This is a list of people whose ideas became part of Nazi ideology. The ideas, writings, and speeches of these thinkers were incorporated into what became Nazism, including antisemitism, German Idealism, eugenics, racial hygiene, the concept of the master race, and Lebensraum. The list includes people whose ideas were incorporated, even if they did not live in the Nazi era.
Intellectuals indirectly associated with Nazism
Some writers came before the Nazi era and their writings were incorporated into Nazi ideology:
- Madame Blavatsky (1831–1891), founder of Theosophy and the Theosophical Society. Guido von List took up some of Blavatsky's racial theories, and mixed them with nationalism to create occultic Ariosophy, a precursor of Nazi ideology. Ariosophy emphasized intellectual expositions of racial evolution. The Thule Society was one of several German occult groups drawing on Ariosophy to preach Aryan supremacy. It provides a direct link between occult racial theories and the racial ideology of Hitler and the emerging Nazi party.[25]
- Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803–1873) was an English writer and politician who served as Secretary of State for the Colonies. Although politically liberal, he wrote the book Vril: The Power of the Coming Race, which influenced Blavatsky, and has been rumored to have been a precursor a secret Vril Society whose ideas were supposedly adopted by the SS.
- Emile Burnouf (1821–1907) was a racialist whose ideas influenced the development of theosophy and Aryanism.[26]
- Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881), romantic Scottish writer, who propounded upon a Great Man Theory of History, which argued that history is largely determined by exceptional men. Goebels would read his biography of Frederick the Great to Hitler during WW2. Targets for his ire included the French, the Irish, Slavs, Turks, Americans, Catholics, and, most explicitly, blacks and Jews.
- Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, and sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production. His book "The International Jew" was praised by Hitler for its antisemitic rhetoric.
- Bernhard Förster (1843–1889), German antisemite teacher who wrote on the Jewish question, where he characterizes Jews as constituting a "parasite on the German body".[27]
- Hans Freyer (1887–1969), German sociologist who called for an anti-liberal, anti-materialist, anti-Marxist Revolution von rechts (Revolution from the Right) that would emphasize organic bonds and community (Gemeinschaft) over the atomization of industrialized society (Gesellschaft).
- Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), German philosopher who was politically involved with National Socialism and rector of Freiburg University. Although after the war he neither apologized nor publicly expressed regret for his involvement with his affiliation with Nazism, in private he called it "the biggest stupidity of his life" (die größte Dummheit seines Lebens). For more information see Heidegger and Nazism to understand the nuances of his relationship.
- Stefan George (1868-1933) german symbolist poet who is famous for leading the George-Kreis and widely to regarded to have been part of the Conservative Revolution, wrote a poem entitled Das neue Reich.
- Arthur de Gobineau (1816–1882) was a French aristocrat, novelist and man of letters who developed the racialist theory of the Aryan master race in his book An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1853–1855). Although the book condemns antisemitism and describes Jews in positive terms, the Nazis still referenced the work since it condemns race mixing and describes the Jews as "alien".[28] De Gobineau is credited as being the father of modern racial demography.[29]
- Madison Grant (1865–1937), American lawyer, known primarily for his work as a eugenicist and conservationist. As a eugenicist, Grant was responsible for one of the most widely read works of scientific racism, and played an active role in crafting strong immigration restriction and anti-miscegenation laws in the United States.[30][31]
- Hanns Hörbiger (1860–1931) was an Austrian engineer who promoted the idea of a Welteislehre that was influential in the 1938-1939 German expedition to Tibet and was not directly involved in Nazism.
- Paul de Lagarde (1827–1891) was a German biblical scholar and orientalist. His Deutsche Schriften (1878–1881) became a nationalist text.[32]
- Guido Karl Anton List (1848–1919), his concept of renouncing Christianity and returning to the paganism of the ancient Europeans found supporters within the Nazi party.
- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), although he was critical of Antisemitism and Nationalism, his concept of the Ubermensch was very easy to appropriate for the Nazis, and he was brother-in-law to Bernhard Forster. For more information see Nietzsche and fascism. He was also a major influence on Alfred Baeumler.
- Johann Plenge (1874–1963) was a German sociologist who wrote about the First World War as an antipode to the French Revolution (the ideas of 1914 vs. the ideas of 1789) and is considered to be influential to many Nazis.
- Oswald Spengler (1880–1936), German historian and philosopher. He is best known for his book The Decline of the West and the cyclical theory of the rise and decline of civilizations. He wrote extensively throughout World War I and the interwar period, and supported German hegemony in Europe. The Nazis held Spengler as an intellectual precursor but he was ostracized after 1933 for his pessimism about Germany and Europe's future, and his refusal to support Nazi ideas of racial superiority.
- Lothrop Stoddard (1883–1950), American political theorist, historian, eugenicist, and anti-immigration advocate who wrote a number of prominent books on scientific racism. He developed the concept of the untermensch.
- Adolf Stoecker (1835–1909), court chaplain to Kaiser Wilhelm and an antisemitic German theologian who founded one of the first antisemitic political parties in Germany, the Christian Social Party. He proposed severely limiting the civil rights of Jews in Germany. In September 1879 he delivered a speech entitled "What we demand of modern Jewry", in which he spelled out several demands of German Jews.[33]
- Georges Vacher de Lapouge (1854–1936), French anthropologist, eugenicist, and anti-semite who developed the idea of a "Selectionist State" that would implement coercive measures to maintain the dominance and purity of dolichocephalic Aryans. His work strongly influenced Nazi eugenicists such as Hans F. K. Günther.
- Richard Wagner (1813–1883), famous German composer who was Hitler's favourite and a one-time friend of Nietzsche, before the two famously went their own ways, as well as father-in-law of Houston Stewart Chamberlain.
- Otto Weininger (1880–1903), although Jewish himself, his writings were consider both highly Anti-semitic and Misogynistic, for his magnum opus Sex and Character. Dietrich Eckart, once supposedly remarked to Adolf Hitler about him that "I only knew one decent Jew and he committed suicide the day when he realized that Jew lives upon the decay of peoples..."