War and other large-scale conflicts result in death and destruction that are not imaginary—unlike many of the other things that inspire conspiracy theories. And it is common to believe that every military engaged in war has some secret interest that is hidden from the public view (and with good reason, for they often do). But sometimes conspiracy theorists take this belief a little too far and believe that we’re being manipulated more than we know.
In this part we’ll deconstruct conspiracy theories that claim the United States allowed the Japanese to bomb Pearl Harbor as an excuse to enter the war; that the United States waged war against its own citizens on 9/11; and that the Holocaust was a myth perpetuated by colluding governments. Why would governments do such things? Or a better question might be, why do conspiracy theorists try so hard to hang unimaginable crimes on their own governments?
One potential answer lies in the uber-popular belief that the Nazi regime was driven by occult mysticism. Books and documentaries abound claiming that the Nazi Party was secretly obsessed with the occult. It’s completely fictional, of course, and yet it’s wildly popular. It satisfies our desire for there to have been some unearthly evil driving the regime. The cruel deeds of the Nazis have been matched very few times in history; our brains try to rationalize them by assigning a motivation that’s equally bizarre. We’ll find similar themes throughout this section.