The Eckart Connection
“Follow Hitler! He will dance, but it is I who have called the tune!”
“Do not mourn for me: I have influenced history more than any other German.”
Those were Dietrich Eckart ‘s last words as he lay dying in Munich in December of 1923. Dietrich Eckart was the main figure of the Thule Society. He considered himself the mentor of Adolf Hitler. Some people believe that it was Eckart who suggested Hitler the use of the swastika as the symbol of the Nazi movement.
This racist poet and drug addict helped reinforce Hitler’s political and racial ideas. Hitler had him in such a great esteem that he dedicated the second volume of Mein Kampf to Eckart. And it is said, though it it difficult to believe, that Hitler’s eyes invariably moistened whenever he spoke of Eckart.
Eckart was the editor of a racist periodical, Auf gut Deutsch (In Plain German), in which he published scathing attack on Jews and other non-Germans. His articles clearly evidenced he had Wagner, Chamberlain, Lanz von Liebenfels and Guido von List. Like the rest of them, he was fascinated with German mythology, runic mysteries, and the swastika.
An occultist as well as a rabid nationalist, Eckart and a group of the Society’s inner circle had been waiting for the appearance of a German messiah who would fuse politics and religion into an unholy crusade against the ideals of the Christian world.
Eventually Eckart became Editor-in-Chief of the Völkischer Beobachter, the Nazi official newspaper, and for some time was a very influential individual in Nazi Germany.