In the course of the thread ‘what is your favorite Nietzschequote’ it has become clear to me that few understand Nietzsche to the point that he becomes useful, a means to power. But that it is important to understand Nietzsche to this point I will try to explain as follows:
That is excactly the point.
The only reason Nietzsche formulated the eternal recurrence is to invoke this question.
“Free from what? What doth that matter to Zarathustra! Clearly, however, shall thine eye show unto me: free FOR WHAT?”
That is the beginning of the uebermench - to no longer accidentally be great, as man has in the past, but to take evolution in the hands and create the future.
Man is too cowardly for this - he thinks; what if I am wrong? I can’t see the consequences of my actions! The Nietzschean man does not fear the consequences of his actions, terrible as they may be - he embraces them, even if they recur infinitely.
Only when one can affirm all the pain in the world is one fit to create a world - because this world will certainly include pain, and it must justify this pain.
The doctrine of the recurrence is a means to mans affirmation of his creative will.
Like Jesus and Budda, Nietzsche saw that life is suffering. Unlike them, he did not seek to escape this suffering, but to answer the question; what justifies this suffering, this life? What makes life worth existing, in the full knowledge of monstrous suffering?
The answer he found again and again was that only justification of the terrifying reality of life is the uninhibited exertion of the creative will.
“Creating—that is the great salvation from suffering, and life’s alleviation. But for the creator to appear, suffering itself is needed, and much transformation.” in the Happy Isles
The catch is that in order for the creative will to be uninhibited, one must have affirmed the reality of suffering.
This makes Nietzsche only understandable to those who have suffered and seen the world as it is, and repulsive for those who live in the bliss of ignorance.
Only those who can implement it it are strong enough to understand it - and they might instantly understand it even as they first smell it, because it tells them of their true nature.
Concluding; it is not important whether Nietzsche saw mankind the way it is. What is important is that he saw the possibility of what some men may possibly become.