Not Too Much Enthusiasm

Tracing the history of Central Europe through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it is common to note the harmful effects of extreme nationalism, which turned a healthy and benign patriotism into a toxic, vicious and aggressive sentiment. While there is no doubt that nationalism - valuing allegiance to one's country too much - played a role in causing both world wars, historian Herbert Schnädelbach notes that an additional cause was a lukewarm attitude toward one's own nation: a lack of enthusiasm which extended to not bothering to rescue it from the clutches of dangerous extremists.

The German Empire - a monarchy which politically united modern Germany for the first time in 1871, and which lasted until 1918 - had been a compromise: between those who wanted to unite all of German-speaking Europe and those who merely wanted an expansion of Prussia. It was also a compromise in terms of its structure, failure to be a pure monarchy or a constitutional republic. Being a compromise, most people were ready to live with it, but were not enthusiastic about it. Despite the expressions of affection for Chancellor Bismarck and Kaiser Wilhelm, the grief felt in 1918 was not caused by the loss of the monarchy. Of the many political parties which populated ballots in the early 1920's, the few tiny monarchist parties got an insignificant number of votes. Not many voters were trying to restore the monarchy or the empire.

While German affection for the empire proved to be ephemeral, their fondness for the ensuing Weimar Republic was event less potent. A confusing and inefficient system, its processes seemed to be more of an annoyance than a unifying force, and its collapse seemed almost inevitable. The number of parties, and their inevitable compromises as they formed the needed coalitions, ensured that most voters were discontent with whatever composition constituted the cabinet of the day. Schnädelbach writes:

Both constitutionally and in relation to the national question, the German Empire of 1871 represented a compromise between opposing forces, which began to crumble as a result of the defeat in the World War of 1914-18. The grievances associated with that defeat - the traumatic Versailles thesis of war-guilt, the prohibition on union with the Austrian Germans, the separation of Alsace and Lorraine and the ineffectiveness of the political system of the Weimar Republic in comparison with that of the Empire - weakened any real will to defend the new state against anti-democratic activities. All this was made worse by the economic consequences of the inflation and the world economic crisis, which many attributed to the former enemies and to the political system.

Most Germans didn't like Hitler and his Nazis - he never won a fair election; the most he got was 37% - they were also resigned to some type of structural collapse of the Weimar system, and when Hitler managed to exploit the devices of coalition-formation and non-elected appointments to gain power, it seemed inevitable. Even with the Nazis in power to rig the elections, Hitler still on got approximately 43.9% Although the electorate didn't like Hitler, they also didn't know the extent of the evil and suffering he would inflict on Europe. In 1933, he seemed like a tolerably mediocre choice.

Extreme nationalists are dangerous for reasons which were made all too clear by Hitler and his Nazis. But the opposite extreme - an apathy about one's government, in which one is resigned to expecting mediocre leadership and even the collapse of the system, a collapse to which one is indifferent - is also dangerous, inasmuch as Hitler was able to exploit the disengagement and psychological distance which kept that segment of the voters from caring much or acting to prevent his takeover.