The Myth Of The Twentieth Century Article Index for
The Myth 		Website Links For
Myth 		 

Information About

The Myth Of The Twentieth Century
  CATEGORIES ABOUT THE MYTH OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
   
1930 books
   
nazism
   
antisemitic publications
   
books about nazism
   
SHOPPER'S DELIGHT
 
Shop For:  
Department
Price Minimum:
Price Maximum:
      



Rosenberg was inspired by Meister Eckhart , the racist theories of Houston Stewart Chamberlain , Richard Wagner 's romanticism and also by Aryanism . He believed that God created man as separate races, not as individuals or mankind as a whole, and that only the race has a Soul . ''The Myth of the Twentieth Century'' was conceived of as a sequel to Chamberlain's ''The Foundation of the Nineteenth Century'' (Yahil, 1991, p. 41).

Rosenberg's racial interpretation of history concentrates on the supposedly negative influence of the Jewish Race in contrast to the Aryan Race . He equates the latter with the Nordic peoples of northern Europe. According to Rosenberg, modern culture has been corrupted by Semitic influences, which has produced degenerate Modern Art , along with moral and social Degeneration . In contrast, Aryan culture is defined by innate moral sensibility and an energetic will to power. Rosenberg believed that the higher races must rule over the lower and not interbreed with them, because cross-breeding destroys the divine combination of physical heredity and spirit. He uses an organic metaphor of the race and the State and argues that the Nazis must purify the race soul by eliminating non-Aryan elements in much the same ruthless and uncompromising way in which a surgeon would cut a cancer from a diseased body.

In Rosenberg's ; the Indo-Aryan migration to Persia and India, and the Doric Greeks and Latins ; the Teutonic migration; and the Colonization by Germanic Western Europe. Rosenberg's "positive" Christianity , which was actually based on Pantheistic Pagan nature worship and Teutonic Gods, underpins a mystic conception of race in which the Germans are the Chosen People and Hitler is the Messiah sent by God.

This tendentious account of world history is used to support his Manichean model of human experience, as are ideas co-opted from Nietzsche and Darwinian writers of the era.

Thanks to Nazi support the book sold more than one million copies by 1944. Hitler is said never to have read the book (Lukacs, 1998, p. xix).


SEE ALSO



REFERENCES

  • Ball, Terence and Bellamy, Richard (2003). ''The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Political Thought''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521563542

  • Lukacs, John (1998). "Introduction to ''Mein Kampf'' by Adolf Hitler". Houghton Mifflin Books. ISBN 0395925037

  • McIver, Tom (1992). ''Anti-Evolution: A Reader's Guide to Writings Before and After Darwin''. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0801845203

  • Snyder, Louis L. (1998). ''Encyclopedia of the Third Reich Crown Quarto''. Wordsworth Editions. ISBN 1853266841

  • Viereck, Peter Robert Edwin (2003). ''Metapolitics: From Wagner and the German Romantics to Hitler''. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 0765805103

  • Yahil, Leni (1991). ''The Holocaust: The Fate of the European Jewry, 1932-1945''. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195045238



EXTERNAL LINKS