Greater Germanic Reich

“ Who is there among you that hath not heard of the great number of the Germans? You have, to be sure, yourselves seen them to be strong and tall, and that frequently, since the Romans have them among their captives every where; yet these Germans, who dwell in an immense country, who have minds greater than their bodies, and a soul that despises death, and who are in rage more fierce than wild beasts, have the Rhine for the boundary of their enterprises, and are tamed by eight Roman legions. ”

“ It was not to be compared with the old Roman empire, it did not at all come up to what the Carolingian had been. But it did give strong and irrevocable expression to the idea of a highest authority in Germany, an authority bound up with religion, yet independent in itself. ... The foundation of the Germanic empire, that is of an organization which, resting on the internal development of the German nations had won a universal position through the extension of the power of the Ottos over Italy, forms the event of world-wide importance of the tenth century. ”

“ The conquest of the feudal nobility between the Elbe and the Oder, and the feudal colonies of the military orders of knights in Prussia and Livonia, only laid the ground for a far more extensive and effective system of Germanization by the trading and manufacturing middle classes, which in Germany, as in the rest of Western Europe, rose into social and political importance since the fifteenth century. ”

“ Within the limits of Germany itself, there was, as we have seen, no united nationality. Even the consolidation of the smaller tribes under the names of Goths, Franks, Saxons and Alemanni, during the third century, was only the beginning of a new political development which was not continued upon German soil. With the exception of Denmark, Sweden, Russia, Ireland, Wales, the Scottish Highlands, and the Byzantine territory in Turkey, Greece and Italy, all Europe was under Germanic rule at the end of the Migration of the Races, in the year 570. ”

“ So involved, I do not see that the existing Germanic synthesis is likely to prevail in the close economic unity, the urban region that will arise in Western Europe. I imagine that the German Empire—that is, the organized expression of German aggression to-day—will be either shattered or weakened to the pitch of great compromises by a series of wars by land and sea ”

“ Only I think that we could not be answerable for it to Germany, and to Germania, for this Germanic Reich needs the SS organization. She needs it at least for the next few centuries. Then, in a hundred, a thousand, or two thousand years another form will surely be found. When we are dead and gone, some remnant of us with a few of our fundamental ideas will pull through and carry on. ”

“ If the present war with all its horrible carnage issues, even if only in the beginning of those changes which some of us believe must necessarily result from it—changes economical, political, and moral—then indeed it will not have been waged in vain. With the great intellectual powers of the Germanic people devoted, not to the organization of military power and of national domination, but to furthering the realization of a higher human society ”

“ And the world will feel their sting so long as they continue to tolerate Germany and her peoples on the earth, for those Germanic traits are the same as those which, emanating from the German soul, animated the Germanic tribes of yore. We have but to examine the development of those tribes to perceive just to what extent within the German soul, the German ideal of world conquest and dominion really lies. ”

“ In this Pan-German Empire, Germans alone will govern; they alone will exercise political rights; they alone will serve in the army and navy; they alone will have the right to hold land; and they will thus be made to feel that they are a people of rulers, as they were in the Middle Ages. ”

“ The Germanic body as a whole suffers by its geographical disposition, coupled with its political constitution, a grave disadvantage in its struggle against the Allies, particularly towards the East, because just that part of it which is thrust out and especially assailable by Russia happens to be the part most likely to be disaffected to the whole interests of the Germanic body ”

“ The boundaries between Germany and Rome still remained the Rhine and the Danube, but on the east they were extended to the Black Sea, and in place of the invasions of Cæsar, Drusus and Germanicus, the Empire was obliged to be content when it succeeded in repelling the invasions made upon its own soil. Three hundred years of very slow, but healthy growth on the one side, and of luxury, corruption and despotism on the other, had thus changed the relative position of the two races. ”

“ Germany’s ambitions are only too well known—they have been advertised loudly enough, and they have been expounded again quite recently in General von Bernhardi’s notorious book, “Germany and the Next War”—a book written65 with all the brusque insolence of which only a German is capable. If Germany’s future programme includes the Germanizing of the whole of Europe, it is surely superfluous to relate in detail how she strove to Germanize a people under her own rule—it is one of the blackest chapters in the histories of oppression. ”

“ Germania as a malicious vestal clad in horrid armor and making mischief in the world is a very present danger; Germania with a torch lighting the world to salvation is a phantom, a ghost, seen by hasty and nervous observers, who rush out to proclaim an adventure that may excite a passing interest in themselves. ”

“ Between the Germanic community and the degenerate population of an inferior variety of men there is no longer any common measure. Human brotherhood is rejected, even more than all the other traditional moral values.
How can one explain how Germany, fertilized through the centuries by classic antiquity and Christianity, by the ideals of liberty, equality, and social justice, by the common heritage of western humanism to which she had brought such noble and precious contributions, could have come to this astonishing return to primitive barbarism? ”

“ The unseverable unity of Pan-Germanism is the ruling formula with the Germans of Austria. Are they not continually threatening the Hapsburgs that they will secede if the supremacy of their German minority over the Slav majority is not maintained? They do not even take the trouble to lower their voices when they cry to the neighbouring Empire: "Before very long we shall be yours."
Since the defeat of France, Germany's ambitions have grown to a height out of all proportion even to the importance of her conquest. ”

“ Enough has now been said to give some idea of the distracted condition of the Germanies in the eighteenth century and to explain why the Holy Roman Empire was an unimportant bond of union. Austria, traditionally the chief of the Germanies, was increasingly absorbed in her non-German possessions in Hungary, Italy, and the Netherlands. Prussia, the rising kingdom of the North, comprised a population in which Slavs constituted a large minority. Saxony was linked with Poland; Hanover, with Great Britain. Bavaria was a chronic ally of France. ”

“ Russia, France, and England will oppose the establishment of Greater Germany. Austria, feeble as she is, will not weigh heavily in the balance. The Germans will not march against Germany. The basis of our enterprise must be the Pan-Germanist principle.
“Some one must make room, either the Slavs of the West or of the South, or else we ourselves! As we are the strongest the choice will not be difficult. We must give up our attitude of modest expectation. ”

“ Would we comprehend the Germany of to-day, we must hold firmly in our minds an epitome of what it has been, and see vividly the devious path of its development through the ages.
The German nation is of ancient lineage, and indeed belongs to the royal line of human descent, the Aryan; its ancestral roots running back until lost in the heart of Asia, in the mists of antiquity.
The home of the Aryan race is shrouded in mystery, as are the impelling causes which sent those successive tides of humanity into Europe. ”

“ The present population of the German Empire is almost exclusively Germanic, the exceptions being the Slavic Poles of Posen, Pomerellen, southeastern Prussia and eastern Silesia, the remnant of the Wends of Lusatia and the French element in the recently acquired Imperial lands of Alsace and Lorraine. ”

“ In Germany, notwithstanding the greatest division, the most peculiar separation of religion and even of races, yet nevertheless that great German empire is coming forward as a monument of the civilization of the future world, and as the centre of all Europe against any form of Oriental barbarism. ”

“ Surely these quiet, harmless folk, fathers as they are of the North German race, might have been spared that uncalled-for nagging and worrying which has often been pointed against them from Berlin for purely political purposes! In the day of their power they were more tolerant of Germanism. They fought side by side with the Franks, fought even under Frankish chieftains. Germany owes them a debt, and should at least, as it may be hoped that she now will, let them die in peace. Death no doubt is bound to come. ”

“ After the lapse of a generation that has been weighted with the cuirass of Militarism, we are able to appreciate the force of that remark. Equally true is it that the formation of the German Empire has not added to the culture and the inner [pg 154] happiness of the German people. The days of quiet culture and happiness are gone; and in their place has come a straining after ambitious aims which is a heavy drag even on the vitality of the Teutonic race. Still, whether for good or for evil, the unification of Germany must stand out as the greatest event in the history of the Nineteenth Century. ”

“ The power of Germany comes not from the west but from the east, from Prussia, from the country built nearly on the Slavonic side, and every progress in the east means a new increase of the German power, and the first thing for Europe to do in the future if she wants to have Germany less dangerous is to stop the progress of Germanism in the east. ”

“ Had not the uprising of the peasants been shamefully betrayed by the leaders of German culture and civilization, the development of the nation would, at that time, have already assumed a normal form, and not only would Germany be the equal of the other civilized nations, but as the first-born modern nation, would have held the roost prominent place among them. ”

“ For a century after the reign of Frederick, Prussia remained the most prominent Germanic state in Europe. ”

“ Although as a result of the Thirty Years’ War the German Empire is far less Nordic than in the Middle Ages, the north and northwest of Germany are still Teutonic throughout and in the east and south the Alpines have been thoroughly Germanized with an aristocracy and upper class very largely of pure Teutonic blood. ”

“ In our reckonings and prognostications we should keep in mind that the German is the centre body of the Teutonic race. He is down, but he is not finally beaten. His mind is resentful, and indeed full of the revenge instinct. ”

“ Even Germany acknowledges the sway of French literature, politeness, and taste. Victorious Berlin copies the fashions and manners of conquered France, as ancient Rome, after conquering Athens, became the slave of Athenian civilization.
Germany, too, must have already passed the period of her maturity, according to the race theory; for, under the Saxon Othos, under the Hohenstaufens, and Charles V., until the Thirty Years' War broke the strength of the empire, she was superior even to France. Does not German genius in its peculiar walks rule the world now? German science, German music? ”

“ The Germans of to-day, whether they live on the farms or in the cities, are for the most part descendants of the peasants who survived, not of the brilliant knights and sturdy foot soldiers who fell in that mighty conflict. Knowledge of this great past when Europe was Teutonic and memories of the shadowy grandeur of the Hohenstaufen Emperors, 187who, generation after generation, led Teutonic armies over the Alps to assert their title to Italian provinces, have played no small part in modern German consciousness. ”

“ BUT—shall Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Austrians, Norwegians, Dutch, Belgians, Frenchmen, Greeks, Englishmen, Irishmen, Scotsmen, Canadians, Australians and Americans—for we too may ultimately feel the spike of the German boot—shall all these peoples, numbering some 300,000,000 of the most civilized, most enlightened on earth suffer constantly and face unnatural death every generation so that some small part of Germany's populace may continue to exist? ”

“ She lagged for centuries in the rear of her neighbors, staring after them, despising, envying, scarce comprehending. It is only within the last hundred and fifty years that Germany has reasserted her ancient place among the foremost of the nations. ”

“ The Emperor of Germany can honestly deny that he is a Pan-Germanist, and the Tsar that he is a Pan-Slavist. Germans and Slavs of Austria, and Slavs of the Balkans, may, for their part, desire to remain Austrian or independent, as they are to-day. It is none the less true, however, that there is in Europe an old quarrel between two great races, that each of them is represented by a powerful empire, and that these empires cannot forever remain unconcerned about the quarrels of the two races. ”

“ I am convinced that the fear of war induced by a hereditary instinct, caused the mass of the Germans to become the tools and dupes of those who played upon this very fear in order to create a military autocracy. On the other hand, and, especially, in the noble class, we have in Germany a great number of people who believe in war for its own sake. In part, these nobles are the descendants of the Teutonic Knights who conquered the Slav population of Prussia, and have ever since bound that population to their will. ”