Very good article.

I agree that the Nazis represent an element in Germany’s collective psychology, and an element in the general human condition. Have you considered that they might also represent an element in the collective psychology of Europe as a subcontinent?

Why did Hitler and his associates adopt what they believed to be the ancient Roman salute? What did the first Olympic torch relay (from Olympia to Berlin in 1936) mean to Nazi propagandists? Why did the Waffen SS include units from over 20 European countries apart from Germany?

I think the Nazi movement expressed an element in European cultural psychology imaged by two major totems of the Roman Empire: the wolf and the eagle. For the last two thousand years, this element has coexisted uneasily with the lamb and shepherd of the Bible. Christianised Europe has never really come to terms with its wolf side, which has therefore become a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

This is the “heart of darkness” which Joseph Conrad found in European-colonised Africa…