Magical Re-Enchantment: Part 4

Case Study - Nazi Germany and the Power of Myth

By Carl Teichrib

Note: Part four of this series is an expanded adaptation from chapter 7 in my book, Game of Gods: The Temple of Man in the Age of Re-Enchantment, briefly exploring Nazi Germany as a model of Re-Enchantment.

It should go without saying, but this article presents a precautionary analysis; by understanding the past, we can see how the present may be framed.

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So much of the popular interest around Nazi Germany is centered on the actions of World War II. Relatively less attention is given to the domestic-spiritual milieu of the National Socialist state. Of importance is the development of myth and meaning as put forward by Party leadership, and by those intellectuals who fashioned the underlying context. Keep in mind, however, that in dealing with National Socialism there are layers of complexity, nuance, and paradox.

On one hand we see what Hermann Rauschning called the “opportunist policy” of direct action and pragmatism.¹ In this there is an element of modernity and disenchantment: The behemoth of Nazi bureaucracy enforcing Party plans – be they rational or irrational – and the organizing of technical solutions to pressing problems. Technocratic attitudes were visible in the interplay between State goals, science, and industry. Racial science, an accepted discipline in the Western world at the time, married the Nietzschean will to power with biological determinism, justifying a Darwinian license for experiments in racial purity.²

Techniques of domination, industries of extermination, and the science of misery turned Europe into a living nightmare. By war’s end, technocracy was “one of the most powerful and last pillars of the National Socialist state.”³

On the other hand, the Third Reich was mesmerized by an aesthetic way of seeing itself. Mythic meaning was woven into art and literature and film, in its new way of looking at religion, in its emphasis on youth and vitality, and in the stirring of mass mood.⁴ Nazi education stressed total integration and “we-consciousness,” creating an emotional experience that bound the heart of the student to the spirit of the nation.⁵ Farming practices became models of naturalistic holism, following the Germanic paganism of Walther Darré, the Reich Minister of Food and Agriculture.⁶ German National Socialism was the first green state, instituting land preservation laws and emphasizing a romanticized version of nature.⁷ Green members of the Party wedded ecology with racial biology and Social Darwinism.⁸ It was a secular religion framed around a Pagan worldview, preaching a sacred duty.

Three national themes instilled mystery, myth, and meaning: Führer, the leader-messiah who is absorbed into the fate of his people, a mystical incarnation of the national soul⁹ – Volk, the authentic and pure community, an ethnic-spiritual identity in which the individual is consumed within the Germanic ideal¹⁰ – Blut und Boden, “blood and soil,” the life-force which drives purpose, connecting sacrifice and toil to the sacredness of the land.¹¹

None of this emerged in a vacuum.