Nazi Occultism 2: Weird Science | European History | Extra History

the University students gather in the plaza shouting laughing singing as the chest High pile of books burn a brass band plays each volume has been labeled unerman degenerate or counter to Nazi ideals leftist texts Marxist texts feminine texts plays and poetry by Jewish people books by pacifists or that portray War negatively like All Quiet on the Western Front they even burn Helen Keller's books because those argue for the humanity of the disabled but they also burn scientific and medical texts they throw Einstein and Freud on the bonfire along with books by physician Magnus hersfield whose

research library at his Institute for sexual research was the first ever burnt mainstream science the party believes is too Jewish the Nazis have their own science you see science that is far more attuned to their beliefs Weird Science that's not really science at all [Music] thanks so much to brilliant for continuing to support the learning of you know real science when we last left off Hitler had just entered the orbit of the German Workers Party a right-wing workingclass group formed by ex th Society members but he considered the party a bit of a joke a

committed atheist he had little patience for the slipshod way it was run and the Absurd astrological and esoteric beliefs some of the members displayed scoffing at the th society as a tea Club of course that didn't mean he rejected their nationalism anti-Semitism and folkish ideas in fact his first notable act at a party meeting was to deliver a passionate and electrifying speech about the importance of uniting his native Austria and Germany into a greater political ethnic entity and within the next few years he rose in prominence dispatching leadership Rivals and centering more of the party's

operations and goals around himself huh where have I seen that tactic recently I don't know anyway yet in that time when he ditched so many early aspects of the party and invented it he never cleaned house on the occultists and astrologers who'd staffed its early membership on the contrary the party actually sponsored Solstice festivals in 1920 and 1921 dedicated to Baldor the Sun God and his son sigfried the party newspaper ran articles claiming the cries of the Ware Republic were foretold in Scandinavian sagas and the newspapers rhetoric increasingly spoke of Communists as demons and Jews

as vampires trading on Supernatural imagery it intentionally Ed and attracted the ariosophy adopting their eugenic tenants of protecting the Aryan race by Banning interracial marriage engaging in selective breeding and eliminating or sterilizing racial or religious minorities and those with different bodies all of this with the goal to create pure blood which was really more of a spiritual concept than a scientific one related to theorists who claimed humans were part animal part Angel and that Nordic people had a greater proportion of angelic Heritage or else were part of a vanish alien super race from Atlantis now

stopping for a second if this all sounds a little sci-fi fantasy to you there's actually a very good reason for that see Vare Germany was a wash in what we'd now refer to as pulp fantasy and science fiction much of it involving Tales of blond Germanic Supermen battling enemies clearly coded as leftist and Jewish some of which took place in the ancient past some in space and as the party grew it subsumed many of those writers into its propaganda machine utilizing their sci-fi and horror talents into helping craft the image of the Nazi party and

its foes granted while many top level leaders in the party like Heinrich himler and Rudolph Hess were very into occultism and astrology overall Hitler wasn't terribly interested in that stuff despite regularly calling on tradition and the values of an imaginary past again he was an atheist and considered himself a modernist who was more interested in science or rather things that you know appeared science see he wanted the appearance of harnessing cuttingedge technology but in truth largely rejected mainstream science because Nazi ideology held that science and Academia was tainted by Jewish experts Nazis instead rested on

an alternate structure of pseudo science and would have been called border Sciences things that use the vocabulary of Science and that adherence claimed would be proven but were in no way evidence-based a great example is World ice theory that we mentioned last episode The belief that the Earth had ice moons orbiting it in the past and these had eventually smashed into the planet triggering different epochs as late as 1942 Hitler gave an interview personally endorsing the idea going on to say that Legends of cosmic cataclysm such as Atlantis or Norse Tales of gods battling ice

giants are only explicable if a disaster had destroyed an ancient culture with quote a high degree of human civilization but this went far beyond World ice Theory the Nazis endorsed and even researched techniques such as dousing astrology and Homeopathy in fact many of these border Sciences interacted with health since along with science they rejected mainstream medicine as well this included stuff as wacky as magnetic therapy and spirit diagnosis but also fairly reasonable practices like organic farming anti-smoking campaigns and vegetarianism yeah Hitler's famous vegetarianism this is where that comes from they also threw money at researching

techniques called esoteric farming this was a precursor of organic farming created by the German theosophist Rudolph Steiner who ironically fled Germany in fear of Hitler now while esoteric farming included many aspects we'd recognize today like refusing to use pesticides it also suggested things like assisting plant growth with astrology and advised burying a Rams Horn stuffed with quartz crystal in the soil in fact remember how we talked last week about how folkish thinkers imagined a past where German Peasants were mystically connected to their land well Nazi thinkers actually fantasized about eventually recreating those communities and using

esoteric farming techniques on land they'd conquered but ultimately the Nazis disliked and distrusted real science because it was based on the scientific method a structure that when used properly does not conform to an ideological bias University students professors and even many doctors were distrusted as secret Communists since many of these sectors had opposed the rise of fascism similarly the Nazis drove out prominent Jew and leftist academics creating a brain drain that ensured the country's scientific strength was severely weakened this had a particularly disastrous impact on German physics since several prominent physicists like Albert Einstein and

Max Bourne were Jewish ironically the flight of German physicists would ensure that Nazi nuclear research lagged behind the allies and mostly focused on reactors for generating power however border Sciences like World ice Theory were more malleable easier to bring inside the fold but still seeming in the moment enough to give a gloss of modernism remember Hitler desperately wanted his regime to be seen as modern and he was well aware that his anti-semitic policies appeared medieval religious persecution laws against intermarriage and ghettos had quite literally been practiced for centuries in Central Europe and internationally they were

called out as such as a result when trying to Define jewishness legally ahead of the nurenberg laws Hitler was desperate to find a standard other than religious practice that would separate Jews from Aryans and he couldn't find one from blood tests to facial measurements it quickly became clear that there was no way you could just throw a measuring tape around someone's skull and tell biologically if they had Jewish Heritage he finally had to give up and simply make the test do you or did any of your ancestors practice the Jewish religion and that more than

anything exposes how Nazi radical ideology rested on pseudo science and what is at the bottom is really a supernatural belief rather than a scientific one well that and how originally the Nazis spoke about Japan as part of the quote Asian horde that were trying to take over the world but then when an alliance looked appealing their propagandist explained that oh well actually the Japanese are like the Aryans of East Asia and are totally part of the higher races as well yeah that one caused some Whiplash even among the most indoctrinated Nazis and the reason pop

culture thinks of Nazi Germany as an era of not just science but super science is that their propagandists were so good at choosing projects that would impress and intimidate the V2 rocket the battleship bismar the first jet used in combat many of these were termed Wonder Weapons stuff pulled directly from science fiction which newspapers and radio broadcasts touted as being able to turn the tide of the war of course they couldn't the bismar sank on its maiden voyage V2s were random unguided weapons that terrified civilians but had near zero military utility and the me262 Jet

well America also had Jets but they weren't desperate enough to risk them being downed and captured the German Miracle weapons by contrast really existed largely as a way to convince the German public that their government was capable of great things selling the myth of scientific achievement while ignoring the fundamentals ultimately that tendency toward grandiose claims substituting for actual reality will would arguably lose them the war with Hitler getting high on his own Supply thinking that not only could he invade and occupy the Soviet Union but simultaneously fight the United States as well however in this

Venture science was not the only thing the Nazis would turn against plus it's not like Weird Science is a thing of the past right today we're still inundated with bad sources informed more by ideologies than the scientific method which is why personally when I'm looking to learn something new about science math data and analytics or programming I turn to brilliant brilliant is a learning platform where you learn by doing with courses crafted by an award-winning team of teachers researchers and professionals from places like MIT Caltech Duke University Microsoft and Google that you can complete on

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