User talk:WHEELER/Joseph Goebbels and Nikos Kazantzakis
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The Similarities between Joseph Goebbels and Nikos Kazantzakis.
First, Kazantzakis as noted previously in the post, “User talk:WHEELER/Nikos Kazantzakis and the Swastika”, was mesmerized by Oriental religions and philosophies. Joseph Goebbels had the same love of Eastern ways.
“For a while he (Goebbels) had flirted with the notion of emigrating to India with Richard Flisges. In Freiburg the two of them had delved into Indian philosophy, fantasizing about spending their lives under southern skies.” (1)
Second, Nikos Kazantzakis was greatly influenced by Oswald Spengler, who wrote the “Decline of the West”. The book described “cultural determinism.” (2) “Kazantzakis was one of those who acclaimed Spengler, and many years later he echoed the German historian: ‘Whatever spirit this world once possessed was expended in creating a brilliant civilization—ideas, religious, arts and crafts, sciences, deeds. Now this world has vented its strength.’” (Report to El Greco, 420)
In the winter of l920, Joseph Goebbels a struggling college student “came upon Spengler’s “Decline of the West”, which dispelled any vision of a “just world”…In the face of the eternal law of the rise and fall of civilizations, only the strong could prevail. He recorded his impressions as follows: “Pessimism. Despair. I no longer believe in anything.” (3)
It is clearly seen that both were deeply affected by this book but not with joy but with depression and despair.
Third, both Goebbels and Kazantzakis lived in Weimar Germany and experienced the suffering and extreme poverty of the post WWI German people. This experience of both led them to seek the “emancipation of men”. (4)
Goebbels good friend, Richard Flisges, advised him to read Marx and Engels. (5)
Kazantzakis was also taken with Marxism.
Kazantzakis and Goebbels both had mystical and romantical natures.
The influence of Eastern philosophy and religion, of Marx, of Spengler, of Hegel (indirectly), of the post war condition of the German people had a major impact on people. These philosophies profoundly affected the way people thought about the world and just like the gunshot from the anarchist (anarchism is a form of socialism) that changed Europe forever in Sarajevo, these philosophies altered Europe from its classical and Christian foundations. Many men in America and Europe had these same influences.
It is frighteningly obvious that Goebbels had practically the same political and philosophical formation as Nikos Kazantzakis. It was the political intrigue and propagandizing power of Joseph Goebbels that furthered the meteoric rise of Adolf Hitler. It was also this combination of the occult, of Marx, of Spengler, of Eastern Nihilism that sent German troops to Crete. Yet many Cretans today read Nikos Kazantzakis and revere him just because of his literary output. What they don’t realize is that the same forces that produced Kazantzakis, were the same forces that shaped Joseph Goebbels.
Joseph Goebbels through is propagandizing methods and intense mystical patriotism galvanized a jaded and reluctant people to back Adolf Hitler as some kind of German Messiah. Look at the destruction he wrot.
The works of Kazantzakis carry on these modalities and philosophies. Kazantzakis gives permanence and immortality to this period of time. His works continue this work of destruction. In a sense, Joseph Goebbels lives on in the work of Nikos Kazantzakis.
(1) Goebbels, Ralf Georg Reuth, trans. By, Krishna Winston, Harcourt Brace & Company, NY, NY, l993. pg40
(2) Kazantzakis, The Politics of Salvation, James F. Lea, Pgs 66, 138
(3) Goebbels, pg 36
(4) Kazantzakis, pg 40; Goebbels pg 41
(5) Goebbels, pg 28.
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