4th June
I want the nazis to speak. I want them to talk loudly and enthusiastically. Let the loudspeakers cannonade with resounding joy over the roof tops, but even better, let them feel they can speak amongst friends, personally and convincingly hang out their inner beliefs as best they can.
It is like listening to birds singing, but not in the usual sense of the expression.
Give it thought: What are the birds really saying? You have to listen closely and for hours.
I fast forwarded to May 12th, 1939. Another speech by Josef Bürckel. From the context I gather that he has been instated as Gauleiter and manager of the entire Vienna district.
I read slowly - my German is rusty, but improving. My best evaluation tells me that he is not just reciting the party belief. The sinews of an understanding which was once very real is detectable under the skin of the words. Today, decades later, the fabric has withered away and crumbles as parchment under the historian’s feet. I need to reanimate that animus, and to do that, I must unlock the message carefully.
New forms
It turns out I hit upon another historical moment by chance. Bürckel is taking over Vienna. His speech delivered to the administrative leadership of Vienna on 11th May 1939 came after the Ostmarkgesetz, the constitutional changes decreed by Hitler 14th April 1939 detailing how Austria should join to the Reich as smaller, separate districts. Josef Bürckel holds the quoted speech during his inauguration.
He opens his speech by citing ideas rooted in theoretical thinking of his time.
Jede Weltanschauung schafft sich ihre eigenen Formen. In Ihnen findet sie ihren sichtbaren und ihren geschichtlichen Ausbruch, in ihnen gestaltet sie das Leben, und je nach ihrer inneren Kraft wird sie das Leben zur höchsten Entfaltung vorwärts tragen oder die Lebenskraft eines Volkes zersetzen.
Every worldview creates its own forms. In them, it finds its visible and historical expression; in them, it shapes life, and depending on its inner strength, it will either carry life forward to its highest development or decompose the vitality of a people.
It is a philosophical standpoint and I will need to trace its roots.
Weltanschauung
What is a Weltanschauung?
Did Kant pave the way for a belief in transcendent world forms when he projected the transcendental subject far out into the unconsciousness periphery of the world? Did the romantic Germans inhabit an increasingly dangerous world of Freudian monsters and transcendental chimeras? Once made aware of the doppelgänger presence of the human subject, part substantial and transient, part ethereal and analytical but strangely interconnected, would the Germans have evolved a kind of fear of pending ruin, if polluting his corporeal soul?
“I don’t want to see things your way, because once I do that, the world out there will start to change. I don’t want your liberalist illness to affect my physical world.”
The 19th century also saw the rise of the sociological insect. What did it mean for humans to be sociological animals? Would transferring a hive of ants to another location imply their slow demise? Would the animals’ activity grind to a halt and cease? Barring a few enclaves of staunch believers in individuality, the scientific world was rife with theories disproving the grand individual. Not to mention how unbridled capitalism had clearly turned whole populations into beggars. Perhaps Marx’ socialism was right after all?
The science of the 18-hundreds was a testament to a blind faith in the infallibility of objectivity, of governing laws ruling over human life inside and out. The individual’s will was growing dimmer with each passing day. Freud hollowed it out from the inside, Marx and Weber from the outside.
Diefranzösische Revolution hat in notwendigerKonsequenz ihres Wesens die Formen desliberalen Parlamentarismus der sogenanntenwestlichen Demokratien entwickelt. Daß dieseFormen dem deutschen Volke wesensfremdbleiben mußten, weil die zugrundeliegendeWeltanschauung dem deutschen Leben fremd ist,hat die Entwicklung der letzten Jahrzehntedeutlich gezeigt.
In dem Chaos dem demokratischen Parlamentarismus kam die lebende Tat des Führers.
The French Revolution, as a necessary consequence of its nature, developed the forms of liberal parliamentarism of the so-called Western democracies. Developments of the past decades have clearly demonstrated that these forms had to remain essentially alien to the German people because the underlying worldview is alien to German life.
In the chaos of democratic parliamentarism, came the living action of the Führer.
85 years later it seems obvious that the German nation could manage liberalism just fine. In other words, the Nazi Weltanschauung was not specific to the gene pool.
But then what? Did they just misunderstand their own development? Did the long and winding path out of a disparate jumble of fiefdoms controlled by an aristocratic elite into a fairly coherent people leave a mark? I think of the Weimar Republic, the infamous economic and societal breakdown.
In fact, I should turn to that. What happened in World War 1? In Russia, we witnessed a revolution against the aristocracy who lead the nation into war. Their entire imperialistic agenda was sabotaged by popular movements taking over. One could say that the Russian people were not the beneficiaries of the war. Their overlords were. But Germany? If people wanted the war (and historians say they did), wouldn’t they have been more willing to accept inheriting their overlords’ war debt?
Germany wasn’t unified by liberalist forces, but by Bismarck. The people, democracy, had failed in accomplishing that. Did that have any long term effect on self perception?
Questions like these might be akin to asking about the difference between the American and the French Revolution.
But ask them we must. What fertile soil did the Nuremberg rallies germinate in?
Forget the rallies. So vast it is surreal. I need to start somewhere until I have better sources, and I will focus on two currents of developments: First the pre WW1 Völkisch stirrings which permeated culture. Second the breakdown of society in the interwar years.
Listen to this:
Ein Markstein auf dem Wege dieser nationalsozialistischen Umformung der öffentlichen Funktionen ist die Deutsche Gemeindeordnung. Und ein noch stärkerer, […] das Ostmarkgesetz, das der Führer am 14. April 1939 erlassen hat.
Das ganz grundlegend Neue der Regelung besteht darin, daßvon der politischen Willensbildung, deren Träger die NSDABist, die öffentlichen Funktionen und vor allem die öffentlicheVerwaltung bestimmt werden. Partei und Staat sind nicht mehrzu trennen.
A milestone on the path to this National Socialist transformation of public functions is the German Municipal Code. And an even greater, […] the Ostmark Law, which the Führer enacted on April 14, 1939.
The fundamentally new aspect of this regulation is that public functions, and above all, public administration, are determined by the political decision-making process, which is carried out by the NSDAB. Party and state are no longer separable.
Bolshevism and nazism were mortal enemies, as is common knowledge. Modern historical revisionism which is eager to throw socialism and fascism into the same bin, naturally scouts for common traits, and nothing stands out like the authoritarianism of a singular party with its own obscure internal rules completely controlling the state apparatus.
Of course Nazis hate Bolsheviks and vice versa for utterly nationalistic respectively ideological reasons.
Intrinsic to the communist system was a notion of educating the proletariat. Without that education, revolution would be impossible, since most of the revolutionary potential would have been swallowed up by bourgeois ideological thinking. Hence Lenin’s vanguard party which broke the revolutionary deadlock.
Die Stadtverwaltung hat also nichts anderes zu sein als die Exekutive des nationalsozialistischen Willens, der als Wesensausdruck der gleichen Weltanschauung auf allen Gebieten des Lebens sich äußert.
The city administration, therefore, is nothing other than the executive branch of the National Socialist will, which, as the essential expression of the same worldview, manifests itself in all areas of life.
Is it any surprise that liberalism receives considerable negative attention, nothing like communism, but still pretty strong words in nazi newspapers? In that 1938 issue I read a few days ago, liberalism was accused of obeying the usual Jewish cabal, which is about the highest nazi praise one can earn.
And yet, my attention reverts to Bürckel’s words, fresh from the fight. More than anything in them, I recognise the still breathing heart of a politician having fought and won his way to the summit.
It could be Trump, surpassing the insurmountable hordes of progressives, or the next Democrat president persevering through an eternal four year conservative darkness. Having survived and even won back the power, these politicians raise their countenance towards a future of frictionless action.
I am not talking about the individual here. We need to unlearn that rhetoric. The politician cannot be separated from the will of the many, which he is in contact with. Trump wanting to take away power from the establishment and give power back to his electorate probably isn’t much different from Bürckel saying:
Als Nationalsozialisten müssen wir über die liberalistische Denkweise von Ressorts und Zuständigkeiten hinauswachsen. Es ist doch kein Geheimnis, daß in der Vergangenheit überall, wo die Bürokraten im gegenseitigen Ressortstreit lagen, wo sie um Zuständigkeiten kämpften, der um sein Recht ringende Volksgenosse auf dem Wege von Instanz zu Instanz um jedes Vertrauen und nicht selten auch inzwischen um sein Recht selbst kam.
As National Socialists, we must transcend the liberal mentality of departments and responsibilities. It is no secret that in the past, wherever bureaucrats were in mutual dispute over departments, wherever they fought over responsibilities, the citizen, struggling for his rights, lost all trust and, not infrequently, even his rights themselves, as he went from one authority to the next.
What we miss is that this politician has a political mandate from a large number of people. The fact that he was chosen, not elected (as far as I can deduce) changes little. Monarchs of the past didn’t require the goodwill of the people to be next in the order of succession. But they would rather have it than not.
To be a voice for someone.
If we ignore that aspect to follow a narrative reducing the politician to a selfish animal, we throw away the biggest chance of insight we can possibly come across.
Those phrases just cited boil over with empathy and possibly also partaking in the plight of the unprivileged classes who have paid the prise for unstable leadership.
Anger.
It draws my attention as a possible explanation as to why national socialism rather than real socialism conquered the nation. Perhaps they simply excelled at playing the game. Scaremongering as the stronger force. In Russia it took a couple of years of civil strife before the Bolsheviks climbed out on top. Strategy had everything to do with that.
Josef Bürckel describes how the bureaucracy broke down in the previous system. We must never forget that autocracy does not entail contempt for citizens. Somehow we suffer from a tendency to conflate the two. Quite the opposite, it is the central planners and autocrats who can afford sacrificing liberal principles to rebuild a system that benefits the people.
The new American leadership in 2025 is equally trying to strengthen its grip on the bureaucratic machine. Not in spite of the people, but for the people. Unlike the bureaucrats, they care as they know and most likely have experienced the consequences of liberal puritanism.
Will autocracy always lead to Holocaust?
The question is manipulative at best.
Maßgebend ist das Volk
Bei aller Notwendigkeit sachlicher sächlicher Klarheit geordneter Geschäftsführung möchte ich darauf hinweisen, daß das Leben unseres Volkes mit seinen neuen Impulsen und in seinem Hinstreben zur Gesamtheit auch vor den Schaltern unserer Verwaltung nicht Halt macht und sich nicht mehr abdrängen läßt von dem Recht, teilzunehmen und teilzuhaben an allem, was das Leben bewegt.
Das Leben unseres Volkes gestaltet der Nationalsozialismus vielseitig, stark und intensiv, so daß es bürokratische Grenzziehungen nicht mehr anerkennen kann. Die Partei ist der Träger dieser alles umfassenden Vitalität des Volkes. Kein Problem des öffentlichen Lebens ist deshalb zu lösen ohne die politischen Kräfte der Partei und ihrer Gliederungen. Staat, Gemeinde, Wirtschaft, Kultur, kurzum alles Geschehen in unserem Volke kann nur mehr das Ergebnis des Zusammenwirkens aller Kräfte sein, bei dem der Ordnung des Zusammenwirkens von dem Willensträger festgelegt wird. Ich habe bereits Vorkehrung getroffen, um ein solches geordnetes zusammenwirken aller Kräfte zu sichern und die Zusammenarbeit in der Zukunft zu vertiefen.
The Authority is the People
Despite the necessity of objective, factual clarity and orderly management, I would like to point out that the life of our people, with its new impulses and its striving for unity, does not stop at the counters of our administration and can no longer be pushed aside from the right to participate and share in everything that moves life.
National Socialism shapes the life of our people in a diverse, strong, and intense way, so that it can no longer recognize bureaucratic boundaries. The Party is the bearer of this all-encompassing vitality of the people. No problem of public life can therefore be solved without the political forces of the Party and its branches. State, community, economy, culture—in short, everything that happens in our people can only be the result of the interaction of all forces, in which the order of interaction is determined by the person who has the will. I have already taken precautions to ensure such an orderly interaction of all forces and to deepen cooperation in the future.
Disempower the people, deny them fair political representation, and what else do we leave them but rallying around a movement that can more or less genuinely say it is of and for the people.
But a movement of and for the people is just as capable at committing crimes against humanity as any other set of politicians.
4th June - Evening
My amateurish attempts at explaining parts of Bürckel’s speech could theoretically have some proximity with the truth. I may be closer to a valid understanding.
I wish I could say the same thing about the hate to Jews. It is an opaque window to the national soul.
PARADISE LOST