The Project Gutenberg eBook, Readings on Fascism and National Socialism,
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Title: Readings on Fascism and National Socialism
Author: Various
Release Date: November 16, 2004 [eBook #14058]
Language: English
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READINGS ON FASCISM AND NATIONAL SOCIALISM
Selected by Members of the Department of Philosophy, University of
Colorado
ALAN SWALLOW
Denver
PREFATORY NOTE
The ensuing readings are presented to encourage the student to clarify
his thinking on social philosophy. He will accordingly need to
determine whether the readings contain a more or less coherent body of
ideas which constitutes a social philosophy. He will also need to
raise the more far-reaching question whether the ideas are acceptable.
To arrive at any satisfactory answer to this latter question, he will
necessarily have to compare the ideas of fascism and their practical
meanings with the alternatives, real and ideal, that are the substance
of live philosophical issues.
CONTENTS
The Doctrine of Fascism by Benito Mussolini
The Political Doctrine of Fascism by Alfredo Rocco
The Philosophic Basis of Fascism by Giovanni Gentile
National Socialism by Raymond E. Murphy, Francis B. Stevens,
Howard Trivers, Joseph M. Roland
National-Socialism and Medicine by Dr. F. Hamburger
Selected Bibliography
THE DOCTRINE OF FASCISM
By
BENITO MUSSOLINI
From the ENCYCLOPEDIA ITALIANA. Vol. XIV
The English translation of the "Fundamental Ideas" is by Mr.
I.S. Munro, reprinted by his kind permission from "Fascism
to World-Power" (Alexander Maclehose, London, 1933).
FUNDAMENTAL IDEAS.
1. Philosophic Conception.
Like every concrete political conception, Fascism is thought and
action. It is action with an inherent doctrine which, arising out of a
given system of historic forces, is inserted in it and works on it
from within. It has therefore a form co-related to the contingencies
of time and place; but it has at the same time an ideal content which
elevates it into a formula of truth in the higher region of the
history of thought.
There is no way of exercising a spiritual influence on the things of
the world by means of a human will-power commanding the wills of
others, without first having a clear conception of the particular and
transient reality on which the will-power must act, and without also
having a clear conception of the universal and permanent reality in
which the particular and transient reality has its life and being. To
know men we must have a knowledge of man; and to have a knowledge of
man we must know the reality of things and their laws.
There can be no conception of a State which is not fundamentally a
conception of Life. It is a philosophy or intuition, a system of ideas
which evolves itself into a system of logical contraction, or which
concentrates itself in a vision or in a faith, but which is always,
at least virtually, an organic conception of the world.
2. Spiritualised Conception.
Fascism would therefore not be understood in many of its
manifestations (as, for example, in its organisations of the Party,
its system of education, its discipline) were it not considered in the
light of its general view of life. A spiritualised view.
To Fascism the world is not this material world which appears on the
surface, in which man is an individual separated from all other men,
standing by himself and subject to a natural law which instinctively
impels him to lead a life of momentary and egoistic pleasure. In
Fascism man is an individual who is the nation and the country. He is
this by a moral law which embraces and binds together individuals and
generations in an established tradition and mission, a moral law which
suppresses the instinct to lead a life confined to a brief cycle of
pleasure in order, instead, to replace it within the orbit of duty in
a superior conception of life, free from the limits of time and space
a life in which the individual by self-abnegation and by the sacrifice
of his particular interests, even by death, realises the entirely
spiritual existence in which his value as a man consists.
3. Positive Conception of Life as a Struggle.
It is therefore a spiritual conception, itself also a result of the
general reaction of the Century against the languid and materialistic
positivism of the Eighteenth Century. Anti-positivist, but positive:
neither sceptical nor agnostic, neither pessimistic nor passively
optimistic, as are in general the doctrines (all of them negative)
which place the centre of life outside of man, who by his free will
can and should create his own world for himself.
Fascism wants a man to be active and to be absorbed in action with all
his energies; it wants him to have a manly consciousness of the
difficulties that exist and to be ready to face them. It conceives
life as a struggle, thinking that it is the duty of man to conquer
that life which is really worthy of him: creating in the first place
within himself the (physical, moral, intellectual) instrument with
which to build it.
As for the individual, so for the nation, so for mankind. Hence the
high value of culture in all its forms (art, religion, science) and
the supreme importance of education. Hence also the essential value
of labour, with which man conquers nature and creates the human world
(economic, political, moral, intellectual).
4. Ethical Conception.
This positive conception of life is evidently an ethical conception.
And it comprises the whole reality as well as the human activity which
domineers it. No action is to be removed from the moral sense; nothing
is to be in the world that is divested of the importance which belongs
to it in respect of moral aims. Life, therefore, as the Fascist
conceives it, is serious, austere, religious; entirely balanced in a
world sustained by the moral and responsible forces of the spirit. The
Fascist disdains the "easy" life.
5. Religious Conception.
Fascism is a religious conception in which man is considered to be in
the powerful grip of a superior law, with an objective will which
transcends the particular individual and elevates him into a fully
conscious member of a spiritual society. Anyone who has stopped short
at the mere consideration of opportunism in the religious policy of
the Fascist Regime, has failed to understand that Fascism, besides
being a system of government, is also a system of thought.
6. Historical and Realist Conception.
Fascism is an historical conception in which man could not be what he
is without being a factor in the spiritual process to which he
contributes, either in the family sphere or in the social sphere, in
the nation or in history in general to which all nations contribute.
Hence is derived the great importance of tradition in the records,
language, customs and rules of human society. Man without a part in
history is nothing.
For this reason Fascism is opposed to all the abstractions of an
individualistic character based upon materialism typical of the
Eighteenth Century; and it is opposed to all the Jacobin innovations
and utopias. It does not believe in the possibility of "happiness" on
earth as conceived by the literature of the economists of the
Seventeenth Century; it therefore spurns all the teleological
conceptions of final causes through which, at a given period of
history, a final systematisation of the human race would take place.
Such theories only mean placing oneself outside real history and
life, which is a continual ebb and flow and process of realisations.
Politically speaking, Fascism aims at being a realistic doctrine; in
its practice it aspired to solve only the problems which present
themselves of their own accord in the process of history, and which of
themselves find or suggest their own solution. To have the effect of
action among men, it is necessary to enter into the process of reality
and to master the forces actually at work.
7. The Individual and Liberty.
Anti-individualistic, the Fascist conception is for the State; it is
for the individual only in so far as he coincides with the State,
universal consciousness and will of man in his historic existence. It
is opposed to the classic Liberalism which arose out of the need of
reaction against absolutism, and had accomplished its mission in
history when the State itself had become transformed in the popular
will and consciousness.
Liberalism denied the State in the interests of the particular
individual; Fascism reaffirms the State as the only true expression of
the individual.
And if liberty is to be the attribute of the real man, and not of the
scarecrow invented by the individualistic Liberalism, then Fascism is
for liberty. It is for the only kind of liberty that is serious--the
liberty of the State and of the individual in the State. Because, for
the Fascist, all is comprised in the State and nothing spiritual or
human exists--much less has any value--outside the State. In this
respect Fascism is a totalising concept, and the Fascist State--the
unification and synthesis of every value--interprets, develops and
potentiates the whole life of the people.
8. Conception of a Corporate State.
No individuals nor groups (political parties, associations, labour
unions, classes) outside the State. For this reason Fascism is opposed
to Socialism, which clings rigidly to class war in the historic
evolution and ignores the unity of the State which moulds the classes
into a single, moral and economic reality. In the same way Fascism is
opposed to the unions of the labouring classes. But within the orbit
of the State with ordinative functions, the real needs, which give
rise to the Socialist movement and to the forming of labour unions,
are emphatically recognised by Fascism and are given their full
expression in the Corporative System, which conciliates every interest
in the unity of the State.
9. Democracy.
Individuals form classes according to categories of interests. They
are associated according to differentiated economical activities which
have a common interest: but first and foremost they form the State.
The State is not merely either the numbers or the sum of individuals
forming the majority of a people. Fascism for this reason is opposed
to the democracy which identifies peoples with the greatest number of
individuals and reduces them to a majority level. But if people are
conceived, as they should be, qualitatively and not quantitatively,
then Fascism is democracy in its purest form. The qualitative
conception is the most coherent and truest form and is therefore the
most moral, because it sees a people realised in the consciousness and
will of the few or even of one only; an ideal which moves to its
realisation in the consciousness and will of all. By "all" is meant
all who derive their justification as a nation, ethnically speaking,
from their nature and history, and who follow the same line of
spiritual formation and development as one single will and
consciousness--not as a race nor as a geographically determined
region, but as a progeny that is rather the outcome of a history which
perpetuates itself; a multitude unified by an idea embodied in the
will to have power and to exist, conscious of itself and of its
personality.
10. Conception of the State.
This higher personality is truly the nation, inasmuch as it is the
State. The nation does not beget the State, according to the decrepit
nationalistic concept which was used as a basis for the publicists of
the national States in the Nineteenth Century. On the contrary, the
nation is created by the State, which gives the people, conscious of
their own moral unity, the will, and thereby an effective existence.
The right of a nation to its independence is derived not from a
literary and ideal consciousness of its own existence, much less from
a _de facto_ situation more or less inert and unconscious, but from an
active consciousness, from an active political will disposed to
demonstrate in its right; that is to say, a kind of State already in
its pride (_in fieri_). The State, in fact, as a universal ethical
will, is the creator of right.
11. Dynamic Reality.
The nation as a State is an ethical reality which exists and lives in
measure as it develops. A standstill is its death. Therefore the
State is not only the authority which governs and which gives the
forms of law and the worth of the spiritual life to the individual
wills, but it is also the power which gives effect to its will in
foreign matters, causing it to be recognised and respected by
demonstrating through facts the universality of all the manifestations
necessary for its development. Hence it is organization as well as
expansion, and it may be thereby considered, at least virtually, equal
to the very nature of the human will, which in its evolution
recognises no barriers, and which realises itself by proving its
infinity.
12. The Rôle of the State.
The Fascist State, the highest and the most powerful form of
personality is a force, but a spiritual one. It reassumes all the
forms of the moral and intellectual life of man. It cannot, therefore,
be limited to a simple function of order and of safeguarding, as was
contended by Liberalism. It is not a simple mechanism which limits the
sphere of the presumed individual liberties. It is an internal form
and rule, a discipline of the entire person: it penetrates the will as
well as the intelligence. Its principle, a central inspiration of the
living human personality in the civil community, descends into the
depths and settles in the heart of the man of action as well as the
thinker, of the artist as well as of the scientist; the soul of our
soul.
13. Discipline and Authority.
Fascism, in short, is not only a lawgiver and the founder of
institutions, but an educator and a promoter of the spiritual life. It
aims to rebuild not the forms of human life, but its content, the man,
the character, the faith. And for this end it exacts discipline and an
authority which descend into and dominates the interior of the spirit
without opposition. Its emblem, therefore, is the lictorian _fasces_,
symbol of unity, of force and of justice.
POLITICAL AND SOCIAL DOCTRINE
1. Origins of the Doctrine.
When, in the now distant March of 1919, I summoned a meeting at Milan,
through the columns of the _Popolo d'Italia,_ of those who had
supported and endured the war and who had followed me since the
constitution of the _fasci_ or Revolutionary Action in January 1915,
there was no specific doctrinal plan in my mind. I had the experience
of one only doctrine--that of Socialism from 1903-04 to the winter of
1914 about a decade--but I made it first in the ranks and later as a
leader and it was never an experience in theory. My doctrine, even
during that period, was a doctrine of action. A universally accepted
doctrine of Socialism had not existed since 1915 when the revisionist
movement started in Germany, under the leadership of Bernstein.
Against this, in the swing of tendencies, a left revolutionary
movement began to take shape, but in Italy it never went further than
the "field of phrases," whereas in Russian Socialistic circles it
became the prelude of Bolscevism. "Reformism," "revolutionarism,"
"centrism," this is a terminology of which even the echoes are now
spent--but in the great river of Fascism are currents which flowed
from Sorel, from Peguy, from Lagardelle and the "Mouvement
Socialiste," from Italian syndicalists which were legion between 1904
and 1914, and sounded a new note in Italian Socialist circles
(weakened then by the betrayal of Giolitti) through Olivetti's _Pagine
Libere_, Orano's _La Lupa_ and Enrico Leone's _Divenire Sociale_.
After the War, in 1919, Socialism was already dead as a doctrine: it
existed only as a grudge. In Italy especially, it had one only
possibility of action: reprisals against those who had wanted the War
and must now pay its penalty. The _Popolo d'Italia_ carried as
sub-title "daily of ex-service men and producers," and the word
producers was already then the expression of a turn of mind. Fascism
was not the nursling of a doctrine previously worked out at a desk; it
was born of the need for action and it was action. It was not a party,
in fact during the first two years, it was an anti-party and a
movement.
The name I gave the organisation fixed its character. Yet whoever
should read the now crumpled sheets with the minutes of the meeting at
which the Italian "Fasci di Combattimento" were constituted, would
fail to discover a doctrine, but would find a series of ideas, of
anticipations, of hints which, liberated from the inevitable
strangleholds of contingencies, were destined after some years to
develop into doctrinal conceptions. Through them Fascism became a
political doctrine to itself, different, by comparison, to all others
whether contemporary or of the past.
I said then, "If the bourgeoisie think we are ready to act as
lightning-conductors, they are mistaken. We must go towards labour.
We wish to train the working classes to directive functions. We wish
to convince them that it is not easy to manage Industry or Trade: we
shall fight the technique and the spirit of the rearguard. When the
succession of the regime is open, we must not lack the fighting
spirit. We must rush and if the present regime be overcome, it is we
who must fill its place. The claim to succession belongs to us,
because it was we who forced the country into War and we who led her
to victory. The present political representation cannot suffice: we
must have a direct representation of all interest. Against this
programme one might say it is a return to corporations. But that does
not matter. Therefore I should like this assembly to accept the claims
put in by national syndicalism from an economic standpoint...."
Is it not strange that the word corporations should have been uttered
at the first meeting of Piazza San Sepolcro, when one considers that,
in the course of the Revolution, it came to express one of the social
and legislative creations at the very foundations of the regime?
2. Development.
The years which preceded the March on Rome were years in which the
necessity of action did not permit complete doctrinal investigations
or elaborations. The battle was raging in the towns and villages.
There were discussions, but what was more important and sacred--there
was death. Men knew how to die. The doctrine--all complete and formed,
with divisions into chapters, paragraphs, and accompanying
elucubrations--might be missing; but there was something more decided
to replace it, there was faith.
Notwithstanding, whoever remembers with the aid of books and speeches,
whoever could search through them and select, would find that the
fundamental principles were laid down whilst the battle raged. It was
really in those years that the Fascist idea armed itself, became
refined and proceeded towards organisation: the problems of the
individual and of the State, the problems of authority and of liberty,
the political and social problems, especially national; the fight
against the liberal, democratic, socialistic and popular doctrines,
was carried out together with the "punitive expeditions."
But as a "system" was lacking, our adversaries in bad faith, denied to
Fascism any capacity to produce a doctrine, though that doctrine was
growing tumultuously, at first under the aspect of violent and
dogmatic negation, as happens to all newly-born ideas, and later under
the positive aspect of construction which was successively realised,
in the years 1926-27-28 through the laws and institutions of the
regime. Fascism today stands clearly defined not only as a regime, but
also as a doctrine. This word doctrine should be interpreted in the
sense that Fascism, to-day, when passing criticism on itself and
others, has its own point of view and its own point of reference, and
therefore also its own orientation when facing those problems which
beset the world in the spirit and in the matter.
3. Against Pacifism: War and Life as a Duty.
As far as the general future and development of humanity is concerned,
and apart from any mere consideration of current politics, Fascism
above all does not believe either in the possibility or utility of
universal peace. It therefore rejects the pacifism which masks
surrender and cowardice. War alone brings all human energies to their
highest tension and sets a seal of nobility on the peoples who have
the virtue to face it. All other tests are but substitutes which never
make a man face himself in the alternative of life or death. A
doctrine which has its starting-point at the prejudicial postulate of
peace is therefore extraneous to Fascism.
In the same way all international creations (which, as history
demonstrates, can be blown to the winds when sentimental, ideal and
practical elements storm the heart of a people) are also extraneous to
the spirit of Fascism--even if such international creations are
accepted for whatever utility they may have in any determined
political situation.
Fascism also transports this anti-pacifist spirit into the life of
individuals. The proud _squadrista_ motto "_me ne frego_" ("I don't
give a damn") scrawled on the bandages of the wounded is an act of
philosophy--not only stoic. It is a summary of a doctrine not only
political: it is an education in strife and an acceptance of the risks
which it carried: it is a new style of Italian life. It is thus that
the Fascist loves and accepts life, ignores and disdains suicide;
understands life as a duty, a lifting up, a conquest; something to be
filled in and sustained on a high plane; a thing that has to be lived
through for its own sake, but above all for the sake of others near
and far, present and future.
4. The Demographic Policy and the "Neighbour."
The "demographic" policy of the regime is the result of these
premises. The Fascist also loves his neighbour, but "neighbour" is not
for him a vague and undefinable word: love for his neighbour does not
prevent necessary educational severities. Fascism rejects professions
of universal affection and, though living in the community of
civilised peoples, it watches them and looks at them diffidently. It
follows them in their state of mind and in the transformation of their
interests, but it does not allow itself to be deceived by fallacious
and mutable appearances.
5. Against Historical Materialism and Class-Struggle.
Through this conception of life Fascism becomes the emphatic negation
of that doctrine which constituted the basis of the so-called
scientific Socialism or Marxism: the doctrine of historical
materialism, according to which the story of human civilisation is to
be explained only by the conflict of interests between the various
social groups and by the change of the means and instruments of
production.
That the economic vicissitudes--discovery of prime or raw materials,
new methods of labour, scientific inventions--have their particular
importance, is denied by none, but that they suffice to explain human
history, excluding other factors from it, is absurd: Fascism still
believes in sanctity and in heroism, that is to say in acts in which
no economic motive, immediate or remote, operates.
Fascism having denied historical materialism, by which men are only
puppets in history, appearing and disappearing on the surface of the
tides while in the depths the real directive forces act and labour, it
also denies the immutable and irreparable class warfare, which is the
natural filiation of such an economistic conception of history: and it
denies above all that class warfare is the preponderating agent of
social transformation.
Being defeated on these two capital points of its doctrine, nothing
remains of Socialism save the sentimental aspiration--as old as
humanity--to achieve a community of social life in which the
sufferings and hardships of the humblest classes are alleviated. But
here Fascism repudiates the concept of an economic "happiness" which
is to be--at a given moment in the evolution of economy--socialistically
and almost automatically realised by assuring to all the maximum of
well-being.
Fascism denies the possibilities of the materialistic concept of
"happiness"--it leaves that to the economists of the first half
of the Seventeenth Century; that is, it denies the equation
"well-being-happiness," which reduces man to the state of the animals,
mindful of only one thing--that of being fed and fattened; reduced, in
fact, to a pure and simple vegetative existence.
6. Against Democratic Ideologies.
After disposing of Socialism, Fascism opens a breach on the whole
complex of the democratic ideologies, and repudiates them in their
theoretic premises as well as in their practical application or
instrumentation. Fascism denies that numbers, by the mere fact of
being numbers, can direct human society; it denies that these numbers
can govern by means of periodical consultations; it affirms also the
fertilising, beneficient and unassailable inequality of men, who
cannot be levelled through an extrinsic and mechanical process such as
universal suffrage.
Regimes can be called democratic which, from time to time, give the
people the illusion of being sovereign, whereas the real and effective
sovereignty exists in other, and very often secret and irresponsible
forces.
Democracy is a regime without a king, but very often with many kings,
far more exclusive, tyrannical and ruinous than a single king, even if
he be a tyrant. This explains why Fascism which, for contingent
reasons, had assumed a republican tendency before 1922, renounced it
previous to the March on Rome, with the conviction that the political
constitution of a State is not nowadays a supreme question; and that,
if the examples of past and present monarchies and past and present
republics are studied, the result is that neither monarchies nor
republics are to be judged under the assumption of eternity, but that
they merely represent forms in which the extrinsic political evolution
takes shape as well as the history, the tradition and the psychology
of a given country.
Consequently, Fascism glides over the antithesis between monarchy and
republic, on which democraticism wasted time, blaming the former for
all social shortcomings and exalting the latter as a regime of
perfection. We have now seen that there are republics which may be
profoundly absolutist and reactionary, and monarchies which welcome
the most venturesome social and political experiments.
7. Untruths of Democracy.
"Reason and science" says Renan (who had certain pre-fascist
enlightenments) in one of his philosophical meditations, "are products
of mankind, but to seek reason directly for the people and through the
people is a chimera. It is not necessary for the existence of reason
that everybody should know it. In any case if this initiation were to
be brought about it could not be through low-class democracy, which
seems to lead rather to the extinction of every difficult culture and
of every great discipline. The principle that society exists only for
the welfare and liberty of individuals composing it, does not seem to
conform with the plans of nature: plans in which the species only is
taken into consideration and the individual appears sacrificed. It is
strongly to be feared that the last word of democracy thus understood
(I hasten to add that it can also be differently understood) would be
a social state in which a degenerated mass would have no preoccupation
other than that of enjoying the ignoble pleasures of the vulgar
person."
Thus Renan. In Democracy Fascism rejects the absurd conventional
falsehood of political equality, the habit of collective
responsibility and the myth of indefinite progress and happiness.
But if there be a different understanding of Democracy if, in other
words, Democracy can also signify to not push the people back as far
as the margins of the State, then Fascism may well have been defined
by the present writer as "an organised, centralised, authoritarian
Democracy."
8. Against Liberal Doctrines.
As regards the Liberal doctrines, the attitude of Fascism is one of
absolute opposition both in the political and in the economical field.
There is no need to exaggerate the importance of Liberalism in the
last century--simply for the sake of present-day polemics--and to
transform one of the numerous doctrines unfolded in that last century
into a religion of humanity for all times, present and future.
Liberalism did not flourish for more than a period of fifteen years.
It was born in 1830 from the reaction to the Holy Alliance which
attempted to set Europe back to the period which preceeded '89 and had
its years of splendour in 1848, when also Pius IX was a Liberal. Its
decadence began immediately afterwards. If 1848 was a year of light
and poesy, 1849 was a year of weakness and tragedy. The Roman Republic
was killed by another Republic, the French Republic. In the same year
Marx issued his famous manifesto of Communism. In 1851 Napoleon III
made his anti-Liberal _coup d'état_ and reigned over France until
1870. He was overthrown by a popular movement, following one of the
greatest defeats registered in history. The victor was Bismarck, who
always ignored the religion of liberty and its prophets. It is
symptomatic that a people of high civilisation like the Germans
completely ignored the religion of liberty throughout the whole
Nineteenth Century--with but one parenthesis, represented by that
which was called "the ridiculous parliament of Frankfurt" which lasted
one season. Germany realised its national unity outside of Liberalism,
against Liberalism--a doctrine which seemed alien to the German spirit
essentially monarchical, since Liberalism is the historical and
logical ante-chamber of anarchy.
The three wars of 1864, 1866 and 1870 conducted by "Liberals" like
Moltke and Bismarck mark the three stages of German unity. As for
Italian unity, Liberalism played a very inferior part in the make-up
of Mazzini and Garibaldi, who were not liberals. Without the
intervention of the anti-Liberal Napoleon we would not have had
Lombardy, and without the help of the anti-Liberal Bismarck at Sadowa
and Sedan it is very likely that we would not have got Venice in 1866,
or that we would have entered Rome in 1870.
During the period of 1870-1915 the preachers of the new Credo
themselves denounced the twilight of their religion; it was beaten in
the breach by decadence in literature. It was beaten in the open by
decadence in practice. Activism: that is to say, nationalism,
futurism. Fascism.
The "Liberal Century" after having accumulated an infinity of Gordian
knots, sought to cut them in the hecatomb of the World War. Never did
any religion impose such a terrible sacrifice. Have the gods of
Liberalism slaked their blood-thirst?
Liberalism is now on the point of closing the doors of its deserted
temples because nations feel that its agnosticism in the economic
field and its indifference in political and moral matters, causes, as
it has already caused, the sure ruin of States. That is why all the
political experiences of the contemporary world are anti-Liberal, and
it is supremely silly to seek to classify them as things outside of
history--as if history were a hunting ground reserved to Liberalism
and its professors; as if Liberalism were the last and incomparable
word of civilisation.
9. Fascism Does Not Turn Back.
The Fascist negation of Socialism, of Democracy, of Liberalism, should
not lead one to believe that Fascism wishes to push the world back to
where it was before 1879, the date accepted as the opening year of the
demo-Liberal century. One cannot turn back. The Fascist doctrine has
not chosen De Maistre for its prophet. Monarchical absolutism is a
thing of the past, and so is the worship of church power. Feudal
privileges and divisions into impenetrable castes with no connection
between them, are also "have beens." The conception of Fascist
authority has nothing in common with the Police. A party that totally
rules a nation is a new chapter in history. References and comparisons
are not possible. From the ruins of the socialist, liberal and
democratic doctrines, Fascism picks those elements that still have a
living value; keeps those that might be termed "facts acquired by
history," and rejects the rest: namely the conception of a doctrine
good for all times and all people.
Admitting that the Nineteenth Century was the Century of Socialism,
Liberalism and Democracy, it is not said that the Twentieth century
must also be the century of Socialism, of Liberalism, of Democracy.
Political doctrines pass on, but peoples remain. One may now think
that this will be the century of authority, the century of the "right
wing" the century of Fascism. If the Nineteenth Century was the
century of the individual (liberalism signifies individualism) one may
think that this will be the century of "collectivism," the century of
the State. It is perfectly logical that a new doctrine should utilise
the vital elements of other doctrines. No doctrine was ever born
entirely new and shining, never seen before. No doctrine can boast of
absolute "originality." Each doctrine is bound historically to
doctrines which went before, to doctrines yet to come. Thus the
scientific Socialism of Marx is bound to the Utopian Socialism of
Fourier, of Owen, of Saint-Simon; thus the Liberalism of 1800 is
linked with the movement of 1700. Thus Democratic doctrines are bound
to the Encyclopaedists. Each doctrine tends to direct human activity
towards a definite object; but the activity of man reacts upon the
doctrine, transforms it and adapts it to new requirements, or
overcomes it. Doctrine therefore should be an act of life and not an
academy of words. In this lie the pragmatic veins of Fascism, its will
to power, its will to be, its position with regard to "violence" and
its value.
10. The Value and Mission of the State.
The capital point of the Fascist doctrine is the conception of the
State, its essence, the work to be accomplished, its final aims. In
the conception of Fascism, the State is an absolute before which
individuals and groups are relative. Individuals and groups are
"conceivable" inasmuch as they are in the State. The Liberal State
does not direct the movement and the material and spiritual evolution
of collectivity, but limits itself to recording the results; the
Fascist State has its conscious conviction, a will of its own, and for
this reason it is called an "ethical" State.
In 1929 at the first quinquiennial assembly of the Regime, I said: "In
Fascism the State is not a night-watchman, only occupied with the
personal safety of the citizens, nor is it an organisation with purely
material aims, such as that of assuring a certain well-being and a
comparatively easy social cohabitation. A board of directors would be
quite sufficient to deal with this. It is not a purely political
creation, either, detached from the complex material realities of the
life of individuals and of peoples. The State as conceived and enacted
by Fascism, is a spiritual and moral fact since it gives concrete form
to the political, juridical and economical organisation of the
country. Furthermore this organisation as it rises and develops, is a
manifestation of the spirit. The State is a safeguard of interior and
exterior safety but it is also the keeper and the transmitter of the
spirit of the people, as it was elaborated throughout the ages, in its
language, customs and beliefs. The State is not only the present, but
it is also the past and above all the future. The State, inasmuch as
it transcends the short limits of individual lives, represents the
immanent conscience of the nation. The forms in which the State
expresses itself are subject to changes, but the necessity for the
State remains. It is the State which educates the citizens in civic
virtues, gives them a consciousness of their mission, presses them
towards unity; the State harmonizes their interests through justice,
transmits to prosperity the attainments of thoughts, in science, in
art, in laws, in the solidarity of mankind. The State leads men from
primitive tribal life to that highest expression of human power which
is Empire; links up through the centuries the names of those who died
to preserve its integrity or to obey its laws; holds up the memory of
the leaders who increased its territory, and of the geniuses who cast
the light of glory upon it, as an example for future generations to
follow. When the conception of the State declines and disintegrating
or centrifugal tendencies prevail, whether of individuals or groups,
then the national society is about to set."
11. The Unity of the State and the Contradictions of Capitalism.
From 1929 onwards to the present day, the universal, political and
economical evolution has still further strengthened the doctrinal
positions. The giant who rules is the State. The one who can resolve
the dramatic contradictions of capital is the State. What is called
the crisis cannot be resolved except by the State and in the State.
Where are the ghosts of Jules Simon who, at the dawn of Liberalism,
proclaimed that "the State must set to work to make itself useless and
prepare its resignation?" Of MacCulloch who, in the second half of the
past century, proclaimed that the State must abstain from ruling? What
would the Englishman Bentham say today to the continual and
inevitably-invoked intervention of the State in the sphere of
economics, while, according to his theories, industry should ask no
more of the State than to be left in peace? Or the German Humboldt
according to whom an "idle" State was the best kind of State? It is
true that the second wave of Liberal economists were less extreme than
the first, and Adam Smith himself opened the door--if only very
cautiously--to let State intervention into the economic field.
If Liberalism signifies the individual--then Fascism signifies the
State. But the Fascist State is unique of its kind and is an original
creation. It is not reactionary but revolutionary, inasmuch as it
anticipates the solution of certain universal problems such as those
which are treated elsewhere: 1) in the political sphere, by the
subdivisions of parties, in the preponderance of parliamentarism and
in the irresponsibilities of assemblies; 2) in the economic sphere, by
the functions of trade unions which are becoming constantly more
numerous and powerful, whether in the labour or industrial fields, in
their conflicts and combinations, and 3) in the moral sphere by the
necessity of order, discipline, obedience to those who are the moral
dictators of the country. Fascism wants the State to be strong,
organic and at the same time supported on a wide popular basis. As
part of its task the Fascist State has penetrated the economic field:
through the corporative, social and educational institutions which it
has created. The presence of the State is felt in the remotest
ramifications of the country. And in the State also, all the
political, economic and spiritual forces of the nation circulate,
mustered in their respective organisations.
A State which stands on the support of millions of individuals who
recognise it, who believe in it, who are ready to serve it, is not the
tyrannical State of the mediaeval lord. It has nothing in common with
the absolutist States before or after '89. The individual in the
Fascist State is not annulled but rather multiplied, just as in a
regiment a soldier is not diminished, but multiplied by the number of
his comrades.
The Fascist State organises the nation, but leaves a sufficient margin
afterward to the individual; it has limited the useless or harmful
liberties and has preserved the essential ones. The one to judge in
this respect is not the individual but the State.
12. The Fascist State and Religion.
The Fascist State is not indifferent to the presence or the fact of
religion in general nor to the presence of that particular established
religion, which is Italian Catholicism. The State has no theology, but
it has morality. In the Fascist State religion is considered as one of
the most profound manifestations of the spirit; it is therefore not
only respected, but defended and protected. The Fascist State does not
create its own "God," as Robespierre wanted to do at a certain moment
in the frenzies of the Convention; nor does it vainly endeavour to
cancel the idea of God from the mind as Bolschevism tries to do.
Fascism respects the God of the ascetics, of the saints and of the
heroes. It also respects God as he is conceived and prayed to in the
ingenuous and primitive heart of the people.
13. Empire and Discipline.
The Fascist State is a will expressing power and empire. The Roman
tradition here becomes an idea of force. In the Fascist doctrine,
empire is not only a territorial or a military, or a commercial
expression: it is a moral and a spiritual one. An empire can be
thought of, for instance, as a nation which directly or indirectly
guides other nations--without the need of conquering a single mile of
territory. For Fascism, the tendency to empire, that is to say the
expansion of nations, is a manifestation of vitality, its contrary
(the stay-at-home attitude) is a sign of decadence. Peoples who rise,
or who suddenly flourish again, are imperialistic; peoples who die are
peoples who abdicate. Fascism is a doctrine which most adequately
represents the tendencies, the state of mind of a people like the
Italian people, which is rising again after many centuries of
abandonment and of foreign servitude.
But empire requires discipline, the coordination of forces, duty and
sacrifice. This explains many phases of the practical action of the
regime. It explains the aims of many of the forces of the State and
the necessary severity against those who would oppose themselves to
this spontaneous and irresistible movement of the Italy of the
Twentieth century by trying to appeal to the discredited ideologies of
the Nineteenth century, which have been repudiated wherever great
experiments of political and social transformation have been daringly
undertaken.
Never more than at the present moment have the nations felt such a
thirst for an authority, for a direction, for order. If every century
has its own peculiar doctrine, there are a thousand indications that
Fascism is that of the present century. That it is a doctrine of life
is shown by the fact that it has created a faith; that the faith has
taken possession of the mind is demonstrated by the fact that Fascism
has had its Fallen and its martyrs.
Fascism has now attained in the world an universality over all
doctrines. Being realised, it represents an epoch in the history of
the human mind.
THE POLITICAL DOCTRINE OF FASCISM[1]
BY HIS EXCELLENCY ALFREDO ROCCO
PREMIER MUSSOLINI'S ENDORSEMENT OF SIGNOR ROCCO'S SPEECH
The following message was sent by Benito Mussolini, the Premier of
Italy, to Signor Rocco after he had delivered his speech at Perugia.
Dear Rocco,
I have just read your magnificent address which I endorse
throughout. You have presented in a masterful way the
doctrine of Fascism. For Fascism has a doctrine, or, if you
will, a particular philosophy with regard to all the
questions which beset the human mind today. All Italian
Fascists should read your discourse and derive from it both
the clear formulation of the basic principles of our program
as well as the reasons why Fascism must be systematically,
firmly, and rationally inflexible in its uncompromising
attitude towards other parties. Thus and only thus can the
word become flesh and the ideas be turned into deeds.
Cordial greetings,
MUSSOLINI.
Fascism As Action, As Feeling, and As Thought
Much has been said, and is now being said for or against this complex
political and social phenomenon which in the brief period of six years
has taken complete hold of Italian life and, spreading beyond the
borders of the Kingdom, has made itself felt in varying degrees of
intensity throughout the world. But people have been much more eager
to extol or to deplore than to understand--which is natural enough in
a period of tumultuous fervor and of political passion. The time has
not yet arrived for a dispassionate judgment. For even I, who noticed
the very first manifestations of this great development, saw its
significance from the start and participated directly in its first
doings, carefully watching all its early uncertain and changing
developments, even I do not feel competent to pass definite judgment.
Fascism is so large a part of myself that it would be both arbitrary
and absurd for me to try to dissociate my personality from it, to
submit it to impartial scrutiny in order to evaluate it coldly and
accurately. What can be done, however, and it seldom is attempted, is
to make inquiry into the phenomenon which shall not merely consider
its fragmentary and adventitious aspects, but strive to get at its
inner essence. The undertaking may not be easy, but it is necessary,
and no occasion for attempting it is more suitable than the present
one afforded me by my friends of Perugia. Suitable it is in time
because, at the inauguration of a course of lectures and lessons
principally intended to illustrate that old and glorious trend of the
life and history of Italy which takes its name from the humble saint
of Assisi, it seemed natural to connect it with the greatest
achievement of modern Italy, different in so many ways from the
Franciscan movement, but united with it by the mighty common current
of Italian History. It is suitable as well in place because at
Perugia, which witnessed the growth of our religious ideas, of our
political doctrines and of our legal science in the course of the most
glorious centuries of our cultural history, the mind is properly
disposed and almost oriented towards an investigation of this nature.
First of all let us ask ourselves if there is a political doctrine of
Fascism; if there is any ideal content in the Fascist state. For in
order to link Fascism, both as concept and system, with the history of
Italian thought and find therein a place for it, we must first show
that it is thought; that it is a doctrine. Many persons are not quite
convinced that it is either the one or the other; and I am not
referring solely to those men, cultured or uncultured, as the case may
be and very numerous everywhere, who can discern in this political
innovation nothing except its local and personal aspects, and who know
Fascism only as the particular manner of behavior of this or that
well-known Fascist, of this or that group of a certain town; who
therefore like or dislike the movement on the basis of their likes and
dislikes for the individuals who represent it. Nor do I refer to those
intelligent, and cultivated persons, very intelligent indeed and very
cultivated, who because of their direct or indirect allegiance to the
parties that have been dispossessed by the advent of Fascism, have a
natural cause of resentment against it and are therefore unable to
see, in the blindness of hatred, anything good in it. I am referring
rather to those--and there are many in our ranks too--who know Fascism
as action and feeling but not yet as thought, who therefore have an
intuition but no comprehension of it.
It is true that Fascism is, above all, action and sentiment and that
such it must continue to be. Were it otherwise, it could not keep up
that immense driving force, that renovating power which it now
possesses and would merely be the solitary meditation of a chosen few.
Only because it is feeling and sentiment, only because it is the
unconscious reawakening of our profound racial instinct, has it the
force to stir the soul of the people, and to set free an irresistible
current of national will. Only because it is action, and as such
actualizes itself in a vast organization and in a huge movement, has
it the conditions for determining the historical course of
contemporary Italy.
But Fascism is thought as well and it has a theory, which is an
essential part of this historical phenomenon, and which is responsible
in a great measure for the successes that have been achieved. To the
existence of this ideal content of Fascism, to the truth of this
Fascist logic we ascribe the fact that though we commit many errors of
detail, we very seldom go astray on fundamentals, whereas all the
parties of the opposition, deprived as they are of an informing,
animating principle, of a unique directing concept, do very often wage
their war faultlessly in minor tactics, better trained as they are in
parliamentary and journalistic manoeuvres, but they constantly break
down on the important issues. Fascism, moreover, considered as action,
is a typically Italian phenomenon and acquires a universal validity
because of the existence of this coherent and organic doctrine. The
originality of Fascism is due in great part to the autonomy of its
theoretical principles. For even when, in its external behavior and in
its conclusions, it seems identical with other political creeds, in
reality it possesses an inner originality due to the new spirit which
animates it and to an entirely different theoretical approach.
Common Origins and Common Background of Modern Political Doctrines:
From Liberalism to Socialism
Modern political thought remained, until recently, both in Italy and
outside of Italy under the absolute control of those doctrines which,
proceeding from the Protestant Reformation and developed by the
adepts of natural law in the XVII and XVIII centuries, were firmly
grounded in the institutions and customs of the English, of the
American, and of the French Revolutions. Under different and sometimes
clashing forms these doctrines have left a determining imprint upon
all theories and actions both social and political, of the XIX and XX
centuries down to the rise of Fascism. The common basis of all these
doctrines, which stretch from Longuet, from Buchanan, and from
Althusen down to Karl Marx, to Wilson and to Lenin is a social and
state concept which I shall call mechanical or atomistic.
Society according to this concept is merely a sum total of
individuals, a plurality which breaks up into its single components.
Therefore the ends of a society, so considered, are nothing more than
the ends of the individuals which compose it and for whose sake it
exists. An atomistic view of this kind is also necessarily
anti-historical, inasmuch as it considers society in its spatial
attributes and not in its temporal ones; and because it reduces social
life to the existence of a single generation. Society becomes thus a
sum of determined individuals, viz., the generation living at a given
moment. This doctrine which I call atomistic and which appears to be
anti-historical, reveals from under a concealing cloak a strongly
materialistic nature. For in its endeavors to isolate the present from
the past and the future, it rejects the spiritual inheritance of ideas
and sentiments which each generation receives from those preceding and
hands down to the following generation thus destroying the unity and
the spiritual life itself of human society.
This common basis shows the close logical connection existing between
all political doctrines; the substantial solidarity, which unites all
the political movements, from Liberalism to Socialism, that until
recently have dominated Europe. For these political schools differ
from one another in their methods, but all agree as to the ends to be
achieved. All of them consider the welfare and happiness of
individuals to be the goal of society, itself considered as composed
of individuals of the present generation. All of them see in society
and in its juridical organization, the state, the mere instrument and
means whereby individuals can attain their ends. They differ only in
that the methods pursued for the attainment of these ends vary
considerably one from the other.
Thus the Liberals insist that the best manner to secure the welfare of
the citizens as individuals is to interfere as little as possible with
the free development of their activities and that therefore the
essential task of the state is merely to coordinate these several
liberties in such a way as to guarantee their coexistence. Kant, who
was without doubt the most powerful and thorough philosopher of
liberalism, said, "man, who is the end, cannot be assumed to have the
value of an instrument." And again, "justice, of which the state is
the specific organ, is the condition whereby the freedom of each is
conditioned upon the freedom of others, according to the general law
of liberty."
Having thus defined the task of the state, Liberalism confines itself
to the demand of certain guarantees which are to keep the state from
overstepping its functions as general coordinator of liberties and
from sacrificing the freedom of individuals more than is absolutely
necessary for the accomplishment of its purpose. All the efforts are
therefore directed to see to it that the ruler, mandatory of all and
entrusted with the realization, through and by liberty, of the
harmonious happiness of everybody, should never be clothed with undue
power. Hence the creation of a system of checks and limitations
designed to keep the rulers within bounds; and among these, first and
foremost, the principle of the division of powers, contrived as a
means for weakening the state in its relation to the individual, by
making it impossible for the state ever to appear, in its dealings
with citizens, in the full plenitude of sovereign powers; also the
principle of the participation of citizens in the lawmaking power, as
a means for securing, in behalf of the individual, a direct check on
this, the strongest branch, and an indirect check on the entire
government of the state. This system of checks and limitations, which
goes by the name of constitutional government resulted in a moderate
and measured liberalism. The checking power was exercised only by
those citizens who were deemed worthy and capable, with the result
that a small élite was made to represent legally the entire body
politic for whose benefit this régime was instituted.
It was evident, however, that this moderate system, being
fundamentally illogical and in contradiction with the very principles
from which it proceeded, would soon become the object of serious
criticism. For if the object of society and of the state is the
welfare of individuals, severally considered, how is it possible to
admit that this welfare can be secured by the individuals themselves
only through the possibilities of such a liberal régime? The
inequalities brought about both by nature and by social organizations
are so numerous and so serious, that, for the greater part,
individuals abandoned to themselves not only would fail to attain
happiness, but would also contribute to the perpetuation of their
condition of misery and dejection. The state therefore cannot limit
itself to the merely negative function of the defense of liberty. It
must become active, in behalf of everybody, for the welfare of the
people. It must intervene, when necessary, in order to improve the
material, intellectual, and moral conditions of the masses; it must
find work for the unemployed, instruct and educate the people, and
care for health and hygiene. For if the purpose of society and of the
state is the welfare of individuals, and if it is just that these
individuals themselves control the attainment of their ends, it
becomes difficult to understand why Liberalism should not go the whole
distance, why it should see fit to distinguish certain individuals
from the rest of the mass, and why the functions of the people should
be restricted to the exercise of a mere check. Therefore the state, if
it exists for all, must be governed by all, and not by a small
minority: if the state is for the people, sovereignty must reside in
the people: if all individuals have the right to govern the state,
liberty is no longer sufficient; equality must be added: and if
sovereignty is vested in the people, the people must wield all
sovereignty and not merely a part of it. The power to check and curb
the government is not sufficient. The people must be the government.
Thus, logically developed, Liberalism leads to Democracy, for
Democracy contains the promises of Liberalism but oversteps its
limitations in that it makes the action of the state positive,
proclaims the equality of all citizens through the dogma of popular
sovereignty. Democracy therefore necessarily implies a republican form
of government even though at times, for reasons of expediency, it
temporarily adjusts itself to a monarchical régime.
Once started on this downward grade of logical deductions it was
inevitable that this atomistic theory of state and society should pass
on to a more advanced position. Great industrial developments and the
existence of a huge mass of working men, as yet badly treated and in a
condition of semi-servitude, possibly endurable in a régime of
domestic industry, became intolerable after the industrial revolution.
Hence a state of affairs which towards the middle of the last century
appeared to be both cruel and threatening. It was therefore natural
that the following question be raised: "If the state is created for
the welfare of its citizens, severally considered, how can it tolerate
an economic system which divides the population into a small minority
of exploiters, the capitalists, on one side, and an immense multitude
of exploited, the working people, on the other?" No! The state must
again intervene and give rise to a different and less iniquitous
economic organization, by abolishing private property, by assuming
direct control of all production, and by organizing it in such a way
that the products of labor be distributed solely among those who
create them, viz., the working classes. Hence we find Socialism, with
its new economic organization of society, abolishing private ownership
of capital and of the instruments and means of production, socializing
the product, suppressing the extra profit of capital, and turning over
to the working class the entire output of the productive processes. It
is evident that Socialism contains and surpasses Democracy in the same
way that Democracy comprises and surpasses Liberalism, being a more
advanced development of the same fundamental concept. Socialism in its
turn generates the still more extreme doctrine of Bolshevism which
demands the violent suppression of the holders of capital, the
dictatorship of the proletariat, as means for a fairer economic
organization of society and for the rescue of the laboring classes
from capitalistic exploitation.
Thus Liberalism, Democracy, and Socialism, appear to be, as they are
in reality, not only the offspring of one and the same theory of
government, but also logical derivations one of the other. Logically
developed Liberalism leads to Democracy; the logical development of
Democracy issues into Socialism. It is true that for many years, and
with some justification, Socialism was looked upon as antithetical to
Liberalism. But the antithesis is purely relative and breaks down as
we approach the common origin and foundation of the two doctrines, for
we find that the opposition is one of method, not of purpose. The end
is the same for both, viz., the welfare of the individual members of
society. The difference lies in the fact that Liberalism would be
guided to its goal by liberty, whereas Socialism strives to attain it
by the collective organization of production. There is therefore no
antithesis nor even a divergence as to the nature and scope of the
state and the relation of individuals to society. There is only a
difference of evaluation of the means for bringing about these ends
and establishing these relations, which difference depends entirely on
the different economic conditions which prevailed at the time when the
various doctrines were formulated. Liberalism arose and began to
thrive in the period of small industry; Socialism grew with the rise
of industrialism and of world-wide capitalism. The dissension
therefore between these two points of view, or the antithesis, if we
wish so to call it, is limited to the economic field. Socialism is at
odds with Liberalism only on the question of the organization of
production and of the division of wealth. In religious, intellectual,
and moral matters it is liberal, as it is liberal and democratic in
its politics. Even the anti-liberalism and anti-democracy of
Bolshevism are in themselves purely contingent. For Bolshevism is
opposed to Liberalism only in so far as the former is revolutionary,
not in its socialistic aspect. For if the opposition of the Bolsheviki
to liberal and democratic doctrines were to continue, as now seems
more and more probable, the result might be a complete break between
Bolshevism and Socialism notwithstanding the fact that the ultimate
aims of both are identical.
Fascism as an Integral Doctrine of Sociality Antithetical to the
Atomism of Liberal, Democratic, and Socialistic Theories
The true antithesis, not to this or that manifestation of the
liberal-democratic-socialistic conception of the state but to the
concept itself, is to be found in the doctrine of Fascism. For while
the disagreement between Liberalism and Democracy, and between
Liberalism and Socialism lies in a difference of method, as we have
said, the rift between Socialism, Democracy, and Liberalism on one
side and Fascism on the other is caused by a difference in concept. As
a matter of fact, Fascism never raises the question of methods, using
in its political praxis now liberal ways, now democratic means and at
times even socialistic devices. This indifference to method often
exposes Fascism to the charge of incoherence on the part of
superficial observers, who do not see that what counts with us is the
end and that therefore even when we employ the same means we act with
a radically different spiritual attitude and strive for entirely
different results. The Fascist concept then of the nation, of the
scope of the state, and of the relations obtaining between society and
its individual components, rejects entirely the doctrine which I said
proceeded from the theories of natural law developed in the course of
the XVI, XVII, and XVIII centuries and which form the basis of the
liberal, democratic, and socialistic ideology.
I shall not try here to expound this doctrine but shall limit myself
to a brief résumé of its fundamental concepts.
Man--the political animal--according to the definition of Aristotle,
lives and must live in society. A human being outside the pale of
society is an inconceivable thing--a non-man. Humankind in its
entirety lives in social groups that are still, today, very numerous
and diverse, varying in importance and organization from the tribes of
Central Africa to the great Western Empires. These various societies
are fractions of the human species each one of them endowed with a
unified organization. And as there is no unique organization of the
human species, there is not "one" but there are "several" human
societies. Humanity therefore exists solely as a biological concept
not as a social one.
Each society on the other hand exists in the unity of both its
biological and its social contents. Socially considered it is a
fraction of the human species endowed with unity of organization for
the attainment of the peculiar ends of the species.
This definition brings out all the elements of the social phenomenon
and not merely those relating to the preservation and perpetuation of
the species. For man is not solely matter; and the ends of the human
species, far from being the materialistic ones we have in common with
other animals, are, rather, and predominantly, the spiritual
finalities which are peculiar to man and which every form of society
strives to attain as well as its stage of social development allows.
Thus the organization of every social group is more or less pervaded
by the spiritual influxes of: unity of language, of culture, of
religion, of tradition, of customs, and in general of feeling and of
volition, which are as essential as the material elements: unity of
economic interests, of living conditions, and of territory. The
definition given above demonstrates another truth, which has been
ignored by the political doctrines that for the last four centuries
have been the foundations of political systems, viz., that the social
concept has a biological aspect, because social groups are fractions
of the human species, each one possessing a peculiar organization, a
particular rank in the development of civilization with certain needs
and appropriate ends, in short, a life which is really its own. If
social groups are then fractions of the human species, they must
possess the same fundamental traits of the human species, which means
that they must be considered as a succession of generations and not as
a collection of individuals.
It is evident therefore that as the human species is not the total of
the living human beings of the world, so the various social groups
which compose it are not the sum of the several individuals which at a
given moment belong to it, but rather the infinite series of the past,
present, and future generations constituting it. And as the ends of
the human species are not those of the several individuals living at a
certain moment, being occasionally in direct opposition to them, so
the ends of the various social groups are not necessarily those of the
individuals that belong to the groups but may even possibly be in
conflict with such ends, as one sees clearly whenever the preservation
and the development of the species demand the sacrifice of the
individual, to wit, in times of war.
Fascism replaces therefore the old atomistic and mechanical state
theory which was at the basis of the liberal and democratic doctrines
with an organic and historic concept. When I say organic I do not wish
to convey the impression that I consider society as an organism after
the manner of the so-called "organic theories of the state"; but
rather to indicate that the social groups as fractions of the species
receive thereby a life and scope which transcend the scope and life of
the individuals identifying themselves with the history and finalities
of the uninterrupted series of generations. It is irrelevant in this
connection to determine whether social groups, considered as fractions
of the species, constitute organisms. The important thing is to
ascertain that this organic concept of the state gives to society a
continuous life over and beyond the existence of the several
individuals.
The relations therefore between state and citizens are completely
reversed by the Fascist doctrine. Instead of the liberal-democratic
formula, "society for the individual," we have, "individuals for
society" with this difference however: that while the liberal
doctrines eliminated society, Fascism does not submerge the individual
in the social group. It subordinates him, but does not eliminate him;
the individual as a part of his generation ever remaining an element
of society however transient and insignificant he may be. Moreover the
development of individuals in each generation, when coordinated and
harmonized, conditions the development and prosperity of the entire
social unit.
At this juncture the antithesis between the two theories must appear
complete and absolute. Liberalism, Democracy, and Socialism look upon
social groups as aggregates of living individuals; for Fascism they
are the recapitulating unity of the indefinite series of generations.
For Liberalism, society has no purposes other than those of the
members living at a given moment. For Fascism, society has historical
and immanent ends of preservation, expansion, improvement, quite
distinct from those of the individuals which at a given moment compose
it; so distinct in fact that they may even be in opposition. Hence the
necessity, for which the older doctrines make little allowance, of
sacrifice, even up to the total immolation of individuals, in behalf
of society; hence the true explanation of war, eternal law of mankind,
interpreted by the liberal-democratic doctrines as a degenerate
absurdity or as a maddened monstrosity.
For Liberalism, society has no life distinct from the life of the
individuals, or as the phrase goes: solvitur in singularitates. For
Fascism, the life of society overlaps the existence of individuals and
projects itself into the succeeding generations through centuries and
millennia. Individuals come into being, grow, and die, followed by
others, unceasingly; social unity remains always identical to itself.
For Liberalism, the individual is the end and society the means; nor
is it conceivable that the individual, considered in the dignity of an
ultimate finality, be lowered to mere instrumentality. For Fascism,
society is the end, individuals the means, and its whole life consists
in using individuals as instruments for its social ends. The state
therefore guards and protects the welfare and development of
individuals not for their exclusive interest, but because of the
identity of the needs of individuals with those of society as a whole.
We can thus accept and explain institutions and practices, which like
the death penalty, are condemned by Liberalism in the name of the
preeminence of individualism.
The fundamental problem of society in the old doctrines is the
question of the rights of individuals. It may be the right to freedom
as the Liberals would have it; or the right to the government of the
commonwealth as the Democrats claim it, or the right to economic
justice as the Socialists contend; but in every case it is the right
of individuals, or groups of individuals (classes). Fascism on the
other hand faces squarely the problem of the right of the state and of
the duty of individuals. Individual rights are only recognized in so
far as they are implied in the rights of the state. In this
preeminence of duty we find the highest ethical value of Fascism.
The Problems of Liberty, of Government, and of Social Justice in the
Political Doctrine of Fascism
This, however, does not mean that the problems raised by the other
schools are ignored by Fascism. It means simply that it faces them and
solves them differently, as, for example, the problem of liberty.
There is a Liberal theory of freedom, and there is a Fascist concept
of liberty. For we, too, maintain the necessity of safeguarding the
conditions that make for the free development of the individual; we,
too, believe that the oppression of individual personality can find no
place in the modern state. We do not, however, accept a bill of rights
which tends to make the individual superior to the state and to
empower him to act in opposition to society. Our concept of liberty is
that the individual must be allowed to develop his personality in
behalf of the state, for these ephemeral and infinitesimal elements of
the complex and permanent life of society determine by their normal
growth the development of the state. But this individual growth must
be normal. A huge and disproportionate development of the individual
of classes, would prove as fatal to society as abnormal growths are to
living organisms. Freedom therefore is due to the citizen and to
classes on condition that they exercise it in the interest of society
as a whole and within the limits set by social exigencies, liberty
being, like any other individual right, a concession of the state.
What I say concerning civil liberties applies to economic freedom as
well. Fascism does not look upon the doctrine of economic liberty as
an absolute dogma. It does not refer economic problems to individual
needs, to individual interest, to individual solutions. On the
contrary it considers the economic development, and especially the
production of wealth, as an eminently social concern, wealth being for
society an essential element of power and prosperity. But Fascism
maintains that in the ordinary run of events economic liberty serves
the social purposes best; that it is profitable to entrust to
individual initiative the task of economic development both as to
production and as to distribution; that in the economic world
individual ambition is the most effective means for obtaining the best
social results with the least effort. Therefore, on the question also
of economic liberty the Fascists differ fundamentally from the
Liberals; the latter see in liberty a principle, the the Fascists
accept it as a method. By the Liberals, freedom is recognized in the
interest of the citizens; the Fascists grant it in the interest of
society. In other terms, Fascists make of the individual an economic
instrument for the advancement of society, an instrument which they
use so long as it functions and which they subordinate when no longer
serviceable. In this guise Fascism solves the eternal problem of
economic freedom and of state interference, considering both as mere
methods which may or may not be employed in accordance with the social
needs of the moment.
What I have said concerning political and economic Liberalism applies
also to Democracy. The latter envisages fundamentally the problem of
sovereignty; Fascism does also, but in an entirely different manner.
Democracy vests sovereignty in the people, that is to say, in the mass
of human beings. Fascism discovers sovereignty to be inherent in
society when it is juridically organized as a state. Democracy
therefore turns over the government of the state to the multitude of
living men that they may use it to further their own interests;
Fascism insists that the government be entrusted to men capable of
rising above their own private interests and of realizing the
aspirations of the social collectivity, considered in its unity and in
its relation to the past and future. Fascism therefore not only
rejects the dogma of popular sovereignty and substitutes for it that
of state sovereignty, but it also proclaims that the great mass of
citizens is not a suitable advocate of social interests for the reason
that the capacity to ignore individual private interests in favor of
the higher demands of society and of history is a very rare gift and
the privilege of the chosen few. Natural intelligence and cultural
preparation are of great service in such tasks. Still more valuable
perhaps is the intuitiveness of rare great minds, their traditionalism
and their inherited qualities. This must not however be construed to
mean that the masses are not to be allowed to exercise any influence
on the life of the state. On the contrary, among peoples with a great
history and with noble traditions, even the lowest elements of society
possess an instinctive discernment of what is necessary for the
welfare of the race, which in moments of great historical crises
reveals itself to be almost infallible. It is therefore as wise to
afford to this instinct the means of declaring itself as it is
judicious to entrust the normal control of the commonwealth to a
selected élite.
As for Socialism, the Fascist doctrine frankly recognizes that the
problem raised by it as to the relations between capital and labor is
a very serious one, perhaps the central one of modern life. What
Fascism does not countenance is the collectivistic solution proposed
by the Socialists. The chief defect of the socialistic method has been
clearly demonstrated by the experience of the last few years. It does
not take into account human nature, it is therefore outside of
reality, in that it will not recognize that the most powerful spring
of human activities lies in individual self-interest and that
therefore the elimination from the economic field of this interest
results in complete paralysis. The suppression of private ownership of
capital carries with it the suppression of capital itself, for capital
is formed by savings and no one will want to save, but will rather
consume all he makes if he knows he cannot keep and hand down to his
heirs the results of his labors. The dispersion of capital means the
end of production since capital, no matter who owns it, is always an
indispensable tool of production. Collective organization of
production is followed therefore by the paralysis of production since,
by eliminating from the productive mechanism the incentive of
individual interest, the product becomes rarer and more costly.
Socialism then, as experience has shown, leads to increase in
consumption, to the dispersion of capital and therefore to poverty. Of
what avail is it, then, to build a social machine which will more
justly distribute wealth if this very wealth is destroyed by the
construction of this machine? Socialism committed an irreparable error
when it made of private property a matter of justice while in truth it
is a problem of social utility. The recognition of individual property
rights, then, is a part of the Fascist doctrine not because of its
individual bearing but because of its social utility.
We must reject, therefore, the socialistic solution but we cannot
allow the problem raised by the Socialists to remain unsolved, not
only because justice demands a solution but also because the
persistence of this problem in liberal and democratic régimes has been
a menace to public order and to the authority of the state. Unlimited
and unrestrained class self-defense, evinced by strikes and lockouts,
by boycotts and sabotage, leads inevitably to anarchy. The Fascist
doctrine, enacting justice among the classes in compliance with a
fundamental necessity of modern life, does away with class
self-defense, which, like individual self-defense in the days of
barbarism, is a source of disorder and of civil war.
Having reduced the problem of these terms, only one solution is
possible, the realization of justice among the classes by and through
the state. Centuries ago the state, as the specific organ of justice,
abolished personal self-defense in individual controversies and
substituted for it state justice. The time has now come when class
self-defense also must be replaced by state justice. To facilitate the
change Fascism has created its own syndicalism. The suppression of
class self-defense does not mean the suppression of class defense
which is an inalienable necessity of modern economic life. Class
organization is a fact which cannot be ignored but it must be
controlled, disciplined, and subordinated by the state. The syndicate,
instead of being, as formerly, an organ of extra-legal defense, must
be turned into an organ of legal defense which will become judicial
defense as soon as labor conflicts become a matter of judicial
settlement. Fascism therefore has transformed the syndicate, that old
revolutionary instrument of syndicalistic socialists, into an
instrument of legal defense of the classes both within and without the
law courts. This solution may encounter obstacles in its development;
the obstacles of malevolence, of suspicion of the untried, of
erroneous calculation, etc., but it is destined to triumph even though
it must advance through progressive stages.
Historical Value of the Doctrine of Fascism
I might carry this analysis farther but what I have already said is
sufficient to show that the rise of a Fascist ideology already gives
evidence of an upheaval in the intellectual field as powerful as the
change that was brought about in the XVII and XVIII centuries by the
rise and diffusion of those doctrines of _ius naturale_ which go under
the name of "Philosophy of the French Revolution." The philosophy of
the French Revolution formulated certain principles, the authority of
which, unquestioned for a century and a half, seemed so final that
they were given the attribute of immortality. The influence of these
principles was so great that they determined the formation of a new
culture, of a new civilization. Likewise the fervor of the ideas that
go to make up the Fascist doctrine, now in its inception but destined
to spread rapidly, will determine the course of a new culture and of a
new conception of civil life. The deliverance of the individual from
the state carried out in the XVIII century will be followed in the XX
century by the rescue of the state from the individual. The period of
authority, of social obligations, of "hierarchical" subordination will
succeed the period of individualism, of state feebleness, of
insubordination.
This innovating trend is not and cannot be a return to the Middle
Ages. It is a common but an erroneous belief that the movement,
started by the Reformation and heightened by the French Revolution,
was directed against mediaeval ideas and institutions. Rather than as
a negation, this movement should be looked upon as the development and
fulfillment of the doctrines and practices of the Middle Ages.
Socially and politically considered the Middle Ages wrought
disintegration and anarchy; they were characterized by the gradual
weakening and ultimate extinction of the state, embodied in the Roman
Empire, driven first to the East, then back to France, thence to
Germany, a shadow of its former self; they were marked by the steady
advance of the forces of usurpation, destructive of the state and
reciprocally obnoxious; they bore the imprints of a triumphant
particularism. Therefore the individualistic and anti-social movement
of the XVII and XVIII centuries was not directed against the Middle
Ages, but rather against the restoration of the state by great
national monarchies. If this movement destroyed mediaeval institutions
that had survived the Middle Ages and had been grafted upon the new
states, it was in consequence of the struggle primarily waged against
the state. The spirit of the movement was decidedly mediaeval. The
novelty consisted in the social surroundings in which it operated and
in its relation to new economic developments. The individualism of the
feudal lords, the particularism of the cities and of the corporations
had been replaced by the individualism and the particularism of the
bourgeoisie and of the popular classes.
The Fascist ideology cannot therefore look back to the Middle Ages, of
which it is a complete negation. The Middle Ages spell disintegration;
Fascism is nothing if not sociality. It is if anything the beginning
of the end of the Middle Ages prolonged four centuries beyond the end
ordinarily set for them and revived by the social democratic anarchy
of the past thirty years. If Fascism can be said to look back at all
it is rather in the direction of ancient Rome whose social and
political traditions at the distance of fifteen centuries are being
revived by Fascist Italy.
I am fully aware that the value of Fascism, as an intellectual
movement, baffles the minds of many of its followers and supporters
and is denied outright by its enemies. There is no malice in this
denial, as I see it, but rather an incapacity to comprehend. The
liberal-democratic-socialistic ideology has so completely and for so
long a time dominated Italian culture that in the minds of the
majority of people trained by it, it has assumed the value of an
absolute truth, almost the authority of a natural law. Every faculty
of self-criticism is suppressed in the minds and this suppression
entails an incapacity for understanding that time alone can change. It
will be advisable therefore to rely mainly upon the new generations
and in general upon persons whose culture is not already fixed. This
difficulty to comprehend on the part of those who have been thoroughly
grounded by a different preparation in the political and social
sciences explains in part why Fascism has not been wholly successful
with the intellectual classes and with mature minds, and why on the
other hand it has been very successful with young people, with women,
in rural districts, and among men of action unencumbered by a fixed
and set social and political education. Fascism moreover, as a
cultural movement, is just now taking its first steps. As in the case
with all great movements, action regularly outstrips thought. It was
thus at the time of the Protestant Reformation and of the
individualistic reaction of the XVII and XVIII centuries. The English
revolution occurred when the doctrines of natural law were coming into
being and the theoretical development of the liberal and democratic
theories followed the French Revolution.
At this point it will not be very difficult to assign a fitting place
in history to this great trend of thought which is called Fascism and
which, in spite of the initial difficulties, already gives clear
indication of the magnitude of its developments.
The liberal-democratic speculation both in its origin and in the
manner of its development appears to be essentially a non-Italian
formation. Its connection with the Middle Ages already shows it to be
foreign to the Latin mind, the mediaeval disintegration being the
result of the triumph of Germanic individualism over the political
mentality of the Romans. The barbarians, boring from within and
hacking from without, pulled down the great political structure raised
by Latin genius and put nothing in its place. Anarchy lasted eight
centuries during which time only one institution survived and that a
Roman one--the Catholic Church. But, as soon as the laborious process
of reconstruction was started with the constitution of the great
national states backed by the Roman Church the Protestant Reformation
set in followed by the individualistic currents of the XVII and XVIII
centuries, and the process of disintegration was started anew. This
anti-state tendency was the expression of the Germanic spirit and it
therefore became predominant among the Germanic peoples and wherever
Germanism had left a deep imprint even if afterward superficially
covered by a veneer of Latin culture. It is true that Marsilius from
Padua is an Italian writing for Ludwig the Bavarian, but the other
writers who in the XIV century appear as forerunners of the liberal
doctrines are not Italians: Occam and Wycliff are English; Oresme is
French. Among the advocates of individualism in the XVI century who
prepared the way for the triumph of the doctrines of natural law in
the subsequent centuries, Hotman and Languet are French, Buchanan is
Scotch. Of the great authorities of natural law, Grotius and Spinosa
are Dutch; Locke is English; l'Abbé de St. Pierre, Montesquieu,
d'Argenson, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot and the encyclopaedists are
French; Althusius, Pufendorf, Kant, Fichte are German.
Italy took no part in the rise and development of the doctrines of
natural law. Only in the XIX century did she evince a tardy interest
in these doctrines, just as she tardily contributed to them at the
dose of the XVIII century through the works of Beccaria and Filangeri.
While therefore in other countries such as France, England, Germany,
and Holland, the general tradition in the social and political
sciences worked in behalf of anti-state individualism, and therefore
of liberal and democratic doctrines, Italy, on the other hand, clung
to the powerful legacy of its past in virtue of which she proclaims
the rights of the state, the preeminence of its authority, and the
superiority of its ends. The very fact that the Italian political
doctrine in the Middle Ages linked itself with the great political
writers of antiquity, Plato and Aristotle, who in a different manner
but with an equal firmness advocated a strong state and the
subordination of individuals to it, is a sufficient index of the
orientation of political philosophy in Italy. We all know how thorough
and crushing the authority of Aristotle was in the Middle Ages. But
for Aristotle the spiritual cement of the state is "virtue" not
absolute virtue but political virtue, which is social devotion. His
state is made up solely of its citizens, the citizens being either
those who defend it with their arms or who govern it as magistrates.
All others who provide it with the materials and services it needs are
not citizens. They become such only in the corrupt forms of certain
democracies. Society is therefore divided into two classes, the free
men or citizens who give their time to noble and virtuous occupations
and who profess their subjection to the state, and the laborers and
slaves who work for the maintenance of the former. No man in this
scheme is his own master. The slaves belong to the freemen, and the
freemen belong to the state.
It was therefore natural that St. Thomas Aquinas the greatest
political writer of the Middle Ages should emphasize the necessity of
unity in the political field, the harm of plurality of rulers, the
dangers and damaging effects of demagogy. The good of the state, says
St. Thomas Aquinas, is unity. And who can procure unity more fittingly
than he who is himself one? Moreover the government must follow, as
far as possible, the course of nature and in nature power is always
one. In the physical body only one organ is dominant--the heart; in
the spirit only one faculty has sway--reason. Bees have one sole
ruler; and the entire universe one sole sovereign--God. Experience
shows that the countries, which are ruled by many, perish because of
discord while those that are ruled over by one enjoy peace, justice,
and plenty. The States which are not ruled by one are troubled by
dissensions, and toil unceasingly. On the contrary the states which
are ruled over by one king enjoy peace, thrive in justice and are
gladdened by affluence.[2] The rule of the multitudes can not be
sanctioned, for where the crowd rules it oppresses the rich as would a
tyrant.[3]
Italy in the Middle Ages presented a curious phenomenon: while in
practice the authority of the state was being dissolved into a
multiplicity of competing sovereignties, the theory of state unity and
authority was kept alive in the minds of thinkers by the memories of
the Roman Imperial tradition. It was this memory that supported for
centuries the fiction of the universal Roman Empire when in reality it
existed no longer. Dante's _De Monarchia_ deduced the theory of this
empire conceived as the unity of a strong state. "Quod potest fieri
per unum melius est per unum fieri quam plura," he says in the XIV
chapter of the first book, and further on, considering the citizen as
an instrument for the attainment of the ends of the state, he
concludes that the individual must sacrifice himself for his country.
"Si pars debet se exponere pro salute totius, cum homo siti pars
quaedam civitatis ... homo pro patria debet exponere se ipsum." (lib.
II. 8).
The Roman tradition, which was one of practice but not of
theories--for Rome constructed the most solid state known to history
with extraordinary statesmanship but with hardly any political
writings--influenced considerably the founder of modern political
science, Nicolo Machiavelli, who was himself in truth not a creator of
doctrines but a keen observer of human nature who derived from the
study of history practical maxims of political import. He freed the
science of politics from the formalism of the scholastics and brought
it close to concrete reality. His writings, an inexhaustible mine of
practical remarks and precious observations, reveal dominant in him
the state idea, no longer abstract but in the full historical
concreteness of the national unity of Italy. Machiavelli therefore is
not only the greatest of modern political writers, he is also the
greatest of our countrymen in full possession of a national Italian
consciousness. To liberate Italy, which was in his day "enslaved, torn
and pillaged," and to make her more powerful, he would use any means,
for to his mind the holiness of the end justified them completely. In
this he was sharply rebuked by foreigners who were not as hostile to
his means as they were fearful of the end which he propounded. He
advocated therefore the constitution of a strong Italian state,
supported by the sacrifices and by the blood of the citizens, not
defended by mercenary troops; well-ordered internally, aggressive and
bent on expansion. "Weak republics," he said, "have no determination
and can never reach a decision." (Disc. I. c. 38). "Weak states were
ever dubious in choosing their course, and slow deliberations are
always harmful." (Disc. I. c. 10). And again: "Whoso undertakes to
govern a multitude either in a régime of liberty or in a monarchy,
without previously making sure of those who are hostile to the new
order of things builds a short-lived state." (Disc. I. c. 16). And
further on "the dictatorial authority helped and did not harm the
Roman republic" (Disc. I. c. 34), and "Kings and republics lacking in
national troops both for offense and defense should be ashamed of
their existence." (Disc. I. c. 21). And again: "Money not only does
not protect you but rather it exposes you to plundering assaults. Nor
can there be a more false opinion than that which says that money is
the sinews of war. Not money but good soldiers win battles." (Disc. I.
II. c. 10). "The country must be defended with ignominy or with glory
and in either way it is nobly defended." (Disc. III. c. 41). "And with
dash and boldness people often capture what they never would have
obtained by ordinary means." (Disc. III. c. 44). Machiavelli was not
only a great political authority, he taught the mastery of energy and
will. Fascism learns from him not only its doctrines but its action as
well.
Different from Machiavelli's, in mental attitude, in cultural
preparation, and in manner of presentation, G.B. Vico must yet be
connected with the great Florentine from whom in a certain way he
seems to proceed. In the heyday of "natural law" Vico is decidedly
opposed to _ius naturale_ and in his attacks against its advocates,
Grotius, Seldenus and Pufendorf, he systematically assails the
abstract, rationalistic, and utilitarian principles of the XVIII
century. As Montemayor justly says:[4] "While the 'natural jurists',
basing justice and state on utility and interest and grounding human
certitude on reason, were striving to draft permanent codes and
construct the perfect state, Vico strongly asserted the social nature
of man, the ethical character of the juridical consciousness and its
growth through the history of humanity rather than in sacred history.
Vico therefore maintains that doctrines must begin with those subjects
which take up and explain the entire course of civilization.
Experience and not ratiocination, history and not reason must help
human wisdom to understand the civil and political regimes which were
the result not of reason or philosophy, but rather of common sense, or
if you will of the social consciousness of man" and farther on (pages
373-374), "to Vico we owe the conception of history in its fullest
sense as magistra vitae, the search after the humanity of history, the
principle which makes the truth progress with time, the discovery of
the political 'course' of nations. It is Vico who uttered the eulogy
of the patrician 'heroic hearts' of the 'patres patriae' first
founders of states, magnanimous defenders of the commonwealth and wise
counsellors of politics. To Vico we owe the criticism of democracies,
the affirmation of their brief existence, of their rapid
disintegration at the hands of factions and demagogues, of their lapse
first into anarchy, then into monarchy, when their degradation does
not make them a prey of foreign oppressors. Vico conceived of civil
liberty as subjection to law, as just subordination, of the private to
the public interests, to the sway of the state. It was Vico who
sketched modern society as a world of nations each one guarding its
own imperium, fighting just and not inhuman wars. In Vico therefore we
find the condemnation of pacifism, the assertion that right is
actualized by bodily force, that without force, right is of no avail,
and that therefore 'qui ab iniuriis se tueri non potest servus est.'"
It is not difficult to discern the analogies between these
affirmations and the fundamental views and the spirit of Fascism. Nor
should we marvel at this similarity. Fascism, a strictly Italian
phenomenon, has its roots in the Risorgimento and the Risorgimento was
influenced undoubtedly by Vico.
It would be inexact to affirm that the philosophy of Vico dominated
the Risorgimento. Too many elements of German, French, and English
civilizations had been added to our culture during the first half of
the XIX century to make this possible, so much so that perhaps Vico
might have remained unknown to the makers of Italian unity if another
powerful mind from Southern Italy, Vincenzo Cuoco, had not taken it
upon himself to expound the philosophy of Vico in those very days in
which the intellectual preparation of the Risorgimento was being
carried on.
An adequate account of Cuoco's doctrines would carry me too far.
Montemayor, in the article quoted above, gives them considerable
attention. He quotes among other things Cuoco's arraignment of
Democracy: "Italy has fared badly at the hand of Democracy which has
withered to their roots the three sacred plants of liberty, unity,
and independence. If we wish to see these trees flourish again let us
protect them in the future from Democracy."
The influence of Cuoco, an exile at Milan, exerted through his
writings, his newspaper articles, and Vichian propaganda, on the
Italian patriots is universally recognized. Among the regular readers
of his _Giornale Italiano_ we find Monti and Foscolo. Clippings of his
articles were treasured by Mazzini and Manzoni, who often acted as his
secretary, called him his "master in politics."[5]
The influence of the Italian tradition summed up and handed down by
Cuoco was felt by Mazzini whose interpretation of the function of the
citizen as duty and mission is to be connected with Vico's doctrine
rather than with the philosophic and political doctrines of the French
Revolution.
"Training for social duty," said Mazzini, "is essentially and
logically unitarian. Life for it is but a duty, a mission. The norm
and definition of such mission can only be found in a collective term
superior to all the individuals of the country--in the people, in the
nation. If there is a collective mission, a communion of duty ... it
can only be represented in the national unity."[6] And farther on:
"The declaration of rights, which all constitutions insist in copying
slavishly from the French, express only those of the period ... which
considered the individual as the end and pointed out only one half of
the problem" and again, "assume the existence of one of those crises
that threaten the life of the nation, and demand the active sacrifice
of all its sons ... will you ask the citizens to face martyrdom in
virtue of their rights? You have taught men that society was solely
constituted to guarantee their rights and now you ask them to
sacrifice one and all, to suffer and die for the safety of the
'nation?'"[7]
In Mazzini's conception of the citizen as instrument for the
attainment of the nation's ends and therefore submissive to a higher
mission, to the duty of supreme sacrifice, we see the anticipation of
one of the fundamental points of the Fascist doctrine.
Unfortunately, the autonomy of the political thought of Italy,
vigorously established in the works of Vico, nobly reclaimed by
Vincenzo Cuoco, kept up during the struggles of the Risorgimento in
spite of the many foreign influences of that period, seemed to exhaust
itself immediately after the unification. Italian political thought
which had been original in times of servitude, became enslaved in the
days of freedom.
A powerful innovating movement, issuing from the war and of which
Fascism is the purest expression, was to restore Italian thought in
the sphere of political doctrine to its own traditions which are the
traditions of Rome.
This task of intellectual liberation, now slowly being accomplished,
is no less important than the political deliverance brought about by
the Fascist Revolution. It is a great task which continues and
integrates the Risorgimento; it is now bringing to an end, after the
cessation of our political servitude, the intellectual dependence of
Italy.
Thanks to it, Italy again speaks to the world and the world listens to
Italy. It is a great task and a great deed and it demands great
efforts. To carry it through, we must, each one of us, free ourselves
of the dross of ideas and mental habits which two centuries of foreign
intellectualistic tradition have heaped upon us; we must not only take
on a new culture but create for ourselves a new soul. We must
methodically and patiently contribute something towards the organic
and complete elaboration of our doctrine, at the same time supporting
it both at home and abroad with untiring devotion. We ask this effort
of renovation and collaboration of all Fascists, as well as of all who
feel themselves to be Italians. After the hour of sacrifice comes the
hour of unyielding efforts. To our work, then, fellow countrymen, for
the glory of Italy!
* * * * *
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: Translated from the Italian.]
[Footnote 2: "civitates quae non reguntur ab uno dissenionibus
laborant et absque pace fluctuant. E contrario civitates quae sub uno
rege reguntur pace gaudent, iustitia florent et affluentia rerum
laetantur." (De reg. princ. I. c. 2).]
[Footnote 3: "ideo manifustum est, quod multitudo est sicut tyrannuus,
quare operationes multitudinis sunt iniustae. ergo non expedit
multitudinem dominari." (Comm. In Polit. L. III. lectio VIII).]
[Footnote 4: Rivista internazionale di filosofia del diritto V. 351.]
[Footnote 5: Montemayor. Riv. Int. etc. p. 370.]
[Footnote 6: della unità italiana. Scritti, Vol. III.]
[Footnote 7: I sistemi e la democrazia. Scritti, Vol. VII.]
* * * * *
THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF FASCISM
BY GIOVANNI GENTILE
For the Italian nation the World War was the solution of a deep
spiritual crisis. They willed and fought it long before they felt and
evaluated it. But they willed, fought, felt and evaluated it in a
certain spirit which Italy's generals and statesmen exploited, but
which also worked on them, conditioning their policies and their
action. The spirit in question was not altogether clear and
self-consistent. That it lacked unanimity was particularly apparent
just before and again just after the war when feelings were not
subject to war discipline. It was as though the Italian character were
crossed by two different currents which divided it into two
irreconcilable sections. One need think only of the days of Italian
neutrality and of the debates that raged between Interventionists and
Neutralists. The ease with which the most inconsistent ideas were
pressed into service by both parties showed that the issue was not
between two opposing political opinions, two conflicting concepts of
history, but actually between two different temperaments, two
different souls.
For one kind of person the important point was to fight the war,
either on the side of Germany or against Germany: but in either event
to fight the war, without regard to specific advantages--to fight the
war in order that at last the Italian nation, created rather by
favoring conditions than by the will of its people to be a nation,
might receive its test in blood, such a test as only war can bring by
uniting all citizens in a single thought, a single passion, a single
hope, emphasizing to each individual that all have something in
common, something transcending private interests.
This was the very thing that frightened the other kind of person, the
prudent man, the realist, who had a clear view of the mortal risks a
young, inexperienced, badly prepared nation would be running in such a
war, and who also saw--a most significant point--that, all things
considered, a bargaining neutrality would surely win the country
tangible rewards, as great as victorious participation itself.
The point at issue was just that: the Italian Neutralists stood for
material advantages, advantages tangible, ponderable, palpable; the
Interventionists stood for moral advantages, intangible, impalpable,
imponderable--imponderable at least on the scales used by their
antagonists. On the eve of the war these two Italian characters stood
facing each other, scowling and irreconcilable--the one on the
aggressive, asserting itself ever more forcefully through the various
organs of public opinion; the other on the defensive, offering
resistance through the Parliament which in those days still seemed to
be the basic repository of State sovereignty. Civil conflict seemed
inevitable in Italy, and civil war was in fact averted only because
the King took advantage of one of his prerogatives and declared war
against the Central Powers.
This act of the King was the first decisive step toward the solution
of the crisis.
II
The crisis had ancient origins. Its roots sank deep into the inner
spirit of the Italian people.
What were the creative forces of the _Risorgimento_? The "Italian
people," to which some historians are now tending to attribute an
important if not a decisive role in our struggle for national unity
and independence, was hardly on the scene at all. The active agency
was always an idea become a person--it was one or several determined
wills which were fixed on determined goals. There can be no question
that the birth of modern Italy was the work of the few. And it could
not be otherwise. It is always the few who represent the
self-consciousness and the will of an epoch and determine what its
history shall be; for it is they who see the forces at their disposal
and through those forces actuate the one truly active and productive
force--their own will.
That will we find in the song of the poets and the ideas of the
political writers, who know how to use a language harmonious with a
universal sentiment or with a sentiment capable of becoming universal.
In the case of Italy, in all our bards, philosophers and leaders, from
Alfieri to Foscolo, from Leopardi to Manzoni, from Mazzini to
Gioberti, we are able to pick up the threads of a new fabric, which is
a new kind of thought, a new kind of soul, a new kind of Italy. This
new Italy differed from the old Italy in something that was very
simple but yet was of the greatest importance: this new Italy took
life seriously, while the old one did not. People in every age had
dreamed of an Italy and talked of an Italy. The notion of Italy had
been sung in all kinds of music, propounded in all kinds of
philosophy. But it was always an Italy that existed in the brain of
some scholar whose learning was more or less divorced from reality.
Now reality demands that convictions be taken seriously, that ideas
become actions. Accordingly it was necessary that this Italy, which
was an affair of brains only, become also an affair of hearts, become,
that is, something serious, something alive. This, and no other, was
the meaning of Mazzini's great slogan: "Thought and Action." It was
the essence of the great revolution which he preached and which he
accomplished by instilling his doctrine into the hearts of others. Not
many others--a small minority! But they were numerous enough and
powerful enough to raise the question where it could be answered--in
Italian public opinion (taken in conjunction with the political
situation prevailing in the rest of Europe). They were able to
establish the doctrine that life is not a game, but a mission; that,
therefore, the individual has a law and a purpose in obedience to
which and in fulfillment of which he alone attains his true value;
that, accordingly, he must make sacrifices, now of personal comfort,
now of private interest, now of life itself.
No revolution ever possessed more markedly than did the Italian
_Risorgimento_ this characteristic of ideality, of thought preceding
action. Our revolt was not concerned with the material needs of life,
nor did it spring from elementary and widely diffused sentiments
breaking out in popular uprisings and mass disturbances. The movements
of 1847 and 1848 were demonstrations, as we would say today, of
"intellectuals"; they were efforts toward a goal on the part of
a minority of patriots who were standard bearers of an ideal
and were driving governments and peoples toward its attainment.
Idealism--understood as faith in the advent of an ideal reality, as a
manner of conceiving life not as fixed within the limits of existing
fact, but as incessant progress and transformation toward the level of a
higher law which controls men with the very force of the idea--was the
sum and substance of Mazzini's teaching; and it supplied the most
conspicuous characteristic of our great Italian revolution. In this
sense all the patriots who worked for the foundation of the new kingdom
were Mazzinians--Gioberti, Cavour, Victor Emmanuel, Garibaldi. To be
sure, our writers of the first rank, such as Manzoni and Rosmini, had no
historical connection with Mazzini; but they had the same general
tendency as Mazzini. Working along diverging lines, they all came
together on the essential point: that true life is not the life which
is, but also the life which ought to be. It was a conviction essentially
religious in character, essentially anti-materialistic.
III
This religious and idealistic manner of looking at life, so
characteristic of the _Risorgimento_, prevails even beyond the heroic
age of the revolution and the establishment of the Kingdom. It
survives down through Ricasoli, Lanza, Sella and Minghetti, down, that
is, to the occupation of Rome and the systemization of our national
finances. The parliamentary overturn of 1876, indeed, marks not the
end, but rather an interruption, on the road that Italy had been
following since the beginning of the century. The outlook then
changed, and not by the capriciousness or weakness of men, but by a
necessity of history which it would be idiotic in our day to deplore.
At that time the fall of the Right, which had ruled continuously
between 1861 and 1876, seemed to most people the real conquest of
freedom.
To be sure the Right cannot be accused of too great scruple in
respecting the liberties guaranteed by our Constitution; but the real
truth was that the Right conceived liberty in a sense directly
opposite to the notions of the Left. The Left moved from the
individual to the State: the Right moved from the State to the
individual. The men of the left thought of "the people" as merely the
agglomerate of the citizens composing it. They therefore made the
individual the center and the point of departure of all the rights and
prerogatives which a régime of freedom was bound to respect.
The men of the Right, on the contrary, were firmly set in the notion
that no freedom can be conceived except within the State, that freedom
can have no important content apart from a solid régime of law
indisputably sovereign over the activities and the interests of
individuals. For the Right there could be no individual freedom not
reconcilable with the authority of the State. In their eyes the
general interest was always paramount over private interests. The law,
therefore, should have absolute efficacy and embrace the whole life of
the people.
This conception of the Right was evidently sound; but it involved
great dangers when applied without regard to the motives which
provoked it. Unless we are careful, too much law leads to stasis and
therefore to the annihilation of the life which it is the State's
function to regulate but which the State cannot suppress. The State
may easily become a form indifferent to its content--something
extraneous to the substance it would regulate. If the law comes upon
the individual from without, if the individual is not absorbed in the
life of the State, the individual feels the law and the State as
limitations on his activity, as chains which will eventually strangle
him unless he can break them down.
This was just the feeling of the men of '76. The country needed a
breath of air. Its moral, economic, and social forces demanded the
right to develop without interference from a law which took no account
of them. This was the historical reason for the overturn of that year;
and with the transference of power from Right to Left begins the
period of growth and development in our nation: economic growth in
industry, commerce, railroads, agriculture; intellectual growth in
science, education. The nation had received its form from above. It
had now to struggle to its new level, giving to a State which already
had its constitution, its administrative and political organization,
its army and its finance, a living content of forces springing from
individual initiative prompted by interests which the _Risorgimento_,
absorbed in its great ideals, had either neglected or altogether
disregarded.
The accomplishment of this constitutes the credit side of the balance
sheet of King Humbert I. It was the error of King Humbert's greatest
minister, Francesco Crispi, not to have understood his age. Crispi
strove vigorously to restore the authority and the prestige of the
State as against an individualism gone rampant, to reassert religious
ideals as against triumphant materialism. He fell, therefore, before
the assaults of so-called democracy.
Crispi was wrong. That was not the moment for re-hoisting the
time-honored banner of idealism. At that time there could be no talk
of wars, of national dignity, of competition with the Great Powers; no
talk of setting limits to personal liberties in the interests of the
abstract entity called "State." The word "God," which Crispi sometimes
used, was singularly out of place. It was a question rather of
bringing the popular classes to prosperity, self-consciousness,
participation in political life. Campaigns against illiteracy, all
kinds of social legislation, the elimination of the clergy from the
public schools, which must be secular and anti-clerical! During this
period Freemasonry became solidly established in the bureaucracy, the
army, the judiciary. The central power of the State was weakened and
made subservient to the fleeting variations of popular will as
reflected in a suffrage absolved from all control from above. The
growth of big industry favored the rise of a socialism of Marxian
stamp as a new kind of moral and political education for our
proletariat. The conception of humanity was not indeed lost from view:
but such moral restraints as were placed on the free individual were
all based on the feeling that each man must instinctively seek his own
well-being and defend it. This was the very conception which Mazzini
had fought in socialism, though he rightly saw that it was not
peculiar to socialism alone, but belonged to any political theory,
whether liberal, democratic, or anti-socialistic, which urges men
toward the exaction of rights rather than to the fulfillment of
duties.
From 1876 till the Great War, accordingly, we had an Italy that was
materialistic and anti-Mazzinian, though an Italy far superior to the
Italy of and before Mazzini's time. All our culture, whether in the
natural or the moral sciences, in letters or in the arts, was
dominated by a crude positivism, which conceived of the reality in
which we live as something given, something ready-made, and which
therefore limits and conditions human activity quite apart from
so-called arbitrary and illusory demands of morality. Everybody wanted
"facts," "positive facts." Everybody laughed at "metaphysical dreams,"
at impalpable realities. The truth was there before the eyes of men.
They had only to open their eyes to see it. The Beautiful itself could
only be the mirror of the Truth present before us in Nature.
Patriotism, like all the other virtues based on a religious attitude
of mind, and which can be mentioned only when people have the courage
to talk in earnest, became a rhetorical theme on which it was rather
bad taste to touch.
This period, which anyone born during the last half of the past
century can well remember, might be called the demo-socialistic phase
of the modern Italian State. It was the period which elaborated the
characteristically democratic attitude of mind on a basis of personal
freedom, and which resulted in the establishment of socialism as the
primary and controlling force in the State. It was a period of growth
and of prosperity during which the moral forces developed during the
_Risorgimento_ were crowded into the background or off the stage.
IV
But toward the end of the Nineteenth Century and in the first years of
the Twentieth a vigorous spirit of reaction began to manifest itself
in the young men of Italy against the preceding generation's ideas in
politics, literature, science and philosophy. It was as though they
were weary of the prosaic bourgeois life which they had inherited from
their fathers and were eager to return to the lofty moral enthusiasms
of their grandfathers. Rosmini and Gioberti had been long forgotten.
They were now exhumed, read, discussed. As for Mazzini, an edition of
his writings was financed by the State itself. Vico, the great Vico, a
formidable preacher of idealistic philosophy and a great
anti-Cartesian and anti-rationalist, became the object of a new cult.
Positivism began forthwith to be attacked by neo-idealism.
Materialistic approaches to the study of literature and art were
refuted and discredited. Within the Church itself modernism came to
rouse the Italian clergy to the need of a deeper and more modern
culture. Even socialism was brought under the philosophical probe and
criticized like other doctrines for its weaknesses and errors; and
when, in France, George Sorel went beyond the fallacies of the
materialistic theories of the Marxist social-democracy to his theory
of syndicalism, our young Italian socialists turned to him. In Sorel's
ideas they saw two things: first, the end of a hypocritical
"collaborationism" which betrayed both proletariat and nation; and
second, faith in a moral and ideal reality for which it was the
individual's duty to sacrifice himself, and to defend which, even
violence was justified. The anti-parliamentarian spirit and the moral
spirit of syndicalism brought Italian socialists back within the
Mazzinian orbit.
Of great importance, too, was nationalism, a new movement then just
coming to the fore. Our Italian nationalism was less literary and more
political in character than the similar movement in France, because
with us it was attached to the old historic Right which had a long
political tradition. The new nationalism differed from the old Right
in the stress it laid on the idea of "nation"; but it was at one with
the Right in regarding the State as the necessary premise to the
individual rights and values. It was the special achievement of
nationalism to rekindle faith in the nation in Italian hearts, to
arouse the country against parliamentary socialism, and to lead an
open attack on Freemasonry, before which the Italian bourgeoisie was
terrifiedly prostrating itself. Syndicalists, nationalists, idealists
succeeded, between them, in bringing the great majority of Italian
youth back to the spirit of Mazzini.
Official, legal, parliamentary Italy, the Italy that was
anti-Mazzinian and anti-idealistic, stood against all this, finding
its leader in a man of unfailing political intuition, and master as
well of the political mechanism of the country, a man sceptical of all
high-sounding words, impatient of complicated concepts, ironical,
cold, hard-headed, practical--what Mazzini would have called a "shrewd
materialist." In the persons, indeed, of Mazzini and Giolitti, we may
find a picture of the two aspects of pre-war Italy, of that
irreconcilable duality which paralyzed the vitality of the country and
which the Great War was to solve.
V
The effect of the war seemed at first to be quite in an opposite
sense--to mark the beginning of a general _débâcle_ of the Italian
State and of the moral forces that must underlie any State. If
entrance into the war had been a triumph of ideal Italy over
materialistic Italy, the advent of peace seemed to give ample
justification to the Neutralists who had represented the latter. After
the Armistice our Allies turned their backs upon us. Our victory
assumed all the aspects of a defeat. A defeatist psychology, as they
say, took possession of the Italian people and expressed itself in
hatred of the war, of those responsible for the war, even of our army
which had won our war. An anarchical spirit of dissolution rose
against all authority. The ganglia of our economic life seemed struck
with mortal disease. Labor ran riot in strike after strike. The very
bureaucracy seemed to align itself against the State. The measure of
our spiritual dispersion was the return to power of Giolitti--the
execrated Neutralist--who for five years had been held up as the
exponent of an Italy which had died with the war.
But, curiously enough, it was under Giolitti that things suddenly
changed in aspect, that against the Giolittian State a new State
arose. Our soldiers, our genuine soldiers, men who had willed our war
and fought it in full consciousness of what they were doing, had the
good fortune to find as their leaders a man who could express in words
things that were in all their hearts and who could make those words
audible above the tumult.
Mussolini had left Italian socialism in 1915 in order to be a more
faithful interpreter of "the Italian People" (the name he chose for
his new paper). He was one of those who saw the necessity of our war,
one of those mainly responsible for our entering the war. Already as a
socialist he had fought Freemasonry; and, drawing his inspiration from
Sorel's syndicalism, he had assailed the parliamentary corruption of
Reformist Socialism with the idealistic postulates of revolution and
violence. Then, later, on leaving the party and in defending the cause
of intervention, he had come to oppose the illusory fancies of
proletarian internationalism with an assertion of the infrangible
integrity, not only moral but economic as well, of the national
organism, affirming therefore the sanctity of country for the working
classes as for other classes. Mussolini was a Mazzinian of that
pure-blooded breed which Mazzini seemed somehow always to find in the
province of Romagna. First by instinct, later by reflection, Mussolini
had come to despise the futility of the socialists who kept preaching
a revolution which they had neither the power nor the will to bring to
pass even under the most favorable circumstances. More keenly than
anyone else he had come to feel the necessity of a State which would
be a State, of a law which would be respected as law, of an authority
capable of exacting obedience but at the same time able to give
indisputable evidence of its worthiness so to act. It seemed
incredible to Mussolini that a country capable of fighting and winning
such a war as Italy had fought and won should be thrown into disorder
and held at the mercy of a handful of faithless politicians.
When Mussolini founded his Fasci in Milan in March, 1919, the movement
toward dissolution and negation that featured the post-war period in
Italy had virtually ceased. The Fasci made their appeal to Italians
who, in spite of the disappointments of the peace, continued to
believe in the war, and who, in order to validate the victory which
was the proof of the war's value, were bent on recovering for Italy
that control over her own destinies which could come only through a
restoration of discipline and a reorganization of social and political
forces. From the first, the Fascist Party was not one of believers but
of action. What it needed was not a platform of principles, but an
idea which would indicate a goal and a road by which the goal could be
reached.
The four years between 1919 and 1923 inclusive were characterized by
the development of the Fascist revolution through the action of "the
squads." The Fascist "squads" were really the force of a State not yet
born but on the way to being. In its first period, Fascist "squadrism"
transgressed the law of the old régime because it was determined to
suppress that régime as incompatible with the national State to which
Fascism was aspiring. The March on Rome was not the beginning, it was
the end of that phase of the revolution; because, with Mussolini's
advent to power, Fascism entered the sphere of legality. After October
28, 1922, Fascism was no longer at war with the State; it _was_ the
State, looking about for the organization which would realize Fascism
as a concept of State. Fascism already had control of all the
instruments necessary for the upbuilding of a new State. The Italy of
Giolitti had been superceded, at least so far as militant politics
were concerned. Between Giolitti's Italy and the new Italy there
flowed, as an imaginative orator once said in the Chamber, "a torrent
of blood" that would prevent any return to the past. The century-old
crisis had been solved. The war at last had begun to bear fruit for
Italy.
VI
Now to understand the distinctive essence of Fascism, nothing is more
instructive than a comparison of it with the point of view of Mazzini
to which I have so often referred.
Mazzini did have a political conception, but his politic was a sort of
integral politic, which cannot be so sharply distinguished from
morals, religion, and ideas of life as a whole, as to be considered
apart from these other fundamental interests of the human spirit. If
one tries to separate what is purely political from his religious
beliefs, his ethical consciousness and his metaphysical concepts, it
becomes impossible to understand the vast influence which his credo
and his propaganda exerted. Unless we assume the unity of the whole
man, we arrive not at the clarification but at the destruction of
those ideas of his which proved so powerful.
In the definition of Fascism, the first point to grasp is the
comprehensive, or as Fascists say, the "totalitarian" scope of its
doctrine, which concerns itself not only with political organization
and political tendency, but with the whole will and thought and
feeling of the nation.
There is a second and equally important point. Fascism is not a
philosophy. Much less is it a religion. It is not even a political
theory which may be stated in a series of formulae. The significance
of Fascism is not to be grasped in the special theses which it from
time to time assumes. When on occasion it has announced a program, a
goal, a concept to be realized in action, Fascism has not hesitated to
abandon them when in practice these were found to be inadequate or
inconsistent with the principle of Fascism. Fascism has never been
willing to compromise its future. Mussolini has boasted that he is a
_tempista_, that his real pride is in "good timing." He makes
decisions and acts on them at the precise moment when all the
conditions and considerations which make them feasible and opportune
are properly matured. This is a way of saying that Fascism returns to
the most rigorous meaning of Mazzini's "Thought and Action," whereby
the two terms are so perfectly coincident that no thought has value
which is not already expressed in action. The real "views" of the
_Duce_ are those which he formulates and executes at one and the same
time.
Is Fascism therefore "anti-intellectual," as has been so often
charged? It is eminently anti-intellectual, eminently Mazzinian, that
is, if by intellectualism we mean the divorce of thought from action,
of knowledge from life, of brain from heart, of theory from practice.
Fascism is hostile to all Utopian systems which are destined never to
face the test of reality. It is hostile to all science and all
philosophy which remain matters of mere fancy or intelligence. It is
not that Fascism denies value to culture, to the higher intellectual
pursuits by which thought is invigorated as a source of action.
Fascist anti-intellectualism holds in scorn a product peculiarly
typical of the educated classes in Italy: the _leterato_--the man who
plays with knowledge and with thought without any sense of
responsibility for the practical world. It is hostile not so much to
culture as to bad culture, the culture which does not educate, which
does not make men, but rather creates pedants and aesthetes, egotists
in a word, men morally and politically indifferent. It has no use, for
instance, for the man who is "above the conflict" when his country or
its important interests are at stake.
By virtue of its repugnance for "intellectualism," Fascism prefers not
to waste time constructing abstract theories about itself. But when we
say that it is not a system or a doctrine we must not conclude that it
is a blind praxis or a purely instinctive method. If by system or
philosophy we mean a living thought, a principle of universal
character daily revealing its inner fertility and significance, then
Fascism is a perfect system, with a solidly established foundation and
with a rigorous logic in its development; and all who feel the truth
and the vitality of the principle work day by day for its development,
now doing, now undoing, now going forward, now retracing their steps,
according as the things they do prove to be in harmony with the
principle or to deviate from it.
And we come finally to a third point.
The Fascist system is not a political system, but it has its center of
gravity in politics. Fascism came into being to meet serious problems
of politics in post-war Italy. And it presents itself as a political
method. But in confronting and solving political problems it is
carried by its very nature, that is to say by its method, to consider
moral, religious, and philosophical questions and to unfold and
demonstrate the comprehensive totalitarian character peculiar to it.
It is only after we have grasped the political character of the
Fascist principle that we are able adequately to appreciate the deeper
concept of life which underlies that principle and from which the
principle springs. The political doctrine of Fascism is not the whole
of Fascism. It is rather its more prominent aspect and in general its
most interesting one.
VII
The politic of Fascism revolves wholly about the concept of the
national State; and accordingly it has points of contact with
nationalist doctrines, along with distinctions from the latter which
it is important to bear in mind.
Both Fascism and nationalism regard the State as the foundation of all
rights and the source of all values in the individuals composing it.
For the one as for the other the State is not a consequence--it is a
principle. But in the case of nationalism, the relation which
individualistic liberalism, and for that matter socialism also,
assumed between individual and State is inverted. Since the State is a
principle, the individual becomes a consequence--he is something which
finds an antecedent in the State: the State limits him and determines
his manner of existence, restricting his freedom, binding him to a
piece of ground whereon he was born, whereon he must live and will
die. In the case of Fascism, State and individual are one and the same
things, or rather, they are inseparable terms of a necessary
synthesis.
Nationalism, in fact, founds the State on the concept of nation, the
nation being an entity which transcends the will and the life of the
individual because it is conceived as objectively existing apart from
the consciousness of individuals, existing even if the individual does
nothing to bring it into being. For the nationalist, the nation exists
not by virtue of the citizen's will, but as datum, a fact, of nature.
For Fascism, on the contrary, the State is a wholly spiritual
creation. It is a national State, because, from the Fascist point of
view, the nation itself is a creation of the mind and is not a
material presupposition, is not a datum of nature. The nation, says
the Fascist, is never really made; neither, therefore, can the State
attain an absolute form, since it is merely the nation in the latter's
concrete, political manifestation. For the Fascist, the State is
always _in fieri_. It is in our hands, wholly; whence our very serious
responsibility towards it.
But this State of the Fascists which is created by the consciousness
and the will of the citizen, and is not a force descending on the
citizen from above or from without, cannot have toward the mass of the
population the relationship which was presumed by nationalism.
Nationalism identified State with Nation, and made of the nation an
entity preëxisting, which needed not to be created but merely to be
recognized or known. The nationalists, therefore, required a ruling
class of an intellectual character, which was conscious of the nation
and could understand, appreciate and exalt it. The authority of the
State, furthermore, was not a product but a presupposition. It could
not depend on the people--rather the people depended on the State and
on the State's authority as the source of the life which they lived
and apart from which they could not live. The nationalistic State was,
therefore, an aristocratic State, enforcing itself upon the masses
through the power conferred upon it by its origins.
The Fascist State, on the contrary, is a people's state, and, as such,
the democratic State _par excellence_. The relationship between State
and citizen (not this or that citizen, but all citizens) is
accordingly so intimate that the State exists only as, and in so far
as, the citizen causes it to exist. Its formation therefore is the
formation of a consciousness of it in individuals, in the masses.
Hence the need of the Party, and of all the instruments of propaganda
and education which Fascism uses to make the thought and will of the
_Duce_ the thought and will of the masses. Hence the enormous task
which Fascism sets itself in trying to bring the whole mass of the
people, beginning with the little children, inside the fold of the
Party.
On the popular character of the Fascist State likewise depends its
greatest social and constitutional reform--the foundation of the
Corporations of Syndicates. In this reform Fascism took over from
syndicalism the notion of the moral and educational function of the
syndicate. But the Corporations of Syndicates were necessary in order
to reduce the syndicates to State discipline and make them an
expression of the State's organism from within. The Corporation of
Syndicates are a device through which the Fascist State goes looking
for the individual in order to create itself through the individual's
will. But the individual it seeks is not the abstract political
individual whom the old liberalism took for granted. He is the only
individual who can ever be found, the individual who exists as a
specialized productive force, and who, by the fact of his
specialization, is brought to unite with other individuals of his same
category and comes to belong with them to the one great economic unit
which is none other than the nation.
This great reform is already well under way. Toward it nationalism,
syndicalism, and even liberalism itself, were already tending in the
past. For even liberalism was beginning to criticize the older forms
of political representation, seeking some system of organic
representation which would correspond to the structural reality of the
State.
The Fascist conception of liberty merits passing notice. The _Duce_ of
Fascism once chose to discuss the theme of "Force or consent?"; and he
concluded that the two terms are inseparable, that the one implies the
other and cannot exist apart from the other; that, in other words, the
authority of the State and the freedom of the citizen constitute a
continuous circle wherein authority presupposes liberty and liberty
authority. For freedom can exist only within the State, and the State
means authority. But the State is not an entity hovering in the air
over the heads of its citizens. It is one with the personality of the
citizen. Fascism, indeed, envisages the contrast not as between
liberty and authority, but as between a true, a concrete liberty which
exists, and an abstract, illusory liberty which cannot exist.
Liberalism broke the circle above referred to, setting the individual
against the State and liberty against authority. What the liberal
desired was liberty as against the State, a liberty which was a
limitation of the State; though the liberal had to resign himself, as
the lesser of the evils, to a State which was a limitation on liberty.
The absurdities inherent in the liberal concept of freedom were
apparent to liberals themselves early in the Nineteenth Century. It is
no merit of Fascism to have again indicated them. Fascism has its own
solution of the paradox of liberty and authority. The authority of the
State is absolute. It does not compromise, it does not bargain, it
does not surrender any portion of its field to other moral or
religious principles which may interfere with the individual
conscience. But on the other hand, the State becomes a reality only in
the consciousness of its individuals. And the Fascist corporative
State supplies a representative system more sincere and more in touch
with realities than any other previously devised and is therefore
freer than the old liberal State.
NATIONAL SOCIALISM
BASIC PRINCIPLES, THEIR APPLICATION
BY THE NAZI PARTY'S FOREIGN ORGANIZATION,
AND THE USE OF GERMANS ABROAD
FOR NAZI AIMS
Prepared in the Special Unit
Of the Division of European Affairs
By
RAYMOND E. MURPHY
FRANCIS B. STEVENS
HOWARD TRIVERS
JOSEPH M. ROLAND
ELEMENTS OF NAZI IDEOLOGY
The line of thought which we have traced from Herder to the immediate
forerunners of the Nazi movement embodies an antidemocratic tradition
which National Socialism has utilized, reduced to simple but
relentless terms, and exploited in what is known as the National
Socialist _Weltanschauung_ for the greater aggrandizement of Nazi
Germany. The complete agreement between the Nazi ideology and the
previously described political concepts of the past is revealed in the
forthcoming exposition of the main tenets of Naziism.
The Volk
Ernst Rudolf Huber, in his basic work _Verfassungsrecht des
grossdeutschen Reiches (Constitutional Law of the Greater German
Reich_) (document 1, _post_ p. 155), published in 1939, states:
The new constitution of the German Reich ... is not a
constitution in the formal sense such as was typical of the
nineteenth century. The new Reich has no written
constitutional declaration, but its constitution exists in
the unwritten basic political order of the Reich. One
recognizes it in the spiritual powers which fill our people,
in the real authority in which our political life is
grounded, and in the basic laws regarding the structure of
the state which have been proclaimed so far. The advantage
of such an unwritten constitution over the formal
constitution is that the basic principles do not become
rigid but remain in a constant, living movement. Not dead
institutions but living principles determine the nature of
the new constitutional order.[8]
In developing his thesis Huber points out that the National Socialist
state rests on three basic concepts, the _Volk_ or people, the Führer,
and the movement or party. With reference to the first element, the
_Volk_, he argues that the democracies develop their concept of the
people from the wrong approach: They start with the concept of the
state and its functions and consider the people as being made up of
all the elements which fall within the borders or under the
jurisdiction of the state. National Socialism, on the other hand,
starts with the concept of the people, which forms a political unity,
and builds the state upon this foundation.
There is no people without an objective unity, but there is
also none without a common consciousness of unity. A people
is determined by a number of different factors: by racial
derivation and by the character of its land, by language and
other forms of life, by religion and history, but also by
the common consciousness of its solidarity and by its common
will to unity. For the concrete concept of a people, as
represented by the various peoples of the earth, it is of
decisive significance which of these various factors they
regard as determinants for the nature of the people. The new
German Reich proceeds from the concept of the political
people, determined by the natural characteristics and by the
historical idea of a closed community. The political people
is formed through the uniformity of its natural
characteristics. Race is the natural basis of the people ...
As a political people the natural community becomes
conscious of its solidarity and strives to form itself, to
develop itself, to defend itself, to realize itself.
"Nationalism" is essentially this striving of a people which
has become conscious of itself toward self-direction and
self-realization, toward a deepening and renewing of its
natural qualities.
This consciousness of self, springing from the consciousness
of a historical idea, awakens in a people its will to
historical formation: the will to action. The political
people is no passive, sluggish mass, no mere object for the
efforts of the state at government or protective welfare
work ... The great misconception of the democracies is that
they can see the active participation of the people only in
the form of plebiscites according to the principle of
majority. In a democracy the people does not act as a unit
but as a complex of unrelated individuals who form
themselves into parties ... The new Reich is based on the
principle that real action of a self-determining people is
only possible according to the principle of leadership and
following.[9]
According to Huber, geographical considerations play a large part in
the shaping of a people:
The people stands in a double relation, to its lands; it
settles and develops the land, but the land also stamps and
determines the people ... That a certain territory belongs
to a certain people is not justified by state authority
alone but it is also determined objectively by its
historical, political position. Territory is not merely a
field for the exercise of state control but it determines
the nature of a people and thereby the historical purpose of
the state's activity. England's island position, Italy's
Mediterranean position, and Germany's central position
between east and west are such historical conditions, which
unchangeably form the character of the people.[10]
But the new Germany is based upon a "unity and entirety of the
people"[11] which does not stop at geographical boundaries:
The German people forms a closed community which recognizes
no national borders. It is evident that a people has not
exhausted its possibilities simply in the formation of a
national state but that it represents an independent
community which reaches beyond such limits.[12]
The State justifies itself only so far as is helps the people to
develop itself more fully. In the words of Hitler, quoted by Huber
from _Mein Kampf_, "It is a basic principle, therefore, that the state
represents not an end but a means. It is a condition for advanced
human culture, but not the cause of it ... Its purpose is in the
maintenance and advancement of a community of human beings with common
physical and spiritual characteristics."[13]
Huber continues:
In the theory of the folk-Reich _[völkisches Reich_], people
and state are conceived as an inseparable unity. The people
is the prerequisite for the entire political order; the
state does not form the people but the people moulds the
state out of itself as the form in which it achieves
historical permanence....[14]
The State is a function of the people, but it is not
therefore a subordinate, secondary machine which can be used
or laid aside at will. It is the form in which the people
attains to historical reality. It is the bearer of the
historical continuity of the people, which remains the same
in the center of its being in spite of all changes,
revolutions, and transformations.[15]
A similar interpretation of the role of the _Volk_ is expounded by
Gottfried Neesse in his _Die Nationalsozialistische Deutsche
Arbeiterpartei--Versuch einer Rechtsdeutung_ (_The National Socialist
German Workers Party--An Attempt at Legal Interpretation_), published
in 1935. From the National Socialist viewpoint, according to Neesse,
the state is regarded not as an organism superior to the people but as
an organization of the people: "In contrast to an organism, an
organization has no inherent legality; it is dependent upon human will
and has no definite mission of its own. It is a form in which a living
mass shapes itself into unity, but it has no life of its own."[16] The
people is the living organism which uses the organization of the state
as the form in which it can best fulfil its mission. The law which is
inherent in the people must be realized through the state.
But the central and basic concept of National Socialist political
theory is the concept of the people:
In contrast to the state, the people form a true organism--a
being which leads its own life and follows its own laws,
which possesses powers peculiar to itself, and which
develops its own nature independent of all state forms....
This living unity of the people has its cells in its
individual members, and just as in every body there are
certain cells to perform certain tasks, this is likewise the
case in the body of the people. The individual is bound to
his people not only physically but mentally and spiritually
and he is influenced by these ties in all his
manifestations.[17]
The elements which go to make up a people are beyond human
comprehension, but the most important of them is a uniformity of
blood, resulting in "a similarity of nature which manifests itself in
a common language and a feeling of community and is further moulded by
land and by history."[18] "The unity of the people is increased by its
common destiny and its consciousness of a common mission."[19]
Liberalism gave rise to the concept of a "society-people"
(_Gesellschaftsvolk_) which consisted of a sum of individuals, each of
whom was supposed to have an inherent significance and to play his own
independent part in the political life of the nation. National
Socialism, on the other hand, has developed, the concept of the
"community-people" (_Gemeinschaftsvolk_) which functions as a uniform
whole.[20]
The people, however, is never politically active as a whole,
but only through those who embody its will. The true will of
a people can never be determined by a majority vote. It can
only display itself in men and in movements, and history
will decide whether these men or movements could rightly
claim to be the representatives of the people's will.[21]
Every identification of the state with the people is false
from a legal and untenable from a political standpoint ...
The state is the law-forming organization and the law serves
the inner order of the community; the people is the
politically active organism and politics serve the outward
maintenance of the community ... But law receives its
character from the people and politics must reckon with the
state as the first and most important factor.[22]
The "nation" is the product of this interplay and balance between the
state and the people. The original and vital force of the people,
through the organization of the state, realizes itself fully in the
unified communal life of the nation:
The nation is the complete agreement between organism and
organization, the perfect formation of a naturally grown
being. ... _Nationalism_ is nothing more than the outwardly
directed striving to maintain this inner unity of people and
state, and _socialism_ is the inwardly directed striving for
the same end.[23]
Dr. Herbert Scurla, Government Councilor and Reich's Minister for
Science, Education, and Folk Culture, in a pamphlet entitled _Die
Grundgedanken des Nationalsozialismus und das Ausland (Basic
Principles of National Socialism With Special Reference to Foreign
Countries_), also emphasizes the importance of the _Volk_ in the
National Socialist state. Dr. Scurla points out that National
Socialism does not view the nation in the domocratic sense of a
community to which the individual may voluntarily adhere.
The central field of force of the National Socialist
consciousness is rather the folk, and this folk is in no
case mere individual aggregation, i.e., collectivity as sum
of the individuals, but as a unity with a peculiar
two-sidedness, at the same time "essential totality" (M.H.
Boehm). The folk is both a living creature and a spiritual
configuration, in which the individuals are included through
common racial conditioning, in blood and spirit. It is that
force which works on the individual directly "from within or
from the side like a common degree of temperature" (Kjellén)
and which collects into the folk whatever according to
blood and spirit belongs to it. This folk, point of
departure and goal at the same time, is, in the National
Socialist world-view, not only the field of force for
political order, but as well the central factor of the
entire world-picture. Neither individuals, as the epoch of
enlightenment envisaged, nor states, as in the system of the
dynastic and national state absolutism, nor classes, as
conceived by Marxism, are the ultimate realities of the
political order, but the peoples, who stand over against one
another with the unqualifiable right to a separate existence
as natural entities, each with its own essential nature and
form. [24]
Dr. Scurla claims that National Socialism and Fascism are the
strivings of the German and Italian people for final national
unification along essentially different national lines natural to each
of them. "What took place in Germany," he asserts, "was a political
revolution of a total nature."[25] "Under revolution," he states, "we
understand rather the penetration of the collective folk-mind
[_gesamtvölkischen Bewusstseins_] into all regions of German
life."[26] And, he concludes:
National Socialism is no invented system of rules for the
political game, but the world-view of the German people,
which experiences itself as a national and social community,
and concedes neither to the state nor the class nor the
individual any privileges which endanger the security of the
community's right to live.[27]
Some of the most striking expressions of the race concept are found in
_Die Erziehung im dritten Reich_ (_Education in the Third Reich_), by
Friedrich Alfred Beck, which was published in 1936. It is worthy of
note that the tendency which may be observed in Huber (document I,
_post_ p. 155) and Neesse to associate the ideas of _Volk_ and race is
very marked with Beck. "All life, whether natural or spiritual, all
historical progress, all state forms, and all cultivation by education
are in the last analysis based upon the racial make-up of the people
in question."[28] _Race_ finds its expression in human life through
the phenomenon of the _people_:
_Race_ and _people_ belong together. National Socialism has
restored the concept of the people from its modern
shallowness and sees in the people something different from
and appreciably greater than a chance social community of
men, a grouping of men who have the same external interests.
By _people_ we understand an entire living body which is
racially uniform and which is held together by common
history, common fate, a common mission, and common tasks.
Through such an interpretation the people takes on a
significance which is only attributed to it in times of
great historical importance and which makes it the center,
the content, and the goal of all human work. Only that race
still possesses vital energy which can still bring its unity
to expression in the totality of the people. The people is
the space in which race can develop its strength. Race is
the vital law of arrangement which gives the people its
distinctive form. In the course of time the people undergoes
historical transformations, but race prevents the loss of
the people's own nature in the course of these
transformations. Without the people the race has no life;
without race the people has no permanence ... Education,
from the standpoint of race and people, is the creation of a
form of life in which the racial unity will be preserved
through the totality of the people.[29]
Beck describes the politically spiritual National Socialist
personality which National Socialist education seeks to develop, in
the following terms:
Socialism is the direction of personal life through
dependence on the community, consciousness of the community,
feeling for the community, and action in the community;
nationalism is the elevation of individual life to a unique
(microcosmic) expression of the community in the unity of
the personality.[30]
National Socialist education must stress the heroic life and teach
German youth the importance of fulfilling their duty to the _Volk_.
Heroism is that force and that conviction which consecrates
its whole life to the service of an idea, a faith, a task,
or a duty even when it knows that the destruction of its own
life is certain ... German life, according to the laws of
its ideology, is heroic life ... All German life, every
person belonging to the community of Germans must bear
heroic character within himself. Heroic life fulfils itself
in the daily work of the miner, the farmer, the clerk, the
statesman, and the serving self-sacrifice of the mother.
Wherever a life is devoted with an all-embracing faith and
with its full powers to the service of some value, there is
true heroism ... Education to the heroic life is education
to the fulfilment of duty ... One must have experienced it
repeatedly that the inner fruition of a work in one's own
life has nothing to do with material or economic
considerations, that man keeps all of his faculties alive
through his obligation to his work and his devotion to his
duty, and that he uses them in the service of an idea
without any regard for practical considerations, before one
recognizes the difference between this world of heroic
self-sacrifice and the liberalistic world of barter. Because
the younger generation has been brought up in this heroic
spirit it is no longer understood by the representatives of
the former era who judge the values of life according to
material advantage ... German life is heroic life. Germany
is not a mere community of existence and of interests whose
only function is to insure the material and cultural needs
of its members, but it also represents an elemental
obligation on the part of the members. The eternal Germany
cannot be drawn in on the map; it does not consist of the
constitution or the laws of the state. This Germany is the
community of those who are solemnly bound together and who
experience and realize these eternal national values. This
Germany is our eternal mission, our most sacred law ... The
developing personality must be submerged in the living
reality of the people and the nation from earliest youth on,
must take an active and a suffering part in it. Furthermore
the heroic life demands a recognition and experiencing of
the highest value of life which man must serve with all his
powers. This value can perhaps be recognized and presented
theoretically in the schools but it can only be directly
comprehended and personally experienced in the community of
the people. Therefore all education must preserve this
_direct connection with the community of the people_ and
school education must derive from it the form and substance
of its instruction.[31]
This nationalism, which is based upon the laws of life, has
nothing in common with the weak and presumptuous patriotism
of the liberalistic world; it is not a gift or a favor, not
a possession or a privilege, but it is the form of national
life which we have won in hard battle and which suits our
Nordic-German racial and spiritual heritage. In the
nationalistic personality the powers and values which have
been established in the socialistic personality will be
purposefully exerted for the perfection of the temporal and
eternal idea of life.[32]
The National Socialist idea of totality, therefore, and its
manifestation in life of the national community form the principal
substance of education in the Third Reich:
This idea of totality must be radically distinguished from
the liberalistic conception of the mass. According to the
liberalistic interpretation the whole consists of a
summation of its parts. According to the National Socialist
organic conception the whole comes before the parts; it does
not arise from the parts but it is already contained in the
parts themselves; all parts are microcosmic forms of the
whole. This organic conception of the whole is the deepest
natural justification of the basic political character of
all organic life.[33]
Education, Beck continues, must present this total unity as it is
manifested in the racial character of the people. Race is the most
essential factor in the natural and spiritual unity of a people, and
it is also the main factor which separates one people from another.
The racial character of the people must determine the substance of
education; this substance must be derived primarily from the life of
the people.
Even in the specialized field of political science, Nazi education is
concerned not with the structure of the state but with the role of the
individual in the life of the people:
National Socialist political science concerns itself not
with education to citizenship but with preparation for
membership in the German people.... Not the structure of the
state but the strength of a people determines the value and
the strength of an individual life. The state must be an
organization which corresponds to the laws of the people's
life and assists in their realization.[34]
Such indeed is the supreme goal of all National Socialist education:
to make each individual an expression of "the eternal German":
Whoever wishes fully to realize himself, whoever wishes to
experience and embody the eternal German ideal within
himself must lift his eyes from everyday life and must
listen to the beat of his blood and his conscience ... He
must be capable of that superhuman greatness which is ready
to cast aside all temporal bonds in the battle for German
eternity ... National Socialist education raises the eternal
German character into the light of our consciousness ...
National Socialism is the eternal law of our German life;
the development of the eternal German is the transcendental
task of National Socialist education.[35]
Racial Supremacy
The theory of the racial supremacy of the Nordic, i.e., the German,
which was developed by Wagner and Stewart Chamberlain reaches its
culmination in the writings of Alfred Rosenberg, the high priest of
Nazi racial theory and herald of the _Herrenvolk_ (master race).
Rosenberg developed his ideas in the obscure phraseology of _Der
Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts_ (_The Myth of the Twentieth Century_)
(document 3, _post_ p. 174). "The 'meaning of world history'," he
wrote, "has radiated out from the north over the whole world, borne by
a blue-eyed blond race which in several great waves determined the
spiritual face of the world ... These wander-periods were the
legendary migration of the Atlantides across north Africa, the
migration of the Aryans into India and Persia; the migration of the
Dorians, Macedonians, Latins; the migration of the Germanic tribes;
the colonization of the world by the Germanic Occident."[36] He
discusses at length Indian, Persian, Greek, Roman, and European
cultures; in each case, he concludes, the culture is created by the
ruling Nordic element and declines through the racial decay of the
Nordics resulting from their intermixture with inferior races.
It has long been accepted, Rosenberg claims, that all the states of
the west and their creative values have been generated by Germans; and
it follows that if the Germanic blood were to vanish away completely
in Europe all western culture would also fall to ruin.
Rosenberg acclaims the new faith of the blood which is to replace the
non-German religion of Christianity. "A _new_ faith is arising today:
the myth of the blood, the faith to defend with the blood the divine
essence of man. The faith, embodied in clearest knowledge, that the
Nordic blood represents that _mysterium_ which has replaced and
overcome the old sacraments."[37]
Rosenberg accepts the classic German view of the _Volk_, which he
relates closely to the concept of race. "The state is nowadays no
longer an independent idol, before which everything must bow down; the
state is not even an end but is only a means for the preservation of
the folk ... Forms of the state change, and laws of the state pass
away; the folk remains. From this alone follows that the nation is the
first and _last_, that to which everything else has to be
subordinated."[38] "The new thought puts folk and race higher than the
state and its forms. It declares protection of the folk more important
than protection of a religious denomination, a class, the monarchy, or
the republic; it sees in treason against the folk a greater crime than
high treason against the state."[39]
The essence of Rosenberg's racial ideas was incorporated in point 4 of
the program of the Nazi Party, which reads as follows: "None but
members of the nation [_Volk_] may be citizens of the State. None but
those of German blood, whatever their creed, may be members of the
nation. No Jew, therefore, may be a member of the nation."[40] After
the Nazis came to power, this concept was made the basis of the German
citizenship law of September 15, 1935.
Commenting upon point 4 of the Nazi program in his pamphlet, _Nature,
Principles, and Aims of the NSDAP_, Rosenberg wrote:
An indispensable differentiation must be made sometime in
the German _Volk_ consciousness: The right of nationality
should not represent something which is received in the
cradle as a gift, but should be regarded as a good which
must be earned. Although every German is a subject of the
state, the rights of nationality should only be received
when at the age of twenty or twenty-two he has completed his
education or his military service or has finished the labor
service which he owes to the state and after having given
evidence of honorable conduct. The right to nationality,
which must be earned, must become an opportunity for every
German to strive for complete humanity and achievement in
the service of the _Volk_. This consciousness, which must
always be kept alive, will cause him to regard this earned
good quite differently from the way it was regarded in the
past and today more than ever.
The prevailing concept of state nationality completely
ignores the idea of race. According to it whoever has a
German passport is a German, whoever has Czech documents is
a Czech, although he may have not a single drop of Czech
blood in his veins ...
National Socialism also sees in the nature of the structure
and leadership of the state an outflowing of a definite
character in the _Volk_. If one permits a wholly foreign
race--subject to other impulses--to participate therein, the
purity of the organic expression is falsified and the
existence of the _Volk_ is crippled....
This whole concept of the state [parliamentary democracy] is
replaced by National Socialism with a basically different
concept. National Socialism recognizes that, although the
individual racial strains in German-speaking territory
differ, they nevertheless belong to closely related races,
and that many mixtures among the members of these different
branches have produced new and vital strains, among them the
complex but still _German_ man, but that a mixture with the
Jewish enemy race, which in its whole spiritual and physical
structure is basically different and antagonistic and has
strong resemblances to the peoples of the Near East, can
only result in bastardization.[41]
True to the tradition of German imperialism, Rosenberg does not
confine his ideas of racial supremacy to the Germans in the Reich
alone. He even extends them to the United States, where he envisages
the day when the awakening German element will realize its destiny in
this country. In _Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts_, for example, he
writes, "After throwing off the worn-out idea upon which it was
founded ... i.e., after the destruction of the idea represented by New
York, the United States of North America has the great task ... of
setting out with youthful energy to put into force the new
racial-state idea which a few awakened Americans have already
foreseen."[42]
This idea was developed at length by the German geopolitician, Colin
Ross. In his book _Unser Amerika_ (_Our America_) (document 4, _post_
p. 178), published in 1936, Ross develops the thesis that the German
element in the United States has contributed all that is best in
American life and civilization and urges it to become conscious of its
racial heritage and to prepare for the day when it may take over
complete control of the country.
Reference was made in the preceding section to Beck's _Education in
the Third Reich_. On the subject of racial supremacy Beck points out
that certain new branches of learning have been introduced into the
National Socialist schools and certain old ones have been given a new
emphasis. The most important of these are the science of race and the
cultivation of race (_Rassenkunde und Rassenpflege_), which teach the
pupil to recognize and develop those racial powers which alone make
possible the fullest self-realization in the national community. An
awakening of a true racial consciousness in the people should lead to
a "qualitative and quantitative" racial refinement of the German
people by inducing a procreative process of selection which would
reduce the strains of foreign blood in the national body. "German
racial consciousness must have pride in the Nordic race as its first
condition. It must be a feeling of the highest personal pride to
belong to the Nordic race and to have the possibility and the
obligation to work within the German community for the advancement of
the Nordic race."[43] Beck points out that pupils must be made to
realize "that the downfall of the Nordic race would mean the collapse
of the national tradition, the disintegration of the living community
and the destruction of the individual."[44]
Under the influence of war developments, which have given the Nazis a
chance to apply their racial theories in occupied territories, their
spokesmen have become increasingly open with regard to the political
implications of the folk concept. In an article on "The Structure and
Order of the Reich," published late in 1941, Ernst Rudolf Huber wrote,
"this folk principle has found its full confirmation for the first
time in the events of this war, in which the unity of the folk has
been realized to an extent undreamed of through the return to the
homeland of territories which had been torn from it and the
resettlement of German folk-groups. Thus the awakening of Germandom to
become a political folk has had a twofold result: the unity of the
folk-community has risen superior to differences of birth or wealth,
of class, rank, or denomination; and the unity of Germandom above all
state boundaries has been consciously experienced in the European
living-space [_Siedlungsraum_]."[45]
The Führer Principle
The second pillar of the Nazi state is the Führer, the infallible
leader, to whom his followers owe absolute obedience. The Führer
principle envisages government of the state by a hierarchy of leaders,
each of whom owes unconditional allegiance to his immediate superior
and at the same time is the absolute leader in his own particular
sphere of jurisdiction.
One of the best expositions of the Nazi concept of the Führer
principle is given by Huber in his _Constitutional Law of the Greater
German Reich_ (document 1, _post_ p. 155):
The Führer-Reich of the [German] people is founded on the
recognition that the true will of the people cannot be
disclosed through parliamentary votes and plebiscites but
that the will of the people in its pure and uncorrupted form
can only be expressed through the Führer. Thus a distinction
must be drawn between the supposed will of the people in a
parliamentary democracy, which merely reflects the conflict
of the various social interests, and the true will of the
people in the Führer-state, in which the collective will of
the real political unit is manifested ...
The Führer is the bearer of the people's will; he is
independent of all groups, associations, and interests, but
he is bound by laws which are inherent in the nature of his
people. In this twofold condition: independence of all
factional interests but unconditional dependence on the
people, is reflected the true nature of the Führer
principle. Thus the Führer has nothing in common with the
functionary, the agent, or the exponent who exercises a
mandate delegated to him and who is bound to the will of
those who appoint him. The Führer is no "representative" of
a particular group whose wishes he must carry out. He is no
"organ" of the state in the sense of a mere executive agent.
He is rather himself the bearer of the collective will of
the people. In his will the will of the people is realized.
He transforms the mere feelings of the people into a
conscious will ... Thus it is possible for him, in the name
of the true will of the people which he serves, to go
against the subjective opinions and convictions of single
individuals within the people if these are not in accord
with the objective destiny of the people ... He shapes the
collective will of the people within himself and he embodies
the political unity and entirety of the people in
opposition to individual interests ...
But the Führer, even as the bearer of the people's will, is
not arbitrary and free of all responsibility. His will is
not the subjective, individual will of a single man, but the
collective national will is embodied within him in all its
objective, historical greatness ... Such a collective will
is not a fiction, as is the collective will of the
democracies, but it is a political reality which finds its
expression in the Führer. The people's collective will has
its foundation in the political idea which is given to a
people. It is present in the people, but the Führer raises
it to consciousness and discloses it ...
In the Führer are manifested also the natural laws inherent
in the people: It is he who makes them into a code governing
all national activity. In disclosing these natural laws he
sets up the great ends which are to be attained and draws up
the plans for the utilization of all national powers in the
achievement of the common goals. Through his planning and
directing he gives the national life its true purpose and
value. This directing and planning activity is especially
manifested in the lawgiving power which lies in the Führer's
hand. The great change in significance which the law has
undergone is characterized therein that it no longer sets up
the limits of social life, as in liberalistic times, but
that it drafts the plans and the aims of the nation's
actions ...
The Führer principle rests upon unlimited authority but not
upon mere outward force. It has often been said, but it must
constantly be repeated, that the Führer principle has
nothing in common with arbitrary bureaucracy and represents
no system of brutal force, but that it can only be
maintained by mutual loyalty which must find its expression
in a free relation. The Führer-order depends upon the
responsibility of the following, just as it counts on the
responsibility and loyalty of the Führer to his mission and
to his following ... There is no greater responsibility than
that upon which the Führer principle is grounded.[46]
The nature of the plebiscites which are held from time to time in a
National Socialist state, Huber points out, cannot be understood from
a democratic standpoint. Their purpose is not to give the people an
opportunity to decide some issue but rather to express their unity
behind a decision which the Führer, in his capacity as the bearer of
the people's will, has already made:
That the will of the people is embodied in the Führer does
not exclude the possibility that the Führer can summon all
members of the people to a plebiscite on a certain question.
In this "asking of the people" the Führer does not, of
course, surrender his decisive power to the voters. The
purpose of the plebiscite is not to let the people act in
the Führer's place or to replace the Führer's decision with
the result of the plebiscite. Its purpose is rather to give
the whole people an opportunity to demonstrate and proclaim
its support of an aim announced by the Führer. It is
intended to solidify the unity and agreement between the
objective people's will embodied in the Führer and the
living, subjective conviction of the people as it exists in
the individual members ... This approval of the Führer's
decision is even more clear and effective if the plebiscite
is concerned with an aim which has already been realized
rather than with a mere intention.[47]
Huber states that the Reichstag elections in the Third Reich have the
same character as the plebiscites. The list of delegates is made up by
the Führer and its approval by the people represents an expression of
renewed and continued faith in him. The Reichstag no longer has any
governing or lawgiving powers but acts merely as a sounding board for
the Führer:
It would be impossible for a law to be introduced and acted
upon in the Reichstag which had not originated with the
Führer or, at least, received his approval. The procedure is
similar to that of the plebiscite: The lawgiving power does
not rest in the Reichstag; it merely proclaims through its
decision its agreement with the will of the Führer, who is
the lawgiver of the German people.[48]
Huber also shows how the position of the Führer developed from the
Nazi Party movement:
The office of the Führer developed out of the National
Socialist movement. It was originally not a state office;
this fact can never be disregarded if one is to understand
the present legal and political position of the Führer. The
office of the Führer first took root in the structure of the
Reich when the Führer took over the powers of the Chancelor,
and then when he assumed the position of the Chief of State.
But his primary significance is always as leader of the
movement; he has absorbed within himself the two highest
offices of the political leadership of the Reich and has
created thereby the new office of "Führer of the people and
the Reich." That is not a superficial grouping together of
various offices, functions, and powers ... It is not a union
of offices but a unity of office. The Führer does not unite
the old offices of Chancelor and President side by side
within himself, but he fills a new, unified office.[49]
The Führer unites in himself all the sovereign authority of
the Reich; all public authority in the state as well as in
the movement is derived from the authority of the Führer.
We must speak not of the state's authority but of the
Führer's authority if we wish to designate the character of
the political authority within the Reich correctly. The
state does not hold political authority as an impersonal
unit but receives it from the Führer as the executor of the
national will. The authority of the Führer is complete and
all-embracing; it unites in itself all the means of
political direction; it extends into all fields of national
life; it embraces the entire people, which is bound to the
Führer in loyalty and obedience. The authority of the Führer
is not limited by checks and controls, by special autonomous
bodies or individual rights, but it is free and independent,
all-inclusive and unlimited. It is not, however,
self-seeking or arbitrary and its ties are within itself. It
is derived from the people; that is, it is entrusted to the
Führer by the people. It exists for the people and has its
justification in the people; it is free of all outward ties
because it is in its innermost nature firmly bound up with
the fate, the welfare, the mission, and the honor of the
people.[50]
Neesse, in his _The National Socialist German Workers Party--An
Attempt at Legal Interpretation_, emphasizes the importance of
complete control by the party leadership over all branches of the
government. He says there must be no division of power in the Nazi
state to interfere with the leader's freedom of action. Thus the
Führer becomes the administrative head, the lawgiver, and the highest
authority of justice in one person. This does not mean that he stands
above the law. "The Führer may be outwardly independent, but inwardly
he obeys the same laws as those he leads."[51]
The _leadership_ (_Führung_) in the Nazi state is not to be compared
with the _government_ or _administration_ in a democracy:
_Führung_ is not, like government, the highest organ of the
state, which has grown out of the order of the state, but it
receives its legitimation, its call, and its mission from
the people ...[52]
The people cannot as a rule announce its will by means of
majority votes but only through its embodiment in one man,
or in a few men. The principle of the _identity_ of the
ruler and those who are ruled, of the government and those
who are governed has been very forcibly represented as the
principle of democracy. But this identity ... becomes
mechanistic and superficial if one seeks to establish it in
the theory that the people are at once the governors and the
governed ... A true organic identity is only possible when
the great mass of the people recognizes its embodiment in
one man and feels itself to be one nature with him ... Most
of the people will never exercise their governing powers but
only wish to be governed justly and well ... National
Socialist _Führung_ sees no value in trying to please a
majority of the people, but its every action is dictated by
service to the welfare of the people, even though a majority
would not approve it. The mission of the _Führung_ is
received from the people, but the fulfilment of this mission
and the exercise of power are free and must be free, for
however surely and forcefully a healthy people may be able
to make decisions in the larger issues of its destiny, its
decisions in all smaller matters are confused and uncertain.
For this reason, _Führung_ must be free in the performance
of its task ... The Führer does not stand for himself alone
and can be understood not of himself, but only from the idea
of a work to be accomplished ... Both the Führer and his
following are subject to the idea which they serve; both are
of the same substance, the same spirit, and the same blood.
The despot knows only subjects whom he uses or, at best, for
whom he cares. But the first consideration of the Führer is
not his own advantage nor even, at bottom, the welfare of
the people, but only service to the mission, the idea, and
the purpose to which Führer and following alike are
consecrated.[53]
The supreme position of Adolf Hitler as Führer of the Reich, which
Huber and Neesse emphasize in the preceding quotations, is also
stressed in the statements of high Nazi officials. For example, Dr.
Frick, the German Minister of the Interior, in an article entitled
"Germany as a Unitary State," which is included in a book called
_Germany Speaks_, published in London in 1938, states:
The unity of the party and the state finds its highest
realization in the person of the Leader and Chancelor who
... combines the offices of President and Chancelor. He is
the leader of the National Socialist Party, the political
head of the state and the supreme commander of the defense
forces.[54]
It is interesting to note that, notwithstanding the generally
recognized view as expressed in the preceding citations that the
authority of the Führer is supreme, Hitler found it necessary in April
1942 to ask the Reichstag to confirm his power to be able at any time,
if necessary, to urge any German to fulfil his obligations by all
means which appear to the Führer appropriate in the interests of the
successful prosecution of the war.[55] (The text of the resolution
adopted by the Reichstag is included as document 5, _post_ p. 183.)
Great emphasis is placed by the Nazi leaders on the infallibility of
the Führer and the duty of obedience of the German people. In a
speech on June 12, 1935, for instance, Robert Ley, director of the
party organization, said, "Germany must obey like a well-trained
soldier: the Führer, Adolf Hitler, is always right." Developing the
same idea, Ley wrote in an article in the _Angriff_ on April 9, 1942
(document 6, _post_ p. 184): "Right is what serves my people; wrong is
what damages it. I am born a German and have, therefore, only one holy
mission: work for my people and take care of it." And with reference
to the position of Hitler, Ley wrote:
The National Socialist Party is Hitler, and Hitler is the
party. The National Socialists believe in Hitler, who
embodies their will. Therefore our conscience is clearly and
exactly defined. Only what Adolf Hitler, our Führer,
commands, allows, or does not allow is our conscience. _We
have no understanding for him who hides behind an anonymous
conscience, behind God, whom everybody conceives according
to his own wishes._
These ideas of the Führer's infallibility and the duty of obedience
are so fundamental in fact that they are incorporated as the first two
commandments for party members. These are set forth in the
_Organisationsbuch der NSDAP_ (_Nazi Party Organization Book_) for
1940, page 7 (document 7, _post_ p. 186). The first commandment is
"The Führer is always right!" and the second is "Never go against
discipline!"
In view of the importance attached to the Führer principle by the
Nazis, it is only natural that youth should be intensively
indoctrinated with this idea. Neesse points out that one of the most
important tasks of the party is the formation of a "select group" or
elite which will form the leaders of the future:
A party such as the NSDAP, which is responsible to history
for the future of the German Reich, cannot content itself
with the hope for future leaders but must create a strain of
strong and true personalities which should offer the
constantly renewed possibility of replacing leaders whenever
it is necessary.[56]
Beck, in his work _Education in the Third Reich_, also insists that a
respect for the Führer principle be inculcated in youth:
The educational value of the Hitler Youth is to be found in
this community spirit which cannot be taught but can only be
experienced ... But this cultivation of the community spirit
through the experience of the community must, in order to
avoid any conception of individual equality which is
inconsistent with the German view of life, be based upon
inward and outward recognition of the Führer principle ...
In the Hitler Youth, the young German should learn by
experience that there are no theoretical equal rights of the
individual but only a natural and unconditional
subordination to leadership.[57]
German writers often pretend that the Führer principle does not
necessarily result in the establishment of a dictatorship but that it
permits the embodiment of the will of the people in its leaders and
the realization of the popular will much more efficiently than is
possible in democratic states. Such an argument, for example, is
presented by Dr. Paul Ritterbusch in _Demokratie und Diktatur_
(_Democracy and Dictatorship_), published in 1939. Professor
Ritterbusch claims that Communism leads to a dictatorial system but
that the Nazi movement is much closer to the ideals of true democracy.
The real nature of National Socialism, however, cannot be understood
from the standpoint of the "pluralistic-party state." It does not
represent a dictatorship of one party and a suppression of all others
but rather an expression of the will and the character of the whole
national community in and through one great party which has resolved
all internal discords and oppositions within itself. The Führer of
this great movement is at once the leader and the expression of the
national will. Freed from the enervating effects of internal strife,
the movement under the guiding hand of the Führer can bring the whole
of the national community to its fullest expression and highest
development.
The highest authority, however, Hitler himself, has left no doubt as
to the nature of Nazi Party leaders. In a speech delivered at the
Sportpalast in Berlin on April 8, 1933, he said:
When our opponents say: "It is easy for you: you are a
dictator"--We answer them, "No, gentlemen, you are wrong;
there is no single dictator, but ten thousand, each in his
own place." And even the highest authority in the hierarchy
has itself only one wish, never to transgress against the
supreme authority to which it, too, is responsible. We have
in our movement developed this loyalty in following the
leader, this blind obedience of which all the others know
nothing and which gave to us the power to surmount
everything.[58]
As has been indicated above, the Führer principle applies not only to
the Führer of the Reich, Adolf Hitler, but to all the subordinate
leaders of the party and the government apparatus. With respect to
this aspect of the Führer principle, Huber (document 1, _post_ p.
155), says:
The ranks of the public services are regarded as forces
organized on the living principle of leadership and
following: The authority of command exercised in the labor
service, the military service, and the civil service is
Führer-authority ... It has been said of the military and
civil services that true leadership is not represented in
their organization on the principles of command and
obedience. In reality there can be no political leadership
which does not have recourse to command and force as the
means for the accomplishment of its ends. Command and force
do not, of course, constitute the true nature of leadership,
but as a means they are indispensable elements of every
fully developed Führer-order.[59]
The Führer principle is officially recognized by the party, and the
party interpretation thereof is set forth in the _Party Organization
Book_ (document 7 and charts 1 and 1-A, _post_ pp. 186, 488, 489).
There are also included herein, as charts 2 and 2-A and 3 and 3-A
(_post_ pp. 490, 491, 492, 493), photostatic copies and translations
of two charts from _Der nationalsozialistische Staat_ (_The National
Socialist State_) by Dr. Walther Gehl, published in 1935. These charts
clearly show the concentration of authority in the Führer and the
subordinate relation of the minor leaders in both the state and the
party.
The Party: Leadership by an Elite Class
_1. Functions of the Party_
The third pillar of the Nazi state, the link between _Volk_ and Führer,
is the Nazi Party. According to Nazi ideology, all authority within the
nation is derived ultimately from the people, but it is the party
through which the people expresses itself. In _Rechtseinrichtungen und
Rechtsaufgaben der Bewegung_ (_Legal Organization and Legal Functions of
the Movement_) (document 8, _post_ p. 204), published in 1939, Otto
Gauweiler states:
The will of the German people finds its expression in the
party as the political organization of the people. It
represents the political conception, the political
conscience, and the political will. It is the expression and
the organ of the people's creative will to life. It
comprises a select part of the German people for "only the
best Germans should be party members" ... The inner
organization of the party must therefore bring the national
life which is concentrated within itself to manifestation
and development in all the fields of national endeavor in
which the party is represented.[60]
Gauweiler defines the relationship of the party to the state in the
following terms:
The party stands above and beside the state as the wielder
of an authority derived from the people with its own
sovereign powers and its own sphere of sovereignty ... The
legal position of the party is therefore that of a
completely sovereign authority whose legal supremacy and
self-sufficiency rest upon the original independent
political authority which the Führer and the movement have
attained as a result of their historical achievements.[61]
Neesse states that "It will be the task of National Socialism to lead
back the German people to an organic structure which proceeds from a
recognition of the differences in the characters and possibilities of
human beings without permitting this recognition to lead to a cleavage
of the people into two camps."[62] This task is the responsibility of
the party. Although it has become the only political party in Germany,
the party does not desire to identify itself with the state. It does
not wish to dominate the state or to serve it. It works beside it and
cooperates with it. In this respect, Nazi Germany is distinguished
from the other one-party states of Europe: "In the one-party state of
Russia, the party rules over the state; in the one-party state of
Italy, the party serves the state; but in the one-party state of
Germany, the party neither serves the state nor rules over it directly
but works and struggles together with it for the community of the
people."[63] Neesse contends that the party derives its legal basis
from the law inherent in the living organism of the German _Volk_:
The inner law of the NSDAP is none other than the inner law
of the German people. The party arises from the people; it
has formed an organization which crystallizes about itself
the feelings of the people, which seemed buried, and the
strength of the people, which seemed lost.[64]
Neesse states that the party has two great tasks--to insure the
continuity of national leadership and to preserve the unity of the
_Volk_:
The first main task of the party, which is in keeping with
its organic nature, is to protect the National Socialist
idea and to constantly renew it by drawing from the depths
of the German soul, to keep it pure and clear, and to pass
it on thus to coming generations: this is predominantly a
matter of education of the people.
The second great task, which is in keeping with its
organizational nature, is to form the people and the state
into the unity of the nation and to create for the German
national community forms which are ever new and suited to
its vital development: this is predominantly a matter of
state formation. These two tasks, one of which deals with
substance and the other with function, belong together. It
is as impossible to separate them as it is to split up the
party into organism and organization, form and content.[65]
Huber (document 1, _post_ p. 155) describes the tasks of the party in
similar terms. He states that the party is charged with the "education
of the people to a political people" through the awakening of the
political consciousness of each individual; the inculcation of a
"uniform political philosophy," that is, the teaching of Nazi
principles; "the selection of leaders," including the choice and
training of especially promising boys to be the Führers of the future;
and the shaping of the "political will of the people" in accordance
with the Führer's aims.[66]
The educational tasks of the party are stressed by Beck, who develops
the idea that the _Volk_ can be divided into three main groups, "a
supporting, a leading, and a creative class."[67] It is the duty of
the leading class, that is, the party, from which the creative class
of leaders is drawn, to provide for the education of the supporting
class.
Every member of the body of the people must belong to the
politically supporting class, that is, each one who bears
within himself the basic racial, spiritual, and mental
values of the people ... Here no sort of leading or creative
activity is demanded but only a recognition of the leading
and creative will ... Only those are called to leadership in
political life who have recognized the community-bound law
of all human life in purest clarity and in the all-embracing
extent of its validity and who will place all the powers of
their personal lives with the help of a politically moral
character in the service of the formation of community life
... From the politically leading class arise the politically
creative personalities. These are the mysterious elemental
forces which are beyond all explanation by human reason and
which through their action and by means of the living idea
within them give to the community of the people an
expression which is fresh, young, and eternal. Here is the
fulfilment of the highest and purest political humanity ...
The education of the socialist personality is essentially
the forming of the politically supporting class within the
German people and the encouragement of those political
tendencies which make a man a political leader. To educate
to political creativeness is just as impossible as to
educate to genius. Education can only furnish the spiritual
atmosphere, can only prepare the spiritual living-space for
the politically creative personality by forming a uniform
political consciousness in the socialistic personality, and
in the development of politically creative personalities it
can at the most give special attention to those values of
character and spirit which are of decisive importance for
the development of this personality.[68]
Goebbels in _The Nature and Form of National Socialism_ (document 2,
_post_ p. 170) emphasizes the responsibility of the party for the
leadership of the state:
The party must always continue to represent the hierarchy of
National Socialist leadership. This minority must always
insist upon its prerogative to control the state. It must
keep the way open for the German youth which wishes to take
its place in this hierarchy. In reality the hierarchy has
fewer rights than duties! It is responsible for the
leadership of the state and it solemnly relieves the people
of this responsibility. It has the duty to control the state
in the best interests and to the general welfare of the
nation.[69]
Dr. Frick, German Minister of the Interior, in his chapter in _Germany
Speaks_ indicates the exclusive position of the party in the Third
Reich:
National Socialist Germany, however, is not merely a unitary
state: it is also a unitary nation and its governance is
based on the principle of leadership ...
In National Socialist Germany, leadership is in the hands of
an organized community, the National Socialist Party; and as
the latter represents the will of the nation, the policy
adopted by it in harmony with the vital interests of the
nation is at the same time the policy adopted by the country
... The National Socialist Party is the only political party
in Germany and therefore the true representative of the
people ...[70]
To Dr. Ley, the party is identical with the Führer. As he wrote in the
_Angriff_ on April 9, 1942 (document 6, _post_ p. 184), "The National
Socialist Party is Hitler, and Hitler is the party."
The role of the party in legislation, in political matters, and in the
appointment of Government officials is indicated by the Führer's
decree of May 29, 1941,[71] as amplified by the order of January 16,
1942, concerning its execution.[72] (Document 9, _post_ p. 212). This
order provides that all legislative proposals and proposed laws and
decrees, as well as any proposed changes therein, must pass through
and receive the approval of the Party Chancelry.
_2. Party Membership_
Details concerning the qualifications and duties of party members are
contained in the _Party Organization Book_ for 1940 (document 7,
_post_ p. 186).
Membership is finally confirmed by the issuance of a
membership card or a membership book. Anyone who becomes a
party member does not merely join an organization but he
becomes a soldier in the German freedom movement and that
means much more than just paying his dues and attending the
members' meetings. He obligates himself to subordinate his
own ego and to place everything he has in the service of the
people's cause. Only he who is capable of doing this should
become a party member. A selection must be made in
accordance with this idea.
Readiness to fight, readiness to sacrifice, and strength of
character are the requirements for a good National
Socialist. Small blemishes, such as a false step which
someone has made in his youth, should be overlooked; the
contribution in the struggle for Germany should alone be
decisive. The healthy will naturally prevail over the bad if
the will to health finds sufficient support in leadership
and achievement. Admission to the party should not be
controlled by the old bourgeois point of view. The party
must always represent the elite of the people.[73]
German blood is one of the prerequisites for party membership. The
_Party Organization Book_ for 1940 (document 7, _post_ p. 186) also
states, "Only those racial comrades who possess German citizenship are
eligible for admission."[74]
Party members shall not exceed ten per cent of the German population
of the region. "The ideal proportion of the number of party members to
the number of racial comrades is set at ten per cent. This proportion
is to apply also to the individual Province [Gau]."[75]
_3. Pledges and Symbols of Allegiance_
Party members take an oath of loyalty to the Führer in the following
terms: "I pledge allegiance to my Führer, Adolf Hitler. I promise at
all times to respect and obey him and the leaders whom he appoints
over me."[76]
(a) The Hitler Salute
A pledge of allegiance to the Führer is also implied in the Nazi
salute, which is usually accompanied by the greeting, "Heil Hitler."
The phrase _mit deutschen Gruss_, which is commonly used as a closing
salutation in letters, is another form of the Hitler greeting. _Knaurs
Konversations-Lexikon_ (_Knaur's Conversational Dictionary_), published
in Berlin in 1934, contains the following definition:
_German greeting_, Hitler greeting: by raising the right
arm; used by the old Germans with the spear as a greeting of
arms _[Waffengruss]._ Communal greeting of the National
Socialists; introduced into general use in 1933.
That this greeting was used by the Nazis as early as 1923 is
demonstrated by a photograph which appeared in _Das Buch der NSDAP,
Werden, Kampf and Ziel der NSDAP_ (_The Book of the NSDAP, Growth,
Struggle, and Goal of the NSDAP_) by Walter M. Espe (Berlin, 1934),
illustration 34 (document 10, _post_ p. 214).
In the same book (page 23 in the supplement entitled "_Die NSDAP_")
the following distinction is made between the usual Nazi greeting and
the Storm Troopers' salute:
While the German greeting consists merely in raising the
right hand in any desired manner and represents rather a
general comradely greeting, the SA salute is executed, in
accordance with the specifications of the SA service
regulations, by placing the left hand on the belt and
raising the extended right arm.
The SA salute is to be given to all higher ranking leaders
of the SA and the SS and of the veterans' organization which
has been incorporated into the SA, as well as to the Army
and the national and security police forces.
The comradely German greeting is to be exchanged between all
equally ranking members of the SA and the SS and members of
a corresponding rank in the Army, the police, the veterans'
organization, the German air-sport league, the Hitler Youth,
the railway guards, and the whole membership of the party so
far as they are distinguishable by regulation uniforms.
(b) The Swastika
Early in its history the Nazi Party adopted the swastika banner as
its official emblem.[77] It was designed by Hitler himself, who wrote
in _Mein Kampf_:
I myself after countless attempts had laid down a final
form: a flag with a background of red cloth, having a white
circle, and, in its center, a black swastika....
As National Socialists we see our program in our flag. In
the _red_ we see the social idea of the movement, in the
_white_ the nationalistic idea, and in the _swastika_ the
fight for the victory of Aryan man and at the same time for
the victory of the idea of creative work, which in itself
always was and always will be anti-Semitic.[78]
The swastika banner came into general use after January 30, 1933 as a
symbol of allegiance to the Hitler regime, but not until two years
later was it made the German national flag by the Reich flag law of
September 15, 1935.[79] Another law, decreed on April 7, 1937,[80]
specified that:
The insignia which the NSDAP, its formations, and associated
organizations use for their officers, their structure, their
organization, and their symbols may not be used by other
associations either alone or with embellishments.
It is interesting to note that party regulations forbid members to use
passport photographs in which they appear in party uniform or wearing
party insignia and that party members are forbidden to discuss foreign
policy with foreigners unless they are officially designated by the
Führer to do so. The pertinent regulations read:
_Pass Photos on Identification Cards_
Members of the NSDAP must not use pass photos which show the
holder of any identification card in a uniform of the party
or of any of its formations. It is also forbidden to use as
pass photos pictures which show the person wearing a party
button.
* * * * *
_Conversations With Foreigners_
It is forbidden to all party members to engage in
discussions of foreign policy with foreigners. Only such
persons as have been designated by the Führer are entitled
to do so.[81]
The Totalitarian State
The Weimar Constitution, although never formally abrogated by the
Nazis, was rendered totally ineffectual by two basic laws, promulgated
within two months after the seizure of power by the party. The first
of these was the "Decree of the Reich's President for the Protection
of the People and State" (document 11-I, _post_ p. 215), issued
February 28, 1933, the day after the Reichstag was burned down. It
suspended "until further notice"[82] articles of the Weimar
Constitution guaranteeing essential democratic rights of the
individual. Thus, according to article I of this decree, "restrictions
on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion,
including freedom of the press, on the right of assembly and the right
of association, and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic,
and telephonic communications, and warrants for house-searches, orders
for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also
permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed."[83] The
abrogation by the Nazis of these fundamental rights of democracy has
never been repealed or amended. In fact, this decree represents the
presupposition and confirmation of the police sway established
throughout Germany by the Nazis.[84]
The second basic law, known as the "Enabling Act," the "Law To Remove
the Distress of People and State," of March 24, 1933 (document 11-II,
_post_ p. 217), swept away parliamentary government entirely. By
abrogating the pertinent articles of the Weimar Constitution, it
enabled the Nazi Cabinet under Hitler's chancelorship to appropriate
money and legislate without any responsibility to the Reichstag or any
obligation to respect the Constitution.
The dissolution of democracy in Germany was sealed by the unification
of the authoritarian Nazi Party with the German state. Soon after the
party came to power in 1933, steps were taken to effect and secure
this unity. The process is described by Huber (document 1, _post_ p.
155) as follows:
On July 14, 1933 was issued the law against the formation of
new parties which raised the NSDAP to the only political
party in Germany [document 11-III] ... The overthrow of the
old party-state was accompanied by the construction of the
new movement-state [_Bewegungsstaat_]. Out of a political
fighting organization the NSDAP grew to a community capable
of carrying the state and the nation. This process was
accomplished step by step in the first months after the
National Socialist seizure of power. The assumption of the
office of Chancelor by the Führer of the movement formed the
basis for this development. Various party leaders were
appointed as _Reichsminister_; the governors of the
provinces were national leaders or _Gauleiter_ of the party,
such as General von Epp; the Prussian government officials
are as a rule _Gauleiter_ of the party; the Prussian police
chiefs are mostly high-ranking SA leaders. By this system of
a union of the personnel of the party and state offices the
unity of party and state was achieved.[85]
The culmination of this development was reached in the "Law To
Safeguard the Unity of Party and State," of December 1, 1933 (document
11-IV, _post_ p. 221), which proclaimed the NSDAP "the bearer of the
German state-idea and indissolubly joined to the state." In order to
guarantee the complete cooperation of the party and SA with the public
officials, the Führer's Deputy and the Chief of Staff of the SA were
made members of the Cabinet.
With regard to the relation between the party and the state, Neesse
writes:
The NSDAP is not a structure which stands under direct state
control, to which single tasks of public administration are
entrusted by the state, but it holds and maintains is claim
to totality as the "bearer of the German state-idea" in all
fields relating to the community--regardless of how various
single functions are divided between the organization of the
party and the organization of the state.[86]
To maintain cooperation between the party and state organizations, the
highest state offices are given to the men holding the corresponding
party offices. Gauweiler (document 8, _post_ p. 204) attributes to the
party supreme leadership in all phases of national life. Thus the
state becomes merely an administrative machine which the party has set
up in accordance with and for the accomplishment of its aims:
As the responsible bearer and shaper of the destiny of the
whole German nation the party has created an entirely new
state, for that which sought to foist itself upon her as a
state was simply the product of a deep human confusion. The
state of the past and its political ideal had never
satisfied the longing of the German people. The National
Socialist movement already carried its state within itself
at the time of its early struggles. It was able to place the
completely formed body of its own state at the disposal of
the state which it had taken over.[87]
The official party interpretation of the relation between party and
state, as set forth in the _Party Organization Book_ for 1940, appears
in the Appendix as document 7 (_post_ p. 186).
Goebbels in his lecture on _The Nature and Form of National
Socialism_ (document 2, _post_ p. 170) stressed the importance of
_Gleichschaltung_ or the penetration of Nazi ideology into all fields
of national life. This to his mind must be the result of the National
Socialist revolution. The same aims, ideals, and standards must be
applied to economics and to politics, to cultural and social
development, to education and religion, and to foreign and domestic
relations.
The result of this concept of the totalitarian state has been the
compulsory regimentation of all phases of German life to conform to
the pattern established by the party. The totalitarian state does not
recognize personal liberties for the individual. The legal position of
the individual citizen in the Third Reich is clearly set forth by
Huber (document 1, _post_ p. 155):
Not until the nationalistic political philosophy had become
dominant could the liberalistic idea of basic rights be
really overcome. The concept of personal liberties of the
individual as opposed to the authority of the state had to
disappear; it is not to be reconciled with the principle of
the nationalistic Reich. There are no personal liberties of
the individual which fall outside of the realm of the state
and which must be respected by the state. The member of the
people, organically connected with the whole community, has
replaced the isolated individual; he is included in the
totality of the political people and is drawn into the
collective action. There can no longer be any question of a
private sphere, free of state influence, which is sacred and
untouchable before the political unity. The constitution of
the nationalistic Reich is therefore not based upon a system
of inborn and inalienable rights of the individual.[88]
In place of these rights the constitution of the Third Reich
guarantees to the individual his place in the community of the people:
The legal position of the individual member of the people
forms an entirely new concept which is indispensable for the
construction of a nationalistic order. The legal position of
the individual is always related to the community and
conditioned by duty. It is developed not for the sake of the
individual but for the community, which can only be filled
with life, power, and purpose when a suitable field of
action is insured for the individual member. Without a
concrete determination of the individual's legal position
there can be no real community.
This legal position represents the organic fixation of the
individual in the living order. Rights and obligations arise
from the application of this legal position to specific
individual relationships ... But all rights must be regarded
as duty-bound rights. Their exercise is always dependent
upon the fulfilment by the individual of those duties to
which all rights are subordinate ...[89]
The concept of private property in the totalitarian state is also at
variance with the democratic concept of private property. In the
Third Reich the holder of property is considered merely as a manager
responsible to the _Volk_ for the use of the property in the common
interest. Huber sets forth the Nazi view in the following words:
"Private property" as conceived under the liberalistic
economic order was a reversal of the true concept of
property. This "private property" represented the right of
the individual to manage and to speculate with inherited or
acquired property as he pleased, without regard for the
general interests ... German socialism had to overcome this
"private," that is, unrestrained and irresponsible view of
property. All property is common property. The owner is
bound by the people and the Reich to the responsible
management of his goods. His legal position is only
justified when he satisfies this responsibility to the
community.[90]
Pursuant to this view of the nature of ownership, property may be
confiscated whenever the state decides that public management would be
in the interests of the community, or if the owner is found guilty of
irresponsible management, in which case no compensation is paid him.
Reference has been made to the appointment of party members to
important state offices. Gauweiler (document 8, _post_ p. 204) points
out that the party insured the infusion of the entire structure
of the state with its ideology through the civil-service law
(_Beamtengesetz_) of January 26, 1937,[91] which provides that a
person appointed to a civil-service position must be "filled with
National Socialist views, since only thus can he be an executor of the
will of the state which is carried by the NSDAP. It demands of him
that he be ready at all times to exert himself unreservedly in behalf
of the National Socialist state and that he be aware of the fact that
the NSDAP, as the mouthpiece of the people's will, is the vital force
behind the concept of the German state."[92]
The infiltration of party members into the civil service has now
proceeded to such a point that early in 1942 Pfundtner, the Secretary
of State in the German Ministry of the Interior, could write in the
periodical _Akademie für deutsches Recht_:
The German civil servant must furthermore be a National
Socialist to the marrow of his bones and must be a member of
the party or of one of its formations. The state will
primarily see to it that the Young Guard of the movement is
directed toward a civil-service career and also that the
civil servant takes an active part in the party so that the
political idea and service of the state become closely
welded.[93]
* * * * *
FOOTNOTES TO FIRST SECTION
[Footnote 8: Huber, _Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches_
(Hamburg, 1939), pp. 54-55.]
[Footnote 9: _Ibid._, pp. 153-155.]
[Footnote 10: _Ibid._, pp. 156-157.]
[Footnote 11: _Ibid._, p. 157.]
[Footnote 12: _Ibid._, p. 158.]
[Footnote 13: _Ibid._, p. 163.]
[Footnote 14: _Ibid._, p. 164.]
[Footnote 15: _Ibid._, pp. 165-166.]
[Footnote 16: Neesse, _Die Nationalsozialistische Deutsche
Arbeiterpartei--Versuch einer Rechtsdeutung_ (Stuttgart, 1935), p.
44.]
[Footnote 17: _Ibid._, p. 51.]
[Footnote 18: _Ibid._, p. 54.]
[Footnote 19: _Ibid._, p. 58.]
[Footnote 20: _Ibid._, pp. 54-56.]
[Footnote 21: _Ibid._, p. 59.]
[Footnote 22: _Ibid._, pp. 60-61.]
[Footnote 23: _Ibid._, pp. 65-66.]
[Footnote 24: Scurla, _Die Grundgedanken des Nationalsozialismus und
das Ausland_ (Berlin, 1938), pp. 10-11.]
[Footnote 25: _Ibid._, p. 9.]
[Footnote 26: _Ibid._]
[Footnote 27: _Ibid._, p. 13.]
[Footnote 28: Beck, _Die Erziehung im dritten Reich_ (Dortmund and
Breslau, 1936), p. 20.]
[Footnote 29: _Ibid._, pp. 20-21.]
[Footnote 30: _Ibid._, p. 35.]
[Footnote 31: _Ibid._, pp. 52-55.]
[Footnote 32: _Ibid._, p. 46.]
[Footnote 33: _Ibid._, p. 57.]
[Footnote 34: _Ibid._, p. 118.]
[Footnote 35: _Ibid._, p. 140.]
[Footnote 36: Rosenberg, _Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts_ (Munich,
1935), p. 28 (1st ed. 1930).]
[Footnote 37: _Ibid._, p. 114.]
[Footnote 38: _Ibid._, p. 479.]
[Footnote 39: _Ibid._, p. 542.]
[Footnote 40: Gottfried Feder, _The Programme of the Party of Hitler_
(translated by E.T.S. Dugdale: Munich, 1932), p. 18.]
[Footnote 41: Rosenberg, _Wesen, Grundsätze und Ziele der NSDAP_
(Munich, 1933), pp. 16-18 (1st ed. 1922).]
[Footnote 42: Rosenberg, _Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts_, p. 673.]
[Footnote 43: Beck, _op. cit._, p. 110.]
[Footnote 44: _Ibid._, p. 110.]
[Footnote 45: Huber, "_Aufbau und Gefüge des Reiches_," published in
the book _Idee und Ordnung des Reiches_ (ed. by Huber: Hamburg,
Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1941), p. 12.]
[Footnote 46: Huber, _Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches_
(Hamburg, 1939), pp. 194-198.]
[Footnote 47: _Ibid._, pp. 199-200.]
[Footnote 48: _Ibid._, pp. 207-208.]
[Footnote 49: _Ibid._, pp. 213-214.]
[Footnote 50: _Ibid._, p. 230.]
[Footnote 51: Neesse, _op. cit._, p. 146.]
[Footnote 52: _Ibid._, p. 143.]
[Footnote 53: _Ibid._, pp. 144-147.]
[Footnote 54: _Germany Speaks_ (containing articles by twenty-one
leading members of the Nazi Party and the German Government: London,
1938), p. 31.]
[Footnote 55: _Reichsgesetzblatt_ (1942), p. 247. (All citations to
the _Reichsgesetzblatt_ refer to part I thereof.)]
[Footnote 56: Neesse, _op. cit._, p. 150.]
[Footnote 57: Beck, _op. cit._, p. 131.]
[Footnote 58: _My New Order_, p. 159.]
[Footnote 59: Huber, _Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches_
(Hamburg, 1939), p. 410.]
[Footnote 60: Gauweiler, _Rechtseinrichtungen und Rechtsaufgaben der
Bewegung_ (Munich, 1939), p. 2.]
[Footnote 61: _Ibid._, p. 9.]
[Footnote 62: Neesse, _op. cit,_, p. 71.]
[Footnote 63: _Ibid._, p. 119.]
[Footnote 64: _Ibid._, p. 126.]
[Footnote 65: _Ibid._, pp. 139-140.]
[Footnote 66: Huber, _Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches_
(Hamburg, 1939), pp. 293-296.]
[Footnote 67: Beck, _op. cit._, p. 37.]
[Footnote 68: _Ibid._, pp. 37-38.]
[Footnote 69: Goebbels, _op. cit._, p. 19.]
[Footnote 70: _Germany Speaks_, pp. 30-31.]
[Footnote 71: _Reichsgesetzblatt_ (1941), p. 295.]
[Footnote 72: _Ibid._, (1942), p. 35.]
[Footnote 73: _Organisationsbuch der NSDAP_ (ed. by the National
Organizational Director of the NSDAP: Munich, 1940), p. 5.]
[Footnote 74: _Ibid._, p. 6b.]
[Footnote 75: _Ibid._, p. 6d.]
[Footnote 76: _Ibid._]
[Footnote 77: The German pocket reference book for current events
(_Taschen-Brockhaus zum Zeitgeschehen_: Leipzig, 1942) states that the
swastika banner was designed by Hitler for the NSDAP in 1919.]
[Footnote 78: Adolf Hitler, _Mein Kampf_ (Munich, Verlag Frank Eher,
G.m.b.H., 1933 [copyright 1925]), pp. 556-557.]
[Footnote 79: _Reichsgesetzblatt_ (1935), p. 1145.]
[Footnote 80: _Ibid._ (1937), p. 442.]
[Footnote 81: _Organisationsbuch der NSDAP_ (Munich, 1940), p. 8.]
[Footnote 82: _Reichsgesetzblatt_ (1933), p. 83.]
[Footnote 83: _Ibid._]
[Footnote 84: In his book _Die deutsche Polizei_ (_The German Police_)
(_Darmstadt_, L.C. Wittich Verlag, 1941), p. 24, the prominent Nazi
police official, Dr. Werner Best, wrote that this law "is to be
regarded not as a 'police law'--that is, as the regulation of police
functions and activities--but as the expression of the new conception
of the state as it has been transformed by the National Socialist
revolution, from which the new 'police' concept is derived." Also,
this law was for the police "the confirmation that the work already
begun was in agreement with the law giving will of the Supreme
Leadership of the Reich."]
[Footnote 85: Huber, _Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches_
(Hamburg, 1939) p. 288.]
[Footnote 86: Neesse, _op. cit._, p. 131.]
[Footnote 87: Gauweiler, _op. cit._, p. 3.]
[Footnote 88: Huber, _Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches_
(Hamburg, 1939), p. 361.]
[Footnote 89: _Ibid._, pp. 365-366.]
[Footnote 90: _Ibid._, pp. 372-373.]
[Footnote 91: _Reichsgesetzblatt_ (1937), pp. 39-70.]
[Footnote 92: Gauweiler, _op. cit._, p. 156.]
[Footnote 93: Reported in a bulletin of the official German news
agency, DNB, Apr. 14, 1942.]
NAZI AIMS AND METHODS
Political Aims
The political aims of National Socialism have been written so clearly
in history in the past 10 years that it does not appear necessary to
discuss them at length here.
The detailed program of the Nazi Party consists of the 25 points which
were adopted on February 24, 1920 at a party mass meeting in Munich.
(The 25-point program appears in the Appendix as document 12, _post_
p. 222.) The points of particular interest in this study are the first
four, which are set forth below:
1. We demand the union of all Germans to form a Great
Germany on the basis of the right of the self-determination
enjoyed by nations.
2. We demand equality of rights for the German People in its
dealings with other nations, and abolition of the Peace
Treaties of Versailles and St. Germain.
3. We demand land and territory (colonies) for the
nourishment of our people and for settling our superfluous
population.
4. None but members of the nation may be citizens of the
State. None but those of German blood, whatever their creed,
may be members of the nation. No Jew, therefore, may be a
member of the nation.[94]
_1. Internal Objectives_
A statement of the internal objectives of National Socialism is made
by Gauweiler in his _Legal Organization and Legal Functions of the
Movement_ (document 8, _post_ p. 204). The laws of the Reich must seek
to establish and promote the five basic values recognized by Nazi
ideology:
1. Race: The legal protection of the race, which has created
a new concept of nationality [_Volkszugehörigkeit_], is
consciously put in first place, for the most significant
historical principle which has been established by the
victory of National Socialism is that of the necessity for
keeping race and blood pure. All human mistakes and errors
can be corrected except one: "the error regarding the
importance of maintaining the basic values of a nation."
The purpose of this legal protection of the basic value of
_race_ must be the prevention for all time of a further
mixture of German blood with foreign blood, as well as the
prevention of continued procreation of racially unworthy and
undesirable members of the people.
2. Soil [_Boden_]: The living-space and the basis for the
food supply of the German people are its territory and soil.
The farmer is the first and deepest representative of the
people since he nourishes the people from the fertility of
the earth and he maintains the nation through the fertility
of his own family. Here National Socialism had to accomplish
two great legal ends: the reestablishment and the protection
of the farmer class and the securing of its land for the
farmer family.
3. Work: The nation's work as a basic national value is
grounded on the leading concept of "work of the hands and of
the head" within and for the community of the people and the
elevation of work to the only criterion for the value of an
individual within the community. In place of the idea of
class warfare, National Socialism had to establish the
national community legally; in place of the defamation of
work and its degradation to an object of barter, National
Socialism had to raise it to an ethical duty and the right
to work had to become the most clearly defined personal
right of the individual. The concept of the honor of work
had to be established as the basic concept of the national
honor.
4. The Reich: With the securing of the three basic values of
race, soil, and work arises the National Socialist Reich.
The infusion of foreign cultural and legal influences in
Germany was a consequence of the weakening of the central
authority of the German Reich since the Middle Ages. The
creation and insuring of a strong central authority in
contrast to the disorganized, federalistic system of the
Weimar Republic became one of the principal lines of
National Socialist legal policy. In consequence of the
National Socialist revolution, the Reich took on the legal
form of a totalitarian state and received a supreme and
completely authoritative lawgiver in the person of the
Führer. The principle of a division of power could no longer
maintain itself: The formulation, the interpretation, and
the execution of the law are all performed by the Führer
himself or under his authority.
5. Honor: The fifth great value of the nation is its honor.
The honor of the people, the Reich, the party, the Führer,
and the individual citizen are all regarded as goods to be
protected by law. The basis of national honor is loyalty.
National Socialist criminal law is therefore essentially
organized as a system of punishment for breaches of faith.
Every crime and offense against the community is a breach of
faith which must result in loss of honor.[95]
_2. Foreign Policy_
The close connection between the internal political program of the
National Socialist movement, as expressed in the foregoing paragraphs,
and its foreign policy was indicated by Hitler when he wrote in _Mein
Kampf_ (document 13-I, _post_ p. 226):
As National Socialists we can further set forth the
following principle with regard to the nature of the foreign
policy of a folk-state:
_It is the task of the foreign policy of a folk-state to
secure the existence on this planet of the race which is
encompassed by the state and at the same time to establish a
healthy, viable, natural relation between the number and
growth of the folk on the one hand and the size and quality
of its soil and territory on the other hand._[96]
And in the same work he states:
Yes, we can only learn from the past that we must undertake
the setting of aims for our political activity in two
directions: _Soil and territory as the goal of our foreign
policy, and a new, philosophically firm and uniform
foundation as the goal of our domestic political
activity._[97]
The political objectives of National Socialism, then, by definition of
Hitler himself, are the internal unification of the German people and
external expansion.
While the Nazis have never concealed the first of these objectives,
the second was the subject for a great deal of dissimulation up to the
outbreak of the present war. Typical of the false front which the
Nazis presented to the outside world with reference to their foreign
policy objectives are the statements made by Dr. Scurla in _Basic
Principles of National Socialism With Special Reference to Foreign
Countries_. Dr. Scurla quotes Hitler's speech of May 17, 1933 in which
he said, "We see the European nations around us as given facts.
French, Poles, etc., are our neighbor peoples, and we know that no
conceivable historic occurrence could change this reality,"[98] and
comments:
This folk principle, which has grown out of the National
Socialist ideology, implies the recognition of the
independence and the equal rights of each people. We do not
see how anyone can discern in this a "pan-Germanic" and
imperialistic threat against our neighbors. This principle
does not admit the difference between "great powers" and
"minor states," between majority peoples and minorities. It
means at the same time a clear rejection of any imperialism
which aims at the subjugation of foreign peoples or the
denationalization of alien populations. It demands the
unqualified acknowledgment of the right to live of every
folk, and of every folk-group, which is forced to live as a
foreign group in another state. The western European
national state together with its parliamentary democracy was
not able to do justice to the natural and living entities,
the peoples, in their struggle for existence.[99]
Farther on in the same work Scurla states:
Out of its fundamental ideologic view, however, Germany
rejects every form of imperialism, even that of peaceful
penetration. It is unable to concede to any people the
authority to develop ideas and ways of living, to which then
another people has to subordinate itself, even if some other
order is suited to its essential nature ... It does not at
all, however, consider the German order obligatory for other
peoples. National Socialism, as has been said a hundred
times, is exclusively the sum total of the German
world-view.[100]
Similar assurances by Nazi leaders were frequently made in order to
induce a sense of security in neighboring countries. Hitler, for
example, in a proclamation opening the party congress at Nuremberg on
September 11, 1935 said:
National Socialism has no aggressive intentions against any
European nation. On the contrary, we are convinced that the
nations of Europe must continue their characteristic
national existence, as created by tradition, history and
economy; if not, Europe as a whole will be destroyed.[101]
But such assurances, which were intended exclusively for foreign
consumption, were refuted by the basic policy laid down in _Mein
Kampf_, which has been persistently pursued throughout the 10 years of
the Nazi regime and has been realized to the extent that Germany now
dominates and is in control of most of the European continent. In
_Mein Kampf_ (document 13-I, _post_ p. 226) Hitler wrote:
_Our task, the mission of the National Socialist movement,
however, is to lead our folk to such political insight that
it will see its future goal fulfilled not in the
intoxicating impression of a new Alexandrian campaign but
rather in the industrious work of the German plow, which
waits only to be given land by the sword._[102]
Hitler suggests a future foreign policy for Germany which would assure
_Lebensraum_ and domination of the European continent. In _Mein Kampf_
he states:
But the political testament of the German nation for its
outwardly directed activity should and must always have the
following import:
_Never tolerate the establishment of two continental powers
in Europe. See an attack against Germany in every attempt to
organize a second military power on the German borders, even
if it is only in the form of the establishment of a state
which is a potential military power, and see therein not
only the right but also the duty to prevent the formation of
such a state with all means, even to the use of force, or if
it has already been established, to destroy it again. See to
it that the strength of our folk has its foundations not in
colonies but in the soil of the European homeland. Never
regard the foundations of the Reich as secure, if it is not
able to give every off-shoot of our folk its own bit of soil
and territory for centuries to come. Never forget that the
most sacred right in the world is the right to the soil
which a man wishes to till himself, and the most sacred
sacrifice is the blood which he spills for this soil_.[103]
It is impossible to adduce from the writings of Hitler, or other Nazi
leaders direct statements indicating that they aspire to the
domination of the entire world. Such expressions, however, may be
inferred not only from the direction of German foreign policy and the
effusions of the geopoliticians but also from the following statement
made by Hitler in _Mein Kampf_ (document 13-I, _post_ p. 226):
... If the German folk, in its historical development, had
possessed that herdlike unity which other peoples have
enjoyed, the German Reich would today be mistress of the
globe. World history would have taken another course, and no
one can tell whether in this way that might not have been
attained which so many deluded pacifists are hoping today to
wheedle by moaning and whining: a peace supported not by the
palm branches of tearful pacifistic female mourners but
founded by the victorious sword of a master race
[_Herrenvolk_] which places the world in the service of a
higher culture.[104]
Like Hitler, Rosenberg envisaged the extension of Nazi power far
beyond the borders of Germany. In his _Nature, Principles, and Aims of
the NSDAP_ he stated, "But National Socialism also believes that, far
beyond Germany's borders, its principles and its ideology ... will
lead the way in the unavoidable struggles for power in the other
countries of Europe and America."[105]
Propaganda
_1. Professed Peaceful Intentions as a Cloak for Imperialistic
Designs_
The falsity of Nazi propaganda has been demonstrated repeatedly during
the past decade. That its keynote was set by Hitler himself becomes
evident upon an examination of his statements on foreign policy over a
period of years. Not only has his policy been marked by a series of
shifts and turns, so that the policy of one year was frequently
canceled by the policy of the next, but a comparison of his words with
his subsequent deeds makes it evident that he deliberately sought to
lull other countries into a feeling of security until he was ready to
move against them. On May 17, 1933 he asserted:
_No fresh European war is capable of putting something
better in the place of unsatisfactory conditions which exist
to-day ..._ The outbreak of such madness without end would
lead to the collapse of existing social order in Europe ...
The German Government are convinced that to-day there can be
only one great task, and that is to assure the peace of the
world ... _The German Government wish to settle all
difficult questions with other Governments by peaceful
methods._ They know that any military action in Europe, even
if completely successful, would, in view of the sacrifice,
bear no relation to the profit to be obtained ...
Germany will tread no other path than that laid down by the
Treaties. The German Government will discuss all political
and economic questions only within the framework of, and
through, the Treaties.
_The German people have no thought of invading any
country._[106]
(Document 14, _post_ pp. 282-233.)
And on March 7, 1936 he stated:
After three years I believe that I can regard the struggle
for German equality as concluded to-day. I believe,
moreover, that thereby the first and foremost reason for our
withdrawal from European collective collaboration has ceased
to exist. _We have no territorial demands to make in
Europe._[107] (Document 14, _post_ p. 237.)
Moreover, he did not shrink from giving specific assurances of
Germany's peaceful intentions toward his subsequent victims:
There are Germans and Poles in Europe, and they ought to
live together in agreement. The Poles cannot think, of
Europe without the Germans and the Germans cannot think of
Europe without the Poles. (Oct. 24, 1933)
_Germans and Poles must reconcile themselves as to the fact
of each others' existence._ It has seemed to me necessary to
demonstrate by an example that it is possible for two
nations to talk over their differences without giving the
task to a third or a fourth ...
_The assertion that the German Reich plans to coerce the
Austrian State is absurd and cannot be substantiated or
proved_ ... The assertion of the Austrian Government that
from the side of the Reich an attack would be undertaken or
planned I must emphatically reject ... The German Reich is
always ready to hold out a hand for a real understanding,
with full respect for the free will of Austrian Germans ...
(Jan. 13, 1934)
_The lie goes forth again that Germany to-morrow or the day
after will fall upon Austria or Czecho-Slovakia_. I ask
myself always: Who can these elements be who will have no
peace, who incite continually, who must so distrust, and
want no understanding? Who are they? I know they are not the
millions who, if these inciters had their way, would have to
take up arms. (May 1, 1936)
Germany and Poland are two nations, and these nations will
live, and neither of them will be able to do away with the
other. I recognized all of this, and we all must recognize
that a people of 33,000,000 will always strive for an outlet
to the sea ... _We have assured all our immediate neighbors
of the integrity of their territory as far as Germany is
concerned. That is no hollow phrase; it is our sacred will_
...
(Sept. 26, 1938)[108]
(Document 14, _post_ pp. 233, 234, 238, 240-241.)
Yugoslavia is a State that has increasingly attracted the
attention of our people since the war. The high regard that
the German soldiers then felt for this brave people has
since been deepened and developed into genuine friendship.
Our economic relations with this country are undergoing
constant development and expansion, just as is the case with
the friendly countries of Bulgaria, Greece, Rumania, Turkey,
Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden,
Finland, and the Baltic States. (Jan. 30, 1939)[109]
In Hitler's Reichstag speech of April 28, 1939, in which he replied to
President Roosevelt's telegraphic message inviting him and Mussolini
to pledge themselves not to attack 31 countries mentioned by name, he
stated:
_... All states bordering on Germany have received much more
binding assurances, and above all suggestions, than Mr.
Roosevelt asked from me in his curious telegram ..._
The German Government is nevertheless prepared to give each
of the States named an assurance of the kind desired by Mr.
Roosevelt on the condition of absolute reciprocity, provided
that the State wishes it and itself addresses to Germany a
request for such an assurance together with appropriate
proposals.[110]
And on September 1, 1939, with reference to the recently concluded
pact between Germany and Russia, he said:
You know that Russia and Germany are governed by two
different doctrines. There was only one question that had to
be cleared up. Germany has no intention of exporting its
doctrine. Given the fact that Soviet Russia has no intention
of exporting its doctrine to Germany, I no longer see any
reason why we should still oppose one another. On both sides
we are clear on that. Any struggle between our people would
only be of advantage to others. We have, therefore, resolved
to conclude a pact which rules out forever any use of
violence between us.[111]
Additional assurances of this nature are quoted in a series of
extracts from Hitler's speeches, dating from February 10, 1933 to
September 1, 1939, which was printed in the _London Times_ of
September 26, 1939 (document 14, _post_ p. 232).
_2. Internal Propaganda_
Within Germany the notorious propaganda machine of Dr. Goebbels,
together with a systematic terrorization of oppositionist elements,
has been the principle support of the rise and triumph of the Nazi
movement. In his _Legal Organization and Legal Functions of the
Movement_ (document 8, _post_ p. 204), Gauweiler gives an idea of the
permeation of all phases of national life with a propaganda designed
to make Nazi "legal principles" acceptable to the masses. He makes it
clear that all of the Nazi propaganda machinery is in the service of
this program; political lecturers, the press, the radio, and the films
all play a part in helping the people to understand and appreciate the
new legal code. The schools and Hitler Youth groups provide
instruction for all young people in the fundamentals of National
Socialist law, and pupils in those schools which train the carefully
selected future leaders are given an especially strong dose of Nazi
legal theory and practice.
In order to appeal to the broadest audience, Nazi propaganda has
always sought to present all questions in the simplest possible terms.
Goebbels himself, in his _Nature and Form of National Socialism_
(document 2, _post_ p. 170), wrote as follows:
National Socialism has simplified the thinking of the German
people and led it back to its original primitive formulas.
It has presented the complicated processes of political and
economic life in their simplest terms. This was done with
the well-considered intention of leading the broad masses of
the people once again to take part in political life. In
order to find understanding among the masses, we consciously
practiced a popular [_volksgebundene_] propaganda. We have
taken complexes of facts which were formerly accessible only
to a few specialists and experts, carried them to the
streets, and hammered them into the brain of the little man.
All things were presented so simply that even the most
primitive mind could grasp them. We refused to work with
unclear or insubstantial concepts but we gave all things a
clearly defined sense. Here lay the secret of our
success.[112]
The character and quality of Nazi propaganda was fully presaged in
_Mein Kampf_. Here Hitler paid a striking tribute to the power of
lies, commenting on--
the very correct principle that the size of the lie always
involves a certain factor of credibility, since the great
mass of a people will be more spoiled in the innermost
depths of its heart, rather than consciously and
deliberately bad. Consequently, in view of the primitive
simplicity of its mind it is more readily captivated by a
big lie than by a small one, since it itself often uses
small lies but would be, nevertheless, too ashamed to make
use of big lies. Such an untruth will not even occur to it,
and it will not even believe that others are capable of the
enormous insolence of the most vile distortions. Why, even
when enlightened, it will still vacillate and be in doubt
about the matter and will nevertheless accept as true at
least some cause or other. Consequently, even from the most
impudent lie something will always stick ...[113]
A number of other passages display Hitler's low opinion of the
intellectual capacities and critical faculties of the masses:
All propaganda has to appeal to the people and its
intellectual level has to be set in accordance with the
receptive capacities of the most-limited persons among those
to whom it intends to address itself. The larger the mass
of men to be reached, the lower its purely intellectual
level will have to be set.[114]
The receptive capacity of the great masses is very
restricted, its understanding small. On the other hand,
however, its forgetfulness is great. On account of these
facts all effective propaganda must restrict itself to very
few points and impress these by slogans, until even the last
person is able to bring to mind what is meant by such a
word.[115]
The task of propaganda is, for instance, not to evaluate
diverse rights but to emphasize exclusively the single right
of that which it is representing. It does not have to
investigate objectively the truth, so far as this is
favorable to the others, in order then to present it to the
masses in strict honesty, but rather to serve its own side
ceaselessly.[116]
If one's own propaganda even once accords just the shimmer
of right to the other side, then the basis is therewith laid
for doubt regarding one's own cause. The masses are not able
to distinguish where the error of the other side ends and
the error of one's own side begins.[117]
But all talent in presentation of propaganda will lead to no
success if a fundamental principle is not always strictly
followed. Propaganda has to restrict itself to a few matters
and to repeat these eternally. Persistence is here, as with
so many other things in the world, the first and most
important presupposition for success.[118]
In view of their slowness of mind, they [the masses] require
always, however, a certain period before they are ready even
to take cognizance of a matter, and only after a
thousandfold repetition of the most simple concept will they
finally retain it.[119]
_In all cases in which there is a question of the fulfilment
of apparently impossible demands or tasks, the entire
attention of a people must be concentrated only on this one
question, in such a way as if being or non-being actually
depends on its solution_ ...
...The great mass of the people can never see the entire way
before them, without tiring and doubting the task.[120]
In general the art of all truly great popular leaders at all
times consists primarily in not scattering the attention of
a people but rather in concentrating it always on one single
opponent. The more unified this use of the fighting will of
a people, the greater will be the magnetic attractive force
of a movement and the more powerful the force of its push.
It is a part of the genius of a great leader to make even
quite different opponents appear as if they belonged only to
one category, because the recognition of different enemies
leads weak and unsure persons only too readily to begin
doubting their own cause.
When the vacillating masses see themselves fighting against
too many enemies, objectivity at once sets in and raises the
question whether really all the others are wrong and only
one's own people or one's own movement is right.[121]
(Document 13-II, _post_ pp. 229-231.)
It has been the aim of Nazi propaganda, then, to unite the masses of
the people in hatred of certain enemies, designated by such
conveniently broad and simple terms as "Jews," "democrats,"
"plutocrats," "bolshevists," or "Anglo-Saxons," which so far as
possible were to be identified with one another in the public mind.
The Germans were represented to themselves, on the other hand, as a
racial folk of industrious workers. It then became possible to plunge
the people into a war on a wave of emotional hatred against those
nations which were pictured as combining to keep Germany from
attaining her rightful place in the sun.
The important role which propaganda would have to play in the coming
war was fully recognized by Ewald Banse, an ardent Nazi military
theorist of the geopolitical school and professor of military science
at Brunswick Military College. In his book _Raum und Volk im
Weltkrieg_ (_Space and People in the World War_) which appeared in
1932 (an English translation by Alan Harris was published under the
title _Germany Prepares for War_ (New York, Harcourt, Brace and Co.,
1934)), he stated:
Preparation for future wars must not stop at the creation,
equipment and training of an efficient army, but must go on
to train the minds of the whole people for the war and must
employ all the resources of science to master the conditions
governing the war itself and the possibility of endurance.
In 1914 we had a first-class army, but our scientific
mobilization was bad, and the mobilization of men's minds a
thing undreamed of. The unveiling of war memorials, parades
of war veterans, flag-waggings, fiery speeches and
guard-mounting are not of themselves enough to prepare a
nation's mind for the dangers that threaten. Conviction is
always more lasting than enthusiasm.
... Such teaching is necessary at a time and in a world in
which countries are no longer represented by monarchs or a
small aristocracy or by a specialist army, but in which the
whole nation, from the commander-in-chief to the man in the
ranks, from the loftiest thought to the simplest wish, from
corn to coal, from the treasury vaults to the last
trouser-button, must be permeated through and through with
the idea of national defense, if it is to preserve its
national identity and political independence. The science of
national defense is not the same as military science; it
does not teach generals how to win battles or company
commanders how to train recruits. Its lessons are addressed
first and foremost to the whole people. It seeks to train
the popular mind to heroism and war and to implant in it an
understanding of the nature and prerequisite conditions of
modern warfare. It teaches us about countries and peoples,
especially our own country and its neighbors, their
territories and economic capacity, their communications and
their mentality--all for the purpose of creating the best
possible conditions for waging future wars in defense of the
national existence.[122]
Infiltration Tactics
The Nazis, while entirely without scruple in the pursuit of their
objectives, endeavor whenever possible to give their actions the cloak
of legality. This procedure was followed in Germany to enable them to
gain control of the Government of the Reich and in their foreign
policy up to September 1, 1939. It has been a cardinal principle of
the Nazis to avoid the use of force whenever their objectives may be
attained in another manner and they have assiduously studied their
enemies in an effort to discover the weak points in their structure
which will enable the Nazis to accomplish their downfall. The
preceding pages have demonstrated that the Nazis have contributed
practically nothing that is original to German political thought. By
the use of unscrupulous, deceitful, and uninhibited tactics, however,
they have been able to realize many of the objectives which had
previously existed only in theory.
The Weimar Constitution provided the Nazis with a convenient basis for
the establishment of the totalitarian state. They made no effort to
conceal their intention of taking advantage of the weaknesses of the
Weimar Republic in order to attain power. On April 30, 1928 Dr.
Goebbels wrote in his paper _Der Angriff_:
We enter Parliament in order to supply ourselves, in the
arsenal of democracy, with its own weapons. We become
members of the Reichstag in order to paralyze the Weimar
sentiment with its own assistance. If democracy is so stupid
as to give us free tickets and salaries for this bear's
work, that is its affair ...[123]
And later in the same article:
We do not come as friends, nor even as neutrals. We come as
enemies. As the wolf bursts into the flock, so we come.[124]
Hitler expressed the same idea on September 1, 1933, when, looking
back upon the struggle for political power in Germany, he wrote:
This watchword of democratic freedom led only to insecurity,
indiscipline, and at length to the downfall and destruction
of all authority. _Our opponents' objection that we, too,
once made use of these rights, will not hold water; for we
made use of an unreasonable right, which was part and parcel
of an unreasonable system, in order to overthrow the
unreason of this system._[125]
Discussing the rise to power of the Nazis, Huber (document 1, _post_
p. 155) wrote in 1939:
The parliamentary battle of the NSDAP had the single purpose
of destroying the parliamentary system from within through
its own methods. It was necessary above all to make formal
use of the possibilities of the party-state system but to
refuse real cooperation and thereby to render the
parliamentary system, which is by nature dependent upon the
responsible cooperation of the opposition, incapable of
action.[126]
As its parliamentary strength increased, the party was able to achieve
these aims:
It was in a position to make the formation of any positive
majority in the Reichstag impossible.... Thus the NSDAP was
able through its strong position to make the Reichstag
powerless as a lawgiving and government-forming body.[127]
The same principle was followed by Germany in weakening and
undermining the governments of countries which it had chosen for its
victims. While it was Hitler's policy to concentrate on only one
objective at a time, German agents were busy throughout the world in
ferreting out the natural political, social, and economic cleavages in
various countries and in broadening them in order to create internal
confusion and uncertainty. Foreign political leaders of Fascist or
authoritarian persuasion were encouraged and often liberally
subsidized from Nazi funds. Control was covertly obtained over
influential newspapers and periodicals and their editorial policies
shaped in such a way as to further Nazi ends. In the countries Germany
sought to overpower, all the highly developed organs of Nazi
propaganda were utilized to confuse and divide public opinion, to
discredit national leaders and institutions, and to induce an
unjustified feeling of confidence in the false assertions of Nazi
leaders disclaiming any aggressive intentions.
One of the most important features introduced by the Nazis into German
foreign policy was the appreciation of the value of Germans living
abroad and their organization as implements of the Reich for the
attainment of objectives in the field of foreign policy. This idea was
applied by the Nazis to all the large colonies of Germans which are
scattered throughout the world. The potential usefulness of these
colonies was early recognized by the men in Hitler's immediate
entourage, several of whom were so-called _Auslandsdeutsche_ who had
spent many years of their life abroad and were familiar with foreign
conditions and with the position and influence of German groups in
foreign countries. Of particular importance in this group were Rudolf
Hess, the Führer's Deputy, who was primarily responsible for
elaborating the policy which utilized the services of Germans abroad,
and Ernst Wilhelm Bohle, the leader of the Foreign Organization, who
was responsible for winning over these Germans to Naziism and for
their organization in groups which would serve the purposes of the
Third Reich.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 94: Feder, _op. cit._, p. 18.]
[Footnote 95: Gauweiler, _op. cit._, pp. 149-151.]
[Footnote 96: _Mein Kampf_, pp. 727-728.]
[Footnote 97: _Ibid._, pp. 735-736.]
[Footnote 98: Scurla, _op. cit._, p. 21.]
[Footnote 99: _Ibid._, pp. 21-22.]
[Footnote 100: _Ibid._, p. 23.]
[Footnote 101: _Der Parteitag der Freiheit_ (official record of the
1935 party congress at Nuremberg: Munich, 1935), p. 27.]
[Footnote 102: _Mein Kampf_, p. 743.]
[Footnote 103: _Ibid._, pp. 754-755.]
[Footnote 104: _Ibid._, pp. 437-438.]
[Footnote 105: Rosenberg, _Wesen, Grundsätze und Ziele der NSDAP_, p.
48.]
[Footnote 106: _London Times_, Sept. 26, 1939, p. 9.]
[Footnote 107: _Ibid._]
[Footnote 108: _Ibid._]
[Footnote 109: _My New Order_, p. 592.]
[Footnote 110: _Ibid._, pp. 669-671.]
[Footnote 111: _Ibid._, p. 687.]
[Footnote 112: Goebbels, _op. cit._, p. 6.]
[Footnote 113: _Mein Kampf_, p. 252.]
[Footnote 114: _Ibid._, p. 197.]
[Footnote 115: _Ibid_., p. 198.]
[Footnote 116: _Ibid._, p. 200.]
[Footnote 117: _Ibid._, pp. 200-201.]
[Footnote 118: _Ibid._, p. 202.]
[Footnote 119: _Ibid._, p. 203.]
[Footnote 120: _Ibid._, p. 273.]
[Footnote 121: _Ibid._, p. 129.]
[Footnote 122: Banse, _Germany Prepares for War_ (New York, 1934), pp.
348-349.]
[Footnote 123: Goebbels, _Der Angriff: Aufsätze aus der Kampfzeit_
(Munich, 1936), p. 71.]
[Footnote 124: _Ibid._, p. 73.]
[Footnote 125: _My New Order_, pp. 195-196.]
[Footnote 126: Huber, _Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches_
(Hamburg, 1939), p. 31.]
[Footnote 127: _Ibid._, p. 32.]
NATIONAL-SOCIALISM AND MEDICINE
Address by Dr. F. Hamburger to German Medical Profession. Translated
(in part) from _Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift_, 1939, No. 6.
Medical men must beware of pride, a pride which is certainly
wide-spread and which leads to the disparagement of the practical
doctor and medical layman, and then further to the disparagement of
the craft of nature healers. The practical doctor and the nature
healer on the one hand tend towards an understandable disparagement of
medical science and analysis and, on the other hand, tend towards
superficiality. The superficiality of the opponents of science is,
however, as unhappy an affair as the pride of the so-called
scientists, but the one group should not demean the other. This would
lead to successful cooperation to the advantage of the sick and health
of the community.
Academic medicine and nature healers generally have one thing in
common, that they underestimate the significance of automatism and
suggestion. In this regard there is an absence in both camps of the
necessary criticism and clarity. Successes are noted with specific
methods without any confirmation as to whether or not suggestion and
faith alone have not produced the improvement in the patient.
National-Socialism is the true instrument for the achievement of the
health of our people. National-Socialism is concerned with the great
significance of inherited traits and with the insight into the working
of spiritual forces upon the body, with the study of the power of
custom and, along with this, of the significance of education and
nurture. (Hamburger here complains about the luxurious arrangement for
dealing with the mentally ill in contradistinction to the neglect of
Folk-health. This he attributes to the era of liberalism with its
stress upon the single individual. He here also attacks the Socialism
of Social Democracy and its conception of a Community of Equal Men.
This is a false Socialism.)
So we scientists and doctors simply and soberly affirm the principle
of strength of faith and the nationalist socialist principle of
Positive Christianity which does not prevent us from the inspired
consideration of natural and divinely willed phenomena. We doctors
must never forget the fact that the soul rules the body.
Soul forces are the most important. The spirit builds the body.
Strength springs from joy. Efficiency is achieved despite care, fear,
and uncertainty--We speak here of thymogenetic automatism or the
automatism of harmony ("thymogenetische automatismus oder
stimmungsautomatismus"). The autonomous nervous system achieves, under
the influence of joy, the expansion of the blood vessels in skin and
muscle.... The muscular activity incited by joy means the use of
calories and stimulation of appetite. Muscular contraction pulls and
draws at the bones, ligaments are tensed, breathing deepend, appetite
increased ... A child influenced by the daily exercise of joy develops
physically strong and powerful. ... The Soul care (Seele Sorge) of the
practical doctor is his most significant daily task alongside of
prescriptions and manipulative dexterity.
Soul-care in the medical sense is a concern for the wishes, hopes and
fears of the patient, the considered participation in his fate. Such a
relationship leads to the all-important and generally recognized trust
in the doctor. This faith, in all cases, leads to the improvement,
often even to the elimination of symptoms, of the disease. Here we
have clearly before us the great significance of thymogenetic
automatism.
Academic physicians should not dismiss this because we do not know its
biochemical aspects. (We must beware of regarding something as
unacceptable because it is not measurable in exact terms, he warns.)
We see its practical results, and, therefore, thymogenetic automatism
must stand in the first rank as of overwhelming significance. Thus,
also, the principle, strength through joy (Kraft durch Freude) stands
firmly as an inescapable natural law.
We see the practical country doctor spreading courage and confidence.
For years too few doctors have seen clearly that gymnastic tourism and
sport do more for health than all doctors taken together. And now we
face the fact that a single man, a non-medical man (Hitler) through
his great qualities, has opened up new avenues of health for the
eighty million folk of Germany.
In the majority of cases things so happen that the doctor must act
before making a diagnosis, since only the mis-educated patients, the
one-sided intellectual patient, wishes in the very first place to know
the diagnosis. But the unspoilt and properly ordered type of person
wishes only to be relieved of his pain. For him the diagnosis is an
interesting side issue but not the principle thing. We can thus also
understand why we always meet the desire for a diagnosis placed first
by the over-intellectualized Jewish patient. But that is not the case
with most Aryan patients. They, from the first, come to meet the
doctor with more trust. They do not entertain as many after-thoughts.
And I cannot help but remark that after-thoughts are hardly conducive
to right results.
(After a discussion of the sterilization of the unfit and of
inheritable diseases he turns to the subject of child bearing.)
It has been estimated that every couple should have four children if
the nation's population is to be maintained. But we meet already the
facile and complacent expression of young married people, "Now we have
our four children and so have fulfilled our obligations"--What
superficiality! Today we must demand a much higher moral attitude from
the wife than previously. Earlier it was taken for granted that a
woman would bear a child every one or two years. But today in this
time of manifold amenities of life, at a time when women is not denied
access to these joys it is understandable that she is eager to
participate in them. Add to this that the knowledge of birth control
is general today. Despite all this women must be encouraged to give
birth during twenty years of married life to eight or ten and even
more children, and to renounce the above-mentioned joys of life. She
must decide as a mother of children to lead a life full of sacrifices,
devotion, and unselfishness. It is only when these ethical demands are
fulfilled by a large number of worthy wives of good stock that the
future of the German nation will be assured.
Doctors are leaders of the Folk more than they know ... They are now
quite officially fuehrer of the people, called to the leadership of
its health. To fulfill this task they must be free of the profit
motive. They must be quite free from that attitude of spirit which is
rightly designated as Jewish, the concern for business and
self-provision.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Arendt, Hannah--_The Origins of Totalitarianism_, N.Y., 1951.
Pt. III is especially directed to a discussion of the
principles and consequences of fascism. The author gives an
effective account of what "total domination" signifies in a
reign of terror. Detailed bibliography.
Bodrero, Emilio--"Fascism" in _Dictatorship on Its Trial_, ed. by Otto
Forst de Battaglia, London, 1930.
A brief, but significant, statement by a former Rector of
the University of Padua and a Secretary of State to
Mussolini.
Borgese, G.A.--_Goliath, The March of Fascism_, N.Y., 1938.
Well written from the point of view of an Italian humanist.
Brady, Robert A.--_The Spirit and Structure of German Fascism_,
London, 1937.
An extremely thorough and documented discussion of the
economy of National Socialist Germany, its institutions and
its business practices.
See also: Brady's _Business as a System of Power_; chapters
on Germany, Italy and Japan. N.Y., 1943.
Childs, H.L. and Dodd, W.E.--_The Nazi Primer_, N.Y., 1938.
A translation of the "Official Handbook for Schooling the
Hitler Youth." In simple form including illustrations, it is
an excellent indication of the guiding principles of the
German educational system.
Dennis, Lawrence--_The Coming American Fascism_, N.Y., 1936.
_The Dynamics of War and Revolution_, N.Y., 1940.
Two books by the only fascist theorist in America.
Fraenkel, Ernest--_The Dual State: A Contribution to the Theory of
Dictatorship,_ N.Y., 1941.
By distinguishing between the "Prerogative State" and the
"Normative State," the author gives an effective account of
the attempt of the Nazis to acknowledge an indispensable, if
minimal, legal order, which was, comparatively speaking,
independent of the extra-legal realm of violence.
Hartshorne, E.Y.--_The German Universities and National Socialism_,
Cambridge, 1937.
A carefully documented account of what happened in the
various branches and departments of German universities
under the Nazis.
Hitler, Adolph--_My Battle_, N.Y., 1939.
Hitler's own vitriolic account of his attempt to rise to
power.
Lasswell, Harold D.--"The Garrison State," _American Journal of
Sociology_, Chicago, Vol. XLVI, 1940-41, pp. 455-468.
A brief but incisive discussion of the structure of fascism.
Lilge, Frederic--_The Abuse of Learning: The Failure of the German
University,_ N.Y., 1948.
A philosophical history of higher education in Germany,
concluding with its fascist evolution.
Matteotti, Giacomo--_The Fascist Exposed: A Year of Fascist
Domination_, London, 1924.
A factual account by a liberal, who, until murdered, was a
member of the Italian Senate.
Minio-Paluello, L.--_Education in Fascist Italy_, N.Y., 1946.
A detailed discussion of fascist education, including an
historical introduction to pre-fascist education.
Neumann, Franz--_Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National
Socialism_, N.Y., 1942.
Probably the most comprehensive and definitive statement in
English of the functioning of National Socialism. It
concentrates especially on the political and economic
aspects of Nazism.
Pinthus, Kurt--"Culture Under Nazi Germany," _The American Scholar_,
Vol. IX, N.Y., 1940, pp. 483-498.
A valuable treatment of the inner character of the arts and
letters and of what happened to their publics under the
Nazis.
Sabine, G.H.--_A History of Political Theory_, N.Y., 1950.
A brief chapter on "Fascism" gives an excellent balanced
account of its fundamentals.
Salvemini, Gaetano--_The Fascist Dictatorship in Italy_, N.Y., 1927.
_Under the Axe of Fascism_, N.Y., 1936.
An eminent Italian historian writes vividly and perceptively
on Italian Fascism.
Schneider, Herbert W.--_Making the Fascist State_, N.Y., 1928.
An early, but well considered, account of the rise of
Italian fascism.
Silone, Ignazio--_Fontamara_, Verona, 1951.
The best novel on Italian fascism.
Spender, Stephen--_European Witness_, N.Y., 1946.
Note especially the analysis of Goebbel's novel, _Michael_.
Trevor-Roper, H.R.--_The Last Days of Hitler_, N.Y., 1946.
An intimate portrayal of Hitler and his entourage from the
time of the beginning of the collapse of the Nazi armies.
Especially good on the rift between the politicians and the
military.
READINGS ON FASCISM AND NATIONAL SOCIALISM
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