Chapter 4

Evening in Germany:

National Socialism and the Myth of Langemarck

The film version of Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front had its German première in Berlin on December 4, 1930. The German version had been modified slightly from the American original, removing some material that might have been seen as anti-German. It passed the censors without objection. The première was quite successful; the Vossische Zeitung wrote approvingly, “The frightful irrationality of war emerges most clearly in the film’s big battle scenes… [the] most moving which we have experienced in sound-film so far.”[1] Elsewhere in Berlin, the Nazi parliamentary faction had been gathered since December 3. Joseph Goebbels, then Gauleiter [regional party leader] of Berlin, perceived that the showing of the film was an “opportunity [for him] to show off in front of the party bosses.”[2] On December 5, he and roughly 200 other SA men and Nazi MPs attended the screening of the movie in the Mozartsaal cinema. They scattered themselves throughout the cinema; about ten minutes into the film, the darkened theater fell into chaos. The Nazis threw smoke-bombs and paper bags filled with sneezing powder from the balcony into the audience. They released white mice in the stalls. They shouted things like “filthy film,” “pigsty,” and “throw the Jews out.”[3] The film was stopped; Goebbels declared that “Hitler is in the front of the gates of Berlin.” The police were called in to clear out the cinema. Goebbels, writing in his diary, reflected on the demonstration:

The cinema has been turned into a madhouse a mere ten minutes after the start of the film…. The Jews try to make themselves invisible…. Afterwards I sit in a café with my lads; experiences are swapped; it is hilariously funny, but everything has worked well.... Once again I have had the right scent.[4]

For the next few nights, the manager of the cinema was able to keep the Nazis at bay with the help of police protection; a demonstration of 8,000 people on December 9 prompted the head of police to prohibit all demonstrations in Berlin. By this time, though, the scandal had grown so large that the film board decided to withdraw their support, banning the film with the claim that the controversy was endangering Germany’s reputation abroad.[5] Der Angriff justified the protests by referring to the memory of the dead soldiers. “Yesterday evening in the vicinity of the Nollendorfplatz and the Wittenbergplatz 30,000 to 40,000 Germans protested against the insulting and sullying of the German front soldiers, in particular the heroic youth of Langemarck.”[6]

As this story suggests, memory of the War was at the center of the cultural and political life of the Weimar Republic. Just as in Britain, the issues raised by the war books and films were as important as they were controversial. Allegiance to the legacy of the War, especially the legacy of Langemarck, was a crucial part of the public image that the National Socialists wished to project. Comparing the soldiers of the War to the Nazis who died in the failed putsch of 1923, the author Fritz Fink wrote that “the yearning for the Reich that flared up at Langemarck found its fulfillment at the Feldherrnhalle.”[7] Before examining the Nazi appropriation of the myth of Langemarck, though, it is necessary to consider the peculiar nature of Nazi ideology.

Nazi Ideology and the Weakness of the Weimar Republic

To examine Nazi ideology is to delve into controversy, for the ideological bases of the movement are still widely debated. It is important to make three points to clarify the discussion. First, despite the claims that many have made that Nazism was fundamentally opportunistic, it did have an ideology. Though not always coherent, nor terribly consistent, the Nazi movement was based on a core set of beliefs. The pragmatic element certainly was present, but it was not the only, or the prime, motivating force. Second, National Socialism, for all the features it shared in common with other European fascist movements, especially the Italian one, was uniquely German. It depended on certain beliefs about culture, civilization, and history that had developed primarily in Germany. Finally, the Nazi movement was essentially a war movement. It had its genesis in the war of 1914-1918 and its end in the war of 1939-1945 and preached war in between. For this reason, the myth of Langemarck, which was a war myth, was very important to Nazism as a whole.

The elements that comprised the myth of Langemarck—youth, nation, and sacrifice—may initially seem at odds with the Nazi emphasis on machines, technology, and “new men.” Langemarck was essentially a backward-looking product of Romanticism; by contrast, many elements of Nazism were oriented toward the future, following on the heels of the futurist F. T. Marinetti, who wrote, “Why should we look back, when was we want is to break down the mysterious doors of the Impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We already live in the absolute, because we have created eternal, omnipresent speed.”[8] Bernd Hüppauf, in his excellent article, “The Birth of Fascist Man from the Spirit of the Front,” deals with the contradiction easily; the myth of Langemarck, he says, was used cynically by the Nazis because of its mass appeal; it was little more than “a smoke-screen.”[9] In his account, the really important myth for the Nazis was not that of Langemarck, but that of Verdun, a myth “of the emotionless and hardened modern warrior who functioned like a machine.”[10] However, it is not necessary to dismiss the importance of Langemarck to the Nazis so quickly. As was argued in chapter 2, the apparent apolitical idealism of Langemarck was only an illusion, for the myth could be read in a number of more aggressive ways. Its close connection to the youth movement, especially, left the myth of Langemarck strongly opposed to Weimar democracy. Further, Nazism itself was not solely a worship of machines and technology. One of its most important characteristics, in fact, was its embrace the paradoxical opposites of past and future, a combination Jeffrey Herf calls “reactionary modernism.”[11] Modris Eksteins, in discussing the idea of the fusion of past and future, suggests that Nazism wished to use the past or the myth of the past to pursue the future, phrasing it this way:

The implication of [one description] is that Nazism used the tools and technology of modernity in an attempt to impose on Germany a vision of the past. As we have argued, that would be to misinterpret, in fact to reverse, the central thrust of the movement in the context of its age.[12]

The view of the idealized past the Nazis were able to project through the language of Langemarck enabled them to pursue their modernist designs. These two elements, past and future, technology and myth, were not entirely separate as Hüppauf suggests, but rather, amid the confusions of fascist ideology, one and the same.

Hitler, as the Nazi propagandists never tired of mentioning, was a veteran of the War. In Mein Kampf, he recounted his experience at Langemarck:

We marched silently through a wet, cold night in Flanders, and just as the sun began to disperse the fog, an iron greeting was sent our way and shrapnel and shells exploded all around us; but before the smoke had cleared, the first hurrahs welled up from two hundred voices as the first messengers of death. Then we heard the crack and roar of gunfire, singing and yelling, and with wild eyes we all lunged forward, faster and faster, until suddenly man-to-man fighting broke out in turnip fields and thickets. We heard the sounds of a song from afar which came closer and closer to us, passing from one company to another, and then, just as men were dying all around us it spread into our ranks, and we passed it on: “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles, über alles in der Welt!”[13]

It was an introduction of youth to adulthood: “seventeen-year-old boys,” he said, “now looked like men.”[14] The theme of youth was combined with those of death and maturity, or, rather, a rejuvenation of manhood by youthful vigor. Hitler’s political vision was a translation of this experience of war into a sweeping program for society. “Only by understanding the Fronterlebnis [experience of the front],” said one supporter, “can one understand National Socialism.”[15] Hitler believed that a modern future was made possible by looking back to the War and, further, back to a mythical German past; Langemarck combined these two elements perfectly.

The role of the Langemarck myth in Nazi ideology is especially important because of the crucial role of a publicly presented ideology in the rise of the Nazis and the corresponding fall of Weimar. The Weimar political system was troubled from birth. It was born under an inauspicious cloud of defeat in the War. The Republic did not spring from a long-standing tradition of representative democracy; it was in some ways a “makeshift democracy,” produced by the loss of the War.[16] One of its first significant actions was to accept the Treaty of Versailles, a treaty that not only imposed harsh reparations but also explicitly assigned responsibility for the War to the Germans. Many Germans, believing the overoptimistic propaganda that was was produced by the High Command until the end, were genuinely surprised by the conclusion of the War. They felt, wrongly, that the German troops had not been defeated in the field, a belief supported by the German military. The frustration with the sudden, unfavorable conclusion to the War was therefore not attached to the military that lost the War but rather the government that accepted the consequences of the loss. In 1919, General Paul von Hindenburg presented the official military version of the end of the War:

An English general said with justice: “The German army was stabbed in the back.” No guilt applies to the good core of the army.... Where the guilt lies has clearly been demonstrated. If it needed more proof, then it would be found in the quoted statement of the English general and in the boundless astonishment of our enemies at their victory.[17]

The civilians were blamed for the military defeat; they, said Hindenburg, had lost their “will to victory.”[18] Further, the civilian government was not in a strong position to combat this pernicious myth; it could not afford to attack the suffering or courage of the soldiers of the War. Friedrich Ebert, chancellor and leader of the Social Democrats, welcomed the soldiers returning to Berlin in December 1918 by claiming that they were returning undefeated.[19]

German propaganda, in line with the stab-in-the-back myth, asserted that returning soldiers were generally dishonored by the civilians: their sacrifices forgotten, they were left to unemployment and poverty. The image of soldiers having their insignia torn from their uniforms as they arrived home was a common one. However, as Richard Bessel has argued, this was not really the case at all. German soldiers were fairly successfully reintegrated into German society. In this case, though, the myth was as important as reality, and the myth represented the soldiers as betrayed and subsequently dishonored by the civilians. Amid the period of stabilization and reintegration, therefore, there was also a burgeoning myth of a government betraying the German spirit embodied in its soldiers.

For this reason, even as the Weimar Republic weathered the crises of its early years and began to show signs of succeeding, there was an undercurrent of deep bitterness directed against the government and against the civilians. This tendency, never fully repressed by a weak government, was to return in strength when the Republic began to face the economic probems that were to lead to its downfall. One member of the Freikorps expressed it by saying, “People told us that the War was over. That made us laugh. We ourselves are the War.”[20] The War formed part of the identities of many people, and evoked correspondingly strong emotions. The myth of Langemarck, as one of the most common stories about the War, was centrally important for an interwar Germany struggling with its past.

In conjunction with the problems resulting from the loss of the War, Weimar democracy faced a number of structural problems. The system of proportional representation established by the Constitution was on the cutting edge at the time, considered the most fair system of electing governments. It meant, however, that splinter groups of the extreme left and right would not be shut out of the government by their inability to win majorities. This, combined with the parties largely left intact from the imperial days, produced a fragmented political system. The parties represented class and economic interests, not philosophical or ideological positions. The initial agreements between the employers and the trade unions made possible a coalition government which encompassed both left and right. When, however, in the depressed economic circumstances of the late 1920s this coalition fell apart, majority rule became impossible. The authoritarian solution, first practiced by Chancellor Heinrich Brüning as allowed by the Constitution, signaled the end of the viable democracy in Weimar.

At the same time, the extreme political fragmentation produced frustration within the voters. With the focus on narrow interest groups, the only possible mass party would be one which could cut across these interest groups with an ideology with mass appeal. The nature of the middle class in Germany, further, meant that such a group could only form on the political right; the left, especially the KPD, continued to grow, but could not hope for a majority. In these conditions, the National Socialists were thrust forward during the campaign against the Young Plan in 1929. Their first widespread public appearance, aided by the deep pockets of the industrialist Alfred Hugenberg, was in a campaign against the Republic’s acceptance of the conditions of Versailles. The Young Plan was economically helpful for Germany, but the Nazis gained status by standing apart from the negotiations that took the German defeat in the War as its fundamental basis. The Nazis offered a foundation in ideology rather than in economic interest; moreover, they were headed by a charismatic leader. Their ideology, combining a Romantic praise of the past and of youth with a modernist vitality and energy which contrasted well with the perceived lifelessness of Weimar, was quite attractive to many Germans.

In short, the Nazis appeared in favorable circumstances preaching an ideology tailored to suit those who were dissatisfied with the Republic. Although they never attained a majority, the National Socialists became the largest party in the Reichstag; eventually the government tried to accommodate them, little realizing that they could not be accommodated. Heinrich Mann traced the attraction of Hitler to the inner condition of the German people: “they have not overcome the war; it continues to rule them and, in their feelings, has never ended.”[21] Hitler’s opportunity, he said, came because of the mentality of the Germans: eternally besieged, they looked to the one who offered them an ideology and a way out of their condition. Like the crowds at Hitler’s nighttime rallies, rallies held late in the evening in order to catch the audience tired and ready to submit, the nation of Germany was worn down by its struggle and was consequently susceptible to the appeal of Nazism: “It is already evening in Germany,” he wrote, “if not midnight.”[22]

The Legacy of Langemarck: Use and Politicization

The myth of Langemarck was at the center of the War’s continued influence. A 1934 headline in the Völkischer Beobachter, a Nazi paper, proclaimed proudly, “The Spirit of Langemarck Lives!”[23] In the words of another writer, “this word [Langemarck] has become a living force” to keep alive the past.[24] The adoption of the myth of Langemarck by the Nazis was gradual, as the myth was slowly rewritten to emphasize its aggressive connotations and to ignore the apolitical ones. Part of the significance of the myth of Langemarck arose from the lack of competition; it appeared in something of a mythical vacuum. At the Nuremberg rally of 1935, Hitler said that history values no nation except those that build their own monuments.[25] By this standard, the Weimar Republic was particularly unsuccessful. It could not settle on an accepted day of national celebration. Some parties supported a day of celebration on the anniversary of the founding of the Reich in 1871 and some supported a commemoration of the founding of the Republic in 1919; nothing was resolved. Likewise, no Day of Mourning for the War was universally accepted; there were a number of competing ideas (including a national celebration of the Day of Langemarck supported by students’ and veterans’ organizations).[26] In the same way, the Republic was unsuccessful in constructing convincing memorials. A shrine in honor of the tenth anniversary of the outbreak of the War was proposed in 1924, but it never came to fruition; the process was paralyzed by the competing offerings and ideas proposed by various organizations and cities. The few memorials it did build were departures from traditional German memorial iconography. One memorial to honor the dead of the War was a hall that contained a library and a reading room; another was a huge crystal ball. The library drew on rational and intellectual ideals; the crystal ball was more modernist in its references. Neither was successful. Such efforts, suggests George Mosse,

were considered by some as a negation of patriotic and warlike themes. National monuments continued to be viewed as sacred places, as secular, national shrines, frameworks for acts of national worship. Neither reading rooms nor crystal balls could fulfill this function.[27]

This poverty of memorial expression that marked the Republic led to many perceiving it as “cold, rationalistic and dull.”[28] The Republic’s failure to produce significant memorials was symptomatic of its inability to inspire loyalty. Even in its best years, many of those supporting it did so with little emotional enthusiasm.

It is in this context that the return of the dead in the myth of Langemarck is to be understood. By its very nature traditional and spiritual, Langemarck was in opposition to the perceived rationalism of the Weimar Republic. Because of the political situation, it was nearly impossible for the emotions associated with Langemarck to be mobilized in favor of the Republic. Langemarck, mobilizing the vocabulary of the distant Germanic past, stood for everything the Republic was perceived as standing against. If the War was remembered primarily in terms of Langemarck, in terms of the sacrifice of youth betrayed by a civilian denial of the German spirit, then it would only be to the detriment of the Republic. The political struggle of the 1920s and 1930s was a struggle about the legacy of the War; this legacy was determined, in part, by the vocabulary used to represent it. There were to be consequences for the increasing use of the vocabulary of Langemarck.

This vocabulary began to evolve almost immediately. In 1915, on the first anniversary of the battle, many newspapers published editorials about the “Day of Langemarck.” The Deutsche Tageszeitung wrote that “the Day of Langemarck will forever remain a day of honour for the German youth.... Our grief for the bold dead is so splendidly surpassed by the pride in how well they knew how to fight and die.”[29] This praise of the youth of Langemarck would only grow in the years after the War. There were national celebrations in 1919, 1924, 1928, and 1932; from 1919, the national student organization supported a Langemarck Day (November 10, opposed to the ceremonies on November 11, Armistice Day) celebration in most of the German universities.[30]

In 1924, around two thousand members of the Bündische youth met in the Rhön to witness the opening of a memorial to the soldiers of Langemarck on the tenth anniversary of the beginning of the War. They camped on the mountain, and then gathered around campfires, singing and chanting; a medieval Rhenish mass prepared them for a speech by a veteran and poet. The daytime was spent in games, modeled on the games of the Greeks.[31] R. G. Binding, reporting on the 1924 gathering, wrote that the events of Langemarck,

no longer form part of history, where some day they would be paralyzed and buried, but belong to the continuously creative, continuously rejuvenating, continuously living, power of myth. The death of the brave has already established itself as such, since German youth has taken possession of it as the symbol and foremost image of youthful revolt, to which among all peoples on earth only this youth has a true entitlement.[32]

In 1928, Hans Schwarz spoke to the student union at the University of Greifswald, where the National Socialist Student Organization represented fifty-three per cent of the students. His remarks were later turned into the very successful and widely distributed book Die Wiedergeburt des heroischen Menschen (The Rebirth of Heroic Man).[33] He used the myth of Langemarck to contrast the particular mission of Germany with that of Britain, France, and the United States. German identity, he argued, was embodied in the collective experience of Langemarck and valued pure culture and nature against debased Western, modern civilization; Langemarck allowed Germans to perceive their inner character obscured by modern rationalism. This perception would rejuvenate the German people much more than the Republic ever would: “an ecstatic Volk changes life more deeply than the agitated masses of 9 November [that is, of the Republic] could have wished for.”[34] Schwarz also assigned a political position to the myth, saying, “The singing of Langemarck and the singing of the proletariat revolution do not sound good together.”[35] In speeches like this one to university audiences, the myth of Langemarck was becoming a way for the National Socialists to approach many of the educated youth, those “longing for metaphysical shelter and meaning in history.”[36]

The Langemarck Committee, founded in 1921 by students, nationalists, and veterans, took part in a trip to a student congress in Paris in August 1928. While the students were in the area, they visited Langemarck.[37] While there were well-kept British, French and Belgian cemeteries, there was no such German cemetery. German graves were scattered and overgrown with weeds. Remembering the words

A people that does not honor their dead

Is not worth their sacrifice,[38]

they resolved to build an appropriate cemetery, one which would honor the spirit of the dead. With the help of the German war graves committee, the Volksbund Deutsche Kriesgräberfürsorge, and its lead architect, Robert Tischler, they began construction.[39] The cemetery, like many German war cemeteries, emphasized uncontrolled nature through its use of large trees; unlike British cemeteries, there were no neatly arranged and colorful flowers, which were seen by the Germans as an attempt to disguise the tragic and heroic death of the fallen.[40] The entrance to the cemetery was through a chapel built to look like a fortress (Fig. 6) within which was inscribed the names of the students who died at Langemarck. There were similar Totenburgen (fortresses of the dead) in a number of German cemeteries; they were Hitler’s favorite burial monuments.[41]

After four years of construction, the cemetery was completed. It was opened on July 10, 1932. “The earth of Flanders,” wrote one observer, “which drank the blood of German youth, has once again become holy ground.”[42] Conflicts between the Student Union and the National Socialists (many students were upset by previous ceremonies which had become little more than Nazi rallies) minimized the Nazi participation, but their involvement was still very noticeable.[43] The keynote speaker, Josef Magnus Wehner, was a prominent Nazi author. His most famous book, 7 Vor Verdun, had appeared during the war books controversy as a rebuttal to Remarque’s Im Westen Nichts Neues. His address was read publicly at all German universities. He opened by reminding the present generation that they had inherited the legacy of the dead youth of Langemarck:

In this hour, German students, your first chairman will receive the key to the cemetery of Langemarck.... In this hour you will receive, German students, the guard of the dead, of the nameless coffins of the German youths of the Great War.[44]

He continued by invoking this spirit of Langemarck, a spirit forsaken by the cold Republic of Weimar:

Before the Reich veiled itself in shame, those at Langemarck sang. The dying sang, the attacking sang, they sang in their ranks, bullets in their hearts, they sang on the run, the young students, they sang amidst their own extermination, the overpowering, thousand guns of the roaring enemy: “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles, über alles in der Welt.” Through the song, with which they died, they were resurrected, a thousand times, and will be resurrected again, a thousand times until the end of the Reich, that is, our world.[45]

For him, the dead were still being resurrected, still returning, still alive. One Nazi would later write that, in Germany, no one is more alive than the dead.[46] Drawing on these eternal dead, Wehner called for the students to begin constructing a state that would embody the spirit of Langemarck, a state not limited by borders and countries but as limitless as the world itself.[47] The students were finally called to a spiritual meeting with the dead of Langemarck:

They [the dead] come and greet us, the survivors, the suspicious ones, the doubters, the despairing. Now they are more alive than we, now they sing and speak:

Build the colums of the Reich

Over the decay of the World![48]

Frustrated in their attempt to make the opening of the cemetery a purely partisan affair, the Nazis issued a book in conjunction with the event. This book, Das Langemarckbuch der Deutschen Studentenschaft (Fig. 7), was filled with contributions from prominent Nazis on the theme of Langemarck and letters from the front written by soldiers who fell at Langemarck. Most of the articles worked to establish a connection between the spirit of Langemarck and the spirit of National Socialism. Langemarck, an eruption of the German soul that was repressed by the Weimar Republic, found its fulfillment in the Nazis. “Langemarck,” wrote one contributor, “is the slogan under which we will march forward with Adolf Hitler into a free, strong, fortune-filled German future!”[49] The leader of the student union referred to the stab-in-the-back, saying, “We, who involved ourselves in the War out of our own free will, had no place in the country after the war, and we, who fell for Germany, came to be regretted as sacrifices for a ‘pathetically executed’ lie.” Only by understanding the spirit of Langemarck could one find “sense and meaning” in the sacrifice.[50]

The Langemarck cemetery had become, like the Menin Gate earlier, a site of pilgrimage. It was constructed, said the editor of the Langemarckbuch, in order to provide a “place of pilgrimage for German students, German mothers, fathers, and sons.”[51] There was another pilgrimage in November 1932 made by several members of the SA, an organization seen as the continuation of the spirit of the front into interwar life. “The SA man,” wrote the Völkischer Beobachter, “stands alongside the heroes of the world war.”[52] Unrestricted by the limitations of student organizations, the participants in this pilgrimage were able to make the connection between Langemarck and Nazism even more explicitly. One participant spoke of the legacy of Langemarck:

Just as once the rhythm of the gray columns thundered on the roads of Flanders, and just as our young Wandervögel brothers in gray coats died here on the field of Langemarck with a song on their lips – so our lives must be like their deed: brave, unselfish, strong and pure. We have two weapons to achieve this: we have our swords and we have our Adolf Hitler.[53]

In a crucial step in the trajectory from apolitical idealism to applied ideology, the myth of Langemarck began to lose its individualistic aspects. The youth of Langemarck, like everyone else, were portrayed as needing a strong leader.

Increasingly, the myth of Langemarck was expanded to include not merely the youth who died in the War but also the spirit of the front shared by all German soldiers. In emphasizing the communal spirit, the myth was held up against the class divides of Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany.[54] The heroes of Langemarck were no longer referred to solely as students, but also as workers, craftsmen and teachers.[55] Though probably more historically accurate (students likely formed little more than ten per cent of the total dead), this change did not occur for reasons of accuracy but rather in order to make the lessons of Langemarck, and the spirit of the front, easily accessible and applicable to a broader range of people. One commentator referred to the “students and workers, professors and farmers” of Langemarck.[56] Bernd Hüppauf believes that this shift indicates the cynical nature of the Nazi use of Langemarck: they used Langemarck to court bourgeois youth while that was necessary; when this was done sufficiently, they changed the focus of Langemarck.[57] It is more likely that this shift was merely a product of the success of the politicization of the Langemarck myth; as it became more powerful, it was applied to, and accepted by, more and more people.

Soon, the word Langemarck was everywhere. In 1933, Heinrich Zerkaulen wrote a play entitled Jugend von Langemarck. In 1934, this was followed by another play, Langemarck. Der Opfergang der Deutschen Jugend.[58] In 1935, there was a ceremony of celebration on Langemarck Day organized by Baldur von Schirach, leader of the Hitler Youth; a choral version of Eberhard Wolfgang Möller’s The Letters of the Fallen was sung and von Schirach spoke to the veterans among the audience:

You have given us the great gift of the heroic experience. We are spirit of your spirit. You gave birth to the socialism of the front. This is the meaning of Langemarck! That we forget ourselves, that we sacrifice ourselves, that we are loyal, that is the message of the fallen to the living, that is the call from the beyond to our times.... Because the German dead have risen. With our flags waving we march together with them into eternity.[59]

Again, the individualism of the students was denied; what was most important, said von Schirach, was that they “forgot” themselves in their sacrifice. Further, the Nazis were keeping the War alive; the return of the dead was connected with their refusal to accept defeat. The Weimar Republic acknowledged German defeat, but the Nazis argued that the War was still being fought, and would be fought into eternity.

After the Nazis had gained power, the use of the word Langemarck was institutionalized, tied both to the Nazi emphasis on youth and the effort to construct “new men” for Germany. In 1936, there was a celebration entitled “Langemarck - Heritage of the Hitler Youth” organized by the Hitler Youth and the military; it was broadcast on all national radio stations. The Langemarck organizations were placed under the control of the Reich ministries and the Hitler Youth. The Day of Langemarck became the day when new student members were admitted to the party. Further, indicating perhaps the value of the word Langemarck in cultural exchange, a compulsory Langemarck pfennig, paid each month, was introduced for every member of the Hitler Youth in 1938.[60] Also in 1938 a Langemarck educational program was introduced, with the aim of producing a “new man” who would comply with the Nazi goal of a “specific unified type.”[61] The program, financed by the party, the student unions, and industry, was offered in nine universities; emptied of many of its original connotations, the myth of Langemarck had become little more than “the primitive idea of breeding a genetically clean and ideologically streamlined elite.”[62] The task of building “new men,” originally associated with the defiant self-expression of the prewar youth movement and then the political assertiveness of the Bündische Youth, now involved youth “forgetting” themselves as they fell into line with Nazi standards.

With the Langemarck educational program, the trajectory of the myth of Langemarck was complete. It had been claimed almost completely by the National Socialists, and the National Socialist reading of Langemarck as an example of the self-denial and self-sacrifice in the service of the nation was dominant. The aim of Nazi ideology and policy was to return Germany to the vision they glimpsed at Langemarck and Verdun: a nation brave and youthful and powerful and German. One propagandist claimed that “National Socialism and ‘Langemarck’ are one and the same.”[63] Appropriately, not long after this task was begun, Hitler himself returned to Langemarck. It was a spectacular pilgrimage, a visit to a holy site presaged by tanks and planes and “lightning war.” Nazism and its leader were obsessed with the past and the War; it was not surprising that Hitler fought the next war as if he was still trying to win the last one. The German army fought again in the Flanders fields where the heroes of the last war were buried. The military communiqué of May 29, 1940, reported that “the Reich war flag is waving [again] over the monument to the German youth at Langemarck, the scene of the heroic struggle in 1914.”[64] For many, the waving of the war flag had never stopped.

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[1] Quoted in Martin Broszat, Hitler and the Collapse of Weimar Germany (New York: Berg, 1987), 32.

[2] Ibid., 33.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Quoted in Broszat, 34.

[5] Ibid., 35.

[6] Der Angriff, December 9, 1930 (Gestern abend protestierten im Umkreis des Nollendorfplatzes und Wittenbergplatzes 30.000 bis 40.000 deutsche Menschen gegen die Beschimpfung und Besudelung der deutschen Frontkämpfer, insbesondere der heldenhaften Jugend von Langemarck.).

[7] Quoted in Uwe- K. Ketelsen, “»Die Jugend von Langemarck« Ein poetisch-politisches Motiv der Zwischenkriegszeit,” in Thomas Koebner, Rolf-Peter Janz, and Frank Trommler, eds., »Mit uns zieht die neue Zeit« Der Mythos Jugend (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1985), 79 (Die Sehnsucht nach dem Reich, die in Langemarck aufgelodert war, fand ihre Erfüllung an der Feldherrnhalle.).

[8] Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, “The Futurist Manifesto,” in Adrian Lyttelton, ed., Italian Fascisms: From Pareto to Gentile (London: Cape, 1973), 212.

[9] Bernd Hüppauf, “The Birth of Fascist Man from the Spirit of the Front: From Langemarck to Verdun,” in John Milfull, ed., The Attractions of Fascism (New York: Berg, 1990), 56.

[10] Ibid., 61.

[11] Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984).

[12] Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age (New York: Doubleday, 1989), 328.

[13] Quoted in Jay W. Baird, To Die For Germany: Heroes in the Nazi Pantheon (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 4.

[14] George L. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (New York: Oxford University Press), 72.

[15] Quoted in Eksteins, 307.

[16] Eberhard Kolb, The Weimar Republic (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988), 3.

[17] Paul von Hindenburg, “The Stab in the Back,” in Anton Kaes, Martin Jay, and Edward Dimendberg, eds., The Weimar Republic Sourcebook (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 16.

[18] Ibid., 15.

[19] Richard Bessel, “The Great War in German Memory: The Soldiers of the First World War, Demobilization, and Weimar Political Culture,” German History 6 (April 1988), 21.

[20] Quoted in Barbara Ehrenreich, foreword to Klaus Theweleit, Male Fantasies, vol. 1 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), x.

[21] Heinrich Mann, “The German Decision,” in Kaes, Jay, and Dimendberg, 165.

[22] Ibid., 164.

[23] Völkischer Beobachter, November 13, 1934, 2.

[24] Karl August Walther, ed., Das Langemarckbuch der Deutschen Studentenschaft (Leipzig: Verlag von K.F. Koehler, 1933), 11 (Dieses Wort is eine lebendige Kraft geworden).

[25] George Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses (New York: Howard Fertig, 1975), 183.

[26] Bernd Hüppauf, “The Birth of Fascist Man from the Spirit of the Front: From Langemarck to Verdun,” in John Milfull, ed., The Attractions of Fascism (New York: Berg, 1990), 54.

[27] Mosse, Nationalization, 71.

[28] Hüppauf, 54.

[29] Quoted in Hüppauf, 49.

[30] Ibid., 50.

[31] Baird, 5.

[32] Quoted in Hüppauf, 51.

[33] Ibid., 53.

[34] Quoted in Hüppauf., 54.

[35] Quoted in Ketelsen, 82 (Das Singen von Langemarck klang nicht mit dem Singen der proletarischen Revolution zusammen.).

[36] Hüppauf, 53.

[37] Günter Kaufmann, “Einführung der Jugend in den Frontkämpfergeist,” in Hans-Jochen Gamm, Führung und Verführung: Pädagogik des Nationalsozialismus (München: List Verlag, 1964), 359.

[38] Hansgeorg Moka, “Die Langemarck-Arbeit der Deutschen Studentenschaft,” in Walther, 210 (Ein Volk, das seine Toten nicht ehrt, / ist ihrer Opfer nicht wert.).

[39] Moka, 210-1; Mosse, Fallen Soldiers, 85-6.

[40] Mosse, Fallen Soldiers, 85.

[41] Ibid.

[42] Moka, 213 (Flandrische Erde, getränkt von deutscher Jugend Blut ist ihr wieder heilige Erde geworden.).

[43] Hüppauf, 57.

[44] Josef Magnus Wehner, Langemarck. Ein Vermächtnis (München: Albert Langen / Georg Müller, 1933), 3 (In dieser Stunde, deutsche Studenten, übernimmt euer erster Vorsitzer die Schlüssel zum Friedhof von Langemarck.... in dieser Stunde übernehmt ihr, deutsche Studenten, die Totenwache an den namenlosen Särgen deutscher Jünglinge des grossen Krieges.).

[45] Ibid., 6 (Ehe das Reich sich verhüllte, sangen die von Langemarck. Sterbende sange, Stürmende sange, sie sangen in Reihen, die Kugel im Herzen, sie sangen im Lauf, die jungen Studenten, sangen in die eigene Vernichtung hinein, von dem übermächtigen, aus tausend Geschützen brüllenden Feinde: “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles, über alles in der Welt.” ... Über mit dem Liede, mit dem sie starben, sind sie wieder auferstanden, tausendmal, und werden wieder auferstehen, tausendmal bis zum ende des Reiches, und das ist: unserer Welt.).

[46] Kaufmann, 358.

[47] Wehner, 7.

[48] Ibid., 10 (Sie nahen und grüssen uns, die Nachlebenden, die Zwielichtigen, die Zweifler, die Verzweifelten. Nun sind sie lebendiger als wir ... nun singen und sagen sie: “Pflanzt die Säulen des Reichs / In die Verwesung der Welt!”).

[49] Walther, 8 (“Langemarck” heisst die Parole, unter der wir mit Adolf Hitler vorwärtsmarschieren in eine freie, starke, glückhafte deutsche Zukunft!).

[50] Ibid., 9 (Wir, die als Freiwillige in den Krieg zogen, hatten in dem Nachkriegsstaat keinen Raum und die, die für Deutschland fielen, wurden als Opfer einer “Pathetisch hingerichteten” Lüge bedauert.).

[51] Ibid., 11 (ein Pilgerort deutscher Studenten, deutscher Mütter, Väter und Söhne).

[52] Völkischer Beobachter, November 13, 1934, 2.

[53] Quoted in Baird, 9.

[54] Ketelsen, 84.

[55] Hüppauf, 58.

[56] Walther, 12 (der Studenten und Arbeiter, Professoren und Bauern).

[57] Hüppauf, 58.

[58] Ketelsen, 85-6.

[59] Baird, 11.

[60] Hüppauf, 59-60.

[61] Ibid., 60-1.

[62] Ibid., 61.

[63] Quoted in Hüppauf, 60.

[64] Baird, 11.