My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleycombine to forbid it. The motive for such crime may be remote from the crudeconcept of current propaganda. Yet whether it be hubris, or in simpler modernlanguage, a monstrous vanity, it is deeply wrong.I have often contrasted the character of Hitler with the natures of the supreme men ofhistory: he suffered in extreme degree from what the classic Greeks called hubris; thebelief that man can usurp the place of the gods in complete determination of his ownfate and that of others. The supreme exponents of the art of action have known better.Julius Caesar exerted the utmost qualities of will and energy to a point where it couldtruly be said that everything possible had been done; but he then never for a momentlost the sense that after the ultimate effort of man the outcome must rest with thepower which some call God, and others fate, or destiny. It was this restraining senseof the final realism which gave him his calm, sad resolution to achieve by thecomplete dedication and expenditure of himself everything humanly possible—morein the sphere of action than any other man has ever achieved —without a trace of theself-deception and hysteria which some outstanding men in face of great events findas necessary as small men find alcohol in the minor excitements of everyday life.In lesser degree the same quality is discernible in Napoleon's admirably balancedsense of destiny and realism, in Bismarck's subtle but massive purpose, which securedthe widest measure of union yet achieved during so short a period within the modernworld. All these men, in their different ways, and by the diverse standards of theirvarious epochs, were, in present terminology, very tough, but we cannot conceive anyof them in the modern age ordering or allowing what occurred during the war in theGerman concentration camps, even if only a fraction of the record be true. Thisinhibition may be ascribed to moral sense or merely to their realism, the sense of whatis possible.The character of Hitler can be analysed in the same way in a totally different sphere.The same quality emerged at the end of the war in the sacrifice of young German liveswhen it was clear the war was lost. These children running out to meet a stream ofirresistible fire erected an enduring monument to German heroism, but not to theleadership which ordered or permitted it. This had neither immediate nor ultimatepurpose. It was surely vanity again: the world ends with one man's will; 'apres moi ledeluge’. The part of a true immortal was at the moment rather to prepare the future.Hitler's duty was then to lose himself but to save his idea. The only thing that shouldhave mattered to him was to preserve and to transmit whatever truth he possessed forthe judgment of posterity. He should in his moral terms have committed suicide longbefore, directly it was clear the war was irretrievably lost; again, vanity, fantasy, thebelief in miracles which accompanies this character in disaster, as it did Wallensteinin Schiller's great drama, inhibited that calm, objective realism which never desertsthe supreme man. As it was, he prolonged his own life for a few weeks as a lastexhibition of ineffective will, but tarnished his idea and jeopardised the future by thewanton deed of the concentration camps and the useless sacrifice of German youth. Ifhe had gone a little sooner, leaving his idea and his fame inviolate, he might havebeen among those who, in the German proverb, must succumb in life in order toachieve an immortality in the minds and hearts of men.It would have been a serious day for his enemies if he had left such a legend behindhim. As it is, mankind is left with the question how such things can be prevented from311 of 424