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the unknown hitler: nazi roots in the occult

on april 6, 1919, in bavaria, left wing socialists and anarchists pro- 
claimed the bavarian soviet republic.  the brains of the revolution were 
a 
group of writers who had little idea of administration.  life in munich 
grew 
chaotic.  the counter-revolutionary forces, the whites, composed 
of various
 groups of decommissioned soldiers known as "frei corps", 
equipped and
 financed by the mysterious thule society, defeated the 
bavarian soviet within
 a matter of weeks.

many other decommissioned soldiers waited out the turbulence in 
barracks, pfc
 adolph hitler among them.  after the bavarian republic had 
been defeated by the whites, in may, hitler's superiors put him to work 
in the post revolution
 investigating commission.  his indictments injected 
ruthless efficiency into
 the kangaroo courts as he fingered hundreds of 
noncommissioned officers and
 enlisted men who had sympathized with 
the communists and anarchists.  he was subsequently sent to attend 
special anticommunist training courses and
 seminars at the university 
which were financed by the reichswehr
 administration and by private 
donors from the thule society.  this led to an
 assignment in the intelli-
gence division of the postwar german army, to
 infiltrate groups that could 
organize the working classes while the communists were weak.  on a 
september evening, 1919, hitler turned up in the 
sternecker beer hall 
where members and friends of the budding german workers party had 
gathered.  he quietly listened to the presentation by engineer 
gottfried 
feder, a thule society member, who talked about jewish control over 
lending capital.  when one of the other group members called for bavaria 
to break away from the rest of germany, hitler sprang into action.  the 
astonished audience stood by while his highly aggressive remarks and 
compelling oratory swept through the room.  after hitler had finished his 
harangue, party chairman and founder, anton drexler, immediately asked 
him to a meeting of the party's steering committee held a few days later.  
he was 
asked to join the committee as its seventh member, responsible 
for advertising and propaganda.

back in 1912, several german occultists with radical anti-semitic inclina- 
tions decided to form a "magic" lodge, which they named the order of 
teutons.  
the main founders were theodor fritsch, a publisher of an anti-
semitic
 journal; philipp stauff, pupil of the racist guido von list, and hermann
pohl, the order's chancellor. (pohl would drop out three years later to found
his own bizarre lodge, the walvater teutonic order of the holy grail.)  the
order of teutons was organized along the lines of the free masons or the
rosicrucians, having differing degrees of initiation, only persons who could
fully document that they were of pure "aryan" ancestry were allowed to join.

in 1915, pohl was joined by rudolf blauer, who held a turkish passport and
practiced sufi meditation.  he also dabbled in astrology and was an admirer
of lanz von liebenfels and guido von list, both pathologically anti-semitic.
blauer went by the name of rudolf freiherr von seboottendorf.  he was very
wealthy, although the origin of his fortune is unknown.  he became the grand
master of the bavarian order and he founded the thule society, with pohl's
approval, in 1918.

after the bavarian communist revolution of 1918, the thule society became 
a
 center of the counterrevolutionary subculture.  an espionage network and 
arms
 caches were organized.  the thule club rooms became a nest of resist-
ance to
 the revolution and the munich soviet republic.

journalist karl harrer was given the job of founding a political "worker
 circle".  
he realized that the workers would reject any program that was
 presented to 
them by a member of the conservative "privileged" class.  harrer
 knew that 
the mechanic anton drexler, who was working for the railroads, was
 a well-
known anti-semite, chauvinist and proletarian.  with drexler as
 nominal chair-
man, harrer founded the german workers party in january 1919.

the german workers party was only one of many associations founded and
controlled by the thule society.  the thule was the "mother" to the german
socialist party, led by julius streicher, and the right-wing radical oberland
free corps.  it published the munich observer [note: Munich is the Capitol
of Bavaria. - Wol.], which later became the
 national observer.  hitler became 
the most prominent personality in the
 party.  he caused harrer to drop out, 
and he pushed drexler, the nominal
 chairman, to the sidelines.  he filled 
key positions with his own friends
 from the thule society and the army.  
during the summer of 1920, upon his
 suggestion, the party was renamed 
the national socialist german worker party
 (nasdap).  the new name was 
intended to equally attract nationalists and proletarians.

to go along with the new name his mass movement also required a flag 
with a 
powerful symbol.  among many designs under consideration, hitler 
picked the one suggested by thule member dr. krohn: a red cloth with a 
white circle in 
the middle containing a black swastika.

hitler wanted to turn the german workers party into a mass-conscious 
fighting party, but harrer and drexler were hesitant, due in part to their 
woeful
 financial situation.  the thule society was not yet supplying very 
much money
 and no one seemed to know how to build up a mass party.  
hitler arranged two
 public meetings in obscure beer halls, and he drafted 
leaflets and posters,
 but there was no real breakthrough.

all of this changed dramatically at the end of the 1919 when hitler met
dietrich eckart.  most biographers have underestimated the influence 
that
 eckart exerted on hitler.  he was the wealthy publisher and editor-in-
chief
 of an anti-semitic journal which he called 'in plain german'.  eckart 
was
 also a committed occultist and a master of magic.  as an initiate, 
eckart
 belonged to the inner circle of the thule society as well as other 
esoteric orders.  

briefly, the creed of the thule society inner circle is as follows: thule was 
a legendary island in the far north, similar to atlantis,  supposedly the 
center of a lost, high-level civilization.  but not all secrets of that 
civilization 
had been completely wiped out.  those that remained were being 
guarded 
by ancient, highly intelligent beings (similar to the "masters" of
 theosophy 
or the white brotherhood).  the truly initiated could establish
 contact with 
these beings by means of magic-mystical rituals.  the "masters" or "ancients" 
allegedly would be able to endow the initiated with
 supernatural strength 
and energy.  with the help of these energies the goal
 of the initiated was 
to create a race of supermen of "aryan" stock who would
 exterminate all 
"inferior" races.

there can be no doubt that eckart - who had been alerted to hitler by other 
thulists - trained hitler in techniques of self confidence, self projection, 
persuasive oratory, body language and discursive sophistry.  with these 
tools, in a short period of time he was able to move the obscure workers 
party from the club and beer hall atmosphere to a mass movement.  the 
emotion 
charged lay speaker became an expert orator, capable of mesmer-
izing a vast audience.

one should not underestimate occultism's influence on hitler.  his subse- 
quent rejection of free masons and esoteric movements, of theosophy, of 
anthrosophy, does not necessarily mean otherwise.  occult circles have 
long 
 been known as covers for espionage and influence peddling.  hitler's 
spy apparatus under canaris and heydrich were well aware of these 
conduits, 
particularly from the direction of britain which had within its mi5 
intelligence agency a department known as the occult bureau.  that these 
potential sources of trouble were purged from nazi life should not be taken 
to mean that hitler and the nazi secret societies were not influenced by 
mystical and occult writers such as madame blavatsky, houston stewart 
chamberlain, guido von list, lanz von liebenfels, rudolf steiner, george 
gurdjieff, karl haushofer and theodor fritsch.  although hitler later 
denounced 
and ridiculed many of them, he did dedicate his book mein kampf to 
his 
teacher dietrich eckart.

a frequent visitor to landsberg prison where hitler was writing mein kampf 
with the help of rudolf hess, was general karl haushofer, a university 
pro-
fessor and director of the munich institute of geopolitics.  haushofer, 
hitler, 
and hess had long conversations together.  hess also kept records of 
these 
conversations.  hitler's demands for german "living space" in the east 
at the 
expense of the slavic nations were based on the geopolitical theories 
of the 
learned professor.  haushofer was also inclined toward the esoteric.  as 
military attache in japan, he had studied zen-buddhism.  he had also gone 
through initiations at the hands of tibetan lamas.  he became hitler's second
"esoteric mentor", replacing dietrich eckart.  in berlin, haushofer had
 founded 
the luminous lodge or the vril society.  the lodge's objective was to
 explore 
the origins of the aryan race and to perform exercises in
 concentration to 
awaken the forces of "vril".  haushofer was a student of the
 russian magician
and metaphysician gregor ivanovich gurdyev (george
 gurdjieff).   both gurdjeiff 
and haushofer maintained that they had contacts
 with secret tibetan lodges 
that possessed the secret of the "superman".  the
 lodge included hitler, 
alfred rosenberg, himmler, goring, and hitler's
 subsequent personal physician 
dr. morell.  it is also known that aleister crowley and gurdjieff sought contact 
with hitler.  hitler's unusual powers of
 suggestion become more understand-
able if one keeps in mind that he had access
 to the "secret" psychological 
techniques of the esoteric lodges.  haushofer
 taught him the [hypnotic] tech-
niques of gurdjieff which, in turn, were based on the
 teachings of the sufis and 
the tibetan lamas - and familiarized him with the
 zen teaching of the japanese 
society of the green dragon.

from "the unknown hitler" by wulf schwartzwaller, berkeley books, 1990
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the men behind hitler -  excerpts from the book by bernard schreiber

thomas robert malthus (1766-1834) was an english political economist and
historian who in 1796 published a book called "an essay on the principle of
population" in which he said that poverty, and thereby vice and misery, are
unavoidable because population growth always exceeds food production.  
checks
 on population growth were wars, famine, and diseases.

malthus's ideas had great impact, only a few asked on what his claims 
were
 actually based.  yet neither malthus nor his later disciples ever man-
aged to
 put forward any scientific proof for his theory.  many scientists 
have
 disproved malthus' theory and the ideology resulting from it.

however, with the book, malthus created an atmosphere which moved 
his 
adherents in 1834 to pass a new law providing for the institution of 
work-houses for the poor, in which the sexes were strictly separated to 
curb the 
otherwise inevitable overbreeding.  this kind of philosophy urged 
the calling forth of drastic measures.  the full title of charles darwin's 
famous book is 
not so famous: "the origin of species by means of natural 
selection or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life".  in 
it he explains the development of life-forms as a struggle for existence.  
the result of
 this struggle would be a natural selection of those species 
and races who
 were to triumph over those weaker ones who would perish.

francis galton (1822-1911) was an english psychologist and a half-cousin 
of darwin.  galton extended darwin's theory into a concept of deliberate 
social 
intervention, which he said was a logical application of evolution to 
the human race.  he called his theory "eugenics", the principle of which 
was that by encouraging better human stock to breed and discouraging 
the reproduction
 of less desirable stock, the whole race could be improved.

modern racism really began with arthur count de gabon (1816-1882) who 
published his "essay on the inequality of human races".  he wrote in of a
fair-haired aryan race that was superior to all the others whose remnants
constituted a tiny racial aristocracy decaying under the overwhelming 
weight
 of inferior races. a revival of his work in germany began ten years 
after his
 death by the pan-germans, an extremely nationalistic and anti-
jewish group.

in 1899, gabon's disciple, houston stewart chaimberlain (1844-1927), an 
englishman, published "the foundations of the nineteenth century", in
germany.  he upheld the german race to be the purest and damned the 
inferior
 races, the jews and negroes, as degenerate.  from this point on, 
eugenics,
 social darwinism and racial hygiene fused into a single concept.

in 1904 the first chairs in eugenics were instituted at university college, 
london, followed by the establishment of the galton laboratory for national 
eugenics in 1907.  in 1910 the eugenic record office was founded in the 
united states, both institutes used the research results of the galton 
laboratory of national eugenics to propose practical applications.  eugenics 
was used an the "scientific" basis upon which racism was fused to politics.

eugenicists believed that the child of a mentally-ill person and a mentally 
heathy person would be a mentally-ill offspring.  this led to a series of 
escalating regimens: separation from society, restraint, separation of the 
sexes in defective's colonies, and sterilizations.  in great britain one of 
the leaders of the mental hygiene movement was miss evelyn fox.  she 
had been
 an active member of the eugenics society before the foundation 
of the
 national council for mental hygiene, of which she was an officer and 
founder.
  among the board members was sir cyril burt, who later founded 
mensa, a high
 i.q.  group which espoused eugenic principles.  the mental 
hygiene movement
 drew strongly from the eugenic movements of whatever 
country they were in.

shortly after the turn of the century eugenic organizations were set up 
throughout the world.  while the whole world was being prepared by propa-
ganda 
for the sterilization of the insane, the adherents of mental hygiene 
and 
eugenics were preparing their next step, euthanasia.  in the u.s.a., 
dr. 
alexis carrel, a nobel prize winner who had been on the staff of the
rockefeller institute since its inception, published his book "man the
unknown" in 1935.  in it he suggests the removal of the mentally ill and 
the criminal by small euthanasia institutions equipped with suitable gases.

in 1933 the nazi party rapidly consolidated its power.  in june of that year, 
minister of the interior wilhelm frick put in motion the passage of the "law 
for the prevention of hereditary diseases in posterity" - the sterilization 
law.  architect of the law was ernst rudin, professor of psychiatry at the 
munich university, director of the kaiser-wilhelm institute for genealogy, 
and 
of the research institute for psychiatry.  a separate legal system was 
set up consisting of "hereditary health courts", which could decree sterili-
zation 
against a person's will.  by 1935 the "nuremburg laws" intended to 
insure the racial purity of the nation and was aimed specifically at the jews.

in 1934 the institute for heredity, biology and racial research was founded
at frankfurt university by professor ernst rudin's colleague at the kaiser
wilhelm institute, dr. otmar freiherr von verscheur.  von verscheur's
 assistant 
there was dr. joseph mengele.

in england, dr. charles killick millard, president of the society of medical 
officers of health, brought up in 1931 the question of voluntary euthanasia 
and proposed a suitable law.  later he became fellow founder of the voluntary 
euthanasia legislation society.  in 1935 lord moynihan, president of the
 royal 
college of surgeons, founded the euthanasia society .

sterilization and euthanasia were not [originally] the ideas of the nazis... 
they were ideas which were supported and promoted throughout the world 

by groups with an interest in the development of mental hygiene.  germany,
 
however, was the only country in which the political climate allowed
 material-
ization of the final goal of sterilization and euthanasia.

there is not a great deal known about "t4" compared to other aspects of 
nazi 
germany.  t4 was the fuhrer chancellery and the initials came from the 
full 
address which was tiergartenstrasse 4, berlin.  "project t4" was fully 
integrated into the organizational structure of the reich and fell under 
section 
11b. ("mercy-death") of the chancellery of the fuhrer.  four cover 
organizations 
safeguarded the project t4: the realms work committee in charge 
of collecting 
information on candidates for euthanasia from questionnaires 
sent to hospitals, 
the realms committee for scientific approach to severe 
illness due to heredity 
set up exclusively to apply euthanasia to children, the charitable company 
for the transport of the 'sick' which transported patients to the killing centers, 
and the charitable foundation for institutional care, in charge of final disposition 
of the victims' remains.

at the time the questionnaires went out a number of mental hospitals were 
being converted for use as killing centers and schools for murder.  death 
chambers were built disguised as shower-baths and crematoriums, which 
were 
identical to those later to be established in the death camps in poland.

schooling of the personnel at hadamar mental institution produced perfect 
murderers who were used to the smell of burnt flesh, had been taught to trick 
people being led to their death and to steel themselves against the crying 
and pleading of the victims.  on arrival, the victims were stripped, dressed 
in paper shirts and forthwith taken to a gas chamber where they were mur-
dered with hydrocyanic acid gas, and the bodies moved to crematoriums by 
conveyer belts, six bodies to a furnace.  the psychiatrist in charge at hadamar 
was
 dr. adolf wahlmann, an active member of the german mental hygiene 
movement.

after the state had been relieved of the burden of these undesireables, the 
operation, still under the direction of eminent mental health psychiatrists 
in t4, was expanded under the code of 14f13.  from being limited to mental 
hospitals and institutions, it now embraced german and austrian inmates 
and jews in concentration camps who were sick or invalid.  at dachau at 
the end 
of 1941 a commission composed of 4 psychiatrists under professor 
dr. werner 
heyde, ss standartenfuhrer and lecturer in neurology and psychiatry 
at wurzburg university, arrived at the camp and selected hundreds of patients
incapable of work who were transported to the gas chambers and disposed of.

the extermination camps had followed a separate evolution from the concen- 
tration camps that were opened a few months after the nazi rise to power.  
these death camps had their headquarters, not in himmler's ss organization, 
but in the fuhrer's chancellory (t4).  franz stangl (austrian gestapo) said 
at the 
nuremberg trials that his progression to builder and commander of the
 sobibor 
extermination camp went through the hartheim and bernberg euthanasia
centers.  the original staff at sobibor was taken from hartheim.

during the war eugenics became associated with the nazis and afterwards 
a
 global whitewashing began.  the first step was the reconstitution of the 
many
 national councils of mental hygiene.  the first was the british associa-
tion
 for mental health.  lady prescilla norman, wife of montagu norman, 
governor
 of the bank of england, had been working in the mental hygiene 
movement since
 the 20's.  in 1944 they sponsored a congress held at the 
ministry of health
 in london where they established the world federation of 
mental health - wfmh.

the first elected president of the wfmh was dr. john rawlings rees, a british
psychiatrist associated with the tavistock institute.  in 1948 the wfmh was
formally inaugurated at the third international congress of mental health.  a
vice-president of the congress was dr. carl g. jung who was described by
fellow vice-president dr. conti as  "representing german psychiatry under 
the
 nazis".  dr. jung had been co-editor of the journal for psychotherapy 
with
 dr. m. h. goering, the cousin of marshal hermann goering.
  george 
ivonovitch gurdjieff: proto nazi

it may be that the real key to the third reich lies buried in the history of
 tibet, 
for it was here that karl haushofer, the initiate who taught the
 youthful hitler, 
first met in literal fact the superman of nazi legend.

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origins of the swastika

by 1945 the thousand year reich had become a smoking ruin.  russian soldiers
pressed through the rubble, fighting from house to house, from street to
 street 
in order to link up with their british and american allies who also
 pressed in 
inexorably on the heart of the dying capital.  before they overran
 the eastern 
sector of berlin, these russian troops came across something very
 strange: 
vast numbers of tibetan corpses.  the fact is mentioned by maurice
 bessy and 
again by pauwels and bergier, who set the actual number of bodies
 at a thou-
sand.  they wore german uniform, but without the usual insignia of
 rank.

the religion of tibet is buddhism, but like the zen of japan, it is a brand
 of 
buddhism far divorced from the indian original.  many scholars prefer the
term "lamaism" to distinguish between tibetan buddhism and its parent root.
the religious life of the country is concentrated in a multitude of
 monasteries, 
many of them built in almost inaccessible mountain regions.
  side by side 
with the state religion of lamaism, and flourishing particularly in the rural 
districts, is tibet's aboriginal religion of bon.  the 
bon-pas follow a primitive, 
animistic creed, full of dark rituals and spells.  
if the holy lamas of the buddhist 
sects were looked on as personifications 
of spiritual wisdom, the priests of bon 
had a potent reputation with the common people as magicians.

the nazi leaders were attracted to tibet by those of its secret doctrines
 which 
filtered through to the west.  they believed, those members of the
 thule group, 
the luminous lodge, and the various other occult organizations
 which helped 
shape the third reich, in an esoteric history of mankind.  and
 it was in the 
archives of tibetan monasteries that this history was
 preserved in its purest 
form.

already, in the latter half of the previous century, intriguing hints about 
tibetan 
secret teachings had been carried to the west by helena blavatsky, 
who claimed 
initiation at the hands of the holy lamas themselves.  blavatsky 
taught that her 
"hidden masters" and "secret chiefs" had their earthly
 residence in the himalayan 
region [within subterranean chambers... also Blavatsky wrote about subterranean
secret societies of India, in other metaphysical works of hers. - Wol.].  as soon 
as the nazi movement had
 sufficient funds, it began to organize a number of 
expeditions to tibet and
 these succeeded one another practically without inter-
ruption until 1943.  one
 of the most tangible expressions of nazi interest in tibet 
was the party`s
 adoption of its deepest and most mystical of symbols - the 
swastika.

the swastika is one of mankind's oldest symbols, and apart from the cross 
and
 the circle, probably the most widely distributed.  it is shown on pottery
fragments from greece dating back to the eighth century b.c.  it was used in
ancient egypt, india and china.  the navaho indians of north america have a
traditional swastika pattern.  arab-islamic sorcerers used it.  in more
 recent 
times, it was incorporated in the flags of certain baltic states.

the idea for the use of the swastika by the nazis came from a dentist named
dr. friedrich krohn who was a member of the secret germanen order.  krohn
produced the design for the actual form in which the nazis came to use the
symbol, that is reversed, spinning in an anti-clockwise direction.  as a
 solar 
symbol, the swastika is properly thought of as spinning, and the
 buddhists 
have always believed the symbol attracted luck.  the sanskrit
 word "svastika" 
means good fortune and well being.  according to
 cabbalistic lore and occult 
theory, chaotic force can be evoked by reversing the symbol.  and so the symbol 
appeared as the flag of nazi germany and
 the insignia of the nazi party, an 
indication for those who had eyes to
 see, as to the occult nature of the third 
reich.

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