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Comment by DominikR | Hacker News Reader

Funny conspiracy theory but I have to say that following Occam's razor I would have reach the conclusion that it was indeed Goebbels who was behind it all as the presumably correct historical explanation is quite convoluted.

On the other hand for the Goebbels theory to be plausible I only need to evaluate: Did Goebbels have the power to influence this all across Europe? Yes he definitely had the power to do so.

Actually it wouldn't even be that crazy to believe this as the Nazis believed in all kinds of crazy mystical druid magic nonsense. (That Hitler could have sent people to search for the Ark of the Covenant as depicted in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" isn't that far fetched)

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Hitler himself was very intolerant of any of this mysticism business. All these activities and societies were banned in Germany once they came to power. There was a number of people, in SS mainly, who were deeply into mysticism, and that was tolerated because of their status. So Hitler wouldn't have sent people to search for the Arc, but Himmler & co. might. Just another illustration of a common misconception about nazi-fascist regimes: they are regarded as highly organized, “precise“, bureaucracies, when in fact they were run mostly arbitrary and ad hoc, a consequence of the Fuhrer Principle.

Well, I have no reason to doubt you regarding Hitler's personal beliefs, but I wouldn't call it a total misconception.

I live in a German speaking country and the people here who still follow this ideology are frequently into the same insane mysticism. Of that I'm 100% sure because I've seen it quite often.

Oh, there's definitely a phenomenon of widespread taste for the occult in Nazi movements. I was just trying to point out that the bulk efforts of Nazi German state and agenda weren't influenced by that in an “official” way. But people like Himmler were obsessed, and they could get away with it with Hitler because they were otherwise useful to him. Of course, it's hard to say what's official and what's not when it comes to such regimes because of the ad hoc system of rule I mentioned: every figurehead had their own fiefdom so to say, governed mostly arbitrarily by their will, as long as it didn't conflict with Hitler's overall agenda, itself arbitrary and dependent upon whatever he came up with.

You have to explain how 440 was adopted in Britain, though. Hmm, was that what Rudolf Hess was really up to?

The US adopted Nazi rocket designs to send the first person on the moon. There's always been exchange of ideas and it's not even necessary for the receiving side to fully understand the theory. It's often sufficient that some culture is dominant in some area and others will copy blindly.

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