Section 6
Both Mussolini and Hitler had a preference for Friedrich Nietzsche. I never understood Hitler's preference. Didn't Hitler read the deadly condemnations that Nietzsche - presumably after Herbert Spencer - hurled against socialism? Did Hitler know that Nietzsche saw socialism as one of the greatest evils in world history? Like Thomas Jefferson and Wilhelm von Humboldt, Nietzsche wanted "as little state as possible" for the sake of individual freedom. He feared that socialism would legally enforce "as much state as possible". But this would ultimately make the state the "coldest of all cold monsters" for people born to true freedom, a machine of cogs and wheels that crushes the dignity of the individual and nationalizes people. According to Nietzsche, all socialism must initiate the "breeding of a type of people who are finely prepared for slavery".
Young people in North America and Europe who are without a fatherland and are ready for revolution already call such a state of subjection an establishment, but fail to recognize that every welfare state, even a stateless "world state" - and this one in particular - must become some kind of establishment, to the downfall of even the last remnants of individual freedom.
Did Hitler never read the spiteful attacks that Nietzsche directed against the German character? According to Alfred Hoche, Nietzsche must be considered ill since 1883 and mentally disturbed since 1888. But Hitler could not have known that and most of the authors of Nietzsche's life and thought have overlooked it. Nietzsche, who was inspired by the harshly aristocratic Theognis of
Megara, certainly did not think in a "national" or "socialist" way even in his healthy years. But what was the attraction of Nietzsche for Mussolini and Hitler?
Hitler had commissioned my friend Schultze-Naumburg to build the "Nietzsche Archive" in Weimar. At the end of the entrance hall, a marble sculpture - not made by Schultze-Naumburg - depicted Nietzsche, enthroned on a chair like a demigod, with a bushy moustache. There can hardly be any other explanation for this veneration of Nietzsche by a national socialist than that Hitler claimed the status and position of a "superman" for himself. This claim would be
understandable, even forgivable, if one can assume that Hitler was spiritually corrupted by the veneration and worship shown to him, in which foreigners also took part. Every dictator has been and will be exposed to the danger of appearing to himself as soter (savior) in the manner of Hellenistic rulers, or as divinus (divine) in the manner of many Caesars, in the east of the Roman Empire as kyrios (lord in the religious sense). This will remain the case, especially in the declining age of masses. Never before has a vestigia terrent, a historical experience, frightened people.
Did Hitler not feel repelled by the glorification bestowed upon him by those around him and by the masses? Did he tolerate the Byzantinism of the banners praising him or even accept it at face value? Did he perceive such inscriptions and greetings as fitting tributes to a "superman"? -
For the May Day celebrations of 1935 or 1936, the University of Berlin was instructed to march through the streets to Tempelhofer Feld to hear Hitler's May Day speech. Snow had fallen overnight and turned into 5 to 10 cm of mud, which we - not exactly in the best May mood - had to tread out in the streets. Beside me walked a young, highly talented lecturer, an excellent person who I knew to be an enthusiastic National Socialist, an example of the generations that were half a generation or a whole generation younger than Hitler and I. They were usually more moved by National Socialism than the older generation of Hitler's generation. This lecturer experienced the campaign in France as an officer, and the man who was wounded several times describes it in an excellent book. He is said to have later died in the Russian campaign.
Banners hung over our march route to Tempelhofer Feld, mostly of a tasteless nature. My eye fell on a banner that said "Führer befiehl! We follow you," a banner that was often hung up then and later. I said to the lecturer next to me, pointing to the inscription: "Tacitus would say: ruere in servitium (to throw oneself into slavery)." The next banner read: "You are nothing, your people are everything." I said: "There won't be much to be done with 70 million nothings." The lecturer always smiled embarrassedly and remained silent. But I thought he was so clever that he would agree with me inwardly.
Did Hitler's taste tolerate such inscriptions? Did he approve of them or even want them? Did he himself suggest the Hitler salute or did he just tolerate it? Did the blind devotion of the untalented or selfish among his entourage, which renounced their own judgment, appear to him as "loyalty"? Did he demand such "loyalty" from all of us after 1932? Was he never disgusted by what was called the "personality cult" after Stalin's death?
If in our declining age the science of history can maintain itself at the level of a Thucydides or Ranke, if it does not fall prey to a sociology, political science or psychoanalysis that follows the current political opinion or any other presumption, then it will also have to address the question - if forged evidence has been rejected and accurate evidence has been examined - whether Hitler, who was filled with a sense of mission, driven by fanaticism and surrounded by uncritical devotion, finally succumbed to a rush of power after 1932. Did he finally decide to give short orders to the incompetent and submissive people around him: hoc volo, sic iubeo; sit pro ratione voluntas (luvenalis)!* If so, from when on? If not, then some of his words and actions will be
difficult to explain. Thucydidean-Ranke historical research will have to ask: how long did Hitler think more about the people and the Reich, and from when on more about his position of power? - This question will hardly be solved, even if there is sufficient reliable evidence, because Hitler considered his unlimited power to be necessary for the threatened Reich and the German people, who had been oppressed from abroad since 1919.
Was Hitler, like many imperious statesmen before and after him, surrounded by undiscerning submissives, corrupted by his dictatorial power after 1933? Tacitus wrongly assumed this from Tiberius: vi dominationis convulsus et mutatus®. In my opinion, the proletarian "will" described below only became clearer in Hitler's facial features after 1933.
In asking this question, I am aware that in our age of masses there is a widespread need for a "strong leadership" that leads to welfare and relieves people of self-determination, and that any party that has become too powerful would reintroduce, even command, what has been called the "cult of personality."
I mentioned above (p. 7) [note from the VS editor: in this text p. 5] that Hitler rejected the term and word "völkisch". He had used or tolerated völkisch ideas up until 1933 in order to attract völkisch groups to his party, had either banned the völkisch groups in 1933 or "brought them into line" and soon after was reluctant to hear the word "völkisch". This turning away from völkisch ideas took place, it seems to me, at the same time as a turn towards the traditional power politics of all foreign states, a policy which was condemned by the völkisch people because they, as völkisch people, demanded the right of self-determination for all peoples within their language borders. For these nationalists, the cession of the German-populated border areas of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia (October 1938) was a matter of course in the spirit of the right of self-determination of all peoples, which was proclaimed by the North American President Wilson in 1918 but only applied against the German Reich. The annexation of a "Reich Protectorate" of Bohemia (Czechs) and Moravia (Slovaks) in March 1939 was, however, clearly a turning away from any nationalist policy in foreign policy and was perceived as such not only by me but by many nationalist-minded party comrades, as I could gather from the partly frightened, partly indignant opinions. I cannot judge whether Hitler was forced to invade Czechoslovakia by Russian plans to invade. I would also be looking at the statesman, where I am concerned with the human being. But I maintain that from these years onwards Hitler's foreign policy was only the usual and, for ethnic-minded Germans, outdated power politics of other states, i.e. the usual non-ethnic "imperialism". Accordingly, up until 1933 the man Hitler had viewed the word "ethnic" as a means to his end, but had never associated it with a domestic or foreign policy goal. This final turning away from ethnicism can at the same time be seen as a sign of when Hitler, as a "superman", began to succumb to the lust for domestic and foreign power. From then on he was no different from other "imperialist" statesmen.
I consider the derivation of Hitler from the lower middle class to be completely wrong, a derivation that has often been attempted to explain his "megalomania". Since 1945 it has become fashionable in our country to accuse people who are disliked or who are presented as disliked of being lower middle class. Since many a genuine lower middle class person fears
such insults, he tries to become a fake "left-wing radical". Hitler was not shaped by a small town, but - at least as an adult - by a big city. A state actress who had spoken to Hitler, and who was not at all averse to him as a politician, described Hitler to me as a bohemian in terms of his human characteristics. I consider this description to be more accurate than others that I have heard and read. The non-Prussian aspect of Hitler has been emphasized several times, the Austrian aspect less so and usually only in connection with the fact that he shaped his party on the model of the Catholic Church.
These questions - like many others that perhaps this or that reader would like to see me discuss - are outside my "impression" of the man Adolf Hitler, which is why I do not wish to comment on them. However, I suspected that Hitler was Catholic Austrian when he tried to unite the Protestant groups, which differed in their beliefs, into a Reich Church, to give it a Pope and to conclude a concordat with such a Pope, just as he had previously concluded a concordat with the Roman Pope - contrary to the nationalist spirit. He found an army chaplain of average stature - whom I pitied - willing to do this, appointed him as Reich Bishop, known in the NSDAP as Reibi, and now, ignorant of Protestant nature, had to see that Reibi was left without a Reich Church. I was only able to follow such embarrassing, even ridiculous events and the whole ensuing strife with both churches occasionally and reluctantly, from a great distance and with "one wet eye, one cheerful eye" (Hamlet). In the absence of a Lucilius, Persius, Iuvenalis and Petronius, the description of the church dispute should be left to a theological expert such as Jonathan Swift (1667-1745). Jonathan Swift would also have been provided with material by those unbelievers who had become "confessors" out of hatred of Hitler and National Socialism - confessing, however, in disregard of Matthew 5:39-44. Swift would also have had much material for an amusing portrayal of the "German Christians", who proclaimed their "Aryan Jesus" as excitedly and excitingly as the nebi'im of the Old Testament.
In my opinion, Hitler was a bohemian in the sense that people who are shaped by big cities, who are completely un-rural, and therefore "groundless" are rootless and cannot put down roots anywhere. Hitler found a substitute for a homeland in his party. Statesmen who want to establish something lasting will always benefit from their origins in large farming or large landed estates. They will also never try to ripen fruit by putting a petroleum lamp under the tree, as Bismarck put it. Impatience and haste, which can be explained in part by the political situation, were the main faults of the man and the statesman Hitler. It may perhaps be considered petty bourgeois that people "from humble backgrounds" who are elevated to positions of power are more likely to "lose their heads" than people of "better" origins.
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