I'm glad that Satoshi has sought to connect Thomas Mann with this
discussion, since Mann' *Doktor Faustus* forms the basis for much of
post-war German thought on the question of what happened.  His question -
in effect how could this happen in the most civilised nation on earth -
and his answers still reverberate.

What is missing in Satoshi's commentary, because it is missing in Mann's,
and in many other people's - is the actual connection between Wagnerism and
Hitlerism.  The "ism" in both cases is intentional.

The staging of his "musical dramas" Wagner knew to be an immense taske,
it required not only financial resources - that he was perpetually trying
to secure - but also human capital.  It needed, in effect, a boursgeoise or
priest class to maintain it in the event of his eventual death.  It needed
dedicated servants, such as a small army of copyists, and other fillers in,
musicians, stage hands.  It needed a 5th column of supporters in every city
that mattered in the world of opera, translators, defenders, critics and
arrangers.

The keeper of this organisation - Wagner Inc.  - was Cosima, and her
favorites.  In due course when another strong willed world-shattering
visionary presented himself, they accepted him, long before Hitler was
anybody - because he resembled the aspects of Wagner which had drawn them
into their roles as priests of the religion.  Because Hitler understood
early on that Bayreuth was the model that he could use to his own ends -
a mythopoesis of artistic sheen, wrapped around a cold, hard, practical
machine for creating converts and holding the apparatus together.  Never
mind that for Wagner all of this had been a means to an end - for Hitler
it was the end itself, a vision of a unified national-socialist state.

Mann, like most intellectuals, wondered about the seduction of the
intellectual class.  But he should not have.  Germany was one of the most
successful of 19th century cultures, because it could train people to
attend to details, personally repellant in some way, with a love of the
method.  The work of classifying hundreds of chemical compounds, dozens
of languages, hundreds of chords, thousands of insect species - all take
advantage of this ability to stare at the repellant part, in return for
belief that one is advancing the beautiful whole.  Since the whole - of
art, of science, of nationality - is impossible for an individual to view,
one must take the fact that the whole is beautiful on a certain degree of
faith.

Here is where Hitler's understanding came in - he realised that love of
beautiful things does not, in itself, make a person aware of the structural
whole.  By keeping individuals focused on details - number of political
parties, particular absurdities, and making them angry about very vague
generalities - he then could plant a vision of a beautiful whole which
people were to take part in.  This, alone, was enough to make him an
important minority figure.

But what is crucial to realise, is that while Wagner's methods were
essential for the construction of the National Socialist Party and its
apparatus, Hitler rapidly went beyond the very 19th century organisational
structure of Bayreuth - which, in the end, is run very much like a local
bank or factory.  The Nazi party was to this as the BCCI is to my local
5 cent savings bank.  He pioneered the field of political polling, of
creating propoganda rallies in scale far beyond anything Wagner would
have allowed - which, never the less, bear a certain affinity to Wagner's
description of the results of a religion of art.  In short Wagner was a
source, and the Wagerist apparautus a useful stepping stone on his road
upward.  He, and they, recognised each other.

Wagner, in order to create the apparauts he needed for his message and
his art, made himself into a kind of messiah of music and art.  Hitler, in
order to further his ends, had to become a kind of messiah of the German
people, and used much of the already proven tactics which Wagner had used.
Wagner's political message, such as it is, is a diagnosis of the problems
of a run away 19th century society.  In itself it is not a bad daignosis,
nor are his conclusions particularly unique to him.  The idea of a pending
political catastrophe hung over the newly annointed impoerialists of the
day, and the fear of sliding back into the turmoil of the Napoleanic wars
and before is almost palpable in the writings of more than a few historians
of the day.  Wagner, however, porvided no political solution, because, as
he rather clearly states in Art and Religion - no political solution is
possible.

So when Hitler arrived at Bayreuth, bearing a chest of flattery for a group
of people who, by their nature, had nothing creative to offer, but had a
tremendous sense of their artistic superiority over everyone else - and
the holy grail of a political solution to the riddle Wagner's ring posed -
naturally they thought it was the answer to their prayers...

stirling s newberry
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