TheConservative Revolution (German:Konservative Revolution), also known as theGerman neoconservative movement (neokonservative bewegung),[1] ornew nationalism (neuer nationalismus),[2] was a Germannational-conservative andultraconservative movement prominent inGermany andAustria between 1918 and 1933 (from the end ofWorld War I up to theNazi seizure of power).
Conservative revolutionaries were involved in a cultural counter-revolution and showed a wide range of diverging positions concerning the nature of the institutions Germany had to instate, labelled by historianRoger Woods the "conservative dilemma". Nonetheless, they were generally opposed to traditionalWilhelmine Christianconservatism,egalitarianism,liberalism andparliamentarian democracy as well as the cultural spirit of thebourgeoisie andmodernity. Plunged into what historianFritz Stern has named a deep "cultural despair", uprooted as they felt within therationalism andscientism of the modern world, theorists of the Conservative Revolution drew inspiration from various elements of the 19th century, includingFriedrich Nietzsche's contempt forChristian ethics, democracy and egalitarianism; the anti-modern and anti-rationalist tendencies ofGerman Romanticism; the vision of an organic and naturally-organizedfolk community cultivated by theVölkisch movement; the Prussian tradition of militaristic and authoritarian nationalism; and their own experience of comradeship and irrational violence on the front lines ofWorld War I.
The Conservative Revolution held an ambiguous relationship withNazism from the 1920s to the early 1930s, which has led scholars to describe it as a form of "German pre-fascism"[3] or "non-Nazi fascism".[4] Although they share common roots in 19th-centuryanti-Enlightenment ideologies, the disparate movement cannot be easily confused with Nazism.[5] Conservative Revolutionaries were not necessarily racialist as the movement cannot be reduced to itsVölkisch component.[6] Although they participated in preparing the German society to the rule of theNazi Party with their antidemocratic andorganicist theories,[7] and did not really oppose their rise to power,[8] Conservative Revolutionary writings did not have a decisive influence onNazism,[9] and the movement was brought to heel like the rest of the society whenAdolf Hitler seized power in 1933, culminating in the assassination of prominent thinkerEdgar Jung by the Nazis during theNight of the Long Knives in the following year.[10] Many of them eventually rejected theantisemitic or thetotalitarian nature of the Nazi regime,[11] with the notable exception ofCarl Schmitt and some others.
From the 1960–1970s onwards, the Conservative Revolution has largely influenced theEuropean New Right, in particular the FrenchNouvelle Droite and the GermanNeue Rechte,[12] and through them the contemporary EuropeanIdentitarian movement.[13][14]
Although conservative essayists of the Weimar Republic likeArthur Moeller van den Bruck,Hugo von Hofmannsthal orEdgar Jung had already described their political project as aKonservative Revolution ("Conservative Revolution"),[15] the name saw a revival after the 1949 doctoral thesis ofNeue Rechte philosopherArmin Mohler on the movement.[16] Molher's post-war ideological reconstruction of the "Conservative Revolution" has been widely criticized by scholars, but the validity of a redefined concept of "neo-conservative"[6] or "new nationalist" movement active during theWeimar period (1918–1933),[2] whose lifetime is sometimes extended to the years 1890s–1910s,[17] and which differed in particular from the "old nationalism" of the 19th century, is now generally accepted in scholarship.[18]
The name "Conservative Revolution" has appeared as a paradox, sometimes as a "semantic absurdity", for many modern historians, and some of them have suggested "neo-conservative" as a more easily justifiable label for the movement.[15] SociologistStefan Breuer wrote that he would have preferred the substitute "new nationalism" to name a charismatic andholistic cultural movement that differed from the "old nationalism" of the previous century, whose essential role was limited to the preservation of the German institutions and their influence in the world.[19] Despite the apparent contradiction, however, the association of the terms "Conservative" and "Revolution" is justified in Moeller van den Bruck's writings by his definition of the movement as a will to preserve eternal values while favouring at the same time the redesign of ideal and institutional forms in response to the "insecurities of the modern world".[20]
HistorianLouis Dupeux, a specialist of the Conservative Revolution, saw the movement as an intellectual project with its own consistent logic, namely the striving for anIntellektueller Macht ("intellectual power"), if necessary via the use of modern technique and concepts, which would allow them to promote and gain wider support to conservative and revolutionary ideas directed against liberalism, egalitarianism, and traditional conservatism. This change of attitude, compared to 19th-century conservatism, is described as aBejahung ("affirmation") by Dupeux: Conservative Revolutionaries said "yes" to their time as long as they could find the ways to facilitate the resurgence of anti-liberal and what they saw as "eternal values" within modern societies. Dupeux conceded at the same time that the Conservative Revolution was rather a counter-cultural movement than an actual philosophical proposition, relying more on non-rationalistic "feeling, images and myths" than on scientific analysis and concepts. He also admitted the necessity to distinguish several leanings, sometimes with contradictory views, within its diverse ideological spectrum.[21]
[Conservative Revolutionaries] are, admittedly, as reactionary in politics as their pre-war predecessors, but they stand out by theiroptimism — or at least by their voluntarism — in front of the modern world. They do not really fear themasses, nor thetechnique anymore. Yet this change ofHaltung ("attitude") had significant consequences — the backward-looking regret is replaced by a juvenile energy — and led to a wide-ranging political and cultural initiative.
— Louis Dupeux, 1994[6]
Political scientist Tamir Bar-On has defined the Conservative Revolution as a combination of "German ultra-nationalism, defence of the organicfolk community, technological modernity, and socialist revisionism, which perceived the worker and soldier as models for a reborn authoritarian state superseding the egalitarian "decadence" of liberalism, socialism, and traditional conservatism."[22]
The Conservative Revolution is encompassed in a larger and oldercounter-movement to theFrench Revolution of 1789, influenced by the anti-modernity and anti-rationalism of early 19th-centuryromanticism, in the context of a German, especiallyPrussian, "tradition of militaristic, authoritarian nationalism which rejected liberalism, socialism, democracy and internationalism."[15] HistorianFritz Stern described the movement as disoriented intellectuals plunged into a profound "cultural despair": they felt alienated and uprooted within a world dominated by what they saw as "bourgeois rationalism and science". Their hatred of modernity, Stern follows, led them to the naive confidence that all these modern evils could be fought and resolved by a "Conservative Revolution".[17]
Although terms such asKonservative Kraft ("conservative power") andschöpferische Restauration ("creative restoration") began to spread across German-speaking Europe from the 1900s to the 1920s,[a] theKonservative Revolution ("Conservative Revolution") became an established concept in theWeimar Republic (1918–1933) through the writings of essayists likeArthur Moeller van den Bruck,Hugo von Hofmannsthal,Hermann Rauschning,Edgar Jung andOswald Spengler.[25]
The creation of theAlldeutscher Verband ("Pan-German League") byAlfred Hugenberg in 1891 and theJugendbewegung ("youth movement") in 1896 are cited as conducive to the emergence of the Conservative Revolution in the following decades.[26] Moeller van den Bruck was the dominant figure of the movement until his suicide on 30 May 1925.[27] His ideas were initially spread through theJuniklub he had founded on 28 June 1919, on the day of the signing ofTreaty of Versailles.[26]
Conservative Revolutionaries frequently referred to German philosopherFriedrich Nietzsche as their mentor and as the main intellectual influence on their movement.[28] Despite Nietzsche's philosophy being often misinterpreted, or wrongly appropriated by thinkers of the Conservative Revolution,[29] they retained his contempt for Christian ethics, democracy, modernity and egalitarianism as the cornerstone of their ideology. HistorianRoger Woods writes that Conservative Revolutionaries "constructed", in response to the war and the unstableWeimar period, a Nietzsche "who advocated a self-justifying activism, unbridled self-assertion, war over peace, and the elevation of instinct over reason."[30]
Many of the intellectuals involved in the movement were born in the last decades of the nineteenth century and experienced WWI as a formative event (Kriegserlebnis, "war experience") for the foundation of their political beliefs.[31] The life on the front line, with its violence and irrationality, caused most of them to searcha posteriori for a meaning to what they had to endure during the conflict.[32]Ernst Jünger is the major figure of that branch of the Conservative Revolution which wanted to uphold military structures and values in peacetime society, and saw in the community of front line comradeship (Frontgemeinschaft) the true nature of German socialism.[33]
According toArmin Mohler and other sources, prominent members of the Conservative Revolution included:
Despite a broad range of political positions that historian Roger Woods has labelled the "conservative dilemma",[58] the German Conservative Revolution can be defined by its disapproval of:
Conservative Revolutionaries argued that their nationalism was fundamentally different from the precedent forms of German nationalism or conservatism.[25] They condemned thereactionary outlook of traditionalWilhelmine conservatives and their failure to fully understand the emerging concepts of the modern world, such as technology, the city and theproletariat.[60]
Moeller van den Bruck defined the Conservative Revolution as the will to conserve a set of values seen as inseparable from aVolk ("people, ethnic group"). These eternal values were able to survive through the fluctuations of the ages because of innovations in their institutional and ideal forms.[20] Distant from the pure reactionary who, in Moeller van den Bruck's eyes, does not create (and from the pure revolutionary who does nothing but destroys everything), the Conservative Revolutionary sought to give a form to phenomena in an eternal space, a shape that could guarantee their survival among the few things that cannot be lost:[61]
Conserving is not receiving to hand down, but rather innovating the forms, institutional or ideal, which agree to remain rooted in a solid world of values in the face of continuous historical setbacks. In the face of modernity as an era of insecurity, opposing the securities of the past is no longer enough; instead it is necessary to redesign new safety by adopting and taking on the same risky conditions with which it is defined.
— Arthur Moeller van den Bruck[62]
Edgar Jung indeed dismissed the idea that true conservatives wanted to "stop the wheel of history".[63] Thechivalric way of life they were seeking to achieve was, according toOswald Spengler, not governed by any moral code, but rather by "a noble, self-evident morality, based on that natural sense of tact which comes from good breeding". This morality was not the product of a conscious reflection, but rather "something innate which one senses and which has its own organic logic."[64] Conservative revolutionaries saw the values of morality as instinctive and eternal, and as such embodied in rural life. The latter became challenged, Spengler believed, by the rise of the artificial world of the city, where theories and observations were needed to understand life itself, either coming from liberal democrats orscientific socialists. What Conservative Revolutionaries were aiming to achieve was the restoration, within the modern world, of what they saw as natural laws and values:[65]
We call Conservative Revolution the restoration of all those elementary laws and values, without which man loses his connection with Nature and with God and cannot establish a true order.
— Edgar Jung, 1932[66]
Influenced by Nietzsche, most of them were opposed to the Christian ethics of solidarity and equality. Although many Conservative Revolutionaries described themselves asProtestant orCatholics, they sawChristian ethical premise as structurally indenturing the strong into mandatory, rather than optional, service to the weak.[67] On a geopolitical scale, theorists of the movement adopted avision of the world (Weltanschauung) where nations would abandon moral standards in their relationship to each others, only guided by their natural self-interest.[15]
Let thousands, nay millions, die; what meaning have these rivers of blood in comparison with a state, into which flow all the disquiet and longing of the German being!
— Friedrich Georg Jünger, 1926[68]
Völkischen were involved in aracialist andoccultist movement dating back to the middle of the 19th century and had an influence on the Conservative Revolution. Their priority was the fight against Christianity and the return to a (reconstructed) Germanic pagan faith, or the "Germanization" of Christianity to purge it from foreign (Semitic) influence.[69]
Thomas Mann believed that if German military resistance to the West during World War I was stronger than its spiritual resistance, it was primarily because theethos ("character") of the GermanVolksgemeinschaft ("national community") cannot quickly express itself in words, and as a result is not able to counter effectively the solidrhetoric of the West.[71] Since German culture was "of the soul, something which could not be grasped by the intellect",[72] the authoritarian state was the natural order desired by the German people. Politics, Mann argued, was inevitably a commitment to democracy and therefore alien to the German spirit:[71]
There is no such thing as ademocratic or aconservative politician. Either youare a politician or youare not, and if you are, you are a democrat.
— Thomas Mann, 1915[72]
While scholars have debated whether these formulations should be considered artistic and idealistic, or rather a serious attempt to draw a political analysis of that period, young Mann's writings have been influential on many Conservative Revolutionaries.[73] Mann was accused by the right of watering down his undemocratic views in 1922 after he removed some paragraphs from the republication ofBetrachtungen eines Unpolitischen ("Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man"), originally released in 1918.[74] In a speech delivered the same year ("On the German Republic" [Von deutscher Republik]), Mann publicly became a staunch defender of the Weimar Republic and attacked many of the figures associated with the Conservative Revolution such as Oswald Spengler, whom he depicted as intellectually dishonest and irresponsibly immoral.[70] In 1933, he describedNational Socialism as thepolitische Wirklichkeit jener konservativen Revolution, that is to say the "political reality of that Conservative Revolution".[75]
In 1921,Carl Schmitt published his essayDie Diktatur ("The Dictatorship"), in which he studied the foundations of the recently establishedWeimar Republic. Comparing what he saw as the effective and ineffective elements of the new constitution, he highlighted the office of theReichspräsident as a valuable position, essentially due to the power granted to the president by theArticle 48 to declare anAusnahmezustand ("state of emergency"), which Schmitt implicitly praised as dictatorial.[76]
If the constitution of a state is democratic, then every exceptional negation of democratic principles, every exercise of state power independent of the approval of the majority, can be called dictatorship.
— Carl Schmitt, 1921[77]
Schmitt further advanced inPolitische Theologie (1922) that there cannot be any functioning legal order without a sovereign authority. He definedsovereignty as thepossibility, or the power, todecide on the triggering of a "state of emergency", in other words a state ofexception regarding the law: "There is some person or institution, in a given polity, capable of bringing about a total suspension of the law and then to use extra-legal force to normalize the situation, then that person or institution is the sovereign in that polity."[78] According to him, every government should include within its constitution that dictatorial possibility to allow, when necessary, for faster and more effective decisions than going through parliamentary discussion and compromise.[79] Referring toAdolf Hitler, he later used in 1934 the following formulation to justify the legitimacy of theNight of the Long Knives:Der Führer schützt das Recht ("The leader defends the law").[80]
Conservative Revolutionaries asserted that they were not guided by the "sterile resentment of the class struggle".[81] Many of them invoked the community of front line comradeship (Frontgemeinschaft) of World War I as the model for the national community (Volksgemeinschaft) to follow in peaceful times, hoping in that project to transcend the established political categories of right and left.[59] For that purpose, they tried to remove the concept of revolution from November 1918 in order to attach it to August 1914. Conservative Revolutionaries indeed painted theNovember Revolution, which led to the foundation of theWeimar Republic, as a betrayal of the true revolution and, at best, hunger protests by the mob.[82]
The common agreement withsocialists was the abolition of the excesses of capitalism.[83] Jung claimed that, while the economy should remain in private hands, the "greed of capital" should at the same time be controlled,[84] and that a community based on shared interests had to be set up between workers and employers. Another source of aversion for capitalism was rooted in the profits made from the war and inflation, and a last concern can be found in the fact that most of Conservative Revolutionaries belonged to themiddle class, in which they felt crushed at the centre of an economic struggle between the ruling capitalists and the potentially dangerous masses.[83]
Although they dismissedcommunism as mere idealism, many of them showed their dependence on some Marxist terminology in their writings.[85] For instance, Jung emphasized the "historical inevitability" of conservatism taking over from the liberal era,[84] in a mirror-image of thehistorical materialism developed byKarl Marx. Spengler also wrote about thedecline of the West as an ineluctable phenomenon, but his intention was to provide modern readers with a "new socialism" that would enable them to realize the meaninglessness of life, contrasting with Marx's idea of the coming of paradise on earth.[85] Above all, the Conservative Revolution drew influences fromvitalism (Lebensphilosophie) andirrationalism, not frommaterialism.[86] Spengler argued that the materialist vision of Marx was based on nineteenth-century science, while the twentieth century would be the age ofpsychology.[85]
We no longer believe in the power of reason over life. We feel that it is life which dominates reason.
— Oswald Spengler, 1932[87]
Along withKarl Otto Paetel andHeinrich Laufenberg,Ernst Niekisch (from 1926 onwards)[88] was one of the main advocates ofNational Bolshevism,[89] a minor branch of the Conservative Revolution described as the "left-wing-people of the right" (Linke Leute von rechts).[90] They defended an ultra-nationalist form of socialism that took its roots in bothVölkisch extremism andnihilisticKulturpessimismus, rejecting any Western influence on German society:liberalism anddemocracy,capitalism andMarxism, thebourgeoisie and theproletariat,Christianity andhumanism.[10] Niekisch and National Bolsheviks were even ready to build a temporary alliance withGerman communists and theSoviet Union in order to annihilate the capitalist West.[91]
In his PhD thesis supervised byKarl Jaspers,Armin Mohler distinguished five currents inside the nebula of the Conservative Revolution: theJungkonservativen ("young conservatives"), theNationalrevolutionäre ("national revolutionaries"), theVölkischen (from the "folkish movement"), theBündischen ("leaguists") and theLandvolksbewegung ("rural people's movement"). According to Mohler, the last two groups were less theory- and more action-oriented, theLandvolks movement offering concrete resistance in the form of demonstrations and tax boycotts.[92]
French historianLouis Dupeux saw five lines of divisions that can be drawn inside the Conservative Revolutionaries: the small farmers were different from the cultural pessimists and the "pseudo-moderns", who belonged for the most part to the middle class; while the proponent of an "organic" society diverged from those of an "organized" society. A third division split the supporters of deep and lengthy political and cultural transformations from those who endorsed a quick and erupting social revolution, as far as challenging economic freedom and private property. The fourth rift resided in the question of theDrang nach Osten ("drive to the East") and the attitude to adopt towardsBolshevik Russia, escorted by a debate on the place of Germany between a so-called "senile"West and "young and barbaric"Orient; the last division being a deep opposition between theVölkischen and the pre-fascist thinkers.[3]
In 1995, historianRolf Peter Sieferle described what he labelled five "complexes" in the Conservative Revolution: the "völkischen", the "national socialists", the "revolutionary nationalists" as such, the "vital-activists" (aktivistisch-vitalen), and, a minority in the movement, the "biological naturalists".[93]
Building on the previous studies conducted by Mohler and Dupeux, French political scientistStéphane François summarized the three main currents within the Conservative Revolution, this broad division being the most widely shared among analysts of the movement:[94]
"Young conservatives" were deeply influenced by 19th-century intellectual and aesthetic movements such asGerman romanticism andKulturpessimismus ("cultural pessimism"). Contrary to traditionalWilhelmine conservatives,Jungkonservativen aimed at assisting the re-emergence of "persistent and fundamental structures"—authority, the state, the community, the nation, the people—while "espousing their times" in the very same movement.[6]
Moeller van den Bruck tried to overcome theKulturpessimismus dilemma by fighting decadency to build a new political order over it.[10] In 1923, he published the influential bookDas Dritte Reich ("The Third Reich"), in which he went further from theoretical analysis to introduce a practical revolutionary programme as a remedy to the political situation: a "Third Reich" that would unite all classes under anauthoritarian rule based on a combination of thenationalism of the right and thesocialism of the left.[25][98]
Rejecting both the nation-state narrowed to one unified people and the imperialistic structure based on different ethnic groups,[99] the goal ofJungkonservativen was to fulfil theVolksmission ("mission of theVolk") through the edification of a new Reich, i.e. "the organization of all the peoples in a supra-state, dominated by a superior principle, under the supreme responsibility of only one people" in the words of Armin Mohler.[92] As summarized byEdgar Jung in 1933:
The concept of thenation-state is the transfer of individualistic doctrines from the individuals to the individual state. [...] The super-state (the Reich) is a form of rule that rises above theVolkstum and can leave it untouched. But it shall not want to be total, and shall recognize autonomies (Autonomien) and sovereignties (Eigenständigkeiten).
— Edgar Jung, 1933[100]
Although Moeller van der Bruck killed himself in despair in May 1925, his ideas continued to influence his contemporaries. Among them was Edgar Jung, who advocated the creation of acorporatistorganic state, free from class struggle and parliamentary democracy, which would make way for a return to the spirit of theMiddle Ages with a newHoly Roman Empire federating central Europe.[10] The theme of a return to medieval values and aesthetics among "young conservatives" was inherited from aRomantic fascination for that period, which they believed to be simpler and more integrated than the modern world.[101]Oswald Spengler praised medievalchivalry as the philosophical and moral attitude to adopt against a modern decadent spirit.[64] Jung perceived this return as a gradual and lengthy transformation, similar to theProtestant Reformation of the 16th century, rather than a sudden revolutionary eruption like theFrench Revolution.[25]
Other Conservative Revolutionaries rather drew influence from their life at the front line (Kriegserlebnis, "war experience") during theFirst World War. Far from theKulturpessimismus concern of the "young conservatives",Ernst Jünger and the other "national revolutionaries" advocated total acceptance of modern technique and endorsed the use of any modern phenomena that could help them overcome modernity—such aspropaganda ormass organizations—and eventually achieve a new political order.[102] The latter would have been based on life itself rather than the intellect, founded on organic, naturally structured and hierarchical communities, and led by a new aristocracy of merit and action.[103] HistorianJeffrey Herf used the term "reactionary modernism" to describe that "great enthusiasm for moderntechnology with a rejection of theEnlightenment and the values and institutions ofliberal democracy".[104]
That time is only worth destroying. But to destroy it, you have to know it first. [...] You had to completely submit yourself to the technique, by shaping it at last. [...] The apparatus itself deserved no admiration — that was the dangerous thing to do — it just had to be used.
— Franz Schauwecker, 1931[105]
Jünger supported the emergence of a young intellectual elite that would spring out from the trenches of WWI, ready to oppose bourgeois capitalism and to embody a new nationalist revolutionary spirit. In the 1920s, he wrote more than 130 articles in various nationalist magazines, mostly inDie Standarte or, less frequently, inWiderstand, the National-Bolshevik publication ofErnst Niekisch. However, as Dupeux pointed out, Jünger wanted to use nationalism as an "explosive" and not as an "absolute", to eventually let the new order arise by itself.[10] The association of Jünger to the Conservative Revolutionaries is still a matter of debate among scholars.[106]
The entry of Germany in theLeague of Nations in 1926 participated in radicalizing the revolutionary wing of the movement during the late 1920s. The event was seen as a "sign of a Western orientation" in a country Conservative Revolutionaries had conceived as the futureReich der europäischen Mitte ("Empire ofCentral Europe").[26]
The adjectivevölkisch derives from the German concept ofVolk (cognate with Englishfolk), which has overtones of "nation", "race" and "tribe".[107] TheVölkisch movement emerged in the mid-19th century, influenced byGerman Romanticism. Erected on the concept ofBlut und Boden ("blood and soil"), it was aracialist,populist,agrarian,romantic nationalist and, from the 1900s, anantisemitic movement.[108] According toArmin Mohler, theVölkischen aimed at opposing the "process of desegregation" that was threatening theVolk by providing him means to generate a consciousness of itself.[109]
Influenced by authors likeArthur de Gobineau (1816–1882),Georges Vacher de Lapouge (1854–1936),Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855–1927), andLudwig Woltmann (1871–1907), theVölkischen had conceptualised a racialist and hierarchical definition of human peoples whereAryans (or Germans) were set at the summit of the "white race". But while they used terms likeNordische Rasse ("Nordic race") andGermanentum ("Germanic peoples"), their concept ofVolk could also be more flexible and understood as aGemeinsame Sprache ("common language"),[110] or as anAusdruck einer Landschaftsseele ("expression of a landscape's soul") in the words of geographerEwald Banse.[111] TheVölkischen indeed idealized the myth of an "original nation"–which they thought could still be found in German rural regions–organised as a form of "primitive democracy freely subjected to their natural elites."[10] The notion of "people" (Volk) subsequently turned into the idea of a birth-giving and eternal entity amongVölkischen—in the same way as they would have written on "the Nature"—rather than a sociological category.[112]
The political agitation and uncertainty that followed WWI nourished a fertile background for the renewed success of variousVölkisch sects that were abundant in Berlin at the time.[10] TheVölkischen became significant by the number of groups during theWeimar Republic,[113] although they were not so by the number of adherents.[10] SomeVölkischen tried to revive what they believed to be a true German faith (Deutschglaube), by resurrecting the cult ofancient Germanic gods.[114] Various occult movements such asAriosophy were connected toVölkisch theories,[115] and artistic circles were largely present among theVölkischen, such as the paintersLudwig Fahrenkrog (1867–1952) andFidus (1868–1948).[10] By May 1924,Wilhelm Stapel perceived the movement as capable of embracing and reconciling the whole nation: in his view,Vökischen had an idea to spread instead of a party programme, and they were led by "heroes" rather than "calculating politicians".[116]
Mohler listed the following figures as belonging to theVölkisch movement:Theodor Fritsch,Otto Ammon,Willibald Hentschel,Guido von List,Erich Ludendorff,Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels,Herman Wirth, andErnst Graf zu Reventlow.[109]
Despite a significant intellectual legacy in common, the disparate movement cannot be easily conflated withNazism.[117] Their anti-democratic and militaristic thoughts certainly participated in making the idea of an authoritarian regime acceptable to the semi-educated middle-class, and even to the educated youth,[7] but Conservative Revolutionary writings did not have a decisive influence onNational Socialist ideology.[9] HistorianHelga Grebing indeed reminds that "the question of the susceptibility to and preparation for National Socialism is not the same as the question of the roots and ideological precursors of National Socialism".[118] This ambiguous relationship has led scholars to characterize the movement as a form of "German pre-fascism"[3] or "non-Nazi fascism".[119]
During the rise of power of theNazi party in the 1920s up until the early 1930s, some thinkers seem to have shown, as historianRoger Woods writes, "a blindness towards the true nature of the Nazis", while their unresolved political dilemma and failure to define the content of a new German regime led to the absence of widely supported alternative propositions from the right, and eventually to a lack of resistance to the Nazi seizure of power.[8] According to historianFritz Stern, "despite some misgivings about Hitler's demagogy, many conservative revolutionaries saw in theFührer the sole possibility of achieving their goal. In the sequel, Hitler's triumph shattered the illusions of most of Moeller's followers, and the twelve years of theThird Reich witnessed the separation of conservative revolution and national socialism again".[120]
After a few months of adulation in the aftermath of their decisive electoral victory, the Nazis disavowedMoeller van den Bruck and denied that he had been a forerunner of National Socialism: his "unrealistic ideology", as they said in 1939, had "nothing to do with the actual historical developments or with soberRealpolitik" and Hitler "wasnot Moeller's heir".[9] When taken individually, Conservative Revolutionaries often held ambivalent views of the Nazis,[121] but many of them eventually rejected Nazism and the Nazi party after they seized power in 1933,[11] either owing to itstotalitarian orantisemitic character (the "opponents"), or because there would have preferred another form of authoritarian or totalitarian regime (the "competitors"). Stern summarized the relationship in those terms:
But, we must ask, could there have been any other "Third Reich"? Can one abjure reason, glorify force, prophesy the age of the imperial dictator, can one condemn all existing institutions, without preparing the triumph of irresponsibility? The Germanic critics did all that, thereby demonstrating the terrible dangers of the politics of cultural despair.
— Fritz Stern, 1961[9]
Many Conservative Revolutionaries, while keeping on opposing liberalism and still adhering to the notion of a "strong leader",[25] rejected the totalitarian or the antisemitic nature of the Nazi regime.Martin Niemöller, initially a supporter ofAdolf Hitler, opposed the Nazification of German Protestant churches in 1934, as well as the Nazis'Aryan Paragraph.[122] Despite having made remarks about Jews that some scholars have calledantisemitic,[b][123] he was a leader of the anti-NaziConfessing Church.[124]
We preferred to keep silent. We are certainly not without guilt, and I ask myself again and again, what would have happened, if in the year 1933 or 1934 — there must have been a possibility — 14,000 Protestant pastors and all Protestant communities in Germany had defended the truth until their deaths? If we had said back then, it is not right whenHermann Göring simply puts 100,000 Communists in the concentration camps, in order to let them die.
— Martin Niemöller, 1946[125]
Rudolf Pechel andFriedrich Hielscher openly opposed the Nazi regime, whileThomas Mann went into exile in 1939 and broadcast anti-Nazi speeches to the German people via theBBC during the war.Ernst Jünger refused a seat in theReichstag for the Nazi party both in 1927 and in 1933, despised the "blood and soil" doctrine,[124] and his house was raided several times by theGestapo.[10]Hermann Rauschning andGottfried Reinhold Treviranus sought refuge abroad to keep on opposing the regime.[50]Georg Quabbe refused to collaborate with the Nazis as a lawyer.[126] Shortly before his death in 1936,Oswald Spengler prophesied that "in ten years, a German Reich [would] probably no longer exist" (Da ja wohl in zehn Jahren ein Deutsches Reich nicht mehr existieren wird!).[127] In his private papers, he denounced Nazi anti-Semitism in strong terms:
How much envy of the capability of other people in view of one's lack of it lies hidden in anti-Semitism! [...] when one would rather destroy business and scholarship than see Jews in them, one is an ideologue, i.e., a danger for the nation. Idiotic.
— Oswald Spengler[128]
Others such asClaus von Stauffenberg remained inside theReichswehr and later in theWehrmacht to silently conspire in the20 July plot of 1944. Fritz Stern stated that it was "a tribute to the genuine spiritual quality of the conservative revolution that the reality of the Third Reich aroused many of them to opposition, sometimes silent, often open and costly. [...] In the final plot against Hitler, in July 1944, a few former conservative revolutionaries risked and lost their lives, martyr to the genuine idealism of their earlier cause."[129]
Some Conservative Revolutionaries did not reject the fascist nature of Nazi ruleper se, but would have preferred an alternativeauthoritarian State. They were often murdered or imprisoned for their deviation from theFührerprinzip.
Edgar Jung, a leading figure of the Conservative Revolution, was murdered during theNight of the Long Knives by theSS ofHeinrich Himmler, who wanted to prevent competitive nationalist ideas from opposing or deviating from Hitler's doctrine. For many Conservative Revolutionaries, this event ended the ambivalence between them and the Nazis.[121] Jung promoted acollectivist version of the Conservative Revolution, speaking of nations asbeing singular organic entities, attackingindividualism while praisingmilitarism and war. He also supported "total mobilization" of human and industrial resources, while promoting the productive power ofmodernity, similar to thefuturism espoused byItalian Fascism.[130]
Ernst Niekisch, althoughanti-Jewish and in favour of atotalitarian state, rejectedAdolf Hitler as he felt he lacked any realsocialism, and instead found inJoseph Stalin his model for theFührer Principle. He was interned in a concentration camp from 1937 to 1945 for his criticism of the regime.[131]August Winnig, initially welcoming the Nazis in 1933, opposed theThird Reich for hisneo-pagan tendencies. Despite a best-selling[132] essay published in 1937 defending fascism and strongly tainted by antisemitism, but that diverged from the officialNazi doctrine on race,[133] he was left alone by the Nazis due to Winnig remaining mostly silent during the rule of Hitler.[134]
Regarded as the "crown jurist of theThird Reich",[135]Carl Schmitt remained unrepentant even after 1945 for his role in the creation of the Nazi state.[78] Although he considered Adolf Hitler too vulgar,[130] Schmitt was party to the burning of books by Jewish authors, rejoicing in the destruction of "un-German" and "anti-German" material, and calling for a much more extensive purge, to include works by authors influenced by Jewish ideas.[136]
Hans Freyer was the head of the German Institute for Culture inBudapest from 1938 to 1944. Together with Nazi historianWalter Frank, Freyer established a racist and anti-semiticvölkisch historiography during that period.[137]Wilhelm Stapel joined theDeutschen Christen in July 1933, spoke vehemently against the anti-NaziConfessing Church ofMartin Niemöller andKarl Barth and advocated for the introduction of theAryan paragraph in the Church. At the same time Stapel was committed to the policy of Reichsminister of Church Affairs (Reichskirchenminister)Hanns Kerrl, to whom he served as an advisor.[138] However, under pressure from the Nazi leadership in 1938, he had to stop the publication of his monthly magazineDeutsches Volkstum.[139]
The precursor of academic studies of the Conservative Revolution was the French historianEdmond Vermeil, who published in 1938 an essay entitledDoctrinaires de la révolution allemande 1918–1938 ("Doctrinarians of the German revolution 1918–1938").[10] In the first decades that followed the end ofWWII, most of the political theorists who studied the Conservative Revolution and became specialists of the subject were far-right thinkers deeply influenced by Conservative Revolutionary thinkers, such asArmin Mohler andAlain de Benoist. It was not until the 1980–1990s that academic research on the movement began to spread more globally across the political spectrum, mostly due to its controversial relationship with Nazism and later influence on the post-warEuropean New Right.[15]
The contemporary concept of a "Conservative Revolution" was retrospectively reconstructed after WWII byNeue Richt philosopherArmin Mohler in his 1949 doctoral thesisDie Konservative Revolution in Deutschland 1918–1932, written under the supervision ofKarl Jaspers. Mohler called Conservative Revolutionaries the "Trotskyites of the German Revolution", and his appropriation of the concept has been recurrently accused of being a biased attempt to reconstruct a pre-WWII far-right movement acceptable in a post-fascist Europe, by downplaying the influence some of these thinkers had on the rise ofNazism.[140] Subtitled "a handbook", the study was conceived, in the words of historianRoger Griffin, "as a survivalist manual for those who do not wish to lose their spiritual bearings in the present age". Mohler believed that the project of the "Conservative Revolution" had only been postponed by the Nazi seizure of power.[141] He was also at that time the secretary ofErnst Jünger, who had been a major figure of the movement.[142]
During the 1970s, thinkers of the Conservative Revolution were influencing newradical right movements, including the FrenchNouvelle Droite, led byAlain de Benoist.[143] Some academics, especially inWest Germany, took a new interest in the subject and began to suspect Mohler's study for his political closeness to the concept. The reactionary and anti-modern characters of the "Conservative Revolution" were largely emphasised during that decade, and the movement was seen as nothing more than a fertile ground forNazism, speaking "the same totalitarian languages".[144]
German-American historianFritz Stern used the term "Conservative Revolution" in his 1961 bookThe Politics of Cultural Despair to describe the life and ideas ofArthur Moeller van den Bruck, and rather drew attention to the alienation and "cultural despair" these authors experienced in the nascent modern world, which led them to express such radical ideas in response. Stern grouped, however, Moeller van den Bruck into a larger "Germanic ideology", along with earlier thinkers from the late 19th century likePaul de Lagarde andJulius Langbehn.[17]
In a 1981 symposium entitled "Conservative revolution and modernity", French historianLouis Dupeux pointed out that what Mohler had called the "Conservative Revolution" was in reality neither truly reactionary nor totally anti-modern (they could even show optimism towards the modern world).[6] This analysis was supported three years later by American historianJeffrey Herf in his bookReactionary Modernism, which highlighted the acceptance of modern technique besides a rejection of liberal democracy among conservative thinkers of that period.[145] Dupeux also stressed that Conservative Revolutionaries were not only opposed to the "two forms of progressivism", namelyliberalism andMarxism, but also to the "cultural pessimism" of the reactionary and conservative right, a standoff they attempted to overcome by proposing an innovative form of reactionary regimes that could espouse the new frameworks of the modern world.[6]
In his 1993 bookAnatomie der Konservativen Revolution ("Anatomy of the Conservative Revolution"), German sociologistStefan Breuer rejected Mohler's definition of the term "Conservative Revolution", defining "conservatism" as the aspiration to conserve the structures offeudal Germany, in fact, a political project already moribund during theWeimar period.[146] The "Conservative Revolution" constructed by Mohler was, in his view, the mirror-image of an emerging modern society that took conscious of the deadlocks and dangers of a "simple modernity" built onscience andtechnique only. While noting the complexity that would imply an intellectual classification of that period, Breuer stated that he would have preferred the substitute "new nationalism" to designate a more charismatic andholistic version of the German right-wing movements, contrasting with the "old nationalism" of the 19th century, a current which had essentially been aiming at preserving traditional institutions and German influence in the world.[147]
In 1996, British historianRoger Woods recognized the validity of the concept, while stressing the eclectic character of the movement and their inability to form a common agenda, a political deadlock he labelled the "conservative dilemma". Woods described the Conservative Revolution as "ideas which cannot simply be explained and summarised as if they were a political programme, but rather as expressions of tension".[148] Regarding the ambiguous relationship with Nazism, downplayed by Mohler in his 1949 thesis and accentuated by 1970s analysts, Woods argued that "regardless of individual Conservative Revolutionary criticisms of the Nazis, the deeper commitment to activism, strong leadership, hierarchy and a disregard for political programmes persists. [...] Unresolved political dilemmas result in an activism and an interest in hierarchy which mean that there can be no fundamental objection to the National Socialist assumption of power."[8]
Historian Ishay Landa has described the nature of the Conservative Revolution's "socialism" as decidedly capitalist.[149] Landa points out that Oswald Spengler's "Prussian Socialism" strongly opposedlabor strikes,trade unions,progressive taxation or any imposition of taxes on the rich, any shortening of the working day, as well as any form of government insurance for sickness, old age, accidents, or unemployment.[149] At the same time as he rejected any social democratic provisions, Spengler celebrated private property, competition, imperialism,capital accumulation, and "wealth, collected in few hands and among the ruling classes".[149] Landa describes Spengler's "Prussian Socialism" as "working a whole lot, for the absolute minimum, but — and this is a vital aspect — being happy about it."[149] Landa likewise describes Arthur Moeller van den Bruck as a "socialist champion of capitalism" who praised free trade, flourishing markets, the creative value of the entrepreneur, and the capitalist division of labor, and sought to emulate British and French imperialism.[150] Landa notes the similarities of Moeller's critiques of socialism with those of neoliberals such asFriedrich von Hayek and writes that "far from hostile to the bourgeois spirit, Moeller's text is suffused with such spirit."[150]
The movement influenced contemporary thinkers outside of German-speaking Europe. Among them, the Italian philosopherJulius Evola is often associated with the Conservative Revolution.[51]
TheNouvelle Droite, a French far-right philosophical movement created in the 1960s to adapttraditionalist,ethnopluralist and illiberal politics to the European post-WWII context and to distance itself from earlier forms of far-right like fascism, mainly through a project ofpan-European nationalism[151] have been deeply influenced by the Conservative Revolution,[143][152] as well as its German counterpart theNeue Rechte.[153][13]
The ideology and theoretical structure of theIdentitarian movement is mainly inspired by the Nouvelle Droite, theNeue Rechte, and through them by the Conservative Revolution.[14][13]
Conservative Revolution was emphatically depicted in the German TV SeriesBabylon Berlin.
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