The association ofNazism withoccultism occurs in a wide range of theories, speculation, and research into the origins of Nazism and into Nazism's possible relationship with various occult traditions. Such ideas have flourished as a part ofpopular culture since at least the early 1940s (duringWorld War II), and gained renewed popularity starting in the 1960s.
British historianNicholas Goodrick-Clarke analyzed the topic in his 1985 bookThe Occult Roots of Nazism, in which he argued there were in fact links between some ideals ofAriosophy and Nazi ideology. He also analyzed the problems of the numerous popular occult historiography books written on the topic, which he found heavily exaggerated the relationship between Nazism and the occult. Goodrick-Clarke sought to separateempiricism andsociology from the modernmythology of Nazi occultism that exists in many books which "have represented the Nazi phenomenon as the product of arcane anddemonic influence".[1] He evaluated most of the 1960 to 1975 books on Nazi occultism as "sensational and under-researched".[2]
HistorianNicholas Goodrick-Clarke's 1985 book,The Occult Roots of Nazism, discusses the possibility of links between the ideas of theoccult and those of Nazism. The book's main subject is the racist-occult movement ofAriosophy, a major strand of nationalistesotericism in Germany and Austria during the 19th and early 20th centuries. He introduces his work as "an underground history, concerned with the myths, symbols, and fantasies that bear on the development of reactionary, authoritarian, and Nazi styles of thinking," arguing that "fantasies can achieve a causal status once they have been institutionalized in beliefs, values, and social groups."[3]
In Goodrick-Clarke's view, the Ariosophist movement built on the earlier ideas of theVölkisch movement, atraditionalist,pan-German response toindustrialization andurbanization, but it associated the problems of modernism specifically with the supposed misdeeds ofFreemasonry,Kabbalah, andRosicrucianism in order to "prove the modern world was based on false and evil principles". The Ariosophist "ideas and symbols filtered through to several anti-semitic and Nationalist groups in late Wilhelmian Germany, from which the early Nazi Party emerged in Munich after the First World War." He demonstrated links between two Ariosophists andHeinrich Himmler.[3]
Appendix E of Goodrick-Clarke's book is entitledThe Modern Mythology of Nazi Occultism. In it, he gives a highly critical view of much of the popular literature on the topic. In his words, these books describe Hitler and the Nazis as being controlled by a "hidden power … characterized either as a discarnate entity (e.g., 'black forces', 'invisible hierarchies', 'unknown superiors') or as a magical elite in a remote age or distant location".[4] He referred to the writers of this genre as "crypto-historians".[4] The works of the genre, he wrote,
were typically sensational and under-researched. Complete ignorance of the primary sources was common to most authors and inaccuracies and wild claims were repeated by each newcomer to the genre until abundant literature existed, based on wholly spurious 'facts' concerning the powerfulThule Society, the Nazi links with the East, and Hitler's occult initiation.[5]
In a new preface for the 2004 edition ofThe Occult Roots of Nazism, Goodrick-Clarke comments that in 1985, when his book first appeared, "Nazi black magic" was regarded as a topic for sensational authors in pursuit of strong sales."[6]
In his 2002 workBlack Sun, which was originally intended to trace the survival of occult Nazi themes in the postwar period,[7] Goodrick-Clarke considered it necessary to readdress the topic. He devotes one chapter of the book to "the Nazi mysteries",[8] as he terms the field of Nazi occultism there. Other reliable summaries of the development of the genre have been written by German historians. The German edition ofThe Occult Roots of Nazism includes an essay, "Nationalsozialismus und Okkultismus" ("National Socialism and Occultism"), which traces the origins of the speculation about Nazi occultism back to publications from the late 1930s, and which was subsequently translated by Goodrick-Clarke into English. The German historian Michael Rißmann has also included a longer "excursus" about "Nationalsozialismus und Okkultismus" in his acclaimed book onAdolf Hitler's religious beliefs.[9]
According to Goodricke-Clarke, the speculation of Nazi occultism originated from "post-war fascination with Nazism".[10] The "horrid fascination" of Nazism upon the Western mind[11] emerges from the "uncanny interlude in modern history" that it presents to an observer a few decades later.[10] The idolization of Hitler in Nazi Germany, its short-lived dominion on the European continent and Nazism's extremeantisemitism set it apart from other periods of modern history.[11] "Outside a purely secular frame of reference, Nazism was felt to be the embodiment of evil in a modern twentieth-century regime, a monstrous pagan relapse in the Christian community of Europe."[11]
By the early 1960s, "one could now clearly detect a mystique of Nazism."[11] A sensationalistic and fanciful presentation of its figures and symbols, "shorn of all political and historical context", gained ground with thrillers, non-fiction books, and films and permeated "the milieu ofpopular culture."[11]
One of the earliest claims of Nazi occultism can be found inLewis Spence's bookOccult Causes of the Present War (1940). According to Spence,Alfred Rosenberg and his bookThe Myth of the Twentieth Century were responsible for promoting pagan, occult and anti-Christian ideas that motivated the Nazi party.
For ademonic influence on Hitler,Hermann Rauschning'sConversations with Hitler is brought forward as a source.[12] However, most modern scholars do not consider Rauschning reliable.[13] (As Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke summarises, "recent scholarship has almost certainly proved that Rauschning's conversations were mostly invented".)[14] The best that can be said for Rauschning's claims may be Goodrick-Clarke's judgment that they "record ... the authentic voice of Hitler by inspired guesswork and imagination."[14]
Similarly to Rauschning,August Kubizek, one of Hitler's closest friends since childhood, claims that Hitler—17 years old at the time—once spoke to him of "returning Germany to its former glory"; of this comment August said, "It was as if another being spoke out of his body, and moved him as much as it did me."[15]
The article "Hitler's Forgotten Library" by Timothy Ryback, published inThe Atlantic (May 2003),[16] mentions a book fromHitler's private library authored byErnst Schertel. Schertel, whose interests includedflagellation, dance, occultism,nudism andBDSM, had been an activist forsexual liberation before 1933. He had been imprisoned in Nazi Germany for seven months and his doctoral degree was revoked. He is supposed to have sent a dedicated copy of his 1923 bookMagic: History, Theory and Practice to Hitler some time in the mid-1920s. Hitler is said to have marked extensive passages, including one which reads "He who does not have the demonic seed within himself will never give birth to a magical world".[17]
TheosophistAlice A. Bailey stated duringWorld War II that Adolf Hitler was possessed by what she called theDark Forces.[18] Her followerBenjamin Creme has stated that through Hitler (and a group of equally evil men around him in Nazi Germany, together with a group of militarists in Japan and a further group around Mussolini in Italy[19]) was released the energies of theAntichrist,[20] which, according to theosophical teachings is not an individual person but forces of destruction.
According toJames Herbert Brennan in his bookOccult Reich, Hitler's mentor,Dietrich Eckhart (to whom Hitler dedicatesMein Kampf), wrote to a friend of his in 1923: "Follow Hitler! He will dance, but it is I who have called the tune. We have given him the 'means of communication' with Them. Do not mourn for me; I shall have influenced history more than any other German."[21]
The Vatican's chief exorcist, FatherGabriele Amorth, held the belief that Hitler and other Nazi leaders were influenced by demons.[22]
Conspiracy theorists "frequently identify German National Socialism among other things as a precursor of the New World Order".[23] With regard to Hitler's later ambition of imposing the Nazi regime throughout Europe,Nazi propaganda used the termNeuordnung (often poorly translated as "theNew Order", while actually referring to the "re-structurization" of state borders on the European map and the resulting post-war economic hegemony of Greater Germany),[24] so one could probably say that the Nazis pursueda new world order in terms of politics. But the claim that Hitler and theThule Society conspired to create aNew World Order (a conspiracy theory, put forward on some webpages)[25] is completely unfounded.[26]
There are also unverifiable rumours that the occultistAleister Crowley sought to contact Hitler during World War II. Despite several allegations and speculations to the contrary, there is no evidence of such an encounter.[27] In 1991,John Symonds, one of Crowley'sliterary executors, published a book:The Medusa's Head or Conversations Between Aleister Crowley and Adolf Hitler, which has definitively been shown to be literary fiction.[27] That the edition of this book was limited to 350 also contributed to the mystery surrounding the topic.[27] Mention of a contact between Crowley and Hitler—without any sources or evidence—is also made in a letter fromRené Guénon toJulius Evola dated October 29, 1949, which later reached a broader audience.[27]
Whether Hitler had met Hanussen at all is not certain. That he even encountered him before March 1927 is not confirmed by other sources about Hanussen. In the late 1920s to early 1930s Hanussen made political predictions in his own newspaper,Hanussens Bunte Wochenschau, that gradually started to favour Hitler, but until late 1932 these predictions varied.[28] In 1929, Hanussen predicted, for example, thatWilhelm II would return to Germany in 1930 and that the problem of unemployment would be solved in 1931.[28]
Nazi mysticism in German culture is further expanded in an article byManfred Nagl [de], "SF (Science Fiction), Occult Sciences, and Nazi Myths", published in the journalScience Fiction Studies. In it, Nagl writes that the racial narratives described in contemporary German Science Fiction stories, like The Last Queen of Atlantis, by Edmund Kiss, provide further notions of racial superiority under the auspices of Ariosophy,Aryanism, and alleged historic racial Mysticism, suggesting that writings associated with possible Occultism, Ariosophy, or Aryanism were products intended to influence and justify in a socio-political manner, rather than simply establish cultural heritage. The stories themselves dealt with "...heroes, charismatic leader types, (who) have been chosen by fate—with the resources of a sophisticated and extremely powerful technology".[29] Nagl considers science fiction pieces like Atlantis further fueled the violent persuasiveness of Nazi leaders, such as Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler, as further justification for a "Nazi elite (envisioning) for itself in occupied East European territories".[29] This, in turn, allegedly propagated public support of Nazi ideology, summated by Nagl as "a tremendous turning back of culture, away from the age of reason and consciousness, toward the age of a 'sleepwalking certainty', the age of supra-rational magic".[30] An example of this claim was demonstrated in World War II, when theWehrmacht occupiedHouska Castle until 1945. The Nazis were said to have conducted experiments[31] into the occult.[32] According to one source, there were "multiple myths about their supposed occult involvements there".[33][34][verification needed] Another source states locals believed that the Nazis had been using the "powers of Hell" for their experiments. As of early 2020, the castle was open to the public and had been since 1999. Tourists may visit the chapel with fading frescoes and murals "including pictures of demon-like figures and animal-like beings".[34][verification needed]
In the essay that is included in the German edition ofThe Occult Roots...,Hans Thomas Hakl, an Austrian publisher of esoteric works,[35] traces the origins of the speculation about Nazism and Occultism back to several works from the early 1940s. His research was also published in a short book,Unknown sources: National Socialism and the Occult, translated by Goodrick-Clarke. Already in 1933 a pseudonymousKurt van Emsen described Hitler as a "demonic personality", but his work was soon forgotten.[36] The first allusions that Hitler was directed by occult forces which were taken up by the later authors came from FrenchChristian esotericist René Kopp.[37] In two articles published in the monthly esoteric journalLe Chariot from June 1934 and April 1939, he seeks to trace the source of Hitler's power to supernatural forces.[37] The second article was titled: "L'Enigme du Hitler".[37] In other French esoteric journals of the 1930s, Hakl could not find similar hints.[37] In 1939 another French author, Edouard Saby, published a book:Hitler et les Forces Occultes.[38] Saby already mentions Hanussen andIgnaz Trebitsch-Lincoln.[39] Hakl even hints that Edouard Saby would have the copyright on the myth of Nazi occultism.[39] However, another significant book from 1939 is better known:Hermann Rauschning'sHitler Speaks. There it is said (in the chapter "Black and White Magic"), that "Hitler surrendered himself to forces that carried him away. … He turned himself over to a spell, which can, with good reason and not simply in a figurative analogy, be described as demonic magic." The chapter "Hitler in private" is even more dramatic, and was left out in the German edition from 1940.[40]
Goodrick-Clarke examines several pseudo-historic "books written about Nazi occultism between 1960 and 1975", that "were typically sensational and under-researched".[5] He terms this genre "crypto-history", as its defining element and "final point of explanatory reference is an agent which has remained concealed to previous historians of National Socialism".[4] Characteristic tendencies of this literature include: (1) "a complete ignorance of primary sources" and (2) the repetition of "inaccuracies and wild claims", without the attempt being made to confirm even "wholly spurious 'facts'".[41] Books debunked in Appendix E ofThe Occult Roots of Nazism are:
More than 60 years after the end of theThird Reich, Nazism and Adolf Hitler have become a recurring subject in historydocumentaries. Among these documentaries, there are several that focus especially on the potential relations between Nazism and occultism, such asthe History Channel's documentaryHitler and the Occult.[46][47] As evidence of Hitler's "occult power" this documentary offers, for example, the infamous statement byJoachim von Ribbentrop of his continued subservience to Hitler at theNuremberg Trials.[48] After the authorDusty Sklar has pointed out thatHitler's suicide happened at the night of April 30/May 1, which isWalpurgis Night, the narrator continues: "With Hitler gone, it was as if a spell had been broken." A much more plausible reason for Hitler's suicide (that does not involve the paranormal) is that the Red Army had already closed to within several hundred meters ofHitler's bunker and he did not want to be captured alive.
From the perspective of academic history, these documentaries on Nazism, if ever commented, are seen as problematic because they do not contribute to an actual understanding of the problems that arise in the study of Nazism and Neo-Nazism. Without referring to a specific documentaryMattias Gardell, a historian who studies contemporary separatist groups, writes:
In documentaries portraying the Third Reich, Hitler is cast as a master magician; these documentaries typically include scenes in which Hitler is speaking at huge mass meetings. [...] Cuts mix Hitler screaming with regiments marching under the sign of the swastika. Instead of providing a translation of his verbal crescendos, the sequence is overlaid with a speaker talking about something different. All this combines to demonize Hitler as an evil wizard spellbinding an unwitting German people to become his zombified servants until they are liberated from the spell by the Allied victory after which, suddenly, there were no German Nazis left among the populace. How convenient it would be if this image were correct. National socialism could be defeated with garlic. Watchdog groups could be replaced with a few vampire killers, and resources being directed into anti-racist community programs could be directed at something else. [...]
The truth, however, is that millions of ordinary German workers, farmers and businessmen supported the national socialist program. [...] They were people who probably considered themselves good citizens, which is far more frightening than had they merely been demons.[49]
At least one documentary,Hitler's Search for the Holy Grail, includes footage from the1939 German expedition to Tibet. The documentary describes it as "the most ambitious expedition" of the SS. This original video material was made accessible again by Marco Dolcetta in his seriesIl Nazismo Esoterico in 1994.[50] An interview that Dolcetta conducted with Schäfer does not support the theories of Nazi occultism, neither does Reinhard Greve's 1995 articleTibetforschung im SS Ahnenerbe (Tibet Research Within the SS Ahnenerbe),[51] although the latter does mention the occult thesis.[50] Hakl comments that Greve should have emphasized more strongly the unreliability of authors like Bergier and Pauwels or Angbert.[50]Ernst Schäfer's expedition report explicitly remarks on the "worthless goings-on" by "a whole army of quacksalvers" concerning Asia and especially Tibet.[50]
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
.svg)
