Scott Abel

Critique number three

The Occult History of the Third Reich: The Enigma of the Swastika

This documentary describes how Nazi symbolism such as the swastika played an

important role in seducing the German people. The documentary also demonstrates the

evolution of the use of symbolism and the myths that helped the Nazi party to gain

power. The swastika and other symbols helped to create an image of Germany that truly

never existed. However, the film doesn’t show enough of how the Nazis made up their

own history.

The omnipresence of the swastika created an aura of mysticism and nationalism.

Aspects of science questioned religious doctrine and this resulted in some westerners

searching for a new spiritual meaning. Some people went to Tibet, because Tibet was a

non-Christian nation whose people’s main religious belief was Buddhism. A Russian

psychic name Mme. Blavastiki brought esoteric symbolism to Europe including the

swastika. The swastika was a symbol for the god of the sun and creation of good fortune.

The symbol came to mean the race of light or people of “Aryan” blood.

At the time, there were also a politically divided German-speaking people. There

was the dissolved Austrian-Hungarian Empire and the formerly Prussian-dominated

Germany. Some wanted a union under one nation and government. Many Austrians

were nostalgic for the days of Holy Roman Empire, because the Holy Roman Empire

unified the German-speaking people. The unity of Holy Rome was fragile and the

empire was more controlled by groups of local princes; rather than a centralized power.

Also, the days of powerful local princes and nobles were virtually over in large part due

to the changes during the Industrial Era. The political, economic, and social changes

during the Industrial Revolution were important for the creation of new ideologies. These

ideologies helped gave birth to the idea of the Germanic Aryan race. Along with the

ideas of the Aryan race came the resurrection of pagan deities such as Woten and the use

of ancient runes. The new cult helped fill the Aryan spiritual void.

During the Great War, German soldiers used the swastika as a good luck charm.

However, after the defeat of Germany, Nazis began to create an idealized fictional past.

For example, there were parades with knights adorned with swastikas and swastikas on

what resembled Roman legion flags. The swastika was written into European history by

the Nazis. Germans began to look back at the Teutonic knights and glorified them as

ancient Aryans. They idealized their past by parading knights in armor and other

medieval soldiers adorned with swastikas.

Hitler used the swastika as his symbol in the Munich revolt, which was an attempt

to undermine the authority of the Weimar Republic. He had a Nazi flag, bloodied during

the coup attempt, which became sacred and even holy to the Nazi cause. The swastika

came to symbolize not only the Nazis, but the idea of the superiority of the Aryan race in

a social Darwinist regime. The Nazis believed that the Aryans were superior to all other

races and creeds. Eventually, the Nazis began to push Christianity out and replace it with

the old Nordic faith within their party causing the swastika to become the new cross to

the Nazis. New symbols appeared all over the Nazi regime; each representing a division

of the government or military. Many Germans became infatuated with the swastika and

the Aryan ideology, because they wanted to see how far the influence of the Aryans had

advanced territorially as well as culturally. The swastika corrupted from a symbol of

good luck to that of Nazi power. The film did not demonstrate very well how the Nazis

rewrote history to make their ideology more popular. It did not demonstrated what really

happened and how the Nazis lied about the past.

The Nazis became a power that claimed that the Aryans were a superior race that

glorified their past and created a new religious cult. The swastika became the symbol of

this power and ideology. However, in reality, they made up a lot this ideology, which the

film should have demonstrated. The Nazis merged the Aryan ideology with ancient

symbolism to create a new culture. Today, this symbolism is viewed by most as evil and

represents a hated ideology.