Alfred Rosenberg
From Metapedia
Alfred Rosenberg (January 12, 1893 - October 16, 1946) was an early and intellectually influential member of the NSDAP, who later held several important posts in Germany's National Socialist government. He is considered the main author of key National Socialist ideological creeds, including its racial theories on Aryans and Jews, Lebensraum, abolition of the Treaty of Versailles, and opposition to modern art. He is also known for his rejection of Christianity. At the Nuremberg Trials he was tried and executed as a war criminal.
Contents |
[edit] Early Career
Rosenberg was born to a family of Baltic Germans. His father was a wealthy merchant from Latvia, his mother from Reval (today's Tallinn, in Estonia, then part of the Russian Empire). He studied architecture at the Riga Polytechnical Institute and engineering at Moscow University, completing his Ph.D. studies in 1917. Buildings that he designed in this period still stand in the central part of Tallinn. During the Russian Revolution of 1917, he supported the counter-revolutionaries known as the White Army. Later, Rosenberg emigrated to Germany in 1918 along with Max Scheubner-Richter who was something of a mentor to Rosenberg and his ideology. He arrived in Munich and contributed to Dietrich Eckart's publication, the Völkischer Beobachter (People's Observer). By this time, he held anti-Semitic beliefs having eye-witnessed the Jewish role in the Bolshevik Revolution. He was also influenced by Houston Stewart Chamberlain's The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century a key book on European racial theory.
Rosenberg was one of the earliest members of the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP), joining in January 1919. Rosenberg had also been a member of the Thule Society, with Eckart. Rosenberg became editor of the Völkischer Beobachter, the party's newspaper in 1921.
In 1923 after the failed Beer Hall Putsch and Hitler's subsequent imprisonment, Hitler appointed Rosenberg as a leader of the new movement, a position he held until Hitler was released.
In 1929, Rosenberg founded the Militant League for German Culture. He later formed the Institute for the Study of the Jewish Question, dedicated to identifying and attacking "Jewish" influence in German culture and to recording the history of Judaism from a racial perspective. He became a Reichstag Deputy in 1930 and published his book on racial theory The Myth of the Twentieth Century (Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts). It was intended as a sequel to Houston Stewart Chamberlain's above cited book. By 1945 the book sold more than a million copies.
More influential were Rosenberg's attitude toward the Soviet Union. He is credited with showing Hitler the threat of Communism to Europe and polularized the term "Jewish-Bolshevism" during the early 1920s.
He was named leader of the NSDAP's foreign political office in 1933. His visit to Britain in that year was designed to reassure the British that Germany should not be considered a threat, and to encourage links between the new regime and the British Empire. In January 1934 he was deputized by Hitler with responsibility for the spiritual and philosophical education of the NSDAP and all related organizations.
[edit] Racial Theories
Rosenberg was the NSDAP's chief racial theorist and built upon the works of Arthur de Gobineau, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, and Madison Grant. Rosenberg did not have the resources over which Grant and others disposed and based his racial theories on philosophical ideas. Rosenberg considered Africans and Jews inferior to Aryans.
[edit] Religious Theories
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. He believed that this had been embodied in early Indo-European religions, notably ancient European (Celtic, Germanic, Baltic, Roman) paganism, Zoroastrianism and Vedic Hinduism. Following the ideas of Chamberlain, he condemned what he called "negative Christianity," the orthodox beliefs of Protestant and Catholic churches, arguing instead for a so-called "positive" Christianity based on Chamberlain's claim that Jesus was a member of a Nordic enclave resident in ancient Galilee who struggled against Judaism. For Rosenberg religious doctrine was not important, what mattered was that a belief should serve the interests of the Aryan, connecting the individual to his racial nature.
[edit] Wartime Activities
In 1940 Rosenberg was made head of the Hohe Schule (literally "high school"), the Centre of National Socialist Ideological and Educational Research. He created a "Special Task Force for Music" (Sonderstab Musik) to collect the best musical instruments and scores for use in a university to be built in Hitler's hometown of Linz, Austria.
[edit] Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories
Following the invasion of the Soviet Union, Rosenberg was appointed head of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories. Alfred Meyer was his deputy and represented him at the Wannsee Conference. Another official of the Ministry, Georg Leibbrandt, also attended the conference, at Rosenberg's request.
Rosenberg had presented Hitler with his plan for the organization of the conquered Eastern territories, suggesting the establishment of new administrative districts, to replace the previously Soviet-controlled territories with new Reichskommissariats. These would be:
Ostland (Baltic countries and Belarus), Ukraine (Ukraine and nearest territories), Kaukasus (Caucasia area), Moskau (Moscow metropolitan area and the rest of nearest Russian European areas) Such suggestions were intended to encourage non-Russian nationalism and to promote German interests for the benefit of future Aryan generations, in accord with geopolitical "Lebensraum im Osten" plans. They would provide a buffer against Soviet expansion in preparation for the total eradication of Communism and Bolshevism by decisive pre-emptive military action.
[edit] Wartime Propaganda Efforts
Alfred Rosenberg advocated a policy designed to encourage anti-Communist opinion. Amongst other things, Rosenberg issued a series of posters announcing the end of the kolkhoz, the Soviet collective farms. He also issued an Agrarian Law in February 1942, anulling all Soviet legislation on farming, restoring family farms to the orginal owners.
There were also numerous Wehrmacht posters asking for assistance in the Bandenkrieg, the war against the Soviet partisans.
Another of Rosenberg's initiatives was the "Free Caucasus" campaign attracting various nationalities into the Ostlegionen.
[edit] Trial and Execution
Alfred Rosenberg was captured by Allied troops at the end of the war. He was tried at Nuremberg and found guilty of conspiracy to commit crimes against peace; planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression; war crimes; and crimes against humanity. He was sentenced to death and executed with other condemned co-defendants at Nuremberg on the morning of October 16, 1946.
[edit] Family Life
Rosenberg was married twice. He married his first wife, Hilda Leesmann, an ethnic Estonian, in 1915; after eight years of marriage, they divorced in 1923. He married his second wife, Hedwig Kramer, in 1925; the marriage lasted until his death. He and Kramer had two children; a son, who died in infancy, and a daughter, Irene; who was born in 1930.
