Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Fri Nov 24, 2023 9:10 amIf you are trying to persuade me that Hitler was a bad man, you are pushing against an open door. Many Germans, like you, believed that the "supreme good of man" is to know God through Jesus Christ, and in fact every member of the wehrmacht was issued a belt on which the buckle said Gott mit uns, which is what Immanuel means, by the way. One interpretation was that not only had the Jews always rejected Jesus, they had handed him over to Rome for crucifixion, for all of which, the world would be a better place without them, and since God was going to burn them in hell for eternity, why not give them a head start?
At the risk of getting myself in hot water (all conversations on this ultra-hot topic have that potential) I will say that though Adolph Hitler earns the right to be designated bad and also *evil*, the facts of the matter indicate that his choices and his actions could fairly be described as accentuations of choices and actions easily identified among many non-German Europeans. If that is so it is then a question of degree. Every Hitlerian stance and doctrine, and all the core doctrines of National Socialism, were shared to degrees in Europe. In the Interwar years many intellectuals were involved with this set of core ideas. See for example Aldous Huxley's
Proper Studies: The Proper Study of Mankind Is Man (1927) and
Do What You Will (1929) He turns in them to a very strict realism that -- today in any case -- would be unutterable. My understanding is that after the war, as with so many, there was a turn against many of these originally proposed ideas and attitudes, but my point is that they were common. They are also still very considerable, if also discouraged and unpopular.
I point this out not to take from anyone the delicious contempt for the man which has become for us an unquestionable tenet, nor to oppose the declaration about his
evilness that must be made from time to time among the truly *righteous*, but only because I have found it serves me to see things in a more balanced light. Psycho-mythologically Hitler serves a function similar to that of Satan: an emblem of evilness. As a symbol he serves that function in nearly all circles.
How Hitler and his clique, and how German National Socialism dealt with the Christian churches and also Christian philosophy and belief is a strange and complex question. In fact what they tried to do, and what they did set in motion, was a re-interpretation movement centered largely, but not exclusively, on the intolerable fact that Jesus was a Jew. My source for this is Susannah Heschel's
The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany (Princeton, 2008)
Like it or not (I mean for those who feel a need to *defend* Nietzsche and to stress that he was no enemy of Judaism or of Jews) the ideas of Nietzsche were part of a general European movement which, as I have said, involved on the one hand getting out from under the oppressive impositions of the fallaciousness of the Christian myths, and all those metaphysical assertions that we know to be non-truths and which we also oppose; and on the other of seeking out and trying to establish an alternative grounding for European man. This was not strictly a German project but a pan-European one. And that is where the idea of an Aryan culture, a sort of European ur-cultural strata, was proposed and sought out. For this reason a great deal of emphasis was placed on Greek culture, ideas and ideals, and naturally the Greeks could be seen as children of the Indo-Europeans and thus 'the Aryans'.
Another interesting aspect here was that of delving into *true* Aryan philosophy and metaphysics as an alternative to the Judaic-based metaphysics which had become so foundational in Europe. And the obvious source was the religious and metaphysical lore of the Indian Subcontinent. There is a book I got and read that was said to be by a very favored author among the National Socialists:
The Religious Attitudes of the Indo-Europeans by Hans F.K. Gunther. I know it can only be interpreted as criminal if I say that it is actually a very good book. It really has nothing to do with Nazi philosophy but is actually a thoughtful and interesting examination of exactly what it purports to examine: core religious attitudes.
It is a difficult set of assertions to make, and certainly to talk about, yet it is also true that the anti-Christian movement (if I can attach such a bold label), and the movement that sought to discover an ancient and original focus for identification in Indo-Europeanism, was wide and influential and in fact still is. C.G. Jung was deeply involved in it and all of his psychological and mythological investigations, centered naturally on his exploration of his own inner structures, is connected to the same movement as Hans F.K. Gunther explored.
I recognize that the military belt-buckle Gott Mit Uns could be interpreted as reference to the Christian god-concept, and it is true that many Nazi soldiers came from solid Christian stock, but one has to ask what sort of 'Gott' was being defined there? One would have to make reference to the skull ring (Totenkopfring) that was also prominent. It represented, I gathered, a sort of Heideggarian idea about death as an intimate companion of the living. No part of it can be said to link up with Christian concepts.
Anyway, the point I want to make is that not only the Germans and the National Socialists were involved in a redefinition project of what "God" is, but so too was all of Europe.
the world would be a better place without them
Another very problematic assertion I will point to. Let us start by saying that one of the many things we talk about on this forum, when it turns to the consideration of Christianity and all notions of metaphysics, is that *we have to do away* with those who hold to these untenable, regressive ideas that revolve around the mythologies of Christian belief. Consider in this context the virulent opposition to that which IC says he stands for.
It is a fact that the National Socialists wanted to rid their nation, and Europe, of Jews, and their efforts at first involved encouraging and forcing emigration. If they could have exported all or most of them their problem would have been solved. And what was that problem? On one level it had to do with the influences of Judaism within Germanism. These were understood to be incomparable. And the problem became acute and intolerable. The Germanic man and the Jewish man are birds of different feathers, according to this view. And that is why it became necessary to set up other sources for identification -- Indo-Europeanism, Hellenism, Aryanism, and different metaphysical constructs that could oppose or perhaps contradict the established Judaic ones.
So we need to squarely face what I think is a very difficult fact: this process of *doing away with* those who carry the Christian banners, which originate directly within Judaism and are essentially Judaic, are still being fought against. This is beyond any doubt evident and clearly so today.
