nietzsche and nazism: postdoctoral application
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Postdoctoral Application
Dr. Geoffrey Roche
April 16th 2007
1.1 Project Title: ROME VS. ISRAEL
Nietzsche and the Nazi Cultural Revolution 1
1.2 Project Summary Europe! Happy land where for so long a time the arts, sciences, and philosophy have
flourished; you whose wisdom and power seem destined to command the rest of the
world! Do you never tire of the false dreams invented by the impostors in order to
deceive the brutish slaves of the Egyptians? [...] Leave to the stupid Hebrews, to the
frenzied imbeciles, and to the cowardly and degraded Asiatics these superstitions
which are as vile as they are mad....”
Baron d’Holbach L’esprit du Judaïsme (1750). 2
“Philosophers have merely interpreted Nietzsche, and in different ways, but the Nazis
have realized him.” The opinion is widespread…. is this right? What is it to ‘realize’
a philosopher?
Martin Schwab, Nietzsche’s Nazi Affinities3
The watchwords of the battle, written in characters which have remained legible
throughout human history, read: “Rome vs. Israel, Israel vs. Rome.” No battle has
been as momentous as this one. Nietzsche Genealogy of Morals4
1 At a conference with his generals in 1941, Hitler described the war with the Soviets as a
Weltanschauungskrieg; as “Kampf zweiter Weltanschauungen gegeneinander.” See Robert S. Wistrich
Hitler and the Holocaust. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2001. p.104. 2 [Baron d’Holbach] L’Esprit du Judaïsme ou examen raisonné de la loi de MOYSE, & de son
influence sur la Religion Chrétienne (‘Londres’ [probably false] 1750) p. 200-201. Quoted in Arthur
Hertzberg The French Enlightenment and the Jews p.310. 3 Martin Schwab Nietzsche’s “Nazi Affinities” (unpublished). 4 Friedrich Nietzsche The Birth of Tragedy and the Genealogy of Morals (in one volume) trans. Francis
Golffing (New York: Anchor Books, 1956) p.185.
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This project aims to contribute to, if not resolve, the ‘Nazism Question’ in Nietzsche
studies (alternately, the ‘Nietzsche Question’ in Nazism studies). It is the view of the
author that Nietzsche’s thought, if we are to critically engage with it as a philosophy,
rather than a dogmatically defended credo, should really be considered as if it were
taken as a guide to moral conduct. As such, whether the Nazis (or other totalitarian
groups) had taken Nietzschean principles to heart should be relevant to an appraisal
(or condemnation) of Nietzsche’s ethics.
1.3 Aims and Significance
The project, as I envision it, will be to go beyond the standard assumptions and
approaches of critical Nietzsche studies. The existing literature on the Nietzsche-
Nazism association is largely confined to a legalistic dialogue. That is, it is largely
concerned with a straightforward condemnation or defense of Nietzsche’s work. As
such, it is not so much a discussion of a question of ethics as a question of an author’s
purported guilt or innocence. Further, this discussion rarely discusses the actual
contents of Nazi literature (or philosophers sympathetic to Nazism, such as Max
Wundt and Erich Rothacker) or even acknowledges the existence of such an entity. 5
(One recent anthology on the subject, Nietzsche, Godfather of Fascism? edited by
Jacob Golomb and Robert S. Wistrich, is a case in point. It only mentions Hitler’s
writings in passing, never quotes from them, and does not mention any other Nazi
text. This is despite the fact that a number of Nazis were enthusiastic interpreters and
readers of Nietzsche, including head Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg and Alfred
Baeumler, as well as non- Nazi fascists such as Mussolini.
Nietzsche scholarship concerning this question remains incomplete on this
question until there is a critical inquiry into the Nazi Weltanschauung, from the
highest members (Hitler, Goebbels, Goering, Himmler, Rosenberg) to the various
academics who were entrusted to interpret and disseminate Nazi ideology, down to
the institutional level. Two insightful papers are Greg Canada’s “Nietzsche and the
5Max Weinreich Hitler’s Professors: The part of Scholarship in Germany’s crimes against the Jewish
people. New Haven: Yale University Press/ YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 1999, p.15.
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Third Reich,” and Martin Schwab’s “Nietzsche’s Nazi Affinities,” yet neither paper is
currently published. 6
Discursive Formations: Culture, Morality, and Race in Germany 1800- 1945.
Rather than a focus, from the outset, of a purported causal connection between
Nietzsche and Nazism (which can all too easily run into a hermeneutic tar-pit),
The first part of the research would be a thorough textual and discursive analysis of
both the ideologies and movements that led to, fed into or inspired Nazism. This
analysis would take into consideration such philosophers as Fichte or Schelling,
ideologues and theorists such as Count Joseph Gobineau (1816-1882), Houston
Stewart Chamberlain (1885-1927), Wilhelm Marr, Richard Wagner, Charles Maurras
(1868- 1952) Ernst Jünger or Oswald Spengler, and semi- secret cultic societies, such
as the Volkish movement and the Thule movement. (Nietzsche had strong, usually
negative, opinions on many of the nationalistic and anti- Semitic groups, so the
picture will be no doubt be complex by the time it is complete). I will also briefly
discuss some of the central ideas in Nietzsche, with a clear Nazi resonance, that have
a far older heritage, in particular the goals of eradicating Jewish- Christian morality
on the European continent, and of returning to the more rustic, life- affirming
moralities of pre- Christian Europe. Baron D’Holbach, Claude- Adrien Helvétius and
the anonymous author of The Three Imposters (1716) 7 are some of the more extreme
exponents of such proto- Nietzschean ideals, yet similar ideas are to be found in the
works of such ‘moderates’ as Jean- Jacques Rousseau.
Of the texts associated with Nazism itself, and an analysis and retracing of the
basic doctrines, value assumptions and underlying premises concerning State,
Culture, Power, Gender, Strength, Health, Race, Socialism, Liberalism, Grosspolitik,
the celebration of warfare and militarism, Democracy, and so on. That is, The
Nietzsche- Nazism question will be answered only through approaching the
6 Greg Canada carefully notes the depth of the Nazi appropriation of Nietzsche, but nevertheless rejects
the association, noting serious disaffinities between Nietzsche and Nazism. Schwab takes an extremely
cautious approach, rejecting even Nietzsche’s call for the ‘destruction of the weak’ as being too
contingent. Instead, Schwab notes such fundamental similarities between Hitler and Nietzsche as the
insistence of the Will to Power, Value Naturalism, and notions of morally relevant gradients of Rank
and Hierarchy as core values. 7 http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/unknown/three_impostors.html
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Nietzschean text as one discursive artifact among many. The project will be, that is,
an archeology of the Nietzschean oeuvre and its cross- textual context.
The question as to whether Nietzsche inspired Nazism, whether erroneously or not,
only deals with a small part of the problem. Another question could also be
legitimately asked: what were the ideological conditions that led to such wholesale
approval (from WWI on) of a thinker as anti- democratic, as flamboyantly dismissive
of traditional morality, as Nietzsche?
The Nietzsche qua Proto- Nazi
The origins of this study are in the suspicions of Adorno, Horkheimer, and Lester G.
Crocker, all of whom saw the same three- point continuum in the history of Nihilism:
Sade, Nietzsche, Nazism. Adorno and Horkheimer, in Dialectic of Enlightenment,
describe Sade and Nietzsche as both having pushed the Enlightenment, that is, the
“objective systematization of nature,” to the point where natural morality had simply
collapsed. As such, they had anticipated Nazism: “by raising the cult of strength to a
world- historical doctrine, German Fascism also took it to an absurd extreme…the
realization of Nietzsche’s assertions both refutes them and at the same time reveals
their truth, which— despite all his affirmation of life— was inimical to the spirit of
reality.”8
For Lester G. Crocker, on the other hand, the association of Sade, Nietzsche and
Nazism is in the surrender to Nature; that is, the collapse of Naturalism into Nihilism.
Accompanying these developments [denial in philosophy of validity of norms available to
reason] was the desire for a total integration of man in nature, with refusal of any
transcendence, even though it was admitted that his more complex physical organization
gave him certain special abilities and ways of living. The important thing, as La Mettrie,
d’Holbach, and others made clear, is that he is submitted to the same laws; everything is
response to need – mechanically, some added, like a tree or a machine. Man merely
carries out natural forces– without any freedom whatsoever- in all he does, whether he
loves or hates, helps or hurts, gives life or takes it…. [a] n unbroken line of thought leads
from such eighteenth-century views to Hitler’s Mein Kampf and the Nazi infamies ...
Nihilism is the rejection of the prevailing organization of instincts which is imposed
by any culture, and ipso facto of all moral restrictions to the id (a revolt against repression
of the instincts). Totalitarianism is a defense of culture based on the acceptance of the
8 Adorno and Horkheimer Dialectic of Enlightenment p.101.
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truth of nihilism; it pretends to nothing more than a tyrannical and arbitrary imposition of
a superego and contemplates the remaking of the individual, through the pressures of total
conditioning, so that the id is inhibited and the ego enslaved. If the effort toward
humanistic self-control and voluntary co-operation does not succeed, culture is left with
no other way to defend itself (NC: 333-334, 395).
Most famously, Georg Lukács places Nietzsche squarely in the continuum of ‘anti-
rational’ thinkers, perceiving a genealogical line running from Schelling to Hitler,
with Spengler, H, S, Chamberlain, Alfred Rosenberg (the official Nazi philosopher),
and Nietzsche as points on that continuum. Others who have made this association are
Bertrand Russell, Crane Brinton (Nietzsche, 1948), and the former Nazi Hermann
Rauschning (The Revolution of Nazism, 1939). Finally, Stephen E. Aschheim (The
Nietzsche Legacy in Germany, 1890-1990) has perhaps done the most work in making
the case that Nietzsche was central to the formation of the Nazi worldview. 9
It should also be noted that Nazism was not the only Fascist movement that had
appropriated Nietzsche (or, as the case may be, was inspired by Nietzsche). A number
of Italian fascists were admirers and commentators on Nietzsche, in particular Benito
Mussolini, Filippo Marinetti, Gabriele D’Annunzio and Julius Evola. French-
language fascist thinkers (albeit restricted to the arena of ideas, rather than engaged
with concrete politics) inspired by Nietzsche were Henri Le Man, and members of the
Jeune Droit, Marcel Déat and Pierre Drieu La Rochelle. 10
The Nietzsche- Nazism association rejected
An even longer list of writers have vehemently opposed the Nietzsche- Nazism
association. Thomas Mann, Albert Camus, Georges Bataille, Karl Lowith, Walter
Kaufmann, Weaver Stantiello, and Ben Macintyre are all emphatic that the Nazism
association is basically in error. Firstly, as R.J. Hollingdale and Kaufmann have
argued, Nietzsche was fundamentally a-political; he stood for liberation of the
individual, and always dismissed politics of any stripe. As such, Hollingdale argues
that “the connection between The Untimely Meditations of 1873-76 and National
9 Stephen E. Aschheim The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany, 1890- 1990. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1992. 10 For discussion of these figures, see Roger Eatwell Fascism: A History. London: Vintage, 1995.
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Socialism is invisible to the sober reader.”11 The Nazi appropriation of Nietzsche was
largely down to heavy bowdlerization, the argument goes; Nietzsche himself could
never have approved of a movement spawned by resentful Schlechtweggekommene –
his term of abuse for Jew- baiting misfits. Secondly, it is argued, Nietzsche’s text is
simply too ambiguous for any stable, unambiguous interpretation.
Nietzsche has too many things to say about the evils of democracy, of socialism,
or of anything not resembling Fascism for the first argument to hold. Citing the
Heidegger and Carl Schmitt cases, Strong notes that “we cannot simply say that
Nietzsche is a serious thinker, that there was no serious thought in Nazism, and that
therefore links between the two are excluded.”12
As for the second argument, the question as to whether Nietzsche’s text is self-
negating, or even (“let us suppose that”) fictional, has little relevance to the question
as to what the ideas within that text amount to. It is not, as Robert C. Solomon notes,
“as if Nietzsche were merely playing with language.” 13 (It is curious that such
defenses are only applied by Nietzsche scholars when discussing passages — on
women’s rights, warfare, or torture etc., — that contradict Judaeo- Christian
morality).
If these arguments against the association are compelling, the question remains:
why did the Nazis appropriate a thinker who was apparently so antagonistic to, among
other things, politics, the notion of German supremacy, and anti- Semitism?
11 R.J. Hollingdale “The hero as outsider,” in Bernd Magnus and Kathleen Higgins, eds., The
Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 71- 89, p.72. 12 Tracy B. Strong “Nietzsche’s Political Misappropriation,” in Bernd Magnus and Kathleen Higgins,
eds., The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996: 119-
148, p. 130. 13 Robert C. Solomon “Nietzsche ad hominem: Perspectivism, personality, and ressentiment
revisited.”p.185.
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Nietzsche and Nazism: Ideological and Textual Similarities
Pope and Rabbi shall be no more
We want to be Pagans once again
No more creeping to churches
We are the joyous Hitler Youth
We do not need any Christian virtues
Our leader, Adolf Hitler, is our savior.
Hitler Youth song14
Adorno, Horkheimer and Crocker did not discuss either the Nietzschean text nor the
works of the Nazis in detail to support their contentions. Philosophers, too, have
avoided the Nazi canon, so the heavy work has been done largely by historians and
those, such as Robert S. Wistrich, who work between Nietzsche and Nazi scholarship.
For Wistrich, Nazism was to the core a “Nietzschean project”:
[…] Nietzsche’s relentless assault on Judaeo- Christian morality did provide one of
the deeper sources of inspiration for the Nazi revolution, It was, after all, Nietzsche
who had branded priestly Judaism and the teachings of the Gospels as the “slave-
revolt in morals […] it mattered little that few Nazis had actually read Nietzsche or
paid much attention to his contempt for the Germans and admiration for Jews. The
attraction lay in the prospect of transgression on a grand scale, the Nietzschean
smashing of those remaining taboos that still reined in the barbarian warrior- lust
lurking under an increasingly ‘civilized’ veneer. 15
Similarly, the historian William Shirir writes in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
that while Nietzsche was never anti-Semitic, Hitler basically saw what he wanted to
see in Nietzsche's writings: “Hitler often visited the Nietzsche museum in Weimar
and published his veneration for the philosopher by posing for photographs of himself
14 Quoted in Carl Friedrich, “Anti-Semitism: Challenge to Christian Culture” in Jews in a Gentile
World: the Problem of Anti-Semitism, ed. Isacque Graeber and Stuart Henderson Britt (New York:
Macmillan, 1942) p.8; Quoted in Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin Why the Jews? (New York:
Touchstone/ Simon & Schuster, 1983) p.160. 15 Robert S. Wistrich Hitler and the Holocaust London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2001, pp.14-15.
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staring in rapture at the bust of the great man.” Karl Dietrich Brachar, albeit noting
Nietzsche’s anti- Germanism and anti- anti Semitism, makes the following
observation: Nietzsche’s impassioned, brutalized catch- phrases about the will to power,
superman, the blond German beast, and the triumph of the strong over the weak,
however deeply rooted they may have been in a radical individualism, lent
themselves to any distortion.16
It should also be noted just how prevalent Nietzschean ideas were in Nazi Germany.
Although most of the literature concerns the ‘official’ Nietzscheanism of Rosenberg,
Rauschning et. al, and the pronouncements of Nietzsche’s importance from Hitler and
Speer,17 amongst others, the extent to which Nietzschean ideas were promoted at the
institutional level also requires analysis. Draconian forms of punishment, basic to
Nazi justice, were legitimated in Nietzschean terms. 18In his work on the Nazi medical
system, Robert Jay Lifton writes that Nazi doctors were inspired by Nietzsche’s
vision of “all- consuming sickness and cure,” in particular his injunction that belief in
the “magic power of extremes” and his declaration that “we have to be destroyers.”19
Likewise, Nietzsche’s aphorisms and texts were widely used in both regular education
and military training from World War I on: 150,000 copies of Zarathustra were sold
between 1914 and 1919 alone. Edited editions of Nietzsche (for example Heinrich
Hartl’s Nietzsche and National Socialism) were used in schools to foster values
considered appropriate for the ideal warrior. 20 The degree to which Nietzsche’s
authority was used to legitimate Nazi society (and German militarism before it) is
such that, if Greg Canada and others are to believe, Nazism is unintelligible without
an understanding of Nietzsche’s adopted role.
16 Karl Dietrich Bracher The German Dictatorship: The Origins, Structure and Consequences of
National Socialism trans. Jean Steinberg. London: Penguin, 1991, p.46. 17 Speer is reported to have said that “one cannot but love this great and magnificent man, if one knows
him as well as I do.” Cited in H.F. Peters Zarathustra’s Sister: The Case of Elizabeth and Friedrich
Nietzsche. New York: Crow Publishers, 1977, p. 222. 18 Canada p. 4. 19 Cited in Robert Jay Lifton The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide New
York: Basic Books, 2000. p.486. 20 See Greg Canada Nietzsche and the Third Reich (unpublished) p. 3.
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Two questions, both central to the Nietzsche-Nazism project in particular, and to
value theory in general, may be raised here. Firstly, is it really the case that the Nazi
appropriation of Nietzschean brutality really a distortion? That it was (as suggested
by the subtitle of the Godfather of Fascism text)- abused by the Nazis? This seems
only plausible if we take any fixed, unambiguous reading of Nietzsche to be a
distortion, and consider Nietzsche’s central ethical claims to be less significant than
his often contradictory statements on Jews and German nationalism. Given the
number of explicit endorsements of violence and domination in Nietzsche, the burden
of proof should really fall on those who insist that any stable interpretation is
erroneous. 21 With regards to the Nazi eugenics program, for example, to what extent
was it any less humane that Nietzsche’s proposals to simply dispose of those deemed
unfit to live? Is it just a coincidence that Nazi doctors frequently cited Nietzsche in
legitimating their policies? In what sense is the Nazi concept of the Untermensch any
different to the sentiment expressed in aphorisms such as these?
The rights of a man arrogates to himself are related to the duties he imposes upon
himself, to the tasks to which he feels equal. The great majority of men have no right
to existence, but are a misfortune to higher men. 22
One must learn to sacrifice many and to take one’s cause seriously enough not to
spare men. 23
Concerning Nietzsche’s weltanschauung as a whole, in what sense could the
following passages possibly be misread as endorsements of meting terror upon
others? How (as not a few defenders have argued) are such passages taken ‘out of
context’?
…no act of violence, rape, exploitation, destruction, is intrinsically ‘unjust,’ since
life itself is violent, rapacious, exploitative, and destructive, [to counter the “radical
21 For a criticism of this approach, see Thomas Jovanovski “Postmodernism’s Self- Nullifying Reading
of Nietzsche,” Inquiry 44 (2001): 405- 432. 22 Nietzsche Will to Power §872 p.467 23 Ibid. §982. p.513.
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life- will” with legal or moral systems]“can only bring about man’s utter
demoralization and, indirectly, a reign of nothingness.24 “we can imagine [the nobles] returning from an orgy of murder, arson, rape, and
torture, jubilant and at peace with themselves as though they had committed a
fraternity prank...”25
The second question that I would like to inquire into: to what extent does Nazi
discourse on power, health, culture, the State, the Jews etc. resemble, appropriate, or
distort the Nietzschean oeuvre? Insofar as most Nietzsche scholars have not looked
into Nazi literature to any great extent, this task remains to be done. Canada has noted
the rhetorical similarities in Mein Kampf to Nietzsche’s work, in particular the phrases
“lords of the earth,” “herd instinct” and “will to power.”26 One scholar, Robert Wicks,
has made the following observation: there is at least one passage in Mein Kampf
which is practically identical to a passage in Nietzsche. In a footnote to his Nietzsche:
Hitler also used arguments that might have come directly from Nietzsche. For
example, he referred to “The Jewish teachings of Marxism” which “reject the
aristocratic principle of nature and put in place of the eternal prerogative of force and
strength, the mass of numbers and their dead weight.” Mein Kampf, Volume I,
Chapter 2. See, in comparison, Nietzsche’s notebook entry from March- June 1888
(§53), which is almost identical in wording… I thank Geoffrey Roche for the
discussion that directed me to this passage. 27
24 Friedrich Nietzsche The Birth of Tragedy and the Genealogy of Morals (in one volume). trans.
Francis Golffing. (New York: Anchor Books, 1956). p.208. 25 Friedrich Nietzsche Genealogy of Morals in The Birth of Tragedy and the Genealogy of Morals
p.174. Indeed, there are passages in the Nachlass that are even more extreme: yet to see the light of day
in English language scholarship are Nietzsche’s suggestions of “public suicide festivals” and the use of
‘young boys’ (Knabenliebe) for the use of “Practicing the art of coitus. See Friedrich Nietzsche Idyllen
aus Messina/ Die fröhliche Wissenshaft/ Nachgelassene Fragmente Frühjahr 1881 bis Sommer 1882.
Nietzsche Werke Kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. Giorgio Colli, Mazzino Montinari. Berlin and New
York: Walter de Gruyter, 1973. , pp.370, 374. 26 Canada p. 3. 27 Robert Wicks Nietzsche Oxford: Oneworld, 2002. Footnote 183, p.174.
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Further, in terms similar to what Robert Nola calls Nietzsche’s “anti- Semitic
conspiracy theory,”28 Hitler holds that the Jews introduced Christianity specifically in
order to cause the ruin of stronger races through its unnatural morality. From the
Table Talk:
The Jew who fraudulently introduced Christianity into the ancient world – in order to ruin
it – re-opened the same breach in modern times, this time taking as his pretext the social
question…It is Jewry that always destroys this [natural] order. It constantly provokes the
weak against the strong, bestiality against intelligence, quantity against quality. It took
fourteen centuries for Christianity to reach the peak of savagery and stupidity. We would
therefore be wrong to sin by excess of confidence and proclaim our definite victory over
Bolshevism...[a] people that is rid of its Jews returns spontaneously to the natural order
(17 February 1942; TT: 314).
Finally, Hitler holds that the fall of Rome was due to the corrupting influence of
Christian morality. 29 On the 21st of October 1941, whilst discussing ‘Jewish
Christianity’ and ‘Jewish Bolshevism,’ Hitler compared the fall of Rome with latter-
day Bolshevism, the product, Hitler, believed, of Jewish influence.30 The following
transcript, made several months later, continues in the same vein:
But for the coming of Christianity, who knows how the history of Europe would have
developed? Rome would have conquered all Europe, and the onrush of the Huns would
have been broken on the legions. It was Christianity that brought about the fall of Rome – not the Germans or the Huns… One day ceremonies of thanksgiving will be sung to
Fascism and National Socialism for having preserved Europe from a repetition of the
triumph of the Underworld… (27th January 1942; TT: 253).
28 Robert Nola “Nietzsche as anti-Semitic Jewish conspiracy theorist” Croatian journal of philosophy,
2003, vol. 3, no7, pp. 35-62. 29This theory is historically questionable. For discussion, see Henry Chadwick “Envoi: On Taking
Leave of Antiquity” in John Boardman, Jasper Griffin, Oswyn Murray, eds, The Oxford History of the
Classical World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986) 807-828, p.826. 30 Werner Jochmann, ed. Adolf Hitler: Monologe im Führerhauptquartier 1941-1944. Die
Aufzeichnungen Hienrich Heims (Hamburg, 1980) p.99; Aufzeichnungen des persönlichen Referenten
Rosenbergs Dr. Koeppen über Hitlers Tischgespräche 1941, Bundesarchiv R6/34a, Fols. 1-82 (Notes
of Dr Werner Koeppen, liaison of Alfred Rosenberg at FHQ, on Hitler’s ‚table talk’, 1941) pp.60-61.
Cited in Kershaw Hitler 1936-1945 p.488.
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Our epoch will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity. It will last another
hundred years, two hundred years perhaps. My regret will have been that I couldn’t, like
whoever the prophet was, behold the promised land from afar. We are entering into a
conception of the world that will be a sunny era, an era of tolerance… What is important
above all is that we should prevent a greater lie from replacing the lie that is disappearing.
The world of Judaeo-Bolshevism must collapse (27th February 1942, TT: 343-344).
The question for ethicists, again, is what does Nietzsche amount to as an ethicist, and
does the Nazi appropriation of Nietzschean principles —at every institutional level,
from the classroom to the medical establishment—suggest something quite obvious
about the nature of his thought? One need not demonstrate that Nietzsche’s ethics is
intrinsically homicidal (even though, in a number of places, it clearly is); we merely
need to show that Nietzsche the man, believing in nothing more than Nietzschean
ethics, could not consistently object to the hanging of Sophie Scholl, let alone the rest
of the Nazi atrocities. This is simply an outcome of the blanket rejection of the very
notion of crime that we find in Nietzsche. Even the opening pages of The Genealogy
of Morals show how redundantly straightforward dismissing Nietzsche should be: it
ought to be as simple as explaining why rape, murder, arson and torture are bad things
to do. The really interesting questions, in a sense, are psychological, rather than
philosophical: how is it that Nietzsche’s defenders manage to avoid the implications
of his thought? And what is the appeal of a philosopher who speaks approvingly of
rape and murder?
1.4 Project Plan
Specific thesis questions are as follows:
1). Did that doctrine which we find in Nietzsche’s works inspire the Nazis?
2). How faithful to this doctrine was the Nazi appropriation?
3). Does Nietzsche’s work provide the intellectual resources (his hatred of German
nationalism, or of anti- Semitism; his ideal of the ‘Good European’) to evade Nazi
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appropriation? Or were such principles, to a point, inconsistent with his radical
counter- morality and his notion of Natural Aristocracy?
3). If Nazism was so receptive to Nazism, how was it that Nietzsche has had such a
strong following amongst thinkers and politicians from every other political
standpoint, including the founding Zionists?
4). Are those aspects of Nietzsche that resonated for the Nazis fundamental to
Nietzsche’s values and philosophy as a whole? Or are the disaffinities and
discontinuities (Nietzsche’s dislike of politics, or of the Volkish movement; his
celebration of the individual, and so on) sufficient to justify the claim that Nietzsche
was misappropriated?
5). A more fundamental question is this: Was Nazism a mere aberration of Occidental
thought? Or was it, as Adorno, Horkheimer, Camus, Lester G. Crocker and others, its
rational terminus? And what is Nietzsche’s role in this genealogy?
This possibility clashes with ideal of philosophy as in some sense fundamentally
connected with Enlightenment values. In the view of Kaufmann, it is Nietzsche’s
commitment to such values that preclude any Nazi association. Yet Nietzsche himself
perhaps shows the extent to which philosophy itself can endorse aggression and
domination. The stakes are high: to conclusively associate Nietzsche with Nazism
will essentially end this perhaps naïve conception of the history and historical role of
Occidental philosophy (just as Richard Popkin has shown the philosophical roots of
Western racism).
1.5 Relation with Previous Research.
My research on the Marquis de Sade was partly inspired by the assertion (found in
Camus, Adorno and Horkheimer, and Lester G. Crocker) that there is some doctrinal
commonality between Sade, Nietzsche and Nazism. Although I sought to clarify
what this association might be, and what it may entail, in my thesis, two of my
reviewers (Timo Airaksinen in Finland and Necati Polat, in Turkey) remained
unconvinced, and felt that the Sade- Nazism axis was not sufficiently well argued. As
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my supervisors (Robert Wicks and Stefano Franchi) warned, this would require
another book. The envisioned project is that book.
1.5 Projected Outcomes
1.5.1 Research Papers
Besides papers on the specifics of the project outline, I would also like to inquire into
various Nazi- era German (sub) philosophers who have been, arguably, neglected in
the History of Ideas. In particular I would like to know more about Adrien Turel and
Oswald Spengler. Spengler’s lugubrious vision of all Western Civilization in a state
of collapse seems as relevant (if not accurate) now as when it was first written (the
recent Alfonso Cuarón film Children of Men comes to mind here). In particular, the
present situation in Iraq seems only intelligible in terms of a basically mythic world-
view, according to which the only alternative to invasions overseas is total collapse at
home.
1.5.2 Book Proposal.
Given the scope of the project, it should be possible to pitch the project as a
monograph roughly matching the project in both scope and depth. I had a fair degree
of success with the Sade thesis, having two publishers in the United States (Columbia
University Press and University of Virginia Press) awaiting a rewrite. (Working full-
time in English and Philosophy teaching is slowing this project down at present).
However, the requested revisions may be instructive: I had written a book on a
Continental theme, but was allegedly too brusque with the ‘continental’ approach.
That is, I had alienated the target readership. (This is the main reason behind the
rewrite: in particular, I was told that I would need to engage more closely with the
reading of Sade offered by such figures as Klossowski and Blanchot).
With regards to the Nietzsche/ Nazism project, a book that explicitly links
Nietzsche with Nazism is unlikely to be popular with Nietzsche scholars, and too
heavy or esoteric for most Nazi collectors. Given the extremely cautious approach of
the Wistrich anthology, I suspect that, as a monograph, the proposed text may well be
unpublishable, at least as a trade book, no matter how well researched or written.
What is required is an angle flamboyant or novel enough to hold the reader’s
attention. It has to be interesting enough to not appear to be a merely anti- Nietzsche
15
polemic (which it could too easily become). Another, perhaps dangerous, approach
may be to present Nazism in all its appalling splendor, with roots deep in European
culture and thought (rather than being reducible to the jack-booted thugs of popular
imagination). Without understanding the philosophical and pseudo-intellectual roots
of the movement, and its attractions to a number of intellectuals (and not merely
Heidegger), understanding how it came to death camps and genocide will remain
unintelligible. Hence the significance of Nietzsche, who, more than perhaps anyone
else, knew the power of reducing morality to aesthetics.
1.5.3 General Outcomes
I have three main goals, beyond the parameters of the project as stated. Firstly, I
would like to help close the gap between Nietzsche scholarship and that of 19th
Century and 20th Century History of Ideas, and of history in general. If one reads, for
example, The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche or any comparable general
introduction, one would never know that it is a fairly widespread belief amongst
scholars of Nazism that Nietzsche’s thought was a contributing factor. This is not to
say that they are correct; but the fact that their take on Nietzsche is not even
acknowledged shows a certain lacuna.
Secondly, I would like to remove Nietzsche from the almost exclusively
exculpatory treatments that typify Nietzsche scholarship. There is a fury and a
severity in Nietzsche’s text (in particular the Nachlass) that is simply missing from
the greater part of the secondary literature. To will Nietzsche’s vision, as he himself
asserted, would take someone that had gone far beyond ordinary humanity. Any
faithful reading of Nietzsche, as such, will acknowledge this horror.
Having said that, I would like to stress that the goal of the project is not to lay
blame, or to ‘charge’ Nietzsche’ with being ‘guilty’ of some crime. I am not
concerned with making a legal case against Nietzsche, but a critical evaluation of his
thought as a practical, livable possibility of action, whether on the individual or
national (or global) level. In this respect, the issue as to whether Nietzsche inspired
the Nazis is a distraction of the core ethical problem: what are the implications and
costs of reducing morality to ‘will to power,’ of rejecting Judeo- Christian morality,
of using aesthetics, as an ultimate arbiter of value, of rejecting the virtues of kindness
and asserting the ‘natural virtues’ of hardness and cruelty? For these are all central
ideas in Nietzsche, and were all too some extent adopted by the Nazis. No Nietzsche-
16
Nazism association need be demonstrated to take from Nazism a lesson about the
dangers of such ideals. Nietzsche and Nazism need never have existed; the problems
still remain: what do these ideas truly entail?
Thirdly, I would like to apply my work on Nietzsche (and Sade) to a critical
engagement with their modern equivalents, in particular contemporary post- moralists
Charles Pigden, Richard Joyce and the late Ian Hinckfuss. Like Nietzsche, all three
hold that normative ethics is fundamentally erroneous, and have sought to fill the gaps
in Nietzsche’s own reasoning.
1.6 Related Projects and Questions
The following, related topics will be engaged with alongside the main thesis
questions.
1.6.1 Philosophical practice in Europe in the time of the Nazis
Two issues related to the Nietzsche- Nazism project, that I would like to pursue. The
first is concerned with the sociology of philosophy; the other is more aligned to meta-
philosophical criticism.
a). To what extent did philosophers in Germany critically engage with Nazism?
And to what extent were they accepting? Further, was their attitude towards Nazism
philosophically grounded or articulated? For those philosophers within Nazi
Germany, and for other intellectuals attracted to fascistic modes of political
organization, what was the source of this attraction? And was this attraction due to or
inspired by their philosophical commitments and principles?
b). To what extent were the observations or theorizing of those outside Nazi
Germany (Camus, Hesse, Levinas, Adorno and Horkheimer) actually useful or
informed, concerning the nature of Nazism and its threat? To put it bluntly: was
philosophy of any use? (I note that one of the perhaps least philosophically
sophisticated critics of the Nazis, Sophie Scholl, was probably the most insightful).
17
Two related topics that could be discussed:
a). Nietzsche and Zionism. Nietzsche was a major influence on Ashkenazi Zionist
intellectuals, which is an interesting counter to the idea that the Nazis were the only
heirs (rightly or wrongly) of Nietzsche’s legacy. 31
b). Far Right Activists in late 20th Century Europe inspired by Nietzsche:
A number of far rightists have stated the influence of Nietzsche, in particular
Michael Kühnen of the National Socialist Action Front, and Alain de Benoist of the
New Right.
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