Wyndham Lewis - The Hitler Cult

1939

BY WYNDHAM LEWIS

FOREWORD

PART I:

I. FIRST SIGHT OF THE NAZIS II. "NO JEW--NO HITLER!" III. BERLIN, 1930--"NUR LEGAL!" IV. THE PROPER APPROACH TO NATIONAL SOCIALISM

PART II--HITLER:

I. HERR HITLER'S PERSONAL APPEARANCE II. HITLER AS A FAIRY-TALE III. KULTUR IV. RACE V. HITLER A "SOLITARY" (COMPARISON WITH ROUSSEAU) VI. THE SLEEP-WALKER VII. HITLER, 1933-1939 VIII. A POLITICIANS' HERO IX. HERR HITLER AND "PIG-HEADED INTELLECTUALS" X. HITLER "THE MYSTIC"

PART III--THE PROMISED LAND OF TOM, DICK, AND HARRY:

I. MANCHUKUO, ABYSSINIA, AUSTRIA, CZECHOSLOVAKIA, AND SPAIN II. IS ENGLAND IN A SPOT? III. THE DANGERS OF A "GREY WAR" IV. 1939 COMPARED WITH 1914 V. THE PROMISED LAND OF TOM, DICK, AND HARRY

PART IV--THE CONFESSIONS OF AN EMPIRE-BUILDER:

I. TRADE FOLLOWS THE FLAG II. PROPER ACTION OFF THE COAST OF SPAIN III. EMPIRE-BUILDING IN 1939 IV. EMPIRE: OR THE PROBLEM OF THE GIANT STATE V. THE "HAVES" AND "HAVE-NOTS" VI. GROSSDEUTSCHLAND IS SO "GROSS" VII. THE EMPIRE-BUILDER REPUDIATES HITLER'S ALIBI VIII. SOVEREIGN-NATIONHOOD

CONCLUSION

AS one of the only "neutrals" Germany has ever had in this country--as the first English writer to produce a book upon the subject of Herr Hitler--I begin by announcing that I am no longer neutral. Nothing in my earlier neutrality has been retained, since it is obvious that the time has passed for that, and it could no longer serve any useful purpose. To-day, to be neutral is to be anti-British. Further, it is to be anti-European culture, as I understand it. And the eighty-million-odd Germans back Herr Hitler up much too heartily for us to be able to dissociate them from their leader. One can no longer retain a soft spot, therefore, for the eighty-million-odd Germans. That would be distinctly disloyal to the thirty-million-odd English --who have no Fhrer, and wouldn't back him up if they had, not if he turned out to be a camouflaged Napoleon.

It was not on account of Herr Hitler's beautiful eyes, or of the cute little face of Dr Goebbels, that I adopted "neutrality." It was because another war like the last one is hardly an event lightly to repeat. And to be on bad terms with Germany would entail that, I considered.

"It appears to us humanely desirable that Germany should win no war against France or England." I wrote those words (in my Editorial, Blast No. 2, at the outset of the last War). They are just as true as they were in 1914; and they express what I think to-day exactly as they did then.

But it is "humanely desirable," too, that no war should have broken out at all. So long as I thought it possible to avoid that, I regarded it as my duty to be "neutral." Even I have indulged--in the more restricted field of the written word--in efforts at "appeasement" beside which those of Mr Chamberlain pale in comparison. But to-day, with war following those efforts, there is an impasse, and neutrality will not help us out of it. That is more patent every minute. So I come back to my 1914 position: namely, the undesirability of England or France suffering defeat at the hands of Germany.

As to who "started it," who knows? Was it Edward the Peacemaker? It probably started at the time of the Partitions of Poland, in the eighteenth century. It is at least as old, I dare say, as the days when England was the "wool-farm of the Hanse."

Nations are like children: they take a dislike to one another's face, or accent, or the way the other handles his knife and fork. And Prussia has been the playground-bully ever since he came to school. A rough boy, liked by nobody--look how easy it is to collect coalitions against him to-day, among his playmates great and small! Even the Turk has turned against him.

Whether French, Turks, Spaniards, Slavs, or what not, we are all rather a happy-go-lucky, "decadent" lot to-day, thank goodness. Only Prussia and Japan aspire to be virile. In stupid and stiff-necked fashion they stalk about with glassy eyes, their chests stuck out. All the "decadents" were bound to throw themselves upon these two in the end and stop them from being so beastly efficient. "Curse braces. Bless relaxes," as Blake, a much more typical Englishman than Shakespeare, remarked.

These two communities, one in the West, one in the East, believe that a blow in the eye settles all arguments, and is the best answer should any one dissent from your point of view. In social life such a man is highly unpopular. A nation of that kind is no less so. And the odds against such a nation are so great that its fall is a foregone conclusion.

This book is about a religion--Hitlerism. The personal ascendancy of Herr Hitler, the cult to which he has given birth, with all its political implications, is so important, that the facial muscles, the diet, the sexual continence or otherwise, proneness to constipation, condition of the scalp, glandular set-up, the artistic proclivities of this man-god, and his early career, demand our close attention, and shall receive it.

But it is the cult itself, rather than its object, that is of prime importance. "If there were not a God it would be necessary to invent one." If there were no Hitler, would he be invented? And by whom, and for what purpose? It is my contention that he has been invented. And I will try and explain why, and how.

Of these latter-day "Caesarisms," the Hitler cult is by far the most potent. Shrines were set up for Augustus, but such a thing is unthinkable in the case of Mussolini. One cannot see Balbo pouring a libation. The Italians, as well as everybody else, would laugh--and after all they have the Vatican. But it is not at all unthinkable in the case of Hitler. And busts of him have in fact appeared in the new "Nordic" temples, here and there.

The creed of this Jingo God is naturally a jingo creed. It is referred to as an "ideology." That suggests "ideas." In this war into which we have been forced we are fighting ideas: for it is an "ideological war" we are told. But there are precious few ideas there for us to fight, I am afraid. To make war upon ideas, when they are unsuitable, is the "highbrows" only recognizable function in the modern state at war, and I can hardly find any there, good, bad, or indifferent, to attack. The average Briton need not lie awake at night on that score, anyway. Great Britain will not succumb to the "grey matter" of Herr von Ribbentrop or of his master: it will have to be a strictly physical ascendancy, if Germany is to overthrow Britannia. Such ideas as there are, I shall reveal, in all their intemperate crudity. They are the sort of ideas you would expect a nation to have who have taken unto themselves a Jingo God--of so homely, so rotarian an aspect as this bellicose yet vegetarian divinity.

But let me, without delaying this brief foreword any longer than is necessary, proceed to my introductory exposition.

I begin my book with an account of my personal contacts with Hitlerism. That part is in the nature of political autobiography. Then I deal with Herr Hitler in person. With ideology--with the philosophical stuffing of this Jingo God--I deal last.

PART I

TEN years ago a book of mine was published called Hitler. It made no great stir--for the excellent reason that Herr Hitler in 1930 had made no great stir. It was not topical. It might be described as pre-topical. It is just as bad to be pre-topical, as to be post-topical. I was on the spot five years too soon.

At that time Hitler had not tasted power--he was in his "heads will roll" period. Speeches of his were full of how heads would roll in the sand once he came to power--though no one felt his head particularly insecure on that account, for it seemed highly problematic if power would ever be his. He had tried once in 1923 (his Munich Putsch) and failed ignominiously. Then the Junkers thought a spoke had better be put in Schleicher's wheel--one of those mischievous "political generals"! And so half contemptuously they turned to Herr Hitler, in his old brown shirt. He was so blamelessly plebeian! He would put the Communists' nose out of joint, as well as frustrate the knavish tricks of such as Schleicher. Since then the one-time house-painter has never looked back. He was put in to keep the place warm for somebody else, bluer in blood than he was. But he has stopped there ever since--with a look in his eye that seems to say: "Kind hearts are more than coronets!" And the Junkers have had to put up with it and admit that on occasion a Kind Heart takes you further and is better at a bargain than Norman Blood (or the Prussian equivalent).