This study dismisses any doubt that Germany is waging an all-out total war for
world domination. It reveals in a simple and painstaking manner how Nazi
aggressive ideology has
been converted with the help of psychology into a dynamic
military system of life.
This Nazi aggressiveness, this dynamism, this complete upsurge of actionism runs
throughout the entire picture. German military psychologists seem to scoff at the
“fortress”
mentality. They seem to point a finger of contempt at Americans who set
as much store in
“protective oceans”
as the ill-fated Frenchmen did in their now-defunct Maginot Line.
The Germanic theories of warfare—as they unfold in this study—are something
awesome, strange, almost otherworldly. They are confusing; they do not fit easily
into any of our preconceived ideas; they leave us without means of defining our
future role. Yet this, to us, artificial and
“unreal”
character of German ideology is
not only accepted by the army but by large sections of the population ruled by
Hitler. To quote W. I. Thomas,
“If men define situations as real, they are real in
their consequences.”
What may seem strange, barbaric, and bizarre to us is the
very core of the
“New Order”
which the Nazis are trying to build. In other words,
the impact of such cultural values on the German man, woman, or child today or
in the future—if Hitler wins—will determine the kind of individuals with whom we
must deal
in the coming years.
It behooves us to understand the revolutionary
nature of these changes, if we would not be misled.
But in spite of our anxiety and dismay over the Nazi successes, we do have one
great advantage. We can never say we misunderstood the Germans. We can never
say that we
were not warned and informed of Nazi aims and aggressive techniques,
as were the French and British who were deluded, first, by an appeasement policy
without resort to arms, and, second, by the belief that
modern
wars can be
successfully fought merely by
providing adequate defense.
Yet the average American still thinks in terms of
“defense.”
Either he is indifferent
to the implications of Nazi offensive strategy, follows a pseudo-socialist line of self-sufficiency, or believes with an utterly unrealistic naiveté
that we are still living in
a world of nineteenth-century laissez-faire capitalism and free international trade.
These attitudes are given the lie by the Nazis’
own testimony. It is frankly stated
over and over again that the conditions of the last
post-war era can never return;
that in the coming
“New Order”
Germany will assume the role of
“leader-nation”
in a world forced to subservience on Nazi terms; that war is a permanent and
desirable biological and social condition of mankind. The Germans say
that war
will continue as a
“war of action”
or as a
“war of nerves”
(war between wars) until
the Nazi world state is established.
