Repository: UIHistories Project: Convocation - 1942 Winter-Spring [PAGE 60]

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lift perva ling and dominating eve i ol ial I nsiderable achievement. Such .1 vie\* oi lif< a Hitler I 'demands d tatoi all) thai it b knowledge I 1 I lively and pie I) nd that the entire public life be completel) n lju -I ,j \r to its own views Hitler admired this meth< > hi< in 1 t| foi litj in Marxism and carri< 1 n over into Ins 1 >nsti > n u the German ul. "The nationalization of great ma 11 nev< 1 place bj 1 weak emphasis upon a so called obji th viewpoint, 1 t I ruthless and fanatically one sided orientation a the > b d at." This method has hern remarkably su< ful in moldin the German people into a willing and efficient instrument of its !• will. It carries a long step further that absolute con entration 1 power in the hands oi irresj nsible political leaders which is the urn

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f the tot litarian state. On this point, again, the practice of Soviet Russia has b on the whole, in harmony with that of its totalitarian neighbor. It was indeed, the Communists who taught Hitler this sort of political tactic, though he also professes to find su stions of it in irly Christianity and if he has bettered the instruction in intolerance, it is along a lin that his predecessors had laid down. W e come now to the third aspect of this absolute concentration of irresponsible power which is the dominant characteristic of the t litarian state. T h e individual exists for the state and must surrender even' non-political value and human decency to its commands, but for what does the state exist? W h e n men give up so much, what is it that they gain? If they are to lose their own souls, they ought at least t< be promised that they will gain the whole world in return. And that in fact, is what they have been promised. A state so organized, embodying the unified will of its superior racial consciousness in a political power unit of maximum efficiency, can become a wonder and terror to the nations of the world. Its racial "superiority," purified ni extrinsic and debasing elements by its "folkish" leaders, will justify itclaim to the dominating position on the international scene, and its power, or the threat of power, forcing the submission oi its weaker or more pusillanimous rivals, will give the demonstration of its superiority. It is not that might makes right, exactly, nothing as clear as that—but that the inner sense of superiority enables its possessors to lispense with those scruples which would otherwise serve as impediments to the ruthlessly effective destruction of adversaries, while the effectiveness of this destruction happily confirms the inner sense oi superiority and proves nature, which honors power and success, to have been on the side of national egotism. The totalitarian state claims to be absolute, then, in its capacity and intention to impose its will upon Other and inferior states, and to use these as the instruments of its purpose and the ervants of the higher culture which it alone