The Antichrist

H.L. Mencken translated this version of The Antichrist following the end of World War I—with much of his introduction focusing on reconciling Friedrich Nietzsche’s work with its participation in said conflict. In his introduction, Mencken describes the leaders of Germany as having embraced Nietzsche’s concepts, while the Allied Powers opposed his work—branding it too anti-democratic. Further reconciliation is required to read The Antichrist following World War II, given the rise of Nazi Germany and its application of modernity and “science” in executing the Holocaust.

While Nietzsche’s popularity in Germany never fully waned following the country’s loss in World War I, his work became associated with the Nazi party due to his sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, a noted antisemite and Nazi party member whose funeral was attended by Adolf Hitler himself in 1935. Förster-Nietzsche championed her brother’s work following his mental breakdown and death, and accounts persist that she edited his works to further accentuate antisemitic and eugenicist idioms that might indirectly cast the Nazi ideology in a positive light.

Mencken himself contributed to the Nazification of Nietzsche’s philosophies. Though he opposed the persecution of Jewish people in Europe and advocated for their admission into America, Mencken ultimately opposed America’s entry into World War II; his bibliography and introduction for The Antichrist include multiple antisemitic arguments. He also argued for social Darwinism, believing in caste systems based on race.

Yet, the extent to which Hitler and the Nazis repurposed Nietzsche’s ideas in forming their regime is unknown; even in an example like The Antichrist, their utilization of his philosophy is selective at best, and anathema at worst. At the core of Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity is his accusation of religion redirecting its followers’ hatred towards Judaism—leaning on the story of the rabbis calling for Christ’s crucifixion to cast them as the ultimate villains of Christianity.

In his critique of modern Germany, Nietzsche accuses his fellow citizens of acquiring the knowledge of science—which disproves Christian metaphysics—but failing to abandon them when their deceptions were laid bare. To Nietzsche, these Christian morals include essential antisemitism. The Nazis choosing to harness secularism and science to industrialize antisemitism only proved Nietzsche’s critique correct, as it brought his concept of a nihilistic Christian morality to its ultimate—horrifying—conclusion.