'Peoples of Europe, protect your holy heritage'

Britannia is clearly identifiable, followed by (from left to right) Italia, Austria, Russia, Germania and (standing for France) Marianne. The angel is the Archangel St Michael. This painting by the German artist Hermann Knackfuß in 1895 was a present by Kaiser Wilhelm to Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. It represents the challenge to Christian Europe to unite against the godless "Yellow Peril" of the East.

Who actually voted for Hitler?

How did Hitler come to power? Actually, it was because people voted for him.

But who?

Here's a nifty graphic that one doesn't see every day.

[Civics and Citizenship - Discovering Democracy Units]

It’s hard not to feel that after the end of the German Empire the mainstream Social Democrats to a certain extent blew it. When Weimar Germany’s first great disaster (i.e. hyperinflation) struck, the SDs lost a lot of support both to the Communists and to the main protestant conservative party, the DNVP, which was indeed Germany’s most important party throughout the 1920s.

More importantly though, it was from the DNVP itself, after the second great disaster (the Great Depression) struck, that the Nazis gained a lot of their support, as well as from first-time voters.

Ministranten beim Gebet

by Felix von Ende, ca.1888

Prussia

Adolph von Menzel, Departure of King Wilhelm I to the Army on July 31, 1870

A Young Marine Praying

by Corporal Eugene Suarez

During the Korean War in 1951, a young Marine finds a moment of quiet and solitude in which to offer up a prayer for the safety of himself and his comrades. Minutes later, the 1st Marine Division launched an offensive against entrenched communist troops during the Korean conflict.

Der Held und seine Kinder

[H/T: Tribunus]

Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels and the Knights Templar

Adolf Josef Lanz was born on 19 July 1874 in the Penzing district of Vienna in what was then Austria-Hungary, as the son of schoolmaster Johann Lanz and his wife Katharina, née Hoffenreich. His parents were middle class, and his father's ancestors had been burghers in Vienna since the early 18th century.

Lanz became a monk in the Cistercian order in 1893, assuming the name Georg and living in the Heiligenkreuz monastery. In 1894, he claimed to have been "enlightened" after finding the tombstone of a Knight Templar, and began developing his theories of "blue-blond Aryanism" and "lower races". He left the monastery in 1899; although Lanz claimed that this was due to "growing nervousness", the official documents recorded "carnal love" as the reason. 

[Wikipedia (Adapted slightly)] 

One is, of course, tempted to feel sorry for a neurotic young Cistercian who got kicked out of his monastery for fantasising about blond-haired, blue-eyed Knights Templar.

After all, who am I to judge?

The Knights Templar themselves were of course de facto the Cistercians' "military wing". They were suppressed in the late middle ages, for bum-sex, and for doing weird things with crucifixes.

But still, they did lots of good fighting, they lived (most of the time) according to a strict rule, and their singing was jolly impressive.