Hitler's Search for the Holy Grail

PBS ^ | 11/30/01 | PBS

[Aquinasfan]

Them Nazis were sooo crazy.

I see them more as evil than crazy. There is a perverse logic to evil.

[steve-b]

To all indications, Himmler was the big occultist in the Nazi inner circle. Hitler recognized the utility of the symbolism and ritual, but seems not to have been a true believer.

[Doctor Doom]

They were evil. That was a line from an old Warner Brothers cartoon. I'm just full of pop culture references today. :)

[Slainte]

Cicero did not choose wisely.

[Hemingway's Ghost]

LOL! Don't forget the Nazi comedy writing unit that came up with the joke that killed.

One of the funniest skits ever, but I forget the jokes---anyone remember them?

[Frances_Marion]

Those Indiana Jones movies get even better when you realize they're all written around factual history. Hitler really was interested in acquiring the Ark of the Covenant and the Grail, both of which he thought would make his armies invincible. IJ and the Temple of Doom's villains are the Cult of the Thuggee, a cult of Kali worshippers who were infesting India in the 19th/20th centuries before the British wiped them out.

[ibbryn]

Those Nazis are nuts!

[Fithal the Wise]

Although his sources have been questioned, Trevor Ravenscroft's "Spear of Destiny" is an interesting supplementary read.

[Former Proud Canadian]

...Cult of the Thuggee, a cult of Kali worshippers who were infesting India in the 19th/20th centuries...

Is that where we get the word, "thug"?

[gumbo]

Whatever he was looking for, he thought of as essentially a magical means to gain power, not as the goal of a religious quest.

Thank you. I was just about to ask, why would Hitler be interested in the Holy Grail, given that he clearly did not believe in the holiness of Christ. Then I found you'd already answered my question.

[Romulus]

Although King Arthur wasn't evil like Hitler...

Or totalitarian.

[#1CTYankee]

It was great!

I particularly liked the part when those French guys catapulted a cow on them.
Oh, and then they sent in the Trojan Rabbit, that was too funny.

One thing, I don't remember them dressing quite like that.

[freedomcrusader]

He weren't no popularly elected leader, neither!

[Doctor Doom]

Some watery tart did toss a scimitar at him, though.

[Heyworth]

There's a lot of wacky stuff when you start digging around in this occult Nazi lore. The problem is that a lot of the more extraordinary stuff is based on very thin evidence. I remember reading once that a whole bunch of Tibetan monks were found dead in the ruins of Berlin. There's another story floating around (no pun intended) that a scuba diver in a lake somewhere up in the Austrian Alps saw an entire SS unit, men and all, sitting on the bottom. There's a lot of stuff about Aghartha, the underground kingdom under the Himalayas. There's the whole Grail/Spear of Longinus stuff, the Thule Society and its connections to Aleister Crowley. The list goes on and on. If you want to read a mind-blower of a book (and one that will get the Fundamentalists wigging out), check out HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL, which manages to tie together, among other things, the divine bloodline of Jesus, the Merovingian Dynasty of 8th Century France, the Holy Roman Emperors, the Hapsburgs, the Nazi occultists, the Knights Templar, the Masons, and a shadowy bunch of Frenchman called the Priory of Sion who may be the real authors of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and an intriguing little mystery centered around a small town in Southern France and a mysterious fortune in the hands of the local priest. Great fun. Even more fun, just for parodying most of the above, is the ILLUMINATI TRILOGY by Robert Anton Wilson.

[Cu Roi]

Is that where we get the word, "thug"?

Kali (``Black Earth Mother'') was a goddess of destruction who was so feared that the other gods of the pantheon would allow her to lead them in battle. Her devotees were usually assassins aka ``thugs''.

From Websters:

Etymology: Hindi thag, literally, thief:
Date: 1810:
: a brutal ruffian or assassin : GANGSTER, KILLER

[Heyworth]

Oh, now we see the violence inherent in the system. Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help! Help! I'm bein' repressed!

[Defiant]

a cult of Kali worshippers who were infesting India in the 19th/20th centuries before the British wiped them out

They weren't all wiped out. Many of them made it to the US, where they founded Kali-fornia as an enclave for their cult.