According to liberal views, the antipode of totalitarianism is Western-type democracy with its traditions of parliamentarism, the absolutization of private property, and respect for civil liberties. However, recent history knows the other side of this heritage of mankind.
The one who approved June 22 as the "Day of Remembrance and Sorrow", and not the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, pursued an obvious goal - for Russians to feel themselves not so much the heirs of the Victory of Good over Evil as victims of totalitarianism.
Heralds of Nazism
Great Britain is considered to be one of the strongholds of democratic values. It may seem all the more surprising that it was this stronghold of democracy that became for the Nazis an example and ideal both for the colonization of great spaces and the assertion of the right of the “superior race” to rule over these spaces, over the “inferior”, “weak” and “fallen” races.
“I admire the British people,” said A. Hitler. "In the case of colonization, he did the unheard of."
“Our goal,” declared the Fuehrer on May 23, 1939, “is the expansion of space in the East. And this space in the East must become German India."
“Only I, like the British, have the toughness to get things done,” he declared. He was echoed by his entourage: "Everything that we want to put into practice has long existed in England."
The citizens of the Third Reich were instructed to learn from the British on the example of Hitler's favorite English film "The Life of a Bengal Lancer", the viewing of which was mandatory for all members of the SS.
Professor M. Sarkisyants, who gave a course of lectures on the English roots of German Nazism, wrote a book on the same topic. In it, he showed that the Nazis were not the first to be drawn to the British experience of colonialism and racism. The founder of German colonial expansion in Africa K. Peters called the English "our mentors", who considered it a blessing for mankind that, thanks to the British, "it is not the Romanian or the Mongol that sets the tone on earth, but the Germans, which we feel ourselves to be."
It was reasonable and just that he believed that "many hundreds of thousands of people in England can enjoy their leisure time, because they employ many millions of representatives of" alien races ".
The English writer and historian Thomas Carlisle (1795 - 1881) is recognized as one of the spiritual forerunners of Nazism. There is not a single basic doctrine of Nazism that Carlisle did not have, wrote the Anglo-German Review in 1938. “Strength is right”, “A free person is characterized not by rebellion, but by submission,” he proclaimed.
Harmony, according to Carlisle, is possible only in a society where “… the worker demands from the leaders of industry:“Master, we need to be enrolled in the regiments. May our common interests become permanent … Colonels of industry, overseers at work, dispose of those who have become a soldier!"
Later, in Hitler's version, this was called "bringing the German worker to the side of the national cause."
"Whom heaven made a slave," taught Carlisle, "no parliamentary vote will make a free man." Well, “a black man has the right to be forced to work in spite of his natural laziness. The worst master for him is better than no master at all."
As for one of the first peoples who fell victim to the Anglo-Saxon expansion - the Irish, then during the famine of 1847 T. Carlisle proposed to paint two million Irishmen black and sell them to Brazil.
A worthy predecessor of both British fascists (pictured) and German Nazis should also be recognized as the powerful head of the British Victorian cabinet B. Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield), who proclaimed that "the racial issue is" the key to world history. " "Jewish racial isolation," he argued, "refutes the doctrine of human equality."
"Being a Jew," noted the German researcher A. Arend, "Disraeli found it completely natural that there is something better in the rights of an Englishman than in human rights." We can say that England became the Israel of his dreams, and the British became the chosen people, to whom he addressed with such reasoning: “You are good shooters, you know how to ride, you know how to row. And that imperfect isolation of the human brain, which is called thought, has not yet bent your camp. You don't have time to read. Eliminate this occupation altogether … It is a cursed occupation of the human race."
Several decades later, Hitler seemed to have outlined these theses: "What happiness for rulers when people do not think!.. Otherwise, humanity could not exist."
Well, the closest - and not only in time - the Nazis consider H. S. Chamberlain. His major work, Foundations of the 19th Century, was later called the bible of the Nazi movement by the main Nazi newspaper Volkischer Beobachter.
A. Rosenberg's book "The Myth of the 20th Century" is not only a continuation, but also an adaptation of Chamberlain's "Foundations".
Considering England no longer energetic enough to bear the "burden of the white man", H. S. Chamberlain moved to Germany during the First World War. He considered it more promising for the further expansion of the domination of the white race. At the same time, he continued to assert that both countries "are inhabited by two Germanic peoples who have achieved the most in the world." Moreover, he proposed idealizing the Germans "not as a thinker people, but as a nation of soldiers and merchants."
Calling, like Disraeli, to follow the example of the Jews in the observance of racial purity, H. S. Chamberlain at the same time argued: "Their very existence is a sin, a crime against the sacred laws of life" and argued that only the Aryans are spiritually and physically superior to all other people and therefore they should rightfully be the rulers of the world.
It was he, an English aristocrat and an armchair scientist, who saw in the "little corporal" Hitler "the performer of his life mission and the exterminator of subhumans."
According to R. Hess, with the death of H. S. Chamberlain in 1927, "Germany has lost one of its greatest thinkers, a fighter for the German cause, as it is written on the wreath laid on behalf of the Movement." On the last journey H. S. Chamberlain was seen off by Hitler's stormtroopers dressed in uniforms.
Freedom is the privilege of masters
But the figures named above are, so to speak, peaks in the British proto-fascist landscape. What is the landscape itself? One of the pioneers of British fascism A. K. Chesterton was not the only one who believed that "the foundations of fascism lay in the very British national tradition," according to which "freedom is the privilege of a nation of masters."
The most ardent bearers of this tradition were, first of all, large and small colonial officials and officers, who also took the lead in the creation of the first concentration camps in modern history during the Boer War and the Lost Legion secret society, whose goal was to establish the power of the empire. over the entire "uncivilized" world.
The prototype of the future SS troops was glorified by R. Kipling, who wrote that "only people with the hearts of Vikings could serve in the legion."
Long before the Indians, Africans, aborigines of North America, Australia and New Zealand, the indigenous inhabitants of the British Isles, the Celts, conquered by the Anglo-Saxons invading from continental Europe, were enrolled in the lower race. The popular at the time writer Charles Kinsley complained that in Ireland he was pursued by crowds of humanoid chimpanzees. "If they had black skin," he wrote, "it would be easier." And the "scientist" J. Biddow argued that "the ancestors of the Irish were Negroes."
R. Knox demanded that the Celts and the Russians be excluded from the list of European peoples, since "the Celtic and Russian nations, despising labor and order, are at the lowest stage of human development."
"Freedom is the privilege of the master race." This principle was cultivated not only in the elite circles of Great Britain, but also in the lowest strata of society, who were proud of their belonging to the highest race in relation to the same Irish, Indians, etc. etc.
It is also noticed that the appeal to the elder, born in the scout movement, “My leader”, adopted by the Nazis as “my Fuhrer”, was used more often in England than in Germany until the beginning of the thirties.
A number of researchers believe that the factor stabilizing English society is that even the poor Englishmen generally put up with their subordinate position much more humbly than other peoples of Europe. As Tenisson noted, "this saves us from riots, republics, revolutions that are shaking other, not so broad-shouldered nations."
It is noteworthy that 140 years before the Nazi ideas about the Bolsheviks, similar propaganda was conducted in England against the French, who staged their Great Revolution and personified in the eyes of the British a criminal, wild, "special subclass of creatures", "a special subclass of monsters."
But J. Goebbels admired the "national cohesion of the people in their desire to form a unified state will."
At the same time, as J. St. Mill, "We rebel against the manifestation of all individuality." Voluntary obedience to the norms of the "usually accepted", also noted by A. Herzen, allowed the British to do without state coercion. Verbal camouflage of expressions such as "open society", "personal freedom", etc. in fact, nothing changed in this. Another piece of evidence: "In England, the yoke of public opinion is more painful than in most other European countries."
During World War II, the above-mentioned features of British society led to the fact that internees, victims of fascism in their countries, were treated more harshly in England than British fascists, since the latter were considered patriots of Great Britain, while the former were traitors to their country.
Intellect has poisoned our people
Much of the Nazis tried to borrow directly from English education and culture. In doing so, they took as a basis, first of all, the education of "racial pride and national energy." During this restructuring, Hitler declared: “I do not need intellectuals. Knowledge will only spoil the youth. But they will have to learn to command them without fail."
The main thing was the reorientation from gaining knowledge to training the body and strengthening the will, and the English language was proclaimed "the language of a ruthless act of will."
One of the mentors of the future Fuhrer stated that "English guests prefer the brownest of the brown schools" - the so-called "Napolas".
A report delivered at the Royal Institute of International Relations, England, noted that “Nazi educational institutions are in many ways modeled after our English public scools. All their upbringing is aimed at instilling faith in the invincibility of the nation. " Speaker Sir Rowen-Robinson noted that Napolas' school leaders are "extremely nice people."
The only thing that initially reduced the effectiveness of the restructuring of upbringing in the English way was the intellect of the educated.“We have so much of him that we have only difficulties with him,” complained Goebbels. “We Germans think too much. Intellect has poisoned our people."
As was shown further, this drawback was largely overcome.
Some of the oddities of that war
And now the reader has the right to ask: if everything is as described above, why did the British still declare war on Hitler?
Firstly, because he, aimed at conquering the eastern territories and eradicating Bolshevism, got out of control and allowed himself too much. Secondly, there are still many mysteries in the history of World War II. It is enough to recall only three. The first - the Dunkirk encirclement in the summer of 1940 of the three hundred thousandth British army, which was a matter of technique for the Germans to crush and capture. But they did not do this, allowing the British to evacuate to their islands. Why would you? This is still debated.
The second mystery is the strange flight of Hitler's closest comrade-in-arms, R. Hess, in May 1941 to Great Britain. Obviously for negotiations, but what is still kept secret, part of which the aged Hess took away, mysteriously ending his life in prison.
The general public knows less about the third mystery. And it is that the Wehrmacht both occupied the Channel Islands belonging to Britain in 1940 and held them until the end of the war in 1945. For five years, the British Union Jack and the Nazi banner with the swastika developed side by side. All these five years, an atmosphere reigned here in which the Germans and the British felt as if there had been no war between them.
According to the testimony of the American journalist Charles Swift, who visited the islands in 1940, the vanquished - subjects of the proud country, behaved with polite respect, and the Germans called the British “cousins in race”. The level of collaboration and the level of security of the German military, who went unarmed, were the highest in Europe.
The British administration of the islands acted as agents of the Nazis. Special laws against Jews were introduced here. Some islanders took part in the bullying of concentration camp prisoners.
In June 1945, with the war behind us, the British Ministry of Information announced that collaboration on the islands "was almost inevitable." None of the Norman collaborators were brought to justice. Moreover, 50 of the most active of them were secretly taken to England and released, and members of the local administration were even awarded honors.
According to journalist M. Baiting, the occupation of the Channel Islands was "an experimental platform for the occupation of the whole of Great Britain."
All in the past?
We are more and more insistently required to look in the mirror of our history so that we understand from which abyss the West wants to help us get out.
But how many in the West are willing to look in their own mirrors? Take, for example, the electronic version of the most respectable British Encyclopedia, we will find in it the topic of fascism. Here it is very specific and detailed.
it is stated about Italian fascism, Spanish, Serbian, Croatian, Russian!.. About the British one - a stingy line with the message that there were 50 thousand people in its ranks. And, of course, the emphasis is on the same thing: the only democratic West has been and remains a reliable bulwark against any fascism-totalitarianism.
Meanwhile, none other than F. Papen, the last German chancellor on the eve of Hitler's coming to power, emphasized that the Nazi state arose, "having gone to the end along the path of democracy."
The philosopher K. Horkheimer pointed out the absence of an impassable chasm between them: “The totalitarian regime is nothing but its predecessor: the bourgeois-democratic order, which suddenly lost its ornaments”.
G. Marcuse came to a similar conclusion: “The transformation of a liberal state into a totalitarian one took place in the bosom of one and the same social order. It was liberalism that "pulled" the totalitarian state out of itself as its own embodiment at the highest stage of development."
Deprecated? Has it faded into history? Perhaps. Only history has such a property - not to go into the past for good.
