Beauty and a Beast
The Nazis, fine art, and beauty as an idol
I am at that age. It is a time of life every man need go through, so why not now? It would have been interesting, exciting even, to do it as a younger man with more testosterone and dreams of glory. It is better understood as a husband and father, particularly a father of two sons. I now know how the History Channel made its mark, how blockbuster movies came to be, and above all, the wonder and darkness that human beings are capable of carrying out. I am speaking, of course, of World War II.
I stepped into the conflict at first through something easy; an HBO series. Then I found podcasts and books, hardcover books that smell a decades old, and their companion audio files. Ecclesiastes 12:12 warns us, “My son, beware of anything beyond these. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.” King Solomon was right, as he often was, but this quote could be applied only to the years of 1939-1945 and it would still be true. Of the making of books about WWII, there is never, ever, an end in sight. This is a good thing, for WWII is not a thing to forget. In some ways, it is not a thing to remember, either.
Rick Atkinson’s Pulitzer Prize winning series, The Liberation Trilogy, gives an excellent account of the war in northern Africa, the Mediterranean, and central and western Europe. The series follows the Allies as they get their literal feet wet, and covered in sand, as they remove Nazi and Italian troops from Africa, and turn their sights north to Italy proper. Atkinson shares dramatic failures and mistakes, as well as Allied victories in southern Europe that set, in some sense, a distraction from the larger invading force poised to land at Normandy and other beaches on D-Day. The books cover the Battle of the Bulge, where the often caricatured General Patton shows his military genius and personable foibles and details the bristling between Allied leadership. Atkinson’s writing reads like a novel, with characters as real as any created only for paper. More real, in fact. Actual real. There are many takeaways from the series, including the shift in world order from the British to the United States and Soviet Union, the depth of total war, the horrors of the Holocaust, and the general knowledge of military strategy, supply, morale, and tactics. I shed a tear over the liberation of prisoners in concentration camps, but was taken aback, and had to pull over my vehicle, at the mention of ‘Ghost Ships’ bearing thousands of the dead back to their home soil.
Most of this content was expected, but something else surprised me. It was a case of beauty and a beast; the looting of Hitler’s fabled Eagle’s Nest and the recovery of priceless works of art in the Altaussee Mine revealed a strange paradox. Why did the Nazis, one of humanity’s worst regimes, care for beautiful views and fine art?
War is a psychological struggle as much as anything, and to find humanity in our enemies makes that war all the more difficult to fight. I am not suggesting that discussing Rembrandt with Herman Goering would have brought about world peace; it might have strengthened the resolve of the Allies. What I am suggesting, is that there is something about beauty we have to be careful with. For one thing, not all our enemies are as clear-cut as Tolkien’s Dark Lord Sauron and the orcs. There are times on earth when evil consolidates, but as Tolkien has written, there is no human equivalent to the orcs. In the world of Tolkien’s writings, orcs cannot be redeemed. There is a reason why their cities in Mordor were so repulsive, why the land of the Balrog in the Mines of Moria is so empty and dark. The men of Gondor and Rohan did not find a cache of ancient art beneath the Black Gate. There were no beautiful vistas beneath the smoke of Mount Doom. Whatever spark of goodness we as people all hold onto, no matter how small, was extinguished in the orcs long ago.
Just because someones longs for beauty, or appreciates it, does not make them, for lack of a better philosophical term, good. I can stare at a sunset all morning and still be a jerk when the bright colors go away. To be attuned to beauty is a fine aspect of life, to seek it out is important, but beauty, like us, can also be corrupted. Hitler and the Nazis gazed on historical works of art and built buildings with wonderful views of mountains, yes, but was this because they loved it, or because they used it to shroud the darker parts of their life? Or, was it simply a case of coveting something? See it, want it, take it. I don’t care to get into the mind of Hitler and his confidants, at least not to the extent that I can answer that question. There is some knowledge better left out of my head.
The thing about beauty is, whether you make it or see it, whether you own it or appreciate it; it is only an echo, a representation of actual beauty. Beauty is also interwoven with truth and goodness, and when one of those is separated out from the others, it can lose its defenses, it can be placed on the altar like an idol. An idol requires a person to care for it, to worship it. Idolatry isn’t about hanging an image, it is about an incorrect relationship with that image. I imagine the Golden Calf might have been beautiful, too, in its own way. But the beauty we see with our eyes is only our way of funneling an infinite divinity into our limited consciousness. What the Israelites missed in the desert, Hitler and the Nazis missed in Germany. Beauty is not something to own or possess, it is not something to worship or control or serve us. Beauty is something that comes from God, that moves through us and in turn, shapes us. The fullness of beauty cannot be seen in the Golden Calf anymore than it can be seen in a Rembrandt or the Bavarian Alps. These are fractured, fractal versions of the whole. We cannot mistake a part of something for the whole of something.
Beauty is not, in fact, a thing at all. It is a way of living, a way of being in the world. Moses knew about the fullness of beauty as his face glowed and he descended with the Ten Commandments. So beautiful was Moses’ glow that the Israelites had trouble even looking at him. There was no such trouble with the Golden Calf. This moment with Moses, this depiction of beauty, reflects a proper relationship. A beautiful painting, or for that matter, a photograph, ought to make us look, but it also ought to make us wonder if we are, in fact, worthy to look upon it. If we are not made more holy by an encounter with something beautiful, it might be that we are not seeing it properly, it might be that we are instead trying to control it, to take something external and stuff it inside. But this doesn’t work. As Christ reminds us in Matthew 15:11, “It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person."
What came out of Hitler was not something beautiful, despite all the luxuries of the Eagles’s Nest and a trove of artistic treasures buried in a giant salt mine. He was a man surrounded by beautiful art, yet like his own paintings, he missed the point. The finest work of art isn’t something hanging on a wall, your wall, or my wall. Art is us, we see beautiful things because we have it within us to live beautiful lives. We are the thing being crafted. God uses art to shape us, not the other way around. If we let the Lord do His work, a more complete view of beauty can emerge.
Solomon ends his verse on the making of books with something far more profound in Ecclesiastes 12:13, “The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.”
God will bring every deed into judgement. It is a reminder I need when reading about WWII.
Unlike the orcs, who know they have no possibility of redemption and can live wholly in darkness, the Nazis are humans. Judgement awaits them. It awaits all of us. On the surface this outcome may seem untenable, but I prefer my villains face justice in the end rather than the cover of non-existence that gives orcs and their conscience free reign when they are alive. Hitler was a failed painter not because of his lack of painting accolades, but because he let other things shape him, darker things. It was this darkness he lived out, it was this dark art that came out of him, that animated the Nazis and pulled the world into war.
Yes, there are many books on WWII, but we only get one life. We can look at beauty and we can own it, we can even try to worship it. But the better route, the right relationship, is to live it. We are the canvas. Our lives are the finest art of all.