Adolf Hitler's Religious Views - Mysticism and Occultism

Mysticism and Occultism

Some scholars maintain that, in contrast to a few other Nazi leaders, Hitler did not adhere to esoteric ideas, occultism, or mysticism (see also Nazism and occultism) and even ridiculed such beliefs in private and possibly in public. Hitler stated: "We will not allow mystically-minded occult folk with a passion for exploring the secrets of the world beyond to steal into our Movement. Such folk are not National Socialists, but something else—in any case something which has nothing to do with us." Other scholars believe the young Hitler was strongly influenced, particularly in his racial views, by an abundance of occult works on the mystical superiority of the Germans, like the occult and anti-Semitic magazine Ostara, and give credence to the claim of its publisher Lanz von Liebenfels that Hitler visited him in 1909 and praised his work. Indeed, evidence indicates Hitler was a regular reader of Ostara.

Hitler's contact to Lanz von Liebenfels makes it necessary to examine how far his religious views were influenced by Ariosophy, an esoteric movement in Germany and Austria that flourished from the 1890s to the 1920s. (Whether Ariosophy is to be classified as Germanic paganism or Occultism is a different question.) The seminal work on Ariosophy, The Occult Roots of Nazism by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, devotes its last chapter the topic of Ariosophy and Adolf Hitler. Not at least due to the difficulty of sources, historians disagree about the importance of Ariosophy for Hitler's religious views. As noted in the foreword of The Occult Roots of Nazism by Rohan Butler, Goodrick-Clarke is more cautious in assessing the influence of Lanz von Liebenfels on Hitler than Joachim Fest in his biography of Hitler. A Hitler biography by John Toland that appeared in 1992 reprints a poem that Hitler allegedly wrote while serving in the German Army on the Western Front in 1915. This poem includes references to magical runes and the pre-Christian Germanic deity Wotan (Odin), but it is mentioned neither by Goodrick-Clarke nor by Fest.

While he was in power, Hitler was definitely less interested in the occult or the esoteric than other Nazi leaders. Unlike Heinrich Himmler and Rudolf Hess, for example, Hitler had no interest in astrology. Nevertheless, Hitler is the most important figure in the Modern Mythology of Nazi occultism. There are teledocumentaries about this topic, with the titles Hitler and the Occult and Hitler's Search for the Holy Grail.

Comparing him to Erich von Ludendorff, Fest writes: "Hitler had detached himself from such affections, in which he encountered the obscurantism of his early years, Lanz v. Liebenfels and the Thule Society, again, long ago and had, in Mein Kampf, formulated his scathing contempt for that völkish romanticism, which however his own cosmos of imagination preserved rudimentarily." Fest refers to the following passage from Mein Kampf:

"The characteristic thing about these people is that they rave about the old Germanic heroism, about dim prehistory, stone axes, spear and shield, but in reality are the greatest cowards that can be imagined. For the same people who brandish scholarly imitations of old German tin swords, and wear a dressed bearskin with bull's horns over their heads, preach for the present nothing but struggle with spiritual weapons, and run away as fast as they can from every Communist blackjack.

It is not clear if this statement is an attack at anyone specific. It could have been aimed at Karl Harrer or at the Strasser group. According to Goodrick-Clarke, "In any case, the outburst clearly implies Hitler's contempt for conspiratorial circles and occult-racist studies and his preference for direct activism." Hitler also said something similar in public speeches.

Older literature states that Hitler had no intention of instituting worship of the ancient Germanic gods in contrast to the beliefs of some other Nazi officials. In Hitler's Table Talk one can find this quote:

"It seems to me that nothing would be more foolish than to re-establish the worship of Wotan. Our old mythology ceased to be viable when Christianity implanted itself. Nothing dies unless it is moribund.

Jackson Spielvogel and David Redles in an article published by the Simon Wiesenthal Center assert that the influence of the anti-Judaic, Gnostic and root race teachings of H.P. Blavatsky, the founder of The Theosophical Society with doctrines as expounded by her book "The Secret Doctrine", and the adaptations of her ideas by her followers, through Ariosophy, the Germanenorden and the Thule Society, constituted a popularly unacknowledged but decisive influence over the developing mind of Hitler. The scholars state that Hitler himself may be responsible for turning historians from investigating his occult influences. While he publicly condemned and even persecuted occultists, Freemasons, and astrologers, his nightly private talks disclosed his belief in the ideas of these competing occult groups - demonstrated by his discussion of reincarnation, Atlantis, world ice theory, and his belief that esoteric myths and legends of cataclysm and battles between gods and titans were a vague collective memory of monumental early events.