Hitler's Demon

★ Mythology, astrology, witchcraft, charlatans, werewolf units, vampires, wonder weapons... The Nazis' madness is almost unimaginable, and the Third Reich's complex relationship with supernatural ideas is stranger than fiction.

★ The real-world origins of films and novels such as Captain America, Hellboy, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Keep, and Wolfenstein.

★ A worthwhile read for anyone interested in Nazism, modern pseudoscience, and pseudo-history.

The Captain America and Hellboy films, the Indiana Jones series, The Keep, the Hydra organization in Wolfenstein, werewolf units... The quest to uncover the relationship between the Nazi Party and occultism has a long history in popular culture. In fact, Nazi leaders were fascinated by the occult, and the close ties between Nazi ideology and supernatural fantasies were evident at every stage, from the party's early beginnings to its seizure of power. The German navy, Himmler's SS, and Goebbels's propaganda ministry all employed astrologers and pendulum dowsers to obtain military intelligence and wage psychological warfare. Hitler, Himmler, and others sponsored far-fetched doctrines such as astrology and cosmobiology, embraced fringe science, and encouraged research into the Holy Grail, witchcraft, and medieval devil worship. They even cobbled together a Nazi “werewolf” unit to fight...

The Gestapo forbade professional debunkers from exposing the secrets behind “magic,” while Goebbels enlisted a famous horror novelist from the Weimar era for important propaganda assignments. In short, the history of the Third Reich cannot be fully understood without understanding its relationship with supernatural fantasies. The Third Reich drew on ideas and symbols such as astrology, parapsychology, the supernatural, paganism, Aryan mythology, witchcraft, wonder weapons, and the lost kingdom of Atlantis to reimagine Germany's politics and society and reshape its science and religion. By confronting Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union and carrying out ethnic purges, it sought to realize its racial utopia and imperial dream.

This is the first comprehensive historical study of the Nazis' supernatural fantasies. Eric Kurlander reveals the complex relationship between the Third Reich and supernatural ideas. Despite its cool, scholarly treatment of the subject, every page reveals truths stranger than fiction and sure to open readers' eyes.