Conjuring Hitler

Pluto Press

Contents

Chapter One

Laying Siege to Germany with World War I, 1900-18

'A petty Navy Royall of three score tall ships or more, but in case fewer ... seemeth to be almost a mathematical demonstration, next under the merciful and mighty protection of God, for a feasible policy to bring and preserve this victorious British monarchy in a marvellous security. Whereupon the revenue of the Crown of England and wealth public will wonderfully increase and flourish; and then ... sea forces anew to be increased proportionately. And so Fame, Renown, Estimation and Love, and Fear of this Brytish Microcosmus all the whole of the great world over will be speedily and surely be settled.' John Dee The Brytish Monarchy [1577]

The Second Reich: the tragedy of an imperial upstart

The sudden growth of the German Reich during the second half of the nineteenth century compelled the British Commonwealth to launch a sweeping maneuver against the world's continental landmass. The chief objective was the prevention of a durable alliance between Russia and Germany. Britain proceeded to deter the union by signing a triple alliance with France and Russia designed to encircle the German Reich (1907). After the outbreak of war, the operation was deepened by enlisting the aid of the United States in a phase during which the Russian link of the alliance seemed to be giving (1917). As a perilous gap opened in the East, Britain hastened to fix it by encouraging a Liberal experiment under a straw man, a barrister by the name of Kerensky, which dissolved in a few months. Meantime, as a possible alternative, revolutionary nihilists - the so-called Bolsheviks commanded by the intellectual radical Lenin - were transferred to Russia through a labyrinthine network of organized subversion by obscure 'agents' such as the Russian Parvus Helphand, with the expectation that out of such inflow would emerge a despotic regime, whose polarity (materialist, anti-clerical, and anti-feudal) was the inverse of that of the German Reich. The involvement of the United States became part of a broader deployment ranging from a military reinforcement on the Western Front to Zionist propaganda for the joint (with Britain) occupation of Palestine, which loomed as a vital geopolitical zone on the East-West divide. The Reich's surrender at the end of World War I (1918) completed the initial stage of Germany's annihilation.

If we are to understand the rise of the Nazi era and the conflict between Britain and the German Reich, we must first examine the international relations of the new German nation from 1870 onwards.

* * *

By 1900 it was all clear.

Improbable as it might have appeared, a German empire had emerged from the post-Napoleonic morass: a nation culled from a garbled constellation of feisty principalities had at last coagulated, 'by blood and iron,' round the martial core of its feistiest province, the kingdom of Prussia. And so, in the 1870s, there it stood before the eyes of the West: the Second German Reich.

An unstable compound: a coupling of feudal hunger and formidable scientific achievement. After all, this was the uncouth matrimony of the unfailing Prussian armies with the best music, physics, chemistry, political economy, historiography, philosophy, and philology the West had to offer. A formidable beginning.

And soon enough, this German dynastic state, conscious of its potential and bursting with overconfidence, enticed the curiosity of the great British Commonwealth. In those early days, England had paid scarce attention to German politics, preoccupied as she was with French colonial rivalry and the 'Great Game' in Central Asia that pitted her military forces against czarist Russia. Germany had been too fragmented to claim a piece of the geopolitical surveys of the British generals. Not that German commerce did not matter to Britain: the opposite was true. But when, under the leadership of the master tactician and Chancellor of the Empire, Otto Bismarck (1870-90), the nature of the trade between Britain and Germany was gradually reversed; that is, when Germany ceased to act vis--vis the United Kingdom as the mere supplier of foodstuffs and recipient of her manufactures, to become, in turn, a growing industrial power in her own right, the British Foreign Office and the subsidiary clubs began to ponder the matter over with some apprehension.

Evidently, the Germans were benefiting from the merits of borrowing: they had had the opportunity to snap up a panoply of technological know-how ready-made from their European counterparts, and perfect it dramatically, without the encumbrances and sunken costs of pioneering. Yet even if untrammeled industrial production remained problematic: if manufactures were to yield a profit, national business could seldom rely on the local markets - they might be too narrow, they saturated fast. Where was one to dump the surplus at a profit? Where did Britain unload hers? In her colonies. Hence Germany too pushed for 'a place in the sun.'

The bill for national expenses incurred in outfitting warships and consular administration overseas, which as a rule far outweighed the pecuniary gains of the protected concerns, was, and has been, naturally footed by the public. Indeed, colonies also served as a comfortable springboard for imperial intrigue. Though the imperial chancellor Bismarck had preferred to consolidate Germany's continental, that is, Middle-European position, by weaving a steady and diplomatically criss-crossed reticulation of arrangements in the midst of the other 'big players' (Britain, Russia, Austria-Hungary, and France), the vested interests of commercial enterprise became persuasive enough to change the iron chancellor's mind, and induce him to bless the Reich's colonial bid. This took place in the first half of the 1880s.

As was to be expected, the costs associated with the Reich's penetration of Africa (southwest Africa, Togoland, the Cameroons, a stake in Tanganyika), the Pacific (part of New Guinea, the Solomon, Marshall and Caroline Islands), and the Far East (the outpost on the Kiao-Chao bay, with its state-of-the-art colonial architecture, masterful civil engineering, and the fashionable beach resort of Tsing-Tao), were, gauged against the profitable extraction of raw materials and foodstuffs, somewhat disproportionate. Germany acquired 'colonial territories some four times as large as herself.' Notwithstanding (1) the public outlay for shielding commerce with 'the flag,' (2) the earnest commitment of the Deutschkolonialer Frauenbund (colonial women's league of Germany) to supply Teutonic females to the meager German corps of settlers (they were 25,000, including the soldiers, by 1914), and (3) the rather speedy turnover of German investments in hemp, phosphates, cocoa and rubber, these territorial acquisitions were rated by the ruling circles a 'sad disappointment.' Too costly, too thorny: the Germans lacked that imperial dsinvolture with the natives, they knew nothing of that calm poise wherewith the British sahib seeped into the 'local mind' to lay a firmer hold of it.

Naturally, the Germans faced a number of violent insurgencies amongst their indigenous subjects - other than repress them ruthlessly, they did nothing more. Bismarck grew impatient, the great Berlin banks showed no interest in these exotic experiments, and in the interlude, the British empire was resenting ever more such German intrusion at the periphery: for all its flamboyant Kultur, the Reich was evidently the imperial parvenu of the world. Herbert Bismarck, the chancellor's son, in his capacity of insider, confessed that embarking on a colonial policy 'was popular and conveniently adapted to bring [Germany] into conflict with England at any given moment.'

So the Germans wanted attention; they were keen to share with their British cousins the condominium of the world, and eventually clash with them, though it would assumedly have to be a collision of short duration. It appeared Germany desired competition for its own sake - a competition which, in the imagination of German rulers and nationalist intellectuals alike, should historically have led to a theoretical 'change of the guard' between Britain and Germany, something akin to the transition from the Spanish to the British empire in the seventeenth century.

And so while Bismarck junior did not conceal his imperialistic enthusiasm, the late chancellor Bernhard von Blow (1900-09) would years later decry in his memoirs that the German people had no political ability whatever. Possibly it was all true, but it did not bode well for Germany's national security. The ablest student of the era, Nowegian-American social scientist Thorstein Veblen, remarked in 1915:

Doubtless, a penchant for profundity and deliberation bulks large among the habits of those who cultivate [German] culture. But nothing can be more profoundly and meticulously deliberate than the measured footsteps of the man who no longer knows where he is going, though he is on his way.

Because it knew not precisely where it was going, German imperial policy might have been judged amateurish, but the facts facing external observers persisted: here was an educated 'anthill', replete with technique and presumption that was seeking to expand. And expand it did: despite its naivety in the arts of imperial scheming, the Reich laid rail - the most sophisticated - everywhere it could, established an enviable network of commercial stations, introduced impeccable administration, and eventually hoped to crown it all with the diffusion of its unsurpassed arts and sciences. Not as politically experienced as the British, but nonetheless a competitor of disturbing brilliance. To restrain, challenge, and defeat the Germans would be no simple task.

By 1890, admittedly not even the master strategist, Bismarck himself, who was now being dismissed by the new Emperor, Wilhelm II, had been capable of identifying a 'new course' for Germany. He clearly comprehended, as will be emphasized hereafter, the importance of not antagonizing Russia, though that proved extremely difficult, considering that Germany's closest ally, the Austrian empire, was perennially at odds with Russia's aspirations in Eastern Europe. Hence, Bismarck's cherished goal, a solid alliance of the three continental sovereigns (the Dreikaiserbund), never materialized. Then, the tentatively 'friendly' feelers he had sent toward England had always been received with suspicion in London, for the Reich had been for some time unabashedly fashioning itself as a rival - there only remained to assess its degree of hostility. But that, as mentioned above, was a matter fuzzy to Germany herself.

What was certain was that France, within the shifting circles of alliances, was for Germany 'hopeless': in 1871, after the Franco-Prussian War, the newly proclaimed Reich had annexed industrially-rich Alsace and Lorraine, and thenceforth it was sworn hate between the two powers. By the time Bismarck left, he had done precious little to allay the discomfort of Britain.

Collectively, the gist of all such interminable diplomatic jockeying consisted in the Germans' unresolved complex of political inferiority vis--vis the British: Kaiser Wilhelm, the grandson of Queen Victoria; Bismarck, Admiral Tirpitz, the future father of the German Imperial Navy; and a slew of German grandees were all fluent in English, and educated in the ways of the British gentleman of leisure: the German attraction to Britain, the fascination with her mastery of power, were strong. But the German Reich was altogether a 'different' creature: it only wished it possessed an equal level of imperial savvy to make itself heard. And so it tried, with whatever it had - which was much, as the Allies were to realize two decades later, but not enough.

Thereafter, with Wilhelm II, came the neuer Kurs: and this 'new course,' which was in truth but the continuation of the old one, brought in relief the former orientation and unveiled its blurred medium-term aim: in brief, antagonism with Britain; antagonism to be settled by naval skirmishes, bold diplomacy, and commercial and technological swagger.

In the voluminous stream of scholarly production dealing with the Second Reich and the Grnderzeit (the 'founding epoch' of German imperial hegemony in the late nineteenth century) much has been made of Wilhelm II's infantile antics and capricious shallowness; much catastrophic action ascribed to the Kaiser's neurotic shame for his withered left arm and hand. Leaving aside such psychologistic etiology bon march, which is graciously passing out of vogue, it may be more to the point to remark that the abiding tendency of Germany's new course appeared to be nothing more than a disquieting drift to dissolution. As one German historian recently observed, Wilhelm II was not the creator of German hubris, simply its most conspicuous functionary.

Thus by the end of the nineteenth century, economically speaking, Germany and America were breathing down Britain's neck. But this elementary recognition on Britain's part hardly exhausted the matter. America spoke passable English, could be 'Liberal', and most important, was, like Britain herself, an island: she could not represent a threat. But the German language was as remote from the English as Wilhelmshaven was close to Dover. Germany was at hand, on the continent. And there was more.

Naval skirmishes ...

It became apparent by the end of the century that Wilhelm II was enthusiastically supporting the project of expanding the Imperial Navy. At home, the cosmopolitans, the Socialists and the Liberals, were wary - of course, such a move would have meant a positive confrontation with Britain - but so were the conservative agrarians: a great Navy signified some form of open trade, and heavy taxes. The Reich silenced its landlord class - the so-called Junkers - with protective tariffs, and set out to ratchet up the maritime effort, cheered by the vast majority of the country - Liberals, Catholics, pan-Germans, the rich absentee owners and not so rich Socialist underclass, all, in one shape or another, 'nationalists': at the time it seemed indecorous not to wear some of that collective pride for the so many astounding achievements of the young Reich.

Propaganda, public rallying and, to respond to German jingoism, whipping the average Briton into patriotic frenzy by feeding him a 'good hate' amounted to so much routine for the British governors and their dependable press organs: these things could be effected effortlessly, if the need arose. But the German intrusion upon the waters of the North Sea, and therefrom the new fleet's predictable reach for the maritime expanses of the globe constituted for Britain, to put it mildly, a grave worry. This time the Reich had gone too far. It was encroaching upon the very means of British imperial management, the hallowed 'Royall Navy,' which had been the chief instrument of Great Britain's conquest of the world since the prophetic Elizabethan days of John Dee, the Queen's astrologer, cartographer, occultist, and intelligence officer.

The Germans were intuiting one thing too many: they were slowly understanding that if they successfully coupled continental might - which they could readily wield, being the Prussian divisions, solidly planted in the heart of Europe, the best in the world - with a powerful fleet, their military force de frappe would assuredly overpower that of Britain.

So then the issue of alliances came to the fore. Intuitively, the Germans knew since the epoch of Bismarck that it would not do to find themselves trapped between the 'hopeless' French, and the ambivalent Russians. A prolonged war, if fight one must, on two fronts had to be avoided. This was why Bismarck never sought to alienate Russia entirely; but the clumsy anti-Slav intrigues of the Austrian partner in the Balkans stood in the way: the Austro-Hungarian empire was the weak appendage of the Reich; the German General Staff was conscious of this burden. And would live to regret it - 'we are fettered to a corpse,' they would wail a mere month after the beginning of the war. But for the time being, Austria remained the natural ally because she afforded a continuum of Germanic control upon the southeastern reaches of Europe, and, moreover, Austrians spoke beautiful German. That fin de sicle Vienna, though showing spreading symptoms of decadence, was one of the vanguards, if not the vanguard of 'German' artistic expression - a crucible of extraordinary inventiveness, second not even to Paris - is an important consideration in this regard.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Conjuring Hitlerby Guido Giacomo Preparata Copyright © 2005 by Guido Giacomo Preparata . Excerpted by permission.
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