Hitler the Philosopher

I
n spite of more than 70 years of unabated interest
in Nazism the story of Hitler as a philosopher
remains untold. Hitler had a dream to rule the
world, not only with the gun but also with the
mind. Astonishingly he saw himself as a 'philosopher
leader'. Philosophy was central to German culture,
regarded as a national achievement. Thinkers such as
Kant, Hegel and Nietzsche were as sacred to the
German people as Shakespeare and Dickens were to
the British or Thomas Jefferson and Mark Twain to
the Americans. Hitler's fervent desire to be the most
authentic of all Germans made these iconic figures
deeply alluring and his egotism extended to a fantasy
that he himself was a great thinker.
Hitler maintained his interest in philosophy sprang
from his time in Landsberg jail, where he was incarcer-
ated for nine months in spring 1924 after the failed
Beer Hall Putsch of the previous November. He
described this period of imprisonment as his 'univer-
sity paid for by the state' for 'the long days of enforced
idleness were ideal for reading and reflection'. During
this time he claimed to have read widely and devel-
oped a philosophy that guided the course of all his
later actions. In fact he usurped some of the greatest
minds in German culture to legitimise his macabre
project. Hitler also used his time in Landsberg to ham-
mer out a work that he believed would constitute his
masterpiece. Initially entitled Four and a Half Years (of
Struggle) Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice, this
was the work that would later become simply My
Struggle (Mein Kampf). In volume two, under the
rubric 'The National Socialist Movement', he pro-
claimed his own philosophy.

n reality Hitler had always been considered by his

I teachers to have singularly little talent, described as a
lazy student with no interest in work. Although much
doubt has been placed upon the proficiency of his

Hitler
reading. Hitler said he read 'everything he could get
hold of: 'Nietzsche, Houston Stewart Chamberlain ...
Marx...'. He also claimed to have immersed himself in
'the theoretical literature of Marxism', which, of
course, he disparaged.
Hitler idolised certain thinkers and some of these

The
had attracted his interest from an early age. He was
impressed by the German biblical scholar Paul de
Lagarde, by the British-born writer and philosopher,
Houston Stewart Chamberlain, the art historian and

Philosopher
philosopher Julius Langbehn and the philospher/histo-
rians Heinrich von Treitschke and Oswald Spengler. He
had borrowed copies of Spengler from the National
Socialist Institute in Munich between 1919 and 1921,

Führer
Yvonne Sherratt explores the ways in which
Adolf Hitler attempted to appropriate the ideas of
some of Germany's greatest thinkers during his
brief period of incarceration in 1924.
even before his internment in Landsberg. But his inter-
est in these thinkers is not especially surprising; they all
proffered an antisemitic, racist, nationalist or militaris-
tic perspective - no one would be surprised by Hitler's
interest in them. What was astonishing was Hitler's
identification with several of the great German philoso-
phers of the 18th and 19tlT centuries. As he whiled away
his long months in prison, he apparently imbibed the
ideas of the famous German Idealist philosopher
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), as well as Friedrich
Schiller ( 1759-1805), Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-

www.historytoday.com April 2013 I Historyíi)í/íii'

Previous page: Hitler in
Landsberg prison. Soon
after his release these
photographs were tal<en
by his official photogra-
pher, Heinrich Hoffmann.
Hitier rehearsed his
speeches in front of a non-
existent audience so he
could see from the photo-
graphs how he would
appear to the German
public. Hoffmann was
arrested at the end ofthe
war and his photographic
archive seized by the US
military. Eva Braun had
been his studio assistant
and was introduced to
Hitier by Hoffmann.

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 Hitler the Philosopher

I860), Richard Wagner (1813-83) and Friedrich

Nietzsche (1844-1900), among others. His fi-iend
August Kubizec later asserted that Hitler had digested
an impressive list of classics 'including Goethe, Schiller
... Schopenhauer and Nietzsche... '.

4i No doubt owing to a simmering inferiority com-

plex from the memory ofhis own academic failings
Hitler was initially rather resentful of the 'academic
type' and would berate Germany's 'rulers' who 'were
over educated men'. Nonetheless during his time in
Landsberg he stated: 'I had but one pleasure: my
books ... I read and studied much.' Hitler developed a
particular fascination for the Enlightenment thinker
Immanuel Kant, insisting 'Kant's complete refutation
ofthe teachings which were the heritage ofthe Middle
Ages, and ofthe dogmatic philosophy ofthe Church,
is the greatest ofthe services that he has rendered to
us'. This assertion was followed by others. 'Perhaps we
are ignorant of humanity's most precious spiritual
treasures ... In our parts of the world, the Jews would
have immediately eliminated ... Kant'.
The importance of reason was something Hitler
claimed Kant had inspired in him. In an electoral
campaign speech of March 1936 he stated:

There are many who say that reason is not the

decisive factor, but that other imponderables
must be considered. I believe that there can be
nothing of value which is not in the last resort
based on reason. I refuse to believe that in
statesmanship one should regard as right any
views which are not anchored in reason ...

Such proclamations are superficial and

amateurish but Hitler alleged great expert-
ise and felt well qualified to pontificate.
Just how deeply he read Kant from his cell
we can never know. As one associate,
Hermann Rauschning, remarked. Hitler
'has been a Bohemian all his life. He gets
up late. He can spend whole days lazing
and dozing. He hates to have to read with
concentration. He rarely reads a book
through; usually he only begins it.'
Another thinker Hitler greatly admired was the
philosopher-playwright Friedrich Schiller, who was
widely favoured by the leading Nazis as a German
nationalist and patriot. Hitler professed a love ofhis
philosophy, joking affectionately: 'Our Schiller found
nothing better to do than glorify a Swiss bowman!' -
referring to Schiller's most famous work, William Tell
(1804), which extolled Swiss nationalism. Before the
unification ofthe German states by 1871 Schiller had
been more popular than Goethe because his writings
encouraged German unity. As Hitler's friend Ernst
Hanfstaengl observed. Hitler 'prefers the dramatic rev-
olutionary Schiller to the Olympian and contempla-
tive Goethe'. Hitler confirmed his preference: 'Goethe's
house gives the impression of a dead thing. And one
understands that in the room where he died he should
have asked for light - always more light.' Whereas
'Schüler's house can still move one by the picture it
gives of the penury in which the poet lived.' Schiller

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Hitler admiring a bust of
Nietzsche, Aprin931.
became the pet genius of the Nazi generals, who
would give themselves nicknames from his plays. For
example, Hanfstaengl recalled;
Even Goering began to call me the 'Questenberg in the
camp', a phrase he had invented in 1923, which was a
reference to the character in Schiller's Wallenstein.
'The strong man is mightiest alone': Hitler used this
familiar quotation from Schiller's William Tell (Act I,
Scene III) as the title of a chapter in the second vol-
ume of Mein Kampfand it became his motto during
his later years as Führer. During the Second World
War he had a special encasing made over the Schiller
and Goethe monument in Weimar to protect it from
Allied bombing. But, besides Schiller and other high-
minded works. Hitler was known to possess 'in the
drawer of his bedside table ... literature of a less rep-
utable character', according to Rauschning.
In his prison cell Hitler laid the foundations of his
philosophy from the gleanings of other German
Idealists such as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
( 1770-1831 ) and Johann Gottlieb Fichte ( 1762-
1814). Hegel's historical view ofthe formation ofthe
state from ancient origins became a favourite theme
and would often appear, in garbled form, in Hitler's
orations, such as this extract from a speech at the
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Faculty of Military Science in November 1937:
For the states ofthe Ancient world were not ruined by their
cities... The Roman Empire did notfall on account ofthe
city of Rome, for without the city ofRome there never
would have been a Roman Empire. The most natural way
for the formation of great states - the way in which most
great states had arisen - was to begin with a crystallisation
point ofthe political and later the cultural life which then,
as the capital city, often gave its name to the state.
Stephen Tansey and Nigel Jackson have commented:
Hitler's views articulated in Mein Kampf, built in
many ways upon more orthodox conservative German
political theorists and philosophers. Hegel, for
instance, had stressed the importance of a strong state
... and the existence of a ... [destiny] in history which
justified war by superior states upon inferior ones.
The historian, Frank McDonough, has observed: 'It
is possible to detect Hegel's view ofthe state having
"supreme power over the individual" in Hitler's
writings and speeches.' Others have pointed out how
'the half educated Hitler was a mosaic of influences
... (including) the messianic complex of Fichte.'
Hitler's associate and fellow inmate at Landsberg,
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 Hitler the Philosopher

Dietrich Eckart, identified Fichte, the pessimistic
metaphysical thinker Arthur Schopenhauer and the
philosopher-poet Friedrich Nietzsche as the 'philo-
sophical triumvirate of National Socialism'. In 1933
the film director Leni Riefenstahl gave Hitler a
handsome eight-volume first edition of Fichte's col-
lected works published in 1848, bound in cream-
coloured vellum with gold-leaf tipped pages.
uring the course of his musings for Mein
D Kampf Hitler's admiration for Schopenhauer
was perhaps the most notable, for'Schopenhauer
glorified Will over Reason'. Hitler recalled that: 'I
carried Schopenhauer's works with me throughout
the whole of the First World War. From him I
learned a great deal'. On the topic of the purity of
the Germanic language, he referred to his 'beloved'
Schopenhauer: 'Only writers of genius can have the
right to modify the language. In the past generation,
I can think of practically nobody but Schopenhauer
who would have dared do such a thing.'
In an opulent restaurant in Berlin on May 16th,
1944 the Führer addressed his generals, asserting:
It is on Kant's theory of knowledge that Schopenhauer
built the edifice of his philosophy, and it is Schopenhauer
who annihilated the pragmatism of Hegel.
Hitler leaves a Weimar hotel
for a festival celebrating
Schiller's 17Sth birthday in
1934. Inset: Leni
Riefenstahl's inscription to
Hitler in a book from the
first edition set of Johann
Gottlieb Fichte's collected
works, 1848.
From the Archive
\ Germania: Hitler's
^ Dream Capital
J Albert Speer's plan
to transform Berlin into the
capital of a 1,000-year Reich
would have created a vast
monument to misanthropy,
as Roger Moorhouse
explains.
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However Hitler would eventually become irritated by
the contemplative side of philosophy, complaining:
W/iere would I get ifL listened to all his [Schopenhauer's]
transcendental talk? A nice ultimate wisdom that: To
reduce oneself to a minimum of desire and will. Once
will is gone all is gone. This life is War.
Schopenhauer was out. Another German philosopher
was in. But which one? Hitler's friend Ernst
Hanfstaengl heard him remark: 'Now it is the heroic
Weltanschauung which will illuminate the ideals of
Germany's future ...' 'What was this?' Hanfstaengl
questioned. 'This was not Schopenhauer, who had
been Hitler's philosophical god in the old ... days. No,
this was new. It was Nietzsche'. Hitler's admiration
moved camp. As he expressed it:
Schopenhauer's pessimism which springs partly, L think,
from his own line ofphilosophical thought and partly
from the subjective feeling and the experiences of his own
life, has been far surpassed by Nietzsche.
Hitler's speeches became littered with ideas hacked
from Nietzsche. Hitler aped the Nietzschean love of
the ancients, especially his veneration for the Greeks,
as here in Nuremberg in 1938:

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The art of Greece is not merely a formal reproduction of
the Greek mode of life, of the landscapes and inhabi-
tants of Greece; no, it is a proclamation of the essential
Greek spirit.

/'Combining Nietzsche's love of the Greeks with

V^Hegel's depiction of the ancient origins of the
western world became a favourite theme. Except that
Hitler used Darwinism to claim that the ancients were
biological ancestors of the Germans:

A cultural ideal stands before us which even today

thanks to its art and to our own origin which relates us
to it by our blood, still mediates to us a compelling pic-
ture of the fairest epochs of human development, and of
the most resplendent bearers of its culture.

Hitler copied Nietzsche in admiring the ancient Greek

ideals of strength and beauty and borrowed phrases
such as 'affirmation of life'. Speaking at the opening of
the second exhibition of German Art in Munich on
Jully 10th, 1938, he proclaimed:

The German people of this 20th century is the people of a

newly awakened affirmation of life, seized with admira-
tion for Strength and Beauty and therefore for that
which is healthy and vigorous. Strength and Beauty -
these are fanfares sounded by this new age.

Hitler went aU the way in his veneration of Nietzsche's

ideal and claimed that the Nazis were the modern ren-
aissance of ancient culture:

The gigantic works of the Third Reich are a token of its

cultural renaissance and shall one day belong to the
inalienable cultural heritage of the western world, just as
the great cultural achievements of this world in the past
belong to us today. (September, 1938)

The journalist William Shirer (1904-93) noted that,

am.
after leaving prison. Hitler 'often visited the Nietzsche
museum in Weimar and publicised his veneration for Hitler attending the Berlin
Opera for Wagner's
the philosopher by posing for photographs of himself
Lohengrin in August 1938
staring in rapture at the bust of the great man.' A decade and, right, meeting
after his release, in August 1934 on the 90th anniversary Winifred Wagner at the
of Nietzsche's birth. Hitler visited the Nietzsche opening of the Bayreuth
Archives in Weimar. A fi-iend recalled it thus: Festival the following year.

r
/ thought back only a few months earlier to a visit he
had paid during one of his election campaigns, while
travelling from Weimar to Berlin, to the Villa
Silberblick, where Nietzsche had died and where his
widowed sister, aged 86, still lived. The rest of us had
waited nearly an hour and a half Hitler had gone in
carrying his whip, but, to my astonishment, came
tripping out with a slim little turn of the century cane
dangling from his fingers: 'What a marvellous old lady]
he said to me. 'What vivacity and intelligence. A real
personality. Look, she has given me her brother's last
walking stick as a souvenir...

From that moment Nietzschean catchphrases

noticeably pepper his speeches: Wille zur Macht (the

HistoryToíírty I April 2013 www.historytoday.com


will to power), Herrenvolk (master race),
Sklavenmoral (slave morality) - the fight for the
heroic life; against formal dead weight education,
against Christian ethics of compassion. But many
scholars, including McDonough, have traced Hitler's
homage to Nietzsche to his time in Landsberg. The
philosopher's term 'Lords ofthe Earth' is in constant
use throughout Mein Kampf. As the historian James
Giblin puts it, Nietzsche 'predicted modern society
would result in the "death of God"... Overall what
Hitler latched onto in Nietzsche's writings were
[what he took to be] his fervent criticisms of demo-
cratic forms of government, his praise of violence
and war and his prediction ofthe coming "master
race" led by an all powerful "superman" ... who
would rule the world.'
From the Reichstag on December 11th,
1941, just days after the attack on Pearl
Harbor, Hitler made a speech drawing on
ideas he had gained in Landsberg.
Declaring war on the US he quoted the
mythic notion of'blood sacrifice', which
came directly from his reading of
Nietzsche. 'You, my deputies, are in the
best position to gauge the extent ofthe
blood sacrifice', he declared. In the same
speech Hitler justified an invasion of
Europe, using Hegel's historical idea of
'coming into being': 'In the whole histo-
ry of the coming into being', he would
proclaim, 'the German Reich ... will
wage the war forced upon them by the
USA. Thus it was that during a year of
musing in prison Hitler would find
ideas to deploy in later years to justify
war upon the world.
HanfstaengI later reflected on Hitler's 'savage
bowdlerization of Nietzsche', commenting: 'The guil-
lotine twist which Robespierre had given to the teach-
ings of Jean Jacques Rousseau was repeated by Hitler
and the Gestapo in their political simplification ofthe
contradictory theories of Nietzsche.'
A year or so before his internment in Landsberg
-iVHitler had met the family of his greatest hero
Richard Wagner, the 19th-century German composer
from Bayreuth. Dressed in his traditional Bavarian
outfit of lederhosen, thick woollen socks and a red and
blue checked shirt he arrived at Haus Wahnfried,
where in the music room and library he marvelled
over Wagner's former possessions. In a sacred whisper,
'as though he were viewing relics in a cathedral', he
articulated his reverence.
Hitler's admiration knew no bounds: 'Wagner was
a man ofthe renaissance;' 'Wagner was typically a
prince' and so on. He referred in public speeches to
'the genius of Richard Wagner' and among the great
men in history he always singled out Wagner. Beyond
music. Hitler's veneration ofthe composer in fact
became one of emulation. Hitler watched Tristan and
Isolde 30 to 40 times and used the stage setting of'the-
atre and pageantry' for the military displays ofthe
Third Reich. 'I came to see,' wrote Hanfstaengel
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Hitier the Philosopher
... a direct parallel between the construction of
[Wagner's operas] ... and that of his [Hitler's] speeches.
The whole interweaving of leitmotifs, of embellishments,
of counterpoint and musical contrasts and argument,
were exactly mirrored in the pattern of speeches, which
were symphonic in construction and ended in a great
climax, like the blare of Wagner's trombones.'
In Mein KampfHiÚer also described Wagner as one of
the intellectual precursors of National Socialism, for
not only his music but his antisemitism struck a
chord: 'To understand Nazism one must first know
Wagner', he wrote.
n September 1924 the warden of Landsberg prison
I made a report on Hitler to the Bavarian ministry of
justice. It couldn't have been more favourable. Adolf
Hitler had been 'at all times cooperative, mod-
est and courteous to everyone, particularly to
the officials ofthe institution', the report stat-
ed. 'There is no doubt he has become a much
more quiet, more mature and thoughtful indi-
vidual during his imprisonment than he was
before, and does not contemplate acting against
existing authority.' Hitler responded, 'When I
left Laiidsberg ... everyone wept (the warden and
i the other members of the prison staff) - but not
I! We'd won them all over to our cause.' So it was
that they released a jubilant Hitler. He had
arrived as a man of action and left, he fancied, as
the 'philosopher leader'.
As his friend HanfstaengI expressed it. Hitler
'was not so much a distiller as a bartender of
genius. He took all the ingredients the German
[tradition] offered him and mixed them through
his private alchemy into a cocktail they wanted to
drink'. But, for a man for whom every ingredient
of his life was fantasy, his professed admiration of
philosophy was no less significant than anything else
about him.
A German patriotic poster, Yvonne Sherratt is the author of Hitler's Philosophers newly
C.1870. published by Yale University Press.
Further Reading
M. Kuehn, Kant: A Biography (Cambridge University Press,
2001).
J. G. Fichte, Ä State Within a State'(1793), in The Jew in the
Modem World: A Documentary History, ed. P. Mendes-Flohr
and J. Reindharz (Oxford University Press, 1995).
S.R Renny The Heidelberg Myth: The Nazification and
Denazification of a German University (Harvard University
Press, 2002).
Frani< iVicDonough, Hitler and the Rise ofthe Nazi Party
(Pearson Education, 2003)
James Giblin, The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler (Clarion
Books, 2002).
S. Tansey and N. Jackson, Politics the Basics (Routledge,
2008).
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