Michael Fitzgerald - The Nazis and the Supernatural: The Occult Secrets of Hitlers Evil Empire

Adolf Hitlers impact on the world is unprecedented and unparalleled. In twelve short years he left an indelible impact on history and the consequences of many of his actions continue to affect the world today. Even during his lifetime, he was as much a myth as a human being, and with the increasing distance of years his figure still fascinates to a unique degree. If anything, he has become even more like a cartoon villain than a real individual.

Following the defeat of Germany in the Second World War many people who had been enthusiastic Nazis rushed to denounce Hitler and to deny or minimize their own part in the regime. The safely dead Hitler and, to a lesser extent, Himmler were blamed for all the excesses and barbarity of the regime in a mass process of collective denial of guilt and individual responsibility that remains a unique phenomenon in human history.

There are several ways of interpreting historical events and processes and particularly the career of Hitler and the extraordinary period of the Nazi ascendancy. Hitler himself subscribed to Carlyles great man theory and saw himself as a heroic figure who had taken charge of the destiny of Germany and sought to place it on the path to greatness. Many of his contemporaries agreed with that estimate and broadly saw Hitler in those terms.

According to the Marxist interpretation of events, Hitler was simply a pawn who was manipulated into power to serve the interests of a desperate capitalist class and prevent the possibility of a Communist takeover in Germany. His policies were nothing more than capitalism applied with exceptional brutality and Hitler himself nothing more than a tool of big business. It was largely the level of unemployment within Germany that gave Hitler his chance.

Conservative interpretations of Hitler and the Nazis tend to stress the sense of national humiliation following the Treaty of Versailles, the occupation of the Ruhr and the shared sense of national failure. By giving Germans back a feeling of collective self-confidence, pride in their nation and themselves, a revived sense of community and the promise of renewed greatness, Hitler won their support and was able to make himself master of Germany.

In recent years what might be called technical explanations have become more common. These theories stress the ability of Hitler and Goebbels to use propaganda, Hitlers power as a public speaker, the relative youth of the Nazi leadership and Hitlers cynical attempt to project an image of sex appeal to women voters as the principal reasons for his success.

The culmination of Hitlers cult of personality: Albert Speers Cathedral of Light inspired a feeling of religious awe among those attending the Nuremberg Rally of 1936.

There are also various psychological explanations for Hitlers temporary triumph. His ability to tune in to the collective feelings of a nation, his capacity for rousing the emotions of a mass audience and his uncanny genius for diagnosing peoples strengths and weaknesses have all been put forward to account for the Nazi phenomenon.

A variation of the psychological analysis approach is the range of theories putting forward an occult explanation for Nazism. Such ideas were first put forward as early as the 1930s, but it was with the astonishing success of Pauwels and Bergiers The Morning of the Magicians in the 1960s that they entered popular consciousness and became fashionable. A number of other writers followed their example, some engaging in a serious analysis of the extent to which occult factors did or did not play a significant part in the regime and others in little more than fantastic speculation.

There is of course some truth in all of the proposed explanations for Hitlers remarkable success. Without the dire economic position of Germany from 1929 to 1933 it is doubtful whether Hitler would ever have come to power. The sense of national humiliation within Germany was undoubtedly profound, but it could have been appealed to equally by a more conventionally nationalist politician as Stresemann demonstrated during the 1920s. The ability of Goebbels to manipulate public opinion through propaganda is also unquestionable as is Hitlers power as a rabble rouser and his awareness of and capacity for appealing to the collective feelings of a nation. All these factors certainly played an important part in his success, and yet the extent to which Nazism was a unique phenomenon remains. Stalin, Mao and other dictators were equally ruthless and homicidal, but even at their worst there was a core of logic behind their actions. Only Pol Pot among tyrants displayed the same degree of utter insanity and destructiveness, which is perhaps why he is the only dictator regarded with similar loathing.

Hitlers irrationality permeated every aspect of his life, his ideas and the manner in which Nazi Germany functioned once he came to power. His obsessional racism went far beyond simple prejudice and his policies of genocide continued until the last possible moment in spite of the far more urgent demands of the war. Hitlers frequently expressed contempt for rationality and science was hardly a helpful attitude in terms of restoring Germany to a position of greatness. His known belief in Hrbigers Glacial Cosmogony was at least partly responsible for losing the war in Russia. During the final stages of the war he and Goebbels examined the horoscope of Germany to find a magical reprieve from defeat through the position of the stars in the heavens.

Many historians ignore, dismiss or downplay these aspects of Hitler and the regime. When faced with the exaggerated claims of some writers that Hitler and the Nazis were practising Satanists who were overwhelmingly motivated by occult considerations, it is difficult not to sympathize, but such an analysis of the Third Reich and its leader is not remotely plausible. On the other hand, to regard the occult aspects of the regime as of no importance or even as total fabrications is equally to be guilty of a flawed, superficial and inaccurate picture.

Occult factors and ideas undoubtedly entered into the thoughts and actions of Hitler and other Nazi leaders. They were certainly not the most important considerations in determining policy and decisions, but all the same they played a part.

The Nazi Occult War separates fact from fiction, myth from reality and examines to what extent occult factors affected Hitler and the Third Reich. The results of this analysis may well surprise both the fantasists and the doubters.

The twelve years during which the Nazi Party ruled Germany and much of Europe were so fundamentally governed by irrational and even magical thinking that the whole period has sometimes been referred to as the occult Reich. Hitler, Hess, Goering, Himmler, Bormann, Goebbels and Rosenberg were simply the most prominent believers in a way of thought that was entirely at odds with the secular thinking that had come to prevail in Europe. When the Third Reich was no more than a smouldering ruin, the Allied conquerors took a number of statements from Nazi Party members and discovered many documents about the way in which a range of occult notions had come to dominate the thinking of the most powerful leaders within Germany. They were so astonished by what they discovered that the evidence was deliberately suppressed at the Nuremberg Trials for fear that it would allow the defence lawyers to plead insanity on behalf of their clients.