FREEMASONRY in the THIRD REICH a Dissertation By
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COMPASS, SQUARE AND SWASTIKA: FREEMASONRY IN THE THIRD REICH A Dissertation by CHRISTOPHER CAMPBELL THOMAS Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY August 2011 Major Subject: History COMPASS, SQUARE AND SWASTIKA: FREEMASONRY IN THE THIRD REICH A Dissertation by CHRISTOPHER CAMPBELL THOMAS Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Approved by: Chair of Committee, Arnold Krammer Committee Members, David Vaught Robert Shandley Adam Seipp Head of Department, David Vaught August 2011 Major Subject: History iii ABSTRACT Compass, Square and Swastika: Freemasonry in the Third Reich. (August 2011) Christopher Campbell Thomas, B.A., Arizona State University; M.A., Texas A&M University Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. Arnold Krammer Nazi persecution was not uniform and could be negotiated by the groups being targeted based on a number of factors including the racial status of the group being persecuted, the willingness of the group members to cooperate with the regime, the services and skills the group had to offer and the willingness of the regime to allow cooperation. The experience of Freemasons under the Third Reich provides an example of the ability of targeted groups to negotiate Nazi persecution based on these factors. As members of the educated and professional class, Freemasons belonged to the demographic that most strongly supported Hitler from the late 1920s until war’s outbreak in 1939. For Hitler, the skills these men possessed as doctors, lawyers, businessmen and bankers were essential to the success of the regime. So what would have otherwise been a mutually beneficial relationship eagerly sought after by both parties was prevented by the fact that the men were Freemasons and thus had ties to an organization whose ideology stood in complete contrast to that of National Socialism. However, because the identifier “Freemason” was not one based on biology or race, Freemasons had the ability to shed their identity as Freemasons by leaving the iv regime, an ability that they willingly and eagerly exercised. In return, the Nazi Party had to decide to what extent former Freemasons, whose professional skills and talent were so essential, could be allowed to work with the regime. Thus began the complex dance of compromise as each side tested the limits of what it could and couldn’t do in order to cooperate with the other. For former Freemasons, the goal was trying to prove loyalty to the regime in the face of their previous lodge membership. For the regime the goal was finding a balance between ideological purity and practical necessity. Though the Nazis destroyed Freemasonry as an institution, the success of former Freemasons in aligning with the party as individuals shows the ability of Germans, even those in targeted groups, to escape persecution and even benefit from the regime that had previously targeted them. v NOMENCLATURE AMI L’association Maconnique Internationale BArch Bundesarchiv ERR Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg GStA PK Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preussicher Kulturbesitz DAF Deutsche Arbeitsfront DDP Deutsche Demokratische Partei DVP Deutsche Volkspartei KSCV Kösener Senioren-Convents-Verband NARA National Archives and Records Administration NSDAP Nationalsocialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei NSDStB Nationalsocialistische Deutesche Studentenbund NSV Nationalsocialiste Volkswohlfahrt OKH Oberkommando des Heeres OKW Oberkommando der Wehrmacht RFSS Reichsführer-SS RM Reichsmark RMdI Reichsministerium des Innern RSHA Reichsicherheitshauptampt RuPrMdI Reich und Preussicher Ministerium des Innern RUSchlA/USCHLA Reich Untersuchung und Schlichtungs-Ausschuss vi SA Sturmabteilung SD Sicherheitsdienst SGvD Symboliches Großloge von Deutschland SPD Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands SS Schutzstaffeln IOBB Independent Order of B’nai B’rith USHMM United States Holocaust Memorial Museum VB Völkisher Beobachter vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT.............................................................................................................. iii NOMENCLATURE.................................................................................................. v TABLE OF CONTENTS.......................................................................................... vii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION................................................................................ 1 II WHO WERE THE FREEMASONS, REALLY? ................................ 21 III LODGE CLOSURES AND REACTIONS.......................................... 48 IV DEFINING “FREEMASON” .............................................................. 82 V LOOTING LODGES, LOOTING LIMITS ......................................... 117 VI THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. SCHACHT AND MR. HITLER..... 144 VII EPILOGUE AND CONCLUSION...................................................... 176 REFERENCES.......................................................................................................... 190 APPENDIX ............................................................................................................... 201 VITA ......................................................................................................................... 209 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Hitler based his hatred of Freemasonry on the belief that through it, Jews side- stepped the racial and legal barriers that marginalized them in European society.1 Consequently, one of Hitler’s first acts after seizing power was to shut the lodges down; a task that was completed in just two years. When war broke out four years later, Hitler’s anti-Masonic attitude spread along with his invading armies, prompting Sven Lunden, a correspondent with the American Mercury, to proclaim that “there is only one group of men whom the Nazis and the Fascists hate more than the Jews. They are the Freemasons.”2 Though an intriguing declaration, to be sure, Lunden was wrong; the Nazis did not hate Freemasons more than Jews. In fact, Nazis didn’t hate Freemasons at all; the Nazis hated “Freemasonry,” but not necessarily “Freemasons.” The ideology was what the Nazis hated, not the men. On the contrary, the men who made up the bulk of the German Masonic lodges were very people that had increasingly gravitated toward the regime during the Weimar Republic and supported it after the seizure of power. They were established, educated, middle-class and professional men of good German- stock. The only thing keeping the Nazis from welcoming these men was their This dissertation follows the style of American Historical Review. 1 Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939), 433. 2 Sven G. Lunden, “Annihilation of Freemasonry,” American Mercury, February, 1941, 184-190. 2 membership, either past or present, with a fraternity that, in the words of Alfred Rosenberg, “work[ed] for the loosening of state, national and social bonds.”3 I first stumbled across the idea of studying Freemasonry in the Third Reich while writing my masters thesis. I was reading Robert Herzstein’s The War that Hitler Won and came across the cartoon in Figure A1. Note that in the caption, Herzstein identified the symbol above Stresemann’s head as the Star of David; however, closer inspection revealed that the symbol wasn’t the Star of David, but the compass and the square; symbol of the Freemasons (to which Stresemann belonged). Now, separately, the subjects of Nazi Germany and Freemasonry occupy entire bookshelves of printed material and thousands of hours of movies and documentaries, but surprisingly there is practically nothing that examines the two together. Survey texts on the Third Reich and the Holocaust mention Freemasonry, but only in passing.4 Often the most information that can be found in secondary literature comes from books about the Christian churches under Hitler,5 which is both misleading and unfair. Though requiring its members to 3 By “social” he means “racial.” Alfred Rosenberg, Myth of the Twentieth Century: An Evaluation of the Spiritual-Intellectual Confrontations of Our Age (Torrence, CA: Noontide Press, 1982), 47. 4 Michael Burleigh’s recently published The Third Reich: A New History (New York: Hill and Wang, 2001), for example, devotes only two paragraphs (one for German Freemasonry and one for Freemasonry in France) of its near 1000 pages to the topic. Ian Kershaw’s two- volume study of Hitler has a half-dozen references to Freemasons throughout its almost 2000 pages, most of which are only cursory. Richard Evans three volume study of Nazi Germany devotes less than a paragraph to Freemasonry, again only mentioned in passing. 5 Ernst Christian Helmreich, German Churches Under Hitler (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1979), Guenter Lewy, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany (New York: McGraw Hill, 1964) and John Conway, Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 1933-1945 (New York: Basic Books, 1968) offer the most information. Christine Elizabeth King occasionally mentions connections between the Freemasons and non-mainstream churches in The Nazi State and the New Religions: Five Case Studies in Non-Conformity (New York: E. Mellon Press, 1982). 3 believe in God, Freemasonry is not, nor has it ever claimed to be, a religion. General histories of Freemasonry likewise suffer from the same dearth.6 Of all the available literature on the Freemasons in Nazi Germany, what is scholarly isn’t in English and