Chapter five germans and greeks

I am not alone in arguing that one of the fundamental causes of the Third Reich was the deep schism between German and Western political thought that opened up in the late eighteenth century.⁹⁰ It resulted in a special German sense of destiny with strong anti-Western overtones. This outlook, we have seen, found expression in Kant’s effort to discipline French individualism with German enlightened corporatism and in Fichte’s Address to the German Nation. Written in 1807-08, in response to the French occupation, Fichte praised the “German spirit,” whose ideals transcended the selfish goals of Western culture, and described Germans as the only Europeans capable of profound and original thought. Anti-Western diatribes became a constant theme of German literature and intellectuals in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Thomas Mann’s Reflections of a Non-Political Man, written toward the end of the World War I, praises Germany’s musical and metaphysical culture, which he contrasts with the more skeptical, analytic and political culture of the West. He rejects democracy as “foreign and poisonous to the German character” and endorses the Obrigkeitstaat [authoritarian state] as most suitable to the German character.⁹¹ In the 1920s, writing in the aftermath of another defeat and partial French occupation, Oswald Spengler’s advanced a variant of this argument in his best-selling Decline of the West. Western thought, he wrote, was “merely rational,” and the Germans, who were capable of great accomplishments, had to be protected from it.⁹²

The German middle class was particularly susceptible to völkisch ideas, as events of 1848, 1866, 1870, 1918 and 1933 revealed.⁹³ Nazi ideology was admittedly the most extreme variant, but one that played to a largely receptive audience, and for reasons having largely to do with the need for self-esteem. Victory in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71), national unification (1871) and recognition as the leading power on the continent should have boosted German self-esteem and reduced the need of its leaders and people to define themselves in opposition to France and Britain and the values they were thought to epitomize. Bismarck certainly behaved as a mature and satisfied leader. He was never drawn to nationalism as anything other than a means of advancing Prussian power, and under his leadership Germany acted as a satisfied nation and defender of the territorial status quo. He had a jaundiced view of colonies, although he briefly flirted with social imperialism, and consistently opposed a blue water navy as a provocation and waste of money. Bismarck was considered old-fashioned by many Germans in the 1880s, and especially by those believed that empire was the sine qua non of great power status.⁹⁴ Pursuit of empire and a navy to challenge that of Britain’s were widely supported, especially by the middle classes. Germans now felt strong enough, psychologically as well as physically, to compete on the playing fields dominated by their competitors and adversaries, Britain and France. At the same time, they continued to enhance their self-esteem by defining themselves and their political culture in sharp contrast to those of Britain and France.⁹⁵

In the late nineteenth century the Sonderweg thesis was mobilized to justify and extend the shelf life of quasi-authoritarian government. German music under Wagner sought to fuse völkish traditions with modernity in the form of a Gesamtkuntswerk [total art], and the composer and his followers vaunted its artistic superiority to the “decadent” operas of Italy and France. German literature continued to praise pre-modern values and heap scorn on the petty, commercial concerns of the middle class. Schelling was horrified that his brother briefly considered a career in business, warning that he would think of nothing but "self interest and profit."⁹⁶ Nietzsche condemned "superfluous people" whose life centered on money, markets, profit.⁹⁷ Friedrich Meinecke, Germany’s preeminent historian in the decade prior to World War I, lauded German Kultur, which combined language, ethnicity, national identity and spiritual renewal, as superior to the French principles of liberty, fraternity and equality.⁹⁸ During World War I, Werner Sombart rhapsodized “the ancient German hero’s spirit,” which was rescuing Germany from becoming another corrupt capitalist nation and would make the German Volk the “chosen people” of the twentieth century.⁹⁹

National neuroses -- if we can use this term -- are no more readily palliated by success than their individual counterparts. They are, however, greatly exacerbated by failure, which is what happened in Germany after its defeat in World War I. Defeat prompted denial, a search for scapegoats and an intense desire for revenge, emotions that made it difficult, if not impossible, for the Weimar Republic to gain legitimacy. To create a different political-psychological outlook, it took another round of war that left Germany defeated, in ruins and occupied and divided by powers intent on imposing their respective political and economic systems and reshaping the country’s culture.

A principal thesis of this chapter is that the Sonderweg was not unique. German historians who advance this claim make the mistake of comparing Germany to its western neighbors. Facing west, German intellectual and political development does appear anomalous and in need of special explanation. Facing east, Germany looks more “normal.” Poland, Russia and Japan developed similar ideologies; intellectuals stressed the uniqueness and superiority of their cultures to the west by virtue of their preservation of traditional values. Although they did this in somewhat different ways, their cultural claims were similar as were the key arguments mobilized in their support. These similarities, I contend, reflect underlying similarities in circumstance. They suggest the extent to which identity, national as well as personal, is an important means of building self-esteem.

For late developers the west was the model to emulate. A state could not become or remain great, and its people claim status, in the absence of economic development and the panoply of other status markers that wealth allowed. In the nineteenth century these included victory in war, colonies, beautification of one’s capital, and excellence in the arts, sciences and sports.¹⁰⁰ Copying the west conferred status but the need to emulate other countries and their accomplishments was a palpable admission of one’s relative backwardness and inferiority. The way around this dilemma was to assert superiority on the basis of a more traditional, less materialistic culture, which, when combined with the economic development and technology of the west, would result in a superior synthesis. This was precisely the claim made by advocates of German Volksgemeinschaft and Kultur, Russian communalism and Japanese depictions of their country as a “family nation” [kazoku sei kokka].

All these identities were Janus-faced; they looked to the past and to the future. The backward looking component was reminiscent of golden age discourses and their invocation of imaginary pasts. German and Russian intellectuals rhapsodized a conflict-free, communally oriented past that never was. Dissatisfied Japanese intellectuals idealized the spirit of wa [harmony] and the community [kyōdōtai], that had no place for individualism or profit making.¹⁰¹ All three discourses differed from golden age narratives in that they invoke the past to help transform the present. By stressing communal solidarity and artistic creativity and denigrating the value of commerce and constitutional government they aimed to buttress the self-esteem of those classes who supported the regime. By emphasizing the role of the state as the instrument and expression of the nation’s mission – as did the Germans and Japanese -- power could be concentrated in ways that would sooner or later facilitate successful competition with the leading powers of the day.