Friedrich August von Hayek, Knowledge of Germany

First published in The Spectator on December 26, 1941, and republished in the supplied 1997 version, Knowledge of Germany is a wartime periodical essay advocating systematic British study of German intellectual life. Hayek’s subject is the practical cost of misunderstanding an enemy whose ideas also circulate among allies and within Britain itself. His central claim is that effective policy requires sustained, historically informed expertise rather than impressions acquired through travel, selective admiration, or indiscriminate hostility. The essay moves from the instability of Germany’s reputation to deficiencies in British scholarship, then examines the international reach of German ideas before proposing university training and access to current German publications.

Hayek begins with the extraordinary oscillations in foreign assessments of Germany over the preceding century. A nation once admired for its intellectual influence subsequently becomes the embodiment of everything detestable. He treats these reversals as evidence that observers have constructed inadequate pictures, not simply that successive generations have corrected their predecessors. Discovering qualities excluded by an earlier condemnation can produce another equally selective enthusiasm. The political consequence is explicit:

There will be no stable policy towards Germany till a stable view of her has been achieved, which must be a view that suppresses neither the bad nor the good side, but combines them into a coherent picture.

The distinction here is between instability within German thought and instability in knowledge about it. Conflicting intellectual tendencies do not make a coherent understanding impossible; they make an account of their causes necessary. Hayek seeks neither a favourable nor an unfavourable national portrait, but an interpretation capable of holding contradictory evidence together without repeatedly reversing its political implications.

The next section distinguishes familiarity from expertise. More Britons may have visited Germany between the wars, yet Hayek argues that British knowledge of the country declined. Visitors commonly became lovers or haters of Germany according to the side they encountered. What Britain lacked was a professional community able to interpret the intellectual currents shaping German development and policy. His comparisons with Halévy, Dibelius, Andler, Vermeil, and Curtius identify sustained scholarship on another country as the relevant standard, rather than personal acquaintance or literary appreciation alone.

This deficiency becomes urgent during war and in preparation for its aftermath. Understanding enemy ideas is a condition of intelligent action, including propaganda, whose recent British record Hayek judges poor. He sharply separates explanatory understanding from moral indulgence:

To understand is in such a case by no means necessarily to forgive or to condone. But it is an essential basis for any intelligent action.

The qualification prevents his appeal for knowledge from being mistaken for reconciliation or exculpation. Universities should train specialists as part of the war effort because existing courses do not supply the necessary combination of political, historical, and intellectual understanding. German exiles could help train them, although Hayek regards their outlook as inevitably somewhat biased and does not consider them substitutes for British experts.

He then reverses the objection that studying German thought might itself be dangerous:

Here, as elsewhere, it is only partial knowledge that is dangerous.

This is more than a defence of academic inquiry. Hayek argues that Britons have already absorbed German ideas while neglecting their relationship to the larger system from which they came. Such borrowing has weakened awareness of differences between English and German thought. Fuller knowledge would make discrimination possible: readers could assess which elements can be separated from features they reject and which remain connected to them. The essay calls for contextual scrutiny of intellectual borrowing, not its blanket repudiation. Hayek does not, however, specify which borrowed doctrines belong in either category.

The argument broadens from Britain to the international persistence of ideas. Central European nations, including British allies, have drawn heavily on German sources in social and political thought. Those ideas may continue operating abroad even after disappearing in Germany itself. German accounts of the origins of the previous war have also influenced distinguished American historians, affecting the reception of British arguments. National influence therefore cannot be understood solely by observing the present German state: it survives in other countries’ intellectual assumptions.

The final section turns this diagnosis into a concrete proposal. Hayek rejects the supposition that dictatorship has completely stopped intellectual development. Britain’s ignorance is increasing because specialists outside official positions cannot follow current German publications. He contrasts this with the First World War, when important German books and reviews continued to reach Britain and receive scholarly attention. Official monitoring alone is insufficient:

The hurried and overworked civil servant can hardly pay attention to anything except what is of immediate importance.

Specialists need access because significant tendencies may not appear immediately useful to administrators. Acknowledging wartime restrictions, Hayek proposes making one copy of each important publication available at a central location to competent readers with legitimate interests. Scholars could then monitor developments in their own fields and report their significance. The essay’s lasting relevance lies in this connection between reliable foreign knowledge and its institutional conditions: a coherent policy depends on trained interpreters, contextual understanding, and access to evidence beyond the immediate priorities of government.