Eric Kurlander: Hitler's Monsters: A Supernatural History of the Third Reich

by Kurlander, Eric

ISBN: 9780300234541

Published: 2017

The definitive history of the supernatural in Nazi Germany--the occult ideas, esoteric sciences, and pagan religions touted by the Third Reich in the service of power "[Kurlander] shows how swiftly irrational ideas can take hold, even in an age before social media."--Michael Dirda, The Washington Post "A careful, clear-headed, and exhaustive examination of a subject so lurid that it has probably scared away some of the serious research it merits."--National Review The Nazi fascination with the occult is legendary, yet today it is often dismissed as Himmler's personal obsession or wildly overstated for its novelty. Preposterous though it was, however, supernatural thinking was inextricable from the Nazi project. The regime enlisted astrology and the paranormal, paganism, Indo-Aryan mythology, witchcraft, miracle weapons, and the lost kingdom of Atlantis in reimagining German politics and society and recasting German science and religion. In this eye-opening history, Eric Kurlander...