Chapter One
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 meditating 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 incestuary, but unhappy
inclinations can be magnified as well. Instability 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 frustrations 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.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from The Castle in the Forest
by Norman Mailer
Copyright © 2007 by Norman Mailer.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Random House
Copyright © 2007
Norman Mailer
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-394-53649-1
