Hitler and his God

A Militant Movement

Hitler owed the successes of his NSDAP to his insight that, in the given post-war circumstances, no new party could make headway if it was not able to stand up to the other parties, the Socialists and especially the Communists, with brute force, for they ruled the streets and broke up any meeting or manifestation which was not to their liking. Humanity being what it is, Hitler was right in concluding from History that a revolutionary idea needs a revolutionary movement to make its physical appearance and growth possible in society.

He wrote: “Any ideology, though a thousand times right and supremely beneficial to humanity, will be of no practical service for the maintenance of a people as long as its principles have not yet become the rallying point of a militant movement … If an abstract conception of a general nature is to serve as the basis of a future development, then the first prerequisite is to form a clear understanding of the nature and scope of this conception. For only on such a basis can a movement be founded which will be able to draw the necessary fighting strength from the internal cohesion of its principles and convictions. From general ideas a political programme must be constructed and a general ideology must receive the stamp of a definite political faith.” “We had declared one of our principles thus: ‘We shall meet violence with violence in our own defence’. Naturally that principle disturbed the equanimity of the knights of the pen. They reproached us bitterly not only for what they called our crude worship of the cudgel but also because, according to them, we had no intellectual forces on our side. These charlatans did not think for a moment that a Demosthenes could be reduced to silence at a mass-meeting by fifty idiots who had come there to shout him down and use their fists against his supporters.” “We, by our aggressive policy, are setting up a new ideology which we shall defend with indomitable devotion.” 312

“Faith” and “devotion” are religious terms, used by Hitler freely and intentionally, for the new ideology of which he was the prophet was not a political programme to be realized by a political party and with political objectives: it was a fundamental and therefore religious creed, intended to use the German nation as an instrument for conquest of the world and the establishment of a new world order. Hitler as a human being may have been petty and in some ways ridiculous, but the vision which had taken hold of him was world-encompassing and did cause global upheaval. “Do you now understand the depth of our national-socialist movement?” he asked Hermann Rauschning after having lifted a tip of the veil. “Can there be something that is greater and more comprehensive? He who has understood National-Socialism as no more than a political movement doesn’t know anything about it.” 313

Hitler defended keeping his party programme unchanged by writing: “The function which dogma fulfils in religious belief is parallel to the function which party principles fulfil for a political party which is in the process of being built up … A doctrine which forms a definite outlook on life cannot struggle and triumph by allowing the right of free interpretation of its general teaching, but only by defining that teaching in certain articles of faith that have to be accepted and incorporating it in a political organization.” “The essentials of a teaching must never be looked for in external formulas, but always in its inner meaning. And this meaning is unchangeable.” 314 The essentials of Hitler’s teaching were indeed unchangeable – in his own head; so many of the people more or less close to him have testified to the fixity of his leading ideas, and to their secrecy. About his new gospel he wrote the following dreadful but revealing words: “A revolutionary conception of the world and human existence will always achieve decisive success when the new ideology has been taught to a whole people, or subsequently forced upon them if necessary, and when, on the other hand, the central organization, the movement itself, is in the hands of only those few men who are absolutely indispensable to form the nerve-centres of the coming State.” 315 The man foresaw all essentials of his future reign of terror, and they were written there for all to read.

“Since the first day of our foundation we were resolved to secure the future of the movement by fighting our way forward in a spirit of blessed faith and ruthless determination”, writes Hitler. “If the struggle on behalf of an ideology is not conducted by men of heroic spirit who are ready to sacrifice everything, within a short while it will become impossible to find real fighting followers who are ready to lay down their lives for the cause … In order to secure the conditions that are necessary for success, everybody concerned must be made to understand that the new movement looks to posterity for its honour and glory but that it has no recompense to offer to the present-day members.” “It is always more difficult to fight successfully against faith than against knowledge. Love is less subject to change than respect. Hatred is more lasting than mere aversion. And the driving force which has brought about the most tremendous revolutions on this earth has never been a body of scientific teaching which has gained power over the mass, but always a devotion which has inspired them, and often a kind of hysteria which has urged them to action.” 316

In this connection Ralph Reuth quotes Goebbels: “Goebbels reflected once: ‘What we want is according to the laws of science not attainable and not to be achieved. We know that. But we act nevertheless according to our thought because we believe in miracles, in the impossible and unattainable. To us, politics is the miracle of the impossible!’” And Reuth comments: “In this irrationality, in this metaphysics of blind faith lay the actual essence of National-Socialism as a political religion.” 317 Because Hitler kept his most intimate thoughts a secret, “Germany subjected itself to a religion it did not know; it followed rites it did not understand; it exulted and died for a mysterium in which it was not initiated. Only ‘the Führer’ had real knowledge, no National-Socialist doubted that. And the Führer kept to himself what he did not want to share with others.” 318

“Hitler has shown his political abilities also by the fact that he always discussed his political plans in detail only within a certain circle, and let only very few have a glimpse of the interconnection between his ideas as a whole. Before he came to power, the main reason for this was that only very few of those lower middle class bourgeois, who were his closest backers, could stretch their minds wide enough not to recoil before new ideas which surpassed all boundaries of a ‘reasonable’ nationalism and socialism. Hitler was already suspect as an illumined seer and fantast with the ‘realists’ in the party. That precisely the ‘fantastic’ ideas of Hitler would made it possible for him to go his peculiar way, which gave the lie to all sceptics, was in those days understandable only to a few.” (Hermann Rauschning 319)