The Catastrophe of the 20th Century

From the promise of the Enlightenment to catastrophe

In the previous lecture we saw the great promise of the Enlightenment: using their own reason, people can leave their “self-incurred immaturity”, know their rights and build states that respect them. We also saw the warning of Adorno and Horkheimer: reason reduced to a mere instrument can also serve domination. The 20th century showed that the warning was no exaggeration.

The First World War (1914–1918) killed some 17–20 million people. It was the first industrial war: machine guns, poison gas, trenches where tens of thousands died for a few kilometres of ground. The peace of Versailles (1919) was built on the idea of punishment: Germany was declared guilty and forced to pay huge reparations. Humiliation and economic crisis prepared the ground for extremism.

The Second World War (1939–1945) was even more devastating: between 70 and more than 80 million dead, most of them civilians. Whole cities were destroyed, from Warsaw to Dresden, from Stalingrad to Rotterdam.

Remember the link: a peace built on humiliating the defeated prepared the next war. We will see that in 1950 Europe deliberately chose the opposite path.

The Holocaust and the Gulag: evil as administration

At the centre of the catastrophe stands the Holocaust: the systematic extermination of some 6 million Jews by the Nazi regime and its allies, together with Roma, people with disabilities and other groups.

Holocaust (Heb. Shoah): the genocide of the Jews of Europe, organised by Nazi Germany and its allies between 1941 and 1945. Example: the Auschwitz camp, where more than a million people were murdered.

What makes the Holocaust unique is not only the number of victims but the fact that it was a bureaucratic project. People were registered, dispossessed, transported and killed according to plans, tables and timetables.

At the same time, in the Soviet Union, Stalin’s regime built the Gulag, the system of forced-labour camps through which millions of people passed. There were famines caused or worsened by state policy, purges, mass executions and deportations of entire peoples. Here, too, violence was organised administratively: lists, quotas, signed decisions.

What is new: totalitarianism

Tyrants and massacres have existed throughout history. What does the 20th century bring that is new? The philosophers’ answer: a new political form.

Totalitarianism: a regime that does not just want to govern or get rich, but to control society totally, even people’s thoughts, in the name of an ideology that claims to know the laws of Nature or of History. Example: Nazi Germany and Stalin’s USSR.

The term was first used in Mussolini’s Italy and was later applied to both regimes. Its deepest analysis belongs to Hannah Arendt.

Primo Levi, an Italian chemist and survivor of Auschwitz, gives us the key to the whole lecture:

“It happened, therefore it can happen again: this is the core of what we have to say.”Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved (1986), Conclusion

The memory of the catastrophe is not a history lesson to learn by heart. It is a question for today: what conditions could make something like this possible again?

“The right to have rights”

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) was born into a Jewish family in Germany and studied philosophy with Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers. In 1933 she was briefly arrested by the Gestapo, then fled to France, and in 1941 she reached the United States.

For many years she lived as a stateless person, without the citizenship of any state. The experience showed her something that would become a central idea of her work: human rights, proclaimed as universal, are worth little to someone who belongs to no political community. Whoever has no state to protect their rights is, in practice, left without them.

The right to have rights: for Arendt, the basic right to belong to a political community, without which all other rights remain only on paper. Example: a refugee without papers cannot go to court, cannot work legally and cannot vote anywhere.

Four features of totalitarianism

In The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), Arendt analyses Nazism and Stalinism as two forms of the same new phenomenon. Totalitarianism differs from classical tyranny in four features.

Ideology: a total explanation of the world that claims to know the law of History (class struggle) or of Nature (race struggle). Facts that do not fit are ignored. Terror: it strikes not only opponents but also the innocent. Anyone can become an “enemy”, so no one feels safe any more.

Isolation: the bonds between people (family, friends, associations, church) are weakened or destroyed. A person alone, with no one to talk to, can no longer resist. “Superfluous” people: the camps are the “laboratories” of totalitarianism, where human beings are turned into interchangeable specimens, without individuality.

Pluralism: the existence of several parties, opinions, associations and sources of information. For post-1945 Europe, pluralism is not a luxury but a protection against total domination. Example: an independent press and an active civil society.

Eichmann in Jerusalem: “the banality of evil”

In 1961 Adolf Eichmann, one of the organisers of the deportation of Jews to the death camps, was tried in Jerusalem. Arendt followed the trial as a reporter for The New Yorker. She expected to see a monster. She saw a functionary: a careerist who spoke in clichés, boasted of his efficiency and claimed he had only “done his duty”.

The banality of evil: Arendt’s idea that extreme evil can be done by ordinary people who are neither sadists nor fanatics but simply do not think. It does not mean the evil is small. Example: the official who signs deportation lists without asking what will happen to the people on them.

“The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal.”Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963), Epilogue

The link with critical thinking is direct. For Arendt, to think means to hold a dialogue with yourself, as Socrates did, and to be able to say “no”. Critical thinking is not just an exam technique but a moral condition: a person who thinks is harder to turn into an instrument.

Reading Arendt critically too

The thesis of the “banality of evil” has been strongly contested. Historians who later studied the documents, for example Bettina Stangneth in Eichmann Before Jerusalem (2011), showed that Eichmann was a convinced antisemite who, in the 1950s in Argentina, boasted of his role. The image of a “functionary who only followed orders” was largely his defence strategy at the trial.

What do we learn? A philosophical idea can be valuable in general: many ordinary people really did take part in crimes without being fanatics. But applying it to a concrete case must be checked against the facts.

Always distinguish the thesis from the example chosen to illustrate it. A badly chosen example does not automatically refute the thesis, but it weakens it.

Neither “everyone” nor “no one”

Karl Jaspers (1883–1969), Arendt’s teacher and friend, was one of the few great German philosophers who made no compromise with Nazism. His wife was Jewish, and both lived for years under the threat of deportation.

In the winter of 1945–1946, at the University of Heidelberg, Jaspers gave a course on the question the whole of Germany was avoiding: who is guilty? The lectures appeared in 1946 as The Question of German Guilt.

Jaspers rejects two extremes. The first: “all Germans are guilty”, that is, the idea of collective guilt in a criminal or moral sense. The second: “no one is guilty except Hitler and a few leaders”. To escape this false alternative, he distinguishes four meanings of guilt.

Four kinds of guilt

Criminal guilt is borne by whoever broke clear laws: killed, tortured, deported. A court judges. Example: the Nuremberg trial (1945–1946).

Political guilt is borne by the citizens of a state for the deeds of their state. The consequence is not punishment but liability: reparations, limits on power.

Moral guilt is borne by each person for what they personally did or did not do: kept silent, went along, looked away. Here only one’s own conscience judges.

Metaphysical guilt is felt by anyone who survived while others were being killed beside them. For Jaspers, only God judges.

The distinction is of great practical value: a people can share a political liability without every individual being criminally guilty.

Facing the past

Jaspers shows that law and courts are not enough: a society also needs a moral self-examination that no one can impose from outside. He believed that only an honest acceptance of the past opens the way to reconciliation with one’s neighbours and to a genuine democracy.

Germany travelled this road gradually, with hesitations, over several decades. A symbolic moment came in December 1970, when Chancellor Willy Brandt knelt before the monument to the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Vergangenheitsbewältigung (Ger.): “coming to terms with the past”, the process by which a society takes responsibility for past crimes through justice, education and public memory. Example: in Germany, pupils learn about the Holocaust at school and often visit the memorials of former camps.

The European dream in the dark years

The idea of a united Europe did not appear only in 1950. In 1941, on the island of Ventotene, where they had been confined by Mussolini’s regime, the Italian anti-fascists Altiero Spinelli and Ernesto Rossi wrote the Ventotene Manifesto. They argued that the absolute sovereignty of nation states inevitably leads to war and that, once fascism was defeated, Europe must become a federation. The manuscript was smuggled off the island.

After the war the idea came out of hiding. In Zurich in 1946, Winston Churchill called for a kind of “United States of Europe” and said something surprising, only a year after the war:

“The first step in the re-creation of the European family must be a partnership between France and Germany.”Winston Churchill, speech at the University of Zurich, 19 September 1946

In 1949 the Council of Europe was founded, and in 1950 the European Convention on Human Rights was signed. But the decisive step towards the future European Union came from another direction.

9 May 1950: coal and steel

On 9 May 1950 the French foreign minister Robert Schuman read a short declaration to the press in Paris, prepared together with Jean Monnet. The proposal was concrete and, for its time, astonishing: France and Germany, which had fought each other three times in 70 years (1870, 1914, 1939), should place all their coal and steel production under a common High Authority, in an organisation open to other European countries.

Why coal and steel? Because they were the basic resources of the war industry: tanks, guns, railways. A state that no longer controls these resources alone can no longer secretly prepare a war against its neighbour.

The Declaration says explicitly that, through this solidarity, any war between France and Germany would become “not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible”.

The method: small steps, de facto solidarity

The central philosophical idea of the Declaration is one of method:

“Europe will not be made all at once, or according to a single plan. It will be built through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity.”Schuman Declaration, 9 May 1950

De facto solidarity: bonds created through concrete common interests and projects, not through declarations. Example: two countries that manage their coal together have every interest in not fighting each other.

The project was quickly put into practice. Through the Treaty of Paris (1951), six states (France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg) created the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). In 1957, through the Treaties of Rome, the same states created the European Economic Community. From there, through many stages, we reach today’s European Union.

9 May is celebrated in the EU as Europe Day.

Why is the Declaration a philosophical act?

At first sight the Declaration looks like a technical document about industry. In fact it contains three important philosophical ideas.

Reconciliation instead of punishment. After 1919, peace had been built on humiliating the defeated. In 1950 Germany is treated as an equal partner, only five years after the war. It is a moral choice: the common future is placed above the right to revenge.

Peace as a process, not a proclamation. Peace treaties and solemn declarations of friendship had not prevented earlier wars. Schuman and Monnet propose small steps that create common interests, the habit of cooperation and trust.

Shared sovereignty. For the first time, European states willingly agree to place part of their power under a common authority, independent of governments. It is exactly what Spinelli and Rossi had called for.

Reconstructing the argument

Let us apply what we know about the structure of arguments. Here is one possible, simplified reconstruction of the Declaration.

Assumption: an unstated premise that is nevertheless needed for the argument to work. Example: “Take an umbrella, it’s cloudy” assumes that clouds usually bring rain.

The Declaration’s argument has three assumptions. First: economic interdependence reduces the risk of war. This is Montesquieu’s idea from the previous lecture: “the natural effect of commerce is to lead to peace”. Second: common institutions can create trust. Third: Germany can be a trustworthy partner.

Most weaknesses of an argument hide in its assumptions. They are the first place worth looking.

Angell’s test

Let us test the main assumption. In 1910 Norman Angell wrote in The Great Illusion that the European economies were so closely linked that a war would be absurd. Four years later the First World War broke out.

The conclusion: economic interdependence alone is not a sufficient condition for peace. What does Schuman add to mere trade? Common institutions, which bind states even after the enthusiasm fades, and a political decision to reconcile.

A condition can be necessary without being sufficient. Trade helps peace, but does not guarantee it.

Correlation or causation?

It is often said: “Thanks to European integration, the member states have not fought each other since 1945.” In 2012 the European Union received the Nobel Peace Prize for precisely this reason. The fact is true. But is the causal relation proven?

Correlation and causation: two things can occur together (correlation) without one producing the other (causation). Example: in summer more ice cream is sold and more people drown, but ice cream does not cause drowning. The common cause is the heat.

There are alternative explanations: the American military presence and NATO, the common threat from the USSR during the Cold War, nuclear deterrence, post-war economic growth, the living memory of the war. Most likely peace has several causes, and European integration is one of them.

An honest argument for the EU does not need to exaggerate. It is enough to show that integration contributed and made peace more stable over time.

A century of catastrophes, on our own land

The territory of today’s Republic of Moldova lived through the 20th century as a succession of catastrophes, under different regimes: war, the Holocaust, deportations and famine, under two dictatorships.

Many families have direct memories of these events: deported grandparents, relatives who starved, soldiers who fell on opposite fronts. In 2013 the monument “Train of Pain” was unveiled at the Chișinău railway station, dedicated to the victims of the deportations. The same city has monuments to the victims of the ghetto and the “Eternity” memorial complex, dedicated to the soldiers who fell in the Second World War.

Three monuments in the same city, for three kinds of victims. Each tells part of the same history.

The same day, two memories

Yet the memory of these events is divided. A concrete example is 9 May. For some, it is above all Victory Day over Nazism and the day of remembrance for the fallen. For others, it is also Europe Day, the anniversary of the Schuman Declaration.

Likewise, for some, 1944 means “liberation”. For others, it means the return of an occupation and the beginning of the deportations. Both groups have real dead to mourn.

Divided memory: a situation in which groups in the same society remember the same past differently and give it opposite meanings. Example: the same calendar date, celebrated by some as a victory and lived by others as the start of suffering.

Reconciliation, not forgetting

Here the lessons of Jaspers and Schuman become practical. Jaspers shows us that reconciliation does not mean forgetting but honestly accepting the truth, including the truth that is uncomfortable for one’s own community. Schuman shows us that reconciliation is built through concrete common projects.

Reconciliation: rebuilding trust between former adversaries, based on recognising the truth about the past and on common projects for the future. Example: France and Germany, enemies in three wars, are today close partners in the EU.

The Republic of Moldova is negotiating EU accession: negotiations were opened in June 2024, and in 2026 the first group of chapters (cluster) was opened. Moldova is thus joining a project born precisely of the will to overcome a memory of hatred, not to erase it.

Negative peace and positive peace

Let us return to the question of the lecture. To discuss it precisely, a distinction made by the Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung (1969) helps.

Negative peace and positive peace: negative peace means only the absence of war. Positive peace means trust, justice, cooperation and good relations between people. Example: two neighbours who no longer fight have negative peace. Two neighbours who help each other mend the fence have positive peace.

The question becomes: can an economic construction produce not only negative peace but also positive peace?

Three answers

Yes, interests create virtues. As in Aristotle, where virtue is formed by habit, daily cooperation creates trust over time. Trade, exchanges and common projects help people get to know each other. The problem: the example of 1914 shows that interdependence can coexist with hatred and can collapse quickly.

No, moral peace requires memory and repentance. Without facing the past, as in Jaspers, economic cooperation remains a calculation of interests that can change at any time. The problem: moral reckoning takes time, sometimes generations. Meanwhile people need a concrete peace, even if “only” negative.

Both, in the right order. The Declaration says that concrete achievements will “first” create a de facto solidarity. The economy creates the framework, and moral peace comes later, through political and human gestures: Franco-German youth exchanges (from 1963), Brandt kneeling (1970), Kohl and Mitterrand holding hands at Verdun (1984). The problem: what happens if the second step never comes?