State totalitarianism also has ancient roots in Germany. The absorption of individuals by the State was hoped for by Hegel, who wrote:
“Individuals disappear in the presence of the universal substance”—that is the people or state idea—“and this substance itself shapes the individuals in accordance with its own ends.”
Therefore, National Socialism appears in present-day Germany neither as a spontaneous formation which might be due to the consequence of the defeat in 1918, nor as a mere invention of a group of men determined upon seizing power. National Socialism is the ultimate result of a long evolution of doctrines; the exploitation by a group of men of one of the most profound and most tragic aspects of the German soul. But the crime committed by Hitler and his companions will be precisely that of unleashing and exploiting to its extreme limit the latent force of barbarity, which existed before him in the German people.
The dictatorial regime instituted by Hitler and his companions carries with it for all Germans the “soldier-life,” that is to say, a kind and a system of life entirely different from that of the bourgeois West and the proletarian East. It amounted to a permanent and complete mobilization of individual and collective energies. This integral militarization presupposed complete uniformity of thoughts and actions. It is a militarization which conforms to the Prussian tradition of discipline.
Propaganda instils into the masses faith, drive, and a thirst for the greatness of the community. Those consenting masses find an artificial derivative for their moral anguish and their material cares in theories of race and in a mystical exaltation held in common. Souls which yesterday were wounded and rent asunder once more find themselves united in a common mould.
The Nazi educational system moulds new generations which show no trace of traditional moral teachings, those being replaced by the cult of race and of strength.
The race myth tends to become a real national religion. Many writers dream of substituting for the duality of religious confessions a world-wide dogma of German conception, which would amount to being the religion of the German race as a race.
In the middle of the 20th century Germany goes back, of her own free will, beyond Christianity and civilization to the primitive barbarity of ancient Germany. She makes a deliberate break with all universal conceptions of modern nations. The National Socialist doctrine, which raised inhumanity to the level of a principle, constitutes, in fact, a doctrine of disintegration of modern society.
This doctrine necessarily brought Germany to a war of aggression and to the systematic use of criminality in the waging of war.
The absolute primacy of the German race, the negation of any international law whatsoever, the cult of strength, the exacerbation of community mysticism made Germany consider recourse to war, in the interests of the German race, logical and justified.