Help me with a paper on Heinrich Himmler

[Revenge of the Bjorn]

I really don't yet have much direction for this other than he was out of his friggin mind. but I was wondering is there really any truth to the idea that he was obsessed with or even interested in the occult? any of it from really reliable sources? I mean, I've seen it on websites and stuff but its a bit tough to believe. So any information about that or other out-of-his-mind-ed-ness would be much appreciated. Thanks

 

[Angcuru]

Well, in my Ethics class we were discussing different views of morality, and Himmler invariably was brought up.

Surprisingly enough, he has been documented to say that he had sympathy for the victims of the Jewish Purge.

"To retain one's feelings while acting in violation of them is glorious." - H.H.

Himmler was not an immoral man by any standards, rather he was what we would call an Ethical Egoist. As in he believed that one should do what is best for oneself in any situation. He had sympathy for the Jews, yes, but it was in his best interests to hide that sympathy from his peers and even to further facilitate the plight of the Jews, thus increasing his ranking in Nazi German Society, thus serving his own self interest. If one has the choice of enforcing a terrible situation upon a group of people or being summarily executed for not doing so, the choice is that obvious in the eyes of an egoist.

And then we have a man named Johnathan Edwards (17th century philosopher) who did very little harm to his fellow man if any at all, but believed that everyone is damned to hell, and he held absolutely no sympathy for anyone.

So if we are looking in terms of Morality, it could be argued that Edwards has a 'worse' morality than Himmler, in that while Himmler has sympathy for his victims, Edwards has no sympathy for anyone at all.

This can be compared to the situation in "Alice in Wonderland" where we have a Walrus and a Fisherman(?) eating a bunch of innocent baby clams. The Walrus eats many more than the Fisherman, but cries inconsolably the whole time, while the Fisherman just stands by, eating but a few and showing no emotion whatsoever. The Walrus would be like Himmler, while the Fisherman would be like Edwards.



ANYway, maybe I went a bit off track there, but I hope it helps you out somehow.

 

[Andrew D. Gable]

This is only speaking from my knowledge, so others may be more knowledgable than me:

As to the involvement of Himmler, or other Nazis for that matter, in the occult, it's somewhat tenuous to say. It's rather undeniable that the Nazis used runes and mystic symbols as symbology, and the Nazi party is thought by some to be a political arm of the Germanenorden society (which, in turn, was an outgrowth of the occult Thulegesellschaft, or Thule Society). Himmler specifically, however, is more tenuous. I've found a reliable site which states that Himmler's reorganization of the SS and implementation of the Final Solution utilized "mystical elements", though I can find no real reliable statement of what those elements were, or how dependent on them he was. Several sites I've found note that Himmler was using Wewelsburg Castle (in Bavaria, IIRC) as a "cult center", a place to teach SS ideology - but nothing to state definitively that it was anything beyond an SS training center. True, there are some weird-looking things in the architecture, like runic/mystic symbols on the floor, and he had a round table brought into the castle, as he thought of the castle as a sort of Camelot.

Most of the Nazi/occult stuff, AFAIK, comes from Ravenscroft's books, and I've heard questionable things about his reliability.

 

[Umbran]

This can be compared to the situation in "Alice in Wonderland" where we have a Walrus and a Fisherman(?)

It was The Walrus and the Carpenter.