Total War and the Human Mind
- Author:
Major A. M.
Meerloo, M.D., h.R.s.M. FuDiisnea ior tne Netherlands Government Information Bureau. George Allen & Unwin Ltd. Pp. 78. 5s. Major Meerloo’s little book should be read by all thinking people. The first five chapters, ” Two Days in Occupied Holland,” ” Mass Reactions to German Occupation,” ” The Deutschland Complex and German Psychology,” ” Hitler’s Psychological Weapons ” and ” The Psychology of Radio Propaganda ” are largely narrative, and this sort of thing has been done often enough before, but the last five chapters are really constructive. The author points out that the seeds of authoritarianism and democracy are in us all, and it depends partly on ourselves and partly on our education, whether we regress or remain at the adolescent stage of instable submission to authority, or grow up into fully adult democratic independence of thought and feeling. Next he discusses the human reactions to fear, the forms of courage?mass ecstacy or individual fortitude, and the degenerative manifestation of mass delusion. In relation to courage we should take to heart the following passage:
” Much though we owe to the soldier who does his duty and pays the price for human delusion and unwisdom, it is essential that we understand the nature of the hero worship we offer him. We give admiration from a sense of guilt. We have offered up the unknown warrior as a sacrifice on the altar of unreason, and in return we pay him homage as we pay a debt of honour.” Finally there is an admirable chapter on the Psychological preparation of the next war, which shows clearly the dangers against which we must guard and the provisions we ought to make. At present most people will agree with all that Major Meerloo has to say, but can we trust ourselves to preserve our sense of reality, and resist the waves of sentimentality and apathy which swept over us so disastrously after the last war ? We can only hope so for the sake of the next generation.
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