Religious Aspects of Nazism - Himmler and The SS

Himmler and The SS

Credited retrospectively with being the founder of "Esoteric Hitlerism", and certainly a figure of major importance for the officially sanctioned research and practice of mysticism by a Nazi elite, was Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler who, more than any other high official in the Third Reich (including Hitler) was fascinated by pan-Aryan (i.e., broader than Germanic) racialism. Himmler's capacity for rational planning was accompanied by an "enthusiasm for the utopian, the romantic and even the occult."

It also seems that Himmler had an interest in astrology. He consulted the astrologer Wilhelm Wulff in the last weeks of the Second World War. (One detailed but difficult source for this is a book written by Wulff himself, Tierkreis und Hakenkreuz, published in Germany in 1968. That Walter Schellenberg had discovered an astrologer called Wulf is mentioned in Hugh Trevor-Roper's The Last Days of Hitler.)

In Bramwell's assessment: "Too much can be made of the importance of bizarre cultism in Himmler's activities...but it did exist, and was one of the reasons behind the split between Himmler and Darré that took place in the late 1930s." Although Himmler did not have any contact with the Thule Society, he possessed more occult tendencies than any other Nazi leader. The German journalist and historian Heinz Höhne, an authority on the SS, explicitly describes Himmler's views about reincarnation as occultism.

The historic example which Himmler used in practice as the model for the SS was the Society of Jesus, since Himmler found in the Jesuits what he perceived to be the core element of any order, the doctrine of obedience and the cult of the organisation. The evidence for this largely rests on a statement from Walter Schellenberg in his memoirs (Cologne, 1956, p. 39), but Hitler is also said to have called Himmler "my Ignatius of Loyola" . As an order, the SS needed a coherent doctrine that would set it apart. Himmler attempted to construct such an ideology, and to this purpose he deduced a "pseudo-Germanic tradition" from history. However, this attempt was not entirely successful. Höhne observes that "Himmler's neo-pagan customs remained primarily a paper exercise".

In a 1936 memorandum, Himmler set forth a list of approved holidays based on pagan and political precedents and meant to wean SS members from their reliance on Christian festivities. The Winter Solstice, or Yuletide, was the climax of the year. It brought SS folk together at candlelit banquet tables and around raging bonfires that harked back to German tribal rites.

The Allach Julleuchter (Yule light) was made as a presentation piece for SS officers to celebrate the winter solstice. It was later given to all SS members on the same occasion, December 21. Made of unglazed stoneware, the Julleuchter was decorated with early pagan Germanic symbols. Himmler said, “I would have every family of a married SS man to be in possession of a Julleuchter. Even the wife will, when she has left the myths of the church find something else which her heart and mind can embrace.”

Only adherents of theories of Nazi occultism or the few former SS members who were, after the war, participants in the Landig Group in Vienna would claim that the cultic activities within the SS would amount to its own mystical religion. At the time of his death in 1986, Rudolf J. Mund was working on a book on the Germanic 'original race-cult religion', however, what was indoctrinated into the SS is not known in detail.