Jim Marrs is a celebrated journalist and the author of Our Occulted History, The Trillion-Dollar Conspiracy, The Rise of the Fourth Reich, Rule by Secrecy, Alien Agenda, and Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy. He lives in Texas.

The Rise of the Fourth Reich

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Chapter One

A New Reich Begins

Hitler's Support Group

Following the Armistice of 1918, which ended World War I, German soldiers returned home, to a country economically devastated by the war. The Bavarian city of Munich was hit particularly hard, with jobless ex-soldiers wandering the streets and a number of splinter political parties vying for membership.

It was in this setting that Hitler, a twenty-nine-year-old veteran, came into contact with members of the Thule Gesellschaft, or Thule Society, ostensibly an innocent reading group dedicated to the study and promotion of older German literature. But the society, composed mostly of wealthy conservatives, ardent nationalists, and anti-Semites, actually delved into radical politics, race mysticism, and the occult under its emblem—a swastika superimposed over a sword.

The society also served as a front for the even more secretive Germanenorden, or German Order, a reincarnation of the old Teutonic Knights, which had branches throughout Germany patterned after Masonic lodges. It is believed that these lodges carried on the agenda of the outlawed Bavarian Illuminati, with its fundamental maxim that "the end justifies the means." In other words, members should pretend to be anything or anybody, adopt any philosophy, tell any lie, steal, cheat, even kill as long as it accomplishes the society's objectives.

Members of the Thule Society encouraged a Munich locksmith and toolmaker named Anton Drexler to bring workers into the political process. The unassuming Drexler founded the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or German Workers Party, which was guided to prominence by covert aid from conservative elements within industry and the military.

Hitler, unable to make a living as an artist, turned to earning extra money by serving as an army intelligence agent reporting to a Captain Karl Mayr. "One day I received orders from my headquarters to find out what was behind an apparently po­liti­cal society which, under the name of ?German Workers Party,' intended to hold a meeting.?.?.?.??I was to go there and look at the society and to report upon it," Hitler recalled in Mein Kampf. Arriving at the Sterneckerbrau beer hall, he was not overly impressed. "I met there about 20 to 25 people, chiefly from among the lower walks of life," wrote Hitler. However, the young military agent stood and "astonished" the small gathering by arguing against a proposal that Bavaria break ties with Prus­sia. Impressed with the nationalistic and anti-Semitic views of the fledgling party, military authorities allowed Hitler to join and began funding the party's work. He became the party's seventh registered member.

Hitler's work in the party was initially supported both by funds from Captain Mayr's army intelligence unit and the dedicated anticommunists and occultists of the Thule Society. Funding was passed through the publisher of occult literature, Dietrich Eckart, whom Hitler called the "spiritual founder of National Socialism." Eckart was soon introducing the new member to the right social circles in Munich and his intellectual friends in the Thule Society. The editors of Time-Life Books noted, "Dietrich Eckart took over as editor of the Volkischer Beobachter, the renamed Munchener Beobachter, which the party had purchased from the Thule Society with money supplied partly by Mayr's secret army account."

Author Joseph P. Farrell stated that the covert connections of Eckart and future deputy fuehrer Martin Bormann support the idea "that Hitler was deliberately manipulated and placed into power, and secretly manipulated behind the scenes by more powerful forces than even he wielded, and, when he had served his purpose, was deliberately sabotaged and cast aside." The forceful Hitler, armed with adequate funds, quickly gained control of the German Workers Party, which soon claimed three thousand members. In April 1920, Hitler changed the party's name to the Nationalsozialistiche Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, the National Socialist German Workers Party, abbreviated to Nazi.

Following an ill-fated attempt to take control of the government in 1923, known as the Beer-hall Putsch, Hitler and his lieutenants were imprisoned and the Nazi Party languished. Upon his release after only nine months, Hitler began to direct the Nazi Party into more effective, and legal, activities, which resulted in the Nazis becoming the largest po­liti­cal party in Germany by July 1932.

It was, in fact, wealthy businessmen in Western industrial and banking circles who guaranteed Hitler's success. After Hitler lost a pop­u­lar election to Hindenburg in 1932, thirty-nine business leaders, with familiar names like Krupp, Siemens, Thyssen, and Bosch, signed a petition urging the aged president Paul von Hindenburg to name Hitler chancellor. In January 1933, through a compromise with German aristocrats, industrialists, and army officers, brokered by banker Baron Kurt Freiherr von Schroeder, Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany. The deal to name Hitler chancellor of Germany was cut at von Schroeder's home on January 4, 1933. On hand were prominent industrialists, at least one director of the giant Deutsche Bank as well as I. G. Farben's Hermann Schmitz and Dr. Georg von Schnitzler representing Farben's board of directors. According to author Eustace Mullins, also attending this meeting were John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles of the New York law firm Sullivan and Cromwell, which represented the Schroeder bank. This claim has been disputed by other researchers.

At that time, Germany was a free republic with one of the most educated and cultured populations in the world. The country was at peace and enjoying a blossoming of demo­cratic freedom under a coalition government of the Weimar Republic.

Oddly, Hitler went against tradition by choosing not to work out of an office in the German Reichstag, or parliament building, and on February 27, 1933, the Reichstag was gutted by fire. In those slower, gentler times, this act was as great a shock to the German people as the destruction of the World Trade Center towers was to Americans in 2001. Hitler blamed the destruction on communist terrorists. Inside the building, police arrested an incoherent, half-naked retarded Dutch youth named Marinus van der Lubbe. They said he was carrying a Dutch Communist Party card. After some time in custody, the youth confessed to being the arsonist. However, later investigation found that one person could not have started the mammoth blaze and that incendiary devices had been carried into the building through a tunnel that led to the offices of Hitler's closest partner, Hermann Goering.