lp4guld

PART TWOTHE BAD FASCISM:GERMANYI · The Impartial MicrobeONE FRUITFUL ORIGIN of much of the confusion about fascismin Germany arises out of the variety of people who hate it. Eachhates it for some special reason. And while most people here abhorit for its brutal assaults upon the substance and implements of freegovernment, there are many whose hatred is inspired by some specialpersonal or group indignity or injustice suffered at the handsof the Führer. Thus Hitler is execrated by some who are themselvesfascists—as, for instance, those fascist dictators whose regimes haverolled under his tanks equally with their democratic neighbors, orsome of those former colleagues who were squeezed out of his congregation,or some of those disillusioned businessmen who gambledwith him and lost.A great many books have appeared, written either by theseliquidated disciples or religious and political groups ruthlessly oppressedby him. It is a fair statement, however just their deep senseof wrong, that such books have reflected their flaming hatredsrather than their sound intellectual judgments. They have explainedfascism in terms of their hatreds. These volumes have had a powerfulinfluence here. They have gone far toward implanting the beliefthat fascism in Germany is the product of extraordinarily able yetevil men or that it is due to some demoniac possession of the Germanpeople themselves.For the American honestly in search of the seeds of fascism noanalyses could be more misleading than these. If fascism is the work74