By accepting the racial theory, which identified them as the pure, Aryan race, the Germans could feel inherently superior to others, as individuals and as a people. Hitler also promised Germans superiority as a nation, which appealed to the strong nationalism and the remnants of militarism that existed in Germany.
Hitler’s movement promised to unite two political trends, socialism and nationalism, with the possibility of uniting groups associated with them. Unity was specifically furthered by the notion of Volk. Meinecke wrote that “within the Nordic race [i.e., “Aryans"], our own German nation was further especially hallowed and in appearance romanticized by the German idea of a people distinguished from other peoples by possessing certain common customs, traditions, and historic past, that is, by the idea of a ‘volk’” (a people).21 The communality of the volk was contrasted with the separateness and competition imposed by capitalism. To a people distressed by inflation, depression, joblessness, and political chaos, togetherness and unity had wide appeal.
The Nazi “people’s community” also incorporated an idealized recollection of life in the trenches – comradeship, mutual support, shared danger, equality in the face of a hostile environment. Contrasted with this were the polluters of the economic and national life, especially Jews, socialists, and communists. To combat this pervasive pollution, Germans had to subordinate themselves to the community and give up their individuality.
Hitler promised order and tranquility. The strength and discipline of his followers demonstrated his capacity to deliver. The Nazis provided ideals to live by, guidance, and hope. Finally, Hitler was a charismatic leader to whom Germans could resign their fate, absolving themselves of responsibility for the difficulties of their lives. Following a powerful leader in unity and common cause with others, they could throw off despair.
a According to some, the orderliness of the revolution was peculiarly German and perhaps a source of its relative failure. A respect for authority manifested itself all along. “Zuckmayer was elected to the soviet because the ‘mutineers’ felt it essential that they should be led by an officer. The point is characteristic of the whole German revolution. Time and again we shall see revolutionary spirit qualified by an inherent need for order and decorum.”2
b Much more could be said about the immense problems in Germany and their immense effects on individual lives. For example, the British and French occupation troops after the war enjoyed humiliating Germans; the unemployment compensation was progressively reduced during the depression, and huge numbers of homeless people lived in tent cities; during several periods there were intense battles in Germany between four private political armies. The decorum of the 1918 revolution had disappeared.
c During his stay in Vienna, while he struggled and failed at various enterprises (e.g., as an artist), Hitler was surrounded by a society soaked in anti-Semitism. It was pervasive in political life and in the atmosphere of the city. It was at this time that he had the “revelation” of the far-reaching destructiveness of Jews. This probably had a number of psychological benefits, including perhaps a feeling of connection to the world around him, not insignificant for a lonely man.
8 Preconditions for the Holocaust in German culture
Nazi ideology matched basic aspects of German culture; the fit made the extreme ideology acceptable to many Germans. When the Nazis took power, their propaganda and actions further shaped German culture.
No single cultural element can explain genocide. A multiplicity of factors have to coalesce. In the context of intense, persistent life problems, the cultural characteristics that I describe in this chapter made the Germans susceptible to Hitler and the Nazi ideology. An evolution toward destruction followed, without reactions by internal and external bystanders that might have inhibited it.
The devaluation of Jews
One precondition for genocide was widespread anti-Semitism. Political anti-Semitism appeared in a number of European countries in the second half of the nineteenth century. An anti-Semitic party was represented in the German parliament and continually tried to pass anti-Semitic legislation. In 1881 an Anti-Semites Petition was presented to Bismarck, with 225,000 signatures, demanding the “emancipation of the German people from a form of alien domination which it cannot endure for any length of time” and proposing legal steps to restrict the rights of Jews, rights granted under Napoleon in the early nineteenth century.1 In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, racial dogmas identifying superior and inferior social groups provided a link to the Nazi belief in the racial superiority of Aryans.2
Anti-Semitism increased even before Hitler and his party gained national influence. Jews, among others, were blamed for the loss of the war; cultural devaluation led to their selection when a scapegoat was needed. Anti-Semitism was not itself the cause of the Holocaust, but provided an important precondition for it. Devaluation of Jews and discrimination against them had historical sources and acquired a historical continuity.
An important source of anti-Semitism was Christian dogma. Jews were regarded as killers of Christ and as unbelievers, doomed to eternal damnation. Their stubborn refusal to be converted and saved was seen as an attack on the Christian religion itself. A central reason for intense early Christian anti-Semitism had to be the need to separate from the old roots of Christianity, in order to create an independent identity.
Girard shows all this in the words of early Christian writers:
A Jewish sect at first, Christianity, under the influence of St. Paul, separated rapidly from the synagogue and engaged in a merciless war with it. The Gospel of John, the last to have been written, is by far the most hostile to the Jews, who were held collectively responsible for the death of Christ. The fall of the temple and the dispersion that followed were interpreted as a divine punishment. As Origen wrote, “We can therefore say with all confidence that the Jews will not regain their former position, because they have committed the most abominable of sins, by hatching this plot against the savior of mankind... it was therefore necessary, that the city where Jesus suffered so be
