The National-Social Revolution in Germany

THE NATIONAL-SOCIAL REVOLUTION IN GERMANY R. FLENLEY )\ DOLF HITLER, the leader of the N.S.D.A.P. fi (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei) was appointed chancellor of Germany on January 30, I 933, and has now been in office for over ·half a year. In the middle of July he declared that the Nazi revolution, which his entry into office inaugurated, was over. The time seems suitable, therefore, for an attempt at a survey of the revolution, with the proviso that, official declaration notwithstanding, the revolution is no more closed than that of France was when Napoleon, after his coup d'etat in 1799, made a similar declaration. And, in any case, closed or ·not, it is too early to judge or generalize about the Nazi revolution, as the recollections of our early judgments about the Fascist revolution in Italy should remind us. All we can do is to observe its course and examine its nature as far as its actions and words allow. THE BACKGROUND: FACT AND LEGEND The Nazi or Hitler revolution grew out of the war, the·collapse of Germany in 1918, and the hardships, discontents , and disorders of the years that followed. It is impossible to recount here the history of Germany from the revolution of November, 1918, to that of 1933, but certain aspects of this history require mention in explanation of the Nazi triumph. The defeat in the war, the abdication and flight of emperor and princes, the failure and bankruptcy of the military dictatorship of Ludendorff and Hindenburg, left, as in France in I 871, a ((vacancy of power." Out of this arose, with remark17 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY able ease and speed, the Weimar Republic, its constitution largely the work of Hugo Preuss, a Jewish radical lawyer. At one bound Germany passed from a federation of largely monarchist states under the Hohenzollern emperors, s~pported by the army, the. landed aristocracy, the bureaucracy, and large-scale industry, to a more unified (though still federal) republic of extremely democratic design under an elected president. Everyone of both sexes over the age -of twenty was given the franchise; the Reichstag was to be ·the supreme expression of the will of the people. The revolution w~s to be social as well as political, and the old social inequalities were to go: titles were abolished; henceforth all German citizens were to be equal in rank and status. Germany leapt into the van of western democracy under the leadership of the Social Democratic party, resting primarily on the proletariat of the towns and the trade unions, though the Social Democrat soon had to share power (and so responsibility) with the Catholic Centre party. But it proved-easier to draft such a constitution than to educate the German people to Jive by it, or to provide the necessary leadership for such a time. The new system made too violent a breach with the old. The grant of the vote at the age of twenty was probably unwise . The system of election encouraged the multiplication of parties and groups, and__ minimized the personal connection between the voter and the Reichstag. There the old feuds and hatreds which had weakened the Reichstag before .1914> reappeared in fu~l force, strengthened by the passions and miseries of the time. The new system> indeed, never had a fair chance. It inevitably became identified with both the political and economic hardships resulting from the unprecedented strain of 18 REVOLUTION IN GERMANY the period of the war, and with the humiliation and losses expressed in the Armistice, the military occupation of the Rhine territory, and the Versailles Treaty. Into the terms or the defects of the peace settlement we cannot here enter. That it went too far and was too hard on Germany, may be freely admitted, though considering the circumstances it was less bad than is often now asserted. But it was the defeat, as much as the treaty, which -Germany could not get over. No treaty based on defeat would have been acceptable, and out of the see1ning incredibili.ty of the defeat grew up, zealously fostered by interested parties, the legend that Germany in 1918 had been "stabbed...