Norman Spinrad

nosis of repressed homosexuality on the part of Hitler. It is true that although Hitler never married, he had a certain reputation as a Don Juan at science-fiction conventions.

On the other hand, repressed homosexuality is frequently an element in Don Juanism. Nevertheless it would be somewhat presumptuous to make such a post-mortem diagnosis from the available evidence. Suffice it to say that Hitler's attitude toward women and sexuality was hardly wholesome.

Thus, far from a cynically written formula novel cunningly devised to appeal to the phallic urges of the masses like so many other science-fantasy novels, Lord of the Swastika emerges as the obsessional product of a deranged but powerful personality. Its power derives not from the skill of the writer but from the very richness of the pathological self-display with which he invested the novel in an entirely unself-conscious manner. It is well known that the art of psychotics may appear as brilliant and appealing even to the perfectly normal mind. Such art gives us a frightening glimpse into a baleful reality fortunately beyond our personal experience. Thus we come away deeply moved and disturbed by intimate contact with the unspeakable.

Those unfamiliar with the commercial science-fiction genre may be startled to learn that such pathological products are not that uncommon. The literature of science fiction abounds with stories of all-powerful phallic supermen, alien creatures rendered as fecal surrogates, penile totems, vaginal castration symbols (such as the monster with the many sucking mouths filled with razor-sharp teeth in Swastika), subliminally homoerotic or even pederastic relationships, and the like. While a few of the better writers in the field make sparing and judicious use of such elements on a conscious level, most of this material bubbles up from the subconscious into the work of writers writing on a purely superficial surface level.

Lord of the Swastika varies only in intensity and to some extent in content from the considerable body of pathological literature published within the science-fiction field. One must look to Hitler's somewhat unusual background to fully explain the unique appeal of this particular book.

Adolf Hitler was born an Austrian and migrated to Germany, in whose army he served during the Great War, before emigrating to New York in 1919. During the period between the end of the Great War and his move to 251

America, Hitler was involved with a small radical party known as the National Socialists. Very little is known about this obscure group which disappeared around 1923, a full seven years before the Communist coup made the subject academic. However it does seem clear that the National Socialists, or Nazis, as they were sometimes called, anticipated the machinations of the Soviet Union by many years and were confirmed anti-Communists.

The subject of the National Socialists and Germany remained sore points with Hitler for the rest of his life; he discussed them only with great reluctance and bitterness and, as it were, in his cups. The National Socialists he dismissed, no doubt with entirely sufficient justification, as a pathetic beer-hall debating society. But his early, fiery, and continuing devotion to the cause of anti-Communism was well-known, and involved him in many heated debates and feuds within the small world of science-fiction fans in which he moved, until the takeover of Britain in 1948

made the imperialistic appetite of the Greater Soviet Union crystal clear to even the most naive Communist apologist.

Thus, while the imagery, violence, fetishism, and symbolism of Lord of the Swastika are clearly manifestations of Hitler's unwholesome unconscious obsessions, it is reasonable to assume that elements of political allegory within the novel were conscious creations on Hitler's part, and products of a mind deeply concerned with world politics and the unhappy fate of his ancestral Europe.

The Empire of Zind bears obvious similarities to the present-day Greater Soviet Union. Zind represents the logical extreme end-product of Communist ideology—an anthill of mindless slaves presided over by a ruthless oligar-chy. As the Dominators of Zind seek a world in which every sapient being has been reduced to their subhuman slave, so the present Communist leaders seek a world in which individualism will be entirely annihilated and every man reduced to subservience to the Communist Party of the GSU. As the power of Zind resides in its great size and huge pool of manpower which the Dominators feel free to expend without humanitarian scruples, so does the power of the Greater Soviet Union derive from its vast extent and enormous population, which the Communists tax cruelly with total disregard for individual need or dignity.

Heldon would seem to represent some resurgent Germany that never existed, a wish-fulfillment on Hitler's part, or possibly the non-Communist world in toto.

252