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The Nazi Campaign Against Occultism

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The Nazi Campaign Against Occultism chapter 6 The Nazi Campaign against Occultism On June 9, 1941, less than two weeks before Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the Nazi security services launched an all-out campaign against occultist orga- nizations and individuals. Officially dubbed the “Campaign against occult doctrines and so-called occult sciences” (Aktion gegen Geheimlehren und soge- nannte Geheimwissenschaften), this sweeping move aimed at the definitive elimination of occult activities from the national community. Why did the SD and Gestapo put so much effort into pursuing marginal occult groups in June 1941, when the Nazi leadership had more pressing concerns? The answers to this question reveal the complexities and contradictions at the heart of the contested relationship between occultism and National Socialism. The hard-line anti-occultist faction within the Nazi movement was con- centrated in the SD, the Sicherheitsdienst or ‘security service’ of the SS under Reinhard Heydrich. From 1933 to 1941 they were largely kept in check by other Nazi officials, including the staff of Rudolf Hess in his position as Deputy of the Führer and nominal head of the Nazi party. Hess was the highest-ranking Nazi protector of anthroposophical endeavors. The longstanding tension within the Nazi hierarchy over the status of occult groups was complicated by the pivotal role of Martin Bormann, technically Hess’s subordinate but his de facto equal in power, influence, and access to Hitler. Bormann was a confirmed opponent of occult organizations and a crucial ally of the SD, which in turn formed a central component of the police imperium overseen by SS head Heinrich Himmler. Heydrich’s SD had hounded a wide variety of occultist tendencies since the early days of the Third Reich. Its obligatory counterpart in this endeavor was the Gestapo, the ‘secret police’ of the Nazi state. The development of these two Nazi agencies, and their peculiar dynamic of simultaneous cooperation and competition, gave momentum to the anti-occultist campaign that culminated in June 1941. The SD’s enduring hostility toward occult groups stemmed in part from the perceived organizational competition they represented, but the anti- occultist Nazi faction viewed esoteric doctrines above all as an ideological threat to the integrity of National Socialist principles. In the eyes of the SD, occultists belonged—willingly or not—to the broad panoply of weltanschauli- che Gegner or “ideological enemies” of Nazism. Combating these ostensible enemies was a crucial part of the SD’s raison d’être. Anthroposophy was one of many such ‘enemies’ within the occult camp. By the time of the June 1941 actions, the ire of the SD, the Gestapo, and their allies © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���4 | doi ��.��63/9789004�70�5�_��8 The Nazi Campaign Against Occultism 215 such as Bormann and Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels encompassed not just anthroposophists but theosophists, ariosophists, astrologists, para- psychologists, fortune tellers, faith healers, rune readers, dowsers, and myriad other practitioners of supposed occult arts. Esoteric movements with a well- defined worldview figured centrally in this pantheon of hidden adversaries, and anthroposophy thus came to occupy a prominent position as a perceived opponent of National Socialism. Paradoxically, official Nazi hostility toward organized occult groups depended as much on underlying ideological similar- ity as on overt ideological distance.1 The June 1941 campaign was as much a move against pro-anthroposophist Nazis as against anthroposophists themselves. Like the events of June 1934, the so-called ‘Night of the Long Knives,’ one faction of Nazis seized the oppor- tunity to eliminate internal rivals as well as settle old scores with non-Nazi figures, including those ideologically close to—and thereby competitors to— Nazism itself. The dialectic of affinity and distance which had governed the relationship between National Socialism and anthroposophy all along came to a head in 1941, exacerbated by a well-rehearsed SD dynamic in which familiar- ity bred enmity. Behind this long-brewing confrontation lay unpredictable institutional factors in Nazism’s fearsome but fractured surveillance system. The SD’s fixa- tion on perceived “ideological enemies” derived from its own uncertain status within the intricate apparatus of the Nazi party-state. Founded in 1931 as an SS intelligence service, the SD struggled for years to establish a distinctive opera- tional profile and an adequate budget for its activities, which included keeping tabs on friend and foe alike. Even in the latter half of the 1930s the SD remained “in search of image and mission.”2 With the consolidation of police powers under Himmler’s control between 1933 and 1936, Heydrich’s SD managed to 1 For an extended analysis see Peter Staudenmaier, “Nazi Perceptions of Esotericism: The Occult as Fascination and Menace” in Ashwin Manthripragada, ed., The Threat and Allure of the Magical (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013), 24–58; cf. the contrasting inter- pretation in Treitel, A Science for the Soul, 210–42. Brief overviews of the 1941 campaign against occultism are available in Longerich, Heinrich Himmler, 519–20; Jochen von Lang, Der Sekretär: Martin Bormann, der Mann, der Hitler beherrschte (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1977), 167–69; Kurt Pätzold and Manfred Weißbecker, Rudolf Heß: Der Mann an Hitlers Seite (Leipzig: Militzke, 1999), 269–71. First-hand accounts include Walter Schellenberg, The Schellenberg Memoirs (London: Andre Deutsch, 1956), 199–203, and Felix Kersten, The Kersten Memoirs (New York: Macmillan, 1957), 88–89. 2 See the chapter “The SD Into 1937: In Search of Image and Mission” in George Browder, Hitler’s Enforcers: The Gestapo and the SS Security Service in the Nazi Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 175–96. On the early history of the SD see Shlomo Aronson, Reinhard Heydrich und die Frühgeschichte von SD und Gestapo (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, .
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