Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

232 DER FUEHRERThat, the letter-writer assures the Kaiser, meant German science. Onlythe Germans were sufficiently permeated by science to organize theearth. To be sure, the English seemed to dominate the globe at themoment, 'by muscle, sinew, and will,' but this epoch of domination bysheer power was past. And English science was too atomized, toounsystematic, too 'happy-go-lucky,' 1 for the great world task. The writerseasons his whole letter to the English-speaking Kaiser with Englishexpressions. With obsequious flattery he compares the rise of Germanculture with English intellectual decadence, and even quotes an Englishauthority on the subject: 'To my mind,' the English chemist Dewar hadrecently declared at a scientific congress, 'the really appalling thing isnot that the Germans have seized this or the other industry, it is thatGermany possesses a national weapon of precision which must give heran enormous initial advantage in any and every contest depending upondisciplined and methodized intellect.' Yes, the letter-writer goes on,Dewar is right, and this must be Germany's aim: to become a 'nationacting according to plan, a scientifically drilled nation.'The writer lacked the intellectual integrity which made Nietzsche cryout openly for slavery, but he meant the same thing; against his will theword slips out after all, and he is not embarrassed to call it theconsequence of higher education: 'True organic subordination— notslavery — requires a higher education than the English system demandsor even allows. The Englishman does his best work alone, while theGerman does his best in community. Germany can only wrest theleadership from Anglo-Americanism by pursuing a totally differentmethod and acting as a cohesive unit, disciplined and methodized as ourgood Dewar correctly says. Germany— of this I am firmly convinced— can dominate the whole globe in part by direct political methods, inpart indirectly through language, culture, techniques.'This was not written by a native German, but by Houston StewartChamberlain, born an Englishman, for the first twenty-five years of hislife a virtual Frenchman; in the end a German. Natural scientist andphilosopher, he exerted a decisive influence on two1 The words in italics are English in original.