Nazi-Fascism and Masonry, pt. 1: Old Prussians and the Third Reich

And you thought the Third Reich was blanket-opposed to Freemasonry? Ahahahahahahahahahahaha- no.

Jun 14, 2024

A common—yet irritating—tendency to view political tensions as outgrowths of monolithic dynamics is unfortunately all the norm in mainstream discourse. The “Nazi persecution of Freemasonry” canard is no stranger, and rests on the naive presumption that Hitler and his brownshirted minions were absolutely opposed to all of “The Craft” for its liberal tolerance, cosmopolitanism, and of course, supposed involvement in a “Jewish conspiracy.” Ignored in this picture is the massive elephant in the room: the “Old Prussian” faction of German Masonry.

Masonic intrafeud: reactionism vs. liberalism

Much as any other broad religiously-connotated movement, Masonry was never monolithically united amongst itself. In the case example of Germany (during the decades preceding Nazi “repression”), there were (about) 9 Grand Lodges, two-thirds of which were Humanitarian Grand Lodges aligned with liberal-democratic, cosmopolitan, philosemitic tolerance, while the remaining one-third were the “more historically prestigious” and rabidly racist, reactionary “Old Prussian Lodges.”1 At face value it appears that the Old Prussian faction constituted only a third of Masonry, though at the rank-and-file level they disproportionately represented 70 percent of German Masons. As succinctly noted:2

The Old Prussians were also avowedly anti-Semitic, and regarded the Humanitarian Lodges as dangerous centres of ‘pacifist and cosmopolitan’ thinking. A great many Freemasons in Old Prussian Lodges sympathised with the volkisch extreme Right of the political spectrum where the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy myth found its natural home.
…
In 1924, an Old Prussian Lodge in Regensburg adopted the Nazi swastika as its badge. From 1926—still long before Hitler came to power—two of the three Old Prussian Grand Lodges began to consider reforming their rituals, removing suspiciously Jewish Old Testament references and substituting robustly ‘Aryan’ symbols sourced from Teutonic folklore. When the Old Prussian Grand Lodges heard accusations that they were a tool of the Jews, they proudly indicated that they did not have a single Jewish member—thereby pointing the finger at their Brothers in the more tolerant Humanitarian Lodges.

The disingenuous irony of the “Judeo-Masonic” canard (as was propagated repeatedly by the Nazis) in part is observed in the fact that Jewish participation in Masonry already dwindled years previous by the time the NSDAP controlled Germany—the reactionist “out-antisemitizing” game utilized by the Old Prussians pressured the timid Humanitarians into acquiescing, in the midst of a fascist-nationalistic antiliberal cauldron, to the volkisch extremists and gradually shift to the extreme “right.” The percentage of Jews in Humanitarian Masonry dwindled by 1930 (a full three years before Hitler seized power) from 12-13% to 4%.3 “Most” of the Old Prussian base, along with “even some members” of the liberal Humanitarians, found no irreconcilability between Nazi and Masonic ideologies, and Dietrich Bischoff, president of the German Freemason Association, suggested prior to Nazi ascension of power the establishment of a Third Reich grounded in Masonic dogma.4 As for further details about Nazism and Old Prussian Masonry, another author writes:5

After Hitler came to power in January 1933, his top deputy, Hermann Goering, informed the grand master of the Grand Lodge of Germany there was ‘no place for Freemasonry’ in Nazi Germany. At that time, there were nine principle German Grand Lodges, with a membership of almost 80,000. The largest were the Grand Lodge of the Three Globes, National Grand Lodge of All German Freemasons, and the Grand Lodge Royal York of Friendship. Their leaders were told that the Nazi government did not intend to prohibit the activities of the lodge, but that the Masonic order must discontinue the use of the words ‘Freemason’ and ‘lodge,’ break all international relations, require that its members be of German descent, remove the requirement of secrecy, and discard all parts of the ritual that are of Old Testament origin. Thereafter, the Association of German Freemasons called itself the National Christian Order of Frederick the Great.

And even while various sources may portray the Old Prussian Lodges as “shut down” by the Nazi regime, they weren’t. They merely were rebranded in name6 as part of the Nazi-imposed condition to continue their otherwise-normal operations,7 and apparently reverted quickly back to their former title designation(s) in the post-WWII years.8 The Bavarian Order was allowed to continue;9 Old Prussian Masons, whether open or clandestine, comprised Nazi ranks, and as one independent researcher sums it up, “it is not known how many Masons secretly joined the Nazi cause.”10

Was Hitler himself a Mason?

The “Freemasons Community” website stringently insists he was not:11

It is clear that Hitler was not a Freemason. In fact, he was a significant threat to Freemasonry at the time.
There is no evidence that the Freemasons played any direct role in Hitler’s rise to power. Hitler’s rise was due to numerous factors, including the economic and social conditions in Germany at the time, as well as his own political skill.

Lelliĭ P. Zamoĭskiĭ would’ve begged to differ—his published documentation Behind the Facade of the Masonic Temple (1989) carefully notes towards the last segment:12

The Nazis’ relationship with Masonry was quite involved. There is information that way back in 1919 Hitler was initiated into Masonry by Reverend Bernhard Stempfle, who subsequently style edited Mein Kampf.
“…some of the German Freemasons strongly supported Hitler at the time when the German Workers’ Party was merely a handful of ‘insane followers of even more insane leaders.’ Hitler’s party was backed by [the] Thule [Society], Germany’s strongest secret organization rooted in the Germanenorden, which had Masons in its branches all over the country.”

‘Crafty’ origins: Masonic Thulists

If you read pt. ii of my mini-series explaining the “Jewish”-supremacist origin of Nazism, the name Rudolf von Sebottendorf ought to ring a bell. The details are considerably jargon-filled and heavy for this discussion, though all you primarily need to know for now is that Sebottendorf, as a lead founder of the proto-Nazi Thule Society, favored ancient esoteric concepts of Freemasonry while opposing “modernist corruptions” (my phrasing).13 Sebottendorf:14

…contended that modern Freemasonry had abandoned its mystical values by adopting the Scottish Rite's humanistic reforms in 1717. … [He] tried to model the Thule Society on his conception of Eastern Freemasonry.

In essence, Sebottendorf’s views of Masonry were about the exact same as that of the subsequent Nazi Party:15

…he thought that they had lost the original Aryan wisdom and that they were run by the Jews. … The structure of the Thule Society, like that of many other cults, was derived from Masonry, so there may also have been an element of envy in Nazi hatred of the Masons.

The so-called ‘Nazi persecution of Freemasonry’

Wikipedia’s slanted propaganda page on “Anti-Masonry” claims, as of typing:16

The number of Freemasons from Nazi occupied countries who were killed is not accurately known, but it is estimated that between 80,000 and 200,000 Freemasons were murdered under the Nazi regime.

Zamoĭskiĭ once again would beg to differ:17

The scope of repression is illustrated by official figures released by the West German Masons. Between 1933 and 1945, altogether 4,800 out of the 80,000 German Masons—6 percent—were repressed, and the list specifying acts of repression against them is worth reprinting:
1,750 died from natural causes;
62 were killed;
238 were exiled abroad;
133 disappeared without trace;
254 sustained loss of property;
377 lost jobs;
285 were compelled to change occupation;
53 were commited to concentration camps.
The losses and suffering of the Masons are hardly comparable with those of active antifascists (according to the same source, of the Masons only ‘44 persons offered active resistance.’)

Conclusion

Another quality excerpt from the same author to sum it all up:18

“[Hitler] was aware that many of the Masons were his allies. West German historian Neuberger says in his study [‘]Masonry and National Socialism[’] that Hitler ‘never once took a stand of struggle against Masonry… Hitler’s anti-Masonic stand was never so profound as his anti-Semitism was. He viewed the Masons merely as rivals.’
…
Hitler had especially many Masonic allies in the militaristic circles, among the Prussian and other military, who found the Nazis to be their heirs. Both Kaisers, Wilhelm I and Wilhelm II, were the patrons of Prussian Masonry. The Hitler army revered the names of quite a few Masons… … Nazi warships carried their names and the Wehrmacht was brought up in the spirit of reverence for the Prussian military school and its Masonic patrons, Friedrich II and Friedrich III. The former’s portrait never left the wall of Hitler’s office.”

—Lelliĭ P. Zamoĭskiĭ

John Dickie (2020), “The Craft: How the Freemasons Made the Modern World,” pp. 289-91. Internet Archive.

Ibid.

S. Brent Morris, Art DeHoyos, “Freemasonry in Context: History, Ritual, Controversy,” pp. 91-92.

H. Paul Jeffers (2005), “Freemasons: A History and Exploration of the World's Oldest Secret Society,” p. 159.

Nick Toczek (Dec. 3, 2015), “Haters, Baiters and Would-Be Dictators: Anti-Semitism and the UK Far Right,” p. 98.

E. Christopher Reyes, “In His Name: Who Wrote the Gospels?”

Peter F. Kapnistos, “Hitler's Doubles: Fully-Illustrated,” p. 119.

Philip Gardiner (Jun. 15, 2007), “Secret Societies: Revelations about the Freemasons, Templars, Illuminati, Nazis, and the Serpent Cults,” p. 179.

H. George Tavakoli (Jun. 5, 2019), “Hitler was a Freemason,” YouTube.

“Was Hitler A Freemason: Uncovering The Truth Behind The Myth,” Freemasons Community.

Lelliĭ Petrovich Zamoĭskiĭ (1989), “Behind the Facade of the Masonic Temple,” p. 128.