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If we were to make no better use of victory than to countenance existing trends in this direction, only too visible before 1939, we might indeed find that we have defeated National Socialism merely to create a world of many national socialisms, differing in detail, but all equally totalitarian, nationalistic, and in recurrent conflict with each other. The Germans would appear as the disturbers of peace, as they already do to some people, merely because they were the first to take the path along which all the others were ultimately to follow.

Friedrich Hayek#26

PoliticsHistoryWarTotalitarianism

About this quote

What does it mean?
Defeating one ideology is pointless if society repeats its totalitarian patterns.
In plain terms
Winning a war means nothing if we keep making the same mistakes.
What can you take from it?
Avoid repeating past political errors.

Where it applies

  • post-war reconstruction
  • political analysis
  • historical study

Putting it to work

  • studying history
  • critiquing policy trends

Questions to consider

  • How do we learn from history?
  • Is war ever truly won?

Another view

Sometimes new systems emerge from old conflicts.

More from Friedrich Hayek

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  3. It is neither necessary nor desirable that national boundaries should mark sharp differences in standards of living, that membership of a national group should…

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