Alexander Rud Mills


Alexander Rud Mills was an Australian barrister and author, interned in 1942 for his Nazi sympathies. He was also a prominent Odinist, one of the earliest proponents of the rebirth of Germanic Neopaganism in the 20th century, and an anti-Semite. He founded the First Anglecyn Church of Odin in Melbourne in 1936 as a front for his fascist agitation. He published under his own name and the pen-name Tasman Forth.

Early life

Mills was born in Forth, Tasmania, in 1885. In around 1910, he moved to Victoria to enrol at the Melbourne University Law School. He graduated in 1916 and was admitted to the Victorian Bar in 1917. He was a legal practitioner thereafter but it was the mid-1930s, after he returned from Europe where he had met Adolf Hitler, that he gained notoriety as an anti-Semite and 'Odinist'.

Political sympathies and activities

Mills applied to join the AIF during World War I but was rejected on medical grounds. His soldier's reject badge was No. 65039.
In 1931, having little work but some money, he embarked on a trip around the world. He visited South Africa but did not like either the climate nor the 'mixed races'. He then visited Italy, Germany, Britain and the USSR. He claimed to have become disillusioned with communism, which he had come to view as a form of organized thuggery, during his trip to Russia. In England, he attended meetings of Sir Oswald Mosley's 'British Union of Fascists', and Arnold Leese's smaller and more radical 'Imperial Fascist League'. He aligned himself more closely with the Imperial Fascists and later helped to distribute Leese's newspaper, The Fascist, in Australia.
Historian of esotericism Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke characterises Mills as a "Nazi sympathiser". Mills' trip to Germany included a visit to the Brown House where, without appointment, he met Adolf Hitler "talking" "to some of his confreres". At the 1944 Australia First enquiry, Mills claimed that Hitler had impressed him as a 'kindly man' who 'seemed to have the respect of his men and appeared kind to them.' In Germany, Mills also met followers of General Erich Ludendorff, the famous First World War strategist and conspiracy theorist who was also, like Mills, anti-Semitic.
Returning to Australia in 1934, Mills established the Anglecyn Church of Odin. He told an undercover agent the following year that this 'religion' was a front which allowed him to pursue his dedication to fascism without fear of prosecution. In 1935, he also founded a group called the 'British Australian Racial Body'. He established two short-lived newspapers, the National Socialist and The Angle, as vehicles through which to espouse his racist, religious and political views. At this time he maintained correspondence with officials of the British Union of Fascists. During wartime investigations into his views at this time, it was established that he owned an autographed photograph of Julius Streicher, publisher of Der Stürmer. In 1941, he became associated with the anti-War, pro-Isolationist Australia First Movement and contributed to its newspaper The Publicist, which, before 1939, had described itself as being "for national socialism" and "for Aryanism; against semitism", and which was the mouthpiece for W. J. Miles, a leading member of the Rationalist Society.
Mills' The Odinist Religion: Overcoming Jewish Christianity was published in 1939. In that work, Mills claimed that Nordic races had established the ancient civilisations of Sumer, Egypt, Persia, Greece, and Rome, but that they had been weakened by miscegenation with other races, and by adopting Christianity and, along with it, the view that all humans were equal.

Internment

Mills was the first resident of Victoria to join Australia First, though he would later claim to be only a passive member. Barbara Winter shows that, in fact, he fully supported Australia First's position, read its publications and was convinced of the truth of widespread Jewish conspiracy; he believed, for instance, that former Australian prime minister William Hughes was half-Jewish and that Chiang Kai Shek was a prominent freemason and therefore in the thrall of 'Jewish Christianity'. Because of Mills' membership of Australia First and his well-known Nazi sympathies, he was arrested on 7 May 1942 and detained without trial lest he aid the Japanese army which at that time seemed likely to invade Australia. Major Edward Hattam of the Commonwealth Investigation Branch later testified that he believed "Mills had views leaning somewhat toward Nazi ideology." He was interned until 17 December 1942. Bruce Muirden's The Puzzled Patriots refers to Mills' bashing by an army officer at Loveday Internment Camp in South Australia. though Mills did not mention this during the 1944 inquiry into Australia First.
In Federal Parliament on 30 March 1944 Robert Menzies, then leader of the opposition, said of Mills, "I happen to know him quite well, because he went through the university at the same time as I did... he was hauled out of his home, imprisoned and put in an internment camp... his association, so I am informed, with the Australia First Movement amounted to this: some man who had secured appointment with the movement wrote to him and asked him to subscribe, and he forward 10s 6d. as a subscription... I know this man and I know something of the disaster which this has brought upon him... Here is a man who for twenty-odd years was building up a practice as a professional man. He was taken out of his home, just as anybody might be. He was incarcerated in circumstances of immense notoriety. When he came out, what happened? His friends were gone, his practice gone, his reputation was gone."

Mills' Odinism

Given that it was, at least initially, a 'cover' for his fascist politicking, it is perhaps not surprising that Mills' articulation of his religion was skewed towards a strong interest in race and notions of racial superiority. Having formulated "his own unique blend" of Ariosophy, he was heavily influenced by the writings of pioneering Austrian Ariosophist and Wotanist Guido von List. Much of Mills' ideology focused around what he conceived as the "British race", a group who he believed also inhabited other parts of the world colonised by the British Empire. That concept was problematic given the ethnically and linguistically diverse nature of the British population during the early 20th century. Mills believed that while Christianity was alien to Britons, Odinism was native and thus could be better understood by British folk. He expressed the view that "our own racial ideas and traditions are our best guide to health and national strength". He was critical of Christianity, believing it to be "unnatural" because - in his view - it encouraged the breaking down of racial barriers.
In Mills' theology, the Norse gods were symbols of the divine rather than actual anthropomorphic entities, and he believed that each racial group had its own symbolic system for interpreting and understanding divinity. For Mills, Odin represented an archetypal father figure, with other deities from Norse mythology, such as Thor and Frigg, having minor roles in his groups' theology. This emphasis on Odin may represent the influence of Christianity on his thinking.
In his 1936 liturgical text, The First Guide Book to the Anglecyn Church of Odin, Mills gives a version of the Ten Commandments that is only slightly different from that in Exodus, and Mill's formulary includes vigils, hymns, evensong and communion, making it abundantly clear that Mills based the liturgy of the Anglecyn Church of Odin on that of the Anglican Church. However, while textually there is a debt to Christian worship, philosophically Mills expresses strong anti-Christian sentiments throughout:
Anti-Semitic comments can likewise be found scattered throughout the Guide Book. He claims that Jewish people plot world conquest:
control the media:
and dominate Freemasonry:

Later life

After Mills was released from internment in late 1942 he continued to promote his vision of Odinism. He remained an active writer, publishing eight books and numerous articles and pamphlets between 1933 and 1957 on Odinist themes.
For over thirty years, Mills had a friendship and romance with schoolteacher Evelyn Louisa Price. They were married at Holy Trinity, Church of England, Surrey Hills, on 2 June 1951. Price, the daughter of Frederick Andrew Price and Helena Louisa Rogers, had been born in South Yarra in 1889. At the time of their marriage Mills was 65, Price 62.
Mills died on 8 April 1964, and is buried at Ferntree Gully Cemetery, Victoria; Evelyn died on 9 July 1973 and is buried with her husband. Curiously, considering Mills' avowed rejection of Christianity, both are buried in the Church of England section of the Cemetery.

Legacy and influence on Germanic neopaganism

Writing in the Australian Religion Studies Journal, A. Asbjørn Jøn characterised Mills as "obscure yet important", having played a "very significant role" in the development of Norse-oriented Neopaganism.
During the 1960s, the Danish far right activist Else Christensen came across Mills' work while she was living in Canada. Although Christensen felt that many of Mills' ideas were too heavily influenced by Freemasonry for her liking, she was profoundly influenced by his ideas about reviving the worship of ancient Norse deities. Christensen subsequently established the Odinist Fellowship in 1969, then based from her mobile home in Crystal River, Florida. According to Australian historian of the far right, Kristy Campion, the Odinist religion had more influence in the United States than in Mills' native Australia.
In the early 1970s, a group of Australian Odinists, who were students at the University of Melbourne, sought a guarantee from the Australian Attorney-General that if Odinism were formally revived it would not be persecuted. Attorney-General Lionel Murphy pursued a course of allowing freedom of religion within Australia, and by the early 1990s the Odinic Rite of Australia had been granted legal status by the Australian government. Today, members of the ORA attend annual pilgrimages to the graves of Rud and Evelyn Mills.
In 1980, Kerry Raymond Bolton from Christchurch, New Zealand, along with David Crawford, co-founded a New Zealand group called the Church of Odin. They both had a background in far-right political activities. Paul Spoonley quotes Crawford as saying that the Church of Odin was exclusively for whites, and specifically whites "of non-Jewish descent", and that "the main Odinic law requires loyalty to race". By 1983 Bolton had left the Church.
Today, the main Odinist religious bodies that see significance in Mills' work are the northern hemisphere's Odinic Rite, and the Odinic Rite of Australia.

Partial bibliography