They say that literature gives you licence. So I could, for instance, make them turn around the Penrose stairs in perpetuity, going neither up nor down, or both at the same time. (Location 50)
About his conversation with Hitler, for instance, he would write to Baldwin: ‘Nationalism and Racialism is a powerful force but I can’t feel that it’s either unnatural or immoral!’ And a short time later: ‘I cannot myself doubt that these fellows are genuine haters of Communism, etc.! And I daresay if we were in their position we might feel the same.’ Such were the foundations of what, still today, we call the Policy of Appeasement. (Location 193)
They were too cramped for space in Germany – and since no one is ever completely satisfied, and people are always turning towards hazy distant horizons, and a touch of megalomania overlaid with paranoid tendencies makes the slope even slipperier; and since, on top of that, they had already had the deliria of Herder and the addresses of Fichte, Hegel’s ‘spirit of the people’ and Schelling’s dream of a communion of hearts, we can say that the notion of Lebensraum was really nothing new. (Location 199)
Note: Importance of cultural environment. But note Tooze’s more prosaic political economic explanation.
It’s strange how the most dyed-in-the-wool tyrants still vaguely respect due process, as if they want to make it appear that they aren’t abusing procedure, even while riding roughshod over every convention. It’s as if power isn’t enough for them, and that they take special pleasure in forcing their enemies to perform, one last time and for their benefit, the same rituals that they are even then demolishing. (Location 505)
