Stephan Malinowski. Nazis and Nobles: The History of a Misalliance.

Abstract

The relationship between Nazism and the German aristocracy tends to be drawn in one of two ways, each verging on caricature—lionization of the heroic, noble resistance fighters behind the July bomb plot, or caustic castigation of the be-monocled Junkers and the Cabinet of Barons who smoothed Hitler’s road to power. Stephan Malinowski’s Nazis and Nobles steers an admirably nuanced middle way between these simplistic poles of wholesale absolution or demonization. The key question Malinowski seeks to answer throughout the book runs as follows: How could a noble caste that valued tradition and aristocratic leadership so highly join forces socially and ideologically with a lower middle-class, ostensibly egalitarian far-right movement? Each of the work’s five chapters then addresses a different piece of this puzzle. The first chapter, “Defining ‘Nobility,’” explores various aspects of the German aristocratic habitus: concern for one’s land, leadership, bloodlines, praise of the countryside, and contempt for intellectualism, capitalism, and the toxicity of urban living, including middle-class wealth and ostentation. These latter bugbears were associated above all with antisemitic stereotypes and exaggerated distaste for nouveaux riches or so-called “clinking goats” (Klirrziegen), bourgeois women who dared to adorn themselves with ostentatious jewelry. All of these ideological elements could potentially be redefined in a völkisch vein even if their roots lay in mainstream conservative rather than radical right-wing soil. Chapter 2, “The Apocalypse and Beyond,” then reveals the extent to which many aristocrats saw Germany’s “November Revolution” in 1918 as heralding the utter collapse of their world of wealth and privilege, as well as rendering monarchism moot after Kaiser Wilhelm’s “shameful” flight to the Netherlands. Many aristocrats even believed that Wilhelm should have been forced to die “honourably” at the enemy’s hands, with plans having been made toward the war’s end to effect this very eventuality. The dissolution of royal courts, Upper Houses, the Army (a preferred haunt for lesser noble sons of little brain), and aristocratic bodies such as the Prussian Heraldry Office, along with the swift descent of many nobles into what they considered to be utter penury (some were “forced” into work as tutors or taxi-drivers) led to increasing radicalization, especially among the genuinely impoverished ranks of the Prussian minor nobility. For every noble who might frown at a classified ad such as “Stony-broke devil, aristocrat, seeks filthy rich angel for marriage,” vowing to cast its author into social darkness, there were others who might seek to follow its lead. The fates of female aristocrats are tellingly delineated too: A significant number became increasingly politicized in tandem with their enforced independence from familial expectations and the certainties of arranged marriage.