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12: The Wewelsburg Effect: Nazi Myth
and Paganism in Postwar European
Popular Music
Oded Heilbronner
Historians have not given [racial thought, Germanic
Christianity, and völkisch mysticism] much serious attention,
for they have regarded this ideology as a species of subintellectual
rather than intellectual history. It has generally been regarded as
a façade used to conceal a naked and intense struggle for power,
and therefore the historian should be concerned with other and
presumably more important attitudes toward life. Such however
was not the case.
—George Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology
Introduction: What Was the Wewelsburg?
THERE ARE MANY LEGENDS associated with the castle of Wewelsburg
near the city of Paderborn in North Germany.1 One relates that the
saga of Wewelsburg is about the “last battle at the birch tree,” in which a
“huge army from the East” was beaten decisively by the “West.”2 Another
says that Wewelsburg was the home region of the ancient Germanic war-
rior Herrmann the Cheruscan.3 But the most influential legend about
the Wewelsburg, which is still current, is that of the connection between
Heinrich Himmler, the SS, and Wewelsburg in the 1930s and 1940s.
Wewelsburg was intended to be a place of worship (Kultstätte) and spiri-
tual center for the SS—Himmler’s Valhalla.4
Wewelsburg was initially intended to be a training center of the SS
Race Office (Rasseamt), though it was not used for regular training pur-
poses.5 Rather, stimulated by the occult-inspired runologist and SS-Officer
Karl Maria Wiligut, Himmler undertook renovating the Wewelsburg as
the central meeting place of the SS group leaders. After the completion
of the renovation, every group leader of the SS (Gruppenführerkorps) was
to meet there regularly, and each newly promoted group leader was to
be sworn in on the SS race and blood laws. Himmler also decided that
the skull rings (Totenkopfringe) of deceased SS men were to be solemnly
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THE WEWELSBURG EFFECT 271
preserved in the Wewelsburg. Courses for SS-officers in pre- and early his-
tory, mythology, archaeology, and astronomy took place there regularly.6
Himmler’s efforts to create an elite group of Nazi warrior-priests
failed, and his occult- and pagan-Germanic musings never became the
official religion of the Third Reich. But nor did the persistent myth of
Nazi occultism, as exemplified by Himmler’s activities at the Wewelsburg,
end with the collapse of the Third Reich. Indeed, while Himmler’s activi-
ties at the Wewelsburg attracted few proponents in the Third Reich, this
peculiar brand of Nazi mythology and religion found a new lease on life
among occulist, neo-Nazi, pro-“Aryan”-groups during the 1970s and
the 1980s, especially in the neofolk rock music scene. This surprising
resurgence of interest in Nazi occultism and mythology is what I call the
Wewelsburg Effect.
Although I will briefly describe some manifestations of the
Wewelsburg Effect in post–Second World War popular culture chiefly
between 1970 to 1990 (in part 2), my main intention is to connect the
Wewelsburg myth to the music of some contemporary neofascist rock
bands, above all the British band Death in June (which I discuss in part
3). By concentrating on the music and the lyrics of this band as the pri-
mary case study, I can identify how the unsuccessful attempts by Himmler
and his SS colleagues’ to create a Nazi mythology and religion around
Wewelsburg turned into a reality within the underground music scene in
Europe by the end of the twentieth century.
My argument is that musical scene helped to create a dangerous envi-
ronment for the proliferation of “alternative” histories tainted with the
biases of the extreme right in recent years. Alternative histories to the
Third Reich have been slowly aesthetised and now adopted as just one
of many popular culture symbols. This “negative” history (the SS and
Wewelsburg) has been adopted by today’s youth (the right-wing extrem-
ism is chiefly a youth phenomenon)—in stereotypically rebellious fash-
ion—based on the idea that the antithesis of mainstream opinion must by
definition be best, and has all this worked together with the development
of an increased number of mediums, most notably the Internet. Finally,
as Ian Buruma argues, young people are “returning to the images of the
previous dictatorship [that is, the Third Reich and the SS] as a rebellion”
against mainstream culture, against their parents’ culture, and against
their own past.7
I. The Myth of Nazi Occultism
in Western Popular Culture
Before discussing the Nazi occult legacy in postwar European popular
music, it is important to remind the reader that there were important
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272 ODED HEILBRONNER
occult and other pagan religious elements in the contemporary Third
Reich.8 As many of the contributions to this volume indicate, there was
a profound fascination with occult and esoteric practices across early
twentieth-century Germany and Austria; the Nazis were not immune to
these wider cultural and intellectual trends.9 Indeed, the NSDAP’s ori-
gins in the esoteric Bavarian Thule Society is well known, as is the occult-
infused ariosophic literature that inspired aspects of Nazi doctrine, as well
as inspiring some Nazi leaders to search for Aryan origins in central Asia,
Tibet, and the lost continent of Atlantis. Himmler and the SS were, of
course, a leading force in such efforts.10
But the point of this first section is not to revisit the fascinating (if com-
plex) history of occultism in interwar Germany and the Third Reich. Rather,
I would like to emphasize here that the putative fascination with occultism
that we associate with the Third Reich has certainly persisted in postwar
Western culture. An indulgence in esoteric fantasies, even alternative uni-
verses, comprise a widespread and general phenomenon. Young people who
go to rock concerts, dress in punk style, make underground movies, attend
the Gothic-style festival in Leipzig or pagan gatherings in Stonehenge, and
play Dungeons and Dragons have become an important element of main-
stream cultural life in the West. The unprecedented publishing success of the
Harry Potter books, the proliferation of discussion groups and fan websites
devoted to fantasy worlds, such as Paganism and Satanism, Middle Earth and
Star Wars, and the popularity of multiplayer online role-playing games and
fantasies and pagan, satanist websites all provide clear evidence that occult
fantasies have persisted in postwar popular culture. Nor, as Michael Saler has
recently observed, is this popular fascination a form of regression, margin-
ality, and escapism but an important ongoing cultural attempt to question,
examine, and recast the idea of modernity.11
How did these trends express themselves after the war in those
streams of popular culture that celebrated the legacies of Nazism?
Official memory culture might sound like something stable, conserva-
tive, static, but there are multiple dynamics and many variations in the
discourse of official memory in general and, in our case, the memory of
Nazi Germany. Ian Buruma calls this the “multi-narratives” of the Third
Reich.12 Although many contemporary scholars and the initial genera-
tion of postwar historians were interested in the mystical aspects of Nazi
Germany, most research dealing with the topic has been conducted out-
side academia. However, in recent years, it is possible to trace an “occul-
tural flow” between official memory culture and popular culture going in
both directions when dealing with Nazism. George Mosse’s suggestion
from 1962 mentioned above has once again become salonfähig (socially
acceptable) in official memory culture. This mythical aspect described
by Eva Kingsepp as “a dominant characteristic of much, or even most,
of today’s mediated popular history, not the least the history of Nazi
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THE WEWELSBURG EFFECT 273
Germany and the Second World War.”13 Indeed, this “occultural flow”
between official memory culture and popular culture has increased in the
last few decades of the use of Nazism, its symbols and theories, across
Western popular culture.14
Many good German writers used to say “the Germans can’t keep their
devils in the basement; they have to let them out.” But, as the British
writer Martin Amis suggests, it’s no longer the Germans—or not merely
the Germans—that we need to worry about.15 We must consider “the
discreet (dark or kitsch) charm of Nazism,” a concept that such veteran
philosophers and historians, such as Susan Sontag and Saul Friedlander,
have used in various ways to warn against the danger of being attracted by
this “charm,” which today plays a central role in visual culture.16 Indeed,
Hitler, the Nazis, the Holocaust, and particularly Nazi artifacts (memora-
bilia), have become a profitable business, among which Nazi visual sym-
bols are prominent (in pornograpy, fetishism, books, video games, films,
rock bands, fashion items,17 souvenirs, badges, and zombie culture).
Nazi occult symbols and fantasies also play an important role in fantasy
and science fiction internet games, as Jeff Hayton argues so persusasively
in this volume. The reason for “the discreet (dark) charm of Nazism,”
which apparently has even attracted many Israelis since the period of
“Stalag pulp fiction,” is the unique combination that Nazism seems to
offer of black magic, of occult theories, and of the cult of satanism of the
European radical right-wing—which appeared already in the nineteenth
century with cold-blooded, technocratic, rational, aesthetic murderous
intent, accompanied by academic sophistication.18 This combination is
well described by Jonathan Littell in his novel The Kindly Ones, and many
satanic sects, neofolk rock groups and white power groups incorporate it
in their activities today in central, eastern, and northern Europe, as we
will see in the next section.
Hence many researchers, including Israelis and Jewish scholars,
are drawn to the intellectual and aesthetic possibilities that new trends
in visual, material, and popular culture offer for interpretation of “the
Nazi beast,” both for personal reasons and because of its uniqueness in
the Western cultural landscape in recent centuries.19 As David Katz has
argued, “Much more needs to be done on this subject [Nazi occultism
and its impact], in order to understand the appeal of Nazism to a culti-
vated people. What is striking, however, is the way in which these aspects
or romanticism and mysticism were woven together into what amounted
to a kind of occult religion more than a detached body of knowledge . . .
the emphasis on esoteric religious faith in the 20th-Century would have
enormous consequences on present day culture.”20 Instead of revealing
new dimensions of Nazi horror, many postwar intellectuals and artists
alike end up falling into the trap of propagating this macabre fascina-
tion—what I have referred to above as the Wewelsburg Effect.21
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274 ODED HEILBRONNER
II. The Wewelsburg Effect: Wewelsburg
Fantasies in the First Decades after the War
Since the 1950s, when the actual history of the mythology Himmler
and some of his followers constructed was less known than today, some
authors attempted to fill the gaps in research with their imagination,
especially the religious aspects of the SS as an “Order” (Orden). It is in
this immediate postwar period that the actual history of Nazi occultism
and pagan religion began to get obscured and magnified by elements of
fantasy and mythology. Walter Schellenberg, former chief of the foreign
news service in the main security office of the Reich, published his mem-
oirs posthumously in 1956.22 In them, he wrote that Himmler modeled
the SS on the organizational principles of the Jesuit Order and that the
Wewelsburg was the big “SS monastery” in which a “secret consistory”
met every year to engage in exercises and practices in concentration.
Heinz Höhne’s book, The Order of the Death’s Head: The Story of Hitler’s
SS (1967), which portrayed the SS as a “schwarzen gegenloge” (satanic
counterlodge) of the Jesuit Order, contributed to the popularization of
such myths.23 Höhne described a 35-meter long and 15-meter wide din-
ing room in Wewelsburg in which Himmler set up his “[King] Arthur
Panel” and held spiritualist-type meetings with the “twelve chosen.”
Höhne called Wewelsburg “Himmler’s Grail.”24
Such relatively sound observations by eyewitnesses and reputable
scholars soon become supplemented in esoteric circles and popular culture
by less well-substantiated myths about the Wewelsburg, about the SS, and
about Nazi occultism. In the 1960s, a variety of fantastic literature appeared
and continues to flourish even now in esoteric circles. In this literature, it is
claimed that the true history of Nazism, hitherto hidden from professional
historians, can only be explained through theories about secret societies.25
In this scenario, the Wewelsburg began to take center stage as the secret
inauguration center for the rituals of the SS, where the highest initiates met
on the lines of the Arthurian knights. It was “the magical and spiritual cen-
tre of the Order, the magical centre of the new Thule (Society), . . . the
nerve centre of the Black Order, where its most sacred and secret rites were
performed by its greatest initiates,” and a laboratory from which the corpus
of the Germanic god-people would arise.26
A good example of proliferation of the Wewelsburg myth in post-
war European and American society is its place in satanic sects. The most
important of them are the Church of Satan and the Temple of Set during
the 1970s. The Church of Satan was the largest occult organization in the
USA, led by Anton Szandor LaVey. LaVey worked in circuses, carnivals,
and burlesque houses as a lion tamer and musician. Under the influence
of another magician, the English master of the Ordo Templi Orientis
Aleister Crowley and his followers, he founded the Church of Satan in
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THE WEWELSBURG EFFECT 275
1961 in San-Franscisco. The church was greatly influenced by Nazi theo-
ries, anthems, and performances. One of his disciples, Michael A. Aquino,
a former US army officer, rebelled against LaVey and in 1975 founded his
own church, the Temple of Set.27
The Temple of Set had a deep fascination with Nazi occultism. Like
other orders derived from the Church of Satan, the temple was impressed
by the romantic Germanic magical tradition and its influence on Nazism
and the SS.The SS, says Aquino, “embodied a living blueprint for the
ideal National Socialist state,” which was governed “according to irra-
tional principles.” Aesthetics and design were considered important: the
leaders of the SS “both followed and encouraged practices that, in the
context of our Satanic ritual, included specific design for both operative
and illustrative effect.”28
In order to experience this mystical aspect himself, in 1982 the tem-
ple leader Aquino traveled to Wewelsburg.29 On the afternoon of the
October 19, 1982, from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m., Aquino practiced a magic
ritual in the Crypt (Hall of the Dead [Totenstätte]), where Himmler had
allegedly conducted ritual magic. This became known as the “Wewelsburg
working.” Many stories circulated about this “working,” and in the occult
scene it gained a legendary and notorious reputation.30 One book on
satanic ritual claims, for example, that Aquino read “a satanic mass” in the
Crypt. According to another account, he tried to connect through “med-
itations and invocations . . . with the spirit of the former SS leaders.” Such
legends were encouraged by the fact that although Aquino wrote down
the objectives and results of his ritual, he did not describe the working
itself. A few years later, however, he described his experience there:
It [the fantastic literature] was certainly vague, inaccurate, and igno-
rant. I think they (the authors) knew only that the castle had been
of central/metaphysical importance to Himmler, who was famous
for his occult and ancient-wisdom interests, so it was easy for them
to speculate that “satanic rituals” (a term they used very loosely and
inaccurately) were practiced there. The same writers often called
Hitler a “Satanist,” though he was nothing of that sort. And I don’t
think that even occultists like Himmler or Hess would have consid-
ered themselves “Satanists” at all. . . . By the time I visited it, (. . .) I
had a tremendous appreciation of the Wewelsburg’s significance, and
could sense the same power radiating from it, and particularly the
North Tower, that I think Himmler did. Perhaps this is only partly
the “memory” of the castle itself, and partly its location in terms
of Ley lines (energetic power lines that cover the world according
to the view of geomancy) and other geophysical influences. (. . .)
Essentially it was the castle itself, and its Walhalla, that “created” the
working. I merely perceived and responded to it.31
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276 ODED HEILBRONNER
According to Aquino, Nazi Germany was a country in which various
forms of black magic were particularly strong. Even if the Nazis them-
selves did not consider their actions to be such, the SS, for its part, prac-
ticed higher black magic according to the criteria of the temple.32
The Church of Satan’s fascination with the Wewelsburg is merely
the most prominent example of how the SS religious center became a
key symbol in the neo-Nazi cults, especially in Europe and among young
people.33 The Black Sun, which has its roots in ancient religions and by
the end of the nineteenth century had become a symbol for many radical
right-wing and völkisch (racialist) groups who adopted racial and quasi-
Christian rituals, was one of the Wewelsburg ornaments and a favorite
SS symbol that decorated the Hall of Valhalla in the northern tower of
the castle. In recent decades, neo-Nazis groups discussed the symbol
and its meaning a great deal in Germany, England, New Zealand, and
Scandinavia.34 The German neofolk band Sol Invictus (Unconquered
Sun) wrote,“As knights of the sun we are returning home/we will be
the new nobility/rare scions of our own rank/we were orphaned and the
journey was long/the darkness did not swallow us/we rose up/the chil-
dren of the sun.”35 It is in such songs, as well as in popular culture that
the Wewelsburg effect is most in evidence and potentially most problem-
atic in providing a revisionist occult mythology about the Third Reich in
the twenty-first century.
III. Fantasies and European Myths
in Contemporary Popular Music:
The Neofolk Subculture
Background—The Euro Neofolk Scene
One of the popular cultural manifestations of the Wewelsburg Effect
in recent decades is the euro-pagan scene, especially the neofolk music
genre, which attracts many singers and bands.36 Since the beginning of
the 1990s, many countries in Europe have become centers for Neofolk
music and pagan youth subculture. Their lyrics, music, representations,
and pronouncements express revulsion against what they perceive as the
rationalist, production-driven, homogenizing aspects of modern society
with its supposedly alienating effects on the individual,which in many
cases coupled with a nostalgia for the past and a fascination with ethnic
whiteness, dark visions, and death.37 Their radical protest has involved
both a militant fascist aesthetic and a fundamental critique of what they
view as an inhuman, one-dimensional society.
In popular music, the neofolk subculture is situated, as Dominik
Tischleder argues in a booklet attached to the “Looking for Europe” CD
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THE WEWELSBURG EFFECT 277
compendium, “somewhere between the Gothic/Dark Wave scene and
circles of avangardist noise-music enthusiasts. For many Neofolk artists,
their artistically transformed theme—mostly literary, mythological, eso-
teric and historical [European] references—occupies a central place: thus,
their unifiying bond is defined more aptly by such thematic common-
alities rather than by a common musical language.”38 Fascist, Nazi, and
radical Right references regularly surface in neofolk music. Many groups
(and their followers) are well informed about the history of the National
Socialist movement and the Holocaust, and as Emily Turner-Graham
argues, all this information has been translated into “the use of [Nazi]
images . . . and has been gathered together by neofolk groups and fans
alike.”39 English musician Paul Roland, answering a question about the
motivation behind his attraction to Nazism, said, “It is because I have
such a strong positive outlook on what lies beyond this world . . . and a
different understanding of the nature of what is called evil.” Boyd Rice,
anotherof the key figures in the neofolk scene, explained that he was fas-
cinated by the Nazi uniform, by the swastika, by the Black Sun, and by
other symbols of European paganism because of “the aesthetic nature of
their appearance.”40 Suggesting yet another kind of motivation—shock
value—the leader of the British euro-pagan rock band Ostara notes, “To
play devil’s advocate for the most demonic movement in history [Nazism]
is still heresy.”41
It is significant to note that Ostara (a goddess in Germanic pagan-
ism)42 and other groups use Nazi imagery not because they necessarily
believe in Hitler’s political and ideological message, but because they wish
to challenge contemporary cultures in Europe, raise voices against what
they see as the disintegration of its “whiteness,” and delineate a period of
“interregnum” (that is, an era between the European “heroic” past and
its allegedly imminent resurrection). Anton Shekhovtsov argues, “The
specific stylistic expression of the theme of the interregnum lies outside
the realm of [neofolk] music itself. While one may rightfully consider that
the images of ruins featured on album covers and/or booklets refer to
the theme of Europe’s death, it seems more reasonable—given [Julius]
Evola’s overwhelming popularity among apoliteic artists—to link such
images to the theme of the interregnum.”43 Julius Evola, the reactionary
Italian esotericist, philosopher, and spiritualist, has been cited as an influ-
ence on neofolk groups.44
As the preceeding discussion suggests, the key theme of protest
linking all neofolk musicians is the question of European identity, and
a romantic rebellion against a rational-multiculturalist-technological
Europe. As Douglas Pearce, the leader of Death in June, one of the
most famous and controversial bands in the scene, argues, “Whatever
[the scene] may be . . . the term euro-centric should be in it.”45 Neofolk
eurocentrism manifests a fascination with Nordic symbols and references,
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278 ODED HEILBRONNER
which are ubiquitous in the scene. The groups mentioned above believe,
as Stephane Francois argues, “that European civilization originates from
the North. With this belief, they take up some of the racist German ideas
of the beginning of the twentieth century, affirming the Nordic origin of
European civilization. They are also interested in ideas of the ethnic unity
of the Europeans. This liking for Indo-European studies leads them to
sink their culture more deeply into this domain, which is often lacunar or
nonexistent.”46 But neofolk music also makes clear references to fascist
movements, protofascist thinkers, and, most important, Germanic legends
and heroes, and its aesthetic in some ways resembles the visual culture of
the Third Reich and especially that of the SS. Neofolk comprises, in short,
some of the best evidence of a contemporary “Wewelsburg effect,” and
no band embodies this effect better than the British group Death in June.
“Every War Has Its Artistic Consequences”: The Wewelsburg Effect,
the Neofolk Pagan Scene, and the Neofolk Band Death in June
Sons of Europe
Sick with Liberalism
Sons of Europe
Chained with Capitalism
On a marble slab of Yalta
Mother Europe
Was Slaughtered47
Then my loneliness closes in
So I drink a German Wine
And drift in dreams of other lives
and greater time48
Death in June (DiJ) is an English rock band. It combines neofolk music,
images and themes related to Nazism and European fascism, racialist
statements, and an affinity for neopaganism, esoteric spirituality, and tra-
ditionalism—praising the putative way of life of premodern Europe.49 A
fascination with Nazism is at the centre of the group’s interest; their name
is an explicit reference to the Night of the Long Knives, when some SA
members and certain opponents of Nazism were massacred by the SS. DiJ
has even recorded the Nazi anthem, the “Horst-Wessel-Lied.”50
DiJ is not a typical white neo-Nazi rock band: they do not dress in
black shirts or shave their heads. However, their unabashed support for
fascist ideology and aesthetics is just as strong as that of other neofolk
groups. The band’s use of paganism and fascist symbolism, and their
explorations of decadence, corruption, and occultism go far beyond shock
tactics. DiJ’s message goes hand in hand with other Gothic, neofolk scenes
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THE WEWELSBURG EFFECT 279
that sympathize with Nazi phenomena, especially the aesthetic manifesta-
tions of the SS. Pearce, the central figure in DiJ, has always been careful
to conceal his political beliefs and avoid controversy, but a close examina-
tion of the band’s interests and activities suggests where his feelings and
commitments may lie.51 For example, as noted, DiJ repeatedly use fascist
and Nazi symbols in their albums and on stage (see images), including the
death’s-head (worn as a pin by SS soldiers), the Life Rune (a pagan sym-
bol), the death’s-head under the title “We Drive East,” and the Black Sun
(another symbol used by the SS). On DiJ’s album Östenbräun (together
with the band Les Joyaux de la Princesse), there is a song (“A Rose for
SD”) which, it seems, is dedicated to the criminal Nazi security force, the
SD (Sicherheitdienst). On one of the album’s three different covers, there
is a photo of a Waffen-SS soldier, and on another there is a photo of the
Spear of Desity, a famous occultist symbol.The band also adopts fascist
lyrics. Their song “Circo Massimo” from their “Take Care and Control”
album adopted a chorus from a fascist marching song. The title of their
“Operation Hummingbird” album comes from a Nazi military opera-
tion aimed at creating gravity-defying aircraft. Writing in the neo-Nazi
music promotion network Blood and Honour, one fan has described how
“twenty-five years ago my musical world was turned upside down” by
DiJ. The fan’s comments describe one of the band’s performances. “Two
men take to the stage dressed in SS [camouflage uniforms] and start to
pound a military beat on kettle drums draped in Totenkopf banners.52
Yet DiJ are not the only neofolk artists to take up these symbols and
images. Others, including Boyd Rice, Derniêre Volonté, Les Joyaux de
la Princesse, and Krepulec, dress in military or quasi-military uniforms for
performances or promotional photographs. Turner-Graham, who studies
the pagan-neofolk subculture, notes that other notable neofolk groups have
borrowed or adopted Nazi names and concepts, like Blood Axis, Luftwaffe,
Kapo, and Strength through Joy. Just as the Nazis themselves borrowed cer-
tain symbols from the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century völkisch
movement (and derisively discarded others), so too do these new interpreters
of the fascist aesthetic pick and choose among an array of symbols. Runes
adorn their websites and CD covers alongside, as we saw in the case of DiJ,
for example, SS-esque death’s head symbols and the image of a leather-
gloved hand clutching a rolled-up whip. Der Blutharsch, from Vienna, are
well-known exponents of the style and have employed the pagan Sig rune (as
used by the SS) and the iron cross surrounded by oak leaves as their symbols.
They are renowned for perfoming at concerts by the light of flaming torches,
to the sound of martial drumming while dressed in uniform-like costumes
replete with jodhpurs, knee-length leather boots, leather cross-straps across
their chests and runic patches on their shirt sleeves.53
Those in the scene emphasize their musical and lyrical image as “cul-
tural soldiers” who keep the flag flying in the fight against “the age of
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280 ODED HEILBRONNER
decay and democracy.”54 In 1992, during Yugoslavia’s bloody civil war,
as part of his Pan-European propaganda campain, Pearce visited the
front line and the HOS Miliz (Croatian fascists). Pearce made several
live recordings in Croatia and then released them as a two-CD set called
“Something Is Coming: Live and Studio Recordings from Croatia” that
carried the red-white national flag of Croatia. Proceeds from the CD went
to a Croatian fascist military hospital. That same year, DiJ backed out of
the Dark Xmas festival in Hamburg after the organizers issued a statement
condemning a spate of fascist attacks on immigrants in Germany. In 1994,
DiJ refused to play at the Festival of Darkness because the show was pro-
moted as being against racism and neo-Nazism.DiJ songs were included
in a 1996 tribute to Leni Riefenstahl, the well-known Third Reich film
director. A CD [of songs from the film?] was published by VAWS (Verlag
und Agentur), a right-wing record label issued by Werner Symanek, who
is active in the rightist scene in Germany. VAWS has released similar trib-
utes to Nazi artists, such as Arno Breker and Josef Thorak.
DiJ, Neo-Paganism and the Wewelsburg Legacy
If DiJ displays a deep fascination with the darkest pages of recent Euro-
pean history, they have a particular interest in the esoteric aspects of the
SS. This constitutes a form of what has been called “black romanticism,”
which finds links between the SS and esotericism. Musicians attracted
to paganism (though apparently not DiJ) have traveled to SS sites like
the Wewelsburg.55 As Stephane Francois writes, neopaganism imagines a
“traditional” past that Europeans lost and seek to reengage with:
(Neo)religious paganism is definitely a legacy of romanticism, espe-
cially in its rejection of the Enlightenment, of the liberalism that
developed from it, and of technological modernity. . . . Among the
neo-pagans, on both the left and right, there is . . . a will to return to
a tribal and/or clan paganism of the traditional societies, self-man-
aging and self-sufficient, gathering freely in the larger units. In fact,
the democratic idea of the neo-pagans is based on a system inspired
by an idealized vision of the social systems of antiquity, above all the
Celtic and Germanic,an organic European system.56
Some neofolk bands simply say that they are pagans, or adepts of some
pagan form of thought—especially right-wing paganism. They stand for
the rejection of Christianity because of what they regard as its false and
corrupt manifestations, which in turn form an obstacle, they hold, to the
realization the “true self” supposed to have existed in premodern times.
Again, DiJ plays an important role here. They sing, “On your pale his-
tory / Jesus bids us bleed / Blood Victory . . . Crushed in the corner /
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THE WEWELSBURG EFFECT 281
Piercing and transfixed . . . / Mary’s pallid sow / Jesus bids me shine? /
Blood Victory / Blood Victory / Loki bids me gleam / Hurrah!”57
The impression DiJ’s darker symbols make on young people is echoed
clearly in one of their fans’comments: “I like the darkness of Death in
June’s imagery, words and music. . . . I guess there must have been some-
thing in there which reminded me of those childhood war games. . . .
I rationalised, with lines fed from interviews in fanzines,that they were
simply exploring the darker side of human nature.”58 Other fans describe
their music as “Satanic Music for Good Children.”59
As noted, one of the major characteristics of DiJ songs and the neo-
pagan scene is an ethnocentrism centered around northern European,
white, mediaevalist elements, and a condemnation of multicultural soci-
ety. The latter is seen as a manifestation of the decline of European values
and the victory both of corrupting Western universalism, standardization,
and homogenization and of the mixing of cultures.60 “Europe” or “the
West” in DiJ songs is used in an ethnic, even racist, rather than a geo-
graphical sense, and eurocentrism is coupled with a European nationalism
that is often quite forthright. As Francois reminds us, a collection entitled
The Orb Weaver—Notre domicile est l’Europe, a disc which includes euro-
pagan and noneuro-pagan bands playing neofolk music released in 2001
on the German music label Thaglasz, was distributed by the DiJ fan club.
In 2001, the fan club issued on the same label the pan-European three-
LP compilation Der Waldgänger, named after a famous essay written by
Ernst Jünger in 1951 where he called for a pure and simple life in the
forest. The forest, for Jünger, was a symbol of “supra-temporal Being”
or “the Ego” and, by “retreating” into it, “the wanderer in the forest”
(Waldgänger) could resist the moral corruption of the interregnum (that
is, the Europe of the 1950s, after the defeat of Nazi Germany).61
They’re making the last film
they say it’s the best
And we all helped make it
It’s called the Death of the West
the kids from Fame will all be there
Free cocacola for you!
And all the monkeys from the zoo
Will they be extras too?
They’re making the last film
they say it’s the best
And we all helped make it
It’s called the Death of the West
A star is rising in our northern sky
And on it we’re crucified
A chain of gold is wrapped around this world
We’re ruled by those who lie62
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282 ODED HEILBRONNER
Epilogue
The lure of Nazi occultist symbols continues to exert an attraction even
today in many branches of popular culture.63 I have tried to trace one
such manifestation—in popular music. While it must be conceded that
there is some degree of theatricality in the fascistic poses adopted by the
bands discussed here, their apparent fascination with satanist, pagan, and
medieval symbols—which resemble those favored by Himmler and his
followers—is worth noting nevertheless. For some musicians, Nazi fanta-
sies and myths present present possibilities for expressing a dissatisfaction
with cultural life in Europe today. What I have called the myth of Wewels-
burg draws our attention to this longing for a different Europe—white,
clean, and built on tribal and premodern foundations. The subculture I
have here described, in the words of Susan Sontag, lets “Nazi material
enter the vast repertory of popular iconography.”64 To pharaphrase Son-
tag’s essay on Leni Riefenstahl, then “the trick is to filter out the noxious
political ideology [of the neofolk, pagan subculture], leaving only their
‘aesthetic’ merits.”65 The fusion of neofolk subculture, neo-Nazism, and
the extreme Right with pop-rock cultures should give us pause. The neo-
folk movement and its many offshoots spread increasingly widely today
via the Internet, challenging official cultures of memory among an ever
widening group of (often young) people. This might be the most danger-
ous heritage of the “Wewelsburg Effect.”
Notes
1 Karl Hüser, Wewelsburg 1933–45: Kultstätte des SS-Ordens (Paderborn: Münster
Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe, 1987); Jan-Eril Schulte, ed., Die SS, Him-
mler und die Wewelsburg (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2009).
2 Hüser, Wewelsburg, 3.
3 Hüser, Wewelsburg, 3–4.
4 Heinz Höhne, The Order of the Death’s Head: The Story of Hitler’s SS (Der
Orden unter dem Totenkopf: Die Geschichte der SS 3rd ed. (New York: Pan,
1969), 172–74; Walter Schellenberg, The Schellenberg Memoirs (London: Andre
Deutsch, 1956), 32–33; Jan-Erik Schulte, “Die SS in Wewelsburg: Weltan-
schauliche Hybris—terroristische Praxis: Auf dem Weg zu einer Gesamtdarstel-
lung,” in Gedenkstättenarbeit und Erinnerungskultur in Ostwestfalen-Lippe:
Ein abschließender Projektbericht für die Planungswerkstatt Erinnerungskultur:
Geschichte in Ostwestfalen-Lippe 1933–1945, ed. Juliane Kerzel (Büren: Planung-
swerkstatt Erinnerrungskultur, 2002), 208–20.
5 Schulte, “Die SS in Wewelsburg,” 209–10.
6 Schulte, “Die SS in Wewelsburg,” 209–10; Daniela Siepe, “Die Rolle der
Wewelsburg in der phantastischen Literatur, in Esoterik und Rechtsextremismus
nach 1945,” in Schulte, Die SS, 488–510; Kerzel, Gedenkstättenarbeit, 276–90.
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THE WEWELSBURG EFFECT 283
7 Ian Buruma, The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan (Lon-
don: Atlantic, 2009), 188–89.
8 Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the
Politics of Identity (New York: New York University Press, 2003); Eric Kurlander,
“Hitler’s Monsters: The Occult Roots of Nazism and the Emergence of the Nazi
‘Supernatural Imaginary,’” German History 30 (2012): 528–49. From a nonac-
ademic standpoint, Trevor Ravenscroft, The Spear of Destiny: The Occult Power
behind the Spear which Pierced the Side of Christ (New Beach: Sphere, 1973).
9 Corinna Treitel, A Science for the Soul: Occultism and the Genesis of the German
Modern (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004).
10 Goodrick-Clarke, Black Sun, chap. 6; Kurlander, “Hitler’s Monsters”; Siepe,
“Die Rolle der Wewelsburg,” 492; Francis King, Satan and Swastika: The Occult
and the Nazi Party (London: HarperCollins, 1976); Bill Yenne, Hitler’s Master of
the Dark Arts: Himmler’s Black Knights and the Occult Origins of the SS (Minne-
apolis, MN: Zenith, 2010); Christopher Hale, Himmler’s Crusade: The True Story
of the Nazi Expedition to Tibet (London: Wiley, 2004).
11 Michael Saler, As If: Modern Enchantment and the Literary Prehistory of Virtual
Reality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 1–11.
12 Ian Buruma, Wages of Guilt, 21.
13 Eva Kingsepp, “Hitler as Our Devil?” in Monsters in the Mirror: Representa-
tions of Nazism in Post-War Popular Culture, ed. Maartje Abbenhuis-Ash and Sara
Buttsworth (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2010) 30; Daniel H. Magilow et al.,
eds., Nazisploitation: The Nazi Image in Low-Brow Cinema and Culture (Lon-
don: Bloomsbury, 2012); Gavriel Rosenfeld, The World Hitler Never Made: Alter-
nate History and the Memory of Nazism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2005) is a bold example of the use of Nazism in popular literature.
14 “According to trade magazine The Bookseller, there were no fewer than 850
new titles about the Third Reich published in the United Kingdom in 2010 (up
from 380 in 2000—that’s more than double in ten years).” “Nazi Gold: Pub-
lishing the Third Reich,” accessed May 28, 2015, http://www.bbc.co.uk/
programmes/b00zf4hz.
15 Quoted by Martin Amis, “The Supreme Scourge of this Country’s Topmost
Scum and Lowest Dregs Takes on the Nazis,” Independent, June 14, 2013. Later
we will see that it is not only Germans who deal with these devils.
16 Susan Sontag, “Fascinating Fascism,” in Under the Sign of Saturn (New
York: Picador, 1980), 73–108; Saul Friedlander, Reflections of Nazism: An Essay
on Kitsch and Death (New York: Harper and Row, 1984). I paraphrase Gilad
Atzmon, “There Is No Business like Shoa Business,” http://www.gilad.co.uk/
writings/there-is-no-business-like-shoah-business-by-gilad-atzmon.html. For
further discussion of this issue, see Norman Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry:
Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (New York Verso, 2000); Alvin
H. Rosenfeld, The End of the Holocaust (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
2011).
17 The Guardian reported in 2013 that a boy was sent home from a Staffordshire
school after his Hitler costume was deemed inappropriate for a Second World War
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284 ODED HEILBRONNER
fancy-dress day. “The Boy Dressed as Hitler: Are Nazi Costumes ever Accept-
able?,” accessed May 28, 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/
shortcuts/2013/oct/04/boy-dressed-hitler-nazi-costumes. See also the col-
lection of articles in Daniel H. Magilow, Kristin T. Vander Lugt, and Elizabeth
Bridges, eds., Nazisploitation! The Nazi Image in Low-Brow Cinema and Culture
(New York: Continuum, 2012); Abbenhuis-Ash, Monsters in the Mirror. See also
Marcus Stiglegger, Nazi-Chic und Nazi-Trash: Faschistische Ästhetik in der pop-
ulären Kultur (Berlin: Berg, 2011). For fascination with the Eastern Front and
the German army activity there in popular culture, see the video game Barbarossa.
“Four Reasons This One Kickstarter Proves Humanity Is Doomed,” accessed
May 28, 2015, http://www.cracked.com/quick-fixes/4-reasons-this-one-
kickstarter-proves-humanity-doomed/, and the book by Ronald Smelser and
Edward Davies, The Myth of the Eastern Front: The Nazi-Soviet War in American
Popular Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
18 There are different definitions of satanism. Most popular is “adversary of main-
stream values.” See Chris Mathews, Modern Satanism: Anatomy of a Radical Sub-
culture (London: Praeger, 2009), 97. However, satanism is used today in both a
narrow and a broad sense. Here I use the narrow sense in which satanism “desig-
nates the cult which defiles or travesties Chiristian rites.” Wade Baskin, Dictionary
of Satanism (New York: Philosophical Library, 1972), 289. For the unique com-
bination of irrationalism and rationalism in Nazism, see Christian Ingrao, Believe
and Destroy: Intellectuals in the SS War Machine (Oxford: Polity, 2001).
19 Alon Confino, A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to
Genocide (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014); Noah Benninga, Mate-
riality at the Zero Degree: The Material Culture of Prisoners in Auschwitz (PhD
thesis, Hebrew University, 2014).
20 David Katz, The Occult Tradition: From the Renaissance to the Present Day
(London: J. Cope, 2005), 176–77.
21 Many examples can be found in Magilow, Nazisploitation! 199–294. An exam-
ple from Israel is an article by Boaz Neumann, “Between the Brown and the
Green: Nazism, Holocaust, Ecology,” Theory and Criticism (Hebrew) 40 (Sum-
mer 2012): 137–58.
22 Schellenberg, Schellenberg Memoirs, 32–33.
23 Höhne, Order of the Death’s Head, 172–73.
24 Höhne, Order of the Death’s Head, 173; Peter Longerich, Himmler (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2012), 294–96.
25 Ravenscroft, Spear of Destiny; Goodrick-Clark, Black Sun, chp.6.
26 Siepe, “Die Rolle der Wewelsburg,” 493–94.
27 Goodrick-Clarke, Black Sun, 214–15.
28 Michael Aquino, The Church of Satan, 6th ed. (New York: CreateSpace, 2009,
http://www.xeper.org/maquino.
29 Mathews, Modern Satanism, 86–87.
30 The event described here is taken from Siepe, “Die Rolle,” 500. Siepe based
her account on a letter she received from Aquino.
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THE WEWELSBURG EFFECT 285
31 Siepe, “Die Rolle,” 500.
32 Goodrick-Clarke, Black Sun, 228–31; Siepe, “Die Rolle.”
33 Goodrick-Clarke, Black Sun, 14–17, 108–9; Siepe, “Die Rolle.”
34 See n. 10 and Goodrick-Clarke, Black Sun, 189–210.
35 Goodrick-Clarke, Black Sun, 150.
36 Jonathan Sheehan, “Paganism,” in The Classical Tradition, ed. Anthony Graf-
ton et al. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 675–79.
37 I don’t mean to say that the neofolk scene is marked chiefly by racism, dark
visions, and death. Many bands declare a firm and clear attitude against racism.
A bold example is the Slovenian postindustrial band Laibach. Other examples
include The Moon and the Nightspirit, Cult of Youth or Flëur. They all adopt a
certain eurocentrism and medievalism but do not translate their music and lyrics
directly into racist politics, dark visions, and death.
38 Looking for Europe, The Neofolk Compendium, Prophecy Productions CD,
ASIN: 393687803X 2005, 40. On the cover of the CD one can discern the iconic
German Iron Cross. On the CD itself there is the sign of the swastika.
39 Emily Turner-Graham, “‘Keep Feeling Fasci/nation’: Neofolk and the Search
for ‘Europe,’” in Abbenhuis-Ash, Monsters in the Mirror, 204.
40 Paul Rolland, Interviews 1980–2010, booklet attached to his CD In Memo-
rium, 49; Boyd Rice on Nazis from “Pearls Before Swine,” http://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=6zkunTr6Yog.
41 Turner-Graham, “Keep Feeling Fasci/nation,” 215.
42 Ostara’s leader Richard Leviathan began his musical career working with Doug-
las Pearce of Death in June in a band called Strength through Joy, after the state-
sponsored leisure agency in the Third Reich.
43 Anton Shekhovtsov, “Apoliteic Music: Neofolk, Martial Industrial and ‘Meta-
political Fascism,’” Patterns of Prejudice 43, no. 5 (2009):. 431–57.
44 Mark Sedgwick, Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intel-
lectual History of the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006),
chap. 3. In the 1930s Evola tried to join the SS and visited Wewelsburg. Many
neofolk bands reference Evola’s ideas and works, including, among others, Death
in June, Above the Ruins, Sol Invictus, and Current 93. As the neofolk scene
develops, many bands reference and provide links to a range of fascist-tradition-
alist-right-wing thinkers. See Peter Webb, “Statement on Neo-Folk and Post-
Industrial Music,” accessed on May 28, 2015, http://www.whomakesthenazis.
com/2010/10/peter-webb-statement-on-neo-folk-and.html.
45 Looking for Europe, 43.
46 Stephane Francois, “The Euro-Pagan Scene: Between Paganism and Radical
Right,” Journal for the Studies of Radicalism 1 (2007): 47.
47 “Every war has its consequences” is a quote from Douglas Pearce (of Death in
June), in the 2006 documentary film Behind the Mask. DiJ, “Sons of Europe,” on
Burial (London: Leprosy Discs, 1984).
48 DiJ,“Runes and Men,” on Brown Book (London: New European Recordings,
1987).
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286 ODED HEILBRONNER
49 See Sedgwick, Against the Modern World.
50 On the album Brown Book, NER, 1987, the “Horst-Wessel-Lied” was renamed
“Brown Book.” Francois, “Euro-Pagan,” 40.
51 The following is based on several books and websites. Robert, “Misery and
Purity: A History and Personal Interpretation of DiJ” (New York: Jara Press,
1995); “My Time as a DiJ Fan,” http://www.whomakesthenazis.com/2010/11/
what-ends-when-symbols-shatter-my-time.html; “Death in June: A Nazi Band?”
http://libcom.org/library/death-in-june-a-nazi-band; the official DiJ website,
http://www.deathinjune.net/index2.htm.
52 The description was quoted in James Cavanaugh, “Death in June Coming
to Electrowerkz,” accessed on May 28, 2015, http://www.whomakesthenazis.
com/2012/11/james-cavanagh-death-in-june-coming-to.html.
53 Emily Turner-Graham, “Trauermarsch: German History as Remembered by
the Extreme Right,” Reconstruction, Studies in Contemporary Culture 10, no. 4
(2010), accessed May 28, 2015, http://reconstruction.eserver.org/Issues/104/
Turner-Graham_01.shtml.
54 Shekhovtsov, “Apoliteic Music,” 16.
55 Francois, “The Euro-Pagan Scene,” 40.
56 Francois, “Euro-Pagan Scene,” 42–45. François finds “a profound doctrinal
unity” among all neo-pagans. This consists of “the praise of radical differential-
ism,” “using communitarianism as a solution to multiculturalism,” and “criticism
of western thought, [as] individualist and standardizing.” François notes a num-
ber of “fascinations” among the euro-pagan section of neo-paganism, notably fas-
cinations with “bravery and virility,” “the warrior,” “the North,” and “the dark
pages of European history.”
57 DiJ, “Blood Victory,” The World That Summer, NER, 1986. Francois, “Euro-
Pagan Scene,” 46.
58 “What Ends When Symbols Shatter? My Time as a Death in June Fan,” http://
www.whomakesthenazis.com/2010/11/what-ends-when-symbols-shatter-
my-time.html.
59 “More Death in June,” accessed May 28, 2015, http://satanicmusicforgood
children.blogspot.co.il/2012/05/more-death-in-june.html.
60 Francois, “Euro-Pagan Scene,” 46.
61 Ernst Jünger, “Retreat into the Forest,” Confluence 3, no. 2 (1954): 127–42;
Shekhovtsov, “Apoliteic Music,” 17.
62 Death in June, “Death of the West” on Burial (London: Leprosy Discs, 1984).
63 See n. 10.
64 Sontag, “Fascinating Fascism,” 79.
65 Sontag, “Fascinating Fascism,” 83.
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