ABSTRACT
Within Germany, the idea that defeat was the result of a conspiracy had no evidence to back it up but explained everything. But German society was the daughter of an intensely Romantic nineteenth century, and was unconsciously exposed to mythological or sentimental points of view; so the Dolchstoßlegende, the theory or legend of the 'stab in the back', came to dominate the mass media. The 'Carthaginian' peaces of the First World War erased the identities of two old multinational states: the remains of the Habsburg Empire passed from Mitteleuropeanism to German and Hungarian nationalism; at the meeting point between Europe and Asia there was a slide from Ottomanism to Turkism. The paranoia, which ought to have died down with the coming of peace, did not affect the defeated alone, but exploded in new forms throughout Europe. The world of paranoid procedure, previously reserved for wars of religion or silent colonial genocides. Now it established itself in European relations.
