George Orwell, review of Mein Kampf (1940):
Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all βprogressiveβ thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security and avoidance of pain. In such a view of life there is no room, for instance, for patriotism and the military virtues. The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow wonβt do. Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings donβt only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades. However they may be as economic theories, Fascism and Nazism are psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life. The same is probably true of Stalinβs militarised version of Socialism. All three of the great dictators have enhanced their power by imposing intolerable burdens on their peoples. Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people βI offer you a good time,β Hitler has said to them βI offer you struggle, danger and death,β and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet. Perhaps later on they will get sick of it and change their minds, as at the end of the last war. After a few years of slaughter and starvation βGreatest happiness of the greatest numberβ is a good slogan, but at this moment βBetter an end with horror than a horror without endβ is a winner. Now that we are fighting against the man who coined it, we ought not to underrate its emotional appeal.