Of course, it was Imperial Japan, not Nazi Germany, that attacked Hawaii. Yet in the immediate aftermath of the day of infamy, the United States entered a war both in Europe and in the Pacific. Although the political structures and ideologies of Japan and Germany were hardly identical and their geopolitical ambitions were not at all thoroughly aligned (who would replace the British in India?), President Roosevelt was able to articulate a clear opposition between the democracies and the fascist powers. Differences among the various fascist regimes could still leave room for nuanced policies and strategic decisions: there was no allied invasion of Franco’s Spain. Yet the fact that Mussolini was not Hitler did not prohibit the invasion of Sicily, a crucial link in the chain that would lead to victory in both theaters.
Such was the ability of American society then and its political leadership to resist and defeat the dictatorships of the Second World War, followed decades later by the successful conclusion of the Cold War with the collapse of the Soviet Union. That capacity for such political and military resolve is however of a completely different nature than academic inquiry which, characteristically, has developed a rich insight into the specific features and differences among the dictatorships. Scholars distinguish and differentiate, and this variegated knowledge can, at times, inform policy decisions, but, in the end, academics have the professional luxury of never having to act and certainly not to take action to contribute to national security.
Some intellectuals nonetheless have the ability to see the big picture. Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism of 1951 draws primarily on the examples of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, between which she describes important similarities. Aside from the left, which has always resented the impugning of Communism, academic objections to Arendt’s study have pointed out the undeniable differences between Hitler and Stalin, and their respective regimes. Within scholarly research, such criticisms should not be discounted, but there is a point, particularly when one moves from the university into the political arena, where this quibbling becomes a debilitating fixation: insistence on the specificity of each tree, while refusing to take note of the forest.
This is a problem with categories as such. Individual phenomena retain an irreducible particularity, which makes up the texture of lived life, the Lebenswelt; at the same time, we cannot do without a conceptual vocabulary to describe commonalities and to enable action in the world. Action is a defining condition of humanity, the ability to build on reflection to transform the world through creative innovation. Without the conceptual tools of thought, action becomes blind; but without an active pursuit of human goals—telos—thought diminishes.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, a widespread rethinking of political history and social theory commenced. Questions long frozen in the glacial stand-off between East and West began to thaw out, and the ideological mythologies of the twentieth century were subjected to new scrutiny. Why had the century of modernity been so centrally catastrophic? What was the nature of the worst offenders, the totalitarian regimes—especially in Germany, Italy, and Russia—that had generated so much violence? How could intellectuals and public opinion alike have facilely regarded Nazi Germany and fascist Italy as nearly identical formations (when they displayed so many differences)? And how could Stalinist Russia have been hailed as a positive alternative to Nazi Germany (when they displayed so many similarities)? With the disappearance of the Soviet Union, these interrogations could be pursued without the agenda, baggage, and defensiveness of the previous historical era. The question of the totalitarian state could finally be posed with the advantage of historical distance..
