Science at the Service of Aryan Mysticism - "Occult History of the Third Reich" - Documentary

Science at the Service of Aryan Mysticism

Wagner's Parsifal

Here is another post about Nazi mysticism, science, and ideology as I do research for my thesis. What I most take away from this documentary is that science is not its own independent set of values. Science is a tool for understanding the physical world, not the narrative or spiritual world. Therefore, science will always be nested in some deeper set of values. While some like Sam Harris seem to think that it is self evident that science should be wielded for "good," when confronted with the history of the Nazis, it becomes much clearer to see that science provides no self-evident answer for navigating human societies or complex relationships between people. The Nazis united the scientific theories of their time, along with cutting edge technology and innovation, to do what they saw as "good." Given their Aryan mystic history, they thought that Nature itself desired and destined that they purify humanity in the process of evolution. Again, the science was wielded and used as a tool of a deeper set of values. It doesn't seem possible to me that this wouldn't be the case. 

Please note that this post is in no way an endorsement of any of the ideas presented below from the documentary. It is simply for my research regarding the role of worldviews and beliefs in societies.

The Mystical Teachings of Houston Stewart Chamberlin and Jorg Lanz

"For our people it is decisive whether they acknowledge the Jewish Christ creed with its effeminate pity ethics, or a strong heroic belief in god in nature, god in our own people, in our destiny, in our blood." - Hitler 1933. Even though Nazi Germany radically rejected its Christian past, Hitler's ideas were not grounded in some Enlightenment philosophy, or one that upheld the dignity of human reason and logic. Rather, the Nazi ideology was one that fundamentally existed within a return to pagan religion and myth, a historical mythology centered on race and blood. A story that was revived in Germany culture by a number of pagan "mystics" in the late 1800's and early 1900's. In the words of Hitler: "The old beliefs will be brought back to honor again. The whole secret knowledge of nature, of the divine ... the demonic. We will wash off the Christian veneer and bring out a religion peculiar to our race."

Chamberlin

In the late 1800's the Second Reich of Germany was born, though it was struggling to stabilize itself because of the changing nature of society due to the Industrial Revolution. The old aristocracy was being supplanted in its power by the new and rich business owner. And so in 1897 Kaiser Wilhem II reached out to an English writer, Houston Stewart Chamberlin, the spouse of Richard Wagner's daughter, in order to learn about his new book The Foundations of the 19th Century. Chamberlin said that history can be explained by the rise and fall of races of people. More importantly, it was the ancient Teutonic race that was the founder and creator of all culture and civilization. It was the Jew who was bringing about its decay. They were an alien and evil race, one who was trying to destroy Aryan blood by racial interbreeding. Thus they need to be purged and a new ancient Teutonic religion of Aryan blood must be reestablished to help Germany. "The German mind must guide the Aryan peoples to racial supremacy and world domination." The Kaiser accepts this teachings and is supposed to have said, "It was God who sent your book to the German people, and you personally to me."

A number of the Germans who had been segregated in a Slavic dominated Austria at the time began to resonate with this type of pan-German patriotism. They felt as though their culture, language, and identity was being threatened. And so they too desired this return to ancient Nordic paganism and the "primal laws of nature." It is in purifying German blood and land that she will regain her soul from Capitalism, democracy, and Christianity. One of the many Occult "mystics" of the time was a rogue monk by the name of Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels, who was the grandmaster of the Occultist Order of the New Templars. He pioneered a doctrine called "Theozoology" which he put forth in his journal "Ostara" from 1905 on. The idea behind it, like that of Chamberlin, Blavatsky, and Von Listz, was the retelling of history according to occult mythology of "root races." At a stage of human development there existed the 4th root race, a civilization in the North Atlantic, the Atlantians. They were a higher race and developed race but at a certain point split into two before their civilization was lost. They split into a higher pure species and bestial lower species. Over the course of a thousand years the Aryan, pure and god-like, descendants had been corrupted by mixing with the lower bestial people. Having done this, they lost their psychic and mystical powers. At a point in Germany's past there was an attempt to purify the Aryan blood through race laws but Christianity put a stop to it. Now Christianity must be overthrown and in the chaos of the modernizing world a final battle must occur. There must be a battle between the higher Aryan race and the lower subhuman races. A "god-man" must come forth to dominate and rule the world for the coming thousand years. 

Jorg Lanz

Lanz advocated, therefore, for the reproduction of the higher Aryans through polygamy, while preventing the lower classes from reproducing through slavery or sterilization. There should be no intermarrying between higher and lower, and the lower Jews should be used as beasts of burden, kicked out, or just killed. Lanz's Ostara magazine spreads throughout Germany in the early 1900's. Hitler himself visits him in 1909 looking for more copies to add to his collection of over 50 editions. 1

Developing of Secret Occult Groups in Germany 

Leading up to World War I, there are several secret societies centered around these occult teachings about Germany. In the words of Lanz, "Amid the jubilation of the liberated god men we would conquer the whole planet. The fire should be raked until sparks fly from the barrels of German battleships and order is created." And so when it was announced that Germany was going to war, it was received by a jubilant crowd, a crowd with Hitler in its midst. They believed that in fighting they will reunite Germany, and rid it of the inferior influence of capitalism and democracy. In losing the war, though, the Second Reich comes to an end and the Kaiser abdicates. It seems to many Germans that the Jews have stabbed them in the back. The democrats, the Marxists had claimed a victory over them. This sentiment prompted Hitler into politics. In 1919 Germany is a mess of competing factions and ideologies. But there are certainly Nationalist groups which center their pride on the occult teachings and Aryan supremacy. 

Hitler joins one of these groups and comes into contact with other men who will shape his thinking as well. Among these were three "pagan mystics" who deeply influenced Nazi ideology. Alfred Rosenburg (disciple of Houston Steward Chamberlin), Dietrich Eckhart (Intimate associate of Thule society), and Rudolf Hess (future deputy fuhrer). For example, Rosenburg was inspired by a work called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a book which was supposedly a secret Jewish blueprint for taking over the world brought by Russian emigres fleeing the Revolution. This work held that it was the Slavic Jews who overthrow the Russian aristocracy (which they thought were previously Aryan given that they were aristocracy). Thus both Marxist Bolshevism and democratic groups in Germany were there to undermine the country. (As it turns out the work was actually a forgery created by the Tsar's secret police.) 2

Aryan Mysticism Gets Scientific Backing 

As Rosenburg, Eckhart, Hess, and Hitler all continue to feed off one another, they begin to publish more and more regarding their beliefs. The sentiment also comes about that Hitler is the prophesied messiah of the Occult prophecies who is going to save Germany, "the strong one from above" who will bring about the Aryan millennium. A final inspiration that Hitler received before making his first bid for political power was a pilgrimage to Richard Wagner's home. Wagner had been Hitler's idol growing up. He was the "supreme prophet of the German people." Wagner had held that Jews were descended from apes, while the Aryans from gods. Thus the Jews were incapable of spirituality. In his mystical work Parsifal, he presents an Aryan Christ along with medieval tales of the knights of the holy grail, with the grail being a symbol of blood purity of the Aryans and a warning against diluting their lineage. Interestingly Houston Stewart Chamberlin was married to Wagner's daughter, Ava. Hitler, inspired by Wagner, said: "Out of Parsifal I make a religion." One month later Hitler and others try to take over the Bavarian government in a coop. While he fails and is imprisoned, Hitler is not giving up. 

It is during this time that he adds to his mysticism the scientific side racial biology and eugenics. Through Rudolf Hess, Karl Haushofer, and another scientist named Fritz Lentz (professor of racial hygiene at the University of Munich) Hitler receives these ideas. Given the theory of evolution it became clear that reproduction was key to the success or decline of a civilization. If the lower classes reproduced more, with their diseases, moral and mental weaknesses, and corrupt blood, then the Aryan race was at risk. Thus, they must practice "racial hygiene" in order to better the race. Those who were inferior must be either sterilized for the greater good, and those of higher blood made to reproduce. This is outlined in a work by Lentz called The Outline of Human Genetics and Racial Hygiene. Likewise, it was believed that nature is fundamentally aristocratic. There are higher races and lower races. Nature favors the higher ones, and they must be served. All science, art, and reason must serve the will of nature, which is to create the best race. Thus there is to be a hierarchy which expresses the will of nature. An ultimate Fuhrer from which all power flows, and lesser fuhrers for each aspect of life and society. Finally, it was Haushofer, with his science of Geo-Politics, who put forward the idea of "lebensraum" or "living space." The idea was that Germany needed more land on the European continent itself to live out the Aryan destiny. 3 So the laws of nature have chosen him, the soul of the West is in him. Hitler's role is to unlock the spirit of race and blood in the masses. "The party is Hitler. Hitler is Germany, just as Germany is Hitler." 

In the 1930's this racial biology and eugenics is put into practice within Germany. In an effort to purge hereditary weakness, 400,000 people would need to be sterilized. That way the Jewish people can be biologically quarantined, and the "feeble minded, schizophrenic, epileptic, and alcoholics" can also be eliminated from the equation. There is a law that's passed, the law "for the protection of German blood and German honor" which forbids intermarriage between Jews and Aryans. In the words of Hitler, "The Jew is the anti-man, the creature of another God. He must come from another root of the human race." Soon it went even farther, with the government checking on marriages between Germans to make sure that there were no hereditary diseases present. Hitler thought that by producing one million healthy Aryan children each year, and eliminating 700,000 to 800,000 feeble children a year, then Germany would strengthen its blood. In fact, towards the beginning of WWII Hitler starts a program which secretly euthanizes disabled children up the age of twelve. 4

Putting It All Into Practice in War and the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" - 41 - 50

"Man is becoming God. Those who see in National Socialism nothing but a political movement, know scarcely anything of it. It is more even than a religion, it is a will to create mankind a new." (Hitler). As the Second World War begins, Hitler takes these measures even farther. The SS is to become the highest of German classes, being bred for strength and ancestry. They turn to Poland to gain for themselves more land on which pure Germans can live. The mentally handicapped, as well as the elderly, are gassed by a special committee in psychiatric hospitals. Of every thousand Germans, ten are mentally Ill, five enter the hospital, and one must die. The T4 committee calculated that 65-75,000 people need to die by gassing. This is the same group testing out the gas chambers that will be transported to the concentration camps for an even more widespread use. 

Not only did the Germans want to eradicate the Jews, but the Slavs as well. Hitler names his operation to take over Russia after a Germanic legend in which Emperor Barbarossa lay sleeping under a mountain, but would one day wake up and unleash his fury. The Slavs need to be depopulated. More technology is developed for euthanasia and sterilization. 5 "Since the turn of the century the scientific dogmas, dogmas of eugenics, and the Aryan fantasies of the Aryan occult, had been slowly fused into a single doctrine of racial supremacy and annihilation. Now in the death camps the techniques devised by German physicians are used to destroy a racial enemy identified by racial mystics." 6

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1 - Occult History Of The 3rd Reich - Adolf Hitler - Full Documentary (by Documentary Base) Minutes 1-10.

2 - Minutes 11- 20

3 - Minutes 21 - 30

4 - Minutes 31 - 40 

5 - Minutes 41 - 50

6 - Minutes 51 -56