Ominous Parallels

by Leonard Peikoff

  35 Nietzsche is an exception to the altruist trend. But he typically advocates the sacrifice of others to self. This viewpoint, though it is a form of egoism, leaves unchallenged the basic Kantian idea that man is an object of sacrifice. Nietzsche’s view was easily adapted by the Nazis to suit their own purposes (cf. Ch. 2, above). A theory of egoism that does not accept the concept of sacrifice in any variant is indicated below (Ch. 16).

  36 Kolnai, op. cit., p. 89; the last sentence is a quote from Bergmann. Mosse, Nazi Culture, p. 223; quoting a lecture given by Gauger at Bad Neuheim, 1934. Murphy et al., op. cit., p. 68; quoting Beck, Die Erziehung im dritten Reich (Dortmund and Breslau, 1936). Mein Kampf, pp. 300, 298.

  37 Op. cit., p. 491.

  38 Philosophy of Right, p. 109.

  39 Kolnai, op. cit., p. 54; quoting Wilhelm Stapel. Rosenberg quoted by Robert A. Brady, The Spirit and Structure of German Fascism (New York, Viking, 1937), p. 116.

  40 Rauschning, The Voice of Destruction, p. 78.

  41 Communism, Fascism, and Democracy, ed. C. Cohen (New York, Random House, 1962), pp. 406, 409; quoting speeches at Essen (Nov. 22, 1926) and at Chemnitz (April 2, 1928).

  42 Mein Kampf, pp. 299, 138-39.

  43 Quoted in Shirer, op. cit., p. 982.

  44 Eichmann in Jerusalem, pp. 137, 150.

  45 Rauschning, The Voice of Destruction, p. 225.

  46 A. James Gregor, Contemporary Radical Ideologies (New York, Random House, 1968), p. 214.

  Chapter Five

  1 Urian Oakes at Cambridge, in 1677; reprinted in The American Puritans, ed. P. Miller (Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1956), p. 206. Cotton Mather, Durable Riches (Boston, 1695); in Ideas in America, ed. G.N. Grob and R.N. Beck (New York, Free Press, 1970), p. 49. Cotton Mather, Essays to Do Good (1710); Miller, op. cit., p. 219.

  2 Writings, ed. A.E. Bergh (20 vols., Washington, Jefferson Memorial Assoc., 1903), VI, 258.

  3 Principles of Nature (New York, 1801); Grob and Beck, op. cit., pp. 81, 83, 85, 84.

  4 Charles Backus, A Sermon Preached in Long-Meadow at the Publick Fast (Springfield, 1788); Grob and Beck, op. cit., pp. 133-34.

  5 Life and Works (10 vols., New Rochelle, Thomas Paine National Historical Assoc., 1925), II, 179-80.

  6 Joseph L. Blau, Men and Movements in American Philosophy (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, 1952), p. 44; quoting the original provisional constitution of the State of New Hampshire (1766).

  7 Adams, Report of the Committee of Correspondence to the Boston Town Meeting (Nov. 20, 1772); Grob and Beck, op. cit., p. 107. Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Harvard U.P., 1967), p. 187; quoting Dickinson, An Address to the Committee of Correspondence In Barbados (Philadelphia, 1766).

  8 Grob and Beck, op. cit., p. 108.

  9 The Second Treatise of Government, ed. T.P. Peardon (Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1952), p. 15. This passage and others from Locke are quoted by Samuel Adams in Report of the Committee.

  10 Writings, op. cit., III, 318. The Federalist Papers, ed. C. Rossiter (New York, New American Library, 1961), No. 10, p. 81.

  11 Robert C. Whittemore, Makers of the American Mind (New York, Morrow, 1964), pp. 131-32; quoting Adams, “Defence of the Constitution.”

  12 Quoted in Isabel Paterson, The God of the Machine (New York, Putnam’s, 1943), p. 292.

  13 Lectures on Law (1790-91); in Documents in the History of American Philosophy, ed. M. White (New York, Oxford U.P., 1972), pp. 93, 83, 92, 83.

  14 Letters to Benjamin Rush (April 21, 1803) and Thomas Law (June 13, 1814); in American Thought Before 1900, ed. P. Kurtz (New York, Macmillan, 1966), pp. 157-58, 160-61.

  15 Franklin quoted in Whittemore, op. cit., p. 79.

  16 A History of American Philosophy (2nd ed., New York, Columbia U.P., 1963), p. 30.

  Chapter Six

  1 George Ripley, book review in The Christian Examiner (Jan. 1833); White, op. cit., pp. 137, 124. The Philosophy of Loyalty (New York, 1908); Kurtz, op. cit., pp. 366, 373.

  2 Blau, op. cit., p. 123; quoting Emerson, “Politics,” in Essays, Second Series (Boston, 1895). Royce quoted by Schneider, op. cit., p. 423. Creighton, Studies in Speculative Philosophy (New York, Macmillan, 1925), pp. 49- 50.

  3 Schneider, op. cit., pp. 380, 379; quoting Laurens Perseus Hickok, Moral Science (Schenectady, N.Y., 1853). Ibid., p. 167; quoting Denton J. Snider, Social Institutions (St. Louis, 1901). Whittemore, op. cit., pp. 281-82; quoting Snider, The State, specially the American State, Psychologically Treated. Edward R. Lewis, A History of American Political Thought from the Civil War to the World War (New York, Macmillan, 1937), p. 187; quoting John W. Burgess.

  4 Mill’s Ethical Writings, ed. J.B. Schneewind (New York, Collier, 1965); Utilitarianism, pp. 291, 290.

  5 Sidney Fine, Laissez Faire and the General-Welfare State (Ann Arbor, U. of Michigan P., 1964), p. 54. The economist quoted is Edward Atkinson, The Industrial Progress of the Nation (New York, 1890).

  6 The Principles of Ethics (2 vols., New York, D. Appleton, 1893), II, 433.

  7 Ibid., I, 243, 256.

  8 Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy (Cambridge, Riverside P., 1902); Kurtz, op. cit., p. 390.

  9 Fine, op. cit., p. 88; quoting Sumner, “Laissez Faire,” in Essays, ed. A.G. Keller and M.R. Davie (New Haven, 1934). Folkways (Ginn & Co., 1907); in Problems of Ethics, ed. R.E. Dewey et al. (New York, Macmillan, 1961), p. 31.

  10 Fine, op. cit., p. 44; quoting Edward Livingston Youmans speaking to Henry George.

  11 Fine, op. cit., p. 194; quoting George D. Herron, “The Message of Jesus to Men of Wealth” (Christian Union, Dec. 11, 1890). Ibid., p. 173; quoting a letter from Josiah .Strong to Richard T. Ely (Aug. 8, 1889). Ibid., p. 174; quoting Lyman Abbott, Reminiscences (Boston, 1915). Ibid., p. 182; quoting Abbott, “Christianity versus Socialism” (North American Review, April 1889).

  12 The Quest for Certainty (New York, Putnam‘s, 1960), pp. 44, 137.

  13 Ibid., p. 23, passim. Cf. Dewey, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (New York, Holt, 1938), pp. 104ff.

  14 The first and third quotes are from Reconstruction in Philosophy; quoted in Brand Blanshard, The Nature of Thought (2 vols., New York, Macmillan, 1939), I, 347. The second quote is from Essays in Experimental Logic (New York, Dover, n.d.), p. 310.

  15 The Quest for Certainty, p. 276.

  16 Castell, op. cit., “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life,” pp. 73, 77.

  17 Liberalism and Social Action (New York, Capricorn, 1963), p. 12.

  18 Ibid., pp. 4-5, 32. Philosophy and Civilization (New York, Minton, Balch, 1931), pp. 322f. “Authority and Social Change” (1936); in Ebenstein, Modern Political Thought, p. 649.

  19 Liberalism and Social Action, pp. 65, 67. Individualism Old and New (New York, Capricorn, 1962), pp. 75, 119, 95, 119.

  20 The School and Society (Chicago, U. of Chicago P., 1956), pp. 104, 101, 100.

  21 Ibid., pp. 99, 16, 91, 29. The second excerpt (“to share in the social consciousness”) comes from My Pedagogic Creed (New York, 1897); quoted in Fine, op cit., p. 288.

  22 The School and Society, p. 15.

  Chapter Seven

  1 Pinson, op. cit., p. 358; quoting a resolution passed by a workers’ meeting called by the Bavarian Majority Socialists and the trade unions (Munich, Nov. 14, 1918).

  2 Ibid., pp. 201, 203; quoting an address by Lassalle to the court (April 12, 1862).

  3 Ibid., p. 458. Seeds of Modern Drama, ed. N. Houghton (3 vols., New York, Dell, 1963); The Weavers, trans. H. Frenz and M. Waggoner, III, 254, 281, 283-84, 320.

  4 Pinson, op. cit., p. 217; quoting Bebel, Unsere Ziele (10th ed., Berlin, 1893).

  5 Ibid., p. 359; quoting a program submitted by the new provisional government of Bavaria (Nov. 15, 1918).

  6 Luther’s statements are quoted by Walter Kaufmann, The Faith of a Heretic (Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1963), p. 75.

  7 Von Mises, op. cit., p. 158. Gustav Stolper, The German Economy, trans. T. Stolper
(New York, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967), pp. 43-44.

  8 Electoral figures for the Center party include the votes of the Bavarian People’s party, a Catholic splinter group with views similar to those of the Center.

  9 Rudolf Virchow, Jan. 17, 1873; quoted in Pinson, op. cit., p. 193.

  10 Erich Eyck, A History of the Weimar Republic, trans H.P. Hanson and R.G.L. Waite (2 vols., Cambridge, Harvard U.P., 1967), II, 92.

  11 Ibid., I, 59; quoting Adolf Gröber (Feb. 13, 1919).

  12 Op. cit., p. 181.

  13 Cf. ibid., p. 184.

  14 Ibid., p. 182; quoting Bishop Wilhelm Emanuel von Ketteler, “The Great Social Questions of the Present Day” (sermons delivered in Frankfurt, 1848).

  15 Ibid., p. 394.

  16 Quoted in Eyck, op. cit., I, 76.

  17 The Abuse of Learning (New York, Macmillan, 1948), p. 133.

  18 Ibid., pp. 137, 139.

  19 Unless otherwise identified, translations of the Weimar Constitution are from Heinrich Oppenheimer, The Constitution of the German Republic (London, Stevens & Sons, 1923), Appendix. Articles 7, 9, 119, 144; pp. 220- 22, 246, 251.

  20 Articles 111, 117, 118, 120, 114; pp. 244-46.

  21 Article 48, p. 230.

  22 Article 151, p. 253.

  23 Articles 153, 155, 156, 164, 162; pp. 253-56. The translation “in the interests of collectivism” is taken from S. William Halperin, Germany Tried Democracy (New York, Norton, 1965), p. 159.

  24 Article 163, p. 256.

  25 Pinson, op. cit., p. 202; quoting a letter of Lassalle to Bismarck (June 8, 1863).

  26 Ibid., p. 379. The first and third quotes are from a statement to a Berlin meeting of the Independent Socialists (Dec. 1918). The second is from a statement of Nov. 20, 1918.

  27 Ibid., p. 370; quoting Philipp Scheidemann at the first congress of the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils (Dec. 1918).

  28 Ibid., p. 364; quoting from Vorwärts, Dec. 27, 1918.

  29 Cf. ibid., pp. 381-86.

  30 Robert G.L. Waite, Vanguard of Nazism (New York, Norton, 1969), p. 269; quoting Ernst von Salomon, Die Geächteten (Berlin, 1930).

  31 Ibid., p. 164; quoting von Salomon, Die Geächteten. Ibid., p. 56; quoting von Salomon, “Der verlorene Haufe.”

  32 Ibid., pp. 42-43. The phrase “peace and money-grabbing” is taken from ibid., p. 43; quoting Edgar Jung, “Die Tragik der Kriegsgeneration.” Ibid., p. 209; quoting Röhm, Geschichte eines Hochverräters (7th ed., Munich, 1934).

  33 Op. cit., p. 198.

  Chapter Eight

  1 Hilton Kramer, “E.L. Kirchner: Art vs. Life,” The New York Times, April 6, 1969.

  2 Fifteen Famous European Plays, ed. B.A. Cerf and V.H. Cartnell (New York, Random House, 1943); From Morn to Midnight, p. 506.

  3 Pinson, op. cit., p. 462; quoting Preussentum und Sozialismus (1920).

  4 Shirer, op. cit., p. 102.

  5 This summary of Klages’s views is by Frederick Wyatt and Hans Lukas Teuber, “German Psychology Under the Nazi System: 1933-1940,” Psychological Review, Vol. LI (1944), pp. 230-31.

  6 Kandinsky quoted in T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings, Mona Lisa’s Mustache (New York, Knopf, 1947), p. 168. Klee quoted in Laqueur, op. cit., p. 174.

  7 Harold C. Schonberg, The Lives of the Great Composers (New York, Norton, 1970), p. 568; quoting Schoenberg, Style and Idea (New York, 1950). Laqueur, op. cit., p. 159; quoting a letter to Paul Bekker.

  8 Quoted in Robsjohn-Gibbings, op. cit., p. 160.

  9 Pinson, op. cit., p. 463; quoting Preussentum und Sozialismus.

  10 Peter Gay, Weimar Culture (New York, Harper & Row, 1970), p. 86; quoting Preussentum und Sozialismus.

  11 Walter Laqueur, Young Germany (New York, Basic Books, 1962); Introduction by R.H.S. Crossman, p. xviii. The views and slogans of the youth movement are presented in some detail in this book by Laqueur.

  12 Waite, op. cit., p. 20. The sentence Waite quotes is from Howard Becker, German Youth: Bond or Free (London, 1946).

  13 R.H. Samuel and R. Hinton Thomas, Education and Society in Modern Germany (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1949), p. 141; quoting Robert von Erdberg, “Ten Commandments” for Folk high schools in Prussia (1919). Thomas Alexander and Beryl Parker, The New Education in the German Republic (New York, John Day, 1929), p. 172. Lichtwark quoted in ibid., p. 102.

  14 Ibid., pp. 5, 133, 358.

  15 Ibid., p. 172. Germany Puts the Clock Back (New York, Morrow, 1933), p. 155.

  16 Gardner’s Art Through the Ages, rev. by H. de la Croix and R.G. Tansey (6th ed., 2 vols., New York, Harcourt Brace, 1975), II, 736. The statement about art is quoted in Laqueur, Weimar: A Cultural History, p. 119.

  17 William Barrett, Irrational Man (Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1958), p. 40.

  18 Stolper, op. cit., p. 85.

  19 Laqueur, Weimar: A Cultural History, p. 68; referring to Gottfried Benn.

  20 Otto Friedrich, Before the Deluge (New York, Harper & Row, 1972), p. 124.

  21 Pinson, op. cit., p. 447; quoting a statement made on June 29, 1927.

  22 Friedrich, op. cit., pp. 128-129; quoting Zweig, The World of Yesterday (Lincoln, Neb., 1943). Ibid., p. 126; quoting Grosz, A Little Yes and a Big No (New York, 1946).

  23 Halperin, op cit., p. 267.

  24 Quoted in Shirer, op. cit., p. 62.

  Chapter Nine

  1 Der Nationalsozialismus: Dokumente 1933-1945, ed. W. Hofer (Frankfurt a.M., Fischer Bücherei, 1957); Die 25 Punkte des Programms der NSDAP. Unless otherwise identified, translations of the Points are from Problems in Western Civilization, ed. L.F. Schaefer et al. (2 vols., New York, Scribner’s, 1968), II, 422-25.

  2 Excerpt from Point 11 (trans. G. Reisman). Händler und Helden is the title of a book by Werner Sombart.

  3 The last quote is from Mein Kampf, p. 34.

  4 Cf. the following from Walter Laqueur: “[T]he sums paid to Hitler prior to 1933 were not only modest in absolute terms, they were small in comparison with what was given to other parties. German industrialists did not ‘make’ Hitler, they joined him only after his party had become a leading political force, and it is possible that Hitler would have come to power even if the Nazis had not received a single pfennig from the bankers and industrialists.” “Fascism—The Second Coming,” Commentary, Vol. 61, No. 2, Feb. 1976, p. 58.

  5 Stolper, op. cit., p. 47.

  6 Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (rev. ed., New York, Harper & Row, 1964), p. 174. Shirer, op. cit., p. 145.

  7 Quoted in ibid., p. 159.

  8 Stolper, op. cit., p. 128.

  9 The Voice of Destruction, p. 186.

  10 Waite, op. cit., p. 268; quoting Friedrich Glombowski.

  Chapter Ten

  1 Laqueur, Weimar: A Cultural History, Preface, p. ix. Myers, “The Modern Artist in Germany,” The American-German Review, Vol. XVI, No. 4, April 1940, pp. 16, 34. Gay, op. cit., Preface, p. xiii.

  2 Ibid., p. 123. Pinson, op. cit., p. 458.

  3 The Magic Mountain, trans. H.T. Lowe-Porter (New York, Random House, 1969), pp. 55-56, 349, 348.

  4 Ibid., pp. 372, 85, 62, 246, 62, 61-62, 249, 100, 712.

  5 Ibid., p. 496. (The second quotation—“Man is master....” —is taken from Gay, op. cit., pp. 126-27.)

  6 Ibid., pp. 603, 496, 594, 583.

  7 Weimar: A Cultural History, p. 123.

  8 Op. cit., p. 17.

  9 Gay, op. cit., p. 53. Ibid., p. 54; quoting Zweig, “Abschied von Rilke.”

  10 The Word and the World (New York, Scribner’s, 1931), p. 126.

  11 “The Cry Was, ‘Down With Das System,’ ” The New York Times Magazine, Aug. 16, 1970, p. 13.

  12 Freud, “One of the Difficulties of Psycho-Analysis,” (1917), trans. J. Riviere, in On Creativity and the Unconscious, ed. B. Nelson (New York, Harper & Row, 1958), p. 7.

  13 Ibid., pp. 4, 6, 9.

  14 Pinson, op. cit., p. 456.

  15 Editorial Topic, Jan. 22, 1978.

  16 Edna Heidbreder, Seven Psychologi
es (New York, Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1933), p. 393.

  17 Quoted in Robsjohn-Gibbings, op. cit., pp. 179, 104.

  18 The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution (rev. ed., New York, New American Library, 1975), “The Age of Envy,” p. 153.

  19 V.J. McGill, “Notes on Philosophy in Nazi Germany,” Science and Society: A Marxian Quarterly, Vol. IV, No. 1, Winter 1940, p. 27.

  Chapter Eleven

  1 Quoted in Pinson, op. cit., p. 452.

  2 Franz Neumann, Behemoth (New York, Harper & Row, 1966), p. 31; quoting Fritz Tarnow (head of the Wood-worker’s Union), “Kapitalistische Wirtschaftsanarchie und Arbeiterklasse,” in Sozialdemokratischer Parteitag in Leipzig (Berlin, 1931).

  3 Op. cit., pp. 123-24.

  4 Ibid.

  5 Laqueur, Young Germany, p. 191.

  6 Gay, op. cit., p. 143; quoting Ernst von Aster, “Metaphysik des Nationalismus” (1932).

  7 Cf. Mosse, Nazi Culture, p. 346.

  8 Eliot Barculo Wheaton, Prelude to Calamity (Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1968), p. 412. Gay, op. cit., p. 140.

  9 Eyck, op. cit., II, 211, 219. Hugenberg quoted in ibid., II, 476. Mowrer, op. cit., p. 203; quoting Pastor Mattiat of Kerstlingerode on the Prussian election of 1932, in the organ of the Evangelische Bund.

  10 The Voice of Destruction, p. 131.

  11 Quoted in Rudolf Morsey, “The Center Party between the Fronts,” in The Path to Dictatorship: 1918-1933, intro. Fritz Stern, trans. J. Conway (Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1966), pp. 74, 76, 73.

  12 The Social Democrats did bring suit in the Supreme Court to protest the rape of Prussia, but the Court evaded the legal issues involved and essentially upheld the coup. Workers’ signs mentioned in Eyck, op. cit., II, 118.

  13 Quoted in Halperin, op. cit., p. 495.