The First World War bore the traces of the old dynastic wars fought
by the ruling classes to fine tune the balance of power and verify
their mutual positions. On the other hand, the Second World War,
from the very beginning, was "total war," as they used to say in
the 1930s, because it was fought by peoples who did not have
limited and reasonable aims but desired the complete destruction
of the adversary and construction of a new international order.
After a long pregnancy, the nation-states had finally generated a
conflict that befit their nature. It began with the ritualistic ultima-
tums and declarations of war, but from the very first it revealed
that the peace treaty, if it ever existed (in the case of Germany it was
never finalized), could simply have ratified the order that in the
meantime the winner had imposed on the defeated populations.
And so it happened. Almost every German military success cre-
ated a new political situation. The military machine of the Reich
was also a constitutional and administrative machine that, as it
proceeded, continually transformed the political shape of Europe.
The Soviet Union, Italy, the minor powers of the German coalition
and later, when the war turned in their favor, the Atlantic democ-
racies acted in the same way. The extraordinary result was that the
two phases of the conflict -- the time of the German victories and
the time of Allied victories -- produced two inverse orders that

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