On the basis of two of Litt's papers in which in the early 1930 ies he criticised Nazism, I have summarized his criticism in two point's. Litt's argument in “University and Politics” (“Universität und Politik”) can be summed up as follows :
1. Political interference with science tends to destroy it because it infringes on the autonomy of science.
2. A university should be firmly grounded in its function as a research institution ; by doing so it can best serve the state. In addition, I interpret the term “hohe Schule des Geistes” as an expression symbolic of the above-mentioned outlook on the university.
Next, I discuss the significance of the paper “The Position of the Mental Sciences in the National Socialist State” (“Die Stellung der Geisteswissenschaften im national-sozialistischen Staate”) from the viewpoint of criticism against Nazism.
1. Investigating the problem from many different angles it demonstrates that it is wrong for science to serve Nazism.
2. It proves that the attempt of ethnology to explain history by means of the concept of race is fundamentally impossible.
3. It divides the way Nazis deal with history into three different kinds and points out that each of them contains internal contradictions as well as contradictions with each other.
By way of conclusion, I maintain that Litt's peculiar method of criticism pointing at the logical weakness of Nazism amounts to an indirect verdict of Nazism as such.
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