Conservative Revolution

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The Conservative Revolution (German: Konservative Revolution), also called the German neoconservative movement^[1] or new nationalism,^[2] was a German national-conservative and ultraconservative movement that was important in Germany and Austria from 1918 to 1933, between World War I and the rise of the Nazis.

Conservative revolutionaries were involved in a cultural movement that pushed back against modern ideas and had different opinions about what Germany should be like, which historian Roger Woods calls the "conservative dilemma." They mostly turned away from traditional Christian conservatism, ideas of equality, liberalism, and democracy, as well as the cultural beliefs of the middle class. Feeling confused by the modern world, which historian Fritz Stern describes as "cultural despair," they looked back to different ideas from the 19th century.This included Friedrich Nietzsche's dislike for Christian values, democracy, and equality; anti-modern thoughts from German Romanticism; the idea of a natural community from the Völkisch movement; the Prussian tradition of strong nationalism; and their own experiences of friendship and violence during World War I.

The Conservative Revolution had a complicated relationship with Nazism from the 1920s to the early 1930s.Some scholars called it "German pre-fascism" or "non-Nazi fascism." While both had some similar ideas from earlier beliefs against Enlightenment thinking, they were not the same.The Conservative Revolutionaries did not always focus on race, as their movement included more than just the Völkisch part.They helped prepare German society for Nazi rule with their anti-democratic ideas and did not strongly oppose the Nazis coming to power.However, their writings did not have a big impact on Nazism, and when Adolf Hitler took power in 1933, the movement was controlled like the rest of society. This led to the killing of important thinker Edgar Jung by the Nazis the following year.Many members of this movement later rejected the antisemitic or totalitarian parts of the Nazi government, except for Carl Schmitt and a few others.

Since the 1960s and 1970s, the Conservative Revolution has had a big effect on the European New Right, especially in France and Germany, and through them, it has influenced the current European Identitarian movement.

1. ↑ Dupeux 1994, pp. 471–474; Woods 1996, pp. 1–2.
2. ↑ Breuer 1993, pp. 194–198; Woods 1996, pp. 1–2.