Hitler's Racial Ideology: Content and Occult Sources
by Jackson Spielvogel and David Redles Cont...
The leading figures of Ariosophy were two Austrian occultists, Guido von List and Lanz von Liebenfels. Guido von List (1848-1919) was a free-lance author who turned increasingly to mystical and occult themes in his writings. His supporters formed the Guido von List Society in Vienna in 1903. It soon became one of the leading Viennese occult groups. Its members included the well-known Theosophist Franz Hartmann, the chief of staff of the Austro- Hungarian army, wealthy merchants in Vienna and Germany, and the affluent Munich industrialist Friedrich Wannieck, who largely financed the society. The primary purpose of the society was to circulate and perpetuate the books and ideas of List.49
List's ideas were explicated in a series of occult books. In Die Religio der Ario-Germanen (The Religion of the Ario-Germans) List established the fundamental beliefs of Ariosophy. There is a life-force that pervades the universe and its mysteries could be grasped solely by people closely in tune with nature. Only the Ario-Germans were capable of this attunement since they were the most removed from modem rationalistic and materialistic society. The Jews, on the other hand, were viewed as a prime example of lower races since they were heavily involved in rationalism and materialism. In his work Die Armanenschaft der Ario-Germanen (The Armanen Caste of the ArioGermans) List made proposals for an Ario-Germanic state. It would be based on the recognition of the superiority of Aryan peoples and the need for lower races to serve the higher race. Only Ario-Germans could hold leadership positions in the state, schools, professions, industry and banks, newspapers, theater and the arts. Racial laws would maintain the purity of the Ario-Germanic race by prohibiting racial intermarriage and by reserving citizenship for Ario- Germans. A new school system based on levels would reserve the highest level for the "Armanen," the Aryan leaders who were distinguished by their ability to use the occult powers of the soul to know the secrets of the ancient wisdom-religion.50 The parallels of List's Ario-Germanic state to Hitler's Nazi state are indeed striking.
List was also interested in occult signs and symbols. In Das Geheimnis der Runen (The Secret of the Runes) he portrayed runes as the sacred symbols of ancient Aryan knowledge which, interpreted properly, could provide a real understanding of spiritual forces. He used the swastika, which he depicted as a fundamental occult symbol of salvation, to represent the victory of the Aryans over the lower races. Blavatsky had also considered the swastika as a powerful occult symbol and had used it in the seal of the Theosophical Society.51 in Mein Kampf Hitler had viewed the swastika as symbolizing " . . . the mission of the struggle for the victory of the Aryan man, and ... the victory of the idea of creative work, which as such always has been and always will be anfi-Semific."52
There can be little doubt about the close relationship between List's Ariosophy and Theosophy. Franz Hartmann, himself a prominent Theosophist, explained how List's teachings, especially on racial doctrine bore remarkable resemblance to those of Blavatsky.53 The kinship between List's Ariosophy and Theosophy is also especially noticeable in Prana, a German occult monthly for applied spiritualism. It was published by the Theosophical publishing house at Leipzig and edited by Johannes Baltzli, a Theosophist who was secretary of the Guido von List Society and biographer of List. Contributors to Prana included the Theosophists Franz Hartmann and C.W. Leadbeater, and Guido von List himself. The journal's name represented the power of the sun, considered the visible symbol of God. Prana emphasized the importance of vegetarianism. It argued that the eating of meat impeded the ability to understand nature and hence the cosmic life-force. Alcohol was thought to have the same negative qualities.54 It is interesting to note that Hitler became both a dedicated vegetarian and teetotaler by the 1920s.
Whether Hitler had a direct, personal relationship to the Guido von List Society during his years in Vienna from 1907-1913 has not been definitively established. The List Society was certainly prominent in the occult circles that stressed volkisch nationalism and antisernitism. And Hitler did emphasize in Mein Kampf that in Vienna he established "a world picture and a philosophy which became the granite foundation" of all his actions.55 That "granite foundation" was centered in his racial ideology. Nevertheless, it is more probable that Hitler did come into direct contact with another major proponent of Ariosophy in Vienna, Lanz von Liebenfels.
Lanz von Liebenfels (1874-1954) moved from Catholic monasticism to an involvement in occultism, racism, and German nationalism. He came to characterize his occupation as "racial researcher, philosopher of religion and sexual mystic," all of which were consonant with various forms of occultism. He founded a quasi-religious Order of the New Templars whose primary purpose was to foster Ariosophical doctrines. He established his first New Templars castle in the Burg Werfenstein on the Danube in 1907 and proudly flew a swastika flag over it. By the 1920s he had established three more castles and a house in Salzburg as part of his Templar movement. He served as a member of the board of directors of the Guido von List Society.56
Lanz von Liebenfels wrote a series of occult works that presented his Ariosophical philosophy, although his major work Theozoologie (Theo- zoology), written in 1904, contains the essence of his thought. That philosophy, like List's, was based on the superiority of the Ario-Germans. The Aryan was an exalted spiritual being: "The Aryan hero is on this planet the most complete incarnation of God and of the Spirit."57 Jews, as well as other inferior races, were characterized as "animal- men" who must someday be eliminated by genetic selection, sterilization, deportations, forced labor, and even "direct liquidation." The elimination of the "animal-man" made possible the coming of the "higher new man."58 Liebenfels also propagated his occult racial views in a magazine called Ostara and subtitled "Library of Those Who are Blond and Defend the Rights of the Male."59
According to Liebenfels, there was a close affinity between Theosophy and his brand of Ariosophy. In discussing Blavatsky's work, The Secret Doctrine, he wrote enthusiastically that "she was almost a generation ahead of her time and of anthropology. Today for the first time work on the latest material has brought to light results which show a completely amazing identity with those of the spiritual Theosophist."60 It was claimed by a friend that Lanz had direct contact with Blavatsky and her immediate successor as head of the Theosophical movement, Annie Besant.61
The direct impact of Lanz von Liebenfels on Hitler is by no means accepted by all historians. However, Liebenfels claimed that he had personal contact with Hitler when the future Fiihrer visited him in 1909 to obtain some back issues of Ostara.62 The New Templar movement was still active during the growth of the Nazi party and Liebenfels himself made several direct assertions concerning the close relationship of his movement to Hitler's. He wrote in 1925:
Already there appear the outlines of a new Ariosophical, Ario-Christian International: Fascism in Italy, Awakening Hungary, the Spanish Fascists, the North American Ku Klux Man and finally the Swastikamovement in Germany, directly proceeding from Ariosophy.63
In 1932 Liebenfels wrote to one of his New Templar brothers: "Do you know that Hitler is one of our pupils? You will still live to see that he, and thereby we, also will triumph and kindle a movement that will make the world tremble."64 Are these statements pure fantasy? Or did Liebenfels know of Hitler's affinity to his movement?
Without new evidence it may be impossible to prove to everyone's satisfaction that Hitler was directly influenced in the development of his racial ideology by Guido von List and Lanz von Liebenfels. But there can be little doubt, based on the parallels found in Hitler and in both Theosophy and Ariosophy that the occult climate of Vienna in Hitler's "formative years" did have an impact on him. Hitler experienced a similar environment after the war when he returned to Munich. Postwar Germany, as one contemporary noted, was rife with occultism:
Germany seems to be gripped by an occult fever. Its victims are like drug- addicts; every new psychic fashion claims thousands of adherents and dozens of victims.... Men and women have become exhausted by the sorrows and horrors of reality; they flee to the world of imagination; the maze of everyday life enfolds them and they hope to find a way out through occultism and dreams.65
The Bavarian capital of Munich was likewise a scene of much occult activity and Hitler had ample opportunity to experience it. In the conversation with Rauschning quoted earlier in this paper, Hitler refers to his knowledge of a Munich occultist who had written about the "Cyclopean eye."66 As a frequent visitor at the home of Hugo and Elsa Bruckmann in 1922 and 1923, Hitler probably heard some of the lectures of Alfred Schuler, a disciple of Guido von List.67 Most important, however, Hitler associated with various members of the Thule Society, an occult society that combined occult racial philosophy with a belief in militant action. Ariosophy, like Theosophy, had relied on intellectual expositions of racial evolution. The Thule Society preached Aryan supremacy and acted to achieve it. It provides the final link between occult racial theories and the racial ideology of Hitler and the emerging Nazi party.
The Thule Society was basically a continuation of the Germanen Order, whose first lodge was established in Berlin in 1912. Modeled after the organization of Freemasonry, the aims of the Germanen Order were to achieve German racial purity, attack the Jews, and establish Germans as the leaders of Europe. In 1917, Rudolf von Sebottendorf was made head of the Order's Bavarian province. In order to provide a cover for the Order's activities, he founded the Thule Society in January 1918. The Thule Society functioned outwardly as a "German Studies" group. Despite its outer appearance, it was actively involved in the counter-revolutionary forces against the Bavarian Soviet Republic, which the Thule felt was dominated by Jews.68
In his 1933 book, Bevor Hitler Kam (Before Hitler Came), Rudolf von Sebottendorf claimed that the Thule Society was of great importance to the founding of Hitler's National Socialist movement. He stated,
It was Thule people to whom Hitler first came and it was Thule people who first united themselves with Hitler. The armament of the coming Fiihrer consisted, besides the Thule itself, of the German Workers' Society, founded in the Thule Society by brother Karl Harrer and the German-Socialist Party led by Hans Georg Grassinger, whose organ was the Munchener Beobachter, later the Volkische Beobachter. From these three sources Hitler created the National Socialist German Worker's Party.69
Undoubtedly, Sebottendorf exaggerated his own significance.70 There is no evidence that he and Hitler ever met. Nevertheless, the German Worker's Party, which Hitler joined and later renamed, was founded by Anton Drexler early in 1919 under the chairmanship of Karl Harrer, a member of the Thule. In fact, the German Workers' Party had a number of close links with the Thule society. Hitler also had intimate ties with Thule members. Dietrich Eckart, whom Hitler accepted as his mentor and praised as the original father of the Nazi movement, Alfred Rosenberg, eventually the Nazi party's ideologist, and Rudolf Hess, Hitler's future second-in-command, were all members of the Thule Society. Sebottendorf's Thule Society, with its occult, racist ideas is, regardless of any exaggeration in Sebottendorf's claims, connected to the beginning of Hitler's National Socialism.
Significantly, the Thule Society was well grounded in occultist philosophy. Eckart, Rosenberg, and Hess shared occult interests. In his writings, Dietrich Eckart combined German racism, his own version of occult Christian mysticism, and a profound knowledge of Theosophy and occultism in general. Alfred Rosenberg, an intimate of Eckart, shared his mystical preoccupations. In his work, The Myth of the Twentieth Century, he developed an "occult history" of mankind based on the lost Atlantis. Rudolf Hess was especially interested in astrology and astrological prophecies and herbalist lore founded upon the occult "doctrine of correspondences." Thule's founder Rudolf von Sebottendorf was a practicing occultist. He wrote a history of Turkish Freemasonry and a history of astrology that was really a discussion of occult prehistory. He edited an astrological magazine and another called Runen, which was decorated with swastikas.71 According to Sebottendorf himself, the Germanen Order and Thule Society were basically dependent for their intellectual foundation on Guido von List and Lanz von Liebenfels. Indeed, the connection of the Thule Society to Ariosophy is evident in a headline of Thule's newspaper, the Mfinchener Beobachter. It read "Down with the Tschandalen," the latter being Liebenfels's name for the inferior races who faced liquidation.72
This paper began with a discussion of Hitler's racial ideology and its parallels to Blavatsky's esoteric thought. Our examination of the Ariosophy of Guido von List and Lanz von Liebenfels and the Thule Society described the possible channels by which Theosophical thought might have reached Hitler and helped to determine his own racial ideology. Considerably more research remains to be done to show specifically how Hitler and other Nazis came into direct contact with esoteric philosophy and more important, what the ramifications of this new information are. The lack of originality in Hitler's thought is apparent. But Hitler's true originality was his ability to translate ideas into reality. His racial ideology, derived in part from perversion of esoteric thought, did, after all, become racial genocide.
NOTES
1. Edouard Calic, Secret Conversations with Hitler (New York, 1971), p. 68.
2. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. Ralph Manheim (Boston, 1943), p. 339,
3. Ibid., p. 22. The general subject of Hitler's ideology has not been very thoroughly explored. The standard treatment of Hitler's world view is Eberhard Jackerl, Hitler's Weltanschauung, trans. Herbert Arnold (Middletown, CT, 1972). Also valuable is Heinrich Kautz, Das zerschlagene Menschenbild: Prinzipien und Ideen zur Wirklichkeit und Ideologie des Nationalsozialismus (Sankt Augustin, 1977). Barbara Miller Lane and Leila Rupp have edited a collection of selections from other Nazis dealing with ideology in Nazi Ideology before 1933 (Austin, 1978). A new approach to this problem is taken in James Rhodes, The Hitler Movement: A Modern Millenarian Revolution (Stanford, 1980). His thesis that National Socialist ideology was a "more or less coherent millenarian and gnostic world view" is well argued.
4. Mein Kampf, pp. 327, 381 and especially 396 on blood and soul; also on God's role, see speech of 1937 in Gordon Prange, ed., Hitler's Words (Washington, DC, 1944), p. 80.
5. Mein Kampf, p. 394.
6. Ibid., p. 290.
7. Ibid., p. 383.
8. Ibid., p. 296; see also pp. 249, 286-89; and Hitler's notes for a "monumental world history" in Werner Maser, ed., Hitler's Letters and Notes (New York, 1974), p. 280.
9. Mein Kampf, p. 300.
10. Ibid., p. 306.
11. Ibid., p. 324; also see Maser, Hitler's Letters, p. 221, and Calic, Secret Conversations, p. 66.
12. Mein Kampf, pp. 316, 325.
13. Ibid., pp. 324, 326.
14. Ibid., pp. 91, 313, 316; especially on internationalism, see Hitler's speech of 1922 in Prange, Hitler's Words, pp. 73, 75-76; one of Hitler's most thorough arguments on the Jews' creation of democracy, liberalism, and parliaments is in a speech of 1922 in The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, 1922-1939, ed . Norman H. Baynes, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1942), vol. 1, pp. 23-24.
15. Mein Kampf, p. 382.
16. Ibid., pp. 393-94.
17. Ibid., pp. 65, 320, 325, 382, 447; see also Hitler's speech of 28 July 1922 in Prange, Hitler's Words, p. 73.
18. Mein Kampf, p. 382.
19. Ibid., pp. 383-84, 391, 398.
20. Ibid., pp. 397-98.
21. [bid., pp. 346, 380.
22. Ibid., pp. 351, 384.
23. Ibid., p. 338.
24. Ernst Deuerlein, "Hitlers Eintritt in die Politik und die Reichswehr," Vierteljahrshefte ffir Zeitgeschichte 7 (1959): 204.
25. Max Domarus, ed., Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen, 1932-1945, 2 vols. (Munich, 1962-1963), vol. 2, p. 2239.
26. Mein Kampf, pp. 383-84.
27. Baynes, Speeches of Adolf Hitler, vol. 1, p. 775.
28. Mein Kampf, p. 427.
29. Two examples are Karl Dietrich Bracher, The German Dictatorship, trans. Jean Steinberg (New York, 1970), pp. 7-45, 50-57, and Alan Bullock, Hitler, A Study in Tyranny (New York, 1962), pp. 36-46, 374, 382-85, 397-408.
30. As a good example of this approach, see R.H. Samuels, "The Origin and Development of the Ideology of National Socialism," The Australian Journal of Politics and History 9 (May 1963): 59-77.
31. Joachim Besser, "Die Vorgeschichte des Nationalsozialismus im neuen Licht," Die Pforte 2, no. 21-22 (Nov. 1950): 768-85. George Mosse, "The Mystical Origins of National Socialism," Journal of the History of Ideas 22 (Jan.-Mar. 1961): 81-96 and The Crisis of German Ideology (New York, 1964), pp. 13-51, 67-83. See also Wilfried Daim, Der Mann, der Hitler die Ideen gab (Munich, 1958), pp. 239-40.
32. Jeffrey Goldstein, "On Racism and Anti-Sernitism in Occultism and Nazism," Yad Vashem Studies 13 (1979): 53-72. James Webb, The Occult Establishment (LaSalle, IL, 1976), especially pp. 21-79, 275-344. Webb, p. 15, defines occultism as a term covering Spiritualism, Theosophy, Eastern cults, varieties of Christian sects, and the esoteric pursuits of magic, alchemy and astrology. Although these can be in conflict, they share one common belief, the ideal of "spiritual development."
33. It is possible that the often lurid approach seen in books produced by popular dabblers in the occult understandably drove serious historians away from such a pursuit. Examples of such "occult" Hitler studies include: Francis King, Satan and Swastika (St. Albans, 1976); J.H. Brennan, Occult Reich (New York, 1974); Trevor Ravenscroft, The Spear of Destiny (New York, 1973); Jean-Michel Angebert, The Occult and the Third Reich, trans. Lewis Sumberg (New York, 1974); and Gerald Suster, Hitler: the Occult Messiah (New York, 1981). These studies use the same evidence to build their arguments. Most of the evidence is circumstantial and undocumented.
34. As Reginald Phelps has shown, Hitler deliberately crushed the claim of Rudolf von Sebottendorf that the occult Thule Society was largely responsible for creating the original German Worker's Party. Reginald H. Phelps, "Before Hitler Came: Thule Society and Germanen Order," Journal of Modern History 35 (1963): 245-61.
35. Hitler's Secret Conversations, 1941-1944, trans. Norman Cameron and R.H. Stevens (New York, 1953), pp. 33, 67, 118, 203-04, 263. Helena Blavatsky's occult work, The Secret Doctrine, discussed below, contains a section entitled "Giants, Civilizations, and Submerged Continents Traced in History." It forms Section VI of The Secret Doctrine, 3 vols. (London, 1928), vol. 2, pp. 784-821.
36. For a modern biography see Marion Meade, Madame Blavatsky (New York, 1980). The best scholarly work has been done by Bruce F. Campbell, Ancient Wisdom Revived: A History of the Theosophical Movement (Berkeley, 1980), pp. 31-51.
37. Blavatsky, Secret Doctrine, vol. 2, p. 812. The Northern lands were the legendary Nordic homeland of Thule, a name later used by the protoNazi group, the Thule Society, which will be discussed below.
38. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 111, 278, 411, 527; Mein Kampf, pp. 264-65, 294, 393, 423; Alfred Rosenberg, Der Mythus des 20. jahrhunderts (Munich, 1934), pp. 21-35. Rosenberg begins with the Atlantis legend.
39. Blavatsky, Secret Doctrine, vol. 2, pp. 90-94.
40. Ibid., pp. 307, 313.
41. Ibid., pp. 302-16.
42. Hermann Rauschning, Hitler Speaks (London, 1939), p. 240. Although some historians have attempted to question the content of Rauschning's conversations with Hitler, Theodore Schieder's conclusion in his study, Hermann Rauschnings "Gesprache mit Hitler" als Geschichtsquelle (Opladen, 1972) is a well-balanced one: " . . . although the words attributed to Hitler by Rauschning cannot be valued as being authentic in the sense they were recorded verbatim . . . they must be seen as an attempt at a composite summing-up. In this Rauschning undoubtedly produces something noteworthy." Quoted in J. S. Conway, "Hermann Rauschning as Historian and Opponent of Nazism," Canadian Journal of History 8 (1973): 67-78.
43. Rauschning, Hitler Speaks, p. 241. Note Blavatsky's statement in The Secret Doctrine, vol. 2, p. 439: "Mankind is obviously divided into God-informed men and lower human creatures."
44. Rauschning, Hitler Speaks, p. 242.
45. Blavatsky, Secret Doctrine, vol. 2, pp. 339-94.
46. Rauschning, Hitler Speaks, p. 238.
47. Ibid., p. 234.
48. See Webb, The Occult Establishment, especially pp. 21-79.
49. On List, see the highly favorable biography by the secretary of the List Society, Johannes Baltzli, Guido von List (Leipzig, 1917). For a brief description, see Goldstein, "On Racism and Anti-Sernitism in Occultism and Nazism," pp. 62-64, Webb, The Occult Establishment, pp. 279-80, and Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology, pp. 73-75.
50, Besser, "Die Vorgeschichte des Nationalsozialismus im. neuen Licht," pp. 770- 72.
51. In The Secret Doctrine, Blavatsky wrote of the occult significance of the swastika. See especially vol. 2, p. 103, where she characterized the swastika as the most sacred symbol in India. "It is the summary in a few lines of the work of creation, or evolution as one should rather say." See also pp. 104-06, 586-91.
52. Mein Kampf, p. 497.
53. Baltzli, Guido von List, pp. 45-46. See also Mosse, "The Mystical Origins of National Socialism," pp. 85-87.
54. On Prana, see Mosse, "Mystical Origins," pp. 87-88.
55. Mein Kampf, p. 22.
56. The basic modern study of Liebenfels is Wilfried Daim, Der Mann, der Hitler die Ideen gab.
57. Ibid., p. 180.
58. Ibid., pp. 184-88.
59. Joachim Fest, Hitler, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (New York, 1974), p. 36. See also George Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses (New York, 1975), p. 197.
60. Quoted in Webb, The Occult Establishment, p. 282.
61. Daim, Der Mann, der Hitler die Ideen gab, pp. 120-21.
62. Based on his research, Daim argues for the credibility of the story, ibid., pp. 20- 21.
63. Ibid., p. 23, also quoted in Goldstein, "On Racism and Anti-Sernitism in Occultism and Nazism," p. 55.
64. Daim, Der Mann, der Hitler die Ideen gab, p. 12. Hitler's personal library also contained one of von Liebenfels's books and a book bearing the inscription: "An Adolf Hitler, meinem lieben Armanenbruder." See Robert G. L. Waite, "Adolf Hitler's Anti-Sernitism: A Study in History and Psychoanalysis," in The Psychoanalytic Interpretation of History, ed. Benjamin Wolsman (New York, 1971), p. 197. On Hitler's relationship to Liebenfels, see also Fredrich Heer, Der Glaube des Adolf Hitler (Munich, 1968), pp. 166-67.
65. Cornelius Tabori, My Occult Diary (London, 1951), p. 53.
66. See above, p. 234. George Mosse first identified this "Munich savant" as Edgar Dacque. See The Crisis of German Ideology, p. 306.
67. Gerd-Klaus Kaltenbrunner, "Zwischen Rilke und Hitler-Alfred Schuler," Zeitschritt ffir Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 19 (1967): 338, 343. See also Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology, p. 76.
68. On the Germanen Order and the Thule Society, see George Franz, "Munich: Birthplace and Center of the National Socialist German Workers' Party," The Journal of Modern History 29 (Dec. 1957): 325-29; Phelps, "Before Hitler Came: Thule Society and Germanen Order"; Goldstein, "On Racism and Anti-Sernitism in Occultism and Nazism," pp. 65-71; and Rudolf von Sebottendorf Bevor Hitler kam (Munich, 1933), especially pp. 33-43.
69. Ibid., dedication page.
70. See n. 34, above.
71. See above, p. 237, for List's preoccupation with runes. Sebottendorf believed that "a vast amount of Aryan wisdom" could be found in the teachings of alchemists, Rosicrucians, and medieval masonic guilds. Sebottendorf, Bevor Hitler kam, p. 22. On Sebottendorf's occultism, see Ellic Howe, Urania's Children: The Strange World of the Astrologers (London, 1967), pp. 86-87.
72. Quoted in Webb, The Occult Establishment, p. 297.
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