Nietzsche and the Nazis: A Personal View by Stephen Hicks, Ph.D.
Published: 2006
Format: DVD
Written and Narrated by Stephen Hicks, Ph.D.
Directed and Edited by Christopher Vaughan and John Barrett
Research and Project Management by Virginia Murr
Sound and Music by John Barrett and John Parson
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) is famous for his statement that “God is dead” and his provocative account of Master and Slave moralities—and for the fact that Adolf Hitler and the Nazis claimed that Nietzsche was one of their great inspirations. Were the Nazis right to do so—or did they misappropriate Nietzsche’s philosophy?
In this two hour and forty-five minute documentary containing over 400 images, Professor Stephen Hicks asks and answers the following questions:
* What were the key elements of Hitler and the National Socialists’ political philosophy?
* How did the Nazis come to power in a nation as educated and civilized as Germany?
* What was Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy—the philosophy of “Live dangerously” and “That which does not kill us makes us stronger”?
* And to what extent did Nietzsche’s philosophy provide a foundation for the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis?
Dr. Stephen Hicks is Professor of Philosophy at Rockford College, Illinois, and a member of the Friedrich Nietzsche Society and the North American Nietzsche Society. He has been a visiting professor at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. and a visiting scholar at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center in Bowling Green, Ohio. He is also the author of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault (Scholargy, 2004), The Art of Reasoning: Readings for Logical Analysis (W. W. Norton & Co., 1998), and articles in academic journals such as The Review of Metaphysics and other publications such as The Wall Street Journal.
Nietzsche and the Nazis is available from Amazon or directly from Ockham’s Razor.
Ockham's Razor 
Although Walter Kaufmann is chronologically dated, I think some attention to his work on Nietzsche is warranted. One finding is that some of his remarks are part of his notebook, posthumously published as The Will to Power. In his notes, N experiments with ideas, and does not necessarily intend them for publication. This may be most true about some of his deprecatory remarks about (19th century) liberalism, and glorification of war. Also, N advocates sublimation of impulses and argues that strong impulses are necessary if they are to be sublimated. There is a succinct observation to this point in Twilight of Idols. Ironically, N has positive things to say about German emphasis on commanding and obeying, but in the overall context of his work, these are necessary steps for the creation of a higher type. And true, N expresses contempt here and in Beyond Good and Evil for English utilitarianism and emphasis on reciprocity of behavior. (German philosophy was superior, if flawed.) What N praises in Antichrist are the “noble” man’s spontaneous acts of generosity to those less fortunate: actions which are “almost never” motivated by pity but by an overflowing of passion; they are fundamentally unilateral. Kaufmann has explained that N is not a Darwinian, but a follower of Lamarck, who believed that acquired traits can be inherited: The Nazis opposed Lamarck as “Bolshevist” since such acquisition can be environmental, and preferred the Darwinian eugenics of the Americans Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard. ( It seems that N does approach eugenics in his statements on the reliance of drugs to survive, but it almost looks as if he is advocating suicide.) You make the point that N does not offer a clear picture of the social order he prefers, but this only reinforces the position he took when he described himself as “the last antipolitical German” in Ecce Homo. Some decades ago, the compiler of a collection of writings of philosophy in the 19th century summarized N as an “authoritarian who opposed the cult of statism.” This better than Kaufmann crystallizes N’s position.
No scholar would deny that N has ideas and strikes poses that anticipate the Nazi’s, but it is a harder proposition to include him in a juxtaposition of N, Nazis, and (libertarian) capitalism. It was Milton Friedman who himself admitted that capitalism rewards consumers, but can penalize producers. People can lose their jobs, and in the late 20th century CEO’s threw people out of work on the basis of an “enforced” free trade model deliberately designed to line their pockets. That is just a rather recent example. Simple libertarian cliches don’t work for producers and constitute on of the problems of capitalism, and its attempted alignment with democracy. Another issue pertaining dramatically to the 21st century was also articulated by Friedman some years back–to wit, you cannot have open borders and a welfare state at the same time.
All in all, your work is thought-provoking in the truest sense, and after all these years, I fell off my bed of intellectual slumber.