Kusaimamekirai’s Reviews > Nazi Germany and The Humanities: How German Academics Embraced Nazism > Status Update

“Nietzsche insists, more than once, ‘Whoever said he had understood something of me, had made up something out of me after his own image.’”

“How many ‘opportunists’ does it take to stabilize a totalitarian regime? Is the moral status of ‘opportunism’ qualitatively superior to that of ‘true believers’, or those who act out of conviction? What, moreover, are the ethical implications of cooperating with a regime that in its initial months, had suppressed civil liberties and political pluralism…?”

The “surrender in advance”, to coin a phrase from Timothy Snyder is quite sobering here. While there was definite political pressure to fall in line with the political ideology of the moment, there were far more intellectuals who “worked toward the fuhrer”. In essence, doing what they thought was expected of them without being asked first

“With few exceptions, the academic elite welcomed and justified the acts of the Nazi regime, uttered not a word of protest when their Jewish and liberal colleagues were dismissed, nor raised a stir when Jewish students were barred admission”

“The philosopher Ernst Cassirer reflected on this hubris of the humanities and countered it with a stoical interpretation of his own. ‘Kant no longer believes that civilization even in its highest perfection can bring about the happiness of mankind, and he no longer asks it to. It is rather the setting in which man is to test and prove his freedom. And he must undergo this test ever and again’”