The World Beyond Hitler

When I wrote Last and First Men, I missed Hitler. I mention it partly as a warning. We may think that we can see the broad movement of events, and yet something may appear which we have wholly failed to foresee. There will certainly be surprises ahead of us. Nevertheless, we must try to discover what sort of world may lie beyond Hitler.

This war is a much greater turning point than the last war. After the last war we could still muddle along much as before. We could return to the old power politics and to an unplanned economy. After this war, I should say, there can be no such return. There must be either change or regression. Mechanisation has gone further. The world has become smaller and far more closely knit.

What, then, is the meaning of Hitler? He is not a freakish phenomenon. Something of his kind was, in the circumstances, inevitable. Consider Germany after the last war: the military defeat of a nation intensely proud of the Reich; economic crisis; and the sense that Germany had been let down by the democracies. These things produced a kind of social inferiority neurosis. Along with it there was a clear perception of the worst side of our so-called civilisation. There was a real sense that liberal culture had somehow gone wrong, and a disgust with liberalism, Christianity, materialism and rationality.

Then Hitler appeared: a military failure, an artistic failure and a social failure, but a man of boundless ambition. He sensed the prevailing subconscious disillusion. He produced a new myth to express it. Against freedom he set the subjection of the individual. Against a sham internationalism he set the cult of race. Against what seemed to be a sham doctrine of love he set the cult of might. Against rationalism he set unreason. He added a pseudo-mysticism and a cult of death, teaching that individuals must sacrifice themselves. And he provided a scapegoat—the Jews.

Hitler clicked with Germany—with something in the German subconscious. Haffner has remarked upon the strange fact that Germans laughed at Hitler and yet followed him. The case of Italy was similar. Nor was this tendency confined to Germany and Italy. There has been a world-wide Fascist tendency.

We must therefore attempt an analysis of a "liberal" civilisation. Its outstanding characteristic has been insincerity—the contradiction between its professed principles and its actual conduct. In theory, it promised universal happiness through laissez-faire. It professed internationalism, the rule of reason, free speech and human brotherhood. In actuality, it produced slums, unemployment and inequality. It practised nationalism and imperialism. It accepted the fiction of "economic man" and tolerated exploitation. It allowed individualism to go unchecked. The result may be summed up under three heads: nationalism, commercial exploitation and materialism.

How, then, are we to meet Hitler’s challenge? Military resistance is necessary, but it is not enough. Nazism draws its strength from an idea. It can be defeated permanently only with an idea. We must have something positive to fight for: a new order in Europe and in the world, and a new cultural ideal. That ideal cannot be liberal individualism. Nor can it be Nazism. What is needed is a new synthesis.

Let us consider the changes of mental climate—the large movement of culture and, in particular, of its values. The first phase is liberal democracy. It inherited Christian morality—brotherhood, freedom and the fulfilment of the individual—but it increasingly lacked any sanction for that morality. Christian brotherhood was associated with rationalism; freedom with materialism. Individual fulfilment came to mean legally protected private enterprise, and the human being was more and more conceived as economic man.

Secondly, socialism stressed the community. It nevertheless kept the liberal values and the Christian ideal of brotherhood. Thirdly, Marxian Communism accepted the conception of economic man. It disparaged the individual and exalted society. It treated morality as wholly socially conditioned. At the same time it tried to preserve certain Christian values; but in vain.

Fourthly, Italian Fascism denied economic man and preached self-abnegation. It substituted a cult of the State. Fifthly, Nazism denied not merely economic man but love itself. Its appeal was neurotic. It stressed virility and ruthlessness; it was pseudo-mystical; and it produced what one may call an amoral morality. Right conduct was simply conduct which served the race.

None of these phases gives us what we need. A sixth phase is therefore needed—a new synthesis.

We come now to federalism. Its aims are, first, to prevent war; secondly, to turn human energy away from armaments and toward prosperity and the fulfilment of human capacity; and thirdly, to create an instrument of world-planning.

There seem to be three main causes of war. The first is the armed independence of national states. The second is economic imperialism—the rivalry for markets. The third is tribalistic passion. Federalism deals with the first cause by abolishing armed nationalism. It establishes a supranational government, a supranational police force, supranational citizenship and supranational law.

Federalism might also abolish economic imperialism. Indeed, if it does not do so, federalism will not work. And federalism educates men out of tribalism, because it must be based on a will for intertribal co-operation and upon the growth of a loyalty which transcends the tribe.

What machinery would be required? It must be based on like-mindedness about social aims. There must be some form of dual vote, a hierarchy of governments and a common citizenship. The federal authority must control foreign policy, armaments and currency. It must also control economic organisation. How far it must control law, justice and education is a more difficult question.

Several possible federations suggest themselves. There might be a federation of the United States, Britain and the Dominions; or a European federation; or a federation of the democracies of the world; or a federation of man.

There are three great problems, and all three are interconnected. The first is the creation of a supranational order—federalism. The second is social harmony through creative social planning. The third is the clarification of our fundamental values.

Federalism is an intermediate form between a completely unitary world-state and the absolute sovereignty of national states. It means a government standing over the national governments. It involves common citizenship and dual voting: men must participate both in their own national or regional community and in the wider federal community. The federal authority must control common affairs, especially foreign policy and armaments.

Economic planning raises more difficult questions. Would a federation require free trade? Would it require socialism? Whether, and how far, economic planning must be federal remains a real question. There must also be a sufficient degree of like-mindedness about social ideals. Where the members of a federation seek fundamentally incompatible forms of society, disruption is threatened.

But this brings us to the question of the good. I should put the matter in this way. Good is, first, what a developed mind cannot but desire when it knows the relevant facts and is not perverted. And what it desires, I suggest, is the fulfilment of individual human capacity.

We come now to creative social planning and the planned economy. Some federal purists say that federalism alone is enough: end war, and the rest will follow. Some socialists put the matter in the reverse order: establish socialism first and then federate. They argue that capitalist states are essentially cannibals.

The solution, I think, is that the federal government itself must possess economic control. It must be able to prevent autarky and economic imperialism. Currencies must be assimilated.

But merely negative control is not enough. Positive planning is needed—planning for plenty and for human welfare. Stalin and Hitler have taught us as much. A sponge may remain a loose association of comparatively independent parts, but a mammal requires an intricate organisation of the whole. Our world, through modern industry and communication, has ceased to be sponge-like and has become much more like the integrated organism. World-economic organisation is now vital.

There is, of course, a grave danger to freedom. Planning may produce a robot world or a dictatorship. Nazism has grasped the need for planning but has lost the goal of planning. The democracies retain at least the rudiments of the proper goal, but they dare not plan creatively—or they are prevented from doing so by an effete ruling class.

We therefore need a restatement of values: a new democratic ideal and a new democratic theory. The aim must be to make the most of individuals as knowers, feelers and strivers. This requires equality of opportunity, equality of freedom and equality of sacrifice.

We do accept the duty of sacrifice, when sacrifice is really needed and when we can trust the god to which the sacrifice is offered. Indeed, human beings need the call to sacrifice. But the sacrifice must be voluntary, open-eyed and occasional—not imposed, blind and perpetual. If our rulers manifestly care for our freedom, we will sacrifice our freedom at their bidding.

Finally, there must be a rediscovery of the good. Catholics say that the Church interprets God’s will. Puritans appeal to the individual conscience. Scientists have said that there is no morality—only the greatest pleasure; and the liberals, perhaps, say much the same. Socialists say that community is good. Communists say that "good" is whatever furthers social evolution. Nazis say that good is whatever serves the master race. What comes next? That is the question.

This title-card repeats the lecture’s governing claims: that the war ends one age and begins another, and that the meaning of Hitler must therefore be understood.

Who can take us into the promised land? Not, I fear, the present leaders, for they are too closely tied to the old order. Some of them may serve a temporary purpose; one thinks of Churchill.

Nor can we look to the old-school-tie financial class. Nor, on the other hand, is the proletariat as such ready to lead. Nor are the intellectuals.

The lead, I suggest, must come from a broad middle class—not the middle class in the narrow conventional sense, but the great body which already possesses much of the effective power of modern society. I mean the technicians: engineers, airmen, mechanics and artisans; the applied scientists; the teachers; and, more generally, ordinary people.

But they are slow to wake. A few have wakened, especially the more sensitive among them. The mass are still clinging to the old world. Circumstances are not yet ripe for the great awakening of this broad middle class. Suffering will wake them.

Let me return, in conclusion, to my own failure of foresight. What was it that I missed? It was not an individual. It was a movement: a widespread revulsion from civilisation and, in the popular mind, a revulsion from reason and love. It was also a revulsion from an insincere internationalism.

The dominant mode of thought during the inter-war period conceived man as economic man. It combined utilitarianism with an ideal of "self-fulfilment". It appealed to "reason". Beneath a cloak of liberal Christianity there was much amorality. Emotion was suppressed. In politics it meant the policies of appeasement.

Then came an eruption from the subconscious. Irrationalism broke through. Men sought self-abnegation and a return to primitive values. Nazism was a neurotic regression to infantilism after failure on the adult level.

What comes next? There seem to be two possibilities. We may regress still further. Or we may recover an adult mentality.