[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.

[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.

[RocketWolf]

Exactly so..if you can find a good translation (eg,pre 1936) of the original two volume Mein Kampf you will note that Hitler took an explicit stand against the nuttiest of the nutty Germanic cult movements . Not to deny he exploited the political benefit of pseudo pagan pagent and probably tolerated some activity designed to lend " scientific" credibility to what was invaluable political theater.