Word: hitlers
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...assume, for the sake of argument, that there are regimes -- Hitler's, Amin's, Khomeini's -- whose ends are irrational. It is a mistake to think that because a state has lunatic ends, it must be clumsy, erratic or incompetent in carrying them...
...just wrong but dangerous to underestimate the rationality of regimes that profess the craziest of ends. The very designation "crazy state" inclines those sure of their own sanity to let down their guard. Europe catastrophically underestimated Hitler because he was plainly a madman. That he was. It did not prevent him from conquering Europe...
...mullahs, the Sandinistas and the rest of the world's zealots. It is a wan hope. This century has not been kind to the notion that fanaticism must collapse from within. Generally, the crazy state does not self-destruct. On the contrary, it must be destroyed from without: Hitler by the Allies, the Khmer Rouge by Viet Nam, Idi Amin by Tanzania. (In his last years Stalin was no less irrational than Hitler, if not quite as bloody. Yet far from self- destructing, his regime, having succeeded in war, extended its hegemony over a great empire...
...passionate intensity, celebrating martyrdom and incurring it. Sightings of moderates notwithstanding, Iran shows no sign of collapse from within. Moreover, its prospects of being punctured from without are slim. Since crazy states tend to be destroyed from the outside, their fate is often a function of their geography. Hitler had the misfortune of being located in Central Europe; his pursuit of Lebensraum ran up against the greatest powers of the day. The Khmer Rouge's bad luck was to be living next door to an equally warlike Viet Nam. Otherwise it would be killing to this day, assuming there were...
While unlikely to revolutionize modern understanding of the Third Reich, Goebbels' diaries are certain to prove of great historical interest. "After 1945, people liked to think that Hitler himself was the bearer of guilt for everything," says History Professor Hans Mommsen of the University of the Ruhr in Bochum. "Books like these let us look at the period more matter-of- factly." And offer some insights into the frighteningly matter-of-fact ways in which the Fuhrer's subordinates worked...