By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Nazi's and Nobles in Germany

Part One of Two

Operation Valkyrie (German: Unternehmen Walküre) was a German World War II emergency continuity of government operations plan. Claus von Stauffenberg modified the plan to use it to take control of German cities, disarm the SS, and arrest the Nazi leadership once Hitler had been assassinated in the 20 July plot. It is generally accepted by historians today that the ”July 20 plotters” depicted in Valkyrie; believed in revolution from above. Or, as  Hans Mommsen elaborated, their "plans for a new order relied extensively on neoconservative and corporatist ideas of the Weimar period, in particular going back to Spengler's model of a 'Prussian socialism.' For a number of the conspirators ... the Prussian tradition represented a central motive for the decision to join the resistance."1

Besides Staufenberg, among the prominent conspirators were the following members of the nobility: Count Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzin (1890-1945), Werner von Haeften (1908-44), Albrecht Ritter Merz von Quirnheim (1905-44), Erwin von Witzleben (1881-1944), Adam von Trott zu Solz (1909-44), Ulrich von Hassell (1881-1944), Henning von Tresckow (1901-44), Count Helmuth James von Moltke (1907-45), Count Wolf-Heinrich von Helldorf (1896-1944), Count Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg (1875-1944), and Count Peter Yorck von Wartenburg (1904-44).2  Whereby most of the former are, not mentioned in  Valkyrie are; Prince Louis Ferdinand von Preussen; who exhibited a willingness to lend his support; and Crown Prince Wilhelm's former adjutant, Count Heinrich Dohna-Schlobitten (1882-1944) who was hanged for it.3

But as already suggested, the public image of the German aristocracy during the Nazi period to date, have indeed been largely shaped by the well-known events depicted in Valkyrie. This became especially visible in context of the sixtieth anniversary of the assassination attempt, following which it has frequently been pointed out how strongly aristocrats themselves were committed (and has been ever since 1945)-- to stressing the aristocratic resistance to National Socialism. This has produced a view today in which the history of the aristocracy under Nazism is practically identified with that of the resistance. That is until shortly after a 2003 when a major academic work by Stephan Malinowski came out, in which for the first time-- the real relationship between the aristocracy and National Socialism was examined.4

What emerged from Malinowski ‘s 660 pages in depth research, is that indeed large sections of the German aristocracy, became radically right wing after 1918 . Among others, on p. 570 of his book, Malinowski pointed out that the Nazis kept very good records— one document in the German Federal Archives contains a list of no less than 270 members of princely families who had joined the Nazi Party. While it was difficult to provide an exact percentage, it appeared that about a third of the princes eligible to do so had joined the NSDAP. For the first time ever, published on the internet (Nov.30,2007), underneath the footnotes, you can see the complete list from the Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde. (Sammlung Schumacher, R. 187/400, "Aufstellung derjenigen Parteigenossen, die Angehoerige fuerstlicher Hauser sind.")

Thus among others, in 1938, 18.7 percent of the lieutenant generals (Obergruppenfuhrer); 9.8 percent of the major generals (Gruppenfuhrer); and 14.3 percent of the brigadier generals (Brigadefuhrer) were members of the aristocracy.5 Among the Higher SS and Police Leaders, eight of forty-four stemmed from the nobility (Oberschicht).6 While it is an exaggeration to use the phrase that was "popularly bandied about after the war that the SS was 'at times almost a nursing home for princes,'" there were organic ties between the nobility and Himmler's elite.7

But of course, the relationship between the aristocracy and the extreme right, and National Socialism in particular, cannot be reduced to a common denominator during the interwar period. But a combination of biographical and history-of experience approaches will help us with the explanation of political orientations and patterns of political behavior among the aristocracy as well as others during the Nazi years.8

Of major significance however is that ever since the late summer of 1918, the stab-in-the-back myth (Dolchstosslegende) had begun to take shape among the Prussian-German officer corps, which was still dominated by the aristocracy.9 The feelings that cavalry captain Andreas Graf von Bernstorff confided to his diary on 11 October were by no means unique:

In Germany, every truly loyal German (treudeutsch) man naturally hangs his head in shame that our Jewish-Social Democratic government has destroyed everything that the sword achieved. All the sacrifice in vain! The army can no longer fight willingly if there is no will for victory at home, only an anxiety that Germany should not gain anything in this war.10

In talk of the stab-in-the-back, which pervaded not only the early history of the Weimar Republic like a theme with variations, old and deeply rooted resentments, in the case of the aristocracy, against liberal democracy, parliamentarism, and the “unpatriotic fellows” (vaterlandslose Gesellen) of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) combined with a search for explanations for the problems and troubles, the actual or imagined experiences of loss and decline in the present. Beyond this, the stab-in-the-back was also a mechanism for easing one's own burden by shifting the blame for the current situation, both individual and collective, onto others, while deflecting it from the forces and actors of one's own in-group. For those aristocrats, in particular, for whom war's end and revolution had come as a dramatic interruption of life plans and career prospects (especially in the armed forces), such attributions of blame and justifications for social decline were of central significance.11

The end of the monarchy and the Weimar Republic's numerous constitutional and legal regulations that curtailed or abolished the privileges of the aristocracy, and, from the point of view of the state, at least placed its special socio-political role in question, hit the whole of the aristocracy as a group. The arguments associated with the stab-in-the-back, and their function of consolidating a group which could see itself as a victim of defeat in war and revolution, of democracy and parliamentary constitution, should be placed in the context of the attempt to rebuild a collective identity, and to boost the solidarity and homogeneity of social groups, which was especially important for the aristocracy. In fact this adoption of the role of victim and the anti-republicanism it led to, are significant for the political radicalization of the German aristocracy. The view that one was a victim (Opfer) of 'left-wing' machinations easily combined with other Opfer topoi: talk of the aristocracy's “blood sacrifice” (Blut-Opfer) on the battlefields of the world war, which had proved to be in vain.12

The Prussian-German military aristocracy, in particular, the foundations of whose existence had been shattered by demilitarization after 1918, would have been attracted by the ideas of 'soldierly-militant leadership' circulating everywhere in nationalist circles, but particularly in the rising Nazi movement. 9 Such ideas of a new leadership combined easily with anti-Semitism, which was an integral part of the stab-in-the-back myth. Marcus Funck in this context  spoke of a 'racial-national warrior community'.13 This is of  importance because, beyond all the career opportunities which Nazi policy for war and rearmament offered after 1933, especially to the aristocracy from the regions east of the Elbe, it helps to explain the attractiveness of Nazi ideas long before 1933.

Informed historians have repeatedly pointed to anti-Bolshevism as the force driving the right-wing radicalization of the aristocracy, and this is not to be denied (we researched this before). However we should stress, that the most radical opponents of the Republic and democracy would hide behind this basic anti-Bolshevik consensus; thus anti-Bolshevism could camouflage the most radical goals, which could be made to look attractive and presentable.

Furthermore the conservative and voelkisch right, could not imagine replacing the Weimar Republic with anything but a restoration of the monarchy, and this form of monarchism was associated with ideas of a charismatic leadership. And exactly this provided the bridge for the aristocracy, and especially for the younger generation, born around 1890/1900, which denounced the decadence of Wilhelminism. This generation could not see a monarch like Wilhelm II as a model and, after the Kaiser's flight and abdication, accused him of betraying the people.14 Of course, neither Crown Prince Wilhelm of Prussia, the Kaiser's eldest son, nor other Hohenzollern princes were suitable new monarchs in the eyes of these aristocrats. This led increasingly to a search for a replacement monarch, for a different charismatic Fuhrer figure who, with a strong hand, would not only restore the lost order, but also unify the people behind him and lead the Reich to new greatness. “Only a dictator can help us now”, wrote Andreas von Bernstorff in 1928, “someone who will sweep away this international bunch of parasites with an iron broom. If only, like the Italians, we had a Mussolini!”15 Given the support by younger aristocrats at the time, suggests that Mussolini's seizure of power in Italy helped to dissolve traditional monarchism among the German aristocracy, especially as the establishment of the fascist dictatorship did not formally put an end to the Italian monarchy.16

The Count Bemstorff quoted above, born in 1868, furthermore shows us that the alienation from the Hohenzollern empire and monarchy, and from monarchism as such, was not, as is mostly claimed, limited to the younger generation of aristocrats.

The restoration of the Hohenzollern was a political project whose aim was to transform the Republic in an authoritarian way, and the longer the Republic lasted, the greater the political significance of this project became. This political monarchism was largely promoted by aristocratic politicians, especially those in the Deutschnationale Volkspartei (DNVP; German National People's Party). Its primary aim, however, was to sweep away the Republic, not to restore the Hohenzollern dynasty.

This glance at aristocratic monarchism and its mutation into a search for a charismatic Fuhrer would be incomplete; however, if we did not mention that monarchist attitudes could also be an obstacle to a rapprochement between the aristocracy and the Nazi movement. This was especially true in the case of the Bavarian aristocracy, which made up a significant proportion of the monarchist and legitimist movement in Bavaria. It is typical that plans for a monarchist coup d’etat in Bavaria in February-March 1933 aimed to prevent a Nazi dictatorship, not to strengthen it.17 Monarchism as such thus neither encouraged friendly relations between the aristocracy and the radical right, nor prevented them. Thus our analysis must look at the individual monarchists involved, and ask what the motives behind their monarchism were. Was their primary goal to restore the monarchy, or to abolish the Republic? What were the sources feeding their monarchism?

In seeking an answer to this question, the literature and the Catholic aristocracy have repeatedly pointed to the significance of denomination. It is claimed that the Protestant aristocracy had a greater affinity for Nazism, while the Catholic aristocracy (exemplified again by Tom Cruise as  Graf von Stauffenberg in Valkyrie) kept their distance, at least relatively.18 But what may have been true for most of the Bavarian Catholic aristocracy certainly, did not apply to the Catholic aristocracy of Westphalia.19

To add another comparison, in nearby Belgium (a staunch enemy of Germany during WWI), there was according to historical experts a fairly strong support for the Nazi’s among Catholic nobility.20

 

 

1. Hans Mommsen, "Der Widerstand gegen Hitler und die deutsche Gesellschaft." In Der Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus. Die deutsche Gesellschaft und der Widerstand gegen Hitler, edited by Jiirgen Schmadeke and Peter Steinbach. Munich: Piper, 1986, 10.

2. Eckart Conze, "Adel und Adeligkeit im Widerstand des 20.Juli 1944." In Adel und Buergertum in Deutschland 3, edited by Heinz Reif, Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2001,269-95.

3. Friedrich Wilhelm Prinz von Preussen, Das Haus Hohenzollern, 1918-1945. Munich, 1985, 275.

4. Stephan Malinowski, Vom Konig zum Führer: Sozialer Niedergang und politische Radikalisierung im deutschen Adel zwischen Kaiserreich und NS-Staat (Berlin, 2003).

5. Ruth Bettina Birn. Die hoeheren SS- und Polizeifiihrer: Himmlers Vertreter im Reich und in den besetzten Gebieten. Dusseldorf: Droste, 1986, 353. Note that the category Oberschicht is comprised of Rittergutsbesitzer (estate owners) and Hochadel (high aristocracy).

6. Bernd Wegner, The Waffen-SS: Organization, Ideology and Function. Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1990, 245.

7. See for example Wencke Meteling, 'Der deutsche Zusammenbruch 1918 in den Selbstzeugnissen adeliger preullischer Offiziere'in Eckart Conze and Monika Wienfort (eds.), Adel und Modeme: Deutschland im europaischen Vergleich im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Cologne, 2004)., 289-321; Rainer Pomp, 'Brandenburgischer Landadel und die Weimarer Republik: Konflikte urn Oppositionsstrategien und Elitenkonzepte', in Kurt Adamy and Kristina Hiibener (eds.), Adel und Staatsverwaltung in Brandenburg im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert: Ein historiscker Vergleich (Berlin, 1996), 185-218; or Eckart Conze, Von deutschem Adel: Die Grafen von Bernstoiff im 20. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 2000), esp. '49-88.

8. See in particular Boris Barth, Dolchstosslegenden und politische Desintegration: Das Trauma der deutschen Niederlage im Ersten Weltkrieg 1918-1933 (Dusseldorf, 2003).

9. Andreas Graf Bemstorff (1868-1945), unpublished diary, Tagebuch, x. 57, 11 Oct. 1918.

10. On this see Friedrich Freiherr Hiller von Gaertringen, , "Dolchstoss"Diskussion und "Dolchstoss"-Legende im Wandel von vier Jahrzehnten', in id. and Waldemar Besson (eds.), Geschichte und Gegenwartsbewusstsein: Historische Betrachtungen und Untersuchungen. Festschrift fuer Hans Rothftls zum 70. Geburtstag (Gottingen, 1963), 122-60; Detlef Lehnert, 'Propaganda des Burgerkrieges? Politische Feindbilder in der Novemberrevolution als mentale Destabilisierung der Weimarer Demokratie', in id. and Klaus Megerle (eds.), Politische Teilkulturen zwischen Integration und Polarisierung: Zur politischen Kultur der Weimarer Republik (Opladen, 1990),61-101, esp. 63-8.

11. Marcus Funck, 'Schock und Chance: Der preussische Militaradel in der Weimarer Republik zwischen Stand und Profession', in Reif (ed.), Adel und Burgertum, 127-71, esp. 139-42; and Meteling, “Der deutsche Zusammenbruch”. The German word Opfer means both 'victim' and 'sacrifice'; this is a prerequisite for the widespread German Opfer discourse.

12. Marcus Funck, 'The Meaning of Dying: East Elbian Noble Families as "War Tribes" in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries', in Matt Berg and Greg Eghigian (eds.), Sacrifice and National Belonging in Twentieth-Century Germany (College Station, Tex., 2001), 26-63.

13. Marcus Funk, 'Vom Holling zum soldatischen Mann: Varianten und Umwandlungen adeliger Mannlichkeit zmschen Kaiserreich und Nationalsozialismus', in Conze and Wienfort (eds.), Adel und Moderne, 205-35, esp. 225-34.

14. Martin Kohlrausch, 'Die Bucht des Kaisers: Doppeltes Scheitern adelig-biirgerlicher Monarchiekonzepte', in Reif (ed.), Add und Bürgertum, 65-101.

15. Bernstorff, Tagebuch, xviii. 27,1 Mar. 1928.

16. Ironically only some days ago on November 25, even  Umberto Eco (who himself is a historian) when asked; “Are you saying that Germany got the idea of fascism from Italy?” answered; “Oh, certainly. According to what the historians say, it is so.”

 

 

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