Friedrich Nietzsche's influence and reception varied widely and may be roughly divided into various chronological periods. Reactions were anything but uniform, and proponents of various ideologies attempted to appropriate his work quite early.

Overview Beginning while Nietzsche was still alive, though incapacitated by mental illness, many Germans discovered his appeals for greater heroic individualism and personality development in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, but responded to those appeals in diverging ways. He had some following among left-wing Germans in the 1890s. Nietzsche's anarchistic influence was particularly strong in France and the United States.O. Ewald, "German Philosophy in 1907", in The Philosophical Review, Vol. 17, No. 4, Jul. 1908, pp. 400–426; T. A. Riley, "Anti-Statism in German Literature, as Exemplified by the Work of John Henry Mackay", in PMLA, Vol. 62, No. 3, Sep. 1947, pp. 828–843; C. E. Forth, "Nietzsche, Decadence, and Regeneration in France, 1891–95", in Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 54, No. 1, Jan. 1993, pp. 97–117

By World War I, German soldiers even received copies of Thus Spoke Zarathustra as gifts.Steven E. Aschheim notes that "[a]bout 150,000 copies of a specially durable wartime Zarathustra were distributed to the troops" in The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany, 1890–1990, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1992, p. 135Kaufmann, p. 8 The Dreyfus affair provides another example of his reception: the French antisemitic Right labelled the Jewish and leftist intellectuals who defended Alfred Dreyfus as "Nietzscheans."Schrift, A.D. (1995). Nietzsche's French Legacy: A Genealogy of Poststructuralism. Routledge. . Such seemingly paradoxical acceptance by diametrically opposed camps is typical of the history of the reception of Nietzsche's thought. In the context of the rise of French fascism, one researcher notes, "Although, as much recent work has stressed, Nietzsche had an important impact on "leftist" French ideology and theory, this should not obscure the fact that his work was also crucial to the right and to the neither right nor left fusions of developing French fascism.Mary Ann Frese Witt, The Search for Modern Tragedy, Cornell University Press, 2001, p. 137

Indeed, as Ernst Nolte proposed, Maurrassian ideology of "aristocratic revolt against egalitarian-utopian 'transcendence'" (transcendence being Nolte's term for the ontological absence of theodic center justifying modern "emancipation culture") and the interrelation between Nietzschean ideology and proto-fascism offer extensive space for criticism and the Nietzschean ambiance pervading French ideological fermentation of extremism in time birthing formal fascism, is unavoidable.

Many political leaders of the 20th century were at least superficially familiar with Nietzsche's ideas. However, it is not always possible to determine whether or not they actually read his work. Regarding Hitler, for example, there is a debate. Some authors claim that he probably never read Nietzsche, or that if he did, his reading was not extensive.Weaver Santaniello, Nietzsche, God, and the Jews, SUNY Press, 1994, p. 41: "Hitler probably never read a word of Nietzsche"; Berel Lang, Post-Holocaust: Interpretation, Misinterpretation, and the Claims of History, Indiana University Press, 2005, p. 162: "Arguably, Hitler himself never read a word of Nietzsche; certainly, if he did read him, it was not extensively"; Jacob Golomb, Nietzsche and Jewish Culture, Routledge, 1997, p. 9: "To be sure, it is almost certain that Hitler either never read Nietzsche directly or read very little."; Andrew C. Janos, East Central Europe in the Modern World, Stanford University Press, 2002, p. 184: "By all indications, Hitler never read Nietzsche. Neither Mein Kampf nor Hitler's Table Talk (Tischgesprache) mentions his name. In all fairness, one may say Hitler did read Nietzsche in some capacity, but not in a scholarly fashion. In any case, Nietzschean ideas reached him through the filter of Alfred Rosenberg's Myth of the Twentieth Century, and, more simply, through what was coffeehouse Quatsch in Vienna and Munich. This at least is the impression he gives in his published conversations with Dietrich Eckart." Hitler more than likely became familiar with Nietzsche quotes during his time in Vienna when quotes by Nietzsche were frequently published in pan-German newspapers.Brigitte Hamann, Hitler's Vienna: A Dictator's Apprenticeship, p. 74; enlarged new ed. by O. Rathkolb and J. Sachslehner, Vienna & Graz, 2022, p. 122. Nevertheless, others point to a quote in Hitler's Table Talk, where the dictator mentioned Nietzsche when he spoke about what he called "great men", as an indication that Hitler may have been familiar with Nietzsche's work.Jacob Golomb & Robert S. Wistrich (2002), "Nietzsche, Godfather of Fascism? On the Uses and Abuses of a Philosophy", Princeton University Press, 2007. Retrieved on 8 June 2013. "In Hitler's Table Talk, [Hitler] refers to Nietzsche, saying: "In our part of the world, the Jews would have immediately eliminated Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Kant. If the Bolsheviks had dominion over us for 200 years, what works of our past would be handed on to posterity? Our great men would fall into oblivion, or else they'd be presented to future generations as criminals and bandits." Other authors like Melendez (2001) point out to the parallels between Hitler's and Nietzsche's titanic anti-egalitarianism,Meléndez Germán (2001), Nietzsche en perspectiva, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, pages 255–258. Chapter "Poder y Anti-igualitarismo en Nietzsche y Hitler", by Ernst Tugendhat. and the idea of the "übermensch",Star Alexander, The New York Times, January 13, 2012. a term which was frequently used by Hitler and Mussolini to refer to the so-called "Aryan race", or rather, its projected future after fascist engineering. Alfred Rosenberg, an influential Nazi ideologist, also delivered a speech in which he related Nazism to Nietzsche's ideology.Rosenberg is quoted "In a truly historical sense, the movement eclipses the rest of the world, much as Nietzsche, the individual, eclipsed the powers of his times." Broadly speaking, despite Nietzsche's hostility towards anti-semitism and nationalism, the Nazis made selective use of Nietzsche's philosophy, and eventually, this association caused Nietzsche's reputation to suffer following World War II.Rafael Arévalo Martínez (1943), Nietzsche el conquistador: (la doctrina que engendró la segunda guerra mundial.), Tipografía Sánchez & De Guise, 170 pp.

On the other hand, it is known that Mussolini early on heard lectures about Nietzsche, Vilfredo Pareto, and others in ideologically forming fascism. A girlfriend of Mussolini, Margherita Sarfatti, who was Jewish, relates that Nietzsche virtually was the transforming factor in Mussolini's "conversion" from hard socialism to spiritualistic, ascetic fascism:Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini's Italy, University of California Press, 2000, p. 44 "In 1908 he presented his conception of the superman's role in modern society in a writing on Nietzsche entitled, "The Philosophy of Force."

Nietzsche's influence on Continental philosophy increased dramatically after the Second World War.

Nietzsche and anarchism

During the 19th century, Nietzsche was frequently associated with anarchist movements, in spite of the fact that in his writings he definitely holds a negative view of egalitarian anarchists.In Beyond Good and Evil (6.2:126), to only cite one volcanic attack against anarchists of modernity, he refers to "anarchist dogs" Nevertheless, Nietzsche's ideas generated strong interest from key figures from the historical anarchist movement which began in the 1890s. According to a recent study, "Gustav Landauer, Emma Goldman and others reflected on the chances offered and the dangers posed by these ideas in relation to their own politics. Heated debates over meaning, for example on the will to power or on the status of women in Nietzsche’s works, provided even the most vehement critics such as Peter Kropotkin with productive cues for developing their own theories. In recent times, a newer strand called post-anarchism has invoked Nietzsche’s ideas, while also disregarding the historical variants of Nietzschean anarchism. This calls into question the innovative potential of post-anarchism."

Some hypothesize on certain grounds Nietzsche's violent stance against anarchism may (at least partially) be the result of a popular association during this period between his ideas and those of Max Stirner."Nietzsche's possible reading, knowledge, and plagiarism of Max Stirner's The Ego and Its Own (1845) has been a contentious question and frequently discussed for more than a century now." Thomas H. Brobjer, "Philologica: A Possible Solution to the Stirner-Nietzsche Question", in The Journal of Nietzsche Studies, Issue 25, Spring 2003, pp. 109–114 Thus far, no plagiarism has been detected at all, but a probable concealed influence in his formative years.

Spencer Sunshine writes, "There were many things that drew anarchists to Nietzsche: his hatred of the state; his disgust for the mindless social behavior of "herds"; his anti-Christianity; his distrust of the effect of both the market and the state on cultural production; his desire for an "overman" — that is, for a new human who was to be neither master nor slave; his praise of the ecstatic and creative self, with the artist as his prototype, who could say, "Yes" to the self-creation of a new world on the basis of nothing; and his forwarding of the "transvaluation of values" as source of change, as opposed to a Marxist conception of class struggle and the dialectic of a linear history."Spencer Sunshine, "Nietzsche and the Anarchists" Lacking in Nietzsche is the anarchist utopian-egalitarian belief that every soul is capable of epic greatness: Nietzsche's aristocratic elitism is the death-knell of any Nietzschean conventional anarchism.

According to Sunshine: "The list is not limited to culturally oriented anarchists such as Emma Goldman, who gave dozens of lectures about Nietzsche and baptized him as an honorary anarchist. Pro-Nietzschean anarchists also include prominent Spanish CNT–FAI members in the 1930s such as Salvador Seguí and anarcha-feminist Federica Montseny; anarcho-syndicalist militants like Rudolf Rocker; and even the younger Murray Bookchin, who cited Nietzsche's conception of the 'transvaluation of values' in support of the Spanish anarchist project." Also in European individualist anarchist circles his influence is clear in thinker/activists such as Émile ArmandThe Anarchism of Émile Armand by Émile Armand and Renzo NovatoreToward the Creative Nothing by Renzo Novatore among others. Also more recently in post-left anarchy, Nietzsche is present in the thought of Hakim Bey and Wolfi Landstreicher.

Nietzsche and fascism