The Kindly Ones

by Jonathan Littell

This idea stayed with me all evening, and when I was back home, late at night, a little drunk perhaps, I took down from a shelf an anthology of the Führer’s speeches that belonged to Frau Gutknecht and began leafing through it, looking for the most virulent passages, especially on the Jews, and as I read them I wondered if, when he said, The Jews lack ability and creativity in every walk of life but one: lying and cheating, or else The Jew’s entire building will collapse if he’s refused a following, or They are liars, forgers, deceivers. They only got anywhere through the simplemindedness of those around them, or We can live without the Jew. But he cannot live without us, the Führer, without knowing it, was really describing himself. Yet this man never spoke in his own name, so the accidents of his personality counted for little: his role was almost that of a lens, he captured and concentrated the will of the Volk to bring it into focus always at the right point. Thus, even if in those passages he was speaking about himself, wasn’t he speaking about us all?