Georg Lukacs: The German past and its overcoming (1966)

Preface to the West German edition of the second volume of "The Destruction of Reason", 1966 (Von Nietzsche zu Hitler, pp. 7-26).

The German past and its overcoming

This question is gradually but inevitably moving to the center of all important debates. Officially, in the broadest sense of the word, transcending the past (Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung), such a request is rejected, politely or rudely. When authors, for example, wish to go beyond a simple improvement in the manipulation of public opinion, they are dismissed as "old-fashioned", as amateur ignorant. But despite the fact that such protests are usually unable to present clear, well-thought-out excuses, this very movement seems to be developing with a certain irresistible force. Heinrich Boell's "Billiards at Nine and a Half" remained, in essence, an episode that was respectfully ignored. But Rolf Hochhuth's "Representative" had already vigorously broken the wall of silence surrounding responsibility in the problematic sector of Hitler's era and confronted those who live today in the shadow of that responsibility. It is quite understandable that this direct, vehement protest provoked more shock, indignation and resistance than the condensed artistic presentation of "Antigone of Berlin", in which contemporary German literature first reached the level of real life, the last letters of the doomed anti-fascists, and became truly European – in the spirit of Jorge Sèmprun's "The Great Journey". Peter Weiss's evolution from the dramatic skepticism of "Marat de Sade" to the oratorio of "The Auschwitz Trial" also demonstrates a similar spiritual direction, in stark contrast to those writers such as Martin Walser, who consciously or unconsciously diverted, through psychologically and artistically sophisticated "depth," any subjectively present awakening, thus making it acceptable to the system.

As some crucial chapters from my book "The Destruction of Reason," completed in 1952, are now available to the general public, I would like to briefly outline its connection to this belated, but nevertheless emerging, protest movement against the legacy of Germany's Hitlerite past. Of course, the scope of the problem is much more limited in the book itself. I am talking there mainly about world-theoretical frameworks that reveal philosophical irrationalism in 19th-century Germany as an objective preparation for Hitler's era. In this context, the political climax coincides with the nadir of theoretical and humanitarian standards. Indeed, the conquest of hegemony by irrationalism in German philosophy represents an unceasing fall of standards in the sense of genuine philosophy. Of course, this limitation of the problem to philosophical worldview does not mean that it remains in the realm of simple reflection. There is no such thing as an innocent worldview: this is one of the fundamental theses of this book. As much as I know that every real alternative in life is posed by objective social and historical development, I have always been clear that no alternative decision is ever made in which the worldview of those involved remains unaffected. This does not mean that we overestimate the role of philosophical works. The number of those who have actually read Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, or even Heidegger, and who have been directly influenced by them in their actions is extremely small. (Schopenhauer himself did not concede to his ethics any validity for his own way of life.)

Nevertheless, there is a connection here. Only it is much more indirect, mediated. Above all, one does not need to have read a philosopher to be influenced by him ideologically, sometimes even decisively. There is secondary literature, there are articles in magazines and newspapers, radio speeches and much more. In them, the content of many worldviews is disseminated, often diluted or distorted, often admittedly aptly simplified to the essentials. Surely one does not need to have read Nietzsche himself. He does not need to know anything about the Dionysian problem, about the eternal repetition of the same, and yet one can acquire a clear conscience from such mediations in order to behave like a "superman" towards his wife or subordinates. All of this clearly shows that this process of popularizing philosophical worldviews always captures those moments that become important for a socially influential movement at a certain stage of historical evolution. Interpretations, reinterpretations, etc., exhibit a wide spectrum, from proper understanding of the substance to complete distortion. After all, they are based on the real social needs of the time, whose motto is always Molière's "I go where I find it". Precisely for this reason, this choice is rarely completely arbitrary. It is extremely rare for it to remain completely independent of the object. It can, of course, include elements of the periphery as well as those of the center. We are thinking, in particular, of the spontaneous social popularization mentioned above. Systematic reinterpretations, however, can easily turn a philosophy into something completely alien, such as Kant's neo-Kantian interpretation of the thing itself or Marx's Stalinist interpretation.

For these reasons, I have placed the chapter on Nietzsche at the beginning of this volume. For if "The Destruction of Reason" is one of my most controversial writings in Germany today, the chapter on Nietzsche is certainly the main reason for this hostile attitude. Even today, however, I believe that Nietzsche, despite his clever aphorisms, was not a philosopher in the true sense of the word. Of course, one can demonstrate a conceptual connection in his works, as I do in my own presentations. But this does not mean that he has emerged as a philosopher, if we consider Spinoza or Vico, Kant or Hegel as philosophers. A true philosopher is someone who, by analyzing the great contradictions of his time, can proceed to new cosmic connections. Thus, each in his own way, Vico and Hegel discovered the primordial historicity of Being. In Nietzsche, on the other hand, one finds amateurish, hollow constructions that are supposed to be clever, like the eternal repetition of himself. Worse still, one finds at the heart of the system a reactionary, arbitrary negation of tendencies that, since time immemorial, have been and continue to be the main driving forces of human development. Such as the absolute equality of men, which began with the Stoics, with the early Christian equality of all souls before God, which was upgraded in the great French Revolution to the admittedly merely formal equality of citizens before the law, for the continuation of which the Nietzsche era began to fight in depth and breadth. When Nietzsche opposes this course of history, he does so with arguments that, at best, linguistically go beyond the formulations of the average reactionary daily press. Or think of man's attitude towards his own instincts. Ever since we have been in possession of literary writings, we have seen, even in Homer, that humanity is essentially based on the control of instincts. This teaching was so vital to humanity that, even in Kant's time, people even resorted to a transcendental regulator, simply to philosophically secure this rule. Only Spinoza, with the dominance of emotion motivated by logic over merely spontaneous emotions, discovered a purely earthly, human form for this basis of the existence of the human race as a human race. What Nietzsche has to offer for freeing instincts from the tyranny of reason is—including Dionysus vs. Socrates—an intelligently reactionary feiye. In essence, it is no deeper than André Zide's "action gratuite", in which almost no one today would see anything deeper than a grotesque, shocking idea.

It is no accident that no genuine system could be made up of such weightless and fragile elements of thought. Podach is absolutely right when he proves that the "will to power" is a non-existent system. Admittedly, there is the other legend of the great aphorist, the filler of that pursued by La Rosfuco and other important moralists. Here, too, reality reveals a "slight" difference from the legend: when modern (capitalist) selfishness was in its infancy and still very little understood, La Rosfuco, with insightful perceptiveness, recognized its essence and its human contradictions in life. What Nietzsche adds in itself is something that has long since become insignificant in bourgeois practice: "I want to create a pure consciousness of selfishness." A deeper, inner necessity for the form of excommunication no longer exists in Nietzsche. At best, it is an indicative manifestation of this deliberate opposition to simple professorial philosophy, which, inaugurated by Schopenhauer in a systematic manner, became increasingly prevalent after 1848. It represents the contrast between the boring and the fragmentary lack of genuine depth; leads, through the Germans of Langbehn and Lagarde, to the "Workers" of Moeller van den Broek or Ernst Juenger.

All this did not become an obstacle, but rather the vehicle for Nietzsche's fame and influence. Indeed, it mobilized decadent tendencies, initially among the cultural elite, for reactionary activity. To do this, he had to recognize himself as one of them: "In addition to the fact that I am decadent, I am also the opposite of decadence." And indeed, the principle of Nietzsche's universal influence lies in the fact that his influence led the left-democratic movement in reactionary directions after the abolition of Bismarck's Anti-Socialist Law. Later, this effect became more and more powerful. Its direct vehicle was mainly his cultural criticism. Here, one can find some really interesting things in his work. Alongside the final shallow wittisms such as "Schiller or Zekingen's Moral Trumpet" or "Zola: or the Joy of the Dirt", etc., there are also clever thoughts, for example, about the inner coordination of Wagner's heroes and heroines in the world of Flaubert's "Madame Beauvir". The intellectual incorporation of decadent German tendencies into the general European movement is undoubtedly a step forward in the development of Germany's reactionary ideology: a move beyond provincialism that Nietzsche criticized the philistine university professors of his time and extended to a critique of Bismarck from the right. This rearmament of reactionary ideology is also evident in the way it breaks the old alliance between political reaction and Christianity. He appears as the Antichrist and proclaims a "second Enlightenment". Suffice it to add briefly that while the early Enlightenment—including Voltaire, whom Nietzsche claimed as his forerunner—attacked Christianity as a prop for the feudal remnants, the great sin of Christianity according to the Second Enlightenment lies in being the ancestor and spiritual anchor of slave discontent, the forerunner of democracy and socialism. We don't need to waste a word on the uncertainty of this "demonic" construction.

Nietzsche also exhibits the same spiritual qualities in the positive justice of the second Enlightenment: the old was a process of equality in the service of the "democratic horde," while the new was aimed at "showing the dominant natures the way" by making "everything permissible" to them. Just as the real contrast might have been seen earlier in the comparison with La Rosfouco, so here, too, when we compare Nietzsche with his contemporary, Dostoevsky, for whom "everything is allowed" also became a central theme. However, in Dostoevsky, whose deep inner problems cannot be examined here, the morality based on it is a weighty social event, whose inner conflicts and despair he portrays in a painful way in the tragedies of Raskolnikov, Stavrogin and Ivan Karamazov. For Nietzsche, on the other hand, it is a supposed—political-moral—way out of the inertia of the reactionary, decadent new elite. Is it a slander against Nietzsche to say that Hitler and Himmler, Goebbels and Goering objectively found a spiritual and moral ally for their actions in Nietzsche's "everything is allowed"?

So far for Nietzsche. It seems superfluous to comment further on my book. What matters is not so much the individual thinkers as the German fate itself. Here, too, the question can logically be posed as follows: what significance does Hitler's era have in German development? Is it an unfortunate episode in the midst of an essentially normal national development? Or is it the final, the most acute, paradoxical consequence of a socially and historically abnormal development? I know that, in general, the first question is answered in the affirmative, although not in the clear form proposed here. Here, I would like to talk about the latter.

This immediately raises the question: where does Germany's course begin to deviate from social and historical normality? Wherever possible, I rely mainly on non-socialist, not far-left martyrs. Alexander von Humboldt believed that Germany had lost its way during the Peasants' War. There is profound truth in this. For the normal course of modern bourgeois development presupposes a victory over the feudal ways of life, and at the same time, it gives national unity, which also emerges in this process, a real basis for the state unity of the nation. This has happened, despite all the differences, in France and England. During the Peasants' War, there was also a longing for national unity—directed against disintegrating feudalism—which found expression in Wendel Hipler's draft constitution (the Twelve Articles). The victory of the princes over the peasants consolidated the national divisions and fragmentation of the small states. What took place in France, for example, as the dissolution of feudalism, took a form of caricature in Germany: on the one hand, the victorious small hegemonies created caricatures of absolute monarchy, mainly by not dismantling or at least not transforming the disintegrating feudalism, but essentially preserving it; On the other hand, this extremely miserable transition to absolute monarchy was not a vehicle, but an obstacle to national unity. When the young Hegel, in his work "The Constitution of Germany," speaks of the foreign powers that used their imperial power to destroy national unity, he lists, along with Denmark, Sweden and England, "primarily Prussia."

This observation already demonstrates the irregular connection between the political situation and culture in Germany. For the French, their civilization from the "Golden Age" of Louis XIV to the Enlightenment, for England from Shakespeare to Walter Scott, is a direct, sufficient expression of the emergence and development of the national spirit on the basis of the consolidation and renewal of state unity. The great German civilization from Lessing to Heine is a paradoxically contrasting development: it turns against the past and the present, fighting for a utopian future whose contours can only become visible very gradually and very dimly. No wonder that when the French Revolution and Napoleon put the issue of national unity on the agenda for the first time since the Peasants' War – admittedly from the outside, not from the inside – even the greatest personalities could only offer timid, utopian, impossible answers: Goethe and Hegel expected a solution "from the great teacher of constitutional law in Paris," Sarnhorst and Gnaizenau dreamed of an inner spiritual renewal of Prussia.

Utopias arise where the material basis for transformation is still absent. This emerged in the post-Napoleonic era as the Prussian Customs Union. It is worth noting that its borders coincide exactly with those that emerged from Prussia's victorious war against Austria in 1866. But here, too, the opposition to the West is clearly visible. The economic and political unity of France emerged at the same time, through internal historical acts. The economic basis of German unification, on the other hand, arose, so to speak, on the backs of those who carried it out unwillingly. This observation is not "Marxist economism." Heinrich von Treitschke describes the creation of the Customs Union as something that happened "largely against the will of the Prussian crown itself" and, as he does not understand anything about the connection between economics and politics, he adds: "Here one sees the inner force of nature in action." It also shows that Friedrich Wilhelm IV was pro-Austrian, that the middle states "would have destroyed Prussia with heartfelt joy, but no one dared to dissolve the Customs Union. They could no longer be freed from this bond." It is precisely because Treitschke understood this process as little as those involved — "it was the nature of things that ultimately led to it," he says — that makes him an undeniably unfounded witness to this issue. The unification of Germany had become an economic necessity by the middle of the 19th century.

But it depended largely on how it was implemented politically. As early as 1848, the German people were faced with the alternative: unity through freedom or "unity before freedom". The defeat of democracy in the revolution answered this question in the spirit of the second formula, namely, by repeatedly postponing the realization of freedom until the Second Coming. The young Marx had already foreseen such a turn in German history. She wrote of one of its possible prospects: "Germany will therefore one morning find itself at the level of European decline before it even reaches the level of European emancipation." This is exactly what Bismarck achieved at the end of the Franco-German War: an economically and politically united Germany, which could therefore very quickly begin the course of capitalist rise towards imperialism; a Germany which, in a genuine Bonapartian way, introduced universal suffrage, but whose parliament nevertheless had no real power, whose policy continued to be guided by the Hohenzollerns and the Junckers, who had become political and military bureaucrats. After 1848, there was still a debate on another important question: the absorption of Prussia by Germany or the assimilation of Germany? It is clear what answer this question received in German history.

Thus, the foundations of the new Germany were laid. Bismarck had implemented the state superstructure of the Customs Union with great diplomatic skill. And because this was a historically important act, German historians remember him for a long time as a great politician. However, he had nothing less than a clear and precise view of the work he had created. He had a vague sense that the emergence of a German great power was fraught with dangers. He didn't really have a clear idea of the reasons for these risks. He assumed that Germany was "saturated", that is, peaceful, that it was even the guardian of the European balance of power in peace. Thus, he tried to maintain the status quo of 1871 at all costs, and in every suggestion of regroupment, he had his famous "cauchemar des coalitions" (balance of alliances). Of course, he did not know that his economic measures served the development of German imperialism and not the consolidation of a "saturated" Germany. The few steps that differed from his general practice—the Anti-Socialist Law, the Kulturkampf against the Catholics—were intended to promote the consolidation of the Prussianization of Germany, but this could not be accomplished to the extent of his intentions.

Bismarck's fall was therefore a historical necessity: insatiable, Prussian Germany, now seeking "its place in the sun," pushed him aside through the often symbolic figure of the megalomaniac, mediocre boastful Wilhelm II. For a long time, it was part of the general pattern of German historiography to simply emphasize the contrast between these two main actors. This undoubtedly exists psychologically, also as a political and human weight of personality. Nevertheless, it seems useful here to emphasize an essential, especially German characteristic that they both share: the unreality of the basic strategic concept. This is particularly important because it is precisely a very rarely recognised product of German development. The philistine pettiness in a fragmented Germany made large-scale and at the same time reality-based political projects impossible. Such plans arise only from the fateful situations of a great people who write world history by answering their own vital questions about themselves. With the establishment of the Empire, the German people found themselves in a situation like this: how the rapidly growing German people, now a state, would be integrated into the world's power structure. Bismarck's response to a saturated Germany was—on the eve of the transition to imperialism—economically completely unrealistic. He differs, however, from his successors in that he sought to implement his unrealistic strategy with carefully thought-out tactical moves.

Behind all the improvisations of Wilhelm II was an unrealistic conception: that of Germany as a leading world power. It is so unrealistic that it only took conscious form during the apparent transition to its realization during the First World War. However, if Wilhelm II's foreign policy is to be evaluated as a single political (and not psychopathological) entity, we must start from such systems of global domination. For a normal imperialist development of Germany it would require careful maneuvering between the main conflicting interests of the time (England-Russia, Russia-Austria, England-France, etc.), the achievement of intermediate goals along the course of a "do ut des". Without going into detail, it must be mentioned that the policy of Wilhelm II succeeded - something that no one would have imagined possible a little earlier - in temporarily eliminating all these conflicts and bringing about the subsequent Entente. With a few exceptions, this general line becomes invisible in German historiography. The extremely trivial truth that England, France and Russia also had imperialist, and ultimately warlike, goals is repeatedly pointed out. However, this is not the case in this case, but rather in the imperialist policy pursued by Wilhelm's Germany in such an imperialist environment. If, for example, England was seriously seeking to reach a naval agreement with Germany, this was neither a pacifist love of peace nor a diabolical ploy, but simply an attempt to turn its dangerous competitor, Germany, into an inferior partner. The price, of course, would be, in addition to renouncing naval rivalry and colonial reparations, competition with Russia. Thus, Germany had the possibility of a choice in the midst of the secular Asian conflict between England and Russia. However, Wilhelm's policy – intentionally or out of strategic blindness – led to the Britain-Russia alliance.

A detailed analysis goes beyond the bounds here; this one example will suffice. It simply demonstrates that German policy, with fantastic shortsightedness, provoked a life-and-death struggle for world domination or destruction. Given the German conditions prevailing at the time, this is, of course, difficult to prove from the documents in the programmatic statements. The program, after all, was drawn up unofficially by amateur Pan-Germanists; only during the war did it become apparent how decisive this influence was, especially in the military bureaucracy. (Wilhelm II's friendship with Houston Stuart Chamberlain and his admiration for his racial theory show that this influence was already at work before the war.) The unique nature of German imperialist policy - in contrast to other imperialisms - is thus more apparent than ever: there is a large military apparatus that functions perfectly in all technical matters, while the political bureaucracy is at a somewhat lower level. However, all the tactics that were sought to be achieved by this organization served a completely unrealistic strategy. In Bismarck's case, it may have been simply an error in assessing Germany's internal and external strategic situation. In Wilhelm II, the error developed into a seemingly self-confident and authoritarian, but objectively unfounded, irrationality. And this irrationality did not arise by chance. has its roots only psychologically in the person of Wilhelm II. It is an interesting coincidence that at the time of a previous turning point in Germany's fortunes, namely 1848, Friedrich Wilhelm IV was ideologically very similar.

The roots of this irrationality must be sought in Germany's past, in the backward and reactionary national construction. In the Western democracies, there has been a gradual transition of the great national goals to imperialist world politics. They had similar social foundations and were increasingly subject to the control of public opinion. Therefore, there was very rarely, and never in principle, a qualitative gap between political-military strategy and tactics. Since Russia, though socially backward, maintained its national-state unification into a centralized absolute monarchy, it represents an intermediate stage between Germany and the Western powers. In political strategy, it is closer to the former than to the latter. For centuries, however, Germany considered national unity and national strength a utopian dream, like the myth of Kyfhauser, in uncompromising contrast to petty, narrow-minded, bureaucratically elaborate political maneuvers. This historical tradition is already expressed in Bismarck's strategic blindness after 1871. Its devastating consequences came to light explosively under the regime of Wilhelm II. And it is certainly no coincidence that the vast majority of the German intelligentsia enthusiastically embraced this strategic irrationality at the outbreak of the war. They opposed the "ideas" of 1914 to those of 1789.

Max Weber was one of the few Germans who had even an idea of this problem. To the democratic West, Germany seemed simply strange and unpredictable. In close circles, Max Weber often said: "The national misfortune of Germany is that no Hohenzollern has ever been beheaded." And indeed, the execution of Charles I in 1649 in England and Louis XVI in 1793 in France were both a turning point in the development of democratic leadership and control of the foreign and domestic policy of England and France. Admittedly, Weber, despite his intelligence, does not have the inner capacity to lead his own thoughts to their conclusions. In him, too, the German utopian connotation is present in its entirety, despite the realism of his individual observations and conclusions. He was an astute liberal imperialist. Therefore, he clearly saw and assessed with insight the irrational utopianism of German foreign policy and, later, that of war. He clearly saw the superiority of Anglo-French diplomacy over German diplomacy. He also saw how German development necessarily led to the "personal regime" of Wilhelm II and, as a result of the weakness of parliament, to the inability to emerge a politically capable ruling class and to the domination of a politically incompetent, though technically smoothly, bureaucracy. He inherited this latter insight from Bismarck. Bismarck occasionally observed that the Prussian army could train excellent officers, up to the level of colonel. But the strategically important German generals - Sarnhorst, Gnaizenau, Moltke - were never products of Prussian military training (the first two had studied at the military academies of Hanover and Saxony, the third was Danish in origin and had entered the Prussian army already an officer from Schleswig-Holstein). The First World War confirmed this correct pessimistic prognosis in every respect. Since Max Weber was merely a liberal imperialist, not a radical democrat, his often correct critique of Kaiser Wilhelm II's Germany could only remain an ineffective, subjective utopia. Of course, there was one major left-wing party in Germany at the time, even denounced by its opponents as revolutionary: the Social Democratic Party. He emerged victorious from the struggle against Bismarck's Anti-Socialist Laws and showed a steady increase in support from election to election. In these matters, however, he remained internally blind and therefore externally powerless. Not because its genuine counter-program failed because of the superior power of the Prussian Reich, but because it was incapable of presenting a concrete and real alternative to the existing order. Immediately after the party's victory in the struggle against the Anti-Socialist Law, Friedrich Engels made this accusation against him in his Critique of the Erfurt Programme (1891). He assumed that the Imperial Constitution, as far as the political rights of the people were concerned, was "a pure imitation of the Prussian Constitution of 1850," "in which the government holds all real power." It is worth noting that Engels does not simply present socialism as an alternative—something that is often encountered among the Social Democrats of the time of Wilhelm II — but rather sees its realization as impossible without a radically democratic renewal of Germany, without the ruthless elimination of all remnants of the feudal-authoritarian, microstate past. He explicitly emphasizes the possibility that countries such as England or France will become socialist. At the same time, he scoffs at the German Social Democrats' illusion of a "fresh, pious, cheerful, and free (frisch, fromm, froelich, frei, as he says very poetically) development of the old dirt in socialist society." In this way, it took into account the legal possibilities of the situation at that time, did not demand an open commitment to a democratic democracy, but rather was content with the programmatic goal of "concentrating all political power in the hands of the people's representatives" and the fact that Prussia would cease to exist. Everyone knows: this appeal has never had consequences. At most, Franz Mehring's rather isolated journalistic activity can be seen as an attempt to create a radically democratic alternative to the bureaucratically Prussian Reich.

However, this democratic alternative did not materialize even after the defeat of 1918. Of course, a democracy emerged (without democrats) and of course – purely formally – all power was in the hands of the elected bodies. In fact, the dominance of the political and military bureaucracy remained virtually unshaken. Even the agrarian reform in the territory of the Prussian Junckers was out of the question. This inherent German weakness of the socialist left continued in Weimar. The communist slogan of a German Soviet Republic, after a brief swing by a minority, strengthened opportunist tendencies within the Social Democrats. This does not simply mean rejecting a socialist revolution, but above all avoiding any fundamental democratic reform. Not even the ever-growing threat of National Socialism could change this adaptation to a merely formal, superficially altered old Germany. There were, of course, left-wing tendencies within the Social Democrats. While their efforts for a democratic united front against Hitler were largely thwarted by their own leadership's unconditional willingness to compromise, Stalin's slogan of social democracy as the "twin brother" of fascism ultimately served to prop up right-wing opportunism. The numerically strongest workers' movement in the capitalist world was thus unable to achieve anything, not even in the struggle to defend Weimar democracy. Papen had already managed to throw out the left-wing Prussian government like a poor servant, and a democratic left determined to fight Hitler was also missing.

Since, to use Weber's words, no Hohenzollern dynasty was beheaded in Weimar, even in the metaphorical sense, the general line of development, the fundamental structure of German policy, could not be changed. Weber himself was among the few to draw realistic conclusions from the defeat: "Of course, the self-discipline of honesty dictates that we say to ourselves: Germany's role in world politics is over." This was true in 1918 and could later become a solid basis for the future. Gradually, however, economic shifts began to appear. The original peace terms were designed to make a second 1914 on the German side impossible. But Russia had become a Soviet republic, and the idea of using a legally or illegally rearmed Germany against the Soviets seemed particularly tempting to some Western politicians. Thus, the remnants of the military apparatus, saved thanks to the truncated Weimar-style democratization of Germany described above, and their accomplices (think of the black Reichswehr and the trial of Karl von Ositsky), once again gained room for manoeuvre. The wing of restoration was strengthened, and with it the desire for a revision of the peace treaties. All that mattered was who would be the "strongman" who would lead Germany back on the provenly successful path of the struggle for world domination. Because, as a growing number of reactionaries and not only Germans said and believed, Germany had in fact remained undefeated in the war. Only "the backstabbing (from the left) gave victory to the Entente".

All this, of course, does not constitute a realistic, scientifically correct prehistory of Hitler's seizure of power, which – and this is a symptom of German development – took place in perfectly legitimate forms. This presentation simply aims to emphasize the element of continuity in German history, despite the many abrupt twists and turns on the surface. And it should be noted here only briefly that the leaders of the right-wing, restorative German bourgeoisie, who legitimately helped Hitler to take power in the form of a coalition, had a strategy as irrational and utopian as that of Wilhelm II. What was initially a hesitant approach in this case, is now blossoming into full maturity. It is, as Hegel occasionally says: when a historical personality is about to perish, then and only then do all his characteristics tend to appear in their fullest development. Thus, the mixture of technical precision in all matters of tactical implementation, and complete, unbridled strategic irrationality in its objectives. Germany's world domination is revealed without any disguise: the "inferior" people can know once and for all what their fate will be if the German "superhumans" really possess unlimited power. We often talk about Hitler's military amateurism. This is true. But Ludendorff and his predecessors were undoubtedly well-trained specialists, and yet their operations, from the invasion of Belgium to Verdun and from Brest-Litovsk to the final Western offensive, were not as much a mockery of Clausewitz's teachings as Hitler's so-called amateur plans? Of course, the scale has become even more enormous—therefore, perhaps humanity can hope that this was really the final outbreak, in which "the world will be healed by the German spirit." I know that the very word "hope" is perceived as an insult by many in Germany today. Hasn't Nazism become an outdated past? Isn't Germany a free and peaceful democracy? Didn't the participants in the July 20, 1944 movement prove that the best Germans had already severed their relations with Hitler's regime? Not by chance, I will answer the last question first. Reading Gerhart Ritter's detailed biography of Carl Goerdeler, for example, the truly impartial reader will hesitate in his suggestions to Western powers. Germany, said the man who would replace Hitler in the leadership of the Reich if the movement succeeded, would have to keep Austria, the Sudetenland. Occasionally, South Tyrol even claims. Is this a real break with Hitler? Wasn't Austria's "Anslus" a typical act of violence by the Hitler regime? Wasn't the Munich Treaty and what followed for Czechoslovakia a decisive step towards Hitler's world domination? Can one trust that the people who wanted to continue Hitler's legacy in these matters would ever really break with the German past, including Hitler? Is it possible to reject Hitler and embrace such crucial elements of his policy of conquest?

Everyone knows: the present Federal Republic is a democracy that has been manipulated according to the times, just like the modern Western countries. Perhaps some will protest, citing the fact that they see such a democracy not in Germany, but only in de Gaulle's France. On the one hand, however, I was not talking about democracy in general, but rather about manipulated democracy, and on the other hand, every German communist would be happy if he could enjoy in his homeland those democratic freedoms that were taken for granted under de Gaulle - where the Communist Party and its unions are powerful factors, while in Germany they are outlawed. Therefore, no reasonable person should simply see the Federal Republic as Hitler's successor. But that is not the subject of my current question. Goerdeler, too, was an opponent of Hitler and was even executed by him - and yet: the demand for Austria, the Sudetenland, is nothing more than an attempt to take over Hitler's legacy. The profound ambiguity and ambiguity of the movement of July 20, 1944 lies precisely in the fact that its representatives wanted to remove Hitler, while preserving crucial elements of his legacy. Certainly, at least during the time of the conspiracy, they were direct political opponents of Hitler, but equally certainly they were, by nature, political disciples of that German development that began long before Hitler, but which led to Hitler not by chance. They wanted to remove him, but without breaking with the - apparently variable - decisive categories of specifically German imperialism.

But has this rupture really occurred today, almost a quarter of a century later? It should be noted: the ideological rupture also with Goerdeler, with everything connected with the past of Germany after 1848, not only with the individual, concrete manifestations of Hitlerism itself. For only then do we return to our original question. The collective responsibility of a nation for a period of its development is something so abstract and intangible that it borders on the absurd. And yet, a period like the Hitler era can be considered rejected and consolidated in one's memory only if the spiritual and moral attitude that filled it, gave it movement, direction and form, has been radically overcome. Only then is it possible for others - for other peoples - to trust a reversal, to experience the past as truly past. And only at this level does our question - which today is emerging with increasing urgency at one pole and is being rejected with increasing superiority at the other pole - begin to take on real meaning. Consider a current issue such as Germany's share and role in NATO's nuclear force. The German side repeatedly emphasizes that there should be no discrimination against the Federal Republic in this respect. We do not even want to mention the position of the Soviet Union, although its people, who experienced German methods of occupation firsthand in two world wars, have a certain right to generalize from their experiences. But even the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, which no one would call overly radical, occasionally writes that the White House is just as worried about a German seizure of nuclear weapons as it is about the enemy. De Gaulle repeatedly expresses his concern that Germany's right to possess nuclear weapons could involve his homeland in conflicts that it does not want in any way. And the atmosphere in England is very similar. Behind this, undoubtedly, lies a general and deep distrust, a discrimination: the people fear that in this case, the Federal Republic could drag its allies into a new world war that they do not want. If the diplomatically coded words have any meaning, the NATO partners fear a new 1914 or 1939 on the part of the Federal Republic if it has the freedom of initiative in the field of nuclear war.

This problem did not arise with such acuteness immediately after the end of the war. At the time, it was considered the central concern of all world politics to prevent such a recurrence. Moreover, Germany at the time seemed to have no physical means to pose such a threat. It was only when John Foster Dulles (and the irony of history is that this now bigwig of American imperialism was the same man who had drafted the disgraceful Treaty of Versailles at the expense of Germany in 1919) that a decade ago inaugurated the policy of the Cold War, which included as a strategic goal the push of the Soviet Union back to its pre-war borders, when Germany began to recover economically, Adenauer's perspective emerged: to revive German imperialism as a staunch ally of the United States within this framework. This dream is over. The nuclear impasse has imposed a new U.S. foreign policy, one of the prerequisites of which – de facto, albeit implicit – is the European status quo. Thus, Adenauer's foreign policy has lost the certainty of its direction. The equally implicit strategic plan that a conflict between the U.S. and the Soviet Union would lead to a revision of peace agreements is increasingly losing its foundations, hovering more and more in the air. The preparations for this, the observance of the Munich resolutions, the non-recognition of the new borders, etc., only serve to present the Federal Republic as a possible source of unrest in Europe. Of course, no one believes that Germany will provoke war tomorrow. But no one feels certain that it will not seize the first opportunity that seems even in the least favorable to its leaders, and - after the experience of two world wars - no one has confidence that a German politician can really assess a critical situation soberly and resist the temptation of revenge. Consider, too, that the same English and Americans who are terrified by the German prospect of acquiring nuclear weapons feel nothing of the sort about De Gaulle's actually existing "force de frappe" (the nuclear "strike force"). Their fight against it has completely different motives.

That brings us back to the issue of discrimination. If Hitler's era had been merely an unfortunate episode in German development, if Germany had ever decisively transcended its past, the world atmosphere would have been completely different. The second question does not require a detailed explanation. Of course, there are trials and verdicts against Nazi criminals. As for how, I will again mention a witness who is not suspected of left-wing radicalism. On the occasion of the debate on the statute of limitations for Nazi crimes, "Der Monat" published a letter that stated: "The criminals who were tried received sentences that would have been more appropriate for a violator of the Traffic Code under the influence of alcohol, if they had not been completely acquitted for not having used an axe, rope, firearm or torture device themselves. The prosecutor who traveled to the East to examine the material there, at the last minute turns out to be an old comrade of the (Nazi) party and a member of the SA. And the minister who ran the judicial system of the Third Reich (Hans Globke) so extraordinarily efficiently, consumes a very high pension with the help of German jurisprudence." Anyone who knows the fate of the Nazi legislator Globke on the one hand and the anti-fascist militant Ernst Nikis on the other hand in the West German state can easily form an opinion on this question.

But this is still only a symptom of the fact that broad and influential circles consider "reconstruction-minded" Nazis to be more credible citizens than the truly determined and self-sacrificing anti-fascists. The real question, to which our discussion always returns, is: was the Hitler era really just an episode that could be eliminated in isolation?Previous historical allusions have already demonstrated my opinion on this. Now I would like to quote a literary witness. In his cycle of novels about World War I, Arnold Zweig gave an encyclopedically varied description of German society. In these writings the reader already finds concentration camps for the populations of Lithuania and Belgium, which can safely be considered worthy forerunners of Hitler. One gets vivid images of how both the subjugated and the allies loathe the dominant German race. One sees—and this is what must come to light above all—how precisely such conditions turn subordinate petty bureaucrats into ruthless murderers, cowardly executioners, and those who have not been initiated into German history are astonished at how many common characteristics they reveal with the greater and lesser Eichmanns. In Zweig's novel, Lieutenant Kreusing, whose brother was murdered by such methods, says to a military priest: "Have you not discovered, after two years of engagement, that excessive power is bad for many people? And that the average, honest person needs moderate pressure to keep his composure? The dominance of the warrior caste places these people in a very delicate atmosphere, and the extremes overflow... An itinerant wine merchant or a tax collector with some cunning cunning then performs great deeds like King David without a sting of conscience, only he quickly hides behind the backs of strangers when he feels the avenger's fist on his neck." Many have tried to understand the psychology or sociology of the Auschwitz murderers. The true foundations can only be found in history if one is able to listen to the basic motifs of Hitlerism, which are sometimes condensed into an introduction, from the sounds of the front, rear, and hinterland to the War of 1914-18.

Now, if our ears are sharpened enough for this historical system of tones, we can perceive, in a wide variety of areas, both this continuity of German history and its contradictions with equally bourgeois, equally imperialist societies. I recall once again Max Weber's sigh of relief at the headless Hohenzollerns, and I ask the reader, in the age of security, to compare the Dreyfus case with the Zambern case or, to recall the present, to examine the political fate of the English minister Profumo and the West German Franz Josef Strauss. Both have publicly and proven lies about politically important issues. But while Profumo has irrevocably disappeared, Strauss is still a strong party leader and maybe tomorrow – who knows? - Minister again.

Of course, all these examples are the so-called isolated cases, and for each of them, a historian can be found who will explain it pragmatically "scientifically" in such detail that it loses all coincidental meaning. Thoughts like mine are defenseless against this. They are not addressed to those who are consciously blind, but rather to those in whom at least a vague sense of concern about Germany's Hitler past operates. They must awaken to a historical awareness, to the awareness that Hitler was not a single, random episode in German history after 1848, that a real and therefore effective confrontation with Hitler's era, a genuine reconciliation with the German past, is only possible if one understands that at least the alternatives of 1848 were answered wrongly, that Germany has since grown spiritually—sometimes better, sometimes worse—politically and morally in a period of consequences, to use Churchill's witty expression. Of course, it is impossible today to simply go back to 1848 and realize the goals of that time directly and unchanged. In 120 years, the whole world has changed radically, and the continuity of problems and tasks therefore implies equality and diversity at the same time. But without acknowledging the error as such, without seeing the substantial, especially political and moral, superiority of the otherwise similar peoples economically and socially, the Germans will continue to perceive Hitler as a mere episode in their history and therefore will never really surpass him.

There is little people can expect from official politics today. An organized democratic left does not exist and probably will not exist for a long time. The already extremely timid attempts of social democracy to propose alternatives for specific moments in Germany's course were completely halted by the Godesberg Program. Today's social democracy simply presents the alternative of a better CDU, i.e. a party that represents the interests of German capitalism as a whole and does not make concessions to the tendencies of individual groups to exert pressure as obediently as the CDU. I repeat here again that the Stalin era made it much easier for the right-wing leadership to follow this direction. If, as a result of Stalin's policies, the objectively perfectly possible attempt to turn the GDR into a democratic Piedmont for all of Germany was not necessarily doomed to failure, the proposals for democratic alternatives might also have a different physiognomy within German social democracy. But the manipulation of normal daily life does not in any way mean a simple agreement with it among the masses. Quite the opposite. Sudden outbursts of public opinion, such as in the Spiegel case, demonstrate how powerful latent contradictions are. However, reform efforts lack a center, organization, and direct authority. This means that the role and influence of ideologues, especially thoughtful writers, is constantly increasing. It was no accident that I spoke of Boell, Hochhuth and Peter Weiss at the beginning of these reflections. They are not the only ones, and it is very likely that we are facing a wave of such literature that seeks revival. That's a good thing. This is the best, democratic tradition of literature. In France, we find an almost unbroken line, from Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau, through Zola and Anatole François in the Dreyfus affair, to Jean-Paul Sartre at the time of the Algerian War of Liberation. This phenomenon was not foreign to Germany even before 1848. Although social conditions guaranteed literature a much narrower scope, there were still Lessing and Forster, Buchner and Boerne, Heine and the young Marx. Even in Hitler's time, there was an exile literature that pointed to these connections: Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Bertolt Brecht, Arnold Zweig, and many others. Admittedly, exile under Hitler today is widely isolated. (Think of the accusations against the very moderate, very "political" Willi Brandt at election time.) Internal migration remains even more respected. This, of course, does not apply to the real oppositionists, Nikis and Nimeler, but rather to those who, like Heidegger or Karl Schmitt – according to their later statements – participated in Hitlerism only in a Kirkegorian incognito. They thought of Helderlin when they mobilized their listeners at a demonstration for Hitler. They were the interpreters of Hobbes when they justified all internal and external violations of the law by Hitler in "scientific and legal" terms, etc., etc.

Here, too, we should remember the initial observations: there is no such thing as an innocent worldview. Hegel adopted a purely philosophical stance against the aristocratic epistemology of Schelling's "intellectual intuition," and Goethe repeatedly emphasized: "Even the lowest human being can be complete." Those who consider this attitude obsolete and seek and find in Nietzsche the ideological foundations for the "anything allowed" of superhumans (again, including Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels and Goering), those who reject any mass resistance to it as discontent from a "deep psychological" point of view, are blocking the way for themselves and others to overcome the wrong path that the German people have followed for so long. No one can at present deny this possibility in literature (the study of society and history, including philosophy). At most, if she avoids the big questions in order to focus on a reduced content, made shallow by "deepening", on simply absurdly shocking results, if she wants to remain respected by such "remaining artistic" in manipulated conformism.

The author of this work does not feel the need to apologize to his readers for the severity of his judgment, which he, as a Hungarian, dares to make. Almost sixty years ago, I wrote my first essay on Novalis, and since then, German philosophy, German literature, and German destiny have always been the focus of my writing. The book from which the chapters published here come, both in its entirety and in its details, also aims to serve such an awakening of the genuine German spirit. The pleasure of being able to present at least important parts of it to a wider readership prompted me to preface these reflections with an attempt at a historical-philosophical quintessence of the problems of German life.

Budapest, January 1966.