The Intellectual Foundations of Anti-Fascist Resistance

The history of the 1930s and 1940s tells of the networks of individuals and small groups inside Germany which worked to effectively undermine, hamper, and hinder the Nazi war effort and Nazi systematic destruction of human life. This resistance movement had measurable effects: thousands of Jewish lives were saved as Jews were hidden or smuggled out of the Nazi-controlled territory; Germans deliberately produced munitions to substandard specifications, disrupted railways, and cut telegraph and telephone lines, all to make the military less successful.

What motivated these Germans? Some answers to that question are obvious: they desired to free Germany from Nazi oppression and end the war that was taking German lives; they had the rather obvious moral intuition that murdering millions of people — not only Jews, but Russians, Poles, religious groups like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, communists, libertarians, etc. — was wrong and should be stopped.

The official name for Naziism is ‘National Socialism’ and opposing it was risky. Many members of the resistance died for their beliefs. Given the risk involved, those who opposed National Socialism spent time and energy exploring and articulating their motives. One example is the writings of the White Rose group at the University of Munich.

The leaflets produced and distributed by the White Rose are written in a reflective and educated tone. They include references to Chinese philosophers, Greek and Roman thinkers like Aristotle and Cicero, the Old Testament, classic German poets like Goethe and Novalis, and most most frequently, allusions to the New Testament and to Jesus. The members of the anti-fascist resistance had a carefully reasoned and documented worldview which caused them to take an uncompromising stance against Adolf Hitler and his National Socialism.

Other members of the resistance also wrote about their motivations. Perhaps most famously, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote extensively during the prewar and wartime years.

Examining the statements of those who took steps against the Nazis, both similarities and differences appear. Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran theologian; Claus von Stauffenberg was devout Roman Catholic; still other resistance members were Calvinist, Protestant, or Evangelical. The members of the White Rose group included all the above and followers of eastern Orthodoxy.

As journalist Uwe Siemon-Netto writes

It was by and large a movement of Christians, Protestant as well as Roman Catholic.

He gives details:

As far back as 1933 some 6,000 pastors, one-third of Germany’s entire Protestant clergy, had joined the anti-Nazi Pfarrernotbund (Pastors Emergency League). Interestingly, this number corresponds roughly to the proportion of ministers actively opposed to the totalitarian authorities in East Germany after the war, according to Harald Krille, editor-in-chief of Glaube und Heimat, a weekly Protestant newspaper for central Germany.

It was in 1933 that Hitler seized power, so Siemon-Netto’s data shows that the resistance began immediately. The members of what would become the resistance had been watching and analyzing carefully. They didn’t wait to see what would happen, or give National Socialism a chance to prove itself. They knew and understood the actions that Hitler would take. They were ahead of the curve in perceiving and responding to evil on a large scale.

“Thousands of clergymen critical of Hitler,” Siemon-Netto continues, “were jailed, forbidden to preach, or drafted and often sent to the Russian front, from whence most did not return.”

Yet these are the easy and obvious examples: theologians and clergy. The biggest part of the resistance was composed of people who didn’t get a paycheck from a church, and didn’t officially represent organized religion.

Claus von Stauffenberg was one of many officers who were part of resistance: they were a large part of organizing assassination attempts on Hitler, and sabotaging the war effort. Military officers saw Hitler as carelessly wasting the lives of young German soldiers. Claus von Stauffenberg played a central role in a plot to assassinate Hitler, and was executed when the plot failed. Claus von Stauffenberg understood the risk he was taking, and considered it worthwhile. There were at least 42 attempts to assassinate Hitler from 1932 to 1944, indicating the level of energy in the resistance movement.

Carl Friedrich Goerdeler studied economics at the University of Tübingen. His career included a role as a bureaucrat in the city government of Solingen, the mayor of Königsberg, and the mayor of Leipzig. When Hitler seized power in 1933, Goerdeler first attempted to influence Hitler; he wrote him memoranda on various policy topics, hoping to change Hitler’s plans. Goerdeler resisted pressure to join the Nazi Party, and by 1936 took an openly hostile view of Hitler and the National Socialist government. Starting in 1938, Goerdeler was involved in a series of plots to overthrow the National Socialist government and assassinate Hitler. Like Claus von Stauffenberg, Goerdeler paid with his life.

Both Goerdeler and von Stauffenberg represent a large segment of the resistance, perhaps the majority: They hadn’t studied theology at the university, weren’t employed by a church, didn’t represent a church, and didn’t receive a paycheck from a church. They came from ordinary, worldly, walks of life.

Yet both of them were motivated by deeply spiritual conceptions of life. Goerdeler was a Lutheran and von Stauffenberg was a Roman Catholic. Both had absorbed the faiths of their families in childhood, and both of them retained this faith as adults. These two men probably could not have expressed their faiths in the precise academic language of professors, but they had absorbed and internalized their faiths to the point at which they instinctively recognized evil when they saw it, and to the point at which they knew that they were morally obliged to take action against such evil, even if it would cost them their lives.

About Goerdeler’s conceptual framework, Uwe Siemon-Netto writes:

His sense of order made him an early opponent of National Socialism. In very Lutheran terms, Goerdeler called the anti-Semitic outrages of the Hitler regime an “unbearable offense to civilization and a manifestation of mob rule.” Driven by his own motto, omnia restaurare in Christo, Goerdeler strove to topple Hitler.

In this framework, resistance was not optional; it was a duty to defy the National Socialist government:

A Lutheran ethos motivated men like Goerdeler. Goerdeler’s internalized Lutheranism told him that Germans must rid themselves of this evil.

He didn’t write or talk about spirituality; he lived it:

Goerdeler, who knew nothing of Luther’s theology of the cross, lived a theology of the cross.

From these examples, it is clear that those who resisted the Nazis weren’t reacting out of simple emotion. They were drawing from a deep well of intellectual resources. They received the support they needed to take the ultimate risks and endure the ultimate sacrifices.

Competing Liberalisms: From Locke to Mill and Beyond

The word ‘liberalism’ and the history of liberalism are complicated and surprising. Historians are careful to distinguish among the different definitions of ‘liberalism’ for this reason. A political thinker who was a liberal in the 17th century is different from one in the 18th century, who in turn is different from one in the 19th century. It will be important to sort and chart these distinct meanings of the word.

John Locke was a liberal; Hillary Clinton was a liberal. But the two are different and distinct from each other.

Although historians can identify isolated strands of liberal thought in previous centuries, and even millennia ago, modern political liberalism emerged in the late 1600s. This era includes the Glorious Revolution and most of John Locke’s political writings.

The initial version of liberalism, shaped by Locke and others, emphasized the task of government being to protect every citizen’s life, liberty, and property. The etymology of ‘liberalism’ and ‘liberty’ make clear the goals and values of liberalism. In one famous passage, Locke writes that “no one can be put out of” an initial free state of nature “and subjected to the political power of another, without his own consent.”

Along with the idea that a government derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed, other key ideas in this original Classical Liberalism included an emphasis on keeping government in check so that it did not encroach on the rights of the individual, and the articulation of such rights as freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of religion, and free markets. A laissez-faire economic approach was understood as protecting the individual’s right to do as she or he pleases with her or his property.

Note that Locke posits that humans have, or had, an initial “state of nature,” which he hypothesizes to be a state of liberty. Other political philosophers, including some who disagree sharply with Locke, agree on this point, that there is or was a “state of nature” which is prior to a social contract and the institution of government. The “state of nature” might be logically prior or temporally prior to the formation of a governed state.

For example, Thomas Hobbes developed a concept of the “state of nature” which was sinister and violent, while Locke’s state of nature was a bit more cheerful.

This initial version of modern political liberalism — note that the late 1600s are reckoned as ‘modern’ — arose and developed in the British Isles, and is often called ‘Classical Liberalism’ as Maurice Cranston writes:

Traditional English liberalism has rested on a fairly simple concept of liberty — namely, that of freedom from the constraints of the state. In Hobbes’s memorable phrase, “The liberties of subjects depend on the silence of the law.” In general, however, English liberals have always been careful not to press this notion to anarchist extremes. They have regarded the state as a necessary institution, ensuring law and order at home, defense against foreign powers, and security of possessions — the three principles Locke summarized as “life, liberty and property.”

Buried in Locke’s view of the world is an Enlightenment concept of human beings as rational, knowing, deliberative agents. Locke, like nearly every other political philosopher, had a notion of human nature, and his conception of society and government arose from his idea of human nature.

The concept of a human being as a deliberate, rational, knowing agent is foundational for free market economics.

Central to this original version of Classical Liberalism is a sharp distinction between society and government. In chapter 19 of Locke’s Second Treatise (1689), which runs from paragraph 211 to paragraph 243, the word ‘government’ occurs approximately 48 times, the word ‘society’ approximately 43 times, and the words ‘free, freedom, liberty’ approximately 29 times. In the chapter, Locke makes a detailed effort to distinguish between society and government.

Following Locke, Thomas Paine emphasizes this distinction and scolds the writers who fail to note it. In 1776 he explained:

Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices.

Paine continues, writing that society “encourages” communication or dealings between individuals or groups, while government “creates distinctions.” Society “is a patron,” but government is “a punisher.”

Classical Liberalism proposes that the task of political philosophy is to develop structures which will confine government to its proper province and prevent it from encroaching up society’s realm, as Maurice Cranston notes:

English liberals have also maintained that the law can be used to extend the liberties of subjects insofar as the law is made to curb and limit the activities of the executive government. Thus, for example, the English laws of habeas corpus, of bail, and of police entry and arrest all constrain or restrain the executive and, in so doing, increase the freedom of the people. Some instruments of constitutional law have a similar effect.

The Classical Liberalism of John Locke had a profound influence on the founding of the United States, leading to the abolition of slavery and the universal suffrage for all citizens, including women and formerly enslaved people.

Eventually, a competing form of liberalism arose to contend with the original form of Classical Liberalism. A central author in this new movement was J.S. Mill. In 1859, advocated a schema which inverted the logic of Classical Liberalism. Instead of limiting and curbing government power so that both the individual and the society would be free to flourish, J.S. Mill wanted to empower government to restrain society. Mill reasoned that society, with its unregulated markets and its political principle of majority rule, was the true danger to the freedom of the individual.

This new form of liberalism, promoted by Mill and others, rested on a subtly but importantly different understanding of freedom.

A “liberalism” that once argued for economic freedom, and for the government to refrain from controlling society, now argued for the exact opposite. Maurice Cranston explains:

The traditional form of English political liberalism naturally went hand in hand with the classical economic doctrine of laissez-faire.

“Toward the end of the nineteenth century, however, certain radical movements and certain English liberal theorists,” continues Maurice Cranston, propounded “a different — as they claimed, broader — concept of freedom, which was, to a large extent, to prove more popular in the twentieth century than traditional English liberalism with its economic gospel of laissez-faire.”

The split between Classical Liberalism and J.S. Mill’s liberalism each birthed a handful of political and economic movements which would struggle with each other through most of the twentieth century.

The newer form of liberalism was less about protecting freedom and more about providing comfort. Indeed, it was willing to sacrifice freedom.

One of Mill’s famous sayings seems to support liberty:

the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.

The slippery slope in Mill’s argumentation is hiding behind the word ‘harm’ in this well-known quotation. ‘Harm’ had long been understood as compromising or undermining the protection of an individual’s life, liberty, and property. But now Mill would interpret ‘harm’ in a broader way. ‘Harm’ would be the failure to intervene into the life of the individual, or into the life of society. Such intervention was, according to Mill, morally obligatory, in order to improve the life of the individual.

Liberalism had gone from protecting the life of the individual to improving the life of the individual. While an improved life might seem like a good thing, troubling questions soon appeared: Who decided what was truly an improvement? Who decided which improvements were necessary? How would this improvement violate the rights of the individual, if she or he didn’t want a particular improvement? And who would pay for the improvements?

Maurice Cranston describes the tensions between the two groups of liberals:

The central aim of this new school was utilitarian — namely, freeing men from misery and ignorance. Its exponents believed that the state must be the instrument by which this end was to be achieved. Hence, English liberal opinion entered the twentieth century in a highly paradoxical condition, urging, on the one hand, a freedom which was understood as freedom from the constraints of the state and, on the other, an enlargement of the state’s power and control in order to liberate the poor from the oppressive burdens of poverty.

Liberalism had split into two movements. The two contradicted each other. A single liberal movement soon became a practical impossibility, and eventually, there were more than two versions of liberal movements, both in England and around the world. A significant number of these movements did not use the word ‘liberal’ but rather wore labels like communist, socialist, progressive, etc.

Before the rise of J.S. Mill’s new version of liberalism, the original Classical Liberalism had a good career, especially in the United States, but also in various nation-states around the world, as Patrick Deneen writes:

A political philosophy conceived some 500 years ago, and put into effect at the birth of the United States nearly 250 years later, was a wager that political society could be grounded on a different footing. It conceived humans as rights-bearing individuals who could fashion and pursue for themselves their own version of the good life. Opportunities for liberty were best afforded by a limited government devoted to “securing rights,” along with a free-market economic system that gave space for individual initiative and ambition. Political legitimacy was grounded on a shared belief in an originating “social contract” to which even newcomers could subscribe, ratified continuously by free and fair elections of responsive representatives. Limited but effective government, rule of law, an independent judiciary, responsive public officials, and free and fair elections were some of the hallmarks of this ascendant order and, by all evidence, wildly successful wager.

The success of Classical Liberalism for a century or two in various locations around the globe is due to its core drive for freedom and liberty. Practical steps toward a “weak” or “limited” government made such freedom and liberty possible.

The vision of freedom was nearly universally appealing, allowing Classical Liberalism to appear in nations of various cultures, various religions, and various languages: a global phenomenon. Patrick Deneen expounds on the attractiveness of the doctrine:

The deepest commitment of liberalism is expressed by the name itself: liberty. Liberalism has proven both attractive and resilient because of this core commitment to the longing for human freedom so deeply embedded in the human soul. Liberalism’s historical rise and global attraction are hardly accidental; it has appealed especially to people subject to arbitrary rule, unjust inequality, and pervasive poverty. No other political philosophy had proven in practice that it could fuel prosperity, provide relative political stability, and foster individual liberty with such regularity and predictability.

As effective as Classical Liberalism had been in the process of moving the world into modernity, it yet had within itself the seeds of its own downfall. The liberty of each individual to propound her or his own worldview included the worldviews which undermine a stable society. Those worldviews were translated into action. As society was sabotaged, civic chaos began; the response to the turmoil was increased governmental powers to manage the social instability.

Classical Liberalism, which began by restraining government power to protect individual liberty, had given birth to a movement which necessitated increased government intervention into the life of the private citizen.

Instead of society working to limit government’s ability to shackle the individual, the new order included increasing the government’s power to shackle the salutary ability of society to shape a communal life conducive to individual development.

Patrick Deneen narrates how liberalism destroyed both itself and society:

Liberalism’s founders tended to take for granted the persistence of social norms, even as they sought to liberate individuals from the constitutive associations and education in self-limitation that sustained these norms. In its earliest moments, the health and continuity of families, schools, and communities were assumed, while their foundations were being philosophically undermined. This undermining led, in turn, to these goods being undermined in reality, as the norm-shaping power of authoritative institutions grew tenuous with liberalism’s advance. In its advanced stage, passive depletion has become active destruction: remnants of associations historically charged with the cultivation of norms are increasingly seen as obstacles to autonomous liberty, and the apparatus of the state is directed toward the task of liberating individuals from such bonds.

What will the twenty-first century bring for liberalism? Will the struggle between Classical Liberalism and J.S. Mill’s liberalism continue? Will one or the other of those two dominate? Will the tension continue to be framed as one between individual liberty and governmental interventionism? Which political leaders, and which policies, correspond to Classical Liberalism? Which correspond to J.S. Mill?

In any event, the only way to understand the political dynamics of today and tomorrow is to study the past.