Understanding Hitler’s Worldview (Part II)

“The risk in our increasingly polarized and tribally divided times is that these societies —ours among them—are thrashing around in a sea of hopeless liquid modernity and risk coming apart in a storm of violence.”

Introduction

In writing The Law of Blood: Thinking and Acting as a Nazi, Chapoutot was trying to communicate through the use of the words of the Nazis and their philosophers that the ideas of the Nazis were part of an ideological framework with deep intellectual roots that had spread across the continent of Europe. As a result of a confluence of political, military and economic circumstances in 1930’s Germany, these ideas were adopted and implemented by the Nazis and sent into battle in the war between races. Their holistic worldview—with German society a biological organism rooted in nature, morals defined by blood feeling, and survival under peril—required ejecting the parasitic parts of German society that debilitated the German organism. The disabled were cut away like a diseased organ, and the Jews were flushed away like bacteria. The race-war was fought to preserve the German race, with the Eastern-Front campaign attempting to roll back both the temporal frontiers of national borders that were strangling the German national body, and to roll back the frontiers of time themselves, which threatened to bury the German race under history’s sands. The goal of the thousand-year Reich was taken seriously, took on a metaphysical meaning, and promised the German utopia across a sea of blood.

As is clear from this brief summary, this is a horrifying book, all the more so for the extensive use of the words of the Nazis and the thinkers who provided the intellectual foundations to their evil ideology.

As is clear from this brief summary, this is a horrifying book—all the more so for the extensive use of the words of the Nazis and the thinkers who provided the intellectual foundations to their evil ideology. The temptation when faced by something as monstrous as the crimes of the Nazis is to immunize ourselves from the horror by dehumanizing the perpetrators of such atrocities. This is understandable: it is not a comforting notion that we share a human nature with those who supported and fought for the ideas presented in this book. This shared humanity calls for serious reflection on our roles in our times: how should we comport ourselves so that we prevent ourselves from traveling our own dark roads towards terror and ultimate perdition? I would argue that the new investment in the politics of blood is a potentially disastrous course to take.

The Return to the Politics of Blood

Chapoutot writes that, “[t]o many at the time, the NSDAP had the tremendous merit of clearing a straight path through a confusing world, with tangible and easily comprehensible guideposts.” History is a rhyme rather than a repetition. We are not going to see a repeat of those times: the “literally Hitler” crowd and those who compare their political opponents to Nazis are not thinking clearly. More importantly, they do a rhetorical grave-dance on those killed by the Nazi regime. The events in Europe of the mid-twentieth century happened because of a specific confluence of circumstances in a particular place interacting with a set of ideas whose roots were spread across the continent. These ideas were taken to the extent they were because they were enabled by the circumstances of the time.