PART I

I. GERMAN LIBERALISM

1. The Ancien Régime and Liberalism

II. THE TRIUMPH OF MILITARISM

1. The Prussian Army in the New German Empire

PART II

III. ETATISM

1. The New Mentality

THE most important event in the history of the last hundred years is the displacement of liberalism by etatism. Etatism appears in two forms: socialism and interventionism. Both have in common the goal of subordinating the individual unconditionally to the state, the social apparatus of compulsion and coercion.

1 The Principle of Nationality

1. The Shortcomings of Current Explanations

THE current explanations of modern nationalism are far from recognizing that nationalism within our world of international division of labor is the inevitable outcome of etatism. We have already exposed the fallacies of the most popular of these explanations, namely, of the Marxian theory of imperialism. We have now to pass in review some other doctrines.

PART III

VI. THE PECULIAR CHARACTERISTICS OF GERMAN NATIONALISM

1. The Awakening

GERMAN nationalism did not differ from other peoples’ nationalism until—in the late 1870’s and early ‘80’s—the German nationalists made what they believed to be a great discovery. They discovered that their nation was the strongest in Europe. They concluded that Germany was therefore powerful enough to subdue Europe or even the whole world. Their reasoning ran as follows:

VII. THE SOCIAL DEMOCRATS IN IMPERIAL GERMANY

1. The Legend

KNOWLEDGE concerning Germany and the evolution and present-day actions of Nazism is obscured by the legends about the German Social Democrats.

VIII. ANTI-SEMITISM AND RACISM

1. The Role of Racism

NAZISM is frequently regarded as primarily a theory of racism.

IX. THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC AND ITS COLLAPSE

1. The Weimar Constitution

X. NAZISM AS A WORLD PROBLEM

1. The Scope and Limitations of History