HITLERISM

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 60, Issue 4231, 15 January 1940, Page 6

HITLERISM

ITS DESPOTISM INDICTED. Since Dr Aurel Kolnai’s book “The War Against the West/’ was published more than a year ago, there has been no survey of Nazi ideology so comprehensive and scathing, so judicial and so carefully documented, as Professor Rader’s “No Compromise: The Conflict of Two Worlds.” “No Compromise,” like Dr Kolnai’s book, is based on a cento of quotations from scores of Nazi authorities, all carefully examined, for Professor Rader is a Professor of Philosophy in the University of Washington. In reviewing a book of nearly 400 pages of profound and learned analyses of the writings of men who seem to be standing on their heads and demonstrating that logically, politically and metaphysically they are the right way up, and that all other peoples are standing wrongly, it is impossible to give more than a broad outline. It is this: That between the doctrine or creed of Fascism and the beliefs of the democracies there can be no compromise. The very title of the book is taken from a sentence in a speech made several years ago by Signor Mussolini, who said, “The struggle between the two worlds of Democracy and Fascism permits no compromise . . Either We or They!” Pro! ‘essor Rader argues that an understanding with Nazi Germany is impossible; that no concessions, large or small, would remove the Fascist menace; and that the ,democracies must end their policies of retreat*, compromise, and appeasement (the book was written before the outbreak of the war, but was not published in London until October 30). Professor Harold Laski, of London University, who wrote a preface after the war had started says that Germany’s actions in deliberately

plunging the world into war is a proof that “its government is wholly antagonistic to ’all the principles upon which men depend for the preservation of the decencies of civilisation.”

The misery that followed the World W ar and the subsequent world depression provided the atmosphere in which German Fascism sprang up and flourished, but the Nazi creed did not originate with Hitler.

It has a long pedigree running back even to ancient Jewish customs and to Plato’s Republic, and traceable in more recent days to Machiavelli and Wagner, to Nietzsche and Treitschke, to Fichte and Hegel, to Pareto and Spengler, to Houston Chamberlain, the English renegade, and to Count Arthur de Gobineau, a French nobleman of the 19th century. Hitlet has borrowed from the theories of men of all ages and from the methods of other dictators, ancient and modern.

The doctrine of State as Power belongs to Hegel; the idolatory of race purity to Fichte and Gobineau; the cult of primitive barbarism to Machiavelli; the contempt of Christian morality to Nietsche; the violent anti-Semitism to Houston Chamberlain, Rosenberg, and other adventurers. The worship of force, is, of course the same old “blood and iron” policy that Bismarck used to crush democracy in Germany more than 70 years ago.

Kaiser Wilhelm, following the policy of Bismarck, tried to divert attention from domestic to external problems by spreading the legend of “encirclement” and by raising the old cry that the Fatherland was in danger. That is what Bismarck did from 1864 until 1870. It was the Hitler policy from 1934 to 1939; and it is now the Nazi cry throughout Germany.

The worship of force has long been characteristic of Prussian policy and Prussian thought; and in the postwar chaos and world depression the German people turned with hope to the Austrian corporal who, like

Moses, said he was ready to lead his people to the promised land. As soon as Hitler became supreme the minds of the German people were moulded by the newspapers, the radio, the publicists, and the teachers. In the schools and colleges, in gymnasiums and universities, in playing fields and factories, in homes and halls, the people were nurtured upon the doctrine that force is the highest form of civilisation; that Germany must impose her culture upon the World or humanity would perish; that the Fuehrer, Herr Hitler, is infallible, and that whatever he says or does is right, and must not be questioned. German Fascism became a new and terrible religion. It was not new in idea, but it was intensely modernised. It was old Prussianism in a new guise, with the people worshipping State, looking upon their leader as one sent from God, and hating both Christianity and democratic liberalism.

Many of the German pastors have preached that the old-time Christianitv must be replaced by the worship of German blood and holy German earth. Boldue von Schirach, the Reich Youth Leader, summed up the Nazi creed by saying, “The service of Germany is the service of God; whoever serves the Fuehrer serves Germany, and whoever serves Germany serves God.” Through the writings of prominent Nazis, including Hitler, Goering, Goebbels, and other leaders, Professor Rader examines almost every phase of German life, showing that modern Germany is saturated with the terrible doctrine of force, with world domination as its ultimate object.

The extracts from Nazi pastors and Nazi professors are a shameful commentary upon so-called enlightenment, but Professor Rader shows that real education in Germany has become a travesty, and that tuition in schools, colleges, and universities, and sermons in churches, must be based on Nazi propaganda.

Professor Rader finishes his terrible indictment of Fascism (Italian.

Japanese, and German, but German in particular) by urging the democracies to meet the menace before it spreads over the whole world. The struggle, he contends, is world-wide. It is Fascism or Democracy; there can be no compromise. Either we or they! He concludes with a remark from President Roosevelt that “the ultimate victory, the victory of to-morrow, is with Democracy, for no people can be left eternally ignorant or eternally enslaved.” “No Compromise” is not an easy book to read, but it is intensely illuminating showing how a great nation by ceaseless propaganda can be made to believe that morality and reason, pity and sympathy, and every form of humanitarian sentiment are contemptible; that such ideas as the love of Christianity and the rights of man should be spurned; that war and violence are ennobling. The documents are named, and extracts given from which such a conclusion is justified.

After all it is merely the hideous despotism of 1914 a little more relentlessly regimented.