Readings on Fascism and National Socialism

The culmination of this development was reached in the "Law To Safeguard the Unity of Party and State," of December 1, 1933 (document 11-IV, post p. 221), which proclaimed the NSDAP "the bearer of the German state-idea and indissolubly joined to the state." In order to guarantee the complete cooperation of the party and SA with the public officials, the Führer's Deputy and the Chief of Staff of the SA were made members of the Cabinet.

With regard to the relation between the party and the state, Neesse writes:

The NSDAP is not a structure which stands under direct state control, to which single tasks of public administration are entrusted by the state, but it holds and maintains is claim to totality as the "bearer of the German state-idea" in all fields relating to the community—regardless of how various single functions are divided between the organization of the party and the organization of the state.86

To maintain cooperation between the party and state organizations, the highest state offices are given to the men holding the corresponding party offices. Gauweiler (document 8, post p. 204) attributes to the party supreme leadership in all phases of national life. Thus the state becomes merely an administrative machine which the party has set up in accordance with and for the accomplishment of its aims:

As the responsible bearer and shaper of the destiny of the whole German nation the party has created an entirely new state, for that which sought to foist itself upon her as a state was simply the product of a deep human confusion. The state of the past and its political ideal had never satisfied the longing of the German people. The National Socialist movement already carried its state within itself at the time of its early struggles. It was able to place the completely formed body of its own state at the disposal of the state which it had taken over.87

The official party interpretation of the relation between party and state, as set forth in the Party Organization Book for 1940, appears in the Appendix as document 7 (post p. 186).

Goebbels in his lecture on The Nature and Form of National Socialism (document 2, post p. 170) stressed the importance of Gleichschaltung or the penetration of Nazi ideology into all fields of national life. This to his mind must be the result of the National Socialist revolution. The same aims, ideals, and standards must be applied to economics and to politics, to cultural and social development, to education and religion, and to foreign and domestic relations.

The result of this concept of the totalitarian state has been the compulsory regimentation of all phases of German life to conform to the pattern established by the party. The totalitarian state does not recognize personal liberties for the individual. The legal position of the individual citizen in the Third Reich is clearly set forth by Huber (document 1, post p. 155):

Not until the nationalistic political philosophy had become dominant could the liberalistic idea of basic rights be really overcome. The concept of personal liberties of the individual as opposed to the authority of the state had to disappear; it is not to be reconciled with the principle of the nationalistic Reich. There are no personal liberties of the individual which fall outside of the realm of the state and which must be respected by the state. The member of the people, organically connected with the whole community, has replaced the isolated individual; he is included in the totality of the political people and is drawn into the collective action. There can no longer be any question of a private sphere, free of state influence, which is sacred and untouchable before the political unity. The constitution of the nationalistic Reich is therefore not based upon a system of inborn and inalienable rights of the individual.88

In place of these rights the constitution of the Third Reich guarantees to the individual his place in the community of the people:

The legal position of the individual member of the people forms an entirely new concept which is indispensable for the construction of a nationalistic order. The legal position of the individual is always related to the community and conditioned by duty. It is developed not for the sake of the individual but for the community, which can only be filled with life, power, and purpose when a suitable field of action is insured for the individual member. Without a concrete determination of the individual's legal position there can be no real community.

This legal position represents the organic fixation of the individual in the living order. Rights and obligations arise from the application of this legal position to specific individual relationships … But all rights must be regarded as duty-bound rights. Their exercise is always dependent upon the fulfilment by the individual of those duties to which all rights are subordinate …89

The concept of private property in the totalitarian state is also at variance with the democratic concept of private property. In the Third Reich the holder of property is considered merely as a manager responsible to the Volk for the use of the property in the common interest. Huber sets forth the Nazi view in the following words:

"Private property" as conceived under the liberalistic economic order was a reversal of the true concept of property. This "private property" represented the right of the individual to manage and to speculate with inherited or acquired property as he pleased, without regard for the general interests … German socialism had to overcome this "private," that is, unrestrained and irresponsible view of property. All property is common property. The owner is bound by the people and the Reich to the responsible management of his goods. His legal position is only justified when he satisfies this responsibility to the community.90

Pursuant to this view of the nature of ownership, property may be confiscated whenever the state decides that public management would be in the interests of the community, or if the owner is found guilty of irresponsible management, in which case no compensation is paid him.

Reference has been made to the appointment of party members to important state offices. Gauweiler (document 8, post p. 204) points out that the party insured the infusion of the entire structure of the state with its ideology through the civil-service law (Beamtengesetz) of January 26, 1937,91 which provides that a person appointed to a civil-service position must be "filled with National Socialist views, since only thus can he be an executor of the will of the state which is carried by the NSDAP. It demands of him that he be ready at all times to exert himself unreservedly in behalf of the National Socialist state and that he be aware of the fact that the NSDAP, as the mouthpiece of the people's will, is the vital force behind the concept of the German state."92

The infiltration of party members into the civil service has now proceeded to such a point that early in 1942 Pfundtner, the Secretary of State in the German Ministry of the Interior, could write in the periodical Akademie für deutsches Recht:

The German civil servant must furthermore be a National Socialist to the marrow of his bones and must be a member of the party or of one of its formations. The state will primarily see to it that the Young Guard of the movement is directed toward a civil-service career and also that the civil servant takes an active part in the party so that the political idea and service of the state become closely welded.93

NAZI AIMS AND METHODS

Political Aims

The political aims of National Socialism have been written so clearly in history in the past 10 years that it does not appear necessary to discuss them at length here.

The detailed program of the Nazi Party consists of the 25 points which were adopted on February 24, 1920 at a party mass meeting in Munich. (The 25-point program appears in the Appendix as document 12, post p. 222.) The points of particular interest in this study are the first four, which are set forth below:

1. We demand the union of all Germans to form a Great Germany on the basis of the right of the self-determination enjoyed by nations.

2. We demand equality of rights for the German People in its dealings with other nations, and abolition of the Peace Treaties of Versailles and St. Germain.

3. We demand land and territory (colonies) for the nourishment of our people and for settling our superfluous population.

4. None but members of the nation may be citizens of the State. None but those of German blood, whatever their creed, may be members of the nation. No Jew, therefore, may be a member of the nation.94

1. Internal Objectives

A statement of the internal objectives of National Socialism is made by Gauweiler in his Legal Organization and Legal Functions of the Movement (document 8, post p. 204). The laws of the Reich must seek to establish and promote the five basic values recognized by Nazi ideology:

1. Race: The legal protection of the race, which has created a new concept of nationality [Volkszugehörigkeit], is consciously put in first place, for the most significant historical principle which has been established by the victory of National Socialism is that of the necessity for keeping race and blood pure. All human mistakes and errors can be corrected except one: "the error regarding the importance of maintaining the basic values of a nation."

The purpose of this legal protection of the basic value of race must be the prevention for all time of a further mixture of German blood with foreign blood, as well as the prevention of continued procreation of racially unworthy and undesirable members of the people.

2. Soil [Boden]: The living-space and the basis for the food supply of the German people are its territory and soil. The farmer is the first and deepest representative of the people since he nourishes the people from the fertility of the earth and he maintains the nation through the fertility of his own family. Here National Socialism had to accomplish two great legal ends: the reestablishment and the protection of the farmer class and the securing of its land for the farmer family.

3. Work: The nation's work as a basic national value is grounded on the leading concept of "work of the hands and of the head" within and for the community of the people and the elevation of work to the only criterion for the value of an individual within the community. In place of the idea of class warfare, National Socialism had to establish the national community legally; in place of the defamation of work and its degradation to an object of barter, National Socialism had to raise it to an ethical duty and the right to work had to become the most clearly defined personal right of the individual. The concept of the honor of work had to be established as the basic concept of the national honor.

4. The Reich: With the securing of the three basic values of race, soil, and work arises the National Socialist Reich.

The infusion of foreign cultural and legal influences in Germany was a consequence of the weakening of the central authority of the German Reich since the Middle Ages. The creation and insuring of a strong central authority in contrast to the disorganized, federalistic system of the Weimar Republic became one of the principal lines of National Socialist legal policy. In consequence of the National Socialist revolution, the Reich took on the legal form of a totalitarian state and received a supreme and completely authoritative lawgiver in the person of the Führer. The principle of a division of power could no longer maintain itself: The formulation, the interpretation, and the execution of the law are all performed by the Führer himself or under his authority.

5. Honor: The fifth great value of the nation is its honor. The honor of the people, the Reich, the party, the Führer, and the individual citizen are all regarded as goods to be protected by law. The basis of national honor is loyalty. National Socialist criminal law is therefore essentially organized as a system of punishment for breaches of faith. Every crime and offense against the community is a breach of faith which must result in loss of honor.95

2. Foreign Policy

The close connection between the internal political program of the National Socialist movement, as expressed in the foregoing paragraphs, and its foreign policy was indicated by Hitler when he wrote in Mein Kampf (document 13-I, post p. 226):

As National Socialists we can further set forth the following principle with regard to the nature of the foreign policy of a folk-state:

It is the task of the foreign policy of a folk-state to secure the existence on this planet of the race which is encompassed by the state and at the same time to establish a healthy, viable, natural relation between the number and growth of the folk on the one hand and the size and quality of its soil and territory on the other hand. 96

And in the same work he states:

Yes, we can only learn from the past that we must undertake the setting of aims for our political activity in two directions: Soil and territory as the goal of our foreign policy, and a new, philosophically firm and uniform foundation as the goal of our domestic political activity.97

The political objectives of National Socialism, then, by definition of Hitler himself, are the internal unification of the German people and external expansion.

While the Nazis have never concealed the first of these objectives, the second was the subject for a great deal of dissimulation up to the outbreak of the present war. Typical of the false front which the Nazis presented to the outside world with reference to their foreign policy objectives are the statements made by Dr. Scurla in Basic Principles of National Socialism With Special Reference to Foreign Countries. Dr. Scurla quotes Hitler's speech of May 17, 1933 in which he said, "We see the European nations around us as given facts. French, Poles, etc., are our neighbor peoples, and we know that no conceivable historic occurrence could change this reality,"98 and comments:

This folk principle, which has grown out of the National Socialist ideology, implies the recognition of the independence and the equal rights of each people. We do not see how anyone can discern in this a "pan-Germanic" and imperialistic threat against our neighbors. This principle does not admit the difference between "great powers" and "minor states," between majority peoples and minorities. It means at the same time a clear rejection of any imperialism which aims at the subjugation of foreign peoples or the denationalization of alien populations. It demands the unqualified acknowledgment of the right to live of every folk, and of every folk-group, which is forced to live as a foreign group in another state. The western European national state together with its parliamentary democracy was not able to do justice to the natural and living entities, the peoples, in their struggle for existence.99

Farther on in the same work Scurla states:

Out of its fundamental ideologic view, however, Germany rejects every form of imperialism, even that of peaceful penetration. It is unable to concede to any people the authority to develop ideas and ways of living, to which then another people has to subordinate itself, even if some other order is suited to its essential nature … It does not at all, however, consider the German order obligatory for other peoples. National Socialism, as has been said a hundred times, is exclusively the sum total of the German world-view.100

Similar assurances by Nazi leaders were frequently made in order to induce a sense of security in neighboring countries. Hitler, for example, in a proclamation opening the party congress at Nuremberg on September 11, 1935 said:

National Socialism has no aggressive intentions against any European nation. On the contrary, we are convinced that the nations of Europe must continue their characteristic national existence, as created by tradition, history and economy; if not, Europe as a whole will be destroyed.101

But such assurances, which were intended exclusively for foreign consumption, were refuted by the basic policy laid down in Mein Kampf, which has been persistently pursued throughout the 10 years of the Nazi regime and has been realized to the extent that Germany now dominates and is in control of most of the European continent. In Mein Kampf (document 13-I, post p. 226) Hitler wrote:

Our task, the mission of the National Socialist movement, however, is to lead our folk to such political insight that it will see its future goal fulfilled not in the intoxicating impression of a new Alexandrian campaign but rather in the industrious work of the German plow, which waits only to be given land by the sword. 102

Hitler suggests a future foreign policy for Germany which would assure Lebensraum and domination of the European continent. In Mein Kampf he states:

But the political testament of the German nation for its outwardly directed activity should and must always have the following import:

Never tolerate the establishment of two continental powers in Europe. See an attack against Germany in every attempt to organize a second military power on the German borders, even if it is only in the form of the establishment of a state which is a potential military power, and see therein not only the right but also the duty to prevent the formation of such a state with all means, even to the use of force, or if it has already been established, to destroy it again. See to it that the strength of our folk has its foundations not in colonies but in the soil of the European homeland. Never regard the foundations of the Reich as secure, if it is not able to give every off-shoot of our folk its own bit of soil and territory for centuries to come. Never forget that the most sacred right in the world is the right to the soil which a man wishes to till himself, and the most sacred sacrifice is the blood which he spills for this soil.103

It is impossible to adduce from the writings of Hitler, or other Nazi leaders direct statements indicating that they aspire to the domination of the entire world. Such expressions, however, may be inferred not only from the direction of German foreign policy and the effusions of the geopoliticians but also from the following statement made by Hitler in Mein Kampf (document 13-I, post p. 226):

… If the German folk, in its historical development, had possessed that herdlike unity which other peoples have enjoyed, the German Reich would today be mistress of the globe. World history would have taken another course, and no one can tell whether in this way that might not have been attained which so many deluded pacifists are hoping today to wheedle by moaning and whining: a peace supported not by the palm branches of tearful pacifistic female mourners but founded by the victorious sword of a master race [Herrenvolk] which places the world in the service of a higher culture.104

Like Hitler, Rosenberg envisaged the extension of Nazi power far beyond the borders of Germany. In his Nature, Principles, and Aims of the NSDAP he stated, "But National Socialism also believes that, far beyond Germany's borders, its principles and its ideology … will lead the way in the unavoidable struggles for power in the other countries of Europe and America."105

Propaganda1. Professed Peaceful Intentions as a Cloak for Imperialistic Designs

The falsity of Nazi propaganda has been demonstrated repeatedly during the past decade. That its keynote was set by Hitler himself becomes evident upon an examination of his statements on foreign policy over a period of years. Not only has his policy been marked by a series of shifts and turns, so that the policy of one year was frequently canceled by the policy of the next, but a comparison of his words with his subsequent deeds makes it evident that he deliberately sought to lull other countries into a feeling of security until he was ready to move against them. On May 17, 1933 he asserted:

No fresh European war is capable of putting something better in the place of unsatisfactory conditions which exist to-day … The outbreak of such madness without end would lead to the collapse of existing social order in Europe … The German Government are convinced that to-day there can be only one great task, and that is to assure the peace of the world … The German Government wish to settle all difficult questions with other Governments by peaceful methods. They know that any military action in Europe, even if completely successful, would, in view of the sacrifice, bear no relation to the profit to be obtained …

Germany will tread no other path than that laid down by the Treaties. The German Government will discuss all political and economic questions only within the framework of, and through, the Treaties.

The German people have no thought of invading any country. 106 (Document 14, post pp. 282-233.)

And on March 7, 1936 he stated:

After three years I believe that I can regard the struggle for German equality as concluded to-day. I believe, moreover, that thereby the first and foremost reason for our withdrawal from European collective collaboration has ceased to exist. We have no territorial demands to make in Europe.107 (Document 14, post p. 237.)

Moreover, he did not shrink from giving specific assurances of Germany's peaceful intentions toward his subsequent victims:

There are Germans and Poles in Europe, and they ought to live together in agreement. The Poles cannot think, of Europe without the Germans and the Germans cannot think of Europe without the Poles. (Oct. 24, 1933)

Germans and Poles must reconcile themselves as to the fact of each others' existence. It has seemed to me necessary to demonstrate by an example that it is possible for two nations to talk over their differences without giving the task to a third or a fourth …

The assertion that the German Reich plans to coerce the Austrian State is absurd and cannot be substantiated or proved … The assertion of the Austrian Government that from the side of the Reich an attack would be undertaken or planned I must emphatically reject … The German Reich is always ready to hold out a hand for a real understanding, with full respect for the free will of Austrian Germans … (Jan. 13, 1934)

The lie goes forth again that Germany to-morrow or the day after will fall upon Austria or Czecho-Slovakia. I ask myself always: Who can these elements be who will have no peace, who incite continually, who must so distrust, and want no understanding? Who are they? I know they are not the millions who, if these inciters had their way, would have to take up arms. (May 1, 1936)

Germany and Poland are two nations, and these nations will live, and neither of them will be able to do away with the other. I recognized all of this, and we all must recognize that a people of 33,000,000 will always strive for an outlet to the sea … We have assured all our immediate neighbors of the integrity of their territory as far as Germany is concerned. That is no hollow phrase; it is our sacred will …

(Sept. 26, 1938)108

(Document 14, post pp. 233, 234, 238, 240-241.)

Yugoslavia is a State that has increasingly attracted the attention of our people since the war. The high regard that the German soldiers then felt for this brave people has since been deepened and developed into genuine friendship. Our economic relations with this country are undergoing constant development and expansion, just as is the case with the friendly countries of Bulgaria, Greece, Rumania, Turkey, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the Baltic States. (Jan. 30, 1939)109

In Hitler's Reichstag speech of April 28, 1939, in which he replied to President Roosevelt's telegraphic message inviting him and Mussolini to pledge themselves not to attack 31 countries mentioned by name, he stated:

… All states bordering on Germany have received much more binding assurances, and above all suggestions, than Mr. Roosevelt asked from me in his curious telegram …