Friedrich Nietzsche's Philosophy Influence The Nazi Party

While Hitler was the leader of the Third Reich, the functionalists believed that the ‘road to Auschwitz’ was characterized by an indirect unplanned path that was defined by cumulative radicalization of the Nazis due to the prevalence of chaotic decision-making processes that were a major feature of the polycratic system of governance. Additionally, this system was characterized by the elimination of individuals considered as destructive to the Nazi movement, leading to the creation of a movement that was ready to do anything to achieve a ‘final solution’ to the ‘Jew problem’. Karl Schleunes falls in this school of thought. Karl Schleunes argument, like that of other functionalists, was cemented on institutions and structure of the Third Reich. With the intentionalists arguing that the Holocaust was the fulfillment of Hitler’s plan hatched in the 1920s, their argument was summer up as the ‘straight road to Auschwitz.’ For functionalists, however, the path to the Holocaust was not straight, a reason why Karl Schleunes labeled his book The Twisted Road to

Nietzsche was a revolutionary author and philosopher who has had a tremendous impact on German culture up through the twentieth century and even today. Nietzsche's views were very unlike the popular and conventional beliefs and practices of his time and nearly all of his published works were, and still are, rather controversial, especially in On the Genealogy of Morals. His philosophies are more than just controversial and unconventional viewpoints, however; they are absolutely extreme and dangerous if taken out of context or misinterpreted. After Nietzsche's death it took very little for his sister to make some slight alterations to his works to go along with Nazi ideology.

Masters and slaves are constantly discussed throughout Nietzsche’s work, but the connection between them is discussed best in his book On the Genealogy of Morality. The first of the three essays outlines two alternate structures for the creation of values, which is credited to masters and the other to slaves.

Within Germany, a country torn between the rise of a totalitarian party that determined a superior race, Nazism, and the survival of the oppressed, young Germans face a test between a sense of self and society. Individuality would be suppressed within this new type of society, and being different would be the deadliest obstruction to life. The violations of the rights to life, religion, and speech are relived through the stories of the German youth that lived through this haunting time, whose name would be tarnished in their struggle to survive. In their fight, their morals would be challenged and influenced until the Nazi regime ended, and the violation of human dignity would leave them wondering if life was worth living after all. The Nazi Party grew under its leader, Adolf Hitler, which struggled not to use violence against those that disagreed with their views, starting with armed groups known as the Strum Abteilung, who pledged to be ready to sacrifice their life in the aims of the Nazi Party and absolute loyalty to their leader. Their cruel intolerance began by their strong nationalism and their hatred of democracy and communism, and they gained power through the economic depressions around the world, controlling the media by instilling fear and propaganda that influenced a strong belief in their leaders. This belief in the leaders would soon seem to override Church influence when the official body of the Church failed to do anything significant

Throughout his writings, Nietzsche aims to inform his readers that we as humans can only reach our potential by following our passions and ignoring the flawed ideals of the church. Under the doctrine of the church’s morality, innate passions of its followers must be abolished in order to become proper Christians. By destroying the inner passions of its followers, the church is doing a great disfavor by using morality to rule out nature from their lives.

German philosophers Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770 – 1831) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900) have traditionally been viewed as polar opposites in terms of their philosophy. Hegel has been dubbed an idealist and a systematic philosopher who identified various different types of History, theoretical entities and concepts. Nietzsche, on the other hand, is seen to be a counter-Enlightenment and counter-systematic philosopher who penned the well-known text, ‘Genealogy of Morals’. In this essay, I aim to bring to light the underlying similarities between the two thinkers that have previously been overlooked, as well as to identify the differences in Hegel and Nietzsche’s ideologies and presuppositions.

In his book, Twilight of the Idols, Friedrich Nietzsche aggressively challenges conventional schools of thought dating back to the ancients. Philosophy, as we know it, began over two-thousand years ago in Athens with the birth of Socrates. Socrates introduced the practice of reasoning and dialectics—the art of discourse hoping to bring individuals closer to some universal truth—to an Athenian society that previously held aesthetics, not logic, as indicative of goodness. Socrates revolutionized life in Athens, and by extension, the Western tradition. His beliefs are found in works written centuries after his death. He is heralded as the “father of philosophy.”

The text is noted for its sharp criticism of the tactics used to embody the whole of the Nazi party's crimes in the form of one seemingly meek bureaucrat. However, the text is also the subject of considerable criticism itself for a tone that seems both to minimize the Jewish suffering in the Holocaust and to purposively gloss over the truly determinant role played by Eichmann in the implementation of the Final Solution.

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich was a summary of Adolf’s journey from his boyhood to his final decision to end his life. Shirer successfully made his case as he laid down many points that proved the foolishness of the German citizen in becoming aroused by Hitler’s power and not reacting to stop him from getting any more powerful. The point of view must be addressed. Based on the author’s choice of words and writing, it was clear that he had found Hitler distasteful as he uses the words restless, bitter, demonic, and ruthless to describe the Fuhrer throughout the book. Therefore the writings in the book could have been influenced by the fact that he lived and worked in the Third Reich and witnessed Adolf Hitler’s rise of power first hand. The audience of the book, based on the difficulty of reading and the content, should be for young adults and older, historians, and for anyone interested in this topic. The book could be used for further research into this subject or simply for the pleasure of new information that have never been seen before in other famous Holocaust stories such as The Diary of Anne Frank. This book will definitely stimulate further conversation among historians and history lovers and historiography on this subject as the author’s thesis is quite controversial. Overall, I have liked the thoroughness of this book and all the interesting insights in which I have never come upon with other books talking about the Third Reich, I don’t recommend taking this

As stated previously, Nietzsche’s work was both great and highly influential. The Nazis even used his writings as a basis for their beliefs. Nietzsche believed that the greatest societies were always built upon the aristocratic system. Since he believed there

“As soon as a religion comes to dominate it has as its opponents all those who would have been its first disciples.” Nietzsche was one of the first modern philosophers to rebel against rationalism and when World War I came about, the revolution against religion truly became a legitimate statement. Friedrich Nietzsche strongly believed that many of those that practiced religion were led to the acceptance of slave morality. Religion had always played a fundamental role in society as it sets strict boundaries and standards of what is morally correct and incorrect. However, Nietzsche claims that, “Human nature is always driven by “ ‘the will to power’ ”, but religion will tell one otherwise, saying that one should forbid their bad desires. In Nietzsche’s

The rise and subsequent take-over of power in Germany by Hitler and the Nazi Party in the early 1930s was the culmination and continuation not of Enlightenment thought from the 18th and 19th century but the logical conclusion of unstable and cultural conditions that pre-existed in Germany. Hitler’s Nazi Party’s clear manipulation of the weak state of the Weimar Republic through its continued failure economically and socially, plus its undermining of popular support through the signing the Treaty of Versailles all lead to the creation of a Nazi dictatorship under the cult of personality of Hitler. This clear take-over of power and subsequent destruction of any

Even though they were separated by thousands of years, hundreds of miles, and different cultures, the philosophical views of Friedrich Nietzsche and Plato can be examined and weighed against each other in many different ways. Friedrich Nietzsche, born in 1844, was a German philosopher whose main goal was to erect a new image for the people and to create a free spirit in them. Plato, born in 427 B.C., was a Greek philosopher whose main goal was to create a new way of thinking about the world itself, knowledge itself, philosophy itself, and the individual. Both philosophers have obvious similarities; their literary style of writing is perhaps the most apparent, but also their desire

The following paper presents a brief reconstruction of Nietzsche’s idea of community and its reception by Tönnies, Plessner and Schmitt. Although lacking in conceptual consistency, Nietzsche’s interpretation of community is a critical counterpart not only to its Christian variation but also to the attempts of its politicization. Although Tönnies’ idea of community is influenced by the Birth of Tragedy, he overlooks its key elements presented in Nietzsche’s later works. In his Limits of Society, Plessner provides an alternative to Tönnies’ theory while also criticizing both the Nietzschean and the Marxist interpretation of community. Still, several crucial points of his theory (such as the importance of masks and playfulness in social interaction)

5. Discuss Nietzsche’s theory of “will to power” and “the innocence of becoming”. Does the hypothesis of the will to power successfully “debunk” traditional religion, morality, and philosophical claims to provide the “disinterested” or “objective” truth?