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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2024
The following article is an excerpt from Professor Gerhard Ritter s contribution to a Symposium on the origins and methods of National Socialism. This Symposium, whose publication in English translation is forthcoming, was organised under the auspices of the International Council for Philosophy and Humanistic Studies.
The International Council for Philosophy and Humanistic Studies has assured complete freedom of expression to all participants while obviously not endorsing any of the opinions expressed in the Symposium.
In presenting the material of this Symposium the publishers wish to make it clear that the opinions expressed are those of the authors themselves and do not represent the policy of Intercultural Publications or the views of its personnel.
1 With regard to Italy, we should remember the demands of the Irredenta; with regard to Germany, the revival, rather dramatic around 1918-19, of the ‘Greater German' dream, which called for Austro-German unification, as well as the political agitation in favour of Germans who lived around or beyond the German frontiers, an agitation which grew more intense after the loss of certain German territories through the Treaty of Versailles. It should be noted, however, that the ‘Greater German' problem played a relatively secondary role in Hitler's propaganda.
2 As far as I know, the example of the French Revolution was not consciously present either to the Italians of 1922 or the Germans of 1933. The situation is different with regard to the Marxist doctrine and, accordingly, in the case of Lenin in 1917. The memory of the uprising of the Paris Communes of 1877, however, had an even more direct influence in this case than the great French Revolution.
3 Cf. Section 3 of the Soviet constitution of October 7, 1918. It seems, incidentally, that in Russia (in contrast to Italy and Germany) the dictatorship of one man emerged gradually from the dictatorship of an all-powerful group of activists. Lenin, nevertheless, was by far the most powerful figure, right from the outset, and it is well known that immediately after his death he was embalmed as a saint of the people.
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