An Existential Life

The best example of nihilism taken to its extremes is without a doubt the Nazi regime and Hitler’s genocides.  The disastrous consequences of rebellion without appeal to any human values is self-evident in the events that occurred.

Seven million Jews assassinated, seven million Europeans deported or killed, ten million war victims, are perhaps not sufficient to allow history to pass judgment: history is accustomed to murderers.  But the very destruction of Hitler’s final justification—that is, the German nation—henceforth makes this man, whose presence in history for years on end haunted the minds of millions of men, into an inconsistent and contemptible phantom.  Speer’s deposition at the Nuremburg trials showed that Hitler, though he could have stopped the war before the point of total disaster, really wanted universal suicide and the material and political destruction of the German nation.  The only value for him remained, until the bitter end, success. (Camus, Rebel, 185)

For Hitler and his followers, the only value that mattered was the glory of the German nation, for which no sacrifice was too great.  Because the Jews stood in the way of this vision, they were exterminated.  Because other nations kept Germany’s power in check after World War I, these nations had to be taken over and drained of their power.  In the end, Germany was to be the most powerful nation in the world, a shining beacon of Aryan glory and human perfection.  However, when it became clear that they could not prevail, Hitler chose to let them be destroyed rather than willingly accept defeat.  When a nation’s only value is success, any failure deems that nation unworthy to exist.  This is the reason for the failure of Nazism, and why Hitler’s rebellion was not the right kind.