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... fascism”. 746 “National Socialism was fundamentally and from the very start ‘Hitlerism’, and Hitler himself was, seen in this way, the first convinced ‘Hitlerite’”, writes Jochen Kirchhoff. He repeats Gottfried Benn’s question: did Hitler create the movement or did the movement create him? The answer of all knowledgeable people is unanimous: “There was and is no National Socialism without Hitler.... was a fortiori National Socialism. Therefore Fest can quote prominent Nazis as stating not only that “Hitler was the most radical Nazi of all”, but even that he was “the only Nazi” – just as Nietzsche said that Christ had been the only Christian. It was this way of seeing which allowed Konrad Heiden to entitle a chapter of his early Hitler biography “Hitler versus National Socialism”, in which “National... [non-aggression] Pact with Moscow?” But Jodl cut short the debate. “Gentlemen”, he said, “this is not a question for discussion but a decision of the Führer”. 750 Hitler reigned supreme and alone. National Socialism in the mind of its adherents meant in the first place an internal revolution which would give them stability and order instead of chaos, employment instead of joblessness and desperation, and ...

... bread alone but by the slogans which were inculcated into their brains, but they seem very credible to us now that we have acquired an idea of the varied background from which National Socialism emerged. In National Socialism there was a Christian current represented by figures like Dietrich Eckart, an admirer of the mystic Johannes Tauler, Arthur Dinter, who wanted to bring the Reformation to a ... The Vision of Adolf Hitler Hitler and his God Nazism “There was actually no ideology as such, no coherent, compact theory which could be called National Socialism. Even central concepts like ‘race’ or ‘Nordic’ were defined in quite differing and loose ways, or not at all,” writes the former Heidelberg Professor Klaus von See. 736 Heinz Höhne, historian... groups of the German population, could be extended endlessly when following the ramifications and the diversity of Nazi interests, many of which were intertwined or overlapped. The basics of National Socialism may be summarized as follows. The corner stone of the rather ramshackle ideological construction is the idea of the racial superiority of the Aryan-Nordic-Germanic people. Theoretically speaking ...

... “National Socialism is a Religion” It was the future propaganda-tsar Goebbels who wrote in 1928: “National Socialism is a religion. Only the religious inspiration, which shatters the old, outmoded formulas and creates new ones, is still missing. What we lack is a ritual. The time must come that National Socialism becomes the state religion of the Germans... responded to the call of the Führer-Messiah. “I call Hitler’s world vision and consequently National Socialism a religion”, 795 states Orzechowski; Bärsch writes that National Socialism “was not one or other ideology, but essentially a religion”; 796 and Klaus Vondung sees as the decisive factor in National Socialism that it consisted of “an independent religion”. 797 The Nazis had their own yearly cycle ...

... not an accident. So for instance George Mosse, who wrote: “National Socialism was not an aberration; neither was it without historical foundation. It was, rather, the product of the interplay of economic, social and political forces on the one hand, and human perceptions, hopes and longing for the good life on the other. National Socialism was successful as a mass movement precisely because it was... true German phenomenon.” 359 Another writer in exile, Hans Habe, expressed the same idea in one of his novels: “Everything has started with Luther … Luther is the inventor of National Socialism. The textbooks of National Socialism are no more than copies of the Wittenberg Theses … Luther’s Church is already the ‘German Church’ – and therefore no church any longer. The spreading of the Lutheran teaching... intellectuals of late nineteenth-century Germany [Paul de Lagarde and Julius Langbehn] were indistinguishable from Nazi ideologists. Given this cultural fact, it is amazing how many still think that National Socialism had little intellectual connection with the German past … The future leaders of Germany and their supporters were created long before 1914. It was never just Hitler and a few Nazis … By 1914 ...

... n; the redress of alleged injustices by the morally and culturally inferior victors of 1918; ostentation of strength and will power; rituals and music which made the German innards vibrate – National Socialism had everything to allure national, conservative and traditional Germany, including the idealists, who were much more influenced by all these notions than they themselves realized. Hitler masterly... considerable today, not just to louts and skinheads, but to the literate, the thoughtful, the well-educated, the artistically inclined … A number of the future conspirators … found elements in National Socialism they felt they could endorse. So, too, could certain members of Stefan George’s circle.” Claus von Stauffenberg would say: “Hitler is capable of putting into words certain basic and genuine ideas ...

... the facts, cannot explain the historical events. This is especially true as far as the history of the Third Reich is concerned … There is a wealth of quotations which show that Hitler conceived National Socialism as a religion. Until now no historian has drawn serious conclusions from this fact. The National Socialist religion appeared too abstruse to the analytical, scientific intelligence for it to... before yesterday’ in the German mentality, the ‘age-old neurotic base’, the ‘secret relation of the German nature with the demonical’, as Thomas Mann puts it, who sees in this one of the roots of National Socialism …” 662 ...

... “Near-Ultimate Evil” “During the post-war trials of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, material relating to the influence of esoteric thought on National Socialism and the Nazi hierarchy was deliberately suppressed, and has been lost to the record”, write Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh. “According to one of the British prosecutors, the late Airey Neave... commentators, the role of esotericism in the rise of Nazi-Germany was never accorded the attention it deserved. Instead of being assessed and explored as what it was, the religious dimension of National Socialism was nervously dismissed by such facile formulations as ‘mass madness’, ‘mass hysteria’ and ‘mass hypnosis’, and then subordinated to theories of economics, sociology and so-called political science ...

... their Führer and his brown-shirts had meant what they said, but it was too late to protest. The Nuremberg Laws put the seal on what had been announced as the fate of the Jews from the birth of National-Socialism, and what was now being pushed inexorably towards its fulfilment. On 30 January 1939, the solemnly commemorated anniversary of the Machtergreifung, Hitler pronounced the words against the... thought of the mendacious distortions in these few sentences? True, thinking about fundamentals was no longer what one did in Germany, or what was even permitted. No Jews had taken the rise of National-Socialism as a laughing matter, even if they had kept hoping that things would turn out better than expected and reasoned the danger away; no Jews had wanted war; and Bolshevism was not identical with ...

... not be won for a higher flight of the ideas. They were political toughs, hardened in the down-wearing struggle of every day. Their thought did not reach beyond the once accepted principles of National Socialism.” Hitler knew their strengths and their weaknesses very well, and rewarded their loyalty by satisfying their ambitions and greed. Only when this generation had died out could, secondly, “a... of “a new religion of humanity, the creation of a new human species”. Hitler realized that this would be possible only after the decisive war of world conquest “which was to come unavoidably”. National Socialism, or rather Hitlerism, was still in its infancy. “He touched repeatedly upon these topics in his conversations. And one felt, hidden behind his apparent resignation, the searing impatience to ...

... Men of Zion and Jewish World Politics. Though Hitler spoke sometimes scathingly of him in private, officially he remained regardful of Rosenberg’s intellectual contribution to the formation of National Socialism, and called him “a man of whose integrity of personal intention I am absolutely convinced”. 448 He appointed Rosenberg general supervisor of National-Socialist ideology for the whole Reich and... Were not Jews to be found in the vanguard of every socialist or communist revolution? These racist themes have become increasingly familiar to us, but now they were part of the doctrine of National Socialism. From 1933 onwards they would be the official doctrine of the Nazi state, and it would be Hitler’s intention to implement them as soon and fully as possible. He would try to cement them during ...

... reach, no mathematical or chemical formula, no philosophical theory, no human questioning”. 524 This mentality, the essence of the völkisch movement, is strongly denounced by Joachim Fest: “National Socialism laid bare phenomena of which the movement itself was in turn only a symptom: the most consistent expression in the field of political power groupings of a multiplicity of pseudo-religious longings... masses, for a share in their unthinking vitality and closeness to nature, but also in their force and historical effectiveness as expressed in the myth of the national community. Fundamentally National Socialism represented a politically organized contempt for the mind … “Its hostility to reason was intellectual, just as it was essentially a movement of failed intellectuals who had lost their faith ...

... depth of our national-socialist movement?” he asked Hermann Rauschning after having lifted a tip of the veil. “Can there be something that is greater and more comprehensive? He who has understood National-Socialism as no more than a political movement doesn’t know anything about it.” 313 Hitler defended keeping his party programme unchanged by writing: “The function which dogma fulfils in religious belief... in the impossible and unattainable. To us, politics is the miracle of the impossible!’” And Reuth comments: “In this irrationality, in this metaphysics of blind faith lay the actual essence of National-Socialism as a political religion.” 317 Because Hitler kept his most intimate thoughts a secret, “Germany subjected itself to a religion it did not know; it followed rites it did not understand; it exulted ...

... the masters of the world” (Rüdiger Sünner). “The German patriotism was the weakest point in the Germany of the pre-Hitler period”, writes Sebastian Haffner in 1939, “the spot where the toxin of National-Socialism could infiltrate. And that is still now the only point on which the Nazis and many civilized Germans agree.” 364 In this quotation everything depends on the meaning of the word “patriotism”,... impulses still very much alive. These were the hidden realities Romanticism fell back on, as did, in its wake, the völkisch movement which built up an imaginary world fed by deep instincts. “National Socialism was a völkisch movement”, states George Mosse. “Yet Hitler would never have succeeded in demonstrating the political effectiveness of the völkisch world vision had this perception of reality ...

... turn out to be another Götterdämmerung, so be it, they were ready to lay down their life with dignity. These were the realities as the völkisch youth saw them; they led straight to Nazism. “National Socialism was a völkisch movement”, states Mosse in the very first pages of his thorough study of the movement. We know about Hitler’s reservations on this point and will draw our conclusions later. It... “accepts the obligations of the community of the dead-but-immortals”. This experience, with its relations to Germanic prehistory, can be understood only in the Third Reich, writes Klaus von See. National-Socialism was a movement, an existentially and ecstatically “moved movement”. And he shows how during the Nazi period the word “fanatic” is no longer defined as “passionately zealous” but as “filled with ...

... crucial role in his decisions to go to war, each time as soon as possible. Claus-Ekkehard Bärsch states straightaway: “The model for Adolf Hitler is Christ”, 765 and John Toland asserts that “National Socialism was a religion and Hitler was its Christ.” 766 This is much more than a simile. Hitler took his role of saviour “with the utmost seriousness”, writes Joachim Fest, and attached a special significance ...

... quiet. Afterwards he slept for many hours. And then he was again bearable for some time.” 903 The novelist Joseph Roth wrote in his diary: “People have not yet understood, not even today, that National Socialism is not a political but an infernal movement. It cannot change its intentions because from the first only one intention was instilled into it according to the unfathomable will of the Eternal: ...

... 15. “The Lord of the Nations” Hitler and his God More Friends 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 ...

... these words were written] … we will find Wotan quite suitable as a causal hypothesis. In fact I venture the heretical suggestion that the unfathomable depths of Wotan’s character explain more of National Socialism than all reasonable factors put together.” 1095 In an earlier chapter of our story we have heard about Wotan, the one-eyed God with the green hat who rides at the head of his wild hunters ...

... gigantic mass manifestations, and the road of the movement cannot be cleared by dagger or pistol, but by the conquest of the street. We must teach Marxism that the future lord of the street is National Socialism, just as one day it will be the lord of the nation.” 180 And so it was that the Sturmabteilung (literally “attack section”), SA for short, came into being. At first these desperados were ...

... it was Sebottendorff’s disappearance which had made his appearance possible: “Sebottendorff had to sacrifice himself”, writes Sebottendorff, “he had to go not to smother the frail plant” – of National Socialism, that is. 232 The former Master of Thule made matters worse by trying to relaunch the Society, perhaps envisioning a place of honour in the Third Reich for himself and his former adherents. “Today ...

... Germans, Nordic Tribe, League of Loyalty for an Uplifting Life, Friends of the Light, Vikings, Eagle and Falcon, Storm Bird, etc. 468 All these groups of very dedicated and mostly young people – National Socialism too has been characterized as a youth movement – turned their back on the present and sought meaning and solace in the past. There were similar movements in other countries, but not on this scale ...

... something about this in his own way … Man becomes God, this is what it all means in simple words. Man is the becoming God …” And it was here that he spoke the oft-quoted words: “He who understands National Socialism only as a political movement knows practically nothing about it. It is more than a religion: it is the will to create a new humanity.” 808 We remember that in the decennia around 1900 the ...

... public life in accordance with its way of seeing things. Neither can it tolerate a survival of the institutions of the previous situation.” 781 Here the standpoint and intentions of Hitler’s National Socialism were fully spelled out in black and white; from this line Hitler never wavered. He steadfastly refused to compromise with any other organization, however rightist or völkisch, a standpoint he ...

... the steps after they have been undertaken; but it surpasses their knowledge – and it should surpass it – what an immense amount of labour has to be done before a new step forward can be made … National-Socialism is what Marxism could have been if it had separated itself from the absurd, artificial connection with a democratic order.” 605 Konrad Heiden, a closely involved observer of the events we ...

... avid and quickly learning disciple”. And Mosse adds quite rightly: “Thus it is indeed surprising that historians have failed to give Eckart due credit for his contribution to the viability of National Socialism.” 111 François Delpla puts it bluntly: “History has not been interested in Eckart.” 112 In their Hitler biographies Fest (1973) dedicates to Eckart one page, Toland (1976) one and a half paragraph ...

... book”, was “the idea that this Europe was not to arise as the result of a federation, but by the racially strongest nations [none other than the Germanic, of course] subjugating the others … National-Socialism will extend its revolution until the New Order has been achieved all through the world”. 351 “As things stand today, vast spaces still lie uncultivated all over the surface of the globe”, ...

... looks on at the free play of forces. Who has the strongest courage and industry obtains then, as her dearest child, the right of the lordship over all beings.” 293 One Nazi leader summed it up: “National Socialism is applied biology.” 294 ...

... ex-corporal as “the Führer by God’s grace, sent by heaven to the German people”. He would become Gauleiter, i.e. regional leader, of Thuringia, the German federal state which became a hotbed of National-Socialism after having been a centre of revolutionary communist activity, and perhaps in reaction to it. Dinter, now famous for his vicious hatred of the Jews, was also elected a member of the Thuringian ...

... mentality of their world, the end of which was greeted with jubilation in 1914. From the ‘German Youth’ originated the movement of the Wandervogel , many of whose best elements would later join National-Socialism … Their ideology was based on the “blood and soil” motto, hate against all civilization and liberalism, humanism and pacifism, social democracy and Bolshevism, as well as against Judaism.” After ...

... what is old and creates the possibility of new connections. It was with the concept of the nation that France took its great revolution across its borders. It is with the concept of race that National Socialism will conduct its revolution, which will lead to a new order in the world.” 452 Here again Hitler sees race as an abstraction, a “concept”, without any necessary foundation in reality, but to ...