By Eric Vandenbroeck and
co-workers
Ludendorff And The German Right
For the Ludendorffs, the emphasis on conspiracy to explain
Germany's troubles after World War I pointed to a broader crisis of confidence
in the country. Society is tempted to blame plots for the mysteries, scandals,
humiliations, and difficulties they face, especially if these societies
encounter extraordinarily severe political, social, and economic problems. In
the 1920s and 1930s, Germany experienced such difficulties. Religious, political,
economic, and scientific explanations were inadequate reassurances for Germans
in the unstable years of the 1920s and 1930s. The crisis in confidence opened
the door for the bizarre Weltanschauungen of
the Ludendorffs and others like them, such
as Streich er, Rosenberg, and Heinrich
Himmler.
For radical German
nationalists, these contrived explanations based on the notion of faceless
conspiracies made sense; for them the history of Germany in the interwar years
seemed inhumane, confusing, and arbitrary. Intangible economic developments had
destroyed the German economy, social forces unleashed by World War I had
destabilized German society, and a new democratic government of questionable
legitimacy had transformed the German state. Once familiar terrain was now
barely recognizable.
Conspiracy theory
instills order, offers explanation, and puts a human face on otherwise
confusing, random, unrelated, and impersonal events. Ludendorff was merely one
of many conspiracy theorists in Germany during the interwar years. Although
some Germans chuckled at his groundless fantasies, he helped fuel the fire of
conspiracy theory with his widespread publications and the subsequent public
discussions of his off-the-wall hypotheses. Radical German nationalists, regardless
of their political allegiance, agreed with the spirit, if not the details, of
his accusations. More importantly, Germans became familiar with his tirades and
rants.
It is astonishing
that Germany, a highly educated country, accepted the paranoid fantasies of
extremists, be they Leftists who railed against industrialists or Rightists who
fumed against international communism. Yet, as Hannah Arendt suggested,
conspiracy theories in totalitarian movements offered security to the
"isolated individuals of an atomized society."1
From bankrupt
shopkeepers to struggling farmers, humiliated veterans to frustrated civil
servants, unemployed workers to simple cranks, Germany was awash in conspiracy
theorists during the interwar years. The Ludendorffs contributed
their share to the flood of conspiracy theories, helping lay the foundation for
the Third Reich. Conspiracy and mystery are essential for creating totalitarian
movements since they harness the populace's suspicious and gullible nature in
their drive to power. For modem masses, disbelieving facts but trusting their
imaginations long for stability and consistency in their lives. Totalitarian
propaganda, which relentlessly exposes and pursues supranational conspiracies,
offered them consistency.
Both the Nazis and
the Bolsheviks learned that supranational conspiracies made effective
propaganda for mass consumption; totalitarian propaganda thrived when it
escaped reality and produced fiction.
The Ludendorffs, fearing internationalism, framed their
opposition to international cooperation in racist terms emphasizing
supranational conspiracy. Collectivization, which in their judgment was the
result of internationalism, diluted the blood and strength of the German
people, weakening them and leaving them vulnerable to foreign predators.
"Many times," Ludendorff wrote, "I have proven that the priestly
caste robs the people of their physical and spiritual uniqueness, changes
humanity into mush through miscegenation and global religion, or religion
transforms society into a bustling, busy, yet spiritually collectivized
anthill.” 2
The resulting loss of
national identity terrified the Ludendorffs just
as it terrified other radical nationalists. They insisted that the various
Voelker must preserve national freedom and the differences between nations to
avert this danger. According to Ludendorff, national identity trumped all other
identities since only a cohesive national identity without the conflicting
loyalties of class interest ensured a productive and prosperous national
economy in which all national community members benefited. Ludendorff was not
alone in these sentiments: quite a few Europeans, especially those on the
political Right, believed class conflict and its political expression in
Marxism disrupted and destabilized national communities, and they rejected
internationalism because it would force their nations to lose economic and
political independence.
Ludendorff insisted
that the Catholic Church encouraged the growth of socialism, ultimately leading
to German society's collapse. He pronounced that Bismarck himself recognized
Catholicism's conspiratorial aims. "It was always the design of the
papacy," Ludendorff wrote, "to push others, i.e., the secular arm, into
burning heretics. The German worker, led by Social Democracy, must make a
revolution, but, as Bismarck first said, the Jesuits were the leaders of Social
Democracy.3
It is unclear whether
Bismarck made such a remark. According to Ludendorff, Germany lost the war
because of socialism at home. Still, if one follows his logic, the
responsibility for this defeat lay with the Catholics, who initiated sinister
plots to humiliate Germany, collectivize German society, instill socialism, and
suppress the German Volk.
Many Europeans
criticized capitalism during the interwar, although generally not for
anti-Catholic or anti-Semitic reasons.4
The 1920s and 1930s
were periods of economic instability in Europe, especially Germany. Ludendorff,
however, based his critique of capitalism on conspiracy theory, not on economic
or social grounds. He argued that once Germans eliminated Christianity from the
"body of the Volk," Germans would also eliminate priests, Jews, and
their capital.5
In this respect,
Ludendorff is a unique figure on the German Right since others on that side of
the political spectrum rarely referred to Christianity as a bulwark of
capitalism.
Of course, glaring
contradictions existed in the Ludendorffs'
disdain for industrial capitalism. They insisted on elevating rural society and
diminishing urban culture even though Erich Ludendorff demanded a powerful
industrial base designed to manufacture the modem tools of war, without which
Germany could not defend itself from outside aggression. He was unable to
reconcile this paradox. Another contradiction existed in the Ludendorffs' support for private property but rejecting the
stock market. The Ludendorffs believed that
society did not need stock markets, the ultimate symbols of world capitalism.
They said closing stock markets and ending speculation would not harm the
global economy. Indeed, they argued that the world economy did not need
anything like the modem stock market for "hundreds of thousands of
years." The Ludendorffs supported
private property, but they did not support the accumulation of it. According to
the Ludendorffs, the modem stock market was a product
of global capitalism and a means to "gain profit without labor and
concentrate property in the hands of the capitalists; in other words, Jewish,
Masonic, and priestly insiders."
For them, global
capitalism remained a tool for easy profit and exploitation. The Ludendorffs had concocted an ill-defined socialist,
capitalist, and nationalist compromise to promote economic equality while
protecting individual's right to pursue personal economic aims. However, they
did not suggest any thorough and well-conceived economic alternative.
They only understood that capitalism and socialism were tools used by
malevolent forces to destroy Germany.
The “Ueberstaatliche Maechte” had
motives for prolonging Germany's economic crises during the 1920s and 1930s. As
capitalists made financial gains, they undermined German strength to create a
single-world government after Germany's economic collapse. Socialists, in the
meantime, divided the nation, thereby fostering political instability.
Ludendorff argued that Europe faced a catastrophic war in which Germany would witness
destruction unseen since the Thirty Years War in the first half of the
seventeenth century. Germany would become the battleground for Italy, the
Soviet Union, and France, or, as Ludendorff preferred, Communism, and
Freemasonry, although he added that "however much the slogans may differ,
they are all uttered with a Jewish accent.”
Ludendorff wrote:
("The supranational powers), incidentally, hope that the slaughter will
put an end to the economic crisis [the Great Depression]. There are many
superfluous people worldwide, apart from twenty million excess Germans [as
claimed by the supranational powers]. 'If millions were to die, the survivors
would get rich and be relieved of a great deal of anxiety.' A war would enable
the financial world to make big profits." 6
Germany would never
reap these rewards since the nation would be annihilated.7
Similar ideas rejecting modernity found popularity in
the German Right. Indeed, the Ludendorffs advocated
a return to traditional rural German culture since they believed that the
demands of modem capitalist society had to the German people from the soil,
causing them to forget their heritage and ensuring their submission to finance
and industrial capital. The Ludendorffs'
ideology paralleled similar intellectual developments among Conservative
Revolutionaries.8
1. The Origins
of Totalitarianism, vol. 3, 1951, 49-61.
2. Erich Ludendorff, "Auch asiatische Priesterkasten
erstreben Kollektivierung von Menschen und VoeIkern,"
in “Asiatenpriestern” 9.
3. Ludendorff, Feldherrnworte, vol. 3, 59.
4. The number of
studies focusing on capitalism's critics during the interwar years is enormous.
But for an analysis of right-wing, conservative, and fascist critiques of
capitalism, see, for example, Herman Lebovics, Social
Conservatism and the Middle Classes in Germany, 1914-1933 (1969); Walter
Struve, Elites against Democracy: Leadership Ideals in Bourgeois Political
Thought in Germany, 1890-1933 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973);
Muller, “The Other God that Failed,” and Schueddekopf,
“Linke Leute von Rechts.”
5. Erich and Mathilde Ludendorff, "Weg mit Goldwahrung
und Boerse!" in Judenmacht (“Jewpower”), P. 395.
6. The number of
studies focusing on capitalism's critics during the interwar years is enormous.
But for an analysis of right-wing, conservative, and fascist critiques of
capitalism, see, for example, Herman Lebovics,
Social Conservatism and the Middle Classes in Germany, 1914-1933 (1969); Walter
Struve, Elites against Democracy: Leadership Ideals in Bourgeois Political
Thought in Germany, 1890-1933 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973);
Muller, “The Other God that Failed,” and Schueddekopf,
“Linke Leute von Rechts.”
7. The Coming
War, 14.
8. Erich and Mathilde
Ludendorff, "Goldwaehrung" (Goldstandard) in Judenmacht,
398.
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