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In recent years nations have often been compared to members of a large family with the globe as their home. To the optimist such a comparison has the ring of warmth and well-wishing; it implies that the relations between the different members are either well established or can be worked out on the basis of mutual understanding and affection. To the realist who is aware of the complexity of sibling relationships - besides, the family of nations having neither father nor mother - the need for knowledge is equally apparent, although for different purposes. Both, the optimist and the realist, are anxious to recognize what distinguishes and explains the character of a nation in order to get a better understanding of world problems and events. There are then eminently practical as well as scientific reasons for research in this domain.
At times of international tension and war almost everybody feels tempted to believe in definite, permanent differences of the national character. During calm and peaceful periods of history the problem is stimulating, though mostly to scholars of sociology, psychology and history, but during political changes, unrest and wars it becomes obsessive. In our everyday language we speak about a typical Englishman, Frenchman, German; but in trying to examine the inherent belief objectively, one soon comes to the realization that the task of describing and defining such a character is doomed to failure.
A copious literature written by historians, sociologists, economists, men in politics, philosophers, psychiatrists and anthropologists has been assembled in our time. It started when the spreading fascist Weltanschauung began to clash with the liberal ideology, quite a number of years before the outbreak of the war and reached its peak during World-War II. Beading this literature that attempts to