Customer Reviews

Nietzsche and the Nazis

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This documentary is an unusually fine example of what philosophy can do when it's done properly. Stephen Hicks takes the viewer on a information rich tour of the intellectual history of 20th Century Germany. His presentation is scholarly, fastidious, and fair.

Hicks refuses to completely acquit Nietzsche of responsibility for Nazism, but he doesn't stoop to cheap caricatures, either. Nietzsche, no pale criminal, would likely accept responsibility for everything Hicks levels at him. After all, to call Nietzsche "dangerous" is merely to appreciate him in full.

But Hicks is not merely doing positive intellectual history. This video essay is also a normative philosophical endeavor. Hicks takes the unfashionable view that ideas have consequences, that they drive history. Hicks appreciates that Nazism was a highly sophisticated and fully-articulated philosophy. As Walter put it The Big Lebowski, "Say what you want about National Socialism dude - it's an ethos." Nazism was not a spasm of madness, but a coherent response to perennial questions. It is not enough that we dismiss Nazism, or simply forget it; in the long run it's certain to emerge once again. Instead, Hick holds, we have to engage it - and engage Nietzsche - to determine and then to prove where each goes wrong and why.

Hicks sees philosophy as a sort of ideological bomb squad, dispatched to dismantle rogue ideologies before they become catastrophes. As thrilling as I find this notion, my view is a bit more cynical. In 1930's Germany, Hicks has identified one of the few points in the last 2000 years when philosophy had some causal traction on the highway of world history - and in that instance the result was not pretty.

Still, if you're interested in these things you'll be hard-pressed to find a more engaging three hours of television anywhere.

I had never seen a Lecture I liked before, now I have. Although there is very little about Friedrich Nietzche, Dr Hicks does a great job of showing how Nazi philosophy was influenced by Nietzche. This video is crammed full of facts about how the National Socialist of Germany gaine popular support and how their methods shaped a generation of followers. It is put in terms that will allow you to see that the very same methods are in place with in western culture today without a mention of modern times in the video. In this video you will discover the strategy behind who supported the National Socialists, how this strategy perpetuated National Socialist support, and even how college students were behind book burnings. Although there was not an obvious agenda, it leads to the feeling when watching this lecture that Dr. Hicks was warning us that this history could easily repeat itself if we become complacent. This Video should be required viewing for highschool students. After viewing this video I found Dr Hicks website and posted a thank you for such a great video, and he responded. Some people are a benefit to humanity, and Dr Stephen R.C. Hicks is one of those people.

I thought I knew a lot about World War II (and Nietzsche) until I saw this documentary on Netflix.

It was simply fantastic--most writing/documentaries on WWII strike me as a form of "pornography" in that they go on over and over about what happened and the evil things that were done, but almost none organize, explain, and make sense of the mass of detail/facts as Prof Hicks does here. Also, many either glorify Nietzsche or portray him as "evil" instead of taking the even handed approach that this documentary takes.

I hope Prof. Hicks does many more similar productions--I have become a big fan, and plan to buy his DVD and the accompanying book for my local library.

I also commend him for his initiative in the unusual (and inspiring) approach he took to produce this.

I always have wondered, "How could it have happened?" This movie puts it into focus using philosophy as the foundation. All the Nazi documentaries ever made do not do the job this does in explaining what made Germany kills millions of innocent civilians and create a very destructive war that resulted in millions of more deaths.

I did not give it the last star only because the film does not attempt to be Citizen Kane. Hicks executes perfectly. His lecturing engages without boring or getting too deep into the philosophy. The imagery and music are an eerie accompaniment.

I have long been interested in World War II. That is what led me to this DVD; history not philosophy. I have looked at the historical events of WWII and often asked myself, "Was Hitler insane?" Dr. Hicks has helped me to understand the mind behind the actions. The answer of course is that Hitler was not insane, he was a man committed to a philosophy and a cause. Dr. Hicks traced the progression of that philosophy and made me aware that, unfortunately, war will never be obsolete. I gave this DVD a 5 star rating because Dr. Hicks captured and held my attention for the entire 2 hours and 45 minutes. With me being borderline ADD that is not easy to do.

This 2 1/2 hour documentary is mostly a lecture (although to some degree all documentaries are lectures) about the Nazis and the philosopher. This may be a turnoff for some people, but actually this is an excellent film if you are interested in either topic. The first half deals exclusively with the Nazis and it explodes many of the myths that have been handed down through the decades. The socialistic aspect of the Nazis is highlighted, something which is rarely done; usually the emphasis is on the racism of the Nazis but the socialism is ignored---this is done particularly by socialist leftists. A second myth that is exploded is that the notorious bookburnings were not carried out by the government but by college students and that college students were some of the most fervent Nazis; to those of us who lived through the Sixties and Seventies and saw the "student radicals" and "student activists" (i.e., the Communists) in the United States, Western Europe and South America, this comes as no surprise at all.

Another myth is that the Nazis were anti-intellectual and had no support from the intelligentsia. This is not true. Many intellectuals did support the Nazis (cf. a book The Appeal of Fascism on just this topic) and their attacks on certain other intellectuals and ideas were done because those persons or ideas were the opposite of what they themselves advocated. Again, you find the very same attitude from the Sixties to the present day in universities: anyone who voices or writes an opinion or fact that is not Politically Correct will find himself disembowled by other intellectuals.

Specifically, during the Seventies a philosopher by the name of Kauffman hit the jackpot by claiming that the Nazis had misused Nietzsche and that Nietsche was no foundation of the Nazi movement. This claim was true only if you ripped out several chapters of the philosopher's writings, but it did not matter and Kauffman, like I said, hit the jackpot telling leftists what they wanted to hear. Anyway, the film actually starts to deal with Nietzsche at the end of the first hour.

An excellent presentation. This is not a movie in the sense of actors, scenery, action, etc. It is simply Stephen Hicks speaking in front of a series of simple backgrounds interspersed with photos, videos, quotes, etc. to illustrate his thesis. If you expect more than a simple but riveting documentary, you may be disappointed. This is for people interested in learning a topic of importance, not for frivolous entertainment.

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.

Stephen Hicks should get a pat on the back for doing this presentation. Rather than be content to just sit in his professors chair and impact a few undergrads each year, he saw a void and he made effort to step into. I find that remarkably commendable -- the kind of thing that we should be giving our academics awards for.

In that way it reminded me of the popular video by Herb Meyer The Siege of Western Civilization. It's really just a presentation. In fact he probably shot a lot of it himself in areas around his house. But it doesn't matter. The content is good, and the application is direct.

What was that void? Well we've all heard endlessly about the Nazis, but as Hicks lays out, we are mostly given unhelpful explanations for their rise -- things like Hitler being a madman, or the economic situation in Germany being bad, etc. The problem is that these by themselves do not explain anything. If Hitler was a "madman" then how did he get power in the first place? And many countries had bad economies without being taken over by evil people.

The answer is ideas. The Nazis did not arise out of nowhere. They were giving political power to an ideology that had been developed many years before and was gaining sway among leading German intellectuals. Sure they don't represent any one thinker like Neitzche exactly, but the correspondences are much stronger than we have been led to believe.

Hicks concludes with a powerful call to fight proto-Nazi idealogies in our culture rather than have to face them on the battlefield. It's a compelling message and one that we all need.

I never wrote a review for amazon before, but I felt this one was so good I just had to. Excellent video.