American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas

by Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen

But in all Darrow’s efforts to show the boys as victims of Nietzsche’s philosophy, to suggest that it “destroyed” their lives, he intimated that it was their innocent mistake to think that they were what Nietzsche had in mind. “Nathan Leopold is not the only boy who has read Nietzsche. He may be the only one who was influenced in the way that he was influenced.”101 Though he argued that they were victims, they were so because when they read Nietzsche, they could not help but think that they were reading themselves. Darrow was on to something. For early twentieth-century Americans, the Übermensch was a hazy vision, but it was one they used to see clearly the problems and possibilities of themselves as they came to terms with their modern America.