The Origins of Totalitarianism
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86 Harold Nicolson in his Curzon: The Last Phase 1919–1925, Boston-New York, 1934, tells the following story: “Behind the lines in Flanders was a large brewery in the vats of which the private soldiers would bathe on returning from the trenches. Curzon was taken to see this dantesque exhibit. He watched with interest those hundred naked figures disporting themselves in the steam. ‘Dear me!,’ he said, ‘I had no conception that the lower classes had such white skins.’ Curzon would deny the authenticity of this story but loved it none the less” (pp. 47–48).
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87 Carthill, op. cit., p. 88.
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88 T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Introduction (first edition, 1926) which was omitted on the advice of George Bernard Shaw from the later edition. See T. E. Lawrence, Letters, edited by David Garnett, New York, 1939, pp. 262 ff.
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89 From a letter written in 1918. Letters, p. 244.
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90 T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Garden City, 1938, chapter i.
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91 Ibid.
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92 How ambiguous and how difficult a process this must have been is illustrated by the following anecdote: “Lawrence had accepted an invitation to dinner at Claridge’s and a party afterwards at Mrs. Harry Lindsay’s. He shirked the dinner, but came to the party in Arab dresses.” This happened in 1919. Letters, p. 272, note 1.
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93 Lawrence, op. cit., ch. i.
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94 Lawrence wrote in 1929: “Anyone who had gone up so fast as I went ...and had seen so much of the inside of the top of the world might well lose his aspirations, and get weary of the ordinary motives of action, which had moved him till he reached the top. I wasn’t King or Prime Minister, but I made ’em, or played with them, and after that there wasn’t much more, in that direction, for me to do” (Letters, p. 653).
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95 Ibid., pp. 244, 447, 450. Compare especially the letter of 1918 (p. 244) with the two letters to George Bernard Shaw of 1923 (p. 447) and 1928 (p. 616).
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96 George Bernard Shaw, asking Lawrence in 1928 “What is your game really?”, suggested that his role in the army or his looking for a job as a night-watchman (for which he could “get good references”) were not authentic.
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97 Garnett, op. cit., p. 264.
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98 Ibid., in 1924, p. 456.
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99 Letters, in 1930, p. 693.
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100 Ibid., p. 693.
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101 Lawrence, op. cit., chapter i.
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102 Millin, op. cit., p. 15.
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103 As put by Sir Thomas Watt, a citizen of South Africa, of British descent. See Barnes, op. cit., p. 230.
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1 Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf (New York, 1939): In Vienna, “I laid the foundations for a world concept in general and a way of political thinking in particular which I had later only to complete in detail, but which never afterward forsook me” (p. 129).—Stalin came back to Pan-Slav slogans during the last war. The 1945 Pan-Slav Congress in Sofia, which had been called by the victorious Russians, adopted a resolution pronouncing it “not only an international political necessity to declare Russian its language of general communication and the official language of all Slav countries, but a moral necessity.” (See Aufbau, New York, April 6, 1945.) Shortly before, the Bulgarian radio had broadcast a message by the Metropolitan Stefan, vicar of the Holy Bulgarian Synod, in which he called upon the Russian people “to remember their messianic mission” and prophesied the coming “unity of the Slav people.” (See Politics, January, 1945.)
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2 For an exhaustive presentation and discussion of the Slavophiles see Alexandre Koyré, La philosophie et le problème national en Russie au début du 19e siècle (Institut Français de Leningrad, Bibliothèque Vol. X, Paris, 1929).
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3 Ernst Hasse, Deutsche Politik. 4. Heft. Die Zukunft des deutschen Volkstums, 1907, p. 132.
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4 Ibid., 3. Heft. Deutsche Grenzpolitik, pp. 167–168. Geopolitical theories of this kind were current among the Alldeutschen, the members of the Pan-German League. They always compared Germany’s geopolitical needs with those of Russia. Austrian Pan-Germans characteristically never drew such a parallel.
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5 The Slavophile writer Danilewski, whose Russia and Europe (1871) became the standard work of Pan-Slavism, praised the Russians’ “political capacity” because of their “tremendous thousand-year-old state that still grows and whose power does not expand like the European power in a colonial way but remains always concentrated around its nucleus, Moscow.” See K. Staehlin, Geschichte Russlands von den Anfangen bis zur Gegenwart, 1923–1939, 5 vols., IV/1, 274.
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6 The quotation is from J. Slowacki, a Polish publicist who wrote in the forties. See N. O. Lossky, Three Chapters from the History of Polish Messianism, Prague, 1936, in International Philosophical Library, II, 9.
Pan-Slavism, the first of the panisms (see Hoetzsch, Russland, Berlin, 1913, p. 439), expressed these geopolitical theories almost forty years before Pan-Germanism began to “think in continents.” The contrast between English sea power and continental land power was so conspicuous that it would be far-fetched to look for influences.
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7 Reismann-Grone, Ueberseepolitik oder Festlandspolitik?, 1905, in Alldeutsche Flugschriften, No. 22, p. 17.
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8 Ernst Hasse of the Pan-German League proposed to treat certain nationalities (Poles, Czechs, Jews, Italians, etc.) in the same way as overseas imperialism treated natives in non-European continents. See Deutsche Politik. 1. Heft: Das Deutsche Reich als Nationalstaat, 1905, p. 62. This is the chief difference between the Pan-German League, founded in 1886, and earlier colonial societies such as the Central-Verein fur Handelsgeographie (founded in 1863). A very reliable description of the activities of the Pan-German League is given in Mildred S. Wertheimer, The Pan-German League, 1890–1914, 1924.
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9 Emil Deckert, Panlatinismus, Panslawismus und Panteutonismus in ihrer Bedeutung fur die polilische Weltlage, Frankfurt a/M, 1914, p. 4.
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10 Pan-Germans already talked before the first World War of the distinction between “Staatsfremde,” people of Germanic origin who happened to live under the authority of another country, and “Volksfremde,” people of non-Germanic origin who happened to live in Germany. See Daniel Frymann (pseud, for Heinrich Class), Wenn ich der Kaiser war. Politische Wuhrheiten und Noiwendigkeiten, 1912.
When Austria was incorporated into the Third Reich, Hitler addressed the German people of Austria with typically Pan-German slogans. “Wherever we may have been born,” he told them, we are all “the sons of the German people.” Hitler’s Speeches, ed. by N. H. Baynes, 1942, II, 1408.
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11 Th. G. Masaryk, Zur russischen Geschichts- und Religionsphilosophie (1913), describes the “zoological nationalism” of the Slavophiles since Danilewski (p. 257). Otto Bonhard, official historian of the Pan-German League, stated the close relationship between its ideology and the racism of Gobineau and H. S. Chamberlain. See Geschichte des alldeutschen Verbandes, 1920, p. 95.
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12 An exception is Friedrich Naumann, Central Europe (London, 1916), who wanted to replace the many nationalities in Central Europe with one united “economic people” (Wirtschaftsvolk) under German leadership. Although his book was a bestseller throughout the first World War, it influenced only the Austrian Social Democratic Party; see Karl Renner, Oesterreichs Erneuerung. Politisch-programmatische Aufsätze, Vienna, 1916, pp. 37 ff.
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13 “At least before the war, the interest of the great parties in foreign affairs had been completely overshadowed by domestic issues. The Pan-German League’s attitude is different and this is undoubtedly a propaganda asset” (Martin Wenck, Alldeutsche Taktik, 1917).
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14 See Paul Molisch, Geschichte der deutschnationalen Bewegung in Oesterreich, Jena, 1926, p. 90: It is a fact “that the student body does not at all simply mirror the general political constellation; on the contrary, strong Pan-German opinions have largely originated in the student body and thence found their way into general politics.”
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15 Useful information about the social composition of the membership of the Pan-German League, its local and executive officers, can be found in Wertheimer, op. cit. See also Lothar Werner, Der alldeutsche Verband. 1890–1918. Historische Studien. Heft 278, Berlin, 1935, and Gottfried Nippold, Der deutsche Chauvinismus, 1913, pp. 179 ff.
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16 Quoted from Hans Kohn, “The Permanent Mission” in The Review of Politics, July, 1948.
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17 Danilewski, op. cit., included in a future Russian empire all Balkan countries, Turkey, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Galicia, and Istria with Trieste.
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18 The Slavophile K. S. Aksakow, writing in the middle of the nineteenth century, took the official name “Holy Russia” quite literally, as did later Pan-Slavs. Sec Th. G. Masaryk, op. cit., pp. 234 ff.—Very characteristic of the vague nonsense of Pan-Germanism is Moeller van den Bruck, Germany’s Third Empire (New York, 1934), in which he proclaims: “There is only One Empire, as there is only One Church. Anything else that claims the title may be a state or a community or a sect. There exists only The Empire” (p. 263).
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19 George Cleinow, Die Zukunft Polens, Leipzig, 1914, II, 93 if.
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20 During the Crimean War (1853–1856) Michael Pagodin, a Russian folklorist and philologist, wrote a letter to the Czar in which he called the Slav peoples Russia’s only reliable powerful allies (Staehlin, op. cit., p. 35); shortly thereafter General Nikolai Muravyev-Amursky, “one of the great Russian empire-builders,” hoped for “the liberation of the Slavs from Austria and Turkey” (Hans Kohn, op. cit.); and as early as 1870 a military pamphlet appeared which demanded the “destruction of Austria as a necessary condition for a Pan-Slav federation” (see Staehlin, op. cit., p. 282).
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21 See Otto Bonhard, op. cit., pp. 58 ff., and Hugo Grell, Der alldeutsche Verband, seine Geschichte, seine Bestrebungen, seine Erfolge, 1898, in Alldeutsche Flugschriften, No. 8.
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22 According to the Austrian Pan-German program of 1913, quoted from Eduard Pichl (al. Herwig), Georg Schoenerer, 1938, 6 vols., VI, 375.
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23 When Schoenerer, with his admiration for Bismarck, declared in 1876 that “Austria as a great power must cease” (Pichl, op. cit., I, 90), Bismarck thought and told his Austrian admirers that “a powerful Austria is a vital necessity to Germany.” See F. A. Neuschaefer, Georg Ritter von Schoenerer (Dissertation), Hamburg, 1935. The Czars’ attitude toward Pan-Slavism was much more equivocal because the Pan Slav conception of the state included strong popular support for despotic government Yet even under such tempting circumstances, the Czar refused to support the expansionist demand of the Slavophiles and their successors. See Staehlin, op. cit., pp. 30 ff
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24 See chapter ii.
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25 Pichl, op. cit., I, 26. The translation is quoted from the excellent article by Oscar Karbach, “The Founder of Modern Political Antisemitism: Georg von Schoenerer,” in Jewish Social Studies, Vol. VII, No. 1, January, 1945.
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26 Vassiliff Rozanov, Fallen Leaves, 1929, pp. 163–164.
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27 See C. A. Macartney, National States and National Minorities, London, 1934, pp. 432 if.
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28 Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte English translation by De Leon, 1898.
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29 See J. T. Delos, La Nation, Montreal, 1944, an outstanding study on the subject.
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30 See the Duc de Rohan, De l’Intérêt des Princes et Etats de la Chrétienté, 1638, dedicated to the Cardinal Richelieu.
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31 One of the most illuminating discussions of the principle of sovereignty is still Jean Bodin, Six Livres de la République, 1576. For a good report and discaussion of Bodin’s main theories, see George H. Sabine, A History of Political Theory, 1937.
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32 Interesting in this context are the socialist propositions of Karl Renner and Otto Bauer in Austria to separate nationality entirely from its territorial basis and to make it a kind of personal status; this of course corresponded to a situation in which ethnic groups were dispersed all over the empire without losing any of their national character. See Otto Bauer, Die Nationalitätenfrage und die österreichische Sozialdemokratie, Vienna, 1907, on the personal (as opposed to the territorial) principle, pp. 332 ff., 353 ff. “The personal principle wants to organize nations not as territorial bodies but as mere associations of persons.”
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33 Pichl, op. cit., I, 152.
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34 No full-fledged pan-movement ever developed except under these conditions. Pan-Latinism was a misnomer for a few abortive attempts of the Latin nations to make some kind of alliance against the German danger, and even Polish Messianism never claimed more than what at some time might conceivably have been Polish-dominated territory. See also Deckert, op. cit., who stated in 1944: “that Pan-Latinism has declined more and more, and that nationalism and state consciousness have become stronger and retained a greater potential there than anywhere else in Europe” (p. 7).
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35 Nicolas Berdyaev, The Origin of Russian Communism, 1937, p. 102.—K. S. Aksakow called the Russian people the “only Christian people on earth” in 1855 (see Hans Ehrenberg and N. V. Bubnoff, Oestliches Christentum, Bd. I, pp. 92 if.), and the poet Tyutchev asserted at the same time that “the Russian people is Christian not only through the Orthodoxy of its faith but by something more intimate. It is Christian by that faculty of renunciation and sacrifice which is the foundation of its moral nature.” Quoted from Hans Kohn, op. cit.
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36 According to Chaadayev whose Philosophical Letters. 1829–1831 constituted the first systematic attempt to see world history centered around the Russian people. See Ehrenberg, op. cit., I, 5 ff.
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37 Speech of January 30, 1945, as recorded in the New York Times, January 31.
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38 The words of Luke, the Archbishop of Tambov, as quoted in The Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, No. 2, 1944.
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39 This was already recognized by the Russian Jesuit, Prince Ivan S. Gagarin, in his pamphlet La Russie sera-t-
elle catholique? (1856) in which he attacked the Slavophiles because “they wish to establish the most complete religious, political, and national uniformity. In their foreign policy, they wish to fuse all Orthodox Christians of whatever nationality, and all Slavs of whatever religion, in a great Slav and Orthodox empire.” (Quoted from Hans Kohn, op. cit.)
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40 “People will recognize that man has no other destination in this world but to work for the destruction of his personality and its replacement through a social and unpersonal existence.” Chaadayev, op. cit. Quoted from Ehrenberg, op. cit., p. 60.
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41 The following passage in Frymann, op. cit., p. 186, is characteristic: “We know our own people, its qualities and its shortcomings—mankind we do not know and we refuse to care or get enthusiastic about it. Where does it begin, where does it end, that we are supposed to love because it belongs to mankind...? Are the decadent or half-bestial Russian peasant of the mir, the Negro of East-Africa, the half-breed of German South-West Africa, or the unbearable Jews of Galicia and Rumania all members of mankind?...One can believe in the solidarity of the Germanic peoples—whoever is outside this sphere does not matter to us.”
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42 It was this shrinking of geographic distances that found an expression in Friedrich Naumann’s Central Europe: “The day is still distant when there shall be ‘one fold and one shepherd,’ but the days are past when shepherds without number, lesser or greater, drove their flocks unrestrained over the pastures of Europe. The spirit of large-scale industry and of super-national organisation has seized politics. People think, as Cecil Rhodes once expressed it, ‘in Continents.’” These few sentences were quoted in innumerable articles and pamphlets of the time.
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43 Very interesting in this respect are the new theories of Soviet Russian genetics. Inheritance of acquired characteristics clearly means that populations living under unfavorable conditions pass on poorer hereditary endowment and vice versa. “In a word, we should have innate master and subject races.” See H. S. Muller, “The Soviet Master Race Theory,” in New Leader. July 30, 1949.
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44 G. Fedotov’s “Russia and Freedom,” in The Review of Politics, Vol. VIII, No. I, January, 1946, is a veritable masterpiece of historical writing; it gives the gist of the whole of Russian history.