The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• The Liberty Fund Library of the Works of Ludwig Von Mises
• Foreword to the Liberty Fund Edition
• Preface
• Omnipotent Government
• Introduction
• Part I: The Collapse of German Liberalism
• I: German Liberalism
• 1.: The Ancien Régime and Liberalism
• 2.: The Weakness of German Liberalism
• 3.: The Prussian Army
• 4.: The Constitutional Conflict In Prussia
• 5.: The “little German” Program
• 6.: The Lassalle Episode
• II: The Triumph of Militarism
• 1.: The Prussian Army In the New German Empire
• 2.: German Militarism
• 3.: The Liberals and Militarism
• 4.: The Current Explanation of the Success of Militarism
• Part II: Nationalism
• III: Etatism
• 1.: The New Mentality
• 2.: The State
• 3.: The Political and Social Doctrines of Liberalism
• 4.: Socialism
• 5.: Socialism In Russia and In Germany
• 6.: Interventionism
• 7.: Etatism and Protectionism
• 8.: Economic Nationalism and Domestic Monopoly Prices
• 9.: Autarky
• 10.: German Protectionism
• IV: Etatism and Nationalism
• 1.: The Principle of Nationality
• 2.: The Linguistic Group
• 3.: Liberalism and the Principle of Nationality
• 4.: Aggressive Nationalism
• 5.: Colonial Imperialism
• 6.: Foreign Investment and Foreign Loans
• 7.: Total War
• 8.: Socialism and War
• V: Refutation of Some Fallacious Explanations
• 1.: The Shortcomings of Current Explanations
• 2.: The Alleged Irrationality of Nationalism
• 3.: The Aristocratic Doctrine
• 4.: Misapprehended Darwinism
• 5.: The Role of Chauvinism
• 6.: The Role of Myths
• Part III: German Nazism
• VI: The Peculiar Characteristics of German Nationalism
• 1.: The Awakening
• 2.: The Ascendancy of Pan-germanism
• 3.: German Nationalism Within an Etatist World
• 4.: A Critique of German Nationalism
• 5.: Nazism and German Philosophy
• 6.: Polylogism
• 7.: Pan-germanism and Nazism
• VII: The Social Democrats In Imperial Germany
• 1.: The Legend
• 2.: Marxism and the Labor Movement
• 3.: The German Workers and the German State
• 4.: The Social Democrats Within the German Caste System
• 5.: The Social Democrats and War
• VIII: Anti-semitism and Racism
• 1.: The Role of Racism
• 2.: The Struggle Against the Jewish Mind
• 3.: Interventionism and Legal Discrimination Against Jews
• 4.: The “stab In the Back”
• 5.: Anti-semitism As a Factor In International Politics
• IX: The Weimar Republic and Its Collapse
• 1.: The Weimar Constitution
• 2.: The Abortive Socialization
• 3.: The Armed Parties
• 4.: The Treaty of Versailles
• 5.: The Economic Depression
• 6.: Nazism and German Labor
• 7.: The Foreign Critics of Nazism
• X: Nazism As a World Problem
• 1.: The Scope and Limitations of History
• 2.: The Fallacy of the Concept of “national Character”
• 3.: Germany’s Rubicon
• 4.: The Alternative
• Part IV: The Future of Western Civilization
• XI: The Delusions of World Planning
• 1.: The Term “planning”
• 2.: The Dictatorship Complex
• 3.: A World Government
• 4.: Planned Production
• 5.: Foreign Trade Agreements
• 6.: Monet Ary Planning
• 7.: Planning International Capital Transactions
• XII: Peace Schemes
• 1.: Armament Control
• 2.: A Critique of Some Other Schemes Proposed
• 3.: The Union of the Western Democracies
• 4.: Peace In Eastern Europe
• 5.: The Problems of Asia
• 6.: The Role of the League of Nations
• Conclusion

1.

The Legend

Knowledge concerning Germany and the evolution and present-day actions of Nazism is obscured by the legends about the German Social Democrats.

The older legend, developed before 1914, runs like this: The German bourgeoisie have betrayed freedom to German militarism. They have taken refuge with the imperial government in order to preserve, through the protection of the Prussian Army, their position as an exploiting class, which was menaced by the fair claims of labor. But the cause of democracy and freedom, which the bourgeois have deserted, has found new advocates in the proletarians. The Social Democrats are gallantly fighting Prussian militarism. The Emperor and his aristocratic officers are eager to preserve feudalism. The bankers and industrialists, who profit from armaments, have hired corrupt writers in order to spread a nationalist ideology and to make the world believe that Germany is united in nationalism. But the proletarians cannot be deceived by the nationalist hirelings of big business. Thanks to the education that they got from the Social Democrats they see through this fraud. Millions vote the socialist ticket and return to Parliament members fearlessly opposing militarism. The Kaiser and his generals arm for war, but they fail to take account of the people’s strength and resolution. There are the 110 socialist members of Parliament.* Behind them are millions of workers organized in the trade-unions who vote for the Social Democrats, in addition to other voters, who—although not registered members of the party—also vote its ticket. They all combat nationalism. They stand with the (second) International Working Men’s Association, and are firmly resolved to oppose war at all costs. These truly democratic and pacifist men can be relied upon without hesitation. They, the workers, are the deciding factor, not the exploiters and parasites, the industrialists and Junkers.

The personalities of the Social Democratic leaders were well known all over the world. The public listened whenever they addressed the Reichstag or party congresses. Their books were translated into nearly every language and read everywhere. Led by such men, mankind seemed to be marching toward a better future.

Legends die hard. They blind the eyes and close the mind against criticism or experience. It was in vain that Robert Michels* and Charles Andler† tried to give a more realistic picture of the German Social Democrats. Not even the later events of the first World War shattered these illusions. To the old legend, instead, a new one was added.

This new legend goes: Before the outbreak of the first World War the party’s great old men, Bebel and Liebknecht, unfortunately died. Their successors, mainly intellectuals and other professional politicians of nonproletarian background, betrayed the party’s principles. They coöperated with the Kaiser’s policy of aggression. But the workers, who in their capacity as proletarians naturally and necessarily were socialist, democratic, revolutionary, and internationally minded, deserted these traitors and replaced them by new leaders, old Liebknecht’s son Karl and Rosa Luxemburg. The workers, not their old dishonest leaders, made the Revolution of 1918 and dethroned the Kaiser and other German princes. But the capitalists and the Junkers did not give up the game. The treacherous party leaders Noske, Ebert, and Scheidemann aided them. For fourteen long years the workers fought a life-and-death struggle for democracy and freedom. But, again and again betrayed by their own leaders, they were doomed to fail. The capitalists concocted a satanic scheme which finally brought them victory. Their armed gangs seized power, and now Adolf Hitler, the puppet of big business and finance, rules the country. But the masses despise this wretched hireling. They yield unwillingly to the terrorism which has overpowered them, and they gallantly prepare the new decisive rebellion. The day of victory for genuine proletarian communism, the day of liberation, is already dawning.

Every word of these legends distorts the truth.

[* ]Elected in 1912, the last election in the imperial Reich.

[* ]See the bibliography of Michels’s writings in Studi in Memoria di Roberto Michels, “Annali della Facoltà di Giurisprudenza delle R. Università di Perugia” (Padova, 1937), Vol. XLIX.

[† ]Andler, Le Socialisme impérialiste dans l’Allemagne contemporaine, Dossier d’une polémique avec Jean Jaurès (1912–13) (Paris, 1918).