Nietzsche and the Nazis: Full Audiobook

Nietzsche and the Nazis a personal view of Stephen Hicks documentary published in 2006 by N squared Productions and the publisher Occam's razor version of the book published in 2010 by Occam's razor this

audiobook

version recorded in 2013. part 1 introduction philosophy and history section one fascinated by history think about why we are fascinated by history, all those notable individuals and exotic peoples, the rise and fall of civilizations, and we wonder why that happens, how classical Greece achieved its golden age, the age of Socrates and Pericles, Euripides and Hippocrates, what explains the remarkable confluence of so many outstanding individuals in one era why almost two thousand years later occurred the Italian Renaissance Leonardo Michelangelo Machiavelli Raphael again an incredible outpouring of genius in the arts sciences and politics jumping three centuries The Chinese and the ancient Romans made impressive technological advances, but nothing on the scale of the Industrial Revolution.

Why did the Industrial Revolution initially take place in England and Scotland? Why not in Burma or Botswana? Collapse The most powerful civilization of the ancient world imploded and was left defenseless against successive waves of barbarian invasion and before the Romans, the powerful military empires of the Hittites, Assyrians and Babylonians also collapsed. Is there a common pattern at work here? Why did the French Revolution occur? go so terribly wrong by descending into a reign of paranoia, fratricide and terror. Why, instead, did the American Revolution, fighting in many ways the same kind of battle and subject to the same desperate pressures, not have the same self-destructive root as it did a century and a half ago?

Later, the most educated nation in Europe could become a Nazi dictatorship. All of these questions raise questions of dramatic historical changes for better or worse, but we can also ask questions about long periods during which dramatic changes did not occur. Consider the people of the Kalahari region in Southern Africa, they are sometimes called Bushmen. Experts estimate that for ten thousand years children have lived the same way generation after generation. Let's put this into perspective, if a generation lasts approximately 25 years, then 10,000 years means 400 generations of San. On the contrary, only about 20 generations have passed since Columbus crossed the Atlantic and consider how much has changed in Europe and America since then, but even the 10,000 years of the San people are dwarfed by the estimated 35,000 years that have passed since the Aboriginal people of Australia. existed essentially the same way generation after generation 35,000 years ago it was approximately when Neanderthal man was becoming extinct why the cultures of the sun and the aborigines did not change for such unimaginably long periods of time section 2 what is the philosophy of History They are fascinating questions.

As historians we study interesting individuals and cultures to understand how they lived, why they lived the way they did, and what impact they had on the course of human events. As philosophers we think more broadly and abstractly, we learn our lessons from historians and ask: There are broader explanations we can find in the dramatic rises and falls of cultures or in the static nature of others. From this perspective, history is a huge laboratory of experiments in human life. Some of those experiments have been very successful. Some have achieved mediocre results leading their cultures. to make a living across generations and some have been absolute disasters causing misery and death on a large scale.

Can we identify the root causes at play? Can we learn why some cultures flourish while others stagnate, collapse, or descend into horror? the history of history let's move on to an important experiment one that turned out to be one of the darkest eras in the history of humanity and the Nazis part two explaining Nazism philosophically section three how Nazism could have occurred how Nazism could have occurred this is a important question teachers and The world's teachers abuse the Nazis as a prime example of evil and no wonder the Nazis were enormously destructive killing 20 million people during their 12 year reign.

They were not the most destructive regime of the 20th century. Joseph Stalin and the other communist dictators of the 20th century. The Soviet Union killed 62 million people. Mao Zidong and the communists in China killed approximately 35 million. The Nazis killed over 20 million and would no doubt have killed millions more if they had not been defeated, so it is important to learn the lesson and understand it well afterwards. Coming to power through democratic and constitutional means in 1933, the Nazis quickly turned Germany into a dictatorship. For six years they devoted their energies to preparing for the war that began in 1939, during the war in which all human and financial resources were needed for military purposes. devoted enormous amounts of resources in an attempt to exterminate the Jews, Gypsies, Slavs and others, the internal dictatorship, the international war, the Holocaust, they are all terrible, but what exactly is the lesson of history here?

How could a civilized European nation plunge itself and the world into such horror? Section Four Five Week Explanations for National Socialism. A common explanation is that the Germans lost the World War because they were bitter about the loss and the harsh punitive measures the victors imposed in the Treaty of Versailles. There is a grain of truth here, but this is a very weak explanation. The reason it is weak is that many countries lose bitter wars but do not respond by electing Adolf Hitler to power. Another reason is that the fact that Germany lost 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 a fascist and one of the losers also became a fascist, then whether one lost or won the war is not the important factor here. Another explanation holds that Germany's economic problems 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 do not turn to National Socialism for a solution.

There is also the phenomenon of Nazism and Neo-Nazi movements throughout the 20th century in relatively prosperous countries, very few countries suffering from economic difficulties become Nazis and there are many Nazi sympathizers in prosperous nations. Another weak explanation suggests that there is something innately wrong with the Germans who history shows are inherently bloodthirsty militaristic and genocidal and the Nazis are simply limited and exaggerated by innate German tendencies, this type of explanation is of course an insult to the many Germans who were appalled by National Socialism, who opposed it and fought it vigorously, and does not explain how National Socialism has attracted people of many races and ethnicities in 2005 Mein Kampf was a bestseller in the country of Turkey.

Do we mean to suggest that Turks are inherently bloodthirsty and genocidal? I don't think so. Another weak explanation holds that Nazism is explained by the personal neurosis and psychosis of the Nazi leaders, the argument here is that Hitler was bitterly disappointed at having been rejected from art school or that he was a repressed homosexual or that his right-hand man, Joseph Goebbels, was compensating for his below-average height and clubfoot. Again, this is a poor explanation. How many Art School rejects become Nazis? How many repressed homosexuals or disabled men become Nazis? This explanation also ignores the large number of powerful Nazis who were neither homosexual nor short nor particularly interested in art.

Any of the above explanations can work together with a suggestion that the Nazis were a product of modern communication technologies that are masters of rhetoric and propaganda. The Nazis managed to deceive millions of Germans about their agenda and manipulated their way to power. I have some sympathy for this way of thinking. It's the kind of explanation that comes naturally to those of us raised in liberal democracies. When I started learning about the Nazis, I thought they must have been crazy. It's hard to imagine that such horror could be anything other than the product 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 simply as manipulators.

The first is that the Nazis came to power through 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, number of years of schooling, newspaper readers, political awareness, etc., it was in an educated nation that the Nazis achieved increasing success in elections during the 1920s, spreading their message far and wide until they made their major gains in the early 1930s.

Millions of voters in a democracy they may be wrong, but it is unlikely that they were all deceived by a better The explanation is that they knew why they were voting and they fought for the best course of action and that is what I will argue, but millions of people do not spontaneously decide to vote by this party or that a mass political movement requires so much cultural work. It can be done over many years and this is where intellectuals do their work intellectuals of a culture develop and articulate the ideals of a culture its goals its aspirations in books speeches sermons and radio broadcasts intellectuals are the opinion makers of a culture are the intellectuals who write the opinion articles in the mass newspapers who are the professors in the universities, the universities where teachers and preachers are trained, where politicians, lawyers, scientists and doctors receive their education, This brings us to the other reason why it is a weak explanation to say that the Nazis were simply disrupted, blocked or manipulated on their way to political power, consider the following list of intellectuals who supported the Nazis long before they came to power. can.

These intellectuals represent a who's who list of powerful minds and cultural leaders. Philippe Leonard won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1905. Gerhard Hautmann won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1912. Helpman once met Hitler and described his brief handshake as, quote, the most important moment of my life. Johannes Stark won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1919. That's three Nobel Prize winners, then there's Dr. Oswald Spangler, author of the landmark bestseller The Decline of the West, published in 1918. Spengler's books sold in the millions and was perhaps the most famous intellectual in Germany in the 1920s. Then there is Molar Vandenbrook, another famous public intellectual of the 1920s, his book The Third Reich published in 1923 provided a theoretical justification for National Socialism and was, like the books by Spengler, a constant bestseller during the 1920s; then there is Dr.

Carl Schmidt 1888-1985, probably the sharpest legal and political mind of his generation. Schmidt's books are still widely read and discussed by political theorists of all stripes and are recognized as classics of the 20th century and to complete this initial list is the philosopher Martin Heidegger, already in the 1920s Heidegger was hailed as the most brilliant philosopher of his generation, which is especially significant in a philosophical nation like In Germany, the evaluation that has been carried out throughout the 20th century asks today's professional philosophers to name the five most important philosophers of the 20th century and, if love him or live with him, most will include Heidegger on the list.

These seven men were among the most intelligent and powerful minds in Germany in the decade before the Nazis came to power. They are leading figures of German intellectual culture spanning the arts, sciences, history, law, politics and philosophy. All of them, to one degree or another, supported National Socialism. Was Hitler smart enough to deceive? all of these highly intelligent men or more likely knew what they believed they achieved and supported national socialism because they thought it was true Section 5 explaining Nazism philosophically I want to suggest a better explanation the main cause of Nazism lies in philosophy, not economics neither psychology nor even politics, National Socialism was first a philosophy of life, believed and defended by highly intelligent men and women,professors, public intellectuals, Nobel Prize winners, almighty minds working at the forefront of their disciplines, they were the ones 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;

That doesn't mean there weren't other contributing factors; the legacy of the First World War; persistent economic problems; modern communication technologies and the personal psychologies of the Nazi leadership played a role, but the most significant factor was the power of a set of abstract philosophical ideas. National Socialism was a philosophy-intensive movement. I will raise the aunt even higher. I also want to suggest that Nazi intellectuals and their followers were thinking of themselves. As idealists and as crusaders for a noble cause, this may be even more difficult for us to accept. The National Socialists of the 1920s were passionate men and women who thought the world was in crisis and that a moral revolution was needed because they believed in their ideas.

To be truly beautiful Noble and the only hope for the world Yes, Nazi ideology contained important elements of harshness and even brutality, but what if an important truth about the world is that it is harsh and brutal? It may be hard to believe that the Nazis thought of themselves. As noble idealists, especially with our later knowledge of the horrible destructiveness of Nazism, it can be especially difficult for those of us raised in Western liberal democracies to believe, since we were raised from the cradle to believe that freedom, equality and peace are almost self-evidently good, but what if they are not self-evidently good?

Let me play devil's advocate. How long have humans existed? Most anthropologists say that homo sapiens have existed for more than 100,000 years, perhaps as long as two hundred thousand years. For how much of that time has freedom, equality in peace been the norm? Democratic experiments were attempted in ancient Greece for a few centuries later, republican experiments were attempted again in ancient Rome for a few centuries, but Greece and Rome failed. The Greeks were conquered by the Romans and the Romans ascended to authoritarian decline before they were conquered and there have been some smaller and relatively brief republican city-states Renaissance Venice Florence and in the Baltic that are some short-lived experiments in over 100 000 years not very impressive, so we now imagine ourselves in Europe in the first decades of the 20th century Democratic republicanism has been resurrected and It is being tried again, for example, in the United States of America, but how successful have the modern experiments?

Since the 1920s, the United States is only about 150 years old, meaning it has survived less time than the Greek democracies or the Roman Republic. The United States lasted only 90 years before collapsing into a brutal Civil War whose repercussions are still felt in the early 20th century. In the 1920s, the United States is experiencing economic uncertainty and will soon plunge into its Great Depression, even in the United States many intellectuals are suggesting that capitalism and liberalism are finished and that some form of centralized authority led by a strong man it is the future. So in the 1920s, how strong are the arguments for freedom, democracy, republicanism, and capitalism?

What if a culture's brightest thinkers believe that democracy is a historical problem, what if they come to believe that the lesson of history is that what people need is structure and strong leadership? What if you believe that history shows that some cultures are obviously superior in their arts, their science and technology, and their religion? if you believe that history teaches us that we live in a harsh and conflictive world and that in such a world strength and assertiveness against enemies are essential to survive or even more strongly that peace softens people and that it is Conflict and war bring out the best in people, make them tough, vigorous, willing to fight for their ideals and, if necessary, to die for them.

I am suggesting that a set of ideals was primarily responsible for the rise of Nazism. I think those ideals are extraordinarily false and terribly destructive. but that is not how millions of intelligent and educated Germans, even in many cases well-intentioned, saw them, but why do I call them a set of ideals? Why not just say that the Nazis had some ideas? Of course they had some ideas to charm the masses with, but basically they just wanted power and they were effective in using those ideas to gain power, of course the Nazis wanted power, what politician doesn't want power, but if only you seek power, think about how to get it in a democracy.

The best way is to identify established political parties. Join one of the powerful and rise through the ranks to the top. Here is an analogy in the United States, the two main parties are the Democrat and the Republican, so if you are young and ambitious. and you want to have a realistic chance of becoming a senator or even president in your lifetime you join one of those two parties what you don't do is join a fringe party what you don't do is start your own party let's say the Farmers Union party of the Midwest in the middle of nowhere, the only reason you would start the Midwest Farmers Union party is if you are a true believer in the ideals of Midwestern agriculture and believe that you cannot achieve your ideals by joining the established parties, but that describes the Nazis exactly: they didn't unite. the social democrats or any of the established political parties created their own fringe party initially based in southern Germany and far from the center of power in Berlin.

They were true believers in a cause and did not want power if it meant compromising their ideals by joining an established party they wanted power but power to achieve what they considered high ideals so what was this obscure political party formed in Munich in 1920 and what did it represent for Nietzsche and the Nazis part 3 National Socialist Philosophy section 6 the program of the Nazi party the Nazi party emerged from the d.a.p the German Workers' Party its objective according to one of its founders quote from Gottfried Fader was to reconcile nationalism and socialism in quotes it was a lecture by an installer in 1919 which attracted Adolf Hitler to the internal party.

A year later, the party changed its name to have one that more accurately expressed its founding principles. The new name was the National Socialist German Workers Party. At a demonstration in Munich in 1920, attended by more than 2,000 people, the party announced its platform on May 25. points program the main authors of the program were Fader Adolf Hitler and a third man Anton Drexler to understand what national socialism represented the main points of the program it is worth looking closer at section 7 collectivism not individualism an important theme of the program is a emphasis on collectivism and rejection of individualism Point number 10 of the program, for example, says: it should be the first duty of every citizen to perform physical or mental work.

Individual activity must not violate the general interest but must be exercised within the framework of the community and for the general good, National Socialism in quotes consciously rejects Western liberal individualism with its emphasis on the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, all of which are individualistic rights. Nazism is collectivism; it does not maintain that individuals have their own lives to live. and happiness is to pursue rather individuals must work for the community out of a sense of duty serve the general good to which they subordinate their personal life point out point 24 of the program returns to this theme and strongly emphasizes the common interest before the self- interest quotes, bold and capital letters are in the original to emphasize Section 8 economic socialism, not capitalism the second theme of the program is an emphasis on socialism and a strong rejection of capitalism numerically socialism is the most emphasized theme in the Nazi program for more than half of the 25 points of the program 14 of the 25 to be exact detail economically socialist demands Point eleven calls for the abolition of all income obtained by lending money with interest Point 12 calls for the confiscation of all profits obtained by German companies during the World War one point 13 demands the nationalization of all corporations Point 14 demands participation in the profits of large industrial companies Point 15 demands the generous development of state old-age insurance Point 16 demands the immediate socialization of department stores, etc., so strong was the Nazi party's commitment to socialism that in 1921 the party began negotiations to merge with another Socialist Party, the German Socialist Party, the negotiations failed, but economic socialism remained a constant Nazi theme during the 1920s and 1930s, for example, here is Adolf Hitler in a speech in 1927. quote we are socialists, we are enemies of the current capitalist economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak with its unfair wages and 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 in quotes even more strongly Joseph Goebbels hated capitalism and urged socialism Dr.

Joseph Googles was perhaps the most brilliant and educated of all the Nazi politicians once the Nazis came to power, he was to be one of the most powerful of the most important Nazis, perhaps number two or three after Hitler himself, the commitment of the gerbil with national socialist principles began much earlier. He received an extensive classical education by attending five universities in Germany and eventually received a doctorate in literature and philosophy from the University of Heidelberg in 1921. During his graduate student days, he absorbed and agreed with much of the writings of the communists. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels condemning those he called, quote, the money pigs of capitalist democracy. the curse of humanity suffocates the seed of everything great and good, every penny is sticky with sweat and blood in quotes and in a language that could be taken from the writings of Karl Marx, the gerbils believe they fervently quote the worker in a capitalist state and that is its deepest The misfortune is no longer a living human being a Creator a maker has become a machine a number a cog in a machine without sense or understanding is alienated from what it produces in quotes the Nazi solution then it is the strong socialism the state should control the organization of the economy its production and distribution in the collective interest section 9 nationalism not internationalism or cosmopolitanism all this raises a question so far the Nazi program emphasizes that collectivism and socialism take priority over the individual but what collective or social group takes priority here the Nazi program emphatically defines its collectivism and socialism in nationalist terms individuals belong primarily to their ethnic and racial groups those ethnic and racial groups that gave them their central identities in the 1920 program seven of the 25 points they speak directly to this topic this topic is moderately complicated because the Nazis have three enemies in mind against whom they want to distinguish themselves first they reject Marxist socialism or any socialism that gives priority to economic groups as much as the Nazis hated capitalism they do not see the world as a battle between economic groups Marxists as they see it are also battles for Nazis obsessed and overly focused on money money is only part of the battle the main battle is between different racial and cultural groups with different biological histories languages ​​values ​​laws and religions the battle is between Germans with their particular biological heritage and cultural history against all other racial cultures, secondly, the Nazis reject cosmopolitanism, an ideal of Western liberals who believe that all humans are essentially equal wherever one travels in the world and who believe that one should strive to be a citizen of the world, someone who can be at home. everywhere the Nazis are nationalists on the contrary and reject any form of internationalism or cosmopolitanism.

These themes explain the design of the Nazi flag with the swastika as a symbolic integration of socialism and nationalism. Red is a symbol of socialism. White is a symbol of nationalism and the swastika is. according to Hitler, representative of the Aryan struggle for racial and cultural supremacy against those who try to destroy the Germans, consequently, in the Nazi program of 1920 we find many points about German national identity and the affirmation of German needs and objectives, one demands the unification of all. ethnic Germans to a greater Germany0.8 demands that immigration of non-Germans be stopped and that those who have recently immigrated be expelled from the country.

Public offices can only be open to citizens and point three defines citizenship in terms of possession of German blood and possession of German blood is care

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y defined to reject a third target of the Nazis: those whom they hate even more than the Nazis. Marxists or liberal capitalists and they are the Jews. Point three of the program denies that Jews can be racial comrades of the Germans and this, in combination with the other points of the program, effectively excludes Jews from German life. A widely used Nazi propaganda poster depicted a three-headed dragon with hats representing the Communist, the International Capitalist, and the Jew, the enemies the pure German warrior must defeat from the start.

Since the party's inception in 1920, pro-German nationalism and strong anti-Semitic themes are like collectivism and socialism central Nazi themes, while the 1920 program only mentions Jews twice and appears to advocate only that Jews be forced to leave. In Germany, within a few years, Nazi leaders had clearly begun to consider harsher measures in 1925, for example Hitler published Mein Kampf, a book that sold increasingly as the Nazis rose to power. Hitler variously describes the Jews as an octopus in quotes as a parasite in the body of other nations in quotes as a vampire in quotes as a spider that sucked the blood out of people's pores in quotes and that had taken over of the German state to liberate the German people, consequently Hitler calls for, in quotes, the elimination of the existing Jews. one in quotes and I quote the end of this parasite about the Nations in quotes section 10. authoritarianism, not liberal democracy so far we have three main themes in the Nazi program collectivism socialism and nationalism the next question is how do the Nazis believe this can be achieved As already in 1920, the Nazis were clear that they were not friends of democracy, liberalism or republicanism, they were in favor of strong authoritarianism and centralized power.

Point 23 calls for censorship and government control of all newspapers. Point 24 suggests limitations on religions that do not fit Nazi objectives. Point 25 calls for centralization and unconditional power quote we demand the creation of a strong central power in Germany a central political parliament must possess unconditional authority over the entire Reich and its organization in general quote these points, in combination with the economically socialist points above, they must give

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government control over all aspects of society during the 1920s, the Nazis Unapologetic about wanting to eliminate liberalism, democracy and republicanism, the gerbils, for example, say it bluntly and quote it publicly, the people never govern themselves.

This madness has been invented by liberalism, behind its concept of sovereignty of the people hide the most corrupt rogues who do not want to. be recognized in quotes in Mein Kampf Hitler totally agreed quote there should be no majority decisions in quotes instead quote decisions will be made by a single man in quotes then goobles continued quote we will create a power group with which we can conquer this state and then without mercy and brutality using the prerogatives of the State we will enforce our will and our program. Once again, quote from Goebbels. History has repeatedly shown how a young and determined minority has overthrown the government of a corrupt and rotten majority and then used for a time the State and its power to achieve through dictatorship and force the conditions necessary to complete the conquest and impose new ideas in quotes the Nazis were very clear from the beginning what they were for what they were against and how they planned to exercise power once they achieved it socialism racial nationalism identity and purification and a strong centralized power to make it a reality section 11.

Idealism, no Politics as usual It is important to emphasize that the Nazis presented their program frankly and as a noble and even spiritual ideal to achieve, promising not simply another political platform but an entire philosophy of life that, as they and their followers believed, promised renewal and They called on Germans to exercise the highest virtues of altruism and self-sacrifice for the good of society to achieve that renewal. Point 10 of the program urges individuals to put the common good of Germany before their personal interest point 24 is repeated by Hitler and Goebbels repeatedly urging Nazism as a spiritual vision and ideal in contrast to the usual politics of power greed of the time in Mein Kampf Hitler insisted on citing any Force that does not arise from a firm force. the spiritual foundation will be wavering and uncertain; it lacks the stability that can only rest on a fanatical view of life. in quotes, he called on individuals not to be selfish but to be willing to sacrifice. the autobiographical novel of the individual in quotes and the gerbil Michael, a book that sold out 17 editions, the main character is explicitly compared to Jesus Christ Michael is the socialist Christ who sacrifices himself for love of humanity and the gerbils urge that the German nobles be willing to do the same.

Widely used Nazi posters featured a religiously spiritual figure with his arms around a young Nazi soldier. Hitler regularly praised Germans for their spirit of altruism. He cited that this state of mind that subordinates ego interests to the preservation of the community is actually the first premise. For every truly human culture, in quotes, altruism believes that it is a more pronounced trait in Germans than in any other culture, which is why he claimed to be so optimistic about the future of Germany, this message of National Socialism as a moral ideal and as spiritual crusade was appealing to many, many Germans and especially the young, in 1925 the party membership in the north was mostly young, two thirds of the members were under 30 years old and within a few years the Nazis had attracted a large number of followers among university students. the young idealists will be the heart of the future Nazi in Germany quote the old people do not even want to understand that the young even exist they defend their power to the end but one day they will be defeated after all the youth must finally be victorious we, the young, will attack the attacker is always stronger than the defender if we liberate ourselves we can also liberate the entire working class and the liberated working class will free the Homeland from its chains in quotes section 12 Nazi democratic success for the Nazis the clear The firm and passionate defense of Their political objectives together with efficient organization and propaganda brought them increasing democratic success in Germany after years of work.

In 1928, the party had only 12 seats in the Reichstag, Germany's national parliament, but in the September 1930 elections they increased that number. to 107 seats less than two years later in the July 1932 election, they dramatically increased that number to 230 seats, a few months later they lost 34 seats in the November election and now had 196, but in January 1933 Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany. one of the two highest positions in the country and the Nazis were in a position to consolidate their power in March 1933 they called another election to obtain a clear mandate from the German people about their plans for Germany.

They participated and the Nazis made huge profits, winning 43.9 percent of the popular vote and 288 seats in the Reichstag. 288 seats are more seats than his next three competitors combined. Table one. Germany, March 5, 1933. Reichstag elections. National Socialist Party. 288. Social Democrat. party 120 seats Communist Party 81 seats Catholic Center Party 73 seats nationalist front comp SWR Front party 52 seats Buyers Party Volks 19 seats Deutsche stats party five seats social crystalline volksteinst Party 4 seats Deutsche Volks Party another nationalist party two seats Deutsche Baron party two seats vertenbergerish London a seed in 1933 the National Socialist German Workers Party was in control Nietzsche and the Nazis part 4 the Nazis in power section 13 political controls as the Nazis had promised acted quickly to transform Germany from a constitutional democracy to an authoritarian dictatorship A first step What they took was to eliminate rival political parties, some were banned completely, the rest were pressured to dissolve and in July 1933 the Nazi government prohibited the formation of new political parties in 1934 the Nazis further consolidated their power and The Hitlers that Hitler had almost always had increased. strong control of the internal politics of the Nazi party, but it had not been absolute. 1934 brought an internal purge and the elimination of Hitler's rivals.

The triggering event was Ernst Rome's attempted rebellion. Rome had been the head of the sa, the storm abtailung or storm division. The paramilitary wing of the Roma party had used his position to form a rival power bloc within the party and planned a rebellion. Hitler was warned of the rebellion in advance and was able to suppress it in the purge that followed; 43 conspirators and rivals were executed. Along with the purge there were many unofficial killings as old scores were settled. The result of the bloodshed was an even more strongly united Nazi party around Adolf Hitler in August of the same year that President Hindenburg died.

Paul Von Hindenburg had been the grand elder of Germany. After Hinenburg's death, Hitler merged the positions of president and chancellor, thus further increasing his power in a nationwide plebiscite. national vote to confirm the merger of the two positions almost 90 percent of Germans voted in favor of giving Hitler greater powers the Nazis now controlled all major political offices they had cleaned house internally and eliminated all rival parties that had a firm control they then set out to reshape the entire education of section 14 of German society. Political tools such as physical force and authoritarian laws are necessary tools for a dictatorship, but long-term control of a people also requires control of their minds.

The Nazis recognized this and made remodeling the German education system a priority. They already had a good head start when the National Socialists came to power in 1933. Around 2.5 million Germans were members of the Nazi Party. Seven percent of party members were from the upper class. Seven percent were farmers. 35 percent were industrial workers and 51 percent were middle class and professional. This last group, the middle and professional class, the largest occupational group represented was primary school teachers. Hitler and the National Socialists, therefore, already had a core group of committed followers in a position to help them shape the minds of the next generation.

The general purpose of education. The Nazis. He had a particular type of youth in mind already in 1925, Hitler had written in Mein Kampf citing that the popular State should not adjust all its educational work primarily to the inoculation of mere knowledge, but to the breeding of absolutely healthy bodies; Training mental abilities is essential. only secondary in quotes when 1933 came and power Hitler repeatedly made it even clearer what kind of healthy bodies he wanted the educational system to produce quote my program to educate youth is hard weakness must be eliminated in my castles of the Teutonic order a youth will grow before which the world will tremble I want a brutal, domineering, fearless and cruel youth, youth must be all that must endure pain, there must be nothing weak and gentle in it, free, Splendid Beast of prey, it must shine once again in their eyes, this is how I will eradicate thousands. of years of human domestication, this is how I will create the New Order, in quotes, intellectual training was less emphasized than physical training, but it was not omitted, students were trained in Nazi ideology, they studied German history from a National Socialist perspective , they learned political activism and were trained to develop themselves. a selfless, obedient and duty-oriented moral character, the curriculum was revised, textbooks were rewritten and teachers were trained as servants of the cause at the beginning of the Nazi reign, teachers were declared civil servants and were demanded that they join the National Socialist Teachers' League by taking an oath of absolute loyalty to Adolf Hitler, the Hitler Youth, in addition to transforming the formal school system, the Nazis placed great emphasis on the Hitler Youth Organization.

The Nazi Party Youth Organization had been formed in 1922 early in the party's history and acquired its name fromHitler Youth in 1926. The purpose of the Hitler Youth was to train a group of devoted young followers outside of the formal school system, once the Nazis came to power the old German school system and the Hitler Youth became supplementary programs of training and indoctrination. Children could enter the program when they were of age. six, although official training began at age 10. All members of the Hitler Youth took this oath in the presence of this Blood Flag that represents our least.

I swear to dedicate all my energy and strength to the savior of our country, Adolf Hitler. ready and willing to give my life for him, so help me God, quote, full membership and systematic training began at age 14 and included the ability to take a physical beating without complaint, brutal wrestling sessions between Children were common and encouraged, as Hitler had said. in my comp appointment but above all the young and healthy body must also learn to suffer blows in quotes if a child could not bear the pain or the pressure he was embarrassed in front of his peers those who succeeded received praise a sense of belonging to a great cause and useful symbols of their status, such as a special dagger, parallel programs existed for girls, the Young Girls' League was created for girls from 10 to 14 years old, the Hitler Youth group for girls from 14 to 18 years old was the Bund Deutsche model or League of German girls from 17 to 21 years of age, young Aryans were members of the faith and beauty instruction focused on the home family and the duty to have children.

Girls' training was similar to that of boys, including wearing military-style uniforms and participating in soldier-like activities. and learning Nazi ideology and activism, although young people were encouraged to question their parents and non-Nazi teachers within the Hitler Youth, absolute obedience was required even though membership in the Hitler Youth was attractive to many young people Germans, summer camps and parades were regular activities for In the Hitler Youth there was also the feeling of camaraderie and the sense of developing a sense of self-discipline, loyalty and honor, membership came to be considered a badge of honor and , as the Nazi party got closer to achieving power, membership even became a status. symbol In 1932, the year before the Nazis came to power, the Hitler Youth had 107,956 members or five percent of the German youth population in one year, membership had grown to more than 2 million members by 1936, the Membership in the Hitler Youth became mandatory for all other youth.

The groups had ceased to exist, being absorbed into the Hitler Youth or abolished and in 1939, the year in which World War II was to begin, membership in the Hitler Youth reached almost 8 million members. The Nazis' universities had also achieved a great success with older students at the University Long before Hitler came to power, Nazi student groups existed in universities throughout Germany. Before 1933, it was common for students to attend classes wearing brown shirts and swastika armbands, and in many cases the most intelligent and idealistic university students were the most. Student activists and outspoken supporters of National Socialism also had many allies among their teachers.

When the National Socialists took power, they banned all Jews from holding academic positions. This resulted in the dismissal of hundreds of tenured Jewish professors, including several Nobel laureates to their credit and many other professors. They resigned in protest or emigrated, but those professors were a small minority, a large majority of university professors remained in their positions, either silently accepting the new regime or even actively supporting it in 1933, for example, 960 professors, including prominent figures such as Martin Heidegger, made a public statement. proclamation of his support for Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist regime section 15. censorship what the Nazis established for the schools and universities they attempted to establish for German society at large through extensive government regulations on the media and total censorship of theThe world of schools and education was only an important microcosm of the Nazi plans for all of German society.

Joseph Goebbels. Germany's new propaganda chief put it this way: any quote from a book or work of art that acts subversively on our future or attacks the root of German thought. the German home and the driving forces of our people, in quotes, should be destroyed the great symbolic declaration of what was to come occurred early in the Nazi regime the book burning of May 10, 1933 just a few months after the Nazis took power in Unturned and Linden an Plaza opened in front of the University of Berlin. Approximately 20,000 books were burned in a large bonfire. Goebbels spoke at the event before forty thousand cheering spectators.

Some of the authors whose books were destroyed were Thomas Mann Albert Einstein Jack London Helen Keller H.G Wells Sigmund Freud Emil Zola and Marcel Proust An important and sometimes overlooked fact about the book burnings is that they were not instigated by the Nazi government or by non-intellectual thugs the book burnings were instigated by university students the student organization of the Nazi party conceived and carried out book burnings throughout the country book bonfires burned brightly that night in every German university town the professors had taught their students well The gerbil's official title was minister of the Reich chamber of culture the Reich chamber of culture and controlled seven cultural spheres Fine arts Music Theater literature the press, radio and films, this gave him power over the main media in Germany and allowed him to use his formidable propaganda talents effectively.

He quickly established regulations that anyone who worked in any of those camps had to become a member of the Nazi party and join. in the respective chamber the objective of the regulation was, as the gerbils say, to carry out a German cultural policy it is necessary to bring together creative artists from all spheres in a unified organization under the leadership of the Reich, the reich-mux not only He determined the lines of mental and spiritual progress, but also directed and organized the professions in the field of art. Hitler and Goebbels attempted to cleanse Germany of modern art and replace it with Germanic art, classical music, classical plays and operas, as well as Hollywood B-movies.

They were still allowed, but galleries exhibiting modern art were closed. The newspapers received close supervision. The Reich Press Law of 1933 prohibited newspaper editors from marrying Jews and required editors to meet daily with the Ministry of Propaganda to ensure that misleading stories were not published. Basically, this meant that the government told newspapers what they could and couldn't print; Likewise, radio was absorbed in 1933 by another branch of the Ministry of Propaganda. The Radio Chamber, the Film Chamber, took charge of the content of the film industry although it left film production to private companies in all areas of the world. art and culture editors who did not cooperate writers and performers were expelled sent to prison or concentration camps or sometimes murdered editors and artists who remained knew how they should behave German culture thus became an obedient tool of the Nazi policy section 16 eugenics Nazi education and censorship attempted to control people's minds The Nazis also controlled the bodies of their citizens as much as possible.

The softer controls involved new public health measures, such as an aggressive anti-smoking campaign. The Nazis banned smoking in certain public places. They ran an anti-smoking propaganda campaign and restrictions on how tobacco could be advertised. Stronger controls were extended to the sexual and reproductive lives of citizens and this leads us into darker territory: the Nazi embrace of eugenics. Eugenics was not exclusive to the Nazi regime or Germany as early as 1895 Eugenics researcher Alfred Yost had published a book called The Right to Death which called for state control over human reproduction and many intellectuals in many countries embraced eugenics in nature, the argument was: Only the strongest males mate with the females, the weakest males get to mate.

Mating less frequently or not at all This natural selection of the strongest and deselection of the weakest serves to keep the species healthy and strengthen it. The same principle applies to agriculture, just as a farmer cares about improving the quality of his herd, the State should care about improving the quality of its citizenry and just as a farmer will not allow any Bowl to mate with no cow, the State should not allow any male to have sexual relations with any female, the farmer will select his strongest and healthiest bulls and have them. They mate only with their strongest and healthiest cows, those bulls and cows that do not meet the standard are removed from the herd and are not allowed to reproduce at all, as Rudolf Hess, the Reich deputy would say a little later quote that the National Socialism is nothing more than applied biology without quotes before the Nazis came to power German intellectuals were among the world leaders in eugenics research in 1916 Dr.

Ernst Rudin, director of the demographic-genealogical department of the German Institute for Psychiatric Research, created a field of hereditary psychiatric biology based on the theory of eugenics. Rudin became president of the International Federation of Eugenic Organizations, the world leader of the eugenic movement in 1920, professor of psychiatry Alfred Hawk and distinguished jurist Carl Binding wrote the permission to destroy life Unworthy of life; his book called for the destruction of, quote-unquote, worthless human beings in order to protect worthy human beings. among the so-called useless individuals were the physically and mentally handicapped, another influential book on the principles of human heredity and racial hygiene, written by doctors Eugene Fisher Lens and Bauer, praised the superiority of the German race and called for the use of concentration camps for non-Germans and mixed races Fisher already had experience in this having planned and executed the forced sterilization of South Africans who were descendants of German military men and women indigenous to South Africa when the Nazis came to power.

Eugenics was an established part of German intellectual life. A striking indication of this is that German universities had 23 official professors of racial hygiene. National Socialism maintained that the state should take control where natural selection left off, in accordance with its collectivism and anti-individualism. The Nazis maintained that medicine and reproduction should serve the interests of humanity. the state rather than the individual like the farmer the Nazis wanted high quality Aryan children for state purposes so they took over the mating process for the citizens of Germany the Reich could not allow individuals to come into heat with anyone who took away their individual choices and reproduction would improve.

To supply and cleanse the nation of bad genetic elements, the Nazis also argued that they were therefore more socialist than their archrivals, the Communists, while the Communists focused almost entirely on issues of monetary capitalism and economics, the Nazis advocated for a more comprehensive socialism every year. aspect of human life, including family and reproduction, was to be socialized. The Nazi eugenics program had two sides, a positive and a negative, the positive side intended to increase the number of pure Aryan births, the negative side intended to eliminate the lower genetic influences in Germany to implement On both sides of the program, the Nazis first needed to define racial purity, they decided that there were three racial categories: full Jew with three or more Jewish grandparents, two degrees of michelinga or mixed type, with one or two Jewish grandparents and a complete Aryan with no Jewish grandparents. the pure Aryan would be the blond, tall, thin but strong human being, this led to a serious parody given that not many of the Nazi leaders met those criteria, neither the gerbils nor Göring nor Hitler himself obviously met them, all the humor , apart from the fact that the Nazis intended to achieve the positive.

Against their agenda, in various ways they provided incentives to encourage racially pure marriages. Incentives included loans to help married couples obtain set subsidies for each child produced and official awards and medals for mothers.heroic mothers of four or more children. Childless couples were vilified. The Nazi government also lowered the age of marriage to 16 encouraged the birth of illegitimate Aryan children banned abortion for Aryans banned marriage for sterile women strictly regulated birth control and initially prohibited mothers from working outside the home Heinrich Himmler was In charge of this area of ​​Nazi policy Himmler was also the head of the SS and the Gestapo, making him one of the two or three most powerful Nazis in the regime under Himmler's leadership.

The Nazis also created the labensborn or source of life program in 1935. This project developed group homes for youth. Single Aryan women impregnated by Aryan men Once parental racial purity was established, the young women remained in the homes and received free food and medical care in return, the women gave up all rights to their fetuses, who upon birth They would be raised by selected Nazi families between twelve thousand and sixteen thousand babies were born in Laban's homes in Germany and in Nazi-occupied territories. A few years later, to accelerate the development of a pure Aryan race, the Nazis began kidnapping Aryan children from the occupied territories.

An estimated 250,000 children aged six or younger were returned to Germany and assimilated into Nazi homes. The negative face of the Nazis. The eugenics program required the extermination of non-Aryans in 1935. The Nazis implemented the Nuremberg Laws for the protection of hereditary health. These laws. included the forced sterilization of people with mental and hereditary physical defects during the 1930s the Nazis sterilized approximately 400,000 people certification of Aryan ancestry became a requirement for marriage interracial marriages were banned and the remaining rights of children were revoked Jews the Nazis introduced extermination in May 1935 the regime euthanized 12 patients in a psychiatric hospital in Hadamar Germany the Nazi Ministry of the Interior demanded that all children under three years of age with congenital malformations and mental deficiencies be registered with the state; those deemed unfit were removed from their homes to receive special treatment.

In quotes, special treatment meant being injected with a lethal dose of medication or simply starving to death. The Nazis were still somewhat wary of public scrutiny, so part of their strategy was to slowly accustom the nation to human extermination before focusing all their attention on the For the Jews, the public justification for these deaths was not just health biological state, the Nazis also gave a collectivist economic justification. If the health of citizens is the responsibility of the State, then the State must allocate its economic resources responsibly, if money and resources are used to care for the weak, the strongest human beings are forced to sacrifice, but the strongest human beings are the best assets of the State, they are the ones who are the fulfillment and the future of the people, so the State has the moral obligation not to waste economic resources on the weak and when the weak are destroyed as nature intended, the strong will be improved and the species advanced, this brings us to Nazi economic policy, section 17, economic controls through education and censorship, the Nazis attempted to socialize the German mind through public health measures and eugenics. attempted to socialize the German organism, a natural extension of both policies was to socialize German economic production as the socialist part of National Socialism would expect.

The guiding principle of the Nazi economy was that all property belonged to the people and should be used only for the good of the people, thus As the body is no longer one's private possession, but rather belongs to the entire community, economic property is no longer the private possession of anyone, but must be used with the permission of the State and only for the good of the people upon reaching power, the Nazi government nationalized Jewish property and in 1934 passed a law allowing the expropriation of property owned by communists. Another of the first policies that the Nazi government gave high priority to was the organization of all German companies into cartels.

The argument was that, in contrast to disorder. and the selfishness of free market capitalism, centralization and state control would increase efficiency in a sense of German unity. In July 1933, membership in a cartel became mandatory for companies and in 1934 the cartel structure was reorganized and placed firmly under the direction of the German government by In 1937, state unions dissolved small companies with capital less than forty thousand dollars, as well as the rights to strike and collective bargaining, unemployment was addressed through public works programs, road construction, etc., now all property and labor power were either owned by the State or, if they are still owned by private parties subject to almost total control, the state tells companies what to produce and in what quantities, prices and wages are set by the state and, if anyone complains, a Nazi slogan is used common, puts them. the defensive quote common interest before self interest unquote the argument was quite clear you are not a private individual seeking profits or higher wages in a capitalist economy you and your property belong to the German people and your duty is to serve the public interest, even if it involves personal sacrifice, there is an important subpoint worth dwelling on, as there is a lively debate about how committed the Nazis were to socialism;

After all, they did not openly nationalize all companies as pure socialism would require, but instead allowed several companies to remain in private hands. An official declaration from 1935 expressed National Socialist policy in this way citing that the economy of power will not be directed by the state but by private entrepreneurs who will act under their own free and unrestricted responsibility. The State is limited to the control function, which of course is all inclusive; It also reserves the right to intervene to enforce the supremacy of public interest considerations. The question of how socialist the Nazis were is, in part, a question of long-term judgment. principles and short-term pragmatism, here's a related example: Clearly the Nazis were strongly committed to racism, but we could point out that they formed alliances with the Italians and the Japanese, neither of whom are racially Aryan, but it would obviously be a mistake to infer of these alliances that the Nazis were not really racist, they were racist, but as a matter of short-term strategy and political commitment they were willing to form alliances with those they would otherwise despise, since the Italians and the Japanese were powers that had strategic sense to overlook. the racial issue in the short term the same applies to economic socialism, allowing some major companies to remain officially in private hands made pragmatic economic sense in the short term, the Nazis knew they needed productive companies to drive the economy and their war machine developing, so it would have been foolish to interfere too much with the proper functioning of companies.

Furthermore, the Nazis knew they could count on the German nationalism of many business owners to accept what the Nazi government asked of them, and if push came to shove, the Nazis could and did approve. precise regulations to direct production as they saw fit, while the Nazi government imposed many regulations on German businesses, the Nazis counted on and received much voluntary commitment and enthusiasm, most business owners, managers and workers believed in the cause and devoted their economic energies to it, they saw the personal sacrifices required of them as their duty and, obediently and willingly, took on the sacrifices for the good of the cause.

As a result, between 1932 and 1936, Germany experienced an economic boom that came out of the stagnation of the 1920s and in the early 1930s unemployment fell. From 6 million to 1 million national production increased by 102 percent and national income doubled in 9 1936 the same year that the Germans organized the Olympic Games in Berlin the German economy was once again a power, a national vote in March to measure popular support for Hitler's regime Adolf Hitler's was the only name on the ballot and voters were given the opportunity to vote for Hitler or not as dubious as the vote was. The numbers tell us something: 98.6 percent of the voting population voted and of those 98.7 voted for Hitler, which means that more than 44 million German adults expressed their approval and only about half a million did not. . militarization of section 18 the most important part of the new Germany was the army on a historically unprecedented scale the German economy became a war economy conscription had been reintroduced in 1935 and in 1936 Hermann Goering took over German Minister of Economy under Guring.

Germany began to develop a total war economy in Earnest. Until then, Germany's remilitarization had been kept semi-secret and had largely been paid for with funds confiscated from Germany's enemies. the state and blocked foreign bank accounts under the leadership of remilitarization came to light guing initiated a four-year plan to make Germany self-sufficient so that it could survive blockades during a war reduced imports to a minimum since controls were established wages and prices and factories were built to produce rubber textiles. Fuel and steel. All commodities essential for a war machine and taxes on private companies were greatly increased to finance the war, also as promised as early as 1920 and the founding political program of the Nazi party, the The Nazis began a strategy of geographical expansion in 1936.

Germany again occupied the Rhineland and also in 1936 Hitler concluded an alliance with Mussolini and Italy and sent troops to Spain to support the authoritarian regime of General Francisco Franco. There was no military response from France, England or the other Allied powers in 1938 the Germans took Austria no shooting or violence was necessary after the seizure of power a plebiscite was held in which one could vote Yes or No for Hitler in Austria 99, 75 percent voted for Hitler in Germany 99.08 voted for Hitler Hitler was angry because he received a slightly lower level of support from the Germans than from the Austrians again there was no military response from the allies instead they believed Hitler was Satisfied they still believed him when he signed the Munich agreement promising no further expansion beyond the Sudetenland to a key part of Czechoslovakia.

As a result of that agreement, Hitler was named Man of the Year 1938 by Time magazine. In early 1939 the Germans again seized all of Czechoslovakia, there was no military response from the Allies, but on September 1, 1939 the Germans invaded Poland and this By the time the Western Allies responded, World War II had officially begun and the 20th century began its Second Great Collision of philosophies of life incompatible with the democratic and capitalist, individualistic and broadly liberal allies of the West, at war with the authoritarian collectivist and socialist powers of the Axis. East and at the end of the war tens of millions more people would die.

The Germans were robbed for war and were well prepared physically and psychologically. They believed in the kingdom of Lieben, in the rightness of Germany to expand as much as necessary to acquire land and resources to survive. They believed in the rightness of Germany's expansion to reincorporate ethnic Germans now living in foreign lands. They believed that Germany had a moral mission, even a divine mission, to show the world the way to a brighter idealistic future and destroy the faltering and depraved capitalist nations of the West, as Hitler put it at the beginning of the war, quote, which will be destroyed in this war is a capitalist clique that was and remains willing to annihilate millions of men for the sake of their despicable personal interests, in quotes, and of course the Germans had plans. for the Jews section 19 the Holocaust in 1821 the German poet Heinrich Heinen wrote a quote where in the end books are burned, people are also burned in quotes Heine evoked the terrible era of the reformation and counter-reformation in which both people and books were burned regularly but he was also making a philosophical comment about the importance of ideas, books are about ideas and ideas matter, humans live what we believe and if history teaches us anything it is that people can believe an incredible variety of things about themselves and the world in which they live.

Books store and transmit ideas, but it isin the minds of real human beings where ideas live and are put into practice. Burning a book has some power to stop an idea, but the only way to eliminate an idea completely is to eliminate the people who believe in it. Dictators know this and have no qualms about eliminating individuals. The Nazis were not historically unique. In this sense, what they were was the enormous scale on which they operated and the cruelty, efficiency and cold blood with which they destroyed human beings, killed and burned. Of the 12 million human beings who were exterminated during the Holocaust, approximately six million of them were Jews.

We've all heard the numbers and the terrible stories before and sometimes it's hard for them not to become abstract statistics in our minds, but to think of just one person. You know who lives a real life has dreams works hard loves his family has a quirky sense of humor wants to travel the world and then imagine that person being taken away in the middle of the night stuck in a cattle car naked experienced without slowly anesthetize starving them, gassing them, putting them in an oven and reducing them to ashes, that's what the Nazis did to millions of human beings.

All of the theoretical ingredients of the National Socialist program that contributed to the Holocaust were publicly announced 20 years before the Holocaust began. that they are divided into collective groups that shape their identity that those collective groups are in a competitive life and death struggle with each other that any tactic is legitimate in the war of competing groups that human beings are not individuals with their own lives to live but they are servants of the state that the state must have complete power over the minds and bodies of its citizens and can dispose of them as it wishes; that citizens must obey a higher authority and be willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for the good of their group as defined by higher authority.

Furthermore, during the 1930s, the Nazis had experimented with most practical techniques which would be used in the Holocaust in the 1930s. The basic human rights to Liberty property and the pursuit of happiness were denied to millions of people as a matter of official policy. those deemed undesirable had been forced to leave their homes and country; those who stayed were subjected to occasional officially tolerated beatings and murders for vandalism; some of those considered unfit to reproduce were sterilized; some of those deemed unfit to live had been slaughtered as early as 1933. Camps had been established north of Berlin at Oranienberg and at Dachau in southern Germany, more camps were added as the decade progressed and of course , the cruel anti-Semitism of the Nazis and their sympathizers among millions of Germans had been common knowledge and practice. it is appropriate that the classically educated Reich Minister of Culture Dr.

Joseph Gerbil put it most directly and clearly: "Certainly, the Jew is also a man, but the flea is also an animal," in quotes. , so let's return to our initial question: how could Nazism occur? Section 20...the question of the philosophical roots of Nazism we do ourselves a disservice if we do not understand Nazism thoroughly or if we settle for superficial explanations: it took a world war to stop National Socialism in the 20th century war is strength gross Brute force rarely changes anyone's mind about anything and does not by itself destroy the underlying causes motivating conflict. To use a crude analogy, if two neighbors are having an ongoing argument about a series of topics and one neighbor knocks the other unconscious, that ends the argument but does not resolve it. your problems, the source of your argument is still there and will resurface.

The same goes for the underlying causes of National Socialism and its differences from liberal democracies. Liberal democracies were able to defeat the Nazis in World War II, although it was a close war. but the underlying arguments are still with us, the differences between National Socialism and liberal democracies are profound and involve completely different philosophies of life. National Socialism was the product of a well-thought-out philosophy of life, the main elements of which were originated, elaborated and argued by philosophers and other intellectuals over many generations. Nazi intellectuals were no lightweights and we risk underestimating our enemy if We dismiss their ideology as appealing only to a few cranky weirdos.

If your enemy has a machine gun but you think he only has a blowgun then he is setting himself up for failure, and if we remember the list of heavyweight intellectuals who supported Nazism, leading philosophers and brilliant legal thinkers, Nobel Prize winners, it is clear that they were not peashooters and that we need heavyweight intellectual ammunition to defend ourselves. We ourselves, in the case of other major historical revolutions, are more familiar with seeing the meaning of philosophy when we think, for example, of the causes of the communist revolutions in Russia and China, we naturally think of the philosopher Karl Marx when we think of the causes. of the French Revolution we think of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, when we think of the causes of the American Revolution we naturally think of the philosopher John Locke, the same applies to the causes of National Socialism, although since the Nazi regime got it so terribly wrong there There may be a reluctance to name names, but sometimes it is crucial to name names if we want to get to the historical heart of the matter.

What philosophers can we cite in the case of the Nazis? Several names are candidates George Hagel Johann Victor even elements of Karl Marx, but in relation to the Nazis, perhaps the biggest and most controversial name that is regularly mentioned is that of Friedrich Nietzsche, the Nazis often cited Nietzsche as one of their precursors. philosophical and, although Nietzsche died 33 years before the Nazis came to power, the references to nature are harvesting. appears regularly in Nazi writings and activities in the lectures of the philosopher Heidegger, for example, quoting Nietzsche was presented as the Nazi philosopher in quotes in his study Adolf Hitler had a bust of Friedrich Nietzsche in 1935 Hitler attended and participated in the funeral of the Nietzsche's sister, Isabel, in 1938 the Nazis built a monument to Nietzsche in 1943 Hitler gave a set of Nietzsche's writings to his fellow dictator Benito Mussolini.

Hitler's propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, was also a great admirer of Friedrich Nietzsche in his semi-autobiographical novel The Gerbils has the main character Michael die in a mining accident after three books are found among his belongings, the precious bible Faust and Nietzsche thus spoke zarathustra so who was Friedrich Nietzsche Nietzsche and the Nazis part five the life and influence of Nietzsche section 21 who was Friedrich Nietzsche quotes what does not kill us makes us stronger without quotes live dangerously without quotes Friedrich Nietzsche was a famous 19th century German philosopher for his adoration of human potential and for encouraging people to seek Great Heights and realize their creative dreams.

He is also famous for his absolute hatred of all things small, cowardly or mediocre in his writings. In his writings we find a corresponding reverence for all things great, noble and heroic, he spoke directly and passionately to the best within each of us. . He quotes, don't throw away the hero in his soul and keep his greatest hope holy. have a creative spark that must be honored and nurtured quote the noble soul reveres itself an indication of the importance of Nietzsche is the pantheon of the major intellectuals of the 20th century who he influenced was an influence on Jean-Paul Sartre and Hermann Hesse, The leading writers of both who won Nobel Prizes, influenced thinkers as diverse in their views as Iron Rand and Michelle Foucault.

Rand's politics are classically liberal or broadly libertarian, while Foucaos is far-left, including a period as a member of the French Communist Party. There is a surprising fact. that Nietzsche was an atheist but influenced Martin Buber, one of the most widely read theologians of the 20th century, and that nature said harsh things about the Jews, as we will see, but was still admired by Heim Weissmann, a leader of the Zionist movement. and first president of Israel, so what is the attraction of Nietzsche?: his passionate, sometimes searing prose. Nietzsche was a stylist par excellence: his Romanticism of life as a great and daring adventure of importance for serious intellectuals: the fundamentality and the sheer audacity of the questions he raised about the human condition according to his teachers and professors the young Friedrich Nietzsche showed of extraordinary intellectual promise he was appointed professor at the University of Basel in Switzerland at the age of 24, which is unusually young for a professor.

Even more unusual was his appointment before completing his doctorate, which was almost unheard of, as brilliant as he was. Nietzsche, according to most people, was unfit for academic life, was a terrible lecturer, and suffered from chronic health problems that contributed to a general nervous breakdown in 1870. In the 1870s he wandered largely alone and solitary through Europe examining the cultural landscape and when we take stock of the world at the end of the 19th century, what do we learn from section 22 God is dead God is dead for thousands of years we have believed in religion, but in the modern world religion has become a shadow of what it was before.

Nietzsche's dramatic phrase God is dead is intended to capture the personal and impactful quality of this Revelation for those of us raised religiously. Religion personalized the world. It gave us the feeling that the world had a purpose. and that we are part of a broader plan, it comforted us to know that, despite appearances, we are all equal and cared for and that when we die, instead of a cold grave, a happy ending awaits us forever, that is already hard to believe in the modern world. We have seen the spectacular rise of science providing different, less comfortable answers to questions on which religion traditionally had a monopoly.

We have freed ourselves from the chains of feudalism with its unconditional acceptance of authority and knowing our place. We are more individualistic and naturalistic in our thinking, but in historical time, all this has happened very quickly in the span of a few centuries, for millennia we have been religious, but come the 19th century, even the average man has heard that the Religion may have reached the end of its road for most of us, even the suggestion. If this hints at a crisis, imagine a 13 year old boy who was woken up in the middle of the night and told by strangers that his parents had died.

He was suddenly orphaned, for as long as he can remember, his mother and father have been present in his life caring for him and guiding him sometimes firmly but always benevolent protection and support in a world that he is not yet able to handle on his own now. who are gone and ready or not, is thrown into that world alone, how does the young man do it? teen handles that sudden transition culturally Nitro believes we are like that young teen for as long as we can remember, our society has trusted God the Father to take care of us and be a benevolent and sometimes stern guiding force through a difficult world, but now Suddenly, we are orphans, we wake up one morning and discover deep in our hearts that the religious beliefs of childhood are naive and have withered, so now, whether we like it or not, the question of how to face well the perspective of a world without God and without religion. says Nietzsche in the 19th century most people do not deal with that question well section 23 symptoms of nihilism most people avoid the topic feeling that even raising it would be entering dangerous territory they feel that the game could be up for religion but for Out of fear they close their minds and force themselves to believe that God is still out there somewhere, life without religion is too terrifying to contemplate, so they retreat to a safe zone of belief and nervously repeat the formulas they have learned about.

Faith. Now he thinks Nietzsche is a thing. For a medieval peasant to have a naive faith, but for us moderns, that faith has a tinge of dishonesty. A little better for Nietzsche, but not so much for the socialists of the 19th century. Socialism is on the rise and many socialists have abandoned the faith. religion of their youth, but only half-heartedly, most socialists accept that God is dead, but then they are very worried about the state taking God's place and taking care of them, the powerful state will provide for us and tell us what to do and will protect us against bad people. of the world think of it this way, the Judeo-Christian tradition says that this is a world of sin in which the weak suffer at the hands of the strong, that we should all be selfless and serve God and others, especially the sick and the helpless, and that in a future Ideal World Heaven the lion will lie down with the lamb and the inescapable power ofGod will bring Salvation to the meek and judgment to the wicked the Marxist socialist tradition says that this is a world of evil exploitation in which the strong take advantage of the weak but we must all be selfless and sacrifice ourselves for the good of others, especially the needy, quote each one according to his ability, each one according to his need, in quotes and that the forces of History will necessarily bring an ideal future world that puts an end to all harsh competition. empower the oppressed and eliminate evil exploiters, both religion and socialism glorify weakness and need, both flee from the world as it is harsh, unequal, harsh, both flee to an imaginary future realm where they can feel safe , they both tell you, be a good boy, be a The good girl shares feel sorry for the little people and they are both desperately looking for someone to take care of them, be it God or the state, so where does Nietzsche ask?

They are the men of courage who are willing to stare into the abyss and who can stand alone on the ice. On a mountaintop who can look a tiger in the eye without blinking, such men exist. Every generation occasionally produces Magnificent Men. Wills against anything the world can throw at them, but such magnificent human beings are few and far between in the 19th century and Nietzsche wonders why and looks back to past cultures where Magnificent Men ruled, strength was prized and equality It was a fact of life. and conquest were a source of pride, he names the Japanese feudal nobility as an example with their samurai code of honor and the Indian brahmins who rose up and imposed their caste system, the Vikings who raided mercilessly along the European coast , the expansionist Arabs and, of course, the impressive Roman Empire, what explains this stark contrast?

Why do some cultures achieve greatness and brazenly impose their will on the world, while other cultures seem apologetic and urge us into dull conformity? Section 24 Masters and Slaves, part of the answer says that Nietzsche is completely biological of organic nature is divided into two broad types of species: those animals that are naturally herd animals and those that are naturally solitary, those that are prey and those that They are predators, some animals are by nature sheep, field mice or cows and some animals by nature are wolves, hawks. or lions, psychologically and physically, this division also runs through the human species, some people are born fearful and inclined to join a pride and others are born fearless and inclined to seek solitary heights, some of us are born sedentary and slow and others are born crackling purposeful and craving adventure some of us, to use Nietzsche's language, are born to be slaves and others are born to be masters and what type you are, there is little you can do about it, there is a brute biological fact here, each of us we is the product. of a long line of evolution and our traits are evolutionarily instilled in us, just as a sheep cannot help being shy and a hawk cannot help being a hawk, each of us inherits from our parents and from their parents before them a long line of incorporated traits The quote cannot be erased from a man's soul what his ancestors have done preferentially and with greater constancy.

Master types live with strength, creativity, independence, assertiveness and related traits. They respect power, courage, audacity and risk even recklessness. It's natural for them to go their own way regardless. what to rebel against social pressure and conformity slave types live in conformity tend towards passivity dependence meekness it is natural for them to stay together for a sense of security just as herd animals do now says Nietzsche let's talk about morality about good and evil, right? And wrongly for a long time we have been taught that morality is a matter of religious commandments etched in stone thousands of years ago.

It is not so, says Nietzsche. What we consider moral depends on our biological nature and different biological natures dictate different moral codes. So if you are a sheep then what will seem good to you as a sheep to be able to graze quietly being very close to others just like you are part of the flock and not stray away what will seem bad to you good wolves will seem bad to you and anything similar to a wolf, aggressive predator, but what if you were a wolf? Then force, cruelty and contempt for sheep will come naturally to you and seem good to you.

There is nothing that wolves and sheep can agree on morally. Their natures are different, as are their needs. and goals, since that's what makes them feel good, of course, it would be good for the Sheep if they could convince the Wolves to be more like sheep, but what self-respecting wolf would fall for that quote that Lamb doesn't like big birds of prey? It only seems strange that there is no reason to reproach these birds of prey for taking little lambs and if the Lambs say among themselves that these birds of prey are bad and the one that least resembles a bird of prey but rather a lamb, doesn't it? it would be like this? well, there is no reason to criticize this institution of an ideal, except perhaps that the birds of prey see it a little ironically and say that we do not dislike these good little lambs at all, we even love them, nothing is tastier than a tender lamb without quotes , the same point applies to humans.

The division between strong and weak, assertive and shy runs through the entire human species. The key question we must ask about morality is not whether this or that value is universally and intrinsically good, but rather what kind of person finds this value to be valuable. In Nietzsche's words, one's moral code is a decisive testimony of who is he of the innermost impulses of his nature in quotes moral judgments Nietzsche says that they are symptoms and sign languages ​​that betray the process of physiological prosperity or failure without quotes, then one's moral code is a function of psychological structure of one and one's psychological structure is a function of one's biological structure biological language and examples from those quotes show that biology is crucial to Nietzsche's views on morality nature was 15 years precocious when Charles The book Darwin's On the Origin of Species was published in 1859.

Evolutionary ideas had been in the air for a long time before Darwin and much of the intellectual world moved from thinking about reality in terms of timeless, immutable absolutes to seeing it in of processes. and changing all this also applies to morality the moral codes that Nietzsche suggests are part of a life strategy of survival of biological types and the more you look at the history of morality evolutionary and biologically, the more you are surprised by the diversity of circumstances and how Beliefs about values ​​have changed dramatically over time, this is precisely our key problem culturally.

Nietzsche argues that the evidence shows that we used to meddle with excellence and power and look down on the lowly and lowly, now the meek, the common man, the kind neighbor, is the good one. Guys, while the aggressive, the powerful, the strong, the proud, are evil, think about it this way. Suppose I gave you the following list of traits and urged you in a positive way. It is good to be proud of yourself to have a healthy sense of self-esteem and wealth. It is good because it gives you the power to live as you wish. Be ambitious and bold and pursue your highest dream.

Do not accept nonsense from other people. Make it clear that you will take revenge and demand justice against those who mess with you. Seek to improve your life and dedicate yourself only to things. that benefit you, do not waste your time or resources, seek great challenges, great pleasures, including the sensual pleasures of the body, and follow your own independent path in life, accepting whatever risks you must to develop a full life and fulfilled sense of yourself as an individual and when you achieve something great admire yourself for what you have done and enjoy the rewards that greatness deserves Pride self-esteem wealth ambition audacity Revenge Justice profit challenge pleasure sensuality Independence risk individualism self-admiration Indulgence now Consider the items on that list together as a package.

Does that list resonate with you? Do you feel in your bones that if more people lived this way they would live more active and fuller lives and that they in the human species would realize their full potential? Now consider a different list of traits and let me urge you to positively urge them as well. One must be humble because pride goes before the fall, the meek inherit the earth and blessed are the poor in terms of riches and the rich will find it easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven instead of Seeking profit must be sacrificed and given to charity. be patient and forgiving turn the other cheek be aware of one's own weaknesses and sins and, as a result, shame and despise oneself practice self-control, especially with regard to one's lower, impure and often disgusting physical desires play it safe, think about other people's needs and don't make waves and realize that we all depend on each other.

Obey your parents, your preacher and the politicians. Does that description resonate with you? Do you feel that if more people lived that way they would live better lives and that the human species would realize its full potential a table Traits of the master contrasted with the traits of the slave Proud masters self-esteem slaves humility Pride goes before the fall I master bold slaves meek will inherit the earth Master Rich slaves blessed are the poor Masters wealth slaves will be Easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle Master Prophet slaves sacrifice charity I love ambition slave patience I love revenge slave forgiveness I love Justice slave turn the other cheek I love sense of self-esteem slave weakness sinfulness Master self-admiration slave shame Master Indulgence slave self-control master sensuality manga discussed in the physical challenge Master slave safety Master slave individualism Don't rock the boat Master Independence slave dependence Master autonomy slave obedience Nietzsche is very clear about the slave's set of concepts that list is dangerous to human potential, reeks of weakness, even disease and unhealthiness, undermines human potential for greatness and is tragically the dominant morality of our time in our time the traits that a man noble are condemned and all the traits that weaken man are praised morality, as nature says, paradoxically has to become something bad morality has become immoral quote precisely morality would be to blame if the maximum power and splendor really possible for the type of man would never be achieved, so that precisely morality was the danger of dangers, consequently Nietzsche concludes quote we need a critique of moral values, first we must question the value of these values ​​themselves and for that we need a knowledge of the conditions and circumstances in which they grew up, under which they evolved and changed in quotes section 25 the origin of slave morality our problem is this somehow the morality of the weak has become dominant and the morality of the strong has declined How do you explain this rather paradoxical situation?

Part of the story is a question of our individual biological and psychological makeup for each of us individually, one or the other. Of the two moralities resonates more with us as individuals, but part of the story is cultural because sometimes the master morality dominates a culture and sometimes the slave morality dominates and there is a history lesson here. Part of the historical story is that the modern world has embraced democracy and democracy means giving power to the majority and a majority of people are, shall we say, conformist in their tastes, worried about what their neighbors think of them hoping to retire when they won't have They will do nothing and will be content to sit passively in their little homes.

They gossip and complain about their bosses and mothers-in-law. Democracy gives those kinds of people power, so we should expect democratic laws and policies to reflect the tastes and interests of those kinds of people. Democracies adapt their policies to the majority, not the majority. There are an exceptional few who are radical pioneers and uncompromising risk takers, but according to Nietzsche, the modern movement towards democracy is itself an effect of deeper historical causes if we reflect again on the elements that were on the right side of the list. . Pride goes before the fall. the meek turn the other cheek clearly they all come from Western religious traditions Nietzsche openly blames the Judeo-Christian moral tradition for the rise of slave morality for Nietzsche there are no essential differences between Judaism and Christianity Jesus was a Jew who wanted to reform Judaism and the consequent division between Judaism and Christianity is a matter of two variations on the same theme: both theJudaism and Christianity share the same roots and the same general approach to morality.

Nietzsche traces the origin of that morality to a decisive set of early events in Jewish history before the time of Moses, that event being the enslavement of the Jews in Egypt. If we remember our biblical history, the Jews were long slaves under powerful Egyptian masters, but we know that the Jews found a way to survive. their slavery under the Egyptians and although their Egyptian masters have long since perished, the Jews have survived scattered throughout the world and have kept their religion and culture alive despite often horrible adversities, how did the Jews do it here? Nietzsche says that the Jews asked themselves some very realist practical questions about morality if it is good to survive then what policies and actions will keep you alive and if you are a slave how do you survive as a slave and conversely what policies and actions will probably get you killed If you are a slave and have children who you desperately want to survive and grow, what will you teach your slave children to increase their chances of doing so?

Here Nietzsche is saying that what is good and bad, what is moral and immoral, is not a question. of supernatural theological commandments that apply to all circumstances timelessly, what is good and evil is a matter of real life. Practical circumstances and different circumstances require different moral strategies, so if your real life circumstances are that you are a slave, which strategy will be moral? What strategy will really help you survive? Clearly, if you are going to survive as a slave, then you must obey the master. This is not something natural for all living beings. Nietzsche says that they have an instinct to express themselves and assert their power, so you have to repress your natural instinct or you assume that the master hits you because you did something wrong.

The desire for revenge arises naturally but you have to stifle it. You train yourself to restrict your natural impulses. and internalize a humble, patient and obedient self with pain slaves who do not do this end up being dead slaves who are proud, impatient and disobedient, they do not last long, so the slave virtues of obedience and humility have survival value and Those are the traits you will instill in your children if you want them to survive. The virtues of the slaves thus become cultural values ​​through generations. Nietzsche argues that during this decisive event in early Jewish history the values ​​of the slaves became the internalized cultural values ​​of the Jews.

Notice that Nietzsche is saying that obedience, humility, forgiveness, and patience are moral, not because some supernatural being has ordered them to be so. Fundamentally, morality has nothing to do with it. with religion, the goodness of those traits is based on practical, down-to-earth considerations, how do you survive in a harsh world of power struggles? If you are a slave in such a world then slave morality is a survival tool now of course time passes and many people forget where their moral code culture came from or they are passive and don't think much about it and just They accept the prevailing Norms I and even among slaves many people are like sheep and do not particularly care about being slaves but others resent it and listening to the story that Nietzsche tells us becomes darker some of those Jews who are slaves under the Egyptians and then Masters are living human beings with the desire of human beings to live grow They express who one is but cannot express it to live as a slave one must constantly feel frustrated and the more energetic and lively one is, the greater his frustration will be, such slaves will naturally begin They will strongly resent the master and will also begin to hate themselves for having to do what the master says, how does it feel?

When the boss tells you to do something you don't want to do, do you tell the boss to take this job and quit or do you quietly submit and do what he says all the time resentful and if you submit often enough? and resent it for a long time, what does that do to your soul? The pressure builds up, not only do you start hating the teacher, but you start hating yourself for being so weak and timid, and that in turn causes unbearable pressure inside you psychologically, and that's when psychologically ugly things start. to happen Nietzsche expresses it this way he quotes the outward discharge was inhibited and turned back against man himself hostility cruel joy in pursuing and attacking and changed into destruction all this turned against the possessors of such instincts which is the origin of evil conscience in quotes then, if you are one of those who has this bad conscience, how do you console yourself?

How do you not descend into self-destructive rage? good with yourself, you can't really get revenge on the Masters, but what about fantasy? feel more acutely the internal battle between the animals' natural drive for power and the demands of a morality that has taught them to be selfless and humble within such priests. Nietzsche says that we find psychological phenomena most interesting and disturbing. Nitro puts it harshly, quotes what it is. Due to their impotence, hatred grows in them to monstrous and strange proportions, the true great enemies in world history have always been priests, in quotes, what do priests of the Judeo-Christian tradition constantly talk about in their sermons, is it not a big revenge fantasy?

They tell their flocks that it is good to be humble, meek and obedient, but to whom should one be obedient? Well, to God, of course, but God is not often around, so being obedient to God in practical terms means being obedient to God's Representatives here on Earth. and guess who those people are, of course they are the priests, so this is part of a strategy of forming a power base of a large number of people who are your obedient followers. You may not have quality people on your side, but sometimes, large amounts of people can be. a powerful weapon another part of the sermon is to condemn the powerful and assertive rich, demand that they give up their money but their power at the service of the weak and sick and be like the lion who is supposed to lie Put down the lamb and not eat it for lunch.

What is the point of all these sermons against the rich and powerful? Of course, part of this is a consolation to those in his audience who are weak and poor. Plays on his envy of the rich. and powerful and gives them the satisfaction of hearing the rich and powerful being criticized, but the sermon is also intended to be a direct weapon against the rich and powerful and is intended to induce in them a feeling of guilt and self-doubt. who they are and how they live moral sermons are psychological weapons in the battle of the weak against the strong and the weak use psychological weapons since physical weapons are not their strong suit priests never use physical confrontation against the Masters and the Masters find it beneath their dignity to fight against an unarmed and despicable enemy, on the other hand, priests use morality as their weapon of confrontation, praising the meek and condemning the strong Judeo-Christian ethics.

Nietzsche says that the quote has waged a deadly war against this superior type of man that he has placed. all the basic instincts of his kind are forbidden by, quote, the Judeo-Christian moral code that Nietzsche concludes becomes part of his revenge strategy. His goal is to allow the weakest to survive in a harsh world in which they are often the ones who receive the big stick. but also to undermine the master type's confidence in themselves and eventually subdue and tear down the Masters to demand spiritual Vengeance as evidence of this. Nietzsche reminds us of standard Judeo-Christian rhetoric about how, despite current appearances, the weak, the sick, and the poor will triumph in the end.

His Kingdom will one day come and God will unleash his wrath on the rich and powerful in a perfect Nietzsche catch. quotes Saint Thomas Aquinas, the patron saint of Catholic theology and the most influential philosopher of Christianity during the last millennium. so that the Blessedness of the Saints is more delightful for them and they can give more copious thanks to God because they are given to see perfectly the punishment of the Damned in quotation marks, summarizing all this in two essential points Nietzsche believes that the slave morality of the Jewish tradition -Christian is a double strategy: first, it is a survival code that allows the weekly to unite to survive and second, it is a revenge and a power game in their battle against the strong and in Nietzsche's opinion there is no serious doubt about who is winning the ancient battle an early christian church father named tertullian once rhetorically asked quote what athens has to do with jerusalem unquote in the history of the early church christians like tertullian were regularly argued with and mocked by philosophers of the pagan schools of classical Greek philosophy the point of Tertullian's answer, what does Athens have to do with Jerusalem was that the Traditions that came out of Athens and the Traditions that came out of Jerusalem are opposite and have nothing to do with each other, it is an ancient battle for dominion over the soul of the Western world.

Nietzsche agrees, but puts the point differently. Jerusalem is the home of the major Western religious traditions and they all come from Judaism, but instead of Athens, Nietzsche points to the classical tradition. Rome as the highest height of the pagan.The traditions achieved in Rome, the philosophy and art of the Greeks combined with the political and military genius of the Romans to create the largest Empire the world has ever seen, thus in reading of Nietzsche's History. The great battle for the soul of the Western world is Rome. versus Judea and as evidence of whether Rome or Judea is winning, invites us to consider to whom one kneels in Rome today the Judeo-Christians have taken over Rome and to use Nietzsche's words, quote, everything is becoming visibly Judaized, Christianized , mobilized, without quotes, the boss.

The slave has long established his camp and planted his flag in the center of what was the greatest Master Empire the world has ever seen. All of this is a great moral crisis and it is a crisis because the future development of humanity is at stake. what type of species we want to be in what way we want to develop the moral code we choose will set our course what most people consider the only possible morality Judeo-Christian morality Nietzsche sees as a threat to human development because it represses all those traits of assertiveness, selfishness, independence and risk-taking that make human greatness and development and that same morality possible.

He praises smallness and meekness and chain-kneeling, all traits that undermine human greatness. Quote, nothing stands more evilly in the way of The rise and evolution of humanity than what today in Europe is simply called morality, quote and quote more clearly, let me expressly declare that in the days when humanity still He was not ashamed of his cruelty, life on Earth was happier than it is now, in quotes, so the current dominance of Judeo-Christian morality is an unhealthy development that must be overcome the fate of the human species depends on For this we must go beyond Good and Evil section 26 the superman Nietzsche once said that he philosophized with a hammer.

By that he did not mean something crude like a mallet that breaks things, he had in mind a delicate hammer like the one used by a tuner. pianos to strike the keys of a finely constructed musical instrument to see which notes sound clear and which are discordant or murky when writing his philosophy that Nietzsche intended. His words are like that delicate hammer in your soul when you read them. How does your soul respond? Do you vibrate clearly or reel with uncertainty when you hear that God is dead? Do those words make you cringe inside and fill with soft panic?

Or do they strike a clear, pure, liberating note that heralds the beginning of the tremendous symphony you can become? God is dead, so we must become gods and create our own values, but most people are afraid to legislate for themselves, they know there is inequality and risk. out there in the big bad world, so they want to let some higher power take responsibility, but Nietzsche says that for a few among us, the realization that God is dead galvanizes every fiber of their being, they respond by feeling passionately and solemnly that I will convert. the author I will create, I will accept the responsibility with joy, I will go beyond good and evil and create a magnificent new set of values, such an individual will raise humanity to a higher level of existence, he will be the Ubermensch, the Superman or about man as a whole. history of humanity Nietzsche believes that he will have prepared the Übermensch for his great creative adventure in himself, he will embody the best of the past, the physical vitality and exuberance of the past, the types of Masters will flow through his veins, but Nietraalso credits the Judeo-Christian tradition for its internalized Spiritual Development by turning all its energy inward and emphasizing ruthless self-discipline and self-denial, which tradition has been a vehicle for the development of a stronger and more capable type of spirit. , the new Masters will thus combine the physical Vitality of the aristocratic ones. masters with the spiritual cruelty of the slaves Priests of Christianity, as Nietzsche expressed it in a memorable phrase, the new Masters will be, in quotes, Caesars with the soul of Christ in quotes, we cannot say in advance what new values ​​the Masters will create without being Uber , we mention ourselves.

We do not have the power to decide for them or even predict, but Nietzsche clearly indicates what broad direction the new Masters will take first. The superior man will find his deepest instinct and let him be a tyrant. The creative source of the future lies in instinct. passion and willingness to express the point in a negative way, the superior man will not depend much on reason, reason, of course, is the favorite method of the modern scientific man, but Nietzsche maintains that reason is an artificial tool of the weak, Those who need to feel safe and protected construct fantasy in an orderly manner.

The structures themselves, on the other hand, the instincts are the deepest parts of your nature and, to the extent that you feel a powerful Instinct welling up within you, you must nourish it and let it dominate because from that spring flows true creativity and true exaltation. One thing is necessary to style one's character, a great and rare art, in the end, when the work is finished, it becomes evident how the restriction of a single taste governed and formed everything, great and small, if this taste was good or bad is less important than one might suppose if only it was a simple taste, in quotes, and again, I quote, the great man is great because of the free play and the scope of his desires and the even greater power that he knows how to put these magnificent monsters at your service.

Secondly, another clue that Nietzsche gives us is that the superman will face conflict and exploitation calmly as a fact of life and will enter The Fray with enthusiasm in the face of conflict. Many people are apprehensive and given to wishing that life would be kinder and gentler for such people Nietzsche has nothing but contempt quote Now people everywhere rave, even under the guise of science, about the coming conditions of society in which the exploitative character will be absent, which sounds like me heard as if they promised to invent a way of life that should abstain from all organic functions, without quotes, conflict and exploitation.

They are integrated into life and the superman himself will not only accept it as natural, but will also be a master of conflict and exploitation, as expressed by nature. We think that everything terrible, evil, tyrannical in man, everything in him is related to beasts of prey. and snakes serve the improvement of the species man as much as his opposite in quotes and more I quote a higher and more fundamental value for life could have to be attributed to deceit, selfishness and lust in quotes third another suggestion that we According to Nietzsche, it is the will of the superior man to naturally accept the fact of the great inequalities between men and the fact of his own superiority, man over man will have no scruple about his superior abilities and his superior value to all others, above The superior men that Nietzsche openly proclaims, cite their right to exist, the privilege of The ringing bell over the false and the cracked is a thousand times greater.

Only they are our guarantee for the future. Only they are responsible for the future of man. Therefore, those who are strong must revel in their superiority and ruthlessly impose their wills hierarchically on everyone else. just as the Masters did in past aristocratic societies, every improvement of the type, man has hitherto been the work of an aristocratic society and will be again and again a society that believes in the long order of rank and differences of value Between the men. and man and needs slavery in some sense or another fourth unquote and as the last quote suggests Nietzsche approvingly indicates that the superman will have no problem using and exploiting others ruthlessly to achieve his ends quote Humanity en masse sacrificed to the prosperity of a single species of stronger man who would be an advance in quotes Nietzsche gives a name to his anticipated superman he calls him Zarathustra and names his greatest literary and philosophical work in his honor Zarathustra will be the creative tyrant having dominated himself and the others, he will Command and exuberantly and energetically realize a new and magnificent reality.

Zarathustra will lead humanity beyond itself and into an open future. Mitchell Longs for Zarathustra's next quote, but someday, in an age stronger than this decadent and unbelieving present, he must yet come to us as a redeemer. man of great love and contempt, this man of the future who will redeem us not only from the hitherto reigning ideal but also from what was to arise from it, the great nausea, the will to nothing, nihilism, this Antichrist and antinihilist, this Victor . about God and nothing, must come one day in quotes and with that prophetic note Friedrich Nietzsche stops and leaves the future in our hands Nietzsche and the Nazis part 6 Nietzsche against the Nazis section 27 five differences now we can ask the big question of the reward After surveying National Socialist Theory and Practice and addressing the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche we can ask how much Nietzsche and the Nazis have in common or, to put it another way, to what extent the Nazis were justified in seeing Nietzsche as a precursor of his movement.

We know that Adolf Hitler Joseph Goebbels and most of the leading intellectuals of National Socialism were admirers of Nietzsche's philosophy, read him avidly during their formative years, recommended him to their peers, and incorporated Nietzsche's themes and sayings into their own writings. speeches and policies to the point that they were accurate and It is justified to do so and, in my opinion, a decision divided into several very important aspects is required on this complicated issue. The Nazis were perfectly justified in viewing Nietzsche as a precursor and intellectual ally, and in several important respects Nietzsche would have been rightly horrified. the misuse of his Philosophy by the Nazis let's start with the key differences between Nietzsche and the Nazis here I want to focus on five important points section 28 on the blonde beast and racism take the phrase the blonde beast and recoil from what he saw like a flaccid 19th century European culture.

Nietzsche often called with nostalgia, quote, a herd of blonde beasts of prey, a conquering and dominant race that organized itself for war and with the ability to organize unhesitatingly lays its terrible claws on a populist, and spoke of, quote, The deep and icy distrust that the German still arouses today every time he enters a position of power is an echo of that inextinguishable horror with which Europe observed for centuries that fury of the blonde Germanic Beast, in quotes and again inspiringly on what is at the bottom of everything. these Noble races the Beast of prey The Splendid blonde Beast greedily prowling in search of loot and victory this hidden core needs to burst from time to time the animal has to leave and return to the desert what are we going to do with these regular races? positive mentions of the Blond Beast it is clear what the Nazis made of them an endorsement by Nietzsche of the racial superiority of the German Aryan type but for those who have read the original Nietzsche that interpretation clearly takes Nietzsche's words out of context in context the blonde The beast Nietzsche refers to is the lion, the large feline predator with the shaggy blonde mane and the terrible roar.

Nietzsche believes that the Germans long ago manifested the spirit of the lion, but they were not the only ones in that sense, the spirit and power of the lions have been manifested by peoples of many races. To see this, let's put one of the quotes in context. complete. The date begins this way. The quote at the end of all these noble races is the Beast of Prey. The splendid blonde Beast that prowls avidly in search. of booty and victory now let us complete the sentence as nature wrote it let us quote the Roman, Arab, Germanic, Japanese nobility, the Homeric heroes, the Scandinavian Vikings, they all shared this need, in quotes, so Nietzsche is clearly using the lion in an analogical way and comparing its predatory power with the predatory power. that humans of many different racial types have manifested.

Nietzsche here lists six different racial and ethnic groups and Germans are not special on that list, so while Nietzsche endorses a strongly biological basis for cultures, he does not endorse racism of the kind that says that any one race is biologically necessarily superior to any other this is a clear difference from the Nazis the Nazis were racist and thought that the Germanic racial type was superior to all others throughout the world Nietzsche did not agree this brings us directly to a second important section of difference 29 about contemporary Germans, the hope of the world or despicable, while the Nazis gave priority to the German Aryan racial type.

Nietzsche is almost never complementary to his fellow Germans; in Nietzsche's view, Germany has fallen into flaccidity and complaint. Germany was once a strange and fearsome thing, but Germany in the 19th century has become a nation of religious revival, socialism, and movements toward democracy and equality, whatever special endowments Germans once possessed, they have lost. Nature makes it clear when talking about 19th century Germany. The rendezvous between the ancient Germanic tribes and the German Americans there. There is hardly any conceptual relationship, much less one of blood, in quotes, so instead of being proud of their ancient history and achievements, Nietzschev believes that the Germans of his time should be embarrassed by the comparison, as well as the German intellectual and cultural life is prominent throughout the world and Nietzsche deplores the fact that contemporary Germany is a center of softness and slow decay, so nature believes that Germany's weaknesses are infecting the rest of the world, as he He expresses it in the will to power.

Quote that the Aryan influence has corrupted everyone in quotes, instead of celebrating the contemporary era. Germany and its power as the Nazis would Nietzsche is disgusted by contemporary Germany, this brings us to a third important point of difference, section 30 on anti-Semitism, valid or repugnant, the most repulsive sign of Germany's decline, Nietzsche writes and this may initially be surprising is his hatred of Jews his virulent and almost irrational anti-Semitism Nietzsche we know he has said some harsh things about Jews, but again, that is a set of issues that are easily misunderstood, so we must be careful in relation to all the negative things Nietzsche has said about Jews.

We must also keep in mind the following that Nietzsche talks about quoting. the quote-unquote anti-Jewish stupidity of the Germans, talks about those psychologically disturbed individuals who are more consumed by self-hatred and envy, uses the French word santomon to describe such nauseating individuals, and says that this horizontal mother is more easily studied in the anarchists. and anti-Semites, in quotes, pathological dishonesty is a symptom of such repulsive characters. quote an anti-Semite is certainly no more decent because he lies on principle in quotes so, to summarize, Nietzsche reserves some of his most damning language for Germans who hate Jews, considers them Liars Stupid Pathological cases of disturbed and self-hatred that should be studied by psychologists with strong stomachs, so it seems a reasonable inference that Nietzsche would also have disliked the Nazis because the Nazis absorbed into their ideology the worst possible kind of anti-Semitism and pursued their anti-Jewish policies almost to the point of self-destruction. .

Section 31 on the Jews is either admirable or despicable, but how does this fit in with the harsh things we know Nietzsche said about the Jews? This brings us to a fourth point of difference. between Nietzsche and the Nazis because of all the negative things Nietzsche says about the Jews, he also respects and praises them a lot. Here is a representative quote from Beyond Good and Evil. However, the Jews are, without a doubt, the strongest, toughest and purest race now. living in Europe in quotes here is another quote from the Antichrist psychologically considered that the Jewish people are a people endowed with the harshest vital energy who, in impossible circumstances, divined a power in these instincts with which one could prevail against the world. in quotes he again praises the Jews for having the strength to govern Europe, if they decided to quote that the Jews, if they wanted to or if they were forced to do so, thatseems to be what the anti-Semites want, they could even now have preponderance in, in fact, literally, dominion over Europe, that is, being sure that they are not working or planning for it is equally true in quotes and in another book Nietzsche compares favorably to the Jews to the Germans, in fact, identifies one way in which the Jews are superior to the Germans cite that Europe owes no small thanks to the Jews for making its people more logical to have cleaner intellectual habits , none more so than the Germans, a race unfortunately Dave Risenablo that even today first needs to take a good mental beating in quotes, but how can all this Praise of the Jews fit with the rest of what he says about the Jews, a distinction Important here is between blaming the Jews of several millennia ago for devising slave morality and imposing it on the world and between evaluating today's Jews as heirs of a cultural tradition that has allowed them to survive and even flourish.

Despite great adversity, in the first case Nietzsche blames the Jews and condemns them for subverting human greatness, but in the second case he would at least have to acknowledge, even if grudgingly, that the Jews have come up with a strategy of survival and have preserved their cultural identity. for over two thousand years, how many other cultures can make that claim? That list is very short and for that the Jews deserve praise. Section 32 on Judaism and Christianity is opposite or identical. One more key difference between Nietzsche and the Nazis is important and that is their Views on Christianity Nietzsche consistently states that Judaism and Christianity are allies arising from the same source and both advocate a religious ethic that puts the weak, the sick and the humble, as is the case in Judaism.

Christian morality is a slave morality. Christianity, he writes, is a rebellion of everything that crawls on the ground against that which has height in quotes. The Christians he writes quote did not know how to love their God except by crucifying man in quotes and for that great crime against humanity Nietzsche says quote I condemn Christianity I raise against the Christian Church the The most terrible of all accusations that any accuser has ever uttered is to me the highest of all conceivable corruptions, without quotes, so Christianity does not escape the wrath of Nietzsche, just as the slave morality of the Jews did not escape his wrath and for the same reason Christianity is an extension. and the purification of the moral themes first developed within Judaism in Nietzsche's own words quote in Christianity all Judaism reaches its supreme mastery as the art of lying in a sacred matter the Christian the ultimate proportion of the LIE is the Jewish once more even three times more Without quotes, this identification of Christianity with Judaism also separates Nietzsche from the Nazis, since the Nazis went to great lengths to distinguish Jews from Christians, condemning Judaism and embracing a generic type of Christianity early in the party's history in its founding document, the 1920 program, Point 24 States. the following quote the party as such defends positive Christianity without allying itself to any particular denomination, combats the Jewish materialist spirit without quotes the use of Christian themes and images was prominent in Nazi propaganda throughout the 1920s in the novel Joseph Gerbil's semi-autobariography, the main character of Michael is portrayed as a hybrid figure of Christ and a German martyr and in a 1935 interview, Jerbos was so concerned with separating Christianity from Judaism that he went so far as to deny that Jesus was Jewish.

Adolf Hitler argued that Jews and Christians were fundamentally opposed. Religions and himself raised Christian moral themes explicitly in public pronouncements like this quote when I came to Berlin a few weeks ago: Luxury, perversion, iniquity, unbridled display and Jewish materialism disgusted me so much that I was almost beside myself. I imagined myself as Jesus Christ when he came to his father's temple and found it taken over by money changers. I can well imagine how he felt when he took a whip and whipped them unquote section 33 summary of the five differences we have five significant separations In the path between Nietzsche and the Nazis, the Nazis believe that the German Aryans are racially superior, while Nietzsche believes that the higher types can manifest themselves in any racial type. 2.

Nazis believe that contemporary German culture is the highest and best hope for the world while Nietzsche considers contemporary German culture to be degenerate and infecting the rest of the world three Nazis are enthusiastically anti-Semitic while Nietzsche sees anti-Semitism as a disease moral four the Nazis hate everything Jewish while Nietzsche praises the Jews for their toughness, their intelligence and their sheer ability to survive five and finally the Nazis see Christianity as radically different and vastly superior to Judaism, while Nietzsche believes that Judaism and Christianity are essentially the same, with Christianity in fact a worse and more dangerous variation of Judaism, those Five Points identify important differences and provide support to those interpreters of Nietzsche who complain about simplistic identifications of nature as a proto-Nazi philosopher. , but there are equally important ways in which the Nazis were right to see Nietzsche as an intellectual ally. from part six Nietzsche and the Nazis part 7 Nietzsche as a proto-Nazi section 34 anti-individualism and collectivism we know that the National Socialists were completely collectivist and strongly anti-individualist for them the relevant groups were the Germanic Aryans and all other individuals were defined by their group identity and the Individuals were seen only as vehicles through which groups achieved their interests The Nazis rejected the Western liberal idea that individuals are ends in themselves for the Nazis Individuals were mere servants of the groups to which they belonged Anti-individualism of The Nazis were more egregious in their treatment of the Jews: they did not see the Jews as individuals with meaning and moral rights, but instead saw them as members of a group they wished to destroy.

This meant, as a matter of policy, that the Nazis did not They cared about the lives of the Jews. individuals and were willing to kill as many individuals as necessary to achieve their group's advantage, even within their own group, the Nazis did not see the Aryan Germans as fundamentally individuals, they saw them as members of the Volk, the Germanic people, the group they owed service to. obedience and even their lives Nietzsche has a reputation as an individualist. There are certainly individualistic elements in Nietzsche's philosophy, but in my opinion his reputation as an individualist is often greatly exaggerated when we talk about philosophies as individualistic or collectivist.

First, three key points are discussed. We ask whether individuals shape their own identities or whether there are identities created by forces beyond their control; For example, whether individuals have the ability to decide their own beliefs and form their own characters or whether individuals are molded and molded primarily by their biological inheritances or culturally by the groups in which they are born and raised. Secondly, we ask, are individuals ends in themselves with their own lives and purposes to pursue or do individuals exist for the sake of something beyond themselves to which they are expected to subordinate their interests third we ask do the decisive Events in human life and history occur because individuals They are generally exceptional individuals who make them happen or are the decisive events in History a matter of collective action or greater forces at work.

Let's take the first question: whether individuals shape themselves in significant ways or whether they are the product of forces beyond their control only in an attenuated way. Does Nietzsche believe that individuals shape their own characters and destiny to a large extent? He is a determinist who believes that individuals are a product of their biological inheritance, as he puts it in Beyond Good and Evil. erasing from the soul of a human being what his ancestors liked to do most and what they did most frequently, removing quotes from the thoughts and actions of any individual are an expression of an underlying set of traits that the individual inherited, since whether one is a sheep or a wolf.

It is a matter of biology that one does not choose or are significantly shaped by whether one is a sheep or a wolf. It is a matter of biology that one does not choose or shape in any significant way. So, to that extent, it makes no sense to hold individuals responsible for who and what they are. they become what about the second question: does Nietzsche believe that individuals are ends in themselves? which exist by themselves emphatically not here. I think many casual readings of nature get it completely wrong. take an obvious starting point. Nietzsche has nothing but contempt for the vast majority of the population he believes are sheep and a disgrace to the dignity of the human species, their individual lives having no value in themselves.

This is Nietzsche's point in the following quote in which he explicitly denies that his philosophy is individualistic. He cites My philosophy aims at rank ordering not at an individualistic morality. in quotes Nietzsche believes that most individuals have no right to exist and, more brutally, states that if they were sacrificed or massacred that would be an improvement in Nietzsche's own words. To quote humanity en masse sacrificed to the prosperity of a single species of man stronger than it would be in advance in quotes and again in quotes one must learn more one must learn to sacrifice many and to take one's own cause seriously enough to not to forgive men in quotes, it is difficult to see as an individualist someone who sees no value in the lives of the vast majority of individuals and it is difficult to see as an individualist someone who would sacrifice those individuals in the name of improving the species.

Improving the species is a collectivist goal and measuring the value of individuals in terms of their worth. to the species and sacrifice those who do not measure up, that is textbook collectivism, this connects directly to the value that Nietzsche does see in the few great individuals that emerge in each generation, it is his powerful poetic rhetoric when talking about these exceptional individuals which gives Nietzsche his reputation as an individualist, but it is important to note that Nietzsche does not even see these exceptional individuals as ends in themselves and does not exempt them from sacrifice. The goal of becoming exceptional is not to advance one's life but to improve human life. in fact, the species to go beyond the human species to a higher type of species, the overman, as Nietzsche says repeatedly, citing not humanity but man is the goal in quotes, the goal of the niche is collectivist to achieve a new future, a superior species of man over man.

It is the meaning of his exhortations about the Ubermensch, the superman, the Superman, that for Nietzsche it seems that none of us, whether weak or wrong, exist for our own good, in contrast to individualists who believe that the lives of individuals are theirs to find and create value. Within Nietzsche's belief is that our lives have value only to the extent that we fulfill a goal beyond our lives: the creation of a stronger species and in that general collectivist extreme Nietzsche has an important point in common with the Nazis . There is also the third subtheme of individualism whether decisive events in history and human life occur because usually exceptional individuals make them happen or whether individuals are pawns of larger historical forces here Nazi theory and practice were a combination of both, they believed and they used the politics of mass movements seeing their politics. movement as the vehicle through which a powerful cultural Force the German people were affirming their historical Destiny at the same time that the Nazis maintained that those powerful historical forces selected some special individuals to perform special tasks and that Destiny spoke through those individuals specials, this was in any case Hitler's firm belief when he made statements such as the following quote: I carry out the orders that Providence has given me in quotes and I quote no power on Earth can shake the German Reich now Divine Providence has willed that I carry out the fulfillment of the quote-unquote Germanic task by invoking Divine Providence Hitler draws on a long philosophical tradition that dates back most famously to the German philosopher George Hegel with his world-historical individuals, those individuals like Julius Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte who , in Hegel's view, were vehicles through which the spiritual forces of History operated.

That tradition goes back even further in religious interpretations of History. Think, for example, of religious prophets. Prophets are individuals. special within a religious tradition the prophet, although he is notspecial as an individual, he is not an individual who has acquired his powers through his own efforts and has created a new and unique Vision for himself. Rather, the prophet is special only because God has chosen him and because God is speaking through him. The prophet is totally a tool of God. The power of it comes from. God and he is a mouthpiece through which God conveys his message.

It is a localized vehicle through which the real Force, that is, God, acts. Now let's return to Nietzsche. Nietzsche is an atheist, but he offers a secular version of the same theory. Nietzsche's power force is not a religious or spiritual Force but a biological one, his great prophets like the Zarathushtras, who may be among us and those to come, are special individuals in whom powerful evolutionary forces have converged to create something extraordinary and those powerful evolutionary forces are working through them. xerathusras to achieve something even more remarkable the superman such exceptional individuals do not develop or use power power develops and uses those individuals individuals are only the tools the vehicles this is what Nietzsche is referring to when he says that every living creature values many things higher than life itself, but from this very evaluation the will to power speaks in quotes, note what Nietzsche is saying, the true causal power is the will to power.

It works through that in rules, it's not that those individuals develop and use power, there is a legitimate controversy between them. Scholars discuss this interpretation of Nietzsche, but to the extent that this interpretation is true, it undermines Nietzsche's reputation as an individualist and strengthens the claim the Nazis have on him as a philosophical precursor section 35 group conflict a second important point of agreement between Nietzsche and the Nazis is their view of conflict because both conflict is the fundamental human reality both firmly believe that life is a matter of some individuals in groups winning at the expense of others the Nazis were clear about this in theory and in In practice they did not believe it was possible for Aryans and Jews to live in harmony nor did the Nazis believe that Germany could live in harmony with the liberal capitalist nations of the West;

Instead, many economists and politicians had come to believe that conflict and war could become a problem. A thing of the past, the productive power of the Industrial Revolution was creating great wealth and surpluses and those surpluses led to greater trade between nations that was mutually beneficial. Trade was a powerful harmonizing force that led nations to want to do business with each other rather than with each other. During the war, the Nazis rejected that view and argued that recent economic history was a matter of Jews and capitalists promoting their interests at Germany's expense. Nietzsche fully shares with the Nazis the general point about zero-sum conflict in his words, quote, the well-being of the many and the well-being of the few are opposite views of value, in quotes, but he believes even more strongly that This conflict is not simply a matter of historical and cultural accident, but is embedded in the requirements of life. deeply to the very base and resist all sentimental weakness life itself is essentially appropriation injury conquest of the strange and weak suppression severity obtrusion of peculiar forms incorporation and at least putting it soft list X exploitation without quotes the horse eats the grass the lion kills the horse man rides the horse and kills the lion life is a continuous struggle between strong and weak predators and prey, cooperation and trade are possible, but they are superficial interludes between more fundamental animal facts about life, as Nietzsche puts it again. quote that life always lives at the expense of another life whoever does not understand this has not even taken the first step towards honesty with himself without quotes on this key point Nietzsche and the Nazis agree since the conflict is inescapable the next question is how conflicts will be resolved section 36 Instinct passion and anti-reason Hitler liked to say in private quotes that it is lucky that men do not think in quotes there is another important point of agreement between Nietzsche and the Nazis, both agree that great conflicts do not they will be resolved rationally through processes of discussion, argument, persuasion or diplomacy Both Nietzsche and the Nazis are irrationalists in their view of human psychology and this has important social and political implications.

Think about democracy for a particular moment. Think about how much trust in the power of reason democracy requires. Democracy is a matter of political decentralization. power to individuals, for example by giving each individual a vote. The assumption of democracy is that individuals have the ability to weigh and judge important issues and cast a responsible vote. The expectation is that members of democracies will have ongoing discussions and arguments on all types of issues. and that they will be able to evaluate the evidence, arguments meet arguments, and they will be able to learn from their mistakes and, when appropriate, change their votes next time.

It is no coincidence that neither Nietzsche nor the Nazis were defenders of either democracy. or reason Hitler considered a highly developed intellect a weakness and overconfidence in reason a disease. Germany's recent problems, he believed, arose from overthinking. Quote that intellect has become autocratic and has become a disease of life. Not to mention what Germany needed. passion a storm of emotions arising from deeply rooted instincts and impulses quote only a storm of fiery passion can change the destinies of nations but this passion can only be provoked by a man who carries it within himself unquotes consequently, training and German propaganda were not directed towards presenting facts and arguments but rather arousing the passions of the masses reason logic and objectivity were out of place quote we are not objective we are German in quotes said Hans Shem the first Nazi minister of culture here again there is an important connection with Nietzsche Nietzsche 2 sees an opposition between conscious reason and unconscious Instinct and belittles those who emphasize rationality, those who engage in what he calls, in quotes, ridiculous overestimation and misunderstanding of Consciousness, among quote, in his own words, is, quote, rationality versus Instinct, and he believes that rationality is the least useful guiding power that humans possess.

Humans emerged from a long evolutionary line that depended on impulses and instincts, and those impulses and instincts served us well for millennia, but over time men became domesticated and civilized and lost something crucial in this new world that they no longer knew. They no longer possessed their former guides, their unconscious and infallible regulatory impulses were reduced to thinking, inferring, settling scores, coordinating cause and effect, these unfortunate creatures were reduced to their Consciousness, their weakest and most fallible organ, in quotes, note that Nietzsche says that our unconscious impulses They are infallible if only we can find them again within ourselves it is our strongest and most assertive unconscious instinct that we must let govern Our lives quote instinct is of all the types of intelligence that have been discovered so far the most intelligent in quotes in this aspect Nietzsche and the Nazis agree.

They are both fundamentally irrationalists, do not think much about the power of reason and urge themselves and others to let their strongest passions and instincts well up within them and be released into the world. Section 37 Conquest and War Now put the three points above together Collectivism Conflict and Irrationalism what will be the social results if you wholeheartedly and passionately believe that your identity can be found by merging with your group and that your group is caught in a deadly conflict of ultimate zero with other groups and that reason is superficial and that passion and instinct drive the world, so how are you going to assert yourself in that conflict for much of the 19th century?

Western liberal capitalists had begun to hopefully wonder if war was a thing of the past; in their view, progress had been made during the Enlightenment of the 19th century. By the 18th century, much of the West had embraced the idea of ​​individual rights, the idea that each individual has the right to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness; By the 19th century, those rights had been effectively extended to women, and slavery had also been eliminated in the 19th century. The 19th century saw the full realization of the power of the Industrial Revolution and the idea that through technology and capitalism economic production could increase dramatically.

As a result, liberal capitalists of the 19th century came to believe that we could solve the problem of poverty and eliminate it. In most of our conflicts over wealth, they believed that with increasing wealth and education rational people could learn to respect the rights of others, that there was more to be gained from trade than from war, and that peace It was a natural state and that humanity could overcome the horrors of war. could become a thing of the past, we know from the tragic history of the 20th century, the desire of the National Socialists to use war as their main tool to achieve their international objectives, we know that they are praising the marshal spirit and the beauty of the soul as fundamental warrior of his total recasting of the education of children to achieve what Hitler wanted to quote a brutal, domineering, fearless and cruel youth youth must be all that must endure pain there must be nothing weak and gentle in it the free and splendid beast of prey must once again shine from his eyes without quotes the phrase of the Beast of Prey is again rhetoric directly inspired by Nietzsche about the importance and nobility of war Nietzsche and the Nazis were almost completely in agreement Nietzsche praised war and He urged upon his arrival he desired a Great Purge that would end most of the humans whose lives he considered worthless and a shame to the human species.

He cited too many living and too long hanging from its branches, if a storm came to shake all this worm-eaten rot from the tree, but he also longed for war as a means. inspire those humans who have the potential to advance us towards the superman for that purpose nature believed that war is absolutely indispensable quote War is essential enthusiasm and sentimentality are in vain continue to hope much more still hope much more for humanity a Having learned not to wage war for the time being, we know of no other means of imbuing exhausted people with as much strength and security as every Great War does with that raw energy of the battlefield, that deep, impersonal hatred. , that cold-blooded murderer with a good conscience. that organized community order and destruction of the enemy that proud indifference to great losses for one's own existence and that of one's friends that silenced convulsion of the Soul like an earthquake in quotes and against those who believe that we have entered into a more peaceful error and that such Once war is no longer necessary, nature reminds us in a particularly chilling quote that the beginnings of everything great on Earth are completely soaked in blood and for a long time, quote-unquote, in this respect the Nazis were completely Nietzschian instead to press for the recognition of the mutuality of human interests as Western liberal capitalists had been doing for much of the 19th century, and instead of seeking reasonable and peaceful diplomatic solutions to the normal collisions of international politics, the Nazis engaged fundamentally with war as its main means of self-regeneration and dominance over the rest. of the world section 38 authoritarianism a fifth and final set of themes link Nietzsche with the Nazis both were antidemocratic anticapitalist and antiliberal the Nazis were not friends of democracy but were extremely effective players of democracy which they announced from the beginning in the program of their founding party of 1920, their authoritarian principles, however, were found in the democratic system that was the Weimar Republic, they played mainly by the rules and out-democratized the other political parties, they used democracy to achieve undemocratic ends.

Nietzsche's political views are less developed and more ambiguous but it is clear that he favors some type of aristocracy. quotes what is serious to me, nature wrote in Beyond Good and Evil is the European problem as I understand it, the cultivation of a new caste that will rule Europe again in quotes, while Nietzsche is not specific not necessarily refers to an official political aristocracy; more likely he refers to the de facto rule of an exceptional few, whatever the formal and official political structures; In this way, although Nietzsche despises the impulsesthat give rise to democracy, does not care much about the real political dominance of democratic forms of government.

Those forms of government he believes will simply become instruments through which exceptional individuals, most likely behind the scenes, will achieve their goals, as expressed by nature. Democracy will be a tool of a race superior to the future masters. of the earth, philosophical men of power and tyrannical artists who will use democratic Europe as their most docile and flexible instrument to control the destinies of the earth in quotes Nietzsche is not programmatic about what the newly formed aristocratic class will take or what specific objectives will be pursued; Indonesia did not consider a superman simply as a herald of his coming, but Nietzsche is extremely clear that any social method, no matter how brutal, will be legitimate if the new aristocrats they want it. he accepts energetically and with a good conscience the sacrifice of innumerable human beings who must be reduced and degraded by him to incomplete human beings, to slaves of instruments. quote, this is certainly illiberal and fits well with Nietzsche's self-assessment that, quote, not by any quote-unquote liberal means, in addition to dismissing liberalism, Nietzsche dismisses capitalism as a dehumanizing economic system and rejects individualism when is about issues of marriage and procreation, marriage should not be based on a quote-unquote idiosyncrasy that is based on love and personal sexual attraction. rather he suggested that marriage should be organized by the state for the purposes of reproduction in all the points that the Nazis made and can find inspiration in nature section 39 summary of the five similarities again to summarize, we have five significant connections between Nietzsche and the Nazis, one of which the Nazis were strongly collectivist. and Nietzsche, with some reservations, also promotes strongly collectivist and anti-individualist themes.

Both Nietzsche and the Nazis see zero-sum conflict as inescapable and fundamental to the human condition. three both are irrationalists in their psychological theories radically downplaying the role reason plays in life and emphasizing the power and glory of instincts and feeling four both Nietzsche and the Nazis except voluntarily even with nostalgia that war is necessary healthy and even majestic five and finally both Nietzsche and the Nazis are antidemocratic, anticapitalist and antiliberal and So, in the 1930s, the Nazis were fundamentally opposed to those Western nations that were still broadly committed to democracy, capitalism and liberalism . End of the seventh part.

Nietzsche and the Nazis. Eighth part. Conclusion. Nazi and anti-Nazi philosophies. Section 40. In retrospect and future resolution. We know in historical retrospect that a World War was necessary to defeat the Nazis. Tens of millions of human beings died in that war. Real human beings who lived, loved, cried, had dreams and then were killed. Millions of others saw their lives damaged and seriously disrupted again and again. all the economic and cultural costs, the destruction of people's homes and possessions, the destruction of art workers, the destruction of historical artifacts, etc., those costs are incalculable. The Nazis lost that war, but it was close and there is no guarantee that they will.

This will not happen again and that is why it is important that we understand what really motivated National Socialism in the 1930s: the Nazis had all the political and economic muscle of Germany at their disposal, but most importantly, they had a muscle intellectual power behind them and they had a set of philosophical ideals that motivated and energized millions of people, that intellectual and idealistic power, more than anything, made the Nazis an amazing force to be reckoned with. History has taught us that the philosophy and ideals the Nazis espoused were and are false and horribly destructive, but we do ourselves no favors by dismissing the Nazis as Mad Men or as a historical oddity that will never happen again.

The Nazis stood for philosophical and political principles that appealed to millions, that attracted some of the best minds of their generation and that still dominate the minds and hearts of people in all parts of the world and that means that we must confront philosophical ideals and politicians of the National Socialists for what they really are, we must understand them, know where they come from and what intellectual and emotional power they have at that moment and only then will we be in a position to defeat them. We will be able to defeat them because we will understand their power and we will have more powerful arguments with which to defend ourselves.

Arguing about philosophical and political ideals is often unpleasant and the issues involved are often abstract, complicated and emotionally difficult, but there are no shortcuts, perhaps the best motivation to do the hard work comes from reminding ourselves regularly and often how much more it costs to solve. disputes through war. We may not like that the Nazis had arguments and positions that many of us find attractive, we may find it repulsive to take their arguments seriously, we may find it difficult to get inside their heads to see where they are coming from, but we have the choice, or we fight against those ideas in theory or we fight them in practice, or we fight against them in practice. intellectually or we fight them on the battlefield, the time may still come to fight them on the battlefield, but that is always the most terrible option, the most expensive in every possible sense and the one we should Avoid if there is any other way to do it.

Defeating them means intellectually defeating National Socialism is the strategy we must follow. First, defeating them intellectually means taking their positions seriously. Understanding them and knowing how to argue against them. The second rule of politics is to know your enemy. The first rule of politics is to know yourself. same knowing what you represent and why knowing what fundamentally matters to you and what you are willing to do to achieve it and when necessary to fight to defend it that is a very big project and that is why philosophers and other intellectuals of a culture do important work or if they get it wrong, it will cause great damage as a start to that project, let me indicate a clearer direction to start in section 41 anti-Nazism of principles philosophically and politically the Nazis defended five main principles they defended collectivism by instinct and passion for war and Conflict for authoritarianism and for socialism, that means that we can identify the principles that in each case are directly opposed to what the Nazis represented.

The Nazis represented collectivism. The opposite of that is a philosophy of individualism that recognizes the right of each individual to live for her own good. For their own good, the Nazis defended instinct and passion as basic guides in life. The opposite of that is a philosophy of reason that has a healthy confidence in the power of evidence, logic, and judgment to guide one's life. The Nazis defended war and conflict. as the best way to achieve one's goals the opposite of that is a philosophy that encourages productivity and commerce as the best way to achieve one's goals in life the Nazis advocated political authoritarianism and top-down leadership The opposite of that is a philosophy that allows individuals maximum freedom to live their lives according to their own choice and direction, respecting the equal right of other individuals to do the same.

The Nazis defended socialism and the principle of centrally directing the economy for the common good. The opposite of that is the system of free market capitalism in which individual producers and consumers decide for themselves what they will produce and what they will spend their money on when they get started. The second set of principles is the best antidote to National Socialism we have. Each of these principles is controversial in our time. and I hope they will remain so for generations to come, but they represent the starkest possible philosophical contrast to National Socialism and form the first line of defense against future incarnations of Nazism.

There is no better place to start than to understand them thoroughly. end on a provocative note: the Nazis knew what they stood for. end of the final eighth part of Nietzsche and the Nazis read by the author copyright 2013.