The German Soul Is Not Dead, Only Sick
Considerably influenced by Spengler, Goebbels identified materialism as the source of “the political, intellectual, and moral confusion of our times.” And as a universal curative he proposed, in the spirit of Dostoyevsky, a return to the “German Soul,” the source of a mystical strength that guided the fate of the Volk. He linked this notion to the idea of an “organic body of the Volk,” which he felt had manifested itself in the solidarity the German people displayed at the beginning of the war. He claimed to love “my Germany from the deepest recesses of my heart,” and declared that “love of the fatherland is worship of God,” and “to be German today means keeping still, waiting, and working to improve oneself in secret.”
In another article Goebbels attacked “those good Germans who believe salvation must come from an external source.” He called upon them to reject “everything foreign to our being” and to awaken their “own soul” to new life. Despite Weimar “system” and the shameful territorial concessions and reparations, they should not let themselves be persuaded “that the German soul is dead. It is only sick, indeed very sick, for it has been abused, subjugated, and trampled upon.”
Unwilling to accept Spengler’s pessimistic prognoses, Goebbels asserted that “the German soul will not fail to react, as always in times of crisis, against all elements foreign to its nature.” In the spring of 1922, he thought he could detect the direction from which that soul would draw its strength. Certainly not from the decadent capital of the Reich: “No, no, salvation cannot come from Berlin…Sometimes it looks as though a new sun is about to rise in the south.” By this “new sun” Goebbels meant the hotbed of volkischgroups in Munich, among which Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) was attracting more and more attention. Although he had laughed at the Nazi’s only a few months earlier, Goebbels now began to view them as an expression of the rebelling “German soul” and followed their gains with interest.
-excerpted from “Goebbels” by Ralph Georg Reuth