Indoctrination: poetry & music (4/6)

Walter Felscher (walter.felscher@UNI-TUEBINGEN.DE)
Mon, 9 Nov 1998 18:16:56 +0100 

6. The imitation of religious attitudes and practises


Hitler, as did most of his close associates from the early NS
movement, came from the South of Germany, Goebbels from the
Rhineland. Most of these men grew up in catholic environments
(Goebbels even received a diocesan stipend during his last
years at the university) and knew the outward appearances of
catholic religiosity. So they knew

   the public processions through the streets, particularly on
   the holiday Corpus Christi (11 days after pentecost), which
   stop for prayer, from time to time, at altars set out in the
   open, located on risen platforms, covered with lilac cloth',
   surrounded by church flags and abundantly adorned with
   flowers and branches of green,

      which they later imitated in their party meetings, particularly
      at the Reichsparteitage, with the role of the altars taken
      by speaker's pulpits, covered and surrounded by NS flags;

   in a procession, the carrying along of the Sanctuarium where
   all bystanders at the streetside kneel when it passes them,

      which they later imitated with carrying a flag in front of
      their marching columns where all bystanders were forced
      to turn towards the flag, when it passed them, and to
      greet it with the NS salute (i.e. their stretched-out
      right arm), and he who would not could expect to be
      beaten up by accompanying SA troopers;

   the consecration of regimental flags by spraying consecrated
   water and touching them with an older flag,

      which they later imitated by consecrating their NS flags
      with the "Blutfahne" or a descendant of it. [This was the
      bloodied flag that had been carried at the NS march to the
      'Feldherrnhalle' on Nov.9th , 1923, during which they were
      gunned down by the police : shot by the second from line two in

             Kameraden, die
             Rotfront und Reaktion erschossen,
             marschier'n im Geist
             in unsern Reihen mit. ]

That all of this was no joke (as readers may mean who never
saw a catholic procession), but was done on purpose and in utter
seriousness, becomes clear from the entries in Goebbels' private
diaries, e.g. on October 16 , 1928 ,

   (Goebbels' own reflections.)
   Was ist uns heute das Christentum ? Nationalsozialismus ist
   Religion. Es fehlt nur noch das religio"se Genie, das alte
   u"berlebte Formeln sprengt und neue bildet. Der Ritus fehlt
   uns. Nationalsozialismus muss auch einmal Staatsreligion der
   Deutschen werden. Meine Partei ist meine Kirche, und ich glaube
   dem Herrn am besten zu dienen, wenn ich seinen Willen erfu"lle
   und mein unterdru"cktes Volk von den Sklavenketten befreie.

    [What is christianity for us today ? National-socialism if
     religion. What is lacking is only the religious genius which
     breaks outdated formulas and forms new ones. The ritus is
     lacking us. Sometime, National-socialism must become the
     state religion of Germans. My party is my church, and I
     think to serve the Lord best when I fulfill his will and
     liberate my suppressed people from the chains of slavery.]

and later on December 2 , 1936,

   (Report on Hitler's address to the cabinet meeting on Dec. 1 )
   Frage der Kirchen akut. Religiosita"t von ihnen trennen, da
   sonst mit ihnen die ganze Gottgla"ubigkeit in Gefahr. Den
   Gottesglauben ganz tief, vor allem in der Jugend verankern.
   Hier Einheit und Klarheit schaffen. Darum neues Jugendgesetz,
   das H.J. zur Staatsjugend erhebt.

    [The question of the churches is urgent. Religiosity must
    be separated from them since otherwise the entire belief in
    god is endangered. The belief in god must be anchored very
    deeply, particularly among the youth. Here unity and
    clearness must be created. To this end new youth law
    which rises the HJ to the State Youth. ]

The policies then, pursued by Hitler and Goebbels, amounted to

(a) substitute the God of Christianity by an impersonal god (or
    Vorsehung, providence, as Hitler called it in his public
    pronouncements),

(b) replace service in the name of God by service for the
    German 'Volk' (an ill-defined notion, referring sometimes
    to nationality, sometimes to language, and sometimes to
    ethnicity and race),

(c) substitute solemnly organized meetings of NS organizations
    for high mass in church, and idolize the flag in place of
    the Cross or the Sanctuarium,

(d) replace personal resurrection by the unending chain of
    generations promised for the Volk and, extending this
    connection,

(e) replace the sacrifice at Golgatha by the sacrificial death
    for the survival of that 'Volk'.

It should be clear, however, that all these aims were not the
unique inventions of Hitler and his men. We find (a) at least
since the 18th century (for instance in Goethe's poems),
certainly under the influence of the enlightenment. Many
analogous substitutions occur in masonic procedures (cf.their
vulgarization in Schikaneder/Mozart), not to mention the
various mystifications cultivated by the several youth
movements in the early 20ieth century. Similar features will be
discovered in the attempts of the 19th centuries leftist
revolutionaries, and if you replace "NS" and "Volk" by "CP" and
"working class" then you can read (a) - (e) for Stalin's soviet
union and its imitations  -  only that Stalin had no Goebbels.