IT WAS HITLER’S nature to carry all things to extremes until they were transformed into their opposites. So was it with all the institutions he attempted to reform. He set out to rid society of pernicious outgrowths, for which reason he made a revolution. But then he tore everything up by the roots. A horrid example of this process is his treatment of the judicial system.
Hitler incessantly attacked the nation’s judges for being “remote from life,” without links to their race, sticklers to the dead letter of the law, “petrified bureaucrats,” and the last pillars of reaction. In his private conversation violent abuse of magistrates was one of his constant themes. He made no bones about his hatred of them. Undoubtedly one of the reasons for this feeling was the sense that judicial independence constituted concealed resistance to his absolutism.
Apparently out of deepest conviction and without ulterior motives he asked for a type of justice which would accord with the “sound instincts of the nation.” This slogan was flattering to the masses but had no other validity. He refused to see the other side of the question, in spite of its being often pointed out to him. Otherwise he would have had to realize that judges were not bound to fixed statutes and laws solely because all his predecessors since the beginnings of civilization had suffered from calcification of the brain. He would have had to recognize that the conservative qualities of justice derive from sound experience, from the wisdom of the human race built up over countless generations. Men have recognized that a certain amount of inevitable formalism in justice is the lesser evil, for if justice is left to the discretion of the individual judge, it will be hopelessly at the mercy of human frailty. Such a conception of justice will lead inexorably to the self-destruction of justice, to pure arbitrariness rather than right. In attacking the concomitants of a precious and unalterable principle, Hitler destroyed the very foundations of justice.
He appointed himself a legislator with restrictive powers; he also appointed himself supreme judge of the nation, and made free with the operations of the law. Characteristically, he imagined that he was acting in the name of the nation, that he was fulfilling a noble mission. If his absurd ideas are thought out to the end, it becomes obvious that the “sound instincts of the nation” which he made so much of would be destructive forces rather than constructive ones.
Hitler declared that for him, too, the will of the people was supreme law. In reality he put forward his personal will as that of the people, and he made the people believe that his will was theirs.
An incident of the last year of the war throws much light upon this matter. In a dinner conversation, which centered around the psychology of women and the diplomacy necessary in marriage, Hitler praised the cleverness of women who know how to convince their husbands by suggestion that the male will is dominant in the marriage. The point was that they did not let the husbands realize that it was the wife who actually was holding the reins. With deliberate intent I remarked rather brashly that such women knew the secret which was widely held to be the key to political leadership. In mass psychology also, the leader’s formula for dealing with the people might be, “They must want to do what they have to do!”
Hitler repeated the phrase, but did not contest it. I sensed that the discussion made him uncomfortable and pensive; all through the remainder of the meal he was obviously thinking about it. Apparently I had touched him at the quick of his demagogic soul, the true nature of which I was only then beginning to suspect. If I were now to sum up Hitler’s method in a few words, I should say this: The essence of it was to get the people into his grip by cunningly planting false premises into their minds.
Hitler had a technique for presenting false or highly debatable premises at the very start of his argument, giving them the air of being indisputable, obvious facts. Building upon these premises, he could then prove to the listener who accepted the premises whatever he wished to prove. From the untenable base his thesis was built up with unassailable logic and put forward with great force of conviction. Anyone examining the first premises more closely, and challenging them rather than accepting them without question, would soon have recognized the faultiness of his conclusions. But challenging his premises was not so easy. To support his view Hitler would marshal an array of facts that could not be checked by most of his listeners. He would dress up such facts and inflate their importance enormously while he would either belittle or entirely ignore the arguments on the other side.
By means of this trick of his, along with the suggestive force of his oratory and the deep conviction he put behind his words, no matter what he was saying, he was able to reassure and encourage those who had dealings with him. He always sounded as if he were speaking under inspiration from on high. During the last years of the war many persons came to him beset by doubts; they left him inwardly strengthened and in spite of everything filled with new faith. When such visitors emerged from Hitler’s study at headquarters, they seemed like new men in their whole expression and attitude. The confidence Hitler himself displayed even in the most desperate situations spread like wildfire on the home and the fighting fronts and was the chief constituent of that faith which the world could not comprehend, that faith which upheld so many Germans to the very end, and which was so sadly betrayed.
Hitler’s demagogic passion operated somewhere in between consciousness and imagination; it was a compound of self-deception and remarkable courage, of patriotism and deliberate mendacity.
Hitler was always afraid that prudence would cripple youthful vigor. For that reason he deliberately gathered young people around him, kept aloof from the experience of age, and hated the “intellectual reservations” of the mature. Worried as age crept up on him, constantly fearing that he would be unable to finish his work when his youthful élan gave out, and believing that he alone could finish that work, he drove himself incessantly. Out of that fear sprang his reckless, ill-fated haste and the inorganic, destructive character of his acts. On the one hand, he thought in millennia when decades would have been more to the point; on the other hand, he wanted to achieve in years things that would require centuries. Child of fortune that he was, he lacked all feeling for development and tradition, growth and maturation. On the one hand, he was dazzled by pictures out of Germany’s past—electoral princes and imperial glories. These he wanted to revive in new dress—in a modern industrial country! On the other hand, he smashed forms of contemporary life that had developed over the course of generations, and he imagined that by the stroke of a pen he could set up new forms for all eternity.
His political structure had no tradition behind it, no historical foundation in the people. Consequently, as soon as the tower began to sway, it collapsed like a house of cards.
Hitler had created a classless state. But this was not the state of people and leaders painted in his ideology; it was merely a naked dictatorship. Curiously enough, the legal foundations for this state were the emergency clauses of the Weimar Constitution (Article 48, Section 2). Yet the principles by which he acted were diametrically opposed to parliamentary democracy. In a parliamentary democracy the administration is fundamentally responsible to the elected representatives of the people. Responsibility proceeds from the top down; that is, the leadership is responsible to the people and the will of the people is its supreme law. In Hitler’s state, however, the responsibility was to proceed from the bottom to the top and authority from superior to subordinate. In other words, the Führer was not to be responsible to the people; on the contrary, the people were responsible to him and he to nobody at all. Hitler himself decided what the will of the people was.
Systematically, he wiped out all control of the leadership by the people. He eliminated all institutions that might have served the ends of such control. He created a party which many thought was fulfilling a great mission, but which was in no way dependent upon the people, though it dwelt among them. The National Socialist Party did not control the Leader; on the contrary, he used the Party to control the people.
Initially, the Party, too, was an institution built up on a democratic foundation. According to the original Party statutes the Party Chairman was to be elected annually by a general convention. Until 1933 Hitler had been elected in this manner. But once he held state power, he dispensed with these democratic rudiments in the Party, just as he did later in the conduct of government.
As Hitler proceeded step-by-step toward usurpation of all power in Party and State, he abandoned his own idea of a new and progressive form of human society—that mirage with which he had dazzled the people. He did not establish an ideal Volksstaat with authoritarian leadership, but a full-blown dictatorship—a perfect system for exercising without hindrance the tyranny of his own will. Systematically, he made it impossible for the people to control his actions in any way. By the time they realized what had been done to them, it was already too late for them to change anything. This elimination of all check on his conduct of the government left Hitler free to make the fate of whole nations the plaything of his passions and his megalomania.
The magnitude and frightfulness of the consequences of Hitler’s dictatorship have taught the German people a basic lesson in history. The catastrophe is the strongest proof that the democratic form of government is absolutely indispensable. That applies not only to the Germans, but to all nations that have not yet come to this conclusion. The fiasco of the Third Reich appears to have brought the human race to a point in its experience at which the age-old question of democratic versus authoritarian government has at last been answered in favor of the democratic form. All the attacks, doubts, and criticisms heretofore directed against democracy apply only to its deficiencies and excesses. It is clear today that the errors and weaknesses of all the democratic governments in the world do not outweigh the harm that a single man can bring down upon his nation and humanity when that man is not controlled by the people’s institutions.
The realization of this comes to us too late, comes when all the weight of disaster is bowing us down. Perhaps it is for this very reason that many Germans rebel, from a sense of national pride, against admitting it to themselves. Nevertheless, the painful experience of the recent past requires us in all conscience to make the admission. Many of us are profoundly bitter over the necessity for humbling ourselves spiritually and intellectually at the same time that we are so humbled by the frightfulness of material defeat. But true understanding must rise above false pride. Even if such understanding runs counter to what we used to believe, the more honorable course is to profess it, rather than to cling to dead ideals out of a mistaken sense of loyalty. The chronicler’s obligation requires me, for my part, to make an honest confession that I served a wrong cause. The experiences which have led me to change my mind are today plainly evident to all Germans. All those who in good faith followed Hitler from nationalistic socialism to catastrophe are obligated to reflect and to reform.
Hitler flattered the German nation. In order to win the people over so that he might use them for the purposes of his megalomania, he heaped praise on the Germans’ good traits and passed over their bad ones. For the sake of our place in the world it would be better for us to recognize our faults as well as our gifts. The Germans have often presented their consciousness of their own strength all too crudely. Highly intelligent, the Germans give way to arrogance where modesty and a sense of realities would be more appropriate. Foreigners have often expressed admiration for German discipline and the German ability to organize; but when these tendencies are carried too far, they invite ridicule. Uncritical submission to the will of a strong personality is a dangerous trait in the German national character.
Our ability to organize is a splendid characteristic as long as it stays within healthy bounds. But it makes for mischief as soon as we become fanatical about it, as soon as we let it become a rigid pattern that represses the development of individuality. We rightly boast of our industriousness, but we are mistaken when we think that foreigners are merely expressing envy when they criticize our bustling ways and our inability to leave them in peace. Our culture enjoys great prestige throughout the world—but our failures in the art of life are often regretted or despised.
Throughout its history the German nation has never distinguished itself by an overdose of political instinct. Its lack of knowledge of the world and of cosmopolitan ways has adversely affected the life of the nation. It is high time that the “people of poets and thinkers” at last develop into a nation with an international horizon.
Now and henceforth, the prerequisite for international status is a democratic state. Democracy means rule of the people. Rule of the people cannot be attained directly. The people can govern effectively only through forms and institutions which they themselves shape. In Germany, parliamentary democracy was “organized” after the First World War. No national tradition stood behind it; it was not the product of inner growth, of maturity on the part of the people. Consequently, it gave rise to excrescences which did its prestige no good. Focusing attention on these excrescences, Hitler was able to win the people to himself. Other nations, by national education, consciousness of tradition, stability, and political maturity have produced extremely workable political institutions. Such democratic institutions must necessarily be different in every nation, must correspond to the peculiarities of the race, the nature of the land, the character of the people, and their historical origins. But we must recognize that democracy in itself, with all the variety of its forms, has in fact become the dominant political mode of our time. In the present stage of technical, economic, and social progress it has proved to be the historical solution to the problem of human organization, the only possible principle of social order.
The question of the workability of democracy already belongs to the past. The problem of the future is merely one of developing and perfecting democracy. It is up to us to realize that only those nations will participate in culture and progress which organically develop the democratic forms of life, which shape them meaningfully and keep them pure from harmful elements.
We were obviously destined by fate to run a misguided historical course to the very end, to drink the cup of misfortune to the dregs, so that we would at last come to see that our dire way must be abandoned forever.