lfred Rosenberg is the evil mind behind Hitler, the man who, more than anyone else, influenced the thinking of the future leader of the Nazi Party. When defeat had already become a sure thing, after six years of war, the Nazis throughout Germany destroyed sensitive documents that could have been used against them. The bureaucrats who failed to do so hid the papers around Germany in places such as woods, mines, and castles.

The discovery of Alfred Rosenberg’s file

In April 1945, after arriving in the Bavarian region, American soldiers were led by Kurt von Behr, an aristocrat with a monocle and high boots, perfectly polished, to Banz Castle, in the cellar of which were hidden a lot of extremely valuable Nazi documents.

The documents revealed by von Behr had belonged to Alfred Rosenberg, Hitler’s chief ideologue and one of the first members of the Nazi Party. Rosenberg witnessed the early days of the newly formed party in 1919 when disappointed German nationalists discovered their leader in Adolf Hitler, the bombastic, summer-losing veteran of World War I.

In November 1923, the night Hitler tried to overthrow the government, Alfred Rosenberg stood right behind his hero in the famous Munich brewery. He was there ten years later, when the party came to power and launched the crusade against its enemies. It was in the middle of the events and when the Nazis reshaped Germany all in their image and likeness. He was on duty until the end, when their whole vision was shattered.

In the spring of 1945, when they picked up an enormous amount of documents, including 250 volumes of official and personal correspondence, buyers discovered something extraordinary: Rosenberg’s personal diary.

500 pages written by hand, documenting the decade 1934–1944. Among the most important people of the Third Reich, only Rosenberg, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and Hans Frank, the bloody governor-general of occupied Poland, left such diaries behind. Everyone else, including Hitler, took their secrets with them to the grave.

He dreamed of a world cleansed of Jews

Outside the borders of Germany, Rosenberg has never been as well known as Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler — the head of the security services, or Hermann Göring — the economic brain of Hitler and the commander of the air force. Moreover, Rosenberg had to fight with these colossi of the Nazi bureaucracy, for the authority he thought he deserved. But it was supported by Hitler from beginning to end.

Rosenberg had left his mark on some of the most notorious crimes in Nazi Germany. He orchestrated the theft of works of art, archives, and libraries from Paris, Krakow, and Kyiv — all the Allied troops found hidden in German castles and mines.

In 1920, Rosenberg planted in Hitler’s mind the idea of ​​a Jewish conspiracy behind the communist revolution in the Soviet Union and repeated it over and over again.

Rosenberg is behind the theory that Hitler used to justify Germany’s devastating war against the Soviet Union two decades later. As the Nazis prepared to invade the Soviet Union, Rosenberg promised that the war would be “an act of global biological cleansing,” which would eventually lead to the extermination of “the last Jewish seed that infects our race”.

During the early years of the war in the East, when the Germans managed to push Red Army troops into the vicinity of Moscow, Rosenberg instituted an occupation regime that terrorized the Baltic countries, Belarus, and Ukraine, collaborating with Himmler’s “crusaders” to massacre them.

Rosenberg’s ideas inspired the leaders of the Auschwitz camp

Last but not least, Rosenberg laid the foundations of the Holocaust. He began publishing his toxic ideas about Jews in 1919 and, as editor of the party newspaper and author of articles, pamphlets, and books, spread hatred among members of the Nazi Party. Later, Rosenberg was Hitler’s envoy on ideological issues, received by enthusiastic crowds in towns and villages throughout the Reich.

His theoretical work “The Myth of the Twentieth Century” has sold over a million copies and is considered, along with Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” (My War), an essential text of Nazi ideology. At the same time it is discussed among historians that Rosenberg would have done anything to impress Hitler (as his hero) in order to gain a more important position within the Nazi Party.

Rudolf Höss, commander of the Auschwitz extermination camp, where more than a million people were killed, acknowledged that Hitler, Goebbels and Rosenberg were the ones who prepared him psychologically to complete his mission.

“I am filled with anger once again when I remember how badly these Jewish parasites did to Germany,” Rosenberg wrote in his diary in 1936.

“But I take comfort in the thought that I also contributed to the unmasking of this betrayal.” Rosenberg’s ideas legitimized the killing of millions of people.

He was convicted by the Nuremberg Tribunal

In November 1945, an extraordinary military tribunal met in Nuremberg to try the most notorious Nazi survivors of war crimes. Rosenberg was among them. His case was based on documents discovered by Allied troops in Kurt von Behr’s cellar.

Hans Fritzsche considered a war criminal for his work in the Ministry of Propaganda, said during the trial that Rosenberg played a key role in Hitler’s formation in the 1920s before the Nazis came to power. “From my point of view, Rosenberg had a colossal influence on Hitler at a time when Hitler was still thinking,” said Fritzsche, who was acquitted by the Nuremberg Tribunal but later sentenced to nine years in prison. by a German court of denazification.

“Rosenberg is important because his ideas, which were just theory, became a reality in Hitler’s hands. The tragic part is that Rosenberg’s fanciful theories have been put into practice. “

In Nuremberg, Chief Prosecutor Robert H. Jackson called Rosenberg “the most important apostle of the” pure race. “ Judges found him guilty of war crimes, and on October 16, 1946, at midnight, Rosenberg was executed by hanging.