Hitler in Hell

by Martin van Creveld

  We were not going to follow the Communists by nationalizing industry. But we were going to remind it of its duties toward those who worked for it and were largely responsible for generating its wealth. Though we prohibited strikes, we did put in place an organization charged with mediating between owners and workers and finding solutions to any problems that might arise. We sent our officials to talk to industrialists and to press them into making all kinds of improvements to their factories, such as adding safety devices, lighting, cafeterias, shower rooms, and gardens where the workers could relax during pauses. Nor did we limit our efforts to industry alone. We also looked into the shipping business, where we made sure that the crews would have proper lodgings. Ditto with respect to domestic help and other workers not previously included in the social security system.

  Nothing is perfect, but by and large our efforts in this direction worked out very well. This happened partly because industrialists and other employers realized the benefits that would accrue to them. And partly because they understood that the officials in question enjoyed the backing of the state and, ultimately, mine. Had it not been for the war, we surely would have made our factories not only the most efficient but the most pleasant in the world. Far more so than English ones, where early industrial conditions still prevailed in many cases. And far more so than Americans ones, where the dehumanizing practice of Fordismus reigned supreme.

  Thus the dissolution of the unions in 1933 did not mean that every worker was left to face his employers, and the market, on his own. To the contrary: with Ley in the lead, we went ahead and organized all our German workers in a single gigantic union known as the Arbeitsfront. Membership in the organization and the payment of dues were compulsory for most categories of workers. In return the Arbeitsfront, working through one of its subsidiary organizations, Kraft durch Freude (KdF), organized a vast number of different activities. Such as sporting events, hikes, concerts, film shows, plays, day trips, you name it. We even reorganized the entire structure of football leagues, making them far more competitive and exciting than before.

  The best-known measures of all were vacations, which could be spent either in the country or in neighboring ones such as Austria, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia. At a time when few workers even knew what a vacation was, this was an innovation. In 1934 2.3 million people took advantage of the holidays on offer. By 1938 that figure had gone up to 10.3 million, about one in seven in the entire population. By the time the war broke out the total had gone up to over 45 million packages. My goal was to make sure that every worker should be able to have one or two trips to the sea during his life.

  Even this does not exhaust the list of “socialist” measures we put in place. Among the most important ones was the Arbeitsdienst, the Labor Service. The organization conscripted several hundreds of thousands of youngsters each year and put them to work. By so doing it helped carry out all sorts of projects, reduced unemployment, and welded together different parts of the Volksgemeinschaft, or popular community. It did all this on top of teaching future draftees the rudiments of discipline and order even before they joined the armed forces. Both men and women participated. However, we soon discovered that the latter, assisted by their parents, were very good at finding all sorts of excuses as to why they should not serve.

  Another measure we introduced was the Eintopf. It was a sort of national solidarity day, held several times a year, during which people, taking meals consisting of one course only, used the savings to help the poor. Yet another, Winterhilfe was a system for helping poor folks by collecting goods for them and distributing them. There were some others, too. To be sure, they were essentially symbolic by nature. However, that does not mean they were not important in helping generate the kind of spirit we National Socialists wanted to infuse the community with.

  And then there was education. As has been said, it is not old opinions that die. It is those who hold them who do. That is why, as I personally said in at least one of my speeches, we would see to it that the coming generation would be ours. It was also why, right from the beginning, we laid our hands on the schools. In Germany, as in other countries, there was not one type of school but many. This was a situation we National Socialists could not tolerate and to which we soon put an end. The only important exception were the Catholic schools. The issue played a major role in the talks that led to the Concordat of 20 July 1933. As expected, the representatives of the Church proved to be tough and shrewd negotiators. In the end, we had no choice but to allow the schools to continue to exist and to function.

  That point having been settled, we left the outline of the school system with its division into elementary school, intermediate school, and high school more or less as it had been. The same applied to the system of mostly separate education for boys and girls; co-education only became the rule in Germany after 1945. Whether that was a good idea, incidentally, was and remains undetermined as yet. But we did modify the curriculum. We added more physical training and military exercises for boys and put a greater emphasis on housekeeping and handiwork for girls. We also made sure that students should be familiar with the origins of our Party, its principles, and the heroic struggle through which it came to power. Another very important innovation was teaching students the basics of racial science. Both sexes had to master them, but girls in particular. Given that, without their willing cooperation in their roles as wives and mothers, keeping our race pure was impossible to begin with.

  To the existing school system we added the so-called NAPOLA (National Political Institutes of Education). It was in them that our future leaders were to be put through their paces. Students, all of them male, were selected on the basis of both mental and physical tests. Among the latter was a requirement that candidates swim ten meters under the ice. True to our ideology, they were selected regardless of social origin or class. No gifted youth should be barred from school because his family did not have money. NAPOLA students had to wear full military-style uniforms. The curriculum was less classical and more modern than that of regular high schools. This was especially true at the gymnasiums. The schools were a great success, as a collection of memoirs, written long after by their grateful former students, proves.

  Above the NAPOLA we had the so-called Ordensburgen. Their purpose was to take the place of the universities in educating the crème de la crème. Students were in their early to mid-twenties. To gain admission they had to be in perfect physical health as well as show proof of Aryan descent. To these requirements were added full military service and a period of probationary party work. The curriculum emphasized National Socialist ideology, racial science, geopolitics, and sport. Three campuses were built, and the first students arrived in 1936. Unfortunately, the outbreak of the war did not allow us to sustain the program after 1939. As a result, from then on the buildings were used for a variety of other purposes.

  The female equivalent was Glaube und Schönheit, Faith and Beauty. The program aimed at developing young women who, through healthy bodies and balanced minds, would embody the beauty of divine creation. They would believe in Germany and pass that belief on to their future children. It was not without some success, as I was often able to observe at first hand. We also planned schools for hohe Frauen, elevated women. The term originated in the Middle Ages when it referred to the women of the nobility. Goethe used it, too. For us it meant well-bred women of the kind our elite would be able to marry and take pride in as they, the women, deserved. Himmler, who dreamed of turning his SS officers into the nucleus of a new racial community, was particularly interested in this subject. Selected from among those with pure Aryan backgrounds, the women would have to know how to dress, how to make themselves up decently, how to behave, how to entertain, and how to cook. And they had to learn languages, of course. Some desultory efforts in this direction were made. Much to Himmler’s regret, though, they did not get very far, and even became the object of some ridicule.

  True to its name, modern “liberal” society puts fa
r too much emphasis on the rights of the individual versus his duties to the Gemeinschaft, the community, to which he belongs. It also overemphasizes theoretical knowledge at the expense of what the English used to call “character” as well as practical experience and physical development. From my seat in Hell, I can observe the outcome in almost every one of the wars that have broken out since 1945. In almost every case, whenever Western troops met non-Western ones, they were defeated. Think of Iraq (post 2003). Think of Afghanistan. Think of Somalia. Think of Vietnam. Think of Cyprus. Think of Algeria. Think of Malaysia and Indo-China. Think, too, of the handful of Jews—Jews, of all people—who threw the English out of Palestine in 1947-48. Truth be told, the troops in question are not soldiers at all. They are pussycats, helpless nerds. Instead of training, they are made to listen to lectures about sexual harassment, its nature, and the need to avoid it. Instead of fighting, they complain about PTSD. And that specifically includes the Bundeswehr—the “army without pathos,” as it has been called.

  We National Socialists did not want our youths, the greatest treasure any society can have and the sole support of its future, to grow up as pussycats. That is why, especially in the Hitler Youth and its equivalent for girls, the BDM, of which every young person had to be a member, we deemphasized Bildung and diplomas, precisely the things which the bourgeoisie treasures so much. Much to the chagrin of some of the teachers, we preferred to stress physical training on the one hand and a sense of community on the other. Boys wrestled and boxed; girls did calisthenics. Youngsters of both sexes went on hikes, swam, rowed, and marched. They also played the kind of rough field games where everyone depends on, and has to cooperate with, one another. They spent evenings engaged in singing in front of the campfire and slept on the hay in primitive lodgments. It was for them that we expanded our network of youth hostels, perhaps the most extensive there has ever been. All under instructors who, unlike the ridiculous adults who run the U.S. Boy Scouts and are occasionally caught abusing their charges, were themselves young. Not only did they enjoy it, but it worked. As one important Israeli historian has written, in the whole of history it is impossible to find soldiers who fought better than our German ones in World War II.

  As always, we put the community ahead of the individual. Hence our slogan, “It is your duty to be healthy.” No state before us had ever invested so much in the field of preventive health. Few have done more since, least of all the great and humane US of A where, to this day, some thirty million people are without any medical insurance at all. We put great emphasis on anti-smoking campaigns, though ultimately without success. But that was because the war put much of our population under such tremendous stress that they simply could not do without cigarettes. We taught them the principles of a healthy diet. In fact, doing so was one of the main tasks of the Nationalsozialistische Frauenschaft (National Socialist Women’s League) with its millions and millions of members. We did our best to make people reduce their consumption of meat. We actively fought diseases such as breast cancer (the disease that had killed my mother) and colon cancer. We distributed leaflets and produced films on those subjects, calling on people to undergo annual and even biannual tests. We did so much more that entire books could be, and have been, written about that issue alone.

  Finally, it is a fundamental principle of education, at any rate, education as we National Socialists understood it, that it should not be limited to the young or to the schools. It is, instead, a process that goes on, or should go on, throughout life down to old age. Perhaps it should focus particularly on old age, which is when people, having little to do, may end up poisoning the minds of youth, as, for example, Socrates was accused of doing. We did not want to bring people to culture as philistines so often try to do. To the contrary, we wanted to bring culture to people. Again, my ideas on the subject had started forming during my years in Vienna and Munich. Learning to know those two cities, I could not help noting how much of our national culture was shut up in museums. Many were splendid indeed, and no one enjoyed visiting them more than I did. But working people and their families, who along with farmers formed the mainstay of the nation, had no use for them and rarely bothered to do so. That, incidentally, remains as true now as it was then.

  I do not mean to say I wanted to close the museums, which certainly have a role to play. Indeed, the art I myself collected in such huge quantities was never meant for my own use. How could it be? Both at the Reichskanzlei and in my private residences I had enough and more to spare. My intention was to build a vast new museum in my favorite city, Linz, to which I hoped to retire after the Endsieg (final victory). It would be something like the British Museum and the Louvre combined! There the German people would be able to enjoy it and be inspired by it. That is why I had my agents, the most important of whom was Dr. Hans Posse of the Dresden Gallery, acquire art left and right. A lot was confiscated from the Jews, first in Germany and then throughout occupied Europe. Nor, their post-war denials notwithstanding, were those in charge unaware of that fact; quite a few of them used to boast of it.

  I was determined to make sure that members of the lower classes should also have access to art. It was to this end that I initiated a series of vast and very expensive programs meant to employ talented artists such as Josef Thorak, Arno Breker, and a host of others. Their task was to beautify—I deliberately do not say decorate—our buildings, city streets, avenues, squares, and what have you. That is why many of their creations are as large as they are. Going further still, I wanted people to enjoy art, not just on special occasions but as a self-evident and omnipresent part of their daily lives. And I wanted this to happen not just in the big cities but in small provincial ones as well. The people were to be immersed in an artistic environment, so to speak, as if in some kind of perpetual bath. It would be something like the medieval Fountain of Life, perhaps. Another method of achieving this result was to put art on display during reviews, parades, sports events, and so on. As, for example, when we added an amphitheater to the Olympiastadion in Berlin. Unfortunately, not all the art we brought to the people in this way was of the highest quality. But that problem we would have solved in time.

  No country, not even ancient Athens, has ever done more in its attempt to merge art with politics and politics with art. But what kind of art? Nineteenth-century German art had often been magnificent. Think of Caspar David Friedrich, Franz von Lenbach, Arnold Boecklin, Adolf Menzel, and many others no less good. Or, later, of Hermann Gradl, who captured our German landscapes as no one else before or after him did. He, however, was an exception. As I said before, starting around 1910, Munich in particular turned into a hothouse for all kinds of half-demented experiments in this field. After the war, with chaos reigning all around, things became even worse. Not only in Germany but over much of the rest of Europe as well. The more grotesque and perverted an image, the louder the applause it drew. Expressionism and Cubism were joined by Dadaism, a “style” whose idiotic name speaks for itself and whose symbol, appropriately enough, was a urinal with its neck turned upward. It was enough, more than enough, to make one ashamed of being called an artist! Then there were Abstractionism, Brutalism, Constructivism, Fauvism, Supremacism, Surrealism, Vorticism, and entire hosts of other isms only sick minds could come up with. Even Italy, once home to da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Titian, was not spared some association with this “modernist” trash.

  Most of those responsible for producing this junk would have been unable to paint a decent picture if they tried. But they did not try. Instead, they deliberately produced all kinds of abominations. From Otto Dix to Kate Kollwitz, many went out of their way to undermine the national spirit, the will to fight and sacrifice. Not to mention women’s desire to have healthy children! Others, often taking their inspiration from the quack Freud, were simply pornographers. All they had on their brains was sex. I did not care about what foreigners said or did. Throughout my years in power I was quite happy to have them provide us with hard cash in return for all kinds of
junk we unloaded on them. Normally in Switzerland, and sometimes with the help of Jewish middlemen who had left Germany for safer havens. Jews are constitutionally unable to create culture. But that did not prevent them from hovering about like birds of ill omen, cawing and trying to make a profit at our expense.

  What I did care about was the kind of art our own countrymen would experience. I wanted sane art. Healthy art, Aryan art, German art. Aryan, in the sense that it drew on Greek and Roman prototypes. German, in the sense that it should be the opposite of Jewish, meaning international, and rootless. The kind of art our ancestors, starting over a thousand years ago, used to produce and we, having inherited it from them, could be proud of. The kind ordinary, decent people, ordinary, decent Germans, could relate to and which would lift them, however temporarily, out of their humdrum existence into the higher realms of the spirit.

  I well knew how to reward outstanding artists by means of commissions, awards, and appointments to juries and offices of every kind. As, for example, when I made both Frau Troost and her fellow designer, Leonhard Gall, professors. I also knew that the supply of truly talented artists, not only painters and sculptors but singers and actors and writers as well, is always very limited. That is why, once the war had broken out, I personally made sure that the dumb military machine would not treat them as cannon fodder. But that did not mean molly-coddling them. Those of my favorite city of Linz, for example, were drafted into the SS; believe it or not, some ended up as concentration camp guards at Mauthausen.

  To show people what I meant, I allowed Goebbels to organize an exhibition of “Degenerate Art” in Munich. A gathering of uglier, more revolting, monstrosities you never saw; no wonder that, wherever it and its various offshoots were shown, it attracted masses of people. The total number of visitors was said to have been in excess of two million. We also put into place a system of censorship aimed at preventing certain “artists” from painting or sculpting and certain “writers,” from covering the rest of us with their Dreck. Or from playing and listening to the kind of degenerate Judeo-Negroid “music” known as jazz. Those who disobeyed their orders were sent to prison. Or else, if they persisted, they were sentenced to be reeducated in a concentration camp, where harsh living conditions, strict discipline, and forced labor sometimes did wonders. Usually, though, the threat was enough.