II. World War II

“Humanity without Nationality is empty, nationality without humanity is blind.” — Werner Sombart, Vom Menschen.

TODAY every war is a “Holy War.” Engaging a large part of the population it necessarily becomes a crusade. It is possible, of course, that money interest brought the United States into the last war.* And yet — the thousands of Americans who volunteered for the Allies and those who were conscripted but fought with enthusiasm, believed firmly that they were fighting a crusade for the sacred ideal of “democracy” whose acceptance would be a benefit to every single nation in the world. In spite of this mistake it was nevertheless an idealism of the highest order which prompted these men and boys to offer their lives for the cause. Even if it were true that materialistic reasons were behind the declaration of war by the United States, these reasons were not the ones which fired the nation into action. There is no doubt that our time bred men pretty near to the type of the homo oeconomicus, but this monster exists nevertheless only as an approximation and not as a reality. Nobody wants to risk or to lay down his life for a 10 per cent increase in wages or an additional bonus along with the old-age pension.**

It is only too frequent that we see our historians laboriously engaged in research work trying to find “economic reasons” for the process of history. When John Green, Ph.D., faces the crusades he is aware that he himself would not fight for the Holy Sepulcher. His preoccupation with his salary and unpaid gas bills render him materially minded and therefore he will continue his research until he makes the discovery that a Venetian smith, specialized in swords, was married to a woman whose brother had a mistress whose uncle in turn drank wine with the butler of a Roman Cardinal who undoubtedly persuaded Urban II to start the crusades. His discovery (which makes “sense” of an otherwise senseless chapter of history) will be heralded as sensational and influence his colleagues in continuing their efforts to find the real reasons for the different historical phenomena behind the mask of religious superstition, patriotic hypocrisy, ideological pretense, and dynastic make-believe.

Yet there is an ideological element in every total war (if not for any other reasons, then simply because there are no two nations with exactly the same philosophy of life) and this ideological element is predominant in the present struggle. The economic problems could somehow have been patched up, and it is clear that no responsible statesman plunges a country into a war merely because he owns a few armament shares. Such monsters who readily and consciously sacrifice millions of lives for hard cash exist almost exclusively in the phantasy of Bolsheviks (apart from a few individual cases which can be counted on the fingers.)

It was a very marked concession to the spirit of the twentieth century when Hitler appealed to his nation to fight (amongst other reasons) for raw materials. The reason of this appeal was to create a general impression in the German people that their country was one of the “have-nots” aspiring merely to economic equality. Thus we see clearly that National Socialism has already accepted the Marxian theory of class struggle by which the Proletarian strives to overthrow the rule of the “bourgeois.” In order to achieve this goal, a dictatorship of the proletariat is necessary, a dictatorship made possible by a preceding revolution. The Third Reich, representing a nation of “have-nots” (or rather of “have-less”), enters now into the revolutionary phase which in its national collectivistic form is simply called “war.” The conquest of Europe by Germany is nothing else but the dictatorship of the “proletariat.”

Yet the economic aspirations of the Third Reich — in the very intention of its leaders — are thoroughly subordinated to the idea of power and domination, in short: to the imperialistic aims. The National Socialists only want an economically strong and independent (autarchic) country in order to have political power, military strength and an absolute liberty of action. They do not care in the least whether the individual Herr Schmidt or Frau Krause have butter or margarine on their bread. The economic issue in relation to the individual stomach is therefore purely secondary. Private enterprisers in Germany were not in the least enthusiastic about this war. Economic reasons on the side of the Allies, though weighty, were hardly sufficient to risk the life of practically all of British and French manhood, and womanhood. The Third Reich could have organized the worst export dumping the world over and no British or French Prime Minister would have had the backing of their respective nations to engage in a war on such an issue. Even the total loss of all foreign trade would not have led to the third of September, 1939.

The imperialistic aims again were clearly the outcome of the philosophy accepted by the Third Reich. It would be a fatal mistake to believe that this order of subordination — putting economics under political imperialism under philosophy — exists in the reverse. Only that fearful imaginary savage, the homo oeconomicus can perceive such a perverted situation.²⁶⁸

(The homo oeconomicus is certainly not a “progressive” mirage in the evolutionary sense. Only the beast is economical through and through. A dog, a rat, or a hyena come nearest to this conception. They would not fight for anything else but sex, food, and shelter. It is the homo sapiens who dies for ideas and traditions, for religions and philosophies).

American public opinion was deeply agitated before the attack on Pearl Harbor by the issue of isolationism versus interventionism; some “isolationists” on the East coast charged that their opponents belonged predominantly to the wealthy classes of old stock and British descent, an accusation which was not entirely without foundation in the section mentioned. Yet if it is true that isolationism was stronger in the lower income brackets one can only be struck by the thoroughly uneconomical, idealistic, and “sentimental” attitude of a nation frequently accused of gross materialism. It must have been evident to the beati possidentes that a war would mean for them an almost disastrous taxation, death of their young men, a stronger hold of the New Deal and more curtailing state intervention in the economic life hitherto largely controlled by them. The “lower” classes, on the other hand, could hope for more employment, bigger wages, and a higher standard of living in case of America being involved in a “foreign” war. But the hatred of the whiggish upper ten for Hitler, the attachment to the land which gave them Milton and Shakespeare and tombstones to their own ancestors made them act against their economic interest while other ties, equally sentimental, and bitter memories influenced equally large layers of the American Nation in the opposite direction.

The German case shows clearly the desire for a “bigger and better” Reich, sprung from National Socialist doctrine, and it also demonstrates that the conception of a bigger Germany is inseparable from the dogma of racial superiority due to the fact that a bigger Reich involves the domination of non-Germans by Germans²⁶⁹ — for a period of transition, well understood. It would be a grave underestimate of the coercive power of ideas among (in a “closed” sense) logical and (in a broad sense) religious nations, if one would attempt to deny their priority of thought. The principle to live first and to philosophize afterward they left to the more materialistic and practical nations.

There is little if any permanent* sacrifice of these sacred ideological principles in the German World and no greater compromise may be expected from this totally heretical ideology — National Socialism; this is so in spite of the fact that every digression would be “justified” if it would only momentarily benefit the nation. In this unfortunate philosophy we find incorporated the age-old, tragically German Machiavellian spirit as personified by Hagen von Tronje in the Nibelungen Saga. But “what profits the people is right” reminds one strongly of Jeremiah Bentham. The Communists are also convinced Benthamists and each time the Kremlin made a compromise with capitalist concepts, the whole western world considered it as a sure sign that Soviet Russia had given up its “struggle against human nature.” And all these wishful thinkers were each time bitterly disappointed because the Soviet Union made, for each step in their direction, two in the other.

It is questionable whether the Russo-German pact was just one of these Benthamite escapades of the two totalitarian Empires. It may have had a far deeper sense and meaning than that of a mere act of expediency. At work, no doubt, was also the old geopolitical law: “The neighbor of my neighbor is my friend,” and we have to ask ourselves whether the disappearance of Poland was not destined to affect the peaceful cooperation of these two superdemocracies. But at that time the cooperation of the Third German and the Third Russian Reich** was a natural combination, and Peter Drucker in his End of Economic Man prophesied it five years ago. Only the wishful thinkers who saw the Germanies in the clutches of a “rightist” and “reactionary” ideology could not conceive this joining of hands with the “greatest democracy” in the world. The Third Reich is no less an ochlocracy than Russia. Mass man, against all expectations and calculations, celebrated his great victories East and not West of the Rhine.²⁷⁰

The result of the unholy alliance, at that time, between the German Republic* and the Soviet Republic has been seen. The similarity of their respective ideologies was not a sure guarantee of such a union. Communism and National Socialism are at the same time too similar (at heart) and too dogmatic not to cause the wrath of their court philosophers who will see in their opponents dangerous heretics. The popes would never have permitted schismatic bishops to reside in the Holy City, yet they hardly objected to the presence of Jewish rabbis. The desire in Berlin and in Moscow was to influence each other and this led to frictions and intrigues. And there was even more explosive material in the non-ideological (i.e., in the geopolitical) sphere. The clash between these two powers could thus be delayed but not avoided.

The ideologies of both Third Empires, arising from ochlocratic democratism, were foreseen with uncanny clearness by Alexis de Tocqueville, the great aristocratic French liberal, 110 years ago. Yet the forms of thought, life, and existence which, reversing the order, now demoniacally menace the West from their strongholds in the East, must be combated by those nations who have attained a certain immunity in this disease. Originally it was England and America (and France) who spread it, but now they know better and begin to see more clearly. These communitarian, herdist ideologies are nothing but gigantic exaggerations and distortions of their teachings, so great that the average citizen of these countries is unable to see the connection and therefore considers them derived from their old bogeys, “reaction” and “medievalism.” This error is, in a way, a very happy one. Otherwise a certain, very misplaced tenderness might arise in these people for their gargantuan, philosophical “grandchildren.” English and a great deal of misguided (and miseducated) American public opinion would be filled with uncertainty and uneasiness should it ever become clear that “communism” has it roots firmly in doctrines preached in this country as well. The Second and Third German and Russian Empires as well as the present, terrible war would not exist if it were not for the preceding progressive excesses of such phenomena as:

1. The Lutheran and the Petrinian “reform.”

2. The influence of the French and Industrial Revolutions.

3. Militarism, Nationalism, Capitalism, Socialism: all derived from No. 2.

4. The establishment of philosophical, political parties and ideological Parliaments.

5. The breakdown of the Christian monarchical idea and system.

6. The rise of the modern, déraciné megalopolis with its herdism.

7. The pseudo-scientific attitude toward man.

Needless to emphasize, all these trends were and are considered to be “progressive” and all these tendencies have always been bitterly assailed by the Church, who therefore was ridiculed and attacked by all those who now, in the West, ache under the sinister menace of the satanical synthesis of all their heresies. Today it is slowly dawning upon the minds of those who had misjudged the issues and, it must be said in all fairness, that there always was a minority in Continental Europe which was able to “see” or at least to “sense” the outcome. The effect of a candlelight in a dark room might be instanced in explanation of this minority of upright men of good will and good judgment. Under ordinary conditions such a light penetrates the darkness and can be perceived from the remotest corner of the room. In the Germanies (and in Russia) this light might be even more conspicuous, more shining, more brilliant than in other places, but the ferocious, smoky darkness is nevertheless far more impenetrable. Only if we move to the very center of the room can we touch the flame and feel its warmth on the outstretched hand. It will be necessary for the enemies — are they really enemies? — of the Third Empires to smash the windows, let the smoke escape, and make the room habitable once more. This operation is not only necessary for Germany but for the rest of Europe and the entire world. It is a tragic fact that the country which was once the Holy Roman Empire, the great physical heart of Christendom, must be saved by the “secular” realms.²⁷¹

The prophecy of Count de Tocqueville concerning the advent of the identitarian horrors should be read in full. It should have been a warning for all those who have been playing with the dangerous toys — identity and uniformity — ages ago. His warning was never listened to and one can almost hear the mass of hommes médiocres exclaim in unison 107 years before our time: “Vous exagérez! Vous exagérez!” He wrote:

I had remarked during my stay in the United States that a democratic state of society, similar to that of the Americans, might offer singular facilities for the establishment of despotism; and I perceive upon my return to Europe, how much use had already been made by most of our rulers of the notions, the sentiments, the wants engendered by this same social condition, for the purpose of extending the circle of their power. This led me to think that the nations of Christendom would perhaps eventually undergo some sort of oppression like that which hung over several nations of the ancient world. A more accurate examination of the subject, and five years of further meditations have not diminished my apprehensions, but they have changed the object of them. No sovereign ever lived in former ages so absolute or so powerful as to undertake to administer, by his own agency and without the assistance of intermediate powers, all the parts of a great empire; none ever attempted to subject all his subjects indiscriminately to strict uniformity of regulation, and personally to tutor and direct every member of the community. No notion of such an undertaking ever occurred to the human mind and if any man had conceived it the want of information, the imperfections of the administrative system and above all the natural obstacles caused by the inequalities of conditions, would speedily have checqued the execution of so vast a design. When the Roman emperors were at the height of their power the different nations of the empire still preserved their manners and customs of great diversity. Although they were subject to the same monarch most of the provinces were separately administered; they abounded in powerful and active municipalities and although the whole government of the empire was centered in the hands of the emperor alone and he always remained, upon occasions, the supreme arbiter in all matters, yet the details of social life and private occupations lay for the most part beyond his control. The Emperors possessed, it is true, an immense and unchecked power which allowed them to gratify all their whimsical tastes and to employ for that purpose the whole strength of the state. They frequently abused that power arbitrarily to deprive their subjects of property or life; their tyranny was extremely onerous to the few, but it did not reach the greater number; it was fixed to some few main objects and neglected the rest; it was violent but its range was limited.

But it would seem that, if despotism were to be established among the democratic nations of our days, it might assume a different character; it would be more extensive and more mild; it would degrade men without tormenting them. I do not question that in an age of instruction and equality like our own, sovereigns might more easily succeed in collecting all political power into their own hands, and might interfere more habitually and decidedly within the sphere of private interests, than any sovereigns of the antiquity ever could do. . . .

I think then, that the species of oppression by which democratic nations are menaced is unlike anything which ever before existed in the world; our contemporaries will find no prototype of it in their memories. I am trying myself to choose an expression which will accurately convey the whole of the idea I have formed of it, but in vain; the old words despotism and tyranny are inappropriate; the thing itself is new; and since I can not name it, I must attempt to define it.

I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world. The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. . . . Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications, and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood; it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and arbiter of that happiness: it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances — what remains but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living? Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these things: it has predisposed men to endure them and often to look on them as benefits.

After having successfully taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned them at will the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the network of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided: men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting: such a power does not destroy but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize but it compresses, ennervates, extinguishes, and stupifies people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd. . . .

. . . I believe that it is easier to establish a despotic government among a people in which the conditions of society are equal than among any other; and I think that if such a government were once established among such a people, it would not only oppress men, but would eventually strip each of them of several of the highest qualities of humanity. Despotism therefore appears to me peculiarly to be dreaded in democratic ages. I should have loved freedom, I believe, at all times, but in the time in which we live I am ready to worship it. — (Democracy in America, “Influence of democratic opinions and sentiments upon political society,” Trans. by Henry Reeve, New York, 1899.)²⁷²

This gives, in short, a characteristic of the enemy against whom the United Nations have to wage a war, an enemy who is slightly less subtle in his methods than M. de Tocqueville dared dream. He refers twice to the mildness of that coming regime and at first this seems to impair the value of this astonishing prophecy. Neither Moscow nor Berlin excel in mildness, and yet de Tocqueville’s “mistake” is only due to a different timing. He envisages the advent of the efficient ant state at a period when the nations of the Christian world are already thoroughly uniformistic and identitarian. Such a state can — in his opinion — only come into existence when everybody follows the same political creed and shares the same taste, the same outlook on life, etc. Such conditions in absolute perfection are still rare and they are even more unlikely in historical countries with divergent traditions and class distinctions. We have referred to the example of the plebiscites in the hotels of Berlin and New York. Yet countries like the Germanies or Russia are still far from the perfect political uniformity of New York and therefore brutal force has to be applied. There is no reason why one should hesitate to believe that once the total uniformity of political thought has been achieved, the de Tocquevillian mildness will also come to the fore. It is quite possible that we shall see in thirty years a Nazi Parliament with ten different Nazi parties all believing in the Nazi essentials. A gentle, soft pressure from above, as it has been so well described in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and a thoroughly Nazified society would keep all “restless” elements in line.²⁷³

The Anglo-Saxon powers thus have to fight an enemy still in the process of transformation. This is certainly an advantage in wartime. And the only real potential ally in the Germanies at a time when the hardships of war are not strongly and generally felt will be exactly the “exceptional” people, those who on account of their intelligence, personality, faith, or tradition could not have been assimilated or leveled. These are a minority and the sooner the belligerents realize that it is not the herdist, the mass man, who suffers in a superdemocratic ochlocracy, but the “outstanding man,” the better for them. It must be kept in mind that it is not the railroad conductor and the employee of the gas works who in a plebiscitarian dictatorship goes slowly to pieces but the philosopher, the writer, the sensitive, creative artist, the educator, the priest, who have to stand the strain, who feel the chains. It is for the better and braver part of these that the present crusade should be waged. The masses are often satisfied if they can eat, work, and sleep. Intellectual freedom has little meaning for them one way or the other.

The question must clearly be faced whether this is an aristocratic or a democratic war; whether one should shoulder arms in order to give freedom to an aristocracy of intellect, conviction, and spirit or whether one has decided to die for the ballot of Herr Kunz or Herr Kraus, who may vote another Hitler into power if they fear for their pocketbook or regular employment. America may be far quicker in understanding these issues than the outsider is ready to believe. It is of little importance that America at present has less of a visible tradition than Europe and a smaller intellectual aristocracy, but in no country in the world is there such furious hunger for cultural and intellectual values, such craving for true personality and the dignity of the human person, such worshipful seeking for the beautiful things of life. America will understand. . . .

This present war is not fought between one group of countries which is “enlightened” and another one which wants to “put the clock back” but between a coalition which stands for Liberty (and Soil) and another one which proclaims Equality-Identity (and Blood). It is a struggle between Patriotism (represented by the United Nations) and Nationalism-Racialism (represented by the Axis).

Such a world-wide issue can nevertheless hardly manifest itself in absolute, unequivocal purity. The Allied Nations in the last war fought against the Central Powers in the name of “Progress” versus “Reaction”; today this chronological order has been reversed. It is Washington and London who represent the conservative trend, it is Berlin which became the synthesis of unbridled and uninhibited technical and biological “modernity.” Where then stands Russia? The USSR stands on exactly the same spot as Imperial Russia in 1914. The Russian Emperor was, in World War I, the ally of the Third French Republic and of Liberal England. No ideological affinity then united the Winter Palace with the Pantheon; and today there is hardly a rainbow bridge between the Kremlin, the Liberty Bell and Buckingham Palace. The war between the Germans and Russians was and is a people’s war; the war between the Axis and the Anglo-Saxons was and is a deep ideological “discussion” fought out by arms. There are not two, but three wars going on: one in the Pacific, one in the Atlantic, and a third one in the Sarmathian Plains.

Yet while it is none too easy to understand the issues at stake in the present war, it is even more difficult to envisage the future if the powers of good will are victors in the struggle. What sort of political order should be established in Europe and especially in Central Europe? And again, what kind of higher political order should be established with the purpose of conferring at least a minimum of peace and comfort on the desperate, confused, bewildered, and misguided peoples of Europe? These are two separate problems, yet they are closely interrelated. The coming order in Central Europe is of the utmost importance to the entire Continent for the very simple reason that it is the heart of the western section of the Old World, of the European peninsula of Eurasia. And as long as we continue to consider the Atlantic rim of Europe as the only true and integral part of Christian civilization, and all countries east of the Rhine merely as an approximation to Asiatic “barbarism,” no lasting and constructive reorientation and reorganization of the war-torn Continent is feasible or possible.

It will be absolutely necessary to go back courageously to old, very old, patterns and take at the same time precautions that a process of disintegration and wrong herdist reconstruction, as we have witnessed it in the past 300 years, will be avoided. It is a solid First Reich or something similar to it which must be revived.

Yet there seems to be one school among western “statesmen” which wants to make good the mistakes of 1919 by re-creating the Austro-Hungarian monarchy of old and carving up the Germanies. The dangerous aspect of such an enterprise lies in the fact that this arrangement could easily be carried out once the Third Reich has broken down. There would be then, more than ever, an extreme dislike for the Prussianized Germans in Austria, and German national sentiments would be at a low ebb in Vienna and the Alps. The Germans themselves, after a crushing defeat, would become the victims of one of their typical fits of bitter melancholy, self-denunciation, self-hatred, and apathy. All those who would come under the rule of indigenous princes and princelets would be happy to be at least not under Polish or direct Allied control. Yet what would happen in another twenty or thirty years? We know from experience that no peace arrangement is lasting if it relies on brutal force except, of course, in the case of total extirpation of the conquered race.

The time would come when the individual German rulers — or petty parliaments — would be looked at as servile agents of a hated group of alien enemies; a new wave of hitherto unknown nationalistic ideologies would sweep the Germanies, a new Hitler might arise and unite the separated countries in a new, terrible, centralistic, and herdist concentration. There is little one could do against such a process short of new bloodshed; and the military help granted by the Allies to their helpmates inside the Germanies would change the contempt for the petty monarchs and other representatives of the bad cause to boiling hatred resulting in perpetual tension. A similar situation might even arise in Austria, where some uneasiness for the suffering of the once so hated blood brothers in the divided Germanies would revive the always latent German sentiment.

It would be quite incorrect to attribute German sentiment in Austria to a frantic herdism on account of the common language — which, after all, is also the “uniting bond” between Yorkshire and Liberia. There are undoubtedly such primitive Austrians who base their German feelings on herdist principles only. There are others — equally shortsighted — who oppose this herdism by just another one, emphasizing the “dividing differences” in the cultural and sentimental domain. But there is also a minority — and minorities often are “aristocracies” — which still cultivates the tradition of the First Reich. These do not respect in the Habsburgs the rulers of Austria but the descendants of the emperors, who did not develop that amazing inferiority complex toward the Prussians that some “Little Austrians” have nursed. Nor could it be a difficult task to dominate these fiery, German-speaking Slavs who are such excellent fighters in uniform but such docile subjects in mufti.

The tradition of the First Reich is far older, greater, and nobler than the Imperial Austrian tradition dating back only to 1806, and although not derived from the French Revolution, yet still of the same age if not younger. To compare the First Reich with the Austrian Imperial idea means to compare the dry and worn-out bureaucratism of Francis Joseph with the universality and knightly grandeur of Maximilian I, Charles V, Ferdinand II, or Maria Theresa.

The main argument for a one-sided revival of the Danubian Monarchy, or a South-German “Catholic” solution, is usually based upon a deep mistrust toward the Prussians (who, incidentally, must be re-educated in the European manner and tradition). Uniting Southern Germany with little Austria or even with a greater Austrian empire, leaving the North independent under the leadership of Berlin, a city with less cultural tradition than Baltimore or Charleston, would establish a focus for herdism, an almost purely Protestant platform for the basest phenomena of technicism, nationalism, militarism, or perhaps even an extremely apt steppingstone for a new type of Bolshevism in Central Europe. Yet northeastern Germany must be placed under the benevolent but nevertheless methodical control by the rest of Germany. People in the northeast (and this would include Saxony and Thuringia) must be trained again to enjoy their meager personalities and to value originality above uniformity.

The New-Old Reich has to be a realm with a Catholic majority and a Catholic leadership.²⁷⁴ American and British non-Catholics must remember that Protestantism in the Germanies stood for all the ideas which they so intensely dislike. Even such a severe and implacable critic of Catholicism as Dean Inge had to acknowledge — in an article written seven years ago in the Evening Standard — that the British get on best with the Bavarians and the Austrians on account of their “Gothic” spirit. There is very little of this spirit in the military training fields of Tempelhof or the factories of Herr Krupp von Bohlen. What cultured Britisher, American, or Netherlander did not feel more at home in Vienna than in Berlin, in the Tyrol than in Pomerania, in Cologne than in Stettin? It is exactly the cultured spirit of the Catholic Germanies which must be helped by the Allies to regain its old and dominating position. One must pray to God (and hope against hope, cynics would say) that the men of Washington and London in responsible positions will know what they have to do when they have an opportunity to act and to decide.

Modern wars end necessarily with some sort of revolution on the side of the defeated; a government which has emphasized over a long period that it was fighting a righteous crusade cannot possibly sit down at the same table with the enemy, who during the hostilities was depicted as the very personification of Satan. It must either abdicate or will be swept away by a revolt — a revolt of the masses, a revolt of the army, or a rebellion of the upper classes, in order to make peace arrangements possible.* No Nazi and no member of the British parties, as we know them, could ever sit together in conference. Francis Joseph could say in 1859, “I lost a battle and I pay with a province.” Such a “traitorous” attitude would be unthinkable today. Progressive nations have to bleed to death in their wars. Rulers felt that they had to be sparing with the lives of their subjects, but leaders have the marvelous excuse that they are nothing but executors of the general will.

If and when the Third Reich goes the way of all flesh, it may be that the revolt will be engineered by the upper classes or the army. If the rising comes from the lower classes, then it will be inspired by none of the better known leftist ideologies. It will be a revolution with anarchistic leanings, a revolution for revolution’s sake. Such a situation cannot last forever. There is no such thing as a revolution in permanence. Order will be asked for and we stand under no illusion that a revival of the First Reich will be extremely popular from the outset. The lower classes may even ignore the very meaning of a Sacrum Imperium, yet a country after a defeat, tired of a war, is like wax and it depends largely upon those who enact the great historic return whether they will make a success of the restoration or a failure like the Stuarts and Bourbons.

Any revival of nineteenth-century Parliamentarianism should also be out of the question. It would merely give the mob another chance to vote for another Holy Roller with a Chaplin moustache. The New First Reich must also be necessarily based on monarchical principles. This is the only way we can avoid the dangers of parliamentarianism without anchored safeguards in the heart of Europe, the danger whose real name is “party dictatorship.”²⁷⁵ Neither, of course, should the absolutistic monarchy of the seventeenth century be revived. In some respects the governmental forms have to be taken from medieval patterns without its feudal elements. An opinionating body of a corporative character freely elected is not less necessary than a first-rate administrative officialdom. But all these externals will work only if society itself is transformed on personalistic and hierarchical lines by a revolution from above. Personality, person, and personalism must again become the keynote of European culture and quality triumph over quantity.²⁷⁶ But all this is possible only if a fundamental change, a real μετάνοια. of all Europe takes place. The love for the “nearer home,” the engere Heimat, must again be cultivated and supplant the senseless worship of impressive “national” statistics. It is self-evident that these changes cannot be imposed without a far-reaching re-education of the masses and a true revolution “from above.” Already Constantin Frantz, the apostle of German federalism, emphasized that true federalism presupposed a change of culture, of education, of mentality.*

There is nothing inferior or degrading in “local patriotism,” so much frowned upon or ridiculed by the mammoth nationalism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. All these revolutionary changes (revolutionary only for the urban elements and not the peasantry) must be based upon the right answer of the great, fundamental question: “What is man?”

It is also the very order of “consciences” and allegiances which must be reversed in a revolutionary way. (Without this revolution no fundamental reconstruction of the Old World is possible.) Today to belong to a people of eighty millions means “everything”; to be a member of a community, “little”; to be a human being — “nothing.” Our worship of quantity subordinates man to society, state, nation, race, which, after all, must all remain abstractions which may or may not be legitimate.

It cannot be emphasized often enough that the abolition of parliamentary government does not mean that the dignity of man will not be respected any more. Neither can it be maintained that the insipid counting of noses, which degraded the human person to a mere voting animal,* was a personalist feature of the past one hundred years. A freer atmosphere should liberate the people from the control of their neighbors, and laws will be enacted guaranteeing the civil liberties. The defense of these essential liberties (whose importance for the well-being of a self-respecting nation cannot be overemphasized) should be vested in the person of the monarch who is also the guardian of the constitution. In the religious ceremony of the coronation the monarch will have to promise to watch over the constitution, the civil rights, and liberties under an oath given to God and the nation.

The constitution also provides for an independent judiciary system and for a supreme court. There will be all due liberty of the press, of speech, and organization. Everybody will be free to criticize the political decisions, the legislation, the administration. The intolerance toward criticism is the certain sign of characteriological inferiority.** It is the masses and the mass man that cannot bear contradiction. (Hitler is a very good example of the monologizing “one way” mobmaster.) The idea of “His Majesty’s most loyal opposition” is as old as monarchy itself. The leader of the opposition in the British parliament does not receive a salary for nothing. The first paid (artificial) opposition were the jesters at the royal courts of Europe. Their cruel criticisms were borne with equanimity. But on the other hand, the laymen, the masses of innocent ignorants, will have to come to terms with the experts. Everybody has a moral right to criticize a house, but the building of a house can nevertheless be trusted only to an architect. And politics are an art as difficult, and as public, as architecture.

Provisions will also have to be taken to prevent the bureaucracy from becoming a soulless, arrogant caste. The officials remain, in spite of the fact that they are not executors of the “general will,” but independent experts, basically servants of the people and advisers of the monarch. The opinionating, corporative parliament which represents naked interests and not parties can protest the cast and proposals of the legislative-administrative officialdom; dependent upon the nature of the protested object, it is either the supreme court or the monarch with his crown council (the government) that are going to act as arbiters and to decide to what extent public opinion or group interests should be taken into consideration or overruled.

The parliaments of yesterday represented vague agglomerations of political “persuasions” and the very system is based upon the belief that administration and legislation are easily separable elements. Yet they are not. Still there are many people who will not agree with this statement.^277a Legislation and administration are like architect and contractor. Yet the architect is the learned expert, while the contractor is only a skilled foreman of workers. The old parliamentary system put the experts in the administration and the foreman in the designing job. It is an order which in Europe could not last.

The preceding statements seem to betray an extraordinary faith in the Germans.* Yet all these questions are not questions of faith but of feasibility and expediency. It is a geographical fact that the Germans live in the heart of Europe and there is every indication that they have a “central” character. The Nazi claim that Germany alone can be the point of gravity of Europe is perfectly justified, but it is equally true that their ideology is the very last which could facilitate this mission. It is one of the fausses idées claires that Europe can be united only by conquest and the National Socialists fell for it. Yet it is equally true that Europe cannot “escape” the Germans and the Germans will never and can never give up to formulate a Reichsidee, an imperial idea. If this idea is spiritual, Europe may benefit from it, if the idea is materialistic, Europe will suffer atrociously. One cannot be happy and healthy if one’s heart is diseased.

The Germans (like the Jews) are in their ubiquity everywhere in Europe. The thrones of England, Portugal, Norway, Denmark, Holland,** Belgium, Russia,*** Bulgaria, Rumania, Greece, Hungary have been occupied by Germans. Fragments of Germans live as far as Reval and the Alsace, Heligoland and the Lower Volga. One cannot escape them. To omit them in calculations is folly. And to think that they will calm down and become “ordinary people” betrays ignorance. They must have a mission which is not materialistic and a spiritual mission cannot be invented on a green table. It can only be a revival or a continuation from past memories. The Fourth Reich will be the continuation of the First Reich or it will be thoroughly and restlessly diabolic.****

Against these proposals most progressive people will bring up the objection that one cannot “turn the clock back.” This is only partly true. A photographic copy of the past is impossible. Nobody would advise a woman to dress in the style of 1926, but it is nowadays quite smart to imitate the fashions of 1860. If one turns the clock back it must be done in a dynamic, spectacular, and breath-taking way. What is true of sartorial vogues is equally true of political fashions. Nothing could be more childish than to turn Europe’s clock back to 1926. The supine effort to oppose National Socialism (or communism) with “democracy” is as hopeless as it would have been 150 years ago to combat the radical Jacobins with some sort of flabby Girondism. In a struggle against a revolutionary idea it is only possible to use ideological elements which are a thousand times more radical, or adopt principles which represent a total reaction against them. (Every effort to fight a certain stage of a revolution with its elements of a previous stage would be thoroughly abortive.) Yet neither Washington nor London can, ought, and will be more progressive than Berlin (by advocating, for instance, the sterilization of all men and women with dark eyes), and thus the only alternative remaining is to have recourse to a sound and courageous medievalism.^277b.

We have to give thanks to the Holy Ghost that the Atlantic Charter did not repeat the Wilsonian nonsense of a world safe for democracy, and that the two aristocrats who met off Newfoundland pledged their countries merely to the defeat of National Socialism and the establishment of forms of government appealing to the nobler sides of human nature. A definite danger lurks in the possibility of the “progressive” elements of England and America increasing unduly their influence mainly at the time of the peace conferences. It will then be the Girondists of London, Washington (and Paris) who will win this war technically, yet a revolutionary war technically won and morally lost is in reality a total defeat and nothing else but a preparation for World War III.

The present war is a revolutionary war, more so than World War I. European history since the French Revolution is largely a series of revolutions, reactions, counterrevolutions, and counterreactions, where naked and veiled ideologies clash in furious attacks. The tragic aspect of the present situation lies in the fact that in spite of the many valuable ideas afloat in Anglo-Saxon countries there is very little of the Catholic and Continental tradition, very little of pure spirituality and conservative mentality. In the Catholic countries themselves the positive tradition is far richer and personal culture more Catholic, but the respective political machineries are either hopelessly pagan or even more hopelessly compromised from the (not yet entirely unimportant) point of view of honor. Catholic government in Europe is confined to the balcão aberto sôbre o infinito* — Portugal. Franco’s foreign policy has until now kept neutral. Everything else has been crushed, destroyed, wiped out. Thus all the hope rests with a mixture of Canterbury, Wall Street, the London Times, Serbian guerrillas, the foreign office, the Eight Points of the Atlantic Charter, and the Moderator of the Free Churches in Britain. In such a situation the Catholic’s duty is primarily to pray to the Holy Ghost that he may enlighten those who will be responsible for the order in Europe after an Allied victory.

Not only a new order in Central Europe but also a new order in Christendom is necessary. It would be a waste of time to discuss any real order outside of Christendom, because such a thing is genuinely inconceivable. We have spoken already about the defects of the old League of Nations (p. 152 ff.). It is evident that only nations accepting the basic theistic principles can be members. A League of Nations without a common positive creed could never accomplish anything worth while — just like a parliament divided by basic philosophies. The only uniting bond in the old league was the vague philosophizing of “modern man” — the “good pagan” — who dislikes wars because they are expensive and spread death — and death, we must not forget, is the supreme catastrophe for the atheist. A new League of Nations should be a regular congress of the Christian monarchs and heads of nations with their ministers in a place of great and ancient Christian tradition — in Aix-la-Chapelle, in Rome, in Canterbury, in Jerusalem. A league of the very heads of the states will also be more efficient than a league of mere representatives of easily changeable parliamentary governments. The conventions of the kings, the emperor, and the presidents of the few republics would also have a greater symbolic effect upon the nations who will increasingly feel the uniting power of Christendom.

Last not least — the most important feature of a well-established and (nationally as well as internationally) recognized monarchy should not be forgotten — legitimacy. Without legitimacy it is impossible to imagine the binding power of agreements, of stability, and peace.²⁷⁸

It will be possible that a few flag-waving mob masters will protest against their “unpatriotic” monarchs and the “new clericalism.” But outside the terra firma of Christian principles we are nothing else but a pack of hungry and greedy wolves who devour each other in times of hunger and emergency; no “Sunday meditation” of any modern “Ethical Society” will be able to change that. Europe as a coherent and cooperating continent can only be rebuilt on the same philosophical and religious doctrine, and the Cross is, after all, the sole uniting reality between Iceland and Sicily, between Portugal and Finland. The blood relationship of monarchs in that union is simply an additional material ligament, and their status of anointed Christian monarchs a further spiritual bond.²⁷⁹

There are yet still a few dreamers who want to restore a human order along the old lines of ochlocracy, mass terror, anthropocentrism, and a humanitarian pan-Fascism. In 1940 a book was put on the market, written by a few charlatans and a couple of men who, one would be tempted to say, should know better — the City of Man. The title itself betrayed the anthropocentricity of the whole program and there is little doubt that the title meant it to be in contradiction to St. Augustine’s Civitas Dei. The confusion in some pages should not mislead the reader in underestimating the symptomatic significance of that slender volume. If the writers say that: “Democracy is nothing more and nothing less than humanism in theocracy and rational theocracy in universal humanism,”* they only testify to the fact that they overhastily consulted Webster’s dictionary. But slogans like “Everything within humanity, nothing against humanity, nothing outside humanity”** show where the sources of their ideas lie; here we find a shameless adaptation of Mussolini’s “Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, everything for the state.” When the writers permit the existence of religious teachings in so far as they represent “Vernaculars of the democratic religion” they imitate Hitler, who dreams of making Christianity subservient to the state and its dynamic ideology, or Napoleon, who regretted his “concessions” to the Church not less than his illustrious epigone.²⁸⁰ The sacred conviction that man is the center of the cosmos will always lead to the creation of ideologies which may differ in name yet show the same characteristics, the same tendencies, the same inhuman humanitarianism. The City of Man proves this without the slightest doubt.²⁸¹

It certainly will not be easy to demand from victorious nations, as well as from those who have suffered at the hands of the Germans in the most ignominious way, that they conclude a peace without material gains and without the element of revenge. When the next peace will have to be signed, the great western cities may lie in ashes and the masses of the people will be imbued with a terrific hatred against a nation which had spread or provoked such horrible destruction.

Grant God that the Anglo-Saxon nations will be led at that time by statesmen, and not by politicians, who will have the honesty and the will power to dissociate themselves from that great anonymous monster, Public Opinion.²⁸² They will be asked nothing more, nothing less than to assist the German people in finding their better self again, and with Christian charity to aid them in building a lasting house.

In this specific case we have to remember the Latin proverb: fiat iustitia pereat mundus. It is not naked justice in a legalistic sense or righteousness only which can help Europe, but wisdom, knowledge, and charity.²⁸³ If a rigid and formal justice be applied, the doom of Europe would actually be sealed.*

Yet here we cannot omit a consideration of the moral order. We have to ask ourselves whether the Atlantic nations would have acted more bravely under similar circumstances than the Germans. Would they have offered more determined resistance if they had fallen into the hands of powerful ochlocratic dictators — or would they have kept their mouths shut, trembling for their individual, physical, and financial security? It is highly probable that the fear of poverty, the fear of death and of physical torture would have prevented any active resistance in the great urban centers. Courage is, at any rate, a rare virtue.²⁸⁴ Yet determined small minorities can easily overpower the modern state and the modern city. Five thousand determined men could completely paralyze the ten million inhabitants of New York by blasting the gas works, electricity plants, and the water supply. There is, under such circumstances, no other “hope” for the straphanger than to get a mild, charitable master instead of a brutal tyrant.

Yet the demands on the victors unquestionably remain extreme in their nature. The alternatives are either an angelic charity or final doom in World War III. There is no other choice. Situations where a human person can choose only between two extremes sometimes do arise. A crusader caught by the “Assassins” and asked to renounce his faith or to die under the most terrible tortures had of a sudden the sole choice of either becoming a great saint-martyr or else offending God beyond imagination. In such a case there is no medium between mortal sin and supreme sanctity. And if the United Nations win they will be faced by a similar alternative.

There is also the problem of the arrangements to be made outside of the Germanies. It matters very little what the local majorities of the Central and Eastern Europeans think at the present moment or at the time of the termination of the war. Of all fantasmagories ever invented, the “self-determination of nations” is one of the most fatal propositions. “Self-determination” led to National Socialism, “self-determination” was responsible for the most fantastic borders ever conceived in Europe. Plebiscites are, after all, nothing but lay opinions based on mere likes and dislikes. They rarely bring happy solutions.

Neither will it be easy to engineer a lasting restoration, even if it is based on a great tradition. Restorations were singularly unsuccessful in history, yet there is no reason why one should succumb to a historical fatalism. The memory of Hitler will doubtless cause certain difficulties. It is the impending great tragedy written all over his face which partly explains the magnetism of his personality. It would be a dangerous illusion to underestimate his present popularity even among people who heartily detest the system he represents. There is little doubt that the downfall of National Socialism will bring about a low in the Hitler cult, but nevertheless, after his death, his person will be surrounded by the same strange, mystic glory which was spun around the great Corsican. Ignorant people probably will continue to see in him their hero, who was finally betrayed, sold, overpowered by his enemies. Hitler will become another Michael Kohlhaas, a German Pugatshov, the dreamer and schemer surging from the depths of the nation and reaching madly for the sun. . . .

One should certainly not have too many illusions about the results of the changes brought by a new-old order; it will never bring a millennium of perfect human happiness. Human life is always and under all circumstances a march through a valley of tears. Bossuet’s words, “La vie d’un chrétien n’est qu’un pélérinage; notre domicile est ailleurs,” should always be borne in mind. Yet the traditional order may be instrumental in restoring the dignity of the human beings that have suffered so bitterly under all sorts of “progressive” systems, from Robespierre to Dewey. History since the Crucifixion has become predominantly the record of a chain of attacks and defenses against and for human dignity and personality. This human dignity is fundamentally connected with the God-man who suffered the most humiliating death on the martyr-instrument for common criminals, but who rose triumphantly from the grave. Thus the cross became the joyful symbol for man, that image of God. Whosoever attacks the Cross also attacks mankind. The powers of darkness who attack and degrade the human personality and its sacred uniqueness, are also out to deny and to eradicate the Cross.

There are forces engaged in this war which have adopted the diabolical plan to put the docile ant in place of the Image of God possessing free will. These forces must be defeated. Yet the issue and the goal must be clearly before all our eyes. There is not only an external front in this war — a front with trenches, a front in the air, on the sea, in the deserts of Africa, and the jungles of Asia, but also an inner front. We must not forget that for every right-thinking man or woman on the wrong side, there is a wrong-thinking person on this side. Thoughts, ideas, philosophies, religions have no clearly defined geographical borders.

If those with the wrong conceptions already living in a pre-Nazi stage of development will get the upper hand, then the war will be morally lost as a foregone conclusion. If the goal of Britain and America would actually be a conglomeration of “making Europe safe for democracy,” “economical competition,” “decent business dealing,” “more colonies, cash, and a return to Geneva,” then we better all go to bed, switch out the light, and pull the sheets over our heads. Neither with such “democracy” nor with nationalism or any other herdism can we survive. A supranational order with material safeguards must be established. The words of Myerezhkovski, written after the last war, must be constantly remembered:

What is the meaning of the world-wide catastrophe, by which mankind is now affected, the political, economical, social and cultural destruction of Europe? Why are there after the world war no victors and no vanquished? Why is even victory worse than defeat?

Russian Bolshevism and Polish Messianism answers these questions in a seemingly identical way; from the category of nationalistic existence mankind, to save itself, must evolve inevitably into a form of supranational existence. Once the nations lived freely in the national form of their existence and developed their nationality; now they die and suffocate in them. These forms were once diapers, but now they have become shrouds. Mankind will either be buried in them in order to decay or it will throw them off like Lazarus rising from the dead.

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* Yet even the argument used by Ferdinand Lundberg in America’s Sixty Families, is not conclusive.

** As to World War I and its supposedly economic background see Sidney Fay, Origins of the World War, New York, 1938, p. 46.

*Temporary betrayals of tenets of the National Socialist ideology should surprise nobody; a materialistic (and utilitarian) philosophy has not the same sense of honor as a religion or a metaphysical Weltanschauung. Communism also indulged in compromises like the N.E.P. under Lenin or the Russo-German military alliance against Poland; arrangements ad hoc.

** Many Russians, among them Dimitri Myerezhkovski, speak about the Third Russian Empire. The First Empire they consider to be the Kievian and early Muscovite Russia (Svyataya Russ); the Second Empire the Westernized, shallow Russia of Peter the Great (Rossiya); and the Third Empire the Soviet Union (Sovyetzkiy Soyuz). The first Empire was (as in Germany) primarily religious, whereas the third one is merely a gross exaggeration of the second one which already had departed from the right way.

The Second Empire is a break with the tradition (on account of the petrinian reformation), yet the third one is an almost inevitable consequence of western, identitarian “isms” of which Panslavism was the most spectacular preparation.

* Germany is officially still a Republic; the Weimar Constitution has, in spite of numerous “amendments,” never been formally abrogated.

* Guglielmo Ferrero describes the necessity for a revolution as a terminating point of a war in his volume Peace and War, New York, 1933, pp. 60–61.

*Deutschland und der Föderalismus, Stuttgart-Berlin, 1921, pp. 36–37.

* The Germans call him Stimmvieh.

** The greatest mistakes ecclesiastic authorities committed at various times were prompted by a wrong evaluation of the liberty of thought. They naturally never committed the monumental error of “liberal” relativists to despair in the respective existence of truth and untruth; if Catholicism is right Protestantism must be wrong and vice versa. The reason why untruth can ever be tolerated (tolerated, not accepted) must be found in the mysterious laws of thoughts and ideas, not in the relativism of complacent agnostics; neither is Truth able to take care of herself (as some optimists invariably believe) nor does Truth thrive under eternal vigilance, protection, and a system of enforcement. Truth then degenerates to commonplace, it loses its appeal, its inner dynamism, its luster and brilliancy (for which it needs a dark background). Human beings are then finally brought to resent truth and the forbidden fruits of untruth begin to taste sweeter than ever.

Uremy is the result of the degeneration of the glomeruli, tiny agents which transports the poisons of the body to the kidneys whence they are eliminated. Once the glomeruli cease to function the body dies of an inner poisoning. The Middle Ages died from such a uremic process. People remained intra muros through indifference or out of fear, heretical ideas spread because they had the mystical magnetism of the appeal from the tree in paradise. Error has certainly no right to exist; if it is tolerated it should certainly not be for its own sake, but for the sake of its poor bearer and for the sake of Truth which will shine in a light more brilliant if its sinister counterpart has not been meticulously eradicated.

* It is interesting to see where a consequential belief in “democratic” principles finally led to. Professor Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster, an ardent German “democrat,” arrived at an almost complete denial of his own nation, a blank despair about its misdeeds, and a furious denunciation of its recent aberrations. He is today not only an exile from Germany but even a voluntary exile of the German people. No German Conservative, however, anti-Nazi, will share his opinion; for a Christian Conservative, the masses of every country are made up by more or less goodhearted and more or less well-intentioned people without any sense of political responsibility and a total ignorance of political facts. To accuse nations (not leaders or governments) is the hallmark of the demo-nationalist of the nineteenth or twentieth centuries; it leads to endless hatreds, feelings of revenge, misunderstandings, and frictions. It is the surest guarantee for perpetual mass wars.

** House of Nassau-Oranje; Princess Juliana’s father was Prince of Mecklenburg.

*** House of Holstein-Gottorp (not Romanov) since the days of Peter III.

**** The relatively soundest proposition of what to do with Germany after the war had been given by Captain Alan Graham, M.P., in After the War (a symposium of peace aims edited by William Teeling, London, 1940). Captain Graham knows at least all the premises, but his deductions are influenced by the fact that he had to reckon with France as a partner on the conference table at the time when he wrote his essay.

* “The balcony opening on the infinite,” overlooking the sea.

* Page 33.

** Page 34.

* Cf. Gábor de Rónay’s article in the Catholic World, September, 1941.