Hitler’s Monsters

A Supernatural History of the Third Reich

De: Eric Kurlander

Narrado por: Grover Gardner

The Nazi fascination with the occult is legendary, yet today it is often dismissed as Himmler's personal obsession or wildly overstated for its novelty. Preposterous though it was, however, supernatural thinking was inextricable from the Nazi project. The regime enlisted astrology and the paranormal, paganism, Indo-Aryan mythology, witchcraft, miracle weapons, and the lost kingdom of Atlantis in reimagining German politics and society and recasting German science and religion. In this eye-opening history, Eric Kurlander reveals how the Third Reich's relationship to the supernatural was far from straightforward. Even as popular occultism and superstition were intermittently rooted out, suppressed, and outlawed, the Nazis drew upon a wide variety of occult practices and esoteric sciences to gain power, shape propaganda and policy, and pursue their dreams of racial utopia and empire.

©2017 Eric Kurlander (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

An interesting book

On one hand, it worked to the allies advantage that the Nazis were distracted with some of these occult beliefs since it took away from focusing on fighting the war, and hindered their efforts. It also led to the NAZIs doing some of the most horrific things to people, and committing crimes against humanity. It was interesting to see how some of these stories were used in propaganda in the Reich to perpetuate their reign.

Nazi Uses of the Occult: Extremes of Twisted Faith

A cornucopia of research and knowledge about the Nazi manipulation of Germans before and during WWII. The use of twisted folk propaganda to justify the oppression and mass murder of ethnic groups in Europe and starting a world war. The book delves deep into occult thinking among Nazi leaders and their use of border science to achieve their ends. A. excellent read and eye opener on Nazi world views. Also a warning to the present and future on how easily humans are bent by masters of deception.

Great scholarship, poor reader

If you could sum up Hitler’s Monsters in three words, what would they be?

Scholarly, balanced, well-researched

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Grover Gardner?

I wish that the production company had chosen *any* reader who is capable of pronouncing German words correctly. Ignorance of foreign languages is a widespread problem in audiobooks. Since I study German literature, I am always pleased to find audiobooks relating to my interests, but I have rarely, if ever, found a reader who actually knows how to pronounce German words in a way that doesn't make me cringe. If the book is about German subject matter, and uses a large number of German words and names, pick a reader who knows at least the basic rules of German pronunciation!

Any additional comments?

Excellent scholarly treatment of the issues surrounding the supernatural and border science in the Third Reich. I am a professor of German literature, and have done some research on occultism, parapsychology, and related phenomena, so I was eager to read this book, and pleased to find it in audiobook format (despite my dissatisfaction with the reader). Kurlander offers a well-researched account of the topic that draws deeply on primary sources, as well as addressing theoretical and historical work on related topics by other leading scholars. I would love to see more audiobooks of scholarly works like this, as opposed to the popular histories that are more common in audio format.

sobering

a fascinating account of the Third reich's involvement with the bizarre and the demonic that was both sober and sobering.

Hocus Pocus helped the Nazi’s loose the war!

Not clear how the national socialist party of Hitler’s government can be repeatedly referred to as ‘right wing’? Besides that issue, it was a thorough history of all the illogical, unscientific views of many in the regime.

This is a good book

This is a good book. It develops a side to Nazi history. It isn't that he is presenting previously unknown information. He's not. But he is developing it in an interesting way that gives me new thoughts about the subject.

A scholarly look at an oft sensationalized topic

I feel I need to defend this book for being dry. This is a scholarly monograph, and most such books don't get made into audiobooks. The reason is that they're usually intensely boring to anyone who isn't researching that specific area. (To be honest, they're still boring then, but they're at least useful).
However, scholarly monographs about WWII and especially about the Nazis _do_ often get made into audiobooks because there's an unusual level of popular interest. But it's important to know what you're getting with this book--it's not a popular history, like, say, Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. I think Shirer is a magnificent writer, but he doesn't write like an academic (pretty sure the two facts are directly related, tbh!). Kurlander's book is a scholarly work with extensive notes and a long bibliography full of solid sources, and as such it can certainly be dry at times.
That said, I enjoyed it very much--it was one of the most accessible and engaging scholarly monographs I've ever read/listened to (and that's in the high hundreds). But it was also useful for my own dissertation research (about Japanese mysticism, folk movements and nationalism), so I went into it with a specific goal in mind. I can understand being disappointed and bored if you aren't looking to get something specific and useful out of the book.

I do have a few criticisms. The book can be repetitive at times, and I'm pretty sure I heard a sentence or two from an early chapter repeated in a later chapter (and it wasn't a quote). It could have used some aggressive editing.
I also think that it would have benefitted enormously from a deeper look at theosophy and similar movements prior to WWI throughout Europe and America, perhaps starting with folk/rural romanticism and disillusionment with industrialization. It's a big subject, but it's important to emphasize that these ideas didn't suddenly appear in Weimar Germany out of nowhere (and Kurlander definitely knows this and does devote space to it--just not enough, in my opinion).
Finally, I do think that some of the Weimar and Nazi criticisms of the 19th and 20th-century dominance of scientific materialism and rationalism are interesting and legitimate, even though they were being made by some terrible, terrible people and used to justify unspeakable actions. It is a fact that at the time many people (including scientists) thought science would eventually solve every problem of humanity, even those of human nature. That belief in a regimented scientific utopia was responsible for much suffering and death. Nazi ideology occupied a weird space between absolute faith in science, and resentment that science had destroyed the mysterious and spiritual aspects of life (which Kurlander does discuss). That's not a specifically Nazi issue; in fact, it's a jarring incongruity that western society is still attempting to mediate, without much success. In the book, Kurlander comes down pretty hard on the side of scientific materialism, sometimes to the point of sarcasm. I wish he had been more even-handed. (Or maybe I'm doing Kurlander a disservice and he's just personally an ultra-materialist?)
As for the narration, I often buy books simply because they're narrated by Grover Gardner, so I was pleased as punch when I saw his name on this one.

A Profound Insight Into a Sadly Relevent Topic

This book presents the origins to much of the western world's modern, ignorant, ideologicla racism, and paranoia over metaphysicl/existential dilemmas concerning race. It's essential to understanding the development of bigoted pseudoscience over the course of generations, and gives a detailed account of how closely linked the spiritual revival was to white supremacy. The best part is this is the first author I have encountered willing to call the Nazi myth out for the fraud that it is. There are no pacts with demons here, or UFO's, but you will find out why some of Germany's worst blunders stem from the ridiculous mystical strategies that doomed the third rich before the war even began. All of the research is thorough, and free of a lot of the new age dramatics one normally finds in books about the occult fascination of the Nazi's.

Interesting and well written

Tackles a difficult subject to explain because it is so odd. I thought that the author's approach to this subject was useful for those not familiar with it.

Highly Academic, yet intiguing.

There have been so many wild theories put forth over the years about the link between the Occult and the Nazis. Eric Kurlander, an accomplished academic and historian, sets out to explore what exactly the truth about all of this is. In order to do so, he is forced to explain the nature of many different fringe movements and beliefs of the time that impacted the thirty-three percent of the German population that the Nazis reportedly used to ride their way to power. (This is, in fact, a frightening tale that parallels some of the recent political changes in the United States, and thus proves that you only need a unified minority of the populace to gain the power of any nation.) The difficulty with this approach is that the first third of the book is pretty dry and cerebral, but crucial to understanding the basis and full depth of some of the entertaining and intriguing, yet arguably kooky, myths and propaganda that the Nazis used to keep their followers aligned and motivated. Naturally, there are some interesting characters that arise from all of this. Likewise, it depicts a group of Nazi leaders who were constantly having to alter their approach to handling their followers rather than the other way around. This does not make them sympathetic, but makes it pretty clear that those in charge were pursuing power for the sake of power rather than having a more mystical agenda; though there were those in the power structure, including Hitler himself, who turned out to have some rather bizarre interests and beliefs that are not only surprising, but entertaining.