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Die Deutschen Briefe: Gurian and the German CrisisAuthor(s): M. A. FitzsimonsSource: The Review of Politics, Vol. 17, No. 1, The Gurian Memorial Issue (Jan., 1955), pp. 47-72Published by: Cambridge University Press for the University of Notre Dame du lac on behalf of Review ofPoliticsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1405100

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Die Deutschen Briefe: Gurian and theGerman Crisisby M. A. Fitzsimons

N 1934 Waldemar Gurian had the wriest of pleasures. whenhe was forced to recognize that his very pessimistic analysisof the National-Socialist movement was correct. He fled fromGermany to Switzerland where he was soon joined by his wifeand daughter. In the extremely straitened circumstances of anemigre, soon to receive official notification that he was a state-less person, he had to face simultaneously the tasks of earning aliving and of carrying on his work as a Catholic writer who com-bined scholarship and publicism. He was a profound student ofBolshevism. But his study, personal experience and the progressof events emphasized that Europe then faced a more dangerousthreat than Russian Bolshevism. The threat stemmed from thecontrol of Germany by the National-Socialists, who skilfullyexploited a moral crisis in Germany and all of Europe, to gainand, then systematically and totally, to consolidate power inGermany. The menace to Europe was all the more dire, be-cause the Nazis had disguised their totalitarian movement inthe mask of anti-Bolshevism and so the danger went unrecog-nized.

The task was to awaken Europe to the crisis created by theParty, which had used the slogan "Germany, awake." Gurianwas a publicist but was incapable of propaganda, for he movedmost familiarly in the world of ideas. Indeed, as he saw it, theEuropean crisis manifested itself in the unscrupulous use of slo-gans and in an irresponsibility that would not take principlesseriously. Polemical party journalism was not for him. But as amissionary in the moder world, for him the task of the Catho-lic publicist, he had to rouse those, who might hear and under-stand him, to the urgency of the European situation. Principles,even grotesque and incredible views, had to be taken seriously.Perhaps, he might be heard and widely heard, for, unlike manyintellectuals, he never restricted his sights to a precious circle

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THE REVIEW OF POLITICSof a precious few, to a self-acclaimedvanguard, so far out infront of mankind that obviouslythey could not be heard exceptby themselves. He treasured the marks of critical understanding,yes, and hopefully and, sometimes,patheticallythe more doubt-ful outward signs of recognition. No publisher ever followedsales more avidly than he scrutinizedbook-ordersand subscrip-tions at Notre Dame. This hope was surely present, but onlythe Christianhope expressedin "The Catholic Publicist" tamedhis massive doubts and restrainedthe harrowingfears, personal,family and financial, of an emigre.His thoughts settled on the establishmentof a news servicedevoted exclusivelyto the political and socio-philosophicalanaly-sis of National Socialism. This work,which also involved a specialemphasison the religious aspect of the actual historicalproblemas it presenteditself in the unfolding of events, would enable theauthor to use fully his almost unique combination of a power-ful, analytic mind, rich in knowledge and understanding,withthe publicist's concern about contemporaryproblems. But thelabor, also, required a journalist and business manager, functionsfor which Gurian had an astonishing incapacity. During thesummer of 1934 the happy accident of a meeting in Lucerne witha recent German emigre, Otto M. Knab, enabled Gurian tosecure the necessarypartner. Knab, a man of literary interests,had been editor, later editor-in-chiefof the StarnbergLand undSeebote, a Catholic daily paper. The two began cooperationalmost immediately,and after two experimentalissues had beenprepared, Die deutschen Briefe appeared with its first numberdated, October 5, 1934.The Deutsche Briefe was a mimeographed weekly, usuallyeight pages of single-spacedtyping. It appeared under the nameof the Swiss publishing house, Liga Verlag. The editors alter-nately used the mimeographmachines of two Swiss businesses-tablishments.Other Swiss friends advanced small sums of moneyfor paper and ink. The enterprisewas begun with a capital ofless than 100 Swiss francs.Gurian'sanalytical writings comprisedabout 75% of the is-sues until the summer of 1937 when he set out for the UnitedStates and Notre Dame. His partner, who prepared synopsesfrom Nazi publications and speeches, and did some satiricalnotices in addition to handling technical and business affairs,

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GURIAN AND THE GERMAN CRISIShas noted that Gurian helped faithfully with the folding andenclosing of each weekly issue.

It was two years before the Deutsche Briefe had a subscrip-tion list of one hundred and the number never reached two hun-dred. There were two types of subscription: individuals, who paidtwo Swiss francs monthly, and newspapers, which, in proportionto their circulation, paid up to ten Swiss francs monthly. Mostof the individual subscribers were Swiss. The newspaper sub-scribers amounted to about two dozen. After the first fewmonths, the work provided the editors with a small but increas-ing income.The information in the Deutsche Briefe was drawn from per-sons in the German government and from ecclesiastical sourcesin Germany and from a wide reading of German and Europeannewspapers, periodicals and books. The Gestapo made severalunsuccessful and clumsy attempts to discover the informants.On a number of occasions German bishops, whose cooperationwith the Nazis had been described in the Deutsche Briefe, sentemissaries to explain their case to the editors, for the Germanbishops were made aware that their actions were being scruti-nized and publicized. The influence was seen in Swiss editorialcomments, occasionally in Le Temps, and on one occasion Os-servatore Romano used material published exclusively in theDeutsche Briefe.After Gurian's departure Otto Knab carried on until thefollowing spring. But the work became more difficult after Hit-ler's seizure of Austria. Once again, the prophetic realism ofGurian's dark analysis of Nazism in being justified by events madethe paper's work impossible. Switzerland became understand-ably less cordial to a paper, critical of Nazism and edited byGerman emigres. The last issue of the Deutsche Briefe, Number178, appeared on April 15, 1938. An attempt to save the idea ofthe paper by placing it under the nominal editorship of a Swissand changing the name to Eidgenossische Besinnung did not sur-vive three issues.1

It is a curious irony that Gurian's Russian birth and his study1 Otto M. Knab furnished much of the information on which the accountof the Deutsche Briefe was based. He, also, generously gave the University ofNotre Dame Library a complete set of the paper, from which much of thefollowing pages is drawn.

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THE REVIEW OF POLITICSof Bolshevism played a decisive role in his interpretation of theGerman crisis. His mother became a Catholic, had him baptized,and sent him to a Dutch Catholic school. Catholicism boundhim to the west, but not wholly to Germany, for he loved Franceand was wittiest and most graceful, when dealing with Frenchsubjects. He loved, also, the academic, intellectual and Catholicworld of Germany, its conflicts and its challenging movements.There, he became, as he was always known at Notre Dame,Doctor Gurian, not Professor Gurian. There he defined thework of the Catholic publicist, his own vocation. But he, also,loved Russia and the study of its life and history. He was aRussian, and he resented and feared German efficiency. He hadsomething of the old Russian habit of looking upon all attemptsto impose external regularity and order as the enemy of thehuman spirit, or, at any rate, as the enemy. When the Germansdespised Slavic and Russian lack of organization, Gurian wasinclined to echo the Russian view that the Germans make goodgovernesses, though he preferred his Russian nurse.

I. POST-WAR AND PRE-HITLER GERMANYUntil his later years (after 1947), when he concentrated hisattention on the Soviet Union, Gurian looked on the moderworld's troubles as part of a general crisis, the disruption of theliberal European society of the nineteenth century. The FirstWorld War was the violent midwife of this crisis, for it re-vealed the resources of power accessible to those who might con-trol the state, produced in Soviet Russia the first striking mani-festation of a total state, using moral claims and demands solelyfor power purposes, and left Germany with a legacy of infla-tion and defeat that compounded the particular and general

aspects of the crisis in Germany.The general aspects of the: crisis derived from the decline ofliberalism, where it had been a class-outlook instead of a na-tional tradition expressing itself in national institutions. Liberal-ism, as a class creed, no longer had content and a program,and was doomed to be swept away by the postwar nationalismof Europe, often an integral nationalism, in confronting andanswering the demands for a new economic and social order.This hope and belief in the future expressed a rejection of the

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GURIAN AND THE GERMAN CRISISpresent, a sickness that could easily become worse, for it createda temper and a situation favorable to the use of principles forpower's sake.This crisis of morals and faith was strikingly evident inthe history of Marxism and European socialism. The dissolutionof society and the state in Russia had enabled the BolshevikMarxists to seize power. Thereafter, Marxism there graduallyceased to be of importance, for theory became simply the justi-fication of the demands of those wielding power and seeking totalpower. Elsewhere, socialism had so accommodated itself toliberal democracy that it was bound up in the fate of the liberalworld. Where, as in Germany, that was dying, the socialistscould offer no alternative course. Marxian socialism arousedfears by its preaching, but could not practice what it preached.It was fatally a part of the political ideas of the nineteenth cen-tury and was incapable of meeting the crisis of the bourgeoissociety "with a new state and a new society."2In Germany this emptiness of the socialists was markedlyevident, when they failed to establish a socialist Germany in1918-1919 and in founding the Weimar Republic provided forthe continuation of Wilhelmian Germany in a regime of com-promise, plagued by a double fear.3 The socialists with theirdemocratic and Catholic Centre collaborators in the Cabinetand Reichstag, lacking faith in themselves and their programs,anxiously sought the support of the elites of Imperial Germany,the bureaucracy and the Army. But the war, defeat and its after-math had shocked the conservatives so that they had lost con-fidence in their mission to rule. The masses had become im-portant, as was revealed in the Revolution of 1918 and in thefailure of the Kapp Putsch (1920). Obviously something hadbeen wrong in the relations of the ruling elites of WilhelmianGermany with the masses.

2 Gurian, The Rise and Decline of Marxism (London, 1938), p. 81. Thisis a translation of Marxismus am Ende (Einsiedeln, 1936). Gurian expressedthis view in numerous writings, notably in Um des Reiches Zuku'nft publishedin Freiburg in 1932 under the name Walter Gerhart. This volume, subtitled"National Rebirth or Political Reaction," presents a lucid and subtle accountof the nationalist currents in post-war Germany.3 In a later writing Gurian noted that Fritz Ebert, the German socialistleader, had been angered "by the hasty proclamation of the republic." Quotedfrom "The Sources of Hitler's Power," The Review of Politics, IV (October,1942), 386.

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THE REVIEW OF POLITICSGurian saw this latter issue posed by the National Social

writings of Friedrich Naumann and by Max Weber, who inhis inaugural lecture at Freiburg (1895) had argued that, fail-ing the inclusion of the workers into the national society andthe state, Germany as united by Bismarck had not become apolitical nation. Weber and Naumann agreed that this extensionof the national community must be achieved if Germany wereto become a truly modem economic state and a dominant worldpower. The World War had undermined the bourgeoisie andwhile destroying the assurance of the traditional elites had madepatent the unseriousness of the German Marxists.The Weimar Republic, the regime of defeat and compromise,offered a favorable ground for the groups, which "believedthemselves charged with the same vocation as the BolshevikParty in Russia." But, because of the loss of faith in liberalismand socialism, they "could not, if they were to have any pros-pect of success, employ the same nineteenth century watch-words."4 Thus, in Italy and Germany the revolution against thenineteenth century was, also, presented as a struggle againstMarxist and Asiatic-Russian Bolshevism. The Nazis, exploitinga general mentality which considered political and social mat-ters as the only issues that mattered, and intensifying and ex-ploiting a pragmatic activism, which emphasized organizationand practice to the neglect or oppression of the spirit, proposedan ideology, taken seriously by few, but appealing to the wholerange of German hopes and frustrations.The ideology was not taken seriously, and so an ironical re-venge was taken on a generation, which took so few thingsseriously. But the slogans and the propaganda were effective,all the more because the Nazi Party's program was not believed.The Nazi leaders, however, had to simulate the conditions ofanarchy, which would justify their claim to total power, a claimby which they rejected the nineteenth century.

Anarchy could not be achieved in Germany as easily as ithad been in Russia. The German state, indeed, was weakenedby "an excessive social organization," and this power of socialorganization created the appearance of a nation divided into

4Gurian, The Future of Bolshevism (New York, 1936), p. 51. This is atranslation of Bolschewismus als Weltgefahr (I,ucerne, 1935).

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GURIAN AND THE GERMAN CRISISdiscrete, competing groups which reduced the state to little"more than a permanent compromise between" them, an en-tity without "any firm will of its own." The Nazis, thereby,persuading the Rightist groups, sought to discredit this systemby the sustained abuse of its "freedom from restraints." Anyattempt to check the abuse created a "martyr" and the abusewas advanced as proof of the anarchy from which the Naziswould save the nation.5As early as 1932 Gurian had equated Nazism and Bolshe-vism. The Nazi demand, the total state, with its trappings ofheroism, revealed symptomatically the belief in the exclusive su-premacy of political and social questions, for in the total statethere is nothing but the political. For it the existence of thenation is the single fundamental and the only justification, asis the belief in the future classless society for Bolshevism.6The socialists grew weaker, and Hitler finally had to dealonly with right-wing German leaders, who were ready victimsof the Nazi leader because they hoped to use him as the tamerof the masses. The regular leftist charge that Hitler was a Con-servative pawn provided Hitler with respectability and encour-aged the right in its delusion that it could exploit Hitler. TheNazi leader was "the great exploiter of the weakness of hisopponents." His vagueness and contradictions made him thegreat simplifier of German nationalism.

"The conservatives first abandoned the position of the chancellorbecause they believed that Papen and his friends would be thereal rulers. Then they put their confidence in the army, then theyhoped that the experts would prevent the worst ... they relied onthe National Socialist Right Wing. . . . Finally it became mani-fest that small payments had become a large amount, and thatthe installment rates had given Hitler everything. It was thefear of risking everything which paralyzed all will of resistanceagainst Hitler."7Gurian saw this folly of the Conservatives and of the Centre5 The quotations are from The Future of Bolshevism, pp. 52, 55, 57.6 Um des Reiches Zukunft, p. 120. Gurian learned much about the kin-ship of the Bolsheviks and Nazis from the German legal scholar, Karl Schmitt,who became a servant of the Nazi state. The Deutsche Briefe often citeSchmitt as an example of the reckless time-servers, who helped the Nazis.7 "The Sources of Hitler's Power," Review of Politics, IV (October, 1942),394-395.

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THE REVIEW OF POLITICSParty partially as the product of conditions that were peculiarto Germany. Although in Imperial Germany the nationalists andconservatives were reluctant to oppose the government, theywere opposed to the Weimar Republic as the government ofdefeat, of the left and of continued frustration of national life.Unfortunately, even the Centre Party had become too accus-tomed to power and tired, inclined to think in terms of tac-tics rather than principles and to try to solve difficulties by dip-lomacy or temporizing adjustments. Thus, Hitler won the game.In a notable essay Gurian used Jacob Burckhardt's lecture noteson Mohammed to explain his own view of Hitler. Burckhardtdescribed Mohammed as a fanatical and radical simplifier, whosecrude eclecticism provided something familiar for the whole,quarreling Arab world, uniting a divided people and keepingthem together by the provision of concrete aims acceptable andpleasing to all. Great effects do not necessarily stem from greatpersons.

Hitler was the fanatical simplifier and unifier of variousGerman traditions "in the service of simple national aims."Distortedly and with exaggeration Hitler appeared to manydiffering, German groups "as the fulfiller of their wishes andsharer of their beliefs." Gurian rejected proportional representa-tion as a major explanation for the failure of the Weimar Re-public, for the clumsy German party system had also existed inImperial Germany without proportional representation. He, also,rejected an economic cause as a major explanation of Hitler'srise, for he believed that the spiritual and intellectual outlookwere decisive. Hitler's success derived from his ability to appealto and to trick most of the segments of German life. His successwas not the simple result of the numbers of the Nazi Party.

His lack of traditions and his very insignificance, groundsfor which the Conservatives did not take him seriously, gavehim the advantage of being unconnected with the old regimeand of appearing as the representative of new forces. This andhis exploitation of their grievances, hopes and pride, won themasses to his side. It should be noted that Gurian does not con-sider a democratic alternative because he believed that democracywas of slight importance in pre-Hitler Germany and unaccept-

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GURIAN AND THE GERMAN CRISISable to all important nationalist groups. Hitler was in the worstsense a genius of the twentieth century in his recognition of theall-importance of mass propaganda and in his talents for it. Theputsch of 1923 taught him that the Republic would have tobe destroyed by using its civil liberties against itself. He quicklyoutclassed the nationalist sects and fashioned a disciplined andorganized leadership group combined with a mass party. Thecontent of the propaganda did not appear to be original butits presentation was systematically effective and to the masses hegave it a new meaning. Along with the Right Hitler mademuch of the "stab in the back" of the German army. But Hit-ler intended it not only as a denunciation of the Republic andthe socialists but as a revolutionary indictment of the old re-gime for its inability to restrain the internationalist and Jewishforces. His nationalism combining protests against Versaillesand Germany's economic difficulties with the claims of security,Lebensraum and resistance to encirclement, also united the ap-pearance of a return to German conservative order with a twen-tieth-century revolutionary "ruthless realism and activism" thatwas later to win the bureaucracy and the army to supine serviceto the Nazi state. His nationalism and its simplification, fanaticismand ambiguity enabled Hitler to paralyze his rivals and adversariesby dividing them and using them for his own ends.8In this simplifying work of union Nazi anti-Semitism playedan important role, for all the nationalistic secret and militaryorganizations of the early years of the Weimar Republic wereanti-Semitic. His anti-Semitism involved the crude assertion thatthe Jews were a "parasitic and inferior counter-race." But itscrudity and assurance, its assumption of being self-evident, ap-pealed to the masses, weary of debate and eager to have theburden of decision lifted from them. At the same time, it drewConservative groups into the Nazi orbit or made them friendly,for it appeared as a protest against the hated Republic. "Anti-Semitism was the form in which radical negation of the existingorder could be most easily expressed by groups which had norevolutionary tradition." Anti-Semitism provided the basis for

8 The preceding three paragraphs are largely based on "The Sources ofHitler's Power," previously cited, and "Hitler-Simplifier of German Nation-alism," Review of Politics, VII (July, 1945), 316-324.

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THE REVIEW OF POLITICSdrawing in the masses for the transformation of liberal national-ism into a totalitarian one.9

II. THE NAZIS IN POWERGurian and Otto Knab began the Deutsche Briefe about

eighteen months after Hitler had taken office as Chancellor ofGermany. This paper reveals a powerful and restrained concen-tration of purpose. The editors, except in their books, are notconcerned with historical analysis, for history would have beena cause of distraction and dissension from the major task, theanalysis of the nature of Nazism. At the end of 1934 the editorspublished a statement of their purpose. The Deutsche Briefe wasnot concerned with sensational news. Instead, it would explainthe sources of strength of Nazism which the urgency and ex-citement of daily journalism are likely to overlook. Nazism is theexpression of Bolshevization, all the more dangerous in that itcalls itself Positive Christianity. It is no more permissible to takean exclusively tactical position concerning it than concerningthe Soviet Union. The Deutsche Briefe has no political goalsbut seeks to make recognizable in their true shape the anti-Christian forces in the contemporary world.10Gurian only summarized a host of German Nazis, and, un-fortunately, scholars, when he defined Nazi ideology: "The willof the Fuehrer is the content of the National Socialist ideology."'1This emphasis on the Fuehrer made a dramatically simple appealto the masses. The Fuehrer embodies the will of the Party andthe people, whose best and most truly knowledgeable representa-tives are the Party members. Just as the Bolsheviks justify theirmonopoly of power on the grounds that they know the lawand movement of history to the classless society, so the Nazisand the Fuehrer in their Weltanschauung claim to express theelite of Germanism. The Fuehrer acts as the expression of thewill of the German folk, and so Karl Schmitt presented a trueNazi view when he said that in the blood purge of June 30,1934, the Fuehrer acted as justice. Just because Germans and

9 Gurian's major writing on anti-Semitism is "Anti-Semitism in ModemGermany" which was printed in the second edition of Koppel Pinson (editor),Essays on Antisemitism (New York, 1946).lo Deutsche Briefe, December 28, 1934.11 A quotation from The Future of Bolshevism in the Deutsche Briefe,March 13, 1935.

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GURIAN AND THE GERMAN CRISISforeigners did not take this as a serious claim, and Gurian did,he carefully noted the occasions on which such claims were made,for example, the statement of a Nazi leader that the Germanshave no need of a written constitution-the will of Hitler isconstitution enough. Similarly, the Bolsheviks always sought topreserve their freedom of action in the face of written law.The comparison, Gurian insisted, was not arbitrary. Karl Schmittin Staat, Bewegung, Volk (State, Movement, Folk) describedthe Soviet Union as "an example of the type of state charac-teristic of the twentieth century, as contrasted with the typicalnineteenth century state."12 The distinction of state, nation andsociety is abolished. The Party or movement dominates thestate, and dominates and leads the people.When the Bavarian Minister of Worship in a speech at Dan-zig described the differing religious groups as "way stations onthe road to God," he coupled it with the claim of Nazism "toshape the whole future of the German people."'3 Only by takingthis claim and the Nazi Weltanschauung seriously can the mean-ing of Nazism be understood. Gurian often wondered at thefact that so few people had read, and fewer understood MeinKampf, a fact which contributed to Hitler's success. The claimof Nazism to determine all of Germany's life was the expressionof a will for change and unification that would stop at nothing,that considered everything as material to be used for the powerdemands and power expansion of Hitler's state.14

This claim distinguished the Nazi party and state from otherregimes of the German past, which did not have such all-em-bracing ambitions in the field of culture. The first goal of theNazis was the negative one of eliminating all anti-Nazi elementsfrom public and social life. Spiritual or social barriers or limitswere not recognized. Only the Nazi Party and the folk wereautonomous. Everything was coordinated with the Nazi regime.The press and libraries were supervised and the direction wasnot limited to politics. State financial contributions were used to

12 The Future of Bolshevism, p. 53.13 The early numbers of the Deutsche Briefe abound in such salient quo-tations as this from the issue of October 26, 1934.14 Ibid., November 30, 1934. This is one of a notable series of articles on"National Socialist Cultural Policies," summarized in the following fourparagraphs.

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THE REVIEW OF POLITICSreenforce this coordination. The negative objective was furtheredby the purging of representatives of the former parties and ofnon-Aryan individuals.The Nazi student Fuehrer explained that this purging is acontinuous thing. Just as Lenin recognized that the Sovietregime could not at once replace all the professors in the Russianuniversities, so Hitler will proceed only gradually to transformthe German universities. The goal was to have the universitiesexclusively occupied by professors schooled in the Nazi Weltan-schauung of Hitler and Rosenberg.Under close inspection the positive side of this program wasmerged in the unlimited claim that the Nazi Party and Hitler,who embodies it, had been called to the leadership of the Ger-man people and that their opponents are either bad Germans or,at best, under the influence of an anti-German education. Theunconditional character of this claim to dominance stopped atnothing. The Nazis were the agents of the best in the race.This racial community must be guided by the Party to its propersupremacy, before which nothing else takes precedence. Aryanismwas an end in itself and race took the place of God.15 Just asthe Bolshevik belief in man's self-sufficiency in the classless so-ciety determines its atheism and hostility to religion, so the Nazidivinization of the German race dictated its opposition to Cath-olic and Christian beliefs. Religion only had a racial significanceas the expression of the soul of a people.

Only these Nazi views may be expressed without criticism.Occasionally, more detailed points were made as they suited theNazi leaders. Schiller was hailed as a forerunner of Nazism andHindemith's music was banned. But the reality was that allphases of life were used simply in the service of the Nazi state.Nazi cultural, and all other Nazi policies, end in the educationand exploitation of the German people as an instrument of thestate. Everything that served the power of the state was prizedand this power was identified with that of the Nazi Party. Thismade for a mechanization of the whole of life, for whatever hap-pened was presented as the will of the people which always coin-cided with Nazi interest. Thus, the Nazi promise of a purge and

15 Ibid., May 24, 1935, where Bolshevismis describedas the deification ofman and work and Nazism as the deification of the racial community.

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GURIAN AND THE GERMAN CRISISrenewal of German cultural life became the basis for a cripplingpower which actually crushed its free development.The preceding paragraphs, barring religion and the Germannames, could as well be a description of Soviet cultural policies.But the Nazis had to proceed more cautiously than the Bol-sheviks, who could move more daringly in the anarchic condi-tions of Russia. The Nazis legally took over a strong and intactstate and an undisintegrated society. The Nazis, therefore, con-centrated on coordinating the various institutions of German life.Some of this coordination, Gurian believed, was achieved withshameful or disturbing ease, for example, the self-dissolution ofthe Centre Party. Franz Seldte, leader of the nationalist Stahl-helm, was ready to compromise everything to maintain his min-isterial post. To save his scientific work, Max Planck wired toHitler: "Only under your aegis can science exist."'6 This kind ofsubmission encouraged the submission of more humble people.Moreover, the easy coordination helped the Nazi regime tomaintain its voluntary appearance. The regime, as did the Bol-sheviks, sought mass manifestations of popular support to main-tain the fiction of its embodiment of the national will. Its author-ity was ratified by mass meetings and this manipulation of themasses into the outward show of frenzied unity provided thebasis for the totalitarian boast that it had, thereby, demonstrat-ed its superiority to the parliamentary system with its relativelyrare manifestations of unity. The concern with power and unitycaused totalitarian public life to be in a constant state of hightension. "Abnormal conditions are the normal conditions of bothsystems of government."17This was the secret of the appearance of general enthusiasmfor the Nazi government. Their use of propaganda, reenforcedby terror, involved "a methodical debasement of values by a kindof mass-suggestion."18 This was something historically new. But"the secret of the German secret" was the subtle use of terrorin the early years of the regime. The purge of June 30, 1934,

16Ibid., February 7, 1936.17The Future of Bolshevism, p. 71.18 Deutsche Briefe, June 21, 1934. "To comprehend National Socialismone must go to its propaganda, for propaganda is one of its decisive weapons.Indeed, it may be argued that in its systematic perfection propaganda is thesalient feature of Nazism." Ibid., June 5, 1936.

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THE REVIEW OF POLITICSwas a public exception for which Gurian did not have an ex-planation. The absence of public terror was necessary becauseof Germany's more civilized level as compared with Russia andthe desire to foster foreign misunderstanding of the nature ofNazism. The terror operated more by threat than violence. Therewas first the threat of economic pressures such as dismissal andboycott and fear of public defamation, of being charged "withlack of patriotism."19 The coordination, the terror andpropaganda served to destroy society as an independent andfree entity. The individual was reduced to himself and impo-tent. Thereafter, the reiteration of propaganda, sometimes de-liberately absurd in itself, served to force the individual to ac-cept commands and explanations as self-evident.20 If the indi-vidual was to work and to live, he was inevitably coordinatedand a National-Socialist.

The specifically German features in Nazism arose from theefficiency and outlook of the German bureaucracy and army.Gurian insisted that there was a general moral crisis but the Nazidanger to Europe was greatly enhanced by the skill and powerthat the bureaucracy and the army gave to Hitler. Both groupsrepresented in Gurian's mind the striking examples of incompletemen, specialists concerned only with their own technical func-tioning, satisfied and unprepared to question, if they were keptbusy with blue prints, projects and rearmament. "Hitler's irra-tional will to power would have remained unimportant if he hadnot had German institutions at his disposal."21 Hitler needed theirrational methods for his irrational aims, but they, also, neededHitler because he made possible the gigantic undertakings andorganizations that these crippled human beings regarded as thefulfillment of their life. As a rule, they did not like Hitler andthe Nazis as persons. They feared and then admired his daring,when he was successful. They did not favor Nazi brutalities or

19Ibid., June 14, 1935 and April 10, 1936.20Ibid., January 25, 1935.21 "The Sources of Hitler's Power," Review of Politics, IV (October,1942), 397, 379-408. In this article, Gurian's major consideration of the roleof the bureaucracy and army, he emphatically related these institutions to thegeneral crisis. "Though German institutions such as the army and bureaucracydid not originate as instruments of a pure will to power, they became suchinstruments after the social environments in which they originated disap-peared."

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GURIAN AND THE GERMAN CRISISthe launching of war. But their opposition was not based onprinciples, on the rejection of war and conquests. They merelyfeared the consequences of political or military catastrophe. Thisoutlook meant that they could only be impressed by successfuldaring or by brute facts. "Therefore they found their masterin Hitler, who saved them in order to exploit them as accom-plices, and who rewarded them by the destruction of others, bind-ing them much closer to himself."22Gurian frequently pointed out that the belief in the likeli-hood of the German Army restraining Hitler was groundless butdid help Hitler. The Fuehrer was not the prisoner of the Reichs-wehr because the army did not have its own policy. For it thedecisive fact was that Hitler had initiated rearmament. TheNazi leader had understood the fact that the army was domi-nated by military specialists, of whom he could be more surethan he could be of some elements of the Brown Shirt leader-ship. 23 Thus, when R6hm played with the idea of becomingwar minister and bringing the Brown Shirts into the GermanArmy, Hitler decided in favor of the army and Rohm wasassassinated.

This severe judgment of the German specialists gainedstrength from Gurian's deepest convictions. To him, the incom-plete man, the specialist concentrating on a part of reality andunconcerned about its relations to the whole, was the betrayerof the mind, a danger to the world of scholarship, to the stateand the whole of human society. He was impatient with theabsence of the technical competence that came easily to him. Buthis monumental impatience was reserved for those who made aself-contained universe of their own specialization. He insisted onthe primary honesty and necessity of presenting the writer's pointof view, his awareness of the relationship of part and whole,if only in an awareness of mystery. Gurian's rejection of positivistscholarship was based on philosophy, but in Um des ReichesZukunft he argued that positivist scholarship too readily enabledan author to disguise his unexamined values and conclusions asscientific dictates. As an occasion of scholarly pride and pre-sumption, positivism was all the more dangerous.

22Ibid., 397.23Deutsche Briefe, February 1, 1935, January 3, 1936.

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THE REVIEW OF POLITICSThough Gurian in the Deutsche Briefe and into the waryears devoted himself to the Nazi threat to Europe and theworld and sought to clarify the unique German features of Nazitotalitarianism, he maintained his view that the European worldwas in a general crisis. The identity of Bolshevism and Nazismevidenced this. In describing Propaganda and National Power(1933) by Hadamovsky, an influential associate of Joseph Goeb-bels, the Nazi Propaganda Minister, Gurian was at pains todemonstrate that the leading Nazis were aware of the "intrin-sic relationship of their methods to Bolshevik methods." Thisidentity consisted in their overriding concern with power andwith the total supremacy of the political and social. Hadamovsky,

having described the methods of the Soviet Cheka, commentedthat it would be a serious "mistake to restrict the principles in-volved in these methods to Russia or a particular time. . .Certainly, unbridled instincts require brutal measures, but civil-ized nations need not experience bloodbaths, as did the Russianpeople under the Soviets, except in cases of extreme danger."Gurian emphasized the importance of this work for the additionalreason that it revealed the Nazi sense of tactics, the necessityof a gradual approach to the realization of their aims.Nazi anti-Bolshevism, then, was not to be taken seriously. Itwas not fundamental, but a propaganda weapon. Nazi "hostilityto Bolshevism is at most an expression of a competitive strugglebetween two different groups. For both power is the pivotalconsideration, power which they seek to wield by the samemethods. Thus, it is understandable that they fight each other,although they are children of the same spirit."24 This point aboutidentity, supported by detailed comparisons in his books andarticles, is inseparably connected with Gurian's views about thegeneral crisis. The German army and bueaucracy are uniquein their efficiency but in their unconcern about the whole theyare only extreme representatives of a general outlook. The su-preme irony and tragedy is that each of two identical systems,aspiring to totality of power and dehumanizing men in the di-vinization of a class or race, is genuinely taken as a redeemerfrom the peril offered by the other.The Communist Party is forbidden in Germany but that

24Ibid., May 31, 1936.

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GURIAN AND THE GERMAN CRISISdoes not mean that the Bolshevist danger has been lifted fromGermany. Bolshevism does not mean a particular party; it meansa certain fundamental standpoint to all questions of society, whichmay also be shared by those who profess to be anti-Bolshevik.It is a world danger because it deifies the state and the partywhich controls the state. This domination shapes the whole oflife and is grounded on a Weltanschauung.25 Indeed, SovietCommunism, with its remnants of rationalism and of a traditionof objectivity and natural law, yields to the irrationality of Naz-ism, which, therefore, "displays most clearly the ideal Bolshevikideology."26The decay of the bourgeoisie was most pronounced in Ger-many, but not confined to Germany. The decomposition trans-cended political and national borders. Liberalism was dead ordying and the new forces at work since the First World War werereactions to and heirs of the secularization, accomplished by lib-eralism, although Gurian insisted that many believing Christianswere affected by the outlook of their time, for example, in over-prizing organizations and influence, and in blurring their principlesor in being silent about them.

"It is a fundamental error to consider National Socialism as apolitical phenomenon. It is an ideology, a substitute for religion,for Christianity which has disappeared from so much of society.Some decades ago the Russian philosopher, Rozanov, had alreadyenvisioned our time correctly: 'The basic cause of what happensin Europe today is that the disappearanceof Christianity has leftvast abysses in European society. Everything is falling into thosegaps'."27

III. NAZISM AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCHESMore than half of the pages of the Deutsche Briefe are de-voted to the religious history of Germany under the Nazis. This

emphasis is not only the result of Gurian's and Knab's interest25Ibid., April 12, 1935.26 The Future of Bolshevism, p. 81.27Deutche Briefe, April 17, 1936. It is worthy of note that Gurian greatlyadmired Leon Bloy and read widely in Russian religious literature, and inphilosophy, theology and 'Church history. He repeated the judgment expressedby Rozanov in his last major writings on totalitarianism. See "Totalitarianismas Political Religion" in C. J. Friedrich (editor), Totalitarianism (Cambridge,Mass., 1954), pp. 119-129.

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THE REVIEW OF POLITICSbut reflects their earnest desire to warn the German and Euro-pean Christians and to elicit from the authorities of the Catho-lic Church in Germany and the world an explicit condemna-tion of Nazism as unChristian. The moral crisis could be lessen-ed only by clarity about moral ends and by the example ofsincerity. Gurian several times referred to the astonishment of thefirst Nazi Minister of Worship and Education in Prussia at thefact that he encountered so little opposition from the Germanteaching profession: "These people do not believe in what theyprofess to stand for."28 If principles are not taken seriously bybelievers, the game, in the best case, goes to the materialist andopportunist.In the conclusion of his book on religion in Nazi GermanyGurian summarized his position: "We see, then, that the tasksthat lie before the Catholic and the Confessional Churches areessentially the same. ... If faith is to be more than a personal,private affair it must be proclaimed to the world at large asthe unconditional and uncompromising belief in Christ, justas it is proclaimed at every divine service."29 In Gurian's analy-sis, various historical conditions helped to explain the differingreactions of the Protestant Churches and the Catholic Church.

The first and decisive tradition, of which the Nazis madeuse for the establishment of a German Church, solely dedicated tothe expression of the German soul, was the longing for a ThirdChurch, which would obliterate the religious divisions of Ger-many. This longing had taken an early form in the Interimof Augsburg, and more seriously in Hohenzollern Church policy.After German Idealism and the Higher Criticism had erodedthe substance of the orthodox Christianity of many GermanProtestant thinkers, an almost wholly secularized and humanistThird Church seemed both possible and desirable. The com-radeship of the First World War and its following nationalismpotently supported the same expectation. Hitler proposed hisWeltanschauung as the ultimate fulfillment of the Third Church.Two forces rendered the German Protestant Churches in-

28 Ibid., February7, 1936.29Hitler and the Christians (New York, 1936), p. 168. It is mournful torecall that this book attracted little critical notice. Some Catholic journalspersisted in regarding Soviet Russia as the enemy and Nazi Germany, as abulwark state, unfortunately guilty of some excesses.

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GURIAN AND THE GERMAN CRISISitially susceptible to the Nazi attempt to undermine them. Thesewere theological liberalism, a powerful preparer of the generalcrisis, and their tradition of nationalism. Often, these went handin hand, and theological liberalism sometimes anticipated oreven approved the extremist racism of the Nazis. Under theRepublic the Protestant nationalists had been in opposition butmany gladly returned to the older policy of patriotic obedience.In Gurian's eyes the early Protestant resistance to the Nazis inpower had been mainly caused by Nazi clumsiness and tacticallypremature expressions of anti-Christian sentiments, and reflectedan opportunist struggle for preferment.30 Later Nazi attacks,however, prompted such unequivocal confessions of Christianfaith as the Evangelical resolutions at Barmen and Dahlem, andKarl Barth's lecture "The Church and the Churches," when aconsiderable portion of German Protestantism had already been"coordinated" with the regime.Hitler could not use the same tactics against the CatholicChurch with its hierarchical character and teaching authority.But specific German Catholic traditions and outlooks providedother opportunities. There were a widespread Catholic fear ofnot appearing to be national enough and a profound hostility toCommunism. In spite of these traditions a number of bishopswere highly critical of Nazism, when it assumed power. Butsome of these protests had been associated with calls for sup-port of the Centre Party. Thus, the Nazis objected to what theycalled "Political Catholicism." This attack was really a rejectionof the public independence of the Church.31 But the chargehad effect and the circumstances favored it.

After this early period the Pope and the German Bishopssought to arrive at an understanding, which took shape in theConcordat (1933). The later history of the Concordat is thestory of persistent undermining of its basis, while observing itsexternal obligations. Until 1936 these breaches were met byindividual and collective episcopal protests, but these protestsusually contained professions of loyalty and did not recognize

30 Hitler and the Christians, p. 93. My summary barely does justice toGurian's close analysis in this book and in the Deutsche Briefe, which has per-manent value for the religious history of the early Nazi Reich.31Deutsche Briefe, August 16, 1935.

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THE REVIEW OF POLITICSNazism as evil in itself.32 By this time the Catholic press waspowerless under heavy censorship, and in Gurian's eyes only themost forthrightcondemnationcould save the situation.There had been momentsof tactical appeasementon the partof the Nazis, for example, as a preparationfor the Saar Plebi-cite. But when in 1935 sisters and priests were tried, first forinfractions of currency regulations and then on charges of im-morality,the Deutsche Briefe began to sound a note of the mostanxious urgency.Gurian emphasizedthat Hitler would not makemartyrsby persecutingthe clergy openly. They would be discred-ited as criminals. He called for an authoritative judgment onNazism from the German bishops and from Rome before thetime was too late.It was, indeed, late. By 1935 the Nazis had so consolidatedtheir power that the German bishops could not even be sure ofhaving their protests publicly heard. The tactical and diplomaticapproach, a characteristicof the modem crisis and a legacy ofthe Centre Party, had failed. The strategyof the Nazis had beenmet by a tactical willingness for accommodation. As Nazi tac-tics were extended in the face of such flexibility,the Nazis weremarching towards their goal and the condition of the GermanCatholics deterioratedto the point where it was necessary tospeak out clearly and boldly lest wrong really be made to ap-pear as right. The Fulda Pastoral Letter (1935) did not nameNazism as the enemy. In it the bishops again professed theirunwillingnessto deal with mattersthat concernedthe Party andthe state. But as the very goal of Nazism was the divinizationof German man and state, Nazism was inherentlyevil and hadso to be named. The Bishopscould not beat Hitler in the gameof tactics and in a struggle for the soul of the German people,this judgment of Nazism had to be made.33Gurian was acutely aware of the difficulties of making sucha move. But, he asked, if the word could not be spoken in Ger-many, what better proof of the Church's perilous estate therecould be given? Gurian spoke as a Catholic. At the same time,he believed that the grave weakening of the Christian Churches

32 On coming to the United States Gurian wrote "Hitler'sUndeclared Waron the Catholic Church," Foreign Affairs, XVI (January, 1938), 260-271.33This paragraphis a summaryof the issuesof 1935.

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GURIAN AND THE GERMAN CRISISin Germany would mean the complete triumph of Nazism andthe destruction of all humane values in the country. The decayof the German bourgeoisie and its current mentality posed themost serious problem of the future, for the mind is the hardestthing to make good again.34He insistently returned to his point that Nazism was a politi-cal religion. Rosenberg and Hitler presented it as such. Baldurvon Schirach, the Fuehrer of the Hitler Youth, had proclaimedNazi policy when he said: "The way of the German youth isthe way of Rosenberg." Contempt for the shallowness andmonumental ignorance of Rosenberg's Myth of the TwentiethCentury could not change the fact that it presented the religiousobjectives of the Nazi Reich. Gurian rigidly distinguished theGerman Christians and the neo-pagans as unimportant featuresof the regime. They were used to attack the Churches but theChurch journals were allowed to attack them. This made foran appearance of freedom in Germany. But Rosenberg's andHitler's views could not be attacked. The Nazis were graduallydeveloping a ritual and liturgy of their own. But for this earlyNazi period the important policy was the attack on the publicindependence of the churches in the name of a united GermanChurch. Goebbels had deliberately compared Germany to onebig church, encompassing all classes, professions, and denomina-tions, with Hitler as its advocate and intercessor. The Germanracial community is weakened by its membership in variouschurches, presented as power structures and instruments. Nazireligion means belief in the race, a belief that transcends any"narrow denominational faith." A Rhineland Gauleiter, Grohe,expressed the objective in a notably frank manner:

"It cannot be fate that men in whose veins flows the same bloodand who are designed by Divine Providence to be one people,should suffer a permanent spiritual division . . . we now have tobuttress our people spiritually and intellectually as the basis ofour unity. In spite of the alien doctrines of the Churches, notbecause we oppose the religions but because we love our people,we must form a folkish unity which will embraceall the millions ofour countrymen and be a spiritual home for every German."35a4 Deutsche Briefe, February 7, 1936.35 Ibid., Oct. 22, 1936; January3, March 6, 1936.

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THE REVIEW OF POLITICSIV. NAZISM AND EUROPE

The Nazi threat to Europe derived not only from the powerafforded Hitler by German institutions but from the generalcrisis, which made the European states incapable of understand-ing Nazi-Bolshevism. Hitler's destructive powers increased withhis success and his success was made possible by the other Eu-ropean powers. After 1933 those powers played the dubious rolethat the German Conservatives enacted in the period beforeHitler's accession to power. Their moral lethargy painfully re-flects an apparent inability to take their own ideals seriously.Hitler simplified German nationalism but he performed asimilar function on the international scene. His anti-Bolshevismwas taken at face value and won him the acquiescence of manyFrench and English Conservatives. His anti-Semitism gainedfurther strength for him, because some conservatives and otherpoliticians regarded opposition to the Nazis as a Jewish cause.36This unconcern or carelessness about principles may, also, beseen in the democracies' weak will to defend themselves and intheir effective confusion by Hitler's propaganda. In this situationalliances against Hitler would not be effective. "The vital issueis whether or not there are moral forces sufficiently strong tooppose to the Bolshevizing process, . . . a resistance which is notmerely political."37The crisis in the western world took the special form of anoutlook for which

"peace and security, law and order are possessionswhich demandno struggle or risk for their maintenance and are therefore injeopardy the moment a power arises which has the courage to actwith determination and work systematicallyfor its own sovereign-ty by cynically exploiting pacific and legal phraseology."38Hitler turned the allied war propaganda of the First World

War against the Versailles settlement. Thus, while professingpeace, he helped to weaken and confuse the west. Even the en-emies of Hitler came to believe that the order established at36 Gurian made this point most strikingly in his essay in Koppel Pinson'svolume I, already cited.37The Future of Bolshevism, p. 120.as bid., pp. 119-120.

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GURIAN AND THE GERMAN CRISISVersailles was responsible for the insecurity of Europe. This ledto the conclusion that the undoing of Versailles will, in the longrun, produce a more peaceful order. Hitler's profession of pacificintentions assuaged domestic German misgivings, and paralyzedthe widespread pacifist mentality. The Nazi leader's power ofinitiative was supported by other considerations. France in 1934-1935 used German rearmament as a pretext for seeking diplo-matic allies. But the flimsy coalition governments of Francewould regularly fall when a military alliance was called for.Thus, the end result of French policy would be the militariza-tion of Germany. Britain, on the other hand, wanted no alliancesand believed that its prestige would not be lowered by effortsto reach an accommodation with Germany.39

But Hitler's demand for equality of rights for Germany hada special folkish content. Equality of rights initially meant secur-ing the conditions of honorable national existence, and the endof all restrictions on German sovereignty. German sovereignty,however, was viewed as an eternal right nullifying all agreementsthat infringe it. His offers of peace involved this conception, andyet, when they were turned down, the negators were made toappear as the enemies of peace. In the rapid pace of events peoplequickly forgot his own contradictory statements and his threats.Many western politicians ignored the program of Mein Kampfand took much more seriously the slogans of their own leftistrivals. Hitler could move from one fait accompli to another andeach one made him stronger. The folkish concept of peacemeant that peace is the dominance of the best race.The international situation could only grow worse. Equalityof rights in Nazi terms meant that Nazi Germany alone decidedon its rights. German power was, therefore, decisive, and Hitler

39 Deutche Briefe, February 22, 1935, April 3, 1936. Gurian understoodBaldwin and Neville Chamberlain only too well. He had a Catholic and con-tinental approach to England, a dislike of English Puritanism and smugness.On one occasion he told me with an apologetic smile that as a very youngman he had come to dislike England for its treatment of Oscar Wilde. Headmired Swift and Newman with reservations. The playful and humorous tra-dition of England wearied him. His own penchant was for irony, "cast irony"as one of his colleagues put it. Hobbes fascinated him and one of my owndreams was to hear Gurian lecturing to an English audience on Hobbes as arepresentative Englishman, "the practical Englishman." But when he waspresent at denunciations of British imperialism or "tyranny," he usually indi-cated that he would find Anglo-Saxon tyranny endurable.

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THE REVIEW OF POLITICShad been able to rearm without hindrance. In assessing Ger-many's international position this was the only significant real-ity. Hitler had the initiative, for while he talked peace, he didnot shrink from war. But the western powers did. They weremaking the fundamental mistake of trying to restrain an elemen-tal force by dealing with it as though it was satisfied with theexisting order.40

V. LAST WRITINGS AND REVISIONSGurian believed that the appeasement mentality would con-tinue to prevail through 1939. He anticipated the collapse ofFrance but was almost afraid to believe in the "ChurchillianRenaissance." When Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, Gurian

increasingly devoted himself to his Soviet studies. He was tor-tured by the dilemma of cooperation with the Soviet Union,although he continued to regard Nazism as the supreme threatto Europe and the world. He had earlier argued that a tacticalposition to Nazism was no more possible than to Soviet Com-munism. But his analysis had not found wide acceptance andevents had posed the problem of survival in terms that Guriandid not wholly illuminate and, for that matter, our own leaderscould not solve.

Shortly after the war's end Gurian resumed his Germancontacts. In a little while the Gurian household had become aclearing-house for pleas of assistance from Germany, and a pri-vate but extensive relief organization. Food, clothing, books andsubscriptions to the New York Times were sent with an uncal-culating charity that could not be maintained. The need and hisown insufficient resources caused him to make several publicappeals for help. He quickly renewed or made new contactswith German scholars and, eventually, Notre Dame was visitedby hosts of touring Germans.Gurian made a number of trips to the new Germany, but itis difficult for me to recall more than a few hints of his viewsof the new Germany. He could be a superb conversationalist,but this was the product of a special effort. With his closest as-sociates he relaxed in gossip or lapsed into what he apparently

40 Deutsche Briefe, November 23, 1934, December 14, 1934, February22,1935, April 3, 1936, April 17, 1936, July 10, 1936, passim.

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GURIAN AND THE GERMAN CRISISconsidered a "sociable silence," which at times was an expres-sion of weariness and of a brooding sense of futility, not despair.

His first major report on post-Hitler Germany recalled hisearly analysis: it was entitled "The German Vacuum."41 In alater writing he returned to familiar themes and quoted ap-provingly the judgment of Monsignor Grosche of Cologne thatGerman Catholicism still overestimated a traditionalist bour-geois Catholicism with its emphasis on externals. It placed toomuch trust in organizations that suppress the creativity of theindividual and sought to restore a world doomed with the dis-appearance of the nineteenth century bourgeois security. Gurianadded to his agreement his protest "against an attitude whichregards the terrible crisis of the twentieth century, expressed inthe rise of Hitler and his regime, merely as a kind of incidentafter which one can return with some industry to normalcy."42First, the kingdom of God, and no confusion of it with anearthly reality, a socialist Europe or a conservative, Christianwest.The confusion appeared in its most extreme form in thetotalitarian states. In them secularism assumed a kind of venge-ful form. The totalitarian state limits man to this earth, a grimsecularism. The classless society or the racial community be-comes the kingdom of God. Totalitarianism means the secular-ization of religion itself. For doctrines on the creation and endof man are substituted the laws of history or social development.

"The doctrine enforced by the totalitarian power determines thereality; enemies, betrayers, evil contaminating forces are con-stantly created. There seems to be no other aim and purpose thanthe existence of totalitarian power and its leadership. Totalitarianterror-this must be emphasized-is not primarily directed againstreal or even potential enemies; it is directed against those who aredeclared to be enemies; what is real, is determined by the declara-tion of the totalitarian masters, and of course, correspondingfactsmust and can easily be found."4341 The Commonweal,Dec. 2, 1949.42 "The Catholic Church in Germany," an unpublished paper, deliveredat a Symposium on The Catholic Church in World Affairs, Notre Dame(1951).43 "Totalitarianism as Political Religion" in C. J. Friedrich (editor), To-talitarianism, pp. 126-127. Gurian noted that only in the last years of thewar did the Nazis move to a pure form of totalitarianism.

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THE REVIEW OF POLITICSThe ideology is a doctrine which replaces reality. Gurian's an-alysis agrees with Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianismin his following remark:This analytical survey of Gurian's thought on Germany wasconceived as a tribute to a friend, who, as a colleague, openedup to me the dimensions of the modem crisis with its intellectualand moral features. At first, I only intended to describe hisvaliant work for the Deutsche Briefe, an aspect of his life andcharacter, unknown to most of his friends. But I found myselfconstantly driven to refer to his general analysis. Finally, I de-cided that his views on Germany provided the proper subject,for it reveals the wholeness of his thought and the completenessof the man: his youthful precocity, his profound Catholicism,his interest in intellectual history and modem politics, and theluminous penetration and consistency of his analysis of the mod-em crisis. He was obviously a publicist and a scholar. But hisanalysis of the modem crisis reveals something greater and moreunexpected; the combination of moral critic and scholar. Andthe lucid power of his work largely derived from his kinshipwith the line of Rozanov, Soloviev and Leon Bloy, to name buta few of many moral critics and religious philosophers who in-fluenced him.

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Gurian and the Gmn Crisis

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