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Alfred Ernst Rosenberg ( – 16 October 1946) was a Baltic GermanSources which refer to Rosenberg as a "Baltic German" or equivalent include:
Nazism theorist and ideologue. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart and he held several important posts in the Nazi government. He was the head of the NSDAP Office of Foreign Affairs during the entire rule of Nazi Germany (1933–1945), and led Amt Rosenberg ("Rosenberg's bureau"), an official Nazi body for cultural policy and surveillance, between 1934 and 1945. During World War II, Rosenberg was the head of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (1941–1945). He helped direct the extermination of the Slavs. After the war, he was convicted of crimes against peace; planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression; war crimes; and crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg trials in 1946. He was sentenced to death by hanging and executed on 16 October 1946.
The author of a seminal work of Nazi ideology, The Myth of the Twentieth Century (1930), Rosenberg is considered one of the main authors of key Nazi ideological creeds, including its racial theory and its hatred of the Jewish people, the need for Lebensraum, abrogation of the Treaty of Versailles, and opposition to what was considered "degenerate art" modern art. He was also known for his hatred and rejection of what he regarded as "negative" Christianity,Evans, Richard J. (2005) The Third Reich in Power New York: Penguin Books. p.238-40. however, he played an important role in the development of German nationalist Positive Christianity, which denied that Jesus is the Messiah and rejected the Old Testament.
His paternal grandfather, Martin Rosenberg, was a master shoemaker and elder of his guild. Born in Riga in 1820, and probably partly of Latvians descent, he had moved to Reval in the 1850s, where he met Julie Elisabeth Stramm, born in Juuru (now Estonia) in 1835. The two married in the German St. Nicholas parish of Reval in 1856.
The Hungarian-Jewish journalist Franz Szell, who was apparently residing in Tilsit, Prussia, Weimar Republic, spent a year researching in Latvian and Estonian archives before publishing an open letter in 1936, with copies to Hermann Göring, Joseph Goebbels, Foreign Minister Konstantin von Neurath and others, accusing Rosenberg of having "no drop of German blood" flowing in his veins. Szell wrote that among Rosenberg's ancestors were only "Latvians, Jews, Mongols, and French."Staff (March 2008) "Szell, Franz (fl 1936-1937): correspondence regarding Alfred Rosenberg" (catalog entry) Wiener Library Quote: "Franz Szell, an exiled Hungarian journalist apparently resident in Tilsit, Lithuania spent more than a year in the archives in Latvia and Estonia researching Alfred Rosenberg's family history with a view to publishing the open letter, 936/1." As a result of his open letter, Szell was deported by Lithuanian authorities on 15 September 1936.Staff (5 September 1936) "Lithuania Deports Writer Who Called Nazi Chief 'non-aryan Jewish Telegraph Agency His claims were repeated in the 15 September 1937 issue of the Vatican City newspaper L'Osservatore Romano.Gugenberger, Edouard (2002) Boten der Apokalypse. Visionäre des Dritten Reichs. Vienna. p.196
During the German occupation of Estonia in 1918, Rosenberg served as a drawing teacher at the Gustav Adolf Gymnasium and Tallinna II Reaalkool (current Tallinn Polytechnic School). He gave his first speech on "Jewish Marxism" on 30 November, at the House of the Blackheads, after the 28 November 1918 outbreak of the Estonian War of Independence.Pekka Erelt Kapo luuras natsijuhi Alfred Rosenbergi järele Eesti Ekspress He emigrated to Germany with the retreating Imperial German army, along with Max Scheubner-Richter, who served as something of a mentor to Rosenberg and to his ideology. Arriving in Munich, he contributed to Dietrich Eckart's publication, the Völkischer Beobachter ( Ethnic/Nationalist Observer). By this time, he was both an antisemite – influenced by Houston Stewart Chamberlain's book The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, one of the key proto-Nazi books of racial theory – and an Anti-communism. Rosenberg became one of the earliest members of the German Workers' Party – later renamed the Nazi Party, better known as the Nazi Party – joining in January 1919, eight months before Adolf Hitler joined in September. According to some historians, Rosenberg had also been a member of the Thule Society, along with Eckart,Ian Kershaw (2000) Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris, W. W. Norton & Company. pp.138-139. although Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke contends that they were only guests. The Völkischer Beobachter became the Nazi party newspaper in December 1920. Eckart was its first editor and after his bout with alcoholism, Rosenberg became its editor in 1923. Rosenberg was a leading member of Aufbau Vereinigung, Reconstruction Organisation, a conspiratorial organisation of White Russian émigrés which had a critical influence on early Nazi policy.Kellogg 227–228
Rosenberg sympathized and identified with Talaat Pasha and the Committee of Union and Progress that carried out the Armenian genocide, also claiming that there was "a deliberately Jewish policy which had always protected the Armenians" and that "during the world war, the Armenians have led the espionage against the Turks, similar to the Jews against Germany". (2025). 9781400889631, Princeton University Press. ISBN 9781400889631
(2025). 9781137564023, Palgrave Macmillan UK. ISBN 9781137564023
On 1 January 1924, Rosenberg founded the Greater German People's Community, a Nazi front organization. Headquartered in Munich, it was largely limited to Bavaria, the birthplace of National Socialism, had no substantial presence outside that State and became a haven for Nazi Party members from that area. Prominent members included Max Amann, Phillip Bouhler, Hermann Esser, Franz Xaver Schwarz and Julius Streicher. (1969). 9780822931836 ISBN 9780822931836 Rosenberg, one of the least charismatic of the Nazi leaders and lacking in leadership qualities, was soon pushed aside by Streicher, a far more ruthless and abrasive personality, who was elected Chairman on 9 July 1924 with Esser, also a coarse, bullying sort, as his Deputy Chairman.Michael D. Miller & Andreas Schulz: Gauleiter: The Regional Leaders of the Nazi Party and Their Deputies, 1925-1945, Volume 3 (Fritz Sauckel – Hans Zimmermann), Fonthill Media, 2021, p. 351, .
Rosenberg was on the rostrum at the refoundation of the NSDAP in February 1925.
In 1929 Rosenberg founded the Militant League for German Culture. He later formed the "Institute for Research on the Jewish Question", the first branch of a projected Advanced School of the NSDAP,Grimsted, Patricia Kennedy (2005). "Roads to Ratibor: Library and archival plunder by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg." Holocaust and Genocide Studies, vol. 19, no. 3. pp. 390-458; here: p. 406." Institut zur Erforschung der Judenfrage (IEJ)" In: Glossary. Jüdisches Museum Berlin (Jewish Museum Berlin). Retrieved 2015-01-18. dedicated to identifying and attacking supposed Jewish influence in German culture and to recording the history of Judaism from a radical nationalist perspective. In 1930, he published his book on Master race The Myth of the Twentieth Century ( Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts) which deals with key issues in the Nazi ideology, such as the "Jewish question". He condemned Islam in the book as well which he described as being against European races and as anti-Christian. 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 remains doubtful. It is often said to have been a book that was officially venerated within Nazism, but one that few had actually read beyond the first chapter or even found comprehensible.Leon Goldensohn (2025). 037541469X, Alfred A. Knopf. 037541469X According to Albert Speer, Hitler called it "stuff nobody can understand"
and disapproved of its pseudo-religious tone. Contradicting this, other authors noted that Hitler considered it the most important book of party ideology. Rosenberg also played a key role in developing Hitler’s belief in Jewish conspiracies by introducing him to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Rosenberg was elected as a Reichstag deputy at the September 1930 parliamentary election as a representative of the Nazi Party electoral list. He would continue to serve in this capacity until the end of the Nazi regime, representing electoral constituency 33, Hesse-Darmstadt, from July 1932. Alfred Rosenberg entry in the Reichstag Members Database
Rosenberg helped convince Hitler, whose early speeches focused on revenge against France and Britain, that communism was a serious threat to Germany. "Jewish-Bolshevism" became an ideological target for Nazism during the early 1920s.
In Rome during November 1932 Rosenberg participated in the Volta Conference about Europe. British historian Sir Charles Petrie met him there and regarded him with great distaste; Petrie was a Catholic and strongly objected to Rosenberg's anti-Jewish and anti-Catholic sentiments.Sir Charles Petrie, A Historian Looks at His World (London, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1972), p. 136.
The following year, following the Nazi seizure of power, Rosenberg was named leader of the Nazi Party's Foreign Policy Office in April, and on 2 June 1933 he was named a Reichsleiter, the second highest political rank in the Nazi Party. In May 1933 Rosenberg visited Britain, to give the impression 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 Rosenberg laid a wreath bearing a swastika at the Cenotaph, James Edmond Sears a Labour Party candidate slashed it, later threw it in the Thames and was fined 40 shillings for willful damage at Bow Street magistrate's court."Dr. Rosenberg's Wreath." Times London, 12 May 1933: 11. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 6 February 2014. "There was a further charge against Sears of wilfully damaging the wreath which was laid on the Cenotaph on Wednesday by Dr Rosenberg on behalf of Herr Hitler".
In October 1933, Rosenberg was named as a member of Hans Frank's Academy for German Law. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Vol. VI, pp. 214-215, Document 3530-PS
On 27 January 1934, Hitler made Rosenberg the "Führer's Representative for the Supervision of Intellectual and Ideological Education of the NSDAP." This was the origin of the Amt Rosenberg, or Rosenberg Office, which was an official body for cultural policy and surveillance within the Nazi party. It was also known as the Reich surveillance office. Alfred Rosenberg entry in German Biography
Rosenberg had presented Hitler with his plan for the organization of the conquered Eastern territories, suggesting the establishment of new administrative districts, to replace the previously Soviet Union-controlled territories with new . These would be:
Although Rosenberg believed that all of the peoples of the Soviet Union were subhumans because of their Communism beliefs,David Irving (1996) Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich, London: Focal Point. p. 769. such suggestions were intended to encourage certain non-Russian forms of nationalism and promote German interests for the benefit of future Aryan race 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 organization of these administrative territories led to conflict between Rosenberg and the SS over the treatment of Slavs under German occupation. As Nazi Germany's chief racial theorist, Rosenberg considered Slavs, though lesser than Germans, to be Aryan. Rosenberg often complained to Hitler and Himmler about the treatment of non-Jewish occupied peoples.Kevin P. Spicer, Antisemitism, Christian ambivalence, and the Holocaust, Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, Indiana University Press, 2007, p. 308 He proposed the creation of buffer satellite states made out of Greater Finland, Baltica, Ukraine, and Caucasus.
During an 18 November 1941 press conference, he made the following statements about the Jewish question:
At the Nuremberg trials he said he was ignorant of the Holocaust, despite the fact that Leibbrandt and Meyer were present at the Wannsee conference.
Amongst other things, 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 and restoring family farms for those willing to collaborate with the occupiers. But decollectivisation 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. Hitler himself denounced the redistribution of land as "stupid".Leonid Grenkevich, The Soviet Partisan Movement, 1941–1945: A Critical Historiographical Analysis, Routledge, New York, 1999, pp. 169–171.
There were 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 such as "Come work with us to shorten the war", hid the appalling realities faced by OST-Arbeiter. Rosenberg noted that many joined the partisans when volunteers for work details declined and the Germans resorted to force to acquire workers from the East.
He was sentenced to death and executed with other condemned co-defendants at Nuremberg Prison on the morning of 16 October 1946. His body, like those of the other nine executed men and that of Hermann Göring, was cremated at Ostfriedhof (Munich) and the ashes were scattered in the river Isar.
Throughout the trial, it was agreed that Rosenberg had a decisive role in shaping Nazi philosophy and ideology. Examples include: his book The 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 particular; and opposition to the Versailles Treaty. Rosenberg case for the defense at Nuremberg trials (Spanish)
According to Joseph Kingsbury-Smith, who covered the executions for the International News Service, Rosenberg was the only condemned man who, when asked at the gallows if he had any last words to make, replied with only one word: "No".
The question of Rosenberg's influence in the Nazi 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 Hitler appeared to be close to 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". But Hitler rejected Rosenberg's spiritual views on race but instead based his views on biology.
After Hitler's assumption of power he moved to unify the churches into a national church which could be manipulated and controlled. 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; Hitler wanted to appear non-threatening to major Christian faiths and consolidate his power.
Some Nazi leaders, such as Martin Bormann, were anti-Christian and sympathetic to Rosenberg.Stiegmann-Gall, Richard, The Holy Reich, CUP, pp. 243–5 Once in power, Hitler and most Nazi leaders sought to unify the Christian denominations in favor of "positive Christianity". Hitler privately condemned mystical and pseudoreligious interests as "nonsense", and maintained that National Socialism was based on science and should avoid mystic and cultic practices. However, he and Joseph Goebbels 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.Hürten, H. "'Endlösung' für den Katholizismus? Das nationalsozialistische Regime und seine Zukunftspläne gegenüber der Kirche," in: Stimmen der Zeit, 203 (1985) pp. 534–546
Heinrich Himmler's views were among the closest to Rosenberg's, and their estrangement was perhaps created by Himmler's abilities to put into action what Rosenberg had only written. Also, while Rosenberg thought Christianity should be allowed to die out, Himmler actively set out to create countering pagan rituals.
Lieutenant Colonel William Harold Dunn (1898–1955) wrote a medical and psychiatric report on him in prison to evaluate him as a suicide risk:
Summarizing the unresolved conflict between the personal views of Rosenberg and the pragmatism of the Nazi elite:
Rosenberg got the racial term Untermensch from the title of Stoddard's 1922 book The Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace of the Under-men, which had been adopted by the Nazis from that book's German version Der Kulturumsturz: Die Drohung des Untermenschen (1925).
Rosenberg reshaped the Nazi racial policy over the years, but it always consisted of Aryanism, extreme German nationalism and rabid antisemitism. Rosenberg also outspokenly opposed homosexuality – notably in his pamphlet "Der Sumpf" ("The Swamp", 1927). He viewed homosexuality as a hindrance to the expansion of the Nordic population.
Rosenberg's attitude towards Slavs was flexible because it depended on the particular nation which he referred to.Rosenberg wrote: "The Czechs, for their part, were stratified by race into a Nordic-Slavic nobility, and lower orders of an Alpine Dinaric stamp, thus displaying that type which the modern Czech so plainly embodies." Page 108, "The one eyed maniacal Ziska of Trocnow, whose head in the Prague National Museum shows him to have been an eastern hither Asiatic type, was the first expression of this totally destructive Taborite movement, which the Czechs must thank for the extermination of the last remaining Germanic powers active within them, as well as the repression of all that was truly Slavic." The Myth of the Twentieth Century (1930) p.109Rosenberg wrote: "The entire east is diversified throughout; one will need to speak here of the Russian character, of the Germanised peoples of Finland, Estonia and Lithuania, whereat also Poland has developed its clearly outlined individuality." The Myth of the Twentieth Century (1930) p.643 As a result of the ideology of "Drang nach Osten" ("Drive to the East"), Rosenberg saw his mission as the conquest and colonization of the Slavic East. Oświęcim, 1940–1945: przewodnik po muzeum, Kazimierz Smoleń, Państwowe Muzeum w Oświęcimiu, 1978, page 12Metapolitics: from Wagner and the German Romantics to Hitler, page 221, Peter Viereck, Transaction Publishers 2003 In The Myth of the Twentieth Century, Rosenberg describes Russian Slavs as being overwhelmed by Bolshevism.Rosenberg wrote: "In the year 1917, Russian Man finally disintegrated. He fell into two parts. The Nordic Russian blood gave up the struggle, the eastern Mongolian, powerfully stirred up, summoned Chinese and desert peoples to its aid, Jews and Armenians pushed forward to leadership, and the Kalmuch Tartar Lenin became master. The demonry of this blood directed itself instinctively against everything which outwardly still had some honest effect, looked manly and Nordic, like a living reproach against a type of man whom Lothrop Stoddard described as 'subhuman'." The Myth of the Twentieth Century (1930) p.214 Regarding Ukrainians, he favoured setting up a buffer state to ease the pressure on the German eastern frontier, while agreeing with the notion that Russia could be exploited for the benefit of Germany.Andreyev, Caterine (1990)
Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Movement: Soviet Reality and Émigré Theories London: Cambridge University Press. p.30. During the war, Rosenberg was in favour of collaboration with the East Slavs against Bolshevism and offering them national independence unlike other Nazis such as Hitler and Himmler who dismissed such ideas.Herbert, Ulrich (1997) Hitler's Foreign Workers: Enforced Foreign Labor in Germany Under the Third Reich London: Cambridge University Press. pp.260–261 Hertstein, Robert Edwin (1979) The war that Hitler won: Goebbels and the Nazi media campaign, UK: Hamish Hamilton. p.364
Rosenberg criticised those who did not subscribe to his racial theories. For example, he attacked Fascist Italy for what he perceived as its incorrect and improper stance on race and Jewishness.
In his 1920 book Immorality in the Talmud, Rosenberg identified Jews with the antichrist.Rosenberg wrote: "The hate of Jesus combined with an unfathomable lack of understanding for Jesus that is showing in the works of today's Jewry almost without disguise and culminates in the systematic Jewish Bolshevik persecution of Christianity in Russia goes back almost 2000 years. The personality of Jesus was the strongest storm against Jewish nature, which the Jew has always felt and known and only Christian over-tolerance could deem it possible to build a bridge. There can be no peace between Christ and the antichrist; there can only be a winner."
Original in German: "Der Haß, verbunden mit abgrundtiefer Verständnislosigkeit der Person Jesu gegenüber, der in den Erzeugnissen der heutigen Juden kaum mehr verhüllt zum Ausdruck kommt und in den planmäßigen Christenverfolgungen seitens der jüdischen bolschewistischen Machthaber in Rußland seinen Höhepunkt erreicht hat, dieser Haß dauert jetzt bald 2000 Jahre unverändert fort. Die Persönlichkeit Christi ist der stärkste Ansturm gegen jüdisches Wesen; das hat der Jude von jeher gefühlt und gewußt, einzig christliche Übertoleranz könnte glauben, hier eine Brücke schlagen zu können. Frieden kann es zwischen Christ und Antichrist nicht geben; es siegt entweder der eine oder der andere."
Rosenberg, Alfred (1943) 1920 Unmoral im Talmud. Franz Eher Verlag, p.19 "If the concentrated feeling of personality which built Gothic cathedrals and inspired a portrait penetrated more clearly into the consciousness of the general public, a new wave of culture would begin. But the prerequisite for this is the overcoming of the former statutory values of the 'Christian' churches." The Myth of the Twentieth Century (1930) p. 391
In January 1934, Hitler appointed Rosenberg cultural and educational leader of the Reich.Shirer, William L. (1960) The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich London: Secker & Warburg; London. p. 240 The Nazi War Against the Catholic Church; National Catholic Welfare Conference; Washington D.C.; 1942 The Sanctum Officium in Rome recommended that Rosenberg's Myth of the Twentieth Century be put on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (list of books forbidden by the Catholic Church) for scorning and rejecting "all dogmas of the Catholic Church, and the very fundamentals of the Christian religion".
Rosenberg has been described as an Atheism by some people, including Henry F. Gerecke, the Lutheran chaplain who communed with some of the Nuremberg prisoners with Lutheran backgrounds, like Joachim von Ribbentrop and Wilhelm Keitel."Within the NSDAP (as in the German völkisch movement in general) there existed from the outset a group of old Hitler partisans who in contrast to the 'atheists' Alfred Rosenberg, Martin Bormann and others, believed in a union of National Socialism and Protestant Christianity." Martin Broszat (1981) The Hitler State: The Foundation and Development of the Internal Structure of the Tjird Reich. London: Longman. p.223 Callahan, Daniel ed. (1967) The Secular City Debate. New York: Macmillan. p.152Goldensohn, Leon (2005) The Nuremberg Interviews: An American Psychiatrist's Conversations with the Defendants and Witnesses. New York: Vintage. p.75. "Apart from Rosenberg giving his name and replying 'No' to a question as to whether he had anything to say, this atheist did not utter a word. Despite his disbelief in God he was accompanied by a Protestant chaplain, who followed him to the gallows and stood beside him praying." Hitler's Third Reich: A Documentary History, p. 613 Gustave Mark Gilbert, Rosenberg's prison psychologist during his trial, reports that Rosenberg described himself having "always been anti-Catholic" and criticised the Church's power. Due to his criticism of traditional Christianity, some polemical texts have called him a Modern Paganism.
Informational notes
Citations
Bibliography
Wartime activities
In 1940 Rosenberg was made head of the Hohe Schule (literally "high school", but the German phrase refers to a college), the Centre of National Socialist Ideological and Educational Research, out of which the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce) developed for the purpose of Nazi plunder. The ERR were especially active in Paris in looting art stolen from famous Jewish families such as the Rothschilds and that of Paul Rosenberg. Hermann Göring used the ERR to collect art for his own personal gratification.Löhr, Hanns Christian (2018): Kunst als Waffe – Der Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, Ideologie und Kunstraub im "Dritten Reich", Gebr. Mann, p. 38 ff.
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 Hitler's home town of Linz, Austria. The orders given to 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.Vries, Willem de (2000): Kunstraub im Westen, Alfred Rosenberg und der Sonderstab Musik, S.Fischer Verlag.
Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories
Following the invasion of the Soviet Union, Rosenberg was appointed head of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories ( Reichsministerium für die besetzten Ostgebiete) on 17 July 1941. 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 Rosenberg's request.
Wartime propaganda efforts
Since the invasion of the Soviet Union intended to impose the New Order, it was essentially a war of conquest. German propaganda efforts designed to win over Russian opinion were, at best, patchy and inconsistent. Alfred Rosenberg was one of the few in the Nazi hierarchy who advocated a policy designed to encourage anti-Communist opinion among the population of the occupied territories. His interest here was mainly in the non-Russian areas such as Ukraine and the Baltic States; however, supporters of the Russian Liberation Army were somewhat able to win him over.
Capture, trial and execution
Rosenberg was captured by Allied troops on 19 May 1945 in Flensburg-Mürwik. He was tried at Nuremberg Trials and found guilty of all four counts: conspiracy to commit crimes against peace; planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression; war crimes; and crimes against humanity. The final judgment against him named him one of the principal planners of the invasion of Norway and the invasion of the Soviet Union. It also held him directly responsible for the systematic plunder of the occupied countries of Europe, as well as the brutal conditions in Eastern Europe. During his trial he wrote his memoirs, which were published posthumously and with analytical commentary by Serge Lang and Ernst von Schenck.
Views and influence on Nazi policy
Hitler was a leader oriented towards practical politics, whereas, for Rosenberg, religion and philosophy were key and he was the most culturally influential within the party. Several accounts of the time before the Nazi ascension to power speak of Hitler as being a mouthpiece for Rosenberg's views, and he clearly exerted a great deal of intellectual influence.
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.
The ruthless pursuit of Nazi aims turned out to mean not, as 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.
Racial theories
As the Nazi Party's chief racial theorist, Rosenberg oversaw the construction of a human racial "ladder" that justified Hitler's racial and ethnic policies. Rosenberg built on the works of Arthur de Gobineau, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Madison Grant and the Klansman Lothrop Stoddard as well as on the beliefs of Hitler. Rosenberg placed Black people and Jews at the very bottom of the ladder, while at the very top stood the "Aryan race. Rosenberg promoted the Nordicism which considered the Nordic race the "master race",Rosenberg wrote: "No people of Europe is racially homogeneous, also Germany is not. According to the latest research, we accept five races all of which reveal perceptibly different types. But it is beyond question that the true culture bearer for Europe has been in the first place the Nordic race. Great heroes, artists and founders of states have grown from this blood." The Myth of the Twentieth Century (1930) p.576Though Rosenberg does not use the word "master race". He uses the word "Herrenvolk" (i.e. ruling people) twice in his book The Myth, first referring to the (saying that Archibald Sayce described them as fair skinned and blue eyed) and secondly quoting Victor Wallace Germains' description of the English in "The Truth about Kitchener". ("The Myth of the Twentieth Century") - Pages 26, 660 - 1930 superior to all others, including to other Aryans (Indo-Europeans). He was also influenced by the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory promoted by the Catholic counter-revolutionary tradition, such as the book Le Juif, le judaïsme et la judaïsation des peuples chrétiens (1869) by Roger Gougenot des Mousseaux, which he translated into German under the title The Eternal Jew.
Religious theories
Rosenberg was raised as a Lutheranism, but he rejected what he called "negative" Christianity later in life. Instead, Rosenberg argued for a new "religion of the blood", which was based on the supposed innate promptings of the Nordic soul to defend its noble character against racial and cultural degeneration.Cecil, 1972, s. 85
Published works
Diary
During the Nuremberg trials, Rosenberg's handwritten diary was translated by Harry Fiss, Chief of Documentation for the American prosecution. After its use in evidence during the Nuremberg trials, the diary went missing, along with other material which had been given to the prosecutor Robert Kempner (1899–1993). It was recovered in Lewiston, N.Y., on 13 June 2013. Federal Officials Reveal Diary of High-Level Nazi Leader Found in WNY Written on 425 loose-leaf pages, with entries dating from 1936 through 1944, it is now the property of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington. Henry Mayer, the museum's senior archivist, and the son of a Holocaust survivor, was able to access the material and while "not given enough time to read the diary entry from beginning to end," he "could see that Rosenberg focused on certain subjects, including brutality against Jews and other ethnic groups and forcing the civilian population of occupied Russia to serve Germany." Meyer also noted Rosenberg's "hostile comments about Nazi leaders," which he described as "unvarnished." While some parts of the manuscript had been previously published, the majority had been lost for decades. Former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Robert King Wittman, who helped track down the diary, said, "there is no place in the diary where we have Rosenberg or Hitler saying the Jews should be exterminated, all it said was 'move them out of Europe. The New York Times said of the search for the missing manuscript that "the tangled journey of the diary could itself be the subject of a television mini-series."
Since the end of 2013, the USHMM has shown the 425-page document (photos and transcripts) on its homepage.
Personal life
Rosenberg was married twice. In 1915, he married , an ethnic Estonians; they divorced in 1923. Two years later, in 1925 he married Hedwig Kramer, to whom he remained wed until his execution by the Allies. He and Kramer had two children: a son who died in infancy and a daughter, Irene, who was born in 1930. His wife died in 1947.
See also
Goldensohn, Leon (2025). 037541469X, Knopf. 037541469X
Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke (1985). 081473054X, I.B. Tauris. 081473054X
(2025). 9780007575602, William Collins. ISBN 9780007575602
External links
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