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Rating: 
Summary: my personal review
Review: Thanx to the autor,the book is brilliant.A meticolous and perfect reconstruction of the most important peoples,organizations and societies.A very good study about Guido von List,Jørg Lanz von Liebenfels,Rudolf von Sebottendorf,Karl Maria Wiligut and the Germanenorden,the Ordo Novi Templi,the Thule Gesellschaft,the SS mystic castle Wewelsburg.Only for scholars and truly interested and involved people.Not stupid,idiot,ignorant people.Only for the Elite.
Rating:
Summary: Ariosophism
Review: The Occult Roots of Nazism by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke is a very well written study of the massive influence Aryan occultism and esoteric societies had upon Hitler and the theoriticians of the NSDAP. He is quite comprehensive in his coverage of Ariosophist philosophers and enigmatic volkish groups which blossomed in late ninteenth-early twentieth century middle Europe. What makes this book worth reading to the student of Modern European History, is not only Goodrick-Clarke's ability to link these movements to Nazi philosophy, but his attention to detail. Further, he carefully explains the historical surroundings and mystical, sometimes ludicrous, beliefs held by members of the various Ariosophical societies.These explanations, coupled with what must have been very tedious research, enlighten these somewhat obscure and often forgotten influences on the NSDAP. This book is well worth a read. However, its appeal is somewhat limited to those with particular interest in the occult philosophy sub-genre of Nazi Studies. By no means is it a typical Shirer inspired playscript of the Reich. TAB
Rating: 
Summary: The Nazi Underground.
Review: This book chronicles some of the underground movements and popular delusions that existed in Germany and Austria before the Nazis came to power. It examines the influence these groups may have had on Nazi leaders in the SS, on Adolf Hitler, and on the thinking of Germans at the time. It is necessary to understand such extremist and occult groups in order to understand how the Nazis were able to take over Germany. Millenarian fantasies and a kind of cultural paranoia preoccupied the German mind, and these fantasies came to hold a unique place within various secret societies set up to propagate racist and occult doctrines (especially concerning the role of the "Aryan" race and it's existence in German prehistory). The author examines many eccentric German individualists, dreamers, and romantics and their role in occult societies. These include: Guido (von) List, who claimed to have rediscovered a Wotanist religion and was influenced by the Theosophist Helena Petrovna Blavatsky; Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels, who resurrected a sect based on the Knights Templars; the Ariosophists, who relied on a "theozoology" concerning the struggle of the Aryan race, and their secret societies, the Germanenorden, the Thule Society, and the Edda Society. The author also considers the influence of such individuals as Rudolf von Sebottendorf, Herbert Reichstein, and Karl Maria Wiligut on the SS (Himmler), and examines the role Ariosophical thinking might have played in the development of Adolf Hitler. The book includes several appendices, one of which deals with some of the sensationalist and "crypto-historical" literature that has sprang up around the occult and Nazism, which attributes a great role to the occult in the rise to power of the Nazis. This is an important book for understanding how collective delusions can arise in the mind of a country, particularly racist ideologies. The Nazis continue to exercise a fascination upon us, both for their brutality and for their nationalist mysticism. And, this book allows us to understand. [If you are interested in this kind of thing, I can also recommend any of the works by Norman Cohn, who is cited repeatedly in this book. He deals mostly with the medieval period, but you'll notice that the same sort of delusions and fantasies keep on cropping up throughout European history.]
Rating:
Summary: Excellent presentation & documentation; a classic!
Review: This book was not very enjoyable even though I tried to like it. I am interested in Nazism as well as the occult, so I thought this would be a no-brainer purchase. Wrong. The information within the book is boring and tedious. The author informs us of various "mystics" who may or may not have had influence on basic Nazi ideology, but he fails to delve deep into the actual description of these beliefs and their correlation to National Socialist policy. The book could have been something if concrete examples of these ideologies were given (e.g. excerpts from Ostara).
Rating:
Summary: The Occult Roots of Nazism
Review: This is a great book on the history of the movement. A lot of good info about Aryan Paganism in Germany at the start of the 1900s. I've known people who were involved with German Wotanism between the 1920s to 1945 and have books of and about that time period, but Mr. Goodricke-Clarke talks about alot of people I've never heard of before, and he gives new details about people I've read a great deal about. This book is the only source for a lot of this info.
His new book Black Sun is like part II of The Occult Roots of Nazism. He talks about the Pagan Revival after WWII and all the new ideas and people in the movement. These two books should be read together.
Rating:
Summary: The Occult Roots of Nazism.
Review: _The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology_ by Nicholas Goodrick-Clark is an intriguing academic study on the pre-Nazi occult scene in Germany. The cover features a rather threatening Thule Gesellschaft symbol: a sword and swastika wrapped in laurels and a halo of emanating light. Many of the occult practices described in this book--palmistry, crystals, secret orders, hidden knowledge, spirit guides, channeling, tarot cards, fortune telling, astrology--have retained their popularity today in the New Age movement. What's particularly interesting about Goodrick-Clarke's work is he compares the Ariosophists List and Lanz to the ancient duelist philosophies of Gnosticism and Manicheanism in their extreme division of reality into two eternally conflicting forces of good (Aryans) and evil (Jews). Goodrick-Clarke begins his discussion by going back to the writings of Madame Helena Blavatsky, her two books _The Secret Doctrine_ and _Isis Unvieled_, and her occult Theosophical Society. Her books propagated a form of anti-rationalism and anti-scientism, instead relying upon supposed revealed secret doctrines by hidden masters in Tibet. Blavatsky believed there was a series of seven "root races" that lived on earth, of which the Aryan race was the fifth. Other notables connected with the occult at this time included Annie Besant, Charles Leadbeater and Bulwer Lytton. Lytton wrote in his work _The Coming Race_ of a subterranean race that was to give mankind new enlightenment and psychic abilities. Ariosophy, the so-called wisdom of the Aryans, developed from theosophical ideas and the general occult subcultures of the time. The political and motivation for the rise of occultism in Germany and Austria was the situation of the Austro -Hungarian Empire and the Hapsburg monarchy. Prussia had permanently excluded Austria from a role in a united German state by Bismark's military victories before 1871. However the Austrian Empire encompassed not only Hungary but also many nationalities of Slavic, non-German descent, in addition to Jewish minorities. The status of Germans as a whole in Austria was tenuous and the conservative elements of the populace were more inclined to fall for unorthodox metaphysical beliefs that would allow them to fight against the tides of political liberalism in the Empire. Hitler, it is to be noted, was not actually born in "Germany" proper but in the Austro-Hungarian Empire near the German border. Goodrick-Clarke takes care to note that Hitler despised the Hapsburg monarchy, while his sectarian occultist predecessors admired it as a bastion of German mystical/mythical tradition. In Vienna, during the late 1800s and early 1900s before World War I, two radical German nationalists, Guido von List and Adolf Lanz (who self-styled himself with the aristocratic title of von Liebenfels) researched and published a considerable amount of literature dealing with Germany's so-called repressed history. List believed that ancient, pagan, pre-Christian Germany was a center of culture kept alive by a secret order of initiates, the Armanenschaft, who established a decentralized aristocratic hierarchy and kept the German race pure through eugenic practices. Oddly enough, their secret doctrine, according to List, was encoded and given to the Rabbis for safekeeping in the form of the Cabala, in order to preserve it from Christian destruction. Lanz, whose _Ostara_ pamphlets Hitler is likely to have read, was an ex-Cistercian monk who joined the pan-German movement. Lanz made an extensive study of ancient civilizations and the Old Testament and concluded that the ancestors of the German race lived on Atlantis, which sank, and spread to Northern Europe and the Middle East. The supposed Aryan Middle Easterners founded the great civilizations of Egypt and the Fertile Crescent, including the Hebrews. The Hebrew Scripture, according to Lanz's analysis, was a history of the attempt for Aryans to preserve their race. He interpreted the fall as the miscegenation between Aryans and lesser races. Lanz believed Jesus ("Frauja") was an Aryan savior and the medieval Christian character of Europe, with its monasteries and nobility, embodied the Aryan ideal. He believed Alexandria, known for its library and scholarship, was the center of gravity of ancient Ariosophy. The first bishop to convert the Germans to Christianity was Ulifas, an Arian bishop from Alexandria, thus Lanz equates "Aryanism" with the Christian heresy of "Arianism," or disbelief in the deity of Christ. The Ariosophists and pan-Germanists believed the only way to preserve Germany's Aryan past was to fight against modern liberal tendencies and take aggressive action against those corrupting Germany's traditional landscape: the Jews, communists and Slavs. Several quasi-Masonic lodges were founded throughout Germany and Austria before, during and after WWI. Among these were the Thule Society and the Germannorden. There is some speculation that the Thule Society, its membership being a collection of well-educated professionals and aristocrats, founded the German Workers Party (DAP) as an activist political party to attract a mass membership. Hitler was sent as a spy to the DAP to survey its activities. Hitler later joined this party, which eventually renamed itself the German National Socialist Party (NASDAP or Nazi Party). Although Hitler never mentioned Lanz by name in any of his recorded words, Goodrick-Clarke attributes this fact to Hitler not wanting to call attention to where he got his ideas during his formative years in Vienna. Although Hitler did not have much of an interest in actual occult practices, his chief of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, did. Himmler consulted a former mental asylum inmate, Karl Maria Willigut (a.k.a. Weisthor), who claimed to possess an ancient ancestral knowledge of the German race. Himmler constructed a "Nazi Vatican" at a castle in Wewelsburg where neo-pagan ceremonies for the Nazi SS were held. Goodrick-Clarke's final appendix to this study is an examination of the mythology Nazi Germany's meteoric rise and fall from an obscure party from the 1920s to a totalitarian government that had Europe from the English Channel to the Caucasus Mountains under its thumb (albeit briefly). A considerable amount of literature has been published in various countries about how the Nazi Party's rise to power was aided by supernatural and demonic forces.
Rating:
Summary: The Occult Roots of Nazism.
Review: _The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology_ by Nicholas Goodrick-Clark is an intriguing academic study on the pre-Nazi occult scene in Germany. The cover features a rather threatening Thule Gesellschaft symbol: a sword and swastika wrapped in laurels and a halo of emanating light. Many of the occult practices described in this book--palmistry, crystals, secret orders, hidden knowledge, spirit guides, channeling, tarot cards, fortune telling, astrology--have retained their popularity today in the New Age movement. What's particularly interesting about Goodrick-Clarke's work is he compares the Ariosophists List and Lanz to the ancient duelist philosophies of Gnosticism and Manicheanism in their extreme division of reality into two eternally conflicting forces of good (Aryans) and evil (Jews). Goodrick-Clarke begins his discussion by going back to the writings of Madame Helena Blavatsky, her two books _The Secret Doctrine_ and _Isis Unvieled_, and her occult Theosophical Society. Her books propagated a form of anti-rationalism and anti-scientism, instead relying upon supposed revealed secret doctrines by hidden masters in Tibet. Blavatsky believed there was a series of seven "root races" that lived on earth, of which the Aryan race was the fifth. Other notables connected with the occult at this time included Annie Besant, Charles Leadbeater and Bulwer Lytton. Lytton wrote in his work _The Coming Race_ of a subterranean race that was to give mankind new enlightenment and psychic abilities. Ariosophy, the so-called wisdom of the Aryans, developed from theosophical ideas and the general occult subcultures of the time. The political and motivation for the rise of occultism in Germany and Austria was the situation of the Austro -Hungarian Empire and the Hapsburg monarchy. Prussia had permanently excluded Austria from a role in a united German state by Bismark's military victories before 1871. However the Austrian Empire encompassed not only Hungary but also many nationalities of Slavic, non-German descent, in addition to Jewish minorities. The status of Germans as a whole in Austria was tenuous and the conservative elements of the populace were more inclined to fall for unorthodox metaphysical beliefs that would allow them to fight against the tides of political liberalism in the Empire. Hitler, it is to be noted, was not actually born in "Germany" proper but in the Austro-Hungarian Empire near the German border. Goodrick-Clarke takes care to note that Hitler despised the Hapsburg monarchy, while his sectarian occultist predecessors admired it as a bastion of German mystical/mythical tradition. In Vienna, during the late 1800s and early 1900s before World War I, two radical German nationalists, Guido von List and Adolf Lanz (who self-styled himself with the aristocratic title of von Liebenfels) researched and published a considerable amount of literature dealing with Germany's so-called repressed history. List believed that ancient, pagan, pre-Christian Germany was a center of culture kept alive by a secret order of initiates, the Armanenschaft, who established a decentralized aristocratic hierarchy and kept the German race pure through eugenic practices. Oddly enough, their secret doctrine, according to List, was encoded and given to the Rabbis for safekeeping in the form of the Cabala, in order to preserve it from Christian destruction. Lanz, whose _Ostara_ pamphlets Hitler is likely to have read, was an ex-Cistercian monk who joined the pan-German movement. Lanz made an extensive study of ancient civilizations and the Old Testament and concluded that the ancestors of the German race lived on Atlantis, which sank, and spread to Northern Europe and the Middle East. The supposed Aryan Middle Easterners founded the great civilizations of Egypt and the Fertile Crescent, including the Hebrews. The Hebrew Scripture, according to Lanz's analysis, was a history of the attempt for Aryans to preserve their race. He interpreted the fall as the miscegenation between Aryans and lesser races. Lanz believed Jesus ("Frauja") was an Aryan savior and the medieval Christian character of Europe, with its monasteries and nobility, embodied the Aryan ideal. He believed Alexandria, known for its library and scholarship, was the center of gravity of ancient Ariosophy. The first bishop to convert the Germans to Christianity was Ulifas, an Arian bishop from Alexandria, thus Lanz equates "Aryanism" with the Christian heresy of "Arianism," or disbelief in the deity of Christ. The Ariosophists and pan-Germanists believed the only way to preserve Germany's Aryan past was to fight against modern liberal tendencies and take aggressive action against those corrupting Germany's traditional landscape: the Jews, communists and Slavs. Several quasi-Masonic lodges were founded throughout Germany and Austria before, during and after WWI. Among these were the Thule Society and the Germannorden. There is some speculation that the Thule Society, its membership being a collection of well-educated professionals and aristocrats, founded the German Workers Party (DAP) as an activist political party to attract a mass membership. Hitler was sent as a spy to the DAP to survey its activities. Hitler later joined this party, which eventually renamed itself the German National Socialist Party (NASDAP or Nazi Party). Although Hitler never mentioned Lanz by name in any of his recorded words, Goodrick-Clarke attributes this fact to Hitler not wanting to call attention to where he got his ideas during his formative years in Vienna. Although Hitler did not have much of an interest in actual occult practices, his chief of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, did. Himmler consulted a former mental asylum inmate, Karl Maria Willigut (a.k.a. Weisthor), who claimed to possess an ancient ancestral knowledge of the German race. Himmler constructed a "Nazi Vatican" at a castle in Wewelsburg where neo-pagan ceremonies for the Nazi SS were held. Goodrick-Clarke's final appendix to this study is an examination of the mythology Nazi Germany's meteoric rise and fall from an obscure party from the 1920s to a totalitarian government that had Europe from the English Channel to the Caucasus Mountains under its thumb (albeit briefly). A considerable amount of literature has been published in various countries about how the Nazi Party's rise to power was aided by supernatural and demonic forces.
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