Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology

by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke

Book Overview

Reveals how Nazism was influenced by powerful occult sects that thrived in Germany and Austria almost fifty years before Hitler's rise to power

Over half a century after the defeat of the Third Reich, Nazism remains a subject of extensive historical inquiry, general interest, and, alarmingly, a source of inspiration for resurgent fascism around the world. Goodrick-Clarke's powerful and timely book traces the intellectual roots of...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0814730604
• ISBN13: 9780814730607
• Release Date: September 1993
• Publisher: New York University Press
• Length: 203 Pages
• Weight: 0.84 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.9" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

A serious scholarly work

"The occult roots of Nazism" is not a sensationalist work claiming that Hitler was a Satanist or demoniac. Rather, it's a perfectly serious and scholarly work. The author, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, is a British professor specializing in the relationship between occultism and right-wing extremism, an admittedly obscure subject. The book deals with the Thule Society, the Germanenorden and other occult groups in interwar Germany and Austria. Guido von List, Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels and Rudolf von Sebottendorff are featured. It turns out that fascist occultism was simply a more extreme, exotic version of "völkisch" nationalism, a much broader movement. The function of occultism, in the author's opinion, was to sacralize the purported traditions of völkisch German nationalism, thereby turning them into really timeless truths (and religious dogmas). Inevitably, a book of this kind must confront the question of whether the Third Reich and the Nazi party were in some sense "occult". After all, the Nazis did use the swastika as their symbol, and so did some of the "Ariosophist" groups. Was Hitler himself influenced by this kind of evil occultism? Goodrick-Clarke believes that the influence, if any, must have been negligible. Hitler may have been an avid reader of the occult magazine "Ostara" and apparently sought out its editor Lanz to purchase back issues. The hysterical anti-Semitism of the magazine would have appealed to Hitler, but overall, there is little resemblance between the ideas of Lanz and later National Socialism. Goodrick-Clarke rejects other testimonies, according to which Hitler was influenced by Guido von List (although he may have read his works). A more promising line of evidence is that the Nazi party was originally established by the occultist Thule Society. However, the society seems to have been broader than the occultist milieu, and the Nazi party disavowed all occult connections when Hitler took it over. Indeed, Hitler even heckles the occultists in "Mein Kampf". However, Goodrick-Clarke does manage to find one connection between occultism and Nazism. Himmler actually believed in occultist lore, and was influenced by one Karl Maria Willigut, an "Irminist" neo-pagan whom Himmler promoted to a high-ranking position within the SS. The occult-inspired symbolism of the SS was apparently the work of Willigut. Goodrick-Clarke calls him "Himmler's magus". Wikipedia, less charitably, calls him Himmler's Rasputin! On balance, however, it must be concluded that Nazi evil was human, all too human. "The occult roots of Nazism" is a very well written book, and a relatively easy read, despite the obscure subject. It's already something of a classic, and deserves all its five stars.

The Occult Roots of Nazism.

_The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology_ by Nicholas Goodrick-Clark is an intriguing academic study on the pre-Nazi occult scene in Germany. The cover features a rather threatening Thule Gesellschaft symbol: a sword and swastika wrapped in laurels and a halo of emanating light. Many of the occult practices described in this book--palmistry, crystals, secret orders, hidden knowledge, spirit guides, channeling, tarot cards, fortune telling, astrology--have retained their popularity today in the New Age movement. What's particularly interesting about Goodrick-Clarke's work is he compares the Ariosophists List and Lanz to the ancient duelist philosophies of Gnosticism and Manicheanism in their extreme division of reality into two eternally conflicting forces of good (Aryans) and evil (Jews). Goodrick-Clarke begins his discussion by going back to the writings of Madame Helena Blavatsky, her two books _The Secret Doctrine_ and _Isis Unvieled_, and her occult Theosophical Society. Her books propagated a form of anti-rationalism and anti-scientism, instead relying upon supposed revealed secret doctrines by hidden masters in Tibet. Blavatsky believed there was a series of seven "root races" that lived on earth, of which the Aryan race was the fifth. Other notables connected with the occult at this time included Annie Besant, Charles Leadbeater and Bulwer Lytton. Lytton wrote in his work _The Coming Race_ of a subterranean race that was to give mankind new enlightenment and psychic abilities. Ariosophy, the so-called wisdom of the Aryans, developed from theosophical ideas and the general occult subcultures of the time. The political and motivation for the rise of occultism in Germany and Austria was the situation of the Austro -Hungarian Empire and the Hapsburg monarchy. Prussia had permanently excluded Austria from a role in a united German state by Bismark's military victories before 1871. However the Austrian Empire encompassed not only Hungary but also many nationalities of Slavic, non-German descent, in addition to Jewish minorities. The status of Germans as a whole in Austria was tenuous and the conservative elements of the populace were more inclined to fall for unorthodox metaphysical beliefs that would allow them to fight against the tides of political liberalism in the Empire. Hitler, it is to be noted, was not actually born in "Germany" proper but in the Austro-Hungarian Empire near the German border. Goodrick-Clarke takes care to note that Hitler despised the Hapsburg monarchy, while his sectarian occultist predecessors admired it as a bastion of German mystical/mythical tradition. In Vienna, during the late 1800s and early 1900s before World War I, two radical German nationalists, Guido von List and Adolf Lanz (who self-styled himself with the aristocratic title of von Liebenfels) researched and published a considerable amount of literature dealing with Germany's so-called repressed h

The Occult Roots of Nazism

This is a great book on the history of the movement. A lot of good info about Aryan Paganism in Germany at the start of the 1900s. I've known people who were involved with German Wotanism between the 1920s to 1945 and have books of and about that time period, but Mr. Goodricke-Clarke talks about alot of people I've never heard of before, and he gives new details about people I've read a great deal about. This book is the only source for a lot of this info. His new book Black Sun is like part II of The Occult Roots of Nazism. He talks about the Pagan Revival after WWII and all the new ideas and people in the movement. These two books should be read together.

The Nazi Underground.

This book chronicles some of the underground movements and popular delusions that existed in Germany and Austria before the Nazis came to power. It examines the influence these groups may have had on Nazi leaders in the SS, on Adolf Hitler, and on the thinking of Germans at the time. It is necessary to understand such extremist and occult groups in order to understand how the Nazis were able to take over Germany. Millenarian fantasies and a kind of cultural paranoia preoccupied the German mind, and these fantasies came to hold a unique place within various secret societies set up to propagate racist and occult doctrines (especially concerning the role of the "Aryan" race and it's existence in German prehistory). The author examines many eccentric German individualists, dreamers, and romantics and their role in occult societies. These include: Guido (von) List, who claimed to have rediscovered a Wotanist religion and was influenced by the Theosophist Helena Petrovna Blavatsky; Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels, who resurrected a sect based on the Knights Templars; the Ariosophists, who relied on a "theozoology" concerning the struggle of the Aryan race, and their secret societies, the Germanenorden, the Thule Society, and the Edda Society. The author also considers the influence of such individuals as Rudolf von Sebottendorf, Herbert Reichstein, and Karl Maria Wiligut on the SS (Himmler), and examines the role Ariosophical thinking might have played in the development of Adolf Hitler. The book includes several appendices, one of which deals with some of the sensationalist and "crypto-historical" literature that has sprang up around the occult and Nazism, which attributes a great role to the occult in the rise to power of the Nazis. This is an important book for understanding how collective delusions can arise in the mind of a country, particularly racist ideologies. The Nazis continue to exercise a fascination upon us, both for their brutality and for their nationalist mysticism. And, this book allows us to understand.[If you are interested in this kind of thing, I can also recommend any of the works by Norman Cohn, who is cited repeatedly in this book. He deals mostly with the medieval period, but you'll notice that the same sort of delusions and fantasies keep on cropping up throughout European history.]

Excellent presentation & documentation; a classic!

Folks who think that Nazism isn't all that bad would *hate* this book. Dr. Goodrick-Clarke has documented, with impressive comprehensiveness, aspects of the origins of the occult sections of Nazism from Ariosophy, Guido List, and other sources. He has gone back to original, primary sources (some of which are hard to get), and this research is impeccable. If one also reads "Unholy Alliance" (Levander), "Die Runenkunde im Dritten Reich" (Hunger), "Schwarze Fahnen, Runenzeichen" (WeiBmann), you'll see that this book is a first-class survey of the subject at hand. A "must read" for anyone interested in the occult aspects of Nazism!