Nietzsche and the Nazis (Was Re: aesthetics)

[Bradford DeLong]

>Brad says:
>
>>I've always liked William Shirer's take on Nietzsche and the Nazis:
>>
>>
>>Yet I think no one who lived in the Third Reich could have failed to
>>be impressed by Nietzsche's influence on it . . . >Yet Nazi 
>>scribblers never tired of extolling him. Hitler often
>>visited the Nietzsche museum in Weimar and publicized his veneration
>>for the philosopher by posing for photographs of himself staring in
>>rapture at the bust of the great man.
>>
>>There was some ground for this appropriation of Nietzsche as one of
>>the originators of the Nazi Weltanschauung. Had not the philosopher
>>thundered against democracy and parliaments, preached the will to
>>power, praised war and proclaimed the coming of the master race and
>>the superman--and in the most telling aphorisms? A Nazi could proudly
>>quote him on almost every conceivable subject, and did. -
>
>I dunno. I was a student of Walter Kaufmann, Jew, Zionist, and 
>Nietzsche scholar, who devoted a good part of a long career to 
>attacking this sort of rubbish. There is a lot in Nietzsche that 
>liberal democrats like Bard and me and socialists like me and most 
>on this list cannot stomach. But the association with the Nazis is 
>just a smear.

I thought the point of my passage from Shirer was that Nietzsche was 
very far indeed from being a Nazi, but that the Nazis found a lot of 
strands in his work very useful and appropriated him?

Brad DeLong