The Occult Roots of Nazism


The Occult Roots of Nazism: The Ariosophists of Austria and Germany, 1890-1935 is a book about Nazi occultism and Ariosophy by historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, who traces some of its roots back to Esotericism in Germany and Austria between 1880 and 1945. The foreword is by Rohan Butler, who had written The Roots of National Socialism in the 1930s. The book is based on Goodrick-Clarke's 1982 Ph.D. thesis The ariosophists of Austria and Germany 1890-1935: Reactionary political fantasy in relation to social anxiety.
This book has been continually in print since its first publication in 1985, and has been translated into twelve languages, including Spanish, French, Polish, Italian, Russian, Czech, German and Greek. It was republished as a paperback by New York University Press in 1992, and more recently republished by I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd.
The German edition features a preface and an additional essay Nationalsozialismus und Okkultismus by H.T. Hakl.

Publication history

The exact title of the book changed in the 1992 edition. Foreign language editions are also listed: