Anti-Intellectualism

The German Genius, Peter Watson, pg. 620

During the Weimer years [in Germany..] there was a continual battle between the rationalists -the scientists and the academics- and the nationalists, the pan-Germans, who remained convinced there was something special about Germany, her history, the “instinctive superiority” of her heroes. In The Decline of the West, Oswald Spengler had stressed how Germany was different from France, the US, and Britain, and this view [..] gained ground among Nazis as they edged closer to power. From time to time Hitler attacked modern art [..] but, like other leading Nazis, he was by temperament an anti-intellectual; for him, most great men of history had been doers, not thinkers.

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BTW, this book is all about the accomplishments of Germans in history which the author thinks are widely underrated. I found this passage interesting because it points out how opposite Hitler was to all that, while at the same time, using all these accomplishments for his propaganda.