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Henry Morgenthau, The German Character
Five chapters from Morgenthau’s book, Germany is our Problem, here published with an introductory note by Ellopos. Emphasis, in bold or italic letters, by Ellopos. Complete book in print.
52 Pages
Page 44
The finest elements of that regime sat in a big, dimly lit room in the Chancellery. In the confusion of calling the hasty meeting, someone had forgotten to turn on all the lights, and one of the participants in the gathering later remembered that the members of the Cabinet already looked like ghosts. President Ebert, who seemed an old man although he was only fifty-two, paced the floor. His latest Chancellor, the bull-necked Stresemann, sat back in a chair reporting to his colleagues in a voice which some of them thought he strained to keep steady. But these men were not looking to the people to protect their republic. Apparently not one of them in this crisis even so much as thought that their power derived from the masses about whom they talked so glibly in the Reichstag; certainly not one of them proposed that the real sovereign in any democracy be consulted. Instead, as Stresemann finished talking, they turned anxiously to the one man in that room who hardly paid even lip service to such a thing as a republic, let alone democracy.
General Hans von Seeckt, tall and slim in his neat, tight-fitting field gray, crossed one leg over the other and swung an elegantly shod foot while a beam of light reflected blankly from the still circle of his monocle. His companions were horribly nervous, but he was impassive. As commander of the treaty army, he represented to these uneasy republicans the true source of authority. At last Ebert broke the long silence, demanding in a noticeably hoarse voice: "And the Reichswehr, Herr General, will they stick to the Reich or go over to Bavaria?" "The Reichswehr," replied the real master of Germany, "will stick to me. Herr President."
Before the Ministers left the room, General von Seeckt had been entrusted with a virtual dictatorship. He issued a few short words of command, and the beer hall putsch collapsed. The military and their allies, the industrialists, were not yet ready for a Hitler. The republic was said to have been saved. Actually, of course, the republic was merely a disguise behind which the generals and the Ruhr magnates found it easy to operate. The very fact that the republic allowed itself to be so used was an added reason why the German people regarded it with contempt. A sham democracy which rushed for shelter to the protection of its worst enemies was hardly a sight to inspire enthusiasm for democratic ideals. Neither the Germans nor their leaders —nor apparently foreigners who dream wistfully of a regenerated Reich—understand that a democratic government is the expression of a people; the people never become a democracy because a little group of rulers tells them they are one. The omelet, in short, is made from the eggs, but not even modem scientific magic has discovered a way to make eggs out of an omelet.
Cf. H. Arendt: totalitarianism reduces men to impersonal natural forces * German philosophers in support of Nazism * Beethoven and Mauthausen * The Superior Race of Germans * Kalergi, European Spirit must Precede Europe's Political Unification * La Construction de l'Europe selon Jean Monnet * Plan Fouchet * Mitterrand and Kohl urge European Political Union * Il Manifesto di Ventotene
