The Roots of an Evil Regime

Periodically over the last few months I've been dipping into a most fascinating historical exploration. I am in no hurry to finish it, which is why I am only on page 231 of William Shirer's massive 1200+ page Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany. Despite my slowness, it is an intriguing read.

Here I learned of the almost comic “Beer Hall Putsch” where a young and fiery Hitler burst onto the view of Germany brandishing a pistol at a large beer hall and calling for a revolution in Germany. Bluffing that three government leaders he held hostage were in support of his putsch, Hitler garnered enough public support to throw the city of Munich into confusion. The next morning Hitler—still brandishing his pistol—marched through the streets of Munich with three thousand followers at his back.

But this revolution of November 1923 fell into the cracks of the pavement after a firefight with the police. Hitler fled as the rest of his Nazi cohorts scattered across the countryside and across Europe to avoid arrest. Most of them, including Hitler, were unable to avoid arrest, but Hitler turned even this dismal turn of events into a speaking platform for his movement. And after nine months in prison he was back on the street, feverishly polishing off the tarnish from his image.

While Hitler gave up his revolutionary aspirations after his arrest and imprisonment, his rise to absolute power was not entirely legal, and certainly not peaceful, although it was done with the consent of the German people. Hitler realized he must overthrow the German Republic from within so he began winning over the voting populace to the Nazi party. It was a long and seemingly impossible road for the once ridiculed Austrian Vagabond; yet ultimately, the blame for Hitler's rise to power rests with the German people. Even a year and a half after his appointment as Chancellor, when Hitler illegally combined the office of Chancellor and President into one Fuehrer, the German people were given one last chance to remove someone whose words and actions had clearly been leading the nation towards totalitarianism. William Shirer writes of Hitler's final grab for power:

“That the 'law' was illegal also made little difference in a Germany where the former Austrian corporal had now become the law itself. That it was illegal was obvious... But what mattered the law now? ...And the German people? On August 19 [1934], some 95 per cent of those who had registered went to the polls, and 90 per cent, more than thirty-eight million of them, voted approval of Hitlers usurpation of complete power” (229-230).

Shirer goes on in astonishment to note:

“the overwhelming majority of Germans did not seem to mind that their personal freedom had been taken away, that so much of their culture had been destroyed and replaced with a mindless barbarism, or that their life and work had become regimented to a degree never before experienced even by a people accustomed for generations to a great deal of regimentation... a newly arrived observer was somewhat surprised to see that the people of this country did not seem to feel that they were being cowed and held down by an unscrupulous and brutal dictatorship. On the contrary, they supported it with genuine enthusiasm. Somehow it imbued them with a new hope and a new confidence and an astonishing faith in the future of their country” (231).

And what were the origins of this new “hope” and “faith in the future?” Much of it came from the writings of a neurotic Englishman named Houston Chamberlain, also known as “the father of Nazism.” Chamberlain, made no secret that he believed his once influential writings and thoughts were inspired from outside of himself by demons. Chamberlain looked on his writings with admiration, sometimes “unable to recognize them as his own work, because they surpassed his expectations” (105). Shirer writes:

“Once, in 1896, when he was returning from Italy, the presence of a demon became so forceful that he got off the train at Gardone, shut himself up in a hotel room for eight days and, abandoning some work on music that he had contemplated, wrote feverishly on a biological thesis until he had the germ of the theme that would dominate all of his later works: race and history” (105).

Needless to say, Chamberlain's views about the Aryans were not just racist, but also “shoddy” and preposterous (105-107); nevertheless, the early Nazi press heralded his writings as the “gospel of the Nazi movement” (109).

Seeing the outcome of such a hate-filled and racist “gospel” at the foundation of a government should make us thankful that the “gospel” at the foundation of the American government was, believe it or not, the Gospel; the good news of Jesus coming to reconcile man with God, and man with man. (For example, the most cited author of the American Founders was the apostle Paul.) As can be seen, an era so dark in the world's history, as the Nazi era was, did not come about through benign neighborly love. Its roots were demonic and its trunk a rejection of Jesus' command to “love your neighbor as yourself.”

William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany. New York, Simon and Schuster. 1960

Lord and Thane

The relationship of the Christian to Christ is often portrayed as that of a servant to a master. The parallel is good and true, but for those who find the metaphor of slaves either stale or repellent, consider this description of old Germanic kings and their followers taken from The Norton Anthology of English Literature:

When a warrior vowed loyalty to his lord, he became not so much his servant as his voluntary companion, one who would take pride in defending him and fighting in his wars. In return, the lord was expected to take care of his thanes and to reward them richly for their valor; a good king, one like Hrothgar or Beowulf, is referred to by such poetic epithets as “ring-giver” and as the “helmet” and “shield” of his people (25).

Abrams, M.H. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors 7th. ed. W.W.Norton and Co. 2001

The Search for a Soul

“Were I asked, what is a fairytale? I should reply, read Undine: that is a fairytale.... and of all fairytales I know, I think Undine the most beautiful.” --George MacDonald (23)

Naturally, when I read this in George MacDonald's essay "The Fantastic Imagination," I knew that I would have to read this “most beautiful” of fairytales. "The Fantastic Imagination" is MacDonald's attempt to say a little bit about what a fairytale ought to be. Not what a fairytale is, for that task is too difficult; as MacDonald says: “I should as soon think of describing the abstract human face, or stating what must go to constitute a human being. A fairytale is just a fairytale, as a face is just a face” (23).

Since a fairytale is so hard to describe, MacDonald directs his readers to the lengthy tale of Undine by Friedrich de la Motte Fouquee. I googled it and read its entire 55 pages at Project Gutenberg. If you plan to read it there you need not read any further here since what follows is just a short summary of some of the important highlights of the tale.

A wandering knight, bewildered by a fierce storm, stumbles upon a fisherman's cottage where he meets the young and beautiful Undine. The fisherman explains that his foster-daughter mysteriously appeared at his cottage years before when she was a toddler. The truth of the matter is that Undine is a water-nymph in human form seeking a soul. She learns that only by loving a mortal can she gain the soul that no water-spirit has. Needless to say, she comes to love the knight and they are soon married. “Through love Undine had won a soul, which is indeed the gift of God to every mortal” (25).

But this is not the end of the story. Undine's powerful uncle Kuhleborn does all he can to destroy her love and make her return to her watery home. In an eerie parallel to the Prince of the Power of the Air, Kuhleborn says of himself: “I am free as the wild birds of the air to go hither and thither as I will” (30). He laughs mockingly when Undine cries out that, “I no longer wish to have aught to do with you!” (30) Rather than going away, he plagues Undine and the knight Huldbrand more fiercely. On top of all their other trials the lady Bertalda begins to drive Undine and the knight apart. Finally, at the instigation of Kuhleborn, the knight breaks his promise to his wife and speaks harshly to Undine. At this, Undine must leave him and return to her ocean home. “There will I live, loving, sorrowing, for into the depths of the blue sea will I carry my new-won soul” (28).

The knight sees too late his error and only at his own death, when Undine's tears fall so heavily on his heart that it breaks, does he realizes that "he had never loved any one in all the wide world as he loved Undine" (53). The wild water-nymph who found a soul when she found love and who always tried to protect her knight in life, melted into a stream at his grave while it was said by the villagers that, “the little crystal stream, was none other than Undine, poor forsaken Undine, who thus surrounds and protects Huldbrand, her beloved” (55).

Friedrich de la Motte Fouquee. Undine. Project Gutenberg. http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=240839&pageno=1

George MacDonald. "The Fantastic Imagination." The Gifts of the Child Christ: Fairytales and Stories for the Childlike. ed. Glenn Edward Sadler. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan. 1973.

Literature in the High Middle Ages

This post and the last one are parts of a paper on the intellectual and artistic achievements of the High Middle Ages I worked on in my Western civ. class. I included the missing footnotes in my last post in case anyone cares. This fragment ends somewhat abruptly because it was part of a longer essay I worked on. You'll just have to use your imagination to envision a nice concluding paragraph that wraps the topic up.

The High Middle Ages also placed great importance on books. Medieval historian C. S. Lewis shows that culture in, “the Middle Ages depended primarily on books. Though literacy was of course far rarer then than now, reading was in one way a more important ingredient of the total culture.”1 Literature from the past—particularly Greek and Latin—was looked upon reverently by the authors of the Middle Ages. Consequently, they modeled much their own work on previously written manuscripts. They embellished familiar stories, expanded on old subjects, and wrote down the legends of their fore bearers. To lend credence to their writing, authors from the Middle Ages would often claim they got their subject from an “auctour”--an author from Greek or Roman antiquity.2

The greatest work of literature from the High Middle Ages shows this tendency. The Divine Comedy of Dante not only borrows from earlier authors but goes to the extreme of actually including the Roman poet Virgil as one of the Characters who inhabit the Inferno. All the other characters Dante meets on his dream journey are also from history or legend. There is ample space in this huge poem about the after-life to retell the well-known stories of the people he meets.

One of the most easily recognized types of literature from the High Middle Ages is the epic romance. The tales of King Arthur and the Round Table are the most famous of these. Again, the earliest authors of these stories, such as the Frenchman Christien De Troyes, did not try to claim credit for inventing the tales but tried to show that they were ancient histories with just a little embellishment. The Arthurian stories were picked up by numerous authors in the middle ages. Intellectual property rights were not what they are today nor was this "plagiarism" seen as anything but flattery. Besides the “Matter of Britain” dealing with King Arthur, numerous other romances of chivalry were written. The “Matter of France” is another cycle of stories dealing with another king; this time the French Charlemagne. Called “chanson de geste,” these epic poems written by mostly unknown authors extolled the mythical exploits of Charlemagne against the Muslim invaders of Europe in the Early Middle Ages. The Song of Roland written around 1100 3 retells the simi-historical ambush on Charlemagne's rear-guard in the pass of Rounceval.

In Northern Europe a similar body of national epic literature was being developed during the same period. The German Nibelungenlied has been compared to The Song of Roland or even the Greek Iliad.4 The tragic death of Sigfried and the terrible revenge of his wife Kriemhild set among the forests and mead-halls of Germany has been the inspiration for stories and operas even into recent times. This corpus of German literature borrows from the same legends as the thirteenth century Eddas and tales of Scandinavia.

An important development in literature during the High Middle Ages came with the troubadour poets. The troubadours wrote and performed lyrical songs--often about love. Practicing a form of oral literature, delivered much like the famous bards of antiquity, troubadours usually had a rich patron who payed a troubadour to entertain his guests although some troubadours were nobles themselves. An important aspect of troubadour poetry that is characteristic of the literature of the High Middle Ages was “courtly love.” This term is both a literary and a real life characteristic of the period. The literary meaning is a lyrical poem written to an idealized lady whom the poet loves. But C. S. Lewis points out that this poet, “is no light-hearted gallant: his love is represented as a despairing and tragical emotion.” (sic)5

1. C. S. Lewis. The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature. (Canto Books, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1995). 5

2. Ibid. 5

3. Jackson J. Spielvogel. Western Civilization: A Brief History, 3rd. ed. (Thomson-Wadsworth, 2005). 166

4. Arthur Thomas Hatto, editor. The Nibelungenlied. (Penguin Classics, Penguin Books, 1669). 8

5. C. S. Lewis. The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition. (Oxford University Press, 1968). 3

13th. Century Literature: Part II

I was going to begin with a grand paean in praise of The Nibelungenlied, extolling it as the great epic of German legendary history. But that sort of thing is boring to most people including myself. In fact, the very name of The Nibelungenlied, if it sparks any recognition at all, is not likely to kindle a flame of interest. Stories with Homeric battles, lengthy and improbable speeches, all written in (or translated into) archaic language, are not likely to rivet the attention of most people. So instead I’ll briefly describe some of the characters.

Though my knowledge of ancient and medieval literature is limited, it seems to me that Sigfried, Kriemhild and others are delineated with a clearness and realism lacking in most old texts. A notable exception is Hagen, but of him later. First, who is Sigfried? Before this story opens in the mythical past of Germanic Europe he was reputed to have won a fabulous treasure by killing a dragon. Those who have read The Hobbit or the end of Beowulf will have a good grasp on this dragon/treasure principle in literature. Unlike Beowulf, who is slain, Sigfried survives and rubs the blood of the dragon all over his skin. Except for a small spot on his back. If you reach one arm over your shoulder and twist the other behind your back you will notice that (besides being uncomfortable and looking stupid) it is extremely difficult to make your hands touch somewhere between your shoulder blades. This is Sigfried’s Achilles Heel; the one spot not made invulnerable by virtue of the dragon’s blood. It is though this, and the cunning of Hagen, that Sigfried is treacherously murdered.

From the beginning his death is hinted at. It is really the focus of the whole story. It seems odd that the hero of a story should die halfway through the book, but if Sigfried had not died early on in the story there would be no Nibelungenlied; his death sets into motion a host of other evils: lies, greed, revenge, and lastly, war. Sigfried's death is a tragedy but it is not the last, nor even, I think, the greatest, tragedy in this story.

Who is most grieved over the death of Sigfried? Who but his wife, the lovely Kriemhild. And good reason she has to be grieved; not only over Sigfried, but also over the way her kinsmen and Hagen treat her after his death. How right it is to sympathize with Kriemhild yet how wrong to support her later actions. To understand this claim will require explaining the further events of the story. Kriemhild eventually remarries a distant king; however, rather than causing her to forget Sigfried, this only elevates her into a position powerful enough to avenge his death. It takes awhile, but finally she lures Hagen and her kinsmen to her new husband’s realm with pretended overtures of friendliness. Her intention is to start a conflict on some pretext and slaughter them. Her kinsmen and Hagen seem almost equally inclined to belligerence and demonstrate it by their disrespect and arrogance. It is, therefore, almost irrelevant who struck the first blow.

The men of Hagen and Günther (Kriemhild’s brother) easily get the upper hand in the first bout. They barricade themselves into the main hall and fight off every assault launched against them. All day they fight till Kriemhild, with the logic (and cruelty) of a woman, orders the hall burnt down. Somehow a few of them survive the flames and fight on the next day amid the charred rubble. At this point the fighting reaches Hollywood quality but it tops Hollywood (as most books do) by searching out what drives good and bad men to war. Rudiger and Dietrich, unwilling warriors, are perhaps the most human and the most heroic, and therefore the best, characters in the story apart from Sigfried himself. How and why they fight is both tragic and glorious, but mostly tragic. Even Dietrich’s victory over Hagen is no cause for joy.

So who is the hero in this tale? All through the book I was looking for a hero (after Sigfried died anyway). While there are many noble and heroic characters scattered throughout, the main conflict centers between Kriemhild and Hagen. Hagen, as the murderer of Sigfried, was obviously out, but the bloodthirsty revenge of Kriemhild went beyond simply a desire for justice as well. In the end I did not know what to think. I tinkered with the idea that this was a postmodern book (written, of course, around 1200 A.D) with no good guy/bad guy distinctions. Yet while no one was right, it does not follow postmodern epistemology that no one was wrong. Both were wrong. There may be different degrees of wrongness, but the central fact remains: both Hagen and Kriemhild were wrong. The consequence of their actions was the slaughter and decimation of entire Kingdoms.