Thomas Mann

Thomas Mann’s novel “Doctor Faustus” is about a German man writing a biography about his genius composer friend. This narrator is living in Germany during the second world war, toward the end of it, with Germany’s defeat becoming inevitable. One of the compelling aspects of the novel are these interludes in which the narrator relates the state of mind of living in a doomed Third Reich. This excerpt comes from one of those interludes.

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Yes, I fear it will prove our destruction that a fatally inspired policy has brought us into conflict with two powers at once: one of them richest in manpower and revolutionary elan; the other mightiest in productive capacity. It seems, indeed, that this American production-machine did not even need to run to capacity to throw out an absolutely crushing abundance of war material. That the flabby democracies did know after all how to use these frightful tools is a staggering revelation, weaning us daily from the mistaken idea that war is a German prerogative, and that all other peoples must prove to be bunglers and amateurs in the art.

-- “Doctor Faustus” by Thomas Mann

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