Amerika über alles: American Exceptionalism Follows the Path of German Exceptionalism

It you read the longest post on the blog, a systematic critique of Joachim Köhler's book Wagner's Hitler, one of the key themes is the rejection of German exceptionalism. In the early post-war decades, historians often discussed whether the rise and triumph of the Dritte Reich or Third Empire was the consequence of German historical exceptionalism, termed the Sonderweg or special path:

... the effort to find the deep root, the ur-explanation of Hitler and the Holocaust in some intrinsic pathology of German culture was something German intellectuals themselves had been seeking for decades since the war. One version of what might be called “German exceptionalism” was the notion of the “Sonderweg”—the special path German history and culture had taken in the centuries since the Reformation. In its more pointed, more self-lacerating form, this became the postwar “Schuldfrage” controversy—the blame question, in which some German thinkers contended there was something not merely exceptional but deeply darkly wrong in German culture. That the violent extremism of thought to be found in Nietzsche and Wagner made Hitler possible if not inevitable.

Rosenbaum: Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil (Chapter 19: Daniel Goldhagen: Blaming Germans)

As Sir Richard J. Evans points out, such arguments about a Sonderweg had been largely discredited come the 1990s:

A few decades ago, historians searching for the longer-term roots of Nazism’s theory and practice looked to the ruptures and discontinuities in German history: the failed revolution of 1848; the blockage of democratic politics after unification in 1871; the continued dominance of aristocratic elites over a socially and politically supine middle class; the entrenched power of the traditionally authoritarian and belligerent Prussian military tradition—in short, everything, they argued, that had come by the outbreak of the First World War to distinguish Germany from other major European powers and set it on a ‘special path’ [Sonderweg] to modernity that ended not in the creation of a democratic political system ..., but in the rise and triumph of the Third Reich. 

Such arguments were discredited by the 1990s, as it became clear that imperial Germany’s middle classes had been far from supine, its political culture was active and engaged... The 1848 revolution was shown to have transformed German political culture, not to have restored the old regime. ... [T]here was no domestic ‘special path’ [Sonderweg] from unification to the rise of the Third Reich...

Richard J. Evans: The Third Reich in History and Memory 2. Imagining Empire.

Evans argues elsewhere that all nations have their own unique history and path towards democracy and liberalism. Germany was no exception.

One problem with the Sonderweg thesis is that it inadvertently fell into the trap of accepting National Socialist propagandist views about a German exceptionalist historicism in which the authentic German character had for all time been allegedly right-wing, militaristic, and anti-democratic:

In a curious way, this echoed the Nazis’ own version of German history, in which the Germans had also held by some kind of basic racial instinct to these fundamental traits [such as militarism, racism, hatred of human rights and democracy], but had been alienated from them by foreign influences such as the French Revolution.

Richard J. Evans: The Coming of the Third Reich: How the Nazis Destroyed Democracy and Seized Power in Germany

What has curiously been forgotten was that in the nineteenth century there was another narrative of German exceptionalism: a path of liberal exceptionalism. Marx and Engels argued that Germany was uniquely placed in history to become the vanguard of liberalism. Revolution would start in Germany and spark worldwide movements as the workers of the world joined to unite.

In the Communist Party Manifesto, first published in 1848, Marx wrote:

The Communists turn their attention chiefly to Germany, because that country is on the eve of a bourgeois revolution that is bound to be carried out under more advanced conditions of European civilisation and with a much more developed proletariat than that of England was in the seventeenth, and France in the eighteenth century, and because the bourgeois revolution in Germany will be but the prelude to an immediately following proletarian revolution.

In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.

In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.

Finally, they labour everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries. The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.  

They have a world to win. 

Workers of All Countries, Unite!

What is less appreciated is that in the very same year of 1848, Richard Wagner also unveiled a similar paper, arguing for a similar position of German liberal exceptionalism:

And when all who draw breath in our dear German land are united into one great free people, when class prejudices shall have ceased to exist, then do you suppose we have reached our goal? ... In the coming contest we shall find that society will be maintained by the physical activity of individuals, and we shall destroy the nebulous notion that money possesses any inherent power. ... Then shall we root out the miseries engendered and nourished by public and secret usury, deceptive paper money and fraudulent speculations. ...  

Then shall we traverse the ocean in our ships, and found here and there a new young Germany, enriching it with the fruits of our achievements, and educating our children in our principles of human rights, so that they may be propagated everywhere. ... Our colonies shall be truly German, and from sunrise to sunset we shall contemplate a beautiful, free Germany, inhabited, as in the mother country, by a free people. The sun of German freedom and German gentleness shall alike warm and elevate Cossack, Frenchmen, Bushmen, and Chinese. You see our republican zeal in this respect has no termination; it pushes on further and further from century to century, to confer happiness on the whole of the human race! Do you call this a Utopian dream? ... 

Therefore let us abolish monarchy altogether as autocracy, i.e. sole-reigning, becomes impossible by the strong opposition of democracy, —the reign of the many... 

Wagner: Fatherland Union Paper (1848), quoted in Ferdinand Praeger, Wagner as I Knew Him (translated by Praeger). The full original Urtext can be found here, and I can confirm that the Praeger translation is extremely good.

The position Wagner took here was in favour of democratic socialism, although there is now growing evidence that after 1848 his thinking grew even more radical to take on largely the same communist revolutionary stance as that of Marx. Both Wagner and Marx (who also coincidentally died within a month of each other in 1883) take the euphoric position that Germany was uniquely placed to be the epicentre of a revolution that would spread like wildfire around the world conferring liberty to all people.

Particularly striking is that even the Deutschlandlied hymn with the words "Deutschland über alles", made so notorious by the National Socialist regime, originally had a revolutionary meaning, urging the sweeping away of all of the little ancient regimes ruled by hereditary dictatorships into which the German nations were splintered and their replacement with a unified democratic nation by the 1848 revolution. Originally it was the hymn of German liberal exceptionalism, founded on the belief that German nationalism was a "force for good" born as it was in the anti-imperialist mood under Napoleonic occupation, where German nations belonged with Britain on the side of the Allies against French imperialism.

The point here was that there was a time in the revolutionary euphoria of the 1848 revolution, when German liberals could still speak of a liberal German exceptionalism. It was only in the aftermath of the Dritte Reich in the following century that the notion of German exceptionalism took on a negative and sinister meaning. Some retrospective commentators have even taken to blaming either Marx or Wagner for leading German down its negative Sonderweg.

Opportunistic right-wing Allied war propagandists argued that the thought of Darwin, Marx, and Wagner represented the same ideological "heritage" implying that Nazism was an extreme form of left-wing politics.

The reality is that societies tend to be inherently split by class conflict. If there was a strong German liberal movement that seemed at points to be gaining dominance, there followed periods of violent counter-reaction. There cannot be a homogeneous "German Mind" that dominates throughout discontinuous historical epochs, for societies are always fundamentally divided by class conflict. German history is no more exceptional than any other in experiencing such violent class conflict and innate antagonisms precipitating wild swings from one extreme to another.

At that point we should turn to the notion of American exceptionalism. For many today still regard the President of the United States to be the "leader of the free world". Many regard American history and politics to be dominated by The American Mind, which is supposedly uniquely pro-democratic and libertarian in its outlook, based as it is on the idealism of the founders of the democratic nation. The innate virtuousness of The American Mind with its exceptional love of liberty supposedly protects American society from the vicissitudes of class conflict, since reactionary illiberalism is so alien to it as to render America uniquely immune to such things, which are deemed fundamentally "un-American".

The trouble is that this nationalistic self-belief tends to lead to a certain hubris. It was Heinrich Himmler who wrote in 1940 during the forced emigration phase of the Final Solution:

I hope completely to erase the concept of Jews through the possibility of a great emigration of all Jews to a colony in Africa or elsewhere. . . . However cruel and tragic each individual case may be, this method is still the mildest and best, if one rejects the Bolshevik method of physical extermination of a people out of inner conviction as unGerman and impossible. 

Quoted from Christopher Browning’s book The Origin of the Final Solution p.70 of eBook edition. My emphasis.

In this same section of Himmler’s report can be seen Adolf Hitler’s personal hand-written comment: “very good and correct”. It goes to show that the blind nationalistic belief in the inherent virtuousness of all that passes in the name of one's nation to the point that the very name of the nation is used as the supreme embodiment of good leads to a blinding hubris of uncritical self-belief.

Merely because the historical circumstances of the founding of the nation following American independence favoured an anti-monarchist and pro-democratic nationalist identity does nothing to guarantee the indefinite perpetuation of those historical circumstances that brought liberalism to the forefront. Far from it, the historical circumstances of America since independence have changed markedly.

The most historically decisive event changing America's position on the international stage were those brought about by World War II. This transformed America, bringing it out from its isolationist position to become the most powerful nation in the world as the Old World destroyed itself.

Part of the narrative here is that America emerged out of isolationism to become the Leader of the Free World. America with its love of freedom and liberty saved the day, and single-handedly stopped fascism from taking over the world. The reality was that come D-Day, the German Third Empire was already a spent force. It was the Soviet Union that had defeated the Wehrmacht and the race to Berlin was on. By comparison to the sum of all the cataclysmic battles the Red Army fought along the road to the Battle of Berlin, D-Day was a rather modest affair. For example, based on Wikipedia figures (not an ideal source, of course) the casualties numbers from the Normandy landings were 14,000–19,000. On the Soviet side, the battle of Stalingrad saw over a million casualties, and Kursk (the largest tank battle in history) saw over 250 000 casualties, and the battle of Berlin again over a million casualties. If you talk to Russian historians, they will rightly tell you that the Red Army fought a whole string of D-Days all the way to Berlin. No less a historian than Hans Mommsen states that the Soviet Union sacrificed around 31 million people (although some historians still debate the accuracy of this figure) in the Second World War: this was the ultimate sacrifice that destroyed the German Third Empire.

D-Day was not the anti-German offensive Allied propaganda claimed it to be, but an anti-Soviet offensive that marked the start of the Cold War. It signalled the replacement of the German Third Empire by America as the world's leading anti-Soviet force. D-Day marked the start of a race to capture as much territory of the crumbling German Third Empire for the Western Allies as possible so as to stop the Red Army from completely overrunning Europe all the way to Spain.

Historian, Alexander Canduci phrases it well:

The stated goal of the Normandy landings was to breach Hitler’s ‘Fortress Europe’, and to bring an end to the war. While this was certainly a goal, it was not the main point of the operation. Its principal purpose was really to prevent the entry into Europe of an enemy America and Britain feared even more than Hitler—the Soviet Union. The second front was opened in order to stop Soviet troops from overrunning Germany and gaining access to its scientists and the advanced technology they had been busy developing. The real success of the Normandy landings, and the operations that followed, was in preventing the Soviet Union—and the ‘scourge’ of communism—from dominating Europe. ... 

The real objective of the Normandy landings could not be disclosed, since that would have alienated Stalin. The operation was therefore described as the great Western offensive to topple Hitler. While this was certainly a secondary reason for the invasion, the primary reason was always to halt the Soviet advance, which had the potential to go far beyond Germany. There was the possibility that Belgium, France, Greece and Italy might all be brought under Soviet control if communist troops were allowed to proceed unchecked. Such an outcome was unthinkable, and so it was that the Cold War began on those northern beaches in the early summer of 1944.

Alexander Canduci: The Greatest Lies in History

Hence post-war American narrative has been dominated by anti-communist and anti-socialist rhetoric encouraging along with it an anti-scientific reasoning that easily falls prey to climate change scepticism. This is why there is such a prominent emphasis placed upon an ultra-reactionary politicised variant of religion in American politics, one which mirrors that of Muslim extremists. The ultra-reactionary politicised expressions of religion in the Middle East can be seen as an Americanised “McDonald’s” religion, a kind of a halal Big Mac, an outgrowth of American support for the Mujahideen during the Afghan-Soviet war. Even Osama Bin Laden was originally a CIA trained operative. Such politicisation of religion stands in marked contrast to those liberal forefathers of America who preferred the separation of state and religion.

Suddenly, after the end of WWII, many European left-wing intellectuals who had fled the Third Empire to America found themselves being persecuted all over again in McCarthian America. For example, Theodor Adorno quickly moved back to Germany as Bertolt Brecht artfully dodged accusations during his celebrated appearance before the House Committee on Un-American Activities:

That is why Goebbels could have been speaking for the American post-war Zeitgeist when he wrote that love trumps hate:

The war we are fighting until victory or the bitter end is in its deepest sense a war between Christ and Marx. 

Marx: the principle of hate.
Christ: the principle of love.

Der Kampf, den wir heute ausfechten bis zum Sieg oder bis zum bitteren Ende, ist im tiefsten Sinne ein Kampf zwischen Christus und Marx.

Christus: das Prinzip der Liebe.
Marx: das Prinzip des Hasses.

Joseph Goebbels: Michael—ein Deutsches Schicksal in Tagebuchblättern (Michael: a German Destiny in Diary Notes). Zentralverlag der NSDAP, Franz Eher Nachf., Munich, 17th edition, 1942, p.82. My translation.

This is not to say that the American and German Third Empire are the "same thing". They are not, and nor can they ever be: to assert otherwise is gross propagandist oversimplification. The historical origins of their respective rise to historical prominence follow entirely different paths. Yet there remain tantalizing parallels between the Third Empire's providential self-belief in the motto "Gott Mit Uns" and the American "In God We Trust".

"In God We Trust"

The collapse of the Soviet Union was greeted as the victory of free-market capitalism and democracy over communist totalitarianism, and given that history cannot be read as a battle between Good and Evil there was some truth in this, yet with it has emerged an unchecked American exceptionalist nationalistic hubris. Suddenly, it became the Destiny of America to be the sole leader of the "free world".

In a sense, the rise of George W. Bush and Donald Trump in an increasingly neoliberal order all had historical precedence along a path of cumulative momentum after the fall of the German Third Empire. Even Obama, along with the New Labour of Tony Blair did nothing to reverse the trend, even largely going along with it or contributing to developments. The disdain George W. Bush showed for the United Nations and international law in waging war showed parallels to the contempt the Third Empire showed for the League of Nations. Trump is merely continuing this historical path towards dismantling the international order that triumphed in the wake of the failure of the League of Nations pathing the road to World War II.

It is not without reason that this failure of internationalism after World War I has been described by Zara Steiner as The Lights that Failed:

And the apocalyptic chapter in history that followed in that wake, likewise as The Triumph of the Dark:

Sadly, the international lights are once again dimming and beginning to fail one by one. Once more the world is threatened by the Triumph of the Dark, as one by one nation states threaten to fall back into insular states in a dog-eats-dog world dominated by self-interested nationalistic isolationism and protectionism.

As a consequence of decades of cumulative policy making in the post-war era, we have reached a pivotal moment where the world finds itself on the brink of crisis as we stare down the precipice of the threat of a new Triumph of the Dark. All Donald Trump needs now is a Reichstag fire moment to justify the suspension of all civil liberties and commence the process of systematic imprisonment of all political opponents. The American Second Amendment gives Americans constitutional rights to have militia groups akin to the SA and SS who can "bear arms" in constitutional defence of their president. They will shoot protesters sooner and more brutally than these can "punch Nazis".

Yet through all of that we still hear voices clinging to the delusion that American exceptionalism will save the day. It is as though they think the liberal founders of America will rise from their graves to indict the dark reactionary forces taking over. Amerika über alles is the hymn such rosy-eyed optimists sing, thinking that this is still the hymn that lead to American independence from British imperialism.

While the current American Spring of liberal protest in the wake of the election of Donald Trump may, like the 1848 uprisings and the Arab Spring, be heartening, it must be kept in mind that it is arguably far too little, too late. It is heartbreakingly ironic that the American liberal belief in its exceptionalism means they can still call for Trump to be impeached before a House Committee of "un-American" activities. Yet with or without Trump in power, the tide of historical momentum after World War II, the collapse of the communist block, and the Gulf Wars, then culminating in the social destabilisation of the Great Recession, is entirely on the side of the forces of reaction. The world continues to grossly underestimate the sheer brutal force of that historical tidal wave set in train in the wake of cumulative events following the fall of the Third Empire. For ideas of national exceptionalism are invariably always propagandist distortions, and no nation remains immune from the vicissitudes of class conflict where the tide of momentum can unexpectedly turn from that of liberty towards the dark forces of reaction.

Even if Trump is forcibly removed, the crisis is bigger is larger than one man, and it will provoke further reactionary anger, stoking the flames of class conflict ever more intensely. The calamity has only just begun to start.

Soon the storm will truly break loose...