Preface to “Hitler: The Occult Messiah by Gerald Suster”

Preface to “Hitler: The Occult Messiah by Gerald Suster”

PREFACE

Hitler: Orthodox Version

Few men have been the subject of such excellent historical writing as Adolf Hitler. Four books in particular stand out as masterpieces: Alan Bullock's Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, surely the classic biography of Hitler; William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, the standard history of ‘Nazism; Hugh Trevor-Roper's The Last Days of Hitler, an unsurpassed study of the twilight of the Third Reich; and Joachim C. Fest's admirable analysis of the men and mood responsible for National Socialism, The Face of the Third Reich. There are numerous other books on the subject, none of which attain the exalted heights of these, but most of which are of an unusually high standard. It can be argued that the work of recognized orthodox historians has rendered any subsequent efforts completely redundant.

How Do They Do It?

The authors cited above have achieved deserved renown for their work. They have been fortunate, perhaps, in the intrinsic fascination of their subject-matter, but then so has everyone who has attempted the task of comprehending the Hitler phenomenon. What distinguishes . Bullock, Shirer, Trevor-Roper and Fest is firstly, their enviable prose styles, and secondly, their acute powers of analysis.

There is a third similarity: their historical method. It is above all a method based upon rationality. Let us leave aside, laudable though it is, their talent for original research and the integrity which moves them to check the accuracy of every source. I am referring more to the very nature of their approach, which consists of endeavoring to tackle their subject without conscious preconceptions.

It used to be fashionable to invoke some ethereal ‘spirit of history'. Even today, there is a school of historians that invokes an equally ethereal ‘spirit of economic forces'. The men we are discussing will have none of this, and resolutely shun the temptation to impose upon their work an all embracing theory of history. Instead they present us with the facts, and from these facts they draw logical deductions. No one could in consequence criticize their writings for being ‘unscientific' - except possibly a determined propagandist. Nor is there present in their books any element that a rational mind would automatically question and reject.

Yet, as E. H. Carr has shown in his excellent What Is History?, the art of the historian does not consist of relating the facts, since everything that has ever happened is a fact, but in selecting the facts which, consciously or unconsciously, he thinks are significant. To some, therefore, the fact that at least on one occasion, Hitler consulted an astrological horoscope may be extremely important: to others it is too trivial to be worth mention, save possibly in a footnote.

The historian, in other words, emphasises the facts which he feels are important, and neglects the others. This emphasis may be consciously exerted, as in the case of Marxist historians, who are determined to fit history into a preconceived pattern: or it may be unconscious, and determined by the conviction that history is a rational process. Irrationalities and oddities will therefore be played down or forgotten. Thus, there is no such thing as objective history, any more than there is objective journalism. Everything depends on the facts which the historian selects from the infinite number available to him, and on the emphasis he gives those facts, and the result is the pattern which the historian has seen, which may be explicit or implicit in his narrative.

Do We Now Understand Adolf Hitler?

The pattern which emerges from the works I have cited is a rational pattern. That is to say that everything is explained in terms which a rational-humanist mind can grasp. The question is whether at the end of these and similar works, we understand the phenomenon of Adolf Hitler.

Despite the brilliance of the studies I have cited, it is my conviction that these works alone do not ultimately enable us to understand either Hitler himself or the Third Reich. After studying the mechanism by which Hitler attained power, the uses to which he put his power, his writings, his speeches and his actions, I hold that one is still baffled by a flood of unanswered questions.

Why did a civilized nation of the twentieth century abruptly revert to barbarism? How could a shabby ex dropout, so manifestly third-rate in all matters of the intellect, have achieved such unparalleled power? Why did the Germans come to venerate Hitler as a god? Why do he and his associates, Himmler, Goering, and Goebbels, still exert a mystique that is so conspicuously absent when we study Mussolini, Ciano and Starace, or Stalin, Molotov and Beria? Why does one feel that the Third Reich stood for a radically different kind of civilisation? Most fascinating of all, what drove Adolf Hitler, what motivated him, what went on in his mind that resulted in consequences of such magnitude?

Hitler, Unorthodox Version: or, Now At Last The Truth Can Be Told!

These, and so many similar questions, have resulted in a spate of books which furnish a bizarre contrast to the works I have mentioned. The first of these is that extraordinary work, The Dawn of Magic by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier, which has exercised a profound effect upon what is loosely termed the alternative culture. Part Two of the book, ‘ A Few Years In The Absolute Elsewhere', brings to light a vast number of facts, rumors, coincidences and hypotheses, all of which point to an involvement of Hitler and his associates with the occult. The authors speak of an eruption of the irrational with Hitler as its mediumistic prophet, of influential societies dedicated to the pursuit of magic, and of bizarre beliefs from the darkest hinterlands of the occult which obsessed the minds of Germany's leaders.

This thesis is not entirely original. Many years before, during the Second World War, Lewis Spence had published The Occult Causes of the Present War , which portrayed the Nazis as black magicians in the purest Satanic tradition. But whereas Spence had based his not very convincing arguments upon pre-twentieth century occult groups, the utterances of Alfred Rosenberg, anti-German prejudice and pro-Christian propaganda, Pauwels and Bergier cited a disturbing number of illustrations from the period 1919-115 which really did make one pause to consider whether they had stumbled upon the extraordinary truth.

The Dawn of Magic prepared the way for other books of a similar nature. J. H. Brennan's Occult Reich, brought to our attention a large number of facts ignored by orthodox historians, which again pointed convincingly to a strong connection between the Nazis and the world of magic.

In Satan and Swastika , Francis King attempted a rational and dispassionate analysis of the connection between Nazism and the Occult, and made clear that there was, beyond all doubt, such a connection. Mr King, a good and reputable historian, did not hesitate to lean towards the side of caution whenever there was the possibility of a rational explanation, with the result that his more extraordinary assertions are always fully substantiated.

Finally, there are the works of Hermann Rauschning, the former Nazi Gauleiter of Danzig to whom Hitler revealed some of his most secret beliefs and desires, and who in consequence fled to Britain. No one, to my knowledge, has impugned the authenticity of Rauschning's books, which make plain the magical worldview of Hitler: instead, the books have been for the most part studiously ignored. It is no use opposing to Rauschning's testimony a rag-bag of supposedly anti occult public statements by Hitler: of course Hitler did not parade his magical obsessions before an uncomprehending crowd. As Rauschning tells us, Hitler spoke frankly only to those select intimates whom he felt might understand him.

Now, the books I have just mentioned are not, as works of history, in the same class as those of the best recognised historians. Nevertheless, they do contain much information which the latter have neglected or dismissed. They do make comprehensible certain things about Hitler which had hitherto made no sense at all. They do answer many of the questions which were left us by orthodox historians. They do emphasise those very facts which seem closest to the baffling National Socialist mystique, and so bring us closer to a total understanding of Nazism and of Hitler. Therefore we cannot afford to neglect them.

What Are We To Conclude?

Why have such superb historians as those whom we have praised implicitly denied the existence of the close relationship between the Nazis and the occult? It is because their outlook is a rationalist's outlook, which can make no sense whatever of what strikes them as being a collection of bizarre lunacies. One almost feels in the background the existence of a mad syllogism: occultists never enjoy historical significance; Hitler enjoyed historical significance; therefore, Hitler was not an occultist. Others may argue that there is precious little evidence to demonstrate Hitler's passion for the esoteric: but the evidence is very plainly there, as I shall show, and this argues the existence of a certain willful blindness.

In short, the orthodox historian is determined to demonstrate that however strange the Hitler era might at times have been, ultimately all the events conformed to a rational pattern. The heretical historian denies this, and emphasises facts which upset this pattern. Some have gone further and imposed their own pattern, which, to the orthodox historian, is completely ‘irrational'.

One of the prime motives behind this book has been to use the available facts so that the nature of Hitler and of Nazism can be fully comprehended. Many of these facts have been shunned by orthodox historians, but it is my conviction that this attitude has been mistaken, though to their writings I owe an enormous debt. I am greatly indebted too, and I have acknowledged this where appropriate, to the historical heretics. I have concentrated on the darker and lesser known side of Hitlerism, and I venture the suggestion that the resulting work supplies a truer insight into the subject than has hitherto been available.

Shall We Take A Theory For Our Guide?

Inevitably one does, even if it is only a subconscious faith that history is entirely explicable in terms of the concepts of the majority of people living in the post-1945 world, which faith, I confess, I look upon as a curious superstition. Just because we choose to be rationalists is no reason why others should automatically be so, or why Life itself should be rational. I have contemplated the facts before me, and I have sought for a theory which would satisfactorily explain them. I believe that I have found it.

How Was It Arrived At?

Given what has been said, it is tempting to speak of intuition: where, after all, do original ideas come from? But such has not really been the case. To my mind, intuition is wholly untrustworthy unless it has a firm basis in reality. My methods have therefore consisted of logical deduction from the facts I considered significant, and of induction. To explain this last term: if we wake up one morning and see a grey sky and a wet street, we are justified in arguing that it has been raining, even though we have not seen it actually doing so; we have learned what the signs of rain are. Similarly, if I see Hitler saying and doing all the things which occultists say and do, then I am justified in arguing that he was an occultist, even though in some cases this is not immediately apparent; I have learned what the signs of occultism are.

Is This ‘Occult History'?

No, if by ‘occult history' is meant an ill-written jumble of odd facts, scraps of fiction, irrational prejudices, secret and mystical information sources, and a-pretence at complete omniscience. Nor would I care to be labelled as an occultist. a term which most occultists have brought into a richly deserved contempt. Like all orthodox historians, I have done my utmost to understand my subject and to present what I believe to be the truth about it. Occultism forms a significant part of this narrative because it is there.

Hitler and the Age of Horus

In the course of endeavoring to comprehend the nature of Hitlerism, one inevitably contemplates the entire tale of the decline and fall of Europe and the values it represented. One confronts the question of Hitler's role in Europe's collapse. One perceives the values which accompanied the collapse and notes their relation to Hitler. For my part, I saw the two themes as being intertwined.

What Is the Age of Horns?

The further I pursued this theme, the stronger became the belief that the twentieth century is that of the greatest crisis in human affairs for very many centuries. This is hardly a novel announcement: it has been said so often that it is virtually a platitude. My belief differs from the commonplace only in my comprehension of the nature of this crisis which, I will argue, has been both a crisis of the breakdown of a civilization and a spiritual crisis of the most profound significance. For reasons subsequently explained, I have poetically termed this crisis the onset of the Age of Horus. I have also implicitly asserted that we shall find a real insight into this phenomenon in the work of artists, poets, writers and all who are concerned with the world of the unconscious.

What This Book Is About

It is about Hitler, it is about the Age of Horus, and it is about the relationship between Hitler and the Age of Horus.

Is There a Spirit of World Historic Destiny?

Like most twentieth-century historians, I dislike grandiose terms such as the above, but the issue must be faced and dealt with. Either events conform to some kind of order outside the historian's mind, or they do not. If they do not, everything that happens, happens purely by chance, there can consequently be no such thing as science, and the historian's job becomes one of making sense out of random chaos, a job no different from writing fiction. If, on the other hand, there are laws of history, or there is some order in accordance with which events occur, there is no excuse for not trying to discover what it is. Christians may see in history the workings of God, of Christ, of the Devil: Marxists may discern the immutable workings of economic forces, of the class struggle, of the machinations of capitalism; and so on. I too have discerned a form of order. In common with other historians, I believe that the evidence points to the pattern I have discerned, and not to any other.

‘Why Did He Write It?'

Because ‘those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it'.