2nd June
In the Beobachter issue I read yesterday, there was another article citing what appears to be an election speech delivered by Joseph Bürckel in the days leading up to the Anschluss of Austria into the Reich.
That articles brought on a deluge of thoughts and concerns in my mind.
Why? Because it struck deep into an entangled nest of history and most of our most precious principles. And unlike our simplistic image of Nazi literature, it was not at all obvious who the culprit was.
The apple of discord: The Saar region.
But in reality, everything comes into play in WW1. Dying family based dynasties mixed into a rising nationalist consensus and people’s movements mutually working with populist politicians.
I spent a few days reading up on the convoluted region in the vain hope that I could separate the historical layers.
What became clear to me is that we - the people - are built out of the same material as the average person throwing themselves in the hands of a political project such as the hybrid between nationalism and the Völkischer Bewegung.
What difference is there really between “political will” and “Wille zur Macht?”? A slightly different degree of determination. America cannot understand this. Europe is a cell block with little room for expansion. The settlers in America took over a naked continent which they easily stripped for its earlier inhabitants.
Saar
The Versailles treaty set up a precarious situation:
France wanted the coal industry in Saar after the end of World War 1 as compensation for destroyed industry under German shelling on its side of the Western Front.
The population consisted mostly of Germans. Woodrow Wilson saw this during the negotiations and given his predilection for self-determination of peoples, Versailles laid out a plan for a plebiscite where people could vote if Saar should be French, German or independent. But before the plebiscite, a fifteen year grace period where the Saar was to be put under administration by the League of Nations.
There are undoubtedly a lesson to learn here. But which one? Always aim for minimal friction? France didn’t see it like that. The French seemingly had a lot to learn, because in the end they managed to provoke the Saar population to hate the occupation which it in reality was.
The speech by Gauleiter Bürckel reeks of this innate embitterment which is aimed broadly. Unlike Hess, Bürckel’s aim is clear and directed precisely against the forces he has had to endure in the 15 years where they were refused their German identity.
An der Saar gibt es nur Deutsche. Der Saarkampf galt der Widerlegung jener unglückseligen Auffassung, die im Versailler Vertrag zum Ausbruch kommt und besagt daß es Frankreich doch gelingen könnte, nach 15 Jahren aus Deutschen wenn nicht Franzosen, so doch Autonomisten zu machen.
There are only Germans on the Saar. The Saar struggle was intended to refute the unfortunate notion that emerged in the Treaty of Versailles, which stated that France might succeed after 15 years in turning Germans, if not French, then at least autonomists.
Can you reprogram people? How naive were political leaders in 1920-1935? Was it conceivable that they believed German Völkisch nationalism to be erasable? Did they console themselves that the result of propaganda can be undone, superficial and unrooted as it is? This was to be achieved through hedonism and material progress. Was that the underlying argument? The liberal dream? Poor people are unruly?
Das Ziel sollte vor allem durch den Einsatz materieller Mittel erreicht werden, das heißt also, daß man durch alle möglichen Vergünstigungen, Schaffung wirtschaftlich bevorzugter Zustände die Stimme des Blutes zum Schweigen bringen wollte. So war denn auch dieser Kampf aus de Frage abgestellt, erheßt das Blut seine Sprache, oder weicht das Blut einem materiellen oder sonstigen Angebot.
The goal was to be achieved primarily through the use of material means, meaning that the voice of blood was to be silenced through all possible privileges and the creation of economically advantageous conditions. Thus, this struggle was also resolved by the question: does blood speak out, or does blood yield to material or other means?
Blood. The slogan of the century. My gut reaction was one of weary rejection. The same inevitable racist script.
Then it crept in on me: I am connecting the dots in backward order. Should have asked Bürckel instead.
Blood. What a name to give to a voice in your head. The loudspeakers preach democracy and a cultural materialism festers, but under your feet lay trampled the country you yearned for, the tribal connection. The dream that could have been. The dream grows into a slogan with all the appearance of succinctness: Blood.
30 Silberlinge gegen das Blut
Sehr bald waren zwei Fronten entstanden. Die eine, stark und stolz, die Front, die der Stimme des Blutes gehorchte — und die andere, schwach und verschlagen, die zum Kampf gegen das eigene Blut antrat.
30 Silver Coins against Blood
Very soon, two fronts emerged. One, strong and proud, the front that obeyed the voice of the blood—and the other, weak and cunning, that fought against its own blood.
What happens in the emotional underbrush of civil life? If we sympathise with action, we antagonise planning. If we sympathise with the jungle rule, we antagonise urbanised civility.
Bürckel’s diatribe has the vibe of a remnant 19th century nature versus culture debate.
I realise the amount of digging I have to do. The anatomy of the 19th century is a riddle to me. At the outset there was the aftermath of two major liberal revolutions, then came industrialisation and following those, urban proletariats and socialist awareness lending critical mass to the revolutions of 1848. All the while, empires scrambled for Africa and expanded their colonies. Then, after a few wars between Europe’s arch combatants, Germany and France, came the Belle Époque. That was how the century ended.
Right in its tail, a war so devastating it marked the end of empires. And every phase in the century shapes the world spirit in a new way.
Somewhere in those chapters of a century lies the sociological explanation for the development of nazism.
So hat die Demokratie ihre Stimme gegen das Blut erhoben, und zwar deshalb, weil in Deutschland inzwischen das Blut durch den Nationalsozialismus zur überbeordneten Kraft des Volkes erhoben wurde.
Und nun begann der Kampf zwischen Naturgesetz und Demokratie. Das heißt: Der Kampf der Demokratie gegen den Nationalsozialismus, gegen den Nationalsozialismus deshalb, weil er das Gesetz seines Handelns der Natur ablauscht und es sich nicht wie die Demokratie von dunklen Mächten und Interessen in die Ohren flüstern läßt. Und beide — Blut und Demokratie — richteten ihren Appell an das Volk.
Thus, democracy raised its voice against blood, because in Germany, blood had meanwhile been elevated by National Socialism to the supreme power of the people.
And now the struggle between natural law and democracy began. That is, the struggle of democracy against National Socialism, against National Socialism because it eavesdrops on the law of its actions from nature and does not allow itself to be whispered into its ears by dark powers and interests, as democracy does. And both—blood and democracy—directed their appeal to the people.
Bürckel pits not only democracy up against blood, and not just democracy, but the holy grail itself: Freedom.
Why? Is he lashing out in anger? What were the living conditions in the Saar region in the inter-war years? Or is it true what he says, that material means has nothing to do with it? Can a nation brimful of well-fed citizens evolve into a xenophobic ghoul?
But if not for lack of food then why? What was at the core and who is to say that it won’t happen again?
That the worker’s conditions were appalling is well known. Does that in equal parts explain Marxism and National Socialism? Both represent a reckoning with a capitalism none of us can even begin to imagine. Liberalism’s bleakest hour.
I need more older newspapers. By 1935 the past was already lost. I will read Mein Kampf, but doubt it will provide anything fresh. Whatever happened, happened in the 19th century.
I am going to bed now.
3rd June
Blood. What a ring it has to our ears. It reeks of race theories and aryan supremacy. But hundred years ago? What if we called it family.
“Is freedom more important than the well-being of your family?”
No
“Will you sacrifice the health of your family in order to secure their freedom?”
No
Freedom as an abstract looses every match against caring for your family. Only when applied indirectly can it bounce back into relevance:
“Would you want a world where your children would not be free to choose because people have made choices that limited their children’s choice due to their concerns about their children’s futures?”
No. Perhaps yes. Well, no.
Blood? While not abstract, then certainly a malleable version of family ties. Nationalistic kinship.
The key to nazism starts with socialism, meaning: Solidarity. We missed the murderous era of smokestacks and pollution in dirty metropolises. Perhaps the doors are closed to understanding militant solidarity.
Anomic breakdown is a term used in classical sociology. Perhaps I should focus on that instead. It sounds irreducible, like an emergent property. The actions of a group are possibly not explainable by individual psychology.
The front lines have been drawn:
Und so standen sich also gegenüber: Blut und Ehre, System und Verrat.
And so they faced each other: blood and honor, system and betrayal.
“System”. He could just as well have said “bureaucracy” or “social sciences”. It is a strange choice of words. A piece is missing from the puzzle. Their rabid antisemitism is always linked to an academic speculativeness. As if reason itself was the guilty party. Or liberalism. Intellectualism at large riddled with the disease of lack of courage, duty, sacrifice. German university students in the 19th century had fencing clubs. In 1935, being a student no longer had the ring of courage to it.
It was inevitable that his speech sooner or later would connect jews and bolsheviks through association.
To his era, large swaths of people appear opaque in their thinking. Especially Russians with their bolshevik revolution and Americans with the ditto liberal. They are “kin”, “related” in their lack of passion and truth.
So ist es auch verständlich, daß die Repräsentaten einer solchen spekulativen Auffassung wesensverwandt, wenn nicht wesensgleich sind, und daß sie in der Anwendung ihrer Mittel die gleichen Wege beschreiten. Ihr Ziel is, dem politischen Machtegoismus die Kraft des Blutes unterzuordnen. Dabei soll nicht behauptet werden, dass diese Spekulanten eigener Initiative folgen. Sie sind vielmehr Objekt in der hand jener treibenden Kräfte, für die das Gesetz des Blutes immer zur Niederlage führt.
Thus, it is also understandable that the representatives of such a speculative view are inherently related, if not equally, and that they take the same paths in the use of their means. Their goal is to subordinate the power of blood to the political egoism of power. It is not to be claimed that these speculators follow their own initiative. Rather, they are the object in the hands of those driving forces for which the law of blood always leads to defeat.
In one end of the spectrum there is “political egoism of power” and in the opposite there are brothers in arms dying in solidarity.
We experience emotion in accordance with such stories. Who can honestly say that they perceive their country’s elected officials in a colourful manner? They are bloodless conniving dishonest crooks, except perhaps those few we voted on. But why do we think like that? Because politicians are ready to strike a deal?
Why do I insist on nitpicking on this question of the blood?
Two reasons:
- At least in Bürckel’s speech it is situated far outside our ordinary image of a nazi obsession with pure blood. “Blood” is the thing that prevents us from bowing to speculative power and rather makes us show solidarity within the nation.
- Bürckel is about to contrast blood with another group and their beloved holy grail in slogan form: The democratic ideal of freedom. From a purely symmetrical point of view, none of those has anything on the other. Well, nazism degenerated into Holocaust. The liberals … well, pick your own horror story from WW2.
My point is rather, that all the horrors of the war are closer to being connected to the extreme pressure under which a leadership must function in a time of war.
Obviously antisemitism was bound to evolve beyond mere words. But it is also a manifest fact that the hatred is at least partly originally directed at competing political ideologies rather than Jews themselves. They just happen to show up in discussions on Communist Internationals and Bolshevism.
Man erkennt an dem Beifall ihrer Zeitgenossen, in wessen Dienst sie stehen: Die Parallellität der Erscheinungen an der Saar und hier in Österreich ist zu verführerisch, als dass man sie nicht zur Beweisführung heranziehen möchte. Dort haven Juden und Bolschewisten den Kampf geführt, hier sind es die gleichen oder ähnlich verpflichtete Kräfte.
One can tell from the applause of their contemporaries, in whose service they stand: The parallelism of the apparitions on the Saar and here in Austria is too seductive to be used as evidence. There, Jews and Bolsheviks fought the battle, here it is the same or similarly committed forces.
Freiheit ist sein Verrat
Bürckel uses this excellent caption for his speech. “Freedom is his betrayal.”
I would venture the suggestion that half the rhetoric is the result of the pressures of competition. National socialism was competing with Marxism and their anticapitalist solidarity and with liberalism and their uncompromising insistence on civil liberties.
As the rhetoric sharpens, the original socialists are reduced to deceptive jews whose solidarity is a fake. Competition?
Liberalism is harder to dismiss. He spends quite some time trying to hollow out the so-called freedom with a spoon.
Es tut not, dieser Freiheit Stellung zu nehmen:
Kann man in Namen der Freiheit ein Volk verraten oder gibt es überhaupt eine Freiheit, die nicht an das Volk gebunden ist? Als 1918 Deutschland und Österreich zusammenbrachen, da wurde der Ruf nach der Freiheit von den gleichen Mächten erhoben, die jetzt im Namen der Freiheit wiederum Verrat begehen wollten. Wie hat sich diese Freiheit nun ausgewirkt? Der einzelne durfte hetzen, streiken, aussperren, unsere Toten besudeln, ja Landesverrat begehen, das alles waren seine Freiheiten. Und das Ergebnis der Ausnützung dieser Freiheiten war, daß das gesamte Volk keine ruhige Stunde mehr hatte, von dem Augenblick an, als wir diese sogenannte Freiheit besaßen.]
Was ergibt sich daraus? Daß eine Freiheit immer an die Gesamtheit gebunden ist und daß ausschließlich das Wohl und Wehe der Gesamtheit die Freiheit des einzelnen bestimmt.
It is necessary to take a stand on this freedom:
Can one betray a people in the name of freedom? Or is there even freedom that is not tied to the people? When Germany and Austria collapsed in 1918, the call for freedom was raised by the same powers that now wanted to commit treason again in the name of freedom. What effect did this freedom have? Individuals were allowed to incite hatred, strike, lock out, defile our dead, even commit treason – all of these were their freedoms. And the result of the exploitation of these freedoms was that the entire people no longer had a moment’s peace from the moment we possessed this so-called freedom.
What results from this? That a freedom is always bound to the whole and that only the good and bad of the whole determines the freedom of the individual.
Collectivist individualism. Of course it falls apart. This holistic group thinking is and will always remain the opposite of the essence of individualism. Bürckel has no interest in praising freedom. Freedom is easily sacrificed on the alter in favour of the common good for the nation.
Freiheit, die wir meinen
Die Demokratischen Freiheiten erscheinen uns nicht geeignet, der Gesamtheit die Kräfte zu geben, damit sie stark genug ist, ihren Gegen an die Glieder des Volkes zu verteilen. Noch viel weniger kann Zügellosigkeit des einzelnen und und wenn sie sich auch Freiheit nennt, in ihrer Summe zur wahren Freiheit eines ganzen Volkes führen.
Freedom, as we see it
Democratic freedoms do not seem suitable to us to give the totality the strength to be strong enough to distribute its opposite to the members of the people. Even less can the unbridledness of the individual and, if it is also called freedom, in its sum, lead to the true freedom of a whole people.
Late night addition
It is now 2 AM. I went to bed hours ago and woke by the rays of the moon and seagulls screaming at this ungodly hour.
Bürckel’s speech nags me.
I thought this would be easy. Just think like a nazi and see if I feel like one.
And yet, half his speech is explainable due to circumstances, as I have outlined. The other half, the energy of his political conviction, eludes proper explanation.
At least, until I have located the proper sources.
I really thought thinking like a nazi would be easy.
PARADISE LOST