By the 1930s, the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche had been effectively coopted by the German far-right, largely through the mediation of his sister (who belonged to a proto-Nazi group) and his younger cousins (outright Nazis), who were responsible for inserting racist and anti-Semitic ideas into his posthumously published work. While Nietzsche was a critic of both Judeo-Christian morality and modern liberalism, he was hardly what Hitler’s admirers made him out to be. Hugh Drochon gives credit for the rejection of this view of Nietzsche to the scholar Walter Kaufmann:

Kaufmann . . . arrived in the U.S. in 1939; after graduating from Williams College he interrupted his doctoral studies at Harvard to enlist in the U.S. Army Air Force and served as an interrogator for military intelligence during the war. In Berlin he chanced upon an edition of Nietzsche’s collected works and was immediately—like so many before and after him—captivated. Having discharged his duty, he returned to Harvard resolved to write his PhD on Nietzsche.

One point of disagreement [with his subject concerned] religion. While the “death of God” is still one of Nietzsche’s most famous pronouncements, in 1961 Kaufmann wrote Faith of a Heretic. Born in Freiburg in 1921, Kaufmann had been raised a Lutheran, but realizing he didn’t understand the Holy Ghost and that all his grandparents were Jewish (his father had converted, but not his mother), he abjured Christianity and set off to study under the Reform rabbi Leo Baeck at the Berlin Institute for Judaic Studies in 1938. Those studies were cut short by emigration, but the interest in religion would continue.

Last week, the New York Times reported, based on unnamed sources within the Trump administration, that the president had asked Israel not to carry out a planned strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. That is, somebody deliberately gave this information to the press, which later tried to confirm it by speaking with other officials. Amit Segal writes that, “according to figures in Israel’s security establishment,” this is “the most serious leak in Israel’s history.” He explains:

As Israel is reportedly planning what may well be one of its most consequential military operations ever, the New York Times lays out for the Iranians what Israel will target, when it will carry out the operation, and how. That’s not just any other leak.

Seth Mandel looks into the leaker’s logic:

The primary purpose of the [Times] article is not as a record of internal deliberations but as an instrument of policy itself. Namely, to obstruct future U.S. and Israeli foreign policy by divulging enough details of Israel’s plans in order to protect Iran’s nuclear sites. The idea is to force Israeli planners back to the drawing board, thus delaying a possible future strike on Iran until Iranian air defenses have been rebuilt.

The leak is the point. It’s a tactical play, more or less, to help Iran torpedo American action.

The leaker, Mandel explains—and the Times itself implies—is likely aligned with the faction in the administration that wants to see the U.S. retreat from the world stage and from its alliance with Israel, a faction that includes Vice-President J.D. Vance, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and the president’s own chief of staff Susie Wiles.

Yet it’s also possible, if less likely, that the plans were leaked in support of administration policy rather than out of factional infighting. Eliezer Marom argues that the leak was “part of the negotiations and serves to clarify to the Iranians that there is a real attack plan that Trump stopped at the last moment to conduct negotiations.”