Review of \u3ci\u3eWeimar Germany\u27s Left-Wing Intellectuals\u3c/i\u3e, by Istvan Deak (original) (raw)

Book Reviews 449 of doctrinaire individuals used to feed slogans to a Mittelstand thirsting for a way out of its dilemmas. The Marxist revolutionary and sometime National Bolshevik Ernst Niekisch used his Resistance Press to advocate a reconciliation between socialism and nationalism in response to western domination and the Versailles treaty, while the extremely conservative Oswald Spengler sought to save Prussian values by postulating a Prussian socialism aimed at integrating the working class into the value system of the past. Finally, Ferdinand Fried and his colleagues on Die Tat played upon the misery which united all elements of the Mittelstand during the depression and upon the breakdown of the international economy to advocate a Third Front which would unify the disaffected Mittelstand in support of a new autarkic order in a German-dominated Mitteleuropa. Lebovics is careful to point out that the relationship between social conservatism and nazism was a parallel rather than a direct one. Both movements appealed to the Mittelstand, and the Nazis were "vulgar" social conservatives. The author suggests that, "deviations notwithstanding," there was a correspondence between the theoretical tendencies in the two movements, the social conservative Center (Sombart and Spann), Left (Niekisch), and Right (Spengler) having counterparts, respectively, in Gottfried Feder, the Strasser brothers, and Fritz Thyssen. Ultimately, it was Hitler who determined Nazi economic policy by implementing the social conservative doctrine of the primacy of politics over economics and subordinating the fate of the nation to a racism alien to most social conservatives and to an imperialism beyond their wildest dreams. While Lebovics correctly emphasizes Hitler's opportunistic acceptance of private property in order to win over big business, he gives undue emphasis to Hitler's connection with Emil Kirdorf, whom the author erroneously identifies as the head of the defunct Zentralverband deutscher Industrieller. Such minor criticisms should not detract from the excellence of this book which should encourage further research into the Mittelstand and into the way in which social conservative ideas were "molded into the cliches at the beerhall Stammtisch, at the innumerable meetings of the societies and clubs to which so many members of the middle class belonged, at the political rallies, and in the pages of magazines of political commentary" (p. 179).