ABSTRACT
The Second World War saw the cataclysmic culmination of a lethal blend: nationalism and militarism propelled the criminal ideologies of Germany, Italy, and Japan in a war of conquest and extermination. The Allies withstood the initial onslaught, mobilized their resources, and defeated the atavistic challengers to the liberal world order. With the collapse of Germany and Japan came the end of militarism in those countries, and while the Soviet Union, herself heavily militarized, presented a serious challenge to the liberal democracies, the last great power conflict resulted in the end of history, the defeat and disappearance of political ideology as a motivating factor in human affairs. That is the history of the twentieth century read in hindsight and rendered in black and white. A closer reading suggests militarism and nationalism—both cultural forms of modernity—were not exclusive to dictatorships, and they remain alive, if perhaps in more benign expressions, in the global and regional powers of our time.
