Free To Be Nazis

Broadly, Peter Fritzsche's argument in Germans Into Nazis is that Hitler's regime was brought about by a process of democratization. The August Days of 1914 and the revolution in 1918 are presented as the key turning points before 1933. The evidence is solid, but this does not make Fritzsche's argument any less counter-intuitive. Nazis epitomize fascism, and fascism is associated with a power seizure from above. Germans Into Nazis makes what turns out to be a bold claim, as the title all but suggests- Germans weren't brainwashed into accepting the Third Reich, they transformed themselves.

Fritzche's argument has historical precedent outside of Germany. The Nazis themselves only occurred once, but people seizing government control (again- democratization) has led to authoritarian (in this case totalitarian) regimes pretty often. One sees this in many different forms: Napolean is to the French Revolution as Stalin is to the Russian Revolution as Mao is to the Chinese Revolution. Furthermore, democracies in Italy, Brazil, and India all fell to tyranny in the 20th century. So Weimar Germany provided the perfect conditions for Hitler to exercise power, a mere addendum to a pre-existing precedent.

The danger in suggesting such a broad historical trend is the multiplicity of counter-examples. But how many are there? Populist movements have certainly been known to lead to functional democracies, but these begin to look like more of an exception than a rule. The American Revolution certainly never ushered in a totalitarian order. Denmark and Switzerland also boast long traditions of democratic stability. Am I missing any? Aincient Greece, perhaps? Modern Greece certainly belongs in the second paragraph- for the overthrow of democracy once in 1936 and again with the military coup of 1967.

Crucial to the rise of Nazism is Germany's unique militarism. Fritzsche identifies two very different entities: the interest group society of the Weimar republic and the Freikorps. The two can be reconciled to explain the rise of Nazism. Germany has always struggled with disunity (see last week's post), divisions that reach to its HRE days. Unity has always come in a militant guise- be it unification itself or the grand August Days of 1914 (where Fritzsche sees the origins of German populism and Nazism). Intoxicating as this unity seems to have been, the rapture of the August Days were short-lived, to be replaced by a bitter commonality that ran the Kaiser out. Then, it was back to fracture as always with the self-interested vocational splits that dominated Weimar. The Freikorps was an outlet for veterans and militants in general, many members would become prominent Nazis later on. However, they were nihilistic in many ways, not having any political motivation.

The fracture of the interest groups was nationalistically unsatisfying. The Freikorps- simply a blind, violent embodiment of a yearning for national singularity. In such a state, the Germans were ripe for a movement that captured the ideals of the Left and the blind nationalism of the Right, all the while basking in the promise of great military glory. As Nazis, the intoxication of the crowd could be felt once more...