Hermann Adolf Reinhold Rauschning (7 August 1887 – 8 February 1982) was a German politician and author, adherent of the Conservative Revolution movementStern,Fritz Richard The politics of cultural despair: a study in the rise of the Germanic ideology University of California Press reprint edition (1974) note to p. 297 who briefly joined the Nazi movement before breaking with it.Bosworth, R. J. B. Explaining Auschwitz and Hiroshima: History Writing and the Second World War Routledge (1994) p21 He was the President of the Senate (head of government and chief of state) of the Free City of Danzig from 1933 to 1934. In 1934, he renounced Nazi Party membership and in 1936 emigrated from Germany. He eventually settled in the United States and began openly denouncing Nazism. Rauschning is chiefly known for his book Gespräche mit Hitler ("Conversations with Hitler", American title: Voice of Destruction, British title: Hitler Speaks) in which he recalls meetings and conversations with Adolf Hitler.
Early life Rauschning was born in Thorn in the province of West Prussia (then part of the German Empire; now Toruń, Poland) to a Prussian Army officer. He attended the Prussian Cadet Corps institute at Potsdam and studied history, German philology and musicology at the Berlin University, where he obtained a Dr. phil. doctorate in 1911. He fought in World War I as a lieutenantAndrzejewski, Marek Hermann Rauschning. Biographische Skizze (Hermannn Rauschning biographical sketch) in Gornig Gilbert (ed.), German-Polish meeting on science and culture, Societas Physicae Experimentalis, Series of Gdansk Scientific Society, Volume 5, 2001, pp. 170–185 and was wounded in action.Wistrich, Robert Who's Who in Nazi Germany Bonanza (1984) p240
After the war, he stayed in Poznań,Brockhaus Enzyklopädie, last printed edition 2006, vol. 22 p. 578 which (like Rauschning's home region of West Prussia) was ceded by Germany to Poland after the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. He was active in several organisations of the German minority and prominent in the Poznań historical society. Disagreeing with the leaders of the German minority in the Poznań Voivodeship, he moved to the Free City of Gdansk (which was under League of Nations mandate) in 1926, where he bought an estate in the village of Warnau (Warnowo) in the Vistula Fens and became a farmer.
Political career
During the 1920s, Rauschning was close to the "Young Conservative" movement of Arthur Moeller van den Bruck and affiliated with the German National People's Party (DNVP) of Danzig. In 1932, he joined the Nazi Party as he believed it to offer the only way out of Germany's troubles, including the return of Danzig to Germany.Brockhaus Enzyklopädie, recent printed edition 2006, Vol. 22 page 578 In the 1930 Danzig parliamentary election, the Nazis had become the second-strongest force, replacing the DNVP, as they had discovered the electoral potential of the rural population in Danzig. Rauschning saw this as a powerful tool to reorganize the Danzig NSDAP. Rauschning became the agricultural advisor to the local Gau in January 1932 and in February of the same year, leader of the Danzig Agricultural League (Danziger Landbund), a movement that supported the taking over of the Senate by the Nazis. He also became chairman of the Danzig Teachers' Association in 1932.
The President of the Senate, Ernst Ziehm (DNVP) who ruled from 1931 to 1933, strongly disliked Rauschning. In Summer 1932, Rauschning and the local Gauleiter Albert Forster met with Adolf Hitler in Obersalzberg to discuss happenings in Danzig. After Hitler came to power in Germany in January 1933, the Nazis in Danzig withdrew their support for the Ziehm Senate and demanded the formation of a new government under the leadership of Hermann Rauschning. Ziehm refused to form a joint government with the Nazis, but he and his Senate resigned en bloc, triggering an early parliamentary election in May 1933. The NSDAP won this election with an absolute majority and Rauschning became the President of the Senate of Danzig on 20 June 1933, starting the Rauschning Senate which—except for the Senator of Justice—consisted exclusively of NSDAP members.
In foreign affairs, Rauschning did not conceal his personal desire to turn neighbouring Poland into a vassal state of Germany.Gdańska polityka Józefa Becka, Bogdan Dopierała,page 86, Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, 1967 As a conservative nationalist, Rauschning was not typical of Nazi members and the Nazis' violent antisemitism was alien to him. He was a bitter rival of Albert Forster, the future Gauleiter of Danzig.
There has been some debate over the importance of Rauschning to Hitler and the party. One of the reasons cited for Hitler's interest in Rauschning was his citizenship and political leadership in the Free City of Danzig. One of the first questions that Hitler asked Rauschning was "whether Danzig had an extradition agreement with Germany," which drew Hitler’s attention due to the possibility of him being forced to go underground.Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, New York, NY, Bantam Books, Books, 1961, p. 188 Hitler feared that the Weimar Republic might move against the party and ban it. Since Danzig retained an independent status under the League of Nations, Hitler apparently felt that the free port "might well offer a useful asylum."
Fall from power On 23 November 1934, he resigned from the Senate and the party. In the April 1935 Danzig elections, he supported "constitutionalist" candidates against the Nazis and wrote articles supporting co-operation with the Poles, which angered the Nazis. Rauschning found himself in personal danger.
He sold his farming interests and fled to Poland in 1936. He moved on to Switzerland in 1937, France in 1938 and the United Kingdom in 1939. Rauschning joined German émigrés; left-wing Germans opposed his right-wing views and the fact that as a member of the Nazi Party, he had been instrumental in the takeover of Danzig. Rauschning represented "one of the most conservative poles of the emigration" and enjoyed celebrity status through his lectures.Palmier, Jean Michel Weimar in exile: the antifascist emigration in Europe and America Verso (2006) p569 He sought to play a leading role in the more conservative émigré German Freedom Party, run by Carl Spiecher, later of the Centre Party, but he fell out with Spiecher, who thought Rauschning was motivated by self-interest, rather than the interest of the party.
Later life Between 1938 and 1942, he wrote a number of works in German on the problem of the Nazis that were translated to a number of languages, including English. His Gespräche mit Hitler (Conversations with Hitler) was a huge bestseller but its credibility would later be severely criticised, and its standing as an accurate document on Hitler for historians was later questioned by the holocaust-denier Wolfgang Hänel and Ian Kershaw. However, as anti-Nazi propaganda it was taken seriously by the Nazi regime. At the beginning of the war, the French dropped leaflets on the Western Front containing excerpts from Rauschning's writings but with little response. Rauschning's ideas of conservative Christian resistance to Hitler met with increasing scepticism and were of no interest to Winston Churchill and his doctrine of uncompromising total war against the Nazis.Conway, J.S. Hermann Rauschning as Historian and Opponent of Nazism Canadian Journal of History Vol 8, No 1 (1973) pp. 74–76
In 1941, Rauschning moved to the United States, becoming an American citizen in 1942 and purchasing a farm near Portland, Oregon, where he died in 1982. He remained politically active after the war and opposed the policies of Konrad Adenauer.
Writings
In 1930, he published a work under the title Die Entdeutschung Westpreußens und Posens (The Degermanisation of West Prussia and Posen). According to Rauschning, Germans in those areas were constantly put under pressure to leave Poland.
Rauschning's writings that were translated into English deal with Nazism, the conservative revolutionaries' relation to it, and their role and responsibility for Hitler gaining power. By conservative revolution, Rauschning meant "the prewar monarchic-Christian revolt against modernity that made a devil's pact with Hitler during the Weimar period."Neaman, Elliot Yale A dubious past: Ernst Jünger and the politics of literature after Nazism University of California Press (1999) p. 71 Rauschning came "to the bitter conclusion that the Nazi regime represented anything other than the longed-for German revolution."Bullivant, Keith The Conservative Revolution in Phelan, Anthony (ed) The Weimar dilemma: intellectuals in the Weimar Republic Manchester University press (1985) p. 66
In Die Revolution des Nihilismus (The Revolution of Nihilism), he wrote that "the National Socialism that came to power in 1933 was no longer a nationalist but a revolutionary movement"Rauschning, Hermann The Revolution of Nihilism, Warning to the West (1939) p16 and as the book's title states a nihilistic revolution that destroyed all values and traditions. He believed that the only alternative to Nazism was the restoration of the monarchy.Rauschning, Hermann The Revolution of Nihilism, Warning to the West (1939) pp. 170–172 His book went through 17 printings in the United States. The book was directed at conservatives in Nazi Germany, whom he hoped to warn of the alleged anti-Christian nature of the Nazi revolution.Conway, J.S. Hermann Rauschning as Historian and Opponent of Nazism Canadian Journal of History Vol 8, No 1 (1973) pp. 69–70 He would reiterate the anti-Christian nature of Nazism in Gespräche mit Hitler, where he has Hitler rule out that Jesus could have been Aryan. Given that Hitler held the exact opposite view, Rauschning's intention appears to have been "to put as much distance between Hitler and Christianity as possible". The main thesis of The Revolution of Nihilism that National Socialism was a nihilist pursuit of power with no ideological content is claimed to have unduly influenced Alan Bullock's portrayal of Hitler as a cynic in his 1952 Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, as well as that of Bullock's rival Hugh Trevor-Roper in The Last Days of Hitler (1947).
His success with the publication of his Die Revolution des Nihilismus book (The Revolution of Nihilism) in early 1938 made Rauschning financially able to pursue his German edition of Gespräche mit Hitler (Conversations with Hitler) and the other early versions and translations in 1939 and 1940. The first edition of The Revolution of Nihilism was printed in German under a Zurich, Switzerland, publishing house (Europa), which was "rapidly followed by ever renewed editions."Toni Stolper, "Nazi Dynamics," The Saturday Review, Sept. 9, 1939, pp. 3–4. Its English translation was published in 1939 and became "the third best-seller on the non-fiction list.""Dynamics of Destruction," The New Masses, Oct. 24, 1939, p. 28
At the Nuremberg Trials, the Soviet Union presented as evidence (USSR-378) two extracts from The Voice of Destruction.The Trial of German Major War Criminals by the International Military Tribunal sitting at Nuremberg Vol 7 (1946) p29 Horst Pelckmann, for the defence, asked for Rauschning to be called as a witness on the matter of the party programme relating to the solution of the Jewish question and Hitler's "principle to deceive the Germans about his true intentions" so that the prosecution would have to prove that the SS "knew what Hitler actually wanted," but Rauschning was not called.
Authenticity of Hitler Speaks