"Friedrich Nietzsche is often cited as having a large influence on Adolf Hitler, the head of the German Nazi party chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, who’s legendary anti-Semitism was the driving force behind Nazi perpetration of the Holocaust and the Final Solution. Many of Neitzsche’s works have been interpreted as anti-Semitic. For example, On The Genealogy of Morals, one of Nietzsche’s most beloved works, is full of passages lambasting the Jews as a race of weak, parasitic, and conniving people, and God[1]. Though Nietzsche is often seen as a strong advocate of individualism, the National Socialist (Nazi) Party of Germany co-opted some of his writings which emphasize “values of heroism, struggle, and power…paramount to a solidarity based…on the community of the trenches…”[2]. As Hitler himself put it, Nietzsche’s brand of pro-nationalism, ultra-patriotic socialism, “is the socialism of the Front, of Adolf Hitler…the socialism of the Steel Helmet.”[3]
Hitler and the German Nazi party also co-opted Nietzsche stirring words from such books as the classic 1885 Thus Spoke Zarathustra (famous for one of the tag-lines of Existentialism proper, “God is Dead” for their own purposes. There is some speculation that Zarathustra served as one of Hitler’s main influences in writing his own racist magnum opus Mein Kampf (1925). Nietzsche, who’s work makes up a large part of the Existentialist cannon, had a complex (and to this day controversial) attitude towards Jews and Judaism, which makes his influence on Germany in the first half of the twentieth century (as a lead-up to WWII) of particular interest to those concerned with “Jewish Existentialism’ and/or the Holocaust."
From my POV these paragraphs while interesting don't belong in this article but in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche
Unless anyone disagrees I will delete them.
(Kyuss2009 (talk) 16:07, 12 September 2009 (UTC))
"For example, On The Genealogy of Morals, one of Nietzsche’s most beloved works, is full of passages lambasting the Jews as a race of weak, parasitic, and conniving people.[26]" - This is clearly not the case - refer to main article on On The Genealogy of Morals. Please provide quotation if this argument is to be made. But the argument is not to be made - because wikipedia is not meant for literary criticism - if you want to cite a credible secondary source that says OTGOM really views the Jews as such, please provide the citation. But if so, please also provide contrary sources.
References
Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo. New York: Vintage, 1989. 33-36.
Aschheim, Steven E. The Nietzsche legacy in Germany, 1890-1990. Berkeley: University of California P, 1994. 195.
