Occultism in Nazism

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The association of Nazism with occultism occurs in a wide range of theories, speculation, and research into the origins of Nazism and into Nazism's possible relationship with various occult traditions. Such ideas have flourished as a part of popular culture since at least the early 1940s (during World War II), and gained renewed popularity starting in the 1960s. British historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke analyzed the topic in his 1985 book The Occult Roots of Nazism, in which he argued there were in fact links between some ideals of Ariosophy and Nazi ideology. He also analyzed the problems of the numerous popular occult historiography books written on the topic, which he found heavily exaggerated the relationship between Nazism and the occult. Goodrick-Clarke sought to separate empiricism and sociology from the modern mythology of Nazi occultism that exists in many books which "have represented the Nazi phenomenon as the product of arcane and demonic influence". He evaluated most of the...

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