Noble man recognizes duty only to equals, will not spare other people as he acts for his cause, allows himself to be violent and cunning in war, and practices inexorable discipline. He has the capacity for cruelty; almost everything we call “higher culture” is based upon the spiritualizing and intensifying of cruelty.
Bertrand Russell points out that if noble man becomes so as a result of education, it would be difficult to exclude the masses from the advantages for which they are qualified by their potential. Hence, Nietzsche’s thinking implies biological superiority, or at least the Nazis could easily interpret it that way. He wrote that “no morality is possible without good birth.” Russell also suggests that such a philosophy must arise from fear – a reasonable suggestion in understanding a feeble, sickly professor who admires only strength, all that is military, whose heroes are all conquerors, foremost among them Napoleon. He deals with his own great timidity in relation to women by profoundly devaluing them.
Some of Nietzsche’s ideas are contrary to those adopted by the Nazis. He did not believe in the state but in the noble individual; he was not a nationalist and did not admire Germany and was against totalitarianism. Some of the views I described can be interpreted as primarily the advocacy of the overthrow of tradition and of freedom of creation. But ideas are absorbed selectively, and Hitler’s needs and his own fears may have been greatly served by Nietzsche’s megalomaniacal thoughts. For Hitler, racially pure Aryans became supermen with the highest culture. Given the cultural predisposition – the superior societal self-concept, the preference for authoritarian rule, and German militarism – Nietzsche’s ideas could also serve the needs of many Germans suffering from difficult life conditions.
Rationality versus sentimental romanticism
Germans were split between rationality, which was exemplified in problem solving, concern with technological excellence, and authoritarian structures, and irrationality, in the forms of romanticism, emotionality, sentimentality, and mysticism. Kren and Rappaport propose that public behavior was “rational,” and private life “irrational.”48 Wagner’s operas, with their sentimental advocacy of the supremacy of love and elevation of Teutonic chivalry, represent this private Germanness. Kren and Rappaport suggest that morality was relegated to the emotional and sentimental private world.
This in itself is not unique to Germany: the interests of states are often considered predominant and morality irrelevant to their behavior. In my view, the split between realms in which moral considerations do or do not apply was primarily based on ingroup-outgroup distinctions, ideology, and the perpetrators’ experience and evolution in their roles. With regard to the private-public split, probably a spillover from the private to the public was most significant. German romanticism, mysticism, and the tendency to “idealize” made a special contribution to the concepts of volk and Germanness. This allowed preference, desire, and yearning to become a basis of “scientific” racism and public policy.
The psychological effects on German youth of World War I and the postwar period
This is not a cultural precondition but an emergent psychological condition. German fathers left to fight the war; some did not return and others returned defeated, unable to make a living and offer security. Some of their authority was inevitably lost. If they were authoritarian, their authority lacked legitimacy. Young people faced material deprivation and a chaotic world. Some authors argue that these experiences created psychic needs that Hitler offered to satisfy.49 The psychological effects of difficult life conditions described in Part I would be more intense and wider-ranging in children whose family system was disrupted by the war, with change in family relations and socialization practices.50 Security needs would increase and the possibility of their fulfillment would decrease. With an authoritarian father whose authority is insecure or illegitimate, the needs for authority may be generated but unfulfilled.
In The Mass Psychology of Fascism Wilhelm Reich noted that the Nazis addressed the psychosocial needs of German youth, and the communists did not. The Nazi ideology and world view fit German myths and culture better. Thus, joining them would better satisfy the needs created by the war and later conditions.51
Nevertheless, communists and socialists also won substantial support. As I argued in Part I, different subgroups of society have different needs and are differently affected by life problems. The communists offered an ideology aimed at the needs and experience of the working class. Their appeal would have been stronger and broader, in my view, if they had built more on elements of German culture.
Another consequence of the war was an upheaval in values and a loss of legitimate authority. The weak Weimar Republic was besieged from all sides by movements that aimed to overthrow it. Black marketeering and loose sexual morality were supplanting traditional German respect for public order and the family. Young people were not offered moral guidance, although their authoritarian childhoods made their need for it great.
I discussed earlier another important effect of war, posttraumatic stress. Like Vietnam veterans with posttraumatic stress syndrome, many German combat soldiers must have suffered from low self-esteem, loss of meaning, lack of goals, anger and hostility, loss of faith in the benevolence of the world and in legitimate authority, restlessness, and a need for excitement and adventure. Many German veterans were therefore especially sensitive to the promises of the Nazi movement: new meaning, new authority, a feeling of superiority, and targets for hostility. The Abel collection shows that before 1933 veterans made up 53 percent of the Nazi Party membership (with official party statistics showing a somewhat lower percentage).52
Youth groups and military groups after World War I
Violence became a way of life for many groups in Germany after World War I. Paramilitary organizations participating in warlike battles served the needs of both veterans and youth. Kren and Rappaport call this way of life “heroic nihilism.” It was a bridge to the exaltation of violence by the SA and SS, and part of the evolution toward genocide.
The Freikorps
