GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

THEORY OP FASCISM 647
and expansion seems likely at the moment to be successful,
the fascist State will bide its time until it thinks that it
can sweep the opposition aside. The foreign policy of
fascist States is, therefore, ope of imperialist adventure
and expansion in the interests of self-realization.
The State and the Group. Within the nation every
manifestation of the life and interests of individuals must
be rooted in the State; for the State pervades their nature
through and through. Thus Heir Bohle, the head of the
Organization of Germans Abroad, writes: "We recognize
only one kind of German abroad the total German who,
a citizen of the Reich, always and everywhere is German
and nothing but German, and therefore National Socialist."
In the German Civil Service all officials must either
marry or give reasons why they are not married. Excuses
for not marrying, connected with insufficient means will
not be recognized for, since the citizen belongs to the
State, it is the citizen's business to produce children for
the State. Women are told that "there is no higher or
finer privilege for a woman than that of sending her
children to war", while young people ate enrolled in
youth (Hitlerjugeud) groups with which their interests
are completely identified. Thus it is illegal in contemporary
Germany for a young man to go for a day's walk in the
woods with persons other than those who are members
of his own Hitlerjugend group, while to meet members
of groups from other towns or villages is strictly forbidden.
As with the individual, so with the group. Voluntary
associations can never in a fascist State be merely voluntary.
Groups must regard themselves as integral parts of
the State; voluntary associations as expressions of the
State's life. To quote Mussolini again,
Fascism "conceives
of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all
individuals or groups are relative,
of in their relation to the State".
only to be conceived
Many would regard as the most distinctive characteristic
of fascist political theory the absolute claim which the