Douglas Mercer
January 3 2025
Continued from Empyrean (Part Fifteen)
OAK SACRIFICE
Do you know how to carve?
Do you know how to dispatch?
Do you know how to slaughter?
Every god requires a sacrifice they say; and I believe it. If we became the Nemesis of the god and the scourge of the god, then so be it; history is the mother of truth and necessity is its theme. As is said to read of the destruction of European Jewry and not burst out laughing one must have a heart of stone; how many times our forebears expelled the Jews, and either did a poor job of it, or allowed them to return like the bad penny or, usually, both. What interminable folly and what madness! That it was left to us to finish the job, and that when it was finished it was a nasty, brutish and long affair is not to cast aspersions on us; one only gets after all what one pays for (and not even that if you buy from a Jew runs the joke). All Hail to Henrich Himmler for teaching my generation that our task would not be an easy one, that it would be bitter and ugly and difficult; but that we must become the new men, the iron men, to cast off the shackles of the shopworn milieu of good and evil, and be the ones who would wade in blood (and yes, suffer) and make the world itself run scarlet rivers on the sacred fields. But, he always reminded us, the future generations able to live in the peace of their own people, would thank us, and so they have. And anyway it is flame alone, always flame, that purifies, cleanses, teaches, exhorts and calls; calls us to plunge on the path from which there shall be no thought of return.
It was not as if they were not warned. In his great book Hitler lamented that if in 1914 we had gassed 10,000 Jews the whole affair would never have come to pass. In his famous 1939 speech Hitler stood foursquarely before the watching world and informed the Jews that should they decide to bring this war on Germany they would pay for that conscious decision in full. You get what you pay for they say and now the debt is paid in full. You see we are at heart a gallant people, courteous, respectful, circumspect, and chivalrous; that is our basic nature. I see it now when I travel about, I see a people as far from fanaticism as you can possibly imagine. Indeed, I see the thing that I never thought to see: I see a Germany that is happy. But we also have always been a punctilious people, a strict people, a servere people, and one very jealous of our prerogatives; and any honest reading of history (which is what this paper is meant to be in nuce) will adduce that our patience was sorely tested and that our patience was exhausted; and when you deal with stiff necked people, obstinate people, hard headed people, recalcitrant people, it is true that they can either go peacefully or they can go kicking and screaming, the choice as always is theirs; and so we shut their lying mouths. But the weight, the burden, falls totally on their shoulders. Perhaps not everyone can carry the weight of the world; but we proved we could.
To say that Nature is red in tooth and claw is true but not in all senses. Nature has many oases of splendor and beauty and wonder as anyone who will stroll with me on any avenue in Germany will attest. These beautiful lulls or caesuras are what the Americans call the lee of life. But one should not be mistaken, this pleasant and marvelous life is the goal of life but is paid for always with what used to be called cruelty; and to not see it as so is to put the cart before the horse and not see that in the end all accounts are settled by the great decider who cures the earth of the pleurisy of its peoples. As the poet said when the Saxon awakes from his slumbers and begins to hate his will is ferocious; I would quibble with hate for hate assumes passion and what we do is in cold blood--it is just implacable indifference and it is when the Saxon awakes to his cosmic calling that moving others we are ourselves as stone. For when a people discover what they were put on earth for, when they see what their destiny is, they have their work cut out; and if it is within the power of that people no one must deter or deflect them from the progress of their path. Creative destruction demands it; and the gods smile on it. When a people find their true purpose and find their will they must will it at all hazards and all costs; any other people who attempt to thwart it may be killed with impunity, whatever the circumstances and whatever the numbers. They may be killed without compunction because the reason the universe is here is to realize its will and so in this case murder (to use an outmoded term of art) becomes a primal duty. If one kills wantonly or gratuitously, or takes pleasure in killing, that is another matter, but that is not the case in question. It is a matter only of executing the will. Indeed, coming to the realization that in this circumstance of the extremity that bloodletting is a sacred calling is the foremost precept of ur Germanic Religion, so different from what preceded it. That is a people who interfere or waylay fate must be dispensed with by killing without ceremony and with extraordinary and high-handed prejudice. For what we have learned most of all is that this is nature’s version of black letter law and for us it is a settled matter. I am sure some secret dissidents among our friends will grumble that it the victors who write history; but who else would know it like the back of their hands in order to do so?
In the early 1950s I traveled to some Southwestern States to do a follow up on Krieger’s seminal work. What I found pleased me. The Americans were still struggling with their ever-present moral quandaries but by and large they had settled the matter of race, making sure that some very basic rights were granted to the race alien but not anything even approximating full participation in society. As expected after some initial dudgeon this was accepted with more or less equanimity by both parties. It was on my way home that I stopped off in Austin and met with another of my German colleagues who was studying American Law. He said of course the law for the Americans was still a problem as they yet to fully coordinate society. Naturally there was still some crime in Germany, but a vanishingly small amount of it, and it was met with good measure. The Americans still had their holdover of individual freedom and though crime was controlled generally it still from time to time flared and reared its ugly head, occasionally quite strikingly. I mention this now because he told me the tale of a Judge in the vast outlying districts who when a murder case came before him would assemble the various parties and ask them a question, as if to square away the predicate. He would speak of the murdered and what he would ask was: did he need a killing? It’s always the question that matters and must be answered before all others. Tell the truth and you shame the devil is what they say.
***
The Oak Tree has always been sacred to we Germans. In one of his masterful hymns Holderlin speaks of the Oak growing in the glacial north of ice, whispering to us of our destiny. The Oak for us is the Tree Of Life with deep roots in our native soil, our ancestors worshipped the tree as we do as well. Around the camps that we built stood many stately oaks and always at the Center was a luxuriant Oak Tree, one that always reminded us of the Oak Tree of Goethe, and indeed they have come to be called in the vernacular Goethe Oaks. This Oak of legend was the Oak under which Goethe composed his immortal Nightsong and the location under which he wrote the Walpurgisnacht section of Faust. In legend the fate of this oak came to represent the fate of Germany and symbolized self-betterment and memories of a better world. Oak trees were considered especially sacred to ancient Germans of course; of all the European Trees none other can be considered as pre-eminent among the hallowed lore of the Aryan people. Its worship is well attested in our history for all branches of our peoples; the Oak tree symbolized power, fertility and sacrifice and it was by means of sacrifice that this power and fecundity was achieved. The Oak was considered mighty due to it sheer size and the depth and strength of the roots as they made their way into the earth—unbreakable. It was in the Oak Grove that the rituals of our people and their thanksgiving and their letting of blood occurred. That this ancient rite and lore were practiced by our people in the 1930s was considered by the world at large as an occult and atavistic throwback to nature mysticism—but it was nothing of the sort. In his youth Hitler wrote a play about religious sacrifice delineating the differences between Christianity and our ancient German religion. When his friend awakened in the night and saw Adolf in a feverish trance he asked him what he could be working on. The young Hitler only showed him a piece of paper with these words on it: Holy Mountain in the background, before it the mighty sacrificial block surrounded by towering stands of oaks. Two mighty warriors hold the black bull firmly by the horns and place its mighty head in the hollow of the sacrificial block. Behind them in light colored robes stands the priests. He holds the sword with his clean smooth blade with which he will slaughter the bull. All around solemn men, bearded men, leaning on their shields, hold their lances and watch the proceeding intently. When he read those words his friend looked up to see Hitler in a kind of hypnotic glare and he asked his friend, what is it? Hitler simply said: a play.
***
Naturally we wanted the whole process to run as smoothly as possible and with as little blood as possible; but we were willing come what may. When the war ended there were those in England and America who thought that we would come to some accommodation with the Jews and there were those who could not imagine us going through with it. But of course imagination was never our problem, we are the nation of poets and thinkers after all. When they saw that something was afoot there were understated communiqués about possible ways to avert what they insisted was a tragedy. When word of these came through Hitler calmly told them that this world we were building was built on mutual trust; that we had our mutual interests and in these spheres he hoped for vigorous and boisterous debate provided it was done with the discretion of noble men; but in Home Affairs, both theirs and ours, it was a sanctified zone of non-interference. When at last the American suggested emigration Hitler smiled and said his reading of the man in the street in America told him that might be somewhat difficult, that they had enough of them on their hands. But even if that were not the case we had had our Evians, and they had their chance. And he then referred them to his pre-war speeches. Safe to say we never heard from that county again.
At Wannsee presided over by our revered Heydrich it had been concluded that when it came to European Jews we had a storage problem. The best of our lot had wracked their brains high and low to come up with a solution; Madascar was bruited about, the East, emigration, and a state in Palestine; as to this latter it was thought that creating a state of Israel would be like releasing wolves in the nursery; it would be Pandora’s Box without the stone called hope in the bottom. During the length of the war we certainly had our camps but despite the statements from abroad these were not killing fields; and when the war was sewn up so seemingly miraculously and so quickly we had many other irons in our fires to solve in the international situation; it was agreed to leave the greatest question, the Jewish Question (to which everyone agreed there was only one answer) to somewhat later. In the meantime we could persist in the status quo and with our modus Vivendi with the Jewish people on our continent. As time wore on the situation went unaddressed and to them in must have been an eerie kind of quiet. But they were sitting ducks---no one harbored any illusions about that. But whatever else was true we were not going to let them use our good will against us as a hostage.
When the ideas of the Camps in the East came about I cannot say; even though a German man is a plain and honest man there was a modicum of secrecy regarding what I now know was labeled Project Neptune. My guess is that it was percolating in high circles at least by 1944 and the first building went up in the year following; they have since been dismantled but I can say for sure that when they first began to appear they were built with maximum efficiency and at terrific speed; some seventy-five in all, all them according to one master plan: the idea was to inject them and then cremate them, a T4 project of a great order of magnitude, men in white coats rallying to the cause of Germania. It was really simplicity itself: once you had the load in and once the piece was totally incinerated you simply opened the chimney and the fire would follow the air out through the baffle and flue; and then in the chamber directly opposite the combustion zone which burned at 1000 degrees would then cool to near 40, cool enough to unload the ash and then reload the chamber: so while one chamber is heating up another was cooling: burn, cool, unload, reload, German meticulousness writ large; and then the process was repeated ad nauseam. When I told this process to an American friend of mine he paused a bit to take it in; I told him he was in good company, that in the killing zone of the East Eichmann had fainted dead away and no less a person than Himmler would manically clutch a handkerchief to his nose. But that when we said that humanity must be surpassed and superseded we were not writing high flown philosophy or majestic poetry; we were writing history. He then noted that cremation in English was nearly the exact same word as creation. I thought about a bit but told him mysticism was never my forte and I could not speak to it—but I did mention that it was Heidegger who said that man did not speak but language did, and in this instance at least he may have had a point. After all not everyone can carry the weight of the world—but if you find yourself able to you should.
Once in the camps the problem was relatively solved. We had out massive interlocking systems of track built and everything was ready; the issue was how to transport. With this as with everything we did it with method and precision. What we did was take their fortune hostage, children in this case, the famed project Kinder; and so we insisted on good behavior, a kind of latter day version of the whiff of grapeshot to encourage everyone. Although nothing was spoken they all knew what was happening, no deception paved out way. Of course here and there or now and then were pockets of hysteria but these were fewer than one would imagine and were dealt with swiftly and appropriately. At one point one of their priests asked if he might not reason with us at long last. We certainly needed no bill of indictment to read to them to arrive at a verdict of guilty. And this proposal was considered at great length and it was decided to let the priest meet with one of our men from the schools. No record of it is given but from what I can glean the priest said he was resigned to events but wanted to know why, why there was such animosity. With dispassion his interlocutor said although among our masses animosity there was (living cheek by jowl with them made this inevitable) but that among our ideologues none was present. We would no more think of being angry at a snake for sinking its poisonous fangs into us or at a wolf ripping us limb from limb; there was incomprehension on his part (feigned or otherwise) they say and our officer reminded him of the time that the Romans had tried to get them in line and the mass of thousands had bared their necks to their own knives and he asked them if he thought they were bluffing. The priest said he doubted it and our officer said then think of this as your Masada. But really he said there is no reason, that it was just the nature of war and reality, and he assured the man that were the shoe to have been on the other foot not to fool himself that they would have behaved any differently. I think the calm and clear demeanor took the Jew aback; and in the lull our representative said it was simpler than all of this; he alluded to Montaigne who when his friend asked him why they were such good friends, why they loved each other the famous author said he was not sure but he presumed it had been only because he was he—and I was I.
Lots of stories get told, and gossip is written all over the face of human nature, and even though for the most part we try to (and do) rise above such things talk happens; they say at some of the camps conspicuous lightening rods were attached to each of the four sides of the chimney of the cremation centers. The massive and nearly unwieldy flames that flew out from the flue of the chimney tops accentuated and lit up the rods--especially at night and for late night denizens a kind of cathedral of light was put on. The SS letters themselves were iconically stylized as lightning bolts and we of course had our lightning war and our operation thunderclap---so it would have been highly appropriate. And of course we always like to be plain dealing people and use obvious symbols to drive home our point—like taking those degenerate books on dung carts on the way to the bonfires. So while I cannot vouch for it (we don’t chase down phantoms at this late date as I indicated) it is the kind of thing that could be true, as if to symbolize our efforts we had a handful of ash and blew----
Is there still Jewish blood coursing through our veins? Certainly. For all our great efforts one does not totally obliterate 2000 years of delusions—not in forty-seven years. And over time it will become smaller and smaller as the blood washes away to the vanishing point, that is if the great event on the Northern Plain doesn't make such considerations moot. The Jewish people did not have one neck and, given the circumstances, I think we acquitted ourselves quite well, and we don’t have to wipe the blood off of us, we have been in the sacred grove---and nothing to atone for—having paid in full.
***
Notes:
At the pinnacle of our program stands not mysterious premonitions but clear knowledge and hence open avowal. Our cult is exclusively cultivation of that which is natural and hence what is willed by God—Adolf Hitler, Berlin, 1938
Continued at Empyrean (Part Seventeen)
