Hitler's private conversations, even more than his public declarations, amply reveal that he clearly realized that. He not only saw much of this but, in his brutal and ignorant way, tried to construct this new order by deliberate planned effort. He set waves in motion. "The Nazi movement has finally closed the Feudal Age forever," he once declared privately. "All these tremendous changes are inevitable and it is National Socialism alone which understands their significance and works actively for a new era. Our task is to remake the world on modern and unprecedented lines. We alone possess the vast imagination and creative willpower to get out of the common somnolence of living in the antiquated past and attempt it successfully." Amid all his obvious charlatanry, Hitler was something of a clairvoyant. But his mental eyes being diseased, he could see only distorted visions. Consequently, he not only caricatured, degraded, and falsified ideas which were originally sound, but instead of understanding that the greatly needed historical upheaval was to be brought about for the universal benefit of all mankind, he could understand only that it was to be brought about for the exclusive benefit of the Germans. Hence his evil visions led in the end to miserable failure where they might have led to the success that attends the perception of dynamic historical inner necessity, and his idealism became so grossly limited and distorted that its artificial achievements constituted a curse and not a blessing for mankind. What, at a time when contemporary history was so drastically at work, could have become a movement for ending world enslavement, what the time-spirit demanded for the uplift of all men, Hitler was willing to concede only for the selfish aggrandizement of a particular group of men. This is why he achieved the gigantic success that he did and why it was followed later by equally gigantic failure. He could have rendered an incomparable service to the world but instead rendered an incomparable disservice to it. For the new age he tried to usher in was immeasurably worse than the old one. Nazi victory would have spiritually put the evolutionary clock back for centuries. It would have meant a spiritual defeat, a moral degeneration, and an intellectual black-out.
-- Notebooks Category 11: The Negatives > Chapter 3 : Their Presence in The World > # 200
