Movies About The Nazi Era

Google does a daily of what's being said and written about National Socialism. There are many interesting and peculiar comments floating around. I note, for instance, that many are still making movies about that dreadful 12 years of Hitler's reign, 1933-1945. Here's a link to some of them: http://bit.ly/dYEYh1

Hitler Exhibition Raises Questions About Mass Enthusiasm

Berlin exhibition views Hitler's hold on Germans - Forbes.com

How could it be? How did it happen that Adolf Hitler was able to obtain such a hold on the German people? This new exhibition does not answer the question. It raises it and helps the German people to discuss it. The German Historical Museum suggests that Hitler mobilized the social fears and hopes of Germans in the 1930's and used them for the Nazi party's political purposes. Nazi rule was based as much upon mass enthusiasm and agreement as upon force, murder and physical destruction.

Anyone looking at the Nazi rise to power in the 1930's must raise similar questions about mass enthusiasm for any politician seeking power. Many here in the U.S. are asking such questions about President Barack Obama's rise to the American presidency. This is not to suggest, of course, that Pres. Obama is a Nazi or that he is to be compared to Hitler. It is rather to suggest that all of us must maintain our objectivity amidst the enthusiastic embrace of any politician by the masses, regardless of race or political party.

The Inadequate Role Of The Church In Society

In human history there have always been those who opposed tyranny. Some opposed it out of  duty and love for country. Others acted out of faith in a God who loves all mankind. In the dozen years of Nazi domination in Germany (1933-45) there were those who gave their lives to resist for both reasons.

Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide, writes about The Restless Conscience, Ms. Hava Kohav Bellar's documentary of those who opposed Nazi rule.

"During the totalitarian rule of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich, opponents of the Nazis mounted various attempts to thwart the mad dictator's power throughout Europe. Yet arguably, none were as concentrated or impressive as the collective efforts of the resistance inside of Germany. Between 1933 and 1944, at least twenty such attempts materialized on German soil. While unsuccessful (many of the perpetrators received conviction in a 1944 trial), these attempts demonstrated a remarkable and inspiring core of integrity and courage among those who dared to speak for the truth. This nonfiction effort from Hava Kohav Beller - a 1991 Oscar nominee for Best Documentary - interweaves the personal accounts of those who participated in the said resistance, and details their subversive activities. More broadly, it reflects on the tension between a small number of proponents of human values and a widely-accepted regime that stood opposed to common decency and goodness."

The film does not adequately address several issues., like why outside powers like Great Britain and the United States were so unwilling to assist the resisters who came to them looking for help? The narration suggests that leaders of these countries either did not believe it politically expedient at the time or they did not trust those who approached them. This needs to be explored in more detail.

Another issue inadequately addressed is why Nazism was able to sweep across Germany so quickly and maintain its hold upon the populace and the military. One interviewee suggests that the Germans had little experience with democracy. Instead  the rule of kings, dukes and princes for over a thousand years had prepared them for the dictatorial rule of Adolph Hitler. So when the Fuehrer led them to prosperity and a renewed national pride they naturally fell in step behind him. This too needs to be studied in greater detail.

Beyond that, the film portrays the willingness of the Lutheran and Catholic churches to fall in behind Hitler. In that they failed miserably to be leaders of conscientious resistance to the Nazis' blatant and horrific murder of millions. The film only hints at why this was so. It does mention in some detail the resistance led by Dr. Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Confessional Church. Strangely it does not even mention Rev. Martin Niemoeller, founder of Emergency Pastoral League (Pfarrernotbund) in 1934 and then leader of the Confessional Church (Bekennende Kirche). Bonhoeffer was a founding member of the movement and very influential in helping the Confessional Church develop its theology.

Filmmaker Steven Martin explored complicity between church leaders and Adolf Hitler in a documentary film "Theologians Under Hitler." aired on PBS. The film is an adaptation of Robert Ericksen's 1986 book and has stirred a national discussion about the role of the church in society. That discussion continues to the present.

Where Is Bonhoeffer's Witness Today?

In his book about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Eric Metaxas writes that Bonhoeffer concluded it was "unequivocally the responsibility of the Christian church to help all Jews." Not only was this dramatic. It was revolutionary, because the Lutheran church in Nazi Germany had sold out to the philosophy that the Jews should be excluded from their fellowship because they were not of the Aryan race. At best, those Jews who were baptized Christians might have their own Jewish Christian church.

"Ignoring the protests of Bonhoeffer and other dissenting pastors, in 1933 the Lutheran Church had adopted a set of Aryan clauses. Non-Aryans and those married to non-Aryans were no longer to be ordained or offered positions in the church. 

Bonhoeffer immediately called for all dissenting pastors to resign and refused the parish that had been offered to him. He sent a statement to church leaders declaring that the Aryan clauses were in direct conflict with basic Christian doctrines. When he received no response, Bonhoeffer helped Martin Niemoller form the Pastors’ Emergency League, which eventually grew to 6,000 dissenting pastors and the Confessing church.

Bonhoeffer believed that at some point the church must act against the state to stop it from perpetrating evil like the state's antisemitism and the murder of the mentally and physically handicapped. "This action is permitted only when the church sees its very existence threatened by the state as defined by God. Bonhoeffer added that this condition exists if the state forces the exclusion of baptized Jews from our Christian congregations or in the prohibition of our mission to the Jews."

Such thinking ultimately led Bonhoeffer to participate in a modification of Hitler's Operation Valkyrie. This was the unsuccessful plot to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1943.

"At the end of 1943 the Schutzstaffel (SS) and the Gestapo managed to arrest several Germans involved in plotting to overthrow Adolf Hitler. This included Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Klaus Bonhoeffer, Josef Mueller and Hans Dohnanyi. Others under suspicion like Wilhelm Canaris and Hans Oster were dismissed from office in January, 1944.

"Major Claus von Stauffenberg now emerged as the leader of the group opposed to Nazi rule. In 1942, he had decided to kill Adolf Hitler. He was joined in the plot by Wilhelm Canaris, Carl Goerdeler, Julius Leber, Ulrich Hassell, Hans Oster, Peter von Wartenburg, Henning von Tresckow, Friedrich Olbricht, Werner von Haeften, Fabian Schlabrendorft, Ludwig Beck and Erwin von Witzleben."

Ultimately some 6,000 Germans were executed after the July plot. Bonhoeffer, then 39 years old, was among them. Because Bonhoeffer was considered a possible source of information, he was kept alive for some time after the attempt. Hitler only ordered his execution after defeat for Germany became inevitable. Bonhoeffer was hanged at the Flossenbürg Concentration Camp on April 9, 1945.

All this raises many questions for the modern church in a world still dominated by racial discrimination, violence, hatred, deception and killing. Thank God there are still those willing to join Bonhoeffer in publicly witnessing against such evils.

Vatican Ratlines For Nazis After WW II

Only recently have I learned about the escape routes for Nazis and other fascists at the end of WW II. The word 'ratlines' refers to rats climbing the lines of a sinking sailboat's mast. It would be the last escape route before the ship sunk. So it was for many Nazis. 

I recently read the hard cover edition of  Unholy Trinity: The Vatican, The Nazis, and The Swiss Banks [Paperback] - Head-spinning documentation of how Vatican immunity shielded Nazi war criminals from just punishment--and unwittingly aided the Communist cause. - By Mark Aarons, an Australian expert on Nazi fugitives and John Loftus (The Belarus Secret, 1982), former chief prosecutor of the Justice Department's Nazi War Crimes Unit.

Further online comments include:

• It is now public knowledge that war criminals  like Klaus Barbie, Adolf Eichmann, Heinrich Mueller, Franz Stangl and a whole list of other war criminals escaped war torn Europe via the Catholic Church. Most of these men escaped through the work of one man, a Roman Catholic Bishop named Alois Hudal, Rector of the Pontificio Santa Maria dell’ Anima. "During the war Hudal served as Commissioner or the Episcopate for German speaking Catholics in Italy, as well as Father Confessor to Rome’s German community." [2] Hudal harbored anti-Semitic feelings and his pro Nazi stance was well known throughout the Catholic community. During Hitler’s rule, Bishop Hudal often spoke about the unity between the Catholic Church and the Nazi government.

• Ratlines were systems of escape routes for Nazis and other fascists fleeing Europe at the end of World War II. These escape routes mainly led toward havens in South America, particularly Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, and Chile. Other destinations included the United States and perhaps Canada and the Middle East. There were two primary routes: the first went from Germany to Spain, then Argentina; the second from Germany to Rome to Genoa,  then South America; the two routes "developed independently" but eventually came together to collaborate.

• Pope Paul VI was connected says Haareetz: "It is possible that within a short time a court in the United States will prohibit the publication of the account before us. In the meantime, Haaretz has obtained the testimony given last month by William Gowen, a former intelligence officer in the United States Army, at a federal court in San Francisco. The testimony contains historical and political explosives. It links Giovanni Battista Montini, who later became Pope Paul VI, to the theft of property of Jewish, Serb, Russian, Ukrainian and Roma victims during World War II in Yugoslavia."

I leave you to do your own searching. . . and commenting.

What To Do With Hate—What Germans Did Not Do In The Nazi Era

Hate is a very intense emotion. It means to have a passionate dislike for and a strong aversion to someone or something. Like the majority of people, I hate what Adolf Hitler and the National Socialists of German did to millions of Jews, Gypies, Poles, homosexuals, etc. during the dozen years of their rule. How is it that millions of Aryan Germans could overlook what was happening in their country under the Nazi regime?

Fritz Stern, Five Germanys I Have known, writes about German doctors being early and enthusiastic Nazis. Of one such, a former colleague of his Jewish father, he writes,

Even if the man felt a twinge of shame, he was merely following a pervasive German habit of the time: one chose not to see, one didn't see, one didn't want to know. Zivilcourage—meaning civil courage, an excellent German word but not a German practice—grew ever rarer (p. 97).

A bit later, he writes about Germany of the 1930s,

Germany had an air of uniformed normality: the political opposition had been imprisoned and silenced; economic conditions had improved; every success was pompously celebrated as public triumph (p. 104).

The Pueblo, N.M. Chieften's chief managing editor, Steve Henson, asks "What will it take for us to stop hating?" In his conclusion to a July 18, 2010 post, he writes:

We should not insist, "Our president (Obama), right or wrong." But we should insist on this: "This is our president. We may disagree, we may oppose his policies, but he is our president, and we will respect the office and help the president in efforts to improve our country. And if we disagree with the president and his policies, we will support another candidate of our choice.

For those who prefer to hate, then perhaps it's time to get a reality check and travel the world. Learn how truly wonderful our country is, how fortunate we are to live here.

How no matter to what degree we disagree with our president or other elected officials, their intentions—to serve the people, to improve our way of life—is for the most part noble and deserves our support. Not blind support, but support nonetheless.

Earlier in the article he wrote, "To compare our president—any president; doesn't matter if his name is Reagan, Clinton, Bush or Obama — to Hitler is unpatriotic and hateful."

It seems we face the same dilemma as the Depression era Germans. How does one successfully separate policies from the person? How can you respect the office and yet strongly disagree with what the man in the office is doing? How can you support our president when you do not believe his intentions are noble nor that he wants to serve the people and improve our way of life?

In Nazi Germany most Protestant (read Lutheran) clergy and congregations had long fostered a hatred of Jews. They clamored for an elimination of any acknowledgment of the Judaic origins of Christianity. Ultimately thousands of them compromised their theology and historic Christian teachings. They embraced the Nazi version of the German religion. Only a relatively few pastors in the Confessing Church ever publicly stood against Nazism's substitution of race for religion. Many of these clergy were imprisoned. One notable Lutheran pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, was hanged shortly before the war's end for his part in the conspiracy to kill Hitler.

We Americans must think carefully about this history. It is probably not possible to separate the man from his policies, especially in public life. We know a man by his fruits, his policies. Once again, hatred is an intense emotional response to and a passionate dislike for a person and/or his policies. To suggest that we should—or are even able to—eliminate such feelings is naive. The more important issue is what any of us DO with such emotional energy. In this democracy we still have some power to bring about change, to unseat politicians embracing and promoting what we consider hateful policies. We still have the power to vote in leaders who will change laws and policies we intensely dislike, yes even hate. Because of their inbred passivity and conformity many, many Germans lost that opportunity once National Socialism had thrown out the democratic policies, parties, laws and constitution of the Weimar Republic. Their time to act was gone. Our time still remains.

Jewish Citizenship Reversed by Nazis

Nazis had a twisted view of race. The 'race' they despised the most was the Jewish. It was their prime objective to cleanse the world of this despised race and make certain that the rulers of the world were the Aryans. To understand this, one must return to the nineteenth century when restrictions against Jews were somewhat lifted.

In January, 1782, Austrian Emperor Joseph II enacted the Edict of Tolerance. The new law's main objective was to bring the Jewish subjects into the realm's economic life. Jews were granted access to public education, job training and higher education. At the same time "Jewish language and writing" was to be abolished. All books and official documents were to be in German. In 1787 each Jew was to adopt a firm, German surname. No more Hebrew names. All given names were to be "Germanized" as well.

One German state after another followed the Austrian example.  Frederick William of Prussia declared Jews to be "his national subjects and citizens" in an Edict of March 11, 1812. Employment at state offices was, however, forbidden, as was lecturing at universities. Not even all Prussian territories were included in William's Edict.

Because of such new laws many Jews converted to Christianity and married Christians. Conversion granted access to full rights and professions and less discrimination. The majority of the converts were well educated, members of the middle-class. Some of them became famous poets, musicians and socialites. Nevertheless many of the German nobility did not welcome former Jews into their social networks.

Ahnen Passport

Hitler and the National Socialists were well aware that many such conversions had taken place and had been recorded in the churches' books. This was why Germans were all required to prove their Aryan background in their Ahnen Pass, their "passport of ancestors," and prove that at least three generations of ancestors were Aryan on both parents' sides. If a convert was discovered in any record, he was no longer considered Aryan and became subject to the same fate as those who were still openly Jewish.

The Hindu-Aryan Myth of Savitri Devi

The whole terrible Nazi experience had many oddities, and Savitri Devi, a relatively unknown woman, is one of them. Born in France in 1905 as Maximiani Portas, the daughter of a Greek father and an English mother. She became a Greek national in 1928. She was attracted to the Greek Orthodox Church and Byzantine culture, but soon became more interested in paganism and pantheism, with strong anti-Semitic prejudices. 

She left for India in 1932 at the age of 27, in search of the roots of the Aryan civilization. Following the lead of people like Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and many other pseudo-scientific teachers, she regarded Hinduism as the only living Aryan heritage in the modern world, superior to all other religions. She adopted the name Savitri Devi and accepted India as her home. Convinced that she could rediscover a living Aryan world only in contemporary India, she championed the cause of Hindu nationalism and a neo-Nazi cult.  She lived and worked in Calcutta and called Hitler her idol. She admired the Brahmins, India's highest caste, whom she saw as a pure race. By the late 1930s she was involved with Hindu nationalist movements like the Hindu Mahasabha. 

N. Goodrick-Clarke  notes: “For Savitri Devi, Hinduism was the custodian of the Aryan and Vedic heritage down through the centuries, the very essence of India. In her opinion, Hinduism was the sole surviving example of that Indo-European paganism once common to all the Aryan nations” (Hitler's Priestess, p.44).

After the war Devi traveled through a devastated Europe and was a vocal apologist of the Nazis, regardless of the horrendous things they had done. Her early writings were republished by far-right-wing publishers, and she gained new fans in the 1970s as neo-Nazism spread. Devi died in 1982, but her combination of Hindu religion and Nordic racial ideology became "a bridge between neo-Nazism and the New Age" movements

Her numerous writings are available online at the Savitri Devi Archive.

_________________________

My primary scource for this article is Hitler's Priestess: Savitri Devi, the Hindu-Aryan Myth, and Neo-Nazism  by N Goodrick-Clarke.


For more on Savitri Devi's continued influence consult Goodrck-Clarke, The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology.
 

Fragility of Freedom and Nazi History

Today I ordered Fritz Stern's book: Five Germany's I Have Known. I look forward to reading it with great interest, especially since Stern and I are both from the same generation. With the help of Amazon's
click to look inside, I came across the following comment from page two of the Introduction:

Decades of study and experience have persuaded me that the German roads to perdition, including National Socialism, were neither accidental or inevitable. National Socialism had deep roots, and yet its growth could have been arrested. I was born into a world on the cusp of avoidable disaster. And I came to realize that no country is immune to the temptations of pseudo-religious movements of repression such as those to which Germany succumbed. The fragility of freedom is the simplest and deepest lesson of my life and work. And when an unvarnished picture of the past, always indispensable, seemed difficult, I recalled Ernst Reuter's great credo of 1913: "The fate of democracy rests on faith in history." 

Do you see why I want to read and even re-read Stern's book? I am concerned about my own country and the roads to perdition we are following. I do not believe we have followed those roads to disaster—yet—but I am aware and want others to be aware of the "fragility of freedom" in our nation.

In future blogs I'd like to follow Stern and others to ponder lessons we can learn from Germany's disastrous march down the roads that led them to declare themselves National Socialists—better known as Nazis. 

Most American and European Jews Are Not Israelites

I read recently that the Jews of Israel are mostly not descended from the twelve sons of Jacob/Israel. For some reason, I was still following 19th and early 20th century views of race. As you know, the Nazis were committed to developing the master race, the Aryans, and were dead set upon eliminating the Jewish race. But most European Jews were Caucasian, not racially different from the Nazis themselves!

My source for this astounding conclusion is Arthur Koestler's book, The Thirteenth Tribe . Koestler explains that Eastern Europe's Jewish population, largely decimated by the Nazi onslaught during the World War II,  were descended from a a tribe known as the Khazars. They were converted to Judaism by their king as a way of balancing their position between the Christian Byzantine Empire on the east and the Muslims on their western and southern borders. When their empire collapsed they immigrated to and settled in Hungary, Poland and Germany, bringing their Jewish faith with them.

This means that the European Jews came from the Caucasus region (southern Russia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkey). Genetically, they are more closely related to the Hun, Uigar and Magyar tribes than to the seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. These folks are known today as Ashkenazic Jews.

The site Judaism 101 seems to ignore this history, preferring to go no deeper than the fact that there were Jews in France, Germany, and Eastern Europe. That site says, 

"Ashkenazic Jews are the Jews of France, Germany, and Eastern Europe and their descendants . . . The word "Ashkenazic" is derived from the Hebrew word for Germany. The word "Sephardic" is derived from the Hebrew word for Spain. The word "Mizrachi" is derived from the Hebrew word for Eastern."

In later Blogs I'll explore further the views on race promoted in the years leading up to Nazism. 

Nazi Twins in Brazil

Here's a quote from the January, 2009 Telegraph.Co.Uk. about Dr. Joseph Mengele:

"The steely hearted "Angel of Death", whose mission was to create a master race fit for the Third Reich, was the resident medic at Auschwitz from May 1943 until his flight in the face of the Red Army advance in January 1945.

His task was to carry out experiments to discover by what method of genetic quirk twins were produced – and then to artificially increase the Aryan birthrate for his master, Adolf Hitler.

"Now, a historian claims, Mengele's notorious experiments may have borne fruit.

"For years scientists have failed to discover why as many as one in five pregnancies in a small Brazilian town have resulted in twins – most of them blond haired and blue eyed.

"But residents of Candido Godoi now claim that Mengele made repeated visits there in the early 1960s, posing at first as a vet but then offering medical treatment to the women of the town.
"Shuttling between Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil, he managed to evade justice before his death in 1979, but his dreams of a Nazi master race appeared unfulfilled.

"In a new book, Mengele: the Angel of Death in South America, the Argentine historian Jorge Camarasa, a specialist in the post-war Nazi flight to South America, has painstakingly pieced together the Nazi doctor's mysterious later years."

However, Ursula Matte of the medical genetics unit at Porto Alegre Hospital in Brazil and her colleagues reject any notion that Mengele was responsible for the phenomenon. She says that other factors may explain the phenomenon, especially since the area was settled by German immigrants and there has been a high level of inbreeding.

That aside, it all makes me wonder how many Nazis made it to Brazil or any other South American country toward the end of WW II. Cecil Adams tells us that the true story has never been told. He suggests that thousands of Nazis may have escaped with the help of members of the Catholic Church, Argentina's president Peron and other high placed people. 

Frederick Forsythe wrote a popular novel about a Nazi organization in Brazil, The Odessa Files. In the book the suicide of an elderly German Jew explodes into revelation after revelation of a Mafia-like organization called Odessa. This secret group (the name is an acronym for Organization der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen, "Organization of Former SS Members") supposedly used stashed war booty and connections in high places to spirit Nazi big shots out of reach of the Allies.

All this and more suggests that the Nazis lost WW II, but they and their descendants are still around.

Atlantis, Nazis, Brazil and Other Strange Tales

I finished David Gran's interesting tale about British explorer Percy Fawcett's obsession to find the lost city of Z somewhere along the Amazon River in South America back in the years before and after WW I. The book is The Lost City of Z: a tale of deadly obsession in the Amazon. Most everyone believes that he and his son died in 1925 in the jungles, but not everyone. And that's what interested me, especially as this tale has a connection with the Nazi's Third Reich.

I've mentioned elsewhere on this blog the influence Madame Blavatsky had upon early 20th century Europeans. Gran points out that she practiced the arts of a medium, claiming to be a conduit for a brotherhood of reincarnated Tibetan mahatmas. As I also indicated, she claimed that the Tibetans were descendants of the very old Atlanteans and that's where the Nazis come in, especially because they believed themselves to be descended from those wise and very ancient priests, the Aryans, who escaped from Atlantis when it sunk into the sea thousands of years ago.

Percy Fawcett's older brother, Edward, converted to Buddhism and aligned himself with the religious leaders of India and Ceylon to oppose British rule. Edward, who had been a child prodigy, helped Blavatsky to research and write her 1893 magnum opus, The Secret Doctrine.  That work is still read and admired by occultists and new age religionists. And now the plot thickens.

Deep in the Amazon jungles of central Brazil are the Roncador Mountains. There are mystics who believe that Fawcett's lost city of Z was not above, but rather underground. It is a great city built by the Atlanteans even before they escaped into them from the sinking continent off the coast of Brazil. Dr. Raymond Bernard in The Hollow Earth tells us that a resident of Brazil believes there are mysterious tunnels in great number in the Roncador Mountains of northwest Mato Grosso. Colonel Fawcett was last seen heading toward them. And very likely—maybe more than likely—he found the entrance to these tunnels and disappeared into them.

You see an ancient Guatemalan manuscript the Popul Vuh, seems to describe the destruction of Atlantis, that great continent off the eastern coast of Brazil. One of the South American colonies of Atlantis was probably the land called Brazil, a name that land bore thousands of years before the arrival of the Portuguese. In fact, the name Brazil was known to the old Irish Celts as Hy-Brazil. Could this mythical land of Brazil, the Isle of the Living, the land of joy, fair women and apples, be indeed this colony of the sunken continent, as Morris West suggests as he writes about "the blessed stormless isle, where all men are good and all the women pure and where God retreats for a recreation from the rest of us"?

If you follow this line of thinking then the Incas of Peru are the late inheritors of the remains of the civilization of the Atlantean imperial colony of Hy-Brazil. Peru is not a native Peruvian tongue word, it's not found in the Quichua language. The word means the god of the sun. All this speculation comes from books by Lewis Spence, published about the same time that Fawcett disappeared. Read The Problem of Atlantis and the History of Atlantis.

Concluding thoughts: Fawcett found a great subterranean city with Atlanteans still living in it. Some of that great race also escaped to Tibet. Don't go looking for this place yourself, however. It is guarded by fierce, dark-skinned warriors of great physical strength, the Chavantes Indians. But if you do and if you are able to get past them into the ancient city, you just may find Colonel Fawcett and his son Jack, or at least their remains.

I wonder if this might be woven into a novel one day? I wonder . . . Also makes one wonder why so many Nazis ended up in South America and Brazil. We'll have to pursue this another day.

Hitler's Nostradamus

Erik Jan Hanussen, was known for a time as Hitler's Nostradamus and as the Prophet of the Third Reich. He was born Herschmann Chaim Steinschneider on June 2, 1889 in a Viennese jail cell to a Jewish father who was an actor and caretaker of a synagogue. Hanussen quit school to join the circus. In the circus he developed his showman skills as a knife thrower, fire eater and strong man. 

As a soldier in World War I Hanussen first began to demonstrate his psychic abilities. At one point, his company was cut off from its supply of water, and the troops were becoming desperate. Hanussen, without the use of a divining rod or any other apparatus, successfully dowsed water for his comrades. His entertainment background and charismatic personality eventually got him a transfer to perform for the troops.

When the war was over, Hanussen further developed his stage act as a clairvoyant and mentalist, performing at music halls across Germany and surrounding countries. During one of his shows he revealed unknown details about a local murderer. This feat brought him much public attention. Many suspect now that Hanussen had a confederate at the newspaper or the police department that fed him the information.

Read more about Hanussen's rise to fame and his connection to the Nazi party in Hitler’s Prophet By Stephen Wagner. 

In the early 1930s Hanussen founded a tabloid empire that blended occult belief with radical politics. German Communist journalists revealed the clairvoyant's Jewish origins. Since he was not a pure Aryan, he was murdered in April, 1933 on the orders of Nazi Sturm Abteilung (SA) officers who owed him money. 1933 was the same year Hitler came to power.

Erik Jan Hanussen 

Berkeley professor Mel Gordon has written a fascinating account of Hanussen's activities, many names and many lovers, with excerpts from Hanussen's writings. His book, Erik Jan Hanussen: Hitler's Jewish Clairvoyant was published 2001.

Invincible is a 2001 film, based on the true story of Zishe Breitbart, a Jewish blacksmith's son from Poland who becomes a sensation in Weimar, Berlin as a mythical strongman. His employer, Hanussen, dreams of establishing an all-powerful Ministry of the Occult in Hitler's government. Yet as Hitler's hold on power grows more sure, and Berlin erupts in a ferment of anti-Semitism, Zishe must decide how he will use his strength. Plagued by nightmares, he takes counsel from a local rabbi. He becomes convinced that he has been chosen by God to warn his people of the grave danger they face. The script was written by Sujit R. Varma.

Nazi attitudes toward the occult were mixed and varied. Many astrology conferences were held in Nazi Germany until 1934, when the Nazis officially banned fortune telling. This made the publication of any almanacs and astrological journals illegal. See Hitler's Germany and Astrology.

FDR's First 100 Days

My three novels are set in the decade of the Great Depression. From 1933 and on into WW II Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) was president of the United States. There is so much about Franklin Delano Roosevelt on the Internet that it boggles my mind! Apparently many of us are interested in that very fascinating man. Roosevelt pioneered the 100-day standard for gauging presidential effectiveness.

In the days of the Great Depression the people of our nation were praying and believing that FDR would be the new Teddy Roosevelt Rough Rider that would take them out of the deep problems the nation was facing.  Many cartoons from that era portray that belief. Here is a sample:

The first 100-day gauge has been applied to U.S. presidents ever since.

The Uniqueness of Nazi Antisemitism

What are the unique roots of Nazi antisemitism? Professor Yehuda Bauer, Director of the International Center for Holocaust Studies of Yad Vashem, made some generalizations about the uniqueness of Nazi antisemitism over a dozen years ago in Jerusalem.

1. 
   

   The Holocaust is a genocide of special and unprecedented type. The word genocide was coined by Raphael Lemkin, a refugee Polish-U.S. Jewish lawyer in 1942. While genocides are planned attempts to destroy ethnic or racial groups, the Holocaust was a radical attempt to annihilate every single member of the Jewish race.

2. 
   

   The Holocaust was purely ideological. The Nazis imagined an international Jewish conspiracy to control the world (think "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion").  More on the fictitious Protocols another time. Other genocides have had practical motivations.

3. 
   

   The Holocaust was not geographically limited. Since the Nazis fully intended to rule the world, directly or through allies, Jews around the world were to be hunted down and exterminated.

4. 
   

   The Nazis were looking for all Jews. Persons with three or four Jewish grandparents were sentenced to death for the crime of having been born. 

5. 
   

   The Holocaust dehumanized the perpetrators and humiliated the victims.

6. 
   

   In Nazi thinking all humanity was to be reorganized. The so-called Aryan race, they believed, was destined to dominate the world. All other races or social groups were to be either abolished or subordinated.

7. 
   

   Finally, to accomplish this Nazis combined the ideology with modern technology and record keeping. Ultimately, this combination made it possible to exterminate 2/3 of European Jewry in less than a decade, together with millions of Slavic and other peoples.

The roots of Nazi antisemitic ideology are to be found, no doubt, in the rebirth of Nordic paganism, or the Nordic Religion. In this view the Aryan race has always been the master race. It is the will of the gods.


Connected to this, in his 2006 argument Pope Benedict claimed that the "ultimate Nazi target" was the Christian church. If the tap root of the Christian faith, i.e. Judaism, could be torn up, the church might also be destroyed, he said.

This statement seems to ignore the nearly two millenia-long antisemitic hatred sponsored by many within the Christian Church who maintained that the Jews were responsible for rejecting and murdering their long-awaited Messiah. Since the Jews asked that Jesus blood be upon them and their children (Matt.27:24-25), let it be so. Their old covenant has been superseded by the New Covenant in Christ.

Related to this issue is the Roman Catholic Church's more recent affirmation of the permanent integrity of God's ancient covenant with the Jewish people.  Many scholars, including some Lutheran, have insisted that this is so and are calling for Christians to reevaluate their relationship to the Jewish people.

These issues must be explored in greater detail another time.

As Long As There Are Jews There Will Always Be Nazis

"Solange es Juden gibt, wird es immer Nazis geben" 

(As long as there are Jews there will always be Nazis)

"A Jew is a citizen of no country except Israel" 

"Waarom leef ik" (Why am I alive?)

—comments written in the Anne Frank museum guestbook, Amsterdam and quoted by Mark Kurlansky in A Chosen Few: The Resurrection of European Jewry.

Anne Frank

My one and only visit to the Anne Frank museum in Amsterdam took place back in 1971. My wife, children and I were touring the Netherlands, Germany, France and Italy in a rented VW bus. To stand in that place where this little Jewish family hid from the Nazis filled me with deep sorrow and anguish. It put flesh and blood to the story of Nazi fanatical hatred. It was such a troubling experience for me that I had to cut the visit short. Tears choked my throat and eyes as we walked down the stairs and back to the street.

To this day, now nearly forty years later, I cannot put my mind around how any group of people, any nation, any government could harbor such hatred and fear. It does not make rational sense, but then why should it? The only explanation I can find for the Nazi decade, the years during which I was born and began to grow toward manhood, is to accept the fact of evil, evil so deep as to go far beyond comprehension. The more I study—and write—about that era, the more I am convicted by the insights of Jesus and his apostles. Listen to them:

"...our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms" (Ephesians 6:12).

"When I was with you day after day in the temple, you did not lay hands on me. But this is your hour, and the power of darkness" ( Jesus when captured in the Garden - Luke 22:53).

"He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son" (Colossians 1:13).

Jesus and his apostles teach us that everything about darkness and this dark world is opposed to light. They also teach that this is power, not power in the sense of electricity or steam or hydrogen, etc., but power that reaches into the human psyche to fill it with darkness. We view the power of that darkness in the rise and destruction of Nazism. No war in all human history destroyed so many human lives, both civilian and military. Estimates run to as high as 60 million, an astounding and unbelievable number.

But why? I will not attempt to probe the depths of that question, but instead, in  the days ahead, will focus on antisemitism and share some of what my research suggests about why the Nazis hated Jews so deeply and attempted to exterminate them all from the face of the earth.

Nazi Links to Antisemitism's Long History

In  my novel, Freya's Child, Hulda Schwarz, the devoted Nazi priestess of the Nordic goddess Freya, makes it very clear that she believes the religion of the Jews—and the Christians—must be replaced with the religion of the northern gods. In that she reflects the well-known antisemitism of the Nazi regime and the resulting annihilation of millions in Nazi death camps. As indicated in my previous Blog, what is not known so well is the strong connection between the Nazis and many adherents of the Muslim faith, both in the middle-east and elsewhere.

Anyone interested in a deeper understanding of that connection would do well to read the book I cited, Icon of Evil, as well as some others, for instance

• Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World  - Jeffrey Herf 
• The Nazi Connection to Islamic Terrorism: Adolf Hitler and Haj Amin al-Husseini - Chuck Morse
• Mufti of Jerusalem - Moshe Perlman

The books themselves are of varied quality and value. However, what they all make clear is that el Husseini is the 20th century grandfather and progenitor of an ongoing antisemitism among Arab extremists to the present. In that hatred these Muslims and the Nazis found common ground. For further background consult

• The Jewish Agency for Israel and their links. Also
• Palestine Facts

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has its own take on the history of antisemitism during the decade of the 1930s. It also has valuable links outlining the 2,000 year-long history of antisemitism from the beginning of the Christian era to the present. This site suggests that Christian leaders taught that all Jews were responsible for the crucifixion of Christ, the destruction of  the Temple by the Romans and their own scattering. This hatred was fostered and continued most especially in Christian Europe up to the Nazi era. Simple To Remember has a time-line of widespread Jewish persecution across the two millennia, especially in Europe.

Nazis and Al Qaeda

Icon of Evil: Hitler's Mufti and the Rise of Radical Islam

By David G. Dalin, John F. Rothmann

 Fascinating read. I did not realize the close link between this radical Muslim leader and Adolf Hitler. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, was a radical anti-semitist and strongly supported Hitler's programs. Tens of thousands of Soviet Muslims joined SS legions and al-Husayni encouraged them.

Also check out this War Crimes Investigator who Says Al Qaeda was spawned from the Nazi Third Reich: “Al Qaeda is the direct lineal descendant of the Arab Nazis of the Muslim Brotherhood"

Here's another quote from that website:

• “Saudi Wahhabism is to Islam as the KKK is to Christianity,” Loftus said. “It’s an extreme and perverted form of religion that was condemned as a heresy by Islam more than 60 times before the 1900s.”
  
  “Here is this corrupt cult and all of a sudden the school teachers are Nazis. Here a fusion is born between the two. Schools of hatred were built all over Saudi Arabia,” Loftus said.
   
• A well known pupil of these schools is Osama bin Laden, Loftus said. Bin Laden and other graduates of the schools were inducted into an underground neo-Nazi Wahhabi army for Saudi Arabia." 

There is lots more information on the web about Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem 1921-1948.

Nazi Werewolves

The Wolfsangel (wolf's hook) is a very interesting rune used by the Nazis. It does not belong to any runic tradition. Wolfsangel was a device used to trap wolves. Many also believed it to have the magical power to ward off werewolves. It can be aligned either vertically or horizontally. 

 In Nazi Germany the Wolfsangel was used by the SS, the Sturmabtelung, the Hitlerjugend and a group known as the Werwölfe (Werewolves). In modern Germany the use of the symbol is illegal if a connection with one of the Neo-Nazi organizations is apparent. This is directly related to what happened following the defeat of the Nazis by Allied troops.

Following the end of World War II, Nazi guerillas, called Werewolfs, carried out guerilla actions. The Werewolves were an underground organization of die-hard SS officers who terrorized both military and civilian targets. The movement, founded by Heinrich Himmler in 1944, helped to delay the first democratic election under occupation until 1947.

Nazi Runes of Life and Death

Here are four more runes used by the Nazis.



The first, the Algiz (possibly "elk"), known also as the Leben or life rune, was adopted by the SS to symbolize protection for their Lebensborn Eingetragener Verein, or Fountain Of Life Society, which ran maternity homes. Germany's birthrate had been dropping, so in 1935 Himmler encouraged the SS and Wehrmacht officers to impregnate true Aryan women who would grow up to lead the Nazi-Aryan nation. The children born were then given to the SS to raise and educate.

The SS transformed these nurseries into meeting places for racially pure German women who wanted to meet and have children with the racially pure SS officers. Since these mothers were often unwed they needed to have a home and the means to bear their Nazi children in safety and comfort.
Read more about this disastrous Lebensborn program in the Jewish Virtual Library. The SS used this rune on documents and graves to show date of birth.

Upended this rune becomes the Toten or death rune, and was used on documents and graves to show date of death. The rune is really a crow's foot and was an ancient symbol of death and despair. This particular symbol, with a circle around it, is also called the peace symbol in some circles.

Two other runes, the Opfer and the Eif runes, mirror one another. The first symbolizes self-sacrifice. The second symbolizes zeal and enthusiasm. As an aside, Opfer der Vergangeheit (victims of the past), was a Nazi propaganda film made in 1937 to depict horrific images of the mentally ill and promote support for Hitler's euthanasia policy. This policy predated the Holocaust by approximately two years. It was an effort to restore racial "integrity" to the German nation and to eliminate "life unworthy of life." These were individuals with severe psychiatric, neurological or physical disabilities who represented both a genetic and a financial burden upon German society.

The Opfer rune was also used by Der Stahlhelm (steel helmet) war veterans' association, founded after WW I as a political combat group, as well as on a badge commemorating the Nazis who perished during the 1923 Munich Putsch. After 1933 the Stahlhelm was absorbed into the Nazi party.

It's opposite is the Eif rune, insignia of the specially chosen SS Adjutants assigned to guard Adolph Hitler. Prominent among them was Rudolf Hess, deputy Fuehrer and number three man in Hitler's Germany after Goering. In 1923 Hess took part in Hitler's failed Munich Putsch and was arrested and imprisoned along with Hitler in Landsberg. While in prison he took dictation for Hitler's infamous Mein Kampf and made some editorial suggestions about the Lebensraum (living space) program. Following Hitler's rise to power in 1933 the SS divided into two: the Waffen-SS, which comprised the military wing, and the Allgemeine-SS. The Allgemeine-SS had a wide-ranging effect on life. Allgemeine-SS had control of life in Nazi Germany, from enforcing Hitler’s racial policies to the running of over 500 factories in Germany and occupied Europe. While the more visible armed SS combat units, the Waffen-SS, naturally received all the publicity, especially during the war, it was the rather faceless Allgemeine-SS which wielded the real power.

Nationalism—Nazi Style

The Nazis made wide use of Nordic runes. My primary reference is The Viking Rune symbols and the Third Reich. Today I take up their use of the Odal-Rune. 

The Odal-Rune was the symbol for the Blut und Boden (Blood and Soil) ideology. This is far more than getting back to the land and country life, the idea of a German people on a German land. It moves into a "sort of mystical bond between the land and the soul of the people." Read more about this concept in the article on Blood & Soil.

The Nazis were committed to the "Germanization" of Europe with Aryan people, the "Thulians" of ancient Atlantis. Nazi leaders believed in a historical Thule or Hyperborea as the ancient origin of the true Aryan race. The history of Thule was revealed in a supposedly ancient book.

Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, favored this 19th century book, the Oera Linda Book, found by Cornelius Over de Linden. This manuscript was  handed down from one generation to another in the Over de Linden family. It was translated into German in 1933. The earliest portion of the book was supposedly composed in 2194 BC. It also mentions Atland or Atlantis, the continent submerged in 2193 BC.

As a side, the modern day Norroena Society continues the traditions of this worldview. Among their goals they speak of re-establishing the twelve fundamentals of Odin's culture and making cutting edge research on the Odinist faith available, unfettered by the Christian biases and restraints of mainstream academia.

The Odal rune was the emblem of the Waffen-SS (the combat arm of the SS) division Prinz Eugen. It was also used by Reichs Bauernschaft and the Hitlerjugend (the Hitler Youth - a paramilitary organization).

This symbol is but another reminder of the deep commitment of the Nazis to replace Christianity in Europe with the ancient Nordic/Aryan religion.

Nazi Death's Head - Wedding Rings

This is the third in a series of studies on the Nazi use of Nordic runes. My initial reference, as before, is Nordic Symbols and the Third Reich. Let's take a look at the Hagall Rune.

By the way, there are those yet who believe that the runes have magical power to harness the "cosmic energies of creation." Check out Rune Masters International.

The star form of this rune is "characteristic of the Younger Futhark. The Hagall means 'hail'. In the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc this sign is called iar, and sounds the same as the Younger Futhark Hagall, but uses a different form.

The Nazis used the Hagall rune in the design of the SS-Ehrenring (SS honor or death's head ring). Himmler said, "The swastika and the Hagall-Rune represent our unshakable faith in the ultimate victory of our philosophy." The Nazis also used the ring as part of the SS wedding ceremony.

Here is the image of a rare Nazi death ring available from 24dash.com. 

Here is a Nazi Honor Ring available through iOffer.com

Note the date on the inside, as well as a cross image. 

As I look at these rings I wonder how it must have felt to wear such a ring as a symbol of marriage. Did both man and wife wear similar rings? I'll try to find that out one day. 

If you'd like a copy of such a ring you can go to PzG-Your Third Reich Headquarters. There are resources for hobbyists interested in all things related to the Third Reich. 

And finally, here is a photo from the German propaganda archive of a "wedding hall" in the small town of Thalheim. The quote "The family is the smallest but most important unit in building the whole state structure" is on the wall. Hitler's photo is in the center with the Nazi Eagle and Swastika above and below. 

                        

As this site says, "The Nazis wanted to replace Christian rites of baptism, marriage and death with their own rituals." 

The Nazi Sig Rune and The Swastika

We move now into the second of the rune symbols used by the Nazis. Again I'm relying upon the help of Viking Rune to guide us into this study.

The Sig-Rune looks like a lightning bolt. It also is very ancient and did not mean what it came to mean among the Nazis. Among the ancient Norse and Germanic peoples it always designated the sun. In their language it was sowilo or sol, meaning sun. The Anglo-Saxon Futhorc name was sigel, which also meant 'sun'.

All this was changed by the very influential Guido von List. You will find much helpful information about this in Guido von List Runes and the Swastika symbol. Von List changed the name to Sieg, meaning victory in German. From this we are all familiar with the infamous Nazi salute, Sieg Heil, "Hale to Victory". Heil is, of course, a word for health and Heiland means Savior. Anyway, the Sig-Rune became an S and two together became the swastika and represented socialists joining together to form the National Socialist German Workers' party. In 1935 the swastika flag became official for Germany. The swastika symbol was not called that, but rather a HakenKreuz or hooked cross. This was Hitler's attempt to unite the church with the state, especially since German culture was strongly influenced by Christianity.

You can find more on these topics on Rex Curry's website and its various pages. He has some interesting things to say about the use of the swastika also in America up to the start of WW II, as well as the open hand salute. The symbol was used by various socialist groups, not only in the USA, but also in the USSR.

To say the least, Curry does not write objectively about these various matters.

Nazis and Runic Symbols - Part One

At the heart of National Socialism (Nazi) Germany was a love of country and a heart-felt desire to restore and promote all things German. The renewed religion of the north countries, the Nordic (the word is derived from Nord, German and Scandinavian for north), must be put back in its correct place. As a result, the runes and rune symbols became very important in the life and events of Nazi Germany. See Norse Rune Symbols and the Third Reich.

The Holy Nation of Odin traces the history of Tiu, the son of Odin and Frigga or Freya. He is the god of martial honor, courage, defense and victory, bravest of the gods and one of the twelve principal deities of Asgard. He is portrayed as the one-handed warrior. 

By the way, the practice of Odinism or the Nordic faith continues to the present day. As the home page of the Holy Nation of Odin says, we all should be familiar with it because of the very names of our week: Sunna (Sunday), Manni (Monday), Tiu/Tyr (Tuesday), Wodan/Odin (Wednesday), Thor (Thursday) and Frigga/Freya (Friday). Note also that the practice of putting up a Christmas tree can be traced to this those who followed the Nordic faith and decorated trees to attract ancestral spirits to accept their gifts. 

But back to Tiu and his runic symbol. Runes were always considered symbols of great power. The word rune itself means 'mystery'. This was especially true when reading and writing were not common, so the ability to represent ideas in symbolic form was a mystery to most. Thus these symbols became a means of communication between the seen and the unseen, between the visible world of men and the invisible spirit realm, the realm of the gods, the mighty ones. 

In the view of this and other nature religion, everything is divine and alive. The Spirit and the spirits are everywhere. So the Nordic or Germanic priests and priestesses used the runes to divine or read the messages of the spirits. More on this another time. 

In Nazi Germany the Tyr or Tiu rune was also known as the Kampf-Rune (Battle rune) or the Pfeil-Rune (Arrow rune). It symbolized leadership in battle and was widely used by various young people organizations. It was used as a symbol for leadership schools (Reichsführerschulen) of Hitler's brownshirts, the SA (Sturmabteilung), the Nazi party's paramilitary wing. Upon graduation from leadership school, brownshirts were permitted to wear the Tyr symbol on the upper left arm. It was also the badge of the SS (Schutzstaffel or 'protective squadron'). The SS broke off from the SA in 1934. The graves of the SS were marked with the Tyr symbol rather than the Christian cross. 

To the present the Tyr rune is common among white supremacists and Neo-Nazi hate groups. 

Freya, Goddess of Many Names

One of the stated aims of the Nazi regime was to restore the true religion of the north. As noted in earlier blogs, this meant restoring the worship of the gods and goddesses of the north. Tie this into the belief that the Germans were the true twentieth century representatives of the Aryan race and you begin to see the links with the various other historical manifestations of the gods and goddesses around the world. The Nazis were but returning to the worship of the same gods and goddesses the Aryans, the noble white race, had been worshipping for thousands of years. The Aryans would include the Assyrians, Babylonians, Phoenicians, later the Greeks and Romans, the Egyptians and in the Americas the Incas and Aztecs. They all had similar gods, many parallel mythical stories, but with different names. They all worshipped Freya, goddess of many names.

In Aphrodite from The Many Faces of Venus Ev Chochrane links the development of various mythological tales about ancient goddesses with catastrophic events in out solar system. Why does the Aphrodite, the mother goddess, the goddess of love, sex and fertility have such power? Why is she worshipped so widely under many names? You can read the article to see how he attempts to tie this to the planet Venus in its various phases.

Ishtar (Louvre Museum)

For the purposes of this Blog it is enough to note that this Queen of Heaven, the goddess Astarte or Ishtar or Inanna (Great Lady) was the goddess of life and love, fertility and sexuality, also the goddess of war, battles and the chase among the Phoenicians and Assyrians (see also in the Bible Jeremiah 7:18 and Jeremiah 44:17-25).

She appears as two Greek goddesses among the Greeks. Many suggest that Ishtar was the precursor to the Greek Athena, the goddess of culture and heroes. She was also the precursor to Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, fertility and sex, that frivolous and promiscuous goddess, beloved by men and gods. Ishtar or Astarte are but equivalents of the Greek Aphrodite and the Roman Venus. In Egypt she was Hathor, Great One of many names, Mistress of heaven. She also became Isis, ideal mother, goddess of children. In the north she was worshipped as Freya, wife of Odin, the All Father.

In my novel, Freya's Child, Hulda Schwarz, despairs of teaching all this and so much more to Albert Freitag. To her and to many Nazis, particularly the members of the SS under Heinrich Himmler, this was the only way to go. The true religion, with all its ancient history and meaning must be restored. The destiny of the Aryan race was to rule the world. The thousand year reign of the Third Reich had begun.

Culture in the Third Reich: Reflections on History

Culture in the Third Reich: Disseminating the Nazi Worldview — A brief historical review of the major events controlled by the Nazis as they ascended to power in the first part of the 1930s. Reminds me that I'll have to explore each of these areas in more depth if I'm to understand how this happened.

Big question: Can it happen in the U.S.? How vital is worldview?
Brief answer: Worldview is everything. Right now it seems that in the U.S. we have a clash between several worldviews. This is reflected in our politics.

Concern: the quoted article above does not discuss the Nazi program to replace Christian and Jewish religious views. The major festivals, i.e. Christmas and Easter, etc. were replaced with celebrations of the winter solstice and the spring or vernal equinox. Dragging back the worship of the old gods of the north brought also the worldview of those old gods, their values and culture.

More on this in later posts. Caution: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” 
— Life of Reason, Reason in Common Sense, Scribner's, 1905, p. 284
So the oft repeated quote of George Santayana. Some truth therein.

Freya's Child—Not Fantasy, but Historical Fiction

I keep reading that it's very important to find the people who are interested in what your novel is all about. The good folks at Wheatmark, my publisher, suggested that we place it both as fantasy and as mystery. I go back and forth about that question. 

When I look for a fantasy novel I think of something like JRR Tolkien's work. Middle Earth, Hobbits, Ents, Elves and Wizards are all characters from fantasy novels. What frightens me a little is that people will begin to think that Freya's Child is a novel about some fantastic world that existed only in the author's mind. 

That's not true. This novel is based upon real history. It is in many ways historical fiction. That's not to say that my characters actually existed. With the exception of Heinrich Himmler, head of the Nazi SS, all the others are fictional and any resemblance to real people is, as they say, coincidental. The history part has to do with the Nazis—they were certainly real—and with World War II. 

But here's the part I want to emphasize. Thousands upon thousands of Nazis were committed to replacing Christianity with the Nordic religion, with the worship of the old gods they believed had been repressed. The true religion of the rising Aryan race was the Nordic and the worship of the gods of the north. 

This may sound like fantasy, but that part is solid fact or history. They did worship the old gods and they did believe in their power. 

Germans in America

If you've read some of my other blogs you've noticed the emphasis upon the German population of the United States during the Great Depression years. How many Germans were there? Here are a few facts.

• Before World War I more than 6% of American schoolchildren received their primary education only in German. By the way, my father was one of them. 

• 49 million Americans claim German ancestors. In 1996 this group was 25% of the population.

• The first German American, Dr. Johannes Fleischer arrived in Jamestown, Virginia in 1607.

• The first permanent German settlement was Germantown, PA., near Philadelphia, 1683. 

• Waves of Germans settled in Pennsylvania, New York, Virginia, Louisiana and Massachusetts during the 18th century.

• Thousands of German soldiers came to support King George III, Elector of Hanover and King of Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War. 

• Between 1840-48 Germans were the largest group of immigrants to America.

• The cities of Milwaukee, Cleveland, St. Louis, Chicago, New York and Baltimore were the favored destinations of Germans. 

• By 1900 the populations of Cleveland, Milwaukee, Hoboken and Cincinnati were all more than 40% German.

• In Texas, where I live, many Germans came through the port of Galveston to farm and later to take industrial jobs in Houston. The Germans built the brewing industry in Houston. By the 1920s college-educated German Americans were moving into the chemical and oil industries.

I've already noted how President Roosevelt and the FBI feared what Germans favoring Nazism might do leading up to and during WW II.

Many other fascinating facts can be found on Absolute Astronomy under the topic German American.