by Anthony M. Ludovici
The English Review 63, 1936, pp. 35–41, 147–153, 231–239
The English Review 63, 1936, pp. 35–41, 147–153, 231–239
The present
temper of the German people, unlike that of their kinsmen before the Great War
or under the Republic, is also unlike anything that Europe has witnessed
probably since the Middle Ages.
The visitor to their country who fails to grasp this fact, like the
stay-at-home Englishman whose Press does not enable him to appreciate it,
misses the most fundamental feature in the whole of Nazi Germany.
For something akin to a new religious zeal has spread throughout the land,
making the people wistful, but strangely light-hearted and confident in their
earnestness. It is as if they had been not only raised from the dust, but also
shown a star or ball of fire which will lead them to the fulfilment of their
destiny.
It was to be expected that a great proud nation, broken and humiliated,
would respond with turbulent gratitude to anyone who helped her to recover her
self-esteem and face the world once more without shame. But those who are
inclined to see only thankful exultation over rescued vanity in the present
mood of the German people would sadly misunderstand and therefore underrate
what has happened. For in Germany today there is none of the truculence of a
greedily recovered self-confidence, none of the self-complacency of a people
basking in a light which their sense of superiority claims. On the contrary,
everything is reserved, serene, almost reticent, as if beneath the
inexpressible joy that everyone feels there stirred the constantly sobering
reflection that the defeat, the humiliation and the shame of yesterday was a
judgment, a penance for the mistakes of the older generation.
The Fuehrer never loses an opportunity of reminding them of this. But it is
a thought that must form spontaneously in most of their minds, because their
behaviour, even towards strangers and foreigners, bears the stamp of it. They
appear to have reached a level of self-respect from which they look down with
anxious dread upon any impulse, word, or action which might bear an a-social or
negative interpretation. Petty deeds of mutual strife, hostility or exploitation,
are naturally scorned as infra-dignitatem. Again and again the visitor
is impressed by the scrupulous honesty, consideration, patience, and
willingness of menials, public servants and the rank and file of government
employees. I could mention scores of instances of this. The tone of the country
seems to be set by the general consciousness that a great common good is being
served, and that those who depart too conspicuously from the example of
impersonal effort set by the Fuehrer may wreck his prodigious scheme. Thus a
mood prevails which makes certain things – mean, ill-natured thoughts and
actions – appear unworthy of a great nation stirred and united by a lofty
purpose.
„Not individual gain, but the common good!“ This can be read on almost
every hoarding. And it is no empty phrase. It genuinely inspires the mass of
the people, and makes for a wholesome reluctance to indulge in ill-informed
criticism and fault-finding, while the gigantic work of reconstruction is in
progress. Indeed, the Fuehrer himself is the very last to claim infallibility
in his function, and with a wisdom surely exceptional in history repeatedly
takes the people into his confidence to remind them that, if he is to act with
courage and a cheerful readiness to shoulder responsibilities, they must allow
him occasionally to make mistakes.
The last great movement of anything like the same importance as National
Socialism was the Reformation. With his teaching, the fire he put into it, and
the music and song he used so skilfully to carry it into the hearts of the
people, Luther swept the country. But he divided Germany and left it divided.
Even the united Empire created by Bismarck, although it integrated a congeries
of petty states whose rulers had often been dominated by mutual jealousies,
left Germany in the grip of parties whose rivalries proved even more dangerous
and disintegrating.
The Nazi movement, however, has united the country as no country has been
united since the Renaissance. It has not merely destroyed the barriers between
the states, it has obliterated the demarcations of factions. There are no
parties today in Germany. Nor should there be in any so-called „nation“.
If the people naturally look up to their leader more as a saviour than a
statesman, more as a Heaven-sent prophet than a politician, if at the
loudspeakers fixed to almost every pillar and post in the land, they hang on
his words and his voice and are ready to accept and do his bidding, and if to
us in strife-ridden England they appear to be standardised, „conditioned“ on a
scale no free Briton would tolerate, let us in this country remember two
important aspects of this state of affairs:
The first is that over here we cannot pretend to be able to fathom the depths of the humiliation they suffered after the Great War and therefore cannot appreciate the extent of their devotion to their rescuer.
The first is that over here we cannot pretend to be able to fathom the depths of the humiliation they suffered after the Great War and therefore cannot appreciate the extent of their devotion to their rescuer.
The second is that we, too, in this country are standardised and „conditioned“
on a vast and alarming scale. But whereas in Germany the standardising and
conditioning powers are responsible and ready to answer for the effects they
produce, over here these powers are wholly irresponsible and, as things are,
could not by any conceivable means be made to answer for what their
untrammelled use of publicity enables them to effect in the moulding of
so-called „public-opinion“.
Herr von Ribbentrop assured me that if to-morrow the Fuehrer were to ask
the German people to do without sheets on the beds, they would cheerfully
accede to his request and, to a family, give up this form of comfort.
There seems to me not the slightest doubt that this is true. But before we
call such a request tyranny, and the hearty response to it slavery, let us be
quite sure that we understand the amount of mutual confidence, affection and
respect it implies.
When I was asked by a prominent member of the government, a man who, in his day, had ruled over one of the smaller nominally autonomous States of the old Empire, to sum up in a line how the Germany of the Third Reich impressed me, I replied that I could think of nothing like it in recent history and could compare it only to what I imagined western Europe must have been when our great Gothic cathedrals were being built.
When I was asked by a prominent member of the government, a man who, in his day, had ruled over one of the smaller nominally autonomous States of the old Empire, to sum up in a line how the Germany of the Third Reich impressed me, I replied that I could think of nothing like it in recent history and could compare it only to what I imagined western Europe must have been when our great Gothic cathedrals were being built.
Nor is there anything factitious or perfunctory in the enthusiasm with
which the people acclaim and welcome the enigmatical figure who has contrived
to strike this deep religious note in their hearts. I witnessed two public
appearances of the Fuehrer. I saw him drive into a vast stadium at half-past
eight in the morning to address 80,000 children of the Hitler Youth Movement
and a few thousand adults; and, an hour or two later, I saw him arrive at the Lustgarten
in the centre of Berlin to address a vast assembly of working men and specially
invited guests of both sexes.
On both occasions something more than ordinary enthusiasm was displayed and
no visitor required to understand the language in order to feel the magic of
the moment.
Long before the actual appearance of the smart black touring car bearing
the Leader, the ringing cheers of the populace could be heard in the distance
drawing gradually nearer and nearer, until, when the car entered the arena, the
whole gathering of thousands took up the cry and, standing with right arms
raised, shook the May morning with their greetings.
„Sieg!“ (Victory) he
cried.
„Heil Hitler!“ the
throng roared in return.
„Sieg!“ he cried again.
„Heil Hitler!“ came the
response once more.
„Sieg!“ he cried for the third and last time.
„Heil Hitler!“ was thundered back by 100,000 voices.
No sense of humour! – No! But we should be thankful that there are still
occasions, even in modern England, when a sense of humour would be thought out
of place. We still see no humour in the death of a beloved relative or in a
broken heart, or a lost love. And is not possible for the degree of passion
behind the love for a relative or a betrothed to be equalled by the love for a
figure which stands for the salvation of a people’s native land, their pride
and their hopes?
I certainly saw no sign of a sense of humour in the reception given to the
Fuehrer on these two occasions. But I witnessed instead something bordering on
the magic, something which, although beyond reason, was anything but madness.
I saw bent old men and women who must have known Bismarck, the Kaiser William I, and the glorious early seventies of last century, and I saw crowds of educated and uneducated middle-aged people, young men and women and adolescents, thousands of whom could never have seen the days of the Empire. But one and all displayed the same passionate affection of children in the presence of the Fuehrer, and to watch them was to learn what miracles can still be wrought with the ultra-civilised and often effete populations of modern Europe if only they are given a lofty purpose.
This is surely the secret of the perpetual hold religions have on men, and it explains Adolf Hitler’s magic influence. To exhort men to commercial and industrial prosperity is not enough. To stimulate them to make good in individual enterprise, in profit-making, in self-help, ultimately leaves the best elements of the nation cold – not merely cold, but fractious, restless, mutually negative and given to petty criticism and fault-finding. In fact, it creates the populace which is typical of modern democratic politics, and makes possible every kind of large-scale fraud, from a general election to the vast advertisement hoardings of a city like London.
I saw bent old men and women who must have known Bismarck, the Kaiser William I, and the glorious early seventies of last century, and I saw crowds of educated and uneducated middle-aged people, young men and women and adolescents, thousands of whom could never have seen the days of the Empire. But one and all displayed the same passionate affection of children in the presence of the Fuehrer, and to watch them was to learn what miracles can still be wrought with the ultra-civilised and often effete populations of modern Europe if only they are given a lofty purpose.
This is surely the secret of the perpetual hold religions have on men, and it explains Adolf Hitler’s magic influence. To exhort men to commercial and industrial prosperity is not enough. To stimulate them to make good in individual enterprise, in profit-making, in self-help, ultimately leaves the best elements of the nation cold – not merely cold, but fractious, restless, mutually negative and given to petty criticism and fault-finding. In fact, it creates the populace which is typical of modern democratic politics, and makes possible every kind of large-scale fraud, from a general election to the vast advertisement hoardings of a city like London.
The religious appeal, however, by giving men a higher, impersonal purpose,
sets humanity at one stroke above the market-place, above considerations of
merely individual gain, with all that these mean in internecine and suicidal
struggle. And to have given his nation such a purpose, to have persuaded them
that such a purpose can be worthwhile, is the secret of the Fuehrer’s magic. To
my mind, this constitutes his chief importance to the German nation.
It is perhaps a pure coincidence that this man who, according to his own
admission, moves and acts in state affairs with the somnambulistic certainty (nachtwandlerische
Sicherheit) of a sleep-walker – that is to say, whose most important
decisions spring from the mysterious strata of the Unconscious – should have
chosen for the badge of his party and his movement the ancient mystic sign
known as the Gammadion, Fylfot or Swastika. But when we
bear in mind that this very badge was once the symbol of a mysterious cult, and
has for countless ages stood as the sign of a particularly instinctive and
deep-seated form of worship, the choice of the symbol seems particularly apt.
For the fact that Germany is to-day stirred by a purpose super-personal and
therefore religious, is beyond question.
Whether the conspicuous diminution in crime all over the country is to be
ascribed to this religious mood, I cannot pretend to judge. If, however, I
throw my mind back, as I like to do, to the days in western Europe when our
great cathedrals were springing up in almost every large town, I imagine that
they, too, must have been times of a low incidence of crime. For it is
impossible to believe that all that anonymous, impersonal work, which must in
millions of cases have offered no hope of being completed before those engaged
upon it died, could have been performed in any mood which promoted the
negativism of crime.
When, therefore, we learn from Liebermann von Sonnenberg, the head of the
Criminal Investigation Department of the German government, that since 1932,
crime in Germany has declined 50 per cent., and in some districts actually as
much as 60 per cent., and that in all Prussian towns of over 50,000 inhabitants
murders have declined 32 per cent., robberies by violence 63 per cent. and
burglaries 52 per cent., it ought not to surprise us.
To suppose that, in such a mood and with such impersonal strivings, the
German nation can now entertain purely predatory and venal aims would be wholly
to misunderstand the feat Adolf Hitler has performed, and the metamorphosis his
magic has effected.
He has effected this transformation on a foundation of repentance, on the
constant reminder that Germany’s defeat and humiliation were a judgment and a
penalty. Those who have been chastened by his appeal, and they represent over
90 per cent. of the German nation, cannot therefore be insincere in their
desire for a relationship of peace and friendship with their neighbours and
particularly with England.
This is not to say, however, that peace and friendship do not impose
certain duties of mutual consideration on the parties concerned. But it struck
me that it is only to that feeling of duty, and not to ideals of force and
violence, that modern Germans now look with hope for the redress of their
wrongs and the relief of their domestic difficulties.
Thus the greatest of the Fuehrer’s reforms and most creative of his innovations, as I hope to show, have aimed at construction and development at home. And if, in this work, Hitler and his advisers have in the last three years performed miracles, about which we in this country hear little, and appear to care less, it is to the rigorous press-censorship now prevailing over here that we must ascribe both our ignorance and indifference.
Thus the greatest of the Fuehrer’s reforms and most creative of his innovations, as I hope to show, have aimed at construction and development at home. And if, in this work, Hitler and his advisers have in the last three years performed miracles, about which we in this country hear little, and appear to care less, it is to the rigorous press-censorship now prevailing over here that we must ascribe both our ignorance and indifference.
It is difficult to give an adequate impression of the enormous assistance
afforded to the Fuehrer’s various schemes of construction by the spirit he has
contrived to stimulate in the German people.
In a country uninspired by his personal leadership, many of his reforms,
particularly those deriving from his biological revaluation and his wise
attitude towards women, manual labour and agriculture, would undoubtedly have
provoked the likeliest opposition. And if so many of his fundamental
innovations have passed smoothly into the everyday life of the people to
transform their sentiment and outlook, he has to thank the religious mood with
which he first infected his nation.
Nowhere, however, has the change of point of view and life-habits been more conspicuously displayed than in the movement which led to the so-called „Labour“ camps, of which there are now 1,300 for men alone all over Germany.
Designed, on the cultural side, to reduce class cleavage, to whittle down the marked difference of esteem in which manual and mental work are held throughout Western civilization, and to promote health and manliness in all classes, these Labour Camps are, economically, one of the greatest assets of the new régime. For by providing the means of concentrating unpaid labour at all these points in the land where it is most needed, either in order to develop or reclaim existing wastes, or to help newly settled urbanites to make good as farmers, market-gardeners, fruit-growers, etc., it has given an impetus to agricultural development which, without it, would have been quite unrealisable.
Nowhere, however, has the change of point of view and life-habits been more conspicuously displayed than in the movement which led to the so-called „Labour“ camps, of which there are now 1,300 for men alone all over Germany.
Designed, on the cultural side, to reduce class cleavage, to whittle down the marked difference of esteem in which manual and mental work are held throughout Western civilization, and to promote health and manliness in all classes, these Labour Camps are, economically, one of the greatest assets of the new régime. For by providing the means of concentrating unpaid labour at all these points in the land where it is most needed, either in order to develop or reclaim existing wastes, or to help newly settled urbanites to make good as farmers, market-gardeners, fruit-growers, etc., it has given an impetus to agricultural development which, without it, would have been quite unrealisable.
It is not generally appreciated in England that the problems in the sphere
of agriculture alone which the Fuehrer had to face, and which had actually been
studied by him and his advisers before his Party came into power, were manifold
and complicated.
The Treaty of Versailles deprived Germany of 9.5 per cent of her people and
over 13 per cent of her area. Thus the ratio of population to territory was in
any case less favourable than it had been before the war. Over and above this,
however, the land lost on her eastern and western frontiers was of a very high
grade, and therefore made the total decrease of her agricultural area more than
it seemed – i.e., nearer 30 per cent than 13 per cent in actual value.
In addition, about one million of her nationals returned to the Reich from
ceded territories, and, owing to the increasing use and perfection of labour-saving
machinery, ever larger numbers of industrial workers were being turned out of
work every year. So that, failing a wise and drastic policy calculated to
improve the state of agriculture and provide fresh employment for the workless
(numbering 6,000,000 before 1933), it seemed as if disaster must soon overtake
the country.
Two things were clear – thousands of recently urbanized families must at all costs be restored to the land, and the arable areas of the Reich must be increased.
A „Back-to-the-land“ movement was therefore immediately inaugurated on a grand scale, while under the slogan that Germany, if she chose, could conquer a whole new province for herself within her own borders, another movement was started to improve the quality and yield of existing agricultural areas, to reclaim millions of acres of existing marsh, heath and moor-land in various parts of the country, and shoals and flats along the North Sea coast, to regulate the course of small rivers, to plant and grub, and to transform waste woodland into profitable forests.
Two things were clear – thousands of recently urbanized families must at all costs be restored to the land, and the arable areas of the Reich must be increased.
A „Back-to-the-land“ movement was therefore immediately inaugurated on a grand scale, while under the slogan that Germany, if she chose, could conquer a whole new province for herself within her own borders, another movement was started to improve the quality and yield of existing agricultural areas, to reclaim millions of acres of existing marsh, heath and moor-land in various parts of the country, and shoals and flats along the North Sea coast, to regulate the course of small rivers, to plant and grub, and to transform waste woodland into profitable forests.
In connexion with the first movement an administration known as the Reichstelle
für die Auswahl deutscher Bauernsiedler, was soon set up for selecting
desirable people for settlement in rural districts as farmers, farm labourers
and peasants, which, working on the lines of the new biological revaluation,
granted permits, land and sometimes credits, only to the best people from the
standpoint of descent, health and capacity.
Thus favour is invariably shown to:–
(a) Men who in their family line and blood have long had some close
relationship to the soil and been lately separated from it – for instance,
farmers who have been recently uprooted or lost their farms through no fault of
their own.
(b) Men who have large families. (Only men over 25 and married are
considered.)
(c) Men who served in the late war, or who are known to have served
in the S.A. (Hitler’s Sturmableitung) or the S.S. (the biological cream
of the S.A.).
(d) Men who have served in the Reichswehr (the post-war
German army).
(e) Finally, rural labourers whom adverse conditions have driven
from the soil.
I have not the statistics for 1935 at hand; but in 1934 the Office for Selecting German Settlers on the Land received 15,948 applications of which 11,094 were accepted and provided for; and since the inauguration of the movement (not reckoning 1935) 67,000 new farmsteads have been established, covering about 1,827,800 acres. Altogether, up to the end of 1934, about 2,964,000 acres had been secured for settlement purposes.
The Government reckons that it takes about five years for these newly settled farmers and peasants to make good, and during their first years of endeavour, every kind of assistance is given them provided they display the right spirit and energy.
Now in the work of reclaiming the soil for the reception of these new agricultural workers, and in the task of helping them to make good, the Reich Labour Service finds its principal functions; and, apart from the cultural advantages the camps secure for the whole male population, as described above, it is in these principal functions that they constitute one of the greatest assets of the new régime.
I have not the statistics for 1935 at hand; but in 1934 the Office for Selecting German Settlers on the Land received 15,948 applications of which 11,094 were accepted and provided for; and since the inauguration of the movement (not reckoning 1935) 67,000 new farmsteads have been established, covering about 1,827,800 acres. Altogether, up to the end of 1934, about 2,964,000 acres had been secured for settlement purposes.
The Government reckons that it takes about five years for these newly settled farmers and peasants to make good, and during their first years of endeavour, every kind of assistance is given them provided they display the right spirit and energy.
Now in the work of reclaiming the soil for the reception of these new agricultural workers, and in the task of helping them to make good, the Reich Labour Service finds its principal functions; and, apart from the cultural advantages the camps secure for the whole male population, as described above, it is in these principal functions that they constitute one of the greatest assets of the new régime.
Briefly stated, the conditions of the service are these:–
Every young German must enter the Labour Service between the end of his
seventeenth and the end of his twenty-fifth year; he is enrolled only after a
thorough physical examination and has to serve for six months, after which his
year’s military service begins.
Life in the camps is divided between manual labour with spade and hoe, in
which all must take part, strenuous drilling exercises, and periods of leisure
given to reading and the study of contemporary events and problems. The day
starts at 5 a.m. in the summer and 6 a.m. in the winter, and ends at 10 p.m. –
the time after supper (7 p.m.) and short intervals during the day being devoted
to rest and leisurely pursuits.
Each camp consists of 152 men, and there are at present about 1,300 camps for men in Germany. Thus, year in year out, the country can command the work of 200,000 young men whose labour is to all extents and purposes unpaid. Actually, they do receive about 3d. a day in pocket money.
Each camp consists of 152 men, and there are at present about 1,300 camps for men in Germany. Thus, year in year out, the country can command the work of 200,000 young men whose labour is to all extents and purposes unpaid. Actually, they do receive about 3d. a day in pocket money.
A similar organisation exists for German girls. But, so far, the service
has not been made compulsory. Nevertheless, such is the impersonal spirit
prevailing in Germany to-day that, on the present voluntary basis, these Reich
Labour Service girls have come forward in sufficient numbers from all classes
of society to form 500 camps which, like those of the men, provide unpaid
labour devoted to assisting the newly settled peasants and farmers all over the
land.
As to what these men’s labour camps have done, let it suffice to say that,
out of an area of 15,437 square miles (about half the size of Portugal) of
swamp land, half has already been reclaimed for agricultural purposes; hundreds
of thousands of acres of waste land and waste woodland, of no use to the
peasants, have already been transformed into profitable forests; and drainage
and irrigation, now being carried out, is expected to double the value of more
than 46,312 square miles of existing agricultural land of poor quality.
It is, in fact, reckoned that the net annual proceeds derived from the work
done by the Labour Service organisation have already exceeded 10 per cent. of
the cost of the organisation. But the full value of what they are now creating
in the form of new agricultural areas, new farmsteads and a new peasant
population will, of course, not be realized for perhaps a generation or two.
I visited several of these men’s camps in the Havelländische Luch and
questioned men whom I saw at work. As I had been led to expect, there were
among them representatives of every class of the community, and they all
appeared to be enjoying their labours and flourishing under the discipline of
the camps. They were young enough to relish the hard work and the rough life as
an adventure, and they all looked healthy enough to thrive under Spartan
conditions.
Their camp officers who, without exception, attracted attention by their
unusually fine physique and manly bearing, are men specially picked from the
standpoint of psycho-physical standards. They do not separate from their men at
meals or during the hours of leisure, as Army and Navy officers do, but have to
live every moment of their waking hours with them, setting them an example of
good manners, correct speech, and a cultured outlook.
In the women’s camps the girls are subjected to much the same camp
discipline, but their work is of course different. They may, if called upon,
help the newly settled farmers and peasants in light work in the fields, but
their principal function is to give the rural families help in the home as
unpaid domestic servants, dairymaids, nursemaids, etc. In this way, the newly
settled farmers who are trying to make good, are substantially assisted at no
cost to themselves, and are often able to have the more skilled work of their
wives in the fields, while the voluntary Reich-Service workers look after the
home and the children and do the cooking, mending and washing.
Valuable by-products of both the girls’ and the men’s Labour Camps are, of course, the excellent discipline that all these young people have to undergo at a period in their lives when discipline is most salutary, the breaking down of class barriers by the mixing of the various social strata in the camps, and the benefit to all concerned derived from the closer acquaintance made by the children of middle and upper-class families with manual labour, its hardships, its advantages and its immense importance in the economy of the nation.
Valuable by-products of both the girls’ and the men’s Labour Camps are, of course, the excellent discipline that all these young people have to undergo at a period in their lives when discipline is most salutary, the breaking down of class barriers by the mixing of the various social strata in the camps, and the benefit to all concerned derived from the closer acquaintance made by the children of middle and upper-class families with manual labour, its hardships, its advantages and its immense importance in the economy of the nation.
„Work ennobles!“ (Arbeit adelt!) – that is the device of this branch
of the National Service. And, thanks to the right spirit and the right values,
and in spite of a world that has too long worshipped only money and the
successful stockbroker and financier, it somehow comes true. It can already be
seen in the faces and manners of the people, and it is evidenced in every
relationship of high and humble in the life of modern Germany.
Meanwhile, promoting and consolidating the „Back-to-the-land“ and „Reich-Labour-Service“
movements, laws have been passed which make it difficult, particularly for
young rural women, to swell the throng of country folk who annually try to
migrate to the large towns; and a very important series of laws – not based on
abstract principles or theory, but rooted in peasant custom – which came into
force in September, 1933, and are known as the Reichserbhofrecht (the
Law relating to the Inheritance of Landed Property) now provide for the
hard-working and capable peasant a security in his holding, which no usurious
or other kinds of creditors can defeat (Paragraphs 37–39 of above law). The
test appears to be not whether the creditor has a lien on the land, but (a)
whether the present debtor has defaulted through any fault of his own, and (b)
whether the peasant debtor is a capable, knowledgeable and diligent farmer and
has shown that he can keep his land in a proper state. The general idea
inspiring the whole measure is that land cannot and should not be treated as
moveable property, to be bought and sold in the open market.
It is impossible in the space at my disposal to describe in detail what
this law has done to secure the peasant landowner in this holding, to regulate
the inheritance of land so as to keep it in the hands of worthy families, and
generally to enhance the prestige of conscientious and painstaking husbandry;
but anyone who wishes to study the law in detail can do so in the excellent handbook
on the subject by Otto Baumecker (Handbuch des Gesamten Reichserbhofrechts)
the third edition of which was published in Cologne in 1935.
Great as are the reforms discussed in my last article, and wonderful as is
the tribute their success pays to the inspiration of the Fuehrer, they are,
however, as nothing compared with his innovations in a far more difficult and
pitfall-strewn field – the field of human biology.
Three influences – urbanisation, industrialism and the negative Socratic
values which began to prevail with the spread of Protestantism, and happened to
be favourable to the two former – have now, for almost two centuries, been
inclining the people of Europe, and all countries like Europe, to set their
faces ever more and more steadfastly against a biological attitude towards man.
And this has resulted in the tendency of modern civilisation not only to
neglect and despise the body but also to exalt as praiseworthy all those
practices which favour the multiplication of biologically inferior human
beings.
To deal with urbanisation first, it must be clear, even to those who are
unfamiliar with the contempt in which boroughs and their inhabitants were held
by the rural populations of the Middle Ages, that the city and town do not and
cannot breed the healthiest, sturdiest and most active members of the community
and cannot, therefore, cultivate a very fastidious taste in standards of human
desirability. The kind of occupation open to the town-dweller – quite apart
from the air he breathes and the food he tends to live on – neither selects nor
is calculated to maintain the soundest of types. Moreover, by withdrawing the
human being from a close touch with the realities of Nature’s work and laws,
from the everyday and obvious lessons to be learnt by watching cultivated
plants and animals grow, and observing the conditions essential to their
prosperity, town life must in time foster a fantastic or unrealistic attitude
to life and its problems, which of itself constitutes mental or intellectual unsoundness.
Over and above this, however, in towns and cities, the very roots of human
life tend to wither. In the country there is always some way in which the child
only just past toddlerdom can help in the general impersonal work of Nature,
even if it is only to scare the sparrows from the ripening corn. Thus children
are always welcome and quickly become a further asset to the house in which
they are born. But in towns the child tends to become more and more a luxury,
an undesired by-product of the sexual adaptation of its parents. The result is
that an unnatural relationship begins to grow up between married couples, and
women as a whole incline to neglect and despise maternal occupations. In fact,
society reaches a condition known as Feminism, on the one hand, in which, as
even the Feminist Havelock Ellis admits, „Motherhood is without dignity“ –
indeed, how could it have dignity when children are unwanted? – and, on the
other, a condition known as Pornocracy, in which the taste of the harlot, and
the outlook of the harlot, necessarily tend to prevail.
Industrialisation, even under the most humane and solicitous factory laws
and regulations, confirms and intensifies most of the worst influences of
urbanisation. It cannot help so doing, because, in addition to offering the
urban crowds unhealthy occupations, it has not reached that stage of
enlightenment when it would necessarily regard it as a duty to protect the
character and minds of the so-called proletariat from the besotting and degrading
influence of mere machine-minding, or of performing, year in year out,
unskilled, repetitive and often merely fragmentary tasks. Besides, the factory
can be adequately served by types which would not have the stamina or endurance
for heavy farm work, and this again exercises with the town a preferential
selection in favour of unsoundness.
On its occupational side, therefore, it undermines the garnered qualities
of a national constitution and character. It lives on the spiritual and
physical capital of the people, without making a single contribution of value
to either from one generation to another. Thus, it creates among a mass of
physically deteriorated, uprooted and traditionless individuals, already
removed from the instructive realities of life by their urban habits, a
standardized type of mind and character, which is steadily becoming more and
more helpless, passive, colourless and servile. It means that a race is being
reared which in character, body and mind is hardly civilised.
Turning now to the third influence – that of Socratic values – which has made the two former influences possible, it is difficult for the modern man of Western Europe to appreciate the extent to which he has become saturated, „conditioned“, and disciplined both in body and mind by the values which tend to underrate and neglect body standards. If we have ceased to look with horror on a man or woman who, although under thirty, has false teeth, if we have ceased to demand an apology from people with foul breath, and if we imagine that human rubbish and human foulness can give us good laws, good poetry, good science and good art, it is wholly and exclusively due to Socrates and his influence.
Turning now to the third influence – that of Socratic values – which has made the two former influences possible, it is difficult for the modern man of Western Europe to appreciate the extent to which he has become saturated, „conditioned“, and disciplined both in body and mind by the values which tend to underrate and neglect body standards. If we have ceased to look with horror on a man or woman who, although under thirty, has false teeth, if we have ceased to demand an apology from people with foul breath, and if we imagine that human rubbish and human foulness can give us good laws, good poetry, good science and good art, it is wholly and exclusively due to Socrates and his influence.
His exclusive claim to notoriety is that, thanks to his own wretchedly poor
physical endowments in the midst of a population of beauty-venerators, he found
himself forced in self-defence to discover a dialectical method of excusing
every kind of physical disreputability, degeneracy and putrescence.
He argued, after the manner of the fox who had lost his tail, that the
beauty of the body is but a slight affair, and that man’s greatest achievement
is to set a higher value on the beauty of the soul, and he declared to Glaucon,
„If there be any merely bodily defect in another, we will be patient of it and
love the same“.
„Merely bodily defect“! – These three words epitomise the whole savour and
trend of Socratic teaching.
Thus radiant and flawless health is everywhere rare among human beings, and
wherever Western civilisation has spread the minority of the sound are taxed
out of existence and sacrificed in order to preserve, succour and pay honour to
the unsound.
Now to set one’s face against this deeply implanted bias, to invite modern men, and particularly modern women, in the teeth of their morbid sentimentality, to change their attitude and to honour and look up to the sound, to protect the sound from extermination by the unsound, and to resist their being sacrificed for the latter – in fact, to assume towards humanity the very attitude which, to a farmer contemplating his animals and his crops, is a commonplace of good husbandry, is to-day one of the most difficult and precarious of undertakings, particularly for the head of a State.
In the lives of the people, Socratic values, by inculcating a contempt for bodily considerations, leads to all kinds of perverted tastes and unwise matings – marriage with cripples, with the hereditarily blind, with the hereditarily deaf and dumb, the diseased and malformed. Three popular works, such as Lytton’s Pilgrims of the Rhine, George Eliot’s Mill on the Floss and Charlotte Yonge’s Pillars of the House, in which diseased or crippled persons are solemnly held up as marriageable or as objects to be specially honoured (and there are hundreds of lesser English novels which do the same), could hardly have been written or read unless a culture had lost its sanity in mating.
Now to set one’s face against this deeply implanted bias, to invite modern men, and particularly modern women, in the teeth of their morbid sentimentality, to change their attitude and to honour and look up to the sound, to protect the sound from extermination by the unsound, and to resist their being sacrificed for the latter – in fact, to assume towards humanity the very attitude which, to a farmer contemplating his animals and his crops, is a commonplace of good husbandry, is to-day one of the most difficult and precarious of undertakings, particularly for the head of a State.
In the lives of the people, Socratic values, by inculcating a contempt for bodily considerations, leads to all kinds of perverted tastes and unwise matings – marriage with cripples, with the hereditarily blind, with the hereditarily deaf and dumb, the diseased and malformed. Three popular works, such as Lytton’s Pilgrims of the Rhine, George Eliot’s Mill on the Floss and Charlotte Yonge’s Pillars of the House, in which diseased or crippled persons are solemnly held up as marriageable or as objects to be specially honoured (and there are hundreds of lesser English novels which do the same), could hardly have been written or read unless a culture had lost its sanity in mating.
Now the fact that Adolf Hitler, as soon as he seized the reins of
Government at the beginning of 1933, did not hesitate to grapple with Socrates
and, at least in Germany, to discredit him, is surely one of his most
remarkable achievements.
True, his assault on urbanisation and industrialism would have been imperfect and abortive had he failed to attack the values based on Socratic teaching which enable both to flourish. But, apart from the measures he has framed to restore a healthy agricultural life to Germany and arrest the flight to the cities, his daring attack on the traditional „glory“ of fifth-century Athens should alone have sufficed ultimately to sweep unhealthy tastes and prejudices from his country.
True, his assault on urbanisation and industrialism would have been imperfect and abortive had he failed to attack the values based on Socratic teaching which enable both to flourish. But, apart from the measures he has framed to restore a healthy agricultural life to Germany and arrest the flight to the cities, his daring attack on the traditional „glory“ of fifth-century Athens should alone have sufficed ultimately to sweep unhealthy tastes and prejudices from his country.
For to-day the sound in health and mind are the honoured of the German
nation and, as the guarantors of a desirable posterity, are granted many
privileges. Although to us over here this cannot help seeming slightly odd, it
is, of course, the most elementary wisdom.
Among the principal measures framed to secure a healthier generation, I
would refer to the Law of July 14, 1933, to Prevent the Transmission of
Hereditary Diseases. By means of this law it became possible through
sterilisation to prevent men and women suffering from certain hereditary
diseases specified in the law from having progeny. Such diseases are congenital
feeble-mindedness, certain mental diseases such as schizophrenia and manic
depression, hereditary epilepsy, blindness, deaf-mutism and severe
malformations.
All cases are tried before a Eugenics Court, consisting of one judge
assisted by two doctors, and their decisions are reached only after a thorough
and conscientious inquiry into each case. In the report for the year 1934,
published on July 3, 1935, we find that in all 84,525 petitions were filed in
the 205 eugenics courts, i.e., about one case per 771 of the population.
There were 42,903 males and 41,662 females[1]. Of this number, 64,449 or
about 75 per cent. were heard before the courts, and sterilisation was ordered
in 98.8 of the cases, i.e., 56,244 persons. In 3,692 cases (6.2 per
cent.) the petitions were rejected, while in 4,563 the petition was either
withdrawn or else referred to a superior Eugenics Court, of which twenty-six
participated in the ultimate decisions.
Of 8,219 appeals taken against a court order for sterilisation, only 377
were allowed. In 438 cases, appeals were made against the rejection of
sterilisation petitions ordered by the Eugenics Court of first instance. And of
these, 299 heard before the end of 1934 ended in the granting of the petition
in 179 cases, and the reversal of the decision of the first Court.
In regard to pregnant women, it has been decided that if a valid Court has
ruled that sterilisation should take place, the pregnancy may be interrupted
provided that this is done before the sixth month of pregnancy.
The importance of these measures will be appreciated, as Dr Burgdörfer
points out, when it is remembered that according to the last census there were
2,000,000 sufferers from incurable disease, crippledom and insanity in the
country. The cost of maintaining them was 1,000,000,000 Reichsmarks, or about
£76,000,000 a year – a burden which is not only useless but also actively
pernicious, seeing that under it the sound cannot have the number of desirable
healthy children they might otherwise give the country. To continue suffering
such a burden and allowing it to increase, as it inevitably would if it were
not dealt with, amounts to sacrificing the sound for the unsound. And this only
a nation that has forgotten the laws of good husbandry through generations of
urbanisation could ever tolerate.
A further measure, known as the Law to Protect the Hereditary Health of the
German People (October 18, 1935), provides for the refusal of marriage
certificates to all applicants who fail to reach certain standards of health.
Thus a marriage certificate must be refused (1) to all parties suffering from
an infectious disease which may affect the other partner or the children of the
marriage; (2) to all parties suffering from a mental disorder which would make
it contrary to public policy for them to marry; and (3) to all parties affected
with a hereditary disease within the scope of the law of July 14, 1933,
described above.
If both of the parties to the proposed marriage are foreigners, or if the
prospective husband is a foreigner, the law does not apply. But if a foreign
woman wishes to marry a German citizen, she must subject herself to a medical
examination and obtain her Ehetauglichkeitszeugnis – her certificate of
fitness for marriage.
The law makes it compulsory for these certificates to be obtained from the
local bureau of health, and all people contemplating marriage have to undergo a
medical examination before they can obtain their certificates.
But these purely negative measures do not satisfy the present rulers of
Germany, and, side by side with them, they have instituted positive measures,
not merely for encouraging marriage and large families, but also and above all
for giving such encouragement only to desirable and sound couples. Thus, the
unhealthy and pornocratic tendency of town life is stigmatized, and honour is
given where it is due, i.e., to those who are a guarantee of a desirable
coming generation and who, as married couples, are fit to lead to lead normal
lives as parents.
The first measure dealing with this policy, formed part (para. x) of the
Law for the Reduction of Unemployment of June 1, 1933. It provided that all
young couples who desired to marry, and who had not the means to do so, could
obtain from the government a loan to the extent of 1,000 marks in order to help
them set up a home. But other measures have since confirmed and amplified these
provisions, as, for instance, those of July 1933, August 1933, and March 1934.
The conditions under which the loan is granted are, however, severe. The
parties to the marriage contract are required to be of German blood,
hereditarily sound, and free from any disease, infectious or otherwise, which
would make their marriage incompatible with the best public interest.
From August 1933 to March 1935, 400,738 such loans were made, of an average
of 600 marks apiece, and the statistics show not only a sudden increase in
marriages throughout the Reich, but also – and this was one of the objects of
the measure – a corresponding decline in unemployment, owing to the number of
posts vacated by the girls concerned. The number of marriages encouraged under
this law were far more numerous in the urban that in the rural districts, and
rose to the level of 12.6 per thousand in towns of more than 100,000
inhabitants.
The loans carry no interest, but are repayable at the rate of 1 per cent.
per month. Thus, a loan of 600 marks is repaid by 100 monthly instalments of 6
marks. If, however, children are born of the marriage, a quarter of the loan is
remitted for each child, and the repayments are suspended for a year. Of the
400,738 marriages which took place under these conditions, 182,355 children
were born by end of March 1935, and a large proportion of the recovery of the
German birthrate may justly be ascribed to these measures.
But these are not the only measures adopted by the government to promote
soundness and good health in the nation. From the Health Record books of the
Hitler Jugend – the corps of young Germans constituting the Youth Movement in
Germany – to the biological selection of the S.A. (Sturm-Abteilung)
known as the S.S., all of whose members strike the onlooker by the splendour of
their health, build and looks, no detail is lost sight of which can transvalue
the Socratic values still latent in the people, and make them honour, seek and
favour the sound in mind and body.
The S.S. men may be encountered in every walk of life, and before the stranger, familiar with the spectacle of widespread degeneration at home, has learnt to read the signs or symbols proclaiming their order, his attention is usually drawn to them by their exceptionally fine condition and bearing. Our chauffeur on one occasion happened to be a man of this type, whose biological rank was obviously high, and as I was then unaware of the significance of the various badges worn in present-day Germany, I commented to my host on the healthy manly appearance of his servant.
„He belongs to the S.S., the biological cream of the S.A.“, replied my host. And he proceeded to inform me that not only did the young man belong to highest biological class, but that his wife, too, when he took one, would require to be the same. In fact, no marriage certificate would be granted either to him or his fiancée unless she could satisfy the relevant authorities that she came up to his standard.
The S.S. men may be encountered in every walk of life, and before the stranger, familiar with the spectacle of widespread degeneration at home, has learnt to read the signs or symbols proclaiming their order, his attention is usually drawn to them by their exceptionally fine condition and bearing. Our chauffeur on one occasion happened to be a man of this type, whose biological rank was obviously high, and as I was then unaware of the significance of the various badges worn in present-day Germany, I commented to my host on the healthy manly appearance of his servant.
„He belongs to the S.S., the biological cream of the S.A.“, replied my host. And he proceeded to inform me that not only did the young man belong to highest biological class, but that his wife, too, when he took one, would require to be the same. In fact, no marriage certificate would be granted either to him or his fiancée unless she could satisfy the relevant authorities that she came up to his standard.
No sense of humour? – Lucky Germany!
[1] The total according to these
figures should be 84,565 and not 84,525. But the fault lies with the original
German report and not with the present extract from it.
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