HISTORY STUDENTS HICCUPS : PREEN'S PRECIS

IN A 1956 essay, the British writer Aldous Huxley wrote : '' At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice, and by the great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity : Idealism, dogmatism, and the proselytising zeal on behalf of religious or political idols.'' 

Huxley wrote these words, just 11 years after the end of World War II. The memory of the horrors of that war would have still been fresh in his mind - such as the memory of an idealistic programme to create 1,000-year Reich founded on the supposed intellectual, spiritual and physical superiority of the white ' Aryan race', which was ' destined ' to run supreme after vanquishing 'inferior' races.

Such beliefs were concocted by the Nazis to motivate polity that was struggling to come to terms with the ' humiliation ' that their country had suffered in the First World War.

Then, in the late 1920s, Germans became victims of a rapidly crumbling economy.

So, a lot of them quite liked the idea of being told that they were a superior race, led by a 'strongman' [ Hitler ], who shaped himself not only as a ' fearless ' leader, but also as a messianic figure whose impulse, will and wisdom would put in place the building blocks of the coming 1,000-year Reich.

The World Students Society thanks Nadeem F. Paracha.