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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/14058-0.txt b/14058-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fb31caf --- /dev/null +++ b/14058-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5193 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14058 *** + +READINGS ON FASCISM AND NATIONAL SOCIALISM + +Selected by Members of the Department of Philosophy, University of +Colorado + +ALAN SWALLOW + +Denver + + + + + + + +PREFATORY NOTE + + +The ensuing readings are presented to encourage the student to clarify +his thinking on social philosophy. He will accordingly need to +determine whether the readings contain a more or less coherent body of +ideas which constitutes a social philosophy. He will also need to +raise the more far-reaching question whether the ideas are acceptable. +To arrive at any satisfactory answer to this latter question, he will +necessarily have to compare the ideas of fascism and their practical +meanings with the alternatives, real and ideal, that are the substance +of live philosophical issues. + + + + +CONTENTS + + The Doctrine of Fascism by Benito Mussolini + + The Political Doctrine of Fascism by Alfredo Rocco + + The Philosophic Basis of Fascism by Giovanni Gentile + + National Socialism by Raymond E. Murphy, Francis B. Stevens, + Howard Trivers, Joseph M. Roland + + National-Socialism and Medicine by Dr. F. Hamburger + + Selected Bibliography + + + + + +THE DOCTRINE OF FASCISM +By +BENITO MUSSOLINI + +From the ENCYCLOPEDIA ITALIANA. Vol. XIV + + The English translation of the "Fundamental Ideas" is by Mr. + I.S. Munro, reprinted by his kind permission from "Fascism + to World-Power" (Alexander Maclehose, London, 1933). + + +FUNDAMENTAL IDEAS. + +1. Philosophic Conception. + + +Like every concrete political conception, Fascism is thought and +action. It is action with an inherent doctrine which, arising out of a +given system of historic forces, is inserted in it and works on it +from within. It has therefore a form co-related to the contingencies +of time and place; but it has at the same time an ideal content which +elevates it into a formula of truth in the higher region of the +history of thought. + +There is no way of exercising a spiritual influence on the things of +the world by means of a human will-power commanding the wills of +others, without first having a clear conception of the particular and +transient reality on which the will-power must act, and without also +having a clear conception of the universal and permanent reality in +which the particular and transient reality has its life and being. To +know men we must have a knowledge of man; and to have a knowledge of +man we must know the reality of things and their laws. + +There can be no conception of a State which is not fundamentally a +conception of Life. It is a philosophy or intuition, a system of ideas +which evolves itself into a system of logical contraction, or which +concentrates itself in a vision or in a faith, but which is always, +at least virtually, an organic conception of the world. + + +2. Spiritualised Conception. + +Fascism would therefore not be understood in many of its +manifestations (as, for example, in its organisations of the Party, +its system of education, its discipline) were it not considered in the +light of its general view of life. A spiritualised view. + +To Fascism the world is not this material world which appears on the +surface, in which man is an individual separated from all other men, +standing by himself and subject to a natural law which instinctively +impels him to lead a life of momentary and egoistic pleasure. In +Fascism man is an individual who is the nation and the country. He is +this by a moral law which embraces and binds together individuals and +generations in an established tradition and mission, a moral law which +suppresses the instinct to lead a life confined to a brief cycle of +pleasure in order, instead, to replace it within the orbit of duty in +a superior conception of life, free from the limits of time and space +a life in which the individual by self-abnegation and by the sacrifice +of his particular interests, even by death, realises the entirely +spiritual existence in which his value as a man consists. + + +3. Positive Conception of Life as a Struggle. + +It is therefore a spiritual conception, itself also a result of the +general reaction of the Century against the languid and materialistic +positivism of the Eighteenth Century. Anti-positivist, but positive: +neither sceptical nor agnostic, neither pessimistic nor passively +optimistic, as are in general the doctrines (all of them negative) +which place the centre of life outside of man, who by his free will +can and should create his own world for himself. + +Fascism wants a man to be active and to be absorbed in action with all +his energies; it wants him to have a manly consciousness of the +difficulties that exist and to be ready to face them. It conceives +life as a struggle, thinking that it is the duty of man to conquer +that life which is really worthy of him: creating in the first place +within himself the (physical, moral, intellectual) instrument with +which to build it. + +As for the individual, so for the nation, so for mankind. Hence the +high value of culture in all its forms (art, religion, science) and +the supreme importance of education. Hence also the essential value +of labour, with which man conquers nature and creates the human world +(economic, political, moral, intellectual). + + +4. Ethical Conception. + +This positive conception of life is evidently an ethical conception. +And it comprises the whole reality as well as the human activity which +domineers it. No action is to be removed from the moral sense; nothing +is to be in the world that is divested of the importance which belongs +to it in respect of moral aims. Life, therefore, as the Fascist +conceives it, is serious, austere, religious; entirely balanced in a +world sustained by the moral and responsible forces of the spirit. The +Fascist disdains the "easy" life. + + +5. Religious Conception. + +Fascism is a religious conception in which man is considered to be in +the powerful grip of a superior law, with an objective will which +transcends the particular individual and elevates him into a fully +conscious member of a spiritual society. Anyone who has stopped short +at the mere consideration of opportunism in the religious policy of +the Fascist Regime, has failed to understand that Fascism, besides +being a system of government, is also a system of thought. + + +6. Historical and Realist Conception. + +Fascism is an historical conception in which man could not be what he +is without being a factor in the spiritual process to which he +contributes, either in the family sphere or in the social sphere, in +the nation or in history in general to which all nations contribute. +Hence is derived the great importance of tradition in the records, +language, customs and rules of human society. Man without a part in +history is nothing. + +For this reason Fascism is opposed to all the abstractions of an +individualistic character based upon materialism typical of the +Eighteenth Century; and it is opposed to all the Jacobin innovations +and utopias. It does not believe in the possibility of "happiness" on +earth as conceived by the literature of the economists of the +Seventeenth Century; it therefore spurns all the teleological +conceptions of final causes through which, at a given period of +history, a final systematisation of the human race would take place. +Such theories only mean placing oneself outside real history and +life, which is a continual ebb and flow and process of realisations. + +Politically speaking, Fascism aims at being a realistic doctrine; in +its practice it aspired to solve only the problems which present +themselves of their own accord in the process of history, and which of +themselves find or suggest their own solution. To have the effect of +action among men, it is necessary to enter into the process of reality +and to master the forces actually at work. + + +7. The Individual and Liberty. + +Anti-individualistic, the Fascist conception is for the State; it is +for the individual only in so far as he coincides with the State, +universal consciousness and will of man in his historic existence. It +is opposed to the classic Liberalism which arose out of the need of +reaction against absolutism, and had accomplished its mission in +history when the State itself had become transformed in the popular +will and consciousness. + +Liberalism denied the State in the interests of the particular +individual; Fascism reaffirms the State as the only true expression of +the individual. + +And if liberty is to be the attribute of the real man, and not of the +scarecrow invented by the individualistic Liberalism, then Fascism is +for liberty. It is for the only kind of liberty that is serious--the +liberty of the State and of the individual in the State. Because, for +the Fascist, all is comprised in the State and nothing spiritual or +human exists--much less has any value--outside the State. In this +respect Fascism is a totalising concept, and the Fascist State--the +unification and synthesis of every value--interprets, develops and +potentiates the whole life of the people. + + +8. Conception of a Corporate State. + +No individuals nor groups (political parties, associations, labour +unions, classes) outside the State. For this reason Fascism is opposed +to Socialism, which clings rigidly to class war in the historic +evolution and ignores the unity of the State which moulds the classes +into a single, moral and economic reality. In the same way Fascism is +opposed to the unions of the labouring classes. But within the orbit +of the State with ordinative functions, the real needs, which give +rise to the Socialist movement and to the forming of labour unions, +are emphatically recognised by Fascism and are given their full +expression in the Corporative System, which conciliates every interest +in the unity of the State. + + +9. Democracy. + +Individuals form classes according to categories of interests. They +are associated according to differentiated economical activities which +have a common interest: but first and foremost they form the State. +The State is not merely either the numbers or the sum of individuals +forming the majority of a people. Fascism for this reason is opposed +to the democracy which identifies peoples with the greatest number of +individuals and reduces them to a majority level. But if people are +conceived, as they should be, qualitatively and not quantitatively, +then Fascism is democracy in its purest form. The qualitative +conception is the most coherent and truest form and is therefore the +most moral, because it sees a people realised in the consciousness and +will of the few or even of one only; an ideal which moves to its +realisation in the consciousness and will of all. By "all" is meant +all who derive their justification as a nation, ethnically speaking, +from their nature and history, and who follow the same line of +spiritual formation and development as one single will and +consciousness--not as a race nor as a geographically determined +region, but as a progeny that is rather the outcome of a history which +perpetuates itself; a multitude unified by an idea embodied in the +will to have power and to exist, conscious of itself and of its +personality. + + +10. Conception of the State. + +This higher personality is truly the nation, inasmuch as it is the +State. The nation does not beget the State, according to the decrepit +nationalistic concept which was used as a basis for the publicists of +the national States in the Nineteenth Century. On the contrary, the +nation is created by the State, which gives the people, conscious of +their own moral unity, the will, and thereby an effective existence. +The right of a nation to its independence is derived not from a +literary and ideal consciousness of its own existence, much less from +a _de facto_ situation more or less inert and unconscious, but from an +active consciousness, from an active political will disposed to +demonstrate in its right; that is to say, a kind of State already in +its pride (_in fieri_). The State, in fact, as a universal ethical +will, is the creator of right. + + +11. Dynamic Reality. + +The nation as a State is an ethical reality which exists and lives in +measure as it develops. A standstill is its death. Therefore the +State is not only the authority which governs and which gives the +forms of law and the worth of the spiritual life to the individual +wills, but it is also the power which gives effect to its will in +foreign matters, causing it to be recognised and respected by +demonstrating through facts the universality of all the manifestations +necessary for its development. Hence it is organization as well as +expansion, and it may be thereby considered, at least virtually, equal +to the very nature of the human will, which in its evolution +recognises no barriers, and which realises itself by proving its +infinity. + + +12. The Rôle of the State. + +The Fascist State, the highest and the most powerful form of +personality is a force, but a spiritual one. It reassumes all the +forms of the moral and intellectual life of man. It cannot, therefore, +be limited to a simple function of order and of safeguarding, as was +contended by Liberalism. It is not a simple mechanism which limits the +sphere of the presumed individual liberties. It is an internal form +and rule, a discipline of the entire person: it penetrates the will as +well as the intelligence. Its principle, a central inspiration of the +living human personality in the civil community, descends into the +depths and settles in the heart of the man of action as well as the +thinker, of the artist as well as of the scientist; the soul of our +soul. + + +13. Discipline and Authority. + +Fascism, in short, is not only a lawgiver and the founder of +institutions, but an educator and a promoter of the spiritual life. It +aims to rebuild not the forms of human life, but its content, the man, +the character, the faith. And for this end it exacts discipline and an +authority which descend into and dominates the interior of the spirit +without opposition. Its emblem, therefore, is the lictorian _fasces_, +symbol of unity, of force and of justice. + + +POLITICAL AND SOCIAL DOCTRINE + +1. Origins of the Doctrine. + +When, in the now distant March of 1919, I summoned a meeting at Milan, +through the columns of the _Popolo d'Italia,_ of those who had +supported and endured the war and who had followed me since the +constitution of the _fasci_ or Revolutionary Action in January 1915, +there was no specific doctrinal plan in my mind. I had the experience +of one only doctrine--that of Socialism from 1903-04 to the winter of +1914 about a decade--but I made it first in the ranks and later as a +leader and it was never an experience in theory. My doctrine, even +during that period, was a doctrine of action. A universally accepted +doctrine of Socialism had not existed since 1915 when the revisionist +movement started in Germany, under the leadership of Bernstein. +Against this, in the swing of tendencies, a left revolutionary +movement began to take shape, but in Italy it never went further than +the "field of phrases," whereas in Russian Socialistic circles it +became the prelude of Bolscevism. "Reformism," "revolutionarism," +"centrism," this is a terminology of which even the echoes are now +spent--but in the great river of Fascism are currents which flowed +from Sorel, from Peguy, from Lagardelle and the "Mouvement +Socialiste," from Italian syndicalists which were legion between 1904 +and 1914, and sounded a new note in Italian Socialist circles +(weakened then by the betrayal of Giolitti) through Olivetti's _Pagine +Libere_, Orano's _La Lupa_ and Enrico Leone's _Divenire Sociale_. + +After the War, in 1919, Socialism was already dead as a doctrine: it +existed only as a grudge. In Italy especially, it had one only +possibility of action: reprisals against those who had wanted the War +and must now pay its penalty. The _Popolo d'Italia_ carried as +sub-title "daily of ex-service men and producers," and the word +producers was already then the expression of a turn of mind. Fascism +was not the nursling of a doctrine previously worked out at a desk; it +was born of the need for action and it was action. It was not a party, +in fact during the first two years, it was an anti-party and a +movement. + +The name I gave the organisation fixed its character. Yet whoever +should read the now crumpled sheets with the minutes of the meeting at +which the Italian "Fasci di Combattimento" were constituted, would +fail to discover a doctrine, but would find a series of ideas, of +anticipations, of hints which, liberated from the inevitable +strangleholds of contingencies, were destined after some years to +develop into doctrinal conceptions. Through them Fascism became a +political doctrine to itself, different, by comparison, to all others +whether contemporary or of the past. + +I said then, "If the bourgeoisie think we are ready to act as +lightning-conductors, they are mistaken. We must go towards labour. +We wish to train the working classes to directive functions. We wish +to convince them that it is not easy to manage Industry or Trade: we +shall fight the technique and the spirit of the rearguard. When the +succession of the regime is open, we must not lack the fighting +spirit. We must rush and if the present regime be overcome, it is we +who must fill its place. The claim to succession belongs to us, +because it was we who forced the country into War and we who led her +to victory. The present political representation cannot suffice: we +must have a direct representation of all interest. Against this +programme one might say it is a return to corporations. But that does +not matter. Therefore I should like this assembly to accept the claims +put in by national syndicalism from an economic standpoint...." + +Is it not strange that the word corporations should have been uttered +at the first meeting of Piazza San Sepolcro, when one considers that, +in the course of the Revolution, it came to express one of the social +and legislative creations at the very foundations of the regime? + + +2. Development. + +The years which preceded the March on Rome were years in which the +necessity of action did not permit complete doctrinal investigations +or elaborations. The battle was raging in the towns and villages. +There were discussions, but what was more important and sacred--there +was death. Men knew how to die. The doctrine--all complete and formed, +with divisions into chapters, paragraphs, and accompanying +elucubrations--might be missing; but there was something more decided +to replace it, there was faith. + +Notwithstanding, whoever remembers with the aid of books and speeches, +whoever could search through them and select, would find that the +fundamental principles were laid down whilst the battle raged. It was +really in those years that the Fascist idea armed itself, became +refined and proceeded towards organisation: the problems of the +individual and of the State, the problems of authority and of liberty, +the political and social problems, especially national; the fight +against the liberal, democratic, socialistic and popular doctrines, +was carried out together with the "punitive expeditions." + +But as a "system" was lacking, our adversaries in bad faith, denied to +Fascism any capacity to produce a doctrine, though that doctrine was +growing tumultuously, at first under the aspect of violent and +dogmatic negation, as happens to all newly-born ideas, and later under +the positive aspect of construction which was successively realised, +in the years 1926-27-28 through the laws and institutions of the +regime. Fascism today stands clearly defined not only as a regime, but +also as a doctrine. This word doctrine should be interpreted in the +sense that Fascism, to-day, when passing criticism on itself and +others, has its own point of view and its own point of reference, and +therefore also its own orientation when facing those problems which +beset the world in the spirit and in the matter. + + +3. Against Pacifism: War and Life as a Duty. + +As far as the general future and development of humanity is concerned, +and apart from any mere consideration of current politics, Fascism +above all does not believe either in the possibility or utility of +universal peace. It therefore rejects the pacifism which masks +surrender and cowardice. War alone brings all human energies to their +highest tension and sets a seal of nobility on the peoples who have +the virtue to face it. All other tests are but substitutes which never +make a man face himself in the alternative of life or death. A +doctrine which has its starting-point at the prejudicial postulate of +peace is therefore extraneous to Fascism. + +In the same way all international creations (which, as history +demonstrates, can be blown to the winds when sentimental, ideal and +practical elements storm the heart of a people) are also extraneous to +the spirit of Fascism--even if such international creations are +accepted for whatever utility they may have in any determined +political situation. + +Fascism also transports this anti-pacifist spirit into the life of +individuals. The proud _squadrista_ motto "_me ne frego_" ("I don't +give a damn") scrawled on the bandages of the wounded is an act of +philosophy--not only stoic. It is a summary of a doctrine not only +political: it is an education in strife and an acceptance of the risks +which it carried: it is a new style of Italian life. It is thus that +the Fascist loves and accepts life, ignores and disdains suicide; +understands life as a duty, a lifting up, a conquest; something to be +filled in and sustained on a high plane; a thing that has to be lived +through for its own sake, but above all for the sake of others near +and far, present and future. + + +4. The Demographic Policy and the "Neighbour." + +The "demographic" policy of the regime is the result of these +premises. The Fascist also loves his neighbour, but "neighbour" is not +for him a vague and undefinable word: love for his neighbour does not +prevent necessary educational severities. Fascism rejects professions +of universal affection and, though living in the community of +civilised peoples, it watches them and looks at them diffidently. It +follows them in their state of mind and in the transformation of their +interests, but it does not allow itself to be deceived by fallacious +and mutable appearances. + + +5. Against Historical Materialism and Class-Struggle. + +Through this conception of life Fascism becomes the emphatic negation +of that doctrine which constituted the basis of the so-called +scientific Socialism or Marxism: the doctrine of historical +materialism, according to which the story of human civilisation is to +be explained only by the conflict of interests between the various +social groups and by the change of the means and instruments of +production. + +That the economic vicissitudes--discovery of prime or raw materials, +new methods of labour, scientific inventions--have their particular +importance, is denied by none, but that they suffice to explain human +history, excluding other factors from it, is absurd: Fascism still +believes in sanctity and in heroism, that is to say in acts in which +no economic motive, immediate or remote, operates. + +Fascism having denied historical materialism, by which men are only +puppets in history, appearing and disappearing on the surface of the +tides while in the depths the real directive forces act and labour, it +also denies the immutable and irreparable class warfare, which is the +natural filiation of such an economistic conception of history: and it +denies above all that class warfare is the preponderating agent of +social transformation. + +Being defeated on these two capital points of its doctrine, nothing +remains of Socialism save the sentimental aspiration--as old as +humanity--to achieve a community of social life in which the +sufferings and hardships of the humblest classes are alleviated. But +here Fascism repudiates the concept of an economic "happiness" which +is to be--at a given moment in the evolution of economy--socialistically +and almost automatically realised by assuring to all the maximum of +well-being. + +Fascism denies the possibilities of the materialistic concept of +"happiness"--it leaves that to the economists of the first half +of the Seventeenth Century; that is, it denies the equation +"well-being-happiness," which reduces man to the state of the animals, +mindful of only one thing--that of being fed and fattened; reduced, in +fact, to a pure and simple vegetative existence. + + +6. Against Democratic Ideologies. + +After disposing of Socialism, Fascism opens a breach on the whole +complex of the democratic ideologies, and repudiates them in their +theoretic premises as well as in their practical application or +instrumentation. Fascism denies that numbers, by the mere fact of +being numbers, can direct human society; it denies that these numbers +can govern by means of periodical consultations; it affirms also the +fertilising, beneficient and unassailable inequality of men, who +cannot be levelled through an extrinsic and mechanical process such as +universal suffrage. + +Regimes can be called democratic which, from time to time, give the +people the illusion of being sovereign, whereas the real and effective +sovereignty exists in other, and very often secret and irresponsible +forces. + +Democracy is a regime without a king, but very often with many kings, +far more exclusive, tyrannical and ruinous than a single king, even if +he be a tyrant. This explains why Fascism which, for contingent +reasons, had assumed a republican tendency before 1922, renounced it +previous to the March on Rome, with the conviction that the political +constitution of a State is not nowadays a supreme question; and that, +if the examples of past and present monarchies and past and present +republics are studied, the result is that neither monarchies nor +republics are to be judged under the assumption of eternity, but that +they merely represent forms in which the extrinsic political evolution +takes shape as well as the history, the tradition and the psychology +of a given country. + +Consequently, Fascism glides over the antithesis between monarchy and +republic, on which democraticism wasted time, blaming the former for +all social shortcomings and exalting the latter as a regime of +perfection. We have now seen that there are republics which may be +profoundly absolutist and reactionary, and monarchies which welcome +the most venturesome social and political experiments. + + +7. Untruths of Democracy. + +"Reason and science" says Renan (who had certain pre-fascist +enlightenments) in one of his philosophical meditations, "are products +of mankind, but to seek reason directly for the people and through the +people is a chimera. It is not necessary for the existence of reason +that everybody should know it. In any case if this initiation were to +be brought about it could not be through low-class democracy, which +seems to lead rather to the extinction of every difficult culture and +of every great discipline. The principle that society exists only for +the welfare and liberty of individuals composing it, does not seem to +conform with the plans of nature: plans in which the species only is +taken into consideration and the individual appears sacrificed. It is +strongly to be feared that the last word of democracy thus understood +(I hasten to add that it can also be differently understood) would be +a social state in which a degenerated mass would have no preoccupation +other than that of enjoying the ignoble pleasures of the vulgar +person." + +Thus Renan. In Democracy Fascism rejects the absurd conventional +falsehood of political equality, the habit of collective +responsibility and the myth of indefinite progress and happiness. + +But if there be a different understanding of Democracy if, in other +words, Democracy can also signify to not push the people back as far +as the margins of the State, then Fascism may well have been defined +by the present writer as "an organised, centralised, authoritarian +Democracy." + + +8. Against Liberal Doctrines. + +As regards the Liberal doctrines, the attitude of Fascism is one of +absolute opposition both in the political and in the economical field. +There is no need to exaggerate the importance of Liberalism in the +last century--simply for the sake of present-day polemics--and to +transform one of the numerous doctrines unfolded in that last century +into a religion of humanity for all times, present and future. +Liberalism did not flourish for more than a period of fifteen years. +It was born in 1830 from the reaction to the Holy Alliance which +attempted to set Europe back to the period which preceeded '89 and had +its years of splendour in 1848, when also Pius IX was a Liberal. Its +decadence began immediately afterwards. If 1848 was a year of light +and poesy, 1849 was a year of weakness and tragedy. The Roman Republic +was killed by another Republic, the French Republic. In the same year +Marx issued his famous manifesto of Communism. In 1851 Napoleon III +made his anti-Liberal _coup d'état_ and reigned over France until +1870. He was overthrown by a popular movement, following one of the +greatest defeats registered in history. The victor was Bismarck, who +always ignored the religion of liberty and its prophets. It is +symptomatic that a people of high civilisation like the Germans +completely ignored the religion of liberty throughout the whole +Nineteenth Century--with but one parenthesis, represented by that +which was called "the ridiculous parliament of Frankfurt" which lasted +one season. Germany realised its national unity outside of Liberalism, +against Liberalism--a doctrine which seemed alien to the German spirit +essentially monarchical, since Liberalism is the historical and +logical ante-chamber of anarchy. + +The three wars of 1864, 1866 and 1870 conducted by "Liberals" like +Moltke and Bismarck mark the three stages of German unity. As for +Italian unity, Liberalism played a very inferior part in the make-up +of Mazzini and Garibaldi, who were not liberals. Without the +intervention of the anti-Liberal Napoleon we would not have had +Lombardy, and without the help of the anti-Liberal Bismarck at Sadowa +and Sedan it is very likely that we would not have got Venice in 1866, +or that we would have entered Rome in 1870. + +During the period of 1870-1915 the preachers of the new Credo +themselves denounced the twilight of their religion; it was beaten in +the breach by decadence in literature. It was beaten in the open by +decadence in practice. Activism: that is to say, nationalism, +futurism. Fascism. + +The "Liberal Century" after having accumulated an infinity of Gordian +knots, sought to cut them in the hecatomb of the World War. Never did +any religion impose such a terrible sacrifice. Have the gods of +Liberalism slaked their blood-thirst? + +Liberalism is now on the point of closing the doors of its deserted +temples because nations feel that its agnosticism in the economic +field and its indifference in political and moral matters, causes, as +it has already caused, the sure ruin of States. That is why all the +political experiences of the contemporary world are anti-Liberal, and +it is supremely silly to seek to classify them as things outside of +history--as if history were a hunting ground reserved to Liberalism +and its professors; as if Liberalism were the last and incomparable +word of civilisation. + + +9. Fascism Does Not Turn Back. + +The Fascist negation of Socialism, of Democracy, of Liberalism, should +not lead one to believe that Fascism wishes to push the world back to +where it was before 1879, the date accepted as the opening year of the +demo-Liberal century. One cannot turn back. The Fascist doctrine has +not chosen De Maistre for its prophet. Monarchical absolutism is a +thing of the past, and so is the worship of church power. Feudal +privileges and divisions into impenetrable castes with no connection +between them, are also "have beens." The conception of Fascist +authority has nothing in common with the Police. A party that totally +rules a nation is a new chapter in history. References and comparisons +are not possible. From the ruins of the socialist, liberal and +democratic doctrines, Fascism picks those elements that still have a +living value; keeps those that might be termed "facts acquired by +history," and rejects the rest: namely the conception of a doctrine +good for all times and all people. + +Admitting that the Nineteenth Century was the Century of Socialism, +Liberalism and Democracy, it is not said that the Twentieth century +must also be the century of Socialism, of Liberalism, of Democracy. +Political doctrines pass on, but peoples remain. One may now think +that this will be the century of authority, the century of the "right +wing" the century of Fascism. If the Nineteenth Century was the +century of the individual (liberalism signifies individualism) one may +think that this will be the century of "collectivism," the century of +the State. It is perfectly logical that a new doctrine should utilise +the vital elements of other doctrines. No doctrine was ever born +entirely new and shining, never seen before. No doctrine can boast of +absolute "originality." Each doctrine is bound historically to +doctrines which went before, to doctrines yet to come. Thus the +scientific Socialism of Marx is bound to the Utopian Socialism of +Fourier, of Owen, of Saint-Simon; thus the Liberalism of 1800 is +linked with the movement of 1700. Thus Democratic doctrines are bound +to the Encyclopaedists. Each doctrine tends to direct human activity +towards a definite object; but the activity of man reacts upon the +doctrine, transforms it and adapts it to new requirements, or +overcomes it. Doctrine therefore should be an act of life and not an +academy of words. In this lie the pragmatic veins of Fascism, its will +to power, its will to be, its position with regard to "violence" and +its value. + + +10. The Value and Mission of the State. + +The capital point of the Fascist doctrine is the conception of the +State, its essence, the work to be accomplished, its final aims. In +the conception of Fascism, the State is an absolute before which +individuals and groups are relative. Individuals and groups are +"conceivable" inasmuch as they are in the State. The Liberal State +does not direct the movement and the material and spiritual evolution +of collectivity, but limits itself to recording the results; the +Fascist State has its conscious conviction, a will of its own, and for +this reason it is called an "ethical" State. + +In 1929 at the first quinquiennial assembly of the Regime, I said: "In +Fascism the State is not a night-watchman, only occupied with the +personal safety of the citizens, nor is it an organisation with purely +material aims, such as that of assuring a certain well-being and a +comparatively easy social cohabitation. A board of directors would be +quite sufficient to deal with this. It is not a purely political +creation, either, detached from the complex material realities of the +life of individuals and of peoples. The State as conceived and enacted +by Fascism, is a spiritual and moral fact since it gives concrete form +to the political, juridical and economical organisation of the +country. Furthermore this organisation as it rises and develops, is a +manifestation of the spirit. The State is a safeguard of interior and +exterior safety but it is also the keeper and the transmitter of the +spirit of the people, as it was elaborated throughout the ages, in its +language, customs and beliefs. The State is not only the present, but +it is also the past and above all the future. The State, inasmuch as +it transcends the short limits of individual lives, represents the +immanent conscience of the nation. The forms in which the State +expresses itself are subject to changes, but the necessity for the +State remains. It is the State which educates the citizens in civic +virtues, gives them a consciousness of their mission, presses them +towards unity; the State harmonizes their interests through justice, +transmits to prosperity the attainments of thoughts, in science, in +art, in laws, in the solidarity of mankind. The State leads men from +primitive tribal life to that highest expression of human power which +is Empire; links up through the centuries the names of those who died +to preserve its integrity or to obey its laws; holds up the memory of +the leaders who increased its territory, and of the geniuses who cast +the light of glory upon it, as an example for future generations to +follow. When the conception of the State declines and disintegrating +or centrifugal tendencies prevail, whether of individuals or groups, +then the national society is about to set." + + +11. The Unity of the State and the Contradictions of Capitalism. + +From 1929 onwards to the present day, the universal, political and +economical evolution has still further strengthened the doctrinal +positions. The giant who rules is the State. The one who can resolve +the dramatic contradictions of capital is the State. What is called +the crisis cannot be resolved except by the State and in the State. +Where are the ghosts of Jules Simon who, at the dawn of Liberalism, +proclaimed that "the State must set to work to make itself useless and +prepare its resignation?" Of MacCulloch who, in the second half of the +past century, proclaimed that the State must abstain from ruling? What +would the Englishman Bentham say today to the continual and +inevitably-invoked intervention of the State in the sphere of +economics, while, according to his theories, industry should ask no +more of the State than to be left in peace? Or the German Humboldt +according to whom an "idle" State was the best kind of State? It is +true that the second wave of Liberal economists were less extreme than +the first, and Adam Smith himself opened the door--if only very +cautiously--to let State intervention into the economic field. + +If Liberalism signifies the individual--then Fascism signifies the +State. But the Fascist State is unique of its kind and is an original +creation. It is not reactionary but revolutionary, inasmuch as it +anticipates the solution of certain universal problems such as those +which are treated elsewhere: 1) in the political sphere, by the +subdivisions of parties, in the preponderance of parliamentarism and +in the irresponsibilities of assemblies; 2) in the economic sphere, by +the functions of trade unions which are becoming constantly more +numerous and powerful, whether in the labour or industrial fields, in +their conflicts and combinations, and 3) in the moral sphere by the +necessity of order, discipline, obedience to those who are the moral +dictators of the country. Fascism wants the State to be strong, +organic and at the same time supported on a wide popular basis. As +part of its task the Fascist State has penetrated the economic field: +through the corporative, social and educational institutions which it +has created. The presence of the State is felt in the remotest +ramifications of the country. And in the State also, all the +political, economic and spiritual forces of the nation circulate, +mustered in their respective organisations. + +A State which stands on the support of millions of individuals who +recognise it, who believe in it, who are ready to serve it, is not the +tyrannical State of the mediaeval lord. It has nothing in common with +the absolutist States before or after '89. The individual in the +Fascist State is not annulled but rather multiplied, just as in a +regiment a soldier is not diminished, but multiplied by the number of +his comrades. + +The Fascist State organises the nation, but leaves a sufficient margin +afterward to the individual; it has limited the useless or harmful +liberties and has preserved the essential ones. The one to judge in +this respect is not the individual but the State. + + +12. The Fascist State and Religion. + +The Fascist State is not indifferent to the presence or the fact of +religion in general nor to the presence of that particular established +religion, which is Italian Catholicism. The State has no theology, but +it has morality. In the Fascist State religion is considered as one of +the most profound manifestations of the spirit; it is therefore not +only respected, but defended and protected. The Fascist State does not +create its own "God," as Robespierre wanted to do at a certain moment +in the frenzies of the Convention; nor does it vainly endeavour to +cancel the idea of God from the mind as Bolschevism tries to do. +Fascism respects the God of the ascetics, of the saints and of the +heroes. It also respects God as he is conceived and prayed to in the +ingenuous and primitive heart of the people. + + +13. Empire and Discipline. + +The Fascist State is a will expressing power and empire. The Roman +tradition here becomes an idea of force. In the Fascist doctrine, +empire is not only a territorial or a military, or a commercial +expression: it is a moral and a spiritual one. An empire can be +thought of, for instance, as a nation which directly or indirectly +guides other nations--without the need of conquering a single mile of +territory. For Fascism, the tendency to empire, that is to say the +expansion of nations, is a manifestation of vitality, its contrary +(the stay-at-home attitude) is a sign of decadence. Peoples who rise, +or who suddenly flourish again, are imperialistic; peoples who die are +peoples who abdicate. Fascism is a doctrine which most adequately +represents the tendencies, the state of mind of a people like the +Italian people, which is rising again after many centuries of +abandonment and of foreign servitude. + +But empire requires discipline, the coordination of forces, duty and +sacrifice. This explains many phases of the practical action of the +regime. It explains the aims of many of the forces of the State and +the necessary severity against those who would oppose themselves to +this spontaneous and irresistible movement of the Italy of the +Twentieth century by trying to appeal to the discredited ideologies of +the Nineteenth century, which have been repudiated wherever great +experiments of political and social transformation have been daringly +undertaken. + +Never more than at the present moment have the nations felt such a +thirst for an authority, for a direction, for order. If every century +has its own peculiar doctrine, there are a thousand indications that +Fascism is that of the present century. That it is a doctrine of life +is shown by the fact that it has created a faith; that the faith has +taken possession of the mind is demonstrated by the fact that Fascism +has had its Fallen and its martyrs. + +Fascism has now attained in the world an universality over all +doctrines. Being realised, it represents an epoch in the history of +the human mind. + + + + +THE POLITICAL DOCTRINE OF FASCISM[1] +BY HIS EXCELLENCY ALFREDO ROCCO +PREMIER MUSSOLINI'S ENDORSEMENT OF SIGNOR ROCCO'S SPEECH + + +The following message was sent by Benito Mussolini, the Premier of +Italy, to Signor Rocco after he had delivered his speech at Perugia. + + + Dear Rocco, + + I have just read your magnificent address which I endorse + throughout. You have presented in a masterful way the + doctrine of Fascism. For Fascism has a doctrine, or, if you + will, a particular philosophy with regard to all the + questions which beset the human mind today. All Italian + Fascists should read your discourse and derive from it both + the clear formulation of the basic principles of our program + as well as the reasons why Fascism must be systematically, + firmly, and rationally inflexible in its uncompromising + attitude towards other parties. Thus and only thus can the + word become flesh and the ideas be turned into deeds. + + Cordial greetings, + MUSSOLINI. + + + + +Fascism As Action, As Feeling, and As Thought + +Much has been said, and is now being said for or against this complex +political and social phenomenon which in the brief period of six years +has taken complete hold of Italian life and, spreading beyond the +borders of the Kingdom, has made itself felt in varying degrees of +intensity throughout the world. But people have been much more eager +to extol or to deplore than to understand--which is natural enough in +a period of tumultuous fervor and of political passion. The time has +not yet arrived for a dispassionate judgment. For even I, who noticed +the very first manifestations of this great development, saw its +significance from the start and participated directly in its first +doings, carefully watching all its early uncertain and changing +developments, even I do not feel competent to pass definite judgment. +Fascism is so large a part of myself that it would be both arbitrary +and absurd for me to try to dissociate my personality from it, to +submit it to impartial scrutiny in order to evaluate it coldly and +accurately. What can be done, however, and it seldom is attempted, is +to make inquiry into the phenomenon which shall not merely consider +its fragmentary and adventitious aspects, but strive to get at its +inner essence. The undertaking may not be easy, but it is necessary, +and no occasion for attempting it is more suitable than the present +one afforded me by my friends of Perugia. Suitable it is in time +because, at the inauguration of a course of lectures and lessons +principally intended to illustrate that old and glorious trend of the +life and history of Italy which takes its name from the humble saint +of Assisi, it seemed natural to connect it with the greatest +achievement of modern Italy, different in so many ways from the +Franciscan movement, but united with it by the mighty common current +of Italian History. It is suitable as well in place because at +Perugia, which witnessed the growth of our religious ideas, of our +political doctrines and of our legal science in the course of the most +glorious centuries of our cultural history, the mind is properly +disposed and almost oriented towards an investigation of this nature. + +First of all let us ask ourselves if there is a political doctrine of +Fascism; if there is any ideal content in the Fascist state. For in +order to link Fascism, both as concept and system, with the history of +Italian thought and find therein a place for it, we must first show +that it is thought; that it is a doctrine. Many persons are not quite +convinced that it is either the one or the other; and I am not +referring solely to those men, cultured or uncultured, as the case may +be and very numerous everywhere, who can discern in this political +innovation nothing except its local and personal aspects, and who know +Fascism only as the particular manner of behavior of this or that +well-known Fascist, of this or that group of a certain town; who +therefore like or dislike the movement on the basis of their likes and +dislikes for the individuals who represent it. Nor do I refer to those +intelligent, and cultivated persons, very intelligent indeed and very +cultivated, who because of their direct or indirect allegiance to the +parties that have been dispossessed by the advent of Fascism, have a +natural cause of resentment against it and are therefore unable to +see, in the blindness of hatred, anything good in it. I am referring +rather to those--and there are many in our ranks too--who know Fascism +as action and feeling but not yet as thought, who therefore have an +intuition but no comprehension of it. + +It is true that Fascism is, above all, action and sentiment and that +such it must continue to be. Were it otherwise, it could not keep up +that immense driving force, that renovating power which it now +possesses and would merely be the solitary meditation of a chosen few. +Only because it is feeling and sentiment, only because it is the +unconscious reawakening of our profound racial instinct, has it the +force to stir the soul of the people, and to set free an irresistible +current of national will. Only because it is action, and as such +actualizes itself in a vast organization and in a huge movement, has +it the conditions for determining the historical course of +contemporary Italy. + +But Fascism is thought as well and it has a theory, which is an +essential part of this historical phenomenon, and which is responsible +in a great measure for the successes that have been achieved. To the +existence of this ideal content of Fascism, to the truth of this +Fascist logic we ascribe the fact that though we commit many errors of +detail, we very seldom go astray on fundamentals, whereas all the +parties of the opposition, deprived as they are of an informing, +animating principle, of a unique directing concept, do very often wage +their war faultlessly in minor tactics, better trained as they are in +parliamentary and journalistic manoeuvres, but they constantly break +down on the important issues. Fascism, moreover, considered as action, +is a typically Italian phenomenon and acquires a universal validity +because of the existence of this coherent and organic doctrine. The +originality of Fascism is due in great part to the autonomy of its +theoretical principles. For even when, in its external behavior and in +its conclusions, it seems identical with other political creeds, in +reality it possesses an inner originality due to the new spirit which +animates it and to an entirely different theoretical approach. + + +Common Origins and Common Background of Modern Political Doctrines: +From Liberalism to Socialism + +Modern political thought remained, until recently, both in Italy and +outside of Italy under the absolute control of those doctrines which, +proceeding from the Protestant Reformation and developed by the +adepts of natural law in the XVII and XVIII centuries, were firmly +grounded in the institutions and customs of the English, of the +American, and of the French Revolutions. Under different and sometimes +clashing forms these doctrines have left a determining imprint upon +all theories and actions both social and political, of the XIX and XX +centuries down to the rise of Fascism. The common basis of all these +doctrines, which stretch from Longuet, from Buchanan, and from +Althusen down to Karl Marx, to Wilson and to Lenin is a social and +state concept which I shall call mechanical or atomistic. + +Society according to this concept is merely a sum total of +individuals, a plurality which breaks up into its single components. +Therefore the ends of a society, so considered, are nothing more than +the ends of the individuals which compose it and for whose sake it +exists. An atomistic view of this kind is also necessarily +anti-historical, inasmuch as it considers society in its spatial +attributes and not in its temporal ones; and because it reduces social +life to the existence of a single generation. Society becomes thus a +sum of determined individuals, viz., the generation living at a given +moment. This doctrine which I call atomistic and which appears to be +anti-historical, reveals from under a concealing cloak a strongly +materialistic nature. For in its endeavors to isolate the present from +the past and the future, it rejects the spiritual inheritance of ideas +and sentiments which each generation receives from those preceding and +hands down to the following generation thus destroying the unity and +the spiritual life itself of human society. + +This common basis shows the close logical connection existing between +all political doctrines; the substantial solidarity, which unites all +the political movements, from Liberalism to Socialism, that until +recently have dominated Europe. For these political schools differ +from one another in their methods, but all agree as to the ends to be +achieved. All of them consider the welfare and happiness of +individuals to be the goal of society, itself considered as composed +of individuals of the present generation. All of them see in society +and in its juridical organization, the state, the mere instrument and +means whereby individuals can attain their ends. They differ only in +that the methods pursued for the attainment of these ends vary +considerably one from the other. + +Thus the Liberals insist that the best manner to secure the welfare of +the citizens as individuals is to interfere as little as possible with +the free development of their activities and that therefore the +essential task of the state is merely to coordinate these several +liberties in such a way as to guarantee their coexistence. Kant, who +was without doubt the most powerful and thorough philosopher of +liberalism, said, "man, who is the end, cannot be assumed to have the +value of an instrument." And again, "justice, of which the state is +the specific organ, is the condition whereby the freedom of each is +conditioned upon the freedom of others, according to the general law +of liberty." + +Having thus defined the task of the state, Liberalism confines itself +to the demand of certain guarantees which are to keep the state from +overstepping its functions as general coordinator of liberties and +from sacrificing the freedom of individuals more than is absolutely +necessary for the accomplishment of its purpose. All the efforts are +therefore directed to see to it that the ruler, mandatory of all and +entrusted with the realization, through and by liberty, of the +harmonious happiness of everybody, should never be clothed with undue +power. Hence the creation of a system of checks and limitations +designed to keep the rulers within bounds; and among these, first and +foremost, the principle of the division of powers, contrived as a +means for weakening the state in its relation to the individual, by +making it impossible for the state ever to appear, in its dealings +with citizens, in the full plenitude of sovereign powers; also the +principle of the participation of citizens in the lawmaking power, as +a means for securing, in behalf of the individual, a direct check on +this, the strongest branch, and an indirect check on the entire +government of the state. This system of checks and limitations, which +goes by the name of constitutional government resulted in a moderate +and measured liberalism. The checking power was exercised only by +those citizens who were deemed worthy and capable, with the result +that a small élite was made to represent legally the entire body +politic for whose benefit this régime was instituted. + +It was evident, however, that this moderate system, being +fundamentally illogical and in contradiction with the very principles +from which it proceeded, would soon become the object of serious +criticism. For if the object of society and of the state is the +welfare of individuals, severally considered, how is it possible to +admit that this welfare can be secured by the individuals themselves +only through the possibilities of such a liberal régime? The +inequalities brought about both by nature and by social organizations +are so numerous and so serious, that, for the greater part, +individuals abandoned to themselves not only would fail to attain +happiness, but would also contribute to the perpetuation of their +condition of misery and dejection. The state therefore cannot limit +itself to the merely negative function of the defense of liberty. It +must become active, in behalf of everybody, for the welfare of the +people. It must intervene, when necessary, in order to improve the +material, intellectual, and moral conditions of the masses; it must +find work for the unemployed, instruct and educate the people, and +care for health and hygiene. For if the purpose of society and of the +state is the welfare of individuals, and if it is just that these +individuals themselves control the attainment of their ends, it +becomes difficult to understand why Liberalism should not go the whole +distance, why it should see fit to distinguish certain individuals +from the rest of the mass, and why the functions of the people should +be restricted to the exercise of a mere check. Therefore the state, if +it exists for all, must be governed by all, and not by a small +minority: if the state is for the people, sovereignty must reside in +the people: if all individuals have the right to govern the state, +liberty is no longer sufficient; equality must be added: and if +sovereignty is vested in the people, the people must wield all +sovereignty and not merely a part of it. The power to check and curb +the government is not sufficient. The people must be the government. +Thus, logically developed, Liberalism leads to Democracy, for +Democracy contains the promises of Liberalism but oversteps its +limitations in that it makes the action of the state positive, +proclaims the equality of all citizens through the dogma of popular +sovereignty. Democracy therefore necessarily implies a republican form +of government even though at times, for reasons of expediency, it +temporarily adjusts itself to a monarchical régime. + +Once started on this downward grade of logical deductions it was +inevitable that this atomistic theory of state and society should pass +on to a more advanced position. Great industrial developments and the +existence of a huge mass of working men, as yet badly treated and in a +condition of semi-servitude, possibly endurable in a régime of +domestic industry, became intolerable after the industrial revolution. +Hence a state of affairs which towards the middle of the last century +appeared to be both cruel and threatening. It was therefore natural +that the following question be raised: "If the state is created for +the welfare of its citizens, severally considered, how can it tolerate +an economic system which divides the population into a small minority +of exploiters, the capitalists, on one side, and an immense multitude +of exploited, the working people, on the other?" No! The state must +again intervene and give rise to a different and less iniquitous +economic organization, by abolishing private property, by assuming +direct control of all production, and by organizing it in such a way +that the products of labor be distributed solely among those who +create them, viz., the working classes. Hence we find Socialism, with +its new economic organization of society, abolishing private ownership +of capital and of the instruments and means of production, socializing +the product, suppressing the extra profit of capital, and turning over +to the working class the entire output of the productive processes. It +is evident that Socialism contains and surpasses Democracy in the same +way that Democracy comprises and surpasses Liberalism, being a more +advanced development of the same fundamental concept. Socialism in its +turn generates the still more extreme doctrine of Bolshevism which +demands the violent suppression of the holders of capital, the +dictatorship of the proletariat, as means for a fairer economic +organization of society and for the rescue of the laboring classes +from capitalistic exploitation. + +Thus Liberalism, Democracy, and Socialism, appear to be, as they are +in reality, not only the offspring of one and the same theory of +government, but also logical derivations one of the other. Logically +developed Liberalism leads to Democracy; the logical development of +Democracy issues into Socialism. It is true that for many years, and +with some justification, Socialism was looked upon as antithetical to +Liberalism. But the antithesis is purely relative and breaks down as +we approach the common origin and foundation of the two doctrines, for +we find that the opposition is one of method, not of purpose. The end +is the same for both, viz., the welfare of the individual members of +society. The difference lies in the fact that Liberalism would be +guided to its goal by liberty, whereas Socialism strives to attain it +by the collective organization of production. There is therefore no +antithesis nor even a divergence as to the nature and scope of the +state and the relation of individuals to society. There is only a +difference of evaluation of the means for bringing about these ends +and establishing these relations, which difference depends entirely on +the different economic conditions which prevailed at the time when the +various doctrines were formulated. Liberalism arose and began to +thrive in the period of small industry; Socialism grew with the rise +of industrialism and of world-wide capitalism. The dissension +therefore between these two points of view, or the antithesis, if we +wish so to call it, is limited to the economic field. Socialism is at +odds with Liberalism only on the question of the organization of +production and of the division of wealth. In religious, intellectual, +and moral matters it is liberal, as it is liberal and democratic in +its politics. Even the anti-liberalism and anti-democracy of +Bolshevism are in themselves purely contingent. For Bolshevism is +opposed to Liberalism only in so far as the former is revolutionary, +not in its socialistic aspect. For if the opposition of the Bolsheviki +to liberal and democratic doctrines were to continue, as now seems +more and more probable, the result might be a complete break between +Bolshevism and Socialism notwithstanding the fact that the ultimate +aims of both are identical. + + +Fascism as an Integral Doctrine of Sociality Antithetical to the +Atomism of Liberal, Democratic, and Socialistic Theories + +The true antithesis, not to this or that manifestation of the +liberal-democratic-socialistic conception of the state but to the +concept itself, is to be found in the doctrine of Fascism. For while +the disagreement between Liberalism and Democracy, and between +Liberalism and Socialism lies in a difference of method, as we have +said, the rift between Socialism, Democracy, and Liberalism on one +side and Fascism on the other is caused by a difference in concept. As +a matter of fact, Fascism never raises the question of methods, using +in its political praxis now liberal ways, now democratic means and at +times even socialistic devices. This indifference to method often +exposes Fascism to the charge of incoherence on the part of +superficial observers, who do not see that what counts with us is the +end and that therefore even when we employ the same means we act with +a radically different spiritual attitude and strive for entirely +different results. The Fascist concept then of the nation, of the +scope of the state, and of the relations obtaining between society and +its individual components, rejects entirely the doctrine which I said +proceeded from the theories of natural law developed in the course of +the XVI, XVII, and XVIII centuries and which form the basis of the +liberal, democratic, and socialistic ideology. + +I shall not try here to expound this doctrine but shall limit myself +to a brief résumé of its fundamental concepts. + +Man--the political animal--according to the definition of Aristotle, +lives and must live in society. A human being outside the pale of +society is an inconceivable thing--a non-man. Humankind in its +entirety lives in social groups that are still, today, very numerous +and diverse, varying in importance and organization from the tribes of +Central Africa to the great Western Empires. These various societies +are fractions of the human species each one of them endowed with a +unified organization. And as there is no unique organization of the +human species, there is not "one" but there are "several" human +societies. Humanity therefore exists solely as a biological concept +not as a social one. + +Each society on the other hand exists in the unity of both its +biological and its social contents. Socially considered it is a +fraction of the human species endowed with unity of organization for +the attainment of the peculiar ends of the species. + +This definition brings out all the elements of the social phenomenon +and not merely those relating to the preservation and perpetuation of +the species. For man is not solely matter; and the ends of the human +species, far from being the materialistic ones we have in common with +other animals, are, rather, and predominantly, the spiritual +finalities which are peculiar to man and which every form of society +strives to attain as well as its stage of social development allows. +Thus the organization of every social group is more or less pervaded +by the spiritual influxes of: unity of language, of culture, of +religion, of tradition, of customs, and in general of feeling and of +volition, which are as essential as the material elements: unity of +economic interests, of living conditions, and of territory. The +definition given above demonstrates another truth, which has been +ignored by the political doctrines that for the last four centuries +have been the foundations of political systems, viz., that the social +concept has a biological aspect, because social groups are fractions +of the human species, each one possessing a peculiar organization, a +particular rank in the development of civilization with certain needs +and appropriate ends, in short, a life which is really its own. If +social groups are then fractions of the human species, they must +possess the same fundamental traits of the human species, which means +that they must be considered as a succession of generations and not as +a collection of individuals. + +It is evident therefore that as the human species is not the total of +the living human beings of the world, so the various social groups +which compose it are not the sum of the several individuals which at a +given moment belong to it, but rather the infinite series of the past, +present, and future generations constituting it. And as the ends of +the human species are not those of the several individuals living at a +certain moment, being occasionally in direct opposition to them, so +the ends of the various social groups are not necessarily those of the +individuals that belong to the groups but may even possibly be in +conflict with such ends, as one sees clearly whenever the preservation +and the development of the species demand the sacrifice of the +individual, to wit, in times of war. + +Fascism replaces therefore the old atomistic and mechanical state +theory which was at the basis of the liberal and democratic doctrines +with an organic and historic concept. When I say organic I do not wish +to convey the impression that I consider society as an organism after +the manner of the so-called "organic theories of the state"; but +rather to indicate that the social groups as fractions of the species +receive thereby a life and scope which transcend the scope and life of +the individuals identifying themselves with the history and finalities +of the uninterrupted series of generations. It is irrelevant in this +connection to determine whether social groups, considered as fractions +of the species, constitute organisms. The important thing is to +ascertain that this organic concept of the state gives to society a +continuous life over and beyond the existence of the several +individuals. + +The relations therefore between state and citizens are completely +reversed by the Fascist doctrine. Instead of the liberal-democratic +formula, "society for the individual," we have, "individuals for +society" with this difference however: that while the liberal +doctrines eliminated society, Fascism does not submerge the individual +in the social group. It subordinates him, but does not eliminate him; +the individual as a part of his generation ever remaining an element +of society however transient and insignificant he may be. Moreover the +development of individuals in each generation, when coordinated and +harmonized, conditions the development and prosperity of the entire +social unit. + +At this juncture the antithesis between the two theories must appear +complete and absolute. Liberalism, Democracy, and Socialism look upon +social groups as aggregates of living individuals; for Fascism they +are the recapitulating unity of the indefinite series of generations. +For Liberalism, society has no purposes other than those of the +members living at a given moment. For Fascism, society has historical +and immanent ends of preservation, expansion, improvement, quite +distinct from those of the individuals which at a given moment compose +it; so distinct in fact that they may even be in opposition. Hence the +necessity, for which the older doctrines make little allowance, of +sacrifice, even up to the total immolation of individuals, in behalf +of society; hence the true explanation of war, eternal law of mankind, +interpreted by the liberal-democratic doctrines as a degenerate +absurdity or as a maddened monstrosity. + +For Liberalism, society has no life distinct from the life of the +individuals, or as the phrase goes: solvitur in singularitates. For +Fascism, the life of society overlaps the existence of individuals and +projects itself into the succeeding generations through centuries and +millennia. Individuals come into being, grow, and die, followed by +others, unceasingly; social unity remains always identical to itself. +For Liberalism, the individual is the end and society the means; nor +is it conceivable that the individual, considered in the dignity of an +ultimate finality, be lowered to mere instrumentality. For Fascism, +society is the end, individuals the means, and its whole life consists +in using individuals as instruments for its social ends. The state +therefore guards and protects the welfare and development of +individuals not for their exclusive interest, but because of the +identity of the needs of individuals with those of society as a whole. +We can thus accept and explain institutions and practices, which like +the death penalty, are condemned by Liberalism in the name of the +preeminence of individualism. + +The fundamental problem of society in the old doctrines is the +question of the rights of individuals. It may be the right to freedom +as the Liberals would have it; or the right to the government of the +commonwealth as the Democrats claim it, or the right to economic +justice as the Socialists contend; but in every case it is the right +of individuals, or groups of individuals (classes). Fascism on the +other hand faces squarely the problem of the right of the state and of +the duty of individuals. Individual rights are only recognized in so +far as they are implied in the rights of the state. In this +preeminence of duty we find the highest ethical value of Fascism. + + +The Problems of Liberty, of Government, and of Social Justice in the +Political Doctrine of Fascism + +This, however, does not mean that the problems raised by the other +schools are ignored by Fascism. It means simply that it faces them and +solves them differently, as, for example, the problem of liberty. + +There is a Liberal theory of freedom, and there is a Fascist concept +of liberty. For we, too, maintain the necessity of safeguarding the +conditions that make for the free development of the individual; we, +too, believe that the oppression of individual personality can find no +place in the modern state. We do not, however, accept a bill of rights +which tends to make the individual superior to the state and to +empower him to act in opposition to society. Our concept of liberty is +that the individual must be allowed to develop his personality in +behalf of the state, for these ephemeral and infinitesimal elements of +the complex and permanent life of society determine by their normal +growth the development of the state. But this individual growth must +be normal. A huge and disproportionate development of the individual +of classes, would prove as fatal to society as abnormal growths are to +living organisms. Freedom therefore is due to the citizen and to +classes on condition that they exercise it in the interest of society +as a whole and within the limits set by social exigencies, liberty +being, like any other individual right, a concession of the state. +What I say concerning civil liberties applies to economic freedom as +well. Fascism does not look upon the doctrine of economic liberty as +an absolute dogma. It does not refer economic problems to individual +needs, to individual interest, to individual solutions. On the +contrary it considers the economic development, and especially the +production of wealth, as an eminently social concern, wealth being for +society an essential element of power and prosperity. But Fascism +maintains that in the ordinary run of events economic liberty serves +the social purposes best; that it is profitable to entrust to +individual initiative the task of economic development both as to +production and as to distribution; that in the economic world +individual ambition is the most effective means for obtaining the best +social results with the least effort. Therefore, on the question also +of economic liberty the Fascists differ fundamentally from the +Liberals; the latter see in liberty a principle, the the Fascists +accept it as a method. By the Liberals, freedom is recognized in the +interest of the citizens; the Fascists grant it in the interest of +society. In other terms, Fascists make of the individual an economic +instrument for the advancement of society, an instrument which they +use so long as it functions and which they subordinate when no longer +serviceable. In this guise Fascism solves the eternal problem of +economic freedom and of state interference, considering both as mere +methods which may or may not be employed in accordance with the social +needs of the moment. + +What I have said concerning political and economic Liberalism applies +also to Democracy. The latter envisages fundamentally the problem of +sovereignty; Fascism does also, but in an entirely different manner. +Democracy vests sovereignty in the people, that is to say, in the mass +of human beings. Fascism discovers sovereignty to be inherent in +society when it is juridically organized as a state. Democracy +therefore turns over the government of the state to the multitude of +living men that they may use it to further their own interests; +Fascism insists that the government be entrusted to men capable of +rising above their own private interests and of realizing the +aspirations of the social collectivity, considered in its unity and in +its relation to the past and future. Fascism therefore not only +rejects the dogma of popular sovereignty and substitutes for it that +of state sovereignty, but it also proclaims that the great mass of +citizens is not a suitable advocate of social interests for the reason +that the capacity to ignore individual private interests in favor of +the higher demands of society and of history is a very rare gift and +the privilege of the chosen few. Natural intelligence and cultural +preparation are of great service in such tasks. Still more valuable +perhaps is the intuitiveness of rare great minds, their traditionalism +and their inherited qualities. This must not however be construed to +mean that the masses are not to be allowed to exercise any influence +on the life of the state. On the contrary, among peoples with a great +history and with noble traditions, even the lowest elements of society +possess an instinctive discernment of what is necessary for the +welfare of the race, which in moments of great historical crises +reveals itself to be almost infallible. It is therefore as wise to +afford to this instinct the means of declaring itself as it is +judicious to entrust the normal control of the commonwealth to a +selected élite. + +As for Socialism, the Fascist doctrine frankly recognizes that the +problem raised by it as to the relations between capital and labor is +a very serious one, perhaps the central one of modern life. What +Fascism does not countenance is the collectivistic solution proposed +by the Socialists. The chief defect of the socialistic method has been +clearly demonstrated by the experience of the last few years. It does +not take into account human nature, it is therefore outside of +reality, in that it will not recognize that the most powerful spring +of human activities lies in individual self-interest and that +therefore the elimination from the economic field of this interest +results in complete paralysis. The suppression of private ownership of +capital carries with it the suppression of capital itself, for capital +is formed by savings and no one will want to save, but will rather +consume all he makes if he knows he cannot keep and hand down to his +heirs the results of his labors. The dispersion of capital means the +end of production since capital, no matter who owns it, is always an +indispensable tool of production. Collective organization of +production is followed therefore by the paralysis of production since, +by eliminating from the productive mechanism the incentive of +individual interest, the product becomes rarer and more costly. +Socialism then, as experience has shown, leads to increase in +consumption, to the dispersion of capital and therefore to poverty. Of +what avail is it, then, to build a social machine which will more +justly distribute wealth if this very wealth is destroyed by the +construction of this machine? Socialism committed an irreparable error +when it made of private property a matter of justice while in truth it +is a problem of social utility. The recognition of individual property +rights, then, is a part of the Fascist doctrine not because of its +individual bearing but because of its social utility. + +We must reject, therefore, the socialistic solution but we cannot +allow the problem raised by the Socialists to remain unsolved, not +only because justice demands a solution but also because the +persistence of this problem in liberal and democratic régimes has been +a menace to public order and to the authority of the state. Unlimited +and unrestrained class self-defense, evinced by strikes and lockouts, +by boycotts and sabotage, leads inevitably to anarchy. The Fascist +doctrine, enacting justice among the classes in compliance with a +fundamental necessity of modern life, does away with class +self-defense, which, like individual self-defense in the days of +barbarism, is a source of disorder and of civil war. + +Having reduced the problem of these terms, only one solution is +possible, the realization of justice among the classes by and through +the state. Centuries ago the state, as the specific organ of justice, +abolished personal self-defense in individual controversies and +substituted for it state justice. The time has now come when class +self-defense also must be replaced by state justice. To facilitate the +change Fascism has created its own syndicalism. The suppression of +class self-defense does not mean the suppression of class defense +which is an inalienable necessity of modern economic life. Class +organization is a fact which cannot be ignored but it must be +controlled, disciplined, and subordinated by the state. The syndicate, +instead of being, as formerly, an organ of extra-legal defense, must +be turned into an organ of legal defense which will become judicial +defense as soon as labor conflicts become a matter of judicial +settlement. Fascism therefore has transformed the syndicate, that old +revolutionary instrument of syndicalistic socialists, into an +instrument of legal defense of the classes both within and without the +law courts. This solution may encounter obstacles in its development; +the obstacles of malevolence, of suspicion of the untried, of +erroneous calculation, etc., but it is destined to triumph even though +it must advance through progressive stages. + + +Historical Value of the Doctrine of Fascism + +I might carry this analysis farther but what I have already said is +sufficient to show that the rise of a Fascist ideology already gives +evidence of an upheaval in the intellectual field as powerful as the +change that was brought about in the XVII and XVIII centuries by the +rise and diffusion of those doctrines of _ius naturale_ which go under +the name of "Philosophy of the French Revolution." The philosophy of +the French Revolution formulated certain principles, the authority of +which, unquestioned for a century and a half, seemed so final that +they were given the attribute of immortality. The influence of these +principles was so great that they determined the formation of a new +culture, of a new civilization. Likewise the fervor of the ideas that +go to make up the Fascist doctrine, now in its inception but destined +to spread rapidly, will determine the course of a new culture and of a +new conception of civil life. The deliverance of the individual from +the state carried out in the XVIII century will be followed in the XX +century by the rescue of the state from the individual. The period of +authority, of social obligations, of "hierarchical" subordination will +succeed the period of individualism, of state feebleness, of +insubordination. + +This innovating trend is not and cannot be a return to the Middle +Ages. It is a common but an erroneous belief that the movement, +started by the Reformation and heightened by the French Revolution, +was directed against mediaeval ideas and institutions. Rather than as +a negation, this movement should be looked upon as the development and +fulfillment of the doctrines and practices of the Middle Ages. +Socially and politically considered the Middle Ages wrought +disintegration and anarchy; they were characterized by the gradual +weakening and ultimate extinction of the state, embodied in the Roman +Empire, driven first to the East, then back to France, thence to +Germany, a shadow of its former self; they were marked by the steady +advance of the forces of usurpation, destructive of the state and +reciprocally obnoxious; they bore the imprints of a triumphant +particularism. Therefore the individualistic and anti-social movement +of the XVII and XVIII centuries was not directed against the Middle +Ages, but rather against the restoration of the state by great +national monarchies. If this movement destroyed mediaeval institutions +that had survived the Middle Ages and had been grafted upon the new +states, it was in consequence of the struggle primarily waged against +the state. The spirit of the movement was decidedly mediaeval. The +novelty consisted in the social surroundings in which it operated and +in its relation to new economic developments. The individualism of the +feudal lords, the particularism of the cities and of the corporations +had been replaced by the individualism and the particularism of the +bourgeoisie and of the popular classes. + +The Fascist ideology cannot therefore look back to the Middle Ages, of +which it is a complete negation. The Middle Ages spell disintegration; +Fascism is nothing if not sociality. It is if anything the beginning +of the end of the Middle Ages prolonged four centuries beyond the end +ordinarily set for them and revived by the social democratic anarchy +of the past thirty years. If Fascism can be said to look back at all +it is rather in the direction of ancient Rome whose social and +political traditions at the distance of fifteen centuries are being +revived by Fascist Italy. + +I am fully aware that the value of Fascism, as an intellectual +movement, baffles the minds of many of its followers and supporters +and is denied outright by its enemies. There is no malice in this +denial, as I see it, but rather an incapacity to comprehend. The +liberal-democratic-socialistic ideology has so completely and for so +long a time dominated Italian culture that in the minds of the +majority of people trained by it, it has assumed the value of an +absolute truth, almost the authority of a natural law. Every faculty +of self-criticism is suppressed in the minds and this suppression +entails an incapacity for understanding that time alone can change. It +will be advisable therefore to rely mainly upon the new generations +and in general upon persons whose culture is not already fixed. This +difficulty to comprehend on the part of those who have been thoroughly +grounded by a different preparation in the political and social +sciences explains in part why Fascism has not been wholly successful +with the intellectual classes and with mature minds, and why on the +other hand it has been very successful with young people, with women, +in rural districts, and among men of action unencumbered by a fixed +and set social and political education. Fascism moreover, as a +cultural movement, is just now taking its first steps. As in the case +with all great movements, action regularly outstrips thought. It was +thus at the time of the Protestant Reformation and of the +individualistic reaction of the XVII and XVIII centuries. The English +revolution occurred when the doctrines of natural law were coming into +being and the theoretical development of the liberal and democratic +theories followed the French Revolution. + +At this point it will not be very difficult to assign a fitting place +in history to this great trend of thought which is called Fascism and +which, in spite of the initial difficulties, already gives clear +indication of the magnitude of its developments. + +The liberal-democratic speculation both in its origin and in the +manner of its development appears to be essentially a non-Italian +formation. Its connection with the Middle Ages already shows it to be +foreign to the Latin mind, the mediaeval disintegration being the +result of the triumph of Germanic individualism over the political +mentality of the Romans. The barbarians, boring from within and +hacking from without, pulled down the great political structure raised +by Latin genius and put nothing in its place. Anarchy lasted eight +centuries during which time only one institution survived and that a +Roman one--the Catholic Church. But, as soon as the laborious process +of reconstruction was started with the constitution of the great +national states backed by the Roman Church the Protestant Reformation +set in followed by the individualistic currents of the XVII and XVIII +centuries, and the process of disintegration was started anew. This +anti-state tendency was the expression of the Germanic spirit and it +therefore became predominant among the Germanic peoples and wherever +Germanism had left a deep imprint even if afterward superficially +covered by a veneer of Latin culture. It is true that Marsilius from +Padua is an Italian writing for Ludwig the Bavarian, but the other +writers who in the XIV century appear as forerunners of the liberal +doctrines are not Italians: Occam and Wycliff are English; Oresme is +French. Among the advocates of individualism in the XVI century who +prepared the way for the triumph of the doctrines of natural law in +the subsequent centuries, Hotman and Languet are French, Buchanan is +Scotch. Of the great authorities of natural law, Grotius and Spinosa +are Dutch; Locke is English; l'Abbé de St. Pierre, Montesquieu, +d'Argenson, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot and the encyclopaedists are +French; Althusius, Pufendorf, Kant, Fichte are German. + +Italy took no part in the rise and development of the doctrines of +natural law. Only in the XIX century did she evince a tardy interest +in these doctrines, just as she tardily contributed to them at the +dose of the XVIII century through the works of Beccaria and Filangeri. + +While therefore in other countries such as France, England, Germany, +and Holland, the general tradition in the social and political +sciences worked in behalf of anti-state individualism, and therefore +of liberal and democratic doctrines, Italy, on the other hand, clung +to the powerful legacy of its past in virtue of which she proclaims +the rights of the state, the preeminence of its authority, and the +superiority of its ends. The very fact that the Italian political +doctrine in the Middle Ages linked itself with the great political +writers of antiquity, Plato and Aristotle, who in a different manner +but with an equal firmness advocated a strong state and the +subordination of individuals to it, is a sufficient index of the +orientation of political philosophy in Italy. We all know how thorough +and crushing the authority of Aristotle was in the Middle Ages. But +for Aristotle the spiritual cement of the state is "virtue" not +absolute virtue but political virtue, which is social devotion. His +state is made up solely of its citizens, the citizens being either +those who defend it with their arms or who govern it as magistrates. +All others who provide it with the materials and services it needs are +not citizens. They become such only in the corrupt forms of certain +democracies. Society is therefore divided into two classes, the free +men or citizens who give their time to noble and virtuous occupations +and who profess their subjection to the state, and the laborers and +slaves who work for the maintenance of the former. No man in this +scheme is his own master. The slaves belong to the freemen, and the +freemen belong to the state. + +It was therefore natural that St. Thomas Aquinas the greatest +political writer of the Middle Ages should emphasize the necessity of +unity in the political field, the harm of plurality of rulers, the +dangers and damaging effects of demagogy. The good of the state, says +St. Thomas Aquinas, is unity. And who can procure unity more fittingly +than he who is himself one? Moreover the government must follow, as +far as possible, the course of nature and in nature power is always +one. In the physical body only one organ is dominant--the heart; in +the spirit only one faculty has sway--reason. Bees have one sole +ruler; and the entire universe one sole sovereign--God. Experience +shows that the countries, which are ruled by many, perish because of +discord while those that are ruled over by one enjoy peace, justice, +and plenty. The States which are not ruled by one are troubled by +dissensions, and toil unceasingly. On the contrary the states which +are ruled over by one king enjoy peace, thrive in justice and are +gladdened by affluence.[2] The rule of the multitudes can not be +sanctioned, for where the crowd rules it oppresses the rich as would a +tyrant.[3] + +Italy in the Middle Ages presented a curious phenomenon: while in +practice the authority of the state was being dissolved into a +multiplicity of competing sovereignties, the theory of state unity and +authority was kept alive in the minds of thinkers by the memories of +the Roman Imperial tradition. It was this memory that supported for +centuries the fiction of the universal Roman Empire when in reality it +existed no longer. Dante's _De Monarchia_ deduced the theory of this +empire conceived as the unity of a strong state. "Quod potest fieri +per unum melius est per unum fieri quam plura," he says in the XIV +chapter of the first book, and further on, considering the citizen as +an instrument for the attainment of the ends of the state, he +concludes that the individual must sacrifice himself for his country. +"Si pars debet se exponere pro salute totius, cum homo siti pars +quaedam civitatis ... homo pro patria debet exponere se ipsum." (lib. +II. 8). + +The Roman tradition, which was one of practice but not of +theories--for Rome constructed the most solid state known to history +with extraordinary statesmanship but with hardly any political +writings--influenced considerably the founder of modern political +science, Nicolo Machiavelli, who was himself in truth not a creator of +doctrines but a keen observer of human nature who derived from the +study of history practical maxims of political import. He freed the +science of politics from the formalism of the scholastics and brought +it close to concrete reality. His writings, an inexhaustible mine of +practical remarks and precious observations, reveal dominant in him +the state idea, no longer abstract but in the full historical +concreteness of the national unity of Italy. Machiavelli therefore is +not only the greatest of modern political writers, he is also the +greatest of our countrymen in full possession of a national Italian +consciousness. To liberate Italy, which was in his day "enslaved, torn +and pillaged," and to make her more powerful, he would use any means, +for to his mind the holiness of the end justified them completely. In +this he was sharply rebuked by foreigners who were not as hostile to +his means as they were fearful of the end which he propounded. He +advocated therefore the constitution of a strong Italian state, +supported by the sacrifices and by the blood of the citizens, not +defended by mercenary troops; well-ordered internally, aggressive and +bent on expansion. "Weak republics," he said, "have no determination +and can never reach a decision." (Disc. I. c. 38). "Weak states were +ever dubious in choosing their course, and slow deliberations are +always harmful." (Disc. I. c. 10). And again: "Whoso undertakes to +govern a multitude either in a régime of liberty or in a monarchy, +without previously making sure of those who are hostile to the new +order of things builds a short-lived state." (Disc. I. c. 16). And +further on "the dictatorial authority helped and did not harm the +Roman republic" (Disc. I. c. 34), and "Kings and republics lacking in +national troops both for offense and defense should be ashamed of +their existence." (Disc. I. c. 21). And again: "Money not only does +not protect you but rather it exposes you to plundering assaults. Nor +can there be a more false opinion than that which says that money is +the sinews of war. Not money but good soldiers win battles." (Disc. I. +II. c. 10). "The country must be defended with ignominy or with glory +and in either way it is nobly defended." (Disc. III. c. 41). "And with +dash and boldness people often capture what they never would have +obtained by ordinary means." (Disc. III. c. 44). Machiavelli was not +only a great political authority, he taught the mastery of energy and +will. Fascism learns from him not only its doctrines but its action as +well. + +Different from Machiavelli's, in mental attitude, in cultural +preparation, and in manner of presentation, G.B. Vico must yet be +connected with the great Florentine from whom in a certain way he +seems to proceed. In the heyday of "natural law" Vico is decidedly +opposed to _ius naturale_ and in his attacks against its advocates, +Grotius, Seldenus and Pufendorf, he systematically assails the +abstract, rationalistic, and utilitarian principles of the XVIII +century. As Montemayor justly says:[4] "While the 'natural jurists', +basing justice and state on utility and interest and grounding human +certitude on reason, were striving to draft permanent codes and +construct the perfect state, Vico strongly asserted the social nature +of man, the ethical character of the juridical consciousness and its +growth through the history of humanity rather than in sacred history. +Vico therefore maintains that doctrines must begin with those subjects +which take up and explain the entire course of civilization. +Experience and not ratiocination, history and not reason must help +human wisdom to understand the civil and political regimes which were +the result not of reason or philosophy, but rather of common sense, or +if you will of the social consciousness of man" and farther on (pages +373-374), "to Vico we owe the conception of history in its fullest +sense as magistra vitae, the search after the humanity of history, the +principle which makes the truth progress with time, the discovery of +the political 'course' of nations. It is Vico who uttered the eulogy +of the patrician 'heroic hearts' of the 'patres patriae' first +founders of states, magnanimous defenders of the commonwealth and wise +counsellors of politics. To Vico we owe the criticism of democracies, +the affirmation of their brief existence, of their rapid +disintegration at the hands of factions and demagogues, of their lapse +first into anarchy, then into monarchy, when their degradation does +not make them a prey of foreign oppressors. Vico conceived of civil +liberty as subjection to law, as just subordination, of the private to +the public interests, to the sway of the state. It was Vico who +sketched modern society as a world of nations each one guarding its +own imperium, fighting just and not inhuman wars. In Vico therefore we +find the condemnation of pacifism, the assertion that right is +actualized by bodily force, that without force, right is of no avail, +and that therefore 'qui ab iniuriis se tueri non potest servus est.'" + +It is not difficult to discern the analogies between these +affirmations and the fundamental views and the spirit of Fascism. Nor +should we marvel at this similarity. Fascism, a strictly Italian +phenomenon, has its roots in the Risorgimento and the Risorgimento was +influenced undoubtedly by Vico. + +It would be inexact to affirm that the philosophy of Vico dominated +the Risorgimento. Too many elements of German, French, and English +civilizations had been added to our culture during the first half of +the XIX century to make this possible, so much so that perhaps Vico +might have remained unknown to the makers of Italian unity if another +powerful mind from Southern Italy, Vincenzo Cuoco, had not taken it +upon himself to expound the philosophy of Vico in those very days in +which the intellectual preparation of the Risorgimento was being +carried on. + +An adequate account of Cuoco's doctrines would carry me too far. +Montemayor, in the article quoted above, gives them considerable +attention. He quotes among other things Cuoco's arraignment of +Democracy: "Italy has fared badly at the hand of Democracy which has +withered to their roots the three sacred plants of liberty, unity, +and independence. If we wish to see these trees flourish again let us +protect them in the future from Democracy." + +The influence of Cuoco, an exile at Milan, exerted through his +writings, his newspaper articles, and Vichian propaganda, on the +Italian patriots is universally recognized. Among the regular readers +of his _Giornale Italiano_ we find Monti and Foscolo. Clippings of his +articles were treasured by Mazzini and Manzoni, who often acted as his +secretary, called him his "master in politics."[5] + +The influence of the Italian tradition summed up and handed down by +Cuoco was felt by Mazzini whose interpretation of the function of the +citizen as duty and mission is to be connected with Vico's doctrine +rather than with the philosophic and political doctrines of the French +Revolution. + +"Training for social duty," said Mazzini, "is essentially and +logically unitarian. Life for it is but a duty, a mission. The norm +and definition of such mission can only be found in a collective term +superior to all the individuals of the country--in the people, in the +nation. If there is a collective mission, a communion of duty ... it +can only be represented in the national unity."[6] And farther on: +"The declaration of rights, which all constitutions insist in copying +slavishly from the French, express only those of the period ... which +considered the individual as the end and pointed out only one half of +the problem" and again, "assume the existence of one of those crises +that threaten the life of the nation, and demand the active sacrifice +of all its sons ... will you ask the citizens to face martyrdom in +virtue of their rights? You have taught men that society was solely +constituted to guarantee their rights and now you ask them to +sacrifice one and all, to suffer and die for the safety of the +'nation?'"[7] + +In Mazzini's conception of the citizen as instrument for the +attainment of the nation's ends and therefore submissive to a higher +mission, to the duty of supreme sacrifice, we see the anticipation of +one of the fundamental points of the Fascist doctrine. + +Unfortunately, the autonomy of the political thought of Italy, +vigorously established in the works of Vico, nobly reclaimed by +Vincenzo Cuoco, kept up during the struggles of the Risorgimento in +spite of the many foreign influences of that period, seemed to exhaust +itself immediately after the unification. Italian political thought +which had been original in times of servitude, became enslaved in the +days of freedom. + +A powerful innovating movement, issuing from the war and of which +Fascism is the purest expression, was to restore Italian thought in +the sphere of political doctrine to its own traditions which are the +traditions of Rome. + +This task of intellectual liberation, now slowly being accomplished, +is no less important than the political deliverance brought about by +the Fascist Revolution. It is a great task which continues and +integrates the Risorgimento; it is now bringing to an end, after the +cessation of our political servitude, the intellectual dependence of +Italy. + +Thanks to it, Italy again speaks to the world and the world listens to +Italy. It is a great task and a great deed and it demands great +efforts. To carry it through, we must, each one of us, free ourselves +of the dross of ideas and mental habits which two centuries of foreign +intellectualistic tradition have heaped upon us; we must not only take +on a new culture but create for ourselves a new soul. We must +methodically and patiently contribute something towards the organic +and complete elaboration of our doctrine, at the same time supporting +it both at home and abroad with untiring devotion. We ask this effort +of renovation and collaboration of all Fascists, as well as of all who +feel themselves to be Italians. After the hour of sacrifice comes the +hour of unyielding efforts. To our work, then, fellow countrymen, for +the glory of Italy! + + * * * * * + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 1: Translated from the Italian.] + +[Footnote 2: "civitates quae non reguntur ab uno dissenionibus +laborant et absque pace fluctuant. E contrario civitates quae sub uno +rege reguntur pace gaudent, iustitia florent et affluentia rerum +laetantur." (De reg. princ. I. c. 2).] + +[Footnote 3: "ideo manifustum est, quod multitudo est sicut tyrannuus, +quare operationes multitudinis sunt iniustae. ergo non expedit +multitudinem dominari." (Comm. In Polit. L. III. lectio VIII).] + +[Footnote 4: Rivista internazionale di filosofia del diritto V. 351.] + +[Footnote 5: Montemayor. Riv. Int. etc. p. 370.] + +[Footnote 6: della unità italiana. Scritti, Vol. III.] + +[Footnote 7: I sistemi e la democrazia. Scritti, Vol. VII.] + + * * * * * + + + + +THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF FASCISM +BY GIOVANNI GENTILE + + +For the Italian nation the World War was the solution of a deep +spiritual crisis. They willed and fought it long before they felt and +evaluated it. But they willed, fought, felt and evaluated it in a +certain spirit which Italy's generals and statesmen exploited, but +which also worked on them, conditioning their policies and their +action. The spirit in question was not altogether clear and +self-consistent. That it lacked unanimity was particularly apparent +just before and again just after the war when feelings were not +subject to war discipline. It was as though the Italian character were +crossed by two different currents which divided it into two +irreconcilable sections. One need think only of the days of Italian +neutrality and of the debates that raged between Interventionists and +Neutralists. The ease with which the most inconsistent ideas were +pressed into service by both parties showed that the issue was not +between two opposing political opinions, two conflicting concepts of +history, but actually between two different temperaments, two +different souls. + +For one kind of person the important point was to fight the war, +either on the side of Germany or against Germany: but in either event +to fight the war, without regard to specific advantages--to fight the +war in order that at last the Italian nation, created rather by +favoring conditions than by the will of its people to be a nation, +might receive its test in blood, such a test as only war can bring by +uniting all citizens in a single thought, a single passion, a single +hope, emphasizing to each individual that all have something in +common, something transcending private interests. + +This was the very thing that frightened the other kind of person, the +prudent man, the realist, who had a clear view of the mortal risks a +young, inexperienced, badly prepared nation would be running in such a +war, and who also saw--a most significant point--that, all things +considered, a bargaining neutrality would surely win the country +tangible rewards, as great as victorious participation itself. + +The point at issue was just that: the Italian Neutralists stood for +material advantages, advantages tangible, ponderable, palpable; the +Interventionists stood for moral advantages, intangible, impalpable, +imponderable--imponderable at least on the scales used by their +antagonists. On the eve of the war these two Italian characters stood +facing each other, scowling and irreconcilable--the one on the +aggressive, asserting itself ever more forcefully through the various +organs of public opinion; the other on the defensive, offering +resistance through the Parliament which in those days still seemed to +be the basic repository of State sovereignty. Civil conflict seemed +inevitable in Italy, and civil war was in fact averted only because +the King took advantage of one of his prerogatives and declared war +against the Central Powers. + +This act of the King was the first decisive step toward the solution +of the crisis. + + +II + +The crisis had ancient origins. Its roots sank deep into the inner +spirit of the Italian people. + +What were the creative forces of the _Risorgimento_? The "Italian +people," to which some historians are now tending to attribute an +important if not a decisive role in our struggle for national unity +and independence, was hardly on the scene at all. The active agency +was always an idea become a person--it was one or several determined +wills which were fixed on determined goals. There can be no question +that the birth of modern Italy was the work of the few. And it could +not be otherwise. It is always the few who represent the +self-consciousness and the will of an epoch and determine what its +history shall be; for it is they who see the forces at their disposal +and through those forces actuate the one truly active and productive +force--their own will. + +That will we find in the song of the poets and the ideas of the +political writers, who know how to use a language harmonious with a +universal sentiment or with a sentiment capable of becoming universal. +In the case of Italy, in all our bards, philosophers and leaders, from +Alfieri to Foscolo, from Leopardi to Manzoni, from Mazzini to +Gioberti, we are able to pick up the threads of a new fabric, which is +a new kind of thought, a new kind of soul, a new kind of Italy. This +new Italy differed from the old Italy in something that was very +simple but yet was of the greatest importance: this new Italy took +life seriously, while the old one did not. People in every age had +dreamed of an Italy and talked of an Italy. The notion of Italy had +been sung in all kinds of music, propounded in all kinds of +philosophy. But it was always an Italy that existed in the brain of +some scholar whose learning was more or less divorced from reality. +Now reality demands that convictions be taken seriously, that ideas +become actions. Accordingly it was necessary that this Italy, which +was an affair of brains only, become also an affair of hearts, become, +that is, something serious, something alive. This, and no other, was +the meaning of Mazzini's great slogan: "Thought and Action." It was +the essence of the great revolution which he preached and which he +accomplished by instilling his doctrine into the hearts of others. Not +many others--a small minority! But they were numerous enough and +powerful enough to raise the question where it could be answered--in +Italian public opinion (taken in conjunction with the political +situation prevailing in the rest of Europe). They were able to +establish the doctrine that life is not a game, but a mission; that, +therefore, the individual has a law and a purpose in obedience to +which and in fulfillment of which he alone attains his true value; +that, accordingly, he must make sacrifices, now of personal comfort, +now of private interest, now of life itself. + +No revolution ever possessed more markedly than did the Italian +_Risorgimento_ this characteristic of ideality, of thought preceding +action. Our revolt was not concerned with the material needs of life, +nor did it spring from elementary and widely diffused sentiments +breaking out in popular uprisings and mass disturbances. The movements +of 1847 and 1848 were demonstrations, as we would say today, of +"intellectuals"; they were efforts toward a goal on the part of +a minority of patriots who were standard bearers of an ideal +and were driving governments and peoples toward its attainment. +Idealism--understood as faith in the advent of an ideal reality, as a +manner of conceiving life not as fixed within the limits of existing +fact, but as incessant progress and transformation toward the level of a +higher law which controls men with the very force of the idea--was the +sum and substance of Mazzini's teaching; and it supplied the most +conspicuous characteristic of our great Italian revolution. In this +sense all the patriots who worked for the foundation of the new kingdom +were Mazzinians--Gioberti, Cavour, Victor Emmanuel, Garibaldi. To be +sure, our writers of the first rank, such as Manzoni and Rosmini, had no +historical connection with Mazzini; but they had the same general +tendency as Mazzini. Working along diverging lines, they all came +together on the essential point: that true life is not the life which +is, but also the life which ought to be. It was a conviction essentially +religious in character, essentially anti-materialistic. + + +III + +This religious and idealistic manner of looking at life, so +characteristic of the _Risorgimento_, prevails even beyond the heroic +age of the revolution and the establishment of the Kingdom. It +survives down through Ricasoli, Lanza, Sella and Minghetti, down, that +is, to the occupation of Rome and the systemization of our national +finances. The parliamentary overturn of 1876, indeed, marks not the +end, but rather an interruption, on the road that Italy had been +following since the beginning of the century. The outlook then +changed, and not by the capriciousness or weakness of men, but by a +necessity of history which it would be idiotic in our day to deplore. +At that time the fall of the Right, which had ruled continuously +between 1861 and 1876, seemed to most people the real conquest of +freedom. + +To be sure the Right cannot be accused of too great scruple in +respecting the liberties guaranteed by our Constitution; but the real +truth was that the Right conceived liberty in a sense directly +opposite to the notions of the Left. The Left moved from the +individual to the State: the Right moved from the State to the +individual. The men of the left thought of "the people" as merely the +agglomerate of the citizens composing it. They therefore made the +individual the center and the point of departure of all the rights and +prerogatives which a régime of freedom was bound to respect. + +The men of the Right, on the contrary, were firmly set in the notion +that no freedom can be conceived except within the State, that freedom +can have no important content apart from a solid régime of law +indisputably sovereign over the activities and the interests of +individuals. For the Right there could be no individual freedom not +reconcilable with the authority of the State. In their eyes the +general interest was always paramount over private interests. The law, +therefore, should have absolute efficacy and embrace the whole life of +the people. + +This conception of the Right was evidently sound; but it involved +great dangers when applied without regard to the motives which +provoked it. Unless we are careful, too much law leads to stasis and +therefore to the annihilation of the life which it is the State's +function to regulate but which the State cannot suppress. The State +may easily become a form indifferent to its content--something +extraneous to the substance it would regulate. If the law comes upon +the individual from without, if the individual is not absorbed in the +life of the State, the individual feels the law and the State as +limitations on his activity, as chains which will eventually strangle +him unless he can break them down. + +This was just the feeling of the men of '76. The country needed a +breath of air. Its moral, economic, and social forces demanded the +right to develop without interference from a law which took no account +of them. This was the historical reason for the overturn of that year; +and with the transference of power from Right to Left begins the +period of growth and development in our nation: economic growth in +industry, commerce, railroads, agriculture; intellectual growth in +science, education. The nation had received its form from above. It +had now to struggle to its new level, giving to a State which already +had its constitution, its administrative and political organization, +its army and its finance, a living content of forces springing from +individual initiative prompted by interests which the _Risorgimento_, +absorbed in its great ideals, had either neglected or altogether +disregarded. + +The accomplishment of this constitutes the credit side of the balance +sheet of King Humbert I. It was the error of King Humbert's greatest +minister, Francesco Crispi, not to have understood his age. Crispi +strove vigorously to restore the authority and the prestige of the +State as against an individualism gone rampant, to reassert religious +ideals as against triumphant materialism. He fell, therefore, before +the assaults of so-called democracy. + +Crispi was wrong. That was not the moment for re-hoisting the +time-honored banner of idealism. At that time there could be no talk +of wars, of national dignity, of competition with the Great Powers; no +talk of setting limits to personal liberties in the interests of the +abstract entity called "State." The word "God," which Crispi sometimes +used, was singularly out of place. It was a question rather of +bringing the popular classes to prosperity, self-consciousness, +participation in political life. Campaigns against illiteracy, all +kinds of social legislation, the elimination of the clergy from the +public schools, which must be secular and anti-clerical! During this +period Freemasonry became solidly established in the bureaucracy, the +army, the judiciary. The central power of the State was weakened and +made subservient to the fleeting variations of popular will as +reflected in a suffrage absolved from all control from above. The +growth of big industry favored the rise of a socialism of Marxian +stamp as a new kind of moral and political education for our +proletariat. The conception of humanity was not indeed lost from view: +but such moral restraints as were placed on the free individual were +all based on the feeling that each man must instinctively seek his own +well-being and defend it. This was the very conception which Mazzini +had fought in socialism, though he rightly saw that it was not +peculiar to socialism alone, but belonged to any political theory, +whether liberal, democratic, or anti-socialistic, which urges men +toward the exaction of rights rather than to the fulfillment of +duties. + +From 1876 till the Great War, accordingly, we had an Italy that was +materialistic and anti-Mazzinian, though an Italy far superior to the +Italy of and before Mazzini's time. All our culture, whether in the +natural or the moral sciences, in letters or in the arts, was +dominated by a crude positivism, which conceived of the reality in +which we live as something given, something ready-made, and which +therefore limits and conditions human activity quite apart from +so-called arbitrary and illusory demands of morality. Everybody wanted +"facts," "positive facts." Everybody laughed at "metaphysical dreams," +at impalpable realities. The truth was there before the eyes of men. +They had only to open their eyes to see it. The Beautiful itself could +only be the mirror of the Truth present before us in Nature. +Patriotism, like all the other virtues based on a religious attitude +of mind, and which can be mentioned only when people have the courage +to talk in earnest, became a rhetorical theme on which it was rather +bad taste to touch. + +This period, which anyone born during the last half of the past +century can well remember, might be called the demo-socialistic phase +of the modern Italian State. It was the period which elaborated the +characteristically democratic attitude of mind on a basis of personal +freedom, and which resulted in the establishment of socialism as the +primary and controlling force in the State. It was a period of growth +and of prosperity during which the moral forces developed during the +_Risorgimento_ were crowded into the background or off the stage. + + +IV + +But toward the end of the Nineteenth Century and in the first years of +the Twentieth a vigorous spirit of reaction began to manifest itself +in the young men of Italy against the preceding generation's ideas in +politics, literature, science and philosophy. It was as though they +were weary of the prosaic bourgeois life which they had inherited from +their fathers and were eager to return to the lofty moral enthusiasms +of their grandfathers. Rosmini and Gioberti had been long forgotten. +They were now exhumed, read, discussed. As for Mazzini, an edition of +his writings was financed by the State itself. Vico, the great Vico, a +formidable preacher of idealistic philosophy and a great +anti-Cartesian and anti-rationalist, became the object of a new cult. + +Positivism began forthwith to be attacked by neo-idealism. +Materialistic approaches to the study of literature and art were +refuted and discredited. Within the Church itself modernism came to +rouse the Italian clergy to the need of a deeper and more modern +culture. Even socialism was brought under the philosophical probe and +criticized like other doctrines for its weaknesses and errors; and +when, in France, George Sorel went beyond the fallacies of the +materialistic theories of the Marxist social-democracy to his theory +of syndicalism, our young Italian socialists turned to him. In Sorel's +ideas they saw two things: first, the end of a hypocritical +"collaborationism" which betrayed both proletariat and nation; and +second, faith in a moral and ideal reality for which it was the +individual's duty to sacrifice himself, and to defend which, even +violence was justified. The anti-parliamentarian spirit and the moral +spirit of syndicalism brought Italian socialists back within the +Mazzinian orbit. + +Of great importance, too, was nationalism, a new movement then just +coming to the fore. Our Italian nationalism was less literary and more +political in character than the similar movement in France, because +with us it was attached to the old historic Right which had a long +political tradition. The new nationalism differed from the old Right +in the stress it laid on the idea of "nation"; but it was at one with +the Right in regarding the State as the necessary premise to the +individual rights and values. It was the special achievement of +nationalism to rekindle faith in the nation in Italian hearts, to +arouse the country against parliamentary socialism, and to lead an +open attack on Freemasonry, before which the Italian bourgeoisie was +terrifiedly prostrating itself. Syndicalists, nationalists, idealists +succeeded, between them, in bringing the great majority of Italian +youth back to the spirit of Mazzini. + +Official, legal, parliamentary Italy, the Italy that was +anti-Mazzinian and anti-idealistic, stood against all this, finding +its leader in a man of unfailing political intuition, and master as +well of the political mechanism of the country, a man sceptical of all +high-sounding words, impatient of complicated concepts, ironical, +cold, hard-headed, practical--what Mazzini would have called a "shrewd +materialist." In the persons, indeed, of Mazzini and Giolitti, we may +find a picture of the two aspects of pre-war Italy, of that +irreconcilable duality which paralyzed the vitality of the country and +which the Great War was to solve. + + +V + +The effect of the war seemed at first to be quite in an opposite +sense--to mark the beginning of a general _débâcle_ of the Italian +State and of the moral forces that must underlie any State. If +entrance into the war had been a triumph of ideal Italy over +materialistic Italy, the advent of peace seemed to give ample +justification to the Neutralists who had represented the latter. After +the Armistice our Allies turned their backs upon us. Our victory +assumed all the aspects of a defeat. A defeatist psychology, as they +say, took possession of the Italian people and expressed itself in +hatred of the war, of those responsible for the war, even of our army +which had won our war. An anarchical spirit of dissolution rose +against all authority. The ganglia of our economic life seemed struck +with mortal disease. Labor ran riot in strike after strike. The very +bureaucracy seemed to align itself against the State. The measure of +our spiritual dispersion was the return to power of Giolitti--the +execrated Neutralist--who for five years had been held up as the +exponent of an Italy which had died with the war. + +But, curiously enough, it was under Giolitti that things suddenly +changed in aspect, that against the Giolittian State a new State +arose. Our soldiers, our genuine soldiers, men who had willed our war +and fought it in full consciousness of what they were doing, had the +good fortune to find as their leaders a man who could express in words +things that were in all their hearts and who could make those words +audible above the tumult. + +Mussolini had left Italian socialism in 1915 in order to be a more +faithful interpreter of "the Italian People" (the name he chose for +his new paper). He was one of those who saw the necessity of our war, +one of those mainly responsible for our entering the war. Already as a +socialist he had fought Freemasonry; and, drawing his inspiration from +Sorel's syndicalism, he had assailed the parliamentary corruption of +Reformist Socialism with the idealistic postulates of revolution and +violence. Then, later, on leaving the party and in defending the cause +of intervention, he had come to oppose the illusory fancies of +proletarian internationalism with an assertion of the infrangible +integrity, not only moral but economic as well, of the national +organism, affirming therefore the sanctity of country for the working +classes as for other classes. Mussolini was a Mazzinian of that +pure-blooded breed which Mazzini seemed somehow always to find in the +province of Romagna. First by instinct, later by reflection, Mussolini +had come to despise the futility of the socialists who kept preaching +a revolution which they had neither the power nor the will to bring to +pass even under the most favorable circumstances. More keenly than +anyone else he had come to feel the necessity of a State which would +be a State, of a law which would be respected as law, of an authority +capable of exacting obedience but at the same time able to give +indisputable evidence of its worthiness so to act. It seemed +incredible to Mussolini that a country capable of fighting and winning +such a war as Italy had fought and won should be thrown into disorder +and held at the mercy of a handful of faithless politicians. + +When Mussolini founded his Fasci in Milan in March, 1919, the movement +toward dissolution and negation that featured the post-war period in +Italy had virtually ceased. The Fasci made their appeal to Italians +who, in spite of the disappointments of the peace, continued to +believe in the war, and who, in order to validate the victory which +was the proof of the war's value, were bent on recovering for Italy +that control over her own destinies which could come only through a +restoration of discipline and a reorganization of social and political +forces. From the first, the Fascist Party was not one of believers but +of action. What it needed was not a platform of principles, but an +idea which would indicate a goal and a road by which the goal could be +reached. + +The four years between 1919 and 1923 inclusive were characterized by +the development of the Fascist revolution through the action of "the +squads." The Fascist "squads" were really the force of a State not yet +born but on the way to being. In its first period, Fascist "squadrism" +transgressed the law of the old régime because it was determined to +suppress that régime as incompatible with the national State to which +Fascism was aspiring. The March on Rome was not the beginning, it was +the end of that phase of the revolution; because, with Mussolini's +advent to power, Fascism entered the sphere of legality. After October +28, 1922, Fascism was no longer at war with the State; it _was_ the +State, looking about for the organization which would realize Fascism +as a concept of State. Fascism already had control of all the +instruments necessary for the upbuilding of a new State. The Italy of +Giolitti had been superceded, at least so far as militant politics +were concerned. Between Giolitti's Italy and the new Italy there +flowed, as an imaginative orator once said in the Chamber, "a torrent +of blood" that would prevent any return to the past. The century-old +crisis had been solved. The war at last had begun to bear fruit for +Italy. + + +VI + +Now to understand the distinctive essence of Fascism, nothing is more +instructive than a comparison of it with the point of view of Mazzini +to which I have so often referred. + +Mazzini did have a political conception, but his politic was a sort of +integral politic, which cannot be so sharply distinguished from +morals, religion, and ideas of life as a whole, as to be considered +apart from these other fundamental interests of the human spirit. If +one tries to separate what is purely political from his religious +beliefs, his ethical consciousness and his metaphysical concepts, it +becomes impossible to understand the vast influence which his credo +and his propaganda exerted. Unless we assume the unity of the whole +man, we arrive not at the clarification but at the destruction of +those ideas of his which proved so powerful. + +In the definition of Fascism, the first point to grasp is the +comprehensive, or as Fascists say, the "totalitarian" scope of its +doctrine, which concerns itself not only with political organization +and political tendency, but with the whole will and thought and +feeling of the nation. + +There is a second and equally important point. Fascism is not a +philosophy. Much less is it a religion. It is not even a political +theory which may be stated in a series of formulae. The significance +of Fascism is not to be grasped in the special theses which it from +time to time assumes. When on occasion it has announced a program, a +goal, a concept to be realized in action, Fascism has not hesitated to +abandon them when in practice these were found to be inadequate or +inconsistent with the principle of Fascism. Fascism has never been +willing to compromise its future. Mussolini has boasted that he is a +_tempista_, that his real pride is in "good timing." He makes +decisions and acts on them at the precise moment when all the +conditions and considerations which make them feasible and opportune +are properly matured. This is a way of saying that Fascism returns to +the most rigorous meaning of Mazzini's "Thought and Action," whereby +the two terms are so perfectly coincident that no thought has value +which is not already expressed in action. The real "views" of the +_Duce_ are those which he formulates and executes at one and the same +time. + +Is Fascism therefore "anti-intellectual," as has been so often +charged? It is eminently anti-intellectual, eminently Mazzinian, that +is, if by intellectualism we mean the divorce of thought from action, +of knowledge from life, of brain from heart, of theory from practice. +Fascism is hostile to all Utopian systems which are destined never to +face the test of reality. It is hostile to all science and all +philosophy which remain matters of mere fancy or intelligence. It is +not that Fascism denies value to culture, to the higher intellectual +pursuits by which thought is invigorated as a source of action. +Fascist anti-intellectualism holds in scorn a product peculiarly +typical of the educated classes in Italy: the _leterato_--the man who +plays with knowledge and with thought without any sense of +responsibility for the practical world. It is hostile not so much to +culture as to bad culture, the culture which does not educate, which +does not make men, but rather creates pedants and aesthetes, egotists +in a word, men morally and politically indifferent. It has no use, for +instance, for the man who is "above the conflict" when his country or +its important interests are at stake. + +By virtue of its repugnance for "intellectualism," Fascism prefers not +to waste time constructing abstract theories about itself. But when we +say that it is not a system or a doctrine we must not conclude that it +is a blind praxis or a purely instinctive method. If by system or +philosophy we mean a living thought, a principle of universal +character daily revealing its inner fertility and significance, then +Fascism is a perfect system, with a solidly established foundation and +with a rigorous logic in its development; and all who feel the truth +and the vitality of the principle work day by day for its development, +now doing, now undoing, now going forward, now retracing their steps, +according as the things they do prove to be in harmony with the +principle or to deviate from it. + +And we come finally to a third point. + +The Fascist system is not a political system, but it has its center of +gravity in politics. Fascism came into being to meet serious problems +of politics in post-war Italy. And it presents itself as a political +method. But in confronting and solving political problems it is +carried by its very nature, that is to say by its method, to consider +moral, religious, and philosophical questions and to unfold and +demonstrate the comprehensive totalitarian character peculiar to it. +It is only after we have grasped the political character of the +Fascist principle that we are able adequately to appreciate the deeper +concept of life which underlies that principle and from which the +principle springs. The political doctrine of Fascism is not the whole +of Fascism. It is rather its more prominent aspect and in general its +most interesting one. + + +VII + +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] + +German writers often pretend that the Führer principle does not +necessarily result in the establishment of a dictatorship but that it +permits the embodiment of the will of the people in its leaders and +the realization of the popular will much more efficiently than is +possible in democratic states. Such an argument, for example, is +presented by Dr. Paul Ritterbusch in _Demokratie und Diktatur_ +(_Democracy and Dictatorship_), published in 1939. Professor +Ritterbusch claims that Communism leads to a dictatorial system but +that the Nazi movement is much closer to the ideals of true democracy. +The real nature of National Socialism, however, cannot be understood +from the standpoint of the "pluralistic-party state." It does not +represent a dictatorship of one party and a suppression of all others +but rather an expression of the will and the character of the whole +national community in and through one great party which has resolved +all internal discords and oppositions within itself. The Führer of +this great movement is at once the leader and the expression of the +national will. Freed from the enervating effects of internal strife, +the movement under the guiding hand of the Führer can bring the whole +of the national community to its fullest expression and highest +development. + +The highest authority, however, Hitler himself, has left no doubt as +to the nature of Nazi Party leaders. In a speech delivered at the +Sportpalast in Berlin on April 8, 1933, he said: + + When our opponents say: "It is easy for you: you are a + dictator"--We answer them, "No, gentlemen, you are wrong; + there is no single dictator, but ten thousand, each in his + own place." And even the highest authority in the hierarchy + has itself only one wish, never to transgress against the + supreme authority to which it, too, is responsible. We have + in our movement developed this loyalty in following the + leader, this blind obedience of which all the others know + nothing and which gave to us the power to surmount + everything.[58] + +As has been indicated above, the Führer principle applies not only to +the Führer of the Reich, Adolf Hitler, but to all the subordinate +leaders of the party and the government apparatus. With respect to +this aspect of the Führer principle, Huber (document 1, _post_ p. +155), says: + + The ranks of the public services are regarded as forces + organized on the living principle of leadership and + following: The authority of command exercised in the labor + service, the military service, and the civil service is + Führer-authority ... It has been said of the military and + civil services that true leadership is not represented in + their organization on the principles of command and + obedience. In reality there can be no political leadership + which does not have recourse to command and force as the + means for the accomplishment of its ends. Command and force + do not, of course, constitute the true nature of leadership, + but as a means they are indispensable elements of every + fully developed Führer-order.[59] + +The Führer principle is officially recognized by the party, and the +party interpretation thereof is set forth in the _Party Organization +Book_ (document 7 and charts 1 and 1-A, _post_ pp. 186, 488, 489). + +There are also included herein, as charts 2 and 2-A and 3 and 3-A +(_post_ pp. 490, 491, 492, 493), photostatic copies and translations +of two charts from _Der nationalsozialistische Staat_ (_The National +Socialist State_) by Dr. Walther Gehl, published in 1935. These charts +clearly show the concentration of authority in the Führer and the +subordinate relation of the minor leaders in both the state and the +party. + + +The Party: Leadership by an Elite Class + +_1. Functions of the Party_ + +The third pillar of the Nazi state, the link between _Volk_ and Führer, +is the Nazi Party. According to Nazi ideology, all authority within the +nation is derived ultimately from the people, but it is the party +through which the people expresses itself. In _Rechtseinrichtungen und +Rechtsaufgaben der Bewegung_ (_Legal Organization and Legal Functions of +the Movement_) (document 8, _post_ p. 204), published in 1939, Otto +Gauweiler states: + + The will of the German people finds its expression in the + party as the political organization of the people. It + represents the political conception, the political + conscience, and the political will. It is the expression and + the organ of the people's creative will to life. It + comprises a select part of the German people for "only the + best Germans should be party members" ... The inner + organization of the party must therefore bring the national + life which is concentrated within itself to manifestation + and development in all the fields of national endeavor in + which the party is represented.[60] + +Gauweiler defines the relationship of the party to the state in the +following terms: + + The party stands above and beside the state as the wielder + of an authority derived from the people with its own + sovereign powers and its own sphere of sovereignty ... The + legal position of the party is therefore that of a + completely sovereign authority whose legal supremacy and + self-sufficiency rest upon the original independent + political authority which the Führer and the movement have + attained as a result of their historical achievements.[61] + +Neesse states that "It will be the task of National Socialism to lead +back the German people to an organic structure which proceeds from a +recognition of the differences in the characters and possibilities of +human beings without permitting this recognition to lead to a cleavage +of the people into two camps."[62] This task is the responsibility of +the party. Although it has become the only political party in Germany, +the party does not desire to identify itself with the state. It does +not wish to dominate the state or to serve it. It works beside it and +cooperates with it. In this respect, Nazi Germany is distinguished +from the other one-party states of Europe: "In the one-party state of +Russia, the party rules over the state; in the one-party state of +Italy, the party serves the state; but in the one-party state of +Germany, the party neither serves the state nor rules over it directly +but works and struggles together with it for the community of the +people."[63] Neesse contends that the party derives its legal basis +from the law inherent in the living organism of the German _Volk_: + + The inner law of the NSDAP is none other than the inner law + of the German people. The party arises from the people; it + has formed an organization which crystallizes about itself + the feelings of the people, which seemed buried, and the + strength of the people, which seemed lost.[64] + +Neesse states that the party has two great tasks--to insure the +continuity of national leadership and to preserve the unity of the +_Volk_: + + The first main task of the party, which is in keeping with + its organic nature, is to protect the National Socialist + idea and to constantly renew it by drawing from the depths + of the German soul, to keep it pure and clear, and to pass + it on thus to coming generations: this is predominantly a + matter of education of the people. + + The second great task, which is in keeping with its + organizational nature, is to form the people and the state + into the unity of the nation and to create for the German + national community forms which are ever new and suited to + its vital development: this is predominantly a matter of + state formation. These two tasks, one of which deals with + substance and the other with function, belong together. It + is as impossible to separate them as it is to split up the + party into organism and organization, form and content.[65] + +Huber (document 1, _post_ p. 155) describes the tasks of the party in +similar terms. He states that the party is charged with the "education +of the people to a political people" through the awakening of the +political consciousness of each individual; the inculcation of a +"uniform political philosophy," that is, the teaching of Nazi +principles; "the selection of leaders," including the choice and +training of especially promising boys to be the Führers of the future; +and the shaping of the "political will of the people" in accordance +with the Führer's aims.[66] + +The educational tasks of the party are stressed by Beck, who develops +the idea that the _Volk_ can be divided into three main groups, "a +supporting, a leading, and a creative class."[67] It is the duty of +the leading class, that is, the party, from which the creative class +of leaders is drawn, to provide for the education of the supporting +class. + + Every member of the body of the people must belong to the + politically supporting class, that is, each one who bears + within himself the basic racial, spiritual, and mental + values of the people ... Here no sort of leading or creative + activity is demanded but only a recognition of the leading + and creative will ... Only those are called to leadership in + political life who have recognized the community-bound law + of all human life in purest clarity and in the all-embracing + extent of its validity and who will place all the powers of + their personal lives with the help of a politically moral + character in the service of the formation of community life + ... From the politically leading class arise the politically + creative personalities. These are the mysterious elemental + forces which are beyond all explanation by human reason and + which through their action and by means of the living idea + within them give to the community of the people an + expression which is fresh, young, and eternal. Here is the + fulfilment of the highest and purest political humanity ... + The education of the socialist personality is essentially + the forming of the politically supporting class within the + German people and the encouragement of those political + tendencies which make a man a political leader. To educate + to political creativeness is just as impossible as to + educate to genius. Education can only furnish the spiritual + atmosphere, can only prepare the spiritual living-space for + the politically creative personality by forming a uniform + political consciousness in the socialistic personality, and + in the development of politically creative personalities it + can at the most give special attention to those values of + character and spirit which are of decisive importance for + the development of this personality.[68] + +Goebbels in _The Nature and Form of National Socialism_ (document 2, +_post_ p. 170) emphasizes the responsibility of the party for the +leadership of the state: + + The party must always continue to represent the hierarchy of + National Socialist leadership. This minority must always + insist upon its prerogative to control the state. It must + keep the way open for the German youth which wishes to take + its place in this hierarchy. In reality the hierarchy has + fewer rights than duties! It is responsible for the + leadership of the state and it solemnly relieves the people + of this responsibility. It has the duty to control the state + in the best interests and to the general welfare of the + nation.[69] + +Dr. Frick, German Minister of the Interior, in his chapter in _Germany +Speaks_ indicates the exclusive position of the party in the Third +Reich: + + National Socialist Germany, however, is not merely a unitary + state: it is also a unitary nation and its governance is + based on the principle of leadership ... + + In National Socialist Germany, leadership is in the hands of + an organized community, the National Socialist Party; and as + the latter represents the will of the nation, the policy + adopted by it in harmony with the vital interests of the + nation is at the same time the policy adopted by the country + ... The National Socialist Party is the only political party + in Germany and therefore the true representative of the + people ...[70] + +To Dr. Ley, the party is identical with the Führer. As he wrote in the +_Angriff_ on April 9, 1942 (document 6, _post_ p. 184), "The National +Socialist Party is Hitler, and Hitler is the party." + +The role of the party in legislation, in political matters, and in the +appointment of Government officials is indicated by the Führer's +decree of May 29, 1941,[71] as amplified by the order of January 16, +1942, concerning its execution.[72] (Document 9, _post_ p. 212). This +order provides that all legislative proposals and proposed laws and +decrees, as well as any proposed changes therein, must pass through +and receive the approval of the Party Chancelry. + + +_2. Party Membership_ + +Details concerning the qualifications and duties of party members are +contained in the _Party Organization Book_ for 1940 (document 7, +_post_ p. 186). + + Membership is finally confirmed by the issuance of a + membership card or a membership book. Anyone who becomes a + party member does not merely join an organization but he + becomes a soldier in the German freedom movement and that + means much more than just paying his dues and attending the + members' meetings. He obligates himself to subordinate his + own ego and to place everything he has in the service of the + people's cause. Only he who is capable of doing this should + become a party member. A selection must be made in + accordance with this idea. + + Readiness to fight, readiness to sacrifice, and strength of + character are the requirements for a good National + Socialist. Small blemishes, such as a false step which + someone has made in his youth, should be overlooked; the + contribution in the struggle for Germany should alone be + decisive. The healthy will naturally prevail over the bad if + the will to health finds sufficient support in leadership + and achievement. Admission to the party should not be + controlled by the old bourgeois point of view. The party + must always represent the elite of the people.[73] + +German blood is one of the prerequisites for party membership. The +_Party Organization Book_ for 1940 (document 7, _post_ p. 186) also +states, "Only those racial comrades who possess German citizenship are +eligible for admission."[74] + +Party members shall not exceed ten per cent of the German population +of the region. "The ideal proportion of the number of party members to +the number of racial comrades is set at ten per cent. This proportion +is to apply also to the individual Province [Gau]."[75] + + +_3. Pledges and Symbols of Allegiance_ + +Party members take an oath of loyalty to the Führer in the following +terms: "I pledge allegiance to my Führer, Adolf Hitler. I promise at +all times to respect and obey him and the leaders whom he appoints +over me."[76] + + +(a) The Hitler Salute + +A pledge of allegiance to the Führer is also implied in the Nazi +salute, which is usually accompanied by the greeting, "Heil Hitler." +The phrase _mit deutschen Gruss_, which is commonly used as a closing +salutation in letters, is another form of the Hitler greeting. _Knaurs +Konversations-Lexikon_ (_Knaur's Conversational Dictionary_), published +in Berlin in 1934, contains the following definition: + + _German greeting_, Hitler greeting: by raising the right + arm; used by the old Germans with the spear as a greeting of + arms _[Waffengruss]._ Communal greeting of the National + Socialists; introduced into general use in 1933. + +That this greeting was used by the Nazis as early as 1923 is +demonstrated by a photograph which appeared in _Das Buch der NSDAP, +Werden, Kampf and Ziel der NSDAP_ (_The Book of the NSDAP, Growth, +Struggle, and Goal of the NSDAP_) by Walter M. Espe (Berlin, 1934), +illustration 34 (document 10, _post_ p. 214). + +In the same book (page 23 in the supplement entitled "_Die NSDAP_") +the following distinction is made between the usual Nazi greeting and +the Storm Troopers' salute: + + While the German greeting consists merely in raising the + right hand in any desired manner and represents rather a + general comradely greeting, the SA salute is executed, in + accordance with the specifications of the SA service + regulations, by placing the left hand on the belt and + raising the extended right arm. + + The SA salute is to be given to all higher ranking leaders + of the SA and the SS and of the veterans' organization which + has been incorporated into the SA, as well as to the Army + and the national and security police forces. + + The comradely German greeting is to be exchanged between all + equally ranking members of the SA and the SS and members of + a corresponding rank in the Army, the police, the veterans' + organization, the German air-sport league, the Hitler Youth, + the railway guards, and the whole membership of the party so + far as they are distinguishable by regulation uniforms. + + +(b) The Swastika + +Early in its history the Nazi Party adopted the swastika banner as +its official emblem.[77] It was designed by Hitler himself, who wrote +in _Mein Kampf_: + + I myself after countless attempts had laid down a final + form: a flag with a background of red cloth, having a white + circle, and, in its center, a black swastika.... + + As National Socialists we see our program in our flag. In + the _red_ we see the social idea of the movement, in the + _white_ the nationalistic idea, and in the _swastika_ the + fight for the victory of Aryan man and at the same time for + the victory of the idea of creative work, which in itself + always was and always will be anti-Semitic.[78] + +The swastika banner came into general use after January 30, 1933 as a +symbol of allegiance to the Hitler regime, but not until two years +later was it made the German national flag by the Reich flag law of +September 15, 1935.[79] Another law, decreed on April 7, 1937,[80] +specified that: + + The insignia which the NSDAP, its formations, and associated + organizations use for their officers, their structure, their + organization, and their symbols may not be used by other + associations either alone or with embellishments. + +It is interesting to note that party regulations forbid members to use +passport photographs in which they appear in party uniform or wearing +party insignia and that party members are forbidden to discuss foreign +policy with foreigners unless they are officially designated by the +Führer to do so. The pertinent regulations read: + + _Pass Photos on Identification Cards_ + + Members of the NSDAP must not use pass photos which show the + holder of any identification card in a uniform of the party + or of any of its formations. It is also forbidden to use as + pass photos pictures which show the person wearing a party + button. + + * * * * * + + _Conversations With Foreigners_ + + It is forbidden to all party members to engage in + discussions of foreign policy with foreigners. Only such + persons as have been designated by the Führer are entitled + to do so.[81] + + +The Totalitarian State + +The Weimar Constitution, although never formally abrogated by the +Nazis, was rendered totally ineffectual by two basic laws, promulgated +within two months after the seizure of power by the party. The first +of these was the "Decree of the Reich's President for the Protection +of the People and State" (document 11-I, _post_ p. 215), issued +February 28, 1933, the day after the Reichstag was burned down. It +suspended "until further notice"[82] articles of the Weimar +Constitution guaranteeing essential democratic rights of the +individual. Thus, according to article I of this decree, "restrictions +on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, +including freedom of the press, on the right of assembly and the right +of association, and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic, +and telephonic communications, and warrants for house-searches, orders +for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also +permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed."[83] The +abrogation by the Nazis of these fundamental rights of democracy has +never been repealed or amended. In fact, this decree represents the +presupposition and confirmation of the police sway established +throughout Germany by the Nazis.[84] + +The second basic law, known as the "Enabling Act," the "Law To Remove +the Distress of People and State," of March 24, 1933 (document 11-II, +_post_ p. 217), swept away parliamentary government entirely. By +abrogating the pertinent articles of the Weimar Constitution, it +enabled the Nazi Cabinet under Hitler's chancelorship to appropriate +money and legislate without any responsibility to the Reichstag or any +obligation to respect the Constitution. + +The dissolution of democracy in Germany was sealed by the unification +of the authoritarian Nazi Party with the German state. Soon after the +party came to power in 1933, steps were taken to effect and secure +this unity. The process is described by Huber (document 1, _post_ p. +155) as follows: + + On July 14, 1933 was issued the law against the formation of + new parties which raised the NSDAP to the only political + party in Germany [document 11-III] ... The overthrow of the + old party-state was accompanied by the construction of the + new movement-state [_Bewegungsstaat_]. Out of a political + fighting organization the NSDAP grew to a community capable + of carrying the state and the nation. This process was + accomplished step by step in the first months after the + National Socialist seizure of power. The assumption of the + office of Chancelor by the Führer of the movement formed the + basis for this development. Various party leaders were + appointed as _Reichsminister_; the governors of the + provinces were national leaders or _Gauleiter_ of the party, + such as General von Epp; the Prussian government officials + are as a rule _Gauleiter_ of the party; the Prussian police + chiefs are mostly high-ranking SA leaders. By this system of + a union of the personnel of the party and state offices the + unity of party and state was achieved.[85] + +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] + + * * * * * + +FOOTNOTES TO FIRST SECTION + +[Footnote 8: Huber, _Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches_ +(Hamburg, 1939), pp. 54-55.] + +[Footnote 9: _Ibid._, pp. 153-155.] + +[Footnote 10: _Ibid._, pp. 156-157.] + +[Footnote 11: _Ibid._, p. 157.] + +[Footnote 12: _Ibid._, p. 158.] + +[Footnote 13: _Ibid._, p. 163.] + +[Footnote 14: _Ibid._, p. 164.] + +[Footnote 15: _Ibid._, pp. 165-166.] + +[Footnote 16: Neesse, _Die Nationalsozialistische Deutsche +Arbeiterpartei--Versuch einer Rechtsdeutung_ (Stuttgart, 1935), p. +44.] + +[Footnote 17: _Ibid._, p. 51.] + +[Footnote 18: _Ibid._, p. 54.] + +[Footnote 19: _Ibid._, p. 58.] + +[Footnote 20: _Ibid._, pp. 54-56.] + +[Footnote 21: _Ibid._, p. 59.] + +[Footnote 22: _Ibid._, pp. 60-61.] + +[Footnote 23: _Ibid._, pp. 65-66.] + +[Footnote 24: Scurla, _Die Grundgedanken des Nationalsozialismus und +das Ausland_ (Berlin, 1938), pp. 10-11.] + +[Footnote 25: _Ibid._, p. 9.] + +[Footnote 26: _Ibid._] + +[Footnote 27: _Ibid._, p. 13.] + +[Footnote 28: Beck, _Die Erziehung im dritten Reich_ (Dortmund and +Breslau, 1936), p. 20.] + +[Footnote 29: _Ibid._, pp. 20-21.] + +[Footnote 30: _Ibid._, p. 35.] + +[Footnote 31: _Ibid._, pp. 52-55.] + +[Footnote 32: _Ibid._, p. 46.] + +[Footnote 33: _Ibid._, p. 57.] + +[Footnote 34: _Ibid._, p. 118.] + +[Footnote 35: _Ibid._, p. 140.] + +[Footnote 36: Rosenberg, _Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts_ (Munich, +1935), p. 28 (1st ed. 1930).] + +[Footnote 37: _Ibid._, p. 114.] + +[Footnote 38: _Ibid._, p. 479.] + +[Footnote 39: _Ibid._, p. 542.] + +[Footnote 40: Gottfried Feder, _The Programme of the Party of Hitler_ +(translated by E.T.S. Dugdale: Munich, 1932), p. 18.] + +[Footnote 41: Rosenberg, _Wesen, Grundsätze und Ziele der NSDAP_ +(Munich, 1933), pp. 16-18 (1st ed. 1922).] + +[Footnote 42: Rosenberg, _Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts_, p. 673.] + +[Footnote 43: Beck, _op. cit._, p. 110.] + +[Footnote 44: _Ibid._, p. 110.] + +[Footnote 45: Huber, "_Aufbau und Gefüge des Reiches_," published in +the book _Idee und Ordnung des Reiches_ (ed. by Huber: Hamburg, +Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1941), p. 12.] + +[Footnote 46: Huber, _Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches_ +(Hamburg, 1939), pp. 194-198.] + +[Footnote 47: _Ibid._, pp. 199-200.] + +[Footnote 48: _Ibid._, pp. 207-208.] + +[Footnote 49: _Ibid._, pp. 213-214.] + +[Footnote 50: _Ibid._, p. 230.] + +[Footnote 51: Neesse, _op. cit._, p. 146.] + +[Footnote 52: _Ibid._, p. 143.] + +[Footnote 53: _Ibid._, pp. 144-147.] + +[Footnote 54: _Germany Speaks_ (containing articles by twenty-one +leading members of the Nazi Party and the German Government: London, +1938), p. 31.] + +[Footnote 55: _Reichsgesetzblatt_ (1942), p. 247. (All citations to +the _Reichsgesetzblatt_ refer to part I thereof.)] + +[Footnote 56: Neesse, _op. cit._, p. 150.] + +[Footnote 57: Beck, _op. cit._, p. 131.] + +[Footnote 58: _My New Order_, p. 159.] + +[Footnote 59: Huber, _Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches_ +(Hamburg, 1939), p. 410.] + +[Footnote 60: Gauweiler, _Rechtseinrichtungen und Rechtsaufgaben der +Bewegung_ (Munich, 1939), p. 2.] + +[Footnote 61: _Ibid._, p. 9.] + +[Footnote 62: Neesse, _op. cit,_, p. 71.] + +[Footnote 63: _Ibid._, p. 119.] + +[Footnote 64: _Ibid._, p. 126.] + +[Footnote 65: _Ibid._, pp. 139-140.] + +[Footnote 66: Huber, _Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches_ +(Hamburg, 1939), pp. 293-296.] + +[Footnote 67: Beck, _op. cit._, p. 37.] + +[Footnote 68: _Ibid._, pp. 37-38.] + +[Footnote 69: Goebbels, _op. cit._, p. 19.] + +[Footnote 70: _Germany Speaks_, pp. 30-31.] + +[Footnote 71: _Reichsgesetzblatt_ (1941), p. 295.] + +[Footnote 72: _Ibid._, (1942), p. 35.] + +[Footnote 73: _Organisationsbuch der NSDAP_ (ed. by the National +Organizational Director of the NSDAP: Munich, 1940), p. 5.] + +[Footnote 74: _Ibid._, p. 6b.] + +[Footnote 75: _Ibid._, p. 6d.] + +[Footnote 76: _Ibid._] + +[Footnote 77: The German pocket reference book for current events +(_Taschen-Brockhaus zum Zeitgeschehen_: Leipzig, 1942) states that the +swastika banner was designed by Hitler for the NSDAP in 1919.] + +[Footnote 78: Adolf Hitler, _Mein Kampf_ (Munich, Verlag Frank Eher, +G.m.b.H., 1933 [copyright 1925]), pp. 556-557.] + +[Footnote 79: _Reichsgesetzblatt_ (1935), p. 1145.] + +[Footnote 80: _Ibid._ (1937), p. 442.] + +[Footnote 81: _Organisationsbuch der NSDAP_ (Munich, 1940), p. 8.] + +[Footnote 82: _Reichsgesetzblatt_ (1933), p. 83.] + +[Footnote 83: _Ibid._] + +[Footnote 84: In his book _Die deutsche Polizei_ (_The German Police_) +(_Darmstadt_, L.C. Wittich Verlag, 1941), p. 24, the prominent Nazi +police official, Dr. Werner Best, wrote that this law "is to be +regarded not as a 'police law'--that is, as the regulation of police +functions and activities--but as the expression of the new conception +of the state as it has been transformed by the National Socialist +revolution, from which the new 'police' concept is derived." Also, +this law was for the police "the confirmation that the work already +begun was in agreement with the law giving will of the Supreme +Leadership of the Reich."] + +[Footnote 85: Huber, _Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches_ +(Hamburg, 1939) p. 288.] + +[Footnote 86: Neesse, _op. cit._, p. 131.] + +[Footnote 87: Gauweiler, _op. cit._, p. 3.] + +[Footnote 88: Huber, _Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches_ +(Hamburg, 1939), p. 361.] + +[Footnote 89: _Ibid._, pp. 365-366.] + +[Footnote 90: _Ibid._, pp. 372-373.] + +[Footnote 91: _Reichsgesetzblatt_ (1937), pp. 39-70.] + +[Footnote 92: Gauweiler, _op. cit._, p. 156.] + +[Footnote 93: Reported in a bulletin of the official German news +agency, DNB, Apr. 14, 1942.] + + + + +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] + + +Propaganda + +_1. 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 ..._ + + The German Government is nevertheless prepared to give each + of the States named an assurance of the kind desired by Mr. + Roosevelt on the condition of absolute reciprocity, provided + that the State wishes it and itself addresses to Germany a + request for such an assurance together with appropriate + proposals.[110] + +And on September 1, 1939, with reference to the recently concluded +pact between Germany and Russia, he said: + + You know that Russia and Germany are governed by two + different doctrines. There was only one question that had to + be cleared up. Germany has no intention of exporting its + doctrine. Given the fact that Soviet Russia has no intention + of exporting its doctrine to Germany, I no longer see any + reason why we should still oppose one another. On both sides + we are clear on that. Any struggle between our people would + only be of advantage to others. We have, therefore, resolved + to conclude a pact which rules out forever any use of + violence between us.[111] + +Additional assurances of this nature are quoted in a series of +extracts from Hitler's speeches, dating from February 10, 1933 to +September 1, 1939, which was printed in the _London Times_ of +September 26, 1939 (document 14, _post_ p. 232). + + +_2. Internal Propaganda_ + +Within Germany the notorious propaganda machine of Dr. Goebbels, +together with a systematic terrorization of oppositionist elements, +has been the principle support of the rise and triumph of the Nazi +movement. In his _Legal Organization and Legal Functions of the +Movement_ (document 8, _post_ p. 204), Gauweiler gives an idea of the +permeation of all phases of national life with a propaganda designed +to make Nazi "legal principles" acceptable to the masses. He makes it +clear that all of the Nazi propaganda machinery is in the service of +this program; political lecturers, the press, the radio, and the films +all play a part in helping the people to understand and appreciate the +new legal code. The schools and Hitler Youth groups provide +instruction for all young people in the fundamentals of National +Socialist law, and pupils in those schools which train the carefully +selected future leaders are given an especially strong dose of Nazi +legal theory and practice. + +In order to appeal to the broadest audience, Nazi propaganda has +always sought to present all questions in the simplest possible terms. +Goebbels himself, in his _Nature and Form of National Socialism_ +(document 2, _post_ p. 170), wrote as follows: + + National Socialism has simplified the thinking of the German + people and led it back to its original primitive formulas. + It has presented the complicated processes of political and + economic life in their simplest terms. This was done with + the well-considered intention of leading the broad masses of + the people once again to take part in political life. In + order to find understanding among the masses, we consciously + practiced a popular [_volksgebundene_] propaganda. We have + taken complexes of facts which were formerly accessible only + to a few specialists and experts, carried them to the + streets, and hammered them into the brain of the little man. + All things were presented so simply that even the most + primitive mind could grasp them. We refused to work with + unclear or insubstantial concepts but we gave all things a + clearly defined sense. Here lay the secret of our + success.[112] + +The character and quality of Nazi propaganda was fully presaged in +_Mein Kampf_. Here Hitler paid a striking tribute to the power of +lies, commenting on-- + + the very correct principle that the size of the lie always + involves a certain factor of credibility, since the great + mass of a people will be more spoiled in the innermost + depths of its heart, rather than consciously and + deliberately bad. Consequently, in view of the primitive + simplicity of its mind it is more readily captivated by a + big lie than by a small one, since it itself often uses + small lies but would be, nevertheless, too ashamed to make + use of big lies. Such an untruth will not even occur to it, + and it will not even believe that others are capable of the + enormous insolence of the most vile distortions. Why, even + when enlightened, it will still vacillate and be in doubt + about the matter and will nevertheless accept as true at + least some cause or other. Consequently, even from the most + impudent lie something will always stick ...[113] + +A number of other passages display Hitler's low opinion of the +intellectual capacities and critical faculties of the masses: + + All propaganda has to appeal to the people and its + intellectual level has to be set in accordance with the + receptive capacities of the most-limited persons among those + to whom it intends to address itself. The larger the mass + of men to be reached, the lower its purely intellectual + level will have to be set.[114] + + The receptive capacity of the great masses is very + restricted, its understanding small. On the other hand, + however, its forgetfulness is great. On account of these + facts all effective propaganda must restrict itself to very + few points and impress these by slogans, until even the last + person is able to bring to mind what is meant by such a + word.[115] + + The task of propaganda is, for instance, not to evaluate + diverse rights but to emphasize exclusively the single right + of that which it is representing. It does not have to + investigate objectively the truth, so far as this is + favorable to the others, in order then to present it to the + masses in strict honesty, but rather to serve its own side + ceaselessly.[116] + + If one's own propaganda even once accords just the shimmer + of right to the other side, then the basis is therewith laid + for doubt regarding one's own cause. The masses are not able + to distinguish where the error of the other side ends and + the error of one's own side begins.[117] + + But all talent in presentation of propaganda will lead to no + success if a fundamental principle is not always strictly + followed. Propaganda has to restrict itself to a few matters + and to repeat these eternally. Persistence is here, as with + so many other things in the world, the first and most + important presupposition for success.[118] + + In view of their slowness of mind, they [the masses] require + always, however, a certain period before they are ready even + to take cognizance of a matter, and only after a + thousandfold repetition of the most simple concept will they + finally retain it.[119] + + _In all cases in which there is a question of the fulfilment + of apparently impossible demands or tasks, the entire + attention of a people must be concentrated only on this one + question, in such a way as if being or non-being actually + depends on its solution_ ... + + ...The great mass of the people can never see the entire way + before them, without tiring and doubting the task.[120] + + In general the art of all truly great popular leaders at all + times consists primarily in not scattering the attention of + a people but rather in concentrating it always on one single + opponent. The more unified this use of the fighting will of + a people, the greater will be the magnetic attractive force + of a movement and the more powerful the force of its push. + It is a part of the genius of a great leader to make even + quite different opponents appear as if they belonged only to + one category, because the recognition of different enemies + leads weak and unsure persons only too readily to begin + doubting their own cause. + + When the vacillating masses see themselves fighting against + too many enemies, objectivity at once sets in and raises the + question whether really all the others are wrong and only + one's own people or one's own movement is right.[121] + (Document 13-II, _post_ pp. 229-231.) + +It has been the aim of Nazi propaganda, then, to unite the masses of +the people in hatred of certain enemies, designated by such +conveniently broad and simple terms as "Jews," "democrats," +"plutocrats," "bolshevists," or "Anglo-Saxons," which so far as +possible were to be identified with one another in the public mind. +The Germans were represented to themselves, on the other hand, as a +racial folk of industrious workers. It then became possible to plunge +the people into a war on a wave of emotional hatred against those +nations which were pictured as combining to keep Germany from +attaining her rightful place in the sun. + +The important role which propaganda would have to play in the coming +war was fully recognized by Ewald Banse, an ardent Nazi military +theorist of the geopolitical school and professor of military science +at Brunswick Military College. In his book _Raum und Volk im +Weltkrieg_ (_Space and People in the World War_) which appeared in +1932 (an English translation by Alan Harris was published under the +title _Germany Prepares for War_ (New York, Harcourt, Brace and Co., +1934)), he stated: + + Preparation for future wars must not stop at the creation, + equipment and training of an efficient army, but must go on + to train the minds of the whole people for the war and must + employ all the resources of science to master the conditions + governing the war itself and the possibility of endurance. + In 1914 we had a first-class army, but our scientific + mobilization was bad, and the mobilization of men's minds a + thing undreamed of. The unveiling of war memorials, parades + of war veterans, flag-waggings, fiery speeches and + guard-mounting are not of themselves enough to prepare a + nation's mind for the dangers that threaten. Conviction is + always more lasting than enthusiasm. + + ... Such teaching is necessary at a time and in a world in + which countries are no longer represented by monarchs or a + small aristocracy or by a specialist army, but in which the + whole nation, from the commander-in-chief to the man in the + ranks, from the loftiest thought to the simplest wish, from + corn to coal, from the treasury vaults to the last + trouser-button, must be permeated through and through with + the idea of national defense, if it is to preserve its + national identity and political independence. The science of + national defense is not the same as military science; it + does not teach generals how to win battles or company + commanders how to train recruits. Its lessons are addressed + first and foremost to the whole people. It seeks to train + the popular mind to heroism and war and to implant in it an + understanding of the nature and prerequisite conditions of + modern warfare. It teaches us about countries and peoples, + especially our own country and its neighbors, their + territories and economic capacity, their communications and + their mentality--all for the purpose of creating the best + possible conditions for waging future wars in defense of the + national existence.[122] + + +Infiltration Tactics + +The Nazis, while entirely without scruple in the pursuit of their +objectives, endeavor whenever possible to give their actions the cloak +of legality. This procedure was followed in Germany to enable them to +gain control of the Government of the Reich and in their foreign +policy up to September 1, 1939. It has been a cardinal principle of +the Nazis to avoid the use of force whenever their objectives may be +attained in another manner and they have assiduously studied their +enemies in an effort to discover the weak points in their structure +which will enable the Nazis to accomplish their downfall. The +preceding pages have demonstrated that the Nazis have contributed +practically nothing that is original to German political thought. By +the use of unscrupulous, deceitful, and uninhibited tactics, however, +they have been able to realize many of the objectives which had +previously existed only in theory. + +The Weimar Constitution provided the Nazis with a convenient basis for +the establishment of the totalitarian state. They made no effort to +conceal their intention of taking advantage of the weaknesses of the +Weimar Republic in order to attain power. On April 30, 1928 Dr. +Goebbels wrote in his paper _Der Angriff_: + + We enter Parliament in order to supply ourselves, in the + arsenal of democracy, with its own weapons. We become + members of the Reichstag in order to paralyze the Weimar + sentiment with its own assistance. If democracy is so stupid + as to give us free tickets and salaries for this bear's + work, that is its affair ...[123] + +And later in the same article: + + We do not come as friends, nor even as neutrals. We come as + enemies. As the wolf bursts into the flock, so we come.[124] + +Hitler expressed the same idea on September 1, 1933, when, looking +back upon the struggle for political power in Germany, he wrote: + + This watchword of democratic freedom led only to insecurity, + indiscipline, and at length to the downfall and destruction + of all authority. _Our opponents' objection that we, too, + once made use of these rights, will not hold water; for we + made use of an unreasonable right, which was part and parcel + of an unreasonable system, in order to overthrow the + unreason of this system._[125] + +Discussing the rise to power of the Nazis, Huber (document 1, _post_ +p. 155) wrote in 1939: + + The parliamentary battle of the NSDAP had the single purpose + of destroying the parliamentary system from within through + its own methods. It was necessary above all to make formal + use of the possibilities of the party-state system but to + refuse real cooperation and thereby to render the + parliamentary system, which is by nature dependent upon the + responsible cooperation of the opposition, incapable of + action.[126] + +As its parliamentary strength increased, the party was able to achieve +these aims: + + It was in a position to make the formation of any positive + majority in the Reichstag impossible.... Thus the NSDAP was + able through its strong position to make the Reichstag + powerless as a lawgiving and government-forming body.[127] + +The same principle was followed by Germany in weakening and +undermining the governments of countries which it had chosen for its +victims. While it was Hitler's policy to concentrate on only one +objective at a time, German agents were busy throughout the world in +ferreting out the natural political, social, and economic cleavages in +various countries and in broadening them in order to create internal +confusion and uncertainty. Foreign political leaders of Fascist or +authoritarian persuasion were encouraged and often liberally +subsidized from Nazi funds. Control was covertly obtained over +influential newspapers and periodicals and their editorial policies +shaped in such a way as to further Nazi ends. In the countries Germany +sought to overpower, all the highly developed organs of Nazi +propaganda were utilized to confuse and divide public opinion, to +discredit national leaders and institutions, and to induce an +unjustified feeling of confidence in the false assertions of Nazi +leaders disclaiming any aggressive intentions. + +One of the most important features introduced by the Nazis into German +foreign policy was the appreciation of the value of Germans living +abroad and their organization as implements of the Reich for the +attainment of objectives in the field of foreign policy. This idea was +applied by the Nazis to all the large colonies of Germans which are +scattered throughout the world. The potential usefulness of these +colonies was early recognized by the men in Hitler's immediate +entourage, several of whom were so-called _Auslandsdeutsche_ who had +spent many years of their life abroad and were familiar with foreign +conditions and with the position and influence of German groups in +foreign countries. Of particular importance in this group were Rudolf +Hess, the Führer's Deputy, who was primarily responsible for +elaborating the policy which utilized the services of Germans abroad, +and Ernst Wilhelm Bohle, the leader of the Foreign Organization, who +was responsible for winning over these Germans to Naziism and for +their organization in groups which would serve the purposes of the +Third Reich. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 94: Feder, _op. cit._, p. 18.] + +[Footnote 95: Gauweiler, _op. cit._, pp. 149-151.] + +[Footnote 96: _Mein Kampf_, pp. 727-728.] + +[Footnote 97: _Ibid._, pp. 735-736.] + +[Footnote 98: Scurla, _op. cit._, p. 21.] + +[Footnote 99: _Ibid._, pp. 21-22.] + +[Footnote 100: _Ibid._, p. 23.] + +[Footnote 101: _Der Parteitag der Freiheit_ (official record of the +1935 party congress at Nuremberg: Munich, 1935), p. 27.] + +[Footnote 102: _Mein Kampf_, p. 743.] + +[Footnote 103: _Ibid._, pp. 754-755.] + +[Footnote 104: _Ibid._, pp. 437-438.] + +[Footnote 105: Rosenberg, _Wesen, Grundsätze und Ziele der NSDAP_, p. +48.] + +[Footnote 106: _London Times_, Sept. 26, 1939, p. 9.] + +[Footnote 107: _Ibid._] + +[Footnote 108: _Ibid._] + +[Footnote 109: _My New Order_, p. 592.] + +[Footnote 110: _Ibid._, pp. 669-671.] + +[Footnote 111: _Ibid._, p. 687.] + +[Footnote 112: Goebbels, _op. cit._, p. 6.] + +[Footnote 113: _Mein Kampf_, p. 252.] + +[Footnote 114: _Ibid._, p. 197.] + +[Footnote 115: _Ibid_., p. 198.] + +[Footnote 116: _Ibid._, p. 200.] + +[Footnote 117: _Ibid._, pp. 200-201.] + +[Footnote 118: _Ibid._, p. 202.] + +[Footnote 119: _Ibid._, p. 203.] + +[Footnote 120: _Ibid._, p. 273.] + +[Footnote 121: _Ibid._, p. 129.] + +[Footnote 122: Banse, _Germany Prepares for War_ (New York, 1934), pp. +348-349.] + +[Footnote 123: Goebbels, _Der Angriff: Aufsätze aus der Kampfzeit_ +(Munich, 1936), p. 71.] + +[Footnote 124: _Ibid._, p. 73.] + +[Footnote 125: _My New Order_, pp. 195-196.] + +[Footnote 126: Huber, _Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches_ +(Hamburg, 1939), p. 31.] + +[Footnote 127: _Ibid._, p. 32.] + + + + +NATIONAL-SOCIALISM AND MEDICINE +Address by Dr. F. Hamburger to German Medical Profession. Translated +(in part) from _Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift_, 1939, No. 6. + + +Medical men must beware of pride, a pride which is certainly +wide-spread and which leads to the disparagement of the practical +doctor and medical layman, and then further to the disparagement of +the craft of nature healers. The practical doctor and the nature +healer on the one hand tend towards an understandable disparagement of +medical science and analysis and, on the other hand, tend towards +superficiality. The superficiality of the opponents of science is, +however, as unhappy an affair as the pride of the so-called +scientists, but the one group should not demean the other. This would +lead to successful cooperation to the advantage of the sick and health +of the community. + +Academic medicine and nature healers generally have one thing in +common, that they underestimate the significance of automatism and +suggestion. In this regard there is an absence in both camps of the +necessary criticism and clarity. Successes are noted with specific +methods without any confirmation as to whether or not suggestion and +faith alone have not produced the improvement in the patient. + +National-Socialism is the true instrument for the achievement of the +health of our people. National-Socialism is concerned with the great +significance of inherited traits and with the insight into the working +of spiritual forces upon the body, with the study of the power of +custom and, along with this, of the significance of education and +nurture. (Hamburger here complains about the luxurious arrangement for +dealing with the mentally ill in contradistinction to the neglect of +Folk-health. This he attributes to the era of liberalism with its +stress upon the single individual. He here also attacks the Socialism +of Social Democracy and its conception of a Community of Equal Men. +This is a false Socialism.) + +So we scientists and doctors simply and soberly affirm the principle +of strength of faith and the nationalist socialist principle of +Positive Christianity which does not prevent us from the inspired +consideration of natural and divinely willed phenomena. We doctors +must never forget the fact that the soul rules the body. + +Soul forces are the most important. The spirit builds the body. +Strength springs from joy. Efficiency is achieved despite care, fear, +and uncertainty--We speak here of thymogenetic automatism or the +automatism of harmony ("thymogenetische automatismus oder +stimmungsautomatismus"). The autonomous nervous system achieves, under +the influence of joy, the expansion of the blood vessels in skin and +muscle.... The muscular activity incited by joy means the use of +calories and stimulation of appetite. Muscular contraction pulls and +draws at the bones, ligaments are tensed, breathing deepend, appetite +increased ... A child influenced by the daily exercise of joy develops +physically strong and powerful. ... The Soul care (Seele Sorge) of the +practical doctor is his most significant daily task alongside of +prescriptions and manipulative dexterity. + +Soul-care in the medical sense is a concern for the wishes, hopes and +fears of the patient, the considered participation in his fate. Such a +relationship leads to the all-important and generally recognized trust +in the doctor. This faith, in all cases, leads to the improvement, +often even to the elimination of symptoms, of the disease. Here we +have clearly before us the great significance of thymogenetic +automatism. + +Academic physicians should not dismiss this because we do not know its +biochemical aspects. (We must beware of regarding something as +unacceptable because it is not measurable in exact terms, he warns.) +We see its practical results, and, therefore, thymogenetic automatism +must stand in the first rank as of overwhelming significance. Thus, +also, the principle, strength through joy (Kraft durch Freude) stands +firmly as an inescapable natural law. + +We see the practical country doctor spreading courage and confidence. +For years too few doctors have seen clearly that gymnastic tourism and +sport do more for health than all doctors taken together. And now we +face the fact that a single man, a non-medical man (Hitler) through +his great qualities, has opened up new avenues of health for the +eighty million folk of Germany. + +In the majority of cases things so happen that the doctor must act +before making a diagnosis, since only the mis-educated patients, the +one-sided intellectual patient, wishes in the very first place to know +the diagnosis. But the unspoilt and properly ordered type of person +wishes only to be relieved of his pain. For him the diagnosis is an +interesting side issue but not the principle thing. We can thus also +understand why we always meet the desire for a diagnosis placed first +by the over-intellectualized Jewish patient. But that is not the case +with most Aryan patients. They, from the first, come to meet the +doctor with more trust. They do not entertain as many after-thoughts. +And I cannot help but remark that after-thoughts are hardly conducive +to right results. + +(After a discussion of the sterilization of the unfit and of +inheritable diseases he turns to the subject of child bearing.) + +It has been estimated that every couple should have four children if +the nation's population is to be maintained. But we meet already the +facile and complacent expression of young married people, "Now we have +our four children and so have fulfilled our obligations"--What +superficiality! Today we must demand a much higher moral attitude from +the wife than previously. Earlier it was taken for granted that a +woman would bear a child every one or two years. But today in this +time of manifold amenities of life, at a time when women is not denied +access to these joys it is understandable that she is eager to +participate in them. Add to this that the knowledge of birth control +is general today. Despite all this women must be encouraged to give +birth during twenty years of married life to eight or ten and even +more children, and to renounce the above-mentioned joys of life. She +must decide as a mother of children to lead a life full of sacrifices, +devotion, and unselfishness. It is only when these ethical demands are +fulfilled by a large number of worthy wives of good stock that the +future of the German nation will be assured. + +Doctors are leaders of the Folk more than they know ... They are now +quite officially fuehrer of the people, called to the leadership of +its health. To fulfill this task they must be free of the profit +motive. They must be quite free from that attitude of spirit which is +rightly designated as Jewish, the concern for business and +self-provision. + + + + +SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY + +Arendt, Hannah--_The Origins of Totalitarianism_, N.Y., 1951. + + Pt. III is especially directed to a discussion of the + principles and consequences of fascism. The author gives an + effective account of what "total domination" signifies in a + reign of terror. Detailed bibliography. + +Bodrero, Emilio--"Fascism" in _Dictatorship on Its Trial_, ed. by Otto +Forst de Battaglia, London, 1930. + + A brief, but significant, statement by a former Rector of + the University of Padua and a Secretary of State to + Mussolini. + +Borgese, G.A.--_Goliath, The March of Fascism_, N.Y., 1938. + + Well written from the point of view of an Italian humanist. + +Brady, Robert A.--_The Spirit and Structure of German Fascism_, +London, 1937. + + An extremely thorough and documented discussion of the + economy of National Socialist Germany, its institutions and + its business practices. + + See also: Brady's _Business as a System of Power_; chapters + on Germany, Italy and Japan. N.Y., 1943. + +Childs, H.L. and Dodd, W.E.--_The Nazi Primer_, N.Y., 1938. + + A translation of the "Official Handbook for Schooling the + Hitler Youth." In simple form including illustrations, it is + an excellent indication of the guiding principles of the + German educational system. + + Dennis, Lawrence--_The Coming American Fascism_, N.Y., 1936. + _The Dynamics of War and Revolution_, N.Y., 1940. + + Two books by the only fascist theorist in America. + +Fraenkel, Ernest--_The Dual State: A Contribution to the Theory of +Dictatorship,_ N.Y., 1941. + + By distinguishing between the "Prerogative State" and the + "Normative State," the author gives an effective account of + the attempt of the Nazis to acknowledge an indispensable, if + minimal, legal order, which was, comparatively speaking, + independent of the extra-legal realm of violence. + +Hartshorne, E.Y.--_The German Universities and National Socialism_, +Cambridge, 1937. + + A carefully documented account of what happened in the + various branches and departments of German universities + under the Nazis. + +Hitler, Adolph--_My Battle_, N.Y., 1939. + + Hitler's own vitriolic account of his attempt to rise to + power. + +Lasswell, Harold D.--"The Garrison State," _American Journal of +Sociology_, Chicago, Vol. XLVI, 1940-41, pp. 455-468. + + A brief but incisive discussion of the structure of fascism. + +Lilge, Frederic--_The Abuse of Learning: The Failure of the German +University,_ N.Y., 1948. + + A philosophical history of higher education in Germany, + concluding with its fascist evolution. + +Matteotti, Giacomo--_The Fascist Exposed: A Year of Fascist +Domination_, London, 1924. + + A factual account by a liberal, who, until murdered, was a + member of the Italian Senate. + +Minio-Paluello, L.--_Education in Fascist Italy_, N.Y., 1946. + + A detailed discussion of fascist education, including an + historical introduction to pre-fascist education. + +Neumann, Franz--_Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National +Socialism_, N.Y., 1942. + + Probably the most comprehensive and definitive statement in + English of the functioning of National Socialism. It + concentrates especially on the political and economic + aspects of Nazism. + +Pinthus, Kurt--"Culture Under Nazi Germany," _The American Scholar_, +Vol. IX, N.Y., 1940, pp. 483-498. + + A valuable treatment of the inner character of the arts and + letters and of what happened to their publics under the + Nazis. + +Sabine, G.H.--_A History of Political Theory_, N.Y., 1950. + + A brief chapter on "Fascism" gives an excellent balanced + account of its fundamentals. + + Salvemini, Gaetano--_The Fascist Dictatorship in Italy_, N.Y., 1927. + _Under the Axe of Fascism_, N.Y., 1936. + + An eminent Italian historian writes vividly and perceptively + on Italian Fascism. + +Schneider, Herbert W.--_Making the Fascist State_, N.Y., 1928. + + An early, but well considered, account of the rise of + Italian fascism. + +Silone, Ignazio--_Fontamara_, Verona, 1951. + + The best novel on Italian fascism. + +Spender, Stephen--_European Witness_, N.Y., 1946. + + Note especially the analysis of Goebbel's novel, _Michael_. + +Trevor-Roper, H.R.--_The Last Days of Hitler_, N.Y., 1946. + + An intimate portrayal of Hitler and his entourage from the + time of the beginning of the collapse of the Nazi armies. + Especially good on the rift between the politicians and the + military. + + + + +READINGS ON FASCISM AND NATIONAL SOCIALISM + +The catastrophe and holocaust brought about by the two powerful +movements of fascism and national socialism will mark human life +always. Now, as we feel our hatred for them, we find it difficult to +understand how they could have been so powerful, how they could have +appealed so strongly to millions of people of a modern age. + +And the documents whereby we could understand these philosophies have +been lost--except as they are now gathered here in one convenient +volume. + +To understand our own times, it is necessary to understand these +movements. And to understand them, we must read the basic +philosophical and political documents which show the force of the +ideas which moved a world to the brink of disaster. + + + THE FIRST SWALLOW PAPERBOOKS: + + 1. A FIELD OF BROKEN STONES by Lowell Naeve. + A profound book written in a prison. $1.65. + + 2. THE WIFE OF MARTIN GUERRE by Janet Lewis. + One of the fine short novels of all time. $1.25. + + 3. READINGS ON FASCISM AND NATIONAL SOCIALISM. + A grouping together of authoritative readings. $1.35. + + 4. THE TEACHER OF ENGLISH by James E. Warren, Jr. + The Materials and Opportunities of the teacher. $1.35. + + 5. MORNING RED by Frederick Manfred. + The most ambitious novel by a powerful writer. $1.95. + + + ALAN SWALLOW + 2679 So. York St., Denver 10, Colo. + +Cover design by Lowell Naeve + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14058 *** diff --git a/14058-h/14058-h.htm b/14058-h/14058-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..addd0e8 --- /dev/null +++ b/14058-h/14058-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,5395 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Readings on Fascism and National Socialism, by Various</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + text-indent: 1em; + } + H1,H5,H6 { + text-align: center; font-family: garamond; /* all headings centered */ + } + H2 { + text-align: center; font-size: 155%; color: maroon; font-family: garamond; /* centered and coloured */ + } + H3 { + text-align: center; font-size: 125%; color: maroon; font-family: garamond; /* centered and coloured */ + } + H4 { + text-align: center; font-family: garamond; font-weight: normal;/* all headings centered */ + } + HR { width: 33%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + .linenum {position: absolute; top: auto; left: 4%;} /* poetry number */ + .tdright {text-align: right;} /* aligning cell content to the right */ + .tdcenter {text-align: center;} /* aligning cell content to the center */ + .nodent {text-indent: 0em;} /* when don't want indenting */ + .tdleft {text-align: left;} /* aligning cell content to the left */ + .quot {margin-left: 5em; margin-right: 5em; text-indent: .5em;} + .quot2 {margin-left: 10em; margin-right: 10em; text-indent: 0em;} + .listdent {margin-left: 15em;} /* indent list */ + .totoc {position: absolute; right: 2%; font-size: 85%; text-align: right;} /* page numbers */ + .note {margin-left: 2em; margin-right: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} /* footnote */ + .tble {text-align: center;} /* centering tables */ + .pagenum {position: absolute; left: 92%; font-size: smaller; text-align: right;} /* page numbers */ + .sidenote {width: 20%; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding-left: 1em; font-size: smaller; float: right; clear: right;} + + .poem {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;} + .poem br {display: none;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem span {display: block; margin: 0; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 2em;} + .poem span.i4 {display: block; margin-left: 4em;} + hr.full { width: 100%; } + a:link {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + link {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + a:visited {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + a:hover {color:red} + pre {font-size: 8pt;} + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14058 ***</div> +<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, Readings on Fascism and National Socialism, +by Various, Edited by Alan Swallow</h1> +<hr class="full" /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<h2><b>READINGS ON FASCISM AND NATIONAL SOCIALISM</b></h2> + +<br /><br /><br /> + +<h3>Selected By Members Of<br /> +The Department Of Philosophy</h3> +<h3>University Of Colorado</h3> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: right;"> ALAN SWALLOW, <i>Denver</i></p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<br /><br /> + +<h3>PREFATORY NOTE</h3> +<br /> + +<p>The ensuing readings are presented to encourage the student to clarify +his thinking on social philosophy. He will accordingly need to +determine whether the readings contain a more or less coherent body of +ideas which constitutes a social philosophy. He will also need to +raise the more far-reaching question whether the ideas are acceptable. +To arrive at any satisfactory answer to this latter question, he will +necessarily have to compare the ideas of fascism and their practical +meanings with the alternatives, real and ideal, that are the substance +of live philosophical issues.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> + +<a name="toc" id="toc"></a><hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3>CONTENTS</h3> + +<div class='tble'> + <table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="1" width="85%" summary="Table of Contents"> + <tr> + <td width="85%" class="tdleft" style="white-space: nowrap;" valign="top"><a class="noline" href="#THE_DOCTRINE_OF_FASCISM"> + The Doctrine of Fascism</a><br /> + <i>by Benito Mussolini</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td width="85%" class="tdleft" style="white-space: nowrap;" valign="top"><a class="noline" href="#THE_POLITICAL_DOCTRINE_OF_FASCISM"> + The Political Doctrine of Fascism</a><br /> + <i>by Alfredo Rocco</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td width="85%" class="tdleft" style="white-space: nowrap;" valign="top"><a class="noline" href="#THE_PHILOSOPHIC_BASIS_OF_FASCISM"> + The Philosophic Basis of Fascism</a><br /> + <i>by Giovanni Gentile</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td width="85%" class="tdleft" style="white-space: nowrap;" valign="top"><a class="noline" href="#NATIONAL_SOCIALISM"> + National Socialism</a><br /> + <i>by Raymond E. Murphy, Francis B. Stevens,<br /> + Howard Trivers, Joseph M. Roland</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td width="85%" class="tdleft" style="white-space: nowrap;" valign="top"><a class="noline" href="#NATIONAL_SOCIALISM_AND_MEDICINE"> + National-Socialism and Medicine</a><br /> + <i>by Dr. F. Hamburger</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td width="85%" class="tdleft" style="white-space: nowrap;" valign="top"><a class="noline" href="#SELECTED_BIBLIOGRAPHY"> + Selected Bibliography</a></td> + </tr> + </table> +</div> + +<br /><br /><br /><br /> + +<a name="THE_DOCTRINE_OF_FASCISM"></a><hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<br /> + + +<h3>THE DOCTRINE OF FASCISM</h3><span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span> +<h3>by</h3> +<h3><span style="font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 110%">Benito Mussolini</span></h3> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em">From the +<span style="font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 110%">Encyclopedia Italiana</span>. Vol. XIV</p> + +<p class="quot2">The English translation of the "Fundamental Ideas" is by Mr. + I.S. Munro, reprinted by his kind permission from "Fascism + to World-Power" (Alexander Maclehose, London, 1933). </p> +<br /><br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 110%; margin-bottom: 1em"> +FUNDAMENTAL IDEAS.</p> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><b>1. Philosophic Conception.</b></p> + + +<p>Like every concrete political conception, Fascism is thought and +action. It is action with an inherent doctrine which, arising out of a +given system of historic forces, is inserted in it and works on it +from within. It has therefore a form co-related to the contingencies +of time and place; but it has at the same time an ideal content which +elevates it into a formula of truth in the higher region of the +history of thought.</p> + +<p>There is no way of exercising a spiritual influence on the things of +the world by means of a human will-power commanding the wills of +others, without first having a clear conception of the particular and +transient reality on which the will-power must act, and without also +having a clear conception of the universal and permanent reality in +which the particular and transient reality has its life and being. To +know men we must have a knowledge of man; and to have a knowledge of +man we must know the reality of things and their laws.</p> + +<p>There can be no conception of a State which is not fundamentally a +conception of Life. It is a philosophy or intuition, a system of ideas +which evolves itself into a system of logical contraction, or which +concentrates itself in a vision or in a faith, but which is always, +at least virtually, an organic conception of the world.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><b>2. Spiritualised Conception.</b></p> + +<p>Fascism would therefore not be understood in many of its +manifestations (as, for example, in its organisations of the Party, +its system of education, its discipline) were it not considered in the +light of its general view of life. A spiritualised view.</p> + +<p>To Fascism the world is not this material world which appears on the +surface, in which man is an individual separated from all other men, +standing by himself and subject to a natural law which instinctively +impels him to lead a life of momentary and egoistic pleasure. In +Fascism man is an individual who is the nation and the country. He is +this by a moral law which embraces and binds together individuals and +generations in an established tradition and mission, a moral law which +suppresses the instinct to lead a life confined to a brief cycle of +pleasure in order, instead, to replace it within the orbit of duty in +a superior conception of life, free from the limits of time and space +a life in which the individual by self-abnegation and by the sacrifice +of his particular interests, even by death, realises the entirely +spiritual existence in which his value as a man consists.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>3. Positive Conception of Life as a Struggle.</b></p> + +<p>It is therefore a spiritual conception, itself also a result of the +general reaction of the Century against the languid and materialistic +positivism of the Eighteenth Century. Anti-positivist, but positive: +neither sceptical nor agnostic, neither pessimistic nor passively +optimistic, as are in general the doctrines (all of them negative) +which place the centre of life outside of man, who by his free will +can and should create his own world for himself.</p> + +<p>Fascism wants a man to be active and to be absorbed in action with all +his energies; it wants him to have a manly consciousness of the +difficulties that exist and to be ready to face them. It conceives +life as a struggle, thinking that it is the duty of man to conquer +that life which is really worthy of him: creating in the first place +within himself the (physical, moral, intellectual) instrument with +which to build it.</p> + +<p>As for the individual, so for the nation, so for mankind. Hence the +high value of culture in all its forms (art, religion, science) and +the supreme importance of education. Hence also the essential value +of labour, with which man conquers nature and creates the human world +(economic, political, moral, intellectual).</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>4. Ethical Conception.</b></p> + +<p>This positive conception of life is evidently an ethical conception. +And it comprises the whole reality as well as the human activity which +domineers it. No action is to be removed from the moral sense; nothing +is to be in the world that is divested of the importance which belongs +to it in respect of moral aims. Life, therefore, as the Fascist +conceives it, is serious, austere, religious; entirely balanced in a +world sustained by the moral and responsible forces of the spirit. The +Fascist disdains the "easy" life.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>5. Religious Conception.</b></p> + +<p>Fascism is a religious conception in which man is considered to be in +the powerful grip of a superior law, with an objective will which +transcends the particular individual and elevates him into a fully +conscious member of a spiritual society. Anyone who has stopped short +at the mere consideration of opportunism in the religious policy of +the Fascist Regime, has failed to understand that Fascism, besides +being a system of government, is also a system of thought.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>6. Historical and Realist Conception.</b></p> + +<p>Fascism is an historical conception in which man could not be what he +is without being a factor in the spiritual process to which he +contributes, either in the family sphere or in the social sphere, in +the nation or in history in general to which all nations contribute. +Hence is derived the great importance of tradition in the records, +language, customs and rules of human society. Man without a part in +history is nothing.</p> + +<p>For this reason Fascism is opposed to all the abstractions of an +individualistic character based upon materialism typical of the +Eighteenth Century; and it is opposed to all the Jacobin innovations +and utopias. It does not believe in the possibility of "happiness" on +earth as conceived by the literature of the economists of the +Seventeenth Century; it therefore spurns all the teleological +conceptions of final causes through which, at a given period of +history, a final systematisation of the human race would take place. +Such theories only mean placing oneself outside real history and +life, which is a continual ebb and flow and process of realisations.</p> + +<p>Politically speaking, Fascism aims at being a realistic doctrine; in +its practice it aspired to solve only the problems which present +themselves of their own accord in the process of history, and which of +themselves find or suggest their own solution. To have the effect of +action among men, it is necessary to enter into the process of reality +and to master the forces actually at work.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>7. The Individual and Liberty.</b></p> + +<p>Anti-individualistic, the Fascist conception is for the State; it is +for the individual only in so far as he coincides with the State, +universal consciousness and will of man in his historic existence. It +is opposed to the classic Liberalism which arose out of the need of +reaction against absolutism, and had accomplished its mission in +history when the State itself had become transformed in the popular +will and consciousness.</p> + +<p>Liberalism denied the State in the interests of the particular +individual; Fascism reaffirms the State as the only true expression of +the individual.</p> + +<p>And if liberty is to be the attribute of the real man, and not of the +scarecrow invented by the individualistic Liberalism, then Fascism is +for liberty. It is for the only kind of liberty that is serious—the +liberty of the State and of the individual in the State. Because, for +the Fascist, all is comprised in the State and nothing spiritual or +human exists—much less has any value—outside the State. In this +respect Fascism is a totalising concept, and the Fascist State—the +unification and synthesis of every value—interprets, develops and +potentiates the whole life of the people.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>8. Conception of a Corporate State.</b></p> + +<p>No individuals nor groups (political parties, associations, labour +unions, classes) outside the State. For this reason Fascism is opposed +to Socialism, which clings rigidly to class war in the historic +evolution and ignores the unity of the State which moulds the classes +into a single, moral and economic reality. In the same way Fascism is +opposed to the unions of the labouring classes. But within the orbit +of the State with ordinative functions, the real needs, which give +rise to the Socialist movement and to the forming of labour unions, +are emphatically recognised by Fascism and are given their full +expression in the Corporative System, which conciliates every interest +in the unity of the State.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>9. Democracy.</b></p> + +<p>Individuals form classes according to categories of interests. They +are associated according to differentiated economical activities which +have a common interest: but first and foremost they form the State. +The State is not merely either the numbers or the sum of individuals +forming the majority of a people. Fascism for this reason is opposed +to the democracy which identifies peoples with the greatest number of +individuals and reduces them to a majority level. But if people are +conceived, as they should be, qualitatively and not quantitatively, +then Fascism is democracy in its purest form. The qualitative +conception is the most coherent and truest form and is therefore the +most moral, because it sees a people realised in the consciousness and +will of the few or even of one only; an ideal which moves to its +realisation in the consciousness and will of all. By "all" is meant +all who derive their justification as a nation, ethnically speaking, +from their nature and history, and who follow the same line of +spiritual formation and development as one single will and +consciousness—not as a race nor as a geographically determined +region, but as a progeny that is rather the outcome of a history which +perpetuates itself; a multitude unified by an idea embodied in the +will to have power and to exist, conscious of itself and of its +personality.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>10. Conception of the State.</b></p> + +<p>This higher personality is truly the nation, inasmuch as it is the +State. The nation does not beget the State, according to the decrepit +nationalistic concept which was used as a basis for the publicists of +the national States in the Nineteenth Century. On the contrary, the +nation is created by the State, which gives the people, conscious of +their own moral unity, the will, and thereby an effective existence. +The right of a nation to its independence is derived not from a +literary and ideal consciousness of its own existence, much less from +a <i>de facto</i> situation more or less inert and unconscious, but from an +active consciousness, from an active political will disposed to +demonstrate in its right; that is to say, a kind of State already in +its pride (<i>in fieri</i>). The State, in fact, as a universal ethical +will, is the creator of right.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>11. Dynamic Reality.</b></p> + +<p>The nation as a State is an ethical reality which exists and lives in +measure as it develops. A standstill is its death. Therefore the +State is not only the authority which governs and which gives the +forms of law and the worth of the spiritual life to the individual +wills, but it is also the power which gives effect to its will in +foreign matters, causing it to be recognised and respected by +demonstrating through facts the universality of all the manifestations +necessary for its development. Hence it is organization as well as +expansion, and it may be thereby considered, at least virtually, equal +to the very nature of the human will, which in its evolution +recognises no barriers, and which realises itself by proving its +infinity.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>12. The Rôle of the State.</b></p> + +<p>The Fascist State, the highest and the most powerful form of +personality is a force, but a spiritual one. It reassumes all the +forms of the moral and intellectual life of man. It cannot, therefore, +be limited to a simple function of order and of safeguarding, as was +contended by Liberalism. It is not a simple mechanism which limits the +sphere of the presumed individual liberties. It is an internal form +and rule, a discipline of the entire person: it penetrates the will as +well as the intelligence. Its principle, a central inspiration of the +living human personality in the civil community, descends into the +depths and settles in the heart of the man of action as well as the +thinker, of the artist as well as of the scientist; the soul of our +soul.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>13. Discipline and Authority.</b></p> + +<p>Fascism, in short, is not only a lawgiver and the founder of +institutions, but an educator and a promoter of the spiritual life. It +aims to rebuild not the forms of human life, but its content, the man, +the character, the faith. And for this end it exacts discipline and an +authority which descend into and dominates the interior of the spirit +without opposition. Its emblem, therefore, is the lictorian <i>fasces</i>, +symbol of unity, of force and of justice.</p> +<br /> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 110%; margin-bottom: 1em"> +Political And Social Doctrine</p> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>1. Origins of the Doctrine.</b></p> + +<p>When, in the now distant March of 1919, I summoned a meeting at Milan, +through the columns of the <i>Popolo d'Italia,</i> of those who had +supported and endured the war and who had followed me since the +constitution of the <i>fasci</i> or Revolutionary Action in January 1915, +there was no specific doctrinal plan in my mind. I had the experience +of one only doctrine—that of Socialism from 1903-04 to the winter of +1914 about a decade—but I made it first in the ranks and later as a +leader and it was never an experience in theory. My doctrine, even +during that period, was a doctrine of action. A universally accepted +doctrine of Socialism had not existed since 1915 when the revisionist +movement started in Germany, under the leadership of Bernstein. +Against this, in the swing of tendencies, a left revolutionary +movement began to take shape, but in Italy it never went further than +the "field of phrases," whereas in Russian Socialistic circles it +became the prelude of Bolscevism. "Reformism," "revolutionarism," +"centrism," this is a terminology of which even the echoes are now +spent—but in the great river of Fascism are currents which flowed +from Sorel, from Peguy, from Lagardelle and the "Mouvement +Socialiste," from Italian syndicalists which were legion between 1904 +and 1914, and sounded a new note in Italian Socialist circles +(weakened then by the betrayal of Giolitti) through Olivetti's <i>Pagine +Libere</i>, Orano's <i>La Lupa</i> and Enrico Leone's <i>Divenire Sociale</i>.</p> + +<p>After the War, in 1919, Socialism was already dead as a doctrine: it +existed only as a grudge. In Italy especially, it had one only +possibility of action: reprisals against those who had wanted the War +and must now pay its penalty. The <i>Popolo d'Italia</i> carried as +sub-title "daily of ex-service men and producers," and the word +producers was already then the expression of a turn of mind. Fascism +was not the nursling of a doctrine previously worked out at a desk; it +was born of the need for action and it was action. It was not a party, +in fact during the first two years, it was an anti-party and a +movement.</p> + +<p>The name I gave the organisation fixed its character. Yet whoever +should read the now crumpled sheets with the minutes of the meeting at +which the Italian "Fasci di Combattimento" were constituted, would +fail to discover a doctrine, but would find a series of ideas, of +anticipations, of hints which, liberated from the inevitable +strangleholds of contingencies, were destined after some years to +develop into doctrinal conceptions. Through them Fascism became a +political doctrine to itself, different, by comparison, to all others +whether contemporary or of the past.</p> + +<p>I said then, "If the bourgeoisie think we are ready to act as +lightning-conductors, they are mistaken. We must go towards labour. +We wish to train the working classes to directive functions. We wish +to convince them that it is not easy to manage Industry or Trade: we +shall fight the technique and the spirit of the rearguard. When the +succession of the regime is open, we must not lack the fighting +spirit. We must rush and if the present regime be overcome, it is we +who must fill its place. The claim to succession belongs to us, +because it was we who forced the country into War and we who led her +to victory. The present political representation cannot suffice: we +must have a direct representation of all interest. Against this +programme one might say it is a return to corporations. But that does +not matter. Therefore I should like this assembly to accept the claims +put in by national syndicalism from an economic standpoint...."</p> + +<p>Is it not strange that the word corporations should have been uttered +at the first meeting of Piazza San Sepolcro, when one considers that, +in the course of the Revolution, it came to express one of the social +and legislative creations at the very foundations of the regime?</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>2. Development.</b></p> + +<p>The years which preceded the March on Rome were years in which the +necessity of action did not permit complete doctrinal investigations +or elaborations. The battle was raging in the towns and villages. +There were discussions, but what was more important and sacred—there +was death. Men knew how to die. The doctrine—all complete and formed, +with divisions into chapters, paragraphs, and accompanying +elucubrations—might be missing; but there was something more decided +to replace it, there was faith.</p> + +<p>Notwithstanding, whoever remembers with the aid of books and speeches, +whoever could search through them and select, would find that the +fundamental principles were laid down whilst the battle raged. It was +really in those years that the Fascist idea armed itself, became +refined and proceeded towards organisation: the problems of the +individual and of the State, the problems of authority and of liberty, +the political and social problems, especially national; the fight +against the liberal, democratic, socialistic and popular doctrines, +was carried out together with the "punitive expeditions."</p> + +<p>But as a "system" was lacking, our adversaries in bad faith, denied to +Fascism any capacity to produce a doctrine, though that doctrine was +growing tumultuously, at first under the aspect of violent and +dogmatic negation, as happens to all newly-born ideas, and later under +the positive aspect of construction which was successively realised, +in the years 1926-27-28 through the laws and institutions of the +regime. Fascism today stands clearly defined not only as a regime, but +also as a doctrine. This word doctrine should be interpreted in the +sense that Fascism, to-day, when passing criticism on itself and +others, has its own point of view and its own point of reference, and +therefore also its own orientation when facing those problems which +beset the world in the spirit and in the matter.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>3. Against Pacifism: War and Life as a Duty.</b></p> + +<p>As far as the general future and development of humanity is concerned, +and apart from any mere consideration of current politics, Fascism +above all does not believe either in the possibility or utility of +universal peace. It therefore rejects the pacifism which masks +surrender and cowardice. War alone brings all human energies to their +highest tension and sets a seal of nobility on the peoples who have +the virtue to face it. All other tests are but substitutes which never +make a man face himself in the alternative of life or death. A +doctrine which has its starting-point at the prejudicial postulate of +peace is therefore extraneous to Fascism.</p> + +<p>In the same way all international creations (which, as history +demonstrates, can be blown to the winds when sentimental, ideal and +practical elements storm the heart of a people) are also extraneous to +the spirit of Fascism—even if such international creations are +accepted for whatever utility they may have in any determined +political situation.</p> + +<p>Fascism also transports this anti-pacifist spirit into the life of +individuals. The proud <i>squadrista</i> motto "<i>me ne frego</i>" ("I don't +give a damn") scrawled on the bandages of the wounded is an act of +philosophy—not only stoic. It is a summary of a doctrine not only +political: it is an education in strife and an acceptance of the risks +which it carried: it is a new style of Italian life. It is thus that +the Fascist loves and accepts life, ignores and disdains suicide; +understands life as a duty, a lifting up, a conquest; something to be +filled in and sustained on a high plane; a thing that has to be lived +through for its own sake, but above all for the sake of others near +and far, present and future.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>4. The Demographic Policy and the "Neighbour."</b></p> + +<p>The "demographic" policy of the regime is the result of these +premises. The Fascist also loves his neighbour, but "neighbour" is not +for him a vague and undefinable word: love for his neighbour does not +prevent necessary educational severities. Fascism rejects professions +of universal affection and, though living in the community of +civilised peoples, it watches them and looks at them diffidently. It +follows them in their state of mind and in the transformation of their +interests, but it does not allow itself to be deceived by fallacious +and mutable appearances.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>5. Against Historical Materialism and Class-Struggle.</b></p> + +<p>Through this conception of life Fascism becomes the emphatic negation +of that doctrine which constituted the basis of the so-called +scientific Socialism or Marxism: the doctrine of historical +materialism, according to which the story of human civilisation is to +be explained only by the conflict of interests between the various +social groups and by the change of the means and instruments of +production.</p> + +<p>That the economic vicissitudes—discovery of prime or raw materials, +new methods of labour, scientific inventions—have their particular +importance, is denied by none, but that they suffice to explain human +history, excluding other factors from it, is absurd: Fascism still +believes in sanctity and in heroism, that is to say in acts in which +no economic motive, immediate or remote, operates.</p> + +<p>Fascism having denied historical materialism, by which men are only +puppets in history, appearing and disappearing on the surface of the +tides while in the depths the real directive forces act and labour, it +also denies the immutable and irreparable class warfare, which is the +natural filiation of such an economistic conception of history: and it +denies above all that class warfare is the preponderating agent of +social transformation.</p> + +<p>Being defeated on these two capital points of its doctrine, nothing +remains of Socialism save the sentimental aspiration—as old as +humanity—to achieve a community of social life in which the +sufferings and hardships of the humblest classes are alleviated. But +here Fascism repudiates the concept of an economic "happiness" which +is to be—at a given moment in the evolution of economy—socialistically +and almost automatically realised by assuring to all the maximum of +well-being.</p> + +<p>Fascism denies the possibilities of the materialistic concept of +"happiness"—it leaves that to the economists of the first half of the +Seventeenth Century; that is, it denies the equation +"well-being-happiness," which reduces man to the state of the animals, +mindful of only one thing—that of being fed and fattened; reduced, in +fact, to a pure and simple vegetative existence.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>6. Against Democratic Ideologies.</b></p> + +<p>After disposing of Socialism, Fascism opens a breach on the whole +complex of the democratic ideologies, and repudiates them in their +theoretic premises as well as in their practical application or +instrumentation. Fascism denies that numbers, by the mere fact of +being numbers, can direct human society; it denies that these numbers +can govern by means of periodical consultations; it affirms also the +fertilising, beneficient and unassailable inequality of men, who +cannot be levelled through an extrinsic and mechanical process such as +universal suffrage.</p> + +<p>Regimes can be called democratic which, from time to time, give the +people the illusion of being sovereign, whereas the real and effective +sovereignty exists in other, and very often secret and irresponsible +forces.</p> + +<p>Democracy is a regime without a king, but very often with many kings, +far more exclusive, tyrannical and ruinous than a single king, even if +he be a tyrant. This explains why Fascism which, for contingent +reasons, had assumed a republican tendency before 1922, renounced it +previous to the March on Rome, with the conviction that the political +constitution of a State is not nowadays a supreme question; and that, +if the examples of past and present monarchies and past and present +republics are studied, the result is that neither monarchies nor +republics are to be judged under the assumption of eternity, but that +they merely represent forms in which the extrinsic political evolution +takes shape as well as the history, the tradition and the psychology +of a given country.</p> + +<p>Consequently, Fascism glides over the antithesis between monarchy and +republic, on which democraticism wasted time, blaming the former for +all social shortcomings and exalting the latter as a regime of +perfection. We have now seen that there are republics which may be +profoundly absolutist and reactionary, and monarchies which welcome +the most venturesome social and political experiments.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>7. Untruths of Democracy.</b></p> + +<p>"Reason and science" says Renan (who had certain pre-fascist +enlightenments) in one of his philosophical meditations, "are products +of mankind, but to seek reason directly for the people and through the +people is a chimera. It is not necessary for the existence of reason +that everybody should know it. In any case if this initiation were to +be brought about it could not be through low-class democracy, which +seems to lead rather to the extinction of every difficult culture and +of every great discipline. The principle that society exists only for +the welfare and liberty of individuals composing it, does not seem to +conform with the plans of nature: plans in which the species only is +taken into consideration and the individual appears sacrificed. It is +strongly to be feared that the last word of democracy thus understood +(I hasten to add that it can also be differently understood) would be +a social state in which a degenerated mass would have no preoccupation +other than that of enjoying the ignoble pleasures of the vulgar +person."</p> + +<p>Thus Renan. In Democracy Fascism rejects the absurd conventional +falsehood of political equality, the habit of collective +responsibility and the myth of indefinite progress and happiness.</p> + +<p>But if there be a different understanding of Democracy if, in other +words, Democracy can also signify to not push the people back as far +as the margins of the State, then Fascism may well have been defined +by the present writer as "an organised, centralised, authoritarian +Democracy."</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>8. Against Liberal Doctrines.</b></p> + +<p>As regards the Liberal doctrines, the attitude of Fascism is one of +absolute opposition both in the political and in the economical field. +There is no need to exaggerate the importance of Liberalism in the +last century—simply for the sake of present-day polemics—and to +transform one of the numerous doctrines unfolded in that last century +into a religion of humanity for all times, present and future. +Liberalism did not flourish for more than a period of fifteen years. +It was born in 1830 from the reaction to the Holy Alliance which +attempted to set Europe back to the period which preceeded '89 and had +its years of splendour in 1848, when also Pius IX was a Liberal. Its +decadence began immediately afterwards. If 1848 was a year of light +and poesy, 1849 was a year of weakness and tragedy. The Roman Republic +was killed by another Republic, the French Republic. In the same year +Marx issued his famous manifesto of Communism. In 1851 Napoleon III +made his anti-Liberal <i>coup d'état</i> and reigned over France until +1870. He was overthrown by a popular movement, following one of the +greatest defeats registered in history. The victor was Bismarck, who +always ignored the religion of liberty and its prophets. It is +symptomatic that a people of high civilisation like the Germans +completely ignored the religion of liberty throughout the whole +Nineteenth Century—with but one parenthesis, represented by that +which was called "the ridiculous parliament of Frankfurt" which lasted +one season. Germany realised its national unity outside of Liberalism, +against Liberalism—a doctrine which seemed alien to the German spirit +essentially monarchical, since Liberalism is the historical and +logical ante-chamber of anarchy.</p> + +<p>The three wars of 1864, 1866 and 1870 conducted by "Liberals" like +Moltke and Bismarck mark the three stages of German unity. As for +Italian unity, Liberalism played a very inferior part in the make-up +of Mazzini and Garibaldi, who were not liberals. Without the +intervention of the anti-Liberal Napoleon we would not have had +Lombardy, and without the help of the anti-Liberal Bismarck at Sadowa +and Sedan it is very likely that we would not have got Venice in 1866, +or that we would have entered Rome in 1870.</p> + +<p>During the period of 1870-1915 the preachers of the new Credo +themselves denounced the twilight of their religion; it was beaten in +the breach by decadence in literature. It was beaten in the open by +decadence in practice. Activism: that is to say, nationalism, +futurism. Fascism.</p> + +<p>The "Liberal Century" after having accumulated an infinity of Gordian +knots, sought to cut them in the hecatomb of the World War. Never did +any religion impose such a terrible sacrifice. Have the gods of +Liberalism slaked their blood-thirst?</p> + +<p>Liberalism is now on the point of closing the doors of its deserted +temples because nations feel that its agnosticism in the economic +field and its indifference in political and moral matters, causes, as +it has already caused, the sure ruin of States. That is why all the +political experiences of the contemporary world are anti-Liberal, and +it is supremely silly to seek to classify them as things outside of +history—as if history were a hunting ground reserved to Liberalism +and its professors; as if Liberalism were the last and incomparable +word of civilisation.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>9. Fascism Does Not Turn Back.</b></p> + +<p>The Fascist negation of Socialism, of Democracy, of Liberalism, should +not lead one to believe that Fascism wishes to push the world back to +where it was before 1879, the date accepted as the opening year of the +demo-Liberal century. One cannot turn back. The Fascist doctrine has +not chosen De Maistre for its prophet. Monarchical absolutism is a +thing of the past, and so is the worship of church power. Feudal +privileges and divisions into impenetrable castes with no connection +between them, are also "have beens." The conception of Fascist +authority has nothing in common with the Police. A party that totally +rules a nation is a new chapter in history. References and comparisons +are not possible. From the ruins of the socialist, liberal and +democratic doctrines, Fascism picks those elements that still have a +living value; keeps those that might be termed "facts acquired by +history," and rejects the rest: namely the conception of a doctrine +good for all times and all people.</p> + +<p>Admitting that the Nineteenth Century was the Century of Socialism, +Liberalism and Democracy, it is not said that the Twentieth century +must also be the century of Socialism, of Liberalism, of Democracy. +Political doctrines pass on, but peoples remain. One may now think +that this will be the century of authority, the century of the "right +wing" the century of Fascism. If the Nineteenth Century was the +century of the individual (liberalism signifies individualism) one may +think that this will be the century of "collectivism," the century of +the State. It is perfectly logical that a new doctrine should utilise +the vital elements of other doctrines. No doctrine was ever born +entirely new and shining, never seen before. No doctrine can boast of +absolute "originality." Each doctrine is bound historically to +doctrines which went before, to doctrines yet to come. Thus the +scientific Socialism of Marx is bound to the Utopian Socialism of +Fourier, of Owen, of Saint-Simon; thus the Liberalism of 1800 is +linked with the movement of 1700. Thus Democratic doctrines are bound +to the Encyclopaedists. Each doctrine tends to direct human activity +towards a definite object; but the activity of man reacts upon the +doctrine, transforms it and adapts it to new requirements, or +overcomes it. Doctrine therefore should be an act of life and not an +academy of words. In this lie the pragmatic veins of Fascism, its will +to power, its will to be, its position with regard to "violence" and +its value.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>10. The Value and Mission of the State.</b></p> + +<p>The capital point of the Fascist doctrine is the conception of the +State, its essence, the work to be accomplished, its final aims. In +the conception of Fascism, the State is an absolute before which +individuals and groups are relative. Individuals and groups are +"conceivable" inasmuch as they are in the State. The Liberal State +does not direct the movement and the material and spiritual evolution +of collectivity, but limits itself to recording the results; the +Fascist State has its conscious conviction, a will of its own, and for +this reason it is called an "ethical" State.</p> + +<p>In 1929 at the first quinquiennial assembly of the Regime, I said: "In +Fascism the State is not a night-watchman, only occupied with the +personal safety of the citizens, nor is it an organisation with purely +material aims, such as that of assuring a certain well-being and a +comparatively easy social cohabitation. A board of directors would be +quite sufficient to deal with this. It is not a purely political +creation, either, detached from the complex material realities of the +life of individuals and of peoples. The State as conceived and enacted +by Fascism, is a spiritual and moral fact since it gives concrete form +to the political, juridical and economical organisation of the +country. Furthermore this organisation as it rises and develops, is a +manifestation of the spirit. The State is a safeguard of interior and +exterior safety but it is also the keeper and the transmitter of the +spirit of the people, as it was elaborated throughout the ages, in its +language, customs and beliefs. The State is not only the present, but +it is also the past and above all the future. The State, inasmuch as +it transcends the short limits of individual lives, represents the +immanent conscience of the nation. The forms in which the State +expresses itself are subject to changes, but the necessity for the +State remains. It is the State which educates the citizens in civic +virtues, gives them a consciousness of their mission, presses them +towards unity; the State harmonizes their interests through justice, +transmits to prosperity the attainments of thoughts, in science, in +art, in laws, in the solidarity of mankind. The State leads men from +primitive tribal life to that highest expression of human power which +is Empire; links up through the centuries the names of those who died +to preserve its integrity or to obey its laws; holds up the memory of +the leaders who increased its territory, and of the geniuses who cast +the light of glory upon it, as an example for future generations to +follow. When the conception of the State declines and disintegrating +or centrifugal tendencies prevail, whether of individuals or groups, +then the national society is about to set."</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>11. The Unity of the State and the Contradictions of Capitalism.</b></p> + +<p>From 1929 onwards to the present day, the universal, political and +economical evolution has still further strengthened the doctrinal +positions. The giant who rules is the State. The one who can resolve +the dramatic contradictions of capital is the State. What is called +the crisis cannot be resolved except by the State and in the State. +Where are the ghosts of Jules Simon who, at the dawn of Liberalism, +proclaimed that "the State must set to work to make itself useless and +prepare its resignation?" Of MacCulloch who, in the second half of the +past century, proclaimed that the State must abstain from ruling? What +would the Englishman Bentham say today to the continual and +inevitably-invoked intervention of the State in the sphere of +economics, while, according to his theories, industry should ask no +more of the State than to be left in peace? Or the German Humboldt +according to whom an "idle" State was the best kind of State? It is +true that the second wave of Liberal economists were less extreme than +the first, and Adam Smith himself opened the door—if only very +cautiously—to let State intervention into the economic field.</p> + +<p>If Liberalism signifies the individual—then Fascism signifies the +State. But the Fascist State is unique of its kind and is an original +creation. It is not reactionary but revolutionary, inasmuch as it +anticipates the solution of certain universal problems such as those +which are treated elsewhere: 1) in the political sphere, by the +subdivisions of parties, in the preponderance of parliamentarism and +in the irresponsibilities of assemblies; 2) in the economic sphere, by +the functions of trade unions which are becoming constantly more +numerous and powerful, whether in the labour or industrial fields, in +their conflicts and combinations, and 3) in the moral sphere by the +necessity of order, discipline, obedience to those who are the moral +dictators of the country. Fascism wants the State to be strong, +organic and at the same time supported on a wide popular basis. As +part of its task the Fascist State has penetrated the economic field: +through the corporative, social and educational institutions which it +has created. The presence of the State is felt in the remotest +ramifications of the country. And in the State also, all the +political, economic and spiritual forces of the nation circulate, +mustered in their respective organisations.</p> + +<p>A State which stands on the support of millions of individuals who +recognise it, who believe in it, who are ready to serve it, is not the +tyrannical State of the mediaeval lord. It has nothing in common with +the absolutist States before or after '89. The individual in the +Fascist State is not annulled but rather multiplied, just as in a +regiment a soldier is not diminished, but multiplied by the number of +his comrades.</p> + +<p>The Fascist State organises the nation, but leaves a sufficient margin +afterward to the individual; it has limited the useless or harmful +liberties and has preserved the essential ones. The one to judge in +this respect is not the individual but the State.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>12. The Fascist State and Religion.</b></p> + +<p>The Fascist State is not indifferent to the presence or the fact of +religion in general nor to the presence of that particular established +religion, which is Italian Catholicism. The State has no theology, but +it has morality. In the Fascist State religion is considered as one of +the most profound manifestations of the spirit; it is therefore not +only respected, but defended and protected. The Fascist State does not +create its own "God," as Robespierre wanted to do at a certain moment +in the frenzies of the Convention; nor does it vainly endeavour to +cancel the idea of God from the mind as Bolschevism tries to do. +Fascism respects the God of the ascetics, of the saints and of the +heroes. It also respects God as he is conceived and prayed to in the +ingenuous and primitive heart of the people.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>13. Empire and Discipline.</b></p> + +<p>The Fascist State is a will expressing power and empire. The Roman +tradition here becomes an idea of force. In the Fascist doctrine, +empire is not only a territorial or a military, or a commercial +expression: it is a moral and a spiritual one. An empire can be +thought of, for instance, as a nation which directly or indirectly +guides other nations—without the need of conquering a single mile of +territory. For Fascism, the tendency to empire, that is to say the +expansion of nations, is a manifestation of vitality, its contrary +(the stay-at-home attitude) is a sign of decadence. Peoples who rise, +or who suddenly flourish again, are imperialistic; peoples who die are +peoples who abdicate. Fascism is a doctrine which most adequately +represents the tendencies, the state of mind of a people like the +Italian people, which is rising again after many centuries of +abandonment and of foreign servitude.</p> + +<p>But empire requires discipline, the coordination of forces, duty and +sacrifice. This explains many phases of the practical action of the +regime. It explains the aims of many of the forces of the State and +the necessary severity against those who would oppose themselves to +this spontaneous and irresistible movement of the Italy of the +Twentieth century by trying to appeal to the discredited ideologies of +the Nineteenth century, which have been repudiated wherever great +experiments of political and social transformation have been daringly +undertaken.</p> + +<p>Never more than at the present moment have the nations felt such a +thirst for an authority, for a direction, for order. If every century +has its own peculiar doctrine, there are a thousand indications that +Fascism is that of the present century. That it is a doctrine of life +is shown by the fact that it has created a faith; that the faith has +taken possession of the mind is demonstrated by the fact that Fascism +has had its Fallen and its martyrs.</p> + +<p>Fascism has now attained in the world an universality over all +doctrines. Being realised, it represents an epoch in the history of +the human mind.</p> + +<br /><br /> + +<a name="THE_POLITICAL_DOCTRINE_OF_FASCISM"></a><hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<br /> + +<h3>THE POLITICAL DOCTRINE OF FASCISM<a name="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1"><sup>[1]</sup></a></h3><span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span> +<h3>by</h3> +<h3><span style="font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 110%">His Excellency Alfredo Rocco</span></h3> + +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em"> +<span style="font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 110%"> +Premier Mussolini's Endorsement Of Signor Rocco's Speech</span></p> +<br /> + +<p class="quot">The following message was sent by Benito Mussolini, the Premier of +Italy, to Signor Rocco after he had delivered his speech at Perugia.</p> + +<p class="quot">Dear Rocco,<br /><br /> +I have just read your magnificent address which I endorse + throughout. You have presented in a masterful way the + doctrine of Fascism. For Fascism has a doctrine, or, if you + will, a particular philosophy with regard to all the + questions which beset the human mind today. All Italian + Fascists should read your discourse and derive from it both + the clear formulation of the basic principles of our program + as well as the reasons why Fascism must be systematically, + firmly, and rationally inflexible in its uncompromising + attitude towards other parties. Thus and only thus can the + word become flesh and the ideas be turned into deeds.<br /><br /> + +Cordial greetings,<br /> +<span style="font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 110%">Mussolini</span>.</p> + +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>Fascism As Action, As Feeling, and As Thought</b></p> + +<p>Much has been said, and is now being said for or against this complex +political and social phenomenon which in the brief period of six years +has taken complete hold of Italian life and, spreading beyond the +borders of the Kingdom, has made itself felt in varying degrees of +intensity throughout the world. But people have been much more eager +to extol or to deplore than to understand—which is natural enough in +a period of tumultuous fervor and of political passion. The time has +not yet arrived for a dispassionate judgment. For even I, who noticed +the very first manifestations of this great development, saw its +significance from the start and participated directly in its first +doings, carefully watching all its early uncertain and changing +developments, even I do not feel competent to pass definite judgment. +Fascism is so large a part of myself that it would be both arbitrary +and absurd for me to try to dissociate my personality from it, to +submit it to impartial scrutiny in order to evaluate it coldly and +accurately. What can be done, however, and it seldom is attempted, is +to make inquiry into the phenomenon which shall not merely consider +its fragmentary and adventitious aspects, but strive to get at its +inner essence. The undertaking may not be easy, but it is necessary, +and no occasion for attempting it is more suitable than the present +one afforded me by my friends of Perugia. Suitable it is in time +because, at the inauguration of a course of lectures and lessons +principally intended to illustrate that old and glorious trend of the +life and history of Italy which takes its name from the humble saint +of Assisi, it seemed natural to connect it with the greatest +achievement of modern Italy, different in so many ways from the +Franciscan movement, but united with it by the mighty common current +of Italian History. It is suitable as well in place because at +Perugia, which witnessed the growth of our religious ideas, of our +political doctrines and of our legal science in the course of the most +glorious centuries of our cultural history, the mind is properly +disposed and almost oriented towards an investigation of this nature.</p> + +<p>First of all let us ask ourselves if there is a political doctrine of +Fascism; if there is any ideal content in the Fascist state. For in +order to link Fascism, both as concept and system, with the history of +Italian thought and find therein a place for it, we must first show +that it is thought; that it is a doctrine. Many persons are not quite +convinced that it is either the one or the other; and I am not +referring solely to those men, cultured or uncultured, as the case may +be and very numerous everywhere, who can discern in this political +innovation nothing except its local and personal aspects, and who know +Fascism only as the particular manner of behavior of this or that +well-known Fascist, of this or that group of a certain town; who +therefore like or dislike the movement on the basis of their likes and +dislikes for the individuals who represent it. Nor do I refer to those +intelligent, and cultivated persons, very intelligent indeed and very +cultivated, who because of their direct or indirect allegiance to the +parties that have been dispossessed by the advent of Fascism, have a +natural cause of resentment against it and are therefore unable to +see, in the blindness of hatred, anything good in it. I am referring +rather to those—and there are many in our ranks too—who know Fascism +as action and feeling but not yet as thought, who therefore have an +intuition but no comprehension of it.</p> + +<p>It is true that Fascism is, above all, action and sentiment and that +such it must continue to be. Were it otherwise, it could not keep up +that immense driving force, that renovating power which it now +possesses and would merely be the solitary meditation of a chosen few. +Only because it is feeling and sentiment, only because it is the +unconscious reawakening of our profound racial instinct, has it the +force to stir the soul of the people, and to set free an irresistible +current of national will. Only because it is action, and as such +actualizes itself in a vast organization and in a huge movement, has +it the conditions for determining the historical course of +contemporary Italy.</p> + +<p>But Fascism is thought as well and it has a theory, which is an +essential part of this historical phenomenon, and which is responsible +in a great measure for the successes that have been achieved. To the +existence of this ideal content of Fascism, to the truth of this +Fascist logic we ascribe the fact that though we commit many errors of +detail, we very seldom go astray on fundamentals, whereas all the +parties of the opposition, deprived as they are of an informing, +animating principle, of a unique directing concept, do very often wage +their war faultlessly in minor tactics, better trained as they are in +parliamentary and journalistic manoeuvres, but they constantly break +down on the important issues. Fascism, moreover, considered as action, +is a typically Italian phenomenon and acquires a universal validity +because of the existence of this coherent and organic doctrine. The +originality of Fascism is due in great part to the autonomy of its +theoretical principles. For even when, in its external behavior and in +its conclusions, it seems identical with other political creeds, in +reality it possesses an inner originality due to the new spirit which +animates it and to an entirely different theoretical approach.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>Common Origins and Common Background of Modern Political Doctrines:<br /> +From Liberalism to Socialism</b></p> + +<p>Modern political thought remained, until recently, both in Italy and +outside of Italy under the absolute control of those doctrines which, +proceeding from the Protestant Reformation and developed by the +adepts of natural law in the XVII and XVIII centuries, were firmly +grounded in the institutions and customs of the English, of the +American, and of the French Revolutions. Under different and sometimes +clashing forms these doctrines have left a determining imprint upon +all theories and actions both social and political, of the XIX and XX +centuries down to the rise of Fascism. The common basis of all these +doctrines, which stretch from Longuet, from Buchanan, and from +Althusen down to Karl Marx, to Wilson and to Lenin is a social and +state concept which I shall call mechanical or atomistic.</p> + +<p>Society according to this concept is merely a sum total of +individuals, a plurality which breaks up into its single components. +Therefore the ends of a society, so considered, are nothing more than +the ends of the individuals which compose it and for whose sake it +exists. An atomistic view of this kind is also necessarily +anti-historical, inasmuch as it considers society in its spatial +attributes and not in its temporal ones; and because it reduces social +life to the existence of a single generation. Society becomes thus a +sum of determined individuals, viz., the generation living at a given +moment. This doctrine which I call atomistic and which appears to be +anti-historical, reveals from under a concealing cloak a strongly +materialistic nature. For in its endeavors to isolate the present from +the past and the future, it rejects the spiritual inheritance of ideas +and sentiments which each generation receives from those preceding and +hands down to the following generation thus destroying the unity and +the spiritual life itself of human society.</p> + +<p>This common basis shows the close logical connection existing between +all political doctrines; the substantial solidarity, which unites all +the political movements, from Liberalism to Socialism, that until +recently have dominated Europe. For these political schools differ +from one another in their methods, but all agree as to the ends to be +achieved. All of them consider the welfare and happiness of +individuals to be the goal of society, itself considered as composed +of individuals of the present generation. All of them see in society +and in its juridical organization, the state, the mere instrument and +means whereby individuals can attain their ends. They differ only in +that the methods pursued for the attainment of these ends vary +considerably one from the other.</p> + +<p>Thus the Liberals insist that the best manner to secure the welfare of +the citizens as individuals is to interfere as little as possible with +the free development of their activities and that therefore the +essential task of the state is merely to coordinate these several +liberties in such a way as to guarantee their coexistence. Kant, who +was without doubt the most powerful and thorough philosopher of +liberalism, said, "man, who is the end, cannot be assumed to have the +value of an instrument." And again, "justice, of which the state is +the specific organ, is the condition whereby the freedom of each is +conditioned upon the freedom of others, according to the general law +of liberty."</p> + +<p>Having thus defined the task of the state, Liberalism confines itself +to the demand of certain guarantees which are to keep the state from +overstepping its functions as general coordinator of liberties and +from sacrificing the freedom of individuals more than is absolutely +necessary for the accomplishment of its purpose. All the efforts are +therefore directed to see to it that the ruler, mandatory of all and +entrusted with the realization, through and by liberty, of the +harmonious happiness of everybody, should never be clothed with undue +power. Hence the creation of a system of checks and limitations +designed to keep the rulers within bounds; and among these, first and +foremost, the principle of the division of powers, contrived as a +means for weakening the state in its relation to the individual, by +making it impossible for the state ever to appear, in its dealings +with citizens, in the full plenitude of sovereign powers; also the +principle of the participation of citizens in the lawmaking power, as +a means for securing, in behalf of the individual, a direct check on +this, the strongest branch, and an indirect check on the entire +government of the state. This system of checks and limitations, which +goes by the name of constitutional government resulted in a moderate +and measured liberalism. The checking power was exercised only by +those citizens who were deemed worthy and capable, with the result +that a small élite was made to represent legally the entire body +politic for whose benefit this régime was instituted.</p> + +<p>It was evident, however, that this moderate system, being +fundamentally illogical and in contradiction with the very principles +from which it proceeded, would soon become the object of serious +criticism. For if the object of society and of the state is the +welfare of individuals, severally considered, how is it possible to +admit that this welfare can be secured by the individuals themselves +only through the possibilities of such a liberal régime? The +inequalities brought about both by nature and by social organizations +are so numerous and so serious, that, for the greater part, +individuals abandoned to themselves not only would fail to attain +happiness, but would also contribute to the perpetuation of their +condition of misery and dejection. The state therefore cannot limit +itself to the merely negative function of the defense of liberty. It +must become active, in behalf of everybody, for the welfare of the +people. It must intervene, when necessary, in order to improve the +material, intellectual, and moral conditions of the masses; it must +find work for the unemployed, instruct and educate the people, and +care for health and hygiene. For if the purpose of society and of the +state is the welfare of individuals, and if it is just that these +individuals themselves control the attainment of their ends, it +becomes difficult to understand why Liberalism should not go the whole +distance, why it should see fit to distinguish certain individuals +from the rest of the mass, and why the functions of the people should +be restricted to the exercise of a mere check. Therefore the state, if +it exists for all, must be governed by all, and not by a small +minority: if the state is for the people, sovereignty must reside in +the people: if all individuals have the right to govern the state, +liberty is no longer sufficient; equality must be added: and if +sovereignty is vested in the people, the people must wield all +sovereignty and not merely a part of it. The power to check and curb +the government is not sufficient. The people must be the government. +Thus, logically developed, Liberalism leads to Democracy, for +Democracy contains the promises of Liberalism but oversteps its +limitations in that it makes the action of the state positive, +proclaims the equality of all citizens through the dogma of popular +sovereignty. Democracy therefore necessarily implies a republican form +of government even though at times, for reasons of expediency, it +temporarily adjusts itself to a monarchical régime.</p> + +<p>Once started on this downward grade of logical deductions it was +inevitable that this atomistic theory of state and society should pass +on to a more advanced position. Great industrial developments and the +existence of a huge mass of working men, as yet badly treated and in a +condition of semi-servitude, possibly endurable in a régime of +domestic industry, became intolerable after the industrial revolution. +Hence a state of affairs which towards the middle of the last century +appeared to be both cruel and threatening. It was therefore natural +that the following question be raised: "If the state is created for +the welfare of its citizens, severally considered, how can it tolerate +an economic system which divides the population into a small minority +of exploiters, the capitalists, on one side, and an immense multitude +of exploited, the working people, on the other?" No! The state must +again intervene and give rise to a different and less iniquitous +economic organization, by abolishing private property, by assuming +direct control of all production, and by organizing it in such a way +that the products of labor be distributed solely among those who +create them, viz., the working classes. Hence we find Socialism, with +its new economic organization of society, abolishing private ownership +of capital and of the instruments and means of production, socializing +the product, suppressing the extra profit of capital, and turning over +to the working class the entire output of the productive processes. It +is evident that Socialism contains and surpasses Democracy in the same +way that Democracy comprises and surpasses Liberalism, being a more +advanced development of the same fundamental concept. Socialism in its +turn generates the still more extreme doctrine of Bolshevism which +demands the violent suppression of the holders of capital, the +dictatorship of the proletariat, as means for a fairer economic +organization of society and for the rescue of the laboring classes +from capitalistic exploitation.</p> + +<p>Thus Liberalism, Democracy, and Socialism, appear to be, as they are +in reality, not only the offspring of one and the same theory of +government, but also logical derivations one of the other. Logically +developed Liberalism leads to Democracy; the logical development of +Democracy issues into Socialism. It is true that for many years, and +with some justification, Socialism was looked upon as antithetical to +Liberalism. But the antithesis is purely relative and breaks down as +we approach the common origin and foundation of the two doctrines, for +we find that the opposition is one of method, not of purpose. The end +is the same for both, viz., the welfare of the individual members of +society. The difference lies in the fact that Liberalism would be +guided to its goal by liberty, whereas Socialism strives to attain it +by the collective organization of production. There is therefore no +antithesis nor even a divergence as to the nature and scope of the +state and the relation of individuals to society. There is only a +difference of evaluation of the means for bringing about these ends +and establishing these relations, which difference depends entirely on +the different economic conditions which prevailed at the time when the +various doctrines were formulated. Liberalism arose and began to +thrive in the period of small industry; Socialism grew with the rise +of industrialism and of world-wide capitalism. The dissension +therefore between these two points of view, or the antithesis, if we +wish so to call it, is limited to the economic field. Socialism is at +odds with Liberalism only on the question of the organization of +production and of the division of wealth. In religious, intellectual, +and moral matters it is liberal, as it is liberal and democratic in +its politics. Even the anti-liberalism and anti-democracy of +Bolshevism are in themselves purely contingent. For Bolshevism is +opposed to Liberalism only in so far as the former is revolutionary, +not in its socialistic aspect. For if the opposition of the Bolsheviki +to liberal and democratic doctrines were to continue, as now seems +more and more probable, the result might be a complete break between +Bolshevism and Socialism notwithstanding the fact that the ultimate +aims of both are identical.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>Fascism as an Integral Doctrine of Sociality Antithetical to the +Atomism of Liberal, Democratic, and Socialistic Theories</b></p> + +<p>The true antithesis, not to this or that manifestation of the +liberal-democratic-socialistic conception of the state but to the +concept itself, is to be found in the doctrine of Fascism. For while +the disagreement between Liberalism and Democracy, and between +Liberalism and Socialism lies in a difference of method, as we have +said, the rift between Socialism, Democracy, and Liberalism on one +side and Fascism on the other is caused by a difference in concept. As +a matter of fact, Fascism never raises the question of methods, using +in its political praxis now liberal ways, now democratic means and at +times even socialistic devices. This indifference to method often +exposes Fascism to the charge of incoherence on the part of +superficial observers, who do not see that what counts with us is the +end and that therefore even when we employ the same means we act with +a radically different spiritual attitude and strive for entirely +different results. The Fascist concept then of the nation, of the +scope of the state, and of the relations obtaining between society and +its individual components, rejects entirely the doctrine which I said +proceeded from the theories of natural law developed in the course of +the XVI, XVII, and XVIII centuries and which form the basis of the +liberal, democratic, and socialistic ideology.</p> + +<p>I shall not try here to expound this doctrine but shall limit myself +to a brief résumé of its fundamental concepts.</p> + +<p>Man—the political animal—according to the definition of Aristotle, +lives and must live in society. A human being outside the pale of +society is an inconceivable thing—a non-man. Humankind in its +entirety lives in social groups that are still, today, very numerous +and diverse, varying in importance and organization from the tribes of +Central Africa to the great Western Empires. These various societies +are fractions of the human species each one of them endowed with a +unified organization. And as there is no unique organization of the +human species, there is not "one" but there are "several" human +societies. Humanity therefore exists solely as a biological concept +not as a social one.</p> + +<p>Each society on the other hand exists in the unity of both its +biological and its social contents. Socially considered it is a +fraction of the human species endowed with unity of organization for +the attainment of the peculiar ends of the species.</p> + +<p>This definition brings out all the elements of the social phenomenon +and not merely those relating to the preservation and perpetuation of +the species. For man is not solely matter; and the ends of the human +species, far from being the materialistic ones we have in common with +other animals, are, rather, and predominantly, the spiritual +finalities which are peculiar to man and which every form of society +strives to attain as well as its stage of social development allows. +Thus the organization of every social group is more or less pervaded +by the spiritual influxes of: unity of language, of culture, of +religion, of tradition, of customs, and in general of feeling and of +volition, which are as essential as the material elements: unity of +economic interests, of living conditions, and of territory. The +definition given above demonstrates another truth, which has been +ignored by the political doctrines that for the last four centuries +have been the foundations of political systems, viz., that the social +concept has a biological aspect, because social groups are fractions +of the human species, each one possessing a peculiar organization, a +particular rank in the development of civilization with certain needs +and appropriate ends, in short, a life which is really its own. If +social groups are then fractions of the human species, they must +possess the same fundamental traits of the human species, which means +that they must be considered as a succession of generations and not as +a collection of individuals.</p> + +<p>It is evident therefore that as the human species is not the total of +the living human beings of the world, so the various social groups +which compose it are not the sum of the several individuals which at a +given moment belong to it, but rather the infinite series of the past, +present, and future generations constituting it. And as the ends of +the human species are not those of the several individuals living at a +certain moment, being occasionally in direct opposition to them, so +the ends of the various social groups are not necessarily those of the +individuals that belong to the groups but may even possibly be in +conflict with such ends, as one sees clearly whenever the preservation +and the development of the species demand the sacrifice of the +individual, to wit, in times of war.</p> + +<p>Fascism replaces therefore the old atomistic and mechanical state +theory which was at the basis of the liberal and democratic doctrines +with an organic and historic concept. When I say organic I do not wish +to convey the impression that I consider society as an organism after +the manner of the so-called "organic theories of the state"; but +rather to indicate that the social groups as fractions of the species +receive thereby a life and scope which transcend the scope and life of +the individuals identifying themselves with the history and finalities +of the uninterrupted series of generations. It is irrelevant in this +connection to determine whether social groups, considered as fractions +of the species, constitute organisms. The important thing is to +ascertain that this organic concept of the state gives to society a +continuous life over and beyond the existence of the several +individuals.</p> + +<p>The relations therefore between state and citizens are completely +reversed by the Fascist doctrine. Instead of the liberal-democratic +formula, "society for the individual," we have, "individuals for +society" with this difference however: that while the liberal +doctrines eliminated society, Fascism does not submerge the individual +in the social group. It subordinates him, but does not eliminate him; +the individual as a part of his generation ever remaining an element +of society however transient and insignificant he may be. Moreover the +development of individuals in each generation, when coordinated and +harmonized, conditions the development and prosperity of the entire +social unit.</p> + +<p>At this juncture the antithesis between the two theories must appear +complete and absolute. Liberalism, Democracy, and Socialism look upon +social groups as aggregates of living individuals; for Fascism they +are the recapitulating unity of the indefinite series of generations. +For Liberalism, society has no purposes other than those of the +members living at a given moment. For Fascism, society has historical +and immanent ends of preservation, expansion, improvement, quite +distinct from those of the individuals which at a given moment compose +it; so distinct in fact that they may even be in opposition. Hence the +necessity, for which the older doctrines make little allowance, of +sacrifice, even up to the total immolation of individuals, in behalf +of society; hence the true explanation of war, eternal law of mankind, +interpreted by the liberal-democratic doctrines as a degenerate +absurdity or as a maddened monstrosity.</p> + +<p>For Liberalism, society has no life distinct from the life of the +individuals, or as the phrase goes: solvitur in singularitates. For +Fascism, the life of society overlaps the existence of individuals and +projects itself into the succeeding generations through centuries and +millennia. Individuals come into being, grow, and die, followed by +others, unceasingly; social unity remains always identical to itself. +For Liberalism, the individual is the end and society the means; nor +is it conceivable that the individual, considered in the dignity of an +ultimate finality, be lowered to mere instrumentality. For Fascism, +society is the end, individuals the means, and its whole life consists +in using individuals as instruments for its social ends. The state +therefore guards and protects the welfare and development of +individuals not for their exclusive interest, but because of the +identity of the needs of individuals with those of society as a whole. +We can thus accept and explain institutions and practices, which like +the death penalty, are condemned by Liberalism in the name of the +preeminence of individualism.</p> + +<p>The fundamental problem of society in the old doctrines is the +question of the rights of individuals. It may be the right to freedom +as the Liberals would have it; or the right to the government of the +commonwealth as the Democrats claim it, or the right to economic +justice as the Socialists contend; but in every case it is the right +of individuals, or groups of individuals (classes). Fascism on the +other hand faces squarely the problem of the right of the state and of +the duty of individuals. Individual rights are only recognized in so +far as they are implied in the rights of the state. In this +preeminence of duty we find the highest ethical value of Fascism.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>The Problems of Liberty, of Government, and of Social Justice in the +Political Doctrine of Fascism</b></p> + +<p>This, however, does not mean that the problems raised by the other +schools are ignored by Fascism. It means simply that it faces them and +solves them differently, as, for example, the problem of liberty.</p> + +<p>There is a Liberal theory of freedom, and there is a Fascist concept +of liberty. For we, too, maintain the necessity of safeguarding the +conditions that make for the free development of the individual; we, +too, believe that the oppression of individual personality can find no +place in the modern state. We do not, however, accept a bill of rights +which tends to make the individual superior to the state and to +empower him to act in opposition to society. Our concept of liberty is +that the individual must be allowed to develop his personality in +behalf of the state, for these ephemeral and infinitesimal elements of +the complex and permanent life of society determine by their normal +growth the development of the state. But this individual growth must +be normal. A huge and disproportionate development of the individual +of classes, would prove as fatal to society as abnormal growths are to +living organisms. Freedom therefore is due to the citizen and to +classes on condition that they exercise it in the interest of society +as a whole and within the limits set by social exigencies, liberty +being, like any other individual right, a concession of the state. +What I say concerning civil liberties applies to economic freedom as +well. Fascism does not look upon the doctrine of economic liberty as +an absolute dogma. It does not refer economic problems to individual +needs, to individual interest, to individual solutions. On the +contrary it considers the economic development, and especially the +production of wealth, as an eminently social concern, wealth being for +society an essential element of power and prosperity. But Fascism +maintains that in the ordinary run of events economic liberty serves +the social purposes best; that it is profitable to entrust to +individual initiative the task of economic development both as to +production and as to distribution; that in the economic world +individual ambition is the most effective means for obtaining the best +social results with the least effort. Therefore, on the question also +of economic liberty the Fascists differ fundamentally from the +Liberals; the latter see in liberty a principle, the the Fascists +accept it as a method. By the Liberals, freedom is recognized in the +interest of the citizens; the Fascists grant it in the interest of +society. In other terms, Fascists make of the individual an economic +instrument for the advancement of society, an instrument which they +use so long as it functions and which they subordinate when no longer +serviceable. In this guise Fascism solves the eternal problem of +economic freedom and of state interference, considering both as mere +methods which may or may not be employed in accordance with the social +needs of the moment.</p> + +<p>What I have said concerning political and economic Liberalism applies +also to Democracy. The latter envisages fundamentally the problem of +sovereignty; Fascism does also, but in an entirely different manner. +Democracy vests sovereignty in the people, that is to say, in the mass +of human beings. Fascism discovers sovereignty to be inherent in +society when it is juridically organized as a state. Democracy +therefore turns over the government of the state to the multitude of +living men that they may use it to further their own interests; +Fascism insists that the government be entrusted to men capable of +rising above their own private interests and of realizing the +aspirations of the social collectivity, considered in its unity and in +its relation to the past and future. Fascism therefore not only +rejects the dogma of popular sovereignty and substitutes for it that +of state sovereignty, but it also proclaims that the great mass of +citizens is not a suitable advocate of social interests for the reason +that the capacity to ignore individual private interests in favor of +the higher demands of society and of history is a very rare gift and +the privilege of the chosen few. Natural intelligence and cultural +preparation are of great service in such tasks. Still more valuable +perhaps is the intuitiveness of rare great minds, their traditionalism +and their inherited qualities. This must not however be construed to +mean that the masses are not to be allowed to exercise any influence +on the life of the state. On the contrary, among peoples with a great +history and with noble traditions, even the lowest elements of society +possess an instinctive discernment of what is necessary for the +welfare of the race, which in moments of great historical crises +reveals itself to be almost infallible. It is therefore as wise to +afford to this instinct the means of declaring itself as it is +judicious to entrust the normal control of the commonwealth to a +selected élite.</p> + +<p>As for Socialism, the Fascist doctrine frankly recognizes that the +problem raised by it as to the relations between capital and labor is +a very serious one, perhaps the central one of modern life. What +Fascism does not countenance is the collectivistic solution proposed +by the Socialists. The chief defect of the socialistic method has been +clearly demonstrated by the experience of the last few years. It does +not take into account human nature, it is therefore outside of +reality, in that it will not recognize that the most powerful spring +of human activities lies in individual self-interest and that +therefore the elimination from the economic field of this interest +results in complete paralysis. The suppression of private ownership of +capital carries with it the suppression of capital itself, for capital +is formed by savings and no one will want to save, but will rather +consume all he makes if he knows he cannot keep and hand down to his +heirs the results of his labors. The dispersion of capital means the +end of production since capital, no matter who owns it, is always an +indispensable tool of production. Collective organization of +production is followed therefore by the paralysis of production since, +by eliminating from the productive mechanism the incentive of +individual interest, the product becomes rarer and more costly. +Socialism then, as experience has shown, leads to increase in +consumption, to the dispersion of capital and therefore to poverty. Of +what avail is it, then, to build a social machine which will more +justly distribute wealth if this very wealth is destroyed by the +construction of this machine? Socialism committed an irreparable error +when it made of private property a matter of justice while in truth it +is a problem of social utility. The recognition of individual property +rights, then, is a part of the Fascist doctrine not because of its +individual bearing but because of its social utility.</p> + +<p>We must reject, therefore, the socialistic solution but we cannot +allow the problem raised by the Socialists to remain unsolved, not +only because justice demands a solution but also because the +persistence of this problem in liberal and democratic régimes has been +a menace to public order and to the authority of the state. Unlimited +and unrestrained class self-defense, evinced by strikes and lockouts, +by boycotts and sabotage, leads inevitably to anarchy. The Fascist +doctrine, enacting justice among the classes in compliance with a +fundamental necessity of modern life, does away with class +self-defense, which, like individual self-defense in the days of +barbarism, is a source of disorder and of civil war.</p> + +<p>Having reduced the problem of these terms, only one solution is +possible, the realization of justice among the classes by and through +the state. Centuries ago the state, as the specific organ of justice, +abolished personal self-defense in individual controversies and +substituted for it state justice. The time has now come when class +self-defense also must be replaced by state justice. To facilitate the +change Fascism has created its own syndicalism. The suppression of +class self-defense does not mean the suppression of class defense +which is an inalienable necessity of modern economic life. Class +organization is a fact which cannot be ignored but it must be +controlled, disciplined, and subordinated by the state. The syndicate, +instead of being, as formerly, an organ of extra-legal defense, must +be turned into an organ of legal defense which will become judicial +defense as soon as labor conflicts become a matter of judicial +settlement. Fascism therefore has transformed the syndicate, that old +revolutionary instrument of syndicalistic socialists, into an +instrument of legal defense of the classes both within and without the +law courts. This solution may encounter obstacles in its development; +the obstacles of malevolence, of suspicion of the untried, of +erroneous calculation, etc., but it is destined to triumph even though +it must advance through progressive stages.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>Historical Value of the Doctrine of Fascism</b></p> + +<p>I might carry this analysis farther but what I have already said is +sufficient to show that the rise of a Fascist ideology already gives +evidence of an upheaval in the intellectual field as powerful as the +change that was brought about in the XVII and XVIII centuries by the +rise and diffusion of those doctrines of <i>ius naturale</i> which go under +the name of "Philosophy of the French Revolution." The philosophy of +the French Revolution formulated certain principles, the authority of +which, unquestioned for a century and a half, seemed so final that +they were given the attribute of immortality. The influence of these +principles was so great that they determined the formation of a new +culture, of a new civilization. Likewise the fervor of the ideas that +go to make up the Fascist doctrine, now in its inception but destined +to spread rapidly, will determine the course of a new culture and of a +new conception of civil life. The deliverance of the individual from +the state carried out in the XVIII century will be followed in the XX +century by the rescue of the state from the individual. The period of +authority, of social obligations, of "hierarchical" subordination will +succeed the period of individualism, of state feebleness, of +insubordination.</p> + +<p>This innovating trend is not and cannot be a return to the Middle +Ages. It is a common but an erroneous belief that the movement, +started by the Reformation and heightened by the French Revolution, +was directed against mediaeval ideas and institutions. Rather than as +a negation, this movement should be looked upon as the development and +fulfillment of the doctrines and practices of the Middle Ages. +Socially and politically considered the Middle Ages wrought +disintegration and anarchy; they were characterized by the gradual +weakening and ultimate extinction of the state, embodied in the Roman +Empire, driven first to the East, then back to France, thence to +Germany, a shadow of its former self; they were marked by the steady +advance of the forces of usurpation, destructive of the state and +reciprocally obnoxious; they bore the imprints of a triumphant +particularism. Therefore the individualistic and anti-social movement +of the XVII and XVIII centuries was not directed against the Middle +Ages, but rather against the restoration of the state by great +national monarchies. If this movement destroyed mediaeval institutions +that had survived the Middle Ages and had been grafted upon the new +states, it was in consequence of the struggle primarily waged against +the state. The spirit of the movement was decidedly mediaeval. The +novelty consisted in the social surroundings in which it operated and +in its relation to new economic developments. The individualism of the +feudal lords, the particularism of the cities and of the corporations +had been replaced by the individualism and the particularism of the +bourgeoisie and of the popular classes.</p> + +<p>The Fascist ideology cannot therefore look back to the Middle Ages, of +which it is a complete negation. The Middle Ages spell disintegration; +Fascism is nothing if not sociality. It is if anything the beginning +of the end of the Middle Ages prolonged four centuries beyond the end +ordinarily set for them and revived by the social democratic anarchy +of the past thirty years. If Fascism can be said to look back at all +it is rather in the direction of ancient Rome whose social and +political traditions at the distance of fifteen centuries are being +revived by Fascist Italy.</p> + +<p>I am fully aware that the value of Fascism, as an intellectual +movement, baffles the minds of many of its followers and supporters +and is denied outright by its enemies. There is no malice in this +denial, as I see it, but rather an incapacity to comprehend. The +liberal-democratic-socialistic ideology has so completely and for so +long a time dominated Italian culture that in the minds of the +majority of people trained by it, it has assumed the value of an +absolute truth, almost the authority of a natural law. Every faculty +of self-criticism is suppressed in the minds and this suppression +entails an incapacity for understanding that time alone can change. It +will be advisable therefore to rely mainly upon the new generations +and in general upon persons whose culture is not already fixed. This +difficulty to comprehend on the part of those who have been thoroughly +grounded by a different preparation in the political and social +sciences explains in part why Fascism has not been wholly successful +with the intellectual classes and with mature minds, and why on the +other hand it has been very successful with young people, with women, +in rural districts, and among men of action unencumbered by a fixed +and set social and political education. Fascism moreover, as a +cultural movement, is just now taking its first steps. As in the case +with all great movements, action regularly outstrips thought. It was +thus at the time of the Protestant Reformation and of the +individualistic reaction of the XVII and XVIII centuries. The English +revolution occurred when the doctrines of natural law were coming into +being and the theoretical development of the liberal and democratic +theories followed the French Revolution.</p> + +<p>At this point it will not be very difficult to assign a fitting place +in history to this great trend of thought which is called Fascism and +which, in spite of the initial difficulties, already gives clear +indication of the magnitude of its developments.</p> + +<p>The liberal-democratic speculation both in its origin and in the +manner of its development appears to be essentially a non-Italian +formation. Its connection with the Middle Ages already shows it to be +foreign to the Latin mind, the mediaeval disintegration being the +result of the triumph of Germanic individualism over the political +mentality of the Romans. The barbarians, boring from within and +hacking from without, pulled down the great political structure raised +by Latin genius and put nothing in its place. Anarchy lasted eight +centuries during which time only one institution survived and that a +Roman one—the Catholic Church. But, as soon as the laborious process +of reconstruction was started with the constitution of the great +national states backed by the Roman Church the Protestant Reformation +set in followed by the individualistic currents of the XVII and XVIII +centuries, and the process of disintegration was started anew. This +anti-state tendency was the expression of the Germanic spirit and it +therefore became predominant among the Germanic peoples and wherever +Germanism had left a deep imprint even if afterward superficially +covered by a veneer of Latin culture. It is true that Marsilius from +Padua is an Italian writing for Ludwig the Bavarian, but the other +writers who in the XIV century appear as forerunners of the liberal +doctrines are not Italians: Occam and Wycliff are English; Oresme is +French. Among the advocates of individualism in the XVI century who +prepared the way for the triumph of the doctrines of natural law in +the subsequent centuries, Hotman and Languet are French, Buchanan is +Scotch. Of the great authorities of natural law, Grotius and Spinosa +are Dutch; Locke is English; l'Abbé de St. Pierre, Montesquieu, +d'Argenson, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot and the encyclopaedists are +French; Althusius, Pufendorf, Kant, Fichte are German.</p> + +<p>Italy took no part in the rise and development of the doctrines of +natural law. Only in the XIX century did she evince a tardy interest +in these doctrines, just as she tardily contributed to them at the +dose of the XVIII century through the works of Beccaria and Filangeri.</p> + +<p>While therefore in other countries such as France, England, Germany, +and Holland, the general tradition in the social and political +sciences worked in behalf of anti-state individualism, and therefore +of liberal and democratic doctrines, Italy, on the other hand, clung +to the powerful legacy of its past in virtue of which she proclaims +the rights of the state, the preeminence of its authority, and the +superiority of its ends. The very fact that the Italian political +doctrine in the Middle Ages linked itself with the great political +writers of antiquity, Plato and Aristotle, who in a different manner +but with an equal firmness advocated a strong state and the +subordination of individuals to it, is a sufficient index of the +orientation of political philosophy in Italy. We all know how thorough +and crushing the authority of Aristotle was in the Middle Ages. But +for Aristotle the spiritual cement of the state is "virtue" not +absolute virtue but political virtue, which is social devotion. His +state is made up solely of its citizens, the citizens being either +those who defend it with their arms or who govern it as magistrates. +All others who provide it with the materials and services it needs are +not citizens. They become such only in the corrupt forms of certain +democracies. Society is therefore divided into two classes, the free +men or citizens who give their time to noble and virtuous occupations +and who profess their subjection to the state, and the laborers and +slaves who work for the maintenance of the former. No man in this +scheme is his own master. The slaves belong to the freemen, and the +freemen belong to the state.</p> + +<p>It was therefore natural that St. Thomas Aquinas the greatest +political writer of the Middle Ages should emphasize the necessity of +unity in the political field, the harm of plurality of rulers, the +dangers and damaging effects of demagogy. The good of the state, says +St. Thomas Aquinas, is unity. And who can procure unity more fittingly +than he who is himself one? Moreover the government must follow, as +far as possible, the course of nature and in nature power is always +one. In the physical body only one organ is dominant—the heart; in +the spirit only one faculty has sway—reason. Bees have one sole +ruler; and the entire universe one sole sovereign—God. Experience +shows that the countries, which are ruled by many, perish because of +discord while those that are ruled over by one enjoy peace, justice, +and plenty. The States which are not ruled by one are troubled by +dissensions, and toil unceasingly. On the contrary the states which +are ruled over by one king enjoy peace, thrive in justice and are +gladdened by affluence.<a name="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2"><sup>[2]</sup></a> +The rule of the multitudes can not be +sanctioned, for where the crowd rules it oppresses the rich as would a +tyrant.<a name="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3"><sup>[3]</sup></a></p> + +<p>Italy in the Middle Ages presented a curious phenomenon: while in +practice the authority of the state was being dissolved into a +multiplicity of competing sovereignties, the theory of state unity and +authority was kept alive in the minds of thinkers by the memories of +the Roman Imperial tradition. It was this memory that supported for +centuries the fiction of the universal Roman Empire when in reality it +existed no longer. Dante's <i>De Monarchia</i> deduced the theory of this +empire conceived as the unity of a strong state. "Quod potest fieri +per unum melius est per unum fieri quam plura," he says in the XIV +chapter of the first book, and further on, considering the citizen as +an instrument for the attainment of the ends of the state, he +concludes that the individual must sacrifice himself for his country. +"Si pars debet se exponere pro salute totius, cum homo siti pars +quaedam civitatis ... homo pro patria debet exponere se ipsum." (lib. +II. 8).</p> + +<p>The Roman tradition, which was one of practice but not of +theories—for Rome constructed the most solid state known to history +with extraordinary statesmanship but with hardly any political +writings—influenced considerably the founder of modern political +science, Nicolo Machiavelli, who was himself in truth not a creator of +doctrines but a keen observer of human nature who derived from the +study of history practical maxims of political import. He freed the +science of politics from the formalism of the scholastics and brought +it close to concrete reality. His writings, an inexhaustible mine of +practical remarks and precious observations, reveal dominant in him +the state idea, no longer abstract but in the full historical +concreteness of the national unity of Italy. Machiavelli therefore is +not only the greatest of modern political writers, he is also the +greatest of our countrymen in full possession of a national Italian +consciousness. To liberate Italy, which was in his day "enslaved, torn +and pillaged," and to make her more powerful, he would use any means, +for to his mind the holiness of the end justified them completely. In +this he was sharply rebuked by foreigners who were not as hostile to +his means as they were fearful of the end which he propounded. He +advocated therefore the constitution of a strong Italian state, +supported by the sacrifices and by the blood of the citizens, not +defended by mercenary troops; well-ordered internally, aggressive and +bent on expansion. "Weak republics," he said, "have no determination +and can never reach a decision." (Disc. I. c. 38). "Weak states were +ever dubious in choosing their course, and slow deliberations are +always harmful." (Disc. I. c. 10). And again: "Whoso undertakes to +govern a multitude either in a régime of liberty or in a monarchy, +without previously making sure of those who are hostile to the new +order of things builds a short-lived state." (Disc. I. c. 16). And +further on "the dictatorial authority helped and did not harm the +Roman republic" (Disc. I. c. 34), and "Kings and republics lacking in +national troops both for offense and defense should be ashamed of +their existence." (Disc. I. c. 21). And again: "Money not only does +not protect you but rather it exposes you to plundering assaults. Nor +can there be a more false opinion than that which says that money is +the sinews of war. Not money but good soldiers win battles." (Disc. I. +II. c. 10). "The country must be defended with ignominy or with glory +and in either way it is nobly defended." (Disc. III. c. 41). "And with +dash and boldness people often capture what they never would have +obtained by ordinary means." (Disc. III. c. 44). Machiavelli was not +only a great political authority, he taught the mastery of energy and +will. Fascism learns from him not only its doctrines but its action as +well.</p> + +<p>Different from Machiavelli's, in mental attitude, in cultural +preparation, and in manner of presentation, G.B. Vico must yet be +connected with the great Florentine from whom in a certain way he +seems to proceed. In the heyday of "natural law" Vico is decidedly +opposed to <i>ius naturale</i> and in his attacks against its advocates, +Grotius, Seldenus and Pufendorf, he systematically assails the +abstract, rationalistic, and utilitarian principles of the XVIII +century. As Montemayor justly says:<a name="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4"><sup>[4]</sup></a> +"While the 'natural jurists', +basing justice and state on utility and interest and grounding human +certitude on reason, were striving to draft permanent codes and +construct the perfect state, Vico strongly asserted the social nature +of man, the ethical character of the juridical consciousness and its +growth through the history of humanity rather than in sacred history. +Vico therefore maintains that doctrines must begin with those subjects +which take up and explain the entire course of civilization. +Experience and not ratiocination, history and not reason must help +human wisdom to understand the civil and political regimes which were +the result not of reason or philosophy, but rather of common sense, or +if you will of the social consciousness of man" and farther on (pages +373-374), "to Vico we owe the conception of history in its fullest +sense as magistra vitae, the search after the humanity of history, the +principle which makes the truth progress with time, the discovery of +the political 'course' of nations. It is Vico who uttered the eulogy +of the patrician 'heroic hearts' of the 'patres patriae' first +founders of states, magnanimous defenders of the commonwealth and wise +counsellors of politics. To Vico we owe the criticism of democracies, +the affirmation of their brief existence, of their rapid +disintegration at the hands of factions and demagogues, of their lapse +first into anarchy, then into monarchy, when their degradation does +not make them a prey of foreign oppressors. Vico conceived of civil +liberty as subjection to law, as just subordination, of the private to +the public interests, to the sway of the state. It was Vico who +sketched modern society as a world of nations each one guarding its +own imperium, fighting just and not inhuman wars. In Vico therefore we +find the condemnation of pacifism, the assertion that right is +actualized by bodily force, that without force, right is of no avail, +and that therefore 'qui ab iniuriis se tueri non potest servus est.'"</p> + +<p>It is not difficult to discern the analogies between these +affirmations and the fundamental views and the spirit of Fascism. Nor +should we marvel at this similarity. Fascism, a strictly Italian +phenomenon, has its roots in the Risorgimento and the Risorgimento was +influenced undoubtedly by Vico.</p> + +<p>It would be inexact to affirm that the philosophy of Vico dominated +the Risorgimento. Too many elements of German, French, and English +civilizations had been added to our culture during the first half of +the XIX century to make this possible, so much so that perhaps Vico +might have remained unknown to the makers of Italian unity if another +powerful mind from Southern Italy, Vincenzo Cuoco, had not taken it +upon himself to expound the philosophy of Vico in those very days in +which the intellectual preparation of the Risorgimento was being +carried on.</p> + +<p>An adequate account of Cuoco's doctrines would carry me too far. +Montemayor, in the article quoted above, gives them considerable +attention. He quotes among other things Cuoco's arraignment of +Democracy: "Italy has fared badly at the hand of Democracy which has +withered to their roots the three sacred plants of liberty, unity, +and independence. If we wish to see these trees flourish again let us +protect them in the future from Democracy."</p> + +<p>The influence of Cuoco, an exile at Milan, exerted through his +writings, his newspaper articles, and Vichian propaganda, on the +Italian patriots is universally recognized. Among the regular readers +of his <i>Giornale Italiano</i> we find Monti and Foscolo. Clippings of his +articles were treasured by Mazzini and Manzoni, who often acted as his +secretary, called him his "master in politics." +<a name="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5"><sup>[5]</sup></a></p> + +<p>The influence of the Italian tradition summed up and handed down by +Cuoco was felt by Mazzini whose interpretation of the function of the +citizen as duty and mission is to be connected with Vico's doctrine +rather than with the philosophic and political doctrines of the French +Revolution.</p> + +<p>"Training for social duty," said Mazzini, "is essentially and +logically unitarian. Life for it is but a duty, a mission. The norm +and definition of such mission can only be found in a collective term +superior to all the individuals of the country—in the people, in the +nation. If there is a collective mission, a communion of duty ... it +can only be represented in the national unity." +<a name="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6"><sup>[6]</sup></a> And farther on: +"The declaration of rights, which all constitutions insist in copying +slavishly from the French, express only those of the period ... which +considered the individual as the end and pointed out only one half of +the problem" and again, "assume the existence of one of those crises +that threaten the life of the nation, and demand the active sacrifice +of all its sons ... will you ask the citizens to face martyrdom in +virtue of their rights? You have taught men that society was solely +constituted to guarantee their rights and now you ask them to +sacrifice one and all, to suffer and die for the safety of the +'nation?'"<a name="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7"><sup>[7]</sup></a></p> + +<p>In Mazzini's conception of the citizen as instrument for the +attainment of the nation's ends and therefore submissive to a higher +mission, to the duty of supreme sacrifice, we see the anticipation of +one of the fundamental points of the Fascist doctrine.</p> + +<p>Unfortunately, the autonomy of the political thought of Italy, +vigorously established in the works of Vico, nobly reclaimed by +Vincenzo Cuoco, kept up during the struggles of the Risorgimento in +spite of the many foreign influences of that period, seemed to exhaust +itself immediately after the unification. Italian political thought +which had been original in times of servitude, became enslaved in the +days of freedom.</p> + +<p>A powerful innovating movement, issuing from the war and of which +Fascism is the purest expression, was to restore Italian thought in +the sphere of political doctrine to its own traditions which are the +traditions of Rome.</p> + +<p>This task of intellectual liberation, now slowly being accomplished, +is no less important than the political deliverance brought about by +the Fascist Revolution. It is a great task which continues and +integrates the Risorgimento; it is now bringing to an end, after the +cessation of our political servitude, the intellectual dependence of +Italy.</p> + +<p>Thanks to it, Italy again speaks to the world and the world listens to +Italy. It is a great task and a great deed and it demands great +efforts. To carry it through, we must, each one of us, free ourselves +of the dross of ideas and mental habits which two centuries of foreign +intellectualistic tradition have heaped upon us; we must not only take +on a new culture but create for ourselves a new soul. We must +methodically and patiently contribute something towards the organic +and complete elaboration of our doctrine, at the same time supporting +it both at home and abroad with untiring devotion. We ask this effort +of renovation and collaboration of all Fascists, as well as of all who +feel themselves to be Italians. After the hour of sacrifice comes the +hour of unyielding efforts. To our work, then, fellow countrymen, for +the glory of Italy!</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em">FOOTNOTES:</p> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1">[1]</a> Translated from the Italian.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2">[2]</a> "civitates quae non reguntur ab uno dissenionibus +laborant et absque pace fluctuant. E contrario civitates quae sub uno +rege reguntur pace gaudent, iustitia florent et affluentia rerum +laetantur." (De reg. princ. I. c. 2).</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3">[3]</a> "ideo manifustum est, quod multitudo est sicut tyrannuus, +quare operationes multitudinis sunt iniustae. ergo non expedit +multitudinem dominari." (Comm. In Polit. L. III. lectio VIII).</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4">[4]</a> Rivista internazionale di filosofia del diritto V. 351.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5">[5]</a> Montemayor. Riv. Int. etc. p. 370.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6">[6]</a> della unità italiana. Scritti, Vol. III.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7">[7]</a> I sistemi e la democrazia. Scritti, Vol. VII.</p></div> + +<br /><br /> + + + + +<a name="THE_PHILOSOPHIC_BASIS_OF_FASCISM"></a><hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<br /> + +<h3>THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF FASCISM</h3><span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span> +<h3>by</h3> +<h3><span style="font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 110%">Giovanni Gentile</span></h3> +<br /> + +<p>For the Italian nation the World War was the solution of a deep +spiritual crisis. They willed and fought it long before they felt and +evaluated it. But they willed, fought, felt and evaluated it in a +certain spirit which Italy's generals and statesmen exploited, but +which also worked on them, conditioning their policies and their +action. The spirit in question was not altogether clear and +self-consistent. That it lacked unanimity was particularly apparent +just before and again just after the war when feelings were not +subject to war discipline. It was as though the Italian character were +crossed by two different currents which divided it into two +irreconcilable sections. One need think only of the days of Italian +neutrality and of the debates that raged between Interventionists and +Neutralists. The ease with which the most inconsistent ideas were +pressed into service by both parties showed that the issue was not +between two opposing political opinions, two conflicting concepts of +history, but actually between two different temperaments, two +different souls.</p> + +<p>For one kind of person the important point was to fight the war, +either on the side of Germany or against Germany: but in either event +to fight the war, without regard to specific advantages—to fight the +war in order that at last the Italian nation, created rather by +favoring conditions than by the will of its people to be a nation, +might receive its test in blood, such a test as only war can bring by +uniting all citizens in a single thought, a single passion, a single +hope, emphasizing to each individual that all have something in +common, something transcending private interests.</p> + +<p>This was the very thing that frightened the other kind of person, the +prudent man, the realist, who had a clear view of the mortal risks a +young, inexperienced, badly prepared nation would be running in such a +war, and who also saw—a most significant point—that, all things +considered, a bargaining neutrality would surely win the country +tangible rewards, as great as victorious participation itself.</p> + +<p>The point at issue was just that: the Italian Neutralists stood for +material advantages, advantages tangible, ponderable, palpable; the +Interventionists stood for moral advantages, intangible, impalpable, +imponderable—imponderable at least on the scales used by their +antagonists. On the eve of the war these two Italian characters stood +facing each other, scowling and irreconcilable—the one on the +aggressive, asserting itself ever more forcefully through the various +organs of public opinion; the other on the defensive, offering +resistance through the Parliament which in those days still seemed to +be the basic repository of State sovereignty. Civil conflict seemed +inevitable in Italy, and civil war was in fact averted only because +the King took advantage of one of his prerogatives and declared war +against the Central Powers.</p> + +<p>This act of the King was the first decisive step toward the solution +of the crisis.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><b>II</b></p> + +<p>The crisis had ancient origins. Its roots sank deep into the inner +spirit of the Italian people.</p> + +<p>What were the creative forces of the <i>Risorgimento</i>? The "Italian +people," to which some historians are now tending to attribute an +important if not a decisive role in our struggle for national unity +and independence, was hardly on the scene at all. The active agency +was always an idea become a person—it was one or several determined +wills which were fixed on determined goals. There can be no question +that the birth of modern Italy was the work of the few. And it could +not be otherwise. It is always the few who represent the +self-consciousness and the will of an epoch and determine what its +history shall be; for it is they who see the forces at their disposal +and through those forces actuate the one truly active and productive +force—their own will.</p> + +<p>That will we find in the song of the poets and the ideas of the +political writers, who know how to use a language harmonious with a +universal sentiment or with a sentiment capable of becoming universal. +In the case of Italy, in all our bards, philosophers and leaders, from +Alfieri to Foscolo, from Leopardi to Manzoni, from Mazzini to +Gioberti, we are able to pick up the threads of a new fabric, which is +a new kind of thought, a new kind of soul, a new kind of Italy. This +new Italy differed from the old Italy in something that was very +simple but yet was of the greatest importance: this new Italy took +life seriously, while the old one did not. People in every age had +dreamed of an Italy and talked of an Italy. The notion of Italy had +been sung in all kinds of music, propounded in all kinds of +philosophy. But it was always an Italy that existed in the brain of +some scholar whose learning was more or less divorced from reality. +Now reality demands that convictions be taken seriously, that ideas +become actions. Accordingly it was necessary that this Italy, which +was an affair of brains only, become also an affair of hearts, become, +that is, something serious, something alive. This, and no other, was +the meaning of Mazzini's great slogan: "Thought and Action." It was +the essence of the great revolution which he preached and which he +accomplished by instilling his doctrine into the hearts of others. Not +many others—a small minority! But they were numerous enough and +powerful enough to raise the question where it could be answered—in +Italian public opinion (taken in conjunction with the political +situation prevailing in the rest of Europe). They were able to +establish the doctrine that life is not a game, but a mission; that, +therefore, the individual has a law and a purpose in obedience to +which and in fulfillment of which he alone attains his true value; +that, accordingly, he must make sacrifices, now of personal comfort, +now of private interest, now of life itself.</p> + +<p>No revolution ever possessed more markedly than did the Italian +<i>Risorgimento</i> this characteristic of ideality, of thought preceding +action. Our revolt was not concerned with the material needs of life, +nor did it spring from elementary and widely diffused sentiments +breaking out in popular uprisings and mass disturbances. The movements +of 1847 and 1848 were demonstrations, as we would say today, of +"intellectuals"; they were efforts toward a goal on the part of a +minority of patriots who were standard bearers of an ideal and were +driving governments and peoples toward its attainment. +Idealism—understood as faith in the advent of an ideal reality, as a +manner of conceiving life not as fixed within the limits of existing +fact, but as incessant progress and transformation toward the level of +a higher law which controls men with the very force of the idea—was +the sum and substance of Mazzini's teaching; and it supplied the most +conspicuous characteristic of our great Italian revolution. In this +sense all the patriots who worked for the foundation of the new +kingdom were Mazzinians—Gioberti, Cavour, Victor Emmanuel, Garibaldi. +To be sure, our writers of the first rank, such as Manzoni and +Rosmini, had no historical connection with Mazzini; but they had the +same general tendency as Mazzini. Working along diverging lines, they +all came together on the essential point: that true life is not the +life which is, but also the life which ought to be. It was a +conviction essentially religious in character, essentially +anti-materialistic.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><b>III</b></p> + +<p>This religious and idealistic manner of looking at life, so +characteristic of the <i>Risorgimento</i>, prevails even beyond the heroic +age of the revolution and the establishment of the Kingdom. It +survives down through Ricasoli, Lanza, Sella and Minghetti, down, that +is, to the occupation of Rome and the systemization of our national +finances. The parliamentary overturn of 1876, indeed, marks not the +end, but rather an interruption, on the road that Italy had been +following since the beginning of the century. The outlook then +changed, and not by the capriciousness or weakness of men, but by a +necessity of history which it would be idiotic in our day to deplore. +At that time the fall of the Right, which had ruled continuously +between 1861 and 1876, seemed to most people the real conquest of +freedom.</p> + +<p>To be sure the Right cannot be accused of too great scruple in +respecting the liberties guaranteed by our Constitution; but the real +truth was that the Right conceived liberty in a sense directly +opposite to the notions of the Left. The Left moved from the +individual to the State: the Right moved from the State to the +individual. The men of the left thought of "the people" as merely the +agglomerate of the citizens composing it. They therefore made the +individual the center and the point of departure of all the rights and +prerogatives which a régime of freedom was bound to respect.</p> + +<p>The men of the Right, on the contrary, were firmly set in the notion +that no freedom can be conceived except within the State, that freedom +can have no important content apart from a solid régime of law +indisputably sovereign over the activities and the interests of +individuals. For the Right there could be no individual freedom not +reconcilable with the authority of the State. In their eyes the +general interest was always paramount over private interests. The law, +therefore, should have absolute efficacy and embrace the whole life of +the people.</p> + +<p>This conception of the Right was evidently sound; but it involved +great dangers when applied without regard to the motives which +provoked it. Unless we are careful, too much law leads to stasis and +therefore to the annihilation of the life which it is the State's +function to regulate but which the State cannot suppress. The State +may easily become a form indifferent to its content—something +extraneous to the substance it would regulate. If the law comes upon +the individual from without, if the individual is not absorbed in the +life of the State, the individual feels the law and the State as +limitations on his activity, as chains which will eventually strangle +him unless he can break them down.</p> + +<p>This was just the feeling of the men of '76. The country needed a +breath of air. Its moral, economic, and social forces demanded the +right to develop without interference from a law which took no account +of them. This was the historical reason for the overturn of that year; +and with the transference of power from Right to Left begins the +period of growth and development in our nation: economic growth in +industry, commerce, railroads, agriculture; intellectual growth in +science, education. The nation had received its form from above. It +had now to struggle to its new level, giving to a State which already +had its constitution, its administrative and political organization, +its army and its finance, a living content of forces springing from +individual initiative prompted by interests which the <i>Risorgimento</i>, +absorbed in its great ideals, had either neglected or altogether +disregarded.</p> + +<p>The accomplishment of this constitutes the credit side of the balance +sheet of King Humbert I. It was the error of King Humbert's greatest +minister, Francesco Crispi, not to have understood his age. Crispi +strove vigorously to restore the authority and the prestige of the +State as against an individualism gone rampant, to reassert religious +ideals as against triumphant materialism. He fell, therefore, before +the assaults of so-called democracy.</p> + +<p>Crispi was wrong. That was not the moment for re-hoisting the +time-honored banner of idealism. At that time there could be no talk +of wars, of national dignity, of competition with the Great Powers; no +talk of setting limits to personal liberties in the interests of the +abstract entity called "State." The word "God," which Crispi sometimes +used, was singularly out of place. It was a question rather of +bringing the popular classes to prosperity, self-consciousness, +participation in political life. Campaigns against illiteracy, all +kinds of social legislation, the elimination of the clergy from the +public schools, which must be secular and anti-clerical! During this +period Freemasonry became solidly established in the bureaucracy, the +army, the judiciary. The central power of the State was weakened and +made subservient to the fleeting variations of popular will as +reflected in a suffrage absolved from all control from above. The +growth of big industry favored the rise of a socialism of Marxian +stamp as a new kind of moral and political education for our +proletariat. The conception of humanity was not indeed lost from view: +but such moral restraints as were placed on the free individual were +all based on the feeling that each man must instinctively seek his own +well-being and defend it. This was the very conception which Mazzini +had fought in socialism, though he rightly saw that it was not +peculiar to socialism alone, but belonged to any political theory, +whether liberal, democratic, or anti-socialistic, which urges men +toward the exaction of rights rather than to the fulfillment of +duties.</p> + +<p>From 1876 till the Great War, accordingly, we had an Italy that was +materialistic and anti-Mazzinian, though an Italy far superior to the +Italy of and before Mazzini's time. All our culture, whether in the +natural or the moral sciences, in letters or in the arts, was +dominated by a crude positivism, which conceived of the reality in +which we live as something given, something ready-made, and which +therefore limits and conditions human activity quite apart from +so-called arbitrary and illusory demands of morality. Everybody wanted +"facts," "positive facts." Everybody laughed at "metaphysical dreams," +at impalpable realities. The truth was there before the eyes of men. +They had only to open their eyes to see it. The Beautiful itself could +only be the mirror of the Truth present before us in Nature. +Patriotism, like all the other virtues based on a religious attitude +of mind, and which can be mentioned only when people have the courage +to talk in earnest, became a rhetorical theme on which it was rather +bad taste to touch.</p> + +<p>This period, which anyone born during the last half of the past +century can well remember, might be called the demo-socialistic phase +of the modern Italian State. It was the period which elaborated the +characteristically democratic attitude of mind on a basis of personal +freedom, and which resulted in the establishment of socialism as the +primary and controlling force in the State. It was a period of growth +and of prosperity during which the moral forces developed during the +<i>Risorgimento</i> were crowded into the background or off the stage.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><b>IV</b></p> + +<p>But toward the end of the Nineteenth Century and in the first years of +the Twentieth a vigorous spirit of reaction began to manifest itself +in the young men of Italy against the preceding generation's ideas in +politics, literature, science and philosophy. It was as though they +were weary of the prosaic bourgeois life which they had inherited from +their fathers and were eager to return to the lofty moral enthusiasms +of their grandfathers. Rosmini and Gioberti had been long forgotten. +They were now exhumed, read, discussed. As for Mazzini, an edition of +his writings was financed by the State itself. Vico, the great Vico, a +formidable preacher of idealistic philosophy and a great +anti-Cartesian and anti-rationalist, became the object of a new cult.</p> + +<p>Positivism began forthwith to be attacked by neo-idealism. +Materialistic approaches to the study of literature and art were +refuted and discredited. Within the Church itself modernism came to +rouse the Italian clergy to the need of a deeper and more modern +culture. Even socialism was brought under the philosophical probe and +criticized like other doctrines for its weaknesses and errors; and +when, in France, George Sorel went beyond the fallacies of the +materialistic theories of the Marxist social-democracy to his theory +of syndicalism, our young Italian socialists turned to him. In Sorel's +ideas they saw two things: first, the end of a hypocritical +"collaborationism" which betrayed both proletariat and nation; and +second, faith in a moral and ideal reality for which it was the +individual's duty to sacrifice himself, and to defend which, even +violence was justified. The anti-parliamentarian spirit and the moral +spirit of syndicalism brought Italian socialists back within the +Mazzinian orbit.</p> + +<p>Of great importance, too, was nationalism, a new movement then just +coming to the fore. Our Italian nationalism was less literary and more +political in character than the similar movement in France, because +with us it was attached to the old historic Right which had a long +political tradition. The new nationalism differed from the old Right +in the stress it laid on the idea of "nation"; but it was at one with +the Right in regarding the State as the necessary premise to the +individual rights and values. It was the special achievement of +nationalism to rekindle faith in the nation in Italian hearts, to +arouse the country against parliamentary socialism, and to lead an +open attack on Freemasonry, before which the Italian bourgeoisie was +terrifiedly prostrating itself. Syndicalists, nationalists, idealists +succeeded, between them, in bringing the great majority of Italian +youth back to the spirit of Mazzini.</p> + +<p>Official, legal, parliamentary Italy, the Italy that was +anti-Mazzinian and anti-idealistic, stood against all this, finding +its leader in a man of unfailing political intuition, and master as +well of the political mechanism of the country, a man sceptical of all +high-sounding words, impatient of complicated concepts, ironical, +cold, hard-headed, practical—what Mazzini would have called a "shrewd +materialist." In the persons, indeed, of Mazzini and Giolitti, we may +find a picture of the two aspects of pre-war Italy, of that +irreconcilable duality which paralyzed the vitality of the country and +which the Great War was to solve.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><b>V</b></p> + +<p>The effect of the war seemed at first to be quite in an opposite +sense—to mark the beginning of a general <i>débâcle</i> of the Italian +State and of the moral forces that must underlie any State. If +entrance into the war had been a triumph of ideal Italy over +materialistic Italy, the advent of peace seemed to give ample +justification to the Neutralists who had represented the latter. After +the Armistice our Allies turned their backs upon us. Our victory +assumed all the aspects of a defeat. A defeatist psychology, as they +say, took possession of the Italian people and expressed itself in +hatred of the war, of those responsible for the war, even of our army +which had won our war. An anarchical spirit of dissolution rose +against all authority. The ganglia of our economic life seemed struck +with mortal disease. Labor ran riot in strike after strike. The very +bureaucracy seemed to align itself against the State. The measure of +our spiritual dispersion was the return to power of Giolitti—the +execrated Neutralist—who for five years had been held up as the +exponent of an Italy which had died with the war.</p> + +<p>But, curiously enough, it was under Giolitti that things suddenly +changed in aspect, that against the Giolittian State a new State +arose. Our soldiers, our genuine soldiers, men who had willed our war +and fought it in full consciousness of what they were doing, had the +good fortune to find as their leaders a man who could express in words +things that were in all their hearts and who could make those words +audible above the tumult.</p> + +<p>Mussolini had left Italian socialism in 1915 in order to be a more +faithful interpreter of "the Italian People" (the name he chose for +his new paper). He was one of those who saw the necessity of our war, +one of those mainly responsible for our entering the war. Already as a +socialist he had fought Freemasonry; and, drawing his inspiration from +Sorel's syndicalism, he had assailed the parliamentary corruption of +Reformist Socialism with the idealistic postulates of revolution and +violence. Then, later, on leaving the party and in defending the cause +of intervention, he had come to oppose the illusory fancies of +proletarian internationalism with an assertion of the infrangible +integrity, not only moral but economic as well, of the national +organism, affirming therefore the sanctity of country for the working +classes as for other classes. Mussolini was a Mazzinian of that +pure-blooded breed which Mazzini seemed somehow always to find in the +province of Romagna. First by instinct, later by reflection, Mussolini +had come to despise the futility of the socialists who kept preaching +a revolution which they had neither the power nor the will to bring to +pass even under the most favorable circumstances. More keenly than +anyone else he had come to feel the necessity of a State which would +be a State, of a law which would be respected as law, of an authority +capable of exacting obedience but at the same time able to give +indisputable evidence of its worthiness so to act. It seemed +incredible to Mussolini that a country capable of fighting and winning +such a war as Italy had fought and won should be thrown into disorder +and held at the mercy of a handful of faithless politicians.</p> + +<p>When Mussolini founded his Fasci in Milan in March, 1919, the movement +toward dissolution and negation that featured the post-war period in +Italy had virtually ceased. The Fasci made their appeal to Italians +who, in spite of the disappointments of the peace, continued to +believe in the war, and who, in order to validate the victory which +was the proof of the war's value, were bent on recovering for Italy +that control over her own destinies which could come only through a +restoration of discipline and a reorganization of social and political +forces. From the first, the Fascist Party was not one of believers but +of action. What it needed was not a platform of principles, but an +idea which would indicate a goal and a road by which the goal could be +reached.</p> + +<p>The four years between 1919 and 1923 inclusive were characterized by +the development of the Fascist revolution through the action of "the +squads." The Fascist "squads" were really the force of a State not yet +born but on the way to being. In its first period, Fascist "squadrism" +transgressed the law of the old régime because it was determined to +suppress that régime as incompatible with the national State to which +Fascism was aspiring. The March on Rome was not the beginning, it was +the end of that phase of the revolution; because, with Mussolini's +advent to power, Fascism entered the sphere of legality. After October +28, 1922, Fascism was no longer at war with the State; it <i>was</i> the +State, looking about for the organization which would realize Fascism +as a concept of State. Fascism already had control of all the +instruments necessary for the upbuilding of a new State. The Italy of +Giolitti had been superceded, at least so far as militant politics +were concerned. Between Giolitti's Italy and the new Italy there +flowed, as an imaginative orator once said in the Chamber, "a torrent +of blood" that would prevent any return to the past. The century-old +crisis had been solved. The war at last had begun to bear fruit for +Italy.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><b>VI</b></p> + +<p>Now to understand the distinctive essence of Fascism, nothing is more +instructive than a comparison of it with the point of view of Mazzini +to which I have so often referred.</p> + +<p>Mazzini did have a political conception, but his politic was a sort of +integral politic, which cannot be so sharply distinguished from +morals, religion, and ideas of life as a whole, as to be considered +apart from these other fundamental interests of the human spirit. If +one tries to separate what is purely political from his religious +beliefs, his ethical consciousness and his metaphysical concepts, it +becomes impossible to understand the vast influence which his credo +and his propaganda exerted. Unless we assume the unity of the whole +man, we arrive not at the clarification but at the destruction of +those ideas of his which proved so powerful.</p> + +<p>In the definition of Fascism, the first point to grasp is the +comprehensive, or as Fascists say, the "totalitarian" scope of its +doctrine, which concerns itself not only with political organization +and political tendency, but with the whole will and thought and +feeling of the nation.</p> + +<p>There is a second and equally important point. Fascism is not a +philosophy. Much less is it a religion. It is not even a political +theory which may be stated in a series of formulae. The significance +of Fascism is not to be grasped in the special theses which it from +time to time assumes. When on occasion it has announced a program, a +goal, a concept to be realized in action, Fascism has not hesitated to +abandon them when in practice these were found to be inadequate or +inconsistent with the principle of Fascism. Fascism has never been +willing to compromise its future. Mussolini has boasted that he is a +<i>tempista</i>, that his real pride is in "good timing." He makes +decisions and acts on them at the precise moment when all the +conditions and considerations which make them feasible and opportune +are properly matured. This is a way of saying that Fascism returns to +the most rigorous meaning of Mazzini's "Thought and Action," whereby +the two terms are so perfectly coincident that no thought has value +which is not already expressed in action. The real "views" of the +<i>Duce</i> are those which he formulates and executes at one and the same +time.</p> + +<p>Is Fascism therefore "anti-intellectual," as has been so often +charged? It is eminently anti-intellectual, eminently Mazzinian, that +is, if by intellectualism we mean the divorce of thought from action, +of knowledge from life, of brain from heart, of theory from practice. +Fascism is hostile to all Utopian systems which are destined never to +face the test of reality. It is hostile to all science and all +philosophy which remain matters of mere fancy or intelligence. It is +not that Fascism denies value to culture, to the higher intellectual +pursuits by which thought is invigorated as a source of action. +Fascist anti-intellectualism holds in scorn a product peculiarly +typical of the educated classes in Italy: the <i>leterato</i>—the man who +plays with knowledge and with thought without any sense of +responsibility for the practical world. It is hostile not so much to +culture as to bad culture, the culture which does not educate, which +does not make men, but rather creates pedants and aesthetes, egotists +in a word, men morally and politically indifferent. It has no use, for +instance, for the man who is "above the conflict" when his country or +its important interests are at stake.</p> + +<p>By virtue of its repugnance for "intellectualism," Fascism prefers not +to waste time constructing abstract theories about itself. But when we +say that it is not a system or a doctrine we must not conclude that it +is a blind praxis or a purely instinctive method. If by system or +philosophy we mean a living thought, a principle of universal +character daily revealing its inner fertility and significance, then +Fascism is a perfect system, with a solidly established foundation and +with a rigorous logic in its development; and all who feel the truth +and the vitality of the principle work day by day for its development, +now doing, now undoing, now going forward, now retracing their steps, +according as the things they do prove to be in harmony with the +principle or to deviate from it.</p> + +<p>And we come finally to a third point.</p> + +<p>The Fascist system is not a political system, but it has its center of +gravity in politics. Fascism came into being to meet serious problems +of politics in post-war Italy. And it presents itself as a political +method. But in confronting and solving political problems it is +carried by its very nature, that is to say by its method, to consider +moral, religious, and philosophical questions and to unfold and +demonstrate the comprehensive totalitarian character peculiar to it. +It is only after we have grasped the political character of the +Fascist principle that we are able adequately to appreciate the deeper +concept of life which underlies that principle and from which the +principle springs. The political doctrine of Fascism is not the whole +of Fascism. It is rather its more prominent aspect and in general its +most interesting one.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><b>VII</b></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>in fieri</i>. It is in our hands, wholly; whence our very serious +responsibility towards it.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>The Fascist State, on the contrary, is a people's state, and, as such, +the democratic State <i>par excellence</i>. 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 +<i>Duce</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>The Fascist conception of liberty merits passing notice. The <i>Duce</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<br /><br /> + +<a name="NATIONAL_SOCIALISM"></a><hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<br /> + +<h3>NATIONAL SOCIALISM</h3><span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span> + +<h4><span style="font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 110%">Basic Principles, Their Application<br /> +By The Nazi Party's Foreign Organization,<br /> +And The Use Of Germans Abroad<br /> +For Nazi Aims</span><br /> +<br /> +Prepared in the Special Unit<br /> +Of the Division of European Affairs</h4> + +<h3>by</h3> +<h3><span style="font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 110%">Raymond E. Murphy<br /> +Francis B. Stevens<br /> +Howard Trivers<br /> +Joseph M. Roland</span></h3> + +<br /> +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 110%; margin-bottom: 1em"> +Elements Of Nazi Ideology</p> +<br /> + +<p>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 <i>Weltanschauung</i> 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.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><b>The Volk</b></p> + +<p>Ernst Rudolf Huber, in his basic work <i>Verfassungsrecht des +grossdeutschen Reiches (Constitutional Law of the Greater German +Reich</i>) (document 1, <i>post</i> p. 155), published in 1939, states:</p> + +<p class="quot">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.<a name="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8"><sup>[8]</sup></a></p> + +<p>In developing his thesis Huber points out that the National Socialist +state rests on three basic concepts, the <i>Volk</i> or people, the Führer, +and the movement or party. With reference to the first element, the +<i>Volk</i>, 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.</p> + +<p class="quot">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.</p> + +<p class="quot">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.<a name="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9"><sup>[9]</sup></a></p> + +<p>According to Huber, geographical considerations play a large part in +the shaping of a people:</p> + +<p class="quot">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. + <a name="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10"><sup>[10]</sup></a></p> + +<p>But the new Germany is based upon a "unity and entirety of the +people"<a name="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11"><sup>[11]</sup></a> +which does not stop at geographical boundaries:</p> + +<p class="quot">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. +<a name="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12"><sup>[12]</sup></a></p> + +<p>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 <i>Mein Kampf</i>, "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."<a name="FNanchor_13_13"></a> +<a href="#Footnote_13_13"><sup>[13]</sup></a></p> + +<p>Huber continues:</p> + +<p class="quot">In the theory of the folk-Reich [<i>völkisches Reich</i>], 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....<a name="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14"><sup>[14]</sup></a></p> + +<p class="quot">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.<a name="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15"> +<sup>[15]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>A similar interpretation of the role of the <i>Volk</i> is expounded by +Gottfried Neesse in his <i>Die Nationalsozialistische Deutsche +Arbeiterpartei—Versuch einer Rechtsdeutung</i> (<i>The National Socialist +German Workers Party—An Attempt at Legal Interpretation</i>), 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."<a name="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16"><sup>[16]</sup></a> 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.</p> + +<p>But the central and basic concept of National Socialist political +theory is the concept of the people:</p> + +<p class="quot">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.<a name="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17"><sup>[17]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>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."<a name="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18"><sup>[18]</sup></a> "The unity of the people is increased by its +common destiny and its consciousness of a common mission."<a name="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19"><sup>[19]</sup></a></p> + +<p>Liberalism gave rise to the concept of a "society-people" +(<i>Gesellschaftsvolk</i>) 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" (<i>Gemeinschaftsvolk</i>) which functions as a uniform +whole.<a name="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20"><sup>[20]</sup></a></p> + +<p class="quot">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.<a name="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21"><sup>[21]</sup></a></p> + +<p class="quot">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.<a name="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22"><sup>[22]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p class="quot">The nation is the complete agreement between organism and + organization, the perfect formation of a naturally grown + being. ... <i>Nationalism</i> is nothing more than the outwardly + directed striving to maintain this inner unity of people and + state, and <i>socialism</i> is the inwardly directed striving for + the same end.<a name="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23"><sup>[23]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>Dr. Herbert Scurla, Government Councilor and Reich's Minister for +Science, Education, and Folk Culture, in a pamphlet entitled <i>Die +Grundgedanken des Nationalsozialismus und das Ausland</i> (<i>Basic +Principles of National Socialism With Special Reference to Foreign +Countries</i>), also emphasizes the importance of the <i>Volk</i> 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.</p> + +<p class="quot">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. <a name="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24"><sup>[24]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>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."<a name="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25"><sup>[25]</sup></a> "Under revolution," he states, "we +understand rather the penetration of the collective folk-mind +[<i>gesamtvölkischen Bewusstseins</i>] into all regions of German +life."<a name="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26"><sup>[26]</sup></a> And, he concludes:</p> + +<p class="quot">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. +<a name="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27"><sup>[27]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>Some of the most striking expressions of the race concept are found in +<i>Die Erziehung im dritten Reich</i> (<i>Education in the Third Reich</i>), 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, +<i>post</i> p. 155) and Neesse to associate the ideas of <i>Volk</i> 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."<a name="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28"><sup>[28]</sup></a> <i>Race</i> +finds its expression in human life through +the phenomenon of the <i>people</i>:</p> + +<p class="quot"><i>Race</i> and <i>people</i> 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 <i>people</i> 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. +<a name="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29"><sup>[29]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>Beck describes the politically spiritual National Socialist +personality which National Socialist education seeks to develop, in +the following terms:</p> + +<p class="quot">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.<a name="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30"><sup>[30]</sup></a></p> + +<p>National Socialist education must stress the heroic life and teach +German youth the importance of fulfilling their duty to the <i>Volk</i>.</p> + +<p class="quot">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 + <i>direct connection with the community of the people</i> and + school education must derive from it the form and substance + of its instruction.<a name="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31"><sup>[31]</sup></a></p> + +<p> 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.<a name="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32"><sup>[32]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p class="quot">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. +<a name="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33"><sup>[33]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p class="quot">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.<a name="FNanchor_34_34"></a> +<a href="#Footnote_34_34"><sup>[34]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>Such indeed is the supreme goal of all National Socialist education: +to make each individual an expression of "the eternal German":</p> + +<p class="quot">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.<a name="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35"><sup>[35]</sup></a> </p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><b>Racial Supremacy</b></p> + +<p>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 <i>Herrenvolk</i> (master race). +Rosenberg developed his ideas in the obscure phraseology of <i>Der +Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts</i> (<i>The Myth of the Twentieth Century</i>) +(document 3, <i>post</i> 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."<a name="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36"><sup>[36]</sup></a> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Rosenberg acclaims the new faith of the blood which is to replace the +non-German religion of Christianity. "A <i>new</i> 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 <i>mysterium</i> which has replaced and +overcome the old sacraments."<a name="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37"><sup>[37]</sup></a></p> + +<p>Rosenberg accepts the classic German view of the <i>Volk</i>, 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 <i>last</i>, that to which everything else has to be +subordinated."<a name="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38"><sup>[38]</sup></a> "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."<a name="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39"><sup>[39]</sup></a></p> + +<p>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 [<i>Volk</i>] 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."<a name="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40"><sup>[40]</sup></a> After +the Nazis came to power, this concept was made the basis of the German +citizenship law of September 15, 1935.</p> + +<p>Commenting upon point 4 of the Nazi program in his pamphlet, <i>Nature, +Principles, and Aims of the NSDAP</i>, Rosenberg wrote:</p> + +<p class="quot">An indispensable differentiation must be made sometime in + the German <i>Volk</i> 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 <i>Volk</i>. 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.</p> + +<p class="quot">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 ...</p> + +<p class="quot">National Socialism also sees in the nature of the structure + and leadership of the state an outflowing of a definite + character in the <i>Volk</i>. 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 <i>Volk</i> is crippled....</p> + +<p class="quot">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 <i>German</i> 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.<a name="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41"><sup>[41]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>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 <i>Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts</i>, 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."<a name="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42"><sup>[42]</sup></a></p> + +<p>This idea was developed at length by the German geopolitician, Colin +Ross. In his book <i>Unser Amerika</i> (<i>Our America</i>) (document 4, <i>post</i> +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.</p> + +<p>Reference was made in the preceding section to Beck's <i>Education in +the Third Reich</i>. 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 (<i>Rassenkunde und Rassenpflege</i>), 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."<a name="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43"><sup>[43]</sup></a> 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."<a name="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44"><sup>[44]</sup></a></p> + +<p>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 [<i>Siedlungsraum</i>]."<a name="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45"><sup>[45]</sup></a></p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><b>The Führer Principle</b></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>One of the best expositions of the Nazi concept of the Führer +principle is given by Huber in his <i>Constitutional Law of the Greater +German Reich</i> (document 1, <i>post</i> p. 155):</p> + +<p class="quot">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 ...</p> + +<p class="quot">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 ...</p> + +<p class="quot">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 ...</p> + +<p class="quot">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 ...</p> + +<p class="quot">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 <br />grounded.<a name="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46"><sup>[46]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p class="quot">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. +<a name="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47"><sup>[47]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p class="quot">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. +<a name="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48"><sup>[48]</sup></a></p> + +<p>Huber also shows how the position of the Führer developed from the +Nazi Party movement:</p> + +<p class="quot">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. +<a name="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49"><sup>[49]</sup></a></p> + +<p class="quot">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.<a name="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50"><sup>[50]</sup></a></p> + +<p>Neesse, in his <i>The National Socialist German Workers Party—An +Attempt at Legal Interpretation</i>, 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."<a name="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51"><sup>[51]</sup></a></p> + +<p>The <i>leadership</i> (<i>Führung</i>) in the Nazi state is not to be compared +with the <i>government</i> or <i>administration</i> in a democracy:</p> + +<p class="quot"><i>Führung</i> 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 ...<a name="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52"><sup>[52]</sup></a></p> + +<p class="quot">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 <i>identity</i> 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 <i>Führung</i> 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 <i>Führung</i> 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, <i>Führung</i> 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.<a name="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53"><sup>[53]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>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 +<i>Germany Speaks</i>, published in London in 1938, states:</p> + +<p class="quot">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.<a name="FNanchor_54_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_54"><sup>[54]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>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.<a name="FNanchor_55_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55_55"><sup>[55]</sup></a> (The text of the resolution +adopted by the Reichstag is included as document 5, <i>post</i> p. 183.)</p> + +<p>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 <i>Angriff</i> on April 9, 1942 +(document 6, <i>post</i> 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:</p> + +<p class="quot">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. <i>We + have no understanding for him who hides behind an anonymous + conscience, behind God, whom everybody conceives according + to his own wishes.</i> </p> + +<p>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 +<i>Organisationsbuch der NSDAP</i> (<i>Nazi Party Organization Book</i>) for +1940, page 7 (document 7, <i>post</i> p. 186). The first commandment is +"The Führer is always right!" and the second is "Never go against +discipline!"</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p class="quot">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. +<a name="FNanchor_56_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_56"><sup>[56]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>Beck, in his work <i>Education in the Third Reich</i>, also insists that a +respect for the Führer principle be inculcated in youth:</p> + +<p class="quot">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. +<a name="FNanchor_57_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_57"><sup>[57]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>German writers often pretend that the Führer principle does not +necessarily result in the establishment of a dictatorship but that it +permits the embodiment of the will of the people in its leaders and +the realization of the popular will much more efficiently than is +possible in democratic states. Such an argument, for example, is +presented by Dr. Paul Ritterbusch in <i>Demokratie und Diktatur</i> +(<i>Democracy and Dictatorship</i>), published in 1939. Professor +Ritterbusch claims that Communism leads to a dictatorial system but +that the Nazi movement is much closer to the ideals of true democracy. +The real nature of National Socialism, however, cannot be understood +from the standpoint of the "pluralistic-party state." It does not +represent a dictatorship of one party and a suppression of all others +but rather an expression of the will and the character of the whole +national community in and through one great party which has resolved +all internal discords and oppositions within itself. The Führer of +this great movement is at once the leader and the expression of the +national will. Freed from the enervating effects of internal strife, +the movement under the guiding hand of the Führer can bring the whole +of the national community to its fullest expression and highest +development.</p> + +<p>The highest authority, however, Hitler himself, has left no doubt as +to the nature of Nazi Party leaders. In a speech delivered at the +Sportpalast in Berlin on April 8, 1933, he said:</p> + +<p class="quot">When our opponents say: "It is easy for you: you are a + dictator"—We answer them, "No, gentlemen, you are wrong; + there is no single dictator, but ten thousand, each in his + own place." And even the highest authority in the hierarchy + has itself only one wish, never to transgress against the + supreme authority to which it, too, is responsible. We have + in our movement developed this loyalty in following the + leader, this blind obedience of which all the others know + nothing and which gave to us the power to surmount + everything.<a name="FNanchor_58_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58_58"><sup>[58]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>As has been indicated above, the Führer principle applies not only to +the Führer of the Reich, Adolf Hitler, but to all the subordinate +leaders of the party and the government apparatus. With respect to +this aspect of the Führer principle, Huber (document 1, <i>post</i> p. +155), says:</p> + +<p class="quot">The ranks of the public services are regarded as forces + organized on the living principle of leadership and + following: The authority of command exercised in the labor + service, the military service, and the civil service is + Führer-authority ... It has been said of the military and + civil services that true leadership is not represented in + their organization on the principles of command and + obedience. In reality there can be no political leadership + which does not have recourse to command and force as the + means for the accomplishment of its ends. Command and force + do not, of course, constitute the true nature of leadership, + but as a means they are indispensable elements of every + fully developed Führer-order.<a name="FNanchor_59_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59_59"><sup>[59]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>The Führer principle is officially recognized by the party, and the +party interpretation thereof is set forth in the <i>Party Organization +Book</i> (document 7 and charts 1 and 1-A, <i>post</i> pp. 186, 488, 489).</p> + +<p>There are also included herein, as charts 2 and 2-A and 3 and 3-A +(<i>post</i> pp. 490, 491, 492, 493), photostatic copies and translations +of two charts from <i>Der nationalsozialistische Staat</i> (<i>The National +Socialist State</i>) by Dr. Walther Gehl, published in 1935. These charts +clearly show the concentration of authority in the Führer and the +subordinate relation of the minor leaders in both the state and the +party.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: .5em"><b> +The Party: Leadership by an Elite Class</b></p> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><i>1. Functions of the Party</i></p> + +<p>The third pillar of the Nazi state, the link between <i>Volk</i> and +Führer, is the Nazi Party. According to Nazi ideology, all authority +within the nation is derived ultimately from the people, but it is the +party through which the people expresses itself. In +<i>Rechtseinrichtungen und Rechtsaufgaben der Bewegung</i> (<i>Legal +Organization and Legal Functions of the Movement</i>) (document 8, <i>post</i> +p. 204), published in 1939, Otto Gauweiler states:</p> + +<p class="quot">The will of the German people finds its expression in the + party as the political organization of the people. It + represents the political conception, the political + conscience, and the political will. It is the expression and + the organ of the people's creative will to life. It + comprises a select part of the German people for "only the + best Germans should be party members" ... The inner + organization of the party must therefore bring the national + life which is concentrated within itself to manifestation + and development in all the fields of national endeavor in + which the party is represented. +<a name="FNanchor_60_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60_60"><sup>[60]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>Gauweiler defines the relationship of the party to the state in the +following terms:</p> + +<p class="quot">The party stands above and beside the state as the wielder + of an authority derived from the people with its own + sovereign powers and its own sphere of sovereignty ... The + legal position of the party is therefore that of a + completely sovereign authority whose legal supremacy and + self-sufficiency rest upon the original independent + political authority which the Führer and the movement have + attained as a result of their historical achievements.<a name="FNanchor_61_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61_61"><sup>[61]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>Neesse states that "It will be the task of National Socialism to lead +back the German people to an organic structure which proceeds from a +recognition of the differences in the characters and possibilities of +human beings without permitting this recognition to lead to a cleavage +of the people into two camps."<a name="FNanchor_62_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62_62"><sup>[62]</sup></a> This task is the responsibility of +the party. Although it has become the only political party in Germany, +the party does not desire to identify itself with the state. It does +not wish to dominate the state or to serve it. It works beside it and +cooperates with it. In this respect, Nazi Germany is distinguished +from the other one-party states of Europe: "In the one-party state of +Russia, the party rules over the state; in the one-party state of +Italy, the party serves the state; but in the one-party state of +Germany, the party neither serves the state nor rules over it directly +but works and struggles together with it for the community of the +people."<a name="FNanchor_63_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63_63"><sup>[63]</sup></a> Neesse contends that the party derives its legal basis +from the law inherent in the living organism of the German <i>Volk</i>:</p> + +<p class="quot">The inner law of the NSDAP is none other than the inner law + of the German people. The party arises from the people; it + has formed an organization which crystallizes about itself + the feelings of the people, which seemed buried, and the + strength of the people, which seemed lost.<a name="FNanchor_64_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64_64"><sup>[64]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>Neesse states that the party has two great tasks—to insure the +continuity of national leadership and to preserve the unity of the +<i>Volk</i>:</p> + +<p class="quot">The first main task of the party, which is in keeping with + its organic nature, is to protect the National Socialist + idea and to constantly renew it by drawing from the depths + of the German soul, to keep it pure and clear, and to pass + it on thus to coming generations: this is predominantly a + matter of education of the people.</p> + +<p class="quot">The second great task, which is in keeping with its + organizational nature, is to form the people and the state + into the unity of the nation and to create for the German + national community forms which are ever new and suited to + its vital development: this is predominantly a matter of + state formation. These two tasks, one of which deals with + substance and the other with function, belong together. It + is as impossible to separate them as it is to split up the + party into organism and organization, form and content.<a name="FNanchor_65_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65_65"><sup>[65]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>Huber (document 1, <i>post</i> p. 155) describes the tasks of the party in +similar terms. He states that the party is charged with the "education +of the people to a political people" through the awakening of the +political consciousness of each individual; the inculcation of a +"uniform political philosophy," that is, the teaching of Nazi +principles; "the selection of leaders," including the choice and +training of especially promising boys to be the Führers of the future; +and the shaping of the "political will of the people" in accordance +with the Führer's aims.<a name="FNanchor_66_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66_66"><sup>[66]</sup></a></p> + +<p>The educational tasks of the party are stressed by Beck, who develops +the idea that the <i>Volk</i> can be divided into three main groups, "a +supporting, a leading, and a creative class."<a name="FNanchor_67_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67_67"><sup>[67]</sup></a> It is the duty of +the leading class, that is, the party, from which the creative class +of leaders is drawn, to provide for the education of the supporting +class.</p> + +<p class="quot">Every member of the body of the people must belong to the + politically supporting class, that is, each one who bears + within himself the basic racial, spiritual, and mental + values of the people ... Here no sort of leading or creative + activity is demanded but only a recognition of the leading + and creative will ... Only those are called to leadership in + political life who have recognized the community-bound law + of all human life in purest clarity and in the all-embracing + extent of its validity and who will place all the powers of + their personal lives with the help of a politically moral + character in the service of the formation of community life + ... From the politically leading class arise the politically + creative personalities. These are the mysterious elemental + forces which are beyond all explanation by human reason and + which through their action and by means of the living idea + within them give to the community of the people an + expression which is fresh, young, and eternal. Here is the + fulfilment of the highest and purest political humanity ... + The education of the socialist personality is essentially + the forming of the politically supporting class within the + German people and the encouragement of those political + tendencies which make a man a political leader. To educate + to political creativeness is just as impossible as to + educate to genius. Education can only furnish the spiritual + atmosphere, can only prepare the spiritual living-space for + the politically creative personality by forming a uniform + political consciousness in the socialistic personality, and + in the development of politically creative personalities it + can at the most give special attention to those values of + character and spirit which are of decisive importance for + the development of this personality.<a name="FNanchor_68_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_68_68"><sup>[68]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>Goebbels in <i>The Nature and Form of National Socialism</i> (document 2, +<i>post</i> p. 170) emphasizes the responsibility of the party for the +leadership of the state:</p> + +<p class="quot">The party must always continue to represent the hierarchy of + National Socialist leadership. This minority must always + insist upon its prerogative to control the state. It must + keep the way open for the German youth which wishes to take + its place in this hierarchy. In reality the hierarchy has + fewer rights than duties! It is responsible for the + leadership of the state and it solemnly relieves the people + of this responsibility. It has the duty to control the state + in the best interests and to the general welfare of the + nation.<a name="FNanchor_69_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69_69"><sup>[69]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>Dr. Frick, German Minister of the Interior, in his chapter in <i>Germany +Speaks</i> indicates the exclusive position of the party in the Third +Reich:</p> + +<p class="quot">National Socialist Germany, however, is not merely a unitary + state: it is also a unitary nation and its governance is + based on the principle of leadership ...</p> + +<p class="quot">In National Socialist Germany, leadership is in the hands of + an organized community, the National Socialist Party; and as + the latter represents the will of the nation, the policy + adopted by it in harmony with the vital interests of the + nation is at the same time the policy adopted by the country + ... The National Socialist Party is the only political party + in Germany and therefore the true representative of the + people...<a name="FNanchor_70_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70_70"><sup>[70]</sup></a></p> + +<p>To Dr. Ley, the party is identical with the Führer. As he wrote in the +<i>Angriff</i> on April 9, 1942 (document 6, <i>post</i> p. 184), "The National +Socialist Party is Hitler, and Hitler is the party."</p> + +<p>The role of the party in legislation, in political matters, and in the +appointment of Government officials is indicated by the Führer's +decree of May 29, 1941,<a name="FNanchor_71_71"></a><a href="#Footnote_71_71"><sup>[71]</sup></a> as amplified by the order of January 16, +1942, concerning its execution.<a name="FNanchor_72_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_72_72"><sup>[72]</sup></a> (Document 9, <i>post</i> p. 212). This +order provides that all legislative proposals and proposed laws and +decrees, as well as any proposed changes therein, must pass through +and receive the approval of the Party Chancelry.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><i>2. Party Membership</i></p> + +<p>Details concerning the qualifications and duties of party members are +contained in the <i>Party Organization Book</i> for 1940 (document 7, +<i>post</i> p. 186).</p> + +<p class="quot">Membership is finally confirmed by the issuance of a + membership card or a membership book. Anyone who becomes a + party member does not merely join an organization but he + becomes a soldier in the German freedom movement and that + means much more than just paying his dues and attending the + members' meetings. He obligates himself to subordinate his + own ego and to place everything he has in the service of the + people's cause. Only he who is capable of doing this should + become a party member. A selection must be made in + accordance with this idea.</p> + +<p class="quot">Readiness to fight, readiness to sacrifice, and strength of + character are the requirements for a good National + Socialist. Small blemishes, such as a false step which + someone has made in his youth, should be overlooked; the + contribution in the struggle for Germany should alone be + decisive. The healthy will naturally prevail over the bad if + the will to health finds sufficient support in leadership + and achievement. Admission to the party should not be + controlled by the old bourgeois point of view. The party + must always represent the elite of the people. +<a name="FNanchor_73_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_73_73"><sup>[73]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>German blood is one of the prerequisites for party membership. The +<i>Party Organization Book</i> for 1940 (document 7, <i>post</i> p. 186) also +states, "Only those racial comrades who possess German citizenship are +eligible for admission."<a name="FNanchor_74_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_74_74"><sup>[74]</sup></a></p> + +<p>Party members shall not exceed ten per cent of the German population +of the region. "The ideal proportion of the number of party members to +the number of racial comrades is set at ten per cent. This proportion +is to apply also to the individual Province [Gau]."<a name="FNanchor_75_75"></a><a href="#Footnote_75_75"><sup>[75]</sup></a></p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><i>3. Pledges and Symbols of Allegiance</i></p> + +<p>Party members take an oath of loyalty to the Führer in the following +terms: "I pledge allegiance to my Führer, Adolf Hitler. I promise at +all times to respect and obey him and the leaders whom he appoints +over me."<a name="FNanchor_76_76"></a><a href="#Footnote_76_76"><sup>[76]</sup></a></p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: left; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em">(a) The Hitler Salute</p> + +<p>A pledge of allegiance to the Führer is also implied in the Nazi +salute, which is usually accompanied by the greeting, "Heil Hitler." +The phrase <i>mit deutschen Gruss</i>, which is commonly used as a closing +salutation in letters, is another form of the Hitler greeting. <i>Knaurs +Konversations-Lexikon</i> (<i>Knaur's Conversational Dictionary</i>), published +in Berlin in 1934, contains the following definition:</p> + +<p class="quot"><i>German greeting</i>, Hitler greeting: by raising the right + arm; used by the old Germans with the spear as a greeting of + arms [<i>Waffengruss</i>]. Communal greeting of the National + Socialists; introduced into general use in 1933.</p> + +<p>That this greeting was used by the Nazis as early as 1923 is +demonstrated by a photograph which appeared in <i>Das Buch der NSDAP, +Werden, Kampf and Ziel der NSDAP</i> (<i>The Book of the NSDAP, Growth, +Struggle, and Goal of the NSDAP</i>) by Walter M. Espe (Berlin, 1934), +illustration 34 (document 10, <i>post</i> p. 214).</p> + +<p>In the same book (page 23 in the supplement entitled "<i>Die NSDAP</i>") +the following distinction is made between the usual Nazi greeting and +the Storm Troopers' salute:</p> + +<p class="quot">While the German greeting consists merely in raising the + right hand in any desired manner and represents rather a + general comradely greeting, the SA salute is executed, in + accordance with the specifications of the SA service + regulations, by placing the left hand on the belt and + raising the extended right arm.</p> + +<p class="quot">The SA salute is to be given to all higher ranking leaders + of the SA and the SS and of the veterans' organization which + has been incorporated into the SA, as well as to the Army + and the national and security police forces.</p> + +<p class="quot">The comradely German greeting is to be exchanged between all + equally ranking members of the SA and the SS and members of + a corresponding rank in the Army, the police, the veterans' + organization, the German air-sport league, the Hitler Youth, + the railway guards, and the whole membership of the party so + far as they are distinguishable by regulation uniforms. </p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: left; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em">(b) The Swastika</p> + +<p>Early in its history the Nazi Party adopted the swastika banner as +its official emblem.<a name="FNanchor_77_77"></a><a href="#Footnote_77_77"><sup>[77]</sup></a> It was designed by Hitler himself, who wrote +in <i>Mein Kampf</i>:</p> + +<p class="quot">I myself after countless attempts had laid down a final + form: a flag with a background of red cloth, having a white + circle, and, in its center, a black swastika....</p> + +<p class="quot">As National Socialists we see our program in our flag. In + the <i>red</i> we see the social idea of the movement, in the + <i>white</i> the nationalistic idea, and in the <i>swastika</i> the + fight for the victory of Aryan man and at the same time for + the victory of the idea of creative work, which in itself + always was and always will be anti-Semitic.<a name="FNanchor_78_78"></a><a href="#Footnote_78_78"><sup>[78]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>The swastika banner came into general use after January 30, 1933 as a +symbol of allegiance to the Hitler regime, but not until two years +later was it made the German national flag by the Reich flag law of +September 15, 1935.<a name="FNanchor_79_79"></a><a href="#Footnote_79_79"><sup>[79]</sup></a> Another law, decreed on April 7, 1937,<a name="FNanchor_80_80"></a><a href="#Footnote_80_80"><sup>[80]</sup></a> +specified that:</p> + +<p class="quot">The insignia which the NSDAP, its formations, and associated + organizations use for their officers, their structure, their + organization, and their symbols may not be used by other + associations either alone or with embellishments. </p> + +<p>It is interesting to note that party regulations forbid members to use +passport photographs in which they appear in party uniform or wearing +party insignia and that party members are forbidden to discuss foreign +policy with foreigners unless they are officially designated by the +Führer to do so. The pertinent regulations read:</p> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<i>Pass Photos on Identification Cards</i></p> + +<p class="quot">Members of the NSDAP must not use pass photos which show the + holder of any identification card in a uniform of the party + or of any of its formations. It is also forbidden to use as + pass photos pictures which show the person wearing a party + button.</p> + +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><i>Conversations With Foreigners</i></p> + +<p class="quot">It is forbidden to all party members to engage in + discussions of foreign policy with foreigners. Only such + persons as have been designated by the Führer are entitled + to do so.<a name="FNanchor_81_81"></a><a href="#Footnote_81_81"><sup>[81]</sup></a> </p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em">The Totalitarian State</p> + +<p>The Weimar Constitution, although never formally abrogated by the +Nazis, was rendered totally ineffectual by two basic laws, promulgated +within two months after the seizure of power by the party. The first +of these was the "Decree of the Reich's President for the Protection +of the People and State" (document 11-I, <i>post</i> p. 215), issued +February 28, 1933, the day after the Reichstag was burned down. It +suspended "until further notice"<a name="FNanchor_82_82"></a><a href="#Footnote_82_82"><sup>[82]</sup></a> articles of the Weimar +Constitution guaranteeing essential democratic rights of the +individual. Thus, according to article I of this decree, "restrictions +on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, +including freedom of the press, on the right of assembly and the right +of association, and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic, +and telephonic communications, and warrants for house-searches, orders +for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also +permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed."<a name="FNanchor_83_83"></a><a href="#Footnote_83_83"><sup>[83]</sup></a> The +abrogation by the Nazis of these fundamental rights of democracy has +never been repealed or amended. In fact, this decree represents the +presupposition and confirmation of the police sway established +throughout Germany by the Nazis.<a name="FNanchor_84_84"></a><a href="#Footnote_84_84"><sup>[84]</sup></a></p> + +<p>The second basic law, known as the "Enabling Act," the "Law To Remove +the Distress of People and State," of March 24, 1933 (document 11-II, +<i>post</i> p. 217), swept away parliamentary government entirely. By +abrogating the pertinent articles of the Weimar Constitution, it +enabled the Nazi Cabinet under Hitler's chancelorship to appropriate +money and legislate without any responsibility to the Reichstag or any +obligation to respect the Constitution.</p> + +<p>The dissolution of democracy in Germany was sealed by the unification +of the authoritarian Nazi Party with the German state. Soon after the +party came to power in 1933, steps were taken to effect and secure +this unity. The process is described by Huber (document 1, <i>post</i> p. +155) as follows:</p> + +<p class="quot">On July 14, 1933 was issued the law against the formation of + new parties which raised the NSDAP to the only political + party in Germany [document 11-III] ... The overthrow of the + old party-state was accompanied by the construction of the + new movement-state [<i>Bewegungsstaat</i>]. Out of a political + fighting organization the NSDAP grew to a community capable + of carrying the state and the nation. This process was + accomplished step by step in the first months after the + National Socialist seizure of power. The assumption of the + office of Chancelor by the Führer of the movement formed the + basis for this development. Various party leaders were + appointed as <i>Reichsminister</i>; the governors of the + provinces were national leaders or <i>Gauleiter</i> of the party, + such as General von Epp; the Prussian government officials + are as a rule <i>Gauleiter</i> of the party; the Prussian police + chiefs are mostly high-ranking SA leaders. By this system of + a union of the personnel of the party and state offices the + unity of party and state was achieved.<a name="FNanchor_85_85"></a><a href="#Footnote_85_85"><sup>[85]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>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, <i>post</i> 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.</p> + +<p>With regard to the relation between the party and the state, Neesse +writes:</p> + +<p class="quot">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.<a name="FNanchor_86_86"></a><a href="#Footnote_86_86"><sup>[86]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>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, <i>post</i> 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:</p> + +<p class="quot">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.<a name="FNanchor_87_87"></a><a href="#Footnote_87_87"><sup>[87]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>The official party interpretation of the relation between party and +state, as set forth in the <i>Party Organization Book</i> for 1940, appears +in the Appendix as document 7 (<i>post</i> p. 186).</p> + +<p>Goebbels in his lecture on <i>The Nature and Form of National Socialism</i> +(document 2, <i>post</i> p. 170) stressed the importance of +<i>Gleichschaltung</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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, <i>post</i> p. 155):</p> + +<p class="quot">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.<a name="FNanchor_88_88"></a><a href="#Footnote_88_88"><sup>[88]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>In place of these rights the constitution of the Third Reich +guarantees to the individual his place in the community of the people:</p> + +<p class="quot">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.</p> + +<p class="quot">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 ...<a name="FNanchor_89_89"></a><a href="#Footnote_89_89"><sup>[89]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>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 <i>Volk</i> for the use of the property in the common +interest. Huber sets forth the Nazi view in the following words:</p> + +<p class="quot">"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.<a name="FNanchor_90_90"></a><a href="#Footnote_90_90"><sup>[90]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Reference has been made to the appointment of party members to +important state offices. Gauweiler (document 8, <i>post</i> 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 +(<i>Beamtengesetz</i>) of January 26, 1937,<a name="FNanchor_91_91"></a><a href="#Footnote_91_91"><sup>[91]</sup></a> 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."<a name="FNanchor_92_92"></a><a href="#Footnote_92_92"><sup>[92]</sup></a></p> + +<p>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 <i>Akademie für deutsches Recht</i>:</p> + +<p class="quot">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.<a name="FNanchor_93_93"></a><a href="#Footnote_93_93"><sup>[93]</sup></a> </p> + +<br /> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 110%; margin-bottom: 1em"> +Footnotes To First Section</p> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8">[8]</a> Huber, <i>Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches</i> +(Hamburg, 1939), pp. 54-55.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9">[9]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 153-155.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10">[10]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 156-157.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11">[11]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 157.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12">[12]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 158.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13">[13]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 163.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14">[14]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 164.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15">[15]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 165-166.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16">[16]</a> Neesse, <i>Die Nationalsozialistische Deutsche +Arbeiterpartei—Versuch einer Rechtsdeutung</i> (Stuttgart, 1935), p. +44.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17">[17]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 51.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18">[18]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 54.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19">[19]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 58.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20">[20]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 54-56.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21">[21]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 59.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22">[22]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 60-61.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23">[23]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 65-66.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24">[24]</a> Scurla, <i>Die Grundgedanken des Nationalsozialismus und +das Ausland</i> (Berlin, 1938), pp. 10-11.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25">[25]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 9.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26">[26]</a> <i>Ibid.</i></p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27">[27]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 13.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28">[28]</a> Beck, <i>Die Erziehung im dritten Reich</i> (Dortmund and +Breslau, 1936), p. 20.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29">[29]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 20-21.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30">[30]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 35.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31">[31]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 52-55.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32">[32]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 46.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33">[33]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 57.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34">[34]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 118.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35">[35]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 140.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36">[36]</a> Rosenberg, <i>Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts</i> (Munich, +1935), p. 28 (1st ed. 1930).</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37">[37]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 114.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38">[38]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 479.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39">[39]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 542.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40">[40]</a> Gottfried Feder, <i>The Programme of the Party of Hitler</i> +(translated by E.T.S. Dugdale: Munich, 1932), p. 18.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41">[41]</a> Rosenberg, <i>Wesen, Grundsätze und Ziele der NSDAP</i> +(Munich, 1933), pp. 16-18 (1st ed. 1922).</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42">[42]</a> Rosenberg, <i>Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts</i>, p. 673.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43">[43]</a> Beck, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 110.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44">[44]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 110.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45">[45]</a> Huber, "<i>Aufbau und Gefüge des Reiches</i>," published in +the book <i>Idee und Ordnung des Reiches</i> (ed. by Huber: Hamburg, +Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1941), p. 12.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46">[46]</a> Huber, <i>Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches</i> +(Hamburg, 1939), pp. 194-198.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47">[47]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 199-200.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48">[48]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 207-208.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49">[49]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 213-214.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50">[50]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 230.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51">[51]</a> Neesse, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 146.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_52">[52]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 143.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_53">[53]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 144-147.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_54_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54_54">[54]</a> <i>Germany Speaks</i> (containing articles by twenty-one +leading members of the Nazi Party and the German Government: London, +1938), p. 31.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_55_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55_55">[55]</a> <i>Reichsgesetzblatt</i> (1942), p. 247. (All citations to +the <i>Reichsgesetzblatt</i> refer to part I thereof.)</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_56_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56_56">[56]</a> Neesse, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 150.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_57_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57_57">[57]</a> Beck, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 131.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_58_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58_58">[58]</a> <i>My New Order</i>, p. 159.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_59_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59_59">[59]</a> Huber, <i>Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches</i> +(Hamburg, 1939), p. 410.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_60_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60_60">[60]</a> Gauweiler, <i>Rechtseinrichtungen und Rechtsaufgaben der +Bewegung</i> (Munich, 1939), p. 2.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_61_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61_61">[61]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 9.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_62_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62_62">[62]</a> Neesse, <i>op. cit,</i>, p. 71.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_63_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63_63">[63]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 119.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_64_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64_64">[64]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 126.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_65_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65_65">[65]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 139-140.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_66_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_66_66">[66]</a> Huber, <i>Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches</i> +(Hamburg, 1939), pp. 293-296.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_67_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_67_67">[67]</a> Beck, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 37.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_68_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_68_68">[68]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 37-38.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_69_69"></a><a href="#FNanchor_69_69">[69]</a> Goebbels, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 19.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_70_70"></a><a href="#FNanchor_70_70">[70]</a> <i>Germany Speaks</i>, pp. 30-31.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_71_71"></a><a href="#FNanchor_71_71">[71]</a> <i>Reichsgesetzblatt</i> (1941), p. 295.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_72_72"></a><a href="#FNanchor_72_72">[72]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, (1942), p. 35.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_73_73"></a><a href="#FNanchor_73_73">[73]</a> <i>Organisationsbuch der NSDAP</i> (ed. by the National +Organizational Director of the NSDAP: Munich, 1940), p. 5.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_74_74"></a><a href="#FNanchor_74_74">[74]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 6b.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_75_75"></a><a href="#FNanchor_75_75">[75]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 6d.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_76_76"></a><a href="#FNanchor_76_76">[76]</a> <i>Ibid.</i></p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_77_77"></a><a href="#FNanchor_77_77">[77]</a> The German pocket reference book for current events +(<i>Taschen-Brockhaus zum Zeitgeschehen</i>: Leipzig, 1942) states that the +swastika banner was designed by Hitler for the NSDAP in 1919.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_78_78"></a><a href="#FNanchor_78_78">[78]</a> Adolf Hitler, <i>Mein Kampf</i> (Munich, Verlag Frank Eher, +G.m.b.H., 1933 [copyright 1925]), pp. 556-557.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_79_79"></a><a href="#FNanchor_79_79">[79]</a> <i>Reichsgesetzblatt</i> (1935), p. 1145.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_80_80"></a><a href="#FNanchor_80_80">[80]</a> <i>Ibid.</i> (1937), p. 442.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_81_81"></a><a href="#FNanchor_81_81">[81]</a> <i>Organisationsbuch der NSDAP</i> (Munich, 1940), p. 8.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_82_82"></a><a href="#FNanchor_82_82">[82]</a> <i>Reichsgesetzblatt</i> (1933), p. 83.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_83_83"></a><a href="#FNanchor_83_83">[83]</a> <i>Ibid.</i></p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_84_84"></a><a href="#FNanchor_84_84">[84]</a> In his book <i>Die deutsche Polizei</i> (<i>The German Police</i>) +(<i>Darmstadt</i>, L.C. Wittich Verlag, 1941), p. 24, the prominent Nazi +police official, Dr. Werner Best, wrote that this law "is to be +regarded not as a 'police law'—that is, as the regulation of police +functions and activities—but as the expression of the new conception +of the state as it has been transformed by the National Socialist +revolution, from which the new 'police' concept is derived." Also, +this law was for the police "the confirmation that the work already +begun was in agreement with the law giving will of the Supreme +Leadership of the Reich."</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_85_85"></a><a href="#FNanchor_85_85">[85]</a> Huber, <i>Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches</i> +(Hamburg, 1939) p. 288.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_86_86"></a><a href="#FNanchor_86_86">[86]</a> Neesse, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 131.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_87_87"></a><a href="#FNanchor_87_87">[87]</a> Gauweiler, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 3.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_88_88"></a><a href="#FNanchor_88_88">[88]</a> Huber, <i>Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches</i> +(Hamburg, 1939), p. 361.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_89_89"></a><a href="#FNanchor_89_89">[89]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 365-366.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_90_90"></a><a href="#FNanchor_90_90">[90]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 372-373.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_91_91"></a><a href="#FNanchor_91_91">[91]</a> <i>Reichsgesetzblatt</i> (1937), pp. 39-70.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_92_92"></a><a href="#FNanchor_92_92">[92]</a> Gauweiler, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 156.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_93_93"></a><a href="#FNanchor_93_93">[93]</a> Reported in a bulletin of the official German news +agency, DNB, Apr. 14, 1942.</p></div> + +<br /><br /> + +<a name="NAZI_AIMS_AND_METHODS"></a><hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<br /> + +<h3><span style="font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 110%"> +Nazi Aims And Methods</span></h3> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em">Political Aims</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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, <i>post</i> +p. 222.) The points of particular interest in this study are the first +four, which are set forth below:</p> + +<p class="quot">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.</p> + +<p class="quot">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.</p> + +<p class="quot">3. We demand land and territory (colonies) for the + nourishment of our people and for settling our superfluous + population.</p> + +<p class="quot">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.<a name="FNanchor_94_94"></a><a href="#Footnote_94_94"><sup>[94]</sup></a> </p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><i>1. Internal Objectives</i></p> + +<p>A statement of the internal objectives of National Socialism is made +by Gauweiler in his <i>Legal Organization and Legal Functions of the +Movement</i> (document 8, <i>post</i> p. 204). The laws of the Reich must seek +to establish and promote the five basic values recognized by Nazi +ideology:</p> + +<p class="quot">1. Race: The legal protection of the race, which has created + a new concept of nationality [<i>Volkszugehörigkeit</i>], 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."</p> + +<p class="quot">The purpose of this legal protection of the basic value of + <i>race</i> 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.</p> + +<p class="quot">2. Soil [<i>Boden</i>]: 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.</p> + +<p class="quot">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.</p> + +<p class="quot">4. The Reich: With the securing of the three basic values of + race, soil, and work arises the National Socialist Reich.</p> + +<p class="quot">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.</p> + +<p class="quot">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.<a name="FNanchor_95_95"></a><a href="#Footnote_95_95"><sup>[95]</sup></a> </p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><i>2. Foreign Policy</i></p> + +<p>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 <i>Mein +Kampf</i> (document 13-I, <i>post</i> p. 226):</p> + +<p class="quot">As National Socialists we can further set forth the + following principle with regard to the nature of the foreign + policy of a folk-state:</p> + +<p class="quot"><i>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.</i><a name="FNanchor_96_96"></a><a href="#Footnote_96_96"><sup>[96]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>And in the same work he states:</p> + +<p class="quot">Yes, we can only learn from the past that we must undertake + the setting of aims for our political activity in two + directions: <i>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.</i><a name="FNanchor_97_97"></a><a href="#Footnote_97_97"><sup>[97]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>The political objectives of National Socialism, then, by definition of +Hitler himself, are the internal unification of the German people and +external expansion.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Basic +Principles of National Socialism With Special Reference to Foreign +Countries</i>. 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,"<a name="FNanchor_98_98"></a><a href="#Footnote_98_98"><sup>[98]</sup></a> and +comments:</p> + +<p class="quot">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.<a name="FNanchor_99_99"></a><a href="#Footnote_99_99"><sup>[99]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>Farther on in the same work Scurla states:</p> + +<p class="quot">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.<a name="FNanchor_100_100"></a><a href="#Footnote_100_100"><sup>[100]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p class="quot">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.<a name="FNanchor_101_101"></a><a href="#Footnote_101_101"><sup>[101]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>But such assurances, which were intended exclusively for foreign +consumption, were refuted by the basic policy laid down in <i>Mein +Kampf</i>, 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 +<i>Mein Kampf</i> (document 13-I, <i>post</i> p. 226) Hitler wrote:</p> + +<p class="quot"><i>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.</i><a name="FNanchor_102_102"></a><a href="#Footnote_102_102"><sup>[102]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>Hitler suggests a future foreign policy for Germany which would assure +<i>Lebensraum</i> and domination of the European continent. In <i>Mein Kampf</i> +he states:</p> + +<p class="quot">But the political testament of the German nation for its + outwardly directed activity should and must always have the + following import:</p> + +<p class="quot"><i>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</i>.<a name="FNanchor_103_103"></a><a href="#Footnote_103_103"><sup>[103]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>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 <i>Mein Kampf</i> (document 13-I, <i>post</i> p. 226):</p> + +<p class="quot">... 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 + [<i>Herrenvolk</i>] which places the world in the service of a + higher culture.<a name="FNanchor_104_104"></a><a href="#Footnote_104_104"><sup>[104]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>Like Hitler, Rosenberg envisaged the extension of Nazi power far +beyond the borders of Germany. In his <i>Nature, Principles, and Aims of +the NSDAP</i> 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."<a name="FNanchor_105_105"></a><a href="#Footnote_105_105"><sup>[105]</sup></a></p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em;"><b>Propaganda</b></p> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><i>1. Professed Peaceful Intentions as a Cloak for Imperialistic +Designs</i></p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p class="quot"><i>No fresh European war is capable of putting something + better in the place of unsatisfactory conditions which exist + to-day ...</i> 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 ... <i>The German Government wish to settle all + difficult questions with other Governments by peaceful + methods.</i> 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 ...</p> + +<p class="quot">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.</p> + +<p class="quot"><i>The German people have no thought of invading any + country.</i><a name="FNanchor_106_106"></a><a href="#Footnote_106_106"><sup>[106]</sup></a> + (Document 14, <i>post</i> pp. 282-233.) </p> + +<p>And on March 7, 1936 he stated:</p> + +<p class="quot">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. <i>We have no territorial demands to make in + Europe.</i><a name="FNanchor_107_107"></a><a href="#Footnote_107_107"><sup>[107]</sup></a> (Document 14, <i>post</i> p. 237.) </p> + +<p>Moreover, he did not shrink from giving specific assurances of +Germany's peaceful intentions toward his subsequent victims:</p> + +<p class="quot">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)</p> + +<p class="quot"><i>Germans and Poles must reconcile themselves as to the fact + of each others' existence.</i> 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 ...</p> + +<p class="quot"><i>The assertion that the German Reich plans to coerce the + Austrian State is absurd and cannot be substantiated or + proved</i> ... 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)</p> + +<p class="quot"><i>The lie goes forth again that Germany to-morrow or the day + after will fall upon Austria or Czecho-Slovakia</i>. 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)</p> + +<p class="quot">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 ... <i>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</i> + ...<br /> + (Sept. 26, 1938)<a name="FNanchor_108_108"></a><a href="#Footnote_108_108"><sup>[108]</sup></a><br /> + (Document 14, <i>post</i> pp. 233, 234, 238, 240-241.)</p> + +<p class="quot">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)<a name="FNanchor_109_109"></a><a href="#Footnote_109_109"><sup>[109]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p class="quot"><i>... 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 ...</i></p> + +<p class="quot">The German Government is nevertheless prepared to give each + of the States named an assurance of the kind desired by Mr. + Roosevelt on the condition of absolute reciprocity, provided + that the State wishes it and itself addresses to Germany a + request for such an assurance together with appropriate + proposals.<a name="FNanchor_110_110"></a><a href="#Footnote_110_110"><sup>[110]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>And on September 1, 1939, with reference to the recently concluded +pact between Germany and Russia, he said:</p> + +<p class="quot">You know that Russia and Germany are governed by two + different doctrines. There was only one question that had to + be cleared up. Germany has no intention of exporting its + doctrine. Given the fact that Soviet Russia has no intention + of exporting its doctrine to Germany, I no longer see any + reason why we should still oppose one another. On both sides + we are clear on that. Any struggle between our people would + only be of advantage to others. We have, therefore, resolved + to conclude a pact which rules out forever any use of + violence between us.<a name="FNanchor_111_111"></a><a href="#Footnote_111_111"><sup>[111]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>Additional assurances of this nature are quoted in a series of +extracts from Hitler's speeches, dating from February 10, 1933 to +September 1, 1939, which was printed in the <i>London Times</i> of +September 26, 1939 (document 14, <i>post</i> p. 232).</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><i>2. Internal Propaganda</i></p> + +<p>Within Germany the notorious propaganda machine of Dr. Goebbels, +together with a systematic terrorization of oppositionist elements, +has been the principle support of the rise and triumph of the Nazi +movement. In his <i>Legal Organization and Legal Functions of the +Movement</i> (document 8, <i>post</i> p. 204), Gauweiler gives an idea of the +permeation of all phases of national life with a propaganda designed +to make Nazi "legal principles" acceptable to the masses. He makes it +clear that all of the Nazi propaganda machinery is in the service of +this program; political lecturers, the press, the radio, and the films +all play a part in helping the people to understand and appreciate the +new legal code. The schools and Hitler Youth groups provide +instruction for all young people in the fundamentals of National +Socialist law, and pupils in those schools which train the carefully +selected future leaders are given an especially strong dose of Nazi +legal theory and practice.</p> + +<p>In order to appeal to the broadest audience, Nazi propaganda has +always sought to present all questions in the simplest possible terms. +Goebbels himself, in his <i>Nature and Form of National Socialism</i> +(document 2, <i>post</i> p. 170), wrote as follows:</p> + +<p class="quot">National Socialism has simplified the thinking of the German + people and led it back to its original primitive formulas. + It has presented the complicated processes of political and + economic life in their simplest terms. This was done with + the well-considered intention of leading the broad masses of + the people once again to take part in political life. In + order to find understanding among the masses, we consciously + practiced a popular [<i>volksgebundene</i>] propaganda. We have + taken complexes of facts which were formerly accessible only + to a few specialists and experts, carried them to the + streets, and hammered them into the brain of the little man. + All things were presented so simply that even the most + primitive mind could grasp them. We refused to work with + unclear or insubstantial concepts but we gave all things a + clearly defined sense. Here lay the secret of our + success.<a name="FNanchor_112_112"></a><a href="#Footnote_112_112"><sup>[112]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>The character and quality of Nazi propaganda was fully presaged in +<i>Mein Kampf</i>. Here Hitler paid a striking tribute to the power of +lies, commenting on—</p> + +<p class="quot">the very correct principle that the size of the lie always + involves a certain factor of credibility, since the great + mass of a people will be more spoiled in the innermost + depths of its heart, rather than consciously and + deliberately bad. Consequently, in view of the primitive + simplicity of its mind it is more readily captivated by a + big lie than by a small one, since it itself often uses + small lies but would be, nevertheless, too ashamed to make + use of big lies. Such an untruth will not even occur to it, + and it will not even believe that others are capable of the + enormous insolence of the most vile distortions. Why, even + when enlightened, it will still vacillate and be in doubt + about the matter and will nevertheless accept as true at + least some cause or other. Consequently, even from the most + impudent lie something will always stick ...<a name="FNanchor_113_113"></a><a href="#Footnote_113_113"><sup>[113]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>A number of other passages display Hitler's low opinion of the +intellectual capacities and critical faculties of the masses:</p> + +<p class="quot">All propaganda has to appeal to the people and its + intellectual level has to be set in accordance with the + receptive capacities of the most-limited persons among those + to whom it intends to address itself. The larger the mass + of men to be reached, the lower its purely intellectual + level will have to be set.<a name="FNanchor_114_114"></a><a href="#Footnote_114_114"><sup>[114]</sup></a></p> + +<p class="quot">The receptive capacity of the great masses is very + restricted, its understanding small. On the other hand, + however, its forgetfulness is great. On account of these + facts all effective propaganda must restrict itself to very + few points and impress these by slogans, until even the last + person is able to bring to mind what is meant by such a + word.<a name="FNanchor_115_115"></a><a href="#Footnote_115_115"><sup>[115]</sup></a></p> + +<p class="quot">The task of propaganda is, for instance, not to evaluate + diverse rights but to emphasize exclusively the single right + of that which it is representing. It does not have to + investigate objectively the truth, so far as this is + favorable to the others, in order then to present it to the + masses in strict honesty, but rather to serve its own side + ceaselessly.<a name="FNanchor_116_116"></a><a href="#Footnote_116_116"><sup>[116]</sup></a></p> + +<p class="quot">If one's own propaganda even once accords just the shimmer + of right to the other side, then the basis is therewith laid + for doubt regarding one's own cause. The masses are not able + to distinguish where the error of the other side ends and + the error of one's own side begins.<a name="FNanchor_117_117"></a><a href="#Footnote_117_117"><sup>[117]</sup></a></p> + +<p class="quot">But all talent in presentation of propaganda will lead to no + success if a fundamental principle is not always strictly + followed. Propaganda has to restrict itself to a few matters + and to repeat these eternally. Persistence is here, as with + so many other things in the world, the first and most + important presupposition for success.<a name="FNanchor_118_118"></a><a href="#Footnote_118_118"><sup>[118]</sup></a></p> + +<p class="quot">In view of their slowness of mind, they [the masses] require + always, however, a certain period before they are ready even + to take cognizance of a matter, and only after a + thousandfold repetition of the most simple concept will they + finally retain it.<a name="FNanchor_119_119"></a><a href="#Footnote_119_119"><sup>[119]</sup></a></p> + +<p class="quot"><i>In all cases in which there is a question of the fulfilment + of apparently impossible demands or tasks, the entire + attention of a people must be concentrated only on this one + question, in such a way as if being or non-being actually + depends on its solution</i> ...</p> + +<p class="quot">...The great mass of the people can never see the entire way + before them, without tiring and doubting the task.<a name="FNanchor_120_120"></a><a href="#Footnote_120_120"><sup>[120]</sup></a></p> + +<p class="quot">In general the art of all truly great popular leaders at all + times consists primarily in not scattering the attention of + a people but rather in concentrating it always on one single + opponent. The more unified this use of the fighting will of + a people, the greater will be the magnetic attractive force + of a movement and the more powerful the force of its push. + It is a part of the genius of a great leader to make even + quite different opponents appear as if they belonged only to + one category, because the recognition of different enemies + leads weak and unsure persons only too readily to begin + doubting their own cause.</p> + +<p class="quot">When the vacillating masses see themselves fighting against + too many enemies, objectivity at once sets in and raises the + question whether really all the others are wrong and only + one's own people or one's own movement is right.<a name="FNanchor_121_121"></a><a href="#Footnote_121_121"><sup>[121]</sup></a> + (Document 13-II, <i>post</i> pp. 229-231.) </p> + +<p>It has been the aim of Nazi propaganda, then, to unite the masses of +the people in hatred of certain enemies, designated by such +conveniently broad and simple terms as "Jews," "democrats," +"plutocrats," "bolshevists," or "Anglo-Saxons," which so far as +possible were to be identified with one another in the public mind. +The Germans were represented to themselves, on the other hand, as a +racial folk of industrious workers. It then became possible to plunge +the people into a war on a wave of emotional hatred against those +nations which were pictured as combining to keep Germany from +attaining her rightful place in the sun.</p> + +<p>The important role which propaganda would have to play in the coming +war was fully recognized by Ewald Banse, an ardent Nazi military +theorist of the geopolitical school and professor of military science +at Brunswick Military College. In his book <i>Raum und Volk im +Weltkrieg</i> (<i>Space and People in the World War</i>) which appeared in +1932 (an English translation by Alan Harris was published under the +title <i>Germany Prepares for War</i> (New York, Harcourt, Brace and Co., +1934)), he stated:</p> + +<p class="quot">Preparation for future wars must not stop at the creation, + equipment and training of an efficient army, but must go on + to train the minds of the whole people for the war and must + employ all the resources of science to master the conditions + governing the war itself and the possibility of endurance. + In 1914 we had a first-class army, but our scientific + mobilization was bad, and the mobilization of men's minds a + thing undreamed of. The unveiling of war memorials, parades + of war veterans, flag-waggings, fiery speeches and + guard-mounting are not of themselves enough to prepare a + nation's mind for the dangers that threaten. Conviction is + always more lasting than enthusiasm.</p> + +<p class="quot">... Such teaching is necessary at a time and in a world in + which countries are no longer represented by monarchs or a + small aristocracy or by a specialist army, but in which the + whole nation, from the commander-in-chief to the man in the + ranks, from the loftiest thought to the simplest wish, from + corn to coal, from the treasury vaults to the last + trouser-button, must be permeated through and through with + the idea of national defense, if it is to preserve its + national identity and political independence. The science of + national defense is not the same as military science; it + does not teach generals how to win battles or company + commanders how to train recruits. Its lessons are addressed + first and foremost to the whole people. It seeks to train + the popular mind to heroism and war and to implant in it an + understanding of the nature and prerequisite conditions of + modern warfare. It teaches us about countries and peoples, + especially our own country and its neighbors, their + territories and economic capacity, their communications and + their mentality—all for the purpose of creating the best + possible conditions for waging future wars in defense of the + national existence.<a name="FNanchor_122_122"></a><a href="#Footnote_122_122"><sup>[122]</sup></a> </p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><b>Infiltration Tactics</b></p> + +<p>The Nazis, while entirely without scruple in the pursuit of their +objectives, endeavor whenever possible to give their actions the cloak +of legality. This procedure was followed in Germany to enable them to +gain control of the Government of the Reich and in their foreign +policy up to September 1, 1939. It has been a cardinal principle of +the Nazis to avoid the use of force whenever their objectives may be +attained in another manner and they have assiduously studied their +enemies in an effort to discover the weak points in their structure +which will enable the Nazis to accomplish their downfall. The +preceding pages have demonstrated that the Nazis have contributed +practically nothing that is original to German political thought. By +the use of unscrupulous, deceitful, and uninhibited tactics, however, +they have been able to realize many of the objectives which had +previously existed only in theory.</p> + +<p>The Weimar Constitution provided the Nazis with a convenient basis for +the establishment of the totalitarian state. They made no effort to +conceal their intention of taking advantage of the weaknesses of the +Weimar Republic in order to attain power. On April 30, 1928 Dr. +Goebbels wrote in his paper <i>Der Angriff</i>:</p> + +<p class="quot">We enter Parliament in order to supply ourselves, in the + arsenal of democracy, with its own weapons. We become + members of the Reichstag in order to paralyze the Weimar + sentiment with its own assistance. If democracy is so stupid + as to give us free tickets and salaries for this bear's + work, that is its affair ...<a name="FNanchor_123_123"></a><a href="#Footnote_123_123"><sup>[123]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>And later in the same article:</p> + +<p class="quot">We do not come as friends, nor even as neutrals. We come as + enemies. As the wolf bursts into the flock, so we come.<a name="FNanchor_124_124"></a><a href="#Footnote_124_124"><sup>[124]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>Hitler expressed the same idea on September 1, 1933, when, looking +back upon the struggle for political power in Germany, he wrote:</p> + +<p class="quot">This watchword of democratic freedom led only to insecurity, + indiscipline, and at length to the downfall and destruction + of all authority. <i>Our opponents' objection that we, too, + once made use of these rights, will not hold water; for we + made use of an unreasonable right, which was part and parcel + of an unreasonable system, in order to overthrow the + unreason of this system.</i><a name="FNanchor_125_125"></a><a href="#Footnote_125_125"><sup>[125]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>Discussing the rise to power of the Nazis, Huber (document 1, <i>post</i> +p. 155) wrote in 1939:</p> + +<p class="quot">The parliamentary battle of the NSDAP had the single purpose + of destroying the parliamentary system from within through + its own methods. It was necessary above all to make formal + use of the possibilities of the party-state system but to + refuse real cooperation and thereby to render the + parliamentary system, which is by nature dependent upon the + responsible cooperation of the opposition, incapable of + action.<a name="FNanchor_126_126"></a><a href="#Footnote_126_126"><sup>[126]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>As its parliamentary strength increased, the party was able to achieve +these aims:</p> + +<p class="quot">It was in a position to make the formation of any positive + majority in the Reichstag impossible.... Thus the NSDAP was + able through its strong position to make the Reichstag + powerless as a lawgiving and government-forming body.<a name="FNanchor_127_127"></a><a href="#Footnote_127_127"><sup>[127]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>The same principle was followed by Germany in weakening and +undermining the governments of countries which it had chosen for its +victims. While it was Hitler's policy to concentrate on only one +objective at a time, German agents were busy throughout the world in +ferreting out the natural political, social, and economic cleavages in +various countries and in broadening them in order to create internal +confusion and uncertainty. Foreign political leaders of Fascist or +authoritarian persuasion were encouraged and often liberally +subsidized from Nazi funds. Control was covertly obtained over +influential newspapers and periodicals and their editorial policies +shaped in such a way as to further Nazi ends. In the countries Germany +sought to overpower, all the highly developed organs of Nazi +propaganda were utilized to confuse and divide public opinion, to +discredit national leaders and institutions, and to induce an +unjustified feeling of confidence in the false assertions of Nazi +leaders disclaiming any aggressive intentions.</p> + +<p>One of the most important features introduced by the Nazis into German +foreign policy was the appreciation of the value of Germans living +abroad and their organization as implements of the Reich for the +attainment of objectives in the field of foreign policy. This idea was +applied by the Nazis to all the large colonies of Germans which are +scattered throughout the world. The potential usefulness of these +colonies was early recognized by the men in Hitler's immediate +entourage, several of whom were so-called <i>Auslandsdeutsche</i> who had +spent many years of their life abroad and were familiar with foreign +conditions and with the position and influence of German groups in +foreign countries. Of particular importance in this group were Rudolf +Hess, the Führer's Deputy, who was primarily responsible for +elaborating the policy which utilized the services of Germans abroad, +and Ernst Wilhelm Bohle, the leader of the Foreign Organization, who +was responsible for winning over these Germans to Naziism and for +their organization in groups which would serve the purposes of the +Third Reich.</p> + +<br /> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 110%; margin-bottom: 1em"> +Footnotes:</p> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_94_94"></a><a href="#FNanchor_94_94">[94]</a> Feder, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 18.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_95_95"></a><a href="#FNanchor_95_95">[95]</a> Gauweiler, <i>op. cit.</i>, pp. 149-151.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_96_96"></a><a href="#FNanchor_96_96">[96]</a> <i>Mein Kampf</i>, pp. 727-728.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_97_97"></a><a href="#FNanchor_97_97">[97]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 735-736.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_98_98"></a><a href="#FNanchor_98_98">[98]</a> Scurla, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 21.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_99_99"></a><a href="#FNanchor_99_99">[99]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 21-22.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_100_100"></a><a href="#FNanchor_100_100">[100]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 23.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_101_101"></a><a href="#FNanchor_101_101">[101]</a> <i>Der Parteitag der Freiheit</i> (official record of the +1935 party congress at Nuremberg: Munich, 1935), p. 27.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_102_102"></a><a href="#FNanchor_102_102">[102]</a> <i>Mein Kampf</i>, p. 743.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_103_103"></a><a href="#FNanchor_103_103">[103]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 754-755.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_104_104"></a><a href="#FNanchor_104_104">[104]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 437-438.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_105_105"></a><a href="#FNanchor_105_105">[105]</a> Rosenberg, <i>Wesen, Grundsätze und Ziele der NSDAP</i>, p. +48.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_106_106"></a><a href="#FNanchor_106_106">[106]</a> <i>London Times</i>, Sept. 26, 1939, p. 9.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_107_107"></a><a href="#FNanchor_107_107">[107]</a> <i>Ibid.</i></p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_108_108"></a><a href="#FNanchor_108_108">[108]</a> <i>Ibid.</i></p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_109_109"></a><a href="#FNanchor_109_109">[109]</a> <i>My New Order</i>, p. 592.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_110_110"></a><a href="#FNanchor_110_110">[110]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 669-671.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_111_111"></a><a href="#FNanchor_111_111">[111]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 687.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_112_112"></a><a href="#FNanchor_112_112">[112]</a> Goebbels, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 6.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_113_113"></a><a href="#FNanchor_113_113">[113]</a> <i>Mein Kampf</i>, p. 252.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_114_114"></a><a href="#FNanchor_114_114">[114]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 197.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_115_115"></a><a href="#FNanchor_115_115">[115]</a> <i>Ibid</i>., p. 198.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_116_116"></a><a href="#FNanchor_116_116">[116]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 200.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_117_117"></a><a href="#FNanchor_117_117">[117]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 200-201.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_118_118"></a><a href="#FNanchor_118_118">[118]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 202.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_119_119"></a><a href="#FNanchor_119_119">[119]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 203.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_120_120"></a><a href="#FNanchor_120_120">[120]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 273.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_121_121"></a><a href="#FNanchor_121_121">[121]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 129.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_122_122"></a><a href="#FNanchor_122_122">[122]</a> Banse, <i>Germany Prepares for War</i> (New York, 1934), pp. +348-349.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_123_123"></a><a href="#FNanchor_123_123">[123]</a> Goebbels, <i>Der Angriff: Aufsätze aus der Kampfzeit</i> +(Munich, 1936), p. 71.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_124_124"></a><a href="#FNanchor_124_124">[124]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 73.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_125_125"></a><a href="#FNanchor_125_125">[125]</a> <i>My New Order</i>, pp. 195-196.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_126_126"></a><a href="#FNanchor_126_126">[126]</a> Huber, <i>Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches</i> +(Hamburg, 1939), p. 31.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_127_127"></a><a href="#FNanchor_127_127">[127]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 32.</p></div> + +<br /><br /> + +<a name="NATIONAL_SOCIALISM_AND_MEDICINE"></a><hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<br /> + +<h3>NATIONAL-SOCIALISM AND MEDICINE</h3><span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<i>Address by Dr. F. Hamburger to German Medical Profession. <br /> +Translated (in part) from Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift, 1939, No. 6.</i></p> + +<p>Medical men must beware of pride, a pride which is certainly +wide-spread and which leads to the disparagement of the practical +doctor and medical layman, and then further to the disparagement of +the craft of nature healers. The practical doctor and the nature +healer on the one hand tend towards an understandable disparagement of +medical science and analysis and, on the other hand, tend towards +superficiality. The superficiality of the opponents of science is, +however, as unhappy an affair as the pride of the so-called +scientists, but the one group should not demean the other. This would +lead to successful cooperation to the advantage of the sick and health +of the community.</p> + +<p>Academic medicine and nature healers generally have one thing in +common, that they underestimate the significance of automatism and +suggestion. In this regard there is an absence in both camps of the +necessary criticism and clarity. Successes are noted with specific +methods without any confirmation as to whether or not suggestion and +faith alone have not produced the improvement in the patient.</p> + +<p>National-Socialism is the true instrument for the achievement of the +health of our people. National-Socialism is concerned with the great +significance of inherited traits and with the insight into the working +of spiritual forces upon the body, with the study of the power of +custom and, along with this, of the significance of education and +nurture. (Hamburger here complains about the luxurious arrangement for +dealing with the mentally ill in contradistinction to the neglect of +Folk-health. This he attributes to the era of liberalism with its +stress upon the single individual. He here also attacks the Socialism +of Social Democracy and its conception of a Community of Equal Men. +This is a false Socialism.)</p> + +<p>So we scientists and doctors simply and soberly affirm the principle +of strength of faith and the nationalist socialist principle of +Positive Christianity which does not prevent us from the inspired +consideration of natural and divinely willed phenomena. We doctors +must never forget the fact that the soul rules the body.</p> + +<p>Soul forces are the most important. The spirit builds the body. +Strength springs from joy. Efficiency is achieved despite care, fear, +and uncertainty—We speak here of thymogenetic automatism or the +automatism of harmony ("thymogenetische automatismus oder +stimmungsautomatismus"). The autonomous nervous system achieves, under +the influence of joy, the expansion of the blood vessels in skin and +muscle.... The muscular activity incited by joy means the use of +calories and stimulation of appetite. Muscular contraction pulls and +draws at the bones, ligaments are tensed, breathing deepend, appetite +increased ... A child influenced by the daily exercise of joy develops +physically strong and powerful. ... The Soul care (Seele Sorge) of the +practical doctor is his most significant daily task alongside of +prescriptions and manipulative dexterity.</p> + +<p>Soul-care in the medical sense is a concern for the wishes, hopes and +fears of the patient, the considered participation in his fate. Such a +relationship leads to the all-important and generally recognized trust +in the doctor. This faith, in all cases, leads to the improvement, +often even to the elimination of symptoms, of the disease. Here we +have clearly before us the great significance of thymogenetic +automatism.</p> + +<p>Academic physicians should not dismiss this because we do not know its +biochemical aspects. (We must beware of regarding something as +unacceptable because it is not measurable in exact terms, he warns.) +We see its practical results, and, therefore, thymogenetic automatism +must stand in the first rank as of overwhelming significance. Thus, +also, the principle, strength through joy (Kraft durch Freude) stands +firmly as an inescapable natural law.</p> + +<p>We see the practical country doctor spreading courage and confidence. +For years too few doctors have seen clearly that gymnastic tourism and +sport do more for health than all doctors taken together. And now we +face the fact that a single man, a non-medical man (Hitler) through +his great qualities, has opened up new avenues of health for the +eighty million folk of Germany.</p> + +<p>In the majority of cases things so happen that the doctor must act +before making a diagnosis, since only the mis-educated patients, the +one-sided intellectual patient, wishes in the very first place to know +the diagnosis. But the unspoilt and properly ordered type of person +wishes only to be relieved of his pain. For him the diagnosis is an +interesting side issue but not the principle thing. We can thus also +understand why we always meet the desire for a diagnosis placed first +by the over-intellectualized Jewish patient. But that is not the case +with most Aryan patients. They, from the first, come to meet the +doctor with more trust. They do not entertain as many after-thoughts. +And I cannot help but remark that after-thoughts are hardly conducive +to right results.</p> + +<p>(After a discussion of the sterilization of the unfit and of +inheritable diseases he turns to the subject of child bearing.)</p> + +<p>It has been estimated that every couple should have four children if +the nation's population is to be maintained. But we meet already the +facile and complacent expression of young married people, "Now we have +our four children and so have fulfilled our obligations"—What +superficiality! Today we must demand a much higher moral attitude from +the wife than previously. Earlier it was taken for granted that a +woman would bear a child every one or two years. But today in this +time of manifold amenities of life, at a time when women is not denied +access to these joys it is understandable that she is eager to +participate in them. Add to this that the knowledge of birth control +is general today. Despite all this women must be encouraged to give +birth during twenty years of married life to eight or ten and even +more children, and to renounce the above-mentioned joys of life. She +must decide as a mother of children to lead a life full of sacrifices, +devotion, and unselfishness. It is only when these ethical demands are +fulfilled by a large number of worthy wives of good stock that the +future of the German nation will be assured.</p> + +<p>Doctors are leaders of the Folk more than they know ... They are now +quite officially fuehrer of the people, called to the leadership of +its health. To fulfill this task they must be free of the profit +motive. They must be quite free from that attitude of spirit which is +rightly designated as Jewish, the concern for business and +self-provision.</p> + +<br /><br /> + + +<a name="SELECTED_BIBLIOGRAPHY"></a><hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<br /> + +<h2>SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY</h2><span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span> + +<p>Arendt, Hannah—<i>The Origins of Totalitarianism</i>, N.Y., 1951.</p> + +<p class="quot">Pt. III is especially directed to a discussion of the + principles and consequences of fascism. The author gives an + effective account of what "total domination" signifies in a + reign of terror. Detailed bibliography. </p> + +<p>Bodrero, Emilio—"Fascism" in <i>Dictatorship on Its Trial</i>, ed. by Otto +Forst de Battaglia, London, 1930.</p> + +<p class="quot">A brief, but significant, statement by a former Rector of + the University of Padua and a Secretary of State to + Mussolini. </p> + +<p>Borgese, G.A.—<i>Goliath, The March of Fascism</i>, N.Y., 1938.</p> + +<p class="quot">Well written from the point of view of an Italian humanist. </p> + +<p>Brady, Robert A.—<i>The Spirit and Structure of German Fascism</i>, +London, 1937.</p> + +<p class="quot">An extremely thorough and documented discussion of the + economy of National Socialist Germany, its institutions and + its business practices.</p> + +<p class="quot">See also: Brady's <i>Business as a System of Power</i>; chapters + on Germany, Italy and Japan. N.Y., 1943. </p> + +<p>Childs, H.L. and Dodd, W.E.—<i>The Nazi Primer</i>, N.Y., 1938.</p> + +<p class="quot">A translation of the "Official Handbook for Schooling the + Hitler Youth." In simple form including illustrations, it is + an excellent indication of the guiding principles of the + German educational system. </p> + +<p>Dennis, Lawrence—<i>The Coming American Fascism</i>, N.Y., 1936.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 9em;"><i>The Dynamics of War and Revolution</i>, N.Y., 1940.</span></p> + +<p class="quot">Two books by the only fascist theorist in America. </p> + +<p>Fraenkel, Ernest—<i>The Dual State: A Contribution to the Theory of +Dictatorship,</i> N.Y., 1941.</p> + +<p class="quot">By distinguishing between the "Prerogative State" and the + "Normative State," the author gives an effective account of + the attempt of the Nazis to acknowledge an indispensable, if + minimal, legal order, which was, comparatively speaking, + independent of the extra-legal realm of violence. </p> + +<p>Hartshorne, E.Y.—<i>The German Universities and National Socialism</i>, +Cambridge, 1937.</p> + +<p class="quot">A carefully documented account of what happened in the + various branches and departments of German universities + under the Nazis. </p> + +<p>Hitler, Adolph—<i>My Battle</i>, N.Y., 1939.</p> + +<p class="quot">Hitler's own vitriolic account of his attempt to rise to + power. </p> + +<p>Lasswell, Harold D.—"The Garrison State," <i>American Journal of +Sociology</i>, Chicago, Vol. XLVI, 1940-41, pp. 455-468.</p> + +<p class="quot">A brief but incisive discussion of the structure of fascism. </p> + +<p>Lilge, Frederic—<i>The Abuse of Learning: The Failure of the German +University,</i> N.Y., 1948.</p> + +<p class="quot">A philosophical history of higher education in Germany, + concluding with its fascist evolution. </p> + +<p>Matteotti, Giacomo—<i>The Fascist Exposed: A Year of Fascist +Domination</i>, London, 1924.</p> + +<p class="quot">A factual account by a liberal, who, until murdered, was a + member of the Italian Senate. </p> + +<p>Minio-Paluello, L.—<i>Education in Fascist Italy</i>, N.Y., 1946.</p> + +<p class="quot">A detailed discussion of fascist education, including an + historical introduction to pre-fascist education. </p> + +<p>Neumann, Franz—<i>Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National +Socialism</i>, N.Y., 1942.</p> + +<p class="quot">Probably the most comprehensive and definitive statement in + English of the functioning of National Socialism. It + concentrates especially on the political and economic + aspects of Nazism. </p> + +<p>Pinthus, Kurt—"Culture Under Nazi Germany," <i>The American Scholar</i>, +Vol. IX, N.Y., 1940, pp. 483-498.</p> + +<p class="quot">A valuable treatment of the inner character of the arts and + letters and of what happened to their publics under the + Nazis. </p> + +<p>Sabine, G.H.—<i>A History of Political Theory</i>, N.Y., 1950.</p> + +<p class="quot">A brief chapter on "Fascism" gives an excellent balanced + account of its fundamentals. </p> + +<p>Salvemini, Gaetano—<i>The Fascist Dictatorship in Italy</i>, N.Y., 1927.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 9.5em;"><i>Under the Axe of Fascism</i>, N.Y., 1936.</span></p> + +<p class="quot">An eminent Italian historian writes vividly and perceptively + on Italian Fascism. </p> + +<p>Schneider, Herbert W.—<i>Making the Fascist State</i>, N.Y., 1928.</p> + +<p class="quot">An early, but well considered, account of the rise of + Italian fascism. </p> + +<p>Silone, Ignazio—<i>Fontamara</i>, Verona, 1951.</p> + +<p class="quot">The best novel on Italian fascism. </p> + +<p>Spender, Stephen—<i>European Witness</i>, N.Y., 1946.</p> + +<p class="quot">Note especially the analysis of Goebbel's novel, <i>Michael</i>. </p> + +<p>Trevor-Roper, H.R.—<i>The Last Days of Hitler</i>, N.Y., 1946.</p> + +<p class="quot">An intimate portrayal of Hitler and his entourage from the + time of the beginning of the collapse of the Nazi armies. + Especially good on the rift between the politicians and the + military. </p> + +<br /><br /> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h4><b>READINGS ON FASCISM AND NATIONAL SOCIALISM</b></h4> + +<p>The catastrophe and holocaust brought about by the two powerful +movements of fascism and national socialism will mark human life +always. Now, as we feel our hatred for them, we find it difficult to +understand how they could have been so powerful, how they could have +appealed so strongly to millions of people of a modern age.</p> + +<p>And the documents whereby we could understand these philosophies have +been lost—except as they are now gathered here in one convenient +volume.</p> + +<p>To understand our own times, it is necessary to understand these +movements. And to understand them, we must read the basic +philosophical and political documents which show the force of the +ideas which moved a world to the brink of disaster.</p> + + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 110%; margin-bottom: 1em"> +The First Swallow Paperbooks:</p> + +<ol class="listdent"> +<li><span style="font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 110%">A Field Of Broken Stones</span> by Lowell Naeve.<br /> +A profound book written in a prison. $1.65.<br /><br /></li> + +<li><span style="font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 110%">The Wife Of Martin Guerre</span> by Janet Lewis.<br /> +One of the fine short novels of all time. $1.25.<br /><br /></li> + +<li><span style="font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 110%">Readings On Fascism And National Socialism</span>.<br /> +A grouping together of authoritative readings. $1.35.<br /><br /></li> + +<li><span style="font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 110%">The Teacher Of English</span> by James E. Warren, Jr.<br /> +The Materials and Opportunities of the teacher. $1.35.<br /><br /></li> + +<li><span style="font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 110%">Morning Red</span> by Frederick Manfred.<br /> +The most ambitious novel by a powerful writer. $1.95.<br /></li> +</ol> + +<br /> +<br /> + +<p class="nodent" style="font-size: small">ALAN SWALLOW<br /> +2679 So. York St., Denver 10, Colo.</p> +<br /> +<p class="nodent" style="font-size: small">Cover design by Lowell Naeve</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14058 ***</div> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5d3825c --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #14058 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14058) diff --git a/old/14058-8.txt b/old/14058-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8114a24 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/14058-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5586 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Readings on Fascism and National Socialism, +by Various, Edited by Alan Swallow + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Readings on Fascism and National Socialism + +Author: Various + +Release Date: November 16, 2004 [eBook #14058] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK READINGS ON FASCISM AND NATIONAL +SOCIALISM*** + + +E-text prepared by John Hagerson, Kevin Handy, Jeannie Howse, and the +Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + +READINGS ON FASCISM AND NATIONAL SOCIALISM + +Selected by Members of the Department of Philosophy, University of +Colorado + +ALAN SWALLOW + +Denver + + + + + + + +PREFATORY NOTE + + +The ensuing readings are presented to encourage the student to clarify +his thinking on social philosophy. He will accordingly need to +determine whether the readings contain a more or less coherent body of +ideas which constitutes a social philosophy. He will also need to +raise the more far-reaching question whether the ideas are acceptable. +To arrive at any satisfactory answer to this latter question, he will +necessarily have to compare the ideas of fascism and their practical +meanings with the alternatives, real and ideal, that are the substance +of live philosophical issues. + + + + +CONTENTS + + The Doctrine of Fascism by Benito Mussolini + + The Political Doctrine of Fascism by Alfredo Rocco + + The Philosophic Basis of Fascism by Giovanni Gentile + + National Socialism by Raymond E. Murphy, Francis B. Stevens, + Howard Trivers, Joseph M. Roland + + National-Socialism and Medicine by Dr. F. Hamburger + + Selected Bibliography + + + + + +THE DOCTRINE OF FASCISM +By +BENITO MUSSOLINI + +From the ENCYCLOPEDIA ITALIANA. Vol. XIV + + The English translation of the "Fundamental Ideas" is by Mr. + I.S. Munro, reprinted by his kind permission from "Fascism + to World-Power" (Alexander Maclehose, London, 1933). + + +FUNDAMENTAL IDEAS. + +1. Philosophic Conception. + + +Like every concrete political conception, Fascism is thought and +action. It is action with an inherent doctrine which, arising out of a +given system of historic forces, is inserted in it and works on it +from within. It has therefore a form co-related to the contingencies +of time and place; but it has at the same time an ideal content which +elevates it into a formula of truth in the higher region of the +history of thought. + +There is no way of exercising a spiritual influence on the things of +the world by means of a human will-power commanding the wills of +others, without first having a clear conception of the particular and +transient reality on which the will-power must act, and without also +having a clear conception of the universal and permanent reality in +which the particular and transient reality has its life and being. To +know men we must have a knowledge of man; and to have a knowledge of +man we must know the reality of things and their laws. + +There can be no conception of a State which is not fundamentally a +conception of Life. It is a philosophy or intuition, a system of ideas +which evolves itself into a system of logical contraction, or which +concentrates itself in a vision or in a faith, but which is always, +at least virtually, an organic conception of the world. + + +2. Spiritualised Conception. + +Fascism would therefore not be understood in many of its +manifestations (as, for example, in its organisations of the Party, +its system of education, its discipline) were it not considered in the +light of its general view of life. A spiritualised view. + +To Fascism the world is not this material world which appears on the +surface, in which man is an individual separated from all other men, +standing by himself and subject to a natural law which instinctively +impels him to lead a life of momentary and egoistic pleasure. In +Fascism man is an individual who is the nation and the country. He is +this by a moral law which embraces and binds together individuals and +generations in an established tradition and mission, a moral law which +suppresses the instinct to lead a life confined to a brief cycle of +pleasure in order, instead, to replace it within the orbit of duty in +a superior conception of life, free from the limits of time and space +a life in which the individual by self-abnegation and by the sacrifice +of his particular interests, even by death, realises the entirely +spiritual existence in which his value as a man consists. + + +3. Positive Conception of Life as a Struggle. + +It is therefore a spiritual conception, itself also a result of the +general reaction of the Century against the languid and materialistic +positivism of the Eighteenth Century. Anti-positivist, but positive: +neither sceptical nor agnostic, neither pessimistic nor passively +optimistic, as are in general the doctrines (all of them negative) +which place the centre of life outside of man, who by his free will +can and should create his own world for himself. + +Fascism wants a man to be active and to be absorbed in action with all +his energies; it wants him to have a manly consciousness of the +difficulties that exist and to be ready to face them. It conceives +life as a struggle, thinking that it is the duty of man to conquer +that life which is really worthy of him: creating in the first place +within himself the (physical, moral, intellectual) instrument with +which to build it. + +As for the individual, so for the nation, so for mankind. Hence the +high value of culture in all its forms (art, religion, science) and +the supreme importance of education. Hence also the essential value +of labour, with which man conquers nature and creates the human world +(economic, political, moral, intellectual). + + +4. Ethical Conception. + +This positive conception of life is evidently an ethical conception. +And it comprises the whole reality as well as the human activity which +domineers it. No action is to be removed from the moral sense; nothing +is to be in the world that is divested of the importance which belongs +to it in respect of moral aims. Life, therefore, as the Fascist +conceives it, is serious, austere, religious; entirely balanced in a +world sustained by the moral and responsible forces of the spirit. The +Fascist disdains the "easy" life. + + +5. Religious Conception. + +Fascism is a religious conception in which man is considered to be in +the powerful grip of a superior law, with an objective will which +transcends the particular individual and elevates him into a fully +conscious member of a spiritual society. Anyone who has stopped short +at the mere consideration of opportunism in the religious policy of +the Fascist Regime, has failed to understand that Fascism, besides +being a system of government, is also a system of thought. + + +6. Historical and Realist Conception. + +Fascism is an historical conception in which man could not be what he +is without being a factor in the spiritual process to which he +contributes, either in the family sphere or in the social sphere, in +the nation or in history in general to which all nations contribute. +Hence is derived the great importance of tradition in the records, +language, customs and rules of human society. Man without a part in +history is nothing. + +For this reason Fascism is opposed to all the abstractions of an +individualistic character based upon materialism typical of the +Eighteenth Century; and it is opposed to all the Jacobin innovations +and utopias. It does not believe in the possibility of "happiness" on +earth as conceived by the literature of the economists of the +Seventeenth Century; it therefore spurns all the teleological +conceptions of final causes through which, at a given period of +history, a final systematisation of the human race would take place. +Such theories only mean placing oneself outside real history and +life, which is a continual ebb and flow and process of realisations. + +Politically speaking, Fascism aims at being a realistic doctrine; in +its practice it aspired to solve only the problems which present +themselves of their own accord in the process of history, and which of +themselves find or suggest their own solution. To have the effect of +action among men, it is necessary to enter into the process of reality +and to master the forces actually at work. + + +7. The Individual and Liberty. + +Anti-individualistic, the Fascist conception is for the State; it is +for the individual only in so far as he coincides with the State, +universal consciousness and will of man in his historic existence. It +is opposed to the classic Liberalism which arose out of the need of +reaction against absolutism, and had accomplished its mission in +history when the State itself had become transformed in the popular +will and consciousness. + +Liberalism denied the State in the interests of the particular +individual; Fascism reaffirms the State as the only true expression of +the individual. + +And if liberty is to be the attribute of the real man, and not of the +scarecrow invented by the individualistic Liberalism, then Fascism is +for liberty. It is for the only kind of liberty that is serious--the +liberty of the State and of the individual in the State. Because, for +the Fascist, all is comprised in the State and nothing spiritual or +human exists--much less has any value--outside the State. In this +respect Fascism is a totalising concept, and the Fascist State--the +unification and synthesis of every value--interprets, develops and +potentiates the whole life of the people. + + +8. Conception of a Corporate State. + +No individuals nor groups (political parties, associations, labour +unions, classes) outside the State. For this reason Fascism is opposed +to Socialism, which clings rigidly to class war in the historic +evolution and ignores the unity of the State which moulds the classes +into a single, moral and economic reality. In the same way Fascism is +opposed to the unions of the labouring classes. But within the orbit +of the State with ordinative functions, the real needs, which give +rise to the Socialist movement and to the forming of labour unions, +are emphatically recognised by Fascism and are given their full +expression in the Corporative System, which conciliates every interest +in the unity of the State. + + +9. Democracy. + +Individuals form classes according to categories of interests. They +are associated according to differentiated economical activities which +have a common interest: but first and foremost they form the State. +The State is not merely either the numbers or the sum of individuals +forming the majority of a people. Fascism for this reason is opposed +to the democracy which identifies peoples with the greatest number of +individuals and reduces them to a majority level. But if people are +conceived, as they should be, qualitatively and not quantitatively, +then Fascism is democracy in its purest form. The qualitative +conception is the most coherent and truest form and is therefore the +most moral, because it sees a people realised in the consciousness and +will of the few or even of one only; an ideal which moves to its +realisation in the consciousness and will of all. By "all" is meant +all who derive their justification as a nation, ethnically speaking, +from their nature and history, and who follow the same line of +spiritual formation and development as one single will and +consciousness--not as a race nor as a geographically determined +region, but as a progeny that is rather the outcome of a history which +perpetuates itself; a multitude unified by an idea embodied in the +will to have power and to exist, conscious of itself and of its +personality. + + +10. Conception of the State. + +This higher personality is truly the nation, inasmuch as it is the +State. The nation does not beget the State, according to the decrepit +nationalistic concept which was used as a basis for the publicists of +the national States in the Nineteenth Century. On the contrary, the +nation is created by the State, which gives the people, conscious of +their own moral unity, the will, and thereby an effective existence. +The right of a nation to its independence is derived not from a +literary and ideal consciousness of its own existence, much less from +a _de facto_ situation more or less inert and unconscious, but from an +active consciousness, from an active political will disposed to +demonstrate in its right; that is to say, a kind of State already in +its pride (_in fieri_). The State, in fact, as a universal ethical +will, is the creator of right. + + +11. Dynamic Reality. + +The nation as a State is an ethical reality which exists and lives in +measure as it develops. A standstill is its death. Therefore the +State is not only the authority which governs and which gives the +forms of law and the worth of the spiritual life to the individual +wills, but it is also the power which gives effect to its will in +foreign matters, causing it to be recognised and respected by +demonstrating through facts the universality of all the manifestations +necessary for its development. Hence it is organization as well as +expansion, and it may be thereby considered, at least virtually, equal +to the very nature of the human will, which in its evolution +recognises no barriers, and which realises itself by proving its +infinity. + + +12. The Rôle of the State. + +The Fascist State, the highest and the most powerful form of +personality is a force, but a spiritual one. It reassumes all the +forms of the moral and intellectual life of man. It cannot, therefore, +be limited to a simple function of order and of safeguarding, as was +contended by Liberalism. It is not a simple mechanism which limits the +sphere of the presumed individual liberties. It is an internal form +and rule, a discipline of the entire person: it penetrates the will as +well as the intelligence. Its principle, a central inspiration of the +living human personality in the civil community, descends into the +depths and settles in the heart of the man of action as well as the +thinker, of the artist as well as of the scientist; the soul of our +soul. + + +13. Discipline and Authority. + +Fascism, in short, is not only a lawgiver and the founder of +institutions, but an educator and a promoter of the spiritual life. It +aims to rebuild not the forms of human life, but its content, the man, +the character, the faith. And for this end it exacts discipline and an +authority which descend into and dominates the interior of the spirit +without opposition. Its emblem, therefore, is the lictorian _fasces_, +symbol of unity, of force and of justice. + + +POLITICAL AND SOCIAL DOCTRINE + +1. Origins of the Doctrine. + +When, in the now distant March of 1919, I summoned a meeting at Milan, +through the columns of the _Popolo d'Italia,_ of those who had +supported and endured the war and who had followed me since the +constitution of the _fasci_ or Revolutionary Action in January 1915, +there was no specific doctrinal plan in my mind. I had the experience +of one only doctrine--that of Socialism from 1903-04 to the winter of +1914 about a decade--but I made it first in the ranks and later as a +leader and it was never an experience in theory. My doctrine, even +during that period, was a doctrine of action. A universally accepted +doctrine of Socialism had not existed since 1915 when the revisionist +movement started in Germany, under the leadership of Bernstein. +Against this, in the swing of tendencies, a left revolutionary +movement began to take shape, but in Italy it never went further than +the "field of phrases," whereas in Russian Socialistic circles it +became the prelude of Bolscevism. "Reformism," "revolutionarism," +"centrism," this is a terminology of which even the echoes are now +spent--but in the great river of Fascism are currents which flowed +from Sorel, from Peguy, from Lagardelle and the "Mouvement +Socialiste," from Italian syndicalists which were legion between 1904 +and 1914, and sounded a new note in Italian Socialist circles +(weakened then by the betrayal of Giolitti) through Olivetti's _Pagine +Libere_, Orano's _La Lupa_ and Enrico Leone's _Divenire Sociale_. + +After the War, in 1919, Socialism was already dead as a doctrine: it +existed only as a grudge. In Italy especially, it had one only +possibility of action: reprisals against those who had wanted the War +and must now pay its penalty. The _Popolo d'Italia_ carried as +sub-title "daily of ex-service men and producers," and the word +producers was already then the expression of a turn of mind. Fascism +was not the nursling of a doctrine previously worked out at a desk; it +was born of the need for action and it was action. It was not a party, +in fact during the first two years, it was an anti-party and a +movement. + +The name I gave the organisation fixed its character. Yet whoever +should read the now crumpled sheets with the minutes of the meeting at +which the Italian "Fasci di Combattimento" were constituted, would +fail to discover a doctrine, but would find a series of ideas, of +anticipations, of hints which, liberated from the inevitable +strangleholds of contingencies, were destined after some years to +develop into doctrinal conceptions. Through them Fascism became a +political doctrine to itself, different, by comparison, to all others +whether contemporary or of the past. + +I said then, "If the bourgeoisie think we are ready to act as +lightning-conductors, they are mistaken. We must go towards labour. +We wish to train the working classes to directive functions. We wish +to convince them that it is not easy to manage Industry or Trade: we +shall fight the technique and the spirit of the rearguard. When the +succession of the regime is open, we must not lack the fighting +spirit. We must rush and if the present regime be overcome, it is we +who must fill its place. The claim to succession belongs to us, +because it was we who forced the country into War and we who led her +to victory. The present political representation cannot suffice: we +must have a direct representation of all interest. Against this +programme one might say it is a return to corporations. But that does +not matter. Therefore I should like this assembly to accept the claims +put in by national syndicalism from an economic standpoint...." + +Is it not strange that the word corporations should have been uttered +at the first meeting of Piazza San Sepolcro, when one considers that, +in the course of the Revolution, it came to express one of the social +and legislative creations at the very foundations of the regime? + + +2. Development. + +The years which preceded the March on Rome were years in which the +necessity of action did not permit complete doctrinal investigations +or elaborations. The battle was raging in the towns and villages. +There were discussions, but what was more important and sacred--there +was death. Men knew how to die. The doctrine--all complete and formed, +with divisions into chapters, paragraphs, and accompanying +elucubrations--might be missing; but there was something more decided +to replace it, there was faith. + +Notwithstanding, whoever remembers with the aid of books and speeches, +whoever could search through them and select, would find that the +fundamental principles were laid down whilst the battle raged. It was +really in those years that the Fascist idea armed itself, became +refined and proceeded towards organisation: the problems of the +individual and of the State, the problems of authority and of liberty, +the political and social problems, especially national; the fight +against the liberal, democratic, socialistic and popular doctrines, +was carried out together with the "punitive expeditions." + +But as a "system" was lacking, our adversaries in bad faith, denied to +Fascism any capacity to produce a doctrine, though that doctrine was +growing tumultuously, at first under the aspect of violent and +dogmatic negation, as happens to all newly-born ideas, and later under +the positive aspect of construction which was successively realised, +in the years 1926-27-28 through the laws and institutions of the +regime. Fascism today stands clearly defined not only as a regime, but +also as a doctrine. This word doctrine should be interpreted in the +sense that Fascism, to-day, when passing criticism on itself and +others, has its own point of view and its own point of reference, and +therefore also its own orientation when facing those problems which +beset the world in the spirit and in the matter. + + +3. Against Pacifism: War and Life as a Duty. + +As far as the general future and development of humanity is concerned, +and apart from any mere consideration of current politics, Fascism +above all does not believe either in the possibility or utility of +universal peace. It therefore rejects the pacifism which masks +surrender and cowardice. War alone brings all human energies to their +highest tension and sets a seal of nobility on the peoples who have +the virtue to face it. All other tests are but substitutes which never +make a man face himself in the alternative of life or death. A +doctrine which has its starting-point at the prejudicial postulate of +peace is therefore extraneous to Fascism. + +In the same way all international creations (which, as history +demonstrates, can be blown to the winds when sentimental, ideal and +practical elements storm the heart of a people) are also extraneous to +the spirit of Fascism--even if such international creations are +accepted for whatever utility they may have in any determined +political situation. + +Fascism also transports this anti-pacifist spirit into the life of +individuals. The proud _squadrista_ motto "_me ne frego_" ("I don't +give a damn") scrawled on the bandages of the wounded is an act of +philosophy--not only stoic. It is a summary of a doctrine not only +political: it is an education in strife and an acceptance of the risks +which it carried: it is a new style of Italian life. It is thus that +the Fascist loves and accepts life, ignores and disdains suicide; +understands life as a duty, a lifting up, a conquest; something to be +filled in and sustained on a high plane; a thing that has to be lived +through for its own sake, but above all for the sake of others near +and far, present and future. + + +4. The Demographic Policy and the "Neighbour." + +The "demographic" policy of the regime is the result of these +premises. The Fascist also loves his neighbour, but "neighbour" is not +for him a vague and undefinable word: love for his neighbour does not +prevent necessary educational severities. Fascism rejects professions +of universal affection and, though living in the community of +civilised peoples, it watches them and looks at them diffidently. It +follows them in their state of mind and in the transformation of their +interests, but it does not allow itself to be deceived by fallacious +and mutable appearances. + + +5. Against Historical Materialism and Class-Struggle. + +Through this conception of life Fascism becomes the emphatic negation +of that doctrine which constituted the basis of the so-called +scientific Socialism or Marxism: the doctrine of historical +materialism, according to which the story of human civilisation is to +be explained only by the conflict of interests between the various +social groups and by the change of the means and instruments of +production. + +That the economic vicissitudes--discovery of prime or raw materials, +new methods of labour, scientific inventions--have their particular +importance, is denied by none, but that they suffice to explain human +history, excluding other factors from it, is absurd: Fascism still +believes in sanctity and in heroism, that is to say in acts in which +no economic motive, immediate or remote, operates. + +Fascism having denied historical materialism, by which men are only +puppets in history, appearing and disappearing on the surface of the +tides while in the depths the real directive forces act and labour, it +also denies the immutable and irreparable class warfare, which is the +natural filiation of such an economistic conception of history: and it +denies above all that class warfare is the preponderating agent of +social transformation. + +Being defeated on these two capital points of its doctrine, nothing +remains of Socialism save the sentimental aspiration--as old as +humanity--to achieve a community of social life in which the +sufferings and hardships of the humblest classes are alleviated. But +here Fascism repudiates the concept of an economic "happiness" which +is to be--at a given moment in the evolution of economy--socialistically +and almost automatically realised by assuring to all the maximum of +well-being. + +Fascism denies the possibilities of the materialistic concept of +"happiness"--it leaves that to the economists of the first half +of the Seventeenth Century; that is, it denies the equation +"well-being-happiness," which reduces man to the state of the animals, +mindful of only one thing--that of being fed and fattened; reduced, in +fact, to a pure and simple vegetative existence. + + +6. Against Democratic Ideologies. + +After disposing of Socialism, Fascism opens a breach on the whole +complex of the democratic ideologies, and repudiates them in their +theoretic premises as well as in their practical application or +instrumentation. Fascism denies that numbers, by the mere fact of +being numbers, can direct human society; it denies that these numbers +can govern by means of periodical consultations; it affirms also the +fertilising, beneficient and unassailable inequality of men, who +cannot be levelled through an extrinsic and mechanical process such as +universal suffrage. + +Regimes can be called democratic which, from time to time, give the +people the illusion of being sovereign, whereas the real and effective +sovereignty exists in other, and very often secret and irresponsible +forces. + +Democracy is a regime without a king, but very often with many kings, +far more exclusive, tyrannical and ruinous than a single king, even if +he be a tyrant. This explains why Fascism which, for contingent +reasons, had assumed a republican tendency before 1922, renounced it +previous to the March on Rome, with the conviction that the political +constitution of a State is not nowadays a supreme question; and that, +if the examples of past and present monarchies and past and present +republics are studied, the result is that neither monarchies nor +republics are to be judged under the assumption of eternity, but that +they merely represent forms in which the extrinsic political evolution +takes shape as well as the history, the tradition and the psychology +of a given country. + +Consequently, Fascism glides over the antithesis between monarchy and +republic, on which democraticism wasted time, blaming the former for +all social shortcomings and exalting the latter as a regime of +perfection. We have now seen that there are republics which may be +profoundly absolutist and reactionary, and monarchies which welcome +the most venturesome social and political experiments. + + +7. Untruths of Democracy. + +"Reason and science" says Renan (who had certain pre-fascist +enlightenments) in one of his philosophical meditations, "are products +of mankind, but to seek reason directly for the people and through the +people is a chimera. It is not necessary for the existence of reason +that everybody should know it. In any case if this initiation were to +be brought about it could not be through low-class democracy, which +seems to lead rather to the extinction of every difficult culture and +of every great discipline. The principle that society exists only for +the welfare and liberty of individuals composing it, does not seem to +conform with the plans of nature: plans in which the species only is +taken into consideration and the individual appears sacrificed. It is +strongly to be feared that the last word of democracy thus understood +(I hasten to add that it can also be differently understood) would be +a social state in which a degenerated mass would have no preoccupation +other than that of enjoying the ignoble pleasures of the vulgar +person." + +Thus Renan. In Democracy Fascism rejects the absurd conventional +falsehood of political equality, the habit of collective +responsibility and the myth of indefinite progress and happiness. + +But if there be a different understanding of Democracy if, in other +words, Democracy can also signify to not push the people back as far +as the margins of the State, then Fascism may well have been defined +by the present writer as "an organised, centralised, authoritarian +Democracy." + + +8. Against Liberal Doctrines. + +As regards the Liberal doctrines, the attitude of Fascism is one of +absolute opposition both in the political and in the economical field. +There is no need to exaggerate the importance of Liberalism in the +last century--simply for the sake of present-day polemics--and to +transform one of the numerous doctrines unfolded in that last century +into a religion of humanity for all times, present and future. +Liberalism did not flourish for more than a period of fifteen years. +It was born in 1830 from the reaction to the Holy Alliance which +attempted to set Europe back to the period which preceeded '89 and had +its years of splendour in 1848, when also Pius IX was a Liberal. Its +decadence began immediately afterwards. If 1848 was a year of light +and poesy, 1849 was a year of weakness and tragedy. The Roman Republic +was killed by another Republic, the French Republic. In the same year +Marx issued his famous manifesto of Communism. In 1851 Napoleon III +made his anti-Liberal _coup d'état_ and reigned over France until +1870. He was overthrown by a popular movement, following one of the +greatest defeats registered in history. The victor was Bismarck, who +always ignored the religion of liberty and its prophets. It is +symptomatic that a people of high civilisation like the Germans +completely ignored the religion of liberty throughout the whole +Nineteenth Century--with but one parenthesis, represented by that +which was called "the ridiculous parliament of Frankfurt" which lasted +one season. Germany realised its national unity outside of Liberalism, +against Liberalism--a doctrine which seemed alien to the German spirit +essentially monarchical, since Liberalism is the historical and +logical ante-chamber of anarchy. + +The three wars of 1864, 1866 and 1870 conducted by "Liberals" like +Moltke and Bismarck mark the three stages of German unity. As for +Italian unity, Liberalism played a very inferior part in the make-up +of Mazzini and Garibaldi, who were not liberals. Without the +intervention of the anti-Liberal Napoleon we would not have had +Lombardy, and without the help of the anti-Liberal Bismarck at Sadowa +and Sedan it is very likely that we would not have got Venice in 1866, +or that we would have entered Rome in 1870. + +During the period of 1870-1915 the preachers of the new Credo +themselves denounced the twilight of their religion; it was beaten in +the breach by decadence in literature. It was beaten in the open by +decadence in practice. Activism: that is to say, nationalism, +futurism. Fascism. + +The "Liberal Century" after having accumulated an infinity of Gordian +knots, sought to cut them in the hecatomb of the World War. Never did +any religion impose such a terrible sacrifice. Have the gods of +Liberalism slaked their blood-thirst? + +Liberalism is now on the point of closing the doors of its deserted +temples because nations feel that its agnosticism in the economic +field and its indifference in political and moral matters, causes, as +it has already caused, the sure ruin of States. That is why all the +political experiences of the contemporary world are anti-Liberal, and +it is supremely silly to seek to classify them as things outside of +history--as if history were a hunting ground reserved to Liberalism +and its professors; as if Liberalism were the last and incomparable +word of civilisation. + + +9. Fascism Does Not Turn Back. + +The Fascist negation of Socialism, of Democracy, of Liberalism, should +not lead one to believe that Fascism wishes to push the world back to +where it was before 1879, the date accepted as the opening year of the +demo-Liberal century. One cannot turn back. The Fascist doctrine has +not chosen De Maistre for its prophet. Monarchical absolutism is a +thing of the past, and so is the worship of church power. Feudal +privileges and divisions into impenetrable castes with no connection +between them, are also "have beens." The conception of Fascist +authority has nothing in common with the Police. A party that totally +rules a nation is a new chapter in history. References and comparisons +are not possible. From the ruins of the socialist, liberal and +democratic doctrines, Fascism picks those elements that still have a +living value; keeps those that might be termed "facts acquired by +history," and rejects the rest: namely the conception of a doctrine +good for all times and all people. + +Admitting that the Nineteenth Century was the Century of Socialism, +Liberalism and Democracy, it is not said that the Twentieth century +must also be the century of Socialism, of Liberalism, of Democracy. +Political doctrines pass on, but peoples remain. One may now think +that this will be the century of authority, the century of the "right +wing" the century of Fascism. If the Nineteenth Century was the +century of the individual (liberalism signifies individualism) one may +think that this will be the century of "collectivism," the century of +the State. It is perfectly logical that a new doctrine should utilise +the vital elements of other doctrines. No doctrine was ever born +entirely new and shining, never seen before. No doctrine can boast of +absolute "originality." Each doctrine is bound historically to +doctrines which went before, to doctrines yet to come. Thus the +scientific Socialism of Marx is bound to the Utopian Socialism of +Fourier, of Owen, of Saint-Simon; thus the Liberalism of 1800 is +linked with the movement of 1700. Thus Democratic doctrines are bound +to the Encyclopaedists. Each doctrine tends to direct human activity +towards a definite object; but the activity of man reacts upon the +doctrine, transforms it and adapts it to new requirements, or +overcomes it. Doctrine therefore should be an act of life and not an +academy of words. In this lie the pragmatic veins of Fascism, its will +to power, its will to be, its position with regard to "violence" and +its value. + + +10. The Value and Mission of the State. + +The capital point of the Fascist doctrine is the conception of the +State, its essence, the work to be accomplished, its final aims. In +the conception of Fascism, the State is an absolute before which +individuals and groups are relative. Individuals and groups are +"conceivable" inasmuch as they are in the State. The Liberal State +does not direct the movement and the material and spiritual evolution +of collectivity, but limits itself to recording the results; the +Fascist State has its conscious conviction, a will of its own, and for +this reason it is called an "ethical" State. + +In 1929 at the first quinquiennial assembly of the Regime, I said: "In +Fascism the State is not a night-watchman, only occupied with the +personal safety of the citizens, nor is it an organisation with purely +material aims, such as that of assuring a certain well-being and a +comparatively easy social cohabitation. A board of directors would be +quite sufficient to deal with this. It is not a purely political +creation, either, detached from the complex material realities of the +life of individuals and of peoples. The State as conceived and enacted +by Fascism, is a spiritual and moral fact since it gives concrete form +to the political, juridical and economical organisation of the +country. Furthermore this organisation as it rises and develops, is a +manifestation of the spirit. The State is a safeguard of interior and +exterior safety but it is also the keeper and the transmitter of the +spirit of the people, as it was elaborated throughout the ages, in its +language, customs and beliefs. The State is not only the present, but +it is also the past and above all the future. The State, inasmuch as +it transcends the short limits of individual lives, represents the +immanent conscience of the nation. The forms in which the State +expresses itself are subject to changes, but the necessity for the +State remains. It is the State which educates the citizens in civic +virtues, gives them a consciousness of their mission, presses them +towards unity; the State harmonizes their interests through justice, +transmits to prosperity the attainments of thoughts, in science, in +art, in laws, in the solidarity of mankind. The State leads men from +primitive tribal life to that highest expression of human power which +is Empire; links up through the centuries the names of those who died +to preserve its integrity or to obey its laws; holds up the memory of +the leaders who increased its territory, and of the geniuses who cast +the light of glory upon it, as an example for future generations to +follow. When the conception of the State declines and disintegrating +or centrifugal tendencies prevail, whether of individuals or groups, +then the national society is about to set." + + +11. The Unity of the State and the Contradictions of Capitalism. + +From 1929 onwards to the present day, the universal, political and +economical evolution has still further strengthened the doctrinal +positions. The giant who rules is the State. The one who can resolve +the dramatic contradictions of capital is the State. What is called +the crisis cannot be resolved except by the State and in the State. +Where are the ghosts of Jules Simon who, at the dawn of Liberalism, +proclaimed that "the State must set to work to make itself useless and +prepare its resignation?" Of MacCulloch who, in the second half of the +past century, proclaimed that the State must abstain from ruling? What +would the Englishman Bentham say today to the continual and +inevitably-invoked intervention of the State in the sphere of +economics, while, according to his theories, industry should ask no +more of the State than to be left in peace? Or the German Humboldt +according to whom an "idle" State was the best kind of State? It is +true that the second wave of Liberal economists were less extreme than +the first, and Adam Smith himself opened the door--if only very +cautiously--to let State intervention into the economic field. + +If Liberalism signifies the individual--then Fascism signifies the +State. But the Fascist State is unique of its kind and is an original +creation. It is not reactionary but revolutionary, inasmuch as it +anticipates the solution of certain universal problems such as those +which are treated elsewhere: 1) in the political sphere, by the +subdivisions of parties, in the preponderance of parliamentarism and +in the irresponsibilities of assemblies; 2) in the economic sphere, by +the functions of trade unions which are becoming constantly more +numerous and powerful, whether in the labour or industrial fields, in +their conflicts and combinations, and 3) in the moral sphere by the +necessity of order, discipline, obedience to those who are the moral +dictators of the country. Fascism wants the State to be strong, +organic and at the same time supported on a wide popular basis. As +part of its task the Fascist State has penetrated the economic field: +through the corporative, social and educational institutions which it +has created. The presence of the State is felt in the remotest +ramifications of the country. And in the State also, all the +political, economic and spiritual forces of the nation circulate, +mustered in their respective organisations. + +A State which stands on the support of millions of individuals who +recognise it, who believe in it, who are ready to serve it, is not the +tyrannical State of the mediaeval lord. It has nothing in common with +the absolutist States before or after '89. The individual in the +Fascist State is not annulled but rather multiplied, just as in a +regiment a soldier is not diminished, but multiplied by the number of +his comrades. + +The Fascist State organises the nation, but leaves a sufficient margin +afterward to the individual; it has limited the useless or harmful +liberties and has preserved the essential ones. The one to judge in +this respect is not the individual but the State. + + +12. The Fascist State and Religion. + +The Fascist State is not indifferent to the presence or the fact of +religion in general nor to the presence of that particular established +religion, which is Italian Catholicism. The State has no theology, but +it has morality. In the Fascist State religion is considered as one of +the most profound manifestations of the spirit; it is therefore not +only respected, but defended and protected. The Fascist State does not +create its own "God," as Robespierre wanted to do at a certain moment +in the frenzies of the Convention; nor does it vainly endeavour to +cancel the idea of God from the mind as Bolschevism tries to do. +Fascism respects the God of the ascetics, of the saints and of the +heroes. It also respects God as he is conceived and prayed to in the +ingenuous and primitive heart of the people. + + +13. Empire and Discipline. + +The Fascist State is a will expressing power and empire. The Roman +tradition here becomes an idea of force. In the Fascist doctrine, +empire is not only a territorial or a military, or a commercial +expression: it is a moral and a spiritual one. An empire can be +thought of, for instance, as a nation which directly or indirectly +guides other nations--without the need of conquering a single mile of +territory. For Fascism, the tendency to empire, that is to say the +expansion of nations, is a manifestation of vitality, its contrary +(the stay-at-home attitude) is a sign of decadence. Peoples who rise, +or who suddenly flourish again, are imperialistic; peoples who die are +peoples who abdicate. Fascism is a doctrine which most adequately +represents the tendencies, the state of mind of a people like the +Italian people, which is rising again after many centuries of +abandonment and of foreign servitude. + +But empire requires discipline, the coordination of forces, duty and +sacrifice. This explains many phases of the practical action of the +regime. It explains the aims of many of the forces of the State and +the necessary severity against those who would oppose themselves to +this spontaneous and irresistible movement of the Italy of the +Twentieth century by trying to appeal to the discredited ideologies of +the Nineteenth century, which have been repudiated wherever great +experiments of political and social transformation have been daringly +undertaken. + +Never more than at the present moment have the nations felt such a +thirst for an authority, for a direction, for order. If every century +has its own peculiar doctrine, there are a thousand indications that +Fascism is that of the present century. That it is a doctrine of life +is shown by the fact that it has created a faith; that the faith has +taken possession of the mind is demonstrated by the fact that Fascism +has had its Fallen and its martyrs. + +Fascism has now attained in the world an universality over all +doctrines. Being realised, it represents an epoch in the history of +the human mind. + + + + +THE POLITICAL DOCTRINE OF FASCISM[1] +BY HIS EXCELLENCY ALFREDO ROCCO +PREMIER MUSSOLINI'S ENDORSEMENT OF SIGNOR ROCCO'S SPEECH + + +The following message was sent by Benito Mussolini, the Premier of +Italy, to Signor Rocco after he had delivered his speech at Perugia. + + + Dear Rocco, + + I have just read your magnificent address which I endorse + throughout. You have presented in a masterful way the + doctrine of Fascism. For Fascism has a doctrine, or, if you + will, a particular philosophy with regard to all the + questions which beset the human mind today. All Italian + Fascists should read your discourse and derive from it both + the clear formulation of the basic principles of our program + as well as the reasons why Fascism must be systematically, + firmly, and rationally inflexible in its uncompromising + attitude towards other parties. Thus and only thus can the + word become flesh and the ideas be turned into deeds. + + Cordial greetings, + MUSSOLINI. + + + + +Fascism As Action, As Feeling, and As Thought + +Much has been said, and is now being said for or against this complex +political and social phenomenon which in the brief period of six years +has taken complete hold of Italian life and, spreading beyond the +borders of the Kingdom, has made itself felt in varying degrees of +intensity throughout the world. But people have been much more eager +to extol or to deplore than to understand--which is natural enough in +a period of tumultuous fervor and of political passion. The time has +not yet arrived for a dispassionate judgment. For even I, who noticed +the very first manifestations of this great development, saw its +significance from the start and participated directly in its first +doings, carefully watching all its early uncertain and changing +developments, even I do not feel competent to pass definite judgment. +Fascism is so large a part of myself that it would be both arbitrary +and absurd for me to try to dissociate my personality from it, to +submit it to impartial scrutiny in order to evaluate it coldly and +accurately. What can be done, however, and it seldom is attempted, is +to make inquiry into the phenomenon which shall not merely consider +its fragmentary and adventitious aspects, but strive to get at its +inner essence. The undertaking may not be easy, but it is necessary, +and no occasion for attempting it is more suitable than the present +one afforded me by my friends of Perugia. Suitable it is in time +because, at the inauguration of a course of lectures and lessons +principally intended to illustrate that old and glorious trend of the +life and history of Italy which takes its name from the humble saint +of Assisi, it seemed natural to connect it with the greatest +achievement of modern Italy, different in so many ways from the +Franciscan movement, but united with it by the mighty common current +of Italian History. It is suitable as well in place because at +Perugia, which witnessed the growth of our religious ideas, of our +political doctrines and of our legal science in the course of the most +glorious centuries of our cultural history, the mind is properly +disposed and almost oriented towards an investigation of this nature. + +First of all let us ask ourselves if there is a political doctrine of +Fascism; if there is any ideal content in the Fascist state. For in +order to link Fascism, both as concept and system, with the history of +Italian thought and find therein a place for it, we must first show +that it is thought; that it is a doctrine. Many persons are not quite +convinced that it is either the one or the other; and I am not +referring solely to those men, cultured or uncultured, as the case may +be and very numerous everywhere, who can discern in this political +innovation nothing except its local and personal aspects, and who know +Fascism only as the particular manner of behavior of this or that +well-known Fascist, of this or that group of a certain town; who +therefore like or dislike the movement on the basis of their likes and +dislikes for the individuals who represent it. Nor do I refer to those +intelligent, and cultivated persons, very intelligent indeed and very +cultivated, who because of their direct or indirect allegiance to the +parties that have been dispossessed by the advent of Fascism, have a +natural cause of resentment against it and are therefore unable to +see, in the blindness of hatred, anything good in it. I am referring +rather to those--and there are many in our ranks too--who know Fascism +as action and feeling but not yet as thought, who therefore have an +intuition but no comprehension of it. + +It is true that Fascism is, above all, action and sentiment and that +such it must continue to be. Were it otherwise, it could not keep up +that immense driving force, that renovating power which it now +possesses and would merely be the solitary meditation of a chosen few. +Only because it is feeling and sentiment, only because it is the +unconscious reawakening of our profound racial instinct, has it the +force to stir the soul of the people, and to set free an irresistible +current of national will. Only because it is action, and as such +actualizes itself in a vast organization and in a huge movement, has +it the conditions for determining the historical course of +contemporary Italy. + +But Fascism is thought as well and it has a theory, which is an +essential part of this historical phenomenon, and which is responsible +in a great measure for the successes that have been achieved. To the +existence of this ideal content of Fascism, to the truth of this +Fascist logic we ascribe the fact that though we commit many errors of +detail, we very seldom go astray on fundamentals, whereas all the +parties of the opposition, deprived as they are of an informing, +animating principle, of a unique directing concept, do very often wage +their war faultlessly in minor tactics, better trained as they are in +parliamentary and journalistic manoeuvres, but they constantly break +down on the important issues. Fascism, moreover, considered as action, +is a typically Italian phenomenon and acquires a universal validity +because of the existence of this coherent and organic doctrine. The +originality of Fascism is due in great part to the autonomy of its +theoretical principles. For even when, in its external behavior and in +its conclusions, it seems identical with other political creeds, in +reality it possesses an inner originality due to the new spirit which +animates it and to an entirely different theoretical approach. + + +Common Origins and Common Background of Modern Political Doctrines: +From Liberalism to Socialism + +Modern political thought remained, until recently, both in Italy and +outside of Italy under the absolute control of those doctrines which, +proceeding from the Protestant Reformation and developed by the +adepts of natural law in the XVII and XVIII centuries, were firmly +grounded in the institutions and customs of the English, of the +American, and of the French Revolutions. Under different and sometimes +clashing forms these doctrines have left a determining imprint upon +all theories and actions both social and political, of the XIX and XX +centuries down to the rise of Fascism. The common basis of all these +doctrines, which stretch from Longuet, from Buchanan, and from +Althusen down to Karl Marx, to Wilson and to Lenin is a social and +state concept which I shall call mechanical or atomistic. + +Society according to this concept is merely a sum total of +individuals, a plurality which breaks up into its single components. +Therefore the ends of a society, so considered, are nothing more than +the ends of the individuals which compose it and for whose sake it +exists. An atomistic view of this kind is also necessarily +anti-historical, inasmuch as it considers society in its spatial +attributes and not in its temporal ones; and because it reduces social +life to the existence of a single generation. Society becomes thus a +sum of determined individuals, viz., the generation living at a given +moment. This doctrine which I call atomistic and which appears to be +anti-historical, reveals from under a concealing cloak a strongly +materialistic nature. For in its endeavors to isolate the present from +the past and the future, it rejects the spiritual inheritance of ideas +and sentiments which each generation receives from those preceding and +hands down to the following generation thus destroying the unity and +the spiritual life itself of human society. + +This common basis shows the close logical connection existing between +all political doctrines; the substantial solidarity, which unites all +the political movements, from Liberalism to Socialism, that until +recently have dominated Europe. For these political schools differ +from one another in their methods, but all agree as to the ends to be +achieved. All of them consider the welfare and happiness of +individuals to be the goal of society, itself considered as composed +of individuals of the present generation. All of them see in society +and in its juridical organization, the state, the mere instrument and +means whereby individuals can attain their ends. They differ only in +that the methods pursued for the attainment of these ends vary +considerably one from the other. + +Thus the Liberals insist that the best manner to secure the welfare of +the citizens as individuals is to interfere as little as possible with +the free development of their activities and that therefore the +essential task of the state is merely to coordinate these several +liberties in such a way as to guarantee their coexistence. Kant, who +was without doubt the most powerful and thorough philosopher of +liberalism, said, "man, who is the end, cannot be assumed to have the +value of an instrument." And again, "justice, of which the state is +the specific organ, is the condition whereby the freedom of each is +conditioned upon the freedom of others, according to the general law +of liberty." + +Having thus defined the task of the state, Liberalism confines itself +to the demand of certain guarantees which are to keep the state from +overstepping its functions as general coordinator of liberties and +from sacrificing the freedom of individuals more than is absolutely +necessary for the accomplishment of its purpose. All the efforts are +therefore directed to see to it that the ruler, mandatory of all and +entrusted with the realization, through and by liberty, of the +harmonious happiness of everybody, should never be clothed with undue +power. Hence the creation of a system of checks and limitations +designed to keep the rulers within bounds; and among these, first and +foremost, the principle of the division of powers, contrived as a +means for weakening the state in its relation to the individual, by +making it impossible for the state ever to appear, in its dealings +with citizens, in the full plenitude of sovereign powers; also the +principle of the participation of citizens in the lawmaking power, as +a means for securing, in behalf of the individual, a direct check on +this, the strongest branch, and an indirect check on the entire +government of the state. This system of checks and limitations, which +goes by the name of constitutional government resulted in a moderate +and measured liberalism. The checking power was exercised only by +those citizens who were deemed worthy and capable, with the result +that a small élite was made to represent legally the entire body +politic for whose benefit this régime was instituted. + +It was evident, however, that this moderate system, being +fundamentally illogical and in contradiction with the very principles +from which it proceeded, would soon become the object of serious +criticism. For if the object of society and of the state is the +welfare of individuals, severally considered, how is it possible to +admit that this welfare can be secured by the individuals themselves +only through the possibilities of such a liberal régime? The +inequalities brought about both by nature and by social organizations +are so numerous and so serious, that, for the greater part, +individuals abandoned to themselves not only would fail to attain +happiness, but would also contribute to the perpetuation of their +condition of misery and dejection. The state therefore cannot limit +itself to the merely negative function of the defense of liberty. It +must become active, in behalf of everybody, for the welfare of the +people. It must intervene, when necessary, in order to improve the +material, intellectual, and moral conditions of the masses; it must +find work for the unemployed, instruct and educate the people, and +care for health and hygiene. For if the purpose of society and of the +state is the welfare of individuals, and if it is just that these +individuals themselves control the attainment of their ends, it +becomes difficult to understand why Liberalism should not go the whole +distance, why it should see fit to distinguish certain individuals +from the rest of the mass, and why the functions of the people should +be restricted to the exercise of a mere check. Therefore the state, if +it exists for all, must be governed by all, and not by a small +minority: if the state is for the people, sovereignty must reside in +the people: if all individuals have the right to govern the state, +liberty is no longer sufficient; equality must be added: and if +sovereignty is vested in the people, the people must wield all +sovereignty and not merely a part of it. The power to check and curb +the government is not sufficient. The people must be the government. +Thus, logically developed, Liberalism leads to Democracy, for +Democracy contains the promises of Liberalism but oversteps its +limitations in that it makes the action of the state positive, +proclaims the equality of all citizens through the dogma of popular +sovereignty. Democracy therefore necessarily implies a republican form +of government even though at times, for reasons of expediency, it +temporarily adjusts itself to a monarchical régime. + +Once started on this downward grade of logical deductions it was +inevitable that this atomistic theory of state and society should pass +on to a more advanced position. Great industrial developments and the +existence of a huge mass of working men, as yet badly treated and in a +condition of semi-servitude, possibly endurable in a régime of +domestic industry, became intolerable after the industrial revolution. +Hence a state of affairs which towards the middle of the last century +appeared to be both cruel and threatening. It was therefore natural +that the following question be raised: "If the state is created for +the welfare of its citizens, severally considered, how can it tolerate +an economic system which divides the population into a small minority +of exploiters, the capitalists, on one side, and an immense multitude +of exploited, the working people, on the other?" No! The state must +again intervene and give rise to a different and less iniquitous +economic organization, by abolishing private property, by assuming +direct control of all production, and by organizing it in such a way +that the products of labor be distributed solely among those who +create them, viz., the working classes. Hence we find Socialism, with +its new economic organization of society, abolishing private ownership +of capital and of the instruments and means of production, socializing +the product, suppressing the extra profit of capital, and turning over +to the working class the entire output of the productive processes. It +is evident that Socialism contains and surpasses Democracy in the same +way that Democracy comprises and surpasses Liberalism, being a more +advanced development of the same fundamental concept. Socialism in its +turn generates the still more extreme doctrine of Bolshevism which +demands the violent suppression of the holders of capital, the +dictatorship of the proletariat, as means for a fairer economic +organization of society and for the rescue of the laboring classes +from capitalistic exploitation. + +Thus Liberalism, Democracy, and Socialism, appear to be, as they are +in reality, not only the offspring of one and the same theory of +government, but also logical derivations one of the other. Logically +developed Liberalism leads to Democracy; the logical development of +Democracy issues into Socialism. It is true that for many years, and +with some justification, Socialism was looked upon as antithetical to +Liberalism. But the antithesis is purely relative and breaks down as +we approach the common origin and foundation of the two doctrines, for +we find that the opposition is one of method, not of purpose. The end +is the same for both, viz., the welfare of the individual members of +society. The difference lies in the fact that Liberalism would be +guided to its goal by liberty, whereas Socialism strives to attain it +by the collective organization of production. There is therefore no +antithesis nor even a divergence as to the nature and scope of the +state and the relation of individuals to society. There is only a +difference of evaluation of the means for bringing about these ends +and establishing these relations, which difference depends entirely on +the different economic conditions which prevailed at the time when the +various doctrines were formulated. Liberalism arose and began to +thrive in the period of small industry; Socialism grew with the rise +of industrialism and of world-wide capitalism. The dissension +therefore between these two points of view, or the antithesis, if we +wish so to call it, is limited to the economic field. Socialism is at +odds with Liberalism only on the question of the organization of +production and of the division of wealth. In religious, intellectual, +and moral matters it is liberal, as it is liberal and democratic in +its politics. Even the anti-liberalism and anti-democracy of +Bolshevism are in themselves purely contingent. For Bolshevism is +opposed to Liberalism only in so far as the former is revolutionary, +not in its socialistic aspect. For if the opposition of the Bolsheviki +to liberal and democratic doctrines were to continue, as now seems +more and more probable, the result might be a complete break between +Bolshevism and Socialism notwithstanding the fact that the ultimate +aims of both are identical. + + +Fascism as an Integral Doctrine of Sociality Antithetical to the +Atomism of Liberal, Democratic, and Socialistic Theories + +The true antithesis, not to this or that manifestation of the +liberal-democratic-socialistic conception of the state but to the +concept itself, is to be found in the doctrine of Fascism. For while +the disagreement between Liberalism and Democracy, and between +Liberalism and Socialism lies in a difference of method, as we have +said, the rift between Socialism, Democracy, and Liberalism on one +side and Fascism on the other is caused by a difference in concept. As +a matter of fact, Fascism never raises the question of methods, using +in its political praxis now liberal ways, now democratic means and at +times even socialistic devices. This indifference to method often +exposes Fascism to the charge of incoherence on the part of +superficial observers, who do not see that what counts with us is the +end and that therefore even when we employ the same means we act with +a radically different spiritual attitude and strive for entirely +different results. The Fascist concept then of the nation, of the +scope of the state, and of the relations obtaining between society and +its individual components, rejects entirely the doctrine which I said +proceeded from the theories of natural law developed in the course of +the XVI, XVII, and XVIII centuries and which form the basis of the +liberal, democratic, and socialistic ideology. + +I shall not try here to expound this doctrine but shall limit myself +to a brief résumé of its fundamental concepts. + +Man--the political animal--according to the definition of Aristotle, +lives and must live in society. A human being outside the pale of +society is an inconceivable thing--a non-man. Humankind in its +entirety lives in social groups that are still, today, very numerous +and diverse, varying in importance and organization from the tribes of +Central Africa to the great Western Empires. These various societies +are fractions of the human species each one of them endowed with a +unified organization. And as there is no unique organization of the +human species, there is not "one" but there are "several" human +societies. Humanity therefore exists solely as a biological concept +not as a social one. + +Each society on the other hand exists in the unity of both its +biological and its social contents. Socially considered it is a +fraction of the human species endowed with unity of organization for +the attainment of the peculiar ends of the species. + +This definition brings out all the elements of the social phenomenon +and not merely those relating to the preservation and perpetuation of +the species. For man is not solely matter; and the ends of the human +species, far from being the materialistic ones we have in common with +other animals, are, rather, and predominantly, the spiritual +finalities which are peculiar to man and which every form of society +strives to attain as well as its stage of social development allows. +Thus the organization of every social group is more or less pervaded +by the spiritual influxes of: unity of language, of culture, of +religion, of tradition, of customs, and in general of feeling and of +volition, which are as essential as the material elements: unity of +economic interests, of living conditions, and of territory. The +definition given above demonstrates another truth, which has been +ignored by the political doctrines that for the last four centuries +have been the foundations of political systems, viz., that the social +concept has a biological aspect, because social groups are fractions +of the human species, each one possessing a peculiar organization, a +particular rank in the development of civilization with certain needs +and appropriate ends, in short, a life which is really its own. If +social groups are then fractions of the human species, they must +possess the same fundamental traits of the human species, which means +that they must be considered as a succession of generations and not as +a collection of individuals. + +It is evident therefore that as the human species is not the total of +the living human beings of the world, so the various social groups +which compose it are not the sum of the several individuals which at a +given moment belong to it, but rather the infinite series of the past, +present, and future generations constituting it. And as the ends of +the human species are not those of the several individuals living at a +certain moment, being occasionally in direct opposition to them, so +the ends of the various social groups are not necessarily those of the +individuals that belong to the groups but may even possibly be in +conflict with such ends, as one sees clearly whenever the preservation +and the development of the species demand the sacrifice of the +individual, to wit, in times of war. + +Fascism replaces therefore the old atomistic and mechanical state +theory which was at the basis of the liberal and democratic doctrines +with an organic and historic concept. When I say organic I do not wish +to convey the impression that I consider society as an organism after +the manner of the so-called "organic theories of the state"; but +rather to indicate that the social groups as fractions of the species +receive thereby a life and scope which transcend the scope and life of +the individuals identifying themselves with the history and finalities +of the uninterrupted series of generations. It is irrelevant in this +connection to determine whether social groups, considered as fractions +of the species, constitute organisms. The important thing is to +ascertain that this organic concept of the state gives to society a +continuous life over and beyond the existence of the several +individuals. + +The relations therefore between state and citizens are completely +reversed by the Fascist doctrine. Instead of the liberal-democratic +formula, "society for the individual," we have, "individuals for +society" with this difference however: that while the liberal +doctrines eliminated society, Fascism does not submerge the individual +in the social group. It subordinates him, but does not eliminate him; +the individual as a part of his generation ever remaining an element +of society however transient and insignificant he may be. Moreover the +development of individuals in each generation, when coordinated and +harmonized, conditions the development and prosperity of the entire +social unit. + +At this juncture the antithesis between the two theories must appear +complete and absolute. Liberalism, Democracy, and Socialism look upon +social groups as aggregates of living individuals; for Fascism they +are the recapitulating unity of the indefinite series of generations. +For Liberalism, society has no purposes other than those of the +members living at a given moment. For Fascism, society has historical +and immanent ends of preservation, expansion, improvement, quite +distinct from those of the individuals which at a given moment compose +it; so distinct in fact that they may even be in opposition. Hence the +necessity, for which the older doctrines make little allowance, of +sacrifice, even up to the total immolation of individuals, in behalf +of society; hence the true explanation of war, eternal law of mankind, +interpreted by the liberal-democratic doctrines as a degenerate +absurdity or as a maddened monstrosity. + +For Liberalism, society has no life distinct from the life of the +individuals, or as the phrase goes: solvitur in singularitates. For +Fascism, the life of society overlaps the existence of individuals and +projects itself into the succeeding generations through centuries and +millennia. Individuals come into being, grow, and die, followed by +others, unceasingly; social unity remains always identical to itself. +For Liberalism, the individual is the end and society the means; nor +is it conceivable that the individual, considered in the dignity of an +ultimate finality, be lowered to mere instrumentality. For Fascism, +society is the end, individuals the means, and its whole life consists +in using individuals as instruments for its social ends. The state +therefore guards and protects the welfare and development of +individuals not for their exclusive interest, but because of the +identity of the needs of individuals with those of society as a whole. +We can thus accept and explain institutions and practices, which like +the death penalty, are condemned by Liberalism in the name of the +preeminence of individualism. + +The fundamental problem of society in the old doctrines is the +question of the rights of individuals. It may be the right to freedom +as the Liberals would have it; or the right to the government of the +commonwealth as the Democrats claim it, or the right to economic +justice as the Socialists contend; but in every case it is the right +of individuals, or groups of individuals (classes). Fascism on the +other hand faces squarely the problem of the right of the state and of +the duty of individuals. Individual rights are only recognized in so +far as they are implied in the rights of the state. In this +preeminence of duty we find the highest ethical value of Fascism. + + +The Problems of Liberty, of Government, and of Social Justice in the +Political Doctrine of Fascism + +This, however, does not mean that the problems raised by the other +schools are ignored by Fascism. It means simply that it faces them and +solves them differently, as, for example, the problem of liberty. + +There is a Liberal theory of freedom, and there is a Fascist concept +of liberty. For we, too, maintain the necessity of safeguarding the +conditions that make for the free development of the individual; we, +too, believe that the oppression of individual personality can find no +place in the modern state. We do not, however, accept a bill of rights +which tends to make the individual superior to the state and to +empower him to act in opposition to society. Our concept of liberty is +that the individual must be allowed to develop his personality in +behalf of the state, for these ephemeral and infinitesimal elements of +the complex and permanent life of society determine by their normal +growth the development of the state. But this individual growth must +be normal. A huge and disproportionate development of the individual +of classes, would prove as fatal to society as abnormal growths are to +living organisms. Freedom therefore is due to the citizen and to +classes on condition that they exercise it in the interest of society +as a whole and within the limits set by social exigencies, liberty +being, like any other individual right, a concession of the state. +What I say concerning civil liberties applies to economic freedom as +well. Fascism does not look upon the doctrine of economic liberty as +an absolute dogma. It does not refer economic problems to individual +needs, to individual interest, to individual solutions. On the +contrary it considers the economic development, and especially the +production of wealth, as an eminently social concern, wealth being for +society an essential element of power and prosperity. But Fascism +maintains that in the ordinary run of events economic liberty serves +the social purposes best; that it is profitable to entrust to +individual initiative the task of economic development both as to +production and as to distribution; that in the economic world +individual ambition is the most effective means for obtaining the best +social results with the least effort. Therefore, on the question also +of economic liberty the Fascists differ fundamentally from the +Liberals; the latter see in liberty a principle, the the Fascists +accept it as a method. By the Liberals, freedom is recognized in the +interest of the citizens; the Fascists grant it in the interest of +society. In other terms, Fascists make of the individual an economic +instrument for the advancement of society, an instrument which they +use so long as it functions and which they subordinate when no longer +serviceable. In this guise Fascism solves the eternal problem of +economic freedom and of state interference, considering both as mere +methods which may or may not be employed in accordance with the social +needs of the moment. + +What I have said concerning political and economic Liberalism applies +also to Democracy. The latter envisages fundamentally the problem of +sovereignty; Fascism does also, but in an entirely different manner. +Democracy vests sovereignty in the people, that is to say, in the mass +of human beings. Fascism discovers sovereignty to be inherent in +society when it is juridically organized as a state. Democracy +therefore turns over the government of the state to the multitude of +living men that they may use it to further their own interests; +Fascism insists that the government be entrusted to men capable of +rising above their own private interests and of realizing the +aspirations of the social collectivity, considered in its unity and in +its relation to the past and future. Fascism therefore not only +rejects the dogma of popular sovereignty and substitutes for it that +of state sovereignty, but it also proclaims that the great mass of +citizens is not a suitable advocate of social interests for the reason +that the capacity to ignore individual private interests in favor of +the higher demands of society and of history is a very rare gift and +the privilege of the chosen few. Natural intelligence and cultural +preparation are of great service in such tasks. Still more valuable +perhaps is the intuitiveness of rare great minds, their traditionalism +and their inherited qualities. This must not however be construed to +mean that the masses are not to be allowed to exercise any influence +on the life of the state. On the contrary, among peoples with a great +history and with noble traditions, even the lowest elements of society +possess an instinctive discernment of what is necessary for the +welfare of the race, which in moments of great historical crises +reveals itself to be almost infallible. It is therefore as wise to +afford to this instinct the means of declaring itself as it is +judicious to entrust the normal control of the commonwealth to a +selected élite. + +As for Socialism, the Fascist doctrine frankly recognizes that the +problem raised by it as to the relations between capital and labor is +a very serious one, perhaps the central one of modern life. What +Fascism does not countenance is the collectivistic solution proposed +by the Socialists. The chief defect of the socialistic method has been +clearly demonstrated by the experience of the last few years. It does +not take into account human nature, it is therefore outside of +reality, in that it will not recognize that the most powerful spring +of human activities lies in individual self-interest and that +therefore the elimination from the economic field of this interest +results in complete paralysis. The suppression of private ownership of +capital carries with it the suppression of capital itself, for capital +is formed by savings and no one will want to save, but will rather +consume all he makes if he knows he cannot keep and hand down to his +heirs the results of his labors. The dispersion of capital means the +end of production since capital, no matter who owns it, is always an +indispensable tool of production. Collective organization of +production is followed therefore by the paralysis of production since, +by eliminating from the productive mechanism the incentive of +individual interest, the product becomes rarer and more costly. +Socialism then, as experience has shown, leads to increase in +consumption, to the dispersion of capital and therefore to poverty. Of +what avail is it, then, to build a social machine which will more +justly distribute wealth if this very wealth is destroyed by the +construction of this machine? Socialism committed an irreparable error +when it made of private property a matter of justice while in truth it +is a problem of social utility. The recognition of individual property +rights, then, is a part of the Fascist doctrine not because of its +individual bearing but because of its social utility. + +We must reject, therefore, the socialistic solution but we cannot +allow the problem raised by the Socialists to remain unsolved, not +only because justice demands a solution but also because the +persistence of this problem in liberal and democratic régimes has been +a menace to public order and to the authority of the state. Unlimited +and unrestrained class self-defense, evinced by strikes and lockouts, +by boycotts and sabotage, leads inevitably to anarchy. The Fascist +doctrine, enacting justice among the classes in compliance with a +fundamental necessity of modern life, does away with class +self-defense, which, like individual self-defense in the days of +barbarism, is a source of disorder and of civil war. + +Having reduced the problem of these terms, only one solution is +possible, the realization of justice among the classes by and through +the state. Centuries ago the state, as the specific organ of justice, +abolished personal self-defense in individual controversies and +substituted for it state justice. The time has now come when class +self-defense also must be replaced by state justice. To facilitate the +change Fascism has created its own syndicalism. The suppression of +class self-defense does not mean the suppression of class defense +which is an inalienable necessity of modern economic life. Class +organization is a fact which cannot be ignored but it must be +controlled, disciplined, and subordinated by the state. The syndicate, +instead of being, as formerly, an organ of extra-legal defense, must +be turned into an organ of legal defense which will become judicial +defense as soon as labor conflicts become a matter of judicial +settlement. Fascism therefore has transformed the syndicate, that old +revolutionary instrument of syndicalistic socialists, into an +instrument of legal defense of the classes both within and without the +law courts. This solution may encounter obstacles in its development; +the obstacles of malevolence, of suspicion of the untried, of +erroneous calculation, etc., but it is destined to triumph even though +it must advance through progressive stages. + + +Historical Value of the Doctrine of Fascism + +I might carry this analysis farther but what I have already said is +sufficient to show that the rise of a Fascist ideology already gives +evidence of an upheaval in the intellectual field as powerful as the +change that was brought about in the XVII and XVIII centuries by the +rise and diffusion of those doctrines of _ius naturale_ which go under +the name of "Philosophy of the French Revolution." The philosophy of +the French Revolution formulated certain principles, the authority of +which, unquestioned for a century and a half, seemed so final that +they were given the attribute of immortality. The influence of these +principles was so great that they determined the formation of a new +culture, of a new civilization. Likewise the fervor of the ideas that +go to make up the Fascist doctrine, now in its inception but destined +to spread rapidly, will determine the course of a new culture and of a +new conception of civil life. The deliverance of the individual from +the state carried out in the XVIII century will be followed in the XX +century by the rescue of the state from the individual. The period of +authority, of social obligations, of "hierarchical" subordination will +succeed the period of individualism, of state feebleness, of +insubordination. + +This innovating trend is not and cannot be a return to the Middle +Ages. It is a common but an erroneous belief that the movement, +started by the Reformation and heightened by the French Revolution, +was directed against mediaeval ideas and institutions. Rather than as +a negation, this movement should be looked upon as the development and +fulfillment of the doctrines and practices of the Middle Ages. +Socially and politically considered the Middle Ages wrought +disintegration and anarchy; they were characterized by the gradual +weakening and ultimate extinction of the state, embodied in the Roman +Empire, driven first to the East, then back to France, thence to +Germany, a shadow of its former self; they were marked by the steady +advance of the forces of usurpation, destructive of the state and +reciprocally obnoxious; they bore the imprints of a triumphant +particularism. Therefore the individualistic and anti-social movement +of the XVII and XVIII centuries was not directed against the Middle +Ages, but rather against the restoration of the state by great +national monarchies. If this movement destroyed mediaeval institutions +that had survived the Middle Ages and had been grafted upon the new +states, it was in consequence of the struggle primarily waged against +the state. The spirit of the movement was decidedly mediaeval. The +novelty consisted in the social surroundings in which it operated and +in its relation to new economic developments. The individualism of the +feudal lords, the particularism of the cities and of the corporations +had been replaced by the individualism and the particularism of the +bourgeoisie and of the popular classes. + +The Fascist ideology cannot therefore look back to the Middle Ages, of +which it is a complete negation. The Middle Ages spell disintegration; +Fascism is nothing if not sociality. It is if anything the beginning +of the end of the Middle Ages prolonged four centuries beyond the end +ordinarily set for them and revived by the social democratic anarchy +of the past thirty years. If Fascism can be said to look back at all +it is rather in the direction of ancient Rome whose social and +political traditions at the distance of fifteen centuries are being +revived by Fascist Italy. + +I am fully aware that the value of Fascism, as an intellectual +movement, baffles the minds of many of its followers and supporters +and is denied outright by its enemies. There is no malice in this +denial, as I see it, but rather an incapacity to comprehend. The +liberal-democratic-socialistic ideology has so completely and for so +long a time dominated Italian culture that in the minds of the +majority of people trained by it, it has assumed the value of an +absolute truth, almost the authority of a natural law. Every faculty +of self-criticism is suppressed in the minds and this suppression +entails an incapacity for understanding that time alone can change. It +will be advisable therefore to rely mainly upon the new generations +and in general upon persons whose culture is not already fixed. This +difficulty to comprehend on the part of those who have been thoroughly +grounded by a different preparation in the political and social +sciences explains in part why Fascism has not been wholly successful +with the intellectual classes and with mature minds, and why on the +other hand it has been very successful with young people, with women, +in rural districts, and among men of action unencumbered by a fixed +and set social and political education. Fascism moreover, as a +cultural movement, is just now taking its first steps. As in the case +with all great movements, action regularly outstrips thought. It was +thus at the time of the Protestant Reformation and of the +individualistic reaction of the XVII and XVIII centuries. The English +revolution occurred when the doctrines of natural law were coming into +being and the theoretical development of the liberal and democratic +theories followed the French Revolution. + +At this point it will not be very difficult to assign a fitting place +in history to this great trend of thought which is called Fascism and +which, in spite of the initial difficulties, already gives clear +indication of the magnitude of its developments. + +The liberal-democratic speculation both in its origin and in the +manner of its development appears to be essentially a non-Italian +formation. Its connection with the Middle Ages already shows it to be +foreign to the Latin mind, the mediaeval disintegration being the +result of the triumph of Germanic individualism over the political +mentality of the Romans. The barbarians, boring from within and +hacking from without, pulled down the great political structure raised +by Latin genius and put nothing in its place. Anarchy lasted eight +centuries during which time only one institution survived and that a +Roman one--the Catholic Church. But, as soon as the laborious process +of reconstruction was started with the constitution of the great +national states backed by the Roman Church the Protestant Reformation +set in followed by the individualistic currents of the XVII and XVIII +centuries, and the process of disintegration was started anew. This +anti-state tendency was the expression of the Germanic spirit and it +therefore became predominant among the Germanic peoples and wherever +Germanism had left a deep imprint even if afterward superficially +covered by a veneer of Latin culture. It is true that Marsilius from +Padua is an Italian writing for Ludwig the Bavarian, but the other +writers who in the XIV century appear as forerunners of the liberal +doctrines are not Italians: Occam and Wycliff are English; Oresme is +French. Among the advocates of individualism in the XVI century who +prepared the way for the triumph of the doctrines of natural law in +the subsequent centuries, Hotman and Languet are French, Buchanan is +Scotch. Of the great authorities of natural law, Grotius and Spinosa +are Dutch; Locke is English; l'Abbé de St. Pierre, Montesquieu, +d'Argenson, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot and the encyclopaedists are +French; Althusius, Pufendorf, Kant, Fichte are German. + +Italy took no part in the rise and development of the doctrines of +natural law. Only in the XIX century did she evince a tardy interest +in these doctrines, just as she tardily contributed to them at the +dose of the XVIII century through the works of Beccaria and Filangeri. + +While therefore in other countries such as France, England, Germany, +and Holland, the general tradition in the social and political +sciences worked in behalf of anti-state individualism, and therefore +of liberal and democratic doctrines, Italy, on the other hand, clung +to the powerful legacy of its past in virtue of which she proclaims +the rights of the state, the preeminence of its authority, and the +superiority of its ends. The very fact that the Italian political +doctrine in the Middle Ages linked itself with the great political +writers of antiquity, Plato and Aristotle, who in a different manner +but with an equal firmness advocated a strong state and the +subordination of individuals to it, is a sufficient index of the +orientation of political philosophy in Italy. We all know how thorough +and crushing the authority of Aristotle was in the Middle Ages. But +for Aristotle the spiritual cement of the state is "virtue" not +absolute virtue but political virtue, which is social devotion. His +state is made up solely of its citizens, the citizens being either +those who defend it with their arms or who govern it as magistrates. +All others who provide it with the materials and services it needs are +not citizens. They become such only in the corrupt forms of certain +democracies. Society is therefore divided into two classes, the free +men or citizens who give their time to noble and virtuous occupations +and who profess their subjection to the state, and the laborers and +slaves who work for the maintenance of the former. No man in this +scheme is his own master. The slaves belong to the freemen, and the +freemen belong to the state. + +It was therefore natural that St. Thomas Aquinas the greatest +political writer of the Middle Ages should emphasize the necessity of +unity in the political field, the harm of plurality of rulers, the +dangers and damaging effects of demagogy. The good of the state, says +St. Thomas Aquinas, is unity. And who can procure unity more fittingly +than he who is himself one? Moreover the government must follow, as +far as possible, the course of nature and in nature power is always +one. In the physical body only one organ is dominant--the heart; in +the spirit only one faculty has sway--reason. Bees have one sole +ruler; and the entire universe one sole sovereign--God. Experience +shows that the countries, which are ruled by many, perish because of +discord while those that are ruled over by one enjoy peace, justice, +and plenty. The States which are not ruled by one are troubled by +dissensions, and toil unceasingly. On the contrary the states which +are ruled over by one king enjoy peace, thrive in justice and are +gladdened by affluence.[2] The rule of the multitudes can not be +sanctioned, for where the crowd rules it oppresses the rich as would a +tyrant.[3] + +Italy in the Middle Ages presented a curious phenomenon: while in +practice the authority of the state was being dissolved into a +multiplicity of competing sovereignties, the theory of state unity and +authority was kept alive in the minds of thinkers by the memories of +the Roman Imperial tradition. It was this memory that supported for +centuries the fiction of the universal Roman Empire when in reality it +existed no longer. Dante's _De Monarchia_ deduced the theory of this +empire conceived as the unity of a strong state. "Quod potest fieri +per unum melius est per unum fieri quam plura," he says in the XIV +chapter of the first book, and further on, considering the citizen as +an instrument for the attainment of the ends of the state, he +concludes that the individual must sacrifice himself for his country. +"Si pars debet se exponere pro salute totius, cum homo siti pars +quaedam civitatis ... homo pro patria debet exponere se ipsum." (lib. +II. 8). + +The Roman tradition, which was one of practice but not of +theories--for Rome constructed the most solid state known to history +with extraordinary statesmanship but with hardly any political +writings--influenced considerably the founder of modern political +science, Nicolo Machiavelli, who was himself in truth not a creator of +doctrines but a keen observer of human nature who derived from the +study of history practical maxims of political import. He freed the +science of politics from the formalism of the scholastics and brought +it close to concrete reality. His writings, an inexhaustible mine of +practical remarks and precious observations, reveal dominant in him +the state idea, no longer abstract but in the full historical +concreteness of the national unity of Italy. Machiavelli therefore is +not only the greatest of modern political writers, he is also the +greatest of our countrymen in full possession of a national Italian +consciousness. To liberate Italy, which was in his day "enslaved, torn +and pillaged," and to make her more powerful, he would use any means, +for to his mind the holiness of the end justified them completely. In +this he was sharply rebuked by foreigners who were not as hostile to +his means as they were fearful of the end which he propounded. He +advocated therefore the constitution of a strong Italian state, +supported by the sacrifices and by the blood of the citizens, not +defended by mercenary troops; well-ordered internally, aggressive and +bent on expansion. "Weak republics," he said, "have no determination +and can never reach a decision." (Disc. I. c. 38). "Weak states were +ever dubious in choosing their course, and slow deliberations are +always harmful." (Disc. I. c. 10). And again: "Whoso undertakes to +govern a multitude either in a régime of liberty or in a monarchy, +without previously making sure of those who are hostile to the new +order of things builds a short-lived state." (Disc. I. c. 16). And +further on "the dictatorial authority helped and did not harm the +Roman republic" (Disc. I. c. 34), and "Kings and republics lacking in +national troops both for offense and defense should be ashamed of +their existence." (Disc. I. c. 21). And again: "Money not only does +not protect you but rather it exposes you to plundering assaults. Nor +can there be a more false opinion than that which says that money is +the sinews of war. Not money but good soldiers win battles." (Disc. I. +II. c. 10). "The country must be defended with ignominy or with glory +and in either way it is nobly defended." (Disc. III. c. 41). "And with +dash and boldness people often capture what they never would have +obtained by ordinary means." (Disc. III. c. 44). Machiavelli was not +only a great political authority, he taught the mastery of energy and +will. Fascism learns from him not only its doctrines but its action as +well. + +Different from Machiavelli's, in mental attitude, in cultural +preparation, and in manner of presentation, G.B. Vico must yet be +connected with the great Florentine from whom in a certain way he +seems to proceed. In the heyday of "natural law" Vico is decidedly +opposed to _ius naturale_ and in his attacks against its advocates, +Grotius, Seldenus and Pufendorf, he systematically assails the +abstract, rationalistic, and utilitarian principles of the XVIII +century. As Montemayor justly says:[4] "While the 'natural jurists', +basing justice and state on utility and interest and grounding human +certitude on reason, were striving to draft permanent codes and +construct the perfect state, Vico strongly asserted the social nature +of man, the ethical character of the juridical consciousness and its +growth through the history of humanity rather than in sacred history. +Vico therefore maintains that doctrines must begin with those subjects +which take up and explain the entire course of civilization. +Experience and not ratiocination, history and not reason must help +human wisdom to understand the civil and political regimes which were +the result not of reason or philosophy, but rather of common sense, or +if you will of the social consciousness of man" and farther on (pages +373-374), "to Vico we owe the conception of history in its fullest +sense as magistra vitae, the search after the humanity of history, the +principle which makes the truth progress with time, the discovery of +the political 'course' of nations. It is Vico who uttered the eulogy +of the patrician 'heroic hearts' of the 'patres patriae' first +founders of states, magnanimous defenders of the commonwealth and wise +counsellors of politics. To Vico we owe the criticism of democracies, +the affirmation of their brief existence, of their rapid +disintegration at the hands of factions and demagogues, of their lapse +first into anarchy, then into monarchy, when their degradation does +not make them a prey of foreign oppressors. Vico conceived of civil +liberty as subjection to law, as just subordination, of the private to +the public interests, to the sway of the state. It was Vico who +sketched modern society as a world of nations each one guarding its +own imperium, fighting just and not inhuman wars. In Vico therefore we +find the condemnation of pacifism, the assertion that right is +actualized by bodily force, that without force, right is of no avail, +and that therefore 'qui ab iniuriis se tueri non potest servus est.'" + +It is not difficult to discern the analogies between these +affirmations and the fundamental views and the spirit of Fascism. Nor +should we marvel at this similarity. Fascism, a strictly Italian +phenomenon, has its roots in the Risorgimento and the Risorgimento was +influenced undoubtedly by Vico. + +It would be inexact to affirm that the philosophy of Vico dominated +the Risorgimento. Too many elements of German, French, and English +civilizations had been added to our culture during the first half of +the XIX century to make this possible, so much so that perhaps Vico +might have remained unknown to the makers of Italian unity if another +powerful mind from Southern Italy, Vincenzo Cuoco, had not taken it +upon himself to expound the philosophy of Vico in those very days in +which the intellectual preparation of the Risorgimento was being +carried on. + +An adequate account of Cuoco's doctrines would carry me too far. +Montemayor, in the article quoted above, gives them considerable +attention. He quotes among other things Cuoco's arraignment of +Democracy: "Italy has fared badly at the hand of Democracy which has +withered to their roots the three sacred plants of liberty, unity, +and independence. If we wish to see these trees flourish again let us +protect them in the future from Democracy." + +The influence of Cuoco, an exile at Milan, exerted through his +writings, his newspaper articles, and Vichian propaganda, on the +Italian patriots is universally recognized. Among the regular readers +of his _Giornale Italiano_ we find Monti and Foscolo. Clippings of his +articles were treasured by Mazzini and Manzoni, who often acted as his +secretary, called him his "master in politics."[5] + +The influence of the Italian tradition summed up and handed down by +Cuoco was felt by Mazzini whose interpretation of the function of the +citizen as duty and mission is to be connected with Vico's doctrine +rather than with the philosophic and political doctrines of the French +Revolution. + +"Training for social duty," said Mazzini, "is essentially and +logically unitarian. Life for it is but a duty, a mission. The norm +and definition of such mission can only be found in a collective term +superior to all the individuals of the country--in the people, in the +nation. If there is a collective mission, a communion of duty ... it +can only be represented in the national unity."[6] And farther on: +"The declaration of rights, which all constitutions insist in copying +slavishly from the French, express only those of the period ... which +considered the individual as the end and pointed out only one half of +the problem" and again, "assume the existence of one of those crises +that threaten the life of the nation, and demand the active sacrifice +of all its sons ... will you ask the citizens to face martyrdom in +virtue of their rights? You have taught men that society was solely +constituted to guarantee their rights and now you ask them to +sacrifice one and all, to suffer and die for the safety of the +'nation?'"[7] + +In Mazzini's conception of the citizen as instrument for the +attainment of the nation's ends and therefore submissive to a higher +mission, to the duty of supreme sacrifice, we see the anticipation of +one of the fundamental points of the Fascist doctrine. + +Unfortunately, the autonomy of the political thought of Italy, +vigorously established in the works of Vico, nobly reclaimed by +Vincenzo Cuoco, kept up during the struggles of the Risorgimento in +spite of the many foreign influences of that period, seemed to exhaust +itself immediately after the unification. Italian political thought +which had been original in times of servitude, became enslaved in the +days of freedom. + +A powerful innovating movement, issuing from the war and of which +Fascism is the purest expression, was to restore Italian thought in +the sphere of political doctrine to its own traditions which are the +traditions of Rome. + +This task of intellectual liberation, now slowly being accomplished, +is no less important than the political deliverance brought about by +the Fascist Revolution. It is a great task which continues and +integrates the Risorgimento; it is now bringing to an end, after the +cessation of our political servitude, the intellectual dependence of +Italy. + +Thanks to it, Italy again speaks to the world and the world listens to +Italy. It is a great task and a great deed and it demands great +efforts. To carry it through, we must, each one of us, free ourselves +of the dross of ideas and mental habits which two centuries of foreign +intellectualistic tradition have heaped upon us; we must not only take +on a new culture but create for ourselves a new soul. We must +methodically and patiently contribute something towards the organic +and complete elaboration of our doctrine, at the same time supporting +it both at home and abroad with untiring devotion. We ask this effort +of renovation and collaboration of all Fascists, as well as of all who +feel themselves to be Italians. After the hour of sacrifice comes the +hour of unyielding efforts. To our work, then, fellow countrymen, for +the glory of Italy! + + * * * * * + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 1: Translated from the Italian.] + +[Footnote 2: "civitates quae non reguntur ab uno dissenionibus +laborant et absque pace fluctuant. E contrario civitates quae sub uno +rege reguntur pace gaudent, iustitia florent et affluentia rerum +laetantur." (De reg. princ. I. c. 2).] + +[Footnote 3: "ideo manifustum est, quod multitudo est sicut tyrannuus, +quare operationes multitudinis sunt iniustae. ergo non expedit +multitudinem dominari." (Comm. In Polit. L. III. lectio VIII).] + +[Footnote 4: Rivista internazionale di filosofia del diritto V. 351.] + +[Footnote 5: Montemayor. Riv. Int. etc. p. 370.] + +[Footnote 6: della unità italiana. Scritti, Vol. III.] + +[Footnote 7: I sistemi e la democrazia. Scritti, Vol. VII.] + + * * * * * + + + + +THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF FASCISM +BY GIOVANNI GENTILE + + +For the Italian nation the World War was the solution of a deep +spiritual crisis. They willed and fought it long before they felt and +evaluated it. But they willed, fought, felt and evaluated it in a +certain spirit which Italy's generals and statesmen exploited, but +which also worked on them, conditioning their policies and their +action. The spirit in question was not altogether clear and +self-consistent. That it lacked unanimity was particularly apparent +just before and again just after the war when feelings were not +subject to war discipline. It was as though the Italian character were +crossed by two different currents which divided it into two +irreconcilable sections. One need think only of the days of Italian +neutrality and of the debates that raged between Interventionists and +Neutralists. The ease with which the most inconsistent ideas were +pressed into service by both parties showed that the issue was not +between two opposing political opinions, two conflicting concepts of +history, but actually between two different temperaments, two +different souls. + +For one kind of person the important point was to fight the war, +either on the side of Germany or against Germany: but in either event +to fight the war, without regard to specific advantages--to fight the +war in order that at last the Italian nation, created rather by +favoring conditions than by the will of its people to be a nation, +might receive its test in blood, such a test as only war can bring by +uniting all citizens in a single thought, a single passion, a single +hope, emphasizing to each individual that all have something in +common, something transcending private interests. + +This was the very thing that frightened the other kind of person, the +prudent man, the realist, who had a clear view of the mortal risks a +young, inexperienced, badly prepared nation would be running in such a +war, and who also saw--a most significant point--that, all things +considered, a bargaining neutrality would surely win the country +tangible rewards, as great as victorious participation itself. + +The point at issue was just that: the Italian Neutralists stood for +material advantages, advantages tangible, ponderable, palpable; the +Interventionists stood for moral advantages, intangible, impalpable, +imponderable--imponderable at least on the scales used by their +antagonists. On the eve of the war these two Italian characters stood +facing each other, scowling and irreconcilable--the one on the +aggressive, asserting itself ever more forcefully through the various +organs of public opinion; the other on the defensive, offering +resistance through the Parliament which in those days still seemed to +be the basic repository of State sovereignty. Civil conflict seemed +inevitable in Italy, and civil war was in fact averted only because +the King took advantage of one of his prerogatives and declared war +against the Central Powers. + +This act of the King was the first decisive step toward the solution +of the crisis. + + +II + +The crisis had ancient origins. Its roots sank deep into the inner +spirit of the Italian people. + +What were the creative forces of the _Risorgimento_? The "Italian +people," to which some historians are now tending to attribute an +important if not a decisive role in our struggle for national unity +and independence, was hardly on the scene at all. The active agency +was always an idea become a person--it was one or several determined +wills which were fixed on determined goals. There can be no question +that the birth of modern Italy was the work of the few. And it could +not be otherwise. It is always the few who represent the +self-consciousness and the will of an epoch and determine what its +history shall be; for it is they who see the forces at their disposal +and through those forces actuate the one truly active and productive +force--their own will. + +That will we find in the song of the poets and the ideas of the +political writers, who know how to use a language harmonious with a +universal sentiment or with a sentiment capable of becoming universal. +In the case of Italy, in all our bards, philosophers and leaders, from +Alfieri to Foscolo, from Leopardi to Manzoni, from Mazzini to +Gioberti, we are able to pick up the threads of a new fabric, which is +a new kind of thought, a new kind of soul, a new kind of Italy. This +new Italy differed from the old Italy in something that was very +simple but yet was of the greatest importance: this new Italy took +life seriously, while the old one did not. People in every age had +dreamed of an Italy and talked of an Italy. The notion of Italy had +been sung in all kinds of music, propounded in all kinds of +philosophy. But it was always an Italy that existed in the brain of +some scholar whose learning was more or less divorced from reality. +Now reality demands that convictions be taken seriously, that ideas +become actions. Accordingly it was necessary that this Italy, which +was an affair of brains only, become also an affair of hearts, become, +that is, something serious, something alive. This, and no other, was +the meaning of Mazzini's great slogan: "Thought and Action." It was +the essence of the great revolution which he preached and which he +accomplished by instilling his doctrine into the hearts of others. Not +many others--a small minority! But they were numerous enough and +powerful enough to raise the question where it could be answered--in +Italian public opinion (taken in conjunction with the political +situation prevailing in the rest of Europe). They were able to +establish the doctrine that life is not a game, but a mission; that, +therefore, the individual has a law and a purpose in obedience to +which and in fulfillment of which he alone attains his true value; +that, accordingly, he must make sacrifices, now of personal comfort, +now of private interest, now of life itself. + +No revolution ever possessed more markedly than did the Italian +_Risorgimento_ this characteristic of ideality, of thought preceding +action. Our revolt was not concerned with the material needs of life, +nor did it spring from elementary and widely diffused sentiments +breaking out in popular uprisings and mass disturbances. The movements +of 1847 and 1848 were demonstrations, as we would say today, of +"intellectuals"; they were efforts toward a goal on the part of +a minority of patriots who were standard bearers of an ideal +and were driving governments and peoples toward its attainment. +Idealism--understood as faith in the advent of an ideal reality, as a +manner of conceiving life not as fixed within the limits of existing +fact, but as incessant progress and transformation toward the level of a +higher law which controls men with the very force of the idea--was the +sum and substance of Mazzini's teaching; and it supplied the most +conspicuous characteristic of our great Italian revolution. In this +sense all the patriots who worked for the foundation of the new kingdom +were Mazzinians--Gioberti, Cavour, Victor Emmanuel, Garibaldi. To be +sure, our writers of the first rank, such as Manzoni and Rosmini, had no +historical connection with Mazzini; but they had the same general +tendency as Mazzini. Working along diverging lines, they all came +together on the essential point: that true life is not the life which +is, but also the life which ought to be. It was a conviction essentially +religious in character, essentially anti-materialistic. + + +III + +This religious and idealistic manner of looking at life, so +characteristic of the _Risorgimento_, prevails even beyond the heroic +age of the revolution and the establishment of the Kingdom. It +survives down through Ricasoli, Lanza, Sella and Minghetti, down, that +is, to the occupation of Rome and the systemization of our national +finances. The parliamentary overturn of 1876, indeed, marks not the +end, but rather an interruption, on the road that Italy had been +following since the beginning of the century. The outlook then +changed, and not by the capriciousness or weakness of men, but by a +necessity of history which it would be idiotic in our day to deplore. +At that time the fall of the Right, which had ruled continuously +between 1861 and 1876, seemed to most people the real conquest of +freedom. + +To be sure the Right cannot be accused of too great scruple in +respecting the liberties guaranteed by our Constitution; but the real +truth was that the Right conceived liberty in a sense directly +opposite to the notions of the Left. The Left moved from the +individual to the State: the Right moved from the State to the +individual. The men of the left thought of "the people" as merely the +agglomerate of the citizens composing it. They therefore made the +individual the center and the point of departure of all the rights and +prerogatives which a régime of freedom was bound to respect. + +The men of the Right, on the contrary, were firmly set in the notion +that no freedom can be conceived except within the State, that freedom +can have no important content apart from a solid régime of law +indisputably sovereign over the activities and the interests of +individuals. For the Right there could be no individual freedom not +reconcilable with the authority of the State. In their eyes the +general interest was always paramount over private interests. The law, +therefore, should have absolute efficacy and embrace the whole life of +the people. + +This conception of the Right was evidently sound; but it involved +great dangers when applied without regard to the motives which +provoked it. Unless we are careful, too much law leads to stasis and +therefore to the annihilation of the life which it is the State's +function to regulate but which the State cannot suppress. The State +may easily become a form indifferent to its content--something +extraneous to the substance it would regulate. If the law comes upon +the individual from without, if the individual is not absorbed in the +life of the State, the individual feels the law and the State as +limitations on his activity, as chains which will eventually strangle +him unless he can break them down. + +This was just the feeling of the men of '76. The country needed a +breath of air. Its moral, economic, and social forces demanded the +right to develop without interference from a law which took no account +of them. This was the historical reason for the overturn of that year; +and with the transference of power from Right to Left begins the +period of growth and development in our nation: economic growth in +industry, commerce, railroads, agriculture; intellectual growth in +science, education. The nation had received its form from above. It +had now to struggle to its new level, giving to a State which already +had its constitution, its administrative and political organization, +its army and its finance, a living content of forces springing from +individual initiative prompted by interests which the _Risorgimento_, +absorbed in its great ideals, had either neglected or altogether +disregarded. + +The accomplishment of this constitutes the credit side of the balance +sheet of King Humbert I. It was the error of King Humbert's greatest +minister, Francesco Crispi, not to have understood his age. Crispi +strove vigorously to restore the authority and the prestige of the +State as against an individualism gone rampant, to reassert religious +ideals as against triumphant materialism. He fell, therefore, before +the assaults of so-called democracy. + +Crispi was wrong. That was not the moment for re-hoisting the +time-honored banner of idealism. At that time there could be no talk +of wars, of national dignity, of competition with the Great Powers; no +talk of setting limits to personal liberties in the interests of the +abstract entity called "State." The word "God," which Crispi sometimes +used, was singularly out of place. It was a question rather of +bringing the popular classes to prosperity, self-consciousness, +participation in political life. Campaigns against illiteracy, all +kinds of social legislation, the elimination of the clergy from the +public schools, which must be secular and anti-clerical! During this +period Freemasonry became solidly established in the bureaucracy, the +army, the judiciary. The central power of the State was weakened and +made subservient to the fleeting variations of popular will as +reflected in a suffrage absolved from all control from above. The +growth of big industry favored the rise of a socialism of Marxian +stamp as a new kind of moral and political education for our +proletariat. The conception of humanity was not indeed lost from view: +but such moral restraints as were placed on the free individual were +all based on the feeling that each man must instinctively seek his own +well-being and defend it. This was the very conception which Mazzini +had fought in socialism, though he rightly saw that it was not +peculiar to socialism alone, but belonged to any political theory, +whether liberal, democratic, or anti-socialistic, which urges men +toward the exaction of rights rather than to the fulfillment of +duties. + +From 1876 till the Great War, accordingly, we had an Italy that was +materialistic and anti-Mazzinian, though an Italy far superior to the +Italy of and before Mazzini's time. All our culture, whether in the +natural or the moral sciences, in letters or in the arts, was +dominated by a crude positivism, which conceived of the reality in +which we live as something given, something ready-made, and which +therefore limits and conditions human activity quite apart from +so-called arbitrary and illusory demands of morality. Everybody wanted +"facts," "positive facts." Everybody laughed at "metaphysical dreams," +at impalpable realities. The truth was there before the eyes of men. +They had only to open their eyes to see it. The Beautiful itself could +only be the mirror of the Truth present before us in Nature. +Patriotism, like all the other virtues based on a religious attitude +of mind, and which can be mentioned only when people have the courage +to talk in earnest, became a rhetorical theme on which it was rather +bad taste to touch. + +This period, which anyone born during the last half of the past +century can well remember, might be called the demo-socialistic phase +of the modern Italian State. It was the period which elaborated the +characteristically democratic attitude of mind on a basis of personal +freedom, and which resulted in the establishment of socialism as the +primary and controlling force in the State. It was a period of growth +and of prosperity during which the moral forces developed during the +_Risorgimento_ were crowded into the background or off the stage. + + +IV + +But toward the end of the Nineteenth Century and in the first years of +the Twentieth a vigorous spirit of reaction began to manifest itself +in the young men of Italy against the preceding generation's ideas in +politics, literature, science and philosophy. It was as though they +were weary of the prosaic bourgeois life which they had inherited from +their fathers and were eager to return to the lofty moral enthusiasms +of their grandfathers. Rosmini and Gioberti had been long forgotten. +They were now exhumed, read, discussed. As for Mazzini, an edition of +his writings was financed by the State itself. Vico, the great Vico, a +formidable preacher of idealistic philosophy and a great +anti-Cartesian and anti-rationalist, became the object of a new cult. + +Positivism began forthwith to be attacked by neo-idealism. +Materialistic approaches to the study of literature and art were +refuted and discredited. Within the Church itself modernism came to +rouse the Italian clergy to the need of a deeper and more modern +culture. Even socialism was brought under the philosophical probe and +criticized like other doctrines for its weaknesses and errors; and +when, in France, George Sorel went beyond the fallacies of the +materialistic theories of the Marxist social-democracy to his theory +of syndicalism, our young Italian socialists turned to him. In Sorel's +ideas they saw two things: first, the end of a hypocritical +"collaborationism" which betrayed both proletariat and nation; and +second, faith in a moral and ideal reality for which it was the +individual's duty to sacrifice himself, and to defend which, even +violence was justified. The anti-parliamentarian spirit and the moral +spirit of syndicalism brought Italian socialists back within the +Mazzinian orbit. + +Of great importance, too, was nationalism, a new movement then just +coming to the fore. Our Italian nationalism was less literary and more +political in character than the similar movement in France, because +with us it was attached to the old historic Right which had a long +political tradition. The new nationalism differed from the old Right +in the stress it laid on the idea of "nation"; but it was at one with +the Right in regarding the State as the necessary premise to the +individual rights and values. It was the special achievement of +nationalism to rekindle faith in the nation in Italian hearts, to +arouse the country against parliamentary socialism, and to lead an +open attack on Freemasonry, before which the Italian bourgeoisie was +terrifiedly prostrating itself. Syndicalists, nationalists, idealists +succeeded, between them, in bringing the great majority of Italian +youth back to the spirit of Mazzini. + +Official, legal, parliamentary Italy, the Italy that was +anti-Mazzinian and anti-idealistic, stood against all this, finding +its leader in a man of unfailing political intuition, and master as +well of the political mechanism of the country, a man sceptical of all +high-sounding words, impatient of complicated concepts, ironical, +cold, hard-headed, practical--what Mazzini would have called a "shrewd +materialist." In the persons, indeed, of Mazzini and Giolitti, we may +find a picture of the two aspects of pre-war Italy, of that +irreconcilable duality which paralyzed the vitality of the country and +which the Great War was to solve. + + +V + +The effect of the war seemed at first to be quite in an opposite +sense--to mark the beginning of a general _débâcle_ of the Italian +State and of the moral forces that must underlie any State. If +entrance into the war had been a triumph of ideal Italy over +materialistic Italy, the advent of peace seemed to give ample +justification to the Neutralists who had represented the latter. After +the Armistice our Allies turned their backs upon us. Our victory +assumed all the aspects of a defeat. A defeatist psychology, as they +say, took possession of the Italian people and expressed itself in +hatred of the war, of those responsible for the war, even of our army +which had won our war. An anarchical spirit of dissolution rose +against all authority. The ganglia of our economic life seemed struck +with mortal disease. Labor ran riot in strike after strike. The very +bureaucracy seemed to align itself against the State. The measure of +our spiritual dispersion was the return to power of Giolitti--the +execrated Neutralist--who for five years had been held up as the +exponent of an Italy which had died with the war. + +But, curiously enough, it was under Giolitti that things suddenly +changed in aspect, that against the Giolittian State a new State +arose. Our soldiers, our genuine soldiers, men who had willed our war +and fought it in full consciousness of what they were doing, had the +good fortune to find as their leaders a man who could express in words +things that were in all their hearts and who could make those words +audible above the tumult. + +Mussolini had left Italian socialism in 1915 in order to be a more +faithful interpreter of "the Italian People" (the name he chose for +his new paper). He was one of those who saw the necessity of our war, +one of those mainly responsible for our entering the war. Already as a +socialist he had fought Freemasonry; and, drawing his inspiration from +Sorel's syndicalism, he had assailed the parliamentary corruption of +Reformist Socialism with the idealistic postulates of revolution and +violence. Then, later, on leaving the party and in defending the cause +of intervention, he had come to oppose the illusory fancies of +proletarian internationalism with an assertion of the infrangible +integrity, not only moral but economic as well, of the national +organism, affirming therefore the sanctity of country for the working +classes as for other classes. Mussolini was a Mazzinian of that +pure-blooded breed which Mazzini seemed somehow always to find in the +province of Romagna. First by instinct, later by reflection, Mussolini +had come to despise the futility of the socialists who kept preaching +a revolution which they had neither the power nor the will to bring to +pass even under the most favorable circumstances. More keenly than +anyone else he had come to feel the necessity of a State which would +be a State, of a law which would be respected as law, of an authority +capable of exacting obedience but at the same time able to give +indisputable evidence of its worthiness so to act. It seemed +incredible to Mussolini that a country capable of fighting and winning +such a war as Italy had fought and won should be thrown into disorder +and held at the mercy of a handful of faithless politicians. + +When Mussolini founded his Fasci in Milan in March, 1919, the movement +toward dissolution and negation that featured the post-war period in +Italy had virtually ceased. The Fasci made their appeal to Italians +who, in spite of the disappointments of the peace, continued to +believe in the war, and who, in order to validate the victory which +was the proof of the war's value, were bent on recovering for Italy +that control over her own destinies which could come only through a +restoration of discipline and a reorganization of social and political +forces. From the first, the Fascist Party was not one of believers but +of action. What it needed was not a platform of principles, but an +idea which would indicate a goal and a road by which the goal could be +reached. + +The four years between 1919 and 1923 inclusive were characterized by +the development of the Fascist revolution through the action of "the +squads." The Fascist "squads" were really the force of a State not yet +born but on the way to being. In its first period, Fascist "squadrism" +transgressed the law of the old régime because it was determined to +suppress that régime as incompatible with the national State to which +Fascism was aspiring. The March on Rome was not the beginning, it was +the end of that phase of the revolution; because, with Mussolini's +advent to power, Fascism entered the sphere of legality. After October +28, 1922, Fascism was no longer at war with the State; it _was_ the +State, looking about for the organization which would realize Fascism +as a concept of State. Fascism already had control of all the +instruments necessary for the upbuilding of a new State. The Italy of +Giolitti had been superceded, at least so far as militant politics +were concerned. Between Giolitti's Italy and the new Italy there +flowed, as an imaginative orator once said in the Chamber, "a torrent +of blood" that would prevent any return to the past. The century-old +crisis had been solved. The war at last had begun to bear fruit for +Italy. + + +VI + +Now to understand the distinctive essence of Fascism, nothing is more +instructive than a comparison of it with the point of view of Mazzini +to which I have so often referred. + +Mazzini did have a political conception, but his politic was a sort of +integral politic, which cannot be so sharply distinguished from +morals, religion, and ideas of life as a whole, as to be considered +apart from these other fundamental interests of the human spirit. If +one tries to separate what is purely political from his religious +beliefs, his ethical consciousness and his metaphysical concepts, it +becomes impossible to understand the vast influence which his credo +and his propaganda exerted. Unless we assume the unity of the whole +man, we arrive not at the clarification but at the destruction of +those ideas of his which proved so powerful. + +In the definition of Fascism, the first point to grasp is the +comprehensive, or as Fascists say, the "totalitarian" scope of its +doctrine, which concerns itself not only with political organization +and political tendency, but with the whole will and thought and +feeling of the nation. + +There is a second and equally important point. Fascism is not a +philosophy. Much less is it a religion. It is not even a political +theory which may be stated in a series of formulae. The significance +of Fascism is not to be grasped in the special theses which it from +time to time assumes. When on occasion it has announced a program, a +goal, a concept to be realized in action, Fascism has not hesitated to +abandon them when in practice these were found to be inadequate or +inconsistent with the principle of Fascism. Fascism has never been +willing to compromise its future. Mussolini has boasted that he is a +_tempista_, that his real pride is in "good timing." He makes +decisions and acts on them at the precise moment when all the +conditions and considerations which make them feasible and opportune +are properly matured. This is a way of saying that Fascism returns to +the most rigorous meaning of Mazzini's "Thought and Action," whereby +the two terms are so perfectly coincident that no thought has value +which is not already expressed in action. The real "views" of the +_Duce_ are those which he formulates and executes at one and the same +time. + +Is Fascism therefore "anti-intellectual," as has been so often +charged? It is eminently anti-intellectual, eminently Mazzinian, that +is, if by intellectualism we mean the divorce of thought from action, +of knowledge from life, of brain from heart, of theory from practice. +Fascism is hostile to all Utopian systems which are destined never to +face the test of reality. It is hostile to all science and all +philosophy which remain matters of mere fancy or intelligence. It is +not that Fascism denies value to culture, to the higher intellectual +pursuits by which thought is invigorated as a source of action. +Fascist anti-intellectualism holds in scorn a product peculiarly +typical of the educated classes in Italy: the _leterato_--the man who +plays with knowledge and with thought without any sense of +responsibility for the practical world. It is hostile not so much to +culture as to bad culture, the culture which does not educate, which +does not make men, but rather creates pedants and aesthetes, egotists +in a word, men morally and politically indifferent. It has no use, for +instance, for the man who is "above the conflict" when his country or +its important interests are at stake. + +By virtue of its repugnance for "intellectualism," Fascism prefers not +to waste time constructing abstract theories about itself. But when we +say that it is not a system or a doctrine we must not conclude that it +is a blind praxis or a purely instinctive method. If by system or +philosophy we mean a living thought, a principle of universal +character daily revealing its inner fertility and significance, then +Fascism is a perfect system, with a solidly established foundation and +with a rigorous logic in its development; and all who feel the truth +and the vitality of the principle work day by day for its development, +now doing, now undoing, now going forward, now retracing their steps, +according as the things they do prove to be in harmony with the +principle or to deviate from it. + +And we come finally to a third point. + +The Fascist system is not a political system, but it has its center of +gravity in politics. Fascism came into being to meet serious problems +of politics in post-war Italy. And it presents itself as a political +method. But in confronting and solving political problems it is +carried by its very nature, that is to say by its method, to consider +moral, religious, and philosophical questions and to unfold and +demonstrate the comprehensive totalitarian character peculiar to it. +It is only after we have grasped the political character of the +Fascist principle that we are able adequately to appreciate the deeper +concept of life which underlies that principle and from which the +principle springs. The political doctrine of Fascism is not the whole +of Fascism. It is rather its more prominent aspect and in general its +most interesting one. + + +VII + +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] + +German writers often pretend that the Führer principle does not +necessarily result in the establishment of a dictatorship but that it +permits the embodiment of the will of the people in its leaders and +the realization of the popular will much more efficiently than is +possible in democratic states. Such an argument, for example, is +presented by Dr. Paul Ritterbusch in _Demokratie und Diktatur_ +(_Democracy and Dictatorship_), published in 1939. Professor +Ritterbusch claims that Communism leads to a dictatorial system but +that the Nazi movement is much closer to the ideals of true democracy. +The real nature of National Socialism, however, cannot be understood +from the standpoint of the "pluralistic-party state." It does not +represent a dictatorship of one party and a suppression of all others +but rather an expression of the will and the character of the whole +national community in and through one great party which has resolved +all internal discords and oppositions within itself. The Führer of +this great movement is at once the leader and the expression of the +national will. Freed from the enervating effects of internal strife, +the movement under the guiding hand of the Führer can bring the whole +of the national community to its fullest expression and highest +development. + +The highest authority, however, Hitler himself, has left no doubt as +to the nature of Nazi Party leaders. In a speech delivered at the +Sportpalast in Berlin on April 8, 1933, he said: + + When our opponents say: "It is easy for you: you are a + dictator"--We answer them, "No, gentlemen, you are wrong; + there is no single dictator, but ten thousand, each in his + own place." And even the highest authority in the hierarchy + has itself only one wish, never to transgress against the + supreme authority to which it, too, is responsible. We have + in our movement developed this loyalty in following the + leader, this blind obedience of which all the others know + nothing and which gave to us the power to surmount + everything.[58] + +As has been indicated above, the Führer principle applies not only to +the Führer of the Reich, Adolf Hitler, but to all the subordinate +leaders of the party and the government apparatus. With respect to +this aspect of the Führer principle, Huber (document 1, _post_ p. +155), says: + + The ranks of the public services are regarded as forces + organized on the living principle of leadership and + following: The authority of command exercised in the labor + service, the military service, and the civil service is + Führer-authority ... It has been said of the military and + civil services that true leadership is not represented in + their organization on the principles of command and + obedience. In reality there can be no political leadership + which does not have recourse to command and force as the + means for the accomplishment of its ends. Command and force + do not, of course, constitute the true nature of leadership, + but as a means they are indispensable elements of every + fully developed Führer-order.[59] + +The Führer principle is officially recognized by the party, and the +party interpretation thereof is set forth in the _Party Organization +Book_ (document 7 and charts 1 and 1-A, _post_ pp. 186, 488, 489). + +There are also included herein, as charts 2 and 2-A and 3 and 3-A +(_post_ pp. 490, 491, 492, 493), photostatic copies and translations +of two charts from _Der nationalsozialistische Staat_ (_The National +Socialist State_) by Dr. Walther Gehl, published in 1935. These charts +clearly show the concentration of authority in the Führer and the +subordinate relation of the minor leaders in both the state and the +party. + + +The Party: Leadership by an Elite Class + +_1. Functions of the Party_ + +The third pillar of the Nazi state, the link between _Volk_ and Führer, +is the Nazi Party. According to Nazi ideology, all authority within the +nation is derived ultimately from the people, but it is the party +through which the people expresses itself. In _Rechtseinrichtungen und +Rechtsaufgaben der Bewegung_ (_Legal Organization and Legal Functions of +the Movement_) (document 8, _post_ p. 204), published in 1939, Otto +Gauweiler states: + + The will of the German people finds its expression in the + party as the political organization of the people. It + represents the political conception, the political + conscience, and the political will. It is the expression and + the organ of the people's creative will to life. It + comprises a select part of the German people for "only the + best Germans should be party members" ... The inner + organization of the party must therefore bring the national + life which is concentrated within itself to manifestation + and development in all the fields of national endeavor in + which the party is represented.[60] + +Gauweiler defines the relationship of the party to the state in the +following terms: + + The party stands above and beside the state as the wielder + of an authority derived from the people with its own + sovereign powers and its own sphere of sovereignty ... The + legal position of the party is therefore that of a + completely sovereign authority whose legal supremacy and + self-sufficiency rest upon the original independent + political authority which the Führer and the movement have + attained as a result of their historical achievements.[61] + +Neesse states that "It will be the task of National Socialism to lead +back the German people to an organic structure which proceeds from a +recognition of the differences in the characters and possibilities of +human beings without permitting this recognition to lead to a cleavage +of the people into two camps."[62] This task is the responsibility of +the party. Although it has become the only political party in Germany, +the party does not desire to identify itself with the state. It does +not wish to dominate the state or to serve it. It works beside it and +cooperates with it. In this respect, Nazi Germany is distinguished +from the other one-party states of Europe: "In the one-party state of +Russia, the party rules over the state; in the one-party state of +Italy, the party serves the state; but in the one-party state of +Germany, the party neither serves the state nor rules over it directly +but works and struggles together with it for the community of the +people."[63] Neesse contends that the party derives its legal basis +from the law inherent in the living organism of the German _Volk_: + + The inner law of the NSDAP is none other than the inner law + of the German people. The party arises from the people; it + has formed an organization which crystallizes about itself + the feelings of the people, which seemed buried, and the + strength of the people, which seemed lost.[64] + +Neesse states that the party has two great tasks--to insure the +continuity of national leadership and to preserve the unity of the +_Volk_: + + The first main task of the party, which is in keeping with + its organic nature, is to protect the National Socialist + idea and to constantly renew it by drawing from the depths + of the German soul, to keep it pure and clear, and to pass + it on thus to coming generations: this is predominantly a + matter of education of the people. + + The second great task, which is in keeping with its + organizational nature, is to form the people and the state + into the unity of the nation and to create for the German + national community forms which are ever new and suited to + its vital development: this is predominantly a matter of + state formation. These two tasks, one of which deals with + substance and the other with function, belong together. It + is as impossible to separate them as it is to split up the + party into organism and organization, form and content.[65] + +Huber (document 1, _post_ p. 155) describes the tasks of the party in +similar terms. He states that the party is charged with the "education +of the people to a political people" through the awakening of the +political consciousness of each individual; the inculcation of a +"uniform political philosophy," that is, the teaching of Nazi +principles; "the selection of leaders," including the choice and +training of especially promising boys to be the Führers of the future; +and the shaping of the "political will of the people" in accordance +with the Führer's aims.[66] + +The educational tasks of the party are stressed by Beck, who develops +the idea that the _Volk_ can be divided into three main groups, "a +supporting, a leading, and a creative class."[67] It is the duty of +the leading class, that is, the party, from which the creative class +of leaders is drawn, to provide for the education of the supporting +class. + + Every member of the body of the people must belong to the + politically supporting class, that is, each one who bears + within himself the basic racial, spiritual, and mental + values of the people ... Here no sort of leading or creative + activity is demanded but only a recognition of the leading + and creative will ... Only those are called to leadership in + political life who have recognized the community-bound law + of all human life in purest clarity and in the all-embracing + extent of its validity and who will place all the powers of + their personal lives with the help of a politically moral + character in the service of the formation of community life + ... From the politically leading class arise the politically + creative personalities. These are the mysterious elemental + forces which are beyond all explanation by human reason and + which through their action and by means of the living idea + within them give to the community of the people an + expression which is fresh, young, and eternal. Here is the + fulfilment of the highest and purest political humanity ... + The education of the socialist personality is essentially + the forming of the politically supporting class within the + German people and the encouragement of those political + tendencies which make a man a political leader. To educate + to political creativeness is just as impossible as to + educate to genius. Education can only furnish the spiritual + atmosphere, can only prepare the spiritual living-space for + the politically creative personality by forming a uniform + political consciousness in the socialistic personality, and + in the development of politically creative personalities it + can at the most give special attention to those values of + character and spirit which are of decisive importance for + the development of this personality.[68] + +Goebbels in _The Nature and Form of National Socialism_ (document 2, +_post_ p. 170) emphasizes the responsibility of the party for the +leadership of the state: + + The party must always continue to represent the hierarchy of + National Socialist leadership. This minority must always + insist upon its prerogative to control the state. It must + keep the way open for the German youth which wishes to take + its place in this hierarchy. In reality the hierarchy has + fewer rights than duties! It is responsible for the + leadership of the state and it solemnly relieves the people + of this responsibility. It has the duty to control the state + in the best interests and to the general welfare of the + nation.[69] + +Dr. Frick, German Minister of the Interior, in his chapter in _Germany +Speaks_ indicates the exclusive position of the party in the Third +Reich: + + National Socialist Germany, however, is not merely a unitary + state: it is also a unitary nation and its governance is + based on the principle of leadership ... + + In National Socialist Germany, leadership is in the hands of + an organized community, the National Socialist Party; and as + the latter represents the will of the nation, the policy + adopted by it in harmony with the vital interests of the + nation is at the same time the policy adopted by the country + ... The National Socialist Party is the only political party + in Germany and therefore the true representative of the + people ...[70] + +To Dr. Ley, the party is identical with the Führer. As he wrote in the +_Angriff_ on April 9, 1942 (document 6, _post_ p. 184), "The National +Socialist Party is Hitler, and Hitler is the party." + +The role of the party in legislation, in political matters, and in the +appointment of Government officials is indicated by the Führer's +decree of May 29, 1941,[71] as amplified by the order of January 16, +1942, concerning its execution.[72] (Document 9, _post_ p. 212). This +order provides that all legislative proposals and proposed laws and +decrees, as well as any proposed changes therein, must pass through +and receive the approval of the Party Chancelry. + + +_2. Party Membership_ + +Details concerning the qualifications and duties of party members are +contained in the _Party Organization Book_ for 1940 (document 7, +_post_ p. 186). + + Membership is finally confirmed by the issuance of a + membership card or a membership book. Anyone who becomes a + party member does not merely join an organization but he + becomes a soldier in the German freedom movement and that + means much more than just paying his dues and attending the + members' meetings. He obligates himself to subordinate his + own ego and to place everything he has in the service of the + people's cause. Only he who is capable of doing this should + become a party member. A selection must be made in + accordance with this idea. + + Readiness to fight, readiness to sacrifice, and strength of + character are the requirements for a good National + Socialist. Small blemishes, such as a false step which + someone has made in his youth, should be overlooked; the + contribution in the struggle for Germany should alone be + decisive. The healthy will naturally prevail over the bad if + the will to health finds sufficient support in leadership + and achievement. Admission to the party should not be + controlled by the old bourgeois point of view. The party + must always represent the elite of the people.[73] + +German blood is one of the prerequisites for party membership. The +_Party Organization Book_ for 1940 (document 7, _post_ p. 186) also +states, "Only those racial comrades who possess German citizenship are +eligible for admission."[74] + +Party members shall not exceed ten per cent of the German population +of the region. "The ideal proportion of the number of party members to +the number of racial comrades is set at ten per cent. This proportion +is to apply also to the individual Province [Gau]."[75] + + +_3. Pledges and Symbols of Allegiance_ + +Party members take an oath of loyalty to the Führer in the following +terms: "I pledge allegiance to my Führer, Adolf Hitler. I promise at +all times to respect and obey him and the leaders whom he appoints +over me."[76] + + +(a) The Hitler Salute + +A pledge of allegiance to the Führer is also implied in the Nazi +salute, which is usually accompanied by the greeting, "Heil Hitler." +The phrase _mit deutschen Gruss_, which is commonly used as a closing +salutation in letters, is another form of the Hitler greeting. _Knaurs +Konversations-Lexikon_ (_Knaur's Conversational Dictionary_), published +in Berlin in 1934, contains the following definition: + + _German greeting_, Hitler greeting: by raising the right + arm; used by the old Germans with the spear as a greeting of + arms _[Waffengruss]._ Communal greeting of the National + Socialists; introduced into general use in 1933. + +That this greeting was used by the Nazis as early as 1923 is +demonstrated by a photograph which appeared in _Das Buch der NSDAP, +Werden, Kampf and Ziel der NSDAP_ (_The Book of the NSDAP, Growth, +Struggle, and Goal of the NSDAP_) by Walter M. Espe (Berlin, 1934), +illustration 34 (document 10, _post_ p. 214). + +In the same book (page 23 in the supplement entitled "_Die NSDAP_") +the following distinction is made between the usual Nazi greeting and +the Storm Troopers' salute: + + While the German greeting consists merely in raising the + right hand in any desired manner and represents rather a + general comradely greeting, the SA salute is executed, in + accordance with the specifications of the SA service + regulations, by placing the left hand on the belt and + raising the extended right arm. + + The SA salute is to be given to all higher ranking leaders + of the SA and the SS and of the veterans' organization which + has been incorporated into the SA, as well as to the Army + and the national and security police forces. + + The comradely German greeting is to be exchanged between all + equally ranking members of the SA and the SS and members of + a corresponding rank in the Army, the police, the veterans' + organization, the German air-sport league, the Hitler Youth, + the railway guards, and the whole membership of the party so + far as they are distinguishable by regulation uniforms. + + +(b) The Swastika + +Early in its history the Nazi Party adopted the swastika banner as +its official emblem.[77] It was designed by Hitler himself, who wrote +in _Mein Kampf_: + + I myself after countless attempts had laid down a final + form: a flag with a background of red cloth, having a white + circle, and, in its center, a black swastika.... + + As National Socialists we see our program in our flag. In + the _red_ we see the social idea of the movement, in the + _white_ the nationalistic idea, and in the _swastika_ the + fight for the victory of Aryan man and at the same time for + the victory of the idea of creative work, which in itself + always was and always will be anti-Semitic.[78] + +The swastika banner came into general use after January 30, 1933 as a +symbol of allegiance to the Hitler regime, but not until two years +later was it made the German national flag by the Reich flag law of +September 15, 1935.[79] Another law, decreed on April 7, 1937,[80] +specified that: + + The insignia which the NSDAP, its formations, and associated + organizations use for their officers, their structure, their + organization, and their symbols may not be used by other + associations either alone or with embellishments. + +It is interesting to note that party regulations forbid members to use +passport photographs in which they appear in party uniform or wearing +party insignia and that party members are forbidden to discuss foreign +policy with foreigners unless they are officially designated by the +Führer to do so. The pertinent regulations read: + + _Pass Photos on Identification Cards_ + + Members of the NSDAP must not use pass photos which show the + holder of any identification card in a uniform of the party + or of any of its formations. It is also forbidden to use as + pass photos pictures which show the person wearing a party + button. + + * * * * * + + _Conversations With Foreigners_ + + It is forbidden to all party members to engage in + discussions of foreign policy with foreigners. Only such + persons as have been designated by the Führer are entitled + to do so.[81] + + +The Totalitarian State + +The Weimar Constitution, although never formally abrogated by the +Nazis, was rendered totally ineffectual by two basic laws, promulgated +within two months after the seizure of power by the party. The first +of these was the "Decree of the Reich's President for the Protection +of the People and State" (document 11-I, _post_ p. 215), issued +February 28, 1933, the day after the Reichstag was burned down. It +suspended "until further notice"[82] articles of the Weimar +Constitution guaranteeing essential democratic rights of the +individual. Thus, according to article I of this decree, "restrictions +on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, +including freedom of the press, on the right of assembly and the right +of association, and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic, +and telephonic communications, and warrants for house-searches, orders +for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also +permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed."[83] The +abrogation by the Nazis of these fundamental rights of democracy has +never been repealed or amended. In fact, this decree represents the +presupposition and confirmation of the police sway established +throughout Germany by the Nazis.[84] + +The second basic law, known as the "Enabling Act," the "Law To Remove +the Distress of People and State," of March 24, 1933 (document 11-II, +_post_ p. 217), swept away parliamentary government entirely. By +abrogating the pertinent articles of the Weimar Constitution, it +enabled the Nazi Cabinet under Hitler's chancelorship to appropriate +money and legislate without any responsibility to the Reichstag or any +obligation to respect the Constitution. + +The dissolution of democracy in Germany was sealed by the unification +of the authoritarian Nazi Party with the German state. Soon after the +party came to power in 1933, steps were taken to effect and secure +this unity. The process is described by Huber (document 1, _post_ p. +155) as follows: + + On July 14, 1933 was issued the law against the formation of + new parties which raised the NSDAP to the only political + party in Germany [document 11-III] ... The overthrow of the + old party-state was accompanied by the construction of the + new movement-state [_Bewegungsstaat_]. Out of a political + fighting organization the NSDAP grew to a community capable + of carrying the state and the nation. This process was + accomplished step by step in the first months after the + National Socialist seizure of power. The assumption of the + office of Chancelor by the Führer of the movement formed the + basis for this development. Various party leaders were + appointed as _Reichsminister_; the governors of the + provinces were national leaders or _Gauleiter_ of the party, + such as General von Epp; the Prussian government officials + are as a rule _Gauleiter_ of the party; the Prussian police + chiefs are mostly high-ranking SA leaders. By this system of + a union of the personnel of the party and state offices the + unity of party and state was achieved.[85] + +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] + + * * * * * + +FOOTNOTES TO FIRST SECTION + +[Footnote 8: Huber, _Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches_ +(Hamburg, 1939), pp. 54-55.] + +[Footnote 9: _Ibid._, pp. 153-155.] + +[Footnote 10: _Ibid._, pp. 156-157.] + +[Footnote 11: _Ibid._, p. 157.] + +[Footnote 12: _Ibid._, p. 158.] + +[Footnote 13: _Ibid._, p. 163.] + +[Footnote 14: _Ibid._, p. 164.] + +[Footnote 15: _Ibid._, pp. 165-166.] + +[Footnote 16: Neesse, _Die Nationalsozialistische Deutsche +Arbeiterpartei--Versuch einer Rechtsdeutung_ (Stuttgart, 1935), p. +44.] + +[Footnote 17: _Ibid._, p. 51.] + +[Footnote 18: _Ibid._, p. 54.] + +[Footnote 19: _Ibid._, p. 58.] + +[Footnote 20: _Ibid._, pp. 54-56.] + +[Footnote 21: _Ibid._, p. 59.] + +[Footnote 22: _Ibid._, pp. 60-61.] + +[Footnote 23: _Ibid._, pp. 65-66.] + +[Footnote 24: Scurla, _Die Grundgedanken des Nationalsozialismus und +das Ausland_ (Berlin, 1938), pp. 10-11.] + +[Footnote 25: _Ibid._, p. 9.] + +[Footnote 26: _Ibid._] + +[Footnote 27: _Ibid._, p. 13.] + +[Footnote 28: Beck, _Die Erziehung im dritten Reich_ (Dortmund and +Breslau, 1936), p. 20.] + +[Footnote 29: _Ibid._, pp. 20-21.] + +[Footnote 30: _Ibid._, p. 35.] + +[Footnote 31: _Ibid._, pp. 52-55.] + +[Footnote 32: _Ibid._, p. 46.] + +[Footnote 33: _Ibid._, p. 57.] + +[Footnote 34: _Ibid._, p. 118.] + +[Footnote 35: _Ibid._, p. 140.] + +[Footnote 36: Rosenberg, _Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts_ (Munich, +1935), p. 28 (1st ed. 1930).] + +[Footnote 37: _Ibid._, p. 114.] + +[Footnote 38: _Ibid._, p. 479.] + +[Footnote 39: _Ibid._, p. 542.] + +[Footnote 40: Gottfried Feder, _The Programme of the Party of Hitler_ +(translated by E.T.S. Dugdale: Munich, 1932), p. 18.] + +[Footnote 41: Rosenberg, _Wesen, Grundsätze und Ziele der NSDAP_ +(Munich, 1933), pp. 16-18 (1st ed. 1922).] + +[Footnote 42: Rosenberg, _Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts_, p. 673.] + +[Footnote 43: Beck, _op. cit._, p. 110.] + +[Footnote 44: _Ibid._, p. 110.] + +[Footnote 45: Huber, "_Aufbau und Gefüge des Reiches_," published in +the book _Idee und Ordnung des Reiches_ (ed. by Huber: Hamburg, +Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1941), p. 12.] + +[Footnote 46: Huber, _Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches_ +(Hamburg, 1939), pp. 194-198.] + +[Footnote 47: _Ibid._, pp. 199-200.] + +[Footnote 48: _Ibid._, pp. 207-208.] + +[Footnote 49: _Ibid._, pp. 213-214.] + +[Footnote 50: _Ibid._, p. 230.] + +[Footnote 51: Neesse, _op. cit._, p. 146.] + +[Footnote 52: _Ibid._, p. 143.] + +[Footnote 53: _Ibid._, pp. 144-147.] + +[Footnote 54: _Germany Speaks_ (containing articles by twenty-one +leading members of the Nazi Party and the German Government: London, +1938), p. 31.] + +[Footnote 55: _Reichsgesetzblatt_ (1942), p. 247. (All citations to +the _Reichsgesetzblatt_ refer to part I thereof.)] + +[Footnote 56: Neesse, _op. cit._, p. 150.] + +[Footnote 57: Beck, _op. cit._, p. 131.] + +[Footnote 58: _My New Order_, p. 159.] + +[Footnote 59: Huber, _Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches_ +(Hamburg, 1939), p. 410.] + +[Footnote 60: Gauweiler, _Rechtseinrichtungen und Rechtsaufgaben der +Bewegung_ (Munich, 1939), p. 2.] + +[Footnote 61: _Ibid._, p. 9.] + +[Footnote 62: Neesse, _op. cit,_, p. 71.] + +[Footnote 63: _Ibid._, p. 119.] + +[Footnote 64: _Ibid._, p. 126.] + +[Footnote 65: _Ibid._, pp. 139-140.] + +[Footnote 66: Huber, _Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches_ +(Hamburg, 1939), pp. 293-296.] + +[Footnote 67: Beck, _op. cit._, p. 37.] + +[Footnote 68: _Ibid._, pp. 37-38.] + +[Footnote 69: Goebbels, _op. cit._, p. 19.] + +[Footnote 70: _Germany Speaks_, pp. 30-31.] + +[Footnote 71: _Reichsgesetzblatt_ (1941), p. 295.] + +[Footnote 72: _Ibid._, (1942), p. 35.] + +[Footnote 73: _Organisationsbuch der NSDAP_ (ed. by the National +Organizational Director of the NSDAP: Munich, 1940), p. 5.] + +[Footnote 74: _Ibid._, p. 6b.] + +[Footnote 75: _Ibid._, p. 6d.] + +[Footnote 76: _Ibid._] + +[Footnote 77: The German pocket reference book for current events +(_Taschen-Brockhaus zum Zeitgeschehen_: Leipzig, 1942) states that the +swastika banner was designed by Hitler for the NSDAP in 1919.] + +[Footnote 78: Adolf Hitler, _Mein Kampf_ (Munich, Verlag Frank Eher, +G.m.b.H., 1933 [copyright 1925]), pp. 556-557.] + +[Footnote 79: _Reichsgesetzblatt_ (1935), p. 1145.] + +[Footnote 80: _Ibid._ (1937), p. 442.] + +[Footnote 81: _Organisationsbuch der NSDAP_ (Munich, 1940), p. 8.] + +[Footnote 82: _Reichsgesetzblatt_ (1933), p. 83.] + +[Footnote 83: _Ibid._] + +[Footnote 84: In his book _Die deutsche Polizei_ (_The German Police_) +(_Darmstadt_, L.C. Wittich Verlag, 1941), p. 24, the prominent Nazi +police official, Dr. Werner Best, wrote that this law "is to be +regarded not as a 'police law'--that is, as the regulation of police +functions and activities--but as the expression of the new conception +of the state as it has been transformed by the National Socialist +revolution, from which the new 'police' concept is derived." Also, +this law was for the police "the confirmation that the work already +begun was in agreement with the law giving will of the Supreme +Leadership of the Reich."] + +[Footnote 85: Huber, _Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches_ +(Hamburg, 1939) p. 288.] + +[Footnote 86: Neesse, _op. cit._, p. 131.] + +[Footnote 87: Gauweiler, _op. cit._, p. 3.] + +[Footnote 88: Huber, _Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches_ +(Hamburg, 1939), p. 361.] + +[Footnote 89: _Ibid._, pp. 365-366.] + +[Footnote 90: _Ibid._, pp. 372-373.] + +[Footnote 91: _Reichsgesetzblatt_ (1937), pp. 39-70.] + +[Footnote 92: Gauweiler, _op. cit._, p. 156.] + +[Footnote 93: Reported in a bulletin of the official German news +agency, DNB, Apr. 14, 1942.] + + + + +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] + + +Propaganda + +_1. 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 ..._ + + The German Government is nevertheless prepared to give each + of the States named an assurance of the kind desired by Mr. + Roosevelt on the condition of absolute reciprocity, provided + that the State wishes it and itself addresses to Germany a + request for such an assurance together with appropriate + proposals.[110] + +And on September 1, 1939, with reference to the recently concluded +pact between Germany and Russia, he said: + + You know that Russia and Germany are governed by two + different doctrines. There was only one question that had to + be cleared up. Germany has no intention of exporting its + doctrine. Given the fact that Soviet Russia has no intention + of exporting its doctrine to Germany, I no longer see any + reason why we should still oppose one another. On both sides + we are clear on that. Any struggle between our people would + only be of advantage to others. We have, therefore, resolved + to conclude a pact which rules out forever any use of + violence between us.[111] + +Additional assurances of this nature are quoted in a series of +extracts from Hitler's speeches, dating from February 10, 1933 to +September 1, 1939, which was printed in the _London Times_ of +September 26, 1939 (document 14, _post_ p. 232). + + +_2. Internal Propaganda_ + +Within Germany the notorious propaganda machine of Dr. Goebbels, +together with a systematic terrorization of oppositionist elements, +has been the principle support of the rise and triumph of the Nazi +movement. In his _Legal Organization and Legal Functions of the +Movement_ (document 8, _post_ p. 204), Gauweiler gives an idea of the +permeation of all phases of national life with a propaganda designed +to make Nazi "legal principles" acceptable to the masses. He makes it +clear that all of the Nazi propaganda machinery is in the service of +this program; political lecturers, the press, the radio, and the films +all play a part in helping the people to understand and appreciate the +new legal code. The schools and Hitler Youth groups provide +instruction for all young people in the fundamentals of National +Socialist law, and pupils in those schools which train the carefully +selected future leaders are given an especially strong dose of Nazi +legal theory and practice. + +In order to appeal to the broadest audience, Nazi propaganda has +always sought to present all questions in the simplest possible terms. +Goebbels himself, in his _Nature and Form of National Socialism_ +(document 2, _post_ p. 170), wrote as follows: + + National Socialism has simplified the thinking of the German + people and led it back to its original primitive formulas. + It has presented the complicated processes of political and + economic life in their simplest terms. This was done with + the well-considered intention of leading the broad masses of + the people once again to take part in political life. In + order to find understanding among the masses, we consciously + practiced a popular [_volksgebundene_] propaganda. We have + taken complexes of facts which were formerly accessible only + to a few specialists and experts, carried them to the + streets, and hammered them into the brain of the little man. + All things were presented so simply that even the most + primitive mind could grasp them. We refused to work with + unclear or insubstantial concepts but we gave all things a + clearly defined sense. Here lay the secret of our + success.[112] + +The character and quality of Nazi propaganda was fully presaged in +_Mein Kampf_. Here Hitler paid a striking tribute to the power of +lies, commenting on-- + + the very correct principle that the size of the lie always + involves a certain factor of credibility, since the great + mass of a people will be more spoiled in the innermost + depths of its heart, rather than consciously and + deliberately bad. Consequently, in view of the primitive + simplicity of its mind it is more readily captivated by a + big lie than by a small one, since it itself often uses + small lies but would be, nevertheless, too ashamed to make + use of big lies. Such an untruth will not even occur to it, + and it will not even believe that others are capable of the + enormous insolence of the most vile distortions. Why, even + when enlightened, it will still vacillate and be in doubt + about the matter and will nevertheless accept as true at + least some cause or other. Consequently, even from the most + impudent lie something will always stick ...[113] + +A number of other passages display Hitler's low opinion of the +intellectual capacities and critical faculties of the masses: + + All propaganda has to appeal to the people and its + intellectual level has to be set in accordance with the + receptive capacities of the most-limited persons among those + to whom it intends to address itself. The larger the mass + of men to be reached, the lower its purely intellectual + level will have to be set.[114] + + The receptive capacity of the great masses is very + restricted, its understanding small. On the other hand, + however, its forgetfulness is great. On account of these + facts all effective propaganda must restrict itself to very + few points and impress these by slogans, until even the last + person is able to bring to mind what is meant by such a + word.[115] + + The task of propaganda is, for instance, not to evaluate + diverse rights but to emphasize exclusively the single right + of that which it is representing. It does not have to + investigate objectively the truth, so far as this is + favorable to the others, in order then to present it to the + masses in strict honesty, but rather to serve its own side + ceaselessly.[116] + + If one's own propaganda even once accords just the shimmer + of right to the other side, then the basis is therewith laid + for doubt regarding one's own cause. The masses are not able + to distinguish where the error of the other side ends and + the error of one's own side begins.[117] + + But all talent in presentation of propaganda will lead to no + success if a fundamental principle is not always strictly + followed. Propaganda has to restrict itself to a few matters + and to repeat these eternally. Persistence is here, as with + so many other things in the world, the first and most + important presupposition for success.[118] + + In view of their slowness of mind, they [the masses] require + always, however, a certain period before they are ready even + to take cognizance of a matter, and only after a + thousandfold repetition of the most simple concept will they + finally retain it.[119] + + _In all cases in which there is a question of the fulfilment + of apparently impossible demands or tasks, the entire + attention of a people must be concentrated only on this one + question, in such a way as if being or non-being actually + depends on its solution_ ... + + ...The great mass of the people can never see the entire way + before them, without tiring and doubting the task.[120] + + In general the art of all truly great popular leaders at all + times consists primarily in not scattering the attention of + a people but rather in concentrating it always on one single + opponent. The more unified this use of the fighting will of + a people, the greater will be the magnetic attractive force + of a movement and the more powerful the force of its push. + It is a part of the genius of a great leader to make even + quite different opponents appear as if they belonged only to + one category, because the recognition of different enemies + leads weak and unsure persons only too readily to begin + doubting their own cause. + + When the vacillating masses see themselves fighting against + too many enemies, objectivity at once sets in and raises the + question whether really all the others are wrong and only + one's own people or one's own movement is right.[121] + (Document 13-II, _post_ pp. 229-231.) + +It has been the aim of Nazi propaganda, then, to unite the masses of +the people in hatred of certain enemies, designated by such +conveniently broad and simple terms as "Jews," "democrats," +"plutocrats," "bolshevists," or "Anglo-Saxons," which so far as +possible were to be identified with one another in the public mind. +The Germans were represented to themselves, on the other hand, as a +racial folk of industrious workers. It then became possible to plunge +the people into a war on a wave of emotional hatred against those +nations which were pictured as combining to keep Germany from +attaining her rightful place in the sun. + +The important role which propaganda would have to play in the coming +war was fully recognized by Ewald Banse, an ardent Nazi military +theorist of the geopolitical school and professor of military science +at Brunswick Military College. In his book _Raum und Volk im +Weltkrieg_ (_Space and People in the World War_) which appeared in +1932 (an English translation by Alan Harris was published under the +title _Germany Prepares for War_ (New York, Harcourt, Brace and Co., +1934)), he stated: + + Preparation for future wars must not stop at the creation, + equipment and training of an efficient army, but must go on + to train the minds of the whole people for the war and must + employ all the resources of science to master the conditions + governing the war itself and the possibility of endurance. + In 1914 we had a first-class army, but our scientific + mobilization was bad, and the mobilization of men's minds a + thing undreamed of. The unveiling of war memorials, parades + of war veterans, flag-waggings, fiery speeches and + guard-mounting are not of themselves enough to prepare a + nation's mind for the dangers that threaten. Conviction is + always more lasting than enthusiasm. + + ... Such teaching is necessary at a time and in a world in + which countries are no longer represented by monarchs or a + small aristocracy or by a specialist army, but in which the + whole nation, from the commander-in-chief to the man in the + ranks, from the loftiest thought to the simplest wish, from + corn to coal, from the treasury vaults to the last + trouser-button, must be permeated through and through with + the idea of national defense, if it is to preserve its + national identity and political independence. The science of + national defense is not the same as military science; it + does not teach generals how to win battles or company + commanders how to train recruits. Its lessons are addressed + first and foremost to the whole people. It seeks to train + the popular mind to heroism and war and to implant in it an + understanding of the nature and prerequisite conditions of + modern warfare. It teaches us about countries and peoples, + especially our own country and its neighbors, their + territories and economic capacity, their communications and + their mentality--all for the purpose of creating the best + possible conditions for waging future wars in defense of the + national existence.[122] + + +Infiltration Tactics + +The Nazis, while entirely without scruple in the pursuit of their +objectives, endeavor whenever possible to give their actions the cloak +of legality. This procedure was followed in Germany to enable them to +gain control of the Government of the Reich and in their foreign +policy up to September 1, 1939. It has been a cardinal principle of +the Nazis to avoid the use of force whenever their objectives may be +attained in another manner and they have assiduously studied their +enemies in an effort to discover the weak points in their structure +which will enable the Nazis to accomplish their downfall. The +preceding pages have demonstrated that the Nazis have contributed +practically nothing that is original to German political thought. By +the use of unscrupulous, deceitful, and uninhibited tactics, however, +they have been able to realize many of the objectives which had +previously existed only in theory. + +The Weimar Constitution provided the Nazis with a convenient basis for +the establishment of the totalitarian state. They made no effort to +conceal their intention of taking advantage of the weaknesses of the +Weimar Republic in order to attain power. On April 30, 1928 Dr. +Goebbels wrote in his paper _Der Angriff_: + + We enter Parliament in order to supply ourselves, in the + arsenal of democracy, with its own weapons. We become + members of the Reichstag in order to paralyze the Weimar + sentiment with its own assistance. If democracy is so stupid + as to give us free tickets and salaries for this bear's + work, that is its affair ...[123] + +And later in the same article: + + We do not come as friends, nor even as neutrals. We come as + enemies. As the wolf bursts into the flock, so we come.[124] + +Hitler expressed the same idea on September 1, 1933, when, looking +back upon the struggle for political power in Germany, he wrote: + + This watchword of democratic freedom led only to insecurity, + indiscipline, and at length to the downfall and destruction + of all authority. _Our opponents' objection that we, too, + once made use of these rights, will not hold water; for we + made use of an unreasonable right, which was part and parcel + of an unreasonable system, in order to overthrow the + unreason of this system._[125] + +Discussing the rise to power of the Nazis, Huber (document 1, _post_ +p. 155) wrote in 1939: + + The parliamentary battle of the NSDAP had the single purpose + of destroying the parliamentary system from within through + its own methods. It was necessary above all to make formal + use of the possibilities of the party-state system but to + refuse real cooperation and thereby to render the + parliamentary system, which is by nature dependent upon the + responsible cooperation of the opposition, incapable of + action.[126] + +As its parliamentary strength increased, the party was able to achieve +these aims: + + It was in a position to make the formation of any positive + majority in the Reichstag impossible.... Thus the NSDAP was + able through its strong position to make the Reichstag + powerless as a lawgiving and government-forming body.[127] + +The same principle was followed by Germany in weakening and +undermining the governments of countries which it had chosen for its +victims. While it was Hitler's policy to concentrate on only one +objective at a time, German agents were busy throughout the world in +ferreting out the natural political, social, and economic cleavages in +various countries and in broadening them in order to create internal +confusion and uncertainty. Foreign political leaders of Fascist or +authoritarian persuasion were encouraged and often liberally +subsidized from Nazi funds. Control was covertly obtained over +influential newspapers and periodicals and their editorial policies +shaped in such a way as to further Nazi ends. In the countries Germany +sought to overpower, all the highly developed organs of Nazi +propaganda were utilized to confuse and divide public opinion, to +discredit national leaders and institutions, and to induce an +unjustified feeling of confidence in the false assertions of Nazi +leaders disclaiming any aggressive intentions. + +One of the most important features introduced by the Nazis into German +foreign policy was the appreciation of the value of Germans living +abroad and their organization as implements of the Reich for the +attainment of objectives in the field of foreign policy. This idea was +applied by the Nazis to all the large colonies of Germans which are +scattered throughout the world. The potential usefulness of these +colonies was early recognized by the men in Hitler's immediate +entourage, several of whom were so-called _Auslandsdeutsche_ who had +spent many years of their life abroad and were familiar with foreign +conditions and with the position and influence of German groups in +foreign countries. Of particular importance in this group were Rudolf +Hess, the Führer's Deputy, who was primarily responsible for +elaborating the policy which utilized the services of Germans abroad, +and Ernst Wilhelm Bohle, the leader of the Foreign Organization, who +was responsible for winning over these Germans to Naziism and for +their organization in groups which would serve the purposes of the +Third Reich. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 94: Feder, _op. cit._, p. 18.] + +[Footnote 95: Gauweiler, _op. cit._, pp. 149-151.] + +[Footnote 96: _Mein Kampf_, pp. 727-728.] + +[Footnote 97: _Ibid._, pp. 735-736.] + +[Footnote 98: Scurla, _op. cit._, p. 21.] + +[Footnote 99: _Ibid._, pp. 21-22.] + +[Footnote 100: _Ibid._, p. 23.] + +[Footnote 101: _Der Parteitag der Freiheit_ (official record of the +1935 party congress at Nuremberg: Munich, 1935), p. 27.] + +[Footnote 102: _Mein Kampf_, p. 743.] + +[Footnote 103: _Ibid._, pp. 754-755.] + +[Footnote 104: _Ibid._, pp. 437-438.] + +[Footnote 105: Rosenberg, _Wesen, Grundsätze und Ziele der NSDAP_, p. +48.] + +[Footnote 106: _London Times_, Sept. 26, 1939, p. 9.] + +[Footnote 107: _Ibid._] + +[Footnote 108: _Ibid._] + +[Footnote 109: _My New Order_, p. 592.] + +[Footnote 110: _Ibid._, pp. 669-671.] + +[Footnote 111: _Ibid._, p. 687.] + +[Footnote 112: Goebbels, _op. cit._, p. 6.] + +[Footnote 113: _Mein Kampf_, p. 252.] + +[Footnote 114: _Ibid._, p. 197.] + +[Footnote 115: _Ibid_., p. 198.] + +[Footnote 116: _Ibid._, p. 200.] + +[Footnote 117: _Ibid._, pp. 200-201.] + +[Footnote 118: _Ibid._, p. 202.] + +[Footnote 119: _Ibid._, p. 203.] + +[Footnote 120: _Ibid._, p. 273.] + +[Footnote 121: _Ibid._, p. 129.] + +[Footnote 122: Banse, _Germany Prepares for War_ (New York, 1934), pp. +348-349.] + +[Footnote 123: Goebbels, _Der Angriff: Aufsätze aus der Kampfzeit_ +(Munich, 1936), p. 71.] + +[Footnote 124: _Ibid._, p. 73.] + +[Footnote 125: _My New Order_, pp. 195-196.] + +[Footnote 126: Huber, _Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches_ +(Hamburg, 1939), p. 31.] + +[Footnote 127: _Ibid._, p. 32.] + + + + +NATIONAL-SOCIALISM AND MEDICINE +Address by Dr. F. Hamburger to German Medical Profession. Translated +(in part) from _Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift_, 1939, No. 6. + + +Medical men must beware of pride, a pride which is certainly +wide-spread and which leads to the disparagement of the practical +doctor and medical layman, and then further to the disparagement of +the craft of nature healers. The practical doctor and the nature +healer on the one hand tend towards an understandable disparagement of +medical science and analysis and, on the other hand, tend towards +superficiality. The superficiality of the opponents of science is, +however, as unhappy an affair as the pride of the so-called +scientists, but the one group should not demean the other. This would +lead to successful cooperation to the advantage of the sick and health +of the community. + +Academic medicine and nature healers generally have one thing in +common, that they underestimate the significance of automatism and +suggestion. In this regard there is an absence in both camps of the +necessary criticism and clarity. Successes are noted with specific +methods without any confirmation as to whether or not suggestion and +faith alone have not produced the improvement in the patient. + +National-Socialism is the true instrument for the achievement of the +health of our people. National-Socialism is concerned with the great +significance of inherited traits and with the insight into the working +of spiritual forces upon the body, with the study of the power of +custom and, along with this, of the significance of education and +nurture. (Hamburger here complains about the luxurious arrangement for +dealing with the mentally ill in contradistinction to the neglect of +Folk-health. This he attributes to the era of liberalism with its +stress upon the single individual. He here also attacks the Socialism +of Social Democracy and its conception of a Community of Equal Men. +This is a false Socialism.) + +So we scientists and doctors simply and soberly affirm the principle +of strength of faith and the nationalist socialist principle of +Positive Christianity which does not prevent us from the inspired +consideration of natural and divinely willed phenomena. We doctors +must never forget the fact that the soul rules the body. + +Soul forces are the most important. The spirit builds the body. +Strength springs from joy. Efficiency is achieved despite care, fear, +and uncertainty--We speak here of thymogenetic automatism or the +automatism of harmony ("thymogenetische automatismus oder +stimmungsautomatismus"). The autonomous nervous system achieves, under +the influence of joy, the expansion of the blood vessels in skin and +muscle.... The muscular activity incited by joy means the use of +calories and stimulation of appetite. Muscular contraction pulls and +draws at the bones, ligaments are tensed, breathing deepend, appetite +increased ... A child influenced by the daily exercise of joy develops +physically strong and powerful. ... The Soul care (Seele Sorge) of the +practical doctor is his most significant daily task alongside of +prescriptions and manipulative dexterity. + +Soul-care in the medical sense is a concern for the wishes, hopes and +fears of the patient, the considered participation in his fate. Such a +relationship leads to the all-important and generally recognized trust +in the doctor. This faith, in all cases, leads to the improvement, +often even to the elimination of symptoms, of the disease. Here we +have clearly before us the great significance of thymogenetic +automatism. + +Academic physicians should not dismiss this because we do not know its +biochemical aspects. (We must beware of regarding something as +unacceptable because it is not measurable in exact terms, he warns.) +We see its practical results, and, therefore, thymogenetic automatism +must stand in the first rank as of overwhelming significance. Thus, +also, the principle, strength through joy (Kraft durch Freude) stands +firmly as an inescapable natural law. + +We see the practical country doctor spreading courage and confidence. +For years too few doctors have seen clearly that gymnastic tourism and +sport do more for health than all doctors taken together. And now we +face the fact that a single man, a non-medical man (Hitler) through +his great qualities, has opened up new avenues of health for the +eighty million folk of Germany. + +In the majority of cases things so happen that the doctor must act +before making a diagnosis, since only the mis-educated patients, the +one-sided intellectual patient, wishes in the very first place to know +the diagnosis. But the unspoilt and properly ordered type of person +wishes only to be relieved of his pain. For him the diagnosis is an +interesting side issue but not the principle thing. We can thus also +understand why we always meet the desire for a diagnosis placed first +by the over-intellectualized Jewish patient. But that is not the case +with most Aryan patients. They, from the first, come to meet the +doctor with more trust. They do not entertain as many after-thoughts. +And I cannot help but remark that after-thoughts are hardly conducive +to right results. + +(After a discussion of the sterilization of the unfit and of +inheritable diseases he turns to the subject of child bearing.) + +It has been estimated that every couple should have four children if +the nation's population is to be maintained. But we meet already the +facile and complacent expression of young married people, "Now we have +our four children and so have fulfilled our obligations"--What +superficiality! Today we must demand a much higher moral attitude from +the wife than previously. Earlier it was taken for granted that a +woman would bear a child every one or two years. But today in this +time of manifold amenities of life, at a time when women is not denied +access to these joys it is understandable that she is eager to +participate in them. Add to this that the knowledge of birth control +is general today. Despite all this women must be encouraged to give +birth during twenty years of married life to eight or ten and even +more children, and to renounce the above-mentioned joys of life. She +must decide as a mother of children to lead a life full of sacrifices, +devotion, and unselfishness. It is only when these ethical demands are +fulfilled by a large number of worthy wives of good stock that the +future of the German nation will be assured. + +Doctors are leaders of the Folk more than they know ... They are now +quite officially fuehrer of the people, called to the leadership of +its health. To fulfill this task they must be free of the profit +motive. They must be quite free from that attitude of spirit which is +rightly designated as Jewish, the concern for business and +self-provision. + + + + +SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY + +Arendt, Hannah--_The Origins of Totalitarianism_, N.Y., 1951. + + Pt. III is especially directed to a discussion of the + principles and consequences of fascism. The author gives an + effective account of what "total domination" signifies in a + reign of terror. Detailed bibliography. + +Bodrero, Emilio--"Fascism" in _Dictatorship on Its Trial_, ed. by Otto +Forst de Battaglia, London, 1930. + + A brief, but significant, statement by a former Rector of + the University of Padua and a Secretary of State to + Mussolini. + +Borgese, G.A.--_Goliath, The March of Fascism_, N.Y., 1938. + + Well written from the point of view of an Italian humanist. + +Brady, Robert A.--_The Spirit and Structure of German Fascism_, +London, 1937. + + An extremely thorough and documented discussion of the + economy of National Socialist Germany, its institutions and + its business practices. + + See also: Brady's _Business as a System of Power_; chapters + on Germany, Italy and Japan. N.Y., 1943. + +Childs, H.L. and Dodd, W.E.--_The Nazi Primer_, N.Y., 1938. + + A translation of the "Official Handbook for Schooling the + Hitler Youth." In simple form including illustrations, it is + an excellent indication of the guiding principles of the + German educational system. + + Dennis, Lawrence--_The Coming American Fascism_, N.Y., 1936. + _The Dynamics of War and Revolution_, N.Y., 1940. + + Two books by the only fascist theorist in America. + +Fraenkel, Ernest--_The Dual State: A Contribution to the Theory of +Dictatorship,_ N.Y., 1941. + + By distinguishing between the "Prerogative State" and the + "Normative State," the author gives an effective account of + the attempt of the Nazis to acknowledge an indispensable, if + minimal, legal order, which was, comparatively speaking, + independent of the extra-legal realm of violence. + +Hartshorne, E.Y.--_The German Universities and National Socialism_, +Cambridge, 1937. + + A carefully documented account of what happened in the + various branches and departments of German universities + under the Nazis. + +Hitler, Adolph--_My Battle_, N.Y., 1939. + + Hitler's own vitriolic account of his attempt to rise to + power. + +Lasswell, Harold D.--"The Garrison State," _American Journal of +Sociology_, Chicago, Vol. XLVI, 1940-41, pp. 455-468. + + A brief but incisive discussion of the structure of fascism. + +Lilge, Frederic--_The Abuse of Learning: The Failure of the German +University,_ N.Y., 1948. + + A philosophical history of higher education in Germany, + concluding with its fascist evolution. + +Matteotti, Giacomo--_The Fascist Exposed: A Year of Fascist +Domination_, London, 1924. + + A factual account by a liberal, who, until murdered, was a + member of the Italian Senate. + +Minio-Paluello, L.--_Education in Fascist Italy_, N.Y., 1946. + + A detailed discussion of fascist education, including an + historical introduction to pre-fascist education. + +Neumann, Franz--_Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National +Socialism_, N.Y., 1942. + + Probably the most comprehensive and definitive statement in + English of the functioning of National Socialism. It + concentrates especially on the political and economic + aspects of Nazism. + +Pinthus, Kurt--"Culture Under Nazi Germany," _The American Scholar_, +Vol. IX, N.Y., 1940, pp. 483-498. + + A valuable treatment of the inner character of the arts and + letters and of what happened to their publics under the + Nazis. + +Sabine, G.H.--_A History of Political Theory_, N.Y., 1950. + + A brief chapter on "Fascism" gives an excellent balanced + account of its fundamentals. + + Salvemini, Gaetano--_The Fascist Dictatorship in Italy_, N.Y., 1927. + _Under the Axe of Fascism_, N.Y., 1936. + + An eminent Italian historian writes vividly and perceptively + on Italian Fascism. + +Schneider, Herbert W.--_Making the Fascist State_, N.Y., 1928. + + An early, but well considered, account of the rise of + Italian fascism. + +Silone, Ignazio--_Fontamara_, Verona, 1951. + + The best novel on Italian fascism. + +Spender, Stephen--_European Witness_, N.Y., 1946. + + Note especially the analysis of Goebbel's novel, _Michael_. + +Trevor-Roper, H.R.--_The Last Days of Hitler_, N.Y., 1946. + + An intimate portrayal of Hitler and his entourage from the + time of the beginning of the collapse of the Nazi armies. + Especially good on the rift between the politicians and the + military. + + + + +READINGS ON FASCISM AND NATIONAL SOCIALISM + +The catastrophe and holocaust brought about by the two powerful +movements of fascism and national socialism will mark human life +always. Now, as we feel our hatred for them, we find it difficult to +understand how they could have been so powerful, how they could have +appealed so strongly to millions of people of a modern age. + +And the documents whereby we could understand these philosophies have +been lost--except as they are now gathered here in one convenient +volume. + +To understand our own times, it is necessary to understand these +movements. And to understand them, we must read the basic +philosophical and political documents which show the force of the +ideas which moved a world to the brink of disaster. + + + THE FIRST SWALLOW PAPERBOOKS: + + 1. A FIELD OF BROKEN STONES by Lowell Naeve. + A profound book written in a prison. $1.65. + + 2. THE WIFE OF MARTIN GUERRE by Janet Lewis. + One of the fine short novels of all time. $1.25. + + 3. READINGS ON FASCISM AND NATIONAL SOCIALISM. + A grouping together of authoritative readings. $1.35. + + 4. THE TEACHER OF ENGLISH by James E. Warren, Jr. + The Materials and Opportunities of the teacher. $1.35. + + 5. MORNING RED by Frederick Manfred. + The most ambitious novel by a powerful writer. $1.95. + + + ALAN SWALLOW + 2679 So. York St., Denver 10, Colo. + +Cover design by Lowell Naeve + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK READINGS ON FASCISM AND NATIONAL +SOCIALISM*** + + +******* This file should be named 14058-8.txt or 14058-8.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/0/5/14058 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre> +<p>Title: Readings on Fascism and National Socialism</p> +<p>Author: Various</p> +<p>Release Date: November 16, 2004 [eBook #14058]</p> +<p>Language: English</p> +<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p> +<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK READINGS ON FASCISM AND NATIONAL SOCIALISM***</p> +<br /><br /><h4>E-text prepared by John Hagerson, Kevin Handy, Jeannie Howse,<br /> + and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team</h4><br /><br /> +<hr class="full" /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<h2><b>READINGS ON FASCISM AND NATIONAL SOCIALISM</b></h2> + +<br /><br /><br /> + +<h3>Selected By Members Of<br /> +The Department Of Philosophy</h3> +<h3>University Of Colorado</h3> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: right;"> ALAN SWALLOW, <i>Denver</i></p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<br /><br /> + +<h3>PREFATORY NOTE</h3> +<br /> + +<p>The ensuing readings are presented to encourage the student to clarify +his thinking on social philosophy. He will accordingly need to +determine whether the readings contain a more or less coherent body of +ideas which constitutes a social philosophy. He will also need to +raise the more far-reaching question whether the ideas are acceptable. +To arrive at any satisfactory answer to this latter question, he will +necessarily have to compare the ideas of fascism and their practical +meanings with the alternatives, real and ideal, that are the substance +of live philosophical issues.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> + +<a name="toc" id="toc"></a><hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3>CONTENTS</h3> + +<div class='tble'> + <table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="1" width="85%" summary="Table of Contents"> + <tr> + <td width="85%" class="tdleft" style="white-space: nowrap;" valign="top"><a class="noline" href="#THE_DOCTRINE_OF_FASCISM"> + The Doctrine of Fascism</a><br /> + <i>by Benito Mussolini</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td width="85%" class="tdleft" style="white-space: nowrap;" valign="top"><a class="noline" href="#THE_POLITICAL_DOCTRINE_OF_FASCISM"> + The Political Doctrine of Fascism</a><br /> + <i>by Alfredo Rocco</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td width="85%" class="tdleft" style="white-space: nowrap;" valign="top"><a class="noline" href="#THE_PHILOSOPHIC_BASIS_OF_FASCISM"> + The Philosophic Basis of Fascism</a><br /> + <i>by Giovanni Gentile</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td width="85%" class="tdleft" style="white-space: nowrap;" valign="top"><a class="noline" href="#NATIONAL_SOCIALISM"> + National Socialism</a><br /> + <i>by Raymond E. Murphy, Francis B. Stevens,<br /> + Howard Trivers, Joseph M. Roland</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td width="85%" class="tdleft" style="white-space: nowrap;" valign="top"><a class="noline" href="#NATIONAL_SOCIALISM_AND_MEDICINE"> + National-Socialism and Medicine</a><br /> + <i>by Dr. F. Hamburger</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td width="85%" class="tdleft" style="white-space: nowrap;" valign="top"><a class="noline" href="#SELECTED_BIBLIOGRAPHY"> + Selected Bibliography</a></td> + </tr> + </table> +</div> + +<br /><br /><br /><br /> + +<a name="THE_DOCTRINE_OF_FASCISM"></a><hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<br /> + + +<h3>THE DOCTRINE OF FASCISM</h3><span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span> +<h3>by</h3> +<h3><span style="font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 110%">Benito Mussolini</span></h3> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em">From the +<span style="font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 110%">Encyclopedia Italiana</span>. Vol. XIV</p> + +<p class="quot2">The English translation of the "Fundamental Ideas" is by Mr. + I.S. Munro, reprinted by his kind permission from "Fascism + to World-Power" (Alexander Maclehose, London, 1933). </p> +<br /><br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 110%; margin-bottom: 1em"> +FUNDAMENTAL IDEAS.</p> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><b>1. Philosophic Conception.</b></p> + + +<p>Like every concrete political conception, Fascism is thought and +action. It is action with an inherent doctrine which, arising out of a +given system of historic forces, is inserted in it and works on it +from within. It has therefore a form co-related to the contingencies +of time and place; but it has at the same time an ideal content which +elevates it into a formula of truth in the higher region of the +history of thought.</p> + +<p>There is no way of exercising a spiritual influence on the things of +the world by means of a human will-power commanding the wills of +others, without first having a clear conception of the particular and +transient reality on which the will-power must act, and without also +having a clear conception of the universal and permanent reality in +which the particular and transient reality has its life and being. To +know men we must have a knowledge of man; and to have a knowledge of +man we must know the reality of things and their laws.</p> + +<p>There can be no conception of a State which is not fundamentally a +conception of Life. It is a philosophy or intuition, a system of ideas +which evolves itself into a system of logical contraction, or which +concentrates itself in a vision or in a faith, but which is always, +at least virtually, an organic conception of the world.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><b>2. Spiritualised Conception.</b></p> + +<p>Fascism would therefore not be understood in many of its +manifestations (as, for example, in its organisations of the Party, +its system of education, its discipline) were it not considered in the +light of its general view of life. A spiritualised view.</p> + +<p>To Fascism the world is not this material world which appears on the +surface, in which man is an individual separated from all other men, +standing by himself and subject to a natural law which instinctively +impels him to lead a life of momentary and egoistic pleasure. In +Fascism man is an individual who is the nation and the country. He is +this by a moral law which embraces and binds together individuals and +generations in an established tradition and mission, a moral law which +suppresses the instinct to lead a life confined to a brief cycle of +pleasure in order, instead, to replace it within the orbit of duty in +a superior conception of life, free from the limits of time and space +a life in which the individual by self-abnegation and by the sacrifice +of his particular interests, even by death, realises the entirely +spiritual existence in which his value as a man consists.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>3. Positive Conception of Life as a Struggle.</b></p> + +<p>It is therefore a spiritual conception, itself also a result of the +general reaction of the Century against the languid and materialistic +positivism of the Eighteenth Century. Anti-positivist, but positive: +neither sceptical nor agnostic, neither pessimistic nor passively +optimistic, as are in general the doctrines (all of them negative) +which place the centre of life outside of man, who by his free will +can and should create his own world for himself.</p> + +<p>Fascism wants a man to be active and to be absorbed in action with all +his energies; it wants him to have a manly consciousness of the +difficulties that exist and to be ready to face them. It conceives +life as a struggle, thinking that it is the duty of man to conquer +that life which is really worthy of him: creating in the first place +within himself the (physical, moral, intellectual) instrument with +which to build it.</p> + +<p>As for the individual, so for the nation, so for mankind. Hence the +high value of culture in all its forms (art, religion, science) and +the supreme importance of education. Hence also the essential value +of labour, with which man conquers nature and creates the human world +(economic, political, moral, intellectual).</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>4. Ethical Conception.</b></p> + +<p>This positive conception of life is evidently an ethical conception. +And it comprises the whole reality as well as the human activity which +domineers it. No action is to be removed from the moral sense; nothing +is to be in the world that is divested of the importance which belongs +to it in respect of moral aims. Life, therefore, as the Fascist +conceives it, is serious, austere, religious; entirely balanced in a +world sustained by the moral and responsible forces of the spirit. The +Fascist disdains the "easy" life.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>5. Religious Conception.</b></p> + +<p>Fascism is a religious conception in which man is considered to be in +the powerful grip of a superior law, with an objective will which +transcends the particular individual and elevates him into a fully +conscious member of a spiritual society. Anyone who has stopped short +at the mere consideration of opportunism in the religious policy of +the Fascist Regime, has failed to understand that Fascism, besides +being a system of government, is also a system of thought.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>6. Historical and Realist Conception.</b></p> + +<p>Fascism is an historical conception in which man could not be what he +is without being a factor in the spiritual process to which he +contributes, either in the family sphere or in the social sphere, in +the nation or in history in general to which all nations contribute. +Hence is derived the great importance of tradition in the records, +language, customs and rules of human society. Man without a part in +history is nothing.</p> + +<p>For this reason Fascism is opposed to all the abstractions of an +individualistic character based upon materialism typical of the +Eighteenth Century; and it is opposed to all the Jacobin innovations +and utopias. It does not believe in the possibility of "happiness" on +earth as conceived by the literature of the economists of the +Seventeenth Century; it therefore spurns all the teleological +conceptions of final causes through which, at a given period of +history, a final systematisation of the human race would take place. +Such theories only mean placing oneself outside real history and +life, which is a continual ebb and flow and process of realisations.</p> + +<p>Politically speaking, Fascism aims at being a realistic doctrine; in +its practice it aspired to solve only the problems which present +themselves of their own accord in the process of history, and which of +themselves find or suggest their own solution. To have the effect of +action among men, it is necessary to enter into the process of reality +and to master the forces actually at work.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>7. The Individual and Liberty.</b></p> + +<p>Anti-individualistic, the Fascist conception is for the State; it is +for the individual only in so far as he coincides with the State, +universal consciousness and will of man in his historic existence. It +is opposed to the classic Liberalism which arose out of the need of +reaction against absolutism, and had accomplished its mission in +history when the State itself had become transformed in the popular +will and consciousness.</p> + +<p>Liberalism denied the State in the interests of the particular +individual; Fascism reaffirms the State as the only true expression of +the individual.</p> + +<p>And if liberty is to be the attribute of the real man, and not of the +scarecrow invented by the individualistic Liberalism, then Fascism is +for liberty. It is for the only kind of liberty that is serious—the +liberty of the State and of the individual in the State. Because, for +the Fascist, all is comprised in the State and nothing spiritual or +human exists—much less has any value—outside the State. In this +respect Fascism is a totalising concept, and the Fascist State—the +unification and synthesis of every value—interprets, develops and +potentiates the whole life of the people.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>8. Conception of a Corporate State.</b></p> + +<p>No individuals nor groups (political parties, associations, labour +unions, classes) outside the State. For this reason Fascism is opposed +to Socialism, which clings rigidly to class war in the historic +evolution and ignores the unity of the State which moulds the classes +into a single, moral and economic reality. In the same way Fascism is +opposed to the unions of the labouring classes. But within the orbit +of the State with ordinative functions, the real needs, which give +rise to the Socialist movement and to the forming of labour unions, +are emphatically recognised by Fascism and are given their full +expression in the Corporative System, which conciliates every interest +in the unity of the State.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>9. Democracy.</b></p> + +<p>Individuals form classes according to categories of interests. They +are associated according to differentiated economical activities which +have a common interest: but first and foremost they form the State. +The State is not merely either the numbers or the sum of individuals +forming the majority of a people. Fascism for this reason is opposed +to the democracy which identifies peoples with the greatest number of +individuals and reduces them to a majority level. But if people are +conceived, as they should be, qualitatively and not quantitatively, +then Fascism is democracy in its purest form. The qualitative +conception is the most coherent and truest form and is therefore the +most moral, because it sees a people realised in the consciousness and +will of the few or even of one only; an ideal which moves to its +realisation in the consciousness and will of all. By "all" is meant +all who derive their justification as a nation, ethnically speaking, +from their nature and history, and who follow the same line of +spiritual formation and development as one single will and +consciousness—not as a race nor as a geographically determined +region, but as a progeny that is rather the outcome of a history which +perpetuates itself; a multitude unified by an idea embodied in the +will to have power and to exist, conscious of itself and of its +personality.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>10. Conception of the State.</b></p> + +<p>This higher personality is truly the nation, inasmuch as it is the +State. The nation does not beget the State, according to the decrepit +nationalistic concept which was used as a basis for the publicists of +the national States in the Nineteenth Century. On the contrary, the +nation is created by the State, which gives the people, conscious of +their own moral unity, the will, and thereby an effective existence. +The right of a nation to its independence is derived not from a +literary and ideal consciousness of its own existence, much less from +a <i>de facto</i> situation more or less inert and unconscious, but from an +active consciousness, from an active political will disposed to +demonstrate in its right; that is to say, a kind of State already in +its pride (<i>in fieri</i>). The State, in fact, as a universal ethical +will, is the creator of right.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>11. Dynamic Reality.</b></p> + +<p>The nation as a State is an ethical reality which exists and lives in +measure as it develops. A standstill is its death. Therefore the +State is not only the authority which governs and which gives the +forms of law and the worth of the spiritual life to the individual +wills, but it is also the power which gives effect to its will in +foreign matters, causing it to be recognised and respected by +demonstrating through facts the universality of all the manifestations +necessary for its development. Hence it is organization as well as +expansion, and it may be thereby considered, at least virtually, equal +to the very nature of the human will, which in its evolution +recognises no barriers, and which realises itself by proving its +infinity.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>12. The Rôle of the State.</b></p> + +<p>The Fascist State, the highest and the most powerful form of +personality is a force, but a spiritual one. It reassumes all the +forms of the moral and intellectual life of man. It cannot, therefore, +be limited to a simple function of order and of safeguarding, as was +contended by Liberalism. It is not a simple mechanism which limits the +sphere of the presumed individual liberties. It is an internal form +and rule, a discipline of the entire person: it penetrates the will as +well as the intelligence. Its principle, a central inspiration of the +living human personality in the civil community, descends into the +depths and settles in the heart of the man of action as well as the +thinker, of the artist as well as of the scientist; the soul of our +soul.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>13. Discipline and Authority.</b></p> + +<p>Fascism, in short, is not only a lawgiver and the founder of +institutions, but an educator and a promoter of the spiritual life. It +aims to rebuild not the forms of human life, but its content, the man, +the character, the faith. And for this end it exacts discipline and an +authority which descend into and dominates the interior of the spirit +without opposition. Its emblem, therefore, is the lictorian <i>fasces</i>, +symbol of unity, of force and of justice.</p> +<br /> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 110%; margin-bottom: 1em"> +Political And Social Doctrine</p> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>1. Origins of the Doctrine.</b></p> + +<p>When, in the now distant March of 1919, I summoned a meeting at Milan, +through the columns of the <i>Popolo d'Italia,</i> of those who had +supported and endured the war and who had followed me since the +constitution of the <i>fasci</i> or Revolutionary Action in January 1915, +there was no specific doctrinal plan in my mind. I had the experience +of one only doctrine—that of Socialism from 1903-04 to the winter of +1914 about a decade—but I made it first in the ranks and later as a +leader and it was never an experience in theory. My doctrine, even +during that period, was a doctrine of action. A universally accepted +doctrine of Socialism had not existed since 1915 when the revisionist +movement started in Germany, under the leadership of Bernstein. +Against this, in the swing of tendencies, a left revolutionary +movement began to take shape, but in Italy it never went further than +the "field of phrases," whereas in Russian Socialistic circles it +became the prelude of Bolscevism. "Reformism," "revolutionarism," +"centrism," this is a terminology of which even the echoes are now +spent—but in the great river of Fascism are currents which flowed +from Sorel, from Peguy, from Lagardelle and the "Mouvement +Socialiste," from Italian syndicalists which were legion between 1904 +and 1914, and sounded a new note in Italian Socialist circles +(weakened then by the betrayal of Giolitti) through Olivetti's <i>Pagine +Libere</i>, Orano's <i>La Lupa</i> and Enrico Leone's <i>Divenire Sociale</i>.</p> + +<p>After the War, in 1919, Socialism was already dead as a doctrine: it +existed only as a grudge. In Italy especially, it had one only +possibility of action: reprisals against those who had wanted the War +and must now pay its penalty. The <i>Popolo d'Italia</i> carried as +sub-title "daily of ex-service men and producers," and the word +producers was already then the expression of a turn of mind. Fascism +was not the nursling of a doctrine previously worked out at a desk; it +was born of the need for action and it was action. It was not a party, +in fact during the first two years, it was an anti-party and a +movement.</p> + +<p>The name I gave the organisation fixed its character. Yet whoever +should read the now crumpled sheets with the minutes of the meeting at +which the Italian "Fasci di Combattimento" were constituted, would +fail to discover a doctrine, but would find a series of ideas, of +anticipations, of hints which, liberated from the inevitable +strangleholds of contingencies, were destined after some years to +develop into doctrinal conceptions. Through them Fascism became a +political doctrine to itself, different, by comparison, to all others +whether contemporary or of the past.</p> + +<p>I said then, "If the bourgeoisie think we are ready to act as +lightning-conductors, they are mistaken. We must go towards labour. +We wish to train the working classes to directive functions. We wish +to convince them that it is not easy to manage Industry or Trade: we +shall fight the technique and the spirit of the rearguard. When the +succession of the regime is open, we must not lack the fighting +spirit. We must rush and if the present regime be overcome, it is we +who must fill its place. The claim to succession belongs to us, +because it was we who forced the country into War and we who led her +to victory. The present political representation cannot suffice: we +must have a direct representation of all interest. Against this +programme one might say it is a return to corporations. But that does +not matter. Therefore I should like this assembly to accept the claims +put in by national syndicalism from an economic standpoint...."</p> + +<p>Is it not strange that the word corporations should have been uttered +at the first meeting of Piazza San Sepolcro, when one considers that, +in the course of the Revolution, it came to express one of the social +and legislative creations at the very foundations of the regime?</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>2. Development.</b></p> + +<p>The years which preceded the March on Rome were years in which the +necessity of action did not permit complete doctrinal investigations +or elaborations. The battle was raging in the towns and villages. +There were discussions, but what was more important and sacred—there +was death. Men knew how to die. The doctrine—all complete and formed, +with divisions into chapters, paragraphs, and accompanying +elucubrations—might be missing; but there was something more decided +to replace it, there was faith.</p> + +<p>Notwithstanding, whoever remembers with the aid of books and speeches, +whoever could search through them and select, would find that the +fundamental principles were laid down whilst the battle raged. It was +really in those years that the Fascist idea armed itself, became +refined and proceeded towards organisation: the problems of the +individual and of the State, the problems of authority and of liberty, +the political and social problems, especially national; the fight +against the liberal, democratic, socialistic and popular doctrines, +was carried out together with the "punitive expeditions."</p> + +<p>But as a "system" was lacking, our adversaries in bad faith, denied to +Fascism any capacity to produce a doctrine, though that doctrine was +growing tumultuously, at first under the aspect of violent and +dogmatic negation, as happens to all newly-born ideas, and later under +the positive aspect of construction which was successively realised, +in the years 1926-27-28 through the laws and institutions of the +regime. Fascism today stands clearly defined not only as a regime, but +also as a doctrine. This word doctrine should be interpreted in the +sense that Fascism, to-day, when passing criticism on itself and +others, has its own point of view and its own point of reference, and +therefore also its own orientation when facing those problems which +beset the world in the spirit and in the matter.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>3. Against Pacifism: War and Life as a Duty.</b></p> + +<p>As far as the general future and development of humanity is concerned, +and apart from any mere consideration of current politics, Fascism +above all does not believe either in the possibility or utility of +universal peace. It therefore rejects the pacifism which masks +surrender and cowardice. War alone brings all human energies to their +highest tension and sets a seal of nobility on the peoples who have +the virtue to face it. All other tests are but substitutes which never +make a man face himself in the alternative of life or death. A +doctrine which has its starting-point at the prejudicial postulate of +peace is therefore extraneous to Fascism.</p> + +<p>In the same way all international creations (which, as history +demonstrates, can be blown to the winds when sentimental, ideal and +practical elements storm the heart of a people) are also extraneous to +the spirit of Fascism—even if such international creations are +accepted for whatever utility they may have in any determined +political situation.</p> + +<p>Fascism also transports this anti-pacifist spirit into the life of +individuals. The proud <i>squadrista</i> motto "<i>me ne frego</i>" ("I don't +give a damn") scrawled on the bandages of the wounded is an act of +philosophy—not only stoic. It is a summary of a doctrine not only +political: it is an education in strife and an acceptance of the risks +which it carried: it is a new style of Italian life. It is thus that +the Fascist loves and accepts life, ignores and disdains suicide; +understands life as a duty, a lifting up, a conquest; something to be +filled in and sustained on a high plane; a thing that has to be lived +through for its own sake, but above all for the sake of others near +and far, present and future.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>4. The Demographic Policy and the "Neighbour."</b></p> + +<p>The "demographic" policy of the regime is the result of these +premises. The Fascist also loves his neighbour, but "neighbour" is not +for him a vague and undefinable word: love for his neighbour does not +prevent necessary educational severities. Fascism rejects professions +of universal affection and, though living in the community of +civilised peoples, it watches them and looks at them diffidently. It +follows them in their state of mind and in the transformation of their +interests, but it does not allow itself to be deceived by fallacious +and mutable appearances.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>5. Against Historical Materialism and Class-Struggle.</b></p> + +<p>Through this conception of life Fascism becomes the emphatic negation +of that doctrine which constituted the basis of the so-called +scientific Socialism or Marxism: the doctrine of historical +materialism, according to which the story of human civilisation is to +be explained only by the conflict of interests between the various +social groups and by the change of the means and instruments of +production.</p> + +<p>That the economic vicissitudes—discovery of prime or raw materials, +new methods of labour, scientific inventions—have their particular +importance, is denied by none, but that they suffice to explain human +history, excluding other factors from it, is absurd: Fascism still +believes in sanctity and in heroism, that is to say in acts in which +no economic motive, immediate or remote, operates.</p> + +<p>Fascism having denied historical materialism, by which men are only +puppets in history, appearing and disappearing on the surface of the +tides while in the depths the real directive forces act and labour, it +also denies the immutable and irreparable class warfare, which is the +natural filiation of such an economistic conception of history: and it +denies above all that class warfare is the preponderating agent of +social transformation.</p> + +<p>Being defeated on these two capital points of its doctrine, nothing +remains of Socialism save the sentimental aspiration—as old as +humanity—to achieve a community of social life in which the +sufferings and hardships of the humblest classes are alleviated. But +here Fascism repudiates the concept of an economic "happiness" which +is to be—at a given moment in the evolution of economy—socialistically +and almost automatically realised by assuring to all the maximum of +well-being.</p> + +<p>Fascism denies the possibilities of the materialistic concept of +"happiness"—it leaves that to the economists of the first half of the +Seventeenth Century; that is, it denies the equation +"well-being-happiness," which reduces man to the state of the animals, +mindful of only one thing—that of being fed and fattened; reduced, in +fact, to a pure and simple vegetative existence.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>6. Against Democratic Ideologies.</b></p> + +<p>After disposing of Socialism, Fascism opens a breach on the whole +complex of the democratic ideologies, and repudiates them in their +theoretic premises as well as in their practical application or +instrumentation. Fascism denies that numbers, by the mere fact of +being numbers, can direct human society; it denies that these numbers +can govern by means of periodical consultations; it affirms also the +fertilising, beneficient and unassailable inequality of men, who +cannot be levelled through an extrinsic and mechanical process such as +universal suffrage.</p> + +<p>Regimes can be called democratic which, from time to time, give the +people the illusion of being sovereign, whereas the real and effective +sovereignty exists in other, and very often secret and irresponsible +forces.</p> + +<p>Democracy is a regime without a king, but very often with many kings, +far more exclusive, tyrannical and ruinous than a single king, even if +he be a tyrant. This explains why Fascism which, for contingent +reasons, had assumed a republican tendency before 1922, renounced it +previous to the March on Rome, with the conviction that the political +constitution of a State is not nowadays a supreme question; and that, +if the examples of past and present monarchies and past and present +republics are studied, the result is that neither monarchies nor +republics are to be judged under the assumption of eternity, but that +they merely represent forms in which the extrinsic political evolution +takes shape as well as the history, the tradition and the psychology +of a given country.</p> + +<p>Consequently, Fascism glides over the antithesis between monarchy and +republic, on which democraticism wasted time, blaming the former for +all social shortcomings and exalting the latter as a regime of +perfection. We have now seen that there are republics which may be +profoundly absolutist and reactionary, and monarchies which welcome +the most venturesome social and political experiments.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>7. Untruths of Democracy.</b></p> + +<p>"Reason and science" says Renan (who had certain pre-fascist +enlightenments) in one of his philosophical meditations, "are products +of mankind, but to seek reason directly for the people and through the +people is a chimera. It is not necessary for the existence of reason +that everybody should know it. In any case if this initiation were to +be brought about it could not be through low-class democracy, which +seems to lead rather to the extinction of every difficult culture and +of every great discipline. The principle that society exists only for +the welfare and liberty of individuals composing it, does not seem to +conform with the plans of nature: plans in which the species only is +taken into consideration and the individual appears sacrificed. It is +strongly to be feared that the last word of democracy thus understood +(I hasten to add that it can also be differently understood) would be +a social state in which a degenerated mass would have no preoccupation +other than that of enjoying the ignoble pleasures of the vulgar +person."</p> + +<p>Thus Renan. In Democracy Fascism rejects the absurd conventional +falsehood of political equality, the habit of collective +responsibility and the myth of indefinite progress and happiness.</p> + +<p>But if there be a different understanding of Democracy if, in other +words, Democracy can also signify to not push the people back as far +as the margins of the State, then Fascism may well have been defined +by the present writer as "an organised, centralised, authoritarian +Democracy."</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>8. Against Liberal Doctrines.</b></p> + +<p>As regards the Liberal doctrines, the attitude of Fascism is one of +absolute opposition both in the political and in the economical field. +There is no need to exaggerate the importance of Liberalism in the +last century—simply for the sake of present-day polemics—and to +transform one of the numerous doctrines unfolded in that last century +into a religion of humanity for all times, present and future. +Liberalism did not flourish for more than a period of fifteen years. +It was born in 1830 from the reaction to the Holy Alliance which +attempted to set Europe back to the period which preceeded '89 and had +its years of splendour in 1848, when also Pius IX was a Liberal. Its +decadence began immediately afterwards. If 1848 was a year of light +and poesy, 1849 was a year of weakness and tragedy. The Roman Republic +was killed by another Republic, the French Republic. In the same year +Marx issued his famous manifesto of Communism. In 1851 Napoleon III +made his anti-Liberal <i>coup d'état</i> and reigned over France until +1870. He was overthrown by a popular movement, following one of the +greatest defeats registered in history. The victor was Bismarck, who +always ignored the religion of liberty and its prophets. It is +symptomatic that a people of high civilisation like the Germans +completely ignored the religion of liberty throughout the whole +Nineteenth Century—with but one parenthesis, represented by that +which was called "the ridiculous parliament of Frankfurt" which lasted +one season. Germany realised its national unity outside of Liberalism, +against Liberalism—a doctrine which seemed alien to the German spirit +essentially monarchical, since Liberalism is the historical and +logical ante-chamber of anarchy.</p> + +<p>The three wars of 1864, 1866 and 1870 conducted by "Liberals" like +Moltke and Bismarck mark the three stages of German unity. As for +Italian unity, Liberalism played a very inferior part in the make-up +of Mazzini and Garibaldi, who were not liberals. Without the +intervention of the anti-Liberal Napoleon we would not have had +Lombardy, and without the help of the anti-Liberal Bismarck at Sadowa +and Sedan it is very likely that we would not have got Venice in 1866, +or that we would have entered Rome in 1870.</p> + +<p>During the period of 1870-1915 the preachers of the new Credo +themselves denounced the twilight of their religion; it was beaten in +the breach by decadence in literature. It was beaten in the open by +decadence in practice. Activism: that is to say, nationalism, +futurism. Fascism.</p> + +<p>The "Liberal Century" after having accumulated an infinity of Gordian +knots, sought to cut them in the hecatomb of the World War. Never did +any religion impose such a terrible sacrifice. Have the gods of +Liberalism slaked their blood-thirst?</p> + +<p>Liberalism is now on the point of closing the doors of its deserted +temples because nations feel that its agnosticism in the economic +field and its indifference in political and moral matters, causes, as +it has already caused, the sure ruin of States. That is why all the +political experiences of the contemporary world are anti-Liberal, and +it is supremely silly to seek to classify them as things outside of +history—as if history were a hunting ground reserved to Liberalism +and its professors; as if Liberalism were the last and incomparable +word of civilisation.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>9. Fascism Does Not Turn Back.</b></p> + +<p>The Fascist negation of Socialism, of Democracy, of Liberalism, should +not lead one to believe that Fascism wishes to push the world back to +where it was before 1879, the date accepted as the opening year of the +demo-Liberal century. One cannot turn back. The Fascist doctrine has +not chosen De Maistre for its prophet. Monarchical absolutism is a +thing of the past, and so is the worship of church power. Feudal +privileges and divisions into impenetrable castes with no connection +between them, are also "have beens." The conception of Fascist +authority has nothing in common with the Police. A party that totally +rules a nation is a new chapter in history. References and comparisons +are not possible. From the ruins of the socialist, liberal and +democratic doctrines, Fascism picks those elements that still have a +living value; keeps those that might be termed "facts acquired by +history," and rejects the rest: namely the conception of a doctrine +good for all times and all people.</p> + +<p>Admitting that the Nineteenth Century was the Century of Socialism, +Liberalism and Democracy, it is not said that the Twentieth century +must also be the century of Socialism, of Liberalism, of Democracy. +Political doctrines pass on, but peoples remain. One may now think +that this will be the century of authority, the century of the "right +wing" the century of Fascism. If the Nineteenth Century was the +century of the individual (liberalism signifies individualism) one may +think that this will be the century of "collectivism," the century of +the State. It is perfectly logical that a new doctrine should utilise +the vital elements of other doctrines. No doctrine was ever born +entirely new and shining, never seen before. No doctrine can boast of +absolute "originality." Each doctrine is bound historically to +doctrines which went before, to doctrines yet to come. Thus the +scientific Socialism of Marx is bound to the Utopian Socialism of +Fourier, of Owen, of Saint-Simon; thus the Liberalism of 1800 is +linked with the movement of 1700. Thus Democratic doctrines are bound +to the Encyclopaedists. Each doctrine tends to direct human activity +towards a definite object; but the activity of man reacts upon the +doctrine, transforms it and adapts it to new requirements, or +overcomes it. Doctrine therefore should be an act of life and not an +academy of words. In this lie the pragmatic veins of Fascism, its will +to power, its will to be, its position with regard to "violence" and +its value.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>10. The Value and Mission of the State.</b></p> + +<p>The capital point of the Fascist doctrine is the conception of the +State, its essence, the work to be accomplished, its final aims. In +the conception of Fascism, the State is an absolute before which +individuals and groups are relative. Individuals and groups are +"conceivable" inasmuch as they are in the State. The Liberal State +does not direct the movement and the material and spiritual evolution +of collectivity, but limits itself to recording the results; the +Fascist State has its conscious conviction, a will of its own, and for +this reason it is called an "ethical" State.</p> + +<p>In 1929 at the first quinquiennial assembly of the Regime, I said: "In +Fascism the State is not a night-watchman, only occupied with the +personal safety of the citizens, nor is it an organisation with purely +material aims, such as that of assuring a certain well-being and a +comparatively easy social cohabitation. A board of directors would be +quite sufficient to deal with this. It is not a purely political +creation, either, detached from the complex material realities of the +life of individuals and of peoples. The State as conceived and enacted +by Fascism, is a spiritual and moral fact since it gives concrete form +to the political, juridical and economical organisation of the +country. Furthermore this organisation as it rises and develops, is a +manifestation of the spirit. The State is a safeguard of interior and +exterior safety but it is also the keeper and the transmitter of the +spirit of the people, as it was elaborated throughout the ages, in its +language, customs and beliefs. The State is not only the present, but +it is also the past and above all the future. The State, inasmuch as +it transcends the short limits of individual lives, represents the +immanent conscience of the nation. The forms in which the State +expresses itself are subject to changes, but the necessity for the +State remains. It is the State which educates the citizens in civic +virtues, gives them a consciousness of their mission, presses them +towards unity; the State harmonizes their interests through justice, +transmits to prosperity the attainments of thoughts, in science, in +art, in laws, in the solidarity of mankind. The State leads men from +primitive tribal life to that highest expression of human power which +is Empire; links up through the centuries the names of those who died +to preserve its integrity or to obey its laws; holds up the memory of +the leaders who increased its territory, and of the geniuses who cast +the light of glory upon it, as an example for future generations to +follow. When the conception of the State declines and disintegrating +or centrifugal tendencies prevail, whether of individuals or groups, +then the national society is about to set."</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>11. The Unity of the State and the Contradictions of Capitalism.</b></p> + +<p>From 1929 onwards to the present day, the universal, political and +economical evolution has still further strengthened the doctrinal +positions. The giant who rules is the State. The one who can resolve +the dramatic contradictions of capital is the State. What is called +the crisis cannot be resolved except by the State and in the State. +Where are the ghosts of Jules Simon who, at the dawn of Liberalism, +proclaimed that "the State must set to work to make itself useless and +prepare its resignation?" Of MacCulloch who, in the second half of the +past century, proclaimed that the State must abstain from ruling? What +would the Englishman Bentham say today to the continual and +inevitably-invoked intervention of the State in the sphere of +economics, while, according to his theories, industry should ask no +more of the State than to be left in peace? Or the German Humboldt +according to whom an "idle" State was the best kind of State? It is +true that the second wave of Liberal economists were less extreme than +the first, and Adam Smith himself opened the door—if only very +cautiously—to let State intervention into the economic field.</p> + +<p>If Liberalism signifies the individual—then Fascism signifies the +State. But the Fascist State is unique of its kind and is an original +creation. It is not reactionary but revolutionary, inasmuch as it +anticipates the solution of certain universal problems such as those +which are treated elsewhere: 1) in the political sphere, by the +subdivisions of parties, in the preponderance of parliamentarism and +in the irresponsibilities of assemblies; 2) in the economic sphere, by +the functions of trade unions which are becoming constantly more +numerous and powerful, whether in the labour or industrial fields, in +their conflicts and combinations, and 3) in the moral sphere by the +necessity of order, discipline, obedience to those who are the moral +dictators of the country. Fascism wants the State to be strong, +organic and at the same time supported on a wide popular basis. As +part of its task the Fascist State has penetrated the economic field: +through the corporative, social and educational institutions which it +has created. The presence of the State is felt in the remotest +ramifications of the country. And in the State also, all the +political, economic and spiritual forces of the nation circulate, +mustered in their respective organisations.</p> + +<p>A State which stands on the support of millions of individuals who +recognise it, who believe in it, who are ready to serve it, is not the +tyrannical State of the mediaeval lord. It has nothing in common with +the absolutist States before or after '89. The individual in the +Fascist State is not annulled but rather multiplied, just as in a +regiment a soldier is not diminished, but multiplied by the number of +his comrades.</p> + +<p>The Fascist State organises the nation, but leaves a sufficient margin +afterward to the individual; it has limited the useless or harmful +liberties and has preserved the essential ones. The one to judge in +this respect is not the individual but the State.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>12. The Fascist State and Religion.</b></p> + +<p>The Fascist State is not indifferent to the presence or the fact of +religion in general nor to the presence of that particular established +religion, which is Italian Catholicism. The State has no theology, but +it has morality. In the Fascist State religion is considered as one of +the most profound manifestations of the spirit; it is therefore not +only respected, but defended and protected. The Fascist State does not +create its own "God," as Robespierre wanted to do at a certain moment +in the frenzies of the Convention; nor does it vainly endeavour to +cancel the idea of God from the mind as Bolschevism tries to do. +Fascism respects the God of the ascetics, of the saints and of the +heroes. It also respects God as he is conceived and prayed to in the +ingenuous and primitive heart of the people.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>13. Empire and Discipline.</b></p> + +<p>The Fascist State is a will expressing power and empire. The Roman +tradition here becomes an idea of force. In the Fascist doctrine, +empire is not only a territorial or a military, or a commercial +expression: it is a moral and a spiritual one. An empire can be +thought of, for instance, as a nation which directly or indirectly +guides other nations—without the need of conquering a single mile of +territory. For Fascism, the tendency to empire, that is to say the +expansion of nations, is a manifestation of vitality, its contrary +(the stay-at-home attitude) is a sign of decadence. Peoples who rise, +or who suddenly flourish again, are imperialistic; peoples who die are +peoples who abdicate. Fascism is a doctrine which most adequately +represents the tendencies, the state of mind of a people like the +Italian people, which is rising again after many centuries of +abandonment and of foreign servitude.</p> + +<p>But empire requires discipline, the coordination of forces, duty and +sacrifice. This explains many phases of the practical action of the +regime. It explains the aims of many of the forces of the State and +the necessary severity against those who would oppose themselves to +this spontaneous and irresistible movement of the Italy of the +Twentieth century by trying to appeal to the discredited ideologies of +the Nineteenth century, which have been repudiated wherever great +experiments of political and social transformation have been daringly +undertaken.</p> + +<p>Never more than at the present moment have the nations felt such a +thirst for an authority, for a direction, for order. If every century +has its own peculiar doctrine, there are a thousand indications that +Fascism is that of the present century. That it is a doctrine of life +is shown by the fact that it has created a faith; that the faith has +taken possession of the mind is demonstrated by the fact that Fascism +has had its Fallen and its martyrs.</p> + +<p>Fascism has now attained in the world an universality over all +doctrines. Being realised, it represents an epoch in the history of +the human mind.</p> + +<br /><br /> + +<a name="THE_POLITICAL_DOCTRINE_OF_FASCISM"></a><hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<br /> + +<h3>THE POLITICAL DOCTRINE OF FASCISM<a name="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1"><sup>[1]</sup></a></h3><span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span> +<h3>by</h3> +<h3><span style="font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 110%">His Excellency Alfredo Rocco</span></h3> + +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em"> +<span style="font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 110%"> +Premier Mussolini's Endorsement Of Signor Rocco's Speech</span></p> +<br /> + +<p class="quot">The following message was sent by Benito Mussolini, the Premier of +Italy, to Signor Rocco after he had delivered his speech at Perugia.</p> + +<p class="quot">Dear Rocco,<br /><br /> +I have just read your magnificent address which I endorse + throughout. You have presented in a masterful way the + doctrine of Fascism. For Fascism has a doctrine, or, if you + will, a particular philosophy with regard to all the + questions which beset the human mind today. All Italian + Fascists should read your discourse and derive from it both + the clear formulation of the basic principles of our program + as well as the reasons why Fascism must be systematically, + firmly, and rationally inflexible in its uncompromising + attitude towards other parties. Thus and only thus can the + word become flesh and the ideas be turned into deeds.<br /><br /> + +Cordial greetings,<br /> +<span style="font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 110%">Mussolini</span>.</p> + +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>Fascism As Action, As Feeling, and As Thought</b></p> + +<p>Much has been said, and is now being said for or against this complex +political and social phenomenon which in the brief period of six years +has taken complete hold of Italian life and, spreading beyond the +borders of the Kingdom, has made itself felt in varying degrees of +intensity throughout the world. But people have been much more eager +to extol or to deplore than to understand—which is natural enough in +a period of tumultuous fervor and of political passion. The time has +not yet arrived for a dispassionate judgment. For even I, who noticed +the very first manifestations of this great development, saw its +significance from the start and participated directly in its first +doings, carefully watching all its early uncertain and changing +developments, even I do not feel competent to pass definite judgment. +Fascism is so large a part of myself that it would be both arbitrary +and absurd for me to try to dissociate my personality from it, to +submit it to impartial scrutiny in order to evaluate it coldly and +accurately. What can be done, however, and it seldom is attempted, is +to make inquiry into the phenomenon which shall not merely consider +its fragmentary and adventitious aspects, but strive to get at its +inner essence. The undertaking may not be easy, but it is necessary, +and no occasion for attempting it is more suitable than the present +one afforded me by my friends of Perugia. Suitable it is in time +because, at the inauguration of a course of lectures and lessons +principally intended to illustrate that old and glorious trend of the +life and history of Italy which takes its name from the humble saint +of Assisi, it seemed natural to connect it with the greatest +achievement of modern Italy, different in so many ways from the +Franciscan movement, but united with it by the mighty common current +of Italian History. It is suitable as well in place because at +Perugia, which witnessed the growth of our religious ideas, of our +political doctrines and of our legal science in the course of the most +glorious centuries of our cultural history, the mind is properly +disposed and almost oriented towards an investigation of this nature.</p> + +<p>First of all let us ask ourselves if there is a political doctrine of +Fascism; if there is any ideal content in the Fascist state. For in +order to link Fascism, both as concept and system, with the history of +Italian thought and find therein a place for it, we must first show +that it is thought; that it is a doctrine. Many persons are not quite +convinced that it is either the one or the other; and I am not +referring solely to those men, cultured or uncultured, as the case may +be and very numerous everywhere, who can discern in this political +innovation nothing except its local and personal aspects, and who know +Fascism only as the particular manner of behavior of this or that +well-known Fascist, of this or that group of a certain town; who +therefore like or dislike the movement on the basis of their likes and +dislikes for the individuals who represent it. Nor do I refer to those +intelligent, and cultivated persons, very intelligent indeed and very +cultivated, who because of their direct or indirect allegiance to the +parties that have been dispossessed by the advent of Fascism, have a +natural cause of resentment against it and are therefore unable to +see, in the blindness of hatred, anything good in it. I am referring +rather to those—and there are many in our ranks too—who know Fascism +as action and feeling but not yet as thought, who therefore have an +intuition but no comprehension of it.</p> + +<p>It is true that Fascism is, above all, action and sentiment and that +such it must continue to be. Were it otherwise, it could not keep up +that immense driving force, that renovating power which it now +possesses and would merely be the solitary meditation of a chosen few. +Only because it is feeling and sentiment, only because it is the +unconscious reawakening of our profound racial instinct, has it the +force to stir the soul of the people, and to set free an irresistible +current of national will. Only because it is action, and as such +actualizes itself in a vast organization and in a huge movement, has +it the conditions for determining the historical course of +contemporary Italy.</p> + +<p>But Fascism is thought as well and it has a theory, which is an +essential part of this historical phenomenon, and which is responsible +in a great measure for the successes that have been achieved. To the +existence of this ideal content of Fascism, to the truth of this +Fascist logic we ascribe the fact that though we commit many errors of +detail, we very seldom go astray on fundamentals, whereas all the +parties of the opposition, deprived as they are of an informing, +animating principle, of a unique directing concept, do very often wage +their war faultlessly in minor tactics, better trained as they are in +parliamentary and journalistic manoeuvres, but they constantly break +down on the important issues. Fascism, moreover, considered as action, +is a typically Italian phenomenon and acquires a universal validity +because of the existence of this coherent and organic doctrine. The +originality of Fascism is due in great part to the autonomy of its +theoretical principles. For even when, in its external behavior and in +its conclusions, it seems identical with other political creeds, in +reality it possesses an inner originality due to the new spirit which +animates it and to an entirely different theoretical approach.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>Common Origins and Common Background of Modern Political Doctrines:<br /> +From Liberalism to Socialism</b></p> + +<p>Modern political thought remained, until recently, both in Italy and +outside of Italy under the absolute control of those doctrines which, +proceeding from the Protestant Reformation and developed by the +adepts of natural law in the XVII and XVIII centuries, were firmly +grounded in the institutions and customs of the English, of the +American, and of the French Revolutions. Under different and sometimes +clashing forms these doctrines have left a determining imprint upon +all theories and actions both social and political, of the XIX and XX +centuries down to the rise of Fascism. The common basis of all these +doctrines, which stretch from Longuet, from Buchanan, and from +Althusen down to Karl Marx, to Wilson and to Lenin is a social and +state concept which I shall call mechanical or atomistic.</p> + +<p>Society according to this concept is merely a sum total of +individuals, a plurality which breaks up into its single components. +Therefore the ends of a society, so considered, are nothing more than +the ends of the individuals which compose it and for whose sake it +exists. An atomistic view of this kind is also necessarily +anti-historical, inasmuch as it considers society in its spatial +attributes and not in its temporal ones; and because it reduces social +life to the existence of a single generation. Society becomes thus a +sum of determined individuals, viz., the generation living at a given +moment. This doctrine which I call atomistic and which appears to be +anti-historical, reveals from under a concealing cloak a strongly +materialistic nature. For in its endeavors to isolate the present from +the past and the future, it rejects the spiritual inheritance of ideas +and sentiments which each generation receives from those preceding and +hands down to the following generation thus destroying the unity and +the spiritual life itself of human society.</p> + +<p>This common basis shows the close logical connection existing between +all political doctrines; the substantial solidarity, which unites all +the political movements, from Liberalism to Socialism, that until +recently have dominated Europe. For these political schools differ +from one another in their methods, but all agree as to the ends to be +achieved. All of them consider the welfare and happiness of +individuals to be the goal of society, itself considered as composed +of individuals of the present generation. All of them see in society +and in its juridical organization, the state, the mere instrument and +means whereby individuals can attain their ends. They differ only in +that the methods pursued for the attainment of these ends vary +considerably one from the other.</p> + +<p>Thus the Liberals insist that the best manner to secure the welfare of +the citizens as individuals is to interfere as little as possible with +the free development of their activities and that therefore the +essential task of the state is merely to coordinate these several +liberties in such a way as to guarantee their coexistence. Kant, who +was without doubt the most powerful and thorough philosopher of +liberalism, said, "man, who is the end, cannot be assumed to have the +value of an instrument." And again, "justice, of which the state is +the specific organ, is the condition whereby the freedom of each is +conditioned upon the freedom of others, according to the general law +of liberty."</p> + +<p>Having thus defined the task of the state, Liberalism confines itself +to the demand of certain guarantees which are to keep the state from +overstepping its functions as general coordinator of liberties and +from sacrificing the freedom of individuals more than is absolutely +necessary for the accomplishment of its purpose. All the efforts are +therefore directed to see to it that the ruler, mandatory of all and +entrusted with the realization, through and by liberty, of the +harmonious happiness of everybody, should never be clothed with undue +power. Hence the creation of a system of checks and limitations +designed to keep the rulers within bounds; and among these, first and +foremost, the principle of the division of powers, contrived as a +means for weakening the state in its relation to the individual, by +making it impossible for the state ever to appear, in its dealings +with citizens, in the full plenitude of sovereign powers; also the +principle of the participation of citizens in the lawmaking power, as +a means for securing, in behalf of the individual, a direct check on +this, the strongest branch, and an indirect check on the entire +government of the state. This system of checks and limitations, which +goes by the name of constitutional government resulted in a moderate +and measured liberalism. The checking power was exercised only by +those citizens who were deemed worthy and capable, with the result +that a small élite was made to represent legally the entire body +politic for whose benefit this régime was instituted.</p> + +<p>It was evident, however, that this moderate system, being +fundamentally illogical and in contradiction with the very principles +from which it proceeded, would soon become the object of serious +criticism. For if the object of society and of the state is the +welfare of individuals, severally considered, how is it possible to +admit that this welfare can be secured by the individuals themselves +only through the possibilities of such a liberal régime? The +inequalities brought about both by nature and by social organizations +are so numerous and so serious, that, for the greater part, +individuals abandoned to themselves not only would fail to attain +happiness, but would also contribute to the perpetuation of their +condition of misery and dejection. The state therefore cannot limit +itself to the merely negative function of the defense of liberty. It +must become active, in behalf of everybody, for the welfare of the +people. It must intervene, when necessary, in order to improve the +material, intellectual, and moral conditions of the masses; it must +find work for the unemployed, instruct and educate the people, and +care for health and hygiene. For if the purpose of society and of the +state is the welfare of individuals, and if it is just that these +individuals themselves control the attainment of their ends, it +becomes difficult to understand why Liberalism should not go the whole +distance, why it should see fit to distinguish certain individuals +from the rest of the mass, and why the functions of the people should +be restricted to the exercise of a mere check. Therefore the state, if +it exists for all, must be governed by all, and not by a small +minority: if the state is for the people, sovereignty must reside in +the people: if all individuals have the right to govern the state, +liberty is no longer sufficient; equality must be added: and if +sovereignty is vested in the people, the people must wield all +sovereignty and not merely a part of it. The power to check and curb +the government is not sufficient. The people must be the government. +Thus, logically developed, Liberalism leads to Democracy, for +Democracy contains the promises of Liberalism but oversteps its +limitations in that it makes the action of the state positive, +proclaims the equality of all citizens through the dogma of popular +sovereignty. Democracy therefore necessarily implies a republican form +of government even though at times, for reasons of expediency, it +temporarily adjusts itself to a monarchical régime.</p> + +<p>Once started on this downward grade of logical deductions it was +inevitable that this atomistic theory of state and society should pass +on to a more advanced position. Great industrial developments and the +existence of a huge mass of working men, as yet badly treated and in a +condition of semi-servitude, possibly endurable in a régime of +domestic industry, became intolerable after the industrial revolution. +Hence a state of affairs which towards the middle of the last century +appeared to be both cruel and threatening. It was therefore natural +that the following question be raised: "If the state is created for +the welfare of its citizens, severally considered, how can it tolerate +an economic system which divides the population into a small minority +of exploiters, the capitalists, on one side, and an immense multitude +of exploited, the working people, on the other?" No! The state must +again intervene and give rise to a different and less iniquitous +economic organization, by abolishing private property, by assuming +direct control of all production, and by organizing it in such a way +that the products of labor be distributed solely among those who +create them, viz., the working classes. Hence we find Socialism, with +its new economic organization of society, abolishing private ownership +of capital and of the instruments and means of production, socializing +the product, suppressing the extra profit of capital, and turning over +to the working class the entire output of the productive processes. It +is evident that Socialism contains and surpasses Democracy in the same +way that Democracy comprises and surpasses Liberalism, being a more +advanced development of the same fundamental concept. Socialism in its +turn generates the still more extreme doctrine of Bolshevism which +demands the violent suppression of the holders of capital, the +dictatorship of the proletariat, as means for a fairer economic +organization of society and for the rescue of the laboring classes +from capitalistic exploitation.</p> + +<p>Thus Liberalism, Democracy, and Socialism, appear to be, as they are +in reality, not only the offspring of one and the same theory of +government, but also logical derivations one of the other. Logically +developed Liberalism leads to Democracy; the logical development of +Democracy issues into Socialism. It is true that for many years, and +with some justification, Socialism was looked upon as antithetical to +Liberalism. But the antithesis is purely relative and breaks down as +we approach the common origin and foundation of the two doctrines, for +we find that the opposition is one of method, not of purpose. The end +is the same for both, viz., the welfare of the individual members of +society. The difference lies in the fact that Liberalism would be +guided to its goal by liberty, whereas Socialism strives to attain it +by the collective organization of production. There is therefore no +antithesis nor even a divergence as to the nature and scope of the +state and the relation of individuals to society. There is only a +difference of evaluation of the means for bringing about these ends +and establishing these relations, which difference depends entirely on +the different economic conditions which prevailed at the time when the +various doctrines were formulated. Liberalism arose and began to +thrive in the period of small industry; Socialism grew with the rise +of industrialism and of world-wide capitalism. The dissension +therefore between these two points of view, or the antithesis, if we +wish so to call it, is limited to the economic field. Socialism is at +odds with Liberalism only on the question of the organization of +production and of the division of wealth. In religious, intellectual, +and moral matters it is liberal, as it is liberal and democratic in +its politics. Even the anti-liberalism and anti-democracy of +Bolshevism are in themselves purely contingent. For Bolshevism is +opposed to Liberalism only in so far as the former is revolutionary, +not in its socialistic aspect. For if the opposition of the Bolsheviki +to liberal and democratic doctrines were to continue, as now seems +more and more probable, the result might be a complete break between +Bolshevism and Socialism notwithstanding the fact that the ultimate +aims of both are identical.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>Fascism as an Integral Doctrine of Sociality Antithetical to the +Atomism of Liberal, Democratic, and Socialistic Theories</b></p> + +<p>The true antithesis, not to this or that manifestation of the +liberal-democratic-socialistic conception of the state but to the +concept itself, is to be found in the doctrine of Fascism. For while +the disagreement between Liberalism and Democracy, and between +Liberalism and Socialism lies in a difference of method, as we have +said, the rift between Socialism, Democracy, and Liberalism on one +side and Fascism on the other is caused by a difference in concept. As +a matter of fact, Fascism never raises the question of methods, using +in its political praxis now liberal ways, now democratic means and at +times even socialistic devices. This indifference to method often +exposes Fascism to the charge of incoherence on the part of +superficial observers, who do not see that what counts with us is the +end and that therefore even when we employ the same means we act with +a radically different spiritual attitude and strive for entirely +different results. The Fascist concept then of the nation, of the +scope of the state, and of the relations obtaining between society and +its individual components, rejects entirely the doctrine which I said +proceeded from the theories of natural law developed in the course of +the XVI, XVII, and XVIII centuries and which form the basis of the +liberal, democratic, and socialistic ideology.</p> + +<p>I shall not try here to expound this doctrine but shall limit myself +to a brief résumé of its fundamental concepts.</p> + +<p>Man—the political animal—according to the definition of Aristotle, +lives and must live in society. A human being outside the pale of +society is an inconceivable thing—a non-man. Humankind in its +entirety lives in social groups that are still, today, very numerous +and diverse, varying in importance and organization from the tribes of +Central Africa to the great Western Empires. These various societies +are fractions of the human species each one of them endowed with a +unified organization. And as there is no unique organization of the +human species, there is not "one" but there are "several" human +societies. Humanity therefore exists solely as a biological concept +not as a social one.</p> + +<p>Each society on the other hand exists in the unity of both its +biological and its social contents. Socially considered it is a +fraction of the human species endowed with unity of organization for +the attainment of the peculiar ends of the species.</p> + +<p>This definition brings out all the elements of the social phenomenon +and not merely those relating to the preservation and perpetuation of +the species. For man is not solely matter; and the ends of the human +species, far from being the materialistic ones we have in common with +other animals, are, rather, and predominantly, the spiritual +finalities which are peculiar to man and which every form of society +strives to attain as well as its stage of social development allows. +Thus the organization of every social group is more or less pervaded +by the spiritual influxes of: unity of language, of culture, of +religion, of tradition, of customs, and in general of feeling and of +volition, which are as essential as the material elements: unity of +economic interests, of living conditions, and of territory. The +definition given above demonstrates another truth, which has been +ignored by the political doctrines that for the last four centuries +have been the foundations of political systems, viz., that the social +concept has a biological aspect, because social groups are fractions +of the human species, each one possessing a peculiar organization, a +particular rank in the development of civilization with certain needs +and appropriate ends, in short, a life which is really its own. If +social groups are then fractions of the human species, they must +possess the same fundamental traits of the human species, which means +that they must be considered as a succession of generations and not as +a collection of individuals.</p> + +<p>It is evident therefore that as the human species is not the total of +the living human beings of the world, so the various social groups +which compose it are not the sum of the several individuals which at a +given moment belong to it, but rather the infinite series of the past, +present, and future generations constituting it. And as the ends of +the human species are not those of the several individuals living at a +certain moment, being occasionally in direct opposition to them, so +the ends of the various social groups are not necessarily those of the +individuals that belong to the groups but may even possibly be in +conflict with such ends, as one sees clearly whenever the preservation +and the development of the species demand the sacrifice of the +individual, to wit, in times of war.</p> + +<p>Fascism replaces therefore the old atomistic and mechanical state +theory which was at the basis of the liberal and democratic doctrines +with an organic and historic concept. When I say organic I do not wish +to convey the impression that I consider society as an organism after +the manner of the so-called "organic theories of the state"; but +rather to indicate that the social groups as fractions of the species +receive thereby a life and scope which transcend the scope and life of +the individuals identifying themselves with the history and finalities +of the uninterrupted series of generations. It is irrelevant in this +connection to determine whether social groups, considered as fractions +of the species, constitute organisms. The important thing is to +ascertain that this organic concept of the state gives to society a +continuous life over and beyond the existence of the several +individuals.</p> + +<p>The relations therefore between state and citizens are completely +reversed by the Fascist doctrine. Instead of the liberal-democratic +formula, "society for the individual," we have, "individuals for +society" with this difference however: that while the liberal +doctrines eliminated society, Fascism does not submerge the individual +in the social group. It subordinates him, but does not eliminate him; +the individual as a part of his generation ever remaining an element +of society however transient and insignificant he may be. Moreover the +development of individuals in each generation, when coordinated and +harmonized, conditions the development and prosperity of the entire +social unit.</p> + +<p>At this juncture the antithesis between the two theories must appear +complete and absolute. Liberalism, Democracy, and Socialism look upon +social groups as aggregates of living individuals; for Fascism they +are the recapitulating unity of the indefinite series of generations. +For Liberalism, society has no purposes other than those of the +members living at a given moment. For Fascism, society has historical +and immanent ends of preservation, expansion, improvement, quite +distinct from those of the individuals which at a given moment compose +it; so distinct in fact that they may even be in opposition. Hence the +necessity, for which the older doctrines make little allowance, of +sacrifice, even up to the total immolation of individuals, in behalf +of society; hence the true explanation of war, eternal law of mankind, +interpreted by the liberal-democratic doctrines as a degenerate +absurdity or as a maddened monstrosity.</p> + +<p>For Liberalism, society has no life distinct from the life of the +individuals, or as the phrase goes: solvitur in singularitates. For +Fascism, the life of society overlaps the existence of individuals and +projects itself into the succeeding generations through centuries and +millennia. Individuals come into being, grow, and die, followed by +others, unceasingly; social unity remains always identical to itself. +For Liberalism, the individual is the end and society the means; nor +is it conceivable that the individual, considered in the dignity of an +ultimate finality, be lowered to mere instrumentality. For Fascism, +society is the end, individuals the means, and its whole life consists +in using individuals as instruments for its social ends. The state +therefore guards and protects the welfare and development of +individuals not for their exclusive interest, but because of the +identity of the needs of individuals with those of society as a whole. +We can thus accept and explain institutions and practices, which like +the death penalty, are condemned by Liberalism in the name of the +preeminence of individualism.</p> + +<p>The fundamental problem of society in the old doctrines is the +question of the rights of individuals. It may be the right to freedom +as the Liberals would have it; or the right to the government of the +commonwealth as the Democrats claim it, or the right to economic +justice as the Socialists contend; but in every case it is the right +of individuals, or groups of individuals (classes). Fascism on the +other hand faces squarely the problem of the right of the state and of +the duty of individuals. Individual rights are only recognized in so +far as they are implied in the rights of the state. In this +preeminence of duty we find the highest ethical value of Fascism.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>The Problems of Liberty, of Government, and of Social Justice in the +Political Doctrine of Fascism</b></p> + +<p>This, however, does not mean that the problems raised by the other +schools are ignored by Fascism. It means simply that it faces them and +solves them differently, as, for example, the problem of liberty.</p> + +<p>There is a Liberal theory of freedom, and there is a Fascist concept +of liberty. For we, too, maintain the necessity of safeguarding the +conditions that make for the free development of the individual; we, +too, believe that the oppression of individual personality can find no +place in the modern state. We do not, however, accept a bill of rights +which tends to make the individual superior to the state and to +empower him to act in opposition to society. Our concept of liberty is +that the individual must be allowed to develop his personality in +behalf of the state, for these ephemeral and infinitesimal elements of +the complex and permanent life of society determine by their normal +growth the development of the state. But this individual growth must +be normal. A huge and disproportionate development of the individual +of classes, would prove as fatal to society as abnormal growths are to +living organisms. Freedom therefore is due to the citizen and to +classes on condition that they exercise it in the interest of society +as a whole and within the limits set by social exigencies, liberty +being, like any other individual right, a concession of the state. +What I say concerning civil liberties applies to economic freedom as +well. Fascism does not look upon the doctrine of economic liberty as +an absolute dogma. It does not refer economic problems to individual +needs, to individual interest, to individual solutions. On the +contrary it considers the economic development, and especially the +production of wealth, as an eminently social concern, wealth being for +society an essential element of power and prosperity. But Fascism +maintains that in the ordinary run of events economic liberty serves +the social purposes best; that it is profitable to entrust to +individual initiative the task of economic development both as to +production and as to distribution; that in the economic world +individual ambition is the most effective means for obtaining the best +social results with the least effort. Therefore, on the question also +of economic liberty the Fascists differ fundamentally from the +Liberals; the latter see in liberty a principle, the the Fascists +accept it as a method. By the Liberals, freedom is recognized in the +interest of the citizens; the Fascists grant it in the interest of +society. In other terms, Fascists make of the individual an economic +instrument for the advancement of society, an instrument which they +use so long as it functions and which they subordinate when no longer +serviceable. In this guise Fascism solves the eternal problem of +economic freedom and of state interference, considering both as mere +methods which may or may not be employed in accordance with the social +needs of the moment.</p> + +<p>What I have said concerning political and economic Liberalism applies +also to Democracy. The latter envisages fundamentally the problem of +sovereignty; Fascism does also, but in an entirely different manner. +Democracy vests sovereignty in the people, that is to say, in the mass +of human beings. Fascism discovers sovereignty to be inherent in +society when it is juridically organized as a state. Democracy +therefore turns over the government of the state to the multitude of +living men that they may use it to further their own interests; +Fascism insists that the government be entrusted to men capable of +rising above their own private interests and of realizing the +aspirations of the social collectivity, considered in its unity and in +its relation to the past and future. Fascism therefore not only +rejects the dogma of popular sovereignty and substitutes for it that +of state sovereignty, but it also proclaims that the great mass of +citizens is not a suitable advocate of social interests for the reason +that the capacity to ignore individual private interests in favor of +the higher demands of society and of history is a very rare gift and +the privilege of the chosen few. Natural intelligence and cultural +preparation are of great service in such tasks. Still more valuable +perhaps is the intuitiveness of rare great minds, their traditionalism +and their inherited qualities. This must not however be construed to +mean that the masses are not to be allowed to exercise any influence +on the life of the state. On the contrary, among peoples with a great +history and with noble traditions, even the lowest elements of society +possess an instinctive discernment of what is necessary for the +welfare of the race, which in moments of great historical crises +reveals itself to be almost infallible. It is therefore as wise to +afford to this instinct the means of declaring itself as it is +judicious to entrust the normal control of the commonwealth to a +selected élite.</p> + +<p>As for Socialism, the Fascist doctrine frankly recognizes that the +problem raised by it as to the relations between capital and labor is +a very serious one, perhaps the central one of modern life. What +Fascism does not countenance is the collectivistic solution proposed +by the Socialists. The chief defect of the socialistic method has been +clearly demonstrated by the experience of the last few years. It does +not take into account human nature, it is therefore outside of +reality, in that it will not recognize that the most powerful spring +of human activities lies in individual self-interest and that +therefore the elimination from the economic field of this interest +results in complete paralysis. The suppression of private ownership of +capital carries with it the suppression of capital itself, for capital +is formed by savings and no one will want to save, but will rather +consume all he makes if he knows he cannot keep and hand down to his +heirs the results of his labors. The dispersion of capital means the +end of production since capital, no matter who owns it, is always an +indispensable tool of production. Collective organization of +production is followed therefore by the paralysis of production since, +by eliminating from the productive mechanism the incentive of +individual interest, the product becomes rarer and more costly. +Socialism then, as experience has shown, leads to increase in +consumption, to the dispersion of capital and therefore to poverty. Of +what avail is it, then, to build a social machine which will more +justly distribute wealth if this very wealth is destroyed by the +construction of this machine? Socialism committed an irreparable error +when it made of private property a matter of justice while in truth it +is a problem of social utility. The recognition of individual property +rights, then, is a part of the Fascist doctrine not because of its +individual bearing but because of its social utility.</p> + +<p>We must reject, therefore, the socialistic solution but we cannot +allow the problem raised by the Socialists to remain unsolved, not +only because justice demands a solution but also because the +persistence of this problem in liberal and democratic régimes has been +a menace to public order and to the authority of the state. Unlimited +and unrestrained class self-defense, evinced by strikes and lockouts, +by boycotts and sabotage, leads inevitably to anarchy. The Fascist +doctrine, enacting justice among the classes in compliance with a +fundamental necessity of modern life, does away with class +self-defense, which, like individual self-defense in the days of +barbarism, is a source of disorder and of civil war.</p> + +<p>Having reduced the problem of these terms, only one solution is +possible, the realization of justice among the classes by and through +the state. Centuries ago the state, as the specific organ of justice, +abolished personal self-defense in individual controversies and +substituted for it state justice. The time has now come when class +self-defense also must be replaced by state justice. To facilitate the +change Fascism has created its own syndicalism. The suppression of +class self-defense does not mean the suppression of class defense +which is an inalienable necessity of modern economic life. Class +organization is a fact which cannot be ignored but it must be +controlled, disciplined, and subordinated by the state. The syndicate, +instead of being, as formerly, an organ of extra-legal defense, must +be turned into an organ of legal defense which will become judicial +defense as soon as labor conflicts become a matter of judicial +settlement. Fascism therefore has transformed the syndicate, that old +revolutionary instrument of syndicalistic socialists, into an +instrument of legal defense of the classes both within and without the +law courts. This solution may encounter obstacles in its development; +the obstacles of malevolence, of suspicion of the untried, of +erroneous calculation, etc., but it is destined to triumph even though +it must advance through progressive stages.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<b>Historical Value of the Doctrine of Fascism</b></p> + +<p>I might carry this analysis farther but what I have already said is +sufficient to show that the rise of a Fascist ideology already gives +evidence of an upheaval in the intellectual field as powerful as the +change that was brought about in the XVII and XVIII centuries by the +rise and diffusion of those doctrines of <i>ius naturale</i> which go under +the name of "Philosophy of the French Revolution." The philosophy of +the French Revolution formulated certain principles, the authority of +which, unquestioned for a century and a half, seemed so final that +they were given the attribute of immortality. The influence of these +principles was so great that they determined the formation of a new +culture, of a new civilization. Likewise the fervor of the ideas that +go to make up the Fascist doctrine, now in its inception but destined +to spread rapidly, will determine the course of a new culture and of a +new conception of civil life. The deliverance of the individual from +the state carried out in the XVIII century will be followed in the XX +century by the rescue of the state from the individual. The period of +authority, of social obligations, of "hierarchical" subordination will +succeed the period of individualism, of state feebleness, of +insubordination.</p> + +<p>This innovating trend is not and cannot be a return to the Middle +Ages. It is a common but an erroneous belief that the movement, +started by the Reformation and heightened by the French Revolution, +was directed against mediaeval ideas and institutions. Rather than as +a negation, this movement should be looked upon as the development and +fulfillment of the doctrines and practices of the Middle Ages. +Socially and politically considered the Middle Ages wrought +disintegration and anarchy; they were characterized by the gradual +weakening and ultimate extinction of the state, embodied in the Roman +Empire, driven first to the East, then back to France, thence to +Germany, a shadow of its former self; they were marked by the steady +advance of the forces of usurpation, destructive of the state and +reciprocally obnoxious; they bore the imprints of a triumphant +particularism. Therefore the individualistic and anti-social movement +of the XVII and XVIII centuries was not directed against the Middle +Ages, but rather against the restoration of the state by great +national monarchies. If this movement destroyed mediaeval institutions +that had survived the Middle Ages and had been grafted upon the new +states, it was in consequence of the struggle primarily waged against +the state. The spirit of the movement was decidedly mediaeval. The +novelty consisted in the social surroundings in which it operated and +in its relation to new economic developments. The individualism of the +feudal lords, the particularism of the cities and of the corporations +had been replaced by the individualism and the particularism of the +bourgeoisie and of the popular classes.</p> + +<p>The Fascist ideology cannot therefore look back to the Middle Ages, of +which it is a complete negation. The Middle Ages spell disintegration; +Fascism is nothing if not sociality. It is if anything the beginning +of the end of the Middle Ages prolonged four centuries beyond the end +ordinarily set for them and revived by the social democratic anarchy +of the past thirty years. If Fascism can be said to look back at all +it is rather in the direction of ancient Rome whose social and +political traditions at the distance of fifteen centuries are being +revived by Fascist Italy.</p> + +<p>I am fully aware that the value of Fascism, as an intellectual +movement, baffles the minds of many of its followers and supporters +and is denied outright by its enemies. There is no malice in this +denial, as I see it, but rather an incapacity to comprehend. The +liberal-democratic-socialistic ideology has so completely and for so +long a time dominated Italian culture that in the minds of the +majority of people trained by it, it has assumed the value of an +absolute truth, almost the authority of a natural law. Every faculty +of self-criticism is suppressed in the minds and this suppression +entails an incapacity for understanding that time alone can change. It +will be advisable therefore to rely mainly upon the new generations +and in general upon persons whose culture is not already fixed. This +difficulty to comprehend on the part of those who have been thoroughly +grounded by a different preparation in the political and social +sciences explains in part why Fascism has not been wholly successful +with the intellectual classes and with mature minds, and why on the +other hand it has been very successful with young people, with women, +in rural districts, and among men of action unencumbered by a fixed +and set social and political education. Fascism moreover, as a +cultural movement, is just now taking its first steps. As in the case +with all great movements, action regularly outstrips thought. It was +thus at the time of the Protestant Reformation and of the +individualistic reaction of the XVII and XVIII centuries. The English +revolution occurred when the doctrines of natural law were coming into +being and the theoretical development of the liberal and democratic +theories followed the French Revolution.</p> + +<p>At this point it will not be very difficult to assign a fitting place +in history to this great trend of thought which is called Fascism and +which, in spite of the initial difficulties, already gives clear +indication of the magnitude of its developments.</p> + +<p>The liberal-democratic speculation both in its origin and in the +manner of its development appears to be essentially a non-Italian +formation. Its connection with the Middle Ages already shows it to be +foreign to the Latin mind, the mediaeval disintegration being the +result of the triumph of Germanic individualism over the political +mentality of the Romans. The barbarians, boring from within and +hacking from without, pulled down the great political structure raised +by Latin genius and put nothing in its place. Anarchy lasted eight +centuries during which time only one institution survived and that a +Roman one—the Catholic Church. But, as soon as the laborious process +of reconstruction was started with the constitution of the great +national states backed by the Roman Church the Protestant Reformation +set in followed by the individualistic currents of the XVII and XVIII +centuries, and the process of disintegration was started anew. This +anti-state tendency was the expression of the Germanic spirit and it +therefore became predominant among the Germanic peoples and wherever +Germanism had left a deep imprint even if afterward superficially +covered by a veneer of Latin culture. It is true that Marsilius from +Padua is an Italian writing for Ludwig the Bavarian, but the other +writers who in the XIV century appear as forerunners of the liberal +doctrines are not Italians: Occam and Wycliff are English; Oresme is +French. Among the advocates of individualism in the XVI century who +prepared the way for the triumph of the doctrines of natural law in +the subsequent centuries, Hotman and Languet are French, Buchanan is +Scotch. Of the great authorities of natural law, Grotius and Spinosa +are Dutch; Locke is English; l'Abbé de St. Pierre, Montesquieu, +d'Argenson, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot and the encyclopaedists are +French; Althusius, Pufendorf, Kant, Fichte are German.</p> + +<p>Italy took no part in the rise and development of the doctrines of +natural law. Only in the XIX century did she evince a tardy interest +in these doctrines, just as she tardily contributed to them at the +dose of the XVIII century through the works of Beccaria and Filangeri.</p> + +<p>While therefore in other countries such as France, England, Germany, +and Holland, the general tradition in the social and political +sciences worked in behalf of anti-state individualism, and therefore +of liberal and democratic doctrines, Italy, on the other hand, clung +to the powerful legacy of its past in virtue of which she proclaims +the rights of the state, the preeminence of its authority, and the +superiority of its ends. The very fact that the Italian political +doctrine in the Middle Ages linked itself with the great political +writers of antiquity, Plato and Aristotle, who in a different manner +but with an equal firmness advocated a strong state and the +subordination of individuals to it, is a sufficient index of the +orientation of political philosophy in Italy. We all know how thorough +and crushing the authority of Aristotle was in the Middle Ages. But +for Aristotle the spiritual cement of the state is "virtue" not +absolute virtue but political virtue, which is social devotion. His +state is made up solely of its citizens, the citizens being either +those who defend it with their arms or who govern it as magistrates. +All others who provide it with the materials and services it needs are +not citizens. They become such only in the corrupt forms of certain +democracies. Society is therefore divided into two classes, the free +men or citizens who give their time to noble and virtuous occupations +and who profess their subjection to the state, and the laborers and +slaves who work for the maintenance of the former. No man in this +scheme is his own master. The slaves belong to the freemen, and the +freemen belong to the state.</p> + +<p>It was therefore natural that St. Thomas Aquinas the greatest +political writer of the Middle Ages should emphasize the necessity of +unity in the political field, the harm of plurality of rulers, the +dangers and damaging effects of demagogy. The good of the state, says +St. Thomas Aquinas, is unity. And who can procure unity more fittingly +than he who is himself one? Moreover the government must follow, as +far as possible, the course of nature and in nature power is always +one. In the physical body only one organ is dominant—the heart; in +the spirit only one faculty has sway—reason. Bees have one sole +ruler; and the entire universe one sole sovereign—God. Experience +shows that the countries, which are ruled by many, perish because of +discord while those that are ruled over by one enjoy peace, justice, +and plenty. The States which are not ruled by one are troubled by +dissensions, and toil unceasingly. On the contrary the states which +are ruled over by one king enjoy peace, thrive in justice and are +gladdened by affluence.<a name="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2"><sup>[2]</sup></a> +The rule of the multitudes can not be +sanctioned, for where the crowd rules it oppresses the rich as would a +tyrant.<a name="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3"><sup>[3]</sup></a></p> + +<p>Italy in the Middle Ages presented a curious phenomenon: while in +practice the authority of the state was being dissolved into a +multiplicity of competing sovereignties, the theory of state unity and +authority was kept alive in the minds of thinkers by the memories of +the Roman Imperial tradition. It was this memory that supported for +centuries the fiction of the universal Roman Empire when in reality it +existed no longer. Dante's <i>De Monarchia</i> deduced the theory of this +empire conceived as the unity of a strong state. "Quod potest fieri +per unum melius est per unum fieri quam plura," he says in the XIV +chapter of the first book, and further on, considering the citizen as +an instrument for the attainment of the ends of the state, he +concludes that the individual must sacrifice himself for his country. +"Si pars debet se exponere pro salute totius, cum homo siti pars +quaedam civitatis ... homo pro patria debet exponere se ipsum." (lib. +II. 8).</p> + +<p>The Roman tradition, which was one of practice but not of +theories—for Rome constructed the most solid state known to history +with extraordinary statesmanship but with hardly any political +writings—influenced considerably the founder of modern political +science, Nicolo Machiavelli, who was himself in truth not a creator of +doctrines but a keen observer of human nature who derived from the +study of history practical maxims of political import. He freed the +science of politics from the formalism of the scholastics and brought +it close to concrete reality. His writings, an inexhaustible mine of +practical remarks and precious observations, reveal dominant in him +the state idea, no longer abstract but in the full historical +concreteness of the national unity of Italy. Machiavelli therefore is +not only the greatest of modern political writers, he is also the +greatest of our countrymen in full possession of a national Italian +consciousness. To liberate Italy, which was in his day "enslaved, torn +and pillaged," and to make her more powerful, he would use any means, +for to his mind the holiness of the end justified them completely. In +this he was sharply rebuked by foreigners who were not as hostile to +his means as they were fearful of the end which he propounded. He +advocated therefore the constitution of a strong Italian state, +supported by the sacrifices and by the blood of the citizens, not +defended by mercenary troops; well-ordered internally, aggressive and +bent on expansion. "Weak republics," he said, "have no determination +and can never reach a decision." (Disc. I. c. 38). "Weak states were +ever dubious in choosing their course, and slow deliberations are +always harmful." (Disc. I. c. 10). And again: "Whoso undertakes to +govern a multitude either in a régime of liberty or in a monarchy, +without previously making sure of those who are hostile to the new +order of things builds a short-lived state." (Disc. I. c. 16). And +further on "the dictatorial authority helped and did not harm the +Roman republic" (Disc. I. c. 34), and "Kings and republics lacking in +national troops both for offense and defense should be ashamed of +their existence." (Disc. I. c. 21). And again: "Money not only does +not protect you but rather it exposes you to plundering assaults. Nor +can there be a more false opinion than that which says that money is +the sinews of war. Not money but good soldiers win battles." (Disc. I. +II. c. 10). "The country must be defended with ignominy or with glory +and in either way it is nobly defended." (Disc. III. c. 41). "And with +dash and boldness people often capture what they never would have +obtained by ordinary means." (Disc. III. c. 44). Machiavelli was not +only a great political authority, he taught the mastery of energy and +will. Fascism learns from him not only its doctrines but its action as +well.</p> + +<p>Different from Machiavelli's, in mental attitude, in cultural +preparation, and in manner of presentation, G.B. Vico must yet be +connected with the great Florentine from whom in a certain way he +seems to proceed. In the heyday of "natural law" Vico is decidedly +opposed to <i>ius naturale</i> and in his attacks against its advocates, +Grotius, Seldenus and Pufendorf, he systematically assails the +abstract, rationalistic, and utilitarian principles of the XVIII +century. As Montemayor justly says:<a name="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4"><sup>[4]</sup></a> +"While the 'natural jurists', +basing justice and state on utility and interest and grounding human +certitude on reason, were striving to draft permanent codes and +construct the perfect state, Vico strongly asserted the social nature +of man, the ethical character of the juridical consciousness and its +growth through the history of humanity rather than in sacred history. +Vico therefore maintains that doctrines must begin with those subjects +which take up and explain the entire course of civilization. +Experience and not ratiocination, history and not reason must help +human wisdom to understand the civil and political regimes which were +the result not of reason or philosophy, but rather of common sense, or +if you will of the social consciousness of man" and farther on (pages +373-374), "to Vico we owe the conception of history in its fullest +sense as magistra vitae, the search after the humanity of history, the +principle which makes the truth progress with time, the discovery of +the political 'course' of nations. It is Vico who uttered the eulogy +of the patrician 'heroic hearts' of the 'patres patriae' first +founders of states, magnanimous defenders of the commonwealth and wise +counsellors of politics. To Vico we owe the criticism of democracies, +the affirmation of their brief existence, of their rapid +disintegration at the hands of factions and demagogues, of their lapse +first into anarchy, then into monarchy, when their degradation does +not make them a prey of foreign oppressors. Vico conceived of civil +liberty as subjection to law, as just subordination, of the private to +the public interests, to the sway of the state. It was Vico who +sketched modern society as a world of nations each one guarding its +own imperium, fighting just and not inhuman wars. In Vico therefore we +find the condemnation of pacifism, the assertion that right is +actualized by bodily force, that without force, right is of no avail, +and that therefore 'qui ab iniuriis se tueri non potest servus est.'"</p> + +<p>It is not difficult to discern the analogies between these +affirmations and the fundamental views and the spirit of Fascism. Nor +should we marvel at this similarity. Fascism, a strictly Italian +phenomenon, has its roots in the Risorgimento and the Risorgimento was +influenced undoubtedly by Vico.</p> + +<p>It would be inexact to affirm that the philosophy of Vico dominated +the Risorgimento. Too many elements of German, French, and English +civilizations had been added to our culture during the first half of +the XIX century to make this possible, so much so that perhaps Vico +might have remained unknown to the makers of Italian unity if another +powerful mind from Southern Italy, Vincenzo Cuoco, had not taken it +upon himself to expound the philosophy of Vico in those very days in +which the intellectual preparation of the Risorgimento was being +carried on.</p> + +<p>An adequate account of Cuoco's doctrines would carry me too far. +Montemayor, in the article quoted above, gives them considerable +attention. He quotes among other things Cuoco's arraignment of +Democracy: "Italy has fared badly at the hand of Democracy which has +withered to their roots the three sacred plants of liberty, unity, +and independence. If we wish to see these trees flourish again let us +protect them in the future from Democracy."</p> + +<p>The influence of Cuoco, an exile at Milan, exerted through his +writings, his newspaper articles, and Vichian propaganda, on the +Italian patriots is universally recognized. Among the regular readers +of his <i>Giornale Italiano</i> we find Monti and Foscolo. Clippings of his +articles were treasured by Mazzini and Manzoni, who often acted as his +secretary, called him his "master in politics." +<a name="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5"><sup>[5]</sup></a></p> + +<p>The influence of the Italian tradition summed up and handed down by +Cuoco was felt by Mazzini whose interpretation of the function of the +citizen as duty and mission is to be connected with Vico's doctrine +rather than with the philosophic and political doctrines of the French +Revolution.</p> + +<p>"Training for social duty," said Mazzini, "is essentially and +logically unitarian. Life for it is but a duty, a mission. The norm +and definition of such mission can only be found in a collective term +superior to all the individuals of the country—in the people, in the +nation. If there is a collective mission, a communion of duty ... it +can only be represented in the national unity." +<a name="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6"><sup>[6]</sup></a> And farther on: +"The declaration of rights, which all constitutions insist in copying +slavishly from the French, express only those of the period ... which +considered the individual as the end and pointed out only one half of +the problem" and again, "assume the existence of one of those crises +that threaten the life of the nation, and demand the active sacrifice +of all its sons ... will you ask the citizens to face martyrdom in +virtue of their rights? You have taught men that society was solely +constituted to guarantee their rights and now you ask them to +sacrifice one and all, to suffer and die for the safety of the +'nation?'"<a name="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7"><sup>[7]</sup></a></p> + +<p>In Mazzini's conception of the citizen as instrument for the +attainment of the nation's ends and therefore submissive to a higher +mission, to the duty of supreme sacrifice, we see the anticipation of +one of the fundamental points of the Fascist doctrine.</p> + +<p>Unfortunately, the autonomy of the political thought of Italy, +vigorously established in the works of Vico, nobly reclaimed by +Vincenzo Cuoco, kept up during the struggles of the Risorgimento in +spite of the many foreign influences of that period, seemed to exhaust +itself immediately after the unification. Italian political thought +which had been original in times of servitude, became enslaved in the +days of freedom.</p> + +<p>A powerful innovating movement, issuing from the war and of which +Fascism is the purest expression, was to restore Italian thought in +the sphere of political doctrine to its own traditions which are the +traditions of Rome.</p> + +<p>This task of intellectual liberation, now slowly being accomplished, +is no less important than the political deliverance brought about by +the Fascist Revolution. It is a great task which continues and +integrates the Risorgimento; it is now bringing to an end, after the +cessation of our political servitude, the intellectual dependence of +Italy.</p> + +<p>Thanks to it, Italy again speaks to the world and the world listens to +Italy. It is a great task and a great deed and it demands great +efforts. To carry it through, we must, each one of us, free ourselves +of the dross of ideas and mental habits which two centuries of foreign +intellectualistic tradition have heaped upon us; we must not only take +on a new culture but create for ourselves a new soul. We must +methodically and patiently contribute something towards the organic +and complete elaboration of our doctrine, at the same time supporting +it both at home and abroad with untiring devotion. We ask this effort +of renovation and collaboration of all Fascists, as well as of all who +feel themselves to be Italians. After the hour of sacrifice comes the +hour of unyielding efforts. To our work, then, fellow countrymen, for +the glory of Italy!</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em">FOOTNOTES:</p> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1">[1]</a> Translated from the Italian.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2">[2]</a> "civitates quae non reguntur ab uno dissenionibus +laborant et absque pace fluctuant. E contrario civitates quae sub uno +rege reguntur pace gaudent, iustitia florent et affluentia rerum +laetantur." (De reg. princ. I. c. 2).</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3">[3]</a> "ideo manifustum est, quod multitudo est sicut tyrannuus, +quare operationes multitudinis sunt iniustae. ergo non expedit +multitudinem dominari." (Comm. In Polit. L. III. lectio VIII).</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4">[4]</a> Rivista internazionale di filosofia del diritto V. 351.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5">[5]</a> Montemayor. Riv. Int. etc. p. 370.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6">[6]</a> della unità italiana. Scritti, Vol. III.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7">[7]</a> I sistemi e la democrazia. Scritti, Vol. VII.</p></div> + +<br /><br /> + + + + +<a name="THE_PHILOSOPHIC_BASIS_OF_FASCISM"></a><hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<br /> + +<h3>THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF FASCISM</h3><span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span> +<h3>by</h3> +<h3><span style="font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 110%">Giovanni Gentile</span></h3> +<br /> + +<p>For the Italian nation the World War was the solution of a deep +spiritual crisis. They willed and fought it long before they felt and +evaluated it. But they willed, fought, felt and evaluated it in a +certain spirit which Italy's generals and statesmen exploited, but +which also worked on them, conditioning their policies and their +action. The spirit in question was not altogether clear and +self-consistent. That it lacked unanimity was particularly apparent +just before and again just after the war when feelings were not +subject to war discipline. It was as though the Italian character were +crossed by two different currents which divided it into two +irreconcilable sections. One need think only of the days of Italian +neutrality and of the debates that raged between Interventionists and +Neutralists. The ease with which the most inconsistent ideas were +pressed into service by both parties showed that the issue was not +between two opposing political opinions, two conflicting concepts of +history, but actually between two different temperaments, two +different souls.</p> + +<p>For one kind of person the important point was to fight the war, +either on the side of Germany or against Germany: but in either event +to fight the war, without regard to specific advantages—to fight the +war in order that at last the Italian nation, created rather by +favoring conditions than by the will of its people to be a nation, +might receive its test in blood, such a test as only war can bring by +uniting all citizens in a single thought, a single passion, a single +hope, emphasizing to each individual that all have something in +common, something transcending private interests.</p> + +<p>This was the very thing that frightened the other kind of person, the +prudent man, the realist, who had a clear view of the mortal risks a +young, inexperienced, badly prepared nation would be running in such a +war, and who also saw—a most significant point—that, all things +considered, a bargaining neutrality would surely win the country +tangible rewards, as great as victorious participation itself.</p> + +<p>The point at issue was just that: the Italian Neutralists stood for +material advantages, advantages tangible, ponderable, palpable; the +Interventionists stood for moral advantages, intangible, impalpable, +imponderable—imponderable at least on the scales used by their +antagonists. On the eve of the war these two Italian characters stood +facing each other, scowling and irreconcilable—the one on the +aggressive, asserting itself ever more forcefully through the various +organs of public opinion; the other on the defensive, offering +resistance through the Parliament which in those days still seemed to +be the basic repository of State sovereignty. Civil conflict seemed +inevitable in Italy, and civil war was in fact averted only because +the King took advantage of one of his prerogatives and declared war +against the Central Powers.</p> + +<p>This act of the King was the first decisive step toward the solution +of the crisis.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><b>II</b></p> + +<p>The crisis had ancient origins. Its roots sank deep into the inner +spirit of the Italian people.</p> + +<p>What were the creative forces of the <i>Risorgimento</i>? The "Italian +people," to which some historians are now tending to attribute an +important if not a decisive role in our struggle for national unity +and independence, was hardly on the scene at all. The active agency +was always an idea become a person—it was one or several determined +wills which were fixed on determined goals. There can be no question +that the birth of modern Italy was the work of the few. And it could +not be otherwise. It is always the few who represent the +self-consciousness and the will of an epoch and determine what its +history shall be; for it is they who see the forces at their disposal +and through those forces actuate the one truly active and productive +force—their own will.</p> + +<p>That will we find in the song of the poets and the ideas of the +political writers, who know how to use a language harmonious with a +universal sentiment or with a sentiment capable of becoming universal. +In the case of Italy, in all our bards, philosophers and leaders, from +Alfieri to Foscolo, from Leopardi to Manzoni, from Mazzini to +Gioberti, we are able to pick up the threads of a new fabric, which is +a new kind of thought, a new kind of soul, a new kind of Italy. This +new Italy differed from the old Italy in something that was very +simple but yet was of the greatest importance: this new Italy took +life seriously, while the old one did not. People in every age had +dreamed of an Italy and talked of an Italy. The notion of Italy had +been sung in all kinds of music, propounded in all kinds of +philosophy. But it was always an Italy that existed in the brain of +some scholar whose learning was more or less divorced from reality. +Now reality demands that convictions be taken seriously, that ideas +become actions. Accordingly it was necessary that this Italy, which +was an affair of brains only, become also an affair of hearts, become, +that is, something serious, something alive. This, and no other, was +the meaning of Mazzini's great slogan: "Thought and Action." It was +the essence of the great revolution which he preached and which he +accomplished by instilling his doctrine into the hearts of others. Not +many others—a small minority! But they were numerous enough and +powerful enough to raise the question where it could be answered—in +Italian public opinion (taken in conjunction with the political +situation prevailing in the rest of Europe). They were able to +establish the doctrine that life is not a game, but a mission; that, +therefore, the individual has a law and a purpose in obedience to +which and in fulfillment of which he alone attains his true value; +that, accordingly, he must make sacrifices, now of personal comfort, +now of private interest, now of life itself.</p> + +<p>No revolution ever possessed more markedly than did the Italian +<i>Risorgimento</i> this characteristic of ideality, of thought preceding +action. Our revolt was not concerned with the material needs of life, +nor did it spring from elementary and widely diffused sentiments +breaking out in popular uprisings and mass disturbances. The movements +of 1847 and 1848 were demonstrations, as we would say today, of +"intellectuals"; they were efforts toward a goal on the part of a +minority of patriots who were standard bearers of an ideal and were +driving governments and peoples toward its attainment. +Idealism—understood as faith in the advent of an ideal reality, as a +manner of conceiving life not as fixed within the limits of existing +fact, but as incessant progress and transformation toward the level of +a higher law which controls men with the very force of the idea—was +the sum and substance of Mazzini's teaching; and it supplied the most +conspicuous characteristic of our great Italian revolution. In this +sense all the patriots who worked for the foundation of the new +kingdom were Mazzinians—Gioberti, Cavour, Victor Emmanuel, Garibaldi. +To be sure, our writers of the first rank, such as Manzoni and +Rosmini, had no historical connection with Mazzini; but they had the +same general tendency as Mazzini. Working along diverging lines, they +all came together on the essential point: that true life is not the +life which is, but also the life which ought to be. It was a +conviction essentially religious in character, essentially +anti-materialistic.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><b>III</b></p> + +<p>This religious and idealistic manner of looking at life, so +characteristic of the <i>Risorgimento</i>, prevails even beyond the heroic +age of the revolution and the establishment of the Kingdom. It +survives down through Ricasoli, Lanza, Sella and Minghetti, down, that +is, to the occupation of Rome and the systemization of our national +finances. The parliamentary overturn of 1876, indeed, marks not the +end, but rather an interruption, on the road that Italy had been +following since the beginning of the century. The outlook then +changed, and not by the capriciousness or weakness of men, but by a +necessity of history which it would be idiotic in our day to deplore. +At that time the fall of the Right, which had ruled continuously +between 1861 and 1876, seemed to most people the real conquest of +freedom.</p> + +<p>To be sure the Right cannot be accused of too great scruple in +respecting the liberties guaranteed by our Constitution; but the real +truth was that the Right conceived liberty in a sense directly +opposite to the notions of the Left. The Left moved from the +individual to the State: the Right moved from the State to the +individual. The men of the left thought of "the people" as merely the +agglomerate of the citizens composing it. They therefore made the +individual the center and the point of departure of all the rights and +prerogatives which a régime of freedom was bound to respect.</p> + +<p>The men of the Right, on the contrary, were firmly set in the notion +that no freedom can be conceived except within the State, that freedom +can have no important content apart from a solid régime of law +indisputably sovereign over the activities and the interests of +individuals. For the Right there could be no individual freedom not +reconcilable with the authority of the State. In their eyes the +general interest was always paramount over private interests. The law, +therefore, should have absolute efficacy and embrace the whole life of +the people.</p> + +<p>This conception of the Right was evidently sound; but it involved +great dangers when applied without regard to the motives which +provoked it. Unless we are careful, too much law leads to stasis and +therefore to the annihilation of the life which it is the State's +function to regulate but which the State cannot suppress. The State +may easily become a form indifferent to its content—something +extraneous to the substance it would regulate. If the law comes upon +the individual from without, if the individual is not absorbed in the +life of the State, the individual feels the law and the State as +limitations on his activity, as chains which will eventually strangle +him unless he can break them down.</p> + +<p>This was just the feeling of the men of '76. The country needed a +breath of air. Its moral, economic, and social forces demanded the +right to develop without interference from a law which took no account +of them. This was the historical reason for the overturn of that year; +and with the transference of power from Right to Left begins the +period of growth and development in our nation: economic growth in +industry, commerce, railroads, agriculture; intellectual growth in +science, education. The nation had received its form from above. It +had now to struggle to its new level, giving to a State which already +had its constitution, its administrative and political organization, +its army and its finance, a living content of forces springing from +individual initiative prompted by interests which the <i>Risorgimento</i>, +absorbed in its great ideals, had either neglected or altogether +disregarded.</p> + +<p>The accomplishment of this constitutes the credit side of the balance +sheet of King Humbert I. It was the error of King Humbert's greatest +minister, Francesco Crispi, not to have understood his age. Crispi +strove vigorously to restore the authority and the prestige of the +State as against an individualism gone rampant, to reassert religious +ideals as against triumphant materialism. He fell, therefore, before +the assaults of so-called democracy.</p> + +<p>Crispi was wrong. That was not the moment for re-hoisting the +time-honored banner of idealism. At that time there could be no talk +of wars, of national dignity, of competition with the Great Powers; no +talk of setting limits to personal liberties in the interests of the +abstract entity called "State." The word "God," which Crispi sometimes +used, was singularly out of place. It was a question rather of +bringing the popular classes to prosperity, self-consciousness, +participation in political life. Campaigns against illiteracy, all +kinds of social legislation, the elimination of the clergy from the +public schools, which must be secular and anti-clerical! During this +period Freemasonry became solidly established in the bureaucracy, the +army, the judiciary. The central power of the State was weakened and +made subservient to the fleeting variations of popular will as +reflected in a suffrage absolved from all control from above. The +growth of big industry favored the rise of a socialism of Marxian +stamp as a new kind of moral and political education for our +proletariat. The conception of humanity was not indeed lost from view: +but such moral restraints as were placed on the free individual were +all based on the feeling that each man must instinctively seek his own +well-being and defend it. This was the very conception which Mazzini +had fought in socialism, though he rightly saw that it was not +peculiar to socialism alone, but belonged to any political theory, +whether liberal, democratic, or anti-socialistic, which urges men +toward the exaction of rights rather than to the fulfillment of +duties.</p> + +<p>From 1876 till the Great War, accordingly, we had an Italy that was +materialistic and anti-Mazzinian, though an Italy far superior to the +Italy of and before Mazzini's time. All our culture, whether in the +natural or the moral sciences, in letters or in the arts, was +dominated by a crude positivism, which conceived of the reality in +which we live as something given, something ready-made, and which +therefore limits and conditions human activity quite apart from +so-called arbitrary and illusory demands of morality. Everybody wanted +"facts," "positive facts." Everybody laughed at "metaphysical dreams," +at impalpable realities. The truth was there before the eyes of men. +They had only to open their eyes to see it. The Beautiful itself could +only be the mirror of the Truth present before us in Nature. +Patriotism, like all the other virtues based on a religious attitude +of mind, and which can be mentioned only when people have the courage +to talk in earnest, became a rhetorical theme on which it was rather +bad taste to touch.</p> + +<p>This period, which anyone born during the last half of the past +century can well remember, might be called the demo-socialistic phase +of the modern Italian State. It was the period which elaborated the +characteristically democratic attitude of mind on a basis of personal +freedom, and which resulted in the establishment of socialism as the +primary and controlling force in the State. It was a period of growth +and of prosperity during which the moral forces developed during the +<i>Risorgimento</i> were crowded into the background or off the stage.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><b>IV</b></p> + +<p>But toward the end of the Nineteenth Century and in the first years of +the Twentieth a vigorous spirit of reaction began to manifest itself +in the young men of Italy against the preceding generation's ideas in +politics, literature, science and philosophy. It was as though they +were weary of the prosaic bourgeois life which they had inherited from +their fathers and were eager to return to the lofty moral enthusiasms +of their grandfathers. Rosmini and Gioberti had been long forgotten. +They were now exhumed, read, discussed. As for Mazzini, an edition of +his writings was financed by the State itself. Vico, the great Vico, a +formidable preacher of idealistic philosophy and a great +anti-Cartesian and anti-rationalist, became the object of a new cult.</p> + +<p>Positivism began forthwith to be attacked by neo-idealism. +Materialistic approaches to the study of literature and art were +refuted and discredited. Within the Church itself modernism came to +rouse the Italian clergy to the need of a deeper and more modern +culture. Even socialism was brought under the philosophical probe and +criticized like other doctrines for its weaknesses and errors; and +when, in France, George Sorel went beyond the fallacies of the +materialistic theories of the Marxist social-democracy to his theory +of syndicalism, our young Italian socialists turned to him. In Sorel's +ideas they saw two things: first, the end of a hypocritical +"collaborationism" which betrayed both proletariat and nation; and +second, faith in a moral and ideal reality for which it was the +individual's duty to sacrifice himself, and to defend which, even +violence was justified. The anti-parliamentarian spirit and the moral +spirit of syndicalism brought Italian socialists back within the +Mazzinian orbit.</p> + +<p>Of great importance, too, was nationalism, a new movement then just +coming to the fore. Our Italian nationalism was less literary and more +political in character than the similar movement in France, because +with us it was attached to the old historic Right which had a long +political tradition. The new nationalism differed from the old Right +in the stress it laid on the idea of "nation"; but it was at one with +the Right in regarding the State as the necessary premise to the +individual rights and values. It was the special achievement of +nationalism to rekindle faith in the nation in Italian hearts, to +arouse the country against parliamentary socialism, and to lead an +open attack on Freemasonry, before which the Italian bourgeoisie was +terrifiedly prostrating itself. Syndicalists, nationalists, idealists +succeeded, between them, in bringing the great majority of Italian +youth back to the spirit of Mazzini.</p> + +<p>Official, legal, parliamentary Italy, the Italy that was +anti-Mazzinian and anti-idealistic, stood against all this, finding +its leader in a man of unfailing political intuition, and master as +well of the political mechanism of the country, a man sceptical of all +high-sounding words, impatient of complicated concepts, ironical, +cold, hard-headed, practical—what Mazzini would have called a "shrewd +materialist." In the persons, indeed, of Mazzini and Giolitti, we may +find a picture of the two aspects of pre-war Italy, of that +irreconcilable duality which paralyzed the vitality of the country and +which the Great War was to solve.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><b>V</b></p> + +<p>The effect of the war seemed at first to be quite in an opposite +sense—to mark the beginning of a general <i>débâcle</i> of the Italian +State and of the moral forces that must underlie any State. If +entrance into the war had been a triumph of ideal Italy over +materialistic Italy, the advent of peace seemed to give ample +justification to the Neutralists who had represented the latter. After +the Armistice our Allies turned their backs upon us. Our victory +assumed all the aspects of a defeat. A defeatist psychology, as they +say, took possession of the Italian people and expressed itself in +hatred of the war, of those responsible for the war, even of our army +which had won our war. An anarchical spirit of dissolution rose +against all authority. The ganglia of our economic life seemed struck +with mortal disease. Labor ran riot in strike after strike. The very +bureaucracy seemed to align itself against the State. The measure of +our spiritual dispersion was the return to power of Giolitti—the +execrated Neutralist—who for five years had been held up as the +exponent of an Italy which had died with the war.</p> + +<p>But, curiously enough, it was under Giolitti that things suddenly +changed in aspect, that against the Giolittian State a new State +arose. Our soldiers, our genuine soldiers, men who had willed our war +and fought it in full consciousness of what they were doing, had the +good fortune to find as their leaders a man who could express in words +things that were in all their hearts and who could make those words +audible above the tumult.</p> + +<p>Mussolini had left Italian socialism in 1915 in order to be a more +faithful interpreter of "the Italian People" (the name he chose for +his new paper). He was one of those who saw the necessity of our war, +one of those mainly responsible for our entering the war. Already as a +socialist he had fought Freemasonry; and, drawing his inspiration from +Sorel's syndicalism, he had assailed the parliamentary corruption of +Reformist Socialism with the idealistic postulates of revolution and +violence. Then, later, on leaving the party and in defending the cause +of intervention, he had come to oppose the illusory fancies of +proletarian internationalism with an assertion of the infrangible +integrity, not only moral but economic as well, of the national +organism, affirming therefore the sanctity of country for the working +classes as for other classes. Mussolini was a Mazzinian of that +pure-blooded breed which Mazzini seemed somehow always to find in the +province of Romagna. First by instinct, later by reflection, Mussolini +had come to despise the futility of the socialists who kept preaching +a revolution which they had neither the power nor the will to bring to +pass even under the most favorable circumstances. More keenly than +anyone else he had come to feel the necessity of a State which would +be a State, of a law which would be respected as law, of an authority +capable of exacting obedience but at the same time able to give +indisputable evidence of its worthiness so to act. It seemed +incredible to Mussolini that a country capable of fighting and winning +such a war as Italy had fought and won should be thrown into disorder +and held at the mercy of a handful of faithless politicians.</p> + +<p>When Mussolini founded his Fasci in Milan in March, 1919, the movement +toward dissolution and negation that featured the post-war period in +Italy had virtually ceased. The Fasci made their appeal to Italians +who, in spite of the disappointments of the peace, continued to +believe in the war, and who, in order to validate the victory which +was the proof of the war's value, were bent on recovering for Italy +that control over her own destinies which could come only through a +restoration of discipline and a reorganization of social and political +forces. From the first, the Fascist Party was not one of believers but +of action. What it needed was not a platform of principles, but an +idea which would indicate a goal and a road by which the goal could be +reached.</p> + +<p>The four years between 1919 and 1923 inclusive were characterized by +the development of the Fascist revolution through the action of "the +squads." The Fascist "squads" were really the force of a State not yet +born but on the way to being. In its first period, Fascist "squadrism" +transgressed the law of the old régime because it was determined to +suppress that régime as incompatible with the national State to which +Fascism was aspiring. The March on Rome was not the beginning, it was +the end of that phase of the revolution; because, with Mussolini's +advent to power, Fascism entered the sphere of legality. After October +28, 1922, Fascism was no longer at war with the State; it <i>was</i> the +State, looking about for the organization which would realize Fascism +as a concept of State. Fascism already had control of all the +instruments necessary for the upbuilding of a new State. The Italy of +Giolitti had been superceded, at least so far as militant politics +were concerned. Between Giolitti's Italy and the new Italy there +flowed, as an imaginative orator once said in the Chamber, "a torrent +of blood" that would prevent any return to the past. The century-old +crisis had been solved. The war at last had begun to bear fruit for +Italy.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><b>VI</b></p> + +<p>Now to understand the distinctive essence of Fascism, nothing is more +instructive than a comparison of it with the point of view of Mazzini +to which I have so often referred.</p> + +<p>Mazzini did have a political conception, but his politic was a sort of +integral politic, which cannot be so sharply distinguished from +morals, religion, and ideas of life as a whole, as to be considered +apart from these other fundamental interests of the human spirit. If +one tries to separate what is purely political from his religious +beliefs, his ethical consciousness and his metaphysical concepts, it +becomes impossible to understand the vast influence which his credo +and his propaganda exerted. Unless we assume the unity of the whole +man, we arrive not at the clarification but at the destruction of +those ideas of his which proved so powerful.</p> + +<p>In the definition of Fascism, the first point to grasp is the +comprehensive, or as Fascists say, the "totalitarian" scope of its +doctrine, which concerns itself not only with political organization +and political tendency, but with the whole will and thought and +feeling of the nation.</p> + +<p>There is a second and equally important point. Fascism is not a +philosophy. Much less is it a religion. It is not even a political +theory which may be stated in a series of formulae. The significance +of Fascism is not to be grasped in the special theses which it from +time to time assumes. When on occasion it has announced a program, a +goal, a concept to be realized in action, Fascism has not hesitated to +abandon them when in practice these were found to be inadequate or +inconsistent with the principle of Fascism. Fascism has never been +willing to compromise its future. Mussolini has boasted that he is a +<i>tempista</i>, that his real pride is in "good timing." He makes +decisions and acts on them at the precise moment when all the +conditions and considerations which make them feasible and opportune +are properly matured. This is a way of saying that Fascism returns to +the most rigorous meaning of Mazzini's "Thought and Action," whereby +the two terms are so perfectly coincident that no thought has value +which is not already expressed in action. The real "views" of the +<i>Duce</i> are those which he formulates and executes at one and the same +time.</p> + +<p>Is Fascism therefore "anti-intellectual," as has been so often +charged? It is eminently anti-intellectual, eminently Mazzinian, that +is, if by intellectualism we mean the divorce of thought from action, +of knowledge from life, of brain from heart, of theory from practice. +Fascism is hostile to all Utopian systems which are destined never to +face the test of reality. It is hostile to all science and all +philosophy which remain matters of mere fancy or intelligence. It is +not that Fascism denies value to culture, to the higher intellectual +pursuits by which thought is invigorated as a source of action. +Fascist anti-intellectualism holds in scorn a product peculiarly +typical of the educated classes in Italy: the <i>leterato</i>—the man who +plays with knowledge and with thought without any sense of +responsibility for the practical world. It is hostile not so much to +culture as to bad culture, the culture which does not educate, which +does not make men, but rather creates pedants and aesthetes, egotists +in a word, men morally and politically indifferent. It has no use, for +instance, for the man who is "above the conflict" when his country or +its important interests are at stake.</p> + +<p>By virtue of its repugnance for "intellectualism," Fascism prefers not +to waste time constructing abstract theories about itself. But when we +say that it is not a system or a doctrine we must not conclude that it +is a blind praxis or a purely instinctive method. If by system or +philosophy we mean a living thought, a principle of universal +character daily revealing its inner fertility and significance, then +Fascism is a perfect system, with a solidly established foundation and +with a rigorous logic in its development; and all who feel the truth +and the vitality of the principle work day by day for its development, +now doing, now undoing, now going forward, now retracing their steps, +according as the things they do prove to be in harmony with the +principle or to deviate from it.</p> + +<p>And we come finally to a third point.</p> + +<p>The Fascist system is not a political system, but it has its center of +gravity in politics. Fascism came into being to meet serious problems +of politics in post-war Italy. And it presents itself as a political +method. But in confronting and solving political problems it is +carried by its very nature, that is to say by its method, to consider +moral, religious, and philosophical questions and to unfold and +demonstrate the comprehensive totalitarian character peculiar to it. +It is only after we have grasped the political character of the +Fascist principle that we are able adequately to appreciate the deeper +concept of life which underlies that principle and from which the +principle springs. The political doctrine of Fascism is not the whole +of Fascism. It is rather its more prominent aspect and in general its +most interesting one.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><b>VII</b></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>in fieri</i>. It is in our hands, wholly; whence our very serious +responsibility towards it.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>The Fascist State, on the contrary, is a people's state, and, as such, +the democratic State <i>par excellence</i>. 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 +<i>Duce</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>The Fascist conception of liberty merits passing notice. The <i>Duce</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<br /><br /> + +<a name="NATIONAL_SOCIALISM"></a><hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<br /> + +<h3>NATIONAL SOCIALISM</h3><span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span> + +<h4><span style="font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 110%">Basic Principles, Their Application<br /> +By The Nazi Party's Foreign Organization,<br /> +And The Use Of Germans Abroad<br /> +For Nazi Aims</span><br /> +<br /> +Prepared in the Special Unit<br /> +Of the Division of European Affairs</h4> + +<h3>by</h3> +<h3><span style="font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 110%">Raymond E. Murphy<br /> +Francis B. Stevens<br /> +Howard Trivers<br /> +Joseph M. Roland</span></h3> + +<br /> +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 110%; margin-bottom: 1em"> +Elements Of Nazi Ideology</p> +<br /> + +<p>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 <i>Weltanschauung</i> 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.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><b>The Volk</b></p> + +<p>Ernst Rudolf Huber, in his basic work <i>Verfassungsrecht des +grossdeutschen Reiches (Constitutional Law of the Greater German +Reich</i>) (document 1, <i>post</i> p. 155), published in 1939, states:</p> + +<p class="quot">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.<a name="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8"><sup>[8]</sup></a></p> + +<p>In developing his thesis Huber points out that the National Socialist +state rests on three basic concepts, the <i>Volk</i> or people, the Führer, +and the movement or party. With reference to the first element, the +<i>Volk</i>, 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.</p> + +<p class="quot">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.</p> + +<p class="quot">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.<a name="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9"><sup>[9]</sup></a></p> + +<p>According to Huber, geographical considerations play a large part in +the shaping of a people:</p> + +<p class="quot">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. + <a name="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10"><sup>[10]</sup></a></p> + +<p>But the new Germany is based upon a "unity and entirety of the +people"<a name="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11"><sup>[11]</sup></a> +which does not stop at geographical boundaries:</p> + +<p class="quot">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. +<a name="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12"><sup>[12]</sup></a></p> + +<p>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 <i>Mein Kampf</i>, "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."<a name="FNanchor_13_13"></a> +<a href="#Footnote_13_13"><sup>[13]</sup></a></p> + +<p>Huber continues:</p> + +<p class="quot">In the theory of the folk-Reich [<i>völkisches Reich</i>], 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....<a name="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14"><sup>[14]</sup></a></p> + +<p class="quot">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.<a name="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15"> +<sup>[15]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>A similar interpretation of the role of the <i>Volk</i> is expounded by +Gottfried Neesse in his <i>Die Nationalsozialistische Deutsche +Arbeiterpartei—Versuch einer Rechtsdeutung</i> (<i>The National Socialist +German Workers Party—An Attempt at Legal Interpretation</i>), 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."<a name="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16"><sup>[16]</sup></a> 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.</p> + +<p>But the central and basic concept of National Socialist political +theory is the concept of the people:</p> + +<p class="quot">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.<a name="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17"><sup>[17]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>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."<a name="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18"><sup>[18]</sup></a> "The unity of the people is increased by its +common destiny and its consciousness of a common mission."<a name="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19"><sup>[19]</sup></a></p> + +<p>Liberalism gave rise to the concept of a "society-people" +(<i>Gesellschaftsvolk</i>) 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" (<i>Gemeinschaftsvolk</i>) which functions as a uniform +whole.<a name="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20"><sup>[20]</sup></a></p> + +<p class="quot">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.<a name="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21"><sup>[21]</sup></a></p> + +<p class="quot">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.<a name="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22"><sup>[22]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p class="quot">The nation is the complete agreement between organism and + organization, the perfect formation of a naturally grown + being. ... <i>Nationalism</i> is nothing more than the outwardly + directed striving to maintain this inner unity of people and + state, and <i>socialism</i> is the inwardly directed striving for + the same end.<a name="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23"><sup>[23]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>Dr. Herbert Scurla, Government Councilor and Reich's Minister for +Science, Education, and Folk Culture, in a pamphlet entitled <i>Die +Grundgedanken des Nationalsozialismus und das Ausland</i> (<i>Basic +Principles of National Socialism With Special Reference to Foreign +Countries</i>), also emphasizes the importance of the <i>Volk</i> 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.</p> + +<p class="quot">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. <a name="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24"><sup>[24]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>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."<a name="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25"><sup>[25]</sup></a> "Under revolution," he states, "we +understand rather the penetration of the collective folk-mind +[<i>gesamtvölkischen Bewusstseins</i>] into all regions of German +life."<a name="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26"><sup>[26]</sup></a> And, he concludes:</p> + +<p class="quot">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. +<a name="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27"><sup>[27]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>Some of the most striking expressions of the race concept are found in +<i>Die Erziehung im dritten Reich</i> (<i>Education in the Third Reich</i>), 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, +<i>post</i> p. 155) and Neesse to associate the ideas of <i>Volk</i> 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."<a name="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28"><sup>[28]</sup></a> <i>Race</i> +finds its expression in human life through +the phenomenon of the <i>people</i>:</p> + +<p class="quot"><i>Race</i> and <i>people</i> 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 <i>people</i> 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. +<a name="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29"><sup>[29]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>Beck describes the politically spiritual National Socialist +personality which National Socialist education seeks to develop, in +the following terms:</p> + +<p class="quot">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.<a name="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30"><sup>[30]</sup></a></p> + +<p>National Socialist education must stress the heroic life and teach +German youth the importance of fulfilling their duty to the <i>Volk</i>.</p> + +<p class="quot">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 + <i>direct connection with the community of the people</i> and + school education must derive from it the form and substance + of its instruction.<a name="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31"><sup>[31]</sup></a></p> + +<p> 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.<a name="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32"><sup>[32]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p class="quot">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. +<a name="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33"><sup>[33]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p class="quot">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.<a name="FNanchor_34_34"></a> +<a href="#Footnote_34_34"><sup>[34]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>Such indeed is the supreme goal of all National Socialist education: +to make each individual an expression of "the eternal German":</p> + +<p class="quot">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.<a name="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35"><sup>[35]</sup></a> </p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><b>Racial Supremacy</b></p> + +<p>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 <i>Herrenvolk</i> (master race). +Rosenberg developed his ideas in the obscure phraseology of <i>Der +Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts</i> (<i>The Myth of the Twentieth Century</i>) +(document 3, <i>post</i> 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."<a name="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36"><sup>[36]</sup></a> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Rosenberg acclaims the new faith of the blood which is to replace the +non-German religion of Christianity. "A <i>new</i> 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 <i>mysterium</i> which has replaced and +overcome the old sacraments."<a name="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37"><sup>[37]</sup></a></p> + +<p>Rosenberg accepts the classic German view of the <i>Volk</i>, 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 <i>last</i>, that to which everything else has to be +subordinated."<a name="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38"><sup>[38]</sup></a> "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."<a name="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39"><sup>[39]</sup></a></p> + +<p>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 [<i>Volk</i>] 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."<a name="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40"><sup>[40]</sup></a> After +the Nazis came to power, this concept was made the basis of the German +citizenship law of September 15, 1935.</p> + +<p>Commenting upon point 4 of the Nazi program in his pamphlet, <i>Nature, +Principles, and Aims of the NSDAP</i>, Rosenberg wrote:</p> + +<p class="quot">An indispensable differentiation must be made sometime in + the German <i>Volk</i> 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 <i>Volk</i>. 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.</p> + +<p class="quot">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 ...</p> + +<p class="quot">National Socialism also sees in the nature of the structure + and leadership of the state an outflowing of a definite + character in the <i>Volk</i>. 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 <i>Volk</i> is crippled....</p> + +<p class="quot">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 <i>German</i> 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.<a name="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41"><sup>[41]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>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 <i>Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts</i>, 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."<a name="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42"><sup>[42]</sup></a></p> + +<p>This idea was developed at length by the German geopolitician, Colin +Ross. In his book <i>Unser Amerika</i> (<i>Our America</i>) (document 4, <i>post</i> +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.</p> + +<p>Reference was made in the preceding section to Beck's <i>Education in +the Third Reich</i>. 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 (<i>Rassenkunde und Rassenpflege</i>), 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."<a name="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43"><sup>[43]</sup></a> 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."<a name="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44"><sup>[44]</sup></a></p> + +<p>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 [<i>Siedlungsraum</i>]."<a name="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45"><sup>[45]</sup></a></p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><b>The Führer Principle</b></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>One of the best expositions of the Nazi concept of the Führer +principle is given by Huber in his <i>Constitutional Law of the Greater +German Reich</i> (document 1, <i>post</i> p. 155):</p> + +<p class="quot">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 ...</p> + +<p class="quot">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 ...</p> + +<p class="quot">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 ...</p> + +<p class="quot">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 ...</p> + +<p class="quot">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 <br />grounded.<a name="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46"><sup>[46]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p class="quot">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. +<a name="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47"><sup>[47]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p class="quot">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. +<a name="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48"><sup>[48]</sup></a></p> + +<p>Huber also shows how the position of the Führer developed from the +Nazi Party movement:</p> + +<p class="quot">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. +<a name="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49"><sup>[49]</sup></a></p> + +<p class="quot">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.<a name="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50"><sup>[50]</sup></a></p> + +<p>Neesse, in his <i>The National Socialist German Workers Party—An +Attempt at Legal Interpretation</i>, 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."<a name="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51"><sup>[51]</sup></a></p> + +<p>The <i>leadership</i> (<i>Führung</i>) in the Nazi state is not to be compared +with the <i>government</i> or <i>administration</i> in a democracy:</p> + +<p class="quot"><i>Führung</i> 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 ...<a name="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52"><sup>[52]</sup></a></p> + +<p class="quot">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 <i>identity</i> 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 <i>Führung</i> 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 <i>Führung</i> 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, <i>Führung</i> 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.<a name="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53"><sup>[53]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>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 +<i>Germany Speaks</i>, published in London in 1938, states:</p> + +<p class="quot">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.<a name="FNanchor_54_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_54"><sup>[54]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>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.<a name="FNanchor_55_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55_55"><sup>[55]</sup></a> (The text of the resolution +adopted by the Reichstag is included as document 5, <i>post</i> p. 183.)</p> + +<p>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 <i>Angriff</i> on April 9, 1942 +(document 6, <i>post</i> 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:</p> + +<p class="quot">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. <i>We + have no understanding for him who hides behind an anonymous + conscience, behind God, whom everybody conceives according + to his own wishes.</i> </p> + +<p>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 +<i>Organisationsbuch der NSDAP</i> (<i>Nazi Party Organization Book</i>) for +1940, page 7 (document 7, <i>post</i> p. 186). The first commandment is +"The Führer is always right!" and the second is "Never go against +discipline!"</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p class="quot">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. +<a name="FNanchor_56_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_56"><sup>[56]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>Beck, in his work <i>Education in the Third Reich</i>, also insists that a +respect for the Führer principle be inculcated in youth:</p> + +<p class="quot">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. +<a name="FNanchor_57_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_57"><sup>[57]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>German writers often pretend that the Führer principle does not +necessarily result in the establishment of a dictatorship but that it +permits the embodiment of the will of the people in its leaders and +the realization of the popular will much more efficiently than is +possible in democratic states. Such an argument, for example, is +presented by Dr. Paul Ritterbusch in <i>Demokratie und Diktatur</i> +(<i>Democracy and Dictatorship</i>), published in 1939. Professor +Ritterbusch claims that Communism leads to a dictatorial system but +that the Nazi movement is much closer to the ideals of true democracy. +The real nature of National Socialism, however, cannot be understood +from the standpoint of the "pluralistic-party state." It does not +represent a dictatorship of one party and a suppression of all others +but rather an expression of the will and the character of the whole +national community in and through one great party which has resolved +all internal discords and oppositions within itself. The Führer of +this great movement is at once the leader and the expression of the +national will. Freed from the enervating effects of internal strife, +the movement under the guiding hand of the Führer can bring the whole +of the national community to its fullest expression and highest +development.</p> + +<p>The highest authority, however, Hitler himself, has left no doubt as +to the nature of Nazi Party leaders. In a speech delivered at the +Sportpalast in Berlin on April 8, 1933, he said:</p> + +<p class="quot">When our opponents say: "It is easy for you: you are a + dictator"—We answer them, "No, gentlemen, you are wrong; + there is no single dictator, but ten thousand, each in his + own place." And even the highest authority in the hierarchy + has itself only one wish, never to transgress against the + supreme authority to which it, too, is responsible. We have + in our movement developed this loyalty in following the + leader, this blind obedience of which all the others know + nothing and which gave to us the power to surmount + everything.<a name="FNanchor_58_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58_58"><sup>[58]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>As has been indicated above, the Führer principle applies not only to +the Führer of the Reich, Adolf Hitler, but to all the subordinate +leaders of the party and the government apparatus. With respect to +this aspect of the Führer principle, Huber (document 1, <i>post</i> p. +155), says:</p> + +<p class="quot">The ranks of the public services are regarded as forces + organized on the living principle of leadership and + following: The authority of command exercised in the labor + service, the military service, and the civil service is + Führer-authority ... It has been said of the military and + civil services that true leadership is not represented in + their organization on the principles of command and + obedience. In reality there can be no political leadership + which does not have recourse to command and force as the + means for the accomplishment of its ends. Command and force + do not, of course, constitute the true nature of leadership, + but as a means they are indispensable elements of every + fully developed Führer-order.<a name="FNanchor_59_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59_59"><sup>[59]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>The Führer principle is officially recognized by the party, and the +party interpretation thereof is set forth in the <i>Party Organization +Book</i> (document 7 and charts 1 and 1-A, <i>post</i> pp. 186, 488, 489).</p> + +<p>There are also included herein, as charts 2 and 2-A and 3 and 3-A +(<i>post</i> pp. 490, 491, 492, 493), photostatic copies and translations +of two charts from <i>Der nationalsozialistische Staat</i> (<i>The National +Socialist State</i>) by Dr. Walther Gehl, published in 1935. These charts +clearly show the concentration of authority in the Führer and the +subordinate relation of the minor leaders in both the state and the +party.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: .5em"><b> +The Party: Leadership by an Elite Class</b></p> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><i>1. Functions of the Party</i></p> + +<p>The third pillar of the Nazi state, the link between <i>Volk</i> and +Führer, is the Nazi Party. According to Nazi ideology, all authority +within the nation is derived ultimately from the people, but it is the +party through which the people expresses itself. In +<i>Rechtseinrichtungen und Rechtsaufgaben der Bewegung</i> (<i>Legal +Organization and Legal Functions of the Movement</i>) (document 8, <i>post</i> +p. 204), published in 1939, Otto Gauweiler states:</p> + +<p class="quot">The will of the German people finds its expression in the + party as the political organization of the people. It + represents the political conception, the political + conscience, and the political will. It is the expression and + the organ of the people's creative will to life. It + comprises a select part of the German people for "only the + best Germans should be party members" ... The inner + organization of the party must therefore bring the national + life which is concentrated within itself to manifestation + and development in all the fields of national endeavor in + which the party is represented. +<a name="FNanchor_60_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60_60"><sup>[60]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>Gauweiler defines the relationship of the party to the state in the +following terms:</p> + +<p class="quot">The party stands above and beside the state as the wielder + of an authority derived from the people with its own + sovereign powers and its own sphere of sovereignty ... The + legal position of the party is therefore that of a + completely sovereign authority whose legal supremacy and + self-sufficiency rest upon the original independent + political authority which the Führer and the movement have + attained as a result of their historical achievements.<a name="FNanchor_61_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61_61"><sup>[61]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>Neesse states that "It will be the task of National Socialism to lead +back the German people to an organic structure which proceeds from a +recognition of the differences in the characters and possibilities of +human beings without permitting this recognition to lead to a cleavage +of the people into two camps."<a name="FNanchor_62_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62_62"><sup>[62]</sup></a> This task is the responsibility of +the party. Although it has become the only political party in Germany, +the party does not desire to identify itself with the state. It does +not wish to dominate the state or to serve it. It works beside it and +cooperates with it. In this respect, Nazi Germany is distinguished +from the other one-party states of Europe: "In the one-party state of +Russia, the party rules over the state; in the one-party state of +Italy, the party serves the state; but in the one-party state of +Germany, the party neither serves the state nor rules over it directly +but works and struggles together with it for the community of the +people."<a name="FNanchor_63_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63_63"><sup>[63]</sup></a> Neesse contends that the party derives its legal basis +from the law inherent in the living organism of the German <i>Volk</i>:</p> + +<p class="quot">The inner law of the NSDAP is none other than the inner law + of the German people. The party arises from the people; it + has formed an organization which crystallizes about itself + the feelings of the people, which seemed buried, and the + strength of the people, which seemed lost.<a name="FNanchor_64_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64_64"><sup>[64]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>Neesse states that the party has two great tasks—to insure the +continuity of national leadership and to preserve the unity of the +<i>Volk</i>:</p> + +<p class="quot">The first main task of the party, which is in keeping with + its organic nature, is to protect the National Socialist + idea and to constantly renew it by drawing from the depths + of the German soul, to keep it pure and clear, and to pass + it on thus to coming generations: this is predominantly a + matter of education of the people.</p> + +<p class="quot">The second great task, which is in keeping with its + organizational nature, is to form the people and the state + into the unity of the nation and to create for the German + national community forms which are ever new and suited to + its vital development: this is predominantly a matter of + state formation. These two tasks, one of which deals with + substance and the other with function, belong together. It + is as impossible to separate them as it is to split up the + party into organism and organization, form and content.<a name="FNanchor_65_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65_65"><sup>[65]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>Huber (document 1, <i>post</i> p. 155) describes the tasks of the party in +similar terms. He states that the party is charged with the "education +of the people to a political people" through the awakening of the +political consciousness of each individual; the inculcation of a +"uniform political philosophy," that is, the teaching of Nazi +principles; "the selection of leaders," including the choice and +training of especially promising boys to be the Führers of the future; +and the shaping of the "political will of the people" in accordance +with the Führer's aims.<a name="FNanchor_66_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66_66"><sup>[66]</sup></a></p> + +<p>The educational tasks of the party are stressed by Beck, who develops +the idea that the <i>Volk</i> can be divided into three main groups, "a +supporting, a leading, and a creative class."<a name="FNanchor_67_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67_67"><sup>[67]</sup></a> It is the duty of +the leading class, that is, the party, from which the creative class +of leaders is drawn, to provide for the education of the supporting +class.</p> + +<p class="quot">Every member of the body of the people must belong to the + politically supporting class, that is, each one who bears + within himself the basic racial, spiritual, and mental + values of the people ... Here no sort of leading or creative + activity is demanded but only a recognition of the leading + and creative will ... Only those are called to leadership in + political life who have recognized the community-bound law + of all human life in purest clarity and in the all-embracing + extent of its validity and who will place all the powers of + their personal lives with the help of a politically moral + character in the service of the formation of community life + ... From the politically leading class arise the politically + creative personalities. These are the mysterious elemental + forces which are beyond all explanation by human reason and + which through their action and by means of the living idea + within them give to the community of the people an + expression which is fresh, young, and eternal. Here is the + fulfilment of the highest and purest political humanity ... + The education of the socialist personality is essentially + the forming of the politically supporting class within the + German people and the encouragement of those political + tendencies which make a man a political leader. To educate + to political creativeness is just as impossible as to + educate to genius. Education can only furnish the spiritual + atmosphere, can only prepare the spiritual living-space for + the politically creative personality by forming a uniform + political consciousness in the socialistic personality, and + in the development of politically creative personalities it + can at the most give special attention to those values of + character and spirit which are of decisive importance for + the development of this personality.<a name="FNanchor_68_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_68_68"><sup>[68]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>Goebbels in <i>The Nature and Form of National Socialism</i> (document 2, +<i>post</i> p. 170) emphasizes the responsibility of the party for the +leadership of the state:</p> + +<p class="quot">The party must always continue to represent the hierarchy of + National Socialist leadership. This minority must always + insist upon its prerogative to control the state. It must + keep the way open for the German youth which wishes to take + its place in this hierarchy. In reality the hierarchy has + fewer rights than duties! It is responsible for the + leadership of the state and it solemnly relieves the people + of this responsibility. It has the duty to control the state + in the best interests and to the general welfare of the + nation.<a name="FNanchor_69_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69_69"><sup>[69]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>Dr. Frick, German Minister of the Interior, in his chapter in <i>Germany +Speaks</i> indicates the exclusive position of the party in the Third +Reich:</p> + +<p class="quot">National Socialist Germany, however, is not merely a unitary + state: it is also a unitary nation and its governance is + based on the principle of leadership ...</p> + +<p class="quot">In National Socialist Germany, leadership is in the hands of + an organized community, the National Socialist Party; and as + the latter represents the will of the nation, the policy + adopted by it in harmony with the vital interests of the + nation is at the same time the policy adopted by the country + ... The National Socialist Party is the only political party + in Germany and therefore the true representative of the + people...<a name="FNanchor_70_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70_70"><sup>[70]</sup></a></p> + +<p>To Dr. Ley, the party is identical with the Führer. As he wrote in the +<i>Angriff</i> on April 9, 1942 (document 6, <i>post</i> p. 184), "The National +Socialist Party is Hitler, and Hitler is the party."</p> + +<p>The role of the party in legislation, in political matters, and in the +appointment of Government officials is indicated by the Führer's +decree of May 29, 1941,<a name="FNanchor_71_71"></a><a href="#Footnote_71_71"><sup>[71]</sup></a> as amplified by the order of January 16, +1942, concerning its execution.<a name="FNanchor_72_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_72_72"><sup>[72]</sup></a> (Document 9, <i>post</i> p. 212). This +order provides that all legislative proposals and proposed laws and +decrees, as well as any proposed changes therein, must pass through +and receive the approval of the Party Chancelry.</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><i>2. Party Membership</i></p> + +<p>Details concerning the qualifications and duties of party members are +contained in the <i>Party Organization Book</i> for 1940 (document 7, +<i>post</i> p. 186).</p> + +<p class="quot">Membership is finally confirmed by the issuance of a + membership card or a membership book. Anyone who becomes a + party member does not merely join an organization but he + becomes a soldier in the German freedom movement and that + means much more than just paying his dues and attending the + members' meetings. He obligates himself to subordinate his + own ego and to place everything he has in the service of the + people's cause. Only he who is capable of doing this should + become a party member. A selection must be made in + accordance with this idea.</p> + +<p class="quot">Readiness to fight, readiness to sacrifice, and strength of + character are the requirements for a good National + Socialist. Small blemishes, such as a false step which + someone has made in his youth, should be overlooked; the + contribution in the struggle for Germany should alone be + decisive. The healthy will naturally prevail over the bad if + the will to health finds sufficient support in leadership + and achievement. Admission to the party should not be + controlled by the old bourgeois point of view. The party + must always represent the elite of the people. +<a name="FNanchor_73_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_73_73"><sup>[73]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>German blood is one of the prerequisites for party membership. The +<i>Party Organization Book</i> for 1940 (document 7, <i>post</i> p. 186) also +states, "Only those racial comrades who possess German citizenship are +eligible for admission."<a name="FNanchor_74_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_74_74"><sup>[74]</sup></a></p> + +<p>Party members shall not exceed ten per cent of the German population +of the region. "The ideal proportion of the number of party members to +the number of racial comrades is set at ten per cent. This proportion +is to apply also to the individual Province [Gau]."<a name="FNanchor_75_75"></a><a href="#Footnote_75_75"><sup>[75]</sup></a></p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><i>3. Pledges and Symbols of Allegiance</i></p> + +<p>Party members take an oath of loyalty to the Führer in the following +terms: "I pledge allegiance to my Führer, Adolf Hitler. I promise at +all times to respect and obey him and the leaders whom he appoints +over me."<a name="FNanchor_76_76"></a><a href="#Footnote_76_76"><sup>[76]</sup></a></p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: left; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em">(a) The Hitler Salute</p> + +<p>A pledge of allegiance to the Führer is also implied in the Nazi +salute, which is usually accompanied by the greeting, "Heil Hitler." +The phrase <i>mit deutschen Gruss</i>, which is commonly used as a closing +salutation in letters, is another form of the Hitler greeting. <i>Knaurs +Konversations-Lexikon</i> (<i>Knaur's Conversational Dictionary</i>), published +in Berlin in 1934, contains the following definition:</p> + +<p class="quot"><i>German greeting</i>, Hitler greeting: by raising the right + arm; used by the old Germans with the spear as a greeting of + arms [<i>Waffengruss</i>]. Communal greeting of the National + Socialists; introduced into general use in 1933.</p> + +<p>That this greeting was used by the Nazis as early as 1923 is +demonstrated by a photograph which appeared in <i>Das Buch der NSDAP, +Werden, Kampf and Ziel der NSDAP</i> (<i>The Book of the NSDAP, Growth, +Struggle, and Goal of the NSDAP</i>) by Walter M. Espe (Berlin, 1934), +illustration 34 (document 10, <i>post</i> p. 214).</p> + +<p>In the same book (page 23 in the supplement entitled "<i>Die NSDAP</i>") +the following distinction is made between the usual Nazi greeting and +the Storm Troopers' salute:</p> + +<p class="quot">While the German greeting consists merely in raising the + right hand in any desired manner and represents rather a + general comradely greeting, the SA salute is executed, in + accordance with the specifications of the SA service + regulations, by placing the left hand on the belt and + raising the extended right arm.</p> + +<p class="quot">The SA salute is to be given to all higher ranking leaders + of the SA and the SS and of the veterans' organization which + has been incorporated into the SA, as well as to the Army + and the national and security police forces.</p> + +<p class="quot">The comradely German greeting is to be exchanged between all + equally ranking members of the SA and the SS and members of + a corresponding rank in the Army, the police, the veterans' + organization, the German air-sport league, the Hitler Youth, + the railway guards, and the whole membership of the party so + far as they are distinguishable by regulation uniforms. </p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: left; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em">(b) The Swastika</p> + +<p>Early in its history the Nazi Party adopted the swastika banner as +its official emblem.<a name="FNanchor_77_77"></a><a href="#Footnote_77_77"><sup>[77]</sup></a> It was designed by Hitler himself, who wrote +in <i>Mein Kampf</i>:</p> + +<p class="quot">I myself after countless attempts had laid down a final + form: a flag with a background of red cloth, having a white + circle, and, in its center, a black swastika....</p> + +<p class="quot">As National Socialists we see our program in our flag. In + the <i>red</i> we see the social idea of the movement, in the + <i>white</i> the nationalistic idea, and in the <i>swastika</i> the + fight for the victory of Aryan man and at the same time for + the victory of the idea of creative work, which in itself + always was and always will be anti-Semitic.<a name="FNanchor_78_78"></a><a href="#Footnote_78_78"><sup>[78]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>The swastika banner came into general use after January 30, 1933 as a +symbol of allegiance to the Hitler regime, but not until two years +later was it made the German national flag by the Reich flag law of +September 15, 1935.<a name="FNanchor_79_79"></a><a href="#Footnote_79_79"><sup>[79]</sup></a> Another law, decreed on April 7, 1937,<a name="FNanchor_80_80"></a><a href="#Footnote_80_80"><sup>[80]</sup></a> +specified that:</p> + +<p class="quot">The insignia which the NSDAP, its formations, and associated + organizations use for their officers, their structure, their + organization, and their symbols may not be used by other + associations either alone or with embellishments. </p> + +<p>It is interesting to note that party regulations forbid members to use +passport photographs in which they appear in party uniform or wearing +party insignia and that party members are forbidden to discuss foreign +policy with foreigners unless they are officially designated by the +Führer to do so. The pertinent regulations read:</p> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<i>Pass Photos on Identification Cards</i></p> + +<p class="quot">Members of the NSDAP must not use pass photos which show the + holder of any identification card in a uniform of the party + or of any of its formations. It is also forbidden to use as + pass photos pictures which show the person wearing a party + button.</p> + +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><i>Conversations With Foreigners</i></p> + +<p class="quot">It is forbidden to all party members to engage in + discussions of foreign policy with foreigners. Only such + persons as have been designated by the Führer are entitled + to do so.<a name="FNanchor_81_81"></a><a href="#Footnote_81_81"><sup>[81]</sup></a> </p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em">The Totalitarian State</p> + +<p>The Weimar Constitution, although never formally abrogated by the +Nazis, was rendered totally ineffectual by two basic laws, promulgated +within two months after the seizure of power by the party. The first +of these was the "Decree of the Reich's President for the Protection +of the People and State" (document 11-I, <i>post</i> p. 215), issued +February 28, 1933, the day after the Reichstag was burned down. It +suspended "until further notice"<a name="FNanchor_82_82"></a><a href="#Footnote_82_82"><sup>[82]</sup></a> articles of the Weimar +Constitution guaranteeing essential democratic rights of the +individual. Thus, according to article I of this decree, "restrictions +on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, +including freedom of the press, on the right of assembly and the right +of association, and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic, +and telephonic communications, and warrants for house-searches, orders +for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also +permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed."<a name="FNanchor_83_83"></a><a href="#Footnote_83_83"><sup>[83]</sup></a> The +abrogation by the Nazis of these fundamental rights of democracy has +never been repealed or amended. In fact, this decree represents the +presupposition and confirmation of the police sway established +throughout Germany by the Nazis.<a name="FNanchor_84_84"></a><a href="#Footnote_84_84"><sup>[84]</sup></a></p> + +<p>The second basic law, known as the "Enabling Act," the "Law To Remove +the Distress of People and State," of March 24, 1933 (document 11-II, +<i>post</i> p. 217), swept away parliamentary government entirely. By +abrogating the pertinent articles of the Weimar Constitution, it +enabled the Nazi Cabinet under Hitler's chancelorship to appropriate +money and legislate without any responsibility to the Reichstag or any +obligation to respect the Constitution.</p> + +<p>The dissolution of democracy in Germany was sealed by the unification +of the authoritarian Nazi Party with the German state. Soon after the +party came to power in 1933, steps were taken to effect and secure +this unity. The process is described by Huber (document 1, <i>post</i> p. +155) as follows:</p> + +<p class="quot">On July 14, 1933 was issued the law against the formation of + new parties which raised the NSDAP to the only political + party in Germany [document 11-III] ... The overthrow of the + old party-state was accompanied by the construction of the + new movement-state [<i>Bewegungsstaat</i>]. Out of a political + fighting organization the NSDAP grew to a community capable + of carrying the state and the nation. This process was + accomplished step by step in the first months after the + National Socialist seizure of power. The assumption of the + office of Chancelor by the Führer of the movement formed the + basis for this development. Various party leaders were + appointed as <i>Reichsminister</i>; the governors of the + provinces were national leaders or <i>Gauleiter</i> of the party, + such as General von Epp; the Prussian government officials + are as a rule <i>Gauleiter</i> of the party; the Prussian police + chiefs are mostly high-ranking SA leaders. By this system of + a union of the personnel of the party and state offices the + unity of party and state was achieved.<a name="FNanchor_85_85"></a><a href="#Footnote_85_85"><sup>[85]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>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, <i>post</i> 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.</p> + +<p>With regard to the relation between the party and the state, Neesse +writes:</p> + +<p class="quot">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.<a name="FNanchor_86_86"></a><a href="#Footnote_86_86"><sup>[86]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>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, <i>post</i> 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:</p> + +<p class="quot">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.<a name="FNanchor_87_87"></a><a href="#Footnote_87_87"><sup>[87]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>The official party interpretation of the relation between party and +state, as set forth in the <i>Party Organization Book</i> for 1940, appears +in the Appendix as document 7 (<i>post</i> p. 186).</p> + +<p>Goebbels in his lecture on <i>The Nature and Form of National Socialism</i> +(document 2, <i>post</i> p. 170) stressed the importance of +<i>Gleichschaltung</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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, <i>post</i> p. 155):</p> + +<p class="quot">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.<a name="FNanchor_88_88"></a><a href="#Footnote_88_88"><sup>[88]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>In place of these rights the constitution of the Third Reich +guarantees to the individual his place in the community of the people:</p> + +<p class="quot">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.</p> + +<p class="quot">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 ...<a name="FNanchor_89_89"></a><a href="#Footnote_89_89"><sup>[89]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>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 <i>Volk</i> for the use of the property in the common +interest. Huber sets forth the Nazi view in the following words:</p> + +<p class="quot">"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.<a name="FNanchor_90_90"></a><a href="#Footnote_90_90"><sup>[90]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Reference has been made to the appointment of party members to +important state offices. Gauweiler (document 8, <i>post</i> 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 +(<i>Beamtengesetz</i>) of January 26, 1937,<a name="FNanchor_91_91"></a><a href="#Footnote_91_91"><sup>[91]</sup></a> 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."<a name="FNanchor_92_92"></a><a href="#Footnote_92_92"><sup>[92]</sup></a></p> + +<p>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 <i>Akademie für deutsches Recht</i>:</p> + +<p class="quot">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.<a name="FNanchor_93_93"></a><a href="#Footnote_93_93"><sup>[93]</sup></a> </p> + +<br /> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 110%; margin-bottom: 1em"> +Footnotes To First Section</p> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8">[8]</a> Huber, <i>Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches</i> +(Hamburg, 1939), pp. 54-55.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9">[9]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 153-155.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10">[10]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 156-157.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11">[11]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 157.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12">[12]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 158.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13">[13]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 163.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14">[14]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 164.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15">[15]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 165-166.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16">[16]</a> Neesse, <i>Die Nationalsozialistische Deutsche +Arbeiterpartei—Versuch einer Rechtsdeutung</i> (Stuttgart, 1935), p. +44.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17">[17]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 51.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18">[18]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 54.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19">[19]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 58.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20">[20]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 54-56.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21">[21]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 59.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22">[22]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 60-61.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23">[23]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 65-66.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24">[24]</a> Scurla, <i>Die Grundgedanken des Nationalsozialismus und +das Ausland</i> (Berlin, 1938), pp. 10-11.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25">[25]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 9.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26">[26]</a> <i>Ibid.</i></p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27">[27]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 13.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28">[28]</a> Beck, <i>Die Erziehung im dritten Reich</i> (Dortmund and +Breslau, 1936), p. 20.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29">[29]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 20-21.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30">[30]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 35.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31">[31]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 52-55.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32">[32]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 46.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33">[33]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 57.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34">[34]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 118.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35">[35]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 140.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36">[36]</a> Rosenberg, <i>Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts</i> (Munich, +1935), p. 28 (1st ed. 1930).</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37">[37]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 114.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38">[38]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 479.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39">[39]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 542.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40">[40]</a> Gottfried Feder, <i>The Programme of the Party of Hitler</i> +(translated by E.T.S. Dugdale: Munich, 1932), p. 18.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41">[41]</a> Rosenberg, <i>Wesen, Grundsätze und Ziele der NSDAP</i> +(Munich, 1933), pp. 16-18 (1st ed. 1922).</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42">[42]</a> Rosenberg, <i>Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts</i>, p. 673.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43">[43]</a> Beck, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 110.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44">[44]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 110.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45">[45]</a> Huber, "<i>Aufbau und Gefüge des Reiches</i>," published in +the book <i>Idee und Ordnung des Reiches</i> (ed. by Huber: Hamburg, +Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1941), p. 12.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46">[46]</a> Huber, <i>Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches</i> +(Hamburg, 1939), pp. 194-198.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47">[47]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 199-200.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48">[48]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 207-208.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49">[49]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 213-214.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50">[50]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 230.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51">[51]</a> Neesse, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 146.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_52">[52]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 143.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_53">[53]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 144-147.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_54_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54_54">[54]</a> <i>Germany Speaks</i> (containing articles by twenty-one +leading members of the Nazi Party and the German Government: London, +1938), p. 31.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_55_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55_55">[55]</a> <i>Reichsgesetzblatt</i> (1942), p. 247. (All citations to +the <i>Reichsgesetzblatt</i> refer to part I thereof.)</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_56_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56_56">[56]</a> Neesse, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 150.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_57_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57_57">[57]</a> Beck, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 131.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_58_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58_58">[58]</a> <i>My New Order</i>, p. 159.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_59_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59_59">[59]</a> Huber, <i>Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches</i> +(Hamburg, 1939), p. 410.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_60_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60_60">[60]</a> Gauweiler, <i>Rechtseinrichtungen und Rechtsaufgaben der +Bewegung</i> (Munich, 1939), p. 2.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_61_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61_61">[61]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 9.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_62_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62_62">[62]</a> Neesse, <i>op. cit,</i>, p. 71.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_63_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63_63">[63]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 119.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_64_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64_64">[64]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 126.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_65_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65_65">[65]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 139-140.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_66_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_66_66">[66]</a> Huber, <i>Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches</i> +(Hamburg, 1939), pp. 293-296.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_67_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_67_67">[67]</a> Beck, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 37.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_68_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_68_68">[68]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 37-38.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_69_69"></a><a href="#FNanchor_69_69">[69]</a> Goebbels, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 19.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_70_70"></a><a href="#FNanchor_70_70">[70]</a> <i>Germany Speaks</i>, pp. 30-31.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_71_71"></a><a href="#FNanchor_71_71">[71]</a> <i>Reichsgesetzblatt</i> (1941), p. 295.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_72_72"></a><a href="#FNanchor_72_72">[72]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, (1942), p. 35.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_73_73"></a><a href="#FNanchor_73_73">[73]</a> <i>Organisationsbuch der NSDAP</i> (ed. by the National +Organizational Director of the NSDAP: Munich, 1940), p. 5.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_74_74"></a><a href="#FNanchor_74_74">[74]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 6b.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_75_75"></a><a href="#FNanchor_75_75">[75]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 6d.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_76_76"></a><a href="#FNanchor_76_76">[76]</a> <i>Ibid.</i></p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_77_77"></a><a href="#FNanchor_77_77">[77]</a> The German pocket reference book for current events +(<i>Taschen-Brockhaus zum Zeitgeschehen</i>: Leipzig, 1942) states that the +swastika banner was designed by Hitler for the NSDAP in 1919.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_78_78"></a><a href="#FNanchor_78_78">[78]</a> Adolf Hitler, <i>Mein Kampf</i> (Munich, Verlag Frank Eher, +G.m.b.H., 1933 [copyright 1925]), pp. 556-557.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_79_79"></a><a href="#FNanchor_79_79">[79]</a> <i>Reichsgesetzblatt</i> (1935), p. 1145.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_80_80"></a><a href="#FNanchor_80_80">[80]</a> <i>Ibid.</i> (1937), p. 442.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_81_81"></a><a href="#FNanchor_81_81">[81]</a> <i>Organisationsbuch der NSDAP</i> (Munich, 1940), p. 8.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_82_82"></a><a href="#FNanchor_82_82">[82]</a> <i>Reichsgesetzblatt</i> (1933), p. 83.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_83_83"></a><a href="#FNanchor_83_83">[83]</a> <i>Ibid.</i></p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_84_84"></a><a href="#FNanchor_84_84">[84]</a> In his book <i>Die deutsche Polizei</i> (<i>The German Police</i>) +(<i>Darmstadt</i>, L.C. Wittich Verlag, 1941), p. 24, the prominent Nazi +police official, Dr. Werner Best, wrote that this law "is to be +regarded not as a 'police law'—that is, as the regulation of police +functions and activities—but as the expression of the new conception +of the state as it has been transformed by the National Socialist +revolution, from which the new 'police' concept is derived." Also, +this law was for the police "the confirmation that the work already +begun was in agreement with the law giving will of the Supreme +Leadership of the Reich."</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_85_85"></a><a href="#FNanchor_85_85">[85]</a> Huber, <i>Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches</i> +(Hamburg, 1939) p. 288.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_86_86"></a><a href="#FNanchor_86_86">[86]</a> Neesse, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 131.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_87_87"></a><a href="#FNanchor_87_87">[87]</a> Gauweiler, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 3.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_88_88"></a><a href="#FNanchor_88_88">[88]</a> Huber, <i>Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches</i> +(Hamburg, 1939), p. 361.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_89_89"></a><a href="#FNanchor_89_89">[89]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 365-366.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_90_90"></a><a href="#FNanchor_90_90">[90]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 372-373.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_91_91"></a><a href="#FNanchor_91_91">[91]</a> <i>Reichsgesetzblatt</i> (1937), pp. 39-70.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_92_92"></a><a href="#FNanchor_92_92">[92]</a> Gauweiler, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 156.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_93_93"></a><a href="#FNanchor_93_93">[93]</a> Reported in a bulletin of the official German news +agency, DNB, Apr. 14, 1942.</p></div> + +<br /><br /> + +<a name="NAZI_AIMS_AND_METHODS"></a><hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<br /> + +<h3><span style="font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 110%"> +Nazi Aims And Methods</span></h3> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em">Political Aims</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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, <i>post</i> +p. 222.) The points of particular interest in this study are the first +four, which are set forth below:</p> + +<p class="quot">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.</p> + +<p class="quot">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.</p> + +<p class="quot">3. We demand land and territory (colonies) for the + nourishment of our people and for settling our superfluous + population.</p> + +<p class="quot">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.<a name="FNanchor_94_94"></a><a href="#Footnote_94_94"><sup>[94]</sup></a> </p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><i>1. Internal Objectives</i></p> + +<p>A statement of the internal objectives of National Socialism is made +by Gauweiler in his <i>Legal Organization and Legal Functions of the +Movement</i> (document 8, <i>post</i> p. 204). The laws of the Reich must seek +to establish and promote the five basic values recognized by Nazi +ideology:</p> + +<p class="quot">1. Race: The legal protection of the race, which has created + a new concept of nationality [<i>Volkszugehörigkeit</i>], 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."</p> + +<p class="quot">The purpose of this legal protection of the basic value of + <i>race</i> 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.</p> + +<p class="quot">2. Soil [<i>Boden</i>]: 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.</p> + +<p class="quot">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.</p> + +<p class="quot">4. The Reich: With the securing of the three basic values of + race, soil, and work arises the National Socialist Reich.</p> + +<p class="quot">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.</p> + +<p class="quot">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.<a name="FNanchor_95_95"></a><a href="#Footnote_95_95"><sup>[95]</sup></a> </p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><i>2. Foreign Policy</i></p> + +<p>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 <i>Mein +Kampf</i> (document 13-I, <i>post</i> p. 226):</p> + +<p class="quot">As National Socialists we can further set forth the + following principle with regard to the nature of the foreign + policy of a folk-state:</p> + +<p class="quot"><i>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.</i><a name="FNanchor_96_96"></a><a href="#Footnote_96_96"><sup>[96]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>And in the same work he states:</p> + +<p class="quot">Yes, we can only learn from the past that we must undertake + the setting of aims for our political activity in two + directions: <i>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.</i><a name="FNanchor_97_97"></a><a href="#Footnote_97_97"><sup>[97]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>The political objectives of National Socialism, then, by definition of +Hitler himself, are the internal unification of the German people and +external expansion.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Basic +Principles of National Socialism With Special Reference to Foreign +Countries</i>. 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,"<a name="FNanchor_98_98"></a><a href="#Footnote_98_98"><sup>[98]</sup></a> and +comments:</p> + +<p class="quot">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.<a name="FNanchor_99_99"></a><a href="#Footnote_99_99"><sup>[99]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>Farther on in the same work Scurla states:</p> + +<p class="quot">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.<a name="FNanchor_100_100"></a><a href="#Footnote_100_100"><sup>[100]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p class="quot">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.<a name="FNanchor_101_101"></a><a href="#Footnote_101_101"><sup>[101]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>But such assurances, which were intended exclusively for foreign +consumption, were refuted by the basic policy laid down in <i>Mein +Kampf</i>, 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 +<i>Mein Kampf</i> (document 13-I, <i>post</i> p. 226) Hitler wrote:</p> + +<p class="quot"><i>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.</i><a name="FNanchor_102_102"></a><a href="#Footnote_102_102"><sup>[102]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>Hitler suggests a future foreign policy for Germany which would assure +<i>Lebensraum</i> and domination of the European continent. In <i>Mein Kampf</i> +he states:</p> + +<p class="quot">But the political testament of the German nation for its + outwardly directed activity should and must always have the + following import:</p> + +<p class="quot"><i>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</i>.<a name="FNanchor_103_103"></a><a href="#Footnote_103_103"><sup>[103]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>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 <i>Mein Kampf</i> (document 13-I, <i>post</i> p. 226):</p> + +<p class="quot">... 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 + [<i>Herrenvolk</i>] which places the world in the service of a + higher culture.<a name="FNanchor_104_104"></a><a href="#Footnote_104_104"><sup>[104]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>Like Hitler, Rosenberg envisaged the extension of Nazi power far +beyond the borders of Germany. In his <i>Nature, Principles, and Aims of +the NSDAP</i> 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."<a name="FNanchor_105_105"></a><a href="#Footnote_105_105"><sup>[105]</sup></a></p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em;"><b>Propaganda</b></p> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><i>1. Professed Peaceful Intentions as a Cloak for Imperialistic +Designs</i></p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p class="quot"><i>No fresh European war is capable of putting something + better in the place of unsatisfactory conditions which exist + to-day ...</i> 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 ... <i>The German Government wish to settle all + difficult questions with other Governments by peaceful + methods.</i> 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 ...</p> + +<p class="quot">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.</p> + +<p class="quot"><i>The German people have no thought of invading any + country.</i><a name="FNanchor_106_106"></a><a href="#Footnote_106_106"><sup>[106]</sup></a> + (Document 14, <i>post</i> pp. 282-233.) </p> + +<p>And on March 7, 1936 he stated:</p> + +<p class="quot">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. <i>We have no territorial demands to make in + Europe.</i><a name="FNanchor_107_107"></a><a href="#Footnote_107_107"><sup>[107]</sup></a> (Document 14, <i>post</i> p. 237.) </p> + +<p>Moreover, he did not shrink from giving specific assurances of +Germany's peaceful intentions toward his subsequent victims:</p> + +<p class="quot">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)</p> + +<p class="quot"><i>Germans and Poles must reconcile themselves as to the fact + of each others' existence.</i> 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 ...</p> + +<p class="quot"><i>The assertion that the German Reich plans to coerce the + Austrian State is absurd and cannot be substantiated or + proved</i> ... 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)</p> + +<p class="quot"><i>The lie goes forth again that Germany to-morrow or the day + after will fall upon Austria or Czecho-Slovakia</i>. 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)</p> + +<p class="quot">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 ... <i>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</i> + ...<br /> + (Sept. 26, 1938)<a name="FNanchor_108_108"></a><a href="#Footnote_108_108"><sup>[108]</sup></a><br /> + (Document 14, <i>post</i> pp. 233, 234, 238, 240-241.)</p> + +<p class="quot">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)<a name="FNanchor_109_109"></a><a href="#Footnote_109_109"><sup>[109]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p class="quot"><i>... 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 ...</i></p> + +<p class="quot">The German Government is nevertheless prepared to give each + of the States named an assurance of the kind desired by Mr. + Roosevelt on the condition of absolute reciprocity, provided + that the State wishes it and itself addresses to Germany a + request for such an assurance together with appropriate + proposals.<a name="FNanchor_110_110"></a><a href="#Footnote_110_110"><sup>[110]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>And on September 1, 1939, with reference to the recently concluded +pact between Germany and Russia, he said:</p> + +<p class="quot">You know that Russia and Germany are governed by two + different doctrines. There was only one question that had to + be cleared up. Germany has no intention of exporting its + doctrine. Given the fact that Soviet Russia has no intention + of exporting its doctrine to Germany, I no longer see any + reason why we should still oppose one another. On both sides + we are clear on that. Any struggle between our people would + only be of advantage to others. We have, therefore, resolved + to conclude a pact which rules out forever any use of + violence between us.<a name="FNanchor_111_111"></a><a href="#Footnote_111_111"><sup>[111]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>Additional assurances of this nature are quoted in a series of +extracts from Hitler's speeches, dating from February 10, 1933 to +September 1, 1939, which was printed in the <i>London Times</i> of +September 26, 1939 (document 14, <i>post</i> p. 232).</p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><i>2. Internal Propaganda</i></p> + +<p>Within Germany the notorious propaganda machine of Dr. Goebbels, +together with a systematic terrorization of oppositionist elements, +has been the principle support of the rise and triumph of the Nazi +movement. In his <i>Legal Organization and Legal Functions of the +Movement</i> (document 8, <i>post</i> p. 204), Gauweiler gives an idea of the +permeation of all phases of national life with a propaganda designed +to make Nazi "legal principles" acceptable to the masses. He makes it +clear that all of the Nazi propaganda machinery is in the service of +this program; political lecturers, the press, the radio, and the films +all play a part in helping the people to understand and appreciate the +new legal code. The schools and Hitler Youth groups provide +instruction for all young people in the fundamentals of National +Socialist law, and pupils in those schools which train the carefully +selected future leaders are given an especially strong dose of Nazi +legal theory and practice.</p> + +<p>In order to appeal to the broadest audience, Nazi propaganda has +always sought to present all questions in the simplest possible terms. +Goebbels himself, in his <i>Nature and Form of National Socialism</i> +(document 2, <i>post</i> p. 170), wrote as follows:</p> + +<p class="quot">National Socialism has simplified the thinking of the German + people and led it back to its original primitive formulas. + It has presented the complicated processes of political and + economic life in their simplest terms. This was done with + the well-considered intention of leading the broad masses of + the people once again to take part in political life. In + order to find understanding among the masses, we consciously + practiced a popular [<i>volksgebundene</i>] propaganda. We have + taken complexes of facts which were formerly accessible only + to a few specialists and experts, carried them to the + streets, and hammered them into the brain of the little man. + All things were presented so simply that even the most + primitive mind could grasp them. We refused to work with + unclear or insubstantial concepts but we gave all things a + clearly defined sense. Here lay the secret of our + success.<a name="FNanchor_112_112"></a><a href="#Footnote_112_112"><sup>[112]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>The character and quality of Nazi propaganda was fully presaged in +<i>Mein Kampf</i>. Here Hitler paid a striking tribute to the power of +lies, commenting on—</p> + +<p class="quot">the very correct principle that the size of the lie always + involves a certain factor of credibility, since the great + mass of a people will be more spoiled in the innermost + depths of its heart, rather than consciously and + deliberately bad. Consequently, in view of the primitive + simplicity of its mind it is more readily captivated by a + big lie than by a small one, since it itself often uses + small lies but would be, nevertheless, too ashamed to make + use of big lies. Such an untruth will not even occur to it, + and it will not even believe that others are capable of the + enormous insolence of the most vile distortions. Why, even + when enlightened, it will still vacillate and be in doubt + about the matter and will nevertheless accept as true at + least some cause or other. Consequently, even from the most + impudent lie something will always stick ...<a name="FNanchor_113_113"></a><a href="#Footnote_113_113"><sup>[113]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>A number of other passages display Hitler's low opinion of the +intellectual capacities and critical faculties of the masses:</p> + +<p class="quot">All propaganda has to appeal to the people and its + intellectual level has to be set in accordance with the + receptive capacities of the most-limited persons among those + to whom it intends to address itself. The larger the mass + of men to be reached, the lower its purely intellectual + level will have to be set.<a name="FNanchor_114_114"></a><a href="#Footnote_114_114"><sup>[114]</sup></a></p> + +<p class="quot">The receptive capacity of the great masses is very + restricted, its understanding small. On the other hand, + however, its forgetfulness is great. On account of these + facts all effective propaganda must restrict itself to very + few points and impress these by slogans, until even the last + person is able to bring to mind what is meant by such a + word.<a name="FNanchor_115_115"></a><a href="#Footnote_115_115"><sup>[115]</sup></a></p> + +<p class="quot">The task of propaganda is, for instance, not to evaluate + diverse rights but to emphasize exclusively the single right + of that which it is representing. It does not have to + investigate objectively the truth, so far as this is + favorable to the others, in order then to present it to the + masses in strict honesty, but rather to serve its own side + ceaselessly.<a name="FNanchor_116_116"></a><a href="#Footnote_116_116"><sup>[116]</sup></a></p> + +<p class="quot">If one's own propaganda even once accords just the shimmer + of right to the other side, then the basis is therewith laid + for doubt regarding one's own cause. The masses are not able + to distinguish where the error of the other side ends and + the error of one's own side begins.<a name="FNanchor_117_117"></a><a href="#Footnote_117_117"><sup>[117]</sup></a></p> + +<p class="quot">But all talent in presentation of propaganda will lead to no + success if a fundamental principle is not always strictly + followed. Propaganda has to restrict itself to a few matters + and to repeat these eternally. Persistence is here, as with + so many other things in the world, the first and most + important presupposition for success.<a name="FNanchor_118_118"></a><a href="#Footnote_118_118"><sup>[118]</sup></a></p> + +<p class="quot">In view of their slowness of mind, they [the masses] require + always, however, a certain period before they are ready even + to take cognizance of a matter, and only after a + thousandfold repetition of the most simple concept will they + finally retain it.<a name="FNanchor_119_119"></a><a href="#Footnote_119_119"><sup>[119]</sup></a></p> + +<p class="quot"><i>In all cases in which there is a question of the fulfilment + of apparently impossible demands or tasks, the entire + attention of a people must be concentrated only on this one + question, in such a way as if being or non-being actually + depends on its solution</i> ...</p> + +<p class="quot">...The great mass of the people can never see the entire way + before them, without tiring and doubting the task.<a name="FNanchor_120_120"></a><a href="#Footnote_120_120"><sup>[120]</sup></a></p> + +<p class="quot">In general the art of all truly great popular leaders at all + times consists primarily in not scattering the attention of + a people but rather in concentrating it always on one single + opponent. The more unified this use of the fighting will of + a people, the greater will be the magnetic attractive force + of a movement and the more powerful the force of its push. + It is a part of the genius of a great leader to make even + quite different opponents appear as if they belonged only to + one category, because the recognition of different enemies + leads weak and unsure persons only too readily to begin + doubting their own cause.</p> + +<p class="quot">When the vacillating masses see themselves fighting against + too many enemies, objectivity at once sets in and raises the + question whether really all the others are wrong and only + one's own people or one's own movement is right.<a name="FNanchor_121_121"></a><a href="#Footnote_121_121"><sup>[121]</sup></a> + (Document 13-II, <i>post</i> pp. 229-231.) </p> + +<p>It has been the aim of Nazi propaganda, then, to unite the masses of +the people in hatred of certain enemies, designated by such +conveniently broad and simple terms as "Jews," "democrats," +"plutocrats," "bolshevists," or "Anglo-Saxons," which so far as +possible were to be identified with one another in the public mind. +The Germans were represented to themselves, on the other hand, as a +racial folk of industrious workers. It then became possible to plunge +the people into a war on a wave of emotional hatred against those +nations which were pictured as combining to keep Germany from +attaining her rightful place in the sun.</p> + +<p>The important role which propaganda would have to play in the coming +war was fully recognized by Ewald Banse, an ardent Nazi military +theorist of the geopolitical school and professor of military science +at Brunswick Military College. In his book <i>Raum und Volk im +Weltkrieg</i> (<i>Space and People in the World War</i>) which appeared in +1932 (an English translation by Alan Harris was published under the +title <i>Germany Prepares for War</i> (New York, Harcourt, Brace and Co., +1934)), he stated:</p> + +<p class="quot">Preparation for future wars must not stop at the creation, + equipment and training of an efficient army, but must go on + to train the minds of the whole people for the war and must + employ all the resources of science to master the conditions + governing the war itself and the possibility of endurance. + In 1914 we had a first-class army, but our scientific + mobilization was bad, and the mobilization of men's minds a + thing undreamed of. The unveiling of war memorials, parades + of war veterans, flag-waggings, fiery speeches and + guard-mounting are not of themselves enough to prepare a + nation's mind for the dangers that threaten. Conviction is + always more lasting than enthusiasm.</p> + +<p class="quot">... Such teaching is necessary at a time and in a world in + which countries are no longer represented by monarchs or a + small aristocracy or by a specialist army, but in which the + whole nation, from the commander-in-chief to the man in the + ranks, from the loftiest thought to the simplest wish, from + corn to coal, from the treasury vaults to the last + trouser-button, must be permeated through and through with + the idea of national defense, if it is to preserve its + national identity and political independence. The science of + national defense is not the same as military science; it + does not teach generals how to win battles or company + commanders how to train recruits. Its lessons are addressed + first and foremost to the whole people. It seeks to train + the popular mind to heroism and war and to implant in it an + understanding of the nature and prerequisite conditions of + modern warfare. It teaches us about countries and peoples, + especially our own country and its neighbors, their + territories and economic capacity, their communications and + their mentality—all for the purpose of creating the best + possible conditions for waging future wars in defense of the + national existence.<a name="FNanchor_122_122"></a><a href="#Footnote_122_122"><sup>[122]</sup></a> </p> +<br /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"><b>Infiltration Tactics</b></p> + +<p>The Nazis, while entirely without scruple in the pursuit of their +objectives, endeavor whenever possible to give their actions the cloak +of legality. This procedure was followed in Germany to enable them to +gain control of the Government of the Reich and in their foreign +policy up to September 1, 1939. It has been a cardinal principle of +the Nazis to avoid the use of force whenever their objectives may be +attained in another manner and they have assiduously studied their +enemies in an effort to discover the weak points in their structure +which will enable the Nazis to accomplish their downfall. The +preceding pages have demonstrated that the Nazis have contributed +practically nothing that is original to German political thought. By +the use of unscrupulous, deceitful, and uninhibited tactics, however, +they have been able to realize many of the objectives which had +previously existed only in theory.</p> + +<p>The Weimar Constitution provided the Nazis with a convenient basis for +the establishment of the totalitarian state. They made no effort to +conceal their intention of taking advantage of the weaknesses of the +Weimar Republic in order to attain power. On April 30, 1928 Dr. +Goebbels wrote in his paper <i>Der Angriff</i>:</p> + +<p class="quot">We enter Parliament in order to supply ourselves, in the + arsenal of democracy, with its own weapons. We become + members of the Reichstag in order to paralyze the Weimar + sentiment with its own assistance. If democracy is so stupid + as to give us free tickets and salaries for this bear's + work, that is its affair ...<a name="FNanchor_123_123"></a><a href="#Footnote_123_123"><sup>[123]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>And later in the same article:</p> + +<p class="quot">We do not come as friends, nor even as neutrals. We come as + enemies. As the wolf bursts into the flock, so we come.<a name="FNanchor_124_124"></a><a href="#Footnote_124_124"><sup>[124]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>Hitler expressed the same idea on September 1, 1933, when, looking +back upon the struggle for political power in Germany, he wrote:</p> + +<p class="quot">This watchword of democratic freedom led only to insecurity, + indiscipline, and at length to the downfall and destruction + of all authority. <i>Our opponents' objection that we, too, + once made use of these rights, will not hold water; for we + made use of an unreasonable right, which was part and parcel + of an unreasonable system, in order to overthrow the + unreason of this system.</i><a name="FNanchor_125_125"></a><a href="#Footnote_125_125"><sup>[125]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>Discussing the rise to power of the Nazis, Huber (document 1, <i>post</i> +p. 155) wrote in 1939:</p> + +<p class="quot">The parliamentary battle of the NSDAP had the single purpose + of destroying the parliamentary system from within through + its own methods. It was necessary above all to make formal + use of the possibilities of the party-state system but to + refuse real cooperation and thereby to render the + parliamentary system, which is by nature dependent upon the + responsible cooperation of the opposition, incapable of + action.<a name="FNanchor_126_126"></a><a href="#Footnote_126_126"><sup>[126]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>As its parliamentary strength increased, the party was able to achieve +these aims:</p> + +<p class="quot">It was in a position to make the formation of any positive + majority in the Reichstag impossible.... Thus the NSDAP was + able through its strong position to make the Reichstag + powerless as a lawgiving and government-forming body.<a name="FNanchor_127_127"></a><a href="#Footnote_127_127"><sup>[127]</sup></a> </p> + +<p>The same principle was followed by Germany in weakening and +undermining the governments of countries which it had chosen for its +victims. While it was Hitler's policy to concentrate on only one +objective at a time, German agents were busy throughout the world in +ferreting out the natural political, social, and economic cleavages in +various countries and in broadening them in order to create internal +confusion and uncertainty. Foreign political leaders of Fascist or +authoritarian persuasion were encouraged and often liberally +subsidized from Nazi funds. Control was covertly obtained over +influential newspapers and periodicals and their editorial policies +shaped in such a way as to further Nazi ends. In the countries Germany +sought to overpower, all the highly developed organs of Nazi +propaganda were utilized to confuse and divide public opinion, to +discredit national leaders and institutions, and to induce an +unjustified feeling of confidence in the false assertions of Nazi +leaders disclaiming any aggressive intentions.</p> + +<p>One of the most important features introduced by the Nazis into German +foreign policy was the appreciation of the value of Germans living +abroad and their organization as implements of the Reich for the +attainment of objectives in the field of foreign policy. This idea was +applied by the Nazis to all the large colonies of Germans which are +scattered throughout the world. The potential usefulness of these +colonies was early recognized by the men in Hitler's immediate +entourage, several of whom were so-called <i>Auslandsdeutsche</i> who had +spent many years of their life abroad and were familiar with foreign +conditions and with the position and influence of German groups in +foreign countries. Of particular importance in this group were Rudolf +Hess, the Führer's Deputy, who was primarily responsible for +elaborating the policy which utilized the services of Germans abroad, +and Ernst Wilhelm Bohle, the leader of the Foreign Organization, who +was responsible for winning over these Germans to Naziism and for +their organization in groups which would serve the purposes of the +Third Reich.</p> + +<br /> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 110%; margin-bottom: 1em"> +Footnotes:</p> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_94_94"></a><a href="#FNanchor_94_94">[94]</a> Feder, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 18.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_95_95"></a><a href="#FNanchor_95_95">[95]</a> Gauweiler, <i>op. cit.</i>, pp. 149-151.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_96_96"></a><a href="#FNanchor_96_96">[96]</a> <i>Mein Kampf</i>, pp. 727-728.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_97_97"></a><a href="#FNanchor_97_97">[97]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 735-736.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_98_98"></a><a href="#FNanchor_98_98">[98]</a> Scurla, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 21.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_99_99"></a><a href="#FNanchor_99_99">[99]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 21-22.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_100_100"></a><a href="#FNanchor_100_100">[100]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 23.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_101_101"></a><a href="#FNanchor_101_101">[101]</a> <i>Der Parteitag der Freiheit</i> (official record of the +1935 party congress at Nuremberg: Munich, 1935), p. 27.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_102_102"></a><a href="#FNanchor_102_102">[102]</a> <i>Mein Kampf</i>, p. 743.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_103_103"></a><a href="#FNanchor_103_103">[103]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 754-755.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_104_104"></a><a href="#FNanchor_104_104">[104]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 437-438.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_105_105"></a><a href="#FNanchor_105_105">[105]</a> Rosenberg, <i>Wesen, Grundsätze und Ziele der NSDAP</i>, p. +48.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_106_106"></a><a href="#FNanchor_106_106">[106]</a> <i>London Times</i>, Sept. 26, 1939, p. 9.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_107_107"></a><a href="#FNanchor_107_107">[107]</a> <i>Ibid.</i></p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_108_108"></a><a href="#FNanchor_108_108">[108]</a> <i>Ibid.</i></p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_109_109"></a><a href="#FNanchor_109_109">[109]</a> <i>My New Order</i>, p. 592.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_110_110"></a><a href="#FNanchor_110_110">[110]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 669-671.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_111_111"></a><a href="#FNanchor_111_111">[111]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 687.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_112_112"></a><a href="#FNanchor_112_112">[112]</a> Goebbels, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 6.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_113_113"></a><a href="#FNanchor_113_113">[113]</a> <i>Mein Kampf</i>, p. 252.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_114_114"></a><a href="#FNanchor_114_114">[114]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 197.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_115_115"></a><a href="#FNanchor_115_115">[115]</a> <i>Ibid</i>., p. 198.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_116_116"></a><a href="#FNanchor_116_116">[116]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 200.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_117_117"></a><a href="#FNanchor_117_117">[117]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 200-201.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_118_118"></a><a href="#FNanchor_118_118">[118]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 202.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_119_119"></a><a href="#FNanchor_119_119">[119]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 203.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_120_120"></a><a href="#FNanchor_120_120">[120]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 273.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_121_121"></a><a href="#FNanchor_121_121">[121]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 129.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_122_122"></a><a href="#FNanchor_122_122">[122]</a> Banse, <i>Germany Prepares for War</i> (New York, 1934), pp. +348-349.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_123_123"></a><a href="#FNanchor_123_123">[123]</a> Goebbels, <i>Der Angriff: Aufsätze aus der Kampfzeit</i> +(Munich, 1936), p. 71.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_124_124"></a><a href="#FNanchor_124_124">[124]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 73.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_125_125"></a><a href="#FNanchor_125_125">[125]</a> <i>My New Order</i>, pp. 195-196.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_126_126"></a><a href="#FNanchor_126_126">[126]</a> Huber, <i>Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches</i> +(Hamburg, 1939), p. 31.</p></div> + +<div class="note"><p class="nodent"><a name="Footnote_127_127"></a><a href="#FNanchor_127_127">[127]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 32.</p></div> + +<br /><br /> + +<a name="NATIONAL_SOCIALISM_AND_MEDICINE"></a><hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<br /> + +<h3>NATIONAL-SOCIALISM AND MEDICINE</h3><span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span> + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; margin-bottom: 1em"> +<i>Address by Dr. F. Hamburger to German Medical Profession. <br /> +Translated (in part) from Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift, 1939, No. 6.</i></p> + +<p>Medical men must beware of pride, a pride which is certainly +wide-spread and which leads to the disparagement of the practical +doctor and medical layman, and then further to the disparagement of +the craft of nature healers. The practical doctor and the nature +healer on the one hand tend towards an understandable disparagement of +medical science and analysis and, on the other hand, tend towards +superficiality. The superficiality of the opponents of science is, +however, as unhappy an affair as the pride of the so-called +scientists, but the one group should not demean the other. This would +lead to successful cooperation to the advantage of the sick and health +of the community.</p> + +<p>Academic medicine and nature healers generally have one thing in +common, that they underestimate the significance of automatism and +suggestion. In this regard there is an absence in both camps of the +necessary criticism and clarity. Successes are noted with specific +methods without any confirmation as to whether or not suggestion and +faith alone have not produced the improvement in the patient.</p> + +<p>National-Socialism is the true instrument for the achievement of the +health of our people. National-Socialism is concerned with the great +significance of inherited traits and with the insight into the working +of spiritual forces upon the body, with the study of the power of +custom and, along with this, of the significance of education and +nurture. (Hamburger here complains about the luxurious arrangement for +dealing with the mentally ill in contradistinction to the neglect of +Folk-health. This he attributes to the era of liberalism with its +stress upon the single individual. He here also attacks the Socialism +of Social Democracy and its conception of a Community of Equal Men. +This is a false Socialism.)</p> + +<p>So we scientists and doctors simply and soberly affirm the principle +of strength of faith and the nationalist socialist principle of +Positive Christianity which does not prevent us from the inspired +consideration of natural and divinely willed phenomena. We doctors +must never forget the fact that the soul rules the body.</p> + +<p>Soul forces are the most important. The spirit builds the body. +Strength springs from joy. Efficiency is achieved despite care, fear, +and uncertainty—We speak here of thymogenetic automatism or the +automatism of harmony ("thymogenetische automatismus oder +stimmungsautomatismus"). The autonomous nervous system achieves, under +the influence of joy, the expansion of the blood vessels in skin and +muscle.... The muscular activity incited by joy means the use of +calories and stimulation of appetite. Muscular contraction pulls and +draws at the bones, ligaments are tensed, breathing deepend, appetite +increased ... A child influenced by the daily exercise of joy develops +physically strong and powerful. ... The Soul care (Seele Sorge) of the +practical doctor is his most significant daily task alongside of +prescriptions and manipulative dexterity.</p> + +<p>Soul-care in the medical sense is a concern for the wishes, hopes and +fears of the patient, the considered participation in his fate. Such a +relationship leads to the all-important and generally recognized trust +in the doctor. This faith, in all cases, leads to the improvement, +often even to the elimination of symptoms, of the disease. Here we +have clearly before us the great significance of thymogenetic +automatism.</p> + +<p>Academic physicians should not dismiss this because we do not know its +biochemical aspects. (We must beware of regarding something as +unacceptable because it is not measurable in exact terms, he warns.) +We see its practical results, and, therefore, thymogenetic automatism +must stand in the first rank as of overwhelming significance. Thus, +also, the principle, strength through joy (Kraft durch Freude) stands +firmly as an inescapable natural law.</p> + +<p>We see the practical country doctor spreading courage and confidence. +For years too few doctors have seen clearly that gymnastic tourism and +sport do more for health than all doctors taken together. And now we +face the fact that a single man, a non-medical man (Hitler) through +his great qualities, has opened up new avenues of health for the +eighty million folk of Germany.</p> + +<p>In the majority of cases things so happen that the doctor must act +before making a diagnosis, since only the mis-educated patients, the +one-sided intellectual patient, wishes in the very first place to know +the diagnosis. But the unspoilt and properly ordered type of person +wishes only to be relieved of his pain. For him the diagnosis is an +interesting side issue but not the principle thing. We can thus also +understand why we always meet the desire for a diagnosis placed first +by the over-intellectualized Jewish patient. But that is not the case +with most Aryan patients. They, from the first, come to meet the +doctor with more trust. They do not entertain as many after-thoughts. +And I cannot help but remark that after-thoughts are hardly conducive +to right results.</p> + +<p>(After a discussion of the sterilization of the unfit and of +inheritable diseases he turns to the subject of child bearing.)</p> + +<p>It has been estimated that every couple should have four children if +the nation's population is to be maintained. But we meet already the +facile and complacent expression of young married people, "Now we have +our four children and so have fulfilled our obligations"—What +superficiality! Today we must demand a much higher moral attitude from +the wife than previously. Earlier it was taken for granted that a +woman would bear a child every one or two years. But today in this +time of manifold amenities of life, at a time when women is not denied +access to these joys it is understandable that she is eager to +participate in them. Add to this that the knowledge of birth control +is general today. Despite all this women must be encouraged to give +birth during twenty years of married life to eight or ten and even +more children, and to renounce the above-mentioned joys of life. She +must decide as a mother of children to lead a life full of sacrifices, +devotion, and unselfishness. It is only when these ethical demands are +fulfilled by a large number of worthy wives of good stock that the +future of the German nation will be assured.</p> + +<p>Doctors are leaders of the Folk more than they know ... They are now +quite officially fuehrer of the people, called to the leadership of +its health. To fulfill this task they must be free of the profit +motive. They must be quite free from that attitude of spirit which is +rightly designated as Jewish, the concern for business and +self-provision.</p> + +<br /><br /> + + +<a name="SELECTED_BIBLIOGRAPHY"></a><hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<br /> + +<h2>SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY</h2><span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span> + +<p>Arendt, Hannah—<i>The Origins of Totalitarianism</i>, N.Y., 1951.</p> + +<p class="quot">Pt. III is especially directed to a discussion of the + principles and consequences of fascism. The author gives an + effective account of what "total domination" signifies in a + reign of terror. Detailed bibliography. </p> + +<p>Bodrero, Emilio—"Fascism" in <i>Dictatorship on Its Trial</i>, ed. by Otto +Forst de Battaglia, London, 1930.</p> + +<p class="quot">A brief, but significant, statement by a former Rector of + the University of Padua and a Secretary of State to + Mussolini. </p> + +<p>Borgese, G.A.—<i>Goliath, The March of Fascism</i>, N.Y., 1938.</p> + +<p class="quot">Well written from the point of view of an Italian humanist. </p> + +<p>Brady, Robert A.—<i>The Spirit and Structure of German Fascism</i>, +London, 1937.</p> + +<p class="quot">An extremely thorough and documented discussion of the + economy of National Socialist Germany, its institutions and + its business practices.</p> + +<p class="quot">See also: Brady's <i>Business as a System of Power</i>; chapters + on Germany, Italy and Japan. N.Y., 1943. </p> + +<p>Childs, H.L. and Dodd, W.E.—<i>The Nazi Primer</i>, N.Y., 1938.</p> + +<p class="quot">A translation of the "Official Handbook for Schooling the + Hitler Youth." In simple form including illustrations, it is + an excellent indication of the guiding principles of the + German educational system. </p> + +<p>Dennis, Lawrence—<i>The Coming American Fascism</i>, N.Y., 1936.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 9em;"><i>The Dynamics of War and Revolution</i>, N.Y., 1940.</span></p> + +<p class="quot">Two books by the only fascist theorist in America. </p> + +<p>Fraenkel, Ernest—<i>The Dual State: A Contribution to the Theory of +Dictatorship,</i> N.Y., 1941.</p> + +<p class="quot">By distinguishing between the "Prerogative State" and the + "Normative State," the author gives an effective account of + the attempt of the Nazis to acknowledge an indispensable, if + minimal, legal order, which was, comparatively speaking, + independent of the extra-legal realm of violence. </p> + +<p>Hartshorne, E.Y.—<i>The German Universities and National Socialism</i>, +Cambridge, 1937.</p> + +<p class="quot">A carefully documented account of what happened in the + various branches and departments of German universities + under the Nazis. </p> + +<p>Hitler, Adolph—<i>My Battle</i>, N.Y., 1939.</p> + +<p class="quot">Hitler's own vitriolic account of his attempt to rise to + power. </p> + +<p>Lasswell, Harold D.—"The Garrison State," <i>American Journal of +Sociology</i>, Chicago, Vol. XLVI, 1940-41, pp. 455-468.</p> + +<p class="quot">A brief but incisive discussion of the structure of fascism. </p> + +<p>Lilge, Frederic—<i>The Abuse of Learning: The Failure of the German +University,</i> N.Y., 1948.</p> + +<p class="quot">A philosophical history of higher education in Germany, + concluding with its fascist evolution. </p> + +<p>Matteotti, Giacomo—<i>The Fascist Exposed: A Year of Fascist +Domination</i>, London, 1924.</p> + +<p class="quot">A factual account by a liberal, who, until murdered, was a + member of the Italian Senate. </p> + +<p>Minio-Paluello, L.—<i>Education in Fascist Italy</i>, N.Y., 1946.</p> + +<p class="quot">A detailed discussion of fascist education, including an + historical introduction to pre-fascist education. </p> + +<p>Neumann, Franz—<i>Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National +Socialism</i>, N.Y., 1942.</p> + +<p class="quot">Probably the most comprehensive and definitive statement in + English of the functioning of National Socialism. It + concentrates especially on the political and economic + aspects of Nazism. </p> + +<p>Pinthus, Kurt—"Culture Under Nazi Germany," <i>The American Scholar</i>, +Vol. IX, N.Y., 1940, pp. 483-498.</p> + +<p class="quot">A valuable treatment of the inner character of the arts and + letters and of what happened to their publics under the + Nazis. </p> + +<p>Sabine, G.H.—<i>A History of Political Theory</i>, N.Y., 1950.</p> + +<p class="quot">A brief chapter on "Fascism" gives an excellent balanced + account of its fundamentals. </p> + +<p>Salvemini, Gaetano—<i>The Fascist Dictatorship in Italy</i>, N.Y., 1927.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 9.5em;"><i>Under the Axe of Fascism</i>, N.Y., 1936.</span></p> + +<p class="quot">An eminent Italian historian writes vividly and perceptively + on Italian Fascism. </p> + +<p>Schneider, Herbert W.—<i>Making the Fascist State</i>, N.Y., 1928.</p> + +<p class="quot">An early, but well considered, account of the rise of + Italian fascism. </p> + +<p>Silone, Ignazio—<i>Fontamara</i>, Verona, 1951.</p> + +<p class="quot">The best novel on Italian fascism. </p> + +<p>Spender, Stephen—<i>European Witness</i>, N.Y., 1946.</p> + +<p class="quot">Note especially the analysis of Goebbel's novel, <i>Michael</i>. </p> + +<p>Trevor-Roper, H.R.—<i>The Last Days of Hitler</i>, N.Y., 1946.</p> + +<p class="quot">An intimate portrayal of Hitler and his entourage from the + time of the beginning of the collapse of the Nazi armies. + Especially good on the rift between the politicians and the + military. </p> + +<br /><br /> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h4><b>READINGS ON FASCISM AND NATIONAL SOCIALISM</b></h4> + +<p>The catastrophe and holocaust brought about by the two powerful +movements of fascism and national socialism will mark human life +always. Now, as we feel our hatred for them, we find it difficult to +understand how they could have been so powerful, how they could have +appealed so strongly to millions of people of a modern age.</p> + +<p>And the documents whereby we could understand these philosophies have +been lost—except as they are now gathered here in one convenient +volume.</p> + +<p>To understand our own times, it is necessary to understand these +movements. And to understand them, we must read the basic +philosophical and political documents which show the force of the +ideas which moved a world to the brink of disaster.</p> + + +<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 110%; margin-bottom: 1em"> +The First Swallow Paperbooks:</p> + +<ol class="listdent"> +<li><span style="font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 110%">A Field Of Broken Stones</span> by Lowell Naeve.<br /> +A profound book written in a prison. $1.65.<br /><br /></li> + +<li><span style="font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 110%">The Wife Of Martin Guerre</span> by Janet Lewis.<br /> +One of the fine short novels of all time. $1.25.<br /><br /></li> + +<li><span style="font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 110%">Readings On Fascism And National Socialism</span>.<br /> +A grouping together of authoritative readings. $1.35.<br /><br /></li> + +<li><span style="font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 110%">The Teacher Of English</span> by James E. Warren, Jr.<br /> +The Materials and Opportunities of the teacher. $1.35.<br /><br /></li> + +<li><span style="font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 110%">Morning Red</span> by Frederick Manfred.<br /> +The most ambitious novel by a powerful writer. $1.95.<br /></li> +</ol> + +<br /> +<br /> + +<p class="nodent" style="font-size: small">ALAN SWALLOW<br /> +2679 So. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Readings on Fascism and National Socialism + +Author: Various + +Release Date: November 16, 2004 [eBook #14058] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK READINGS ON FASCISM AND NATIONAL +SOCIALISM*** + + +E-text prepared by John Hagerson, Kevin Handy, Jeannie Howse, and the +Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + +READINGS ON FASCISM AND NATIONAL SOCIALISM + +Selected by Members of the Department of Philosophy, University of +Colorado + +ALAN SWALLOW + +Denver + + + + + + + +PREFATORY NOTE + + +The ensuing readings are presented to encourage the student to clarify +his thinking on social philosophy. He will accordingly need to +determine whether the readings contain a more or less coherent body of +ideas which constitutes a social philosophy. He will also need to +raise the more far-reaching question whether the ideas are acceptable. +To arrive at any satisfactory answer to this latter question, he will +necessarily have to compare the ideas of fascism and their practical +meanings with the alternatives, real and ideal, that are the substance +of live philosophical issues. + + + + +CONTENTS + + The Doctrine of Fascism by Benito Mussolini + + The Political Doctrine of Fascism by Alfredo Rocco + + The Philosophic Basis of Fascism by Giovanni Gentile + + National Socialism by Raymond E. Murphy, Francis B. Stevens, + Howard Trivers, Joseph M. Roland + + National-Socialism and Medicine by Dr. F. Hamburger + + Selected Bibliography + + + + + +THE DOCTRINE OF FASCISM +By +BENITO MUSSOLINI + +From the ENCYCLOPEDIA ITALIANA. Vol. XIV + + The English translation of the "Fundamental Ideas" is by Mr. + I.S. Munro, reprinted by his kind permission from "Fascism + to World-Power" (Alexander Maclehose, London, 1933). + + +FUNDAMENTAL IDEAS. + +1. Philosophic Conception. + + +Like every concrete political conception, Fascism is thought and +action. It is action with an inherent doctrine which, arising out of a +given system of historic forces, is inserted in it and works on it +from within. It has therefore a form co-related to the contingencies +of time and place; but it has at the same time an ideal content which +elevates it into a formula of truth in the higher region of the +history of thought. + +There is no way of exercising a spiritual influence on the things of +the world by means of a human will-power commanding the wills of +others, without first having a clear conception of the particular and +transient reality on which the will-power must act, and without also +having a clear conception of the universal and permanent reality in +which the particular and transient reality has its life and being. To +know men we must have a knowledge of man; and to have a knowledge of +man we must know the reality of things and their laws. + +There can be no conception of a State which is not fundamentally a +conception of Life. It is a philosophy or intuition, a system of ideas +which evolves itself into a system of logical contraction, or which +concentrates itself in a vision or in a faith, but which is always, +at least virtually, an organic conception of the world. + + +2. Spiritualised Conception. + +Fascism would therefore not be understood in many of its +manifestations (as, for example, in its organisations of the Party, +its system of education, its discipline) were it not considered in the +light of its general view of life. A spiritualised view. + +To Fascism the world is not this material world which appears on the +surface, in which man is an individual separated from all other men, +standing by himself and subject to a natural law which instinctively +impels him to lead a life of momentary and egoistic pleasure. In +Fascism man is an individual who is the nation and the country. He is +this by a moral law which embraces and binds together individuals and +generations in an established tradition and mission, a moral law which +suppresses the instinct to lead a life confined to a brief cycle of +pleasure in order, instead, to replace it within the orbit of duty in +a superior conception of life, free from the limits of time and space +a life in which the individual by self-abnegation and by the sacrifice +of his particular interests, even by death, realises the entirely +spiritual existence in which his value as a man consists. + + +3. Positive Conception of Life as a Struggle. + +It is therefore a spiritual conception, itself also a result of the +general reaction of the Century against the languid and materialistic +positivism of the Eighteenth Century. Anti-positivist, but positive: +neither sceptical nor agnostic, neither pessimistic nor passively +optimistic, as are in general the doctrines (all of them negative) +which place the centre of life outside of man, who by his free will +can and should create his own world for himself. + +Fascism wants a man to be active and to be absorbed in action with all +his energies; it wants him to have a manly consciousness of the +difficulties that exist and to be ready to face them. It conceives +life as a struggle, thinking that it is the duty of man to conquer +that life which is really worthy of him: creating in the first place +within himself the (physical, moral, intellectual) instrument with +which to build it. + +As for the individual, so for the nation, so for mankind. Hence the +high value of culture in all its forms (art, religion, science) and +the supreme importance of education. Hence also the essential value +of labour, with which man conquers nature and creates the human world +(economic, political, moral, intellectual). + + +4. Ethical Conception. + +This positive conception of life is evidently an ethical conception. +And it comprises the whole reality as well as the human activity which +domineers it. No action is to be removed from the moral sense; nothing +is to be in the world that is divested of the importance which belongs +to it in respect of moral aims. Life, therefore, as the Fascist +conceives it, is serious, austere, religious; entirely balanced in a +world sustained by the moral and responsible forces of the spirit. The +Fascist disdains the "easy" life. + + +5. Religious Conception. + +Fascism is a religious conception in which man is considered to be in +the powerful grip of a superior law, with an objective will which +transcends the particular individual and elevates him into a fully +conscious member of a spiritual society. Anyone who has stopped short +at the mere consideration of opportunism in the religious policy of +the Fascist Regime, has failed to understand that Fascism, besides +being a system of government, is also a system of thought. + + +6. Historical and Realist Conception. + +Fascism is an historical conception in which man could not be what he +is without being a factor in the spiritual process to which he +contributes, either in the family sphere or in the social sphere, in +the nation or in history in general to which all nations contribute. +Hence is derived the great importance of tradition in the records, +language, customs and rules of human society. Man without a part in +history is nothing. + +For this reason Fascism is opposed to all the abstractions of an +individualistic character based upon materialism typical of the +Eighteenth Century; and it is opposed to all the Jacobin innovations +and utopias. It does not believe in the possibility of "happiness" on +earth as conceived by the literature of the economists of the +Seventeenth Century; it therefore spurns all the teleological +conceptions of final causes through which, at a given period of +history, a final systematisation of the human race would take place. +Such theories only mean placing oneself outside real history and +life, which is a continual ebb and flow and process of realisations. + +Politically speaking, Fascism aims at being a realistic doctrine; in +its practice it aspired to solve only the problems which present +themselves of their own accord in the process of history, and which of +themselves find or suggest their own solution. To have the effect of +action among men, it is necessary to enter into the process of reality +and to master the forces actually at work. + + +7. The Individual and Liberty. + +Anti-individualistic, the Fascist conception is for the State; it is +for the individual only in so far as he coincides with the State, +universal consciousness and will of man in his historic existence. It +is opposed to the classic Liberalism which arose out of the need of +reaction against absolutism, and had accomplished its mission in +history when the State itself had become transformed in the popular +will and consciousness. + +Liberalism denied the State in the interests of the particular +individual; Fascism reaffirms the State as the only true expression of +the individual. + +And if liberty is to be the attribute of the real man, and not of the +scarecrow invented by the individualistic Liberalism, then Fascism is +for liberty. It is for the only kind of liberty that is serious--the +liberty of the State and of the individual in the State. Because, for +the Fascist, all is comprised in the State and nothing spiritual or +human exists--much less has any value--outside the State. In this +respect Fascism is a totalising concept, and the Fascist State--the +unification and synthesis of every value--interprets, develops and +potentiates the whole life of the people. + + +8. Conception of a Corporate State. + +No individuals nor groups (political parties, associations, labour +unions, classes) outside the State. For this reason Fascism is opposed +to Socialism, which clings rigidly to class war in the historic +evolution and ignores the unity of the State which moulds the classes +into a single, moral and economic reality. In the same way Fascism is +opposed to the unions of the labouring classes. But within the orbit +of the State with ordinative functions, the real needs, which give +rise to the Socialist movement and to the forming of labour unions, +are emphatically recognised by Fascism and are given their full +expression in the Corporative System, which conciliates every interest +in the unity of the State. + + +9. Democracy. + +Individuals form classes according to categories of interests. They +are associated according to differentiated economical activities which +have a common interest: but first and foremost they form the State. +The State is not merely either the numbers or the sum of individuals +forming the majority of a people. Fascism for this reason is opposed +to the democracy which identifies peoples with the greatest number of +individuals and reduces them to a majority level. But if people are +conceived, as they should be, qualitatively and not quantitatively, +then Fascism is democracy in its purest form. The qualitative +conception is the most coherent and truest form and is therefore the +most moral, because it sees a people realised in the consciousness and +will of the few or even of one only; an ideal which moves to its +realisation in the consciousness and will of all. By "all" is meant +all who derive their justification as a nation, ethnically speaking, +from their nature and history, and who follow the same line of +spiritual formation and development as one single will and +consciousness--not as a race nor as a geographically determined +region, but as a progeny that is rather the outcome of a history which +perpetuates itself; a multitude unified by an idea embodied in the +will to have power and to exist, conscious of itself and of its +personality. + + +10. Conception of the State. + +This higher personality is truly the nation, inasmuch as it is the +State. The nation does not beget the State, according to the decrepit +nationalistic concept which was used as a basis for the publicists of +the national States in the Nineteenth Century. On the contrary, the +nation is created by the State, which gives the people, conscious of +their own moral unity, the will, and thereby an effective existence. +The right of a nation to its independence is derived not from a +literary and ideal consciousness of its own existence, much less from +a _de facto_ situation more or less inert and unconscious, but from an +active consciousness, from an active political will disposed to +demonstrate in its right; that is to say, a kind of State already in +its pride (_in fieri_). The State, in fact, as a universal ethical +will, is the creator of right. + + +11. Dynamic Reality. + +The nation as a State is an ethical reality which exists and lives in +measure as it develops. A standstill is its death. Therefore the +State is not only the authority which governs and which gives the +forms of law and the worth of the spiritual life to the individual +wills, but it is also the power which gives effect to its will in +foreign matters, causing it to be recognised and respected by +demonstrating through facts the universality of all the manifestations +necessary for its development. Hence it is organization as well as +expansion, and it may be thereby considered, at least virtually, equal +to the very nature of the human will, which in its evolution +recognises no barriers, and which realises itself by proving its +infinity. + + +12. The Role of the State. + +The Fascist State, the highest and the most powerful form of +personality is a force, but a spiritual one. It reassumes all the +forms of the moral and intellectual life of man. It cannot, therefore, +be limited to a simple function of order and of safeguarding, as was +contended by Liberalism. It is not a simple mechanism which limits the +sphere of the presumed individual liberties. It is an internal form +and rule, a discipline of the entire person: it penetrates the will as +well as the intelligence. Its principle, a central inspiration of the +living human personality in the civil community, descends into the +depths and settles in the heart of the man of action as well as the +thinker, of the artist as well as of the scientist; the soul of our +soul. + + +13. Discipline and Authority. + +Fascism, in short, is not only a lawgiver and the founder of +institutions, but an educator and a promoter of the spiritual life. It +aims to rebuild not the forms of human life, but its content, the man, +the character, the faith. And for this end it exacts discipline and an +authority which descend into and dominates the interior of the spirit +without opposition. Its emblem, therefore, is the lictorian _fasces_, +symbol of unity, of force and of justice. + + +POLITICAL AND SOCIAL DOCTRINE + +1. Origins of the Doctrine. + +When, in the now distant March of 1919, I summoned a meeting at Milan, +through the columns of the _Popolo d'Italia,_ of those who had +supported and endured the war and who had followed me since the +constitution of the _fasci_ or Revolutionary Action in January 1915, +there was no specific doctrinal plan in my mind. I had the experience +of one only doctrine--that of Socialism from 1903-04 to the winter of +1914 about a decade--but I made it first in the ranks and later as a +leader and it was never an experience in theory. My doctrine, even +during that period, was a doctrine of action. A universally accepted +doctrine of Socialism had not existed since 1915 when the revisionist +movement started in Germany, under the leadership of Bernstein. +Against this, in the swing of tendencies, a left revolutionary +movement began to take shape, but in Italy it never went further than +the "field of phrases," whereas in Russian Socialistic circles it +became the prelude of Bolscevism. "Reformism," "revolutionarism," +"centrism," this is a terminology of which even the echoes are now +spent--but in the great river of Fascism are currents which flowed +from Sorel, from Peguy, from Lagardelle and the "Mouvement +Socialiste," from Italian syndicalists which were legion between 1904 +and 1914, and sounded a new note in Italian Socialist circles +(weakened then by the betrayal of Giolitti) through Olivetti's _Pagine +Libere_, Orano's _La Lupa_ and Enrico Leone's _Divenire Sociale_. + +After the War, in 1919, Socialism was already dead as a doctrine: it +existed only as a grudge. In Italy especially, it had one only +possibility of action: reprisals against those who had wanted the War +and must now pay its penalty. The _Popolo d'Italia_ carried as +sub-title "daily of ex-service men and producers," and the word +producers was already then the expression of a turn of mind. Fascism +was not the nursling of a doctrine previously worked out at a desk; it +was born of the need for action and it was action. It was not a party, +in fact during the first two years, it was an anti-party and a +movement. + +The name I gave the organisation fixed its character. Yet whoever +should read the now crumpled sheets with the minutes of the meeting at +which the Italian "Fasci di Combattimento" were constituted, would +fail to discover a doctrine, but would find a series of ideas, of +anticipations, of hints which, liberated from the inevitable +strangleholds of contingencies, were destined after some years to +develop into doctrinal conceptions. Through them Fascism became a +political doctrine to itself, different, by comparison, to all others +whether contemporary or of the past. + +I said then, "If the bourgeoisie think we are ready to act as +lightning-conductors, they are mistaken. We must go towards labour. +We wish to train the working classes to directive functions. We wish +to convince them that it is not easy to manage Industry or Trade: we +shall fight the technique and the spirit of the rearguard. When the +succession of the regime is open, we must not lack the fighting +spirit. We must rush and if the present regime be overcome, it is we +who must fill its place. The claim to succession belongs to us, +because it was we who forced the country into War and we who led her +to victory. The present political representation cannot suffice: we +must have a direct representation of all interest. Against this +programme one might say it is a return to corporations. But that does +not matter. Therefore I should like this assembly to accept the claims +put in by national syndicalism from an economic standpoint...." + +Is it not strange that the word corporations should have been uttered +at the first meeting of Piazza San Sepolcro, when one considers that, +in the course of the Revolution, it came to express one of the social +and legislative creations at the very foundations of the regime? + + +2. Development. + +The years which preceded the March on Rome were years in which the +necessity of action did not permit complete doctrinal investigations +or elaborations. The battle was raging in the towns and villages. +There were discussions, but what was more important and sacred--there +was death. Men knew how to die. The doctrine--all complete and formed, +with divisions into chapters, paragraphs, and accompanying +elucubrations--might be missing; but there was something more decided +to replace it, there was faith. + +Notwithstanding, whoever remembers with the aid of books and speeches, +whoever could search through them and select, would find that the +fundamental principles were laid down whilst the battle raged. It was +really in those years that the Fascist idea armed itself, became +refined and proceeded towards organisation: the problems of the +individual and of the State, the problems of authority and of liberty, +the political and social problems, especially national; the fight +against the liberal, democratic, socialistic and popular doctrines, +was carried out together with the "punitive expeditions." + +But as a "system" was lacking, our adversaries in bad faith, denied to +Fascism any capacity to produce a doctrine, though that doctrine was +growing tumultuously, at first under the aspect of violent and +dogmatic negation, as happens to all newly-born ideas, and later under +the positive aspect of construction which was successively realised, +in the years 1926-27-28 through the laws and institutions of the +regime. Fascism today stands clearly defined not only as a regime, but +also as a doctrine. This word doctrine should be interpreted in the +sense that Fascism, to-day, when passing criticism on itself and +others, has its own point of view and its own point of reference, and +therefore also its own orientation when facing those problems which +beset the world in the spirit and in the matter. + + +3. Against Pacifism: War and Life as a Duty. + +As far as the general future and development of humanity is concerned, +and apart from any mere consideration of current politics, Fascism +above all does not believe either in the possibility or utility of +universal peace. It therefore rejects the pacifism which masks +surrender and cowardice. War alone brings all human energies to their +highest tension and sets a seal of nobility on the peoples who have +the virtue to face it. All other tests are but substitutes which never +make a man face himself in the alternative of life or death. A +doctrine which has its starting-point at the prejudicial postulate of +peace is therefore extraneous to Fascism. + +In the same way all international creations (which, as history +demonstrates, can be blown to the winds when sentimental, ideal and +practical elements storm the heart of a people) are also extraneous to +the spirit of Fascism--even if such international creations are +accepted for whatever utility they may have in any determined +political situation. + +Fascism also transports this anti-pacifist spirit into the life of +individuals. The proud _squadrista_ motto "_me ne frego_" ("I don't +give a damn") scrawled on the bandages of the wounded is an act of +philosophy--not only stoic. It is a summary of a doctrine not only +political: it is an education in strife and an acceptance of the risks +which it carried: it is a new style of Italian life. It is thus that +the Fascist loves and accepts life, ignores and disdains suicide; +understands life as a duty, a lifting up, a conquest; something to be +filled in and sustained on a high plane; a thing that has to be lived +through for its own sake, but above all for the sake of others near +and far, present and future. + + +4. The Demographic Policy and the "Neighbour." + +The "demographic" policy of the regime is the result of these +premises. The Fascist also loves his neighbour, but "neighbour" is not +for him a vague and undefinable word: love for his neighbour does not +prevent necessary educational severities. Fascism rejects professions +of universal affection and, though living in the community of +civilised peoples, it watches them and looks at them diffidently. It +follows them in their state of mind and in the transformation of their +interests, but it does not allow itself to be deceived by fallacious +and mutable appearances. + + +5. Against Historical Materialism and Class-Struggle. + +Through this conception of life Fascism becomes the emphatic negation +of that doctrine which constituted the basis of the so-called +scientific Socialism or Marxism: the doctrine of historical +materialism, according to which the story of human civilisation is to +be explained only by the conflict of interests between the various +social groups and by the change of the means and instruments of +production. + +That the economic vicissitudes--discovery of prime or raw materials, +new methods of labour, scientific inventions--have their particular +importance, is denied by none, but that they suffice to explain human +history, excluding other factors from it, is absurd: Fascism still +believes in sanctity and in heroism, that is to say in acts in which +no economic motive, immediate or remote, operates. + +Fascism having denied historical materialism, by which men are only +puppets in history, appearing and disappearing on the surface of the +tides while in the depths the real directive forces act and labour, it +also denies the immutable and irreparable class warfare, which is the +natural filiation of such an economistic conception of history: and it +denies above all that class warfare is the preponderating agent of +social transformation. + +Being defeated on these two capital points of its doctrine, nothing +remains of Socialism save the sentimental aspiration--as old as +humanity--to achieve a community of social life in which the +sufferings and hardships of the humblest classes are alleviated. But +here Fascism repudiates the concept of an economic "happiness" which +is to be--at a given moment in the evolution of economy--socialistically +and almost automatically realised by assuring to all the maximum of +well-being. + +Fascism denies the possibilities of the materialistic concept of +"happiness"--it leaves that to the economists of the first half +of the Seventeenth Century; that is, it denies the equation +"well-being-happiness," which reduces man to the state of the animals, +mindful of only one thing--that of being fed and fattened; reduced, in +fact, to a pure and simple vegetative existence. + + +6. Against Democratic Ideologies. + +After disposing of Socialism, Fascism opens a breach on the whole +complex of the democratic ideologies, and repudiates them in their +theoretic premises as well as in their practical application or +instrumentation. Fascism denies that numbers, by the mere fact of +being numbers, can direct human society; it denies that these numbers +can govern by means of periodical consultations; it affirms also the +fertilising, beneficient and unassailable inequality of men, who +cannot be levelled through an extrinsic and mechanical process such as +universal suffrage. + +Regimes can be called democratic which, from time to time, give the +people the illusion of being sovereign, whereas the real and effective +sovereignty exists in other, and very often secret and irresponsible +forces. + +Democracy is a regime without a king, but very often with many kings, +far more exclusive, tyrannical and ruinous than a single king, even if +he be a tyrant. This explains why Fascism which, for contingent +reasons, had assumed a republican tendency before 1922, renounced it +previous to the March on Rome, with the conviction that the political +constitution of a State is not nowadays a supreme question; and that, +if the examples of past and present monarchies and past and present +republics are studied, the result is that neither monarchies nor +republics are to be judged under the assumption of eternity, but that +they merely represent forms in which the extrinsic political evolution +takes shape as well as the history, the tradition and the psychology +of a given country. + +Consequently, Fascism glides over the antithesis between monarchy and +republic, on which democraticism wasted time, blaming the former for +all social shortcomings and exalting the latter as a regime of +perfection. We have now seen that there are republics which may be +profoundly absolutist and reactionary, and monarchies which welcome +the most venturesome social and political experiments. + + +7. Untruths of Democracy. + +"Reason and science" says Renan (who had certain pre-fascist +enlightenments) in one of his philosophical meditations, "are products +of mankind, but to seek reason directly for the people and through the +people is a chimera. It is not necessary for the existence of reason +that everybody should know it. In any case if this initiation were to +be brought about it could not be through low-class democracy, which +seems to lead rather to the extinction of every difficult culture and +of every great discipline. The principle that society exists only for +the welfare and liberty of individuals composing it, does not seem to +conform with the plans of nature: plans in which the species only is +taken into consideration and the individual appears sacrificed. It is +strongly to be feared that the last word of democracy thus understood +(I hasten to add that it can also be differently understood) would be +a social state in which a degenerated mass would have no preoccupation +other than that of enjoying the ignoble pleasures of the vulgar +person." + +Thus Renan. In Democracy Fascism rejects the absurd conventional +falsehood of political equality, the habit of collective +responsibility and the myth of indefinite progress and happiness. + +But if there be a different understanding of Democracy if, in other +words, Democracy can also signify to not push the people back as far +as the margins of the State, then Fascism may well have been defined +by the present writer as "an organised, centralised, authoritarian +Democracy." + + +8. Against Liberal Doctrines. + +As regards the Liberal doctrines, the attitude of Fascism is one of +absolute opposition both in the political and in the economical field. +There is no need to exaggerate the importance of Liberalism in the +last century--simply for the sake of present-day polemics--and to +transform one of the numerous doctrines unfolded in that last century +into a religion of humanity for all times, present and future. +Liberalism did not flourish for more than a period of fifteen years. +It was born in 1830 from the reaction to the Holy Alliance which +attempted to set Europe back to the period which preceeded '89 and had +its years of splendour in 1848, when also Pius IX was a Liberal. Its +decadence began immediately afterwards. If 1848 was a year of light +and poesy, 1849 was a year of weakness and tragedy. The Roman Republic +was killed by another Republic, the French Republic. In the same year +Marx issued his famous manifesto of Communism. In 1851 Napoleon III +made his anti-Liberal _coup d'etat_ and reigned over France until +1870. He was overthrown by a popular movement, following one of the +greatest defeats registered in history. The victor was Bismarck, who +always ignored the religion of liberty and its prophets. It is +symptomatic that a people of high civilisation like the Germans +completely ignored the religion of liberty throughout the whole +Nineteenth Century--with but one parenthesis, represented by that +which was called "the ridiculous parliament of Frankfurt" which lasted +one season. Germany realised its national unity outside of Liberalism, +against Liberalism--a doctrine which seemed alien to the German spirit +essentially monarchical, since Liberalism is the historical and +logical ante-chamber of anarchy. + +The three wars of 1864, 1866 and 1870 conducted by "Liberals" like +Moltke and Bismarck mark the three stages of German unity. As for +Italian unity, Liberalism played a very inferior part in the make-up +of Mazzini and Garibaldi, who were not liberals. Without the +intervention of the anti-Liberal Napoleon we would not have had +Lombardy, and without the help of the anti-Liberal Bismarck at Sadowa +and Sedan it is very likely that we would not have got Venice in 1866, +or that we would have entered Rome in 1870. + +During the period of 1870-1915 the preachers of the new Credo +themselves denounced the twilight of their religion; it was beaten in +the breach by decadence in literature. It was beaten in the open by +decadence in practice. Activism: that is to say, nationalism, +futurism. Fascism. + +The "Liberal Century" after having accumulated an infinity of Gordian +knots, sought to cut them in the hecatomb of the World War. Never did +any religion impose such a terrible sacrifice. Have the gods of +Liberalism slaked their blood-thirst? + +Liberalism is now on the point of closing the doors of its deserted +temples because nations feel that its agnosticism in the economic +field and its indifference in political and moral matters, causes, as +it has already caused, the sure ruin of States. That is why all the +political experiences of the contemporary world are anti-Liberal, and +it is supremely silly to seek to classify them as things outside of +history--as if history were a hunting ground reserved to Liberalism +and its professors; as if Liberalism were the last and incomparable +word of civilisation. + + +9. Fascism Does Not Turn Back. + +The Fascist negation of Socialism, of Democracy, of Liberalism, should +not lead one to believe that Fascism wishes to push the world back to +where it was before 1879, the date accepted as the opening year of the +demo-Liberal century. One cannot turn back. The Fascist doctrine has +not chosen De Maistre for its prophet. Monarchical absolutism is a +thing of the past, and so is the worship of church power. Feudal +privileges and divisions into impenetrable castes with no connection +between them, are also "have beens." The conception of Fascist +authority has nothing in common with the Police. A party that totally +rules a nation is a new chapter in history. References and comparisons +are not possible. From the ruins of the socialist, liberal and +democratic doctrines, Fascism picks those elements that still have a +living value; keeps those that might be termed "facts acquired by +history," and rejects the rest: namely the conception of a doctrine +good for all times and all people. + +Admitting that the Nineteenth Century was the Century of Socialism, +Liberalism and Democracy, it is not said that the Twentieth century +must also be the century of Socialism, of Liberalism, of Democracy. +Political doctrines pass on, but peoples remain. One may now think +that this will be the century of authority, the century of the "right +wing" the century of Fascism. If the Nineteenth Century was the +century of the individual (liberalism signifies individualism) one may +think that this will be the century of "collectivism," the century of +the State. It is perfectly logical that a new doctrine should utilise +the vital elements of other doctrines. No doctrine was ever born +entirely new and shining, never seen before. No doctrine can boast of +absolute "originality." Each doctrine is bound historically to +doctrines which went before, to doctrines yet to come. Thus the +scientific Socialism of Marx is bound to the Utopian Socialism of +Fourier, of Owen, of Saint-Simon; thus the Liberalism of 1800 is +linked with the movement of 1700. Thus Democratic doctrines are bound +to the Encyclopaedists. Each doctrine tends to direct human activity +towards a definite object; but the activity of man reacts upon the +doctrine, transforms it and adapts it to new requirements, or +overcomes it. Doctrine therefore should be an act of life and not an +academy of words. In this lie the pragmatic veins of Fascism, its will +to power, its will to be, its position with regard to "violence" and +its value. + + +10. The Value and Mission of the State. + +The capital point of the Fascist doctrine is the conception of the +State, its essence, the work to be accomplished, its final aims. In +the conception of Fascism, the State is an absolute before which +individuals and groups are relative. Individuals and groups are +"conceivable" inasmuch as they are in the State. The Liberal State +does not direct the movement and the material and spiritual evolution +of collectivity, but limits itself to recording the results; the +Fascist State has its conscious conviction, a will of its own, and for +this reason it is called an "ethical" State. + +In 1929 at the first quinquiennial assembly of the Regime, I said: "In +Fascism the State is not a night-watchman, only occupied with the +personal safety of the citizens, nor is it an organisation with purely +material aims, such as that of assuring a certain well-being and a +comparatively easy social cohabitation. A board of directors would be +quite sufficient to deal with this. It is not a purely political +creation, either, detached from the complex material realities of the +life of individuals and of peoples. The State as conceived and enacted +by Fascism, is a spiritual and moral fact since it gives concrete form +to the political, juridical and economical organisation of the +country. Furthermore this organisation as it rises and develops, is a +manifestation of the spirit. The State is a safeguard of interior and +exterior safety but it is also the keeper and the transmitter of the +spirit of the people, as it was elaborated throughout the ages, in its +language, customs and beliefs. The State is not only the present, but +it is also the past and above all the future. The State, inasmuch as +it transcends the short limits of individual lives, represents the +immanent conscience of the nation. The forms in which the State +expresses itself are subject to changes, but the necessity for the +State remains. It is the State which educates the citizens in civic +virtues, gives them a consciousness of their mission, presses them +towards unity; the State harmonizes their interests through justice, +transmits to prosperity the attainments of thoughts, in science, in +art, in laws, in the solidarity of mankind. The State leads men from +primitive tribal life to that highest expression of human power which +is Empire; links up through the centuries the names of those who died +to preserve its integrity or to obey its laws; holds up the memory of +the leaders who increased its territory, and of the geniuses who cast +the light of glory upon it, as an example for future generations to +follow. When the conception of the State declines and disintegrating +or centrifugal tendencies prevail, whether of individuals or groups, +then the national society is about to set." + + +11. The Unity of the State and the Contradictions of Capitalism. + +From 1929 onwards to the present day, the universal, political and +economical evolution has still further strengthened the doctrinal +positions. The giant who rules is the State. The one who can resolve +the dramatic contradictions of capital is the State. What is called +the crisis cannot be resolved except by the State and in the State. +Where are the ghosts of Jules Simon who, at the dawn of Liberalism, +proclaimed that "the State must set to work to make itself useless and +prepare its resignation?" Of MacCulloch who, in the second half of the +past century, proclaimed that the State must abstain from ruling? What +would the Englishman Bentham say today to the continual and +inevitably-invoked intervention of the State in the sphere of +economics, while, according to his theories, industry should ask no +more of the State than to be left in peace? Or the German Humboldt +according to whom an "idle" State was the best kind of State? It is +true that the second wave of Liberal economists were less extreme than +the first, and Adam Smith himself opened the door--if only very +cautiously--to let State intervention into the economic field. + +If Liberalism signifies the individual--then Fascism signifies the +State. But the Fascist State is unique of its kind and is an original +creation. It is not reactionary but revolutionary, inasmuch as it +anticipates the solution of certain universal problems such as those +which are treated elsewhere: 1) in the political sphere, by the +subdivisions of parties, in the preponderance of parliamentarism and +in the irresponsibilities of assemblies; 2) in the economic sphere, by +the functions of trade unions which are becoming constantly more +numerous and powerful, whether in the labour or industrial fields, in +their conflicts and combinations, and 3) in the moral sphere by the +necessity of order, discipline, obedience to those who are the moral +dictators of the country. Fascism wants the State to be strong, +organic and at the same time supported on a wide popular basis. As +part of its task the Fascist State has penetrated the economic field: +through the corporative, social and educational institutions which it +has created. The presence of the State is felt in the remotest +ramifications of the country. And in the State also, all the +political, economic and spiritual forces of the nation circulate, +mustered in their respective organisations. + +A State which stands on the support of millions of individuals who +recognise it, who believe in it, who are ready to serve it, is not the +tyrannical State of the mediaeval lord. It has nothing in common with +the absolutist States before or after '89. The individual in the +Fascist State is not annulled but rather multiplied, just as in a +regiment a soldier is not diminished, but multiplied by the number of +his comrades. + +The Fascist State organises the nation, but leaves a sufficient margin +afterward to the individual; it has limited the useless or harmful +liberties and has preserved the essential ones. The one to judge in +this respect is not the individual but the State. + + +12. The Fascist State and Religion. + +The Fascist State is not indifferent to the presence or the fact of +religion in general nor to the presence of that particular established +religion, which is Italian Catholicism. The State has no theology, but +it has morality. In the Fascist State religion is considered as one of +the most profound manifestations of the spirit; it is therefore not +only respected, but defended and protected. The Fascist State does not +create its own "God," as Robespierre wanted to do at a certain moment +in the frenzies of the Convention; nor does it vainly endeavour to +cancel the idea of God from the mind as Bolschevism tries to do. +Fascism respects the God of the ascetics, of the saints and of the +heroes. It also respects God as he is conceived and prayed to in the +ingenuous and primitive heart of the people. + + +13. Empire and Discipline. + +The Fascist State is a will expressing power and empire. The Roman +tradition here becomes an idea of force. In the Fascist doctrine, +empire is not only a territorial or a military, or a commercial +expression: it is a moral and a spiritual one. An empire can be +thought of, for instance, as a nation which directly or indirectly +guides other nations--without the need of conquering a single mile of +territory. For Fascism, the tendency to empire, that is to say the +expansion of nations, is a manifestation of vitality, its contrary +(the stay-at-home attitude) is a sign of decadence. Peoples who rise, +or who suddenly flourish again, are imperialistic; peoples who die are +peoples who abdicate. Fascism is a doctrine which most adequately +represents the tendencies, the state of mind of a people like the +Italian people, which is rising again after many centuries of +abandonment and of foreign servitude. + +But empire requires discipline, the coordination of forces, duty and +sacrifice. This explains many phases of the practical action of the +regime. It explains the aims of many of the forces of the State and +the necessary severity against those who would oppose themselves to +this spontaneous and irresistible movement of the Italy of the +Twentieth century by trying to appeal to the discredited ideologies of +the Nineteenth century, which have been repudiated wherever great +experiments of political and social transformation have been daringly +undertaken. + +Never more than at the present moment have the nations felt such a +thirst for an authority, for a direction, for order. If every century +has its own peculiar doctrine, there are a thousand indications that +Fascism is that of the present century. That it is a doctrine of life +is shown by the fact that it has created a faith; that the faith has +taken possession of the mind is demonstrated by the fact that Fascism +has had its Fallen and its martyrs. + +Fascism has now attained in the world an universality over all +doctrines. Being realised, it represents an epoch in the history of +the human mind. + + + + +THE POLITICAL DOCTRINE OF FASCISM[1] +BY HIS EXCELLENCY ALFREDO ROCCO +PREMIER MUSSOLINI'S ENDORSEMENT OF SIGNOR ROCCO'S SPEECH + + +The following message was sent by Benito Mussolini, the Premier of +Italy, to Signor Rocco after he had delivered his speech at Perugia. + + + Dear Rocco, + + I have just read your magnificent address which I endorse + throughout. You have presented in a masterful way the + doctrine of Fascism. For Fascism has a doctrine, or, if you + will, a particular philosophy with regard to all the + questions which beset the human mind today. All Italian + Fascists should read your discourse and derive from it both + the clear formulation of the basic principles of our program + as well as the reasons why Fascism must be systematically, + firmly, and rationally inflexible in its uncompromising + attitude towards other parties. Thus and only thus can the + word become flesh and the ideas be turned into deeds. + + Cordial greetings, + MUSSOLINI. + + + + +Fascism As Action, As Feeling, and As Thought + +Much has been said, and is now being said for or against this complex +political and social phenomenon which in the brief period of six years +has taken complete hold of Italian life and, spreading beyond the +borders of the Kingdom, has made itself felt in varying degrees of +intensity throughout the world. But people have been much more eager +to extol or to deplore than to understand--which is natural enough in +a period of tumultuous fervor and of political passion. The time has +not yet arrived for a dispassionate judgment. For even I, who noticed +the very first manifestations of this great development, saw its +significance from the start and participated directly in its first +doings, carefully watching all its early uncertain and changing +developments, even I do not feel competent to pass definite judgment. +Fascism is so large a part of myself that it would be both arbitrary +and absurd for me to try to dissociate my personality from it, to +submit it to impartial scrutiny in order to evaluate it coldly and +accurately. What can be done, however, and it seldom is attempted, is +to make inquiry into the phenomenon which shall not merely consider +its fragmentary and adventitious aspects, but strive to get at its +inner essence. The undertaking may not be easy, but it is necessary, +and no occasion for attempting it is more suitable than the present +one afforded me by my friends of Perugia. Suitable it is in time +because, at the inauguration of a course of lectures and lessons +principally intended to illustrate that old and glorious trend of the +life and history of Italy which takes its name from the humble saint +of Assisi, it seemed natural to connect it with the greatest +achievement of modern Italy, different in so many ways from the +Franciscan movement, but united with it by the mighty common current +of Italian History. It is suitable as well in place because at +Perugia, which witnessed the growth of our religious ideas, of our +political doctrines and of our legal science in the course of the most +glorious centuries of our cultural history, the mind is properly +disposed and almost oriented towards an investigation of this nature. + +First of all let us ask ourselves if there is a political doctrine of +Fascism; if there is any ideal content in the Fascist state. For in +order to link Fascism, both as concept and system, with the history of +Italian thought and find therein a place for it, we must first show +that it is thought; that it is a doctrine. Many persons are not quite +convinced that it is either the one or the other; and I am not +referring solely to those men, cultured or uncultured, as the case may +be and very numerous everywhere, who can discern in this political +innovation nothing except its local and personal aspects, and who know +Fascism only as the particular manner of behavior of this or that +well-known Fascist, of this or that group of a certain town; who +therefore like or dislike the movement on the basis of their likes and +dislikes for the individuals who represent it. Nor do I refer to those +intelligent, and cultivated persons, very intelligent indeed and very +cultivated, who because of their direct or indirect allegiance to the +parties that have been dispossessed by the advent of Fascism, have a +natural cause of resentment against it and are therefore unable to +see, in the blindness of hatred, anything good in it. I am referring +rather to those--and there are many in our ranks too--who know Fascism +as action and feeling but not yet as thought, who therefore have an +intuition but no comprehension of it. + +It is true that Fascism is, above all, action and sentiment and that +such it must continue to be. Were it otherwise, it could not keep up +that immense driving force, that renovating power which it now +possesses and would merely be the solitary meditation of a chosen few. +Only because it is feeling and sentiment, only because it is the +unconscious reawakening of our profound racial instinct, has it the +force to stir the soul of the people, and to set free an irresistible +current of national will. Only because it is action, and as such +actualizes itself in a vast organization and in a huge movement, has +it the conditions for determining the historical course of +contemporary Italy. + +But Fascism is thought as well and it has a theory, which is an +essential part of this historical phenomenon, and which is responsible +in a great measure for the successes that have been achieved. To the +existence of this ideal content of Fascism, to the truth of this +Fascist logic we ascribe the fact that though we commit many errors of +detail, we very seldom go astray on fundamentals, whereas all the +parties of the opposition, deprived as they are of an informing, +animating principle, of a unique directing concept, do very often wage +their war faultlessly in minor tactics, better trained as they are in +parliamentary and journalistic manoeuvres, but they constantly break +down on the important issues. Fascism, moreover, considered as action, +is a typically Italian phenomenon and acquires a universal validity +because of the existence of this coherent and organic doctrine. The +originality of Fascism is due in great part to the autonomy of its +theoretical principles. For even when, in its external behavior and in +its conclusions, it seems identical with other political creeds, in +reality it possesses an inner originality due to the new spirit which +animates it and to an entirely different theoretical approach. + + +Common Origins and Common Background of Modern Political Doctrines: +From Liberalism to Socialism + +Modern political thought remained, until recently, both in Italy and +outside of Italy under the absolute control of those doctrines which, +proceeding from the Protestant Reformation and developed by the +adepts of natural law in the XVII and XVIII centuries, were firmly +grounded in the institutions and customs of the English, of the +American, and of the French Revolutions. Under different and sometimes +clashing forms these doctrines have left a determining imprint upon +all theories and actions both social and political, of the XIX and XX +centuries down to the rise of Fascism. The common basis of all these +doctrines, which stretch from Longuet, from Buchanan, and from +Althusen down to Karl Marx, to Wilson and to Lenin is a social and +state concept which I shall call mechanical or atomistic. + +Society according to this concept is merely a sum total of +individuals, a plurality which breaks up into its single components. +Therefore the ends of a society, so considered, are nothing more than +the ends of the individuals which compose it and for whose sake it +exists. An atomistic view of this kind is also necessarily +anti-historical, inasmuch as it considers society in its spatial +attributes and not in its temporal ones; and because it reduces social +life to the existence of a single generation. Society becomes thus a +sum of determined individuals, viz., the generation living at a given +moment. This doctrine which I call atomistic and which appears to be +anti-historical, reveals from under a concealing cloak a strongly +materialistic nature. For in its endeavors to isolate the present from +the past and the future, it rejects the spiritual inheritance of ideas +and sentiments which each generation receives from those preceding and +hands down to the following generation thus destroying the unity and +the spiritual life itself of human society. + +This common basis shows the close logical connection existing between +all political doctrines; the substantial solidarity, which unites all +the political movements, from Liberalism to Socialism, that until +recently have dominated Europe. For these political schools differ +from one another in their methods, but all agree as to the ends to be +achieved. All of them consider the welfare and happiness of +individuals to be the goal of society, itself considered as composed +of individuals of the present generation. All of them see in society +and in its juridical organization, the state, the mere instrument and +means whereby individuals can attain their ends. They differ only in +that the methods pursued for the attainment of these ends vary +considerably one from the other. + +Thus the Liberals insist that the best manner to secure the welfare of +the citizens as individuals is to interfere as little as possible with +the free development of their activities and that therefore the +essential task of the state is merely to coordinate these several +liberties in such a way as to guarantee their coexistence. Kant, who +was without doubt the most powerful and thorough philosopher of +liberalism, said, "man, who is the end, cannot be assumed to have the +value of an instrument." And again, "justice, of which the state is +the specific organ, is the condition whereby the freedom of each is +conditioned upon the freedom of others, according to the general law +of liberty." + +Having thus defined the task of the state, Liberalism confines itself +to the demand of certain guarantees which are to keep the state from +overstepping its functions as general coordinator of liberties and +from sacrificing the freedom of individuals more than is absolutely +necessary for the accomplishment of its purpose. All the efforts are +therefore directed to see to it that the ruler, mandatory of all and +entrusted with the realization, through and by liberty, of the +harmonious happiness of everybody, should never be clothed with undue +power. Hence the creation of a system of checks and limitations +designed to keep the rulers within bounds; and among these, first and +foremost, the principle of the division of powers, contrived as a +means for weakening the state in its relation to the individual, by +making it impossible for the state ever to appear, in its dealings +with citizens, in the full plenitude of sovereign powers; also the +principle of the participation of citizens in the lawmaking power, as +a means for securing, in behalf of the individual, a direct check on +this, the strongest branch, and an indirect check on the entire +government of the state. This system of checks and limitations, which +goes by the name of constitutional government resulted in a moderate +and measured liberalism. The checking power was exercised only by +those citizens who were deemed worthy and capable, with the result +that a small elite was made to represent legally the entire body +politic for whose benefit this regime was instituted. + +It was evident, however, that this moderate system, being +fundamentally illogical and in contradiction with the very principles +from which it proceeded, would soon become the object of serious +criticism. For if the object of society and of the state is the +welfare of individuals, severally considered, how is it possible to +admit that this welfare can be secured by the individuals themselves +only through the possibilities of such a liberal regime? The +inequalities brought about both by nature and by social organizations +are so numerous and so serious, that, for the greater part, +individuals abandoned to themselves not only would fail to attain +happiness, but would also contribute to the perpetuation of their +condition of misery and dejection. The state therefore cannot limit +itself to the merely negative function of the defense of liberty. It +must become active, in behalf of everybody, for the welfare of the +people. It must intervene, when necessary, in order to improve the +material, intellectual, and moral conditions of the masses; it must +find work for the unemployed, instruct and educate the people, and +care for health and hygiene. For if the purpose of society and of the +state is the welfare of individuals, and if it is just that these +individuals themselves control the attainment of their ends, it +becomes difficult to understand why Liberalism should not go the whole +distance, why it should see fit to distinguish certain individuals +from the rest of the mass, and why the functions of the people should +be restricted to the exercise of a mere check. Therefore the state, if +it exists for all, must be governed by all, and not by a small +minority: if the state is for the people, sovereignty must reside in +the people: if all individuals have the right to govern the state, +liberty is no longer sufficient; equality must be added: and if +sovereignty is vested in the people, the people must wield all +sovereignty and not merely a part of it. The power to check and curb +the government is not sufficient. The people must be the government. +Thus, logically developed, Liberalism leads to Democracy, for +Democracy contains the promises of Liberalism but oversteps its +limitations in that it makes the action of the state positive, +proclaims the equality of all citizens through the dogma of popular +sovereignty. Democracy therefore necessarily implies a republican form +of government even though at times, for reasons of expediency, it +temporarily adjusts itself to a monarchical regime. + +Once started on this downward grade of logical deductions it was +inevitable that this atomistic theory of state and society should pass +on to a more advanced position. Great industrial developments and the +existence of a huge mass of working men, as yet badly treated and in a +condition of semi-servitude, possibly endurable in a regime of +domestic industry, became intolerable after the industrial revolution. +Hence a state of affairs which towards the middle of the last century +appeared to be both cruel and threatening. It was therefore natural +that the following question be raised: "If the state is created for +the welfare of its citizens, severally considered, how can it tolerate +an economic system which divides the population into a small minority +of exploiters, the capitalists, on one side, and an immense multitude +of exploited, the working people, on the other?" No! The state must +again intervene and give rise to a different and less iniquitous +economic organization, by abolishing private property, by assuming +direct control of all production, and by organizing it in such a way +that the products of labor be distributed solely among those who +create them, viz., the working classes. Hence we find Socialism, with +its new economic organization of society, abolishing private ownership +of capital and of the instruments and means of production, socializing +the product, suppressing the extra profit of capital, and turning over +to the working class the entire output of the productive processes. It +is evident that Socialism contains and surpasses Democracy in the same +way that Democracy comprises and surpasses Liberalism, being a more +advanced development of the same fundamental concept. Socialism in its +turn generates the still more extreme doctrine of Bolshevism which +demands the violent suppression of the holders of capital, the +dictatorship of the proletariat, as means for a fairer economic +organization of society and for the rescue of the laboring classes +from capitalistic exploitation. + +Thus Liberalism, Democracy, and Socialism, appear to be, as they are +in reality, not only the offspring of one and the same theory of +government, but also logical derivations one of the other. Logically +developed Liberalism leads to Democracy; the logical development of +Democracy issues into Socialism. It is true that for many years, and +with some justification, Socialism was looked upon as antithetical to +Liberalism. But the antithesis is purely relative and breaks down as +we approach the common origin and foundation of the two doctrines, for +we find that the opposition is one of method, not of purpose. The end +is the same for both, viz., the welfare of the individual members of +society. The difference lies in the fact that Liberalism would be +guided to its goal by liberty, whereas Socialism strives to attain it +by the collective organization of production. There is therefore no +antithesis nor even a divergence as to the nature and scope of the +state and the relation of individuals to society. There is only a +difference of evaluation of the means for bringing about these ends +and establishing these relations, which difference depends entirely on +the different economic conditions which prevailed at the time when the +various doctrines were formulated. Liberalism arose and began to +thrive in the period of small industry; Socialism grew with the rise +of industrialism and of world-wide capitalism. The dissension +therefore between these two points of view, or the antithesis, if we +wish so to call it, is limited to the economic field. Socialism is at +odds with Liberalism only on the question of the organization of +production and of the division of wealth. In religious, intellectual, +and moral matters it is liberal, as it is liberal and democratic in +its politics. Even the anti-liberalism and anti-democracy of +Bolshevism are in themselves purely contingent. For Bolshevism is +opposed to Liberalism only in so far as the former is revolutionary, +not in its socialistic aspect. For if the opposition of the Bolsheviki +to liberal and democratic doctrines were to continue, as now seems +more and more probable, the result might be a complete break between +Bolshevism and Socialism notwithstanding the fact that the ultimate +aims of both are identical. + + +Fascism as an Integral Doctrine of Sociality Antithetical to the +Atomism of Liberal, Democratic, and Socialistic Theories + +The true antithesis, not to this or that manifestation of the +liberal-democratic-socialistic conception of the state but to the +concept itself, is to be found in the doctrine of Fascism. For while +the disagreement between Liberalism and Democracy, and between +Liberalism and Socialism lies in a difference of method, as we have +said, the rift between Socialism, Democracy, and Liberalism on one +side and Fascism on the other is caused by a difference in concept. As +a matter of fact, Fascism never raises the question of methods, using +in its political praxis now liberal ways, now democratic means and at +times even socialistic devices. This indifference to method often +exposes Fascism to the charge of incoherence on the part of +superficial observers, who do not see that what counts with us is the +end and that therefore even when we employ the same means we act with +a radically different spiritual attitude and strive for entirely +different results. The Fascist concept then of the nation, of the +scope of the state, and of the relations obtaining between society and +its individual components, rejects entirely the doctrine which I said +proceeded from the theories of natural law developed in the course of +the XVI, XVII, and XVIII centuries and which form the basis of the +liberal, democratic, and socialistic ideology. + +I shall not try here to expound this doctrine but shall limit myself +to a brief resume of its fundamental concepts. + +Man--the political animal--according to the definition of Aristotle, +lives and must live in society. A human being outside the pale of +society is an inconceivable thing--a non-man. Humankind in its +entirety lives in social groups that are still, today, very numerous +and diverse, varying in importance and organization from the tribes of +Central Africa to the great Western Empires. These various societies +are fractions of the human species each one of them endowed with a +unified organization. And as there is no unique organization of the +human species, there is not "one" but there are "several" human +societies. Humanity therefore exists solely as a biological concept +not as a social one. + +Each society on the other hand exists in the unity of both its +biological and its social contents. Socially considered it is a +fraction of the human species endowed with unity of organization for +the attainment of the peculiar ends of the species. + +This definition brings out all the elements of the social phenomenon +and not merely those relating to the preservation and perpetuation of +the species. For man is not solely matter; and the ends of the human +species, far from being the materialistic ones we have in common with +other animals, are, rather, and predominantly, the spiritual +finalities which are peculiar to man and which every form of society +strives to attain as well as its stage of social development allows. +Thus the organization of every social group is more or less pervaded +by the spiritual influxes of: unity of language, of culture, of +religion, of tradition, of customs, and in general of feeling and of +volition, which are as essential as the material elements: unity of +economic interests, of living conditions, and of territory. The +definition given above demonstrates another truth, which has been +ignored by the political doctrines that for the last four centuries +have been the foundations of political systems, viz., that the social +concept has a biological aspect, because social groups are fractions +of the human species, each one possessing a peculiar organization, a +particular rank in the development of civilization with certain needs +and appropriate ends, in short, a life which is really its own. If +social groups are then fractions of the human species, they must +possess the same fundamental traits of the human species, which means +that they must be considered as a succession of generations and not as +a collection of individuals. + +It is evident therefore that as the human species is not the total of +the living human beings of the world, so the various social groups +which compose it are not the sum of the several individuals which at a +given moment belong to it, but rather the infinite series of the past, +present, and future generations constituting it. And as the ends of +the human species are not those of the several individuals living at a +certain moment, being occasionally in direct opposition to them, so +the ends of the various social groups are not necessarily those of the +individuals that belong to the groups but may even possibly be in +conflict with such ends, as one sees clearly whenever the preservation +and the development of the species demand the sacrifice of the +individual, to wit, in times of war. + +Fascism replaces therefore the old atomistic and mechanical state +theory which was at the basis of the liberal and democratic doctrines +with an organic and historic concept. When I say organic I do not wish +to convey the impression that I consider society as an organism after +the manner of the so-called "organic theories of the state"; but +rather to indicate that the social groups as fractions of the species +receive thereby a life and scope which transcend the scope and life of +the individuals identifying themselves with the history and finalities +of the uninterrupted series of generations. It is irrelevant in this +connection to determine whether social groups, considered as fractions +of the species, constitute organisms. The important thing is to +ascertain that this organic concept of the state gives to society a +continuous life over and beyond the existence of the several +individuals. + +The relations therefore between state and citizens are completely +reversed by the Fascist doctrine. Instead of the liberal-democratic +formula, "society for the individual," we have, "individuals for +society" with this difference however: that while the liberal +doctrines eliminated society, Fascism does not submerge the individual +in the social group. It subordinates him, but does not eliminate him; +the individual as a part of his generation ever remaining an element +of society however transient and insignificant he may be. Moreover the +development of individuals in each generation, when coordinated and +harmonized, conditions the development and prosperity of the entire +social unit. + +At this juncture the antithesis between the two theories must appear +complete and absolute. Liberalism, Democracy, and Socialism look upon +social groups as aggregates of living individuals; for Fascism they +are the recapitulating unity of the indefinite series of generations. +For Liberalism, society has no purposes other than those of the +members living at a given moment. For Fascism, society has historical +and immanent ends of preservation, expansion, improvement, quite +distinct from those of the individuals which at a given moment compose +it; so distinct in fact that they may even be in opposition. Hence the +necessity, for which the older doctrines make little allowance, of +sacrifice, even up to the total immolation of individuals, in behalf +of society; hence the true explanation of war, eternal law of mankind, +interpreted by the liberal-democratic doctrines as a degenerate +absurdity or as a maddened monstrosity. + +For Liberalism, society has no life distinct from the life of the +individuals, or as the phrase goes: solvitur in singularitates. For +Fascism, the life of society overlaps the existence of individuals and +projects itself into the succeeding generations through centuries and +millennia. Individuals come into being, grow, and die, followed by +others, unceasingly; social unity remains always identical to itself. +For Liberalism, the individual is the end and society the means; nor +is it conceivable that the individual, considered in the dignity of an +ultimate finality, be lowered to mere instrumentality. For Fascism, +society is the end, individuals the means, and its whole life consists +in using individuals as instruments for its social ends. The state +therefore guards and protects the welfare and development of +individuals not for their exclusive interest, but because of the +identity of the needs of individuals with those of society as a whole. +We can thus accept and explain institutions and practices, which like +the death penalty, are condemned by Liberalism in the name of the +preeminence of individualism. + +The fundamental problem of society in the old doctrines is the +question of the rights of individuals. It may be the right to freedom +as the Liberals would have it; or the right to the government of the +commonwealth as the Democrats claim it, or the right to economic +justice as the Socialists contend; but in every case it is the right +of individuals, or groups of individuals (classes). Fascism on the +other hand faces squarely the problem of the right of the state and of +the duty of individuals. Individual rights are only recognized in so +far as they are implied in the rights of the state. In this +preeminence of duty we find the highest ethical value of Fascism. + + +The Problems of Liberty, of Government, and of Social Justice in the +Political Doctrine of Fascism + +This, however, does not mean that the problems raised by the other +schools are ignored by Fascism. It means simply that it faces them and +solves them differently, as, for example, the problem of liberty. + +There is a Liberal theory of freedom, and there is a Fascist concept +of liberty. For we, too, maintain the necessity of safeguarding the +conditions that make for the free development of the individual; we, +too, believe that the oppression of individual personality can find no +place in the modern state. We do not, however, accept a bill of rights +which tends to make the individual superior to the state and to +empower him to act in opposition to society. Our concept of liberty is +that the individual must be allowed to develop his personality in +behalf of the state, for these ephemeral and infinitesimal elements of +the complex and permanent life of society determine by their normal +growth the development of the state. But this individual growth must +be normal. A huge and disproportionate development of the individual +of classes, would prove as fatal to society as abnormal growths are to +living organisms. Freedom therefore is due to the citizen and to +classes on condition that they exercise it in the interest of society +as a whole and within the limits set by social exigencies, liberty +being, like any other individual right, a concession of the state. +What I say concerning civil liberties applies to economic freedom as +well. Fascism does not look upon the doctrine of economic liberty as +an absolute dogma. It does not refer economic problems to individual +needs, to individual interest, to individual solutions. On the +contrary it considers the economic development, and especially the +production of wealth, as an eminently social concern, wealth being for +society an essential element of power and prosperity. But Fascism +maintains that in the ordinary run of events economic liberty serves +the social purposes best; that it is profitable to entrust to +individual initiative the task of economic development both as to +production and as to distribution; that in the economic world +individual ambition is the most effective means for obtaining the best +social results with the least effort. Therefore, on the question also +of economic liberty the Fascists differ fundamentally from the +Liberals; the latter see in liberty a principle, the the Fascists +accept it as a method. By the Liberals, freedom is recognized in the +interest of the citizens; the Fascists grant it in the interest of +society. In other terms, Fascists make of the individual an economic +instrument for the advancement of society, an instrument which they +use so long as it functions and which they subordinate when no longer +serviceable. In this guise Fascism solves the eternal problem of +economic freedom and of state interference, considering both as mere +methods which may or may not be employed in accordance with the social +needs of the moment. + +What I have said concerning political and economic Liberalism applies +also to Democracy. The latter envisages fundamentally the problem of +sovereignty; Fascism does also, but in an entirely different manner. +Democracy vests sovereignty in the people, that is to say, in the mass +of human beings. Fascism discovers sovereignty to be inherent in +society when it is juridically organized as a state. Democracy +therefore turns over the government of the state to the multitude of +living men that they may use it to further their own interests; +Fascism insists that the government be entrusted to men capable of +rising above their own private interests and of realizing the +aspirations of the social collectivity, considered in its unity and in +its relation to the past and future. Fascism therefore not only +rejects the dogma of popular sovereignty and substitutes for it that +of state sovereignty, but it also proclaims that the great mass of +citizens is not a suitable advocate of social interests for the reason +that the capacity to ignore individual private interests in favor of +the higher demands of society and of history is a very rare gift and +the privilege of the chosen few. Natural intelligence and cultural +preparation are of great service in such tasks. Still more valuable +perhaps is the intuitiveness of rare great minds, their traditionalism +and their inherited qualities. This must not however be construed to +mean that the masses are not to be allowed to exercise any influence +on the life of the state. On the contrary, among peoples with a great +history and with noble traditions, even the lowest elements of society +possess an instinctive discernment of what is necessary for the +welfare of the race, which in moments of great historical crises +reveals itself to be almost infallible. It is therefore as wise to +afford to this instinct the means of declaring itself as it is +judicious to entrust the normal control of the commonwealth to a +selected elite. + +As for Socialism, the Fascist doctrine frankly recognizes that the +problem raised by it as to the relations between capital and labor is +a very serious one, perhaps the central one of modern life. What +Fascism does not countenance is the collectivistic solution proposed +by the Socialists. The chief defect of the socialistic method has been +clearly demonstrated by the experience of the last few years. It does +not take into account human nature, it is therefore outside of +reality, in that it will not recognize that the most powerful spring +of human activities lies in individual self-interest and that +therefore the elimination from the economic field of this interest +results in complete paralysis. The suppression of private ownership of +capital carries with it the suppression of capital itself, for capital +is formed by savings and no one will want to save, but will rather +consume all he makes if he knows he cannot keep and hand down to his +heirs the results of his labors. The dispersion of capital means the +end of production since capital, no matter who owns it, is always an +indispensable tool of production. Collective organization of +production is followed therefore by the paralysis of production since, +by eliminating from the productive mechanism the incentive of +individual interest, the product becomes rarer and more costly. +Socialism then, as experience has shown, leads to increase in +consumption, to the dispersion of capital and therefore to poverty. Of +what avail is it, then, to build a social machine which will more +justly distribute wealth if this very wealth is destroyed by the +construction of this machine? Socialism committed an irreparable error +when it made of private property a matter of justice while in truth it +is a problem of social utility. The recognition of individual property +rights, then, is a part of the Fascist doctrine not because of its +individual bearing but because of its social utility. + +We must reject, therefore, the socialistic solution but we cannot +allow the problem raised by the Socialists to remain unsolved, not +only because justice demands a solution but also because the +persistence of this problem in liberal and democratic regimes has been +a menace to public order and to the authority of the state. Unlimited +and unrestrained class self-defense, evinced by strikes and lockouts, +by boycotts and sabotage, leads inevitably to anarchy. The Fascist +doctrine, enacting justice among the classes in compliance with a +fundamental necessity of modern life, does away with class +self-defense, which, like individual self-defense in the days of +barbarism, is a source of disorder and of civil war. + +Having reduced the problem of these terms, only one solution is +possible, the realization of justice among the classes by and through +the state. Centuries ago the state, as the specific organ of justice, +abolished personal self-defense in individual controversies and +substituted for it state justice. The time has now come when class +self-defense also must be replaced by state justice. To facilitate the +change Fascism has created its own syndicalism. The suppression of +class self-defense does not mean the suppression of class defense +which is an inalienable necessity of modern economic life. Class +organization is a fact which cannot be ignored but it must be +controlled, disciplined, and subordinated by the state. The syndicate, +instead of being, as formerly, an organ of extra-legal defense, must +be turned into an organ of legal defense which will become judicial +defense as soon as labor conflicts become a matter of judicial +settlement. Fascism therefore has transformed the syndicate, that old +revolutionary instrument of syndicalistic socialists, into an +instrument of legal defense of the classes both within and without the +law courts. This solution may encounter obstacles in its development; +the obstacles of malevolence, of suspicion of the untried, of +erroneous calculation, etc., but it is destined to triumph even though +it must advance through progressive stages. + + +Historical Value of the Doctrine of Fascism + +I might carry this analysis farther but what I have already said is +sufficient to show that the rise of a Fascist ideology already gives +evidence of an upheaval in the intellectual field as powerful as the +change that was brought about in the XVII and XVIII centuries by the +rise and diffusion of those doctrines of _ius naturale_ which go under +the name of "Philosophy of the French Revolution." The philosophy of +the French Revolution formulated certain principles, the authority of +which, unquestioned for a century and a half, seemed so final that +they were given the attribute of immortality. The influence of these +principles was so great that they determined the formation of a new +culture, of a new civilization. Likewise the fervor of the ideas that +go to make up the Fascist doctrine, now in its inception but destined +to spread rapidly, will determine the course of a new culture and of a +new conception of civil life. The deliverance of the individual from +the state carried out in the XVIII century will be followed in the XX +century by the rescue of the state from the individual. The period of +authority, of social obligations, of "hierarchical" subordination will +succeed the period of individualism, of state feebleness, of +insubordination. + +This innovating trend is not and cannot be a return to the Middle +Ages. It is a common but an erroneous belief that the movement, +started by the Reformation and heightened by the French Revolution, +was directed against mediaeval ideas and institutions. Rather than as +a negation, this movement should be looked upon as the development and +fulfillment of the doctrines and practices of the Middle Ages. +Socially and politically considered the Middle Ages wrought +disintegration and anarchy; they were characterized by the gradual +weakening and ultimate extinction of the state, embodied in the Roman +Empire, driven first to the East, then back to France, thence to +Germany, a shadow of its former self; they were marked by the steady +advance of the forces of usurpation, destructive of the state and +reciprocally obnoxious; they bore the imprints of a triumphant +particularism. Therefore the individualistic and anti-social movement +of the XVII and XVIII centuries was not directed against the Middle +Ages, but rather against the restoration of the state by great +national monarchies. If this movement destroyed mediaeval institutions +that had survived the Middle Ages and had been grafted upon the new +states, it was in consequence of the struggle primarily waged against +the state. The spirit of the movement was decidedly mediaeval. The +novelty consisted in the social surroundings in which it operated and +in its relation to new economic developments. The individualism of the +feudal lords, the particularism of the cities and of the corporations +had been replaced by the individualism and the particularism of the +bourgeoisie and of the popular classes. + +The Fascist ideology cannot therefore look back to the Middle Ages, of +which it is a complete negation. The Middle Ages spell disintegration; +Fascism is nothing if not sociality. It is if anything the beginning +of the end of the Middle Ages prolonged four centuries beyond the end +ordinarily set for them and revived by the social democratic anarchy +of the past thirty years. If Fascism can be said to look back at all +it is rather in the direction of ancient Rome whose social and +political traditions at the distance of fifteen centuries are being +revived by Fascist Italy. + +I am fully aware that the value of Fascism, as an intellectual +movement, baffles the minds of many of its followers and supporters +and is denied outright by its enemies. There is no malice in this +denial, as I see it, but rather an incapacity to comprehend. The +liberal-democratic-socialistic ideology has so completely and for so +long a time dominated Italian culture that in the minds of the +majority of people trained by it, it has assumed the value of an +absolute truth, almost the authority of a natural law. Every faculty +of self-criticism is suppressed in the minds and this suppression +entails an incapacity for understanding that time alone can change. It +will be advisable therefore to rely mainly upon the new generations +and in general upon persons whose culture is not already fixed. This +difficulty to comprehend on the part of those who have been thoroughly +grounded by a different preparation in the political and social +sciences explains in part why Fascism has not been wholly successful +with the intellectual classes and with mature minds, and why on the +other hand it has been very successful with young people, with women, +in rural districts, and among men of action unencumbered by a fixed +and set social and political education. Fascism moreover, as a +cultural movement, is just now taking its first steps. As in the case +with all great movements, action regularly outstrips thought. It was +thus at the time of the Protestant Reformation and of the +individualistic reaction of the XVII and XVIII centuries. The English +revolution occurred when the doctrines of natural law were coming into +being and the theoretical development of the liberal and democratic +theories followed the French Revolution. + +At this point it will not be very difficult to assign a fitting place +in history to this great trend of thought which is called Fascism and +which, in spite of the initial difficulties, already gives clear +indication of the magnitude of its developments. + +The liberal-democratic speculation both in its origin and in the +manner of its development appears to be essentially a non-Italian +formation. Its connection with the Middle Ages already shows it to be +foreign to the Latin mind, the mediaeval disintegration being the +result of the triumph of Germanic individualism over the political +mentality of the Romans. The barbarians, boring from within and +hacking from without, pulled down the great political structure raised +by Latin genius and put nothing in its place. Anarchy lasted eight +centuries during which time only one institution survived and that a +Roman one--the Catholic Church. But, as soon as the laborious process +of reconstruction was started with the constitution of the great +national states backed by the Roman Church the Protestant Reformation +set in followed by the individualistic currents of the XVII and XVIII +centuries, and the process of disintegration was started anew. This +anti-state tendency was the expression of the Germanic spirit and it +therefore became predominant among the Germanic peoples and wherever +Germanism had left a deep imprint even if afterward superficially +covered by a veneer of Latin culture. It is true that Marsilius from +Padua is an Italian writing for Ludwig the Bavarian, but the other +writers who in the XIV century appear as forerunners of the liberal +doctrines are not Italians: Occam and Wycliff are English; Oresme is +French. Among the advocates of individualism in the XVI century who +prepared the way for the triumph of the doctrines of natural law in +the subsequent centuries, Hotman and Languet are French, Buchanan is +Scotch. Of the great authorities of natural law, Grotius and Spinosa +are Dutch; Locke is English; l'Abbe de St. Pierre, Montesquieu, +d'Argenson, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot and the encyclopaedists are +French; Althusius, Pufendorf, Kant, Fichte are German. + +Italy took no part in the rise and development of the doctrines of +natural law. Only in the XIX century did she evince a tardy interest +in these doctrines, just as she tardily contributed to them at the +dose of the XVIII century through the works of Beccaria and Filangeri. + +While therefore in other countries such as France, England, Germany, +and Holland, the general tradition in the social and political +sciences worked in behalf of anti-state individualism, and therefore +of liberal and democratic doctrines, Italy, on the other hand, clung +to the powerful legacy of its past in virtue of which she proclaims +the rights of the state, the preeminence of its authority, and the +superiority of its ends. The very fact that the Italian political +doctrine in the Middle Ages linked itself with the great political +writers of antiquity, Plato and Aristotle, who in a different manner +but with an equal firmness advocated a strong state and the +subordination of individuals to it, is a sufficient index of the +orientation of political philosophy in Italy. We all know how thorough +and crushing the authority of Aristotle was in the Middle Ages. But +for Aristotle the spiritual cement of the state is "virtue" not +absolute virtue but political virtue, which is social devotion. His +state is made up solely of its citizens, the citizens being either +those who defend it with their arms or who govern it as magistrates. +All others who provide it with the materials and services it needs are +not citizens. They become such only in the corrupt forms of certain +democracies. Society is therefore divided into two classes, the free +men or citizens who give their time to noble and virtuous occupations +and who profess their subjection to the state, and the laborers and +slaves who work for the maintenance of the former. No man in this +scheme is his own master. The slaves belong to the freemen, and the +freemen belong to the state. + +It was therefore natural that St. Thomas Aquinas the greatest +political writer of the Middle Ages should emphasize the necessity of +unity in the political field, the harm of plurality of rulers, the +dangers and damaging effects of demagogy. The good of the state, says +St. Thomas Aquinas, is unity. And who can procure unity more fittingly +than he who is himself one? Moreover the government must follow, as +far as possible, the course of nature and in nature power is always +one. In the physical body only one organ is dominant--the heart; in +the spirit only one faculty has sway--reason. Bees have one sole +ruler; and the entire universe one sole sovereign--God. Experience +shows that the countries, which are ruled by many, perish because of +discord while those that are ruled over by one enjoy peace, justice, +and plenty. The States which are not ruled by one are troubled by +dissensions, and toil unceasingly. On the contrary the states which +are ruled over by one king enjoy peace, thrive in justice and are +gladdened by affluence.[2] The rule of the multitudes can not be +sanctioned, for where the crowd rules it oppresses the rich as would a +tyrant.[3] + +Italy in the Middle Ages presented a curious phenomenon: while in +practice the authority of the state was being dissolved into a +multiplicity of competing sovereignties, the theory of state unity and +authority was kept alive in the minds of thinkers by the memories of +the Roman Imperial tradition. It was this memory that supported for +centuries the fiction of the universal Roman Empire when in reality it +existed no longer. Dante's _De Monarchia_ deduced the theory of this +empire conceived as the unity of a strong state. "Quod potest fieri +per unum melius est per unum fieri quam plura," he says in the XIV +chapter of the first book, and further on, considering the citizen as +an instrument for the attainment of the ends of the state, he +concludes that the individual must sacrifice himself for his country. +"Si pars debet se exponere pro salute totius, cum homo siti pars +quaedam civitatis ... homo pro patria debet exponere se ipsum." (lib. +II. 8). + +The Roman tradition, which was one of practice but not of +theories--for Rome constructed the most solid state known to history +with extraordinary statesmanship but with hardly any political +writings--influenced considerably the founder of modern political +science, Nicolo Machiavelli, who was himself in truth not a creator of +doctrines but a keen observer of human nature who derived from the +study of history practical maxims of political import. He freed the +science of politics from the formalism of the scholastics and brought +it close to concrete reality. His writings, an inexhaustible mine of +practical remarks and precious observations, reveal dominant in him +the state idea, no longer abstract but in the full historical +concreteness of the national unity of Italy. Machiavelli therefore is +not only the greatest of modern political writers, he is also the +greatest of our countrymen in full possession of a national Italian +consciousness. To liberate Italy, which was in his day "enslaved, torn +and pillaged," and to make her more powerful, he would use any means, +for to his mind the holiness of the end justified them completely. In +this he was sharply rebuked by foreigners who were not as hostile to +his means as they were fearful of the end which he propounded. He +advocated therefore the constitution of a strong Italian state, +supported by the sacrifices and by the blood of the citizens, not +defended by mercenary troops; well-ordered internally, aggressive and +bent on expansion. "Weak republics," he said, "have no determination +and can never reach a decision." (Disc. I. c. 38). "Weak states were +ever dubious in choosing their course, and slow deliberations are +always harmful." (Disc. I. c. 10). And again: "Whoso undertakes to +govern a multitude either in a regime of liberty or in a monarchy, +without previously making sure of those who are hostile to the new +order of things builds a short-lived state." (Disc. I. c. 16). And +further on "the dictatorial authority helped and did not harm the +Roman republic" (Disc. I. c. 34), and "Kings and republics lacking in +national troops both for offense and defense should be ashamed of +their existence." (Disc. I. c. 21). And again: "Money not only does +not protect you but rather it exposes you to plundering assaults. Nor +can there be a more false opinion than that which says that money is +the sinews of war. Not money but good soldiers win battles." (Disc. I. +II. c. 10). "The country must be defended with ignominy or with glory +and in either way it is nobly defended." (Disc. III. c. 41). "And with +dash and boldness people often capture what they never would have +obtained by ordinary means." (Disc. III. c. 44). Machiavelli was not +only a great political authority, he taught the mastery of energy and +will. Fascism learns from him not only its doctrines but its action as +well. + +Different from Machiavelli's, in mental attitude, in cultural +preparation, and in manner of presentation, G.B. Vico must yet be +connected with the great Florentine from whom in a certain way he +seems to proceed. In the heyday of "natural law" Vico is decidedly +opposed to _ius naturale_ and in his attacks against its advocates, +Grotius, Seldenus and Pufendorf, he systematically assails the +abstract, rationalistic, and utilitarian principles of the XVIII +century. As Montemayor justly says:[4] "While the 'natural jurists', +basing justice and state on utility and interest and grounding human +certitude on reason, were striving to draft permanent codes and +construct the perfect state, Vico strongly asserted the social nature +of man, the ethical character of the juridical consciousness and its +growth through the history of humanity rather than in sacred history. +Vico therefore maintains that doctrines must begin with those subjects +which take up and explain the entire course of civilization. +Experience and not ratiocination, history and not reason must help +human wisdom to understand the civil and political regimes which were +the result not of reason or philosophy, but rather of common sense, or +if you will of the social consciousness of man" and farther on (pages +373-374), "to Vico we owe the conception of history in its fullest +sense as magistra vitae, the search after the humanity of history, the +principle which makes the truth progress with time, the discovery of +the political 'course' of nations. It is Vico who uttered the eulogy +of the patrician 'heroic hearts' of the 'patres patriae' first +founders of states, magnanimous defenders of the commonwealth and wise +counsellors of politics. To Vico we owe the criticism of democracies, +the affirmation of their brief existence, of their rapid +disintegration at the hands of factions and demagogues, of their lapse +first into anarchy, then into monarchy, when their degradation does +not make them a prey of foreign oppressors. Vico conceived of civil +liberty as subjection to law, as just subordination, of the private to +the public interests, to the sway of the state. It was Vico who +sketched modern society as a world of nations each one guarding its +own imperium, fighting just and not inhuman wars. In Vico therefore we +find the condemnation of pacifism, the assertion that right is +actualized by bodily force, that without force, right is of no avail, +and that therefore 'qui ab iniuriis se tueri non potest servus est.'" + +It is not difficult to discern the analogies between these +affirmations and the fundamental views and the spirit of Fascism. Nor +should we marvel at this similarity. Fascism, a strictly Italian +phenomenon, has its roots in the Risorgimento and the Risorgimento was +influenced undoubtedly by Vico. + +It would be inexact to affirm that the philosophy of Vico dominated +the Risorgimento. Too many elements of German, French, and English +civilizations had been added to our culture during the first half of +the XIX century to make this possible, so much so that perhaps Vico +might have remained unknown to the makers of Italian unity if another +powerful mind from Southern Italy, Vincenzo Cuoco, had not taken it +upon himself to expound the philosophy of Vico in those very days in +which the intellectual preparation of the Risorgimento was being +carried on. + +An adequate account of Cuoco's doctrines would carry me too far. +Montemayor, in the article quoted above, gives them considerable +attention. He quotes among other things Cuoco's arraignment of +Democracy: "Italy has fared badly at the hand of Democracy which has +withered to their roots the three sacred plants of liberty, unity, +and independence. If we wish to see these trees flourish again let us +protect them in the future from Democracy." + +The influence of Cuoco, an exile at Milan, exerted through his +writings, his newspaper articles, and Vichian propaganda, on the +Italian patriots is universally recognized. Among the regular readers +of his _Giornale Italiano_ we find Monti and Foscolo. Clippings of his +articles were treasured by Mazzini and Manzoni, who often acted as his +secretary, called him his "master in politics."[5] + +The influence of the Italian tradition summed up and handed down by +Cuoco was felt by Mazzini whose interpretation of the function of the +citizen as duty and mission is to be connected with Vico's doctrine +rather than with the philosophic and political doctrines of the French +Revolution. + +"Training for social duty," said Mazzini, "is essentially and +logically unitarian. Life for it is but a duty, a mission. The norm +and definition of such mission can only be found in a collective term +superior to all the individuals of the country--in the people, in the +nation. If there is a collective mission, a communion of duty ... it +can only be represented in the national unity."[6] And farther on: +"The declaration of rights, which all constitutions insist in copying +slavishly from the French, express only those of the period ... which +considered the individual as the end and pointed out only one half of +the problem" and again, "assume the existence of one of those crises +that threaten the life of the nation, and demand the active sacrifice +of all its sons ... will you ask the citizens to face martyrdom in +virtue of their rights? You have taught men that society was solely +constituted to guarantee their rights and now you ask them to +sacrifice one and all, to suffer and die for the safety of the +'nation?'"[7] + +In Mazzini's conception of the citizen as instrument for the +attainment of the nation's ends and therefore submissive to a higher +mission, to the duty of supreme sacrifice, we see the anticipation of +one of the fundamental points of the Fascist doctrine. + +Unfortunately, the autonomy of the political thought of Italy, +vigorously established in the works of Vico, nobly reclaimed by +Vincenzo Cuoco, kept up during the struggles of the Risorgimento in +spite of the many foreign influences of that period, seemed to exhaust +itself immediately after the unification. Italian political thought +which had been original in times of servitude, became enslaved in the +days of freedom. + +A powerful innovating movement, issuing from the war and of which +Fascism is the purest expression, was to restore Italian thought in +the sphere of political doctrine to its own traditions which are the +traditions of Rome. + +This task of intellectual liberation, now slowly being accomplished, +is no less important than the political deliverance brought about by +the Fascist Revolution. It is a great task which continues and +integrates the Risorgimento; it is now bringing to an end, after the +cessation of our political servitude, the intellectual dependence of +Italy. + +Thanks to it, Italy again speaks to the world and the world listens to +Italy. It is a great task and a great deed and it demands great +efforts. To carry it through, we must, each one of us, free ourselves +of the dross of ideas and mental habits which two centuries of foreign +intellectualistic tradition have heaped upon us; we must not only take +on a new culture but create for ourselves a new soul. We must +methodically and patiently contribute something towards the organic +and complete elaboration of our doctrine, at the same time supporting +it both at home and abroad with untiring devotion. We ask this effort +of renovation and collaboration of all Fascists, as well as of all who +feel themselves to be Italians. After the hour of sacrifice comes the +hour of unyielding efforts. To our work, then, fellow countrymen, for +the glory of Italy! + + * * * * * + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 1: Translated from the Italian.] + +[Footnote 2: "civitates quae non reguntur ab uno dissenionibus +laborant et absque pace fluctuant. E contrario civitates quae sub uno +rege reguntur pace gaudent, iustitia florent et affluentia rerum +laetantur." (De reg. princ. I. c. 2).] + +[Footnote 3: "ideo manifustum est, quod multitudo est sicut tyrannuus, +quare operationes multitudinis sunt iniustae. ergo non expedit +multitudinem dominari." (Comm. In Polit. L. III. lectio VIII).] + +[Footnote 4: Rivista internazionale di filosofia del diritto V. 351.] + +[Footnote 5: Montemayor. Riv. Int. etc. p. 370.] + +[Footnote 6: della unita italiana. Scritti, Vol. III.] + +[Footnote 7: I sistemi e la democrazia. Scritti, Vol. VII.] + + * * * * * + + + + +THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF FASCISM +BY GIOVANNI GENTILE + + +For the Italian nation the World War was the solution of a deep +spiritual crisis. They willed and fought it long before they felt and +evaluated it. But they willed, fought, felt and evaluated it in a +certain spirit which Italy's generals and statesmen exploited, but +which also worked on them, conditioning their policies and their +action. The spirit in question was not altogether clear and +self-consistent. That it lacked unanimity was particularly apparent +just before and again just after the war when feelings were not +subject to war discipline. It was as though the Italian character were +crossed by two different currents which divided it into two +irreconcilable sections. One need think only of the days of Italian +neutrality and of the debates that raged between Interventionists and +Neutralists. The ease with which the most inconsistent ideas were +pressed into service by both parties showed that the issue was not +between two opposing political opinions, two conflicting concepts of +history, but actually between two different temperaments, two +different souls. + +For one kind of person the important point was to fight the war, +either on the side of Germany or against Germany: but in either event +to fight the war, without regard to specific advantages--to fight the +war in order that at last the Italian nation, created rather by +favoring conditions than by the will of its people to be a nation, +might receive its test in blood, such a test as only war can bring by +uniting all citizens in a single thought, a single passion, a single +hope, emphasizing to each individual that all have something in +common, something transcending private interests. + +This was the very thing that frightened the other kind of person, the +prudent man, the realist, who had a clear view of the mortal risks a +young, inexperienced, badly prepared nation would be running in such a +war, and who also saw--a most significant point--that, all things +considered, a bargaining neutrality would surely win the country +tangible rewards, as great as victorious participation itself. + +The point at issue was just that: the Italian Neutralists stood for +material advantages, advantages tangible, ponderable, palpable; the +Interventionists stood for moral advantages, intangible, impalpable, +imponderable--imponderable at least on the scales used by their +antagonists. On the eve of the war these two Italian characters stood +facing each other, scowling and irreconcilable--the one on the +aggressive, asserting itself ever more forcefully through the various +organs of public opinion; the other on the defensive, offering +resistance through the Parliament which in those days still seemed to +be the basic repository of State sovereignty. Civil conflict seemed +inevitable in Italy, and civil war was in fact averted only because +the King took advantage of one of his prerogatives and declared war +against the Central Powers. + +This act of the King was the first decisive step toward the solution +of the crisis. + + +II + +The crisis had ancient origins. Its roots sank deep into the inner +spirit of the Italian people. + +What were the creative forces of the _Risorgimento_? The "Italian +people," to which some historians are now tending to attribute an +important if not a decisive role in our struggle for national unity +and independence, was hardly on the scene at all. The active agency +was always an idea become a person--it was one or several determined +wills which were fixed on determined goals. There can be no question +that the birth of modern Italy was the work of the few. And it could +not be otherwise. It is always the few who represent the +self-consciousness and the will of an epoch and determine what its +history shall be; for it is they who see the forces at their disposal +and through those forces actuate the one truly active and productive +force--their own will. + +That will we find in the song of the poets and the ideas of the +political writers, who know how to use a language harmonious with a +universal sentiment or with a sentiment capable of becoming universal. +In the case of Italy, in all our bards, philosophers and leaders, from +Alfieri to Foscolo, from Leopardi to Manzoni, from Mazzini to +Gioberti, we are able to pick up the threads of a new fabric, which is +a new kind of thought, a new kind of soul, a new kind of Italy. This +new Italy differed from the old Italy in something that was very +simple but yet was of the greatest importance: this new Italy took +life seriously, while the old one did not. People in every age had +dreamed of an Italy and talked of an Italy. The notion of Italy had +been sung in all kinds of music, propounded in all kinds of +philosophy. But it was always an Italy that existed in the brain of +some scholar whose learning was more or less divorced from reality. +Now reality demands that convictions be taken seriously, that ideas +become actions. Accordingly it was necessary that this Italy, which +was an affair of brains only, become also an affair of hearts, become, +that is, something serious, something alive. This, and no other, was +the meaning of Mazzini's great slogan: "Thought and Action." It was +the essence of the great revolution which he preached and which he +accomplished by instilling his doctrine into the hearts of others. Not +many others--a small minority! But they were numerous enough and +powerful enough to raise the question where it could be answered--in +Italian public opinion (taken in conjunction with the political +situation prevailing in the rest of Europe). They were able to +establish the doctrine that life is not a game, but a mission; that, +therefore, the individual has a law and a purpose in obedience to +which and in fulfillment of which he alone attains his true value; +that, accordingly, he must make sacrifices, now of personal comfort, +now of private interest, now of life itself. + +No revolution ever possessed more markedly than did the Italian +_Risorgimento_ this characteristic of ideality, of thought preceding +action. Our revolt was not concerned with the material needs of life, +nor did it spring from elementary and widely diffused sentiments +breaking out in popular uprisings and mass disturbances. The movements +of 1847 and 1848 were demonstrations, as we would say today, of +"intellectuals"; they were efforts toward a goal on the part of +a minority of patriots who were standard bearers of an ideal +and were driving governments and peoples toward its attainment. +Idealism--understood as faith in the advent of an ideal reality, as a +manner of conceiving life not as fixed within the limits of existing +fact, but as incessant progress and transformation toward the level of a +higher law which controls men with the very force of the idea--was the +sum and substance of Mazzini's teaching; and it supplied the most +conspicuous characteristic of our great Italian revolution. In this +sense all the patriots who worked for the foundation of the new kingdom +were Mazzinians--Gioberti, Cavour, Victor Emmanuel, Garibaldi. To be +sure, our writers of the first rank, such as Manzoni and Rosmini, had no +historical connection with Mazzini; but they had the same general +tendency as Mazzini. Working along diverging lines, they all came +together on the essential point: that true life is not the life which +is, but also the life which ought to be. It was a conviction essentially +religious in character, essentially anti-materialistic. + + +III + +This religious and idealistic manner of looking at life, so +characteristic of the _Risorgimento_, prevails even beyond the heroic +age of the revolution and the establishment of the Kingdom. It +survives down through Ricasoli, Lanza, Sella and Minghetti, down, that +is, to the occupation of Rome and the systemization of our national +finances. The parliamentary overturn of 1876, indeed, marks not the +end, but rather an interruption, on the road that Italy had been +following since the beginning of the century. The outlook then +changed, and not by the capriciousness or weakness of men, but by a +necessity of history which it would be idiotic in our day to deplore. +At that time the fall of the Right, which had ruled continuously +between 1861 and 1876, seemed to most people the real conquest of +freedom. + +To be sure the Right cannot be accused of too great scruple in +respecting the liberties guaranteed by our Constitution; but the real +truth was that the Right conceived liberty in a sense directly +opposite to the notions of the Left. The Left moved from the +individual to the State: the Right moved from the State to the +individual. The men of the left thought of "the people" as merely the +agglomerate of the citizens composing it. They therefore made the +individual the center and the point of departure of all the rights and +prerogatives which a regime of freedom was bound to respect. + +The men of the Right, on the contrary, were firmly set in the notion +that no freedom can be conceived except within the State, that freedom +can have no important content apart from a solid regime of law +indisputably sovereign over the activities and the interests of +individuals. For the Right there could be no individual freedom not +reconcilable with the authority of the State. In their eyes the +general interest was always paramount over private interests. The law, +therefore, should have absolute efficacy and embrace the whole life of +the people. + +This conception of the Right was evidently sound; but it involved +great dangers when applied without regard to the motives which +provoked it. Unless we are careful, too much law leads to stasis and +therefore to the annihilation of the life which it is the State's +function to regulate but which the State cannot suppress. The State +may easily become a form indifferent to its content--something +extraneous to the substance it would regulate. If the law comes upon +the individual from without, if the individual is not absorbed in the +life of the State, the individual feels the law and the State as +limitations on his activity, as chains which will eventually strangle +him unless he can break them down. + +This was just the feeling of the men of '76. The country needed a +breath of air. Its moral, economic, and social forces demanded the +right to develop without interference from a law which took no account +of them. This was the historical reason for the overturn of that year; +and with the transference of power from Right to Left begins the +period of growth and development in our nation: economic growth in +industry, commerce, railroads, agriculture; intellectual growth in +science, education. The nation had received its form from above. It +had now to struggle to its new level, giving to a State which already +had its constitution, its administrative and political organization, +its army and its finance, a living content of forces springing from +individual initiative prompted by interests which the _Risorgimento_, +absorbed in its great ideals, had either neglected or altogether +disregarded. + +The accomplishment of this constitutes the credit side of the balance +sheet of King Humbert I. It was the error of King Humbert's greatest +minister, Francesco Crispi, not to have understood his age. Crispi +strove vigorously to restore the authority and the prestige of the +State as against an individualism gone rampant, to reassert religious +ideals as against triumphant materialism. He fell, therefore, before +the assaults of so-called democracy. + +Crispi was wrong. That was not the moment for re-hoisting the +time-honored banner of idealism. At that time there could be no talk +of wars, of national dignity, of competition with the Great Powers; no +talk of setting limits to personal liberties in the interests of the +abstract entity called "State." The word "God," which Crispi sometimes +used, was singularly out of place. It was a question rather of +bringing the popular classes to prosperity, self-consciousness, +participation in political life. Campaigns against illiteracy, all +kinds of social legislation, the elimination of the clergy from the +public schools, which must be secular and anti-clerical! During this +period Freemasonry became solidly established in the bureaucracy, the +army, the judiciary. The central power of the State was weakened and +made subservient to the fleeting variations of popular will as +reflected in a suffrage absolved from all control from above. The +growth of big industry favored the rise of a socialism of Marxian +stamp as a new kind of moral and political education for our +proletariat. The conception of humanity was not indeed lost from view: +but such moral restraints as were placed on the free individual were +all based on the feeling that each man must instinctively seek his own +well-being and defend it. This was the very conception which Mazzini +had fought in socialism, though he rightly saw that it was not +peculiar to socialism alone, but belonged to any political theory, +whether liberal, democratic, or anti-socialistic, which urges men +toward the exaction of rights rather than to the fulfillment of +duties. + +From 1876 till the Great War, accordingly, we had an Italy that was +materialistic and anti-Mazzinian, though an Italy far superior to the +Italy of and before Mazzini's time. All our culture, whether in the +natural or the moral sciences, in letters or in the arts, was +dominated by a crude positivism, which conceived of the reality in +which we live as something given, something ready-made, and which +therefore limits and conditions human activity quite apart from +so-called arbitrary and illusory demands of morality. Everybody wanted +"facts," "positive facts." Everybody laughed at "metaphysical dreams," +at impalpable realities. The truth was there before the eyes of men. +They had only to open their eyes to see it. The Beautiful itself could +only be the mirror of the Truth present before us in Nature. +Patriotism, like all the other virtues based on a religious attitude +of mind, and which can be mentioned only when people have the courage +to talk in earnest, became a rhetorical theme on which it was rather +bad taste to touch. + +This period, which anyone born during the last half of the past +century can well remember, might be called the demo-socialistic phase +of the modern Italian State. It was the period which elaborated the +characteristically democratic attitude of mind on a basis of personal +freedom, and which resulted in the establishment of socialism as the +primary and controlling force in the State. It was a period of growth +and of prosperity during which the moral forces developed during the +_Risorgimento_ were crowded into the background or off the stage. + + +IV + +But toward the end of the Nineteenth Century and in the first years of +the Twentieth a vigorous spirit of reaction began to manifest itself +in the young men of Italy against the preceding generation's ideas in +politics, literature, science and philosophy. It was as though they +were weary of the prosaic bourgeois life which they had inherited from +their fathers and were eager to return to the lofty moral enthusiasms +of their grandfathers. Rosmini and Gioberti had been long forgotten. +They were now exhumed, read, discussed. As for Mazzini, an edition of +his writings was financed by the State itself. Vico, the great Vico, a +formidable preacher of idealistic philosophy and a great +anti-Cartesian and anti-rationalist, became the object of a new cult. + +Positivism began forthwith to be attacked by neo-idealism. +Materialistic approaches to the study of literature and art were +refuted and discredited. Within the Church itself modernism came to +rouse the Italian clergy to the need of a deeper and more modern +culture. Even socialism was brought under the philosophical probe and +criticized like other doctrines for its weaknesses and errors; and +when, in France, George Sorel went beyond the fallacies of the +materialistic theories of the Marxist social-democracy to his theory +of syndicalism, our young Italian socialists turned to him. In Sorel's +ideas they saw two things: first, the end of a hypocritical +"collaborationism" which betrayed both proletariat and nation; and +second, faith in a moral and ideal reality for which it was the +individual's duty to sacrifice himself, and to defend which, even +violence was justified. The anti-parliamentarian spirit and the moral +spirit of syndicalism brought Italian socialists back within the +Mazzinian orbit. + +Of great importance, too, was nationalism, a new movement then just +coming to the fore. Our Italian nationalism was less literary and more +political in character than the similar movement in France, because +with us it was attached to the old historic Right which had a long +political tradition. The new nationalism differed from the old Right +in the stress it laid on the idea of "nation"; but it was at one with +the Right in regarding the State as the necessary premise to the +individual rights and values. It was the special achievement of +nationalism to rekindle faith in the nation in Italian hearts, to +arouse the country against parliamentary socialism, and to lead an +open attack on Freemasonry, before which the Italian bourgeoisie was +terrifiedly prostrating itself. Syndicalists, nationalists, idealists +succeeded, between them, in bringing the great majority of Italian +youth back to the spirit of Mazzini. + +Official, legal, parliamentary Italy, the Italy that was +anti-Mazzinian and anti-idealistic, stood against all this, finding +its leader in a man of unfailing political intuition, and master as +well of the political mechanism of the country, a man sceptical of all +high-sounding words, impatient of complicated concepts, ironical, +cold, hard-headed, practical--what Mazzini would have called a "shrewd +materialist." In the persons, indeed, of Mazzini and Giolitti, we may +find a picture of the two aspects of pre-war Italy, of that +irreconcilable duality which paralyzed the vitality of the country and +which the Great War was to solve. + + +V + +The effect of the war seemed at first to be quite in an opposite +sense--to mark the beginning of a general _debacle_ of the Italian +State and of the moral forces that must underlie any State. If +entrance into the war had been a triumph of ideal Italy over +materialistic Italy, the advent of peace seemed to give ample +justification to the Neutralists who had represented the latter. After +the Armistice our Allies turned their backs upon us. Our victory +assumed all the aspects of a defeat. A defeatist psychology, as they +say, took possession of the Italian people and expressed itself in +hatred of the war, of those responsible for the war, even of our army +which had won our war. An anarchical spirit of dissolution rose +against all authority. The ganglia of our economic life seemed struck +with mortal disease. Labor ran riot in strike after strike. The very +bureaucracy seemed to align itself against the State. The measure of +our spiritual dispersion was the return to power of Giolitti--the +execrated Neutralist--who for five years had been held up as the +exponent of an Italy which had died with the war. + +But, curiously enough, it was under Giolitti that things suddenly +changed in aspect, that against the Giolittian State a new State +arose. Our soldiers, our genuine soldiers, men who had willed our war +and fought it in full consciousness of what they were doing, had the +good fortune to find as their leaders a man who could express in words +things that were in all their hearts and who could make those words +audible above the tumult. + +Mussolini had left Italian socialism in 1915 in order to be a more +faithful interpreter of "the Italian People" (the name he chose for +his new paper). He was one of those who saw the necessity of our war, +one of those mainly responsible for our entering the war. Already as a +socialist he had fought Freemasonry; and, drawing his inspiration from +Sorel's syndicalism, he had assailed the parliamentary corruption of +Reformist Socialism with the idealistic postulates of revolution and +violence. Then, later, on leaving the party and in defending the cause +of intervention, he had come to oppose the illusory fancies of +proletarian internationalism with an assertion of the infrangible +integrity, not only moral but economic as well, of the national +organism, affirming therefore the sanctity of country for the working +classes as for other classes. Mussolini was a Mazzinian of that +pure-blooded breed which Mazzini seemed somehow always to find in the +province of Romagna. First by instinct, later by reflection, Mussolini +had come to despise the futility of the socialists who kept preaching +a revolution which they had neither the power nor the will to bring to +pass even under the most favorable circumstances. More keenly than +anyone else he had come to feel the necessity of a State which would +be a State, of a law which would be respected as law, of an authority +capable of exacting obedience but at the same time able to give +indisputable evidence of its worthiness so to act. It seemed +incredible to Mussolini that a country capable of fighting and winning +such a war as Italy had fought and won should be thrown into disorder +and held at the mercy of a handful of faithless politicians. + +When Mussolini founded his Fasci in Milan in March, 1919, the movement +toward dissolution and negation that featured the post-war period in +Italy had virtually ceased. The Fasci made their appeal to Italians +who, in spite of the disappointments of the peace, continued to +believe in the war, and who, in order to validate the victory which +was the proof of the war's value, were bent on recovering for Italy +that control over her own destinies which could come only through a +restoration of discipline and a reorganization of social and political +forces. From the first, the Fascist Party was not one of believers but +of action. What it needed was not a platform of principles, but an +idea which would indicate a goal and a road by which the goal could be +reached. + +The four years between 1919 and 1923 inclusive were characterized by +the development of the Fascist revolution through the action of "the +squads." The Fascist "squads" were really the force of a State not yet +born but on the way to being. In its first period, Fascist "squadrism" +transgressed the law of the old regime because it was determined to +suppress that regime as incompatible with the national State to which +Fascism was aspiring. The March on Rome was not the beginning, it was +the end of that phase of the revolution; because, with Mussolini's +advent to power, Fascism entered the sphere of legality. After October +28, 1922, Fascism was no longer at war with the State; it _was_ the +State, looking about for the organization which would realize Fascism +as a concept of State. Fascism already had control of all the +instruments necessary for the upbuilding of a new State. The Italy of +Giolitti had been superceded, at least so far as militant politics +were concerned. Between Giolitti's Italy and the new Italy there +flowed, as an imaginative orator once said in the Chamber, "a torrent +of blood" that would prevent any return to the past. The century-old +crisis had been solved. The war at last had begun to bear fruit for +Italy. + + +VI + +Now to understand the distinctive essence of Fascism, nothing is more +instructive than a comparison of it with the point of view of Mazzini +to which I have so often referred. + +Mazzini did have a political conception, but his politic was a sort of +integral politic, which cannot be so sharply distinguished from +morals, religion, and ideas of life as a whole, as to be considered +apart from these other fundamental interests of the human spirit. If +one tries to separate what is purely political from his religious +beliefs, his ethical consciousness and his metaphysical concepts, it +becomes impossible to understand the vast influence which his credo +and his propaganda exerted. Unless we assume the unity of the whole +man, we arrive not at the clarification but at the destruction of +those ideas of his which proved so powerful. + +In the definition of Fascism, the first point to grasp is the +comprehensive, or as Fascists say, the "totalitarian" scope of its +doctrine, which concerns itself not only with political organization +and political tendency, but with the whole will and thought and +feeling of the nation. + +There is a second and equally important point. Fascism is not a +philosophy. Much less is it a religion. It is not even a political +theory which may be stated in a series of formulae. The significance +of Fascism is not to be grasped in the special theses which it from +time to time assumes. When on occasion it has announced a program, a +goal, a concept to be realized in action, Fascism has not hesitated to +abandon them when in practice these were found to be inadequate or +inconsistent with the principle of Fascism. Fascism has never been +willing to compromise its future. Mussolini has boasted that he is a +_tempista_, that his real pride is in "good timing." He makes +decisions and acts on them at the precise moment when all the +conditions and considerations which make them feasible and opportune +are properly matured. This is a way of saying that Fascism returns to +the most rigorous meaning of Mazzini's "Thought and Action," whereby +the two terms are so perfectly coincident that no thought has value +which is not already expressed in action. The real "views" of the +_Duce_ are those which he formulates and executes at one and the same +time. + +Is Fascism therefore "anti-intellectual," as has been so often +charged? It is eminently anti-intellectual, eminently Mazzinian, that +is, if by intellectualism we mean the divorce of thought from action, +of knowledge from life, of brain from heart, of theory from practice. +Fascism is hostile to all Utopian systems which are destined never to +face the test of reality. It is hostile to all science and all +philosophy which remain matters of mere fancy or intelligence. It is +not that Fascism denies value to culture, to the higher intellectual +pursuits by which thought is invigorated as a source of action. +Fascist anti-intellectualism holds in scorn a product peculiarly +typical of the educated classes in Italy: the _leterato_--the man who +plays with knowledge and with thought without any sense of +responsibility for the practical world. It is hostile not so much to +culture as to bad culture, the culture which does not educate, which +does not make men, but rather creates pedants and aesthetes, egotists +in a word, men morally and politically indifferent. It has no use, for +instance, for the man who is "above the conflict" when his country or +its important interests are at stake. + +By virtue of its repugnance for "intellectualism," Fascism prefers not +to waste time constructing abstract theories about itself. But when we +say that it is not a system or a doctrine we must not conclude that it +is a blind praxis or a purely instinctive method. If by system or +philosophy we mean a living thought, a principle of universal +character daily revealing its inner fertility and significance, then +Fascism is a perfect system, with a solidly established foundation and +with a rigorous logic in its development; and all who feel the truth +and the vitality of the principle work day by day for its development, +now doing, now undoing, now going forward, now retracing their steps, +according as the things they do prove to be in harmony with the +principle or to deviate from it. + +And we come finally to a third point. + +The Fascist system is not a political system, but it has its center of +gravity in politics. Fascism came into being to meet serious problems +of politics in post-war Italy. And it presents itself as a political +method. But in confronting and solving political problems it is +carried by its very nature, that is to say by its method, to consider +moral, religious, and philosophical questions and to unfold and +demonstrate the comprehensive totalitarian character peculiar to it. +It is only after we have grasped the political character of the +Fascist principle that we are able adequately to appreciate the deeper +concept of life which underlies that principle and from which the +principle springs. The political doctrine of Fascism is not the whole +of Fascism. It is rather its more prominent aspect and in general its +most interesting one. + + +VII + +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 preexisting, 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 Fuehrer, +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 _[voelkisches 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" (Kjellen) + 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 +[_gesamtvoelkischen 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 Fuehrer Principle + +The second pillar of the Nazi state is the Fuehrer, the infallible +leader, to whom his followers owe absolute obedience. The Fuehrer +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 Fuehrer +principle is given by Huber in his _Constitutional Law of the Greater +German Reich_ (document 1, _post_ p. 155): + + The Fuehrer-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 Fuehrer. 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 Fuehrer-state, in which the collective will of + the real political unit is manifested ... + + The Fuehrer 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 Fuehrer + principle. Thus the Fuehrer 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 Fuehrer 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 Fuehrer, 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 Fuehrer. 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 Fuehrer raises + it to consciousness and discloses it ... + + In the Fuehrer 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 Fuehrer'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 Fuehrer principle rests upon unlimited authority but not + upon mere outward force. It has often been said, but it must + constantly be repeated, that the Fuehrer 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 Fuehrer-order depends upon the + responsibility of the following, just as it counts on the + responsibility and loyalty of the Fuehrer to his mission and + to his following ... There is no greater responsibility than + that upon which the Fuehrer 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 Fuehrer, in his capacity as the bearer of +the people's will, has already made: + + That the will of the people is embodied in the Fuehrer does + not exclude the possibility that the Fuehrer can summon all + members of the people to a plebiscite on a certain question. + In this "asking of the people" the Fuehrer 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 Fuehrer's place or to replace the Fuehrer'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 Fuehrer. It is + intended to solidify the unity and agreement between the + objective people's will embodied in the Fuehrer and the + living, subjective conviction of the people as it exists in + the individual members ... This approval of the Fuehrer'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 Fuehrer 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 Fuehrer: + + It would be impossible for a law to be introduced and acted + upon in the Reichstag which had not originated with the + Fuehrer 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 Fuehrer, who is + the lawgiver of the German people.[48] + +Huber also shows how the position of the Fuehrer developed from the +Nazi Party movement: + + The office of the Fuehrer 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 Fuehrer. The + office of the Fuehrer first took root in the structure of the + Reich when the Fuehrer 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 "Fuehrer 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 Fuehrer does not unite + the old offices of Chancelor and President side by side + within himself, but he fills a new, unified office.[49] + + The Fuehrer 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 Fuehrer. + We must speak not of the state's authority but of the + Fuehrer'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 Fuehrer as the executor of the + national will. The authority of the Fuehrer 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 + Fuehrer in loyalty and obedience. The authority of the Fuehrer + 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 + Fuehrer 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 +Fuehrer 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 Fuehrer may be outwardly independent, but inwardly +he obeys the same laws as those he leads."[51] + +The _leadership_ (_Fuehrung_) in the Nazi state is not to be compared +with the _government_ or _administration_ in a democracy: + + _Fuehrung_ 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 _Fuehrung_ 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 _Fuehrung_ 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, _Fuehrung_ must be free in the performance + of its task ... The Fuehrer 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 Fuehrer 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 Fuehrer 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 Fuehrer and following alike are + consecrated.[53] + +The supreme position of Adolf Hitler as Fuehrer 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 Fuehrer 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 Fuehrer 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 Fuehrer 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 Fuehrer, 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 Fuehrer, + 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 Fuehrer'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 Fuehrer is always right!" and the second is "Never go against +discipline!" + +In view of the importance attached to the Fuehrer 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 Fuehrer 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 Fuehrer 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] + +German writers often pretend that the Fuehrer principle does not +necessarily result in the establishment of a dictatorship but that it +permits the embodiment of the will of the people in its leaders and +the realization of the popular will much more efficiently than is +possible in democratic states. Such an argument, for example, is +presented by Dr. Paul Ritterbusch in _Demokratie und Diktatur_ +(_Democracy and Dictatorship_), published in 1939. Professor +Ritterbusch claims that Communism leads to a dictatorial system but +that the Nazi movement is much closer to the ideals of true democracy. +The real nature of National Socialism, however, cannot be understood +from the standpoint of the "pluralistic-party state." It does not +represent a dictatorship of one party and a suppression of all others +but rather an expression of the will and the character of the whole +national community in and through one great party which has resolved +all internal discords and oppositions within itself. The Fuehrer of +this great movement is at once the leader and the expression of the +national will. Freed from the enervating effects of internal strife, +the movement under the guiding hand of the Fuehrer can bring the whole +of the national community to its fullest expression and highest +development. + +The highest authority, however, Hitler himself, has left no doubt as +to the nature of Nazi Party leaders. In a speech delivered at the +Sportpalast in Berlin on April 8, 1933, he said: + + When our opponents say: "It is easy for you: you are a + dictator"--We answer them, "No, gentlemen, you are wrong; + there is no single dictator, but ten thousand, each in his + own place." And even the highest authority in the hierarchy + has itself only one wish, never to transgress against the + supreme authority to which it, too, is responsible. We have + in our movement developed this loyalty in following the + leader, this blind obedience of which all the others know + nothing and which gave to us the power to surmount + everything.[58] + +As has been indicated above, the Fuehrer principle applies not only to +the Fuehrer of the Reich, Adolf Hitler, but to all the subordinate +leaders of the party and the government apparatus. With respect to +this aspect of the Fuehrer principle, Huber (document 1, _post_ p. +155), says: + + The ranks of the public services are regarded as forces + organized on the living principle of leadership and + following: The authority of command exercised in the labor + service, the military service, and the civil service is + Fuehrer-authority ... It has been said of the military and + civil services that true leadership is not represented in + their organization on the principles of command and + obedience. In reality there can be no political leadership + which does not have recourse to command and force as the + means for the accomplishment of its ends. Command and force + do not, of course, constitute the true nature of leadership, + but as a means they are indispensable elements of every + fully developed Fuehrer-order.[59] + +The Fuehrer principle is officially recognized by the party, and the +party interpretation thereof is set forth in the _Party Organization +Book_ (document 7 and charts 1 and 1-A, _post_ pp. 186, 488, 489). + +There are also included herein, as charts 2 and 2-A and 3 and 3-A +(_post_ pp. 490, 491, 492, 493), photostatic copies and translations +of two charts from _Der nationalsozialistische Staat_ (_The National +Socialist State_) by Dr. Walther Gehl, published in 1935. These charts +clearly show the concentration of authority in the Fuehrer and the +subordinate relation of the minor leaders in both the state and the +party. + + +The Party: Leadership by an Elite Class + +_1. Functions of the Party_ + +The third pillar of the Nazi state, the link between _Volk_ and Fuehrer, +is the Nazi Party. According to Nazi ideology, all authority within the +nation is derived ultimately from the people, but it is the party +through which the people expresses itself. In _Rechtseinrichtungen und +Rechtsaufgaben der Bewegung_ (_Legal Organization and Legal Functions of +the Movement_) (document 8, _post_ p. 204), published in 1939, Otto +Gauweiler states: + + The will of the German people finds its expression in the + party as the political organization of the people. It + represents the political conception, the political + conscience, and the political will. It is the expression and + the organ of the people's creative will to life. It + comprises a select part of the German people for "only the + best Germans should be party members" ... The inner + organization of the party must therefore bring the national + life which is concentrated within itself to manifestation + and development in all the fields of national endeavor in + which the party is represented.[60] + +Gauweiler defines the relationship of the party to the state in the +following terms: + + The party stands above and beside the state as the wielder + of an authority derived from the people with its own + sovereign powers and its own sphere of sovereignty ... The + legal position of the party is therefore that of a + completely sovereign authority whose legal supremacy and + self-sufficiency rest upon the original independent + political authority which the Fuehrer and the movement have + attained as a result of their historical achievements.[61] + +Neesse states that "It will be the task of National Socialism to lead +back the German people to an organic structure which proceeds from a +recognition of the differences in the characters and possibilities of +human beings without permitting this recognition to lead to a cleavage +of the people into two camps."[62] This task is the responsibility of +the party. Although it has become the only political party in Germany, +the party does not desire to identify itself with the state. It does +not wish to dominate the state or to serve it. It works beside it and +cooperates with it. In this respect, Nazi Germany is distinguished +from the other one-party states of Europe: "In the one-party state of +Russia, the party rules over the state; in the one-party state of +Italy, the party serves the state; but in the one-party state of +Germany, the party neither serves the state nor rules over it directly +but works and struggles together with it for the community of the +people."[63] Neesse contends that the party derives its legal basis +from the law inherent in the living organism of the German _Volk_: + + The inner law of the NSDAP is none other than the inner law + of the German people. The party arises from the people; it + has formed an organization which crystallizes about itself + the feelings of the people, which seemed buried, and the + strength of the people, which seemed lost.[64] + +Neesse states that the party has two great tasks--to insure the +continuity of national leadership and to preserve the unity of the +_Volk_: + + The first main task of the party, which is in keeping with + its organic nature, is to protect the National Socialist + idea and to constantly renew it by drawing from the depths + of the German soul, to keep it pure and clear, and to pass + it on thus to coming generations: this is predominantly a + matter of education of the people. + + The second great task, which is in keeping with its + organizational nature, is to form the people and the state + into the unity of the nation and to create for the German + national community forms which are ever new and suited to + its vital development: this is predominantly a matter of + state formation. These two tasks, one of which deals with + substance and the other with function, belong together. It + is as impossible to separate them as it is to split up the + party into organism and organization, form and content.[65] + +Huber (document 1, _post_ p. 155) describes the tasks of the party in +similar terms. He states that the party is charged with the "education +of the people to a political people" through the awakening of the +political consciousness of each individual; the inculcation of a +"uniform political philosophy," that is, the teaching of Nazi +principles; "the selection of leaders," including the choice and +training of especially promising boys to be the Fuehrers of the future; +and the shaping of the "political will of the people" in accordance +with the Fuehrer's aims.[66] + +The educational tasks of the party are stressed by Beck, who develops +the idea that the _Volk_ can be divided into three main groups, "a +supporting, a leading, and a creative class."[67] It is the duty of +the leading class, that is, the party, from which the creative class +of leaders is drawn, to provide for the education of the supporting +class. + + Every member of the body of the people must belong to the + politically supporting class, that is, each one who bears + within himself the basic racial, spiritual, and mental + values of the people ... Here no sort of leading or creative + activity is demanded but only a recognition of the leading + and creative will ... Only those are called to leadership in + political life who have recognized the community-bound law + of all human life in purest clarity and in the all-embracing + extent of its validity and who will place all the powers of + their personal lives with the help of a politically moral + character in the service of the formation of community life + ... From the politically leading class arise the politically + creative personalities. These are the mysterious elemental + forces which are beyond all explanation by human reason and + which through their action and by means of the living idea + within them give to the community of the people an + expression which is fresh, young, and eternal. Here is the + fulfilment of the highest and purest political humanity ... + The education of the socialist personality is essentially + the forming of the politically supporting class within the + German people and the encouragement of those political + tendencies which make a man a political leader. To educate + to political creativeness is just as impossible as to + educate to genius. Education can only furnish the spiritual + atmosphere, can only prepare the spiritual living-space for + the politically creative personality by forming a uniform + political consciousness in the socialistic personality, and + in the development of politically creative personalities it + can at the most give special attention to those values of + character and spirit which are of decisive importance for + the development of this personality.[68] + +Goebbels in _The Nature and Form of National Socialism_ (document 2, +_post_ p. 170) emphasizes the responsibility of the party for the +leadership of the state: + + The party must always continue to represent the hierarchy of + National Socialist leadership. This minority must always + insist upon its prerogative to control the state. It must + keep the way open for the German youth which wishes to take + its place in this hierarchy. In reality the hierarchy has + fewer rights than duties! It is responsible for the + leadership of the state and it solemnly relieves the people + of this responsibility. It has the duty to control the state + in the best interests and to the general welfare of the + nation.[69] + +Dr. Frick, German Minister of the Interior, in his chapter in _Germany +Speaks_ indicates the exclusive position of the party in the Third +Reich: + + National Socialist Germany, however, is not merely a unitary + state: it is also a unitary nation and its governance is + based on the principle of leadership ... + + In National Socialist Germany, leadership is in the hands of + an organized community, the National Socialist Party; and as + the latter represents the will of the nation, the policy + adopted by it in harmony with the vital interests of the + nation is at the same time the policy adopted by the country + ... The National Socialist Party is the only political party + in Germany and therefore the true representative of the + people ...[70] + +To Dr. Ley, the party is identical with the Fuehrer. As he wrote in the +_Angriff_ on April 9, 1942 (document 6, _post_ p. 184), "The National +Socialist Party is Hitler, and Hitler is the party." + +The role of the party in legislation, in political matters, and in the +appointment of Government officials is indicated by the Fuehrer's +decree of May 29, 1941,[71] as amplified by the order of January 16, +1942, concerning its execution.[72] (Document 9, _post_ p. 212). This +order provides that all legislative proposals and proposed laws and +decrees, as well as any proposed changes therein, must pass through +and receive the approval of the Party Chancelry. + + +_2. Party Membership_ + +Details concerning the qualifications and duties of party members are +contained in the _Party Organization Book_ for 1940 (document 7, +_post_ p. 186). + + Membership is finally confirmed by the issuance of a + membership card or a membership book. Anyone who becomes a + party member does not merely join an organization but he + becomes a soldier in the German freedom movement and that + means much more than just paying his dues and attending the + members' meetings. He obligates himself to subordinate his + own ego and to place everything he has in the service of the + people's cause. Only he who is capable of doing this should + become a party member. A selection must be made in + accordance with this idea. + + Readiness to fight, readiness to sacrifice, and strength of + character are the requirements for a good National + Socialist. Small blemishes, such as a false step which + someone has made in his youth, should be overlooked; the + contribution in the struggle for Germany should alone be + decisive. The healthy will naturally prevail over the bad if + the will to health finds sufficient support in leadership + and achievement. Admission to the party should not be + controlled by the old bourgeois point of view. The party + must always represent the elite of the people.[73] + +German blood is one of the prerequisites for party membership. The +_Party Organization Book_ for 1940 (document 7, _post_ p. 186) also +states, "Only those racial comrades who possess German citizenship are +eligible for admission."[74] + +Party members shall not exceed ten per cent of the German population +of the region. "The ideal proportion of the number of party members to +the number of racial comrades is set at ten per cent. This proportion +is to apply also to the individual Province [Gau]."[75] + + +_3. Pledges and Symbols of Allegiance_ + +Party members take an oath of loyalty to the Fuehrer in the following +terms: "I pledge allegiance to my Fuehrer, Adolf Hitler. I promise at +all times to respect and obey him and the leaders whom he appoints +over me."[76] + + +(a) The Hitler Salute + +A pledge of allegiance to the Fuehrer is also implied in the Nazi +salute, which is usually accompanied by the greeting, "Heil Hitler." +The phrase _mit deutschen Gruss_, which is commonly used as a closing +salutation in letters, is another form of the Hitler greeting. _Knaurs +Konversations-Lexikon_ (_Knaur's Conversational Dictionary_), published +in Berlin in 1934, contains the following definition: + + _German greeting_, Hitler greeting: by raising the right + arm; used by the old Germans with the spear as a greeting of + arms _[Waffengruss]._ Communal greeting of the National + Socialists; introduced into general use in 1933. + +That this greeting was used by the Nazis as early as 1923 is +demonstrated by a photograph which appeared in _Das Buch der NSDAP, +Werden, Kampf and Ziel der NSDAP_ (_The Book of the NSDAP, Growth, +Struggle, and Goal of the NSDAP_) by Walter M. Espe (Berlin, 1934), +illustration 34 (document 10, _post_ p. 214). + +In the same book (page 23 in the supplement entitled "_Die NSDAP_") +the following distinction is made between the usual Nazi greeting and +the Storm Troopers' salute: + + While the German greeting consists merely in raising the + right hand in any desired manner and represents rather a + general comradely greeting, the SA salute is executed, in + accordance with the specifications of the SA service + regulations, by placing the left hand on the belt and + raising the extended right arm. + + The SA salute is to be given to all higher ranking leaders + of the SA and the SS and of the veterans' organization which + has been incorporated into the SA, as well as to the Army + and the national and security police forces. + + The comradely German greeting is to be exchanged between all + equally ranking members of the SA and the SS and members of + a corresponding rank in the Army, the police, the veterans' + organization, the German air-sport league, the Hitler Youth, + the railway guards, and the whole membership of the party so + far as they are distinguishable by regulation uniforms. + + +(b) The Swastika + +Early in its history the Nazi Party adopted the swastika banner as +its official emblem.[77] It was designed by Hitler himself, who wrote +in _Mein Kampf_: + + I myself after countless attempts had laid down a final + form: a flag with a background of red cloth, having a white + circle, and, in its center, a black swastika.... + + As National Socialists we see our program in our flag. In + the _red_ we see the social idea of the movement, in the + _white_ the nationalistic idea, and in the _swastika_ the + fight for the victory of Aryan man and at the same time for + the victory of the idea of creative work, which in itself + always was and always will be anti-Semitic.[78] + +The swastika banner came into general use after January 30, 1933 as a +symbol of allegiance to the Hitler regime, but not until two years +later was it made the German national flag by the Reich flag law of +September 15, 1935.[79] Another law, decreed on April 7, 1937,[80] +specified that: + + The insignia which the NSDAP, its formations, and associated + organizations use for their officers, their structure, their + organization, and their symbols may not be used by other + associations either alone or with embellishments. + +It is interesting to note that party regulations forbid members to use +passport photographs in which they appear in party uniform or wearing +party insignia and that party members are forbidden to discuss foreign +policy with foreigners unless they are officially designated by the +Fuehrer to do so. The pertinent regulations read: + + _Pass Photos on Identification Cards_ + + Members of the NSDAP must not use pass photos which show the + holder of any identification card in a uniform of the party + or of any of its formations. It is also forbidden to use as + pass photos pictures which show the person wearing a party + button. + + * * * * * + + _Conversations With Foreigners_ + + It is forbidden to all party members to engage in + discussions of foreign policy with foreigners. Only such + persons as have been designated by the Fuehrer are entitled + to do so.[81] + + +The Totalitarian State + +The Weimar Constitution, although never formally abrogated by the +Nazis, was rendered totally ineffectual by two basic laws, promulgated +within two months after the seizure of power by the party. The first +of these was the "Decree of the Reich's President for the Protection +of the People and State" (document 11-I, _post_ p. 215), issued +February 28, 1933, the day after the Reichstag was burned down. It +suspended "until further notice"[82] articles of the Weimar +Constitution guaranteeing essential democratic rights of the +individual. Thus, according to article I of this decree, "restrictions +on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, +including freedom of the press, on the right of assembly and the right +of association, and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic, +and telephonic communications, and warrants for house-searches, orders +for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also +permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed."[83] The +abrogation by the Nazis of these fundamental rights of democracy has +never been repealed or amended. In fact, this decree represents the +presupposition and confirmation of the police sway established +throughout Germany by the Nazis.[84] + +The second basic law, known as the "Enabling Act," the "Law To Remove +the Distress of People and State," of March 24, 1933 (document 11-II, +_post_ p. 217), swept away parliamentary government entirely. By +abrogating the pertinent articles of the Weimar Constitution, it +enabled the Nazi Cabinet under Hitler's chancelorship to appropriate +money and legislate without any responsibility to the Reichstag or any +obligation to respect the Constitution. + +The dissolution of democracy in Germany was sealed by the unification +of the authoritarian Nazi Party with the German state. Soon after the +party came to power in 1933, steps were taken to effect and secure +this unity. The process is described by Huber (document 1, _post_ p. +155) as follows: + + On July 14, 1933 was issued the law against the formation of + new parties which raised the NSDAP to the only political + party in Germany [document 11-III] ... The overthrow of the + old party-state was accompanied by the construction of the + new movement-state [_Bewegungsstaat_]. Out of a political + fighting organization the NSDAP grew to a community capable + of carrying the state and the nation. This process was + accomplished step by step in the first months after the + National Socialist seizure of power. The assumption of the + office of Chancelor by the Fuehrer of the movement formed the + basis for this development. Various party leaders were + appointed as _Reichsminister_; the governors of the + provinces were national leaders or _Gauleiter_ of the party, + such as General von Epp; the Prussian government officials + are as a rule _Gauleiter_ of the party; the Prussian police + chiefs are mostly high-ranking SA leaders. By this system of + a union of the personnel of the party and state offices the + unity of party and state was achieved.[85] + +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 Fuehrer'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 fuer 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] + + * * * * * + +FOOTNOTES TO FIRST SECTION + +[Footnote 8: Huber, _Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches_ +(Hamburg, 1939), pp. 54-55.] + +[Footnote 9: _Ibid._, pp. 153-155.] + +[Footnote 10: _Ibid._, pp. 156-157.] + +[Footnote 11: _Ibid._, p. 157.] + +[Footnote 12: _Ibid._, p. 158.] + +[Footnote 13: _Ibid._, p. 163.] + +[Footnote 14: _Ibid._, p. 164.] + +[Footnote 15: _Ibid._, pp. 165-166.] + +[Footnote 16: Neesse, _Die Nationalsozialistische Deutsche +Arbeiterpartei--Versuch einer Rechtsdeutung_ (Stuttgart, 1935), p. +44.] + +[Footnote 17: _Ibid._, p. 51.] + +[Footnote 18: _Ibid._, p. 54.] + +[Footnote 19: _Ibid._, p. 58.] + +[Footnote 20: _Ibid._, pp. 54-56.] + +[Footnote 21: _Ibid._, p. 59.] + +[Footnote 22: _Ibid._, pp. 60-61.] + +[Footnote 23: _Ibid._, pp. 65-66.] + +[Footnote 24: Scurla, _Die Grundgedanken des Nationalsozialismus und +das Ausland_ (Berlin, 1938), pp. 10-11.] + +[Footnote 25: _Ibid._, p. 9.] + +[Footnote 26: _Ibid._] + +[Footnote 27: _Ibid._, p. 13.] + +[Footnote 28: Beck, _Die Erziehung im dritten Reich_ (Dortmund and +Breslau, 1936), p. 20.] + +[Footnote 29: _Ibid._, pp. 20-21.] + +[Footnote 30: _Ibid._, p. 35.] + +[Footnote 31: _Ibid._, pp. 52-55.] + +[Footnote 32: _Ibid._, p. 46.] + +[Footnote 33: _Ibid._, p. 57.] + +[Footnote 34: _Ibid._, p. 118.] + +[Footnote 35: _Ibid._, p. 140.] + +[Footnote 36: Rosenberg, _Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts_ (Munich, +1935), p. 28 (1st ed. 1930).] + +[Footnote 37: _Ibid._, p. 114.] + +[Footnote 38: _Ibid._, p. 479.] + +[Footnote 39: _Ibid._, p. 542.] + +[Footnote 40: Gottfried Feder, _The Programme of the Party of Hitler_ +(translated by E.T.S. Dugdale: Munich, 1932), p. 18.] + +[Footnote 41: Rosenberg, _Wesen, Grundsaetze und Ziele der NSDAP_ +(Munich, 1933), pp. 16-18 (1st ed. 1922).] + +[Footnote 42: Rosenberg, _Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts_, p. 673.] + +[Footnote 43: Beck, _op. cit._, p. 110.] + +[Footnote 44: _Ibid._, p. 110.] + +[Footnote 45: Huber, "_Aufbau und Gefuege des Reiches_," published in +the book _Idee und Ordnung des Reiches_ (ed. by Huber: Hamburg, +Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1941), p. 12.] + +[Footnote 46: Huber, _Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches_ +(Hamburg, 1939), pp. 194-198.] + +[Footnote 47: _Ibid._, pp. 199-200.] + +[Footnote 48: _Ibid._, pp. 207-208.] + +[Footnote 49: _Ibid._, pp. 213-214.] + +[Footnote 50: _Ibid._, p. 230.] + +[Footnote 51: Neesse, _op. cit._, p. 146.] + +[Footnote 52: _Ibid._, p. 143.] + +[Footnote 53: _Ibid._, pp. 144-147.] + +[Footnote 54: _Germany Speaks_ (containing articles by twenty-one +leading members of the Nazi Party and the German Government: London, +1938), p. 31.] + +[Footnote 55: _Reichsgesetzblatt_ (1942), p. 247. (All citations to +the _Reichsgesetzblatt_ refer to part I thereof.)] + +[Footnote 56: Neesse, _op. cit._, p. 150.] + +[Footnote 57: Beck, _op. cit._, p. 131.] + +[Footnote 58: _My New Order_, p. 159.] + +[Footnote 59: Huber, _Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches_ +(Hamburg, 1939), p. 410.] + +[Footnote 60: Gauweiler, _Rechtseinrichtungen und Rechtsaufgaben der +Bewegung_ (Munich, 1939), p. 2.] + +[Footnote 61: _Ibid._, p. 9.] + +[Footnote 62: Neesse, _op. cit,_, p. 71.] + +[Footnote 63: _Ibid._, p. 119.] + +[Footnote 64: _Ibid._, p. 126.] + +[Footnote 65: _Ibid._, pp. 139-140.] + +[Footnote 66: Huber, _Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches_ +(Hamburg, 1939), pp. 293-296.] + +[Footnote 67: Beck, _op. cit._, p. 37.] + +[Footnote 68: _Ibid._, pp. 37-38.] + +[Footnote 69: Goebbels, _op. cit._, p. 19.] + +[Footnote 70: _Germany Speaks_, pp. 30-31.] + +[Footnote 71: _Reichsgesetzblatt_ (1941), p. 295.] + +[Footnote 72: _Ibid._, (1942), p. 35.] + +[Footnote 73: _Organisationsbuch der NSDAP_ (ed. by the National +Organizational Director of the NSDAP: Munich, 1940), p. 5.] + +[Footnote 74: _Ibid._, p. 6b.] + +[Footnote 75: _Ibid._, p. 6d.] + +[Footnote 76: _Ibid._] + +[Footnote 77: The German pocket reference book for current events +(_Taschen-Brockhaus zum Zeitgeschehen_: Leipzig, 1942) states that the +swastika banner was designed by Hitler for the NSDAP in 1919.] + +[Footnote 78: Adolf Hitler, _Mein Kampf_ (Munich, Verlag Frank Eher, +G.m.b.H., 1933 [copyright 1925]), pp. 556-557.] + +[Footnote 79: _Reichsgesetzblatt_ (1935), p. 1145.] + +[Footnote 80: _Ibid._ (1937), p. 442.] + +[Footnote 81: _Organisationsbuch der NSDAP_ (Munich, 1940), p. 8.] + +[Footnote 82: _Reichsgesetzblatt_ (1933), p. 83.] + +[Footnote 83: _Ibid._] + +[Footnote 84: In his book _Die deutsche Polizei_ (_The German Police_) +(_Darmstadt_, L.C. Wittich Verlag, 1941), p. 24, the prominent Nazi +police official, Dr. Werner Best, wrote that this law "is to be +regarded not as a 'police law'--that is, as the regulation of police +functions and activities--but as the expression of the new conception +of the state as it has been transformed by the National Socialist +revolution, from which the new 'police' concept is derived." Also, +this law was for the police "the confirmation that the work already +begun was in agreement with the law giving will of the Supreme +Leadership of the Reich."] + +[Footnote 85: Huber, _Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches_ +(Hamburg, 1939) p. 288.] + +[Footnote 86: Neesse, _op. cit._, p. 131.] + +[Footnote 87: Gauweiler, _op. cit._, p. 3.] + +[Footnote 88: Huber, _Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches_ +(Hamburg, 1939), p. 361.] + +[Footnote 89: _Ibid._, pp. 365-366.] + +[Footnote 90: _Ibid._, pp. 372-373.] + +[Footnote 91: _Reichsgesetzblatt_ (1937), pp. 39-70.] + +[Footnote 92: Gauweiler, _op. cit._, p. 156.] + +[Footnote 93: Reported in a bulletin of the official German news +agency, DNB, Apr. 14, 1942.] + + + + +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 [_Volkszugehoerigkeit_], 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 + Fuehrer. 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 Fuehrer + 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 Fuehrer, + 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] + + +Propaganda + +_1. 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 ..._ + + The German Government is nevertheless prepared to give each + of the States named an assurance of the kind desired by Mr. + Roosevelt on the condition of absolute reciprocity, provided + that the State wishes it and itself addresses to Germany a + request for such an assurance together with appropriate + proposals.[110] + +And on September 1, 1939, with reference to the recently concluded +pact between Germany and Russia, he said: + + You know that Russia and Germany are governed by two + different doctrines. There was only one question that had to + be cleared up. Germany has no intention of exporting its + doctrine. Given the fact that Soviet Russia has no intention + of exporting its doctrine to Germany, I no longer see any + reason why we should still oppose one another. On both sides + we are clear on that. Any struggle between our people would + only be of advantage to others. We have, therefore, resolved + to conclude a pact which rules out forever any use of + violence between us.[111] + +Additional assurances of this nature are quoted in a series of +extracts from Hitler's speeches, dating from February 10, 1933 to +September 1, 1939, which was printed in the _London Times_ of +September 26, 1939 (document 14, _post_ p. 232). + + +_2. Internal Propaganda_ + +Within Germany the notorious propaganda machine of Dr. Goebbels, +together with a systematic terrorization of oppositionist elements, +has been the principle support of the rise and triumph of the Nazi +movement. In his _Legal Organization and Legal Functions of the +Movement_ (document 8, _post_ p. 204), Gauweiler gives an idea of the +permeation of all phases of national life with a propaganda designed +to make Nazi "legal principles" acceptable to the masses. He makes it +clear that all of the Nazi propaganda machinery is in the service of +this program; political lecturers, the press, the radio, and the films +all play a part in helping the people to understand and appreciate the +new legal code. The schools and Hitler Youth groups provide +instruction for all young people in the fundamentals of National +Socialist law, and pupils in those schools which train the carefully +selected future leaders are given an especially strong dose of Nazi +legal theory and practice. + +In order to appeal to the broadest audience, Nazi propaganda has +always sought to present all questions in the simplest possible terms. +Goebbels himself, in his _Nature and Form of National Socialism_ +(document 2, _post_ p. 170), wrote as follows: + + National Socialism has simplified the thinking of the German + people and led it back to its original primitive formulas. + It has presented the complicated processes of political and + economic life in their simplest terms. This was done with + the well-considered intention of leading the broad masses of + the people once again to take part in political life. In + order to find understanding among the masses, we consciously + practiced a popular [_volksgebundene_] propaganda. We have + taken complexes of facts which were formerly accessible only + to a few specialists and experts, carried them to the + streets, and hammered them into the brain of the little man. + All things were presented so simply that even the most + primitive mind could grasp them. We refused to work with + unclear or insubstantial concepts but we gave all things a + clearly defined sense. Here lay the secret of our + success.[112] + +The character and quality of Nazi propaganda was fully presaged in +_Mein Kampf_. Here Hitler paid a striking tribute to the power of +lies, commenting on-- + + the very correct principle that the size of the lie always + involves a certain factor of credibility, since the great + mass of a people will be more spoiled in the innermost + depths of its heart, rather than consciously and + deliberately bad. Consequently, in view of the primitive + simplicity of its mind it is more readily captivated by a + big lie than by a small one, since it itself often uses + small lies but would be, nevertheless, too ashamed to make + use of big lies. Such an untruth will not even occur to it, + and it will not even believe that others are capable of the + enormous insolence of the most vile distortions. Why, even + when enlightened, it will still vacillate and be in doubt + about the matter and will nevertheless accept as true at + least some cause or other. Consequently, even from the most + impudent lie something will always stick ...[113] + +A number of other passages display Hitler's low opinion of the +intellectual capacities and critical faculties of the masses: + + All propaganda has to appeal to the people and its + intellectual level has to be set in accordance with the + receptive capacities of the most-limited persons among those + to whom it intends to address itself. The larger the mass + of men to be reached, the lower its purely intellectual + level will have to be set.[114] + + The receptive capacity of the great masses is very + restricted, its understanding small. On the other hand, + however, its forgetfulness is great. On account of these + facts all effective propaganda must restrict itself to very + few points and impress these by slogans, until even the last + person is able to bring to mind what is meant by such a + word.[115] + + The task of propaganda is, for instance, not to evaluate + diverse rights but to emphasize exclusively the single right + of that which it is representing. It does not have to + investigate objectively the truth, so far as this is + favorable to the others, in order then to present it to the + masses in strict honesty, but rather to serve its own side + ceaselessly.[116] + + If one's own propaganda even once accords just the shimmer + of right to the other side, then the basis is therewith laid + for doubt regarding one's own cause. The masses are not able + to distinguish where the error of the other side ends and + the error of one's own side begins.[117] + + But all talent in presentation of propaganda will lead to no + success if a fundamental principle is not always strictly + followed. Propaganda has to restrict itself to a few matters + and to repeat these eternally. Persistence is here, as with + so many other things in the world, the first and most + important presupposition for success.[118] + + In view of their slowness of mind, they [the masses] require + always, however, a certain period before they are ready even + to take cognizance of a matter, and only after a + thousandfold repetition of the most simple concept will they + finally retain it.[119] + + _In all cases in which there is a question of the fulfilment + of apparently impossible demands or tasks, the entire + attention of a people must be concentrated only on this one + question, in such a way as if being or non-being actually + depends on its solution_ ... + + ...The great mass of the people can never see the entire way + before them, without tiring and doubting the task.[120] + + In general the art of all truly great popular leaders at all + times consists primarily in not scattering the attention of + a people but rather in concentrating it always on one single + opponent. The more unified this use of the fighting will of + a people, the greater will be the magnetic attractive force + of a movement and the more powerful the force of its push. + It is a part of the genius of a great leader to make even + quite different opponents appear as if they belonged only to + one category, because the recognition of different enemies + leads weak and unsure persons only too readily to begin + doubting their own cause. + + When the vacillating masses see themselves fighting against + too many enemies, objectivity at once sets in and raises the + question whether really all the others are wrong and only + one's own people or one's own movement is right.[121] + (Document 13-II, _post_ pp. 229-231.) + +It has been the aim of Nazi propaganda, then, to unite the masses of +the people in hatred of certain enemies, designated by such +conveniently broad and simple terms as "Jews," "democrats," +"plutocrats," "bolshevists," or "Anglo-Saxons," which so far as +possible were to be identified with one another in the public mind. +The Germans were represented to themselves, on the other hand, as a +racial folk of industrious workers. It then became possible to plunge +the people into a war on a wave of emotional hatred against those +nations which were pictured as combining to keep Germany from +attaining her rightful place in the sun. + +The important role which propaganda would have to play in the coming +war was fully recognized by Ewald Banse, an ardent Nazi military +theorist of the geopolitical school and professor of military science +at Brunswick Military College. In his book _Raum und Volk im +Weltkrieg_ (_Space and People in the World War_) which appeared in +1932 (an English translation by Alan Harris was published under the +title _Germany Prepares for War_ (New York, Harcourt, Brace and Co., +1934)), he stated: + + Preparation for future wars must not stop at the creation, + equipment and training of an efficient army, but must go on + to train the minds of the whole people for the war and must + employ all the resources of science to master the conditions + governing the war itself and the possibility of endurance. + In 1914 we had a first-class army, but our scientific + mobilization was bad, and the mobilization of men's minds a + thing undreamed of. The unveiling of war memorials, parades + of war veterans, flag-waggings, fiery speeches and + guard-mounting are not of themselves enough to prepare a + nation's mind for the dangers that threaten. Conviction is + always more lasting than enthusiasm. + + ... Such teaching is necessary at a time and in a world in + which countries are no longer represented by monarchs or a + small aristocracy or by a specialist army, but in which the + whole nation, from the commander-in-chief to the man in the + ranks, from the loftiest thought to the simplest wish, from + corn to coal, from the treasury vaults to the last + trouser-button, must be permeated through and through with + the idea of national defense, if it is to preserve its + national identity and political independence. The science of + national defense is not the same as military science; it + does not teach generals how to win battles or company + commanders how to train recruits. Its lessons are addressed + first and foremost to the whole people. It seeks to train + the popular mind to heroism and war and to implant in it an + understanding of the nature and prerequisite conditions of + modern warfare. It teaches us about countries and peoples, + especially our own country and its neighbors, their + territories and economic capacity, their communications and + their mentality--all for the purpose of creating the best + possible conditions for waging future wars in defense of the + national existence.[122] + + +Infiltration Tactics + +The Nazis, while entirely without scruple in the pursuit of their +objectives, endeavor whenever possible to give their actions the cloak +of legality. This procedure was followed in Germany to enable them to +gain control of the Government of the Reich and in their foreign +policy up to September 1, 1939. It has been a cardinal principle of +the Nazis to avoid the use of force whenever their objectives may be +attained in another manner and they have assiduously studied their +enemies in an effort to discover the weak points in their structure +which will enable the Nazis to accomplish their downfall. The +preceding pages have demonstrated that the Nazis have contributed +practically nothing that is original to German political thought. By +the use of unscrupulous, deceitful, and uninhibited tactics, however, +they have been able to realize many of the objectives which had +previously existed only in theory. + +The Weimar Constitution provided the Nazis with a convenient basis for +the establishment of the totalitarian state. They made no effort to +conceal their intention of taking advantage of the weaknesses of the +Weimar Republic in order to attain power. On April 30, 1928 Dr. +Goebbels wrote in his paper _Der Angriff_: + + We enter Parliament in order to supply ourselves, in the + arsenal of democracy, with its own weapons. We become + members of the Reichstag in order to paralyze the Weimar + sentiment with its own assistance. If democracy is so stupid + as to give us free tickets and salaries for this bear's + work, that is its affair ...[123] + +And later in the same article: + + We do not come as friends, nor even as neutrals. We come as + enemies. As the wolf bursts into the flock, so we come.[124] + +Hitler expressed the same idea on September 1, 1933, when, looking +back upon the struggle for political power in Germany, he wrote: + + This watchword of democratic freedom led only to insecurity, + indiscipline, and at length to the downfall and destruction + of all authority. _Our opponents' objection that we, too, + once made use of these rights, will not hold water; for we + made use of an unreasonable right, which was part and parcel + of an unreasonable system, in order to overthrow the + unreason of this system._[125] + +Discussing the rise to power of the Nazis, Huber (document 1, _post_ +p. 155) wrote in 1939: + + The parliamentary battle of the NSDAP had the single purpose + of destroying the parliamentary system from within through + its own methods. It was necessary above all to make formal + use of the possibilities of the party-state system but to + refuse real cooperation and thereby to render the + parliamentary system, which is by nature dependent upon the + responsible cooperation of the opposition, incapable of + action.[126] + +As its parliamentary strength increased, the party was able to achieve +these aims: + + It was in a position to make the formation of any positive + majority in the Reichstag impossible.... Thus the NSDAP was + able through its strong position to make the Reichstag + powerless as a lawgiving and government-forming body.[127] + +The same principle was followed by Germany in weakening and +undermining the governments of countries which it had chosen for its +victims. While it was Hitler's policy to concentrate on only one +objective at a time, German agents were busy throughout the world in +ferreting out the natural political, social, and economic cleavages in +various countries and in broadening them in order to create internal +confusion and uncertainty. Foreign political leaders of Fascist or +authoritarian persuasion were encouraged and often liberally +subsidized from Nazi funds. Control was covertly obtained over +influential newspapers and periodicals and their editorial policies +shaped in such a way as to further Nazi ends. In the countries Germany +sought to overpower, all the highly developed organs of Nazi +propaganda were utilized to confuse and divide public opinion, to +discredit national leaders and institutions, and to induce an +unjustified feeling of confidence in the false assertions of Nazi +leaders disclaiming any aggressive intentions. + +One of the most important features introduced by the Nazis into German +foreign policy was the appreciation of the value of Germans living +abroad and their organization as implements of the Reich for the +attainment of objectives in the field of foreign policy. This idea was +applied by the Nazis to all the large colonies of Germans which are +scattered throughout the world. The potential usefulness of these +colonies was early recognized by the men in Hitler's immediate +entourage, several of whom were so-called _Auslandsdeutsche_ who had +spent many years of their life abroad and were familiar with foreign +conditions and with the position and influence of German groups in +foreign countries. Of particular importance in this group were Rudolf +Hess, the Fuehrer's Deputy, who was primarily responsible for +elaborating the policy which utilized the services of Germans abroad, +and Ernst Wilhelm Bohle, the leader of the Foreign Organization, who +was responsible for winning over these Germans to Naziism and for +their organization in groups which would serve the purposes of the +Third Reich. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 94: Feder, _op. cit._, p. 18.] + +[Footnote 95: Gauweiler, _op. cit._, pp. 149-151.] + +[Footnote 96: _Mein Kampf_, pp. 727-728.] + +[Footnote 97: _Ibid._, pp. 735-736.] + +[Footnote 98: Scurla, _op. cit._, p. 21.] + +[Footnote 99: _Ibid._, pp. 21-22.] + +[Footnote 100: _Ibid._, p. 23.] + +[Footnote 101: _Der Parteitag der Freiheit_ (official record of the +1935 party congress at Nuremberg: Munich, 1935), p. 27.] + +[Footnote 102: _Mein Kampf_, p. 743.] + +[Footnote 103: _Ibid._, pp. 754-755.] + +[Footnote 104: _Ibid._, pp. 437-438.] + +[Footnote 105: Rosenberg, _Wesen, Grundsaetze und Ziele der NSDAP_, p. +48.] + +[Footnote 106: _London Times_, Sept. 26, 1939, p. 9.] + +[Footnote 107: _Ibid._] + +[Footnote 108: _Ibid._] + +[Footnote 109: _My New Order_, p. 592.] + +[Footnote 110: _Ibid._, pp. 669-671.] + +[Footnote 111: _Ibid._, p. 687.] + +[Footnote 112: Goebbels, _op. cit._, p. 6.] + +[Footnote 113: _Mein Kampf_, p. 252.] + +[Footnote 114: _Ibid._, p. 197.] + +[Footnote 115: _Ibid_., p. 198.] + +[Footnote 116: _Ibid._, p. 200.] + +[Footnote 117: _Ibid._, pp. 200-201.] + +[Footnote 118: _Ibid._, p. 202.] + +[Footnote 119: _Ibid._, p. 203.] + +[Footnote 120: _Ibid._, p. 273.] + +[Footnote 121: _Ibid._, p. 129.] + +[Footnote 122: Banse, _Germany Prepares for War_ (New York, 1934), pp. +348-349.] + +[Footnote 123: Goebbels, _Der Angriff: Aufsaetze aus der Kampfzeit_ +(Munich, 1936), p. 71.] + +[Footnote 124: _Ibid._, p. 73.] + +[Footnote 125: _My New Order_, pp. 195-196.] + +[Footnote 126: Huber, _Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches_ +(Hamburg, 1939), p. 31.] + +[Footnote 127: _Ibid._, p. 32.] + + + + +NATIONAL-SOCIALISM AND MEDICINE +Address by Dr. F. Hamburger to German Medical Profession. Translated +(in part) from _Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift_, 1939, No. 6. + + +Medical men must beware of pride, a pride which is certainly +wide-spread and which leads to the disparagement of the practical +doctor and medical layman, and then further to the disparagement of +the craft of nature healers. The practical doctor and the nature +healer on the one hand tend towards an understandable disparagement of +medical science and analysis and, on the other hand, tend towards +superficiality. The superficiality of the opponents of science is, +however, as unhappy an affair as the pride of the so-called +scientists, but the one group should not demean the other. This would +lead to successful cooperation to the advantage of the sick and health +of the community. + +Academic medicine and nature healers generally have one thing in +common, that they underestimate the significance of automatism and +suggestion. In this regard there is an absence in both camps of the +necessary criticism and clarity. Successes are noted with specific +methods without any confirmation as to whether or not suggestion and +faith alone have not produced the improvement in the patient. + +National-Socialism is the true instrument for the achievement of the +health of our people. National-Socialism is concerned with the great +significance of inherited traits and with the insight into the working +of spiritual forces upon the body, with the study of the power of +custom and, along with this, of the significance of education and +nurture. (Hamburger here complains about the luxurious arrangement for +dealing with the mentally ill in contradistinction to the neglect of +Folk-health. This he attributes to the era of liberalism with its +stress upon the single individual. He here also attacks the Socialism +of Social Democracy and its conception of a Community of Equal Men. +This is a false Socialism.) + +So we scientists and doctors simply and soberly affirm the principle +of strength of faith and the nationalist socialist principle of +Positive Christianity which does not prevent us from the inspired +consideration of natural and divinely willed phenomena. We doctors +must never forget the fact that the soul rules the body. + +Soul forces are the most important. The spirit builds the body. +Strength springs from joy. Efficiency is achieved despite care, fear, +and uncertainty--We speak here of thymogenetic automatism or the +automatism of harmony ("thymogenetische automatismus oder +stimmungsautomatismus"). The autonomous nervous system achieves, under +the influence of joy, the expansion of the blood vessels in skin and +muscle.... The muscular activity incited by joy means the use of +calories and stimulation of appetite. Muscular contraction pulls and +draws at the bones, ligaments are tensed, breathing deepend, appetite +increased ... A child influenced by the daily exercise of joy develops +physically strong and powerful. ... The Soul care (Seele Sorge) of the +practical doctor is his most significant daily task alongside of +prescriptions and manipulative dexterity. + +Soul-care in the medical sense is a concern for the wishes, hopes and +fears of the patient, the considered participation in his fate. Such a +relationship leads to the all-important and generally recognized trust +in the doctor. This faith, in all cases, leads to the improvement, +often even to the elimination of symptoms, of the disease. Here we +have clearly before us the great significance of thymogenetic +automatism. + +Academic physicians should not dismiss this because we do not know its +biochemical aspects. (We must beware of regarding something as +unacceptable because it is not measurable in exact terms, he warns.) +We see its practical results, and, therefore, thymogenetic automatism +must stand in the first rank as of overwhelming significance. Thus, +also, the principle, strength through joy (Kraft durch Freude) stands +firmly as an inescapable natural law. + +We see the practical country doctor spreading courage and confidence. +For years too few doctors have seen clearly that gymnastic tourism and +sport do more for health than all doctors taken together. And now we +face the fact that a single man, a non-medical man (Hitler) through +his great qualities, has opened up new avenues of health for the +eighty million folk of Germany. + +In the majority of cases things so happen that the doctor must act +before making a diagnosis, since only the mis-educated patients, the +one-sided intellectual patient, wishes in the very first place to know +the diagnosis. But the unspoilt and properly ordered type of person +wishes only to be relieved of his pain. For him the diagnosis is an +interesting side issue but not the principle thing. We can thus also +understand why we always meet the desire for a diagnosis placed first +by the over-intellectualized Jewish patient. But that is not the case +with most Aryan patients. They, from the first, come to meet the +doctor with more trust. They do not entertain as many after-thoughts. +And I cannot help but remark that after-thoughts are hardly conducive +to right results. + +(After a discussion of the sterilization of the unfit and of +inheritable diseases he turns to the subject of child bearing.) + +It has been estimated that every couple should have four children if +the nation's population is to be maintained. But we meet already the +facile and complacent expression of young married people, "Now we have +our four children and so have fulfilled our obligations"--What +superficiality! Today we must demand a much higher moral attitude from +the wife than previously. Earlier it was taken for granted that a +woman would bear a child every one or two years. But today in this +time of manifold amenities of life, at a time when women is not denied +access to these joys it is understandable that she is eager to +participate in them. Add to this that the knowledge of birth control +is general today. Despite all this women must be encouraged to give +birth during twenty years of married life to eight or ten and even +more children, and to renounce the above-mentioned joys of life. She +must decide as a mother of children to lead a life full of sacrifices, +devotion, and unselfishness. It is only when these ethical demands are +fulfilled by a large number of worthy wives of good stock that the +future of the German nation will be assured. + +Doctors are leaders of the Folk more than they know ... They are now +quite officially fuehrer of the people, called to the leadership of +its health. To fulfill this task they must be free of the profit +motive. They must be quite free from that attitude of spirit which is +rightly designated as Jewish, the concern for business and +self-provision. + + + + +SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY + +Arendt, Hannah--_The Origins of Totalitarianism_, N.Y., 1951. + + Pt. III is especially directed to a discussion of the + principles and consequences of fascism. The author gives an + effective account of what "total domination" signifies in a + reign of terror. Detailed bibliography. + +Bodrero, Emilio--"Fascism" in _Dictatorship on Its Trial_, ed. by Otto +Forst de Battaglia, London, 1930. + + A brief, but significant, statement by a former Rector of + the University of Padua and a Secretary of State to + Mussolini. + +Borgese, G.A.--_Goliath, The March of Fascism_, N.Y., 1938. + + Well written from the point of view of an Italian humanist. + +Brady, Robert A.--_The Spirit and Structure of German Fascism_, +London, 1937. + + An extremely thorough and documented discussion of the + economy of National Socialist Germany, its institutions and + its business practices. + + See also: Brady's _Business as a System of Power_; chapters + on Germany, Italy and Japan. N.Y., 1943. + +Childs, H.L. and Dodd, W.E.--_The Nazi Primer_, N.Y., 1938. + + A translation of the "Official Handbook for Schooling the + Hitler Youth." In simple form including illustrations, it is + an excellent indication of the guiding principles of the + German educational system. + + Dennis, Lawrence--_The Coming American Fascism_, N.Y., 1936. + _The Dynamics of War and Revolution_, N.Y., 1940. + + Two books by the only fascist theorist in America. + +Fraenkel, Ernest--_The Dual State: A Contribution to the Theory of +Dictatorship,_ N.Y., 1941. + + By distinguishing between the "Prerogative State" and the + "Normative State," the author gives an effective account of + the attempt of the Nazis to acknowledge an indispensable, if + minimal, legal order, which was, comparatively speaking, + independent of the extra-legal realm of violence. + +Hartshorne, E.Y.--_The German Universities and National Socialism_, +Cambridge, 1937. + + A carefully documented account of what happened in the + various branches and departments of German universities + under the Nazis. + +Hitler, Adolph--_My Battle_, N.Y., 1939. + + Hitler's own vitriolic account of his attempt to rise to + power. + +Lasswell, Harold D.--"The Garrison State," _American Journal of +Sociology_, Chicago, Vol. XLVI, 1940-41, pp. 455-468. + + A brief but incisive discussion of the structure of fascism. + +Lilge, Frederic--_The Abuse of Learning: The Failure of the German +University,_ N.Y., 1948. + + A philosophical history of higher education in Germany, + concluding with its fascist evolution. + +Matteotti, Giacomo--_The Fascist Exposed: A Year of Fascist +Domination_, London, 1924. + + A factual account by a liberal, who, until murdered, was a + member of the Italian Senate. + +Minio-Paluello, L.--_Education in Fascist Italy_, N.Y., 1946. + + A detailed discussion of fascist education, including an + historical introduction to pre-fascist education. + +Neumann, Franz--_Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National +Socialism_, N.Y., 1942. + + Probably the most comprehensive and definitive statement in + English of the functioning of National Socialism. It + concentrates especially on the political and economic + aspects of Nazism. + +Pinthus, Kurt--"Culture Under Nazi Germany," _The American Scholar_, +Vol. IX, N.Y., 1940, pp. 483-498. + + A valuable treatment of the inner character of the arts and + letters and of what happened to their publics under the + Nazis. + +Sabine, G.H.--_A History of Political Theory_, N.Y., 1950. + + A brief chapter on "Fascism" gives an excellent balanced + account of its fundamentals. + + Salvemini, Gaetano--_The Fascist Dictatorship in Italy_, N.Y., 1927. + _Under the Axe of Fascism_, N.Y., 1936. + + An eminent Italian historian writes vividly and perceptively + on Italian Fascism. + +Schneider, Herbert W.--_Making the Fascist State_, N.Y., 1928. + + An early, but well considered, account of the rise of + Italian fascism. + +Silone, Ignazio--_Fontamara_, Verona, 1951. + + The best novel on Italian fascism. + +Spender, Stephen--_European Witness_, N.Y., 1946. + + Note especially the analysis of Goebbel's novel, _Michael_. + +Trevor-Roper, H.R.--_The Last Days of Hitler_, N.Y., 1946. + + An intimate portrayal of Hitler and his entourage from the + time of the beginning of the collapse of the Nazi armies. + Especially good on the rift between the politicians and the + military. + + + + +READINGS ON FASCISM AND NATIONAL SOCIALISM + +The catastrophe and holocaust brought about by the two powerful +movements of fascism and national socialism will mark human life +always. Now, as we feel our hatred for them, we find it difficult to +understand how they could have been so powerful, how they could have +appealed so strongly to millions of people of a modern age. + +And the documents whereby we could understand these philosophies have +been lost--except as they are now gathered here in one convenient +volume. + +To understand our own times, it is necessary to understand these +movements. And to understand them, we must read the basic +philosophical and political documents which show the force of the +ideas which moved a world to the brink of disaster. + + + THE FIRST SWALLOW PAPERBOOKS: + + 1. A FIELD OF BROKEN STONES by Lowell Naeve. + A profound book written in a prison. $1.65. + + 2. THE WIFE OF MARTIN GUERRE by Janet Lewis. + One of the fine short novels of all time. $1.25. + + 3. READINGS ON FASCISM AND NATIONAL SOCIALISM. + A grouping together of authoritative readings. $1.35. + + 4. THE TEACHER OF ENGLISH by James E. Warren, Jr. + The Materials and Opportunities of the teacher. $1.35. + + 5. MORNING RED by Frederick Manfred. + The most ambitious novel by a powerful writer. $1.95. + + + ALAN SWALLOW + 2679 So. York St., Denver 10, Colo. + +Cover design by Lowell Naeve + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK READINGS ON FASCISM AND NATIONAL +SOCIALISM*** + + +******* This file should be named 14058.txt or 14058.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/0/5/14058 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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