of war as the goal of national life and as the norm of
international relations; from its intellectual regimenta-
tion and its ruthless suppression of political, religious,
and even scientific freedom--in sum, from the total-
itarian state envisaged by Hitler and executed by his
government.

It is on this basic regression that attention must be
riveted. To comprehend its full significance, no single
aspect must be over-stressed; not the incredibly but in-
controvertibly brutal persecution of Jews, of liberals,
of radicals, of Communists; not the truculent chauv-
inism of the Third Reich's foreign policy; not the prop-
aganda of Aryan superiority and the cult of race-hatred
disseminated abroad; not the destruction of labor
movements or of workers' rights; not the cynical con-
tempt for liberal, for democratic, for moral values.
Each of these is but one phase of that tragic relapse of
Germany to barbarism which, viewed in its entirety,
is a threat to the peace of the world, an assault on civ-
ilization itself.

That threat must be understood, that assault with-
stood. The easy evasion that the fate of Germany is
its own concern and not the business of other nations,
is inadmissible. Hitler has made clear by word and
deed that what he has enforced at home he will seek
to impose abroad. Nor may refuge be taken in the
facile assumption that what has been perpetrated in
Germany is inconceivable in the United States. Nazism
appeals to the worst in men and peoples, to the latent
bigotries, to the suppressed hatreds, to the primitive
fears which still burn beneath the surface of modern
life. Against that appeal--never so insidious and sin-
ister as when it is ignored--this volume warns the
American people.

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