Alfred Rosenberg

Alfred Ernst Rosenberg ( – 16 October 1946) was a Baltic German Nazi theorist and ideologue. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart and he held several important posts in the Nazi government. He was the head of the NSDAP Office of Foreign Affairs during the entire rule of Nazi Germany (1933–1945), and led Amt Rosenberg ("Rosenberg's bureau"), an official Nazi body for cultural policy and surveillance, between 1934 and 1945. During World War II, Rosenberg was the head of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (1941–1945). After the war, he was convicted of crimes against peace; planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression; war crimes; and crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg trials in 1946. He was sentenced to death and executed on 16 October 1946.

The author of a seminal work of Nazi ideology, ''The Myth of the Twentieth Century'' (1930), Rosenberg is considered one of the main authors of key Nazi ideological creeds, including its racial theory, persecution of the Jews, ''Lebensraum'', abrogation of the Treaty of Versailles, and opposition to what was considered "degenerate" modern art. He is known for his rejection of and hatred for Christianity, having played an important role in the development of German nationalist Positive Christianity.

Early life

Family

Rosenberg was born on 12 January 1893 in Reval, now Tallinn (the capital of modern Estonia), then in the Governorate of Estonia (Russian Empire). His mother Elfriede (née Siré), who had French and German ancestry, was the daughter of Louise Rosalie (née Fabricius), born near Leal (modern Lihula, Estonia) in 1842, and of the railway official Friedrich August Siré, born in Saint-Petersburg (Russian Empire) in 1843. Born in the same city in 1868 and confirmed in Reval at 17 in 1885, Elfriede Siré married Woldemar Wilhelm Rosenberg, a wealthy merchant from Reval, in the Lutheran Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul (St-Petersburg) in 1886. His paternal grandfather, Martin Rosenberg, was a master shoemaker and elder of his guild. Born in Riga in 1820, and probably partly of Latvian descent, he had moved to Reval in the 1850s, where he met Julie Elisabeth Stramm, born in Jörden (Estonia) in 1835. The two married in the German St. Nicholas parish of Reval in 1856. His mother died two months after his birth.

The Hungarian-Jewish journalist Franz Szell, who was apparently residing in Tilsit, Prussia, Germany, spent a year researching in Latvian and Estonian archives before publishing an open letter in 1936, with copies to Hermann Göring, Joseph Goebbels, Foreign Minister Konstantin von Neurath and others, accusing Rosenberg of having "no drop of German blood" flowing in his veins. Szell wrote that among Rosenberg's ancestors were only "Latvians, Jews, Mongols, and French." As a result of his open letter, Szell was deported by Lithuanian authorities on 15 September 1936. His claims were repeated in the 15 September 1937 issue of the Vatican newspaper ''L'Osservatore Romano''. Alfred Rosenberg was indeed of Baltic German, French, and probably also of Estonian and Latvian descent, but no Jewish ancestry has been discovered.

Education and early career

The young Rosenberg graduated from the Petri-Realschule (currently Tallinna Reaalkool) and went on to study architecture at the Riga Polytechnical Institute and engineering at Moscow's Imperial Higher Technical School ( ru , Императорское Московское техническое училище (ИМТУ)), completing his PhD studies in 1917. During his stays at home in Reval, he attended the art studio of the famed painter Ants Laikmaa - though he showed promise, there are no records that he ever exhibited.

During the German occupation of Estonia in 1918, Rosenberg served as a teacher at the Gustav Adolf Gymnasium. He gave his first speech on Jewish Marxism on 30 November, at the House of the Blackheads, after the 28 November 1918 outbreak of the Estonian War of Independence.Pekka Erel
Kapo luuras natsijuhi Alfred Rosenbergi järele
Eesti Ekspress He emigrated to Germany with the retreating Imperial German army, along with Max Scheubner-Richter, who served as something of a mentor to Rosenberg and to his ideology. Arriving in Munich, he contributed to Dietrich Eckart's publication, the ''Völkischer Beobachter'' (''Ethnic/Nationalist Observer''). By this time, he was both an antisemite – influenced by Houston Stewart Chamberlain's book ''The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century'', one of the key proto-Nazi books of racial theory – and an anti-Bolshevik. Rosenberg became one of the earliest members of the German Workers' Party – later renamed the National Socialist German Workers' Party, better known as the Nazi Party – joining in January 1919, eight months before Adolf Hitler joined in September. According to some historians, Rosenberg had also been a member of the Thule Society, along with Eckart, although Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke contends that they were only guests. After the ''Völkischer Beobachter'' became the Nazi party newspaper in December 1920, Rosenberg became its editor in 1923. Rosenberg was a leading member of Aufbau Vereinigung, Reconstruction Organisation, a conspiratorial organisation of White Russian émigrés which had a critical influence on early Nazi policy.

Rosenberg sympathized and identified with Talat Pasha and the Committee of Union and Progress that carried out the Armenian genocide, also claiming that there was "a deliberately Jewish policy which had always protected the Armenians" and that "during the world war, the Armenians have led the espionage against the Turks, similar to the Jews against Germany".

Nazi party

In 1923, after the failed Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler, who had been imprisoned for treason, appointed Rosenberg as the leader of the Nazi movement. Hitler remarked privately in later years that his choice of Rosenberg, whom he regarded as weak and lazy, was strategic; Hitler did not want the temporary leader of the Nazis to become too popular or hungry for power, because a person with either of those two qualities might not want to cede the party leadership after Hitler's release. However, at the time of the appointment Hitler had no reason to believe that he would soon be released, and Rosenberg had not appeared weak, so this may have been Hitler reading back into history his dissatisfaction with Rosenberg for the job he did.

On 1 January 1924, Rosenberg founded the Greater German People's Community, a Nazi front organization. Headquartered in Munich, it was largely limited to Bavaria, the birthplace of National Socialism, had no substantial presence outside that State and became a haven for Nazi Party members from that area. Prominent members included Max Amann, Phillip Bouhler, Hermann Esser, Franz Xaver Schwarz and Julius Streicher. Rosenberg, one of the least charismatic of the Nazi leaders and lacking in leadership qualities, was soon pushed aside by Streicher, a far more ruthless and abrasive personality, who was elected Chairman on 9 July 1924 with Esser, also a coarse, bullying sort, as his Deputy Chairman.

In 1929 Rosenberg founded the Militant League for German Culture. He later formed the "Institute for Research on the Jewish Question", the first branch of a projected Advanced School of the NSDAP,Grimsted, Patricia Kennedy (2005). "Roads to Ratibor: Library and archival plunder by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg." ''Holocaust and Genocide Studies'', vol. 19, no. 3. pp. 390-458; here: p. 406.Institut zur Erforschung der Judenfrage (IEJ)
In: ''Glossary''. Jüdisches Museum Berlin (Jewish Museum Berlin). Retrieved 2015-01-18. dedicated to identifying and attacking Jewish influence in German culture and to recording the history of Judaism from a radical nationalist perspective. He was elected as a '' Reichstag'' Deputy in 1930 and would continue to serve in this capacity until the end of the Nazi regime. First elected as a representative of the electoral list, from 1933 on he represented electoral constituency 33, Hesse. In 1930, he also published his book on racial theory ''The Myth of the Twentieth Century'' (''Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts'') which deals with key issues in the Nazi ideology, such as the "Jewish question." Rosenberg intended his book as a sequel to Houston Stewart Chamberlain's above-cited book. Despite selling more than a million copies by 1945, its influence within Nazism remains doubtful. It is often said to have been a book that was officially venerated within Nazism, but one that few had actually read beyond the first chapter or even found comprehensible. Hitler called it "stuff nobody can understand" and disapproved of its pseudo-religious tone.

Rosenberg helped convince Hitler, whose early speeches focused on revenge against France and Britain, that communism was a serious threat to Germany. "Jewish-Bolshevism" became an ideological target for Nazism during the early 1920s.

In Rome during November 1932 Rosenberg participated in the Volta Conference about Europe. British historian Sir Charles Petrie met him there and regarded him with great distaste; Petrie was a Catholic and strongly objected to Rosenberg's anti-Jewish and anti-Catholic sentiments.

The following year, following the Nazi seizure of power, Rosenberg was named leader of the Nazi Party's Foreign Policy Office in April, and on 2 June 1933 he was named a '' Reichsleiter'', the second highest political rank in the Nazi Party. In May 1933 Rosenberg visited Britain, to give the impression that the Nazis would not be a threat and to encourage links between the new regime and the British Empire. It was a notable failure. When Rosenberg laid a wreath bearing a swastika at the Cenotaph, a Labour Party candidate slashed it, later threw it in the Thames and was fined 40 shillings for willful damage at Bow Street magistrate's court.

In October 1933, Rosenberg was named as a member of Hans Frank's Academy for German Law. Then on 27 January 1934, Hitler made Rosenberg the "Führer's Representative for the Supervision of Intellectual and Ideological Education of the NSDAP." This was the origin of the Amt Rosenberg.

Racial theories

As the Nazi Party's chief racial theorist, Rosenberg oversaw the construction of a human racial "ladder" that justified Hitler's racial and ethnic policies. Rosenberg built on the works of Arthur de Gobineau, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Madison Grant and the Klansman Lothrop Stoddard as well as on the beliefs of Hitler. Rosenberg placed Blacks and Jews at the very bottom of the ladder, while at the very top stood the " Aryan" race. Rosenberg promoted the Nordic theory which considered the Nordic race the "master race",Rosenberg wrote: "No people of Europe is racially homogeneous, also Germany is not. According to the latest research, we accept five races all of which reveal perceptibly different types. But it is beyond question that the true culture bearer for Europe has been in the first place the Nordic race. Great heroes, artists and founders of states have grown from this blood." ''The Myth of the Twentieth Century'' (1930) p.576 superior to all others, including to other Aryans (Indo-Europeans). He was also influenced by the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory promoted by the Catholic counter-revolutionary tradition, such as the book ''Le Juif, le judaïsme et la judaïsation des peuples chrétiens'' (1869) by Roger Gougenot des Mousseaux, which he translated into German under the title ''The Eternal Jew''.

Rosenberg got the racial term ''Untermensch'' from the title of Stoddard's 1922 book ''The Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace of the Under-man'', which had been adopted by the Nazis from that book's German version ''Der Kulturumsturz: Die Drohung des Untermenschen'' (1925).

Rosenberg reshaped the Nazi racial policy over the years, but it always consisted of Aryan supremacy, extreme German nationalism and rabid antisemitism. Rosenberg also outspokenly opposed homosexuality – notably in his pamphlet "Der Sumpf" ("The Swamp", 1927). He viewed homosexuality as a hindrance to the expansion of the Nordic population.

Rosenberg's attitude towards Slavs was flexible because it depended on the particular nation which he referred to.Rosenberg wrote: "The Czechs, for their part, were stratified by race into a Nordic-Slavic nobility, and lower orders of an Alpine Dinaric stamp, thus displaying that type which the modern Czech so plainly embodies." Page 108, "The one eyed maniacal Ziska of Trocnow, whose head in the Prague National Museum shows him to have been an eastern hither Asiatic type, was the first expression of this totally destructive Taborite movement, which the Czechs must thank for the extermination of the last remaining Germanic powers active within them, as well as the repression of all that was truly Slavic." ''The Myth of the Twentieth Century'' (1930) p.109Rosenberg wrote: "The entire east is diversified throughout; one will need to speak here of the Russian character, of the Germanised peoples of Finland, Estonia and Lithuania, whereat also Poland has developed its clearly outlined individuality." ''The Myth of the Twentieth Century'' (1930) p.643 As a result of the ideology of "Drang nach Osten" ("Drive to the East"), Rosenberg saw his mission as the conquest and colonization of the Slavic East. In ''Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts'' Rosenberg describes Russian Slavs as being overwhelmed by Bolshevism.Alfred Rosenberg, Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts: Eine Wertung der seelischgeistigen Gestaltungskämpfe unserer Zeit, München: Hoheneichen, 1930, here p.214: In the year 1917, Russian Man finally disintegrated. He fell into two parts. The Nordic Russian blood gave up the struggle, the eastern Mongolian, powerfully stirred up, summoned Chinese and desert peoples to its aid, Jews and Armenians pushed forward to leadership, and the Kalmuch Tartar Lenin became master. The demonry of this blood directed itself instinctively against everything which outwardly still had some honest effect, looked manly and Nordic, like a living reproach against a type of man whom Lothrop Stoddard described as "subhuman".
Regarding Ukrainians, he favoured setting up a buffer state to ease the pressure on the German eastern frontier, while agreeing with the notion that Russia could be exploited for the benefit of Germany.Andreyev, Caterine (1990)
''Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Movement: Soviet Reality and Émigré Theories'' London: Cambridge University Press. p.30. During the war, Rosenberg was in favour of collaboration with the East Slavs against Bolshevism and offering them national independence unlike other Nazis such as Hitler and Himmler who dismissed such ideas.

Religious theories

Rosenberg was raised as a Protestant, but he rejected Christianity later in his life. Rosenberg argued for a new "religion of the blood", based on the supposed innate promptings of the Nordic soul to defend its noble character against racial and cultural degeneration.

In his 1920 book ''Immorality in the Talmud'', Rosenberg identified Jews with the antichrist.Rosenberg wrote: "The hate of Jesus combined with an unfathomable lack of understanding for Jesus that is showing in the works of today's Jewry almost without disguise and culminates in the systematic Jewish Bolshevik persecution of Christianity in Russia goes back almost 2000 years. The personality of Christ was the strongest storm against Jewish nature, which the Jew has always felt and known and only Christian over-tolerance could deem it possible to build a bridge. There can be no peace between Christ and the antichrist; there can only be a winner."

Original in German: "Der Haß, verbunden mit abgrundtiefer Verständnislosigkeit der Person Jesu gegenüber, der in den Erzeugnissen der heutigen Juden kaum mehr verhüllt zum Ausdruck kommt und in den planmäßigen Christenverfolgungen seitens der jüdischen bolschewistischen Machthaber in Rußland seinen Höhepunkt erreicht hat, dieser Haß dauert jetzt bald 2000 Jahre unverändert fort. Die Persönlichkeit Christi ist der stärkste Ansturm gegen jüdisches Wesen; das hat der Jude von jeher gefühlt und gewußt, einzig christliche Übertoleranz könnte glauben, hier eine Brücke schlagen zu können. Frieden kann es zwischen Christ und Antichrist nicht geben; es siegt entweder der eine oder der andere."

Rosenberg, Alfred (1943) 920''Unmoral im Talmud''. Franz Eher Verlag, p.19 He rejected Christianity for its universality, for its doctrine of original sin (at least for Germans who he declared on one occasion were born noble), and for its teachings on the immortality of the soul, saying, "indeed, absorbing Christianity enfeebled a people." Publicly, Rosenberg affected to deplore Christianity's degeneration owing to Jewish influence. Following Houston Stewart Chamberlain's ideas, he condemned what he called "negative Christianity" (the orthodox beliefs of the Protestant and Catholic churches), arguing for a so-called "positive" ChristianityRosenberg wrote: "From the description of Jesus one can select very different features. His personality often makes its appearance as soft and pitying, then, again, bluff and rough. But it is always supported by inward fire. It was in the interest of the Roman church, with its lust for power, to represent subservient humility as the essence of Christ in order to create as many servants as possible for this motivated 'ideal'. To correct this representation is a further ineradicable requirement of the German movement for renewal. Jesus appears to us today as self-confident lord in the best and highest sense of the word." ''The Myth of the Twentieth Century'' (1930) p. 604Rosenberg wrote: "For this reason Jesus, in spite of all Christian churches, signifies a pivotal point in our history. He became the god of the Europeans, yet, not seldom did he appear in a repellent distortion.

"If the concentrated feeling of personality which built Gothic cathedrals and inspired a

Rembrandt portrait penetrated more clearly into the consciousness of the general public, a new wave of culture would begin. But the prerequisite for this is the overcoming of the former statutory values of the 'Christian' churches." ''The Myth of the Twentieth Century'' (1930) p. 391

based on Chamberlain's argument that Jesus was a member of an Indo-European, Nordic enclave which was resident in ancient Galilee who struggled against Judaism.Rosenberg quotes Dr. Emil Jung referring to statements by the Syrian Christian preacher Ephraem (4th century): "Jesus' mother was a Danaite woman (that is, someone who was born in Dan), and he had a Latin as his father. Ephraem sees this to be not unhonorable and adds: 'Jesus thus derived his ancestry from two of the greatest and most famous nations, namely, from the Syrians on the maternal side and from the Romans on the paternal.'" ''The Myth of the Twentieth Century"'' (1930), p. 76Rosenberg wrote: "Herder once demanded that the religion dedicated to Jesus should become a religion of Jesus. This was what Chamberlain strove for. A completely free man who disposed inwardly over the entire culture of our times, he has shown the deepest sensitivity for the superhuman simplicity of Christ. He represented Jesus as what he had once appeared to be: a mediator between man and god." ''The Myth of the Twentieth Century"'' (1930), p. 623 Significantly, in his work explicating the Nazi intellectual belief system, ''The Myth of the Twentieth Century'', Rosenberg cryptically alludes to and lauds the early Christian heretic Marcion (who rejected the Old Testament as well as the notion of Christ as the Jewish Messiah) and the Manichaean-inspired, "Aryo-Iranian" Cathari, as being the more authentic interpreters of Christianity versus historically dominant Judaeo-Christianity;Rosenberg wrote: "It is characteristic of Roman Christianity that where possible it eliminates the personality of its founder, in order to put in its place the church structure of a rulership by priests." ''The Myth of the Twentieth Century'' (1930) p. 160 moreover these ancient, externally Christian metaphysical forms were more "organically compatible with the Nordic sense of the spiritual and the Nordic 'blood-soul'." For Rosenberg, the anti-intellectual, religious doctrine was inseparableRosenberg wrote: "The ancient Germanic idea of god is likewise inconceivable without spiritual freedom. Jesus also spoke of the kingdom of heaven within us. The strength of the spiritual search already shows itself in the world wanderer, Odin, and it can be seen in the seeker and believer, Eckehart, and we see it in all great men from Luther to Lagarde. This soul also lived within the venerable Thomas of Aquinas