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Hitler’s Monsters
- Author
- Eric Kurlander
- Narrator
- Grover Gardner
- Publisher
- Blackstone Publishing
- Publish Date
- 18 July 2017
- Run Time
- 18 hours 19 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
- Genre
- Second World War
What to expect
The Nazi fascination with the occult is legendary, yet today it is often dismissed as Himmler’s personal obsession or wildly overstated for its novelty. Preposterous though it was, however, supernatural thinking was inextricable from the Nazi project. The regime enlisted astrology and the paranormal, paganism, Indo-Aryan mythology, witchcraft, miracle weapons, and the lost kingdom of Atlantis in reimagining German politics and society and recasting German science and religion. In this eye-opening history, Eric Kurlander reveals how the Third Reich’s relationship to the supernatural was far from straightforward. Even as popular occultism and superstition were intermittently rooted out, suppressed, and outlawed, the Nazis drew upon a wide variety of occult practices and esoteric sciences to gain power, shape propaganda and policy, and pursue their dreams of racial utopia and empire.
Critics Review
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“A fascinating look at a little-understood aspect of fascism, with a nod to how ‘shadowy conspiracy theories’ and supernatural thinking continue to play out in politics today.”
Kirkus Reviews
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“Hitler’s Monsters is a book I’ve long been wishing to read. Now that it’s been written, I couldn’t be more delighted. Eric Kurlander delivers in just about every way possible. His writing is crisp and compelling; his haunting narrative richly documented, utterly convincing, and certain to change popular understanding of National Socialist history in Germany.”
Sidney D. Kirkpatrick, author of Hitler’s Holy Relics
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“Eric Kurlander’s provocative new study offers compelling reasons to take a critical look at the neglected history of occultism in Nazi Germany. It should spark renewed attention to the topic and more informed debates about its significance.”
Peter Staudenmaier, author of Between Occultism and Nazism
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“In this thought-provoking and original book, Kurlander explores the monstrousness of Hitler’s Germany by taking seriously the demons, vampires, witches, and werewolves that populated the Nazi world and made possible the building of a Third Reich right in the middle of the twentieth century.”
Peter Fritzsche, author of An Iron Wind
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“Until now, no one has offered a sustained treatment of the links between Nazism and occultism. Eric Kurlander has unearthed myriad examples of these links, and in fields as diverse as agriculture, archaeology, and armaments manufacture. Their cumulative effect in Hitler’s Monsters is positively jaw-dropping.”
Monica Black, author of Death in Berlin
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“In this stunning new book, historian Eric Kurlander shows how the Third Reich was monstrous in more ways than commonly supposed. The regime’s modern planning and methods of conquest and biopolitics were shot through with the search for esoteric pagan, even supernatural knowledge. We cannot think of ‘racial science’ in the same way again.”
A. Dirk Moses, author of German Intellectuals and the Nazi Past
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Details
- Author
- Eric Kurlander
- Narrator
- Grover Gardner
- Duration
- 18 hours 19 minutes
- Release Date
- 18 July 2017
- ISBN
- 9781538408506
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Blackstone Publishing
- Genre
- Second World War
Synopsis
The Nazi fascination with the occult is legendary, yet today it is often dismissed as Himmler’s personal obsession or wildly overstated for its novelty. Preposterous though it was, however, supernatural thinking was inextricable from the Nazi project. The regime enlisted astrology and the paranormal, paganism, Indo-Aryan mythology, witchcraft, miracle weapons, and the lost kingdom of Atlantis in reimagining German politics and society and recasting German science and religion. In this eye-opening history, Eric Kurlander reveals how the Third Reich’s relationship to the supernatural was far from straightforward. Even as popular occultism and superstition were intermittently rooted out, suppressed, and outlawed, the Nazis drew upon a wide variety of occult practices and esoteric sciences to gain power, shape propaganda and policy, and pursue their dreams of racial utopia and empire.
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