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PARTISAN REVIEW
the fighting forces: but beyond it, they were surely quite unimpor–
tant. They had no voice in politics and they did not voice the policy
of their respective governments.
Today, however, propaganda as such is no longer effective, espe–
cially if it i'> couched in nationalist and military rather than ideolog–
ical or political terms. Hatred, for example, is conspicuously absent.
The only propaganda result of the revival of the "German problem"
is therefore negative: many who have learned to discount the atrocity
stories of the last war simply refuse to believe what thi'> time is a
gruesome reality because
it
is presented in the old form of national
propaganda. The talk of the "eternal Germany" and its eternal crimes
serves only to cover Nazi Germany and its present crimes with a veil
of scepticism. When in 1939-to take one instance-the French gov–
ernment took out of storage the slogans of the First World War and
spread the 'bogey of Germany's "national character," the only visible
effect was an incredulity about the terror of the Nazis. So it was all
over Europe.
But if propaganda has lost much of its inspirational power, it
has acquired a new political function. It has become a form of politi–
cal warfare and is used to prepare public opinion for certain political
steps. Thus the posing of the "German problem," by spreading the
notion that the source of international conflict lies in the iniquities of
Germany (or Japan), has the effect of masking the actual political
issues. By identifying fascism with Germany's national character and
history people are deluded into believing that the crushing of Ger–
many is synonymous with the eradication of fascism. In this way it
becomes possible to close one's eyes to the European crisis which has
by no means been overcome and which made possible the German
conquest of the continent (with the aid of quislings and fifth column–
ists). Tb.us all attempts to identify Hitler with German history can
only lead to the gratuitous be.stowal upon Hitlerism of national respect–
ability and the sanction of a national tradition.
Whether you compare Hitler with Napoleon, as English propa–
ganda did at time..'>, or with Bismarck,
in
either case you exonerate
Hitler and make free with the historical reputations of Napoleon or
Bismarck. Napoleon, when all is said, still lives in the memory of
Europe as the. leader of armies moved by the image, however dis–
torted, of the French Revolution; Bismarck was neither better nor
worse than most of Europe's national statesmen who played the game
of power politics for the sake of the nation but whose aims were
clearly defined and clearly limited. Though he tried to expand some
of Germany's frontiers, Bismarck did not dream of annihilating any
