The Devil's Dialectic

"He who fights with monsters must see to it that he doesn't thereby become a monster."

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.