[Hitler] has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life. Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all “progressive” thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security, and avoidance of pain. In such a view of life there is no room, for instance, for patriotism and the military virtues. The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won’t do. Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flag and loyalty-parades.
However they may be as economic theories, Fascism and Nazism are psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life. The same is probably true of Stalin’s militarized version of Socialism. All three of the great dictators have enhanced their power by imposing intolerable burdens on their peoples. Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a grudging way, have said to people “I offer you a good time,” Hitler has said to them “I offer you struggle, danger and death,” and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet.
(George Orwell’s review of Mein Kampf)
(well, we have videogames now, yet… we gotta make them better! more vicseral!)
I don’t see that that’s true. Germany loved Hitler when he was giving them job security and easy victories and became much less popular once the struggle and danger and death arrived on the scene.
They grumbled, but 95% of them obeyed, worked, killed and died up until the spring of 1945. A huge amount of Germans certainly believed that sticking with the Nazis until the conflict’s end was a much lesser evil compared to another national humiliation on the scale of Versallies. And look at the impressive use to which him and Goebbels put evaporative cooling of group beliefs to radicalize the faithful after the July plot. Purging a few malcontents led to a significant increase in zeal and loyalty even as things were getting visibly worse and worse.
There’s a pretty good and complete archive of all things by St. George at orwell.ru, by the way. As a pleasant exercise, I’m going to go through the Russian translations over there and see if I can correct anything.
(George Orwell’s review of Mein Kampf)
(well, we have videogames now, yet… we gotta make them better! more vicseral!)
I don’t see that that’s true. Germany loved Hitler when he was giving them job security and easy victories and became much less popular once the struggle and danger and death arrived on the scene.
They grumbled, but 95% of them obeyed, worked, killed and died up until the spring of 1945. A huge amount of Germans certainly believed that sticking with the Nazis until the conflict’s end was a much lesser evil compared to another national humiliation on the scale of Versallies. And look at the impressive use to which him and Goebbels put evaporative cooling of group beliefs to radicalize the faithful after the July plot. Purging a few malcontents led to a significant increase in zeal and loyalty even as things were getting visibly worse and worse.
Full review here:
There’s a pretty good and complete archive of all things by St. George at orwell.ru, by the way. As a pleasant exercise, I’m going to go through the Russian translations over there and see if I can correct anything.