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Reality and Ideology of the Totalitarian State

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Hans Barth  and
George Wack
George Wack
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame
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Extract

The totalitarian state appeared as a state engaged in war. In the World War, for the first time in the twentieth century, the total reserves of national strength were concentrated in one great effort to destroy the enemy. The war was not the concern of the mobilized armies alone. It engaged the whole nation. “It was no longer possible (in the World War) to determine at what point the strength of the civilian population passed into the strength of the army and navy.” The army and the people constituted a single unit and as such they conducted the war. As a unit they faced their threatening opponent, who presented a similar common front. “The fighting ability of the forces at the front was conditioned by the fighting ability of the people at home.”

Type
Articles
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 1 , Issue 3 , July 1939 , pp. 275 - 306
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1939

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References

1 Ludendorff, Erich, Meine Kriegserinnerungen, Berlin, 1919, pp. 1 and 3. (Ludendorff's Own Story, Harper, N. Y., 2 vols., s.d.)Google Scholar

2 Jünger, Ernst, “Die totale Mobilmachung,” Krieg und Krieger, Berlin, 1930, p. 14Google Scholar.

3 Rappard, William, The Crisis of Democracy, Lectures on the Harrison Foundation, Chicago, 1938, p. 71Google Scholar.

4 Ibid., p. 82.

5 Jünger, , loc. cit., p..15Google Scholar.

6 Jünger, Ernst, Arbetier, Der, Herrchaft und Gestalt, Hamburg, 1932, p. 288. Compulsory labor service had been declared also by Ludendorff for moral reasons and for reasons of war-time economy; see Meine Kriegserinnerungen, p. 258 ff.Google Scholar

7 This view of man as a worker in an organized and planned system of production and distribution, of man as a unit in a technical and altogether mundane world which recognizes no hereafter because, as the result of “a trenchant intellectual analysis,” the idea of a future life has been “thinned to an illusion,” is a view of man reached as an inference from Jünger's vision by Niekisch, Ernst in Die dritte Imperiale Figur, Berlin, 1935Google Scholar. a book not widely known which pursues the nihilism of Nietzsche clearly and soberly to its logical conclusion. The totalitarian claim of the “third imperial figure” the worker, is derived exclusively from the interest of each individual in his “mere have existence.” When “supernatural” systems of order and reliance on the divine have failed because their time is up, but man nevertheless desires to have, and must have, an ordered existence, he creates a “universal apparatus.” This universal apparatus, or mechanism, is “by the force of logic a thing of this world.” It it a the product of the ratio of technology, the last form of reason that man is capable of creating. This “universal mechanism” is what man arrives at when he is forced to rely completely on himself, when he can no longer rely upon “God” and the “supernatural.” (p. 152) For a knowledge of the nihilistic elements in the conception of the totalitarian worldstate, which as we know from Spengler, can be realized also by the hegemony of a single state, the book by Niekisch is indispensable. In this book the real motive forces at work in our age can be discerned with a clearness unwelcome to the bourgeois world, which still enjoys relative security and continues to accept as true coin the truthobscuring anti-bolshevist ideology of National Socialism and Fascism.

Niekisch was formerly a member of the Social Democratic party. Later he accepted the ideas of the so-called National Bolshevism (close cooperation between Germany and the Soviet Union for nationalistic purposes). Since Versailles, these ideas had interested many Germans. For instance, there was in the army, a strong group believing in the usefulness and necessity of a military union with Russia. General Seekt was; a representative of this kind of thought.

Niekisch published, among other works, Gedanken üher deutsche Politik and Idee und Politik, Dresden, 1929. In 1932 he published a pamphlet, Hiller ein Deutsches Verhaengnis (Hitler, A German Catastrophe).

In 1938 he was sentenced for treason to a prison term by the Nazis. His very interesting periodical, Widerstand, was forbidden during 1935.

8 He demanded the establishment of a German Imperial bureau of propaganda. At the end of August, 1918, “a weak start in this direction” was made. But in the opinion of Ludendorff it was too late. Meine Kriegserinnerungen, p. 303.

9 Ludendorff, , Krieg, Der totale, Munich, 1935, pp. 20–21. (The Nation at War, Hutchinson, London)Google Scholar.

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11 Already in Kriegsführung und Politik, Berlin, 1922, p. 5, Ludendorif insisted on the union of civil rule and military command in the person of the commander-in-chiefGoogle Scholar.

12 Ludendorff, , op. cit., p. 16. In Kriegsführung und Politik, 1922, it can be seen that Ludendorff's war experiences had given him the idea of the total mobilization of a nation's resources. To strengthen the state and to renew the national spirit all the resources of strength had to be unhesitatingly mobilized in the interest of national independence. What is needed, therefore, is a union of the. German people of all classes and of every walk of life into a common front of deep Christian faith in God and of fervent, self-sacrificing love of country, (p. 336) In 1935, however, he took a different stand. In Der totale Krieg Christianity is regarded as “the primary cause of national collapse in the emergency of a totalitarian war.” (p. 19) Christianity was to be replaced by a Germanic-pagan mythologyGoogle Scholar.

13 Meine Kriegserinnerungen, p. 258.

14 That Germany was a pure military dictatorship under Ludendorff can be learned from Rosenberg's, ArthurDie Enisiehtmg der deulschen Rebpublic, (The Birth of the German Republic, Oxford, N. Y., 1931). Berlin, 1928, pp. 122 ff. By the almost complete exclusion of the Kaiser, Ludendorff helped to rob the constitution of Bismark of its strengthGoogle Scholar.

15 Der totale Krieg, p. 114.

16 Cf. the book by the lieutenant general, Bugnet, Charles, Rue St. Dominique et C.Q.C. ou les Trois Diclalures de la Cuerre, Paris, 1937Google Scholar.

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18 Kriegsfüshrung und Politik, p. 330.

19 Der totale Krieg, p. 10.

20 Reference may be here be made to the very noteworthy book of Hermann Rauschnigg, the former national socialist president of the Senate, Danzig, Die Revolution des Nihilismus, Zürich, 1938. This political theorist whose philosophy is based on Christian-conservative principles gives an overwhelming but honest account and critical review of the thoroughly nihilistic National Socialist revolution which aims at the destruction of all traditional elements of order and reveals a complete amoralism reducing the people under a rule of terror and violence to a broken mass. Concerning Ludendorff, Rauschnigg arrives at conclusions similar to those expressed in the above articleGoogle Scholar.

21 Der totale Krieg, p. 19. As late as 1922 Ludendorff in his book, Kriefsführung und Politik, declared that a common front presenting a deeply spiritual Christian faith in God is worth striving for.

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23 Rosenberg, , Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts., 27th ed., p. 697Google Scholar.

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25 Saller, Karl, op. cit., p. 32. The same conclusion had been expresed fifty years before by Ernest Renan in his famous lecture of 1882, Qu'est-ce qu'une Nation?: “L'Allemagne est germanique, celtique et slave. La France est celtique, ibérique, germanique. L'ltalie est le pays oú l'éthnographie est le plus embarassé.”Google Scholar

26 A large quantity of material, which shows that the intermixture of races among the European nations has been positively enormous, is set forth by Sombart, Wemer in his book, Vom Menschen. Berlin, 1938, pp. 172 and 352 ff.Google Scholar

27 Cf.Huber, Ernst Rudolf, Verfassung, Hamburg, 1937. p. 61. We are following here the political theory of Huber, because it appears to present an adequate theory of the “Führerstaat.”Google Scholar

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31 Ibid., p. 90.

32 Huber, , op. cit., p. 92Google Scholar.

33 Ibid., p. 97.

34 Cf. on this question Sombart, , Vom Menschen, p. 188 ff., who shows clearly that it is scientifically inadmissible to apply the concept of totality (Canzheil) to a peopleGoogle Scholar.

35 Cf.Gurian, Waldemar, Der Bolschewismus als Weltgefahr, Luzern. 1935, p. 70Google Scholar.

36 Berth, , Les Méfaits des Intellectuels, Paris, 1914. 2nd ed., 1926, p. 15Google Scholar.

37 For Sorel as a moralist, see Pirou, Gaétan, George Sorel, Paris, 1927, p. 11 ff.Google Scholar

38 Condorcet, , Esquisse d'un Tableau historique des Progrès de l'Esprit humain, 1795, 9. Epoche. Sorel's criticism of the bourgeoisie is contained in his book Les Illusions in Progrès, 4th ed., 1927Google Scholar.

39 Réflexions sur la violence. 7th ed.Paris, 1930. p. 53Google Scholar.

40 Méfails des Intellectuels. p. 12.

41 Bianquis, Geneviève, Nietzsche en France, Paris, 1929, p. 83 ff. Unfortunately, the well informed author does not mention Eduard Berth's adoption of Nietzsche's idea of the mythosGoogle Scholar.

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45 Op. cit., p. 180

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47 Op. cit, p. 32. Important contributions to the theory of myth can also be found in Sorel's treatment, La Decomposition du Marxisme, Paris, 1907, in which Sorel shows that the true significance of the Marxian theory is to be found not in its so-called scientific elements but in those that are mythological.

48 Sorel, , D'Aristotle à Marx, Paris, 1935, p. 111Google Scholar.

49 Cf. concerning this matter Freund, Michael, Georges Sorel, Frankfurt a. M., 1932, p. 201Google Scholar.

50 Cf. the famous chapter on propaganda in Hitler's, AdolfMein Kampf, 114th ed., 1934, p. 192 ff.Google Scholar The following is taken from the translation published by Reynal and Hitchcock, New York, 1939, p. 227 ff. “Propaganda is not for the intelligentsia.… All propaganda has.… to adapt its spiritual level to the perception of the least intelligent of those towards whom it intends to direct itself.… This is just the art of propaganda that it, understanding the great masses' world of ideas and feelings, finds,… the way to the attention, and further to the heart of the great masses.… the very primary condition for all propagandistic activity as a whole: namely, the subjectively biased attitude of propaganda toward the questions to be dealt with.” The veiling of facts is also permissible, p. 200 of the German edition.

51 Sorel, to Berth, , Méfails des Intellectuels, p. 34Google Scholar.

52 Pareto's work has lately met with increasing popularity in America. His ponderous Trattato di Sociologia generale has appeared in four volumes under the title. The Mind and Society. Franz Borkenau is the author of a good English Monographs on Pareto in the series. Modern Sociologists, London, 1936Google Scholar. Also, Henderson, Lawrence J., Pareto's General Sociology, Cambridge, Mass., 1935CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53 Pareto, , Trattato di Sociologia, 2053Google Scholar.

54 Les Systèmes socialities, vol. I. p. 39Google Scholar.

55 Op. cit., p. 40.

56 Op. cit., vol. II, pp. 454–5Google Scholar.

57 Trattato di Sociologia, Par. 154.

58 Les Systèmes socialities, vol. II, p. 452Google Scholar.

59 Lenin, , Staat und Revolution, (State and Revolution), Complete Works, Vol. XXI. p. 537Google Scholar.

60 Lenin, , Works, Vol. XXI. p. 234Google Scholar.

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66 Trotzki, , op. cit., p. 117Google Scholar.

67 Trattato di Sociologia, Par. 2582.

68 Cf. Plato's Dialogues Corgias and The State. Furthermore, Menzel, Adolf, Kallikles oder über die Lehre vom Recht des Stärkern im Allertum, Vienna, 1923Google Scholar.

69 The connection between Sorel-Pareto, on the one hand, and Mussolini, on the other, is so well known that it need not be stressed here. A good exposition of this relationship can be found in the bookst already noted, of Berth, Pirou, and Freund. The reader might also consult Borgese, G. A., Goliath, the March of Fascism, New York, 1937Google Scholar, and the little book by Kohn, Hans, Force and Reason, Cambridge (Mass.), 1937Google Scholar, which is good and contains much material. Cf. also Witzenmann, Walter, Politischer Aktivismus und sozialer Mythos, Berlin, 1935, p. 140.—That National Socialism very definitely was the pupil of Fascism, especially in its initial states, can hardly be unknown to any one.Google Scholar

70 Marx-Engels, , Cesamtausgabe, Part I, volume VI, p. 536Google Scholar.