The so-known as Black Notebooks constitute a kind of philosophical diary. They contain the private annotations that Martin Heidegger was making uninterrupted and in parallel with his academic activity and the publication of his essays, lectures and seminars. In them he consigns, with his peculiar style of thinking, his reflections from the history of being, which seek to shed light on the sense of present time.
This third volume includes the continuation of the Reflections (the XII-XV numbers), annotations that are recorded in the period from the beginning of autumn 1939 to the end of 1941. Among other historical facts, they refer to the beginning of the war against the Soviet Union on "June 22, 1941" and the subsequent "war intervention of the humanities". Everywhere Heidegger warns signs of degradation. "'Europe' is the realization of the sinking of the West," he writes.
The triggering of war events is interpreted as consummation of the technique, where the world is dominated in all its fields by "machinations". "Bolshevism" is seen as a further sign of these: it arises from rational Western and modern metaphysics and has nothing in common with Russian idiosyncrasies. "Americanism", on the other hand, appears as the summit of nihilism. This is how Americanism, Bolshevism and National Socialism would represent the machining essence of a metaphysics that is coming to an end. In the midst of this vision of universal history, the role attributed by Heidegger he calls "world Judaism" stands out for its controversial nature.