The Night of the Long Knives

After Tom left Germany, Klaus fell into a depression. He felt as if he were at the bottom of a deep pit, and his friend had just levitated to safety and light. And around him, large pincers were sliding out of a crumbling wall.

Tom had wondered about Klaus’s relationship to Nazism. Klaus wondered this as well. He did not respect reason as an absolute, and so was deeply, tragically susceptible to passion. When reason falls, whoever screams the loudest will rise. It is an iron law.

Klaus did not believe in the supremacy of objective reason, and so he had no choice but to take an anthropological and fate-based approach to his own society. What was ‘right’ was whatever happened. Nothing could be opposed in the face of passion. How could he question passion? With what faculty would he oppose it? More pass ...