If you’ve read William Shirer’s masterwork, "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich", perhaps the sheer enormity of the atrocities committed by the Nazis caused you to wonder what dark forces were unleashed on the world through Hitler and his brutal henchmen. So, perhaps, after some research, you came across a book titled "Nazis and the Occult: the dark forces unleashed by the Third Reich." Aha! You might think you’d get some answers.
You would be wrong. Although the author presents various sources that allege (somewhat convincingly) Nazi utilization of occult powers, he goes on to discredit those sources (which he nevertheless continues to cite throughout the book) and ultimately concludes (somewhat unconvincingly) that “..human beings are capable of truly evil acts even without the urging of external influences.” His position seems to be that the Nazis were using dark magic “unconsciously” and “intuitively”. I say “seems” because the author vacillates throughout the book between (A): “Such rites [books burnings] were the clearest evidence yet that Nizism was not a political movement but a satanic cult in the true sense of the word”, and (B): “..there is no documentary evidence that Hitler and his inner circle were practicing magicians or occultists of any kind.”
Ironically, although the author seems to want to discount darker forces completely, by the end of the book, you may be convinced more than ever that something more than “bad men” was at play here. There’s too much smoke here to ignore the possibility of fire. Certainly, the butcher Heinrich Himmler was obsessed with the occult and it’s hard to believe that Himmler and his SS elite were merely having tea parties at Wewelsburg Castle in the circular vault known as the “Realm of the Dead”. Although Trevor Ravenscroft’s contention in “The Spear of Destiny” that Hitler was possessed through this relic by the “Superman [Ubermensch] – a Spirit sublime and fearful, a countenance intrepid and cruel” is dismissed as “speculative fiction”, the author later says that Hitler couldn’t wait to get his hands on the Spear of Destiny when he marched into Austria. It’s hard to dismiss the countless witnesses at the Nuremberg Rallies who described Hitler as talking “as a man possessed”. And, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, whose work “Foundations of the Nineteenth Century” was proclaimed the “gospel of the Nazi movement”, freely admitted that his work was driven by demons.
But, you decide. This is certainly a good read despite its often frustrating "Maybe they did/maybe they didn't" style. And, the Timeline given at the end of the book is a good reference for how the Third Reich unfolded.
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Top reviews from other countries
Norty Moggins
Highly recommended serious book and not what I expected at all
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 18, 2017
Callum Booth
Best account of the Third Reich I've come across.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 29, 2021Christopher Powell
Nazis and the Occult
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 27, 2014D. Griffiths
In general very good
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 31, 2019
