THE NATIONALIST AGE

Smith (2020) explores the history and evolution of what sacrifice for country might mean, with the turn toward sacrifice for the fatherland coming into play in the 1300s, which is a kind of pre-condition for Nationalism.  By the 1900s, it was especially entrenched as represented in World War I, accepted by soldiers and others. But, Nationalism did not really appear until after WWI.  As Smith (2020) indicates:  “before 1914, perhaps even before 1918, Germans lived in an age of nationalism, perhaps more about loyalty to country, and everyone was considered part of it. After 1918, they lived in a nationalist age  which started to take on “us” vs “them” features.  And, while the military budget remained small, mainly paying death benefits to widows, and for health care for people wounded during the war, the substantively increased military expenditure started in 1934.  Germany began rearmament.

Death rates were staggering for German soldiers in both WWI (and later in WWII): “One estimate places the daily death toll for German soldiers at 1303 per day in the First World War and 1083 in the Second (Smith 2020 p. 297).” By the end of WWII, upwards of 10000 to 15000 German soldiers were dying each day. “But both wars reflected the conditions of the industrial era, including callousness toward human life, mass formations, rapid-fire weaponry, and soldiers who understood their roles as industrial laborers whose ‘work,’ as Ernst Jünger put it in 1925, ‘is called killing (Smith 2020, p. 298).'”  The technology of war also changed dramatically as between the two wars.

But, the big difference was the civilian loss of life… “(in eastern Europe) …civilian death tolls which started to rise in the 1930s  induced by Nazi Germany were startling: in Yugoslavia, at least a million civilian deaths; in Poland some two million non-Jewish civilians and some three million civilian Jews; and in Russia, the epicenter of the civilian catastrophe, some sixteen million civilian deaths, including over a million Jews. Genocide … (p. 298)”  was in play, giving the full view of  Authoritarian Radical Nationalism.

As Smith (2020, p. 299) points out, the “…brutality of this new epoch (helps) differentiate what we are calling ‘sacrifice for’ and ‘sacrifice of.’”  The sacrifice for became a substantive part of the frame of the Nationalism that was to come. This kind of sacrifice for could lead to a not so radical nationalism.  It was the sacrifice of that led to the radical version, as in sacrificing the “them” for the cause of the “us.”  As Smith (2020, p. 299) makes clear, “it was understood as meaning that a racially pure German nation could be achieved only by the sacrifice of groups within it.”  The ethnic and racial frame of sacrifice for got blended with the need to eliminate the people who were not part of it, as in sacrifice of such people for the Nationalism associated with sacrifice for.

The Radical Nationalism that came to be also produced two rules of law, one for the “us” and the other for the “them,” who were defined on racial and ethnic lines, especially the Jews.  People in the frame of Judaism lost the protection of the rule of law, not even allowing same to fly the German flag. The Radical outcome was especially characterized in the  “…dominion over the abandoned culminated in the ability to kill without committing homicide (p. 302).” 

The sacrifice of led to “… eliminating Jews from personal, social, and community space, severing the ties of friendship, solidarity, and compassion, and tacitly coming to a consensus that there was a ‘Jewish question,’ and that expulsion was its ‘final solution’ (Smith 2020, p. 302).” 

It was basically, in DIT terms, a total ban on any form of empathy-with the “them.” It was truly an Authoritarian Radical Nationalism, with a kind of dark empathy within the “us” and banned empathy-with the “them.”  And, the “them” was not just Jews:   “In the first mass killings of the Second World War, ethnic German militias (made up of Germans resident in the Polish territory of 1919–1939), typically aided by the Nazi SS, murdered a large number of their fellow Polish citizens, targeting especially lawyers, doctors, officials, clergy, and an enormous number of school teachers (Smith 2020, p. 302).” The mentally ill were also targeted, any and all not considered racially acceptable. It was also focused on land areas, focusing on occupying of land by the German race driven by the “envisioned for non-German populations only expulsion, slavery, and extermination (Smith 2020, 305).”  It clearly was “us” vs “them” in extremely radical form.

Smith (2020, p. 315) points to “… the late summer of 1916 … the slaughter at the Somme… “ which got people to wondering about whether the sacrifice was worth it, searching for meaning.”   Yes: The Somme was clearly about way too many soldiers ending up on the horizontal axis of the typical DIT figure, sacrificing all the self-interest for the country.

SACRIFICE FOR c. 1914–1933

Vast numbers signed-up for military service leading into WWI:  “It was about sacrifice…”  for the country, an essential part of Nationalism (Smith 2020, p. 310).   It was all about sacrifice for the fatherland, what would eventually become after 1933 the pater --- the father ---  the godfather --- the strong man --- the Fuhrer --- at the top of an Authoritarian Radical Nationalism.  It often also involved sacrifice for not only the citizens but also the military because of inadequate food rations, especially toward the end of the war.

Smith (2020) points to intellectuals who supported the war, but, many pulled support as it wore on.  Max Weber, the founder of modern day sociology was one of the latter who “… initially supported the war but came to understand that its price would be the democratic reform of Imperial Germany (Smith 2020, p. 317).” Some outrightly rejected it, as in Albert Einstein, who joined the pacifist group “New Fatherland (Smith 2020, p. 318).”

Many started to see the futility of the war, but not the group forming the German Fatherland Party.  It was a social Darwinist, fight to the end, the superior will win frame of mind. Said Party were Radical Nationalists. The goal was purity in the national state based on race and ethnicity.

One extremely intriguing turn of events about this time was “… the German army transported a revolutionary by the name of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin in a sealed boxcar from his exile in Switzerland across German territory to Finland Station. His appearance in the Russian capital radicalized the revolution, and his party, soon to be named the Bolsheviks, took power in October 1917. Almost immediately, the Bolsheviks ended Russian participation in what seemed to them an imperialist war (Smith 2020, p. 322.”  It was a way to stop Russia fighting against the expansion of Germany. It also took land from the Russians “… deprived the old czarist empire of a quarter of its population and stripped it of Finland, Estonia, Livonia, Poland, Ukraine, and Crimea … containing Russia’s major industrial centers, coal reserves, and roughly a third of its agricultural land … three times the size of prewar Imperial Germany (Smith 2020, p. 322).”

An uprising within the military ranks, as in soldiers ignoring commands and soldiers just simply abandoning posts, like not returning the trenches, were a major contributor to the collapse on the Western Front.  Germany lost.

Subsequent years after the end of the war, things were quite unsettled.  An unusual amount of political assassinations were done, mainly by the right. The court looked away.  Massive inflation also set in.   It took wheelbarrows of German marks to buy simple goods.  The economy went down, which naturally contributed to people looking for some kind of strong man, authoritarian nationalistic solution. It was also difficult to take care of the widows, wounded and otherwise damaged soldiers.  Many turned to the right.

The framing turned toward Authoritarian Nationalism:  “… in 1926, Jünger (a Conservative intellectual) described the kind of state that the ‘new nationalism’ implied: ‘Love of fatherland, camaraderie, courage and discipline will be expressed by it … In other words, it has to be organized as national, social, armed, and authoritarian (Smith 2020, p. 335).”   It was also to be an “us” vs “them” Nation.

SACRIFICE OF c. 1933–1941

So, Hitler arrives on the scene, the Authoritarian promising  to fix it all, especially the economy which was devasted after WWI.  Hitler had few credentials: “As an artist he had been a failure, as an architect he had promise but did not get far, and as a soldier, he was actually only a dispatch runner. Moreover, his regimental comrades, far from lauding his bravery, described him as an ‘Etappenschwein’ (literally, a rear area pig) who was exceedingly covetous of military distinctions and constantly badgered his superiors, one of whom was Jewish, in order to get them (Smith 2020, p. 337).”  Sounds much like the draft dodger bone spur frame of mind, but loving to dress-up in military garb while in imposed military school, and putting  on military parades. As Smith (2020, p. 338) frames it, “Hitler became foremost an orator with a keen sense for telling his audience what they wanted to hear.”  Sounds familiar, given the rhetoric that won both the US 2016 and 2024 elections. 

Hitler went on to refine the claims, most with total disregard for the truth about Jews and Judaism.  Repeating and repeating and repeating fhe outrageous claims was a form of brainwashing.  Such claims included “Jewry is absolutely a race and not a religious association … as a non-German, alien race which neither wishes to nor is able to sacrifice its racial character … (even as they)… possess all the political rights we do…  (all of which leads)  to the systematic legal combating and eliminating of all privileges of the Jews … (and) the irrevocable removal of the Jews in general (Smith 2020, p. 338).”  

The claims were a total disregard for the truth to achieve purpose, as represented in claims like:  “… that nature will punish any variation of racial purity with weakness, for when higher beings, as he called them, bred with lower ones, reduced resistance to disease and loss of fertility would result (Smith 2020, p. 339).”  Nonsense, as the fact is the reverse.  And, as Smith (2020) argues, the National Socialist Party (the Nazis) of what would become Authoritarian Radical Nationalism actually did not have much support in the early years, garnering perhaps 3-4 percent of the vote in the 1920s. 

The rise of the Party, however, reflected a larger trend: “…twenty-six of twenty-eight European countries were parliamentary democracies in 1920—yet by 1938, thirteen had become authoritarian regimes. In roughly the same period, according to another count, sixteen right-wing coups occurred, dramatically altering the political map of the continent (Smith 2020, p. 340).”  Germany was the strongest Democracy at the time to move toward Autocracy.  Smith (2020, p. 340) notes that “… the  Nazis did, receive the second highest voter tally in the Weimar Republic’s brief history when, in June 1932, they captured 37.3 percent of the vote.”   So, even at the peak, only about a third were all in.  The parallels to the current time to include tendencies in the US, Hungary, Turkey, Israel and even places like Germany, to list a few, well, dangerous.

Smith (2020, pp. 341-342) sums it up:  “The allure of National Socialism was not just ideological, however. The Nazis also exploited middle-class fears of socialism, rural hopes for agricultural subsidies, and lower-middle-class anxieties about falling further down the social ladder. Like a hall of shifting mirrors, Nazi electoral appeals seemed to allow each group to see its own interests reflected in what the Nazis said they stood for. In the context of the Great Depression, with unemployment hovering around 30 percent, the Nazis offered hope, perhaps more than any other party. To a divided and immobilized society without a compass, they radiated future, authenticity, and power.”  Sound familiar?  And, then, the anti-Judaism, anti-Semitism was also in the mix serving that dark empathy form of shared other-interest, too. 

The assault on Jewish people started to take hold in about 1933.   Jewish businesses were boycotted by the Government.  Beatings, expulsions, and murders of the “them, not only Jews, but the  undesirable, anyone not fitting the social Darwinism framing”  became ever more common.  Mass rallies were held often with over 100,000 people  on the parade grounds in Nuremberg  (soldiers in parade and others), attracting viewing audiences of upwards of 70,000, were held regularly (like the Madison Square Garden rally in the 2024 Election Campaign, and military parades after elected, with only about 1/3 of the popular vote  by about the same margin as was the winner of the 1933 German election).  

And, while some Germans were resisting through support of the “them”… “By 1935 … fewer and fewer vestiges of elementary kindness and civility could be discerned (Smith 2020, p. 347.”  It was all about Make Germany Great Again --- and, although said exact phrase was not used,  the idea conveys the propaganda of the National Socialist Party.  It was about restoring national greatness after the humiliation of losing WWI, and, being required to pay repatriation which was devasting to the economy. It was about some earlier, magical time when Germany was supposedly great, which was really an outrageous claim that was repeated and repeated and repeated (as in brainwashing) until people bought into it. 

Aas expected --- common in Authoritarian Nationalism systems ---  a dual law system was developed, as the law for “us” and the law for “them.”  The Nuremberg laws redefined citizenship for the “us” as requiring very small amounts of Jewish “blood” as in “racially related blood (Smith 2020, p. 347).”  It was a challenging problem as the Germans and Jews had intermarried for centuries.  The Radical Nationalists considered using the US version of the 1-drop rule for former slaves, but thought it too extreme (well, yes, millions of Germans perhaps had at least 1-drop, as did huge numbers of Southerners in the US). The German Radical Nationalists (Smith 2020, p. 348) “… settled, in the main, on three Jewish grandparents, and added two categories of Mischlinge —Jews with two grandparents (first degree) or with one grandparent (second degree).”   It all led to a huge search for genetic origin for Germans, to make the claim of being “enough German” to not be in the “them” category.  

The Nuremberg Laws created the dual law system  --- again,  common in Authoritarian Nationalism --- using the “us” vs “them” frame, as in the old Fascism and the modern Neofascism. It is being built in the US at the current time, as represented in pardoning all the insurrectionists in the 2021 assault on the US Capital --- the assault on Constitutional Democracy --- which acted as if there is a law for “us” while going after the legitimate opposition with law for “them.” 

The Nuremberg Laws led to the search for genetic history: In order to be married, one had “to prove their so-called Aryan status to a justice of the peace, much as those who wanted to join the Nazi Party had to document non-Jewish lineage (Smith 2020, p. 348).”  Genetic “passports” were created, showing the genetic trace.  The German Radical Nationalist party “… criminalized intercourse between Christians and Jews (Smith 2020, p. 349).”

And, what held it all together? Well, propaganda, as in the total disregard for truth for purpose, and repeating outrageous claims, promising such things as “… low unemployment, homes, roads, public health, old-age insurance, and state-sponsored vacations… (making unfounded claims of the) …  the superiority of the German race, the menace of the Jews, the threat of communism, and the necessity of world empire being its ideological mainstays … (most Germans bought into the propaganda, the total disregard for truth, even though especially not liking) … its spying and the loss of liberty (Smith 2020, p. 350).”  Repetition was used to brainwash.

Such is Authoritarian Nationalism, even the less Radical version of it now in place in several countries like Orban-Hungary and building in Trump-America --- the loyalists supporting the power at the top need to spy.  Such systems also need to work at suppressing  any kind of opposition as represented especially in the investigative press and in fact-based universities, as such entities put fact-content to offsetting the disregard for truth (propaganda) for purpose.

Things worsened greatly for the Jews by 1938, with a pogram starting in November.  “Virtually no city, town, or village with Jewish residents was exempt from the reign of terror … Nazis also damaged a great many businesses, broke into scores of houses, and bludgeoned, kicked, beat, and humiliated Jews; and in communities throughout Germany, neighbors simply watched, often cheered Nazi thugs on, or participated in the violence (Smith 2020, p. 351).”  Even young people, students were sometimes involved in the violence:  “Weaned on nearly six years of propaganda and overtly racist and anti-Semitic instruction, teenagers formed a particularly large contingent who tormented Jews and damaged their property (Smith 2020, p. 353).”  Total disregard for truth --- repeated, repeated, and repeated --- for the purpose of the Nazi frame of reference was used to brainwash the German public.  The November pogram was the turning point: It got far worse after that point. Concentration and, then, extermination camps were on the horizon.

An important aside, not mentioned in the book, but it needs to be understood:  The propaganda strategy used in Germany in the early 1930s was the first substantive use of that now well documented technique for brainwashing --- continuous repetition of outrageous claims --- what political scientists now refer to as big lie political technology (BLPT). And, while started in Germany, it was  refined in the Soviet Union to keep countries in line.  It was applied in the US to win the 2024 Election, starting with the outrageous claim of a 2020 Election Stolen, and a litany of outrageous claims repeated, repeated, and repeated over and over up to the November 5, 2024 Election.  By the time of the 2024 Election, fully 73% of the voters for the person who made the outrageous claims believed same.  Brainwashed.

But back to the German sacrifice:  “In the early years, Communists and a significant number of Socialists constituted the largest number of concentration camp inmates. In addition, there were more than 10,000 gay men in the camps, and several thousand Jehovah’s Witnesses, while Christian clergymen, most of them Catholic, numbered in the hundreds … also roundups of other ‘social outsiders’ (Smith 2020, p. 356).”  In addition, hereditary illnesses resulted in “forcefully sterilized some 300,000 men and women whom the Nazis diagnosed with hereditary illnesses, which ranged from ‘chronic alcoholism’ to the ‘congenitally feeble minded (Smith 2020, p. 357).”  More was to come:  99 percent of the Jews eliminated in the genocide occurred after September 1, 1939 (Smith 2020, p. 358).

Also, in some cases, it was about elimination of all people in a country, like the case of Poland.  “’Destruction of Poland … aim is to remove living forces,’ Hitler told his military leaders, adding, ‘hearts closed to empathy . . . extreme severity’ (Smith 2020, p. 358).”  Well, yes, empathy was in effect banned for any of “them,”  not unlike the “woke ban” in the US after the 2024 Election.  Empathy does not play in an Authoritarian Nationalism except the dark empathy for the “us” and no empathy-with the “them.”

The assault on eastern Europe into Russia was brutal:  Hitler proclaimed “…’first the rule, second the administration, and third the exploitation’ of these lands.  Others present at this meeting concurred. ‘Naturally, the gigantic space has to be pacified as quickly as possible,’ Hermann Göring added, and pointed out that ‘this was best achieved by shooting dead anyone who even looks askance at us.’ General Keitel also emphasized that since it was “not possible to put a guard at every train station and barn…’ (Smith 2020, p. 369).”  Starving and shooting of Soviet soldier POWs was also the rule. It was also going on in Polish camps, with documented cannibalism taking place so a few could try to survive.  Propaganda using brainwashing techniques to dehumanize the people of the area was common, such that starvation and outright killing was believed by many to be justified.

Pograms in the violent assault on Jewish communities were also in play, with locals often involved, now given credence by the German SS.  Often Nationalists of other countries joined in, as in Ukraine and in Lithuania. Also, it was all about pillage of former Jewish homes, scavenging for anything valuable, including some even involved in digging gold out of the mouths of Jewish people massacred in town after town. “And in many, many places—cities, towns, and villages in Ukraine, the Baltic countries, and Poland—people quickly forced their way into Jewish houses, procuring new beds, tables, chairs, lamps, drapes, candlesticks, cutlery, boxes and bowls, as well as the obligatory furs and jewels. Some items were kept, others traded and sold on flourishing black markets of Jewish goods. The genocide enabled an enormous acquisition of possessions, a far more lucrative transfer of goods, one may surmise, than any revolution could have realized (Smith2020, p.378).

Genocidal extermination camps were next, generally using various kinds of gas.  For example, carbon monoxide would be routed into seal vans.   And, then, eventually, the large gas chambers at places like Auschwitz came into play, with people hauled to same using trains. It was genocide done in every imaginable way. Ironically, the genocide of the Jews, as well the expulsion of many other people was leading to an economic problem:  “When we shoot the Jews dead, let the prisoners of war perish, subject a large part of the population of big cities to death by starvation, and in the coming years will also lose part of the rural population to hunger,” an economic adviser to the occupation of Ukraine noted, “then the question remains unanswered: who is supposed to actually produce economic value here?  (Smith 2020, p. 384).”  It was not at all well thought through: The economic logic made no coherent sense.

Empathy was in effect written out of existence for the “them.”  Smith (2020, p. 385):  “We are not here to feel empathy with the Jews,” Goebbels paraphrased Hitler as saying, “but to have empathy with the German people,” and in particular with the soldiers sacrificing their lives on the front. Other high-ranking leaders expressed similar sentiments. “We want to have compassion only for the German people…”  And, while confinement (essentially starving people to death) and shooting continued, the huge gas chambers became the main way to carry out the extermination.  Even toward the end of the war, the killing continued, reaching upwards of 20000/day killed in the gas chambers. Over 1.1 million were killed in Auschwitz alone.