The Beast From the Abyss

Extract

The role of Germany is written in the clearest print upon the map of Europe. In the centre of the European land mass it is, apart from Russia, the greatest homogeneous unit within that mass. With some seventy-eight million inhabitants, largely self-sufficient in food, with great industrial resources of every kind, its inhabitants have spilled over its natural limits and can be found beyond the Vistula, the Bohemian Mountains, the Alps, the Danube and the Rhine. Racially, linguistically, and self-consciously distinct, this nation has vast dynamic energies which it is supremely capable of organising and a strong historic consciousness of its geographical-historical position. That position has two aspects. As the Germanic tribes silted into their present territories, they had the Roman Empire on their Western flank, a static and friable organisation inviting aggression; on their Eastern flank the tribal and barbaric wave beat up against them. The attitude bred by that situation still remains, a feeling of predatory virility towards the Western and settled nations, the lands of the evening; an attitude of cultural defensiveness towards the vast, level, amorphous frontiers to the East. There is no doubt what is Germany’s natural role; it is to be the mistress of Europe.

Divine Providence has apparently ordained that she should be a mistress too tyrannical to be tolerated. For this enormous and extremely able nation has certain obvious psychological defects which make the unrestricted use of its natural supremacy intolerable. It is a very selfconscious nation; it is a politically immature nation; it is an arrogant nation; a warlike one; cruel, unscrupulous, emotional. There is a dark strain of tribalism and totemism in its make-up, despite enormous civilised achievements.