Alfred Ernst Rosenberg (16 October 1946) was a Baltic GermanSources which refer to Rosenberg as a "Baltic German" or equivalent include: Bullock, Alan (1964) Hitler: A Study in Tyranny. New York: Harper p.79 Evans, Richard J. (2003) The Coming of the Third Reich New York: Penguin. p. 178 Fest, Joachim C. (1974) Hitler Translated by Richard and Clara Winston. New York:Vintage. p. 116 Kershaw, Ian (1999) Hitler: 1889–1936: Hubris New York: Norton. p.158
Weber, Thomas (2017) Becoming Hitler: The Making of a Nazi New York: Basic Books. p. 220 Nazi philosopher and convicted war criminal.
Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart, and he held several important posts in the Nazi government. He was the head of the NSDAP Office of Foreign Affairs during the entire rule of Nazi Germany (1933–1945), and led (), an official Nazi body for cultural policy and surveillance, between 1934 and 1945. He also served as the editor of the Nazi Party newspaper . During World War II, Rosenberg was the head of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (1941–1945). He helped direct the genocide against the Slavs. After the war, he was convicted of crimes against peace; planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression; war crimes; and crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg trials in 1946. He was sentenced to death by hanging and executed on 16 October 1946.
The author of a seminal work of Nazi ideology, The Myth of the Twentieth Century (1930), Rosenberg is considered one of the main authors of key Nazi ideological creeds, including its racial theory and its hatred of the Jewish people, the need for , abrogation of the Treaty of Versailles, and opposition to what was considered "degenerate" modern art. He was also known for his hatred and rejection of what he regarded as "negative" Christianity;Evans, Richard J. (2005) The Third Reich in Power New York: Penguin Books. pp. 238–40. however, was an important figure who advocated for a Nazi-aligned Positive Christianity.
Early life
Family Rosenberg was born on 12 January 1893 in Reval (now Tallinn, Estonia), then in the Governorate of Estonia of the Russian Empire. His mother Elfriede (née Siré), who had French and German ancestry, was the daughter of Louise Rosalie (née Fabricius), born near Leal (modern Lihula, Estonia) in 1842, and of the railway official Friedrich August Siré, born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in 1843. Born in the same city in 1868, Elfriede Siré received the Christian sacrament of Confirmation in Reval at 17 in 1885. She married Woldemar Wilhelm Rosenberg, a wealthy merchant from Reval, in the Lutheran Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul (St-Petersburg) in 1886. The young Rosenberg's mother died two months after his birth.
His paternal grandfather, Martin Rosenberg, was a master shoemaker and elder of his craft guild. Born in Riga in 1820, and probably partly of Latvian descent, he had moved to Reval in the 1850s, where he met Julie Elisabeth Stramm, born in Jörden (now Juuru, Estonia) in 1835. The two married in the German St. Nicholas parish of Reval in 1856.
The Hungarian-Jewish journalist Franz Szell, who was apparently residing in Tilsit, Prussia, Germany, spent a year researching in Latvian and Estonian archives before publishing an open letter in 1936, with copies to Hermann Göring, Joseph Goebbels, Foreign Minister Konstantin von Neurath and others, accusing Rosenberg of having "no drop of German blood" flowing in his veins. Szell wrote that among Rosenberg's ancestors were only "Latvians, Jews, Mongols, and French."Staff (March 2008) "Szell, Franz (fl 1936–1937): correspondence regarding Alfred Rosenberg" (catalog entry) Wiener Library Quote: "Franz Szell, an exiled Hungarian journalist apparently resident in Tilsit, Lithuania spent more than a year in the archives in Latvia and Estonia researching Alfred Rosenberg's family history with a view to publishing the open letter, 936/1." As a result of his open letter, Szell was deported by Lithuanian authorities on 15 September 1936.Staff (5 September 1936) "Lithuania Deports Writer Who Called Nazi Chief 'non-aryan Jewish Telegraph Agency His claims were repeated in the 15 September 1937 issue of the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano.Gugenberger, Edouard (2002) Boten der Apokalypse. Visionäre des Dritten Reichs. Vienna. p. 196 These allegations have not been substantiated by historical evidence and appear to have been politically motivated, as Rosenberg was born to a Baltic German father and an Estonian mother and did not have Jewish ancestry.
Education and early career The young Rosenberg graduated from the Petri-Realschule (currently Tallinna Reaalkool) and enrolled in architecture studies at the Riga Polytechnical Institute in the autumn of 1910. In 1915, as the German army was approaching Riga, the entire school evacuated to the Moscow Imperial Higher Technical School (), where he completed his PhD studies in 1917. During his stays at home in Reval, he attended the art studio of the famed painter Ants Laikmaa—though he showed promise, there are no records that he ever exhibited.
During the German occupation of Estonia in 1918, Rosenberg served as a drawing teacher at the Gustav Adolf Gymnasium and Tallinna II Reaalkool (current Tallinn Polytechnic School). He gave his first speech on "Jewish Marxism" on 30 November, at the House of the Blackheads, after the 28 November 1918 outbreak of the Estonian War of Independence.Pekka Erelt Kapo luuras natsijuhi Alfred Rosenbergi järele Eesti Ekspress He emigrated to Germany with the retreating Imperial German army, along with Max Scheubner-Richter, who served as something of a mentor to Rosenberg and to his ideology. Arriving in Munich, he contributed to Dietrich Eckart's publication, the (Ethnic/Nationalist Observer). By this time, he was both an antisemite – influenced by Houston Stewart Chamberlain's book The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, one of the key proto-Nazi books of racial theory – and an anti-Bolshevik. Rosenberg became one of the earliest members of the German Workers' Party – later renamed the National Socialist German Workers' Party, better known as the Nazi Party – joining in January 1919, eight months before Adolf Hitler joined in September. According to some historians, Rosenberg had also been a member of the Thule Society, along with Eckart,Kershaw, Ian (2000) Hitler, 1889–1936: Hubris, W. W. Norton & Company. pp. 138–139. although Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke contends that they were only guests. The became the Nazi party newspaper in December 1920. Eckart was its first editor and after his bout with alcoholism, Rosenberg became its editor in 1923. Rosenberg was a leading member of Aufbau Vereinigung, Reconstruction Organisation, a conspiratorial organisation of White Russian émigrés which had a critical influence on early Nazi policy.
Rosenberg sympathized and identified with Talaat Pasha and the Committee of Union and Progress that carried out the Armenian genocide, also claiming that there was "a deliberately Jewish policy which had always protected the Armenians" and that "during the world war, the Armenians have led the espionage against the Turks, similar to the Jews against Germany".
Pre-war years In November 1923, after the failed Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler, who had been imprisoned for treason, appointed Rosenberg as the leader of the Nazi movement. Hitler remarked privately in later years that his choice of Rosenberg, whom he regarded as weak and lazy, was strategic; Hitler did not want the temporary leader of the Nazis to become too popular or hungry for power, because a person with either of those two qualities might not want to cede the party leadership after Hitler's release. However, at the time of the appointment Hitler had no reason to believe that he would soon be released, and Rosenberg had not appeared weak, so this may have been Hitler reading back into history his dissatisfaction with Rosenberg for the job he did.
On 1 January 1924, Rosenberg founded the Greater German People's Community, a Nazi front organization. Headquartered in Munich, it was largely limited to Bavaria, the birthplace of National Socialism, had no substantial presence outside that State and became a haven for Nazi Party members from that area. Prominent members included Max Amann, Phillip Bouhler, Hermann Esser, Franz Xaver Schwarz and Julius Streicher. Rosenberg, one of the least charismatic of the Nazi leaders and lacking in leadership qualities, was soon pushed aside by Streicher, a far more ruthless and abrasive personality, who was elected Chairman on 9 July 1924 with Esser, also a coarse, bullying sort, as his Deputy Chairman.Michael D. Miller & Andreas Schulz: Gauleiter: The Regional Leaders of the Nazi Party and Their Deputies, 1925–1945, Vol. 3 (Fritz Sauckel – Hans Zimmermann), Fonthill Media, 2021, p. 351, .
Rosenberg was on the rostrum at the refoundation of the NSDAP in February 1925.
In 1929 Rosenberg founded the Militant League for German Culture. He later formed the "Institute for Research on the Jewish Question", the first branch of a projected Advanced School of the NSDAP,Grimsted, Patricia Kennedy (2005). "Roads to Ratibor: Library and archival plunder by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg." Holocaust and Genocide Studies, vol. 19, no. 3. pp. 390–458; here: p. 406."Institut zur Erforschung der Judenfrage (IEJ)" In: Glossary. Jüdisches Museum Berlin (Jewish Museum Berlin). Retrieved 2015-01-18. dedicated to identifying and attacking supposed Jewish influence in German culture and to recording the history of Judaism from a radical nationalist perspective. In 1930, he published his philosophical book of racial theory The Myth of the Twentieth Century () which deals with key issues in the Nazi ideology, such as the "Jewish question". He condemned Islam in the book as well which he described as being against European races and as anti-Christian. Rosenberg intended his book as a sequel to Houston Stewart Chamberlain's above-cited book. Despite selling more than a million copies by 1945, its influence within Nazism remains doubtful. It is often said to have been a book that was officially venerated within Nazism, but one that few had actually read beyond the first chapter or even found comprehensible. According to Albert Speer, Hitler called it "stuff nobody can understand" and disapproved of its pseudo-religious tone. Contradicting this, other authors noted that Hitler considered it the most important book of party ideology. Rosenberg also played a key role in developing Hitler's belief in Jewish conspiracies by introducing him to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Rosenberg was elected as a Reichstag deputy at the September 1930 parliamentary election as a representative of the Nazi Party electoral list. He would continue to serve in this capacity until the end of the Nazi regime, representing electoral constituency 33, Hesse-Darmstadt, from July 1932.Alfred Rosenberg entry in the Reichstag Members Database
Rosenberg helped convince Hitler, whose early speeches focused on revenge against France and Britain, that communism was a serious threat to Germany. "Jewish-Bolshevism" became an ideological target for Nazism during the early 1920s.
In Rome during November 1932 Rosenberg participated in the Volta Conference about Europe. British historian Sir Charles Petrie met him there and regarded him with great distaste; Petrie was a Catholic and strongly objected to Rosenberg's anti-Jewish and anti-Catholic sentiments.Sir Charles Petrie, A Historian Looks at His World (London, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1972), p. 136.