Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T18:38:59.919Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Feudal Aspects of National Socialism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Robert Koehl
Robert Koehl*
Affiliation:
University of Nebraska
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Attempts to establish a “morphology of civilizations” seem to continue in spite of dire warnings from scholars. Indeed, while rejecting Toynbee and Sorokin with one hand, many a scholar has beckoned with the other to adventurous young men to leave the barren tracts of specialization and re-enter the broad panoramic fields of Weltgeschichte. Current interest in “comparative feudal institutions” illustrates the case in point.

The notion that “feudalism” is a “form of society,” especially a “stage in development,” can be traced back to Marxist historiography, and from there back to eighteenth century French thinkers. But instead of becoming thoroughly discredited, the notion has recently led to new thinking on the subject which may turn out to be fruitful. In Feudalism in History for example, Rushton Coulborn, has combined eight separate papers on feudalism in various parts of the world by different historians, with his own critical and synthetic studies. Though he fails to find even one “fully developed” feudal society according to his own definition—a not unexpected result—his study contains an amazing amount of suggestive analysis.

His suggestions are particularly valuable in the construction of “working models” or “ideal types” as research tools. Even when we remain safely within our own “fields,” if we are to go beyond highly specialized fact-gathering and at the same time avoid “presentisi subjectivism,” we will need such tools.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 54 , Issue 4 , December 1960 , pp. 921 - 933
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1960

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Coulborn, Rushton, editor, Feudalism in History (Princeton University Press, 1956).Google Scholar See also From Max Weber, Essays in Sociology, edited by Gerth, H. and Mills, C. W. (New York, 1946), p. 300.Google Scholar cf. Sjoberg, C., “Folk and ‘Feudal’ Societies,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 57 (1952), pp. 231–239.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Ganshof, F. L., Feudalism (London, 1952), xv.Google Scholar Joseph R. Strayer and R. Coulborn, “The Idea of Feudalism,” in Coulborn, op. cit., p. 5.

3 Coulborn, op. cit., pp. 364–395, esp. pp. 364, 392.

4 Neumann, Franz, Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism 1933–1944 (Oxford Univ. Press, 1944), pp. 77–80.Google Scholar

5 The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens (New York, 1931), II, 812–829.

6 “Der Staat ist nun nicht die Verwirklichung der deutschen Volksordnung schlechthin, sondern er ist aus der Gefolgsordnung heraus gewachsen.” (“The state is not the direct embodiment of the national structure, but rather grew out of the feudal order.”) Johanny, Carl and Redelberger, Oscar, Rechtspflege und Verwaltung: I. Allgemeiner Teil, Heft 2: Volk. Partei. Reich. (2. Auflage, Berlin, 1943), pp. 3–4.Google Scholar

7 Nova, Fritz, The National Socialist Fuehrerprinzip and its Background in German Thought (Philadelphia, 1943), pp. 1–14, 71–72, 90–94.Google Scholar According to National Socialist critiques of modern western society, a man's chance to act responsibly, indeed a man's right to be responsible, had been taken from him in the leveling and anony mous processes of mass democracy. Furthermore, the attempt to create uniform, rationalistic rules of procedure in political affairs had served to conceal the role of decision-making, and thus rendered decision-makers irresponsible.

8 Hitler's Secret Conversations 1941–1944 (New York, 1953), pp. 236, 308–310, 343.

9 Rede des Reichsführers SS im Dom zu Quedlinburg am 2. Juli 1936 (Berlin, 1936); cf. Koehl, Robert, “Heinrich the Great,” History Today, March, 1957, pp. 147–153.Google Scholar The Memoirs of Alfred Rosenberg, edited by Lang, S. and Schenck, E. von (New York, 1949), pp. 272–273.Google Scholar

10 Cf. Hitler's Secret Conversations, pp. 325–329; Mein Kampf (New York, 1940), pp. 596–606, 935–943.

11 Darre, R. Walther, Neuadel aus Blut und Boden (Munich, 1935), pp. 43–47, 62, 67–76.Google Scholar

12 Reischle, Hermann and Saure, Wilhelm, Der Reichsnährstand: Aufbau, Aufgaben und Bedeutung (Berlin, 1934), pp. 15–30, 38–44, 133–152.Google Scholar

13 Strasser, Otto, Hitler and I (Boston, 1940), pp. 81–82, 111–114Google Scholar; Reed, Douglas, Nemesis? The Story of Otto Strasser and the Black Front (Boston, 1940), pp. 244–247, 256–263.Google Scholar Similar views are even attributed to Hitler, especially in his early days, by Vermeil, E., “German Nationalist Ideology in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” The Third Reich (New York, 1955), pp. 277, 324, 326.Google Scholar Bullock, Alan makes the same attribution, but his source seems to be Strasser himself: Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (New York, 1952), p. 121, 141.Google Scholar

14 Paetel, Karl O., “Die SS, Ein Beitrag zur Soziologie des Nationalsozialismus,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, January 1954, pp. 1–33 Google Scholar; Hans Buchheim, “Die SS in der Verfassung des Dritten Reiches,” ibid., April 1955, pp. 128–155. cf. Reitlinger, Gerald, SS: Alibi of a Nation (London, 1956).Google Scholar In keeping with the development of an elite the Nazis gave up one of the oldest ideals of Prussian education: uniform public education. They tried to substitute for it the special school for the future elite in which not only the aristocratic virtues were encouraged but in which the sense of difference from the hoi polloi was reinforced.

15 “When our opponents say ‘It is easy for you, you are a dictator’—we answer them, ‘No, gentlemen, you are wrong; there is no single dictator, but ten thousand, each in his own place’.” Adolf Hitler in a speech, April 8, 1933, cited in Nova, op. cit., p. 4.

16 For an oath demanded by Seyss-Inquart, , see Hitlers Tischgespräche (Bonn, 1951), p. 243.Google Scholar The oath of personal loyalty to Hitler of February 1934 was exacted precisely because Hitler did not have patriarchal authority; such an oath was also a visible repudiation of Rechtstaat loyalty to the office: Vermeil, E., The Third Reich, p. 304.Google Scholar

17 Hitler speaks of “die Fehler des ewigen Reglementierens” as specifically a German exaggeration of modern bureaucracy. Both in the relations of Berlin with the provinces and of Germans with foreign races the maximum of freedom was to be observed. Not totalitarianism, but its opposite, feudal decentralization, was the goal: Hitlers Tischgespräche, pp. 110–111, 116–118. cf. Weber's, Max contrast of feudal and patriarchal dominion, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, II, 751.Google Scholar

18 cf. the slogan “Gebt mir vier Jahre! (Give me four years!) used in the years 1933–1936 to win public confidence. See also Nova, op. cit., pp. 31–33; Vermeil, op. cit., pp. 301–302.

19 For example, “Osaf” Pfeffer-Salomon: Heiden, K., Der Fuehrer (Boston, 1944), pp. 350, 742Google Scholar; Gauleiter Josef Wagner of Silesia: testimony of SS General Bach-Zelewski, U. S. Military Tribunal case 8, transcript, p. 383; Gauleiter Streicher of Franconia (reluctantly!): Secret Conversations, pp. 126–127.

20 E.g., the case of Martin Luther in the Foreign Office: Kordt, Erich, Wahn und Wirklichkeit (Stuttgart, 1948), p. 373, note 1.Google Scholar On Darré: affidavits of Aufsess and von Hannecken, U. S. Military Tribunal case 11, Darré defense book I; on Ley: Neumann, op. cit., pp. 619–621; on Rosenberg, ; Rosenberg Memoirs, pp. 282–289 Google Scholar; on Hans Frank: NO 2202, case 8, prosecution document book V-A.

21 Bramstedt, E. K., Dictatorship and Political Police (London, 1945), p. 98 Google Scholar; NO 2676, case 8, prosecution document book XIV-A; NO 3078, case 8, pros. doc. bk. II-B.

22 Darré and Frank both attempted to play off Himmler and Goering against each other in this fashion: NG 1759, case 11, pros. doc. bk. 104; 2233 PS, Triais of War Criminals, IV, 889–891. Dietrich was attached dependently to Goebbels, Seyss-Inquart to Goering, and von Schirach to Hess.

23 Reimann, Guenther, The Myth of the Total State (New York, 1941), pp. 198–213.Google Scholar On Forster and Himmler, see the testimony of Richard Hildebrandt, case 8, transcript, pp. 3887–3889. On the Goebbels-Goering feud, see The Goebbels Diaries, 1942–1943, edited by Lochner, Louis P. (New York, 1948), pp. 260, 262, 264, 267–269, 276–277.Google Scholar

24 F. Neumann suggests that the ever-increas ing “Party Sector” of the German economy “follows the familiar pattern of American gangsters” (i.e., “robber barons”) who become honorable (and even more powerful) by entering into “legitimate business”: op. cit. pp. 298–305. But economic resources were not the only weapons in the private war. The struggle over the private army, that essentially feudal instrument, gave rise to the ambush of June 1934 in which Goering and Himmler and ultimately, Hitler, brought down the SA, in the interests of the Reichswehr, and eventually, the SS. cf. Reitlinger, G., The SS: Alibi of a Nation (London, 1956), pp. 54–71.Google Scholar The Secret Service was also the subject of a vicious fight to the finish: Schellenberg, Walter, The Schellenberg Memoirs (London, 1956), pp. 227–240, 277–285, 398–412.Google Scholar

25 See for example the Schacht-Goering episode described by Beck, Earl R., Verdict on Schacht. A Study in the Problem of Political “Guilt,” Florida State University Studies, No. 20 (Tallahassee, 1955), pp. 96–99, 60, 89–91.Google Scholar cf. Burin, Frederick S., “Bureaucracy and National Socialism: A Reconsideration of Weberian Theory,” Reader in Bureaucracy, edited by Merton, R. K., et al., (Glencoe, Ill., 1952), pp. 33–47.Google Scholar For a surprisingly favorable view of the “personal union” device, see Brandt, K., The Management of Food and Agriculture in the German-occupied and other Areas of Fortress Europe, Germany's Agricultural and Food Policies in World War II, vol. II (Stanford, 1953), xxiii–xxiv.Google Scholar

26 Gisevius, Hans B., Bis zum bitteren Ende (Hamburg, 1947), I, 121–123, 138–139, 155 ff.Google Scholar Strasser, Otto, Die deutsche Bartholomäusnacht, 6. Aufl. (Zürich, 1935), 17–33, 47 ff., 73–81.Google Scholar Cf. Görlitz, Walter und Quint, Herbert, Adolf Hitler (Stuttgart, 1952), 629–631.Google Scholar

27 Rosenberg, , Memoirs, p. 231.Google Scholar

28 Tischgespräche, pp. 250, 252, 254. cf. F. Neumann, op. cit., p. 535; Vermeil, E., The Third Reich, p. 299.Google Scholar

29 A characteristic stage in the development of feudal offices is the assignment of tasks by the leader to table-companions and household em ployees. Precisely this stage was reached in 1945 Hitler Germany, especially in the Führer-Bunker. Furthermore, whether guilty or innocent, Goering and Himmler were accused in April 1945 by Hitler of that fatal feudal disease: frondieren. Each absented himself from the court in a sus piciously distant corner of the kingdom.

30 cf. Hasse, Ernst, Das deutsche Reich als Nationalstaat, Deutsche Politik, Heft 1 (Munich, 1905), pp. 61–62.Google Scholar

31 See Viereck, Peter, Dream and Responsibility: Four Test Cases of the Tension between Poetry and Society (Washington, D. C., 1953), pp. 23–25 Google Scholar; Slochower, Harry, Three Ways of Modern Man (New York, 1937), pp. 57–69 Google Scholar; cf. Hofmannsthal, Hugo von, “Die Rede Gabriele d'Annunzios,” Gesammelte Werke, Prosa, I (Frankfurt am Main, 1950), 335–348.Google Scholar “Der Schutzherr bestimmt den Feind, kraft des ewigen Zusammenhangs von Schutz und Gehorsams,” Schmitt, Carl, Der Begriff des Politischen (Hamburg, 1933), p. 35.Google Scholar

32 From Edwin Dwinger's autobiographical Auf halbem Wege as quoted in Waite, Robert G. L., Vanguard of Nazism. The Free Corps Movement in Postwar Germany 1918–1923 (Cambridge, Mass., 1952), pp. 269–270.Google Scholar

33 Parallel tendencies after World War II are strikingly revealed in an article in the SS-veterans' monthly, Wikingruf, September, 1956. “Suum cuique: Ein Bekenntnis zum Preussentum,” by G. Bardey, emphasizes a search for security in a feudal-type military relationship. cf. Mau's, H. stress on the SA as a “soldierly” symbol: “30. Juni 1934—Zweite Revolution,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, April 1953, p. 125.Google Scholar

34 See the articles by Franck, Louis R. and Schweitzer, Arthur in The Third Reich, pp. 539–594.Google Scholar

35 Scheele, Godfrey, The Weimar Republic: Overture to the Third Reich (London, 1946), pp. 120–160.Google Scholar

36 F. Neumann, op. cit., pp. 8–34. It might be observed that from an early date Hitler showed a genius for making temporary political combinations; cf. Bullock, op. cit., pp. 77–78, 85, 90, 103, 132. Perhaps the ability to convert an essentially weak position into new strength by temporary alliances vouchsafed by the Weimar system led National Socialism into its inner contractualism (temporary alliances among the leadership); cf. F. Neumann, op. cit., p. 522.

37 F. Neumann, op. cit., p. 5; Vermeil, E., Germany's Three Reichs (London, 1945), p. 258.Google Scholar Joseph Schumpeter wrote: “Whoever seeks to understand Europe must not overlook that even today [1919] its life, its ideology, its politics are greatly under the influence of the feudal ‘substance’….” Imperialism and Social Classes (New York, 1951), p. 122.

38 cf. Pol, Heinz, The Hidden Enemy: The German Threat to Post-War Peace (New York, 1943), pp. 23–27, 50–72, 234–241, 254–258.Google Scholar

39 Hallgarten, G. F. W., Hitler, Reichswehr und Industrie. Zur Geschichte der Jahre 1918–1933, 2. edition (Frankfurt am Main, 1955), pp. 43–46.Google Scholar See also his “Adolf Hitler and German Heavy Industry 1931–1933,” The Journal of Economic History, Summer 1952, pp. 222–246.

40 Sasuly, Richard, IG Farben (New York, 1947), pp. 53–177 Google Scholar; Judgment, case 10, Trials of War Criminals, IX, 1445–1446; NI-9981 and NI-3488, case 5, ibid., VI, 244–245.

41 Rosenberg, , Memoirs, p. 248.Google Scholar Weber, Max wrote “… when enthusiasm and emotional response are rationally calculated into the equation of power, we are not dealing with genuine feudal and/or charismatic power.” Essays in Sociology, p. 254.Google Scholar

42 Neumann, op. cit., pp. 350–356.

43 Schacht, for example, was an economic rationalist who tried to compromise with chaos; he managed quite successfully from 1933 to 1936. By 1937, however, he and the Nazis disagreed about the degree of lawfulness to be preserved: Beck, op. cit., p. 92.

44 Coulborn suggests that feudalism “… appears in an age of failure of the high culture as a whole,” also noting that “some feudal periods have been conspicuous also as ‘ages of faith,’” op. cit., p. 10. The effort to regard the inner circle of National Socialism as merely cynical nihilists re sults in half-truths: “It was a purely masculine Order, confined to initiates, to those with ‘knowl edge’—knowledge of nothing but the cynical nihilism that was the definition of their existence. In the presence of the masses they seemed to be performing pseudo-religious rites….” Vermeil, E., The Third Reich, pp. 297–298.Google Scholar

45 “Söhne des Chaos” (sons of chaos) are Hitler's own words to describe what Heiden, Konrad has described as “the wreckage of dead classes,” Der Fuehrer, p. 100 Google Scholar; cf. Vermeil, , The Third Reich, p. 304.Google Scholar Toynbee's internal proletariat comes to mind here along with Fromm's, Erich concept of “alienation”: A Study of History (Abridgment by D. C. Somervell of vols. I–VI: Oxford Univ. Press, 1956), pp. 393–403 Google Scholar; Escape from Freedom (New York, 1941).

46 More revolutionary than a frontal attack on Germany's institutional integrity was National Socialism's tendency to plant seeds of disintegration in potential rivals: Mau, H., “30. Juni 1934—zweite Revolution,” Vierleljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, April 1953, pp. 126, 136.Google Scholar Goebbels spoke of a “poison gas that penetrates the most solid objects” (opponents' institutions and faith), effecting their internal decomposition: Vermeil, , The Third Reich, p. 320.Google Scholar

Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.