Alfred Rosenberg

Book excerpt: Argues that Rosenberg's ideas, though irrational and frequently incomprehensible, are worthy of study since he was the official ideologue of the Nazi Party and formulated its racist and antisemitic ideology in his "Myth of the Twentieth Century" (1930). Traces the intellectual influences on Rosenberg, especially that of Houston Stewart Chamberlain. During the 1930s he tried to introduce racial definitions into the field of art and culture. Ch. 7 (pp. 103-124) examines Rosenberg's antisemitism. Ch. 12 (pp. 207-219) discusses the accusations made at the Nuremberg Trials that, as Minister for the Eastern Occupied Territories from 1941 on, he knew of and supported the liquidation of the ghettos and oversaw the operations of the SS and the Einsatzgruppen. Although he claimed not to have approved of extermination, he was found guilty and executed in October 1946.