Chapter 5: The Folkish State
It is the duty of the State to cultivate harmony between the political and private life of the people -- neither more nor less.
-- Germany Speaks
The National Socialist Student Union Association put university students into brown uniforms and taught them to sing such old party songs as:
Sharpen the long knives on the pavements, so they'll cut the bodies of priests more easily! And when the hour of retribution strikes, we'll be ready for every sort of mass murder.
-- The Hitler File
In promoting the idea of the folkish state, Nazi ideology aspired to build up an ideal state form that would maximize the people's chances to actualize the full potential of their inner folkish spirit. A precondition for a lasting future success of this endeavor was for the folkish state to integrate the people into a united community of folk comrades or kindred souls who share a common racial awareness. For that lofty purpose to be accomplished, it was necessary to implement the leadership principle throughout the folkish state. Hitler's reasoning had been that since this principle rejected the democratic mass idea in favor of the idea of personality, it virtually guaranteed that the best minds in the so-called Volksgemeinschaft or folkish community would rise to leading and influential positions. Hitler's statement in this regard speaks for itself:
The best state constitution and state form is that which, with the most unquestioned certainty, raises the best minds in the national community to leading position and leading influence.
... From the smallest community cell to the highest leadership of the entire Reich, the state must have the personality principle anchored in its organization.
There must be no majority decisions, but only responsible persons, and the word "council" must be restored to its original meaning. Surely every man will have advisers by his side, but the decision will be made by one man. (Hitler 1943, 449)
This rejection of the supposed failed ways of democracy coupled with a return to the imaginary older tribal method requiring that the decision within a council be made by one man was presumed to uphold a supposed humanistic promise. Democracy deserved to be rejected since for Hitler it was as dirty and as false as the Jew. "Democracy" could, however, hold a true humanistic promise if it were redefined in proper folkish terms. Thus, in his speech of November 8, 1938, Hitler redefined "democracy" in this clever bit of verbal fancy-foot dancing:
In our opinion, democracy implies a regime supported by the will of a people. I became Chancellor of Germany once in compliance with the rules of parliamentary democracy ... and today I received the complete approval of the German Volk -- let Mr. Churchill doubt this if he pleases. I did not eliminate two democracies this year, rather, I destroyed, as the epitome of a true democrat, two dictatorships! Namely, the dictatorship of Herr Schuschnigg and the dictatorship of Herr Benes .... I am merely the advocate of my Volk! ... Besides that, I am not a head of state in the sense that a dictator or monarch is, I am a leader of the German Volk! ... Mr. Churchill and these gentlemen are delegates of the English people, and I am a delegate of the German Volk. The only difference here is that Mr. Churchill received only a fraction of his people's votes while, I may confidently say, I represent the entire German Volk! (Domarus 1992, 1238-39)
In this brief sample of Orwellian "newspeak," the sarcastic Hitler is "the epitome of a true democrat" while democratic Austria and, even more so, Czechoslovakia are each a "dictatorship," which deserved to be destroyed by him. But he was dead serious when he pitted himself against Churchill to judge who was a more authentic delegate of his people. Churchill represented but a fraction of the people, while Hitler imagined that he represented the entire folk.
In these statements it can be readily seen that the racial ideal of what a true democracy would be is based on some mystical notion of representing the will of the entire people. And in Hitler's ideology, this expression cannot take place unless society is ordered and led by the force of personality to begin with. Then, and only then, is a human community "redeemed from the curse of Mechanism and becomes a living thing" (Hitler 1943,446). The folkish state was thus more than an organization. It was a living organism, which promoted the people's community or Volksgemeinschaft. And it successfully accomplished this in accordance with the people's separate personalities and collective will, with an emphasis on the latter.
Thus, Nazi ideology aspired to a blissful union of individual contentment through collective merging as if there were no contradiction between the two. The contradiction was conveniently brushed aside through the supposition that no personal satisfaction was possible for individuals anyway except through the collective. But in spite of this cozy presumption, there had been an inherent contradiction there all along, as the requirements of the national collective completely preempted the rights of the individual. Nevertheless, Nazi ideologues were eager to promote their discrepant ideals as if they reinforced one another rather than negated each other. Under the umbrella of the Volksgemeinschaft, the folk community, everything was supposed to cohere naturally in pleasant harmony. Some of the peddlers of this harmony may have been aware of the fraud. And some people did not buy it. But many did. Yet we know from psychology that blissful ignorance of contradictions is a defensive maneuver where a supposedly benevolent unconscious spares people conscious pain. It therefore behooves us to take a closer look at the inherent contradiction.
On face value, the hallmark of life in a true people's community according to Hitler is that it is organic. This means that the entire collectivity, rather than being put together like a thoughtless machine, is united like a conscious living organism. Above all the organic promise, so to speak, is a promise of meaningful connectedness. Instead of the alienation of modernity comes the rootedness in the people's historical past. Instead of the isolation of industrialized life comes the ongoing and available friendliness of folk comrades. Instead of mechanistic existence comes a vitalistic way of life that is characterized by intentionality and will. Instead of atomism, which is the epitome of meaningless disconnectedness, comes the consciousness of being a meaningful part of an organic community to which one is linked by blood, by history, by love, and by choice in a thousand ways. The people yearned for this antidote to alienation. And the leadership principle, which was akin to the central nervous system of the folkish state, promised them that the yearning would be collectively fulfilled yet in an individual and humanistic fashion. Was not each person going to be plugged into a slot that suited him by nature rather than by the coincidence of birth and the vagaries of internal class splits? Was not each individual going to be selected for a proper position so as to playa fitting economic, political, and even artistic role according to his natural inclinations as determined by his inherent personality worth? Was there not room for every single person to fit comfortably into the collective racial framework which was so marvelously able to accommodate individual differences exactly because the greatest personal bent of each folk comrade was the identification with that living and breathing organic whole? What could be more humane and democratic than that? And it would have been self-evident that this is truly democratic if it were not for the fact that the term democratic, rather than denoting accurate expression of the will of the entire people, acquired the distorted anti personality principle of rule by numerical majority. This kind of a distorted outlook, which disregarded the value of personality, implied that democracy itself is in effect anti-individual. For if democracy were truly to mean the cultivation of people's inherent personalities while each individual enjoyed a glorious connectedness with the all-important organic whole, then the Volksgemeinschaft would be instantly recognized as the most humanistic form of existence that delivers that fulfillment, which in present -day democracies remained only an empty promise. In short, there had never been a more natural and spiritually rewarding way of life than the Nazi-promised life in an organic community established in the folkish state through the implementation of the leadership principle. But this principle, which required unquestioned obedience from everybody, rested on the cozy assumption that there was no inherent contradiction between each person's "will" and the will of the leader.
All along there was an inherent tension imbedded in the establishment of a folk community. The rigid implementation of the hierarchical leadership principle in the organic community led to a unity that held a dual promise. The first promise of the unity was the assurance of individual connectedness for everyone; no one was going to be left out leading a meaningless, isolated existence. The second promise of the unity was the creation of magical mass power. It was this power part of the formula, the means to get it and the goals that it would serve, that proved to be preponderant in the Nazi state.
Power is what tilted everything in the direction of mechanism and atomism in spite of the existence of the overall organic umbrella. Since the desire for and promise of power was there all along, it pushed things in a certain direction. For power one needed industrialization regardless of how alienating it was and how it disconnected the individual. For power one needed mechanistic existence imposed from above regardless of how deadening and antivitalistic it was for each person. For power people had to be shunted into slots where more production was needed, not where their personalities would find it most natural to be. And for the sake of power, people who were unhappy with their current and past employment were compelled to remain locked into it all in the name of their common will and individual choice. These inherent contradictions were well exposed by David Schoenbaum (1966), who pointed out that Nazi social theory denied equality but at the same time asserted it. While the premise of the Volksgemeinschaft was the natural (racial) superiority of all Germans, the premise of the leadership principle was the natural superiority (personality merit) of only some Germans. As a result the attempt to square the elite leadership principle with the equality principle of the national community was akin to an attempt to square the circle. In practice, opting for industrial rearmament won over other goals (Schoenbaum 1966, 59, 245-46, 251). It can be concluded from this that power, including military power, assumed top priority.
As for the immediate as well as long-term goals of power, they varied. They ranged from the quest for some form of a German hegemony over Europe to outright world domination and from extirpating Jews by social isolation or by expulsions to doing away with them by outright extermination. In short, these goals of power, which received the utmost national priority, reinforced the tendency to generate power by any means, period. Consequently, the exalted unity of the promised organic community came to serve more the needs of creating collective power rather than the individual need for spiritual connectedness or the need to overcome the alienating impact of modernity. Thus, the revolt against modernity that fueled the initial rise of Nazism was subsequently quashed by the victory of the Nazi movement. The major reason for this was that modernity, which came to be identified first and foremost with modern means of production no matter how mechanistic, was necessary for power. This is the reason why the ideal of voluntary connectedness in an organic community fell casualty to the reality of coercive practices within the same community. In the process, the united whole retained the term organic but assumed definite atomistic and mechanistic features. In sum, the discrepancy between ideological claims and mundane reality created a dilemma. Meaningful organic connectedness could not be maintained without loss of power, while the generation of power by an atomistic linking of society could not take effect without sacrificing organic connectedness.
A feature of Nazi ideology that tried to escape between the horns of this dilemma was the well-emphasized credo that the individual is nothing but the nation is everything. Its implication was that true individual fulfillment is impossible anyway unless a person is enmeshed in the united whole. In other words, nothing is more alienating or less meaningful for a person than to detach himself from the central significance of the collective to which he belongs. To try and reach personal fulfillment in this individual and detached condition is a meaningless and self-negating exercise in futility. What Nazi ideology implied was that a person's "groupish" self is not merely his extended national self but is actually his only self. Thus, by narrowing the psychological space of identity and denying the feasibility of any individual fulfillment outside the framework of the collective, Nazi ideology did away with the notion of autonomous persons seeking on their own initiative either individual or group experiences, according to their varying needs and preferences. What the ideology left standing instead was the notion of a collectivity that is the only agent capable of actualizing the personality potential of its members. The paradigm here was that once the magical mystical link of connectedness between the individual and the group is successfully established, the collectivity unlocks the individual capacity for personal fulfillment, which can be defined only as a personal sharing of the collective life. Left to his own devices, the individual is incapable of unlocking this capacity and is therefore denied participation in the exalted experience of mystical union that comes through such a collective sharing. He thus remains a wasted personality or an individual nothing who tragically missed the chance to become everything through his folk.
By this co-opting or even preemption of the psychological space of personal identity by the psychological realm of collective identity, the contradiction between the requirements of unity for connectedness and the requirements of unity for power was seemingly resolved. The roads toward achieving both goals were supposed to be identical rather than one being organic but the other atomistic. By the same token, all roads led to the same place: a united Volksgemeinschaft fast secured by the folkish state. The state formed the all important means for achieving the sacred goal of a true folkish community. As Hitler (1943,393) stated in Mein Kampf: "The state is a means to an end. Its end lies in the preservation and advancement of a community of physically and psychically homogeneous creatures. This preservation itself comprises first of all existence as a race and thereby permits the free development of all the forces dormant in this race." There it was -- the old promise of a psychophysical integrity -- destined to be realized through the homogenizing by the state of the creatures who belong to the folkish community. In consequence, the generation of national power could now proceed under the banner of the organic whole while people were expected to delight in the discovery of personal fulfillment by becoming individual nothings only to be reincarnated as folk "every things." To reinforce the people's predilection of moving in this direction, Nazi ideology routinely called for sacrifice. In essence this was a call for the sacrifice of individuality and even of life itself for the sake of the whole. That is one meaning of readiness to sacrifice on behalf of the group -- voluntarily becoming an individual nothing for the sake of the national everything. A related meaning is the transformation of the entire masses into pure energy. The implications of this method of generating ultimate power merit further discussion.
Richard Koenigsberg compiled various statements by Hitler concerning sacrifice and provided a summary of the basic themes (Koenigsberg 1975,43-46). He concluded that Hitler stressed the necessity of the sacrifice in the individual in relation to his country, species, state, community, people, and the demands of Germany, stating, "You are nothing, your nation is everything." Hitler also asked the Germans to work for the community, to be the servant of the nation and think only of the nation. Finally Hitler expressed a belief in the value of a willingness to die for the country, calling this act the "crown of all sacrifice." The following statements from Mein Kampf were included in Koenigsberg's compilation but are quoted here at greater length:
The Aryan is not greatest in his mental qualities as such, but in the extent of his willingness to put all his abilities in the service of the community. In him the instinct for self-preservation has reached the noblest form, since he willingly subordinates his own ego to the life of the community and, if the hour demands, even sacrifices it. (Hitler 1943, 297)
This state of mind, which subordinates the interests of the ego to the conservation of the community, is really the first premise for every truly human culture. From it alone can arise all the great works of mankind, which bring the founder little reward, but the richest blessings to posterity . . . . What applies to work as the foundation of human sustenance and all human progress is true to an even greater degree for the defense of man and his culture. In giving one's own life for the existence of the community lies the crown of all sense of sacrifice. It is this alone that prevents what human hands have built from being overthrown by human hands or destroyed by Nature. (Hitler 1-943, 298)
Care must be taken not to underestimate the force of an idea .... For what made men die then was not concern for their daily bread, but love of the fatherland, faith in its greatness, a general feeling for the honor of the nation .... Therefore it is really necessary to confront the master book-keepers of the present material republic by faith in an ideal Reich. (Hitler 1943, 437)
The italics by Hitler in the last sentence refer to the Weimar Republic and to the would-be Third Reich respectively.
Even a cursory look at these quotations reveals that sacrifice, sometimes in combination with other loaded terms such as love, faith, or honor, is identified as an indispensable instrument for the building of a culture as well as for its preservation. It thus forms a required element for racial survival and self-actualization. Moreover, the act of sacrifice serves as a testimony to such an inspired faith in an ideal that it generates the necessary will or willingness to do anything. Consequently the will to sacrifice consists of the final step in completely bridging the gap between ideas and actions no matter how extreme either of them is. It was no coincidence that the notion of the sacrifice was tied by Hitler to faith, honor, and love. Faith serves to propel people to action. Honor legitimizes the action and also makes it inevitable in order to avoid shame. Finally, "love" has a dual role. It is the "horizontal" love for family and for folk, which endows the action with fanaticism, while it is also the "vertical" love for the leader, which accepts the direction of the action as prescribed by the leader. All of this suggests that the issue of "sacrifice" is one of those fateful issues that deals with national ultimate stakes. Consequently, readiness to sacrifice, not only others but also oneself, can sometimes serve as a danger signal, especially at times when a nation turns a blind eye to objective reality and instead finds itself in the grip of a shared group fantasy.
"Sacrifice" has loomed large on the German psychohistorical agenda in the first half of the twentieth century. This subject was puzzling indeed to Hermann Rauschning, a minor player in the unfolding drama of the 1930s. He was a Nazi who left the movement and moved to England, where he wrote a series of books warning the west of the dangers of Nazism. However, his accounts and opinions remain historically controversial, and in fact he was exposed as a fraud who falsely claimed to have conducted confidential conversations with Hitler. Nevertheless, part of his analysis of the unfolding events was insightful. David Schoenbaum (1966, xxi) characterized Rauschning's 1939 book The Revolution of Nihilism: Warning to the West, as the book that "described the Nazi revolution as the novelty it was." In that book, Rauschning discussed the question of what was unfolding in German history in the aftermath of the First World War and during the Nazi era: was the Third Reich a promising new order or was it a holocaust in the making for Germany itself? His own judgment was that the very same thing that was celebrated by the Nazis as the rebirth of the nation was what he himself regarded as a permanent revolution of sheer destruction. This disparity in perception, between the German public's illusion of rebirth on the one hand and his own personal holocaustal vision on the other hand, caused him to wonder what in actuality is make-believe and what is reality, in the Nazi movement specifically and in German history generally.
Such crucial questions cannot be subjected to a genuine national enquiry unless honest criticism is allowed. But in reflecting upon the fact that in Nazi Germany criticism was regarded as the worst of crimes and as high treason, Rauschning also recalled that already twenty years earlier, in the aftermath of the defeat in World War I, he witnessed a similar "bad psychology." This "bad psychology" consisted of a conviction that maintaining the national will to resist requires the nation be kept in ignorance of the frightful gravity of its situation. It was a conviction of the need for a fixed resolve and unquestioning faith combined with contemptuous belittlement of the moral forces of the nation. He poignantly contrasted this bad psychology of unquestioning faith with the practice of other nations that succeeded in increasing their resolve by facing the truth. This finally led Rauschning to ask the pertinent question whether it was a quality peculiar to the German that his readiness for sacrifice can only be maintained under illusions.
Rauschning seems to have hit upon a major psychological strand that characterized the Nazi revolution, which was seen by him as "dynamic," that is, perpetual and capable of energetic movement toward total nihilism and the destruction of all values. His diagnosis of nihilism implied, of course, that the revolutionary promise was an illusion. And now he hit upon the psychological underpinning of this destructive trend. The psychological strand that he detected consisted of a progression from a totally unquestioning faith leading to complete illusions that culminates in the maintenance of sacrifice. To this one may add that in the Nazi ideology, the sequence of faith-illusion-sacrifice leads from the domain of feeling to the domain of action. And in the process, the self-sacrificing person meshes into a glorified all-powerful collective that will triumphantly march on to eternity. Rauschning thus sensed that both Nazi ideology and pre-Nazi psychology led to and culminated in a notion of sacrifice based on illusionary premises of rebirth. He therefore proclaimed, with great exasperation: "It seems to be our destiny to have to repeat the same mistakes with a berserker's infatuation" (Rauschning 1939, xiii). To him the whole notion of a sacrifice based on illusion seemed like a renewed invitation for a catastrophe. It is interesting to note that in the last two paragraphs of Mein Kampf Hitler seems to have engaged in a denial of this very possibility: "A state which in this age of racial poisoning dedicates itself to the care of its best racial elements must some day become lord of the earth. May the adherents of our movement never forget this if ever the magnitude of the sacrifices should beguile them to an anxious comparison with the possible results" (Hitler 1943, 688). This is the bombastic finale of his book, and it was meant to deliver an ideological punch. But its format betrays an underlying dread. The "results to sacrifices ratio" of this format pits future victory and future hegemony against sizable but worthwhile sacrifices. It totally rejects the possibility of a repeat collapse that would make the sacrifices worthless. Consequently, while it reiterates that Germany will become lord of the earth, it also offers a preemptive denial that the required sacrifices will be catastrophic.
Why was any sacrifice deemed essential on the road to racial paradise? The answer partly depends on which meanings are attached to the word. There are many meanings of the term sacrifice. Belt tightening, for instance, can be called "sacrifice." But the readiness for sacrifice that Hitler demanded from his followers leaves no question as to his meaning. Inspection of the above-mentioned collection by Koenigsberg (1975,44-46) of Hitler's statements about sacrifice shows that his underlying meaning of sacrifice is dying: the readiness of each individual to give up his life for the sake of the collective. The images that Hitler conjured up involved regiments going to their death singing Deutschland uber Alles in der Welt, the joyful sacrifice through faith of the most precious blood, giving one's life for the community as the crown of all sacrifice, dying not for daily bread but for love of, faith in, and honor of the country, young men sacrificing their young lives freely and joyfully on the altar of the beloved fatherland, and finally the notion that, for German boys and girls, life must mean sacrifice.
It is clear that subscription to these images by the masses, especially the young generation, laid the foundation for successful application of the leadership principle. The willing sacrificers were going to be obedient subjects indeed to the supreme leader. His will was to be their will because his will represented the will of the entire nation. In Nazi ideology, the notion of the sacrifice implies that any individual will, which separates the individual from the group, is a misguided will and is the faulty product of a mechanistic civilization. In contrast, the individual's willingness to sacrifice self for the nation represents that admirable individual will that is an outcome of salutary total identification with the nation. That kind of will, which is based on faith, is the authentic product of the healthy environment of an organic culture. Subordination of personal ego to the collective is the hallmark of the folkish state, while its realization and proof lie in the total readiness of all members of the folkish community to die at the leader's command because his was the guiding brain of the folkish organism.
It is time now to reiterate some of the highlights of Hitler's ideology in order to illustrate how the ideological matrix culminated in the notion of sacrifice. Since the individual is nothing while the nation is everything, each individual should be willing to give his life for the sake of the collective. This is especially true at a time of mortal danger to the national organism when things are not as they ought to be. The national organism should have nonpolluted blood, which makes for a healthy soul -- a psychophysical integrity of mind and body where the power of the will prevails. This would result in magical powers and invincibility. Unfortunately, however, the national body is afflicted by polluted blood and is therefore in a degenerative state and lacks the necessary strength of will. The responsible parties for this decay into death are the universal agents of decomposition: the Jews. It is therefore an absolute must to do something about the blood poisoning immediately. The essential cure for this affliction is the implementation of the leadership principle -- the magic power formula, which results in "one Reich, one Folk, one Leader." It generates mighty energies that enable the nation to restore its health by purging the Jews and by expanding its inadequate living space. But this power surge, by generating human energies on a mass scale, requires total readiness for ultimate self-sacrifice as a necessary condition. Then, and only then, can the leader of will move mountains with the masses' faith.
Hitler's notions imply that the readiness for sacrifice transforms the masses into an effective instrument of unlimited resources, since those who are willing to die are ready to do anything. In his ideology, readiness for sacrifice signals total malleability of the masses to the point of becoming pure energy. And this brings us back to Rauschning, who regarded the entire purpose of the Nazi philosophy to be that of serving as fuel for energy (Rauschning 1939,23 ). This was consistent with his view of the Nazi revolution as a revolution of nihilism that annuls all values including its own ideological credos. But this was not entirely true. Unlike his socialistic principles, Hitler's racial principles (especially the ones concerning the Jewish danger) were nonnegotiable and were not meant to disappear once they served as fuel for action. However, while Rauschning's assertion was incorrect with regard to the Nazi ideology in toto, it was fairly correct in many ways. These included those features that were valued only as useful myths that raise the people's energy level and mobilize them for mass actions. Energy was indeed one of the sacred goals of Nazi ideology, and it was the readiness for sacrifice that signaled the psychological point of transformation of people into readily usable human energy. The premium placed on the concept of energy was also related to key characteristics of Nazism such as dynamism and permanent revolution, which were discussed by Rauschning (1939) and by Neumann (1965) and which stood for a continuous self-propelled action in an incessant state of warlike mobilization and readiness.
Thus, the dominance of sacrifice in the folkish state was in effect the triumph of mechanism. The folk comrades of the people's community were effectively atomized so as to become a rich storehouse of energy available for use. And the energy was supposed to be turned on and off with the precision of a machine. (In reality the Nazi machine never ran smoothly or precisely.) Claims continued to be made that the Volksgemeinschaft was a living organism, but its modus operandi was highly mechanistic. As for the folkish state, it evolved into an elaborate organization as befits a totalistic state, which tries to control all aspects of life for the purpose of generating a mighty power. The outcome of it all was a glaring discrepancy between the ideological celebration of the living organism and the actual practice of mechanism and atomism.
This did not mean, however, that the atomized masses always caught on to the true reality. But sometimes they were aware of how oppressive totalistic regimentation was and did recognize that they functioned like small cogs in a huge machine. On some such occasions this awareness was expressed through humor. For instance, in one well-circulated joke, a busy Nazi family life was described. Each family member was enrolled in a state-sponsored organization. The father belonged to the SA, the mother to the National Socialist Women's Association, the son to the Hitler Youth, and the daughter to the German Girl's League. The time of every single family member, whether young or old, was confiscated entirely by an endless series of mandated meetings and organized activities. The question arose as to when do the busy family members ever get a chance to meet with each other. The surprise answer -- at the annual party rally in Nuremberg. This was a telling joke indeed. It is even possible to perceive it as a humorous sequel to Hitler's portrayal in Mein Kampf (1943, 30-34) of the wrangling family that lacks national pride. In the present sequel of sorts the educational deficiencies that were exposed in Hitler's earlier portrayal have been fully corrected. This time around, the story is of a family that took full part in the process of the "nationalization" of the people, which Hitler promoted as the desired remedy. The results, however, were not as enthralling as Hitler would have expected them to be. Actually the stinging joke illustrates quite poignantly what happens when, through regimentation, the entire nation is maneuvered from above to play the role of everyone's family. Not surprisingly, this form of imperialism with regard to private time preempts the immediate nuclear family. This is why, in discussing this joke, Sigmund Neumann (1965, 192-93) spoke of the Nazi dictatorship's practice of undermining the family by training children to report on their parents and by the elimination of separate spheres for private and public life. The underlying bottom line here was no private domain, ergo, no family domain.
For Hitler, however, this process represented not the destructive preemption of the domain of the immediate family but rather the integration of all into a one big happy family. His private conversations clearly allude to this famous joke in a defensive attempt to put his own slant on it by treating it not as a joke but as a serious statement. In the process he let the cat out of the bag by stating what it was really all about. He made the following statements at a dinner conversation on July 6, 1942:
In the course of our many electoral tours my companions and I have got to know and to love the Reich from Berlin to its uttermost comers. As for the most part I was invited to take my meals en famille, I also got to know intimately Germans all over Germany. There I used to meet whole families, in which the father would be working in our political section, the mother was a member of the Women's Association, one brother was in the SS, the other in the Hitler Youth, and the daughter was in the German Girl's League. And so when we all meet once a year at the Party Rally at Nuremberg, it always gives me the impression of being just one huge family gathering.
The Party Rally has, however, been not only a quite unique occasion in the life of the NSDAP but also in many respects a valuable preparation for war. Each Rally requires the organization of no fewer than four thousand special trains. As these trains stretched as far as Munich and Halle, the railway authorities were given first-class practice in the military problem of handling mass troop transportation. (Trevor-Roper 1953, 458-59)
There it was. The overbusy members of the preempted immediate family finally get to meet once a year in one huge family gathering of the National Socialist German Workers' (Nazi) Party at Nuremberg. But for Hitler the primary value of this family gathering or party rally was that it served as a valuable preparation for war.
What happened in reality was the dissolution of separate spheres for private and public life, which Sigmund Neumann spoke about. In other words, when the nation is everything but the individual is nothing, his immediate family is reduced to nothing as well. The small family was left with no autonomous functions, but only with the officially sanctioned collaborative state functions of keeping workers content, encouraging the young to become warriors, and incubating a new supply of future soldiers. Indeed, as the pressure to produce new babies and future soldiers increased after the outbreak of World War II, a break from traditional family patterns took place with the official encouragement of girls "to present the Fuhrer with a child" (Bleuel 1974,226-27). It was reported by Bleuel that one such determined girl wrote home from a Labor Service training camp warning her family: "You better not beat me if I come home with a baby, or I will denounce you!" This is a prime example of a child who has been indoctrinated to report her parents and who grew up in a folkish community that systematically dissolved the private domain, switching loyalty and identification from the private nuclear family to the public national family.
At any rate, wishing to present the fuhrer with a child was quite consonant with the notion that in the Volksgemeinschaft the whole nation is the family while the fuhrer is the symbolic father of all. Not that there were not plenty of girls around who wrote love letters to the fuhrer dreaming of his becoming the actual biological father of their child. But in actuality the fuhrer had to remain a symbolic mate. As Richard Grunberger reported, good German maidens were resolved to make the fuhrer the gift of a child by means of the Lebensborn (Spring of Life) program, which enabled willing single women to be impregnated by SS men. Clearly such practices added up to a relentless pressure on the nuclear family. Grunberger discussed the Nazi party rally joke as an illustration of the phenomenon of women finding themselves in a situation of "political widowhood" because the active party involvement prevented their husbands from using the home for more than bed and board. He maintained that this was only one aspect of a whole array of pres sures that eroded family cohesion. These included prolonged national service periods out of home by both boys and girls as well as structural changes in the workplaces involving widespread industrial employment of women, more overtime, and irregular shift work as well as work that required being continually absent from home except for weekends (Grunberger 1972, 255-74). Obviously the folkish state did its utmost to preempt the nuclear family by incorporating it into the larger folk community and channeling its labor for the dual purpose of propagation and production, which would both be necessary for fueling future wars.