Hegel in Winds of War

The historical novel Winds of War by Herman Wouk has a character named General von Roon.  The general is used to portray the German mentality of Nazi Germany.  In chapter 44, Barbarossa, the general makes some comments about Hegel.  I am going to recount the general's words about Hegel because I think Hegel is where the German Enlightenment went off the rails.  Each nation had its own manifestation of the Enlightenment.  There was an English Enlightenment, a Scottish Enlightenment, a French Enlightenment, and a German Enlightenment.  Each had slightly different traits.  But if we want to consider all factions as one conglomerate Enlightenment, it is my contention that the Enlightenment had a high point with the American Constitution and the Federalist Papers and a low point with Nietzsche and Marx.   I believe the Enlightenment became unstable with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, it went off the road with Hegel, it crashed with Marx and Engels, and then Nietzsche blew it up.  Marx and Engels were students of Hegel.

The fictional character General von Roon said this on pages 601 and 602 (ISBN 0316955000).

Hitler's world view was Hegelian.  Nations, empires, cultures, all have their season in history, the great Hegel taught us.  They come, and they go.  Not one is permanent, but in each age one dominates and gives the theme.  In this succession of world dominions, we recognize the evolving will of the God of history, the World Spirit.  God therefore expresses and reveals himself in the will of those world-historical individuals like Caesar, Alexander, and Napoleon, who led their states to world empire.  Conventional morality cannot apply to the deeds of such men, for it is they who create the new modes and themes of morality in each age.

This Hegelian world view is, of course, at the other pole from the petit bourgeois morality which expects great nations to behave like well-brought-up young ladies in a finishing school and would hold a mighty armed people no different, in the rules applicable to its content, than some pale shoe clerk.

We could call this contempt for conventional morality Nietzschean.  Although Friedrich Nietzsche did not study under Hegel, he did read Hegel.  The enlightenment had a bright side and a dark side.  Alexander Hamilton and James Madison are in the bright side of the Enlightenment.  We need to recognize that Hitler, Marx, Lenin, and Stalin are the dark side of the Enlightenment, and Hegel was the starting point for Marx.

With General von Roon, Herman Wouk gave a voice to the worst of Hegel's legacy.

Robert