New Religions and the Nazis

Karla Poewe illuminates an important but neglected part of Nazi history: the contribution of new religions to the emergence of Nazi ideology in 1930s Germany. Looking at traditional German occultism as well as the established Church, this book takes new religions founded in the pre-Nazi and Nazi years, especially Jakob Hauer's German Faith Movement, as indicators of how German fascism distilled aspects of religious doctrine into political extremism. It is researched from original documents, including the SS personnel files held in Berlin's Bundesarchiv.