This essay collection is a welcome contribution to the recent renaissance of interest in the complicated history of Nazism, esotericism, and the occult. Uwe Puschner and Clemens Vollnhals have characterized this history as involving “connection and conflict” (Die völkisch-religiöse Bewegung im Nationalsozialismus. Ein Beziehung- und Konfliktgeschichte [2012]), an assessment the present work certainly confirms. With fifteen contributors and a broad range of topics, this edited volume embodies the complex, contradictory, and nuanced nature of “the Nazi occult.” While standard works by George Mosse (The Crisis of German Ideology [1981]) and Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke (The Occult Roots of Nazism [1992]) have considered the “occult roots” of Nazism, this one seeks to extend the field––beyond even the actual bounds of the Third Reich. It is divided into three chronological sections: 1890–1933, 1933–1945, 1945–present.

A major highlight of the volume is that the authors do not shy away from the “blatant contradictions” (157) of a complex period of German history; indeed, this forms the starting point for contributors like Uwe Schellinger, Andreas Anton, and Michael Schetsche. The essentially heterogeneous nature of occultism existed well before the Nazi Party was founded, as Peter Staudenmaier points out in his chapter, “Esoteric Alternatives in Imperial Germany.” He argues that the occult in Germany, from the nineteenth century into the twentieth, was fluid rather than static, and that there were often no clear-cut lines between theosophy, anthroposophy, ariosophy, astrology, and the völkisch movement from which the Nazi Party arose. Many of those interested in the occult at the time belonged to several of these movements (often simultaneously), while the fractious nature of such groups led to members shifting among them.

Just as important, Staudenmaier and other contributors argue that those who adhered to occult, esoteric, or “pseudo-scientific” ideas did not necessarily stand outside mainstream German culture; rather, esoteric views were accommodated within broad segments of German society. Some of this builds on the findings in Corinna Treitel's A Science for the Soul (2004). Fabian Link and J. Laurence Hare reconsider the use of the term pseudo-science as a means of separating science under the Nazis from “genuine” science, given that the term has sometimes been used “in targeted ways, for self-serving ends” (105), and without recognizing that “culture, politics and social convention have historically played a role in determining what science is and what approaches are acceptable or unacceptable” (105). They argue for the “mutability” (115) of methodological and epistemological categories of scientific research under the Nazis through a case study of the excavation and study of Haithabu (an early Viking settlement in Schleswig-Holstein). They also consider the ways in which völkisch views might fit within the contested bounds of science at the time.

If contradiction is a major theme, so, too, is the idea of a fundamental “disenchantment” (78) with the modern world, and several authors argue that a turn to the occult may derive from a desire for a “reenchanted world” (25) or a need to “remystify” (79) the world—a common theme in the four essays in the first section. This includes Perry Myers's fascinating consideration of Monism and of attempts to “reconcile” spirituality and science, which, he argues, only led to a new “elite priestly class” (56). It is also one of the major themes in Oded Heilbronner's equally fascinating final chapter on the “Wewelsburg Effect” (referring to Wewelsburg castle, which was associated with the SS) and the continuing “attraction” (273, 282) of Nazi occultism today, particularly among disaffected youth and “neofascist rock bands” (271)

The second section of the work (1933–1945) challenges the notion that there was a decisive point at which the Nazis turned against occultism, though the accepted wisdom has been that this occurred with the “Hess Action” of 1941. This refers to the actions taken by the Nazi government after Rudolf Hess flew to England. This bizarre flight was “widely attributed to the deputy Führer's immersion in occult doctrines” (133) so that the Nazi government attacked “the representatives of so-called ‘secret doctrines and secret sciences’” (157). Eric Kurlander has a specific focus on astrology, the “world ice theory,” and anthroposophy (with an emphasis on a continuing Nazi adherence to Rudolf Steiner's views on biodynamic agriculture). He argues that occult and “border-scientific doctrines” (135) retained public support under the Nazis, even though the process of Gleichschaltung (coordination) meant that the “free pursuit” (149) of alternative doctrines was often opposed. Schellinger, Anton, and Schetsche argue just as strongly that the notion of a complete turn away from occultism needs to be modified to account for attempts to use occult methods for pragmatic military ends. They demonstrate that there were particular points after the “Hess Action” when the German military turned to seers, including those who used sidereal pendulums to predict outcomes in naval warfare, as well as psychics and other “diviners,” who were consulted in an attempt to find Benito Mussolini after he was kidnapped.

Michael O'Sullivan and Monica Black add further layers of complexity to the portrait of German society through their respective studies of Christian mysticism, and of two figures who attracted extraordinary numbers of followers: Bruno Gröning, a post-1945 “miracle worker,” and the stigmatic Therese Neumann. O'Sullivan uses the latter to examine the Nazis’ complicated relationship with Christian mysticism, particularly in the 1930s, when Neumann could have potentially acted as a point of resistance to the Nazi regime. Black, for her part, examines the question of “cataclysm” and the notion of the “apocalyptic” in considering why people were drawn to the supposed faith healer Bruno Gröning. She argues that there was a widespread “apocalyptic” view of the world among Germans in the wake of the two world wars, and a sense of living in the “end times.” This may also be why Therese Neumann was attractive to many followers in the 1920s, though O'Sullivan is more focused in his essay on the tension surrounding her in the Third Reich. Rounding out these biographical studies are John Ondrovcik's consideration of “phantasmagoria” and the revolutionary Max Hoelz, and Anna Lux's study of parapsychologist Hans Bender. For a number of these figures, there was a sense that particular themes of “folk-culture” and religion (deriving from a broader German cultural base) came to coalesce around individuals who were taken to embody the miraculous or the mysterious. This folk-culture was sometimes specific to a particular region, as both O'Sullivan and Ondrovcik argue, though apocalyptic notions appear to have been fairly widespread.

The larger question raised in this volume is why people were drawn to such figures and why they fundamentally believed in them. To answer this, each author grounds his or her particular study in a context that draws on longer traditions as well as the immediate situation, such as the chaos of the Weimar Republic. As Black observes, Hitler could appear to be a “savior” in such a context. To draw on an image Ondrovcik uses of the foreboding woods in the Vogtland, these studies create a rich sense of the many possible paths of belief during a period of German history—from World War I to the Cold War—when people often felt entirely lost.