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PARTISAN REVIEW
of the new "alienating" experience of industrialized and central–
ized political life was nationalism: a glowing embellishment of
Germany's republican resignation.
The true achievement of German, Bismarckian nationalism in
the nineteenth century was ideological integration; and it was a mel–
ancholic achievement.
"Die deutsche Nation"
did not evoke visions of
the developing Ruhr valley, of the industrial suburbs of Wuppertal,
Hamburg, or Berlin. The idea of the German nation symbolized a
peculiar closeness to the ground, to one's father's homeland and its
traditional customs. These, of course, were simple images, soothing,
blinding to the realities of slums, rural and urban deprivations-the
usual concomitants of industrial revolution.
Antimodern values (although certainly not blind to the ecologi–
cal realities of pollution) are the rage again in West Germany's sub–
culture. The "simple" life, looking after your garden, your
Seele
and
Gefuhl,
and a certain antienlightenment attitude* form the matrix
for an anti-Western, nationalistic attitude. It has been enforced by
some early, loose talk of the Reagan administration about the possi–
bilities of a limited nuclear war in Europe. The "peace movement,"
a coalition of left-wing splinter groups, church-going young people,
the "green" ecologists, and simply worried citizens, cannot stomach
the psychology of nuclear deterrence. West Germany's peaceful
existence since 1945 is not seen in the light of a continued success of
the Western alliance. The stationing of ever more nuclear devices in
Germany (in fact, there are fewer deployed than two decades ago) is
experienced as a direct threat to Germany's existence . **
Rational arguments-that a "demilitarized West Germany"
will not become less desirable to the Soviet Union than it might be
now; that Germans cannot expect America to provide the nuclear
umbrella without sharing some of the risks-do not reach minds
trained for simple answers. Such "answers" are offered by the
'Strangely enough, Auschwitz is understood as a consequence of unchecked
enlightenment in the guise of totalitarian bureaucracy-an idea adapted from
Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer's
Dialectics of Enlightenment .
"One of the organizers of the great peace rally in Bonn during Ronald Reagan 's
visit , Petra Kelly, thinks that she has a " patriotic duty " to fulfill by preventing the
deployment of Pershing-II missiles and cruise missiles , a deployment that was once
called for by Helmut Schmidt to balance the threat of Russian SS-20s.
