| The Young German Order was a right-wing nationalist organization. It developed against the same historical backdrop as the Nazi party (the German Youth Movement, the First World War) and drew upon the same intellectual precursors the Nazi party drew upon or claimed to draw upon (Romanticism, German Idealism, Volkisch thought). It was skeptical about parliamentary democracy, fervently anti-Communist, and occasionally showed itself to be antisemitic. It was composed of people who were typically attracted to the Nazi party. Nevertheless, the Young German Order became a strongly anti-Nazi movement. Artur Mahraun, the leader of the Order, opposed Hitter as a demagogue interested in personal power rather than the good of the nation. Although it was banned in 1933, former members continued to oppose the Nazi regime. The Young German Order demonstrates that German Idealism and Volkisch thought did not lead inevitably to National Socialism. There were multiple understandings of German nationalism during the Weimar Republic, and it was possible to be a German nationalist without being inherently chauvinistic. It was possible even to see Hitler as an aberrant representation of German nationalism. Adolf Hitler played a crucial role in transforming German conservative nationalism into an anti-Jewish National Socialism. Mahraun rejected racial antisemitism, but Hitler's accusation that the Order was not only not antisemitic but actually philosemitic and therefore un-German forced Mahraun to reconsider his understanding of German nationalism. The conflict was never satisfactorily resolved, but in the process, he did actively shape his own personal and national identity. But those same German intellectual traditions that had led Mahraun and the Order to oppose Hitler (nationalism, an emphasis on duty to the state, and a vision of an idealized German state) also limited members of the Order to mere opposition rather than outright resistance. Although they opposed Hitler's demagogic propaganda, his proclaimed goal of a "people's community" was attractive to many. Mahraun's emphasis on the Prussian military "virtues" of duty and sacrifice limited resistance against "legitimate" authority to mere "national" opposition. Mahraun's teleological understanding of history caused him to view Nazism as a stage in the development of the German nation. |
