Rebecca SC French 602F2576 MA in German Studies - Rhodes ...

as it is only logical that the removal of any barriers necessarily opens the floodgates to all
manner of influence. In this case the removal of conservative Wilhelmine barriers in favour of
(Social) democratic movements and ideas also allowed for a casting-off of traditional wariness
towards the “considerably less positive forces” (Orlow 1982: 202) of political chauvinism and
anti-Semitism. These influences started gaining credibility in the military during the war, when
senior officers encouraged mass participation in the rising political body of the new right wing.
According to Orlow (1982: 202), General Ludendorff and his advisors went as far as propagating
an image of the German government as owing its greatness to the attitudes of anti-Semitism and
anti-democracy. After the war these forces took on an unrestrained life of their own and Orlow
(1982: 203) supports Hannah Arendt‟s conclusion that the “cradle of the specifically German
forms of fascism” lay in the demise of traditional conservatism. The image of the German nation
as racially superior Übermenschen and the “cult of the warrior as amoral superman” (Orlow
1982: 202) came to the fore with the rise of Nazism around the time of the Depression.
Although this is to some extent understandable, considering that Germany now found itself in
terrible circumstances and in need of something or someone who would lift it out of its dire
straits, the analytical conclusion that fascism ultimately succeeded due to “the political
immaturity of a people that suddenly found itself subject rather than object of political decisions”
(Preuss in Orlow: 203) rings true and recalls a further statement by the character of Deutschlin in
Doktor Faustus with reference to the immaturity of the German youth as representative of the
German spirit itself: “Die deutschen Taten geschahen immer aus einer gewissen gewaltigen
Unreife”. (Mann 1948: 184)
To examine the state of theatre during the Second World War, it is good to first explore the link
between art and politics, or, in this case, more specifically between theatre and fascism. Diana
Taylor (1998), in a review of Fascism and Theatre: Comparative Studies on the Aesthetics and
Politics of Performance in Europe 1925-1945, provides an overview of the various elements
which universally link performance and politics. She commends the comprehensive definition of
fascism as found in Roger Griffin‟s opening essay and which I include here below:
[Fascism] emerges when populist ultra-nationalism combines with the myth of a radical crusade
against decadence and for renewal in every sphere of national life. The result is an ideology
which operates as a mythic force celebrating the unity and sovereignty of the whole people
(except, of course, for those considered its internal enemies) in a specifically anti-liberal and anti-
Marxist sense. It is also anti-conservative, for, even when the mythic values of the nation's
history or prehistory are celebrated […,] the stress is on living out „eternal‟ values in a new
society. The hallmark of the fascist mentality is the sense of living at the watershed between two
ages and of being engaged in the frontline of the battle to overcome degeneration through the
creation of a rejuvenated national community, an event presaged by the appearance of a new
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