[Cthulhu]

Interesting reading. I've not yet been able to listen to the show, but would like to say something about the text.

The Roman Republic was not a philosophical one. It took the established reign of the Caesars to make it more 'Greek', that is to give the new rich and old aristocracy a new philosophical peg to hang their hats on (which Juvenal complains about bitterly), til we find Marcus fighting to maintain the empire while writing his meditations in Greek.

As for the superiority of the Germans and significant acomplishments, excepting the stand out Gauss, for our maths we are heavily indebted to the French: Fermat, Poincare, Descarte, Galois. I am just trying to point out that all European peoples once had something to give, quite often having a national particularity.

As for honour and money grubbing, we must remember the Knights Templar, the first bankers of Europe whose rising tide of money wealth was eventually cut off by the French king. Of course the Templars had picked up some strange ideas from their time in Middle East.

Mention of the Grail is made and the story of the grail has parallels with the idea of the dwelling place of the presence of god, the chalice being a feminine symbol and related to the jewish idea of the feminine Shekinah. This again could be from the meeting of cultures in the middle east at that time.

As for the rubble of the bombed out Germany, we know that the NSADP dismissed the "Decline" of Spengler as pessimistic:

A. Hitler, MAY 1, 1935 in Berlin

A writer has summed up the impressions made on him by this time in a book which he entitled 'The Decline of the West.' Is it then really to be the end of our history and of our peoples? No! we cannot believe it. This age must be called, not the decline of the West, but the resurrection of the peoples of this West of ours! Only that which was old, decayed and evil perishes; and let it die! But new life will spring up. Faith can be found, if the will is there. Our leadership has the will, and faith is with the people.

So we have come together on this day to prove symbolically that we are more than a collection of individuals striving one against another, that none of us is too proud, none of us too high, none is too rich, and none too poor, to stand together before the face of the Lord and of the world in this indissoluble, sworn community. And this united nation, we have need of it. When was a leadership at any time faced with a heavier task than our German leadership? Consider, my comrades, what our Germany is, and compare it with other countries. What have we? One hundred and thirty-seven people to the square kilometer; no colonies; no raw materials; no foreign exchange, no capital, no longer any foreign credits; only heavy burdens, sacrifices, taxation, and low wages. What have we, compared with the wealth of other States, the wealth of other countries, the wealth of other peoples, with the possibilities of living that they possess? What have we? One thing only; we have our people. Either it is everything or it is nothing. On it alone can we count. On it alone can we build. Everything that we have created up to the present we owe solely to its goodness of heart, its capacity, its loyalty, its decency, its industry, its sense of order. And if I weigh all this in the balance, it seems to me to be more than all that the rest of the world can offer us. So this, I believe, can be our message to the other peoples on this first of May: 'You need have no fear that we want anything of you. We are proud enough to confess that we ourselves own that treasure, which you certainly could not give us - our people.' I could, as leader, think of no more glorious, no prouder task in this world than to serve this people. One might give me continents, but I would rather be the poorest citizen among this people. And with this people we must and shall succeed in achieving also the tasks that are still to come.

What we want lies clear before us: not war and not strife. Just as we have established peace within our own people, so we want nothing else than peace with the world. For we all know that our great work can succeed only in a time of peace. But just as the leadership of the nation in the domestic sphere has never sacrificed its honor in its relations with the German people, so it can never surrender the honor of the German people in its dealings with the world.

We know what we owe to the world. May the world come to understand what she can never deny to a proud people, and above all may she comprehend one thing: the Germany of today is not the Germany of yesterday - just as little as the Germany of yesterday was the Germany of today. The German people of the present time is not the German people of the day before yesterday, but the German people of the two thousand years of German history which lie behind us.

further...

22 January 1938 Address to Senior Officers

Rome had risen to greatness through strong leadership. The old world was conquered by new nations from the East, seeking living space in the West. However, Christianity provided a basis which prevented the onset of complete chaos and which bound people together. This was the basis of the Holy Roman Empire. It was a sign of great narrow-mindedness in this connection to refer to Charlemagne as the Slaughterer of the Saxons.

He was compelled to strike down the opposition because of his policy of Christianity. It simply remained a pity that the best German blood was lost.

In the modern age, millions saw nothing in Christianity. This was the fault of the form, not the content. Old forms had to go and be replaced by the new.

but we need to turn to the speech of Adolf Hitler in Nuremberg, 6th Sep, 1938 and keeping in mind Spengler's "Decline" to see just what Hitler was striving for...

THE proof of the endowment of a true artist is always to be found in the fact that his work of art expresses the general will of a period. Perhaps that is most clearly shown in architecture.... The religious mystical world of the Christian Middle Ages, turning inwards upon itself, found forms of expression which were possible only for that world - for that world alone could they be of service. A Gothic stadium is as unthinkable as a Romanesque railway station or a Byzantine market hall. The way in which the artist of the Middle Ages, of the beginnings of the modern world, found the artistic solution for the buildings which he was commissioned to create is in the highest degree striking and admirable. That way, however, is no evidence that the conception of the content of life held by the folk of his day was in itself either absolutely right or absolutely wrong; it is evidence only that works of art have rightly mirrored the inner mind of a past age. It is therefore quite comprehensible that insofar as the attempt is made to carry on the life of that past age, those who search for solutions of artistic problems can still seek and find there fruitful suggestions. Thus one can easily imagine that, for instance, in the sphere of religion men will always work backwards to the form-language of a period in which Christianity in its view of the world appeared to meet every need. On the other hand, at the present moment the expression of a new view of the world which is determined by the conception of race will return to those ages which in the past have already possessed a similar freedom of the spirit, of the will, and of the mind. Thus, naturally, the manifestation in art of a European conception of the State will not be possible through civilizations, as, for example, the civilization of the Far East, which - because foreign to us - have no message for our day, but will rather be influenced in a thousand ways through the evidences and memories of that mighty imperial Power of antiquity which, although in fact destroyed fifteen hundred years ago, still as an ideal force lives on and works on in the imaginations of men. The more nearly the modern State approaches to the imperial idea of the ancient World-Power, so more and more will the general character of that civilization be manifested in its influence upon the formation of the style of our own day.

National Socialism is not a cult-movement - a movement for worship; it is exclusively a 'volkic' political doctrine based upon racial principles. In its purpose there is no mystic cult, only the care and leadership of a people defined by a common blood-relationship. Therefore we have no rooms for worship, but only halls for the people - no open spaces for worship, but spaces for assemblies and parades. We have no religious retreats, but arenas for sports and playing-fields, and the characteristic feature of our places of assembly is not the mystical gloom of a cathedral, but the brightness and light of a room or hall which combines beauty with fitness for its purpose. In these halls no acts of worship are celebrated, they are exclusively devoted to gatherings of the people of the kind which we have come to know in the course of our long struggle; to such gatherings we have become accustomed and we wish to maintain them. We will not allow mystically-minded occult folk with a passion for exploring the secrets of the world beyond to steal into our Movement. Such folk are not National Socialists, but something else - in any case, something which has nothing to do with us. At the head of our program there stand no secret surmisings but clear-cut perception and straightforward profession of belief. But since we set as the central point of this perception and of this profession of belief the maintenance and hence the security for the future of a being formed by God, we thus serve the maintenance of a divine work and fulfill a divine will - not in the secret twilight of a new house of worship, but openly before the face of the Lord.

There were times when a half-light was the necessary condition for the effectiveness of certain teachings: we live in an age when light is for us the fundamental condition of successful action. It will be a sorry day when through the stealing in of obscure mystic elements the Movement or the State itself issues obscure commissions.... It is even dangerous to issue any commission for a so-called place of worship, for with the building will arise the necessity for thinking out so-called religious recreations or religious rites, which have nothing to do with National Socialism. Our worship is exclusively the cultivation of the natural, and for that reason, because natural, therefore God-willed. Our humility is the unconditional submission before the divine laws of existence so far as they are known to us men: it is to these we pay our respect. Our commandment is the courageous fulfillment of the duties arising from those laws. But for religious rites we are not the authorities, but the churches! If anyone should believe that these tasks of ours are not enough for him, that they do not correspond with his convictions, then it is for him to prove that God desires to use him to change things for the better. In no event can National Socialism or the National Socialist State give to German art other tasks than those which accord with our view of the world.

It was to move out of the Faustian and the gothic gloom of the cathedrals and let Christianity fully flower in the light of day, as a positive motivating force rather than the whip of the flagellant, as world affirming rather than world denying. Christianity was/is moving in that direction but it was/is possible for it to become perverted and distasteful under the judaic rule, affirming the destructive elements in the world and not the creative.

Anyway, that is my .02 on some of the content. Very thought provoking essay. Keep up the good work.