After World War II

Extract

The events that are happening before our eyes are less clear than those of the past because we do not know their meaning, their place in the epoch which is developing. We know the isolated facts, but we do not know their significance; we do not know to what whole they belong and therefore we overestimate some and underestimate others. Who could have realized, for example, that the meetings of some obscure Russian revolutionaries in 1903 would mean the formation of a party of world-historic importance? Who could have believed in 1919 that not General Ludendorff but an unknown private of Austrian origin, Adolf Hitler, would become the decisive figure in the history of German nationalism, its leader and, as it seems today, its executioner?

We do not know the present, because we do not know die future, and therefore we are ignorant of what will be retained as a lasting trend from the mass and maze of today's happenings.