Nacismus a okultismus : příběh, fakta a Akce Hess

• Published in: Studia historica Brunensia no. 1; pp. 111 - 137
• Main Author: Ševčík, Jan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Czech
• Published: 2024
• ISSN: 1803-7429; 2336-4513
• DOI: 10.5817/SHB2024-1-6

The aim of this article is to introduce the Czech reader to the issue of the relationship between National Socialism and occultism. In Western Europe, these relationships have been explored since the 1970s, when historians James Webb and Nicholas Goodric Clarke began to explore them. In the Czech environment, however, serious research on this topic is still relatively unknown and a minimum of scientists are devoted to it. Conversely, Popular culture and lovers of mysteries produce countless fantastic stories about Nazi wizards, secret societies controlling the NSDAP, or Nazi quests for the Holy Grail. This ensures a tabloid impression. But if we overcome this impression, we will find that the issue of the relationship between Nazism and occultism is a story about the rapid intellectual, religious and especially political development of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, when at other times marginal occult ideas and fantasies could influence the development of entire states. This text is therefore a basic summary of the information known so far about the relationship between National Socialism and occultism. It is processed in the form of a sampling method into the conclusions of research carried out so far and the resulting literature. In it, we observe the intermingling of German nationalism and occultism at the end of the 19th century, which leads to the emergence of a chauvinist and racist occult teaching, the so-called Ariosophy. Ariosophy spread through Austria-Hungary and the German Empire, becoming the political program of various occult and political organizations. In Bavaria, the main representative of Ariosophy is the Thule Society, and the Thule agitation among the workers gave rise to the DAP in 1919, and from 1920 to the NSDAP. The end of the text is devoted to the NSDAP's ambivalent relationship to the occult. Since 1941, the party faction opposing occultism was victorious and the great persecution of occultists begins. The text introduces the reader to Reinhard Heydrich’s order of June 4, 1941, which begins the persecution.