When we think of Nazism, we think of Adolf Hitler. The two are intimately intertwined in our minds and the story we tell to explain the most unexplainable events of the 20th century — and justifiably so.
Hitler, our most frequented history textbooks suggest, was primarily responsible for the creation and emergence of one of the most horrific ideologies of the previous centuries. That’s a perfectly fine narrative if you prefer to believe the more comforting story that Hitler was the kind of man who could dupe a nation of people and then coax his zombie-like minions to carry out his diabolical plan — the problem is, however, that story gives him too much credit. (READ MORE by Aubrey Gulick: Suicide or Murder: The Mysterious Death of Merriweather Lewis)
On Oct. 16, 1946, a man named Alfred Rosenberg was executed after being found guilty of four counts: conspiracy to commit crimes against peace; planning, initiating, and waging wars of aggression; war crimes; and crimes against humanity — all crimes he was guilty of, but it was hardly an exhaustive list.
Rosenberg wasn’t German — he was born in Estonia and attended the University of Moscow where he studied architecture. The young Rosenberg was at the very heart of Russia during the bloodiest and most confusing days of the early Russian Revolution and historians believe that he may have briefly flirted with Communism before he found his way to Munich, Germany in 1919. (READ MORE: The High Price of Historical Illiteracy)
Rosenberg fell in with the wrong crowd in Munich. He made the acquaintance of Dietrich Eckart, the editor of the official Nazi Party newspaper. Eckart introduced Rosenberg to the members of the fledgling Nazi Party — including Hitler and Rudolf Hess — and Rosenberg was sold.
Hitler apparently decided that the young Russian-educated architect would be a better editor than Eckart — and Rosenberg agreed. He took to the newspaper like a duck to the water.
As it turned out, Rosenberg was in the habit of dabbling in the kind of ideas that would eventually become an integral part of the Nazi ideology — things like anti-semitism and the idea of Nordic racial superiority. In his work The Myth of a 20th Century, Rosenberg argued that anyone opposed to the idea of a German-Nazi Europe (Jews, Christians, Gypsies, etc.) ought to be killed. (READ MORE: Israel’s Three Big Problems)
Hitler may have already harbored the inkling of those kinds of ideas before Rosenberg ever joined the Nazi scene — but even if he did, Rosenberg was responsible for linking them and turning them into a somewhat cohesive, if dangerous, ideology. Hitler’s role was to disseminate and enforce the ideas, and Rosenberg was perfectly willing to help.
During the war, Rosenberg helped plan invasions of Norway and the Soviet Union, he gave the order to plunder conquered European countries, and he orchestrated the brutal conditions in Eastern Europe — and those were the kinds of crimes that led to his execution.
It may be comforting to tell ourselves that the Nazi regime was a brainwashed regime — it’s less comforting to realize it was run by like-minded men who discovered one another in Munich and made a pact to rule the world.
This article originally appeared on Aubrey’s Substack, Pilgrim’s Way, with the title “The Architect of the Third Reich,” on Oct. 16, 2023.