Germany and the Next War

by Friedrich von Bernhardi

Humanism was thus in a sense the precursor of the Reformation, which conceived in the innermost heart of the German people, shook Europe to her foundations. Once more it was the German people which, as formerly in the struggle between the Arian Goths and the Orthodox Church, shed it's heart's blood in a religious war for spiritual liberty, and now for national independence also. No struggle more pregnant with consequences for the development of humanity had been fought out since the Persian wars. In this cause the German people nearly disappeared, and lost all political importance. Large sections of the Empire were abandoned to foreign States. Germany became a desert. But this time the Church did not remain victorious as she did against the Arian Goths and the Staufers. It is true she was not laid prostrate; she still remained a mighty force, and drew new strength from the struggle itself. Politically the Catholic States, under Spanish leadership, won an undisputed supremacy. But, on the other hand, the right to spiritual freedom was established. This most important element of civilization was retained for humanity in the reformed Churches, and has become ever since the palladium of all progress, though even after the Peace of Westphalia protracted struggles were required to assert religious freedom.

The States of the Latin race on their side now put forward strong claims to the universal imperium in order to suppress the German ideas of freedom. Spain first, then France: the two soon quarrelled among themselves about the predominance. At the same time, in Germanized England a firs-class Protestant power was being developed, and the age of discoveries, which coincided roughly with the end of the Reformation and the Thirty Years' War, opened new and unsuspected paths to human intellect and human energy. Political life also acquired a fresh stimulus. Gradually a broad stream of immigrants poured into the newly-discovered districts of America, the northern part of which fell to the lot of the Germanic and the southern part to that of the Latin race. Thus was laid the foundation of the great colonial empires, and consequently, of world politics. Germany remained excluded from this great movement, since she wasted her forces in ecclesiastical disputes and religious wars. On the other hand, in combination with England, the Low Countries and Austria, which latter had at the same time to repel the inroad of Turks from the East, she successfully curbed the French ambition for sovereignty in a long succession of wars. England by these wars grew to be the first colonial and maritime power in the world. Germany forfeited large tracts of territory, and lost still more in political power. She broke up into numerous feeble separate States, which were entirely void of any common sympathy with the German cause. But this very disintegration lent her fresh strength. A centre of Protestant power was established in the North—i.e., Prussia.

After centuries of struggle the Germans had succeeded in driving back the Slavs, who poured in from the East, in wrestling large tracts from them, and in completely Germanizing them. This struggle, like that with the niggard soil, produced a sturdy race, conscious of its strength, which extended its power to the coasts of the Baltic, and successfully planted Germanic culture in the far North. The German nation was finally victorious also against Swedes, who disputed the command of the Baltic. In that war the Great Elector had laid the foundations of a strong political power, which, under his successors, gradually grew into an influential force in Germany. The headship of Protestant Germany devolved more and more on this state, and a counterpoise to Catholic Austria grew up. This latter State had developed out of Germany into an independent great Power, resting its supremacy not only on a German population, but also on Hungarians and Slavs. In the Seven Years' War Prussia broke away from Catholic Austria and the Empire, and confronted France and Russia as an independent Protestant State.

But yet another dark hour was in store for Germany, as she once more slowly struggled upwards. In France the Monarchy has exhausted the resources of the nation for its own selfish ends. The motto of the monarchy, L'état c'est moi, carried to an extreme, provoked a tremendous revulsion of ideas, which culminated in the stupendous revolution of 1789, and everywhere in Europe, and more specially in Germany, shattered and swept away the obsolete remnants of medievalism. The German Empire as such disappeared; only fragmentary States survived, among which Prussia alone showed any real power. France once again under Napoleon was fired with the conception of the universal imperium, and bore her victorious eagles to Italy, Egypt, Syria, Germany, and Spain, and even to the inhospitable plains of Russia, which by a gradual political absorption of the Slavonic East, and a slow expansion of power in wars with Poland, Sweden, Turkey, and Prussia, had risen to an important place among the European nations. Austria, which had become more and more a congeries of different nationalities, fell before the mighty Corsican. Prussia, which seemed to have lost all vigour in her dream of peace, collapsed before his onslaught.

But the German spirit emerged with fresh strength from the deepest humiliation. The purest and mightiest storm of fury against the yoke of the oppressor that ever honoured an enslaved nation burst out in the Protestant North. The wars of liberation, with their glowing enthusiasm, won back the possibilities of political existence for Prussia and for Germany, and paved the way for further world-wide historical developments.

While the French people in savage revolt against spiritual and secular despotism had broken their chains and proclaimed their rights, another quite different revolution was working in Prussia—the revolution of duty. The assertion of the rights of the individual leads ultimately to individual irresponsibility and to a repudiation of the State. Immanuel Kant, the founder of critical philosophy, taught, in opposition to this view, the gospel of moral duty, and Scharnhorst grasped the idea of universal military service. By calling upon each individual to sacrifice property and life for the good of the community, he gave the clearest expression to the idea of the State, and created a sound basis on which the claim to individual rights might rest at the same time Stein laid the foundations of self-employed-government in Prussia.

While measures of the most far-reaching historical importance were thus being adopted in the State on which the future fate of Germany was to depend, and while revolution was being superseded by healthy progress, a German Empire of the first rank, the Empire of intellect, grew up in the domain of art and science, where German character and endeavour found the deepest and fullest expression. A great change had been effected in this land of political narrowness and social sterility since the year 1750. A literature and a science, born in the hearts of the nation, and deeply rooted in the moral teaching of Protestantism, had raised their minds far beyond the boundaries of practical life into the sunlit heights of intellectual liberty, and manifested the power and superiority of the German spirit. "Thus the new poetry and science became for many decades the most effectual bond of union for this dismembered people, and decided the victory of Protestantism in German life." [B]

[Footnote B: Treitschke, "Deutsche Geschichte", i., p. 88.]

Germany was raised to be once more "the home of heresy, since she developed the root-idea of the Reformation into the right of unrestricted and unprejudiced inquiry". [C] Moral obligations, such as no nation had ever yet made the standard of conduct, were laid down in the philosophy of Kant and Fichte, and a lofty idealism inspired the songs of her poets. The intense effect of these spiritual agencies was realized in the outburst of heroic fury in 1813. "Thus our classical literature, starting from a different point, reached the same goal as the political work of the Prussian monarchy", [D] and of those men of action who pushed this work forward in the hour of direst ruin.

[Footnote C: Ibid., i., p. 90.]