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From New International, Vol. XXI No. 2, Summer 1955, pp. 128–129.
Marked up up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Why Dictators?
by George W.F. Hallgarten
Published by The Macmillan Co.
Why does an historian with Hallgarten’s reputation write and publish a book like Why Dictators? (Hallgarten’s fame rests securely on his two-volume work, Imperialismus vor 1914. Written and finished just as Hitler came to power, Hallgarten’s work was not published in complete form until 1951 in Munich. It has found its place as an indispensable source in any study of imperialism.)
There is nothing to admire about Why Dictators? except the display of learning and technical virtuosity. Hallgarten freely roams all periods of Western history to find his material. Arnold Toynbee may have needed ten thick volumes, Hallgarten needs only 354 breathless pages. Cypselus of Corinth, Orthagoras of Sycyon, Pisastratus of Athens stand side by side in uneasy contemporaneity with Tiberius, Gaius Gracchus, Ferrante of Naples, Thomas Munzer, Cromwell, Bonaparte, right down to Chiang Kai-shek. We are dazzled but not instructed.
Hallgarten distinguishes four types of dictatorship: the “classical,” the “ultra-revolutionary,” “counter-” and “pseudo-revolutionary.” Social crisis, our author tells us, prepares the soil for dictators. But he simultaneously insists on the psychological derangement and “charismatic” character of dictators to explain their origin, rise and success. Marx, Weber, and Freud all suffer equally as a result of Hallgarten’s method.
Of course Hallgarten is too sophisticated to explain dictators on psychological grounds alone. But the way he combines psychological and social drives is something wonderful to behold. His analysis of the reasons for the extremism of the “pseudo-revolutionary type à la Hitler will serve as a model of his method.
He begins by giving conditional acceptance to Gisevius’s opinion that “neither greedy masses nor unleashed matter nor inscrutable destiny conjured World War II into being. It originated in the will of a single individual.” Says Hallgarten: this statement
“undoubtedly contains a sizable nucleus of truth, though not the full truth. In reality, no pseudo-revolutionary leader would have come to power without active help from the ruling classes and from their individual members whom he was expected to save from distress. Besides, he always remained dependent on the masses behind him ...”
So far, so good. Who could disagree? But then matter is translated into spirit.
“The pressure exercized upon his [Hitler’s] psychology by the mechanics of rearmament – the exhaustion of raw materials, the increase of inflation, the chance of being out-raced by other powers, and the increasing impatience of his own radicals – became more and more unbearable.”
The last chapter of this dismal work ends with some comments on the world struggle between the United States and Russia. Hallgarten fears this struggle will produce dictatorships within the Western world. As is usual, he produces his cataclysmic vision. But instead of turning to Burkhardt, the favorite oracle for the doom-sayers these days, the slightly old-fashioned Hallgarten reverts to Spengler for his panorama of decay. The specter of Spengler’s Caesar, ruler of a declining civilization, threatens Western society unless ... unless the ordinary citizen shakes off his complacency.
We close with the same question we asked at the outset. Why does a historian of Hallgarten’s note dissipate his reputation by writing this kind of book?
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Last updated on 15 August 2019