Even cruelty can have a magnificent aspect, if it is practised with open commitment and idealism; when those who are cruel stand by their deeds with fervour – as happened in the French Revolution and the Russian and Spanish civil wars. In contrast, the Nazis never showed anything but the sly, pale, cowardly face of a murderer denying his crime. While they were systematically torturing and murdering their defenceless victims, they daily declared in fine, noble words that not a single hair of anyone’s head would be harmed, and that never before had a revolution shed less blood or been conducted
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