Eric Voegelin’s Review of Rosenberg’s Nazi Myth (1946)

Eric Voegelin’s short book review evaluates Albert R. Chandler’s study of Alfred Rosenberg’s Myth of the Twentieth Century. Its central objection is methodological: Chandler treats a work intended to evoke a political myth as a collection of propositions to be expounded and refuted. Voegelin acknowledges the importance of studying Rosenberg, whose book he places alongside Mein Kampf as a principal literary document of National Socialism. His criticism concerns what an adequate interpretation of that document must explain.

I am afraid that this is not the proper method to deal with a work which purports to evoke and to elaborate a myth.

The distinction between doctrine and myth governs the review. Chandler’s account identifies Rosenberg’s racial hierarchy, antisemitism, rejection of Christianity as an alien influence, and appropriation of Meister Eckhart. His criticisms expose disagreements with racial authorities, incompatibility with the Gospel, and distance from Goethe. For Voegelin, these observations largely establish what is already obvious. Showing that Rosenberg’s assertions are erroneous or objectionable does not explain the kind of appeal his work seeks to exercise.

Voegelin then names the questions that Chandler’s doctrinal approach leaves substantially untouched:

The great problems raised by the Myth—of the rise of intramundane religiousness, of its causes, of its social appeal, of the apparent helplessness of the Christian churches in the face of this threat, etc.—are barely mentioned.

“Intramundane religiousness” shifts the inquiry toward a religious orientation directed into the world. The task is to investigate its emergence, appeal, and relationship to the churches’ apparent inability to resist it. Voegelin sketches this research agenda rather than developing a full explanation himself. His challenge to Chandler’s reassuring comparison of Nazi “religion” with Christianity sharpens the point: a moral verdict on which degrades or exalts humanity cannot substitute for understanding the phenomenon’s power.

The review moves from the importance of Rosenberg’s text, through criticism of Chandler’s method and examples of its limited results, to a qualified concession. English readers unfamiliar with Rosenberg may gain introductory information and bibliographical references. Chandler’s book therefore retains practical value, but does not fill the interpretive gap Voegelin identifies. The review’s enduring conceptual move is to distinguish refuting ideological claims from explaining how political myth acquires religious and social force.