Originally posted by sonhouse
Can someone here talk about the Nazi conection to Nietzsche?
I think maybe a lot of people are put off by that. Did the Nazi's
just read into it what they wanted or is there some hidden
master race manifesto in it?
Basically, I think the answer is, “Yes, they read it into him.” But it is not difficult to read into Nietzsche! They also had help from his sister, who had custody of him after he collapsed into insanity. She helped to interpret her brother in ways that would support Nazi notions—apparently she also forged works by him, and the original editions of
Will to Power were infected with her forgeries. Ironically, Nietzsche refused to attend his sister’s wedding because she married an anti-Semite; I have seen references that indicated his break with Wagner might have been partly over the latter’s anti-Semitism. The notion of German supremacy would have been a joke to Nietzsche, who preferred to think of himself as “a European.”
This from the wiki article on Nietzsche:
“During the First World War and after 1945, many regarded Nietzsche as having helped to cause the German militarism. The German right-wing didn't like Nietzsche's thought until the Nazis. Nietzsche was popular among left-wing Germans in the 1890s. Many Germans read Thus Spoke Zarathustra and were influenced by Nietzsche's appeal of unlimited individualism and the development of a personality. The enormous popularity of Nietzsche led to the Subversion debate in German politics in 1894/1895. Conservatives wanted to ban the work of Nietzsche. Nietzsche influenced the Social-democratic revisionists, anarchists, feminists and the left-wing German youth movement.
During the interbellum, various fragments of Nietzsche's work were appropriated by National Socialists, notably Alfred Bäumler in his reading of The Will to Power. During the period of Nazi rule, Nietzsche's work was widely studied in German (and, after 1938, Austrian) schools and universities. The Nazis viewed Nietzsche as one of their "founding fathers." They incorporated much of his ideology and thoughts about power into their own political philosophy (without consideration to its contextual meaning). Although there exist some significant differences between Nietzsche and Nazism, his ideas of power, weakness, women, and religion became axioms of Nazi society. The wide popularity of Nietzsche among Nazis was due partly to Nietzsche's sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, a Nazi sympathizer who edited much of Nietzsche's works.
It is worth noting that Nietzsche's thought largely stands opposed to Nazism. In particular, Nietzsche despised anti-Semitism, though his venomous attack upon the Jews in other works such as the Genealogy of Morals confuses this attitude. He also despised nationalism. He took a dim view of German culture as it was in his time, and derided both the state and populism. As the joke goes: "Nietzsche detested Nationalism, Socialism, Germans and mass movements, so naturally he was adopted as the intellectual mascot of the National Socialist German Workers' Party." He was also far from being a racist, believing that the "vigour" of any population could only be increased by mixing with others. In The Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche says, "...the concept of 'pure blood' is the opposite of a harmless concept."
As for the idea of the "blond beast," Walter Kaufmann has this to say in The Will to Power: "The 'blond beast' is not a racial concept and does not refer to the 'Nordic race' of which the Nazis later made so much. Nietzsche specifically refers to Arabs and Japanese, Romans and Greeks, no less than ancient Teutonic tribes when he first introduces the term... and the 'blondness' obviously refers to the beast, the lion, rather than the kind of man."
While some of his writings on "the Jewish question" were critical of the Jewish population in Europe, he also praised the strength of the Jewish people, and this criticism was equally, if not more strongly, applied to the English, the Germans, and the rest of Europe. He also valorised strong leadership, and it was this last tendency that the Nazis took up.
While his use by the Nazis was inaccurate, it should not be supposed that he was strongly liberal either. One of the things that he seems to have detested the most about Christianity was its emphasis on pity and how this leads to the elevation of the weak-minded. Nietzsche believed that it was wrong to deprive people of their pain, because it was this very pain that stirred them to improve themselves, to grow and become stronger. It would overstate the matter to say that he disbelieved in helping people; but he was persuaded that much Christian pity robbed people of necessary painful life experiences, and robbing a person of his necessary pain, for Nietzsche, was wrong. He once noted in his Ecce Homo: "pain is not an objection to life."
Nietzsche often referred to the common people who participated in mass movements and shared a common mass psychology as "the rabble", and "the herd." He valued individualism above all else. While he had a dislike of the state in general, he also spoke negatively of anarchists and made it clear that only certain individuals should attempt to break away from the herd mentality. This theme is common throughout Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
While it will thus be appreciated that a political 'flavour' is easy to discern in Nietzsche's writings, one must stress that his work does not in any sense propose or outline a 'political project'. The man who stated that 'The will to a system is a lack of integrity' was consistent in never devising or advocating a specific 'system' of governance - just as, being a champion of individual struggle and self-realisation, he never concerned himself with 'mass movements' or with the organisation of 'groups' and 'political parties' that bartered and haggled for political power. In this sense, Nietzsche could almost be called an anti-political thinker.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nietzsche
I really only skimmed the article, and just want to note that N defined his “Will to Power” in terms of “life enhancement”—that is, more than Schoepnahuer’s “will to life,” or to survive or perdure; I “translate” will-to-power as “will to thrive,” rather than as political power or conquest or some such.
Nietzsche's discussions of "master and slave" mentalities had nothing to do with a "master race" manifesto.
EDIT for cleanup of that lengthy citation.
15 Jan '06 17:38
Friedrich Nietzsche
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