Alfred Rosenberg

145

Alfred Rosenberg : biography

1893-1-12 – 16 October 1946

Notes

Nazi policy and Rosenberg’s views

Hitler was a leader oriented towards practical politics, whereas, for Rosenberg, religion and philosophy were key and culturally he was the most influential within the party. Several accounts of the time before the Nazi ascension to power, indeed, speak of Hitler as being a mouthpiece for Rosenberg’s views, and he clearly exerted a great deal of intellectual influence.Robert Cecil, The Myth of the Master Race: Alfred Rosenberg and Nazi Ideology p. 45. ISBN 0-396-06577-5

Rosenberg’s influence in the Nazi Party is controversial. He was perceived as lacking the charisma and political skills of the other Nazi leaders, and was somewhat isolated. In some of his speeches Hitler appeared to be close to Rosenberg’s views: rejecting traditional Christianity as a religion based on Jewish culture, preferring an ethnically and culturally pure "Race" whose destiny was supposed to be assigned to the German people by "Providence". In others, he adhered to the Nazi Party line, which advocated a "positive Christianity".

After Hitler’s assumption of power he moved to reassure the Protestant and Catholic churches that the party was not intending to reinstitute Germanic paganism. He placed himself in the position of being the man to save Positive Christianity from utter destruction at the hands of the atheistic antitheist Communists of the Soviet Union. This was especially true immediately before and after the elections of 1932; Hitler wanted to appear non-threatening to major Christian faiths and consolidate his power. Further, Hitler felt that Catholic-Protestant infighting had been a major factor in weakening the German state and allowing its dominance by foreign powers.

Some Nazi leaders, such as Martin Bormann, were anti-Christian and sympathetic to Rosenberg.Stiegmann-Gall, Richard, The Holy Reich, CUP, pp. 243–5 Once in power, Hitler and most Nazi leaders sought to unify the Christian denominations in favor of "positive Christianity". Hitler privately condemned mystical and pseudoreligious interests as "nonsense". However, he and Goebbels agreed that after the Endsieg (Final Victory) the Reich Church should be pressed into evolving into a German social evolutionist organisation proclaiming the cult of race, blood and battle, instead of Redemption and the Ten Commandments of Moses, which they deemed outdated and Jewish.Hürten, H. "’Endlösung’ für den Katholizismus? Das nationalsozialistische Regime und seine Zukunftspläne gegenüber der Kirche," in: Stimmen der Zeit, 203 (1985) pp. 534–546

Heinrich Himmler’s views were among the closest to Rosenberg’s, and their estrangement was perhaps created by Himmler’s abilities to put into action what Rosenberg had only written.Robert Cecil, The Myth of the Master Race: Alfred Rosenberg and Nazi Ideology p. 119. ISBN 0-396-06577-5 Also, while Rosenberg thought Christianity should be allowed to die out, Himmler actively set out to create countering pagan rituals.

Lieutenant Colonel William Harold Dunn (1898–1955) wrote a medical and psychiatric report on him in prison to evaluate him as a suicide risk: He gave the impression of clinging to his own theories in a fanatical and unyielding fashion and to have been little influenced by the unfolding during the trial of the cruelty and crimes of the party.Cecil, p. 219

Summarizing the unresolved conflict between the personal views of Rosenberg and the pragmatism of the Nazi elite:

The ruthless pursuit of Nazi aims turned out to mean not, as Rosenberg had hoped, the permeation of German life with the new ideology; it meant concentration of the combined resources of party and state on total war.Cecil, p. 160

Racial theories

As the Nazi Party’s chief racial theorist, Rosenberg oversaw the construction of a human racial "ladder" that justified Hitler’s genocidal policies. Rosenberg built on the works of Arthur de Gobineau, Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Madison Grant, as well as the beliefs of Hitler. He placed blacks and Jews at the very bottom of the ladder, while at the very top stood the white or "Aryan" race. Rosenberg promoted the Nordic theory which regarded Germans as the "master race", superior to all others, including to other Aryans (Indo-Europeans).

Rosenberg reshaped Nazi racial policy over the years, but it always consisted of Aryan supremacy, extreme German nationalism and rabid antisemitism. Rosenberg also outspokenly opposed homosexuality – notably in his pamphlet "Der Sumpf" ("The Swamp") – having viewed homosexuality (particularly lesbianism) as a hindrance to the expansion of the Nordic population.

Rosenberg’s attitude towards the Slavs was politically motivated and depended on the particular nation involved. He despised Czechs and Poles, and wrote "no considerations can be taken for Poles, Czechs etc., who are as impotent as they are valueless and overbearing. They must be driven back to the east, so that the soil may become free to be tilled by the horny hands of Teutonic peasants". As a result of the ideology of "Drang nach Osten" Rosenberg saw his mission as the conquest and colonization of the Slavic East.Oświęcim, 1940–1945: przewodnik po muzeum, Kazimierz Smoleń, Państwowe Muzeum w Oświęcimiu, 1978, page 12Metapolitics: from Wagner and the German Romantics to Hitler, page 221, Peter Viereck, Transaction Publishers 2003

In Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts Rosenberg describes Slavs, in particular Poles, as racial "subhumans".Alfred Rosenberg, Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts: Eine Wertung der seelischgeistigen Gestaltungskämpfe unserer Zeit, München: Hoheneichen, 1930, here p.214. 

Regarding Ukrainians he favoured setting up a buffer state to ease pressure on the German eastern frontier, while agreeing with the notion that Russia should be exploited for the benefit of Germany.Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Movement: Soviet Reality and Emigré Theories Catherine Andreyev, page 30, Cambridge University Press, 1990