9. ORIGINS OF THE ARYAN RACE

The Ancient Greek philosopher Plato first told the captivating story of Atlantis in

360 B.C. Now over 2,000 years old, the story tells of a powerful utopian island society

that sinks into the sea. Most mainstream scholars have concluded that Atlantis was a fictional

place, but this hasn’t stopped some people from believing in it, including the Nazis.

The forerunner to the Nazi Party, the German Worker’s Party (DAP), was partially founded

by members of a group called the Thule Society, which was dedicated to tracing the origins

of the so-called “Aryan race.” Included among its ranks were several prominent Nazis,

including Rudolf Hess, who became one of Hitler’s right-hand men; Alfred Rosenburg, who oversaw

Germany’s occupied territories in Eastern Europe, and DAP founder Dietrich Eckhart.

The Thule Society believed that an ancient Aryan race lived on a mythical island called

Thule, more commonly known as Atlantis and that modern-day Nordic people descended from

that group. Even more bizarre was the group’s belief that interstellar deities called the

Theozoa deliberately bred with the first Aryans using electricity.

These ideas were influenced by the views of occultists Guido von List and Lanz von Liebenfels,

who coined the term “Ariosophy” regarding the occultism concerning the Aryans. There

was an entire field of study for the far-flung beliefs surrounding Aryan origins.

8. HIMMLER’S “RASPUTIN”

While the Thule Society influenced some of the Nazis’ beliefs, Karl Maria Wiligut dissolved

it before Hitler rose to power, along with many other occult groups. They did this under

the command of top-ranking Nazi official Heinrich Himmler’s personal occultist, who wanted

to ensure that his version of occultism prevailed over all others.

Wiligut’s convoluted belief system held that German culture dated back to 228,000

B.C. when mythical creatures like giants and dwarves supposedly inhabited the earth and

it had three suns revolving around it. According to his made-up religion, which centered on

the worship of a god named Irmin, Wiligut insisted that he was descended from kings

who existed during this alleged time of origin.

He was also a diagnosed schizophrenic, but this didn’t stop Himmler from treating the

man’s word as scripture. The top-ranking Nazi official was especially attracted to

Wiligut’s philosophy because it offered a much-desired alternative explanation for

Christianity’s traditionally accepted Judaic roots.

Himmler consulted Wiligut often and made major decisions based on his so-called “prophecies.”

This is how he chose Wewelsburg castle as the SS operational headquarters, where he

dedicated a room to a crystal symbolizing the Holy Grail.

Even after the war ended, Himmler maintained his belief that the Germanic gods would be

restored.

7. DEMONIC POSSESSION OF HITLER

There’s no doubt that Adolf Hitler was evil, and his sheer ruthlessness begs the question

of exactly what caused him to be that way. Perhaps lacking a better explanation, many

have landed on demonic possession as the answer.

Signs of a “dark presence” occupying Hitler’s mind first appeared during his childhood when

the dictator’s close childhood friend August Kubizek said that Hitler spoke as if another

being were inside his body. Kubizek also said that Hitler was just 17 years old when he

began talking about “returning Germany to its former glory.”

Hitler’s personal library also suggests that he voluntarily dabbled in demonic possession.

His collection reportedly included a copy of Ernst Schertel’s Magic: History, Theory,

and Practice. Written in 1923, the book focuses primarily on the demonic aspect of mysticism.

One of the many passages marked by Hitler reads: “He who does not have the demonic

seed within himself will never give birth to a magical world.”

Alice A. Bailey, who authored many books about the Theosophist religion, wrote during World

War II that dark forces possessed Hitler. Her follower, Benjamin Creme, said that the

dictator and his entourage, along with other evil groups in the world, released the destructive

energies of the Antichrist.

Does this mean that demons possessed Hitler? Not necessarily. Lending too much credibility

to such theories could even be seen as a way of reducing Hitler’s culpability for the

atrocities he committed, even if that’s not the believer’s intention.

6. THE NEW WORLD ORDER

There’s a longstanding belief among many that Hitler and the Thule Society conspired

to establish a secret totalitarian regime that functioned as a precursor to the New

World Order.

The Nazis indeed had plans to take over all of Europe. Propaganda described this using

the term Neuordnung, which is often misinterpreted as “New World Order” but refers to the

predicted “re-structurization” of borders that would occur in the postwar world if everything

went according to plan. In this sense, the Germans certainly planned to implement a new

political order.

In his 1941 paper Neuropa: Hitler’s New World Order, famed American historian W. E.

B. Du Bois wrote of the “new order in Europe which Hitler proposes to establish.” He

noted that while most American experts dismissed the possibility, he knew that the changes

going on in Europe were major based on his time in Germany before the Nazis rose to power

and turned democracy into a planned economy.

Hitler’s plan for world domination extended past Europe and into the U.S., where he dispatched

eight secret agents to carry out a plan called Operation Pastorius in 1942. Luckily, two

of the men defected and the information they provided helped authorities foil the plot.

But there’s no evidence suggesting that Hitler and the Thule Society collaborated

to carry out a shared vision of creating a New World Order.

Do you think a plan for a New World Order still exists, or is it just a conspiracy theory?

Tell me what you think in the comments. Be sure to subscribe and hit the like button!

5. THE HUNT FOR HOLY TREASURES

Occult ideology captivated SS leader Heinrich Himmler. As someone with a major disdain for

conventional Christianity, he relied on a bizarre set of spiritual beliefs to justify

his hateful and racist views, as well as the Nazi desire for global supremacy.

Despite his aversion to Christianity, various things rooted in Christian tradition fascinated

Himmler. For example, he saw the SS as an elite organization structured similarly to

the Teutonic Knights, a religious order that was founded during the 12th century to aid

Christian travelers during their pilgrimages to the Holy Land.

Himmler was also obsessed with the legend of the Holy Grail, to which he dedicated an

entire room at Wewelsburg Castle. It appears as though he was attracted to fabled artifacts

that, perhaps, in his mind, symbolized power.

Besides the Holy Grail, Himmler was preoccupied with Thor’s Hammer. He even wrote to the

think tank Ahnenerbe, which was dedicated to giving academic credibility to Nazi racial

ideology, and described Thor’s hammer as “an early, highly developed war weapon of

our forefathers.” Himmler told the organization to scour the “northern Germanic Aryan cultural

world” for evidence of an understanding of Thor’s Hammer.

In 1940, Himmler embarked on a personal mission to find the Holy Grail. He went to the Montserrat

mountain range in Catalonia based on his belief that it represented the real “Montsalvat,”

which is where the Grail is in an opera written by composer Richard Wagner.

The opera, called “Parsifal,” is based on a German poem called “Parzival” which

had inspired another SS officer, Otto Rahn, to hunt for the Grail years earlier in 1931.

Rahn’s interpretation of the poem led him to the Pyrenees region of southern France,

where he suspected that members of the heretical Christian sect known as the Cathars possessed

knowledge of the Grail’s exact location. He believed he could find the answers inside

Montségur, a mountain fortress, and the last Cathar stronghold to fall during the Crusades.

Rahn did not find the Holy Grail. But his theories and ideology resonated with Himmler

and other Nazis, who latched onto occult views in the years following his failed quest.

4. THE SPEAR OF DESTINY

The Hofburg Spear, also known as the Spear of Destiny or the Holy Lance, is the alleged

lance that pierced Jesus’s side as he was being crucified. Before officially embarking

upon his quest for world domination, Hitler reportedly set his sights on the holy relic,

which he believed would give him the power he needed to take over the planet. When the

Nazis occupied Austria in 1938, he supposedly dispatched an SS squad for the specific task

of acquiring the Spear of Destiny.

Author Trevor Ravenscroft wrote that Hitler’s obsession with the artifact began early in

his childhood. He claimed he had access to the notes of Austrian philosopher and Holy

Grail researcher Dr. Walter Stein, who allegedly knew Hitler as a young boy.

In his twisted biography Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote of the spear and an accompanying collection

of artifacts, known as the Reichskleinodien or Imperial Regalia. It’s been said that

his first port of call following the Nazi takeover of Austria was the Hofmuseum in Vienna,

where they keep the Spear of Destiny.

Some even believe that Hitler was so obsessed with the spear that it wasn’t just part

of his plan for a global takeover, but that it drove his mission to conquer the world.

The Nazis seized the Imperial Regalia and took it to Nuremberg, where they displayed

it at the 1938 Party Congress. They then moved the collection into a bunker near Nuremberg

Castle. The Allies recovered the Imperial Regalia after the war and shipped it back

to Austria.

While most historians agree the Nazis captured the Imperial Regalia at the beginning of the

war, they’re skeptical of the claims surrounding Hitler’s alleged preoccupation with the

artifact.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments below

3. WORLD ICE THEORY The ideology that the Third Reich used to

justify its horrifying crimes against humanity was predicated on bizarre supernatural beliefs

and conspiracy theories. One such belief was a creation story known as World Ice Theory

(“Welteislehre”) or Glacial Cosmology (“Glazial-Kosmogonie”).

The theory first appeared in a 1912 book by Austrian engineer and inventor Hanns Hörbiger,

who claimed that celestial bodies made of ice controlled the development of the universe,

as well as the course of cosmic and human history. There’s absolutely no academic

credibility behind this belief, which was inspired by a so-called vision that Hörbiger

had one day in 1894. He was staring up at the moon and suddenly decided that it must

be made of ice and that there was no other explanation for how it could be so bright.

Hörbiger’s outlandish theory took an even wilder turn after a dream he had about a swinging

pendulum floating in space. He later cited the dream as definitive proof that Newton’s

laws of motion were wrong and that, in his words, “the sun’s gravitational pull ceases

to exist at three times the distance of Neptune.”

In a nutshell, World Ice Theory claims that a massive star collided with a dead star filled

with water, causing the water to splash everywhere and freeze into enormous blocks of ice, creating

the Milky Way galaxy and our solar system. It also alleges that the Earth has had many

moons before, that they were all made of ice, and that our past moons had crashed into the

planet.

World Ice Theory devotees have linked these alleged crashes to the biblical flood described

in the Old Testament and the destruction of the mythical island of Atlantis.

Hörbiger dismissed naysayers as fake but failed to explain his beliefs. Instead, he

responded with statements such as “Calculation can only lead you astray” and “Either

you believe in me and learn, or you will be treated as the enemy.”

Many adhered to his claims, including top-ranking members of the Third Reich.

2. BIODYNAMIC AGRICULTURE

The Nazis bought so heavily into occult beliefs, they relied on biodynamic agriculture in the

development of athletic fields in Berlin for the 1936 Olympics.

As a forerunner to modern organic farming, certain aspects of biodynamic farming make

sense or at least don’t seem crazy. For example, it emphasizes forgoing synthetic

fertilizers, as well as pesticides and herbicides, and instead uses manures, composts, and other

natural materials. Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner, in response to local farmers’ complaints

about soil degradation and ailing crops and livestock after prolonged use of chemical

fertilizers, introduced biodynamic farming in 1924.

But the philosophy behind this alternative form of agriculture is rather abstract, to

put it politely. Simply put, biodynamic farming is based on the concept of harnessing cosmic

forces in the soil and the stars. There are varying forms of it, many of which rely on

an astrological sowing and planting calendar.

Opponents have criticized biodynamic agriculture for the arguably ineffective mineral and quartz

additives and other methods that are supposed to help yield a successful harvest. One alleged

way to harvest “cosmic forces in the soil” involves burying a cow’s horn stuffed with

quartz.

There’s no scientific evidence to suggest that biodynamic farming is more effective

than traditional methods, but the concept gained enough popularity to still be in use

by some modern farms. And it’s no surprise that the Nazis latched onto it, given their

tendency toward mysticism and the supernatural.

1. VAMPIRISM

In his disturbing autobiography, Mein Kampf, Hitler repeatedly described Jews as “vampires”

and “bloodsuckers” who are out to destroy the rest of humanity. He made bizarre claims,

including that wherever Jewish people go, the “host” group dies out. The delusional

dictator said that once the Jews have wiped out one host group, they have to move on to

a new target, or otherwise they would die.

He associated them with undesirable traits like an attraction to the smell of decaying

flesh, degeneracy, and a desire to exploit, rather than “cultivate,” everything in

sight. Nazis used these heavily flawed views in their propaganda to justify the removal

of Jews from society and the ensuing atrocities of the Holocaust. Depicting them as vicious,

non-human monsters like vampires helped to desensitize the Germans, especially those

who were aware of what went on inside the hellish concentration and extermination camps.

Any rational person knows that there’s absolutely no truth behind Hitler’s alarming beliefs,

so it’s hard for most of us to imagine how someone could buy into his rhetoric. But Hitler

and many Nazi leaders believed in the occult and conspiracy theories which they used to

their advantage! Thanks for watching