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.I then lived for two and a half years in Munich […].This was when I first led an intelligence section and fought against separatist plots.51The enemies – Communists and separatists – here described as ‘vermin’ and ‘filth’; the defensive dimension of the combat; Höhn’s extreme youth at the time he started to join the ‘struggle’ – all these show how the culture of war born from 1914–18 had been preserved intact.In his Lebensläufe of the 1930s, Werner Best also highlights his varied activities during the ‘time of troubles’.His precocious militancy, his participation in the founding of the Jungnational Partei of Mainz, and his activism in the Deutsche Hochschulring are all detailed with the greatest care.The fact remains that he continues to keep silent about the images and representations that dictated this militancy.It is in a tract of the Deutsche Hochschulring published at the time of the French invasion of the Rhineland that Best most clearly reveals his deeper motivations:Komilitonen [comrades]! We are again at war.The enemy is in the heart of Germany […] Every French and every Belgian person is our enemy, a member of a people that has set itself above all law and all morality.Every German who gives them the least support, tolerates them in his house, treats them on equal terms, will be struck down by the Vehme [a secret organization that organized political assassinations].52The image of war is here quite explicitly placed at the heart of the author’s representations.Franco-Belgian intervention, motivated by financial considerations,53 is seen as an invasion without any prior declaration of war.The tract depicts an enemy behaving treacherously, which justifies the assertion that it has ‘set itself above all law and all morality’.Best finally launches an appeal for resistance which, under these auspices, can only be an out-and-out fight.He reveals what is at stake here in two articles that were published in a Rhineland newspaper:However, the resolution to hold firm is present.But the Rhineland cannot succeed in this unless it is backed by a brave and resolute Reich.Defeatists should be brought before a war tribunal, or be struck down by the Vehme, since they are stabbing our western front in the back as it fights on […].On 4 February, the French entered Baden.Their aim is to divide Germany into three parts, one, the biggest possible, in the west under a French protectorate, a south under French influence, and a Prussian remainder, destined for the Poles to gobble up.The end of the world war is taking place at this moment.We need to throw our last strength into it – our physical strength but, even more, our moral strength.54The issues at stake in this combat were vital, since it was a matter of fighting off a French army hell-bent on annihilating Germany.In the view of the student Best, partitioning Germany into multiple zones of influence would mean the end of Germany as a state and as a nation.At the beginning of the text quoted below, the activist expresses the risk of his nation completely disappearing in more precise and explicit terms:We are now confronted by an ambitious French plan of extermination [Vernichtungsplan].Our government, thank God, is resolved to resist.It is doing only what is possible and thinkable.The German people, too, lives with the same desire.Social democracy fears national union in any case and sabotages it wherever it can.We need now to clarify for our people the consequences and the ruthless nature of the French extermination plan.Resistance and combat, or annihilation [Vernichtung] without mercy! For us, more than ever, one thing alone counts: to be ready.Nothing more need be said.55Faced with what he thinks is the final phase of a concerted plan, Best vividly describes the ultimate aims of the French invasion.The Akademiker who became involved in the local militias or the Freikörper very largely internalized these representations.56 This quasi-apocalyptic anguish surely forms the kernel of the images and representations that dictated the behaviour of the members of our group during this time of troubles.And it was doubtless also at the heart of the culture of war that coalesced during the great conflagration of 1914–18.The book Sperrfeuer um Deutschland (Barrage Around Germany), by Werner Beumelberg, which saw the Great War as a ‘decisive combat’ against the ‘desire for annihilation’ of the Entente Cordiale, sets the tone for this – which explains its huge sales figures between 1929 and 1941.57The shaping of a belief in the more or less imminent disappearance of Germany, as a state, of course, but also as a biological entity, thus seems, in the final analysis, to have lain at the heart of representations of the Great War and the ‘time of troubles’.This was doubtless the very essence of the initial traumatic experience of the members of our group, an experience so painful that it made it practically impossible for them to describe their childhoods at all.Once they had become adults, they could rekindle their wartime lives by means of the Abwehrkampf, or defensive struggle, and thus manage at least partly to objectify it.The intensity of their perception of war seems to have comprised a crucial aspect of the choices made by the Akademiker.Chapter 2Constructing networksPlaces to studyOnce their secondary studies had come to a conclusion with the Abitur, or school-leaving exam, future SS intellectuals entered university and were faced with the need for geographical mobility.(This is actually the norm in German universities.) The need to change one’s residence can be proved quite empirically from the Lebensläufe composed by SS intellectuals at the time they were recruited.Out of some eighty cases, seventy-two studied in at least two universities; out of the eight remaining cases, only three stayed in their home towns.This mobility is fostered by the extreme decentralization of German space and the great number of universities in the Germanic world.It is quite common to see German students emigrating to Graz, Innsbruck and even Prague.1 This mobility is even made obligatory in the Promotionsordnungen (the rules and regulations on doctoral studies).These rules stipulate that students must have studied at a minimum of two universities before taking a doctorate.2The recurrent appearance of a certain number of major universities in the CVs of future SS intellectuals is striking – Leipzig, Munich, Göttingen and Heidelberg in particular.Nearly 80 per cent attended these universities.Only one of them, Leipzig, could draw on a local pool of students [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]