The Rosenberg Connection
Another among the many people who may have influenced Adolf Hitler’s in the selection of the swastika as a Nazi symbol was Alfred Rosenberg, the “intellectual leader” of the Nazi movement.
Born the son of a poor shoemaker, Alfred Rosenberg’s key to his rise to fame among the Nazi leadership was the possession of a manuscript he smuggled from Moscow, The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion . [1] Some claim that he presented the manuscript to Hitler, who saw in it a blueprint to total power.
Rosenberg told a strange story about how the manuscript came to his hands. It is probably that he quickly discovered that it was a forged document. Nevertheless, he also knew that he had in his hands a valuable document, full of racial and political dynamite, which, if used to his advantage, may become the key to his personal success.
Despite his Jewish origins, Rosenberg gained access to the Thule Society by showing the Protocols to Rudolf Hess and to Dietrich Eckart, who became wildly excited on reading it. Very soon the Protocols viewed its first German edition. German intellectuals were impressed. Edition followed edition. The book was given away at no cost and widely distributed. French, Polish, and British editions appeared. Then it was published also in America, in Italy, and in Hungary.
After the creation of the Nazi Party, Eckart introduced Rosenberg to Adolf Hitler, and the young Jewish-German emigré from Russia became an active Party member. In 1930 Rosenberg reached a high point in his career as a Nazi ideologue with the publication of his most important work, The Myth of the 20th Century . According to a review of that time, it was, “with Hitler’s Mein Kampf , the most important work on National Socialism. The book eventually became a best seller, and sold more than one million copies.
During the World War II, Rosenberg led an art-looting staff which carried off to Germany more than 21,000 carloads of stolen paintings, rare books, sculptures, and jewelry. Much of this loot found its way into the private collections of Reichmarshall Herman Göering.
Anxious to be in Hitler’s good graces, some Nazi leaders, Rosenberg prominently among them, repudiated Christianity completely. Instead, they wanted to set up a pagan cult of “blood, race, and soil.” They would go back to the dark ritual of dramatic rites of their ancestors.
The New Pagans resurrected Odin, Thor, and the old gods of primitive Teutons before Christ’s time. Instead of the Old Testament they adopted Nordic sagas and fairy tales. They set up a new trinity for worship—bravery , loyalty , and physical force .
They even created a hymn for the new German Faith Movement:
The time of the Cross has gone now,
The Sun-wheel shall arise,
And so, with God, we shall be free at last
And give our people their honor back.
The swastika as a solar wheel is prominently displayed in Paris under the Nazi occupation, Summer of 1940.Though Hitler did not openly supported the new paganism, he was not opposed to its ideas. In 1937, he awarded the National Prize, Germany’s version of the Nobel Prize, to Alfred Rosenberg, maximum foe of Christianity and leader of the Neo-Pagans. Rosenberg, the Jew turned into Nazi philosopher, wanted a return to the old Teutonic religion of fire, sword, and swastika.