German Third Reich Book - "An die Dunkelmaenner unserer Zeit" by Alfred Rosenberg

A softcover book by Alfred Rosenberg, published by Hoheneichen Verlag, Muenchen, printed in red and black gothic script lettering on a cream cover. The title translates roughly to "To the Obscurantists of Our Time, " subtitled as a response to attacks against the author's earlier work "Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts." The cover carries a circular device depicting a torch and a sword bound with a swastika motif.

Alfred Rosenberg served as one of the Nazi Party's chief ideologues, and this polemical title was written as a rebuttal to critics, particularly from religious circles, who had challenged his controversial earlier publication. Hoheneichen Verlag was closely associated with Rosenberg and the National Socialist movement's publishing output during the 1930s.

Alfred Rosenberg published "An die Dunkelmaenner unserer Zeit" in 1935 as a direct response to the wave of criticism, especially from Catholic and Protestant clergy, provoked by his 1930 work "Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts, " which had attacked Christianity and promoted a racial reinterpretation of history and religion. Rosenberg, a leading NSDAP ideologue and later head of the Amt Rosenberg and Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, used the pamphlet to dismiss his opponents as reactionary obscurantists defending outdated dogma. Hoheneichen Verlag, the publishing house Rosenberg controlled, issued much of his own output and other titles central to Nazi racial and anti-Christian ideology during the 1930s. Rosenberg was tried at Nuremberg after the war and executed in 1946 for his role in Nazi crimes.