"German Politics: New Pan-Germanism, I" by Edmond Vermeil
From the magazine Revue des Deux Mondes, 6th period, volume 58, 1920 issue
"German Politics: New Pan-Germanism, I" by Edmond Vermeil
From the magazine Revue des Deux Mondes, 6th period, volume 58, 1920 issue
PART I
THE NEW FORM OF PAN-GERMANISM
A young scholar, who knows Germany very well, wrote to us recently:
“What worries me most is that German nationalism, which seemed to me very weakened during the war, at least in the petty bourgeoisie and in the people, woke up more intense than ever. There is no longer a German, I believe, who does not desire revenge: military, or revolutionary, or economic.”
Current events justify this pessimism. As the stupor caused by the sudden defeat dissipates, the idea of revenge develops among the enemy. But there are several ways to conceive of revenge. To imagine that Germany does not envisage them all is to delude oneself. She wants to find the situation she had in the world on the eve of the war. This is the general idea. But the world has changed. New problems demand the attention and the effort of the peoples. Could the goal be achieved in a different manner than by a return, unlikely before long, of military fortune? The day after the armistice, an industrialist from Frankfurt declared indiscreetly: “We are defeated, that is understood. But we will get you anyway. We will promote socialism so intelligently, we will draw up labour laws such that the proletarian masses of all countries will infallibly turn to us and that we will provoke, especially in France and England, all the strikes we want. Masters of the international labour market, we will be masters of the new social order created by the war.”
Did Pan-Germanism, in the catastrophe of 1918, sink with the values of the past which the German people seem to have liquidated forever? This is the problem that must be solved.
The superficial observer might believe so. There is not a day that goes by when the socialist or democratic press does not hold these “Alldeutschen”1 directly responsible for the collapse. The parties which formerly had the monopoly on Pan-Germanism no longer seem to play anything but a secondary role. They stand aside, in a sulky attitude. Their bitter and violent criticism of the current policy seems entirely negative. The parties in power confine them to the contemptuous term “extreme right”, which they oppose to the socialist “extreme left”, to make it clear that they want a moderate solution, far removed from both the social innovations demanded by some and the nationalist reaction demanded by others. From the general policy followed by the majority socialists, the democrats and the Centre, a policy that was moreover anti-revolutionary, hostile to radical measures and sudden upheavals, fond of progressive reforms, it therefore seems that the old Pan-German tradition has been discarded. Relegated to the background, would she have any hope of revival?
No doubt we are aware that the monarchist and militarist reaction has been preparing for a long time, that the officer corps will always be agitated, that the spectre of Bismarck will often be evoked by certain press. But, whatever skepticism or fears in this regard, foreign public opinion has a natural tendency to identify the fate of this reaction with that of the old Pan-Germanism. They would gladly conclude that, if the old Pan-German ideal is not dead and if it still has fairly powerful means, at least it is too discredited to be able to dominate the German mass and bring back dreams of world hegemony.
Other symptoms could also delude us. Germany’s economic distress seems real and deep. Reading the comments of the press on the strikes, the coal crisis and that of the railways, one is easily convinced of the anxiety which reigns in all circles. If the journalists’ remarks that the single winter of 1919-1920 was worth, by its rigors and its privations, all the winters of war, and if they willingly speak of catastrophe, then there is no doubt that this pessimism is partly justified. How could a diminished people, on whom such heavy burdens weigh, dream of the old ideal of grandeur? Turning our eyes to this “lost paradise” that was, from 1870 to 1914, between a dazzling victory and the hope of new successes, the German Empire, this is one thing, but the dreams of hegemony today are seen either as impossible or at the very least paradoxical.
Do not the Germans themselves repeat to us that these ambitions are definitely out of date? Do they not show sincere pacifism? On April 10th, 1919, a Bavarian newspaper published an article on People Without Hate. He said this:
“Fists never clenched furiously in anger; no bitterness in the popular soul; never a serious idea of revenge. We are the people without hatred and we will come out of the war with the feelings that we had during the war, that is to say without personal hostility against our enemies. The appeal launched last year by the ‘German Society for Peace’ in Berlin lends German pacifism all the appearances of a great social force. It begins, no doubt, by asking for the revision of the peace treaty. However, he added: ‘We place ourselves, without ulterior motive, on the terrain of the League of Nations and we pursue a perfectly honest pacifist policy.’ Germany wants to regain universal trust. And the manifesto ends with a vigorous protest against the revanchists who ‘coolly excite national passions, seeking to regain their former position.’ The League claims to make the pacifist idea the dominant note of all German policy.”
Wasn't the policy of revenge, moreover, officially condemned in Weimar? Didn’t President Bauer, in his opening address for July, declare war on reaction by saying: “We must stifle, with the greatest effort, a certain number of people who do not know a finer ideal than that of the old Empire, full of military force and powerful by its several bayonets. This ideal, we deny it purely and simply.” And on the same day, with even more suavity, Minister Hermann Müller spoke of this new amity that Germany was about to introduce into its relations with foreign nations. “We must convince the world of our unshakeable will for peace... The better the world knows that we do not have a democracy without democrats and a republic without republicans, the more our ‘moral change’ will rise outside... Let us bury all the methods of this policy of violence which definitely belongs to the past.” We are therefore reassured. German policy is firmly oriented towards peace. Reading these manifestos and speeches, like so many other assurances given by the press, magazines and books, how can one not declare oneself satisfied?…
It would be a mistake. Only the neutrals and the naïve are taken in by it, those who have a narrow conception of the question, who limit too narrowly, either the old Pan-Germanism, or the general conditions of this great struggle between nations or groups of nations whose world war was only the prelude. Because the Pan-German tradition is not a party affair. It is not strictly limited to the extreme right. Pan-Germans and imperialists were, no doubt to varying degrees, successfully won over before 1914 to all the parties. Pan-Germanism is not just an attitude or a program. It was, it still is, a spirit, a conviction, a religion. Its main idea, elaborated by thinkers and gradually inoculated into the mass of the nation, is that the German people are superior to all others by their “ideal,” this word signifying a determined ideal of social organisation and civilisation. In the name of this ideal, he assigns himself a mission in the world. It is a sui generis2 universalism that wants to extend the German conception of life to the whole world.
If we then enlarge, by thought, the theatre of war, if we see, on the morrow of hostilities as it’s been so properly called, the beginning of a still vaster, deeper struggle, a rivalry not only economic, but also social; If we say to ourselves that only those nations will definitively win the war which will best resolve the question of questions, the social question, the problem of rationally organised labor with a view to supplying and producing food, can we not fear that, on this new and formidable chessboard, Pan-Germanism does not reappear in an enlarged form and that Germany does not want to resume, in another direction, this hegemony coveted for so long, with such untiring perseverance?
This is exactly the question. It can be posed without questioning socialism, or democracy, or any doctrine whatsoever. What matters, in fact, is to define the spirit of ancient Pan-Germanism. We shall then see whether, apart from the reactionary parties which have remained faithful to the original program, this spirit does not reappear, under new aspects, in German democracy and socialism.
Lit. All Germans, could be translated as Pan-Germans
Of its own kind