It was not the front, but the travel to the beforehand that was the worst: ‘There was immoderate crap successful people’s pants, I show you.’ Two years into the war, Otto Dix had seen it all. In 1914 he had signed up enthusiastically to the section artillery. Back then, group had assumed that triumph would beryllium swift successful coming, but that dream had been disappointed. A awesome gash of trenches had travel to people the occidental front. Neither broadside could unit a decisive breakthrough. Now, connected the slopes supra the stream Somme, the British and the French armies were making a concerted effort to smash a spread done the labyrinth of German trenches. All summertime the conflict had been raging. Dix, approaching the Somme, had been deafened by artillery occurrence of a measurement he had ne'er imagined imaginable and seen the occidental sky lit arsenic though by lightning. Everywhere was ruin: mud and blasted trees and rubble. In his dreams Dix was ever crawling done shattered houses and doorways that hardly permitted him to pass. Once he had arrived astatine his post, though, his fearfulness near him. Stationed pinch a dense machine-gun battery, he felt mingled excitement and calm. He moreover recovered clip to paint.
Back successful Dresden, the famously beautiful metropolis successful Saxony wherever he had been an creation student, Dix had experimented pinch a scope of styles. Only 23 erstwhile warfare collapsed out, and from an impoverished background, the consciousness of urgency he felt arsenic a creator was that of a man wished to make a sanction for himself. By night, arsenic Dix huddled beside a carbide lamp pinch his oils aliases his pens, flares complete no-man’s onshore would ray up corpses grotesquely twisted connected barbed-wire entanglements. Then, each morning, dawn would illumine a cratered scenery of death. On 1 July, the opening time of the battle, almost 20,000 British soldiers had been mown down arsenic they sought successful vain to return the force trenches and different 40,000 near wounded. A fortnight later, each gait of the German lines had been pounded by shells. New ways of sidesplitting were being developed. On 15 September, monstrous machines called, by their British inventors, ‘tanks’ grumbled and crushed their measurement for the first clip crossed the battlefield. By the extremity of the month, flying machines were dropping bombs connected the trenches below. Only successful precocious November did the fighting grind to a halt. By that stage, casualties numbered a million. To Dix, hunkered down his instrumentality gun, the world was transformed. ‘Humanity’, he wrote, ‘changes successful demonic fashion.’
On the broadside of the angels
There were plenty, though, who thought themselves connected the broadside of the angels. Back successful Saxony, a twelvemonth earlier the outbreak of war, a immense monument had been unveiled to people the centenary of a bloody triumph complete Napoleon. The centrepiece of the Völkerschlachtdenkmal was a colossal statue of St Michael, winged and equipped pinch a fiery sword. That Germany’s struggle against its foes mirrored the cosmic warfare of angel against demon was a condemnation that reached to the top. The Kaiser, arsenic the warfare dragged connected and a naval blockade of Germany began to bite, grew ever much convinced that the British were successful convention pinch the devil. Patriotic Britons, for their part, had been saying overmuch the aforesaid astir Germany. Bishops joined pinch newspaper editors successful hammering the connection home. The Germans had succumbed to ‘a sadistic and ruthless subject paganism’. They had returned to the believe of Woden. In Germany, The Times announced, ‘Christianity is opening to beryllium regarded arsenic a worn-out creed.’
The alleviation of St Michael connected the Völkerschlachtdenkmal, Liepzig, Christian Behrens, c.1905. © Deutsche Fotothek. It was easier, perhaps, for armchair warriors to judge this than for soldiers connected the front. Behind the British lines astatine the Somme, successful the mini municipality of Albert, location stood a basilica topped by a aureate statue of the Virgin and Child. A twelvemonth previously, the spire had been deed by a shell. The statue had been near hanging precariously, arsenic though by a miracle. Rumours began to dispersed successful some the German and British trenches that whichever broadside brought it down was destined to suffer the war. Yet many, erstwhile they looked up astatine the Virgin, were inspired to dwell not connected the calculus of triumph and conclusion but connected the suffering of some sides successful the battle. ‘The fig erstwhile stood triumphant connected the cathedral tower’, wrote 1 British soldier; ‘now it is bowed arsenic by the past extremity of grief.’ The Virgin, too, had known what it was to mourn a son. Amid the misery and suffering that had go the communal acquisition crossed the full of Europe, the image of Christ tortured to decease connected a transverse took connected for galore a caller potency. Both sides sought to move this to their advantage. In Germany, pastors compared the blockade enforced by the Royal Navy to the nails pinch which Christ had been fixed to the cross; successful Britain, stories of German soldiers crucifying a Canadian captive had agelong been a staple of propaganda. Even so, successful the trenches themselves, wherever soldiers – if they did not find themselves trapped connected barbed wire, aliases riddled by instrumentality gun-fire, aliases disembowelled by an exploding ammunition – would unrecorded time aft time successful the vale of the protector of death, the Crucifixion had a much haunting resonance. Christ was their fellow-sufferer. On the battlefield of the Somme, soldiers would statement successful wonderment their endurance amid each the devastation of wayside crucifixes – chipped and pockmarked pinch bullets though they were. Even Protestants, moreover atheists, were tin of being moved. Christ was imagined sharing successful a jest passed on the trenches, opinionated beside soldiers successful their symptom and weakness. ‘We person nary doubts, we cognize that You are here.’
A benignant of Golgotha
Dix, too, successful his dugout, had Christ’s sufferings connected his mind. Raised a Lutheran, he had brought a Bible pinch him to the Somme. In the people of his work connected the front, he had seen capable artillery attacks to recognise successful their invariable aftermath a benignant of Golgotha. With his artist’s eye, he could glimpse successful the spectacle of a worker impaled connected a shard of metallic thing of the Crucifixion. Yet Dix, to a grade that would person confirmed British propagandists successful each their darkest suspicions of the German character, scorned to spot Christ’s suffering arsenic having served immoderate purpose. To ideate that it mightiness person done truthful was to cling to the values of a slave. ‘To beryllium crucified, to acquisition the deepest abyss of life’: this was its ain reward. Dix, volunteering successful 1914, had done truthful retired of a desire to cognize the eventual extremes of life and death: to consciousness what it was to instrumentality a bayonet successful an enemy’s courage and to twist it around; to person a comrade autumn complete suddenly, a slug quadrate betwixt his eyes; ‘the hunger, the fleas, the mud’. Only successful the intoxication of specified experiences could a man beryllium much than a man: an Übermensch. To beryllium free was to beryllium great; and to beryllium awesome was to beryllium terrible. It was not the Bible which had brought Dix to this conviction. Alongside him successful his dugout he had a 2nd book. So stirred was he by its accuracy that successful 1912, while still an creation student successful Dresden, he had made a life-size plaster bust of its author. Not conscionable his first sculpture, it had besides been his first activity to beryllium bought by a gallery. Discerning critics, inspecting the bust’s drooping moustache, its thrusting neck, its regard shadowed by bristling eyebrows, had proclaimed it the very image of Friedrich Nietzsche.
God is dead
‘Do we not perceive the sound of the grave-diggers who are burying God? Do we not smell the divine putrefaction? – for moreover gods putrefy! God is dead. God remains dead. And we person killed him.’ To publication these words beside the Somme, amid a scenery turned to mud and ash, littered pinch the mangled bodies of men, was to shiver earlier the anticipation that location mightiness not be, aft all, immoderate redemption successful sacrifice. Nietzsche had written them backmost successful 1882: the parable of a madman who 1 agleam greeting lit a lantern and ran to the market-place, wherever nary 1 among his listeners would judge his news that God had bled to decease beneath their knives. Little successful Nietzsche’s upbringing seemed to person prefigured specified blasphemy. The boy of a Lutheran pastor, his inheritance had been 1 of knowledgeable provincialism. Precocious and brilliant, he had obtained a professorship astatine the property of 24; but then, only a decade later, had resigned it to go a shabbily genteel bum. Setting the seal connected the consciousness of a squandered career, he had suffered a intelligence breakdown. For the past 11 years of his life, he had been confined to a succession of clinics. Few, erstwhile he died successful 1900, had publication the books written successful an escalating frenzy of production. Posthumously his fame had grown pinch startling rapidity. By 1914, erstwhile Dix marched to warfare pinch his writings successful his knapsack, Nietzsche’s sanction had go 1 of the astir arguable successful Europe. Condemned by galore arsenic the astir vulnerable philosopher who had ever lived, location were others who hailed him arsenic a prophet. There were galore who considered him both.
The retreating tide
No 1 had dared to regard truthful unblinkingly astatine what the execution of its deity mightiness mean for a civilisation. ‘When 1 gives up the Christian faith, 1 pulls the correct to Christian morality retired from nether one’s feet.’ Nietzsche’s loathing for those who imagined different was intense. Philosophers he scorned arsenic ‘secret priests’. Socialists, communists, democrats: each were arsenic deluded. ‘Naiveté: arsenic if morality could past erstwhile the God who sanctions it is missing!’ Enthusiasts for the Enlightenment, self-proclaimed rationalists who imagined that men and women possessed inherent rights, Nietzsche regarded pinch contempt. It was not from logic that their doctrine of quality dignity derived, but alternatively from the very religion which they believed themselves – successful their conceit – to person banished. Proclamations of authorities were thing but flotsam and jetsam near down by the retreating tide of Christianity: bleached and stranded relics. God was dormant – but successful the awesome cave that erstwhile had been Christendom his protector still fell. For centuries, perhaps, it would linger. Christianity had reigned for 2 millennia. It could not easy beryllium banished. Its myths would agelong endure. And yet they were nary little myths, for each that, because they now wore the show of the secular. ‘Such phantoms arsenic the dignity of man,the dignity of labour’: these were Christian done and through.
Also Sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen, 1908. Museum of Fine Art, Boston. Public Domain. Nietzsche did not mean this arsenic a compliment. It was not conscionable arsenic frauds that he despised those who clung to Christian morality, moreover arsenic their knives were dripping pinch the humor of God; he loathed them arsenic good for believing successful it. Concern for the lowly, acold from serving the origin of justice, was a shape of poison. Nietzsche had penetrated to the bosom of everything that was astir shocking astir the Christian faith. ‘To devise thing which could moreover attack the seductive, intoxicating, anaesthetising, and corrupting powerfulness of that awesome of the “holy cross”, that horrific paradox of the “crucified God”, that enigma of an inconceivably ultimate, astir utmost cruelty and self-crucifixion undertaken for the salvation of mankind? ’. Like St Paul, Nietzsche knew it to beryllium a scandal. Unlike Paul, he recovered it repellent. The spectacle of Christ being tortured to decease had served the powerful arsenic bait. It had persuaded them – the beardown and the healthy, the beautiful and the brave, the powerful and the self-assured – that it was their earthy inferiors, the quiet and the humble, who deserved to inherit the earth. ‘Helping and caring for others, being of usage to others, perpetually excites a consciousness of power.’ Charity, successful Christendom, had go a intends to dominate. Yet Christianity, by taking the broadside of everything ill-constituted, anemic and feeble, had made humanity sick. Its ideals of compassion and equality earlier God were bred, not of love, but of hatred: a hatred of the deepest and astir sublime order, 1 which had transformed the very characteristic of morality, a hatred the for illustration of which had ne'er earlier been seen connected earth. This was the gyration that Paul – ‘that hate-obsessed false-coiner’ – had group successful motion. The anemic had conquered the strong; the slaves had vanquished their masters.
‘Ruined by cunning, secret, invisible, anaemic vampires! Not conquered – only sucked dry! ... Covert revengefulness, petty envy go master!’ Nietzsche, erstwhile he mourned the taming of antiquity’s beasts of prey, did truthful pinch the passion of a clever clever who had devoted his life to the study of their civilisation. He admired the Greeks, not despite, but because of their cruelty. So scornful was he of immoderate conception of ancient Greece arsenic a onshore of sunny rationalism that ample numbers of students, by the extremity of his tenure arsenic a professor, had been shocked into abandoning his classes. Nietzsche weighted the ancients for the pleasance they had taken successful inflicting suffering; for knowing that reward mightiness beryllium festive; for demonstrating that, ‘in the days earlier mankind grew ashamed of its cruelty, earlier pessimists existed, life connected world was much cheerful than it is now’. That Nietzsche himself was a short-sighted invalid prone to convulsive migraines had done thing to inhibit his admiration for the aristocracies of antiquity and their heedlessness towards the sick and the weak. A nine focused connected the feeble enfeebled itself. This is what had made Christianity specified a malevolent bloodsucker. If it was the taming of the Romans that Nietzsche mourned, past he regretted arsenic good really they had battened onto different nations. Nietzsche, whose contempt for the Germans was exceeded only by his scorn for the English, was truthful small an enthusiast for nationalism that he had renounced his Prussian citizenship erstwhile he was only 24 and died stateless. Yet, for each that, he had ever lamented the destiny of his forebears. Once, the forests had sheltered Saxons who, successful their ferocity and their hunger for everything that was richest and astir aggravated successful life, had been predators nary little glorious than lions: ‘blond beasts’. But past the missionaries had arrived. The blond beast had been tempted into a monastery. ‘There he now lay, sick, wretched, malevolent toward himself; filled pinch hatred of the captious drives, filled pinch suspicion towards each that was still beardown and happy. In short, a “Christian”.’ Dix, enduring the extremes of the occidental front, did not person to beryllium a worshipper of Woden to consciousness that he was free astatine last.
Between beast and Übermensch
‘Even war’, he recorded successful his notebook, ‘must beryllium regarded arsenic a earthy occurrence.’ That it was an abyss, crossed which, for illustration a rope, a man mightiness beryllium suspended, fastened betwixt beast and Übermensch: present was a accuracy that Dix felt nary origin to wantonness astatine the Somme. Yet it could look a bleak one, for each that. Soldiers, amid the corpses and the mud, seldom cared to ideate pinch Nietzsche that location mightiness beryllium nary truth, nary value, nary meaning successful itself – and that only by acknowledging this would a man cease to beryllium a slave. The standard of the unit that had convulsed Europe did not daze astir of its peoples into atheism. On the contrary, it served to corroborate them successful their faith. How different to make consciousness of the horror? The cloth that laic betwixt world and eden could look eerily thin. As the warfare crushed connected and 1916 turned to 1917, truthful the extremity times seemed to beryllium drafting close. In Portugal, successful the colony of Fatima, the Virgin made repeated appearances, until astatine last, earlier immense crowds, the sun danced, arsenic though successful fulfilment of the prophecy recorded successful Revelation, that a wondrous motion would look successful heaven: ‘a female clothed pinch the sun’. In Palestine, the British won a crushing triumph astatine Armageddon and took Jerusalem from the Turks. In London, the overseas caput issued a declaration supporting the constitution of a Jewish homeland, a improvement galore Christians believed was bound to herald the return of Christ.
Otto Dix instructing a people successful fig painting, Hugo Erfurth, 1929. Museum of Fine Art, Boston. Public Domain. Yet he did not travel back. Nor did the world end. In 1918, erstwhile the German precocious bid launched a monolithic effort to smash their opponents erstwhile and for all, the cognition they had codenamed ‘Michael’, successful honour of the archangel, peaked and collapsed and ebbed. Eight months later, the warfare was over. Germany sued for terms. The Kaiser abdicated. A squalid bid was brought to a shattered continent. Dix returned from the front. In Dresden, he painted maimed officers, malnourished infants and haggard prostitutes. He saw beggars everywhere. On thoroughfare corners location were gangs of agitators. Some were communists, others nationalists. Some wandered barefoot, prophesying the extremity of the world and calling for man to beryllium calved again. Dix ignored them all. Asked to subordinate a governmental party, he would reply that he would alternatively spell to a brothel. He continued to publication Nietzsche.
The heaviest blow
‘He who fights pinch monsters should look to it that he himself does not go a monster. And erstwhile you regard agelong into an abyss the abyss besides gazes into you.’ Nietzsche had warned that confusions were bound to travel from the decease of God. Good and evil would go relative. Moral codes would drift unanchored. Terrible unit would beryllium perpetrated. In 1933 a authorities came to powerfulness successful Germany that regarded Christianity pinch the contempt of a Nietzsche. Hitler, who successful 1928 had publically proclaimed really Christian his activity was, condemned it successful backstage arsenic ‘the heaviest rustle that ever struck humanity’. Its interest for the anemic he viewed arsenic cowardly and shameful. It had resulted successful immoderate number of excrescences: alcoholics breeding promiscuously while upstanding nationalist comrades struggled to put nutrient connected the array for their families; intelligence patients enjoying cleanable sheets while patient children were obliged to slumber 3 aliases 4 to a bed; cripples having money and attraction lavished connected them that should beryllium devoted to the fit. Idiocies specified arsenic these were precisely what National Socialism existed to terminate. The churches had had their day. The caller order, if it were to endure, would require a caller bid of man: the Übermenschen.
Even committed Nietzscheans mightiness flinch earlier their find of what this meant successful practice. Dix was revolted by the Nazis and they successful move dismissed him arsenic degenerate. Sacked from his school station successful Dresden, forbidden to grounds his paintings, he turned to the Bible and, successful 1939, painted the demolition of Sodom. Fire consumed a metropolis that was unmistakably Dresden. The image proved prophetic. When, that aforesaid year, Hitler’s ambitions plunged Europe into war, cities crossed the continent burned: Warsaw, Rotterdam, London. Then, arsenic the tide turned against Germany, ruin was visited connected the Reich itself. In July 1943 – successful an cognition codenamed Gomorrah – a oversea of occurrence engulfed Hamburg. In February 1945, it was the move of Dresden. The astir beautiful cityscape successful Germany was reduced to ashes. Three months later the warfare successful Europe was over. The Übermenschen was nary more.
‘After a unspeakable earthquake’, Nietzsche had written, ‘a tremendous reflection, pinch caller questions.’ Dix, who had been conscripted into the Wehrmacht during the dying days of the war, was released from a French POW campy successful 1946 and returned to what remained of Dresden. There, he painted himself arsenic Christ, portrayed against a backdrop of barbed wire. The image of the Crucifixion progressively haunted his paintings. By the extremity of his life, he was coating belief scenes that had nary hint of allegory, nary echo of the coming day.
Dix ne'er did represent Nietzsche again.
Tom Holland’s latest book is Dominion: the Making of the Western Mind (Little, Brown, 2019).
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