10 Famous Books You've Been Reading Wrong This Whole Time
5. Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra Is Not Really For Nazis
Another chapter in the very long saga of 'Nazis ruining everything'. Much like his contemporary Wagner, Nietzsche is credited with inspiring and reinforcing the Nazis' ultra-nationalistic, wildly racist ideologies. Unlike Wagner, a raging antisemite, Nietzsche was actually violently opposed to nationalism and theories of racial superiority.
The misunderstanding is in large part down to Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth Förster Nietzsche. After Nietzsche died she became the owner of his intellectual property and ordered edits on his work, this included giving Zarathustra a far more nationalist spin and presenting Nietzsche, for future readers, in a believer of nationalism.
The edits were because Elisabeth was super nationalistic and seeing her brother's ability to present philosophy and convince an audience, decided that his works were a bit too liberal for her taste.
The most enduring concept from Zarathustra is that of the Ubermensch: a sort of John Cena of the soul, if you will. The Nazis, through a combination of malicious editing from Elisabeth and their own poor reading comprehension, took the Ubermensch to represent an ideal of Aryan perfection.
Nietzsche had meant the concept as a kind of unattainable goal, something all of humanity could strive towards, rather than any kind of pseudo-scientific inevitability.