Ernst Rudolf Huber, in his basic work _Verfassungsrecht des
grossdeutschen Reiches (Constitutional Law of the Greater German
Reich_) (document 1, _post_ p. 155), published in 1939, states:
The new constitution of the German Reich ... is not a
constitution in the formal sense such as was typical of the
nineteenth century. The new Reich has no written
constitutional declaration, but its constitution exists in
the unwritten basic political order of the Reich. One
recognizes it in the spiritual powers which fill our people,
in the real authority in which our political life is
grounded, and in the basic laws regarding the structure of
the state which have been proclaimed so far. The advantage
of such an unwritten constitution over the formal
constitution is that the basic principles do not become
rigid but remain in a constant, living movement. Not dead
institutions but living principles determine the nature of
the new constitutional order.[8]
In developing his thesis Huber points out that the National Socialist
state rests on three basic concepts, the _Volk_ or people, the Führer,
and the movement or party. With reference to the first element, the
_Volk_, he argues that the democracies develop their concept of the
people from the wrong approach: They start with the concept of the
state and its functions and consider the people as being made up of
all the elements which fall within the borders or under the
jurisdiction of the state. National Socialism, on the other hand,
starts with the concept of the people, which forms a political unity,
and builds the state upon this foundation.
There is no people without an objective unity, but there is
also none without a common consciousness of unity. A people
is determined by a number of different factors: by racial
derivation and by the character of its land, by language and
other forms of life, by religion and history, but also by
the common consciousness of its solidarity and by its common
will to unity. For the concrete concept of a people, as
represented by the various peoples of the earth, it is of
decisive significance which of these various factors they
regard as determinants for the nature of the people. The new
German Reich proceeds from the concept of the political
people, determined by the natural characteristics and by the
historical idea of a closed community. The political people
is formed through the uniformity of its natural
characteristics. Race is the natural basis of the people ...
As a political people the natural community becomes
conscious of its solidarity and strives to form itself, to
develop itself, to defend itself, to realize itself.
"Nationalism" is essentially this striving of a people which
has become conscious of itself toward self-direction and
self-realization, toward a deepening and renewing of its
natural qualities.
This consciousness of self, springing from the consciousness
of a historical idea, awakens in a people its will to
historical formation: the will to action. The political
people is no passive, sluggish mass, no mere object for the
efforts of the state at government or protective welfare
work ... The great misconception of the democracies is that
they can see the active participation of the people only in
the form of plebiscites according to the principle of
majority. In a democracy the people does not act as a unit
but as a complex of unrelated individuals who form
themselves into parties ... The new Reich is based on the
principle that real action of a self-determining people is
only possible according to the principle of leadership and
following.[9]
According to Huber, geographical considerations play a large part in
the shaping of a people:
The people stands in a double relation, to its lands; it
settles and develops the land, but the land also stamps and
determines the people ... That a certain territory belongs
to a certain people is not justified by state authority
alone but it is also determined objectively by its
historical, political position. Territory is not merely a
field for the exercise of state control but it determines
the nature of a people and thereby the historical purpose of
the state's activity. England's island position, Italy's
Mediterranean position, and Germany's central position
between east and west are such historical conditions, which
unchangeably form the character of the people.[10]
But the new Germany is based upon a "unity and entirety of the
people"[11] which does not stop at geographical boundaries:
The German people forms a closed community which recognizes
no national borders. It is evident that a people has not
exhausted its possibilities simply in the formation of a
national state but that it represents an independent
community which reaches beyond such limits.[12]
The State justifies itself only so far as is helps the people to
develop itself more fully. In the words of Hitler, quoted by Huber
from _Mein Kampf_, "It is a basic principle, therefore, that the state
represents not an end but a means. It is a condition for advanced
human culture, but not the cause of it ... Its purpose is in the
maintenance and advancement of a community of human beings with common
physical and spiritual characteristics."[13]
Huber continues:
In the theory of the folk-Reich _[völkisches Reich_], people
and state are conceived as an inseparable unity. The people
is the prerequisite for the entire political order; the
state does not form the people but the people moulds the
state out of itself as the form in which it achieves
historical permanence....[14]
The State is a function of the people, but it is not
therefore a subordinate, secondary machine which can be used
or laid aside at will. It is the form in which the people
attains to historical reality. It is the bearer of the
historical continuity of the people, which remains the same
in the center of its being in spite of all changes,
revolutions, and transformations.[15]
A similar interpretation of the role of the _Volk_ is expounded by
Gottfried Neesse in his _Die Nationalsozialistische Deutsche
Arbeiterpartei--Versuch einer Rechtsdeutung_ (_The National Socialist
German Workers Party--An Attempt at Legal Interpretation_), published
in 1935. From the National Socialist viewpoint, according to Neesse,
the state is regarded not as an organism superior to the people but as
an organization of the people: "In contrast to an organism, an
organization has no inherent legality; it is dependent upon human will
and has no definite mission of its own. It is a form in which a living
mass shapes itself into unity, but it has no life of its own."[16] The
people is the living organism which uses the organization of the state
as the form in which it can best fulfil its mission. The law which is
inherent in the people must be realized through the state.
But the central and basic concept of National Socialist political
theory is the concept of the people:
In contrast to the state, the people form a true organism--a
being which leads its own life and follows its own laws,
which possesses powers peculiar to itself, and which
develops its own nature independent of all state forms....
This living unity of the people has its cells in its
individual members, and just as in every body there are
certain cells to perform certain tasks, this is likewise the
case in the body of the people. The individual is bound to
his people not only physically but mentally and spiritually
and he is influenced by these ties in all his
manifestations.[17]
The elements which go to make up a people are beyond human
comprehension, but the most important of them is a uniformity of
blood, resulting in "a similarity of nature which manifests itself in
a common language and a feeling of community and is further moulded by
land and by history."[18] "The unity of the people is increased by its
common destiny and its consciousness of a common mission."[19]
Liberalism gave rise to the concept of a "society-people"
(_Gesellschaftsvolk_) which consisted of a sum of individuals, each of
whom was supposed to have an inherent significance and to play his own
independent part in the political life of the nation. National
Socialism, on the other hand, has developed, the concept of the
"community-people" (_Gemeinschaftsvolk_) which functions as a uniform
whole.[20]
The people, however, is never politically active as a whole,
but only through those who embody its will. The true will of
a people can never be determined by a majority vote. It can
only display itself in men and in movements, and history
will decide whether these men or movements could rightly
claim to be the representatives of the people's will.[21]
Every identification of the state with the people is false
from a legal and untenable from a political standpoint ...
The state is the law-forming organization and the law serves
the inner order of the community; the people is the
politically active organism and politics serve the outward
maintenance of the community ... But law receives its
character from the people and politics must reckon with the
state as the first and most important factor.[22]
The "nation" is the product of this interplay and balance between the
state and the people. The original and vital force of the people,
through the organization of the state, realizes itself fully in the
unified communal life of the nation:
The nation is the complete agreement between organism and
organization, the perfect formation of a naturally grown
being. ... _Nationalism_ is nothing more than the outwardly
directed striving to maintain this inner unity of people and
state, and _socialism_ is the inwardly directed striving for
the same end.[23]
Dr. Herbert Scurla, Government Councilor and Reich's Minister for
Science, Education, and Folk Culture, in a pamphlet entitled _Die
Grundgedanken des Nationalsozialismus und das Ausland (Basic
Principles of National Socialism With Special Reference to Foreign
Countries_), also emphasizes the importance of the _Volk_ in the
National Socialist state. Dr. Scurla points out that National
Socialism does not view the nation in the domocratic sense of a
community to which the individual may voluntarily adhere.
The central field of force of the National Socialist
consciousness is rather the folk, and this folk is in no
case mere individual aggregation, i.e., collectivity as sum
of the individuals, but as a unity with a peculiar
two-sidedness, at the same time "essential totality" (M.H.
Boehm). The folk is both a living creature and a spiritual
configuration, in which the individuals are included through
common racial conditioning, in blood and spirit. It is that
force which works on the individual directly "from within or
from the side like a common degree of temperature" (Kjellén)
and which collects into the folk whatever according to
blood and spirit belongs to it. This folk, point of
departure and goal at the same time, is, in the National
Socialist world-view, not only the field of force for
political order, but as well the central factor of the
entire world-picture. Neither individuals, as the epoch of
enlightenment envisaged, nor states, as in the system of the
dynastic and national state absolutism, nor classes, as
conceived by Marxism, are the ultimate realities of the
political order, but the peoples, who stand over against one
another with the unqualifiable right to a separate existence
as natural entities, each with its own essential nature and
form. [24]
Dr. Scurla claims that National Socialism and Fascism are the
strivings of the German and Italian people for final national
unification along essentially different national lines natural to each
of them. "What took place in Germany," he asserts, "was a political
revolution of a total nature."[25] "Under revolution," he states, "we
understand rather the penetration of the collective folk-mind
[_gesamtvölkischen Bewusstseins_] into all regions of German
life."[26] And, he concludes:
National Socialism is no invented system of rules for the
political game, but the world-view of the German people,
which experiences itself as a national and social community,
and concedes neither to the state nor the class nor the
individual any privileges which endanger the security of the
community's right to live.[27]
Some of the most striking expressions of the race concept are found in
_Die Erziehung im dritten Reich_ (_Education in the Third Reich_), by
Friedrich Alfred Beck, which was published in 1936. It is worthy of
note that the tendency which may be observed in Huber (document I,
_post_ p. 155) and Neesse to associate the ideas of _Volk_ and race is
very marked with Beck. "All life, whether natural or spiritual, all
historical progress, all state forms, and all cultivation by education
are in the last analysis based upon the racial make-up of the people
in question."[28] _Race_ finds its expression in human life through
the phenomenon of the _people_:
_Race_ and _people_ belong together. National Socialism has
restored the concept of the people from its modern
shallowness and sees in the people something different from
and appreciably greater than a chance social community of
men, a grouping of men who have the same external interests.
By _people_ we understand an entire living body which is
racially uniform and which is held together by common
history, common fate, a common mission, and common tasks.
Through such an interpretation the people takes on a
significance which is only attributed to it in times of
great historical importance and which makes it the center,
the content, and the goal of all human work. Only that race
still possesses vital energy which can still bring its unity
to expression in the totality of the people. The people is
the space in which race can develop its strength. Race is
the vital law of arrangement which gives the people its
distinctive form. In the course of time the people undergoes
historical transformations, but race prevents the loss of
the people's own nature in the course of these
transformations. Without the people the race has no life;
without race the people has no permanence ... Education,
from the standpoint of race and people, is the creation of a
form of life in which the racial unity will be preserved
through the totality of the people.[29]
Beck describes the politically spiritual National Socialist
personality which National Socialist education seeks to develop, in
the following terms:
Socialism is the direction of personal life through
dependence on the community, consciousness of the community,
feeling for the community, and action in the community;
nationalism is the elevation of individual life to a unique
(microcosmic) expression of the community in the unity of
the personality.[30]
National Socialist education must stress the heroic life and teach
German youth the importance of fulfilling their duty to the _Volk_.
Heroism is that force and that conviction which consecrates
its whole life to the service of an idea, a faith, a task,
or a duty even when it knows that the destruction of its own
life is certain ... German life, according to the laws of
its ideology, is heroic life ... All German life, every
person belonging to the community of Germans must bear
heroic character within himself. Heroic life fulfils itself
in the daily work of the miner, the farmer, the clerk, the
statesman, and the serving self-sacrifice of the mother.
Wherever a life is devoted with an all-embracing faith and
with its full powers to the service of some value, there is
true heroism ... Education to the heroic life is education
to the fulfilment of duty ... One must have experienced it
repeatedly that the inner fruition of a work in one's own
life has nothing to do with material or economic
considerations, that man keeps all of his faculties alive
through his obligation to his work and his devotion to his
duty, and that he uses them in the service of an idea
without any regard for practical considerations, before one
recognizes the difference between this world of heroic
self-sacrifice and the liberalistic world of barter. Because
the younger generation has been brought up in this heroic
spirit it is no longer understood by the representatives of
the former era who judge the values of life according to
material advantage ... German life is heroic life. Germany
is not a mere community of existence and of interests whose
only function is to insure the material and cultural needs
of its members, but it also represents an elemental
obligation on the part of the members. The eternal Germany
cannot be drawn in on the map; it does not consist of the
constitution or the laws of the state. This Germany is the
community of those who are solemnly bound together and who
experience and realize these eternal national values. This
Germany is our eternal mission, our most sacred law ... The
developing personality must be submerged in the living
reality of the people and the nation from earliest youth on,
must take an active and a suffering part in it. Furthermore
the heroic life demands a recognition and experiencing of
the highest value of life which man must serve with all his
powers. This value can perhaps be recognized and presented
theoretically in the schools but it can only be directly
comprehended and personally experienced in the community of
the people. Therefore all education must preserve this
_direct connection with the community of the people_ and
school education must derive from it the form and substance
of its instruction.[31]
This nationalism, which is based upon the laws of life, has
nothing in common with the weak and presumptuous patriotism
of the liberalistic world; it is not a gift or a favor, not
a possession or a privilege, but it is the form of national
life which we have won in hard battle and which suits our
Nordic-German racial and spiritual heritage. In the
nationalistic personality the powers and values which have
been established in the socialistic personality will be
purposefully exerted for the perfection of the temporal and
eternal idea of life.[32]
The National Socialist idea of totality, therefore, and its
manifestation in life of the national community form the principal
substance of education in the Third Reich:
This idea of totality must be radically distinguished from
the liberalistic conception of the mass. According to the
liberalistic interpretation the whole consists of a
summation of its parts. According to the National Socialist
organic conception the whole comes before the parts; it does
not arise from the parts but it is already contained in the
parts themselves; all parts are microcosmic forms of the
whole. This organic conception of the whole is the deepest
natural justification of the basic political character of
all organic life.[33]
Education, Beck continues, must present this total unity as it is
manifested in the racial character of the people. Race is the most
essential factor in the natural and spiritual unity of a people, and
it is also the main factor which separates one people from another.
The racial character of the people must determine the substance of
education; this substance must be derived primarily from the life of
the people.
Even in the specialized field of political science, Nazi education is
concerned not with the structure of the state but with the role of the
individual in the life of the people:
National Socialist political science concerns itself not
with education to citizenship but with preparation for
membership in the German people.... Not the structure of the
state but the strength of a people determines the value and
the strength of an individual life. The state must be an
organization which corresponds to the laws of the people's
life and assists in their realization.[34]
Such indeed is the supreme goal of all National Socialist education:
to make each individual an expression of "the eternal German":
Whoever wishes fully to realize himself, whoever wishes to
experience and embody the eternal German ideal within
himself must lift his eyes from everyday life and must
listen to the beat of his blood and his conscience ... He
must be capable of that superhuman greatness which is ready
to cast aside all temporal bonds in the battle for German
eternity ... National Socialist education raises the eternal
German character into the light of our consciousness ...
National Socialism is the eternal law of our German life;
the development of the eternal German is the transcendental
task of National Socialist education.[35]