https://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2011/12/08/the-closing-of-the-european-mind/feed/PJ Media is a leading news site covering culture, politics, faith, homeland security, and more. Our reporters and columnists provide original, in-depth analysis from a variety of perspectives.en-usWed, 10 Jun 2026 08:17:45 -0400<![CDATA[One of the key themes in Allan Bloom&#8217;s The Closing of the American Mind is that Germany won the war against America &#8212; no, not the Nazis, but the Weimar Republic, and the German intellectuals of the late 19th and 20th century such as Nietzsche, Freud, Einstein and Heidegger (who also courted post-Weimar Germany, IYKWIMAITYD), whose ideas flourished in that 1920s hothouse atmosphere. Add to that Otto von Bismarck as the father of the modern welfare state, plus Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius, who imported Bauhaus architecture to the US, and Wernher von Braun who created the American space program, not to mention the Frankfurt School putzes. The result, as Bloom wrote, was a surprisingly Germanic intellectual culture in the US after the war, even if it was rarely acknowledged as such. Earlier this year, Thomas Friedman famously asked in the New York Times, &#8220;Can Greeks Become Germans.&#8221; Bloom posited a quarter century ago that in effect, well, we did, didn&#8217;t we?]]>Thu, 08 Dec 2011 22:01:21 -0500<![CDATA[Ed Driscoll]]>https://pjmedia.com/ed-driscoll/2011/12/08/the-closing-of-the-european-mind-n254963