that the nineteenth-century concept of “character building” has been out of fashion for quite a while. The fascination with willpower ebbed in the twentieth century partly in reaction to the Victorians’ excesses, and partly due to economic changes and the world wars. The prolonged bloodshed of World War I seemed a consequence of too many stubborn gentlemen following their “duty” to senseless deaths. Intellectuals preached a more relaxed view of life in America and much of Western Europe—but not, unfortunately, in Germany, where they developed a “psychology of will” to guide their country
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