Alfred Rosenberg

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How can we still speak of the salvation and reformation of Europe, when we have to ask Europe's destroyer for help?

Alfred Rosenberg (January 12, 1893 – October 16, 1946) was an early and intellectually influential member of the Nazi party, who later held several important posts in the Nazi government. He is considered one of the main authors of key Nazi ideological creeds, including its racial theory, persecution of the Jews, Lebensraum, abolition of the Treaty of Versailles, and opposition to "degenerate" modern art. His most famous work was the book titled The Myth of the Twentieth Century. At Nuremberg he was tried, sentenced to death, and executed by hanging as a war criminal.

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- When asked if he had any last words, 10/16/46. Quoted in "The Mammoth Book of Eyewitness World War II" - Page 564 - by Jon E. Lewis - History - 2002

From education by the Church to education by Germanic value is a step of several generations. We are the transition from one education to the other. We are the conquerors of one era and the founders of a new - also religious - epoch. We bear a heavy and therefore a great destiny. To destroy images is something every revolution has been able to do. But to establish its cause upon nothing and yet not to burn all bridges behind it: that is the nobility of character of the National Socialist era. The German people is not marked by original sin, but by original nobility. The place of Christian love has been taken by the National Socialist, Germanic idea of comradeship...which has already been symbolically expressed through the replacement of the rosary by the spade of labour.
- Quoted in Chapter 13, Part 3 of "The Face Of The Third Reich" by Joachim C. Fest

How can we still speak of the salvation and reformation of Europe, when we have to ask Europe's destroyer for help?
- On the Nazi-Soviet Pact. Quoted in "The Face of the Third Reich: Portraits of the Nazi Leadership" - Page 171 - by Joachim C. Fest - History - 1999

Today a new faith is stirring: the myth of blood, the faith that along with blood we are defending the divine nature of man as a whole.

I have the feeling that this Moscow Pact will at some time or other exact vengeance upon National Socialism.
- Quoted in "The Face of the Third Reich: Portraits of the Nazi Leadership" - Page 171 - by Joachim C. Fest - History - 1999

I would adopt a standpoint, irrespective of whether someone was for or against it, if I felt deeply that it was right for the movement.
- Quoted in "The Face of the Third Reich: Portraits of the Nazi Leadership" - Page 165 - by Joachim C. Fest - History - 1999

The Myth is the Myth of the Blood, which, under the sign of the Swastika, released the World Revolution. It is the Awakening of the Soul of the Race, which, after a period of long slumber, victoriously put an End to Racial Chaos.
- Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts ("The Myth of the Twentieth Century") - 1930

History and the task of the future no longer signify the struggle of class against class or the conflict between one church dogma and another, but the settlement between blood and blood, race and race, Folk and Folk. And that means: the struggle of spiritual values against each other.
- Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts ("The Myth of the Twentieth Century") - Author's Introduction - Page xlvii - 1930

However, the values of the racial soul, which stand as driving forces behind this new image of the world, have not yet become a living consciousness. Soul means race seen from within. And, conversely, race is the external side of a soul. To awaken the racial soul to life means to recognise its highest value, and, under its dominance, to allot to other values their organic position in the State, in art, and in religion. That is the task of our century; to create a new human type out of a new view of life. And for this, courage is needed; courage of each single individual, courage of the entire generation growing up, indeed of many following generations. For chaos has never been mastered by those without courage, and a world has never been built by cowards. Whoever wishes to go forward, must therefore also burn bridges behind him. Whoever sets out on a great journey, must leave old household goods behind. Whoever strives for what is highest, must turn his back on what is lesser. And to all doubts and questions the new man of the coming great German Reich knows only one answer: I alone will triumph!
- Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts ("The Myth of the Twentieth Century") - Author's Introduction - Page xlviii - 1930

The finance enchains with golden bonds states and peoples, the economy becomes nomadic, the life uprooted.
- Die Finanz umschlingt mit goldenen Stricken Staaten und Völker, die Wirtschaft wird nomadisiert, das Leben entwurzelt., Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts ("The Myth of the Twentieth Century") - Page 1 - 1930

Racial history is therefore natural history and the mysticism of the soul at one and the same time; but the history of the religion of the blood, conversely, is the great world story of the rise and downfall of peoples, their heroes and thinkers, their inventors and artists.
- Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts ("The Myth of the Twentieth Century") - Page 5 - 1930

At last, Mythic feeling and conscious perception no longer confront each other as antagonists but as allies. Passionate nationalism is no longer directed toward tribal, dynastic or theological loyalties, but toward that primal substance, the racially based nationhood itself. Here is the message which will one day melt away all dross, eliminate all that is base, and bring into being all that is noble.
- Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts ("The Myth of the Twentieth Century") - Page 45 - 1930

The authority of a king or duke, territorial limits to episcopal sees, and personal freedom—are all directly rooted in the soil, even though these forces competed, and still do, for ascendancy. If it is clear now that it was the most purely Nordic Germanic states, peoples and tribes which most consistently and resolutely defended themselves against the assault on everything organic by Roman ecumenical conformism, then we shall be able to see that even before the great victorious awakening of those forces from the hypnotic influence of Rome and the Levant, there was an heroic struggle in progress directly linked to the still pagan Teutons. The history of the Albigensians, Waldenses, Cathars, Arnoldists, Stedingers, Huguenots, the reformed church and the Lutherans, as well as of the martyrs of free inquiry and the heroes of Nordic philosophy, draws an impressive picture of a gigantic contest for character values, those prerequisites of soul and spirit without the assertion of which there could have been neither European nor national culture.
- Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts ("The Myth of the Twentieth Century") - Page 47 - 1930

But the Teuton has not, unfortunately, kept up his guard. Magnanimously, he conceded to alien blood those same rights which he had gained for himself as a result of his great sacrifices through the centuries. He carried tolerance of religious diversity and scientific speculation into areas where he would have done better to lay down strict limitations; the areas involving the creation of the national state and of the folkish type. Such are the prerequisites for organic life in general. He failed to see that a spirit of tolerance, as between catholic and protestant religious convictions, was not at all the same thing as toleration of anti Germanic racial values. Surely it is obvious that there is no equivalence of rights as between the stock market manipulator and the heroic man; or those who follow the un Germanic laws of the Talmud cannot be accorded equal rights in shaping the national life as a Hanseatic merchant or a German officer … This failure on the part of the Teuton was a sin against his own blood. From it there sprang that sense of a great national guilt.
- Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts ("The Myth of the Twentieth Century") - Page 59 - 1930

Today a new faith is awakening—the Myth of the blood; the belief that to defend the blood is also to defend the divine nature of man in general. It is a belief, effulgent with the brightest knowledge, that Nordic blood represents that Mysterium which has overcome and replaced the older sacraments.
- Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts ("The Myth of the Twentieth Century") - Page 65 - 1930

On the other hand, heroism is basic to the character of the Nordic peoples. This heroism of the ancient mythic period—and this is what is decisive—has never been lost, despite reverses of fortune, so long as the Nordic blood was still alive. Heroism, in fact, took many forms, from the warrior nobility of Siegfried or Hercules to the intellectual nobility of Copernicus and Leonardo, the religious nobility of Eckehart and Lagarde, or the political nobility of Frederick the Great and Bismarck, and its substance has remained the same.
- Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts ("The Myth of the Twentieth Century") - Page 81 - 1930

In heroic conduct, whether of warriors, philosophers or scientists, we see what is of essential nature, and we know that all heroism groups itself around a supreme value. This has always been the idea of honour, spiritual and mental. But the idea of honour, like its corporeal representatives, was and is involved in a war of soul and spirit against the values represented by alien races or the miscegenated offspring of racial chaos.
- Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts ("The Myth of the Twentieth Century") - Page 84 - 1930

Alongside the mythos of the eternal free soul stands the Myth, the religion of the blood.
- Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts ("The Myth of the Twentieth Century") - Page 161 - 1930

Not in the name of a necessary protection of the white race did the European break into China, but for the benefit of the Jewish-mercantile greed for profit. He thus dishonored himself, destroying a whole civilization, provoking justified indignation. China fights for its myth, for its race, and its ideals, as does the renewal-movement in Germany against the mercantile race that rules all stock markets and the actions of most governments.
- Denn nicht im Namen eines notwendigen Schutzes der weißen Rasse ist der Europäer in China eingebrochen, sondern zugunsten jüdisch-händlerischer Profitsucht. Er hat somit sich selbst entehrt, eine ganze Kulturwelt zerfetzt und in gerechte Empörung gegen sich gebracht. China kämpft um seinen Mythus, um seine Rasse und seine Ideale ebenso, wie die große Erneuerungsbewegung in Deutschland gegen die Händlerrasse, die heute alle Börsen beherrscht und die Handlungen fast aller Regierenden bestimmt., Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts ("The Myth of the Twentieth Century") - Page 653 - 1930

Anti-Semitism is the unifying element of the reconstruction of Germany.
- Quoted in "Famous Trials: Cases that Made History" - Page 104 - by Frank McLynn - 1995

Germany will regard the Jewish question as solved only after the very last Jew has left the greater German living space... Europe will have its Jewish question solved only after the very last Jew has left the continent.
- Quoted in "World Politics in Our Time" - Page 375 - by David C. Jordan - 1970

I didn't say that the Jews are inferior. I didn't even maintain they are a race. I merely saw that the mixture of different cultures didn't work.
- January 12, 1946. Quoted in "Nuremberg Diary" - Page 120 - by G. M. Gilbert - History - 1995

We are the transition from one education to the other. We are the conquerors of one era and the founders of a new - also religious - epoch. We bear a heavy and therefore a great destiny.

We let 50,000 Jewish intellectuals get across the border. Just as I wanted Lebensraum for Germany, I thought Jews should have a Lebensraum for themselves - outside of Germany.
- December 15, 1945. Quoted in "Nuremberg Diary" - Page 72 - by G. M. Gilbert - History - 1995

As I said, I am grateful that you do take notes, but I do wish that you take them accurately and not misrepresent my rather complex theories and reasoning. After all, I am a philosopher and a student, and my thoughts may be complex. If at any time you don't follow me, please interrupt and I will explain further. I have to smile when some of the defendants say in court that they never read my books or works, because it is a reflection on their inabilities to follow a philosophic trend of thought, which to the common man is much too deep and profound. It is difficult for one to express important opinions and theories scientifically and at the same time use simple construction. However, I have always tried to be as lucid as possible and I never strived to make my work or writings beyond the comprehension of the normally intelligent man.
- To Leon Goldensohn, June 8, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

The tribunal here and your American newspapers talk so much about our sharp Nazi methods, but do you realize that within the past year, since the defeat of Germany, 1 million Germans have been evicted from what was originally German territory and which has now been given to Poland? No League of Nations or other body intervened.
- To Leon Goldensohn, June 8, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

[edit] About Rosenberg

I always had the impression that Rosenberg embodied German mysticism. I felt that he belonged to the Romantic era and that there was only a slight whiff of modernity about him. There was nothing unified or organized about the man. Now I want to say something terrible, which is not for the trial. This pure theoretician carries the main guilt of all those who sit here on the defendants' bench, although he carries that guilt to a certain extent innocently. In my opinion, he had a tremendous influence on Hitler, during the period when Hitler still did some thinking - later that stopped. I mean about between the years 1923 and 1928 Rosenberg influenced Hitler. Let me explain. Hitler was a man who lived in the present and was a tremendously active individual. Rosenberg's importance exists because his ideas, which were only theoretical, became in the hands of Hitler a reality and actually transpired.
- Hans Fritzsche to Leon Goldensohn, May 24, 1946

Rosenberg was completely areligious. That was the deepest of his defects. Rosenberg has a one-track mind. He is a pedant. One gathers the impression certainly that he never obtained knowledge from his surroundings, which would be necessary in order to form new philosophic ideas, but he obtained his ideas from books and from his own mind, which was not subject to the influences of reality. Rosenberg had less influence among the old National Socialists than one would believe. But among the youth his ideas played a great part because they were utilized in every school. The tragic thing is that Rosenberg's fantastic theories were actually put into practice.
- Hans Fritzsche to Leon Goldensohn, May 24, 1946

A party philosopher who was interested in historical research and had no idea of the violence which his philosophy was inciting in the twentieth century.
- Robert H. Jackson

It was Rosenberg, the intellectual high priest of the "master race," who provided the doctrine of hatred which gave the impetus for the annihilation of Jewry, and who put his infidel theories into practice against the Eastern Occupied Territories. His woolly philosophy also added boredom to the long list of Nazi atrocities.
- Robert H. Jackson