FRITZ STERN
531
alread y la ngui shing in prison , whe n it should have been abundantly
clea r tha t a fasc ist di cta to rship would have conside rabl e stay in g
powe r, with mobili zed , chee ring multitudes and a tortured , ineffec–
tu al oppos ition ?
I di scussed the
(to
u s) famili a r aspects of the rise of Hitle r,
emphas izing tha t Hitl e r 's followe rs experienced the same total
mobili za ti on a nd the same total impotence that had prevailed a t the
time o f the Great Wa r, ske tching the pageantry of politics that the
Nazis had pe rfected, the uncanny fu sion of religious a nd military rit–
ual, fin all y the cult of the omnipote nt leader. I described the decline
of Weima r, the economi c coll apse, the pola ri zation of politics, the
b reakdown of libe ral , middl e- class support for a democra tic solu–
ti on .
*
I tr ied to sketch the incredibl y swift con solida tion of Hitl e r ' s
totalit a ri a n rul e, the elimina tion of all opposition , the crippling
effect of censo rship a nd la tent terror. I acknowledged the successes of
Hi tle r 's regime: the rev ival a nd moderni zation of the economy, the
resurgence o f G e rman powe r and prestige. And still they won–
de red-ri ghtl y-why the G e rman s had accepted Hitler ' s rule , why
the re had bee n so little resista nce. In passing I referred to Fra nz
Neuma nn , the emi gre M a rxi st schola r whose
B ehemoth
remains one
of the mos t pene tratin g a nalyse s o f the Nazi state but who , a few
month s befo re hi s prema ture death in 1954, had delivered an impas–
sio ned addendum , " Anxi e ty a nd P olitics," in whi ch he argued tha t
the psychi c condition o f G e rmany wa s an element of unsurpa ssed
impo rt ance in the rise o f Hitle r. Why was it , I asked , that Marxism–
Lenini sm had neve r gras ped the true nature of fasc ism? Had it
unde r Stalin become so impri soned in ste ril e categories tha t it could
no longe r pe rce ive wha t Lenin and o the r Bolsheviks had understood
intuiti ve ly: the psychi c element in politics? I alluded to Stalin ' s rol e
as a more or less unwitting ha ndmaiden
to
German fascism , as pa rt
model and pa rt discipl e of fa scism , a nd that too was a ntithetical to
offi cial C hinese dogma .
• At a sem in a r in Sha ngha i, some of the pa rticipa nts p ressed me for "a class a naly–
sis" o f na tiona l soc iali sm : wha t classes suppo rted, wh at classes opposed the N azis.
Their
a nswe r was clear: Naz ism equa led monopoly capitalism . 1 pointed out the
anomalies: the P rotesta nt peasants who suppo rted a nd the Catholic peasants who
opposed Hitler; the regional , generational , and sex differentiations that clearly cut
across class lin es. But for the C hinese, as for most other communists, there is no
oth er schema of interpreta tion tha n the class struggle, excessive emphasis on which
the C hin ese Centra l Committee has nonetheless recently criticized .
