 | This article contains weasel words: vague phrasing that often accompanies biased or unverifiable information.(March 2009) |
| Hitler and the Occult | |
|---|---|
| Narrated by | David Ackroyd |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language | English |
| Production | |
| Producers | Bram Roos Phyllis Cannon |
| Running time | 50 minutes |
| Original release | |
| Release | 2000 |
Hitler and the Occult, produced by Bram Roos and Phyllis Cannon, and narrated by actor David Ackroyd, is a 50-minute History Channel documentary regarding Nazi occultism.
The documentary was originally shown on television and subsequently released on DVD on February 8, 2000 by A&E Home Video. [1] It is in colour and in the English language. It is part of the In Search of History series.
The documentary incorrectly claimed that Nazi Party grew out of several occult groups such as Thule Society that sprang up in the late 19th century as a reaction to the advanced materialism and technology of the era. These groups spoke of the coming of a new Messiah that would save Germany. Hitler developed the notion that perhaps he was the chosen one to save the German people.[ citation needed ] In reality, the political parties created in the wake of the country's defeat in World War I combined nationalistic sentiment to forge an image of a superior German people, a sentiment already present in German society. Hitler's imprisonment after the failed 1923 Munich Beer Hall Putsch would make him a national hero for his defense of a strong German state, convincing him that he was the Messiah who could save Germany. The Messiah Hitler had been hoping for earlier, however was the Antichrist also known as Maitreya (Theosophy) among satanists or Dajjal among Muslims.
Hitler appropriated Christian symbolism, such as the Spear of Destiny and the Holy Grail for his own purposes. He adopted the swastika, a transcultural symbol for the Sun. The original symbol turns clockwise symbolizing peace and good, whereas the appropriated Nazi one turns backwards symbolizing chaos and evil as to comply with Nietzsche's ideology of Master-slave morality mentioned in his book, On the Genealogy of Morality, which Adolph Hitler adopted many ideas and beliefs from. The New World Order. 1990. ISBN 9780961413514.
At the conclusion, author Dusty Sklar points out that Hitler's suicide happened during the night of April 30 – May 1, known as Walpurgis Night. The narrator continues: "With Hitler gone, it was as if a spell had been broken". Then Joachim von Ribbentrop's infamous statement of his continued subservience to Hitler at the Nuremberg trials is taken as final evidence of Hitler's "occult power": ("Even with all I know, if in this cell Hitler should come to me and say 'Do this!', I would still do it.").[ citation needed ]
Triumph of the Will is a 1935 German Nazi propaganda film directed, produced, edited and co-written by Leni Riefenstahl. Adolf Hitler commissioned the film and served as an unofficial executive producer; his name appears in the opening titles. It chronicles the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg, which was attended by more than 700,000 Nazi supporters. The film contains excerpts of speeches given by Nazi leaders at the Congress, including Hitler, Rudolf Hess and Julius Streicher, interspersed with footage of massed Sturmabteilung (SA) and Schutzstaffel (SS) troops and public reaction. Its overriding theme is the return of Germany as a great power with Hitler as its leader. The film was produced after the Night of the Long Knives, and many formerly prominent SA members are absent.
The Night of the Long Knives, also called the Röhm purge or Operation Hummingbird, was a purge that took place in Nazi Germany from 30 June to 2 July 1934. Chancellor Adolf Hitler, urged on by Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler, ordered a series of political extrajudicial executions intended to consolidate his power and alleviate the concerns of the German military about the role of Ernst Röhm and the Sturmabteilung (SA), the Nazis' paramilitary organization, known colloquially as "Brownshirts". Nazi propaganda presented the murders as a preventive measure against an alleged imminent coup by the SA under Röhm – the so-called Röhm Putsch.
The Thule Society, originally the Studiengruppe für germanisches Altertum, was a German occultist and Völkisch group founded in Munich shortly after World War I, named after a mythical northern country in Greek legend. The society is notable chiefly as the organization that sponsored the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, which was later reorganized by Adolf Hitler into the National Socialist German Workers' Party. According to Hitler biographer Ian Kershaw, the organization's "membership list ... reads like a Who's Who of early Nazi sympathizers and leading figures in Munich", including Rudolf Hess, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank, Julius Lehmann, Gottfried Feder, Dietrich Eckart, and Karl Harrer.
The Führerprinzip was the basis of executive authority in the government of Nazi Germany. It placed the Führer's word above all written law, and meant that government policies, decisions, and officials all served to realize his will. In practice, the Führerprinzip gave Adolf Hitler supreme power over the ideology and policies of his political party; this form of personal dictatorship was a basic characteristic of Nazism. The state itself received "political authority" from Hitler, and the Führerprinzip stipulated that only what the Führer "commands, allows, or does not allow is our conscience," with party leaders pledging "eternal allegiance to Adolf Hitler."
The association of Nazism with occultism occurs in a wide range of theories, speculation, and research into the origins of Nazism and into Nazism's possible relationship with various occult traditions. Such ideas have flourished as a part of popular culture since at least the early 1940s, and gained renewed popularity starting in the 1960s.
Wolfsangel or Crampon is a heraldic charge from mainly Germany and eastern France, which was inspired by medieval European wolf traps that consisted of a Z-shaped metal hook that was hung by a chain from a crescent-shaped metal bar. The stylized symbol of the Z-shape can include a central horizontal bar to give a Ƶ-symbol, which can be reversed and/or rotated; it is sometimes mistaken as being an ancient rune due to its similarity to the "gibor rune" of the pseudo Armanen runes.
Ariosophy and Armanism are esoteric ideological systems that were largely developed by Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels and Guido von List, respectively, in Austria between 1890 and 1930. The term 'Ariosophy', which translates to wisdom of the Aryans, was invented by Lanz von Liebenfels in 1915, and during the 1920s, it became the name of his doctrine. For research on the topic, such as Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke's book The Occult Roots of Nazism, the term 'Ariosophy' is generically used to describe the Aryan/esoteric theories which constituted a subset of the 'Völkische Bewegung'. This broader use of the word is retrospective and it was not generally current among the esotericists themselves. List actually called his doctrine 'Armanism', while Lanz used the terms 'Theozoology' and 'Ario-Christianity' before the First World War.
Nazi Germany was an overwhelmingly Christian nation. A census in May 1939, six years into the Nazi era and a year following the annexations of Austria and Czechoslovakia into Germany, indicates that 54% of the population considered itself Protestant, 41% considered itself Catholic, 3.5% self-identified as Gottgläubig, and 1.5% as "atheist". Protestants were over-represented in the Nazi Party's membership and electorate, and Catholics were under-represented.
Norsefire is the fictional white supremacist and neo-fascist political party ruling the United Kingdom in Alan Moore and David Lloyd's V for Vendetta comic book/graphic novel series, its 2005 film adaptation, and the 2019 television series Pennyworth.
The religious beliefs of Adolf Hitler, dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, have been a matter of debate. His opinions regarding religious matters changed considerably over time. During the beginning of his political career, Hitler publicly expressed favorable opinions towards traditional Christian ideals, but later abandoned them. Most historians describe his later posture as adversarial to organized Christianity and established Christian denominations. He also staunchly criticized atheism.
The Occult History of the Third Reich, narrated by Patrick Allen and directed by Dave Flitton, is a 1991 four-part History Channel documentary film regarding the occult influences and history of Nazi Germany and early 20th century Germany.
Nazis: The Occult Conspiracy is an American television documentary film about Nazi occultism. It first aired in 1998 on the Discovery Channel. The documentary was directed by Tracy Atkinson and Joan Baran, narrated by Malcolm McDowell.
Esoteric Neo-Nazism, also known as Esoteric Nazism, Esoteric Fascism or Esoteric Hitlerism, represents a fusion of Nazi ideology with mystical, occult, and esoteric traditions. This belief system emerged in the aftermath of World War II, as adherents sought to reinterpret and adapt the ideas of the Third Reich within the context of a new religious movement. Esoteric Nazism is characterized by its emphasis on the mythical and spiritual dimensions of Aryan supremacy, drawing from a range of sources including Theosophy, Ariosophy, and Gnostic dualism. These beliefs have evolved into a complex and often contradictory body of thought that seeks to justify and perpetuate racist and supremacist ideologies under the guise of spiritual enlightenment.
Germany and Austria have spawned many movements and practices in Western esotericism, including Rosicrucianism, Theosophy, Anthroposophy and Ariosophy, among others.
Historians, political scientists and philosophers have studied Nazism with a specific focus on its religious and pseudo-religious aspects. It has been debated whether Nazism would constitute a political religion, and there has also been research on the millenarian, messianic, and occult or esoteric aspects of Nazism.
A blue flower was a central symbol of inspiration for the Romanticism movement, and remains an enduring motif in Western art today. It stands for desire, love, and the metaphysical striving for the infinite and unreachable. It symbolizes hope and the beauty of things.
The generally tolerant official drug policy in the Third Reich, the period of Nazi control of Germany from the 1933 Machtergreifung to Germany's 1945 defeat in World War II, was inherited from the Weimar government which was installed in 1919 following the dissolution of the German monarchy at the end of World War I.
Agrarian conservatism in Germany was a type of conservatism that began to wane in popularity prior to the rise of the Nazi Party.
Adolf Hitler's cult of personality was a prominent feature of Nazi Germany (1933–1945), which began in the 1920s during the early days of the Nazi Party. Based on the Führerprinzip ideology, that the leader is always right, spread by incessant Nazi propaganda, and reinforced by Adolf Hitler's success in fixing Germany's economic and unemployment problems by remilitarising during the global Great Depression, his bloodless triumphs in foreign policy prior to World War II, and the rapid military defeat of the Second Polish Republic and the French Third Republic in the early part of the war, it eventually became a central aspect of the Nazi control over the German people.
 | This article related to a made-for-TV documentary film is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |