The Danger of Americanism

This article comes from Das Schwarze Korps, the weekly published by the SS. It is part of the general propaganda campaign aimed against the United States. It displays the general Nazi dislike of American culture, and claims that the Jews are behind it all.
 
The source: “Die Gefahr des Amerikanismus,” Das Schwarze Korps, 14 March 1944, pp. 1-2.


When we speak of young Europe and its young nations, we contrast them to the senile world of dying liberalism which, under the leadership of Jewry, is once more gathering all its material resources in an attempt to forever subject the world to the power of money under the domination of those who have it. They want to perpetuate the social injustice they find so comfortable. More is involved than differences between ages and generations, however.

Our camp includes not only those who are young enough to topple the old and build a new world. It includes all those spiritual forces that see the new in the collapse of the old, who want to build a new future with new ways and means.

The triumph of the Copernican worldview over the unfruitful dogma of the past, the triumph of science over empty faith, was a victory of youth. They followed the shining examples of their predecessors. The youth have always been the battering ram that helped bring the national idea to fruition. The discovery of the laws of inheritance has been the occasion and guidepost of a new youth movement that builds on the eternal culture-building values of race and blood. They lead from the deadly and destructive lethargy of materialism to the new world of tomorrow.

Today it is as it always was in times of revolution. Those fighting for the new have more to offer the youth than those who live in yesterday, who hold to what they have grown accustomed to, even if it has long since become rigid, empty and stifling. We offer the youth the freedom to develop their nation, even in the case of smaller nations. We offer them room for creative fantasy, the opportunity to transform great thoughts to reality outside the lecture hall. We offer the realization of dreams on a world scale, a common Germanic will, a common European will. We fill the spiritual vacuum left by liberalism with the magic of a worldview that draws self-confidence and meaning to life from race and the blood of one’s ancestors.

What does old England have to offer its youth to justify the war’s requirements? It cannot even begin to solve its own social problems, much less offer anything to other peoples. Where is there a healthy youth that is on fire for Bolshevism? It was a danger only during the spiritual interregnum that followed the First World War. In the face of an inadequate yesterday, it was the only force, the only revolutionary movement, available, and anything was better than nothing.

Today Bolshevism may have reached its material and organizational pinnacle on the bent backs of its devotees, but as a spiritual movement it is finished. The crass incompetence of its methods and goals have proven it to be the very epitome of capitalist slavery.

The only remaining alternative is Americanism. As strange as it may sound, it is the only serious competition to National Socialism’s racial worldview in the struggle for the youth, in the struggle for the future of humanity. In the end, however, it is only a forerunner of Bolshevism.

Americanism is certainly not a spiritual movement, nor is it a worldview that it is possible to oppose at the intellectual level. Its political beneficiaries have tried in recent years to give it, if not a face, at least a program or a goal: “the American Century.” It is a collection of empty promises of the type democratic orators have always made but this time on a world scale. There is nothing in them to excite a reasonable man. But that is exactly the point of Americanism! The key is not what it promises, but what it cannot promise. The key is not what it demands of men, but what gives them.

That would not matter if the world’s youth were of the sound character that develops from racially conscious lines, tradition-rich families, good upbringing and close camaraderie. But that is not the way things are. The good fairy will not give youth the values they will need in life. The racially sound youth can be inspired by virtue of his blood. But the blood does not tell him what should inspire him. He can be misled into serving a bad cause. He can squander his enthusiasm if he matures in a spiritual vacuum. One should not underestimate the danger of Americanism, or its seductive power. It offers devotion to a culture of nothingness, independence, lack of restraint, a freedom from all obligation, from all honor, from all consideration.

We do not wish to deny this culture of nothingness its right to exist. It can even, rightly used, be good, just as it is sometimes a pleasure to do nothing. Should a German soldier happen to find a portable record player and jazz records in the deserted quarters of British or American soldiers, he does not smash them against the wall. Instead, he takes them along and thinks he has a great treasure. We don’t want to suggest excessive cultural disaster here. 

There are times when he wants a vacation from himself, from us, from the whole world. He needs to relax, and certainly does not wish to ponder intellectual matters. Nothing is better suited to take him out of the normal world than the complete nonsense of this hot music, this cacophony of animal howls, wild instruments, and foot-stomping Negro lust. 

It takes him away from human concerns back to the depths of pre-human apedom, returning him to the time when people did not need to think because there was no past and no future. Its effect is like that of alcohol, which turns normally rational men into shouting, destructive children. That can sometimes be good for serious and intelligent men. And the soldier certainly does not forget his German mission, nor does he lose his character or honor when he occasionally spends an hour relaxing to entertaining music. He is immune to the danger of confusing this rhythmic pig grunting with good music, much less art or culture. It cannot meet his higher standards.

Others, however, are not as immune. That is what those who deny any appeal of Americanism forget.
Certainly there is no danger that our young boys and girls will fall into sexual frenzy while listening to some Jewish lout blowing on a saxophone. One can introduce them to the high priests of the American jitterbug with no worries at all. At most they will laugh. Our young Luftwaffe aides and working girls would hardly join in a dance marathon. And the winning couple running through the arena in tattered, sweaty clothes would receive not applause, but a beating. But that is our youth. They are made of different stuff, and grew up in a world in which dignity comes from doing one’s duty, and both are seen not as a burden but as the joy of life.

That may be self-evident to us, but it is not so to others. Whole nations behave in ways not guided by clear tasks. They are only individuals, parents, teachers, tribes and groups, able to lead them out of error and confusion into a clear world of meaning. We may not forget that during the tragic years following the First World War, a significant part of our youth too fell under the appeal of Americanism, waving their limbs in the Shimmy and the Charleston because there was nothing else to do.

We sometimes fail to see that there are young people in Europe today often from the so-called better classes  who not only do not stand within the camp of young Europe, but even mock or scorn it. Many of us simply cannot understand how there can be a mass meeting at a Norwegian university protesting those who are risking their lives in the east for the freedom and security of their native land, or how Swedish students, even if they do not jump to the side of their Finnish brothers, do not at least follow their struggle with respect.

These young men surely are not consciously supporting the plans of Stalin and Roosevelt. Thank God, this small part of Europe’s youth is not a politically aware counterpart to the European youth defending young Europe in the east. Those who think politically and act from conviction demonstrate it through their actions. The others have followed the comfortable path that leads from political thinking to Americanism.
That is the political danger of Americanism. It leads those who fall prey to it away from political thinking, away from responsibility, even to their nation, away from decency, even from national decency.

The American lad may use fine phrases to say that the nationalist is his political enemy. In reality, however, he fights a man who makes uncomfortable and difficult demands on him, the man who recognizes the fate of the nation as his fate, who respects the woman who will become the mother of his children, who wants to be a model, who always acts as if the eyes of the nation are upon him. The American lad feels his “freedom” restricted by such behavior. He wants to keep the hot music spinning on the record player, not be reminded that he must work as well as relax, that he must not only enjoy, but also honor the dignity of his nation.

That is neither comfortable nor pleasant. It is pleasant to talk slang and enjoy a loose moral life with those of like mind. Americanism has its delights, and he who is captivated by them not only sticks his head in the sand, he also gets some pleasure. It is nice to be able to dismiss all criticism of a too hearty enjoyment of life with the claim that one is defending human rights against Nazi brutality.

Americanism is not a logical development. It certainly does not spring from the descendants of the Virginia colonists with their Prussian sense of honor and duty, nor from the healthy farmers and citizens of the Midwest. It did not triumph easily against the often overdone moralism of Puritan circles. Its power grew along with that of Jewry. As is the case of everything that follows the orders of Jewry, Americanism’s lack of culture and morality, its freedom-promising “Century of the Child,” is nothing but a concealed way of ruining the youth.

Americanism is a splendid method of depoliticization. The Jews have used jazz and movies, magazines and smut, gangsterism and free love, and every perverse desire, to keep the American people so distracted that they pay no attention to their own fate. Even in politics, they are no longer influenced by the head, only by what is under the belt.

The Jews would not be Jews if they did not want to apply such tested methods to the entire world. Nearly every nation in the world faced or is facing the need to combat Americanism, a generally pleasant retreat to a barbaric lack of culture.

The logical consequences of Americanism will help the world combat it. The fact that 60% of American crimes are committed by children 13 years old and under and that rapes increased three-fold between 1942 and 1943 proves that Americanism has reached its limits. It will provoke a counter-movement that, just as in Europe, can only be political.

Americanism is not merely a moral-cultural form of degeneration, nor can it be combated by nonpolitical means. It has already been defeated when one digs it up by its roots and sees there plainly the words: “Made in Israel.”