Germany’s Nervous Breakdown

The conduct of nations is governed by the same psychological laws that govern the conduct of individuals, and while we cannot speak of a “group mind” or a “national psychology” de facto, it is possible to analyze historical movements “as if” they were the movements of an individual under a comparable set of circumstances. Nations, like individuals, are actuated by the desire for peace and security, as a compensation for inferiority feelings which may date back centuries.

Sometimes this sense of inferiority is so profound that mere security does not offer sufficient compensation. Superiority, dominance, Jehovah-like omnipotence are the price of security.

These strivings for security meet with resistance from members of the society of nations, just as similar strivings arouse the aggressive counter-attacks of individuals ### a social group. A defeat of the ###wings for superiority, a loss of ###ce,” subordination and subjugation in an individual lead to the condition usually known as “nervous breakdown.” Germany is having a nervous breakdown at present.

THE NAPOLEONIC ERA

To begin with, Germany suffered the humiliation of adolescence during the Napoleonic period. As a compensation she developed an aggressive militarism to make up for the defeats, the torturing inferiority complex, which she endured while the little Napoleon was working out his personal destiny at the expense of European politics.

As in many neurotic cases, the means of compensation, military force, became an end in itself. As soon as an end, a means, a method of attaining a neurotic goal of security is elevated and even deified into an end in itself, it usually destroys itself and the final goal for which it was created.

In the World War the aggressive military policy of expansion at the expense of the political community was given the lie. Political cooperation, between the Allies, proved more effective than egotistic virtuosity.

Germany suffered the most crushing and bitter defeat in modern times, and the bitterness of the defeat was made more bitter by the humiliatio## imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. Stunned, Germany went through the usual symptomatic throes that attend the onset of a nervous breakdown: Indecision, despair, confusion, hysterical explosions.

After the first symptoms wore off, after the victorious Allies tried to soften the tragedy by encouraging a German renascence, the militarist class in Germany sought to retrieve its place in the sun, and find power and glory again.

QUEST FOR SCAPEGOAT

In order to accomplish this end, it became imperative to exculpate the egregious failure of the World War. The youth of Germany camped under the ennui of unemployment and under the pall of a hopeless future paying the world the costs of their fathers’ folly {SPAN}###cides{/SPAN} mounted.

In order to prevent a national suicide, a scapegoat had to be found, and once you begin seeking for a scapegoat, it is not difficult to find one. The historical scapegoat lay close at hand: The Jews.

Not the folly of militarist aggrandizement had lost the law: It was the Jewish bankers who bored from within and sold out to the enemy. Not the folly of aggressive isolation and the arrogance of the big stick caused the world ### unite against Germany: It was the Jews, those age-old internationalists.

The technique of a nervous breakdown is simple: You fail in a ###tical situation because your private logic” has been knocked out by the superior force of common sense, the force of reality. You go through a brief terror, and as you recover from the immediate sting of defeat, you unconsciously build up an alibi. If you can, you save your face by hanging the blame on the convenient shoulders of a scapegoat.

The technique of any nervous breakdown usually crystallizes in some simple device whose neurotic nature usually is apparent to everyone but the neurotic. In the case of German, this is Hitlerism. Just as a nervous stomach or a palpitating heart may become the loudspeaker of a personality in the throes of a nervous breakdown, so Hitler has become the mouthpiece of a distraught Germany.

Once the technique is crystallized, nothing else matters. Reason is thrown to the winds, reality is excluded from consideration. The neurotic believes that by protesting loudly enough he will communicate his own self-deception to the rest of the world.

HITLER NOT UNERAFTY

Hitler and his gang must be credited with a certain amount of shrewd psychological insight. The Germans have never been known for their sense of humor. They have swallowed the Hitler propaganda with evident satisfaction.

When a gypsy is hungry, so the old saying goes, he whistles. When a German is hard pressed, he marches in a goose-stepping battalion.

Hitler has given Germany plenty of uniforms and goose-stepping