Mackenzie King’s Spiritualism and His View of Hitler in 1939

Abstract

Scholars have usually divided King’s spiritualism from his public political life. The former has been a source of serious embarrassment and has been held to have had little effect on his public career. This article tries to show that King’s spiritualism was not as strange or unique as is usually held, and that it should not be hived off from his public life. If taken more seriously, King’s spiritualism helps to explain his benevolent, poetic interpretation of Adolf Hitler. In the summer of 1939 King’s view of Hitler was especially influenced by Wagnerian insights.