Finland school shooter admired Hitler, Nietzsche

By Sakari Suoninen

TUUSULA (Reuters) - Pekka-Eric Auvinen admired Adolf Hitler, counted Plato and Nietzsche among his favourite writers and called the handgun he used to end eight lives in Finland's deadliest peacetime shooting rampage "Catherine".

The exact reason 18-year-old Auvinen chose on Wednesday to open fire at Jokela High School -- killing six fellow pupils, the principal and the school nurse -- may never be known.

But the clearest clues lie in the words he wrote online.

"I am a cynical existentialist, anti-human humanist, anti-social socialdarwinist, realistic idealist and god-like atheist," he wrote in English in a posting on YouTube.

"Don't blame my parents or my friends. I told nobody about my plans and I always kept them inside my mind only."

Auvinen called himself a "natural selector" and said he would "eliminate all who I see unfit, disgraces of human race and failures of natural selection."

So on Wednesday, he wrote a suicide message, took a gun he'd received a permit for three weeks before and 500 rounds of ammunition and walked through the school firing.

Police said each of his victims was shot several times and that some bodies were riddled with close to 20 bullets.