Alfred
Rosenberg was a Nazi racial ideologue, German politician, and Reich
Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories.
A native of Estonia, Rosenberg emigrated to Germany in 1918. He joined the NSDAP shortly after Adolf
Hitler. Due to his skill in writing propaganda,
Rosenberg was made editor of the Voelkischer
Beobachter, the official Nazi party newspaper,
in 1921. During Hitler's imprisonment after
the failed Beer-Hall Putsch of 1923, Rosenberg
portrayed himself as the ideologue of the
outlawed NSDAP.
In 1930 Rosenberg published The Myth of the Twentieth Century, a racial
tract positing the existence of two opposing
races: the Aryan race, which is the creator
of all values and culture, and a Jewish race,
which is the agent of cultural corruption.
Rosenberg was named head of the Nazi party
foreign policy office in 1933, but, in fact,
he did little more than dabble in diplomatic
affairs.
In 1940 Hitler appointed
him head of the Hohe Schule, the future University
of Nazism. On its behalf Rosenberg's emmisaries
ransacked Jewish libraries throughout Europe,
bringing their spoils to Frankfurt.
Rosenberg also headed a special unit, Einsatzstab
Rosenberg, which plundered
objects of art and furniture belonging
to Jews in occupied western Europe. Following
the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941,
Rosenberg was appointed Reich Minister for
the Occupied Eastern Territories. Rosenberg
came into conflict with the SS because of his opposition to their harsh repression
of non-Russian minorities in the occupied
Eastern Territories. He voiced no similar
doubts about the treatment of Jews in those
areas.
