There are other aspects of the philosopher's teachings that Hitler certainly agreed with. Hitler writes of, “pacifist nonsense,” and justifies war as “self-preservation”. He says it is a right and goes on to say. “And when attempts to settle the difficulty in an amicable way are rejected the clenched hand must take by force that which was refused to the open hand of friendship.” (A.Hitler, p.87) It seemed inevitable to Hitler that France was determined on the destruction of Germany and nothing but a war of conquest, not only in the east but against her neighbour, could solve the problem.( ibid, p371.)
Nietzsche, himself believed in war. He said. “War is another thing. I am by nature warlike. To attack is among my instincts…that supposes a strong nature, it is, in any event a condition of every strong nature. It needs resistance, consequently it seeks resistances: the aggressive pathos belongs as necessarily to strength as the feeling of vengefulness and vindictiveness does to weakness.” (Ecce Homo 7. Why I am so Wise.)
It is intriguing, that when discussing the issue with France, Hitler uses a phrase which has its origins in Nietzsche, "the Will to Life".(The Twilight of the Idols pp.108,109.) Still fulminating against France Hitler says. “Only when the Germans have taken all this fully into account will they cease from allowing the national "will-to-life" to wear itself out in merely passive defence, but they will rally together for a last decisive contest with France.” (Hitler p. 371.)
Sometimes the overman appears as a heroic figure either as a military ruler or as one of the Homeric heroes. At other times he is a lonely figure, far above all others on some icy height. (Thus Spake Zarathustra p.155.) It is not clear whether he saw all aristocrats or just some as fitted to rule, certainly he spoke of a decline in aristocratic values. He may have seen some as more like the overman than others. As well as admiring Caesar, Napoleon and Cesare Borgia and some of the Renaissance artists he also mentions with esteem the Brahmin rulers of India. Perhaps none of these comes near to the ideal of the overman but the Brahmins may have done. They used religion, “as a means of obtaining peace from the noise and effort of cruder modes of government, and cleanliness from the necessary dirt of all politics. Thus did the Brahmins for example arrange things with the aid of a religious organization they gave themselves the power of nominating their kings for the people.” (Beyond Good and Evil. 61.)
Hitler too used mystique and his charisma to set himself, on a lonely height as it were and delegated to his powerful underlings the actual day to day running of things. Thus men like Goering, Himmler, Heydrich, Goebbels, Bormann and some others did the day to day dirty work of politics while Hitler remained above all that as the idol of the party and the people.
As far as women were concerned the position of women in the Third Reich was one of which Nietzsche would have approved. In his chapter on Old and Young Women, he says the following. “Everything in woman is a riddle, and everything in a woman hath one solution-it is called pregnancy. Man is for woman, a means the end is always the child,….? Two different things wanteth the true man, danger and diversion. Therefore wanteth he woman, as the most dangerous plaything…. Man shall be trained for war, and woman for the recreation of the warrior, all else is folly.” (Thus Spake Zarathustra, pp.119,120.) Grunberger says. “Hitler called the emancipation of women a symptom of depravity on a par with parliamentary democracy.” The Nazi Minister for Agriculture, “attributed the desire for feminine emancipation to frustrations set up by malfunctioning sex glands.' The closest to Nietzsche's perverted resentment against half the human race, was the Propaganda Minister, Dr. Goebbels who not only misquoted Goethe and Schiller to make a point but said, in the same context, “Woman has the task of being beautiful and bringing children into the world, and this is, by no means as coarse and old-fashioned as one might think. The female bird preens herself for her mate and hatches her eggs for him.” (R. Grunberger, A Social History of the Third Reich, p.322 and ff.)
Both men were anti-democratic. They believed in the rule of "the best". Nietzsche is vitriolic about those he calls "the rabble". The rabble, he says, only contaminate everything and to deal with them is a betrayal by the rulers. He goes on to say. “And on the rulers turned I my back, when I saw what they now call ruling, to traffic and bargain for power with the rabble.” (Thus Spake Zarathustra, p.149. See also p.255.)
Hitler and Nietzsche, then, were themselves remarkably similar. It might be possible for someone with the expertise to go into the psychopathology of these two strange and terrifying persons. They glorified war, they were elitist and the despised the common people and democracy. They both had some measure of musical and artistic talent and believed in a similar aristocratic social system and in a subservient position for women. Both men had serious personality flaws and both compensated for these with aggressive, even deranged behaviour. Both of them fiercely believed in their own wisdom and rectitude and so were authoritarians of the worst sort.
Indeed it could be argued that Hitler in his career and his personality is the most damning condemnation of the ideas promulgated by Nietzsche that it is possible to find. That both men were born into the same race and nation may say something about the social psychology of that nation or it may be coincidence, I do not think so.
