Nietzsche and the Nazis by Stephen R.C. Hicks
Walter Kaufmann, the foremost Nietzsche scholar in the world, set out after the war to rehabilitate the philosopher. Nietzsche, he argued, got a bad rap as the pre-eminent Nazi philosopher. In his 1950 book, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, which was expanded through three more editions over the years, he includes an entire chapter called The Master Race on the Nazi question.Kaufmann's main thrust is that proto-Nazis like Richard Oehler cherry-picked quotes out of context to promote the idea that Nietzsche was anti-Jewish and pro-Aryan. He includes a prime example of this as well as dissecting Nietzsche's views on race.
Kaufmann argues that Nietzsche was a Lamarckian, that acquired knowledge and characteristics could be passed on. And further, that Nietzsche believed different races had different qualities and that the best outcomes could be produced by mixing the races. One quote extols the virtue of the Poles, "the most gifted and gallant among the Slavic people". Kaufmann cites Nietzsche to the effect that the Jewish struggle against anti-Semitism, their suffering, in fact, made them stronger, and bemoans the "obscenity of leading the Jews to slaughter as scapegoats of every conceivable public and internal misfortune."
Kaufmann concludes that "Nietzsche's views are quite unequivocally opposed to those of the Nazis - more so than those of almost any other prominent German of his own time or before him - and that these views are not temperamental antitheses but corollaries of his philosophy. Nietzsche was no more ambiguous in this respect than is the statement that the Nazis' way of citing him represents one of the darkest pages in the history of literary unscrupulousness." (pages 303-304 - 4th Edition)
This is a short little book, just 107 pages long, but with an excellent set of appendices that includes the complete Nazi Party platform of 1920 and an extensive collection of quotes from Nazis and others about Nazism, socialism and anti-Semitism. With these additions as well as the bibliography and index, the book is 159 pages long.
The first 50 pages do not even mention Nietzsche but rather dissects Nazism as a philosophy. Hicks is driven by a nagging question - how could Nazism happen? Here was one of the most civilized countries in the world, sinking into a morass of hatred, violence and destruction. Why?
The answer is philosophy. "Not economics, not psychology, and not even politics." But philosophy.
Hicks makes the point that "National Socialism was first a philosophy of life believed and advocated by highly intelligent men and women, Professors, public intellectuals, Nobel Prize-winners - all powerful minds working at the cutting edge of their disciplines. It was they who shaped the intellectual culture of Germany in the 1920s and who convinced millions of Germans that National Socialism was the best hope for Germany's future." (page 11)
But Hicks goes further. He suggests that "the Nazi intellectuals and their followers thought of themselves as idealists and as crusaders for a noble cause." (page 11)
The idea of liberal democracy was still in its infancy in the 1920s. Many intellectuals, even in the West, believed that liberalism was a "historical blip", that a "strong leadership" was needed. Even more striking was the belief that "peace makes people soft and that it is conflict and war that brings out the best in people, making them tough, vigorous, and willing to fight for their ideals and if necessary die for them."
In Germany, the Nazis "were true believers in a cause." What was this cause? Hicks continues with a description of the Nazi Party platform of 1920 where those ideals are made explicit. These ideals include:
- Collectivism, not individualism
- Economic socialism, not capitalism
- Nationalism, not internationalism or cosmopolitanism
- Authoritarianism, not liberal democracy
- Idealism, not politics as usual
Hicks delineates these ideals with quotes from the platform and from various Nazi ideologues, including master propagandist Joseph Goebbels.
By 1928, the Nazis had twelve seats in the Reichstag. In 1930 they increased that to 107. And in 1932 they increased that to 230. In the March 1933 election they garnered 288 seats, "more seats than their next three competitors combined".
Once in power, the Nazis set out to consolidate their gains and increase their grip on the machinery of the state. First they purged dissident elements within the party. And by purge, we mean murder. "Forty-three conspirators and rivals were executed."
In 1934, President Hindenburg died and the Nazis combined the position of chancellor and president with Hitler filling the role, a move endorsed by 90 percent of the electorate in a plebiscite. The Nazis were now in "firm control".
They quickly recognized that controlling the minds of Germany's youth was essential. They set out to control education, not a difficult task because fifty-one percent of the party's support came "from the professional and middle class" and elementary school teachers were "the largest occupational group represented".
What kind of education? Hitler laid it out in Mein Kampf. "In my castles of the Teutonic Order a youth will grow up before which the world will tremble. I want brutal, domineering, fearless, cruel youth. Youth must be all that. It must bear pain. There must be nothing weak and gentle about it. The free, splendid beast of prey must once again flash from its eyes....That is how I will create the New Order". (quoted on page 29)
Hicks notes that "teachers were declared to be civil servants and required to join the National Socialist Teachers League, swearing an oath of absolute fidelity to Adolf Hitler". (page 29)
The paramilitary Hitler Youth and the League of Young Girls augmented this effort. And the Nazis held sway in the universities as well. "Nazi student groups existed at universities all over Germany. Before 1933, it was common for students to come to classes wearing brown shirts and swastika armbands, and in many cases it was the most intelligent and idealistic university students who were the most activist and outspoken supporters of National Socialism". (page 31-32)
Jews, including some Nobel Laureates, were turfed from academe, but most professors said nothing. "In 1933, 960 professors, including prominent figures such as philosopher Martin Heidegger, made a public proclamation of their support for Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist regime". (page 32)
The Nazis further cemented their power with censorship. On May 10, 1933, shortly after the Nazis took power, 20,000 books were burnt in a huge bonfire across the street from the University of Berlin. 40,000 spectators cheered them on. "Some of the authors whose books were destroyed were Thomas Mann, Albert Einstein, Jack London, Helen Keller, H.G. Wells, Sigmund Freud, Emile Zola and Marcel Proust". (page 33)
These burnings were not instigated by the party but by university students themselves. And they weren't confined to the University of Berlin. "Book bonfires burned brightly that night in every German university city. The professors had taught their students well". (page 34)
The Nazi eugenics program was instituted to purify the Aryan race.
And rigid economic controls were brought in. The principle was that "all property belongs to the people, the Volk". All Jewish property was nationalized. Any remaining property was nominally private, but "the argument was clear. You are not a private individual seeking profit or higher wages in a capitalist economy. You and your property belong in trust to the German people, and you have a duty to serve the public interest, even if it involves a personal sacrifice". (page 41)
Hicks notes that much of the business community offered "voluntary commitment and enthusiasm," "they saw the personal sacrifices demanded of them as their duty, and they obediently and willingly bore the sacrifices for the good of the cause". (page 43)
As a result, Germany experienced an economic boom from 1932 to 1936. A referendum on Hitler's popularity in 1936 had a 98.6 percent turnout with 98.7 percent of those expressing approval of Hitler's leadership. This set the stage for the next step of the Nazi juggernaut - militarization.
The final horrific piece of the Nazi puzzle was about to fall into place - the Holocaust. The statistics of the Holocaust beggar the imagination - eleven to twelve million people exterminated, six million of them Jews. Hicks notes that sometimes this horror just becomes abstract statistics, so he sets out to personalize it.
"Just think of one person you know who lives a real life, has dreams, works hard, loves his or her family, has a quirky sense of humor, wants to travel the world. And then imagine that person taken away in the middle of the night, herded into a cattle car, stripped naked, experimented upon without anesthesia, slowly starved, gassed, shoved into an oven and burned to cinders. That is what the Nazis did to millions of people". (page 46)
This is the end result of a philosophy that had been promoted for twenty years in Germany, a philosophy that said "that human beings are not individuals with their own lives to live but are servants of the state, that the state should have total power over both the minds and bodies of its citizens and may dispose of them as it wishes," and "that citizens should obey a higher authority and be willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for the good of their group, as defined by higher authority". (page 47)
Hicks returns to his earlier question. How could this happen?
"The Nazi intellectuals were not lightweights," Hicks notes, "and we run the risk of underestimating our enemy if we dismiss their ideology as attractive only to a few cranky weirdos". (page 48-49)
Nazism was a revolutionary movement. It is fairly clear who the philosophical fathers of other revolutions were. Marx spurred the communist revolutions in Russia and China, Rousseau the French Revolution and Locke the American Revolution.
The Nazis cited Friedrich Nietzsche as their philosophical guiding light. So who, asks Hicks, was Nietzsche?
Who Was Nietzsche?
And so starts the second half of the book, a dissection of Nietzsche's life and philosophy.Nietzsche's influence is widespread and includes disparate personalities on both the left and the right. In fact, even pop culture is influenced by Nietzsche. It's not mentioned in the book but consider this pop song from Kelly Clarkson.
"That which does not kill us makes us stronger". - this line appears in Nietzsche's book, Ecce Homo (page 2). It is also the opening line in Hicks's account of Nietzsche. As Hicks puts it, "Nietzsche was... famous for his worship of human potential and for encouraging individuals to seek great heights and make real their creative dreams. He is also famous for his absolute loathing of all things small, cowardly, or mediocre". (page 51)
He had a great reverence for "all things great, noble, heroic". Some famous quotes include "Do not throw away the hero in your soul," Hold holy your highest hope," and "The noble soul has reverence for itself".
His work influenced such diverse figures as Jean-Paul Sartre, Hermann Hesse, Michel Foucault and Ayn Rand. This despite the diametrically opposed politics of the latter two.
The atheist Nietzsche was admired by theologian Martin Buber and Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann.
Hicks goes over two key elements of Nietzschean thought - the natural dichotomy of masters and slaves, and the overman (sometimes referred to as the superman - in German ubermensch.)
Nietzsche starts by looking at the natural world of animals, a world divided into loners and herd animals or predators and prey. And so it is with people. "Some are born to be slaves and some are born to be masters".
Nietzsche believed there was little one could do about this. As Kaufmann noted, he was a Lamarckian. He believed we inherit "inbuilt traits" from our parents and their lineage.
"The master types live by strength, creativity, independence, assetiveness and related traits. They respect power, courage, boldness, risk-taking, even recklessness. It is natural for them to follow their own path no matter what, to rebel against social pressure and conformity". (page 57)
By contrast, "The slave types live in conformity. They tend to passivity, dependence, meekness. It is natural for them to stick together, just as herd animals do". (page 57)
Nietzsche argues that our moral codes reflect these two archetypes. Sheep value grazing together peacefully and wolves value eating the sheep. Their natures are different and so their moral codes are different. Hicks includes a delightful quote from On the Genealogy of Morals to illustrate this point.
"That lambs dislike great birds of prey does not seem strange: only it gives no grounds for reproaching these birds of prey for bearing off little lambs. And if the lambs say among themselves: 'these birds of prey are evil; and whoever is least like a bird of prey, but rather its opposite, a lamb - would he not be good?' there is no reason to find fault with this institution of an ideal, except perhaps that the birds of prey might view it a little ironically and say: 'we don't dislike them at all, these good little lambs; we even love them: nothing is more tasty than a tender lamb". (quoted on page 58)
Thus Nietzsche does not recognize one universally valid moral code, but rather different moral codes for different people, depending on whether they are essentially sheep or wolves.
Hicks lists characteristics of these two different moral codes. One stresses "pride, self-esteem, wealth, ambition, boldness, vengeance, justice, profit, challenge, pleasure, sensuality, independence, risk, individualism, admiration of self and indulgence". The other stresses humility, meekness, poverty, sacrifice, charity, patience, forgiveness, shame, self-restraint, safety, viewing physical desire with disgust, dependence and obedience.
The first set are the values of the master personality. The latter are the values of the slave personality.
Hicks lists these characteristics in two columns and asks which resonates with you, the reader. "Nietzsche is crystal clear about the list on the right," he goes on, "That list is dangerous to human potential. It reeks of weakness, even sickness and unhealthiness. It undermines the human potential for greatness, and it is, tragically, the dominant morality of our time". (page 62)
How did the slave morality become dominant? Nietzsche blames "the Judeo-Christian moral tradition for the rise of the slave morality". (page 64) And the source of this morality comes from the Jewish enslavement in Egypt. Nietzsche doesn't condemn this, but seeks to understand it. The slave morality had survival value. If you are a slave, "you train yourself to to restrain your natural impulses and to internalize a humble , patient, obedient self. The slaves who don't do this end up dead. Slaves who are proud, impatient, and disobedient do not last long. Consequently, slave virtues of obedience and humility have survival value". (page 65)
Hicks notes that these values were not imposed by some deity as is commonly believed, but self-imposed because they had survival value.
So what happens to those who psychologically are masters but find themselves slaves? Hicks draws a modern comparison to clarify the issue. Suppose your boss tells you to do something you don't want to do? "Do you tell the boss to take this job and shove it - or do you knuckle under silently and do what he says all the while resenting it? And if you knuckle under often enough and resent long enough, what does that do to your soul?" (page 66)
Those seething resentments leads to a cruel nature, a vengeful nature. And, ironically, such people often turn to the priesthood. They become clergymen. He cites an amazing quote from Nietzsche: "It is because of their impotence that in them hatred grows to monstrous and uncanny proportions. The truly great haters in world history have always been priests". (quoted on page 67)
Indeed, the Judeo-Christian religious tradition is one big revenge fantasy. The strong and powerful go to hell and the meek and humble land in heaven.
Hicks summarizes Nietzsche on religion thus: "The current dominance of the Judeo-Christian morality is an unhealthy development that must be overcome. The fate of the human species depends on it. We must go beyond good and evil". (page 70-71)
The overcoming of traditional morality is the ubermensch or overman. Nietzsche idealized the Roman Empire as the epoch of the master psychology. But he also "credits the Judeo-Christian tradition for its internalized, spiritual development - by turning all of its energy inward and stressing ruthless self-discipline and self-denial". So the ideal of the overman, the new masters is one of "Caesars with the soul of Christ". (from The Will to Power, quoted on page 72)
Nietzsche is silent on what exact form the overman will take but emphasizes that it will be based on "instinct, passion and will," not on reason. Further, the overman will be ruthless, even violent. He will embrace conflict and exploitation. Quoting Nietzsche: "We think that... everything evil, terrible, tyrannical in man, everything in him that is kin to beasts of prey and serpents, serves the enhancement of the species 'man' as much as its opposite does". (quoted on page 73)
And the overman will embrace inequality. "Those who are strong should revel in their superiority and ruthlessly impose their wills upon everyone else, just as the masters did in past aristocratic societies". (page 74)
Emphasizing the ruthlessness of the overman, Hicks offers another telling quote from The Genealogy of Morals: "Mankind in the mass sacrificed to the prosperity of a single stronger species of man - that would be an advance". (quoted on page 74)
Nietzsche's most popular work, Also Sprach Zarathustra, is the overman personified and made real. Zarathustra is the overman. And, tellingly, this book was widely distributed to the Nazi faithful and even the soldiers on the front lines.
Nietzsche and the Nazis
Hicks now assesses Nietzsche's influence on the Nazis. Like Kaufmann, he notes significant differences between Nietzsche and the Nazis. He lists five:- Nietzsche did not believe the Aryan race to be superior.
- Nietzsche thought German culture was degenerate, not noble as the Nazis believed.
- Nietzsche was no anti-Semite. As noted in the Kaufmann quote earlier, he viewed anti-Semitism as an "obscenity".
- Despite some strong criticism of Judaism, Nietzsche admired the Jews. "The Jews, however, are beyond any doubt the strongest, toughest, and purest race now living in Europe". (Beyond Good and Evil page 251)
- Nietzsche viewed Christianity and Judaism to be very similar "with Christianity being in fact a worse and more dangerous variation of Judaism" in contrast to the Nazis who professed Christianity as superior to Judaism.
On the other hand, Hicks also sees five aspects of Nietzsche's philosophy that point to him being a proto-Nazi.
- Despite seemingly individualistic elements in Nietzsche's philosophy, Hicks views him as being essentially a collectivist as were the Nazis. Nietzsche believed that individuals were shaped by their biology. Nietzsche, in fact, did not respect people as individuals. He "has nothing but contempt for the vast majority of the population, believing them to be sheep and a disgrace to the dignity of the human species. Their individual lives have no value in themselves." He quotes Nietzsche directly to support this contention: "My philosophy aims at ordering of rank not at an individualistic morality". (from The Will To Power page 287 quoted on page 89) As noted earlier, Nietzsche had no qualms about sacrificing the mass of men to create a stronger species. Hicks elaborates on this for several pages and I believe this is the most important insight in his book. As Hicks concludes, "It is hard to see as an individualist anyone who sees no value in the lives of the vast majority of individuals". I will return to this in a separate post later as this is an issue at the heart of libertarianism and indeed, there are some in the libertarian movement who share this contempt for the common man.
- Nietzsche shared with the Nazis the view that different groups are fundamentally in conflict with each other. "Life is an ongoing struggle between strong and weak, predator and prey". (page 93) The liberal capitalist view, on the other hand, is of a harmony of interests.
- Nietzsche believed in instinct and passion as opposed to reason. The Nazis also held to this theory of blood over brains. "What luck that men do not think," said Hitler. Both Nietzsche and the Nazis are "fundamentally irrationalists".
- Both Nietzsche and the Nazis extolled the value of conquest and war. In Nietzsche it was expressed as a glorification of the beast of prey. "He wished for a great purge that would wipe out most humans whose lives he thought worthless and an embarrassment to the human species," writes Hicks. (page 98) Quoting Nietzsche: "It is vain rhapsodizing and sentimentality to expect much (even more, to expect a great deal) from mankind, once it has learned not to wage war. For the time being, we know of no other means to imbue exhausted peoples, as strongly and surely as every great war does, with that raw energy of the battleground, that deep impersonal hatred, that murderous coldbloodedness with a good conscience, that communal, organized ardor in destroying the enemy, that profound indifference to great losses, to one's own existence and to that of one's friends, that muted earthquake-like convulsion of the soul". (Human All Too Human page 477)
- And finally Nietzsche and the Nazis were "both anti-democratic, anti-capitalistic, and anti-liberal". Both were authoritarian in spirit.
Hicks concludes that these Nietzschean and Nazi ideas are still prevalent in today's society. The antidote to bad philosophy is good philosophy and Hicks argues that we need to promote the values of individualism, reason, production and win/win trade, liberalism, and capitalism.
This is a dandy little book. Short, pithy and to the point. Hicks writes with great clarity but also with great passion.
Today the Nazi program has been taken over by the postmodernists who embody all of their values - collectivism, instinct and anti-reason, zero-sum conflict, authoritarianism and socialism. Fortunately, Hicks has written a book laying bare the dangers of this philosophy in Explaining Postmodernism, which I reviewed in some detail previously. Not surprisingly, Nietzsche is a strong influence on this movement, particularly in the area of epistemology. Below are links to my earlier review.
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