How Mysticism and Pseudoscience Became Central to Nazism
Supernatural ideas were widespread at the turn of the 20th century, especially in Germany. But in the social crisis following World War I, esoteric and border-science ideas became a powerful tool of Nazi mobilization, directed at demonizing Jews and the Left.
Adolf Hitler with Herr Lutze, his chief of staff, during a review of the storm troopers in Berlin to mark the third anniversary of Hitler’s rise to power. (©Hulton-Deutsch Collection / Corbis via Getty Images)
In the late nineteenth century, industrializing Europe was the epicenter of what Max Weber famously named the “disenchantment of the world.” Traditional religious practices were being challenged by the forces of modernity, with church attendance troubled by the advance of Enlightenment, science, and secularism.
Yet the famous Weber quote often omits the second part of his thesis — holding that the world was also being re-enchanted by something new. New kinds of esoteric, religious, and border-scientific doctrines emerged as seemingly modern alternatives to traditional religion and science.
These included anthroposophy (an Austro-German variation on the esoteric doctrine of theosophy, which combined elements of eastern spirituality with Christianity, western philosophy, and natural science); ariosophy (a more explicitly racialist and eugenicist version of theosophy), World Ice Theory (a “border-scientific” theory insisting that ice is the basic substance behind all cosmic as well as geological and evolutionary processes on Earth), astrology, and parapsychology (the study of psychic phenomena and paranormal claims). This trend also included alternative religions, New Age, homeopathy, folklore, and renewed interest in Hinduism and Buddhism.
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