The Cause of Hitler's Germany

by Leonard Peikoff, Ayn Rand (Introduction)

“A truly revolutionary idea… Clear, tight, disciplined, beautifully structured, and brilliantly reasoned.”—Ayn Rand
 
Self-sacrifice, Oriental mysticism, racial “truth,” the public good, doing one’s duty—these are among the seductive catchphrases that circulated in pre-Nazi Germany. Objectivist author and philosopher Leonard Peikoff was Ayn Rand’s long-time associate. In The Cause of Hitler’s Germany— previously published in The Ominous Parallels— Peikoff demonstrates how unreason and collectivism led the seemingly civilized German society to become a Nazi regime.

Genres: History, Philosophy, Politics, Nonfiction, World War II, Psychology, Economics

352 pages, Paperback

First published November 25, 2014

About the author

Leonard S. Peikoff (born October 15, 1933) is a Canadian-American philosopher. He is an author, a leading advocate of Objectivism and the founder of the Ayn Rand Institute. A former professor of philosophy, he was designated by the novelist Ayn Rand as heir to her estate. For several years, he hosted a radio talk show.

http://www.peikoff.com/bio.html

Reviews

[Rhys · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite generally unsupported claims against leftist idealism and Ayn Rand circle-jerking, it is a good argument about some of the philosophical causes of the Nazi regime and their atrocities.

[Armin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Barbarisch-einseitig, aber brilliant. Ausführliche Rezi später.

[Barry Linetsky · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a condensed version of Peikoff's The Ominous Parallels. Unfortunately, TOP is not available as an e-book so I had to buy this version, which contains about 75 % of the original. Peikoff looks at the cause of Hitler's Germany from the premise that people act based on their ideas - their deep rooted philosophical ideas. Here he analyzes the ideas of major philosophers - particularly German philosophers, that became embedded in the culture and leveraged by Germany's leaders to exert control over a nation and lead them and Western civilization into calamity. Today these philosophers would be the usual batch of post-modernists, but that label wasn't used when Peikoff wrote this book. Peikoff looks at these ideas across each branch of philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics, and aesthetics/culture, and shows how the German people were in too many ways intellectually disarmed by bad philosophy to fight the corruption of state violence. But the disease of Kant, Weber, Marx, and others wasn't limited to Germany. In The Ominous Parallels, after analyzing Germany's fascist roots, Peikoff turns his analysis to late 20th Century America and shines a light on the ominous parallels that we see playing out today in the streets with rioters issuing fascist political demand under threats of and actual violence, and political leaders who lack the intellectual and moral grounding to stand confidently in opposition. Rand and Peikoff were right: philosophy does matter, and we're losing by default because our political leaders actually believe the same things that the nihilists believe across all branches of philosophy. It's more important now than ever to read and understand Ayn Rand and Leonard Peikoff's warnings. We're getting close to midnight on the concepts of reality, reason, rational-self interest, individual rights, and voluntary exchange free from government coercion.

[Faris Alsaleh · Rating 4 out of 5]

A masterfully reasoned book on the philosophical and epistemological causes and origins of Nazism. Ultimately a book challenging Arendts conclusions on the origins but in agreement of the horror. Worth a read.

[David Simpson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this book nails it

As someone who has lived and studied in Germany and the US, I think this book does justice to what the primary sources actually say. Most who have gone through a Western government education come out believers in core tenets of National Socialism/Marxism by default. Antidotal philosophies have been boxed out. A good follow up to this book would be to trace philosophical and historical trails post WWII. Annie Jacobson's book about Operation Paperclip is a good place to start. Short on philosophy but good documentation should lead to asking good questions. Indeed, the philosophy of National Socialism has not been defeated nor summarily dealt with, and is indeed thriving, maybe more international than national.

[NET7 · Rating 5 out of 5]

The philosophy of Plato and Immanuel Kant were the origins of collectivism, Romanticism, and embracing irrationality over reality and reason. This was the seed planted that others harvested and developed into the collectivism of Socialism, Communism, Marxism, and National Socialism. The Nazis didn't create their philosophy, all of it was borrowed anti-Western, anti-Intellectual, anti-Reason, anti-Capitalist thinkers, who simply took the philosophy of Romanticism and Statism, simply adding Germanic ideas of Race to the mix which led to the slaughter of millions. People wonder, how could a industrialized people living in the 20th century resort to the barbarism and evil that the Nazis perpetrated to fulfill their dreams of a Socialistic utopia? Read this book and you will understand that decades of the philosophy Romanticism, the revolt against reason and rational thought, Collectivism, that we are not individuals with rights but just a 'cell' in a 'body' that is society, Altruism, the idea we must sacrifice our liberties and happiness for the collective, Statism, the rule of the party and of the state is the highest moral authority, and Pragmatism, moral truth is simply expedient, which all preached whole or in part by German philosophers and thinkers like Immanuel Kant, Martin Luther, Aguste Comte, laid a fertile ground for the Nazis to reap followers to their cause when they developed. The best argument this book gives is that we can prevent these movements from finding soil to grow when we stress the importance of reason over feelings, individual freedom over group comfort, and capitalism over socialism.

[A · Rating 2 out of 5]

My criticism of The Cause of Hitler’s Germany is that it reads more like a philosophical treatise than a historical analysis. Leonard Peikoff is not trying to understand the rise of Nazism on its own terms—through material conditions, political decisions, or cultural currents—but rather to validate Ayn Rand’s Objectivist worldview. This creates a major distortion.

Peikoff’s core argument—that Nazism was the logical result of Germany's embrace of self-sacrifice and collectivism—leans heavily on ideological abstraction. He gives far too little attention to the real, chaotic pressures gripping Germany at the time: the trauma of World War I, the Treaty of Versailles, hyperinflation, mass unemployment, political violence, and the collapse of public trust in democratic institutions. These aren't secondary details—they were the primary conditions in which fascism took root.

Additionally, Peikoff glosses over the pragmatic and opportunistic nature of much Nazi support. Many voters in 1932 were not drawn by mystical self-sacrifice, but by promises of order, jobs, and restored national pride. His philosophical narrative also fails to account for the contradictory mix of modernism, reaction, romanticism, and brutal realism in Nazi ideology.

In short, Peikoff commits the error of philosophical determinism: trying to explain a massively contingent historical event with a single abstract cause. It’s not that values and ideas didn’t matter—but which ideas, and how they interacted with specific historical conditions, is something his book oversimplifies to serve a pre-existing philosophical agenda.

[Philip Kuhn · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good book overall, but not what I expected. I thought it would go into Hitler's influences, like Houston Chamberlain. The book is a deep dive into the philosophy of Nazism and gets a little too much. I'm a smart guy but the author loses me in the middle of the book. I recommend that you read the first chapter or two and the last. I do agree with his point of the book about what Nazism is--the very absence of logic and reason and the embrace of the will of the collective, even if it is completely illogical.

PHIL Kuhn

[Anastasiia Da · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a mind-blowing book. The best one I’ve red on this topic. The thing that makes the difference between evil private psychology and powerful movement is: ideas, fundamental ideas, and the science that deals with them. It is philosophy - a certain kind of philosophy, established on the world scene by means of formal, detailed, multivolumed, universally respected statement, which left certain kinds of men with certain kinds of psychological motives free to bare their souls publicly, and which wiped out the possibility of any effective resistance to these men and motives, first in Germany, then everywhere else. Think about it this way: would this have happened if it wasn’t for Hitler? Was Hitler truly the reason Germany found herself in this cultural mess, mess of morality, the power-luster of the death factory? The answer is: it wouldn’t matter. Hitler just happened to be there “in the right place at the right time”. Terrific book that talks about the centuries of philosophical debate between good and evil, human will, ideas of human nature and its effects and consequences. It is everything. This changed my mind and opened my eyes

[Eirik Bøe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Are you still puzzled by the completely horrific, unreal, and senseless nightmare of Nazi Germany? It's because you haven't studied it through the lens of "philosophical warfare". Leonard Peikoff will help you see it.

[David Landy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book explains the cause of Hitler's Germany but perhaps even more importantly it also exemplifies how to identify a cause in intellectual history.

[Sarah Godshall]

more academic than I anticipated but a great understanding off the many influences over time that allowed Hitler to rise to power. Doesn't excuse him in any means.

[Janine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to Goodreads for the ARC! Review forthcoming.

[Joel · Rating 4 out of 5]

“You can’t be sure of that. I mean, we really can’t know anything for certain, there’s so many variables and everybody sees things through their own lens. Their own experiences help them decide what is right and good. And besides, what’s right for you might not be right for me; we are different people and have different needs.”

I turn away.

“Well, I don’t mind really. You know, sometimes we have to sacrifice our desires for the common good. That’s part of living in community – knowing that sometimes they have to come first. If that means a few people get screwed in the process, that’s just the way it is – there is a social contract after all. We all have to do our fair share; it’s just the right thing to do.”

I get up, moving to the back of the train.

“I hate the sheeple. Look at all these idiots around us, living their miserable lives. They are so stupid, willing to follow the next moron right off a cliff. What a waste. Not me, I am my own man, I think for myself. Nobody can tell me what to believe.”

I shrug – there is no escaping it.

If Satan’s greatest trick was convincing the world he did not exist, so too the philosophers. Not that I’m saying philosophers are the devil. Having a handle on our own epistemology is valuable as it helps us to see and to live in a world where things are clear, where we understand why. There are many fraudulent ideas out there that masquerade as truth to prey on the uninformed. Some of these ideas are so attractive, and so often repeated that it’s easy for even the most sophisticated among us to become confused – not only to our own peril but that of those around us.

Cue Hitler’s Germany, because this is exactly what happened; a story masterfully explained in Leonard Peikoff’s “The Cause of Hitler’s Germany”.

Most of us like to think of Hitler’s Germany as a result of some sort of genetic deviation in the Aryan chromosomes. “Surely the Germans are just a warlike people who have barbarity in their blood, right? They’re a tribal people, just like the Rwandan Hutus who committed the genocide – I’m sure of it. It could never happen here, that’s for sure; we just aren’t like that. We are different.” This explanation is comfortable, soothing even.

Unfortunately, it is wrong. The reality is that the death of the Weimar Republic and the advance of Nazism was a direct result of bad epistemology advanced relentlessly for centuries. The holocaust was a result of a particular philosophical outlook on man, his role in society and to each other. As Peikoff’s book outlines the precursors to the madness, presenting the ideological baggage of the German nation in the run-up to the war, it’s hard not to notice the selfsame ideas peddled so freely in our own societies – all of them.

The problem actually starts at the very beginning, in the dual of ideas between Plato and his greatest student, Aristotle. Plato was a proponent of the power of the state and the responsibility of its citizens to each other. He was (albeit simply put) the father of authority. Aristotle took a different path, as the world’s first and greatest advocate of reason and individualism, he challenged Plato’s statism.

But Plato did abide.

In Nazi Germany, the Platonic view of state authority was met with a cohort of sympathizers who presented those ideas as mainstream, as incontrovertible. Then, as is wont to happen, they made their way into the universities. From there they progressed into art and literature and then into pop culture and finally into the minds of normal men. Ideas that challenged the right of the individual to reason and to question. Speeches that placed state authority above individual responsibility. Plays that lauded the irrational and the incoherent. Nihilism ensued, as did a strange form of faith that allowed and even encouraged the hate. The death of self upon the alter of the other.

This was all well and good, and did not seem to have any real impact until a perfect storm hit. Post-war reparations, national humiliation, high unemployment. Hate, resentment, frustration, a people looking for excuses and scapegoats. And then finally, a soothsayer. By the time Hitler arrived, the Weimar Republic was so far gone that they could do nothing but watch him seize power. They had trashed their own liberties one by one – there was nothing to protest in what Hitler proposed, he was the final result of their ideas. When he came after men’s bodies – there was not any individual left to fight him, for they had surrendered their minds long ago.

For those who think this was a once-off, take a look around. It happens all the time; the most recent case in Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela. After fifty years of social democracy, that country too fell to a soothsayer at a moment of national stress. Same for Argentina, and for Ecuador, and for Bolivia, and for Nicaragua, and for Greece, and soon in Spain. For those who do not agree, I entreat you to read “The Cause of Hitler’s Germany”. Lest we cease being attentive and it happens next to us.

[Alan Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leonard Peikoff covers the history of philosophy to introduce his analysis of how modern, or postmodern, intellectual thought lead to the breakdown of the enlightenment foundations of western civilization. Once the ideas of Kant & others who believed reality was not real, and eroded the moral beliefs of right and wrong, the march toward fascism was well underway. Peikoff clearly sets out how Germany was set on the path to irrationality before Hitler arrived by the philosophy of German intellectuals. This same “no reality” philosophy has been accepted throughout the west and has permeated our culture and beliefs including the total elimination of God and morality.

Ayn Rand’s philosophy has opposed the Kant philosophical heritage of nothingness & meaningless existence. Peikoff is a core part of the continuation of Rand’s ideology. Objectivism, Rand’s philosophy, is a refined continuation of Aristotle who contended that A is A. Rand and Peikoff assert that existence exists and go forward from there and build an intellectual foundation for reality being real and we can depend on our senses to tell us what is actually out there. Making the world real again, Rand & Peikoff assert, is the only path to reaffirm the enlightenment worldview of progress and science, and hope for the future.

In my opinion,[None of the following is discussed in the book] Objectivism has a major flaw. Objectivism remains Godless, as postmodernism does, and thus removes hope. Under Objectivism or postmodernism the future is nothing. Where then do morals come from? In essence, reason; however, the French Revolution tried this and it led to the terror. But neither postmodernism nor Objectivism can allow God because God is supernaturalism and under both analysis such thinking is absolutely rejected. The Enlightenment depended on Aquinas and other pre-enlightenment thinkers to keep the doors open to God, but Kant successfully separated reality from the senses and the collapse of the Enlightenment ideas followed. Objectivism, IMO, hasn’t replaced the certainty needed for philosophical revival. AD2

[Gail · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book examines the post-enlightenment philosophy the both created the Nazi's and made it possible for them to gain power. It's a difficult read, especially if you have not studied much philosophy, but worth the extra effort. Piekoff dismisses the usual causes for the rise of Hitler in favor of a deeper look at the common philosophy of the German people. A philosophy nihilism, complete obedience and distrust or dismissal of logic. The result is the most complete explanation of how the Nazi's happened.

I won this book through a First Reads giveaway.

[Cary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Illuminating

I have long considered how certain ideas give way to others, and seen their practical directions. But I had no idea that any groups executed philosophy's worst ideas so wholly. This book began by affirming some of my thoughts, then proceeded to demonstrate, right down to the bone, the philosophical death march that Nazism had to make. From the second chapter, reading was as walking downhill on a narrow road: there were no turns, the destination was always in sight, with logic leading the way.

[ROBERTO RODRIGUEZ-NUNEZ · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoy reading this book.

I liked the way the author explained Kantian philosophy and the Hegelian philosophy to explain the Nazi raise to power.
This book gives you a solid understanding of how philosophy can change a nation for the worse. I recommend it wholeheartedly because it will open your mind to our current reality. The author knows his subject quite well and he weaves a narrative based on philosophical facts. I couldn't stop reading it.

[Eddy Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting ideas and well written. Thought provoking. I won my copy from first reads giveaway at goodreads. Glad I did.

[Daniel Manske · Rating 4 out of 5]

A primer on the philosophy that made it possible. I've learned more about philosophy reading this book than I knew before. Immoral philosophy makes for immoral outcomes.