The crux of National Socialist ideology and state form was German unity. Hitler promoted whatever contributed to this goal and rejected what did not. A literate man with a profound grasp of history, he fashioned a political philosophy that interpreted Germany’s past as a continuous, progressive struggle for independence and unification. Disharmony among the Germans had cost them freedom and life. The Roman Empire had imposed an immoral foreign influence until the Cheruskan Arminius unified prominent German tribes to force the invaders out. During the 17th Century, a politically discordant Germany became the battleground for the 30 Years' War. More than half the population perished. The subsequent Peace of Westphalia in 1648, engineered by Sweden and France, partitioned Germany into a myriad of insignificant duchies and principalities. The treaty established a parliament at Regensburg for their common representation. “Our diplomacy set the wheels of the Reichstag in motion for the purpose of making any serious government in Germany impossible,” boasted the French historian Jacques Bainville in 1915.122
Austria and Prussia regained diplomatic and military poise during the 18th Century. Due to a lack of connection between the royal hierarchy and the population, neither state could later repulse the invasion by Napoleonic France. Conquered in 1806, only through nationalism did the Prussians again become free. Prussia unified Germany in 1871, and this introduced prosperity and progress. Crass social discrepancies nonetheless persisted. At that time, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche expressed the yearning among his people for a deeper, enduring bond: “There are many fine threads in the German soul, but they are not woven into a single, solid and mighty knot; a sorry spectacle and a solemn peril. This must be remedied, a greater solidarity in the nature and soul of our people created, the rupture between the internal and the external eliminated. In the loftiest sense we must strive for German unity, and strive more passionately than for mere political unification. . . . Create the concept of a nation."123
Hitler grew up in the social milieu that Nietzsche criticized for its class distinctions. World War I, during which Hitler saw combat in an infantry regiment, welded various social factions into an entity. “At the front, the feeling of being destined to belong together, the feeling of a community, was by and large reborn,” Gross wrote in Der Schulungsbrief.124 Hitler and his comrades felt solidarity in the trenches but found it undermined by political discord at home. “The enemy no longer faced the frontline soldier just as an honorable fighting man, but also made trouble behind the front,” a journal for the German armed forces related.125 During the post-war period, the country suffered economic distress, political disharmony and foreign exploitation. Hitler later declared that when the German people “form a unified bloc, they are a power. When they are divided, they are defenseless and impotent."126
By emphasizing German unity, National Socialism followed in the footsteps of the Romans' nemesis Arminius, the Prussian reformers who rose against Napoleon, the statesman Bismarck, and the eminent Nietzsche. The matter of Germany’s moral, social, and political harmony influenced the NSDAP’s stand on virtually every major issue. National Socialism, the journal Der SA. Führer (The SA Officer) wrote, recognized that “the labor question was the cardinal social problem of the 19th and 20th Centuries. ... It confronted liberalism’s materialistic, distorted idea of freedom, which leads to abuse and to the rule of a capitalist minority, with a new freedom; one based on the growth of the individual fellow citizen within the national community according to achievement. Unlike the disfranchisement of labor through liberalism, National Socialism incorporates the worker into German society, elevating him and his accomplishments onto par with the rest of the nation."127
Judging someone’s worth according to performance, as far as Hitler was concerned, superseded questions of ethnic standing within the German community. Though many National Socialists based their world view on scientific research on race, the government under Hitler also relied on education to realize human potential. Goebbels wrote in his diary in June 1936, “the Führer sharply disapproves of the work of all the race committees."128 Hitler based his attitude on the potential negative impact such activities could exercise on national unity.
National Socialism was largely a product of 18th and 19th Century values. Hitler saw how the fall of absolutism released powerful forces slumbering within mankind. But as the creative surge burst traditional bonds and restraints associated with the old order, it gave birth to doctrines that evolved independently of one another and were without historical precedent. Liberalism, the dominant philosophy, shattered convention and institution alike, entering unchartered political waters in the unassailable conviction that individual freedom was the future of humanity. Composed at the dawn of the liberal age, the fable of the sorcerer’s apprentice, who tampered with and unleashed extraordinary powers he was unable to control, proved a prophetic allegory.
The National Socialists believed that the exaltation of the individual in the liberal-democratic sense would “dissolve the healthy social order and lead to ruin."129 They nonetheless sanctioned the free play of forces, opportunity for personal development and free enterprise. The task of their authoritarian government was to promote these practices, simultaneously insuring that the collective interests of the population remain decisive. As the individual advanced in National Socialist Germany, so did the nation. Hitler harnessed yet stimulated the forces of human creativity reanimated by the Enlightenment, giving them a form, purpose, and direction not envisioned by the pioneers of liberalism and democracy.