'Mein Kampf': Explaining Hitler

Explaining Hitler

'EDEL WOLF'

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was, and is still, an unsolved mystery.

Scholars call the rise of Hitler 'the most crucial and mystifying event of our century', - 'the seminal question of the twentieth century'.

Percy Ernst Schramm speaks for all historians when he writes: 'By virtue of his personality and his ideas Hitler poses an historical problem of the first magnitude.

H. R. Trevor-Roper writes that, despite the passage of half a century, 'Hitler remains a frightening mystery'.

The most fundamental and difficult question in the field of Hitler studies is the question of how this man came to be one of the most outstanding orators and political organizers in German if not all modern history.

Surely, unless there were some miracle in Hitler's life at the age of thirty, when he apparently attended his first political meeting, any historian worth his salt would be looking into this man's early life to find the secret of his success at gaining power.

Fortunately, there were several amateurs who stepped in to fill the gap, and it is to them that we owe most of everything that we know of the young Hitler other than what this most secretive of men chose to tell.

The first of these was Franz Jetzinger, author Hitlers Jugend (1956).

Jetzinger, however, was not a historian, but a Social Democratic politician who served as a deputy in the Provincial Assembly of Upper Austria for fifteen years before the Second World War, and had a deep-seated hatred of both National Socialism and Adolf Hitler.

Brigitte Hamann

Despite his obvious bias, having been a member of the federal state government, Jetzinger had secured for himself the Austrian military file of Adolf Hitler, which included details on Hitler’s arrest in 1914, which took place because he fled from military conscription.

It is to Jetzinger that we owe much of our knowledge of the documents of Hitler's family, his ancestors, his father's change of name, and where the family lived.

August Kubizek

His attacks on Kubizek's reminiscences about Hitler, however, seem to be motivated by his personal bias, and have been seriously questioned by Brigitte Hamann.

Kubizek's memoirs are important as the first and only insight into the incipient character of the man who, without any other natural advantage besides his own personality, became the most powerful leader in modern history.

It was only through the indefatigable work of Jetzinger, however, that this witness was discovered and his testimony obtained before he died.

If if it had been left to the professional historians, we would never have known of Kubizek, and his memoirs might never have been written and published.

A whole generation may well be named in history after him, and we shall speak of the 'Age of Hitler' as we speak of the 'Age of Napoleon' or the 'Age of Charlemagne'.

And yet, for all the obviousness of its imprint on the world, how elusive his character remains !

To the Marxists, the most old-fashioned of all critics, he was simply a pawn, the creature of a dying capitalism in its last stages.

Others have seen him as a 'charlatan' profiting by a series of accidents, a 'consummate actor' and 'hypocrite', or a 'sly, cheating peasant'.

Even Sir Lewis Namier endorses an account of him given by a disgusted German official as a mere 'illiterate, illogical, unsystematic bluffer'.

Even Bullock seems content to regard him as a 'diabolical adventurer', animated solely by an 'unlimited lust for power'.

Trevor-Roper insists that these are not explanations, but evasions - negative labels that explain nothing.

In dismay he asks, 'Could a mere adventurer, a shifty, scatterbrained charlatan, have done what Hitler did, who, starting from nothing nearly conquered the whole world ?'

Ron Rosenbaum

Bizarrely, some historians - mainly Jews or their sympathisers - seriously hold that any attempt to explain Hitler is 'immoral'

These historians insist that Hitler must forever remain a mystery, and that history must never attempt to explain him.

Any explanation is considered, reports Rosenbaum, 'dangerous, forbidden, a transgression of near biblical proportion'.

Rosenbaum also suggests that historians are unable to find any narrative into which Hitler fits, or any new theory to explain him.

It is suggested that the general consensus of historians is that Hitler is simply 'not explainable by the systems of explanation, historical and psychological, that we use to explain ordinary human behavior'.

Thus it is considered 'reasonable' to acknowledge the bankruptcy of imagination of the historical profession in its failure to find any narrative understandable to ordinary human beings, or any credible explanation of the most stupendous events of the twentieth century.

Mein Kampf - Adolf Hitler

Ron Rosenbaum
'Explaining Hitler' - 1998

Ron Rosenbaum (born November 27, 1946) is an American journalist and author. Rosenbaum was born into a Jewish family in New York City. He graduated from Yale University in 1968. He wrote for The Village Voice for several years, leaving in 1975 after which he wrote for Esquire, Harper's, High Times, Vanity Fair, New York Times Magazine and Slate.
Rosenbaum spent more than ten years doing research on Adolf Hitler, interviewing leading historians, philosophers, biographers, theologians and psychologists. The result was his 1998 book, 'Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil'.

One source of information about Hitler, of course, is 'Mein Kampf'.

This is often taken to be Hitler's 'autobiography', whereas, in fact, it is a skilful piece of propaganda, with certain, in many cases distorted, biographical details inserted, to heighten the work's general appeal.

click below for

'MEIN KAMPF'

Explaining the life of Adolf Hitler is similar to exploring a fractal, as the further one travels into it, the more complex it becomes.

One of the major difficulties in achieving an authentic level of understanding of the Hitler phenomenon is the abundance of spurious sources.

The myths abound: Hitler was Jewish with a Rothschild ancestor; Hitler had only one testicle; Hitler had two testicles, but one was bitten off by a goat; Hitler once lived in Liverpool, England; Hitler was insane; Hitler contracted syphilis from a French prostitute during WW1; Hitler's 'real' name was Schicklgruber; and so on.

Karl Heinrich Marx

Most of us have heard at least a few of these, and possibly believed a few as well.

The ambiguous and sometimes contradictory evidence is ready made for those who would tell the story with an agenda; German politicians - many of who are 'closet' Marxisit, and so-called 'Revisionist' historians, being two of the most obvious.

Ron Rosenbaum

Objectivity, the ideal of the true historian, is harder to come by in the field of Hitler Studies than in nearly any other discipline not theologically based.

In a field that touches on such charged issues and events as Nationalism and Racism, the very nature of war and peace and good and evil, emotions tend to cloud, or at least effect, the judgement of even the most disciplined scholar.

Ron Rosenbaum called it a 'terra incognita of ambiguity and incertitude, where armies of scholars clash in evidential darkness over the spectral shadows of Hitler's past'.
Hitler remains an enigma in spite of everything that has been written about him.
Historians like Alan Bullock, Ian Kershaw and Hugh Trevor-Roper confess their perplexity openly.
How was it possible that an unknown, solitary and future-less front-soldier, in 1918, became some years later the 'Leader' and 'Messiah' of the German people ?

'That is the miracle of our age:

that you have found me:

that you have found me among so many millions -

and that I have found you, that is Germany's good fortune !'

Adolf Hitler

Sixty years after his death Hitler appears to be more popular than ever.
In India he symbolizes resistance, in Egypt prosperity, in Peru discipline.
The Senegalese celebrate him as a hero of anti-colonialism, and the Chinese in Hong Kong as a champion of style.
Presumably, Hitler is the only European who, more than half a century after his death, is still widely known around the world.

Other contemporary politicians, such as Churchill or de Gaulle, are merely remembered in the respective linguistic or cultural spheres; the same goes for intellectual heroes like Göthe, Kant, Cervantes, Shakespeare.
But only Hitler is part of popular knowledge in Korea, Japan, Namibia or Uruguay, even outside the academic islands.
Hitler, the German, is not only the most well-known European, but beside the religious founders Mohammed, Jesus, Buddha, or the slayers Genghis Khan or Stalin, perhaps one of the most well-known figures of all time.
These are the results of various journalistic polls.
For Europeans, who like to view their continent as the cradle of the 'Enlightenment' and humanism, it is a rather embarrassing finding.
And a disconcerting, if not downright shocking one because Hitler is viewed in a positive light by millions of non-Europeans - who would have been viewed by Hitler as 'untermenschen'.
Most of the time, however, it is not the historical Hitler, who is celebrated, or even wished to reappear, but a figure of fantasy with few real attributes.
Hitler has a cathartic function, in which each culture projects its specific experiences, preferences and problems.
In the corrupt and chaotic economies of South America, Hitler is read as a code for order and national unity.
Africans, on the other hand, admire the strong man in him, the myth of power, but also the enemy of the former colonialists France and England.
Also in India, from whose history Hitler took his ideas of the Aryans and the Swastika, Hitler is transfigured into an aid in the national liberation struggle against the British Crown.
However, in East Asia, Hitler is merely present as an aesthetic influence in fashion collections, commercials and the restaurant business, uncoupled from Nazi policies or World War II.
This is not the case in the Arabic and Iranian centers of Islam.
Not only is Hitler celebrating a renaissance in the Middle East, but the modern view of Hitler is closest to the historical one.
In contrast to the West, however, the historical facts are evaluated differently.

Hitler's rise to power was meteoric.

Reichstag

In 12 years he built the National Socialist German Workers Party from a mere seven members in 1919 to the largest political party in Germany in 1932 when the NSDAP won more than one-third of the seats in the Reichstag by competing against six established political parties in free parliamentary elections.
Hitler was no tyrant imposed on Germany.
Though he never received majority support in free elections (no party achieved a majority during the Wiemar Republic) he was legally appointed to power as Reich Chancellor, just like his predecessors had been, and became between 1933 and 1940 arguably the most popular head of state in the world.
It has been suggested that at the peak of his popularity nine Germans in ten were 'Hitler-supporters'.
Hitler's personality may be inexplicable and unfathomable to many, but his skill as an orator is unquestioned.
Hitler was correct when he declared, 'I have no equal in the art of persuading the masses'
Scholars of Hitler's career uniformly attest to his rhetorical prowess:
Klaus Fisher: 'Without his remarkable gift of persuasion Hitler would never have reached such heights of power.'

Trevor Roper

Trevor Roper: 'Hitler, at the beginning, had only his voice. That was the sole instrument of his power.'
Frederic Spotts: 'Hitler's speeches were the key to his rise to power.'
Kershaw writes, 'Hitler's rhetorical talent was, of course, recognized even by his political enemies.'
Rhetoric was the key to Hitler's success and ethos and charisma was the key to Hitler's rhetoric.

Aristotle

Aristotle describes ethos as one of three means of persuasion, along with emotional appeal (pathos) and logical argument (logos).
Writes Aristotle, 'the character of the speaker is a cause of persuasion when the speech is so uttered as to make the speaker worthy of belief.'
For Aristotle, 'the speaker's character as perceived by the audience is the most potent of all the means of persuasion.'
German sociologist and economist Max Weber (1864-1920) emphasizes and expands the importance of ethos to persuasion in his tome 'Economy and Society' by explaining the concept of charisma.
According to Weber, charisma is one of the three pure types of authority, along with rational grounds and traditional grounds.
For Weber, charisma is 'a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is considered extraordinary and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities'.
Explains Weber, 'these are such as are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin, or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a leader'.
In addition there has to be a measure of extraordinariness in the person of the charismatic leader, in order to evoke the enthusiasm and devotion necessary for the establishment of charismatic authority.

Maximilian Weber

Maximilian Karl Emil "Max" Weber (21 April 1864 – 14 June 1920) was a German sociologist, philosopher, and political economist whose ideas influenced social theory, social research, and the entire discipline of sociology. Weber is often cited, with Émile Durkheim and Karl Marx, as among the three founding architects of sociology. Weber was a key proponent of methodological anti-positivism, arguing for the study of social action through interpretive (rather than purely empiricist) means, based on understanding the purpose and meaning that individuals attach to their own actions. Weber's main intellectual concern was understanding the processes of rationalisation, secularisation, and "disenchantment" that he associated with the rise of capitalism and modernity, and which he saw as the result of a new way of thinking about the world.

It should be noted that charismatic political leaders are rare.
Few individuals are perceived to possess that special spiritual power or personal quality that gives an individual influence or authority over large numbers of people.
Hitler, however, exemplified Weber's charismatic leader.
The fact is, Hitler was beloved by his people, - by the average German who pledged to him an affection, a tenderness, and a fidelity that bordered on the irrational.
It was idolatry on national scale.
Kershaw states, 'Underpinning Hitler's unchallenged authority was the adulation of the masses. Large sections of the population simply idolized him'.
A.J.P Taylor concedes, 'no dictatorship has been so ardently desired or so firmly supported by so many people as Hitler's was in Germany'.
Anecdotal examples of the German people's adulation of Hitler abound.
A 17 year old girl declared, 'the Fuhrer is a great man, a genius, a person sent to us by heaven.'
A Berlin teacher remarked, 'The entire thoughts and feelings of most Germans are dominated by the Führer. He is the saviour of a wicked, sad, German world.'
CBS correspondent in Berlin William L. Shirer describes in his diary the reaction of Germans to Hitler during the 1934 Nuremburg Rally: 'At about 10'clock tonight I got caught in a mob of about 10,000 people, who jammed the moat in front of Hitler's hotel shouting 'we want our Fuhrer.' They looked up to him as if he were a messiah, their faces transformed'.
Six years later in December 1940, at the height of Hitler's popularity, following the defeat of France, Shirer acknowledges, 'it is the genius of Adolf Hitler that has aroused this basic feeling, and given it tangible expression. Today, as far as the vast majority of his fellow countrymen are concerned, he has reached a pinnacle never before achieved by a German leader. He has become, even before his death, a legend, almost a god. To many Germans he is a figure remote, unreal, hardly human. For them he has become infallible.'
Hitler's charismatic appeal was not only limited to the German people.
Close associates also succumbed to his ethos.
Hitler's secretary, Christa Schroder, writes in her memoirs, 'He possessed a gift of a rare magnetic power to reach people, a sixth sense and a clairvoyant intuition.
He could, in some mysterious way, foretell the subconscious reactions of the masses, and in some inexplicable manner mesmerized his audience.'

Albert Speer

Erwin Rommel

Erwin Rommel, Hitler's greatest general, wrote to his wife in 1943, 'what power he radiates. What faith and confidence he inspires in his people.'
Albert Speer, Hitler's architect and munitions minister, asks rhetorically in his memoirs, 'How is it possible that he captivated me so, and for more than a decade.'

Leni Reifenstahl, an award winning film director/producer, and actress before Hitler came to power in 1933, recalls hearing Hitler speak for the first time in 1932:

Leni Reifenstahl

'It seemed as if the earth's surface was spreading out in front of me, like a hemisphere that suddenly splits apart in the middle, spewing out an enormous jet of water so powerful that it shook the earth. I felt quite paralysed.'
After this experience Reifenstahl wrote to Hitler, offering to produce movies for the Third Reich.
The 'Hitler Myth' portrayed a leader who possessed numerous charismatic characteristics including: courage, intelligence, goodwill, aloofness, benevolence, asceticism, even sex appeal.
Most importantly the 'Hitler Myth' projected Hitler's exceptional, supernatural, and extraordinary powers by emphasizing his success and strength of character.
He was perceived by millions of Germans to be providential - even messianic.
Weber believed that success was crucial for charismatic leadership: 'if proof of success eludes the leader for long, if he appears deserted by his god, or his magical or heroic powers, above all, if his leadership fails to benefit his followers, it is likely that his charismatic authority will disappear.
Failure, certainly a chain of failures, means a fatal undermining of charisma.
Charismatic leadership cannot survive lack of success.'
Before coming to power Hitler called Germany 'a grovelling nation of beggars.'
He vowed to 'tear to pieces the diktat of Versailles, and restore German pride and honor.
And he subsequently achieved these goals.
In a series of brilliant and bloodless coups he created a triumphant 'Greater Germany', proud and strong.

Austrian Anschluß

Re-militarized Rhineland,

He re-militarized the Rhineland, and annexed Austria and Czechoslovakia.
The nation cheered their Führer's successes.
After Germany's annexation of Austria (Anschluß) in March 1938, Hitler's popularity reached new heights. When Hitler faced down the British and French in Czechoslovakia in October 1938 Hitler's charisma reached a new dimension of legendary infallibility, exceeded only in June 1940 when the defeat of France raised Hitler's standing to unsurpassed heights.
Germans were not alone in lauding Hitler.
One of his strongest admirers was Winston Churchill.
In 1936 Churchill wrote, 'Hitler is the greatest German of the age. He has restored Germany's honor.'
In 1937 Churchill described Hitler's achievements as 'among the most remarkable in the whole history of the world.'
In 1938 Churchill's admiration for Hitler was almost ecstatic: 'I have always said that if Great Britain were defeated in war I hoped we should find a Hitler to lead us back to our rightful position among nations.'
German philosopher Frederick Nietzsche expressed a quality indispensable for charismatic leadership:
'Men believe in the truth of all that is seen to be strongly believed.'
Hitler projected unbounded self-confidence.
Walter Langer, a Harvard psychologist, stated that 'Hitler's strongest point is perhaps his firm belief in his mission. It is the spectacle of a man whose convictions are so strong that he sacrifices himself for the cause that appeals to others and induces them to follow his example.'

Otto Dietrich

Otto Dietrich, who saw Hitler regularly for 12 years as his press secretary, avows, 'Hitler's dominant characteristic was his extraordinary will power.'
Weber believed charismatic leaders project supernatural, extraordinary, and 'providential powers.'

Pasewalk

The 'Hitler Myth' describes Hitler as a leader driven by destiny on a messianic mission to restore Germany.
Hitler said this vision first appeared in 1918 when he was recovering in a hospital in Pasewalk, from a gas attack.
'As I lay there it came over me that I would liberate the German people and make Germany great.'
This premonition became an indispensable part of the 'Hitler Myth' he repeated this omen often.

Ernst Hanestaengl

Ernst Hanestaengl, a frequent social companion, recalls that Hitler told him that he 'received a command from another world above to save his unhappy country'.
This vocation reached Hitler in the form of a supernatural vision.

Nürnberg Reichsparteitag

He felt that his mission was to save Germany.
Portraying himself as a man of destiny became common in Hitler's speeches.
In Munich in 1936 he declared, 'I go the way providence dictates for me with the assurance of a sleepwalker.'
In Linz, Austria, where he lived as a young man, he exclaimed, 'If providence once called me out of this city then providence must thereby have given me a mission.'
Speaking to a huge audience at the Nürnberg Reichsparteitag in 1936 Hitler stated: 'that you have found me among so many millions is the miracle of our time. And that I have found you, that is Germany's fortune.'

Looked at objectively, it could be said that Hitler amazed the world in everything he accomplished.

To the great majority of the German people he was a 'redeemer'.

The German word Erlöser has two distinct connotations.
One refers to Jesus, dying on the cross to redeem the sins of the world.
The second refers to 'Parsifal', the eponymous hero of Wagner's opera - and this brings us directly to an association with Hitler.

Hitler gave the Germans real leadership, and motivated them to the greatest heights of achievement in every field of endeavour.

German Factory

Autobahn

Under his leadership Germany was a pulsating hive of industry.

Every section of the country responded to his ideas and encouragement.

He gave the German people joy of being alive, and a pride in simply being a German, instead of the humiliated broken people he had inherited.

There was an infectious feeling of excitement and expectancy in the land, as day by day and week by week, Hitler raised his people from the gutter, and freed Germans from humiliation in other lands.

Hitler Speaks

'How could we not feel once again at this hour the miracle that brought us together.

You once heard the voice of a man, and it struck your hearts, it awakened you and you followed this voice.
You followed it for years, without even having seen the owner of the voice; you merely heard a voice and followed it.
When we meet here we are all filled by the miraculous quality of this meeting.
Not every one of you sees me, and I do not see everyone of you.
But I feel you, and you feel me.
It is the faith in our nation that has made us small people great, that has made us poor people rich, that has made us vacillating, despondent, frightened people brave and determined; that has given us blind wanderers sight and brought us together.
So you come from your little villages, your market towns, your cities, from mines and factories, away from the plow on one day to this city.
You come from the narrow environment of the struggle of your daily lives, and your struggle for Germany, and for our nation, in order to have the feeling:
Now we are together; we are with him, and he is with us, and now we are Germany.
It is a wonderful thing for me to be your Führer.'

Adolf Hitler

Iron Cross - First Class
© Copyright Peter Crawford 2012

For Hitler, "National Socialism was natural socialism" and in his speeches he equated God with "the dominion of natural laws throughout the entire universe."

This idea was attractive, and easily grasped by the German nation.

Today it is a very modern philosophy.

To his admirers, he was a real patriot and a war hero, having suffered in the horrors of trenches during the First World War, and having been awarded the Iron Cross, First Class.

The people sensed that at last they had found standing before them a man, in whom they could trust, and who believed in himself and in the talents and abilities of his own people.

Hitler created a Germany that influenced people from far beyond its borders.

During the Second World War, a million foreigners joined the Waffen SS simply because they believed in what he was trying to achieve, and willingly sacrificed themselves, for no reward except a profound belief in what they were fighting for.

Hitler created visual images of National Socialism and the Third Reich that are so outstanding, that to this day no person or country, has ever surpassed its artistic and spiritual influence.
These powerful images of the Third Reich have been so effective that even today Hollywood film studios have made billions of dollars since the end of World War II, and still continue to fill theatre seats just on the power of Hitler's name.

His use of the ancient sign of the Swastika is the most famous and easily recognized emblem around the world today, and memorabilia of the Third Reich changes hands for high prices at public auctions or private sales rooms.

Tens of thousands of people purchase copies of Third Reich archive material, and in the privacy of their own homes, watch in fascination at the man who attempted to change the world and bring back simplicity to its organization.

Endless books have been published on the Third Reich.

Even today, debates take place at every level continuing to try to understand this phenomenon.

Hugh Trevor Roper

Some years ago the German historian Rainer Zitelmann, in a scholarly study established that Hitler's outlook was "rational, self-consistent, and modern", and as early as 1953, the respected British historian Hugh R. Trevor Roper, evoked the image of Hitler as a kind of "synthesis of Napoleon and Spengler, noting that of all the world conquerors Hitler had been the most 'philosophical'."

But none of this really 'explains' Hitler.

One of the main stumbling blocks to a true understanding of this unique individual, for us in the twenty-first century, is the fact that Hitler was born a long time ago - in fact on 20th April, 1889.
While Zitelmann may describe Hitler's outlook as "modern" - he does not mean 'contemporary'.

'Modernity', in this case, typically refers to a post-traditional, post-medieval historical period, one marked by the move from feudalism (or agrarianism) toward capitalism, industrialization, secularization, rationalization, the nation-state and its constituent institutions and forms of surveillance.

Charles Pierre Baudelaire

Charles Pierre Baudelaire is credited with coining the term "modernity" (modernité) to designate the fleeting, ephemeral experience of life in an urban metropolis, and the responsibility art has to capture that experience.

Conceptually, modernity relates to the modern era, and to 'modernism', but forms a distinct concept.

Whereas the Enlightenment (ca. 1650–1800) invokes a specific movement in Western philosophy, modernity tends to refer only to the social relations associated with the rise of capitalism.

Picasso - Cubism

In art, however, 'Cubism' may be seen as a feature of 'modernity', and yet it began in the first decade of the twentieth century.

Cubism is an early-20th-century movement pioneered by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. The term is broadly used in association with a wide variety of works produced in Paris (Montmartre, Montparnasse and Puteaux) during the 1910s and extending through the 1920s. Variants such as Futurism and Constructivism developed in other countries. A primary influence that led to Cubism was the representation of three-dimensional form in the late works of Paul Cézanne, which were displayed in a retrospective at the 1907 Salon d'Automne. In Cubist artwork, objects are broken up and reassembled in an abstracted form.

The Wright Flyer - 1903

Equally the world's first successful controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight took place on December 17, 1903 - a 'modern' event that stirred the imagination of the young, fourteen year old Adolf Hitler.

The Wright Flyer is the first successful powered aircraft, designed and built by the Wright brothers. They flew it four times on December 17, 1903 near the Kill Devil Hills, about four miles south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, U.S. Today, the airplane is exhibited in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. The U.S. Smithsonian Institution describes the aircraft as "...the first powered, heavier-than-air machine to achieve controlled, sustained flight with a pilot aboard." The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale described the 1903 flight during the 100th anniversary in 2003 as "the first sustained and controlled heavier-than-air powered flight."

Hitler was born into a Europe dominated by Empires - some ancient, like the Hapsburg and Russian Empires, and some relatively new, although based on an ancient concept, like the German Empire (founded in 1871 - just 18 before Hitler was born).

Wappen des Reiches Österreich

Wappen von Österreich-Ungarn

The Austro-Hungarian Empire - more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in Central Europe, which operated from 1867 to October 1918, following the end of World War I. The union was a result of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, under which the House of Habsburg agreed to share power with the separate Hungarian government, dividing the territory of the former Austrian Empire between them. The Austrian and the Hungarian lands became independent entities enjoying equal status.

Kaiserliche Flagge des deutschen Kaisers

Wappen Deutsches Reich

Das Deutsches Kaiserreich - the German Empire is the common name given to the state officially named Deutsches Reich (literally: "German Realm"), designating Germany from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Kaiser (Emperor) on 18 January 1871, to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of the Emperor, Wilhelm II.
The German Empire consisted of 27 constituent territories (most of them ruled by royal families). While the Kingdom of Prussia contained most of the population and most of the territory of the Reich, the Prussian leadership became supplanted by German leaders and Prussia itself played a lesser role.

Николай II
Николай Александрович Романов
Tsar Nicholas II

Greater Arms of the Russian Empire
© Copyright Peter Crawford 2012

When Hitler was a boy the Soviet Union didn't exist, and Russia was rule by Tsar Nicholas II, the supreme autocrat of the Russian Empire, who had absolute control over all matters both secular and spiritual.

Николай II - Nicholas II (18 May [O.S. 6 May] 1868 – 17 July 1918) was the last Emperor of Russia, Grand Duke of Finland, and titular King of Poland. His official short title was Nicholas II, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias. As with other Russian Emperors he is commonly known by the monarchical title Tsar (though Russia formally ended the Tsardom in 1721). Nicholas II ruled from 1 November 1894 until his enforced abdication on 2 March 1917.

Europe then was a very different place to Europe today, or even the the Europe Hitler came back to after his time in the trenches.

Before he moved to Linz, Hitler grew up in a relatively rural, backward area of Austria.

The population was basically made up of farmers and peasants and, with the absence of mass communications, and relatively poor literacy, the area existed in a kind of 'time-warp', where life carried on much as it had done at the start of the nineteenth century.

Even after Hitler moved to Vienna, and then Munich, he was still living in a world in which only the very wealthy could afford such new inventions as the Gramophone (12" records only became available around 1910), and the wireless (radio).

Gramaphone

From the mid-1890s until the early 1920s both phonograph cylinder and disc recordings, and machines to play them on were widely mass-marketed and sold.
The disc system (the gramophone gradually became more popular because of its cheaper price, and better marketing by disc record companies. Edison ceased cylinder manufacture in the autumn of 1929, and the history of disc and cylinder rivalry was concluded. Early disc recordings were produced in a variety of speeds ranging from 60 to 130 rpm, and a variety of sizes. As early as 1894, Emile Berliner's United States Gramophone Company was selling single-sided 7-inch discs with an advertised standard speed of "about 70 rpm". One standard audio recording handbook describes speed regulators or "governors" as being part of a wave of improvement introduced rapidly after 1897. History does not disclose why 78 rpm was chosen for the phonograph industry, apparently this just happened to be the speed created by one of the early machines and, for no other reason continued to be used.

Equally film, that great moulder of popular culture, was black and white, silent, and short, around the turn of the century

'The Student of Prague' (1913)

On November 1, 1895 Max Skladanowsky and his brother Emil demonstrated their film projector the Bioscop at the Wintergarten music hall in Berlin. A 15-minute series of eight short films, it was the first screening of films to a paying audience in Europe. Other German film pioneers included the Berliners Oskar Messter and Max Gliewe, two of several individuals who independently in 1896 first used a Geneva drive (which allows the film to be advanced intermittently one frame at a time) in a projector, and the cinematographer Guido Seeber. In its earliest days, the cinematograph was restricted to upper class audiences, however, soon, trivial short films were being shown as fairground attractions aimed at the working and lower-middle class. Film-makers with an artistic bent attempted to counter this view of cinema with longer movies based on literary models, and the first German "artistic" films began to be produced from around 1910, an example being 'The Student of Prague' (1913) which was co-directed by Paul Wegener and Stellan Rye, photographed by Guido Seeber. The first standalone, dedicated cinema in Germany was opened in Mannheim in 1906, and by 1910, there were over 1000 cinemas operating in Germany.

Adolf Hitler

When he was a young man Hitler was often referred to as 'schöne Adolf' - 'handsome' or 'beautiful' Adolf.

To many people today, seeing photos and film of Hitler, that may seem incomprehensible, but then we are forgetting how time has changed our perception of beauty.

Take, for example, Charles Chaplin.

Chaplin and Hitler resembled one another, (enough for Chaplin to impersonate Hitler in 'The Great Dictator' in 1940), particularly with regard to the moustache they both favoured - which today seems to many to be ridiculous - although it was a fashionable style at the time.

Charlie Chaplin - The Great Dictator

Chaplin made 'The Great Dictator' in 1940 as a "satirical attack on fascism" (did he mean National Socialism ?), and is his "most overtly political film". There were strong parallels between Chaplin and Adolf Hitler, having been born four days apart, and raised in similar circumstances. It was widely noted that Hitler wore the same moustache as the 'Little Tramp', and it was this physical resemblance that formed the basis of Chaplin's story. Chaplin spent two years developing the script, and began filming in September 1939. Making a comedy about Hitler was seen as highly controversial, but Chaplin's financial independence allowed him to take the risk. The response from critics was not enthusiastic. Although most agreed that it was a brave and worthy film, many considered the ending inappropriate. Chaplin concluded the film with a six-minute speech in which he looked straight at the camera and professed his personal (left wing) beliefs. The monologue drew significant debate for its overt preaching, and continues to attract attention to this day. It has been identified as triggering Chaplin's decline in popularity.

Adolf Hitler - 1920

The Little Tramp

We now think of Chaplin's 'little tramp' as equally ridiculous and pathetic in appearance, but that is not what people thought who saw the character at the turn of the century, (the 'tramp' was first seen in 1914 in the Keystone comedy, 'Kid Auto Races at Venice') - their perception of the 'tramp' was of a young man who was 'down on his luck' - but a 'good-looking', handsome, one may almost say 'cute' character.

And in the same way, Hitler, with a similar hairstyle and similar moustache was seen as 'good-looking' - hence 'schöne Adolf'.

So Hitler came form a world very different from our own, and yet in some respects his 'weltanschauung' seems almost contemporary - which is an obvious paradox.
One explanation for this derives from the fact that Hitler lived through what has been described as the 'Watershed of the Epoch' - which he would have remembered as 'der große Krieg' - the great war.

click below for more information about

Der Große Krieg 1914-18

Causes of the Great War

It was the Great War that effectively divided off the new, 'Modern' epoch of history from the previous 'Traditional' epoch - and it created a paradox in Hitler's thinking and, significantly, in the nature of National Socialism.

This paradox relates to the complex relationship between 'Tradition' and 'Modernity' which informs the fundamental nature of Völkisch thought and philosophy.

click below for a discussion of

'Tradition' and 'Modernity' in National Socialism

Adolf Hitler - Herr Wolf

The name Adolf (Adolph) comes from the Old High German , and is composed of adal (edel - noble, noble) and wolf (wolf).

In his early days Hitler referred to himself as 'Herr Wolf' and changed his sister's name to 'Frau Wolf'.

He was called 'Wolf' by close relatives, as the name Adolf is derived from an old German word for wolf.

He even named three of his military headquarters 'Wolfsschanze', 'Wolfsschluch't and 'Werwolf'.
His favourite dogs were wolfshunde, and he referred to his SS as "my pack of wolves."

"Come what may, my heart remains ice-cold."

Adolf Hitler

___________________________________

WAS HITLER POSSESSED ?

Few explanations for the phenomena of the rise of Adolf Hitler are in any way adequate or convincing.

As a result many unconventional theories have been put forward - including occult explanations, aliens, and possession.
This is, of course, a fertile area for wild speculation, and many have elaborated various unlikely scenarios, however, despite this there is reliable documentary evidence which points to a likely, occult explanation for the phenomena of Hitler and National Socialism.

Hermann Rauschning

Either with individuals, or before a multitude, Hitler revealed a great hypnotic power, and for this reason it is often proposed that he was possessed by invisible powers, his “unknown superiors” referred to by Hermann Rauschning.
In his work 'Hitler Told Me', he describes the Führer as 'an antenna in touch with frightening, superior beings'.
Hitler's words, ‘I follow the way that Providence points me with the confidence of a sleep-walker,’ indicates the lines of his supra-normal powers.
But, from whom did he receive those powers ?
Would it be 'per chance' from the Thule group that had initiated him into the occult ?
Or would it be from an older revelation ?
One thing seems certain about Hitler and National Socialism - the Gnostic and occult character of the man and his thought.

Gnosticism (from gnostikos, "learned", from Ancient Greek: γνῶσις gnōsis, knowledge; Arabic: الغنوصية‎ al-ġnūṣīh) is the belief that the material world created by the demiurge should be shunned, and the spiritual world should be embraced, Gnostic ideas influenced many ancient religions. In Gnosticism, the world of the demiurge is represented by the 'lower world' which associated with matter, flesh, time, the imperfect and ephemeral world. The world of God is represented by the upper world, and is associated with the soul and perfection. The world of God is eternal and not part of the physical. It is impalpable, and time there doesn't exist. To rise to God, the Gnostic must reach the "knowledge" which mixes philosophy, metaphysics, culture, knowledge, and secrets of history and the universe.

So, was Hitler possessed ? - this is a question that is often asked.

Carl Jung, the well known, German speaking, Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist certainly thought so (see below - 'Essay on Wotan').

Carl Jung

Carl Jung was born on July 26, 1875, in Kesswil, Switzerland. Jung believed in the “complex” or emotionally charged associations. He collaborated with Sigmund Freud, but disagreed with him about the sexual basis of neuroses. He founded analytic psychology, advancing the idea of introvert and extrovert personalities and the power of the unconscious. He wrote several books before his death in 1961.

Lance of Saint Maurice

Trevor Ravenscroft's 1973 book, 'The Spear of Destiny', as well as a later book, 'The Mark of the Beast', claims that Adolf Hitler was possessed by an entity connected to the Lance of Saint Maurice (also known as the 'Spear of Destiny'), which Hitler first saw in the Weltliche Schatzkammer in the Hofburg in Vienna.

Trevor Ravenscroft repeatedly attempted to define the mysterious "powers" that the legend says the spear serves.
He states that it is a hostile and evil spirit of immense power.

Trevor Ravenscroft

He never actually referred to the spear as spiritually controlled, but rather as intertwined with all of mankind's ambitions.
However, Ravenscroft very quickly moves away from reasonably well researched material into the sphere of wild speculation which does little to shed any real light on Adolf Hitler, or the true nature of National Socialism.

Trevor Ravenscroft was born in England in 1921. He was educated at Repton and Sandhurst Military College before serving as a Commando officer in World War II. He was captured on a raid which attempted to assassinate Field Marshal Rommel in North Africa and was a POW in Germany from 1941 to 1945, escaping three times but each time being recaptured. After the war he studied at St Thomas' Hospital, later becoming a journalist on the Beaverbrook press. He studied history under Dr Walter Johannes Stein for twelve years and carried out intensive research for his books 'The Spear of Destiny' and 'The Mark of the Beast'. Before his death in 1989, he also lectured on history in London and Edinburgh.

But to start at the beginning, there was a tradition of spirit possession in the area where Hitler was born.

The Schneider Family

Willi and Rudi Schneider were born in Braunau.

Their father was a Linotype compositor who lived with his wife and six sons, close by his workshop.
Willi, the elder brother, first went into trances in 1919, when he was sixteen.

Willi's control was 'Olga', who claimed to have been Lola Montez, the mistress of Ludwig I of Bavaria.

Klara Hitler

Willi was capable of producing materialisations of spirits and despite being tested under rigorous scientific conditions in Munich, Vienna and London from 1922 until 1927, no explanation has been advanced for such phenomena.

Willi's powers faded after 1927, but Rudi's then began to develop.
Rudi was also tested under rigorous scientific conditions in Munich,Vienna, Paris and London and no evidence of fraud was ever forthcoming.

After 1934 Rudi's powers also began to fade, and he died in obscurity in Braunau in 1957.

Strangely, Hitler's wet-nurse was also wet-nurse to the Schneider brothers.

At eight years of age Hitler was sent to the school of the Monastery of Lambach, where he reveled in the pomp and solemnity of Catholic ritual.

Arms of Bishop Hagen

Monastery of Lambach

Klara Hitler had hopes of her son becoming a priest.

(It was at Lambach that Hitler first saw the swastika, which appeared on the heraldic arms of Bishop Hagen, which decorated the Baroque choir stalls, where he sang in the Monastery Church on feast days)

Interestingly, Hitler was not considered suitable for a religious life, despite the fact that at that time he was top of his class.
Related to this may be the fact that while Hitler was a at the abbey, a Cistercian monk named Adolf Joseph Lanz (Liebenfels) made a stay at Lambach.
He stayed for several weeks, shut up in the monastery, thoroughly researching and studying Bishop Hagen's personal papers.
The monks affirm that during his research he evidenced the signs of great agitation, like of a person who had made a great discovery.
After his visit to Abbey, Lanz returned to Vienna, where the following year (1900) he founded the Order of the New Templars.
The question remains - did the young Adolf and the monk Joseph Lanz meet during that time ?

Alois Hitler

Apart from these facts, there seems to be little evidence that young Adolf was anything other than a fairly normal boy, despite his difficult family situation.

On 2 February 1900 Hitler's younger brother, Edmund, died of measles.
Adolf was also ill, but recovered, although for the rest of his childhood and boyhood he was considered a 'sickly youth'.
To Klara, the death was like a hammer blow and brought back the memories of the three children she had lost twelve years before.
She suffered terribly, and neighbours were shocked when she failed to attend the funeral.
To the ten year old Adolf, who had been very close to his younger brother, the death left a lasting wound.
After the church service he stood in a driving snowstorm and watched while his little brother was lowered into his grave.
In the future, any-time Adolf looked out of his bedroom window he was reminded of Edmund, who's grave was visible from his window.
He became moody, dispirited and withdrawn.
The death of Edmund deeply affected Hitler, whose character changed from being confident and outgoing, and an excellent student, to a morose, detached, and sullen boy who constantly fought his father and his teachers.
Years later when Adolf Hitler would become famous, journalists and reporters would flock to the area to see what people remembered of him.
Although the local population would repeat the stories of his Indian games, how quickly he ran if called by his father, how well he did in the Leonding school, or how spoiled he was, they also remembered a very curious thing.
They said Adolf was sometimes seen, late into the night, sitting on the high cemetery wall "gazing up at the stars" or talking to the "windblown trees."
Some of Adolf's playmates remembered that Adolf would also climb the hill behind his house late at night, and talk to a "nonexistent audience."
It is at this point in his youth that the young Adolf passed for the first time through those unseen portals into the world of the occult.
After Edmund's death, religion lost its glamour for the young Adolf and he never again talked about becoming a priest.
It appears that Edmund's death haunted Hitler all his life.

August (Gustl) Kuzibek

Three years later Alois, Hitler's father, died.

Then there was another indication that there was something strange about this young adolescent.
Adolf Hitler's only real friend - August (Gustl) Kuzibek, met Hitler in 1904.

August ("Gustl") Kubizek (3 August 1888, Linz – 23 October 1956, Eferding) was a close friend of Adolf Hitler when both were in their late teens. August was the first born and only surviving child of Michael and Maria Kubizek. His sisters Maria, Therese and Karoline died in early childhood. Kubizek later wrote that this was a striking parallel between his own life and that of Adolf Hitler, whose mother had lost four children prematurely. As the surviving sons of grief-stricken mothers, August and Adolf could not help but feel they had been spared or "chosen" by fate. Kubizek and Hitler first met while competing for standing room in the Landestheater in Linz, Austria. Because of their shared passion for the operas of Richard Wagner they quickly became close friends and later room-mates in Vienna while both sought admission into college. The two shared a small room in Stumpergasse 29/2 door 17 in the sixth district of Vienna from 22 February to early July 1908.
In 1951, Kubizek, who had rejected other post-war offers for his memoirs, agreed to publish 'Adolf Hitler, mein Jugendfreund' ('Adolf Hitler, My Boyhood Friend') through the Leopold Stocker Verlag.

In his account of his friendship with Adolf Hitler Kubizek describes his friend's physical appearance, with particular emphasis on Hitler's eyes'

'In his countenance the eyes were so outstanding that one didn't notice anything else.
Never in my life have I seen any other person whose appearance - how shall I put it - was so completely dominated by the eyes.

Landestheater - Linz,

And does the nickname of 'Wolf' for Hitler come from this pseudo-canine 'dominance' trait of the eyes ?

Here, possibly, is another hint of some mediumistic or 'spirit possessed' nature with regard to Adolf Hitler.
Another incident that indicates that something had happened to the young Hitler occurred after the two boys had attended a performance of Richard Wagner's Opera 'Rienze' in Linz.
On this occasion the young Adolf spoke with a voice that seemed to have its origins and meaning from another place - but more of that strange night and Adolf's strange speech later(see below).

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

At the same time, young Adolf was spending many hours in the public library in Linz, filling his mind with books on such varied subjects as Ancient Rome, Eastern Religions, Yoga, Occultism, Hypnotism, and Astrology.

Many people today are not aware of the deeply Occult basis that these religions and practices contain, and they formed a tremendous early influence on Hitler.

Adolf was also deeply influenced by Hegel, that German Philosopher and University Professor, whose concept of 'Thesis' battling 'Antithesis', producing the hybrid, 'Synthesis', was so influential on European philosophy, and the general flow of history in the 20th Century.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (August 27, 1770 – November 14, 1831) was a German philosopher, and a major figure in German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality revolutionized European philosophy and was an important precursor to Continental philosophy and Marxism. Hegel developed a comprehensive philosophical framework, or "system", of Absolute Idealism to account in an integrated and developmental way for the relation of mind and nature, the subject and object of knowledge, psychology, the state, history, art, religion, and philosophy. In particular, he developed the concept that mind or spirit manifested itself in a set of contradictions and oppositions that it ultimately integrated and united, without eliminating either pole or reducing one to the other.

Alice Bailey

Madame Blavatsky

Between 1903 and 1913 Hitler began to delve into the works of Madame Blavatsky, the head of the Theosophical Society.

Blavatsky wrote 'Isis Enthüllt (Isis Revealed) and 'Die Geheimlehre' (The Secret Doctrine, from which Hitler developed his views on the Ur-Rassen - (Root Races) and the Jews, considering them to be an inferior race which were threatening the "purity" of the German race.

Еле́на Петро́вна Блава́тская - Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (12 August [O.S. 31 July] 1831 – 8 May 1891) was a scholar of ancient wisdom literature and established a research and publishing institute called the Theosophical Society. Blavatsky defined Theosophy as "the archaic Wisdom-Religion, the esoteric doctrine once known in every ancient country having claims to civilization." Blavatsky's extensive research into the many different spiritual traditions of the world led to the publication of what is now considered her magnus opus, 'The Secret Doctrine', which collates and organizes the essence of these teachings into a comprehensive synthesis. Blavatsky's other works include 'Isis Unveiled,' 'The Key to Theosophy' and 'The Voice of the Silence'.

Alice Bailey, writing in her book 'Die Externalisierung der Hierarchie' (The Externalisation Of The Hierarchy), calls the Jews a 'race of lower evolution', a theme Hitler struck often with his statement 'The Jew is the anti-man, the creature of another god'.

Hitler was also deeply involved in achieving 'transcendent consciousness' through meditations and drugs, so critical if he was to open his Pineal Gland, or the 'Third Eye'.

Hitler was also deeply interested in the Akashic Record and Reincarnation.

The women of Germany found him to be "polite, charming, polished and very handsome. Perhaps it was his hypnotic eyes that led many of them into a fatal attraction."

As also noted, Hitler changed from a shy, timid speaker, who seemed to stumble over his words, to a most powerful orator, who seemed to be able to weave a spellbinding effect over his audience.

Yet, his voice was not his own, and he seemed to be transfixed by a strange force, as he was speaking

"Many people believe that the poorly trained Adolf Hitler became the most accomplished orator who ever lived ... His technique has been compared to the gradual seduction of a beautiful woman applied to a whole nation."

Dietrich Eckhart

Hitler also became deeply immersed in stories of Pan-Germanic and Völkisch mysticism, and old Nordic legends.

All of this was a heady brew for young Adolf's mind and soul, but it prepared him for the ultimate experience of all, - joining the Thule Society, in 1919.

At the same time Hitler met Dietrich Eckhart, who exercised a deep influence over him.

As Eckhart lay dying in December, 1923, he uttered a most prophetic statement,
"Follow Hitler! He will dance, but it is I who have called the tune! I have initiated him into the 'Secret Doctrine', opened his centres of vision and given him the means to communicate with the Powers. Do not mourn for me: for I shall have influenced history more than any other German."

Eckhart repeatedly told his fellow adepts in the Thule Group that he had received an occult annunciation, that he was
"destined to prepare the vessel of the Aeon, the man inspired by the higher powers, to conquer the world, and lead the Aryan race to glory".

With the aid of Eckart, Hitler, in 1921, at age 33 years of age, was totally 'possessed' and prepared to take the leadership of the National Socialist Party.

ÆONS and ARCHETYPES

But what is meant by the term 'possession' ?

One of the manifestations of occult power in the earth-plane is possession of the human consciousness by non-material entities.

This is where an entity supplants the will of an individual, to a greater or lesser degree, and performs its own will in the human consciousness.

This is the essence of the mechanism of possession, and this explains how there are very powerful occult entities influencing human behaviour, and human events.

Jung considered theses occult entities to be the 'archetypes'.

Jung developed an understanding of archetypes as being "ancient or archaic images that derive from the collective unconscious".

These are different from instincts, as Jung understood instincts as being "an unconscious physical impulse toward actions, and saw the archetypes as the psychic counterpart".

There are many different archetypes, and Jung has stated they are limitless, but they have been simplified; examples include the 'persona', the 'shadow', the 'anima', the 'animus', the 'great mother', the 'wise old man', the 'hero', and the 'self' - to name but a few.

Jung proposed that the archetype had a dual nature: it exists both in the psyche, and in the world at large.

Archetype of Time
© Copyright Peter Crawford 2012

He called this non-psychic aspect of the archetype the "psychoid" archetype.

He illustrated this by drawing on the analogy of the electromagnetic spectrum.

The part of the spectrum which is visible to us corresponds to the conscious aspects of the archetype.

The invisible infra-red end of the spectrum corresponds to the unconscious biological aspects of the archetype that merges with its chemical and physical conditions.

He suggested that not only do the archetypal structures govern the behaviour of all living organisms, but that they were contiguous with structures controlling the behaviour of inorganic matter as well.

The archetype was not merely a psychic entity, but more fundamentally, a bridge to matter in general.

This theory allows for the existence of independent archetypal entities - occult entities.

Such entities in occult tradition are known as Æons, a class of sentient spiritual beings of varying attributes and powers.

Incarnated Æon
© Copyright Peter Crawford 2012

Their own qualities, the regions they occupy, the dimensions in which they function, and the time-span of their operations, all likewise become actualized, take on independent existence, and form links in the chain of emanation.

The occult spirit hierarchy includes many entities, amongst which, in Gnostic classifications, are Æons, Archons (rulers - archontes) principalities (archat), powers (dynameis), thrones (thronoi), dominions (kuriotetes), and lesser gods (theoi).

The most common spirit entities, those contacted by Willi and Rudi Schneider of Braunau (see above), are known technically as 'Daemons', who are spirit 'guides' - although their guidance is often spurious and malignant, and they sometimes masquerade as the 'gods' themselves (see Plato's 'Symposium').

Daemons, despite their lowly status, are often attributed to nations and races, although such functions properly attach to the Archons.

The most powerful non-material entities are the Æons, which many humans have taken to be 'gods'.

A fundamental concept relating to existence is that of a projecting forth (probole), or out-raying of qualities from the divine unity, commonly known as 'emanation'.
The divine unity generates or causes existence, not through the intermediary of another, or an opposite, not by creation, reproduction or evolution, but by a unique manifestation that brings into existence a complex, and at times paradoxical, chain of being, forming a descending hierarchy of spiritual entities.
The divine attributes of the divine unity , that is, the abstract qualities, mental states, spiritual concepts and metaphysical ideas, constituted the divine unity's thoughts and designs, which lay hidden, known to the divine unity but unknown to themselves.
Then the divine unity gave them existence, and they flowed forth from the divine source.
The externalization of the divine attributes in this manner constitutes the first stage of a long process resulting from the overflow, or outpouring, of the fullness (pleroma) of the divine unity.
The entities that emerge from this process are known as Æons, a class of sentient beings of varying attributes and powers.
Their own qualities, the regions they occupy, the dimensions in which they function, and the time-span of their operations, all likewise become actualized, take on independent existence, and form links in the chain of emanation.
In the material world, or 'Kingdom', the Æons manifest as Nature.
The Æons may also manifest within the human psyche.
In esoteric terms, the Æons are not the lifeless idols they are so often accused of being by the spiritually blind and ignorant.
Rather we can see these images as reflections of a greater Unseen.

The Germanic Wotan is one such Æon who is described by Jung (see below) as an independent archetypal entity, which Jung postulated had possessed the person of Adolf Hitler

Wotan ( oʊdɨn; from Old Norse Óðinn) is a major god in Germanic mythology, and the ruler of Asgard.

His name is related to ōðr, meaning "fury, excitation," besides "mind," or "poetry."

His role is complex.

Wotan is a principal member of the Æsir (the major group of the Germanic pantheon) and is associated with war, battle, victory and death, but also wisdom, magic, poetry, prophecy, and the hunt.

Most significantly Wotan is cited as the discoverer, or even creator of the sacred runes.
The poem Hávamál describes how Odin received the runes through self-sacrifice, and how he once sacrificed himself to himself by hanging on the tree Yggdrasill.

The stanza reads:

'I know that I hung on a windy tree

nine long nights,

wounded with a spear,

dedicated to Wotan,

myself to myself,

on that tree of which no man knows

from where its roots run.'

'No bread did they give me nor a drink from a horn,

downwards I peered;

I took up the runes,

screaming I took them,

then I fell back from there.'

'Wotan's Wolves'

Huginn and Muninn

Wotan has two ravens, Huginn (from Old Norse "thought") and Muninn (Old Norse "memory" or "mind") that fly all over the world, Midgard, and bring the god Wotan information.

In Germanic mythology, Geri and Freki (Old Norse, both meaning "the ravenous" or "greedy one") are two wolves which accompany the god Wotan.

They are attested in the Poetic Edda, a collection of epic poetry compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, in the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson, and in the poetry of skalds.

The pair has been connected to beliefs surrounding the Germanic "wolf-warrior bands", the Úlfhéðnar.

Geri and Freki

'Freki and Geri does Heerfather feed,

The far-famed fighter of old:

But on wine alone does the weapon-decked god,

Wotan, forever live.'

And so we come back to the 'noble wolf' - Adolf.
Now Jung's theory about Wotan is very interesting, but it is simplistic.
Wotan is a storm god of war, rage and frenzy, who can 'seize' and 'posses' his followers - but this does not really relate to Hitler's behaviour, or his conception of himself.
To begin with Hitler envisioned himself as the 'drummer' - a sort of 'John the Baptist' figure - preparing the way for a German messiah.
Later he saw himself as 'Führer'.

Führer is a German title meaning 'leader' or 'guide' - someone who 'shows the way'.

The word Führer, in the sense of 'guide', remains common in German, but because of its strong association with the Third Reich, it comes for some people with some stigma and negative connotations when used as the meaning of leader.

Wotan can be seen in only a very limited sense as Führer.

Hitler was recorded as having a low opinion of Völkisch followers of Wotan.

If we want to discover Hitler's own feeling about mythological identification then we have to consider the name he chose for himself - Wolf.

He even used to whistle the song 'Who's afraid of the Big Bad Wolf'.

Big Bad Wolf

"Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf" is a popular song written by Frank Churchill with additional lyrics by Ann Ronell, which originally featured in the 1933 Disney cartoon 'Three Little Pigs', where it was sung by Fiddler Pig and Fifer Pig (voiced by Mary Moder and Dorothy Compton) as they arrogantly believe their houses of straw and twigs will protect them from the Big Bad Wolf (voiced by Billy Bletcher). The song's theme made it a huge hit during the 1930s and it remains one of the most well-known Disney songs, being covered by numerous artists and musical groups.

The Wolf has a long and distinguished career in mythology - and mythology is the haunt of most of the significant archetypes.

The wolf (Canis lupus) is one of the animals that has been most consistently emblematic of Europe, being a common motif in the foundational mythologies and cosmologies of peoples from present-day Spain to far Eastern Europe.

In various European mythologies, the wolf is equated with creativity, fertility and protection, as well as with destruction, usually in association with the sun and the heroes in relation to the Greek god of Belen.

Before the development of farming and agriculture, when hunting and gathering formed the basis of survival, the wolf held a place of great importance.

Some European peoples considered themselves descended from wolves, and thus worshipped the wolf as both a god and an ancestor.

In European Antiquity, seeing a wolf before the beginning of a battle was an omen of victory, the wolf being symbolic both of the hunter and warrior.

Romulus and Remus and the Wolf

According to the Roman tradition, a wolf was responsible for the childhood survival of the future founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus.
The twin babies were ordered to be killed by their great uncle Amulius.
The servant ordered to kill them, however, relented and placed the two on the banks of the Tiber river.
The river, which was in flood, rose and gently carried the cradle and the twins downstream, where under the protection of the river deity Tiberinus, they would be adopted by a she-wolf known as Lupa in Latin, an animal sacred to Mars - the god of War.

Fenrir
© Copyright Peter Crawford 2012

Hitler and Blondi

Norse mythology prominently includes three malevolent wolves, in particular: the giant Fenrir, eldest child of Loki and Angrboda who was feared and hated by the Gods.
Fenrir is bound by the gods, but is ultimately destined to grow too large for his bonds and devour Odin during the course of Ragnarök - the Twilight of the Gods - Götterdämmerung, which takes us to Wagner, Hitler's favourite composer.
Fenrir's two offspring will according to legend, devour the sun and moon at Ragnarök.
On the other hand, however, the wolves Geri and Freki were the Norse god Odin's faithful pets, (like Blondi, Hitler's wolf-hound), who were reputed to be "of good omen."(see above).
In one mythology, however, the wolf is seen as a guide.

Upuaut
© Copyright Peter Crawford 2012

Egyptian Wolf

In Egyptian mythology, Upuaut, was a deity whose cult centre was Asyut in Upper Egypt (Lycopolis in the Greco-Roman period).
His name means, 'opener of the ways'.
Upuaut was seen as a scout or guide, going out to clear routes for the army to proceed forward.
One inscription from the Sinai states that Upuaut "opens the way" to king Sekhemkhet's victory.
Wepwawet was a wolf deity, thus the Greek name of Lycopolis, meaning city of wolves.
Upuaut was said to accompany the Pharaoh on hunts, in which capacity he was titled 'the one with sharp arrows, more powerful than the gods'.
Over time, the connection to war, and thus to death, led to Upuaut also being seen as one who opened the ways to, and through, Duat, for the spirits of the dead.

Ancient Egyptian Duat

In Egyptian mythology, Duat (also Tuat and Tuaut) is the underworld. The Duat is a vast area connected with Nun, the waters of the primordial abyss. The Duat is the realm of the god Osiris and the residence of other gods and supernatural beings. It is the region through which the sun god Ra travels from west to east during the night, and where he battled Apep. It also was the place where people's souls went after death for judgement, though it was not the full extent of the afterlife. Burial chambers formed touching-points between the mundane world and the Duat, and spirits could use tombs to travel back and forth from the Duat.

Carl G Jung

Having shown the connection between Adolf Hitler, (who called himself 'Wolf'), and the archetype of the wolf, we need now to consider whether such archetypes have any actual existence, and if that is so, whether Adolf Hitler was possessed by such an archetype in the manner that Jung (we would suggest wrongly) thought that Adolf Hitler was possessed by the archetype of Wotan.

Elemental archetypes are said to be created through the power of thought and ritual.

Plato

This theory rests on the belief that the material world is supported and brought into being by a non material mode of existence commonly known as a Platonic World of Forms, (or 'astral plane').

Plato's Theory of Forms asserts that non-material abstract forms, and not the material world of change known to us through sensation, possess the highest and most fundamental kind of reality.

Plato suggests that these Forms (εἶδος or μορφή) are the only true objects of study that can provide us with genuine knowledge, however, they exist on a non-material plane which some describe as the 'astral plane'.

The astral plane is intertwined with the quotidian human world and is inhabited by many entities, including the Platonic Forms and the Archetypes.

Incarnated Aeon

Some suggest that included amongst these entities are 'nature spirits' (elementals), and ethereal beings immersed in macro divisions of an interwoven universe.

In Gnostic teachings these entities are termed Æons and Archons, but in modern terminology they are often referred to as ἀρχέτυπον (Archetypes).

Numbered among the archetypes are the 'gods' of the ancient religions.

The most universal of these are the 'divine' archetypes of the Egyptian, Roman, Greek and Nordic religions.

We would suggest that if Hitler was possessed, then it was by the Aeon known to the Ancient Egyptians as Upuat.

Upuat was the guide, (führer in German), - leading the devotees to the gods - or to victory.

Assuming this to be the case, it is possible to suggest when this possession took place.

On 2 February 1900 Hitler's younger brother, Edmund, died of measles.
This had a profound effect on the young Adolf, causing a psychic shock which undermined his previously normal, outgoing and optimistic character.
Up until that time young 'Adi' had been a co-operative young boy at home and an excellent student at school .
Subsequently Hitler became a morose, detached, and sullen boy who constantly fought his father and his teachers.
This was undoubtedly the outward manifestation of a turbulent conflict, as the alien entity began to take over the young boy's psyche, as shown by his unusual behaviour at the time - (speaking to unseen individuals)
The wolf-like entity, while lying dormant did however, reveal itself in one significant way.
To quote Gustav Kubizek, Hitler's only friend:

'In this countenance the eyes were so outstanding that one didn't notice anything else.
Never in my life have I seen any other person whose appearance - how shall I put it - was so completely dominated by the eyes.
They were the light eyes of his mother, but her somewhat staring, penetrating gaze was even more marked in the son and had even more force and expressiveness.
It was uncanny how these eyes could change their expression, especially when Adolf was speaking.
To me his sonorous voice meant much less than the expression of his eyes.
In fact, Adolf spoke with his eyes, and even when his lips were silent one knew what he wanted to say.
When he first came to our house and I introduced him to my mother, she said to me in the evening, "What eyes your friend has!"
And I remember quite distinctly that there was more fear than admiration in her words.
If I am asked where one could perceive, in his youth, this man's exceptional qualities, I can only answer, "In the eyes."

Many years passed, however, before the 'entity' was finally able to speak through Hitler for the first time.
It was in 1905, and Hitler had just seen the opera 'Rienzi, der Letzte der Tribunen' by Richard Wagner at the Linz Opera House.

'Rienzi, der Letzte der Tribunen' - (Rienzi, the Last of the Tribunes) is an early opera by Richard Wagner in five acts, with the libretto written by the composer after Bulwer-Lytton's novel of the same name (1835). The title is commonly shortened to Rienzi. Written between July 1838 and November 1840, it was first performed at the Hofoper, Dresden, on 20 October 1842, and was the composer's first success.
The opera is set in Rome and is based on the life of Cola di Rienzi (1313–1354), a late medieval Italian populist figure who succeeds in outwitting and then defeating the nobles and their followers and in raising the power of the people.
Magnanimous at first, he is forced by events to crush the nobles' rebellion against the people's power, but popular opinion changes and even the Church, which had urged him to assert himself, turns against him. In the end the populace burns the Capitol, in which Rienzi and a few adherents have made a last stand.

That was the catalyst that revealed his possession and his subsequent role as führer.

Gustav Kubizek

Fortunately Gustav Kubizek, Hitler's boyhood friend, was with Hitler at the time, and later recorded the event for posterity.
According to Kubizek :

It was a cold, unpleasant November evening.
Hitler waved to me impatiently. I was just cleaning myself up from the workshop and getting ready to go to the theatre.
'Rienzi' was being given that night.
We had never seen this Wagner opera and looked forward to it with great excitement. In order to secure the pillars in the Promenade we had to be early.
Adolf whistled, to hurry me up.

'Rienzi, der Letzte der Tribunen'

Now we were in the theatre, burning with enthusiasm, and living breathlessly through Rienzi's rise to be the Tribune of the people of Rome and his subsequent downfall.
When at last it was over, it was past midnight.
My friend, his hands thrust into his coat pockets, silent and withdrawn, strode through the streets and out of the city.
Usually, after an artistic experience that had moved him, he would start talking straight away, sharply criticizing the performance, but after Rienzi he remained quiet a long while. This surprised me, and I asked him what he thought of it. He threw me a strange, almost hostile glance. "Shut up !" he said brusquely.
The cold, damp mist lay oppressively over the narrow streets.
Our solitary steps resounded on the pavement. Adolf took the road that led up to the Freinberg. Without speaking a word, he strode forward. He looked almost sinister, and paler than ever. His turned-up coat collar increased this impression.
I wanted to ask him, "Where are you going ?" But his pallid face looked so forbidding that I suppressed the question.
As if propelled by an invisible force, Adolf climbed up to the top of the Freinberg.
And only now did I realize that we were no longer in solitude and darkness, for the stars shone brilliantly above us.
Adolf stood in front of me; and now he gripped both my hands and held them tight.
He had never made such a gesture before.
I felt from the grasp of his hands how deeply moved he was.
His eyes were feverish with excitement.
The words did not come smoothly from his mouth as they usually did, but rather erupted, hoarse and raucous.
From his voice I could tell even more how much this experience had shaken him.
Gradually his speech loosened, and the words flowed more freely.
Never before and never again have I heard Adolf Hitler speak as he did in that hour, as we stood there alone under the stars, as though we were the only creatures in the world.
I cannot repeat every word that my friend uttered.
I was struck by something strange, which I had never noticed before, even when he had talked to me in moments of the greatest excitement.
It was as if another being spoke out of his body, and moved him as much as it did me.
It wasn't at all a case of a speaker being carried away by his own words.
On the contrary; I rather felt as though he himself listened with astonishment and emotion to what burst forth from him with elementary force.
I will not attempt to interpret this phenomenon, but it was a state of complete ecstasy and rapture, in which he transferred the character of Rienzi, without even mentioning him as a model or example, with visionary power to the plane of his own ambitions.
But it was more than a cheap adaptation. Indeed, the impact of the opera was rather a sheer external impulse which compelled him to speak.
Like flood waters breaking their dikes, his words burst forth from him.
He conjured up in grandiose, inspiring pictures his own future and that of his people.
Hitherto I had been convinced that my friend wanted to become an artist, a painter, or perhaps an architect. Now this was no longer the case.
Now he aspired to something higher, which I could not yet fully grasp.
It rather surprised me, as I thought that the vocation of the artist was for him the highest, most desirable goal, but now he was talking of a mandate which, one day, he would receive from the people, to lead them out of servitude to the heights of freedom.
It was an unknown youth who spoke to me in that strange hour.
He spoke of a special mission which one day would be entrusted to him, and I, his only listener, could hardly understand what he meant.

This, it seems, was an eruption of the dæmonic, of the hidden Æon, that was triggered by the intense stimulus of Wagner's opera, combined with Hitler's obvious frustrations with his somewhat pointless life in Linz.
Subsequently the 'possessing entity' was less obviously active - but was undoubtedly responsible for the way Hitler managed to survive the many difficulties he encountered in Vienna.
However, while living in Vienna Hitler's mental state took a a turn for the worse.
He increasingly demonstrated obvious signs of mental instability, including instances of pressured, grandiose speech, and an inability to sleep for days on end.
It was not uncommon for Adolf to suddenly begin haranguing even complete strangers with violent speeches, which would end as abruptly as they began (Payne, Shirer ).
Adolf might be reading the newspaper and then suddenly erupt, or he could be lounging in the shelter or the lobby of the Mannerheim, slumped in a somewhat stuporous state, only to suddenly jerk upright, raging, and making accusatory and political speeches in the presence of astonished strangers.
He appeared to be suffering from a manic-depressive psychosis, which waxed and waned in severity.
Also, in this period, Hitler believed his thoughts could penetrate walls, or that he could communicate with others by thought alone - which suggests he may have been delusional and hearing voices.
These symptoms, of course, were examples of his adult psyche struggling to accommodate and come to terms with the non-human intelligence which was beginning to control him.
Later, when Hitler had adjusted to the entity, it gave Hitler the 'lupine', (from 'canis lupus' - referring to the wolf), instincts that enabled him to survive the appalling vicissitudes of trench warfare.
For example, he relates the following experience during the first World War.

'I was eating dinner in a trench with several comrades.
Suddenly a voice seemed to be saying to me, "Get up and go over there."
It was so clear and insistent that I obeyed automatically.
I rose to my feet and walked twenty yards.
Then I sat down to go on eating.
Hardly had I done so when a flash and deafening report came from the part of the trench I had just left. Every member in it was killed.' (Price)

Then, once again, the 'entity' didn't just 'guide', but appeared.

In October Hitler was blinded in a gas attack at Ypres, and subsequently sent to a military hospital at Pasewalk, a small town north-east of Berlin.
In 'Mein Kampf' Hitler describes, in detail, his physical pain along with the anguish and despair he felt when he learned of Germany's defeat.
While initially the effects of his gassing must have caused him considerable pain, what he fails to tell us is that once the physical pain had subsided, he found himself in a prolonged state of sensory deprivation; known to para-psychologists as 'the ganzfeld effect'; confined to his bed, unable to see and in the hushed atmosphere of a hospital ward.
Compared to the living hell of the front, with its screaming shells combining with the screams of the mutilated and dying, and the everlasting thundering of the guns, Hitler's new silent, stimulus free environment was tailor-made for the psychic experience that came to him.
According to Hitler, he experienced a 'vision' from 'another world' (the 'astral plane' inhabited by the Æons) while at the hospital.
It was not a vision in the form of a 'wolf', however, but rather in the form of the Übermensch.

The Exaltation of the Human Race

Thule Gesellschaft

In that vision, Hitler was told that he would lead Germany back to glory so that he would then be able to
'perform an act of creation, a divine operation, the goal of a biological mutation which would result in an unprecedented exaltation of the human race and the appearance of a new race of heroes, demi-gods and god-men.'
After this eruption of the dæmonic (dæmon in this usage refers to a non-material entity - it is not related to the christian term 'demon'), Hitler was left alone to pursue his post war activities, until his involvement in both the German Workers Party, and more significantly, the Thule Gesellschaft.
It is at this point that the predatory instincts of the 'wolf' begin to manifest, as Hitler ousted Karl Harrer and Anton Drexler, and took over effective leadership of the Party.

________________________________________

Carl G Jung

Carl G Jung

Carl Gustav Jung (26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist who founded analytical psychology.

Jung proposed and developed the concepts of the 'extroverted' and the 'introverted' personality, 'archetypes', and the 'collective unconscious'.

His work has been influential in psychiatry and in the study of religion, literature, and related fields.

Individuation is the central concept of analytical psychology.

Jung considered 'individuation', the psychological process of integrating the opposites, including the conscious with the unconscious while still maintaining their relative autonomy, to be the central process of human development.

Jung created some of the best known psychological concepts, including the 'archetype', the 'collective unconscious', the 'complex', and 'synchronicity'.

Jung saw the human psyche as "by nature religious", and made this religiosity the focus of his explorations.

Jung is one of the best known contemporary contributors to dream analysis and symbolization.

Though he was a practising clinician and considered himself to be a scientist, much of his life's work was spent exploring tangential areas, including Eastern and Western philosophy, alchemy, astrology, and sociology, as well as literature and the arts.

His interest in philosophy and the occult led many to view him as a mystic.

With regard to Adolf Hitler Jung stated that:
'Hitler seemed like the 'double' of a real person, as if Hitler the man might be hiding inside, and deliberately so concealed in order not to disturb the mechanism.... You know you could never talk to this man; because there is nobody there.... It is not an individual; it is an entire nation.'

This essay by Jung is included in order to show that the concept of psychic possession was considered a real possibility by one of the most astute academic minds of the time.

Unfortunately, Jung did not have much of the information about Hitler that has since become available - and this may account for the fact that he was mistaken in his identification of Wotan as the entity that was responsible for the possession of Hitler, however, many of his insights into Hitler and his relationship with the German people are highly relevant and revealing.

Carl Gustav Jung

First published as 'Wotan, Neue Schweizer Rundschau' (Zurich). n.s. - III March, 1936

Carl Gustav Jung

When we look back to the time before 1914, we find ourselves living in a world of events which would have been inconceivable before the war.

We were even beginning to regard war between civilized nations as a fable, thinking that such an absurdity would become less and less possible in our rational, internationally organized world.

And what came after the war was a veritable witches’ Sabbath.

Everywhere fantastic revolutions, violent alterations of the map, reversions in politics to medieval or even antique prototypes, totalitarian states that engulf their neighbours and outdo all previous theocracies in their absolutist claims, persecutions of Christians and Jews, wholesale political murder, and finally we have witnessed a light-hearted piratical raid on a peaceful, half-civilized people.

With such goings on in the wide world it is not in the least surprising that there should be equally curious manifestations on a smaller scale in other spheres.

In the realm of philosophy we shall have to wait some time before anyone is able to assess the kind of age that we are living in.

But in the sphere of religion we can see at once that some very significant things have been happening.

We need feel no surprise that in Russia the colourful splendours of the Eastern Orthodox Church have been superseded by the 'Movement of the Godless' – indeed, one breathed a sigh of relief oneself when one emerged from the haze of an Orthodox church with its multitude of lamps and entered an honest mosque, where the sublime and invisible omnipresence of God was not crowded out by a superfluity of sacred paraphernalia.

Tasteless and pitiably unintelligent as it is, and however deplorable the low spiritual level of the “Scientific” reaction, it was inevitable that nineteenth-century “scientific” enlightenment should one day dawn in Russia.

But what is more than curious – indeed, piquant to a degree – is that an ancient God of storm and frenzy, the long quiescent Wotan, should awake, like an extinct volcano, to new activity.

Wandervogel auf dem Berggipfel

Deutsch Jugendbewegung

We have seen him come to life in the 'German Youth Movement', and right at the beginning the blood of several sheep was shed in honour of his resurrection.

Armed with rucksack and lute, blond youths, and sometimes girls as well, were to be seen as restless wanderers on every road from North Cape to Sicily, faithful votaries of the roving god.

Later, towards the end of the Weimar Republic, the wandering role was taken over by thousands of unemployed, who were to be met with everywhere on their aimless journeys.

Wandervogel Jungen Camp

Nackt Wandervogel Jungen

By 1933 they wandered no longer, but marched in their hundreds of thousands.

The Hitler movement literally brought the whole of Germany to its feet, from five-year-olds to veterans, and produced a spectacle of a nation migrating from one place to another.

Wotan the wanderer was on the move.

He could be seen, looking rather shamefaced, in the meeting-house of a sect of simple folk in North Germany, disguised as Christ sitting on a white horse.

I do not know if these people were aware of Wotan’s ancient connection with the figures of Christ and Dionysus, but it is not very probable.

Wotan is a restless wanderer who creates unrest and stirs up strife, now here, now there, and works magic.

Franz von Stuck - 'Die Wilde Jagd'

He was soon changed by Christianity into the devil, and only lived on in fading local traditions as a ghostly hunter who was seen with his retinue, flickering like a will o’ the wisp through the stormy night.

The German youths who celebrated the solstice with sheep-sacrifices were not the first to hear the rustling in the primeval forest of unconsciousness.

Stefan George

Nietzsche

They were anticipated by Nietzsche, Schuler, Stefan George, and Ludwig Klages.

The literary tradition of the Rhineland and the country south of the Main has a classical stamp that cannot easily be got rid of; every interpretation of intoxication and exuberance is apt to be taken back to classical models, to Dionysus, to the peur aeternus and the cosmogonic Eros.

No doubt it sounds better to academic ears to interpret these things as Dionysus, but Wotan might be a more correct interpretation.

He is the god of the storm and frenzy, the unleasher of passions and the lust of battle; moreover he is superlative magician and artist in illusion who is versed in all secrets of an occult nature. Nietzsche’s case is certainly a peculiar one.

Also Sprach Zarathustra

He had no knowledge of Germanic literature; he discovered the “cultural Philistine”; and the announcement that “God is dead” led to Zarathustra’s meeting with an unknown god in unexpected form, who approached him sometimes as an enemy and sometimes disguised as Zarathustra himself.

Zarathustra, too, was a soothsayer, a magician, and the storm-wind.

'And like a wind shall I come to blow among them, and with my spirit shall take away the breath of their spirit; thus my future wills it. Truly, a strong wind is Zarathustra to all that are low; and this counsel gives he to his enemies and to all that spit and spew: “Beware of spitting against the wind.” And when Zarathustra dreamed that he was guardian of the graves in the “lone mountain forest of death,” and was making a mighty effort to open the gates, suddenly a roaring wind tore the gates asunder; whistling, shrieking, and keening, it cast a black coffin before me. And amid the roaring and whistling and shrieking the coffin burst open and spouted a thousand peals of laughter. The disciple who interpreted the dream said to Zarathustra: Are you not yourself the wind with shrill whistling, which bursts open the gates of the fortress of death? Are you not yourself the coffin filled with life’s gay malice and angel-grimaces ?'

In 1863 or 1864, in his poem:

'To the Unknown God', Nietzsche had written: 'I shall and will know thee, Unknown One, Who searchest out the depths of my soul, And blowest through my life like a storm, Ungraspable, and yet my kinsman! I shall and will know thee, and serve thee. Twenty years later, in his Mistral Song, he wrote: Mistral wind, chaser of clouds, Killer of gloom, sweeper of the skies, Raging storm-wind, how I love thee! Are we not both the first-fruits Of the same womb, forever predestined To the same fate ?'

In the dithyramb known as Ariadne’s Lament, Nietzsche is completely the victim of the hunter-god:

'Stretched out, shuddering, Like a half-dead thing whose feet are warmed, Shaken by unknown fevers, Shivering with piercing icy frost arrows Hunted by thee, O thought, Unutterable! Veiled! Horrible one! Thou huntsman behind the cloud. Struck down by thy lightening bolt, Thou mocking eye that stares at me from the dark! Thus I lie. Writhing, twisted, tormented With all eternal tortures. Smitten By thee, cruel huntsman, Thou unknown – God !'

Elizabeth Nietzsche

Schulpforta

This remarkable image of the 'hunter-god' is not a mere dithyrambic figure of speech but is based on an experience which Nietzsche had when he was fifteen years old, at Pforta.

It is described in a book by Nietzsche’s sister, Elizabeth Foerster-Nietzsche.

As he was wandering in a gloomy wood at night, he was terrified by a “blood-curdling shriek from a neighbouring lunatic asylum,” and soon afterwards he came face to face with a huntsman whose “features were wild and uncanny.”

Setting his whistle to his lips “in a valley surrounded by wild scrub,” the huntsman “blew such as a shrill blast” that Nietzsche lost consciousness – but woke up again in Pforta.

It was a nightmare.

It is significant that in his dream Nietzsche, who in reality intended to go to Eisleben, Luther’s town, discussed with the huntsman the question of going instead to “Teutschenthal” (Valley of the Germans).

Reich ohne Raum

Richard Wagner

No one with ears can misunderstand the shrill whistling of the storm-god in the nocturnal wood.

Was it really only the classical philologist in Nietzsche that led to the god being called Dionysus instead of Wotan – or was it perhaps due to his fateful meeting with Wagner ?

In his 'Reich ohne Raum', which was first published in 1919, Bruno Goetz saw the secret of coming events in Germany in the form of a very strange vision.

I have never forgotten this little book, for it struck me at the time as a forecast of the German weather.

It anticipates the conflict between the realm of ideas and life, between Wotan’s dual nature as a god of storm and a god of secret musings.

Wotan disappeared when his oaks fell and appeared again when the Christian God proved too weak to save Christendom from fratricidal slaughter.

When the Holy Father at Rome could only impotently lament before God the fate of the grex segregatus (separated flock), the one-eyed old hunter, on the edge of the German forest, laughed and saddled Sleipnir.

In Norse mythology, Sleipnir is an eight-legged horse. Sleipnir is attested in the Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, and the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson. In both sources, Sleipnir is Odin's steed, is the child of Loki and Svaðilfari, is described as the best of all horses, and is sometimes ridden to the location of Hel. The Prose Edda contains extended information regarding the circumstances of Sleipnir's birth, and details that he is grey in color.

We are always convinced that the modern world is a reasonable world, basing our opinion on economic, political, and psychological factors, but if we may forget for a moment and lay aside our well-meaning, all-too human reasonableness, may burden God or the gods with the responsibility for contemporary events instead of man, we would find Wotan quite suitable as a casual hypothesis.

In fact, I venture the heretical suggestion that the unfathomable depths of Wotan’s character explain more of Völkisch philosophy than all three reasonable factors put together.

There is no doubt that each of these factors explains an important aspect of what is going on in Germany, but Wotan explains yet more.

He is particularly enlightening in regard to a general phenomenon, which is so strange to anybody not a German that it remains incomprehensible, even after the deepest reflection. Perhaps we may sum up this general phenomenon as 'Ergriffenheit' – a state of being seized or possessed.

The term postulates not only an 'Ergriffener' (one who is seized) but, also, an 'Ergreifer' (one who seizes).

Wotan is an 'Ergreifer' of men, and, unless one wishes to deify Hitler – which has indeed actually happened – he is really the only explanation.

It is true that Wotan shares this quality with his cousin Dionysus, but Dionysus seems to have exercised his influence mainly on women.

The maenads were a species of female 'storm-troopers', and, according to mythical reports, were dangerous enough.

Wotan confined himself to the 'berserkers', who found their vocation as the Blackshirts of mythical kings.

A mind that is still childish thinks of the gods as metaphysical entities existing in their own right, or else regards them as playful or superstitious inventions.

From either point of view the parallel between 'Wotan redivivus' (come back to life; revived) and the social, political, and psychic storm that is shaking Germany might have at least the value of parable.

But since the 'gods' are without doubt personifications of psychic forces, to assert their metaphysical existence is as much an intellectual presumption as the opinion that they could ever be invented.

Not that “psychic forces” have anything to do with the conscious mind, fond as we are of playing with the idea that consciousness and psyche are identical.

This is only another piece of intellectual presumption.

“Psychic forces” have far more to do with the realm of the unconscious.

Our mania for rational explanations obviously has its roots in our fear of metaphysics, for the two were always hostile brothers.

Hence, anything unexpected that approaches us from the dark realm is regarded either as coming from outside and, therefore, as real, or else as a hallucination and, therefore, not true.

The idea that anything could be real or true which does not come from outside has hardly begun to dawn on contemporary man.

For the sake of better understanding and to avoid prejudice, we could of course dispense with the name “Wotan” and speak instead of the 'furor Teutonicus' (furor - violent anger or frenzy; a state of intense excitement).

But we should only be saying the same thing and not as well, for the furor in this case is a mere psychologizing of Wotan and tells us no more than that the Germans are in a state of “fury.”

We thus lose sight of the most peculiar feature of this whole phenomenon, namely, the dramatic aspect of the 'Ergreifer' and the 'Ergriffener'.

The impressive thing about the German phenomenon is that one man, who is obviously “possessed,” has infected a whole nation to such an extent that everything is set in motion and has started rolling on its course towards perdition.

It seems to me that Wotan hits the mark as an hypothesis.

Apparently he really was only asleep in the Kyffhauser mountain until the ravens called him and announced the break of day.

Kyffhäuser Berg

The Kyffhäuser is a range of hills located on the border of the German state of Thuringia with Saxony-Anhalt. It stands on the southern edge of the Harz. The range has a length of 19 kilometres (12 mi) and a width of 7 kilometres (4.3 mi). It reaches its highest point at the Kulpenberg (473.4 metres (1,553 ft)), situated in Thuringia. The Kyffhäuser has significance in German traditional mythology as the resting place of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, who drowned on June 10, 1190 in the Göksu River near Silifke during the Third Crusade.

He is a fundamental attribute of the German psyche, an irrational psychic factor which acts on the high pressure of civilization like a cyclone and blows it away.

Despite their apparent crankiness, the Wotan-worshippers seem to have judged things more correctly than the worshippers of reason.

Apparently everyone had forgotten that Wotan is a Germanic 'datum' of first importance, the trust expression and unsurpassed personification of a fundamental quality that is particularly characteristic of the Germans.

Houston Stewart Chamberlain is a symptom which arouses suspicion that other veiled gods may be sleeping elsewhere.

'Walküre'
Alexander Rothaug

Houston Stewart Chamberlain

The emphasis on the German race – commonly called “Aryan” – the Germanic heritage, blood and soil, the Wagalaweia songs, the ride of the Valkyries, Jesus as a blond and blue-eyed hero, the Greek mother of St. Paul, the devil as an international Alberich in Jewish or Masonic guise, the Nordic aurora borealis as the light of civilization, the inferior Mediterranean races – all this is the indispensable scenery for the drama that is taking place and at the bottom they all mean the same thing: a god has taken possession of the Germans and their house is filled with a “mighty rushing wind.”

It was soon after Hitler seized power that a cartoon appeared in Punch of a raving berserker tearing himself free from his bonds.

A hurricane has broken loose in Germany while we still believe it is fine weather.

Things are comparatively quite in Switzerland, though occasionally there is a puff of wind from the north or south.

Sometimes it has a slightly ominous sound, sometimes it whispers so harmlessly or even idealistically that no one is alarmed.

“Let the sleeping dogs lie” – we manage to get along pretty well with this proverbial wisdom.

It is sometimes said that the Swiss are singularly averse to making a problem of themselves.

I must rebut this accusation: the Swiss do have their problems, but they would not admit it for anything in the world, even though they see which way the wind is blowing.

We thus pay our tribute to the time of storm and stress in Germany, but we never mention it, and this enables us to feel vastly superior.

It is above all the Germans who have an opportunity, perhaps unique in history, to look into their own hearts and to learn what those perils of the soul were from which Christianity tried to rescue mankind.

Germany is a land of spiritual catastrophes, where nature never makes more than a pretence of peace with the world-ruling reason.
The disturber of the peace is a wind that blows into Europe from Asia’s vastness, sweeping in on a wide front from Thrace to the Baltic, scattering the nations before it like dry leaves, or inspiring thoughts that shake the world to its foundations.
It is an elemental Dionysus breaking into the Apollonian order.
The rouser of this Tempest is named Wotan, and we can learn a good deal about him from the political confusion and spiritual upheaval he has caused throughout history.
For a more exact investigation of his character, however, we must go back to the age of myths, which did not explain everything in terms of man and his limited capabilities, but sought the deeper cause in the psyche and its autonomous powers.
Man’s earliest intuitions personified these powers as 'gods', and described them in the myths with great care and circumstantiality, according to their various characters.
This could be done the more readily on account of the firmly established primordial types or images which are innate in the unconscious of many races and exercise a direct influence upon them.
Because the behaviour of a race takes on its specific character from its underlying images, we can speak of an archetype “Wotan.”

An archetype is a universally understood symbol, term, statement, or pattern of behaviour, - a prototype upon which others are copied, patterned, or emulated.
Archetypes are often used in myths and storytelling across different cultures.
In Jung's psychological framework, archetypes are innate, universal prototypes for ideas and may be used to interpret observations. A group of memories and interpretations associated with an archetype is a complex ( e.g. a mother complex associated with the mother archetype). Jung treated the archetypes as psychological organs, analogous to physical ones in that both are morphological constructs that arose through evolution.

As an autonomous psychic factor, Wotan produces effects in the collective life of a people and thereby reveals his own nature.
For Wotan has a peculiar biology of his own, quite apart from the nature of man.
It is only from time to time that individuals fall under the irresistible influence of this unconscious factor.
When it is quiescent, one is no more aware of the archetype Wotan than of a latent epilepsy. Could the Germans who were adults in 1914 have foreseen what they would be today ?
Such amazing transformations are the effect of the god of wind, that “bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, nor whither it goeth.” It seizes everything in its path and overthrows everything that is not firmly rooted.
When the wind blows it shakes everything that is insecure, whether without or within.
Martin Ninck has recently published a monograph which is a most welcome addition to our knowledge of Wotan’s nature.
The reader need not fear that this book is nothing but a scientific study written with academic aloofness from the subject. Certainly the right to scientific objectivity is fully preserved, and the material has been collected with extraordinary thoroughness and presented in unusually clear form. But, over and above all this, one feels that the author is vitally interested in it, that the chord of Wotan is vibrating in him, too.
This is no criticism – on the contrary, it is one of the chief merits of the book, which without this enthusiasm might easily have degenerated into a tedious catalogue.
Ninck sketches a really magnificent portrait of the German archetype Wotan.
He describes him in ten chapters, using all the available sources, as the berserker, the god of storm, the wanderer, the warrior, the Wunsch- (wish) and Minne -god, the lord of the dead and of the Einherjar, the master of secret knowledge, the magician, and the god of the poets. Neither the Valkyries nor the Fylgja (a supernatural being or creature which accompanies a person in connection to their fate or fortune) are forgotten, for they form part of the mythological background and fateful significance of Wotan.
Ninck’s inquiry into the name and its origin is particularly instructive.

Mercury

He shows that Wotan is not only a god of rage and frenzy, who embodies the instinctual and emotional aspect of the unconscious.
Its intuitive and inspiring side, also, manifests itself in him, for he understands the runes and can interpret fate.
The Romans identified Wotan with Mercury, but his character does not really corresponded to any Roman or Greek god, although there are certain resemblances.
He is a wanderer like Mercury, for instance, he rules over the dead like Pluto and Kronos, and is connected with Dionysus by his emotional frenzy, particularly in its mantic aspect.
It is surprising that Ninck does not mention Hermes, the god of revelation, who as 'pneuma' (ancient Greek for breath, spirit or soul) and 'nous' (Greek - intellect or intelligence) is associated with the wind.
He would be the connecting-link with the Christian 'pneuma' and the miracle of Pentecost.
As Poimandres (the shepherd of men), Hermes is an 'Ergreifer' like Wotan.
Ninck rightly points out that Dionysus and the other Greek gods always remained under the supreme authority of Zeus, which indicates a fundamental difference between the Greek and Germanic temperament.
Ninck assumes an inner affinity between Wotan and Kronos, and the latter’s defeat may perhaps be a sign that the Wotan-archetype was once overcome and split up in prehistoric times.
At all events, the Germanic god represents a totality on a very primitive level, - a psychological condition in which man’s will was almost identical with the god’s and entirely at his mercy.
But the Greeks had gods who helped man against other gods; indeed, 'All-Father' Zeus himself is not far from the ideal of a benevolent, enlightened despot.
It was not in Wotan’s nature to linger on, and show signs of old age.
He simply disappeared when the times turned against him, and remained invisible for more than a thousand years, working anonymously and indirectly.
Archetypes are like riverbeds which dry up when the water deserts them, but which it can find again at any-time.
An archetype is like an old watercourse along which the water of life has flowed for centuries, digging a deep channel for itself.
The longer it has flowed in this channel the more likely it is that sooner or later the water will return to its old bed.
The life of the individual as a member of society and particularly as a part of the state may be regulated like a canal, but the life of nations is a great rushing river which is utterly beyond human control, in the hands of 'One' who has always been stronger than men.
The League of Nations, which was supposed to possess supernatural authority, is regarded by some as a child in need of care and protection, by others as an abortion.
Thus, the life of nations rolls on unchecked, without guidance, unconscious of where it is going, like a rock crashing down the side of a hill, until it is stopped by an obstacle stronger than itself. Political events move from one impasse to the next, like a torrent caught in gullies, creeks and marshes.
All human control comes to an end when the individual is caught in a mass movement.
Then, the archetypes begin to function, as happens, also, in the lives of individuals when they are confronted with situations that cannot be dealt with in any of the familiar ways.
But what a so-called Führer does with a mass movement can plainly be seen if we turn our eyes to the north or south of our country.
The ruling archetype does not remain the same forever, as is evident from the temporal limitations that have been set to the hoped-for reign of peace, the “thousand-year Reich.”
The Mediterranean father-archetype of the just, order-loving, benevolent ruler had been shattered over the whole of northern Europe, as the present fate of the Christian churches bears witness.
Fascism in Italy and the civil war in Spain show that in the south as well the cataclysm has been far greater than one expected.
Even the Catholic Church can no longer afford trials of strength.
The nationalist God has attacked Christianity on a broad front.

Deutsche Glaubensbewegung

In Russia, he is called technology and science, in Italy, 'Duce' (leader), and in Germany, 'Deutsch Glaube' (German Faith), 'German Christianity', or the State.
“The German Christians” are a contradiction in many terms, and would do better to join Hauer’s 'Deutsche Glaubensbewegung' (German Faith Movement).
These are decent and well-meaning people who honestly admit their 'Ergriffenheit' and try to come to terms with this new and undeniable fact.
They go to an enormous amount of trouble to make it look less alarming by dressing it up in a conciliatory historical garb and giving us consoling glimpses of great figures such as Meister Eckhart, who was, also, a German and, also, 'ergriffen'.
In this way the awkward question of who the Ergreifer is is circumvented.
He was always “God.”
But the more Hauer restricts the world-wide sphere of Indo-European culture to the “Nordic” in general and to the 'Edda' in particular, and the more “German” this faith becomes as a manifestation of 'Ergriffenheit', the more painfully evident it is that the “German” god is the god of the Germans.
One cannot read Hauer’s book without emotion, if one regards it as the tragic and really heroic effort of a conscientious scholar who, without knowing how it happened to him, was violently summoned by the inaudible voice of the 'Ergreifer' and is now trying with all his might, and with all his knowledge and ability, to build a bridge between the dark forces of life and the shining world of historical ideas.
But what do all the beauties of the past from totally different levels of culture mean to the man of today, when confronted with a living and unfathomable tribal god such as he has never experienced before ?
They are sucked like dry leaves into the roaring whirlwind, and the rhythmic alliterations of the 'Edda' became inextricably mixed up with Christian mystical texts, German poetry and the wisdom of the Upanishads.
Hauer himself is 'ergriffen' by the depths of meaning in the primal words lying at the root of the Germanic languages, to an extent that he certainly never knew before.
Hauer the Indologist is not to blame for this, nor yet the 'Edda'; it is rather the fault of kairos – 'the present moment in time' – whose name on closer investigation turns out to be Wotan.
I would, therefore, advise the 'German Faith Movement' to throw aside their scruples.
Intelligent people will not confuse them with the crude Wotan-worshipers whose faith is a mere pretense.

Jakob Wilhelm Hauer

The Deutsche Glaubensbewegung was closely associated with Jakob Wilhelm Hauer during the Third Reich (1933–1945), and sought to move Germany away from Christianity towards a religion based on "immediate experience" of God. Hauer was a professor at the University of Tübingen.

Instead of the Bible,[citation needed] a combination of Indian (Hindu)[citation needed] and German literature was used as scripture. Hauer had worked as a missionary in India and was influenced in particular by the Bhagavad Gita[citation needed]. Ceremonies of the movement involved sermons, German classical music and political hymns.
Hauer was considered by contemporary observers as a genuinely religious man, though his political sentiments were also commented on.
The movement had around 200,000 followers at its height. Following the Nazi accession to power, it obtained rights of civil tolerance from Rudolf Hess, but never the preferential treatment from the Third Reich, for which Hauer campaigned.
The development of the German Faith Movement revolved around four main themes:
the propagation of the 'blood and soil' ideology
the replacement of Christian ceremonies by pagan equivalents; the most favoured pagan deity being the sun, as can be seen from the flag of the faith movement
the rejection of Christian ethics
the cult of Hitler's personality.
Similar movements have remained active in Germany since 1945 outside mainstream educational and social structures.

There are people in the 'German Faith Movement' who are intelligent enough not only to believe, but to know, that the god of the Germans is Wotan and not the Christian God.
This is a tragic experience and no disgrace.
It has always been terrible to fall into the hands of a living god.
Yahweh was no exception to this rule, and the Philistines, Edomites, Amorites, and the rest, who were outside the Yahweh experience, must certainly have found it exceedingly disagreeable.
The Semitic experience of Allah was for a long time an extremely painful affair for the whole of Christendom.
We who stand outside judge the Germans far too much, as if they were responsible agents, but perhaps it would be nearer the truth to regard them, also, as victims.
If we apply our admittedly peculiar point of view consistently, we are driven to conclude that Wotan must, in time, reveal not only the restless, violent, stormy side of his character, but, also, his ecstatic and mantic qualities (relating to, or having the power of divination) – a very different aspect of his nature.
If this conclusion is correct, National Socialism would not be the last word.
Things must be concealed in the background which we cannot imagine at present, but we may expect them to appear in the course of the next few years or decades.
Wotan’s reawakening is stepping into the past; the stream was dammed up and has broken into its old channel.
But the Obstruction will not last forever; it is rather a reculer pour mieux sauter, (go back to have a better jump) and the water will over-leap the obstacle.
Then, at last, we shall know what Wotan is saying when he “murmurs with Mimir’s head.”

Mímir (Old Norse "The rememberer, the wise one") is a figure in Norse mythology renowned for his knowledge and wisdom, who is beheaded during the Æsir-Vanir War.
Afterward, the god Odin carries around Mímir's head, and it recites secret knowledge and counsel to him.

WOTAN

„Ich gehe manchmal in rauhen Nächten

Zur Wotanseiche in den stillen Hain,

Mit dunklen Mächten einen Bund zu flechten -

Die Runen zaubert mir der Mondenschein.

Und alle, die am Tage sich erfrechten,

Sie werden vor der Zauberformel klein!

Sie ziehen blank – doch statt den Strauß zu flechten,

Erstarren sie zu Stalagmitgestein.

So scheiden sich die Falschen von den Echten -

Ich greife in das Fibelnest hinein

Und gebe dann den Guten und Gerechten

Mit meiner Formel Segen und Gedeihn.“

Adolf Hitler 1915

I often go on bitter nights

To Wotan’s oak in the quiet glade

With dark powers to weave a union—

The runic letters the moon makes with its magic spell

And all who are full of impudence during the day

Are made small by the magic formula!

They draw shining steel—but instead of going into combat

They solidify into stalagmites.

So the false ones part from the real ones—

I reach into a nest of words

And then give to the good and just

With my formula blessings and prosperity.

THIS POST IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Explaining Hitler

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