[Rockstar]

I have and read Albert Einstein's book Mein Weltbild not in German of course. The english version The World As I See It (unabridged). We normally attribute to him only his discoveries in General Relativity and Physics. But there was certainly more too this man than we normally hear about, he was a good fortune teller too!

In 1947 years before the first Atomic bomb test, he wrote about something which he called the Military Mentality (the "dangerous delusion" that all international problems can be settled by military power.)

"The characteristic feature of this mentality is that people place the importance of what Bertrand Russell so tellingly terms "naked power" far above all other factors which affect the relations between peoples. The Germans, misled by Bismarck's success in particular, under went just such a transformation of their mentality - in consequence they were entirely ruined in less than a hundred years.

I must frankly confess that the foreign policy of the United States since termination of hostilities has reminded me, sometimes irresistibly, of the attitude of Germany under Kaiser Wilhelm II, and I know that, independent of me , this analogy has most painfully occurred to others as well. It is characteristic of the military mentality that non-human factors (atom bombs, strategic bases, weapons of all sorts, the possession of raw materials, etc.) are held essential, while the human being, his desires and thoughts - in short, the psychological factors - are considered as unimportant and secondary. Herein lies a certain resemblance to Marxism, at least in so far as its theoretical side alone is kept in view. The individual is degraded to a mere instrument; he becomes "human materiel". The normal ends of human aspiration vanish with such a viewpoint. Instead the military mentality raises "naked power" as a goal in itself. - one of the strangest illusions to which men can succumb.

In our time the military mentality is still more dangerous than formally because the offensive weapons have become more powerful than the defensive ones. Therefore it leads by necessity, to prevent war. The general insecurity that goes hand in hand with this results in the sacrifice of the citizen's civil rights to the supposed welfare of the state. Political witch hunting, controls of all sorts (e.g. control of teaching, and research, of the press, and so forth) appear inevitable, and for this reason do not encounter that popular resistance, which, if were it not for the military mentality, would provide protection."