Polokaust Antecedent German Thinking Cultural Marxism Kolnai

The War Against the West, by Aurel Kolnai. 1938

Germany and LEBENSRAUM. Nazism vs. Christianity. Nazism Anticipated Modern Western Hedonism (Cultural Marxism)

My review is based on the original 1938 edition. Owing to the fact that this work precedes WWII and the Holocaust, it has the advantage of not being colored by them. The author identifies himself as Jewish (p. 495), but does not emphasize Nazi attitudes towards Jews.

Interesting information is mentioned in this book. For instance, the reader learns that Friedrich Nietzsche was half-Polish. (p. 453). This work goes deeply into political philosophy, and, owing to the breadth of the subjects presented, I focus on a few items.

NAZISM REDEFINES CHRISTIANITY

To begin with, it is unclear to what extent Christianity ever had a hold over the German soul. Author Kolnai quotes Hans Bluher, who quipped (in 1932): “Even today, at bottom, she [Germany] lives in a state of prorogated truce with official Christianity, nor can it ever be known if the pagan cult-fires are truly and properly extinct.” (p. 559).

Kolnai goes into considerable detail on how the Nazis recast German Christianity in the Nazi image. The facts he brings up can be summarized by his statement, (quote) Many Nazis, from tradition or for tactical purposes or merely through intellectual confusion, still cling to Christianity in some form or other. Instead of the frank anti-Christian Gentilism of their more advanced comrades, they profess Pagan amoralism and worship of Power and Self under a more or less transparent Christian cover. (unquote). (p. 249).

In addition, many Nazis (or pre-Nazis) violently rejected Christianity. These included Hermann Wirth, Hauer, Dinter, Bergmann, Reventlow, and General Ludendorff. (p. 241).

DID THE CHURCH SUPPORT NAZISM? NO!

The author realizes that the modus vivendi between Catholicism and Nazism had been a tactical move, and that its magnitude should not be exaggerated. He comments, (quote) …nor can it be denied that the Catholic Church has generally shown all too great an inclination to be hand-in-glove with monarchical absolutism, with social aristocracy, and recently even with totalitarian fascism. However, it has also been often enough manifest—especially in the latter case—that this alliance had about it an air of temporary truce, of outward compromise, perhaps even of ambiguity. Catholic Christianity, however it may condemn subversive or Utopian plans of the Left, is also naturally driven to oppose the confusion between secular and divine power and authority, as well as to uphold moral standards by which social powers of all descriptions are to be judged. (unquote). (p. 251).

THE COMING POLOKAUST: THE PLANNED NAZI AGGRESSION AGAINST THE SLAVS

In the Preface, Wickham Steed writes that, “…it is the intention of National Socialist Germany to bring the Slavs and semi-Slavs of Eastern Europe under German domination and exploitation.” (p. 11).

The leading Nazi, Alfred Rosenberg, described German LEBENSRAUM ambitions. In his words, no consideration was to be made for the Poles, Czechs, etc. They were to make room for 150 million German peasants. (p. 643).

The author notes that, (quote) [Hans] Gunther writes that the Teutons formed a peasantry of warriors, a master people (HERRENVOLK) requiring serfs (KNECHTE) for their economic subsistence. (unquote). (p. 593).

The words of the Nazi Wilhelm Stapel, uttered in 1932, are priceless, (quote) “Minority or majority, we are GERMANS, and being Germans we are the holders of primacy (DIE ERSTEN). Were only two Germans to live in all Poland, still, just for being GERMANS they would be more than all the millions of Poles.” (unquote). (p. 622). (Emphasis is in the original.)

Finally, the late-1930’s German-Polish ENTENTE in no sense implies a German renunciation of what Kolnai calls the German Eastern projects. (p. 561).

FALLACIOUS ATTEMPTS TO RELATIVIZE GERMAN IMPERIAL CONDUCT

Some have argued that the planned German rule over the Slavic peoples is not really objectionable, as it would be no different from British imperialism. Author Kolnai soundly refutes this exculpation. He comments, (quote) The maintenance of British overlordship in India, for instance, however bitterly criticized by many Indians and not a few Englishmen, is not in the least comparable to an imaginary case of England setting out today to subjugate an independent Indian nation… Moreover, non-German Eastern Europe can in no way be compared to a welter of “backward” colored populaces in urgent need of “White”—or rather, Blond—colonization or Prussian organization. (unquote). (p. 612).

THE NAZIS AND SEXUAL MORES

The Jewish sexologists of Weimar Germany were the champions of sexual libertinism, and the Jew Sigmund Freud was well-known for his teaching that hidden sexual drives were behind much human behavior (pansexualism). Author Aurel Kolnai shows that Nazi hostility to Jews, and their advocacy of sexuality as a private, hedonic matter, was less an upholding of traditional marital-limited sexual morality, and more a defense of German racial prerogatives.

As a matter of fact, the Nazis were also antagonistic towards the Church for upholding a non-racial sexuality. Kolnai writes, (quote) We stumble upon similar arguments when perusing the works of the neo-German Pagan BEAUX ESPRITS [clever, cultured persons.] Thus [Lothar] Helbing charges Christianity with being responsible for the decay of marriage in modern society, since it was the mischievous influence of Christian doctrines which caused us to veer round and stop seeing in marriage the “blood-foundation for the future of the State.” (unquote). (p. 238).

More radical Nazis, such as the Berlin physician Dupre, proposed that the State eventually regulate sexual relations, leading to a “breeding State” (ZUCHTUNGSSTAAT). The State would abolish conventional marriage, and establish temporary marriages based upon the racial desirability of the partners and their eventual offspring. (p. 490).

A CLUE TO THE ORIGINS OF MODERN “ANYTHING GOES” RADICAL INDIVIDUALISM

This book, written in 1938, long preceded the West’s abandonment of moral values in favor of hedonistic individualism, which is part of cultural Marxism. However, even then, the author recognized the underlying similarity of the thinking of certain liberals and Nazis.

Kolnai adds that, (quote) Lastly it would be unfair to pass over the fact that the CULT OF RELATIVITY is largely a product of that complacent hedonism and sophistication which is more at home in the habitat of the over-refined Left intelligentsia… The Left Intellectual has taken upon himself the merciless task of exposing the relativity of all values, standards, and rules…The Right “Superman” picks up the thread, and gathers the profits of the argument… (unquote). (p. 235). (Emphasis is in original).

In his Foreword, Kolnai writes, (quote) Finally, it may be surprising to some if I trace a correlation, though definitely subconscious, between Nazism and certain degenerate forms of “Liberalism”. In its cult of “relativism”, “tolerance” and “indifferentism”, in its explanation of social phenomena by “psychology”…Another aspect of the self-destruction of Liberal idealism is the glorification of urges and instincts, of complexes and natural desires which attributes overwhelming power to sensual lust and unconscious impulse. Klages is not far from Freud. Nazi racialism with its false biology and fussy eugenics is very much akin to widely prevalent “progressive” ideas well known to us all. (unquote). (p. 15).