Chapter Fourteen Continued: Aberhart and Manning Find Their Antichrist

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

William Aberhart and his disciple, Ernest Manning; would continue to be obsessed with the Antichrist and the end times; which gained momentum in depression era Alberta.

In 1931, the budding 'playwright, Manning, helped to write a play, based on the 1915 novel by Sydney Watson: The Mark of the Beast*.

The play was an adaptation of Sydney Watson's Mark of the Beast. Entitled The Branding Irons of the Antichrist, it depicted the terrors and persecutions experienced by a brother and sister during the Tribulation; they had not listened to the Gospel message before the Rapture. Following their mother's disappearance in the Rapture, they decided to believe in Christ at any cost. After refusing to accept the brand of the Antichrist they were executed. The moral of the play was that the audience should accept Christ then and there, and avoid the terrors of the Tribulation by being taken up in the Rapture, which Aberhart called "the overhead route". (1)

The cast was drawn from members of the Calgary Prophetic Bible Institute's youth group, and was performed throughout Alberta, becoming the 'Nightmare on Elm Street' for the depression era crowd.

One young lady who was a member of the church discovered that the terror stayed with her for some time. Afterward, when visiting a Christian friend and finding no one home, although the doors were open, she feared that the Rapture had occurred and she had been left behind to face the Antichrist." (1)

Of course William Aberhart thought he might know who the Antichrist was, and no not Adolf Hitler, but another 'dictator'. There were clues:

Premillennialism usually holds too that the Roman empire is to be revived, and that the Antichrist is to be the king or dictator of this realm ... He is not to be revealed as such until after the Rapture of the Church, although he may be the ruler in his kingdom before that time. He is to have more power than has ever before been exercised by any king or dictator. (2)

So given that the Antichrist was to revive the ancient Roman Empire and be a powerful dictator, who better to fit the bill than Benito Mussolini?

His [Aberhart's] theology had become very Manichean; everywhere he saw a cosmic battle between two opposing forces, God and Satan.

The Depression reinforced this belief in Aberhart's mind. When climatic disturbances and plagues of pestilence attacked Alberta's crops, Aberhart claimed that they were not punishments from God, but rather attacks from the Devil . Aberhart became fascinated with Mussolini and he preached a number of sermons on Mussolini** and prophecy. (2)

Footnotes:

*Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, authors of the popular Left behind Series, that is now the blueprint for the Religious Right and Christians United For Israel; also claim to have been influenced by Sydney Watson's apocalyptic novels.

**Leo Strauss, for different reasons; also became fascinated with Mussolini. When he was with the Zionist Youth Blau-Weiss, it's leader Walter Moses, emulated the Italian dictator. Later Strauss would support not only fascism, but the corporatism of Benito.

Sources:

1. Bible Bill: A Biography of William Aberhart, By: David R. Elliot and Iris Miller, Edmonton: Reidmore Books, 1987, Pg. 104

2. THE MILLENNIUM, By: Loraine Boettner, 1957

3. Elliot and Iris Miller, 1987, Pg. 103

Chapter Fourteen Continued: The Power of the Mustache

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

"He is an absolute genius, and he may, says Soloviev, wear a small mustache." Konrad Heiden

When Adolf Hitler joined the German Army, he sported a large mustache. But later, when the German troops were provided with respirator masks, in response to the use of mustard gas by the British, he was told to trim it, so that the mask could be worn properly. (1)

Some men may have simply shaved theirs off, but Hitler instead just clipped the sides until it fit, giving him a rather unusual appearance.

And it was that unusual appearance; of a man with a 'small mustache', as described by Vladimir Solovyov (aka: Soloviev); that led Dietrich Eckart to believe that he had found the Antichrist.

Or had he just found his Antichrist?

And would the most "noble lie" that Leo Strauss so often expounded, be Hitler himself?

Dietrich Eckart and the "Genius Superman"

Dietrich Eckart was not an ordinary man. Born into an affluent family in 1868, in the small port town of Neumarkt in Bavaria; he had planned on becoming a doctor.

However, he was a failure as a student, largely due to a problem that would plague him throughout his life. Dietrich liked to drink too much.

His mother had died when he was ten, and his father when he was twenty-seven; leaving him a fairly wealthy young man, but he would quickly spend his way through his fortune.

Sleeping in flop houses or on park benches, he had already developed a morphine habit, and soon found himself in an asylum for the mentally diseased. And it was there that he found his niche. (2)

He began writing plays that he would have the inmates act out, and on his release in 1899, he settled in Berlin; where before long, he developed a reputation as one of the best playwrights in the city.

Back on top once again, his wealth and notoriety allowed him to move in prominent social circles, and he would lead a charmed life for more than a decade.

But during that time he also began studying some of the more controversial philosophers, including Hitler's favourite, and one of Leo Strauss's, Arthur Schopenhauer; and developed a keen interest in races.

Other thinkers of interest to Eckart included Adolf Josef Lanz, who in his 1904 book, "Theozoology", advocated sterilization of the sick and the "lower races" as well as forced labour for "castrated chandals", and glorified the "Aryan race" as "Gottmenschen" ("god-men"). Lanz also published a magazine, which Eckart subscribed to, and would later introduce to his protege.

Angelus Silesius rounded out Ekarts's influences. Silesius had once written; "I am like God and God like me. I am as large as God. He is as small as I. He cannot above me nor I beneath him be." This may have been the inspiration for Ekart's ideology of creating a "Genius Superman."

In 1913, Eckart joined the Thule society, and moved with it in 1917 to Munich. The following year, the original group joined with a more radical one, and the nature of the society changed, becoming more political.

They operated as counter revolutionaries, carrying out targeted assassinations and making life as miserable as possible for the Jewish people.

The new group now included Alfred Rosenberg, who had brought back the Protocols of the Elders of Zion from Russia. Eckart was already putting out an anti-Semitic magazine and was more than happy to include the Protocols.

There has been a lot of speculation about the influence of the Thule society, which often goes into mystical theories; but I think it was just a white supremacist organization, that wanted to protect and promote their concept of a Nordic heritage.

And while they apparently dabbled in the occult, I think their primary interest was eugenics, under the tutelage of the master white supremacist, Houston Stewart Chamberlain.

But more than just being white supremacists, they held that the Aryan race was supreme, and that was the race they were going to engineer to supremacy. But first they had to deal with the Jewish question.

The Protocols of Zion, provided a vehicle for fear mongering, by establishing the false notion of a Jewish conspiracy, plotting to rule the world. And it also gave rise to the belief in the Antichrist, who was described in great detail by Vladimir Solovyov.

And I believe that when Adolf Hitler walked into the meeting of the German Worker's Party, where the playwright and director Dietrich Eckart was speaking, he had just auditioned for a part in Eckart's next play, and he would win the leading role as the Antichrist.

Chapter fourteen Continued: A Star is Born

Sources:

1. The Unknown Private - Personal Memories of Hitler, By: Alexander Moritz Frey

2. Der Fhehrer, Hitler's Rise to Power, By: Konrad Heiden, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1944, Pg. 100

Chapter Fourteen: Into the Darkness

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

One day in the summer of 1917 a student was reading in his room in Moscow. A stranger entered, laid a book on the table, and silently vanished. The cover of the book bore in Russian the words from the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew: 'He is near, he is hard by the door.'

The student sensed the masterful irony of higher powers in this strange happening. They had sent him a silent message. He opened the book, and the voice of a demon spoke to him. It was a message concerning the Antichrist, who would come at the end of days. The Antichrist is no mythical being, no monkish medieval fantasy. It is the portrait of a type of man who comes to the fore when an epoch is dying. He is a man with a white skin, in everyday clothes, dangerously contemporary, and a mighty demagogue. He will talk with the masses, and at his word the masses will rise up and turn a culture to ashes, a culture which has deserved no better, since it has borne the Antichrist in its own image and for its own destruction. (1)

The student was Alfred Rosenberg and the book; The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion, with a description of the Antichrist by Russian philosopher, Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov.

And though it would be determined time and again that the protocols were fraudulent, they would be used to justify pogroms, unleash hatred and even be the blueprint for the Holocaust.

The Thule Society and the Antichrist

The Protocols of Zion were forged, taken from the fictional work of a French political satirist, Maurice Joly.

Written in 1864, about Napoleon III, and called a Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu; Joly's work was republished in 1905, with a bit of alteration, by Pyotr Ivanovich Rachkovsky, head of the secret police in Russia; as the Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion. Rachkovsky's intention was to blame the unrest in Russia on a global Jewish conspiracy.

Widely distributed during the Russian Revolution, Rosenberg was not the only soldier to obtain a copy, and they would eventually make their way to other European countries, the United States and even Canada.

But when Rosenberg stuffed the little book into his suitcase in 1918, before heading to Munich; they would soon take on a life of their own.

The Thule Society

The Thule Society was originally a Germanic study group, headed by Walter Nauhaus, a wounded World War I veteran, who had become a keeper of pedigrees for the "Order of Teutons". It became established in Munich in 1917 and the following year, Nauhaus was approached by Rudolf von Sebottendorf, head of the Germanenorden Walvater of the Holy Grail, to combine their efforts.

Both groups were occult in nature, with a keen interest in the origins of the Aryan race. On August 18, 1918, they officially merged and began a massive membership drive.

The society held a great appeal to the twenty-five-year-old Alfred Rosenberg*, and he would soon join their ranks, along with friends Dietrich Eckart, Gottfried Feder and Anton Drexler. How involved they were with the secret society is debatable, but they did help to create the German Worker's Party (DAP) as a loosely based offshoot.

DAP would take over the Thule's newspaper in 1920, where Rosenberg published the Protocols of Zion.

By then he was becoming increasingly concerned with the future of the 'Nordic population', denouncing both homosexuality and abortion as a direct threat to it's future. At the time any woman wanting an abortion could obtain a pill from a chemical plant (Probably Bayer) for 50 marks, so abortions were on the increase. (2)

And given the loss of millions of young men during the war, most future fathers, Rosenberg's duties were clear. He had to save his race.

The Antichrist Appears

The Thule Society was also known to have held seances and rituals, where they would try to call on the Antichrist. Some people have claimed that Hitler himself was involved in this, but records have proven otherwise, and he himself referred to the occult as foolishness.

But while Alberta's droughts and infestations resembled an apocalyptic environment, ripe for William Aberhart's prophesies; the break down of German society after the War, also created an end times atmosphere. And the Russian philosopher, Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov; had already provided a description of the Antichrist:

The Antichrist 'does not look like what he is,' and therein precisely lies the danger. He is a young man with a strong personality and seductive power of speech and writing. He is an ascetic and a vegetarian. He will win fame first by a book in which respect of the ancient traditions and symbols stands side by side with a bold and thorough radicalism in social and political problems ... absolute individualism with an ardent fidelity to the common weal . . . .. Then, in Berlin, he will become ruler of the `United States of Europe'; he will conquer Asia and North Africa; America will submit to him voluntarily. He is an absolute genius, and he may, says Soloviev, wear a small mustache. (3)

On August 14, 1919; Dietrich EcKart was giving a speech to the followers of his Geman Worker's Party, when a stranger entered the room. A new arrival, recruited from the streets of Munich.

Eckart stopped speaking as he gazed at the intruder. He was thin giving the appearance of being taller than he was, with a small toothbrush mustache.

And in that moment, Eckart knew that he had arrived.

Chapter Fourteen Continued: The Power of the Mustache

Footnotes:

*Rosenberg would become the Nazi Party's chief racial theorist, in charge of building a human racial ladder to justify Hitler's genocidal policies.

Sources:

1. Der Fhehrer, Hitler's Rise to Power, By: Konrad Heiden, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1944, Pg. 1

2. Germany After the First World War, By: Richard Bessel, Clarendon Press Oxford, 1993, ISBN: 0-19-821938-5, Pg. 248

3. Heiden, Pg. 1-2