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Hannah Arendt, National Socialism and the Project of Foundation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Robert Mayer
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Extract

Foundation is a crucial concept in Hannah Arendt's work. She was especially interested in modern attempts, successful and unsuccessful, to found new bodies politic. Arendt maintained, however, that totalitarian movements were hostile to the project of foundation. Far from seeking to stabilize the world, totalitarianism set the world in motion and tried to keep it moving. But when we turn to National Socialist ideology itself we discover that foundation was vital to the Nazi project; Hitler understood himself as the founder of his people. Arendt's own interpretation of Nazism is mistaken, but I believe that her general theory of foundation can help us to make sense of the National Socialist experience. This article examines the project of foundation in Hitler's Weltanschauung and redeploys Arendt's concepts to explain his unsuccessful attempt to create a new body politic.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 53 , Issue 3 , Summer 1991 , pp. 469 - 487
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1991

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References

1. Arendt, Hannah, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973), pp. 463, 466.Google ScholarArendt, also said that “terror is the essence of totalitarian domination” (p. 464)Google Scholar, but terror was used as a means to accelerate the motion on which totalitarianism thrived.

2. Ibid., pp. 306, 467–68.

3. Arendt, Hannah, “What Is Authority?” in Between Past and Future (New York: Penguin, 1968), pp. 91–141.Google Scholar

4. Arendt, , Origins, pp. 463, 458–59.Google Scholar

5. Quoted in Rauschning, Hermann, The Voice of Destruction (New York: Putnam, 1940), p. 39.Google Scholar

6. My aim is significantly different from Whitfield's, Stephen in Into the Dark: Hannah Arendt and Totalitarianism (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1980).Google Scholar While Whitfield examines Arendt's empirical account of totalitarianism in light of recent historical studies, I am only interested in the adequacy of her philosophical interpretation of National Socialism.

7. Arendt, Hannah, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), pp. 177, 234.Google Scholar

8. Ibid., p. 191.

9. Ibid.,p. 198. For a good account of motion and stability in Arendt's thought see Cooper, Leroy, “Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy: An Interpretation,” Review of Politics 38 (1976): 161–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10. Arendt, , Human Condition, p. 55.Google Scholar

11. Arendt, Hannah, On Revolution (New York: Penguin, 1977), p. 163.Google Scholar Arendt attributed the calamities of the French Revolution to the failure to find an absolute above the popular will.

12. Arendt, Hannah, The Life of the Mind, 2 vols. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978), 2: 6, 27.Google Scholar

13. Arendt, , Human Condition, pp. 194–195.Google Scholar

14. Arendt, , “What Is Authority?” p. 121Google Scholar, and in general pp. 120–28.

15. Ibid., p. 120.

16. Arendt, , Human Condition, p. 195.Google Scholar

17. Ibid., pp. 225, 195. See also Arendt, , “What Is Authority?” pp. 104–20.Google Scholar

18. Arendt, , “What Is Authority?” pp. 96–97.Google Scholar

19. Ibid., pp. 91–92.

20. Arendt, , Origins, pp. 463–65.Google Scholar

21. Ibid., p. 478.

22. Arendt, , Human Condition, p. 307.Google Scholar

23. Arendt, , Origins, p. 466.Google Scholar

24. Robert Mayer, “Hannah Arendt, Leninism, and the Disappearance of Authority,” Polity (forthcoming).

25. References to , Hitler'sMein Kampf, trans. Manheim, R. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1943)Google Scholar, are cited in parentheses (MK followed by page number) in the text of the article. While National Socialist ideology was by no means uniform, I concentrate solely on Hitler's thought because he was the founder and his self-understanding of the Nazi project is crucial. For general surveys of Hitler's thought see Jaeckel, Eberhard, Hitler's Weltanschauung, trans. Arnold, H. (Middle-town: Wesleyan University Press, 1972)Google Scholar; Maser, Werner, Hitlers Mein Kampf (Munich: Bechtle Verlag, 1966)Google Scholar; Fest, Joachim, Hitler, trans Winston, R. & C. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974), pp. 199–220Google Scholar; Staudinger, Hans, The Inner Nazi (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981).Google Scholar

26. On the concept of “life unworthy of life” and the medical justification for genocide see Lifton, Robert Jay, The Nazi Doctors (New York: Basic Books, 1986).Google Scholar See also Bein, Alexander, “Der Jüdische Parasit,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 13 (1965): 121–49.Google Scholar

27. Joachim Fest notes that “What linked Hitler with the leading Fascists of other countries was the resolve to halt this process of degeneration.” Anxiety and “fear of the future” characterized the era of fascism. See Fest, , Hitler, pp. 101–104.Google Scholar Similarly Ernst Nolte argued that racist thought denied “the value of historical development” because it viewed it as “inescapable degeneration.” See Nolte, Ernst, Three Faces of Fascism, trans. Vennewitz, L. (New York: Mentor, 1965), p. 363.Google Scholar

28. The influence of Lenin's vanguard party on National Socialism is obvious in Hitler's text. Just as the proletariat could not attain class consciousness without the guidance of the socialist intelligentsia, neither could the Volk achieve racial consciousness without the leadership of the nationalist intelligentsia. Both sought to place the law above the popular will.

29. Arendt, , Origins, p. 464.Google Scholar

30. On the Nazi rejection of Darwin see Mosse, George, The Crisis of the Germa Ideology (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1964), p. 103;Google ScholarMosse, George, Toward the Final Solution (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), pp. 72–73.Google Scholar Houston Stewart Chamberlain rejected Darwin's theory precisely because “one cannot... speak of progression forwards or backwards, but only of motion.” See Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, trans. Lees, J. (New York: Fertig, 1968), 2: 215.Google Scholar

31. Hans-Guenther Zmarzlik noted that Social Darwinism arose as “a will to assume responsibility for the future because men had lost confidence in a selfevident and automatic progress"; “it was necessary to complement natural selection by a socially guided selection, for otherwise a... qualitative deterioration of the human substance was inevitable.” See “Social Darwinism in Germany” in Republic to Reich, ed. Holborn, H. (New York: Pantheon, 1972), pp. 443–44.Google Scholar

32. Etymologically and biologically Arendt, would appear to be right that “racism is the belief that there is a motion inherent in the very idea of race” (Origins, p. 469)Google Scholar, but George Mosse argues that “The consciousness of change, of the new speed of time, of the possible loss of control over one's life, were basic issues to which racism addressed itself. Through its appeal to history and nature it attempted to make time stand still, to provide men and women... with a piece of eternity that would give them support.” For the racist, race is the fixed point that does not depend on the will for its existence — when everything else is taken from him the racist still has his blood and his white skin. See Mosse, , Nationalism and Sexuality (New York: Fertig, 1985), p. 150.Google Scholar

33. Quoted in Fest, , Hitler, pp. 104, 207.Google Scholar

34. Hitler even used the image of foundation when it was completely inappropriate. For instance: “With the formation of a parliamentary representative body … the cornerstone had been laid for the end of German domination of the monarchy” (MK 74).

35. Quoted in Rauschning, , Voice of Destruction, p. 39.Google Scholar Fest notes that the goal of fascism was “to reverse historical development and to return once more to the starting point, to those better, more nature-oriented, harmonious times before the human race began to go astray.” See Fest, , Hitler, p. 104.Google Scholar

36. Machiavelli, , The Prince and The Discourses, trans. Lerner, M. (New York: Modern Library, 1950), p. 397Google Scholar (Bk. 3. chap. 1).

37. Arendt, , Origins, pp. 163, 169, 192.Google Scholar Hitler spoke favorably of Frederick the Great and Bismarck, but these men were not described as founders and forebears.

38. Arendt, , “What Is Authority?” pp. 120–24.Google Scholar

39. Mayer, “Hannah Arendt, Leninism, and the Disappearance of Authority.”

40. Arendt, , “What Is Authority?” p. 111.Google Scholar

41. On the polyarchal character of the Nazi regime see Broszat, Martin, The Hitler-State, trans. Hiden, J. (New York: Longman, 1981).Google Scholar

42. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, trans. Baynes, N. (New York: Fertig, 1969), 1: 939.Google Scholar

43. Arendt, , On Revolution, p. 25.Google Scholar I am suggesting that National Socialism is better explained by Arendt's argument in On Revolution, although Nazism is not mentioned in that work.

44. Quoted in Rauschning, , Voice of Destruction, p. 17.Google Scholar

45. Arendt, , Human Condition, pp. 7, 220.Google Scholar

46. The attack on plurality is emphasized in Arendt, , Eichmann in Jerusalem (New York: Penguin, 1977), “Epilogue.”Google Scholar

47. Arendt, , Origins, p. 466.Google Scholar

48. To be sure, the Nazi regime was internally dynamic, but its increasing radicalism after 1937 was directed towards reviving the racial foundation as quickly as possible since Hitler believed that he had little time to achieve his goal. The dynamism was a product of the hectic attempt to fabricate a people in just a few years. Furthermore, it is true that Nazism was externally expansive, but as Hitler noted, “at all times the surest foundation for the existence of a people has been its own soil.” Blood and soil were the two foundation-stones of the Aryan people, but space does not permit me to discuss the latter here. See Hitler's Secret Book, trans. Attanasio, S. (New York: Grove, 1961), p. 14.Google Scholar