I recently enjoyed James Herbert’s Rats books, and I’ve have been planning on reading his Nazi horror novel The Spear for years. It’s been a long time since I read anything about Nazi occultism, and I thought I’d read a non-fiction book on the topic refresh my memory first. I’ve had copies of Francis King’s Satan and Swastika and Peter Levenda’s Unholy Alliance on my shelf for years, both of which I plan on reading at some point, but I also had a copy of Michael Fitzgerald’s The Nazi Occult War on my kindle. I hadn’t heard anything about it, but I’m finding ebooks easier to get through recently, so it was an easy choice to make.
This was not a bad book, but I have encountered nearly all of its information elsewhere. It goes into some of the bullshitty stuff, but it doesn’t get bogged down in any one topic. There are sections on Nazi ceremonies and the SS that could be taken from a high-school history book. With all the bullshit rumours about the Reich’s UFOs and Hitler being a Satanist, it’s easy to forget quite how mental the Nazis truly were. This book does feature chapters on Atlantis, the Vril society, and the Holy Grail too though. I think it would serve as a good primer on the topic of Nazi occultism. I had a leaf through a paper copy of the book, and I was quite impressed with the layout. It looks really good. While I certainly wasn’t blown away by any element of this book, it served its purpose. I was reminded of all of the other books I have read about Nazi occultism.
The obvious starting point for this kind of thing is Nicholas Goodrick Clarke’s The Occult Roots of Nazism. This was one of the first books I reviewed on here, and it describes the occultists who actually influenced the Nazis. Stephen E. Flowers and Michael Moynihan’s The Secret King takes a more specific look at one of these loonies, a chap named Karl Maria Wiligut, and I had a good laugh when I read von Liebenfels Theozoology. Goodrick-Clarke wrote another book, Black Sun, about the conspiracies and nutty ideas that sprang up after the fall of the Nazis (much of which stemmed from Pauwels and Bergier’s Morning of the Magicians, and if you’re going to read that you might as well read Bulwer Lytton’s The Coming Race too. It’s fiction, but unlike the fiction I list below, it actually inspired the Nazis rather than being inspired by them.) I enjoyed Black Sun more than Occult Roots of Nazism because it was about the bullshit that was clearly made up. A good companion work to Black Sun would be Joscelyn Godwin’s Arktos, an interesting book which takes a closer look at some of these insane theories. Speaking of insane, Trevor Ravenscroft’s The Spear of Destiny is a must read for anyone researching the Nazi quest for the spear that pierced the side of Christ. Of course, this spear wasn’t the only holy relic they tried to get their hands on. I also spent a lot of time and effort researching Otto Rahn and the Nazi quest for the holy grail.
While the aforementioned books are mostly non-fiction, I have also read quite a few horror novels about Nazis. You should too.
Nocturnal Revelries 
I feel less guilty now about having unread books on my shelf – I thought it was only me that did that! Great to see Francis King’s book get a mention – he was a great guy. A friend recently recommended Dion Fortune’s The Magical Battle of Britain to me, detailing how occultists fought back against the Nazis in WW2.
LikeLiked by 2 people
This one was kind of interesting: https://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Monsters-Eric-Kurlander-ebook/dp/B071PBGSS5/ref=sr_1_5?crid=2F5OCGKM03URG&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Tc389c5_XHqtugVnvRam2_O7VAA5k7XlTUX_W-uPoci6lvSA3-ZHrC9DF-2l-5N6LvAEJzYF-hbo6JcRhsKR1Q7RUhK2IJEvPNjDmEVt6pgJ4I6Tenh0NPJBkHxLJ6By8m7TGgWI8KA2Angae24wWUyZfDjCMWFMplzu3bmhZ2xuGlThLAewNsV_ekIXuWLxVMJdEsehSfmn-2uzFS_GqpkrZkrcXOZrgh7HRrFGWw4.UrxCyGDQcPYWV-5yBg_xMgyNHcgcUqqi9Hc4NLEcfF0&dib_tag=se&keywords=nazi+occult&qid=1716155821&s=digital-text&sprefix=nazi+occult%2Cdigital-text%2C96&sr=1-5
With all the weird tangents the senior Nazis went off on, I think it’s fair to say that the average German citizen or soldier of that time thought they were fighting for Christian civilization against Godless Bolshevism or the decadent Anglo-Americans….The occult stuff didn’t much filter down to the rank and file.
LikeLiked by 1 person
PS: I have read Wheatley’s occult thrillers of course. I also loved Christopher Lee’s reading of a couple on Audible. I hadn’t anticipated that he would read using different accents for various characters, as that’s not something I expected from him.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I didn’t know audiobook versions existed. I wonder if they’re like the newer versions of the books with all the racism cut out.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I haven’t been able to find out exactly when Lee’s audiobooks of Strange Conflict and The Devil Rides Out were recorded, but from memory I think so-called offensive stuff was still there. I think it’s absolutely appalling to retroactively edit classic works to make them acceptable to the wokerati. The James Bond novels have had this indignity thrust upon them, and the British Library lied by simultaneously stating that some of their paperback collections of weird fiction were as originally published and saying that well actually they’ve partially censored them so as not to cause the collapse of the progressive utopia we are now living in. Snigger. The BRITISH LIBRARY!!! Wonder how long before Shakespeare gets the chop. The Lee Wheatley recordings are a great listen, laying abed in the wee small hours. Wish there were more but those are the only two I could find, thought I think he may’ve recorded audiobooks of other classics.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I urge you to read Peter Levenda’s Unholy Alliance. I’ve read it twice, and Levenda is such a great writer and researcher. (He also wrote Ratlines about how the Catholic Church assisted Nazis to escape after the war). You are in for a treat.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Will definitely get to it. Honestly though, I’ve read a few other books by him and never been terribly impressed. His research is fine, but his conclusions aren’t.
LikeLike
Unholy Alliance is my favorite Levenda book, so I guess I’m prejudiced. I did not enjoy the first of his fiction trilogy and did not read the following 2, so I agree he’s not perfect. ☮️
LikeLike
Owen Davies – A Supernatural War is a class read but for WW1. It’s all about trench folklore and how the supernatural beliefs prevalent at the time manifested themselves under wartime conditions.
LikeLike