Stage

I meant to ask you, what am I to make of the above pair of comments plus the link given? I find them both a little disrespectful, and subversive even, given the general perspective of this blog. Following the link I come to a page that reads as its subtitle:

“This website is basically an archive of most, if not all, of the written works of Hans F. K. Guenther (1891-1968) translated into English by yours truly. It will consist of chapters and sections from his books and essays. The reason I am posting his works in their entirety is to vindicate him of any ideological association with the Fascist/National Socialists during his time. From the entirety of his works he was neither an imperialist, anti-semite, and white supremacist nor was he a supporte” [sic]

Am I right in saying it’s filled with – 3 years+ concentration camp inmate – Hans Guenther’s original impressions of Adolf Hitler? None too favourable, I assume, from the majority of the ones I’ve read, and with somewhat of an axe to grind, describing him thusly (just to give a few examples):

I could not and did not want to comment publicly on Adolf Hitler’s essentially misguided domestic policy – also misguided because Hitler, with his lack of knowledge of human nature, chose so many incompetent, dishonest, even unscrupulous men as his subordinates – until North American and English researchers, who had access to files withheld from German researchers, had exonerated Hitler’s foreign policy to such an extent that in 1965 an English friend wrote to me that he had gained the impression that only Germany still believed that Hitler was solely responsible for the war.

I will only mention here the testimony of the outstanding Wilhelm Hartnacke, to whom I will return, who had informed the tribunal that a few years before the outbreak of war, when he and I met in Dresden to discuss the situation in the Reich and in the NSDAP and we expressed our horror at the election and promotion of so many dishonest, irresponsible and incompetent men, I had already considered emigrating.

The letters of exoneration that were sent in and the diligent search of all my books led the third-instance tribunal – usually only two were required – to certify that I had always operated within the boundaries of international science and had never fallen into anti-Semitic agitation…

However, in order not to expose myself to the accusation of abusiveness or injustice, I will keep silent about the most caustic of my statements about Hitler and the NSDAP, even though, stripped of their mocking form, I still find them accurate today in terms of their content, or even more so today.

With his sense of mission of almost oriental strength and with his fanaticism, Hitler can be reminiscent of Muhammad. Muhammad combined his fanaticism and sense of mission with clever consideration, his emotion by Allah, his chosenness, with an unswerving sense of reality and a considered adaptation to the changing external situation, unshakably convinced of his calling and equally convinced that other people were subject to error, but not he. … It is, however, more obvious to compare Hitler with Cromwell, especially since Hitler is said to have regarded this English statesman and military leader as one of his role models. A talented writer has written a novel about the Roman dictator Sulla in Hitler’s honour, and another talented writer, understanding the “signs of the times”, has written a novel about Cromwell. Now I must admit that I am biased towards Cromwell. I was never obliged to make an “objective” judgement about him, nor to make such a judgement about the Catholic Stuart king, whom the Protestant Cromwell sentenced to death. So I was quite allowed to express my dislike and like “subjectively” and must admit that my like was and will be for King Charles I (1600-1649), and my dislike for the Lord Protector Cromwell.

In my school years, around the age of 17-18, I was attracted to socialism. Any intellectually active young person at that age will be attracted to anything that promises “revolution”. But in my home in Baden at that time I could not see any of the socialism that Oswald Spengler later described with approval in his work “Prussianism and Socialism”. Only recently did I read that there was no such socialism as Spengler’s in Prussia. In Baden – at least for me – the socialism of 1905-1910 had a streak of malicious petty bourgeoisie, a resentment that expressed itself almost exclusively in denials, discontent and envy. Even the most harmless expressions of love of country were derided with a wry mouth as “hurrah patriotism”. It was not revolutionary, as I would have imagined it. My socialist tendencies eventually faded away. Although as a student I had studied Ferdinand Lassalle’s national socialism in depth, Hitler’s Weimar speech, which I must confess was rather boring, only won the approval of my mind, which considered the situation and the threat posed by communism, but not of my heart.

I just wondered what Cesar’s impression was. I personally found it somewhat insulting being there, and that this was considered ‘priceless’ in return, of all Douglas could have commented on, to be somewhat bizarre on a pro-NS website. I take it Robiul that you are not so enamoured yourself of National Socialists, or why the stress on ‘defending’ Hans’ name? Tell me if I’ve got this wrong – I do apologise in advance if I’ve got the wrong end of the stick.

Personally, I thought a revolution could be instigated and guided, not by the masses, as is claimed above, but by a tiny, select few, and that once the mass of ordinary people were in general undisciplined unrest, it was really down to that tiny cadre among them, that 1-3%, to find direction for them and get the ball rolling… I assume it was the same with the small group of subversive Jews who instigated the Christian revolution among the slave classes over 1700 years ago.

Just for the record, I think Gaedhal has admirably written a good piece on the necessity of separating mere Fascism from National Socialism as a worldview. I can only apologise to him here for recently berating him by nonsensical email in a brief, damaging psychotic fluster.