Posted on 11/30/2001 7:55:36 AM PST by Aquinasfan
Hitler's Search for the Holy Grail
When Steven Spielberg made a movie about an intrepid archaeologist’s fight to keep a precious and powerful artifact — the Holy Grail — out of the hands of the Nazis, it was not widely known that the tale was based on truth. There really was a Nazi archaeological unit and it did send teams across the world to try to find the Grail.
History meets Indiana Jones in HITLER’S SEARCH FOR THE HOLY GRAIL, a one-hour documentary airing on PBS Monday, November 27, 2000, 10:00 p.m. ET (check local listings). Host Michael Wood (IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT) explores how history was used as a political tool and how the theories of the Nazi historical department provided the ideology used by the SS (Schutzstaffel – "protection squadron") to justify genocide.
The program outlines how the racialist theories of the SS were drawn from archaeology, myth and legend, as well as selected history. Nazi ideas about "Aryans" and the "master race" came out of historical and ethnic fantasies in which legends such as the Holy Grail and the lost city of Atlantis — supposed to be a home of the Aryan race — played their part.
HITLER’S SEARCH FOR THE HOLY GRAIL contains rare and previously unseen footage, including
* color film of the Nazi expedition to Antarctica;
* film of the Nazi expeditions across the world, from the Baltic to Venezuela;
* footage of the 1938 expedition to Tibet, with the measuring of skulls of Tibetans;
* documentary evidence for expeditions to Peru, Iceland and Iran, and footage of SS chief Heinrich Himmler at archaeological sites.
The film conjures the eerie world that permeated the thoughts of key members of the Nazi leadership, especially Himmler, and shows how top scholars, some of them still alive, collaborated in this project.
HITLER’S SEARCH FOR THE HOLY GRAIL includes interviews with a former member of Himmler’s personal staff and the wife of a top SS commander, who give unique and unrepentant insight into the mentality of the Nazi inner circle. The program also includes a dramatic recording of the Nuremburg trial of Wolfram Sievers, the head of the SS Ahnenerbe ("Ancestral Heritage Society"), Himmler’s archaeological and historical unit. The Ahnenerbe’s task, according to Himmler, was "to restore the German people to the everlasting godly cycle of ancestors, the living and the descendants."
Himmler was a member of the Thule Society, an extreme nationalist group named after one of the mythical homes of the German people. It was the society’s almost mystical belief in the greatness of the German past — to which Himmler subscribed with fanatical devotion — that was to provide the intellectual ballast to Nazi belief in race and destiny.
The chief administrator of the Ahnenerbe, Dr. Wolfram Sievers, had been heavily involved in the criminal medical experiments that were carried out on Jews in concentration camps, all to prove racial differences and the superiority of the Aryan race. After Germany’s defeat in 1945, Sievers was brought before a war crimes tribunal, found guilty and sentenced to death. He was executed on June 2, 1948. The archaeological world of the Ahnenerbe died with Hitler, Himmler and Sievers; the Ahnenerbe, too, melted away. Many of its top archaeologists, however, returned, unpunished, to university life, only to re-emerge as leading academics in postwar Germany.
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I'm sure the Vatican probably has it squirrled away in some musty, dusty old storage room somewhere.
They also believed somewhat in the ancient Gods of the forests that enabled the Germanic tribes to defeat the Romans. Nazism was rooted in the idea of Germanic/Aryan superiority ordained by all creation. They also believed in the Master Race which were pure Aryans which they believed could only be identified by research. Those members must reproduce while the subhumans must be prevented from "poisoning the genetic well".
Oddly, if Hitler had listened to Mussolini, The Axis may have won the war. Mussolini wanted to wait until late 1940 to start the war. Hitler thought he was being cowardly. But at the time, Germany was far outpacing Russia and the West and Italy was just beginning to improve their air assets. The West was perfectly content with ignoring the German military expansion while growing fat on peace.
Sorry, but after this hilarious passage, you lost all credibility. That statement is so utterly devoid of fact, that its refutation is child's play. I refer you to "An Occult History of the Third Reich." That makes the case much better than I can here.
Their theology wasn't always correct, but their aim of resurrecting the Norse gods for a modern theo-state have been breathtakingly well-documented.
Thats Wewelsberg (VAY-BELLS-BERG) Castle. Himmler used to initiate SS officers in a secret room called Valhalla where it was supposed that the SS communed with long dead Teutonic knights, warriors, and kings.
Himmler also supposedly brought the Spear of Destiny back to Germany, the same spear that pierced the side of Jesus when he was on the cross. He also sent archeologists to India to find the original Aryans who lived there thousands of years ago. A group of these Ahnenerbe were also sent to fidn the lost city of Atlantis.
I would agree w/ that assesment simply because most of the information cannot be sourced. You must remember that the essential element of a secret society is secretiveness.
When he says, for example that Dietrich Eckart(sp?) was a poet that initiated Hitler into satanic rites, evidence that Eckart, a real poet known to associate w/ Hitler, was a satanist would be hard to come by.
The majority of his info concerning Hitler came from a man named Walter Stein, who was something of a mystic ( a Rosicrucian), and who claims to have known Hitler in his vagabond Vienna days. It is Stein's view of Cosmic Time, stretching back to Atlantis, that makes up the book's foundation. You simply can't source that stuff. Ravenscroft readily admits that the story he is telling is impossible to prove using standard historic models.
Where Ravenscroft does cite hard sources; those check out. And I believe it is these sources, such as Einhard (Life of Charlemagne) and William Shirer, Nietzsche, and Mein Kompf, and various Grail legends, that prove his story has some validity.
Naturally, as a "mystic" history it will not satisfy academic historians. Conversely, can the academics even approach the mystic reality that adherents to such a society believed if they themselves don't take the subject seriously?
When a hard-headed realist like Albert Speer states that at his first meeting w/ Hitler, it was like he came under a spell, is that just a turn of phrase or something more? Likewise, nearly every Hitler biographer, from Toland to Bullock has made reference to Hitler's "demonic" ability to control people. Was that simply attenuated charisma?<P. I don't know, nor do I think anyone ever will know the complete story, but I think Ravenscroft has something interesting to add.
Oh, no. Not the knights who say, "ni." Anything but that.
One's analysis of the influence of the occult on the Third Reich will obviously be influenced by one's acceptance of the reality of the occult. Also, as you said, hard evidence of occult practices (by definition secret) will be hard to come by.
The book does sound interesting.
I guess it depends on how you define "pagan." I'd lump Theosophy in that category.
Check out the top of the Seal of the Theosophical Society. Creepy.
This seems to lend some credibility to the allegation that Hitler and the SS engaged in "channeling" on a regular basis.
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