7 - Pragmatic Occultism in the Military History of the Third Reich

Summary

I.

JUST A FEW MONTHS after the collapse of the Third Reich, the art historian Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub (1884–1963) highlighted the “blatant contradictions” which characterized the policy of the National Socialist regime toward “occult-scientific practices, doctrines and research projects.” For Hartlaub, the analysis of the regime's “zigzag course” regarding these issues exemplified the general state of the NS system, which was defined by “ambiguities and duplicities.” Indeed, neither the relation of National Socialism to occult practices nor occultists’ own attitudes toward the Third Reich can be described one-dimensionally.

Despite continued popular fascination in Nazism's esoteric or occult elements, the amount of existing scholarship on the actual role of the so-called fringe sciences—that is, scientific occultism or parapsychology— remains modest. On the one hand, little is known about the extent to which fringe scientists of the most various kinds were discriminated against or even persecuted by the National Socialist regime. On the other hand, the question whether and to what extent fringe scientists and parapsychologists became committed to the intentions of National Socialism (out of conviction, due to opportunism, or as a result of political pressure) has only been rudimentarily dealt with.

For quite some time the debate has been dominated by two generally contradictory interpretations: mostly popular-scientific publications that highlight the “occult roots” of Nazi ideology and revisionist accounts that emphasize the Third Reich's persecution of the occult, culminating in Sonderaktion Hess (Special action Hess) in June 1941, during which the NS apparatus took massive action against the representatives of so called “secret doctrines and secret sciences.” Neither interpretation provides a suitably differentiated understanding of the relation of National Socialism and the various occult or fringe-scientific doctrines or practices. With a few exceptions, most publications lack descriptions of the actual situation of fringe scientists or occultists in the National Socialist period. And most of the scholarly work that does exist fails to consider the changes in policy brought on by the Second World War, particularly the period beyond 1941.

In continuing and complementing the analysis of preceding chapters in this volume, which focus on the interwar period and first six years of the Third Reich, the two case studies in this chapter will focus on the period after 1941.