian campaign, one can observe an in¬
creasing emphasis upon will, always of importance in Hitler's
Weltanschauung, more particularly upon the will to conquer, to over¬
come fate. The pragmatic element so prominent in National Socialism
was still there, i.e., decisions made and policies undertaken by the
National Socialist regime were correct simply by virtue of their oc¬
curence. Nevertheless, even though Barbarossa had been occasioned by
unprecedented military victories that had been responsible for enormous
Soviet casualties and had brought in approximately 2,500,000 Soviet
prisoners by October 1941, everyone seemed to realise that unprecedented
amounts of labour and sacrifice would be necessary if the operation were
to be successful in the end. Most certainly, calls for sacrifice in the name
of the National Socialist Volksgemeinschaft had been issued ever since
the movement came to power in 1933. With the Russian campaign,
however, there was the sense that a great deal more than ever before
would have to be sacrificed; this, despite the fact that, as we now know,
total war mobilisation in Germany really did not begin until 1943. Some
of this sense was reflected in Hitler’s official thanking of the army and
home front, which appeared in the Vdlkischer Beobachter on 5 October
 The National Socialist Religion in Power 97

1941. The Fiihrer praised the sacrifices of the army, but spent a good
deal of time on those of the home front. 'Behind the front of sacrifice’,
he declared, stood millions of German farmers, workers, and women
doing their jobs. ‘We can truly say: for the first time in history, a whole
people is now in combat, a portion on the front, the rest at home’.100
After the war, necessarily a successful one of course, the National
Socialist movement would 'go back to the old party program, whose
fulfillment now appears to me [to be] more important perhaps than on
the first day'.10' The ‘Lord God’, Hitler went on to say, never helps
lazy people or cowards, people who refuse to help themselves. If the
German people strove assiduously on its own behalf ‘then even the Ixtrd
God will not refuse you his help’!'02
Hitler’s message of 5 October 1941 was a significant one in so far
as National Socialist ideology was concerned. As we mentioned before,
demands for sacrifice and hard work always had been made by the
National Socialist leadership. However, both in profound — at least as
they saw them — ideological/religious works and in more baldly pro-
pagandistic pieces, leading National Socialists had come down strongly
upon two points: (1) that there was an absolute congruence of the National
Socialist ideology with ‘laws of life’ (hence, as we have seen, pragmatism
seemed to have been sewn into the very fabric of this ideology), and
(2) that the Nazi party program, even if specific points of it had not as
yet been implemented, was living in the very life of the German people.
Now, in the 5 October message, Hitler quite bluntly stated that the realisa¬
tion of the party program was up to the German people. If this people
was successful in the greatest war in history, then it could look forward
to the program being implemented after the war. For Hitler, even as
his armies were driving upon Moscow, this program was not alive in
the life-blood of his people. This people had to stand on guard against
laziness and cowardice for, after all, the ‘Lord-God’ — and here. Hitler
might well have been indirectly referring to himself as this God’s
messenger — helps those who help themselves. In other words, there
was the possibility that the National Socialist program, one rooted in
the laws of life, would not be translated into action. The fate of Ger¬
many had been thrust into the hands of the German people. So had that
of the party program. To be sure, dedicated National Socialists continued
to adhere to the belief that their Weltanschauung, their ‘religion of
nature,’ was rooted in life and that the movement, to the degree that
it faithfully acted in conformity with ‘life,’ was justified in whatever
it did. In this regard, idealism continued to express itself in the pragmatic
idiom.
98 The National Socialist Religion in Power

Under massive pressures, however, such as those generated by the

Russian campaign, it became psychologically unbearable for the National
Socialist leadership to be able always to see the movement and the Ger¬
man nation as being coextensive. After all, what would happen if the
German nation in particular and Aryan man in general should somehow
fail to accomplish those tasks presented to them by the laws of life? As
we shall see, while the nation as an axiological principle and racial entity
remained sanctified, its members were more and more called upon to
adhere to principles, ideas, and patterns of action that, as Hitler often
suspected, were not really inherent in the German people as a whole,
but had to be brought out from this people by the movement. In a word,
as the war became, at first, increasingly serious for Germany, and later
downright disastrous, that sense of immanency that had played so strong
a role in the National Socialist religion, while never disappearing
altogether, began to decrease in prominence. Those Germans who did
their duty, as the National Socialist perceived this duty, ‘lived’ the
ideology; those Germans who did not — and, as we shall see, an in¬
creasing number of them were perceived as not doing so — could not
have been seen as doing so.
Although more ‘radical’ National Socialists like Hitler and Goebbels
had always retained a certain degree of suspicion towards the army, this
suspicion became extremely pronounced after the successful Russian
counterattack before Moscow, which began on 6 December 1941. After
about a month, the counterattack was contained, but only after the Ger¬
man army had lost well over 100,OCX) casualties and only after the Fiihrer,
seemingly providentially, was able to prevent a rout through his ‘stand
fast’ order (something that would, of course, have somewhat more
negative effects during the Stalingrad battle.) In any case, as Wellington
might have put it, the Moscow affair had been ‘the nearest run thing’
and the handling of the situation by the professional military came under
sharp criticism. An entry in Goebbels’ diary for 24 January 1942 points
this out clearly. The army, he said, had treated its wounded soldiers very
badly. They had been left in unheated freight cars, often without blankets
and badly fed. The party, Goebbels stated, really ought to take over the
care and transport of wounded soldiers.103 In a similar vein, Goebbels,
in an entry of 28 March 1942, spoke of the marked superiority of the
Waffen-SS compared to the army in looking after their men. However,
since most army generals were reactionary, such was to be expected.104
At the same time, Goebbels adhered to the notion that those who stuck
to their duty with grim determination were the ideology in action. ‘There
are ideologists in our midst’, he said in a diary entry of 27 February
 The National Socialist Religion in Power 99

1942 (during the course of one of his routine attacks on Alfred

Rosenberg), ‘who believe a man from a submarine crew, on emerging
from the engine room dirty and oil-bespattered would like nothing bet¬
ter than to read The Mythus of the Twentieth Century'. This was nonsense.
Such a man needed light materials to read. After all, ‘He is living our
way of life and doesn’t have to be taught it’.105 Elaborating further, Goeb-
bels declared that, ‘After the war we can talk again about ideological
education. At present, we are living our ideology and don’t have to be
taught it’.106 Here, we can observe the old pragmatic approach again.
Those of us — propagandist, soldier, or U-boat sailor — who are doing
our jobs in the service of the National Socialist regime are representing
the National Socialist ideology, or, rather, are the ideology. In such a
situation, formal ideological education, to say nothing, one would sup¬
pose, of the Twenty-Five Point Program of 1920, were things that were
rather beside the point.
As in Hitler’s October 1941 message, Goebbels placed immense
demands on the German people. This can be seen very clearly in a speech
of 15 March 1942, in which he declared that the war was not to be won
simply by shouting ‘Heil Hitler’. Rather, one must work, most especially
in as much as morale and spirit rested in labour.107 Then Goebbels went
on to make a statement that was immensely significant with regards to
how the ‘natural religion’ of National Socialism responded to stress. He
referred to the seemingly mundane call to the German people to work
hard and support the war effort. ‘Naturally’, he said, ‘this is not the
National Socialism that is preached in the grandiose hymns of our party.
This is National Socialism for home consumption. There must be this
also. Even Catholics don’t go to Easter High Mass three times a day’.108
While these lines were received with a certain degree of merriment
(‘Heiterkeit', as it appears in the transcript), what Goebbels said was
of extraordinary importance. The National Socialism ‘preached in the
grandiose hymns’ of the Nazi party was the National Socialism of High
Mass. It was the National Socialism rooted in life, the bearer of religious
principles externalised in racial policies of which the German people knew
a great deal but about which they could not know all. Naturally, ‘National
Socialism for home consumption’ was also rooted in the ‘laws of life’.
As has been mentioned before, there was often congruence between
so-called propagandistic efforts and the genuine beliefs of the Nazi leader¬
ship. For example, the dignity and spirit of labour were elements that
had been emphasised both privately and publicly before and after 1933.
In his 15 March 1942 speech, however, Goebbels was drawing a line
between the National Socialism of the High Mass and that which had
100 The National Socialist Religion in Power

to be proffered to a public in which war enthusiasm had to be aroused

and maintained. Through labour and dedication this public was to be
imbued with National Socialist principles. As in Hitler’s October 1941
statements, Goebbels had maintained that the success or failure of
National Socialism was, in reality, dependent upon whether or not the
German people was willing to expend those efforts commensurate with
the demands of a war in which life itself was engaged in mortal combat
with all those estranged-from-life forces that threatened to extinguish
it. The German people, on the front lines and at home, had to strive
to live National Socialism so that it did not have to be taught.109 In a
word, for Goebbels, ‘ideological instruction’ was almost tantamount to
a confession of defeat, both for the German people and for that move¬
ment which, through its presumed adherence to natural laws of life, was
the German people in its most highly developed form.
With the beginning of the invasion of Russia, one can observe an in¬
creasing tendency to separate the National Socialist movement from the
German people in general and the army in particular. Naturally, this
phenomenon was not totally unprecedented. Elitism had always played
a role in the Nazi attitude towards mass politics and, most particularly,
in Hitler’s concept of leadership. However, in the motto ‘Deutschland
ist Hitler, Hitler ist Deutschland’, expressed, by Rudolf Hess at the 1934
Nuremberg party rally, among other places, a fundamental National
Socialist principle had been stated. Namely, that there was, through the
movement’s adherence to natural life principles, a wellnigh ontological
identification of the National Socialist leadership with the German peo¬
ple even if this leadership had to be viewed as representing an elite group
within this people. This notion was not put on ice for the duration of
the war. Nevertheless, there can be little question but that the Nazi leader¬
ship, both publicly and privately, responded to the increasing stresses
of an increasingly unsuccessful war by, at times, abandoning the
pragmatic idealism emphasised above in favour of a new, more mun¬
dane variety of pragmatism that was informed by an increasingly dualistic
view of movement and people.
The movement could provide the German people with principles and
set an example of selflessness in defence of the sanctified ‘nation’. If
the people who comprised this nation did not respond positively, however,
then it would go under, even as the sacred principles of National Socialism
remained true. Through defeat, the German people in particular and
Aryan man in general would demonstrate that, at best, they did not grasp
these principles and at worst, were not worthy of them, something which
Hitler in more pessimistic passages in Mein Kampf, thought probable.
 The National Socialist Religion in Power 101

Naturally, this did not mean that hallowed themes were dropped from
Nazi propagandistic efforts. Racist concerns remained as central as ever.
As an example of this, we can consider the response of the SS journal
Das Schwarze Korps to the stubborn Russian defence of Stalingrad. In
the 29 October 1942 issue, the almost peevish complaint was raised that
if English or American soldiers had been there, they would have had
the decency to surrender, and not have continued the fanatical, suicidal
resistance with which the German 6th Army was being confronted.
'Thus’, in the journal’s view, ‘Stalingrad represented the quintessence
of the Soviet contempt for the human race’.110 Furthermore, Nazi pro¬
paganda after the surrender of the 6th Army continued to emphasise,
some say more than ever before, anti-Jewish themes.'11 Here, we can
consider one of the most important National Socialist speeches ever given.
On 18 February 1943, sixteen days after the surviving remnant of the
6th Army capitulated, Goebbels gave his famous ‘total war’ speech. In
this we can see Goebbels bringing to bear the salient element of National
Socialist ideology: the Jewish threat — in this case externalised in the
form of Bolshevism — not only to Germany, but indeed to Western
civilisation as a whole. Throughout the address, we can observe that
which Goebbels had once professed to despise — ideological instruction
(parenthetically, in his calling attention to Jewish liquidation comman¬
dos and Jewish terror in general, we can also see a good deal of pro¬
jection).
The very existence of Western man was at stake, Goebbels declared.
‘Behind the storming Soviet divisions we see already the Jewish liquida¬
tion commandos', behind these, however, arises terror, the spectre of
starving millions and complete European anarchy’.112 ‘Eastern
Bolshevism’, he continued, ‘is not only terroristic teaching, but also ter¬
roristic praxis'.‘14 It pursued its goals recklessly and consistently, with
absolutely no consideration or thought of human happiness. All this was
part-and-parcel of a unified, trans-European Jewish threat. ‘In any case’,
Goebbels said, to an increasingly enthusiastic crowd, ‘Germany has no
intention of bowing down before this Jewish threat, but rather, in due
course meeting it, if necessary under [conditions] of the most complete
and most radical elimination of Jewry’!114 The Soviet allies of interna¬
tional Jewry cared nothing about human life. Their throwing in of masses
of men and tanks against the German lines had proved that beyond a
shadow of a doubt.115 ‘ What is sitting before me,' Goebbels continued,
‘is a cross-section of the whole German people at the front and in the
homeland — is that not so?”16 Stormy applause and cries of ‘Ja' greeted
this rhetorical question. ‘To be sure/evw are not represented here!’ More
102 The National Socialist Religion in Power

applause and cries greeted the pronouncement. Finally, Goebbels made

his most strident demand: do you want total war; total and radical war?
To this, the cries of 4Ja’ were deafening.1'7 From 18 February 1943,
well after Great Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States had
declared total social and economic commitment to a world war, Ger¬
many was officially doing the same.
It is true that after he delivered his ‘total war’ speech, Goebbels is
supposed to have said, ‘This hour of idiocy! If I had said to the people,
“Jump out of the third story of Columbus house”, they would have done
it too.’118 This would suggest a most cynical attitude on Goebbels’ part,
with regard to that ‘cross-section of the whole German people’ he had
just finished exhorting to give their all to the war effort. Yet, we must
not forget two things: (1) that Goebbels, in his warning of Jewish ‘li¬
quidation commandos’ and a general Jewish/Bolshevik peril, was ex¬
pressing something which he himself believed, and (2) that he thought
it necessary to rally the German people not by focusing upon the re¬
quirements posed by conventional war, but rather by emphasising the
point that the war was in fact one of racial annihilation. All else had
failed. Thus, one had to fall back upon the central core of the Nazi
ideology, one grounded in religious truths. If one were determined to
provide the educative experience necessary to arouse the German peo¬
ple to the point of superhuman sacrifice, then the message proffered had
to be an expression of the National Socialist Weltanschauung. There is
a most interesting assumption here. Goebbels, who despised ideological
instruction, thought it necessary to emphasise the most radical aspects
of the National Socialist ideology in his effort to rally the German peo¬
ple. In the final analysis. National Socialist propaganda and National
Socialist principles proved to be one and the same. There can be little
question but that Goebbels was very cynical with regards to the com¬
mitment of the German people to the war effort. They would respond
to any message, stridently presented, with enthusiasm. Yet the message
presented by Goebbels was the message of National Socialism, viz., we
are engaged in a racial war with international Jewry; either Aryan man
or the international Jew must perish. At the same time, Goebbels thought
it highly unlikely that his audience and, for that matter, the German people
in general, was imbued with — to utilize a Rankean phrase — that par¬
ticular ‘spiritual energy’ that would drive it on its own, to grasp those
life principles embodied in the National Socialist movement. From now
on, it was up to this movement, clinging assiduously to that in which
it most strongly believed, to educate the German people to the point where
it would willingly sacrifice itself for an ideology congruent with life itself.
 The National Socialist Religion in Power 103

Throughout the immediate post-Stalingrad period until the end of

World War II, Goebbels, as did other Nazi leaders, continued to dif¬
ferentiate sharply between the National Socialist movement and those
individuals and institutions who, through their deficiencies, demonstrated
that they were not properly imbued with the National Socialist spirit.
Naturally, events on the Eastern Front drew a fair amount of commentary.
There, of all the units, German or Allied, i.e., Romanian, Italian, and
Hungarian, the SS ones performed the best. This was so because of
National Socialist indoctrination. ‘Had we brought up the entire Ger¬
man Wehrmacht exactly as we did the SS formations, the struggle in
the East would undoubtedly have taken a different course’.119 The poor
Duce, Goebbels opined, was in a terrible position overall. He had no
units like the SS, only a monarchical army ‘which of course is not equal
to such a brutal war of ideologies’.120 It is of interest to note that, even
with the declaration of ‘total war’, the Fiihrer adhered to certain fun¬
damental views concerning, among other things, the natural role of
women in the struggles to come. ‘But even during total war’, he remark¬
ed, ‘one must not fight the women. Never yet has such a battle been
won by any government. For women constitute a tremendous power and
as soon as you dare to touch their beauty parlours they are all up in arms
against you’.121 Just how much this was indeed a ‘war of ideologies’,
at least in Nazi eyes, was amply revealed in this remark.
At the same time, the National Socialist leadership sought to deprecate
the idealism of so-called ‘liberated’ women, i.e., those ensconced in the
Allied camp. American women in particular seemed unwilling to make
those sacrifices which, hopefully their German counterparts were will¬
ing to make in the face of total war. In a Volkischer Beobachter article
of 13 April 1944, a story that appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer was
reproduced at some length, accompanied, of course, by the expected
ideologically-tinted exhortations to do better. American women appeared
to manifest unpatriotic attitudes. They cheated on their ration cards and
seemed to be completely unwilling to volunteer for nursing tasks and
for war industries.122 Feminine dishonesty and lack of idealism in
America had been accompanied, as was to be expected, by a breakdown
of family morality and a rise in juvenile delinquency.123 With that total
lack of humour often associated with Teutonic modes of idealism in any
form, the Volkischer Beobachter went on to implicate the pathological
influence of Frank Sinatra upon American women. Under such cir¬
cumstances, it was no wonder that such women seemed to be unwilling
to make necessary sacrifices.
It does not require a profound knowledge of psychology to determine
104 The National Socialist Religion in Power

that, in this article, the editors of the Volkischer Boebachter were pro¬
jecting their own concerns regarding the dedication of German women
onto their American counterparts. As several authors have pointed out.
National Socialist attempts to rally women to the war effort — attempts
which were to no small degree hobbled by persistent ideological qualms
— met with what can be described as limited success.124 At the same
time, one can observe a none-too-subtle effort to wean German women
away from those materialistic urges that Hitler himself saw as
characteristic of women in general. Such use of awful example and im¬
plicit or explicit exhortation can be viewed as characteristic of any regime
under stress. In the case of National Socialism, however, it represented
an important development within the framework of the ideology. Again,
recognising that calls for sacrifice and labour had always been an im¬
portant part of the National Socialist message, we must once more point
out that, under the stress of serious military reverses, it had become im¬
perative that the National Socialist regime at times set itself apart from
those whose very spirit it claimed to embody. It was its task to point
out such things as lack of idealism showed by so-called ‘liberated'
American women, in the profound hope that a spiritual awakening would
somehow be called forth in the ranks of the German people.
As we have seen with the uncomplimentary references to American
women, German propaganda, which had always emphasised the bar¬
barous character of Soviet Russia, with its ‘Jewish liquidation comman¬
dos’, tended, as Americans came to play an increasingly important part
in the war, more and more to focus on what it perceived as negative
aspects of the American character. Particularly after the Normandy land¬
ings on 6 June 1944, articles decrying the barbarous nature of the
Americans became common. In the 14 July 1944 Volkischer Beobachter,
for example, there was an essay in which ‘character types’ of American
prisoners were described. ‘There are outspokenly gangster types among
them’ the essay proclaimed.125 A search of the pockets of American
prisoners revealed switch-blade knives (‘Flammendolche') and brass
knuckles. These were the murderers who were fighting to ‘free
Europe’.126 A similar article on much the same subject appeared two
days later, and the issue of American barbarism, something which stem¬
med from the same Jewish source, of course, as Soviet barbarism, became
a topic which enjoyed much popularity, at least in the columns of the
Volkischer Beobachter. One of the most interesting, in this regard, was
an article appearing in the 3 November 1944 issue of this newspaper
entitled ‘The Black Flood’ (‘Die schwarz Fluf). Here, it was maintain¬
ed, one could see palpable evidence that Jg^s were using Negroes to
 The National Socialist Religion in Power 105

destroy the white race. For some reason, CIO leader Sidney Hillman
was singled out as being particularly nefarious in this respect. The
American 'Mischkultur' was in large measure the product of such ‘Swing-
Juden (!) as George Gerschwin and Irving Berlin.127 Hypnotised by
Negroid rhythms, the American public, through the strong Jewish in¬
fluence, was exhibiting signs that ‘negroid mass eroticism’ was now
socially acceptable.128 Implicit in this article was the rhetorical point:
Do you want Europe to be ruled by racial degeneracy? Once again, we
can perceive that as the war situation grew ever worse, the Nazi leader¬
ship strove to educate the German people through emphasising not
peripheral issues, but those elements which subsisted at the racial core
of the ruling ideology. Throughout all of this, one gets the notion that
the National Socialist leadership at times perceived itself as being in the
position of the kindly schoolteacher who had been charged with the divine
task of explicating certain fundamental principles to an increasingly
restless class of schoolchildren.
As has been stated previously, the educative efforts described above
in large measure resulted from the National Socialist movement’s occa¬
sionally ‘pulling away’ from the German people, this being necessitated
by certain radical turns in military fortunes. As we have noted, a
Weltanschauung ultimately rooted in mystery and in a radical identifica¬
tion of spirit and nature — a corollary of which had to have been a
pragmatic view of events as self-justifying — must have found itself in
trouble as mundane life seemed no longer to conform to the ‘laws of
life’. In this context, it is most interesting to note that, as the ‘real world’
became ever more painful for Nazism, that aspect of the ‘Hitler Cult’
which always had emphasised the Fiihrer’s singularity became strengthen¬
ed to the point that he was now often portrayed as being rather apart
from the world, approximating that transcendental God of the Jews so
despised by Nazi ideology.
As an example of this, we can consider the 20 April 1944 issue of
Das Schwarze Korps. In a front-page birthday tribute entitled ‘He is Vic¬
tory!’ (‘Er ist der Sieg!’), it was acknowledged that ‘the Fiihrer seldom
speaks to us. Too seldom.’129 The article went on to state that, while
it was often difficult to describe ‘an immediate personal effect of his
power over our hearts’, he was still there, always working and think¬
ing. Thus, any sacrifice demanded by Hitler was necessary even though
he could not always experience what was going on in the lives of
‘Grenadier Schulze or woman-worker Muller’.130 Shades of the old-
fashioned Judaeo-Christian father-figure God whose ways, while just,
were ‘often strange’! Significantly, the article declared that history would
106 The National Socialist Religion in Power

not ask whether Feldherr Adolf Hitler fought on the Volga or in the Car¬
pathians, but whether he secured the ‘victory of life for his people,
‘greatness and freedom’ to the Reich, and a happy future for Germany s
children.131 Here, we can see a major problem involved in bolstering
Hitler’s historical position. German forces might well have been driven
from the Volga to the Carpathian Mountains. Hitler, as commander-in¬
chief of the German armed forces, was presumably responsible for their
fortunes. Mundane military affairs, however, did not matter any more;
what counted was whether or not Feldherr Adolf Hitler had secured the
‘victory of life’ for the German people.
What we can see here is a rejection of immanency altogether. ‘Laws
of life’, the bearers of which represented the highest elements of the
sanctified German nation, were now the preserve of a movement which,
in transcendental fashion, went beyond this world. In a cruel war in which
material success was being obtained on all fronts by the Allies, spirit
and matter, so triumphantly brought together by numerous Nazi
ideologists, were once again separated. For the German people, all that
was left was a desperate belief in an increasingly remote Fiihrer, the
only vestige of National Socialism possessed of any reality.132
Naturally, most ideologues were not consistent in their rejection of
that monism central to the National Socialist religion of nature. As we
will see, Hitler himself made at least one statement in which he showed
a rather strong degree of consistency in adhering to certain basic tenets
of the National Socialist religion. Thus, though defeat loomed, high Nazis
often attempted to reaffirm their loyalty to that identification of matter
and spirit essential to the National Socialist Weltanschauung. As we have
pointed out earlier, the strengthening of the ‘Fiihrer Cult’ was a logical
result of the bending of the National Socialist ideology under stress. On
the same day as the SS honoured Hitler in their journal, 20 April 1944,
an article by Alfred Rosenberg appeared in which he demonstrated that,
as presumably chief ideologist of the National Socialist Party, he would
continue to adhere to that old version of the Hitler Cult which emphasised
the unity of Fiihrer and people. In the titanic struggle now raging in
Europe, Rosenberg maintained, the National Socialist Weltanschauung
was being strengthened and steeled. This Weltanschauung was bound
up with one personality, and ‘act and idea, struggle and construction
were continuously tied to the phenomenon of the Fiihrer’.13 3 In fact,
that will to victory of ‘front and homeland’ was symbolised in Hitler.134
Goebbels, in his 1944 Christmas speech to the German people, went
even further. After praising the German people for bearing up so well
under Allied air attacks and for being unified in their beliefs in the face
 The National Socialist Religion in Power 107

of so many tests, he declared that ‘The Fiihrer is our pride and our hope’.
He was ‘our one and everything’ and, ‘he belongs to us as we belong
to him, totally and completely, with body and soul’.135 It might be of
some importance to note that, at the time Goebbels was making this ad¬
dress, German troops were enjoying some material success, at least
against the Americans in the West, where the Ardennes counterattack,
which had begun on 16 December 1944, had not yet been fully contained.
With the eventual failure of the Ardennes counterattack, and the
resumption of enemy advance's on all fronts, the Fiihrer disappeared to
the myth-shrouded gloom of his bunker. Now, he truly became a
transcendental spirit, removed from the continuous string of military
disasters that were visited upon Germany from January 1945 until the
end of the war. The man who, after the assassination attempt of 20 July
1944, had declared that he saw his survival as indicative of Providence’s
concern that he remain in power and complete his divinely-sanctioned
tasks, was silent now, and, in Goebbels’ last diary entries we can see
the anguish of one who could no longer adhere to the heroic religious
immanency embodied in the National Socialist Weltanschauung. From
this point on, brave stances assumed by National Socialist propagandists,
while reflecting, in many ways, beliefs central to the movement, had
little to do with nagging personal doubts and bitter recriminations.
The army, Goebbels said, had failed because it had not become
National Socialist. German generals, unlike their Soviet counterparts,
had not become committed to an ideology. The army had to become
National Socialist ‘in outlook and bearing’ if there were to be any
possibility at all of sustained, much less successful, struggle.136 The trou¬
ble with the army, Goebbels maintained, in considering the collapse of
defences around Trier, was that it was not revolutionary enough. Rohm
had been right in 1934, but he could not have been listened to, much
less followed, because if his schemes had been acted upon, such actions
would have been the doings of ‘a homosexual and an anarchist’.137 If
Rohm had been a ‘solid personality’, 100 generals rather than 100 SA
members would have been shot on 30 June 1934.138 Here, we can clearly
see that element which had become most prominent in body public and
private National Socialist pronouncements ever since the beginning of
the Russian campaign, viz., the tendency to differentiate rather sharply
between the National Socialist movement as the bearer of certain life-
rooted ideals and other groups, most important of which was the army,
which simply could not live up to these ideals. National Socialist educa¬
tion had been lacking — Goebbels himself had often deprecated it so
long as soldiers and sailors were ‘living’ the ideology — and now the
108 The National Socialist Religion in Power

chickens had come home to roost. Now. the troops have ‘infected the
home front with their bad morale because they have not been brought
up as National Socialist’.139.
Goebbels, however, did not limit his criticism to the army, and to
party failure to educate it. ‘A fateful development seems to me to be
that now neither the Fiihrer in person nor the National Socialist concept
nor the National Socialist movement is immune from criticism.'140 A
major source of the problem, according to Goebbels, was the ‘bourgeois'
character of so many in the movement. Here, in attacking Speer, Goring,
and others, Goebbels seemed to be harking back to his pre-1925 ‘left-
wing revolutionary National Socialist' period.14' For Goebbels, the
Fiihrer himself, who ‘correctly perceives what has happened . . . [but]
seldom draws the right conclusions’, had failed to provide that leader¬
ship commensurate with National Socialist goals.143 The great leader
of the German people who was supposed to be, none the less, a man
of the people, had stopped speaking to those who were supposed to be
dying for his regime. In desperation, Goebbels stated, he was continuous¬
ly attempting to get the Fiihrer to reverse his policy on this, citing the
examples of Churchill and Stalin.143 All efforts had been in vain. In a
most revealing diary entry of 8 March 1945, Goebbels summed up what
the National Socialist regime had to do — and had failed to do — in
order to retain the confidence of the German people. ‘ ... If National
Socialism could once more present itself to the people as a pure ideology,
freed from all manifestations of corruption and time-serving, it could
still today turn out to be the great victorious ideology of our century'.144
Previously, Goebbels had been confident in the National Socialist
movement as the bearer of an ideology rooted in life-forces. At the same
time, as he once stated it, there had to be an ideology for ‘home con¬
sumption.’ Now, Goebbels’ cynicism regarding the German people was
being augmented if not replaced by a fundamental despair regarding the
National Socialist movement itself. In a word, this movement was
threatened with extinction because it was not National Socialist enough.
Ideological purity had not been maintained and the harassed minister
of propaganda did not exempt his Fiihrer from this charge. The petty
demands and overpowering temptations posed by mundane life had pro¬
ved too much for a natural religion which supposedly both bore life and
received its axiological charge from it. The National Socialist
Weltanschauung was still valid, but the men who bore it had proved to
be frail reeds. Similarly, that sanctified concept of ‘the nation’ remain¬
ed pure, but the people who comprised it were too weak and too
uneducated to grasp the religious ideals in terms of which the nation
 The National Socialist Religion in Power 109

obtained its divinity.

Goebbels, as cynical as he often proved to be, hesitated, even in
private, to declare that, in failing to live up to the rigorous standards
posed by an ideology rooted in life, the German people deserved whatever
fate attended it. He had hinted at such an attitude on several occasions
— and perhaps he believed it — but, Goebbels had never baldly stated
what had to have been the logical conclusion if he was to have adhered
to the identification of matter and spirit central to the National Socialist
Weltanschauung. According to Albert Speer, at least one person was
willing to do so.
Around the middle of March 1945, Speer and Hitler talked about the
economic future of a defeated and devastated Germany. Hitler’s views
on the matter were recapitulated in a letter sent by a troubled Speer some
days later.

From the statements you made that evening the following was une¬
quivocally apparent — if I did not misunderstand you: If the war is
lost, the people will be lost also. It is not necessary to worry about
what the German people will need for elemental survival. On the con¬
trary, it is best for us to destroy even these things. For the nation
has proved to be the weaker, and the future belongs solely to the
stronger eastern nation. In any case only those who are inferior will
remain after this struggle, for the good have already been killed.

These words shook me to the core. And a day later when I read the
demolition order and, shortly afterward, the stringent evacuation
order, I saw these as the first steps toward carrying out these inten¬
tions.145

For many Germans, the National Socialist movement and its ideology
were Hitler. Now, with the nation going under, their leader revealed
that, in at least one lucid moment, he grasped how a true believer in
the identity of nature and spirit had to respond when the Taws of life’
dictated that people presumably ordained to manifest them in their highest
form failed in its sacred task. Many people, Speer included, thought that
Hitler’s indifference to the fate of his people and his willingness to lay
waste that portion of Germany not already blasted by Allied bombs and
artillery, were signs of madness. In a psychogenetic sense, they might
have been correct. From the viewpoint of a dedicated Nazi ideologist,
however. Hitler was being perfectly consistent. Events had demonstrated
that the National Socialist religion had not attained incarnation in the
110 The National Socialist Religion in Power

German people. If it had, then this people would have been victorious
on every front. The religion had proved to be too honestly stringent in
the demands it had placed upon frail humanity. Despite desperate, last-
minute efforts by Goebbels and Rosenberg, for once united in a com¬
mon effort, to call attention to the absolute necessity of the German peo¬
ple’s recognising that the fact that the Fuhrer lived in them — a
recognition which had to assure victory — this people had failed to do
so. Thus, it had to die.
The National Socialist religion of nature, in its positing of an absolute
identification of nature and spirit, had allowed for a radical subordina¬
tion of all state institutions, knowledge, and high culture to it while, at
the same time demanding that a petty-bourgeois social stasis, presumably
commensurate with the ‘state of nature’ itself, be maintained. During
periods of political and military success, the pragmatism inherent in this
doctrine proved to be a most valuable ideational and propagandistic
weapon — the ‘natural’ correctness of the National Socialist idea was
demonstrated through the successes of those who bore it into battle. When
the adherents to ‘laws of life’ began to be overwhelmed by life, however,
the Nazi ideology, this extraordinarily powerful natural religion, had
to devour itself and, in the end, there could only be nihilistic destruc¬
tion. While there can be little doubt that Hitler’s personal pathology had
much to do with his orders that defeat-threatened Germany be razed,
it is also true that in a situation in which life was devouring life, the
nihilistic ravings of March 1945 could, at the very least, have received
substantive ideological rationalisation. For a movement rooted in nature,
there could be no appeal to any sort of higher authority for justification,
and those individuals, who, with unbounded arrogance, had deprecated
humanity in order that a mystery-grounded naturally-determined racial
elite rule on earth for one thousand years, found themselves condemned
by their own naturalism. For, in the final analysis, in a cruel world of
nature, stripped of any sort of extrinsic teleology, simple material might
must always prevail, and truth must necessarily be measured in casualties
suffered and inflicted, indices of war-time production, and general for¬
tunes of war.
This serves to explain a phenomenon described in some detail by Han¬
nah Arendt. While talking about totalitarian movements as a whole —
but necessarily focusing upon the Nazis in particular — she pointed out
that, unlike religious fanatics, members of such movements do not hold
to the faith in defeat. With the destruction of the mundane world of
National Socialist ‘realities’ there could be no martyrs, at least in the
traditional sense of the term.146 In my opinion, Arendt too easily
 The National Socialist Religion in Power 111

dismissed the religious elements of National Socialism. In this particular

regard, however, her argument that the National Socialist permutation
of totalitarianism was a ‘pseudo-religion’, in the strongest sense of the
term, would appear to be verifiable.
While the National Socialist Weltanschauung, by virtue of its devo¬
tion to principles of nature, had to have cut out the grounds for its own
existence as defeat loomed for Germany, it did serve to provide the idea¬
tional substructure for Hitler’s most successful campaign — the exter¬
mination of the Jews. Here, self-proclaimed authentic and natural men
waged a victorious war against what they declared were unnatural
enemies of life. It is to this war that we must now turn.

Notes

1. Leonard Schapiro, Totalitarianism (New York and London, Praeger, 1972), p. 26.
2. Ibid., p. 68.
3. Ibid., p. 71.
4. Hans Buchheim, et al., Anatomie des SS-Staate, Band I, Die SS-Das Herrschaft-
sinstrument Befehl Und Gehorsam (Miinchen, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1967), p. 16.
5. Ibid.
6. For Buchheim’s discussion of the role of the Gestapo, see, Hans Buchheim,
Totalitarian Rule: Its Nature and Characteristics, translated from the German by Ruth
Heim (Middleton, Connecticut, Wesleyan University Press, 1968), p. 96. For his discus¬
sion on the role of the SS, see Anatomie des SS-Staates, Band I, Die SS-Das Herrschaft-
sinstrument Befehl und Gehorsam, p. 182.
7. Ernst Krieck, Volkisch-Politische Anthropologie, Band II, Das Handeln und die
Ordnungen (Leipzig, 1937), pp. 64-5.
8. Ibid., pp. 72-3.
9. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf translated from the German by Ralph Manheim (Boston,
Houghton Miflin, 1962), p. 391, emphasis is Hitler’s.
10. Hermann Rauschning, Hitler Speaks: A Series of Political Conversations with Adolf
Hitler on his Real Aims (London, Heinemann, 1939), p. 200.
11. Max Domarus, Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen 1932-1945, Band I, Zeiter Halb-
band 1934-1938 (Miinchen, Suddeutsche Verlag, 1965), p. 761. The ‘polycentric’ nature
of the ‘National Socialist State’ is discussed in John Hidon and John Farquharson, Ex¬
plaining Hitler’s Germany (Totowa, New Jersey, Barnes and Noble, 1983), p. 69 and
pp. 75-9.
12. Ibid., p. 525.
13. The description of Nazism as being an ‘anti-Jewish revolution’ is to be found in
George L. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology, Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich
(New York, Grosset and Dunlop, 1964).
14. Institut fur Zeitgeschichte, SchulungsbriefNr. 5, NS Weltanschauung, 15.12.44,
reel no. MA 332, frame 9380476.
15. Ibid.
16. Buchheim, in volume one of Anatomie des SS-Staates, has a most interesting discus¬
sion of this. See in particular that on pp. 277-82.
17. Ernest Krieck, ‘Charakter und Weltanschauung’, Rede zum 30 January 1938,
Heidelberger Universitatsreden, Neue Folge, Nr. 4 (Heidelberg, Carl Winter Verlag, 1938),
p. 5.
112 The National Socialist Religion in Power

18. Bernhard Rust, ‘Das nationalsozialismus und Wissenchaft’, Das national

sozialistische Deutschland und die Wissenschaft, Heidelberger Reden von Reichsminister
Rust and Prof. Emst Krieck (Hamburg, Carl Winter Verlag, 1936), p. 22.
19. Ibid., p. 10-11. Emphasis is Rust’s.
20. Ibid., p. 15-16.
21. Ibid., p. 19.
22. Institut fur Zeitgeschichte, Blick in Aufgabe und Arbeit des ‘Amtes Rosenberg.
Weltanschauung und Wissenschaft, reel no. MA 608, frame 55672.
23. Ibid., frame 55673
24. Heinz Wolff, ‘Politik und Wissenschaft,’ in Vdlkischer Beobachter, Munchener
Ausgabe, Nr.25. 54.Jahrgang, 25 January 1941, S, 1.
25. Ludwick Fleck, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact, foreword by Thomas
S. Kuhn, translated by Fred Bradley and Thadeus J. Trenn (Chicago, University of Chicago
Press, 1979), p. 42.
26. Emst Krieck, ‘Die Emeuerung der Universitat’, Frankfurter Akademische Reden,
Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universitat (Frankfurt, n.p., 1933), p. 10.
27. Ibid.
28. Martin Heidegger, ‘Die Selbstbehauptung der deutschen Universitat'. Rede gehalten
bei der feierlichen Ubemahme der Rektorats der Universitat Freiburg am 27 May 1933,
Breslau, 1933, in Joachim Remak (ed.), The Nazi Yean: A Documentary History (Englewood
Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice-Hall, 1969), pp. 58-9. For an interesting discussion of how
Heidegger’s variety of ‘existentialism’ could have led him to give initial support to Na¬
tional Socialism, see Hazel E. Barnes, An Existentialist Ethics (New York, Alfred Knopf,
1967), pp. 418-23.
29. Matthias Heinrich Goring, first cousin of Hermann Goering. was able to preserve
a limited degree of freedom for psychological research and practice in his Goring Institute.
Yet, there can be little doubt that Freudian psychoanalysis suffered greatly when com¬
pared to other forms of psychotherapy. See Geoffry Cocks, The Goring Institut (New York,
Oxford University Press, 1984).
30. See Reece C. Kelly, ‘Die gescheiterte nationalsozialistische Personalpolitik und
die misslungene Entwicklung der nationalsozialistischen Hochschulen', in Manfred
Heinemann (Hrsg.), Erziehung und Schulung in Dritten Reich Teil 2. Hochschule, Er-
wachsenbildung (Stuttgart, Klett-Cotta, 1980).
31. Robert A. Pois, Friedrich Meinecke and German Politics in the Twentieth Cen¬
tury (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1972), pp. 121-3.
32. Nancy Stepan, The Idea of Race in Science. Great Britain 1800-1960 (Hamden,
Connecticut, Archon Press, 1982), pp. xx-xxi, 4, 144, 182.
33. Ibid. p. 189.
34. Probably the best treatment of Nazi art policy per se is still Hildegard Brenner
Die Kunstpolitik des Nationalsozialismus (Hamburg, Rowohlt, 1963). On how this policy
influenced works of art see Berthold Hinz, Art in the Third Reich, translated from the
German by Robert and Rita Kimber (New York, Pantheon, 1979).
35. Kurt Karl Eberlein, ‘Was ist deutsch in der deutschen Kunst?’, in George L. Mossse
(ed.) Nazi Culture: Intellectual and Social Life in the Third Reich (New York, Grosset
and Dunlap, 1966), p. 165.
36. Ibid.
37. Adolf Dresler, Deutsche Kunst und entartete 'KunstKunstwerk und Zerrbild als
Spiegel der Weltanschauung (Miinchen, Deutschen Volksverlag, 1938), p. 6.
38. Ibid., pp 6-7.
39. Paul Schulze-Naumburg, Kunst aus Blut und Boden (Leipzig, Verlag E. A. Seeman,
1934), p. 37.
40. Ibid., pp. 34, 42.
41. Ibid., p. 47.
42. Paul Josef Goebbels, Unititled Article, in Mosse, Nazi Culture, p. 162.
 The National Socialist Religion in Power 113

43. Alfred Rosenberg, Selected Writings, Robert Pois, (ed.) (Jonathan Cape, London,
1970), p. 161. Emphasis is Rosenberg’s.
44. Dresler, Deutsche Kunst, pp. 29-30.
45. Paul Josef Goebbels, Goebbels-Reden Band I: 1932-1939, herausgegeben von
Helmut Heiber (Diisseldorf, Droste Verlag, 1971), p. 134.
46. Ibid., p. 219.
47. Ibid., p. 222. For an interesting analysis of how aesthetics became involved in
a major ‘political’ concern, that of production and working conditions, see Anson G.
Rabinbach, ‘The Aesthetics of Production in the Third Reich’ in Journal of Contemporary
History, 1976, 17, no. 4.
48. Domarus, Hitler, p. 709.
49. Ibid.
50. Hitler, Secret Conversations, 1941-1944, with an introductory essay on the Mind
of Adolf Hitler by H. R. Trevor-Roper, translated from the German by Norman Cameron
and R. H. Stems (New York, Farrar, Straus and Young, 1953), Conversation of 29 July
1942, p. 489.
51. Sybil Milton, ‘Artists in the Third Reich’ in Henry Friedlander and Sybil Milton
(eds.). The Holocaust: Ideology, Bureaucracy and Genocide (Millwood, New York, Kraus-
Intemational Publications, 1980), p. 116. Those close to Hitler knew of his fascination
with the morbidly sensual works of Franz von Stuck. Understandably, psycohistorians
have made much of this. See Robert G. Waite, The Psychopathic God, Adolf Hitler (New
York, Basic Books, 1977).
52. Dresler, Deutsche Kunst, pp. 8-9.
53. Milton, ‘Artists in the Third Reich’, in Friedlander and Milton, The Holocaust,
p. 118.
54. Nolde’s involvement with National Socialism and the psychological sources for
it are considered at length in Robert Pois. Emil Nolde (Lanham, Maryland University Press
of America, 1982).
55. Fritz Kaiser (Hrsg.) Entartete ‘Kunst’, Ftihrer durch die Ausstellung (Berlin, Kaiser,
1937), p. 22.
56. Ibid. Emphasis is Kaiser’s.
57. Domarus, Hitler, p. 877.
58. Ibid.
59. Ibid. p. 878.
60. Herbert Read, The Philosophy of Modem Art (New York, Meridian Books, 1959),
p. 113.
61. See, for example, Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt, Art Under a Dictatorship (New York,
Octagon Books, 1973). Also Martin Damus, Sozialistischer Realismus und Kunst im Na-
tionalsozialismus (Frankfurt/M, Suddeutsche Verlag, 1981).
62. Deutsche Kunstler und die SS (Berlin, n.p., 1941), no page.
63. Franz Rodens, Vom Wesen Deutschen Kunst (Berlin, Franz Eher Verlag, 1941),
p. 54.
64. Deutsche Kunstler, Nr. 17.
65. Martin Damus, Sozialistischer Realismus, p. 9.
66. NSDAP Standartenkalender, 1937 (Miinchen, Franz Eher Verlag, 1937), p. 81.
67. The best descriptions of this are still to be found in David Schoenbaum, Hitler’s
Social Revolution: Class and Status in Nazi Germany, 1933-1939 (New York, Anchor
Books, 1967).
68. Domarus, Hitler, p. 642.
69. Alfred Rosenberg, ‘Frau und Mutter — Lebensquell des Volkes’, in Volkischer
Beobachter, Norddeutsche Ausgabe, Nr.224, 52.Jahrgang, 12 August 1939, S. 5.
70. Wilhelm Frick, ‘Unser erster Grass gilt den Muttem’, in Volkischer Beobachter,
Norddeutsche Ausgabe, Nr. 139, 54.Jahrgang, 19 Mai 1941, S. 2.
71. Ibid.
114 The National Socialist Religion in Power

72. Leila J. Rupp, Mobilizing Women for War. German and American Propaganda.
1934-1945 (Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1978), pp. 45-6.
73. The drawing power exercised by the National Socialist ideology upon middle class
women in particular is one of the major themes of Jill Stephenson, The Nazi Organization
of Women (London, Croom Helm; New York, Barnes and Noble, 1981).
74. On the failure of the Weimar Republic to provide for truly meaningful change for
women see Renate Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz. Beyond Kinder. Kiiche, Kirche. Weimar
Women in Politics and Work,’ in Berenice A. Carroll, (ed.) Liberating Women s History:
Theoretical and Critical Essays (Urbana, Illinois, University of Illinois Press, 1976).
75. An excellent description of the clash between Himmler's ‘Utopian’ views of racial
improvement and his basically bourgeois approach to morality is provided by Larry V.
Thompson, ‘Lebensbom and the Eugenics policy of the Reichsfuhrer SS’ in Central Euro¬
pean History, 1971, IV, no. 1 (March).
76. Felix Kersten, The Kersten Memoirs 1940-1945, introduction by H. R. Trevor
Roper, translated from the German by Constantine Fitzgibbon and James Oliver (New
York, Macmillan, 1957), pp. 75-6.
77. Thompson, ‘Lebensbom’, p. 76-7.
78. Jill Stephenson, Women in Nazi Society (New York, Barnes and Noble, 1975),
pp. 186-7.
79. Claudia Koonz, ‘Mothers in the Fatherland: Women in Nazi Germany’, in Renate
Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz (eds.). Becoming Visible: Women in European History
(Boston, Houghton Miflin, 1977), p. 471.
80. Gerda Lemer, ‘Placing Women in History: A 1975 Perspective', in Carroll,
Liberating Women's History, pp. 363—4.
81. NSDAP Standartenskalender, 1937, p. 37.
82. Goebbels, Reden, p. 273. Emphasis is Goebbels’.
83. Ibid. p. 274.
84. Cajus Fabricius, Positive Christianity in the Third Reich (Dresden, H. Puschel,
1937), p. 70.
85. Ibid., p. 8.
86. Paul Josef Goebbels, The Goebbels Diaries 1939-1941, foreword by John Keegan,
translated and edited by Fred Taylor (New York, Penguin Books, 1984), p. 304.
87. ‘Das Parteiprogramme’, in Vdlkischer Beobachter. Suddeutsche Aufgabe. Nr.56,
54.Jahrgang, 25 February 1941, S.2.
88. Ibid.
89. An excellent description of Dietl’s inspired defence of Narvik is to be found in
Telford Taylor, The March of Conquest, The German Victories in Western Europe, 1940
(New York, Simon and Schuster, 1958), pp. 128-9, 138-48.
90. Jay Baird, The Mythical World of Nazi War Propaganda. 1939-1945 (Minneapolis,
University of Minnesota Press, 1974), pp. 81-2.
91. For a good discussion of these actions see Taylor, The March of Conquest, pp.
210-14. The fall of Fort Eben Emael was responsible for the rapid retirement of the Belgian
army from its first line of defence. While this army was able to rally and to put up a
reasonably decent fight, it never fully recovered from the near rout occasioned by the fall
of its most modern fortress.
92. Baird, The Mythical World, p. 95-6.
93. Theodor Seibert, ‘Der Sowjetmensch’, in Vdlkischer Beobachter, Norddeutsche
Ausgabe, Nr.200, 54.Jahrgang, 19 Juli 1941, S.l.
94. Ibid., S.2.
95. Viktor Lutze, ‘Idealismus,’ in Vdlkischer Beobachter, Norddeutsche Ausgabe,
Nr.222, 54.Jahrgang, 10 August 1941, S.l. Emphasis is Lutze’s.
96. Gunter d’Alquen, ‘Die germanischen Kameraden’, in Vdlkischer Beobachter, Nord¬
deutsche Ausgabe, Nr.246 , 54.Jahrgang, 3 September 1941, S.6.
97. Wolfgang Willrich, Des Reiches Soldaten (Berlin, Verlag Grenze und Ausland,
 The National Socialist Religion in Power 115

1943), p. 9.
98. Ibid, p. 18.
99. Walther Troge, Feuer und Farbe: 155 Bilder vom Kriege (Wien, Wilhelm Frick
Verlag, 1943), no page number.
100. Adolf Hitler, ‘Der Dank des Fuhrer an Front und Heimat,’ in Volkischer
Beobachter, Norddeutsche Ausgabe, Nr.278, 54 Jahrgang, 5 Oktober 1941, S.4 Emphasis
is Hitler’s.
101. Ibid. Emphasis is Hitler’s.
102. Ibid. Emphasis is Hitler’s.
103. Paul Josef Goebbels, The Goebbels Diaries, 1942-1943, edited and translated
by Louis P. Lochner (New York, London, Hamish Hamilton, 1948), pp. 10-11.
104. Ibid., p. 105.
105. Ibid., p. 64.
106. Ibid., p. 65.
107. Goebbels-Redevi, Band II., 1940-1945, p. 107.
108. Ibid., p. 108.
109. Ibid.
110. Baird, The Mythical World, p. 177.
111. Ibid., p. 195-6.
112. Goebbels-Reden, p. 178. Emphasis is Goebbels’.
113. Ibid., p. 180. Emphasis is Goebbels’.
114. Ibid., p. 183. Emphasis is Goebbels’.
115. Ibid., p. 184.
116. Ibid., p. 203. Emphasis is Goebbels’.
117. Ibid., p. 205.
118. Ibid., p. 208, fn. 99.
119. Goebbels, Diaries, entry for 8 May 1943, pp. 278-9.
120. Ibid., p. 279.
121. Ibid., entry for 10 May 1943, p. 288.
122. ‘Mrs. Babbitt Versagt . . . Amerikas Frauen und Roosevelts Krieg’, in Volkischer
Beobachter, Norddeutsche Ausgabe, Nr. 104, 57.Jahrgang, 13 April 1944, S.3.
123. Ibid.
124. Rupp, Mobilizing Women, p. 188 ff, 136, Appendix; Stephenson, Women in Nazi
Society, pp. 186-8.
125. Untitled essay in Volkischer Beobachter, Norddeutsche Ausgabe, Nr. 196,
57.Jahrgang, 14 Juli 1944, S.6.
126. Ibid.
127. Dr. Dietrich Ahrens, ‘Die schwarze Flut’, in Volkischer Beobachter, Norddeutsche
Ausgabe, Nr.301, 57.Jahrgang, 3 November 1944, S.4.
128. Ibid.
129. ‘Er ist der Sieg!’, in Das Schwarze Korp, 16. Folge, 10. Jahrgang, 20 April 1944,
S. 1., in Helmut Heiber Hildegard von Kotze, Facsimile Querschnitt durch Das Schwarze
Korps, (Miinchen, Scherz, 1968), p. 196.
130. Ibid., pp. 196-7.
131. Ibid., p. 197.
132. This theme is discussed throughout Ian Kershaw, Der Hitler-Mythos: Volksmeinung
und Propaganda im Dritten Reich (Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1980). According
to the author, the most crucial element in the ‘Mythos,' was the identification of Hitler
with national rebirth (p. 63). The ‘Hitler Mythos’ was generally impervious to challenge
until late 1942-early 1943, roughly just before, during and after the Stalingrad disaster,
(p. 150).
133. Alfred Rosenberg, ‘In tiefer Verehrung’, in Volkischer Beobachter, Norddeutsche
Ausgabe, Nr. Ill, 57.Jahrgang, 20 April 1944, S.l.
134. Ibid., S.2.
116 The National Socialist Religion in Power

135. Paul Josef Goebbels, -Weihnachten-Fest der starken Herzen’, in Volkischer

Beobachter, Norddcutsche Ausgabe. Nr. 346/347, 57.Jahrgang. 26/27 Dezember, 1944,
S.2.
136. Paul Josef Goebbels. Final Entries 1945. edited, introduced, and annotated by
Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper; translated from the German by Richard Barry (New York,
Putnam, 1978), entry for 15 March 1945. p. 146.
137. Ibid., entry for 27 March 1945, p. 248.
138. Ibid.
139. Ibid., p. 247.
140. Ibid.
141. Ibid., pp. 250-1.
142. Ibid., p. 247.
143. Ibid., p. 253.
144. Ibid., p. 79.
145. Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs, translated from the German by
Richard and Clara Winston (New York, Macmillan, 1970), p. 440.
146. Hannah Arendt. The Origins of Totalitarianism. (New York, Harcourt. Brace,
Jovanovich, 1973), pp. 363-4.
 5 THE NATURAL, AUTHENTIC MAN AND THE
ROAD TO AUSCHWITZ

For Hitler, the National Socialist movement drew its strength ‘from a
complete and comprehensive recognition of the essential nature of life’.1
What was of ultimate, indeed chiliastic, significance was the emergence
of a new man, one totally in keeping with the laws of nature. ‘The new
man is among us’. Hitler proclaimed in 1934. ‘He is here! I will tell
you a secret. I have seen the vision of the new man — fearless and for¬
midable. I shrank from him.’2
As one might imagine, occultist panderers to the perplexed have made
a great deal of these lines. Accepting the fact that the career of the man
makes actual contact with the devil a moot point, we must recognise
that Hitler was sincerely convinced that he was offering people, or at
least Aryan people, a radically new approach to life, something which
must be described as a new religion. As we have seen, it was grounded
in a fundamental rebellion against the hoary Judaeo-Christian dichotomy
between man/God and nature. As could be expected, the Hitlerian em¬
phasis upon the ‘natural man’ found wide resonance among the party
faithful. Of prominence here, as we have seen, was the notion that the
National Socialist movement was itself rooted in a basic understanding
of certain natural laws. In this regard, it is of interest to note that, in
a 1936 address, the once liberal, now convinced Nazi philosopher and
educator Ernst Krieck, could declare that contradiction between the
sciences and the goals of the National Socialist state was precluded
because these ‘have been built up from practical knowledge of the . . .
laws of nature and history’.3
The Nazi claim to have grasped the concept of life ‘in its total width
and depth’ allowed National Socialists to declare openly that their move¬
ment was rooted in and, through grasping its essence, was the highest
moment of, a unified life, in which nothing could be perceived as dead,
or even inorganic. ‘There is no inorganic nature, there is no dead,
mechanical earth’, Ernst Krieck enthused. ‘The great mother has been
won back to life.’4 In grasping life in its totality, the National Socialists
naturally had grasped the ‘whole man’ as well. Traditional Judaeo-
Christian conceptions of man, which had fragmented him between body
and spirit, were to be overthrown and some National Socialist ideologues
even spoke of a new National Socialist medicine — quite homeopathic

117
118 Authentic Man and the Road to Auschwitz

in nature, it would appear — which would treat the whole man . At

the same time of course, the ‘whole man’ could become such only within
the ‘life-whole’ of the Volksgemeinschaft, where falsely assumed gaps
between nature and spirit could be bridged.6
The goal of the National Socialist movement was the creation of a
new human type, the natural man before whom Hitler said he shrank.
This was a being who was totally in harmony with a natural world of
which he, through understanding its totality, was the highest expression.
It is hardly overstating the case to point out that, whether or not, in his
heart of hearts, he really thought that he was such a man/god, and, as
we have seen, he claimed that he did not. Hitler was viewed as provid¬
ing at least a model or prototype for the sort of ‘natural man being con¬
scientiously and seriously cultivated in Himmler s SS.
In this extraordinary being, several of the most crucial elements of
the National Socialist religion came together. This creature was immortal;
not, of course, in the traditional, Judaeo-Christian sense, but because
of his or her (usually his, one gets the feeling) participation in the life
of a race which not only lived in perfect harmony with eternal natural
laws, but embodied these laws. As we have seen, Himmler had faith
in a sort of ‘race-karma’, and his beliefs in reincarnation obviously were
of a piece with these. Certainly, he was somewhat singular in his
adherence to mystical forms. Yet his own version of immortality was
merely a somewhat more exotic permutation of the, literally, ‘death-
defying’ credo of the National Socialist religion, a credo of which the
‘fearless new man’ was to be the ultimate expression. Of course, as in¬
dicated earlier, this existed in sharp counterpoint to the very real mor¬
bidity of the leading figures in the movement; something which bordered
on necrophilia, and which found expression in the actual symbol of the
SS itself. The other element central to National Socialist religiosity, anti¬
transcendence, was also central to the vision of the ‘new man.’ Obviously,
if this being not only lived in accordance with natural laws, i.e., the
‘laws of life’, but was their embodiment as well, he or she not only lived
in a sort of sublime stasis, but had to make certain that the rest of life
was brought into conformity with its underlying, unchanging laws. After
all, to live in accordance with these laws, to be, in effect, their embodi¬
ment, essentially meant living outside history.
This ‘new man’ or totally ‘natural man’, needed no extensive justifica¬
tion. He justified himself by virtue of his very existence. Out of this
there emerged the notion of National Socialist ‘authenticity’ (this was
a concept which could be found among Fascists in general, but we will
be focusing exclusively on National Socialism). It is here where what
 Authentic Man and the Road to Auschwitz 119

J. P. Stem called the politics of ‘Erlebnis’ came into play. Hitler was able

to translate the notions of genuineness and sincerity and living ex¬

perience (designated in German by the word ‘Erlebnis’ and its various
compounds) from the private and poetic sphere into the sphere of
public affairs and to validate this move by the claim that he, the ex¬
ceptional individual with his intimate personal experience of ‘the little
man’s weal and woe’, is the Nation’s representative by virtue of the
genuineness of that experience.7

Throughout one chapter. Stem continually emphasised the role of authen¬

ticity in Hitler’s appeal to the nation, at times suggesting that it served
the function of actually substituting for a ‘consistent ideology’ while it
served a ‘pseudo-religious’ purpose.8 In a very real sense, the author
implied, there was a variety of existentialism at work here, in which
‘authenticity, commitment and what, for want of a better word, we may
call personal truth’ had usurped traditional political values that previously
could be analysed in public, more-or-less ‘objective’ terms.9
It is perhaps parenthetical to our discussion, but, with regards to Nazi
emphasis upon authenticity, the issue arises of the obvious link between
Adolf Hitler (or any of his chosen minions) as the ‘authentic man’ and
Nazi ritualism. In her above-cited work, Mary Douglas posed the
ritualism of established religious and social systems against that ‘exalta¬
tion of the inner experience’ which emerges whenever such systems are
challenged.10 Here she made a most instructive point, something with
which Stem could only agree, that, for those in rebellion against establish¬
ed socio-religious forms (and, of course, attendant ritualistic patterns),
what matters is ‘a man’s inner convictions’.11 Clever or smooth use of
language is to be distrusted and, indeed, ‘incoherence is taken for a sign
of authenticity’.12 Of course, the author points out, those who rebel
against established ritual, whether they know it or not, will establish
ritualistic patterns of their own, ‘ritualisms of enthusiasm’ as she refer¬
red to them.13 With regard to National Socialism, it is obvious that its
‘natural’ (that is to say, secular) religion allowed for authenticity to find
immediate and self-conscious expression in a carefully contrived pat¬
tern of ritualism. What Stern described in his own work was a truly ex¬
traordinary utilisation of the notion of authenticity in which ritualism
defined itself in terms of the inner experience. At the same time, the
latter avoided solipsism through expression in forms pregnant with ex¬
istential content. Perhaps, one could maintain that, in providing a doc¬
trine in which transcendental concerns were irrelevant or superfluous,
the Nazis, through their self-justifying ‘authentic’ religion of nature, in
120 Authentic Man and the Road to Auschwitz

fact alleviated ritualism through infusing ritual and symbol with that
authenticity which was ipso facto inner experience.
In any case, Professor Stern has touched upon an issue that is of crucial
importance in understanding the nature of National Socialism. While there
might well be very good reasons for bringing in the question of existen¬
tialism’s role in the emergence of National Socialism’s concepts of
authenticity — particularly inasmuch as Martin Heidegger had found it
initially quite easy to reconcile his variety of existentialism with Nazi
goals — it is the feeling of this author that the emphasis upon authentic¬
ity came directly out of the Nazi natural religion. Through the Nazi merg¬
ing of nature and spirit — the aforementioned Alles ist Leben concept
is of central importance here — there could be no question but that all
acts undertaken by Hitler in particular and the National Socialist leader¬
ship is general had to be essentially authentic. It would be a violation
of natural laws even to suggest that they could be false. All National
Socialist actions, from the invasion of Poland to the extermination of
the Jews, and finally, to Hitler’s orders to Speer that all of Germany
be razed so that nothing of value could survive her collapse (presumably
according to the National Socialist ideology, nothing of value would have
been left anyway, since Germany had been defeated), were endowed
with authenticity through virtue of their having occurred in the first place.
To deny their authenticity would have been tantamount ot denying the
validity of the laws of thermodynamics. The person who lives in har¬
mony with, or better, embodies the laws of nature (and. in the end. these
have to be one and the same), is authentic and, necessarily, all of his
actions must be as well.
It was in large measure the National Socialist claim to authenticity
that seemed to fascinate C. G. Jung. In his famous ‘Wotan’ essay of
1936, one in which he stated that a natural demiurge in the symbolic
form of Wotan was confronting a rather superficial Christianity in Ger¬
many, he made the following engaging statement:

We thus pay our silent tribute to the Germanic time of storm and stress,
but, we never mention it, which makes us feel superior. Yet it is the
German who has the best chance to learn, in fact he has an oppor¬
tunity which is perhaps unique in history. He is expressing the perils
of the soul from which Christianity tried to rescue mankind, and he
can learn to realize the nature of these perils in his own innermost
heart.14

Here Jung was not suggesting that he was about to lend unqualified sup¬
port to the National Socialist movement. Rather, he was stating that.
 Authentic Man and the Road to Auschwitz 121

because of the awesome issues involved in the confrontation between

National Socialism — ‘Wotan’, if you wish — and Christianity, the Ger¬
mans who were enduring this confrontation were somehow more authen¬
tic, more attuned to certain perils in their ‘innermost heart[s]\ It is
difficult to tell, at this point, just what Jung means by ‘perils’, i.e.,
whether one was to view them positively or negatively. As is so often
the case, unfortunately, his tortured mysticism is opaque enough to vir¬
tually obscure what he had in mind. One thing is certain however: Jung
viewed the National Socialist phenomenon as representing an outburst
of psychic authenticity, one that somehow elevated the Germanic peo¬
ple above their more jaded neighbours. National Socialism might well
have been persecuting Jews, and Christians, for that matter. In his
‘Wotan’ essay, Jung was quite straightforward in acknowledging that.15
He made no judgment on this however, and the reader cannot help but
feel that, at least in 1936, such issues were not very important for him.
In any case, what really seemed to matter for Jung was the authentic
spirituality that National Socialism seemed to have aroused in the Ger¬
man people, a spirituality that, in the end, might dictate that ‘Wotan’
overthrow Christ, albeit perhaps temporarily.
Authenticity could be observed as being expressed in the mysticism
of the deed, something that had to have been a logical corollary of the
National Socialist natural religion. It is here, perhaps, that one can con¬
sider the point raised by J. P. Stern, viz., that National Socialism
represented a crude variety of existentialism. In a situation in which spirit
and matter are viewed as one, without the guiding force of an Hegelian-
variety teleology, those presumably rooted in ‘laws of life’ had to be
judged according to their actions, i.e., the degree to which their actions
conformed to those principles discovered by the National Socialist leader¬
ship. Presumably, the latter, as pointed out above, were always authen¬
tic by virtue of being what they were. This enabled the leadership to
proffer a new variety of ‘socialism,’ presumably to demonstrate that the
term ‘National Socialism’ had not been partially drained of meaning
through primary emphasis upon racial policies. Thus, in a speech of 19
November 1938, Goebbels declared that the ‘socialism’ of National
Socialist Germany was not one of theory and programs, but ‘clear,
realistic socialist action .16 Accomplishments, not theories, defined the
character of this socialism. The same theme is discernable in Goebbels’
10 October 1939 speech concerned with the National Socialistic
Winterhilfe campaign. Winterhilfe achievements ‘were demonstrative
signs of the social solidarity of our German people’, he proclaimed. This
was true socialism, socialism of the deed.17
122 Authentic Man and the Road to Auschwitz

Informing this approach to socialism, one which obviously had strong

pragmatic overtones, was the National Socialist claim upon authentic¬
ity. What was authentic was National Socialist action; unauthentic was
anything that ran counter to it. In a speech of 3 October 1944, to the
leaders of Gaue Koln-Aachen, Goebbels, obviously under somewhat of
a strain, came down especially hard upon the notion that National
Socialism lived through deeds, through action.18 Here, he made the in¬
teresting observation that the Soviets did not collapse before Moscow
in December 1941 because they thought that they could hold out; on
the other hand, because the Germans did not think that they could fight
there in such cold, they fled.19 Parenthetically, one is tempted to ask
if Goebbels was suggesting that the Soviets be made honorary National
Socialists. As was to be expected, wartime stresses had compelled him
to emphasise the relationship between the National Socialist ideology,
authentic to the core, and those actions which, if successful, were the
ideology in action. Failure, such as that before Moscow in 1941, could
only be testimony to an unauthenticity that ran counter to National
Socialism. In any case, one must note that the Gaue representatives ad¬
dressed on 3 October 1944, must have been unauthentic in the end because
Aachen fell to the American First Army on 21 October 1944. Thus, those
aspects of the Nazi religion of nature which emphasised authenticity ran
into the same problems as those aspects which emphasised the identifica¬
tion of nature and spirit.
This speech was, however, written in 1944, at a time in which a
Weltanschauung which emphasised the authenticity of all actions rooted
in this radical identification of spirit and nature — a corollary of which,
as we have seen, had to have been a crudely pragmatic view of events
as self-justifying — must have found itself in trouble. During the salad
years of National Socialism’s coming to power and the triumphs which
followed this, the political and social power of such a Weltanschauung
was extraordinary. More important, though, is the fact that the Nazi con¬
cern with unleashing or creating the ’natural, authentic man’ was rooted
in certain fundamental and thoroughly understandable (if not always ra¬
tional) human desires. The wish to live in close harmony with nature
(to live authentically) and revulsion against the admittedly often alienating
life-patterns of urban existence — these are phenomena extant throughout
a Western world increasingly uncomfortable with the problems atten¬
dant upon first mechanised, and now automated, societies. Taken but
slightly out of context, many of the statements of Nazis quoted in this
work would be applauded by the average, somewhat unreflective, en¬
vironmentalist. Before too many parallels can be drawn between Nazi
 Authentic Man and the Road to Auschwitz 123

and more contemporary concerns with the natural man, a substantive,

and perhaps decisive, difference must be pointed out, viz., that the Na¬
tional Socialists chose to view at least one group of people, the Jews,
as at best existing at a level of nature so low as to be comparable with
disease-bearing germs, or even as being essentially outside of nature.
Here we do have occasional variations in the Nazi Weltanschauung.
Two hundred years of cultural and social conditioning and more recent
economic developments had in large measure determined who the enemy
of ‘natural man’ would be. There was little argument about that. Most
Nazis, however, chose to include the Jew within the realm of nature,
albeit at the very low level described above, while others sought to banish
the Jew altogether from the natural world. As an example of the first
approach, we can consider a 22 April 1936 article published by Him¬
mler in SS Leitheft, ‘Why will there be Training about the Jewish pro¬
blem?’ (‘Warum wird liber das Judenproblem geschult?’) ‘The Jew’,
Himmler declared, ‘is a parasite which, like the parasites of the animals
and plant world, lives from the strengths and productive labour of host
peoples. The Jew is the blood-sucker of the world.’20 The same view¬
point was expressed by Goebbels in a 15 November 1938 article in the
Volkischer Beobachter, where he attempted to explain to Reuters corres¬
pondents the rationale for post-Kristalnacht anti-Jewish measures.
Germans, he said, were mainly interested in getting the Jews out of the
country. A population of 80 million was rebelling against the provoca¬
tions of 600,000 Jews. This was not civil war[!], Goebbels declared,
‘but a people’s reckoning with its parasites’.21 Walter Darre, Reich Pea¬
sant Leader and, until 1942, minister of agriculture, provided an ingen¬
uous rural application of this concept in his explaining why the unwhole¬
some Jewish race had been able to flourish on good German soil. Even
the best soil, he pointed out, can support weeds (Unkraut), and the con¬
scientious farmer had to weed his fields in order to take care of this pro¬
blem. Thus, ‘in the peasant sense’, the Jewish laws served this purpose
in that they ‘free us from the weeds of Jewish blood’.22 The agricultural
expert might well have been engaging in word-play here, because Unkraut
can also mean parasites when the word is applied to humans.
A very common image of the Jew was that of being a disease. Uses
of this image were legion; a few examples will suffice. The 22 December
1941 issue of the Volkischer Beobachter contained a speech given by
Alfred Rosenberg on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the death
of the nineteenth century Geman racist Paul de Lagarde. He praised
Lagarde for combatting Jewish emancipation and for recognising that
Jews had only a negative role to play in Germany. With approval, he
124 Authentic Man and the Road to Auschwitz

quoted his famous statement: ‘One does not negotiate with trichina and
bacillus . . . They will be annihilated as quickly and as thoroughly as
possible.’23 This opinion would no doubt have met with the approval
of Supreme Party Judge Walther Buch. who made the following obser¬
vation:

The Jew is not a human being. He is an appearance of putrescence.

Just as the fission-fungus cannot permeate wood until it is rotting,
so the Jew was able to creep into the German people, to bring on
disaster, only after the German nation, weakened by the loss of blood
in the Thirty Years’ War, had begun to rot from within.24

Hitler himself while, as we shall see. at times tending to exclude the

Jews from the world of nature altogether, also utilised the disease concept.

The discovery of the Jewish virus is one of the greatests revolutions

that have taken place in the world. The battle in which we are engag¬
ed today is of the same sort as the battle waged during the last cen¬
tury by Pasteur and Koch. How many diseases have their origin in
the Jewish virus!25

On at least two occasions. Hitler excoriated those German bourgeois

who expressed dismay at the expelling of Jews and the sending of them
to the east. Jews, he said, had ‘accomplices all over the world' and could
adapt to any place, any climate. 'Jews can prosper anywhere, even in
Lapland and Siberia.’26 The bourgeoisie did not realise that the ‘Jew
is a parasite and as such is the only human being capable of adapting
himself to any climate and of earning a living just as well in Lapland
as in the tropics’.27 In Hitler’s comments in particular, one can notice
what Lucy Davidowicz has called two contradictory images of the Jew\
He was at once vermin and a ‘mythic omnipotent super-adversary' against
whom war was necessary.28 The images are not contradictory if we bear
in mind that the Jews were being placed w ithin the context of a natural
world of which Aryan man, as apotheosised in the National Socialist
movement, was the highest possible expression.
The Jewish enemy here had been included in the world of nature,
but at so low a level as to preclude his positive participation in the sanc¬
tified activities of those men able to live in conscious harmony with the
laws of life. Indeed, as we have seen, this enemy of natural man was
perceived as being part of the natural only as a disease or parasite might
be, i.e., as some sort of negative regulating mechanism. Such a being
could also serve to pervert normal, healthy instincts. Darre, as did so
 Authentic Man and the Road to Auschwitz 125

many other Nazi ideologues, looked longingly to the German past. In

this case, he discovered that the ancient, pre-Christian Germans were
unashamed of nakedness. This was all to the good, Darre maintained.
People should be uninhibited and proud of their naked bodies. However,
Christianity brought in a sense of shame, while the materialistic Jews
made life sexual and shameful. Nakedness, used in an exploitative man¬
ner, became part of the work of Jewish decomposition. ‘Jewish desecra¬
tion of German women corresponded to the witch-persecutions of the
Church; both have a common spiritual father — Jahwe!’29 Here the Jew,
functioning at the very lowest level of life, had been linked to a God
divorced from nature and devoid of life. Thus, in the Alles ist Leben
world view of the Nazis, there were two realms: (1) a higher, nobler
one, in which men lived in honest harmony with nature and themselves,
and (2) a lower (or just low) realm, inhabited by parasites, human and
otherwise.
In their pantheistic Lebensphilosophie, described in the first portion
of this study, the Nazis had sought to infuse a, to them, secularised and
disenchanted world (to use Dr. Richard Rubenstein’s expressions) with
a new sense of mystery and enchantment. The elevation of nature to the
position of divinity, and the setting apart of a portion of humanity as
being, at least partially more natural than others, allowed genuine nature
mystics to pursue the most ruthless of policies in dealing with beings
of a low order. Hence, sensitive souls like Himmler, for whom every
aspect of the natural world throbbed with sacred mystery, could pursue
a policy very much in keeping with the coldest and yet ‘fairest’ of natural
laws: that the weak or degenerate must perish. As Rubenstein has pointed
out, ‘In nature men have the same rights as flies, mosquitoes or beasts
of prey.’30 As opposed to ‘an urban civilisation developed from Jewish
liberalism’, the Nazis posited a remystified world whose eternal tensions
and rhythms pulsed in the veins of the chosen.31 Nature herself, acting
through the agencies of those living in harmony with her, would defend
this world by purging it of the unclean.
As indicated above, there were some who chose to place the Jew out¬
side the natural realm altogether. Probably the most straightforward, to
say nothing of being the most important, of these individuals was Hitler
himself. In Mein Kampf, he made the following comment regarding Jews:
‘Their whole existence is an embodied protest against the aesthetics of
the Lord’s image.’32 Here, of course. Hitler was stating that the Jews,
so hideous in appearance as to preclude their being made in God’s image,
were not really human, a point which had been underscored in the pos¬
ing of ‘Aryan art’ against ‘Degenerate Art’ in 1937. Implicit in this
126 Authentic Man and the Road to Auschwitz

was the idea that what was not ‘human’ could not be natural. In an ex¬
traordinary 1934 conversation with Herman Rauschning, Hitler carried
this further. The Jew, he declared, was part of the world of Satan. ‘The
Jew’, he said ‘is the anti-man. the creature of another god. He must have
come from another root of the human race.’ The Jew and the Aryan were
thus set one against the other. Since the Aryan was called human being ,
the Jew had to be given some sort of name. ‘The two are as widely
separated as man and beast. Not that I would call the Jew a beast. He
is much further from the beasts than we Aryans. He is a creature out¬
side nature and alien to nature.’33 In a very real sense. Hitler was being
rather more consistent than many of his followers. We have seen the
‘natural man’ as this being was conceived of by major Nazi ideologues.
Hitler included. The opponents of so noble a creature worshipped an
alien god, one divorced from life. Jahwe was the god of the wasteland,
ideally suited for people who were utterly divorced from the natural
world; for people who, during the course of history, had become in¬
creasingly identified with the lifeless, soulless, city. For reasons known
only to divine nature, these people had been given approximately human
form. Since they were divorced from life-giving nature, however, and
hence from the laws of life itself, it was only this form. this external
husk that allowed one to call them ‘human’.
There can be little doubt that, while most Nazis usually ‘allowed’ the
Jew to participate in nature at the lowest possible level, the image of
the Jew as utterly alien to nature also entered into the picture from time
to time. This could help to explain why someone like Himmler, who
loved defenceless animals, could engage in policies of mass extermina¬
tion. As Josef Ackerman has said, the qualities of love for animals and
contempt for human life often go together.34 The Jew as an unnatural,
a/j//-natural being who willfully inflicts pain upon creatures of nature,
can be seen in a review of ‘The Eternal Jew’, which appeared in the
Volkischer Beobachter on 9 December 1938. The review ended with a
condemnation of Jewish ritual slaughter of animals. Emphasised here
was the ‘brutality’ of the Jews, who did not allow the animals to be stun¬
ned before they were slaughtered. Such practices were unthinkable in
National Socialist Germany.35 In this context, the Jew is made to ap¬
pear utterly life-alien, unnatural, below the level of existence attained
by those creatures so cruelly slaughtered by him. Within the context of
a confrontation between ‘natural man’ and unnatural humanoid, the at
first seemingly curious combination of love of animals and contempt for
certain humans becomes, on reflection, not so curious.
From what we have seen above, it would be almost logical that
 Authentic Man and the Road to Auschwitz 127

authentic, natural men were driven to wage war upon beings, or anti¬
beings, who existed at the lowest level of natural life or, as Hitler once
suggested, were outside the realm of nature altogether. Indeed, in his
speech of 30 January 1939 Hitler prophesied that if there were to be
any European war — one no doubt instigated by the Jews — then it would
see ‘the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe’. According to Lucy
Davidowicz, this was Hitler’s ‘declaration of war against the Jews’.36
In this regard, Eberhard Jackel has offered a most interesting observa¬
tion. Hitler, when he referred to his statement regarding the annihila¬
tion of the Jews, recalled that he had made it on 1 September 1939 —
in other words, when Poland was invaded. This error offers conclusive
proof, Jackel has maintained, that Hitler identified the war itself with
the Jews.37 There is little doubt that such was the case. The very tenor
of the National Socialist religion called for such a conflict. Eventually,
nature-bound, authentic men had to confront and annihilate a deracinated
pestilence whose very existence represented a threat to life itself.
To be sure, in recent years, a controversy has developed between
those who maintain that policies of extermination emerged quite logically
from the Nazi ideology as a whole, or at least Hitler in particular, and
others who suggest that what policies there were emerged in an almost
ad hoc manner, as harassed and confused SS leaders, caught between
ideological demands and demographic and military necessities, took ac¬
tions into their own hands; actions which, over time, tended to coalesce
into a general policy. Hitler, it has been argued, might well have ap¬
proved of this policy once it did emerge; but neither he nor the National
Socialist leadership in general was responsible for its being implemented
in the first place. Tim Mason has dubbed those who believe in a direct
link between Hitlerian ideology and the policies of extermination ‘in-
tentionalists’, and those who view such policies as emerging in a sort
of ad hoc manner, ‘functionalists’, and these labels have now come into
general use. In my opinion, Gerald Fleming, in his work, Hitler and
the Final Solution, has succeeded in establishing the fact that, even if
there was no written order for the extermination which can be traced
to Hitler, the role of the Fiihrer in establishing such policies was cen¬
tral, and that it remained so up to the end of the war.38 In any case,
it should be obvious that the author thinks that the National Socialist
religion of nature described in this work not only implicitly provided
for extermination policies as a ‘final solution’, but, in fact made them
logically and, above all, ethically necessary. Especially as Germany found
itself in a situation of total war, those ‘enemies of life’ perversely held
responsible for the situation could and had to suffer the fate promised
128 Authentic Man and the Road to Auschwitz

them by Hitler, even if tactical considerations and moral cowardice dic¬

tated that he could not allow himself to be linked with such action in
the public eye.
On 12 November 1941, an article entitled The Jewish Enemy’(‘Die
jiidische Feind ) appeared in the Volkischer Beobachter. The author of
this article, Seibert (probably Theodor Seibert, the first name was not
provided) stated that when the German armies were fighting the English
and the French, one could sense something human in these opponents.
Now, however, with the struggle against Bolshevism and ‘Rooseveltism’,
two phenomena of international Jewry, what was involved was the sim¬
ple act of self-preservation against a foe who was an ‘enemy of life’.39
‘The war against the Jewish International’, Seibert proclaimed, ‘is
a life and death struggle which must be and will be ruthlessly pursued
unto the end’.40 Less than a month later. Dr. Goebbels himself confronted
the issue of the war against the Jews. The Jewish question, he declared,
was one ‘which cannot be confronted with sentimentality, but in clear
recognition of the historical guilt which Jewry has heaped upon itself.41
Goebbels recalled the 30 January 1939 speech of Hitler, in which an¬
nihilation of the Jews was predicted if Europe were to be engulfed in
war. Now, with war raging, one could no longer shrink from the conse¬
quences.42
Einsatzgruppen actions, i.e., the mass executions of Jews and others
condemned by the ‘laws of life’, had been under way since the invasion
of the Soviet Union. With the conclusion of the Wannsee Conference
in January 1942, these actions were rationalised and became the basis
for yet more systematic policies. In some of Goebbels’ diary entries of
February and March 1942, we can observe the emotional writhings of
one who was attempting to face the consequences of this without ‘sen¬
timentality’. On 14 February 1942, Goebbels recorded his views on the
catastrophe world Jewry would suffer along with the Bolsheviks. Hitler
had expressed his desire on this score. ‘There must be no squeamish
sentimentalism about it. The Jews have deserved the catastrophe that
has now overtaken them.’43 On 18 February 1942, after seeing the film
The Dybuk, Goebbels made the following entry:

Looking at this film I realised once again that the Jewish race is the
most dangerous on the face of the earth, and that we must show them
no mercy and no indulgence. This riffraff must be eliminated and
destroyed. Otherwise, it won’t be possible to bring peace to the
world.44

By 7 March 1942, Goebbels had convinced himself of the absolute

 Authentic Man and the Road to Auschwitz 129

necessity of what was occurring around him.

The situation is now ripe for a final settlement of the Jewish ques¬
tion. Later generations will no longer have either the willpower or
the instinctive alertness. That is why we are doing good work in pro¬
ceeding radically and consistently. The task we are assuming today
will be an advantage and a boon to our descendants.45

Events in Poland proceeded apace:

Beginning with Lublin, the Jews under the General Govenment are
now being evacuated eastward. The procedure is pretty barbaric and
is not to be described here more definitely. Not much will remain
of the Jews. About 60 per cent of them will have to be liquidated;
only about 40 per cent can be used for forced labour.46

All of this was justified because what was involved was ‘a life-and-death
struggle between Aryan race and the Jewish bacillus’.47
In these entries, one can observe a most interesting progression with
regard to attitudes towards the Jews. One starts out with a ‘dangerous’
race, and ends up with a ‘bacillus’. Naturally, in public statements, Goeb-
bels had had to keep pace with the strident statements and demands of
Hitler and the SS. Of course, there had always been an aspect of Goeb-
bel’s psyche that was fully committed to radical measures against the
Jews. With the reality of extermination, however, it became necessary
for him to gird himself fully in the National Socialist belief that Jews
were not ‘merely’ subhuman ‘parasites’, but in fact an abstract sort of
plague, one which, none the less, had assumed embarrassingly human
form.
A person who had to face the question of annihilating the enemies
of life more directly was Heinrich Himmler. It is in this incredibly strange
man, a combination of mystical, nature-worshipping Schwarmerei and
intense, bureaucratic coldness, that one can observe the apotheosis of
that pernicious yet genuinely-sensed idealism which was summoned forth
by the National Socialist religion in its ‘finest’ hour. Because of the ex¬
traordinary significance of Himmler’s well known 6 October 1943 ad¬
dress to SS leaders on the Jewish question, this will be quoted at length.

The sentence, ‘The Jews must be exterminated’, with its few words,
gentlemen, is easily expressed. For those who must carry out what
it demands it is the hardest and most difficult there is. You see, natural¬
ly, that they are Jews; it is quite clear, they are only Jews. If you
consider however, how many — even party comrades — have sent
130 Authentic Man and the Road to Auschwitz

either to me or to some other such post, their notorious petition in

which it says that all Jews naturally are swine; that, however, so-
and-so is a really decent Jew to whom one need not do anything .
. . In Germany, we thus have so many millions of people who have
their famous decent Jews, that this number is already greater than
the number of Jews.48

Obviously, with regards to the Jewish exterminations, there could be

no exceptions. But, one could ask — and probably a great many SS men
did — how about women and children? Himmler was unequivocal.

I have decided to find a complete clear solution even here. I do not

consider myself justified to exterminate the men — that is, to slay
or to have [them] slain — and to allow avengers in the form of children
to wax large for our sons and grandsons. The heavy decision to have
these people disappear from the earth must be grasped. For the
organisation that must attend to this, this task was the heaviest that
we have had thus far. It has been carried out without — as I believe
I am able to say — our men and leader having suffered damage to
spirit and soul. This danger is quite close. The path between both
possibilities that here exist — either to become too brutal, to become
heartless and no longer respect human life, or to become soft and
muddled to the point of nervous breakdown — the path between this
Scylla and Charybdis is frightfully narrow.49

Naturally, the SS was not to profit from the exterminations. Nothing

was to be stolen from the Jews. Such, generally, had not been done,
at least according to Himmler, and he went on to praise the SS for assum¬
ing the responsibility for the exterminations, ‘and then taking the secret
with us to our graves’.50
In these inelegant lines, the spectacled, weak-chinned Reichsfiihrer
— everybody’s perfect bureaucrat — made his own indelible contribu¬
tion to twentieth century Western culture. In destroying the Jews — who,
at one point, he did refer to as ‘people’ — one must not ‘become heartless
and no longer respect human life’. What was obviously at stake here
was the destruction of things, unnatural beings utterly remote from the
proverbial fallen sparrow or the lilies of the field, for that matter. For
Himmler, the worshipper of nature, man was nothing special. The SS,
on the other hand, was, and it was a tribute to their humanity that killing
things which somehow had succeeded in attaining human form did not
come easily. Such killings ought not to be done enthusiastically, much
 Authentic Man and the Road to Auschwitz 131

less with sadistic relish. In the case of an SS-Untersturmfiihrer who, on

his own initiative and with his own hands — and with great hideousness
— killed hundreds of Jews, severe punishment was called for since, in
being driven by a ‘true hatred of the Jews’, he had damaged the order
and discipline of his men.51 After all, ‘It is not in the German manner
to employ Bolshevik methods in the necessary annihilation of the worst
enemy of our people.’52
For Himmler, probably in many ways more of a ‘biological mystic’
than even his Fiihrer, the National Socialist Weltanschauung was not
sullied by painful but necessary actions against an unnatural enemy.

As far as anti-Semitism is concerned, it is exactly the same as with

delousing. No question of Weltanschauung is involved in removing
lice. It is a matter of cleanliness. Exactly has anti-Semitism been for
us no question of Weltanschauung, but of cleanliness . . . Soon we
will be deloused.53

To this one must offer the caveat that ‘delousing’ was, at the very least,
called for by the guiding principles of the Weltanschauung. None the
less, Himmler had no doubt convinced himself that for ‘natural men’,
operating not even according to, but as the embodiment of, new religious
principles, cruelty even to lice should be avoided. Actions such as those
involved in the ‘Final Solution’ required the idealistic young SS war¬
riors to negate a substantial portion of their emotional heritage. As Hans
Buchheim has pointed out, however, for idealists of the SS stamp, ethics
dictated ‘that the value of the moral act lies primarily in the amount of
self-abnegation involved’.54 The other side of this abnegation was a
‘moral subjectivism’ which, in a perversely Kantian manner, ‘finds its
satisfaction in the purity of its intentions but does not consider the ef¬
fects of its activities as a question of conscience’.55 One has undertaken
hideous actions for pure, good motives, and that is all that matters. For
the SS man thoroughly imbued with the National Socialist
Weltanschauung, could any motive be more noble than preserving a
sacred natural order from pestilence?
We have noted how the pragmatism inherent in the National Socialist
religion of nature was undone by military reverses and, eventually, by
crushing defeat. In one area, though, events appeared to confirm the
necessity for the ‘Final Solution’. Jewish behaviour, in Nazi eyes, came
more and more to conform to the archetype of the unnatural being. Rudolf
Hoss, commandant of Auschwitz, expressed horror at the behaviour of
the Sonderkommando, the so-called ‘special detachments’, composed
almost entirely of Jews, whose job it was to take the bodies from the
132 Authentic Man and the Road to Auschwitz

gas chambers, pull out the gold teeth and cut off hair, and then to take
the corpses to the crematoria.

They carried out all these tasks with a callous indifference as though
it were all part of an ordinary day’s work. While they dragged the
corpses about, they ate or they smoked. They did not stop eating even
when engaged on the grisly job of burning corpses which had been
lying for some time in mass graves.

It happened repeatedly that Jews of the Special Detachment would

come upon the bodies of close relatives among the corpses, and even
among the living as they entered the gas chambers. They were ob¬
viously affected by this, but it never led to any incident.56

This behaviour shocked Hoss, who concluded thus: ‘The Jews' way of
living and of dying was a true riddle which I never managed to solve."
As would any decent SS man, Hoss recovered from harrowing scenes
by turning to nature. ‘I would mount my horse and ride, until I had chased
the terrible picture away. Often, at night, I would walk through the stables
and seek relief among my beloved animals.’58
In a truly marvellous way, something which, even in his most repen¬
tant moments,seems to have been overlooked by Hoss, the National
Socialists had succeeded in creating that which they knew existed all
along. Through degradation, humiliation, torture, and total dehumanisa¬
tion, they had created the nonhuman, in fact, non-natural Jewish enemy,
seemingly incapable of feeling those normal, human emotions that were
characteristics of those decent folk engaged in annihilating them. The
prosaic realities of military action — numerical superiority, the superior
performance of the Spitfire or P-51 Mustang fighter or the T-34 tank
— could undo the success-dependent pragmatism of National Socialism
in battle. With an utterly helpless, captive mass, one rendered incapable
of significant resistance by the conditioning of recent history, it was ex¬
traordinarily easy to provide those circumstances in which hypothesis
and reality became intertwined in obscene praxis.
Reflection will reveal the fact that, with the possible exception of the
Fiihrer himself — and even he did not dare to put down in writing the
order for the final solution — National Socialist leaders evidenced uncer¬
tainty and, at times, spiritual confusion, when confronted with the
monumental task of annihilating an entire people, condemned on the basis
of a new religion which, like older ones, required that a leap of faith
be made. As we have seen, even Himmler could backslide and, in the
 Authentic Man and the Road to Auschwitz 133

midst of a racist diatribe, refer to the enemy as ‘people.’

One cannot gainsay the singular fact however that Nazism, part and
parcel of a deepseated and genuine rebellion against an increasingly
demythologised world, provides us with a disturbing example of how
the coldest of modern technological devices and services could be utilis¬
ed by political mystics, individuals who sincerely believed that they were
providing those conditions necessary for the emergence of that natural
man in whom the highest of life’s forces would be actualised.
In his introduction to Gerald Fleming’s Hitler and the Final Solu¬
tion, Saul Friedlander talks of ‘the historian’s paralysis’ in dealing with
the Holocaust. This

comes from the simultaneity and the interaction of entirely

heterogeneous phenomena: messianic fanaticism and bureaucratic
structures, pathological impulses and adminstrative decrees, archaic
attitudes and advanced industrial society.59

‘Paralysis’ is perhaps laudable when one is forced to confront, perhaps

even attempt to explain, the unspeakable. Yet, this ‘paralysis’ can be
‘cured’ — and how terrible that word sounds — when one bears in mind
that the ‘messianic fanaticism’ that drove dedicated National Socialists
to shoot, bludgeon and gas millions of human beings, most of them
poignantly unheroic souls who wished only to live, was the expression
of a religion of nature emerging from and consonant with the needs of
a modern age perceived of as being unhappily devoid of life-sustaining
myths. In such circumstances, ‘pathological impulses’ and ‘archaic at¬
titudes’ had to find articulation in ‘bureaucratic structures’ and ‘ad¬
ministrative decrees’. After all, these were the idiom of any ‘advanced
industrial society’. In a way, it is commendable that historians choose
not to believe that ideas can shape reality; and, in all those ways amenable
to ‘scientific’ analysis, they do not and never have. Yet, however ill-
conceived (in every sense of the word) ideas can be, the victories achieved
by National Socialism in its most successful war testify to the hideous
possibilities open to those who act as if they not only can, but must, do so.
However weak and inconsistent the natural-religion-grounded
Weltanschauung appears when it is subject to reason-informed scrutiny,
the Nazis were convinced that they had succeeded in fusing the realms
of nature and spirit, that the product of this fusion was or would be
natural, Aryan man, and that the process of reinforming a decadent,
bourgeois world with a new nature-Mythus necessitated extermination
of those whose very existence was an insult to the laws of life. It was
134 Authentic Man and the Road to Auschwitz

no accident that the most successful purveyors of political mysticism to

date provided that the last sight which greeted those who were to be ex¬
terminated, before they confronted the expression which crowned the
gate to Auschwitz, ‘Arbeit macht frei’, was that of a large tree, striking
in its luxuriance.

Notes

1. Hermann Rauschning, Hitler Speaks: A Series of Political Come nations with Adolph
Hitler on His Real Aims (London, Heinemann, 1939), p. 243.
2. Ibid.
3. Das Nationalsozialistische Deutschland und die Wissenschaft: Heidelberger Reden
von Reichsminister Rust und Prof. Ernst Krieck, (Hamburg, Carl Winter Verlag, 1936),
p. 22.
4. Ernst Krieck, p. 23. The ‘great mother’ referred to here is. of course, the Great
Earth Mother, a divinity who currently is being exhumed by cultists the world over.
5. As an example of this see Ernst Krieck, Wissenschaft. Weltanschauung,
Hochschulreform (Leipzig, Armanen Verlag, 1934). pp. 30-4.
6. Ibid., p. 35.
7. J. P. Stem, Hitler: The Fuhrerand the People (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University
of California Press, 1975), p. 24.
8. Ibid., p. 26.
9. Ibid., p. 44.
10. Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology (New York. Pan¬
theon, 1970), p. 19.
11. Ibid., p. 51.
12. Ibid., p. 52.
13. Ibid., p. 154.
14. C. G. Jung, ‘Wotan,’ first published in Neue Schweizer Rundschau (Neue Folge,
iii Jahrgang, Heft II) March 1936, in C. G. Jung, Essays on Contemporary Esents. translated
from the German by Elizabeth Welch, Barbara Hannah and Mary Brines (London. K.
Paul, 1947), p. 9.
15. Ibid., p. 1.
16. Paul Josef Goebbels, Goebbels-Reden, Band I: 1932-1939, herausgegeben von
Helmut Heiber (Diisseldorf, Droste Verlag, 1971), p. 324. Emphasis is Goebbels’.
17. Ibid., Band II, 1972: 1939-1945, p. 1.
18. Ibid., p. 411.
19. Ibid., p. 416.
20. Josef Ackerman, Himmler als Ideologe (Gottingen, Musterschmidt, 1970), p. 159.
21. Joseph Goebbels, ‘Reinliche Scheidung zwischen Deutschen und Juden’, in
Volkischer Beobachter, Berliner Ausgabe, Nr. 319, 51.Jahrgang, 15 November 1938, p. 7.
22. R. Walter Darre, Neuordnung unseres Denkens (Goslar, Goslarer Volksbucherei,
1940), p. 16. The weed image was an important one for Darre. An early example of this
can be found in a 1930 work, translated as A New Aristocracy Based on Bltxtd and Soil.
An excerpt from this is available in Barbara Miller Lane and Leila J. Rupp (eds.), Nazi
Ideology before 1933: A Documentation (Austin and London, University of Texas Press,
1978). See p. 115 in particular. Darrd was replaced as Minister of Agriculture in 1942
by Herbert Backe. While his approach to the ‘Jewish problem’ was certainly represen¬
tative of the movement as a whole, Darrd came to be viewed as ‘impractical’ with regard
to agricultural problems. In this context, his application of Blood and Soil’ principles
 Authentic Man and the Road to Auschwitz 135

caused him to be criticised as too theoretical. See J.E. Farquharson, The Plough and the
Swastika, the NSDAP and Agriculture in Germany 1928, 1945 (London and Beverly Hills,
Sage, 1976), pp. 246-8.
23. Alfred Rosenberg, ‘Rosenberg sprach iiber Lagarde’, in Volkischer Beobachter,
Norddeutsche Ausgabe, Nr. 356, 54.Jahrgang, 22 December 1941, S.3.
24. Walter Buch on the ideas of German honour, in Deutsche Justiz, 21 October 1938,
in George L. Mosse (ed.), Nazi Culture (New York, Grosset and Dunlap, 1966). pp. 336-7.
25. Adolf Hitler, Secret Conversations 1941-1944. With an introductory essay on ‘The
Mind of Adolf Hitler’, by H. R. Trevor-Roper, translated by Norman Cameron and R.
H. Stevens (New York, Farrar, Strauss and Young, 1953), conversation of 22 February
1942, p. 269.
26. Ibid., conversation of 4 April 1942, p. 322.
27. Ibid., conversation of 15th May 1942, p. 393.
28. Lucy S. Davidowicz, The War Against the Jews, 1933-1945 (New York, Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, 1975), p. 165.
29. Darre, Neuordnung, p. 54.
30. Richard L. Rubenstein, The Cunning of History: Mass Death and the American
Future (New York, Harper and Row, 1975), p. 90.
31. Darre, Neuordnung p. 56.
32. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, translated from the German by Ralph Manheim (Boston,
Houghton Miflin, 1943), p. 178.
33. Rauschning, Hitler Speaks, p. 238.
34. Ackerman, Himmler als Ideologe, p. 165.
35. ‘Judisches Schachten in Film’, in Volkischer Beobachter, Suddeutsche Ausgabe,
Nr. 343 , 51.Jahrgang, 9 Dezember 1938, S.9.
36. Davidowicz, The War Against the Jews, p. 106.
37. Eberhard Jackel, Hitlers Weltanschauung (Tubingen, R. Wunderlich, 1969), p. 83.
38. Gerald Fleming, Hitler and the Final Solution, with an introduction by Saul
Friedlander (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1984). In his in¬
troduction Friedlander provides both a summary and an analysis of the ‘ intentional ist/fiinc-
tionalist’ debate.
39. Seibert, ‘Die jiidische Feind’, in Volkischer Beobachter, Norddeutsche Ausgabe,
Nr. 316, 54.Jahrgang, 12 November 1941. S.2.
40. Ibid.
41. Paul Josef Goebbels, ‘Wir konnen siegen, wir miissen seigen, wir werden siegen!’,
in Volkischer Beobachter, Norddeutsche Ausgabe, Nr. 337, 54.Jahrgang, 3 Dezember
1941, S.2.
42. Ibid.
43. Paul Joseph Goebbels, The Goebbels Diaries, 1942-1943, edited and translated
from the German by Louis P. Lochner (New York, Hamish Hamilton, 1948), p. 48.
44. Ibid., p. 54.
45. Ibid., p. 75.
46. Ibid., pp. 102-3.
47. Ibid., p. 103.
48. Henrich Himmler, Himmler Geheimreden: 1933 bis 1945, Einfuhrung, Joachim
C. Fest; herausgegeben von Bradley F. Smith und Agnes F. Peterson (Frankfurt/M and
Berlin, Propylaen Verlag, 1974), p. 169.
49. Ibid., pp. 169-70.
50. Ibid., p. 171.
51. Hans Buchheim, et al., Anatomie des SS-Staates, Band I., Hans Buchheim, Die
SS-Herrschaftinstrument, Befehl und Gehorsam (Miinchen, Deutscher Taschenbiich Verlag,
1967), p. 267. For the SS’s horrified reaction to spontaneous Romanian massacres of the
Jews see Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New
York, Viking Press, 1963), pp. 173-4. Naturally, at the lower levels, free rein was often
given to the most extreme forms of sadism imaginable.
136 Authentic Man and the Road to Auschwitz

52. Ibid.
53. Himmler, Geheimreden, pp. 200-1.
54. Hans Buchheim, Totalitarian Rule: Its Nature and Characteristics, translated from
the German by Ruth Heim (Middletown, Connecticut, Wesleyan University Press, 1968),
p. 83.
55. Ibid., p. 84. Emphasis is Buchheim’s.
56. Rudolph Hoss, Commandant of Auschwitz, with an introduction by Lord Russell
of Liverpool; translated from the German by Constantine FitzGibbon (New York, Popular
Library, 1959), p. 142.
57. Ibid., p. 143. For an interesting discussion of how totalitarianism inherently pro¬
duces what it thinks to be objectively true, see Hannah Arendt, ‘The Concept of History;
Ancient and Modern’, in Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future.Eight Exercises in
Political Thought (New York, Viking Press, 1977). On the necessity for totalitarian pro¬
paganda to place emphasis on the movement’s infallibility, see Hannah Arendt, The Origins
of Totalitarianism (New York, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1973), pp. 349-50.
58. Hoss, p. 146.
59. Saul Friedlander in Fleming, Hitler and the Final Solution, p. xxxiii.
 6 THE TERROR OF HISTORY AND THE MYTHUS
OF AN IDEALISED PAST

Throughout this work, we have been concerned mostly with National

Socialist religiosity as perceived by the National Socialist leadership.
Logical consequences of such, hypothetically and in practice, also have
been considered. An important conclusion has been drawn: that, to one
degree or another, the leadership and one of its most important in¬
struments of expression, the SS, took at least the guiding principles of
this ‘religion’ very seriously, even if the whole, at times ill-defined body
of it, was not so taken. From time to time, we have focused upon the
mass of German citizenry. While the writer has assumed that those
elements of the religion that attained public expression had a drawing
power with regards to the German population at large, the concrete
dynamics of this have not been investigated systematically. An impor¬
tant reason for this is that, while it is the writer’s opinion that one can
establish without any doubt whatsoever that the leadership strongly believ¬
ed in the core of the National Socialist religion — and that claims to
the contrary are sophistic, ill-informed and naive — it is probably im¬
possible to determine precisely the degree to which this core found per¬
sistent resonance in the German population, although some observations
about this will be made in the Appendix. As pointed out earlier, most
of this population, if it was religious at all, formally adhered to the ‘tradi¬
tional’ religions of Germany. Such people remained Evangelical Lutheran
or Catholic and even a justifiably unsympathetic observer of the 1939
German scene such as William Shirer had to comment upon the con¬
tinued mass purchasing of Christmas trees in pinched wartime condi¬
tions. ‘No matter how tough or rough or pagan a German may be, he
has a childish passion for Christmas trees. People everywhere bravely
trying to make this Christmas seem like the old ones in times of peace.’1
To be sure, the love of a Christmas tree might well have been more in¬
formed by residual paganism than significant commitment to Christianity;
but the average German did not know this and probably would have been
greatly offended if it were called to his attention. Further, for such a
person ‘Christianity’ was Christmas, and Christmas was the tree, gifts,
and often mawkish sentimentality. Of course the ‘average’ German was,
in this regard, no different from the ‘average’ European or American
Christian.

137
138 The Mythus of an Idealised Past

So, in many ways, Germany’s religious traditions remained intact,

even if its leaders might well have viewed them as vestigial elements
of a decadent and degenerative Judaeo-Christian Weltanschauung. Dur¬
ing the struggle for power, National Socialist campaign strategists pointed
out the necessity for declaring, particularly in Catholic areas, that Na¬
tional Socialism was ‘not a religious Weltanschauung', and, as we have
seen, even when in power, the National Socialists found it necessary
to shy away from at least persistent confrontation with the traditional
forms of German Christianity.2
The extraordinarily pragmatic approach of the National Socialist party
during the crucial electoral campaigns of the late 1920s and early 1930s
— its ability to ‘plug in’ to what was needed in any given circumstance
— and the persistence of various traditional German cultural and religious
forms after January 1933, could lead anyone to suspect that, even if the
National Socialist leadership took its Mythus seriously, the vast mass
of the German public did not. The fact that, as we have seen, this leader¬
ship thought it necessary to educate the public gradually, and in a very
gradual manner at that, serves to reinforce this suspicion. One scholar
has gone so far as to suggest that the Nazis were able to score points
against the more rigidly ideological Social Democratic Party by
demonstrating to the German public that they were ‘unhindered by
ideology’ and hence more flexible in offering solutions to depression-
harassed Germany.3 Yet, when all is said and done, it is still obvious
that the National Socialist movement, besides demonstrating an extraor¬
dinary (and oft-discussed) ability to adjust its arguments to given regional
and/or class circumstances, was also able to present itself in wellnigh
metapolitical terms. Furthermore, there can be no question but that in
locales positively sensitised to the mystical appeal of the Volksge-
meinschaft — rural areas and very small towns in particular — the Nazis
were able to present large amounts of the racial Mythus with great ef¬
fectiveness.4 Such arguments were not used in big cities, Richard
Hamilton has suggested, because bourgeois folk, supposedly living in
that anomic state traditionally considered conducive to the emergence
of National Socialist sympathies, did not take the more strident aspects
of the ideology seriously. While virtually all elements of the urban
bourgeoisie eventually went National Socialist, the anti-Communist
posture of the National Socialists was of decisive importance. While,
as stated at the beginning of this chapter, the mass appeal of the National
Socialist religion cannot be precisely determined, Hamilton has pointed
out something of interest: namely, that the National Socialist ideology,
particularly the emphasis upon the mythical Volksgemeinschaft and the
 The Mythus of an Idealised Past 139

dialectically related anti-Semitism, was taken very seriously in those areas

in which people had not yet directly experienced, at least in extreme form,
the anomic, alienating conditions associated with urban life. Rather, it
would appear, they feared these conditions and were hostile to those
forces that were in some way associated with them.
At this point it is necessary to devote some time to the somewhat
singular nature of German industrialisation. Naturally, the larger cities
were of great importance in this process. Berlin, Leipzig, Hamburg, Col¬
ogne and Munich — all came to have industrial districts and residential
areas or industrial suburbs settled by those who served the factories. The
Ruhr industrial region, of course, consisted of a set of medium-large
cities, such as Essen, Duisburg, Bochum, and Wuppertal tied together
into a roughly defined economic complex. Yet, to a great extent, Ger¬
man industrialisation, unlike that of, say, England, did not take place
exclusively, or even largely, within clearly defined urban/industrial areas.
Indeed, even though Germany was the most heavily urbanised state in
contintental Europe, a substantial portion of the industrialisation pro¬
cess took place in small to medium-sized cities. Hence, that clearly defin¬
ed line between urban and rural life that often has been perceived as
resulting from industrialisation did not exist.3 In a word, industrialisa¬
tion in Germany, even in its well-developed stages towards the end of
the nineteenth century and later, was rather ‘spread-out’ and a substan¬
tial portion of the so-called industrial proletariat either remained rooted
in rural life — i.e., obtained seasonal employment in factories or was
employed on a semi-permanent basis — or at the very least, retained
strong rural or ‘small town’ associations.6 Barrington Moore, in com¬
menting upon what he calls ‘the provincial and small-town atmosphere
of German pre-war [i.e., pre-World War I] labour politics,’ has sug¬
gested that much of the German industrial proletariat cannot be seen as
having conformed to that archetype central to Marxist hypothesising,
or even more loosely defined ideology schemata.7
Another, extremely important consequence flowed from the rather
singular nature of German industrialisation. Those who were not
employed in factories — small-town burghers, professional people and
the like, and large numbers of the peasantry as well — while, as sug¬
gested above, not experiencing the consequences of industrialisation in
a fully articulated urban setting, could perceive various disquieting, poten¬
tially alienating elements of it in their midst. In summation, substantial
numbers of ‘small’ or ‘small to medium-sized’ towns, and large por¬
tions of the German countryside were on the cutting-edge of social and
economic change. Populations in these lived in a sort of ‘grey area’ in
140 The My thus of an Idealised Past

which a variety of contradictions, contrasts and uncertainties added up

to ambivalence. It was precisely in these areas where the National
Socialist Mythus could be most fully articulated and with the greatest
effect. According to Moore, the future, for the pre-World War 1 Ger¬
man worker, was often ‘couched in terms of an idealised rural past, or
else an idealised version of what they had seen or heard about contem¬
porary life in the countryside’.8 For those workers in the cities, such
associations no doubt exerted an emotional pull of some significance.
How much more significant must this ‘puli' have been in areas in which
appearances — however deceptive — no doubt induced burgher and
worker alike to turn towards that ‘idealised rural past’ which historical¬
ly had been of immense importance in the sanctified Volksgemeinschafl.
Naturally, the terms ‘idealised rural past’, or ‘idealised version’ utilis¬
ed by Barrington Moore suggest that, for him, there was no such past,
and the version of the rural ‘present’ was, in large measure, clouded
by wishful thinking. Of course, this has been known for a long time,
but recent studies have been of particular significance in pointing out
just how far off the mark such romantic musings have been. According
to romantics — even ones with academic credentials — from Wilhelm
Heinrich Riehl on, the large, warm, mutually supportive family was a
characteristic of rural life, German or otherwise, and it was this homey
complex that was threatened by the insidious forces of modernity. Among
others, a recent study of Michael Mitterauer and Reinhard Sieder has
established that the ‘large pre-industrial family’ was a myth.’ As sug¬
gested, this mythical unit was infused with that deliciously suffocating
warmth often seen as resulting from a comforting patriarchy in which
everyone knew his or her place. Recent studies have suggested that, while
economic necessity might have dictated that members of the so-called
‘pre-industrial’ rural or small-town German family had to have depend¬
ed upon one another, such an arrangement was not necessarily conducive
to the establishing of warm bonds. Indeed, while the death of a child
in such a family certainly was of concern, it was of relatively little im¬
portance, unless, of course, the child had attained an age at which it
was making some sort of contribution to the unit's economic survival.10
Perhaps even less surprising to students of Central European history is
the fact that, for some time in rural Bavaria, wife-beating was apparently
more common ‘than the ill-treatment of horses'." All in all. the notion of
the pre-industrial family, at least in Germany, being a warm-hearted col¬
lectivity within which individuals could attain fulfilment is seen to be
an absurdity. Indeed, intensive familial interaction, with an emphasis
on developing individualism, is far more characteristic of that
 The Mythus of an Idealised Past 141

modem family, supposedly informed by the values of a harsh, alienating,

mechanised society.12 Thus that worshipping of presumed ‘vanished
solidarities of the past' — a shared tendency, albeit for different respec¬
tive reasons, of the left as well as the right — must be seen as roman¬
ticism, in the worst possible sense.13
Yet, when all is said and done, past institutions and social relation¬
ships can be seen as being necessarily more tied to nature, as being part
and parcel of a mode of being more conducive to the emergence and
sustaining of comforting archetypal patterns. There seems to have been
something deliciously ahistorical about this and romantics, such as Riehl,
can be said to have turned to the past in an effort to escape from history.
History is, after all, change, and the emotional demands posed by such
change can be taxing. From our point of view, it is on the mark to say
that human beings are historical beings, and that we are thus, in whatever
permutation of freedom we have at any time, always creating or
recreating ourselves. As Mircea Eliade has pointed out, however, in The
Myth of the Eternal Return, in a world in which humans seem to be more
powerless than ever before, it is easy and perhaps even justified to view
history as disquieting. Indeed, in comparing the situation of primitive
human beings grounded in nondynamic, archetypal certainties to that
of ‘us modems’ he has seen the latter as, at times, being virtually paralys¬
ed by the ‘terror of history’.14 This consideration, of course, brings us
around to our earlier concerns with such things as ‘fear of transcendence’,
and the need to ‘end history’. It is in this context that we must now,
once again, focus upon the nature and power of these salient aspects of
the National Socialist religion.
In attempting to undercut that traditional interpretation of National
Socialism which sees its primary source of support as stemming from
a middle class threatened by economic and social extinction, Richard
Hamilton has focused upon an important statement by William Sheridan
Allen. In describing the state of Northeim’s (a town of around 10,000;
in the first edition of Allen’s work, the pseudonym ‘Thalburg’ was us¬
ed) middle class — large elements of which did go National Socialist
— the latter declared that it had not really been much touched in hard,
economic terms, by the depression. Only ‘psychologically’, Allen stated,
had this had any impact on the middle class or Northeim.15 From our
perspective, of course, this explains a great deal. Objectively, of course,
large elements of the bourgeoisie were not driven to the brink of pover¬
ty by the depression. Certainly, the great industrialists could not have
been threatened by communism, a movement which, according to all
accounts, was in considerable disarray in Germany in the early 1930s.
t
142 The Mythus of an Idealised Past

As we have seen, the areas in which the National Socialist Mythus en¬
joyed its greatest appeal, in rural (particularly Protestant rural) and small
town settings, were not those in which some of the drearier aspects of
industrialisation and objective alienation had been experienced first-hand.
It was precisely in those areas and in those classes, or elements of classes,
in which one sensed a narrowing gap between the objective ‘is' and a
chilling ‘might be’, that the Nazi religious pull was the strongest. It was
here, amongst these people, in large measure, threatened ‘only
psychologically’ that a fetishistic cultural pessimism necessitated the crea¬
tion of a history-defying, totemistic past. To focus again upon a previously
considered example: there was no objective reason why elements of the
German bourgeoisie had to revel in the myth of the large, morally
pristine, pre-industrial family. Yet, the effective use of this myth, so
central to the overriding notion of Volksgemeinschaft, has characterised
Fascist ideologies as a whole, and National Socialism in particular.16
People were driven not only to believe that such things existed, but to
act as if they did. At the same time, as has been noted, it was of the
highest necessity that the Jews in particular be seen as a deracinated ele¬
ment which threatened the whole panoply of archetypes central to a
mythological past.
According to Eliade, primitive man, through adhering to the archetypal
usages central to fully articulated cosmogonies, is in the position ‘to an¬
nul his own history through periodic abolition of time and collective
regeneration’.17 As Eliade has seen it, the ‘time’ of history, i.e.,
chronological time, is ‘profane’ time; while the sort of ‘timeless time’
of primitive cosmogonies, wherein the totems and archetypes which give
meaning to the lives of the peoples concerned are rooted, is ‘sacred time’
(Freud’s ‘Kairotic time’ is perhaps the best ‘modem’ equivalent of this).
No doubt, in part because of the fate of his country, Romania, Eliade
has been very sympathetic to those who, in modem times, seek to escape
from history. Emphasising its ‘timeless’ aspects, i.e., transcendence ‘of’
rather than ‘in’ history, he has offered acceptance of Christianity as the
way by which harassed moderns, deprived of comforting archetypes and
repetitions, can escape, or at least minimise the terrors of temporal life.18
Again, particularly in view of the post-World War II fate of Romania,
it is not surprising that Eliade has focused upon Marxism as an approach
to salvation which, seeing transcendence as coming out of history and
at its end, made no small contribution to its ‘terrors’. The National
Socialist approach has not been mentioned, at least not in The Myth of
the Eternal Return. It is obvious, though, that in the National Socialist
religious revolution, we can see an effort to escape from the ‘terror of
 The My thus of an Idealised Past 143

history’ by essentially abolishing it. The very real terror necessitated

by such an action was not of crucial significance since it would be directed
against those who stood in opposition to the emergence of ‘sacred time’
within that ‘profane time’ over which it must inevitably triumph. That
singular fusion of idealism and pragmatism, described earlier in this
work, provided, at least for dedicated National Socialists, the means by
which this process could be actualised within the life of the nation.
With regard to the notion of ‘sacred time’, and its possible political
applications, it is of interest to note that, from the late nineteenth cen¬
tury on, German builders of national monuments, e.g., the monument
on the myth-shrouded Kyffhauser Mountain (1896), had placed emphasis
on providing a ‘sacred space’ in front of such edifices. This originally
was to have been reserved for the graves of those fallen for the
Fatherland. By the time the Kyffhauser Monument was dedicated,
however, this space was to be occupied by crowds of enthusiastic patriots
taking part in nationalistic rites.19 The monuments themselves were cer¬
tainly erected to commemorate historical events or persons, e.g.,
Friedrich Barbarossa (supposedly asleep within Kyffhauser Mountain),
or the victory of Hermann (or Arminius) over the Roman Varus in 9
A.D. It is obvious however that the ‘sacred space’ was to represent a
timeless melding together of past, present and future, a process taking
place in the nationalistic ceremonies unfolding upon it. Perhaps, all
memorials or monuments are designed to have this effect, but it would
appear that the conscious planning of some sort of ‘sacred space’ was
more prominent in the then recently-unified — and thus no doubt less
secure — Germany than elsewhere. Whether this obvious effort to instil
a sense of eternal volkisch truths in those participating in nationalistic
rituals could have helped ‘prepare the way’ for National Socialism’s
assault upon ‘profane historical time’ is difficult to determine. There
can be no doubt, however, that both phenomena resulted from the same,
at times desperate, psychic needs. At any rate, the providing of such
a ‘space’ continued as a function of the National Socialist blending of
politics and aesthetics.
As stated above, when considering a nation which remained at least
de jure Christian, it is difficult to determine precisely — even the most
sophisticated efforts to arrive at some sort of quantified answer are, in
my opinion, vain — just how many ‘average’ Germans, engaged in the
mundane projects of day-to-day existence, were drawn to the National
Socialist cosmogony. None the less, during the interwar period, the ‘ter¬
ror of history’ had become very real for the German population, while
‘the future as history’ seemed to hold in store very sharpened, particular
144 The Mythus of an Idealised Past

terrors for certain elements of the population.

Dr Leo Schneiderman, in his The Psychology of Myth, Folklore, and
Religion, has made,use of Eliade’s ‘profane/sacred’ dichotomy. For
Schneiderman, though, modern man 'is forced to act as if the gods were
dead while knowing in his heart that he is still a man possessed by
something other than himself’.2" The modem human lives in sacred time
— or at least is concerned with living in it — more than he realises;
in a word, ‘he is more religious than he consciously knows himself to
be’.21 For many modem Germans, that singularly important aspect of
the National Socialist tradition which seemed to provide for the con¬
tinuous sanctification of modern life through grounding it in accepted
elements (‘truths’) of a timeless Volksgemeinschaft had to have exerted
a powerful pull. This was certainly accentuated by the accommodation
that eternal myth had to make, in keeping with the very notion of Volksge¬
meinschaft, for the most banal of petty-bourgeois usages, an accommoda¬
tion which, in the end, had to render them eternal as well.22 Jean-Pierre
Sironneau has had much of value to say about National Socialism as a
secular religion. In my opinion, however, he is somewhat wide of the
mark in his assertion that the primary reason why National Socialism,
indeed, any variety of secular religion, has to be seen as a contradiction
in terms, is that it was, or is, grounded in history. Thus, since any true
religion had to serve the purpose of liberating people from history, i.e.,
had to be transcendent, in the anti-historical sense of the term. National
Socialism, despite its religious trappings, did not in the end measure up
to being one.23 As I see it, Sironneau’s notion of what constitutes a true
religion is rather too formalistic. More important, however, in my opi¬
nion, is a crucial misinterpretation. Sironneau has declared that National
Socialism was anti-transcendent because it was consciously grounded in
history. Most assuredly, one would have to agree that National Socialism
was fundamentally anti-transcendent. Throughout this work, however,
we have been considering a ‘religion’, or ‘pseudo-religion’, that derived
its strength from a pronounced anti-historical posture which, as such,
was anti-transcendent, i.e., seemingly immune from disquieting change.24
It was because, and not in spite, of this posture that National Socialism,
whether or not it was in the end a Teal religion’, was able to exert a
strong pull of religious nature. This was most obviously manifest in
assumed efforts to create the social Volksgemeinschaft.
In such an environment, unpleasant but necessary actions against those
who threatened Gemeinschaft, something which found solipsistic expres¬
sion in various soil-bound myths, were themselves actions undertaken
‘out of time’. The actual order for the final solution was, it would
 The Mythus of an Idealised Past 145

appear, an oral one. According to Himmler, the deeds of the SS

represented a glorious page of history which would never be written.
In the ‘anus mundi' of an Auschwitz, Treblinka, Maidjanek or Belzec,
time ceased for victim and executioner, and what temporal dimension
there was was provided only by those railroad schedules necessary to
make certain that sanctified massacre would proceed apace. In a word,
those who presided over the actions of Einsatzgruppen and the mass gass¬
ings, were determined that such experiences would be virtually non-
events. Naturally, there was no doubt a very substantial psychological
benefit provided by making certain that hideous actions were in effect
non-events: one could not be held accountable for deeds which, since
they were done ‘out of time’, had never been perpetrated. Hence, there
could be no guilt.
No doubt psychological explanations, ones grounded in theories of
denial or cognitive dissonance, are very much to the point. In dealing
with the National Socialist phenomenon, however, and, for that matter,
others which try to cast ‘material’ realities in religious terms, it would
be dangerously misleading to assume that ‘ideas’, however abstruse or
absurd they might be, cannot develop extraordinary powers of their own.
Throughout this work, we have been implicitly concerned with this. The
National Socialist religion, born of an amalgam of social, cultural and
psychological circumstances, was an articulation of these circumstances.
Its leading ideas were grounded in — even if, in due course, they had
in part to break from — widely held fantasies. For many, these had played
important roles in social relationships and political decision-making. One
can condemn the National Socialist religion as an obscenity, informed
by false consciousness or bad faith, the sort of bad faith responsible for
‘a deliberate decision on the part of mass man to live within the limits
of finitude’.25 Dystopian efforts to render this process ‘eternal’ testify
to the depths of the obscenity. Yet, in Himmler’s ability to talk about
slaughters ‘carried out without . . . our men or order suffering damage
to body and spirit’, and in Hoss’s apparent bafflement over the seem¬
ingly unnatural behaviour exhibited by those he was in the process of
exterminating, we can see how ideas can triumph over physical and moral
realities to the point where victims become psychological murderers and
executioners, victims. Unconsciously, of course, Himmler, Hoss and
a multitude of others, were sadists. As they came to see it, however,
they, and not gasping, crying children, were the unhappy victims; con¬
demned by pitiless Taws of life’ to preside over a timeless anus mundi.
Perhaps, in future, all of those Aryan folk who would benefit from those
sacred but terrible activities undertaken on their behalf by the most
146 The My thus of an Idealised Past

sensitive of human beings could learn about them. For Germany as a

whole, it might very well have been true that, as Klaus Vondung put
it. National Socialist ritualistic manipulations and thaumaturgical usages
were, in the end, inadequate to the task of determining that ‘this ideology
and its imaginative picture of reality [would] transplant [what was] tru¬
ly real’.26 None the less, never before or, up to this point, since, have
bearers of a perverse idealism come so close to bringing a world into
conformity with religious fantasies bom of an unwillingness to accept
the vicissitudes of mortality.
In September 1934 William Shirer attended the National Socialist party
rally at Nuremberg. He started off his entry of 5 September in the follow¬
ing fashion:

I’m beginning to comprehend, I think, some of the reasons for Hitler’s

astounding success. Borrowing a chapter from the Roman church,
he is restoring pageantry and colour and mysticism to the drab lives
of twentieth-century Germans. This morning’s opening meeting in
the Luitpold Hall on the outskirts of Nuremberg was more than a
gorgeous show; it also had something of the mysticism and religious
fervour of an Easter or Christmas Mass in a great Catholic cathedral.27

In many respects, Shirer was very much on the mark. Yet, it must be
seen that, while the use of certain forms reminiscent of Catholic ceremony
was obvious, the purpose of the ritual, i.e.. the sanctification of national
life, was so radically at odds with the Judaeo-Christian tradition, that
reliance upon those analogies implicit in this extremely perceptive
observer’s remarks can be very misleading. After all. the rituals of Jews
and Christians are supposed to bring finite, historical beings into close
proximity with a transcendent God-of-history, and hence with the
transcendence that dwells within them as well. This was hardly the pur¬
pose of those rituals witnessed by Shirer. Rather, they were the sacred
rites of that ‘new man’ described by Hitler as “God in the making’. This
new being had overcome ‘the terror of history' by declaring the historical
process to be null and void while all aspects of its life were to unfold
in that endless present rendered sacred by stalwart adherence to totemistic
absurdities. For modern, political man, the merging of religion and
politics in the sacred Volksgemeinschaft was an extraordinary, in many
ways unprecedented, occurrence. What this led to had to have been
ultimately monstrous. For, as Schneiderman has so eloquently put it,
‘The more modern man has identified himself with his ancestral totem,
the more terrible the sacrifice of himself and others that must result’.28
 The Mythus of an Idealised Past 147

Notes

1. William L. Shirer, Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941

(New York, Penguin Books, 1979), entry of 13 December 1939, p. 258.
2. Richard F. Hamilton, Who Voted for Hitler? (Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton
University Press, 1982), p. 325. We will consider the question of National Socialist con¬
frontation with ‘established’ religions in the Appendix.
3. Ibid., pp. 277, 285.
4. Ibid., p. 367.
5. Barrington Moore, Injustice: The Social Base of Obedience and Revolt (White Plains,
New York, M.E. Sharpe, 1978), pp. '179-80.
6. For a fine description of this see Heilwig Schomerus, ‘The Family Life-cycle:
A Study of Factory Workers in Nineteenth Century Wiirttemberg’, in Richard J. Evans
and W.R. Lee (eds.), The German Family: Essays on the Social History of the Family
in Nineteenth Century Germany (New York, Barnes and Noble, 1981), pp. 177-81. Many
of the workers who worked and lived in the larger cities also retained strong rural
associations.
7. Moore, Injustice, p. 180.
8. Ibid., p. 209.
9. Michael Mitterauer and Reinhard Sieder, The European Family: Patriarchy and
Partnership from the Middle Ages to the Present, translated by Karla Oosterveen and Man¬
fred Horzinger (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 24-44.
10. Ibid., p. 61; Robert Lee, ‘Family and Modernization: The Peasant Family and
Social Change in Nineteenth Century Bavaria’, in Evans and Lee, The German Family,
pp. 96-7.
11. Ibid., p. 95.
12. Mitterauer and Sieder, The European Family, p. 63.
13. Raphael Samuel, ‘People’s History’, in Raphael Samuel (ed.). People’s History
and Socialist Theory (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981), p. xxii.
14. Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, or, Cosmos and History (Princeton,
New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1974), p. 156.
15. William Sheridan Allen, as quoted in Hamilton, Who Voted for Hitler?, p. 377.
16. Mitterauer and Sieder, The European Family, pp. 25-6.
17. Eliade, The Myth, p. 157.
18. Ibid., pp. 160-2.
19. The best discussion of ‘sacred space’ is to be found in George L. Mosse, The Na¬
tionalization of the Masses, Political Symbolism and Mass Movements in Germany from
the Napoleonic Wars Through the Third Reich (New York, Howard Fertig Inc., 1975),
pp. 32, 63-5, 60-71, 73, 77, 208.
20. Leo Schneiderman, The Psychology of Myth, Folklore, and Religion (Chicago,
Nelson-Hall, 1981), p. 103. Emphasis is Schneiderman’s.
21. Ibid.
22. For a perceptive discussion of this, see Saul Friedlander, Reflections of Nazism:
An Essay on Kitsch and Death, translated from the French by Thomas Weyr (New York,
Harper and Row, 1984), pp. 38-40, 170-1. As I see it, a balance between bourgeois bathos
and proclaimed ‘eternal value’ can easily be struck in a ‘religion of nature’.
23. Jean-Pierre Sironneau, Secularisation et religions politiques (The Hague, Paris,
New York, Mouton, 1982), p. 565. In his posing of ‘transcendence’ against history, Siron¬
neau is, of course, close to Eliade.
24. For an interesting treatment of the National Socialist anti-historical posture, see
Fred Weinstein, The Dynamics of Nazism: Leadership, Ideology, and the Holocaust (New
York, Academic Press, 1980), pp. 124-6, 137-8.
25. John T. Pawlikowski, ‘Christian Perspectives and Moral Implications’, in Henry
148 The My thus of an Idealised Past

Friedlander and Sybil Milton (eds.). The Holocaust: Ideology. Bureaucracy, and Genocide
(Millwood, New York. Kraus International Publications. 1980). p. 296.
26. Klaus Vondung, Magie and Manipulation: Ideologischen Kult undpolitische Religion
des Nationalsozialismus (Gottingen, Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht. 1971), p. 199.
27. Shirer, Berlin Diary, p. 19.
28. Schneiderman, The Psychology of Myth. p. 105.
 7 CONCLUSION

When Max Weber declared that, through increased rationalisation the

world was becoming ‘disenchanted’, he must have assumed that he was
stating the obvious. In any case, he was hardly alone in making what
was in fact an assumption. Even — and perhaps especially — theologians
came to share in this assumption, and not a few of them assumed that
such a process would, in the end, be beneficial to what they perceived
to be the most crucial elements of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Disen¬
chantment, secularisation of the world could, at least hypothetically, serve
to elevate humankind, to emphasise the divinity embodied in it either
as the gift of God’s grace or due to more mundane, but none the less
singular, evolutionary processes. Yet, as we have seen, disenchantment
can be something extremely difficult for increasingly alienated, finite
beings to accept.
Dr Richard Rubenstein had declared that the Judaeo-Christian tradi¬
tion, through setting God ‘apart’ from His creation, has made the earth
‘devoid of independent divine or magical forces which men had to ap¬
pease’.1 The removal of God from the world, a world over which man
was allowed to reign supreme, effectively removed ethical content from
it, and, in such an atmosphere, there could occur a ‘merging of fact and
value’ which allowed for the coldest of attitudes towards human suffer¬
ing.2 The demystification of life, a product, however unintended, of the
Judaeo-Christian tradition, led to a coldly rationalistic way of perceiv¬
ing problems and solutions, something that in turn led to the death-
factories of World War II. Indeed, he maintains, the ‘Necropolis’,
Auschwitz, was the ‘ultimate cry of Western Civilization’.3 There will
always be the danger, Rubenstein states, that ‘Metropolis will become
Necropolis’, because the city ‘is by nature anti-nature, antiphysis, and
hence, anti-life.’4 Among other things, National Socialism was the result
of a process of disenchantment or demystification which, ironically
enough, came out of that Judaeo-Christian tradition which it was seek¬
ing to extirpate.
It certainly might well be true that secularisation or disenchantment
of the world could have had consequences which have to be described
as ‘anti-humanistic’. In any case, there can be little doubt that those who
have rejoiced in this process have been overly optimistic, if not a trifle
fatuous. Yet we have considered a movement, informed by religious

149
150 Conclusion

principle, which, in its efforts to reinform the world with its version
of enchantment, was systematically, and conscientiously, anti-humamstic
in ways almost unthinkable to previous generations.
There can be no question but that the Nazis were sincere in believing
that the world had been deprived of mystery and enchantment by Judaeo-
Christian dualism. In their religion of nature, a strikingly effective fu¬
sion of crude scientism and those mystical motifs generally associated
with Lebensphilosophie, they thought that they had discovered a means
of bridging the gap between human beings (at least some of them) and
nature while at the same time providing for the extermination of those
who had utilised vulgar ‘modernity’ to alienate man from his natural
roots. The phrase lAUes ist Leben , which figured so prominently in the
Bad Tolz SS handbook, provided a convenient means by which a
necrophilic fascination with death could be absorbed into a putative
religion of life which claimed to have brought enchantment back into
the world.
Of course, one could argue that, in a religion of nature, it is not
necessary to see some men as less ‘natural’ than others, or perhaps as
being in a sort of border area between the animate, i.e. life-bound, and
inanimate worlds. Should, however, the conception of man as being
merely a slightly more intelligent — and hence less likeable — animal
be applied within social and political contexts, then, in a world replete
with tensions and hatreds, avoidance of drawing certain crudely-affirmed
conclusions could become difficult, if not impossible. To be sure, pitiless
massacre and rapine have accompanied the spread of religious movements
which, hypothetically at least, accepted mankind’s divinity. There was,
however, at least an ethical or axiological counterbalance in the concep¬
tion that human life was to be valued simply by virtue of its being human.
The average German or French peasant at the time of the First Crusade
— the sort of person who might become associated with the dreaded and
thoroughly abominable Tafurs — was no doubt a much tougher and pro¬
bably crueller individual than his counterpart (if such could be found)
today. Nevertheless, murder as a part of public policy was not part of
the Medieval vision, and the process of conversion precluded the racist
concept of the permanently tainted soul.5
One can argue, of course, that the religion of nature which was cen¬
tral to National Socialism emerged from traditions generic to a politically
and socially backward Central Europe. Furthermore, that tendency to
reach for a Lebensphilosophie, towards that form of totalism in which
biologism and mysticism become merged, was itelf a rather singular
phenomenon; the produce of time-bound forces and conditions. Certainly,
 Conclusion 151

these are valid arguments and this book has demonstrated that the author
believes that the National Socialist phenomenon was, in its most impor¬
tant aspects, singular. Yet, it would be naive, perhaps dangerously so,
to assume that a supposedly more politically mature Western tradition,
presumably grounded in the humanistic aspects of the Judaeo-Christian
tradition, is immune from being strongly influenced by elements iden¬
tified as central to the National Socialist religion.
As we have noted earlier, rebellion against the rationalisation or disen¬
chantment of the world has hardly been confined to Central Europe. In¬
deed, in the West, nature worship, varieties of occultism, psychedelic
religiosity, adherence to perverted forms of Eastern mysticism and so
on are stronger than ever.6 Historical, cultural and social circumstances
have determined that those who have reached out for such solutions to
alienation have been largely middle or upper middle class — or at least
the children of middle or upper middle class parents. Furthermore, the
politics of such people has generally been liberal, or even, on occasion,
left-wing. None the less, nature worship (as distinct from ‘environmen¬
talism’), occultism and related phenomena have to be either implicitly
or explicitly anti-humanistic, and there is little to go against Wilhelm
Reich’s assertion that ultimately the political expression of mysticism
has to be reactionary.7 As yet, there has been no coherent political ex¬
pression for such varieties of mysticism. Yet, in all of these phenomena
we can see that yearning for ‘return’, and eagerness to abandon rationality
on the way, that have been symptomatic of all bourgeois societies, under
stress. Certainly, when one bears in mind the rape of planet Earth that
has occurred as the most significant result of predatory capitalism, an
overwhelming desire for return to the great, earth mother becomes
understandable. Indeed, there appears to be a sort of ethical imperative
attaching to it. Yet, in the end, this always has constituted withdrawal,
a supposedly ‘apolitical’ decision that must be right-wing in nature. At
the same time, the radical anti-humanism inherent in such withdrawals
must constitute an evasion of ethical responsibility, both with regard to
human beings and, ultimately, to the planet over which, like it or not,
we have sovereignty. In the face of a hostile economic, social and cultural
environment, some millions of desperate or discouraged folk have opted
for a world view which, particularly in view of the crucial political deci¬
sions at hand, is self-serving in the most narrow sense of the term. The
‘self’ to be served is of course engaged in the seemingly ingenuous enter¬
prise of securing a sacred space/time realm, impervious to cruel historical
forces. Politicalisation of this enterprise, or, more precisely, the results
of one variety of politicalisation, have been a major concern of this book.
152 Conclusion

Yet the ‘movers and the shakers’ in Western society, as well, of

course, as the majority of the citizenry, are not ‘mystics , except, perhaps,
in their spare time. Furthermore, there has yet to arise a major political
party which, in self-consciously espousing any variety of political
mysticism, has come close to the National Socialists. Indeed, it is precise¬
ly this sort of nominalist attitude — often informed by a large dose of
Calvinism — that has made it so difficult for Western thinkers to come
to grips with the National Socialist phenomenon. While this writer
believes that the Judaeo-Christian tradition, with its suspension of
humankind between natural world and a divine order, has placed a
tremendous burden upon painfully finite beings, most inhabitants of
Western lands seem comfortable enough, at least consciously, with it.
Self-conscious immersion in nature is still generally viewed as a
somewhat esoteric enterprise, to be engaged in by environmental ex¬
tremists, occultists and other aberrant sorts described earlier. None the
less, while there would appear to be a good deal of at least conscious
resistance to any kind of ‘religion of nature’ — certainly, in any case,
one which would supplant traditional religious forms — certain elements
crucial to this religion are prevalent today, even if cast in deceptively
prosaic molds. These elements are: (1) a flight from history; (2) efforts
to sanctify national life; and (3) belief in a “natural order of things' within
which varieties of human beings are perceived as being almost providen¬
tially condemned. What we will be talking about are elements, which,
if not strictly speaking constitutive of a ‘religion of nature’, are none
the less central to an ideology so widespread and so pervasive as to be
almost unrecognisable as such. The author assumes that these elements
are generic to the West as a whole, but will be devoting his remarks
mainly to contemporary American life.
There is little question but that today’s problems not only suggest but
demand that nationalism’s role in world affairs be severely limited or
abolished altogether. At one point, ‘the tribal mentality’, of which, of
course, nationalism is merely an extension, might have assured survival.
‘However, this tribal mentality ... is anachronistic in the age of mass
killing and genocide.’® Yet appeals to nationalism are stronger than ever
before, at least in recent years. It is no doubt true that, as Dr Johnson
put it, ‘Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel’, but those who make
the most effective use of this ‘refuge’ generally are elected to public of¬
fice. At the same time, of course, important social concerns are neglected
in the name of ‘the national interest’. Nationalistic sloganeering, in a
nuclear, genocidal world, constitutes a ‘flight from history’, as real, and
as least as dangerous, as that undertaken by those ingenuous souls who
 Conclusion 153

once sought refuge from the perils of transcendence in a Volksge-

meinschaft. Indeed, in present-day America, there are probably more
people who believe that they are participating in a chimera approximating
this than there were in National Socialist Germany. As in the Germany
of fifty years ago, people fear change, other than those technological
advances perceived of as being immediately beneficial, and American
politics today is infused by a longing for timeless stasis. Accompanying
this we can perceive a sanctifying of national life which finds expres¬
sion in appeals to the most jejune nationalistic atavisms imaginable. Pro¬
bably the most poignantly naive — and also dangerous — of these is
the notion that a country indeed exists in some sort of sacred space/time
continuum. President Ronald Reagan recently expressed this when he
declared that he saw American values — if not the country itself — as
‘eternal’. Perhaps, in a non-nuclear age, this remark could be taken as
an ahistorical joke, albeit a bad one. Nowadays, it borders on the obscene.
It is, of course, no more obscene than the remark made by a Soviet air¬
force general; to wit, that his airmen were justified in shooting down
an obviously defenceless airliner because it had dared to transgress his
country’s ‘sacred frontiers’ (the phrase itself is most suggestive). I will
however, leave it to other authors to consider the Soviet variant of na¬
tionalistic lunacy, which, of course, is supposedly informed by a ‘sincere’
search for some sort of Marxist sacred realm, but, in any case, is at least
as much of a flight from history as its American equivalent.
Perhaps it is true that any form of nationalism, at any time, implicit¬
ly involves some sort of sanctification of national life. Nineteenth cen¬
tury variants of it, however, did not involve, in fact, could not have
involved, a flight from history. Indeed, steeled by doctrines of social
change and universal progress, however illusive these might have been,
nationalists of that time saw themselves as being on the cutting edge of
history; and indeed, they were often correct. World War I, however,
demonstrated the bankruptcy, if not the moral rot, of nationalism in an
age of mass slaughter. Yet, ironically enough, while the war did little,
if anything, to stem the nationalist tide, it was almost precisely at that
time when the wedding of totalitarian ideology to mechanised technique
made it possible for claims to be made on the whole man, and a ‘ge¬
nuine’ sanctification of national life thus made possible.
Concurrently, modern mass warfare demonstrated for all to see that
nationalism could have no more ‘progressive’ claims to make; that the
absolutising of national values had to involve a suspension of ethical
responsibility which could only take place within the context of a flight
from history; a flight into a sacred space within which hideous archaisms
154 Conclusion

could be nurtured. Present day Western nationalisms, e.g., American

nationalism, are not sustained and enforced by movements which proudly
claim to have grasped 'the laws of life . None the less, they have to in¬
volve flights from history and claims upon sacred spaces which, in the
nuclear age, are as idolatrous as the more self-conscious and systematic
National Socialist efforts to bring the world into conformity with its
naturalistic fantasies.9 At the time of writing, the American political
leadership, to say nothing of the public which elected it, seems to have
accepted the existence of a sacred, and hence, in the twentieth century
context, ahistorical national community.
The ‘sanctification of national life’ which we can observe in the United
States has been justified through appeal to presumably traditional Judaeo-
Christian values. In this distinctly American claim, one which might well
be traced to the Puritan ‘City on the Hill’ (a favourite phrase of the cur¬
rent President), we can observe an approach seemingly the opposite of
that of the National Socialists, who were eager to dispense with this tradi¬
tion altogether.10 As has to be the case, though, if an ahistorical national
community is to receive divine sanctification, the religious values em¬
phasised must be ones which are magically congruent with those hallowed
totemisms deemed vital to the life of this community. Richard Rubens-
tein has pointed out what these values are. They are those grounded in
a concern for personal salvation and that earthly reward which testifies
to this blessed state. They have either resulted in, or have served to ra¬
tionalise, a ‘dichotomising, possessive individualism' which, in turn, has
informed American social thinking.11 In this regard. Rubenstein has
quoted H. Richard Niebuhr: ‘in bourgeois religion the problem of per¬
sonal salvation is far more important than that of social redemption’.12
Thus, as Rubenstein has seen it, the rationalising, disenchanting (or
demystifying) effects of the Judaeo-Christian tradition have been com¬
plemented by a coldly individualistic way of looking at the world which
is also generic to this tradition. As has been obvious in the discussion
up to now, the author has posed National Socialist emphasis upon its
own variety of rf’enchantment of the world against elements of the
Judaeo-Christian tradition that he views more positively. Nevertheless
it would be very difficult to argue with Rubenstein’s assertion that cer¬
tain crucial elements of this self-same tradition have had extremely
negative effects in so far as social consciousness is concerned. Further¬
more, it would also be difficult to argue with his claim that emphasis
upon salvation of a select few, prominent in the Judaeo-Christian tradi¬
tion as a whole, but especially developed in Calvinism, helped prepare
the way for a general acceptance of some of the crueller elements of
 Conclusion 155

Darwinian thinking.1 ’ At the same time, however, it is my opinion that

application of coldly individualistic, in the end, anti-social aspects of
the Judaeo-Christian tradition to the world allowed for, if it did not cause,
another variety of enchantment which found expression in sanctification
of an assumed ‘natural order of things’.
The sanctification of this natural order is something that had to result
from emphasis upon individual salvation and a ‘saved’ community of
the elect; earthly reward of course is the outward sign of such a condi¬
tion. It is, however, crucial to point out that what allows for a sanc¬
tification of a natural order, i.e., of the ‘given’ is, a de-emphasising of
transcendence. For individual gain to become sanctified through its being
perceived as part and parcel of a ‘natural order’, emphasis could not
be placed upon a ‘world without end’, but rather, upon one which effec¬
tively ‘ended’ in one’s own time. Emphasis upon a purely individual
salvation and upon that material gain seen as emblematic of it has to
be purchased at the price of transcendence even if what we have in mind
by it — as indeed we have throughout this book — is ‘merely’ historical
change of a possibly radical nature. Concurrently, what must result is,
what Marx has called, the ‘fetishism of objects’. More than that, however,
there emerges a fetishistic attitude towards, not merely ‘objects’ — i.e.,
manufactured goods and the money which both is generated by those
and allows at least to some people to purchase them — but all institu¬
tions and symbols which are identified with stasis. The government,
private enterprises, the military and the flag become charged with mysti¬
fying, or ‘enchanting’, values.14 In turn, they are perceived, indeed,
must be perceived, as part of a sanctified natural order. To be sure, Weber
and Veblen were certainly correct when they maintained that modern,
rationalising technique had served to deprive the world of that ‘magic’
identified with animistic or ‘other-worldly’ values or beliefs. Yet, if as
a variety of commentators have claimed, human beings are always more
religious than they or others think, then it follows that religiosity must
find expression.15 Belief, at times quite fanatical, in a sanctified natural
order within which the most anti-humanistic and anti-transcendent values
reign supreme, has been a form of expression congruent with the social,
political and cultural circumstances prevalent in the West in general, and
the United States in particular.
Naturally, belief in a natural order implies acceptance of inequities
within it. There will always be those who cannot ‘make it’, those whom
a conveniently bourgeois Providence has condemned to being ‘drones’.
At times, of course, when governments have been moved by more
humanistic values, various programs on behalf of such people have been
156 Conclusion

undertaken. If, however, fiscal problems, economic deficiencies and

questions of the ‘national interest’, i.e., defence, are perceived as being
paramount, then, as must be expected, the fate of those who cannot ‘make
it' on their own becomes of secondary importance. In contemporary
America, there seems to be a willingness to accept the existence of a
large body of permanently poor, unassimilable folks, while the current
British government seems willing to accept a permanent level of fairly
high unemployment.16 Particularly in the United States, it would seem,
the neglect of a large portion of its citizenry has been accompanied by
frenetic declarations of faith in the old totemisms the relevance of which,
in a nuclear age, is highly doubtful at best.
What we have been considering is not a ‘reMgion- antipodal or dialec¬
tically related to, the National Socialist ‘religion of nature'. At the very
least, however, it is an ideology seemingly responsive to the needs of
a post-industrial population fearful both of that alienation generic to the
human condition and of historical change, transcendence, more than ever
called for by the terrible exigencies of the nuclear age. Certain elements
crucial to the National Socialist religion of nature are also central to this
ideology. As we have seen these are: (1) the flight from history; (2) the
sanctification of national life; and (3) belief in a ‘natural order of things’.
Perhaps because all of these elements have been informed by, indeed,
are rooted in, certain aspects of the Judaeo-Christian tradition, the
ideology is so pervasive that it is often not even recognised as being such.
It is not characterised by, indeed, its bearers would largely reject, the
now seemingly absurd bits of exotic symbolism representative of the Na¬
tional Socialist religion. It does not call for the extermination of any peo¬
ple. Indeed, it occasionally articulates itself in calls for ‘brotherhood'
of one sort or another. Obviously, a ‘religion of nature' would be perceiv¬
ed as blasphemous by those who adhere, consciously or not, to the cur¬
rent ideology generic to the post-industrial West, or at least America.
Yet, as was the case with National Socialism, this ideology represents
a flight from history and search for some sort of sacred space/time realm.
Also, although a good deal more subtly, it provides for a form of en¬
chantment absolutely compatible with social stasis. It is fundamentally
anti-transcendent and anti-humanistic. Certainly, the author is not claim¬
ing that this effort to deal — or really, not to deal — with the perennial
questions of alienation, as well as those obviously pressing ones generic
to our age, somehow, even unconsciously, ‘stems from’ or is a copy
of, the National Socialist solution we have been considering throughout
the book. What it points to, though, is the terribly human tendency to
try and avoid facing disquieting issues which might well necessitate
 Conclusion 157

radical social, political or cultural change. ‘Fear of transcendence’; ‘flight

from history’; the searching out for some sort of ‘sacred space’ immune
from change, and efforts to sanctify a ‘natural order’, and, concurrent¬
ly, national life — all of these are part and parcel of a broader effort
to reenchant, or remystify, a world when ‘times are out of joint’.
A particular constellation of historical circumstances and contem¬
porary conditions assured that very basic human responses would assume
the form they did (at least for some) in a National Socialist religion of
nature opposed to the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Another constellation
of circumstances and conditions has produced an ideology which, while
vastly different in many ways, yet points to the same general underlying
needs and responses. With regard to this ideology, it is of crucial im¬
portance to note again that it has drawn upon certain aspects of the Judaeo-
Christian tradition. At the same time, though, it is equally important
to note that other elements, of perhaps even greater importance, have
been either played down or ignored. These, the same elements upon
which the National Socialists focused most of their rage, are an emphasis
upon the divinity of humankind, the idea of people being, as the psalmist
put it, ‘little lower than the angels’, and the crucial role of transcendence.
Deemphasising the two of them allows for a brutal freezing of reality
which can be viewed as providentially-ordained. Humanity, however one
might be repelled by various of its representatives, and transcendence
necessarily go together. In truth, one of those factors which makes cer¬
tain beings human is precisely this ability to perceive situations or con¬
ditions as they are and move beyond them. Perhaps, if one is to be
thoroughly literal about it, neither the divinity of humankind or
transcendence is ‘real’. Yet, the example provided by National Socialist
excursions into naturalism, and the desperate, pressing needs of today
suggest that, if one must orient one’s behaviour in terms of myths (and
this more assuredly has proved the case thus far), it would serve humanity
far better if one chose to believe in these. Humankind would most
assuredly be better served if we acted as if it were ultimately responsi¬
ble for its fate. The author realises that, strictly speaking, this is not
exactly a ‘logical’ approach. In a world which must be without end in¬
habited by finite beings, it is, though, probably the only rational one.
In his Life on the Mississippi, Mark Twain included an essay entitled
‘Enchantments and Enchanters’. It was largely devoted to attacking what
he saw as the nefarious influence of the romanticism of Sir Walter Scott
upon the American South, and obviously was concerned with the sources
of that variety of enchantment which would eventually be manifested
in National Socialism. After describing the progressive influences of the
158 Conclusion

French Revolution and Napoleon, Twain made the following observation:

Then comes Sir Walter Scott with his enchantments, and by his single
might checks this wave of progress, and even turns it back; sets the
world in love with dreams and phantoms; even decayed and swinish
forms of religion; with decayed and degraded systems of government;
with the silliness and emptiness, sham grandeurs, sham gauds, and
sham chivalries of a brainless and worthless long-vanished society.
He did measureless harm; more real and lasting harm, perhaps, than
any other individual that ever wrote.'7

Of course, the author has included a lengthy quote from this essay
because, while recognising the hyperbolic character of Twain’s attack
on the medieval period, he none the less thoroughly approves of the
general message conveyed. Twain was not. of course, attacking the right
of an individual to grasp for enchantment. He was saying, however, that
if such a desire comes to inform the character of a whole society, then
a disturbing if not dangerous situation can arise. The problem is, of
course, whether one is able to recognise that these personal efforts to
overcome that alienation characteristic of modem society — efforts which
almost always fail — which assume the several forms of enchantments,
are merely phantoms, fantasies by means of which brains tortured by
the agonies of modern life seek temporary relief. The back-to-nature fan¬
tasy is probably more of the most wide-spread in modern. Western
civilisation. So is the fantasy of avoiding transcendence through fleeing
history and seeking shelter in some sort of providential ‘natural order’.
To be sure, they are both based on a fundamental truth, viz., humans
are part of a natural order. However, they are fantasies to the extent
that they fail to recognise that humans — often nasty, brutish, thoroughly
unlovable — can neither go home again to those presumably ingenuous
pleasures associated with arboreal ancestors, or in the end, sunive, if
they seek refuge in some sort of endless present.
In National Socialism we see an example of what can occur when
the desire to achieve a virtually timeless state, to return to what could
be called, to use a Freudian analogy, a permanent state of ‘oceanic feel¬
ing’ (to a time in which that alienation made unavoidable by ego dif¬
ferentiation has not yet appeared) becomes the guiding principle of public
life. In the immanency of the National Socialist Weltanschauung religion
and politics were one, and fantasy became reality through counter¬
revolutionary praxis. Enchantment attained through the translation of
‘laws of life’ into reality quite naturally had to result in the elimination
 Conclusion 159

of those beings who deaths were justified by their living outside life in
the first place.
As Richard Rubenstein has pointed out so well, population pressures,
food shortages and the like might well result in the application of Nazi-
like solutions in the future.18 Most certainly the existence of coldly effi¬
cient, depersonalised bureaucracies, to say nothing of computers (as
Rubenstein has said, one can only marvel at what the Nazis were able
to accomplish without them), have provided modern states and/or political
movements with the means of carrying out such solutions. These
mechanisms of modern life are certainly products of and contributors
to, processes of rationalisation and secularisation. However, that which
called for the most efficient of techniques to be applied to tasks of exter¬
mination was a form of religiosity seemingly congruent with modern
needs. Most of these needs centre around the questions of alienation and
fear of change. The unwillingness to deal realistically with these needs
has been reflected in rigid adherence to a ‘Western’ ideology that, in
certain crucial ways, however unintended, has replicated aspects of the
National Socialist religion. In the end, it is hypothetically as dangerous¬
ly utopian, and in practice perhaps equally dystopian, as its more ob¬
viously hideous predecessor. ‘Utopia’ literally is ‘no place’; but the
remains of the gas chambers and crematoria of Auschwitz can be seen
today.

Notes

1. Richard L. Rubenstein, The Cunning of History: Mass Death and the American
Future (New York, Harper and Row, 1975), p. 28.
2. Richard L. Rubenstein, The Age of Triage, Fear and Hope in an Overcrowded
World (Boston, Beacon Press, 1983), p. 218.
3. Rubenstein, The Cunning of History, p. 94.
4. Ibid., p. 95. Although he views the city from a somewhat different perspective,
Rubenstein’s description of it bears a startling resemblance to those provided by represen¬
tatives of the German right.
5. One could, of course, offer the notion of original sin, something that is part of
the Christian, but not the Jewish, tradition. But this applied to all peoples, Christians in¬
cluded. While murder and annihilation as part of a conscientiously carried out policy rarely
were undertaken in the West (one could perhaps suggest the Albigensian Crusade of the
13th century as an exception, but conversion had existed as a possibility until the under¬
taking of the crusade itself), it is instructive to note that such was not the case with regard
to the Mongols, a people of course singularly removed from the Judaeo-Christian tradi¬
tions. Estimates as to the lives taken in the Mongol massacre range up to 10 million, which
demonstrates that what these people lacked in technology, they more than compensated
for in enthusiasm.
6. Jean-Pierre Sironneau has seen this as a response to sensed inadequacies of the
160 Conclusion

major religions to deal with the question of secularisation. See Secularisation et religions
politiques (The Hague, Paris, New York, Mouton, 1982), p. 194.
7. Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, translated from the German
by Vincent R. Carfagno (New York, The Noontide Press, 1971), pp. xv, 5, 169 , 344.
The behaviour of the West German -Green’ Party has been somewhat ambivalent in this
regard. For a good discussion of the contradictions in this party see Horst Mewes, ‘The
West German Green Party’, in New German Critique, 1983, 28. Winter. For a discussion
of recent Green political behaviour in Hesse, see ‘An die Troge’, in Der Spiegel, Nr.
18, 29 Jahrgang, 29 April 1985.
8. Dr. Helen Caldicott, Missile Envy, The Arms Race and Nuclear War (New York,
William Morrow and Co., 1984), p. 289.
9. On the use of the term ‘idolatry’, in this context, see Sironneau. Secularisation
et religions politiques, p. 525. Paul Tillich declared idolatrous sanctification of an object
‘without reference to the divine’ to be ‘demonic’. See Sironneau, p. 46. Also see Friedrich
Gogarten (about whom more will be said later). Despair and Hope for Our Time, translated
by Thomas Wieser (Philadelphia and Boston, Pilgrim Press. 1970), p. 108.
10. For an interesting, and somewhat sympathetic, treatment of the American tenden¬
cy to sanctify at least political institutions, see Paul Johnson, ‘The Almost Chosen Peo¬
ple’, in Time & Tide: A Quarterly Review, Spring 1985.
11. Rubenstein, Triage, p. 229.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. A most interesting idea regarding the origins of flags has been advanced by Lloyd
DeMause. They began as the actual placentas of pharaohs stuck on poles. This was ‘the
concrete prototype of all flags and standards to follow'. Lloyd DeMause, Foundations
of Psychohistory (New York, Psychohistory Press. 1982). p. 289. The ‘flag’ thus resulted
from efforts to utilise the ‘life-giving powers of the king' in potentially dangerous situa¬
tions. If memories of this origin subsist as unconscious residues of one sort or another,
one can understand why flags, particularly in times of stress, become charged w ith emo¬
tional energy.
15. We have already considered the remarks of Leo Schneiderman. See also. Siron¬
neau, Secularisation et religions politiques. pp. 125, 560.
16. On the existence of such a group in America, see Rubenstein. Triage, p. 93.
17. Mark Twain, ‘Enchantment and Enchanters’, in Charles B. Shaw (ed.), American
Essays (New York, New American Library, 1948), p. 67.
18. Rubenstein, The Cunning of History, pp. 83-5; Triage, p. 212.
APPENDIX: THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST RELIGION AND
THE GERMAN PEOPLE

In Chapter 6, we were primarily concerned with what could be called

the metaphysical, anti-historical appeal of National Socialism, and why
such could exercise considerable drawing power in Germany. Yet the
author was careful to point Out that, in his opinion, it will always be
difficult to determine just how many Germans were affected by this, or
if so, to what degree. It is important to point out, however, that, in re¬
cent years, various investigators, making use of quantified approaches,
have attempted to do this. One of these, Professor Richard Hamilton,
was mentioned earlier. There have been others as well. Here, the pioneer¬
ing work of Peter Merkl, cited from time to time throughout the text,
must come to hand, as does that of William S. Allen who, while not
strictly speaking a ‘quantifier’, applied something of a quantified ap¬
proach to a now famous small German town.1 Sarah Gordon, a student
of Allen’s, has published a work, Hitler, Germans and the ‘Jewish Ques¬
tion in which the impact of probably the most crucial element, at least
in historical terms, of the National Socialist religion upon the German
populace has been studied at some length.2
In all of these works, one overriding conclusion has been drawn;
namely, that while Hitler himself may have been influential as a speaker
of immense power, the role of ideology per se — in Hamilton’s case,
an exception to this has been noted earlier — was not very great. This
was so even, and perhaps especially, with regards to anti-Semitism. In
fact, Gordon has gone so far as to question its role within the National
Socialist Party itself.3 In all events, she has maintained, anti-Semitism
was not ‘logically’ necessary for the National Socialist movement to have
attained power.4 Obviously, particularly if we bear in mind the social
origins and usages of ideology mentioned at the beginning of this work,
the role of the Nazi ideology, to say nothing of the religiously-grounded
Weltanschauung of which it was the expression, has been called into
question. As a non-quantifier, Fred Weinstein, has emphasised in his
work, it would seem that the reasons people supported National
Socialism, even the reasons they joined the National Socialist Party, were
so varied that any attempt to apply generalisations to the phenomenon
must be seen as counter-productive.5 Once again — though this was pro¬
bably not the intention of any of the authors mentioned — the National

161
162 Appendix

Socialist phenomenon seems to defy historical explanation of any kind.

In at least one of the works, its excesses have been described as the result
of one man’s ability to impose his perverse will upon a nation-state cowed
into submission by the coarse instrument of bureaucratised terror.6 At
the same time, as one might expect, the quantifiers considered hold lit¬
tle brief for broad ‘psychohistorical’ explanations; although, it must be
noted that, on their parts, they show little understanding of what
psychohistory is all about.
It is certainly true that quantification, as articulated in voting studies,
measurements of opinion and evidence regarding individuals who aided
Jews based on court records, has to be viewed as a useful guard against
overly reductionist approaches to National Socialism. As we have seen,
reductionism can lead to metahistorical or nihilistic explanations which
are both, necessarily, anti-historical, even if the quantified approach can
also tend in this direction. Furthermore, quantified studies have the vir¬
tue of not allowing historians of any kind to remain comfortable with
‘truths’ so well established as to be virtually bromidic in their effects;
e.g., that National Socialism was primarily a lower middle class
phenomenon.7 Even if, in counterargument, evidence in support of one
or the other particular 'truth' can be presented, the challenges posed by
quantifiers are healthy ones. They serve to keep other varieties of
historians on their toes, perhaps a bit humble, and, at times, refreshing¬
ly baffled. Yet I think that, particularly with regard to the roles of
ideology and what we have called the 'National Socialist Religion’, both
within the movement itself and in relation to the German people, these
methods do not tell us a great deal.
Certainly, we can learn much about those courageous individuals,
inside the party or outside of it, who either offered opposition to the
National Socialist regime or 'aid' of one sort or another to Jews. Sarah
Gordon's study, based on the police records of Dusseldorf, tells us that
such people tended to be 'males, older individuals, independents and
white-collar workers’.8 Here, Gordon, much like her mentor William
Allen, has made much of the notion of abstract anti-Semitism.9 Thus
there is the clear impression that many, perhaps most, Germans har¬
boured a certain dislike for Jews in a general, abstract sort of fashion.
Yet they were not likely to participate in concrete anti-Semitic activi¬
ty.1" Indeed, during such 'actions’ as Kristallnacht, in November 1938,
they might even have offered assistance to Jews they knew. Certainly,
there can be little doubt that the 'abstract’ variety of anti-Semite was
often shocked by the gross violence and, above all, illegal behaviour,
undertaken against Jews, particularly those with whom they had been
 Appendix 163

acquainted.11 At the same time, however, the existence of an ‘abstract’

variety of anti-Semitism, something that all authors have widely
acknowledged, is instructive. It points to the existence of a general set
of beliefs and values more or less taken for granted in German society.
The beliefs can, I think, be summed up by the term ‘bourgeois group
fantasy’ and, while elements of this fantasy had been in existence for
some time — certainly since Germany’s emergence as a major industrial
power — it became of immense political importance only after World
War I. We have in part touched upon this in our earlier considerations
of ‘sacred time’, i.e., the desire to flee from or freeze history that was
so crucial to the National Socialist Religion. More important, though,
in considering the relationship between this religion and the German
population as a whole, was this generally held ‘bourgeois group fan¬
tasy’ the most important aspects of which were the following: persistent
yearning fora super-political ‘folk-community’ (Volksgemeinschaft)', a
continuous unease with industrial society and, linked to this, a strong
anti-urban bias; a tendency to extol the values of ‘natural’ and ‘unpolitical’
youth, an almost frenetic desire for strong leadership; and, finally, the
feeling — for usually it was little more than that — that Jews, a foreign,
apparently unnatural element, perhaps did not belong in Germany, even
if it would be rather untoward to drive them from the country.12
Naturally, not every German, not even every middle-class German,
believed in all aspects of the fantasy all the time. Also, there had to have
been — and were — differences between ‘liberals’ and ‘conservatives’
as to the persistence and importance of the fantasy in day-to-day life.
While, however, this could be crucial from time to time — and while
‘working class’ belief in this fantasy has never been determined with
certainty — the existence of such belief is beyond question.13 Natural¬
ly, not every bourgeois who believed in some parts, or even all, of this
fantasy necessarily voted National Socialist. Furthermore, as Gordon
has proved, not even seemingly convinced members of the party — in¬
dividuals who accepted the bourgeois fantasy and, indeed, went well
beyond it — had to accept the practical consequences of some of its more
strident aspects. With regards to beliefs of a seemingly ‘abstract’ nature
and, for many, anti-Semitism was more of an abstraction than, say, the
Volksgemeinschaft, it is both difficult and dangerously misleading to draw
some sort of line between thought — or ‘fantasy’ — and action.
It would, however, be equally misleading to assume that all of Na¬
tional Socialism, even the National Socialism that mattered — i.e., that
of the leadership — was qualitatively removed from the pathetic mus-
ings of a bewildered citizenry. Indeed, as we have noted earlier, a
164 Appendix

veritable legion of authors has attempted to demonstrate how varieties

of what can be called ‘political romanticism’ at least provided the
background for the rise of National Socialism. At the same time, though,
the much-discussed protean nature of the National Socialist ideology
as opposed to the religious core — allowed for a variety of groups and
individuals to support the movement, and the recent quantitative studies
under consideration have served simply to underscore this. Thus, an in¬
dividual might not be an avowed political romantic, much less a consis¬
tent anti-Semite, to vote National Socialist, or even to lend the movement
support beyond the voting booth. A large dose of anticommunism, anger
at economic conditions, or a sudden, and understandable, outburst of
resentment against Versailles might have sufficed. Yet whatever their
opportunistic or agitational value might have been, all of these elements
were crucial to National Socialists. The National Socialist Party for which
millions of Germans voted and, in some cases, fought, stood, albeit in
a more ruthless fashion, for what they believed. Thus, as has been pointed
out earlier, it is questionable whether or not National Socialist anti-
Semitism was indeed necessary for the party to have come to power.
Yet one can make the point that some of the nastier elements of the Na¬
tional Socialist outlook, as known to the German public, did not prevent
large numbers of this public from voting National Socialist.14
People voted National Socialist, or, beyond that, lent it support,
because of the basic acceptance of certain assumptions, assumptions
which were crucial to a fantasy world generic to at least German middle
class life. From the perspective of National Socialist actions once the
movement had attained power, the most important of these assumptions
was the existence of ‘The Jew’ as a sort of unlovable ‘other’.15 The
average German might not have wanted to hurt the Jews, much less ex¬
terminate them, and actions such as those of Kristallnacht might well
have been offensive to his/her sense of propriety. None the less, in view
of the surging dynamism of National Socialism, in its consistent represen¬
tation of so many elements crucial to the ‘bourgeois fantasy’ — most
important of which was the almost sacred notion of Volksgemeinschaft
— the fate of Jews as a group really did not matter all that much.
Of course, once the National Socialists were in power, the Volksge¬
meinschaft proved to be most elusive, and every class had reasons to
complain against some of the alternately ineffective or heavy-handed
policies of the regime; policies which, none the less, sufficed to bring
Germany out of the depression.16 Furthermore, as mentioned earlier,
the National Socialist regime never really succeeded in creating a
‘totalitarian state’ and there is some question whether such was actually
 Appendix 165

envisaged in the first place. Also, efforts at ideological control in such

areas as education and science were halting and inconsistent, despite the
fact that various ideologues such as Ernst Krieck saw these as crucial.
Besides, the average engineer, research scientist and physician was quite
content to ‘go along’ with the regime so long as he was left alone in
his particular bailiwick.17
It is of immense interest to note that, whenever various party zealots
attempted to challenge either of the two important churches — in a word,
whenever the National Socialist religion, inherently anti-Christian in
nature, confronted the traditional religious groups — National Socialist
enthusiasts were forced into hasty, embarrassing retreats. As we have
seen, the churches, particularly the Catholic church, played a decisive
role in the calling off of the euthanasia campaign. Earlier, in 1934, Na¬
tional Socialist attacks upon a popular Lutheran Bishop, Hans Meiser
of Nuremberg, and their eventual efforts to replace him, aroused a storm
of protest which resulted in a somewhat undignified withdrawal on the
part of local ideologues.18 National Socialists suffered a similar, perhaps
even greater embarrassment in 1941 when, in the Catholic portions of
mainly Catholic Bavaria, they tried to enforce an edict banning crucifixes
from the public schools. After some months of bitter confrontation, the
order was rescinded.19 Particularly to those most adamantly concerned
with the eventual overthrow of Judaeo-Christian usages, it became plain
that, because the political victory of the movement was ‘only the prere¬
quisite for the beginning of the fulfilment of their real mission’, challenges
to established religious traditions, particularly if domestic tranquillity
were to be preserved, had to be rather subtle.20
It is obvious that, in very real ways, the established churches had
managed to retain a good deal of influence, perhaps even gaining some
as vehicles of popular protest against unpopular aspects of National
Socialist rule. All observers, however, are united in the observation that
church protest of any kind against either the general course of National
Socialist foreign policy or the regime’s anti-Jewish measures was
minimal.21 To be sure, the Bishop of Munster attacked the paganism
of Alfred Rosenberg, Cardinal Faulhaber defended the Old Testament
of Christianity (he did not, however, defend ‘modem’ Jews), and various
priests offered protests against the treatment of Jews and the general con¬
ception of ‘Aryanism’.22 Protestant leaders, such as the well-known Mar¬
tin Niemoller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer did the same, and the latter paid
with his life for his participation in the 20 July 1944 bomb plot. Pastor
Heinrich Gruber set up a relief agency to help Jews to emigrate. He paid
for his commitment to Christian principle by being tortured in a
166 Appendix

concentration camp, and many of those involved in his relief agency were
killed there.23 He at least survived. Helmut Hesse, another pastor who
spoke out in defence of Jews, did not, dying in Dachau in 1943. The
courageous preaching and in some cases, actions of these and other
clergymen point out the fact that, as might have been expected, various
representatives of the Christian faith recognised the religious challenge
of National Socialism for what it was.
As stated above, however, all who have commented on the role of
the churches have had to report that these individuals were the excep¬
tions; that, in fact, organised church opposition to Nazism, except when
it challenged church authority per se, was virtually non-existent. This
points to the extremely crucial role of the hyphen in the term Judaeo-
Christian. Certainly, all orthodox Christians had to recognise that there
was such a unified tradition. Yet, the traditional identification of the Jews
of killers of Christ — as, in fact, having committed ‘Deicide’ — or, at
the very least, as being stiff-necked apostates, had to have been influen¬
tial in deciding just how far representatives of Christianity would be will¬
ing to go in defending a group of people whose traditional economic
and social roles in German life seemed to suggest that an angry God
had provided a pariah role for it.25 As has been noted. Cardinal
Faulhaber’s somewhat attenuated ‘defence’ of Biblical Judaism did not
necessitate — nor, it seems, would he have wanted it to — defence of
those ‘modern’ Jews threatened by National Socialism, and even the
courageous Dietrich Bonhoeffer thought that, in the future, greater
pressure would have to be put upon the Jews to compel them to recognise
Jesus Christ as Lord.26
The response of German Christian clergy to National Socialist persecu¬
tion of the Jews had to have been vitiated by centuries of traditional anti-
Semitism. This, combined with a general approval of the anti-Bolshevik
stance of the Nazis, particularly after later ideological embarrassments
had been resolved through the invasion of the Soviet Union, tended to
make meaningful church opposition to the salient principles of National
Socialism weak in the extreme.27 Thus, representatives of the major
Christian denominations could not offer real leadership, particularly once
the war became ‘serious’, and, most significantly, particularly once
persecution became transformed into extermination. Furthermore, as seen
earlier, the ‘moralistic’ side of National Socialism — it emphases upon
family life, the ‘traditional’ role of women, and the seeming commit¬
ment to the uplifting of national life in general — elicited initial support
from some clergymen. Friedrich Gogarten, a Protestant theologian who,
with Karl Barth, had at one time fought against the liberalising influences
 Appendix 167

in late nineteenth century theology, and, like Barth, had placed emphasis
upon the absolute contrast between God and man, was an early supporter
of National Socialism, eventually counting himself a ‘German Christian’.
In a curious sort of way, he placed emphasis upon both the radical separa¬
tion of the world of God and the mundane world and a newly sensed
role of divine guidance in the world to justify National Socialism. Thus,
on the one hand, the coming to power of Hitler had to be seen as a
demonstration of how God showed direction and leadership through
political events. On the other hand, the vicissitudes of that purely human
existence, provided for by the will of God, necessitated that a person
render obedience to the state because it was the expression of the will
of that Volk to which he belonged.28 His one time friend and ally, Karl
Barth, who played a prominent role in the anti-Nazi ‘Confessing Church’
(‘Bekennenden kirche') did sense something of a contradiction in this,
and the friendship soon died as a result. Yet it would be erroneous to
assume that simple opportunism was responsible for Gogarten’s descent
into theological conundrum. National Socialism was correctly perceiv¬
ed as constituting an assault upon liberalism in any form. At the same
time, the total claim upon the earthly essence of humanity exerted by
National Socialism seemed to underline the relevance of a church which,
traditionally, had often rationalised its existence in terms of ‘rendering
unto Caesar’.29 In any case while drawing a line between the National
Socialist Weltanschauung, at least as he understood it, and the Christian
faith perse, Gogarten voiced strong approval of the anti-individualistic,
anti-liberal stance of the new regime. In this, of course, he was at one
with a great many clerics who had never accepted either the fall of the
monarchy, or that liberal abomination, the Weimar Republic.
The radical ‘totalism’ of the National Socialist movement greatly at¬
tracted Gogarten. He declared that since it came ‘out of the core of human
life’, it embraced the totality of at least earthly existence.30 No doubt
bearing in mind the apparent anomic chaos of Weimar life, he went on
to state that any person unwilling to accept the fact that true human
freedom came only with the rule of a state governed by the National
Socialist movement was only an ‘abstract individual’.31 There can be
little doubt that, in its apparent total moral commitment to the German
people, National Socialism was perceived by Gogarten as being a
providentially-ordained bridge between the ontologically divided worlds
of God and man. In due course, he came to regret (at least partially)
his early, unfortunate evaluation of the saving power of National
Socialism and, after the war, became a leader in the ‘secularisation’
movement of Protestantism, one which, even more than Gogarten had
168 Appendix

done earlier, emphasised the radical separation between the world of

God and the world of man. This time, there would be no room for political
mediation.32
The conservative Protestant theologian, Wilhelm Stapel, also sought
accommodation with the National Socialists and, in some ways, went
even further than Gogarten. A strong believer in the Volksgemeinschaft,
the rebirth of German military power and the Fuhrerprinzip, he emphasis¬
ed the ‘cleansing’ role that National Socialism would play regarding a
perceived Jewish domination of German culture. In a strongly moralistic
diatribe, which appeared in 1937, Stapel declared that it had been the
‘Jewish Spirit’ that had been responsible for the degenerating intrusions
of ‘psychology’ and liberal values into literature.33 Jewish emancipa¬
tion which, thank God, was now being undone by the National Socialist
movement, had been fearfully mistaken in considering the Jew as a human
being when, in reality, he remained the same archetypal Jew ‘that he
was from the beginning’.34 Stapel, who here came close to rejecting
Christianity altogether in favour of racism, would later have cause to
regret much of what he said, and became a critic of Hitler. Yet, par¬
ticularly in his attacks on a perceived Jewish immorality, he represented
a fairly substantial body of clerical opinion.
Thus, while one can point to a number of religious leaders who, for
theological or simply ethical reasons, offered opposition to National
Socialism, there were many more who either offered no opposition what¬
ever (unless, of course, the religious claims of some National Socialists
brought about jurisdictional disputes), or who sought accommodation
with the new order, seeing within it a strong moral imperative. They
(many of them ‘German Christians’), as did of course no small number
of lay people, saw little conflict between National Socialist goals as they
understood them and the transcendental claims of Christianity. As a rule,
the National Socialist leadership had no intention of disabusing these peo¬
ple, while those who did sense the tension between two Weltanschauun-
gen, and perhaps acted on that basis, could be dealt with over time.
In all of this, it is important to bear in mind that ‘true believers’ such
as Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels and others (here, Martin Bormann must
be reckoned as being something of an exception) came to recognise that
their own very real system of religious values had to be introduced to
the German people ‘in small doses’. To the extent that the average
German adhered to ‘traditional’ religious values, these could not be
attacked head-on. To the extent that the average German, while ‘abstract¬
ly’ anti-Semitic, still disapproved of the window-breaking, head-breaking
violence of Kristallnacht, the far-reaching actions against Jews
 Appendix 169

necessitated by their religion of nature could not be publicised. As men¬

tioned earlier, the ‘mission’ of National Socialism necessitated caution.
Like missionaries in a possibly hostile environment, National Socialist
bearers of the religion of nature could not afford to discomfit the populace
to an inordinate degree.
Nevertheless, there was enough ‘overlap’ at certain levels, and enough
anti-Semitism, usually ‘abstract’, but sometimes more than that, and
enough visceral enthusiasm generated by diplomatic and military suc¬
cesses. to assure a level of support, necessary for the National Socialists
to undertake the first crucial steps in their own revolution.35 Ironically
enough, that ‘traditional’ anti-Semitism which in large measure flowed
from Christianity, something which National Socialism supposedly would
supplant, helped to assure a general level of support for ‘moderate’ anti-
Semitic measures, e.g., the Nuremberg laws of 1935.36 More ideological
variants of anti-Semitism that had become generic to German cultural
life certainly were of value in this regard, although how much so can
probably never be established with certainty. Certainly, as we have seen,
there were Germans who did not go along with all of this. As has been
pointed out, there were even cases in which SS guards at concentration
camps showed kindness to prisoners.37 None the less, the fate of a
generally disliked portion of the population could not excite the same
sort of opposition as could threats to established and respected religious
traditions. For most Germans, such opposition was not worth the risk
to oneself or to one’s family, and the persistent barrage of official anti-
Semitic propaganda most assuredly had a strong influence, particularly
with the younger generation.38 For those who, quite simply, did not want
to know what was happening, — and once the extermination programs
began, this was crucial — quite simply, one did not have to know. All
who have commented upon public opinion in National Socialist Germany
have emphasised that, while there was much grumbling over such things
as economic controls, food shortages, and the persistence of class
privilege — itself a testimony to the chimerical nature of the Volksge-
meinschaft — the ‘Jewish Question’ was not very important to most
Germans.39
Thus, the degree to which major tenets of the National Socialist
Religion affected the behaviour of the everyday German must remain
elusive. Opinion polls, police records, and even specific examples of
assistance to declared racial enemies cannot, in the end, measure the
degree to which most Germans accepted even that which they were
allowed to know about the guiding principles of National Socialism. With
regard to the religious ‘core’, it is plain that the regime itself was, and
170 Appendix

had to be, extremely cautious. Outside those in the leading circles of

the party or the SS, or those who listened attentively to lectures at SS
training schools such as Bad Tolz, probably relatively few Germans were
aware of the revolution in religious values, of which the Final Solu¬
tion’ was deemed a necessary First step.
Yet, even the core of the National Socialist religion of nature was
not something utterly alien to Western/Central European cultural history
in general, and that of Germany in particular. In part it was rooted in
a general malaise that was a byproduct of material progress, a malaise
which found articulation in ‘the return to nature’. It received much of
its specifically German centre from a ‘group fantasy’ that constituted
a substantial portion of at least the bourgeois response to rapid economic
growth, social displacement, military humiliation and cultural and
political upheaval. Implicit in any fantasy is the guiding notion of freez¬
ing time, of a certain flight from historical reality. The sense of
‘timelessness’, or, as Eliade put it, of ‘sacred time’, is a crucial factor
in determining the existence of fantasy as fantasy. In their efforts to assure
the emergence and advancement of the ‘new Aryan man , the bearers
of National Socialist religiosity had to set the stage for a frozen, anti¬
transcendent world in which archetypal suppositions became truths
grounded in ‘nature’s eternal laws’. Here, the National Socialists went
beyond bourgeois fantasising in their determination to push matters
through to a logical, if not rational, conclusion; in a word, to the point
at which the literally ‘fantastic’ became real. The vast mass of citizenry
who, as German Europeans, had helped to construct a fantasy world
which more ruthlessly consistent souls were attempting, with religious
fervour, to transform into reality, bore witness to this process without,
necessarily, being aware of implications.
From time to time, the fanfare of Liszt's 'Preludes’ would blare forth
from the radio, and this was inspiring, because it always preceded vic¬
tory proclamations. From time to time, heavy-handed policies or over¬
sights would arouse hostility on the part of one group or another of the
population, and grumblings were dutifully recorded by members of the
SS ‘Security Service’. Perhaps citizens would read about, or even witness,
an SS ceremony of some sort. No doubt it struck ‘lay people’ as in¬
teresting, perhaps a bit frightening, certainly a trifle bizarre. Occasional¬
ly, citizens would catch a glimpse of wizened, wax-faced wraiths in
outsized pyjama-uniforms and hear rumours about where they were going
and what was being done to them.'40 Eventually, there was aerial bom¬
bardment, military decline and, finally, disaster. In the end, a people
embittered by party corruption and awash in a sea of contradictory or
 Appendix 171

disturbing evidence best not reflected on, much less assimilated, had only
an increasingly remote Fuhrer in whom to believe. Almost until the end,
most of the German people continued to put their faith in him, unaware
that the guiding principles of his religion necessitated that he condemn
them to destruction even as he prepared to take leave of a world unwor¬
thy of so singular a prophet.

Notes

1. William S. Allen’s classical study. The Nazi Seizure of Power, has recently ap¬
peared in updated form as. The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experiences of a Single Ger¬
man Town, 1922-1945, revised edition (New York, Franklin Watts, 1984).
2. Sarah Gordon, Hitler, Germans and the ‘Jewish Question ’ (Princeton, New Jersey,
Princeton University Press, 1984).
3. Differences of opinion as to the proper solution to the ‘Jewish Question’ are discussed
in Chapters 2 and 4 of the above work.
4. Ibid., p. 311. See also, John Hiden and John Farquharson, Explaining Hitler’s
Germany (Totowa, New Jersey, Barnes and Noble, 1983), p. 31.
5. Fred Weinstein, The Dynamics of Nazism: Leadership Ideology, and the Holocaust
(New York, Academic Press, 1980), pp. 59-60.
6. Gordon, Hitler, Germans and the ‘Jewish Question’, pp. 312-6.
7. A challenge to the notion that the German lower middle class bore the greatest
degree of responsibility for Hitler’s coming to power has been posed by Richard F. Hamilton,
Who Voted for Hitler? (Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1982). Michael
H. Kater, The Nazi Party: A Social Profile of Members and Leaders (Cambridge, Mass.,
Harvard University Press, 1983), while not concerned with those who voted for the Na¬
tional Socialist Party, suggests that much of the membership of it was lower middle class,
and that the party as a whole was dominated by lower middle class values.
8. Gordon, Hitler, Germans, and the ‘Jewish Question’, p. 271. Gordon states that
her research has revealed that women and blue-collar workers were least likely to offer
assistance to Jews. Social, psychological and political reasons why this might have been
the case have not been explored.
9. The existence of such is implied throughout Gordon’s work. Allen uses the term
on p. 84 of The Nazi Seizure Power.
10. Ian Kershaw, Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich: Bavaria
1933-1945 (New York, Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 266-8.
11. Ibid., pp. 232, 234-5, 273.
12. For a discussion of this ‘fantasy’ and its relationship to the National Socialist religion,
see Robert A. Pois ‘Jewish Treason against the Laws of Life: Nazi Religiosity and Bourgeois
Fantasy’, in Michael N. Dobkowski and Isidor Wallimann (eds.). Towards the Holocaust:
The Social and Economic Collapse of the Weimar Republic (Westport, Connecticut, Green¬
wood Press, 1983). Also, the reader is referred to Peter Loewenberg, ‘The Psychohistorical
Origins of the Nazi Youth Cohort’, in Peter Loewenberg, Decoding the Past: The
Psychohistorical Approach (New York, Alfred Knopf, 1983); Rudolf Binion, Hitler Among
the Germans (New York, Elsevier, 1976); Irving L. Janis, Victims of Group Think: A
Psychological Study of Foreign-Policy Decisions and Fiascoes (Boston, Houghton Miflin,
1972). Lloyd DeMause developed the group fantasy concept to what could be considered
its logical conclusion when he declared that all forms of human organisation, including
the state, are really group fantasies. See his Foundations of Psychohistory (New York,
172 Appendix

Psychohistory Press. 1982). For a review of the various uses made of this idea, see Peter
Loewenherg.’ Psychohistory’. in Michael Kammen (ed.). The Past Before Us Contem-
porary Historical Writing in the United States (New York. Cornell University Press. 1980).
A somewhat shortened version of this essay is in Loewenherg. Decoding the Past. pp. 14-41
13. Working class musings about a sort of pre-industrial rural idyll, as discussed in
Barrington Moore. Injustice: Die Social Bases of Obedience and Revolt (White Plains,
New York. M E. Sharpe. 1978). have been considered earlier in this work. Whether or
not the fuller articulation of this, the Volksgemeinschaft ideal was broadly represented in
the working class is not known. Most workers, of course, continued to vote Social
Democratic or Communist (although working class representation in the National Socialist
Party was not insignificant), and the internationalism’ of these two leftist parties certain¬
ly flew in the face of the Volksgemeinschaft idea.
14. For a discussion of the rather marginal role that concern for the Jews played in
the political decision-making process of many Germans, see Weinstein. The Dynamics
of Nazism, pp. 23-7. Also see Kershaw . Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the
Third Reich, pp. 276-7.
15. See Eugen Weber, ‘Modem anti-Semitism’, in Henry Friedlander and Sybil Milton
(eds.). The Holocaust: Ideology, Bureaucracy and Genocide (Milwood. New York. Kraus
International Publications. 1980), p. 44. Also, Arnold Paucker, Der judische Abwehrkampf:
gegen Antisemitismus und Nationalsozialismus in den letzen Jahren der Weimarer Republik
(Hamburg, Leibniz-Verlag, 1968), p. 146.
16. Complaints about the continued existence of class discrimination and class advan¬
tage were extremely common during the Hitler years. Ian Kershaw, in Popular Opinion
and Political Dissent in the Third Reich has pointed out that fanners and businessmen
(at least in Bavaria) apparently felt fairly free to voice complaints about various Nazi
economic policies which seemed to — and did — favour well-established interests. Work¬
ing class people even participated in an occasional strike. As Kershaw has stated, however,
e.g.. on p. 139. such complaints and protests were almost never political in nature.
17. See Gerth H. Brieger, ‘The Medical Profession', Alan Beyerchen. The Physical
Sciences’, and Thomas D. Hughes. ‘Technology’, in Friedlander and Sybil. The Holocaust.
Also. Reece C. Kelly, ‘Die gescheiterte nationalsozialistische Personalpolitik und die
misslungene Entwicklung der nationalsozialistischen Hochschulen'. in Manfred Heinemann
(Hrsg.). Erziehung und Schulung im Dritten Reich. Teil 2: Hochschule. Erwachsenbildung
(Stuttgart, Klett-Cotta. 1980).
18. Kershaw. Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich (New York.
Oxfocd University Press. 1983), pp. 163 ff. The 1934 Meiser dispute is also discussed
in lan Kershaw's earlier work, Der Hitler-Mythos: Volksmeinung und Propaganda im Dritten
Reich (Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlag-Anstalt. 1980). pp. 98-102. Once the dispute was over.
Meiser had no qualms about offering prayers thanking God for providing the German people
with Hitler. See Kershaw. Der Hitler-Mythos, p. 93.
19. Kershaw. Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich, p. 341 ff.
Kershaw, Der Hitler-Mythos, pp. 103 ff.
20. Kershaw. Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich, p. 1. In the
church controversies of 1934 and 1941. Hitler’s popularity as opposed to that of the par¬
ty, increased, because he was perceived as being a moderate force, as indeed he was.
He was ultimately responsible for at least slow ing down the pace of anti-Christian activities.
See Kershaw, Der Hitler-Mythos, p. 90 ff and p. 101 ff.
21. Indeed, with regard to bloodless victories, such as the,Anschluss of Austria in March.
1938. the churches, particularly the Catholic church, assumed a very positive stance towards
Hitler’s foreign policy. See Kershaw, Der Hitler-Mythos, p. 97.
22. Gordon, Hitler, Germans and the 'Jewish Questionp. 248. On Faulhaber’s rather
‘mixed message’, see Kershaw, Popular Opinion and Political Dissent, pp. 247-8.
23. Kershaw, ibid., p. 255.
24. Ibid., p. 258.
 Appendix 173

25. David Winston, ‘Pagan and Early Christian Anti-Semitism’, in Friedlander and
Milton, The Holocaust, pp. 23-4. In another essay in this volume, Gavin I. Langmuir
has described a more ‘popular’ form of anti-Semitism which he has identified with Nor¬
thern Europe. In his ‘Medieval Anti-Semitism', he points to the following as characteris¬
ing this version; *. . . repressed fantasies about crucifixion and cannibalism, repressed
doubts about the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and unbearable fears of the bubonic
bacillus that imperceptibly invaded peoples’ bodies’. (Friedlander and Milton, p. 32.)
26. Gerald Fleming, Hitler and the Final Solution. With an Introduction by Saul
Friedlander (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1984), p. 12 fn.
27. On church support, particularly Catholic, of Hitler’s war against Bolshevism, see
Kershaw, Popular Opinion and Political Dissent, p. 340 ff.
28. Friedrich Gogarten, Einheit von Evangelium und Volkstum (Hamburg, Hanseatische
Verlag, 1933), pp. 7-9.
29. John Conway has pointed out that while more conservative theologians, such as
Barth, often offered resistance to National Socialism’s claim upon the whole man, theologians
who were somehow concerned with justifying the relevance of the church in an increas¬
ingly secular world usually either went along with the movement and its regime or capitulated
to it altogether. See John S. Conway, ‘The Churches’, in Friedlander and Milton, The
Holocaust, pp. 204-6.
30. Friedrich Gogarten, Einheit von Evangelium and Volkstum, pp. 10-11.
31. Ibid., p. 13.
32. For a consideration of Gogarten’s role in the ‘secularisation movement’, one which
approved of a demystifying of the world while exalting what its adherents saw as the ‘true’,
Biblical notion of God and Christ, see Jean-Pierre Sironneau, Secularisation et religions
politiques (The Hague, Paris, New York, Mouton, 1982), pp. 84-5. Considering his political
decisions of the 1930s, it is perhaps ironic that, in his post-World War II writings, Gogarten
expressed viewpoints which put him in a camp also occupied by Harvey Cox, Peter Berger
and the late Dietrich Bohhoeffer.
33. Wilhelm Stapel, Literartische Vorherrschafte derJuden in Deutschland: 1918 bis
1933 (Hamburg, Schriften d. Reichsinstitut fur Geschichte d. Neuen Deutschland, 1937),
p. 26, 41.
34. Ibid., p. 32. Stapel’s ‘critique’ of Jewish influence in Germany, as well as his
variant of racism, did not go far enough to please the National Socialists. For a good,
general consideration of him and his career in National Socialist Germany, see Weins¬
tein, The Dynamics of Nazism, pp. 11-12. In their efforts either to lend support to or come
to an accommodation with, the National Socialist regime, few clergy went as far as Jesuit
Hermann Muckermann, who praised a ‘healthy racial stock’ as a ‘gift from heaven’. (Ker¬
shaw, Popular Opinion and Political Dissent, p. 250).
35. On Hitler’s building upon, and then going beyond, ‘traditional’ German middle-
class concerns, see Weinstein, The Dynamics of Nazism, pp. 24, 65-6.
36. Kershaw, Public Opinion and Political Dissent, pp. 269, 272-3. Gordon, Hitler,
Germans, and the 'Jewish Question’, pp. 171-2. Of course, the Nuremberg Laws can
be seen as ‘moderate’ only in comparison to what eventually happened. After all, they
served to deprive the Jews of citizenship altogether and thus put them in a very precarious
legal position.
37. George M. Kren and Leon Rappoport, The Holocaust and the Crisis of Human
Behavior (New York, Holmes and Meier, 1980), p. 96.
38. On the role of propaganda in exacerbating anti-Semitism in German young peo¬
ple, see Gordon, Hitler, Germans and the ‘Jewish Question’, p. 222.
39. Kershaw, Public Opinion and Political Dissent, pp. 360-1. Kershaw, Der Hitler-
Mythos, pp. 132-3. Marlis G. Steinert, Hitler’s War and the German Public — Mood
and Attitudes During the Second World War, ed. and translated by Thomas E.J. de Witt
(Athens, Ohio, Ohio University Press, 1977), pp. 151-3, 154.
40. While various authors talk about what the German people knew or did not know
174 Appendix

about the slaughter of the Jews, probably the best discussion of this in English has been
provided by Lawrence D. Stokes. 'The German People and the Destruction of the Euro¬
pean Jews', in Central European History, 1973. VI, no. 2, June. See also Chapter I, 'Ger¬
many: A Wall of Silence?’, in Walter Laqueur. Ti\e Terrible Secret Suppression of the
Truth About Hitler's Final Solution (Boston. Penguin Books, 1982).
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INDEX

Aachen 122 Bad Tolz Junkerschule Handbook

Ackerman, Josef 126 43-4, 47, 150
Adorno, Theodore 16 see also ‘humanity concept’.
Albert Canal Defence System (Belgian) National Socialist rejection of
94 Baird, Jay 93
Albigensians 64fn. Balkans, campaign in (1941) 92
Albigensian Crusade 57, 159fn. Barbarrosa, Friedrich 143
Allen, William Sheridan 141, 161, 162 Barth, Karl 166, 167
American First Army 122 Battle of Britain (1940) 92 , 93
American national character, Bavaria 140
unfavourable comments upon 104 see also Anti-crucifix campaign
Anti-crucifix campaign (Bavaria, ' Bekenntniskirche ’ 167
1941), National Socialist Belgian army 114fn.
embarrassment in 165 Belzec concentration camp 145
Anti-semitism 2, 59, 92, 139, 161 Berger, Gottlob, Obergruppenfuhrer
‘abstract variety’ 162-3, 169 Waffen-SS 82
as ‘common obscenity’ 16 Berger, Peter L.
as crucial for SS leaders 61 Weltanschauung 8, 173fn.
Goebbels emphasis upon in ‘total definition of mysticism 10-11
war’ speech (February, 1943) The Sacred Canopy 8
101 see also Religion
‘traditional’ 166, 169 Berlin 139
see also Jews, National Socialism, Berlin, Irving 104
and listings under various Bhagavad-Gita
National Socialist leaders Himmler’s use of 52
Ardennes counter offensive Biology, impact of racial assumptions
(December, 1944) 64fn., 106-7 upon 75
Arendt, Hannah 39, 110 Bismarck, Otto von
see also Ideology, Weltanschauung Kulturkampf of 28
‘Armistice Day’ 1 Blacks, enslavement of 1
‘Aryan Man’ 24, 29, 86, 100, 133, Bonhoeffer, Dietrich 165, 166, 173fn.
146, 170 Bormann, Martin 55, 168
approximation of 79-80 attack on Christianity 47
in art 77, 80, 84 ‘Bourgeois group fantasy’
in life/death confrontation with existence of in post-World War I
Jews 102, 124 Germany 163-4
in ‘religion of nature’ 117 relation to ‘sacred time’ 170
Astrology, Hitler’s attitude toward 57 Brachmann, Dr. 47
Auschwitz concentration camp 73, attack of upon Judaism and
131, 134, 145, 159 Christianity 44-5
Authoritarian Personality, The, on ‘cult of the Virgin Mary’ 45
(Adorno) 15 Brecker, Amo 80
Broszat, Martin 14
Backe, Herman, Minister of Buch, Walther 124
Agriculture, 1942-45 134fn. Buchenwald concentration camp 73
Bad Tolz 170 Buchheim, Hans 19, 67, 131

182
 Index 183

on ideology and the SS 19 see also National Socialism

on ‘moral subjectivism' of SS 131 Davidowicz, Lucy 124
Buffon, Louis 58 on Hitler’s ‘declaration of war
Biihier, H.A., painter against the Jews’ 127
‘Homecoming’ 89 DeMause, Lloyd, on placental origins
Bullock, Alan 15 of the flag 160fn.
Dewey, John 71
Calvinism 152, 154 Dietl, General Major Eduard 94, 95
Carpathian Mountains 105 as ‘New Aryan Man’ 93
Cassirer 36, 57 Douglas, Mary 36
Catholic Church on ‘exaltation of the inner
fight of against euthansia program experience’ 119
165 Natural Symbols 9-10
Hitler’s fear of 28 see also Religion
Cecil, Robert on Weltanschauung and Dresler, Adolf 76, 80, 84
Ideology 20-1 Diihring 45
Chamberlain, Houston Stewart 45 Diisseldorf 162
Christians, persecution of 1, 121 Dybbuk, The (film) 128
Christianity 142
anti-Bolshevism of clergy 166 Eban Emael (Belgian fort) 94
efforts of representatives to Eber, Elk 80
establish rapport with National Eberlain, Kurt Karl 76
Socialists 91, 166-8 Eckhardt, Untersturmfuhrer Professor
National Socialists efforts to avoid 54
confrontation with 28-9, Eddas, National Socialist use of 84
137-8, 165, 169 Einsatzgruppen 128
see also National Socialism Elbertzhagen, Alex, on Nordic
National Socialists’ use of 2; see religiosity 45
also Hitler Eliade, Mircea 142, 170
Orthodox variety as offering The Myth of the Eternal Return 141
greater resistance to Nazism England see Great Britain
173fn. Enlightenment 58
sense of shame regarding the interpretations of National
human body 125 Socialism grounded in 23
Churchill, Winston 108 see also Marxist and
‘City on the Hill’, its influence on psychoanalytical interpretations
American politics 154 Eternal Jew, The (film) 126
Cold War 1 ‘Exhibition of Degenerate Art’ 77, 78,
Cologne 139 80, 125
Communism, weakness of in Germany Expressionism 80
in early 1930s 141
Cox, Harvey 173fn. Fabricius, Cajus 91
Cubism 81 Fascism 27, 39, 142
emphasis upon ‘authenticity’ 118
Dachau concentration camp 166 Italian 50, 66
Dada 80, 81 use of pragmatism of 50, 71
d’Alquen, Gunter, Hauptsturmfuhrer Faulhaber, Cardinal 165, 166
Waffen-SS 95 Fest, Joachim 41
Darre, R. Walter, Minister of Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 33fn.
Agriculture, 1933-42, Reich ‘Final Solution’ 53, 127-33
Peasant Leader 1934-45 52, 123, see also Himmler, Jews, SS
124-5, 134fn. Fleck, Ludwick 72-3, 75
Darwinian tradition 40, 41, 58, 154-5 Genesis and Development of a
184 Index

Scientific Fact 72 on superiority of SS units on

Fleming, Gerald Eastern Front 98, 102-3
Hitler and the Final Solution 127, on ‘true socialism’ of National
133 Socialist movement 121-2
‘Flight from History’ 3, 141-2, 153, sees Hitler as one with German
158 people 106
as part of Western, post-industrial ‘total war’ speech of 101-2
ideology 152, 156-7 Gogarten, Friedrich, pro-Nazi stance
Frankfurt School 15 of 166-8
French Revolution 158 Gordon, Sarah 162, 163
Freud, Sigmund and psychoanalysis 4, Hitler, Germans, and the ‘Jewish
16, 60fn., 112fn. Question'
approach to religion 35 Goring, Hermann 108, 112fn.
‘Kairotic Time’ of 152 Goring, Matthias Heinrich
‘Oceanic Feeling’ of 158 Goring Institut 112fn.
Frick, Wilhelm 87 Graberfursorge (‘Graves Welfare’)
Friedlander, Saul 133 Office 56
Friedrich, Caspar David 83 Great Britain
Fiihrerprinzip 168 acceptance of unemployment in 156
role of in usurping power of state industrialisation of 139
67, 69 war effort of 101
Greek art 81
Garia (New Guinea Tribe) 36 ‘Green Party’ (West Germany) 160fn.
German Artists and the SS 82, 83, 88 Gruber, Heinrich 165
Gerschwin, George 104
Gestapo 67 Haeckel, Ernst 40, 62fn.
Gideon 61fn. Hamburg 139
Gnosticism 57 Hamilton, Richard 138, 141, 161
Gobineau, Arthur Comte de 32fn., 58 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 37,
Goebbels, Paul Josef 18 , 54 , 59, 78, 40, 60fn., 91
81, 90-1, 93, 94, 98, 109, 122, crude Hegelianism of National
123, 128, 168 Socialist ‘religion of nature’ 55
as representative of ‘religion of Heidegger, Martin 73, 120
nature’ 29 Hermann (Arminius) 143
his ‘last-ditch’ defence of National Hess, Rudolf 74, 100
Socialist ideology 108-9 Hesse, Helmut 166
offers criticism of Hider and Heuss, Theodor 33fn.
National Socialism 107-8 Hillman. Sidney (CIO leader) 104
on army’s performance in Russia Himmler, Heinrich 23, 34, 48. 52, 55,
98 56, 84-5. 123, 125, 126, 131,
on art criticism 77 144. 168
on ideological training; uselessness and National Socialist ideology 23
of in wartime 98-9 as representative of religion of
on lack of ideological commitment nature 29
of army 107 as ‘victim’ of ‘Final Solution’ 145
on Mussolini and problems with attacks Christianity 48
his ‘royalist’ Italian army 103 his cultivation of the ‘New Aryan
on National Socialism for ‘home Man' 118
consumption’ 99 on Hider as 'Gottmensch' 51-2
on necessity of annihilating Jews on Lebensbom 88
128-9 on task of SS in ‘Final Solution’
on role of ideological stiffening in 129-31
SS units 103 see also SS, Lebensbom, ‘Final
Solution’
 Index 185

Historische Zeitschrift 74 ‘Holocaust’ 1

Hitler, Adolf 4, 6, 10, 14, 15-29 Hoss, Rudolf (commandant of
passim, 42, 44, 47, 48, 55, 66, Auschwitz) 131-2
69, 70, 77, 86, 94, 95, 98, 105-6, on ‘riddle’ of Jewish behaviour 132
120, 127, 128, 161, 168, 171 as ‘victim’ of ‘Final Solution’ 145
and Christianity: contempt for 39, Hungarian Army 103
67, 91; need for Christian
usages 24, 49, 70; on ‘Idealised rural past’, impact of upon
Christianity versus ‘laws of German people 140-1
life’ 49-50; see also National Ideology
Socialism Hannah Arendt’s definition of 7
and nature: deification of nature ' Otto Rank’s definition of 7
42; representative of ‘religion relations of to Weltanschauung and
of nature’ 29 religion in National Socialism
as ‘moderate force’ in church/state 10
disputes 172fn. see also Arendt, Rank, National
assassination attempt upon (July Socialism
20, 1944) 107 Industrialisation, German
biological mysticism of 39 singular characteristics of, 139-40
bourgeoisie’s need for him and his ‘Intentionalist/functionalist’ controversy
ideology 23 regarding ‘Final Solution’ 127
‘Hitler Cult’ 24, 25, 49, 51, 53, Italian army 103
55 Italy 66
and National Socialist religiosity 34
increased emphasis upon towards Jackel Eberhard
end of war 105-6 on Hitler’s identification of
‘laws of life’ 50, 53 approaching European war with
Mein Kampf 38, 68, 100, 125 war on Jews 127
on art 78-9, 81; see also National on Hitler’s Weltanschauung 20
Socialism James, William 71
on ideology: his total adherence to ‘Jewish Question’, lack of importance
guiding principles towards end of for German population in
of war 109-10; on importance general 164, 169
of National Socialist ideology Jews 49, 53, 59, 69, 74, 75, 88, 92,
23 101, 102, 142
on Jews: as a virus 124; as accused of materialistic exploitation
unnatural beings 126; their of human body 125
ability to survive anywhere on accused of using Negroes to
earth 124; their ugliness as an destroy white race 104-5
affront to God 125; threatens to aid offered to during Nazi period
annihilate 127; see also 162
National Socialism and ‘Final Solution’ 118, 127-33
on man and nature 38-9, 40-1 as aesthetically displeasing 125
on ‘New Aryan Man’ 40, 117 as being behind both ‘Bolshevism
on sacrifices necessitated by and Rooseveltism’ 128
Russian campaign 96-7 as disease 59, 123-4, 129
on women; danger of affronting as ‘other’ 164
them during war 103 as parasites 59, 123-4, 131
prayers to 28 as stemming from Satan 126
Secret Conversations 38 persecution of 1-2, 121
withdrawal from German people ritual slaughter, attack upon 126
107, 108 unnatural qualities of 126
Hitler Jugend 47, 49 viewed as not belonging in
186 Index

Germany 163 Guard) 27

see also Anti-Semitism, National Leipzig 139
Socialism, ‘Final Solution’, and Lenin, V.I. 28
listings under variation National Lerner, Gerda 89
Socialist leaders Ley, Robert (head of Labour Front) 54
Joachim of Fiore 56, 60fn. Linnaeus, Carolus 58
John the Baptist 45 Lipsus, R. 96
Johnson, Samuel 152 Liszt, Franz use of ‘The Preludes’ of
Judaeo-Christian tradition 10, 37, 55 to announce German victories 170
and death 36-57 passim Luther, Martin 84
and ‘disenchantment of world’ 26, Lutheran Church, Hitler’s fear of 28
149, 151 Lutze. Victor (head of SA, 1934-45)
and Mosaic Code 37, 58 95
and sanctification of national life
154 Maidjanek concentration camp 145
as basis of bourgeois mortality 91 Marr, Wilhelm 45
aspects of in preparing way for Marxism 4, 11,27.91, 142
anti-social attitudes 154-5 approach to religion 28, 35
general rebellion against 2, 56, 58 emphasis upon ‘fetishism of
man/nature dualism, National objects’ 155
Socialist attacks upon 11, interpretations of National
36-47, 54, passim, 117 Socialism 15-16, 17, 23, 85
Jung, C.G. 120-1 Mason, Tim 127
Mass Psychology of Fascism, The
Kaiser, Fritz 81 (Reich) 15
Kant, Immanuel 58 Meinecke, Friedrich 14. 33nf.. 74
Keck, Paul 80 Meiners, Christoff 58
Kersten, Felix 34 Mein Kampf (Hitler) 8
Klimsch, Fritz, sculptor Meiser, Hans, Bishop of Nuremburg
‘Youth’ 83 165
Koch, Captain Walter, as ‘New Aryan Meister Eckhart 42, 84
Man’ 94 Merkl, Peter 161
Kocks, Frid, painter Mexican-American War 58
‘Our Faith — Our Victory’ 83 Milton, Sybil 79
Koenigsberg, Richard A. Mitteraurer, Michael 140
Hitler's Ideology: A Study in Molders, Colonel Werner 95
Psychoanalytic Sociology 22 Mongol Massacres (13th Century)
Korean War 1 159fn.
Krieck Ernst 40, 47, 54, 55, 73, 74, Monist League 62fn.
165 Montanus of Phrygia 56
on new, earth religion 117 Moore, Barrington 139, 140
representative of ‘religion of Mosaic Code 37, 58
nature’ 29 Moscow, Battle of (December, 1941)
Kristallnacht 123, 162. 164, 168 98, 122
Kuhn, Thomas 72 Mosse, George L. 14, 30
Kyffhauser Memorial 143 The Nationalization of the Masses
25
Lagarde, Paul de 123-4 ‘Mother's Day’, National Socialist
Lassalle, Ferdinand 33fn. glorification of 84 , 89-90
Lebensborn 88 Muckermann, Hermann 173fn.
see also Himmler Muller, Alexander von 74
Lebensraum 51 Munich 139
Legion of the Archangel Michael (Iron Munster, Bishop of 165
 Index 187

Miintzer, Thomas 66 towards; see also Darwinian

Muslim religion. Hitler’s admiration tradition 40, 43
for 61fn. death, denial of 36-7, 42, 57, 118
Mussolini, Benito 66, 103 education, attitude towards 73-5;
Mysticism, contemporary fascination emphasis upon ‘relevance’ 74;
with 3, 5, 7, 151 lack of systematic policy
towards 74
Narvik 93 emphasis upon ‘authenticity’
Nationalism, as embodying ‘flight 118-19, 120, 121, 122
from history’ 152-4 hostility towards homosexuality
National Socialism 54-5, 107
and Jews: war against 66, 69, 92; importance of ‘immanency’ 50, 86,
see also Anti-Semitism, Jews, 98, 106, 158
‘Final Solution’, SS, and importance of its anti-Communism
headings under various National 138
Socialist leaders Taws of life’ 44, 48, 50, 54, 59,
and role of teachers 45, 73 69, 74, 86, 99, 118, 124, 128,
and romanticism 29, 34, 56, 70, 133, 145, 158; response of
140-1, 164 believers in to stress and crisis
and science 72, 75; claims to 92, 105, 109-10; see also
reconcile religion and science Hitler
42; fusion of scientism and Lebensphilosophie of, 38, 46, 58,
mysticism 11, 58, 150 150
and symbolism’s becoming millinerianism of 12fn., 25, 50
ultimately ‘real’ 50-2, 119-20 Nietzschen aspects of 29
anti-historical posture of 2, 31, Nuremburg Party rallies 34, 146
142-5, 146, 163 on role of state 14, 67-70
anti-Semitism of: National Socialist on women 53-4, 87-90, 103-4;
anti-Semitism as not preventing see also Hitler
people from supporting NS-Frauenschaft 53
movement 164; see also Anti- pragmatism of 50, 70, 71-2, 73,
Semitism, Jews, ‘Final 74, 96, 97, 105, 110, 122,
Solution’, and listings under 131, 132, 138; fusion of
various National Socialist pragmatism and idealism 73-4,
leaders 93, 100, 110, 143; necessitates
approach to medicine 117-18 separation of leadership from
art, attitudes toward; see also people in time of crisis 100,
Hitler 52, 76-85 passim, 95-6 102, 104, 105
attack on transcendence 3, 26, 27, rejection of ‘Humanity’ concept see
118, 141, 144, 145, 146 SS
attitude towards Christianity: ‘religion of nature’ 50, 97, 127,
appeal to ‘traditional’ Christian 133, 156, 157; origins of 26-7;
values 90-1, 166-9; compared general characteristics of 29,
to Soviet Union vis-a-vis 42-5, 47, 55-9, 122; German
Christianity 28; rejection of people’s knowledge of 2, 30,
Christianity 28, 43, 45-6, 50; 47, 137, 169-71
reliance upon Christian usages Twenty-five point program of 23,
25, 27, 70, 146; see also 92-3, 94, 99
Christianity variety of reasons for lending it
bourgeois values of 82, 85-6, 89, support 161, 164
90, 91, 110, 144 Weltanschauung 10, 70, 71; broad
condemns occultism 64fn. principles of 55-8, 69; essential
Darwinian evolution, attitudes unity of 54; response to stress
188 Index

and crisis, 92; see also Hitler Religion

Nature-worship in modern Western Berger’s definition of 8
societies 3, 151, 158 Douglas’s definition of 9
Naumann, Friedrich 33fn. Rank’s definition of 8
see also Berger, Douglas, Rank
New York Times 80
Religionswissenschaftliche Institut
Niebuhr, H. Richard 154
Niemoller, Martin 165 (Halle) 44
Nolde, Emil 80 Rhodes, James 50
Nolte, Ernst 39 The Hitler Movement 25
Normandy Invasion (June, 1944) 104 Riehl, Wilhelm Heinrich 140, 141
North Africa, campaign in (1941) 92 Rodens, Franz 83
Nuremburg Laws (1935), general Rohm, Emst (head of SA, 1931-34)
support of 169 107
Northeim (‘Thalburg’) 141 Roman art 81
Romania 142
Orwell, George 18 massacre of Jews in 135fh.
Romanian army 103
P-51 (fighter aircraft) 132 Rosenberg, Alfred 20, 21, 23, 47, 52,
Paust, Otto 89 54, 55, 56, 57, 74, 77, 86, 100,
Peirce, Charles 71 123, 165
Philadelphia Inquirer 103 and ideology 23
Poland, Invasion of (September, 1939) and ‘religion of nature’ 29, 41-2,
120, 127 44
Poliakov, Leon 58 Den Mythus des zwanzigsten
Post-Expressionism 80 Jahrhunderts 8, 41, 98
Pre-industrial family, myth of 140-1 on art 77
Protzen, Th. C. (painter) on Catholicism 41
'SS Junkerschule Bad Tolz SS' 83 on Judaism 41, 46
Pseudo-Baldwin of Flanders 56 on Weltanschauung’s embodiment
Psychohistory 3-5 in Hitler 106
as offering interpretations of Rubenstein, Richard 125, 154, 159
National Socialism 6, 14-16, on Auschwitz as ‘ultimate city of
17, 21-2, 23, 29, 52 Western civilization' 149
on the role of Judaeo-Christian
Quantification, as offering tradition in the ’disenchantment
interpretations of National of the world’ 149. 154
Socialism 161-2, 169-70 Ruhr industrial region 139
Rust, Bernhard (minister of education)
Rank, Otto 7, 8, 10 74
‘Modern Education’ 10
see also Ideology, Religion ‘sacred space’, in the construction of
Rauschning, Hermann, 14, 126 memorials 143
on Hitler’s ‘biological mysticism’ ‘sanctification of national life’ 3
39 as part of Western, post-industrial
see also Hitler ideology 152, 154, 156-7
Read, Herbert 82 in National Socialist Germany
Reagan, Ronald 153 Chapter 4 passim
Reich, Wilhelm 15-16 SA 49, 77, 95
on the reactionary nature of Scandinavia, German campaign in
mysticism 151 (1940) 93
The Mass Psychology of Fascism Schapiro, Leonard 17
15 on role of ideology 17-18
Reichskulturkammer 79 on use of mass symbolism by
 Index 189

National Socialists 17-18 National Socialism

Totalitarianism 67 Stalin, Joseph 52-3, 108
Schneiderman, Leo 146 prayers to 28
The Psychology of Myth, Folklore, Stalingrad, Battle of (August, 1942—
and Religion 144 February, 1943) 98, 100-1, 115fn.
Schultze-Naumberg, Paul 76-7 Standartenkalender 84, 85
Schwarze Korps, Das 54, 100, 105 Stapel, Wilhelm 168
Schweitzer-Mjolnir, Hans (illustrator) Stepan, Nancy 75
‘Waffen-SS Champions Against the Stem, J.P. 50, 118, 119, 120, 121,
World Enemy’ 83 150
Scott, Sir Walter, dangerous Stuck, Franz von 113fn.
romanticism of 157 Sudeten Crisis (September, 1938) 49
Seibert, Theodor 128 Sun-worship 62fn.
Shinto religion, Hitler’s admiration for
61fn. T-34 (Russian medium tank) 132
Shirir, William L. 137, 146 Tafurs 150
Sieder, Reinhard 140 ‘Terror of History’ 2, 141, 142-3
Sinatra, Frank, supposedly pathological Time, ‘sacred’, and ‘profane’ 142, 143
influence upon American women of Totalitarianism 27, 66, 69, 110
103 lack of in National Socialist
Sironneau, Jean-Pierre 144 Germany 67, 164
Sixth Army (German) 101 role of in National Socialist thought
Social Democratic Party 138 21
Socialist Realism, Soviet 52, 84 Transcendence 3
Sonderkommando 131 crucial role of in Judaeo-Christian
Soviet Union 66, 104, 153 tradition 11, 26-7, 157
art policy compared to that of fear of 141
National Socialist Germany 81 role of in seeking out ‘natural
campaign in 92, 94-9 passim order of thing’ 155, 156-7
campaign against ‘New Soviet see also National Socialism
Man’ 94 Treblinka concentration camp 145
compared to National Socialist Trevor-Roper, Hugh 15
Germany in terms of ‘Tribal mentality’ as basis of
‘totalitarianism’ 14, 28 nationalism 152
war effort of 101 Troge, Walther 96
Speer, Albert 108, 109 Turgenev, Ivan 39
Spelter, J. 46 Twain, Mark 157-8
Spitfire (fighter aircraft) 132 Life on the Mississippi 157
SS 14, 19, 34, 51, 67, 98, 102-3,
127, 144, 169, 170 Unger, Aryer, on role of ideology in
and art 83-4 National Socialism 14, 18
and ‘Final Solution’ 129-32 United States
Historical Development of the war against 95, 104
Essence of the German Reich war effort of 101
(SS Document) 45-6 willingness to accept poverty in
‘moral subjectivism’ of, 131 156
Namensweihe (Baptism) ceremony
of 51 Van Gogh, Vincent 78
necrophilia of 59, 118, 150 Varus (Roman general) 143
prototype of ‘New Aryan Man’ 82 Veblen, Thorstein 27, 155
rejects ‘Humanity’ concept 43 Versailles, Treaty of 164
Waffen SS 82, 95 Volga River 105
see also ‘Final Solution’, Himmler, Vdlkischer Beobachter 92 , 94, 96,
190 Index

103, 104, 123, 128 definitions of: Arendt’s definition

Volksgemeinschafi 30, 33fn., 45, 68, 7-8; Berger’s definition 8;
74, 76, 78, 82, 96, 118, 142, 146, Rank’s definition 8; see also
168, 169, 172fn. Arendt, Berger, Rank
American belief in 153 Weltanschauung and ideology,
mystical appeal of 138, 140, 144, distinction between 19-20
163, 164 Weltanschauung, related to
role of in ‘religion of nature’ 30 ideology and religion in
Voltaire, Francois Marie Arouet de 58 National Socialist movement
Vondung, Klaus 145-6 10, II
Weltanschauung, ‘Bolshevik’ and
Wagner, Robert (Reich Governor of National Socialist, clash of
Baden) 47 94-5, 107
as representative of ‘religion of West, campaign in (1940) 94
nature’ 29 Willrich, Wolfgang
on ‘laws of life’ 48 Of The Reich's Soldiers 95
Wannsee Conference (January, 1942) Winterhilfe 121
128 Wolf, Heinz 72
Weber, Max 155 World War I 1,3, 153
on ‘disenchantment of the world’ World War II 2
33fn., 149
Weinstein, Fred 161 Ziegler, Adolf (head of ‘Fine Arts’
definition of ideology 12fn. section of Reichskulturkammer) 79
Weltanschauung 7-8, 9
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