Last Act of Götterdämmerung

from James Neugass' memoir War is Beautiful, p. 209

We may now call ourself Mars and let some slightly less bloody planet name itself The Earth. A black, dripping sun has arisen. All the stops in the organ of death have been pulled out, the last act of Götterdämmerung is upon us. In a blood-red sunset an earthquake topples and sets afire the pillars of Wotan's castle. The waters of the Rhine engulf the ruins. Lady Macbeth has incarnadined the multitudinous Mediterranean. Spain, the bad conscience and whipping boy of the Democracies, suffers first.

Neugass' long-lost memoir drew praise this year, even if its subject--international volunteers in the Spanish Civil War--seldom did. The author takes a crack at apocalyptic imagery from the front seat of the ambulance he drove. It's powerful, haunting, but the reference to Wagner's Ring Cycle is out of place.

The Nazis appropriated Norse mythology as part of their mystique, and these same Nazis provided crucial air support for Franco in his brutal conquest of Spain. History has verified Neugass's contention that Spain was the first chapter in a sustained threat to civilization--the American sounds the call several times in his memoir. But Götterdämmerung took place only in 1945, when the Thousand Year Reich fell. How was Neugass to know, in 1938, that he was invoking a fascist apocalypse, rather than a humanist one?

Incidentally, "incarnadine" means to turn red, lest readers detect another mixed metaphor. As far as I can tell the Lady Macbeth thing is solid.