Nazism did not arise in a vacuum but was deeply rooted in German culture. From German Romanticism sprang ideas of great significance for the genesis of the Third Reich--notions of the individual as a part of the national collective, and of history as a ceaseless struggle between opposing forces. Tracing the origins of the Nazi "political religion," this book examines its foundation in ultra-nationalism, totalitarianism, the Führer cult, racial theory and anti-Semitism, and the glorification of violence--all swathed in an element of occultism--and its culmination in the global cataclysm of World War II and the Holocaust.