A dialogue between Hitler, Nietzsche, and Freud

cene:A bare chamber of stone and firelight. Three men are seated, equally spaced. There is no clock. No audience. Only the sound of thought, and from time to time, a shifting of boots on stone.

Nietzsche:I will begin, if neither of you objects. I died before either of you did your work, and yet I find myself invoked by both. I wonder whether I was a philosopher—or just a mirror.

Freud:You were no mirror. You were a spark. What I did with that spark—what he did—those are different stories. But we didn’t find you by accident.

Hitler:You were the first to speak of man without apology. The first to reject pity as principle. That’s what drew me to you.

Nietzsche:Yes, but tell me—what did you think I meant?

Hitler:You said that strength creates value. That morality is a weapon of the weak. That history moves by will, not reason. I believed you.

Nietzsche (to Freud):And you?

Freud:I believed you were half-right. You saw through reason, as I did. But you misunderstood the mind’s burden. You glorified struggle. I analyzed it. You wanted to transfigure suffering. I wanted to understand its structure.

Nietzsche:You dissected it. You pulled back the skin and labeled each nerve. But you left nothing sublime.

Freud:Because the sublime is an evasion. Aesthetic alibis for pain are still alibis. I studied the wound without poetry.

Hitler (to Freud):You took man apart and called it healing. But you left him smaller than before.

Freud:I left him awake.

Nietzsche (to Hitler):And you? You turned my metaphors into uniforms. That was never my design.

Hitler:Then your design was incomplete. You told man to become stronger—but never said how. You called for the Overman—but gave no path. I provided one.

Nietzsche:Through war? Through race?

Hitler:Through myth. Through order. Through unity. The Will must speak in a single voice—or it shatters into therapy.

Freud:Better therapy than tyranny.

Nietzsche (softly):Or than silence.

Freud:The Will is not a god. It is a drive. A hunger. A compulsion. You named it beautiful. I named it dangerous. He named it sacred.

Nietzsche (to both):Perhaps it is all three.

Hitler:Then it must be used. Not studied.

Freud:But who uses it? And at what cost?

Nietzsche:This is the question neither of you resolved. I proposed a path beyond man—not beneath him. I called for the creator, not the soldier or the surgeon. You both stopped short.

Freud (nods):I never claimed otherwise. I sought equilibrium, not transcendence.

Hitler:And I sought destiny.

Nietzsche (looking between them):One of you tried to end the dream. The other tried to turn it into policy. But the dream resists both endings.

[They are silent for a moment.]

Freud:Tell me, Herr Nietzsche—do you disown us?

Nietzsche:I disown no one. But I am not accountable for what the fire does after it leaves the torch.

Hitler:Then you are not its master.

Nietzsche:Nor its servant.

Freud:Then what are you?

Nietzsche:Its witness.

End.