there have been and are such alternatives in history with mutually incompatible consequences that might have redetermined the course of events in the past, and that might redetermine them in the future. Such a view does not controvert the assumptions of scientific determinism, although it controverts the monistic organic determinism we have previously considered. For it does not assert that all alternatives are possible. It recognizes limitations on possibilities, including limitations on the possible effect of heroic action, grounded on the acceptance of generalized descriptions or laws of social behaviour.
On the basis of given social data we can sometimes predict the alternatives that are open and those which are closed, although we cannot predict what choice will be made between the open alternatives. For example, the situation of pre-Hitler German economy, with the rolls of its unemployed numbered in millions and steadily mounting from 1928 to 1932, restricted the alternatives to a practical extension of femocratic planning for the welfare of the community—a planning which already existed on paper during the Weimar Republic—or to transformation of the national productive plant into an instrument of total war. Whichever alternative was adopted, and they were both historically possible, was bound to have a profound effect upon the future development not only of German but of European economy, and its manifold social consequences. The abstract theoretical possibility of a return to the free market of early capitalism in Germany was historically impossible. The German masses would have starved to death before the free market could have been established.
At the same time it certainly was not a foregone conclusion from what was known of German economy that Hitler’s solution would triumph. If greater export possibilities had been opened to the German economy, and if it had not been struck so severely by the crisis, Hitler probably would have failed. But he was victorious not merely because of the widespread economic misery produced by the crisis. His political skill in unifying the right, ranging from Junker to industrialist to the frightened muddle classes, together with Hindenburg’s support, played an important part. If there had been a great figure in Germany capable of unifying the left and appeasing the centre, Hitler might never have become Chancellor.
Where a genuine alternative exists, the active presence or a great man may be decisive—may be because other elements come
