Germany’s Revolution of Destruction

GERMANYS REVOLUTION OF DESTRUCTIONBY HERMANN RAUSCHNINGTRANSLATED BY E. W. DICKESCONTENTS PART ONE THE VICTORY OF THE REVOLUTIONARY NEW ORDER POLITICAL MOTIVEFORCES AND TENDENCIES IN THE THIRD REICH PART TWO DICTATORSHIP WITHIN THE DICTATORSHIP THE POLITICAL ROLE OF THE ARMY IN THE THIRD REICH PART THREE THE REDISTRIBUTION OF THE WORLD TRENDS AND METHODS OF GERMAN FOREIGN POLICY INTRODUCTION GERMANY, like the forbidden land of Tibet, has become the goal of explorers and it has been the subject of marvelling and also of indignant reports. Many of these flatly contradict one another, and this makes the search for truth no easier. The obscurity that lies over Germany is spreading beyond her frontiers and darkening the world. The German riddle is not only growing sinister, it is threatening mens lives. Inadequate knowledge of what has actually been happening in Germany could not but result in mistakes in policy. But the foreigner has not been alone in his ignorance: even the German living in the Third Reich has had but the vaguest notion of what has been happening to him. Need it be added that the writer himself misunderstood the nature of a movement which passed for national, when he joined itout of conviction and not out of opportunism? It demands patience and rather a longdrawnout process at the outset to separate the husk from the true kernel of events. A bare narration is not sufficient for an understanding of them. A psychological estimate of the men at the head of the new Germany, strange and in their way remarkable men, would be a tempting occupation, but would lead us away from the actual source of what has been an inevitable process. It would be simplifying much too much if we were to identify that source with the world economic depression, or with the loss of the world war, or with the unchanging character of Prussian imperialism. These things played their part, but the roots of the developments in Germany lie deeper. They lie in moral and intellectual processes, some of them of long duration. These must not be overlooked, Perhaps too much attention has been given by students and observers to published doctrine and outward events in Germany the trappings of a political movement. The functions of the elite and the masses in the new methods of political control have received less attention than the persecution of the Jews, the antiChristian activities, and the racial doctrine. The synthesizing element in the political aims of the regime has not been revealed. The main purpose of this book is that revelationthe revelation of the process underlying the ostensibly national movement, a destructive process of re volution of a new and extreme type. This book was planned originally for the German reader, who involuntarily and, as a rule, in perfect good faith has suffered a tragic entanglement in that process. Much of the book was of little interest to the nonGerman, and the book has accordingly been abridged. That its prognosis was wellfounded is shown by the fact that, though it was written mainly in the winter of 1937-38, and published shortly after the annexation of the Sudeten territory, it has not been con tradicted by subsequent events in a single point. The pogroms of the winter of 1938 took place as forecast the developments in foreign policy up to the occupation of Prague are along the lines anticipated in these pages. The only substantial addition in this English version is on pages 292 to 306. This applies above all to the interpretation of Hitlers actual political aims and to the emphasis laid on his inability to produce any constructive peace policy. Many nonGermans have insisted that the characterization of his policy as revolutionary imperialism is an exaggeration: that characteriza tion has been justified before all the world in the past year. It is to be feared that the analysis in this book will be justified in other points by coming developments.