"On the day of German Labor, on the day of the Community of the People, the Rector of Freiburg University, Dr. Martin Heidegger, made his official entry into the National Socialist Party." And so begins one of the most controversial texts available today. Heidegger, a German Nationalist and proud Nazi, thoroughly examines the history, the philosophy, and the rise to power of the Nazi movement in Germany. Martin Heidegger's distinguished Italian colleague, Professor Benedetto Croce, said of his German contemporary, "This man dishonors philosophy and that is an evil for politics too." Croce's severe rebuke was not singular at the time when Hitlerism was rampant over Europe. It is true that among the almost one thousand professional philosophers of Germany and Austria only very few actively opposed National Socialism. On the other hand, no one degraded his history profession in the way that Heidegger did, by becoming a spokesman for National socialism and attempting to mold his theories into one pattern with Hitlerism.
