In 1896, an English author, M. P. Shiel, published a short story in which we read of a band of monstrous criminals ravaging Europe, slaughtering families which they considered inferior and impending the progress of humanity, and burning their corpses. The story was entitled: The S.S.
The atmosphere of terror under the Nazis, which nobody could forsee, was heralded in the horrible stories of the German writer Hans Heinz Ewers: The Mandragore and In Terror, who was destined to become the regime's official poet. Goethe said: "Coming events cast their shadows before", and it may well be that these undercurrents in which the future is reflected may be detected and interpreted, not in events which attract general attention, but in works and human activities which have nothing to do and are far removed from what we call 'the stream of history'.
Germany, when National Socialism first made its appearance, was the home of the exact sciences. German methods, German logic, and the strictness and integrity of German scientists were universally esteemed. And yet it was in a society of this kind that an incoherent and patently crazy doctrine was introduced and spread like wildfire, starting from quite insignificant premisses. In the country of Einstein and Planck there was talk of an 'Aryan physique'; in the homeland of Humboldt and Haeckel 'racial problems' began to be discussed seriously. Such phenomena cannot be explained as being due solely to economic inflation. There was something else at work here, a type of madness forseen in the poems and writings of a neglected few poets and authors.
"Love," said Jacques Chardonne, "is much more than love." We have to wonder if history is also often much more than history. In his analysis of the book Hitler Unmasked by Dr. Otto Dietrich, who was for years the Fuhrer's chief press officer, M. Pierre Cazenave writes as follows:
"...However, Dr. Dietrich is too easily satisfied with a word he often repeats and which, in our positivist age, is inadequate to explain Hitler. 'Hitler', he says, 'was a demoniac possessed by nationalist ideas to the point of madness.' What does he mean by 'demoniac'? And why 'madness'? In the middle ages Hitler would have been described as a man possessed, but today? Either the word 'demoniac' means nothing, or else it means possessed by a demon. But what is a demon? Does Dr. Dietrich believe in the existence of the devil? We must be clear about this. I, personally, am not satisfied with the word 'demoniac'. Nor with the word 'madness', which suggests mental disorder...Was Hitler responsible? In my opinion, yes. And that is why I reject the word 'madness' just as I cannot accept the term 'demoniac'..."
I totally agree with Cazenave's critique and also find the use of words such as 'madness' and 'demoniac' wholly unsatisfactory. But it still leaves us with an unresolved problem. If Hitler was neither mad nor possessed the history of Nazism would still be inexplicable by the standards of a 'positivist age'. Psychology in depth has shown that man's apparently rational actions are in reality governed by forces which he himself knows nothing, or which are closely linked with a symbolism having nothing in common with ordinary everyday logic. In the history of Hitlerism, or rather is certain aspects of this history, everything happens as if the whole conception on which it was based has baffled the ordinary historian so that, if we want to understand, we will have to abandon our positive way of looking at things and enter a world where reason and reality are no longer valid.
"At bottom", said Rauschning, "every German has one foot in Atlantis, where he seeks a better Fatherland and a better patrimony. The double nature of the Germans, this faculty they have of splitting their personality which enables them to live in the real world and at the same time to project themselves into an imaginary world, is especially noticeable in Hitler and provides the key to his magic socialism."
Rauschning I feel is certainly on solid footing in his explanation and he is quick to remind us that this affliction targets not only the Germans:
"whole nations have fallen into a state of inexplicable agitation. They follow the flagellants' procession, or are seized by St. Vitus's Dance...National Socialism is the St. Vitus's Dance of the twentieth century."
But where does this strange malady come from? To this question he failed to find a satisfactory answer. "It's deepest roots are hidden in secret places." It is these secret places that I feel we ought to explore. And it is not a historian, but a poet, the magician and the artist who should be our guide. As C.S. Lewis well remarked in his last book Till We Have Faces, "The gods will not speak to us face to face until we ourselves have a face."
What madness will we have to descend into to understand Nazism? Quick examples will suffice. The earth is hollow. We are living inside it. The stars are blocks of ice. Several moons have already fallen on the Earth. The whole history of humanity is contained in the struggle between ice and fire.
Man is not finished. He is on the brink of formidable mutation which will confer on him the powers the ancients attributed to the gods. A few specimens of the New Man exist in the world, who have perhaps come here from beyond the frontiers of time and space.
Alliances could be formed with the Master of the World or the King of Fear who reignes over a city hidden somewhere in the East. Those who conclude a pact will change the surface of the Earth and window the human adventure with a new meaning for many thousands of years.
Such were the 'scientific' theories and 'religious' conceptions on which Nazism was originally based and in which Hitler and the members of his group believed - theories which have, to a large extent, dominated social and political trends and shaped recent history. The fact that such ideas were irrational did not stop them from spreading and did not stop the true 'believers' from discarding the solid ground of rigorous investigation.
It is well known that the Nazi party was openly, and even flamboyantly anti-intellectual; that it burnt books and relegated the theoretical physicists among it's 'Judeo-Marxist' enemies. Hitler used to say: "We are often abused for being enemies of the mind and spirit. Well, that is what we are, but in a far deeper sense than bourgeois science could ever imagine." As early as 1925 every scientist in Germany and Austria received a letter and an ultimatum:
"The time has come for you to choose - whether to be with us or against us. While Hitler is cleaning up politics, Hans Horbiger will sweep out of the way the bogus sciences. The doctrine of eternal ice will be a sign of the German people. Beware! Come over to our side before it is too late."
There was a fury to these beliefs. Hitler was talking one day to Rauschning, the Governor of Danzig, about the problem of a mutation of the human race. Rauschning, not possessing the key to such strange preoccupations, interpreted Hitler's remarks in terms of a stock-breeder. This did not satisfy Hitler in the slightest and he screamed at the man: "The new man is living amongst us now! He is here! Isn't that enough for you? I will tell you a secret. I have seen the new man. He is intrepid and cruel. I was afraid of him. "
"In uttering these words," added Rausching, "Hitler was trembling in a kind of ecstasy."
It was Rauschning too who related the following episode:
"A person close to Hitler told me that he wakes up in the night screaming and in convulsions. He calls for help, and appears to be half paralysed. He is seized with a panic that makes him tremble until the bed shakes. He utters confused and unintelligible sounds, gasping, as if on the point of suffocation. The same person described to me one of these fits, with details that I would refuse to believe had I not complete confidence in my informant...Hitler was standing up in his room, swaying and looking all round him as if he were lost. 'It's he, it's he', he groaned; 'he's come for me!' His lips were white; he was sweating profusely. Suddenly he uttered a string of meaningless figures, then words and scraps of sentences. It was terrifying. He used strange expressions strung together in bizarre disorder. Then he relapsed again into silence, but his lips still continued to move. He was then given a friction and something to drink. Then suddenly he screamed: 'There! There! Over in the corner! He is there!' - all the time stamping with his feet and shouting. To quieten him he was assured that nothing extraordinary had happened, and finally he gradually calmed down. After that he slept for a long time and became normal again..." (Source: Hermann Rauschning: Hitler m'a dit. Ed. Co-operation, Paris, 1939)
It may be thought that such ridiculous notions and such orgiastic lust for disaster and such disdain for academia and science are things we have learned from and will not repeat. I fear such thoughts are utterly absurd if we merely look at the state of the world today and the sudden emergence of equally ridiculous ideas and the equal shunning of modern science and academia. If the internet has taught us something it's that the absurd can find followers. One need only look at the rise of conspiracy theories and the cult which has emerged around these since September 11, 2001. Only a trigger is necessary and the rest will propel itself.
Not convinced? Find the ideas of a hollow earth, eternal ice and the King of the World too strange to be acceptable today? How different really are the ideas of David Icke today who proposes that there is an elite ruling the earth who are in fact descendents of a reptilian race? How strange is it really that there is a virulent anti Semitism embedded in these conspiracy theorists? How different from the madness of Nazism is it that many of these 'believers' will readily cry out for the gallows to be used on those they call 'traitors'? Or how different is it that pathetic theories such 'ancient aliens' - which have been thoroughly debunked and which we know are connected to ideas of an alien race of men and eventually evolves into more anti Semitism - find ground in mainstream media such as the 'History' Channel? The Nazis will always be with us and the horror of fascism, disguised in whatever form, is always there, keeping us - as Kafka well noted - "a breath away from the ice age."
