Hermann Rauschning Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Hermann Raushning was a German conservative and a reactionary who joined the National Socialist (Nazi) Party, became the president of the Danzig Senate but resigned, fled and became a bitter opponent. He wrote several books that were quite influential, warning the world about Nazism.
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2 Work 3 Sayings 4 Miscellania 5 Writings of Rauschning |
Life
Raushning is a descendant of a land-owing family of military caste in East Prussia. He was educated in the Prussian Cadet Corps and was wounded in the Great War. As an wealthy landowner and skilled agriculturist, he became President of the Danzig Farmers Association. Believing at the time that the National Socialists offered the only way out of Germany's troubles, he joined the Nazi Party and was elected to the Danzig Senate.
When party agents began to insist that he should institute the Gleichschaltung, arrest inconvenient Catholic priests, disenfranchise the Jews and suppress rival parties, he refused and resigned from the party. On account of his active support of constitutionalism in the election of April, 1935, he was forced to dispose of his farming interests and for reasons of personal safety fled Germany.
Entrapment in Nazism
For the Conservative-nationalist-monarchist group, liberalism stood out as the great destroyer of all standards of Germanic and Western culture. They also feared the masses and communism. Formed by Kultur, Rauschning, like others in his political area, joined the Nazi party in hopes of restoring the greatness of Germany as a nation that was groaning under the demands of the Treaty of Versailles and defending Germany from communist revolution and liberalism. In his own words, Rauschning says,
- "The countenancing of violent methods, in which the Conservatives and Nationalists should have been the last to place their faith, entangled elements inspired by the best of intentions in a "realist" policy which was anything but nationalist or conservative".
Writing The Revolution of Nihilism in the winter of 1937-38, he wrote this book for his fellow Germans in hopes of revealing to them the disastrous course Hitler was leading them into and hoped that it would lead a counter-revolution against Nazi power. His answer to them was the restoration of the monarchy as the only hope for a turn around. (Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn says the same thing that the German people are made only for absolutism and the monarchy is the only German way.) His book in America went through seventeen printings.
Rauschning's definition of Fascism
Von Kuehnelt Leddihn reports that "Theodor Schieder in his Rauschnings "Gesparäche mit Hitler" als Geschichtsquelle, (Opladen:Westdeutscher Verlag, 1972) contradicts them effectively".
This is an Article on Hermann Rauschning. Page Contains Information, Facts Details or Explanation Guide About Hermann Rauschning Work
He wrote the first inside story of the Nazi movement since Mein Kampf.Dispute over Hitler Speaks
Raushning had many leftist critics of his work. In Why Hitler, The Genesis of the Nazi Reich pg 137, Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr. notes that "Wolkgang Koch, another prominent historian of the Nazi era, agrees with Turner's assessment and also points out the Reves assisted Hermann Rauschning in the fabrication of the book Hitler Speaks. referenced to H. W. Koch, "1933: The Legality of Hitler's Assumption of Power", in H.W. Kock, ed., Aspects of the Third Reich, (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985) pg 55.Sayings
Miscellania
Writings of Rauschning