Chapter VII (1)

The politic of Fascism revolves wholly about the concept of the national State; and accordingly it has points of contact with nationalist doctrines, along with distinctions from the latter which it is important to bear in mind.

Both Fascism and nationalism regard the State as the foundation of all rights and the source of all values in the individuals composing it. For the one as for the other the State is not a consequence--it is a principle. But in the case of nationalism, the relation which individualistic liberalism, and for that matter socialism also, assumed between individual and State is inverted. Since the State is a principle, the individual becomes a consequence--he is something which finds an antecedent in the State: the State limits him and determines his manner of existence, restricting his freedom, binding him to a piece of ground whereon he was born, whereon he must live and will die. In the case of Fascism, State and individual are one and the same things, or rather, they are inseparable terms of a necessary synthesis.

Nationalism, in fact, founds the State on the concept of nation, the nation being an entity which transcends the will and the life of the individual because it is conceived as objectively existing apart from the consciousness of individuals, existing even if the individual does nothing to bring it into being. For the nationalist, the nation exists not by virtue of the citizen's will, but as datum, a fact, of nature.

For Fascism, on the contrary, the State is a wholly spiritual creation. It is a national State, because, from the Fascist point of view, the nation itself is a creation of the mind and is not a material presupposition, is not a datum of nature. The nation, says the Fascist, is never really made; neither, therefore, can the State attain an absolute form, since it is merely the nation in the latter's concrete, political manifestation. For the Fascist, the State is always _in fieri_. It is in our hands, wholly; whence our very serious responsibility towards it.

But this State of the Fascists which is created by the consciousness and the will of the citizen, and is not a force descending on the citizen from above or from without, cannot have toward the mass of the population the relationship which was presumed by nationalism.

Nationalism identified State with Nation, and made of the nation an entity preëxisting, which needed not to be created but merely to be recognized or known. The nationalists, therefore, required a ruling class of an intellectual character, which was conscious of the nation and could understand, appreciate and exalt it. The authority of the State, furthermore, was not a product but a presupposition. It could not depend on the people--rather the people depended on the State and on the State's authority as the source of the life which they lived and apart from which they could not live. The nationalistic State was, therefore, an aristocratic State, enforcing itself upon the masses through the power conferred upon it by its origins.

The Fascist State, on the contrary, is a people's state, and, as such, the democratic State _par excellence_. The relationship between State and citizen (not this or that citizen, but all citizens) is accordingly so intimate that the State exists only as, and in so far as, the citizen causes it to exist. Its formation therefore is the formation of a consciousness of it in individuals, in the masses. Hence the need of the Party, and of all the instruments of propaganda and education which Fascism uses to make the thought and will of the _Duce_ the thought and will of the masses. Hence the enormous task which Fascism sets itself in trying to bring the whole mass of the people, beginning with the little children, inside the fold of the Party.

On the popular character of the Fascist State likewise depends its greatest social and constitutional reform--the foundation of the Corporations of Syndicates. In this reform Fascism took over from syndicalism the notion of the moral and educational function of the syndicate. But the Corporations of Syndicates were necessary in order to reduce the syndicates to State discipline and make them an expression of the State's organism from within. The Corporation of Syndicates are a device through which the Fascist State goes looking for the individual in order to create itself through the individual's will. But the individual it seeks is not the abstract political individual whom the old liberalism took for granted. He is the only individual who can ever be found, the individual who exists as a specialized productive force, and who, by the fact of his specialization, is brought to unite with other individuals of his same category and comes to belong with them to the one great economic unit which is none other than the nation.

This great reform is already well under way. Toward it nationalism, syndicalism, and even liberalism itself, were already tending in the past. For even liberalism was beginning to criticize the older forms of political representation, seeking some system of organic representation which would correspond to the structural reality of the State.

The Fascist conception of liberty merits passing notice. The _Duce_ of Fascism once chose to discuss the theme of "Force or consent?"; and he concluded that the two terms are inseparable, that the one implies the other and cannot exist apart from the other; that, in other words, the authority of the State and the freedom of the citizen constitute a continuous circle wherein authority presupposes liberty and liberty authority. For freedom can exist only within the State, and the State means authority. But the State is not an entity hovering in the air over the heads of its citizens. It is one with the personality of the citizen. Fascism, indeed, envisages the contrast not as between liberty and authority, but as between a true, a concrete liberty which exists, and an abstract, illusory liberty which cannot exist.

Liberalism broke the circle above referred to, setting the individual against the State and liberty against authority. What the liberal desired was liberty as against the State, a liberty which was a limitation of the State; though the liberal had to resign himself, as the lesser of the evils, to a State which was a limitation on liberty. The absurdities inherent in the liberal concept of freedom were apparent to liberals themselves early in the Nineteenth Century. It is no merit of Fascism to have again indicated them. Fascism has its own solution of the paradox of liberty and authority. The authority of the State is absolute. It does not compromise, it does not bargain, it does not surrender any portion of its field to other moral or religious principles which may interfere with the individual conscience. But on the other hand, the State becomes a reality only in the consciousness of its individuals. And the Fascist corporative State supplies a representative system more sincere and more in touch with realities than any other previously devised and is therefore freer than the old liberal State.

NATIONAL SOCIALISM

BASIC PRINCIPLES, THEIR APPLICATION BY THE NAZI PARTY'S FOREIGN ORGANIZATION, AND THE USE OF GERMANS ABROAD FOR NAZI AIMS

Prepared in the Special Unit Of the Division of European Affairs By RAYMOND E. MURPHY FRANCIS B. STEVENS HOWARD TRIVERS JOSEPH M. ROLAND

ELEMENTS OF NAZI IDEOLOGY

The line of thought which we have traced from Herder to the immediate forerunners of the Nazi movement embodies an antidemocratic tradition which National Socialism has utilized, reduced to simple but relentless terms, and exploited in what is known as the National Socialist _Weltanschauung_ for the greater aggrandizement of Nazi Germany. The complete agreement between the Nazi ideology and the previously described political concepts of the past is revealed in the forthcoming exposition of the main tenets of Naziism.

The Volk

Ernst Rudolf Huber, in his basic work _Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches (Constitutional Law of the Greater German Reich_) (document 1, _post_ p. 155), published in 1939, states:

The new constitution of the German Reich ... is not a
constitution in the formal sense such as was typical of the
nineteenth century. The new Reich has no written
constitutional declaration, but its constitution exists in
the unwritten basic political order of the Reich. One
recognizes it in the spiritual powers which fill our people,
in the real authority in which our political life is
grounded, and in the basic laws regarding the structure of
the state which have been proclaimed so far. The advantage
of such an unwritten constitution over the formal
constitution is that the basic principles do not become
rigid but remain in a constant, living movement. Not dead
institutions but living principles determine the nature of
the new constitutional order.[8]

In developing his thesis Huber points out that the National Socialist state rests on three basic concepts, the _Volk_ or people, the Führer, and the movement or party. With reference to the first element, the _Volk_, he argues that the democracies develop their concept of the people from the wrong approach: They start with the concept of the state and its functions and consider the people as being made up of all the elements which fall within the borders or under the jurisdiction of the state. National Socialism, on the other hand, starts with the concept of the people, which forms a political unity, and builds the state upon this foundation.

There is no people without an objective unity, but there is
also none without a common consciousness of unity. A people
is determined by a number of different factors: by racial
derivation and by the character of its land, by language and
other forms of life, by religion and history, but also by
the common consciousness of its solidarity and by its common
will to unity. For the concrete concept of a people, as
represented by the various peoples of the earth, it is of
decisive significance which of these various factors they
regard as determinants for the nature of the people. The new
German Reich proceeds from the concept of the political
people, determined by the natural characteristics and by the
historical idea of a closed community. The political people
is formed through the uniformity of its natural
characteristics. Race is the natural basis of the people ...
As a political people the natural community becomes
conscious of its solidarity and strives to form itself, to
develop itself, to defend itself, to realize itself.
"Nationalism" is essentially this striving of a people which
has become conscious of itself toward self-direction and
self-realization, toward a deepening and renewing of its
natural qualities.

This consciousness of self, springing from the consciousness
of a historical idea, awakens in a people its will to
historical formation: the will to action. The political
people is no passive, sluggish mass, no mere object for the
efforts of the state at government or protective welfare
work ... The great misconception of the democracies is that
they can see the active participation of the people only in
the form of plebiscites according to the principle of
majority. In a democracy the people does not act as a unit
but as a complex of unrelated individuals who form
themselves into parties ... The new Reich is based on the
principle that real action of a self-determining people is
only possible according to the principle of leadership and
following.[9]

According to Huber, geographical considerations play a large part in the shaping of a people:

The people stands in a double relation, to its lands; it
settles and develops the land, but the land also stamps and
determines the people ... That a certain territory belongs
to a certain people is not justified by state authority
alone but it is also determined objectively by its
historical, political position. Territory is not merely a
field for the exercise of state control but it determines
the nature of a people and thereby the historical purpose of
the state's activity. England's island position, Italy's
Mediterranean position, and Germany's central position
between east and west are such historical conditions, which
unchangeably form the character of the people.[10]

But the new Germany is based upon a "unity and entirety of the people"[11] which does not stop at geographical boundaries:

The German people forms a closed community which recognizes
no national borders. It is evident that a people has not
exhausted its possibilities simply in the formation of a
national state but that it represents an independent
community which reaches beyond such limits.[12]

The State justifies itself only so far as is helps the people to develop itself more fully. In the words of Hitler, quoted by Huber from _Mein Kampf_, "It is a basic principle, therefore, that the state represents not an end but a means. It is a condition for advanced human culture, but not the cause of it ... Its purpose is in the maintenance and advancement of a community of human beings with common physical and spiritual characteristics."[13]

Huber continues:

In the theory of the folk-Reich _[völkisches Reich_], people
and state are conceived as an inseparable unity. The people
is the prerequisite for the entire political order; the
state does not form the people but the people moulds the
state out of itself as the form in which it achieves
historical permanence....[14]

The State is a function of the people, but it is not
therefore a subordinate, secondary machine which can be used
or laid aside at will. It is the form in which the people
attains to historical reality. It is the bearer of the
historical continuity of the people, which remains the same
in the center of its being in spite of all changes,
revolutions, and transformations.[15]

A similar interpretation of the role of the _Volk_ is expounded by Gottfried Neesse in his _Die Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei--Versuch einer Rechtsdeutung_ (_The National Socialist German Workers Party--An Attempt at Legal Interpretation_), published in 1935. From the National Socialist viewpoint, according to Neesse, the state is regarded not as an organism superior to the people but as an organization of the people: "In contrast to an organism, an organization has no inherent legality; it is dependent upon human will and has no definite mission of its own. It is a form in which a living mass shapes itself into unity, but it has no life of its own."[16] The people is the living organism which uses the organization of the state as the form in which it can best fulfil its mission. The law which is inherent in the people must be realized through the state.

But the central and basic concept of National Socialist political theory is the concept of the people:

In contrast to the state, the people form a true organism--a
being which leads its own life and follows its own laws,
which possesses powers peculiar to itself, and which
develops its own nature independent of all state forms....
This living unity of the people has its cells in its
individual members, and just as in every body there are
certain cells to perform certain tasks, this is likewise the
case in the body of the people. The individual is bound to
his people not only physically but mentally and spiritually
and he is influenced by these ties in all his
manifestations.[17]

The elements which go to make up a people are beyond human comprehension, but the most important of them is a uniformity of blood, resulting in "a similarity of nature which manifests itself in a common language and a feeling of community and is further moulded by land and by history."[18] "The unity of the people is increased by its common destiny and its consciousness of a common mission."[19]

Liberalism gave rise to the concept of a "society-people" (_Gesellschaftsvolk_) which consisted of a sum of individuals, each of whom was supposed to have an inherent significance and to play his own independent part in the political life of the nation. National Socialism, on the other hand, has developed, the concept of the "community-people" (_Gemeinschaftsvolk_) which functions as a uniform whole.[20]

The people, however, is never politically active as a whole,
but only through those who embody its will. The true will of
a people can never be determined by a majority vote. It can
only display itself in men and in movements, and history
will decide whether these men or movements could rightly
claim to be the representatives of the people's will.[21]

Every identification of the state with the people is false
from a legal and untenable from a political standpoint ...
The state is the law-forming organization and the law serves
the inner order of the community; the people is the
politically active organism and politics serve the outward
maintenance of the community ... But law receives its
character from the people and politics must reckon with the
state as the first and most important factor.[22]

The "nation" is the product of this interplay and balance between the state and the people. The original and vital force of the people, through the organization of the state, realizes itself fully in the unified communal life of the nation:

The nation is the complete agreement between organism and
organization, the perfect formation of a naturally grown
being. ... _Nationalism_ is nothing more than the outwardly
directed striving to maintain this inner unity of people and
state, and _socialism_ is the inwardly directed striving for
the same end.[23]

Dr. Herbert Scurla, Government Councilor and Reich's Minister for Science, Education, and Folk Culture, in a pamphlet entitled _Die Grundgedanken des Nationalsozialismus und das Ausland (Basic Principles of National Socialism With Special Reference to Foreign Countries_), also emphasizes the importance of the _Volk_ in the National Socialist state. Dr. Scurla points out that National Socialism does not view the nation in the domocratic sense of a community to which the individual may voluntarily adhere.

The central field of force of the National Socialist
consciousness is rather the folk, and this folk is in no
case mere individual aggregation, i.e., collectivity as sum
of the individuals, but as a unity with a peculiar
two-sidedness, at the same time "essential totality" (M.H.
Boehm). The folk is both a living creature and a spiritual
configuration, in which the individuals are included through
common racial conditioning, in blood and spirit. It is that
force which works on the individual directly "from within or
from the side like a common degree of temperature" (Kjellén)
and which collects into the folk whatever according to
blood and spirit belongs to it. This folk, point of
departure and goal at the same time, is, in the National
Socialist world-view, not only the field of force for
political order, but as well the central factor of the
entire world-picture. Neither individuals, as the epoch of
enlightenment envisaged, nor states, as in the system of the
dynastic and national state absolutism, nor classes, as
conceived by Marxism, are the ultimate realities of the
political order, but the peoples, who stand over against one
another with the unqualifiable right to a separate existence
as natural entities, each with its own essential nature and
form. [24]

Dr. Scurla claims that National Socialism and Fascism are the strivings of the German and Italian people for final national unification along essentially different national lines natural to each of them. "What took place in Germany," he asserts, "was a political revolution of a total nature."[25] "Under revolution," he states, "we understand rather the penetration of the collective folk-mind [_gesamtvölkischen Bewusstseins_] into all regions of German life."[26] And, he concludes:

National Socialism is no invented system of rules for the
political game, but the world-view of the German people,
which experiences itself as a national and social community,
and concedes neither to the state nor the class nor the
individual any privileges which endanger the security of the
community's right to live.[27]

Some of the most striking expressions of the race concept are found in _Die Erziehung im dritten Reich_ (_Education in the Third Reich_), by Friedrich Alfred Beck, which was published in 1936. It is worthy of note that the tendency which may be observed in Huber (document I, _post_ p. 155) and Neesse to associate the ideas of _Volk_ and race is very marked with Beck. "All life, whether natural or spiritual, all historical progress, all state forms, and all cultivation by education are in the last analysis based upon the racial make-up of the people in question."[28] _Race_ finds its expression in human life through the phenomenon of the _people_:

_Race_ and _people_ belong together. National Socialism has
restored the concept of the people from its modern
shallowness and sees in the people something different from
and appreciably greater than a chance social community of
men, a grouping of men who have the same external interests.
By _people_ we understand an entire living body which is
racially uniform and which is held together by common
history, common fate, a common mission, and common tasks.
Through such an interpretation the people takes on a
significance which is only attributed to it in times of
great historical importance and which makes it the center,
the content, and the goal of all human work. Only that race
still possesses vital energy which can still bring its unity
to expression in the totality of the people. The people is
the space in which race can develop its strength. Race is
the vital law of arrangement which gives the people its
distinctive form. In the course of time the people undergoes
historical transformations, but race prevents the loss of
the people's own nature in the course of these
transformations. Without the people the race has no life;
without race the people has no permanence ... Education,
from the standpoint of race and people, is the creation of a
form of life in which the racial unity will be preserved
through the totality of the people.[29]

Beck describes the politically spiritual National Socialist personality which National Socialist education seeks to develop, in the following terms:

Socialism is the direction of personal life through
dependence on the community, consciousness of the community,
feeling for the community, and action in the community;
nationalism is the elevation of individual life to a unique
(microcosmic) expression of the community in the unity of
the personality.[30]

National Socialist education must stress the heroic life and teach German youth the importance of fulfilling their duty to the _Volk_.

Heroism is that force and that conviction which consecrates
its whole life to the service of an idea, a faith, a task,
or a duty even when it knows that the destruction of its own
life is certain ... German life, according to the laws of
its ideology, is heroic life ... All German life, every
person belonging to the community of Germans must bear
heroic character within himself. Heroic life fulfils itself
in the daily work of the miner, the farmer, the clerk, the
statesman, and the serving self-sacrifice of the mother.
Wherever a life is devoted with an all-embracing faith and
with its full powers to the service of some value, there is
true heroism ... Education to the heroic life is education
to the fulfilment of duty ... One must have experienced it
repeatedly that the inner fruition of a work in one's own
life has nothing to do with material or economic
considerations, that man keeps all of his faculties alive
through his obligation to his work and his devotion to his
duty, and that he uses them in the service of an idea
without any regard for practical considerations, before one
recognizes the difference between this world of heroic
self-sacrifice and the liberalistic world of barter. Because
the younger generation has been brought up in this heroic
spirit it is no longer understood by the representatives of
the former era who judge the values of life according to
material advantage ... German life is heroic life. Germany
is not a mere community of existence and of interests whose
only function is to insure the material and cultural needs
of its members, but it also represents an elemental
obligation on the part of the members. The eternal Germany
cannot be drawn in on the map; it does not consist of the
constitution or the laws of the state. This Germany is the
community of those who are solemnly bound together and who
experience and realize these eternal national values. This
Germany is our eternal mission, our most sacred law ... The
developing personality must be submerged in the living
reality of the people and the nation from earliest youth on,
must take an active and a suffering part in it. Furthermore
the heroic life demands a recognition and experiencing of
the highest value of life which man must serve with all his
powers. This value can perhaps be recognized and presented
theoretically in the schools but it can only be directly
comprehended and personally experienced in the community of
the people. Therefore all education must preserve this
_direct connection with the community of the people_ and
school education must derive from it the form and substance
of its instruction.[31]

This nationalism, which is based upon the laws of life, has
nothing in common with the weak and presumptuous patriotism
of the liberalistic world; it is not a gift or a favor, not
a possession or a privilege, but it is the form of national
life which we have won in hard battle and which suits our
Nordic-German racial and spiritual heritage. In the
nationalistic personality the powers and values which have
been established in the socialistic personality will be
purposefully exerted for the perfection of the temporal and
eternal idea of life.[32]

The National Socialist idea of totality, therefore, and its manifestation in life of the national community form the principal substance of education in the Third Reich:

This idea of totality must be radically distinguished from
the liberalistic conception of the mass. According to the
liberalistic interpretation the whole consists of a
summation of its parts. According to the National Socialist
organic conception the whole comes before the parts; it does
not arise from the parts but it is already contained in the
parts themselves; all parts are microcosmic forms of the
whole. This organic conception of the whole is the deepest
natural justification of the basic political character of
all organic life.[33]

Education, Beck continues, must present this total unity as it is manifested in the racial character of the people. Race is the most essential factor in the natural and spiritual unity of a people, and it is also the main factor which separates one people from another. The racial character of the people must determine the substance of education; this substance must be derived primarily from the life of the people.

Even in the specialized field of political science, Nazi education is concerned not with the structure of the state but with the role of the individual in the life of the people:

National Socialist political science concerns itself not
with education to citizenship but with preparation for
membership in the German people.... Not the structure of the
state but the strength of a people determines the value and
the strength of an individual life. The state must be an
organization which corresponds to the laws of the people's
life and assists in their realization.[34]

Such indeed is the supreme goal of all National Socialist education: to make each individual an expression of "the eternal German":

Whoever wishes fully to realize himself, whoever wishes to
experience and embody the eternal German ideal within
himself must lift his eyes from everyday life and must
listen to the beat of his blood and his conscience ... He
must be capable of that superhuman greatness which is ready
to cast aside all temporal bonds in the battle for German
eternity ... National Socialist education raises the eternal
German character into the light of our consciousness ...
National Socialism is the eternal law of our German life;
the development of the eternal German is the transcendental
task of National Socialist education.[35]

Racial Supremacy

The theory of the racial supremacy of the Nordic, i.e., the German, which was developed by Wagner and Stewart Chamberlain reaches its culmination in the writings of Alfred Rosenberg, the high priest of Nazi racial theory and herald of the _Herrenvolk_ (master race). Rosenberg developed his ideas in the obscure phraseology of _Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts_ (_The Myth of the Twentieth Century_) (document 3, _post_ p. 174). "The 'meaning of world history'," he wrote, "has radiated out from the north over the whole world, borne by a blue-eyed blond race which in several great waves determined the spiritual face of the world ... These wander-periods were the legendary migration of the Atlantides across north Africa, the migration of the Aryans into India and Persia; the migration of the Dorians, Macedonians, Latins; the migration of the Germanic tribes; the colonization of the world by the Germanic Occident."[36] He discusses at length Indian, Persian, Greek, Roman, and European cultures; in each case, he concludes, the culture is created by the ruling Nordic element and declines through the racial decay of the Nordics resulting from their intermixture with inferior races.

It has long been accepted, Rosenberg claims, that all the states of the west and their creative values have been generated by Germans; and it follows that if the Germanic blood were to vanish away completely in Europe all western culture would also fall to ruin.

Rosenberg acclaims the new faith of the blood which is to replace the non-German religion of Christianity. "A _new_ faith is arising today: the myth of the blood, the faith to defend with the blood the divine essence of man. The faith, embodied in clearest knowledge, that the Nordic blood represents that _mysterium_ which has replaced and overcome the old sacraments."[37]

Rosenberg accepts the classic German view of the _Volk_, which he relates closely to the concept of race. "The state is nowadays no longer an independent idol, before which everything must bow down; the state is not even an end but is only a means for the preservation of the folk ... Forms of the state change, and laws of the state pass away; the folk remains. From this alone follows that the nation is the first and _last_, that to which everything else has to be subordinated."[38] "The new thought puts folk and race higher than the state and its forms. It declares protection of the folk more important than protection of a religious denomination, a class, the monarchy, or the republic; it sees in treason against the folk a greater crime than high treason against the state."[39]

The essence of Rosenberg's racial ideas was incorporated in point 4 of the program of the Nazi Party, which reads as follows: "None but members of the nation [_Volk_] 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."[40] After the Nazis came to power, this concept was made the basis of the German citizenship law of September 15, 1935.

Commenting upon point 4 of the Nazi program in his pamphlet, _Nature, Principles, and Aims of the NSDAP_, Rosenberg wrote:

An indispensable differentiation must be made sometime in
the German _Volk_ consciousness: The right of nationality
should not represent something which is received in the
cradle as a gift, but should be regarded as a good which
must be earned. Although every German is a subject of the
state, the rights of nationality should only be received
when at the age of twenty or twenty-two he has completed his
education or his military service or has finished the labor
service which he owes to the state and after having given
evidence of honorable conduct. The right to nationality,
which must be earned, must become an opportunity for every
German to strive for complete humanity and achievement in
the service of the _Volk_. This consciousness, which must
always be kept alive, will cause him to regard this earned
good quite differently from the way it was regarded in the
past and today more than ever.

The prevailing concept of state nationality completely
ignores the idea of race. According to it whoever has a
German passport is a German, whoever has Czech documents is
a Czech, although he may have not a single drop of Czech
blood in his veins ...

National Socialism also sees in the nature of the structure
and leadership of the state an outflowing of a definite
character in the _Volk_. If one permits a wholly foreign
race--subject to other impulses--to participate therein, the
purity of the organic expression is falsified and the
existence of the _Volk_ is crippled....

This whole concept of the state [parliamentary democracy] is
replaced by National Socialism with a basically different
concept. National Socialism recognizes that, although the
individual racial strains in German-speaking territory
differ, they nevertheless belong to closely related races,
and that many mixtures among the members of these different
branches have produced new and vital strains, among them the
complex but still _German_ man, but that a mixture with the
Jewish enemy race, which in its whole spiritual and physical
structure is basically different and antagonistic and has
strong resemblances to the peoples of the Near East, can
only result in bastardization.[41]

True to the tradition of German imperialism, Rosenberg does not confine his ideas of racial supremacy to the Germans in the Reich alone. He even extends them to the United States, where he envisages the day when the awakening German element will realize its destiny in this country. In _Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts_, for example, he writes, "After throwing off the worn-out idea upon which it was founded ... i.e., after the destruction of the idea represented by New York, the United States of North America has the great task ... of setting out with youthful energy to put into force the new racial-state idea which a few awakened Americans have already foreseen."[42]

This idea was developed at length by the German geopolitician, Colin Ross. In his book _Unser Amerika_ (_Our America_) (document 4, _post_ p. 178), published in 1936, Ross develops the thesis that the German element in the United States has contributed all that is best in American life and civilization and urges it to become conscious of its racial heritage and to prepare for the day when it may take over complete control of the country.

Reference was made in the preceding section to Beck's _Education in the Third Reich_. On the subject of racial supremacy Beck points out that certain new branches of learning have been introduced into the National Socialist schools and certain old ones have been given a new emphasis. The most important of these are the science of race and the cultivation of race (_Rassenkunde und Rassenpflege_), which teach the pupil to recognize and develop those racial powers which alone make possible the fullest self-realization in the national community. An awakening of a true racial consciousness in the people should lead to a "qualitative and quantitative" racial refinement of the German people by inducing a procreative process of selection which would reduce the strains of foreign blood in the national body. "German racial consciousness must have pride in the Nordic race as its first condition. It must be a feeling of the highest personal pride to belong to the Nordic race and to have the possibility and the obligation to work within the German community for the advancement of the Nordic race."[43] Beck points out that pupils must be made to realize "that the downfall of the Nordic race would mean the collapse of the national tradition, the disintegration of the living community and the destruction of the individual."[44]

Under the influence of war developments, which have given the Nazis a chance to apply their racial theories in occupied territories, their spokesmen have become increasingly open with regard to the political implications of the folk concept. In an article on "The Structure and Order of the Reich," published late in 1941, Ernst Rudolf Huber wrote, "this folk principle has found its full confirmation for the first time in the events of this war, in which the unity of the folk has been realized to an extent undreamed of through the return to the homeland of territories which had been torn from it and the resettlement of German folk-groups. Thus the awakening of Germandom to become a political folk has had a twofold result: the unity of the folk-community has risen superior to differences of birth or wealth, of class, rank, or denomination; and the unity of Germandom above all state boundaries has been consciously experienced in the European living-space [_Siedlungsraum_]."[45]

The Führer Principle

The second pillar of the Nazi state is the Führer, the infallible leader, to whom his followers owe absolute obedience. The Führer principle envisages government of the state by a hierarchy of leaders, each of whom owes unconditional allegiance to his immediate superior and at the same time is the absolute leader in his own particular sphere of jurisdiction.

One of the best expositions of the Nazi concept of the Führer principle is given by Huber in his _Constitutional Law of the Greater German Reich_ (document 1, _post_ p. 155):

The Führer-Reich of the [German] people is founded on the
recognition that the true will of the people cannot be
disclosed through parliamentary votes and plebiscites but
that the will of the people in its pure and uncorrupted form
can only be expressed through the Führer. Thus a distinction
must be drawn between the supposed will of the people in a
parliamentary democracy, which merely reflects the conflict
of the various social interests, and the true will of the
people in the Führer-state, in which the collective will of
the real political unit is manifested ...

The Führer is the bearer of the people's will; he is
independent of all groups, associations, and interests, but
he is bound by laws which are inherent in the nature of his
people. In this twofold condition: independence of all
factional interests but unconditional dependence on the
people, is reflected the true nature of the Führer
principle. Thus the Führer has nothing in common with the
functionary, the agent, or the exponent who exercises a
mandate delegated to him and who is bound to the will of
those who appoint him. The Führer is no "representative" of
a particular group whose wishes he must carry out. He is no
"organ" of the state in the sense of a mere executive agent.
He is rather himself the bearer of the collective will of
the people. In his will the will of the people is realized.
He transforms the mere feelings of the people into a
conscious will ... Thus it is possible for him, in the name
of the true will of the people which he serves, to go
against the subjective opinions and convictions of single
individuals within the people if these are not in accord
with the objective destiny of the people ... He shapes the
collective will of the people within himself and he embodies
the political unity and entirety of the people in
opposition to individual interests ...

But the Führer, even as the bearer of the people's will, is
not arbitrary and free of all responsibility. His will is
not the subjective, individual will of a single man, but the
collective national will is embodied within him in all its
objective, historical greatness ... Such a collective will
is not a fiction, as is the collective will of the
democracies, but it is a political reality which finds its
expression in the Führer. The people's collective will has
its foundation in the political idea which is given to a
people. It is present in the people, but the Führer raises
it to consciousness and discloses it ...

In the Führer are manifested also the natural laws inherent
in the people: It is he who makes them into a code governing
all national activity. In disclosing these natural laws he
sets up the great ends which are to be attained and draws up
the plans for the utilization of all national powers in the
achievement of the common goals. Through his planning and
directing he gives the national life its true purpose and
value. This directing and planning activity is especially
manifested in the lawgiving power which lies in the Führer's
hand. The great change in significance which the law has
undergone is characterized therein that it no longer sets up
the limits of social life, as in liberalistic times, but
that it drafts the plans and the aims of the nation's
actions ...

The Führer principle rests upon unlimited authority but not
upon mere outward force. It has often been said, but it must
constantly be repeated, that the Führer principle has
nothing in common with arbitrary bureaucracy and represents
no system of brutal force, but that it can only be
maintained by mutual loyalty which must find its expression
in a free relation. The Führer-order depends upon the
responsibility of the following, just as it counts on the
responsibility and loyalty of the Führer to his mission and
to his following ... There is no greater responsibility than
that upon which the Führer principle is grounded.[46]

The nature of the plebiscites which are held from time to time in a National Socialist state, Huber points out, cannot be understood from a democratic standpoint. Their purpose is not to give the people an opportunity to decide some issue but rather to express their unity behind a decision which the Führer, in his capacity as the bearer of the people's will, has already made:

That the will of the people is embodied in the Führer does
not exclude the possibility that the Führer can summon all
members of the people to a plebiscite on a certain question.
In this "asking of the people" the Führer does not, of
course, surrender his decisive power to the voters. The
purpose of the plebiscite is not to let the people act in
the Führer's place or to replace the Führer's decision with
the result of the plebiscite. Its purpose is rather to give
the whole people an opportunity to demonstrate and proclaim
its support of an aim announced by the Führer. It is
intended to solidify the unity and agreement between the
objective people's will embodied in the Führer and the
living, subjective conviction of the people as it exists in
the individual members ... This approval of the Führer's
decision is even more clear and effective if the plebiscite
is concerned with an aim which has already been realized
rather than with a mere intention.[47]

Huber states that the Reichstag elections in the Third Reich have the same character as the plebiscites. The list of delegates is made up by the Führer and its approval by the people represents an expression of renewed and continued faith in him. The Reichstag no longer has any governing or lawgiving powers but acts merely as a sounding board for the Führer:

It would be impossible for a law to be introduced and acted
upon in the Reichstag which had not originated with the
Führer or, at least, received his approval. The procedure is
similar to that of the plebiscite: The lawgiving power does
not rest in the Reichstag; it merely proclaims through its
decision its agreement with the will of the Führer, who is
the lawgiver of the German people.[48]

Huber also shows how the position of the Führer developed from the Nazi Party movement:

The office of the Führer developed out of the National
Socialist movement. It was originally not a state office;
this fact can never be disregarded if one is to understand
the present legal and political position of the Führer. The
office of the Führer first took root in the structure of the
Reich when the Führer took over the powers of the Chancelor,
and then when he assumed the position of the Chief of State.
But his primary significance is always as leader of the
movement; he has absorbed within himself the two highest
offices of the political leadership of the Reich and has
created thereby the new office of "Führer of the people and
the Reich." That is not a superficial grouping together of
various offices, functions, and powers ... It is not a union
of offices but a unity of office. The Führer does not unite
the old offices of Chancelor and President side by side
within himself, but he fills a new, unified office.[49]

The Führer unites in himself all the sovereign authority of
the Reich; all public authority in the state as well as in
the movement is derived from the authority of the Führer.
We must speak not of the state's authority but of the
Führer's authority if we wish to designate the character of
the political authority within the Reich correctly. The
state does not hold political authority as an impersonal
unit but receives it from the Führer as the executor of the
national will. The authority of the Führer is complete and
all-embracing; it unites in itself all the means of
political direction; it extends into all fields of national
life; it embraces the entire people, which is bound to the
Führer in loyalty and obedience. The authority of the Führer
is not limited by checks and controls, by special autonomous
bodies or individual rights, but it is free and independent,
all-inclusive and unlimited. It is not, however,
self-seeking or arbitrary and its ties are within itself. It
is derived from the people; that is, it is entrusted to the
Führer by the people. It exists for the people and has its
justification in the people; it is free of all outward ties
because it is in its innermost nature firmly bound up with
the fate, the welfare, the mission, and the honor of the
people.[50]

Neesse, in his _The National Socialist German Workers Party--An Attempt at Legal Interpretation_, emphasizes the importance of complete control by the party leadership over all branches of the government. He says there must be no division of power in the Nazi state to interfere with the leader's freedom of action. Thus the Führer becomes the administrative head, the lawgiver, and the highest authority of justice in one person. This does not mean that he stands above the law. "The Führer may be outwardly independent, but inwardly he obeys the same laws as those he leads."[51]

The _leadership_ (_Führung_) in the Nazi state is not to be compared with the _government_ or _administration_ in a democracy:

_Führung_ is not, like government, the highest organ of the
state, which has grown out of the order of the state, but it
receives its legitimation, its call, and its mission from
the people ...[52]

The people cannot as a rule announce its will by means of
majority votes but only through its embodiment in one man,
or in a few men. The principle of the _identity_ of the
ruler and those who are ruled, of the government and those
who are governed has been very forcibly represented as the
principle of democracy. But this identity ... becomes
mechanistic and superficial if one seeks to establish it in
the theory that the people are at once the governors and the
governed ... A true organic identity is only possible when
the great mass of the people recognizes its embodiment in
one man and feels itself to be one nature with him ... Most
of the people will never exercise their governing powers but
only wish to be governed justly and well ... National
Socialist _Führung_ sees no value in trying to please a
majority of the people, but its every action is dictated by
service to the welfare of the people, even though a majority
would not approve it. The mission of the _Führung_ is
received from the people, but the fulfilment of this mission
and the exercise of power are free and must be free, for
however surely and forcefully a healthy people may be able
to make decisions in the larger issues of its destiny, its
decisions in all smaller matters are confused and uncertain.
For this reason, _Führung_ must be free in the performance
of its task ... The Führer does not stand for himself alone
and can be understood not of himself, but only from the idea
of a work to be accomplished ... Both the Führer and his
following are subject to the idea which they serve; both are
of the same substance, the same spirit, and the same blood.
The despot knows only subjects whom he uses or, at best, for
whom he cares. But the first consideration of the Führer is
not his own advantage nor even, at bottom, the welfare of
the people, but only service to the mission, the idea, and
the purpose to which Führer and following alike are
consecrated.[53]

The supreme position of Adolf Hitler as Führer of the Reich, which Huber and Neesse emphasize in the preceding quotations, is also stressed in the statements of high Nazi officials. For example, Dr. Frick, the German Minister of the Interior, in an article entitled "Germany as a Unitary State," which is included in a book called _Germany Speaks_, published in London in 1938, states:

The unity of the party and the state finds its highest
realization in the person of the Leader and Chancelor who
... combines the offices of President and Chancelor. He is
the leader of the National Socialist Party, the political
head of the state and the supreme commander of the defense
forces.[54]

It is interesting to note that, notwithstanding the generally recognized view as expressed in the preceding citations that the authority of the Führer is supreme, Hitler found it necessary in April 1942 to ask the Reichstag to confirm his power to be able at any time, if necessary, to urge any German to fulfil his obligations by all means which appear to the Führer appropriate in the interests of the successful prosecution of the war.[55] (The text of the resolution adopted by the Reichstag is included as document 5, _post_ p. 183.)

Great emphasis is placed by the Nazi leaders on the infallibility of the Führer and the duty of obedience of the German people. In a speech on June 12, 1935, for instance, Robert Ley, director of the party organization, said, "Germany must obey like a well-trained soldier: the Führer, Adolf Hitler, is always right." Developing the same idea, Ley wrote in an article in the _Angriff_ on April 9, 1942 (document 6, _post_ p. 184): "Right is what serves my people; wrong is what damages it. I am born a German and have, therefore, only one holy mission: work for my people and take care of it." And with reference to the position of Hitler, Ley wrote:

The National Socialist Party is Hitler, and Hitler is the
party. The National Socialists believe in Hitler, who
embodies their will. Therefore our conscience is clearly and
exactly defined. Only what Adolf Hitler, our Führer,
commands, allows, or does not allow is our conscience. _We
have no understanding for him who hides behind an anonymous
conscience, behind God, whom everybody conceives according
to his own wishes._

These ideas of the Führer's infallibility and the duty of obedience are so fundamental in fact that they are incorporated as the first two commandments for party members. These are set forth in the _Organisationsbuch der NSDAP_ (_Nazi Party Organization Book_) for 1940, page 7 (document 7, _post_ p. 186). The first commandment is "The Führer is always right!" and the second is "Never go against discipline!"

In view of the importance attached to the Führer principle by the Nazis, it is only natural that youth should be intensively indoctrinated with this idea. Neesse points out that one of the most important tasks of the party is the formation of a "select group" or elite which will form the leaders of the future:

A party such as the NSDAP, which is responsible to history
for the future of the German Reich, cannot content itself
with the hope for future leaders but must create a strain of
strong and true personalities which should offer the
constantly renewed possibility of replacing leaders whenever
it is necessary.[56]

Beck, in his work _Education in the Third Reich_, also insists that a respect for the Führer principle be inculcated in youth:

The educational value of the Hitler Youth is to be found in
this community spirit which cannot be taught but can only be
experienced ... But this cultivation of the community spirit
through the experience of the community must, in order to
avoid any conception of individual equality which is
inconsistent with the German view of life, be based upon
inward and outward recognition of the Führer principle ...
In the Hitler Youth, the young German should learn by
experience that there are no theoretical equal rights of the
individual but only a natural and unconditional
subordination to leadership.[57]