(12 January 1893 – 16 October 1946)
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[ (Russian: Императорское Московское техническое училище (ИМТУ)), 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 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. 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 Völkischer Beobachter (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-NS 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 NSDAP – 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, although Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke contends that they were only guests. After the Völkischer Beobachter became the NSDAP newspaper in December 1920, 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 National Socialist 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".
NSDAP
On 1 January 1924, Rosenberg founded the Greater German People's Community, a National Socialist 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 NSDAP 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 National Socialist 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.
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, dedicated to identifying and attacking supposed Jewish influence in German culture and to recording the history of Judaism from a radical nationalist perspective. He was elected as a Reichstag Deputy in 1930 and would continue to serve in this capacity until the end of the National Socialist regime. First elected as a representative of the electoral list, from 1933 on he represented electoral constituency 33, Hesse. In 1930, he also published his book on racial theory The Myth of the Twentieth Century (Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts) which deals with key issues in the National Socialist ideology, such as the "Jewish question." 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 National Socialism remains doubtful. It is often said to have been a book that was officially venerated within National Socialism, but one that few had actually read beyond the first chapter or even found comprehensible. Hitler called it "stuff nobody can understand" and disapproved of its pseudo-religious tone.
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 National Socialism 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.
The following year, following the National Socialist seizure of power, Rosenberg was named leader of the NSDAPy's Foreign Policy Office in April, and on 2 June 1933 he was named a Reichsleiter, the second highest political rank in the NSDAP. In May 1933 Rosenberg visited Britain, to give the impression that the National Socialists would not be a threat and to encourage links between the new regime and the British Empire. It was a notable failure. When Rosenberg laid a wreath bearing a swastika at the Cenotaph, a Labour Party candidate slashed it, later threw it in the Thames and was fined 40 shillings for willful damage at Bow Street magistrate's court.
In October 1933, Rosenberg was named as a member of Hans Frank's Academy for German Law. Then on 27 January 1934, Hitler made Rosenberg the "Führer's Representative for the Supervision of Intellectual and Ideological Education of the NSDAP." This was the origin of the Amt Rosenberg.
Racial theories
Rosenberg got the racial term Untermensch from the title of Stoddard's 1922 book The Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace of the Under-man, which had been adopted by the National Socialists from that book's German version Der Kulturumsturz: Die Drohung des Untermenschen (1925).
Rosenberg reshaped the National Socialist racial policy over the years, but it always consisted of Aryan supremacy, extreme German nationalism and rabid antisemitism. Rosenberg also outspokenly opposed homosexuality – notably in his pamphlet "Der Sumpf" ("The Swamp", 1927). He viewed homosexuality as a hindrance to the expansion of the Nordic population.
Rosenberg's attitude towards Slavs was flexible because it depended on the particular nation which he referred to. As a result of the ideology of "Drang nach Osten" ("Drive to the East"), Rosenberg saw his mission as the conquest and colonization of the Slavic East. In Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts Rosenberg describes Russian Slavs as being overwhelmed by Bolshevism. Regarding Ukrainians, he favoured setting up a buffer state to ease the pressure on the German eastern frontier, while agreeing with the notion that Russia could be exploited for the benefit of Germany. During the war, Rosenberg was in favour of collaboration with the East Slavs against Bolshevism and offering them national independence unlike other National Socialists such as Hitler and Himmler who dismissed such ideas.
Rosenberg criticised those who did not subscribe to his racial theories. For example, he attacked Fascist Italy for what he perceived as its incorrect and improper stance on race and Jewishness.
Religious theories
In his 1920 book Immorality in the Talmud, Rosenberg identified Jews with the antichrist. He rejected Christianity for its universality, for its doctrine of original sin (at least for Germans who he declared on one occasion were born noble), and for its teachings on the immortality of the soul, saying, "indeed, absorbing Christianity enfeebled a people." Publicly, Rosenberg affected to deplore Christianity's degeneration owing to Jewish influence. Following Houston Stewart Chamberlain's ideas, he condemned what he called "negative Christianity" (the orthodox beliefs of the Protestant and Catholic churches), arguing for a so-called "positive" Christianity based on Chamberlain's argument that Jesus was a member of an Indo-European, Nordic enclave which was resident in ancient Galilee who struggled against Judaism. Significantly, in his work explicating the National Socialist intellectual belief system, The Myth of the Twentieth Century, Rosenberg cryptically alludes to and lauds the early Christian heretic Marcion (who rejected the Old Testament as well as the notion of Christ as the Jewish Messiah) and the Manichaean-inspired, "Aryo-Iranian" Cathari, as being the more authentic interpreters of Christianity versus historically dominant Judaeo-Christianity; moreover these ancient, externally Christian metaphysical forms were more "organically compatible with the Nordic sense of the spiritual and the Nordic 'blood-soul'." For Rosenberg, the anti-intellectual, religious doctrine was inseparable from serving the interests of the Nordic race, connecting the individual to his racial nature. Rosenberg stated that "The general ideas of the Roman and of the Protestant churches are negative Christianity and do not, therefore, accord with our (German) soul." His support for Luther as a great German figure was always ambivalent.
In January 1934, Hitler appointed Rosenberg cultural and educational leader of the Reich. The Sanctum Officium in Rome recommended that Rosenberg's Myth of the Twentieth Century be put on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (list of books forbidden by the Catholic Church) for scorning and rejecting "all dogmas of the Catholic Church, indeed the very fundamentals of the Christian religion". During World War II, Rosenberg outlined the future envisioned by the Hitler government for religion in Germany, with a thirty-point program for the future of the German churches. Among its articles:
- the National Reich Church of Germany would claim exclusive control over all churche
- publication of the Bible would cease
- crucifixes, Bibles and saints were to be removed from altars
- Mein Kampf would be placed on altars as "to the German nation and therefore to God the most sacred book"
- the Christian Cross would be removed from all churches and replaced with the swastika.
Rosenberg has been described as an atheist by people, including Henry F. Gerecke, the Lutheran chaplain who communed with some of the Nuremberg prisoners, including Joachim von Ribbentrop and Wilhelm Keitel. However, some historians have claimed that Rosenberg was a neo-pagan.
Wartime activities
Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories
Following the invasion of the USSR, Rosenberg was appointed head of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (Reichsministerium für die besetzten Ostgebiete) on 17 July 1941. Alfred Meyer served as his deputy and represented him at the Wannsee Conference. Another official of the Ministry, Georg Leibbrandt, also attended the conference, at Rosenberg's request.
Rosenberg had presented Hitler with his plan for the organization of the conquered Eastern territories, suggesting the establishment of new administrative districts, to replace the previously Soviet-controlled territories with new Reichskommissariats. These would be:
- Ostland (Baltic countries and Belarus),
- Ukraine (Ukraine and nearest territories),
- Kaukasien (Caucasus area),
- Moskowien (Moscow metropolitan area and the rest of nearest Russian European areas)
Although Rosenberg believed that all of the peoples of the Soviet Union were subhumans because of their communist beliefs, such suggestions were intended to encourage certain non-Russian forms of nationalism and promote German interests for the benefit of future Aryan generations, in accord with geopolitical "Lebensraum im Osten" plans. They would provide a buffer against Soviet expansion in preparation for the total eradication of Communism and Bolshevism by decisive pre-emptive military action.
Following these plans, when Wehrmacht forces invaded Soviet-controlled territory, they immediately implemented the first of the proposed Reichskommissariats of Ostland and Ukraine, under the leadership of Hinrich Lohse and Erich Koch, respectively. The organization of these administrative territories led to conflict between Rosenberg and the SS over the treatment of Slavs under German occupation. As National Socialist Germany's chief racial theorist, Rosenberg considered Slavs, though lesser than Germans, to be Aryan. Rosenberg often complained to Hitler and Himmler about the treatment of non-Jewish occupied peoples. He proposed the creation of buffer satellite states made out of Greater Finland, Baltica, Ukraine, and Caucasus.
Wartime propaganda efforts
Since the invasion of the Soviet Union intended to impose the New Order, it was essentially a war of conquest. German propaganda efforts designed to win over Russian opinion were, at best, patchy and inconsistent. Alfred Rosenberg was one of the few in the National Socialist hierarchy who advocated a policy designed to encourage anti-Communist opinion among the population of the occupied territories. His interest here was mainly in the non-Russian areas such as Ukraine and the Baltic States; however, supporters of the Russian Liberation Army were somewhat able to win him over.
Amongst other things, Rosenberg issued a series of posters announcing the end of the Soviet collective farms (kolkhoz). He also issued an Agrarian Law in February 1942, annulling all Soviet legislation on farming and restoring family farms for those willing to collaborate with the occupiers. But decollectivisation conflicted with the wider demands of wartime food production, and Hermann Göring demanded that the collective farms be retained, save for a change of name. Hitler himself denounced the redistribution of land as "stupid".
There were numerous German armed forces (Wehrmacht) posters asking for assistance in the Bandenkrieg, the war against the Soviet partisans, though, once again, German policy had the effect of adding to their problems. Posters for "volunteer" labour, with inscriptions such as "Come work with us to shorten the war", hid the appalling realities faced by Russian workers in Germany. Rosenberg noted that many joined the partisans when volunteers for work details declined and the Germans resorted to force to acquire workers from the East.
Trial and execution
Rosenberg was captured by Allied troops on 19 May 1945 in Flensburg-Mürwik. He was tried at Nuremberg and found guilty of all four counts: conspiracy to commit crimes against peace; planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression; war crimes; and crimes against humanity. The final judgment against him named him one of the principal planners of the invasion of Norway and the invasion of the Soviet Union. It also held him directly responsible for the systematic plunder of the occupied countries of Europe, as well as the brutal conditions in Eastern Europe. During his trial he wrote his memoirs, which were published posthumously and with analytical commentary by Serge Lang and Ernst von Schenck.
He was sentenced to death and executed with other condemned co-defendants at Nuremberg Prison on the morning of 16 October 1946. His body, like those of the other nine executed men and that of Hermann Göring, was cremated at Ostfriedhof (Munich) and the ashes were scattered in the river Isar.
Throughout the trial, it was agreed that Rosenberg had a decisive role in shaping National Socialist philosophy and ideology. Examples include: his book The Myth of the Twentieth Century, which was published in 1930, where he incited hatred against "Liberal Imperialism" and "Bolshevik Marxism"; furthering the influence of the "Lebensraum" idea in Germany during the war; facilitating the persecution of Christian churches and the Jews in particular; and opposition to the Versailles Treaty.
According to Joseph Kingsbury-Smith, who covered the executions for the International News Service, Rosenberg was the only condemned man who, when asked at the gallows if he had any last statement to make, replied with only one word: "No".
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