Holocaust and Aviation - Part I, Chapter 7 - Nazi Mysticism

The spread of romantic ideas contributed to a new political worldview among the Germans, who lived until the beginning of the 19th century in small principalities ruled by towering castles on top of hills and fought each other. The natural desire was to unite under a broader roof.

The Second German Reich, 1918-1871, was created by Otto von Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor, who began to unite the German principalities gradually under Prussia, the largest and most powerful principality of all from the northern plains, in a process that came to an end only by dictatorial means after Hitler came to power.

As part of the process, Germany became a constitutional monarchy. The emperor was an influential symbol, uniting all the ends of the nation.

The actual control was in the hands of Bismarck. But after the demise of Bismarck, no political leader was found with a stature that would constitute a counterweight to the emperor. As a result, Germany was ruled in the early twentieth century by a powerful but capricious emperor with few skills to run a modern giant state.

The fall of the great European monarchies in Europe after the First World War, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Russian Empire and the German Empire, created a huge political vacuum in Europe. It was a continuation of the political crisis following the French Revolution.

Monarchy is the practical embodiment of the dream of flight. It is the head of the vertical axis. For many generations the people looked up and saw their kings there in their glory, symbolizing all the sublime, dynamic qualities, as a symbol of heroism, wealth and splendor. This hierarchy was a form of social and mental order.

The Christian Church has completed the work of creating this order. The collapse of the monarchies accelerated the disengagement of religion from everyday life, a process that took place during the Enlightenment period. Thus the gap that was opened was even larger.

This was the culture in which the Jews played a role, sometimes symbolic and sometimes practical, as mediators between the people and the emperor and as religious symbols. In the new social order they did not find themselves. They were seemingly redundant. They were identified with the old regime, the reaction.

The natural fillers of space were the independent European states, which set themselves the goal of replacing the monarchies with the rule of the people, that is, democracy. But democracy, in which everyone is equal, produce horizontal dialectic. The tangible vertical dimension disappears in it.

In the embarrassment, which was great anyway from the very change of regimes, there was an urgent need also for substitutes for the vertical aspect of society.

The bourgeois society, which was the main factor behind the change of regimes, could not be content with domestic values ​​while it had to run a state composed of different interests. There was a need for unifying factors, which would generalize the 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. Companies became conscripted and military development became a central value.

Aviation was the ultimate solution. The solution was created by public opinion and in the media. It was a mesmerizing combination of will and necessity. It was the fulfillment of the human dream. But it was necessary to turn aviation into a comprehensive social and military system. The practice of mysticism and the connection to pagan, popular and national foundations on the one hand, together with extremist nationalism and anti-Semitism on the other, provided the basis for the vital totality. They provided a new, extreme definition of the self, more suited to survival in the new age.

It is the diversity and the unique scope of the origins of Nazi ideology that indicate above all that the reasons for its popularity are extraordinary. Philosophically it is a reinvention of the wheel. Creating out of nothing. This diabolical ideology was used to hastily meet needs previously unknown to the human race. This is because the reality of life has added a significant new component, which required human adaptation to it.

The political inspiration for the Nazis was provided by a number of thinkers, who linked the material need to the spiritual need. They processed the movement towards the skies into a method of action for modern Germany. They developed the German Superman theory, who controls the world from the air by force using the airplane and develops living space. But the spiritual flight and aviation organically identified with it are at the center of human interest and action, as a central symbol of human freedom wherever it is. The Nazi attempt to expropriate them for control and occupation acted like a boomerang.

During the Second Reich, a broad popular romantic-nationalist movement developed in Germany, the pan-German movement, which identified with the irrational belief in everything that was "German". The pan-German organizations were a vocal and influential political pressure group, proliferating with declarations of intent and mobilizing public support. They advocated modern paganism, which offered an alternative to institutionalized religion through appropriate rituals and texts.

Hitler and the rest of the leaders of the Nazi movement began their careers in the "Tula" and "Vril" associations. These were tiny cults for the development of consciousness, which drew their inspiration from famous spiritualist figures in the 19th century, among them the Englishman with the ability to hover Douglas Hume and his mystical disciple Madame Belvatsky, the founder of the Theosophical Society.

Hitler certainly did not acquire his speech and writing skills before the war and certainly not during its time. He had to make the leap between 1919-1924. Between these years, after he ''Tula'' Association, he joined the German Workers Party and then was his imprisonment at Landsberg Prison, where he wrote ''Mein Kampf''.

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

When the Nazis came to power they sought to change the cultural and religious base of Germany. Heinrich Himmler was the one who enthusiastically embraced the new direction, nurturing it until it became the destiny of the SS, Nazi party and Germany.

Heinrich Himmler rose up in the Nazi party from a pale and ridiculous figure to the head of the huge SS empire thanks to his organizational skills. He had a diploma in agriculture and was interested in animal hybridization and fertilizers, which brought him closer to racial theory. He was drawn to the theory of raising an Aryan race of tall and blond people and selected the SS recruits by appearance. He required them to marry girls with Aryan credentials.

Holocaust and Aviation - Part I, Chapter 6 - Fascist Italy the Homeland of Nazism

German Nazism was inspired and was a follower of the Italian fascism that preceded it. This was the case in ideology, politic, personality and military.

Ideologically, the poet and philosopher Gabriel D'Ancio wrote the constitutional platform adopted by Benito Mussolini. Thomaso Marinetti and the Futurism movement he founded created the fascist subculture that advocated youth, violence, speed, and aviation, whose Nazi counterpart was similar. Giulio Douhet wrote the military theory that advocated relentless bombing of population centers in order to reach a quick decision in the war, which the Nazis adopted.

Politically the Nazi regime was an almost reflection of the Italian fascist regime because of its centralization, reliance on conservative capitalists, recruitment of the population to the needs of the state, aggressive colonialist policies and more. Hitler resembled Mussolini in personality and behavioral characteristics. Both were glorified by their propaganda mechanisms to the rank of almighty leader. Italy also had Italo Balbo, a colorful and enthusiastic air marshal who, like Herman Goering, developed the Air Force into a leading international force.

Like Germany, Italy also used the airplanes it developed and manufactured to create air control that would decide the battle quickly and with relentless force, initially in the colonies it had occupied in Africa and later as a key component in its military might. As in Germany, there was a very considerable gap between planning and reality, which led to the defeat in World War II.

The famous playwright Gabriel D'Ancio, the father of modern Italian plays writing and the father of fascism too, was an avid aviation enthusiast. In World War I he volunteered to be a fighter pilot, a move that made him even more famous. The war strengthened his extremist nationalist views and he publicly demanded Italy's return to a first-class status. In September 1919, because he was furious about the agreement at the Paris Conference to return the port city of Fioma to Serbia, he entered it as the head of two thousand armed militia volunteers and expelled the multinational force stationed there.

The complex ritual system of fascism was formulated by D'Anoncio in Fioma, in which he declared himself a dictator bearing the title of "Duche". It included the balcony speeches of the ruler, who conducted a dramatic and rhetorical dialogue with the disciplined crowd, who responded to him with a fascist salute and organized cheers, combined with street parades and mass demonstrations, using religious symbols in a new secular setting.

On a more practical level, D'Anonzio's "gospel" included the dictatorship government, centralized economy, violent militia, strong hand international policy and immediate response, assassination of political opponents and widespread use of propaganda and political deception. D'Anonzio was a source of inspiration to Mussolini and is known as "the father of Italian fascism" both ideologically and practically.

Futurism was an artistic and social movement that arose in Italy in the early 20th century. It was predominantly Italian, but there were parallel movements in Russia, England and many other countries. D'Anoncio's character inspired it in the beginning. Futurism appealed to the emotions of modern man and his experience in the advanced and rapid means of production, communication and transportation, from the airplane to the telephone, from cinema to fast food. These are expressions of progress that change everyday life and in this way change the artist's mode of expression.

The founder of Futurism and the most prominent figure in it was the Italian writer Filippo Thomaso Marinetti. Marinetti founded the movement with the writing of the "Futurist Manifesto" in 1905. He was soon joined by young Italian artists. Marinetti expressed intense disgust for everything that was old and especially for the political and artistic tradition. Futurists adored speed, technology, youth, and violence. They loved the car, the airplane and the industrial city. All of these represented for them the victory of human technology over nature. They were equally ardent nationalists. They denied the culture of the past and any culture of imitation and praised originality for its sake, even if it was bold and violent.

Marinetti founded, as early as 1918, a Futurist party which only one year later merged with Benito Mussolini's party, making Marinetti one of its first supporters and members. In 1919 he participated in the essay "The Fascist Manifesto", which was the original manifesto of the Italian fascist movement.

Futurists have created in many fields of art, including painting, sculpture, ceramics, graphic design, industrial design, interior design, theater, cinema, fashion, literature, music, architecture and gastronomy. Futurists distinguished themselves from the rest of modern art styles by virtue of the desire that influenced their works. They argued that art needs drama, movement and the clash of psychic forces, similar to what happens in nature.

There were many parallel lines between Nazism and Futurism: love of the future and youth, love of modernization, technology, violence, nationalism, war and more. Like the Nazis, Futurists often engaged in technology in general and military technology in particular.

Therefore the practice of aviation gradually became central to the movement, as flight became accessible to more people. The airplane became a major actor in the futuristic drama. Aerial painting is considered the pinnacle of futurism and is typical of the last stage of the movement's development, in the late 1930s and early 1940s.

Giulio Douhet [1865-1930] was an Italian general and theorist of air power. He was a key supporter of the bombing strategy from the air as a crucial factor in the war. In 1911, Italy went to war against the Ottoman Empire for control of Libya. In this war the first aerial bombardment in history was carried out on November 1, 1911 by an Italian pilot. Although it was a seemingly marginal war, it was a significant factor in the outbreak of World War I, as the Balkan peoples saw how the Ottoman Empire, which was Italy's enemy in this war, could be easily defeated. Douhet wrote a report on the aviation lessons learned from this war. He recommended high-altitude bombing as the main function of the miliary airplane.

With the outbreak of World War I, Douhet called on the Italian government to begin building significant military air power. He said that: "Air control means making the enemy helpless''. He proposed building a force of 600 bombers that would be capable of dropping 125 tons of bombs every day, but the decision-makers in Italy ignored him. Douhet continued to write about air power, finished novel on the subject and sent memos to government ministers about a huge fleet of airplanes. In 1921 he completed a research paper called "Air Control", which had a huge impact on aerial bombardment theory.

Douhet stated in this essay that aerial power is a revolution, since it operates in the third dimension. Aircraft are capable of flying above the surface, thereby lowering the importance of ground forces to a secondary degree. The vast sky make protection from airplanes almost impossible. For this reason the attack is the epitome of air power. The only good defense is the offense. An air force capable of gaining control of the air through a preemptive strike by the enemy's air force and destroying it, will then decide the entire fate of the enemy state through constant bombardment.

Douhet believed in the moral effects of the aerial bombardment. Air power is capable of breaking the will power of the citizens, through the destruction of the vital centers of the country. Land and sea armies become redundant as the airplane can fly over them and attack vital government, military and industrial centers without being hit.

In 1920 Benito Mussolini took flight lessons. He survived a crash after 18 hours of solo flights. In 1922 he came to power in Italy, after his loyalists marched to Rome. Mussolini soon placed aviation at the top of his regime's priorities. He preached for the construction of a modern air force, hosted air demonstrations and record-breaking flights and promoted the production of advanced airplanes. His aviation minister Italo Balbo, led Italian aviation to international status after leading, in early 1933, a squadron of 25 naval airplanes on a transatlantic flight from Italy to the United States. Mussolini's two sons were bombers pilots, who took part in operational activities throughout the wars of fascist Italy.

Holocaust and Aviation - Part I, Chapter 5 - Friedrich Nietzsche The Philosopher of Flight

After World War I, defeated Germany experienced a sense of falling from the summit into the abyss. The fear of falling has become attribute of the masses. The fear of falling is one of the strongest and earliest in man since the dawn of humanity. The fear of falling is fixed in mankind through an undeniable psychological reality and create a mental impression that leaves indelible traces. But metaphors concerning fall are far fewer than the metaphors of ascent. The fall is a limited subject. The imaginary fall very quickly becomes nausea, weakness and sickness.

The official philosopher of the Nazi movement was Friedrich Nietzsche. In Nietzsche the poet explains the thinker. He is the prototype of the vertical poet, the poet ascending to the peaks. Nietzsche clearly represents the complex of heights. Everything that moves in the air is expected to make its mark. It's an ongoing preference for anything that comes up. He invested all his energy in making the earthly universe aerial. Prominent in his work and in particular in "Thus Said Zarathustra", the following themes: the air as freedom, the psychological imaginary fall, the dialectical play between vertigo and victory, the courage to live at heights, verticality versus gravity, cold fire and the healing value of rising and growth.

At the heart of Nietzsche's philosophy is the idea of ​​the dialectic between the high and the low. The vertical movement tear man from inside and in this way place both the upper and the lower within him. Superman must experience this inner tension. This is the source of the feeling of supremacy that Nietzsche encourages. Superman finds his way to greatness by uniting the peaks and abysses.

Nietzsche's main conclusion is: to will and to fly are the same. The end result of this longing is moral ambiguity. The sentence that sums up Nietzsche's ideas is: "The upper is the winner''.

Every philosophical doctrine is an attempt to understand and solve the problems of the hour. During the period in which Nietzsche wrote, the hot air balloons carved new paths in the skies of Europe, redefined the limitations of man and created a revolution in his worldview. An in-depth reading of Nietzsche's descriptions of "God's death" clearly reveals the reason for his original approach: Man killed God because he soared to his realms in the skies and took his place. Land's cables were unchained.

Nietzsche gave his ideas a poetic and eloquent attire. His recommendations are given different interpretations and thus found an echo in the hearts of the Nazis. The denial of existing morality, the desire for power, the "supreme man", the sanctification of war and the contempt for peace, all of these were expressed in their teachings while distorting his original ideas about human freedom. His writings about the aerial psyche gave a cohesive character to their worldview.

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.