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The Occult in WW2

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StormDetachment

StormDetachment

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Dec 3, 2017
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THE OCCULT IN WW2. I will discuss the German Reich here, but not in a Pro-Reich sense or anything like that.
"The Occult? Didn't that die hundreds of years ago? Or isn't that controlled by witches from tumblr?"
No, well at least not in the 1940s.
During the rise of AH in Germany, he was very anti-Christian and anti-atheist. AH started to censor certain parts of Christianity and other religious texts. He made something called "Positive Christianity". But we can save that topic for another day.

Many top German officials were interested and followed the Occult or Germanic paganism. One of the most famous being, Heinrich Himmler and Rudolf Hess.
RUDOLF HESS
He was a member of the Thule Society before getting into the NSDAP. The Thule Society was interested in the origins of the Aryan race and other occult ideals. Hess loved these ideas and was one of the biggest supporters. Hess was interested in racial theory and this lead him to believe in ideas similar to Himmler's.
HEINRICH HIMMLER
Heinrich Himmler, was the founder of Esoteric Hitlerism. The mysticism around AH and national socialism. Himmler founded the Ahnenrbe. A research project on the Aryan race and its foundations. Soon expeditions started all over the world to research the Aryan race. Some in Antarctica, Finland, and the Himalayas. Because of his obsession with the occult it became his own tool to research his ideas. He tried to prove that the Nordic population once ruled the world.

This was a short essay on the Occult in Germany. I may continue this project later.
Thank you for reading and make sure to leave down anything I missed or improvements.
 
Afaik weird cults like that werent uncommon back then. Hell they are even common today.
 
I guess so. But these were people in high power, so it's much more different. I mean imagine if Germany won, Europe would be transformed into a Pagan continent.
But today, the organizations are usually just people from tumblr or some weird Satanists.
 
StormDetachment said:
I guess so. But these were people in high power, so it's much more different. I mean imagine if Germany won, Europe would be transformed into a Pagan continent.
But today, the organizations are usually just people from tumblr or some weird Satanists.
Click to expand...

The Nazi Party was in the main protestant and Catholic Christian, just like the majority of German citizens. The occult weirdness was really only found in a small group of Nazis, although several powerful individuals certainly were deeply involved. Even if Germany had won and Himmler became the next Fuhrer, Europe would have remained solidly Christian as the vast majority of its citizens remained Christian and the support of the church was an important factor in Nazi control.
 
Long-term Church - Nazi relations would have been a very interesting topic, I think. I mean, it's an interesting topic even now, especially during the Nazi rise, but how they would have handled the Church after a victory is I think tough to predict (obviously mass-pagan conversions weren't going to happen, but that didn't mean they'd accept the Christian Churches being around to preach "things" either).
 
If you want more info on how deep the Nazi crazy went on occult stuff, I suggest Kenneth Hite's The Nazi Occult. There you'll learn all about their weird ass theories about the origins of mankind (spoilers, we are the fifth sapient race to inhabit the earth. Some of our predecessors were beings made out of electricity. Also jews are literaly a holdover from a previous nonhuman species) and how they went around collecting "evidence" of the primordial Aryan race and the other wacky shit the Ahnernebe SS got up to.

If you don't feel like buying and reading a book, maybe give this podcast a listen where Hite talks about the book so you can get a taste.
http://www.blurryphotos.org/episode-38-kenneth-hite-the-nazi-occult/

But seriously, they were after Atlantis, they were after Thor's Hammer, they were after the Holy Grail! It's almost as if national socalism was kind of a crazy ideology!
 
Actually they did scientific work to prove their theories :D
 
The SS had quite a strong investment in all things occult.
Something akin the the story of 'Return to Castle Wolfenstein' would not have been beyond them.
As it stood they had their own castle (Wewelsburg) chokeful of occult symbolism.
Lineages that connected every last one of them to some notable of the German past (We'll probably never know how they reached beyond the burned pastures of the 30 years war).
And of course Ahnenerbe
And this.
And this.
 
Pyoro said:
Long-term Church - Nazi relations would have been a very interesting topic, I think. I mean, it's an interesting topic even now, especially during the Nazi rise, but how they would have handled the Church after a victory is I think tough to predict (obviously mass-pagan conversions weren't going to happen, but that didn't mean they'd accept the Christian Churches being around to preach "things" either).
Click to expand...
I think the Prussian Lutheran churches offer a clear enough example; the hierarchy was taken over (leading to a schism between the church and those who thought that whole taking over was an assault on the Faith), making the church another tool of the state.

This, of course, led to issues with the Catholic Church, which did not have clear mechanisms for the Nazi apparatus to insert its pawns, so there was direct persecution seemingly aimed at either bringing the Church to heel, or bringing it down. Within the span of WW2 that did not work, and Hitler even eased off the pressure that some of his more occultist advisors were going for (probably because it's counterproductive to inspire a large part of your supportive population to resist, but that's unclear).

After a war, it would depend on who wins the ear, and later chair, of the Führer; if it's one of the more pragmatic of Hitler's henchmen, you'd expect a similar slow-burning takeover or suppression of the Churches, that leads to protest but no serious action against the regime. Under the occultist of them, you might see suppression run off the rails leading to widespread civic violence inside Germany (and there are way too many Christians to make that less than a bloody mess).
 
Yes there is still alot of Nazi propaganda floating around today directly aimed at the Catholic church.
 
Kovax said:
If the data doesn't support the hypothesis, clearly the "scientific" solution is to alter the data to suit.
Click to expand...
Well, all the 'Jewishness' of course needed to be first filtered out from the science.
That is the point, for example, with 'Welteislehre' which precisly positioned itself as 'Aryan' or 'German' science countering all that Jewish Relativity.
 
Occultism was the thing in the early 20th century just like Spiritualism was big in the late 19th and Deist societies were in vogue for the 18th. Just the fads of the fringe and the unsettled. It isn't so surprising then that relative outsiders dedicated to upending the global status quo might be drawn to it.

But this was in no way confined to a few Nazis. There were variants of occultism in other countries and adherents among influential circles of writers and thinkers in the early part of the 20th century. It was just a feature of the time that some of the most respected poets and writers might dress up in faux-egyptian ceremonial garb at a secret gathering.

Sort of like how scientific racism was not just a past-time of the Nazi, though it's cast that way in retrospect.

People were into some pretty odd stuff and it was taken seriously in literate circles. Worth remembering that today.
 
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StormDetachment said:
I guess so. But these were people in high power, so it's much more different. I mean imagine if Germany won, Europe would be transformed into a Pagan continent.
But today, the organizations are usually just people from tumblr or some weird Satanists.
Click to expand...

The Bolsheviks were highly atheistic. And yet, Orthodox Christianity is still alive and kicking. In fact, it's arguably stronger in the East than the West.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USSR_anti-religious_campaign_(1928–1941)#Resolution_of_debate

The issue is that targeting religion ironically makes Religious figures 'the good guy', causing more people to become more religious. Eventually, the Soviets realized the entire process was pointless, and thus, just allowed religion to exist.


Meanwhile, the Nazis had far fewer occultists in their ranks as a percentage, than the Soviets had atheists (most of the SS was still Christian). It doesn't look too hopeful for Himmler's fantasies to actually come true.
 
fredinno said:
The issue is that targeting religion ironically makes Religious figures 'the good guy', causing more people to become more religious. Eventually, the Soviets realized the entire process was pointless, and thus, just allowed religion to exist.
Click to expand...
I think it has also to do with the fact that Christianity came up as a slave and underground religion.
Whole host of christians saints and martyrs died to confess their faith in face of persecution. Being persecuted and getting their priests martyred is arguably like a youth serum to christian religions...
 
fredinno said:
Orthodox Christianity is still alive and kicking. In fact, it's arguably stronger in the East than the West.
Click to expand...

You're kidding, right. You don't think there is a logical explanation why Eastern Orthodoxy is more prevalent in the East than the West?
 
Andre Bolkonsky said:
You're kidding, right. You don't think there is a logical explanation why Eastern Orthodoxy is more prevalent in the East than the West?
Click to expand...
I'm sorry. I meant more hard-line Christianity is prominent in the East than in the Western Bloc of Christianity, not Orthodoxy.

Besides, it doesn't ruin my point, which is that you can't force people to change religion because of a political movement, at least not easily.
It took several Islamic Empires to wipe Zoroastrianism off the map.
 
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