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PARTISAN REVIEW
Carnes Lord:
Would anyone like to comment?
David Gress: I
have one brief clarification and then a question for Dr.
Tamas. The clarification concerns Ernst Nolte. Nolte has said many
strange things in his life; I was talking only about one article published in
1986, which I think people deliberately misread because they wanted to
find errors in it. I consider him a curiosity rather than a danger.
My question concerns these neo-nationalists whom I also read with
fascinated interest. You mentioned Zygmut Zittelman; you also said that
he and other neo-nationalists were really against their own state and so–
ciety. They're also wishing that the state would stand up and fight for
itself That leads me to ask you: does this anarchic, anti-statist nationalism
go right back to the twenties?
In
the twenties, the Weimar Republic
was despised by many nationalists. That is where you would have the
root of anarchic, anti-statist nationalism.
Gaspar Tamas:
Yes, you are right. Nolte's article was misread. Zittel–
man is a journalist and is more obliged to be in tune with the main–
stream than either Strauss or Syberberg are. Zittelman is propagandist for
the cause, so he tries to combine a specific message with hidden German
patriotism.
But there is a great difference between today's nationalism and
Weimar nationalism. Weimer nationalists, for instance, attacked the new
German republic, when the German Navy exhibited the old flag of the
Imperial Navy. Weimar nationalists focused on the Empire; they were
anti-republican; and the president of the Weimar Republic was called, in
very characteristic fashion,
Reichspresident,
the Imperial President, an oxy–
moron. There is a parallel in contemporary Hungary: the new coat of
arms has a crown, yet we are a republic. But in Weimar there was a fo–
cus on a German state. Today, the Federal Republic has no rival, as
Weimar did in its opposition to a new German republic.
Carnes Lord:
Thank you.
Mitchell Ash:
Professor Hollander, I'm surprised that you said no one
quarreled with calling the Nazi regime totalitarian. For the past thirty
years, the question of whether we should properly describe the Nazi
regime as a totalitarian monocracy or as a polyocracy, as Franz Neu–
mann called it, has been central. One has to take account of the histori–
ographical scholarship of the last thirty years before making such a state–
ment. As to a possible explanation for the relative differences in moral
