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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