It is possible that the intellectual and political pollution of Europe’s twentieth century will never go away. Perhaps it is not a sin that can be washed out. But the number of forces that it polluted along the way are still being counted. Some cannot be missed. Most obvious among these are the racial theories that had fascinated some European writers and geneticists up to the 1940s but lost their appeal after Bergen-Belsen. Other forces caught in the slew included things that Europeans might have had need of in the years ahead. They include the very concept of the nation state and the feeling of nationhood as well as the ideologies of nationalism. As a form of hyper-nationalism, Nazism took all of these down with it. Somewhere downriver from there it also swallowed up the possibility of patriotism. The catastrophe of the First World War had already made patriotism look unforgivable and senseless. The catastrophe of the Second World War made it clear that patriotism could be the source of wickedness itself.

What else did these conflicts and the clash of ideologies destroy? If not the last vestiges of religion then certainly the last refuge of the idea of a merciful God. If this had not been achieved in the mud of Flanders then it was completed in the trial of God as described by Elie Wiesel at Auschwitz. The Jews could continue their traditions as a people and could believe in the people even if they had lost faith in their God. But Christian Europe had lost faith not only in its God but in its people as well. Any remaining faith that man had in man was destroyed in Europe. From the period of the European Enlightenments onwards, as belief and trust in God had waned, so belief and trust in man had partially replaced this. The belief in autonomous man had accelerated after the Enlightenments that had stressed the potential wisdom of mankind alone. Yet those who let reason be their guide now looked as ridiculous as everyone else. ‘Reason’ and ‘rationalism’ had led men to do the most unreasonable and irrational things. It had been just another system used by men to control other men. Belief in the autonomy of man had been destroyed by men.