Nietzsche, Nazis, and Nihilism
The philosophy of power that fueled the Third Reich
Note: This article is a follow-up to “The Annihilation of the Nazis.” It is recommended that you read them in order for maximum comprehension.
I began my previous article by focusing on the supreme leader of Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler. Now, place yourself in the boots of a humble conscript in the Wehrmacht, Germany’s regular armed forces.
When you were sent to invade France in 1940 or the Soviet Union the following year, you would likely have been issued an assortment of items: pistol, rifle, uniform, helmet, meal rations, tankard, and a healthy stash of methamphetamine. (The Germans had discovered this substance could do wonders for a person’s energy level.) Apart from the meth, these were all typical parts of any soldier’s kit regardless of nation. But as a member of the Wehrmacht, you would have also received something more unique to help you pass the time: a copy of Thus Spake Zarathustra by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.
Now, I am all for soldiers reading national philosophers. I like to think the Athenians revved themselves up on Heraclitus before defeating the Persians at Marathon. But the wrong philosopher’s tome in the wrong hands can produce something highly combustive, especially when one is prepared to opportunistically embrace certain parts of a philosopher’s thought and not others.
This has rarely been truer than in the case of the Third Reich’s embrace of Nietzsche. In Thus Spake Zarathustra, the Nazis read that God is dead and it is now the era of the Übermensch - the higher person. Naturally, the Nazis saw themselves as Übermenschen destined to rule over the weak races of the earth. Combined with the Social Darwinism of the day and the philosophy of the Eugenics movement, this led Hitler and his cronies to be firmly convinced of the superiority of the Aryan race and its need to triumph over Jews, Slavs, Romani, the disabled, homosexuals, and anyone else who attempted to oppose them.
Of course, Nietzsche had applauded the Jews as a fine race of strong people who ought not face discrimination, and he had rejected German nationalism. But these facts were easily forgotten by the Nazis as they focused on a theme particularly dominant in Nietzsche’s later works: the will to power.
When Friedrich Nietzsche suffered an apparent mental breakdown in 1889, he had a trove of philosophy in various stages of completion. It fell to his friends and family to release these works in the best way they saw fit. What Nietzsche evidently saw as the crowning achievement of his philosophical journey was contained in a series of unpublished notebooks which were subsequently edited by his sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, into a collection entitled The Will to Power. A book titled The Antichrist was also released, and it seems that Nietzsche intended for this to be part of The Will to Power.
Whatever the case, they come down to us as two different books making essentially the same case. Nietzsche argued that Christianity, the prevailing religion in Germany for a millennium, was in fact nihilism: an emptying of human existence. Why? First, because God is dead. The whole thing is a big fairy tale. But fairy tales can be pleasant enough, and thus Nietzsche took greatest objection to what he saw as Christianity’s slave morality.
Weakness triumphing over strength. The first being placed last and the last first. Pity, compassion, grace, gentleness - Nietzsche saw this all as the ideology of slaves who desired their own destruction. It was contrary to life and thus a form of annihilation. To wit…
“I call an animal, a species, an individual corrupt, when it loses its instincts, when it chooses, when it prefers, what is injurious to it…Life itself appears to me as an instinct for growth, for survival, for the accumulation of forces, for power: whenever the will to power fails there is disaster. My contention is that all the highest values of humanity have been emptied of this will—that the values of décadence, of nihilism, now prevail under the holiest names.”12
The besetting illness that Christianity had introduced was pity, a weakness that “has been called the virtue, the source and foundation of all other virtues.” Nietzsche complained that “by means of pity life is denied, and made worthy of denial—pity is the technic of nihilism.” In short, “pity persuades to extinction.”3
Jesus of Nazareth had said, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.” (Matthew 16:24)4 This, for Nietzsche, was the crux of the issue: the offensive denial of one’s own existence represented in the cross. As a moral example, the cross was repulsive.
The primary concern of human beings ought to be not only survival, but power, that thing which brings humans greatest pleasure. This was the true way to judge the validity of human actions. “An action prompted by the life-instinct proves that it is a right action by the amount of pleasure that goes with it: and yet that Nihilist, with his bowels of Christian dogmatism, regarded pleasure as an objection.”5
It may seem backward to declare Christianity to be nihilism. For nearly two millennia, Christian theologians had been arguing that God is the source of all being and goodness, whereas evil was a nothing - a nihil. Nietzsche turned this on its head. It was the Christians who were nihilists, wishing to annihilate themselves. The Übermensch is bold enough to declare the truth that man exists to pursue power.
The Apostle Paul had written that, “When I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:10) That, to Nietzsche, was the very definition of nihilism. As he wrote, “A Nihilist is the man who says of the world as it is, that it ought not to exist, and of the world as it ought to be, that it does not exist.”6 It was time to stop denying what was truly life-giving in man.
However, Nietzsche realized there would be a transition period between Christianity and the world for which he longed. A man must undergo a downfall - an Untergang - before emerging as an Übermensch. He must come face to face with the nihilism that is the death of God and loss of all previous meaning. Once God was dead, Christian morality had no basis in fact and could not survive. It was left for individuals to endure this nihilism and construct a new form of meaning based on the truest law of nature - the will to power. Power is what it means to exist.
The overcoming of philosophers by the annihilation of the world of being: intermediary period of Nihilism; before there is sufficient strength present to transvalue values, and to make the world of becoming, and of appearance, the only world to be deified and called good.”7
In this new world, man and his will to power becomes the measure of all things. He makes truth by the power of that will. “The belief, ‘It is thus and thus,’ must be altered into the will, ‘Thus and thus shall it be.’”8 Nietzsche did not hesitate to declare the boldness of his ideas: a complete reversal of traditional morality.
“What is good?—Whatever augments the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself, in man.
What is evil?—Whatever springs from weakness.
What is happiness?—The feeling that power increases—that resistance is overcome.
Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but efficiency (virtue in the Renaissance sense, virtu, virtue free of moral acid).
The weak and the botched shall perish: first principle of our charity. And one should help them to it.
What is more harmful than any vice?—Practical sympathy for the botched and the weak—Christianity....”9
Among the things which Nietzsche wished to see annihilated were: declining races, slave morality, universal suffrage, mediocrity, and the a priori truths which had until that point governed society.10 Perhaps you have focused in on the declining races bit. Nietzsche does not seem to have viewed one ethnicity as an inferior race, but rather those people who cannot accept the ideas he promotes.
“My philosophy reveals the triumphant thought through which all other systems of thought must ultimately perish. It is the great disciplinary thought: those races that cannot bear it are doomed; those which regard it as the greatest blessing are destined to rule.”11
You may also have noticed his complaint about universal suffrage. Yes, Nietzsche opposed the right of the common man to have a say in government. Universal suffrage suggests an equality of personhood, something that Nietzsche fundamentally rejected. Having derided Christianity for pushing a slave morality, he nevertheless believed that many people were fit only to be slaves at best.
“It is necessary for higher men to declare war upon the masses! In all directions mediocre people are joining hands in order to make themselves masters. Everything that pampers, that softens, and that brings the ‘people’ or ‘woman’ to the front, operates in favour of universal suffrage,—that is to say, the dominion of inferior men. But we must make reprisals, and draw the whole state of affairs (which commenced in Europe with Christianity) to the light of day and to judgment.”12
Again, Nietzsche did not shrink from declaring the most shocking aspects of his philosophy, proclaiming that, “The great majority of men have no right to life, and are only a misfortune to their higher fellows.”13 The justification for Untermenschen (lower people) to exist was “for the service of a higher and sovereign race which stands upon it and can only be elevated upon its shoulders to the task which it is destined to perform.”14 This is rather like the ancient distinction between the Helots and the Spartans, and unsurprisingly, the Nazis identified with the Spartans. One can almost hear the tones of Josef Goebbels when Nietzsche speaks of the Übermenschen.
“From now henceforward there will be such favourable first conditions for greater ruling powers as have never yet been found on earth. And this is by no means the most important point. The establishment has been made possible of international race unions which will set themselves the task of rearing a ruling race, the future ‘lords of the earth’—a new, vast aristocracy based upon the most severe self-discipline, in which the will of philosophical men of power and artist-tyrants will be stamped upon thousands of years: a higher species of men which, thanks to their preponderance of will, knowledge, riches, and influence, will avail themselves of democratic Europe as the most suitable and supple instrument they can have for taking the fate of the earth into their own hands, and working as artists upon man himself.”15
Was Nietzsche a Nazi? No. Were the Nazis Nietzscheans? Only of a sort. They embraced one part of his argument: the will to power. It may not have been the purest interpretation of Nietzsche, but it was the most likely interpretation for Germans of that era to take, or indeed for any human beings to take. For as Nietzsche rightly identified, human beings crave power and like to think of themselves as supermen. They secretly regard themselves superior to others and believe things would be better if they were in control. They want to make themselves “like the Most High.” (Isaiah 14:14)
The German people became the instrument by which Adolf Hitler and his cronies sought to exercise their will to power. If the Germans were Übermenschen, they would triumph over the subservient races. This failed to materialize and Germany was invaded by the Allied Powers. The great German cities lay in ruins. Adolf Hitler sat in his bunker, unable to escape the reality of defeat, and he reached a conclusion: the German people were, in fact, Untermenschen who did not deserve to survive. Let them be annihilated as they clung to weakness.
Pity was nihilism. Compassion was nihilism. Peace itself was nihilism. He was an Übermensch. He would not give in to nihilism. He would never abandon the will to power.
And yet, when all was said and done, the German people had survived, and Hitler had annihilated himself. Not only he, but many high-ranking Nazis did so.
Major Nazi Figures Who Committed Suicide:
Adolf Hitler - In the Führerbunker during the Battle of Berlin
Eva Braun - In the Führerbunker during the Battle of Berlin
Hermann Göring - In Nuremberg prison just prior to scheduled execution
Heinrich Himmler - After being captured by the British
Joseph Goebbels - In the Führerbunker during the Battle of Berlin after killing their children
Magda Goebbels - In the Führerbunker during the Battle of Berlin after killing their children
Rudolf Hess - In Spandau prison in old age
Wilhelm Krebs - In the Führerbunker during the Battle of Berlin
Wilhelm Burgdorf - In the Führerbunker during the Battle of Berlin
Robert Ley - While awaiting trial in Nuremberg
What is nihilism except that thing that leads to annihilation? Was the will to power really the substance of man, or was it the true nothingness? The Nazis had abandoned the values of the past and dared to write their own laws. Within a few years, it had left them dead, imprisoned, or living as fugitives. Their empire was divided and given over to others. The glories that Nietzsche had theorized proved empty in practice.
The Allied victory in World War II is often portrayed as a victory of strength over weakness: superior industrial capacity, superior technology, superior numbers of men. But it may also be seen as a victory for weakness over strength. For as flawed as the Allied powers were, they maintained some vestiges of that old allegiance to the value of pity and the belief in the dignity of every human person.
How the old Christian ideas contrast with those of Nietzsche will be the subject of my next article.
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The Antichrist, I.6
All italicized words in Nietzsche’s quotes are present in the original.
The Antichrist, I.7
Unless stated otherwise, all scripture references in my Substack articles are from the New American Standard Bible (1995 edition), copyright The Lockman Foundation.
The Antichrist, I.11
Will to Power, III.1K.585
Will to Power, III.1K.585
Will to Power, III.1L.593
The Antichrist, 2
Will to Power, IV.1.862
Will to Power, IV.2.103
Will to Power, II.4.861
Will to Power, II.4.872
Will to Power, II.4.898
Will to Power, II.4.960
Nietzsche's attempt to ennoble the annihilation of the weak for the benefit of the strong explains a section of Rudolph Hoss's (the Auschwitz commandant) memoirs [I read it to refute the Holocaust denial that I was beginning to discover in conservative Christian circles]. In the memoirs, Hoss claims he suffered while overseeing the extermination of women and children. On the surface, it seemed like he was making the claim in an attempt to demonstrate to those who then held him prisoner that he wasn't a monster. Now, in light of those quotes by Nietzsche, I think Hoss had persuaded himself that he was a tragic superman, suffering by having to do the work of extermination for the betterment of his fellow supermen.