A selection from Der Mythus des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts (The Myth of the Twentieth Century) by Alfred Rosenberg, 1930.
Rosenberg's book can be read as a kind of sequel to Chamberlain's Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century), 1899. Although in 1933 Hitler appointed Rosenberg as the ideological instructor of the Nazi party, he distanced himself from his book, saying that he wanted nothing to do with "these heathen things." Hitler credited the success of the book to the polemics of the catholics. "The bishops are the ones who have made Rosenberg's book so well know," he said. "Without them no one would have paid any attention to the book." Rosenberg was sentenced to death for war crimes at the Nurnburg trials in 1946.
[Incomplete]
The Myth is the Myth of the Blood, which, under the sign of the Swastika, released the World Revolution. It is the Awakening of the Soul of the Race, which, after a period of long slumber, victoriously put an End to Racial Chaos.
All present day struggles for power are outward effects of an inward collapse.
The Great War, as the beginning of a world revolution... , has revealed the tragic fact that, although millions sacrificed their lives, this sacrifice was to the advantage of forces other than those for which the armies were ready to die. The dead of the war were victims of a catastrophic epoch that had lost all its values, but at the same time- and this is something which begins to be grasped in Germany today, even if so far by few- the martyrs of a new dawn, of a new faith. The blood which died, begins to live. In its mystical sign the cells of the German Folkish soul renew themselves. Past and present suddenly appear in a new light, and for the future there results a new mission. [...] ...the values of the racial soul, which stand as driving forces behind this new image of the world, have not yet become a living consciousness. Soul means race seen from within. And, conversely, race is the external side of a soul. [...] ...to all doubts and questions the new man of the coming great German Reich knows only one answer: I alone will triumph!
Luther’s great deed was, in the first instance, the smashing of the exotic priestly idea, and secondly, the Germanising of Christianity. The awakening of Germany, however, also led after Luther to Goethe, Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Lagarde, and today approaches its full flowering with powerful strides.
To reestablish the ingeniousness of healthy blood, is perhaps the greatest task upon which man can set himself today. At the same time, this affirmation gives evidence of the sad situation of the body and the spirit, that such a deed has become a vital necessity. [...] I hope that the confrontation between a newly arising world and the old forces will take on more and more offshoots, penetrate into all domains of life, always fructifying anew, producing more blood linked pride, until the day when we can stand on the threshold of the fulfilment of our longing for a German life, until the hour when all wellsprings will unite into one great river of a Nordic German rebirth.
That is a dream worth being taught and lived.
Today one of those epochs is beginning in which world history must be written anew. [...] A youthful life force- which also knows itself to be age old- is impelled toward form... .
The horrific crucifixes of the Baroque and Rococo eras, which display emaciated limbs on every street corner, will gradually be replaced by monuments to fallen soldiers... . They will bear the names of those men who, as a symbol of the eternal myth of blood and will, gave their lives for the noblest cause: for the honour of the German name.
