44
PARTISAN REVIEW
transforms himself. It was a collective transformation of this sort
that took place in Germany after 1925. Their difficulties, their
unfavorable contacts with reality, produced in the parties of the
extreme left a masochistic inversion of which fascism took advan–
tage. Hitler, in calling for sadistic behavior, at the same time and
without realizing it called for masochistic behavior on the part of
the Socialists and the Communists. It is only by this that we can
explain how hundreds of thousands of Germans, in spite of the fact
that they felt themselves being pushed irresistibly towards the left,
did nothing at all to resist Hitler. What they unconsciously asked
of the parties of the extreme left was not to lead them to com–
munism, but to lead them to fascism, for in the bottom of their
hearts what they wanted was not power, but prison, not to rule, but
to suffer.
Hitler incarnates to a greater degree, probably, than any one
before him the love of an entire people. In the Third Reich too
many men preoccupy themselves with what HE feels, too many
men want HIM to love them, too many men want HIM to hate
them. Hitler is the synthesis of two contradictory situations, each
symbolised by the behavior of two men, two veritably brother
enemies, Goering and Thaelmann. As long as Thaelmann endures
his sufferings there will be men
in
Germany who feel themselves
obliged to suffer too.
It
is the terrible example of Christ crucified,
of whom St. Paul made a masochistic symbol. To go to prison in
order to suffer as much as Thaelmann, and to excite Hitler's hatred,
is the pattern of the German Communist psychosis; that of the
German fascist phychosis is to serve Hitler as well as Goering does.
The antithetical movements of these two social psychoses are com–
plete, and they have made of the Third Reich what it is today: the
most dangerous of all centers of the self-destructive forces of
humanity.
The rein£orcement of the sadistic current where the sadistic
dominant already exists, and the reversing of the current in favor
of sadism where, as in Germany, the masochistic inversion has
occurred-these are perhaps the most pressing of all tasks for those
who struggle for a reawakening of revolutionary forces in the heart
of the working class. It is sad, but there is no use hiding the facts:
the revolutionary of the fascist or Stalinist epoch knows no longer
what he should love. The violent desire for a transformation awak-
