The myth of the 20th century

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"The Myth of the 20th Century". Binding of the 143-146. Edition from 1939

The Myth of the 20th Century is the title of the several hundred pages long political book written by the NSDAP party ideologist Alfred Rosenberg and published by Hoheneichen-Verlag towards the end of the Weimar Republic in 1930 . The book, considered to be his main work , bears the subtitle “A valuation of the spiritual and spiritual struggles of our time” . Rosenberg uses the approaches of a race theory to combine the notion of a “racial soul” and a “religion of blood” into a political and religious belief concept . The three main chapters are “The Struggle for Values”, “The Essence of Germanic Art” and “The Coming Empire”. By 1944 the total circulation of the “Volksauflage” was 1,075,000 copies; in addition there were 260,000 books of the "thin print edition" during the Second World War . The importance of the book in the time of National Socialism is difficult to assess despite the large number of copies. It is regarded as the most demanding work by a leading National Socialist and is considered the most influential alongside Hitler's Mein Kampf . Since the end of the Nazi era, Rosenberg's book has been of historical and ideological interest as a document on himself and on the phenomenon of National Socialism .

History of origin

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Early writings

Even before 1919, Rosenberg had recorded a number of thoughts in numerous notes, some of which went down in myth .

Conception

The book was conceived as a sequel to Houston Stewart Chamberlain 's The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century . In it Rosenberg pleaded for a new "religion of blood" that should replace Christianity :

“To this end, the myth of the Roman representative of God must be overcome as well as the myth of the“ holy letter ”in Protestantism. In the myth of the people's soul and honor lies the new, binding, creative focus. To serve him is the duty of our sex. "

Despite this attitude, Rosenberg revered Martin Luther , in whom he saw embodied the “true” Christianity, which had been falsified, “Judged” by the Roman Catholic Church and the Jesuits . Rosenberg protested against the claim that he was Heide himself:

“It was suppressed that I presented Wotanism as a dead form of religion [but, of course, Wotan gave birth to awe of the Germanic character, as did Faust], and lying and unscrupulously told me that I wanted to reintroduce the“ pagan Wotan cult ”. "

content of the book

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Philosophy of history

The myth is an attempt to explain the National Socialist ideology as the goal of humanity in a historical-philosophical representation . According to Rosenberg, world history was shaped by the eternally raging struggle between the Nordic-Atlantic and the Jewish-Semitic peoples. Only the Nordic people produce culture. Based on a brief and vague speculation about Plato's Atlantis , he explains that the Nordic people first appeared through the Indians and Persians. The classical Greece thus became the "Nordic Hellas" and the Ancient Rome recognized at the "Nordic-Republican Latinertum". After him, the only legitimate descendant of this Nordic people is the German people .

racism

This Nordic people understood Rosenberg as a race , whereby this is not a biological but a spiritual phenomenon. In this rejection of a "racial materialism" he was in agreement with his arch rival Joseph Goebbels , who like him wanted to shape the ideological course of the NSDAP.

Rosenberg stylized the race as an independent organism by assigning it a soul common to all members - the “race soul”. This racial soul is said to be the carrier and expression of the respective race. Thus the actions of the individual race member are only an expression of the driving force inherent in the collective . In order to achieve the actual goal, it is necessary to suppress any form of individualization , because this endangers the unity of the race itself. Characteristics of this racial soul would be expressed in culture , politics , the legal system , technology and art . In this way the racial affiliation of the respective peoples could be read off from their cultural achievements in the course of world history . These achievements would not have created individuals, but are an expression of the collective soul of the respective race, which would like to create its inherent ideal. The cultural achievements of Immanuel Kant , Richard Wagner , Meister Eckart and other creative people served Rosenberg as incontrovertible proof of the superiority of the Nordic race.

anti-Semitism

Even as a teenager, Rosenberg was fascinated by Houston Stewart Chamberlain 's The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century . The work would have given him the meaning of the " Jewish problem ". In December 1938, for example, Rosenberg warned that the Jews were preparing to "destroy Europe in a blood frenzy".

In myth , he contrasted Judaism with the “Nordic racial soul” and polarized both levels with unsubstantiated images of the enemy . The Jewish religion was described as diabolical , while the Nordic racial soul carried a new kind of divinity. Hitler worked with the same technique by claiming that the Aryans were "children of God" and a Jew was the "personification of the devil" or even "adversary of all humanity". In turn, according to Rosenberg, Christ was not a Jew, but an embodiment of the Nordic racial soul. This alleged state of affairs was initially misrepresented by Judaism itself, later by Paul and then also by the Roman Catholic Church, in order to harm the northern racial soul (“Roman-Syrian principle”). These and several other passages (such as the claim that it was the Rothschild supposedly ruling France in 1914 who made the First World War inevitable) show that the basis of Rosenberg's thought remained the racist conspiracy theory , even when he tried to use it to disguise his intellectual-historical-philosophical speculations.

In the myth , Rosenberg called for marriages and sexual intercourse between "Aryans" and Jews to be made subject to the death penalty. As early as March 1930, this proposal led to a legislative proposal by the National Socialists in the Reichstag, which Hans Globke later implemented.

In a memorandum from the Foreign Office in 1939, Rosenberg had the "Jewish question" declared:

“Today, Judaism strives for a Jewish state in Palestine. But not to give Jews all over the world a home, but for other reasons; World Jewry must have a small miniature state in order to be able to send extraterritorial envoys and representatives to all countries of the world and through them to advance its lust for power. Above all, however, one wants to have a Jewish center, a Jewish state, in which the Jewish impostors from all over the world who are being persecuted by the police in other countries can be accommodated, provided with new passports and then sent to other parts of the world. It is to be hoped that the friends of the Jews in the world, especially the Western democracies , who have so much space in all parts of the world, assign the Jews an area outside Palestine , not to establish a Jewish state, but to establish a Jewish reservation. "

The formative will

The pivotal point of Rosenberg's theory was his belief in an essential will of the “racial soul” . To this end he defines the will, which is not further derived, as a formative force:

"And the new person of the coming First German Reich knows only one answer to all doubts and questions: 'I want'."

This formative force would first impose a desired shape on nature and later also on foreign peoples. Rosenberg also calls this characteristic “dynamic-willful” or “spiritual-architectural”.

The “noblest form” of National Socialist ethics, on the other hand, would express itself in precisely this mere willingness, which sets itself a goal. Rosenberg then built on this an art theory , the core message of which was that a work of art appeared all the more aesthetic the more there was a strong formative will to be recognized in it. This in turn is reminiscent of Hitler's statement regarding the architecture of the buildings of the Nazi party rally in Nuremberg that it was a "stone worldview".

According to Rosenberg, the will itself was not subordinate to any morality . In the end, Rosenberg's metaphysics of will legitimized almost all action - insofar as this is willed and ordered by a strong leader : "That is the task of our century: to create a new type of person from a new myth of life." This paves the way for the submission of foreign peoples, for human breeding in the boreholes of life , compulsory sterilization of genetically ill people and for the killing of "unworthy" life.

See also the history of euthanasia: "Euthanasia" as a term for National Socialist murders .

Impact history

Inside the NSDAP

Rosenberg's book reached millions of copies and was considered the second standard work of Nazi ideology after Hitler's confession book “Mein Kampf”. In reality, however, the publication was very inconvenient for Hitler: as early as the late 1920s, instructions had been issued to all of the party's propaganda offices to reduce anti-Semitism and instead focus more on agricultural and foreign policy . Rosenberg's radically anti-Semitic book, which was also interpreted as “anti-Christian”, now offered new areas of attack, which is why Hitler dismissed it as completely unofficial private work. It was officially declared as such. The designation “chief ideologist” of the NSDAP is therefore incorrect in view of the myth . Hitler also found the work “too difficult” to read, Goebbels even dismissed it as an “intellectual burp” because the National Socialists deliberately defined themselves as people of action and violence to whom any kind of intellectualism was alien. That is why Joachim Fest came to the judgment in 1963 that Rosenberg had [become] the “philosopher” of a movement “whose philosophy was almost always power in the end. Rosenberg himself never recognized or even acknowledged this, and that's precisely why over the years, when the idea of ​​power visibly covered the ideological drapery, had become a forgotten follower: hardly taken seriously, willfully overlooked and pushed around, a prop from the ideological early days , the party's advertising phase . "

If you follow Rosenberg's own account of 1945, Hitler's relationship with Rosenberg and the neo-paganism he represented was not a constant in Hitler's policy, but in this regard Hitler always took into account his foreign policy relations with Mussolini , who in turn had to take the Vatican into account . Rosenberg's myth and his dark men - and the Protestant Rome pilgrims' writings (1937) were closely related to the great German church exit movement , which began in 1937. All of these writings were sold in large numbers at the time and widely discussed in public.

Rosenberg perceived the effect of his myth very closely. In 1939 he admitted to himself that the " National Socialist worldview had not yet developed its final form". However, he was confident on the condition that "if a uniform ideological stance for the future was secured in this decisive epoch". The uncertainty followed, however, at the end of January 1940, because Hitler had explained to him that "our worldview" should not dictate " exact research , but rather deduce the abstract laws from their work". Rosenberg, however, calmed himself down by relativizing the positivism perceived by Hitler as it were: “The Fiihrer's positivistic note was something new to me. But since he has the sure belief in Providence , both worlds are at home with him. "

Further reactions in Germany

On the Roman Catholic side, the book triggered strong reactions from church authors who, from a religious point of view, criticized Rosenberg's “neo-pagan” theses and found their incompatibility with a Catholic worldview. The myth was placed on the " Index ", the list of books forbidden for members of the Catholic Church, by the Vatican ( Holy Office ) on February 7, 1934 . After the Reich Concordat was signed in July 1933 and the originally sharply defensive position against National Socialism had given way to a temporarily more positive, wait-and-see attitude in large parts of the Catholic hierarchy, the ideological criticism of those Catholic theological authors who wanted to approach the Nazi Ideology continued to be hostile, in the course of 1934 mainly to the myth .

In response to the font created in the archdiocese of Cologne , led by vicar Josef Teusch as head of the "Defense Center against anti-Christian propaganda" of the Archdiocese a series of essays studies on the myth of the XX. Century ; Teusch developed the idea together with the Bonn church historian Wilhelm Neuss . The compilation was not a pamphlet, but saw itself as a scientific examination of Rosenberg's theses from biblical, mystical, church-historical and moral theological points of view. The contributions were mainly written by lecturers from the University of Bonn , besides Neuss, above all Josef Steinberg , Karl Theodor Schäfer and Werner Schöllgen . Since the Archbishop of Cologne, Joseph Cardinal Schulte , shied away from publication, it was taken over by Bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen in the diocese of Münster. After the writing barely escaped confiscation there, it was finally published in Cologne and in all other dioceses in Germany as a supplement to the Kirchlicher Anzeiger. Rosenberg did not succeed in unmasking the authors.

Catholic theologians critical of the Nazi regime, such as Konrad Algermissen and Paul Simon, reacted to Rosenberg's work in autumn 1934 with their own, sometimes very combative, writings. In his book, Algermissen refuted Rosenberg's interpretations of the philosophy of history and showed him numerous false historical examples. Simon turned eloquently against the National Socialist racial doctrine and was remembered by readers with his ironic suggestion that Winnetou should be seen as the prototype of the " Nordic man ". The Nazi authorities imposed sanctions on both authors and their books.

In 1935, the then editor-in-chief of the Berliner Tageblatt , the bourgeois Protestant journalist Paul Scheffer , was given Rosenberg's harsh text as an editorial guideline at a press conference of the Propaganda Ministry. This was preceded by an editorial in which Scheffer had written that “the peoples with intact religious communities, such as those in Italy and England, for example, are superior to other nations in terms of mental resilience. Germany, on the other hand, lacks the regular binding force ”. To the horror of the conference participants, Scheffer not only forbade the presumptuous tone, but also parried with an ironic remark: "Incidentally, I note that Germany now has a religion of which the first volume has already been published."

In Protestantism the myth was generally rejected less strongly than in Catholicism, because Rosenberg took a positive view of the "German Luther". However, professing theologians came to the realization that myth ripped the ground from Christianity as a whole. This also provoked numerous, mostly critical reactions to the book. Walter Künneth wrote an extensive refutation on behalf of the church. Albrecht Oepke openly opposed the representations of Rosenberg, which he characterized as pseudoscientific. The Jena theology professor Walter Grundmann, on the other hand, followed Rosenberg's demand for a “Germanization of Christianity” and founded the institute to research and eliminate the Jewish influence on German church life .

The history philosopher Oswald Spengler , author of The Downfall of the West , pronounced the devastating judgment on the myth of the 20th century : A book with nothing right except the page numbers. The idea of ​​"racial purity" must have struck him as grotesque.

Nuremberg Trial

During the Nuremberg Trials , defender of the Nazi leadership corps Robert Servatius brought up the myth . He justified his overall assessment of the direct “ influence ” of this document with regard to general Nazi church policy with only a few circumstantial evidence by referring to document PL-62e and proclaiming: “Even the 'myth' could not give you any information on the church question . This book was difficult to understand and never received the party official mark of harmlessness. “That Rosenberg was appointed personally by Adolf Hitler in 1933 as the Führer’s agent for the supervision of the entire intellectual and ideological training of the NSDAP (BDFÜ), this office until 1945 was never questioned and therefore Rosenberg did not need such a safety certificate, said Servatius in the context of his defense. The emotional involvement in the face of the war crimes and genocide confrontation was sometimes reflected in language, addressing either the scripture or the person himself. The Soviet lieutenant general and chief prosecutor Roman Rudenko said with regard to the person: “Be that as it may, Fritzsche , Schirach , Streicher , Rosenberg: you all worked in the field to dazzle the German people. They were Satan's propagandists , they prepared the ground for the criminal plans of National Socialism. Your worldview had the most devastating effect in the persecution of the Jews . "

However, not only people were brought into connection with evil , but also individual literary works of National Socialism. This is the case with the authors who, just a few months after the Nuremberg Trial, published the book Portrait of a Human Criminal, based on the memoirs of the former Reich Minister Alfred Rosenberg . Under a photo, on which - including Rosenberg's myth  - eight books by National Socialists are depicted, they added this caption: "The program of Satan: Nazi propaganda writings of the Reich". And the lawyer Robert MW Kempner , who was involved in the Nuremberg trial as a lawyer, asked himself many years later why the myth could be taken seriously in any way in its time. He initially quoted the following sentence from the book: “A new belief is emerging today: the myth of blood , the belief that the divine essence of man can be defended with blood.” And Kempner concludes: “Nobody has this broken off yet Being able to decipher incoherence, but since Rosenberg himself claimed to have provided conclusive evidence of the master race in it, others were prepared to ascribe the authority of a revelation to this tormented and confused burst of phrases . [...] Everything and nothing could be proven with it. "

Historical research

Regardless of what effect the political writing Der Mythus had left behind, at least the conditions were met for Rosenberg to spread his writing and the ideas it contained. Reinhard Bollmus wrote in 1970:

“Rather, Rosenberg himself determined all of his powers, as he believed they arose from the Führer mandate, and also determined his areas of activity without instructions from a higher authority. Hitler and Hess did not approve, but neither did they dispute the correctness of the procedure. They gave no advice, did not set any specific tasks, imposed no bans and did not comment on the question of whether Rosenberg's interpretation of the worldview alone, in part, or even at all is authoritative. "

In this respect, as Bollmus has indicated, Rosenberg did not have to fear any sanctions from Hitler, neither specifically for the myth nor for his racial ideology as a whole, which is also widespread in numerous other writings. Bollmus sees the myth as an expression of the vagueness of the National Socialist ideology, since the content “of this worldview cannot be systematically determined”. The myth would hardly contain a thesis "which would have withstood rational examination"; it “required the conditions of a totalitarian dictatorship in order to attempt to realize such ideological fictions ”.

Bollmus already indicated a generally formulated epistemological deficit in the concept of the myth by writing that "neither the anti-Semitic nor the anti-communist and nationalist claims of Rosenberg had their basis in personal experience or critically gained insight", which Rosenberg had "unwittingly confirmed" . As can also be seen from “many of the writings of the later party theorist”, his alleged “insights” are only obtained “ intuitively ”. Rosenberg would have “refrained from checking hypotheses empirically or analytically from the start ”. Reinhard Bollmus was one of the first authors in the post-war period to try to focus on the myth from an epistemological perspective, even if he only mentioned this approach in passing and did not pursue it further. His idea for this approach, however, had solid roots: Bollmus pointed out that shortly after the book was published, not so much Rosenberg's “Weltanschauung” had been criticized “as Rosenberg wanted to lead one to believe”, but “rather his scientific one Methodology ".

In 1998, in the Encyclopedia of National Socialism , Juliane Wetzel characterized the myth of the 20th century as pseudoscientific in her article of the same name . She wrote that Rosenberg "developed his pseudoscientific ideas of neo-paganism, the superiority of Nordic blood and the mysticism of" purity "", which successfully prevailed against Jews and Freemasons ". The expression “twisted style” can also be found in her and she also gave Rosenberg's writing style as a reason why the myth “hardly found readers”, not even “among party officials”.

Cultural studies

According to Bollmus, Rosenberg would have misjudged “all of modern art”; he had "pursued his earlier inclination to popular scientific speculation about imaginatively constructed connections between ancient cultures, races and population movements".

In 1997 the historian Thomas Mathieu wrote:

“Obsessed with his› surveillance ‹trauma, Rosenberg hardly thought of inspiring and promoting a new art based on his ideas: hardly anyone knew his 20th century myth with the beauty ideal of the› front soldier ‹, his aesthetic of› Germanic objectivity ‹ . There was no genius who, from his point of view, could adequately embody his model of the ›aesthetic will‹. The old ethnic art even lacking in the eyes of her mentor, the Rosenberg> elementary pressing forward <[...]. It stayed on its tracks in the past and achieved neither nationally nor internationally presentable quality. "

Political science

In his book The Political Religion of National Socialism , published in 1998, the political scientist Claus-Ekkehard Bärsch met the epistemological attempt to criticize the myth with skepticism . For him, Rosenberg's racial ideology could not be addressed with the arguments of freedom from values and the objectivity of science. He wrote: “Certainly it is natural to claim that Rosenberg understood neither Kant nor the principle of science . But only when this objection is justified are the rules of scientific thought fulfilled, and only then could a contribution to the explanation of racism be made. "

literature

source

  • Alfred Rosenberg: The Myth of the 20th Century. A valuation of the soul and spirit struggles of our time . Hoheneichen, Munich 1930, DNB 577383566 .

Historical background

  • 1977: Raimund Baumgärtner: Weltanschauung fight in the Third Reich. The dispute between the churches and Alfred Rosenberg . Mainz 1977, ISBN 3-7867-0654-9 .
  • 1987: Harald Iber: Christian Faith or Racial Myth. The engagement of the Confessing Church with Alfred Rosenberg's "The Myth of the 20th Century" (= European University Papers 23, 286). Lang, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 1987, ISBN 3-8204-8622-4 .
  • 1988: Klaus Vondung: The Apocalypse in Germany . dtv, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-423-04488-8 .
  • 1988: Thomas Nipperdey : Religion in Transition. Germany 1870–1918 (= Beck'sche Reihe 363). Beck, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-406-33119-X .
  • 2001: Reinhard W. Sonnenschmidt: Political Gnosis . Belief in alienation and illusion of immortality in religion and political philosophy of late antiquity . Fink, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-7705-3626-6 (Background on the history of ideas).
  • 2005: Dominik Burkard: Heresy and Myth of the 20th Century. Rosenberg's National Socialist Weltanschauung before the Tribunal of the Roman Inquisition (= Roman Inquisition and Index Congregation , Volume 5). Schöningh, Paderborn 2005, ISBN 3-506-77673-8 .
  • 2012: Uwe Puschner , Clemens Vollnhals (eds.): The ethnic-religious movement in National Socialism. A history of relationships and conflicts (= writings of the Hannah Arendt Institute for Research on Totalitarianism , Volume 47), Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-525-36996-8 .

Books on Myth

  • 1934: Clemens August Graf von Galen: Studies on the Myth of XX. Century . Also a supplement to other church official gazettes. Münster 1934 and 1938, DNB 56095526X .
  • 1934: Archbishop's General Vicariate Cologne (ed.): Studies on the Myth of the XX. Century . Official supplement to the official gazette of the Episcopal Ordinariate Berlin. Improved Edition, 1934, DNB 560955243 ; Neudruck, Cologne 1935, DNB 560955251 (probably the earliest critical-analytical study).
  • 1935: Hans-Albert Adolphsen: A Christian word on the myth of the blood , Breklum 1935; reprinted in: Karl Ludwig Kohlwage , Manfred Kamper, Jens-Hinrich Pörksen (eds.): “You will be my witnesses!” Voices for the preservation of a denominational church in urgent times. The Breklumer Hefte of the ev.-luth. Confessional community in Schleswig-Holstein from 1935 to 1941. Sources on the history of the church struggle in Schleswig-Holstein. Compiled and edited by Peter Godzik , Husum: Matthiesen Verlag 2018, ISBN 978-3-7868-5308-4 , pp. 67–83.
  • 1935: Wilhelm Florin : Rosenbergs Myth and Evangelical Faith. Volksmissions edition , Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann o. J.
  • 1935: Walter Künneth : Answer to the myth. The decision between the Nordic myth and the biblical Christ , Berlin: Wichern 1935.
  • 1935: Albrecht Oepke: The Myth . Rosenberg observations. Deichert, Leipzig 1935, DNB 575294418 ; 2nd, revised edition, Zurich 1937, DNB 575294426 (critical-analytical study).
  • 1972: Robert Cecil : The Myth of the Master Race. Alfred Rosenberg and Nazi Ideology Batsford, London 1972 ISBN 0-7134-1121-X (English).
  • 1997: Thomas Mathieu: Concepts of Art and Cultural Policy under National Socialism. Studies on Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, Alfred Rosenberg, Baldur von Schirach, Heinrich Himmler, Albert Speer and Wilhelm Frick, Pfau, Saarbrücken 1997, pp. 164–243, ISBN 3-930735-67-9 ( Dissertation Uni Kiel 1997; note : Roots of the development of the book from Rosenberg's early political understanding of art).
  • 1998: Claus-Ekkehard Bärsch: The Political Religion of National Socialism . Fink, Munich 1998; 2nd, completely revised edition, Fink, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-7705-3172-8 (extensive analysis).

Essays on the Myth

  • 1997: Claus-Ekkehard Bärsch: Alfred Rosenberg's "Myth of the 20th Century" as a political religion . In: Hans Maier, Michael Schäfer (ed.): “ Totalitarianism ” and political religions. Concepts of the dictatorship comparison (= political and communication science publications of the Görres Society 17). Volume 2. Schöningh, Paderborn a. a. 1997, ISBN 3-506-76826-3 , pp. 227-248 1999, issue 4), ISSN  0044-2828 .
  • 2015: Clemens Bogedain: "Mein Kampf", the "Myth of the 20th Century" and the "Goebbels Diaries": Works by former Nazi greats in the field of tension between criminal law, copyright and future public rights , in: Journal for Copyright and Media Law ( ZUM) 2015, pp. 206–211.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Othmar Plöckinger: History of a book: Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" 1922-1945. Oldenbourg, Munich 2006, p. 187, ISBN 3-486-57956-8 .
  2. ↑ Reinhard Bollmus: The office of Rosenberg and its opponents. Studies on the power struggle in the National Socialist system of rule. Munich 1970, p. 26. DNB
  3. ^ Ernst Piper : Alfred Rosenberg. Hitler's chief ideologist. Munich 2005, ISBN 3-89667-148-0 , p. 200.
  4. ↑ Alfred Rosenberg. The myth of the 20th century . Munich 1930. Hoheneichen-Verlag. P. 624.
  5. ↑ Alfred Rosenberg. The myth of the 20th century . Munich 1930. Hoheneichen-Verlag. P. 6.
  6. ↑ See: Arn Stromeyer, Atlantis is not Troja - About dealing with a myth , Bremen, 1997, p. 115.
  7. ↑ For an overview of reviews and discussions about these Rosenberg writings between 1930 and 1939 see: Dietrich Müller: Book Review in the Political Context of National Socialism. Lines of development in reviews in Germany before and after 1933 . Dissertation, University of Mainz 2008 ( urn : nbn: de: hebis: 77-19345 PDF; 4.3 MB), pp. 212–220.
  8. ↑ Quoted in: Reinhard Bollmus: The Office Rosenberg and his opponents . Studies on the power struggle in the National Socialist system of rule. Munich 1970, p. 131.
  9. ↑ Quoted in: Reinhard Bollmus: The Office Rosenberg and his opponents . Studies on the power struggle in the National Socialist system of rule, Munich 1970, p. 133. (Source: Rosenberg's diary, entry from February 7, 1940, related to January 29, 1940).
  10. ↑ Hubert Wolf : "Change in combat tactics"? 75 years after the publication of the encyclical "With burning concern". In: Voices of the Time 2012, Issue 4, pp. 241–252 (here: 245).
  11. ^ Robert A. Krieg: Catholic Theologians in Nazi Germany. The Continuum International Publishing Group, New York 2004, pp. 5-9.
  12. ↑ Christoph Kösters: Catholic Church in National Socialist Germany - Current research results, controversies and questions. In: Rainer Bendel (Ed.): The Catholic Guilt? Catholicism in the Third Reich between arrangement and resistance. 2., through Aufl., Lit Verlag, Göttingen 2004, pp. 25–46 (here: p. 30).
  13. ^ Wilhelm Neuss: Fight against the myth of the 20th century. A memorial sheet to Clemens August Cardinal Graf Galen . Cologne 1947.
  14. ↑ Studies on the Myth of XX. Century. Official supplement to the ecclesiastical gazette for the diocese of Münster (1934).
  15. ↑ Church gazette for the Archdiocese of Cologne. Official supplement: Studies on the myth of the XX. Century. Epilogues. Archbishop's General Vicariate, Cologne 1935.
  16. ↑ For the whole paragraph: Erwin Gatz : The Bonn Catholic-Theological Faculty in the ›Third Reich‹ and in the post-war period. In: Thomas Becker (Ed.): Between dictatorship and a new beginning. The University of Bonn in the “Third Reich” and in the post-war period. V&R unipress, Göttingen 2008, pp. 59–77 (here: p. 66).
  17. ↑ Konrad Algermissen: The Myth . Hanover 1934; Paul Simon: Myth or Religion. Paderborn 1934.
  18. ↑ Knut Backhaus : “Triumphantly invaded the area of ​​the enlightened!” About the intellectual genre of an apparently black city. In: Annual and conference report of the Görres Society 2001. With the lectures given in Paderborn by Knut Backhaus, Wolfgang Clement, Otto Depenheuer, Gerfried W. Hunold, Paul Mikat, Rudolf Morsey . Cologne 2001, pp. 5–22 (here: p. 16).
  19. ↑ Margret Boveri: We all lie: A capital newspaper under Hitler. Walter-Verlag, 1965, p. 322 f.
  20. ↑ Walter Künneth: Answer to the Myth. The choice between the Norse myth and the biblical Christ. Berlin 1935.
  21. ↑ Albrecht Oepke: The Myth. Rosenberg observations . Leipzig 1935. 1941
  22. ↑ Walter Grundmann: God and Nation. An evangelical word on the will of National Socialism and Rosenberg's interpretation of the meaning. Berlin undated
  23. ^ Spengler and the Nazis Commentary Magazine, June 1952
  24. ↑ The Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Court of Nuremberg November 14, 1945 - October 1, 1946 , Vol. XXI, Munich / Zurich 1984, p. 516.
  25. ↑ Quoted in: Joe J. Heydecker, Johannes Leeb : The Nuremberg Trial . Revised New edition, Cologne 2003, p. 301 f.
  26. ↑ Serge Lang, Ernst von Schenck: Portrait of a human criminal based on the memoirs of the former Reich Minister Alfred Rosenberg , St. Gallen 1947, p. 295. ( DNB )
  27. ^ Robert MW Kempner: SS in cross-examination - the elite that broke Europe into pieces . Nördlingen 1987, p. 100.
  28. ↑ Reinhard Bollmus: The office of Rosenberg and its opponents. Studies on the power struggle in the National Socialist system of rule. Munich 1970, p. 69.
  29. ↑ Reinhard Bollmus: The office of Rosenberg and its opponents. Studies on the power struggle in the National Socialist system of rule. Munich 1970, p. 17.
  30. ↑ Reinhard Bollmus: The office of Rosenberg and its opponents. Studies on the power struggle in the National Socialist system of rule. Munich 1970, p. 21.
  31. ↑ Reinhard Bollmus: The office of Rosenberg and its opponents. Studies on the power struggle in the National Socialist system of rule. Munich 1970, p. 257.
  32. ↑ W. Benz, H. Graml, H. Weiss (eds.): Encyclopedia of National Socialism . 3rd edition Munich 1998, ISBN 3-608-91805-1 , p. 592.
  33. ↑ Reinhard Bollmus: The office of Rosenberg and its opponents. Studies on the power struggle in the National Socialist system of rule. Munich 1970, p. 20.
  34. ↑ Thomas Mathieu: Concepts of Art and Cultural Policy in National Socialism . Studies on Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, Alfred Rosenberg, Baldur von Schirach, Heinrich Himmler, Albert Speer and Wilhelm Frick. Saarbrücken 1997, p. 298 f.
  35. ↑ Claus Ekkehard Bärsch: The political religion of National Socialism . 2., completely revised Ed., Fink, Munich 2002, p. 203 f. (Adaptation of the quotation to the ref. German law)
  36. ↑ Review by Armin Pfahl-Traughber
  37. ↑ (Review by Werner Röhr in: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft 47.