Hitler's Bastards

More than one friend, perhaps sadly influenced by the current creed of moral relativism, has theorized to me that Hitler and the Nazis were sincere according to their own lights; that in their own minds they believed that what they did was right.

It would follow that we cannot really blame them for what they did. It is only a case of might makes right. We won, so we set the rules.

This came up, specifically, in a discussion of Ernst Zundel, Canada’s own “neo-Nazi.” One of these friends had actually met him in person. He was presumably hardly a supporter of Zundel and his theories, being Jewish himself. But he reported, puzzled, that Zundel, in his professional life, was once asked to doctor a photo to remove evidence of pollution. And he had refused, on the grounds that this would be immoral.

So my friend concludes that Hitler himself could well have been similarly morally motivated. Mistaken, perhaps, but honestly so.

I think that is quite wrong.

For, as Albert Speer, who had been Hitler’s close friend and a leading Nazi, remarks in his autobiography, Hitler and his staff always functioned by “picking up anything that promised success without regard for ideology—in fact, determining even ideological questions by their effect on the voters.” (Inside the Third Reich, p. 53).

This is the strategy of the psychopath. Hitler was, in other words, completely without principle.

He claimed, for example, to be sacrificing himself for the benefit of the German volk, and called on all Germans to do likewise. All other concerns must be subjugated to the good of the race and nation. Yet, when Germany was falling apart, he ordered a scorched earth policy which would have reduced Germany to penury, and he declared that the Germans had failed him and deserved what they got.

In the end, proverbially, he preferred to see his country die for him. It was not about race or nation or ideology. It was about power for Adolf Hitler.

The other top Nazis were also recognizably psychopaths: Goebbels, Goering, Himmler, Ernst, Bormann.

Yet Zundel is the very reverse. A psychopath always sacrifices principle for personal advancement. Zundel has always sacrificed personal advancement for principle. A psychopath cunningly adjusts his persona to be as popular as possible, as a good demagogue knows how to do. Zundel has systematically done the opposite; he has done everything he could to be unpopular.

A psychopath seeks power. Zundel has done precisely what would be most likely to attract persecution.

Zundel is merely a harmless eccentric. And a moral man. He is, indeed, quite possibly, a prisoner of conscience. For, bizarre as his ideas are, he apparently genuinely believes in them. At worst, perhaps he seeks notoriety; but that is harmless.

He could not be more different from a real Nazi. And aside from distracting us from the real danger of Fascism, absolutely nothing is served by imprisoning or fining or deporting or persecuting him.