Adolf Hitler's companion from 1920, Alfred Rosenberg is the main ideologue of the German National Socialist Party. His writings, in particular his personal diary, reveal his major role in the conception and implementation of the Holocaust, a role that was long underestimated. Alfred Rosenberg incarnates indeed one of the most virulent anti-Semites of the party and his unfailing support for the destruction of the Jews lasts until the last moments of Nazi Germany. He also actively organized the looting of works of art, particularly in France. Brought before the Nuremberg tribunal, he was sentenced to death and hanged.
A fiery and precocious commitment, followed by a prodigious ascent
Rosenberg is known as one of the main ideologues of the Nazi regime. He was one of the first members of the Nazi Party. Its accession in January 1919 even preceded that of Hitler, who joined its ranks a few months later. It was then that he became considerably closer to Hitler, of whom he became one of the first traveling companions. His closeness to the latter and his devotion to the party gave him a meteoric rise. After having been editor-in-chief of the Volkischer Beobachter, a national socialist newspaper, he was appointed head of the party by Hitler in 1923, to replace him during his imprisonment following the failed putsch in Munich.
After the return of the charismatic leader, he held multiple positions. Director of research within the NSDAP in 1934, he encouraged ethnographic and archaeological studies, in search of traces of ancestral Germanic culture, in the purity and vigor of which he wanted to found the German identity. In 1938, he created the Institute for the Study of the Jewish Question, a propaganda body having set itself the mission of revealing and countering the influence of the Jews on German culture. One of its main functions from 1940 was to orchestrate the confiscation of works of art held by Jews. In particular, he organized the roundup of the Rothschild collections. He thus participated, according to his 1943 report to Hitler, in the seizure of no less than 20,000 works of art.
The marginalization of Alfred Rosenberg
However, his friendship with Hitler gradually eroded during the 1940s. A strong rivalry with Himmler and other Nazi cadres evolved against him, and the German-German pact Soviet Union makes its staunch anti-communism obsolete for a time. His appointment in 1941 as Reich Minister for the occupied eastern territories marked the beginning of a slow process of marginalization. He is in charge of applying the Generalplan Ost, supposed to redraw on a large scale the organization of the Eastern European territories according to racial criteria, and to supervise the administration of the conquered countries.
However, in reality, his skills are reduced to a trickle due to the encroachment of Gëring and Himmler on his prerogatives, two men who have a deep antipathy to him. Hitler, increasingly distant from his former traveling companion, ended up signifying his disavowal of Rosenberg and his political views. Isolated, the latter resigned in 1944. Sentenced to death during the Nuremberg trial, he was executed by hanging.
A racialist and anti-Christian theorist
In the 1920s, Rosenberg was one of the main party ideologues, next to Goebbels. He elaborates a hierarchy of races with the Aryans and the Nordics at its summit and a theory of History, conceived as the theater of a racial confrontation in which the fall of a civilization is explained by the corruption of the Indo-Germanic identity through Semitic elements. In Rosenberg's ideology, anti-Semitism is thus justified by the dual need to preserve the purity of the German race, the guarantor of its power, and to defend itself, in a fantasy of race war, against Jewish influences. Christianity is considered by Rosenberg as one of the instruments of this influence. Perverted, this religion would have oppressed the Indo-Germanic identity and the dogma of sin would be the cause of a softening of the German will, of its loss of confidence and its irresolution.
Thus, Rosenberg works, without much success, for the establishment of a specifically German cult drawing its references from ancestral paganism. However, his rejection of Christianity is not total. Indeed, he calls for a "positive Christianity", remodeled to satisfy Nazi ideology and its reading of history. In this framework, Jesus is presented as a member of the Nordic community opposed to Judaism. Rosenberg's own intellectualist approach to National Socialist ideology, which at times puzzled party members, was not unrelated to his isolation.
Alfred Rosenberg's Diary
This is an exceptional document. Few Nazi leaders kept a diary. This is why the one written by Alfred Rosenberg, the chief ideologue of National Socialism, is particularly important. It is the only newspaper of this type not to have been published until now. The manuscript had been presented at the Nuremberg trials - where Rosenberg was tried and sentenced to death. It had since disappeared, kept by one of the judges. Rediscovered last year, its publication is necessary to understand from the inside the ideas of the inspirer of Hitler's policy.
Alfred Rosenberg held many important positions in the Nazi regime. He was charged by the Führer with building up the cadres of the Nazi party. He wrote many widely distributed books and traveled throughout occupied Europe to lecture. He spoke of Nazi ideology, of the Catholic Church which had to be brought to heel - one of his obsessions - of his vision of history, and of course of the Jews, of his obsession against them. In July 1941, Rosenberg was appointed Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories. He worked on the ideological implementation of the occupation policy. He was therefore responsible for the horrors that were committed in Eastern Europe.
The diary is fascinating because it allows you to get inside Rosenberg's head, to see the development of his thought, of his fanaticism. It shows that the author played an important role in Nazi foreign policy, particularly towards the Balkans and the Nordic countries. He also gives details of the daily life of the top Nazi leaders:Rosenberg was familiar with Hitler, he frequently had lunch with him. Alfred Rosenberg organized the systematic looting of works of art and cultural heritage throughout occupied Europe. He was particularly active in France where 100,000 works were stolen. He proudly recounts this gigantic organized theft in his diary.
The Journal is also important for understanding the situation in occupied France:Rosenberg was obsessed with France, the "hereditary enemy" of Germany. He expresses in this regard how happy he was to make a speech before the German officers posted in France gathered in the hemicycle of the National Assembly....
Bibliography
- Alfred Rosenberg, Journal 1934-1944. Presented by Jürgen Matthäus and Frank Bajohr. Flammarion, September 2015.
- Understanding Nazism, by Johann Chapoutot. Tallandier, 2018.