Hitler and his God

A Path Apart

Putting together the glimpses of German history which we could catch in our story about the roads that led to Hitler, we detect a certain outline, useful for the interpretation of the whole. The first contact of the Germanic tribes with the rest of the continent on which they lived was their confrontation with Rome. After having migrated over practically the whole European continent and part of North Africa, a second confrontation with Rome and its civilization took place about the acceptance of the Christian faith. Germanic tribes which had occupied Roman territory found little difficulty to convert, as exemplified in the story of Clodowech, alias Clovis, if only to consolidate their conquests or raise their status. (Many of them would become founders of the feudal family trees, later branching out into the blue-blooded and very Christian nobility.) They were actually the driving force behind the evangelization of the still pagan tribes who lived on the original pagan lands. Many Germans will find difficulty in forgiving Charlemagne, a Germanic king, for the slaughter of thousands of recalcitrant Saxons, and Himmler will have to issue an order compelling his SS to do so, after Hitler’s example.

We saw that German nationalism awoke as part of the “romantic” trend of the Renaissance, its most powerful voice being that of Martin Luther. Around this time, the awareness of a difference between the Roman-Latin-Welsh south and the Aryan-Nordic-Germanic north was mooted for the first time. “Luther detested the urban and humanistic culture of the Renaissance, which was a threat to the simple peasant piety he admired … Luther was the only religious reformer to identify himself narrowly with nationalism. In his most important work, an ‘Address to the Nobility of the German Nation’, he announced that he spoke only to and for Germans, demanding that German princes control ecclesiastical matters and throw off the subversive influence of Rome. He would often be cited later by German philosophers, politicians and theologians who interpreted the Reformation as the first great expression of the Germanic soul, rejecting Catholic Christianity as Latin, un-German and cosmopolitan, a threat to the Teutonic people second only to international Jewry.” 527 Luther’s attitude and the enthusiastic response it encountered resulted in the fact that, as Albert Speer noted, “fundamentally the Renaissance skirted Germany when it spread from Italy to France and England. Perhaps one of the roots of Hitler’s successes may be traced to this failure on Germany’s part to participate in humanistic culture.” 528

In the series of religious wars following Luther’s reformation, the terrible Thirty Years’ War devastated the lands we call Germany and left them backward and exhausted for centuries to come. One of the consequences was that Germany remained a patchwork of principalities at a time that elsewhere in Europe the unifying idea of the “nation” began to take shape, mainly because of the innovative ideas put forward by the thinkers of the Enlightenment. “While in England and France the concept of the nation and the state had a rational-humanistic foundation, going back to Calvin on the one hand and the Enlightenment on the other, in Germany the concept of state and Volk was made into a sacred myth by the Romantic movement. The rejection of the Enlightenment and the mythicization of the Volk are the specific factors which led in Germany to a separate development [Sonderentwicklung] of which the consequences should not be underestimated.” 529

The first effects of the specifically German idea of a nationalism based on race and Volk came about as a reaction to the stormy conquests of Napoleon and his imposition of the guiding principles of the French Revolution. The Germans fell back on what they considered their true origins, the rural, and the military temperament of their elders, thus creating the Prussian spirit and the Prussian state. “East Prussia, forged out of the bloodied and Christianized territories of the Teutonic Knights, never lost its feudal character … Prussian military and autocratic values were sanctified among the German elites and eventually the middle classes as well. Once again German history deviated from that of the liberal West.” 530 Prussia will be the core of the Bismarck state, the first political entity which may be called “German” in the full meaning of the word.

The innate German sense of duty and zest for work brought about the first Wirtschaftswunder, managed by a caucus of politicians, industrialists, bankers and military men, and demanding for Germany “a place in the sun” among the nations who looked down upon it as a newcomer. Inwardly, Germany was now divided into three: a group with the Pan-German League as its mouthpiece and which aimed at becoming a world power; the völkisch movement which turned its back on the modern world and its industrialism, and which created a self-enclosed imaginary world of medieval and primitive fantasies; and the sombre masses of the fourth estate, the proletariat, increasingly to be reckoned with and felt as a threat by the established social classes. These parts of the German body politic overlapped; they were also, in times of crisis, tied into temporary unity by the feeling of belonging to a superior people with a special mission in and for the world. For the Germans, writes Haffner, were “an ambitious people”.

Their sense of superiority was egged on by the unexpected and therefore staggering defeat of 1918, the fictitious “stab in the back”, and the feeling of injustice caused by several articles in the Treaty of Versailles. Revenge became the common motive as a means of self-affirmation, drawing its strength from the specific Germanic character and values. That the Germans were special, a Volk apart, capable of justifying its claims as leaders of the world’s destiny, would be proven – that, or nothing. The despicable Weimar Republic was a miscarriage of the Enlightenment fathered by the victorious Allies. Once a Leader was found to bundle and direct the energies of the Volk, it would put its inmost powers into effect, realize its ideals and, at last, create a world worthy of its existence.

George Mosse writes about “the very real difference that separated Germany from the West”, and which is often called Sonderweg, meaning “path apart”. “Was Germany unique in Europe?” he asks. “Other nations had movements similar to the New Romanticism. Barrès and Maurras in France also called for an internal renewal of their nation, a transformation that would entail both a metaphysical religious conviction and political action. But this impetus never penetrated as deeply as in Germany, nor did it lead to the same end. It is important to clarify this once again, since German historians, of late, have been happy to point out parallels with other Western nations. Yet, even though these may have shared certain elements with the New Romanticism, the chemistry of the German movement was quite different. In Germany, the romantic, völkisch ideology established a frame of reference which reached deeper into the nation.” 531

Germany felt itself possessing true values and not modern mental constructs, a divine soul and not only an arbitrary mind, strength rooted in an ever-present authenticity and not the weakening morality of an alien Judaic creed, and pure blood that was not degraded. It felt itself as the chosen people and not a false pretender, as the heroes of the future against the impotent people of a civilization in decline. Having suffered much in its history, it had arrived on the world scene at a late hour, but it staked its claim to a worthy place, in fact to the prominent place which was its due and destiny. Rival powers were encircling it, intending to throttle its industrial life lines and the nourishment of its people. Undefeated on the battlefield, Germany would stand up again stronger than ever, and reach at last its ultimate fulfilment in a Third Reich. What was foreseen in the plan of God would be accomplished by the works of man.