Totalitarianism, page 32
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4 See Hitlers Tiahgespruche In the summer of 1942, he still talks about “[kicking] even the last Jew out of Europe” (p 113) and resettling the Jews in Siberia or Africa (p. 311), or Madagascar, while in reality he had already decided on the “final solution” prior to the Russian invasion, probably in 1940, and ordered the gas ovens to be set up in the fall of 1941 (see Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, II, pp. 265 ff.; III, pp. 783 ff. Document PS 1104; V. pp. 322 ff. Document PS 2605). Himmler already knew in the spring of 1941 that “the Jews [must be] exterminated to the last man by the end of the war. This is the unequivocal desire and command of the Fuehrer” (Dossier Kersten in the Centre de Documentation Juive).
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5 In this connection there is a very interesting report, dated July 16, 1940, on a discussion at the Fuehrer’s headquarters, in the presence of Rosenberg, Lammers and Keitel, which Hitler began by stating the following “basic principles”: “It was now essential not to parade our ultimate goal before the entire world;...Hence it must not be obvious that [the decrees for maintaining peace and order in the occupied territories] point to a final settlement. All necessary measures—executions, resettlements—can, and will be, carried out in spite of this.” This is followed by a discussion which makes no reference whatever to Hitler’s words and in which Hitler no longer participates. He quite obviously had not been “understood” (Document L 221 in the Centre de Documentation Juive).
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6 For Stalin’s confidence that Hitler would not attack Russia, see Isaac Deutscher, Stalin: a Political Biography, New York and London, 1949, pp. 454 ff., and especially the footnote on p. 458: “It was only in 1948 that the Chief of the State Planning Commission, Vice-Premier N. Voznesensky, disclosed that the economic plans for the third quarter of 1941 had been based on the assumption of peace and that a new plan, suited for war, had been drafted only after the outbreak of hostilities.” Deutscher’s estimate has now been solidly confirmed by Khrushchev’s report on Stalin’s reaction to the German attack on the Soviet Union. See his “Speech on Stalin” at the Twentieth Congress as released by the State Department, New York Times, June 5, 1956.
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7 “Education [in the concentration camps] consists of discipline, never of any kind of instruction on an ideological basis, for the prisoners have for the most part slave-like souls” (Heinnch Himmler, Nazi Conspiracy, IV, 616 ff.).
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8 Eugen Hadamovsky, op. cit., is outstanding in the literature on totalitarian propaganda. Without explicitly stating it, Hadamovsky offers an intelligent and revealing pro-Nazi interpretation of Hitler’s own exposition on the subject in “Propaganda and Organization,” in Book II, chapter xi of Mein Kampf (2 vols., 1st German edition, 1925 and 1927 respectively. Unexpurgated translation, New York, 1939).—See also F. A. Six, Die politische Propaganda der NSDAP im Kampf urn die Macht, 1936, pp. 21 ff.
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9 Hitler’s analysis of “War Propaganda” (Mein Kampf, Book I, chapter vi) stresses the business angle of propaganda and uses the example of publicity for soap. Its importance has been generally overestimated, while his later positive ideas on “Propaganda and Organization” were neglected.
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10 See Martin Bormann’s important memorandum on the “Relationship of National Socialism and Christianity” in Nazi Conspiracy, VI, 1036 ff. Similar formulations can be found time and again in the pamphlet literature issued by the SS for the “ideological indoctrination” of its cadets “The laws of nature are subject to an unchangeable will that cannot be influenced. Hence it is necessary to recognize these laws” (“SS-Mann und Blutsfrage,” Schriftenreihe fur die weltanschauliche Schulung der Ordnungspohzei, 1942). All these are nothing but variations of certain phrases taken from Hitler’s Mem Kampf, of which the following is quoted as the motto for the pamphlet just mentioned “While man attempts to struggle against the iron logic of nature, he comes into conflict with the basic principles to which alone he owes his very existence as man.”
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11 J. Stalin, Leninism (1933), Vol. 11, chapter III.
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12 Eric Voegelin, “The Origins of Scientism,” in Social Research, December, 1948.
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13 See F. A. v. Hayek, “The Counter-Revolution of Science,” in Economica, Vol. Vlll (February, May, August, 1941), p. 13.
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14 Ibid., p. 137. The quotation is from the Saint-Simonist magazine Producteur, I, 399.
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15 Voegelin, op. cit.
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16 William Ebenstein, The Nazi State, New York, 1943, in discussing the “Permanent War Economy” of the Nazi state is almost the only critic who has realized that “the endless discussion...as to the socialist or capitalist nature of the German economy under the Nazi regime is largely artificial... [because it] tends to overlook the vital fact that capitalism and socialism are categories which relate to Western welfare economics” (p. 239).
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17 The testimony of Karl Brandt, one of the physicians charged by Hitler with carrying out the program of euthanasia, is characteristic in this context (Medical Trial. US against Karl Brandt et al. Hearing of May 14, 1947). Brandt vehemently protested against the suspicion that the project was initiated to eliminate superfluous food consumers; he emphasized that party members who brought up such arguments in the discussion had always been sharply rebuked. In his opinion, the measures were dictated solely by “ethical considerations.” The same is, of course, true for the deportations. The files are filled with desperate memoranda written by the military complaining that the deportations of millions of Jews and Poles completely disregarded all “military and economic necessities.” See Poliakov, op. cit., p. 321, as well as the documentary material published there.
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18 The decisive decree starting all subsequent mass murders was signed by Hitler on September 1, 1939—the day the war broke out—and referred not merely to the insane (as is often erroneously assumed) but to all those who were “incurably sick.” The insane were only the first to go.
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19 See Friedrich Percyval Reck-Malleczewen, Tagebuth ernes Verzweifelten, Stuttgart, 1947, p. 190.
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20 Hitler based the superiority of ideological movements over political parties on the fact that ideologies (Weltanschuungen) always “proclaim their infallibility” (Mein Kampf, Book II, chapter v, “Weltanschauung and Organization”).—The first pages of the official handbook for the Hitler Youth, The Nazi Primer, New York, 1938, consequently emphasize that all questions of Weltanschauung, formerly deemed “unrealistic” and “ununderstandable,” “have become so clear, simple and definite [my italics] that every comrade can understand them and co-operate in their solution.”
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21 The first among the “pledges of the Party member,” as enumerated in the Organisationsbuch der NSDAP, reads: “The Fuhrer is always right.” Edition published in 1936, p. 8. But the Dienstvorschrift fur die PO. der NSDAP, 1932, p. 38, puts it this way: “Hitler’s decision is final!” Note the remarkable difference in phraseology.
“Their claim to be infallible, [that] neither of them has ever sincerely admitted an error” is in this respect the decisive difference between Stalin and Trotsky on one hand, and Lenin on the other. See Boris Souvarine, Stalin: A Critical Survey of Bolshevism, New York, 1939, p. 583.
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22 That Hegelian dialectics should provide a wonderful instrument for always being right, because they permit the interpretation of all defeats as the beginning of victory, is obvious. One of the most beautiful examples of this kind of sophistry occurred after 1933 when the German Communists for nearly two years refused to recognize that Hitler’s victory had been a defeat for the German Communist Party.
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23 Quoted from Goebbels: The Goebbels Diaries (1942–1943), ed. by Louis Lochner, New York, 1948, p. 148.
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24 Stalin, op. cit., loc. cit.
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25 In a speech he made in September, 1942, when the extermination of the Jews was in full swing, Hitler explicitly referred to his speech of January 30, 1939 (published as a booklet titled Der Fuhrer vor dem ersten Reichstag Grossdeutschlands, 1939), and to the Reichstag session of September 1, 1939, when he had announced that “if Jewry should instigate an international world war to exterminate the Aryan peoples of Europe, not the Aryan peoples but Jewry will [rest of sentence drowned by applause]” (see Der Fuhrer zum Kriegswinterhilfswerk, Schriften NSV, No. 14, p. 33).
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26 In the speech of January 30, 1939, p. 19, as quoted above.
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27 Konrad Heiden, Der Fuehrer Hitler’s Rise to Power, Boston, 1944, underlines Hitler’s “phenomenal untruthfulness,” “the lack of demonstrable reality in nearly all his utterances,” his “indifference to facts which he does not regard as vitally important” (pp. 368, 374).—In almost identical terms, Khrushchev describes “Stalin’s reluctance to consider life’s realities” and his indifference to “the real state of affairs,” op. cit. Stalin’s opinion of the importance of facts is best expressed in his periodic revisions of Russian history.
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28 Nazi Primer.
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29 It is interesting to note that the Bolsheviks during the Stalin era somehow accumulated conspiracies, that the discovery of a new one did not mean they would discard the former. The Trotskyite conspiracy started around 1930, the 300 families were added during the Popular Front period, from 1935 onward, British imperialism became an actual conspiracy during the Stalin-Hitler alliance, the “American Secret Service” followed soon after the close of the war; the last, Jewish cosmopolitanism, had an obvious and disquieting resemblance to Nazi propaganda.
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30 See Chaim Weizmann’s autobiography, Trial and Error, New York, 1949, p. 185.
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31 See, for instance, Otto Bonhard, Judische Geld- und Weltherrschaft?, 1926, p. 57.
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32 Hitler used this picture for the first time in 1922 “Moses Kohn on the one side encourages his association to refuse the workers’ demands, while his brother Isaac in the factory invites the masses...” to strike. (Hitler’s Speeches: 1922–1939, ed. Baynes, London, 1942, p. 29.) It is noteworthy that no complete collection of Hitler’s speeches was ever published in Nazi Germany, so that one is forced to resort to the English edition. That this was no accident can be seen from a bibliography compiled by Philipp Bouhler, Die Reden des Fuhrer’s nach der Machtübernahme, 1940: only the public speeches were printed verbatim in the Völkischer Beobachter; as for speeches to the Fuehrerkorps and other party units, they were merely “referred to” in that newspaper. They were not at any time meant for publication.
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33 Feder’s 25 points contain only standard measures demanded by all antisemitic groups: expulsion of naturalized Jews, and treatment of native Jews as aliens. Nazi antisemitic oratory was always much more radical than its program.
Waldemar Gurian, “Antisemitism in Modern Germany,” in Essays on Antisemitism, ed. by Koppel S. Pinson, New York, 1946, p. 243, stresses the lack of originality in Nazi antisemitism: “All these demands and views were not remarkable for their originality—they were self-evident in all nationalistic circles; what was remarkable was the demagogic and oratorical skill with which they were presented.”
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34 A typical example of mere nationalistic antisemitism within the Nazi movement itself is Rohm who writes: “And here again, my opinion differs from that of the national philistine. Not the Jew is to be blamed for everything! We are to be blamed for the fact that the Jew can rule today” (Ernst Rohm, Die Gesthichte eines Hochverraters, 1933, Volksausgabe, p. 284).
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35 SS applicants had to trace their ancestry back to 1750. Applicants for leading positions in the party were asked only three questions: 1. What have you done for the party? 2. Are you absolutely sound, physically, mentally, morally? 3. Is your family tree in order? See Nazi Primer
It is characteristic for the affinity between the two systems that the elite and police formations of the Bolsheviks—the NKVD—also demanded proof of ancestry from their members See F. Beck and W. Godin, Russian Purge ami the Extraction of Confession, 1951.
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36 Thus the totalitarian tendencies of McCarthyism in the United States showed most glaringly in the attempt not merely to persecute Communists, but to force every citizen to furnish proof of not being a Communist.
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37 “One should not overestimate the influence of the press..., it decreases in general while the influence of the organization increases” (Hadamovsky, op. cit., p. 64). “The newspapers are helpless when they are supposed to fight against the aggressive force of a living organization” (ibid., p. 65). “Power formations which have their origin in mere propaganda are fluctuating and can disappear quickly unless the violence of an organization supports the propaganda” (ibid., p. 21).
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38 “The mass-meeting is the strongest form of propaganda...[because] each individual feels more self-confident and more powerful in the unity of a mass” (ibid, p. 47). “The enthusiasm of the moment becomes a principle and a spiritual attitude through organization and systematic training and discipline” (ibid., p. 21–22).
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39 In the isolated instances in which Hitler concerned himself with this question at all, he used to emphasize: “Incidentally, I am not the head of a state in the sense of a dictator or monarch, but I am a leader of the German people” (see Ausgewhlte Reden des Fuhrers, 1939, p 114).—Hans Frank expresses himself in the same spirit: “The National Socialist Reich is not a dictatorial, let alone an arbitrary, regime. Rather, the National Socialist Reich rests on the mutual loyalty of the Führer and the people” (in Recht und Verwaltung, Munich, 1939, p. 15).
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40 Hitler repeated many times: “The state is only the means to an end. The end is: Conservation of race” (Reden, 1939, p. 125). He also stressed that his movement “does not rest on the state idea, but is primarily based on the closed Volksgemeinschaft”(see Reden, 1933, p 125, and the speech before the new generation of political leaders [Fuhrernachwuchs], 1937, which is printed as an addendum in Hitlers Tischgespräche, p. 446). This, mutatis mutandis, is also the core of the complicated double talk which is Stalin’s so-called “state theory”: “We are in favor of the State dying out, and at the same time we stand for the strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat which represents the most powerful and mighty authority of all forms of State which have existed up to the present day. The highest possible development of the power of the State with the object of preparing the conditions for the dying out of the State; that is the Marxist formula” (op. cit., loc. cit.).
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41 Alexander Stein, Adolf Hitler, Schuler der “Weisen von Zion, “Karlsbad, 1936, was the first to analyze by philological comparison the ideological identity of the teachings of the Nazis with that of the “Elders of Zion.” See also R. M. Blank, Adolf Hitler et lei “Protocoles del Sages de Sion,” 1938.
The first to admit indebtedness to the teachings of the Protocols was Theodor Fritsch, the “grand old man” of German postwar antisemitism. He writes in the epilogue to his edition of the Protocols, 1924: “Our future statesmen and diplomats will have to learn from the oriental masters of villainy even the ABC of government, and for this purpose, the ‘Zionist Protocols’ offer an excellent preparatory schooling.”
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42 On the history of the Protocols, see John S. Curtiss, An Appraisal of the Protocols of Zion, 1942.
The fact that the Protocols were a forgery was irrelevant for propaganda purposes. The Russian publicist S. A. Nilus who published the second Russian edition in 1905 was already well aware of the doubtful character of this “document” and added the obvious’ “But if it were possible to show its authenticity by documents or by the testimony of trustworthy witnesses, if it were possible to disclose the persons standing at the head of the world-wide plot...then...‘the secret iniquity’ could be broken....” Translation in Curtiss, op. cit.
Hitler did not need Nilus to use the same trick: the best proof of their authenticity is that they have been proved to be a forgery. And he also adds the argument of their “plausibility”: “What many Jews may do unconsciously is here consciously made clear. And that is what counts” (Mein Kampf, Book I, chapter xi).
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43 Fritsch, op. cit., “[Der Juden] oberster Grundsatz lautet: ‘Alles, was dem Volke Juda nutzt, ist moralisch und ist heilig.’”
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44 “World Empires spring from a national basis, but they expand soon far beyond it” (Reden).
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45 Henri Rollin, L’Apocalypse de Notre Tempi, Paris, 1939, who considers the popularity of the Protocols to be second only to the Bible (p. 40), shows the similarity between them and the Monita Secreta, first published in 1612 and still sold in 1939 on the streets of Pans, which claim to reveal a Jesuit conspiracy “that justifies all villainies and all uses of violence....This is a real campaign against the established order” (p. 32).
