Article ID: CBB001212924

Hitler's Monsters: The Occult Roots of Nazism and the Emergence of the Nazi “Supernatural Imaginary” (2012)

unapi

Kurlander, Eric (Author)


German History
Volume: 30, no. 4
Issue: 4
Pages: 528-549

While occult figures undoubtedly played an important role in the early days of the NSDAP, it is equally clear that leading Nazis criticized and persecuted occult organizations thereafter. Nevertheless, the sociopolitical and intellectual networks between the early Nazi Party and the Thule Society were richer and more complex than much recent scholarship would suggest. The NSDAP retained closer ties to the Wilhelmine occultist milieu than any mass party of the Weimar era. More importantly, the NSDAP went far beyond the obscure theories of `völkisch wandering scholars' to craft a broader, more populist message that drew on elements of prewar occultism but was also more ideologically eclectic and politically accessible; what I call the `supernatural imaginary'. As the Nazi Party grew in stature and influence after 1919, the occultist `true believers' in the party ranks were often marginalized and persecuted. However, even skeptics recognized the utility of exploiting a supernatural imaginary that might appeal to a larger bourgeois social milieu that viewed popular aspects of the occult as fundamental to negotiating the complexities of modern life. If the Nazis appeared uncertain of how to proceed toward supernatural belief and practices, it was because they, for all their invocations of `enlightenment' (Aufklärung), attacks on `superstition' (Aberglaube), and internecine squabbling over the proper role of science and religion in the Third Reich, still recognized the utility, indeed, the necessity, of appealing to postwar Germany's desperate `longing for myth' and desire for transcendence in making their amorphous racial and imperial visions a reality.

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Authors & Contributors
Leporiere, Lorenzo
Alvarado, Carlos S.
Miroslav Sikora
Pierroberto Scaramella
Kyle Falcon
Maraldi, Everton de Oliveira
Concepts
National Socialism
Occult sciences
Supernatural
Spiritualism
Parapsychology; psychic phenomena
Science and politics
Time Periods
20th century, early
19th century
20th century
Places
Germany
United States
Naples (Italy)
Italy
Great Britain
Silesia (Poland and Germany)
Institutions
Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Anthropologie, Menschliche Erblehre und Eugenik
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