Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The far right in the German and Russian Empires
- 2 At the extreme in the Ukraine and in Germany
- 3 “Hand in hand with Germany”
- 4 The international radical right's Aufbau (reconstruction)
- 5 “Germany–Russia above everything”
- 6 Conspiracies of fire and the sword
- 7 “In Quick March to the Abyss!”
- 8 The four writers of the apocalypse
- 9 Aufbau's legacy to National Socialism
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
- NEW STUDIES IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
7 - “In Quick March to the Abyss!”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The far right in the German and Russian Empires
- 2 At the extreme in the Ukraine and in Germany
- 3 “Hand in hand with Germany”
- 4 The international radical right's Aufbau (reconstruction)
- 5 “Germany–Russia above everything”
- 6 Conspiracies of fire and the sword
- 7 “In Quick March to the Abyss!”
- 8 The four writers of the apocalypse
- 9 Aufbau's legacy to National Socialism
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
- NEW STUDIES IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
Summary
Late 1922 through November 1923 witnessed both the acme and the almost total collapse of the collaboration between Hitler's National Socialist Party and Aufbau to topple the Weimar Republic. In his newspaper Aufbau-Korrespondenz (Aufbau Correspondence), Aufbau's leading figure and the prominent National Socialist policy maker First Lieutenant Max von Scheubner-Richter stressed: “Today Bavaria's historical mission consists of safeguarding German unity in the face of the international solidarity of the Soviets and the stock exchange people.” If Bavaria failed to fulfill its calling, “then Germany's downfall and with it Bavaria's is sealed.” Scheubner-Richter titled his essay “In Quick March to the Abyss!” thereby indicating his belief that the Bavarian-based National Socialist/White émigré radical right invited disaster by not forcefully resisting both Bolshevism and the Weimar Republic.
Scheubner-Richter's aggressive political views deserve particular attention since he acted as the closest advisor of both Adolf Hitler and General Erich von Ludendorff, who led anti-Weimar Republic paramilitary groupings in Bavaria that grew increasingly powerful under the stimulus of the French/Belgian occupation of the Ruhr Basin beginning in early 1923. Scheubner-Richter despised Bolshevism, and he spent much of his energies combating its spread. He nonetheless appreciated some of its aspects. In particular, he admired what he regarded as the Bolshevik lesson that a few determined men could shape world history, and he stressed that the National Socialist movement should adopt the Bolshevik tactics of subversion followed by strict centralization and militarization to defeat its political enemies.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Russian Roots of NazismWhite Émigrés and the Making of National Socialism, 1917–1945, pp. 193 - 216Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005