Was Adolf Hitler A Freemason?

“The conspiracy theory acts as a bridge between the complexity of history and the desire for a simple villain.”
Umberto Eco

We human beings have a strange coping mechanism when it comes to atrocity and horror.

The greater the evil, the harder it seems to comprehend. The yearning for understanding often leads to oversimplification – and from there conspiracy.

Faced with the monumental malice of the so-called Third Reich, our minds recoil from the idea of mere accident.

On one hand, we rightly struggle to accept that a mundane man—a failed painter, a corporal with a shaky moustache and a gastric condition—could single-handedly mesmerise a nation of poets and thinkers into committing industrialised genocide.

This psychological itch has given birth to one of the most enduring and paradoxical sub-genres of 20th-century history: the Occult Reich.

We’ve seen it in everything from Raiders of the Lost Ark to Hellboy.

And sitting squarely in the centre of this Venn diagram of paranoia is the ancient fraternity of the Freemasons.

“In Prussia, the Lodge was the salon of the state.”
Christopher Clark, author of ‘The Iron Kingdom’

Berlin – as it became during the years of the Third Reich – was not always the capital of intolerance.

In fact, for a long time, it was the beating heart of German Freemasonry, and that heart pumped the blood of the Enlightenment.

German Freemasonry was fundamentally different from the revolutionary lodges of France. While the French Grand Orient was busy overthrowing monarchies and decapitating aristocrats, the ‘Old Prussian Mother Lodges’ were fiercely loyal, conservative, and distinctly nationalist.

The poster child for this era was none other than King Frederick the Great.

Before he ascended the throne, while still a crown prince fearful of his abusive father, Frederick was initiated into the craft in 1738 during a secret trip to Brunswick.