WHY REALITY MAKES TRUE BELIEVERS INCREASINGLY FRANTIC:

In the second half of his book, Mr Huber switches tack to give a broad sweep of the Nazi era, tracing the dark exhilaration that overtook previously sane individuals as they came to feel that Hitler could solve all their problems. He describes the denial or glib justifications with which people reacted to the persecution of Jews; some readers may feel he should have dwelled more on that subject. Closer to his main theme, he pinpoints reactions to the assault on the Soviet Union in June 1941. Some had a bleak sense the invasion might fail, others still believed devoutly in the military and moral superiority of the Reich. As news emerged of the atrocities the invaders were committing, and the titanic reverses they began to suffer, some Germans experienced cognitive dissonance. Their faith in Nazism's ultimate triumph grew all the more fervent.

Thus the book hints at a deep truth about war at its dirtiest. When people sense crimes are being committed in their name, they can become even more fanatical in their devotion to the cause, so that an all-out drive for victory, or else martyrdom, seem the only ways these sins can be redeemed.

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