Nazism Still Exists - Second Part (2/3)
The Demoniacal Character of the Hitlerian Regime
Let us now recall what the Hitlerian regime was like in terms of its culture and influence on souls. The Nazi regime represented the obsessive peak of a progressive self-aggrandizement of the German people, which found in Hitler the most complete expression of its vicious tendency towards self-esteem, a theme I have already discussed (Deutschland über Alles), and the consequent will to dominate all of humanity.
What strikes historians about the origins of Nazism is the synthesis it created between four fundamental factors or guiding principles of the German spirit: first, the revival of ancient pre-Christian mythology in the worship of runes [1]; second, idealistic-pantheistic philosophical literature; third, the superstitious interest in occult phenomena, spiritualism, divination, astrology, Indian mysticism, theosophy, Masonic and Kabbalistic esotericism, and magic; fourth, an imaginary ancient origin of the Aryan race, presented as historical science[2].
Aristotle says that man can commit far more damaging evil actions than animals, because man, in doing evil, can use his reason perversely. The power of reason, which grasps the universal – observes Aristotle – is much greater than the sense, which is limited to the particular. Hence, the greater harm produced by actions that originate in perverted reason, compared to those that arise in the sense, to which the power of beasts is limited.
For this reason, it is worth noting that the Nazis, having at their disposal organizational, technical, and economic means infinitely richer and more powerful than those used by the ancient Germanic barbarians who invaded the Roman Empire, obviously caused infinitely greater harm than that caused by their distant ancestors.
Consider only the colossal undertaking of setting up something like 40 concentration camps for the extermination of the Jews. Please think of the enormous costs of this mad enterprise, all the malevolent genius that was employed to conceive, organize, and execute it. Think of the methodical, multi-year, collective meticulousness, all so German, in carrying out the task. Consider the vast amounts of technical means, transport, and construction that must have been employed, and one may get a faint idea of how right Aristotle was.
For this reason, anyone who merely qualifies the conduct of the Nazis as beastly does not adequately express how evil their actions were, which, on the contrary, should certainly be qualified as demonic in the strictly theological sense of the word. Indeed, the devil is a being who intellectually conceives evil and wills it with his will. And this is precisely what the Nazis did, demonstrating a conviction, obstinacy, power, and effectiveness of action, such that it became apparent that a force of intellectual and volitional power beyond the human was at play.
As for the Nazi notion of "Lebensraum" (living space), understood as a justification for the arbitrary and artificial expansion of the German state’s borders through military operation, it is an irrational principle based purely on violence, without any genuine legal or moral justification. That living space, in itself, is a right is indisputable. But the Nazis used the pretext of living space simply to satisfy their thirst for seizing other people’s territories.
Certainly, spatial issues can arise. But they must be resolved in such a way that neighboring peoples are not offended, that is, through agreements or purchases, as the Jews did in 1948, or through emigration or the colonization of uninhabited or sparsely populated territories, as the English did with Australia, North America, Alaska, or Greenland, or the Russians did with Siberia. But in no case is it legitimate to invade another people’s territory with weapons.
The biblical narrative of Israel’s occupation of Palestine reflects an ancient barbaric conception, now rejected by international law based on the same biblical ethics. However, at the time, Israel believed in good faith that it was a divine command.
Hitler’s Seductive Power
We cannot understand [3] the phenomenon of Nazism without referring to the psychic forces active and influential within it—extraordinary forces operating at the mass level, unleashed by the suggestive power of a single man, Hitler.
It is an extraordinary phenomenon that is difficult to interpret or explain: the power to provoke in enormous crowds, with a mere word, gesture, or facial expression, an irresistible emotional impulse with a dual direction: psychedelic and psychomotor.
There seem to be no examples in history of men possessing such abilities. The greatest leaders of crowds—Buddha, Moses, Julius Caesar, Jesus Christ, Muhammad, Napoleon, Mussolini—have acted on the mind by inducing the formation of conceptual intentions.
Hitler, by contrast, seems to provoke thoughts and intentions automatically, as if the listener responded not through an act of free will, but through an unconscious and instinctive impulse, as in hypnosis. However, hypnosis pertains to individual persons, not crowds.
Numerous testimonies exist regarding Hitler's inexplicable oratorical ability and his power to galvanize the masses, inciting enthusiastic and fanatical followers. The most probable hypothesis is that Hitler spoke under the influence of an extraordinarily powerful demonic force. After all, he claimed to feel moved by a superior entity without providing further clarification.
Anyone who watches audio-video recordings of his speeches immediately understands they are confronting an agitated individual and experiencing a sense of revulsion. We cannot comprehend how hundreds of thousands of people who listened to him took him seriously unless it was a form of collective possession, a rare occurrence in history.
I will limit myself here to citing the testimony of René Alleau, author of a learned book dedicated to the Occult Origins of Nazism, which is the title of his book[4]. He recounts the impression he received from one of Hitler’s speeches during a visit to Nuremberg and speaks of:
"A collective orgasm which one must have witnessed to renounce describing it, if not out of respect for human dignity. At least, I was struck by the different phases of personality splitting that characterized Hitler's oratorical mediumship. At this level, in fact, one cannot speak of talent or genius of a tribune."
Hitler ‘functioned,’ so to speak, like a radar. At the beginning of his speeches, in the almost unimaginable silence of a crowd made up of over a million fanatics, frozen as if paralyzed by the expectation of the "message from the Führer." The voice, initially muffled and low, seemed to gradually rise, as if testing the atmosphere in different directions of space, until the moment when, abruptly, it tightened its grip, accelerating the flow of words, hammering the formulas to an increasingly rapid rhythm, similar to that of a drum beating the charge."
Hitler’s fortune, aside from his oratorical skill, personal abilities, and the sense of security he could provide, is due to the extraordinary way in which he interpreted and aroused the most widespread feelings in the German people at the time: the sense of frustration and humiliation from the defeat in the previous World War and the injustice of the peace treaties, the need for justice by the oppressed classes, the ancient belief among the Germans that they were the chosen people destined to dominate humanity.
Hitler’s oratory skills have been compared to those of Mussolini and Napoleon. One could perhaps even compare them to the popular success achieved by past holy preachers, such as the Dominican Blessed Jordan of Saxony and Reginald of Orléans in the 13th century, Saint Bernardino of Siena, Savonarola, or the Blessed Marco d’Aviano, the preacher of the crusade against the Turks at the Battle of Vienna in 1683.
However, it is clear that, beyond the oratorical effectiveness in both cases, there is an abyss concerning the content of the preaching: the Word of God in the Saints; and diabolical perspectives in Hitler. His demonic influence is not so much evident in his manner or intensity of speech, but rather in what he said.
But the tragedy was that very few recognized in Hitler’s attitude the deception of the devil—many did not even believe in his existence—allowing Hitler to give these poor naïve or exalted individuals the impression that he was a hero, a new Siegfried, a titan, a guide, indeed a Führer leading Germany to its greatness.
From Hitler’s speeches on what he thought of himself and his mission, it is evident that he had the will and the mad claim to replace Christ, believing himself to be an instrument of God, fate, destiny, or higher entities in promoting the salvation and greatness of the German people, and through them, for the whole of humanity. The astonishing thing is how easily and ingenuously he was believed and accepted by the Germans—a people of ancient Christian faith, great intellectual and moral gifts, strong spirituality, civilization, progress, and culture.
Where Does Hitler’s Spirit Come From?
What are the roots of Hitler’s spirit? What are the sources of his thoughts? Certainly, the doctrine of Nazism is fully and effectively expressed in him, but this, in turn, is not simply the work of Hitler’s mind. He found it already in formation and brought it to fruition as a politician and head of state.
Nazism is the outcome of a complex, centuries-old ideological movement in Germany, with its distant origins in both Germanic mythology and the heretical Christianity of Luther, as well as medieval voluntarism through Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Hegel, and Nietzsche. It can be traced back to the Renaissance anthropocentrism of Bruno’s magical idealism, and ultimately to that of Protagoras (bold added by the translator).
Essentially, it is a conception of truth where it depends not on the adequacy of the intellect, but on a decision of the will, according to the well-known adage sit pro ratione voluntas. It is clear that this principle, effectively expressed by Nietzsche through the famous "will to power" (Wille zu Macht), is the extreme result of all the previous voluntarism I mentioned above.
Where, more precisely, did Hitler draw from? What is the reason for his pagan anti-Christianity? Although he received a Catholic education, he was drawn to the pre-Christian Germanic spirit from an early age, which he considered superior to Christianity. If he paid attention to Christianity, he admired Luther, not the Papacy, as Luther proposed a Germanic Christianity that was superior and hostile to Roman Catholicism.
Why this choice, which proved fatal for his life and for Germany in the 1930s and 1940s? Perhaps it was due to his proud and aggressive warlike tendency, inherent in the Germanic temperament, a tendency that does not exclude tenderness and dedication, even absolute dedication, up to servility or heroism, depending on the malice or goodness of the practical intention.
A psycho-emotional factor could also have contributed to the formation of Adolf’s ideas: an emotional blockage in the sexual sphere. He never succeeded in initiating a serene relationship with women. It seems that he also had homosexual tendencies. Perhaps, in compensating for this frustration, he redirected all his emotional energy toward love for his country, which was deeply felt among the youth of his time and, even exaggeratedly, associated with the heroic ideal of sacrificing one’s life for the country, with a tendency to regard one's homeland as superior to others.
The fact is that he became so enamored with ancient Germanic mythology that he abandoned the Catholic faith in which he had been raised, although paradoxically, he never abandoned the desire for communion with the Catholic Church. Nazi mysticism, when set as an alternative to Catholic mysticism, adopts some of its features.
It is also worth noting that he, upon coming to power in 1933, requested a concordat with Pope Pius XI. Was it to subject the Church? He could have done that without a concordat. Therefore, despite the hatred that later manifested in him, there remained in his soul a flicker of affection, perhaps nostalgic for a love betrayed and lost. Thus, to Adolf, the god Wotan [5] seemed to be the true god in place of the God of Sacred Scripture. Many documents testify to Hitler’s orientation, since his youth, toward embracing a pre-Christian Germanic worldview concerning the god Wotan, rendered in Italian as Odin.
Let us provide just one example. In 1915, while serving on the Western Front with the German army, he wrote the following esoteric poem, mentioning the pre-Christian Germanic deity Wotan[6]:
“Sometimes I go in the bitter nights
To Wotan's oak in the tranquil grove,
To make a pact with hidden powers.
The runes take me in their lunar spell.And all those who, during the day, were impudent,
Are made tiny by the magic formula!
They strip; but instead of going to battle,
They stiffen into stalagmites.Thus, the righteous are separated from the wicked.
I thrust my hand into the bag of words
And give to the good and pure
My formula of blessing and prosperity.”
Is this the original spirit of Hitler? Doesn’t it seem that here, in a state of purity, the feelings and intentions that, in the adult Hitler, inflated by power, would become distorted by hatred?
Indeed, in the young Hitler, we find the cult of Wotan, an ancient deity of pre-Christian Germanic religion. An expert on this subject describes the deity as follows:
"The most revered deity among the Germans was the Lord of demonic possession. … Wotan is the wild god of possession, the divine master of ecstatic brotherhoods (Männerbunde), the unpredictable god of war and storm, of the Runes and the dead, of wrath and witchcraft." [7]
Wagner's resplendent music glorified the mythic grandeur of Germanic heroes and ancient gods, which appeared to captivate him far more than the sacred epic of Israel’s saints as told in Scripture. Membership in an esoteric society seemed to hold greater significance for him than belonging to the Church.
Here, we note the difference between Wotan and the biblical God. Wotan is death-bringing; the biblical God is life-giving. It becomes evident that Wotan is the devil, whom Christ calls "a murderer from the beginning" (antropktonos ap’archè), (John 8:44). The comparison between the two cults is interesting. The worship of God implies the hierarchy of being, a scale of values, and therefore the degrees of entities, the more and the less, the minimum and the maximum; the worship of Wotan views being as one and flat, all entities are equal [8]; the concept of participation and analogy is absent. Man and God are substantially identical. Consider Brahmanism. The worship of Wotan overturns the relationship between the superior and the inferior, defying the principle of causality, which dictates that the superior causes and promotes the inferior, not the other way around. The lesser comes from the greater, not the greater from the lesser. It is God who creates man, not man who creates God. Thought depends on being, not being on thought. The roots of German idealism lie both in Parmenides and in Wotanism.
While in the worship of God, God, being superior to man, raises man, in the worship of Wotan, Wotan, being superior to man, tyrannizes man. In the worship of God, the inferior submits to the superior, knowing that it strengthens him; whereas in the worship of Wotan, the inferior rebels against the superior, believing that it tyrannizes him. In the worship of God, obedience raises man; in the worship of Wotan, servility degrades him. The worshiper of Wotan rebels against God to become a slave of Wotan.
The worship of Wotan arises from pride; that of God from humility. The devotee of Wotan exalts himself and thus is humbled; the devotee of God humbles himself and thus is exalted: the devotee of Wotan seems free but is a slave; the devotee of God seems a slave but is free. God seems a tyrant but is in reality a liberator; Wotan seems a liberator but is in reality a tyrant.
In Germany, especially from the 16th century, secret societies, hermetic, astrological, alchemical, magical, and kabbalistic associations operated. From the 17th century, Rosicrucian associations emerged, and from the 18th century, Masonic ones. Theosophical and spiritualist societies emerged in the 19th century. All of these associations had connections with the mythologies, sagas, ideas, beliefs, rites, and practices of ancient esoteric and mystic traditions from pre-Christian Germany.
How did Hitler manage to quickly gain success and followership, making himself credible and trustworthy, assuming the role of unquestioned, absolute, and infallible leader (Führer), not just in a temporal sense, but also spiritual and global, so that the entire problem of life for Germans became the act of obeying Hitler? How did he persuade the masses and spur them to war, which they undertook with incredible fanaticism and violence?
Adolf, having learned of the existence of these superstitions, was consumed by the desire to seize the magical, divinatory, mysterious, and extraordinary powers that these societies secretly transmitted to initiates. He threw himself into learning their secrets, principles, methods, operations, and aims, achieving impressive mastery in a short time, thereby gaining influence and prestige among his contemporaries. Meanwhile, driven by the desire for effective action for the greatness of Germany, he turned to politics and, based on the ideas and powers he had acquired, formulated his famous political program, which he presented in Mein Kampf.
Thus, the famous Nazi esotericism[9] served as the secret backdrop for his political action. There has been talk of "Nazi mysticism," but this is a misnomer because true mysticism concerns intimate union with the true God. Here, one should rather speak of a demonic or pagan mysticism. The "sacred" spoken of by Rudolf Otto, Hölderlin, and Heidegger is not the Christian sacred, but the sacred of Nazism.
When Hitler speaks of God, it is not the Christian God, transcendent and creator, distinct from the world and man, but the pantheistic and worldly God of the idealists, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, whose falsity was denounced by Pius XI in his powerful encyclical Mit brennender Sorge of 1937 against Nazism.
Adolf, despite being of Austrian origin, had realized the fundamental ethnic unity of Austrians and Germans, and he felt a strong admiration and deep affection for this great social, human, and historical reality. He was proud to belong to it and to be its son.
However, in doing so, caught up in the national pride widespread at his time, he exaggerated and was seduced by the typically German arrogance of considering themselves the chosen people. For the German, his self, his community, and his leader form one unique and absolute Whole, to which he is called to commit himself completely, even to the death. This self-esteem, both personal and national, does not settle for a mere intellectual global vision, nor does it resolve itself as in Greek, Roman, or Indian cultures, but has a very concrete character, rooted in the land and the German race, forming one Absolute that gives meaning to existence, life, and action.
These are the roots of Nazi racism and its hatred for the Jews. Hitler knew well that Israel was the chosen people of God. But once he became convinced that the chosen people were the Germans, the logical consequence was that Israel became an obstacle to the affirmation and primacy of Germany. Hence, his hatred for the Catholic Church, as the heir to the election of Israel.
Thus, Nazism in a civilized, modern, cultured, and advanced Germany managed to resurrect – incredibly – ancient and savage demonic spirits, which, with the spread of Christianity, had seemed extinguished but had been lying dormant in the depths of the German soul for centuries and millennia.
Yet, a first ominous signal had come with the Lutheran Reformation, with its call to the German nation against ecclesial communion and Luther’s claim to have rediscovered the truth of the Gospel against the lies of the Roman Popes. But the Nazis, aided by Hegelian idealism, aimed precisely to carry Luther’s work to its ultimate atheistic and pantheistic consequences (bold added by the translator). Thus, the Christ of Luther eventually revealed himself as an antichrist.
At any rate, it happened that, as I have mentioned above, with Nazism, beyond the advanced level of civilization, beyond and beneath the composed and harmonious Apollonian face, to use a theme dear to Nietzsche, the German people let erupt and emerge in a torrential way an irrational, telluric, instinctual, chaotic, and Dionysian undercurrent of unrestrained barbarism and ancestral bestiality, already noted by the ancient Greeks [10] and Romans [10]. This barbarism had not been entirely erased but had remained dormant for a long time, ready for a powerful and explosive resurgence. This is what happened with Hitler: he had the power to resurrect it once more. One might think of it as a kind of collective demonic possession.
This is stated, of course, without any prejudice against the precious work of ecumenism initiated by the Second Vatican Council. The urgent problem now, however, is that we Catholics, in this delicate endeavor, must not allow ourselves to be overcome by a sense of inferiority toward our separated brethren, or by foolish human respect. Rather, with fraternal candor and charity, based on the agreements achieved, we must encourage and help these brothers to attain, when and as God wills, full communion with Rome, and not allow ourselves to be deceived by their errors, maintaining, like the Rahnerians, the label of Catholics while in reality having become Protestants.
As for the Rahnerians, I would like to ask them with what good conscience they have placed themselves under the tutelage of a theologian who, at the end of his life, when asked who his master had been, replied: “My only master was Heidegger.” I recall, in this context, that Karl Rahner carried out his work under the generalship of Father Pedro Arrupe, whose cause for beatification is currently in progress. It seems important to clarify what measures Father Arrupe took to address and correct Rahner's errors [12].
End of Part Two (2/3)
P. Giovanni Cavalcoli OP
Fontanellato, 18 December 2024
Source:
https://padrecavalcoli.blogspot.com/p/il-nazismo-esiste-ancora-seconda-parte.html
Notes:
The word "rune" simply means mystery, whisper, or secret, and refers to a form of divination or oracle reading system used to gather information about situations or questions. These magical sibyls could be made from various materials, but are most commonly made of stone and display a symbol from the runic alphabet. There are several types of runic alphabets carved onto stones, with one of the oldest being the Old Germanic alphabet known as the Elder Futhark. The Elder Futhark contains 24 symbols with different meanings, the first six of which spell out the word "futhark". Runemal is the equivalent of our basic grammar, forming part of the ancient Celtic and Norse Viking culture, linked to ancestral myths and legends about courage, sacrifice, challenges between men, and between men and gods, featuring heroes such as Thor and Odin, the god who discovered these mysterious sibyls and gave their newfound knowledge to men. These divinatory stones were used to communicate legal information, contracts, and rituals connected to the Druids—priests, judges, and sages who were consulted in disputes, marriages, to accompany warriors into battle, and too often, to fight or provide weapons derived from their secret knowledge to advise the powerful. Those who mastered the entire system of runic symbols are called Runelore experts, capable of interpreting the complex symbolic system of the runes. Runic Celtic stones, in the course of research conducted over many years by recognized scholars and experts, have been classified into three main categories depending on the origin of their use, with their number varying according to the tradition referenced (from Wikipedia).
See, for example, the Hyperboreans, as described by Herodotus.
Some presentations of the figure of Hitler: Hans-Ulrich Thamer, Adolf Hitler. Biografia di un dittatore, Carocci Editore, Rome 2021; Francesco Agnoli, Hitler l’anticristo. La guerra del Führer alla Chiesa e ai cattolici, Il Timone, Milan 2024.
Edizioni Mediterranee, Rome 1989, p.176.
Wōđanaz or Wōđinaz: Old Norse and Icelandic Óðinn, Faroese Óðin, Danish and Norwegian Odin, Swedish Oden, Old English Wōđen, Old Saxon Wōden, Modern Frisian Weda, German Wotan, Old High German Wuotan, Alemannic Old German Woatan, Bavarian and Franconian Wodan, Dutch Woen, Lombard Godan or Guodan. The etymology connects it to the proto-Germanic root wōþuz (Old Norse óðr, Old English wōþ, Gothic wôds, German Wut), meaning "fury," "wrath," "excitement," "inspiration," but also "poetry," "mind," and "spirit." The proto-Celtic root is wātus ("mantical poetry"). Common roots also include Latin vātes ("seer," "poet") and Sanskrit api-vāt- ("to excite," "to awaken," referring to Agni, the Fire) or vāt- ("to blow," "to inspire," "to invent"). All of these terms share a common root in the Indo-European wāt- ("to breathe into," "to inflame," "to inspire"). The semantic field of the term therefore points to wisdom and "vision" regarding the origin of reality, as well as the creative, poetic inspiration that follows. Georges Dumézil similarly explains Wut as a noun meaning "intoxication," "excitement," and "poetic genius," but also as the terrible movement of the sea, fire, and storms, and as an adjective meaning "violent," "furious," and "swift."
W. S. W. Anson, in his 1880 study Asgard and the Gods, conjectures that "Wuotan" was originally conceived as a purely abstract cosmic force, whose name originally referred not so much to "wrath" as to "what pervades," with the second element, "-an," establishing the concept as a singular, permeating principle. For Anson, "wuot-" means "…to force one's way through anything, to conquer all opposition…" and "Wuotan" thus means "…the all-penetrating, all-conquering Spirit of Nature…" In his interpretation, the name "Wuotan" is also linked to the German word "water" (water), and the idea it expresses. The suffix "-an" personifies, but does not anthropomorphize, the element of the prefix "wuot-" as the source of all things in nature resembling the concept it expresses.
Stefan Schaffer reconstructs the root as Wōđunaz, derived from the aforementioned wōþuz concept with the suffix -na- ("Lord").
Ich gehe manchmal in rauhen Nächten…
Otto Höffner, Kultische Geheimbunde der Germanen, Frankfurt 1934, pp.340-341.
This, in essence, is the principle of equality that animated the French Revolution. As Voltaire believed, what is superior to man is tyrannical. If man wants to be free, he must eliminate it. The principle of Wotanism and all idolatries is no different: it is always a god constructed, as the Bible says, "by the hands of men": not a God whom I serve, but a god who serves me. The idolater does not realize that such a god leads to perdition, for how can a branch live detached from the vine? How can an effect act without the cause? How can being come from nothing unless created by being? The problem of God is radically metaphysical: only a proper metaphysics leads to God.
On Hitler's relations with esotericism and occultism, see Giorgio Galli, Hitler e la cultura occulta, Rizzoli, Milan 2016.
See Herodotus' Histories, Book IV.
See Tacitus' Germania.
The precise reasons for why St. John Paul II sovereignly deposed Father Arrupe from the position of General Superior and replaced him with Father Dezza as Vicar, an unprecedented measure in the history of the Society, which sparked protests within the Order, notably from Rahner, need to be clarified. The story is told by Malachi Martin in The Jesuits: The Secret History of the Society of Jesus, Milan 1988, pp.93-99. One reason for the Pope's decision can be traced to the denunciation of pro-communist and pro-Masonic infiltrations within the Society. See also the book by Jesuit Father Antonio Caruso, who collaborated with St. John Paul II for 18 years, Viverein, Monopoli 2008, p. 201.