He saw them as ‘a new Germanic creation’, but one drawn from an ancient past. He likened them to an order of ‘militant monks’, as they wandered through the streets, tall and elegant in their uniforms. ‘They live ingenuously,’ he wrote, ‘in total self-denial … they do not seem to feel sorrow, or fear, or hunger, or desire: they are the angels of war come down for a moment from the heaven of Niflheim* to help people perform a task that is too difficult for them.’
