The Occult History of the Third Reich (1991 Video) User Reviews

Dark History of the Nazi Ideology

[kurgan-10 · 8/10 · 8 January 2001]

Perhaps as fascinating as it is terrifying, this trilogy of documentaries are best watched together in order (vol. 1 "The Enigma of the Swastika" vol. 2 "The SS Blood and Soil" vol. 3 "Adolph Hitler").

Each volume focuses on a different aspect of the Nazi ideology, and the influences of the occult, mysticism, ancient Nordic religion, Germanic mythos, and racist theories of a superior Aryan man on the system of politics and belief that was to turn Germany into one of the most horrific forces of destruction and brutality in recent history.

There is perhaps no limit to the amount of discussion that can be had over the shocking actions of the Nazis in the 1930's and 40's, and so this series can only begin to scratch the surface. Yet, it seeks to try to understand the ideology that existed prior to Hitler's rise to power that was fostered and developed in order to achieve the ends of power-hungry and blood-thirsty men.

The DVD edition (1998) comes as a boxed set of three discs, each containing under an hour of video with narration (a bit over two and a half hours total). The extras include posters, trivia games and other nice extras typical of Madacy's bargain disc sets.

Overall, a thought-provoking commentary on Hitler and the Nazis, highly recommended for the student of history, politics, or religion.

A good starting place, or maybe all you need?

[Bernie4444 · 8/10 · 8 January 2024]

Well, here we are introduced to a different view of the Third Reich. Why haven't we seen this before? This aspect of Nazis was not as interesting as weapons or fascist ideology. However, I have seen this film several times on history channels and even on public television. And it does bring up new questions as to how it all started.

Well, some would say they knew all about it and that, and this film is just a glossy version with stock footage. OK, find me a film on the subject that is not glossy and uses unique footage. If you have more than a passing interest then it is book time, such as "The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology"

For the most part, this film covers more than the general public is interested in.

An Occlusion

[tedg · 21 March 2003]

Spoilers herein.

TeeVee documentaries fascinate me. In general, they contain some spoken text which conveys the real information, with images that don't particularly add any information. Instead, the pictures seem intended to occupy that part of our attention that wanders so that the voice can do its work. That's the basic nature of TeeVee news: the pictures don't tell you anything and because of the limited vision actually distort.

But this material was potentially different. Nazism was all about images and their manipulation in popular media, especially film. So I was expecting something special: a powerful set of images about a powerful set of images, and perhaps why/how they `turned evil.' Possibly no subject offers such a rich opportunity to break out of the TeeVee `voice with pictures' model.

But I was disappointed. The voice gives good enough information if you know nothing about the subject, though it is repetitive in the three disks and clearly cribbed wholesale from the few studies on the subject. But even this is substantially less information than you can read in about the same time. For instance, they leave out all the `hollow earth' stuff and most of the Fire and Ice science. They left out the similar racial jingoistic, Kabbalistic ideas that grew up in the Jewish community in parallel, ideas which lent some superficial legitimacy to what the Austrians were inventing.

But the truly odd thing was how little the images had to do with what was being said. Yes, they were all German films from the period, but they informed little.

In this case, go to a library and leave these alone.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 4: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

Film Footage

[mind-wax · 9/10 · 21 December 2021]

This is mistitled for modern times..... it's fundamentally about the cult of the regime not necessarily "occult" so I feel it's misleading for a 2020 person, however I believe I get the message. Along side the harder to watch "Einsatzgruppen: The Nazi Death Squads" this series is a historical collection of archival film footage that is unfortunately difficult to find in a grouped collection and also a required watch to 'never forget'. It's a very educational series visually on it's own and displays for modern people the experiences of WW2 era in a screen format that we unfortunately require to absorb the state and experience of past events.

OK, but hardly solid history

[Vornoff-3 · 5/10 · 22 April 2011]

Most of the narrative to this is a simplification of Nicholas Goodricke-Clark's book "The Occult Roots of Nazism." That's probably why it isn't awful - Goodricke-Clark did a good job on fact-checking and avoided conspiracy theory to look at some of the more esoteric origins of National Socialist ideology. The first problem is that there isn't much visual evidence to support this – a documentary has little to do except show images from roughly the same era and allow implied connections with the narrative. But, the real problem here is that this documentary in general falls into the category of "Fascinating Fascism," to use Susan Sonntag's term. It is a parade of old propaganda images that attempts to justify its existence by drawing connections between Blavatsky and Crowley and the NSDAP that are tenuous at best. Concepts are undefined (what does it mean that "Rudolf Hess was a convinced mystic" by the time he met Adolf Hitler?). Influences are exaggerated (Goodricke-Clark discusses Guido von List's tiny religion, the film implies that millions of German soldiers in WWI believed it). There are few outright distortions, but this should be seen more as entertainment than as scholarship.

Somewhat interesting, but not all that well done...

[whynot2 · 5/10 · 20 September 2006]

(I've checked the spoiler box just as insurance against being blacklisted -- but really...does anyone not know how this plot unfolded?) Very briefly...

I found the subject matter, which I would summarize as a recounting of the connection between occult and mystic beliefs and the development of Nazi ideology and practice, to be interesting. I found such aspects as the origin of the term and concept of 'Aryan' as interesting given that this is a term that is, I think, often used without any real sense of its original meaning.

I found the video series itself to be somewhat lackluster. The information provided in each of the 4 episodes becomes increasingly repetitive -- perhaps this was of help when it was broadcast in 4 television episodes over a month, but over 4 successive workouts, the repetition seemed blatant and unnecessary.

As is the case in many historical documentaries, a wide range of stock and 'found' clips are used, many times, presumably because they are of the right era and location, and perhaps, with the right background music, evocative of the emotional response that one might be expecting at any given juncture. But many of them really don't specifically relate to, or add information to, the narration.

Which brings a third point: I'm too lazy to try to find out, but I wonder if the narration were honed and groomed and turned into, say, a magazine article, how long it would be? My sense is that this might result in a much more efficient transfer of information than watching the 4 episodes over the 3+ hours.

Lastly, I don't spend a lot of time looking for this stuff, but the 4th episode included about as long a clip from a Hitler speech as I've seen anywhere, complete with translation via subtitle. Interesting to try to imagine yourself in a different time and place, and try to assess the charisma of such a figure.

Heavy on history, light on the occult

[take2docs · 3/10 · 14 November 2020]

There is a good chance that a viewer would conclude from watching this that any orphic influences upon the Hitlerites were strictly titular.

I've seen far better documentaries on the occult origins of the Third Reich that go into greater detail than what is documented in this, where we learn (elsewhere), for example, of Hanussen, occult advisor to Hitler (a character portrayed in the movie "Invincible"); of SS commander Himmler, who employed mediums and clairvoyants in the hopes of contacting otherworldly beings; of occultist Dietrich Eckart, described by some historians as having been Hitler's mentor if not handler and the actual spiritual founder of the Nazi Party; of the Vril Society, whose members practiced extrasensory abilities and who were said to have tapped into a mystical cosmic energy and who believed themselves to be descendants of an ET race; of the SS in 1936, having supposedly retrieved and back-engineered a flying saucer discovered in Germany's black forest.

None of this is highlighted here, other than a few fleeting comments made by the narrator in reference to Eckart.

THE OCCULT HISTORY OF THE THIRD REICH surprisingly has very little to say about any arcane aspects pertaining to the brownshirts.

The narration is insipidly text-bookish and matter-of-factly delivered, as well as alternately rambling and maddeningly repetitive. All four episodes pretty much contain the same information, only retold in a slightly different manner and hardly any of it has to do with German occultism.

Emphasized throughout the four episodes is the impact that Darwinism had on Hitler's ideology; in particular, the influence upon Hitler of Darwin's cousin, an Englishman by the name of Francis Galton, the founder of eugenics.

There is some mentioning here and there of the influence that esoteric teachings had on the Nazis. The Thule Society is briefly cited, as is Madame Blavatsky who had used the neutral symbol of the swastika herself, albeit in a much different context. (As other docs have pointed out, the term swastika in Sanskrit translates to "mark of good fortune," and long before the Nazis it was used in a positive sense by various cultures of the past, including in ancient India.)

If one were to watch this banal and overlong four-part documentary without knowing of its title they might likely regard it as being a general look at Hitler's rise to power, one that traces his early years as a soldier and painter to the time he entered into politics. And they would be right. Listen closely and you will catch the narrator speak of Wotan and the worship of this Norse god, of National Socialism as having been more of a mystical than a political movement, of how some German esotericists wrote of their ancestors as having been telepathic, but these are treated as mere irrelevant interjections in a documentary far more interested in focusing on the temporal chronicling of a divinized state (statists who, by the way, as this doc informs, were into herbalism, environmentalism, and nature worship).

As an aside, some have looked at Hitler's melodramatic haranguing as the rhetor's channeling of unearthly entities. Here, we learn of Hitler's oratorical powers as having been the result of private lessons in the art of public speaking, as taught by a German drama teacher.