Holocaust and Aviation - Part I, Chapter 4 - Nationalism and Militarism in Germany

The collapse following the First World War of the Austrian, Russian and German empires was the result of the "Nations Spring" in Europe, which began following the French Revolution.

The monarchy is a national embodiment of the dream of flight. The king was the head of the social pyramid. The Christian Church has completed the work of creating this order. The collapse of the monarchies occurred along with the rise of secularism. The resulting political gap was very large.

The natural fillers of space were the independent European states, which set themselves the goal of replacing the monarchy with the rule of the people, that is, democracy. But democracy, in which everyone is equal, lacks hierarchical symbols. The tangible vertical dimension disappear in it.

There is a need for unifying factors that will generalize national disagreements and elevate them to higher levels. In addition, the new democracies found themselves in a confrontation with each other and had to train strong armies. Society became conscripted and military development became a central value.

Aviation was the ultimate solution. It was a mesmerizing combination of will and necessity. It was the fulfillment of the human dream. The practice of mysticism and the connection to pagan, popular and national sources on the one hand, plus isolation and anti-Semitism, provided the basis for the new totality. They provided a new, extreme definition of the "Me".

In the new social order the Jews did not find themselves. They were seemingly useless. They were identified with the old regime, in which they played a role as mediators between the people and the emperor and as religious symbols.

The German Romantic-National Movement identified with the zeal, irrational belief in everything that was "German''. Although a vocal and influential political pressure group in the early twentieth century, they lacked focus and fervor, contenting themselves with statements of intent and mobilizing public support. The energy that made them active and assertive was provided by the Nazi movement.

From below, out of the embarrassment in which Germany was after the defeat in World War I, came the need for a pragmatic order. Each such order, built from different elements at first, unite into a single central political issue. In the case before us, the entire German political spectrum, eventually united, in different ways, under the figure of the Nietzschean Superman. In Germany "order is order" and the Nazis provided it.

The father of the Nazi political party was Rudolf Sabotendorf, a German who practiced occultism, was greatly influenced by Sufi Islamic mysticism and other Oriental philosophies. He developed the idea of ​​reviving the German myth, assuming the coming of the historical moment when, according to his theory, the Aryan race would return to its ancient glory, through the emergence of the upper human race. Hitler was able to write "Mein Kampf" thanks to the spiritual progress he made in the Sabotendorf movement, between 1919-1924.

The Nazi mysticism described in "Mein Kampf" became a kind of religion for the German people. It included a combination of occultism and naturalistic pursuits, illegitimate manipulation of history, neo-paganism and of course racism. It attributed religious significance to the character of Adolf Hitler.

The founder of official Hitlerite esotericism was SS Commander Heinrich Himmler, who was fascinated by Aryan racism and the paganism of God Odin. Himmler claimed to be the spiritual successor and reincarnation of Heinrich "The Bird Hunter", one of the German pagan tribes leaders and the founder of the German Empire in the Middle Ages. Hitler was perceived in this fantasy as the incarnation of Charlemagne, the founder of the Holy Roman Empire.

The diversity and unique scope of the sources of Nazi ideology are exceptional. Philosophically it is a reinvention of the wheel and the creation of something out of nothing. This diabolical ideology was used to hastily meet needs previously unknown to the human race. This is because to the reality of life was added a significant new component, aviation, which required human adaptation to it.

Holocaust and Aviation - Part I, Chapter 3 - Aviation and the Periods of Enlightenment, Romanticism and Modernism

In the century that passed from the end of the 18th century to the end of the 19th century, there were sharp ideological and political changes in Europe. They are described as a transition from the Enlightenment to the Romantic period. These changes took place in coordination with technological developments in general, and in the field of aviation in particular.

It was a transition from the agricultural revolution to the industrial revolution. From God revealed in the cycles of fertility and growth to God revealed from the machine. From the hot air balloon technology that flew at the mercy of the weather to the motorized airship.

The balloon, the airship, the airplane and the missile, were revolutionary inventions that the learned science did not predict, but the practical human technical sense created. During the 19th century the balloons and airships carved new paths. Man took off into the realms of God in the heavens and the chains of the earth were removed. Man's boundaries and limitations have been redefined, creating a revolution in his worldview. The universal ideas of the French Revolution were transformed into extreme nationalism.

At the beginning of the 20th century, further ideological changes took place: with the development of the invention of the airplane, romance was replaced by modernism.

Aviation, which is of great military importance, was identified, in the era of the total state, also with the spiritual flight of man. This happened in the secular aviation dictatorships of the first half of the twentieth century: Germany, the Soviet Union, Japan and Italy. Aviation in them has become a a new form of religious fanaticism. It was a symbol of national progress, unification and victory.

Modernism was replaced by postmodernism in the second half of the 20th century. During this time missles replaced the airplane as the ruler of the skies. The missile, which is controlled at the push of a button that can lead to the elimination of humanity, has brought humans to a cynical and self-centered worldview.

Germany was the country that developed aviation in the most extreme way. Romance, imperialism, militarism, Nazism, and air power, are steps in the process that led to the final solution.

The prominent leaders of the Nazi movement were young pilots, who sought to implement technological and social change too quickly and by firm political means. They grew up on the knees of German romance and did not pay enough attention to the need for caution and slow and controlled experience in the dangerous air medium. They embarked on a crusade towards the sky.

Holocaust and Aviation - Part I, Chapter 2 - The Importance of Aviation for Humanity

Flight is a major symbol of the human spirit and freedom. Aviation is, naturally, identified with spiritual flight. The development of aviation is at the center of human interest and action. Therefore, it can serve as a touchstone for a series of phenomena and allow for a bold, short and accurate historical explanation.

The impact of transportation in general on human existence is enormous and the impact of aviation on modern history is accordingly. The airplane is a means of transportation that provide physical movement of people and goods from place to place, overcoming all physical obstacles. This means a complete change in the balance of power between the nations. Thus the twentieth century was characterized by the most difficult wars in human history. 

There is a chronological connection between developments in the field of aviation and important historical events in the modern era: the French Revolution took place less then  ten years after the invention of the hot air balloon. World War I broke out about ten years after the flight of the first airplane. World War II began at the ''golden age of aviation'' era, in a time when the airplane was established as the only safe air transport.

The airplane is the ideal means of transportation for an isolated country. Germany is a continental country isolated by natural obstacles. It has a small navy. As a result, its colonies were small.

The airplane was imported from the United States to Germany as a technological innovation a few years after its invention. Germany was then at the beginning of its rapid industrialization process and the airplane created a strong incentive for the adoption and development of new technologies.

Germany lost in World War I, but the Germans felt betrayed. The main reason for this was their feeling that in the prestigious air campaign they were close to winning. They had better airplanes and pilots. The famous Flying Circus Squadron, of which Hermann Goering was the last commander, was very successful and popular.

The Treaty of Versailles forbade the Germans to build needed airplanes and they felt deprived of the opportunity to defend themselves and develop the economy and society. Under the guise of civilian gliding clubs that were actually military pilot schools, the Germans continued to develop their Air Force.

Philosophical thinkers and politicians linked the material need to the spiritual need. They processed the movement toward the skies into a method of action. They provided the obedient and militaristic German people with the consciousness essential to the fulfillment of the upward command.

During the Nazi regime, the process of integrating aviation into the life of the country was complete. Aviation, instead of integrating organically, has become a leader in the economy and society. Between the years 1933-1939 the number of workers in this industry grew from three thousand to two million. At its peak, during World War II, the aviation industry was about forty percent of the national budget.

Four key figures in Nazi regime were fighter pilots and also dominant in the initiative and execution of the final solution: Hitler's two deputies, Hermann Goering and Rudolf Hess, who were his companions from the beginning, were professional pilots, whose skills in this field were the main lever for their personal advancement in the Nazi party. Goering and Hess were key activists in enacting and enforcing racial laws and in the chain of orders that led to the final solution. Another member of their squadron, Arthur Greiser, was one of the most prominent figures in the Nazi Party and the Third Reich Administration. As the Nazi mayor of Danzig he called for war on Poland. During the war he was governor of West Poland, making it a model for enforcing the final solution. Reinhard Heydrich was a fighter pilot, who combined a pilot career which he began at a relatively late age, with being Himmler's deputy. His most important role in the SS was being the commander of the Gestapo. He was the planner and direct commander of the Final Solution.

The scale of the aviation industry in Nazi Germany and the role of senior pilots in planning the final solution are enough to explain the rise and fall of the Third Reich and the Holocaust altogether. All the various explanations given so far for the extermination of the Jews in Europe ignore these facts.

Holocaust and Aviation - Part I, Chapter 1 - Gaston Bachelard and his book "Air and Dreams"

Like every revolution in transportation that preceded it, from the wheel to the steam locomotive, the airplane gave those who controlled it the tool to conquer the world. But unlike land and sea, which are the cradle of human activity, air is a whole new field of action and life. Mankind lacks the cultural background to relate to the imaginary flight, central to the development of the mind, in the context of practical aviation activities. 

The impact of aviation on human existence is intense, but the dialectic between spiritual flight of the soul and physical flight in aircraft is vague and destructive. The problematic connection between flight and aviation is very noticeable against the background of the Nazis' efforts to become world rulers while accelerating the development of aviation.

The famous French philosopher Gaston Bechelard [1884-1962], in his book "Air and Dreams" [1942], described the world of philosophical and psychological concepts of the experience of flight. This is done using the tools for imagination research that he developed and especially the concept of 'dynamic imagination', a concept that is valuable to anyone interested in developing his creative abilities. 

According to Bechelard, the imagination is created through some movement. The human desire is to fit into the movement and the thought is to find a way how to do it in practice. A philosopher who seeks to understand man must concentrate on the study of poets.

Bechelard pointed out the benefits of imagination as a result of union with a particular substance. A material element is a good conductor by nature, which gives continuity to the imagining soul. The world of phenomena thus offers lessons in change and preliminary movement. An object is not real, but is a good conductor of what is real. The practical end required by the organism due to the urgent need for immediate needs, also corresponds to the end of poems that take place in the body as a potential.

Every element that the physical imagination enthusiastically adopts prepares a special purification, a characteristic transcendence. Aerial purification is of the purest type. It carries on with a light dialectical refinement. The flying creature appears to be moving beyond the exact atmosphere in which it is flying. There is always room for further transcendence and the absolute is the final stage of the consciousness of freedom created in this way. The title most linked to the word ''air'' is ''free''. Natural air is free air.

The aerial phenomena are those whose stages are the most obvious and regular. They give us very important guidelines for the psychological sensations of: erection, rise, growth, ascent, flight and purification. These feelings are the basic principles of psychology that can be called: Flight Psychology.

At the heart of every mental phenomenon is a true sense of verticality. This verticality is not an empty rhetoric. It is a principle of order, a scale along which a person can experience the different degrees of his emotions. The life of the soul, all the delicate and latent emotions, the hopes and fears, the moral forces involved in our future, have a vertical differential, in the full geometric meaning of the word. Particularly prominent are the images and thoughts involved in the basic values ​​of the mind: freedom, gaiety, lightness.

Elevation, depth, rise, fall and the like, are axiomatic metaphors par excellance. Nothing explains them and they explain everything. In simpler language, if a person is interested in living them, feeling them and above all comparing them to the reality of his life, he understands that they are both of primary quality and most natural. It is impossible to express moral values ​​without reference to the vertical axis. Every nerve that shapes the body transmits verticality. The imaginary air is a mental growth hormone for man.

Because the aerial imagination affects the whole entity, then after we have reached with the help of the air so far and high, we will surely find ourselves in a state of open imagination.

Images of freedom present a problem if their various stages have not been tried one by one, and the same difficulty arises with truths delivered with the free air, or the liberating air movement. In the infinite air dimensions are erased and we come into contact with a dimensionless matter that gives us a sense of complete inner purification.

Having arrived with the help of the air so far and high, the mind is carried on uncontrollably. Eager to try the reality of the upper air, the imagination as a whole will double any impression by adding a new image to it. 

In this transformation, the imagination expresses one of its ambiguous flowers, which obscures the colors of good and evil and violates the most stable laws governed by the values ​​of humanity. The end result of this longing may be moral ambiguity.

Things are indeed growing. The tendendcy of energies, in imagination and in reality, is to progress too far. The reveries of the desire for power are the reveries of the desire to be omnipotent. Superman has no equal opponents. He is doomed, with no ability to return, to a full-fledged existence in the pantheon of legendary heroes, though he may never admit it, even to himself. It is an internal hygiene, almost as practical as the external hygiene.

Man-made aerial objects and especially airplanes, have too much attractive presence to be simply integrated into the human needs hierarchy. The airplane is easily humanized, a characteristic which is one of the most prevalent phenomena in human culture. The airplane is very similar to a bird, an angel, man spreading his hands, or flying scales. It resemble the Christian  religous cross. The Nazi armament with airplanes was also an opportunity for them to appear more human and not just  technologically advanced.

Images that seem meaningless have all the benefits to the life of the soul when their origins are revealed, beside in abstract concepts or material objects, also in the ancient legends. Folklore blends well with the images of flight. Moreover, important terrestrial images hidden within it suddenly take on wings, blossoming into new, vast meanings.

German legends collected by the Grimm brothers were a factor in the development of German nationalism in the nineteenth century. In this spirit of the Romantic period, the Germans took the legends monstrosity as model for good behavior. As a result, they embraced the Nazi regime, in a strict conspiracy of silence that enveloped the German society.