Age Of Absolute Politics And The End Of Private Life

This society would not allow for the differentiation of between politics and daily life which many of us naturally make. Today, in most of the non-communist Western world, politics is regarded as merely one compartment of life; it does not have to penetrate our very thought and being. But Hitler’s aim was to construct an organic society in which every aspect of life would be integrated with its basic purpose. And in the terms in which this purpose was promulgated by the National Socialist party, no one could be allowed to stand aside. Politics was not just one side of life, or one among many other sciences; it was instead the concrete expression of the Nazi world view. This worldview was held to be the very crux of what it meant to be a German, and therefore politics was the consciousness of race, blood, and soil, the essence of the Nazi definition of human nature. 

This is what Hitler meant when he talked about “nationalization of the masses”; will and power were the keys to winning the hearts of the masses, for they could lead the people back to the consciousness of their race. Such a total view of politics meant—as it was called after January 1933—Gleichschaltung, “equalizing the gears” of the nation. All individuals and all organizations in Germany had to be “nationalized,” in the sense of making them subject to party control; for the party was the guardian of the Germanic worldview and through the will and power of its chief, the Fuhrer, the good society would be brought into being. Thus trade unions were abolished and in their place the “German Worker’s Front,” which was under party control, was created. Educational institutions were integrated, as the party exercised control over students and teachers. A whole network of party organizations controlled professional and workers’ groups, membership in which was compulsory. In addition, individuals were organized in other groups which sought mastery over their private lives, outside their professions—from the Hitler Youth to the organization for “German Mothers.” The boundaries between public and private activities were abolished just as the dividing line between politics and the totality of life had ceased to exist. 

This was the totalitarian state and the Nazi party, like the spider in its web, controlled all the life lines of the nation. For us such a society means that all aspects of life are subordinated to the demands of politics. But the Nazis did not see their society in these terms. Political parties and other independent national groupings had to be abolished, for they were a part of that liberal politics which had torn the nation asunder, had set man against man and class against class. In contrast, under the Nazis the individual German had found a sense of belonging, based upon his membership in a community which though its worldview reflected his own inner strivings. A parry publication, one year after Hitler’s seizure of power, sums this up: “The concept of ‘political man’ typifies a bourgeois mentality. Being ‘political’ means to act consistently according to a set standard of behavior. Political behavior is not one attitude among others; it must form the basic attitude towards life.” In an age of industrialization and class conflict man was to be integrated into his Volk; his true self would be activated and his feeling of alienation transformed into one of belonging. 

-Excerpted from “Nazi Culture” by George Mosse (1966)