Page 18 - GALIET BEAUTY´S LURE: WAR Helen of Troy and Margareta of Germany IV

Tyndareus, just as Hitler binds his officials by many party oaths to fulfill his ideological quest and Nazi crimes.26 The Oath of Tyndareus, sworn by an alliance of former suitors of Helen, defends the marriage-rights of Menelaus should anyone try to abduct Helen.27 Similarly, Hitler’s party oaths aim to recover the lost ideals of German Romanticism and Classicism emblemized in Celan’s golden-haired Margareta.
Oaths are deeply ingrained; they cannot be circumvented.28 Helen’s former suitors, the richest and most noble from all Greece, are bound to conform and obey to follow Agamemnon and Menelaus to reclaim lovely-haired Helen from Troy, just as German Nazi leaders are bound by their loyalty party oaths to participate in dire crimes against humanity to reclaim the past Romantic strivings and Classicism of beautiful golden-haired Margareta. Lieutenant Colonel Eichmann, one of the leading Holocaust party members, says how bound he is to obey his party oath,
“When I received an order, I obeyed. An oath is an oath. In the observance of that oath I was uncompromising. Today I’d never take an oath. No one could make me; no judge for instance, could make me take a witness’ oath.
26 Glover, Jonathan. Humanity. A Moral History of the Twentieth Century. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. 328-336.
27 Hesiod. Catalogue of Women and Other. Loeb Classical Library. Ed. and Trans. Most. London: Harvard University Press, 2007. 233.
28 Glover, Jonathan. Humanity. A Moral History of the Twentieth Century. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. 336.
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