Hitler’s long shadow

Alec Ryrie’s The Age of Hitler and How We Will Survive It (Reaktion Books, 160 pp.) alerts us that the old taboos that kept the demons at bay in Western societies for the past 80 years are no longer holding. What First Things editor Rusty Reno labeled “the postwar consensus” is cracking, and according to Ryrie, this development is not wholly unwelcome.

For too long, Western politics has been defined by its devils. We know what we fear and want to avoid at all costs: the second coming of Hitler, racist fascism, anti-Semitism, and so forth. On these we all agree—or at least we did until very recently.

The Age of Hitler and How We Will Survive It Alec Ryrie

We struggle to find common loves around which to rally, and we are left only with common fears and hates. We know we hate Hitler and fear fascism—is this all there is to civilization? The irony is that many anti-Nazis have subtly adopted the logic of famous Nazi theorist Carl Schmitt, who argued that politics is fundamentally defined by the identification of our enemies. It need not be so. These are narrow and soul-­destroying horizons.

After the two World Wars, the West replaced the Christian story with the anti-Nazi story. The complex worldview supplied by Scripture and centuries of Christian reflection was secularized and simplified into a vague humanism and hatred of fascism. This has blinded us to all sorts of other evils and provided poor guidance to deal with the ones we do recognize. We are too quick to make parallels between the problems we face today and the battle against the Nazis in WWII. But since that moment was in many ways unique, the response to it should not be paradigmatic. If we leave ourselves only with the anti-Hitler hammer, all we will see are Nazi nails, and we will treat every problem today with the same absolute ruthlessness with which the Allies pummeled their enemies.

Ryrie doesn’t want us to lose the insights and values gained during the Age of Hitler; he just thinks they need to rest on the firmer foundations of a richer story. Many people recognize the flaws in the postwar consensus and wish to erase the lessons of the 20th century. This isn’t the path Ryrie charts. He wants the West to return to its Christian roots, which are far more rich, positive, and firm than simply fearing fascists and defending human rights. But he also wants us to receive the gains in moral and political wisdom from the past ­century. Both the Christian story and the anti-Hitler story are part of the West’s heritage; both are pieces of the particular providence of our societies. It is just that the latter should not overshadow and erase the former.