After two world wars, the collapse of fascism, nazism, communism

“After two world wars, the collapse of fascism, nazism, communism and colonialism and the end of the cold war, humanity has entered a new phase of its history.” Thus spoke Hans Küng, the theologian and philosopher of the modern age, whose words shimmer like a mirror held before the human soul. In this single sentence, he gathers the blood and ashes of the twentieth century — its triumphs and its terrors — and declares that the story of humankind has crossed a threshold. His message is not one of naïve hope, nor of cynical despair, but of awakening. He saw that the old gods of ideology had fallen, that the world, for all its pain, had been given a new chance — a new phase of history, where humanity could finally rise beyond the cycles of domination, division, and destruction that had haunted it for centuries.

The origin of these words lies in the crucible of the modern world, a world reborn from ruin. Hans Küng, born in 1928, came of age amid the wreckage of World War II, when cities were dust, nations were broken, and the moral conscience of humankind trembled before the horrors of Auschwitz and Hiroshima. He was a witness to the collapse of the ideologies that once promised glory but delivered death — fascism, which exalted race above reason; nazism, which enthroned hatred as truth; communism, which crushed the spirit of man beneath the weight of its dogma; and colonialism, which enslaved millions in the name of civilization. To Küng, these systems were not merely political errors, but spiritual failures — the idols of an age that had lost sight of the sacred dignity of the human being.

Yet, from their ashes, a new possibility emerged. After centuries of conquest and conflict, humankind stood, wounded but alive, at the dawn of a new era. The Cold War, that long and shadowed duel between East and West, had finally ended. The iron walls that divided nations had fallen. The earth itself seemed to exhale, as if relieved of a great tension. But Küng knew that the end of old empires and ideologies did not mean the end of struggle — it meant the beginning of responsibility. For now, the fate of humanity was no longer bound to kings or doctrines, but to itself. The world, for the first time, was truly interconnected — its peoples, its technologies, its destinies entwined like threads of one vast tapestry. The question that hung in the air was no longer “Who will rule?” but “How shall we live together?”

Küng’s declaration can be understood as both a warning and an invitation. The twentieth century had proven that human progress without moral wisdom leads to catastrophe. Science had conquered the atom, but not hatred; reason had built nations, but also camps of extermination. The old world had perished not from ignorance, but from arrogance — from the belief that man could command destiny without compassion. The new phase of history, Küng argued, must therefore be guided not by ideology, but by ethics — by a global sense of solidarity that transcends borders, creeds, and color. “There will be no peace among nations,” he later wrote, “without peace among religions.” In this, he saw that the heart of the new era would not be power, but understanding.

Consider, as a living symbol of this transformation, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. For nearly three decades, it had stood as a monument to fear and division — concrete proof that humanity was split not only by politics, but by the walls within the human heart. When it fell, the world did not merely witness the end of the Cold War; it witnessed a revelation. Strangers embraced across the ruins, and for a fleeting moment, humankind remembered what it meant to be one people. Küng’s words speak from that moment — from the recognition that history, though scarred, can still be redeemed. But he also reminds us that freedom, once gained, must be nurtured. The fall of walls is only the beginning; what follows is the labor of building bridges.

In the new phase of history, Küng envisioned, the true challenge is not conquest but cooperation. The wars of empires have given way to battles of conscience — against poverty, inequality, environmental decay, and spiritual emptiness. The old ideologies are gone, but new idols rise in their place: greed, nationalism, fanaticism, and indifference. The human story, though transformed, is still fragile. The new world will not sustain itself through technology or treaties alone; it must be sustained by the moral awakening of its people. Humanity, he said, must grow not only in knowledge but in wisdom — in the awareness that every life, every nation, is a note in the same eternal song.

So, my child of tomorrow, take heed of Hans Küng’s wisdom. You live in the age he foresaw — an age of great promise, but also great peril. The wars of ideology have ended, but the war within the human spirit continues. You are the inheritor of a world rebuilt from ashes; do not let it fall again to pride or division. Seek truth, but seek it with humility. Defend your beliefs, but never at the cost of another’s humanity. Remember that every advance of civilization must be matched by an advance of conscience.

For indeed, as Küng proclaimed, humanity has entered a new phase of history — but whether this phase becomes the dawn of peace or the twilight of reason depends on the hearts of those who live within it. Let history not be a circle of destruction, but a spiral of progress. Learn from the ruins behind you, and build not for power, but for harmony. In that work, you will fulfill the destiny that Hans Küng saw shimmering beyond the wreckage of the past — the destiny of humankind to rise, to heal, and to become, at last, truly human.