[553] Let's go into some of these examples. Not many of you are able even to understand why a man like Hitler^a could become ultimate authority^b for a whole nation of comparatively educated people. He COULD because of an ideology^c in which the participation in this nation was a participation in a sacramental unity^d. I come back to these points later when we speak about conformism, and also

politics. I had a friend,* perhaps the most intelligent professor of theology---we studied together--- and when the Nazis^e came I turned against them and he turned for them. This was an act which for me was hard to understand, but in his very first book, which appeared already in the year 1933, when Hitler^f came to power, he explained it, and his explanation was of real theological weight and made him the Nazi theologian for the whole period, namely he identified the national community with a sacramental community. For him, the blood community of the nation had sacramental character. And now he construed Hitler^g as the voice of God which has the same ultimate authority as the Bible for orthodox Protestants, and the Pope has for orthodox Catholics. The basis was a religious one. And in the moment in which you accept the identity of nation (from the point of view of blood, especially, as he did) and sacramental community, then it is quite possible to establish

an authority in principle, namely he through whom the unconscious meaning of this nation speaks, and voice-of-God then means that this unconscious meaning has an ultimate dimension. So we have here an authority which cannot be criticized any more because it has sacramental consecration. Now let's take the Protestants. Of course this ultimate authority^h broke down when it was clear that it was a demonic ⁱseduction of the German people into a self-destructive self-elevation ------------------- *Emanuel Hirsch ^j---Ed.