Szyk caricatures Wotan’s palace, Valhalla, as a German beer hall, where the one-eyed divinity drinks with “heroes” of Germany’s imperial past, while Hitler, Mussolini, Goering, and Goebbels bring in food and libations. In the background, opposite bodies hanging from the gallows in a cemetery, is the aged French collaborator Petain preparing a meal for the guests. On the wall is a quote often cited by Szyk and attributed to Hitler: Conscience is a Jewish invention. To emphasize the antisemitic tradition in German history, the god Wotan sits with one foot on the body of a Jew and the other on a volume of poetry by nineteenth-century German Jewish author Heinrich Heine. Each of the “heroes” wears a swastika to suggest a continuity of German antisemitism throughout the ages.
Aller nederst er det note-sitater fra Wagners Ring. Også kjent som Nie-gelungen-Lied.