Adolf Hitler was fascinated by the occult to the point that he planned to indoctrinate the Nazi Party with a pagan religion replacing Christianity. After the German defeat of WWI and the humiliation that followed at the Treaty of Versailles, he knew the German people needed a cause--an inspiration to hold their heads up in spite of their humiliation and rebuild their culture and self confidence.
To this end, Hitler and his second-in-command, Heinrich Himmler, worked to develop a mythological culture of the German people stemming from their beginnings as a Nordic Aryan people who once inhabited northern Europe. This information was disseminated piece-meal to the Germans through newsletters, the schools, Nazi party rallies and newspapers.
Although raised as a Catholic, Hitler was not a Christian at this stage of his life, but he desired three religious relics from antiquity, which he believed could be used to rebuild the confidence and self-worth of the German people. Himmler led the archaeological and historical search of Nordic mythology and legends for material to formulate a new fantasy history and pagan religion of the German nation. Himmler's pseudo-research revealed that Christianity high-jacked much of their symbology from the ancient Nordic Teutonic pagan religion.
The Religious Relics
Hitler most desired to possess three relics from antiquity to enhance his search for world domination:
- The Holy Grail,
- The Ark of the Covenant and
- The Spear of Destiny.
The Fuhrer believed that an Aryan knighthood based on the Holy grail was most important because it would confer immortality on those blue-eyed, blond Aryans from a genetically pure blood-line. He called it the Brotherhood of the Knights of the Holy Grail. Heinrich Himmler, a firm believer in occultism, took over this part of the work and formed a powerful organization of the SS in which the genealogy of its members could be traced back over 200 years to prove continuous, unbroken Aryan ancestry. These men would form the breeding stock and the aristocracy of the new Nazi Germany.
The Ark of the Covenant was reputed to have strange powers according to the Old Testament. Hitler and Himmler believed that the Ark might have originated from unidentified alien origins. Possibly it was a battery or a radio and it had the power to vaporize anyone who touched or even looked at it. Through it, the Nazis might be able to communicated with the ancient Nordic gods.
Nazi archaeologists fanned out across the world to Africa, Europe, the Middle East, India and even into the mountains of Tibet in search of these mythological antiquities.
Churchill's Informant on Nazi Occult Practices
Dr. Walter Johannes Stein, a Viennese scientist with a Ph.D. in Medieval history acted under cover to analyze the minds and motivations of the Third Reich leaders during WWII and reported privately to Churchill on the black magic practices.
During the years before Hitler came into power, Stein watched him write Mein Kampf and prepare himself to assume the leadership of the Nazi party. Stein reported that Hitler used mind-enhancing drugs to attain higher levels of consciousness as he studied medieval occultism and ritual magic.
In 1933, Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler ordered Stein's arrest in order to press him into service with the SS Occult Bureau. Stein escaped and fled to Britain. Here he revealed his knowledge of occultism in the Nazi Party and Hitler's activities to Winston Churchill.
According to Trevor Ravenscroft in his book, The Spear of Destiny, Sir Winston Churchill absolutely insisted that no knowledge of Nazi occultism should be leaked out to the general public.
The Legend of the Spear
Before Hitler came into power, he saw the Spear of Destiny on display at the Hapsburg Treasure House in Vienna. Every day he went to the museum and meditated on it for several hours. He didn't understand its power or his own personal attraction to it until one day when he heard a tour guide say, "There is a legend associated with the spear that whoever claims it, and solves its secrets, holds the destiny of the world in his hands for good and evil." Now Hitler knew he had to own it.
History of the Spear
After the crucifixion, the followers of Christ preserved the lance as a holy relic. One story maintains that King Louis IX brought it back to France during the Crusades where it remained until the French Revolution. Another version claims that the lance resided in Germany at the time of Otto III but was smuggled into hiding in Vienna when Napoleon demanded to have it for his own.
After Germany annexed Austria in 1938, Hitler and Himmler drove to Vienna and claimed the Spear. Hitler was ecstatic when he explained that the Spear was the inspiration for his life's work and also the very key to his rise to power.
The End of WWII
On April 30, 1945, the US 7th Army claimed the Spear when they stumbled upon it hidden away in the Nuremberg stadium in a secret vault. It was preserved in an ancient leather case, resting on an altar surrounded by antiquities, paintings, jewels and other art treasures confiscated by the Nazi army as it plowed through Europe during the war.
General Patton was fascinated by the find and realized the significance of its legend. Patton didn't know it at the time, but the US officially possessed the Spear of Destiny as it was poised on the brink of using the atomic bomb on August 6 and August 9 of that year to end the war in Japan.
In January, 1946, General Dwight Eisenhower, the Commander of the Allied Armies in Europe, ordered the return of the Spear of Destiny to its museum home in Austria.
Source:
- The Spear of Destiny by Trevor Ravenscroft, 1973, Neville Spearman, Publishers Ltd.
Diane Evans - I am a retired civil engineer as well as a member of Sisters in Crime and the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.
Join the Conversation