It wasn't Darwin as the lies go.
http://www.entheology.org/library/winters/NAZIS.TXT
Still, the Enlightenment was of much less importance in Germany,
than it
was in either France or England. After Frederick the Great died in
1786, he
was succeeded by Frederick William II, who stood opposed to the
liberal ideals
of the Enlightenment. Under Frederick William II, Prussia imposed an
edict,
which forbade any school or university from teaching any doctrine that
deviated from Lutheran Protestantism. (Immanuel Kant was censured
under
these new rules for teaching his liberal philosophies.)
Rise of "Volk" Romanticism in Germany
After Napoleon's forces had taken control over Germany, the Holy
Roman
Empire was formally dissolved. Many Germans had reacted to this
humiliation--
imposed by their French conquerors--by defining their nationalistic
ideals
in direct OPPOSITION to the French. French liberal ideals--liberty,
equality,
and fraternity--became especially despised, and pronounced
"un-German".
In its place, German writers began stirring up feelings of "Volk"
culture
(roughly translated as folk culture, but signifying a cultural
heritage and
outlook as a people). Increasingly, German intellectuals who had
identified
with the ideals of the Enlightenment, became denounced as radical,
left-wing
sympathizers of the French Revolution. In its place, a new
conservative form
of Romanticism, led by such German philosophers as Hegel, swept
through the
German intellectual community.
(Note. This anti-left wingism, anti-liberalism was
made explicit by Mussolini in his definition
of Fascism, a word he had coined. This goes to the heart
of popular right winger liues that Hitler was a left winger.)
Hegel and other German philosophers began stressing the greatness of
the
German national character. They claimed that the State did NOT
negatively
influence the individual, as liberals claimed.-- Instead they
proclaimed
that the State was the source of spirituality and virtues, which could
forge
the citizenry into a new world order!
While the French had espoused views of equality of all men (even
Jews)--Volk
culture spoke of the SUPERIORITY and STRENGTH of the German people to
lead
the human race towards a new salvation. For example, the philosopher
Johann
Gottlieb Fichte, known as the father of German nationalism, wrote on
his
fellow Germans:
"...Among all modern peoples it is you in whom the seed of human
perfection most decidedly lies, and on who are charged with
progress
in human development. If you perish in this your essential nature,
then
there perishes together with you every hope of the whole human race
for
salvation from the depths of its miseries." (Johann Gottlieb
Fichte,
REDEN AN DIE DEUTSCHE NATION (Berlin, 1808), p 488)
Jews Defined as the "Enemy" of the German "Volk"
Jews had increased in numbers throughout Germany as a direct result
of the
new religious freedoms they had received in 1871. Because of the high
value
place by Jews on learning, a disproportionate number of them had
become
doctors and lawyers--thus drawing further attention to their
presence--and
making it easier for them to be blamed for Germany's problems.
To the German people, the French were the EXTERNAL enemy of the
"volk"--but
it was the Jews who were the INTERNAL enemy of the "volk". Because
the Jews
had benefited from the political environment under Napoleon, and later
Bismark,
Jews were also identified in the German mind with the ideas and values
of the
French Revolution. Jews were "outsiders" in Christian feudal Germany,
and the
Volk culture that was evolving kept the old religious hatreds-- now
redirecting
them largely along nationalistic lines.
This view can again be seen in the writings of Christian Friedrich
Ruhs
(1781-1820), a history professor at the University of Berlin, who
argued
that Jews should NOT enjoy the rights of German citizenship because,
"a foreign people cannot obtain the rights which Germans enjoy
partly
through being Christians...Everything should be done to induce [the
Jews]...to accept Christianity and through it to be led to a true
acquisition of German ethnic characteristics and thus to effect the
destruction of the Jewish people." (Adler, THE JEWS IN GERMANY, p
71
as quoted by Lucy S. Dawidowicz, THE WAR AGAINST THE JEWS--
1933-1945
(Bantam Books, 1975,1986,p 28. Previous paragraph references her p
27-8)
As the Romantic movement swept through Europe, German writers
reacted by
romanticizing their past. There developed the "volkish" (Pan-German)
view
that Germans had once belonged to an ancient superior race of men--
the Aryans.
They had FALLEN from a Golden Age because of the infiltration of their
culture
By foreign (Jewish) elements.
Richard Wagner, the famous German composer, had been greatly
influenced by
these romantic and racial views of Germany's past. Wagner wrote eerily
beautiful operas on the romanticized glorious past of the German
people.
Rabidly anti-semitic, Wagner claimed the Jew was "the devil incarnate
of human decadence". Only a blood purification would save Aryans in
the
future. Hitler, who was a devoted fan of Wagner's once said to a
friend,
"Behind the absurd externals of the story, with its Christian
embroidery
and its Good Friday mystification, something altogether different is
revealed as the true content...pure, noble blood, in the protection
and
glorification of whose purity the brotherhood of the initiated have
come
together." (Sklar p 146)
--
The official spokesman of the Foxes said
today that investigation into what happened
to the henhouse may be needed.
Cheerful Charlie
.
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