Page 72 - BBC History - September 2017

Books / Reviews

Mystic Nazis

ROGER MOORHOUSE admires a new book investigating the
connection between Nazism and the occult

Hitler’s Monsters: A Supernatural cultural ferment of early 20th-century
History of the Third Reich Munich, when extreme nationalists
by Eric Kurlander shared the political fringes with
Yale University Press, 448 pages, £25 pseudo-intellectuals espousing all
manner of mysterious philosophies, from
In April 1945, Gerda theosophy and ariosophy to hyperbore-
Bormann wrote to her anism and geomancy.
husband, Martin, in Fast-forward to Hitler’s Germany, and ated. Indeed, he argues that the super-
Hitler’s Reich Chancel- many Germans, including senior Nazis natural had a material influence
lery in Berlin to lament such as Heinrich Himmler and Alfred on Nazism.
Germany’s imminent Rosenberg, were already devotees of His examination of Nazism’s twisted
demise. The situation, various esoteric belief systems, ranging relationship with German occult and
she explained, reminded from the comparatively benign – esoteric circles is thorough, clear-eyed
her of the Götterdämmerung – the anthroposophy and dowsing – to the and – crucially – archivally based. He
twilight of the gods. “The wolf Fenris downright insane, like World Ice Theory. makes the case very well that Nazi
and the snake Mitgard are storming Yet, Kurlander suggests that esoterica propaganda and rhetoric were influenced
over the bridge,” she wrote. “The citadel and what he quaintly calls ‘border science’ by occult themes, such as the Slavic or
is tottering.” were not confined to the elite, and were Jewish ‘vampires’ threatening Germany,
One might have imagined that, in much more widespread in the Third or the ‘werewolves’ of the Nazi resistance.
the desperation of their final fight, Reich than has previously been appreci- Even the lightning runes of the SS were
the German people would have had more part of the same package of ideological
important matters in mind than such gibberish. It should come as no surprise,
outlandish mumbo-jumbo. But, as Eric Even the lightning therefore, that Gerda Bormann was busy
Kurlander’s new book makes abundantly quoting Norse mythology as the Third
clear, the occult and the supernatural runes of the SS were Reich collapsed.
were important ingredients of the Third part of the same However, the wider question – that of
Reich. The interconnection goes right the occult actually having an influence
back to the origins of Nazism in the ideological gibberish beyond mere rhetoric and propaganda – is

Rocks and roles that he should count apes among his
ancestors, his argument that the same
PATRICIA FARA considers a book that gives credit to the work slow forces of change have been in
operation for millennia gave Charles
of key players in the 19th-century’s geological discoveries Darwin the courage to formulate his
theory of evolution by natural selection.
Reading the Rocks: In her latest exposé of ungentlemanly Maddox knows how to pick the best of
How Victorian Geologists conduct, Reading the Rocks, she reveals the the familiar stories. At Oxford, William
Discovered the Secret of Life competitive quest for a different secret of Buckland became renowned for his
by Brenda Maddox life – its origins in prehistory. alcohol-fuelled dinner parties featuring
Bloomsbury, 272 pages, £20 Maddox’s hero is Charles Lyell, the cooked mice, tortoise and other delica-
myopic lawyer who dedicated his life to cies, but his first celebrated coup was to
In her wonderful book interpreting the Earth’s hidden messages crawl into a Yorkshire cave full of fossil
about Rosalind Franklin, from the past. An ambitious man, he elephants and rhinoceroses and discover
The Dark Lady of DNA, chose his bride carefully, settling on Mary the hyenas who had killed them. Like
Brenda Maddox de- Horner, daughter of an influential Lyell, Buckland relied on a concealed
scribed the fierce rivalries scientist and well-trained in editing, female expert: Mary Anning, the
involved in the race to translating and cataloguing. Although uneducated fossil collector – rarely
unravel the double helix. Lyell could never bring himself to accept credited by the metropolitan gentlemen

72 BBC History Magazine