The Occult Roots of Nazism

Describes the origins of Ariosophy and mentions its close links with antisemitism. The founders of Ariosophy, Guido von List and Joerg Lanz von Liebenfels, combined theosophy, occult freemasonry, and pagan German religion to create a myth of Aryan superiority and a secret order working to restore the lost, racially pure society. Lanz's magazine "Ostara" was widely read in prewar Vienna. After the crisis of 1918, blamed by Lanz on a Jewish-Bolshevik-Freemason alliance, he became rabidly antisemitic. His ideas influenced Nazism through two virulently antisemitic groups, the Reichshammerbund and the secret Germanenorden, founded in 1912 and also inspired by List. The latter was revived in Bavaria in 1918 as the Thule Society and was active in the counter-revolution. Hitler came into contact with the group in Munich. Concludes that Ariosophy was a symptom of the political and cultural climate rather than a direct influence on Nazism.