Eric Kurlander. Hitler’s Monsters: A Supernatural History of the Third Reich.

Abstract

Historians who set out to chart the relations between the Third Reich and the occult are faced with many challenges. On the one hand they must confront the all-too-present specter of Nazi occultism within the contemporary popular imagination, fed by innumerable crypto-historical films, video games, and the like. On the other hand, they must also contend with the uncomfortable silence on the part of many historians regarding these relations, which probably reflects a concern that to highlight them risks trivializing the regime’s monstrous deeds. The task is made more difficult by the highly inconsistent nature of the Nazi regime’s attitudes toward the occult. Take the story of the regime’s crackdown on astrologers and their ilk following the sudden flight of Nazi Party deputy Rudolf Hess, a notorious dabbler in mysticism, to Scotland in the spring of 1941. This so-called “Hess Action” resulted in the arrest of numerous clairvoyants, soothsayers, and others. But as Eric Kurlander shows in Hitler’s Monsters: A Supernatural History of the Third Reich, many of those arrested were subsequently released from camps within a matter of weeks. Even more surprising is Kurlander’s finding that the regime subsequently recruited many of these very same figures—in certain cases directly from the camps where some were still interned—to help find Benito Mussolini after the Italian partisans who overthrew him went to great lengths to hide him. Even if their efforts contributed nothing to finding Il Duce, this incident attests to the remarkable confluence between National Socialism and esoteric science.