Nationalist Book Review

 32. The Dream of a German America In the large mansion of suburban Chicago, a wooden ox yoke hung over the fireplace.  The lady of the house followed my questioning gaze: "That came from my grandfather. He had moved across the prairie to Missouri in a covered wagon." Then she moved closer to the fire and told the story: "My mother's father was the pastor Georg Münch in Homburg an der Ohm. His superior was the grand ducal chief stable master, who told him every week what he had to preach on Sunday. He himself, however, was not a great speaker before the Lord, and when he once had to give a speech at a banquet, he began to stutter. My grandfather was understandably not very pleased that a chief stable master prescribed his sermons to him every Sunday, and so he could not refrain from making the mocking remark over the blackboard: "Our chief stable master has become a chief sound master!” Thereupon, of course, there was no more preaching. He had to take his leave

  31. The Development of No Man's Land "Before I die, I'd like one time to go through it after all!" The old Tennessee farmer pointed with his chin to the great forests. Endlessly they stretched across the mountains to the horizon. The meadows and fields of the farms were like a small lost clearing carved into the immensity of the virgin forest. Before I had come here to the Great Smoky Mountains, I would not have believed that there could still be this ocean of trees in the United States. "There are still bears in there, panthers," the white-haired man continued, "trees that nobody knows about, and medicinal plants, wonderful medicinal plants, but nobody has ever come all the way through there, not a paleface or a redskin." I felt as if the old man was talking out of his mind, as if he were conjuring up an America of the Leatherstockings that had long since sunk. But he was not deterred: "It will take at least eight days, it can also be fourt

30. The Will to Freedom and Nationality Since the discovery of America by Europe the two parts of the world were coupled like two cogwheels. At first, the drive always came from this side of the Atlantic. Even to the people of the second half of the 18th century it seemed self-evident that all impulses came from the Old World. Then, with the American Revolution, the mechanism that had hitherto been considered natural began to falter. It was as if sand had gotten between the wheels. It was not long before the gears began to turn in the opposite direction, the impetus coming from America. The ideas of the American Revolution had been the intellectual property of Europe; indeed, the European "Enlightenment" had turned a petty colonialist concern, which had originally been merely about better treatment by the mother country, into a fundamental matter of humanity. These thoughts then had an effect on Europe again in their American version and set the great French revolution rollin

 29. The New Continent Hard by the edge of chaos and anarchy, the young American state reached the saving harbor of the Constitution of 1787 and a social and state order that was once again secure. In order to keep up the fight against England, it had been necessary to call up forces that could not easily be gotten rid of after peace had been concluded. All the big words "against tyranny", "for freedom and equality" had not been meant so seriously. The frontiersmen, farmers, and artisans who fought under the star-spangled banner formed an uncomfortable, even dangerous force. Congress wanted to send them home without pay. But they did not agree to this. A troop of soldiers marched to Philadelphia, took up camp in front of the building where Congress was meeting, and demanded fulfillment of its demands at the point of the bayonet. The famous march of the "veterans" of the World War to Washington to enforce the "bonus" thus has its model in that eve

  V. The German Mass Immigration in America 28. Human Rights and the Anglo-Saxon Supremacy As it was in no small part Americans of German blood, under a German leader, who fought through the last decisive hostilities of the War of Independence, so it was a German who proclaimed the news of this in the night streets of Philadelphia, the seat of Congress. The American historian John Fiske reports in his History of the American Revolution that the German night watchman of Philadelphia proclaimed the third hour of the morning of October 24, 1781 with the words: ,,Bascht dree oglock und Corn-val-lis is da-kenl" In the following years, the old American Germanism reaches its peak: In Pennsylvania, a German-born man becomes governor. Here, as in Ohio, the German language is introduced into the schools. Publications of the state legislatures appear in German as well as English. The backlash, however, comes unexpectedly quickly. Half a century later, when German mass immigration begins, it

 27. The German Tragedy In the North, Washington had now been standing idly on the Hudson for three years, ever since the Battle of Monmouth, watching over the main British force at New York, over which Clinton, brought back from the South, had again assumed supreme command. In the meantime, a French relief corps of six thousand men had been landed in Rhode Island. After this had waited a year without exchanging a shot with the enemy, the two armies united. Their commanders-in-chief intended a joint attack on New York. Then they received word that a French fleet under Count de Grasse was approaching from the West Indies to Chesapeake Bay, just off the coast where Cornwallis lay at Yorktown. Immediately the plans were changed. It was decided to make a joint strike against the British force in Virginia. Four thousand men were left on the Hudson to guard against Clinton, and the rest of the American and French troops moved in single file to Virginia, united there with divisions of Green,