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firmly anchored in the consciousness of the people. By 1938, Ger–
many had taken leave of Europe's spiritual identity.
It
had willed
this "descent into barbarism." Hitler's word and Nazi ideology
became the authoritative source of law .
Then, to a Parliament ruled almost totally with university grad–
uates, as well as lawyers, and not a few Ph.D.'s, Jenninger, in the
best Weberian fashion, sought to present a partial causal explana–
tion of the destruction of the European Jews by taking into account
the outlook of the Germans in 1938. His elementary but true foray
in interpretive historical sociology caused the storm and wrecked his
Own
political career:
Perhaps, even more decisive for the fate of the Germans and the
European Jews than Hitler's evil deeds and crimes were his suc–
cesses. Today, even from a distanced vantage point and with
knowledge of the consequences, the years from 1933 to 1938 are
a source of fascination, insofar as there is scarcely a parallel in
history to Hitler's triumphal political march in these first years .
The accomplishments included reincorporation of the Saar, in–
troduction of general military service, massive armament, signing
the British-German fleet agreements, the Berlin Olympics , the
Anschluss of Austria, and, a few weeks before the November po–
grom, the Munich treaty and the division of Czechoslovakia. The
Versailles Treaty had become a scrap of paper, and the German
Reich was now the hegemonial power on the continent:
For the Germans, who overwhelmingly saw the Weimar Re–
public as the result of foreign policy humiliation , all of this must
have seemed like a miracle. And there was more: full employ–
ment replaced mass unemployment, and mass suffering gave
way to prosperity for the broadest strata. Instead of desperation
and hopelessness, there was optimism and self-confidence .
Wasn't Hitler really "chosen by providence, a leader which is sent a
people only once in a thousand years?" Of course, Hitler had never
won a free election. But "who could doubt that in 1938 a great ma–
jority of the Germans stood behind him, and identified with him and
his policies?" A few troublemakers aside, most Germans "from all
strata" were convinced in 1938 that Hitler was the greatest statesman
of German history.
