Religious aspects of Nazism
Encyclopedia
Historians, political scientists and even philosophers have studied Nazism
with a specific focus on its religious or semi-religious aspects.
The most prominent discourse here is the debate whether Nazism would constitute a political religion
, but there has also been research on the millenarianistic
, messianic
, Gnostic and occult
aspects of Nazism. There is also a lively debate about whether Nazism was a "pagan" or a secular movement, or whether (and to what extent) it borrowed concepts from Christianity
.
, Albert Camus
, Romano Guardini
, Denis de Rougemont
, Eric Voegelin
, George Mosse
, Klaus Vondung and Friedrich Heer
. Voegelin's work on political religion
was first published in German in 1938. Emilio Gentile
and Roger Griffin
, among others, have drawn on his concept.
The French author and philosopher Albert Camus
is mentioned here, since he has made some remarks about Nazism as a religion and about Adolf Hitler
in particular in L'Homme révolté.
Outside a purely academic discourse, public interest mainly concerns the relationship between Nazism and Occultism, and between Nazism and Christianity. The interest in the first relationship is obvious from the modern popular myth of Nazi occultism. The persistent idea that the Nazis were directed by occult agencies has been dismissed by historians as modern cryptohistory
. The interest in the second relationship is obvious from the debate about whether Adolf Hitler was a Christian or not.
(1957), Urania's children by Ellic Howe
(1967) and The Occult Establishment by James Webb
(1976). Aside from these works, historians did not consider the question until the 1980s. Due to the popular literature on the topic, "Nazi 'black magic' was regarded as a topic for sensational authors in pursuit of strong sales." In the 1980s, two Ph.D. theses were written about the topic. Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke
published The Occult Roots of Nazism
(1985) based on his thesis, and the German librarian and historian Ulrich Hunger's thesis on rune-lore in Nazi Germany (Die Runenkunde im Dritten Reich) was published in the series Europäische Hochschulschriften (also 1985).
Goodrick-Clarke's book The Occult Roots... is not only considered "without exception" to be the pioneering work on Ariosophy
, but also the "definitive book" on the topic. The term 'Ariosophy' refers to an esoteric movement in Germany and Austria
of the 1900s to 1930s. It clearly falls under Goodrick-Clarke's definition of occult
ism, as it obviously drew on the western esoteric tradition. Ideologically, it was remarkably similar to Nazism. According to Goodrick-Clarke, the Ariosophists wove occult ideas into the völkisch ideology
that existed in Germany and Austria at the time. Ariosophy shared the racial awareness of völkisch ideology, but also drew upon Theosophy
's notion of root race
s, postulating locations such as Atlantis
, Thule
and Hyperborea as the original homeland of the Aryan race
(and its "purest" branch, the Teutons
or Germanic peoples
).
The Ariosophic writings described a glorious ancient Germanic past, in which an elitist priesthood "expounded occult-racist doctrines and ruled over a superior and racially pure society." The downfall of this imaginary golden age was explained as the result of the interbreeding
between the master race
and the untermenschen (lesser races).
The "abstruse ideas and weird cults [of Ariosophy] anticipated the political doctrines and institutions of the Third Reich" writes Goodrick-Clarke in the introduction to his book, motivating the phrase "occult roots of Nazism"; direct influences, however, are sparse. With the exception of Karl Maria Wiligut
, Goodrick-Clarke has not found evidence that prominent Ariosophists directly influenced Nazism. There were other occult and paganist movements in Germany and Austria during that time, but the Ariosophists were the most extreme. The contacts between the Nazi organizations and Ariosophists and other occultists is examined below. This topic can broadly be divided into relations between the Thule Society and the Nazi party, and the occult and paganist activities within the SS
.
Goodrick-Clarke considers the "Nazi crusade [as] ... essentially religious", but he does not offer theoretical concepts to specify in what sense Nazism can be called a religion. His follow-up volume Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity was intended to take a look at the survival of 'ariosophic' ideas after 1945; however, he uncovered a new subject that he has described as neo-völkisch movements
.
published a report on the Nazi Master Plan of the Persecution of the Christian Churches.
The discussion among historians and theologians about religion in Nazi Germany often came to similar results. For Kathleen Harvill Burton, there was a religious objective in National Socialism: make traditional Christianity disappear, and transform it into positive Christianity, based on Nazi mysticism as preached by Alfred Rosenberg
. In particular the Bible
had to be purged of all its Jewish content (i.e., the entire Old Testament
, the Gospel of Matthew
, and the Pauline Epistles
). This was continuous with Paul Lagarde's research on a Germanised and "de-judaized" Christianism. According to Rosenberg:
The Nazi Party program
of 1920 included a statement on religion as point 24. In this statement, the Nazi party demands freedom of religion
(for all religious denominations that are not opposed to the customs and moral sentiments of the Germanic race); on the other hand, this paragraph proclaims the party's endorsement of what is called positive Christianity
. Historians have commonly regarded this statement, and the phrase "positive Christianity" in particular, "as a tactical measure, 'cleverly' left undefined in order to accommodate a broad range of meanings." John S. Conway, in his The Nazi Persecution of the Churches calls it an "ambiguous phraseology." However, Richard Steigmann-Gall
in The Holy Reich holds that, on closer examination, "Point 24 readily provides us with three key ideas in which the Nazis claimed that their movement was Christian": the movement's antisemitism, its social ethic under the phrase Gemeinnutz vor Eigennutz (roughly: public need before private greed) and its attempt to bridge the confessional divide between Catholicism and Protestantism in Germany.
Unsurprisingly, this is a controversial topic, even among historians. Conway holds that The Holy Reich has broken new ground in the examination of the relation between Nazism and Christianity, despite his view that "Nazism and Christianity were incompatible." Conway acknowledges that Steigmann-Gall "is undeniably right to point out how much Nazism owed to German Christian" concepts and only considers his conclusion as "overdrawn".
Any impression that Nazism was a 'pagan' movement is due to the efforts of Nazi paganists like Alfred Rosenberg
, Heinrich Himmler
and Richard Walther Darré. Their beliefs could be called pagan or neo-pagan, but Steigmann-Gall prefers the term paganist to indicate that those "proponents of a Nordicized religion within the [Nazi] party did not actually practice this religion, let alone devise a coherent religious system that could actually be practised. Rather, they advocated the establishment of a faith that ultimately never came into being."
While these paganist elements sometimes dominate the image of Nazism (e.g., in the Discovery Channel documentary Nazis: The Occult Conspiracy
), a majority of leading Nazis, including Hitler himself, did not attack Christianity in public or speak out in favour of the recreation of a heathen religion in Germany. This does not necessarily mean that they harboured no anti-Christian sentiments; if they did, for political reasons they would have carefully avoided campaigning against Christianity. The difficulty for historians lies in the task of evaluating not only the public, but also the private statements of the Nazi politicians. Steigmann-Gall, who intended to do this in his study, points to such people as Erich Koch
(who was not only Gauleiter of East Prussia and Reichskomissar for the Ukraine
, but also the elected praeses
of the East Prussian provincial synod of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union) and Bernhard Rust
as examples of Nazi politicians who also professed to be Christian in private.
; on the other hand he made definite remarks against the völkisch occultism in Mein Kampf
and in public speeches.
Since 1957, when the Austrian psychologist Wilfried Daim
published the important study on Lanz von Liebenfels, enough evidence exists to say that Hitler had been exposed to the Ariosophic Weltanschauung in Vienna. However, it is not clear to what extent he was influenced by it. In the research into this question, Mein Kampf has even been compared to Liebenfels' Theozoologie in detail. According to an online article from the Simon Wiesenthal Center
, the influence of the anti-Judaic, Gnostic and root race
teachings of H.P. Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy, and the adaptations of her ideas by her followers, constituted a popularly unacknowledged but decisive influence over Hitler's developing mind.
Hitler harshly rejected the völkisch esotericism. In Heinrich Heims' Adolf Hitler, Monologe im FHQ 1941-1944 (several editions, here Orbis Verlag, 2000), Hitler is quoted as having said on 14 October 1941: "It seems to be inexpressibly stupid to allow a revival of the cult of Odin/Wotan. Our old mythology of the gods was defunct, and incapable of revival, when Christianity came...the whole world of antiquity either followed philosophical systems on the one hand, or worshipped the gods. But in modern times it is undesirable that all humanity should make such a fool of itself."
It is worth noting that Hitler never publicly said that pagan gods shouldn't be worshipped due to Christian belief, but rather that Odin worship would be "inexpressibly stupid."
had been a member of the Thule Society before attaining prominence in the Nazi party. As Adolf Hitler's official deputy, Hess had also been attracted to and influenced by the organic farming
theories of Rudolf Steiner
and Anthroposophy
. In the wake of his flight to Scotland, Reinhard Heydrich
, the head of the security police, banned lodge organizations and esoteric groups on 9 June 1941. When organic farmers and their supporters and even nudists were arrested, Agriculture Minister Richard Walther Darré protested to Himmler and Heydrich, "despite a letter from Bormann
, warning Darré that Hitler was behind the arrests."
However, the suppression of esoteric organisations
began very soon after the Nazis acquired governmental power. This also affected ariosophic
authors and organisations: "One of the most important early Germanic racialists, Lanz von Liebenfels
, had his writings banned in 1938 while other occultist racialists were banned as early as 1934."
, which is remotely connected to the origins of the Nazi Party, was one of the ariosophic
groups of the late 1910s. Thule Gesellschaft had initially been the name of the Munich
branch of the Germanenorden Walvater of the Holy Grail
, a lodge-based organisation which was built up by Rudolf von Sebottendorff in 1917. For this task he had received about a hundred addresses of potential members in Bavaria from Hermann Pohl, and from 1918 he was also supported by Walter Nauhaus. According to an account by Sebottendorff, the Bavarian province of the Germanenorden Walvater had 200 members in spring 1918, which had risen to 1500 in autumn 1918, of these 250 in Munich. Five rooms, capable of accommodating 300 people, were leased from the fashionable Hotel Vierjahreszeiten ('Four Seasons') in Munich and decorated with the Thule emblem showing a dagger superimposed on a swastika
. Since the lodge's ceremonial activities were accompanied by overtly right-wing meetings, the name Thule Gesellschaft was adopted to arouse less attention from socialists and pro-Republicans.
, an alleged lost land. Sebottendorff identified Ultima Thule as Iceland
. In the Armanism of Guido von List
, to which Sebottendorff made distinct references, it was believed that the Aryan race
had originated from the apocryphal lost continent of Atlantis
and taken refuge in Thule/Iceland after Atlantis had been deluged and sunk under the sea. Hyperborea was also mentioned by Guido von List, with direct references to the theosophic
author William Scott-Elliot
.
In The Myth of the Twentieth Century
, the most important Nazi book after Mein Kampf, Alfred Rosenberg referred to Atlantis as a lost land or at least to an Aryan cultural center. Since Rosenberg had attended meetings of the Thule Society, he might have been familiar with the occult speculation about lost lands; however, according to Lutzhöft (1971), Rosenberg drew on the work of Herman Wirth. The attribution of the Urheimat
of the Nordic race to a deluged land was very appealing at that time.
with the formation of a workers' club, called the Deutscher Arbeiterverein ('German workers' club') or Politischer Arbeiterzirkel ('Political workers' ring'). The most active member of this club was Anton Drexler
. Drexler urged the foundation of a political party, and on 5 January 1919 the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei
(DAP, German Workers' Party) was formally founded. When Adolf Hitler
first encountered the DAP on 12 September 1919, Sebottendorff had already left the Thule Society (in June 1919). By the end of February 1920, Hitler had transformed the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei into the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP or National Socialist German Workers’ Party). Apparently, meetings of the Thule Society continued until 1923. A certain Johannes Hering kept a diary of these meetings; it mentions the attendance of other Nazi leaders between 1920 and 1923, but not Hitler.
That the origins of the Nazi Party can be traced to the lodge organisation of the Thule Society is fact. However, there were only two points in which the NSDAP was a successor to the Thule Society. One is the use of the swastika. Friedrich Krohn, who was responsible for the colour scheme of the Nazi flag, had been a member of the Thule Society and also of the Germanenorden since 1913. Goodrick-Clarke concludes that the origins of the Nazi symbol can be traced back through the emblems of the Thule Society and the Germanenorden and ultimately to Guido von List
, but it is not evident that the Thulean ideology filtered through the DAP into the NSDAP. Goodrick-Clarke implies that ariosophical ideas were of no consequence: "the DAP line was predominantly one of extreme political and social nationalism, and not based on the Aryan-racist-occult pattern of the Germanenorden [and Thule Society]". Godwin summarises the differences in outlook which separated the Thule Society from the direction taken by the Nazis:
The other point in which the NSDAP continued the activities of the Thule Society is in the publication of the newspaper Völkischer Beobachter
. Originally, the Beobachter ("Observer") had been a minor weekly newspaper of the eastern suburbs of Munich, published since 1868. After the death of its last publisher in June 1918, the paper ceased publication, until Sebottendorff bought it one month later. He renamed it Münchener Beobachter und Sportsblatt ("Munich Observer and Sports Paper") and wrote "trenchant anti-Semitic" editorials for it. After Sebottendorff left Munich, the paper was converted into a limited liability company. By December 1920, all its shares were in the hands of Anton Drexler, who transferred the ownership of the paper to Hitler in November 1921.
Its connection with Nazism has made the Thule Society a popular subject of modern cryptohistory. Among other things, it is hinted that Karl Haushofer
and G. I. Gurdjieff
were connected to the Society, but this theory is completely unsustainable.
.
Heinrich Himmler
who, more than any other high official in the Third Reich (including Hitler) was fascinated by pan-Aryan
(i.e., broader than Germanic) racialism
and by certain forms of Germanic neopaganism
. Himmler's capacity for rational planning was accompanied by an "enthusiasm for the utopian, the romantic and even the occult."
It also seems that Himmler had an interest in astrology. He consulted the astrologer Wilhelm Wulff in the last weeks of the Second World War. (One detailed but difficult source for this is a book written by Wulff himself, Tierkreis und Hakenkreuz
, published in Germany in 1968. That Walter Schellenberg
had discovered an astrologer called Wulf is mentioned in Hugh Trevor-Roper's The Last Days of Hitler.)
In Bramwell's assessment: "Too much can be made of the importance of bizarre cultism in Himmler's activities...but it did exist, and was one of the reasons behind the split between Himmler and Darré that took place in the late 1930s." Although Himmler did not have any contact with the Thule Society, he possessed more occult tendencies than any other Nazi leader. The German journalist and historian Heinz Höhne
, an authority on the SS, explicitly describes Himmler's views about reincarnation as occultism.
The historic example which Himmler used in practice as the model for the SS was the Society of Jesus
, since Himmler found in the Jesuits what he perceived to be the core element of any order, the doctrine of obedience and the cult of the organisation. The evidence for this largely rests on a statement from Walter Schellenberg
in his memoirs (Cologne, 1956, p. 39), but Hitler is also said to have called Himmler "my Ignatius of Loyola
" . As an order, the SS needed a coherent doctrine that would set it apart. Himmler attempted to construct such an ideology, and to this purpose he deduced a "pseudo-Germanic tradition" from history. However, this attempt was not entirely successful. Höhne observes that "Himmler's neo-pagan customs remained primarily a paper exercise".
In a 1936 memorandum, Himmler set forth a list of approved holidays based on pagan and political precedents and meant to wean SS members from their reliance on Christian
festivities. The Winter Solstice
, or Yuletide, was the climax of the year. It brought SS folk together at candlelit banquet tables and around raging bonfires that harked back to German tribal rites.
The Allach Julleuchter
(Yule light) was made as a presentation piece for SS officers to celebrate the winter solstice
. It was later given to all SS members on the same occasion, December 21. Made of unglazed stoneware, the Julleuchter was decorated with early pagan Germanic symbols. Himmler said, “I would have every family of a married SS man to be in possession of a Julleuchter. Even the wife will, when she has left the myths of the church find something else which her heart and mind can embrace.”
Only adherents of theories of Nazi occultism or the few former SS members who were, after the war, participants in the Landig Group in Vienna would claim that the cultic activities within the SS would amount to its own mystical religion. At the time of his death in 1986, Rudolf J. Mund was working on a book on the Germanic 'original race-cult religion', however, what was indoctrinated into the SS is not known in detail.
. At first independent, it became the ancestral heritage branch of the SS. Headed by Dr. Hermann Wirth
, it was dedicated primarily to archaeological research
, but it was also involved in proving the superiority of the 'Aryan race' and in occult practices.
A great deal of time and resources were spent on researching or creating a popularly accepted “historical”, “cultural” and “scientific” background so the ideas about a “superior” Aryan race
could be publicly accepted. For example, an expedition to Tibet
was organized to search for the origins of the Aryan race. To this end, the expedition leader, Ernst Schäfer
, had his anthropologist Bruno Beger
make face masks and skull and nose measurements. Another expedition was sent to the Andes
.
Bramwell, however, comments that Himmler "is supposed to have sent a party of SS men to Tibet in order to search for Shangri-La
, an expedition which is more likely to have had straightforward espionage as its purpose".
("The Black Corps"), published weekly from 1935 to 1945. In its first issue, the newspaper published an article on the origins of the Nordic race, hypothesizing a location near the North Pole
similar to the theory of Hermann Wirth (but not mentioning Atlantis).
Also in 1935, the SS journal commissioned a Professor of Germanic History, Heinar Schilling, to prepare a series of articles on ancient Germanic life. As a result, a book containing these articles and entitled Germanisches Leben was published by Koehler & Amelung of Leipzig with the approval of the SS and Reich Government in 1937. Three chapters dealt with the religion of the German people over three periods: nature worship and the cult of the ancestors, the sun religion of the Late Bronze Age, and the cult of the gods.
According to Heinar Schilling, the Germanic peoples of the Late Bronze Age had adopted a four-spoke wheel as symbolic of the sun "and this symbol has been developed into the modern swastika of our own society [i.e., Nazi Germany
] which represents the sun." Under the sign of the swastika "the light bringers of the Nordic race overran the lands of the dark inferior races, and it was no coincidence that the most powerful expression of the Nordic world was found in the sign of the swastika". Very little had been preserved of the ancient rites, Professor Schilling continued, but it was a striking fact "that in many German Gaue today on Sonnenwendtage (solstice days) burning sun wheels are rolled from mountain tops down into the valleys below, and almost everywhere the Sonnenwendfeuer (solstice fires) burn on those days." He concluded by saying that "The Sun is the All-Highest to the Children of the Earth".
Cathedral. Himmler even had his personal quarters at Wewelsburg
castle decorated in commemoration of Heinrich the Fowler. The way the SS redesigned the castle referred to certain characters in the Grail-mythos (see The "SS-School House Wewelsburg").
Himmler had visited the Wewelsburg on 3 November 1933 and April 1934; the SS took official possession of it in August 1934. The occultist Karl Maria Wiligut (known in the SS under the pseudonym 'Weisthor') accompanied Himmler on his visits to the castle. Initially, the Wewelsburg was intended to be a museum and officer's college for ideological education within the SS, but it was subsequently placed under the direct control of the office of the Reichsführer SS (Himmler) in February 1935. The impetus for the change of the conception most likely came from Wiligut.
s, apparently attempting to recreate a pagan ritual. In his book El Cuarto Lado del Triangulo (Sudamericana 1995), Professor Ronald Newton describes a number of occasions when a Sonnenwendfeier occurred in Argentina. When SS-Sturmbannführer Baron von Thermann (Edmund Freiherr von Thermann, German WP), the new head of the German Legation, arrived in December 1933, one of his first public engangements was to attend the NSDAP Sonnenwendfeier at the house of Vicente Lopez in the suburbs of Buenos Aires, "a neo-pagan festival with torches in which the Argentine Nazis greeted the winter and summer solstices". At another in December 1937, 500 young people, mostly Hitler Youth and Hitler Maidens, were taken to a natural amphitheatre dominating the sea at Comodoro Rivadavia
in the south of the country. "They lit great pillars of wood, and in the light of the flickering flames diverse NSDAP orators lectured the children on the origins of the ceremony and sang the praises of the (Nazis) Fallen for Liberty. In March 1939 the pupils at the German School in Rosario were the celebrants on an island in the Paraná River
opposite the city: Hitler Youth flags, trumpets, a rustic altar straight from Germanic mythology, young leaders enthroned with solemnity to the accompaniment of choral singing...the Creole witnesses shook their heads in incredulity..." In the Chaco in the north of Argentina the first great event promoted by the Nazis was the Sonnenwendfeir at Charata on 21 December 1935. Portentous discourses of fire alternated with choral renderings". Such activities continued in Argentina after the war; Uki Goñi in his book The Real Odessa (Granta, 2003) describes how Jacques de Mahieu
, a wanted SS war criminal, was "a regular speaker at the pagan solar solstice celebrations held by fugitive Nazis in Argentina postwar."
could be best described as a Nazi occultist. The (first?) biography of him, written by Rudolf J. Mund, was titled: Himmler's Rasputin (German: Der Rasputin Himmlers, not translated into English). After his retirement from the Austrian military, Wiligut had been active in the 'ariosophic' milieu. Ariosophy
was only one of the threads of Esotericism in Germany and Austria
during this time. When he was involuntarily committed to the Salzburg mental asylum between November 1924 and early 1927, he received support from several other occultists. Wiligut was clearly sympathetic to the Nazi Revolution of January 1933. When he was introduced to Himmler by an old friend who had become an SS officer, he got the opportunity to join the SS under the pseudonym 'Weisthor'. He was appointed head of the Department for Pre- and Early history within the Race and Settlement Main Office (Rasse- and Siedlungshauptamt, RuSHA) of the SS. His bureau could (much more than the Ahnenerbe) be described as the occult department of the SS: Wiligut's main duty appears "to have consisted in committing examples of his ancestral memory to paper." Wiligut's work for the SS also included the design of the Totenkopfring (death's head ring) that was worn by SS members. He is even supposed to have designed a chair for Himmler; at least, this chair and its covers are offered for sale on the Internet.
Otto Rahn
had written a book Kreuzzug gegen den Gral ("Crusade against the Grail") in 1933. In May 1935 he joined the Ahnenerbe; in March 1936 he formally joined the SS. "In September 1935 Rahn wrote excitingly to Weisthor [Karl Maria Wiligut] about the places he was visiting in his hunt for grail traditions in Germany, asking complete confidence in the matter with the exception of Himmler." In 1936 Rahn undertook a journey for the SS to Iceland, and in 1937 he published his travel journal of his quest for the Gnostic-Cathar tradition across Europe in a book titled Luzifers Hofgesinde ("Lucifer's Servants"). From this book he gave at least one reading, before an "extraordinarily large" audience. (An article about this lecture was published in the Westfälische Landeszeitung ("Westphalia County Paper"), which was an official Nazi newspaper.)
Rahn's connection of the Cathars with the Holy Grail ultimately leads to Montségur
in France, which had been the last remaining fortress of the Cathars in France during the Middle Ages. According to eyewitnesses, Nazi archaeologists and military officers
were present at that castle.
was a radical author with German-Ukrainian ancestry. An active agitator against the Bolshevik Revolution, he fled his native Russia in 1920 and travelled widely in eastern Europe, making contact with Bulgarian Theosophists and probably with G.I. Gurdjieff. As a mystical anti-communist, he developed an unshakeable belief in the Jewish-Masonic-Bolshevik world conspiracy portrayed in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In 1922 he published his first book, Freemasonry
and the Russian Revolution, and emigrated to Germany in the same year. He became an enthusiastic convert to Anthroposophy
in 1923, but by 1929 he had repudiated it as yet another agent of the conspiracy. Meanwhile, he had begun to give lectures for the Ariosophical Society and was a contributor to Georg Lomer's originally Theosophical (and later, neopagan) periodical entitled Asgard
: A Fighting Sheet for the Gods of the Homeland. He also worked for Alfred Rosenberg's news agency during the 1920s before joining the SS. He lectured widely on conspiracy theories and was appointed an honorary SS professor in 1942, but was barred from lecturing in uniform because of his unorthodox views. In 1944 he was promoted to SS-Standartenführer on Himmler's recommendation.
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
with a specific focus on its religious or semi-religious aspects.
The most prominent discourse here is the debate whether Nazism would constitute a political religion
Political religion
The theory of political religion concerns governmental ideologies whose cultural and spiritual aspect is so strong that it takes an overwhelming hold of peoples lives that can be only considered as religious...
, but there has also been research on the millenarianistic
Millenarianism
Millenarianism is the belief by a religious, social, or political group or movement in a coming major transformation of society, after which all things will be changed, based on a one-thousand-year cycle. The term is more generically used to refer to any belief centered around 1000 year intervals...
, messianic
Messianism
Messianism is the belief in a messiah, a savior or redeemer. Many religions have a messiah concept, including the Jewish Messiah, the Christian Christ, the Muslim Mahdi and Isa , the Buddhist Maitreya, the Hindu Kalki and the Zoroastrian Saoshyant...
, Gnostic and occult
Occult
The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...
aspects of Nazism. There is also a lively debate about whether Nazism was a "pagan" or a secular movement, or whether (and to what extent) it borrowed concepts from Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
.
Nazism as political religion?
Among the writers who alluded before 1980 to the religious aspects of National Socialism are Raymond AronRaymond Aron
Raymond-Claude-Ferdinand Aron was a French philosopher, sociologist, journalist and political scientist.He is best known for his 1955 book The Opium of the Intellectuals, the title of which inverts Karl Marx's claim that religion was the opium of the people -- in contrast, Aron argued that in...
, Albert Camus
Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
, Romano Guardini
Romano Guardini
Romano Guardini was a Catholic priest, author, and academic. He was one of the most important figures in Catholic intellectual life in 20th-century.- Life and work:...
, Denis de Rougemont
Denis de Rougemont
Denis de Rougemont was a Swiss writer, who wrote in French.He studied at the University of Neuchâtel, and then moved to Paris in 1930. There he wrote for and edited various publications, associating with the personalist groupings and the non-conformists of the 1930s...
, Eric Voegelin
Eric Voegelin
Eric Voegelin, born Erich Hermann Wilhelm Vögelin, was a German-born American political philosopher. He was born in Cologne, then Imperial Germany, and educated in political science at the University of Vienna. He became a teacher and then an associate professor of political science at the...
, George Mosse
George Mosse
George Lachmann Mosse was a German-born American social and cultural historian. Mosse authored 25 books on a variety of fields, from English constitutional law, Lutheran theology, to the history of fascism, Jewish history, and the history of masculinity...
, Klaus Vondung and Friedrich Heer
Friedrich Heer
Friedrich Heer was a historian born in Vienna. He received a PhD at the University in Vienna in 1938. Even as a student he came into conflict with pan-German thinking historians as a staunch opponent of National Socialism....
. Voegelin's work on political religion
Political religion
The theory of political religion concerns governmental ideologies whose cultural and spiritual aspect is so strong that it takes an overwhelming hold of peoples lives that can be only considered as religious...
was first published in German in 1938. Emilio Gentile
Emilio Gentile
Emilio Gentile is an Italian historian specializing in the ideology and culture of fascism. Gentile is considered one of Italy's foremost cultural historians of fascist ideology. He is a student of Renzo De Felice....
and Roger Griffin
Roger Griffin
Roger D. Griffin is a British academic political theorist at Oxford Brookes University, England. His recent efforts have focused on a definition and examination of fascism...
, among others, have drawn on his concept.
The French author and philosopher Albert Camus
Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
is mentioned here, since he has made some remarks about Nazism as a religion and about Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
in particular in L'Homme révolté.
Outside a purely academic discourse, public interest mainly concerns the relationship between Nazism and Occultism, and between Nazism and Christianity. The interest in the first relationship is obvious from the modern popular myth of Nazi occultism. The persistent idea that the Nazis were directed by occult agencies has been dismissed by historians as modern cryptohistory
Pseudohistory
Pseudohistory is a pejorative term applied to a type of historical revisionism, often involving sensational claims whose acceptance would require rewriting a significant amount of commonly accepted history, and based on methods that depart from standard historiographical conventions.Cryptohistory...
. The interest in the second relationship is obvious from the debate about whether Adolf Hitler was a Christian or not.
Nazism and occultism
There are many works that speculate about National Socialism and Occultism, the most prominent being The Morning of the Magicians (1960) and The Spear of Destiny (1972). From the perspective of academic history, however, most of these works are "cryptohistory". Notable exceptions are Der Mann, der Hitler die Ideen gab (The man who gave Hitler the ideas) by Wilfried DaimWilfried Daim
Wilfried Daim is an Austrian psychologist, psychotherapist, writer and art collector.Between 1940 and 1945 Daim was active in the catholic resistance in Austria...
(1957), Urania's children by Ellic Howe
Ellic Howe
Ellic Paul Howe was a British author who wrote extensively on occultism and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn as well as on typography and military history.-Books on occultism:...
(1967) and The Occult Establishment by James Webb
James Webb (historian)
James Charles Napier Webb was a Scottish historian and biographer. He was born in Edinburgh, was educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge. He is remembered primarily for two works The Occult Underground and The Occult Establishment. Occult Underground was originally titled Flight from...
(1976). Aside from these works, historians did not consider the question until the 1980s. Due to the popular literature on the topic, "Nazi 'black magic' was regarded as a topic for sensational authors in pursuit of strong sales." In the 1980s, two Ph.D. theses were written about the topic. Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke
Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke
Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke B.A. , D.Phil. is a professor of Western Esotericism at University of Exeter and author of several books on esoteric traditions....
published The Occult Roots of Nazism
The Occult Roots of Nazism
thumb|right|Cover of the 1992 editionThe Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology: The Ariosophists of Austria and Germany, 1890-1935 is a book by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke. It is the "seminal work" on Nazi occultism and Ariosophy. The book also includes some...
(1985) based on his thesis, and the German librarian and historian Ulrich Hunger's thesis on rune-lore in Nazi Germany (Die Runenkunde im Dritten Reich) was published in the series Europäische Hochschulschriften (also 1985).
Goodrick-Clarke's book The Occult Roots... is not only considered "without exception" to be the pioneering work on Ariosophy
Ariosophy
Armanism and Ariosophy are the names of ideological systems of an esoteric nature, pioneered by Guido von List and Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels respectively, in Austria between 1890 and 1930. The term 'Ariosophy', meaning wisdom concerning the Aryans, was first coined by Lanz von Liebenfels in 1915 and...
, but also the "definitive book" on the topic. The term 'Ariosophy' refers to an esoteric movement in Germany and Austria
Esotericism in Germany and Austria
This article gives an overview of esoteric movements in Germany and Austria between 1880 and 1945, presenting Theosophy, Anthroposophy and Ariosophy, among others, against the influences of earlier European esotericism.-Knights Templar and occultism:...
of the 1900s to 1930s. It clearly falls under Goodrick-Clarke's definition of occult
Occult
The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...
ism, as it obviously drew on the western esoteric tradition. Ideologically, it was remarkably similar to Nazism. According to Goodrick-Clarke, the Ariosophists wove occult ideas into the völkisch ideology
Völkisch movement
The volkisch movement is the German interpretation of the populist movement, with a romantic focus on folklore and the "organic"...
that existed in Germany and Austria at the time. Ariosophy shared the racial awareness of völkisch ideology, but also drew upon Theosophy
Theosophy
Theosophy, in its modern presentation, is a spiritual philosophy developed since the late 19th century. Its major themes were originally described mainly by Helena Blavatsky , co-founder of the Theosophical Society...
's notion of root race
Root race
Root Races are stages in human evolution in the esoteric cosmology of theosophist Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, as described in her book The Secret Doctrine . These races were said to have existed on now-lost continents. Blavatsky's model was developed by later theosophists, most notably William...
s, postulating locations such as Atlantis
Atlantis
Atlantis is a legendary island first mentioned in Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written about 360 BC....
, Thule
Thule
Thule Greek: Θούλη, Thoulē), also spelled Thula, Thila, or Thyïlea, is, in classical European literature and maps, a region in the far north. Though often considered to be an island in antiquity, modern interpretations of what was meant by Thule often identify it as Norway. Other interpretations...
and Hyperborea as the original homeland of the Aryan race
Aryan race
The Aryan race is a concept historically influential in Western culture in the period of the late 19th century and early 20th century. It derives from the idea that the original speakers of the Indo-European languages and their descendants up to the present day constitute a distinctive race or...
(and its "purest" branch, the Teutons
Teutons
The Teutons or Teutones were mentioned as a Germanic tribe by Greek and Roman authors, notably Strabo and Marcus Velleius Paterculus and normally in close connection with the Cimbri, whose ethnicity is contested between Gauls and Germani...
or Germanic peoples
Germanic peoples
The Germanic peoples are an Indo-European ethno-linguistic group of Northern European origin, identified by their use of the Indo-European Germanic languages which diversified out of Proto-Germanic during the Pre-Roman Iron Age.Originating about 1800 BCE from the Corded Ware Culture on the North...
).
The Ariosophic writings described a glorious ancient Germanic past, in which an elitist priesthood "expounded occult-racist doctrines and ruled over a superior and racially pure society." The downfall of this imaginary golden age was explained as the result of the interbreeding
Miscegenation
Miscegenation is the mixing of different racial groups through marriage, cohabitation, sexual relations, and procreation....
between the master race
Master race
Master race was a phrase and concept originating in the slave-holding Southern US. The later phrase Herrenvolk , interpreted as 'master race', was a concept in Nazi ideology in which the Nordic peoples, one of the branches of what in the late-19th and early-20th century was called the Aryan race,...
and the untermenschen (lesser races).
The "abstruse ideas and weird cults [of Ariosophy] anticipated the political doctrines and institutions of the Third Reich" writes Goodrick-Clarke in the introduction to his book, motivating the phrase "occult roots of Nazism"; direct influences, however, are sparse. With the exception of Karl Maria Wiligut
Karl Maria Wiligut
Karl Maria Wiligut was an Austrian Ariosophist- Biography :...
, Goodrick-Clarke has not found evidence that prominent Ariosophists directly influenced Nazism. There were other occult and paganist movements in Germany and Austria during that time, but the Ariosophists were the most extreme. The contacts between the Nazi organizations and Ariosophists and other occultists is examined below. This topic can broadly be divided into relations between the Thule Society and the Nazi party, and the occult and paganist activities within the SS
Schutzstaffel
The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...
.
Goodrick-Clarke considers the "Nazi crusade [as] ... essentially religious", but he does not offer theoretical concepts to specify in what sense Nazism can be called a religion. His follow-up volume Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity was intended to take a look at the survival of 'ariosophic' ideas after 1945; however, he uncovered a new subject that he has described as neo-völkisch movements
Neo-völkisch movements
Neo-völkisch movements, as defined by the historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, cover a wide variety of mutually influencing groups of a radically ethnocentric character which have emerged, especially in the English-speaking world, since World War II...
.
Nazism and Christianity
After Nazi Germany had surrendered in World War II, the U.S. Office of Strategic ServicesOffice of Strategic Services
The Office of Strategic Services was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency...
published a report on the Nazi Master Plan of the Persecution of the Christian Churches.
The discussion among historians and theologians about religion in Nazi Germany often came to similar results. For Kathleen Harvill Burton, there was a religious objective in National Socialism: make traditional Christianity disappear, and transform it into positive Christianity, based on Nazi mysticism as preached by Alfred Rosenberg
Alfred Rosenberg
' was an early and intellectually influential member of the Nazi Party. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart; he later held several important posts in the Nazi government...
. In particular the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
had to be purged of all its Jewish content (i.e., the entire Old Testament
Old Testament
The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...
, the Gospel of Matthew
Gospel of Matthew
The Gospel According to Matthew is one of the four canonical gospels, one of the three synoptic gospels, and the first book of the New Testament. It tells of the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth...
, and the Pauline Epistles
Pauline epistles
The Pauline epistles, Epistles of Paul, or Letters of Paul, are the thirteen New Testament books which have the name Paul as the first word, hence claiming authorship by Paul the Apostle. Among these letters are some of the earliest extant Christian documents...
). This was continuous with Paul Lagarde's research on a Germanised and "de-judaized" Christianism. According to Rosenberg:
- Saint Paul was responsible for the destruction of the racial values from GreekAncient GreeceAncient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
and Roman cultureAncient RomeAncient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
; - the dogma of hellHell in Christian beliefsChristian views on Hell vary, but in general traditionally agree that hell is a place or a state in which the souls of the unsaved suffer the consequences of sin....
advanced in the Middle AgesMiddle AgesThe Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
destroyed the free Nordic spirit; - original sinOriginal sinOriginal sin is, according to a Christian theological doctrine, humanity's state of sin resulting from the Fall of Man. This condition has been characterized in many ways, ranging from something as insignificant as a slight deficiency, or a tendency toward sin yet without collective guilt, referred...
and graceDivine graceIn Christian theology, grace is God’s gift of God’s self to humankind. It is understood by Christians to be a spontaneous gift from God to man - "generous, free and totally unexpected and undeserved" - that takes the form of divine favour, love and clemency. It is an attribute of God that is most...
are Oriental ideas that corrupt the purity and strength of Nordic blood; - the Old Testament and the Jewish race are not an exception and one should return to the Nordic peoples' fables and legends;
- JesusJesusJesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
was not Jewish, but had Nordic blood from his AmoriteAmoriteAmorite refers to an ancient Semitic people who occupied large parts of Mesopotamia from the 21st Century BC...
ancestors.
The Nazi Party program
National Socialist Program
The National Socialist Programme , was first, the political program of the German National Socialist Party in 1918, and later, in the 1920s, of the National Socialist German Workers' Party headed by Adolf...
of 1920 included a statement on religion as point 24. In this statement, the Nazi party demands freedom of religion
Freedom of religion
Freedom of religion is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance; the concept is generally recognized also to include the freedom to change religion or not to follow any...
(for all religious denominations that are not opposed to the customs and moral sentiments of the Germanic race); on the other hand, this paragraph proclaims the party's endorsement of what is called positive Christianity
Positive Christianity
Positive Christianity was a slogan of Nazi propaganda adopted at the NSDAP congress 1920 to express a worldview which is Christian, non-confessional, vigorously opposed to the spirit of "Jewish Materialism", and oriented to the principle of voluntary association of those with a common...
. Historians have commonly regarded this statement, and the phrase "positive Christianity" in particular, "as a tactical measure, 'cleverly' left undefined in order to accommodate a broad range of meanings." John S. Conway, in his The Nazi Persecution of the Churches calls it an "ambiguous phraseology." However, Richard Steigmann-Gall
Richard Steigmann-Gall
Richard Steigmann-Gall is Associate Professor of History at Kent State University, and was the Director of the Jewish Studies Program from 2004 to 2010. He received his BA in 1989 and MA in 1992 from the University of Michigan, and his PhD in 1999 from the University of Toronto...
in The Holy Reich holds that, on closer examination, "Point 24 readily provides us with three key ideas in which the Nazis claimed that their movement was Christian": the movement's antisemitism, its social ethic under the phrase Gemeinnutz vor Eigennutz (roughly: public need before private greed) and its attempt to bridge the confessional divide between Catholicism and Protestantism in Germany.
Unsurprisingly, this is a controversial topic, even among historians. Conway holds that The Holy Reich has broken new ground in the examination of the relation between Nazism and Christianity, despite his view that "Nazism and Christianity were incompatible." Conway acknowledges that Steigmann-Gall "is undeniably right to point out how much Nazism owed to German Christian" concepts and only considers his conclusion as "overdrawn".
The religious beliefs of leading Nazis
Within a large movement like Nazism, "it may not be especially shocking to discover" that individuals could embrace different ideological systems that would seem to be polar opposites. The religious beliefs of even the leading Nazis diverged strongly.Any impression that Nazism was a 'pagan' movement is due to the efforts of Nazi paganists like Alfred Rosenberg
Alfred Rosenberg
' was an early and intellectually influential member of the Nazi Party. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart; he later held several important posts in the Nazi government...
, Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
and Richard Walther Darré. Their beliefs could be called pagan or neo-pagan, but Steigmann-Gall prefers the term paganist to indicate that those "proponents of a Nordicized religion within the [Nazi] party did not actually practice this religion, let alone devise a coherent religious system that could actually be practised. Rather, they advocated the establishment of a faith that ultimately never came into being."
While these paganist elements sometimes dominate the image of Nazism (e.g., in the Discovery Channel documentary Nazis: The Occult Conspiracy
Nazis: The Occult Conspiracy
Nazis: The Occult Conspiracy, directed by Tracy Atkinson and Joan Baran, narrated by Malcolm McDowell, is an English language 1998 Discovery Channel documentary regarding Nazi occultism.-Soundtrack:...
), a majority of leading Nazis, including Hitler himself, did not attack Christianity in public or speak out in favour of the recreation of a heathen religion in Germany. This does not necessarily mean that they harboured no anti-Christian sentiments; if they did, for political reasons they would have carefully avoided campaigning against Christianity. The difficulty for historians lies in the task of evaluating not only the public, but also the private statements of the Nazi politicians. Steigmann-Gall, who intended to do this in his study, points to such people as Erich Koch
Erich Koch
Erich Koch was a Gauleiter of the Nazi Party in East Prussia from 1928 until 1945. Between 1941 and 1945 he was the Chief of Civil Administration of Bezirk Bialystok. During this period, he was also the Reichskommissar in Reichskommissariat Ukraine from 1941 until 1943...
(who was not only Gauleiter of East Prussia and Reichskomissar for the Ukraine
Reichskommissariat Ukraine
Reichskommissariat Ukraine , literally "Reich Commissariat of Ukraine", was the civilian occupation regime of much of German-occupied Ukraine during World War II. Between September 1941 and March 1944, the Reichskommissariat was administered by Reichskommissar Erich Koch as a colony...
, but also the elected praeses
Praeses
Praeses , is a Latin word meaning "Seated in front of, i.e. at the head ", has both ancient and modern uses.-Roman imperial use:...
of the East Prussian provincial synod of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union) and Bernhard Rust
Bernhard Rust
Dr. Bernhard Rust was Minister of Science, Education and National Culture in Nazi Germany. A combination of school administrator and zealous Nazi, he issued decrees, often bizarre, at every level of the German educational system to immerse German youth in the National Socialist philosophy...
as examples of Nazi politicians who also professed to be Christian in private.
Adolf Hitler's religious views
Adolf Hitler's religious views are a difficult case. On the one hand he had been in contact with Lanz von LiebenfelsLanz von Liebenfels
Adolf Josef Lanz aka Jörg Lanz, who called himself Lanz von Liebenfels was an Austrian publicist and journalist...
; on the other hand he made definite remarks against the völkisch occultism in Mein Kampf
Mein Kampf
Mein Kampf is a book written by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. It combines elements of autobiography with an exposition of Hitler's political ideology. Volume 1 of Mein Kampf was published in 1925 and Volume 2 in 1926...
and in public speeches.
Since 1957, when the Austrian psychologist Wilfried Daim
Wilfried Daim
Wilfried Daim is an Austrian psychologist, psychotherapist, writer and art collector.Between 1940 and 1945 Daim was active in the catholic resistance in Austria...
published the important study on Lanz von Liebenfels, enough evidence exists to say that Hitler had been exposed to the Ariosophic Weltanschauung in Vienna. However, it is not clear to what extent he was influenced by it. In the research into this question, Mein Kampf has even been compared to Liebenfels' Theozoologie in detail. According to an online article from the Simon Wiesenthal Center
Simon Wiesenthal Center
The Simon Wiesenthal Center , with headquarters in Los Angeles, California, was established in 1977 and named for Simon Wiesenthal, the Nazi hunter. According to its mission statement, it is "an international Jewish human rights organization dedicated to repairing the world one step at a time...
, the influence of the anti-Judaic, Gnostic and root race
Root race
Root Races are stages in human evolution in the esoteric cosmology of theosophist Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, as described in her book The Secret Doctrine . These races were said to have existed on now-lost continents. Blavatsky's model was developed by later theosophists, most notably William...
teachings of H.P. Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy, and the adaptations of her ideas by her followers, constituted a popularly unacknowledged but decisive influence over Hitler's developing mind.
Hitler harshly rejected the völkisch esotericism. In Heinrich Heims' Adolf Hitler, Monologe im FHQ 1941-1944 (several editions, here Orbis Verlag, 2000), Hitler is quoted as having said on 14 October 1941: "It seems to be inexpressibly stupid to allow a revival of the cult of Odin/Wotan. Our old mythology of the gods was defunct, and incapable of revival, when Christianity came...the whole world of antiquity either followed philosophical systems on the one hand, or worshipped the gods. But in modern times it is undesirable that all humanity should make such a fool of itself."
It is worth noting that Hitler never publicly said that pagan gods shouldn't be worshipped due to Christian belief, but rather that Odin worship would be "inexpressibly stupid."
Rudolf Hess
According to Goodrick-Clarke, Rudolf HessRudolf Hess
Rudolf Walter Richard Hess was a prominent Nazi politician who was Adolf Hitler's deputy in the Nazi Party during the 1930s and early 1940s...
had been a member of the Thule Society before attaining prominence in the Nazi party. As Adolf Hitler's official deputy, Hess had also been attracted to and influenced by the organic farming
Organic farming
Organic farming is the form of agriculture that relies on techniques such as crop rotation, green manure, compost and biological pest control to maintain soil productivity and control pests on a farm...
theories of Rudolf Steiner
Rudolf Steiner
Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner was an Austrian philosopher, social reformer, architect, and esotericist. He gained initial recognition as a literary critic and cultural philosopher...
and Anthroposophy
Anthroposophy
Anthroposophy, a philosophy founded by Rudolf Steiner, postulates the existence of an objective, intellectually comprehensible spiritual world accessible to direct experience through inner development...
. In the wake of his flight to Scotland, Reinhard Heydrich
Reinhard Heydrich
Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich , also known as The Hangman, was a high-ranking German Nazi official.He was SS-Obergruppenführer and General der Polizei, chief of the Reich Main Security Office and Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia...
, the head of the security police, banned lodge organizations and esoteric groups on 9 June 1941. When organic farmers and their supporters and even nudists were arrested, Agriculture Minister Richard Walther Darré protested to Himmler and Heydrich, "despite a letter from Bormann
Martin Bormann
Martin Ludwig Bormann was a prominent Nazi official. He became head of the Party Chancellery and private secretary to Adolf Hitler...
, warning Darré that Hitler was behind the arrests."
However, the suppression of esoteric organisations
Esotericism in Germany and Austria
This article gives an overview of esoteric movements in Germany and Austria between 1880 and 1945, presenting Theosophy, Anthroposophy and Ariosophy, among others, against the influences of earlier European esotericism.-Knights Templar and occultism:...
began very soon after the Nazis acquired governmental power. This also affected ariosophic
Ariosophy
Armanism and Ariosophy are the names of ideological systems of an esoteric nature, pioneered by Guido von List and Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels respectively, in Austria between 1890 and 1930. The term 'Ariosophy', meaning wisdom concerning the Aryans, was first coined by Lanz von Liebenfels in 1915 and...
authors and organisations: "One of the most important early Germanic racialists, Lanz von Liebenfels
Lanz von Liebenfels
Adolf Josef Lanz aka Jörg Lanz, who called himself Lanz von Liebenfels was an Austrian publicist and journalist...
, had his writings banned in 1938 while other occultist racialists were banned as early as 1934."
The Thule Society and the origins of the Nazi Party
The Thule SocietyThule Society
The Thule Society , originally the Studiengruppe für germanisches Altertum , was a German occultist and völkisch group in Munich, named after a mythical northern country from Greek legend...
, which is remotely connected to the origins of the Nazi Party, was one of the ariosophic
Ariosophy
Armanism and Ariosophy are the names of ideological systems of an esoteric nature, pioneered by Guido von List and Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels respectively, in Austria between 1890 and 1930. The term 'Ariosophy', meaning wisdom concerning the Aryans, was first coined by Lanz von Liebenfels in 1915 and...
groups of the late 1910s. Thule Gesellschaft had initially been the name of the Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
branch of the Germanenorden Walvater of the Holy Grail
Germanenorden
The Germanenorden was a völkisch secret society in early 20th century Germany...
, a lodge-based organisation which was built up by Rudolf von Sebottendorff in 1917. For this task he had received about a hundred addresses of potential members in Bavaria from Hermann Pohl, and from 1918 he was also supported by Walter Nauhaus. According to an account by Sebottendorff, the Bavarian province of the Germanenorden Walvater had 200 members in spring 1918, which had risen to 1500 in autumn 1918, of these 250 in Munich. Five rooms, capable of accommodating 300 people, were leased from the fashionable Hotel Vierjahreszeiten ('Four Seasons') in Munich and decorated with the Thule emblem showing a dagger superimposed on a swastika
Swastika
The swastika is an equilateral cross with its arms bent at right angles, in either right-facing form in counter clock motion or its mirrored left-facing form in clock motion. Earliest archaeological evidence of swastika-shaped ornaments dates back to the Indus Valley Civilization of Ancient...
. Since the lodge's ceremonial activities were accompanied by overtly right-wing meetings, the name Thule Gesellschaft was adopted to arouse less attention from socialists and pro-Republicans.
The Aryan race and lost lands
The Thule Society took its name from ThuleThule
Thule Greek: Θούλη, Thoulē), also spelled Thula, Thila, or Thyïlea, is, in classical European literature and maps, a region in the far north. Though often considered to be an island in antiquity, modern interpretations of what was meant by Thule often identify it as Norway. Other interpretations...
, an alleged lost land. Sebottendorff identified Ultima Thule as Iceland
Iceland
Iceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...
. In the Armanism of Guido von List
Guido von List
Guido Karl Anton List, better known as Guido von List was an Austrian/German poet, journalist, writer, businessman and dealer of leather goods, mountaineer, hiker, dramatist, playwright, and rower, but was most notable as an occultist and völkisch author who is seen as one of the most important...
, to which Sebottendorff made distinct references, it was believed that the Aryan race
Aryan race
The Aryan race is a concept historically influential in Western culture in the period of the late 19th century and early 20th century. It derives from the idea that the original speakers of the Indo-European languages and their descendants up to the present day constitute a distinctive race or...
had originated from the apocryphal lost continent of Atlantis
Atlantis
Atlantis is a legendary island first mentioned in Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written about 360 BC....
and taken refuge in Thule/Iceland after Atlantis had been deluged and sunk under the sea. Hyperborea was also mentioned by Guido von List, with direct references to the theosophic
Theosophy
Theosophy, in its modern presentation, is a spiritual philosophy developed since the late 19th century. Its major themes were originally described mainly by Helena Blavatsky , co-founder of the Theosophical Society...
author William Scott-Elliot
William Scott-Elliot
William Scott-Elliot was a theosophist who elaborated Helena Blavatsky's concept of root races in several publications, most notably The Story of Atlantis and The Lost Lemuria , later combined in 1925 into a single volume called The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria.-Theosophical...
.
In The Myth of the Twentieth Century
The Myth of the Twentieth Century
The Myth of the Twentieth Century is a book by Alfred Rosenberg, one of the principal ideologues of the Nazi party and editor of the Nazi paper Völkischer Beobachter. It was the most influential Nazi text after Hitler's Mein Kampf. The titular "myth" is "the myth of blood, which under the sign of...
, the most important Nazi book after Mein Kampf, Alfred Rosenberg referred to Atlantis as a lost land or at least to an Aryan cultural center. Since Rosenberg had attended meetings of the Thule Society, he might have been familiar with the occult speculation about lost lands; however, according to Lutzhöft (1971), Rosenberg drew on the work of Herman Wirth. The attribution of the Urheimat
Urheimat
Urheimat is a linguistic term denoting the original homeland of the speakers of a proto-language...
of the Nordic race to a deluged land was very appealing at that time.
Formation of DAP and NSDAP
In the autumn of 1918 Sebottendorff attempted to extend the appeal of the Thule Society's nationalist ideology to people from a working class background. He entrusted the Munich sports reporter Karl HarrerKarl Harrer
Karl Harrer was a German journalist and politician, one of the founding members of the "Deutsche Arbeiterpartei" in 1919, the party that soon would become the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei .Harrer was also a member of the Thule Society, which gave him the task of founding a...
with the formation of a workers' club, called the Deutscher Arbeiterverein ('German workers' club') or Politischer Arbeiterzirkel ('Political workers' ring'). The most active member of this club was Anton Drexler
Anton Drexler
Anton Drexler was a German right-wing political leader of the 1920s, known for being Adolf Hitler's mentor during his early days in politics.-Biography:...
. Drexler urged the foundation of a political party, and on 5 January 1919 the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei
German Workers' Party
The German Workers' Party was the short-lived predecessor of the Nazi Party .-Origins:The DAP was founded in Munich in the hotel "Fürstenfelder Hof" on January 5, 1919 by Anton Drexler, a member of the occultist Thule Society. It developed out of the "Freien Arbeiterausschuss für einen guten...
(DAP, German Workers' Party) was formally founded. When Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
first encountered the DAP on 12 September 1919, Sebottendorff had already left the Thule Society (in June 1919). By the end of February 1920, Hitler had transformed the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei into the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP or National Socialist German Workers’ Party). Apparently, meetings of the Thule Society continued until 1923. A certain Johannes Hering kept a diary of these meetings; it mentions the attendance of other Nazi leaders between 1920 and 1923, but not Hitler.
That the origins of the Nazi Party can be traced to the lodge organisation of the Thule Society is fact. However, there were only two points in which the NSDAP was a successor to the Thule Society. One is the use of the swastika. Friedrich Krohn, who was responsible for the colour scheme of the Nazi flag, had been a member of the Thule Society and also of the Germanenorden since 1913. Goodrick-Clarke concludes that the origins of the Nazi symbol can be traced back through the emblems of the Thule Society and the Germanenorden and ultimately to Guido von List
Guido von List
Guido Karl Anton List, better known as Guido von List was an Austrian/German poet, journalist, writer, businessman and dealer of leather goods, mountaineer, hiker, dramatist, playwright, and rower, but was most notable as an occultist and völkisch author who is seen as one of the most important...
, but it is not evident that the Thulean ideology filtered through the DAP into the NSDAP. Goodrick-Clarke implies that ariosophical ideas were of no consequence: "the DAP line was predominantly one of extreme political and social nationalism, and not based on the Aryan-racist-occult pattern of the Germanenorden [and Thule Society]". Godwin summarises the differences in outlook which separated the Thule Society from the direction taken by the Nazis:
"Hitler...had little time for the whole Thule business, once it had carried him where he needed to be...he could see the political worthlessness of paganism [i.e., what Goodrick-Clarke would describe as the racist-occult complex of Ariosophy] in Christian Germany. Neither did the Führer's plans for his Thousand-year Reich have any room whatever for the heady love of individual liberty with which the Thuleans romantically endowed their Nordic ancestors."
The other point in which the NSDAP continued the activities of the Thule Society is in the publication of the newspaper Völkischer Beobachter
Völkischer Beobachter
The Völkischer Beobachter was the newspaper of the National Socialist German Workers' Party from 1920. It first appeared weekly, then daily from February 8, 1923...
. Originally, the Beobachter ("Observer") had been a minor weekly newspaper of the eastern suburbs of Munich, published since 1868. After the death of its last publisher in June 1918, the paper ceased publication, until Sebottendorff bought it one month later. He renamed it Münchener Beobachter und Sportsblatt ("Munich Observer and Sports Paper") and wrote "trenchant anti-Semitic" editorials for it. After Sebottendorff left Munich, the paper was converted into a limited liability company. By December 1920, all its shares were in the hands of Anton Drexler, who transferred the ownership of the paper to Hitler in November 1921.
Its connection with Nazism has made the Thule Society a popular subject of modern cryptohistory. Among other things, it is hinted that Karl Haushofer
Karl Haushofer
Karl Ernst Haushofer was a German general, geographer and geopolitician. Through his student Rudolf Hess, Haushofer's ideas may have influenced the development of Adolf Hitler's expansionist strategies, although Haushofer denied direct influence on the Nazi regime.-Biography:Haushofer belonged to...
and G. I. Gurdjieff
G. I. Gurdjieff
George Ivanovich Gurdjieff according to Gurdjieff's principles and instructions, or the "Fourth Way."At one point he described his teaching as "esoteric Christianity."...
were connected to the Society, but this theory is completely unsustainable.
Aftermath
In January 1933 Sebottendorff published Bevor Hitler kam: Urkundlich aus der Frühzeit der Nationalsozialistischen Bewegung ("Before Hitler Came: Documents from the Early Days of the National Socialist Movement"). Nazi authorities (Hitler himself?) understandably disliked the book, which was banned in the following year. Sebottendorff was arrested but managed to flee to TurkeyTurkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
.
Himmler and the SS
Credited retrospectively with being the founder of "Esoteric Hitlerism", and certainly a figure of major importance for the officially sanctioned research and practice of mysticism by a Nazi elite, was Reichsführer-SSReichsführer-SS
was a special SS rank that existed between the years of 1925 and 1945. Reichsführer-SS was a title from 1925 to 1933 and, after 1934, the highest rank of the German Schutzstaffel .-Definition:...
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
who, more than any other high official in the Third Reich (including Hitler) was fascinated by pan-Aryan
Aryan
Aryan is an English language loanword derived from Sanskrit ārya and denoting variously*In scholarly usage:**Indo-Iranian languages *in dated usage:**the Indo-European languages more generally and their speakers...
(i.e., broader than Germanic) racialism
Racialism
Racialism is an emphasis on race or racial considerations. Currently, racialism entails a belief in the existence and significance of racial categories, but not necessarily that any absolute hierarchy between the races has been demonstrated by a rigorous and comprehensive scientific process...
and by certain forms of Germanic neopaganism
Germanic neopaganism
Germanic neopaganism is the contemporary revival of historical Germanic paganism. Precursor movements appeared in the early 20th century in Germany and Austria. A second wave of revival began in the early 1970s...
. Himmler's capacity for rational planning was accompanied by an "enthusiasm for the utopian, the romantic and even the occult."
It also seems that Himmler had an interest in astrology. He consulted the astrologer Wilhelm Wulff in the last weeks of the Second World War. (One detailed but difficult source for this is a book written by Wulff himself, Tierkreis und Hakenkreuz
Zodiac and Swastika
Zodiac and Swastika is a book by Wilhelm Wulff. Originally published 1968 in Germany by Bertelsmann Sachbuchverlag as Tierkreis und Hakenkreuz: Als Astrologe an Himmlers Hof, it was released in 1973 in the USA by Coward, McCann & Geoghegan and in the United Kingdom by Arthur Barker Limited of...
, published in Germany in 1968. That Walter Schellenberg
Walter Schellenberg
Walther Friedrich Schellenberg was a German SS-Brigadeführer who rose through the ranks of the SS to become the head of foreign intelligence following the abolition of the Abwehr in 1944.-Biography:...
had discovered an astrologer called Wulf is mentioned in Hugh Trevor-Roper's The Last Days of Hitler.)
In Bramwell's assessment: "Too much can be made of the importance of bizarre cultism in Himmler's activities...but it did exist, and was one of the reasons behind the split between Himmler and Darré that took place in the late 1930s." Although Himmler did not have any contact with the Thule Society, he possessed more occult tendencies than any other Nazi leader. The German journalist and historian Heinz Höhne
Heinz Höhne
Heinz Höhne was a German journalist and historian who specialized in Nazi and intelligence history....
, an authority on the SS, explicitly describes Himmler's views about reincarnation as occultism.
The historic example which Himmler used in practice as the model for the SS was the Society of Jesus
Society of Jesus
The Society of Jesus is a Catholic male religious order that follows the teachings of the Catholic Church. The members are called Jesuits, and are also known colloquially as "God's Army" and as "The Company," these being references to founder Ignatius of Loyola's military background and a...
, since Himmler found in the Jesuits what he perceived to be the core element of any order, the doctrine of obedience and the cult of the organisation. The evidence for this largely rests on a statement from Walter Schellenberg
Walter Schellenberg
Walther Friedrich Schellenberg was a German SS-Brigadeführer who rose through the ranks of the SS to become the head of foreign intelligence following the abolition of the Abwehr in 1944.-Biography:...
in his memoirs (Cologne, 1956, p. 39), but Hitler is also said to have called Himmler "my Ignatius of Loyola
Ignatius of Loyola
Ignatius of Loyola was a Spanish knight from a Basque noble family, hermit, priest since 1537, and theologian, who founded the Society of Jesus and was its first Superior General. Ignatius emerged as a religious leader during the Counter-Reformation...
" . As an order, the SS needed a coherent doctrine that would set it apart. Himmler attempted to construct such an ideology, and to this purpose he deduced a "pseudo-Germanic tradition" from history. However, this attempt was not entirely successful. Höhne observes that "Himmler's neo-pagan customs remained primarily a paper exercise".
In a 1936 memorandum, Himmler set forth a list of approved holidays based on pagan and political precedents and meant to wean SS members from their reliance on Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
festivities. The Winter Solstice
Winter solstice
Winter solstice may refer to:* Winter solstice, astronomical event* Winter Solstice , former band* Winter Solstice: North , seasonal songs* Winter Solstice , 2005 American film...
, or Yuletide, was the climax of the year. It brought SS folk together at candlelit banquet tables and around raging bonfires that harked back to German tribal rites.
The Allach Julleuchter
Julleuchter
A Julleuchter or Turmleuchter , is a "small earthenware candlestick, about 4" square at the bottom, about 8" tall, and it is shaped kind of like a mountain or a tower." Modern Julleuchters have the Hagall rune and a heart symbol visible on all four sides. Other examples have an Algiz rune or a...
(Yule light) was made as a presentation piece for SS officers to celebrate the winter solstice
Winter solstice
Winter solstice may refer to:* Winter solstice, astronomical event* Winter Solstice , former band* Winter Solstice: North , seasonal songs* Winter Solstice , 2005 American film...
. It was later given to all SS members on the same occasion, December 21. Made of unglazed stoneware, the Julleuchter was decorated with early pagan Germanic symbols. Himmler said, “I would have every family of a married SS man to be in possession of a Julleuchter. Even the wife will, when she has left the myths of the church find something else which her heart and mind can embrace.”
Only adherents of theories of Nazi occultism or the few former SS members who were, after the war, participants in the Landig Group in Vienna would claim that the cultic activities within the SS would amount to its own mystical religion. At the time of his death in 1986, Rudolf J. Mund was working on a book on the Germanic 'original race-cult religion', however, what was indoctrinated into the SS is not known in detail.
Nazi archaeology
In 1935 Himmler, along with Darré, established the AhnenerbeAhnenerbe
The Ahnenerbe was a Nazi German think tank that promoted itself as a "study society for Intellectual Ancient History." Founded on July 1, 1935, by Heinrich Himmler, Herman Wirth, and Richard Walther Darré, the Ahnenerbe's goal was to research the anthropological and cultural history of the Aryan...
. At first independent, it became the ancestral heritage branch of the SS. Headed by Dr. Hermann Wirth
Hermann Wirth
Herman Wirth was a Dutch-German lay historian and scholar of ancient religions and symbols....
, it was dedicated primarily to archaeological research
Nazi archaeology
Nazi archaeology refers to the movement led by various Nazi leaders, archaeologists, and other scholars, such as Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler, to research the German past in order to strengthen nationalism...
, but it was also involved in proving the superiority of the 'Aryan race' and in occult practices.
A great deal of time and resources were spent on researching or creating a popularly accepted “historical”, “cultural” and “scientific” background so the ideas about a “superior” Aryan race
Aryan race
The Aryan race is a concept historically influential in Western culture in the period of the late 19th century and early 20th century. It derives from the idea that the original speakers of the Indo-European languages and their descendants up to the present day constitute a distinctive race or...
could be publicly accepted. For example, an expedition to Tibet
Tibet
Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...
was organized to search for the origins of the Aryan race. To this end, the expedition leader, Ernst Schäfer
Ernst Schäfer
Ernst Schäfer was a famous German hunter and zoologist in the 1930s, specializing in ornithology.-Biography:Schäfer is most famous for his three expeditions to Tibet in 1931, in 1934–1935, and in 1938–1939. The first two expeditions were led by the American Brooke Dolan II...
, had his anthropologist Bruno Beger
Bruno Beger
Bruno Beger was a German Racial anthropologist who worked for the Ahnenerbe...
make face masks and skull and nose measurements. Another expedition was sent to the Andes
Andes
The Andes is the world's longest continental mountain range. It is a continual range of highlands along the western coast of South America. This range is about long, about to wide , and of an average height of about .Along its length, the Andes is split into several ranges, which are separated...
.
Bramwell, however, comments that Himmler "is supposed to have sent a party of SS men to Tibet in order to search for Shangri-La
Shangri-La
Shangri-La is a fictional place described in the 1933 novel Lost Horizon by British author James Hilton. Hilton describes Shangri-La as a mystical, harmonious valley, gently guided from a lamasery, enclosed in the western end of the Kunlun Mountains...
, an expedition which is more likely to have had straightforward espionage as its purpose".
Das Schwarze Korps
The official newspaper of SS was Das Schwarze KorpsDas Schwarze Korps
Das Schwarze Korps was the official newspaper of the Schutzstaffel . This newspaper was published on Wednesdays and distributed free of charge. Each SS member was supposed to read the publication and urge others to do so as well...
("The Black Corps"), published weekly from 1935 to 1945. In its first issue, the newspaper published an article on the origins of the Nordic race, hypothesizing a location near the North Pole
North Pole
The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is, subject to the caveats explained below, defined as the point in the northern hemisphere where the Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface...
similar to the theory of Hermann Wirth (but not mentioning Atlantis).
Also in 1935, the SS journal commissioned a Professor of Germanic History, Heinar Schilling, to prepare a series of articles on ancient Germanic life. As a result, a book containing these articles and entitled Germanisches Leben was published by Koehler & Amelung of Leipzig with the approval of the SS and Reich Government in 1937. Three chapters dealt with the religion of the German people over three periods: nature worship and the cult of the ancestors, the sun religion of the Late Bronze Age, and the cult of the gods.
According to Heinar Schilling, the Germanic peoples of the Late Bronze Age had adopted a four-spoke wheel as symbolic of the sun "and this symbol has been developed into the modern swastika of our own society [i.e., Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
] which represents the sun." Under the sign of the swastika "the light bringers of the Nordic race overran the lands of the dark inferior races, and it was no coincidence that the most powerful expression of the Nordic world was found in the sign of the swastika". Very little had been preserved of the ancient rites, Professor Schilling continued, but it was a striking fact "that in many German Gaue today on Sonnenwendtage (solstice days) burning sun wheels are rolled from mountain tops down into the valleys below, and almost everywhere the Sonnenwendfeuer (solstice fires) burn on those days." He concluded by saying that "The Sun is the All-Highest to the Children of the Earth".
The SS-Castle Wewelsburg
Himmler has been claimed to have considered himself the spiritual successor or even reincarnation of Heinrich the Fowler, having established special SS rituals for the old king and having returned his bones to the crypt at QuedlinburgQuedlinburg
Quedlinburg is a town located north of the Harz mountains, in the district of Harz in the west of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. In 1994 the medieval court and the old town was set on the UNESCO world heritage list....
Cathedral. Himmler even had his personal quarters at Wewelsburg
Wewelsburg
For the village of Wewelsburg see Village of WewelsburgWewelsburg is a Renaissance castle located in the northeast of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, in the village of Wewelsburg which is a quarter of the city Büren, Westphalia, in district of Paderborn in the Alme Valley. The castle has the...
castle decorated in commemoration of Heinrich the Fowler. The way the SS redesigned the castle referred to certain characters in the Grail-mythos (see The "SS-School House Wewelsburg").
Himmler had visited the Wewelsburg on 3 November 1933 and April 1934; the SS took official possession of it in August 1934. The occultist Karl Maria Wiligut (known in the SS under the pseudonym 'Weisthor') accompanied Himmler on his visits to the castle. Initially, the Wewelsburg was intended to be a museum and officer's college for ideological education within the SS, but it was subsequently placed under the direct control of the office of the Reichsführer SS (Himmler) in February 1935. The impetus for the change of the conception most likely came from Wiligut.
SS-Officers in Argentina
There are some accounts of SS officers celebrating solsticeSolstice
A solstice is an astronomical event that happens twice each year when the Sun's apparent position in the sky, as viewed from Earth, reaches its northernmost or southernmost extremes...
s, apparently attempting to recreate a pagan ritual. In his book El Cuarto Lado del Triangulo (Sudamericana 1995), Professor Ronald Newton describes a number of occasions when a Sonnenwendfeier occurred in Argentina. When SS-Sturmbannführer Baron von Thermann (Edmund Freiherr von Thermann, German WP), the new head of the German Legation, arrived in December 1933, one of his first public engangements was to attend the NSDAP Sonnenwendfeier at the house of Vicente Lopez in the suburbs of Buenos Aires, "a neo-pagan festival with torches in which the Argentine Nazis greeted the winter and summer solstices". At another in December 1937, 500 young people, mostly Hitler Youth and Hitler Maidens, were taken to a natural amphitheatre dominating the sea at Comodoro Rivadavia
Comodoro Rivadavia
Comodoro Rivadavia is a city in the Patagonian province of Chubut in southern Argentina, located on the San Jorge Gulf, an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean, at the foot of the Chenque Hill. Comodoro Rivadavia is the most important city of the San Jorge Basin....
in the south of the country. "They lit great pillars of wood, and in the light of the flickering flames diverse NSDAP orators lectured the children on the origins of the ceremony and sang the praises of the (Nazis) Fallen for Liberty. In March 1939 the pupils at the German School in Rosario were the celebrants on an island in the Paraná River
Paraná River
The Paraná River is a river in south Central South America, running through Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina for some . It is second in length only to the Amazon River among South American rivers. The name Paraná is an abbreviation of the phrase "para rehe onáva", which comes from the Tupi language...
opposite the city: Hitler Youth flags, trumpets, a rustic altar straight from Germanic mythology, young leaders enthroned with solemnity to the accompaniment of choral singing...the Creole witnesses shook their heads in incredulity..." In the Chaco in the north of Argentina the first great event promoted by the Nazis was the Sonnenwendfeir at Charata on 21 December 1935. Portentous discourses of fire alternated with choral renderings". Such activities continued in Argentina after the war; Uki Goñi in his book The Real Odessa (Granta, 2003) describes how Jacques de Mahieu
Jacques de Mahieu
Jacques de Mahieu was a French academic and Nazi collaborator who taught mainly in Argentina.- Early life and political activities :...
, a wanted SS war criminal, was "a regular speaker at the pagan solar solstice celebrations held by fugitive Nazis in Argentina postwar."
Karl Maria Wiligut
Of all the SS personnel, Karl Maria WiligutKarl Maria Wiligut
Karl Maria Wiligut was an Austrian Ariosophist- Biography :...
could be best described as a Nazi occultist. The (first?) biography of him, written by Rudolf J. Mund, was titled: Himmler's Rasputin (German: Der Rasputin Himmlers, not translated into English). After his retirement from the Austrian military, Wiligut had been active in the 'ariosophic' milieu. Ariosophy
Ariosophy
Armanism and Ariosophy are the names of ideological systems of an esoteric nature, pioneered by Guido von List and Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels respectively, in Austria between 1890 and 1930. The term 'Ariosophy', meaning wisdom concerning the Aryans, was first coined by Lanz von Liebenfels in 1915 and...
was only one of the threads of Esotericism in Germany and Austria
Esotericism in Germany and Austria
This article gives an overview of esoteric movements in Germany and Austria between 1880 and 1945, presenting Theosophy, Anthroposophy and Ariosophy, among others, against the influences of earlier European esotericism.-Knights Templar and occultism:...
during this time. When he was involuntarily committed to the Salzburg mental asylum between November 1924 and early 1927, he received support from several other occultists. Wiligut was clearly sympathetic to the Nazi Revolution of January 1933. When he was introduced to Himmler by an old friend who had become an SS officer, he got the opportunity to join the SS under the pseudonym 'Weisthor'. He was appointed head of the Department for Pre- and Early history within the Race and Settlement Main Office (Rasse- and Siedlungshauptamt, RuSHA) of the SS. His bureau could (much more than the Ahnenerbe) be described as the occult department of the SS: Wiligut's main duty appears "to have consisted in committing examples of his ancestral memory to paper." Wiligut's work for the SS also included the design of the Totenkopfring (death's head ring) that was worn by SS members. He is even supposed to have designed a chair for Himmler; at least, this chair and its covers are offered for sale on the Internet.
Otto Rahn
Otto Rahn
Otto Wilhelm Rahn was a German medievalist and a Obersturmführer of the SS, born in Michelstadt, Germany....
had written a book Kreuzzug gegen den Gral ("Crusade against the Grail") in 1933. In May 1935 he joined the Ahnenerbe; in March 1936 he formally joined the SS. "In September 1935 Rahn wrote excitingly to Weisthor [Karl Maria Wiligut] about the places he was visiting in his hunt for grail traditions in Germany, asking complete confidence in the matter with the exception of Himmler." In 1936 Rahn undertook a journey for the SS to Iceland, and in 1937 he published his travel journal of his quest for the Gnostic-Cathar tradition across Europe in a book titled Luzifers Hofgesinde ("Lucifer's Servants"). From this book he gave at least one reading, before an "extraordinarily large" audience. (An article about this lecture was published in the Westfälische Landeszeitung ("Westphalia County Paper"), which was an official Nazi newspaper.)
Rahn's connection of the Cathars with the Holy Grail ultimately leads to Montségur
Montségur
The Château de Montségur is a former fortress near Montségur, a commune in the Ariège department in southwestern France. Its ruins are the site of a razed stronghold of the Cathars. The present fortress on the site, though described as one of the "Cathar castles," is actually of a later period...
in France, which had been the last remaining fortress of the Cathars in France during the Middle Ages. According to eyewitnesses, Nazi archaeologists and military officers
Officer (armed forces)
An officer is a member of an armed force or uniformed service who holds a position of authority. Commissioned officers derive authority directly from a sovereign power and, as such, hold a commission charging them with the duties and responsibilities of a specific office or position...
were present at that castle.
Gregor Schwartz-Bostunitsch
Gregor Schwartz-BostunitschGregor Schwartz-Bostunitsch
Gregor Schwartz-Bostunitsch was a prominent figure in Nazi Germany. He was a German-Russian author in the völkisch movement and became SS-Standartenführer in 1944. His death is unclear.-Life:...
was a radical author with German-Ukrainian ancestry. An active agitator against the Bolshevik Revolution, he fled his native Russia in 1920 and travelled widely in eastern Europe, making contact with Bulgarian Theosophists and probably with G.I. Gurdjieff. As a mystical anti-communist, he developed an unshakeable belief in the Jewish-Masonic-Bolshevik world conspiracy portrayed in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In 1922 he published his first book, Freemasonry
Freemasonry
Freemasonry is a fraternal organisation that arose from obscure origins in the late 16th to early 17th century. Freemasonry now exists in various forms all over the world, with a membership estimated at around six million, including approximately 150,000 under the jurisdictions of the Grand Lodge...
and the Russian Revolution, and emigrated to Germany in the same year. He became an enthusiastic convert to Anthroposophy
Anthroposophy
Anthroposophy, a philosophy founded by Rudolf Steiner, postulates the existence of an objective, intellectually comprehensible spiritual world accessible to direct experience through inner development...
in 1923, but by 1929 he had repudiated it as yet another agent of the conspiracy. Meanwhile, he had begun to give lectures for the Ariosophical Society and was a contributor to Georg Lomer's originally Theosophical (and later, neopagan) periodical entitled Asgard
Asgard
In Norse religion, Asgard is one of the Nine Worlds and is the country or capital city of the Norse Gods surrounded by an incomplete wall attributed to a Hrimthurs riding the stallion Svadilfari, according to Gylfaginning. Valhalla is located within Asgard...
: A Fighting Sheet for the Gods of the Homeland. He also worked for Alfred Rosenberg's news agency during the 1920s before joining the SS. He lectured widely on conspiracy theories and was appointed an honorary SS professor in 1942, but was barred from lecturing in uniform because of his unorthodox views. In 1944 he was promoted to SS-Standartenführer on Himmler's recommendation.
Referred Literature
- Anna Bramwell. 1985. Blood and Soil: Richard Walther Darré and Hitler's 'Green Party. Abbotsbrook, England: The Kensal Press. ISBN 0-946041-33-4
- Joscelyn GodwinJoscelyn GodwinJoscelyn Godwin is a composer, musicologist and translator, known for his work on ancient music, paganism and music in the occult....
. 1996. ArktosArktosIn Greek mythology, Arktos was a centaur who fought against the Lapith spearmen....
: The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism, and Nazi Survival. Kempton, Ill.: Adventures Unlimited Press. ISBN 0-932813-35-6 - Nicholas Goodrick-ClarkeNicholas Goodrick-ClarkeNicholas Goodrick-Clarke B.A. , D.Phil. is a professor of Western Esotericism at University of Exeter and author of several books on esoteric traditions....
. 1985. The Occult Roots of NazismThe Occult Roots of Nazismthumb|right|Cover of the 1992 editionThe Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology: The Ariosophists of Austria and Germany, 1890-1935 is a book by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke. It is the "seminal work" on Nazi occultism and Ariosophy. The book also includes some...
: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology: The Ariosophists of Austria and Germany, 1890-1935. Wellingborough, England: The Aquarian Press. ISBN 0-85030-402-4. (Several reprints.) Expanded with a new Preface, 2004, I.B. Tauris & Co. ISBN 1-86064-973-4 - ———. 2002. Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity. New York University Press. ISBN 0-8147-3124-4. (Paperback, 2003. ISBN 0-8147-3155-4)
- H. T. Hakl. 1997: Nationalsozialismus und Okkultismus. In: Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke: Die okkulten Wurzeln des Nationalsozialismus. Graz, Austria: Stocker (German edition of The Occult Roots of Nazism)
- Heinz HöhneHeinz HöhneHeinz Höhne was a German journalist and historian who specialized in Nazi and intelligence history....
. 1966. Der Orden unter dem Totenkopf. Verlag Der Spiegel. ; 1969. The Order of the Death's Head: The Story of Hitler's SS. Martin Secker & Warburg. - Richard Steigmann-GallRichard Steigmann-GallRichard Steigmann-Gall is Associate Professor of History at Kent State University, and was the Director of the Jewish Studies Program from 2004 to 2010. He received his BA in 1989 and MA in 1992 from the University of Michigan, and his PhD in 1999 from the University of Toronto...
. 2003: The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-82371-5 - Harald Strohm. 1997. Die Gnosis und der Nationalsozialismus. . Suhrkamp.
Further reading
- Karla O. Poewe. 2005. New Religions and the Nazis, London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0415290258.
See also
- KirchenkampfKirchenkampfKirchenkampf is a German term that translates as "struggle of the churches" or "church struggle" in English. The term is sometimes used ambiguously, and may refer to one or more of the following different church struggles:...
- The Occult History of the Third ReichThe Occult History of the Third ReichThe Occult History of the Third Reich, narrated by Patrick Allen and directed by Dave Flitton, is a 1991 four-part History Channel documentary regarding the occult influences and history of Nazi Germany and early 20th century Germany.-Contents:...
- Nazis: The Occult ConspiracyNazis: The Occult ConspiracyNazis: The Occult Conspiracy, directed by Tracy Atkinson and Joan Baran, narrated by Malcolm McDowell, is an English language 1998 Discovery Channel documentary regarding Nazi occultism.-Soundtrack:...
- Nazi UFOsNazi UFOsIn science fiction, conspiracy theory, and underground comic books, stories or claims circulate linking UFOs to Nazi Germany. These German UFO theories describe supposedly successful attempts to develop advanced aircraft or spacecraft prior to and during World War II, and further claim the...
- Nazism and religionNazism and religionThis article gives an overview about religion in Nazi Germany and the Nazis' complex and shifting policy towards religion."The German census of May 1939 indicates that 54 percent of Germans considered themselves Protestant and 40 percent considered themselves Catholic, with only 3.5 percent...
- Neofascism and religionNeofascism and religionNeo-fascism and religion refers to debates about the relationships between neo-fascism and various religions.Some scholars, using the term neo-fascism in its narrow sense, consider certain contemporary religious movements and groups to represent forms of clerical or theocratic neofascism, including...
- Positive ChristianityPositive ChristianityPositive Christianity was a slogan of Nazi propaganda adopted at the NSDAP congress 1920 to express a worldview which is Christian, non-confessional, vigorously opposed to the spirit of "Jewish Materialism", and oriented to the principle of voluntary association of those with a common...
- German ChristiansGerman ChristiansThe Deutsche Christen were a pressure group and movement within German Protestantism aligned towards the antisemitic and Führerprinzip ideological principles of Nazism with the goal to align German Protestantism as a whole towards those principles...
- Protestant Reich ChurchProtestant Reich ChurchThe Protestant Reich Church, officially German Evangelical Church and colloquially Reichskirche, was formed in 1936 to merge the 28 regional churches into a unified state church that espoused a single doctrine compatible with National Socialism...
- Nazi archaeologyNazi archaeologyNazi archaeology refers to the movement led by various Nazi leaders, archaeologists, and other scholars, such as Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler, to research the German past in order to strengthen nationalism...
External links
- The Occult Roots of Nazism by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke - Short article at www.lapismagazine.org
- Magic Realism - A book review by William Main of The Occult Roots of Nazism, taken from the December 1994 issue of Fidelity magazine
- Nationalsozialismus und Okkultismus? Die Thule-Gesellschaft Article on an information page from the Swiss Reformed ChurchSwiss Reformed ChurchThe Reformed branch of Protestantism in Switzerland was started in Zürich by Huldrych Zwingli and spread within a few years to Basel , Bern , St...
- NARA Research Room: Captured German and Related Records on Microform in the National Archives: Captured German Records Filmed at Berlin (American Historical Association, 1960). Microfilm Publication T580. 1,002 rolls, including among, others, files of the Ahnenerbe and the Nachlass of Walter Darré.