I was recently asked by my reader @landstrider about a particular quote attributed to Adolf Hitler or Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini talking about Adolf Hitler that I have seen bandied about occasionally.
This runs as follows:
‘“He tried to make me believe he was mystically and scientifically convinced of being possessed not by a demon but by a spirit of prehistoric Aryan mythology,” Mussolini said.’ (1)
This is derived from a biography of Mussolini published in 2004 by Ray Moseley who writes that:
‘On Easter Sunday, April 1, Mussolini had a talk about Hitler with his old friend of forty years, Ottavio Dinale. He recalled meeting in the library of Hitler’s Alpine retreat at Berchtesgaden at which Hitler showed him a row of volumes in red Morocco leather by philosophers and German occultists. Of the many philosophers, Hitler admitted he had read fully only Schopenhauer and Nietzsche but had delved deeply into the works of the occult writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. “He tried to make me believe he was mystically and scientifically convinced of being possessed not by a demon but by a spirit of prehistoric Aryan mythology,” Mussolini said. “In that moment I understood the strange, inexplicable sensation always produced in me by his speeches, which were characterized by a prophetic tone that could not but surprise his listeners.” Hitler, he said, had learned from the occult sciences how to deceive his people and the entire world with the cunning of a swindler.’ (2)
We can already see two things from putting the quotation in its direct context; Moseley is freely quoting (and translating) Dinale’s claim – the source is Ottavio Dinale’s 1953 book about Mussolini ‘Quarant’anni di colloqui con lui’ (lit. ‘Forty Years of Conversations With Him’) – (3) that he asserts Mussolini made to him on 1st April 1945.
The problem here is fairly obvious is that this is Dinale quoting Mussolini eight years after his death – so not horrendously long afterwards but a fair few years – who is in turn quoting Hitler at least three years before that – Mussolini’s last visit to Berchtesgaden as far as I am aware occurred in April 1942 to discussion ‘Operation Herkules’ (the planned invasion of Malta) and the deployment of the German Africa Corps under Rommel which was to lead two months later to German-Italian capture of Tobruk in June 1942 – so the statement is not easy to take authoritatively given that it is third hand information post-war.
Now I haven’t been able to get my hands on a copy of Dinale’s ‘Quarant’anni di colloqui con lui’ but I will observe that I suspect Moseley here is not being entirely fair with that Dinale may have written, but in his citation for this passage; he give nine pages of Dinale’s book which seems a lot of material for such specific claims.
This suggests to me that Moseley is either leaving out a lot of context or other statements made by Dinale that might well clarify what he is claiming, but let’s note what else Moseley states Dinale said.
Dinale states that Mussolini stated that:
‘Of the many philosophers, Hitler admitted he had read fully only Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.’ (4)
This is interesting precisely because we know from Ernst ‘Putzi’ Hanfstaengl – a source we also have use with caution due to Hanfstaengl’s proclivity to be dishonest about/smear Hitler because of their political and personal estrangement (possibly caused by the fact that Hitler may have slept with Hanfstaengl’s wife Helene) - claimed that Schopenhauer had been ‘Hitler’s philosophical god in the old Dietrich Eckart days’ (5) and further that Hitler had begun to idolize Nietzsche by 1933. (6)
In addition, Hans Frank claims that Hitler told him that he carried Schopenhauer’s ‘The World as Will and Representation’ with him in the trenches of the First World War (7) and I would agree with Ryback’s scepticism about this claim in large part because ‘The World as Will and Representation’ is a large four volume work that I cannot reasonable see Hitler as having carted about the battlefields of the First World War. (8)
However, I disagree with Ryback’s dismissal of the claim entirely given that it may well be that either Hitler did read Schopenhauer’s ‘The World as Will and Representation’ during the First World War (for example Ernst Junger repeatedly mentions periods of intense reading and wide availability of books during this war in his ‘Storm of Steel’ and ‘Copse 125’) or carried about an abridged version of the book – which is eminently more feasible and practical – and was speaking metaphorically to Frank, i.e. ‘I carried it in my heart and conduct as the truth’ so-to-speak which Frank later confused as being literal when recalling the conversation over a decade later.
This would suggest – along with Hanfstaengl’s comment – that Hitler had indeed read some of Schopenhauer’s works although whether he had read ‘all of them’ as we find in Dinale’s claimed statement is doubtful, but the exaggeration is very… well… Hitler so I can readily believe this statement is genuine.
As to Nietzsche; we’ve already seen that according to Hanfstaengl Hitler had begun to idolise the philosopher from at least 1933, but he did so primarily to attack Hitler by associating him with Nietzsche’s ‘savageness’ (9) and distancing Hitler from his own favoured philosopher (Schopenhauer) which Ryback points out suggests that the connection between Hitler and Nietzsche might not be as strong as Hanfstaengl wishes it to appear. (10)
Although it should be stated that National Socialism owes much to Nietzsche’s philosophy and that Nietzsche’s philosophy is the intellectual precursor so it; (11) there is little solid evidence that Hitler in fact read much of Nietzsche’s work despite owning a complete first edition of all eight volumes of Nietzsche’s ‘Collected Works’ (published from 1903-1909) (12) but it is clear that Hitler – as is apparently typical of him and for the time – at least read Nietzsche in extract with Eitelfritz Scheiner’s ‘Nietzsche’s Political Legacy’ from 1933 (with a possible Hitler inscription from that year) – which is a series of Nietzsche quotes with interpretative commentary on them - being found in the Fuhrerbunker in May 1945. (13)
This is supported by Leni Riefenstahl’s recollection of a conversation she had with Hitler about Nietzsche where she claims that Hitler told her that:
‘“No, I can’t really do much with Nietzsche,” Riefenstahl recalls Hitler telling her. “He is more artist than philosopher; he doesn’t have the crystal-clear understanding of Schopenhauer. Of course, I value Nietzsche as a genius. He writes possibly the most beautiful language that German literature has to offer us today, but he is not my guide.’ (14)
This reads as very quintessentially Hitler but also shows that Hitler had indeed at least read some of Nietzsche’s work in the original – contrary to Ryback’s interpretation – precisely because of that telling phrase ‘more artist than philosopher’ which is references the almost unique facet of Nietzsche’s work among modern philosophers in that he largely wrote his work in a series aphorisms and – what amount to - poems rather than as a logical train of thought – a style sometimes aped by Mathilde von Ludendorff as it happens – with ‘Thus Spake Zarathustra’ being an attempt to write a more conventional book of philosophy albeit in the style of Voltaire.
This suggests that Hitler did indeed read some of Nietzsche’s work in the original but found it – like nearly all commentators of Nietzsche have (despite it rarely being admitted) – obstruse and difficult to divine the philosopher’s true meaning so he preferred the ‘crystal-clear understanding of Schopenhauer’.
Ryback also points out that the unstated philosopher behind National Socialism is actually Johann Gottlieb Fichte and while this is quite true to an extent – it is also clear that Nietzsche and Schopenhauer had a significant impact on its political philosophy (probably far more than Fichte in my opinion).
Now in the context of Dinale’s quote of Mussolini in April 1945; we can see that there is an element of truth in what Dinale is stating which suggests this was a real conversation because it does align with Hitler – that he owed a complete set of Nietzsche’s works and probably owned a complete set of Schopenhauer’s works – but also makes the claim that Hitler had read all of them and while this is likely untrue; it is a quintessential ‘Hitler boast’ for lack of a better term and thus suggests truth in what Dinale is telling us.
However, when we come on to Dinale’s claim via Mussolini that Hitler told him that he had ‘delved deeply into the works of the occult writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’; we are on much less firm ground, because we know that Hitler didn’t have such books in his library.
As Ryback explains:
‘The surviving books in Hitler’s library on spiritual and occult matters, of which there are scores, are perhaps the most articulate witnesses to Hitler’s lifelong preoccupation. Many of the books were acquired in the early 1920s and others are from the final years of his life. Among them are Peter Maag’s ‘Realm of God and the Contemporary World’, published in 1915, with “A. Hitler” scrawled in the inside cover, but without date or place-name; an undated reprint of Anulus Platonis, an eighteenth-century mystical classic on occult sciences, inscribed to “Adolf,” with two pages of handwritten alchemical symbols; more tendentious books, such as a 1922 account of paranormal phenomena, The Dead are Alive!, which features examples of “occultism, somnambulism and spiritualism” in various European countries, and provides sixteen photographs as “incontrovertible proof’ of supernatural moments. One grainy black-and-white image shows four people at a 1909 seance in Genoa levitating a table. Another reveals “the ghost” of a fifteen-year-old Polish girl, Stasia, being consumed by a “luminous, misty substance.” A picture of a stately looking Englishman is captioned “The Phantom of the English writer Charles Dickens who died in 1871 and is buried in Westminster Abbey. He appeared in 1873 and was photographed.” The earliest such book is a 165-page treatise called The Essence of Creation: Research About This World and the Afterlife, About the Essential Truths of Nature, About the Substance of the Soul and the Resulting Conclusions, published in 1914, with an undated handwritten inscription to “Mr. Adolf Hitler” by the author.’ (15)
The point here is not that Hitler was a ‘big reader on occult matters’ – indeed there are only a ‘handful’ of these books that Hitler is known to have acquired before 1933 (after which he would regularly receive gifts of books from authors and publishers) – (16) with the earliest date for an acquisition of such a book being the 1914 work ‘The Essence of Creation’ followed closely behind by Peter Maag’s 1915 work ‘Realm of God and the Contemporary World’.
Hitler then is revealed - contrary to Dinale’s claimed statement from Mussolini that he had ‘delved deeply’ into ‘occult writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’ – to have read a bit about the ‘occult’ in extract as many thinkers and writers have – this author included - but not have had any particular interest in it let alone being actually ‘deeply versed’ in such matters.
However we don’t need to dismiss this statement entirely because it is clear Hitler had read – and owned - some books on ‘occult matters’ so what we may well be dealing with here is a case of Chinese whispers in that Hitler is known to have tended to overstate what he’d had actually read and knew about – he was a wide and voracious reader and is well-attested by multiple and very different people to have been able to discuss many different subjects in significant detail – and that what Hitler in fact told Mussolini was simply an incorrect boast about his knowledge of ‘occult writers’ – this is why we need Dinale’s original text to see what he is actually referring to and also explain why Moseley’s summation is short but his citation for it so long – which Mussolini took seriously and transmogrified into ‘delved deeply into sixteenth and seventeenth century occult writers’ (or this could also be Dinale’s interpretation of what Mussolini said).
This then suggests that we shouldn’t overinterpret what Dinale or Mussolini are saying here; in that they aren’t per se claiming that Hitler was an ‘occult magus’ but rather someone who was just very knowledgeable about ‘occult matters’ which are commonly (and often deliberately) conflated and confused but are not the same thing.
The next segment is where we really need Dinale’s original text because – to be frank – I don’t entirely trust Moseley’s summation of it not to have removed vital context in Mussolini’s alleged remarks to Dinale on 1st April 1945.
This segment from Moseley is as follows:
‘“He tried to make me believe he was mystically and scientifically convinced of being possessed not by a demon but by a spirit of prehistoric Aryan mythology,” Mussolini said. “In that moment I understood the strange, inexplicable sensation always produced in me by his speeches, which were characterized by a prophetic tone that could not but surprise his listeners.” Hitler, he said, had learned from the occult sciences how to deceive his people and the entire world with the cunning of a swindler.’ (17)
The problem with this paragraph is immediately obvious when looking at the last sentence; in it we have Mussolini – according to Dinale in Moseley’s summation – stating that Hitler used ‘occult sciences’ – this is untrue as we have seen but was widely claimed after the Second World War but also to a lesser extent before that war – to ‘deceive his people and the entire world with the cunning of a swindler’.
Now this last sentence looks nothing like a Mussolini claim and – assuming Moseley is citing Dinale’s claim correctly as he isn’t citing Dinale’s original words but rather summarizing them – more likely represents something added by Dinale to claim by implication that Hitler ‘manipulated’ Mussolini (and the German people) via his ‘knowledge’ of ‘the occult sciences’ ‘with the cunning of a swindler’.
In other words, Dinale is claiming that the Second World War wasn’t Mussolini’s fault nor was he responsible for anything bad but rather had been ‘manipulated’ by Hitler, which suggests there is an ulterior motive operating in Dinale’s retelling of this conversation (i.e., to exculpate his friend Mussolini and throw all the blame Hitler) that informs us we have to be careful of Dinale’s claims because they are made with that purpose.
A good example is the actual subject to this article – sometimes we have to go through the detail to understand what we are looking at – which is this passage:
‘“He tried to make me believe he was mystically and scientifically convinced of being possessed not by a demon but by a spirit of prehistoric Aryan mythology,” Mussolini said.’ (18)
Now the first thing to note is that this is Dinale quoting Mussolini’s summary of what Hitler allegedly told him, but as we have already seen: this cannot be interpreted literally as both friends and opponents of Hitler often try to for nefarious purposes, because Hitler was not interested in the occult other than as a passing interest and cannot be remotely considered some kind of ‘occult magus’ as he is often styled.
The second thing to note is that if Hitler is not talking literally and we aren’t to simply dismiss Dinale’s quotation of Mussolini’s words to him from memory then we can take Hitler’s well-known belief that he was a ‘man of destiny’ and transmute it into this; in that if Hitler was simply telling Mussolini that he was absolutely convinced that he was ‘destined’ or ‘pre-ordained’ to lead Germany to greatness and victory in April 1942 and that either Mussolini or Dinale subsequently interpreted this as Hitler being the ‘spirit of Wotan reborn’ in modernity that was so famously argued by Carl Jung in his March 1936 essay ‘Wotan’. (19)
Thus, what Hitler meant as metaphor and rhetoric Mussolini and/or Dinale took as allegory and then Dinale made Hitler into a kind of ‘occult magus’ later in order to exculpate Mussolini; in apparent contradictions to his previous comments suggesting that either Moseley has mischaracterized them in his summary, or we are potentially dealing with Dinale’s comments being inserted into Mussolini’s mouth.
Therefore, while the quote itself is probably not entirely fake; it isn’t actually evidence of anything much as regards Hitler himself let alone his ‘occult interests’ but rather shows – or seems to show – Dinale engaging in a similar tactic to the former generals of Wehrmacht wherein order to exculpate themselves from responsibility they shifted that responsibility to Hitler.
It is that simple.
References
(1) Ray Moseley, 2004, ‘Mussolini: The Last 600 Days of Il Duce’, 1st Edition, Taylor Trade Publishing: Dallas, p. 211
(2) Idem.
(3) Ibid., p. 400, n. 4; specifically, he gives his source as Ottavio Dinale, 1953, ‘Quarant’anni di colloqui con lui’, 1st Edition, Ciarroca: Milan, pp. 243-251
(4) Moseley, Op. Cit., p. 211
(5) Ernst Hanfstaengl, Richard Evans, 2005, ‘The Unknown Hitler: Notes from the Young Nazi Party’, 1st Edition, Gibson Square: London, p. 223
(6) Ibid., pp. 223-224
(7) Timothy Ryback, 2008, ‘Hitler’s Private Library: The Books That Shaped His Life’, 1st Edition, Alfred A. Knopf: New York, p. 111
(8) Ibid., pp. 111-112
(9) Hanfstaengl, Evans, Op. Cit., p. 224
(10) Ryback, Op. Cit., p. 113
(11) This is explained in some detail by Abir Taha, 2005, ‘Nietzsche, Prophet of Nazism: The Cult of the Superman’, 1st Edition, AuthorHouse: Bloomington
(12) Ryback, Op. Cit., pp. 112-114
(13) Ibid., p. 113
(14) Quoted in Ibid., p. 114
(15) Ibid., pp. 149-150
(16) Ibid., p. 80
(17) Moseley, Op. Cit., p. 211
(18) Idem.
(19) You can read this for yourself here: https://www.philosopher.eu/others-writings/essay-on-wotan-w-nietzsche-c-g-jung/