lecture in late September, 1924. He continued work on his autobiography during the last months of his life; he died at Dornach on 30 March 1925. Steiner has financed the publication of the book Die Entente-Freimaurerei und der Weltkrieg (1919) by ; Steiner also wrote the foreword for the book, partly based upon his own ideas. The publication comprised a conspiracy theory according to whom World War I was a consequence of a collusion of Freemasons and Jews - still favorite scapegoats of the conspiracy theorists - their purpose being the destruction of Germany. The writing was later enthusiastically received by the Nazi Party. According to Dick Taverne Steiner was a Nazi (i.e. a member of the NSDAP). Towards the end of Steiner's life and after his death, there were massive defamatory press attacks mounted on him by early Nazi Party leaders (including Adolf Hitler) and other right-wing nationalists. These criticized Steiner's thought and anthroposophy as being incompatible with Nazi racial ideology, and charged him with being influenced by his close connections with Jews and even (falsely) that he himself was Jewish. But Rudolf Hess, the adjunct Führer, was a patron of Anthroposophy and of Waldorf schools and a staunch defender of Steiner's biodynamic agriculture. When Hess defected to UK, their most powerful protector was gone, but Anthroposophists were still not left without supporters among higher-placed Nazis. According to Tommy Wieringa, a Dutch writer who grew among Anthroposophists, commenting upon an essay by the Anthroposophist , Hess and Heinrich Himmler saw Steiner as their kindred spirit. The Third Reich had banned almost all esoteric organizations, pretending that these are controlled by Jews. The truth was that while Anthroposophists complained of bad press, they were to a surprising extent let be by the Nazi regime, "including outspokenly supportive pieces in the Völkischer Beobachter". Ideological purists from Sicherheitsdienst argued largely in vain against Anthroposophy. According to Staudenmaier, "The prospect of unmitigated persecution was held at bay for years in a tenuous truce between pro-anthroposophical and anti-anthroposophical Nazi factions." Marie Steiner-von Sivers, Guenther Wachsmuth, and Albert Steffen, had publicly expressed sympathy for the Nazi regime since its beginnings; led by such sympathies of their leadership, the Swiss and German Anthroposophical organizations chose for a path conflating accommodation with collaboration, which in the end ensured that while the Nazi regime hunted the esoteric organizations, Gentile Anthroposophists from Nazi Germany and countries occupied by it