In the eighty years since the Second World War, few topics have been as carefully and as closely studied by popular historians as the rise of the Nazi Party.
Adolf Hitler preyed on prejudices and exploited the fears of ordinary people to assume power and force through his fascistic vision for Europe.
Fascism and the crude origins of ‘race science’ have been broken down to better understand, and avoid, their conditions.
But less well understood is how the party traces its beginnings to esoteric, cultish traditions – and how they, in turn, would come to guide the Nazis towards expensive digs around the world in search of evidence of a lost Aryan race of superhumans, once supposedly imbued with the gift of psychic powers.While Nazi engagement with the occult has largely been a footnote of history, reserved for quick allusions in the Indiana Jones films and cartoonish video games, research shows the Nazis did, in fact, lean into ‘magic’ and sponsor huge efforts to reclaim a fabled ancient folk history.
The Nazis harnessed distrust in science and ‘truth’ to rally voters and undermine traditional authorities.
But their willingness to hinge vital war operations on blind faith in tarot readers, death rays and astrology, collecting thousands of mystical tomes and financing excavations in pursuit of a lost ‘divine’ civilisation, suggests they may have also let superstition play a key role in the forming of the Third Reich.
Hellbound and Down 