ABSTRACT
Aurel Kolnai’s The War against the West remains one of the most insightful analyses of Nazi thought ever written. In 1938 it was a revelation. Quite different in tone and approach from most other analyses of Nazism available in English, it was remarkable for the thoroughness with which it discussed the writings of Nazi thinkers and for the seriousness with which it took their views. Only a few other British scholars – such as R. G. Collingwood and E. O. Lorimer – and émigré authors – such as Franz Borkenau and Sebastian Haffner – took the Nazis at their word, and none of them offered such an in-depth analysis of the Nazis’ own writings. In this chapter I compare Kolnai’s achievements with those of both popular and scholarly analyses of Nazism that were published in Britain before the war. Émigré scholars were the most able to understand what Nazism meant but The War against the West, especially in its analysis of Nazi race thinking, is unique: not only was Kolnai not in Britain when he wrote the book but he had never even set foot in the country. Yet his ability to penetrate, in English, the mindset of the Nazis was second to none, an accomplishment that was recognized in the book’s reception.
