The 'intellectual' contents of National Socialism (II)

The theory behind the evil

This is the second excerpt from a research chapter examining the intellectual strands that combined to form the basis of National Socialism. National Socialism (Nazism) emerged in a particular context, both in terms of material causes, but also - and in an often underexplored way - intellectual causes. The essay attempts, therefore, to explain how the intellectual sources of Nazism emerged and were, in places, perverted to justify the Nazi regime: first, the intellectual framework of Michael Freeden’s morphological approach to ideology is explained; subsequently, the components of Nazism are established, specifically: Nietzschean philosophy; Schmitt’s concept of the political; the ideology of fascism; and the emergence of Teutomania.

• Part One

Section Two - The Political Thought of Carl Schmitt

Carl Schmitt’s political thought bears heavily on the political thought of National Socialism, and not merely for his own membership of the Party. In National Socialism can be seen the significance of Schmitt’s consideration of ‘the political’ as a fundamentally unique form of irreconcilable antithesis between ‘friends and enemies’. In this section I shall explain how Schmitt’s “concept of the political” influenced National Socialist political theory.

Schmitt’s theory begins from the observation that ‘the political’ is a specifically intense form of association that groups human beings into two antagonistic camps: friends and enemies, an “us” and “them” that possess no distinct, essential qualities and instead are defined relationally to a concrete circumstance – but nevertheless is “existentially something different and alien”. Perhaps most significantly, these enemies are not defined privately by individuals but “an enemy exists only when, at least potentially, one fighting collectivity of people confronts a similar collectivity. The enemy is solely the public enemy, because everything that has a relationship to such a collectivity of men, particularly to a whole nation, becomes public by virtue of such a relationship” (2007: 26-28, emphasis added).

Carl Schmitt