286 FINAL YEARS AND IMMORTALITY
library, as we have seen, and likewise the revealing diaries of the staff
officer Gaudi were published only in extract. It was therefore no
coincidence that Frederick's Expose du Gouvernement Prussien
(1776) slipped into print in the revolutionary year of 1848: 'At that
time people probably had little consideration or respect for the kind of
objections which, only a few years earlier, had appeared quite
dangerous and insurmountable' (Hintze, 1919, 5). This comment
refers to the decision which had been taken in 1843, on the advice of
Ranke and Alexander von Humboldt, not to publish the two Testa-
ments Politiques. In the second half of the century, when order had
been re-established, only a few scholars of unimpeachable loyalty
were allowed to make verbatim notes of the sensitive 'Reveries
Politiques' of the Testament of 1752, and the complete documents
appeared in a complete edition only in the year 1920, which again
coincided with a period of political upheaval.
After the collapse of the old Western civilisation in 1918, the
record of Frederick was appropriated or rejected by ideologies and
racialisms without overmuch regard for the realities of the eigh-
teenth century. Old Fritz, or rather a certain vision of Old Fritz, was
undoubtedly incorporated into the heart of National Socialism. In
Mein Kampf Hitler expressed his admiration for the old Prussian
sense of discipline, and he and his followers hailed Prussia as the germ
cell of the new order. The old Holy Roman Empire and Austria had
been too weak to strike deep roots, but Frederick was seen as the man
who re-founded the Reich, laying the foundation on which Bismarck
and Hitler could build (Baeumler, 1944, 44). 'Therein resides the
importance of Frederick in historical perspective. We accordingly
remember him with veneration. We date the construction of the
Third Reich from the ceremony in the Potsdam Garrison Church on 21
March 1933, and we lead the Hitler Youth every year to the sarcopha-
gus of the great king' (Wolfslast, 1941, 165).
The deposed Kaiser telegraphed to Hitler from Doom, in the
triumphal year of 1940: 'The Anthem of Leuthen is resounding in
every German heart' (Augstein, 1968, 8). Likewise in the catastrophe
of 1945 Josef Goebbels could turn to Carlyle and draw encouragement
from the description of how Frederick's Prussia was repeatedly res-
cued from the blackest disasters: 'Why should we not also pin our
hopes on a similarly miraculous transformation in affairs?' (Mittenz-
wei, 1979, 211).
It is historically absurd to ask what Frederick would have made
of the Third Reich, otherwise we would have imagined his surprise at
the Danubian accents of the Fiihrer, or the physical dangers he might
have undergone from his association with Masons and Hebrews. The
monarch who slipped into Berlin by a figurative back door in 1763