National Socialism

NATIONAL SOCIALISM. - A movement, generically socialist in tendency, but with a hierarchical and centralized structure, which arose in Germany in 1919-20 and there slowly established itself through alternating fortunes and remained, thereafter, totalitarianly, at the head of that State from 1933 to 1945; then, swept away by the disastrous outcome of the Second World War, essentially determined by National Socialism itself.

I. ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT UP TO 1933

With the entry of A. Hitler (then a propaganda officer in a Munich regiment) into the German Workers' Party (founded by A. Drexler on 5 Jan. 1919), National Socialism soon took on an unexpected development in Bavaria; on 24 Feb. 1920 the same Hitler gave it a broad program in 24 points, while its name was changed, in Apr., to that of German National Socialist Workers' Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei: N. S. D. A. P.); and on 25 July 1921, finally, Hitler obtained its presidency and, especially by making use of specially organized military groups (the Sturmabteilungen or assault squads: S. A.), succeeded in reducing to inactivity the Social Democrats, his most direct opponents. From that time several of the future leaders were at his side: former officers such as H. Göring and E. Röhm, journalists such as A. Rosenberg (future theoretician of racism) and students such as R. Hess (for a long time secretary of the Party and designated successor of the Führer in 1939).

However, the unfortunate participation in a coup attempt against the Bavarian government, organized by various right-wing groups under the leadership of General Ludendorff (the so-called Munich Putsch of 8-9 Nov. 1923), which ended with Hitler's condemnation to 5 years of fortress confinement and the flight abroad of some of his collaborators, seemed to mark the decline of the Party. But Hitler, in his cell, compiled a volume of memoirs and reflections, destined to become (under the title of Mein Kampf) the unappealable ideological text of the movement.

Once he was released, the propaganda of the N. S. D. A. P. rapidly spread beyond Bavaria as well (in the north, particularly through the work of G. Strasser, who would however later break away from Hitler in 1932, and in the Rhineland, through the work of J. Goebbels). The Party furthermore created numerous other dependent organizations (among them that for young people, directed by B. von Schirach), proclaimed a vast agrarian program in defense of the peasant categories (inspired by W. Darré) and began on a large scale its participation in the most disparate electoral contests, until it achieved, with the elections to the Reichstag of 30 July 1932, the majority of parliamentary seats.

The rise to power was thus by now ripe; all the more so since the masses, discouraged and depressed (in 1929 the unemployed had reached 3 million), saw in a decisive change of regime a hope of recovery. President Hindenburg called Hitler to the chancellorship on 30 Jan. 1933; the elections of 5 March to the Reichstag, conducted in a climate of open intimidation, gave the Party 17 million votes; on 23 March by law "full powers" were conferred on the National Socialist cabinet and the country fell into the hands of the leaders of National Socialism, thus arbiter of its destiny.

II. POLITICAL-SOCIAL DOCTRINE

The 24 points of the 1920 program, despite their initially provisional character, constituted for many years the essential core of the demands of National Socialism: the union of all Germans in a great Germany, no longer bound by treaties imposed by force and once again endowed with its colonies; the formation of a closer community among all citizens (Volksgemeinschaft), excluding, however, all those of non-Germanic blood (in particular the Jews); protection of the middle class in industry and commerce, eliminating excessive profits and safeguarding labor in every way; equal and effective aid to the rural classes, burdened by taxes and debts; extensive and manifold activity on behalf of the physical and ideal health of the people; acceptance of a positive Christianity without ties to particular confessions, admitted only in the event that they did not "endanger the security of the State and did not bring harm to the morals and sentiments of the Germanic race"; finally, the establishment of a strong central power in the Reich.

Unlike what had happened with Fascism, undoubtedly taken as a model by Hitler in many respects, predominantly external ones, the long wait before attaining power allowed National Socialism to elaborate a complete politico-social doctrine and then to translate it into juridical terms through an extensive and coordinated legislation in the first years of government. It is therefore possible to grasp its essential cornerstones in broad outline as they appeared delineated in its most advanced phase.

The dominant political value, for National Socialism, was no longer the State, according to the scheme scientifically elaborated by the classic public-law jurists of the 19th century, but the people (Volk), as an ethnic unity, essentially determined by identity of blood. And it was asserted that such an intimate racial communion (Volksgemeinschaft) was to be achieved by eliminating from the German people the non-Aryan elements. Indeed, according to this prejudice, the Aryan-Nordic race was found in its greatest purity specifically in Germany, and along the lines of the theory of the inequality of human races, formulated, well before, by the Frenchman Gobineau and the Englishman Chamberlain, it was considered the most evolved among those existing. In particular, it was necessary to strike from the roll of citizens individuals of non-assimilable blood (among Europeans, for example, the Jews and the Gypsies), who had entered it in epochs in which the racial factor was held in no account, reducing them to the condition of mere subjects as simple Staatsangehörige, instead of Reichsbürger. And it is clear that only the latter were to be considered effective members of the Germanic people (Volksgenossen).

The formula Blut und Boden summarized, in this regard, the thought of National Socialism; but the term Blut also evoked the concept of lineage (Abstammung), that is, the biological, psychic and moral substance determined by birth, while the other, Boden, indicated not only the space, dominated by the supreme authority of the State, but also that zone of the earth's surface to which a people must consider itself intrinsically bound by its labor and its history.

It is explained, therefore, how alongside the so-called racial laws of Nuremberg of Sept. 15, 1935, of a distinctly antisemitic character, there were issued the law of July 14, 1933 on sterilization (incurable mental illnesses, habitual criminals, etc.), that of Oct. 18, 1935 on the prohibition of marriage for persons afflicted with particular contagious diseases, and, moreover, the law of Sept. 20, 1935 on the hereditary farm (Reichserbhofgesetz), which, through the prohibition of further dividing the family's cultural unit, aimed to create, by means of a valid and numerous rural population, a source of healthy blood.

The aforementioned "Germanic popular community, based on identity of blood and historical traditions" was to bind all its components in a bond of sincere comradeship, and within its bosom the collective good would thus naturally have had precedence over the individual good ("Gemeinnutz geht vor Eigennutz": one read, in fact, at that time on the coins of the Reich). The individual was, therefore, to be taken into consideration only in his quality as a member of the popular collectivity: the latter, in turn, was to make itself ever more homogeneous, abolishing the many political, social and cultural particularisms, until it fully realized, with regard to the entire Germanic race, even beyond the territorial boundaries of the State, the axiom "ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer".

Law, which was to bring order and power to the aforementioned community, was not, in fact, conceived as something external and extraneous to the people itself, but rather as something that subsisted in it in a diffused state, awaiting the arrival of a Führer capable of giving it a concrete form, expressing it in normative terms. The Führer appeared, in fact, as the one who, better than any other Volksgenosse, was fit to interpret this community spirit (Volksgeist); and he, in his activity directed at protecting and strengthening the Volksgemeinschaft, was not to make use of a coercive power of dominion (Herrschaft), but only to stride forward as one who leads (führt), followed by all his comrades in full spontaneity and trust, constituting his faithful Gefolgschaft.

The principal means necessary to the Führer, to attain these ends, turned out to be: the National Socialist Party (or Bewegung, that is, political Movement) and the State, now conceived as the complex of bureaucratic, military and paramilitary organizations (Beamtentum, Wehrmacht, Arbeitsdienst), that is, as a simple Apparat, a pure instrument of his action of Führung.

As is evident, such a politico-social doctrine of National Socialism with its almost mystical valorization of race, with its absolute contempt for all individuals not belonging to the Volksgemeinschaft, with its cult of pure violence, etc., could not be heeded by the Catholic Church. And therefore, despite the fact that on July 20, 1933, especially through the mediation of F. von Papen, a concordat was stipulated with the Reich (which summarized those previously existing with certain Länder), numerous controversies soon arose over its interpretation; and meanwhile an attempt was made insidiously to weaken the prestige of the Church with numerous trials against priests accused of supposed offenses against the currency laws (1935) and against morality (1936-37). The Pontiff, moreover, reacted in a very clear-cut manner to the growing suffocation of religious life with the letter Mit brennender Sorge (March 14, 1937); to which were added numerous pastoral letters and declarations of the German episcopate. In reality the Catholic opposition was the only one to hold out effectively even during the harshest years of oppression. Moreover, even the intention of National Socialism to totally subjugate the Protestant Church, given its national character (law of July 11, 1933), encountered considerable difficulties on the part of not a few pastors.

III. ITS EPHEMERAL AFFIRMATION IN GERMANY

Especially during the first years of the Second World War the programmatic cornerstones just set forth appeared for the most part actually achieved, even though subsequent events later showed their ephemeral solidity.

In fact the Führer, after the death of President Hindenburg (Aug. 2, 1934), had remained the sole legislator; all public officials (including members of the armed forces) depended on him alone and swore personal loyalty to him; a devoted party militia (the Schutzstaffeln, or protection squads: SS), with police duties, answered directly to him; even the judiciary was by then dependent on his will, while he could intervene in person in any trial to determine and even carry out the penalty, as he had done, for example, in 1934, when it was a matter of crushing the revolt ordered by the Chief of Staff of the SA, Röhm. Furthermore: on the basis of the dictum "authority downward, responsibility upward," all public functions, without any democratic participation of the people in government, appeared assigned to a complex hierarchy of Unterführer, subordinate, at the top, to the single irresponsible Führer (the so-called Führerprinzip). Likewise: citizens no longer enjoyed any serious constitutional guarantee, given that judges could apply penalties even when appropriate punitive norms were lacking, if they discretionarily deemed that the action prosecuted was contrary to the law immanent, in a latent and diffuse state, in the Volksgemeinschaft itself. The latter, finally, internally, had been truly purged of numerous non-assimilable elements (especially with the implacable application of the anti-Semitic laws), and regrouped into a solid unitary State through the complete abolition of the autonomy of the Länder and the aggregation of neighboring Germanic nuclei, carried out with the incorporation of Austria, the Sudetenland, etc.; and toward the outside, it had achieved a manifest situation of supremacy over various minor ethnic groups bordering it with the formation of the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, the governorate of Poland, etc.

With the victory of the United Nations, in 1945, the total overthrow of the political institutions of Nazism was followed, then, with a process truly rapid and definitive in its consequences, also by the complete dissolution of the ideological "myth" that formed its foundation and that had found strength only in their apparent success. The moral absurdity that was at the basis of such theories could not, in fact, remain hidden any longer, and this despite certain aspects at first sight seductive, such as the vaunted spirit of comradeship or the asserted spontaneous subordination to the collective good. They masked, in reality, an unjustifiable contempt for the eminent dignity of every single human person.

Paolo Biscaretti di Ruffia