Friedrich August von Hayek, Nazi Order

Nazi Order is Hayek’s 1941 joint book review, republished in 1997, of Paul Einzig’s Hitler’s ‘New Order’ in Europe and C. W. Guillebaud’s The Social Policy of Nazi Germany. Its argument moves from a sympathetic assessment of two contrasting accounts of Nazi policy to a criticism of their shared assumptions about political means and ends. Hayek regards both books as necessary corrections to public misunderstanding, but asks whether the methods they sometimes approve can really be separated from the coercive order they deplore.

Despite controversy between the two authors, Hayek finds their contributions complementary. Einzig’s passionate exposure of Germany’s projected European order counters promises that, Hayek observes with alarm, could attract credulous readers even in Britain. Guillebaud’s detached examination of German social policy addresses a different misconception: the belief that Nazism simply served capitalist interests and stood at the opposite pole from socialism. His comparatively favourable account of some Nazi activities helps explain the regime’s continuing appeal to German workers. For Hayek, this explanatory achievement does not excuse the regime; it makes its strength more intelligible.

It is surely more important to know the sources of Nazi strength than to cherish illusions on this score—even if to some the Nazis may in consequence appear less odious than they nevertheless are.

The qualification is essential. Hayek distinguishes understanding political support from endorsing the power that commands it. He acknowledges that Guillebaud’s findings might unsettle readers accustomed to British propaganda, but places responsibility for that discomfort on the misleading picture they have received, not on the scholar correcting it. He also explicitly credits Guillebaud with addressing the regime’s discreditable features within the scope of his study. The review thus defends accurate inquiry even when its results complicate an emotionally reassuring account of an enemy.

The decisive turn comes when Hayek identifies a fault common to both books. Their opposed emphases conceal an agreement about the apparent acceptability of certain instruments of government:

Both authors are inclined to approve many of the methods and means used by the Nazis, but deplore the ends for which they are employed. It does not seem to occur to them that the two things may be connected.

Hayek challenges two corresponding inferences: that disastrous results demonstrate wholly bad intentions, and that measures resembling proposals long advocated by social reformers must produce something good. Neither inference examines whether the methods themselves generate political consequences. The relevant question is therefore not merely what rulers intend, but what the attempt to implement comprehensive direction demands of rulers and institutions.

Is it not possible that all that planning and direction, which in Germany longer than elsewhere has been universally demanded, necessarily require a "totalitarian" regime, arbitrary preferences, the use of force, and the institution of a new hierarchical order of society, and that only the most ruthless and unscrupulous are capable of satisfying the clamour of the masses for ‘action’, while the decent falter and fail when faced with the concrete task?

This question condenses the review’s central conceptual move. Planning may entail imposed priorities, force, and hierarchy, while the demand for decisive action may favour leaders willing to use those instruments without scruple. Hayek presents this as a possibility requiring examination, not as a causal argument fully demonstrated in the brief review. Its significance lies in shifting attention from rulers’ professed objectives to the institutional requirements and selection pressures of their programme.

The closing appeal to a saying attributed to Hölderlin frames the attempt to make the state an earthly heaven as a source of political hell; the reprint’s editorial note reports that the quotation’s source could not be located. The review’s lasting relevance rests on its conjunction of intellectual candour and institutional criticism: Nazi social policy must be understood without comforting distortions, but apparently desirable techniques cannot be assessed independently of the power needed to carry them out.