Hitler and his God

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Observing the origins of National Socialism along the line followed in our story, one discerns two distinct groups among Hitler’s paladins: the likes of Hess, Rosenberg, Streicher, Dinter, Göring, Röhm, Frank, Esser, Gürtner and Frick; and the likes of Himmler, Goebbels, von Schirach and Speer. The former were all men of the first hour who clearly had a common bond with Hitler which allowed them to survive the most dangerous crises in their relationship. Even in the case of Röhm, the main target in the Night of the Long Knives and the one exception in this group, Hitler needed a full day to decide that Röhm should die and gave him the choice of a honourable death by shooting himself. And Hess, who by flying to Scotland had given Hitler “the second worst personal blow of his life” 1022 (the first having been the death of Geli Raubal), was confident that Hitler would understand and forgive him in case they met again. The second group, however close to their Führer at certain times, came “from elsewhere” and was, instead of having the personal bond with Hitler, simply possessed by him. In each of their cases, the process of their becoming dependent is known in detail. The convergence of these facts again leads to the conclusion of an occult secret behind the surface patterns known as history.

Alfred Rosenberg and his wife were fugitives from the Russian revolution; they landed in Munich towards the end of 1918 and became part of the Russian community there. During the troubled times in their country, most Russian intellectuals had been profoundly influenced by Theosophy (Madame Blavatsky was a Russian, after all) and many of them also by spiritism (remember Rasputin). The imperial court had set the example by its practice of spiritism and other forms of occultism, and there was an wide-ranging spiritist literature in the Russian language. These interests were brought with them by the numerous Russian communities in West European cities, also in Germany.

Shortly after his arrival in Munich, Rosenberg went to meet the well-known Dietrich Eckart. They got along at once because of their common interest in mysticism, anti-Semitism and anti-Bolshevism, and Rosenberg became “Eckart’s right hand”, assisting him with the writing and editing of In Plain German. Another of their common interests was occultism, and Eckart introduced the German Balt to the Thule Society in the spring of 1919. A few weeks later he introduced him also to Adolf Hitler, who was becoming a daily visitor at Eckart’s house. Rosenberg’s relation with Hitler was, at that time, “very friendly” (Bärsch).

Rosenberg’s whole personality was strongly focused on the occult, as may be deduced from his major opus, The Myth of the Twentieth Century, and more in particular from his obsession with Zionism and Freemasonry. It was he who translated The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, published them in the Völkischer Beobachter, and commented upon them in a stream of anti-Semitic pamphlets. All this did not prevent him from being an admirer of the Indian scriptures, Christ and Meister Eckhart. Part of the world of this pale-faced, intellectual personality was his rootedness in the dream. “Rosenberg emphasized the importance for life of the dream explicitly, emphatically and energically”, writes Bärsch. “Rosenberg ascribes to the dream and the myth practically the same attributes … The dream is the activity of a power of the soul; the dream as such is cause as well as power ‘and results finally in the creative act.” 1023

Rosenberg was one of many who became instant Hitlerians after having experienced the man during one of his speeches, although he had remained unimpressed when meeting him personally beforehand. Another one was Julius Streicher, the notorious publisher of Der Stürmer, an anti-Semitic gutter publication which, after the coming to power of the Nazis, saw its circulation increase from 20 000 to over 400 000 copies. One of its most faithful readers was the Führer and Chancellor himself, and he will defend Streicher through thick and thin, also after having had to remove him as Gauleiter of Thuringia for recurrent misbehaviour and corruption. “There is, in spite of all his weaknesses, not a single full-blooded personality like him … And the Jew is much more base, bloodthirsty and satanical than Streicher has depicted him”, said Hitler in one of his monologues. 1024

He will never forget that in 1922, after his “conversion”, Streicher transferred in toto the German Socialist Party (DSP), of which he was the chairman, to the NSDAP. The reader may remember that the DSP was one of the two political parties which had been floated by the Thule Society to attract the working class to the nationalist cause, the other and considerably more successful being the DAP. From then onwards Streicher, sporting a whip just like his Führer, had been a most reliable Nazi. On photos taken during the Beerhall Putsch he can be seen addressing the crowd at the Marienplatz, the heart of Munich, when none of the participants knew how to proceed further and Ludendorff gave the order to march on to the Feldherrnhalle, where the shoot-up would take place.

“Streicher associated the conviction of ultimate victory with the existence of Adolf Hitler, this in blatant contradiction with the empirical reality, for Hitler possessed hardly any power at the time”, writes Claus-Ekkehard Bärsch. “Julius Streicher believed not only that Adolf Hitler was blessed by God, but also that he was the intermediary between God and humanity.” Bärsch also points out that Streicher’s faith in Hitler was not based upon race. “One reads nowhere in Julius Streicher, generally labelled a primitive racist, that Adolf Hitler is the Führer because in him the potential of the Aryan race has been actualized to perfection. The significance of Adolf Hitler does not come from below, from nature and race, but from above, in the struggle for a redeeming future against the evil enemy of the world.” 1025

“Streicher had a close relationship with Dinter and was also befriended with Dietrich Eckart”, notes Martin Sobieroj. “The overwhelming impression made by Hitler in the state of possession on those present [during spiritist séances] could explain why Streicher incorporated his followers nearly as one body into the NSDAP on 20.10.22.” And it could explain why Streicher considered Hitler the saviour of the German people sent by God. Streicher himself acted as a basely possessed figure without any humane feelings. “He was considered disgusting even in the Third Reich”, according to Speer, and Joseph Persico observed at Nuremberg that “the man had become a pariah, reviled by his captors and shunned by his fellow defendants”. 1026 But “Streicher spoke and acted aloud what Hitler secretly thought and desired”, remarks Heiden. “Streicher was the embodiment of Hitler’s subconscious.” 1027

Arthur Dinter was the man who openly revolted against Hitler, accused him of betraying the original ideals of the NSDAP and demanded that he be deposed as Leader of the Party – all this when Hitler had already come to power and held the life of every German in his hand. As we have seen in an earlier chapter, Hitler did not even throw Dinter into a concentration camp; he simply isolated him in a way that he could no longer be heard and do no further harm.

Dinter acknowledged that he had been a practising spiritist. He had discovered spiritism shortly after the war when staying at a hotel in Luzern. There “a group of hotel guests began to make the tables turn after their repertoire of party games had been exhausted, all known aria’s and popular songs had been sung, and a teenager had been repeating for the twelfth time a song with the refrain ‘I love you’”. Dinter maintained that he had studied spiritism and occultism in general from a scientific point of view. When he published The Sin against the Spirit, a sequel to his immensely successful anti-Semitic novel The Sin against the Blood, he dedicated it to the two mediums who had been channelling the communications of a spirit which were incorporated in the novel.

According to Sobieroj’s sources, Dinter had been acquainted with Streicher and Eckhart, who had put him into contact with Hitler. Dinter, in his turn, should have put Hitler in contact with his main spirit who called himself Segensbringer, literally meaning “bringer of blessings”. If true, this spirit should have been the same as Hitler’s Lord of the Nations, for it is improbable that the latter would have suffered another paranormal entity to exert an influence over his choice subject. “Dinter’s influence upon Hitler, because of his spiritist foundation of racism and his practical spiritist experience, might therefore have been much more important than is commonly supposed”, conjectures Sobieroj. 1028 It would anyhow explain the extraordinary lenience Hitler showed towards a man who once had been one of the Nazi trailblazers in the venerable town of Weimar, but who had also dared to defy him.

Was Karl Haushofer really “an accomplished black magician” as one reads in certain “spurious” authors? His ambitions as éminence grise behind the National Socialist movement were certainly limitless, but he will always see Rudolf Hess as the prime mover behind Hitler – even when he was applauding Hitler’s first “geopolitical” success quite loudly – with himself of course as the source of inspiration behind Hess. As indicated above, there can be little doubt that Haushofer and Hess were involved in occult and more specifically in spiritist activities. In the interrogations by the Allies in May 1945, after the war had ended, Haushofer will try to play down his part in defining Hitler’s international war objectives; he will also insinuate that some chapters of Mein Kampf were written by Hess, which must have happened in his imagination. Hitler has always been his own man from the time he began to take his distance from Eckart, somewhere in 1923. And he was his own man because he had a direct contact with the highest inspiration, his god: the Lord of the Nations.

Hess always protected Karl Haushofer and his son Albrecht, dearer to him than his own relatives, even though the Haushofers belonged in the Jewish camp. Both were honoured with high educational positions, and Albrecht, widely travelled and well-connected in Great Britain, will even be a temporary consultant with the Dienststelle Ribbentrop, the think tank of the German Foreign Minister, and in this capacity assist Hitler at the infamous Munich conference of 1938. Only when the Haushofers found out that Hitler was going to march against Russia did they begin to question their opportunist pro-Nazi stance. They were certainly involved in Hess’ plans to fly to Scotland in order to convince a fictional anti-Churchill faction to make peace and thus spare Germany a two-front war. Although Albrecht was a personal friend of the Duke of Hamilton, whom Hess wanted to meet, the way in which the political realities in London were misjudged is rather amazing.

Goebbels wrote in his diary: “The Haushofers, father and son, have the Hess case on their conscience.” 1029 They were interrogated by the secret police and their careers took a nosedive from that time onwards. Several Führer decrees were promulgated henceforth forbidding any form of occult activity (except secretly at the instance of high Nazi authorities). But Hitler still did not eliminate the Haushofers. An inwardly torn Albrecht will later be imprisoned on the accusation of complicity in the Stauffenberg plot to kill Hitler. A few days before the end of the war he will be executed on Himmler’s orders by an SS-squad in the ruins of Berlin, clenching in his fist 80 remarkably spiritual sonnets.

Karl and Martha Haushofer will commit suicide after having learned that their other son had found and identified Albrecht’s body. By that time Hess, simulating loss of memory, denied to Karl Haushofer’s face that he had ever known him. To Speer he had however confided that the idea of flying to Scotland “had been inspired in him in a dream of supernatural forces”. 1030 This refers clearly to spiritist practice and is the only “logical” explanation of Hess’ undertaking. For the preparations for “Operation Barbarossa” were already in an advanced phase on 10 May, the date of Hess’ flight, and it is unimaginable that Hitler would have allowed an operation of this magnitude to depend on a circus act.