"I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler."
I was remined of the quote above listening to the Ricochet podcast. At one point Peter mentioned that Truman liked Stalin. Orwell wrote the above in 1940 in a review of Mein Kampf. He also pointed out that "he would certainly kill [Hitler] if [he] could get within reach of him" but would "feel no personal animosity." The last paragraph of the review (quoted in full below) contains a remarkable claim about the appeal of totalitarian ideologies. It is one of my favorite passages in all of Orwell's writing. In my course called Dissident Political Thought we discussed Orwell's argument and its potential import for today. I would be eager to hear the thoughts of the Ricochet community.
Also he [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, flags 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 militarised 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 more 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. Perhaps later on they will get sick of it and change their minds, as at the end of the last war. After a few years of slaughter and starvation "Greatest happiness of the greatest number" is a good slogan, but at this moment "Better an end with horror than a horror without end" is a winner. Now that we are fighting against the man who coined it, we ought not to underrate its emotional appeal.
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Jun '10
Re: "I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler."
Flagg: I'm a great admirer of Orwell. Did he have everything right? Of course not, including his embrace of his rather odd kind of socialism. I give Orwell a pass on the Hitler statements because they were made in 1940 and not in 1945.
I certainly think Orwell understood the nature of the totalitarian mind (witness 1984 and Animal Farm), but he also understood the danger of its precise opposite: hedonism bred of complete ease and irrational freedom.
I've always wished Orwell had lived longer so we could have seen where he would have come out on many of the new issues of the modern world.
Apr '11
Re: "I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler."
Thank you.
Jun '11
Re: "I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler."
Liberty. The absence of the greatness of liberty is what's missing. We all have some doubt and anxiety of what is going on and our ability to influence our life.
Many of us, but not all, crave the ability to be the captain of our own ship, no matter how small.
Jul '10
Re: "I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler."
After a few years of slaughter and starvation "Greatest happiness of the greatest number" is a good slogan, but at this moment "Better an end with horror than a horror without end" is a winner.
He's right.
Most people want to be a part of something larger than themselves, forget stuff, and have cause for complaint. The desire for membership shouldn't be underestimated, and finding a constituency that fits the latter two isn't hard.
Consider, initial opposition to the Iraq War was pretty fractured. A chunk of it's natural opponents kept silent or supported it out of political expediency, another opposed it loudly, and another lamented (even as late as last year) the lack of "shared sacrifice." This last strikes me as a desire to belong.
Sometimes I wonder if Bush would have rallied broader sustained support if he had pushed gasoline rationing (or some such) for the duration of the war. It's counterintuitive (and would have been a stupid policy for several reasons) but it might have been politically popular to "bring the war home" in such a fashion.
Dec '10
Re: "I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler."
What is the difference between "Give me Liberty or give me death." and "Better an end with horror than a horror without end". One man knows the source of moral order and is willing to fight for it even if it means death. The other man only has an unfocused sense of horror. He is willing to commit horrible acts in the hope of ending the horror. The horror will not end it will only get worse. One man is talking the ultimate in mature committment the other is like a giant child throwing a violent tantrum.
I didn't know that Orwell had said this. He seems less to me now then before I read the quote. Still his contribution was great. He, like Ayn Rand, was tough enough to force the world to look directly at the evil it had just been saved from. It takes all kinds.
Edited on November 8, 2011 at 4:53amJun '10
Re: "I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler."
Both Hitler and Orwell lifted their ideas from Arthur Moeller van den Bruck. If you really, really, really want to investigate the origins of Nazism, this is the place to start. The difference between Hitler and Orwell is that the former was a romantic, and the latter was a cold-eyed realist. Obscure stuff even for Ricochet.
Dec '10
Re: "I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler."
I am again impressed by the maturity of George Orwell.
He recognized evil when he saw it, and accepted the need for drastic steps to defeat it without having to display a palpable hate for it's agents.
Nov '10
Re: "I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler."
Great post, Flagg. My initial thought would be that most libertarians and virtually all liberals and Leftists are either massively blind to or massively underestimate -- often with catastrophic results -- that part of man that yearns for greatness and honor. Coeval with this is a yearning for unpredictability. Nietzsche gets at this, as I'm sure you know, in Part 2, section 24 of Beyond Good and Evil.
Nov '10
Re: "I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler."
Palaeologus:
Sometimes I wonder if Bush would have rallied broader sustained support if he had pushed gasoline rationing (or some such) for the duration of the war. It's counterintuitive (and would have been a stupid policy for several reasons) but it might have been politically popular to "bring the war home" in such a fashion. · Nov 7 at 6:41pm
I think that this is one of the problems that President L. Johnson overlooked or declined to confront. If he had called up the National Guard and Reserves and taken the men who had trained for war from their communities and also imposed an economic regime calculated to finance the war in Vietnam from current revenues instead of from the Social Security receipts and debt, then I believe that the country would have stood behind him, and would have forced him to fight to win.
Edited on November 8, 2011 at 4:34amFeb '11
Re: "I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler."
I'm reading a bio of Orwell right now. I wonder if he could feel animosity towards anyone. Although he seems to have enjoyed the ladies, a stranger, more quasi-robotic genius never lived. But many humans (perhaps not all; I think many just want earlier retirement and longer vacations: consider Europe) crave drama and significance for our mortal fingersnap lives. If we don't have it imposed by circumstances, we may create it for ourselves, through political associations, religions, fanaticisms of all sorts, doomed love affairs, or self-destruction by various means. Thus the march of history, driven by our passion for meaning.
Dec '10
Re: "I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler."
"And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor."
If you do not care for the protection of Divine Providence and you try to seperate the sacred from the honor, madness is not far away. Nietzsche was an example of this.
Sep '10
Re: "I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler."
For some reason Chrissie Hynde's song "Revolution," specifically the refrain "I wanna die for something," came to mind as I read this. There's something quaintly romantic about Orwell's assertion that "Fascism and Nazism are psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life. . . . Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people 'I offer you a good time,' Hitler has said to them 'I offer you struggle, danger and death.'" The lack of patriotism seems to bother Orwell the most. He seems to equate the unwillingness to die in battle with hedonism. Maybe it's because world war was on—again—and he was afraid the (quote) Progressives would sell out their country in an effort not to risk their comfortable lifestyles. Perhaps he had to listen to the people around him say things like "Peace Is Patriotic" or "Co-exist" or "War Is Not the Answer" and, knowing that actual soldiers were needed to repel Hitler, confused a problem with a deal-breaker. It would be very easy to do.
Sep '10
Re: "I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler."
too bad they didn't have NCAA football to fill the void Orwell finds in pacifism...
i'm only joking a bit. first time i finally got to watch a game in Ohio Stadium, i was blown away by the martial air of it all. giant flags, beating drums, blaring brass, 100+ thousand people chanting in unison, screaming for the destruction of an enemy...or something like that.
playing with balls does soak up quite a lot of testosterone that would otherwise be put to laying to waste weaker neighbors. although as the central activity of a majority of masculine American males it is quite a big circus to go with the debit carded, welfare "bread" passed out by the state.
Apr '11
Re: "I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler."
I must say I think Orwell has it very close to the mark. I tend to believe that what people really like having (even if they don't like their own particular place in it) is a sense of great purpose, and destiny. Such sense must be created for people by other people. The totalitarian regimes of 1940's Europe were masters at creating this greater sense of purpose and destiny. These things need not lack in a capitalistic democracy, for they are vital to creating a cohesive society, they are just harder to create for the leadership. The great advantage that we as democracies have is that we can by consent reinvent our national purpose to keep up with changing demands and fact of the world.
Aug '10
Re: "I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler."
I think you've just explained FDR's enduring popularity.
He didn't end the Great Depression: he prolonged it. He rationed during war even when it wasn't necessary. But the pain his policies inflicted did make people feel like they were "in it together".
Aug '10
Re: "I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler."
When I was a teenager, I would have thought the yearning for greatness and honor inextinguishable. But learning to live with my own constrained circumstances has since humbled me.
I can no longer disparage those who "massively underestimate" the yearning for greatness and honor. So many "little things" can rightly take priority over greatness and honor. Simple, unacknowedged decency, for one.
Feb '11
Re: "I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler."
Socialists and even capitalists do sometimes ignore the fact that people want more out of life than "ease, security and avoidance of pain,"... fascists err in believing this "more" must be provided by government decree.
Sebastian Haffner, in his memoir of growing up in Germany between the wars, noted that A generation of young Germans had become accustomed to having the entire content of their lives delivered gratis, so to speak, by the public sphere, all the raw material for their deeper emotions (and that when the political situation briefly stablized) Now that these deliveries suddently ceased, people were left helpless, impoverished, robbed, and disappointed. They had never learned how to live from within themselves, how to make an ordinary private life great, beautiful and worth while, how to enjoy it and make it interesting. So they regarded the end of political tension and the return of private liberty not as a gift, but as a deprivation. They were bored, their minds strayed to silly thoughts, and they began to sulk.
It was at this time that, invisibly and unnoticed, the Germans divided into those who later became Nazis and those who would remain non-Nazis.
Edited on November 8, 2011 at 1:29pmDec '10
Re: "I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler."
"Hitler has said to them "I offer you struggle, danger and death," and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet"
I believe this is what animates the OWS movement. They need to feel to be part of a struggle against an evil, however imaginary.
Jan '11
Re: "I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler."
So, Orwell was a Morlock?
Re: "I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler."
Foxman: "Hitler has said to them "I offer you struggle, danger and death," and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet"
I believe this is what animates the OWS movement. They need to feel to be part of a struggle against an evil, however imaginary. · Nov 8 at 5:00am
You beat me too it. That is exactly what I was thinking as I read this.