Yet a sharp difference must be made between race and religion. For example, only one third of Catholics in the world today are White, with two thirds being of mixed race living mostly in Latin America and the Philippines. One need only take a walk in St. Peter’s Square in Rome to spot swarms of non-European Catholic seminarians. Unlike Judaism, which is a highly ethnocentric monotheistic religion, the other two monotheistic religions, also born in the Middle East — Islam and Christianity — ignore, at least in theory, the distinction between race and religion.
There are also double standards in depicting the deluge of Muslim non-European outgroups into Europe and America. These groups are unquestionably changing the racial profile of their White host countries. But while it is relatively safe to criticize the alleged violent nature of Islam in academic circles, one rarely hears that the violence against non-Jews in the Old Testament shows that Judaism is inherently violent.
And in the contemporary world, why criticize the violent nature of Islam while avoiding criticism of the violent nature of Zionism?
Many White nationalists are justly concerned about the inflow of non-European races. But many of these non-Europeans, such as Hindus residing in the UK, are extremely resentful of Islam. Ethnic and religious conflict in the future may well be a complex affair, as it already is in the United States, where Latinos have ethnically cleansed Blacks from some areas of Southern California.
The whole liberal hypocrisy on race was well described by Alain Brossat, who notes that in France making fun of Arabs or describing them as terrorists, obscurantists, or enemies of democracy and republicanism is considered protected free speech. On the other hand, making fun of rabbis or vehemently criticizing the politics of the state of Israel will result in draconian penalties.
To make the subject of race even more complicated, during different historical eras the Catholic Church endorsed highly promiscuous policies of miscegenation, particularly in Latin America during Spanish rule. From the 16th to the 19th century, a few Spanish White settlers and hordes of ordinary criminals from all parts of Europe found a safe haven in fertile Paraguay, only to be forced by the powerful Jesuit clergy to marry Guarani Indian women — simply because there were no White women around.
The Christian Gospel of “love thy neighbour” certainly played an additional role in the process of miscegenation all over Latin America. There has been a gradual depletion of the White gene pool caused by racial mongrelisation. This has often resulted in frequent coup d’états and poor economic growth, despite the fact that Latin America is rich in natural resources.
Moreover, the interplay of race and religion is further complicated by the fact that there are well over 10 million indigenous Muslims in Europe, mostly Bosnians and Albanians whose gene pool is relatively well preserved and who are often more European than White European Christians. Bosnian Muslims present a very peculiar case, being all of European stock with a high number of strikingly blond people. In the Middle Ages their ancestors were renowned as heretics, known as “Bogumils”, with strong ties to French Cathars and Albingensians.
In the late 15th century with the onslaught of Turks against Europe, Bosnian Bogumils converted in droves to Islam — partly because of their hostility to the Vatican, and partly because their White race propelled them quickly into lucrative positions in the Ottoman hierarchy. The Ottomans offered them prestigious titles — “beys”, “pashas”, or “grand viziers.” Valued and praised because of their physical stature and race, Slavic Muslims, including the Albanians, who are of old Indo-European Illyrian stock, played for centuries an important role as elite soldiers known as janissaries who were posted as provincial rulers throughout the Ottoman empire, which in some periods stretched from today’s Algeria in the west to Yemen in the East, and all the way to Hungary in central Europe.
During WWII, many Bosnian and Albanian Muslims were highly regarded by N.S. Germany. The Catholic pro-fascist Croat leader, Ante Pavelić built a large mosque in the heart of the Croatian baroque city of Zagreb, while frequently referring to Bosnian Muslims as the “purest Croats.” In 1943, under the supervision of Heinrich Himmler, a Bosnian Waffen S.S. Handschar was established under German command.
The story of race and racism in the Third Reich is complex and endless in its scope. It still needs to be objectively written. Surprisingly perhaps, some “half-Jews” or “quarter-Jews” played a significant political and military role in N.S. Germany; many took part in the anti-communist campaign in the East. Among the famous “Mischlings”, or crossbreeds, was the famous German admiral Bernhard Rogge, Field Marshal Erhard Milch, Field Marshal von Manstein (born Lewinski), the panzer general Fritz Bayerlein, etc. In his book, Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers, the Jewish American historian Bryan Mark Rigg estimates that between 120,000 to 160,000 Germans of Jewish extraction served in the Wehrmacht.
Heredity and race are crucial elements in someone’s political and social behavior. But a person possessing the highest qualities of his race — but without a culture that preserves and enhances his race — turns into a biological unit with a meaningless life. Culture must always come as the final veneer on a person’s racial make-up. Even among Third Reich scholars the most frequent word was not Rasse (race), but, rather, the word Ausbildung, which denotes character building (often wrongly translated into English as ‘education’). High IQ and other positive racial characteristics can in no way substitute for strong will and moral integrity. These traits are influenced genetically and they differ between the races. But there are strong cultural influences on these traits as well. The phenomenon whereby so many Whites have accepted the death of their culture and the surrender of lands they have held for centuries is the product of a pathological culture, not pathological genes.
It still remains a great mystery why the great White race, once capable of great deeds and daring adventure from Cape Verde to Patagonia and from the Arctic Circle to New Zealand, is now more and more inclined to a domesticated life with no risks, always ready to meekly accept its own cultural and political eclipse as a moral imperative. Must it wait for the real interracial warfare in order to retrieve its ingroup identity?
Art in the Third Reich: 1933–1945
When writing about or discussing the plastic and figurative arts in Germany during the period stretching from 1933 to 1945, one must inevitably mention the cultural or pseudo-cultural works of art that highlighted the epoch of National Socialism. During that short and troubled period of time, art was also a reflection of modern European history, and, therefore, it must be examined, or, for that matter, conceptualized, within the larger geopolitical framework of Europe as a whole.
National Socialist culture, or the Nazi “(anti)culture”, has always been a sensitive subject, whose controversial nature is more apparent today than ever before in the ongoing media warfare between so-called anticommunists and antifascists.
If one accepts the conventional wisdom, widely accepted in all corners of the world, that National Socialism was a form of totalitarianism, one must then also raise the question as to whether there were any authentic cultural successes achieved during the Third Reich at all. Certain parallels can and should be drawn between artistic efforts in the U.S.S.R. and National Socialist Germany, in view of the fact that culture in both systems was dominated by a specific ideology. Does this therefore mean that there were no valuable works of art created in the U.S.S.R., or for that matter in National Socialist Germany? What both National Socialism and Communism had in common was the rejection of “art for art’s sake”, (l’art pour l’art) and the repudiation of middleclass aestheticism. Instead, both political systems favored a committed and normative approach to art, which was supposed to be a tool for the creation of the “new man”. On the other hand, from the thematic, aesthetic and stylistic point of view, the differences between art in Communism and art in National Socialism were immense.
After the Second World War, as the result of pressure from the Allies, Ger
many was forced to open its doors to abstract art (Jackson Pollock, Piet Mondrian, et al.), and, consequently Germany had to stifle the production of its traditional figurative art. Even German artists who were not implicated in the National Socialist regime, including those whom the National Socialist propaganda had labeled “degenerate artists” (entartete Künstler) came under the ban. A large number of paintings and other works of art executed during the Third Reich were either removed or destroyed. Several hundred sculptures were demolished or trashed during the Allied air bombardments. After the war, a considerable number of works of art were confiscated by the Americans, because of “their pornographic character.” In the spring of 1947, eight thousand, seven hundred and twenty-two (8,722) paintings and sculptures of German artists were transported to the United States. Of these, only a small number has hitherto been returned to the Federal Republic of Germany.
A short outline of art under National Socialism requires knowledge of the historical and political framework of that epoch. Who were those German artists? Were they sympathetic to the National Socialist regime? What did they do before the National Socialist seizure of power in 1933? What became of them after the fall of the Third Reich?
It is important to emphasize the fact that to be an artist in National Socialist Germany did not always imply self-enslavement to the ruling class or blind obedience to political decrees, nor did it necessarily entail membership in the National Socialist Party (N.S.D.A.P.). Yet to be able to have one’s artistic works accepted for public exhibition during the period between 1933 and 1945, presupposed at least tacit respect for the concept of beauty as defined by the National Socialist regime. A large number of German artists, who were by no means followers of the National Socialist regime, nevertheless well understood which type of works they could exhibit or display if they wished to remain within the public eye. As was the case with countless artists in every historical epoch and in all political systems from the dawn of time, many German artists were the simple, timorous types, the “flag wavers”, as it were, who understood that it was necessary to yield to the whims of the new regime if they did not wish to be left out of the spotlight completely.
Such a servile attitude is not a novel phenomenon in European cultural history. Being a good artist or a good writer does not always entail the artist’s possession of moral integrity, guaranteeing that the artist will always be found siding with the oppressed, or shouting at full breath for universal justice. Throughout European history, there were (and still are) excellent artists and thinkers who served (and still serve) criminal governments. A well-known Croatian sculptor, Antun Augustinčić, who was influenced in his youth by the French sculptor Auguste Rodin, made busts of the Croatian pro-fascist Ustashi leader, Ante Pavelić. After World War II, in the new communist Yugoslavia, Augustinčić did the same thing for the communist ruler Marshall Josip Broz Tito. To ponder the question as to the moral and political integrity of the sculptor Augustinčić is one thing; to try to define the subtlety of his artistic achievements is quite another.
Moreover, any appreciation of an artistic work created during the National Socialist epoch requires a precise knowledge of the mentality of the German people, a good knowledge of the Zeitgeist, as it influenced a specific work of art at the very moment when it was created. Ignoring the dominant ideas of the first half of the twentieth century cannot help us more accurately to comprehend the artistic range of a particular work of art. The famous French painter, Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825) served with devotion three widely different regimes: the French revolutionary Jacobins; Napoleonic imperialism; and, later, the reactionary monarchists of the French Restoration. David knew well how to adapt his skills to each new system (as a metaphorical and proverbial French demisolde!). However, David’s lack of political or moral integrity does not belittle his gift for the static or mobile composition, nor its key element such as strong and realistic brushwork. One might be tempted to mention hundreds of similar cases today, notably when gifted artists and writers adapt to “political correctness” without any scruples and always with the full approval of their “good conscience.”
The Political Apparatus in the Service of Culture
It is often forgotten that the major goal of National Socialist propaganda was not the rearrangement of the political field, but rather the promotion of culture. This was especially true in the area of figurative and plastic art. The four most influential people in the Third Reich, i.e., Joseph Goebbels, Albert Speer, Arthur Rosenberg, and the Führer, Adolf Hitler, were focused, over the 12 years of the National Socialist regime, on the concept of the new art, the new architecture, and the new painting. In his youth, at the beginning of the twentieth century, Hitler had painted hundreds of watercolors, some of which have, without doubt, a certain artistic value and seem to be held in high esteem among WWII artifacts dealers, especially in the United States.
Toward the end of his reign, in 1945, Hitler dreamed of opening the largest art gallery in the world, which he had long determined to house in the Austrian city of Linz.
Immense architectural and scientific efforts, such as the launching of the first model of the popular automobile named the Volkswagen, and the construction of vast and well-designed motorways, were to a large extent Hitler’s own ideas. In his answer to the editor in chief of the cultural newspaper Kunst dem Volke, on June 2, 1937, Hitler remarked: “The fact that I made paintings in order to survive, does not now mean that they now deserve to be exposed in the Haus der Deutschen Kunst (The House of the German Art).”
As a teenager, imbued by the art and culture of the period of Romanticism, Hitler was influenced by the watercolors of Rudolf von Alt and the oil paintings of Carl von Spitzweg. During the National Socialist regime many journals dealing with art were launched: Kunst der Nation, Kunst dem Volke, Die Kunst im Dritten Reich, etc. In 1937, the propaganda minister Goebbels inaugurated the “Chamber of Arts” (Kunstkammer), a cultural institution that, from 1935 to 1937, enrolled more than one hundred thousand members. During the period stretching from 1933 to 1945, thirty large art exhibitions, on average, were held each month. This was the case even during the period from 1940 to 1945, when Germany was subject to the regular air bombardments carried out by the Allies.
In 1937, the opening of the “Haus der Deutschen Kunst” took place in Munich. At that time, this was the most significant establishment of its kind in Europe. The first stone of this building — which was 175 meters long — was laid by Hitler himself. Approximately one thousand German artists exposed their works in it from 1937 to 1939.
The Archaic Post-Modernity
National Socialist dignitaries devoted much energy to the promotion of German sculptors and their works, and helped them, considerably, in the execution of massive basreliefs and in the erection of monumental stone and bronze sculptures. The political goal was obvious: to bring the German art as close as possible to the German people, so that any German citizen, regardless of his or her social standing could identify himself or herself with a specific artistic achievement.
It should, therefore, come as no surprise that the German art of that time witnessed a return to classicism. Models from Antiquity and the Renaissance were to some extent adapted to the needs of National Socialist Germany. Numerous German sculptors worked arduously on their projects while benefiting from the logistic and financial support of the political elite. Their sculptures resembled, either by form, or by composition, the works of Praxiteles or of Pheidias of ancient Greece, or those executed by Michelangelo during the Renaissance. The most prominent German sculptors of that time were Arno Breker, Josef Thorak, and Fritz Klimsch, who although enjoying the significant logistical resources of the National Socialist regime, were never members of the N.S.D.A.P.
Sculptures of naked women, such as “Flora” by Breker, “Girl” by Fehrle, or “Glance” by Klimsch, show excessively beautiful and geometrically pruned women who, sometimes, with their perfect bodies, with their narrow and lengthened ankle
s, with their well-rounded and well-proportioned breasts, tire the eye of the observer. In addition, the fact that many sculptures show naked males embracing naked females indicates that National Socialism was by no means a “conservative” or “reactionary” movement, and that Puritan and Anglo-Saxon prudishness was completely alien to it. It is difficult to deny the great talents of Breker or Klimsch, even if some critics justly estimate that their sculptures often show traits of solid manufacturing copies of classic artists.
As a young man, Breker lived in France where he was influenced by his future friend and sculptor, Aristide Maillol. After the war, many of Breker’s sculptures were destroyed by the American soldiers. In spite of his political troubles, Breker continued to work after the war making busts of his friends and protectors, (Salvador Dali, Hassan II, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, etc). It should be noted that Breker, in the wake of the Allied occupation of Germany, was requested by the Soviets to continue his artistic career in the Soviet Union — an offer that he refused. It goes without saying that it is possible to draw certain parallels between the gigantism of the plastic art in National Socialist Germany and that of the Soviet Union (the naked Prometheus vis-à-vis the muscular and shirtless hammer-holding proletarian!). Yet the differences are again glaring: in communist countries one can never find sculptures representing nude women and men — which confirms our thesis that Communism, although politically frightening, was primarily a prudish and conservative system.
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