Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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20 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An outstanding DVD!, June 7, 2007
Last weekend I had the good fortune to watch this fascinating, informative, and very disturbing DVD.
I am an avid fan of the History Channel and other forums exploring the theme that ideas have consequences but this piece of work was better than nearly everything else along these lines I have seen.
The Nazis, who murdered roughly 12 million people -- among them the 6 million plus or minus Jews we have all heard of -- were a really vicious bunch. But what is more interesting and important is that they were not barbarians but came from Europe's most educated population, the Germans.
Their main theme was the idealization of Das Volk, "The People," not severally but collectively, as a noble tribe for the welfare and advancement of which everything could be sacrificed, especially individual liberty and independence.
Here was a group of fanatics who wholeheartedly believed in the righteousness of their own zealotry and urged it upon all their followers, of whom there were millions -- the Nazi party was voted into power several times and by the end some 90% of Germans voted for it. Hitler came to power democratically, by "the will of the people" (a phrase we have recently heard in these United States as well).
Nazism was openly in favor of irrationalism, championing instinct over reason, order over liberty, and self-sacrifice over the pursuit of happiness.
Nazis hated the classical liberal ideals represented by the United States of America; they despised free enterprise and imposed a version of socialism -- national socialism, to be precise -- wherever they could. The main difference between their version of socialism and that of the Soviet Union was that they advocated socialism for the nation, unlike the Soviets who wanted it spread internationally.
A persistent question that has bothered historians, psychologists, sociologists, and nearly anyone who has given the matter any thought is how this horrid regime could arise in the midst of a relatively civilized place like Western Europe and its crown jewel of a culture, Germany.
Many hypotheses have been advanced, including one in particular which has always been both intriguing and controversial. This is that certain ideas dominant in German culture had a great deal to do with the Nazi's rise to power. And the central figure who has been proposed as responsible for these ideas is the 19th century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.
I will not give away the story Professor Hicks tells with such clarity and subtlety but I do wish to mention that as far as I can tell -- and I have studied some of these matters over my career as a philosophy teacher -- he gives a very well balanced presentation of just why Nietzsche did in fact encourage the Nazis and in what way his views differ from theirs quite significantly.
On first inspection, for example, it is not easy to believe that the Nazi's demand for subservience and unselfishness fit well with Nietzsche's ideal of "the will to power." But if one looks deep enough one will realize that the will to power was not to be put in the service of the individual person but of the tribe or culture.
Individual flourishing didn't interest Nietzsche; collective triumph did. And on this the Nazis fully agreed with him. No wonder they invoked his legacy over and over again in their literature.
On the other hand, Nietzsche would not likely have favored the sort of politicization of the ideal of the superman that the Nazis promulgated. He would have left politics aside concerning how the future of humanity was to unfold so long as it involved a revolution in our moral values. (He deemed conventional -- especially Judeo-Christian morality -- perverse, an enemy of a fully flourishing, instinct-driven human life!)
Professor Hicks' presentation is immensely rich with facts, quotations, analysis, and insight. Especially fascinating is the list of erudite Europeans -- Noble Laureates and the like -- who eagerly supported the Nazis, as well as the beloved Nazi slogans which are often exactly what our own politicians urge us to internalize -- for example, about the superiority of the public interest over the private one.
Anyone with just an ounce of interest in recent intellectual and political history will find watching this DVD a disturbing as well as riveting experience.
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5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Similarities And Differences Between Nietzsche And The Nazis, August 6, 2008
I expected the entire documentary to focus on the influence of Nietzche's writings on the ideology of National Socialism. But instead the first 1/3 is solely devoted to the rise of the Nazis. Topics discussed include how such a barbaric movement was able to achieve power in the modern, educated nation of Germany and the horrific devasation wrought by the Nazis, including the murder of over 12 million Jews, Slavs, homosexuals and others.
The middle portion explains the basics of Nietzsche's philosophy. Ideas discussed include his belief that Europe had been weakened by its acceptance of a Judeo-Christian ethic that promoted self-restraint and caring for the poor and sickly. Instead Nietzsche believed in striving for power, seeking risky adventure and the triumph of the strong over the weak. To achieve this people must stop depending on reason and return to their instinctual drives and impulses. This would eventually lead to a race of Supermen who would take humankind to new levels of greatness.
The final 1/3 discusses the similarities and differences between the beliefs of Nietzche and the Nazis. For example, while Nietzche was staunchly opposed to the Judeo-Christian tradition he was not actually anti-Semitic. In fact, Nietzche would have undoubtly been horrifed by many aspects of National Socialism, including the Holocaust. But it is also clear that the Nazis were heavily influenced by the writings of Nietzche and used them as an ideological justification for their murderous atrocities.
This doc serves as an excellent intro to the philosophy of Nietzche as well an interesting discussion of the relationship between his ideas and those of the Nazis.
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21 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointed, May 30, 2007
I have to say that when I finished watching this film I was a little disappointed. Hicks provides an extensive history of the rise of the Nazi Party and a thorough overview of Nazi philosophy. He also provides an in depth overview of Nietzsche's philosophy, and a solid analytical discussion of the parallels and differences between the two philosophies. In short, he provides 5 reasons to suggest that major parallels existed (e.g. Nietzsche's support of war as means of cultivating "greatness") and 5 major points of difference (e.g. Nietzsche's disdain towards German anti-semitism and German nationalism).
This is all fine and I generally agree with his points; he does, afterall, provide some very convincing evidence. But his conclusion is almost childishly simplistic and (if you ask me) thoroughly anti-Nietzschean. After his comparative analysis, he immediately returns to a sort of unquestioning, modern, moralistic, liberal-democratic mind set, denouncing everything that the Nazis stood for, philosophically and practically, which he summarises in 5 simplistic dot-points (e.g. socialism, collectivism, nationalism, etc). He then proceedes to outline what he thinks are the binary opposite values of what the Nazis stood for, such as capitalism, democracy, liberalism, etc, concluding by suggesting that if we want to avoid the rise of another National-Socialist regime in the future, we need to adopt the latter set of principles! He doesn't in any way indicate what Nietzsche might have thought of this proposal, or how the two "opposite" sets of principles might interact, or potentially be synthesised - quite bizarre for someone who has spent as much time as Hicks studying the anti-binary ideas of Nietzsche and post-Nietzschean philosophy.
But in the spirit of Nietzsche himself, this is, in the end, just my interpretation. And at least Hicks is honest enough to admit the same of his own views.
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