“Few men in modern times can have hated all the Nazis stand for as Nietzsche did,” the Manchester Guardian writes in an editorial article. “He was exasperated intolerably by the importunities of his sister, Elizabeth Forster-Nietzsche, who, under the influence of her husband, Forster, tried to win him over to support the mad scheme of creating a colony, called Nueva Germania, to be inhabited by pure Nordics—a kind of precursor to the Third Realm—in Paraguay.
“Forster was a bigoted anti-Semite, and once collected over a quarter of a million signatures for a petition in which the expulsion of the Jews from Germany was demanded. Nietzsche loathed Forster and al’ he stood for.
“Nietzsche’s hatred and contempt for anti-Semitism were such that even in his last frightful illness, when his mind was enveloped in darkness. he yet managed to scribble on a card, ‘All anti-Semites ought to be shot.’ He loathed nationalism and declared that the victory of Germany over France in 1871 was a defeat for German civilization.
“With prophetic vision he foresaw what was coming upon Germany. His works are full of passages—some of them written fifty years ago—that relate what is happening now. No one wrote of Hitler and of National Socialism with such profound understanding and with such hatred, a hatred so strong that it was like a physical repulsion, as Nietzsche did.
“He warned the world against Hitler long before Hitler was even heard of, and the combination of Nationalism and Socialism can be deduced from what he says in all its calamitous significance.
“But all this does not prevent the Nazis from claiming Nietzsche as one of their own. He was born ninety years ago, and throughout the Nazi press this anniversary is acclaimed as though Nietzsche had been the principal precursor of the Third Realm. Actually, the Third Realm is Nietzsche’s nightmare come true—and that nightmare has now engulfed Nietzsche’s true mission in its own darkness, as it has engulfed so much else that is priceless in our civilization.”
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
