Re: Hitler's Mentor: Dietrich Eckart, His Life, Times, & Mil
Posted: Fri Nov 23, 2018 2:32 am
Introduction
Medieval philosophers declared human reason ingenious, but insufficient to save one from damnation. Renaissance and Enlightenment thinkers liberated humanity by abandoning obscurantism and exalting Reason. For rationality's sake, the cream of late 19th Century German intellectuals went too far by replacing Judeo-Christian ethics with science and secular humanism. National Socialism arose out of the breakdown of traditional values following World War I. Hitler adopted underground notions in place of civilized norms. His racist ideology consisted of anti-clericalism, pseudoscience, Social Darwinism, and anti-Semitism, along with "Ariosophy" as a substitute for religion.
Inquiring into Nazi ideology inevitably draws historians into Hitler's mind. Unlike 1789 French republicanism or the Communism of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky, National Socialism bears the stamp of one man. Nazism and Hitlerism are synonymous. Hence, this work accepts the Intentionalist interpretation that Nazi genocide stemmed directly from Hitler's personal anti-Semitic prejudices, rather than the Functionalist position (held by Hans Mommsen and others,) which contends that historic, economic, and "bureaucratic" forces determine events to a greater extent than Hitler's will. I agree with John Lukacs' judgment. Germany would have eventually gone to war to redress the injustices of Versailles even if Hitler never existed, but millions of Jews would not have perished in the process. The "Final Solution" was Hitler's brainchild, not the wish of Germany's people. Even Nazi leaders such as Goering, Schirach, Rosenberg, and Speer considered the Holocaust sheer madness.
Adolf Hitler, the embodiment of evil who killed millions-- yet loved dogs and children-- remains an enigma. An inveterate theorizer, he wove his crazy-quilt worldview out of scraps from unacknowledged sources. His brand of "Ariosophy" spurned conventional morality, while embracing a queer combination of Teutonic romanticism, the occult, and scientism. According to Konrad Heiden he was "the apostle of the apostles of Lagarde, Langbehn, and Wagner." To understand Hitler we must examine Hans Horbiger's Cosmic Ice Theory, Ernst Haeckl's Biogenetic Law, Adolf Josef Lam von Liebenfals' TheoZoology, and Dietrich Eckart's Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin. Forgotten mountebanks such as these strongly influenced him. Thus, the study of quackery constitutes a principal theme of this book. Hitler was the culmination of a long line of fringe pontificators.
In the early 1920's playwright Dietrich Eckart mentored Adolf Hitler. Before meeting this "fatherly friend" in 1919 the future dictator's life lacked focus. After Eckart's death in December, 1923, Hitler underwent almost no further intellectual development. Both men were self-educated Bohemians who grew up in rural towns, then moved to big cities as young adults in attempts to fulfill artistic ambitions. They experienced setbacks which scarred them for life. Each man attributed his personal failures to the expanding power of Jews. World War I and its harrowing aftermath further exacerbated their anti-Semitism.
Hitler believed himself a divinely appointed reformer. As a budding megalomaniac in 1906 he dreamed of demolishing Linz, then reconstructing the city on a massive, unrecognizable scale. His friend August Kubizek described how he spent hours drawing plans and poring over them. This compulsion for destruction and rebuilding stayed with him for life. Armed with secret knowledge and what he called "unique qualifications," Hitler aimed to junk Christian values and usher in the next millennium, his own Thousand Year Reich. He wished to create a more evolved human being, "the Atlantean-Aryan-Nordic type." Outworn, bourgeois values had to be swept away before this new order could become reality.
Nazism has been called the revenge of the nobodies, and socialism of fools. After World War I defeat, demoralized Germans turned to false prophets such as Dietrich Eckart and Adolf Hitler for guidance. These scapegoat-creators -- no strangers to alienation themselves -- derived grim solace from the fact that the German Volk now shared their sense of anomie. In his scandalous tabloid Auf Gut Deutsch Eckart put a face on modern day angst by making the enemy palpable. In his mind "the Jew" had mobilized the disintegrating forces of finance capitalism, Bolshevism, democracy, and mass culture to destroy "the good old days." He believed that removing the Jewish spirit from Europe would solve this crisis, and thereby transfigure Germany into an Aryan utopia.
The Diaspora proved to be another mixed blessing for Jews. Unjust laws and periodic outbreaks of violence marred economic and cultural successes. Jews contributed significantly to Germany's extraordinary economic growth between 1866 and 1914. After the First World War 16% of Germany's lawyers and 11% of its doctors were Jewish. Though less than 1% of the population, Jews owned 50% of Germany's private banks, 60% of its retail clothing trade, and 80% of the department stores. The vast majority of them staunchly supported the German Reich, nevertheless their prosperity engendered more resentment than admiration.
To gain perspective on German Jewry, this study delves into the personal histories of Heinrich Heine, Karl Marx, Walter Rathenau, and Franz Kafka. Their lives refute the cheap anti-Semitic generalizations of Eckart and Hitler. Despite weaknesses, all of them were "lights unto the gentiles." These idealistic men bore no resemblance to the hateful stereotypes promulgated by Eckart and Hitler. Because of intolerance all of them experienced profound feelings of ambivalence and estrangement. Jews reacted to their situation in different ways. Heine declared Judaism "not a religion, but a misfortune." [1] As a young man he yearned to transform himself from a depressed Jew into "a joyous Hellene." Unable to assimilate, he and his friend Karl Marx ended up as exiles. Zion ist Theodore Herzl gave up on Europe, and directed his energy toward building a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Walter Rathenau realized that he could never be a "Teutonic Knight," and must settle for the role of "Court Jew." Franz Kafka masochistically read anti-Semitic literature in an effort to understand and control his "Shylock within." He remained a stranger in a strange land his whole life, even though his ancestors had lived in Europe for hundreds of years. Jewish authors Otto Weininger and Arthur Trebitsch became rabid anti-Semites after converting to Christianity.
This book aims to provide a vivid account of Dietrich Eckart's world, as well as a snapshot of modern German history from Heinrich Heine's exile in 1831 to Hitler's 1923 Beer Hall Putsch. Like other disciplines, history exists on a continuum between microcosms (individual persons) at one extreme and the Macrocosm (or "big picture") at the other. By means of induction historians bundle together large samples of concrete details from people's lives in order to arrive at generalizations about the timing and nature of broad epochal trends. The approach taken here will be microcosmic, through the medium of biography. Interlocking biographical sketches chronicle not only the experiences of Eckart and Hitler, but those of Heinrich Heine, Karl Marx, Tsar Nicholas II, Kaiser Wilhlem, Rudolf von Sebottendorf, Fanni zu Reventlow, and other representative figures whose lives illuminate Germany's surreal political landscape. The sections on Bismarck, World War I, and German anti-Semitism furnish a "portrait" of the Wilhelmine era. Discerning readers should find the juxtaposition of Eckart's story with Hitler's particularly revealing.
An author should let his work speak for itself, hoping to "make better than he knows" without over-explaining. In response to questions, however, I feel the need to justifY certain segments as being integral rather than extraneous. German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine strongly influenced Eckart's irreverent style. Misguided idealist Karl Marx polarized three generations of European nationalists. Eckart and Hitler combated Marxism during their entire political careers. The two chapters on Wilhelmine Germany (4 and 5) provide indispensable background information. Neither Hitler nor Eckart can be properly understood without reference to this "backdrop." World War I (Chapter 6) and the Russian Imperial family's slaughter (Chapter 10) traumatized European society. These horrors remained in the forefront of Eckart's consciousness between 1918 and 1923, and cannot be glossed over in a few paragraphs. The Thule Society section explores Nazism's quasi-mystical origins, and resonates with Chapter 16 ("Ariosophy"), an exposition of Hitler's "granite" intellectual foundation, and # 12, which treats Dietrich Eckart's dispute with spiritualist Rudolf Steiner. Lastly, I argue for the inclusion of Franz Kafka, the gifted writer and Jewish prophet whose forebodings of impending disaster came to pass. In Kafkaesque fashion a malevolent imposter gained absolute power and annihilated his entire family for no reason. This epilogue ties up the literary leitmotif first stated in Chapter 1 (Man of Letters), and continued through #2 (Heinrich Heine,) then #3, which discusses Eckart's translation of Ibsen's Peer Gynt.
I wish to thank James Tyson for translating several German articles into English, Professor Daniel J. Gillis for insights into German psychology and politics, Professor Ralph M. Engelman for permission to quote from Dietrich Eckart & the Genesis of Nazism, Adam Tyson, John Suiter, Susan Evans, and Barbara Celia for their help. Any errors or omissions are solely my own responsibility.
Joseph Howard Tyson
March 23, 2008
_______________
Endnote
1 Lewis Browne & Elsa Weihl, That Man Heine, MacMillan, New York, 1927, p.186.
"Eckart was the man who according to Hitler's own statement had the greatest influence upon his career."
-- Otto Dietrich, Hitler's Press Secretary
"Hitler is inconceivable without ... 'midwives' Rohm and Eckart."
-- Karl Dietrich Bracher
Medieval philosophers declared human reason ingenious, but insufficient to save one from damnation. Renaissance and Enlightenment thinkers liberated humanity by abandoning obscurantism and exalting Reason. For rationality's sake, the cream of late 19th Century German intellectuals went too far by replacing Judeo-Christian ethics with science and secular humanism. National Socialism arose out of the breakdown of traditional values following World War I. Hitler adopted underground notions in place of civilized norms. His racist ideology consisted of anti-clericalism, pseudoscience, Social Darwinism, and anti-Semitism, along with "Ariosophy" as a substitute for religion.
Inquiring into Nazi ideology inevitably draws historians into Hitler's mind. Unlike 1789 French republicanism or the Communism of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky, National Socialism bears the stamp of one man. Nazism and Hitlerism are synonymous. Hence, this work accepts the Intentionalist interpretation that Nazi genocide stemmed directly from Hitler's personal anti-Semitic prejudices, rather than the Functionalist position (held by Hans Mommsen and others,) which contends that historic, economic, and "bureaucratic" forces determine events to a greater extent than Hitler's will. I agree with John Lukacs' judgment. Germany would have eventually gone to war to redress the injustices of Versailles even if Hitler never existed, but millions of Jews would not have perished in the process. The "Final Solution" was Hitler's brainchild, not the wish of Germany's people. Even Nazi leaders such as Goering, Schirach, Rosenberg, and Speer considered the Holocaust sheer madness.
"THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN CHAOS AND FORM"
As a final sinister legacy to National Socialism, Aufbau ideology with its conspiratorial and apocalyptic views of the "Jewish Bolshevik" world menace helped to spur the National Socialist enslavement and annihilation of European Jewry. In particular, the former Aufbau member Rosenberg disseminated intense anti-Semitic notions that inspired German hatred of Jews. Rosenberg acted as the leading anti-Semitic ideologue in the NSDAP after Hitler himself. He edited the National Socialist periodical the Volkisch Observer. In 1934, Hitler recognized Rosenberg's substantial contributions to the National Socialist Weltanschauung by appointing him the Representative of the Fuhrer for the Supervision of the Entire Intellectual and Ideological Political Instruction and Education of the NSDAP.
In addition to propagating vitriolic anti-Semitic views himself, Rosenberg fostered the anti-Semitic careers of men who had either belonged to or been associated with Aufbau, most notably his Rubonia Fraternity comrade Schickedanz, Gregor Schwartz-Bostunich, and General Sakharov. Schickedanz, who had served as Aufbau's Deputy Director and Vice President Biskupskii's secretary, proved his anti-Semitic credentials though his 1927 work, Das Judentum: Eine Gegenrasse (Jewry: a Counter Race). Rosenberg invited Schickedanz to serve as the Berlin representative of the Volkisch Observer in February 1930.111
As for Schwartz-Bostunich, who had worked for Aufbau and the NSDAP under Scheubner-Richter's guidance, Rosenberg asked him to write for the Volkisch Observer in 1925.112 Schwartz-Bostunich also provided the ideological basis for the National Socialist leader Julius Streicher's notorious anti-Semitic publication, Der Sturmer (The Stormer).113 Hitler called upon Schwartz-Bostunich to hold an important speech along with Streicher in March 1926. The White emigre's anti-Semitic views increasingly received attention among National Socialist leadership.114
Rosenberg's charge Schwartz-Bostunich supported the National Socialist Party ideologically in the 1930s as well. In the early part of the decade before Hitler's ascension to power, he gave speeches on behalf of the NSDAP with titles such as "The Frenzy of Bolshevism" and "Jewish World Rule." He won over many Communists to the National Socialist cause,115 After Hitler became the German Chancellor in January 1933, Schwartz-Bostunich presented anti-Semitic and anti-Masonic reports to the State Security Main Office (RSHA).116 He also rose in Himmler's SS. He achieved the rank of SS Obersturmbannfuhrer in January 1937 before retiring from active duty.117
The former Aufbau member General Sakharov received support for his anti-Bolshevik, anti-Semitic views from Rosenberg's Foreign Policy Office of the NSDAP. Rosenberg's agency concluded that Sakharov's 1937 brochure, Judas Herrschaft im Wanken! Antisemitische Front in der Sowjetunion (Judas' Rule Tottering!: Anti-Semitic Front in the Soviet Union), presented a "very interesting" picture of "Jewish rule in Bolshevism" and admirably analyzed "the signs of a future Jewish pogrom in Russia as the world has never seen before." Rosenberg's Foreign Policy Office concluded that Sakharov's work was "perfectly suitable to convince simple-minded people of the role of Jewry in Bolshevism."118 Sakharov advanced a thesis that Aufbau had disseminated as one of its key ideological points, namely that Bolshevism represented a primarily Jewish undertaking.
Of all former Aufbau members, Rosenberg made the most important ideological contributions to the NSDAP in the post-Hitler/Ludendorff Putsch period. He proved second only to Hitler himself in formulating National Socialist ideology. As the editor of the Volkisch Observer, he collaborated closely with Hitler on ideological matters. Rosenberg also served as the first National Socialist to present Party views at a large international conference abroad. At the Volta Congress in Rome in November 1932, he asserted that the challenge of the age was to create and to consolidate a "people's socialism ... against the capitalist plutocrats as well as against Jewish Bolshevism."119 Here Rosenberg referred to his notion that the Jews manipulated both finance capitalism and Bolshevism.
Rosenberg received official status as Hitler's greatest ideological assistant in the Third Reich. In 1934, Hitler named him the Beauftragter des Fuhrers fur die Uberwachung der gesamten geistigen und weltanschaulichen Schulung und Erziehung der NSDAP (Representative of the Fuhrer for the Supervision of the Entire Intellectual and Ideological Political Instruction and Education of the NSDAP). In this post, Rosenberg greatly influenced cultural, church, and school affairs. Moreover, he played an important role in shaping SS courses.120 Hitler demonstrated his appreciation for Rosenberg's ideological contributions to National Socialism at the Reichsparteitag (State Party Day) in 1937. He granted Rosenberg the National Prize for Art and Science as the first living German for his contributions to the National Socialist Weltanschauung.121
It is worth noting that, as important as Rosenberg proved to the ideological development of National Socialism, Hitler did not always agree with his ideas. For instance, Hitler critiqued Rosenberg's 1930 magnum opus, Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts: Eine Wertung der seelisch-geistigen Gestaltenkampfe unserer Zeit (The Myth of the Twentieth Century: An Evaluation of the Spiritual-Intellectual Formation Struggles of Our Time), which castigated the Christian Churches and advocated a religious German "blood" myth.122 In an April 1942 conversation, Hitler argued that the title of Rosenberg's work gave a false impression. As a National Socialist, one should not stress the myth of the twentieth century, but should instead juxtapose the belief and knowledge of the twentieth century against the myth of the nineteenth century.123 Despite Hitler's criticism, Rosenberg's Myth reached a distribution of roughly one million copies, second only to Hitler's Mein Kampf in the Third Reich.124
While they did not always see eye to eye ideologically, Hitler clearly agreed with Rosenberg's views of the dire threat posed by "Jewish Bolshevism." As we have seen, while he had belonged to Aufbau, Rosenberg had warned of a conspiratorial Jewish alliance between finance capitalism and Bolshevism. Hitler had espoused this idea since his period of close collaboration with Aufbau in the early 1920s. He demonstrated his belief in world Jewry as the driving force behind international finance capitalism and Bolshevism in his infamous speech before the Reichstag, by then a ceremonial parliament, on January 30, 1939. Hitler stressed: "If international finance Jewry in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging peoples into a world war again, then the result will not be the Bolshevization of the earth and with it the victory of Jewry, but the destruction of the Jewish race in Europe."125
In a May 30, 1942 speech that Hitler gave to a group of newly promoted officers, he demonstrated an apocalyptic anti-Semitism that Aufbau ideologues including Rosenberg had helped to instill in him. Hitler stressed the dangers that the Soviet Union, the "giant in the East," presented. There the "international Jew" as the "driving element" had long threatened Germany, for the "international Jew" had decided: "The time had come to erect its thousand-year empire with the help of another world that had been done out of its national intelligentsia."126 Hitler used apocalyptic anti-Semitism in the vein of Aufbau thought in general and Rosenberg's views in particular to justify his ruthless war in the East.
Hitler ordered the mass murder of Jews as a means of destroying the "Jewish Bolshevik" menace, and Rosenberg aided him in this mission. As an early measure of what became an ever-larger genocide, Hitler issued the notorious Commissar Decree on June 6, 1941. This directive commanded State Leader SS Himmler's special forces, the Einsatztruppen (Task Troops), to execute all captured Red Army political commissars, many of whom were Jewish, in the imminent war against the Soviet Union.117 The Historian Christopher Browning believes that Hitler decided to exterminate civilian Jews in the Soviet Union in mid-July 1941.128 If Browning is correct, then Hitler's resolution to implement this decisive phase of what became known as the Final Solution coincided with his appointment of Rosenberg as the State Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories.
Rosenberg viewed his genocidal anti-Semitic actions in the occupied East as retaliation for the depredations of "Jewish Bolshevism." The November 18, 1941 press release dealing with Rosenberg's public assumption of the State Minister post stressed that the White emigre had entered politics since "he wanted to protect the German people from the same fate that he had lived through in Moscow."129 A composition that Rosenberg himself most likely wrote in preparation for the November press release, "The Struggle Between Chaos and Form: On the Appointment of State Leader Alfred Rosenberg to State Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories," stressed his service in incorporating the "struggle against Jewish Bolshevism" into the" Weltanschauung struggle of the movement." The most belligerent section of this essay, which referred to the large-scale destruction of Jews, did not appear in the official press release:Bolshevism is in essence the form of the Jewish world revolution, the enormously calculated "messianic" attempt to take revenge on the eternally foreign character of the Europeans and not just the Europeans. And destiny has decided against Jewry. The victorious battles of the German struggle for liberation have created a new basis for Europe. The German advance in the Bolshevik East will lead to the complete elimination of Jewish-Bolshevik rule in this area. That which Jewry once planned against Germany and all peoples of Europe, that must it itself suffer today, and responsibility before the history of European culture demands that we do not carry out this fateful separation with sentimentality and weakness, but with clear, rational awareness and firm determination.130
State Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories Rosenberg facilitated the mass slaughter of Jews behind the Eastern Front. In August 1941, he issued a decree specifying who was to be considered a Jew in the East, thereby providing guidelines for Germans and their auxiliaries to follow in deciding whom they would single out for slave labor or extermination.131 Rosenberg supported the creation of the anti-Semitic Deutsche Ukraine-Zeitung (German Ukraine-Newspaper) in January 1942. In an appeal in the paper's first edition, he hinted at the German-led mass murder of Jews in the Ukraine. He noted that Germany had taken over control of the Ukraine in order to assure that "Bolshevik conditions" and the "rule of Jewry" would never return.132 Rosenberg found numerous anti-Semitic collaborators in the Ukraine. Many Ukrainian auxiliary police units slaughtered Jews under German occupation.133
In his 1923 work, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Jewish World Politics, Rosenberg had asserted of the "Jewish Bolshevik" regime: "The terror that has sent waves upon waves of blood across the broad Russian plains from the Gulf of Finland to the mountains of the Caucasus ... is not a Russian flare up, but a methodical massacre of a great people."134 Beginning in the summer of 1942, Rosenberg possessed authority over roughly this same region. He worked in the framework of the Final Solution to facilitate another "methodical massacre" in order to eradicate what he perceived as the "Jewish Bolshevik" world menace. The postwar Nuremberg Tribunal stressed that, among his other crimes, Rosenberg had "helped to formulate the policies of ... extermination of Jews," and the court sentenced him to death by hanging.135
-- The Russian Roots of Nazism: White Emigres and the Making of National Socialism, 1917-1945, by Michael Kellogg
In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution of October 1917, anti-Bolshevik exiles from the former Russian Empire, known as "White emigres," contributed extensively to the making of German National Socialism. This book examines the formative political, financial, military, and ideological influences that White emigres exerted on Adolf Hitler's National Socialist movement. This study of White emigre contributions to Hitlerism demonstrates that National Socialism did not develop merely as a peculiarly German phenomenon. National Socialism arose in the early post-World War I period (1918-1923) from an international radical right milieu in which embittered volkisch (nationalist/racist) Germans collaborated with vengeful White emigres in an anti-Entente (Britain and France), anti-Weimar Republic, anti-Bolshevik, and anti-Semitic struggle.
From 1920 to 1923, Hitler allied himself with a conspiratorial volkisch German/White emigre association headquartered in Munich, Aufbau: Wirtschafts-politische Vereinigung fur den Osten (Reconstruction: Economic-Political Organization for the East), hereafter Aufbau. This secretive union sought to combat international Jewry and to overthrow both the German Weimar Republic and the Soviet Union in league with National Socialists. Aufbau contributed considerable sums of money to Hitler's National Socialist movement. Moreover, early National Socialist ideology combined volkisch notions of Germanic racial and spiritual superiority with the apocalyptic White emigre Aufbau conspiracy theory in which Jews, who operated as a seamless web of conniving finance capitalists and murderous Bolsheviks, threatened to conquer the world and then to send it to perdition. Aufbau left a powerful anti-Bolshevik and anti-Semitic legacy to National Socialism after 1923 as well.
Prominent White emigre Aufbau members who influenced Hitler's political and military strategies as well as his anti-Bolshevik and anti-Semitic Weltanschauung (world-view) included First Lieutenant Max von Scheubner-Richter, General Vladimir Biskupskii, Colonel Ivan Poltavets-Ostranitsa, Lieutenant Piotr Shabelskii-Bork, Colonel Fedor Vinberg, and Alfred Rosenberg. Scheubner-Richter de facto led Aufbau until he was shot fatally while marching with Hitler and General Erich von Ludendorff during the disastrous Hitler/Ludendorff Putsch of November 1923. Hitler subsequently asserted that Scheubner-Richter alone of the martyrs of the failed undertaking had proved irreplaceable. [1]
General Biskupskii acted as Scheubner-Richter's invaluable partner at the head of Aufbau, and he later directed the White emigre community in the Third Reich. [2] Poltavets-Ostranitsa led Aufbau's Ukrainian section, and he sought to establish a National Socialist Ukraine. [3] Shabelskii-Bork transferred The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an inflammatory forgery that influenced National Socialists and other anti-Semites around the world, from the Ukraine to Berlin for publication in German shortly after World War I. [4] Vinberg held detailed ideological discussions with Hitler, and he convinced the Fuhrer that the Soviet Union represented a "Jewish dictatorship." [5]
Rosenberg has been largely overlooked in the historical literature despite his crucial contributions to National Socialism. [6] The White emigre served as the leading National Socialist philosopher after Hitler himself. He collaborated with Dietrich Eckart, Hitler's early mentor, in the newspaper Auf gut deutsch: Wochenschrift fur Ordnung und Recht (In Plain German: Weekly for Law and Order). He de facto took over the editorship of the National Socialist periodical the Volkischer Beobachter (Volkisch Observer) from the ailing Eckart in 1923. He conceived a dire threat to the racially and spiritually superior Germans from a worldwide Jewish capitalist-Bolshevik conspiracy. He led the National Socialist Party during Hitler's imprisonment following the Hitler/Ludendorff Putsch. [7] Finally, he directed Germany's rule over formerly Soviet areas in World War II, and he participated in the atrocities of the Final Solution through his post as Reichsminister fur die besetzten Ostgebiete (State Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories). [8]...
The significance of substantial White emigre influences on Hitler's Weltanschauung has become more apparent since Brigitte Hamann convincingly argued in her 1996 work, Hitler's Wien: Lehrjahre eines Diktators (Hitler's Vienna: Apprentice Years of a Dictator), that Hitler was not yet anti-Semitic during his "hunger years" in Vienna from 1908 to 1913. He even defended the Jews in intense political arguments with those who denounced them. [11] Hamann's book refutes the earlier historical consensus which had contended that Hitler developed an acutely anti-Semitic world-view during his time in Vienna. [12]
Further indications of the relatively late development of Hitler's far right political ideas exist. Hitler's correspondence and private writings from World War I (1914-1918) lack anti-Semitic passages. [13] Hitler's comrades during World War I did not detect anti-Semitic views among his beliefs. [14] Moreover, according to Aide-de-Camp Hans Mend, Hitler's immediate commanding officer on the Western Front in World War I, Hitler occasionally praised Jews, and he exhibited socialist leanings. He often held "rabble-rousing speeches" in which he called himself a representative of the "class-conscious proletariat." [15] Hitler only began to crystallize his virulent anti-Bolshevik, anti-Semitic Weltanschauung in Munich in late 1919 in the context of intercultural collaboration between alienated volkisch Germans and radical White emigres.
Debate on modern German history has dealt with an idea that gained momentum in the 1960s, namely that of a pernicious German Sonderweg (special path). According to the Sonderweg theory, bourgeois Germans brought about a historical deviation through their weakness that ultimately led to the Third Reich and its crimes. [16] The German historian Ernst Nolte attacked the Sonderweg thesis in his 1987 work, Der europaische Burgerkrieg 1917-1945: Nationalsozialismus und Bolschewismus (The European Civil War 1917-1945: National Socialism and Bolshevism). He maintained that National Socialism fundamentally represented a reaction against Bolshevism. [17]
In the Historikerstreit( Historians' Debate) in the second half of the 1980s, most scholars rejected Nolte's ideas of causation. [18] The majority of the historians involved in the Historikerstreit affirmed the horrific singularity of National Socialism in general and the Holocaust in particular. [19] In the 1990s, the American scholar Daniel Goldhagen sparked a second Historikerstreit by reintroducing an extreme version of the Sonderweg theory in his book Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. [20] He placed allegedly unparalleled "eliminationist" German anti-Semitism at the center of his historical schema. [21] German academics in particular attacked Goldhagen's ideas as dangerously simplistic."
The positions of Goldhagen and Nolte represent opposing views of German and foreign influences on National Socialism. In Hitler's Willing Executioners, Goldhagen argues for the peculiarly German nature of National Socialism and the Holocaust. He emphasizes what he terms the "eliminationist mind-set" of "German antisemitism" to the exclusion of virtually all other factors. He asserts that it is "not essential to discuss German antisemitism comparatively." He nevertheless concludes, "No other European country came close" to equaling Germany's anti-Semitism. "The unmatched volume and the vitriolic and murderous substance of German antisemitic literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries alone indicate that German antisemitism was sui generis." [23] Goldhagen thus avoids a sufficient comparative analysis in his treatment of supposedly unequaled German anti-Semitism.
Nolte, on the other hand, stresses the crucial influence of the Bolshevik seizure and consolidation of power in Russia on the National Socialist movement. He is known for arguing that scholars must "historicize" the Final Solution by comparing it with other mass slaughters, most notably those committed under Soviet rule. [24] In The European Civil war 1917-1945, Nolte argues that resistance to Bolshevism formed National Socialism's "most fundamental point." He downplays the importance of German anti-Semitism in the genesis and development of National Socialism. He argues that National Socialism's essence existed "neither in criminal tendencies nor in anti-Semitic obsessions." Rather, the "fear and hate-filled relation to Communism was in fact the moving center of Hitler's feelings and of Hitler's ideology." Nolte further stresses: "Bolshevism was both nightmare and example for National Socialism."
In the conclusion of his work, Nolte provocatively asserts that by holding the Jews responsible for the menace of Bolshevism, Hitler and Reichsfuhrer SS (State Leader SS) Heinrich Himmler "carried the original Bolshevik concept of destruction to a new dimension." Nolte further maintains: "The Gulag Archipelago is more original than Auschwitz and ... a causal nexus exists between them." [25] Nolte's views contain merit in that National Socialists fiercely resisted Bolshevism at the same time that it awed them. Nolte's arguments, however, can lead one to consider National Socialism's Final Solution as a mere reaction to foreign developments.
While I tend more towards Nolte's views than those of Goldhagen, I defend a middle position between Goldhagen's German-specific explanation of National Socialism's murderous development and Nolte's Bolshevik-centered analysis of National Socialism's crimes. National Socialism had both German and Russian roots. The National Socialist movement developed primarily as a synthesis of radical right German and Russian movements and ideas. National Socialism arose out of a radical right post-World War I Munich milieu of vengeful volkisch Germans and rancorous White emigres. Several of the latter despised Bolshevism and yet admired the determination of its leaders as well as its practices of subversion followed by strict centralization, thorough militarization, and the ruthless elimination of political enemies....
Given the expanded research opportunities of the post-Cold War epoch, historians need to emphasize Russian influences on National Socialism more. Archival materials housed in Moscow that have only recently become available to historians in particular necessitate a reevaluation of White emigre contributions to National Socialism. During the summer of 1945, Soviet occupying forces in German Lower Silesia discovered vast German archives as well as great amounts of documents that the Germans had seized from occupied countries, most notably France and Poland. The entire archival collection was transported to Moscow, where it was stored in secrecy from the public and even from workers in other Soviet archives. [34] While Soviet authorities returned some of these records to East Germany during the Cold War, most of the seized archival collection remained under wraps in Moscow.
Russian authorities only admitted to possessing files looted from Germany and declassified them in 1991 after the Soviet Union had collapsed. Historians were allowed to investigate the huge archival collection at the Center for the Preservation of Historical-Documentary Collections, which had become part of the Russian State Military Archives by the time I examined materials there in 1999-2001. [35] I was temporarily denied access to the former Center in March 2001, likely as part of the chilled American-Russian relations that arose after the February 2001 arrest of the FBI operative Robert Hanssen as a double agent for both the Soviets and the Russians. [36]
In its heyday, the former Center contained large amounts of files dealing with National Socialist-White emigre collaboration, including reports from Hitler's Geheime Staatspolizei (Secret State Police, commonly known as the Gestapo) and the Reichskommissar fur die Uberwachung der offentlichen Ordnung (State Commissioner for the Supervision of Public Order), the secret intelligence office of the Weimar Republic that reported on political developments and observed foreigners in Germany. [37] Regrettably, many State Commissioner files, most likely including one devoted specifically to Aufbau, have long been housed at the Sluzhba vneshnoi razvetki (Foreign Intelligence Service), where historians are not allowed to examine them. As a further hindrance, Russian authorities "temporarily" transferred the remaining State Commissioner documents there during the summer of 2001, fortunately after I had examined them thoroughly. I believe that I am the last Western scholar to investigate these valuable materials.
The former Center still houses important personal papers that I examined. For instance, the former Center possesses the extensive private collection of Ludwig Muller von Hausen. This volkisch publicist received The Protocols of the Elders of Zion from Shabelskii-Bork in 1919. He had the Protocols translated into German, and then he published them with commentary, thereby disseminating them to National Socialists and other anti-Semites. [38] The former Center also holds the unpublished diary of Walther Nicolai, the head of German Army Intelligence during World War I who subsequently provided anti-Bolshevik intelligence to Aufbau and the National Socialist Party. [39]
The former Center also contains valuable documents of French and Polish provenance that I analyzed. In particular, the institution possesses copies of French intelligence files from the Surete Generale (General Security) and its successor organization beginning in 1934, the Direction Generale de la Surete Nationale (General Department of National Security). The former Center also holds copies of military intelligence reports from the Deuxieme Bureau (Second Section). Moreover, the former Center houses Polish Sztab Glowny Oddzial drugi (Main Headquarters Second Section) intelligence reports on White emigre activities. The Narodnyi komissariat vnutrennikh del (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, NKVD) began collecting these files in September 1939 after the Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland. [40]
This book is arranged thematically and chronologically. Chapter One provides background on National Socialism's genesis primarily as a synthesis of German and Russian radical right movements and ideologies by examining the development of the far right in the German and Russian Empires. Imperial German and Russian radical rightists, who considered themselves to possess spiritual and even racial superiority, developed elaborate anti-Western, anti-socialist, and anti-Semitic views. The redemptive aspect of volkisch German thought associated with the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, the composer Richard Wagner, and the author Houston Stewart Chamberlain stressed that Germans needed to oppose materialistic Jews and to deny the will to live, thereby attaining salvation. Drawing inspiration from the mystically inclined authors Fedor Dostoevskii and Vladimir Solovev [Soloviev], Imperial Russian far rightists propagated Orthodox Christian superiority and warned that an apocalyptic battle loomed between Russia at the head of all Slavs and conspiratorial international Jewry, where Russians would assume the role of Christ, and Jews would take the part of the Antichrist.
Despite their development of detailed religiously inspired anti-Western, anti-socialist, and anti-Semitic beliefs, far rightists in the German and Russian Empires failed politically in the period leading up to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. The volkisch German right could not gain a mass following, nor could it replace the Kaiser with a military dictatorship under General Ludendorff in 1917. In Imperial Russia, the far right "Black Hundred" movement, of which the Soiuz russkago naroda (Union of the Russian People) formed the most important part, gained some initial popular successes in the aftermath of the Revolution of 1905. The Black Hundred movement soon split into factions. however, that could not thwart the Tsar's abdication and the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917. The combined German-White/White emigre far right only began to thrive after the Bolsheviks had come to power and Germany had lost World War I. Volkisch Germans and Whites/White emigres primarily blamed these catastrophes on the Jews.
Chapter Two is divided into two parts. The first section focuses on the Ukraine in 1918 as the theater of the first large-scale anti-Bolshevik German-White military collaboration. The German-White anti-Bolshevik interaction in and just outside the Ukraine established a precedent for further cooperation between rightist Germans and Whites/White emigres both in Germany and abroad, notably as conducted in the Baltic region the following year. Many White officers who served in the Ukraine under German occupation went on to join Aufbau and to foster the National Socialist cause, including General Biskupskii, Colonel Vinberg, Colonel Poltavets-Ostranitsa, Lieutenant Sergei Taboritskii, and Lieutenant Shabelskii-Bork.
The second segment of Chapter Two deals with the Ukraine's role as a transfer zone for White ideology to postwar volkisch German circles in general and to Hitler in particular. During the winter of 1918/1919, German military personnel evacuated thousands of White officers from the Ukraine. One of them, Shabelskii-Bork, carried The Protocols of the Elders of Zion with him to Berlin. Once there, he gave the fabrication to the volkisch publicist Hausen for translation and publication in German. The Protocols' warnings of an insidious Jewish plot to achieve world domination through both insatiable finance capitalism and revolutionary turmoil greatly affected volkisch Germans and White emigres, including Hitler's mentors Eckart and Rosenberg. They in turn influenced Hitler's anti-Semitic views. Hitler used the Protocols as a blueprint of Jewish schemes to conquer the world, notably through the use of starvation as a means to subjugate nationalist majorities.
Chapter Three focuses on nationalist German-White/White emigre collaboration in the Baltic region and in Germany in 1919-1920. The first part of the chapter analyzes the anti-Bolshevik campaign of a combined German Freikorps (volunteer corps) and White Russian army in the Latvian Intervention of 1919. After allowing and even fostering the creation of Freikorps in the Baltic region, the Entente and the largely socialist German government ordered these units to end their anti-Bolshevik operation in tandem with White formations in Latvia. The early director of the Latvian Intervention, General Count Rudiger von der Goltz, complied with the demands of the Entente and the Weimar Republic, but thousands of Germans defied their orders by remaining in Latvia along with their White comrades. The Western Volunteer Army, as the combined German/White force in Latvia was called, came under the command of Colonel Pavel Bermondt-Avalov, who had served in the Ukraine under German occupation in 1918. After some early successes, Bermondt-Avalov's army suffered defeat. While the Latvian Intervention failed militarily, it fostered a strong sense of German/White solidarity.
In addition to serving as a German/White anti-Bolshevik crusade abroad, the Latvian Intervention complemented international far right efforts to overthrow the Weimar Republic. Nationalist Germans grouped around Wolfgang Kapp and Ludendorff hoped for support for their intended putsch from rightist German and White members of Bermondt-Avalov's Western Volunteer Army after they had triumphed over Bolshevism in Latvia and Russia. After the defeat of Bermondt-Avalov's forces, Kapp and Ludendorff used demobilized Germans and White emigres from the Latvian Intervention to undermine the Weimar Republic. National revolutionary undertakings climaxed with the abortive Kapp Putsch of March 1920, which Ludendorff, Scheubner-Richter, Biskupskii, Vinberg, Shabeiskii-Bork,Taboritskii, and even Hitler and Eckart supported. While the Kapp Putsch failed in Berlin, it succeeded in Munich, and it set the stage for increased cooperation between volkisch Germans, including National Socialists, and White emigres there.
Chapters Four through Seven examine Aufbau's rise and fall in Munich from 1920 to 1923. Aufbau gained its initial impetus from the cooperation between former volkisch German and White emigre Kapp Putsch conspirators located in Bavaria and General Piotr Vrangel's Southern Russian Armed Forces, which were based on the Crimean Peninsula in the Ukraine. Scheubner-Richter led a dangerous mission to the Crimea to specify the terms of mutual support between his right-wing German and White emigre backers in Bavaria and Vrangel's regime. The Red Army soon overran the Crimean Peninsula and sent Vrangel and his soldiers fleeing, but Scheubner-Richter nonetheless turned Aufbau into the dynamic focal point of volkisch German-White emigre collaboration.
Aufbau linked important volkisch Germans, most notably Hitler and General Ludendorff, whom Scheubner-Richter introduced to each other in the framework of Aufbau, with prominent White emigres. Important White emigre members of Aufbau included First Secretary Scheubner-Richter himself, Vice President Biskupskii, Deputy Director Schickedanz, Ukrainian faction leader Poltavets-Ostranitsa, Vinberg, Shabelskii-Bork, Taboritskii, Rosenberg, and Rosenberg's collaborator in Eckart's newspaper In Plain German, Kursell. In addition to serving in Aufbau, Scheubner-Richter, Schickedanz, Kursell, and Rosenberg played active roles in the National Socialist Party. Aufbau's second secretary, the German Max Amann, also served as the National Socialist Party secretary.
After it consolidated itself into a powerful conspiratorial force in the first half of 1921 under Scheubner-Richter's de facto leadership, Aufbau tried and failed to unite all White emigres behind Grand Prince Kirill Romanov in league with National Socialists. Aufbau hoped to lead all White emigres in Europe in an anti-Bolshevik crusade that would replace Soviet rule with nationalist Russian, Ukrainian, and Baltic states. Instead of unifying all White emigres, Aufbau engaged in bitter internecine struggle with the Supreme Monarchical Council under the former Union of the Russian People faction leader Nikolai Markov II. The Council supported Grand Prince Nikolai Nikolaevich Romanov, who had close ties to the French government, for Tsar. Markov II's Council sought to reestablish Imperial Russia in its former borders with French military assistance. Aufbau detested the Council's pro-French undertakings to such a degree that it entertained a hazardous tactical alliance with the Red Army.
To further complementary right-wing German and Russian interests, Hitler assisted the pro-Kirill Aufbau in its struggle with Markov II's Supreme Monarchical Council. For its support, Kirill granted Hitler's National Socialist Party considerable subsidies in the context of the "German-Russian national cause." While Aufbau could not unite all White emigres in Germany (and beyond) behind Kirill and in harness with National Socialists, the Aufbau ideologues Scheubner-Richter, Vinberg, and Rosenberg called for "Germany-Russia above everything." They succeeded in convincing Hitler of the need for a nationalist German-Russian alliance against the Entente, the Weimar Republic, the Soviet Union, and international Jewry.
In addition to urging German-Russian collaboration, Aufbau engaged in terrorism. Biskupskii placed a contract for the assassination of Aleksandr Kerenskii, the former head of the 1917 Provisional Government in Russia. Two Aufbau colleagues, Shabelskii-Bork and Taboritskii, accidentally shot the prominent Constitutional Democrat Vladimir Nabokov in their attempt to murder the Russian Constitutional Democratic leader Pavel Miliukov. The Aufbau co-conspirators Biskupskii, Ludendorff, and his advisor Colonel Karl Bauer (at the least) colluded in the assassination of Weimar Germany's Foreign Minister, Walther Rathenau. In this undertaking, the Aufbau associates conspired with Organization C, a radical right union based in Munich under the important Kapp Putsch participant Captain Hermann Ehrhardt. This association carried out terrorist acts, planned military campaigns against the Weimar Republic and the Soviet Union, and upheld close relations with Hitler's National Socialists.
As well as engaging in terrorism, Aufbau coordinated joint National Socialist-White emigre efforts to topple the Soviet Union through the use of military force. Aufbau's goals vis-a-vis the Soviet Union became those of the National Socialist Party, as Scheubner-Richter rose to become Hitler's leading foreign policy advisor and one of his closest consultants in general. Aufbau's foreign policy called for weakening the Bolshevik regime through internal revolt and then overthrowing it with interventionary forces. Aufbau then planned to establish National Socialist successor states in the Ukraine, in the Baltic region, and in the Great Russian heartland. Hitler, who had not yet developed his concept that Germany needed to acquire Lebensraum (living space) in the East, approved of Aufbau's plans for reconstituting the Soviet Union. He especially wished to foster an independent National Socialist Ukraine under Poltavets-Ostranitsa.
In addition to scheming to overthrow the Soviet Union in league with National Socialists, Aufbau played a pivotal role in coordinating Hitler's preparations for a putsch against the Weimar Republic. Aufbau helped the National Socialist Party to build a substantial war chest for its intended coup by contributing funds from Aufbau members or allies such as Kirill well as by channeling funds from Henry Ford, the wealthy American industrialist and politician. Scheubner-Richter played a leading role in the increasingly belligerent Kampfbund (Combat League), a paramilitary organization under Hitler and General Ludendorff. In preparing for a putsch against the Weimar Republic, Scheubner-Richter drew from the perceived Bolshevik example, where a few determined men had shaped world history through subversion followed by strict centralization and militarization. Scheubner-Richter brought Hitler and Ludendorff together at the head of the Combat League for a determined show of force in the Hitler/Ludendorff Putsch of November 1923. He paid for this doomed undertaking with his life.
Chapter Eight analyzes Aufbau's early ideological contributions to National Socialism. Hitler, who only began to develop intense anti-Bolshevik and anti-Semitic beliefs in late 1919 in the context of volkisch German-White emigre interaction, learned a great deal from his early mentor Eckart and three Aufbau members: Scheubner-Richter, Vinberg, and Rosenberg. These ideological comrades served as the "four writers of the apocalypse." They influenced National Socialist ideology by adding White emigre conspiratorial-apocalyptic anti-Semitism to existing volkisch-redemptive notions of Germanic spiritual and racial superiority.
In the vein of Dostoevskii, the four writers of the apocalypse argued that a sinister worldwide Jewish conspiracy manipulated the twin evils of rapacious finance capitalism and bloodthirsty Bolshevism. They excoriated what they regarded as "Jewish Bolshevism." The ideological quartet warned that "Jewish Bolshevism" had killed many millions of Russians in general, and, in a more sinister manner, had exterminated Russia's nationalist intelligentsia. They emphasized that "Jewish Bolsheviks" threatened to annihilate the German nationalist intelligentsia and to slaughter many millions of other Germans in their bloody quest to achieve tyrannical world rule. While Bolshevism horrified him, Rosenberg nonetheless learned from what he perceived as its brutal method of eliminating political enemies. The four writers of the apocalypse radicalized the early National Socialist Party by warning that the "Jewish Bolshevik" peril threatened to pass from world conquest to world destruction.
This work concentrates on the genesis of National Socialism from 1917 to 1923, but Chapter Nine analyzes Aufbau's political, financial, military, and ideological legacy to National Socialism after 1923. Scheubner-Richter's tragic death at Hitler's side during the Hitler/Ludendorff Putsch served as a model of heroic sacrifice for the National Socialist cause. Biskupskii in particular continued to channel funds to the National Socialist Party after 1923. Rosenberg, Schickedanz, and Biskupskii held high posts in the Third Reich. Hitler and Rosenberg continued to use Ukrainian separatists under Poltavets-Ostranitsa to undermine the Soviet Union. Hitler's insistence on winning the Ukraine for Germany in the vein of Aufbau during World War II led him to divert powerful formations of the German Army southwards away from Moscow in 1941, with disastrous military results.
After subsiding somewhat during the National Socialist seizure and consolidation of power, Hitler's virulent anti-Bolshevism and anti-Semitism which he had largely derived from Aufbau thought, found pronounced expression in the later years of the Third Reich. Hitler's intense anti-Bolshevism, which Aufbau had shaped, largely led him to launch a risky invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Fundamental Aufbau-inspired National Socialist ideas on the pernicious nature of Jewish world conspirators continued to evolve after 1923, and they helped to motivate the National Socialist attempt to annihilate European Jewry in the Final Solution. As the State Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, Rosenberg aided Hitler in his dual crusades against Bolshevism and Jewry, which the Fuhrer often combined into a single struggle against "Jewish Bolshevism."
Popular notions notwithstanding, National Socialism did not arise as a mere continuation of peculiarly German radical right-wing politics. This book seeks to foster understanding of National Socialism and its attendant atrocities primarily as the result of cross-cultural interaction between groups defeated in World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution: alienated volkisch Germans and rancorous White emigres. Many anti-Bolshevik and anti-Semitic White emigres contributed extensively to the rise and development of National Socialism in Germany. They affected aggressive National Socialist political and military strategies, provided Hitler with extensive funding, influenced National Socialist ideology by warning apocalyptically of impending Jewish Bolshevik destruction, and helped to spur the Final Solution.
-- The Russian Roots of Nazism: White Emigres and the Making of National Socialism, 1917-1945, by Michael Kellogg
Adolf Hitler, the embodiment of evil who killed millions-- yet loved dogs and children-- remains an enigma. An inveterate theorizer, he wove his crazy-quilt worldview out of scraps from unacknowledged sources. His brand of "Ariosophy" spurned conventional morality, while embracing a queer combination of Teutonic romanticism, the occult, and scientism. According to Konrad Heiden he was "the apostle of the apostles of Lagarde, Langbehn, and Wagner." To understand Hitler we must examine Hans Horbiger's Cosmic Ice Theory, Ernst Haeckl's Biogenetic Law, Adolf Josef Lam von Liebenfals' TheoZoology, and Dietrich Eckart's Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin. Forgotten mountebanks such as these strongly influenced him. Thus, the study of quackery constitutes a principal theme of this book. Hitler was the culmination of a long line of fringe pontificators.
In the early 1920's playwright Dietrich Eckart mentored Adolf Hitler. Before meeting this "fatherly friend" in 1919 the future dictator's life lacked focus. After Eckart's death in December, 1923, Hitler underwent almost no further intellectual development. Both men were self-educated Bohemians who grew up in rural towns, then moved to big cities as young adults in attempts to fulfill artistic ambitions. They experienced setbacks which scarred them for life. Each man attributed his personal failures to the expanding power of Jews. World War I and its harrowing aftermath further exacerbated their anti-Semitism.
Hitler believed himself a divinely appointed reformer. As a budding megalomaniac in 1906 he dreamed of demolishing Linz, then reconstructing the city on a massive, unrecognizable scale. His friend August Kubizek described how he spent hours drawing plans and poring over them. This compulsion for destruction and rebuilding stayed with him for life. Armed with secret knowledge and what he called "unique qualifications," Hitler aimed to junk Christian values and usher in the next millennium, his own Thousand Year Reich. He wished to create a more evolved human being, "the Atlantean-Aryan-Nordic type." Outworn, bourgeois values had to be swept away before this new order could become reality.
Nazism has been called the revenge of the nobodies, and socialism of fools. After World War I defeat, demoralized Germans turned to false prophets such as Dietrich Eckart and Adolf Hitler for guidance. These scapegoat-creators -- no strangers to alienation themselves -- derived grim solace from the fact that the German Volk now shared their sense of anomie. In his scandalous tabloid Auf Gut Deutsch Eckart put a face on modern day angst by making the enemy palpable. In his mind "the Jew" had mobilized the disintegrating forces of finance capitalism, Bolshevism, democracy, and mass culture to destroy "the good old days." He believed that removing the Jewish spirit from Europe would solve this crisis, and thereby transfigure Germany into an Aryan utopia.
The Diaspora proved to be another mixed blessing for Jews. Unjust laws and periodic outbreaks of violence marred economic and cultural successes. Jews contributed significantly to Germany's extraordinary economic growth between 1866 and 1914. After the First World War 16% of Germany's lawyers and 11% of its doctors were Jewish. Though less than 1% of the population, Jews owned 50% of Germany's private banks, 60% of its retail clothing trade, and 80% of the department stores. The vast majority of them staunchly supported the German Reich, nevertheless their prosperity engendered more resentment than admiration.
To gain perspective on German Jewry, this study delves into the personal histories of Heinrich Heine, Karl Marx, Walter Rathenau, and Franz Kafka. Their lives refute the cheap anti-Semitic generalizations of Eckart and Hitler. Despite weaknesses, all of them were "lights unto the gentiles." These idealistic men bore no resemblance to the hateful stereotypes promulgated by Eckart and Hitler. Because of intolerance all of them experienced profound feelings of ambivalence and estrangement. Jews reacted to their situation in different ways. Heine declared Judaism "not a religion, but a misfortune." [1] As a young man he yearned to transform himself from a depressed Jew into "a joyous Hellene." Unable to assimilate, he and his friend Karl Marx ended up as exiles. Zion ist Theodore Herzl gave up on Europe, and directed his energy toward building a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Walter Rathenau realized that he could never be a "Teutonic Knight," and must settle for the role of "Court Jew." Franz Kafka masochistically read anti-Semitic literature in an effort to understand and control his "Shylock within." He remained a stranger in a strange land his whole life, even though his ancestors had lived in Europe for hundreds of years. Jewish authors Otto Weininger and Arthur Trebitsch became rabid anti-Semites after converting to Christianity.
This book aims to provide a vivid account of Dietrich Eckart's world, as well as a snapshot of modern German history from Heinrich Heine's exile in 1831 to Hitler's 1923 Beer Hall Putsch. Like other disciplines, history exists on a continuum between microcosms (individual persons) at one extreme and the Macrocosm (or "big picture") at the other. By means of induction historians bundle together large samples of concrete details from people's lives in order to arrive at generalizations about the timing and nature of broad epochal trends. The approach taken here will be microcosmic, through the medium of biography. Interlocking biographical sketches chronicle not only the experiences of Eckart and Hitler, but those of Heinrich Heine, Karl Marx, Tsar Nicholas II, Kaiser Wilhlem, Rudolf von Sebottendorf, Fanni zu Reventlow, and other representative figures whose lives illuminate Germany's surreal political landscape. The sections on Bismarck, World War I, and German anti-Semitism furnish a "portrait" of the Wilhelmine era. Discerning readers should find the juxtaposition of Eckart's story with Hitler's particularly revealing.
An author should let his work speak for itself, hoping to "make better than he knows" without over-explaining. In response to questions, however, I feel the need to justifY certain segments as being integral rather than extraneous. German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine strongly influenced Eckart's irreverent style. Misguided idealist Karl Marx polarized three generations of European nationalists. Eckart and Hitler combated Marxism during their entire political careers. The two chapters on Wilhelmine Germany (4 and 5) provide indispensable background information. Neither Hitler nor Eckart can be properly understood without reference to this "backdrop." World War I (Chapter 6) and the Russian Imperial family's slaughter (Chapter 10) traumatized European society. These horrors remained in the forefront of Eckart's consciousness between 1918 and 1923, and cannot be glossed over in a few paragraphs. The Thule Society section explores Nazism's quasi-mystical origins, and resonates with Chapter 16 ("Ariosophy"), an exposition of Hitler's "granite" intellectual foundation, and # 12, which treats Dietrich Eckart's dispute with spiritualist Rudolf Steiner. Lastly, I argue for the inclusion of Franz Kafka, the gifted writer and Jewish prophet whose forebodings of impending disaster came to pass. In Kafkaesque fashion a malevolent imposter gained absolute power and annihilated his entire family for no reason. This epilogue ties up the literary leitmotif first stated in Chapter 1 (Man of Letters), and continued through #2 (Heinrich Heine,) then #3, which discusses Eckart's translation of Ibsen's Peer Gynt.
I wish to thank James Tyson for translating several German articles into English, Professor Daniel J. Gillis for insights into German psychology and politics, Professor Ralph M. Engelman for permission to quote from Dietrich Eckart & the Genesis of Nazism, Adam Tyson, John Suiter, Susan Evans, and Barbara Celia for their help. Any errors or omissions are solely my own responsibility.
Joseph Howard Tyson
March 23, 2008
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Endnote
1 Lewis Browne & Elsa Weihl, That Man Heine, MacMillan, New York, 1927, p.186.