Modern men are inclined to disregard the power of ideas. With Hitler and a number of his lieutenants dead and the others in captivity it seems to them that Clio has written finìs to the short, though comprehensive chapter, “National Socialism”. Our age is wont to see things purely in terms of politics and politics in terms of material power. If this were true, National Socialism would have found its end with the destruction of .its material power and its organisation. National Socialism, however, was not only a political machinery, masses and guns, it was also, and above all, an idea. When the Nazis spoke of totality they avowedly wished to make it clear that they would not confine themselves to economics and politics, or indeed, confine themselves to anything. Their idea was that of an all-embracing Weltanschauung, a definite order of values with the claim to be absolute, or in other words, a religion.

While insane national pride, injured by the defeat in 1918, together with economic and social pressure created an atmosphere suitable for revolution, the real core of the Nazi movement lay in a much deeper stratum of the people's minds. The revolution against the religion of love and the spirit of the Sermon of the Mount—prepared during centuries and manifest in Bismarck’s fight against “Ultramontanism”—rose immediately after 1918, sponsored by Hitler’s forerunner and temporary companion Ludendorff. His wife Mathilde, especially, attempted to preach a romantic mysticism in form of a queer combination of pantheism and Wodan idolatry, which seemed to her the adequate expression of the Teutonic religious spirit. This experiment failed since the theatrical nightly ceremonies in woods and the sight of spectacled German schoolmasters growing wild beards and drinking beer from wassailhorns proved too much even for the most romantic German little bourgeois.