Nazi Beliefs: Frequently Asked Questions

When Scholars talk about Hitler and WWII History, the beliefs of Nazis is either rarely mentioned or mentioned only as a side issue. The reasons for this are many: 1) Not all the Nazis believed in the Occult, in fact except for Jewish, there were Nazis of many faith backgrounds. 2)Many Nazis had come to Nazism because they had to, in order to keep their positions or stay in the military. Even though Hitler and his men coerced persons into the Nazi Party many still distinguished between being German citizens and being Nazis. For some beliefs did not change. 3)Among the high command and higher echelon of "Hitler's Inner Circle" there were many who in varying degrees believed in or practiced the occult. Many had belonged to occultic or "New Age"and volkish mysticism groups before coming to power. Hitler dedicated his second edition of "Mein Kampf" to Dietrich Eckart who he credited with teaching him oratory and crowd manipulation: Eckart was a well-known occultist. Himmler though raised Catholic, believed in reincarnation and other dark arts: he believed himself to be the reincarnation of Heinrich the I, and sought to emulate groups such as the Jesuits and Order of the Knights Templar in structuring Nazi organizations. Hoess, the Kommandant at Auschwitz, consulted astrological charts and readings and is said to have made his escape to England based upon 'favorable times'. Toward the end of the War, Hitler showed evidences of 'magical thinking' and delusions. During this time he sought anything he thought might aid in his war effort: this included astrological charts, seers and psychics, icons such as the spear of destiny and other philosophies and practices. (See Nazi Beliefs

Scholars rarely focus on "the whole Holocaust". Most scholars specialize and become very proficient in one or two areas, and have a broad general knowledge of the Shoah outside their area of expertise. A scholar, for example who studies the resistance movement, of specializes in statistics, might have less opportunity to study in depth what each Nazi leader believed, except for how it related to their topic. Secondly, sources vary widely: unfortunately, too many websites and popular writings deal with 'Nazi Beliefs' from the standpoint of enthralling readers with 'ghost' storiesor tales of the supernatural. Their data, even when correct becomes suspect as to how accurate it is because of this. Serious scholars are less likely to present or endorse a position until there is a preponderance of evidence. This is difficult because until the end of the war, the Nazis kept alot of their unusual beliefs to themselves. They knew they could not speak of Norse gods, or astrological charts openly and still win elections and make political deals---they were practical. Also, many communiques and documents which did show that they believed in 'dark arts' were either destroyed, lost, confiscated and sequestered, or even now require a great deal of time and expertise to translate and deal with: that is why even 60 years later, new information is coming to light. Also, the Nazis themselves differed widely in their personal beliefs: some were pragmatists and existentialists, some were church-goers. Eichmann and others such as Goebbels did however disavow their church ties, claiming it was not conducive to the Nazi Plan. WWII historians tend to deal mostly with facts and events, and only secondarily with beliefs. For this reason, in the literature, the mention of Nazi involvement in the occult is seldom listed. However, a scholar spending a great deal of time reading letters, books, documents, listening to footage, and having a broad knowledge of the Zeitgeist and Philosophies of the time, might present a great deal of information which is not widely known. All these reasons can cause scholars to differ.

One must first realize that there was not one "Church" but many, but, the Nazis did have an overall view of religious organizations: they 'tolerated' them to gain aid in the war effort, but considered them dangerous and anathema to the plans for a 'new European Order' in the Third Reich. Even from the early days, the I-Bureau collected data on groups such as Freemasons, Jehovah Witnesses, "Political " Catholics and Protestants, and other 'religious' groups. Eichmann eventually headed collection of data in the Bureau for Jewish Affairs.

The Nazis first policy towards the Church was semi-conciliatory. They wanted aid from the Catholic and German Lutheran Church in bringing about their social and economic plans and fighting communism. The Vatican had the goal of fighting Communism also, so in an early meeting, a Papal encyclical was drafted and meeting held with the Nazis including Von Papen, and the Vatican's Pacell--- to 'cautiously' agree to work toward a common goal. The document produced was named With Burning Concern".

Nazi antagonism toward the Catholic Church though became evident in the 1930s as individual German Pastors stood up and decried Hitler's Racial Policies and Eugenics/Euthanasia programs. In the beginning, Pastors such as Bishop Galen stood formidably against mistreatment of the mentally infirm. Random acts of violence accompanied the early stands; one pastor had shots fired through his office window, and beatings of Catholic students occurred. Many Catholics though and their Rectors were happy to see the anti-communist Nazis move into power, and looked the other way on controversial policies.

The Nazis also made concessions toward the German Christian [Lutheran] Church in early agreement to fund their pastors' retirement funds through a state pension.¹ The concessions the Church had to make in the beginning were small, but increased to eventually include: Nazi Censorship of Sermons, the Nazi Flag on the altar, and the removal of the Old Testamentfrom doctrine and the Bibles. Church-State relations were never good with the Evangelical Church headed by Bonhoeffer and Niemoller: both ended up in prison and Bonhoeffer died in Flossenburg. The "Confessing Church" was noted for doctrinal opposition in the "Barmen Declaration written by Karl Barth , a notable theologian who escaped to Switzerland. Hitler severely persecuted the Evangelical Church, as it remained a constant form of resistance to Hitler and thereby treasonous, by the definitions of the third Reich, which included a charge of demoralizing the Fuhrer or German People. (See Charges of the White Rose Bonhoeffer was eventually accused of an assasination plot againstHitler with Canaris and executed. Many from the resistance movement came from backgrounds of faith.

The Nazis plans for the Church in the end were not good: they planned to use the Church, especially the Catholic Church for their own ends [there were Catholics involved at high levels]; and then after the war, literally erase the Church as it was known in Germany. They considered it a detriment to their goals and leadership. The relationship of the Nazis and mainline Churches such as Catholicism and Lutheranism was paradoxical: the Catholics formed the 'vatican ratline' whic h aided the Nazis in escaping capture and war crime trials, helped get the Nazi gold, art treasures and other items out of Germany at the end of the war, and aided in advisement and non-intervention, and quite possibly information-leaking. Both the Nazis and the Catholic Church presumably meant to use each other toward their own agendas. The Protestant Church, a mix of believers, quasi-believers, nazis and nazi-protestors, ended with fragmentation, severe internal problems and questions of whether German Churches should repent. (See The Stuttgart Confession

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¹Colson, Charles. "Kingdoms in Conflict".

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The training of killing and cruelty is not new in military annals for any country, because when putting a young person on the battlefield, one either trains them to kill, which is against most people's nature or they will be killed. Most who train in this matter though try to train the suspension of conscience and battle tactics to be battle specific, so that there is not a training of random killers, which becomes a possibility. Early in the Reich, Hitler decried the 'softness' of the 'civilized' German people. He said in order to really win, the German people had to be taught to hate. This ruthlessness was inculcated early through the training of prejudice in the Hitlerjugend methods, and later in military training. Oddly though, the 'training' in cruelty was secondary to the training in obedience., blind obedience or 'befehlnotstand' . Once the training in complete obedience to authority upon penalty of death was accomplished, acts of cruelty, even demonic cruelty became generically possible because the responsibility and therefore guilt for the act was removed from the individual and placed on the leader. Subsequently, the leaders placed responsibility for the act on their leaders, and so on up to Berlin [Fuhrerprinzip], so that in the end, there was only a removed, diffuse , responsibility, which the Gestapo and others in command then directed back to vague 'individuals' on the field: in short there was a process of erasing moral responsibility, cause and guilt.

As a social Psychologist, I know you are familiar with Milgram's studies and the literature it spawned: even without great threat, social acquiescence is a great force: a white coat, a lab and needed the small token of experiment credit was enough for some, and hence the birth of the Ethics considerations in the APA.

I consider this, the primary feature of training a military to 'do anything' coupled with nationalistic hubris and a 'holy cause'. The Fuhrer was seen by many of the troops as a sort of pope-like figure with an infallibility---they were trained from youth to believe he could not be wrong.

In the first pogroms or aktions involving civilians or police departments, the use of alcohol was also a critical point: the first shots against innocents caused some to tremble, so liquor was freely handed out : stupored and following commands and already having killed, by the end of the first aktions, local fathers and citizens became able to shoot men who fit a profile: later women and children.

Additionally, depersonalization both in the psychological sense of the phenomena and in the 'dehumanization' sense took place: soldiers felt removed psychological from their actions and even dissociated, in addition to which they were trained to view Jews, Roma Sinit , Mentally Ill, and others as 'human waste' on the level of killing unwanted predators the way a farmer would kill pests or predators: they were trained implicitly not just in the classroom to view the object of their violence as less than themselves. The real issue for a Social Psychologist then doing research would be the following areas: 1) The Fuhrerprinzip (societal structure) and Befehlnotstand (blind obedience) 2) The training of youth in the removal of moral restraints 3) Literature related to depersonalization, victimization and dehumanization 4) Social Acquiescence 5) The divorcing of Moral restraint by demeaning Church and Religious influence (not well studied but a primary factor in the phenomenon of the Reich to replace its ideology with traditional ones) 6) Propaganda (the Nazis succeeded here through Goebbels more than any other culture in any other time) and 7.) The association of violence with satisfaction instead of revulsion; in other words, the training of sadism.

There is much more but these are some starting places. My site is introductory, but some of the links may aid you at a more sophisticated level. A couple of great starter points before delving into the research literature are Boelke's Conference notes of Goebbels, and the recently declassifed Nuremberg papers on the Nazi's plans for the Church published on the net by Rutgers Law Center. They have a non-related section on Frank and the Sudentenland also which shows his reasoning and the breakdown of normal moral constraint. If you can find source documents on the training of soldiers at Dachau and Trawniki [www.deathcamps.org has an excellent intro] and the soldiers of the Einsatzgruppen, you will get a fertile field of ideas to form research questions.

Even Eichmann reported shuddering and becoming ill at the site of a mass grave earlier in the war. By the end he orchestrated the most sophisticated genocide the world had known.

A few sublinks on my page; http://www.shoaheducation.com/befehl.html http://www.shoaheducation.com/numbernames.html may aid you.

I personally believe the most critical factors are listed above, not any particular 'method' such as you refer to. I think when a new primary purpose starts to replace normal moral sensibility, any of this can be possible anywhere. In the US today, creature comfort may be moving into that position.