N A T I O N A L S O C I A L I S M
An Explanation of the use of Germanic Myths during the Third Reich
©Mike Jacobson
1999-2000
Independent Study Course
Olmsted Falls High School
Intro: Creative Symbolization in History
National Socialism and Germany
Creative Symbolization as a Historical Reference – Rationale
All human history consists of generalities set in different environmental circumstances. These generalities are readily comprehensible as basic symbols incorporating one or a number of human qualities. This is how history is understood.
First, there is an event. To use a famous example, take America’s declaration of war against the Japanese Empire, following the Pearl Harbor attack. Immediately recognizable are three things: the two antagonistic nations, and the state of war. What remain to be understood are the circumstances leading up to the declaration (cause) and the impact of the declaration (effect). The event in question may be of any scale and set among any set of circumstances: geographical, political, cultural, or otherwise. This concept of generalities is often expressed as the "cyclic" view of history, which suggests that certain events reoccur throughout history, within new environments.
Secondly, the individual or group effected interprets the event within a symbolic framework. This process is both separate from and critical to a concrete "real" reaction, or movement, in response to the event. Thus, the interpretation dictates the action.
Many symbolic languages exist to record and express the events of the past, and the late, scholar of world mythology, Joseph Campbell, dubbed the application of these languages "creative symbolization." Thousands of years ago, Cro-Magnon man recorded ritual hunts on the walls of secluded caves. He had only charcoal, small sticks of chalk, and torchlight to guide him. Written language provided a more prolific medium for symbolization, though purely artistic interpretations remained important.
Although western history is traditionally written, recently, oral history, along with many other types of history, have come into their own. But just as an event may be of any scale, so may a history—and thus the number of symbolic languages one may use to describe it are nearly infinite. Together, all of these languages, applied to history, make up the creative mythology of a culture. The function of such a mythology is to relate to humans a sense of place within various levels of existence: individual, family, culture, world, and universe. Joseph Campbell claimed a mythology served three functions. First, to "reconcile waking consciousness to the mysterium tremendum et fascinans of this universe as it is: the second being to render an interpretive total image of the same," with the third function relating more directly to the functioning of a culture. That function, "enforcement of a moral order…shaping of the individual to the requirements of his geographically and historically conditioned social group…" is the one that will be most intensively examined in this paper. The latter two will make themselves heard, but only indirectly.
A culture’s mythology is supremely important in determining its course through history. Creative symbolization, the process by which mythology is created, does not only offer abstract explanations of the mystery of existence, nor is it limited to maintaining an existing social order. It evolves with, and directly effects, political and economic conditions within a culture to the point that it alone can be examined as an accurate reflection of them.
Consider again Pearl Harbor. The day after the raid, President Roosevelt spoke to the American people and the assembled houses of Congress in a rehearsed speech, asking that a state of war be recognized between America and the Japanese Empire. The actions of the government, a cultural construct, determined American perception of the attack. Certain historical realities that are now in dispute, as to whether or not there was adequate warning, sufficient time to prepare, or that the Japanese had been goaded into war, were ignored. The symbolization process made Pearl Harbor into an act of supreme treachery, and clearly pointed to the Japanese as the perpetrators, and thus enemies. By manipulating circumstances, the Japanese had dealt the American Pacific Fleet a grievous blow. But America manipulated those same circumstances according to its cultural mores, and created an entirely different and uniquely appropriate Pearl Harbor. Although I will not assert that America could have prevented the disaster, the possibility alone will serve the example. For today, historians have created that new interpretation; that it was a preventable tragedy allowed to happen so that America would enter the war. But regardless of the truth of that assertion, a different picture was painted at the time. Not a stunning victory, but a shocking betrayal.
Pearl Harbor illustrates the vastly different viewpoints of two cultures. Yet, as previously mentioned, the basic model is the same. All societies create—and depend upon—a unique system of beliefs and morals. British anthropologist A.R. Radcliffe-Brown summed it thus:
A society depends for its existence on the presence in the minds of its members of a certain system of sentiments by which the conduct of the individual is regulated in conformity with the needs of the society. Every feature of the social system itself and every event or object that in any way affects the well-being or the cohesion of the society becomes an object of this system…. In human society the sentiments in question are not innate but are developed in the individual by the action of the society upon him.
If a society’s existence and prosperity depends upon the system of mythology they have created, then there are many historical questions that can be answered through careful analysis of the symbolism of past cultures.
This paper considers the origins and evolution of National Socialism in Germany, with special attention to the symbolic connotations certain actions, objects, words, and people conveyed during that period of time. As previously mentioned, the number of symbolic languages is nearly infinite, so no rigid boundaries will be established, in order to provide a more complete picture of events. Important especially are the theories of Joseph Campbell, namely creative symbolization and the journey of the "Hero With a Thousand Faces." But this paper is not a critical work on mythology; it is a survey of the life and death of Nazism. The symbols of Nazism were deliberately chosen for very specific reasons dictated by circumstance. Thus this paper will explain both how and why creative symbolization took the course it did within Nazi Germany.
The German People, The German State
The development of the German Empire, when compared with other major European empires, was unusually long and arduous. Not until the 19th century did anything resembling a truly German state emerge. For years, a plethora of ‘German’ states had been either under foreign rule, or were simply too weak or too concerned with politics to come together and form a single state. At the Congress of Vienna, the ‘German Confederation’ was established. However, this "federation of independent sovereign states" was hardly unified, the Congress being overly concerned with preserving the autonomy of each and every state. Their motivation was not an early form of self-determination, but rather a desire to continue the pattern of foreign rule in Germany. Thus the borders were drawn not by the German people or even by the German nobility, but by foreign diplomats.
The Congress of Vienna might have quelled the potential power of a unified Germany if Otto von Bismarck’s Prussian expansionist policies had not been so wildly successful in the latter half of the century. Bismarck was everything the Congress and all its predecessors were not. He scorned legislature; ignored diplomacy. His famous statement that "the great questions of the day [would] be settled not by resolutions and majorities…but by blood and iron" implied the death of a peaceful German Confederation. While Bismarck was Prussian, not German, his ruthless and decisive policy, realpolitik, appealed to a faction within the German population. By 1862 Prince Otto von Bismarck was chancellor of a unified German-Prussian Empire. Through two short and successful wars, he swiftly dealt with the foreign powers that had stood in the way of German unification. Austria was defeated in 1866, France in 1870. At Versailles in 1871, the victorious Bismarck proclaimed the Second Reich. At last free to develop as a unified state, Germany rapidly became a major European power. But it would never forget its origins—forged through the autocratic actions of one man who successfully dominated the ruling military class. The Reich’s early history would return to haunt it during the 20th century.
Just prior to the outbreak of the First World War, Germany possessed an Empire strong in industrial and military power, but lacking an evolved form of republican or democratic government. The House of Hohenzollern ruled the German Fatherland, with the Kaiser being the royal position of complete authority. Under him were scores of advisors and generals, and a chancellor. The Prussian tradition of military-caste rule had been assimilated neatly into the new German State, for it served well as a harsh unifier. The grandiose Schlieffen Plan best illustrates the level to which German policy was governed by the military. Designed as a solution to the dilemma of fighting a two-front war with both France and Russia, the Plan mapped out a rapid conquest of France. The General who gave it his name was a man who had no other profession than tinkering with the fine points of his masterpiece. As such, he was a product of a stubborn and ambitious military system that ultimately failed to meet its own ends, for his Plan was inherently flawed. Its main goal, to flank the French by rapidly pushing the German armies through Belgium, was unrealistic. There were simply not enough soldiers or roads to carry them. Nevertheless, the plan lived on as a symbol of continued German ambition.
In 1914, the diplomatic crises that followed the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand triggered the revival of the Plan. In almost automatic process, the Plan took on a life of its own. The necessity of having troops on the march by certain times led the military-dominated government to rush a mobilization, and thus the coming of war. The officials who helplessly watched the Schlieffen Plan were horrified at the forthcoming consequences. The people, however, reacted differently. A jubilant crowd formed in Munich to hear the Kaiser implore them to "go to church, kneel before God and pray to him to help our gallant army." Within that crowd was a young man named Adolf Hitler, who was "not ashamed to acknowledge that [he] was carried away by the enthusiasm of the moment and…sank down upon my knees and thanked Heaven out of the fullness of my heart for the favour of having been permitted to live in such times." The collective joy at the outbreak of war is telling of how deeply entrenched a mindset of nationalism and militarism was within Germany—not just within its leaders, but also within its people.
When executed, the Schlieffen Plan failed to produce a quick victory. Though the Germans were able to drive to the Somme River, near Paris, they were routed there and never again came so close to their goal. Still, Germany was stubborn, trying again and again to overcome their equally resilient French and British adversaries. But by 1918 it was clear that Germany could not win the war, even after defeating Russia in the east. American involvement provided the final push to defeat the German will to resist. However, this ‘will to resist’ varied in different sections of the German social structure. The people were clearly tired of war. But the Army had, after a near-total collapse of morale and order, regained some of its earlier strength. The Allied advance to the German frontier was being hotly contested, and it seemed from a purely military standpoint that the war was not over. Even so, mutineers from the Kreigsmarine (German Navy) had seized control of the key port city of Kiel, and were demanding full-scale revolution against the Kaiser’s government.
Several high-ranking officers, among them the famous General Erich von Ludendorff, felt that continued resistance was preferable to surrender. He published a manifesto to this effect, characterizing allied peace proposals as demands for "unconditional surrender." Together with General Paul von Hindenburg, another great hero of the war, he went before the Kaiser and was charged with insubordination. He was forced to resign, and departed, angry and dejected. Speaking to his wife later that night, he prophesied that "in a fortnight we shall have no Empire and no Emperor left, you will see."
Ludendorff could not foresee exactly what would become of Germany, but his prediction of the departure of Kaiser Wilhelm II was accurate to the day. By the tenth of November, the Kaiser was forced to abdicate by the harsh armistice terms presented by the Allies. In addition to his abdication, the Allies
required the evacuation of all occupied territory, including Alsace-Lorraine, German since 1871, the military evacuation of the western bank of the Rhine and of three bridgeheads on the eastern bank at Mainz, Coblenz, and Cologne; the surrender of enormous quantities of military equipment, and the interment in Allied hands of all submarines and the capital units of the High Seas Fleet; the repudiation of the treaties of Brest-Litovsk and Bucharest, under which the German occupied their conquered territories in the east; the payment of reparations for war damage; and, critically, acceptance of…the Allied [naval] blockade. [This]…ensured Germany’s compliance with peace terms…to be imposed at the Versailles conference.
Even before the critically important Versailles Conference, where Germany’s borders and fate would be determined by foreign diplomats once again, vengeance was the obvious motivating factor behind the terms of peace forced upon Germany. American President Woodrow Wilson’s moderate proposals for "a peace without victors" and self-determination fell upon the deaf ears of the victorious European Allies. Eventually the Americans withdrew entirely from the peace process, leaving Germany to her fate.
The German mindset, established early in her statehood, was a proud one. Although the people were initially happy to have peace, the terms that would be pushed on them were so completely opposed to all that Germany had suffered through and accomplished as a people that they would ultimately provoke a violent backlash. For a country who’s very existence was owed to a strong military and autocratic rule to be placed under the jurisdiction of foreign powers was much more than an embarrassment. It was an outrage. To the young army corporal Adolf Hitler it was unthinkable that the leaders of Germany would allow such a thing to occur. Having been blinded by a mustard gas attack in a battle outside the besieged Belgian city of Ypres, he was informed by a local pastor of the Kaiser’s abdication and the forthcoming surrender.
"Everything went black before my eyes," recalled Hitler. "I tottered and groped my way back to the ward, threw myself on my bunk, and dug my burning head into my blanket and pillow…So it had all been in vain. In vain all the sacrifices and privations…in vain the hours in which, with mortal fear clutching at our hearts, we nevertheless did our duty; in vain the death of two millions…" He called the Allies "a gang of wretched criminals" and bemoaned the fall of the Fatherland to them. He was not alone in his open condemnation of the actions of his country’s leaders, for after the war, a widespread belief that victory could have still been claimed on the battlefield developed. This theory, known as dolchstosslegende (stab-in-the-back), posited that Germany was betrayed by her leaders and not her army. Dolchstosslegende was to become one of the enduring symbols of the vengeful German rebirth. At the end of 1918, it was smoldering in the shattered patriotism of Adolf Hitler.
The Treaty of Versailles was supposed to be the final settlement of The War to End All Wars. But through ignorance of the collective mythology and philosophy of the German people, the Allied powers turned swords to plowshares only to sow the seeds of the Second World War.
The Treaty had a devastating regiment of requirements for peace:
economist John Maynard Keynes warned that Germany could not possibly meet this demand.
With all of these factors in play, the Weimar Republic was born. This was the first real Republican form of government to exist within modern Germany. Although a parliament, the Reichstag, had existed for some time, it did not have the final say in major decisions. Power had always rested, ultimately, with an autocrat. Now a Republic, with none of the institutions that German rulers were used to, was expected to survive in a harsh climate of economic and social crisis. Weimar was doomed to a slow death.
Shortly after the founding of Weimar, in 1920, another political institution of note was founded. This was the Nationalsozialistische Deustche Arbeiterpartei, or NSDAP for short. The disillusioned army corporal, Hitler, had been sent to check on the ‘subversive’ activities of the NSDAP by the army. After a brief period of observation, Hitler made him his mind to join the party. He was accepted as the seventh member into an organization which had precisely seven marks and fifty pfennings to its name.
Yet this fledging organization was more significant than it seemed. In an environment where traditions have been violated or forgotten and conditions have worsened, the attitude of people will tend to become more susceptible to suggestion and radical ideas. The sharp contrast between the sweeping empire of the First World War and the devastated republic left in its wake created cognitive dissonance: the expectations of the people, what they had known and valued, were turned upside down, or thrown out completely. Something had to fill the void. The Weimar Republic was a wasteland, and the Nazis were determined to bring a rebirth of sorts to fruition. This was in keeping with every great epic, notably the old German and Norse myth of Siegfried. Siegfried was a knight who slew a dragon and drank its blood, after which he could understand the languages of animals. The ‘dragon’ of modern Germany was the Treaty of Versailles, and Hitler was to be its Siegfried.The familiar symbol associated with the Nazis, the swastika, was a traditional sun-symbol in many world cultures before it was adopted by the NSDAP. One of the oldest symbols in existence, the swastika has been found on relics in ancient Hindu and Buddhist cultures, as well as those of Troy and Egypt. Hitler himself created the now-familiar ‘blood flag’ of the Nazi Party, a white disk with a black hooked swastika (the hakenkreuz) imprinted on it, set on a field of red.
Before long, an armband with the red, white and black design was issued to all members of the party. Later, Hitler designed the large standards that would be carried by party members in parades and rallies. Similar to old imperial Roman standards, they had a black metal swastika on the top with a silver wreath and an eagle. Below were the initials NSDAP and a small swastika flag with the phrase "Deutschland Erwache!" (Germany Awake!) emblazoned on it. The strange, mystical power of the swastika was clearly felt by all those who wore it. While the symbol itself was relatively simple, it conveyed a certain uniqueness and pride to some Germans that is difficult to understand. In a chaotic time, it provided a rallying symbol for the people of Germany. Hitler’s first major exercise in creative symbolization was a rousing, and now infamous success for the Nazis.
The Face of the Hero
Hitler was destined to play a central role in the rising Nazi Party. Despite his obscure origins (he was the son of a civil servant from Austria) and lack of schooling (his failure to gain admission to a selective art school disgruntled him from the entire process), he was an obviously talented speaker with growing political ambitions. He was a master of exploiting the circumstances he found himself in. Well-versed in history and a veteran of the Great War, he was in an excellent position to relate to the great dissatisfied masses of Germans. So powerful and ambitious was Hitler that within a few years of his joining the Nazis, he had replaced the original masterminds of the party to such an extent that they can scarcely be heard in history.
Some of Hitler’s early speeches survive, and show the early formation of the ideals of
National Socialism. Even in those early days, Hitler’s driving ambitions were clear:
"he was going to restore the German Reich, extending from Memel in the east to Strasbourg in the west, and from Königsberg to Bratislava. In another secret speech, delivered to an audience in Salzburg – evidently on August . or .,... . – Hitler roused his Austrian compatriots with the same two ideals: ‘Firstly, Deutschland über alles in der Welt. And secondly, our German domain extends as far as the German tongue is spoken.’"
Aiding the very existence of the NSDAP was an increasing trend toward inflation and governmental instability. Deprived of her heavy industry, Germany could not hope to meet the reparations payments presented to them. The Deutschmark began to slide in value. As German delinquency on payment continued, the French occupied the key industrial region of the Ruhr, leaving Germany with little industry to speak of. By August of 1923, inflation had reached 1 million marks to the dollar, and was now properly classified as hyperinflation. In September, the government declared a state of emergency and advocated complete submission to the Allies in the reparations issue. Hitler saw an opportunity here, and began to rally his small forces for a decisive move against the Weimar government.
On the 9th of November, 1923, Hitler and his supporters stormed a beer hall in Munich and declared a general revolution. They announced that National Socialists were marching on local governmental buildings and that "the Army and police [are] marching on the city under the Swastika banner." This was a complete bluff, but it had the desired effect of shocking local politicians into listening to the Nazis. Among the Nazis was the eminent war hero, Erich von Ludendorff. His presence was purely symbolic: Hitler made it clear that he was to be the dictator of the new state, as he had said in so many speeches to his Nazi followers. "We need a dictator who is a genius, if we are to arise again." In his mind, he was that genius.
Hitler’s platform rested on several key planks. First and most prominent were his continued demands for a union of all German peoples within a Greater Germany. He was particularly enraged by the portions of Versailles that left millions of Germans on Czech or Polish soil, and felt that Austria, too, should be part of Germany, despite having been forbidden from doing so. Secondly, Hitler wanted to see the Treaty of Versailles completely torn up and thrown out. This in particular gained him enormous popularity, due to the cultural backlash against the ludicrous peace treaty. Finally, he wanted to deny all Jewish peoples living within Germany citizenship, and expel all those who had entered after the beginning of the Great War. Hitler’s anti-Semitic policies were virulently presented and unequivocal. The Jews were painted not only as social parasites, but were blamed for all the problems which had led to the current shackling of Germany’s might. Hitler would later paint them as the adversaries of everything Germany—and the Aryan race—ought to stand for. "The mightiest counterpart to the Aryan is represented by the Jew," he claimed. "In the Jewish people the will to self-sacrifice does not go beyond the individual’s naked instinct of self-preservation." The diatribe went on to compare them to herd animals and parasites without a real "State" to call their own. Fallacious logic was ubiquitous throughout, but the reasoning behind Hitler’s arguments was truly not the most important element. Weimar was a permissive environment for such blame laying.
Not long after the storming of the Beer Hall, things began to go wrong. Police arrived and opened fire on the Nazis, killing several and wounding others. Hitler escaped on foot, but was captured. He was sentenced to five years imprisonment within the fortress of Landsberg, but this was later reduced to a paltry nine months. Considering that the Beer Hall Putsch had, in effect, been an act of high treason, the sentence was telling of how much sympathy for the Nazis had developed in so short a time.
Hitler, ever the ambitious one, took the opportunity to put his ideology into a permanent written form. With the help of his aide Rudolf Hess, he began to dictate his entire philosophy. The result, Mein Kampf, is the fusion of Hitler’s Nazi symbology with political expediency. Covering virtually every topic that crossed the author’s mind, from International Jewry to syphilis to the necessity of a strong military, Mein Kampf was a perfect outline of the young demagogue’s political and military ambitions. Hitler wanted lebensraum (living room) for the German people, and he wanted a single German state. "One blood, one land" was his racial philosophy in short.
He made no equivocal statements with regard to this, for when he confronted the question of what to do about the present possessors of the land in question, he stated that "…the law of self-preservation goes into effect; and what is refused to amicable methods, it is up to the fist to take."
Hitler also wrote of his Weltanschauung, or perception of life. He felt that the German State was destined, indeed by God Himself, to be "lord of the earth." Hitler would be the Leader of this grand State, with absolute and irreversible powers granted to him. He tapped into mythical feelings by implying divine origin for the German state:
The very founding of the Reich seemed gilded by the magic of an event which uplifted the entire nation. After a series of incomparable victories [the Franco-Prussian war], a Reich was born for the sons and grandsons—a reward for immortal heroism. Whether consciously or unconsciously, it matters not, the Germans all had the feelings that this Reich, which did not owe its existence to the trickery of parliamentary fractions, towered above the measure of other states by the very exalted manner of its founding; for not in the cackling of a parliamentary battle of words, but in the thunder and rumbling of the front surrounding Paris was the solemn act performed…
So in one fell swoop Hitler brought history, mythology, and the lingering theory of dolchstosslegende into play. As poorly crafted as some sections of Mein Kampf were, the message was omnipresent and clear: Germany must be reborn, and I [Hitler] am the one to guide it in its quest.
The political side of Mein Kampf is essentially a tribute to the lasting nature of Prussian policies within the old German Empire. The institutions and ideals, for the most part, praised by Hitler, are those that Otto von Bismarck used to create the German Empire some decades earlier.
During his reign, Hitler would court the army (Wehrmacht) closely, but he was already doing so within the pages of his political manifesto. "The mightiest school of the German nation," the army was Hitler’s darling just as it had been to Bismarck before him. Versailles, he recognized, was directed primarily at the army. Thus Hitler equates, like all the Prussians before him, the strength of the German Army as directly correlating with the freedom and integrity of Germany. Hitler states that the German people owe the army just one thing: everything.
Hitler strongly emphasized the necessity of the Leader: one man without bounds on his power. Claiming that a strong man is mightiest alone, he quickly dispatches with republicanism and democracy in favor of an enlightened despotism. Action and strength were more important to Hitler than temperance and justice. And, as mentioned earlier, Hitler puts himself into the role of that hypothetical Leader. To do so, he illustrates his life as though it were an epic odyssey of some sort. The book opens with a pastoral and yet prophetic scene, manipulated by Hitler to his own effects:
Today it seems to be providential that Fate should have chosen Braunau on the Inn as my birthplace. For this little town lies on the boundary between two German states which we of the younger generation at least have made it our life work to reunite by every means at our disposal…One blood demands one Reich.
An immediate mingling of the mythical journey and Hitler’s political goals is evident. Later, as Hitler grows up, his ideals take shape within him. At the age of thirteen, "the little boy laced his tiny knapsack and ran away from his home," giving an air of quest and purpose to Hitler throughout his entire life.
"The standard path of the mythological adventure," wrote Joseph Campbell, "is a magnification of the formula represented in the rites of passage: separation—initiation—return." But did Hitler’s life follow this path? Campbell maintains that most anyone can be a hero, for all people go through the simple cycle of adventure at some point in our lives.
After his release in 1924, Hitler helped to re-launch the NSDAP in ’25. The next few years were not a grand time for the Nazis, for the Weimar government had regained power. However, the sentiments of the people had not changed. The Republic was not liked. Conditions were not good. Hitler’s Nazis spent the rest of the decade competing with opposing radical movements such as the Spartacists, who had previously revolted under the Soviet flag.
Violence was an important method of gaining influence for the Nazis. One of Hitler’s sayings around that time was, "Any method that is legal is also slow." Politics was not a game the Nazis wanted to play. The Storm Troopers (SA) of the Nazis gained a reputation for organization and power. For some time this remained the Nazi method of power: Street fighting. The Nazis were still aiming at revolution, until 1928, when Hitler decided that he would play Weimar "at its own game." The results of the ’28 Reichstag election reflected the move toward semi-legitimate NSDAP politics. They managed 12 of 491 seats in the German parliament3, but no major power was gained.
The economic situation had been steadily improving the last few years, but in 1929, the American stock market collapsed, destroying the progress of the last few years in Germany. This led to a new period of economic (and therefore social) unrest. The connection between social chaos and the favoring of the radicals in Germany became obvious in 1930, when the Nazis won 107 seats in the Reichstag.
The election had been precipitated by controversy over how the economic crisis should be solved. The election campaign was marked by much violence between the Nazis and the Communists. Chancellor Heinrich Bruening managed to keep the Nazis out of government, but his deflationary policies dramatically increased unemployment and swelled the ranks of Nazi and Communist supporters. The Nazis were now the second largest party in the Reichstag.
Again, the unemployed flocked to the radical banners. It seemed now to be only a question of which extreme was to be obeyed, the Right or the Left. Hitler, encouraged by the 1930 results, began to debate the question of running as a Nazi candidate for President. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda chief, strongly urged him to do so. After some time, Hitler decided to go ahead with it. He faced a difficult opponent: The old war hero Paul Von Hindenburg. During the campaign, Hitler became heady and confident, and began to plan the future of his Germany.
One night in Munich…the Fuehrer has a long discussion with Goebbels on which post the latter will have in the Third Reich. Goebbels says, a "Ministry of Popular Education which will deal with films, radio, art, culture, and propaganda." On another evening Hitler has a long discussion with his architect, Professor Troost, over plans for a "grandiose alteration of the national capital."
The duel seemed set, Hitler and Hindenburg. However, at the very last moment, the Communist party enters Ernst Thaellman as a candidate. They do this "on orders from Moscow…playing into Nazi hands." It must be remembered that Hitler vehemently denounced the Communists, and used them as a threat in his campaigns. A Communist candidate for president realized that threat for Hitler, pushing more support his way. The election results, however, turned out somewhat indecisive.
Hindenburg - 49.6 %
Hitler - 30.1 %
Thaelmann - 13.2 %
Because Hindenburg fell short of a total majority, a second election had to be held. Here, Hitler’s vote increased to 36% thanks to new nationalist support5 but Hindenburg’s increased to 53%, finally gaining the majority he needed. By no means were the Nazis out of the game, though.
President Hindenburg had the unfortunate habit of being easily manipulated by those who worked closely with him. A political game ensued between various members of the government that ended in new elections being called in July. Here, the Nazis won 230 of 609 seats in the Reichstag. Further duplicity continued into 1933, when Hindenburg decided that he could finally form a stable government only if Hitler was included in it. The current chancellor was sacked, and Hitler put in his place. This left Hitler only a few short steps away from total power. Years of frenzied speeches, terror tactics, and political backstabbing were coming to fruition. Hitler, confident, called for fresh elections on March 5th.
The final chord of fear was struck on the 27th of February. The Reichstag building was set aflame that evening, and immediately Hitler leapt to the forefront, claiming that "a Communist uprising was imminent," and then "persuaded Von Hindenburg to restrict civil and political liberties severely."
The Communist scare worked. NSDAP gained 44 per cent of the vote on the 5th. It was not a majority, but it was enough. Still playing the "Communist Card," Hitler pushed forward the Enabling Act, an insidious piece of legislature that would ‘enable’ the outlawing of opposition to Hitler, and allow virtually any action that the new Nazi government deemed appropriate.
The plan was deceptively simple and had the advantage of cloaking the seizure of absolute power in legality. The Reichstag would be asked to…confer on Hitler’s cabinet exclusive legislative powers for four years. Put even more simply, the German Parliament would be requested to turn over its constitutional functions to Hitler and take a long vacation.
The "official" name for the Enabling Act was "Law for Removing the Distress of People and Reich (Gesetz zur Behebung der Not von Volk und Reich)." It was five paragraphs long. Despite the fact the Nazis did not have a two-thirds majority, the Act was passed, 441 to 84. They acquired their necessary votes by denying the Communists entry, and by convincing the Catholic Center party that the Enabling Act was necessary for the good for Germany. Upon its passing, the Nazis deliriously cheered and sang. They had, in an apparently legal manner, eliminated democracy in Germany completely. Hitler was a dictator, except in name.
Slightly over one year later, on the 2nd of August, 1934, President von Hindenburg died. As chancellor, Hitler was next in line. His seizure of power was given a 90 per cent approval rating by the people. Only four and a half million Germans voted "No."
Never in the history of the world had there been such a grand plan for a state. Adolf Hitler and his Nazi compatriots had nearly ever aspect of German life for the "thousand year-Reich" already thought and written out. The class, religious, and overall social structure of the German people had been given over to the whim of the Nazi government. More specifically, they were under the guidance of one man, Adolf Hitler - The reins to this powerful social animal that was Germany, in the hands of one man. This was to have severe repercussions later on; it would prove an unmanageable and corrupted way of ruling by the end of the war.
One of the ‘themes’ of the Nazi regime was an almost Pagan way of looking at things. Fertility, glory, and strength were all emphasized. Intellectualism, though, was looked at as degenerate.
The SS paper Schwarzes Korps correlated IQ inversely with male fertility: ‘Intellectuals validate their claim to existence within the community by a paucity of children’; and the country’s leading medical journal ascribed the decline in the population to the mania for educational self-improvement and social climbing.
Also interesting is the German word Volk. It’s meaning was in the process of evolving along with history, and thanks to the ways of semantics, at that point in history it "denoted both ‘the people’ in the radical-democratic sense and ‘the folk’ in the racial sense." Thus such sayings as "Ein volk, ein Reich, ein Fuehrer!" ("One folk, One government, One Ruler!") appearing on propaganda posters carried more than simply political meaning to the Germans who saw them.
In hindsight, the pure absurdity that was pumped through the veins of Germany by Nazi propaganda is easily visible. However, point of view is always a problem. To the German people, very little was out of the ordinary. Nationalism was tradition, and a long-honored one at that. Versailles had wronged them, and now they were putting things to right. This was true. The trains ran on time, so to speak, but behind it all – the same methods that the Nazis had used to gain governmental power in the first place; terror, violence, and intimidation – now under state control and supervision. And slowly, the Nazis were gaining more power over the German people.
Here, in the early days of Nazism were founded the first re-education camps. Those who disagreed with the government loudly enough to be heard were sent away. Disorder would not be tolerated. The way was being paved for concentration camps, and eventually, the gas chambers.
With Hitler in control of Germany, his personal beliefs began to shape the country. His powerful voice drove the German workers onward in modernizing, and, heard through the wondrous radio around Germany, helped to maintain the sense of national identity with the party.
Progress, efficiency, and order were priority now. Whoever got in the way of them was to be crushed. More than not, the Jewish population of Germany was the target of such blame-laying policy. Only a week after Hitler took power, anti-Jewish rallies began in cities across Germany, with posters reading "The Jews have till 10 A.M on Friday to reflect. Then the struggle commences. The Jews of the world want to destroy Germany. German people-resist! Don’t buy from Jews!"
Anti-Semitism was state policy now.
Everywhere, there was hypocrisy, falsity, and madness. The anti-Jewish policy robbed Germany of some of its greatest thinkers, and was harshly enforced, but when the 1936 Olympics came to Berlin, the Juden unerwuenscht (Jews Not Welcome) signs quietly disappeared for a time, and anyone who mentioned that they had been there days before was blasted by the German press.
Religion was subjugated to the state. "…the Evangelical Church of Saxony replaced the Hebrew terms ‘Amen’ and ‘Hallelujah’ by ‘May God Grant it’ and ‘Praised be the Lord’."
The restoration of hope and prosperity had made Hitler into a God, and the Third Reich was his Church. Hitler was admired, praised, revered, and finally deified. Portraits of Hitler had the short Austrian standing astride the world, one hand on his trusted hound, another holding a sword. All this under the watchful eye of the swastika, sitting on its field of blood.
Everything was made to be German. Deutschland uber alles! Schools were re-organized, education was centralized. The new goal of state education was obvious: To produce soldiers for the state. The pure sciences were not taught, for all sciences that were not German were not pure. Now physics, which Germany excelled in, was made to be German Physics. Chemistry – German Chemistry. Racial theory replaced psychology. The ability to gain an unbiased education in Germany had been totally eradicated in a matter of a few years. Where were the protests? Where was the shock? All of this proceeded along its course in a surprisingly quiet manner. Yet, there is absolutely no doubt as to the complete absurdity of Nazi Science. For instance, the Theory of Relativity, critiqued by Nazi professor Wilhelm Mueller:
The Einstein theory, on which so much of modern physics is based, was to this singular Nazi professor "directed from beginning to end toward the goal of transforming the living-that is, the non-Jewish- world of living essence, born from a mother earth and bound up with blood, and bewitching it into spectral abstraction in which all individual differences of peoples and nations, and all inner limits of unsubstantial diversity of geometric dimensions survives which produces all events out of the compulsion of its godless subjection to laws.
Such absurd paranoia was quickly becoming the norm in Germany. If it didn’t fit the Nazi dogma, by Hitler, it would be changed so that it did! "It" could be anything, from a book to a record to a person. No matter - destroy it all.
Another trend at that time in Germany was that of rearmament. Upon coming to power in 1934, Hitler had declared that "the armed forces were to be strong enough to defend Germany within five years and by 1942 capable of offensive action. The army was to be increased from 100,000 to 300,000 men." A disarmed Reich could not realize Hitler’s goals of lebensraum (living space) for all Germanic people. Other violations of Versailles included the formation of the Luftwaffe and the reoccupation of the Rhineland that had been under control of France. Britain and France, while slightly alarmed, did nothing. Even when Hitler sent his troops into Austria on the 12th of March, 1938, nothing was done.
Indeed, the only nation brave enough to act against Hitler was Czechoslovakia, whom deployed her army when Hitler began to attempt to annex the Sudetenland, in May of 1938. This might have been successful (Hitler had not planned on actual combat) had Czech President Hacha not agreed to go to negotiations with Hitler. That September, British Prime Minister Chamberlain flew to Germany and obtained Hitler’s assurance that once the Sudetenland was in German hands, there would be no more demands. The end result of all this was The Munich Pact, which Chamberlain loudly sold to both the French and his own people, saying grandiose things such as "The superstructure for peace has been laid…peace in our time."
A month later, Hitler demanded the restoration of Danzig to Germany. The Polish government would hear none of it, and refused him. In March of 1939 Hitler proved the Munich Pact to be worthless, as he moved into a chaotic Czechslovakia and seized control. There was hardly a sound from the shocked British, who for the first time seriously began to doubt Hitler’s word.
In America, President Franklin Roosevelt was very concerned about the situation in Europe. Despite relative American isolation, Britain was a traditional ally, as was France. The Neutrality Acts of 1935 and 1937, which effectively prevented Roosevelt from acting, dictated official policy. So, he did what he could. He sought assurance from Hitler that Germany would not attack other European countries. Hitler made a joke of it in the Reichstag, and while no direct answer was forthcoming, the feeling was obvious.
Britain felt relatively secure. There was little threat of invasion to her, and even if Germany was to begin a war against she and France, there was always the threat of a two front war that kept Germany in check. Poland sat on Germany’s flank, and beyond that were the endless plains of Russia, and the Red Army. The USSR had even proposed alliance with Britain and France that April.
Then, on August 23rd, the unthinkable happened. Germany and Russia signed a non-aggression pact in Moscow. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact marked the death knell of yet another hope that the west had been clinging to. Britain finally came to the full realization of what was about to happen, and two days later, they signed a formal alliance with Poland. After this, there were desperate negotiations with them to attempt a peace solution with Germany sans appeasement. However, it was clear no such solution existed. Poland was adamant. The Polish statement, made by Colonel Jozef Bock, was clear: "It is clear that negotiations, in which one State formulates demands and the other is obliged to accept those demands unaltered, are not negotiations." Unfortunately, Hitler was just as adamant. He would have Danzig, whether the Poles opposed him or not.
Destruction by Fire – The End of Nazi Germany
On September 1st, 1939, the Second World War met its official start. Concentration camp prisoners, dressed as Polish soldiers, attacked German border posts with small arms and grenades. They were killed, and then displayed to the world as an excuse for the German army to storm across the frontier into the heart of Poland. This was the beginning of the German blitzkrieg that was to strike fear into the hearts of her enemies for years to come.
Britain and France finally acted. They demanded Germany withdraw immediately, or face war. Germany refused, and on the 3rd, they followed through and declared war. Poland fought valiantly in the meantime, hoping that France would attack Germany and save them. However, it was not to be. In the east, blitzkrieg. In the west, ‘sitzkrieg.’. France and Britain sat idly by as Germany, with USSR assistance, smashed Poland in less than a month. Poland had never had a chance: Germany’s motorized infantry and panzer divisions scythed through Polish cavalry divisions like a sickle through grain.
For months, the war stalled. The Germans took their time to train and prepare for the eventual war in the west. Hitler made a final appeal for peace to the west, with the condition that Britain and France recognize the status quo in Poland. It was flatly refused by the now Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Britain, and the French government of Edouard Daladier.
After several months of the Phony War, the Wehrmacht went north, storming into Denmark and Norway. A British effort to reinforce the surprised Norwegians failed, as a highly outnumbered German force swiftly defeated them. The British might have tried to send more forces if not for the events of May 10th, 1940. That day, after weeks of failed peace negotiations involving everyone from the King of Sweden to the Pope, the German army began to blitz its way through the Ardennes forest and the plains of Holland. Ironically, both of these countries had also attempted a peace solution, all the while emphasizing their complete and total neutrality.
Hitler himself had issued orders for this attack last October, calling it Fall Gelb (Plan Yellow.) It was remarkably similar to the German strategy for the 1914 invasion of Belgium and France, which was designed to avoid the fortified Franco-German border region. The allies were expecting exactly this, and were prepared to meet the Germans as they attacked into Belgium. On the border sat the formidable Maginot Line, which the French had every confidence in. Indeed, the entire French strategy was based on concrete, and this was to be its doom. But Hitler’s plan did not take advantage of this, and his generals openly criticized him for that.
6 March – At a military conference in Berlin, [Hitler] decided to adopt the plan put forward by von Rundstedt and his former chief of staff, Erich von Manstein, for the Ardennes option. Code-named Fall Sichelschnitt. (Plan ‘Sickle’), it called for the attack against the Low Countries to go ahead, but with slightly fewer forces, in order to draw the Allies forward, while the decisive thrust would be mounted through the Ardennes. The Maginot Line would be masked.
So, a major strategy change was put forward. Instead of Hitler’s plan, the Wehrmacht was allowed to adopt a strategy that its generals had created. This was to be a wild success and a display of the fantastic talent that was present in the German military. Von Manstein was young and arrogant, but he knew how to plan a blitzkrieg.
German planning once again paid off. Within ten days, armored brigades had reached the mouth of the Somme river, and effectively cut off the British Expeditionary Force and the French First Army in Belgium. Allied counterattacks were launched at Arras and Laon, but neither was concentrated or determined enough to stop the German juggernaut.
On the 15th of May, Holland surrendered, never having had much a chance in the first place. The Belgian Army fought on, but was steadily pushed back towards the sea along with the British and French who were now trapped with them. On the 27th, King Leopold decided that defeat was inevitable, and only further suffering could be gained by fighting. This left the BEF and French in a desperate situation, their backs to the channel. Abruptly, orders came from Hitler:
…with the prompting of Rundstedt and Goering but over the violent objections of Brauchitsch and Halder, that the tank forces should halt…and attempt no further advance. This furnished Lord Gort [Commander of the BEF] an unexpected and vital repreive which he and the British Navy and Air Force made the most of and which, as Rundstedt later perceived and said, led "to one of the great turning points of the war."
The Dunkirk debacle was a lost opportunity for the Germans, mostly due to Hitler’s interference in the conduct of the war. This was overshadowed by the overwhelming success of the Western campaign as a whole, though, and Hitler was able to revel in his victory, touring Paris and expecting the war to be over at any time.
This was not to be so, as Britain was now determined to fight to the last. Hitler found himself facing a foe he could not defeat on the ground, on the sea, or in the air. Hermann Goering’s Luftwaffe made a nearly successful attempt during the Battle of Britain. At one point in September, the British Royal Air Force (RAF) was running desperately short of trained pilots and fighters, and was putting her last reserves forward. Just as the chance for victory loomed, Hitler became enraged at the British bombing of Berlin earlier that month, and ordered Goering to concentrate instead on ‘Terror Raids’ against British cities. This gave the RAF the time it needed to recover, and forever guaranteed a war on the western front for Germany.
1941 was the beginning of the end for Hitler’s Reich. Ever since Mein Kampf, it was Hitler’s strategy that Germany could not survive without Ukrainian grain and oil. Russia had to be German. All during the year, divisions moved eastward and prepared to unleash the largest military operation in history. However, the start date of this operation (‘Barbarossa’) was destined to be pushed back four weeks due to the actions of a strategically worthless Balkan country: Yugoslavia. It was Hitler’s personal rage that led to the diversion of many German divisions to smash the rogue nation that would not submit to becoming a vassal state as Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria had. A coup had taken place, and the government that had originally agreed to Hitler’s demands was no more.
The coup in Belgrade threw Adolf Hitler into one of the wildest rages of his entire life. He took it as a personal affront and in his fury made sudden decisions which would prove utterly disastrous to the fortunes of the Third Reich.
Needless to say, the invasion was successful. However, when the invasion of Russia did go into action, its eventual fortune was doomed to be defeated by the same tireless general that had defeated Napoleon: ‘General Winter.’ German tanks would not start, infantry froze, and when the Russian counterattack came, it drove the Wehrmacht away from the gates of Moscow forever.
Also needless to say, Hitler was enraged.
The final blow was struck to German command structure shortly after. Field Marshal von Brauchitsch, Commander-in-Chief of the German Army, was replaced. Not with another general such as von Manstein or von Rundstedt, but with Hitler. A man who had never risen above the rank of corporal now commanded of one of the world’s greatest fighting forces.
A year after the fact, December 1942: The Wehrmacht once again began to attack Russia, this time aiming for the Caucasus Mountains and the tank factories at Stalingrad. They would reach Stalingrad, and reduce the city to rubble, but at the cost of leaving the flanks of two entire German armies (one of them panzer) guarded by inexperienced Romanians. The Russians exploited this, and Hitler refused to allow his men to pull out of the shattered skeleton of Stalingrad. So there they were left to rot, fighting with nothing but desperation through December, and surrendering in January. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers were lost to Germany in this way. Not wounded, simply lost. Most would never see their homeland again, dying in Russian POW camps. Only 5,000 of more than 200,000 would return home, many years later.
By this time, America was very involved in the war. She had been supplying Britain air support since early 1942, and was by now building up a substantial reserve of soldiers there as well. Plans were being made that would lead to the eventual downfall of Germany in the two-front war she had feared for so long.
In North Africa, General Erwin Rommel’s Deutsches Afrika Korps (DAK) had made good progress up until late 1942, when their supplies simply ceased to come. It was not a matter that they were not able to get there, but that Hitler did not see any importance in getting them there. His obvious devotion (arguably, obsession) with the eastern front left Rommel with precious little attention despite his talent and success. This led to defeat at El Alamein, and eventually to the total loss of axis control of North Africa in 1943. For the first time, Germans had fought against Americans, in Tunisia. They were soundly defeated, being in a bad position, and would be chased up the length of Italy for the next two years by them.
However, there is no greater point of American involvement in Europe than the Normandy invasion and the subsequent liberation of France. Operation ‘Overlord’ was likely the only operation to outreach ‘Barbarossa’ in its complexity, planning, and ambition.
On the morning of June 6, 1944, 155,000 allied troops set off across the English Channel in planes, boats, and gliders13. An assault of a size never before seen was made upon the beaches of Normandy and was mostly successful. There was difficulty at Omaha Beach, where there were nearly 5,000 casualties, but the beach was eventually secured.
The campaign to liberate France was one fraught with difficulty, but always, the soldiers did the best they could with what they had. The American soldiers were proving to be more versatile than the German Super-soldiers who they were faced with. These were boys out of college, out of high school. Hitler had made a key mistake in thinking that they could not adapt to the hardships of the European ground war, and this one would be his last.
There were hundreds of young officers…lieutenants who came into Europe in the fall of 1944 to take up the fighting. Rich kids. Bright kids. The quarterback on the championship high school football team. The president of the class. The chess champion. The lead in the class play. The solo in the spring concert. The wizard in the chemistry class. America was throwing her finest young men at the Germans.
The Americans, British, and Canadians were pushing the Germans back into their own borders just as the Russians were pushing their way into Prussia in the east. The Third Reich was now entering its last days.
Hitler’s last desperate gambles against the Russians and the Western Allies manifested themselves at Budapest in the east and a second Ardennes offensive (The Battle of the Bulge) in the west. Budapest was a total failure, and never had a chance. However, The Battle of the Bulge was a great shock to western forces who had not had a chance to adapt to blitzkrieg tactics. ‘Wacht am Rhein’ would show them the capabilities-and vulnerabilities- of the German army.
Hitler was confident. He had spent a great deal of time planning the attack, gathering the forces, and mustering the necessary supplies. After all of this, he was still relying on several key factors. First, that his fanatical SS soldiers that now comprised the majority of his front-line forces would easily overwhelm inexperienced Americans. Second, and even more critically, that his panzer divisions would be able to capture large stockpiles of American and British supplies so that they could continue their offensive. This was necessary because the new German tanks, though far superior in armament and armor to most American tanks, were gas hogs. Germany could no longer afford to move its armored corps.
It was, however, not to be. Despite perfect weather for the operation and initial breakthroughs that seemed to promise victory, "the GIs-enough of them- were doing what Hitler had been sure they could not." The actions of individuals, not units, were stopping a rusty German war machine in its tracks.
Eventually, ‘Wacht Am Rhein’ ground to a halt, for innumerable reasons. Lack of supplies, of experienced troops, of air support. The heady days of 1940 were clearly nothing but a memory now. The harsh reality of total defeat was beginning to sink in.
The Fuehrer was now sick with Parkinson’s disease, and looked a shadow of the man he had once been. There was no more confident striding about and barking of orders. Hitler had now retired to his Fuehrerbunker beneath Berlin. His once grand communication network was reduced to a single switchboard.
Goebbels made the end of the Third Reich into Wagnerian Opera, a grand tragedy to be remembered by the German people forever. Oh, what could have been!
Adolf Hitler, however, was still Fuehrer. He still seemed to take himself seriously, even when he knew there was no chance of victory. As the Russians pressed their final attacks forward into Berlin, he was still working with his generals (those whom he had not fired or killed) and placing divisions (those that had not surrendered or been overrun) into the path of the oncoming Red Army juggernaut. These were ghost divisions, and all the hopes of a ‘Marne Miracle’ were also phantasmal. Hitler began to descend into an angry rage at every little hint of reality that managed to seep into his concrete cave, and would explode at any report he received that he didn’t like, even if it could not be verified. Siegfried Knappe, in his autobiographical account of his experience as a German soldier, writes of his experiences in the bunker:
After about forty-five minutes, the meeting in the briefing room ended. Hitler emerged, followed by Dr. Goebbels, General Krebs, General Weidling, and some other people. I saluted and Hitler walked toward me. As he neared, I was shocked by his appearance. He was stooped, and his left arm was bent and shaking…He looked like a very old man, at least twenty years older than his fifty-six years.
…
It occurred to me then that Hitler was still the living symbol of Germany-but Germany as it was now. In the same six years, the flourishing, aspiring country had become a flaming pile of debris and ruin.
…
When I reported to the Fuehrer bunker the next day with the daily situation map and saw Hitler going from one room to another in the bunker, my hand moved involuntarily toward my pistol. I had a terribly strong urge to kill him and stop all the suffering…In the instant I had to make a decision, I must have instinctively concluded that I should not risk making a martyr of Hitler and possibly creating another dolchstosslegende.
During the Battle for Berlin, Hitler emerged only once from his bunker. It was to decorate members of the Hitler Youth who were fighting to defend their city. Many were issued Iron Crosses for bravery, by a tired, but happy Hitler, who genuinely seemed to enjoy their company for a brief moment or two.
After this, the Fuehrer who had declared a "thousand-year Reich" entered the fortress that was shortly to become his tomb, and was never seen by anyone on the outside world again.
Sometime on the 30th of April 1945, Adolf Hitler shot himself in the temple with a pistol while simultaneously swallowing a cyanide capsule. His long-time mistress and recently made wife Eva Braun died with him, by poison. A day later the Nazi Eagle sitting atop the chancellery building was blasted off by Soviet artillery. Joseph Goebbels and his entire family died in a mass suicide, silencing the voice of German propaganda. These events were the symbolic end of the Third Reich, which was to cease to exist a week later when it surrendered unconditionally. The Nazis had been smashed into complete submission. The most destructive war ever fought on European soil was over.
The ultimate fall of the Third Reich can be attributed to the failure of one or more of the elements within its mythic journey. However, to "lay blame" exclusively on Hitler, the German people, or the Wehrmacht is to ignore that they were all part of the same social organism. Going through one of the most tumultuous periods in history, the German people adapted and reacted as any group could be expected to. The circumstances of their time helped create their culture, and as has been examined, those circumstances have a wide variety of sources. Therefore, it is this writer’s conclusion that Nazi Germany, though obviously a failed idea, was a minotaur of sorts. Birthed by those who would rather slay it, it tormented Europe, demanding revenge. In the end, it was destroyed out of necessity. To mince words and claim Hitler represented the "ultimate evil" is simply a reflection of wartime propaganda, and ignores the millions of other horrible injustices that have occurred throughout history. Yet, that reaction too is part of a mythology, one separate from Nazi Germany, one that this writer is unalterably biased by.
