The Chamberlain Connection
Another possible link between the swastika and the Nazis may be through Houston Stewart Chamberlain, one of the prophets of the coming race of Aryan [1] supermen which, as he admitted , might not exist, but which should exist in the future.
Some authors claim that, early in his political career, Adolph Hitler
came under the philosophical influence of Houston Stewart Chamberlain,
whom the Führer met on several occasions in 1923. It is interesting
to note that Chamberlain, like Hitler, was not a German by birth, and like
the Führer was both an anti-Semitic and a chauvinist.
Born in 1855, Chamberlain was the son of an English Admiral and the
nephew of Field Marshal Sir Neville Chamberlain. He was brought up by some
relatives in Paris, where we went to school under the private tuition of
a Prussian tutor. Chamberlain's lively and eager mind quickly absorbed
the glories of militarist Prussia and studied in detail the works of the
great German poets and philosophers like Goethe, Fichte, Hegel, Nietsche,
and Richard Wagner.
Chamberlain first met Wagner in 1882, when the composer journeyed from
Geneva to Bayreuth to attend a music festival. Wagner immediately became
a main influence in Chamberlain's life, and he decided to move to Germany
to study its history, literature, philosophy and music.
When he was 27, Chamberlain moved to Germany and settled in Dresden.
Very soon he was more German than he Germans themselves, literally adopting
their nationality, language, and even their mind and soul. In 1899 he published
his most important work, The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century
, in which he synthesized the opposing ideas of Wagner and Nietsche. The
book exploded like a bomb on German nationalist circles, and Chamberlain
became an instant celebrity in Germany.
The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century became Adolf Hitler's
bedside book. Some time later Chamberlain become Wagner's son-in law.
In his book Chamberlain challenged the idea that a noble race needed
to decline and decay pushed by the inferior races, as in the tragedy portrayed
in Wagner's Twilight of the Gods. Developing Wagner's thinking he incorporated
Nietsche's belief that a race of supermen could be bred. Chamberlain's
book soon became the new Bible for the Pan-Germanic movement in search
for a "German Master Race."
Houston Stewart Chamberlain was the main mentor of Alfred Rosenberg,
whose Myth of the 20th Century was the sequel to Chamberlain's work.