THE "GERMAN PROBLEM"
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of the rival nations. He agreed reluctantly to the incorporation of
Lorraine into the Reich because of Moltke's "strategical reasons";
but he did not want foreign splinters within the German frontiers and
had not the slightest ambition to rule foreign peoples as subject races.
What is true of German political history is even more true of
the spiritual roots attributed to Nazism. Nazism owes nothing to any
part•of the Western tradition, be it German or not, Catholic or Prote–
stant, Christian, Greek or Roman. Whether we like Thomas Aquinas
or Machiavelli or Luther or Kant or Hegel or Nietzsche-the list
may be prolonged indefinitely as even a cursory glance at the litera–
ture of the "German problem" will reveal-they have not the least
responsibility for what is happening in the extermination camps.
Ideologically speaking, Nazism begins with no traditional basis at all,
and it would be better to realize the danger of this radical negation
of any tradition, which was the main feature of Nazism from the
beginning (though not of Fascism
in
its first Italian stages). It was
after all the Nazis themselves who were the first to surround their
utter emptiness with the smoke-screen of learned interpretations. Most
of the philosophers at present slandered by the over-zealous experts
of the "German problem" have long been claimed by the Nazis as
their own-not because the Nazis cared about respectability but
simply because they realized that there is no better hiding-place than
the great playground of history and no better bodyguard . than the
children of that playground, the easily employed and easily deluded
"experts."
The very monstrosities of the Nazi regime should have warned
us that we are dealing here with something inexplicable even by
reference to the worst periods of history. For never, neither in ancient
nor medieval nor modern history, did destruction become a well–
formulated program or its execution a highly organized, bureaucra–
tized and systematized process. It is true that militarism has a rela–
tion to the efficiency of the Nazi war machine and that imperialism
has much to do with its ideology. But to approach Nazism you have
to empty militarism of all its inherited warrior's virtues and imperial–
ism of all its inherent dreams of empire-building, such as the "white
man's burden." In other words, one may easily find certain trends
in
modem political life which in themselves point toward fascism and
certain classes which are more easily won and more easily deceived
than others-but all must change their basic functions in society
before Nazism can actually make use of them. Before the war is
over the German military caste, certainly one of the most disgusting
institutions, ridden by stupid arrogance and an upstart tradition,
