Documentos de Académico
Documentos de Profesional
Documentos de Cultura
__ -
A N e w History
.
"
_-
University
Press
cambridge,
~
~~
asachuw
~u
h n d m , England
1
i
tors in most countries, and where that was not the case,
a: whc, p-
knotlomi
~bn,
and io-raim a n form
ti~i:imp?i$ 1faumrc. Anyme
low,o
h e b ~ mr~ 01 d
E.s
bha,8w
=iwaokne%.
246
German Megolomania
German Megolomanio
247
-mcer'ex&ted,
Of WJI.
lone d k h h d i m i a n r ond
0-4Ge:mnr prsesed lhe .rm
hot e n d d ihcn lo rule ihe
vho lea calkd M oompioa
,mn,,ruc;ol
iecde-itscommandad
H:mmlei, Himm!ei guve h15
:i .ha oddsoral name of
( m o wb i k o d ahowed
1s for "pnrilive"
tican on July 20, 1933. Yet resistance also increased within thc Roan Catholic Chui-ch as news spread of the Nazis' euthanasia plans,
lmler and Reinhard Heydrich, and with the SS (Schurasraffel, deenst: Formation); this elite Natioiial Socialist "security unit" became
e supreme police force of the Third Reich, an all-powerful inswunt for punishing, terrori~,in%and purging the population of unde-
252
Gsrmon M e g o l o m a n i a
~crlabohnlin the~ermun
19"'
ie0"
weirmr
con~n~c!~on
of he Brtt uuiobu
to run lrom amb burg lo ~a
uor inlerrupld ay (ha Greo
ihe Nuiionoi Social,sxr,,h,,of
Osc'n
p r d d conrl
turned them alo a speooculur
p,q(iiam in 1936 O S ~ U120.
P"~S
on
pqm. and
visors p ~ , ~ a sdhi r/ p l n k wwli
in cedar e giw wen mere ,no
mtltlory lind drclqic voiue of ih
lo ili3 srnoil,
i,,
'930s the om*dnlol
sins
we* e " ' p l v d
,,
ivg
(Armed SS) and maintained tics with the Race anil Kesettl
I leadquarters, the lmreaucratic division formed to carry out
racial policies.
The muddletl Manichean racial rluc~-ineof National So
quired as a foil for "Aryans," thc bringers of light and redc
group of people who merely by belonging to a particular "ra
hodicd everything evil, bad, and deviant. The National Social'
no difficulty in identifying a group to occupy the position of o
givcn Europe's thousand-yea= t~nditionin this rcspect: It
Je.u,s.The persecution of the Jews was not planned and prepar
254
G e r m o n Megalomania
from above." Among the very first was the Law for Restoration of the
rofcssional Civil Service, which empowered the government to dis-
.. ..
..,.
.."
,:&
invocation of the spirit of Frederick the Great, ox- when the annual
and fascination the other. It began with the fact that hardly
ist regime
dcmption that affected the participants deeply. Not even the British
ambassador Sir Nevile Henclerson could resist their spell completely;
solemn and beautiful,"anrl the cfkct ol'thc: light show " \ a s something
likc being inside a cathedral of ice."
revealed, more than any other symbol, the dual character of the Nwi
~ i i t harchaic ritual. This contrast was typical or the way the Third
Reich presented itself, with autobalins, the Silver Arrow model Mer-
cedes Benz, the first inexpensive radio receiver, the affoi-dahle Volks-
wagen, and the world's first jet-propelled plane, on the one hand, and
materially, hut-what
was perhaps more important-in
ideals a111 a sense of solidarit)..
Germanic sagas, castles of the Teutonic knights where the Nazi elite
was educated, and solstice celebrations on the other. The newest in-
ter
f the Reichrwel~rthat
a plebiscite on January 13, 1935, the inhabitants of the Saar disvoted to rejoin the Reich, and on June 18 a British-German
$1
16 that
; K M ' ~ <C ,U
'9391
air?, however, first of all because Joachim von Ribhcntrop, ihe Ger-
,935:.h
lvli
,hejung
d d Y'epO"'a
~
lish world dominance for the Aryan race. Only four day5 after his ,,.
a
., .,,
pointment he announced with co~npletecandor to the comma$
258
German Megolemonio
pcnly anti-English policies, and s c a ~ n dbecausc the German-Japanest: alliance thrcatcned British interests in the Far Eart. Relations
coaled still further after Germany intervened in d1c Spanish Civil
\Val; where it could test the prq~arednessof its air force, the Lufrwafi.
A t the same time the German Foreign Office noted with interest the
egrec to which the British seemed anxious to avoid being drawn into
onflia on the Continent. Hitlcr had reason to assume he would
ave a largcly free hand in carrying out his plans to expand Germany's
By 1936 prcparatiom for the coming war were in full wing. Hitler
Germon Megalamanio
259
,...ene. The German populatiort I-cacted with jul)ilation to the anof Austria, and so did the majority of Austrians. The separaof 1866 hall heen overcome; Great Germany, the goal that both
liberals in the German il'ational Assembly of 1848 and the Soda1
emocrab of the 1919 National Assembly in Weimar had supported,
s now a reality. The nightmarish character of this reality was per-
d at first only by a minority of Austrian Jews, liberals, commitd Catholics, and sot:ialists who had failed to leave the country in
~ c ;they were swiftly rounded up in unannounced raids and ar-
The success of the ;lnschh$ showed Hider that he had Iittlc t o fear
om the Westcrn powers, and so only two weeks later, on March 28,
he made the deasion to annex Czechoslovakia as well. Two days after
wrote a memorandum creating
a bur-year plan, saying that the
German economy must be ready
a; the date of the iuwasion was set for October 1, 1938. Once again
o,,he
0150
i l the qu-her
i n c r c a i i ~rlawtya'ier '928.or
and ecol;>nic ciisa wrrsned. o
sesirly oiler lte Nciir come to
order to avoid
renbe,
cdul: Gcc~onf-0s
Germon Megolomania
.,<
, hYod
SV i945 a
260
ring-shaped terri-
as ~fiscussin~
peace with Chamherlain, the ''2 plan" was being deloped to Luikl up a fleet to attack England. On March 15, 1939,
he Wehrmachr occupied tlle ''1-ump Czech state:' dcmonstratiug the
thlessness of diplomatic agreements between the Western deocracies and the Hitler dictatorship. Only now did ~ r i t a i nrousc itif to take counter-measures hy guaranteeing Polislr independence
261
d~
~ i ond
e bhe consciered.bvs iesoon.
cmmand, p o d u olrodive D
idizrs t1.01 $!rid regulo~ionrhad lo
sued to i:mr virits by members ol the
is: 411 he wanted was to subject Russia. But if the West was too
lix~cllcrlto support him, he would make terms with Russia, defeat the
262
German Megalomonio
German Megolomonio
263
.O ~ a o r d
for NSDAP Announcwnentr.
re in Aparhenf Hourer and
crL,,
vsl 'b!ockr,' to which filh, houss
o:!e~
bd i ~ v ed i i i i c ~ob-oining
.~
o w n on he p;ivate lib 6 amv
n llleir n w : h q could keep on eyr
~oaulo,on'ilovullv
tive
ank frorn attack and gave dic Germans direct access to the Atlantic.
n atttackon the Ketherlands, Belgium, and France follo\\,ed on May
seventeen days later the Red Arnly crossed the R~lishborder
east. In contrast to 1914, the rnood ofthe German public, an
the Reichsiog delcgates in their Nazi Party uniiorms, was soln
in
success not only placed him at the peak of his
Germany l>ntalso silenccd opposition within the army officers' corps.
gj-, This
The next goal of the war was conquest of Great Britain. Hitler
,ontinued to hope that the Britishu.ould fall into line, and it I\GJ.S with
it is necessary to keep in mind that decisive responsibility for the outbreak of war lay with German leadership, and to a much lesser
d not end in the triumph for the German Lgtwafc that its comander-in-chief, Herinann Gbring, had promised his Fiihrer. Yet Hit-
r's main goal remained the war against the Soviet Union, as he dedared to the leaders of the Wehrmocht on July 31, 1940. Utlable to
German Megolomonio
267
p n s from the ndio, stood in line for rationed goods, and took in the
om the private sphere, while they avoided contact with the outside
rld as much as possible and concentrated on the most urgent task:
xZatWhat
Meanwhile, the regime was making pians for the futul-e. A massive!.
capital city, Germania, would arise on thc site of the old Berlin. con^
ten than it did in the west; it also bad the support of the
was to stretch to the Llrals arid make thc PI-evious railroads looL like
dead that woilld also serve as "border foruessesnin Africa and on the
midst of the war, in preparation for the final victory: A gigantic world
elimination of its declared enemy, the Jews of Europe. Hitler had al-
y a ~ n o u ~ ~ on
c r January
d
30, 1939, that a world war u,ould result
11
battle for hegemony of thc type Enropc had known from time imme-
"the destruction of the Jewish race in Europe." His war was not a
\.
corrupting nature of its age-old adversary, thc Jews. The Weimar Re-
270
German Megolomania
aorld. In Hitler's sick logic it folhnved incscapahiy that the Jews must
bc removed from the healthy German racial community, the "body of
d ~ cpeople," and that tlic Germans must seek Lehcnsraum in the wide
expanses of eastern Europe, space to which their superiority entitled
them. There they would play the role of masters, while the Slavs, another allegedly inferior race, would take the pnrt of colonial slaves.
The world war had to be Sought, according to this demented logic, in
order to exterminate the Jews.
The German leadership thus dk! not see revision of the outcome of
thc First World War as its primary goal in this war, as many of Hitleri
nservative political allies helirvcd and as a number of people still
bic1icr.e today. Nor was the goal political dominance in the sense of
classic European C<.rreignpolicy, conquest of territo11)- representing
addit.ional economic resources and larger markets, or release of internai tensions in military undertakings. None of the rationales foor war
own iu thc history of Europe up to that point apjilics to German acus in World War
.Ihe whole war effort prior to the campaign against the Soviet
~
Union had therefore amounted tn nothing more than tactical pveparacs. The
the JVehmmucht's march to the east; the invasion of Francc was intended
eliminate the danger of attack fron~the rear, as were Hitler's eforts to reach accommodation with Great Britain by dividing up the
Group of W e e
yellow
ior Polish cities. iust as thev had earlier com~elledlews within their
own country to wear i d e n t ~ f y i nbadges
~
But all these measures werc
erely preliminary, a preparation for the next step undertaken in di-
n~
F F ~
ct conjunction with the war on the Soviet Union: the deliberate and
emorseless extermination of the Jews as a prerequisite for the establ d m e n t of German world dommation
274
Germon Megolomania
hat was
us justifications pro\*ed strongcr than consciousness of guilt and re-