ABSTRACT
In his remarkable book Germany's Revolution of Destruction, Dr. Rauschning gives an impression of National Socialism that reminds one of a landslide or an avalanche. His evidence is all the more valuable psychologically since the catastrophe, which he saw approaching, is now actually upon us. From the standpoint of the present work, his most significant testimony has to do with the destructive effect of the avalanche upon human individuality. The following passages contain the gist of his indictment:
It is the essential task of every revolution to produce a tabula rasa, to make a clean sweep of the past political forces; but the nihilist revolution of National Socialism sets out to destroy everything that it cannot itself take over and convert to its own pattern. This explains its Gleichschaltung, or forcing into conformity of all elements of society and of every independent activity, or else their total suppression. It explains why the revolution ignores the very conceptions of a private sphere in life and of legality . . . The new social order will consist of universal and equal servitude, a general mobilization, not only for the purpose of military preparedness, but as a permanent revolutionary system — a servitude which will remove human labour from the sphere of economic and social considerations and subject it to the principle of blind obedience to an absolute despotism. . . .
Thus National Socialism is at issue with every independent activity or ordering of life. It is bound to make an end of freedom of initiative, of all that in the past has made for creative ability and progress: these things make its dominion incomplete. Nothing is more intolerable to it in its revolutionary course than originality, individuality, character, or true public spirit. Whatever it cannot dominate it must destroy; whatever it cannot absorb and master must go. . . .
This destruction is not brought to a halt before the things of the mind. The fight against the intellectuals and against the freedom of science is not in the slightest degree the outcome of any inferiority complex; it arises from the clear recognition that in the field of the intellect the indissoluble unity of Western civilization remains active. In this field, independence of thought and resistance to the revolution are bound to show themselves sooner or later. 1
