ZACARIAS76
Forero Paco Demier
- Desde
- 9 Dic 2023
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"COMPASS, SQUARE AND SWASTIKA: FREEMASONRY IN THE THIRD REICH"
CHRISTOPHER CAMPBELL THOMAS
"Finally, if the group was willing to coordinate, was the regime willing to accept them? Given the nancy need for professionals and the Masonic desire to establish themselves under the new regime, one would think that the two would have made a perfect match. A return to, and comparison with the university Korps helps shed some
light on why Freemasonry, an institution that had a valuable membership and was so willing to align with National Socialism, was unable to do so. Consider the two; by the mid nineteenth century, like the majority of Masonic
lodges, the Korps were very nationalist and also anti-Semitic, especially the Deutsche Burschenschaften. The Freemasons were the current professional and educated elite; the members of the Korps were the future professional and educated elite. Membership in the Korps was a sign of social and economic status, a sign that one was superior even to other university students. The lodges served a similar purpose after college. The Korps,
like the lodges, also had a strict honor code and jovenlandesal guideline, and expected its members to live by those standards. The Korps even used elaborate costumes during it formal ceremonies, like the Freemasons. By the 1920s, the Korps was a Masonic lodge in embryo, but when the Korps sought coordination with National Socialism, they got it. Those few Korps that didn’t align were forcibly closed the very same year as the lodges.
So what was the difference?"
"Over the course of the 1930s, the dance between Freemasons and Nazis reached a successful conclusion; the amnesty made it possible for all but the most senior Freemasons to enjoy what National Socialism had to offer and avoid any negative consequences of former lodge membership. The regime had salvaged tens of thousands
of educated and professional elites while still maintaining the institution of Freemasonryand its ideology as a convenient whipping boy"
"But when German troops marched into Bulgaria ***owing Bulgaria’s alliance with Germany, the Bulgarian lodges remained completely untouched, Chakalov recalled, “There was no interference in the Masonic movement, in the Masonic lodges, during the nancy era. The Germans didn’t go that far, couldn’t go that far, in Bulgaria. The lodges operated normally. They were closed down by the communists. There was absolutely no interference, nobody suffered for having been a Mason, but by the communists. The truth is that the Freemasons had a substantial amount of agency. The Third Reich restricted that agency to a degree, but never completely eliminated it as it had done to groups targeted for racial reasons. Unfortunately, with that agency, the majority of German Freemasons acted under the same motivations as their decision to enter the lodges: self-interest and opportunism. From their decision to join the lodges, then to abandon the lodges for the nancy Party, then back to the lodges after the war ended, ambition, opportunism and self-interest played a primary role. They cooperated with the Third Reich because they wanted to, and because they could"
@Max Aub