Nazis. I hate these guys.
August 4, 2017 8:05 AM   Subscribe

 
I'm about a quarter of the way through this book; it's fascinating. Just wanted to put out a recommendation for anyone daunted by a massive academic tome.
posted by orrnyereg at 8:09 AM on August 4, 2017 [3 favorites]


Also, in the introduction he discusses the first Captain America movie (Red Skull!), which made me cackle on the bus going to work.
posted by orrnyereg at 8:15 AM on August 4, 2017 [3 favorites]


This whole subject is so batty that I actually don't mind when an author just flat out fabulizes the historical record, as with metafilter favorite Ken Hite's The Nazi Occult, one of the Dark Osprey books. He starts with the facts, then adds plausible sounding glitter to pump it up to 11. This delicious fact-based fiction is aimed at role-playing gamers to spice up their campaigns, but can be read by anyone who doesn't mind an author who recognizes that the entire thing is crazy conspiracy and only attracts loons and weirdos and always has and always will.
posted by seasparrow at 8:16 AM on August 4, 2017


This sounds fascinating and right in line with my interests. And it makes me think about Raiders of the Lost Ark:

"You see, for the last two years, the Nazis have had teams of archaeologists running around the world looking for all sorts of religious artifacts. Hitler's a nut on the subject. He's crazy. He's obsessed with the occult. And right now, apparently, there is some kind of German archaeological dig going on in the desert outside Cairo."
posted by nubs at 8:17 AM on August 4, 2017 [6 favorites]


I'm reading it too! Highly recommended.
posted by mfoight at 8:20 AM on August 4, 2017


No mention of Hitler's mecha-suit?
posted by dazed_one at 8:20 AM on August 4, 2017 [4 favorites]


I mean, Hellboy is just slightly removed from being a documentary.
posted by maxsparber at 8:20 AM on August 4, 2017 [17 favorites]


There's a pop-history documentary on (US) Netflix right now called Nazi Temple of Doom, which is pretty History Channel breathless, but has some interesting stuff nonetheless.
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:22 AM on August 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


Actually it's about ethics in Nazi occultists hunting for supernatural weapons to bring about the end of humanity.
posted by Fizz at 8:23 AM on August 4, 2017 [17 favorites]


Kurlander on the Yale University Press podcast.

I haven't had a chance to read this yet, but am curious to because of his focus on the rapid spread of irrational ideas and their influence on politics in a preinternet era. Kurlander came to mind as a partial counterpoint this morning while reading this takedown of Facebook.

Sometimes the "general agora of public debate" is healthy, sometimes it produces a widespread belief in vampiric communist guerillas.
posted by ryanshepard at 8:24 AM on August 4, 2017 [2 favorites]


Aleister and Adolf is a fun read in this genre if you'd prefer a graphic novel. Explores the purportedly true, but historically iffy relationship between possible secret agent Aleister Crowley and his attempt to help the Allies win WWII. Many of the assertions didn't exactly stand up to even a cursory wikipedia scan, but entertaining nonetheless.
posted by Telf at 8:26 AM on August 4, 2017 [2 favorites]


Aleister and Adolf

True Detective: Season 3 took a really weird and dark turn.
posted by Fizz at 8:32 AM on August 4, 2017 [7 favorites]


If you can handle three dudes yelling at each other, Last Podcast on the Left's multi-part Nazis and the Occult episode is pretty good.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 8:46 AM on August 4, 2017 [4 favorites]




ObTvTropes
posted by sukeban at 8:57 AM on August 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


Kinda makes Red Skull and Wolfenstein all the more plausible.
posted by prepmonkey at 9:04 AM on August 4, 2017


Best books I've seen on the subject are from Nicholas Goodrich-Clarke:

The Occult Roots of Nazism
Black Sun

The first book looks at the rise of racist, millenarian, Aryan thought in the late 1800's and how it morphed into Nazi ideology.

The second book looks at how this way of thinking continued after the war and how it is still with us now.

These are academic books but really well written and are hard to put down. From a few racist mystics at the turn of the last century to black metal musicians burning churches in Scandinavia, this ideology that peaked with the Nazis never went away. Over in the POTUS45 thread, there has been an underlying current that points to white nationalism, neo nazi thought, etc. behind what is happening in this country. Maybe it behooves us to know where it came from.
posted by njohnson23 at 9:17 AM on August 4, 2017 [5 favorites]


seasparrow, I'm a little unclear: are you accusing Eric Kurlander of fabrication?
posted by Sangermaine at 9:25 AM on August 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


For those who like this sort of thing, this is that sort of thing:
posted by hank at 9:30 AM on August 4, 2017 [2 favorites]


A professor of mine wrote this book: The Nazi Séance: The Strange Story of the Jewish Psychic in Hitler's Circle.
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:32 AM on August 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


"Two years ago they were just another snake cult. Now they're everywhere."
posted by Chitownfats at 9:37 AM on August 4, 2017 [6 favorites]


Sangermaine, I think seasparow is segueing into discussing Ken Hite's The Nazi Occult
posted by JauntyFedora at 9:42 AM on August 4, 2017 [2 favorites]


I've been playing a lot of Secret World Legends lately (having been a long-time fan of The Secret World as well), so the "Black Sun" reference is freaking me out.

The Dark Days are here, people.
posted by tobascodagama at 9:45 AM on August 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


Looking forward to reading this. I lived in Vienna in the 80's and went through a phase of fascination with Hitler's occult obsession. I'm sure the book goes into it but some the main influencers were the Thule Society, Ostaru, Dieter Eckhart, Lanz von Liebenfels. There was the whole "reclaiming the Spear of Destiny" thing which was supposedly kept at the Art History Museum and the redeeication of St. Stephens Cathedral in the name of Wotan. A deep rabbit hole.
posted by misterpatrick at 9:51 AM on August 4, 2017 [3 favorites]


Sangermaine, I think seasparow is segueing into discussing Ken Hite's The Nazi Occult


Yes.
posted by seasparrow at 9:53 AM on August 4, 2017


See also the Atrocity Archive by mefi's own charles stross for an interesting fiction spin on this....
posted by lalochezia at 9:56 AM on August 4, 2017 [2 favorites]


The critical takeaway here is that the Nazis were not monstrously efficient amoral supermen; they were a gang of thugs and conmen opportunistically exploiting the worst hatred and fears of their society, propped up by business and the tattered aristocracy. That they believed many kinds of incoherent and mutually-contradictory thinks and wasted money and lives in pursuit of nonsense is not a weird exception; it's at the very heart of Nazism.
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:19 AM on August 4, 2017 [23 favorites]


it's at the very heart of Nazism.

funny that. how a fascination with evil madness manifests in evil madness.
posted by philip-random at 10:31 AM on August 4, 2017


the Nazis cobbled together a guerrilla band of Nazi “Werewolves” to combat Communist partisans, who were in turn accused of vampirism by ethnic Germans fleeing the Russians.

I'm so conflicted, generally I am team Jacob, but...
posted by Mayhembob at 11:08 AM on August 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


metafilter favorite Ken Hite's The Nazi Occult, one of the Dark Osprey books. He starts with the facts, then adds plausible sounding glitter to pump it up to 11

To be fair, this is what Ken (whose work I love) does with everything, even the things he doesn't tell you he's doing with it. Ken's great talent is his ability to say and write, with great erudition and absolute conviction, the thing that is most entertaining as if it were the thing that is most reasonable. He's sort of like Stephen Fry, fabulously impressive on every subject until he starts talking about your field, at which point you start chuckling and saying "Well...maaaaybe". But I think he employs that particular gift more effectively than Fry, because he's devoted it to coming up with more and more brilliant and crazed ways to look at and play with the world. The fact that he's the lead on the new edition of Vampire: The Masquerade is both fantastic and probably the only thing that will get me to actually run a WoD game at any point in the future; the prospect of what he will do with the combination of the existing setting lore and his own input and inventiveness is wildly exciting.

On the other hand, all of the above is also why he is possibly the least reliable narrator of actual history since Geoffrey of Monmouth.
posted by howfar at 11:30 AM on August 4, 2017 [9 favorites]


The critical takeaway here is that the Nazis were not monstrously efficient amoral supermen; they were a gang of thugs and conmen opportunistically exploiting the worst hatred and fears of their society, propped up by business and the tattered aristocracy. That they believed many kinds of incoherent and mutually-contradictory thinks and wasted money and lives in pursuit of nonsense is not a weird exception; it's at the very heart of Nazism.

With just a slight change in a couple nouns, this sounds like right now here in the US.
posted by njohnson23 at 11:45 AM on August 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


I wrote a paper on superstition amd the occult in WWII a million billion years ago when I was in college, and one of my favorite factoids was that Churchill decided that if Hitler had psychics influencing military policy, he needed hos own. Not because he believed n psychic abilities, but because maybe all psychics give the same predictions and advice (because they're reading the same stars? Because their predictions come from a similar mystic worldview?)

One of my other favorites, and I'm verrrry fuzzy on this, was Hitler ordering troops to tread lightly or avoid at all a town where Rabbi Akiva (?) wad said to have raised a golem.

The current political climate has made it really difficult for me to read anything about Nazis, but this sounds like a great for when I'm in the right mindset
posted by elr at 11:47 AM on August 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


The fact that he's the lead on the new edition of Vampire: The Masquerade is both fantastic and probably the only thing that will get me to actually run a WoD game at any point in the future; the prospect of what he will do with the combination of the existing setting lore and his own input and inventiveness is wildly exciting.

I thought so too, until he wrote a "triggered" joke into the game mechanics (as the Brujah clan weakness).
posted by Pope Guilty at 11:57 AM on August 4, 2017 [3 favorites]


the Nazis cobbled together a guerrilla band of Nazi “Werewolves” to combat Communist partisans, who were in turn accused of vampirism by ethnic Germans fleeing the Russians.

Not actual werewolves, just a code name for the hordes of supposedly fanatical supernazis who would form the resistance against Allied occupation of Germany, but whom for some reason failed to turn up much. Pretty sure vampirism is just a metaphor too.

I hope that was a failed attempt at humour in the original article, as the Nazi occult is dodgy enough as a subject without embellishment already.
posted by MartinWisse at 12:16 PM on August 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


Yeah, the "vampirism" accusation is basically just the blood libel.
posted by tobascodagama at 1:36 PM on August 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


Das ist kein Mond.

Das ist ein Schneeball.
posted by chillmost at 3:43 PM on August 4, 2017


David Brin's Thor Meets Captain America (1987)

Brin's contribution to an anthology of "what if the Nazis won WWII" stories. He thought magically summoning the Norse gods was the most plausible scenario.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 10:44 AM on August 5, 2017 [3 favorites]


I've tried reading a number of books on the subject but they always kind of disappoint me. But I'm sure I will give this one a go. Thanks for posting.
posted by New England Cultist at 12:40 PM on August 5, 2017 [1 favorite]


justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow, that took me back to reading that story as a grade schooler, tucked in a back corner of the local public library. Clearly it made an impression on me; I wasn't really old enough to understand a lot of what was going on but the moment I started reading it came back to me.
posted by EarBucket at 11:05 AM on August 6, 2017 [1 favorite]


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