In Chapter 22 of his book, Scarlet and the Beast, John Daniel reveals the little-known factors that gave rise to the Hitler phenomenon, ensuring his rise to power, the Anschluss of Austria, and the seizure of Czechoslovakia - events that ultimately led to the outbreak of World War II.
These factors can be roughly divided into three main groups: ideological, political, and financial. All of them, as the author demonstrates, can be traced back to the British ruling class.
1. Ideological factors
These include the works of British authors on the superiority of the white race, which had a profound influence on Hitler's worldview, as well as the mystical and occult mythology created by British scholars, which inspired Hitler's belief in his own messianic destiny. Key figures and organizations include:
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, English writer, author of the novels Rienzi and Vril, which extolled the superiority of the Aryan race. These books had a dramatic impact on the formation of Hitler's messianic consciousness.
Lord Kitchener, who initiated the future General Karl Haushofer into Tibetan mysteries in 1909. After the war, Haushofer taught Hitler geopolitics, assisted him in writing parts of Mein Kampf, and taught Tibetan mysticism to SS officers, founding the Vril Society for them.
The Masonic research lodge "Quatuor Coronati" in London, whose specialists developed the Thule mythology - a synthesis of the legends of Atlantis and the Holy Grail. In 1918, this mythology formed the basis of the German occult "Thule Society," which paved the way for the rise of Hitler.
2. Political Factors
These represent a complex political game played by the British establishment, which supported Hitler's illusion of a possible alliance with Great Britain against the communist USSR and the "Judeo-Masonic conspiracy." Its main elements are:
The Cliveden Set was a pro-Nazi circle of British aristocrats whose goal was to direct German expansion eastward, toward the border of the USSR.
Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who, implementing the plans of the Cliveden Set, pursued a policy of appeasement of Hitler: first he ceded Austria to him, then Czechoslovakia.
The Duke of Windsor, an open Hitler sympathizer, actively promoted Nazism in British society as King Edward VIII, leading many members of the upper class to join the Nazi Party. The royal family also shared this sympathy for the Führer, fueling Hitler's belief in the possibility of a future union with Great Britain.
3. Financial factors
These factors ensured Hitler's political rise and Germany's transformation into a military superpower. These include:
The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) was an institution created to finance the war machine of the Third Reich.
Montagu Norman, a director of the Bank of England and a member of the board of directors of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), is a man who, according to historian Andrey Fursov, "weighed perhaps as much on the scales of history as Roosevelt, Churchill, Hitler, and Mussolini combined." Between 1929 and 1933, Montagu Norman invested in Hitler's rise to power, and after 1933, in the war machine of the Third Reich.
To sum it up, John Daniel writes:
In retrospect it seems inevitable that English Freemasonry [* led by the British ruling class] would need to discover or create, if not Adolf Hitler, someone like him. It is this endeavor of the British Brotherhood that we call the "Hitler Project".
* * *
The main theme of John Daniel's book is the confrontation between English and French Freemasonry. For this reason, the author devotes particular attention to the Masonic connections of the protagonists.
Without denying the significance of the Masonic factor, it is worth noting that by the beginning of the 20th century, Freemasonry had largely lost its status as a major supranational force, giving way to new structures - the Milner Group and the Round Table movement - organizations that laid the foundations of the modern global world, which, in essence, is a hidden form of the British Empire.
* * *
I have added my own notes to the author's text; they are marked with square brackets and an asterisk [*].
Writer Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Herbert Kitchener, Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler, Foreign Secretary Edward Halifax, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.
Content
The Hitler Project
I. HITLER'S INDOCTRINATION
The Mystic Fronts of English Freemasons
Bulwer-Lytton: Godfather of the Nazis
The Golden Dawn in Berlin
The Thule Society's Holy Grail Myth
The Thule Society: Its Founder and Membership
Anti-Semitism and the Thule Society
The Thule: Monarchists in Search of a Party and Leader
Grail Mysticism and the Unknown Hitler
Freemasonry, Vril Mysticism and the SS
The Hitler Project and Anti-Zionism
Hitler, Eckart and the Nazi Party
The Swastika: Occult Symbol of the Nazi Party
Christians, New Agers, and Masons
II. FINANCING HITLER
Aristocrats and the Intelligentsia
Standard Oil and Hitler
Prince Bernhardt, Founder of the Bilderbergers
The Masonic King of England
Henry Ford
The Bank for International Settlements
Hitler Becomes Dictator of Germany
III. HITLER'S INVOLVEMENT IN THE WAR
Hitler and the Cliveden Set
In Conclusion
References
THE HITLER PROJECT
A number of forces were behind the political creation of Adolf Hitler. Perhaps unknown to many is that a significant portion of Nazi ideology had its origin in Great Britain. We must, therefore, discuss the diverse British influences on the Nazis, which include:
1) a number of English Masons with racist views;
2) the secret societies through which they operated; and
3) Holy Grail mysticism.
All three played crucial roles in creating Hitler.
Inventing a Hitler began in the mid-19th century. At that time, the conservative English Freemasonry of the Grand Lodge of England had come to the stark realization that the revolutionary French Freemasonry of the Grand Orient of France was rapidly becoming more powerful. Karl Marx was living in England, injecting his communist poison into the veins of the labor force. Likewise, Joseph Mazzini, Grand Master of Grand Orient Italy, was using London to launch revolutions across the Continent. Most insulting were the prominent English Masons who assisted both men, further weakening the aristocratic Brotherhood.
If this trend persisted, Grand Lodge London would become subservient to Grand Orient Paris. To remedy the problem, several aristocratic English Masons organized political secret societies as vanguards for revolution. Members of these societies would be placed in strategic positions in various nations around the world to penetrate political, financial and educational institutions with policies that would benefit Great Britain. Some fronts, both on the Left and Right, operated strictly on political or socioeconomic lines, such as the Fabian Society and the Round Table Groups. Others reverted to eastern mysticism, or out-right Satanism. All were Masonic and operated by British race-patriots. [6]
In order to regain ascendancy in the struggle for world power, English Masonry would need to disseminate its notions of racial superiority and the occult (which were closely linked), and create a political engine to combat the spread of communism among the working and lower classes. In short, English Masonry would eventually need a charismatic leader who could embrace all three elements of its design.
In retrospect it seems inevitable that English Freemasonry [* led by the British ruling class] would need to discover or create, if not Adolf Hitler, someone like him. It is this endeavor of the British Brotherhood that we call the "Hitler Project".
I. HITLER'S INDOCTRINATION
THE MYSTIC FRONTS OF ENGLISH FREEMASONS
Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-73), the First Baron Lytton of Knebworth, was the youngest son of wealthy parents, Gen. William Bulwer and Elizabeth Lytton. After graduating from Cambridge, Bulwer-Lytton traveled in Europe, returned to England, and married in 1827. His political career began in 1831 when he entered Parliament. In 1841 he resigned in protest against repeal of the corn laws. Freemason Benjamin Disraeli converted him into a Tory (Conservative Party), and in 1852 he returned to Parliament. [7]
Bulwer-Lytton not only was an aristocrat, statesman, historian, orator, and man of letters, he was one of the most prolific and popular English novelists of the 19th century. By 1836 he had achieved the greatest literary reputation of the day. In fact, few men in literary history have enjoyed the reputation and popularity that were Lytton's during his own lifetime. His works were read and admired not only in England, but in Germany, France, Italy, and America as well. He is best known to Americans for his 1838 novel, The Last Days of Pompeii. [8]
Bulwer-Lytton, a British race patriot, expressed his white supremacist doctrine in his 1871 novel Vril: The Power of the Coming Race, which concerns a superman race of white Aryans that would take over the world. He was also a well-known practitioner of witchcraft, studying all the medieval writers on divination and magic. He believed a solid basis of truth underlay the black arts. He maintained a lifelong interest in the occult and was heavily involved with it and with the Societas Rosicrucian Anglia, of which he was Grand Patron. [9]
This Rosicrucian Society was founded in London in 1866. Only Master Masons of good standing and repute were admitted to it as members. Among them were the following notable occultists: William W. Westcott, S. L. MacGregor Mathers, John Yarker, A. E. Waite, Eliphas Levi and Theodore Reuss (head of the O.T.O. in 1905). According to a letter from Yarker to Reuss, dated February 14, 1902, Weishaupt's Illuminati papers, which had been confiscated by the Bavarian government in 17851786, had been entrusted to the care of the "Societas Rosicruciana Anglia". [10] Lytton, along with this membership, studied and carried out various magical rituals, and on many occasions attempted occult experiments, including the conjuring up of "elemental spirits." [11]
One such occasion was related by the clairvoyant Douglas Home, who "witnessed the novelist [Lytton], in a seance, make contact with a spirit which claimed to have influenced the author in his writing of the romance Zanoni." [12] Mackey's Encyclopedia of Freemasonry lists Bulwer-Lytton as a Mason, and confirms his Rosicrucian affiliation, tying him to the Priory of Sion conspiracy. [13] In fact, suggests another author, "his epic King Arthur and the Provencal knight character, Walter de Montreal, in [another of his novels] Rienzi suggest his theology might have included Grail mysticism." [14]
BULWER-LYTTON: GODFATHER OF THE NAZIS
Bulwer-Lytton is recognized by conspiracy researchers as the Godfather of the Nazi movement. A direct line of Freemasons implemented Lytton's teachings, founding and controlling secret societies based upon them. These societies can be directly linked to Hitler and his Nazi Party. Hitler was also inspired by Lytton's novels Rienzi: The Last of the Roman Tribunes: and Vril: The Power of the Coming Race. [15]
Order of the Golden Dawn
In 1887, fourteen years after Lytton's death, the first of the mystic societies based on Lytton's teachings was founded. At the behest of the "Quatuor Coronati" Lodge, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was founded on the doctrine of Lytton's Rosicrucian Society. Moreover, the Golden Dawn's racist rituals had a double source:
they were known to have been heavily derived from Holy Grail mysticism,
and incorporated elements of the pagan rituals outlined in Lytton's 1871 novel, Vril: The Power of the Coming Race. Vril was the story of a superman race of white Aryans that would take over the world. [16]
The swastika was a key symbol of the Golden Dawn.
Theosophical Society
The founding of another secret society can be traced to Bulwer-Lytton. Before his death Lytton had been intimate with female Freemason Helena Blavatsky. Blavatsky later became a member of the Golden Dawn. In fact, Lytton had so influenced Blavatsky by the Isis cult that she wrote the book Isis Unveiled. [17] In another book Secret Doctrine, Blavatsky warns her readers against Lytton's Vril as
"the terrible sidereal [astral] Force, known to, and named by the Atlanteans ... and by the Aryans... It is the Vril of Bulwer Lytton's Coming Race it is this Satanic Force that our generations were to be allowed to add to their stock of Anarchist's baby-toys... It is this destructive agency, which, once in the hands of some modern Attila would reduce Europe in a few days to its primitive chaotic state with no man left alive to tell the tale." [18]
Although Blavatsky realized the danger of Lytton's theories, and warned her readers of the destruction to humanity that the astral Force of Vril would bring should the wrong person appropriate its power, she persistently drew upon Lytton's novels for the Theosophical Society's teachings and rituals. [19]
Rudyard Kipling
Bulwer-Lytton's influence extended to India through his son, Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton (1831-1891), who was Viceroy and Governor-General of India from 1876 to 1880. Under Lytton's governorship, opium production in British India saw its greatest expansion. Lytton junior also opened his home to the cultists who were inspired by his father. One was Freemason Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), who as we learned in the previous chapter, was a member of Milner's Round Table. Another was Madame Blavatsky. Both Kipling and Blavatsky employed the swastika as their personal coat of arms. [20]
Richard Wagner
The influence of Bulwer-Lytton senior extended to Continental Europe as well. Lytton's novels were the favorite reading of German composer and Freemason Richard Wagner (1813-83). Wagner was so taken by Lytton's Rienzi: The Last of the Roman Tribunes that he adapted it for the libretto of his first major opera, also titled Rienzi. [21] Conspiracy writer Edith Miller lists Wagner as an early member of the O.T.O. (Ordo Templi Orientis) before it was officially organized in 1902. [22] Wagner also was an outspoken race ideologue and anti-Semite, who was involved in the 1848 German Grand Orient revolution. He was exiled from Germany in 1849. [23]
Rienzi would provide an excellent blueprint for a 20th century dictator. The Conspiracy Digest informs us that "it would have been better for mankind if this Wagnerian opera had never come into existence. Because the fusion of Bulwer-Lytton's historical novel with the evil genius of Wagner's music was the fateful synthesis which sparked Hitler's Nazi dream." [24]
As suggested by the flophouse scene at the beginning of this chapter, attending a performance of the opera Rienzi proved to be one of the most significant and profound experiences of Hitler's life. His first of what would be over a hundred returns to see Rienzi performed occurred with a friend, August Kubizek, in Linz, Austria, in November 1906. Kubizek reports that Hitler's whole personality changed after that performance. Outside the opera house Hitler spoke of a "mandate which, one day, he would receive from the people, to lead them out of servitude to the heights of freedom... He spoke of a special mission which one day would be entrusted to him." [25]
Soon after the opera, Hitler made one of his many pilgrimages to the grave of Wagner. During the 1930s, when Hitler had made good his mandate, he and Kubizek were guests at the home of Richard Wagner's 86-year-old widow. There Hitler related what he had experienced during and after the 1906 performance of Rienzi. Concluding his account to Frau Wagner, Hitler is quoted as solemnly stating: "In that hour it [National Socialism] began." [26]
Hitler felt that his only predecessor was Richard Wagner. He read all of Wagner's writings and said the composer's political essays were his favorite reading. Hitler never hesitated to acknowledge his debt to Wagner. He is quoted as saying, "Whoever wants to understand National Socialist Germany must know Wagner." [27]
THE GOLDEN DAWN IN BERLIN
After the Golden Dawn was organized in 1887 on the racist doctrine espoused by Bulwer-Lytton, the order had established lodges by the turn of the century in several leading European cities including Berlin, which would soon boast a large ornate Golden Dawn temple. [28]
Before and during World War I, the Berlin Golden Dawn had spawned two other secret societies:
1) in 1902 the Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), which was later controlled by English Freemason Aleister Crowley; and
2) in 1918 the Thule Society, which discovered and groomed Hitler. The Thule Society's doctrine was identical to that contained in Lytton's Vril: The Power of the Coming Race. Blavatsky's doctrines of Theosophy became the Satanic bible of the Thule. [29]
Wulf Schwarzwaller, in The Unknown Hitler (1990), confirms that English Freemasonry indirectly influenced Hitler through its Masonic and sub-Masonic societies. Regarding the Thule Society, he notes the "cross-links to the English Brotherhood of the Golden Dawn, to the theosophists of Madame Blavatsky, and to the notorious magician and adventurer Aleister Crowley", [30] who was at the head of the Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.). These three mystic societies -the Golden Dawn, O.T.O., and Thule society -like fly traps, lured, caught, polished, and then elevated, Adolf Hitler. Once in power, the Fuehrer came completely under their spell.
Crowley had much in common with Hitler.
First, both drew inspiration from Bulwer-Lytton's occult novels, Crowley claiming they contained secrets for higher initiates of magic. [31]
Second, Crowley's Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.) and Hitler's Thule Society were both creations of English Freemasonry and identical in their homicidal orientation. When Hitler began gaining power, Crowley and the Russian occultist G. I. Gurdjieff (the same Gurdjieff who initiated Joseph Stalin into Martinist Freemasonry) sought contact with Hitler. [32] Gurdjieff succeeded.
Vril Society
Another 33rd degree English Mason who certainly had indirect (and possibly direct) contact with Hitler was Viscount Horatio Herbert Kitchener (1850-1916). Mackey's Encyclopedia of Freemasonry states that Lord Kitchener was accomplished in oriental languages, which enabled him to advance Freemasonry in the Orient. As a famous English soldier serving seven years in India, he was responsible for founding three Lodges there, becoming Grand Master at Punjab. While serving in Egypt he was Grand Master of both Egypt and Sudan. He also visited Japan, Australia and New Zealand. [33]
During his sojourn in India, Kitchener made many trips to Tibet where he was introduced to the German general Karl Haushofer. Haushofer, himself a Freemason and member of the Berlin Golden Dawn, had before World War I spent many years as military attache in Japan and traveled extensively in Asia. Kitchener, and the Russian occultist G. I. Gurdjieff, also an expert on Tibetan mysticism, initiated Haushofer into the secret cult of the Tibetan lamas (who claimed to possess the secret of the "superman") and introduced him to the meaning of the swastika. [34] The swastika was originally a symbol of the sun-god in India. In Sanskrit it means "all is all". [35] In Hinduism the swastika is both right-handed and left-handed. The right-handed swastika, rotating clockwise, "symbolized light, white magic, creative force". [36] Rotating counterclockwise, it means darkness, black magic and destruction.
In 1919 Haushofer joined the Thule Society and introduced its membership to the meaning of the swastika, which became the Thule Society's coat of arms. Thus, from Haushofer, Kipling, Blavatsky, and others, the swastika found its way into the German cults that would later form the core of Nazism. [37]
That same year Haushofer became a university professor and director of the Munich Institute of geopolitics. In that position he was destined to school Hitler in geopolitics and assist the Fuehrer in writing "Mein Kampf" (My Fight). Later, as a prominent figure in the Nazi Party, Haushofer would send the core of the SS back to Tibet for initiation. Before they returned he established for them the Vril Society, which in turn would compose the inner core of the Nazi Party. The notion for the Vril, of course, was derived from Bulwer-Lytton's 1871 novel, "Vril: The Power of the Coming Race".
Haushofer's Vril Society rituals were imported from Rosicrucian English Freemasonry, [38] including the Luciferian doctrine of Blavatsky's Theosophy Society. Only a slight twist was needed to accommodate the notion of a "Superman Race".
Alfred Rosenberg (of whom we will discuss at length later in this chapter) was the member of the Thule Society who introduced The Protocols of Sion to the West. He was also the creator of the religious ceremonies for the Vril. Rosenberg had to be cautious in his approach, since the overwhelming majority of the "Aryan" German race adhered to the Christian faith. Christians were already anti-Masonic, especially Catholic Christians, and their cooperation was needed for Hitler's coming destruction of the "Judeo-Masonic" conspiracy. To avoid a direct assault on Christianity, Rosenberg promoted gnostic distortions of Christianity for initiates to the Vril. In this scheme, Lucifer and Christ became the same personality. Lucifer-Christ, then, was a prophet for the master race, which meant, of course, that Christ must belong to the "Aryan race". The earthly parents of Christ, therefore, were not Jewish, but rather Roman legionnaires of Persian descent. This racially northern Christ-hero became the scourge of all racially inferior peoples and rationalist elements of the population. In the myth of the Vril Society, Lucifer-Christ "fought against the Satan of racial inferiority and rationality". [39] (Racial inferiority was assigned to the Jews and the rationalists were members of Continental Freemasonry).
Membership in Haushofer's Vril Society was limited to the SS and the hierarchy of the Nazi Party -Himmler, Goering, Alfred Rosenberg, and the Fuehrer himself, along with his personal physician, Dr. Morell. [40] These men were deeply involved in the same Luciferian Doctrine as English Freemasonry, though it was twisted slightly for their own needs. And they practiced witchcraft with a vengeance.
British connections of the Vril Society and the Thule Society
Not surprisingly, Haushofer's Berlin-based Vril Society, through the Golden Dawn of Berlin, had links with Golden Dawn devotees in Great Britain. Until 1941, members of the Vril, Thule and Berlin Golden Dawn were in continual communication with the London Golden Dawn. Communication was broken off in May 1941, when Rudolf Hess (also a member of the Berlin Golden Dawn, [41] and the closest man to Hitler) made his famous abortive peace mission to England. Before Hess's flight, Haushofer and his son Albrecht gave Hess the names and addresses of Golden Dawn contacts in Great Britain, as well as names of other prominent English Masons who favored peace between England and Germany. [42]
Another important intellectual influence on Hitler was the writings of 33rd degree Mason Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900). In fact, the name Nazi is a derivative of Nietzsche. That Hitler's last birthday gift to Mussolini in 1943 was The Collected Works of Nietzsche testifies to the enduring influence of this philosopher upon Hitler. [43]
Edith Miller lists Nietzsche, along with Wagner, as a member of the O.T.O. before it was officially registered in 1902. [44] Helga Zepp, authoress of The Hitler Book confirms the influence Nietzsche had on the Nazi movement:
"Everything the Nazis later made into reality was already lurking within Nietzsche's tormented brain, darting about with increasing frenzy the idea of a master race, the mystically inspired hatred of Christianity, and its final and ultimate form, the Ecce Homo, where Nietzsche cries out: Have I made myself clear? - Dionysus against the Crucified..." [45]
"Nietzsche was an aggressive spokesmen for English Freemasonry, although he realized that war between England and Germany was inevitable and that when it started it would cause the greatest bloodbath known to history. [46] In Will to Power, he wrote, "Our entire European culture has long been moving with agonizing tension, increasing from decade to decade, and is now tumbling loosely, restlessly, violently into catastrophe: like a river which wants to reach its end, which no longer thinks, which is afraid to think." [47]
Nietzsche, while under the influence of narcotics, is also quoted as saying, "While millions fall trembling in the dust, we are close to the dionysian." [48] Dionysus was the Greek god of drunkenness and orgiastic revelry. For Nietzsche "the dionysian" meant creativity, powers of imagination versus rationalism. Hitler, also a drug addict, brought about the fulfillment of Nietzsche's prophecy.
THE THULE SOCIETY'S HOLY GRAIL MYTH
While members of the Golden Dawn were organizing the Thule Society, the Quatuor Coronati Lodge of Masonic Research at London concocted the Thule myth from the legend of the mythical Atlantis and based it upon Holy Grail mysticism. According to the authors of the Thule myth, the word "Thule" signifies a prehistoric "golden age" of Aryans in northern Europe which ended in sudden catastrophe. In this myth, the Aryans were in possession of the Holy Grail, but after their demise, the Grail was lost. So seriously did the Nazis embrace this legend of Aryan supremacy that Hitler's SS experts in Aryan esoterica actually conducted a search for the Grail in Southern France, with the support of Heinrich Himmler. [49] Zepp explains how the Nazis interpreted the legend:
The Thule Society and the Nazis took up this myth of the Grail and interpreted it so that the Grail was understood as an inscribed stone or tablet. This tablet was a crucial document of Aryan gnosticism, preserved and passed on from Aryan prehistory. According to the myth of the Grail, the tablet was finally hidden in a Grail fortress in southern France; according to the Nazi lore, it originally came from Aryan Persia, then reached Jerusalem, and was brought to Rome after Jerusalem was destroyed. [From Rome] it found its way to southern France... [50]
THE THULE SOCIETY: ITS FOUNDER AND MEMBERSHIP
Since the Thule Society's doctrine was similar to that of the Merovingian Grail kings, it was not surprising to learn that its constituents were aristocrats. Membership consisted of lawyers, judges, university professors, police officials, aristocratic members of royalty, leading industrialists, surgeons, physicians, scientists, as well as rich businessmen, like the proprietor of the elegant Four Seasons Hotel in Munich in which the society was headquartered. [51]
These headquarters became the command center for the counterrevolutionary underground of European royalty at a time when Grand Orient communist revolutions were sweeping post-World War I Europe. Thule Society letterheads and literature displayed the swastika, and large swastika flags decorated its plush meeting rooms and offices. [52]
Although the Thule Society was an offshoot of the Golden Dawn, its official founder and head was Baron Rudolf von Sebottendorf (1875-1945), a Knight of the Masonic Order of Constantine (Turkish Freemasonry). Sebottendorf was the leader of the "Turkish Crescent", which fought in the Balkan War of 1912-1913 against the Grand Orient revolutionists backed by Serbia. In the ranks of the revolutionists were Jews, and consequently during that conflict Sebottendorf became violently anti-Semitic. In 1913 he returned to Germany fortified with a vast knowledge of the occult and substantial funds from an unknown source. During the next four years he made extensive contacts with the leading members of numerous international occult groups that were rapidly proliferating in Germany at that time, focusing his contacts on the Order of the Golden Dawn. Late in 1917 Sebottendorf was in Munich to begin organizing the Thule Society. With assistance from Golden Dawn members, on August 17, 1918, the Thule Society was officially founded. [53] Sebottendorf elevated himself to Grand Master, then recruited from among the German noble families and aristocracy to use the Society as their counterrevolutionary headquarters. To his later discredit and ultimate downfall, Sebottendorf published a list of the Thule Society's membership.
Sebottendorf claimed he had been sent to Germany by the Ascended Masters of Islam, who "had entrusted him with the mission of illuminating Germany through the revelation of the secrets of advanced magic and initiation into ancient oriental mysteries." [54] One of the mysteries Sebottendorf imparted to the Thule membership was the so-called revelation that the Jews were behind world revolution and therefore must be annihilated.
ANTI-SEMITISM AND THE THULE SOCIETY
Another Thule Society member who added strength to Sebottendorf's anti-Semitic accusations was Alfred Rosenberg (1893-1946). Rosenberg grew up as a Baltic German in Revel, Estonia, and spoke perfect German and Russian. He studied architecture at Moscow University and graduated there in 1917. He witnessed Kerensky's revolution in February and saw it destroyed in October by Lenin, a half-Jew, and Trotsky, a full-blooded Jew. In the spring of 1918, he read the newspaper headlines which announced the assassination of the Czar and his royal household at the hands of a Jew. Then he watched as 82 percent of the new Communist bureaucracy was staffed by Jews.
In October 1918 Rosenberg arrived in Munich. To his dismay he discovered that German Communists were mostly Jews. In his baggage he carried a copy of the most damning evidence against them. Upon joining the Thule Society, he presented the Protocols OJ the Learned Elders of Sion to its membership.
The Thule Society's membership was pro-aristocratic, oligarchic and monarchical. Driven by fear of the communists, the Thule's declared, political aim was two-fold:
1) the extirpation of what the membership called the communist Judeo-Masonic conspiracy; and
2) the return of the Hohenzollerns to the German throne.
Hence, the membership was willing to embrace a dictator (for a while at least), who would lead Germany out of the clutches of the communist beast and return her to her original dynastic glory.
At the beginning of November 1918, German Grand Orient Communists took over the government in Munich. Shortly thereafter, on November 9, Sebottendorf spoke before a meeting of the entire membership of the Thule Society to issue a call to arms against Judah. He ended his speech with the declaration: "Remember that you are a German! Keep your blood pure!" [55] This admonition became the motto of the Thule Society, which thereafter publicly espoused German racial superiority, anti-Semitism and anti-Communism. [56]
Rosenberg, with Dietrich Eckart (another top officer of the Thule), were the first to publish the Protocols outside of Russia. [57] Eckart was both a Freemason and a Rosicrucian, and possibly a member of the Golden Dawn. He broke from Freemasonry because he could not embrace its internationalism. [58] Finding his spiritual home in the Thule Society, Eckart, a dedicated Satanist, was a master of magic and practiced rituals that were anything but harmless. Eckart participated in a series of seances with Rosenberg and the infamous Russian occultist G. I. Gurdjieff. [59] During these seances, Eckart was "told of the imminent appearance of the German messiah, a Lord Maitreya." Eckart was further instructed about his own destiny. He was "to prepare the vessel of the Anti-Christ, the man inspired by Lucifer to conquer the world and lead the Aryan race to glory. [60]
Eckart was a heavy drinker who used "drugs, including peyote, the South American hallucinogen, which Aleister Crowley introduced into Europe's artistic and occultist circles. In his younger years in Berlin, Eckart spent some time in a psychiatric clinic because of morphine addiction." [61] This man was destined to become Hitler's mentor.
THE THULE: MONARCHISTS IN SEARCH OF A PARTY AND LEADER
As stated above, in early November 1918, the German Grand Orient communists, known as Spartacists (Adam Weishaupt's code name), [62] took power in Munich. They ruled Bavaria from November to May, during which time there were a series of communist insurrections throughout Germany. Their largest uprising was scheduled for May 1, 1919, the birthday of Weishaupt's Illuminati. Anticipating this event, the voluntary monarchist troops, called Free Corps (which, unbeknownst to the general population, were financed by the Thule Society), surrounded Munich. In retaliation, the Spartacists, who had in their possession the membership list of the Thule Society, which had been irresponsibly published by Sebottendorf, raided the Thule headquarters and took seven members hostage. When the Free Corps units tightened their ring around the city, the hostages were stood up against a wall in the courtyard of the Luitpold High School and shot. Four of the seven were titled aristocrats, including the beautiful young secretary of the society, Countess Heila von Westarp, and Prince Gustave von Thurnund Taxis, who was related to several European royal families. [63]
Sebottendorf, founder of the Thule Society, was blamed by the membership for his careless, and as it turned out, fatal publication of the Society's membership list, which fell into communist hands. From then on, Sebottendorf's influence in the Thule Society declined and in 1923 he returned to Thrkey. [64] Meanwhile, Dietrich Eckart, the man destined to discover and groom Hitler, became one of the most powerful members of the Thule Society's hierarchy.
After the Free Corps troops liberated Munich from the communists, the Thule Society felt it was time to come out in the open as an anti-communist movement. In its own newspaper the Thule Collection, the Thule announced that it was the financier behind the Free Corps. Publisher of the Thule Collection was one Diederichs (no first name available), a leading publisher of Masonic books, and member of an English Grand Lodge. Diederichs also published Tat, the most important public newspaper in Weimar, Germany. Tat's editor was Hans Zehrer, also a prominent English Mason. Later, when Hitler declared that the "Third Reich" would be established by his Nazi Party, Zehrer wrote that the leadership of the "Third Reich" could be "guaranteed only through elites and oligarchs." Within Zehrer's Masonic circle were many wealthy and influential oligarchs. All favored a return of the Hohenzollern monarchy. Most belonged to the Thule Society. [65]
After World War I, the monarchists were still a very powerful force in Germany, enjoying tremendous social prestige and popularity among the upper class. The German People's Party and the Nationalist Party (the two largest conservative political parties) were pro-monarchist. Moreover, the monarchists, which included conservative industrialists, controlled tremendous financial resources, including the inherited fortunes of the various royal and princely families. [66] Although the Kaiser had abdicated in 1918, wealthy Germans were still his loyal subjects.
The first goal of the Thule aristocrats was to form a political party to win back the masses, especially the laborers, whom they said had been ''poisoned with the Jewish ideas of communism and internationalism." [67] Most of the German aristocracy were members of the Thule Society and its hierarchy recognized that the Thule program would be automatically rejected by the masses if its political party was headed by someone of a privileged class. Thule thus recruited Anton Drexier and his German Workers' Party (GWP), financing and promoting it as its own political party. The GWP adopted the anti-Semitic and pro-monarchist Thule agenda.
Meanwhile, Dietrich Eckart composed a bardic verse in which the coming of a national redeemer was prophesied. Obviously, his so-called "prophecy" was prompted by the seances with Gurdjieff where Eckart received his "annunciation" that he was destined to prepare a messiah for the German people. A few weeks after the Free Corps' liberation of Munich, Eckart brought to the Thule supreme council the idea that the hour for a great charismatic leader had come. Below is a portion of the verse, which he read:
We need a leader familiar and foreign at the same time, a nameless one...
We must have a fellow as a leader who won't wince at the rattle of a machine gun.
The rabble must be given a damned good fright.
An officer wouldn't do; the people don't respect them any more.
Best of all would be a worker, a former soldier who could speak.
He needn't be very brainy; politics is the most stupid business in the world...