The Use of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Philosophy by the German Nazi Party Research Question: How was the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche used to justify the rise of the Nazi Party? Philosophy Word count Historical Context Comment by Andrew Price: You need an introductory section where you explain what the research will be, its goals, and how you will build the case through evidence in the related literature. Friedrich Nietzsche was said to have had two deaths. One in 1898 when he suffered a stroke. One on August 25th, 1900. His first death was of his mind while the second was of his body (Peters 8). Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, born in 1844 in Saxony, was a German philosopher famous for …show more content…
He also believed in two different types of nihilism. Active nihilism and passive nihilism. Active nihilism is more destructive as an absolute denial of this world. Passive nihilism is the resignation to the world that is inhospitable to one’s beliefs (Nietzsche, The Will to Power 18). Nietzsche draws a line between pessimism and nihilism. He defines pessimism as “the world that does not have the value that we believed” (Reginstar 29). In other words, Nietzsche means that the world is worth less than we thought. Nietzsche says “the pessimist is convinced that things will take a turn for the worse whereas the nihilist loses his grip on what would be better or worse in the first place”(Reginstar 30). Nietzsche believed that one must come to their own self-realization of who they were without the help of a being transcending this life such as a god or a soul.(Nietzsche, The Will to Power 321) The reception of Nietzsche’s work has been complicated throughout history. This is attributed to his sister, Elizabeth. When Nietzsche physically and mentally collapsed, his sister gained complete editorial control of his work (Peters …show more content…
Hitler began actively rounding up Jews and created laws such as the Nuremberg Laws, which removed citizenship from German jews, in order to push the idea that Aryans were the superior race and deserved to be in power. (GCSE Bitesize). Hitler gloated that his perception of race, which was based upon Nietzsche’s supermen, was the true principle of the twentieth century. He believed that only people who fully believed in the power of race would be able to fight without being restricted by humanitarian inhibitions. This gave the Nazis the ability to ruthlessly and systematically attack the
As Hitler continued to spread these theories, many documents expressing Jewish conspiracy theories stating that they planned to take over the world emerged in the press. This portrayal of the Jews allowed Hitler to move towards ideas of the German population being the master race. Since Hitler emphasized that the Germans were above everyone else, he stated that the threat of outside groups, such as the Jews, would prevent them from reaching their superior status. After gaining support of his ideas from the German population and claiming his power, the Nazi Party passed Anti-Jewish policies from 1933 to 1939. These laws were intended to exclude Jews from accessing political and social communities in Germany.
Hitler saw life in a totally different way. To him and the other Nazis it was very black and white. Nazis believed that Germans were superior to Jews, so they simply decided to get rid of them. These people were insane. No one in their right mind would do this kind of thing, and I can’t come up with reasons why Hitler would do such things.
Culture in the Third Reich National Socialism typified much more than a political movement that has been portrayed since the end of WWII. The Nazi leaders that came to power in January 1933 seeked the political authority to alter or improve the Versailles Treaty, and also wanted to reclaim and expand upon the land they had lost after the loss in World War I. They also found it necessary to manipulate the cultural landscape. They sought to return the country to its more traditional “Germanic” and “Nordic” values, to toll the Jewish, foreign, and degenerate influences that destroyed the German culture.
About eleven million people died in the Holocaust (“We’re Here to Inspire”). Heinrich Himmler was Adolf Hitler's right-hand man that organized many deaths during the Holocaust period. He was a notorious leader that murdered millions. Heinrich Himmler was born on October 7th, 1900. While growing up he was not a healthy child.
He served at the centre of the founding of Nazism, the start of World War II, and the Holocaust. Born on April 20th in 1889, in then, Austria-Hungary, it comes at no surprise that Adolf Hitler would hold high a nationalistic identity towards Germany. Due to a clause in the Treaty of Versailles, Austria and Germany were forbidden from unifying, an issue that would only help Hitler rise to power. The end of world War one left the people of Germany angered, all of the blame of the war was placed on Germany. In 1919, the Treaty of Versailles, imposed punitive territorial, military, and economic provisions on the defeated Germany.
Hitler also changed the religious culture in many parts of Europe. One of Hitler’s main goals while in office was to eliminate the jewish and any other non-aryan people. In the process, Hitler made The Nuremberg Laws. Adolf Hitler, “implemented these laws to ostracize, discriminate and expel Jews from German society” (3) Diverse culture was rejected. Physically, the people of Germany, mostly jews, were affected because of Hitler trying to make the population one master race.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher, essayist, and cultural critic. Before he started to been philosophize, he started his vocation as a classical philologist. Friedrich Nietzsche was born on 15 October 1844 and passed away on 25 August 1990 at age 55. Nietzsche 's body of work is related extensively on art, philology, history, religion, tragedy, culture and also science.
Hitler and some German socialists believed in the purity of Germans’ ethnicity; they saw Jews and Gypsies as the most dangerous threat to their race purity. When Hitler came to power, he started stripping Jews from their jobs and properties. After that, he started gathering them from all Europe, departed them to the Polish ghettoes, and gassing and killing them. By the end of WWII, he killed more than 6 million Jews. However, there were some survivors who witnessed the whole catastrophic story of the Holocaust.
Hitler as Chancellor and Dehumanization of Jews The year 1933 marked the beginning of the systematic dehumanization of Germany’s Jewish people. This was the year Hitler was elected as Chancellor. Germany was already a militaristic country, and anti-Semitism was nothing new. Hitler considered himself a profound thinker who had found the solution to the world’s problems, and that solution was his contribution to the Nazi party- the Nazi ideology.
This idea is meant to answer the question of existence by basing its answer on extreme pessimism in a meaningless universe. According to Magnus (2014), Nietzche believed that in the age he lived, there was no awareness that religious and philosophical absolutes had dissolved in the emergence of the 19th century positivism. Nietzche thought that metaphysical and theological foundations and sanctions for traditional morality had collapsed, and only a pervasive sense of purposelessness and meaninglessness would remain. In questioning existence, nihilism (existential) stands with the idea that since the world is without purpose or meaning, existence itself- all action, suffering, and feeling – is ultimately senseless and empty (Pratt, 2017). Further, Nietzche thought that with the emergence of nationalism in the wake of triumph of meaninglessness - nihilism, the nation-state would be invested with transcendent value and
He was grounded on the idea that life was simply not worth living and it was better for human beings to just not exist at all. Schopenhauer believed that life was simply a form of punishment and was full of suffering from beginning to end. However, his one optimistic argument, was that if individuals accepted their lives were just meant to be punishment they will be able to cope better with their lives. Schopenhauer’s argument derives from historical evidence that continues in the negative side of things. He explains that “history shows us the life of nations and finds nothing to narrate but wars and tumults; the peaceful years appear only as occasional brief pauses and interludes,” (Schopenhauer 42).
Nazism is the political principles and practices of the German Nazi Party. Founded on February 24th, 1920 in Munich, Germany. The founders are Anton Drexler, a locksmith, and Dietrich Eckart, a poet and journalist. Anton Drexler was most commonly known for being a German locksmith born on June 13th ,1884 in Munich, Germany and died on February 24th, 1942. Drexler believed that his financial future lay in Berlin.
The reason why Nietzsche has been considered the forefather of Nazism and why many of the Nazi leaders praised him was from his sister Elizabeth Nietzsche. Elizabeth after her brother’s death sought to popularize her brother as a German nationalist and a war leader while Nietzsche was not a proponent of fascism. Elizabeth quoted her brother by saying “if there was a friend of war, who loved warriors and those who struggle, and placed his highest hopes on them, it was Friedrich Nietzsche” (Whyte 175). Elizabeth published the second edition of The Will To Power in 1906 with extending it to having 1067 aphorisms selecting only a fraction of the notes and his ideas that were revised to associate with the ideology of the Nazi’s (Whyte 180). These
In 1898 and 1899 Nietzsche suffered at least two strokes. This partially paralyzed him, leaving him unable to speak or walk. He suffered from clinical hemiparesis/hemiplegia on the left side of his body by 1899. After contracting pneumonia in mid-August 1900, he had another stroke during the night of 24th to the 25th August and died at about noon on 25 August. His sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche compiled The Will to Power from Nietzsche's unpublished notebooks and published it after his death.
He did this by building thousands of concentration camps and sending millions of people there. For him, Jews were the primary enemy of the Nazis and their lives was worthless. The “Aryan race” was threatened by the others. Hitler believed that having a small territory would suppress the birth rate of the Germans as well. In order for them to be the best, they conquered other countries and expanded their territory.