After Reading Hitler's Mein Kampf
Nietzsche’s thinking and his controversy with the Nazi helps me understand Hitler more comprehensively.
In the last decade of Nietzsche’s life and after his death, his sister, who is a fanatic of Nazi, manipulated Nietzsche’s texts and make it sound like Nazi is justified by Nietzsche’s philosophy. Indeed, there are familiarities of Nietzsche’s thinking with Nazi’s. For example, regarding relations of mass to individual, Nietzsche is a known philosopher who proposes the class distinction and stupidity of masses while Hitler believed the same, as Hitler said, “It is not the mass that invents and not the majority that organizes or thinks, but in all things only and always the individual man, the person” (446, Hitler). However, Nietzsche, I think, would totally against Nazi’s general ideology since first he criticized German socialism and in addition, he thought Jews are great. In “Beyond Good and Evil,” Nietzsche said, “ the Jews performed the miracle of the inversion of valuations, by means of which life on earth obtained a new and dangerous charm for a couple of millenniums”(165, Nietzsche). Therefore, Nietzsche would totally not be related to Nazi’s philosophy.
Nietzsche is against the Nazi ideology. However, what does he think of Hitler, as a person, not what he represents, the Nazi? I think there are several qualities of Hitler that Nietzsche would agree upon. Hitler is an good example of the use of Nietzsche’s “Will to Power.” He had this extraordinary confidence and self-motivation to do things he believed on. For example, when he went to investigate German Workers Party, he could not resist to speak against the speakers and spoke out his own belief. Also, later, in order to become Chancellor, he used many conspiracies and dirty political works. And his talent on understanding what the mass need and his sensitivity of current political struggle in Germany were gradually developed and served to satisfy his bigger wants. That this strong motivation and drive to satisfy his wants is what Nietzsche would appreciate. Therefore, Nietzsche may, in some aspects, favors Hitler. However, on a close look, Nietzsche may appreciate his persistent spirits but may not agree with Hitler’s ideas on truth.
Although Hitler approached things with many questions when he first got in touch with it, after he formed a certain ideas, Hitler was stubborn and sticked to it till death. That’s not what Nietzsche agrees. Nietzsche believes a true philosopher should always “attempt.” which means to question everything continually and never form an absolute ideas on something. Hitler indeed questioned a lot at first, but he stopped questioning. In addition, he was suggestible when he had no clue about something. I noticed that his ideas about something are largely consistent with the first thing he knew about this thing and he never learnt a counter perspective. For example, when he wanted to learn Jew, he read all the anti-semitism booklets and developed an anti-semitism ideas. Because of his suggestibility, as he was easily exposed to extreme nationalistic ideas in post WW1 Germany when extreme-conservatism, nationalism, socialism, anti-semitism were prevalent, his extreme ideas were easily nurtured by those idealisms and due to his stubbornness and his strong will to power, he implemented them. Therefore, in some extent, Hitler was a product of the unstable postwar German history. On the other hand, we may see that Hitler did not think independently and were sometimes irrational, probably due to his lack of formal education. Many of his texts sounded illogical. For example, he blamed the failure of social democratic Press to Jews since Jews were the press writers. He forced culprits to Jews with nonsense.
To sum up, Hitler is persistent and has an iron-made will. But his extreme and irrational ideology is also worth criticizing.
Cited:
Hitler, Adolf, and Ralph Manheim. Mein Kampf. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971. Print.
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. Beyond Good and Evil. Trans. Helen Zimmern.The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, 2015. E-book.