[This is Appendix 2 of Nietzsche and the Nazis. Sources for the quotations are at the end of this post.]
Appendix 2: Quotations on Nazi socialism and fascism
Socialism against individualism
“National socialism is the determination to create a new man. There will no longer exist any individual arbitrary will, nor realms in which the individual belongs to himself. The time of happiness as a private matter is over.”
—Adolf Hitler[137]
“The concept of personal liberties of the individual as opposed to the authority of the state had to disappear; it is not to be reconciled with the principle of the nationalistic Reich. There are no personal liberties of the individual which fall outside of the realm of the state and which must be respected by the state. The member of the people, organically connected with the whole community, has replaced the isolated individual; he is included in the totality of the political people and is drawn into the collective action. There can no longer be any question of a private sphere, free of state influence, which is sacred and untouchable before the political unity. The constitution of the nationalistic Reich is therefore not based upon a system of inborn and inalienable rights of the individual.”
—Ernst Rudolf Huber,[138] official spokesman for the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, 1939
“[O]ur German language has a word which in a magnificent way denotes conduct based on this spirit: doing one’s duty [Pflichterfüllung]—which means serving the community instead of contenting oneself. We have a word for the basic disposition which underlies conduct of this kind in contrast to egoism and selfishness—idealism. By ‘idealism’ we mean only the ability of the individual to sacrifice himself for the whole, for his fellow men.”
—Adolf Hitler,[139] 1925
“The State must act as the guardian of a millennial future in the face of which the wishes and the selfishness of the individual must appear as nothing and submit.”
—Adolf Hitler[140]
“[S]ocialism is sacrificing the individual to the whole.”
—Joseph Goebbels[141]
“THE COMMON INTEREST BEFORE SELF-INTEREST.”
—NDSAP Program, Point 24, 1920
“We must rouse in our people the unanimous wish for power in this sense, together with the determination to sacrifice on the altar of patriotism, not only life and property, but also private views and preferences in the interests of the common welfare.”
—Friedrich von Bernhardi,[142] 1912
Socialist economics
“To put it quite clearly: we have an economic programme. Point No. 13 in that programme demands the nationalisation of all public companies, in other words socialisation, or what is known here as socialism. … the basic principle of my Party’s economic programme should be made perfectly clear and that is the principle of authority … the good of the community takes priority over that of the individual. But the State should retain control; every owner should feel himself to be an agent of the State; it is his duty not to misuse his possessions to the detriment of the State or the interests of his fellow countrymen. That is the overriding point. The Third Reich will always retain the right to control property owners. If you say that the bourgeoisie is tearing its hair over the question of private property, that does not affect me in the least. Does the bourgeoisie expect some consideration from me? … The bourgeois press does me damage too and would like to consign me and my movement to the devil. You are, after all a representative of the bourgeoisie … your press thinks it must continuously distort my ideas. … We do not intend to nail every rich Jew to the telegraph poles on the Munich-Berlin road.”
—Adolf Hitler,[143] to R. Breiting, “bourgeois” newspaper editor, 1931
“We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions.”
—Adolf Hitler,[144] 1927 speech
On “the money pigs of capitalist democracy”: “Money has made slaves of us. “Money is the curse of mankind. It smothers the seed of everything great and good. Every penny is sticky with sweat and blood.”
—Joseph Goebbels,[145] 1929
“The worker in a capitalist state—and that is his deepest misfortune—is no longer a living human being, a creator, a maker. He has become a machine. A number, a cog in the machine without sense or understanding. He is alienated from what he produces.”
—Joseph Goebbels,[146] 1932 pamphlet
“‘Private property’ as conceived under the liberalistic economic order … represented the right of the individual to manage and to speculate with inherited or acquired property as he pleased, without regard for the general interests … German socialism had to overcome this ‘private,’ that is, unrestrained and irresponsible view of property. All property is common property. The owner is bound by the people and the Reich to the responsible management of his goods. His legal position is only justified when he satisfies this responsibility to the community.”
—Ernst Rudolf Huber,[147] official Nazi Party spokesman, 1939
National Socialism, according to some later commentators
“Hitler was never a socialist.”
—Ian Kershaw[148]
“Bastard movements like the National Socialism (Nazism) of twentieth-century Germany and Austria …, save for the bare fact that they enforced central control of social policy, had nothing of socialism in them.”
—Margaret Cole,[149] under “Socialism,” in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy
“Stalinism is a pathology of socialism, Hitlerism being the apposite example for capitalism.”
—Robert Heilbroner,[150] popular socialist author, 1980
“If there is one thing all Fascists and National Socialists agreed on, it was their hostility to capitalism.”
—Eugen Weber,[151] historian of fascism
“[A]nti-Semitism was rife in almost all varieties of socialism.”
—Sidney Hook,[152] socialist philosopher
“It is significant that the most important ancestors of National Socialism—Fichte, Rodbertus, and Lassalle—are at the same time acknowledged fathers of socialism.”
—F. A. Hayek,[153] 1944
Socialism and authoritarianism
“The party is all-embracing. It rules our lives in all their breadth and depth. We must therefore develop branches of the party in which the whole of individual life will be reflected. Each activity and each need of the individual will thereby be regulated by the party as the representative of the general good. There will be no license, no free space, in which the individual belongs to himself. This is Socialism—not such trifles as the private possession of the means of production. Of what importance is that if I range men firmly within a discipline they cannot escape? Let them then own land or factories as much as they please. The decisive factor is that the State, through the party, is supreme over them, regardless whether they are owners or workers. All that, you see, is unessential. Our Socialism goes far deeper.”
—Adolf Hitler[154]
“Our present political world-view, current in Germany, is based in general on the idea that creative, culture-creating force must indeed be attributed to the state.”
—Adolf Hitler,[155] 1925
“The first foundation for the creation of authority is always provided by popularity.”
—Adolf Hitler[156]
“The advantage of … an unwritten constitution over the formal constitution is that the basic principles do not become rigid but remain in a constant, living movement. Not dead institutions but living principles determine the nature of the new constitutional order.”
—Ernst Rudolf Huber,[157] official spokesman for the National Socialist German Workers’ (Nazi) Party, 1939
Against capitalism
“We German National Socialists have recognized that not international solidarity frees the peoples from the ties of international capital, but the organized national force. …The National Socialist German Workers’ Party asks you all to come … to a GIANT DEMONSTRATION against the continued cheating of our people by the Jewish agents of the international world stock-exchange capital.”
—Nazi Poster,[158] 1921
“It is not to save capitalism that we fight in Russia … It is for a revolution of our own. … If Europe were to become once more the Europe of bankers, of fat corrupt bourgeoisies … we should prefer Communism to win and destroy everything. We would rather have it all blow up than see this rottenness resplendent. Europe fights in Russia because it [i.e., Fascist Europe] is Socialist. …what interests us most in the war is the revolution to follow …The war cannot end without the triumph of Socialist revolution.”
—Leon Degrelle,[159] leading National Socialist figure, speaking on behalf of the Nazi SS in occupied Paris, 1943
“[W]e will do what we like with the bourgeoisie. … We give the orders; they do what they are told. Any resistance will be broken ruthlessly.”
—Adolf Hitler,[160] 1931
“The internal and international criminal gang will either be forced to work or simply exterminated.”
—Adolf Hitler,[161] 1931
“Today I will once more be a prophet. If the international Jewish financiers, inside and outside Europe, succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevisation of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!”
—Adolf Hitler,[162] 1939
Historical roots: Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Hitler is an outcome of Rousseau.”
—Bertrand Russell,[163] 1945
“Each member of the community gives himself to it at the instant of its constitution, just as he actually is, himself and all his forces, including all goods in his possession.”
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau[164]
“Whoever refuses to obey the general will will be forced to do so by the entire body; this means merely that he will be forced to be free.”
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau[165]
“The political body, therefore, is also a moral being which has a will; and this general will, which tends always to the conservation and well-being of the whole and of each part of it … is, for all members of the state … the rule of what is just or unjust.”
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau[166]
“The State dominates the Nation because it alone represents it.”
—Adolf Hitler[167]
The state “ought to have a universal compulsory force to move and arrange each part in the manner best suited to the whole. Just as nature gives each man an absolute power over all his members, the social compact gives the body politic an absolute power over all its members.” “We grant that each person alienates, by the social compact, only that portion of his power, his goods, and liberty whose use is of consequence to the community; but we must also grant that only the sovereign is the judge of what is of consequence.”
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau[168]
“For us the supreme law of the constitution is: whatever serves the vital interests of the nation is legal.”
—Adolf Hitler,[169] 1931
“A citizen should render to the state all the services he can as soon as the sovereign demands them.”
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau[170]
“I wish to give officials greater discretion. The State’s authority will be increased thereby. I wish to transform the non-political criminal police into a political instrument of the highest State authority.”
—Adolf Hitler,[171] 1931
Historical sources: Karl Marx
“[W]hen I was a worker I busied myself with socialist or, if you like, marxist [sic] literature.”
—Adolf Hitler,[172] 1931
“I have learned a great deal from Marxism, as I do not hesitate to admit. I don’t mean their tiresome social doctrine or the materialist conception of history, or their absurd ‘marginal utility’ theories and so on. But I have learnt from their methods. The difference between them and myself is that I have really put into practice what these peddlers and pen-pushers have timidly begun. The whole of National Socialism is based on it. Look at the workers’ sports clubs, the industrial cells, the mass demonstrations, the propaganda leaflets written specially for the comprehension of masses; all these new methods of political struggle are essentially Marxist in origin. All that I had to do was take over these methods and adapt them to our purpose. I had only to develop logically what Social Democracy repeatedly failed in because of its attempt to realize its evolution within the framework of democracy. National Socialism is what Marxism might have been if it could have broken its absurd and artificial ties with a democratic order.”
— Adolf Hitler[173]
“Besides, there is more that binds us to Bolshevism than separates us from it. There is, above all, genuine, revolutionary feeling, which is alive everywhere in Russia except where there are Jewish Marxists. I have always made allowance for this circumstance, and given orders that former Communists are to be admitted to the party at once. The petit bourgeois Social-Democrat and the trade-union boss will never make a National Socialist, but the Communist always will.”
— Adolf Hitler[174]
“What is the profane basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly cult of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly god? Money. Very well: then in emancipating itself from huckstering and money, and thus from real and practical Judaism, our age would emancipate itself. … We discern in Judaism … a universal antisocial element …
“As soon as society succeeds in abolishing the empirical essence of Judaism—huckstering and its conditions—the Jew becomes impossible … The social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Judaism.”
—Karl Marx,[175] “On the Jewish Question,” 1843
“[I]t is quite enough that the scientific knowledge of the danger of Judaism is gradually deepened and that every individual on the basis of this knowledge begins to eliminate the Jew within himself, and I am very much afraid that this beautiful thought originates from none other than a Jew [i.e., Marx].”
—Adolf Hitler[176]
“As I listened to Gottfried Feder’s first lecture about the ‘breaking of interest slavery,’ I knew at once that this was a theoretical truth which would inevitably be of immense importance for the German people. … The development of Germany was much too clear in my eyes for me not to know that the hardest battle would have to be fought, not against hostile nations, but against international capital.
“… Thus, it was the conclusions of Gottfried Feder that caused me to delve into the fundamentals of this field with which I had previously not been very familiar. I began to study again, and now for the first time really achieved an understanding of the content of … Karl Marx’s life effort. Only now did his Kapital become really intelligible to me …”
—Adolf Hitler,[177] 1925
“Hitler admired Stalin, quite properly seeing himself as a mere infant in crime compared to his great exemplar.”
—Doris Lessing[178]
“As National Socialists we see our program in our flag. In the red we see the social idea of the movement.”
—Adolf Hitler,[179] Mein Kampf
“The Nazis were not conservatives. They were radicals, they were revolutionaries, and conservatives in Germany understood this.”
—Thomas Childers,[180] American historian of World War II
Comparing Italian Fascism and German National Socialism
“For Fascism, society is the end, individuals the means, and its whole life consists in using individuals as instruments for its social ends.”
—Alfredo Rocco,[181] founder of Fascist theory, 1925
“Liberalism denied the State in the name of the individual; Fascism reasserts the rights of the State as expressing the real essence of the individual.”
—Benito Mussolini[182]
“The State, in fact, as the universal ethical will, is the creator of right.”
—Benito Mussolini,[183] 1932
“In Fascism the State is not a night-watchman, only occupied with the personal safety of the citizens.”
—Benito Mussolini,[184] 1929
“As regards the Liberal doctrines, the attitude of Fascism is one of absolute opposition both in the political and in the economical field.”
—Benito Mussolini,[185] 1932
“Anti-individualistic, the Fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only insofar as his interests as he coincides with those of the State … . It is opposed to classical liberalism which arose as a reaction to absolutism and exhausted its historical function when the State became the expression of the conscience and will of the people. Liberalism denied the State in the name of the individual; Fascism reasserts the rights of the State as expressing the real essence of the individual … Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State—a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values—interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people.”
“The Fascist State, as a higher and more powerful expression of personality, is a force, but a spiritual one. It sums up all the manifestations of the moral and intellectual life of man. Its functions cannot therefore be limited to those of enforcing order and keeping the peace, as the liberal doctrine had it.”
—Benito Mussolini,[186] 1932
“We do not, however, accept a bill of rights which tends to make the individual superior to the State and to empower him to act in opposition to society.”
—Alfredo Rocco,[187] 1925
“All for the State; nothing outside the State; nothing against the State.”
—Benito Mussolini[188]
References
[137] Quoted in Joachim C. Fest, Hitler. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974, p. 533.
[138] Huber, Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches (Hamburg, 1939), in Raymond E. Murphy, et al., ed., National Socialism, reprinted in Readings on Fascism and National Socialism, selected by Department of Philosophy, University of Colorado. Athens, OH: Swallow Press, 1952, p. 90.
[139] Hitler, “On Idealism and Winning the Masses Over,” in Heinz Lubasz, ed., Fascism: Three Major Regimes. John Wiley & Sons: 1973, pp. 81-82.
[140] Hitler, Mein Kampf, translated by Ralph Manheim. Houghton Mifflin: 1971, p. 404.
[141] Goebbels, Michael, in Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom. New York: Rinehart & Company, 1941, p. 233.
[142] Friedrich von Bernhardi. Germany, the Next War, translated by Allen H. Powles. New York: E. Arnold, 1912, Chapter 5, p. 113.
[143] Hitler, in interview with Richard Breiting, 1931, published in Edouard Calic, ed., “First Interview with Hitler,” Secret Conversations with Hitler: The Two Newly-Discovered 1931 Interviews. New York: John Day Co., 1971, pp. 31-35.
[144] Hitler, May 1, 1927; quoted in Toland 1976, p. 306.
[145] Goebbels, quoted in Orlow 1969, p. 87. And Goebbels 1929, in Mosse ed., 1966, p. 107.
[146] Goebbels 1932, “Those Damned Nazis” pamphlet.
[147] Huber, Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches. (Hamburg, 1939) in Raymond E. Murphy, et al., ed., National Socialism, reprinted in Readings on Fascism and National Socialism, selected by Dept. of Philosophy, University of Colorado. Athens, OH: Swallow Press, 1952, p. 91.
[148] Kershaw, Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris. New York: Norton, 1999, p. 448.
[149] Cole, “Socialism,” Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards. New York: Macmillan and Free Press, 1967. Vol. 7, pp. 467-70.
[150] Heilbroner, Marxism: For and Against. New York: Norton, 1980, p. 169.
[151] Weber, Varieties of Fascism. D. Van Nostrand, 1964, p. 47.
[152] Hook, “Home Truths About Marx,” Commentary (September 1978), reprinted in Marxism and Beyond. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1983, p. 117.
[153] Hayek, The Road to Serfdom. University of Chicago Press, 1944/1994, pp. 184-85.
[154] Hitler, quoted in Hermann Rauschning, The Voice of Destruction. New York: Putnam, 1940, p. 191.
[155] Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 382.
[156] Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 518.
[157] Huber, Verfassungsrecht, p. 63.
[158] Nazi poster/handbill, in Mein Kampf. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1941, Appendix, p. 541.
[159] Degrelle, 1943. See Eugen Weber, Varieties of Fascism. D. Van Nostrand, 1964, p. 47. Degrelle was “a leading National Socialist figure, highly regarded by Hitler and by Himmler, speaking for the SS who would later publish and distribute the long speech, with the most revolutionary statements carefully italicized.”
[160] Hitler, interview with Breiting, p. 36.
[161] Hitler, interview with Breiting, p. 86.
[162] Hitler, speaking in the Reichstag on January 30, 1939. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/genocide/hitler_speech_2.shtml
[163] Russell, A History of Western Philosophy. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1945, p. 685.
[164] Rousseau, The Social Contract (1762), translated by Donald Cress. Hackett, 1987. Book 1, Section 9.
[165] Rousseau, The Social Contract , Book 1, Section 7.
[166] Rousseau, A Discourse on Political Economy, in Discourse on Political Economy; and, The Social Contract, translated by Christopher Betts. Oxford University Press, 1994, p. 7.
[167] Hitler, quoted in Albert Jay Nock, Our Enemy the State (1935). Reprinted by Libertarian Review Foundation (New York, 1989), p. 10.
[168] Rousseau, The Social Contract, Book 2, Section 4.
[169] Hitler, interview with Breiting, p. 86.
[170] Rousseau, The Social Contract , Book 2, Section 4.
[171] Hitler, interview with Breiting, p. 86.
[172] Hitler, interview with Breiting, p. 58.
[173] Hitler, quoted Rauschning, p. 186.
[174] Hitler, quoted in Rauschning, p. 131.
[175] Marx, “On the Jewish Question,” in Robert Tucker, The Marx-Engels Reader. Second edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1978, pp. 48, 52.
[176] Hitler, quoted in Julius Carlebach, Karl Marx and the Radical Critique of Judaism, pp. 355-356; see also Praeger and Telushkin, Why the Jews? New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983, pp. 138-139.
[177] Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp. 213, 215.
[178] Lessing, Walking in Shade. Harper Collins, 1997, p. 262.
[179] Hitler, Main Kampf. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1941, p. 737.
[180] Thomas Childers, “Lecture 5: The Nazi Breakthrough.” A History of Hitler’s Empire, 2nd ed., lecture series published by The Teaching Company, Chantilly, VA, 2001, minutes 5-6.
[181] Rocco, “The Political Doctrine of Fascism” (address delivered at Perugia, August 30, 1925), reprinted in Readings on Fascism and National Socialism, selected by Deptartment of Philosophy, University of Colorado. Athens, OH: Swallow Press, 1952, p. 35.
[182] In Charles F. Delzell, ed., Mediterranean Fascism: 1919-1945. New York: Harper & Row, 1970, p. 94.
[183] Mussolini, “The Doctrine of Fascism: Fundamental Ideas,” Enciclopedia Italiana, 1932. Reprinted in Heinz Lubasz, ed., Fascism: Three Major Regimes. John Wiley & Sons: 1973, p. 41.
[184] Mussolini, “The Doctrine of Fascism: Fundamental Ideas,” p. 21.
[185] Mussolini, “The Doctrine of Fascism: Fundamental Ideas,” Enciclopedia Italiana, 1932. Reprinted in Readings on Fascism and National Socialism, p. 18.
[186] Mussolini, “The Doctrine of Fascism: Fundamental Ideas,” in Delzell, ed., 1970, pp. 93-94, 95.
[187] Rocco, “The Political Doctrine of Fascism,” p. 36.
[188] Mussolini, quoted in Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1993, p. 122.
[Bibliography]
[This post can also be downloaded as a PDF at the Nietzsche and the Nazis page.]
Posted 9 months ago at 12:36 pm. 4 comments
[This is Section 4 of Nietzsche and the Nazis.]
4. Five weak explanations for National Socialism
a) A common explanation is that the Germans lost World War I. They were bitter over the loss and the harsh punitive measures the victors imposed in the Versailles Treaty. There is a grain of truth here, but this is a very weak explanation. One reason why it is weak is that many countries lose bitter wars, but they do not respond by electing Adolf Hitlers to power. Another reason is that Germany’s losing the war does not explain Italy. In the 1920s Italy turned to Benito Mussolini and his fascist version of National Socialism. But Italy was on the winning side of World War I. So if one of the winners of World War I became fascist, and one of the losers also became fascist, then whether one lost or won the war is not the significant factor here.
b) Another explanation holds that Germany’s economic troubles of the 1920s were the cause of National Socialism. Here again there is a grain of truth, but again this is a weak explanation. Many countries suffer economic malaise, but they do not turn to National Socialism for the solution. There is also the phenomenon of Nazi and neo-Nazi movements throughout the twentieth century in relatively prosperous countries. Very few countries suffering economic difficulties go Nazi, and there are plenty of Nazi-sympathizers in prosperous nations.
c) Another weak explanation suggests that there is something innately wrong with Germans, that history shows that they are inherently militaristic, bloodthirsty, and genocidal—and the Nazis merely tapped into and exaggerated innate German tendencies. This kind of explanation is an insult of course to the many Germans who were appalled by National Socialism, who opposed it and fought it vigorously. And it does not explain how National Socialism has appealed to people of many races and ethnicities. In 2005, Mein Kampf was a bestseller in the country of Turkey.[2] Do we want to suggest that the Turks are inherently bloodthirsty and genocidal? I do not think so.
d) Another weak explanation holds that Nazism is explained by the personal neuroses and psychoses of the Nazi leadership. The argument here is that Hitler was bitterly disappointed by being rejected for art school—or that he was a repressed homosexual—or that his right-hand man, Josef Goebbels was compensating for his below-average height and having a club foot. Again, this is a poor explanation. How many art-school rejects become Nazis? How many repressed homosexuals or handicapped men become Nazis? This explanation also ignores the large number of powerful Nazis who were neither homosexual nor short nor particularly interested in art.
e) Any of the above explanations can works together with a suggestion that the Nazis were a product of modern communications technologies—that as masters of rhetoric and propaganda the Nazis succeeded in fooling millions of Germans about their agenda and manipulated their way into power.
I have some sympathy for this way of thinking, for it is the kind of explanation that comes naturally to those of us raised in liberal democracies. When I first started learning about the Nazis, I thought they must have been insane. It is hard to imagine that such horror could be anything but the products of deranged minds manipulating the masses. But here I want to suggest two reasons why I think it is not a good idea to dismiss the Nazis merely as manipulators.
The first is that the Nazis achieved power though democratic and constitutional methods. When the party was formed in 1920, it was a small, fringe party. But it spoke to the beliefs and aspirations of millions of Germans. And in the 1920s, the Germans were, arguably, the most educated nation in the world with the highest levels of literacy, numbers of years of schooling, newspaper readership, political awareness, and so on. It was in an educated nation that the Nazis achieved increasing success in elections through the 1920s, spreading their message far and wide, until they made their major breakthroughs in the early 1930s. Millions of voters in a democracy may be wrong, but it is unlikely that they were all deluded. A better explanation is that they knew what they were voting for and thought it the best course of action. And that is what I will be arguing.
But millions of people do not decide spontaneously to vote for this party or that. A mass political movement requires that much cultural groundwork be done over the course of many years. And this is where intellectuals do their work. A culture’s intellectuals develop and articulate a culture’s ideals, its goals, its aspirations. In books, speeches, sermons, and radio broadcasts, intellectuals are a culture’s opinion-shapers. It is intellectuals who write the opinion pieces in the mass newspapers, who are the professors at the universities, the universities where teachers and preachers are trained, where politicians and lawyers and scientists and physicians get their education.
This leads us to the other reason why it is a weak explanation to say the Nazis were simply deranged and lucked or manipulated their way into political power. Consider the following list of intellectuals who supported the Nazis long before they came to power. These intellectuals represent a “Who’s Who” list of powerful minds and cultural leaders:
Philipp Lenard won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1905.
Gerhart Hauptmann won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1912. Hauptmann once met Hitler and described their brief handshake as “the greatest moment of my life.”
Johannes Stark won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1919.
That is three Nobel Prize winners.
Then there is Dr. Oswald Spengler, author of the historical bestseller The Decline of the West (1918). Spengler’s books sold in the millions, and he was perhaps the most famous intellectual in Germany in the 1920s.
Then there is Moeller van den Bruck, another famous public intellectual of the 1920s. His book The Third Reich (1923) provided a theoretical rationale for National Socialism and was, like Spengler’s books, a consistent best-seller throughout the 1920s.
Then there is Dr. Carl Schmitt (1888-1985), probably the sharpest legal and political mind of his generation. Schmitt’s books are still widely read and discussed by political theoreticians of all stripes and are recognized as twentieth century classics.
And to round out this initial list, there is philosopher Martin Heidegger. Already in the 1920s Heidegger was being hailed as the brightest philosopher of his generation, which is especially significant in a philosophical nation such as Germany. That assessment has held over the course of the twentieth century. Ask professional philosophers of today to name the five most significant philosophers of the twentieth century and, whether they love him or loathe him, most will include Heidegger on the list.
These seven men are among the most intelligent and powerful minds in Germany in the decade before the Nazis came to power. They are leading figures in German intellectual culture, spanning the arts, science, history, law, politics, and philosophy.[3] All of them, to one degree or another, supported National Socialism. Was Hitler smart enough to fool all of these highly intelligent men? Or is it more likely that they knew what they believed and supported National Socialism because they thought it was true?[4]
References
[2] “Mein Kampf a Bestseller in Turkey,” April 20, 2005. Windsofchange.net. Viewed August 24, 2009.
[3] Weinreich 1999 (pp. 13-16) gives a wide-ranging list of professors and intellectuals who supported Hitler prior to 1933. See also Rohkrämer 2005 for a clear discussion of the role of Heidegger and the many other philosophers who gave enthusiastic support to the Nazis. Earl Shorris (2007) describes Germany of the time as “a society richer in the knowledge of the humanities than perhaps any other in modern times. Among those people who rose to the top of the Nazi government were students of humanities, former scholars. Joseph Goebbels had studied history and literature at the University of Heidelberg. Reinhard (Hangman) Heydrich was the child of a pianist and an opera singer who founded a conservatory. Ernst Kaltenbrunner studied law at the University of Prague. More than a third of the members of the Vienna Philharmonic belonged to the Nazi Party. Albert Speer, who ran the business side of the Nazi war machine, was an architect.” Gottlob Frege (1848-1925), the great logician and philosopher of mathematics, can be added to this list. Frege was an anti-Semite and later in life named Adolf Hitler as one of his heroes; see Reuben Hersh, What Is Mathematics, Really? (Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 241.
[4] Albert Speer described “the event that led me to [Hitler],” which was a speech Hitler gave to the College of Engineering in Berlin. Speer expected the talk to be “a bombastic harangue” but it turned out to be a “reasoned lecture” (quoted in Orlow 1969, p. 199).
[Bibliography]
[This post can also be downloaded as a PDF at the Nietzsche and the Nazis page.]
Posted 9 months, 1 week ago at 12:05 pm. 1 comment
In the case of other major historical revolutions, we are more familiar with seeing the significance of philosophy. When we think for example of the causes of the Communist Revolutions in Russia and China, we naturally think back to the philosopher Karl Marx. When we think of the causes of the French Revolution, we think back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. When we think of the causes of the American Revolution, we naturally think back to the philosopher John Locke. The same holds the causes of National Socialism—although since the Nazi regime went so horribly wrong, there is perhaps some reluctance to name names. Yet naming names is sometimes crucial if we are going to get to the historical heart of the matter. What philosophers can we cite in the case of the Nazis? Several names are candidates: Georg Hegel, Johann Fichte, even elements from Karl Marx. 