War and the German Mind: The Testimony of Men of Fiction Who Fought at the Front 9780231899383

Table of contents :
Foreword
Preface
Contents
Part 1: Background
Part 2: Wartime Works
Part 3: War and the Person
Part 4: War and the People
Appendix: The Criticism of the German War Novel
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

W A R and the GERMAN MIND

WAR

and the

GERMAN MIND The Testimony of Men of Fiction Who Fought at the Front By WM. K. PFEILER With a Foreword by G E O R G E N. S H U S T E R

AMS PRESS, INC. NEW YORK 1966

Copyright 1941 By Columbia University Press, New York

Reprinted with t h e Permission of Columbia University Press

AMS PRESS, INC. NEW YORK, N.Y. 10003 1966

Manufactured in t h e United S t a t e s of America

Dedicated to the Memory of LAURENCE

FOSSLER

PROFESSOR OF G E R M A N I C LANGUAGES IN T H E UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA F R O M 1 8 8 9 ΤΟ 1 9 3 3

FOREWORD

TO T H E OBSERVER OF 1 9 4 1 , NOTING T H E PROGRESS OF T H E

German armies in Russia, the year 1914 will seem a significant though distant parallel. The Germany of William II was in several important respects wholly unlike the domain now ruled by Adolf Hitler. Then Teutonic society was characterized, at least on the surface, by a rigid caste system, inherited from the absolutists of the eighteenth century but modified by a great measure of religious freedom (the hard-earned legacy of years of struggle) and the activity of powerful trade unions committed for the most part to Social Democracy. This was to a considerable extent the product of Marxist thinking. The middle classes had likewise been exposed to the ferment of new ideas. There was a "youth movement," for example, which blended a Christian outlook more or less indebted to Rudolf Eucken with a romantic affection for nature and the belief that "comradeship" was the proper basis of social reform. As for the ruling class, its book was still the Bible and its philosopher Immanuel Kant. It is, however, only too obvious that the Germany of 1941 must have been latent in the Germany of 1914; and

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FOREWORD

the present study by Dr. Pfeiler is a most interesting essay on the point. Having to do with the fiction which grew out of the last war, it is none the less concerned primarily with the way in which that war predisposed the German psychologically for the acceptance of the Third Reich. The historian is normally too little impressed with such matters. He is likely to throw up his hands at the professional jargon of the psychologists, to jest at the harshsounding names of the various conflicting theories of human behavior, and to fall back upon something simple and convenient like the theory of economic determinism or the Hegelian concept of synthesis. But in all truth men's actions are governed by their notions of what they can or ought to do; by the appeal of the objective they set out to attain; and by their moral appraisal of the methods at their disposal for the harvesting of the fruits of their desire. Since imaginative writers, in modern times the novelist in particular, are engrossed in the study of these and other aspects of life, their work is of great value as a source of information about forces of history too often ignored. Dr. Pfeiler has drunk deeply at that source. He is also to be congratulated on a quite remarkable measure of objectivity. Though a resolute foe of Nazism, he does not regard it merely as a kind of red rag to be pounced upon and gored but insists upon studying it calmly and coolly as a dramatic aspect of historical experience. I shall not permit myself to be lured into the beguiling pleasures of recapitulation in advance. A brief discussion of Dr. Pfeiler's major conclusions from a point of view somewhat different from his may, however, be in order.

FOREWORD

ix

The German army of the World W a r period was, like its French counterpart, a force which welded together professional military men and civilians "for the duration." It was not exactly a new phenomenon in history, for there had been the W a r of 1870 and the Napoleonic campaigns. But the first was a kind of victory march, which had only an incidental literary aftermath. The second called forth a series of German levees en masse and did evoke a number of important literary commentaries, but the Reich was not then united and the issues at stake were not complex. Accordingly the World War experience was in several respects without a parallel, while at the same time the number of participants able to write effectively about that experience was uniquely large. In what respects was the experience novel? In the first place, the fostering of universal military service had been accompanied throughout decades by a steadily growing peace movement. Antimilitarist sentiment was often powerful enough to alarm the governments, and one of the causes of hostility to labor was its tendency to look upon all wars as opposed to the interests and ideals of the working class. Many men were, therefore, predisposed to question the wisdom of any recourse to military force; and though it was possible in 1914 to make them believe that Germany was the victim of aggression and fought solely in selfdefense, the time inevitably came when doubt and pacifism reasserted themselves. As the terrible conflict went on and on, the German soldier also became aware of the attitude of the rest of the world towards his country. While he himself could find no valid reason for hating the men he

χ

FOREWORD

was fighting, they detested him and all he represented. He was, as a result, compelled to take a defensive position morally, and the effect upon his spiritual outlook was often disruptive and bad. In the second place, the heavy loss of life meant that officers had to be replaced by educated civilians having only a brief period of intensive training. There were two important consequences. First, many of the new leaders were raw, ineffectual, and snobbish, adding to the normal caste feeling of the army a bourgeois class consciousness that heightened the tension between troops and their officers. Second, a number of these men were, however, educated and cultured gentlemen with a deep sense of responsibility toward those in their command. Therefore the theme of leadership became a favorite topic of conversation and, afterward, of literary discussion: insufferable little martinets were pilloried, and devoted officers of a philosophic mold brooded over the problem of responsibility and its solution. It is out of this debate that many of the later German conceptions of Fübrertum developed, as Dr. Pfeiler shows. Finally there was the broader human question of the meaning of the war. Whereas in earlier periods reflection on this difficult theme was normally reserved to civilian victims or witnesses of the havoc wrought by professional armies, it was now forced upon men who were participants and as such burdened with a measure of responsibility for what was happening. Such thinkers were, of course, found in the armies of all the nations engaged in fighting the war. One need only recall Henri Barbusse's Le Feu and H. G.

FOREWORD

xi

Wells's Mr Britling Sees It Through. In Germany, however, the conclusions arrived at were conditioned both by the prevailingly idealistic philosophy of writers and by the defeat. Sometimes the novelists who used the medium of fiction were, as Dr. Pfeiler helps us to see so clearly, individualists who related the national catastrophe to their own outlook and fortune. A great many, however, were impelled to find in the dread experience whatever lesson they could for the German people. Had any useful purpose been served by the holocaust? Must one say that millions of dead and wounded had suffered in vain? Echoing words of Lincoln in terms of German thought, many held that there would be "a new birth of freedom," in the sense that the "comradeship" of front-line troops foreshadowed a Germany of brotherhood and unity, of social responsibility and mystical attachment to the common good. It is an interesting fact (indeed, it is probably the most thoughtprovoking of Dr. Pfeiler's conclusions) that there is no sharp line of demarcation between the individualists and the "ethnical" writers. The first cannot escape the impact of the queries which wholly absorb the second, and these in turn retain some of the normal German feeling for the single, isolated human spirit. Thus there is a point at which Arnold Zweig and Magnus Wehner meet. Naturally the war novel did not come into full bloom at once. For some years after the defeat, Germany tried hard to forget the war. The older pacifism mingled with the hatred of war which grew out of the conflict itself, and a sort of militant antimilitarism became fashionable. T o a certain extent this mood found expression in Erich

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FOREWORD

Remarque's novels, but one must observe that All Quiet on the Western Front, published in 1929, appeared at a time when the pacifist mood was already waning. German youth, which had to a large extent received an education which mixed physical training with nationalist sentiment, was so ready for a renaissance of patriotic ardor that it was possible for Dix to predict considerably in advance that in 1930 new voters would send more than a hundred Nazi deputies to the Reichstag. Similarly the war literature railed into being by the vogue of Remarque's best seller was, by and large, a glorification of the German soldier and of the war. Anyone who at that time witnessed the demonstrations of antipathy which All Quiet on the Western Front evoked in all parts of Germany was sure that pacifism was in for a hard time. I remember arguing with a distinguished German to the effect that Remarque's popularity abroad was due to a desire to forget all the name-calling of wartime and to accept the soldier of the Reich as a human being, and getting a reply which indicated that the time has passed when Germany would put any faith in such professions of interest or friendship. Indeed, the excesses of the earlier pacifism only served to swell the forces which were now ushering in a rebirth of militarism. The reasons why this change took place are many, and Dr. Pfeiler's introduction calls attention to some of them. I believe that the imaginative literature bearing on the war from the German point of view is a source of information the pertinence of which cannot be overestimated. Writer after writer was finding something in the war which he had missed in the Hohenzollern Reich and in the Re-

FOREWORD

xiii

public as well. He may have been conditioned by the peace treaty, by the sufferings of the inflation era, and by the French invasion of the Ruhr. But the'"something" was not to be defined in terms of better labor conditions, or more bathtubs, or revisions of boundaries and reparations totals. What really happened was that the German derived no imaginative satisfaction from a Reich dominated by "democratic liberalism," which seemed to give everyone the chance to act as he pleased at the expense of preventing common action for Germany. No attempt to explain this dissatisfaction can help us much. It is far better to let the German express it and seek to glean from that expression some measure of insight into his psychology. Many of the novels here reviewed actually helped to usher in the Third Reich. Dr. Pfeiler is quite correct in insisting that they cannot be dismissed as trash. Some of them—the books of Ernst Jünger and Joachim von der Goltz, for example—are, as a matter of fact, virile and moving. When they celebrate the beauty of comradeship under arms and find in that beauty an augury of social institutions worthy of man, they are, it is true, attributing to secularist attitudes a measure of the mystical fervor which is properly the characteristic of religion. In all this one may see, not too fancifully, the dawn of a new messianic faith, destined to supplant, perhaps temporarily and perhaps for all time, the creed of Marxism. But though the "spirit of the front soldier" was dangerous, it should not be termed an unmitigated evil. W h a t later on became the Nazi revolution is in many respects a perversion of ideas which are found in the literature of the war; and I believe

xiv

FOREWORD

that one reason why the horrors of Hitlerism are so pronounced and sickening is that the ideals of the "front soldier" were far too romantic to be of use and therefore were soon corrupted. In the end, crude, ruthless, and selfseeking sergeants and corporals transformed all Germany into a drill ground and a guardhouse. It is not an accident that many of Hitler's most persistent and determined foes are men who, like Otto Strasser, detest him for having defiled the dreams of their youth. Because it will shed much light on the situations and problems thus briefly outlined, Dr. Pfeiler's book is certain to serve well the uses of scholars eager to learn the truth about Germany. The canvas is broad and colorful; the critic, painstaking and methodical. Other students may sometime wish to correlate with what is here said about the war novel what could be learned from the drama, poetry, and biography. I do not, however, think that their conclusions would differ sharply from Dr. Pfeiler's. He writes as one inured to German habits of thought but none the less dedicated to the permanent cultural interests of mankind. GEORGE N . SHUSTER

September, 1941

PREFACF.

T H E PERIOD B E T W E E N 1 9 1 9 AND 1 9 3 9 IS ONE OF T H E MOST

portentous of modern times, and since its relation with the present world crisis is tragically close, it is not surprising that its aspects become the object of study and contemplation. Although the radical change in the political and cultural life of Germany since 1933 gives the history of Germany before 1933 a sort of preliminary, if perhaps illusory, perspective, the full historical significance of these two decades cannot yet be appreciated. But it is possible to begin working toward the goal of gaining a full idea of the period after the War of 1914-18. My study is intended to be an effort in this direction. It might help towards a better knowledge of the German mind in the fateful years after Versailles; and while this investigation is concerned with an aspect of literature, I hope that it may constitute a modest contribution to the psychointellectual history of the German people. The war novel proved to be the literary form most fruitful for an investigation; however, I have had to include some short stories, letters, reports, and diaries as related prose. I may also add that the material investigated

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PREFACE

and presented was not strictly confined to the works of men of fiction, nor did all of the authors fight at the front. The relevancy of these exceptions, however, will easily be seen in the discussion of my theme. Because of its magnitude and uniqueness, a strict classification and definition of the war literature has not yet been generally agreed upon. The present work is an inquiry, and I hope an impartial one, into the German literary reaction to the war experience. The task was approached from a point of view characterized by faith in the abiding power of a free scholarship, in liberalism, and in humanity. I have endeavored to treat every author without prejudice and to do justice to the writers by presenting their views fairly and by bringing out the essence of their beliefs and ethics. Therefore, if I present opinions in expository fashion, it will not be thought that I espouse them; if I rephrase an author's ideas, I do not thereby make them mine. I would insist on this point, for it touches the very principle of my work. I present my findings in form of a survey of facts and ideas; I leave it to later judges to integrate them into a pattern of meaningful history. In the Appendix I take the opportunity to review some of the more noteworthy literary evaluations of the German war novel. It is with pleasure that I acknowledge indebtedness to the authors, publishers, and holders of copyright of the various works I have quoted, more particularly to: The Greystone Press for H. Lichtenberger, The Third Reich (1937); Oxford University Press for E. W . Bohle, The German Reich and Americans of German Origin (1938);

PREFACE

xvii

Ε. P. Dutton & Co. for A. C. Grzesinski, Inside Germany (1939); Henry Holt and Company for F. L. Schuman, Germany Since 1918 (1937); The Brookings Institution for F. F. Blachly and Μ. E. Oatman, The Government and Administration of Germany (1928); The University of Chicago Press for Martin Schütze, Academic Illusions in the Field of Letters and Art (1933); the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace for A. Mendelssohn Bartholdy, The War and German Society (1937); The Macmillan Company for Prince Hubertus Loewenstein, The Tragedy of a Nation (1934). The selections from Hitler's Mein Kampf are used by permission of, and special arrangement with Reynal & Hitchcock, publishers, and Houghton Mifflin Company, proprietors of the copyright. In quoting from works published originally in German, I have, except in one case, made my own translation, but I wish to express gratitude to the holders of the translation rights for permission to quote in English, especially to: E. P. Dutton & Co. for German Students' War Letters; The Viking Press, Inc., for Zweig, The Case of Sergeant Grischa, and Werfel, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh; Julian Messner for Johannsen, Four Infantrymen, first published by Alfred H. King; Little, Brown & Company for Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front; Alfred A. Knopf for Plivier, The Kaiser's Coolies, Dwinger, Prisoner of War, and Konrad Heiden, Hitler (1936); finally Random House for Latzko, Judgment of Peace, the translation of which I quote. Further information on the published translations of these works will be found in the Bibliography.

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PREFACE

Many valuable suggestions for my work have come from colleagues, also from some of my former students. T o them I express my sincere thanks. I am glad to give special acknowledgment to Professor Hermann Pongs of Stuttgart, Germany, whose investigations—though carried on in a basically different way from mine—have been of greatest value to me. I want to thank the Carl Schurz Vereinigung in Berlin for assistance in making possible— on the occasion of a visit in Germany in 1938—personal interviews with a number of war writers. I also thank Professor Thomas M. Raysor of the University of Nebraska for reading part of the manuscript and offering helpful advice. Last it is with pleasure that I express genuinely grateful appreciation to the staff of the Columbia University Press for the active interest shown in my work. If the results of my study are brought out clearly in a tolerable form, I owe it in a large measure to the patient, considerate, and competent assistance of the Press, especially to William Shepard Smith of the Editorial Department. w. κ. p. The University of Nebraska Lincoln August, 1941

CONTENTS

FOREWORD, B Y GEORGE Ν . SHUSTER

VII

PREFACE

XV PART O N E :

BACKGROUND

Ι. G E R M A N Y 1 9 1 4 - 1 9 3 8

3

2. W E I M A R AND BERCHTESGADEN

21

3. T H E SPIRITUAL LEGACY OF THE FRONT

38

PART T W O :

W A R T I M E

W O R K S

4. LETTERS FROM STUDENTS AT THE FRONT

61

5 . T W O IDEALISTS

82

6. W A R T I M E REALISTS

98

7. DIARIES OF THE FRONT

PART T H R E E : W A R

117

A N D

T H E

PERSON

8. ARNOLD Z W E I G

129

9. REMARQUE AND OTHER M E N OF FEELING

140

10. REALISTS

153

1 1 . FRANZ W E R F E L

182

CONTENTS

XX

P A R T FOUR: W A R

AND

THE

PEOPLE

12. T H E PEOPLE IN B A T T L E

193

13. T H E VISION OF THE R E I C H

215

14. T H E SOLDIER AND H I S COMRADES

235

15. T H E SOLDIER AND H I S LEADER

261

16. T H E SOLDIER AND THE E N E M Y

279

APPENDIX: T H E C R I T I C I S M OF THE G E R M A N W A R N O V E L

301

BIBLIOGRAPHY

321

INDEX

333

Part 1 BACKGROUND

1.

GERMANY 1914-1938

1,700,000 Germans were killed. More than 4,000,000 were wounded, and more than 1,000,000 were captured. And Germany was defeated. Could it have been anything but a catastrophic experience for a people? Most German men living in 1920, and nearly every German man over forty in 1941, had lived through that war, and the war, which had been lost, had been the greatest experience of their lives. Could the war have failed to condition the psychology of Germans? Could anything that happened in the German community after 1918 be understood without reference to the war? Could any German forget it? Literature reflects the great struggles of our age. The writer as a prophet, accuser, defender, analyst, and spokesman has in an ever increasing measure gone beyond creating in a sphere exclusively aesthetic and literary. His works show markedly the deep cleavages that separate men and divide them into communities of race, economic interest, religion, or other sociological factors; and they also reveal the uncompromising individualist who joins with no IN

THE

WORLD

W A R OF

1914-18

MORE

THAN

4

GERMANY 1914-1938

one and who rejects the claims of any community. If these characteristics of diversity hold true everywhere in the literature of Western civilization, it is especially true of the German literature of the twentieth century. What an unbridgeable abyss lies, for instance, between the free literature of the Republic and the strictly coordinated literary activity—the official term, Schrifttum, is very expressive of cohesion—of the Third Reich! And to take just one field of writing, nowhere can be found a greater variety than that displayed in the German reaction to the World War; nowhere can the manifold sociologic and cultural stratification of Germany find a more instructive representation; nowhere can be seen better the tragic and pathetic attempt of man to come to terms with puzzling reality. The World War of 1914-1918 as a political reality resulted in the Weimar Republic. As a great national myth the war was the creator of the Third Reich; at least this is the claim made by the contemporary leaders of Germany. This interpretation of the great catastrophe has found but little consideration in many of the brilliant and penetrating works of scholars and historians who have written of the German history during the last decades in concrete political and economic terms. They have, of course, discussed the war as an experience which made a lasting impression on the habits of thought of Europe, but they have neglected, for whatever reason, to ascribe to the war the role of being the progenitor par excellence of the Third Reich. This is perhaps understandable, for the irrational realm of values and the sphere of judgments founded in

GERMANY 1914-1938

ζ

instinct from which the present German notions of history and society proceed are very unbecoming climates for intellects that thrive on rational comprehension. Consequently, an investigator of the political, economic, and sociologic phenomena in Germany is likely to emphasize and elucidate the more comprehensible data, while he gives less attention tö a psychology which is not only vague and unintelligible to him but perhaps for that very reason personally repulsive. The World War, whatever one thinks of it, was and is an important factor for the understanding of the mentality of the German people. The process which conditioned this people for the acceptance and the exaltation of the Third Reich cannot be fully appreciated without knowing the role which the World War was allowed, or made, to play. Nowhere can the war, and the reaction of the German mind to it, be seen better than in the literature that deals with this very problem: the war novels. Not only do the war novels in their attitudes reflect to a degree the currently dominant political philosophies, they also anticipate certain developments and party aims and slogans. Some novels are rooted in traditional idealism; some are grossly realistic. Others revive in full splendor the era of romanticism, while some are white hot in their devotion to the cause of a humanity in capitalistic bondage. The front had been the central experience in the life of innumerable Germans, and therefore of Germany itself, for at least a generation. Hence the war novel is the chief tangible evidence of the point of view of men at the front, and must therefore be considered very important as symptomatic of

6

GERMANY 1914-1938

German psychology. It goes without saying that not all of the war books are genuine expressions, that some are mendacious fabrications intended to serve ulterior ends of propaganda or business. We shall find that the war books fall into two general classes according to the attitude towards war and its effect expressed in them: in many war is regarded as the destroyer of human values, as the worst possible experience for the individual, in the rest the war is regarded as a constructive experience, not only for the men, but also for the nation as a whole. The first, individualistic manner of reaction to war we shall call egocentric; the second viewpoint, which emphasizes first not the ego but the national community, we shall call ethnocentric. And we shall find that the division between egocentric and ethnocentric attitudes is characteristic of postwar Germany, its extremes typified on the one hand in the Weimar constitution with its liberalism insistent on the rights of man, and on the other hand in the Third Reich, in which true freedom comes from fitting into one's place in the German people. The history of contemporary Germany has already been written, so far as contemporary history ever can be, by a number of competent scholars and observers. However, a brief reference to some salient facts of this history may help to correlate the basic situations of the war novels; it may also assist in evaluating the different intellectual and spiritual atmospheres from which they grew. 1 1

For a select bibliography of contemporary German history see Frederick L . Schuman, Germany since 1918, pp. 117-24 (New York, »937)·

GERMANY 1914-1938

7

When the war began in 1914 it was clear to the German people as a whole that they were innocent of starting it. The fatherland was attacked from all sides; the fatherland had to be defended. Whatever the real responsibilities, there never has been the slightest doubt in the great majority of Germans that they had entered the war for the righteous cause of defense against malevolent attack. No matter what views are held as to the real culprit among the nations, in studying the problem of German psychology this fact of the feeling of innocence of the people must be remembered. The people felt a unity of state and nation such as could never have been experienced in times of peace. They "had been melted into one great mass of ardent power, moving in one direction, working in a common rhythm of labor, even breathing as one." The nation was truly united; triumph and sacrifice were shared by all, men and women, young and old, rich and poor. The oneness of a people that only a short time before had been split by innumerable differences of religion, of regional pride, of social class, and political creeds, seemed complete.2 Brilliant military successes, even after the decisive setback at the Marne, of which the people never learnt the truth until after the war, convinced the nation of its invincibility. Russia was defeated, Rumania eliminated; the submarine warfare promised certain victory. But reverses came. America entered the War. The English blockade became deadly effective. The last gigantic effort after the great disaster of Verdun (1916) was made in 1918. It failed. The material 2 Much of this discussion is based on Mendelssohn Bartholdy, The War and German Society.

8

GERMANY 1914-1938

superiority of the Allies, the starvation of the people, and disintegration within brought the defeat. The demand for an Armistice emanated from the army high command, which, in the person of Ludendorff, had been the virtual dictator of Germany since 1916. Wilson's points were accepted. The emperor and the other rulers resigned, and the Republic "without Republicans" came into being, the result of a revolution that had practically been superfluous, since parliamentarianism and a democratic constitution had already been legally created under the emperor before the war had ended. The signs of internal disintegration were seen early. During the end of the first year and all through the second year of the war a reaction had been developing against the inspiring national unity of the start. As to the causes of this reaction there will be many differences of opinion, but the creation of deep and lasting schisms in the nation gradually beginning with the year 1915 is an historic fact. The soldier was cut off from the homeland. Bearable for a period of perhaps a few months of "hale and hearty" war, this separation now became permanent in character. It was especially felt by the hundreds of thousands of well-settled family men; it was not so hard, in its conscious effect, on youths still in the formative stages, but it exposed these boys, unrooted still in an ordered civilian existence, to the dangerous conditioning of life in the brutal world of the jungle. Military censorship prevented true and satisfactory communication between the soldier and the homeland; and official bulletins were soon distrusted as dispensers of truth. In the army itself the cleavage widened between the

G E R M A N Y 1914-1938

9

soldiers in the line and the staffs in the rear, between the fighting men in the trenches and the Etappe, the organization behind the front. And although the chasm between officer and common man was not so deep at the real front as behind the lines, it nevertheless existed to a degree that belied the professed unity of the nation. It had never been bridged, and it grew in portentous significance when the ranks of the professional officer, responsible and conscientious, had to be filled with immature youths to whom the welfare of their men was not an "inbred aristocratic" concern. For the officer's corps, dominated by the spirit of a feudal aristocracy, had been bled white of its essence. T h e flower of the nobility had perished in the mass destruction of the early battles; now the middle-class youths were called upon to continue the aristocratic tradition, without having aristocratic training. W i t h many notable exceptions, these young officers lowered the standard of the traditional German officer, their failure being not in courage but in qualities of leadership. And it is this class of bourgeois officers which furnished later on many of the ruthless men of action in the movements against the Republic; for they could not forget the free and dangerous life of the front and the role which they had been allowed to play there. Their whole philosophy of life was founded on the life in the trenches and the orgiastic "recreations" behind the lines when relieved, a life free from economic care and rich in social recognition and financial wellbeing. 3 In the homeland there arose the more and more disgust3

See Ernst Jünger, Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis.

10

GERMANY 1914-1938

ing spectacle of the prosperous, influential profiteer. As privations increased, as many families suffered the loss or crippling of their fathers, sons, and brothers, and as in contrast not a few grew wealthy and rich by unscrupulous methods, a gradual change took place in the people's basic conception of the world. Their belief in a certain standard measure in the appraisal of what a man does and what he gets for it was thoroughly undermined, and they lost confidence in justice as a principle regulating the course of human life. A general cynicism took hold of the people, and when finally after the war the German people were punished by the Versailles treaty, punished because they had for more than four years suffered and bled and died for the cause of the fatherland—necessarily this was their way of looking at it—then the anarchy in the moral universe seemed to be complete. The experiences during the war often cancelled, so to speak, the law of causality and established in its place a law of absolute irrationality. All seemed chance, success a piece of luck, failure almost certain. The middle-class element, as the real representative of the nation's dominant ideology, had to bear the heaviest burden of this change from the rational to the irrational, from the calculable to the "incalculable. The Germans wondered: was justice after all only an artificial creation of civilized society? With the loss of confidence in a rational relation between action and effect, the people in general lost the base for any abiding sense of security. Religion had become mute and meaningless for a nation's plight; the Golden Rule, which more or less conventionally had expressed the

GERMANY 1914-1938

Ii

ultimate principle of civilization, had become a joke. The pagan instincts of an almost forgotten past came into their own and seemed to be justified. Rationalized and brought into a system, these instincts were destined in the end to become, under the sign of the swastika, the principles of the Third Reich. The middle class, which was to be the predominant factor of this development, had its first great organizational success in the founding of the Party of the Fatherland [ Vaterlandspartei] in 1917. Then still under the leadership of big industry, the landed gentry and the members of the professions, this party of pan-German origin tried to give power to the drive for a "peace of victory." For a great danger appeared to threaten: the shopkeepers, tradesmen, lower officials and the great mass of the proletariat had become increasingly opposed to a continuation of the war for the sake of an annexionist victory. They were willing to defend the fatherland, but nothing more. This will became articulate in the Reichstag, where the Center party, the Progressives, and the Social Democrats worked for a peace of understanding, a negotiated peace. Due to privation and daily experienced injustice, the nation's will to combat against the external enemies had gradually been transmuted to a deep resentment against the oppression practiced, perhaps as necessary war measure, from above. The appeal to values of a national community lost more and more ground as the war went on, and group egoism and irresponsible individualism asserted themselves. The Party of the Fatherland was intended to check this tendency. It was a powerful attempt, and it failed. It was based

12

GERMANY 1914-1938

on the failure to appraise the situation of Germany correctly because of the deplorable lack of information imposed by a rigid censorship. This state of living in a fool's paradise could go on for such a long time because debate and criticism of the military dictatorship was suppressed by the Burgfrieden "peace within the castle," as this silencing of public opinion was romantically called. Though defeated in its objectives, the organization of the Party of the Fatherland gave the middle class a definite feeling of power against the mighty labor movement, and when the powerful majority Socialists determined after the revolution to continue a reform and revisionist course and erected a democratic instead of a socialistic republic, when they refused to pursue revolutionary power politics, as a passionate minority of labor demanded, then the middle class took courage from the first experience of the Fatherland Party and became convinced of the vulnerability of the dreaded socialist colossus. In this respect the World War party of a great part of the German middle class must be considered an important psychological antecedent of the nationalist and National Socialist movements in the days of the Weimar Republic. The Republic had to liquidate the war under the most adverse circumstances. The humiliation and the crushing economic burden of the armistice and the peace had to be accepted. It had to agree to burden future generations with the fantastic indebtedness of reparations. It had to absorb the shock of the Ruhr invasion by the French and the chaos of inflation with its ensuing destruction of the middle-

G E R M A N Y 1914-1938

13

class economy; and finally before its demise, it was the victim of the world economic crisis which began in 1929. N o one with any sense of historical fairness could charge the Republic with responsibility for these calamities. It was forced to make the best of an impossible job. It was ruined in public opinion when it advocated acceptance and execution of a policy that seemed to put Germany forever under the bondage of her conquerors; and to make its tragic fate complete, it never gained that confidence and sustained support of the Allies which might have rehabilitated her in the eyes of her citizens. The Republic itself, called into being, not by ardent German republicans (they were too few) but made to order by Woodrow Wilson, was conceived in defeat and born in national bitterness and humiliation. As the illegitimate child of Allied victory and Social Democratic opportunism, it saw the light on a day of despair. It began life unwanted and unloved. Whether it could win mass affection and find a permanent place for itself in the heart of the Germans would depend on the fashion in which its protectors acquitted themselves.4 H o w the protectors of the Republic have acquitted themselves is history now. H o w the leaders of the Republic also failed, is known too. The controversial problem as to " w h y ? " must wait for the future historian. But this much can be said, that among the internal reasons for the overthrow of the Republic were the suicidal dissension and individualism of the German republicans and the fact that the leaders of the Republic, mostly older men, simply were not equal to the task of dealing with concrete questions of 4

Schuman, op. ch., p. 15.

14

GERMANY

1914-1938

power. 5 That is, they neglected the use of concrete instruments of power of political life, often for reasons of humanitarianism and faith in the decency of human nature. And, strange as it may sound, the failure of the Republic may be attributed in no small degree to the theoretically almost perfect democratic German electoral law of proportional representation, which fostered in its practical execution the spirit of disunity and of unwillingness for compromise. Finally, the Republic failed to challenge the spirit of community; it failed to dramatize itself; it failed to win in time the youth of the land; it failed, in the sober common-sense attitude of its leaders, to draw strength from the spiritual fount of a traditional past; it failed because in a spirit of ephemeral opportunism the war, the memory of it, and its meaning were allowed to be claimed as the exclusive prerogatives of its most deadly enemies. A s Shotwell says in another connection: Had the full political significance of these facts been seen, the study of war would not have been left to militarists, and the effort to find alternatives for it (the necessity for conducting war) would have had a support if public opinion which, as it was, turned in confusion of thought to the emotional and reactionary leadership of nationalism.4 From its beginning to 1924 the Republic went through a prolonged crisis, which ended with the termination of the inflation and the Ruhr invasion. T h e Dawes plan inaugurated the "policy of fulfillment" (of the demands of the Allies) and with it what some euphemistically call the "era 8 Arthur Rosenberg, Democracy and Socialism, pp. 340 f. (New York, 1939); see also his The Birth of the German Republic (London, 1931). * Mendelssohn Bartholdy, p. xi.

G E R M A N Y 1914-1938

15

of reconstruction." It was, rather, a respite. Foreign capital flowed into the land and created a modest prosperity. Trade increased, and the radical parties of the Right and the L e f t lost ground. T h e lower middle class, the workers, and the peasants felt more reassured. T h e democracy seemed accepted. High hopes and romanticized ideals struggled with cults and practices of cynicism and licentiousness. Literature and the theater blossomed—now in the full flower of fresh creativeness, now in sickly dilettantism and degeneration. These symptoms of malaise were in part a reflection of a decade of bloodshed, honor, starvation, and defeat culminating in the miseries of 1923. In part they were signs of an older and deeper clash between conflicting desires and incompatible aspirations.7 Stresemann tried his policy of rapprochement. A f t e r initial successes, it bogged down, and the extreme nationalists branded him a traitor. H e died in 1929, a brokenhearted man. Under increasing difficulties genuinely parliamentary governments were in control until spring 1930. T h e n the period of a true republican Germany had ended. T h e liberal Centrist Bruening became chancellor and governed through the support of President Hindenburg with emergency decrees, paving unwittingly the w a y for the destruction of German democracy. T h e impact of the economic crisis of 1929 and after began to be more and more severely felt. T h e radical parties increased their deputies by leaps and bounds. Communists raised the number of their representatives in the parliament in September 1930 from 54 to 77, the National Socialists from 12 to 107! T h e n the era of intrigue began. Hindenburg became the 7

Schuman, op. cit., p. 40.

i6

GERMANY 1914-1938

tool of unscrupulous schemers. Political and economic difficulties grew into fantastic proportions. The radicals prospered. Unemployment and misery of the middle class went beyond bounds. Internal strife and daily bloodshed occurred. The masses yearned for the savior who would take the responsibility from them and give them security instead. Circumstances and intrigue worked together. Finally, in January 1933 Hitler became chancellor. The Third Reich dawned over Germany. The war had been driven from the surface of consciousness in Germany during the first ten years of the Republic. The Treaty of Versailles had taken its place.8 That in the confusion of these years the war was lost sight of by the German publicists, economists, and the public in general is strikingly manifest in the almost complete absence of the war as a theme in literature: there was a hiatus in the production of war novels between the end of the war and 1927. Then, however, the war was revived with extreme intensity. The flood of German war novels extended all over the world. At first the war was seen from a pacifist, liberal, and egocentric point of view, but as the political wave of nationalism rose higher and higher, it was the ethnocentric, nationalist war novel that conquered the field. With the advent of the Third Reich it held the monopoly on the German literary stage. From the wealth of historical data gathered so far, this much can be concluded about the victory of the Third Reich: it harnessed the forces and reactions which had been generated by the lost war. The real change effected 8

J. T . Shotwell in Mendelssohn Bartholdy, p. vai.

G E R M A N Y 1914-1938

17

by the war in the social and economic order of Germany and in the mentality of her citizen did not show until, from 1929 onward, the National Socialist movement began to sweep the country. N o compromise with any of the former unitarian forces was sought. . . . T h e new spirit which entered into the youth of Germany, first into a a few soldiers who were disappointed in their immediate prospects and hopes, and later on into thousands, hundreds of thousands and millions of their fellows in suffering, has been variously called a spirit of comradeship, of solidarity, and of unity. But its most significant—and favorite—designation lies in the adjective of the new German State: totalitarian. . . . Uniformity of mental attitude, attained through uniform education and a prescribed common stock of knowledge in a community of one single racial denomination, is the gift of the war to the German nation.9

As a compensatory function for the humiliation suffered in defeat, the propaganda of the National Socialists stressed the idea of Teutonic racial superiority. It combined with it the most violent and uncompromising äntisemitism, which furnished the concrete "evidence" for the masses that there was not only one enemy within, but the archenemy of all ideal Nordic conceptions of life. Against the sinister and varied forces of this enemy, who worked from within and without, the German nation had to be mobilized and united as the army had been in the World War. Thus the necessary enemy was furnished, too, and the organization of an army state had meaning and could proceed. The excessive wearing of uniforms by soldiers, party members, and civilians is but an external sign of this fact. 9

Mendelssohn Bartholdy, op. cit., p. 285.

i8

GERMANY

1914-1938

Soon all parties w e r e eliminated. T h e coordination of all phases of public and private life was ruthlessly enforced with systematic thoroughness.

The

parliamentarian

en-

abling act which suspended the constitution provided a legal facade for a flexible one-man government,

which

gave the F ü h r e r the same absolute freedom of action as the commander of an a r m y would have in war. T h e leadership principle of the T h i r d Reich with its unqualified obedience below and absolute authority at the top is patterned after the discipline of the army. Secretary of State Stuckart

gave

this

euphemistic

interpretation

of

the

Führer's position: Following his accession to power the Führer consciously refused to give the Third Reich a written constitution. H e believed that the essential thing was not what constitution a country possesses but rather under what constitution it lives, e.g., under what conditions of internal unity and order the nation lives. He, therefore, allowed the German, unified, authoritarian, and people's state to develop through organic and legal evolution, adapted to the general situation and the needs of the moment. T h e Third Reich thus already has a new constitution in the sense that there is a political organization of the German people in the Third Reich. This does not find its expression, however, in a constitutional charter but in a series of fundamental laws and above all in the fundamental concepts of National Socialism in the field of public law. These concepts have already acquired the force of customary law. 10 Possible revolts were anticipated and bloodily suppressed. T h e Reichswehr was w o n over to the Führer. G e r m a n y 10

Völkische Beobachter,

Jan. 30, 1936; quoted in Henri Lichtenberger,

The Third Reich, pp. 63 f. (New York, 1937).

GERMANY 1914-1938

19

withdrew from the League of Nations (October, 1933). General conscription was decreed (March, 1935), and the Rhineland reoccupied (March, 1936). The Four Year Plan was begun (October, 1936) to achieve economic selfsufficiency. Austria was occupied (March, 1938) and the Sudetenland "brought home into the Reich" at Munich (September, 1938). As indecision, economic crisis, and dissension had prepared Hitler's way to power inside Germany, so it happened on his march to the European supremacy he envisioned. There never was any effective concerted action on the part of the Western powers; the internal situation of France and the position of Italy and England constituted the main foreign props for the diplomatic successes of Hitler. Toward the end of his admirable and objective book on the Third Reich, 1 1 Professor Lichtenberger expresses his concern about the activist function of the spirit in National Socialist Germany and the emphasis it placed on the first duty of the citizen: to fight for the triumph of race and fatherland. He says: We can understand how such notion held sway during the war. It was mobilized at that time in the same way in which armies are mobilized. It engulfed each nation as with a network of barbed wire and with a protective tissue of useful national "legends." But we refuse to believe that it should be retained in this state in times of peace. This is precisely what the Third Reich did. In Germany it was retained because for the Germans the World W a r had 11

Lichtenberger, op. cit., p. 289.

20

GERMANY 1914-1938

not ended. The whole structure and spirit of the Reich reveals this doctrine. If this is remembered, the manifestations of the Reich become more intelligible. It may explain to a certain extent the startling facility with which promising statements were made and not kept, with which treaties were concluded and abandoned. These moves were simple moves of expediency in warfare.

2.

IN

WEIMAR AND BERCHTESGADEN

THE ESTABLISHMENT

OF THE

WEIMAR

REPUBLIC

THE

civilization of the Western world had supplemented the military victory of the Allies. The majority of the German people brought home from the war an ardent hope for a new social system in which all members of the nation would form a community of men of equal rights. In spite of the unrelenting opposition of the devotees of the old German Kultur with its emotional, romantic bases, a state came into being which drew its strength and ideology from the same forces that had built the democratic civilization of England, France, and the United States. Energies released by the Puritan revolution, the founding of the American Union, and the French Revolution were now actually harnessed into the service of the German people through the instrument of the Weimar constitution. For the first time in German history a practical and thorough application of the rights of man was to be made on a large scale. The inalienable rights of the individual, although well discussed and known and contributed to by many responsive German minds, had never had a fair teSt with the people. Now they were given their chance. But the

22

WEIMAR AND

BERCHTESGADEN

inner situation of Germany was aggravated by the heterogeneity of the components that made up the republican majority of the German people. This is not to say that the policy of the victorious Allies was unimportant. The Marxists were split into revolutionary and evolutionary groups and separated from the Catholic Centrists and the bourgeois liberal democrats whose belief in social progress was not considered incongruous with clinging to the capitalistic order. The Weimar Republic, on the basis of the classic principles of bourgeois liberalism, tried to bring these elements into a working community under the common denominator of faith in the good collective judgment of the people, a faith which underlies true democratic government. The appeal of the republican leaders to the masses was based on common sense and voluntary support. The Central Council, the executive body of the government before the constitution of Weimar, proclaimed nationwide democratic elections for the National Assembly and urged: Soldiers, you must help us! We recognize only the voluntary obedience of free men. Those who cannot serve our cause of their own conviction are free to go. Those who remain must know that they owe loyalty and obedience to the Reich Government, the highest authority of the German Republic. . . . [Dec. 2i, 1918.] Workers and citizens of the German Socialist Republic! Whatever your views on the political questions of the day, there is now only one duty to perform: to establish a workable and stable government. . . . Those who do not cooperate hamper the execution of the resolutions adopted at the Congress of the Workers' and Soldiers' Councils . . . and drive

WEIMAR A N D B E R C H T E S G A D E N

23

German economy into the abyss. The German people must be protected against this catastrophe which would destroy the future of the German people for many generations to come. [Dec. 30 1918.] 1

The constitution, adopted by the National Assembly by a vote of 262 to 75, became law on August 11, 1919, when the then provisional president Ebert signed the document. It contained a detailed bill of rights but imposed restrictions on personal and property rights for the benefit of social welfare [Articles 133 f.] 2 Some of the provisions of the constitution illustrate well the various factors of the Weimar idealism. The supreme power emanated from the people [Article 1]. Germans were equal before the law, had freedom of motion, free cultural exercize if belonging to foreignspeaking groups, and they might pursue any means of livelihood they desired. The freedom of the person was inviolable, as was his dwelling, the secrecy of his correspondence, etc. [109-18]. All inhabitants of the Reich enjoyed full freedom of belief and conscience; civil and political rights were neither qualified nor limited by the exercise of religious freedom [135-41]. Art, science, and the teaching of the same were free [142]. In all schools special attention is to be given to moral development, education in citizenship, and personal and vocational efficiency, in the spirit of German culture and the reconciliation of the nations. In connection with instruction in the public schools, care is to be taken not to wound the feelings 1

A. C. Grzesinski, Inside Germany, p. 60 (New York, 1939). Schuman, op. ext., pp. 16-39. See F. F. Blachly and Μ. E. Oatman, Government and Administration of Germany (Baltimore, 1928), 2

24

WEIMAR AND

BERCHTESGADEN

of those who hold other views. [148; italics mine, here and below.] T h e ordering of the economic life must correspond to the fundamental principles of justice, with the purpose of guaranteeing to everyone an existence worthy of mankind [ 1 5 1 ] . Property involved obligations. Its use should at the same time be a service tb the general welfare [ 1 5 3 ] . T h e Reich should advocate an international regulation of the legal status of laborers to aim at a universal minimum standard of social rights for the entire laboring class of mankind [162]. It is true that some of these pronouncements may be considered simply socialistic phrases disguising a capitalistic democracy in which laissez faire was tempered, as of old, with paternalism, 3 but as the honest attempts and practices of Republican leaders were manifested, they were articles of an ideal faith in man, worthy of the best in human tradition. It was patently the fundamental concept of Weimar to guard the individual's right against any encroachments and to conduct the affairs of the state in closest relation with the popular will. Individual rights were to be qualified only in so far as they were reasonably certain to interfere with the equally established rights of others. T h e constitution stressed voluntary cooperation and voiced firm belief in social progress. Further it expressly decreed international good will, tolerance, and respect for opponents as part of the established educational policy of the Republic, a policy which individual states—for example, Prussia—developed more in specific detail. 3

Schuman, op. cit., p. 22.

WEIMAR AND BERCHTESGADEN

25

In spite of what the people felt to be a vindictive peace imposed on them, the republican state governments tried in the spirit of the Weimar constitution to bring about a spiritual readjustment. With a vision of a great European union, the reorganization of the Prussian high schools in 1924 made "Europeanism," i.e., the common root and mutual interdependence of European cultures, the leading idea of education: It is desired to use the great epochs of culture, exercising their influence on German culture, as sources of education for the German nation. But side by side with Christianity and the preceding order of things we must place as at least equally powerful in its influence modern Europeanism as it has developed in the course of history of the modern spirit since the Reformation and the Renaissance. . . . It is only by a study of this history that the peculiar nature of the German spirit can be properly understood. Its rise was in struggle and agreement chiefly with France and England, both, however, conceived as the indissoluble entity they represent intellectually.4 As can be easily seen, the Republic was seriously endeavoring to change a former nationalist imperialism into cosmopolitanism. If these efforts failed to make any appreciable headway, if there was an evergrowing interest in all things specifically German, it can perhaps in part be explained as a natural reaction against the appalling contempt stirred up against Germany by her enemies, even after the peace had been concluded—an attitude well calculated to cause the Germans to feel themselves outcasts among the 4 Quoted in B. Radtke, Some Observations on German and English Education, p. 12, "Kansas Studies in Education," Vol. II, No. 1 (Lawrence, Kansas).

26

WEIMAR AND

BERCHTESGADEN

nations. The natural result came about: Germans more and more professed their own Kultur, deliberately and defiantly. So it was not simply the fault of the Weimar Republic if its noble efforts came to nought. Responsible men in the government and parliament were not all lacking in insight into the values of tradition and of spiritual appeals. During the deliberation on the official designation of the new state, whether to call Germany a Republic or a Reich, Dr. Hugo Preuss, who prepared the original draft of the constitution, said in the National Assembly: But, gentlemen, the word, the thought, the principle of the Reich has for our German people such a deep-rooted emotional value, that I think we could not defend the giving up of the name. T o the name "Reich" there is attached the tradition of a hundred years, there is attached the whole yearning of a divided people for a national unity, and we should be doing the greatest injury to these deep-rooted feelings, without grounds and without reason, if we should give up this word which represents a unity obtained with difficulty only after long disappointments.5

Recognizing the primacy of the individual, the Republic tried by education and by appealing to common sense, to enlightened self-interest, and to spiritual values, to win the support of the people for the making of a democratic German nation within the framework of a European community. It was not granted to her to succeed. The restraining power of fraternity, the third ideal along with liberty and equality as basic and ethical demands of man, was not potent enough in a Germany which felt herself ever threat5

Quoted in Blachly and Oatman, op. cit., p. j.

WEIMAR AND BERCHTESGADEN

27

ened from without and within by the very opposite of fraternal force; brotherhood remained an unrealized ideal unable in a time of great economic crisis to overcome the selfish interests of groups and the growing individualism fostered by the generous grant of democratic freedom. The Republic was unable to work out a good compromise between the egocentric individual and the community, and so it came about that in suicidal separatism the democratic way of living was finally destroyed by the aggressiveness of ruthless tribal nationalism. The atmosphere of the idealism of Weimar in the first decade after the war was naturally very favorable to the development of pacifism. Numerous organizations were successful in winning some portions of public opinion to oppose the war and its glorification, because the ethical deterioration of the people, especially of youth, showed so flagrantly the morally debasing influence of war. For many the gun and hand grenade had become the symbols for lack of sympathy in society, replacing rational argument. Reckless and utterly irresponsible slander of political opponents became the rule, and assassination of enemies was openly advocated and sometimes even practiced. The pacifists did not think these were results of the revolution of 1918, as the Rightists liked to charge. Rather they saw in the state of society the consequence of four and a half years of warfare; this warfare had made the young people into reckless adventurers to whom respect for the life of others were principles as outmoded as fairy tales. Brutality and rudeness seemed to have become part of the code of conduct in domestic politics. The pacifists saw with apprehen-

28 WEIMAR AND BERCHTESGADEN sion the growing preparation of a permanent glorification of war. Since the war could not be erased from the memory of the people—the Weimar idealists would have welcomed that—the anti-war movements tried to impress upon the people the destructive side, or, as they said, "the real face," of war. They denounced the writers who generalized the attitude of some honest idealists into a universal evaluation and appreciation of war. Such procedure seemed to the Weimar idealists as unjustified as if pestilences were to be praised because in them a number of men had conducted themselves as heroes. This comparison may sound absurd, but people seemed to have no qualms at committing such a grave error in judgment when it came to appraising war. Pacifist authors and speakers took pains to show that much of the literature on war was tainted by falsification, that war was given features that it had never really possessed. The true shape of war, the shape of wretchedness and distress, of screaming wounded soldiers, of horribly mutilated cripples, of times of national wretchedness thereafter; this shape was earnestly put before the people by the proponents of a world peace to be found through international understanding and cooperation. It was in the service of this idea of pacifism, so closely kin to the idealism of Weimar, that the first great war novels began to appear in 1927. In retrospect this literature seems to distill the last valiant effort toward a lasting and honorable peace among the European nations. The writers were the aroused spokesmen of a faith that saw in the inviolability of the individual, most grossly trampled in war, the guarantee for a people spiritually and physically free. It was this predominantly

WEIMAR AND BERCHTESGADEN

29

egocentric literature in all its multifarious shades that caused such a violent reaction in the literature of the nationalists and Nationalist Socialists. Many of the nationalist war books were written as a direct reaction against the influential pacifist literature. The nationalist ideology is the very antithesis of the spirit of Weimar. In the "Second Reich" of Bismarck it was tied up with dynasticism and nineteenth-century imperialism. The aristocracy of the landed gentry, the hierarchy of the officialdom and the army as remnants of a bygone feudal era, as well as the big business interests of an expanding German industry and commerce, furnished the concrete support for a type of nationalistic ideology that had its intellectual roots in the philosophy of history based on Fichte, Hegel, and Treitschke. The masses of the middle class paid homage to this ideal—liberals and progressives with decided reserve—but that it was to a large extent lip service and not a matter of deep conviction can be evidenced in the astounding ease with which loyalties to dynasts and dynasties were cast to the wind in times of real crisis. The proletariat, of course, had no part in the rites of nationalism. It believed in international class solidarity and worked for the deliverance of the working masses in terms of a historical development analyzed and foretold by Marx. The disagreement among the workers and their leaders about the tactics to be pursued when the Weimar Republic challenged the cooperation of the toiling masses was one of the fatal factors in republican disintegration. Dynastic and imperialistic nationalism was, however, by no means dead in the days of Weimar. The German National-

3