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Adolf Hitler too was changed and enlightened by his war experiences. In Mein Kampf<\/em>, he tells how shortly after his unit reached the front line, the soldiers\u2019 initial enthusiasm turned into fear, against which each soldier had to wage a relentless inner war, straining every nerve to avoid being overwhelmed by it. Hitler says that he won this inner war by the winter of 1915\/16. \u2018At last,\u2019 he writes, \u2018my will was undisputed master . . . I was now calm and determined. And this was enduring. Now Fate could bring on the ultimate tests without my nerves shatter or my reason failing.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n The experience of war revealed to Hitler the truth about the world: it is a jungle run by the remorseless laws of natural selection. Those who refuse to recognise this truth cannot survive. If you wish to succeed, you must not only understand the laws of the jungle, but embrace them joyfully. It should be stressed that just like the anti-war liberal artists, Hitler too sanctified the experience of ordinary soldiers. Indeed, Hitler\u2019s political career is one of the best examples we have for the immense authority accorded to the personal experience of common people in twentieth-century politics. Hitler wasn\u2019t a senior officer \u2013 in four years of war, he rose no higher than the rank of corporal. He had no formal education, no professional skills and no political background. He wasn\u2019t a successful businessman or a union activist, he didn\u2019t have friends or relatives in high places, or any money to speak of. At first, he didn\u2019t even have German citizenship. He was a penniless immigrant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When Hitler appealed to the German voters and asked for their trust, he could muster only one argument in his favour: his experiences in the trenches had taught him what you can never learn at university, at general headquarters or at a government ministry. People followed him, and voted for him, because they identified with him, and because they too believed that the world is a jungle, and that what doesn\u2019t kill us only makes us stronger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whereas liberalism merged with the milder versions of nationalism to protect the unique experiences of each human community, evolutionary humanists such as Hitler identified particular nations as the engines of human progress, and concluded that these nations ought to bludgeon or even exterminate anyone standing in their way. It should be remembered, though, that Hitler and the Nazis represent only one extreme version of evolutionary humanism. Just as Stalin\u2019s gulags do not automatically nullify every socialist idea and argument, so too the horrors of Nazism should not blind us to whatever insights evolutionary humanism might offer. Nazism was born from the pairing of evolutionary humanism with particular racial theories and ultra-nationalist emotions. Not all evolutionary humanists are racists, and not every belief in humankind\u2019s potential for further evolution necessarily calls for setting up police states and concentration camps. Auschwitz should serve as a blood-red warning sign rather than as a black curtain that hides entire sections of the human horizon. Evolutionary humanism played an important part in the shaping of<\/p>\n\n\n\n