National Socialism and Occultism

Nazism and occultism describes a range of theories, speculation and research into origins of Nazism and its possible relation to various occult traditions. Such ideas have been a part of popular culture since at least the early 1940s, and gained renewed popularity starting in the 1960s. There are documentaries and books on the topic, among the most significant of which are The Morning of the Magicians (1960) and The Spear of Destiny (1972). Nazism and occultism has also been featured in numerous films, novels, comic books and other fictional media. Perhaps the most prominent example is the film Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).

Historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke analyzed the topic in The Occult Roots of Nazism in which he argued there were in fact links between some ideals of Ariosophy and Nazi ideology. He also analyzed the problems of the numerous popular "occult historiography" books written on the topic. He sought to separate empiricism and sociology from the "Modern Mythology of Nazi Occultism" that exists in many books which "have represented the Nazi phenomenon as the product of arcane and demonic influence". He considered most of these to be "sensational and under-researched".

Historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke's 1985 book, The Occult Roots of Nazism, discussed the possibility of links between the ideas of the Occult and those of Nazism. The book's main subject was the racist-occult movement of Ariosophy, a major strand of Nationalist Esotericism in Germany and Austria during the 1800s and early 1900s. He described his work as "an underground history, concerned with the myths, symbols, and fantasies that bear on the development of reactionary, authoritarian, and Nazi styles of thinking". He focused on this unexamined topic of history because "fantasies can achieve a causal status once they have been institutionalized in beliefs, values, and social groups."

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