The Strange Case of Dr. Schacht And Mr. Hitler Freemasonry and the Nazi Swastika in the Third Reich
By Davis Truman
()
About this ebook
In the darkest years of the 20th century, Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime cast a long and terrifying shadow over the world. The swastika, the symbol of Nazi power and oppression, became synonymous with hatred and brutality. However, a curious and enigmatic figure was hidden within this sinister regime, occupying a paradoxical position. Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, a prominent economist, and financial wizard, emerged as an intriguing character at the heart of the Third Reich, navigating the treacherous terrain of Hitler's inner circle while harboring a mysterious secret of his own.
"The Strange Case of Dr. Schacht and Mr. Hitler: Freemasonry and the Nazi Swastika in the Third Reich" explores the perplexing relationship between Schacht, Hitler, and the clandestine world of Freemasonry that operated within Nazi Germany. Authored by esteemed historians and researchers, this groundbreaking book delves into the depths of historical archives and uncovers a compelling narrative that sheds light on the intricate connections between Freemasonry and the rise of the Nazi regime.
"The Strange Case of Dr. Schacht and Mr. Hitler" unveils the clandestine connections between Freemasonry and the Nazi Swastika, challenging conventional understandings of Nazi ideology. It delves into the secretive world of Masonic lodges. It explores the paradoxical coexistence of the Freemasons within the Third Reich, whose beliefs and principles appeared opposed to Hitler's fascist regime.
Through a captivating narrative, this book traces the origins and evolution of Freemasonry in Germany and unravels the intricate web of influence that the fraternity wielded. From its members who occupied influential positions within the Nazi Party to the covert networks that operated under darkness, this investigation sheds light on the enigmatic relationship between Freemasonry and the Third Reich.
Read more from Davis Truman
Hamas in Palestine The Complex Interplay Between Politics And Religion of The Islamic Movement in The Palestinian Cause Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNazi Party and the Occultism Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Rise of The Nazi Party How Hitler Used The Power of Propaganda And Mass Communication to Rise to Power Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNazi Movies as Propaganda Machine How Goebbels Changed the German Film Industry Into an Ideological Weapon Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMothers of The Nation The Ambiguous Role of Nazi Women in The Third Reich Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Pathetic Adolf The Escape And Capture of Nazi Eichmann, The Mind Behind the Holocaust Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Cannibal Who Collected Skulls The Chilling Case of Jeffrey Dahmer, Traumatized Child Turned Serial Killer Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Atomic Alchemist J. Robert Oppenheimer And The Birth of The Nuclear Age Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Courage of Johanna Bonger The Woman Who Made Vincent Van Gogh Immortal Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSky Secrets America's UFO And Alien Chronicles Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWeb of Deception Unraveling Cyber Espionage World Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBeyond the surface Christopher Columbus and the Kaleidoscope of American Identity Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUnraveling the Knot The Palestine-Israeli Conflict Explained And The Possible Solutions Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIn the Footsteps of Fear The Unabomber's Manifesto, Ideology, Anarchy, And The Pursuit of Revolution Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDark Destinations A Journey through Dark Tourism And Death Adventures Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBehind Enemy Lines Nazi Spies in America During World War II Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Invisible Clash FBI, Shin Bet, And The IRA's Struggle Against Domestic War on Terror Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOver The Wall The Stasi Spy Network in East Germany After World War II Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRhymes And Rebellion Unveiling The Power of Hip Hop And Gangsta Rap Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPower & Ambition The Kennedy Family And The Tragedy of an American Dynasty Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Utøya Monster The Disturbing Evolution of Anders Breivik Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRoosevelt's New Deal From The Crisis of The Great Depression to The Era of Extraordinary Changes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Fragile Planet Zero Waste Strategies in The Fight Against Climate Change And Pollution Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Shadow of Evil The Ethical Dilemma of Nazi Medical Experiments, Darwinism, And Racial Purification Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Kennedy Icon A Retrospective of JFK's Cultural Impact Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMata Hari Decrypting The Spy Game Surrounding Her Life And Death Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Dark Side of Winston Churchill Unmasking The Complexity of The Man Behind The Myth Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBeyond The Breaking Point The Tragedy of Climate Changes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWho Discovered America? The Enigma of Who Came Before Columbus Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to The Strange Case of Dr. Schacht And Mr. Hitler Freemasonry and the Nazi Swastika in the Third Reich
Related ebooks
Understanding The Roots Of Fascism Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5TIN TABERNACLES: How Religious Fundamentalists Took Over the Republican Party Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEconomics and Political Force: A Time to Move Ahead Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHimmler's Secret Desire Gender Roles And The Homosexual Question in Nazi Germany Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Men With the Pink Triangle: The True, Life-and-Death Story of Homosexuals in the Nazi Death Camps Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Shadow of Evil The Ethical Dilemma of Nazi Medical Experiments, Darwinism, And Racial Purification Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Nazis and the Occult: The Dark Forces Unleashed by the Third Reich Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Madmen of History, Sixth Edition Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Understanding the F-Word: American Fascism and the Politics of Illusion Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Conservatism: A Rediscovery Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Political Freud: A History Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHaunting of America: A Demonologist’s Take on American Spirits Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Splendid Blond Beast: Money, Law, and Genocide in the Twentieth Century Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Alt-Right Inferno: Amity Underground, #1 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Invisible Clash FBI, Shin Bet, And The IRA's Struggle Against Domestic War on Terror Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsModern Tyrants Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHitler's Girl: The British Aristocracy and the Third Reich on the Eve of WWII Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Fugitives: A History of Nazi Mercenaries During the Cold War Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Closing of the Liberal Mind: How Groupthink and Intolerance Define the Left Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Cognition Switch #4 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Never Again?: The Threat of the New Anti-Semitism Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The Psychotic Left: From Jacobin France to the Occupy Movement Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGospel Singers and Gunslingers; Riots and Radicals Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMengele and Nazi Doctors During the Third Reich Children's Experiments and the Racial Utopia for Opportunity and Careerism Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsReligions and Followers Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5FDR and His Enemies: A History Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Healing from Hate: How Young Men Get Into—and Out of—Violent Extremism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Forbidden Bookshelf Presents Christopher Simpson: The Splendid Blond Beast, Blowback, and Science of Coercion Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Wars & Military For You
Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Daily Creativity Journal Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sun Tzu's The Art of War: Bilingual Edition Complete Chinese and English Text Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Making of the Atomic Bomb Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unacknowledged: An Expose of the World's Greatest Secret Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Last Kingdom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Killing the SS: The Hunt for the Worst War Criminals in History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Washington: The Indispensable Man Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/577 Days of February: Living and Dying in Ukraine, Told by the Nation’s Own Journalists Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Rise of the Fourth Reich: The Secret Societies That Threaten to Take Over America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933–45 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World--and Why Their Differences Matter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unit 731: Testimony Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of War & Other Classics of Eastern Philosophy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Art of War: The Definitive Interpretation of Sun Tzu's Classic Book of Strategy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dr. Seuss Goes to War: The World War II Editorial Cartoons of Theodor Seuss Geisel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Strange Case of Dr. Schacht And Mr. Hitler Freemasonry and the Nazi Swastika in the Third Reich
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
The Strange Case of Dr. Schacht And Mr. Hitler Freemasonry and the Nazi Swastika in the Third Reich - Davis Truman
Chapter One
INtroduction
Hitler based his hatred of Freemasonry on the belief that through it, Jews sidestepped the racial and legal barriers that marginalized them in European society. Consequently, one of Hitler's first acts after seizing power was to shut the lodges down, a task completed in just two years. When war broke out four years later, Hitler's anti-Masonic sentiment spread along with his invading army, and there was only one set of men whom the Nazis and Fascists despised more than the Jews. They are Freemasons. Though an intriguing declaration, to be sure, Lunden was wrong; the Nazis did not hate Freemasons more than Jews. In fact, Nazis didn't hate Freemasons; the Nazis hated Freemasonry,
but not necessarily Freemasons.
The ideology was what the Nazis hated, not the men.
On the contrary, the men who made up the bulk of the German Masonic lodges were people who had increasingly gravitated toward the regime during the Weimar Republic and supported it after the seizure of power. They were established, educated, middle-class, and professional men of good German stock. The only thing keeping the Nazis from welcoming these men was their past or present membership in a fraternity that worked to loosen state, national, and social bonds. The most crucial difference between victims of persecution and victims of genocide or the holocaust was that their status as a target was not dependent on race, biology, or blood.
For communists, the problem was political; for Jehovah's Witnesses, it was religious; for Freemasons, it was ideological, all three of which are voluntary and controllable by the victim. Victims of genocide and the holocaust included Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, homosexuals, and the mentally disabled: groups whose threat
lay in their blood and could, therefore, taint
the blood of good Aryan Germans through marriage and children. Classification lay with the persecutor. What separated genocide from the holocaust is that victims of genocide were pursued until their racial/ethnic community was destroyed, which, though necessitating mass murder, did not require the murder of all members. That fate is what remained solely for the Jews; complete, total, and utter extinction, not only in Germany but worldwide. Freemasons are thus unique in that they were among the Nazis' ideological enemies, but what set Freemasons apart from other non-racial groups? Like Freemasons, communists could, and did, leave the Communist Party to avoid persecution; some even joined the Nazi Party. In fact, when former Freemasons were denied membership in the Party, they pointed out that former communists were being allowed to join, so why not them? What separated Freemasons from communists was education and class. Communism appeals primarily to the uneducated workingman, whereas Freemasonry appeals to the educated social elite. Former Freemasons thus had skills to offer, not just party dues. As doctors, lawyers, and professors, Freemasons could serve as legitimizers and perpetrators of Nazi ideology. Furthermore, as the bourgeoisie, former Freemasons shared the Nazis' detest of communism.
Freemasons differed from Witnesses in several ways; first, religious affiliation, and the changing thereof, had to be registered with the government. Freemasonry was a social organization and, thus, not a part of one's official identity. Freemasons could join or leave the lodges without government paperwork, which meant that when the Nazis took power, they had complete lists of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Germany, but not of Freemasons. This is one reason why the Gestapo tried so hard to acquire membership lists from lodge administrators; without them, there was little proof of a man’s membership. This ability to change one’s spots has another facet; religion plays a much more significant role in a person’s identity than do their club memberships. As for the Jehovah’s Witnesses, they, too, could denounce the church and escape persecution, which a few did, but to attack one’s religion under persecution is to jeopardize one’s salvation. For most Witnesses, persecution for their belief was preferable to escape by denying the faith. It was choosing the higher calling. In Freemasonry, the bonds of ideology and trust are nowhere near as strong as bonds of faith, and that assumes that the individual joined the lodge for the ideology in the first place, which most didn’t. Whereas the minority of Witnesses forsook ideology, it was the minority of Freemasons who stuck to it and risked continued persecution. Severing the mental connections to a lodge was almost as easy as severing the physical ones. A third area that significantly separates Freemasons from Witnesses is nationalism. A Witness is forbidden to salute the flag, serve in the army, or do anything that might be construed as violating the Second Commandment. This was one of the reasons the Nazis hounded the Witnesses in the first place. On the other hand, Freemasons were intensely national and patriotic, and many of them had already served in the military, as officers no less.
One other group warrants comparison, shows the lodges' uniqueness and helps explain the difficult path the Freemasons had to follow to achieve compromise; the university student Korps (fraternities). These college fraternities shared much in common with the lodges; they were equally old and exclusive, and both declared themselves politically and religiously neutral. As professionals, many Freemasons belonged to the Korps during their days at the university, introducing them to the world of voluntary associations and social exclusivity. Members in both the Korps and the lodges held their membership dear (some even held concurrent membership in both), but belonging to a Korps or lodge was not as defining as political or religious affiliation, leaving a willingness to abandon the association if necessary. After the seizure of power, the Korps responded like the lodges; some sought coordination while others resisted it as long as possible, eventually choosing to close down rather than align. Where they did differ, however, was that Nazis accepted the coordination of the Korps but not of the lodges. The difference was institutional; as an organization, the