"During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, German-speaking countries produced great musicians, poets, and philosophers. This was the German era of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms; of Goethe, Schiller, Novalis, and Lessing; of Kant, von Humboldt, Burkhardt, and Menger; among many others. During the twentieth century, Germany moved in its incomprehensible direction. In a saying from the years after Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party took over, Germany moved from a nation of “poets and thinkers” (Dichter und Denker) to a nation of “judges and hangmen” (Richter und Henker). Germany threw the world into turmoil and global conflict, murdered 6 million Jews in gas chambers and concentration camps, enslaved entire nations, and prepared to abolish Christianity. The Germany of Hitler, Himmler, Goering, and Goebbels was a deliberate attempt to destroy all of the main elements of Western civilization—Greek rationalism, Hebrew monotheism, and Christian love. Rationalism was to be replaced by feeling based on the irrational forces of “blood and soil”; monotheism by the cult of Wotan and other Germanic deities; love by ruthlessness and militarism."