I was looking at Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, (Vintage Books, New York, 1989), edited by Walter Kauffmann. I was always interested by Nietzsche’s account of the “blond beast,” which was misused by later National Socialists. Hating them, I wondered if there was any basis at all to their misuse. To begin, Nietzsche first discusses the blond beast on page 40: “One cannot fail to see at the bottom of all these noble races the beast of prey, the splendid blond beast prowling about avidly in search of spoil and victory; this hidden care needs to erupt from time to time; the animal has to get out again and go back to the wilderness; the Roman, Arabian, Germanic, Japanese nobility, the Homeric heroes, the Scandinavian Vikings – they all shared this need.” (pp. 40-41)