SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL DEFENSE
2'57
has opened no door into a new world. The bourgeois revolution
expressed a new world·view, whose concepts applied to war and
peace, to all nations and all climes. But German fascism is a
highly specialized social form designed for one quite specific and
limited purpose: to win the war which has just been won. This
done, the intricate mechanism stands idle. How can it be adapted
to the new tasks?
This is a problem for the political analyst, but it is aJ.so a
problem for Hitler. His real difficulties have only
begun
with
victory. What profound changes must take place inside Germany,
which for seven years has cut her economy and society to the pat–
tern of discipline, sacrifice, short rations, now that she has sud–
denly been changed from the great "have-not" into the great
"have" nation? Can Germany exploit the rest of Europe as a
master-race without ranging all classes in all nations against her,
and will !!he be able to prevent the subject nations from applying
her own fascist teachings against her?
If
Hitler tries to rule
Europe through native bourgeois satraps, as in France now, will
this not aggravate the class struggle in those countries beyond all
control? What soft of economy can be set up? Will Germany try
to replace the British Empire, accepting international trade and
the gold standard?
If
so, will not the Nazi bureaucracy-now at
the pinnacle of their power, since it is
their
war, carried out against
the warnings of both the old Army caste (cf. General Fritsch) and
the big bourgeoisie (cf. Thyssen )-will they not be reluctant to
retire in favor of the business men who must dominate such an
economy? But if the present barter system and state control are
spread through Europe, will they prove to have enough dynamism
once the war aim has been removed? Above all, it must not be for–
sotten that the Nazi system was designed to unify a homogenous
Dation for a supreme war effort, and that the problem now is to
rule over and organize a dozen different nations, for whose peoples
Hitler must appear not as a deliverer but as a conqueror. "Fascism
is
not an export commodity," Hitler (or was it Mussolini?) once
said. He now faces the paradox he foresaw: Europe has been
united, but by an army whose creed is nationalism.
That the new Nazi order in Europe will be barbarous and
iiliuman, this seems clear. But that it will also be stable seems
doubtful. There will be plenty of convulsions, overturns,
losions in the years immediately ahead, plenty of "revolu-
