I. The German Scene

Corruptio optimi pessima.

“We all love to stray along the edge of a precipice.”

— Krizhanitch.

WE WERE guided by various reasons in picking out the Germanies as a subject for a case history in our political cultural analysis. Germany is first of all as das Reich der Mitte (the central realm) truly central in a geographical sense; halfway between Paris and Moscow, Rome and Stockholm, London and Bucharest, Madrid and Helsingfors it is basically different from the marginal states in the European framework, as, for instance, Ireland, Portugal, Greece or Norway. The German people, not unlike the Russian, has furthermore the proclivity to think through to the bitter end every accepted thought, coming from within or without, and to deduct every ultimate conclusion from such an ideology. This at least is a fundamentally Catholic trait in the German character which values logical honesty higher than prudence. It similarly follows out the logic of its heresies. If we look therefore at the reductio ad absurdum of the great heresies in either the purely religious or the political sphere, we have to look at Germany.

This function of the Germanies may have its extremely unpleasant consequences within that country or in its environments — consequences which everybody familiar with heresies must expect, but it is a function of the utmost necessity and even “usefulness” for the world at large, notwithstanding the fact that these evolutions each time cost millions of human lives. The greatest sufferers are after all the Germans themselves. The Anglo Saxon might gloat over such an uncompromising and extremist attitude and pride himself with his great gift for compromise, but one has nevertheless to be grateful for the existence of a country where the devil has been pictured as walking about naked, with horns on a pig’s head, and a fiery tongue dangling down on his hairy chest — a devil neither subtle, nor veiled, a devil as Dürer has drawn him side by side with the wandering, pensive knight.¹⁵³

But in order to understand the German scene more accurately we must go back in history as far as Christmas day of A.D. 800. On this feast Charlemagne, King of the Germanic Franks, was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Leo III in Rome. His realm included all nations of the Latin Rite, with the exception of the inhabitants of the British Isles. He was truly the ruler of the Occident and he planned, by marrying the daughter of the Byzantine Emperor, to unite Christendom in East and West under one crown and one sword. His secular rule would have supplemented the spiritual rule of the Pope in Rome. The schism between East and West was at that time only a menace. The Millennium of Christendom seemed even then to be waiting “just around the corner.” But disillusionment was to come instead.

Two generations later we behold the Carolingian Empire consisting now of three parts: France, Germany, and a weird realm stretching from the mouths of the Rhine down to Naples, thus comprising the Netherlands, Alsace-Lorraine, Switzerland and Italy. This “Lotharingian” Empire is next divided, twenty-seven years later, between the West Franks (French) and the East Franks (Germans), in such a way that the Germans receive control over Italy. This is the reason why the German and not the French rulers become Holy Roman Emperors, successors of Caesar and the Imperatores Augusti. Thus we see the Holy Roman Emperor as primus inter pares among the other European rulers; he was the Senior Monarch in Christendom and the worldly arm of the Papacy.

The German people shared with pride and pleasure this distinction bestowed upon its ruler. In spite of the frequent wars and altercations between Pope and Emperor, and the popular hatred between Germans and Italians, the position of the Emperor remained legally unchanged. There was nothing farcical about the institution of the Empire, as Voltaire would have it when he remarked that it was neither Holy nor Roman nor an Empire. Even when its existence became fictional it still served the purpose of giving to its inhabitants an appeal to a spiritual mission and bestowing on them a certain supranational character which restrained them from making efforts to germanize the French of Lorraine or the Slavs of Bohemia and Lusatia. The name Germany (Germania) had almost disappeared from common usage and the word Deutschland, propagated by Luther, hardly became popular before the end of the First Reich (1806). There was a great diversity within the boundaries of the Empire, diversity of language, dialect, customs, dresses, and traditions. It was a world in itself; it was the heart of Europe and its most respected realm. The only fixed part of the Empire was Rome and the Urbs was also the metropolis of Christendom.

There was no political capital inside its borders; the emperors, who started out being hereditary rulers and later were elected in order to revert to the initial system, moved their residence from one place to another. We find them frequently in Vienna, but also in Prague, Innsbruck, and Ghent. They were crowned in Aix-la-Chapelle, in Rome, Bologna, and Frankfurt. They were buried in Speyer, Germersheim, Wiener-Neustadt, Utrecht, and Vienna. Constantin Frantz, the great German “Federalist” (i.e., Anti-Centralist) declared bluntly: “The very idea of a German capital has to be considered as thoroughly un-German” (Deutschland und der Föderalismus, Stuttgart-Berlin, 1921, p. 89).

A strong tribal sentiment prevented unification. The rise of a “national” sentiment as we witness it in the West is similarly a slow process. Yet the local dukes and princes, in the beginning pillars of a healthy federalism, became victims of separatistic tendencies. The reaction against this separatism ended under the influence of the French Revolution in the most morbid centralized national uniformity.

Actually one of the most difficult things to explain to non-Continentals is the meaning of the word Reich. In the technical sense it means “Empire,” but there is much more to it than the mere designation of considerable extension. Reich indicates a realm with a specified spiritual character involving a metaphysical function in relation to the nations within the borders of the Reich as well as to the rest of the world. This function is the realization of the theoretical Reichsidee (Reichsgedanke) which historically speaking has undergone considerable change. The expression “Second Reich” or “Third Reich” hints at a change — or should one say at a loss? — of the spiritual destiny and goal of the Empire and the assumption of a new character. The name Deutschland (Germany) never became very widespread because even materialistic Germans hardly ever considered it to be in a line with other “ordinary” countries like Scotland, Finland, or Russia (Russland). The past embodied by the Holy Roman Empire left its traces on the German character. And Germany is thus officially still das Deutsche Reich, “in memory” of a past when all of Christendom honored in the Emperor the temporal overlord of the world.¹⁵⁴

Keeping all that in mind we must again concentrate upon the complexities that involve the vaguest and least comprehensible thing in the world — the German mind, the German character.

First of all it must be remembered that the Catholic essence of the Germanies, due to their specific privileges and obligations, was extremely strong and is still far more potent than the outsider is inclined to believe. Heresy has reached the Reich only through the channel of Wycliffe and Hus. Even the character of the Germans, on account of their existence in the heart of Europe, was of a catholic, i.e., universal nature.* (The meanings of the words “catholic” and “Catholic” will always be mutually inclusive.) There are only two peoples or nations with a naturally universal and cosmopolitan character; the Germans and the Jews. Both characters show the most incredible mosaic of national characteristics, both people were called for an eminent metaphysical mission and both experienced a fall which is comparable only to that of the Angels.**

The universality*** and uniqueness of the natural German character — uncorrupted by political or religious heresies—may be largely due to the fact that there is no nation in all of Europe which has so many direct and indirect neighbors.¹⁵⁵ In the latter group we count all those nations that contain a fair and sizable amount of Germans within their borders — no mere emigrés, but German settlers, who have actually transmitted and accepted important cultural values. These two groups (A and B) contain the following national groups:

A

1. Dutch

2. Flemings

3. Friesians

4. Danes

5. Lithuanians

6. Poles

7. Czechs

8. Slovaks

9. Magyars

10. Slovenes

11. Italians

12. Rhaeto-Romans and Ladinians

13. French as well as French Swiss and Walloons

14. Lusatians

B

15. Latvians

16. Esthonians

17. Russians

18. Rumanians

19. Ukrainians

20. Croatians

21. Serbs

22. A great variety of minor groups in S.E. Russia and in the Caucasus.

In examining the German (or for that matter the Jewish) character we find that the German has specific traits in common with almost every other European nation; he is supposed to have the profundity and depth of the Russian, the cleanliness of the Scandinavian, the thoroughness of the French, the linguistic abilities of the Pole, the melancholy of the Magyar, the gravity of the Dutch, the engineering genius of the British, the metaphysical speculation of the Near Easterner, the loyalty of the Swiss, the brutality of the Serb and the pragmatism of the Czech. Many of these qualities stand in a certain contradiction to each other and it must be admitted that the German as well as the Jewish character are highly contradictory in themselves.¹⁵⁶ How could even these paradoxes be avoided if a synthesis of the European character is to be given? And does not a collection of such varying contradictory traits indicate the lack of a harmonious and rounded character? How, one might ask, can a nation with “borrowed” characteristics be sympathetic to others? The world-wide unpopularity of Germans and Jews* is in part the result of the fact that both nations are sufficiently alike to every other race nation to evoke immediate dislike, wrath, and uneasiness.** After all one prefers to have a dog for a pet rather than a monkey (or even a cat), the latter being too nearly like human beings in certain ways to be truly attractive.***

In the multitude of forms of the different German tribal and individual characters we have to look for the reason of the puzzle of “Germany: Jekyll or Hyde?” The unification has thrown the most different tribal characters together and has brought chaos to the eternal German mosaic. The Christmas tree and Stille Nacht hardly harmonizes with the concentration camp. The Hofbräu of Munich is alien in spirit to the blueprint of a Messerschmitt. Yet “Germany” is a subcontinent like India where Ghandi’s campaign of nonviolence differs so radically from the memories of the terrible slaughter of Lucknow. . . .

The German is thus the best case of the European as such. But just because his character is not as extreme as that of the marginal European (Spaniard, Russian, Irish, Bulgarian) he becomes more easily a victim to objective things. This service to the objects — as Keyserling already has remarked — can go to inhuman and superhuman extremes. The German puts himself “under,” subordinates himself to the things and thoughts. Ich diene — “I serve” — the device of the German Emperors of the Luxemburg dynasty, passed on to the Princes of Wales in its German form and expressed an idea which is not only German and British, but one of the best European and Christian traditions.¹⁵⁷ The danger of this attitude lies in the possibility of a complete surrender to an utterly negative cause, a surrender which unfortunately did not occur recently as an isolated case in German history. For the German “causes” become almost automatically sacred; they receive almost immediately an aura of transcendental immanence, and the German will subordinate every category of his existence to the one dominant idea, never hesitating to sacrifice human lives (his own or others) for the sacred cause. This seriousness is also applicable to minor matters; if anything is accepted as duty (Pflicht) or task (Aufgabe) it has to be served with energy and determination. This is part of the secret of German efficiency.*

This efficiency, of course, is apparent in every domain, and as the contact between the West and the German countries is made in the three most unpleasant aspects of human life — non-Catholic philosophies, commercial travelers,** and mechanized soldiers — the world has begun to look at the war machinery and militarism as something typically German. Yet even such a bellicose state as Prussia fought only three consecutive wars in the 99 years from 1815 till 1914 and they all took place between 1863 and 1871, while England in her far-flung Empire was involved in eight wars of a larger scale, France in six, Russia in seven, and the United States in three such bloody enterprizes.***

Yet efficiency is not limited to the military affairs. The German’s skill in the manufacture of high-precision instruments and chemicals, cameras, telescopes, and guns; his ability to build concrete highways, skyscrapers, and other material objects or gadgets; his talent as a historian, philologist, race driver, and novelist is supplemented by metaphysical speculations, a (sometimes vague) symbolism and a depth (Tiefe) which frequently reminds us of Russia.¹⁵⁸

We can experience this depth in so many of the great German Catholics, such as Meister Eckehardt, Suso, Tauler, Hildegarde von Bingen, Albertus Magnus, Guardini, Przywara. There is no doubt that their remoteness from Latin clarté harbors many dangers. Heretics in both the political and the religious sphere, have interpreted these masters in their own way. The German love for Mystery and the Mysterious — a sentiment so alien to ochlocratic culture — is in itself no evil. It may be even a promise for a better future.

The Germanic parts of the Holy Roman Empire were not infected with heretical thought before the fifteenth century. But John Wycliffe deeply influenced Jan Hus, professor at the oldest University of the Empire, with his ideas and thus Prague, for a long time Imperial Residence, became the center of revolutionary ideas. Hussitism comprised all elements which shaped the history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Evangelical skepticism, pragmatism, nationalism and later on ochlocratic and communist tendencies characterized this dangerous heresy, which was the sanguinary forerunner of all identitarian revolutions to come. This eruption of the Czech volcano* could be crushed only with a maximum of force and the Hussite armies, under the leadership of Žižka, a Czech Cromwell, could be defeated only after his death. Catholicism was for the first time successfully challenged, and the issue was dragged into the political field. The poison of this heresy, suppressed only by force, continued to spread in secret. It was only a question of time when a new heresy would arise, ready to sweep over the endless northern plains as an enormous tidal wave. It came less than a hundred years later in the form of Lutheranism.

The time for its coming was propitious. The Papacy was weak and Humanism had prepared the ground for a nationalist movement. The dukes craved for greater independence from the Emperor, who, in a certain measure, was a Catholic executive. The knights were impoverished as a result of the rise of the commercial cities, and the patriarchal characteristics of serfdom were on the wane. The traders and bankers were weary of the ecclesiastical restrictions on interest.

It is true that it was Calvin who accelerated the rise of an urban, bourgeois culture in the West, in the Palatinate, in Switzerland, in France, in the Netherlands, and even beyond the seas — in Scotland, England, and in America. Luther on the other hand was more successful in de-Europeanizing the Germanies (a process which unfortunately is still continuing) and in undermining the unifying power of an emperor, who like Charles V, was equally interested in driving out the Turks from Hungary, fighting the Moors in Tunisia, getting crowned by the Pope in Bologna, studying the questions of native rights in Peru and Mexico, and evangelizing the islands in the Caribbean.

Luther, imbued with a fanatical hatred against everything non-German, and with a particular dislike for Rome, intended to create a German church of a local character. This bourgeois sentimental idea of a high-strung Augustinian, enveloped in ecstatic Germanism, could never please a Catholic cosmopolitan such as Charles V. Luther’s narrowness was rather aggravated by a frantic emotionalism of which a certain German type (Wagner, Hitler, Novalis) is well capable. He was possessed of a more Slavic than Germanic grudge against Latin clarity and legalism; the meticulous adherence to the iron laws of logic, dry and well-weighted argumentation of a gradual and conclusive nature were alien to him. His whole appearance reminds one rather of a Prussian N.C. officer or of a Slovakian butcher, than of a West German intellectual. His bulging eyes and unkempt hair; his fat neck and bellowing voice; his inordinate love for food, drink, and sex; his coarse speech and eruptive nature are characteristic of certain low-class East Europeans. When he says: “I do not admit that my doctrine can be judged by anyone, not by the angels,” one could almost imagine hearing Hitler speak. His statement that “Reason is contrary to faith” strikes the same Eastern Manichaean note as the declaration that “It is impossible to harmonize faith and reason.”¹⁵⁹ It is the same type of thinking and arguing as Ludendorff’s irrational and poetical Gotteserkenntnis im Blute, “God known in the blood,” and the never expressed but omnipresent suspicion of good National Socialists that abstract brainwork is intrinsically “Jewish.”*

Within the Holy Roman Empire Lutheranism had far-reaching effects. The very essence of the empire, which was necessarily Catholic, was challenged. The spiritual link between the “Roman” emperor and the Protestant princes was naturally weakened and German federalism evolved slowly into separatism. Wars between the Sacra Maiestas Romana and rebellious princes increased in frequency. These provincial chieftains, after the loot of ecclesiastic property, were now considerably richer and more powerful than before, and so, too, their influence in their own countries had gained, thanks to their new role as “heads” of the evangelical churches. The rapid capitalistic development of the Protestant cities, due to the benevolent attitude of Lutheranism and Calvinism toward the taking of interests and dividends, resulted in a financial strengthening of the North and the Northeast. In consequence, defection from the Church came as a tidal wave. While the Catholic Church in England fought a long and hopeless war against the moneybag and the Whigs, lasting almost 150 years, the destruction of Catholicism in northern Germany took hardly two decades. Protestantism had swept the country like wildfire.

The Habsburg dynasty, at that time already rulers of the Empire by heredity, rather than by election, bolstered up their sinking power in Central Europe through the acquisition of two kingdoms by marriage, one within and the other from without the Reich; the annexation of the lands of the Bohemian crown¹⁶⁰ (Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia) strengthened the imperial influence not less than Western Hungary. These countries, together with the Austrian Alpine provinces, formed a coherent domain along the southeast border of the empire. Vienna, situated near the point where the three “hereditary countries” met, increased in importance. It was here and in the neighboring parts of southern and western Germany that German culture continued to flourish after the partial victory of the Reformation. The Northeast was barely Germanized;* even today we find Slavs still speaking their Lusatian vernacular sixty miles from Berlin.

In the North, the Reformation had an asphyxiating effect on further cultural development. But while the South and the “Habsburg hereditary countries,” within and without the Empire, enjoyed the splendor of the Renaissance and the Baroque and the flourishing progress of all the arts under the banner of the Counter Reformation, the northeast section of the country focused its interest onto commerce and the military sciences. Yet the respect of the Germans for the Empire and the imperial idea, in spite even of the Reformation, was not entirely dead. It needed the cooperation of three powers to bring about the downfall of the Holy Roman Empire, the First Reich of the Germans. These powers were Sweden, France, and the traitor in the German midst: Prussia.

It is one of the major tragedies of history that France, the “Oldest Daughter of the Church,” which produced so many great saints (besides many impressive heretics), became the traditional enemy of the Holy Roman Empire and therefore of the German people. France always professed a curious dualistic attitude inasmuch as she considered the spiritual and the political spheres as two distinctly different worlds which had better not mix or get near to each other. While the German delights in the fact, that one idea or ideology penetrates every domain of human activity, the French are too keenly aware of the frailties of the human flesh and despair of ever seeing the “world” completely permeated by the lógos. On the other hand there is little doubt that the German in his overoptimism, and especially the German Catholic, has committed great and fateful blunders which the cautious French have avoided. (One of these blunders, carried out with great enthusiasm, was the establishment of a Catholic Party in the Germanies.)¹⁶¹

Their complete lack of religious loyalty in political matters explains why rulers like Francis I, Louis XIV, and later the two Napoleons, pursued a policy of brutal intrigue against the Holy Roman Empire, fostering all separatistic tendencies within its borders (which meant support for the Protestants) and forming coalitions with Calvinists, Lutherans, and Mohammedans. It is true that Francis I felt “encircled” like William II and considered his wars, waged with the aid of an energetic Pope and Algerian pirates, to be of a defensive nature; but in this game of encirclement the tables were later turned and the coalition between France, the Protestant anti-imperial powers of the North and the great power of the East — first the Islamic Turks and later the Schismatic Russians — became a permanent institution.¹⁶²

The Electorate of Brandenburg became the classical ally of France within the borders of the Empire. This duchy was situated in the Northeastern marshes and was ruled by the Hohenzollerns; it had always been one of the least cultured regions of the imperial dominions and was only superficially Germanized.¹⁶³ The population was nevertheless industrious and laborious, brave as soldiers but lacking “backbone” in social life. The Electors of Brandenburg showed a marked tendency toward absolutism, an inclination they could not live up to because the most important element for a totalitarian state, the middle class, was extremely small and unimportant. The capital, Berlin, was even at the middle of the seventeenth century an insignificant place and nothing but the center of a happy-go-lucky, inefficient feudal state.

Yet the change of the social structure of Brandenburg was to come by the end of the seventeenth century and France was again instrumental in this evolution. Louis XIV gave every imaginable help to the rebellious North German Protestants, and mainly to the Electors of Brandenburg, in order to weaken his great hereditary enemy — the Emperor in Vienna. But in his French affairs he was of an uncompromising strictness in religious matters and his revocation of the Edict of Nantes resulted in a mass emigration of Huguenots. Some of them went to England, Holland, America, and South Africa, but the large bulk fled to Brandenburg where they were enthusiastically welcomed by Frederick William, the “Great Elector,” an uncle by marriage to William III of England.*

The influx of French Huguenots not only strengthened the country commercially but it also gave to it the long desired bourgeois element¹⁶⁴ and in addition a small group of noblemen with great military experience and skill. These Calvinists revolutionized Brandenburg. A powerful state rose now with almost American speed from the monotonous plains along the Polish border, an efficient and ambitious state drilling soldiers, building canals, erecting workshops; Brandenburg thus became a country of shopkeepers and tax collectors, yet it lacked music and sentiment, romance and joy. For decades to come Berlin had a pseudo-French atmosphere, like Bucharest or Belgrade. Theodor Fontane (himself of Huguenot descent) estimated that about fifty per cent of Berliners were French at the beginning of the eighteenth century. There is no doubt that Calvinism, for some time even the religion of the Hohenzollerns, was at least as important as Lutheranism in forming the “Prussian” character and the soul of Berlin.¹⁶⁵

The Electors of Brandenburg not only owed fealty to the Emperor but were also vassals of the kings of Poland in their capacity of dukes of Prussia. They had inherited this duchy, which was to all practical purposes an oversea possession, from the last duke. The Teutonic knights and their grandmaster (a Hohenzollern) had apostasized by 1525, and the latter assumed the title of Duke of Prussia, after having married and founded a local dynasty. These dukes were as little independent of Poland as the grandmasters, and so when the Electors of Brandenburg inherited the duchy it still remained a Polish fief.

Yet the ambitions of Frederick III aimed higher than those of his father, the “Great Elector,” who had been content to be the tyrant of a semifeudal dependency of the empire. Frederick wanted to be a king. It was out of question that a local administrator of the Empire, however important or influential he might be, could assume the royal title which clearly indicated sovereignty of power. But one man found a way out of this dilemma and one order persuaded the Emperor to accept it; the man was Leibnitz and the order, the Society of Jesus.* The solution was that the Margrave-Elector of Brandenburg became king in Prussia, thus unequivocally demonstrating the fact that this title had only a courtesy value within the borders of the Empire.

This new kingdom of Prussia not only shared in the general material “progress” of the Protestant North, but thanks to the proportionally large, ambitious, and puritanical middle class of Calvinistic character, it achieved a leading position. “The practical, the useful, and the necessary alone mattered,” said Constantin Frantz about this new “Prussia.” Frederick I (as Elector Frederick III) was succeeded by King Frederick William I who is generally considered to be the founder of the Prussian bureaucracy. His administration was still largely French. The estates of the nobility were taxed, the principle of obligatory education was layed down, the standing army (supplemented by press gangs) was increased, and the development of the country in the direction of a commercial and military bureaucracy of an industrial type gained momentum. France at this time was still the classical ally. “France is one of our most powerful allies,” wrote Frederick II in his Political Testament** in the year 1752.

The Emperor, limited more and more to his “Hereditary countries,” even though frequently victorious in the numerous wars against Prussia, never definitely gained the upper hand. The Austrians had neither enough ambition nor sufficient grim determination to crush the pitiless enemy who adopted a purely Machiavellian and utilitarian policy. Under Frederick II (who was culturally all through his lifetime a Frenchman)* the old alliance with France went on the rocks, the flow of subsidies stopped, and it was now England who continued to finance and to feed the viper on her bosom. It never pays to support traitors.

Of course there was also genuine admiration for Prussia in northern Europe; Anglo Saxons, impressed by her efficiency and successes, saw in the long drawn-out struggle between the Catholic Emperor and the Protestant King a duel between the two great principles of darkness and light, superstition and enlightenment, backwardness and progress, intolerance and liberality. “Decent” people on the other side of the channel and ocean preferred to back the rotting, syphilitic friend of Voltaire, who was basically an enemy of true Germandom,¹⁶⁶ rather than the benevolent and humorous Empress of Schönbrunn,** and the Napoleonic wars brought a further strengthening of the Prussian position.***

The Polish partitions had in the meantime secured for Prussia the province of Pomerelia (the so-called “Corridor”) and Danzig. Even prior to 1815, solid Prussian territory stretched from the river Elbe to the Lithuanian border. The army was enlarged by the adoption of general conscription, for the adulation of France and her institutions had obviously not ceased. But this army was neither as brilliant, nor as “Prussian,” as some people would have us believe. It was the Archduke Charles of Austria who finally succeeded in beating Napoleon for the first time (at Aspern) and the great “Prussian” military and civil leaders like Gneisenau, Scharnhorst Hardenberg, Blücher, and Stein were without exception non-Prussians. Gneisenau was of Austrian origin, Stein came from Nassau, Hardenberg and Scharnhorst were Hanoverians, Blücher came from Mecklenburg and so did Moltke. The last named was originally a Dane, while Yorck was of English ancestry. Imagination and inventiveness were never great Prussian virtues.

The abdication of Francis II as Holy Roman Emperor, and his assumption of the title of an Austrian Emperor, fortified the Prussian position in spite of her great military defeats. At the Congress of Vienna Prussia was rewarded with the Catholic bishoprics on the Rhine and Austria finally renounced all rights to her possessions north of Switzerland in the vicinity of the French border. Thus the Hohenzollerns of Prussia, in place of the Habsburgs, became the new protectors of the Reich against French aggression. Their new duties involved new rights and aspirations.

The “Reich” had now ceased to exist, but the German League (an inter-German diet with its seat in Frankfort) still gave the impression of some sort of unity. Thirty-five sovereign princes and four imperial cities were represented in that assembly which met regularly under the presidency of the Austrian delegate, who alone had the privilege to smoke during the sessions. The hegemony of the Habsburgs and of Austria was gravely challenged but it was still a profound reality. The “progressive” elements of the Diet (with the exception of the extreme Left) expected the centralistic unification of the Germanies by Prussia and offered the Imperial Crown repeatedly (openly as well as in secret) to Frederick William III and Frederick William IV. The former expressed the view that he would consider it preposterous to accept the German crown (a Holy Roman crown was already out of question in that age of nationalism) as long as the Habsburgs resided in Vienna, and Frederick William IV replied to the delegation headed by Eduard von Simson, that he would accept the dignity only if it would be the expressed wish of the majority of sovereign princes.

The herdist nationalists, who already regarded Austria, on account of her non-Germanic majority, as unfit to lead Germandom, were more active than ever. But historically minded people, with respect for traditions, still refused to consider the Prussians as qualified to assume such an important role. Personally the Prussians were extremely disliked by the Southerners on account of their aggressiveness and boastful character.* The casino in Baden-Baden still had, in 1840, a poster at the entrance saying: “Dogs and Prussians are not admitted.” And the Austro-Bavarian hatred against Prussia is too well known to be explained in detail. Many of the jokes — jokes often not in the least of a kindly nature — against Prussians are similar to those coined in England and on the Continent against the successful entrepreneur type of the Western Hemisphere. Thus the Prussians were not only accused of primitive barbarism but also of possessing the unpleasant attributes of parvenues, a species equally disliked through all the world.¹⁶⁷ Neither did anybody consider the possibility that Austria would ever accept Prussian leadership. Thus the nationalistic herdists dreamt of a “Little German” (kleindeutsch) Empire which would exclude Austria, Vienna, and the Habsburgs. The “Great Germans” (Grossdeutsche) stood for the restoration of the First Reich under the natural domination of Vienna. Many of the conservative Protestants accepted this basically Catholic program.

The fundamental mistake of the national herdists was based upon a thorough misunderstanding of the nature and mission of the German people, whose function is to be just central European and not to form a “Nation” in the Western sense. The marginal races on the periphery may take on unequivocal forms of national existence (without, of course, becoming a prey to odious nationalism), but Germandom, just as the Church, must keep its catholic, universalist, and co-ordinating keynote. The “Prussians,” hardened into an egalitarian monolith, never understood the depth and fullness of the German mission properly, and it was therefore their sad task to distract the Germanies from their true destiny and to become the terrible instrument of the Great German Betrayal through National Socialism, for which the Germans as well as the rest of Europe are now paying so bitter a price.

The “German League” already was a step in the wrong direction. It was a definite break with the idea of the First Reich, yet even the Bund had its supranational aspects. The King of Great Britain was a member of the League due to the fact that he was also the King of Hanover; the Kings of Holland as sovereigns of Luxemburg and the kings of Denmark as dukes of Holstein and Lauenburg participated through their delegates in the activities of the Diet of Frankfort. But the Austrian Emperor as well as the King of Prussia had possessions which were not represented in the League such as Hungary, Galicia, Dalmatia, and on the other side, the two Prussias and Poznan.*

The struggle for supremacy — Austria in a defensive and Prussia in an offensive position — could only be decided through the sword. The fateful year of 1866 brought the decision which paved the way for the establishment of the Second Reich. The intolerable attitude of Prussia forced the German States to unite under Austrian leadership and to enact federal execution against Prussia which sabotaged the Diet of Frankfort. Yet it was the criminal, thanks to his superior armament, and not the legitimate contestant who won the engagements. Prussia defeated the Germanies, and that contrary to the Covenant of the Deutscher Bund, with the help of a foreign power — Italy. The Italians were beaten by the Austrians, yet the division of the Austrian armies as well as the inferiority of the Austrian muzzle loaders (in comparison to the Prussian breech loader) decided the war.

The Prussian army had, in 1866, already introduced the modern breech loader (the “needle rifle”), a technical step forward which the Austrian ministry of war had declined to adopt on account of the fact that the cartridges provided with a small ignition needle frequently exploded during practices. The Prussians, far too Machiavellian to be bothered with the injuries of innocent soldiers during maneuvers, saw the practical advantages only and as true discipline of Bentham provided their armies with this sensitive explosive. The rapid firing of the Prussian troops gave rise to the Austrian expression, So schnell schiessen die Preussen nicht! (“The Prussians do not shoot that fast!”), frequently used to disparage gross exaggerations.

The armies of the other German states (Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg, Saxony, Hessen-Kassel, Hanover) were far too small to resist the Prussian Blitzkrieg. It was not the Prussian army as such which had won the war, but — as later on — the Prussian industrial armament. Austria lost the war largely for the reason of being predominantly an agrarian state. (Today an agrarian state has no chance whatsoever against an industrial state on the battlefield.) Hanover in that war had the same experience; the battle of Langensalza against the Prussians had been almost won when unfortunately her army ran short of ammunition. Modern wars are largely won by mechanics and engineers, not by generals and warriors.

The reader ought to remember in connection with the war of 1866 that Austrians, contrary to general belief, though polite, humorous, musical, and artistic, are not less virile than the North Germans and specially the Prussians. The saying Bella gerant alii, tu felix Austria nube (“Let others wage wars, but you, happy Austria, marry!”) was aimed at the happy policy of the Habsburgs. But through their marital ties they established merely legal titles to foreign countries which usually had to be conquered by brutal power afterward. The marriage of Ferdinand I to the sister of the unlucky King Louis II of Hungary and Bohemia was followed 100 years later by the battle of the White Mountain and 150 years later by Slankamen and Zenta. Austria was distinctly a military — not a militaristic — monarchy, which finally could be broken up only by the spread of herdist identitarian nationalism.¹⁶⁸

It must not be forgotten that many decent-minded Prussians were in 1866 morally shocked by the plans of their government. The Queen in protest against Bismarck’s plans left Berlin and retired to the country. Yet one of the worst parts of the ensuing peace was its dictatorial character and the series of “incorporations.”¹⁶⁹ We see, as in Italy six years before, small dynasties deprived of their thrones and their countries annexed against the will of the population. This was not only the case of Hanover and the Electorate Hesse, but also of Hesse-Nassau and the Free City of Frankfort, whose last burgomaster, Dr. Fellner, a Protestant, committed suicide.* The traditional-conservative elements in the German countries saw clearly the approaching end of a great and sacred tradition,** yet the liberal and progressive circles sensed the beginning of a new dawn, the coming of a centralized “Germany” under identitarian rule.¹⁷⁰

The year 1871 sees the establishment of the Second Reich in Versailles. While a “German Empire” (Deutsches Reich) and a German Emperor (not: Emperor of Germany!) are solemnly proclaimed in the former residence of the absolutistic French monarchs, France herself is on the way to become the Third Republic of moneybags and progressive identitarians.¹⁷¹ From 1866 till 1871 the Church had politically suffered four major defeats: Sadova, Sedan and the establishment of the French Republic, the exclusion of Austria from the Second Reich and the loss of the Papal State. The period immediately following these exterior defeats is characterized also by an inner sterility and stagnation. There was an all-time low of Catholic influence in all spheres of life. National Liberalism (Bismarck’s party too was called “national liberal”), with a distinct, bourgeois, anticlerical, progressive tinge, became the ruling political factor for all of continental Europe.¹⁷²

Parisian France at least produced a decadent, urban culture with men of the type of Toulouse-Lautrec, Zola, Anatole France, Manet, Monet, Cézanne, Maupassant, Verlaine, Rimbaud and Baudelaire, but the Second Reich after its unification became as sterile as Italy after the risorgimento. The cultural production of the Second Reich declined rapidly under the growing Prussianization and actually decreased in the same ratio as the material production increased. Had it not been for Richard Wagner, who fled into the German past, thus building up a German myth which is partly the basis of the more sentimental side of National Socialism, the cultural values of Wilhelminian Germany would definitely be zero.* The mediocre writings of a Suderman and Wildenbruch are hardly worth mentioning. Nietzsche lived in a self-imposed exile in Switzerland. Only the dawn of the twentieth century could bring some improvement.¹⁷³

This cultural sterility passed almost unnoticed on the part of the people who were busy admiring material “progress,” railway stations, bathtubs, and medical laboratories. The billion dollars paid by France to Germany after the war created a commercial boom without parallel. Capitalism begot socialism, a movement which fitted logically into the general picture of the Second Reich. Marx, together with Treitschke, was after all the logical child of Hegel, who in turn was an epigone of Kant and finally also of Descartes. But now we see an increasing worship for collective values. Nietzsche shouting himself hoarse in the solitude of Sils Maria could hardly bring relief nor start a counterrevolution.

Marxism and nationalism coexisted peacefully in the German countries and it was perhaps only a question of time and circumstances when these two ideologies with their fervent admiration for State and Society would merge into one, and National Socialism would arise as a bastard child of Marx and Wagner-Treitschke.

Identitarianism, growing on the Prussian plains, was victorious all along the line. Romanticism, tradition, and diversity were forced to beat a retreat in all sectors. Slowly the Germans assimilated to themselves these new Prussian ideals, even in the South. This assimilation was never, and will never, be complete but it is well known that butlers who spend a lifetime with their masters, accept many of their habits, and it is claimed that they finally resemble them physically. The German tragedy has its parallel in the subjection of China by the Manchus, an efficient, but barbaric people from the northeast corner of the Celestial Empire. The Prussian officials and merchants forced their manners and morals upon the other Germans just as the Manchu Emperors and mandarins forced the pigtail upon the hapless Chinese. And slowly, but assiduously, the Reich was transformed into a mere “state,” into a single and very effective machine, suspicious of everything extraordinary, of everything not conforming to the rules. The Los-von-Rom propaganda, intended to eliminate the Catholics as obstacles in the uniform German picture, and the skillful vexation of minorities — specially the Poles — was calculated to obliterate nationally nonhomogeneous elements.¹⁷⁴ Yet the conservatives protested frequently against this herdist centralism.

In spite of these efforts the federalistic character of the Imperial period of the Second Reich cannot be absolutely denied. The “German Emperor” was just a primus inter pares and soldiers swore allegiance to their respective kings or princes and not to the Emperor. Caricaturists could make fun of the Emperor in Bavaria or Baden, but not in Prussia where he was king. Bavaria as well as Württemberg and Baden also had their own stamps and for some time had a law which forbade the display of the former Imperial flag without the simultaneous display of the Bavarian colors. After 1919 the flying of the Reich flag was for a period altogether forbidden. The larger states (Bavaria, Saxony, Prussia) even had mutual diplomatic representation and this institution was only abolished by the furiously centralistic National Socialists.*

We have discussed the War and the treaty of Versailles before, so that we can now place the Republican Period of the Second Reich under the magnifying glass. It has characteristics similar to the Imperial Period, yet it is a slow and sly transition toward many national-socialist conceptions.¹⁷⁵ The republican constitution of Weimar emphasized and legalized the already existing tendencies and trends of the nineteenth century; this constitution created a Reich even more “progressive,” even more subservient to the postulates of the time. Thus the word Germany — Deutschland — already occurs repeatedly in that pale, soulless, democratic document which later became the frame for the legality of National Socialist Germany. This sad and silly document is, as a matter of fact, still in power, even if supplemented by many “amendments.” Its compiler bore — nomen est omen — the name Dr. Hugo Preuss.

William II went to Holland in exile, his Jewish friend, Albert Ballin, committed suicide,** but the commercial-financial-industrial character of the Reich was preserved. Centralism made further progress and it would have engulfed Germany completely, had not Alpine and royalist Bavaria defended her prerogatives most vigorously. In the cultural sense “Germany” was now most active, probably more so than any other European country at that time. But this postwar culture, a child of the inhuman suffering of the preceding years, was the most degenerate product of the large cities in the North, a real Asphaltkultur, as the Germans called it. This new culture and civilization, expressed in an architectonic style, in music, literature, films, plays, poems, essays and painting, was in itself a “perfect” thing. It could frequently boast of the highest artistic level. Whoever has seen the “Beggars Opera” (Dreigroschenoper) in the German film version or the “Blue Angel,” with Marlene Dietrich and Emil Jannings, knows, that these products of a strongly leftist culture were, in spite of their distorted ideological point of view, of the utmost perfection. The only consolation one could derive from this state of affairs was, that the Catholics were forced to abandon their traditional lethargy and to fight this really superb diabolism.

Yet from the first it was evident to everybody possessing a deeper insight that the great leftist Kultur of Berlin, Hamburg, and Breslau was condemned to death on account of its fundamental morbidity, its negative aspects and suicidal elements. Artistic importance alone cannot give moral justification to a culture; it has to stand for final moral and eternal values or will die. The sadness and despair of the Asphaltkultur was depressing to such a degree, that no popular enthusiasm could be aroused for this monstrous outgrowth from the depths of modern city life.

There was something sinister and menacing about these plays, dealing with abortions, sexual aberrations, and suicides. Even the drawings in the funny papers, which all stood for a definite Weltanschauung, were incredibly foul in their human simplicity, cynicism, and sloppiness. A considerable sector of urban Germandom accepted Leftism with a fervor and grim determination which quickly reduced this ideology to absurdity. Yet it was all done with solemn bitterness and an almost religious conviction. The products of Anglo-Saxon parlor pinks are amusing and grotesque, but the student of German cultural Leftism loses rapidly his sense of humor when looking in that gorgonic mirror. One must remember that there was still the dark shadow of a war brooding over the German scene and the Left redrew and reinterpreted this war in the gloomiest colors. There was terror and uneasiness in the cities. And in the background there was the menace of communism made into a living reality by a truly class-conscious proletariat.

The conception of a dictatorship of the proletariat never penetrated deeply into the conscience of Anglo-Saxon Leftism. The Pinks and Reds on this side of the Channel and the Atlantic always dreamt of a proletariat elevated to the level of a genuine middle class. They were far too bourgeois to visualize anything else.¹⁷⁶ Nothing of that kind existed in the Germanies. The German Communist proletarians desired to remain proletarians forever. Genuine efforts were made to study the possibilities to create an exclusively proletarian culture which, of course, like the capitalistic culture, was intended to be based upon mass production, mass life, and mass emotion.*The ardent desire to give up one’s own personality is apparent in most urban movements.

The flight of William II to Holland was in fact the signal for a general tiredness of personality and responsibility. People were actually prepared to hand over their fate and the shaping of their personalities to groups or group leaders.¹⁷⁷ The famous Führerprinzip — principle of leadership — as understood in the modern, national-socialist sense, is just another aspect of mass collectivism.¹⁷⁸ Only the very superficial spectator will see in it any traces of medieval patriarchalism.¹⁷⁹

The conservative powers in the meantime were not entirely asleep. They felt subconsciously that they were fighting a losing battle against the collective tide. Their writers, essayists, and thinkers were frequently people of the highest order and their publications (today confiscated or nazified) were excellent.

Yet the German Right made the same mistake as most British Conservatives, i.e., they saw in nationalism (in any nationalism) a rightist movement. Another of their blunders was to accept militarism (and conscription) as conservative and laudible institutions, forgetful of the fact that such a great aristocrat and conservative as Leo XIII had attacked these institutions violently. The Prussian Junkers (landed gentry and aristocracy) who had provided the Prussian army with so many able officers had acted against the interests of their class, a mistake of which some of them became aware as late as 1938 or 1939.* The Prussian army had only too often fought for the interests of merchants and traders, always eager for raw materials and customers, and the aspirations of the most bloodthirsty of all classes — the urban, lower middle class, the backbone of the negative “Modern State.” The Rightists are paying now, all over the world, the same heavy toll for their superstitious belief in nationalism and militarism as the liberal Leftists were paying for their blind belief in Moscow. Yet the mistake of the Rightists is more tragic because they represent the best European tradition whereas the liberal Leftists usually recruited themselves from the ranks of the “brilliant” half educated. (“Brilliancy” and half education are indeed the hall marks of our megalopolitan civilization.)

Germany of the postwar era, though marching toward a definite doom, was somehow in limbo. It was neither fish nor flesh.¹⁸⁰ Yet suspense and compromise are things which Germany will never be able to bear. We have already hinted at the fact that negative western ideas have in Central Europe the same mortal effect as measles on the American Indians. The two great western revolutions — the French and the Industrial Revolution — demanded ultimate, logical conclusions and a deepening process which only Germany was able to supply.

There is a great kernel of truth in what Peter Viereck says about the German reaction toward alien ideals: “The perennial German rebel against ‘French ideas’ unconsciously retains many of their essentials. When he fancies he is fighting them most fiercely, he often only readjusts them to German needs. The most unbeatable German reply to a western revolution has always been not conservatism but an even more radical German revolution.” (“Metapolitics.” New York, 1941, p. 56.)

One cannot close the chapter on the Second Reich without mentioning the German Jew. The world over, Hebrews have been portrayed by their enemies as monsters of diabolical shrewdness and perspicacity, and all through history they showed themselves to be experienced schemers and organizers of small plans and to have a great ability in the achievement of immediate ends. Yet they have always upset their many little gains by gigantic blunders. The farseeing Jew is almost as rare as the happy Jew. The greatest opportunity ever given to any nation by God they let go by. In propria venit et sui eum non receperunt, “He came unto His own and His own received Him not,” laments St. John the Evangelist.

The Jews practically always backed the wrong horse. The Jews of Russia who worked for the destruction of monarchy found themselves finally in the grips of a brutal religious persecution which hit them harder than the Christians.* Their most brilliant exponents among the Communists were exiled, slaughtered, or assassinated in exile. The fate of Trotzki is symbolic for Russian Jewry. The Jews, with their ardent sympathies for the Soviet Union, had the same grim awakening when they learned of the Stalin Hitler pacts as the Spanish Jews who had backed the Moors instead of the Christians. Every great Jewish enterprise ended in tragedy, and they made a mistake of unparalleled magnitude when in their idealism they favored “democracy” in Central Europe after the breakdown of the Central Powers.

The strongly Christian background of European monarchy had admittedly some anti-Jewish associations of a religious, but never of a racial order.* Yet the social, not to mention the political position of the Jews in Central Europe, was far superior to that of the Jews in present-day America. No hotel in pre-Hitlerian days would have dared to display a sign “For Gentiles Only.”** The discrimination against baptized Jews was negligible. Neither did Count Witte’s Jewish wife ruin his career in Russia, nor did Anton Rubinstein’s Jewish race prevent his being publicly embraced by the enthusiastic Emperor Nicholas I, nor yet did Prince-Archbishop Cohn’s Jewish descent prevent him from getting the See of Olmütz, or Baron Samuel Hazai’s ancestry render his position as General and Hungarian Minister of War untenable. Yet the (rapidly vanishing) remnants of discrimination against the Jews prompted them nevertheless to hope for more advantages from an ochlocratic order; thus they supported the “democratic” and socialist parties almost unanimously*** and were also the first to extend a peaceful hand to the Allies. Both these actions sealed their fate in the Germanies. Their tragic mistakes consisted largely in their ignoring the fact that they were a tiny minority — 0.9 per cent of the population of the Second Reich. Since ochlocracy is basically a rule of the majority it means automatically the ruin of minorities unless a strong liberal tradition prevails. (We have mentioned this before as the reason why the minority problem became so acute in Central Europe after the “democratization” of that area.)¹⁸¹With William II the German Jews lost the last guarantee of their personal rights. A hierarchic form of government is, so far as minorities are concerned, always preferable to an identitarian state. Farseeing people are fully aware of that.

Five years ago, during the Nordic Socialist Congress in Copenhagen, the Finnish delegate deplored the fact that Finland was not a monarchy, considering this type of state as the best guarantee for a stable constitution as well as for the well-being of political minorities. The German Jews depended thus, after 1919, entirely upon the good will of millions of “individuals” with opinions almost exclusively molded by press and propaganda, instead, as hitherto, upon a gentleman who had sworn allegiance to a constitution. Once an anti-Jewish party with its satellites gained 51 per cent of all votes their disaster was inevitable. And this is exactly what happened.¹⁸²

The Berliner Asphaltkultur, promoted by many Jews, could never have had a far-flung, popular appeal. Intellectualistic trends and ideologies without the simplicities and platitudes of an idée claire have few prospects in an ochlocracy which stands for the rule of the nonintellectual multitudes. The little bourgeoisie as well as the peasants disliked this new megalopolitan culture for different reasons. The hatred of the small bourgeoisie was even more intense because this layer had repeatedly to come into intimate contact with the culture of the Neue Sachlichkeit.* They aimed at a herdism of a more suburban type.

When Marlene Dietrich sang her famous song, “Alone in a big city,” expressing the whole despair and loneliness of the godless straphanger, it was apparent that the old, déraciné Leftism of the Lonely Intellectuals had come to an end. The shadows of the Red Flag with Hammer and Sickle, which had menaced Berlin for such a long time, disappeared, and in its place rose the Red Flag with the Crooked Cross.

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*Elections of the Holy Roman (i.e., German) Emperor were events of world-wide significance. See, for instance, Garrett Mattingly, Catherine of Aragon, pages 202–203.

**Yet the Jewish fall seems to be rather of a spiritual-theological than of an intellectual-characteriological nature as in the case of the Germans.

**See also: What to Do With Germany, by Colonel T. H. Minshall (London, 1941), where we find an excellent revindication of the original universalist German character.

*Yiddish is nothing but a form of Medieval German with additional Hebrew, Slavic, and Latin words. It shares with German a great flexibility and inner freedom. German is not in vain the richest European language, a magnificent instrument of expression standing in its character nearest to Russian. Nothing is easier than translating from any European language into German, nothing more difficult than translating from a rich and personal German into another idiom.

**This explains the mutual dislike of certain Britishers and Americans. Similarity (caricature!) lies at the bottom of this antagonism.

***See the witty analysis of man and dog in Thorstein Veblen’s “Theory of the Leisure Class.”

* The other part of the secret is the rare combination of imagination and organization.

** The North German commercial traveler is indeed a highly unpleasant species of the homo germanicus. He displays a high-pressure salesmanship which beats even his American colleague. Max Scheler in his Über die Ursachen des Deutschenhasses, published in 1917, has a difficult job in defending the German commis voyageur.

*** Austria Hungary was engaged in seven “foreign” wars. If we do not count the War of Secession as a “war,” we must equally cancel the so-called Prusso-Austrian war of 1866 which was an inter-German war on the basis of a Federal Execution of practically all German states under Austrian leadership against rebellious Prussia on account of her defiance of the Frankfort Diet.

* The Germans, who live in the Sudeten mountains and in the hills of the Böhmerwald, were not affected. The “racial” character of this Czech movement was very pronounced.

Hussitism celebrated its “revival” in October and November, 1918, when the Austro-Hungarian monarchy broke down. Czechs left the Catholic Church out of sheer patriotism and anti-Catholic propaganda had the full support of the Government. Almost half a million people joined the “democratic” Neo-Hussite Church. Even a statue of our Lady was demolished as “symbol of Austrian domination.” Catholicism was accused of being a Germanic religion!

It is in connection with Hussitism that the Adamites appeared on the scene in fifteenth-century Bohemia. They were strongly communistic, practised nudity and community of women. They became finally a menace to the Taborite wing of the Hussites and Žižka had to persecute them with the same brutality as he did the Catholics.

* Luther, who seemed to be friendly toward the Jews in the earlier part of his life developed later an unmitigated antijudaism. The violence of his language reminds one strongly of Julius Streicher’s writings and pamphlets.

* This has nothing to do with the Limes-theory of Mr. Hilaire Belloc or Professor Götz Briefs. The gist of this theory is roughly the following one: only countries that stood under Roman domination were able to withstand the seducing voice of the Reformers. Only the discipline of the Roman background was able to keep the flock in the sheepfold.

Yet if we study the facts we see that this theory hardly holds good. There are the Catholic Highlanders in Scotland, the Catholic Irish, the Catholic Westphalians and Ermelanders, the Catholic Czechs, Slovakians, Transylvanian Magyars, Ruthenians, Lithuanians, Latgalians, North Bavarians, and West Hanoverians. On the other hand we have the Protestant English, West and North Swiss, Wuerttembergians, the Mohammedan Albanians and Bosnians, the Huguenots, the Albigenses and Mohammedan North Africa.

** Cf. Rudolf Nadolny’s Germanisierung oder Slawisierung (Berlin, 1928). This author, a German diplomat, repeatedly defended the thesis that the difference between Prussians and Czechs is merely accidental (linguistic) and not “racial.”

* The “Great Elector” had spent his youth in Holland and when William of Orange invaded England his uncle’s soldiers helped him to subdue that unfortunate island.

It is important to remember that France’s (and later on England’s) foreign help given to the traitorous Brandenburgians and Prussians is a matter which is not strongly emphasized in German textbooks. While English Catholics remained loyal to their non-Catholic ruler in the period of Spanish “aggression” the German Protestants never hesitated to make use of foreign assistance against their Emperor. Even the most nationalistic Protestants do not blush when they worship Gustavus Adolphus and the anniversary of his death is celebrated in Protestant Churches. On the tricentenary of the Battle of Lützen (1932) the German Army and German authorities commemorated the day of German defeat and Protestant victory in all solemnity. It would be interesting to see the reaction of the British public if Catholics would celebrate the coronation of Philip II! The popular forgery of English history is a pious little fraud in comparison to the gross, fantastic, and shameless misinterpretation — Umdeutung as they call it — of German history.

* The Prussian Kings were grateful to the Jesuits for their intervention. Frederick II, as it appears from his Political Testament (page 32 of the 1920 edition by Dr. Volz), feared nevertheless the Jesuits, and considered them to be pro-Austrian. Yet noblesse oblige. When the order was dissolved in 1773 Prussia and Russia alone refused to proclaim the dissolution, and thus these two “provinces” of the Society were able to survive the interregnum. It was the privilege of the bourgeois parliamentarian German government of 1872 to exile the Jesuits. One sees that Royal Prussia was in some respects more liberal than England in the eighteenth century and the same can be said about the Russian autocracy.

** Page 44, edition of 1920, edited by Dr. G. B. Volz.

* Otto Forst de Battaglia in his Blut und Erbe shows that the overwhelming majority of Frederick’s ancestors were French. Frederick II never spoke German properly. He used either French or a lingua franca containing French and German elements. His German spelling was deplorable as it was fantastic. Like Friedrich Nietzsche he hated and despised Germans and worshiped everything French. Like Nietzsche he is also one of the great Nazi heroes. Carlyle admired him without reservation.

** One witnessed frequently the most amazing reaction of “average” Anglo Saxons who were delighted by their political impressions collected in Germany. The gist of their experience was the cleanliness of public conveniences, the punctuality of trains and the quality of the super highways. French tourists who are more critical were less often fooled by the material aspects than certain American aeromechanics who cannot distinguish between material and moral issues.

Professor Brogan writes: “Britain has regarded the unification of Germany under Prussia (once it was achieved) with approval; it spread Protestant civilization over a wider area and was in tune with the spirit of the age. It was; but that spirit was already different from what the optimistic Victorians thought. As John Stuart Mill saw, the victory of Prussia was no matter for rejoicing among Liberals. But the illusions of 1866 were still lively in 1919.” (Italics ours.) France Under the Republic (1870-1939), New York 1940, page 556.

*** This Kingdom of Prussia was naturally rather Brandenburgian than Prussian, rather Berlinian than Königsbergian. The real Prussian (frequently a South German colonist) is far more attractive than the Berlinian petit bourgeois, who is one of the most evil representatives of Northern Germany. (The aborigenes of Prussia, on the other side, the Pruzzi, who worshiped their gods Pompillos and Perkunos and not Wotan or Donnar, were relatives of the Latvians and Lithuanians. Their language became extinct at about the same time as Cornish.)

If we refer from now on to Prussians or to the process of Prussianization we mention these terms only in connection with the Kingdom of Prussia as a whole. Protestantism, Militarism, Bourgeoisism, Democratism, Technicism are rather Berlinian and megalopolitan than East Prussian and agrarian — apart from the fact that the whole Ermeland in East Prussia is Catholic. So is one full third of Danzig.

*This is nothing else but the advertising and propagating character of Commercial Man who has something to sell.

* The Eastern Borders of the German League were exactly those of the Holy Roman Empire.

* Not every conservative and “Great German” was a Catholic. Saxony, Württemberg, and Hanover were more or less Protestant countries. The Royal House of Saxony is also Catholic although the country is 96 per cent Protestant.

** A description of the highly social-minded character of the early German Conservative Party can be found in Dr. Oscar Stillich’s Die Politischen Parteien in Deutschland, “I. Die Konservativen,” pp. 111–125. Its great doctrinary leader in the sixties was a baptized Jew, Julius Stahl.

* Richard Wagner as well as Cosima Wagner were both violently anti-Jewish. See Ernest Newman’s Wagner Biography. Vol. III, pp. 284–287. (New York, 1941.)

Wagner’s son-in-law, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, was the greatest protagonist of antisemitism early in this century. (Die Grundlagen des 19. Jahrhunderts). See also Richard Wagner’s Das Judentum in der Musik.

* A fair evaluation of civil liberties in the Imperial Period of the Second Reich can be found in Alonzo Taylor’s Germany Past and Present (New York: Farrar and Rinehart), a useful small booklet. See also Martin Gumpert, Hölle im Paradies, Stockholm, 1939, pp. 79–80.

** Whatever faults William II (or most other European monarchs) had, they could hardly be blamed with racial prejudices as our American middle class. Pushkin, who served in the Imperial guards as officer, would probably have been as a quarteroon a humble bootblack or a redcap in Pennsylvania station had he been born in the United States. Dumas Pére would have been in the same boat as his octoroon son.

* Yet the Socialists and Communists considered the Weimar-Republic a good period of transition. They had not forgotten that it might provide them, as their ideologists expected, with a good framework for the dictatorship of the proletariat. Friedrich Engels had written in his Bürgerkrieg in Frankreich: “Die demokratische Republik ist die spezifische Form für die Diktatur des Proletariats.” The “usefulness” of the “democratic Republic” was emphasized in practically every Parteitag of the Socialists.

* This optic delusion was also the reason for the disastrous cooperation between Conservatives (Deutschnationale) under Hugenberg and the National Socialist. Many of the former had to pay with their lives (like Edgar Jung) for their tragic mistake. Again we see here the pathetic error of the upper classes in accepting the role of clercs. Often it is better and nobler to decline to serve the General Will and to perish.

The most grotesque decision was probably made when the extreme right of the benches was allotted to the National Socialists in the Reichstag. They should have been seated between the Communists and the Independent Social Democrats.

*Orthodox Jews have an endless number of religious laws which renders their participation in modern, industrial life impossible without committing grave sins. Jews are forced in the USSR to eat nonkosher food in the factory canteens, to work on Saturdays, to touch money on Saturdays, etc.

* One should really speak in that connection of Anti-Judaism rather than of Anti-semitism. Anti-Judaism was religious and not racial. Its roots may be found in Rome, Vienna, and Paris. Antisemitism which is “racial” emanates from Berlin, Nuremberg, and New York. As a biological tendency it is far more fatal and final. Like every other materialistic view its logical conclusion is extermination and not conversion.

** Franz Neuman affirms rightly in his Behemoth (New York, 1942, p. 121) that the Germans are the least antisemitic of all people. Martin Gumperts (Hölle im Paradies, Stockholm, 1939, p. 38) shares his views. All this in spite of Luthers viciously antisemitic pamphlets.

*** A non-Jew like Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi prophesied that they would be the future aristocracy of Pan-Europe but intelligent Jews like Uriel Birnbaum saw clearly the coming catastrophe.

* The Neue Sachlichkeit (New Matter of Factness) was the self-arrogated name of the Modern German Republic Culture. It postulated that modern man live a life of simplicity. He should act according to the principles of usefulness. His existence should be carefully planned, but be neither ornamental nor romantic. Everything done should serve a definite material purpose. Neither emotions nor the supernatural should guide the “individual” who is definitely a mere fragment of the masses.

The Neue Sachlichkeit as well as national socialism have Jeremiah Bentham as a common ancestor. Yet while the Neue Sachlichkeit fought every sentimentality in the name of utilitarianism we see national socialism putting sentimental values into the service of utilitarian actions as a means to an end.