Branch: Government
Born: 12 January 1893 in Tallinn, Governorate of Estonia,
Russian Empire.
Died: 16 October 1946 in Nuremberg, Germany..
Appointment's:
Leader of the Foreign Policy Office of the NSDAP 1933 to 1945
Commissar for Supervision of Intellectual and Ideological
Education of the NSDAP 1934 to 1945
Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories 1941 to
1945
Reichsleiter 2 June 1933 to 8 May 1945
Decorations:
Other: Personnel
Articles:
Alfred Ernst Rosenberg was born on 12 January 1893 and became
an early and intellectually influential member of the Nazi
Party. Alfred Rosenberg was first introduced to
Adolf
Hitler by Dietrich Eckart he later held several important
posts in the National Socialist government. He is considered
one of the main authors of key Nazi ideological creeds, including
its racial theory, persecution of the Jews, Lebensraum, abrogation
of the Treaty of Versailles, and opposition to degenerate
modern art. He is also known for his rejection of Christianity,
having played an important role in the development of Positive
Christianity, which he intended to be transitional to a new
Nazi faith. At Nuremberg he was tried, sentenced to death
and executed by hanging as a war criminal.
Alfred Rosenberg was born in 1893 in Reval (today's Tallinn,
in Estonia, then part of the Russian Empire) to a family of
Baltic Germans: his father, Waldemar Wilhelm Alfred Rosenberg,
was a wealthy merchant from Latvia, his mother, Elfriede,
from Estonia. (Tallinn archivist J. Rajandi claimed in the
1930s that Alfred Rosenberg's family had Estonian origins).
The young Alfred Rosenberg studied architecture at the Riga
Polytechnical Institute and engineering at Moscow Highest
Technical School completing his Ph.D. studies in 1917. While
in Riga, he was a member of the Baltic German student fraternity
Rubonia. During the Russian Revolution of 1917 Alfred Rosenberg
supported the counterrevolutionary following their failure
he emigrated to Germany in 1918 along with Max Scheubner-Richter
who served as something of a mentor to Alfred Rosenberg and
to his ideology. He arrived in Munich and contributed to Dietrich
Eckart's publication, the Völkischer Beobachter (People's
Observer). By this time, he was both an anti-Semite - influenced
by Houston Stewart Chamberlain's book The Foundations of the
Nineteenth Century (one of the key pro-Nazi books of racial
theory) - and an anti-Bolshevik (as a result of his family's
exile).
Alfred Rosenberg became one of the earliest members of the
German Workers Party (later the National Socialist German
Workers Party, better known as the Nazi Party), joining in
January 1919
Adolf
Hitler did not join until October 1919. Alfred Rosenberg
had also been a member of the Thule Society, with Eckart.
After the Völkischer Beobachter became the National Socialist
Party newspaper (December, 1920), Alfred Rosenberg became
its editor in 1923. Alfred Rosenberg was a leading member
of Aufbau Vereinigung, Reconstruction Organisation, a conspiratorial
organisation of White Russian émigrés which
had a critical influence on early National Socialist policy.
In 1923, after the failed Beer Hall Putsch,
Adolf
Hitler who had been imprisoned for treason appointed Alfred
Rosenberg as a leader of the Nazi movement, a position he
held until
Adolf
Hitler's release.
Adolf
Hitler remarked privately in later years that his choice
of Alfred Rosenberg, whom he regarded as weak and lazy, was
strategic
Adolf
Hitler did not want the temporary leader of the Nazis
to be overly popular or hungry for power, because a person
with either of those two qualities might not want to cede
the party leadership after
Adolf
Hitler's release. However, at the time of the appointment
Adolf Hitler
had no reason to believe that he would soon be released, and
Alfred Rosenberg had not appeared weak, so that this may been
reading back into history his dissatisfaction with Alfred
Rosenberg for the job he did.
In 1929 Alfred 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 an anti-Semitic 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)
which deals with key issues in the national socialist ideology,
such as the Jewish question. Alfred Rosenberg intended his
book as a sequel to Houston Stewart Chamberlain's above-cited
book. Despite selling more than a million copies by 1945,
its influence within Nazism (beyond providing specious intellectual
cover for unintellectual governance) remains doubtful. It
is often said to have been a book that was officially venerated
within Nazism, but that few actually read beyond the first
chapter or even found comprehensible.
Adolf
Hitler called it stuff nobody can understand and disapproved
of its pseudo-religious tone.
Alfred Rosenberg's attitude towards Soviet Bolshevism obviously
original research? had some influence on
Adolf
Hitler. He convinced
Adolf
Hitler of the Communist threat and of the supposed fragility
of the Soviet political structure. Jewish-Bolshevism was accepted
as a target for Nazism during the early 1920s.
Alfred Rosenberg was named leader of the National Socialist
Party's foreign political office in 1933, but he played little
practical part in the role. His visit to Britain in that year
was designed by whom? to reassure the British that the Nazis
would not be a threat, and to encourage links between the
new regime and the British Empire. It was a notable failure.
When Alfred Rosenberg laid a wreath bearing a swastika at
the tomb of the unknown soldier, a British war veteran threw
it into the Thames. In January 1934
Adolf
Hitler granted Alfred Rosenberg responsibility for the
spiritual and philosophical education of the Party and all
related organisations
As the National Socialist Party's chief racial theorist, Alfred
Rosenberg was in charge of building a human racial ladder
that justified
Adolf
Hitler's genocidal policies. Alfred Rosenberg built on
the works of Arthur de Gobineau, Houston Stewart Chamberlain
and Madison Grant, as well as the beliefs of
Adolf
Hitler. He considered blacks and Jews to be at the very
bottom of the ladder, while at the very top stood the white
or Aryan race. Alfred Rosenberg promoted the Nordic theory
which considered Germans to be the master race, superior to
all others, including other Aryans (Indo-Europeans).
Alfred Rosenberg reshaped Nazi racial policy throughout the
years, but it always consisted of Aryan supremacy, extreme
German nationalism and rabid anti-Semitism. Alfred Rosenberg
was also an outspoken opponent of homosexuality, notably in
his pamphlet Der Sumpf (The Swamp), having viewed homosexuality
(particularly lesbianism) as a hindrance to the expansion
of the Nordic population.
Alfred Rosenberg's attitude towards the Slav depended on the
particular nation involved. He despised Czechs and Poles,
and wrote no considerations can be taken for Poles, Czechs
etc., who are as impotent as they are valueless and overbearing.
They must be driven back to the east, so that the soil may
become free to be tilled by the horny hands of Teutonic peasants,
as a result of the ideology of Drang nach Osten Alfred Rosenberg
believed his mission to be conquest and colonisation of Slavic
east. In Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts, Alfred Rosenberg
describes Slavs, in particular Poles, as racial sub humans.
Regarding Ukrainians he was in favour of creating a buffer
state to ease pressure on German eastern frontier, while agreeing
with the notion that Russia should be exploited for the benefit
of Germany
Alfred 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. Unlike
Heinrich
Himmler, he had less attachment to Buddhism.
He rejected Christianity for its universality, for original
sin, at least for Germans whom he declared on one occasion
were born noble, and for the immortality of the soul. Indeed,
absorbing Christianity enfeebled a people. Publicly, he affected
to deplore Christianity's degeneration owing to Jewish influence.
Following Chamberlain's ideas, 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 Alfred Rosenberg religious
doctrine was not important what mattered was that a belief
should serve the interests of the Nordic race, connecting
the individual to his racial nature. Alfred Rosenberg stated
that The general ideas of the Roman and of the Protestant
churches are negative Christianity and do not, therefore,
accord with our (German) soul. His support for Luther as a
great German figure was always ambivalent.
In 1940 Alfred Rosenberg was made head of the Hohe Schule
(literally high school, but in Germanic languages refers to
a college), 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
Adolf
Hitler's home town of Linz, Austria. The orders given
the Sonderstab Musik were to loot all forms of Jewish property
in Germany and of those found in any country taken over by
the German army and any musical instruments or scores were
to be immediately shipped to Berlin.
Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories Following
the invasion of the USSR, Alfred Rosenberg was appointed head
of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories
(Reichsministerium für die besetzten Ostgebiete). Alfred
Meyer served as his deputy and represented him at the Wannsee
Conference. Another official of the Ministry, Georg Leibbrandt,
also attended the conference, at Alfred Rosenberg's request.
Alfred Rosenberg had presented
Adolf
Hitler with his plan for the organisation 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 (Caucasus area),
Moskau (Moscow metropolitan area and the rest of nearest Russian
European areas)
Such suggestions were intended to encourage certain 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.
Following these plans, when Wehrmacht forces invaded Soviet-controlled
territory, they immediately implemented the first of the proposed
Reichskommissariats of Ostland and Ukraine, under the leadership
of Hinrich Lohse and Erich Koch, respectively. The organisation
of these administrative territories led to conflict between
Alfred Rosenberg and the SS over the treatment of Slavs under
German occupation. As Nazi Germany's chief racial theorist,
Alfred Rosenberg considered Slavs, though lesser than Germans,
to be Aryan. Alfred Rosenberg often complained to
Adolf
Hitler and
Heinrich
Himmler about the treatment of non-Jewish occupied peoples.
He proposed creation of buffer satellite states made out of
Greater Finland, Baltica, Ukraine, Caucasus. He made no complaints
about the murders of Jews. At the Nuremberg Trials he claimed
to be ignorant of the Holocaust, despite the fact that Leibbrandt
and Meyer were present at the Wannsee conference.
Because the invasion of the Soviet Union to impose the New
Order was essentially a war of conquest and extermination,
German propaganda efforts designed to win over Russian opinion
were patchy and inconsistent. Alfred Ernst Alfred Rosenberg
was one of the few in the Nazi hierarchy who advocated a policy
designed to encourage anti-Communist opinion.
Amongst other things, Alfred Rosenberg issued a series of
posters announcing the end of the Soviet collective farms
(kolkhoz). He also issued an Agrarian Law in February 1942,
annulling all Soviet legislation on farming, restoring family
farms for those willing to collaborate with the occupiers.
But de collectivisation conflicted with the wider demands
of wartime food production, and
Hermann
Göring demanded that the collective farms be retained,
save for a change of name.
Adolf
Hitler himself denounced the redistribution of land as
stupid.
There were also numerous German armed forces (Wehrmacht) posters
asking for assistance in the Bandenkrieg, the war against
the Soviet partisans, though, once again, German policy had
the effect of adding to their problems. Posters for volunteer
labour, with inscriptions like Come work with us to shorten
the war, hid the appalling realities faced by Russian workers
in Germany. Many people joined the partisans rather than risk
being sent to an unknown fate in the west.
Another of Alfred Rosenberg's initiatives, the Free Caucasus
campaign, was rather more successful, attracting various nationalities
into the so-called Eastern Legion (Ostlegionen), though in
the end this made little difference.
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 16
October 1946. Throughout the trial, it was agreed that Alfred
Rosenberg had a decisive role in shaping Nazi philosophy and
ideology such examples include: his book, Myth of the Twentieth
Century, which was published in 1930, where he incited hatred
against Liberal Imperialism and Bolshevik Marxism furthering
the influence of the Lebensraum idea in Germany during the
war facilitating the persecution of Christian churches and
the Jews in general and opposition to the Versailles Treaty
during the war.
According to Howard K. Smith, who covered the executions for
the International News Service, Alfred Rosenberg was the only
condemned man, who when asked at the gallows if he had any
last statement to make, replied with only one word: No.
Adolf Hitler
was a leader oriented towards practical politics, whereas,
for Alfred Rosenberg, religion and philosophy were key and
he was the most influential within the party. Several accounts
of the time before the Nazi ascension to power, indeed, speak
of
Adolf Hitler
as being a mouthpiece for Alfred Rosenberg's views, and he
clearly exerted a great deal of intellectual influence.
Alfred Rosenberg's influence in the National Socialist Party
is controversial. He was perceived as lacking the charisma
and political skills of the other Nazi leaders, and was somewhat
isolated. In some of his speeches
Adolf
Hitler appeared to be close to Alfred Rosenberg's views:
rejecting traditional Christianity as a religion based on
Jewish culture, preferring an ethnically and culturally pure
Race whose destiny was supposed to be assigned to the German
people by Providence. In others, he adhered to the National
Socialist Party line, which advocated a positive Christianity.
After
Adolf
Hitler's assumption of power he moved to reassure the
Protestant and Catholic churches that the party was not intending
to re-Institute Germanic paganism. He placed himself in the
position of being the man to save Positive Christianity from
utter destruction at the hands of the atheistic antitheist
Communists of the Soviet Union. This was especially true immediately
before and after the elections of 1932
Adolf
Hitler wanted to appear non-threatening to major Christian
faiths and consolidate his power. Further,
Adolf
Hitler felt that Catholic-Protestant infighting had been
a major factor in weakening the German state and allowing
its dominance by foreign powers.
Some Nazi leaders, such as
Martin
Bormann, were anti-Christian and sympathetic to Alfred
Rosenberg. Once in power, however,
Adolf
Hitler and most Nazi leaders sought to unify the Christian
denominations in favour of positive Christianity. They privately
complained about Alfred Rosenberg's radical, openly anti-Christian
views they also did not support small neopagan groups that
were seeking parity with Christianity, which Alfred Rosenberg
encouraged. However, Goebbels and
Adolf
Hitler both agreed that after the Endsieg (Final Victory)
the Reich Church should be pressed into evolving into a German
social evolutionist organisation proclaiming the cult of race,
blood and battle, instead of Redemption and the Ten Commandments
of Moses, which they deemed outdated and Jewish.
Heinrich
Himmler's views were among the closest to Alfred Rosenberg's,
and their estrangement was perhaps created by
Heinrich
Himmler's abilities to put into action what Alfred Rosenberg
had only written of. Also, while Alfred Rosenberg thought
Christianity should be allowed to die out,
Heinrich
Himmler actively set out to create countering pagan rituals.
Lieutenant Colonel William Harold Dunn 1898 to 1955 wrote
a medical and psychiatric report on him in prison to evaluate
him as a suicide risk:
He gave the impression of clinging to his own theories in
a fanatical and unyielding fashion and to have been little
influenced by the unfolding during the trial of the cruelty
and crimes of the party.
Summarising the unresolved conflict between the personal views
of Alfred Rosenberg and the pragmatism of the National Socialist
elite:
The ruthless pursuit of Nazi aims turned out to mean not,
as Alfred Rosenberg had hoped, the permeation of German life
with the new ideology it meant concentration of the combined
resources of party and state on total war.
Alfred 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. His daughter has
refused contact with anyone seeking information about her
father.
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