Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

INTERLUDE 235First, good material must be available. 'And if someone asks wherethis material comes from, I must reply that I don't know.'Second, the firmest, most powerful material, material endowed withdefinite desired characteristics, must be sought out systematically over aperiod of generations, and in this artificial selection you must not besentimental. 'The exposure of sickly children,' says Chamberlain, 'wasone of the most beneficent laws of the Greeks, Romans, and Teutons.'Nietzsche wanted to slaughter millions to the same end.Third, this good material must for generations be kept pure byinbreeding; that is, by 'producing offspring exclusively in the narrowertribal circle, avoiding all admixture of foreign blood.'Here we seem to have arrived at the 'pure race' of song and story.Have we really? Chamberlain ridicules the legendary 'pure race.' It is a'mystical concept,' an 'airy phantasm.' Inbreeding, the safeguarding ofthe blood against outside influences, is, to be sure, a necessary stage inthe process of race breeding, but it is a late stage. This safeguardingpreserves the race, keeps it rigid and fresh, once it has been created; butthe race does not receive its original vital spark in cool purity, but in amobile mixture of foreign saps and qualities — for this, inChamberlain's view, is the fourth and deepest secret of all race-making:'The genesis of extraordinary races is invariably preceded by a bloodmixture.' As an example, Chamberlain cites the particularly giftedGermanic tribes of Franks and Saxons, mixtures of Germanic and Slavicblood; and, as the finest example, he considers a nation arisen in the lastthree hundred years from blood even more mixed; the Prussians.And when by this fourfold process — discovery of good material,natural selection, mixture, and finally inbreeding — a new race hasarisen, what have we then? Then a noble new type of man has beenborn, who, throughout the globe, may sense, seek, and find kindredbeings of equal nobility, with like or similar gods, legends, andlongings. This kinship is not necessarily of blood, but merely of'affinity'; the kindred race may be of like type and similar genesis — butwithout blood connection. The type is decisive, not the blood.