It’s important to remember that Blavatsky’s works seem to be the result of a lot of research and were very convincing when they were written. Through the writings of von List, von Sebottendorff, and von Liebenfels, we can find that many later Nazi projects were based on ideas that Blavatsky first spread. A caste system for races, the importance of ancient alphabets (especially the runes), the superiority of the Aryans (a white race from the Himalayas), a “initiated” version of astrology and astronomy, cosmic truths hidden in pagan myths, and more can all be found in both Blavatsky and the Nazi Party, especially in the beliefs of its “Dark Creature,” the SS. Blavatsky was the one who showed that the swastika has the most important occult meaning. And it was a follower of Blavatsky who helped get the Protocols of the Elders of Zion into the hands of people in Western Europe who were looking for someone to blame.
People will remember that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion were made up by the Okhrana (the Czarist secret police) and occultists in St. Petersburg and Paris to discredit the enemies of Rachkhovsky, who was in charge of the Okhrana in Paris. The document was made in St. Petersburg in 1902 and then translated into German in 1919. It was supposed to be the minutes of a meeting of the supposed secret Jewish world conspiracy, which seemed to be close to reaching its goals. The Protocols said that the Jews had successfully infiltrated and taken over democracy, communism, and international trade. They had “infected” all governments, all business, and all the arts and media. Madame Yuliana Glinka, who believed in Spiritualism and did a lot to spread the anti-Semitic lies in the document, was the first person to give the press information about the Protocols.
As everyone knows, Hitler came to fully believe that the Protocols were true, which was one of the main reasons for his anti-Semitism:
Protocols of the Wise Men [Elders] of Zion, which Jews hate more than anything else, shows how much this people’s whole way of life is based on a lie that never stops. Every week, the Frankfurter Zeitung screams and moans that they are based on a fake. This is the best proof that they are real. What many Jews may do without realizing it is shown here. And that’s the important part. It doesn’t matter at all which Jewish mind these revelations come from; what matters is that they show with absolutely terrifying certainty what the Jewish people are like and what they do, as well as what their inner contexts are and what their ultimate goals are. The best criticism they can get, though, is the truth. If you look at the last hundred years of history through the lens of this book, you will immediately understand why the Jewish press is so loud. Once this book is shared by a group of people, the Jewish threat can be thought of as over.
Hitler’s reference to the Frankfurter Zeitung is ironic and interesting because of what the anti-Nazi Munich correspondent for that paper, Konrad Heiden, said that was shocking and interesting. Heiden started writing about what Hitler was doing in 1921. When Hitler took power in 1933, Heiden had to run away to France. In his biography of Hitler, Der Fuehrer, which he wrote while he was in exile and published in 1944, Heiden suggests that Hitler and the Protocols have a deep connection, which Rosenbaum sums up as follows:
Heiden’s shocking theory, which deserves attention because he was close to the Hitler Party from the beginning of the Fuhrer’s rise, was that the key to Hitler’s rise was that he used the modernized Machiavellian strategies he thought were used by his archenemy, the Elders of Zion, to manipulate the media, subvert state institutions, and create his own successful plot to rule the world. Heiden says that Hitler didn’t just adopt the fake Jewish conspiracy as his view of the world; he also adopted the tactics that Czarist forgers said were used by Jews but were actually used by Hitler with great success.
A success that made Hitler himself a kind of fake creation.
I hope the reader won’t mind that we’re taking a break from what we were talking about. The idea that the Protocols may have influenced Hitler may seem unrelated to the lost Aryan homeland of the prehistoric north, but it’s worth bringing up now, not only because it was a supporter of Blavatsky who spread the Protocols in western Europe, but also because it’s very important for the rest of our study. If Heiden’s guess is right and Adolf Hitler and, by extension, Nazi Germany were made up, this shows quite convincingly how powerful and influential strange lies can be on the collective mind of a people.
Before we move on, though, we need to talk briefly about Blavatsky and Theosophy to address the idea that some parts of the movement were fascist. Even though Theosophy said that the Aryan race was superior (and Madame Glinka promoted the Protocols, which was a bad idea), it was not inherently fascist, and Blavatsky did not get too involved in politics (Theosophy did, in fact, influence a lot of German occultists and nationalists at the turn of the 20th century, but the Nazis would later attack and shut down it along with any other group that opposed Hitler in any way.) Some of Blavatsky’s followers, like Annie Besant (1847–1933), did get involved in politics, though.
In Besant’s case, it was Indian politics, and after Henry Olcott died in 1907, the Theosophical Society became a key part of the Indian Nationalist Movement while she was president. Levenda says that the Nazis would later try to take advantage of Indian nationalism and the desire for home rule by saying that Indian nationalism and National Socialism had similar goals and ideals.