98
PARTISAN REVIEW
they corresponded to certain fundamental experiences and even more
to certain fundamental cravings. One can say that to some extent
fascism has added a new variation to the old art of lying-the most
devilish variation-that of
lying
the truth.
The truth was the class structure of European society could no
longer function: it simply could no longer work either in its feudal
form
in
the East or in its bourgeois fornt in the West. Not only did
its intrinsic lack of justice become more obvious daily; it was con–
stantly depriving millions and millions of individuals of any class–
status whatever (through unemployment and other causes). The truth
was that the national State, once the very symbol of the sovereignty
of the people, no longer represented the people, becoming incapable
of safeguarding either its external or internal security. Whether Europe
had become too small for this form of organization or whether the
European peoples had outgrown the organization of their national
states, the truth was that they no longer behaved like nations and
could no longer be aroused by national feelings. Most of them were
unwilling to wage a national war-not even for the sake of their
independence.
This social truth of the breakdown of European class-society was
answered by the Nazis with the lie of the
Volksgemeinschaft,
based
on complicity in crime and ruled by a bureaucracy of gangsters. The
decla'3sed could sympathize with this answer. And the truth of the
decline of the national State was answered by the famous lie of the
New
Order in Europe which debased peoples into races and prepared
them for extermination. The gullibility of the European peoples–
who in so many cases let the Nazis into their countries because the
Nazi lies alluded to certain fundamental truths-has cost them an
enormous price. But they have learned at least one great lesson: that
none of the old forces which produced the maelstrom of the vacuum
is so terrible as the new force which springs from this maelstrom and
whose aim is to organize people according to the law of the maelstrom
-which is destruction itself.
3.
The European resistance movements arose among the same peo–
ples who
in
1938 had hailed the Munich agreements and in whom
the outbreak of the war aroused only-dismay. These movements came
into being only when the nationalists of all shades and the preachers
of hate had had their opportunity to turn collaborationist, so that
the almost inevitable inclination of nationalists toward fascism and
