The Nazis and the Occult: The Dark Forces Unleashed by the Third Reich

I read quite a few books on Nazism and such matters and was immediately drawn to this volume when I saw it going cheap (in The Works). It was the title that grabbed me. I had assumed the author would try and argue the case that the Nazis were greatly influenced by occult forces. However, he does not do that. The book is quite well written but its sources are often dubious, as he admits, and so the reader gets a little frustrated by it.

Roland attempts to explain how Hitler and his gang came to control Germany and its people to the extent that they could lead them to commit so many evil deeds. He looks at to what extent the occult played in this. Hitler it appeared was not a believer in the occult while Goering and Himmler did consult astrologers and mistakes before making major decisions. Rudolph Hess was also a user of such advisers.

Interesting account of how so much evil could be perpetrated by leaders who were not particularly smart and definitely had little or no conscience and how they managed to get the majority of Germans to follow them on such a destructive road.

This book looks at how Germanic myth, White and Black Magic, and occultism shaped the evilness of the Third Reich. It does this by examining views of Germanic mythology and the involvement in Magic and Occultism of key individuals such as Hitler and Göring. Information in this book is hard to find anywhere else. The book does ramble but because each section (usually one paragraph to one page) stands alone it does not detract from the book.