In Mein Kampf Adolf Hitler names three figures in German history that he saw as being inspirational historical figures:
To these belong also the great fighters of this world, who, though not understood at present, nonetheless have carried out the fight for their ideas and ideals. They are those who some day will stand close to the heart of the people. To these belong not only the great statesmen but also the great reformers. Alongside Frederick the Great stands also Martin Luther as well as Richard Wagner.
Zu ihnen aber sind zu rechnen die großen Kämpfer auf dieser Welt, die, von der Gegenwart nicht verstanden, dennoch den Streit um ihre Idee und Ideale durchzufechten bereit sind. Sie sind diejenigen, die einst am meisten dem Herzen des Volkes nahestehen werden . . . Hierzu gehören aber nicht nur die wirklich großen Staatsmänner, sondern auch alle sonstigen großen Reformatoren. Neben Friedrich dem Großen stehen hier Martin Luther sowie Richard Wagner.
Mein Kampf, p.232. My translation and emphasis. Zentralverlag der NSDAP, Verlag Franz Eher Nachf., G.m.b.H.; Munich, 1943
The three key figures named are: Friedrich the Great, Martin Luther and Richard Wagner. Many writers from an arts background like to start with an implied central premise that world history is conditioned in toto by the thoughts of the Great Man whose ideas shape history. By claiming that the thoughts of poets and philosophers are the central driving force shaping history, this helps to give a self-aggrandising view of the lofty importance of the arts.
While there is a great danger of merely encouraging those who like to read history from such a Romantic perspective, I thought it might still be interesting to look at these three historical figures named in Mein Kampf.
Frederick the Great
The most iconic portrait of the Prussian king would probably be this painting of Frederick II playing the flute accompanied by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach at the harpsichord in Palace Sanssouci:
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| Frederich the Great playing the flute by Adolph Menzel, 1852 |
This is the sort of music they might have been playing:
When Frederick II met Johann Sebastian Bach, he showed him an instrumental novelty—the piano. Sebastian Bach was given a theme, called the Thema Regium, which he set out to improvise on:
Bach later wrote out the improvisation as das musikalische Opfer (The Musical Offering).
Frederich is remembered as a patron of the arts and enlightened monarch. As a statesman he aspired to be a philosopher king in the manner of Marcus Aurelius. He enjoyed an at times close, yet complex and often stormy friendship with Voltaire. Goethe was to write of Frederick:
Well we had not much to say in favour of the constitution of the Reich; we admitted that it consisted entirely of lawful misuses, but it rose therefore the higher over the present French constitution which is operating in a maze of unlawful misuses, whose government displays its energies in the wrong places and therefore has to face the challenge that a thorough change in the state of affairs is widely prophesied. In contrast when we looked towards the north, from there shone Frederick, the Pole Star, around whom Germany, Europe, even the world seemed to turn
His more enlightened attitudes played a role in substantially progressing the cause of Jewish emancipation in Europe in his own time, with Prussia later becoming one of the first European state to grant Jewish emancipation in 1812. The United Kingdom only granted Jews emancipation in 1858. As such, you never read polemics trying to villainize Frederick as history's ideological proto-Nazi architect of Hitler's “Final Solution”. It seems that his mention by Hitler in Mein Kampf has done little to harm his reputation. There was even a 1942 biopic film made entitled The Great King, portraying Hitler as Frederick the Great's successor. It was a comparison in which inspired Hitler was so enamoured that and he sent a print of the film to Mussolini (Stargardt The German War).
Frederick the Great was himself a composer and a poet, who enjoyed a lifelong friendship with Voltaire. Frederick would be the perfect figure for those who like to indulge in the Great Man view of history to single out as the decisive poet and philosopher who caused the rise of Hitler.
Richard Wagner
Although countless secondary literature cites das Judentum in der Musik as an anti-Semitic document, when judged within the social norms of its era, it is actually a liberal document in which Wagner advocated either assimilation or Zionism—just like Wagnerian Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism.
In the 1869 version there is a postscript in which Wagner pleads for his essay not be understood as “Medieval Jew-hatred” (“mittelalterliche Judenhaß”), of the sort that would be “shameful” (schmachvoll) in the modern age.
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| mittelalterlichen Judenhaß Medieval Jew-hatred |
Wagner strongly denounces any interpretation of his writing as being any such a thing, for being an absurd distortion, and gross misrepresentation of his views. These unequivocal pleas have gone unheeded. He ends the 1869 post-script to the essay with these words:
If, by comparison, this [Jewish] element is assimilated [assimiliert] in this manner, so that together in community [gemeinschaftlich] with us, it helps to mature the development of a loftier humane [menschlichen] establishment, the most candid disclosure of the difficulties of assimilation [Assimilation] is surely more desirable rather than its concealment.
Soll dagegen dieses Element uns in der Weise assimiliert werden, daß es mit uns gemeinschaftlich der höheren Ausbildung unsrer edleren menschlichen Anlagen zureife, so ist es ersichtlich, daß nicht die Verdeckung der Schwierigkeiten dieser Assimilation, sondern nur die offenste Aufdeckung derselben hierzu förderlich sein kann.
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| The word assimilation from an original 1869 printing of das Judentum in der Musik |
In the same essay, Wagner supported Zionism when he conceded the need for the Jews to have their own homeland in the form of a Jerusalemic realm (jerusalemischen Reiches):
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| "jerusalemischen Reiches" The words "Jerusalemic realm" from the original 1869 printing |
Although it would be take a most peculiar Nazi to advocate assimilation and Zionism, this essay is cited countless times as allegedly smoking gun evidence that Wagner advocated genocide through establishment of extermination camps for the “redemption” of Jews. This is despite the fact that a sentence or so before he mentions the final redemption he states unequivocally that the redemption from the historical alienation of the Jews is one that would make Jews and gentiles “united and without difference” (“einig und ununterschieden”):
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| "thus will we be united and without difference!" |
Almost never is a primary bibliographic citation given beyond a few words quoted out of context, and contentious claims generally comes down to the interpretation of just a single word: Untergang. Wagner often uses this word to mean αποκαλυψις (apocalypse), a revelation or supreme fulfilment. There is no reason to think that Wagner's use of this word any more denotes a call for genocide than does its use in Jewish theology in denoting the apocalyptic coming of the Jewish Messiah. The number of publications that cite Wagner's use of one word in this distorted manner may run into the dozens, if not hundreds. Entire books are written about Wagner based on this assumption, despite Wagner's pleas not to read "shameful Medieval Jew-hatred" into his essay.
For a more detailed discussion on das Judentum in der Musik please see the following older posts:
2. An In-depth Analysis of the Controversies Surrounding the Final Paragraph
3. Saul Friedländer on the final paragraph
3. Saul Friedländer on the final paragraph
I have come up with a rough list of principle authors who follow this Nazified line based on the interpretation of just one word taken completely out of context:
Gutman
Rose
Weiner
Katz
Stein
Millington
Nicholson
Kater
With the exception of Viereck, who late in life strongly took back much of his 1940s wartime propagandist polemic, none of these authors are historians who show any awareness about the Dritte Reich and its immense complexities. They generally assume that reading nineteenth opera libretti substitutes perfectly for academic study of the history of the Dritte Reich.
Between them they have written over a dozen books that try in some way or another to concoct a straight causal lineage running directly from Wagner to Hitler and Wagner, often to the point of suggesting that Wagner single handedly caused WWII and the Holocaust. After reading these authors you would think that Wagner was the ideologue par excellence of the German historical Sonderweg leading to National Socialism. You would also probably think that the entire National Socialist apparatus functioned entirely around the writings of a nineteenth century opera composer. The contrast with the fate of Frederick the Great could not be more pronounced—yet both were mentioned in the same breath by Hitler in Mein Kampf.
But quantity is hardly a substitute for quality. For none of these authors are cited (other than to dismiss them) by modern historians. There is an equally voluminous pop literature on Nazi satanism and Nazi UFOs that is not cited by genuine historians either.
Nor during the years of the Dritte Reich were any films producing extolling Hitler as the Opera-Führer on a mission to "transform the world into a Wagnerian drama". If such a film had been made and a print sent off as a gift to Mussolini, one can only imagine the Duce barely able to contain his uproarious laughter at anything so ridiculous.
But quantity is hardly a substitute for quality. For none of these authors are cited (other than to dismiss them) by modern historians. There is an equally voluminous pop literature on Nazi satanism and Nazi UFOs that is not cited by genuine historians either.
Nor during the years of the Dritte Reich were any films producing extolling Hitler as the Opera-Führer on a mission to "transform the world into a Wagnerian drama". If such a film had been made and a print sent off as a gift to Mussolini, one can only imagine the Duce barely able to contain his uproarious laughter at anything so ridiculous.
One argument that has often been presented is that just because Wagner's art has been misused for evil ends, it does not necessarily make him evil. This has fallen on deaf ears. This is in stark contrast to the final figure mentioned by Hitler in Mein Kampf: Martin Luther.
Martin Luther
As the father of the Reformation, Luther scarcely needs an introduction. From a musical point of view, Luther was an admirer of the great Josquin de Prez about whom he famously said that:
Josquin is master of the notes, which are made to express that which he wills, whereas other composers must do as the notes dictate.
Josquin ist Meister der Noten, die das ausdrücken müssen, was er befiehlt, während andere Komponisten das tun müssen, was die Noten vorschreiben.
Luther's high praise of Josquin has tended to encourage the view that Josquin overshadowed all of his contemporaries. This period of music is really only just being fully rediscovered, and it will be some time before we can judge whether Luther's beloved Josquin is the Telemann or the Bach of his age.
In terms of Luther's contribution to the history of anti-Semitism, his writings on the subject are very explicit and unambiguous. The text to his essay The Jews and their Lies can be found here.
Here are some choice quotes from it:
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| Von den Jüden und iren Lügen — The Jews and their Lies by Dr Martin Luther |
Here are some choice quotes from it:
They have failed to learn any lesson from the terrible distress that has been theirs for over fourteen hundred years in exile. Nor can they obtain any end or definite terminus of this, as they suppose, by means of the vehement cries and laments to God.
Therefore, dear Christian, be on your guard against such damnable people whom God has permitted to sink into such profound abominations and lies, for all they do and say must be sheer lying, blasphemy, and malice, however fine it may look.
Therefore be on your guard against the Jews, knowing that wherever they have their synagogues, nothing is found but a den of devils in-which sheer self-glory, conceit, lies, blasphemy, and defaming of God and men are practiced most maliciously. . .
Therefore, wherever you see a genuine Jew, you may with a good conscience cross yourself and bluntly say: “There goes a devil incarnate”.
From their youth they have imbibed such venomous hatred against the Goyim from their parents and their rabbis, and they still continuously drink it. As Psalm 109:18 declares, it has penetrated flesh and blood, marrow and bone, and has become part and parcel of their nature and their life. And as little as they can change flesh and blood, marrow and bone, so little can they change such pride and envy. They must remain thus and perish, unless God performs extraordinarily great miracles.
Why, their Talmud and their rabbis record that it is no sin for a Jew to kill a Gentile, but it is only a sin for him to kill a brother Israelite. Nor is it a sin for a Jew to break his oath to a Gentile. Likewise, they say that it is rendering God a service to steal or rob from a Goy, as they in fact do through their usury. For since they believe that they are the noble blood and the circumcised saints and we the accursed Goyim, they cannot treat us too harshly or commit sin against us, for they are the lords of the world and we are their servants, yes, their cattle.
They are steeped in greed, in usury, they steal and murder where they can and ever teach their children to do likewise.
Someone may think that I am saying too much. I am not saying too much, but too little - for I see their writings. They curse us Goyim. In their synagogues and in their prayers they wish us every misfortune. They rob us of our money and goods through their usury, and they play on us every wicked trick they can. . . . No pagan ever acted thus; in fact, no one acts thus except the devil himself, or whomever he possesses, as he has possessed the Jews.
We also know that God is so gracious by nature that he forgives man his sin in every hour in which man sincerely repents and is sorry for it . . . But there is no remission of sin for these Jews, no prophet to console them with the assurance of such forgiveness, no definite time limit for their punishment, but only interminable wrath and disfavour, devoid of any mercy.
Accordingly, it must and dare not be considered a trifling matter but a most serious one to seek counsel against this and to save our souls from the Jews, that is, from the devil and from eternal death. My advice, as I said earlier, is:
First, that their synagogues be burned down, and that all who are able toss in sulphur and pitch; it would be good if someone could also throw in some hellfire.
Second, that you likewise will shatter and destroy their homes, because they create the same misery there as they do in their schools. For that they should made do under a roof or stable like the Gypsies...
Third, that they be forbidden on pain of death to praise God, to give thanks, to pray, and to teach publicly among us and in our country. They may do this in their own country or wherever they can without our being obliged to hear it or know it.
Fourth, that they be forbidden to utter the name of God within our hearing. For we cannot with a good conscience listen to this or tolerate it, because their blasphemous and accursed mouth and heart call God's Son "Hebel Vorik," and thus also call his Father that. . . . He who hears this name from a Jew must inform the authorities, or else throw sow dung at him when he sees him and chase him away.
The whole thing goes on and on relentlessly. There is no possibility of any ambiguity. There is no need to read deeply in between the lines, or try to twist figurative language so that it means the opposite of what it is actually saying. As for Luther's prophetic instruction to burn the synagogues, the Nazis did just that, on Luther's birthday no less:
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| Kristallnacht occurred on the eve of Martin Luther's birthday so that at daybreak the world was greeted with the sight of burning synagogues thus fulfilling Luther's prophecy that "their synagogues be burned down, and that all who are able toss in sulphur and pitch; it would be good if someone could also throw in some hellfire" |
If you read Wagner's das Judentum in der Musik after Luther, it almosts reads like an extremely liberal plea for moderation, tolerance and patience with the Jews with a view to achieving the long term goal of either assimilation or Zionism. Nor, unlike Wagner, did Luther surround himself with a whole host of Jewish friends and associates with whom he enjoyed an excellent relationship.
Nor is there much ambiguity in the New Testament itself:
Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie; behold, I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee.
—Revelation 3:9
The funny thing is that the next song we always hear is that tired old ditty about how because the Bible has been misused by evil people to perpetrate evil deeds, it doesn't mean that the Bible itself is evil.
I beg your pardon? So why does it always follow that just because Wagner was misused for evil propaganda purposes that it makes Wagner guilty of single handedly causing WWII, and the Holocaust with every work he wrote being perversely twisted into an incitement to racial hatred and genocide, especially where he is saying the diametrical opposite? I think there is a huge amount of hypocrisy going on here. Where are the libraries full of books aggressively demonising Luther as the Prophet of the Holocaust?
I made a concerted effort to find all the books I could find accusing Luther of being the single handed Prophet, of whom Hitler was the Disciple. Every book that has attempted to locate the origins of National Socialism in German culture has strongly implicated Luther. Included amongst these are well known books by William Shirer, as well as Daniel Goldhagen. Despite this, I could hardly find anything that aggressively demonises Luther, let alone a dozen titles pointing the finger of blame at him. This is despite the fact that as one of the major religious figures of last thousand years, Luther is infinitely better described as a Prophet than Wagner ever could be:
On the 10th of November, 1938, on Luther's birthday, the synagogues in Germany will burn. The German people will finally break the might of the Jews in the economic front of a new Germany, and thereby the God-blessed fight of the Führer to free our people will be crowned victorious. In this hour, that man's voice must be listened to, who once began as the German prophet of the 16th century, but forced by experience and reality to become the greatest anti-Semite of his time — the great cautioner of his people against the Jews.
The Protestant-Lutheran regional Bishop Martin Sasse of Eisenach in the Foreword to his essay Martin Luther and the Jews — Away with them!, Freiburg, 1938
The best I could do for a book that implicated Luther as Hitler's Prophet was this one:
Martin Luther: Hitler's Spiritual Ancestor
Peter F. Wiener
Publisher: American Atheist Press; 2 edition (September 1999)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1578849543
ISBN-13: 978-1578849543
http://www.amazon.com/Martin-Luther-Hitlers-Spiritual-Ancestor/dp/1578849543
However, there are a not a dozen books trying to wringe a hidden programme for Jewish extermination out of every little word ever uttered by Luther, the alleged demonic Prophet of Nazism. Yet comparing the tone of The Jews and their Lies with Judaism in Music, there should be at least a thousand more books accusing Luther of being the Prophet of the Holocaust than Wagner. Conspicuously, there are absolutely no books written by outraged Jewish scholars taking to Luther and the New Testament with the wrath of Yahweh, so as to perpetuate the memory of the Shoah.
I also found this book about the complicity of the Church in Germany with the Holocaust:
Betrayal
Robert P. Ericksen and Susannah Heschel
Publisher: Augsburg Fortress Publishers (January 5, 1999)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0800629310
ISBN-13: 978-0800629311
http://www.amazon.com/Betrayal-Robert-P-Ericksen/dp/0800629310
I took a look at it, and it was written by a Christian theologian and a religious Jew who take pains to avoid starting up conflict between the two religions, and the result is a rather apologist book that constantly downplays any suggestion of church complicity. It hardly points a finger of blame at the figure of Martin Luther as the Satanic Prophet of the Holocaust. Right from word go they are in damage control mode:
After sloughing off his early religious training, [Hitler] was not a Christian, but an advocate of his own worldview of German racial destiny.
They provide no evidence to prove that Hitler did not regard himself as a Christian. Their unwritten assumption seems to be that because he killed people and this is “un-Christian”, he can't have been a Christian! Hitler told one of his generals, Gerhard Engel, that: “I am now, as before, a Catholic and will always remain so”.
In a speech given in Berlin on 24 Oct. 1933 Hitler stated:
We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.
My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognised these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow my self to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice… And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows . For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.
Norman H. Baynes, ed. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939, Vol. 1 of 2, pp. 19-20, Oxford University Press, 1942
Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf:
If the Jew gains victory over the people of this world with the help of his Marxist Confession of Faith, then his crown will become the Dance of Death (Totentanz) over the human race . . . That is why I believe that I am acting as the agent of the Almighty Creator. In that I warding off the Jews, I am fighting to do the Lord's work.
Siegt der Jude mit Hilfe seines marxistischen Glaubens-bekenntnisses über die Völker dieser Welt, dann wird seine Krone der Totentanz der Menschheit sein . . . So glaube ich heute im Sinne des allmächtigen Schöpfers zu handeln: Indem ich mich des Juden erwehre, kämpfe ich für das Werk des Herrn.
In his biography of Hitler, John Toland wrote:
Still a member in good standing of the Church of Rome despite detestation of its hierarchy, he carried within him its teaching that the Jew was the killer of god. The extermination, therefore, could be done without a twinge of conscience since he was merely acting as the avenging hand of god. . .
Only someone who thought that he had been sent by God on a divinely ordained religious crusade to destroy the Jews could have possibly committed such monstrous acts of violence without the slightest twinge of conscience. The fact he listened to Wagner had no more to do with it than the fact that his favourite movie was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Even the whole notion of Hitler being primarily driven by a racist ideology based on Darwin or even Chamberlain is equally questionable, and probably reflects an American attempt to deflect the responsibility off Christianity and onto humanism. Darwin is never referred to by Hitler. Chamberlain is only mentioned with respect to a critique of Bismarck's political and economic handling of Germany in Mein Kampf. I even question the translation into English of “Herrenrasse” as “master race” since Herr can mean the Lord. Instead, the better translation may be “The Race of the Lord”—that is, that the Aryans, and not the Jews, were God's Chosen People.
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| Hitler as the Messiah |
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| Jesus is traditionally depicted as being a blonde haired, blue eyed Aryan |
Nonetheless, it must be added the Hitler neither mentioned Luther nor Wagner as the source of his own anti-Semitism. Nor is there evidence that Nazi read Luther's rather Medieval writings on the Jews as an incitation to genocide. Modern historians simply do not accept the view that poets and philosophers caused WWII and the Holocaust. The Luther hypothesis put forward by Shirer has been just as unanimously rejected as the Wagner hypothesis.
Conclusion
Hitler names three figures in Mein Kampf: Frederick the Great, Martin Luther and Richard Wagner. This has done little to harm the reputations of either Frederick II or Luther. However, this has been the basis for endless aggressive attempts to frame Wagner as the scapegoat who can be single handedly blamed for WWII and the Holocaust. This is likely driven by a desire to shift attempts by pop culture to vilify Luther as Hitler's real Prophet. It may also reflect a desire to suppress and censor Wagner's true socialist and anti-theistic ideological message, of the sort that was anathema to the Nazis, but which they foolishly failed to grasp. Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott it is said, and that Burg of the God of storms and war — Valhalla — has been set ablaze by Wagner, destroyer of l'ancien regime.
Marx merely said that religion is the opiate of the people, Nietzsche merely said God was dead. Wagner is infinitely more dangerous than either since he saw to it to see the pagan war-God of Abrahamic religions consumed in the apocalyptic flames of human love: the Untergang of God. Wagner may yet be the most dangerous humanist of them all, and what better way to silence him than with the mendacious accusation of proto-Nazism. If polemicist want to know who Hitler's real Prophet was, they might be better off reading Luther and the New Testament instead.
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