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which simply is not true (unless in the sense that one values what
one hasn't got), and by pointing out the lack of a tradition of self–
government in Germany, which merely removes the difficulty back
one stage and raises the question, why did such a country fail to
develop a democratic tradition?
The fact is that Hitler came to power precisely because indus–
trial progress under capitalism does not strengthen democracy, but
on the contrary creates a situation-concentration of capital, over–
development of productivity in relation to the market, mass unem–
ployment, pressure for imperialist expansion-in which fascism
offers a real way out for the ruling class and an apparent way out
for large sections of the masses. It is true that, as Wallace says,
the "persons of wealth" who backed Hitler did not know what "the
end result" would be, but the end result is always obscure, and
such decisions are taken on the basis of immediate necessities.
And the choice in 1933 was not, as· Wallace implies, between
fascism and liberal capitalism, but between fascism and com–
munism. The German people had no great attachment to the
democratic capitalism of Weimar. The millions of unemployed
found jobs under Hitler and also, equally important, a place in
society; all classes stood to gain if Hitler's program for conquest
should succeed and Germany became the exploiter of a subjugated
Europe. There were also less tangible motives: as Erich Fromm's
Escape from Freedom
shows, fascism takes advantage of a deep
psychological craving for security which the conditions of life in
democratic-capitalist society arouse without satisfying. Fascism
offers a neurotic, that is an ersatz, solution.
If
such phenomena simply don't fit into Wallace's historical
schema, neither does the fact that for the second time in a genera–
tion the world is at war. He must load the sins of capitalism onto
the scapegoat Hitler, "the curse of the modern world," much as
Hitler loaded them onto the Jews. Instead of seeing Hitlerism as
the terrible result of capitalism's social failure, Wallace seems to
see it as a monstrosity which in some way has arisen entirely out·
side the democratic-capitalist order he is defending. "So great are
the psychological resistances to war in modern nations," writes
Harold Lasswell in
Propaganda Technique in the World War,
"that every war must appear to be a war of defense against a
menacing, murderous aggressor. There must be no ambiguity
about whom the public is to hate. The war must not be due to a
world system of conducting international affairs, nor to the stupid-
