rise-and-fall-of-the-third-reich-william-shirer-pdf

88 THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICHhe discourses at great length on what he believes are the reasons for its fall:its tolerance of Jews and Marxists, the crass materialism and selfishness of themiddle class, the nefarious influence of the ”cringers and lickspittles” around theHohenzollern throne, the ”catastrophic German alliance policy” which linkedGermany to the degenerate Hapsburgs and the untrustworthy Italians insteadof with England, and the lack of a fundamental ”social” and racial policy. Thesewere failures which, he promised, National Socialism would correct.THE INTELLECTUAL ROOTS OF THE THIRD REICHBut aside from history, where did Hitler get his ideas? Though his opponentsinside and outside Germany were too busy, or too stupid, to take much noticeof it until it was too late, he had somehow absorbed, as had so many Germans,a weird mixture of the irresponsible, megalomaniacal ideas which erupted fromGerman thinkers during the nineteenth century. Hitler, who often got them atsecond hand through such a muddled pseudo philosopher as Alfred Rosenbergor through his drunken poet friend Dietrich Eckart, embraced them with all thefeverish enthusiasm of a neophyte. What was worse, he resolved to put theminto practice if the opportunity should ever arise.We have seen what they were as they thrashed about in Hitler’s mind: theglorification of war and conquest and the absolute power of the authoritarianstate; the belief in the Aryans, or Germans, as the master race, and the hatredof Jews and Slavs; the contempt for democracy and humanism. They are notoriginal with Hitler – though the means of applying them later proved to be.They emanate from that odd assortment of erudite but unbalanced philosophers,historians and teachers who captured the German mind during the centurybefore Hitler with consequences so disastrous, as it turned out, not only for theGermans but for a large portion of mankind.There had been among the Germans, to be sure, some of the most elevatedminds and spirits of the Western world – Leibnitz, Kant, Herder, Humboldt,Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, Bach and Beethoven – and they had made uniquecontributions to the civilization of the West. But the German culture whichbecame dominant in the nineteenth century and which coincided with the riseof Prussian Germany, continuing from Bismarck through Hitler, rests primarilyon Fichte and Hegel, to begin with, and then on Treitschke, Nietzsche, RichardWagner, and a host of lesser lights not the least of whom, strangely enough,were a bizarre Frenchman and an eccentric Englishman. They succeeded inestablishing a spiritual break with the West; the breach has not been healed tothis day.In 1807, following Prussia’s humiliating defeat by Napoleon at Jena, JohannGottlieb Fichte began his famous ”Addresses to the German Nation” fromthe podium of the University of Berlin, where he held the chair of philosophy.They stirred and rallied a divided, defeated people and their resounding echoescould still be heard in the Third Reich. Fichte’s teaching was heady wine fora frustrated folk. To him the Latins, especially the French, and the Jews arethe decadent races. Only the Germans possess the possibility of regeneration.Their language is the purest, the most original. Under them a new era in historywould blossom. It would reflect the order of the cosmos. It would be led by asmall elite which would be free of any moral restraints of a ”private” nature.