Nietzsche Prophet of Nazism Read online

  In the third category of Nietzsche scholars, we find those who view Nietzsche’s philosophy as anti-Nazi, a refutation of anything the Nazis believed in, accusing the Nazis of completely distorting what Nietzsche meant to say. Refusing to see any similarity between Nietzsche and Nazism, these scholars view them as two sharply distinct doctrines. Some of these scholars even went as far as to come up with the preposterous and ludicrous affirmation that Nietzsche, the radical aristocrat, was a humanist (according to George Morgan and Walter Kaufmann, the latter having advancing a “spiritual-allegorical” interpretation of Nietzsche), a liberal (according to the existentialist Karl Jaspers), or even a socialist (according to H. Lefebvre, who saw that the ideas of Nietzsche fall into the Marxian conception of man)!! The scholars who fall into this category and hence deny the Nietzschean-Nazi connection, mainly base their allegations on the fact that Nietzsche was strongly anti-political, anti-statist, anti-nationalist, that he considered racial-mixing a natural phenomenon sometimes beneficial to culture, and that he felt no hostility whatsoever towards the Jews, what’s more, that he even “admired” them…

  Beyond the controversy: Nietzsche and “Esoteric Nazism”

  In response to such allegations, I argue that Nietzsche’s anti-political, anti-nationalist and anti-statist philosophy was not in the least contradictory with the spiritual, supra-national racism of the Nazis, which was an integral and essential part of the Nazi esoteric doctrine Bluhm was referring to, though this side of Nazism was less apparent than the exoteric, demagogic, nationalist discourse meant for popular consumption and the mobilisation of the masses. Racism and nationalism are indeed two different, often contrasting, ideologies (a nation being a cultural-geographical unit, whereas race is an anthropological-spiritual, i.e. supra-national unit), and the Nazis were essentially racist, yet they tried to combine and reconcile these two theories, coming up with a unique blend, “racist nationalism” (the Voelkish State, a primitive, organic, and racial and spiritual community or “Gemeinschaft”, as opposed to the modern political and multi-racial Nation-State or “Gesellschaft”, based on the Social Contract)… “Racist nationalism” thus aimed at reconciling race with nation (by achieving a racially pure nation), purifying the German race of all non-Germanic elements, such as the Alpine or Mediterranean elements, in order to return to the racial basis of the ancient German Nation which was primarily Aryan, or Nordic; i.e., to make Germany, the original homeland of the Aryans, the new spiritual centre of the Aryans of the world. Indeed, although Nazism was viewed outwardly as a nationalist movement, its real theory of the state was universal in character, based on a racist-aristocratic-mystical view of the world, for the Nazi state was not an end in itself (unlike fascism), what Nietzsche termed “the coldest of cold monsters”, rather a means to a higher end, namely the breeding and perpetuation of Nietzsche’s Master Race, a universal race of Supermen transcending political and national boundaries.

  Furthermore, I argue that even Nietzsche’s well-known hatred for the Germans could be explained, after close analysis, as hatred towards the Judaeo-Christian, Liberal, un-Germanic elements in the modern German character, and hostility towards what Nietzsche viewed as the Reich’s relatively Liberal tendencies… It is worth noting in this respect that Nietzsche often contrasted the authentic German, the ancient pagan Teuton (Der Germane as opposed to Der Deutsche), the “magnificent blond Beast”, whom he admired, with the modern Liberal, Christian, “domesticated”, weakened, and atypical German.

  Finally, I argue that Nietzsche was a virulent “spiritual” and pagan anti-Semite, i.e., that he morally despised the Jews as the decadents of humanity and falsifiers of history, as the living incarnation of the slave morality. Nietzsche was indeed thoroughly hostile to the Jewish Semitic spirit which he saw as the perfect antithesis to the Indo-European or Aryan spirit, best represented by the Vedic, Zoroastrian, and the Dionysian religions, and, what’s more, he often contrasted the Aryan and Semitic spirits as Master versus Slave moralities, praising the superiority of Aryan humanity and civilisation (Manu, founder of the first Aryan religion, the Aryan Vedas, Zarathustra, Brahmanism’s racial hierarchical caste system, the “Blond Beast”, …). What could be more racist and anti-Semitic?

  Nevertheless, the fact is that the controversy over the Nietzschean-Nazi relationship still lingers to this day, each “school” of Nietzsche scholars firmly clinging to its interpretation, even though all agree that, misinterpreted or not, Nietzsche’s greatest political influence has been on the Nazi ideology, and that the parallel between the two doctrines is a very close one… By showing the shortages in all three interpretations of the Nietzsche-Nazi relationship, this book’s contribution lies in its attempt to transcend the said controversy, introducing a new interpretation of the Nietzsche-Nazi connection which consists of a comparison between the philosopher’s writings and the Nazi esoteric doctrine which, I argue, was purely Nietzschean, contrary to the exoteric one whose relationship to the Nietzschean doctrine is more controversial.

  Indeed, the main shortage in the Nietzschean scholars’ different interpretations lies in the fact that the latter have compared Nietzsche and the exoteric side of Nazism, not paying heed to the esoteric, real meaning of the Nazi ideology, the “other side” of Nazism… These scholars have misinterpreted and have failed to grasp the deeper, inner meaning and essence of National Socialism, which, according to Hitler, and as I shall demonstrate throughout this work, was much more than a political movement, even “more than a religion: it is the will to create a New Man”, a superhuman being who symbolises the culmination of evolution. What could be more Nietzschean? In fact, the creation of this Superman as humanity’s highest purpose was -and here lies the significance of this book- also Nietzsche’s highest goal, the pillar and cornerstone of his doctrine…

  Although Bluhm was the first among the cited scholars to specify that Nazism had an esoteric elitist doctrine far deeper than the nationalist mass-politics, he nonetheless failed to go into an in-depth analysis of Esoteric National Socialism (merely mentioning that this doctrine was supra-nationalist, based on a racism that was spiritual, not biological) and hence he was unable to establish a solid link between Nietzsche and Nazism’s “other doctrine”. Bluhm was also mistaken in his rather hasty conclusion that, to the Nazis, race was solely psychological, not based on genes. In the chapter which discusses Nazism’s theory of race, I will show that the exoteric and esoteric doctrines of Nazism were indeed different, yet they were not contradictory (in contrast to what Bluhm assumes), the latter having a deeper meaning than the former: for example, “racist nationalism” was a synthesis of a superior nation and a superior race; also, the concept of race for Nazism was psychological as well as biological, i.e. mystic-biological, which means that the biological factor was a pre-condition for the psychological or spiritual factor. In other words, as H.S. Chamberlain put it, race was much more a spiritual matter than a biological matter, yet to him biology was an important prerequisite for racial superiority: an Aryan spirit could indeed be incarnated in a non-Aryan body, yet this latter should contain a certain amount of Aryan blood to “receive” a superior soul. In the Nazi esoteric doctrine, spirit had precedence over biology, the latter being a vehicle for the former, yet biology was essential, for the Nazis -like Nietzsche- believed in the unity of body and spirit: hence, a superior Aryan soul could only dwell in an Aryan -or at least half-Aryan- body… contrary to Bluhm’s own rather hasty interpretation of Nazism’s “esoteric racism”…

  Having criticised Bluhm’s theory and its shortcomings, my own theory starts where Bluhm’s theory ends: first, by unveiling the Nazi “Secret Doctrine” and second, by establishing the link between Esoteric Nazism and Nietzsche’s philosophy, in order to demonstrate in a concrete manner that the Nazis were true Nietzscheans and not mere revisionists… In doing so, I will analyse Nazism esoterically, for there is where the real doctrine lies.

  Although the Nietzschean-Nazi connection remains a con
troversial one among scholars, yet when we penetrate deeper into the philosopher’s thought as well as Nazism’s supranational elitist-spiritual racism, we find clear, even striking philosophical, moral and spiritual affinities. Hence, we can infer that all the concrete and reliable evidence that will be presented throughout this book will support my main assumption, which is the following: it is an undeniable fact that the Nazis were true and pure Nietzscheans, and we cannot but acknowledge the hard reality that the Nazis were directly and profoundly influenced by Nietzsche, whom they rightfully considered their prophet, turning him into the Third Reich’s most important philosopher, thus compelling a well-known scholar to affirm: “the relation of Fascism to Nietzsche recalls the relation of the French Revolution to Rousseau” (2) … or the relation of Leninism to Marx…

  II. THE REVIVAL OF ARYAN PAGANISM

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE REVIVAL OF ARYAN PAGANISM

  “We few or many who dare again to live in a dismoralised world, we pagans in faith: we are also the first to grasp what a pagan faith is: -to have to imagine higher creatures than man, but beyond good and evil; to have to consider all being higher as also being immoral. We believe in Olympus- and not in the ‘Crucified’.“

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  “Do you understand now the profound significance of our National Socialist movement? Whoever sees in National Socialism nothing but a political movement does not know much about it… It is even higher than a religion: it is the will to create mankind anew.”

  Adolf Hitler

  A. Nietzsche, Nazism and neo-paganism

  The modern revival of paganism in Germany by the German romantic movement as well as German nationalism, after the reunification of the Nation in the 19th century, served to prove the superiority of the Aryan Master Race. Indeed, German neo-paganism calls for a return to the pre-Christian, Aryan “Natural Religion” of the ancient pagan Germans, a pantheistic religion mainly based on the belief in an “inner God” immanent in nature and man’s soul, on Germanic mythology and its veneration of god-men or Supermen; a religion which embodied the aristocratic principle of nature, i.e. the fundamental inequality between species (human beings included), which gives the stronger the natural right to dominate the weaker in a process of natural selection for the perpetual breeding of higher species… The pagan man, the man of Antiquity, a strong and proud warrior alien to the anti-natural and egalitarian values of Judaism and Christianity, was also a model for both Nietzsche and the Nazis, who were staunch neo-pagans, for he incarnated the Superman in every aspect, i.e. the healthy aristocrat, the Higher Man, superior in body and spirit… The Indo-European noble or Brahmin, the Greek, the Spartan, the ancient German, the Roman (of whom Nietzsche wrote in his Genealogy of Morals: “nobody stronger and nobler has yet existed on earth or even been dreamed of”) (1)… were all viewed by Nietzsche as well as the Nazis as superior men of a distinct species, a tough breed of masters who “lived according to nature” -and its aristocratic principle of the survival of the strongest- as much as possible.

  It is worth noting that neo-paganism, although thoroughly opposed to Judaeo-Christianity, is nonetheless essentially a spiritual movement which advocates a revival of the ancient spiritual tradition rooted in the most remote depths of humanity’s collective memory. This explains Nietzsche’s (and later Nazism’s) unique “spiritual” brand of atheism, what Schopenhauer termed “noble atheism”, a fact which didn’t go unnoticed by Bruce Detwiler, a Nietzsche scholar, who remarked: “it is indeed paradoxical that Western spirituality in the twentieth century has been so influenced- indeed, awakened- by a man who declared the death of God and who defined himself as the Antichrist… Nietzsche becomes Western philosophy’s first avowed atheist of the far Right” (2). It is in the same spirit that Heinrich Himmler, head of the S.S. (Schutzstaffeln), Nazi Germany’s pagan aristocracy, declared that his SS were Gottgläubig (“believers in God”), though to him, the nature of this All-powerful Force and Man’s relation to it was radically different from the Judaeo-Christian transcendent and anthropomorphic conception of God… For the Nazi top elite, which was obsessed with mysticism, Man had an intimate relationship with God, and therefore the union with the divinity was an attainable goal for a few higher men.

  Hence, both Nietzsche and the Nazis called for a revival of paganism, the “cult of Antiquity”, “for in the world of antiquity,”, says Nietzsche, “there reigned a different, more lordly morality than today; and the man of antiquity, raised in this morality, was a stronger and deeper man than the man of today- he alone has hitherto been ‘the man that has turned out well’ “ (3). Nietzsche, who praised the pagan “old, noble taste, the agonal instinct, the polis, the value of the race, the authority of tradition” (4), saw himself as the incarnation of Zarathustra, the Persian prophet, and was firmly convinced that the neo-pagan spiritual message for mankind that he was carrying would make greatness possible again in this modern mediocre world, by imposing a revaluation of modernity’s “human, all-too human” Judaeo-Christian values:

  “We few or many who again dare to live in a dismoralised world, we pagans in faith: we are probably also the first to grasp what a pagan faith is:- to have to imagine higher creatures than man, but beyond good and evil; to have to consider all being higher as also being immoral. We believe in Olympus- and not in the “Crucified” (5).

  Likewise, the Nazis were firmly convinced that they were the representatives of a new political faith (Nazism), a new paganism which would replace outdated Judaeo-Christian beliefs and ceremonies: “the enthusiasm of the people for the parades and torchlight processions and the almost unbearable emotionalism of the (pagan) ceremonies were all alike impressive” (6). The Nazi religion, a modern mythology of occultism, was indeed a real “spiritual revolution” in European culture, a new vision of the universe heralding the advent of a New Age for mankind. Hitler, the “Occult Messiah”, was in fact proclaiming a wonderful millennial future for the Aryan race when he announced:

  “We are at the outset of a tremendous revolution in moral ideas and man’s spiritual orientation. A new age of the magic interpretation of the world is coming, an interpretation in terms of will and not the intellect” (7).

  B. Esoteric Nazism: breeding the God-Man, or Nietzsche’s Superman

  It is worth noting here that by showing the link between Nietzsche’s philosophy and Nazi ideology, I am at the same time unveiling the Nazi “Secret Doctrine”, i.e. “Esoteric Nazism” not found in Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” or his public speeches, addressed to the uninitiated masses, but rather in the Fuehrer’s secret conversations with the Nazi top elite and based on occult sources related to the whole Aryanist spiritual school of thought, from the Vedas to Theosophy. Indeed, it would be an elementary mistake to dismiss or underrate the importance of the influence of Aryan occultism (the code of Manu, the Vedic philosophy, Brahmanism, Zoroastrianism, the cults of Greek deities, …) on both the Nietzschean doctrine and Nazi ideology, the latter being a truly unique phenomenon combining, for the first time in history, spiritualism and politics, or, as Hitler liked to say, esoteric knowledge with esoteric power. As Hermann Rauschning affirmed, “it is impossible to understand Hitler’s political plans unless one is familiar with his basic beliefs and his conviction that there is a magic relationship between Man and the Universe” (8).

  Hitler, who considered that “the aim of human evolution is to attain a mystic vision of the Universe” (9), also repeatedly assured Rauschning that true Nazism was much deeper than was widely believed:

  “Do you understand now the profound significance of our National-Socialist movement? Whoever sees in National Socialism nothing but a political movement doesn’t know much about it … It is even more than a religion: it is the will to create mankind anew” (10).

  Indeed, Nazism was deeply imbued with occultism, and the hypothesis of a community of Initiates beneath the cloak of National Socialism is gradually gaining ground in academic circles, following the publica
tion of a good number of books linking Nazism with Aryan mysticism and occultism, the same sources which inspired Nietzsche’s pagan philosophy.

  Mystic writers like professor Karl Haushofer (who, according to Rudolph Hess, was the “secret ‘Master Magician of the Nazi party’, the man behind Hitler”), Lanz von Liebenfels, Karl-Maria Wiligut, Rudolf von Sebottendorf, Meister Eckhart, Dietrich Eckart, George Gurdjieff, Aleister Crowley, Carl Gustav Jung, H.S. Chamberlain, Richard Wagner, Guido von List, Herbert Reichstein, the German scientist Hans Hoerbiger… were the direct or indirect spiritual mentors of the Nazi movement. Lanz von Liebenfels, a mystic racist who founded the Order of the New Templars and preached “theozoology” (a blend of Aryan racism and mysticism), said of the Fuehrer:

  “Hitler is one of our pupils… you will one day experience that he, and through him we, will one day be victorious, and develop a movement that will make the world tremble…” (11).

  Secret societies like the Order of the New Templars, the Hermetic order of the Golden Dawn, the modern Rosy-Cross, the Luminous Lodge of the Vril Society, the Thule Gesellschaft, the Edda Society, and the Germanenorden, had a tremendous influence on Nazi ideology, and were

  “more or less closely associated with the powerful and well-organised Theosophical Society (founded by Helena P. Blavatsky, and based on Aryan paganism). Theosophy added to neo-pagan magic an oriental setting and a Hindu terminology… Theosophy was the name finally given to the whole vast renaissance in the world of magic that affected many thinkers so profoundly at the beginning of the century” (12).

  Thus, National-Socialism was linked to occultism:

  “The remarkable story of the rise of Nazism is implicitly linked to the power of the supernatural… Nazism cannot have been the mere product of socio-economic factors… the myth of a Nazi link with the Orient was of theosophical provenance” (13).