While Hitler and his Nazi supporters were wreaking havoc upon Europe —upon the world, for that matter— they also had other ambitions and interests to further their attempts at tyranny, namely, their obsession with the occult.
Indeed, while the Nazi war machine was exterminating “lesser” individuals, terrorizing civilian populations, and limiting freedom altogether, they were also trying to harness the ancient, arcane secrets that their Aryan forefathers had (according to them) commanded, in their attempts to colonize other nations under the banner of the swastika and in the name of Adolph Hitler.
As seen in popular media such as the Wolfenstein video game franchise and the Indiana Jones film series, the occult influence on the Nazis has had a longing impact on the minds and imaginations of many.
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Adolph Hitler’s January 30, 1939, Reichstag Speech. (Public Domain)
The Beginning
According to the National Socialists, their people —the Aryans— were descended from an old, ancient society, the Atlanteans.
The early progenitors of this theory were the Thule Gesellschaft or the Thule Society, which was named “after a legendary prehistoric Nordic civilization,” according to Paul Roland, author of Nazis and the Occult. This group was composed of many high-ranking Nazi officials, including future deputy to Hitler, Rudolph Hess; the “Nazi philosopher” Alfred Rosenberg; and Dietrich Eckart, founder of the German Worker’s Party (DAP) and mentor to a young Hitler.
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In their interpretation of history, the Thule Society reasoned that the heirs to the Atlantean race (the Aryans, as previously mentioned), after the devastation brought to Atlantis by great, roaring cataclysms, spread across the world, founding prominent societies such as those associated with the Egyptian, Mayan, Greek, and Roman civilizations.
This rationale allowed the Nazis to dehumanize ‘antagonizing’ forces while also bolstering the image of their people —their “race”— as superhumans that not only once had a successful, highly advanced civilization, but were the founders of all other prominent civilizations up to that point in history.
However, the Thule Society would dissolve before the ascension of Hitler into high German society. The Nazis later banned ‘unofficial’ occult groups not because they didn’t believe in them — but because they did. They preferred to keep it a secret, as something to be shared only between occult initiates.
The Symbol for the Thule Society. (NsMn/CC BY-SA 3.0)
An Odd Belief System
“Thus the highest purpose of the folkish State is the care for the preservation of those racial primal elements which, supplying culture, create the beauty and dignity of a higher humanity…” wrote Adolph Hitler in his infamous autobiography, Mein Kampf. This quote summarizes the general concept of the nationalist ideology Ariosophy, which accompanied many esoteric belief systems regarding the Aryan Race and their position in a ‘decadent’ world.
Originally founded by prominent Austrian occultist and Wotanist Guido von List in Vienna, the group attempted to unify a disunited, defeated German people after their defeat in the First World War under the pseudo-ideologies of Volkisch (“of the people”) nationalism, highlighting, again in Mr. Roland’s words, “an idealized past exemplified by chivalry and the nobility of rural life” whose advocates were “tainted with virulent racism.”
The German people were broken, and defeated, so the Ariosophists tried to rally a fragile people under the guise of ‘history’ and ‘the true nature of the people.’ Their belief system would taint the fabric of the German nation for decades to come, but that wasn’t obvious to many in the period after World War I.
Hitler, who was a resident of Vienna in his youth, would, among other influences, be persuaded by groups like the Ariosophists to believe that the German people, descended from God-like nobility, were thus born to inherit the earth and to rid it of ‘vermin’ and ‘disease.’
Guido von List, the ‘father’ of Ariosophy. (Das Bundesarchiv/CC BY-SA 3.0)
The Spear of Destiny
It is said that when Jesus was punctured while dying on the cross, his torturer, Longinus, held what was to be called the “Spear of Destiny.” And when the blood of Christ fell into Longinus’ eyes, his near-blinded vision was cured, making Longinus a devout follower of Christ. That is where the story begins and where its influence on the Nazis’ search for spiritual power attains much of its foundation.
Many great leaders of history were said to have wielded this holy scepter, including figures such as Justinian, Charlemagne, Otto the Great, and Pope John VII. Hitler, in turn, knew that to be a great leader in the annals of not just European but in world history, the Spear was the key to eternal power.
It was said by Trevor Ravenscroft —a controversial ‘crypto-historian’— in his book Spear of Destiny that, at age 19, a young, dithering Hitler stepped foot into the Hofburg Museum in Vienna (again, the location of the Ariospohists) and, upon seeing the Spear, was entranced by its power. He knew it was the key that would unlock the world for the taking by the Aryan Race. He needed it.
Twenty-five years later, in 1938, Hitler entered Vienna again —this time under the triumphant spirit of the ‘awakened’ German people and the banner of the swastika. The relic was secured by General Heinrich Himmler, who, with his SS, personally guarded the Spear until Hitler’s arrival. Finally, after almost three decades of further defeat, hardships, and privation, he stood in front of that most sacred idol, that which, millennia before, was soaked with the holy blood of Christ himself. The Fuhrer had the power of the world —the heavens— in his hands, his ambition stiffened in his hell-bent urge to ‘Aryanize’ the West (the world, even) and rid it of its ‘Jewish materialist spirit’.
We, however, know that the Spear —assuming, acrostically, that it was the ‘real deal’— seemingly did not assist Hitler with his pursuits of Aryanization for the world, as he committed suicide on April 30, 1945, the Nazi regime collapsing at around the same time, too.
Longinus piercing the side of Jesus Christ with the Spear of Destiny by Jacques Joseph Tissot. (Public Domain)
Astrology and the Third Reich
The Nazis, as we have seen, were not —at least before their ascension to power— opposed to using pseudo-scientifica, occult reasoning for why they, ‘the master race,’ were ordained by God (whichever god in their odd Gnostic belief systems that may have been) to inherit the earth. It is not surprising, then, to see that the utilization of astrology was prominent in at least a few esoteric Nationalist Socialist circles.
Without going into specifics, Hitler’s horoscope revealed that, due to the position of his birth (April 20, 1889), he would have a strong, pragmatic, domineering personality, though he would also be a very intolerant individual. This would be reinforced by amateur astrologist Elsbeth Ebertin’s prediction in 1923 when, analyzing the new, upcoming, influential leader’s horoscope, she saw that this man, born April of ’89, “must definitely be taken seriously and is destined for the role of a leader in future struggles.” It seems her predictions weren't far off.
It is questionable how interested Hitler was in his horoscope —or astrology, in general— but there is no doubt, as previously stated, that it had its role in his ideological pursuits. For example, in the summer of 1943, Heinrich Himmler, to locate the captured former leader of fascist Italy, Benito Mussolini, utilized a team of astrologers to find Il Duce. Himmler and the SS were able to find Mussolini in September 1943, due to the astrologers, in Himmler’s reasoning, though, more likely, it was due to breaking Allied radio messages instead.
Heinrich Himmler, avid occultist and influential Nazi leader. (Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-S72707 /CC-BY-SA 3.0)
In addition to the afore-mentioned Frau Ebertin and even the legendary French astrologer Nostradamus, the ‘fortune teller’ Karl Ernst Krafft would be very influential in Nazi astrological predictions. Krafft, in November 1939, warned Nazi leadership that, within the coming week —between November 7th and 10th of 1939— there would be an attempt on the Fuhrer’s life. This warning was, due to its extremity and its pseudo-conviction, passed off as an odd, arcane prediction that had no basis in military intelligence or genuine reasoning.
However, on November 8, 1939, at a reunion of a group of ‘veterans’ of the Beer Hall Putsch sixteen years earlier, Hitler walked out of the building right before a bomb went off, which killed seven people and resulted in 70 injuries. Krafft’s prediction was now taken so seriously that Rudolph Hess, Deputy Fuhrer of the Nazi Party, took Krafft into custody, though he managed to convince his captors of his innocence and would be influential in Nazi esoteric circles until he died in 1945 in German captivity. He was taken prisoner because of the distrust caused by Hess’ infamous escape to England.
The Ice World and its Hollow Earth
The Austrian engineer Hanns Hörbiger, in 1894, postulated that our solar system was formed due to a large ball of ice colliding with the sun, thus creating much-molten matter which, eventually, cooled and solidified into individual stars, planets, and masses of material. He arrived at this conclusion when, while observing molten liquid being poured onto the snow, he had a vision that the solar system, like this liquid and snow process, was formed the same way.
This pseudo-scientific theory of his was called Welteislehre (World Ice Theory) and would, through its fantastical reasoning, influence Nazi ideology. According to Hörbiger — there was a race of giants (due to gravitational differences) that lived on Earth before one of the three moons orbiting the planet collided with it, causing the near-extinction of this once-great race of men, leaving the few remaining giants to rebuild their civilization, creating Atlantis and leading the way for Aryan expansion.
Of course, his radical theories regarding the conception and evolution of modern humanity were ridiculed by the scientific establishment. Through the multitude of contradictions, however, Hörbiger defended his thesis against perceived “Jewish-Liberal science,” which he saw as detrimental to the development of humanity (this science being our conventional scientific processes and reasoning). After Hörbiger died in 1931, followers and devotees would merge Welteislehre into official Nazi research, notably in the pseudo-scientific organization the Ahnenerbe.
In addition to these already eccentric claims about giants and astrology, and other odd belief systems, there is still more, including the Hollow Earth Theory. In the Nazi rendition of it, instead of the center of the Earth being made up of a molten mixture of iron and magma there is a second sun, and there exists a race of beings that inhabit the center of the earth —perhaps aliens too— living in great prosperity. This fantastical place was known as Agartha, and was written about for the first time by French occultist Joseph Alexandre Saint-Yves in the 1880s when he supposedly encountered these mythical beings.
World War I ace fighter pilot Peter Bender, for example, “believed that the human race is living inside a large sphere, that the sky is its inner skin and that the stars are no more than glimmers of light seen through the holes in this greater universe.” The high-ranking Luftwaffe commander Hermann Goering subscribed not only to Welteislehre but also to the Hollow Earth Theory, further demonstrating how prominently these theories influenced top Nazi officials. Lunacy, it seemed, infected the Nazi conscience and ability to reason.
An illustration of the Hollow Earth, from The Goddess of Atvatabar by William Bradshaw (1892) (C. Durand Chapman/Public Domain)
“Aryan Archaeology” and the Ahnenerbe
All these factors have influenced Nazi philosophy and their interpretation of history, and it is best shown through the pseudo-scientific research organization, the Ahnenerbe. Established in 1935 by Henrich Himmler, the Ahnenerbe was, from its inception, created to promote and celebrate ‘Aryan heritage’ and to discover the ‘lost history’ of the Aryan people. Originally, it was a small organization, though, in February 1938 Himmler had transferred the Excavations Department of the SS into the Ahnenerbe, subsequently promoting excavations at sites throughout Germany to further their research.
These excavations, however, would yield little support for the existence of a mythological Aryan ‘super race’; rather, only Nordic runes with swastikas on them —which was very common at the time— were found, leading to their general overuse in explaining the history of the Aryan man. In its attempts to rewrite Germanic-European history, the Ahnenerbe found refuge in academic journals and publications thanks to the Reich’s regime, while others with dissenting opinions were censored.
Apart from their archaeology, the Ahnenerbe also conducted field research, notably their 1938-1939 German Expedition in Tibet, where five men were tasked with “discovering” the “source of origin of the Aryan race.” Hitler, for example, believed that the Indian people migrated from the north after the fall of the Atlantean civilization; thus, the pursuit of archaeological and anthropological evidence — “Aryan archaeology” — was important if the Nazis were to legitimize their power and ‘superiority’ further.
The two notable members of the expedition were Ernst Schäfer and Bruno Beger, the former a zoologist and SS officer and the latter an anthropologist specializing in racial sciences — two perfect candidates for this expedition.
German racial anthropologist Bruno Beger conducting a cranial skull measurement on a Tibetan man (Das Bundesarchiv/CC BY-SA 3.0)
Beger, the anthropologist, took skull measurements of 376 Tibetans and around 2,000 photographs to be used as evidence to confirm his research. Schäfer, for his part, as a hunter and zoologist, studied and documented plants and animals, including the Schapi, a previously unknown species of wild mountain goat, and also made a collection of thousands of plant seeds.
Beger, too, concluded that the Tibetan people were a mix between the Asian Mongol and European peoples, the latter being mostly pronounced within the aristocracy, according to him — though apart from this ‘discovery,’ the mission, as prescribed by the Ahnenerbe, was a failure that didn’t produce evidence of a lost race of ‘supermen’ living high in the Himalayan Mountains.
Though it didn’t have as many occult connections compared to previous research efforts and esoteric conspiracy theories —apart from the Atlantean migration theory— the Tibet Expedition shows how far the Nazis went in their efforts to legitimize their tyranny using their versions of “science” and “history.”
What We Learn from This
These bizarre obsessions further discredit Nazi ideology, for, as we have seen, much of the reasoning behind Hitler and his National Socialists was based on highly questionable esoteric, occult theories that had no real basis within history, science, archaeology, or anthropology. It was all made up for the Third Reich to have ‘historical precedent’ and ‘justification’ to rule over ‘lesser beings.’
Topics like these are fascinating to those who are avid students of history and other humanities, or even of scientific, topics. But everyone, as the saying goes, “must learn from history, lest we be doomed to repeat it.”
Top Image: Aerial photograph of Wewelsburg, the castle chosen by Heinrich Himmler to represent the SS and to be the center of occult practices in Nazi Germany. Source: Carston Steger/CC BY-SA 4.0.
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