Alfred Rosenberg

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Rosenberg, Alfred (1893–1946),Estonian-born member of the Nazi Party whose anti-Semitism, and anti-Christian theories, made him one of the principal contributors to Nazi ideology.

Rosenberg obtained an architectural diploma in Moscow in March 1918, and witnessed the revolution there. In November 1918 he went to Germany where he wrote anti-Semitic articles, met Hitler, joined the Nazi Party, became the editor of its newspaper (Völkischer Beobachter), then its managing editor, and, as a Russian speaker, was the Nazis' expert on east European matters.

At first his influence over Hitler was all-pervading and he led the party when Hitler was imprisoned after the Munich putsch. But opponents soon forced him to resign and Hitler—who found Rosenberg's principal opus, Myth of the Twentieth Century, incomprehensible when it was published in 1930—later froze him out of his inner circle.

However, Rosenberg's early influence on Nazi ideology ensured his survival and a succession of party posts. In 1927 he became head of the new National Socialist Society for Culture and Learning (Combat League for German Culture from 1929); in 1933, after Hitler came to power, he formed the party's foreign policy office; and in 1934 he was made responsible, in his own words, for the party's ‘intellectual and ideological education and training’. His foreign policy office was soon eclipsed by Ribbentrop—though he did ensure Hitler's limited backing for Quisling (see also Norway, 3)—and in striving to achieve a cultural policy he again lost out to more determined rivals such as Ley. Once Germany was at war he also became the titular head of an organization which bore his name to purloin paintings, books, furniture, and objets d'art from occupied territories (see loot).

Though Hitler remained distant, in July 1941 he appointed Rosenberg Reich Minister of Eastern Occupied Territories (Ukraine and Ostland). Rosenberg abjured genocide and expulsion, preferring to co-opt the territories to fight Stalin, but he proved quite unequal to the machinations of such power-hungry rivals as Goebbels, Himmler, and Göring, and in October 1944 he intimated in a letter to Hitler, which was never answered, that he wanted to resign. He was sentenced to death at the Nuremberg trials and executed.

Bibliography

Cecil, R. , The Myth of the Master Race: Alfred Rosenberg and Nazi Ideology (London, 1972).

Alfred Rosenberg , 1893–1946, German Nazi leader. He was born in Reval (now Tallinn, Estonia), and studied architecture in Riga, and later in Moscow. Returning to Reval, he became active as a political ideologist until he fled (1919) to Germany to escape arrest for counterrevolutionary speeches. There he joined the National Socialist party and became the editor of the party organ, Völkischer Beobachter. The author of an anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, and neopagan book, Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts [the myth of the 20th cent.] (1930), he supplied Adolf Hitler with the spurious philosophical and scientific basis for his racist doctrine (see National Socialism ). Rosenberg was made (1933) foreign affairs secretary of the party and distinguished himself as the foremost anti-Bolshevik among its leaders. In 1941 he was appointed minister for the occupied Eastern territories. Convicted as a war criminal at the Nuremberg trials, he was executed.

Bibliography: See his memoirs (tr. 1949) and his Selected Writings, ed. by R. Pois (1970); R. Cecil, The Myth of the Master Race: Alfred Rosenberg and Nazi Ideology (1972).

Rosenberg, Alfred (b. 12 Jan. 1893, d. 16 Oct. 1946). Chief Nazi ideologist A refugee of German descent from Estonia, he joined the Nazi Party in 1919 and became editor of the party newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter in 1923. In his attempt to systematize a Nazi ideology, he published Der Mythos des 20. Jahrhunderts (The Myth of the Twentieth Century, 1930). In it he propsed, among other things, the creation of a new religion based on the superiority of the German race. He led the fight against the Churches, and contributed towards the cultural policies of the Nazis. In 1934 he was officially put in charge of supervising the ideological development of the Nazi Party, and from 1941 to 1945 he was Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, though his actual influence on developments in these areas was relatively modest. At the Nuremberg Trials he was found guilty and executed.

Rosenberg, Alfred (1893–1946) German Nazi leader, b. Estonia. He edited the newspaper of the National Socialist Party. Rosenberg's book The Myth of the 20th Century (1930) formed the basis of the anti-Semitism of National Socialism. In 1941, he became minister for the occupied e regions. Rosenberg was convicted of war crimes at the Nuremberg Trials and executed.