The darker side of Nietzsche’s ideas was incorporated into the Nazi belief system. Part of the link was straightforward: some things Nietzsche said were pure Nazi doctrine. His comments that ‘The extinction of many types of people is just as desirable as any form of reproduction’ and that ‘the tendency must be towards the rendering extinct of the wretched, the deformed, the degenerate’ could come from any work on racial hygiene. Nietzsche’s central contribution was not these explicitly Social Darwinist views, but his rejection of the Judeo-Christian morality of compassion for the weak. Self-creation required hardness towards oneself: a strong will imposing coherence on conflicting impulses. It also requires hardness on others. Conflicts between the self-creative projects of different people made inevitable the attempt to dominate others. The whole of life was a struggle in which victory went to the brave and to the strong-willed. Noble human qualities, linked with the will to power, were brought out in combat but atrophied in peace. Compassion was weakness, cowardice and self-deception. The Judeo-Christian emphasis on it was poison. In drawing these consequences from his beliefs about the death of God and from Social Darwinism, Nietzsche provided the part of the Nazi belief system which ‘justified’ the cruel steps they took to implement their other beliefs.
The darker side of Nietzsche’s ideas was incorporated into the Nazi belief system. Part of the link was straightforward: some things Nietzsche said were pure Nazi doctrine. His comments that ‘The extinction of many types of people is just as desirable as any form of reproduction’ and that ‘the tendency must be towards the rendering extinct of the wretched, the deformed, the degenerate’ could come from any work on racial hygiene. Nietzsche’s central contribution was not these explicitly Social Darwinist views, but his rejection of the Judeo-Christian morality of compassion for the weak. Self-creation required hardness towards oneself: a strong will imposing coherence on conflicting impulses. It also requires hardness on others. Conflicts between the self-creative projects of different people made inevitable the attempt to dominate others. The whole of life was a struggle in which victory went to the brave and to the strong-willed. Noble human qualities, linked with the will to power, were brought out in combat but atrophied in peace. Compassion was weakness, cowardice and self-deception. The Judeo-Christian emphasis on it was poison. In drawing these consequences from his beliefs about the death of God and from Social Darwinism, Nietzsche provided the part of the Nazi belief system which ‘justified’ the cruel steps they took to implement their other beliefs.
