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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 August 2014
The last election to the Reichstag brought the unexpected and rather extraordinary rise of the National Socialist German Labor party from twelve to 107 seats. It is the party of the extreme right. In nationalistic radicalism, it compares with the German National People's party, led by Hugenberg, much as in social radicalism the Communist party compares with the Social Democrats. Until recently, the National Socialists could be passed over as a negligible group of fanatics. But the party's present importance as the second strongest in the Reichstag, and the contradictory and confused ideas that are current about it, make worth while some inquiry into its nature and the causes of its rapid advance.
To start with, the party differs from its rivals in that personal leadership and military discipline are at its foundations. Besides having contributed more than any other single man to the building up of the party, Adolf Hitler is also its leader in the strictest sense of the word. A few facts about his life may show how it was that he could become the exponent of so large a number of German people.
Hitler was born in Austria in 1889 and until his fifteenth year lived in modest bourgeois surroundings, his father being a lower state official. This explains why he always has been, and still is, at heart a man of the middle classes. After the death of his parents, he was forced to earn his living as an unskilled laborer, and for some five years he lived the life of a proletarian among proletarians, completely cut off from his former middle-class environment.
1 Gesellschaft, VII, Jahrgang, No. 6, June, 1930.
2 One of the officers, a leader of the secret “Organisation-Consul,” Karl Tillessen, is supposed to have said of Hitler: “He is the born demagogue for our aims.”
3 The “Third Reich” is a conception somewhat resembling the millennium. After Germany has emerged from all the consequences of the lost war and the revolution, and when it enters upon a new road of glory, the Third Reich will begin. The First Reich was the Germanic Empire of the Middle Ages; the Second Reich began in 1871; the present situation is only an interval without name, and will be followed by the Third Reich.
4 In explanation of this fanatical attitude on the part of some National Socialists, it may be noted that the last paragraph of the program reads as follows: “The leaders of the party promise to support and carry out the foregoing planks, if necessary, at the risk of their lives.” Peder, Gottfried, Das Programm der N.S.D.A.P. und seine weltanschaulichien Grundgedanken, p. 10Google Scholar.
5 By “social justice,” the National Socialists do not mean either the eighteenth-century slogan “all men are born free and equal,” or the nineteenth-century “everything for everybody.” They maintain, with Plato, that social justice consists in recognizing superior and inferior ability, and in having each person fill a place for which his character and talents fit him. In other words, though National Socialism appeals to the masses, it is fundamentally aristocratic.
6 “One has to be strong enough to throw theory overboard if it does not fit life.” Dr.Goebbels, J., in his paper, Angriff, Oct. 12, 1930Google Scholar.
7 Interview with Dr.Künes, Erik, Berliner Illustrierte, Nachtausgabe, Oct. 31, 1930Google Scholar.
8 Völkischer Beobachter, July 4, 1930.
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