Eric Kurlander

HItler’s Monsters: A Supernatural History of the Third Reich
Author: Eric Kurlander
Publisher: Yale University Press
Publishing Date:2017
Edition/Volume: 1st edition
Pgs: 422
Dewey: 943.086 KUR
Disposition: Irving Public Library - South Campus - Irving, TX
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REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

Summary:
Esoterica, occultism, border science, witchcraft, mythology, and supernatural thinking used to justify the horrors of Nazism, This infected real science and the workings of government. This magical thinking infected the culture of pre-war and interregnum Germany. Magical thinking was used as a belief model for an entire country and lead to the downfall of a generation and a Holocaust. The Nazis bathed in the occult searching for any niche that would give them more power.
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Genre:
Religion
Spirituality
Occult
Paranormal
Ghosts
Hauntings
Supernatural
Ancient Aliens
Philosophy

Why this book:
Was expecting more of a why than a how.
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The Feel:
Way more philosophy than I was expecting.

An Occult History may have been a better title than Supernatural. Lotta philosophy. Lotta border science. More belief than fact. But no evidence of anything extranormal. Just massive numbers of sheep following a group of Judas Goats on their way to commit one of the greatest, most horrific crimes against humanity ever perpetrated.

Favorite Scene / Quote/Concept:
“...the metaphysics of dunces made possible the rise of Nazism.” Wow!

Hmm Moments:
“...a kind of religious natural science aka border science so...ancient aliens, eugenics, anti-vaccine, flat earth.” I wonder if Kurlander gave himself headaches while trying to explain all these esoteric mythical mystical philosophies from theosophy to World Ice Theory. I have to stop and shake my head clear every couple pages as he attempts to communicate the underlying philosophies that impacted the formation of occult Nazism. That isn’t an indictment of Kurlander or his writing, it’s the concepts themselves.

Border scientists and mythographers in the Third Reich...these were the bad guys in Indiana Jones.

WTF Moments:
The absorption of this Indo Aryan myth as both religion and history and its being taught in schools primed the pump for an onrushing Holocaust. Myth and parable taught as fact, what could possibly go wrong.

With all the Indo Aryan nonsense passing as real cultural history, I wonder what would have happened if the Axis had had a fourth spoke with an Indian or Tibetan fascist taking part.

Hitler claiming that Jesus was an Aryan resisting the Jews. And that St. Paul betrayed his teachings by claiming that all men were equal and contributing to the fall of the Roman Empire. The Nazis used the parts of Christianity that they wanted and tossed the rest at the feet of the “Jew Pope.” ...crypto-Christianity indeed.

Meh / PFFT Moments:
The Nazi German desire to liberate the mythic lost Indo Aryan pre-civilization fed and justified retaliation against their neighbors, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.

Border science had an essence of faith or belief instead of truth and experimentation. Border science’s roots in the Nazi party and in German society were scary in their depth and acceptance.

The Sigh:
Effectively, World Ice Theory is the culturally blind leading the scientifically deaf toward the next ice satellite impact that would change and either destroy or advance the world through a culling.

Wisdom:
“Creative intuition” lurked at base in so much of this. While a creative intuitive leap can bridge logically divides, a leap with no basis and nothing to land on when it gets there other than belief is foolish. Now translate that upwards to hundreds of millions of people in an entire country.

With the Third Reich’s reliance on border science and failure to respect or understand science, and considering their successes in tank development and, very late war, jet fighter deployment, we’re probably lucky that it interfered with research and development. Imagine the Panzer, Stuka, V-1 and 2, etc, if fairy dust and Teutonic legend hadn’t been given equal standing with aeronautics, rocketry, and engineering.

Hitler saying that Germany had to be destroyed in order to be reborn was about the only truth that monster ever spoke. Of course, he lead it to the point where the only way forward was ashes.

Juxtaposition:
I guess I don’t understand the mytho-cultural romantic longing for a Fatherland that exists outside their window.

I see a horrible mirroring between German centric religion, neo-paganism, longing for a mythic Fatherland, and state worship on the one hand and American evangelicalism, scientific luddism, longing for a mythic golden age, and state worship, on the other. Makes me think the axiom, those who fail to learn from history are destined to repeat it.

In our Trumpian now, with ghost this, paranormal that, and ancient aliens, hollow earth, conspiracy theory cable television, this book may be a little too on the nose for the modern times we’re living in.

The occultish, Indo-Aryan werewolf battling against the Serbo-Slavic Jewish and/or Polish vampire was one of the tropes in this pseudo religious stewpot that Germany found itself boiling in between the world wars and during the rise of Nazism.

This book is full of juxtapositions.

So, the Germans of the pre-World War era played both the resist the colonizing influence of Roman Church and the evangelical Protestant church while proselytizing a cultural appropriation of elements of the Hindu and Islamic institutions with the fake Aryan racial profile. Europeans are not Aryans. If Aryans exist at all as a distinct racial phenotype, they derive from Zorastrians, Parsis, Brahmins, Kshatriyas, and Vaishyas in India, Afghanistan, and Eastern Iran. All peoples who the prototypical German “Aryan” would consider beneath him, racist bastards.

And then, the book touches on false utopias and racial purity, both fed by an engraining and indoctrination into Indo Aryanism, educationally and culturally.

The Unexpected:
When I picked up this book, this deep philosophical look at the underpinnings of German society wasn’t what I was expecting.
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Pacing:
Glacial.

Last Page Sound:
Glad I read, but damn that was not what I expected. Way too much magical thinking and philosophy. Not an indictment of the author, the subject matter is a minefield.

Questions I’m Left With:
Did the Nazis need a conceptual groundwork to justify the horrors they were visiting on the peoples of Europe. Probably not. But it helped keep the masses quiescent and sheeplike. Were the party elite true believers in all that they were speechifying about? Or was it all a means to an end?

Author Assessment:
Anti-modern faux intellectual politicians of cultural despair who combined radical racism with national mysticism with a a future oriented, pseudo-nostalgia utopianism that revels in ludism. It’s like Kurlander was writing horror instead of a philosophical history of the culture that birthed Nazism.

Editorial Assessment:
There was a bit of repetitiveness that could have been done away with, but all in all, well edited.
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A very interesting study of the spiritual underpinnings of several top Nazis. There is valuable material on the Occult environment in which the Germans of the 1920's and thirties confronted the growth of Nazism. There is an interesting bit about Hitler's personal library, and the fact that to some degree he investigated occult reasons for his extra ordinary effectiveness as an orator. Other sections also have insights into the relationship of fantasy and horror literature of those times affected the political stances of the Nazis.… (more)

The particular virtue of Kurlander's study is that instead of trying to look past the Nazi obsession with occult thinking in terms of trying to analyze that regime's policy decisions, he looks squarely at the abyss and argues that this obsession with the esoteric and the occult is precisely what made the Nazi moment, as Wiemar society was suffused with such thinking itself and this state of affairs helped the Nazis to gain power. If it's unsettling to think of the Third Reich as a bad Lovecraftian fantasy come to life (Hitler certainly seems to have thought of himself as being a shamanic oracle), I suppose the question begged is why the German self-image was collectively so empty, even prior to the Great War. I'll also note that this book ends on something of a flat note in terms of dealing with the Nazi fantasies of vengeance weapons, as I'm not sure that Kurlander has the knowledge to appreciate where reality ends and fantasy starts; save me from Nazi flying saucers.… (more)