Hitler's Philosophers

Starred review from March 11, 2013
Oxford academic Sherratt (Adorno’s Positive Dialectic) thoroughly examines the thinkers whose ideas Hitler marshaled to his aid before, during, and after the Holocaust, including German philosophers Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche, as well as those whose opinions he sought desperately to silence (e.g., Jewish theorists Edmund Husserl, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor Adorno) in this captivating narrative critical history. The author argues that reputable scholars like jurist Carl Schmitt and philosopher Martin Heidegger readily lent prestige to Hitler, helping him “make men into minions” and “vilify Jews and deify war.” Outfitted with this intellectual ammunition, the Führer went powerfully forward with his “desecrating vision” and “furious will” to indoctrinate a generation of Germans and murder millions. But of the entire cast of characters, none is more compelling than the unsure Hannah Arendt, whose wavering opinions on Judaism and Zionism resulted in her receiving an “unconsecrated” burial in New York State. Ultimately, Sherratt is right to question the value of “the thoughts of men who are unable to reflect critically upon the most brutal of human regimes,” and her sobering account reveals how the “racism, war and tyranny” that culminated in the concentration camps originated in the Ivory Tower, and that brutality ever lurks “beneath the surface of apparent civilization.” A brilliantly conceived work of genuine scholarship, this book is fascinating and important. Agent: Ian Drury, Sheil Land Associates.

April 1, 2013
A systematic breakdown of the core players and ideas usurped in Nazi ideology. British academic Sherratt (Continental Philosophy of Social Science, 2005, etc.) deconstructs the making of Hitler's thinking, from the writing of his autobiography as a political vehicle to his "savage bowdlerization" of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and many other philosophers. Whether Hitler actually read the works he appropriated did not matter, writes the author. He plucked what he needed from this or that philosopher: From Kant, he claimed the supremacy of reason over the dogma of the church and the degradation of Judaism; from Schiller, the beloved motto: "The strong man is mightiest alone"; from Hegel, the formation of the state from ancient origins; from Nietzsche, his fantasies of an ancient Greek ideal; and so on. As a "bartender of genius," Hitler concocted his lethal ideas about racial supremacy, the lone Romantic hero within the Bavarian natural landscape, the Jewish "enemy" and the obsession with "public health." He needed a coterie of deputies to carry out his political fantasies, namely Alfred Rosenberg, whose job was to "destroy democracy and construct a new Nazi ideal" by infiltrating the schools and universities; and legal mind Carl Schmitt, who "enshrined Hitler's tyranny in law." Some of the philosophers acquiesced for the advancement of their careers--e.g., Martin Heidegger, whose affair with his student Hannah Arendt, a Jew, rendered his collaboration all the more baffling or suspect. Jewish philosophers stripped of their university positions either fled or were destroyed. Sherratt devotes one chapter to the singular resistance of one Munich academic, Kurt Huber, and another to the reckoning meted out to the collaborating philosophers at the Nuremberg Trials. A straightforward work that only hints at the underlying questions of moral failing supported by many of these philosophical works.

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April 1, 2013

Hitler's strategy for ruling Europe was two-pronged--military force coupled with an extensive reworking of the philosophical and cultural bases of German thought. He cabbaged parts of Kant, Nietzsche, Darwin, and other luminaries to create the conceptual underpinnings of National Socialism. Many academics, like Martin Heidegger and Carl Schmitt, eagerly cooperated; others such as Theodor Adorno and Hannah Arendt were exiled, imprisoned, or murdered. Sherratt (British Academy Researcher in Philosophy, Univ. of Oxford; Continental Philosophy of Social Science) has angrily surveyed the Nazi destruction of this segment of Europe's intellectual elite, here combining source and contextual interpretation with vignettes of selected collaborators (in Part 1) and opponents and victims (in Part 2). She concludes by examining the postwar experiences of those German academics who survived the war. Many prospered despite having collaborated with the Nazis, and others simply went on with their interrupted lives. VERDICT Not all readers, even of works on Hitler, will be interested in German philosophy and philosophers, but Sherratt's approach is biohistorical rather than analytic. Cultural historians will be absorbed by this study of the easy adoption of the Nazi meme among a coterie of intellectuals who might have been expected to know better. Useful as part of philosophy or ethics curricula.--Edwin Burgess, U.S. Army Combined Arms Research Lib., Fort Leavenworth, KS

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