So German farm boys and urban poor, when they weren't destroying Western Civilization, were sitting in the trenches reading 600 page Faust and analyzing Nietzsche's philosophy.
I would doubt that even 5% of American College Philosophy professors have read both books cover to cover.
Also, with soldiers like that, how did Germany ever lose the war?
During the 19th Century, the United States boasted of the most Biblically literate population the Western world has ever known. Hence so many young men being given some rather intense Bible names like "Abraham" (Lincoln) and "Thaddeus" Stevens, etc...
As Lincoln stated in his second inaugural:
Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes...
But something about Nietzsche's writings in particular were...violent and self-destructive in nature.