The Iron Dream (38 page)
A cursory study of commercial science fantasy would seem to confirm this contention. The hero with the magi-
247
cal sword is a common, indeed virtually universal, feature of so-called sword and sorcery novels. Such novels are written according to a simple formula whereby this super-masculine figure, aided by his unusually potent weapon, with which he has an obvious phallic identification, over-comes great obstacles to gain his inevitable triumph. Hitler was active in the microcosm of "science-fiction random"
for decades, and in fact many such fantasies were reviewed in his own fanzine. It is therefore reasonable to assume that he was quite familiar with the genre; in fact two or three of his earlier novels approached the sword-and-sorcery vein.
Lord of the Swastika is at least schematically a typical pulp sword-and-sorcery novel. The hero (Jaggar) receives the phallic weapon as a symbol of his rightful supremacy and then triumphantly fights his way through a series of gory battles to final victory. Aside from the political allegory and the more specialized pathologies which I will deal with later, it is the obsessional consistency and intensity of the phallic symbolism which distinguishes Lord of the Swastika from a host of similar science-fantasy novels.
This leads to the conclusion that Hitler made a straightforward study of the nature of the appeal of the sword-and-sorcery genre, and self-consciously increased the pathological appeal of his own book beyond the ordinary by strengthening the phallic symbolism and making it that much more blatant and pervasive. This would make Lord of the Swastika a cynical exploitation of sexual pathology quite common to this genre, though of such a thorough-going nature that its power far exceeds that of its more timid models.
However, I believe that this theory may be disproved both by internal evidence within the novel and by the nature of the science-fiction genre itself.
For one thing. Lord of the Swastika displays abundant evidence of mental aberration on the part of its author quite aside from the question of phallic symbolism. The fetishism which permeates the novel could hardly be consciously designed to appeal to the average unsophisticated reader. Throughout the book, an obsessive amount of attention is paid to uniforms, especially the tight black leather uniforms of the SS. The frequent conjunction of repetitious description of "shiny black leather," "gleaming chrome," "high'steel-soled boots," and similar articles of clothing and adornment with phallic gestures such as the 248
Party salute, heel clicking, precision marching, and the like is dear indication of unselfconscious fetishism on the part of Hitler of a particularly morbid sort, hardly likely to appeal to any but the most thoroughly disturbed personality.
Indeed, in the book Hitler seems to assume that masses of men in fetishistic uniforms marching in precise displays and displaying phallic gestures and paraphernalia will have a powerful appeal to ordinary human beings. Feric Jaggar comes to power in Heldon through little more than a grotesque series of increasingly grandiose phallic displays.
This is undoubtedly phallic fetishism on the part of the author, since the alternative conclusion is to accept the ridiculous notion that an entire nation would throw itself at the feet of a leader simply on the basis of mass displays of public fetishism, orgies of blatant phallic symbolism, -
and mass rallies enlivened with torchlight and rabid oratory. Obviously, such a mass national psychosis could never occur in the real world; Hitler's assumption that it not only could happen but would be an expression of so-called racial will proves that he himself was suffering from such a malady.
Beyond the fetishism, the novel displays internal inconsistencies even on the gross level of commercial science fiction that are sure indications that the author's contact with reality faded more and more as he became involved with his own obsessions while writing what no doubt started out as simply another commercial potboiler.
The novel opens in a world where the highest technology is represented by the steam engine and the crude flying machine and progresses in a ridiculously short stretch of fictional time through television, machine guns, modem tanks, jet fighters, artificially grown human beings, and finally an interstellar spaceship. Hitler makes no attempt whatever to justify any of this; it is wish-fulfillment from beginning to end. Admittedly, unjustified and inconsistent wish-fulfillment fantasies are common in low-grade science fiction, but hardly to this ludicrously obvious extent. Hitler seems to assume that the very existence of a hero like Feric Jaggar would call into being these quantum-jumps in science and technology. Given the close author identification with a hero of this sort, this is a symptom of the grossest narcissism.
Perhaps even more pathological are Hitler's secretional and fecal obsessions. "Foul odors," "pestilences," "reeking 249
sties," "fetid cesspools," and the like abound in the book.
Again and again. Hitler displays his morbid dread of body secretions and processes. He is forever describing the hated Zind Warriors as "drooling," "defecating," "uri-nating," and so forth. Monsters are covered with slime clearly reminiscent of nasal mucous. The forces of evil are described in terms of noxious secretions, filth, foul odors and excretions, whereas the forces of good are "spotless,"
"gleaming," and "precise," their equipment and persons having shiny surfaces burnished to sterile glosses. The anality of this dichotomy should be clear even to the layman.
The violence in the book verges on the psychotic. Hitler describes the most ghastly slaughters as if he not only finds them attractive but assumes that his readers will be likewise enthralled. There is no doubt that the treatment of violence in Lord of the Swastika adds a special morbid appeal to the book. Here the reader is treated, if that is the word, to something that may be unique in all literature: the most ghastly, perverse, and loathsome violence described by a writer who obviously intends such hideous spectacles to be edifying, uplifting, and even expressions of nobility. De Sade himself did not go so far, for his horrors are at worst meant to be sexually titillating, whereas Hitler equates mass destruction, ruthless slaughter, nauseating violent excesses, and genocide with pious self-righteousness, honor and virtue, and, moreover, writes as if he fully expects the average reader to share his point of view as self-evident truth. Surely this is clinching evidence that the power of Lord of the Swastika lies not in the skill of the writer but in the unbridled pathological fantasies which he has unself-consciously committed to print.
And if this were not enough, consider the astonishing fact that not a single woman appears as a character in the book. It may be fairly said that asexuality is a hallmark of the typical science-fantasy novel; women appear only as chaste stock figures, token romantic interest for the hero, prizes to be won. However, Lord of the Swastika not only lacks this traditional romantic interest, it goes to incredible lengths to deny the very need for the female half of the human race. Finally, all reproduction is to proceed from the cloning of the all-male SS, a weird sort of male parthenogenesis. <
It is tempting to add this denial of the very existence of women to the phallic fetishism and come up with a diag-250
nosis of repressed homosexuality on the part of Hitler. It is true that although Hitler never married, he had a certain reputation as a Don Juan at science-fiction conventions.
On the other hand, repressed homosexuality is frequently an element in Don Juanism. Nevertheless it would be somewhat presumptuous to make such a post-mortem diagnosis from the available evidence. Suffice it to say that Hitler's attitude toward women and sexuality was hardly wholesome.
Thus, far from a cynically written formula novel cunningly devised to appeal to the phallic urges of the masses like so many other science-fantasy novels, Lord of the Swastika emerges as the obsessional product of a deranged but powerful personality. Its power derives not from the skill of the writer but from the very richness of the pathological self-display with which he invested the novel in an entirely unself-conscious manner. It is well known that the art of psychotics may appear as brilliant and appealing even to the perfectly normal mind. Such art gives us a frightening glimpse into a baleful reality fortunately beyond our personal experience. Thus we come away deeply moved and disturbed by intimate contact with the unspeakable.
Those unfamiliar with the commercial science-fiction genre may be startled to learn that such pathological products are not that uncommon. The literature of science fiction abounds with stories of all-powerful phallic supermen, alien creatures rendered as fecal surrogates, penile totems, vaginal castration symbols (such as the monster with the many sucking mouths filled with razor-sharp teeth in Swastika), subliminally homoerotic or even pederastic relationships, and the like. While a few of the better writers in the field make sparing and judicious use of such elements on a conscious level, most of this material bubbles up from the subconscious into the work of writers writing on a purely superficial surface level.
Lord of the Swastika varies only in intensity and to some extent in content from the considerable body of pathological literature published within the science-fiction field. One must look to Hitler's somewhat unusual background to fully explain the unique appeal of this particular book.
Adolf Hitler was born an Austrian and migrated to Germany, in whose army he served during the Great War, before emigrating to New York in 1919. During the period between the end of the Great War and his move to 251
America, Hitler was involved with a small radical party known as the National Socialists. Very little is known about this obscure group which disappeared around 1923, a full seven years before the Communist coup made the subject academic. However it does seem clear that the National Socialists, or Nazis, as they were sometimes called, anticipated the machinations of the Soviet Union by many years and were confirmed anti-Communists.
The subject of the National Socialists and Germany remained sore points with Hitler for the rest of his life; he discussed them only with great reluctance and bitterness and, as it were, in his cups. The National Socialists he dismissed, no doubt with entirely sufficient justification, as a pathetic beer-hall debating society. But his early, fiery, and continuing devotion to the cause of anti-Communism was well-known, and involved him in many heated debates and feuds within the small world of science-fiction fans in which he moved, until the takeover of Britain in 1948
made the imperialistic appetite of the Greater Soviet Union crystal clear to even the most naive Communist apologist.
Thus, while the imagery, violence, fetishism, and symbolism of Lord of the Swastika are clearly manifestations of Hitler's unwholesome unconscious obsessions, it is reasonable to assume that elements of political allegory within the novel were conscious creations on Hitler's part, and products of a mind deeply concerned with world politics and the unhappy fate of his ancestral Europe.
The Empire of Zind bears obvious similarities to the present-day Greater Soviet Union. Zind represents the logical extreme end-product of Communist ideology—an anthill of mindless slaves presided over by a ruthless oligar-chy. As the Dominators of Zind seek a world in which every sapient being has been reduced to their subhuman slave, so the present Communist leaders seek a world in which individualism will be entirely annihilated and every man reduced to subservience to the Communist Party of the GSU. As the power of Zind resides in its great size and huge pool of manpower which the Dominators feel free to expend without humanitarian scruples, so does the power of the Greater Soviet Union derive from its vast extent and enormous population, which the Communists tax cruelly with total disregard for individual need or dignity.
Heldon would seem to represent some resurgent Germany that never existed, a wish-fulfillment on Hitler's part, or possibly the non-Communist world in toto.
252
Beyond this, the political allegory seems hopelessly mud-dled. The Dominators seem to stand for the world Communist movement; in the novel, the "Universalist Party"
seems a straightforward surrogate for the Communist Party, with its base and cynical appeal to the sloth of the lower classes.
Yet there seems to be something more to it, something bound up with the entirely inexplicable genetic obsessions of the novel. It is impossible to draw any viable parallel between the degenerated mutants that infest the world of Lord of the Swastika and anything in contemporary reality. Of course the world of Swastika is the product of an ancient atomic war; perhaps Hitler's depiction of the genetically deformed descendants of our own age is simply a cautionary note. But the Doms themselves seem to be a genuine paranoid element. It is hard to escape the conclusion that they stand for some real or imagined group that Hitler hated and feared.
There is some flimsy evidence that the Nazi Party was to a certain extent anti-Semitic. Thus there is the temptation to conclude that the Dominators are somehow symbolic of the Jews. But since Zind is obviously meant to stand for the Greater Soviet Union, in which anti-Semitism has reached such rabid heights in the past decade that five million Jews have perished, and since the Dominators, far from being the victims of Zind, are its absolute rulers, this notion falls flat on its face.
Despite the confusion in details, however, the funda-mental political allegory of Lord of the Swastika is quite clear: Heldon, representing either Germany or the non-Communist world, totally annihilates Zind, representing the Greater Soviet Union.
Needless to say, this particular political wish-fulfillment fantasy strikes a chord in the heart of every American at a time when only the United States and Japan stand between the Greater Soviet Union and total control of the globe. Further, the manner of victory also appeals to our deepest desires. Heldon destroys Zind without recourse to nuclear weapons. The heroic individualism of Heldon defeats the mindless hordes of Zind, i.e., the free men of the non-Communist world defeat the slave masses of Commu-nized Eurasia. Only the loathsome Dominators, the Communist surrogates, stoop to the use of nuclear weapons and it avails them nothing. Although such an outcome to the present bleak world situation seems impossible, it can-253
