I.

Generally speaking, the concept of “politics” has conventionally been defined in terms of the state and state power. In this sense of the term, everything which originates in or impacts the state is political. All of the state’s activities (foreign policy, domestic policy, financial, cultural, social, municipal, etc.) are by nature political; political parties and political endeavors are characterized by the fact that they have influenced or seek to influence the formation of the state’s will [staatliche Willensbildung]; politics as a science is either political science or a theory of the state; politics as an art is statecraft or an “applied theory of the state.” This conception assumes that the state was the sole or at least the only essential and normal manifestation of the political world. Such naive understandings no longer hold true. Today, the people [Volk] forms the standard concept of the political unit. For this reason, today all decisive political concepts are determined by the people. The political is that which concerns the vital issues [Lebensfragen] of a people as a unified whole.

II.

The word “politics” stems from the Greek word “polis” and originally referred to everything that relates to this polis, i.e. the ancient Greek city-state, and primarily to its internal order. It was above all the dissemination of the teachings of the Greek philosophers—and two great works of state philosophy in particular: Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Politics—which occasioned the entry of the word ‘politics’ into the lexicon of European peoples. Yet ever since the formation of the modern state, the two words ‘police’ and ‘politics’ have branched off from their common linguistic root in ‘polis.’ In the absolute monarchies of the 17th and 18th centuries, ‘police’ designated an entity tasked with a domestic administrative activity aimed at the well-being of the subjects and the maintenance of order; ‘politics’ tended to be associated with cabinet politics, “high politics,” i.e. foreign policy. Thus in the 18th century, politics (as distinct from the police) was primarily foreign policy, the liberal democratic constitutional struggles of the 19th century made domestic politics an increasingly pressing issue. Famous academic textbooks on politics (such as Politik by F. C. Dahlmann (1835), Grundzüge der Politik by G. Waitz (1862), and Politik by W. Roscher (1892)) deal almost entirely with domestic constitutional issues, especially the traditional doctrine of the “forms of government” (monarchy, aristocracy and democracy). Only in Heinrich von Treitschke’s Politik (lectures held at the University of Berlin, published in 1898) is there a strong sense that the state must also assert its power [Macht] and existence on an international level, if necessary by means of war.

Thus, to the extent that the state is fractured by party struggles, domestic politics appears in everyday parlance as the actual core and content of politics in general (thus domestic politics is considered primary). In the 19th century, the German state was a military and civil service state [Beamtenstaat] in which a strong government, independent of the political parties, was offset by a form of popular representation (parliament); this state had a dual structure which was divided between prince and people; therefore, the relationship between the princely government and the parliamentary representation of the people was considered to be the key political issue at that time. In a state dominated by a plurality of firmly organized parties (in the so-called plural party state), the unitary collective will [einheitliche Gesamtwille] is the product (often even just the by-product) of the changing coalitions and compromises of these parties. In this situation, the content of domestic politics—indeed of politics in general—is any party activity directed towards a coalition or a compromise. The Weimar state from 1919 to 1933 was characteristic of such a pluralistic party state. As a result, no distinction was made between terms such as political and party-political. Politics is essentially equated with “reconciliation,” i.e. activity aimed at achieving a tolerable compromise. The very title of Adolf Hitler’s book Mein Kampf counters this way of thinking with a different concept of the political.

III.

The content of the words “politics,” “political” and “apolitical” [“unpolitisch”] is thus dependent on the fluctuations of a particular situation. It is therefore no contradiction that in his day Bismarck described politics as the “art of the possible,” while under the spell of the success of Adolf Hitler’s policies, politics could be defined as the “art of making the seemingly impossible possible.” (J. Goebbels) There has been no lack of attempts to find a specific subject area or a specific “matter” [Materie] that is political as such and can be easily distinguished from other subject areas (e.g. economics, technology, law, warfare, morality, religion). In international law, efforts have long been made to define the area of non-political arbitration and to distinguish certain designated matters as “political” issues as opposed to non-political “legal” issues. All attempts at such an enumeration have remained unsuccessful. At the two Hague Peace Conferences of 1899 and 1907, for example, a proposal was made to draw up a list of matters that were “by nature” and in every case non-political; this list ultimately only included very insignificant, almost trivial matters (e.g. assistance to the ailing who are without means), and even these were still subject to “reservations,” such as national honor or vital interests, i.e. the ineradicable reservation of the political.

Historical experience teaches us that in the conflicts between nations and parties, small and incidental matters often become points of contention and thus highly political issues. An otherwise insignificant gesture or saying, a harmless song or a badge, becomes political as soon as it enters the battle zone of warring opponents. This explains why, for example, the decrees of 2 August 1922 and 15 August 1924 prohibited not only the wearing of political insignia by members of the Reichswehr both on and off duty, but also the playing of military marches whose melodies had been used by non-military groups to sing party-political lyrics – both were deemed forms of political activity and thus forbidden. In English-speaking countries, where civil servants are prohibited from engaging in any political activity whatsoever, there are plenty of similar examples which demonstrate that in certain situations, seemingly harmless actions undertaken by a civil servant, or even his wife, can take on a political character. The centuries-long conflicts between church and state prove that there can be no a priori demarcation between what is political and what is apolitical (due to its religious character) simply by listing certain subject matters, because even “purely religious” actions can take on a political meaning and political implications.

Thus the oppositions between the political and the religious, the political and the juridical, the political and the moral, the political and the military, etc., do not contain any unequivocal lines of demarcation which can be applied in a consistent manner to every situation. However, in a period of calm and stability, these oppositions generally prove to be useful in distinguishing the political from the apolitical. However, it is worth noticing that it is possible that everything could become political. Consequently, the decision as to whether something is non-political is also a political decision given the fact that this decision may be disputed. This proves how necessary it is for every people to have a unified, decisive political leadership which can ensure the primacy of the political decision (the primacy of politics) over the division into different subject areas (economy, technology, culture, religion).

IV.

When the Weimar state deemed the army and the civil service to be “politically neutral,” what was meant was merely a party-political neutrality in the sense explained above in section II. At the time, “apolitical” [“Unpolitisch”] had the same meaning as being neutral with respect to party politics. The demand for political neutrality meant two things: firstly, the merely instrumental neutrality of a non-volitional tool, i.e., the idea that the army and the civil service should be an apparatus—blind to values and truth—for enforcing the orders of the changing coalition majorities and the respective party government, regardless of whether that government was national or international, defensive or opposed to defense. This was the meaning of the much-quoted saying of a member of the Supreme Court of the German Reich in the so-called Scheringer trial in 1930: “The army [Reichswehr] is the instrument of the Reich government.” According to this conception, being apolitical meant renouncing any political will and any political substance [politische Substanz]. Secondly, a neutral and apolitical stance could also be understood as a non-partisan [überparteilich] stance, which—given the party-political divisions of the German people at the time—preserved the idea of state unity by positing a unified state will to counter the multiplicity of party-political wills. That was the conception propagated by the army itself, and in particular by its Commander-in-Chief, the Reich President von Hindenburg.

The National Socialist Führer state has overcome the pluralistic party state and established the absolute unity of the political will. The movement organized by the NSDAP is the sole bearer of political leadership. As a result, the oppositions and ruptures that have confused both the concept of the “political” and that of the “apolitical” have been obviated. In the face of such unity and clarity of political decision there can be no such thing as apolitical or trans-political neutrality. What can be spoken of, however, is a depoliticization in the sense that the primacy of political leadership and the “monopoly of the political,” to which the NSDAP is entitled, are unconditionally recognized, thereby rendering any dispute over the political or apolitical character of an issue moot.

V.

Every politics reckons with the possibility of resistance, which it must overcome. It cannot renounce conflict [Kampf] and merely limit itself to the tactics of conciliation and sidestepping. A genuine “depoliticization” and an absolutely apolitical state could only be achieved by those who, in principle, no longer wanted to distinguish between friend and enemy. However, politics is also understood to refer to the shaping and bringing about of order and harmony within a comprehensive national whole, one which brooks no internal enmity and is thus able to determine friend and enemy on the basis of this harmonious national whole. The most fundamental question in discerning the essence of the political is not “can politics do without any form of conflict [Kampf]?” (it can in no way do so without ceasing to be politics), but rather “wherein do war and conflict find their meaning?” Does war find its meaning in itself or in the peace which is to be achieved by war?

According to the conception in which war is nothing but pure warriorism [Kriegertum], war has its meaning, its law [Recht] and its heroism in itself; man, as Ernst Jünger says, “is not built for peace.” The same is expressed by Heraclitus’ famous saying: “War is the father and king of all things; he shows some to be gods, others as men; some he makes free, others to slaves.” Such a view, as purely warlike, stands in contrast to the political view. The latter assumes that wars are waged for the sake of peace and are a means of politics. War, as Clausewitz says in On War, is a “mere instrument of politics” and “nothing but a continuation of political interaction with the intervention of other means.” This is the very conception of the essence of politics that underlies the policy of the Führer and Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler, which is directed towards both defense and honor as well as towards peace.

Translated by Hunter Bolin