In Fear of a Greater Germany

Abstract

Dealing with the effects of nationalism in contemporary German history immediately creates a problem of definition. Of course, there is the textbook definition of nationalism meant to apply to much of the Western world since the French Revolution: a process begun by that revolution, one shared by those of similar geographical origins, language, customs, diets, etc., that harnessed the power of the idea of popular sovereignty into an articulation of the desire for a common political entity.⁶ In Germany’s case, however, other characteristics have been inextricably linked with the desire for unity. German liberals in the Vormärz era began to view a national political entity as the only means of permanently securing individual freedom.⁷ German conservatives at the end of the nineteenth century developed a nationalism that exalted Germanness and pointed the political order squarely against “foreigners” within and without Germany, ranging from “international” Catholics and Social Democrats to Poles and other ethnic minorities. This “growing, passionate, xenophobic, vulgarised nationalism” has been cited as one of the many structural problems within Wilhelmine Germany that led it into the First World War.⁸ In Hitler’s day, a racially based, pseudo-Darwinian nationalism meant conquest of eastern lands and extermination or slavery for the vanquished.⁹

I am aware they are strongly Nazi.

(U.S. Deputy Military Governor Lucius Clay, referring to German refugees from the east, June 1946)¹

…Dr. Schumacher’ s leadership is becoming representative of the most nationalist elements in Germany today…it threatens to lead Germany into new expansionist adventures.

(Ernest dew. Mayer, U.S. Counsel General, Baden-Baden, relaying French official views of the Social Democratic Party, February 1947)²

…Schumacher…is a mixture of a fanatical and almost dangerous German nationalist with strong parochial and narrow elements.

(Patrick Dean, head of the British Foreign Office German Political Department, December 1946)³

Bowed, deeply bowed, but — ladies and gentlemen — not broken.

(Konrad Adenauer, October 1945, describing before the Cologne city council the proper German attitude during the occupation)⁴

German Social Democracy is fighting for Germany as an economic, national, and constitutional unity.

(Kurt Schumacher, June 1947)⁵