"He who fights with monsters must see to it that he doesn't thereby become a monster."
John Leake
A
few years before he died in 1999, Alexander von Üxküll-Gyllenband lived
just down the street from me in Vienna. He was the first cousin of
Claus von Stauffenberg, who unsuccessfully tried to assassinate Hitler
on July 20, 1944.
I occasionally had afternoon tea with him in
his modest apartment, and we talked about history and world affairs. His
father (also named Alexander von Üxküll-Gyllenband) was a participant
in the July 1944 plot and was also executed.
I was always struck
by the quality of Alexander’s manners. He had an exceptionally kind and
gentle way about him, and he always spoke to his wife in a courtly way.
During
the Weimar Republic years (1919 to 1933) the German nobility was
terrified of the communists taking over, and rightfully so. They
understood that if a Soviet style communist party ever came to power in
Germany, they would do terrible things, just like they were doing in
Stalin’s Gulag.
Many
German aristocrats were therefore initially supportive of Hitler, whom
they perceived to be willing to send the commies packing.
At the
same time, many aristocrats perceived Hitler to be far too loud,
bombastic, and histrionic. When President Paul von Hindenburg met him
for the first time on October 10, 1931, Hitler’s garrulousness got on
Hindenburg’s nerves, and after the meeting, he told Chancellor Kurt von
Schleicher:
Dieser böhmische Gefreite wolle Reichskanzler werden? Niemals! Höchstens Postminister.
This bohemian Corporal wants to become Chancellor? Never! At most the Postal Service Minister.
It
seems that Hindenburg was initially under the impression that Hitler
was originally from Bohemia (now the Czech Republic) and not from
Austria.
I mention the German aristocracy and Hitler because it’s
a notable example in recent history of a people lowering their
standards in response to the horrible people whom they were fighting.
The aristocracy hated the communists, whom they perceived to a
malevolent and treacherous bunch. They therefore lowered their standards
to support Hitler on the utilitarian grounds that he would get rid of
the communist menace.
They didn’t stop to think—until it was too
late—that in their fight against monsters, they supported a monster who
ultimately became their master as well.
As Nietzsche famously put it:
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird.
He he fights with monsters must see to it that he doesn’t thereby become a monster.
The
devil’s dialectic involves allowing oneself to get so annoyed by the
monstrousness of one’s antagonists that one is tempted to use monstrous
instruments and methods in the fight against them.
Refusing to
participate in this devil’s dialectic is one of the greatest challenges
in the life of a civilized man and a civilized society. A gentleman
never lowers his own standards and coarsens his own manners just because
he is obliged to contend with dreadful people.
October 11, 1798, letter to the Massachusetts Militia, John Adams wrote:
Because
We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human
Passions unbridled by morality and Religion. Avarice, Ambition, Revenge
or Gallantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a
Whale goes through a Net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
I
sometimes fear that morals and manners are so far gone among our people
that we can no longer be governed by our Constitution that limits the
power of the state.