Nietzsche
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."-----Nietzsche
Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called "Ego".---- FRIEDRICH WILHELM NIETZSCHE
Among the
several men who have been dubbed “the Father of National Socialism” (including
Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels), Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) is probably
most deserving of this distinction, being so labeled by Nazi luminaries Dr.
Alfred Rosenberg and Dr. Franck (Peters:221). Others have called him the
“Father of Fascism” (ibid.:ix). Rabidly anti-Christian and a homosexual,
Nietzsche founded the “God is dead” movement and contributed to the development
of existentialist philosophy. Nietzsche’s publisher, Peter Gast, called
Nietzsche “one of the fiercest anti-Christians and atheists,” and described his
book, The Antichrist, as a “ferocious curse” on Christianity (ibid.:119).
Nietzsche called Christianity and democracy the moralities of the “weak herd,”
and argued for the “natural aristocracy” of the Uuebermensch or superman,
whose “will to power” was grounded in the material world (Wren in Grolier).
According to Macintyre in Forgotten Fatherland: The Search For Elisabeth
Nietzsche, Frederich Nietzsche never married and had no known female sex
partners, but went insane at age 44 and eventually died of syphilis. According
to Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, Nietzsche had caught the disease at a homosexual
brothel in Genoa, Italy (McIntyre:91f). Nietzsche’s unflattering opinion of
women was widely known. His works were “peppered with attacks against women,”
and, like the pederasts of the Community of the Elite, he relegated women to the
role of breeders and sexual slaves. Men, on the other hand were to be bred for
war (Agonito:265f).
One of Nietzsche’s closest friends and another hero of Adolf Hitler was
Richard Wagner, the composer. Wagner was the subject of a 1903 book by Hans
Fuchs called Richard Wagner und die Homosexualitaet (“Richard
Wagner and Homosexuality”) in which Fuchs recommends art as a means for
homosexual emancipation (Oosterhuis and Kennedy:86). We do not know whether
Wagner was homosexual, although Hitler is reported to have identified him as
one. In Kurt Ludecke’s I Knew Hitler, the Fuehrer said the following
when the issue of homosexuality among the Brownshirts was raised: “Ach, why
should I concern myself with the private lives of my followers!....I love
Richard Wagner’s music -- must I shut my ears to it because he was a pederast?
The whole thing’s absurd” (Ludeke:477f).
Nietzsche’s philosophy was grounded in Greek and Roman paganism, and in his
writings he called for “a new Caesar to transform the world” (Peters:viii).
Years later, Nietzsche’s sister and chief promoter, Elisabeth, would
enthusiastically dub Hitler the “superman” her brother had predicted
(ibid.:220). Indeed, Elisabeth’s adulation of Hitler was mirrored by the
Fuehrer’s admiration for her brother. Hitler and the Nazis were indebted to
Nietzsche for his contribution to German nationalism. “It is not too much to
say,” writes historian George Lichtheim, “that but for Nietzsche the SS —
Hitler’s shock troops and the core of the whole movement — would have lacked the
inspiration to carry our their programs of mass murder in Eastern Europe”
(McIntyre:187). And W. Cleon Skousen writes that when “Hitler wrote Mein
Kampf, it was as though Nietzsche was speaking from the dead”
(Skousen:348).
Had he lived in that era, Nietzsche might not have become a Nazi. His works
include numerous condemnations of anti-Semitism and nationalism (and thus were
selectively censored by Elizabeth). But the best measure of Nietzsche’s
contribution and importance to Nazism is not in conjectures about what Nietzsche
might have thought about Nazism, but in the actual reverence of the Nazis for
him. Nietzsche’s most celebrated book, Also Sprach Zarathustra,
(“Thus Spake Zarathustra”) was considered the “bible” of the Hitler Youth and
was “enshrined with Hitler’s Mein Kampf and Alfred Rosenberg’s
Myth of the Twentieth Century -- in the vault of the Tannenberg Memorial,
which had been erected to commemorate Germany’s victory over Russia in the First
World War” (Peters:221). Hitler and the Nazis often used Nietzschean phrases
such as “will to power,” “live dangerously,” and “Superman,” but more
significantly, Nietzsche became a hero to the masses as well. Certain German
intellectuals canonized Nietzsche through the popular media of the day. Peters
writes, Germany’s intellectual elite, including poets like Stefan George and
writers like Thomas Mann, saw in Nietzsche’s “aristocratic radicalism” an answer
to the decadent democratic ideals of the West. Fervent young men and women met
for ritualistic readings from Zarathustra. Hymns were composed to celebrate the
new religion, and by the time the body of the sick philosopher was finally put
to rest, he was proclaimed a saint (Peters:ix).
The Pink Swastika by
Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams.