Civilization #54: The German Will to Power

We will now discuss Germany and conclude our examination of the four great civilizations fighting for global dominance. We previously covered Britain and America, and then Russia. Today, we focus on Germany.

To recap, Russian civilization is very distinct from Anglo-American civilization, and German civilization is also distinct. We're going to focus on the idea of the unity of will in German civilization. We don't know much about German civilization because they were defeated in World War II, and because the Anglo-Americans control the history of the world, we tend to think Anglo-American civilization is superior to German and Russian civilization. But what I will show you is that in many respects, the most advanced civilization that humans have ever created is actually the German civilization.

The Paradox of Prussia

If you look at a map of Europe today, there's a really interesting fact that may surprise you.

The green is Russia, the largest country in the world. Over here are the Baltic nations, and over here is a place called Kaliningrad. It's actually Russian. The question is, how did this come to pass? How was it that you've got this colony of Russians far away from the motherland?

The answer is that historically, this was not Russian. Historically, this was a place called Königsberg, which was part of a nation that no longer exists called Prussia. For a couple of hundred years, Prussia was the strongest military and the most advanced civilization in the world. Now it has disappeared and been replaced by Poland, parts of Belarus, and West Prussia has now become part of Germany. But Prussia is extinct.

The reason is that in World War II, the Allies who won the war—the Soviet Union, the British, and Americans—decided to destroy Prussia. The rationale was that Prussia is a militaristic society that is hell-bent on world domination, and by eliminating Prussia, they could bring peace to the world. The problem, though, is that Königsberg, which is now Kaliningrad, was really the center of civilization for a few decades.

This is Königsberg in the 1800s. It was a beautiful port city by the Baltic Sea and was really the apex of human civilization.

Then, of course, World War II happened, and after the war, Königsberg was destroyed. It was turned into rubble, and today it's Kaliningrad, a very Soviet, stale city with no character, no culture, and no civilization. That was the intent: to destroy Königsberg, which was for the longest time the heart and soul of German civilization.

It is true that Königsberg and Prussia were an extremely powerful military nation. There are many great generals and officers who are from Königsberg. We're not just talking about the nation of Prussia; we're just talking about the city of Königsberg. But you also see that there are many intellectuals and writers who come from Königsberg. The most famous of these intellectuals is Immanuel Kant, who we will discuss later. He basically changed the course of Western history with his philosophy. So, Königsberg was the birthplace of Immanuel Kant.

How is it that the man who is most responsible for the Enlightenment happens to be born in this military nation? That's a question. But not only Immanuel Kant, but you also have many other great thinkers, including Hannah Arendt, who is a Jewish philosopher and considered one of the greatest political philosophers of the 20th century. She's also from Königsberg. The city also produced an amazing group of scientists, mathematicians, musicians, and artists. The contribution of Königsberg to world civilization cannot be overstated.

There were also quite a few Jews who lived in Königsberg. For the longest time, it was considered one of the most tolerant cities in Germany for Jews.

Let's now look at Nobel Prize winners in the sciences: physics, chemistry, and medicine.

• In 1925, the majority were actually from Germany. Germany had the best scientists in the world.
• In 1933, same thing.
• By 1950, same thing.
• In fact, by 1975, Germany was still dominant. The United States was catching up. It's only by about 2000 that the United States starts to overtake Germany.

So again, the question is: how is it possible for a militaristic nation, hell-bent on world domination, to produce so many great scientists and philosophers?

This is a very famous quote from Mirabeau that captures the prejudice of the West against Prussia:

Where some states have an army, the Prussian army has a state.

This is pretty insulting to Prussian culture. We've looked at many civilizations that are militaristic, including the Romans, Spartans, Aztecs, Macedonians, and Qing Chinese, among others. They were extremely successful militarily, but they were not creative. In fact, they were anti-creative. So, how is it possible for the Prussians to be both creative and militaristic?

The answer is because the Western prejudice against Prussia is wrong. They were not a militaristic nation bent on world domination. They were first and foremost a creative, humanistic society that was forced into military confrontation with its neighbors because of its geographic location.

The Rise of Prussia

Let's go back to the history of the Holy Roman Empire. As we discussed previously, the Holy Roman Empire was a confederation of German city-states, thousands of them, that were in competition with each other. Over time, because of competition from more powerful states like France, Poland-Lithuania, Russia, and Sweden, these city-states were forced to gel together. The most successful of these city-states was Prussia.

For the longest time, Prussia was a vassal state of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth or the Swedes. But by about the year 1700, it started to come into its own under great military leadership and began to spread out. It spread out really quickly because of its military victories and its high culture.

By the 19th century, Prussia had dedicated itself to uniting all of Germany and started a series of wars that allowed for the unification of all the German people.

1. The first is the Danish-Prussian War.
2. Then they fight against the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a successor to the Holy Roman Empire, and they defeat the Austrians really quickly.
3. Then they move on to France, which was the dominant power of this time, and they defeat France, thus allowing for the complete unification of Germany under Prussian leadership.

How was Prussia able to be so successful? As we discussed, there are certain characteristics about these city-states that go on to unify a nation. The three major ones that Moscow and Prussia share are:

• Open, cooperative competition. They're surrounded by enemies and are forced to be innovative, open, and tolerant in order to succeed.
• Advantaged by disadvantage. Prussia and Moscow had limited resources, which forced them to focus on human capital, on making sure their citizens were well-educated, hardworking, and industrious.
• Vassalage. Moscow was under the vassalage of the Mongols, and Prussia for the longest time was under the vassalage of the Swedes, Poles, and Lithuanians. As a result, they're always engaged in a process of reflection and resilience. That's really the secret to the success of Prussia.

At the same time, the thing to remember about the Prussians that differentiates them from the Muscovites is that because Prussia is situated within Europe, it has a very different attitude towards humans. The Muscovites, because of their Mongolian heritage, tend to oppress their subjects, whereas the Prussians are much more democratic, progressive, and open.

Frederick the Great and the Enlightened State

This is Frederick the Great, who is considered the great nation-builder of Prussia for his military victories. What is often ignored are his socio-economic and political reforms. He really is the first enlightened despot. He was heavily influenced by Immanuel Kant; they thought very highly of each other, and he was very intent on making Prussia the first enlightened state of Europe. Let's look at a few things he did:

• He radically reformed the Prussian judicial system so that you had the rule of law, so that everyone had recourse to justice. Even if you were poor, you could still sue.
• He abolished torture in the military, which was revolutionary at this time because it was always assumed that you kept your soldiers in check by scaring them.
• He established religious tolerance. Remember, at this time in Europe, there's a huge war going on between Catholics and Protestants, and he was tolerant towards both, and even to a certain extent to the Jews as well. Over time, Königsberg, the heart and center of the Prussian nation, had one of the largest Jewish settlements in Europe, about 5,000 at that point.
• He granted a basic form of freedom of speech.
• Most importantly, in 1763, he established a public school system that became the source for Prussia's future greatness. To put this in context, it was only over 100 years later that Britain and France did this. Japan and America would basically steal the Prussian education system.

Reform and Resilience After Napoleon

In 1806, Prussia was defeated by Napoleon. As a result, Prussia became a vassal state to Napoleon. At this point, what the Prussians did is what they've always done, which is engage in a deep process of reflection. They decided that in order to defeat France, they must be like France. This was the era of the French Revolution, and there was a spread of liberalism throughout France. So the Prussians decided to copy the most important reforms of the French Revolution, which included:

• The abolishment of serfdom. Now peasants could become landowners.
• They destroyed monopolies to encourage free-market competition.
• They opened civil service to the middle class; before, it was only available to the nobility.

The most important reforms were those of a man named Wilhelm von Humboldt. He created the modern research university. He founded the Berlin University and conceptualized the research university where, instead of sitting in class and memorizing what the professor told you, you were encouraged to do your own research and write a thesis, which is what we do today. His most important reform was to conceptualize public education as a meritocracy, as an opportunity for the middle class to grow and to have a greater economic role in society.

These reforms, in only a few years, would allow Prussia to defeat Napoleon and establish itself as a great power again.

This is Carl von Clausewitz, who is considered the greatest military strategist of all time. He was an officer in the Prussian military, and he thought very deeply about the Napoleonic Wars. Why were Napoleon and the French so great? His conclusion was that they were able to mobilize the resources of society for total war. His conclusion was that in the future, if a nation wants to win militarily, it must engage its citizens. You must increase the morale of your citizens and make them want to die for your nation.

The 1848 Revolutions and the Prussian Response

1848 is one of the most important years in human history.

These red spots are all revolutionary hotspots. After Napoleon was defeated in 1815, the European powers, led by Metternich of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, sat everyone down to decide how to ensure no wars like Napoleon's would arise again and, most importantly, how to maintain the feudal structure of Europe. They were very successful at that until 1848, when the middle class and the workers rebelled in 17 different places.

You will notice that in Britain, there was no revolution. The reason is that Britain at this point had colonies overseas—Canada, New Zealand, Australia—so people who were upset about their economic status could migrate elsewhere. But these other places didn't have any colonies; there was no pressure valve for social discontent, and so these revolutions started to take place. A lot of these revolutions were suppressed violently. You would think that Prussia, being a military dictatorship, would suppress the middle-class liberals violently. But that's not what happened.

There were public demonstrations because people wanted more political reforms. The army killed certain people, and now people were really angry. They erected barricades and were getting ready for civil war, another French Revolution. At this point, the emperor, Frederick William IV, went and reassured the public that they would negotiate a peace. To calm the public, the king approved arming the citizens. He gave guns to the citizens to ensure they would feel safe negotiating with the army.

Not only that, but when the crowds went to the king, he basically agreed to all their demands, including parliamentary elections, a constitution, and freedom of the press. He also promised that Prussia was to be merged into Germany because, at this point, there were not only liberal and socialist sentiments but also nationalist sentiments. People wanted to feel united as a German people.

What finally calmed people down was the king attending a funeral for those citizens who died during the rebellion. He and his ministers wore the revolutionary tricolor of black, red, and gold, which is the flag of Germany right now. He was showing tremendous respect to his people. This is the Prussian attitude. The historical image of Prussians is very stern, austere, and dictatorial. But if you look at their behavior, they're very respectful of their people because they understand that in a world where they're surrounded by enemies—France, Russia, all around them—they need to stay united as a people.

Bismarck and the Unification of Germany

This is Otto von Bismarck, the most famous Prussian in world history. He is the founder of the Second Reich. The Holy Roman Empire was the First Reich, and the unified Germany is the Second Reich. He's really the founder of modern-day Germany. He's known as the Iron Chancellor because he gave a speech in which he said that the position of Prussia in Germany will not be determined by its liberalism but by its power. He was rejecting the idea of liberalism, of free speech, openness, negotiation, and institutions, and focusing on the military.

Prussia must concentrate its strength and hold it for the favorable moment, which has already come and gone several times. Since the treaties of Vienna, our frontiers have been ill-designed for a healthy body politic. Not through speeches and majority decisions will the great questions of the day be decided—that was the great mistake of 1848 and 1849—but by iron and blood.

When you read this speech, you understand that he's repudiating the liberalism of King Frederick William. He's saying that the armies should have gone in and killed all the demonstrators. That's why he has a reputation for being the Iron Chancellor, a man of violence and sternness.

But he was an extremely pragmatic man, and his ambition was to have a unified Germany in which people were content. This is another speech he made, same man but a completely different tone:

The real grievance of the worker is the insecurity of his existence; he is not sure that he will always have work, he is not sure that he will always be healthy, and he foresees that he will one day be old and unfit to work.

He was sympathizing with the plight of the factory worker. He understood that it's wrong for workers to lose their hand at work and not be compensated. It's wrong for workers to get sick and their entire family to go into poverty. It's wrong for kids who are six years old to work in factories. It's wrong for managers to beat their factory workers. So, what they did was institute the first welfare state, the first socialist state in the world.

• They had health insurance.
• They had accident insurance, so if you got injured at work, the state would give you money.
• They had a pension.
• They protected workers from abuse.
• They had a child protection act, which meant children were not allowed to work in factories.

In other words, in the years 1800 to 1900, if you could be a citizen of anywhere in the world, you would definitely want to be a citizen of Germany. At this point in Britain, France, and America, workers were being exploited everywhere. But in Germany, workers were being given rights. And because they were being given rights, they wanted to fight for their country. They wanted to die for their country. This made Germany the most powerful nation in the world at this time. And when that happens in Europe, when you become a hegemon, Britain gets scared and starts to plot to get rid of you.

Challenges to German Unity

At the same time, I don't want to say that Germany was a liberal democracy at this point. It was not. As these industrial reforms were happening, there were more groups that were discontent, and they posed a problem to German unity. These groups were:

• The Catholics: A third of Germany was now Catholic because Prussia had united all of Germany. For the longest time, the Holy Roman Empire was Catholic. Bismarck's biggest failure was his attempt to suppress the Catholics. He basically said, "We're not going to fund you anymore, and if you insist on swearing loyalty to the Pope, then we will put you in prison. You now have to show loyalty to Germany." So the priests all went to prison. This was a disaster for Bismarck, and ultimately he had to compromise and relent.
• The Liberals, Socialists, and Communists: There's a huge difference between these three terms. Liberalism means more political rights for the middle class: freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, voting power. The middle class has economic power and wants to transform that into political power. Socialists want democracy for all. They understand that for democracy to really happen, you need to provide worker protection, create class consciousness, and let workers have unions. Then you have Communism, which is more radical. Communists believe wealth should be redistributed. They want to get rid of private property and redistribute wealth for more equality. Also, communism is an international movement.
• Polish Nationalists: A lot of people in Germany at this time were Poles. They're Slavic people who have their own language and ethnic identity, and ultimately they would form Poland. At this time, they were a huge problem for the German state and were suppressed.
• The Anarchists: Anarchists are people who believe that we don't need government or authority. People should just be allowed to do whatever they want to do. People are self-organizing, and as a result, government is bad.

You have all these different political groups, and they're all very powerful. They all posed a problem to German unity, and as a result, they were persecuted one by one. This is important because at the end of World War I, when Germany surrendered, they would reflect on why they lost. One conclusion they had was because of all these political divisions. There were too many divisions within society. Therefore, they needed to suppress this division and create one political entity. This is what allowed for the rise of Hitler and the Nazis.

World War I and Its Aftermath

When Germany became too powerful, Britain was forced into action. Britain cannot allow for a hegemon to be dominant in Europe. Britain went into action against Napoleon when he was a hegemon, and now they were going into action against Germany because it was too powerful.

World War I was a catastrophe. Millions of people died, and it was an alliance of Britain, France, and Russia against Germany. Germany did have the Ottoman Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire as allies, but they were not effective. It was really Germany versus the world. What's amazing is that Germany was able to create a stalemate; there were even times when Germany was about to win.

Of course, when that happens, if Germany is going to win the war, it forces the Americans into action. Why? First of all, the Americans think like the British. They do not want a European power to unite the heartland—Asia and Europe—because then it negates naval trade. Second, the Americans had lent a lot of money to the British through the Lend-Lease policy. If Britain lost the war, then all that money would be gone. So, America came in to save Britain.

But even at this point, it was not clear Germany was going to lose the war. Russia was knocked out of the war, France was divided, and Britain was not that effectual. Chances are Germany was going to lose, but it had not lost yet. If Germany could mobilize all its resources, it could withstand this onslaught.

But then something happened that changed the calculus of the German generals: the 1917 Russian Revolution. Why did the revolution happen? Because Tsar Nicholas was too focused on the war and neglected the political divisions at home. This allowed for a revolution to happen. The German generals who were in control of Germany at this point were scared to death of what was happening in Germany because, at this point in history, the nation with the strongest working class—the proletariat—was actually Germany, not Russia.

As a result, this man, Paul von Hindenburg, who was head of the German military as well as head of the German nation, forced the German government to surrender to the Allies. This led to the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. The treaty had many stipulations that were unfair to the Germans. They had to pay a lot of debt, they could no longer rearm, they had to reduce their military, and they lost a lot of land to France. But the worst thing the Allies did was force Germany to admit complete guilt for starting the war. That was completely unfair. This war happened for many reasons; everyone was involved and had a certain blame, but Germany had to take all the blame.

The government did not want to sign this treaty because it would obviously anger all their people. But the army forced the government to sign it. The thinking of the army at this point was: "Listen, we've been in this situation before. We lost to Napoleon, so we just paid off a lot of debt to Napoleon and then rebuilt. And when we rebuilt, we made the nation stronger. We're resilient. So we'll do the same thing here. We'll just surrender, accept all the terms, then we'll start to rebuild and unify the nation and take revenge against everyone." That was the thinking of the military. A very simple strategy.

The Weimar Republic is what followed after the war. It was 10 years of hyperinflation, social discontent, and complete chaos. When a nation suffers economically, politically, and culturally, it often engages in a deep process of reflection. It goes back into the past and thinks about how to rebuild itself.

The Philosophical Roots of German Unity

Some philosophers were very important for thinkers on how to unify Germany.

Arthur Schopenhauer and The Will

Arthur Schopenhauer is a very, very important philosopher. His conception of the world is that the underlying force of the world is the Will. Desire. And the Will manifests itself physically in us, in bodies. The underlying force of the universe is the Will, and then the Will physically manifests in our bodies, and our bodies will seek to do what the Will wants, which is to procreate, to have sex, to have children, to eat food.

The great paradox of this situation is that before its manifestation in our bodies, the Will was just one; there was no differentiation. But once the Will manifested itself in our bodies, there's now differentiation, there's multiplicity. As such, we see the world through our own selfish perspective, which leads to conflict. It is because we've forgotten that we are just one that conflict and suffering arise.

His great solution to this is compassion. As humans, we must first and foremost be compassionate towards each other and remind ourselves that we are just one people. We can do that through the appreciation of art because art is a great unifier. Art is a thing that allows us to contemplate the wholeness and harmony of the world. Then he says that some of us should engage in self-denial, become like monks, and deny the world because the world is inherently evil. When you refuse to have children, when you refuse to struggle and suffer, then you achieve enlightenment. This is easy for us to understand because it's a very Buddhist ideology. He's basically taking Buddhism and Hinduism from India and making it more secular, trying to remove the religious aspects and make it into a logical system.

Life has no intrinsic worth, but is kept in motion merely by desire and illusion.

As such, if you can remove the desire from your life, you achieve nirvana. You achieve enlightenment. This is a really important passage:

Music is thus by no means like the other arts, the copy of the Ideas, but the copy of the will itself, whose objectivity the Ideas are. This is why the effect of music is so much more powerful and penetrating than that of the other arts, for they speak only of shadows, but it speaks of the thing itself.

How do we know the Will? How can we access the Will? It's through music, because music is a perfect encapsulation of desire. It is the perfect expression of emotions. And so through music, we can rediscover the unity of the world, the unity of the Will.

Richard Wagner and the Total Work of Art

Why is this important? Because it inspires Richard Wagner. Wagner is the most famous musician in Germany; he's really the national poet of Germany. He's a genius. And his great insight is that all art can be combined into one. This is before movies, before cinema. You can put music, paintings, theater, poetry, and philosophy everything together to create one total art that will inspire and unite the people.

This is why he spent 30 years creating The Ring of the Nibelung (the Ring Cycle). This is held every year at the Bayreuth Festival. He created his own opera house in order to stage the play. It's 15 hours long, in four parts, and it's the inspiration for The Lord of the Rings movies. It's a very similar plot.

The plot is not simple, but I'll put it in very simple terms. There are people called the Rhine maidens, river goddesses who control the river Rhine, and they have a lot of gold. There's a dwarf, an evil dwarf, who steals all this gold and crafts a ring to control the world. This is important because it's actually taking Schopenhauer's philosophy—that desire is the source of evil—and turning it into a metaphor. The ring is desire. The ring is what represents evil and suffering in the world, and because we all seek the ring, we cause misery.

Up in the sky, there's a god named Wotan (another name for Odin). Wotan and the gods want to create a palace for themselves called Valhalla, and they hire a giant to build it. They sign a contract with him, but the giant wants payment first. So Wotan and the gods steal the ring from the dwarf and give it to the giant. But then the dwarf places a curse on the ring: the gods will see the end of days, Ragnarök, every day. The gods are haunted. They realize they need to destroy this ring, otherwise they will always be haunted and won't be able to sleep. They need to kill the giant and get the ring back, but they have a contract.

So Wotan conspires to give birth to a great hero who's half-human, half-god, who will go kill the giant and get the ring back. He gives birth to twins, Siegmund and Sieglinde. They're separated at birth, and then they run into each other and fall in love. Sieglinde is already married, so Siegmund is determined to kill her husband, Hunding, and marry her. This is all part of Wotan's plan. He's really happy. But then his wife, Fricka, says to him, "No, they have broken the incest law. They're not allowed to have sex with each other." So he has to kill Siegmund. Wotan doesn't really have a choice; he has to agree to the death of Siegmund.

He sends his daughter, a Valkyrie named Brünnhilde, to make sure that Siegmund is killed by Hunding. But when Brünnhilde arrives, she sees the love between Sieglinde and Siegmund and wants to save Siegmund, defying Wotan's orders. Wotan hears about this, punishes Brünnhilde, and kills Siegmund.

As punishment, he sentences Brünnhilde to eternal sleep surrounded by a wall of flames. Only the greatest hero in the world, the hero who is capable of killing the giant and retrieving the ring, can save her. This hero is named Siegfried, who is the son of Siegmund.

Siegfried saves her, kills the giant, and now has retrieved the ring. But because he has the ring, everyone around him is now conspiring to kill him and get the ring for themselves—the problem of desire which causes misery. In the end, Siegfried is killed. Brünnhilde learns of this treachery, kills those who killed him, and then sacrifices herself in the flames, throwing the ring back to the Rhine maidens.

The Rhine maidens destroy the ring. But when they destroy the ring, they destroy everything. Valhalla is destroyed. The gods are destroyed. The entire world is destroyed. This goes back to the Schopenhauer idea that the source of the world is desire. When you destroy desire, you destroy the world. But when you do that, you allow for a new beginning. That's the national epic of Germany, the Ring Cycle.

The music is very powerful. It represents the unity of the will. As people are watching this, they become united as one. Time and space collapse. Past and present collapse. This is meant to depict the will, the unity of the will.

Friedrich Nietzsche and the Will to Power

Building on top of Wagner and Schopenhauer is Friedrich Nietzsche, who's considered one of the greatest German philosophers of all time. He makes certain corrections to the philosophy of Schopenhauer and the music of Wagner.

Here are the three major differences between Schopenhauer and Nietzsche:

Nietzsche's main complaint is this: Schopenhauer's conception is that the source of everything is desire, and desire manifests itself in physical bodies to obtain what it wants. Schopenhauer's solution is that we must deny this desire. For Nietzsche, this is confusing. Why would the Will manifest itself in physical bodies? Schopenhauer says it's because God is evil and wants us to suffer. Nietzsche is like, first of all, if God is evil, what's the point of resisting him? If it brings us enjoyment to seek desire, then what's wrong with it? Is it possible that God is good and that God lets desire manifest itself in us in order for us to pursue our desire?

For Schopenhauer, we are just biological beings that have a will to life. But for Nietzsche, it's the will to power—the will to expand ourselves, to achieve our fullest desires. Not just to procreate, but to impose our will on reality itself. That's the true purpose of life. That's why God created us: to become gods ourselves. Otherwise, it makes no sense. How do we go from desire to bodies? It only makes sense if the bodies can amplify our desire and help us achieve it.

For Nietzsche, the ideal person, the paragon, is Napoleon. Who is Napoleon? An individual who can step outside of history to control and manipulate history. That's what the Übermensch is. We ourselves are always controlled by social forces. We don't want to anger our classmates; we want to please our teachers and parents. Therefore, we are slaves to public opinion. But Nietzsche says to be an Übermensch, you have to ignore public opinion, ignore community consensus, and just focus on what is right for you. To look deep into yourself and figure out what is right for you and only you.

Why is this important? Because these ideas, in the context of the Weimar Republic, will lead to the rise of the Nazis and Hitler. Hitler is promising to be the next Napoleon. That's Hitler's promise to the German people: "I will be your Napoleon. I will unite you. I will lead you to victory against all enemies."

Let's look at a couple of passages from Nietzsche. This is from On the Genealogy of Morality, his most famous book.

We can no longer conceal from ourselves what is expressed by all that willing which has taken its direction from the ascetic ideal: this hatred of the human, and even more of the animal, and more still of the material, this horror of the senses, of reason itself, this fear of happiness and beauty, this longing to get away from all appearance, change, becoming, death, wishing, from longing itself—all this means—let us dare to grasp it—a will to nothingness, an aversion to life, a rebellion against the most fundamental presuppositions of life; but it is and remains a will! ... And, to repeat in conclusion what I said at the beginning: man would rather will nothingness than not will.

We are desire. It's really a question of how we manifest our desire. In the Christian-Buddhist worldview, it's important to negate our desire. But when we negate our desire, we negate what our desire could lead us to: truth, beauty, creativity, progress, and innovation. When we negate ourselves, we're not returning to unity; we are only embracing oblivion. That's the problem with Christianity and modernity. It's turning us into slaves.

To call the taming of an animal its "improvement" sounds in our ears almost like a joke. Whoever knows what goes on in menageries doubts that the beasts are "improved" there. They are weakened, they are made less harmful, and through the depressive effect of fear, through pain, through wounds, and through hunger they become sickly beasts. It is no different with the tamed man whom the priest has "improved."

This is a great metaphor. How can we understand the impact of society on people? Society is a zoo. We're all caged animals. What is school then? School is a zoo. Before, you were allowed to run around and explore the world and learn things for yourself. As such, you mastered the world around you. You could hunt, farm, kill people, build alliances, write plays. But in school, we ask you to come to class on time, take notes, take tests, and then we give you a piece of paper. We turn you into caged animals, so you lose the capacity to think for yourself. This is a brilliant metaphor to capture the essence of modernity. Society and education are all meant to degrade your capacity to think for yourself in order to make you more obedient to power.

If you take Schopenhauer, Wagner, and Nietzsche together, you get a rejection of Christianity and a return to paganism.

During the Weimar Republic, with the rise of Nazism, you have a rejection of Christianity and a return to paganism as a solution to the national humiliation of Germany.

The Rise of Hitler and the Nazi Party

This is what leads to the rise of Adolf Hitler. This man is Paul von Hindenburg, the same man who ordered the surrender of Germany. In 1933, he was president of Germany, and he appointed Adolf Hitler as chancellor. The question is, why would he do that? Why would the head of the army and the nation make Adolf Hitler chancellor?

The reason is this: Adolf Hitler was a spy for the German army. As an intelligence agent of the army, Hitler's job was to influence other soldiers and infiltrate the German Workers' Party (the Nazi Party). Why was this happening? Remember, the German army surrendered because they were afraid of revolution back home. Who was leading the revolution? The extreme left and the extreme right. Both were populist and believed in workers' rights. The left believed in international solidarity, specifically with the Soviet Union. The right were nationalists who believed in German unity.

The army decided that the most powerful group in Germany was the socialists on the left, so they needed to support the right. Hitler went into the Nazi Party and helped to finance it. Hitler was giving money to these guys, and because he was such a charismatic speaker, he eventually became their leader. But at this point in history, this was a really small group of people. They were extreme and violent, but they were a minority. The majority were the socialists. This is something you're not taught in school, but it is very important to remember: it was the army that financed the building of the Nazi Party in order to dampen the influence of the socialists. The army was still dedicated to avenging the national humiliation of World War I.

Carroll Quigley, a professor at Georgetown University and Bill Clinton's teacher, was a widely respected scholar. In his book Tragedy and Hope, he explains how Hitler was able to rise and take over the leadership of Germany. He explains that at this point in history, Germany was threatened by two opposing forces. The first was communism from the Soviet Union. But another menace, perhaps even more menacing, was capitalism. At this point, international capitalists were trying to create a central banking system to control the entire global economy. Quigley writes about this:

The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole.

In the 1920s, all these bankers in America, Britain, France, and Germany were getting together and conspiring on how to create a global financial system that could control the world and create a feudal system. They succeeded. The system we have today is the one they created. But this is something that German nationalists like Hitler didn't want.

Hitler was allowed to rise, and the Nazi Party became more and more popular. But again, even though they were popular, they were not as popular as the socialists. So what happened was the army and the Nazi Party got together and assumed power. The first step for Hitler was the Night of the Long Knives. This is really important because the Nazi Party was an extreme right-wing workers' party. The army ordered Hitler to kill all their leaders, and that's what happened. The Brownshirts, the extreme right-wing, were eliminated by the army and the Nazi Party.

Now, the Nazi Party and the army were symbiotic. They relied on each other. From now on, the Nazi Party would ensure total unity of will at home through the suppression of people, and the army would go march and conquer the world. That was the plan.

Adolf Hitler was the perfect man for the job assigned to him by the army because he was a fantastic, charismatic speaker. His speeches created a unity of will in Germany. The goal was to rejuvenate the nation and reunite the German people. This unity of will created the idea of synchronicity, the secret to modern warfare. Synchronicity means the organization and mobilization of your people into one task.

If you can get people to stand in line for a long time, you can fight a war. The nations that are really strong at synchronicity are Germany and Japan. Go to Germany or Japan and get on the subway. No one is struggling against each other. Even though it's crowded, people are standing exactly where they should be, perfectly. That is the idea of synchronicity. If your people can do that, they can fight a war and win it.

Hitler's Speeches and the Unity of Will

We can see from Hitler's speeches that he's trying to create a unity of will. He's trying to be the Übermensch who will unite his people like Napoleon and carry them to victory through faith in themselves.

If men wish to live, then they are forced to kill others... One is either the hammer or the anvil. We confess that it is our purpose to prepare the German people again for the role of the hammer.

He's saying we must unite as a people, we must have a unity of will if we are to triumph against our enemies.

Nothing is possible unless one will commands, a will which has to be obeyed by others, beginning at the top and ending only at the very bottom. This is the expression of an authoritarian state... where everyone is proud to obey because he knows: I will likewise be obeyed when I must take command.

Hitler is not being a dictator; he is trying to create a union of will. He is the leader, the Übermensch, but that's only because God demanded him to be so. He will unite the German people into a hurricane, into an ocean to crash itself upon the world.

In the course of my life I have very often been a prophet, and I have usually been ridiculed for it... Today I will once more be a prophet: if the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!

What he's saying here is: we, the German nation, want to be left alone. We want to be unified. But the capitalists and the communists all seek to undermine us. And who are the communists and the capitalists? The Jews. The Jews are a metaphor for a national elite group of individuals who are conspiring to undermine the vitality and strength of the German nation.

On September 1st, 1939, the beginning of World War II, he explained why this was happening:

As a National Socialist and as a German soldier, I enter upon this struggle with a stout heart. My whole life has been nothing but one long struggle for my people, for its restoration, and for Germany. There was only one watchword for this struggle: faith in this people. One word I have never learned: that is, surrender.

He's telling the people we're going to fight this war again. Why did we lose World War I? Because we didn't have faith. We surrendered. If we all came together and fought to the very bitter end, we would have prevailed.

It is quite unimportant whether we ourselves live, but it is essential that our people shall live, that Germany shall live... If we form a community closely bound together by vows, ready for anything, resolved never to surrender, then our will will master every hardship and difficulty.

It is the unity of will that matters. By November 8th, 1942, the Germans understood they've lost the war. The Americans were in the war, getting ready to invade Europe. The German invasion of the Soviet Union had failed. Germany was overstretched. The entire world had allied itself against Germany. But let's look at what Hitler had to say:

In the beginning I did not have much more to give than faith: the faith that if anyone pursues a just aim with unchanging and undisturbed loyalty and never lets himself be diverted from it, but puts everything into it, then others will be found who are determined to be his followers, and that from this host an ever stronger faith must gradually radiate to the whole people.

This is the unity of will. We reject reality. Reality does not matter because we impose our will on reality. As long as we have faith, as long as we have a unity of will, we will triumph.

The Legacy of Prussia and the German Question

Let's go back to the beginning. We were talking about Kaliningrad. It is one of the greatest injustices in human history that Königsberg, which was for the longest time the cradle of human civilization and the epicenter of the Enlightenment, is now completely destroyed.

This is an idea from Wagner: by destroying this, the world has cursed itself. Let me explain why.

First of all, the German question is now more relevant than ever before. You've destroyed Königsberg, but you have not destroyed the desire for unity among the German people. This is a memory that will not fade. So, will the Germans seek vengeance? Will another Hitler arise to unite the German people? What you may not know is that the Prussians were one of the main forces opposing Hitler as well as inhibiting him. Because Prussia had a very proud culture and was a very strong part of Germany. But now that they've destroyed Prussia, if another Hitler rises, there's really nothing to stop him.

Second, Europe and Russia are about to go to war with each other. If Europe goes into Ukraine, they're going to be slaughtered. But Kaliningrad is Russian territory, with 500,000 Russians. You can blockade Kaliningrad. This could be the start of World War III right here. If the Europeans blockade Kaliningrad and try to starve the people, Putin would have no choice but to intervene.

But the main problem is this: Königsberg was one of the main intellectual, scientific, and cultural centers of Europe. That loss reduced the innovative potential of humanity. Science comes from philosophy. Culture leads to philosophy, which leads to science, which leads to technology. You cannot have science independent of philosophy. When you destroy a center of philosophical innovation, you destroy a center for scientific progress.

How Does a Figure Like Hitler Emerge?

Where did Hitler come from? How did he become so charismatic? There's a lot of randomness to life. The army wanted to inhibit the growth of the socialist left-wing movement and did so by financing these right-wing parties. The Nazi Party was just one of many parties that the army financed and supported. Hitler became a spy and part of this movement, and as such, he became exposed to the ideas of the Nazi Party, which came from Nietzsche, Wagner, and others. Over time, Hitler came to believe that he was the messiah dedicated to restoring German unity.

Human population is very diverse, so you always have a subset of people who have these delusions of grandeur, and in certain circumstances, they will be proven right. Another way of saying this is the army needed someone to play the part of the Übermensch, the superman who could unite the German people and create national unity so that the army could seek its vengeance. They were looking for someone to fill this role, and Hitler auditioned for it and got the part.

This is a very familiar pattern in human history. You can also argue that Napoleon was the same way. What makes these people—Napoleon, Hitler, Julius Caesar—different from us is that they are the total expression of the Will. They have no compassion, no sympathy for anyone. They believe they are here on a divine mission. They are the Will itself, and they must impose their will on others to save the world.

Won't people rebel against this? Won't people think this is reckless? What Schopenhauer and Nietzsche would say is that what we want first and foremost is a return to the unity of will. In the very beginning, the Will was God, the Big Bang. Then the Will expanded itself, and we find ourselves alone in an ocean of alienation. What our hearts really aspire to is a return to a union of will. So when someone says you can be part of a movement to transform the world, that's much more appealing psychologically than to say, "Come to school, do your homework, get good grades, do the SAT, get into a top 50 American school, become an accountant, and for 50 years do something meaningless, but make a lot of money and then you will die a happy person." There's no competition.

Hitler was saying to Germans, "We will make Germany great again. We will be a great civilization again. It will require sacrifice, but it will be worth it because we will make the world whole again." When you're in a crowd of people and this man is speaking to you with his voice, it's like Wagner. It's like going to a concert. The music fills you and inspires your heart. It makes you want to be the Übermensch. Hitler is just the example, but he's saying you can also aspire to be the Übermensch if you are willing to sacrifice your life for the unity of will.

This is far more appealing to people than the idea of materialism. This is religion. Hitler was creating a new religion, and it's intoxicating. The fact that the Germans were able to fight for so long against the entire world is incredible. It was America, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union against the Germans, and the fact that the Germans fought so bravely and to the very bitter end just shows you the power of the unity of will.

What this also tells us is that these things don't die. You can kill a civilization, destroy a city, massacre a people, but you cannot destroy the desire for the unity of will, because that's what fundamentally makes us human.