Recently I was made aware of claim made by Richard Steigmann-Gall in his widely-lauded 2003 book ‘The Holy Reich’ which was to the effect that Mathilde Ludendorff – aka Mathilde von Kemnitz and her birth name Mathilde Spiess – believed that the ‘Dalai Lama controlled the jews’.
Now while Mathilde Ludendorff is known for her unorthodox opinions this seemed a little bit too nuts for me, so I tracked the claim back to its origin and perhaps unsurprisingly it highlights that Steigmann-Gall made an extremely lazy error of fact in ‘The Holy Reich’ in making this claim.
So, let’s track it back, shall we?
Steigmann-Gall writes:
‘Like her husband, she believed that, behind the international powers of Marxism, Catholicism, capitalism and Freemasonry, the Jews were at work. But even the Jews were tools of another fore – namely the Dalai Lama, who sought to destroy Germany from faraway Tibet. This fantasy was too much even for Alfred Rosenberg, who later wrote that Kemnitz “made world history into an affair of mere secret conspiracies.”’ (1)
The reference to the first two sentences given by Steigmann-Gall is Peter Viereck’s 1941 ‘Metapolitics: From the Romantics to Hitler’. (2) Steigmann-Gall – to be frank – should have known better and to check Viereck’s claim because it was made in 1941 in a work of – what was essentially – anti-Nazi propaganda in the United States.
Steigmann-Gall rather poorly doesn’t give us a specific page number in Viereck’s book for the quote, but since the Dalai Lama only appears once and in relation to Mathilde Ludendorff it can only be referring to the following claim from Viereck:
‘He [Erich Ludendorff] was converted by his bluestocking wife Mathilde, who wrote Redemption from Jesus Christ. Most Nazis consider themselves sufficiently subtle when they “discover” that all foes are tools of Judaism. Mathilde goes them one better in subtlety: even the Jews are tools! At a Nazi party congress she unmasked the subtlest plot in history, shrieking that Jews, capitalists, Reds, democrats and Freemasons were all puppets of the insidious Dalai Lama, who pulled their strings from his fiendish laboratory in Tibet, where he plotted to persecute Germany.’ (3)
Now obviously Steigmann-Gall should have known better since Viereck is specific about where the claims come despite citing comments on p. 8 of the ‘New York Times’ of 16th June 1940 (4) which don’t appear on that page and which are actually Section T, p. 8 the same issue and are just non-specific reportage referring by proxy to Mathilde Ludendorff’s 1931 book ‘Erlösung von Jesu Christo’ in the same vein he did.
The real source then – as also cited by Viereck – (5) is allegedly Mathilde Ludendorff’s 1931 book ‘Erlösung von Jesu Christo’ which Viereck – like Steigmann-Gall – cites en toto but not specifically for such a specific claim suggesting that Viereck didn’t check the reference – nor read Mathilde Ludendorff’s ‘Erlösung von Jesu Christo’ - himself and was just lazily regurgitating the claim from the ‘New York Times’ article.
Now Mathilde Ludendorff does mention the Dalai Lama in ‘Erlösung von Jesu Christo’ and happily only once – already suggesting that Steigmann-Gall and Viereck’s argument is not based on actual research since if this claim was a cornerstone of her thesis as they imply it should be repeatedly mentioned – specifically on p. 306 where she writes:
‘Jahrhundertelanges, ungeheures Blutvergießen in Mordkämpfen der Chriſten gegen die Andersgläubigen und faſt immerwährende Kriegshetze durch die Geheimorganifationen der Juden unter den gleichgläubigen Chriften waren notwendig, um die Völker ſo zu ſchwächen, daß dieſe Wirtſchaftmoral ſich allgemein verwirklichen konnte und tatſächlich die Gewaltherrſchaft des Wucher⸗ kapitals, des Weltleihkapitals, über den Chriſtenvölkern errichtet iſt. Viel ver⸗ half zu dieſem Ziel die in Rom errichtete Prieſterkirche, die ganz der Prieſter⸗ herrſchaft des Mithrakultes nachgeahmt war und dann mehr und mehr der indiſchen Prieſterherrſchaft unter dem Dalai Lama, dem Stellvertreter Gottes auf Erden, nachgebildet wurde. Die Abſicht des Juden Paulus und der jüdiſchen Evangeliſten war dies nicht und durfte es nicht ſein.Ich erinnere an das Verbot Jeſu, daß irgend jemand ſich Vater nenne und irgendeiner eine Gewaltherrſchaft unter den Gläubigen errichten ſollte. Der Jude kann nur eine jüdiſch⸗orthodoxe Prieſterſchaft als berechtigt anerkennen, niemals eine der Gojim! Als ſie aber eingerichtet war, lernten die Juden dieſe römiſche Prieſter⸗ herrſchaft ſchätzen als Anlaß zu unzählig vielem Blutvergießen an Romgegnern unter den nichtjüdiſchen Völkern und als gewaltiges Mittel zur Beſeitigung des Raſſe⸗ und Volksbewußtſeins, der Sippenanhänglichkeit, kurz all der Kräfte, die in einem Volke die Gewaltherrſchaft des Wucherkapitals leicht abſchütteln könnten. Heute ringen Rom und Juda um die reifen Früchte der Lehre Jeſu, um die Weltherrſchaft über kollektivierte Sklaven.’ (6)
This translated into English states (my translation):
‘Centuries of immense bloodshed in the murderous wars of Christians against those of other faiths, and almost constant warmongering by the secret Jewish organizations among the Christians of the same faith, were necessary to weaken the nations so that this economic morality could be generally realized and the tyranny of usury capital, of world loan capital, was actually established over the Christian peoples. The priestly church established in Rome, which was entirely modelled on the priestly rule of the Mithraic cult and then increasingly modelled on the Indian priestly rule under the Dalai Lama, God's representative on earth, greatly contributed to this goal. This was not, and should not have been, the intention of the Jew Paul and the Jewish evangelists. I recall Jesus' prohibition that anyone should call himself father and that anyone should establish a tyranny among the faithful. The Jew can only recognize a Jewish Orthodox priesthood as legitimate, never one of the Goyim! But once it was established, the Jews learned to value this Roman priesthood as the cause of countless bloodshed against Rome's opponents among the non-Jewish peoples and as a powerful means of eliminating racial and national consciousness, clan loyalty, in short, all the forces that could easily shake off the tyranny of usurious capital in a people. Today Rome and Judah are wrestling for the ripe fruits of Jesus’ teachings, for world domination over collectivized slaves.’
Thus we can see that both the ‘New York Times’ and Viereck’s – as well as Steigmann-Gall by association due to not bothering to verify their allegations – claim about what Ludendorff is arguing here is completely and utter wrong as well as simply dishonest, because Ludendorff is not stating that the jews are controlled by the Dalai Lama at all but rather that the Roman Catholic Church modelled its religious system on Mithraism and then on Buddhism – both of which are academic arguments that have been made from time to time – as represented by the Dalai Lama!
Going back to the passage from Steigmann-Gall’s ‘The Holy Reich’; the third and last sentence in the quoted excerpt is used by Steigmann-Gall to ‘confirm’ this claim by citing that Alfred Rosenberg rejected Ludendorff’s views because of such views.
To remind ourselves:
‘This fantasy was too much even for Alfred Rosenberg, who later wrote that Kemnitz “made world history into an affair of mere secret conspiracies.”’ (7)
The cited source for his Robert Cecil’s 1972 book ‘The Myth of the Master Race: Alfred Rosenberg and Nazi Ideology’ specifically p. 36. (8)
What Cecil actually says is:
‘Mathilda Kemnitz had written a work in three parts on the Folk Soul of Germany, in which, as Rosenberg later wrote, she ‘made world history into an affair of mere secret conspiracies.’’ (9)
This Cecil quotes from p. 64 of Alfred Rosenberg’s 1946 memoir ‘Großdeutschland: Traum und Tragödie’, which predictably isn’t an entirely honest quotation of what Rosenberg actually said and further it is post-war writing when Rosenberg was rejecting the more radical elements within National Socialism of which Mathilde Ludendorff was a spokesman for.
Rosenberg actually writes:
‘Ludendorff holte nun nach, was er im Leben bisher versäumt hatte: Er studierte politische und diplomatische Geschichte. Ihm wurden plötzlich Dinge problematisch, die früher klar und eindeutig erschienen waren. Und wie es manchmal Menschen mit dieser großen Leistungsvergangenheit ergeht: Sie suchen nicht Aufklärung bei vorsichtiger Denkenden, sondern geraten in überwiegend sektiererische Umgebung. Hier war es Frau Dr. von Kemnitz, die den Feldherrn in Privatvorträgen anhimmelte, Eingang fand und aus der Weltgeschichte nur eine Sache geheimer Verschwörungen machte. Statt der notwendigen Ergänzung der Urteile aus rein amtlichen Quellen wurden hier Extreme vertreten, und Ludendorff hat später manches Bedauerliche mit seinem großen Soldatennamen gedeckt. Darüber später.’ (10)
This translated into English states (my translation):
‘Ludendorff now made up for what he had previously missed in life: He studied political and diplomatic history. Things that had previously seemed clear and unambiguous suddenly became problematic for him. And as sometimes happens to people with such a great history of achievement: They don't seek enlightenment from cautious thinkers but instead find themselves in a predominantly sectarian environment. Here, it was Dr. von Kemnitz, who idolized the general in private lectures, gained acceptance, and turned world history into a mere matter of secret conspiracies. Instead of the necessary supplementation of judgments from purely official sources, extremes were advocated, and Ludendorff later covered up many regrettable events with his great military name. More on that later.’
Rosenberg does mention Mathilde Ludendorff again (11), but he does not continue his criticism, rather in this first of the only two mentions of her Rosenberg is primarily attacking Ludendorff rather non-specifically as turning ‘world history into a mere matter of secret conspiracies’ but although Cecil’s claim that this references Ludendorff’s three volume book ‘The Origin and Nature of the Soul’ (1923-1927) is probably somewhat true.
The fact remains that what Rosenberg is upset about here is that Ludendorff was an intellectual rival and although not close to Hitler unlike Rosenberg till the 1940s; she represented significant intellectual competition (and opposition) to Rosenberg and also rejected Rosenberg’s advocacy and acceptance of a ‘purified Christianity’ – Rosenberg’s primary opposition was to specifically to Roman Catholicism not Christianity en toto – in favour of a new religious belief system that ‘was purely from the German folk’ that she called Gotterkenntnis (‘God Knowledge’) and created in the mid-to-late 1920s and was the official belief of Erich Ludendorf’s 100,000 strong ‘Tannenbergbund’ organization before the later was disbanded in September 1933 by the Third Reich (hence why Mathilde Ludendorff was so significant an intellectual rival to Rosenberg).
The point here is that Cecil is citing Rosenberg’s commentary on Ludendorff inaccurately – as we can see in his suggestion that he claimed she was an ‘extremist’ in effect – in that he is using Rosenberg to dismiss Ludendorff as a ‘crank’ in effect but in truth Cecil isn’t putting Rosenberg’s comments in the context that they were made in 1946 after the war was over and are simply just Rosenberg attacking an intellectual rival in vague albeit nasty terms; they aren’t evidence that Ludendorff actually believed any such thing but rather the partisan comments of an intellectual rival that are taken as gospel because it serves the needs – as well as confirms the biases - of both Cecil and Steigmann-Gall.
Thus, we can see that there is need to check references made even in scholarly works since they aren’t always honest as we can see from Steigmann-Gall’s repetition of two claims that are not based on careful study and one is simply a lie while the other is just an odd hand comment that his source explicitly states doesn’t reference the work he is talking about!
Be careful out there!
References
(1) Richard Steigmann-Gall, 2003, ‘The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945’, 1st Edition, Cambridge University Press: New York, p. 88
(2) Ibid, p. 88, n. 6
(3) Peter Viereck, 1941, ‘Metapolitics: From the Romantics to Hitler’, 1st Edition, Alfred A. Knopf: New York, p. 297
(4) Ibid, p. 297, n. 29
(5) Ibid.
(6) Mathilde Ludendorff, 1931, ‘Erlösung von Jesu Christo’, 1st Edition, Ludendorffs Volkswarte Verlag: Munich, p. 309
(7) Steigmann-Gall, Op. Cit., p. 88
(8) Ibid., p. 88, n. 7
(9) Robert Cecil, 1972, ‘The Myth of the Master Race: Alfred Rosenberg and Nazi Ideology’, 1st Edition, Batsford: London, p. 36
(10) Alfred Rosenberg, 1964, [1946], ‘Großdeutschland: Traum und Tragödie’, 1st Edition, Selbstverlag Härtle: Munich, p. 64
(11) Ibid., p. 221