Fascism by Madeleine Albright

TEN WEEKS AFTER THE DEATH OF FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT and less than two months subsequent to the German surrender, President Harry Truman flew to San Francisco to address representatives of the newly founded United Nations. The message he conveyed was one of profound optimism and hope, but included a word of caution. "Fascism did not die with Mussolini," he warned. "Hitler is finished, but the seeds spread by his disordered mind have firm root in too many fanatical brains. It is easier to remove tyrants and destroy concentration camps than to kill the ideas that gave them birth."

Foremost among the ideas Truman referred to was the belief that one's own nation has attributes and rights above all others. The aggression shown by Tojo's militaristic Japan, Mussolini's New Rome, and Hitler's supposed thousand-year Reich could all be traced, at least in part, to the unbridled nationalism of those countries' leaders and followers. The world-East and West-had paid an unconscionable price to withstand the folly unleashed by their "fanatical brains. " However, this did not mean that as history moved from hot war to cold, the Soviet Union and its adversaries would view nationalism in the same light.