The Supernatural Roots of Nazism
This chapter discusses the occult, mythological, and ‘border scientific’ ideas that permeated Vienna's cafés and Munich's beer halls before the First World War. Although these ideas were remarkably fluid and interconnected, they fall loosely into three overlapping subcultures. The first is Ario-Germanic religion, folklore, and mythology. The second is occultism, including the esoteric doctrines of theosophy, anthroposophy, and ariosophy. Third and finally is the so called ‘border sciences’, ranging from astrology, parapsychology, and radiesthesia (‘dowsing’) to World Ice Theory. These subcultures played an important role in the rise of Nazism. First, in terms of ideological content, all three subcultures circulated and popularized ideas and doctrines that informed the Nazi supernatural imaginary and impressed a broader Nazi constituency. Second, these subcultures legitimized an esoteric and border scientific approach to understanding the world that informed Nazi thinking on race and space, science and religion.