It Cannot be Stormed

by Ernst von Salomon

  ‘What’s up?’ cried Hinnerk—and, ‘Light!’

  Pocket torches flashed, and the rays searched. There was a movement beneath the overturned tables.

  ‘The student!’ cried someone. There lay the student; blood streamed round him.

  ‘Bring bandages!’

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘A shot in the chest,’ said someone, wiping the blood from his face. The student moved his hand feebly, groaned and twisted under the quick hands which were trying to bind strips of white material round his chest. A noise at the door. It was opened. All the torches flashed towards it. A military policeman stood at the door, his sword pressed against his body. He lifted his hand. He said in a shaky voice:

  ‘The meeting is dissolved!’

  The pocket torches were turned. They shone on to the platform, illuminating the immense red flag which hung across it with a black swastika on a white field.

  [1] The Sturmabteilung, or storm-troopers, were the street fighters of the early days of the Nazi Party.

  [2]Iversen is quoting from the ‘Horst Wessel Lied’ — the official song of the S.A. and the N.S.D.A.P.

  X

  On the evening of the elections Ive rang up Dr. Schaffer and told him with amusement that he had just met Herr Salamander.

  Herr Salamander, one of the gentlemen who frequented Schaffer’s circle, had seemed to be in a great bustle, as though he were in a terrible hurry to get away. He said he was going to pack his trunk and take the train to Paris. He realised, after the results of the elections, that every sixth person he met in the street, on seeing his pronounced Jewish appearance, would be possessed of one wish only, the wish to kill him, and therefore there was nothing left for him to do but to flee from these insupportable conditions, and to put a frontier between himself and the country in which such things were possible. Ive asked Dr. Schaffer whether he too was packing his trunk.

  Schaffer laughed. He was not packing, he said, and had no intention of doing so.

  ‘So our friend Salamander has suddenly realised the value of frontiers. I tell you what, he continued, ‘why not come round and see me and finish off this exciting day by an evening of talk?’

  Ive agreed. A relationship had grown up between him and Schaffer, which might have been described as a cautious friendship. In spite of complete sincerity on both sides, there was still a trace of shyness, a barrier of reserve, which needed the expansive relief of complete loss of self-control to break it down, and this had a stimulating effect on their association. Ive, who had an idea that his own character was not sympathetic, was inclined to be very reticent about personal matters. The only binding absolute relationship he recognised between himself and others was that of comradeship, and, even in the case of Claus Heim, this was based not so much on affection as on their common cause. Comradeship, however, seemed to be the one thing that was impossible between himself and Schaffer, and Ive knew that this was almost entirely his fault. Just when the discovery of their similarity of opinion on essentials seemed to be bringing them together, Ive would lay stress on their differences and refuse to do anything to reconcile them. Schaffer’s point of view alone was enough to drive him into defending positions which were really not his at all; he had a way of disputing the authority of Schaffer’s views even when he shared them. Thus, on one occasion, when Schaffer said something insulting, though actually true, about the Kaiser, Ive put up a ridiculous defence, although he did not in the least disagree with him. Similarly he regarded it as almost presumptuous in Schaffer to have such a deep and sincere admiration for German art, although he could not but admit that this admiration arose from a much sounder knowledge and a profounder study of the subject than in his own case. Schaffer was very patient, and Ive often left him admitting to himself that he had behaved badly but was undoubtedly in the right, whereas Schaffer obviously thought him a nice fellow but wrong-headed. This did not prevent him from seeking Schaffer’s company, attracted chiefly by his absolute sincerity and the fact that every one of his actions, however odd it might seem, had convincing reasons behind it. In fact, as Ive discovered later, even the St. John’s goblin was the outcome of an extremely thorough and complicated intellectual process, in which solid research into folk-lore, child psychology, and the laws of creative art formed important stages, without however adding to the homunculus’s diminutive stature.

  Ive found Dr. Schaffer at his desk looking at a collection of old prints.

  ‘We must not succumb to the general hysteria,’ he said, putting the prints carefully away into their portfolio. ‘If this election should really prove to be a historical event it will certainly be an event of very doubtful value.’

  ‘Make no mistake,’ said Ive, ‘even supposing the Movement should fall to pieces under the weight of our disappointed hopes, one thing is certain, whatever rises from its ruins, it won’t be anything that has ever existed before.’

  ‘Why,’ asked Schaffer, ‘do you even mention the possibility of this Movement falling to pieces?’

  Ive thought a moment. Then he said: ‘It is understandable that you—as a Jew—are obliged to oppose the Movement; but what is to prevent my joining it unconditionally? You may well be anxious, even though you won’t admit it, but how much more reason have I to be anxious, when I see the Movement blasting with its rapid explosions everything that I consider right and necessary and true, everything for which I have been fighting; and the goal which has been my ardent dream, not transformed into reality, but reduced to a hollow, vulgar formula? When I see that, even though its possibilities may be infinite, it is pursuing a path whose landmarks I should on no account wish to see taken as indications of the future? When I see that all the values which I acknowledge are having their deep and binding significance destroyed by the Movement, or by those who have made it their public duty to represent it; that the only values which make life worth while are being corrupted and stultified—for instance, the nation?’

  ‘I admit that I am anxious, but why should you think it is because I am a Jew?’ said Dr. Schaffer. ‘Why shouldn’t it be for the sake of the only values that make life worth while; for instance, the nation? Do not misunderstand me,’ he added quickly, ‘I have been a Jew, today I am a German, but certainly not in the dull manner of Liberalism, which changes its nationality in order to make existence easier, making this expedient change the basis of a comfortable principle, a principle which represents all nations, if not as similar, yet as equal, and therefore interchangeable, and by this false interpretation destroys the principle of nationality. If I have been a Jew, and am today a German, it is because I recognise the principle of nationality, that is, because I can only live as a responsible member of a nation.’

  ‘What do you understand by the term nation?’ asked Ive.

  Dr. Schaffer looked round at him, and said slowly: ‘I can only interpret the term nation as the sovereign will of the people endowed with power and form.’

  ‘I,’ said Ive, ‘cannot understand the conception nation at all. It is simply something that is there making a demand, a compelling cry of the blood.’

  ‘Of the mind,’ said Schaffer. ‘If it were merely a question of race, the choice would be easy. I am not so foolish as to deny the significance of race. For the very reason, that my origins are Jewish I could not do that without betraying my principles. But in the question of nationality race is only a supplementary factor.’

  ‘If,’ said Ive, ‘class-consciousness is creating the social revolution, with the object of bringing class into power, will it not be race-consciousness that will create the national revolution?’

  ‘With the object of bringing race into power? But the social revolution does away with classes through the supremacy of one. That is its object. Is the national revolution to do away with other races?’ asked Schaffer, and went on: ‘That would be only in the last resort. I by no means minimise the importance of last resorts, but I cannot wait for a German Genghis Khan. You and I are responsible for what h
as to happen. And it is ideas alone which can create a revolution.’

  ‘It is revolutions that create ideas,’ said Ive. ‘War is the father of all things, and civil war is the mother. I cannot wait for ideas. Thoughts may be winged, but you must destroy the cage if they are to fly.’

  Schaffer gave Ive a cautious look. ‘Destruction,’ he said, ‘is an evasion and an easy one, for it brings pleasure with it. I am thus far no longer a Jew, that I might describe this painful pleasure simply as a goyim pleasure. I recognise the significance of destruction, but I do not at the present moment see its practical necessity.’

  ‘Are you one of those,’ asked Ive, ‘who demand a fifty-one percent of certainty of success?’

  ‘A hundred percent certainty,’ said Schaffer, ‘for it is the risks of revolution that destroy its value as an act of violence. Don’t imagine that I wish entirely to repudiate the Terror as a means. It lightens the task, and I cannot conceive how my own personal revolutionary motto could be more easily, more quickly, and more certainly fulfilled than by the Terror: “Down with arteriosclerosis as the sole criterion of capacity.” But the means is not the end, the Terror is not the revolution, the conclusion is not the premise. Above all, revolution is an intellectual change. Without the ideas which were discussed in the salons of the French aristocracy before 1789 there would have been no attack on the Bastille, without Mirabeau no Robespierre, without Marx no Lenin. The revolution is there with its intellectual nucleus, the crystallisation of the change which is justified by the promulgation of ideas, by the new outlook. This nucleus alone is capable of deciding the degree of destruction necessary to attain the goal.’

  ‘The question is,’ said Ive, ‘whether it is to be our ambition to produce the only hygienically justifiable revolution in history. The question is whether, deprived of its elemental quality, it will not be defrauded of its actual significance. You can demonstrate to a prisoner the practical impossibility of escaping from prison. But that will not prevent him from rattling at his bars. I know that it is impossible to attack tanks with walking-sticks. But if we have not the courage to attack tanks with walking-sticks, are not prepared to do it at any moment, we have no right to talk of revolution.’

  ‘We have no right to talk of revolution,’ said Schaffer, ‘so don’t—let’s do it. Everybody calls himself a revolutionary. Since I discovered that there was even a League of Revolutionary Pacifists, I have given up calling myself a revolutionary; otherwise I should find myself in too embarrassing company.’

  ‘You might call that hiding your head in the sand on aesthetic grounds,’ said Ive, laughing. ‘In the Third Reich. . .’

  ‘In the Third Reich we two will probably meet again on the same sand heap,’ said Schaffer.

  Ive shrugged his shoulders. ‘Possibly,’ he said. ‘But that does not seem to me to be a reason for escaping from the prisons of the bourgeoisie in order to settle down comfortably in their dungeons. You and I are responsible for what has to happen. How do you justify your responsibility?’

  ‘I am a German for the sake of the principle of nationality,’ said Schaffer slowly. ‘This faces me with responsibility; I justify it by striving to carry out the only task, the only revolutionary task if you will, which can exist today: to co-operate in the formation of an intellectual aristocracy which will find a way out of the complete planlessness of the German position.’;

  ‘The nation as the sovereign will of the people, that was it, wasn’t it?’ said Ive. ‘Then we might as well rest content with parliamentary democracy. Why don’t you stand for the Reichstag, sir?’

  Schaffer leaned back. He closed his eyes.

  Ive gazed at his pale, yellowish face, the bumpy forehead, with its fringe of thick, wiry black hair, the pointed nose, the full-lipped mouth, the slightly receding chin, blueshadowed. He looks very Jewish, he thought to himself, and was suddenly overcome with an uneasy feeling of compassion that he would not for the world have owned to anyone.

  Schaffer said quietly: ‘We shall never get any further like this. In the end, the only common ground between people is faith. And even there, every individual has his own kind of faith. Every one finds his own way to objective conception, to absolute truth. Your faith is the result of strong feeling. But do not imagine that mine, which is the result of intellectual unrest, of sincere questioning, is any the less ardent, any the less violent, subject to claims any less urgent, or to less exigent responsibilities.’

  ‘Put it to yourself,’ said Ive, ‘do not you love the principle of nationality more than you love the nation?‘

  Schaffer replied, ‘I believe in the principle of nationality, therefore I must love the nation—the nation which does not yet exist, which we still have to create. I find myself in the strange situation in relation to you,’ he said, ‘of having to defend National Socialism. By its mere existence, it has forced people to recognise the nation, if not in principle, at any rate as an actuality. The mistake lies in the overemphasis of the fact that it is an actuality which has yet to be created. It is this that makes me anxious: the failure to realise that a beginning has been made, preposterous, but at the same time a beginning that must be universally recognised, National Socialists dream of a Third Reich, and so they are at liberty, as in the case of the various Internationals, to label every intermediate step Reich 4A or 5B, as the case may be.’

  He raised his hand.

  ‘Let me go on,’ he said. ‘You know that the convert is always stricter about questions of religion than the man brought up in the faith. I am a convert to nationalism. I have tried, as a Jew, to have faith. I have ventured, and I have to venture, on to the thorny path through the thicket. Men who live on a frontier do not see half, they see double—as it were stereoscopically. They can never shirk decision without surrendering themselves from the national point of view. It is an intellectual decision. I have decided. I am more insistent about the question, because I see it as a more urgent issue. The road I am travelling is a private one, I know, but the prospect is not private. I have decided to be German. Why? I love French literature, English will-to-power, Russian breadth, Chinese ethics, German depth; you might, therefore, say that I love all these things as visions, but I see the fulfilment in German nationalism. I see the meaning of the world here’—a note of distress came into his voice—‘after failing to find it in Judaism.’

  ‘If National Socialism were consistent,’ he continued, ‘it would realise that nationalism is a Jewish discovery. Moses was the first nationalist, and the ten commandments are repeated in the German criminal code. It is in no sense of cheap triumph that I make this apt comparison. The fact remains that the first manifestation of Judaism, that of the tribe of Israel from Mount Sinai, contains in it all the elements of nationalism, expresses the sum of the experiences of a nation in race and history, embraces its whole desire for self-expression, its culture, and, over and above all these, the element which is most important in developing national feeling, the will-to-power, which, in the knowledge of its unique individuality, reaches out towards a God, an only God, the God that has made this nation his chosen people, to rule so that in his name it may redeem. It is the covenant between a people and God that makes it a nation.’

  The Covenant and its law:

  ‘Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed,

  and keep my covenant,

  then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me

  above all people:

  for all the earth is mine:

  And ye shall be unto me

  a kingdom of priests

  and a holy nation.’

  Schaffer rose and walked up and down.

  ‘Two thousand, and again two thousand years!’ he said. ‘The blockheads should have the word nation torn out of their impudent mouths.’

  ‘They should!’ said Ive. ‘Who has given you the right to this formula, what siren’s voice has lured you from the covenant?’

  ‘Anti-Semite?’ asked Schaffer.

  Ive replied:
‘The Jew today is the most visible defender of the Liberal stronghold. I attack him because I want to see the stronghold stormed.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Schaffer. ‘The Liberal Jew is the most dangerous enemy of Judaism itself. You as well as I have the right to attack him so long as Judaism is not prepared to whistle him back to his responsibilities. And it is this that has made me despair of Judaism: that it has failed in its will to power; that it has complacently given way where, in all the circumstances, it should have resisted—in the intellectual field; that it does not recognise its hour, does not stand up to bear witness once more, once again to cast down the tables of the law; that it is allowing its power to be broken, after allowing its form to be broken. This and much more. I have not lightly cut myself off; I know what is going on in Judaism today, and particularly in Germany, where the atmosphere has not been propitious to narrow adherence to the law as in the East, nor to an expansion of the law as in the West. I know all about the signs and wonders, about Herzl and Buber; I know that today Judaism also has been caught by the tumultuous waves of the constructive ideal. I know, too, that the vessel is broken, the spiritual form, the theocracy; I know, too, that the foundations are not there for a new development—have not yet been renewed—a calm, deep faith springing up from the depths of the soil; I know, too, that all that Judaism has to win nationally will, at the best, be a matter of pleading, of begging, but not of conquest. I have cut myself off because I have lost my faith; because I can no longer find the organised community. The prophets are silent for me now, when Goethe speaks. I cannot rejoice over it, nor can I bemoan it; it is so. Four thousand years! In yet another thousand years, perhaps! Let him who can believe, have patience and experience in himself the Renaissance of which he dreams. This is the hour of the German nation. The intellectual riches which I sought in Judaism, in the tradition of my people, I have discovered fuller and more alive— and younger—in the German nation.’