Chapter Sixteen Continued: Armed Intellectuals

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

"Only the ruin of all made him ruler over all." Konrad Heiden

Adolf Hitler was an unlikely politician, and even less likely a world leader. And yet this very ordinary man became an extraordinary public figure, whose face is one of the most recognizable in the western world, even more than half a century after his death.

There have been many books written about his rise to power, using his childhood as an excuse for his later evil.

But I see something else. I see him as more of a protagonist. The central character in a literary plot. The leading actor cast by successful playwright and stage director Dietrich Eckart, who was with him almost constantly after discovering him in a beer hall in Munich.

He taught him how to speak and how to use his arms for dramatic effect. Characteristics that might have been seen as flaws by others, were exploited. Hitler's natural jerky movements, and gravelly voice as a result of mustard gas during the war, all played into the mystique.

His character: Vladimir Soloviev's Antichrist.

And when studying the creation of Adolf Hitler, it's not too difficult to recognize a familiar pattern. He is probably the best case study for the phenomenon of image politics. A chameleon who would become the perfect personification of the leader of many causes, while being the champion of none.

Because the only thing that Adolf Hitler really believed in, was his own greatness.

The Validity of a Movement

When members of the Thule Society came up with the idea of creating a party, it was the natural progression of an organization that was becoming increasingly political. They viewed the lawlessness of post-war Germany as a threat to their cause.

Rape, promiscuity and abortion was on the rise. The grand plan of creating a perfect Aryan race was becoming less attainable. There was a "Jewish conspiracy" to take over the world. They needed a miracle.

But that miracle did not arrive as the result of the efforts of the upper echelon of the Thule Society, who were holding seances to conjure one up; but from one of the lower members who creatively "conjured up" the long awaited saviour of the Teutonic races.

And while the resulting party would be one based purely on ideology - the ideology of a society that dabbled in the occult; the infrastructure for such a party was built through earthly endeavours.

Before assuming power they spent more than a decade creating a shadow government, shaping public opinion and selling the idea of a noble cause. To German citizens they were going to save Germany and to the moneyed people of the Thule Society, they were going to save the Aryan race.

But such lofty goals could not be achieved without a veritable army. An army of what Heiden would call "armed intellectuals".

... thousands of youthful, ex-Army officers were streaming back from defeat to poverty and unemployment in the Weimar Republic. They were "armed intellectuals," war-hardened products of Germany's prewar universities. They became an army of the armed bohemians, of heroes and murderers by conviction .

. . They had lost prestige, social position, ideals—"tossed this way and that way," wrote one of them, "just for the sake of our daily bread; gathering men about us and playing soldiers with them; brawling and drinking, roaring and smashing windows—destroying and shattering" . . . They drew to them the flotsam, the stragglers living on the fringe of their class . . . the unemployed . . . the declassed of all classes .... an upper layer that has lost its hold in society seeks the people and finds the rabble ...

... They found their leader in the lowest mass of their subordinates. The spirit of history, in its fantastic mockery, could not have drawn an apter figure. Raving Dervish ... the [formerly] homeless derelict from the Viennese melting pot ...this man who exhorted them with all the semi-education of his age, using miserable German, defective logic, tasteless humor and false pathos ... (1)

And they would soon draw more foot soldiers from all levels of society. Labourers, teachers, public servants et al; all saw in Adolf Hitler what they wanted to see. A man who represented them.

Gottfried Feder and Party Economics

Just as William Aberhart's Social Credit Party was intent on changing the way that Alberta handled it's finances, the Thule Society that was grooming Adolf Hitler, also had plans to change the way the Germany did business.

As part of his indoctrination Adolf was introduced to another Thule member, Gottfried Feder, and it is said that he finally agreed to join the German Worker's Party after listening to Feder speak. (2)

Feder's lecture was about "Jewish finance capitalism" and he showed an open hostility towards wealthy bankers and spoke of 'breaking the shackles of interest'. He believed that all German banks should be nationalized and he called for the abolishment of interest.

In February 1920, together with Adolf Hitler and Anton Drexler, Feder drafted a paper, called the "25 points" which became the party's platform. When the paper was announced on February 14, 1920, more than 2,000 people attended the rally.

And just as Social Credit clubs were springing up across Alberta, a momentum was building for a regime change in Germany. Finally there was a political movement with clear plans to rescue the country from sure ruin.

Chapter Sixteen Continued: The Beer Hall Putsch

Footnotes:

*He would later have to tone down the rhetoric, because of the heavy support to the party by wealthy industrialists and would only become the under-secretary to the minister of economics, when the future Nazi Party formed a government.

Sources:

1. Master of the Masses, Time Magazine, February 07, 1944

2. Hitler: Profiles in Power, by: Ian Kershaw, Longman House UK, 1991, ISBN: 0-582-08053-3, Pg. 21

Chapter Sixteen: The Makings of a Political Party

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

After the first world war, Adolf Hitler may have felt a sense of abandonment. Throughout the war years, he was at home in the military, but Germany's defeat left it's scars. He would have preferred to fight to the last man for the Fatherland.

Now a civilian employee with the German Army, his duties were to rout out dissidents to the new regime, but his heart wasn't it.

Eventually he joined a group of ex-soldiers called the Freikorps ("Free Corps") or "Iron Fists", a paramilitary organization with little sense of loyalty to the government of the day.

Another member of this rowdy bunch, was Rudolf Hess, though he claimed not to remember seeing Hitler at any of the meetings or excursions.

This wasn't unusual. Hitler was quite forgettable in the early days.

Hess was also a member of the Thule Society, though he didn't join the affiliated German Worker's Party (future Nazis) until May of 1920, after hearing Adolf Hitler speak.

By then the formerly sullen Adolf, had undergone his transformation at the hands of Dietrich Eckart, one of the most successful directors in Germany at the time. Speech lessons from Eckart and others experienced at elocution; his performances now took on a theatrical air. The resulting, almost hypnotic voice, was in part due the effects of the mustard gas, that meant he had to use extra force to get the words out. (1)

The photo above with his 'brown shirts', almost looks like a poster for a play, with exaggerated anger and staged positioning. You could envision them bursting through the facade, and breaking into a little soft shoe or sand slide with Eckart calling out "Brush back, Pull back, spank..."

Of course the end results of this movement was anything but a tap dance, as Adolf learned how to emote anger too well, and was no longer acting.

Below is just a small sampling of his theatrical speaking, though I'm sure most people are far too familiar with it already.



It might seem odd, comparing the rise of Adolf Hitler to the rise of neoconservatism, but it's important to remember that both Leo Strauss; the undisputed father of the movement, and Friedrich Hayek; the undisputed father of the associated Libertarian movement; were both directly affected by the Nazis.

Strauss actually wanted to join the party (during these days), but was turned away because he was Jewish. And Hayek after serving as director of the Austrian Institute in the late 1920's, before moving to the London School; decided not to return home because the Nazis then had control of Austria.

In his book The Road to Serfdom, that has become the Bible to free marketeers, like Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Stephen Harper; Hayek includes a chapter: "The Socialist Roots of Nazism." Adolf Hitler was part of his history.

Leo Strauss detested liberalism and claimed that he was not a conservative. So in that way, neoconservatism was perfect, because it was not liberal or conservative. It's principles are loosely based on a fascist model, that supports a centralized authority, censorship and "the will and ability to commit violence and wage war in order to keep the nation strong." (2)

The fact that Strauss suggested adding "religious fervour" to "control the ignorant masses", fits with the social conservative elements of William Aberhart and his Social Credit Party.

They all share a history whether we like it or not.

Chapter Sixteen Continued: Armed Intellectuals

Sources:

1. Der Fhehrer, Hitler's Rise to Power, By: Konrad Heiden, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1944, pg. 87

2. Ethics and political theory. By: Joseph Grcic, University of America, Inc, 2000. pg. 120

Chapter Fourteen Continued: A Star is Born

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

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.

The copy of the Protocols that Alfred Rosenberg brought back from Russia, included the version of the Antichrist, as laid down by Vladimir Soloviev, and interpreted by the alleged forger Sergei Nilus (The Great within the Small and Antichrist, an Imminent Political Possibility. Notes of an Orthodox Believer). And in it "Soloviev's Antichrist finally disappears in a battle against the desperate Jews, many of whom he had massacred before." (1)

Places Everyone

After speaking with Adolf, Dietrich Eckart was convinced that he had found the right person to 'act' as leader. He was an unknown, passionate about politics and had a huge ego*.

And the artist-prince believed that others now recognized the greatness, that he long knew he had.

Passed over for promotion in the army, on the grounds that he "lacked leadership qualities," it was that very lack of leadership qualities that would have appealed to the founders of the German Worker's Party. He was someone they could mould, and so long as they kept his ego fed, could manipulate.

And he had a strangeness about him that would appeal to the mystics in the Thule Society.

And while much has been written about Hitler's involvement with that society, with historians putting that notion to rest, I don't believe he would have qualified to join.

Members were affluent, influential people from Munich society: professors, noblemen, manufacturers, senior officials, businesspeople .... Those wishing to join had to complete a questionnaire and submit a photograph, which was examined for purity of race. The following ‘blood declaration’ also had to be filed: ‘The undersigned assures to the best of his knowledge and conscience that no Jewish or coloured blood flows through his veins or those of this wife and that there are no family members of coloured race among his forefathers ... (2)

Adolf's father was the illegitimate child of a peasant girl. His grandfather was a gypsy. He had no pedigree.

The Thule society was occult in nature, and engaged in symbolic rituals. There were several levels of membership, and while the agenda may have been different for many, they all had a common goal. Purity of the Aryan stock and a belief in the racist philosophy of Guido von List, which asserted the superiority of the Aryans, at least in their interpretations.

And everything that came to define the future Nazi Party, was drawn from that society. Their flag, their anthem and even the creation of their party leader.

Rehearse, Rehearse, Rehearse

Dietrich Eckart immediately introduced his find to his friends Alfred Rosenberg and Anton Drexler. They obviously approved, and now worked to transform the eager Hitler into the Antichrist of Soloviev's vision.

He already had the mustache, an obvious spiritual sign. But they must now make him athletic, seductive, a powerful speaker and a vegetarian**. But above all he had to be able to pull off omnipotent, if they were able to sell him to the affluent moneyed people of the Thule Society.

And the popular playwright and director, Ekart, used his skills to transform*** the former soldier, who looked like this when he enlisted:

To This

Chapter Fourteen Continued: Aberhart and Manning Find Their Antichrist

Footnotes:

*Hitler would sue his friend Hanisch, from his Vienna days, who was handling the sale of his artwork. He felt that a painting of his that Hanisch sold for ten kronen, was worth at least a hundred, and believed that he'd been cheated. Art critics now agree that it was definitely a ten kronen 'work of art.'

**Hitler's vegetarianism was only part of his created persona. He actually loved sausages, cavier and wild game. (3)

***One aspect of neoconservatism that is often overlooked is the practice of image politics. Political Science professor and author, Trevor Harrison, discusses in his book about Stockwell Day: Requiem For a Lightweight: Stockwell Day and Image Politics; how Conrad Black selected Day to run as leader of the Alliance Party. Day, who only had a high school education, was full of self-importance, had the right look and was virtually unknown outside of Alberta. Soon he was being introduced to the cream of society and speaking at $1,000.00 a plate fundraisers. But Black may have been unaware of his questionable past, that surfaced during the election campaign.

And of course the challenge with Stephen Harper was to change his appearance from this:

"Up until the writ for the 2006 election was dropped, Conservative Leader Stephen Harper was widely viewed outside his home province of Alberta as a sullen and condescending policy wonk. Many believe it was this image of a strident right-wing ideologue that helped seal his party's defeat in 2004. But in 2006, the voters saw a new and improved Harper, one who is more centrist, more polished, a party leader who has been made over both professionally and politically. Gone is the helmet hair-do. Gone is the petulant Harper with the legendary simmering temper..." (4)

All politicians, present and future, work to create a saleable image. But for Neocons, it's a religion. All part of the "noble lie".

Sources:

1. Young Hitler, By: Claus Hant, The Thule Society

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

3. Hitler: Neither Vegetarian Nor Animal Lover, By: Ryn Barry, Pythagorean Books, 2004

4. Stephen Harper: The next prime minister, CTV News, January 24, 2006

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