Australia’s Lorenzo Warby’s review of my Nietzsche and the Nazis.
Intriguing sideways connection to Heidegger and militarism: Warby also reviews Brian Daizen Victoria’s Zen at War, “a study of how Zen Buddhism became deeply complicit in Japanese militarism,” just as Heidegger’s mystically-charged writings became complicit in German militarism. Warby there points to this piece by Professor Jeremiah Reedy, who reports: 
“a German friend of Heidegger told me that one day when he visited Heidegger he found him reading one of [Daisetsu Teitaro] Suzuki’s books [on Zen Buddhism]: ‘If I understand this man correctly,’ Heidegger remarked, ‘this is what I have been trying to say in all my writings.'”
[Go to the Nietzsche and the Nazis page. Go to the StephenHicks.org main page.]
Thanks for the plug!. Your link to Zen at War does not work. (My review of it is here.)
Link fixed. Thanks.
Both reviews very interesting. Now I’m going to have to read the book! Thanks for pointing me to this blog, where I found more of interest. Appreciated his piece on Elizabeth Moon, one of my favorite authors of space adventure (generally pro-business sci-fi).
I have not read the book, but I did see the movie! Professor Hicks presents, with admirable lucidity, a persuasive checklist of cause and effect. I would read or attend anything by Stephen Hicks, because he seems detached from judging the Germans (who are boy scouts compared to the Russian atrocity merchants) but he also shows scant knowledge of the German mind and of the new country’s odd genesis. Germans had a form of democracy under the Holy Roman Empire, but this “area” of many principalities had a spiritual kinship and faced the aftermath of WWI, for which Germany was (wrongly) held responsible, and the advent of Bolshevism that frightened all of Europe. Fascism is nothing more than a counter movement to Bolshevism, the lowest form of politics as Ayn Rand and others have proved, and given personal examples. Bolshevism is responsible for the deaths of almost one hundred million normal people. Nietzsche was a poet/writer foremost, and an odd philosopher at best. LIke Luther, one of the great masters of the often convoluted Teutonic tongue, he might be better understood in light of his relationship with Wagner. Wagner was the most eloquent and accurate of late 19th century “anti-Semites.” And Hitler often claimed to have read and re-read Wagner, never Nietzsche. To a degree, National Socialism cannot be understood without perceiving HItler’s ideals. Moreover, der Judenfrage, or, “Jewish Question” was a European problem. The Jews themselves regarded Germany as heaven compared to other host states. To understand Wagner’s views one must read JUDENTUM IN MUSIK. I will answer further questions on this thorny topic. Most people do not understand the history of the “Jews” either, indeed, the term “Jew” is a nickname, and is not used in the Bible until the Book of Esther — “Israelites” was more accurate.
Stephen Dahl