Norman Spinrad

The Greater Soviet Union bestrides Eurasia like a drunken brute. Most of Africa is under its sway, and the South American republics are beginning to crumble. Only the great Japanese-American lake that is the Pacific stands as the final bastion of freedom in a world that seems destined to be inundated by the red tide. Our great Japanese ally has the time-hallowed traditions of Bushido to stiffen its resolve and imbue its people with a sense of mission and destiny, but we Americans seem hopelessly sunk in apathy and despair.

No doubt many of Hitler's readers must find it tempting to imagine what the emergence of a leader like Feric Jaggar could mean to America. Our great industrial resources would be channeled into producing armed forces the equal of anything on earth, our population would be galvanized into a state of patriotic resolve, our moral qualms would be held in abeyance for the duration of Ola-death struggle with the Greater Soviet Union.

Of course, such a man could gain power only in the extravagant fancies of a pathological science-fiction novel.

For Feric Jaggar is essentially a monster: a narcissistic psychopath with paranoid obsessions. His total self-assurance and certainty is based on a total lack of intro-spective self-knowledge. In a sense, such a human being would be all surface and no interior. He would be able to manipulate the surface of social reality by projecting his own pathologies upon it, but he would never be able to share in the inner communion of interpersonal relationships.

Such a creature could give a nation the iron leadership and sense of certainty to face a mortal crisis, but at what cost? Led by the likes of a Feric Jaggar, we might gain the world at the cost of our souls.

No, although the spectre of world Communist domination may cause the simpleminded to wish for a leader modeled on the hero of Lord of the Swastika, in an absolute sense we are fortunate that a monster like Feric Jaggar will forever remain confined to the pages of science fantasy, the fever dream of a neurotic science-fiction writer named Adolf Hitler.

—Homer Whipple, New York, N.Y., 1959