Editing Stab-in-the-back myth (section)

==Psychology of belief==
Historian Richard McMasters Hunt argues in a 1958 article that the myth was an irrational belief which commanded the force of irrefutable emotional convictions for millions of Germans. He suggests that behind these myths was a sense of communal shame, not for causing the war, but for losing it. Hunt argues that it was not the guilt of wickedness, but the shame of weakness that seized Germany's [[national psychology]], and "served as a solvent of the Weimar democracy and also as an ideological cement of Hitler's dictatorship".<ref name=Hunt1958>{{cite journal |last=Hunt|first=Richard M.|title=Myths, Guilt, and Shame in Pre-Nazi Germany|journal=Virginia Quarterly Review|year=1958|volume=34 |issue=3 |pages=355–71|quote=In the last analysis, the deep emotion that gave rise to these myths in pre-Nazi Germany was essentially an overwhelming sense of communal shame. It was not at all a shame related to the responsibility for {{em|causing}} the war. Much more, it was a shame related to the responsibility for {{em|losing}} the war.|id={{ProQuest|1291786296}}}}</ref>