Stephen Hicks, Ph.D.

How could Nazism happen? [Section 3 of Nietzsche and the Nazis]

[This is Section 3 of Nietzsche and the Nazis.]

Part 2. Explaining Nazism Philosophically

3. How could Nazism happen?

How could Nazism happen? This is an important question: professors and teachers the world over use the Nazis as a prime example of evil and rightly so. The Nazis were enormously destructive, killing 20 million people during their twelve-year reign. They were not the most destructive regime of the twentieth century: Josef Stalin and the other Communist dictators of the Soviet Union killed sixty-two million people. Mao Zedong and the Communists in China killed thirty-five million. The Nazis killed over twenty million and no doubt would have killed millions more had they not been defeated.[1]

So it is important to learn the lesson and to get it right.

After coming to power by democratic and constitutional means in 1933, the Nazis quickly turned Germany into a dictatorship. For six years they devoted their energies to preparing for war, which began in 1939. During the war in which every human and economic resource was needed for military purposes, the Nazis devoted huge amounts of resources in an attempt to exterminate Jews, gypsies, Slavs, and others.

Domestic dictatorship, international war, the Holocaust. All are terrible. But what exactly is the lesson of history here? How could a civilized European nation plunge itself and the world into such a horror?

References

[1] See Courtois 1999, pp. x, 4: contributors to that volume variously estimate the Communist death toll to be from 85 million to 100 million. See also Rummel 1997, Section II. Rummel’s site has updated numbers. For example, new data on deliberately caused famines in the People’s Republic of China under Mao led Rummel to revise the death toll for communist China upwards to 76,702,000.

[Bibliography.]

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Coexist or Uncoexist?

A vigorous culture carries on its debates at many levels and via many media, all the way down to the bumper sticker. I enjoy the cleverness that goes into many stickers, as well as the ongoing one-upmanship.

These “Coexist” stickers have been around for awhile now:

Islam, peace, men/women, Judaism, paganism, Taoism/Confucianism, Christianity — can’t we all just get along?

In a gesture of inclusiveness, this version substitutes Hinduism.
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This spelling-challenged version adds science to the mix, thinks it’s important to distinguish the pagans and the wiccans, and seems confused about Buddhism — but is trying very hard not to leave anyone out.

The Coexisters are focused on religion, asking us to attend to the shared themes of many religions — spirituality, love, peace. Their goal is to achieve tolerance by abstracting away from the differences among religions.

But then along comes the Uncoexist response to rain on the parade:

Let’s not forget about the Communists, the theocrats, the Satanists, the pederasts, the Nazis, and the Klan.

Uncoexisters are focused on evil and politics, reminding us that there are evil people in the world and that many of them use politics to harm and control others. Their goal is to protect the free and the innocent from the evil.

According to the Uncoexisters, the Coexisters think: If only we could give Ahmadinejad a big hug, tell him how much we love him, and share a nice cup of chamomile tea, the world would be a better place. What a bunch of pansies.

According to the Coexisters, the Uncoexisters think: If only we could bomb the bastards into the Stone Age, the world would be a better place. What a bunch of troglodytes.

All of this is good at the level of bumper-sticker debate, and it is fascinating how graphic design can concretize and compress so much.

Assignment to the Coexister graphic designers, in keeping with the theme of inclusiveness: Can we please work in Sikh and Shinto?

And an assignment to the Uncoexister graphic designers, in keeping with the theme of lessons in danger: Can we work in Kim Jong-il and Caligula? (And that big E just sitting there is really bothering me.)