Learning from History

...It is enlightening to find how the generals were the real power even in the Weimar Republic, how a people incapable of dealing with the stresses and strains of life in a defeated nation relied unduly on the authority of the Army for its order...

...how the latter pretended to be, and was, a state within a state...

...What kind of analogies can be drawn between a nation inept in the ways of democracy, with a strong military tradition and subjected to strains which we will probably never face...

...We must repeat that, if there are any lessons in this sad story, they must be drawn without any reference to specific analogies...

...Conspiracies in a tyranny against a tyrant could not, unfortunately, promise such a good percentage...

...his dotage offered various groups and gangs the opportunity to conspire in his name...

...Learning from History By Reinhold Niebuhr The behavior of German conservatives before Hitler suggests some interesting, but not necessarily valid, current analogies John Wheeler-Bennett has written a very illuminating history of German militarism entitled The Nemesis of Power...

...By comparison, they are cold and designing...

...Next to Hindenburg, the "liberals" and Socialists, who set up the Weimar Republic and who allowed the military an authority which was incompatible with democratic health, deserve our attention...

...Germany and America are so different...

...Thyssen, the Ruhr industrialist, lent Hitler money when he was badly in need of it...

...And he was the author of the "stab-in-the-back" theory, according to which the military caste tried to create the illusion that the war was lost not on the field of battle but by treason on the home front...

...how it tried to be completely unpolitical and was betrayed by its political ineptness into the worst kind of politics...

...The legend was to do untold harm to the nascent democracy which had to accept the hard realities of defeat...

...Our demagogues may be as unscrupulous as he in subordinating every principle to the quest for power, but they lack his demonic fury...

...how it sought to contain Nazism in various abortive ways, then finally entered into an alliance with Hitler...

...how the instrument of their enslavement was, inter alia, their narrow military moral code, which enjoined loyalty to an oath of allegiance even if that oath meant destruction for the nation...

...The murder did not change relations between Hitler and von Papen...

...Hugenburg was the leader of the Nationalists, whose votes Hitler needed after the election failed, despite its terror, to give him a clear majority in the Reichstag...

...Wheeler-Bennett seems to have conceived his study for the purpose of warning his countrymen that the German military caste was not to be trusted...

...and our nation with an economic and social health much greater than that of the Germans and a youthful health quite in contrast to the sickness of the German culture...

...and how this heroism was "too little and too late" to save Germany...

...This accord was to give the Catholics security at the price of their liquidation of the Catholic party...

...It is fascinating to review the history of the German military caste and the story of its involvement with Nazism...

...It was von Papen who persuaded the Pope to sign a concordat with Hitler...

...one must give the old warning that "any similarity between the characters in this drama and any living persons is purely coincidental...

...Hindenburg, incidentally, was more perfect symbolically than in reality...

...Von Papen, a very pious man, combined Catholic piety with excessive caste snobbishness and a frivolous ambition to be regarded as one of the military caste...

...Obvious analogies would be very unjust, if pressed...

...Lessons by historical analogy are very unsafe, because the analogies are never perfect...

...And, even if they were more similar, characters are so highly individual...

...The injustice would be against the German character in the case of some analogies...

...It consists of von Papen and some of the Ruhr industrialists who were so concerned about the Communist danger that they were willing to trade with Hitler as a force against Communism...

...Theirs was a type of liberalism which was incapable of coming to terms with the realities of politics and which was quite as inept as the Army in dealing with the unscrupulous shrewdness of the Nazis...

...But, even if the similarities were greater, it would be well to observe that there is greater similarity between the matches of history than between the faggots which they ignite...

...The secretary was murdered on the horrible night when the Nazis assassinated Roehm, von Schleicher and others...

...The Government appealed to the Supreme Court and failed to draw on the power of its own police force and the potential power of the workers, ready to call a general strike in behalf of the Government...

...These plots proved to be abortive for two reasons: 1. The foreign world always yielded to Hitler, as in the case of the reoccupation of the Rhineland, just when it seemed to the Army that his policy must spell disaster...

...this made the Kaiser's abdication necessary...

...Two other rather typical conservatives must be mentioned...

...Can we learn any lessons from it...

...One ought to read such a book for its own sake, without seeking to draw any lessons from it...

...Hitler was thus able to score a victory over the generals just when a defeat seemed indicated...

...Hugenburg was soon brushed aside when his votes were no longer needed...

...how this alliance was transmuted into the captivity of the once-proud generals...

...He understood the irresolution and cowardice of men better than they did, or seemed to, at least...

...They also had the illusion that they could contain him...

...Von Papen was placed in the first Hitler Cabinet as Vice-Chancellor on the theory that he would moderate the Nazi fury...

...We have to emphasize that to our European critics who insist that McCarthyism is the first step toward fascism, while even our most vigorous opponents of McCarthyism hopefully call attention to the difference in the "objective conditions" which make the German tragedy inapplicable to our life by way of analogy...

...mostly, it would operate unjustly against the American analogues...

...Instead, it merely delivered the Catholic population into the hands of a ruthless government...

...The speech, ghost-written by one of his brilliant secretaries, gave comfort to all the "decent" people of Germany...

...But can we learn any lessons from the story for our own history...

...and they would undertake no enterprise which did not offer more than 50 per cent success...

...Thus, whether Hitler was contending against liberal politicians or reactionary stuffed shirts or respectable generals, he could always win by the show of an unscrupulous courage against the pretensions of a respectable cowardice...

...To return to the Army, it is interesting that the latter was unhappy about the alliance with Hitler and that its highest officers were partially involved in plots against the Nazis from the earliest days, when it became apparent that Hitler had no idea of being cautious in the dangerous game of foreign affairs...

...History evidently overtook his purpose, and he confesses that immediate common perils vis-a-vis Russia may make it necessary to co-opt the generals, though it would be unsafe to trust them...

...We begin with Hindenburg, who was the symbol of German unity, a military hero from the First World War who served the German people as a kind of live totem-pole, even after he ceased to be altogether alive...

...There is certainly no one in our national life who is exactly analogous to Hitler...

...But Thyssen ultimately languished in a concentration camp, having underrated the ruthlessness and unscrupulousness of his ally...

...Analogies are dangerous and misleading...

...2. The generals were moral cowards despite their conceptions of honor...

...how there were many differences in the character of the generals, from the integrity of von Seeckt, who built the first postwar army, and the intriguing rascality of von Schleicher to the heroic courage of Beck and his colleagues...

...All these facts are interesting historic phenomena which we appreciate as a pathetic drama that lacks those elements of nobility necessary to make it truly tragic...

...Ultimately, this crowd permitted the liquidation of the Prussian Government, constitutionally elected, by the force of a Presidential decree and a few constables...

...Both of them cooperated with Hitler under the illusion that he was a force of "conservatism" to be used against Communism...

...He became instead the pathetic instrument of Hitler's intrigues in Austria and Turkey...

...The degree of that involvement was inevitable because the moral code of the generals, in many respects so different from that of the Nazis, was identical in its acceptance of a predatory nationalism...

...A third group deserves special mention...

...He made a "brave" speech at the University of Marburg warning against the excesses of the Nazis...

...His collaboration was used by orthodox Marxist interpreters of Nazism to prove that it was no more than "capitalism in its final extremity...

...His "honesty" was not rigorous enough to force him to tell the Kaiser the truth about the condition of the Army...

...With all these warnings and reservations, let us, nevertheless, tell Wheeler-Bennett's story briefly without underlining any part of it, so that the thoughtful reader may decide whether or not there are relevant analogies...