Readings on Fascism and National Socialism: Selected by members of the department of philosophy, University of ColoradoVarious
Philosophy
Readings on Fascism and National Socialism: Selected by members of the department of philosophy, University of Colorado
Various
Fascism; National socialism
Dr. Scurla claims that National Socialism and Fascism are the
strivings of the German and Italian people for final national
unification along essentially different national lines natural to each
of them. "What took place in Germany," he asserts, "was a political
revolution of a total nature."[25] "Under revolution," he states, "we
understand rather the penetration of the collective folk-mind
[_gesamtvölkischen Bewusstseins_] into all regions of German
life."[26] And, he concludes:
National Socialism is no invented system of rules for the
political game, but the world-view of the German people,
which experiences itself as a national and social community,
and concedes neither to the state nor the class nor the
individual any privileges which endanger the security of the
community's right to live.[27]
Some of the most striking expressions of the race concept are found in
_Die Erziehung im dritten Reich_ (_Education in the Third Reich_), by
Friedrich Alfred Beck, which was published in 1936. It is worthy of
note that the tendency which may be observed in Huber (document I,
_post_ p. 155) and Neesse to associate the ideas of _Volk_ and race is
very marked with Beck. "All life, whether natural or spiritual, all
historical progress, all state forms, and all cultivation by education
are in the last analysis based upon the racial make-up of the people
in question."[28] _Race_ finds its expression in human life through
the phenomenon of the _people_:
_Race_ and _people_ belong together. National Socialism has
restored the concept of the people from its modern
shallowness and sees in the people something different from
and appreciably greater than a chance social community of
men, a grouping of men who have the same external interests.
By _people_ we understand an entire living body which is
racially uniform and which is held together by common
history, common fate, a common mission, and common tasks.
Through such an interpretation the people takes on a
significance which is only attributed to it in times of
great historical importance and which makes it the center,
the content, and the goal of all human work. Only that race
still possesses vital energy which can still bring its unity
to expression in the totality of the people. The people is
the space in which race can develop its strength. Race is
the vital law of arrangement which gives the people its
distinctive form. In the course of time the people undergoes
historical transformations, but race prevents the loss of
the people's own nature in the course of these
transformations. Without the people the race has no life;
without race the people has no permanence ... Education,
from the standpoint of race and people, is the creation of a
form of life in which the racial unity will be preserved
through the totality of the people.[29]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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