THE LENINIST MYTH OF IMPERIALISM
657
no more than others, wanted the thing that came to an end in the
bunker of Berlin, with the crushing of their homeland.
Unemployment, that is, the economic depression, was at the
root of the rearmament. The formula that makes unemployment the
cause of it would be a great oversimplification of the truth. The
United States had more than twelve million unemployed, yet neither
the masses nor the leaders thought of mobilizing an army or building
a war industry. The resort to a war economy was natural for the
Germans, faithful to their military traditions, and anxious to alter,
if not to supersede, the status imposed by the Treaty of Versailles.
In one way or another, a little sooner or a little later, Germany would
have demanded and obtained equality, demanded if not obtained
a revision of the treaties of peace. On the other hand, it was not
implied in the permanent elements of the German situation that a
man like Hitler and a party like the National Socialists must in–
evitably seize power. War was implied in the style and in the
ambitions of the National Socialists, not in those of the traditional
nationalists.
Once rearmament had begun, and the theory of full employ–
ment on a national basis was applied, was war inevitable? Did re–
armament lead to aggression, just as unemployment had led to rearma–
ment? Did the economic system of the Third Reich rule out the
peace or even the truce that, on the eve of the seizure of Prague, a
British trade delegation once again offered to the Berlin rulers? These
questions are abstract and so to speak unreal. Hitler and his com–
panions had always thought in political and not in economic terms.
What they wanted for their country was power, the reward of which
would be to attain the wealth of a master nation. They never asked
themselves whether they could ever call a halt from an economic
standpoint, for from 1939 on they had not had the slightest inten–
tion of doing so. Occasionally at least Hitler directly wanted war,
which he thought he alone could wage victoriously, and which he
regarded as indispensable for the realization of his schemes. The
National Socialist system itself derived from a will to empire.
Would not Hitler have been driven to attempt conquests at all
events, by force of the economic system that he had erected? This
thesis
is
ad\Canced by pseudo-Marxists who allege that they discover
in
Schachtism the same imperialist fatality they ascribe to monopoly
