List of Nazi Ideologues - Intellectuals Indirectly Associated With Nazism

Intellectuals Indirectly Associated With Nazism

Some writers came before the Nazi era and their writings were (sometimes falsely) incorporated into Nazi ideology:

• Madame Blavatsky (1831–1891), founder of Theosophy and the Theosophical Society. Guido von List took up some of Blavatsky's racial theories, and mixed them with nationalism to create Ariosophy, a precursor of Nazi ideology. Ariosophy emphasized intellectual expositions of racial evolution. The Thule Society was one of several German occult groups drawing on Ariosophy to preach Aryan supremacy. It provides a direct link between occult racial theories and the racial ideology of Hitler and the emerging Nazi party.

• Emile Burnouf (1821–1907) was a racialist whose ideas influenced the development of theosophy and Aryanism.

• Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855–1927) was a British-born author of books on political philosophy, and natural science. His two-volume book Die Grundlagen des Neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (Foundations of the 19th. Century) (1899) became a manual for Nazi racial philosophy including the concept of the master race.

• Julius Evola (1898–1974), a philosopher described as an "ultra-fascist" with an interest in the occult and Eastern religions-->

• Bernhard Förster (1843–1889), German antisemite teacher who wrote on the Jewish question, where he characterizes Jews as constituting a "parasite on the German body".

• Hans Freyer (1887-1969), German sociologist who called for a anti-liberal, anti-materialist, anti-Marxist Revolution von rechts (Revolution from the Right) that would emphasize organic bonds and community (Gemeinschaft) over the atomization of industrialized society (Gesellschaft).

• Arthur de Gobineau (1816–1882) was a French aristocrat, novelist and man of letters who developed the racialist theory of the Aryan master race in his book An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1853–1855). De Gobineau is credited as being the father of modern racial demography.

• Madison Grant (1865–1937), American lawyer, known primarily for his work as a eugenicist and conservationist. As a eugenicist, Grant was responsible for one of the most widely read works of scientific racism, and played an active role in crafting strong immigration restriction and anti-miscegenation laws in the United States.

• Paul de Lagarde (1827–1891) was a German biblical scholar and orientalist. His Deutsche Schriften (1878–1881) became a nationalist text.

• Guido Karl Anton List (1848–1919), his concept of renouncing Christianity and returning to the paganism of the ancient Europeans found supporters within the Nazi party. He created Ariosophy, a precursor of Nazi ideology.

• Martin Luther (1483–1546), German theologian who wrote On the Jews and Their Lies in 1543. He argued that the Jews were "devil's children". He wrote that the synagogue was a "defiled bride ... an incorrigible whore and an evil slut". and Jews were full of the "devil's feces ... which they wallow in like swine." He advocated setting synagogues on fire, destroying Jewish prayerbooks, forbidding rabbis from preaching, seizing Jews' property and money, smashing up their homes, and ensuring that these "poisonous envenomed worms" be forced into labor or expelled "for all time." He also seemed to sanction their murder, writing "We are at fault in not slaying them." His statements that Jews' homes should be destroyed, their synagogues burned, money confiscated and liberty curtailed were revived and used in propaganda by the Nazis in 1933–1945. Some scholars see Luther's influence as limited, and the Nazis' use of his work as opportunistic. Johannes Wallmann argues that Luther's writings against the Jews were largely ignored in the 18th and 19th centuries, and that there is no continuity between Luther's thought and Nazi ideology.

• Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), German philosopher who developed the concept of Übermensch. The Nazi regime's ideas of the German superman were similar to those expressed by Nietzsche. However, it seems that Hitler probably never read Nietzsche, or if he did, the reading was not extensive.

• Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler (1880–1936), German historian and philosopher. He is best known for his book The Decline of the West and the cyclical theory of the rise and decline of civilizations. He wrote extensively throughout World War I and the interwar period, and supported German hegemony in Europe. The National Socialists held Spengler as an intellectual precursor but he was ostracized after 1933 for his pessimism about Germany and Europe's future, and his refusal to support Nazi ideas of racial superiority.

• Lothrop Stoddard (1883–1950), American political theorist, historian, eugenicist, and anti-immigration advocate who wrote a number of prominent books on scientific racism. He developed the concept of the untermensch.

• Adolf Stoecker (1835–1909), court chaplain to Kaiser Wilhelm and an antisemitic German theologian who founded one of the first antisemitic political parties in Germany, the Christian Social Party. He proposed severely limiting the civil rights of Jews in Germany. In September 1879 he delivered a speech entitled "What we demand of modern Jewry", in which he spelled out several demands of German Jews.

• Georges Vacher de Lapouge (1854-1936), French anthropologist, eugenicist, and antisemite who developed the idea of a "Selectionist State" that would implement coercive measures to maintain the dominance and purity of dolichocephalic Aryans. His work strongly influenced Nazi eugenicists such as Hans F. K. Günther.