1
You may call me D.T. That is short for Dieter, a German
name, and D.T. will do, now that I am in America, this curious nation.
If I draw upon reserves of patience, it is because time passes here
without meaning for me, and that is a state to dispose one to
rebellion. Can this be why I am writing a book? Among my former
associates, we had to swear never to undertake such an action. I was,
after all, a member of a matchless Intelligence group. Its
classification was SS, Special Section IV-2a, and we were directly
under the supervision of Heinrich Himmler. Today, the man is seen as a
monster, and I would not look to defend him—he turned out to be
one hell of a monster. All the same, Himmler did have an original mind,
and one of his theses does take me into my literary intentions, which
are, I promise, not routine.
2
The room that Himmler used
when speaking to our elite group was a small lecture hall with dark
walnut paneling and was limited to twenty seats raked upward in four
rows of five. My emphasis will not be, however, on such descriptions. I
prefer to concern myself with Himmler’s unorthodox concepts. They
may even have stimulated me to begin a memoir that is bound to prove
unsettling. I know that I will sail into a sea of turbulence, for I
must uproot many a conventional belief. A cacophony erupts in my spirit
at the thought. As Intelligence officers, we often seek to warp our
findings. Mendacity, after all, possesses its own art, but this is a
venture that will ask me to forsake such skills.
Enough! Let me
present Heinrich Himmler. You, the reader, must be prepared for no easy
occasion. This man, whose nickname, behind his back, was Heini, had
become by 1938 one of the four truly important leaders in Germany. Yet
his most cherished and secret intellectual pursuit was the study of
incest. It dominated our highest-level research, and our findings were
kept to closed conferences. Incest, Heini would propose, had always
been rife among the poor of all lands. Even our German peasantry had
been much afflicted, yes, even as late as the nineteenth century.
“Normally, no one in learned circles cares to speak of the
matter,” he would remark. “After all, there is nothing to
be done. Who would bother to call some poor wretch a certified
offspring of incest? No, every establishment of every civilized nation
looks to sweep such stuff under the rug.”
That is, all
ranking government officials in the world except for our Heinrich
Himmler. He did have the most extraordinary ideas fermenting behind his
unhappy spectacles. I must repeat that for a man with a bland and
chinless mug, he certainly exhibited a frustrating mixture of
brilliance and stupidity. For example, he declared himself to be a
pagan. He predicted that there would be a healthy future for humankind
once paganism took over the world. Everyone’s soul would then be
enriched with hitherto unacceptable pleasures. None of us could
conceive, however, of an orgy where carnality would rise to such a
pitch that you might find a woman ready to throw herself into a
flesh-melting roll with Heinrich Himmler. No, not even in the most
innovative spirit! For you could always see his face as it must once
have been at a school dance, that bespectacled disapproving stare of
the wallflower, tall, thin, a youth full of physical ineptitude.
Already he had a small potbelly. There he was, ready to wait by the
wall while the dance went on.
Yet he grew obsessed over the
years with matters others did not dare to mention aloud (which, I must
say, is usually the first step to new thought). In fact, he paid close
attention to mental retardation. Why? Because Himmler subscribed to the
theory that the best human possibilities lie close to the worst. So he
was ready to assume that promising children when found in low,
nondescript families could be “incestuaries.” The word in
German, as he coined it, was Inzestuarier. He did not like the more
common term of such disgrace, Blutschande (blood-scandal), or as it is
sometimes employed in polite circles, Dramatik des Blutes (blood-drama).
None
of us felt sufficiently qualified to say that his theory could be
dismissed. Even in the early years of the SS, Himmler had recognized
that one of our prime needs was to develop exceptional research groups.
We had a duty to search into ultimates. As Himmler put it, the health
of National Socialism depended on nothing less than these letzte Fragen
(last questions). We were to explore problems that other nations did
not dare to go near. Incest was at the head of the list. The German
mind had to re-establish itself again as the leading inspiration to the
learned world. In turn—so went his unstated coupling—much
recognition might be given to Heinrich Himmler for his profound attack
on problems originating in the agricultural milieu. He would emphasize
the underlying point: Husbandry could hardly be investigated without
comprehending the peasant. Yet to understand this man of the earth was
to speak of incest.
Here, I promise you, he would hold up his
hand in precisely that little gesture Hitler used to employ—one
prissy flip of the wrist. It was Heinrich’s way of saying:
“Now comes the meat. And with it—the potatoes!” Off
he would go on a peroration. “Yes,” he would say,
“incest! This is one very good reason that old peasants are
devout. An acute fear of the sinful is bound to display itself by one
of two extremes: Absolute devotion to religious practice. Or nihilism.
I can recall from my student days that the Marxist Friedrich Engels
once wrote, ‘When the Catholic Church decided adultery was
impossible to prevent, they made divorce impossible to obtain.’ A
brilliant remark even if it comes from the wrong mouth. As much can be
said for blood-scandal. That is also impossible to prevent. So, the
peasant looks to keep himself devout.” He nodded. He nodded again
as if two good pumps of his head might be the minimum necessary to
convince us that he was speaking from both sides of his heart.
How
often, he asked, could the average peasant of the last century avoid
these blood temptations? After all, that was not so easy. Peasants, it
had to be said, were not usually attractive people. Their features were
worn away by hard labor. Besides, they reeked of the field and the
barn. Personal odors were at the mercy of hot summers. Under such
circumstances, would not basic impulses trigger forbidden inclinations?
Given the paucity of their social life, how were they to acquire the
ability to stay away from entanglements with brothers and sisters,
fathers and daughters?
He did not go on to speak of the
pell-mell of limbs and torsos formed by three or four children in a
bed, nor the ham-handed naturalness of the most agreeable work of
all—that hard-breathing, feverish meat-heavy run up the hills of
physical joy—but he did declare, “More than a few in the
agricultural sector come, willy-nilly, to see incest as an acceptable
option. Who, after all, is most likely to find the honorable
work-hardened features of the father or the brother particularly
attractive? The sisters, of course! Or the daughters. Often they are
the only ones. The father, having created them, remains the focus of
their attention.”
Hand it to Himmler. He had been storing
theories in his head for two decades. A great believer in Schopenhauer,
he would also give prominence to a word still relatively new in
1938—genes. These genes, he said, were the biological embodiment
of Schopenhauer’s concept of the Will. They are the basic element
of this mysterious Will. “We know,” he said, “that
instincts can be passed from one generation to the next. Why? I would
say it is in the nature of the Will to remain true to its origins. I
even speak of that as a Vision, yes, gentlemen, a force that lives at
the core of our human existence. It is this Vision which separates us
from the animals. From the beginning of our time on earth, we humans
have been seeking to rise to the unseen heights that lie ahead.
“Of
course, there are impediments to such a great goal. The most
exceptional of our genes must still be able to surmount the privations,
humiliations, and tragedies of life as the genes are transmitted from
father to child, generation after generation. Great leaders, I would
tell you, are rarely the product of one father and one mother. It is
more likely that the rare leader is the one who has succeeded in
breaking through the bonds that held back ten frustrated generations
who could not express the Vision in their own lives but did pass it on
through their genes.
“Needless to say, I have arrived at
these concepts by meditat- ing upon the life of Adolf Hitler. His
heroic rise resonates in our hearts. Since he issues, as we know, from
a long line of modest peasant stock, his life demonstrates a superhuman
achievement. Absolute awe must overwhelm us.”
As
Intelligence agents, we were smiling within. This had been the
peroration. Now our Heinrich was ready to enter what Americans call the
nitty-gritty. “The real question to be asked,” he said,
“is how does the brilliance of the Vision protect itself from
being dulled by commingling? That is implicit in the process of
so-called normal reproduction. Contemplate the multimillions of sperm.
One of them has to travel all the way up to the ovum of the female. To
each lonely sperm cell swimming in the uterine sea, that ovum will loom
as large as a battle cruiser.” He paused before he nodded.
“The same readiness for self-sacrifice that will carry men at war
through an uphill attack on a forbidding ridge must exist in healthy
sperm. The essence of the male seed is that it is ready to commit
itself to just such immolation in order that one of them, at least,
will reach the ovum!”
He stared at us. Could we share his
excitement? “The next question,” he said, “soon
arises. Will the genes of the woman be compatible with the sperm cell
that has managed to reach her? Or will these separate elements find
their respective genes to be in dispute? Are they about to act like
unhappy husbands and wives? Yes, I would answer, dispute is often the
prevailing case. The meeting may prove sufficiently compatible for
procreation to occur, but the combination of their genes is hardly
guaranteed to be in harmony.
“When we speak, therefore, of
the human desire to create that man who will embody the
Vision—the Superman—we have to consider the odds. Not even
one in a million families can present us with a husband and a wife who
are close enough in the inclination of their genes to bring forth a
miraculous child. Not even one, perhaps, in a hundred million.
No!”—again the upraised hand—“let us say,
closer to a million million. In the case of Adolf Hitler, the numbers
may approach the awesome distances we encounter in astronomy.
“So,
gentlemen, logic would propose that any Superman who embodies the
Vision, is bound to come forth from a mating of exceptionally similar
genetic ingredients. Only then will these separate embodiments of the
Vision be ready to reinforce each other.”
Who could not see what Heinrich was aiming at? Incest offered the nearest possibility for such unity of purpose.
“Yet,”
said Himmler, “to be reasonable, we must also agree that life is
not always ready to certify such an event. Debased males and females
are the ones who usually come into the world from these family
intimacies. We have to recognize that products of incest usually suffer
childhood ills and early deaths. Anomalies abound, even exhibitions of
physical monstrosity.”
He stood there, sad and stern.
“That is the price. Not only are many reinforced good tendencies
likely to be present in an inces- tuary, but unhappy inclinations can
be magnified as well. Insta- bility is, therefore, a common product of
incest. Idiocy waits in the wings. And when a vital possibility exists
for the development of a great spirit, this rare human must still
overcome a host of frus- trations profound enough to unhinge the brain
or induce early death.” So spoke Heinrich Himmler.
I think
all of us present knew the subtext of these remarks. Back in 1938, we
were looking (in greatest secrecy, you may be certain) to determine
whether our Führer was a first- or second-degree incestuary. Or
neither. If not, if neither, then Himmler’s theory would remain
groundless. But if our Führer was a true product of incest, then
he was more than a glowing example of the likelihood of the thesis, he
might be the proof itself.
Excerpted from The Castle in the Forest by Norman Mailer Copyright © 2007 by Norman Mailer.