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The Shadow of Heidegger

The two Africa Korps warned us of a move to stain the memory of Rommel. There are plans to recover his reputation as part of the attempt to recover Germany. Germany’s rescuers will make him the hero of the assassination attempt of July ’44. They will praise his military virtues. He’ll be declared a professional of arms and not a National Socialist. This falsity must be denounced. The marshal followed the Führer’s orders; he respected him and was a good German soldier.

Doctor Rolfe, someone said. I have never seen those films you mentioned.

Why?

I denied myself watching them. I thought that such a horror could only be an allied slander, a lie.


A loud laugh pierced my ears. It was the philosopher. The eminent specialist in Meister Eckhart, whom, it’s perhaps worth noting, Rosenberg cites again and again in his political-philosophical-racial treatise. Furthermore, I vaguely recalled, a sentence of the venerated mystic serves as a epigraph to The Myth of the Twentieth Century.

What did you believe, Professor Müller, having taught in the university? Why did you think the Rosenberg office organized the reading of Nietzsche in the manner it did?

Werner Rolfe, in all his grandeur, got up, raised his cup, and spoke:

“The weak and the botched shall perish: first principle of our charity. And one should help them to it.” So we did, Professor Müller. Our work extended yours, much like Rosenberg and Bauemler extended that of Nietzsche and you theirs. We fulfilled the Führer’s most transcendent mandate, that of 1941, the final solution. We carried it out. That glory is ours and no one will snatch it from us.

Doctor Rolfe, I said, these films you said Colonel Lawson showed. Do you have them? Could I see them?

Hans Rolfe regarded me, almost mercifully.

You have never seen them?

Never.

I have Lawson’s films. If your intent is to compare horrors, professor, I also have films of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I assure you they are as discomforting as Lawson’s.

The epigraph from Rosenberg’s book is by Eckhart: “This address is only for those who have already found its message in their own lives, or at least long for it in their hearts.” [Next]

Labels: The Shadow of Heidegger

  ¶ 2:45 AM