The Top Card-Carrying NSDAP Esoterics
Intro
It’s the stuff of legend that Adolf Hitler – and, indeed, the entire Third Reich – was somehow empowered by occult forces.
According to one line of thought, the architect of German National Socialism was a powerful and shadowy occult adept identified as geopolitical strategist Karl Haushofer.
“Introduced by [Rudolf] Hess” – whom we will meet later – “General Karl Haushofer visited Hitler every day …[when the latter] was confined to prison at Landsberg” following the failed Beer Hall Putsch. Haushofer “spent hours with [Hitler,] expounding his theories …”. And it’s beyond question that Haushofer’s vision heavily influenced his pupil’s autobiographical Mein Kampf.
But, what researchers Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier insist upon, in their eye-popping volume The Morning of the Magicians, is that Haushofer exhibited “another personality – as a disciple of Schopenhauer[,] who had taken up Buddhism, [and as] an admirer of [Jesuit founder] Ignatius de Loyola…”. Haushofer is painted as the mystical mastermind behind Hitler.
Pauwels and Bergier suggest “that it was Haushofer who …chose the swastika as an emblem” for the new movement – the symbol being the ensign of an Aryan savior, as explained in Part 1.
Haushofer was “the magician …[and] secret master” pulling the strings of National Socialism.
Nowadays, it’s fashionable to disparage this as a flight of fancy. Tho… much the same judgment was expressed by an establishment insider, attorney Sidney S. Alderman – during the International Military Tribunal, no less. Colloquially known as the “Nuremberg Trials,” the IMT gave Alderman all the backing of United States Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson.
On his own, Pauwels would connect Haushofer to the influential Armenian mystic George Ivanovich “G. I.” Gurdjieff.
We have mentioned Gurdjieff in passing before – such as in our video “10 Occultist Spies.”
We intend to feature him more prominently in our upcoming “Top Ten 20-Century Occultists.”
Those who fell under his sway – whether through books or personal encounters – include the offbeat “New Age guru” Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, at least one of Tibet’s Dalai Lamas, and – if you believe the stories – the erstwhile Führer.
Naysayers are legion. But it’s worth contemplating the reasons such tales have plausibility – among them being the fact that many influential N.S principals had esoterica on their dossiers. So, in this video, we’ll pick up where we left off in Part 1. And we’ll catalog our top ten (10) occultists who operated within Hitler’s Germany.
Caveats and Disclaimers
Technically, starting around 1933, esoterics began receiving pushback from the government. By 1935, the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) had laws outlawing Masonic-style secret societies. These enactments – advanced by interior ministers such as Hermann Goering and Wilhelm Frick – negatively affected numerous völkisch neopagans, occultists, and organizations beyond Freemasonry. Orders were enforced by the “Security Service,” or SD, under Reinhard Heydrich. A few key groups – like the often-shocking Thule Society – had officially disbanded years before the crackdown.
Nevertheless, at various times, Germany was rife with occult activity. One of the most colorful of the era’s esoterics was the flamboyant hypnotist who comes in at number ten.
10 — Erik Jan Hanussen
In point of fact, Hanussen’s lasting reputation is partially owed to the Central Intelligence Agency’s principal predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services.
According to O.S.S. psychologist Walter Charles Langer, Adolf Hitler had been instructed in crowd manipulation, hypnotic suggestion, and even “mind control” by an expert “mentalist.” What name did Langer supply in his secret report? Erik Jan Hanussen.
Born Herschel Chaim Steinschneider, Hanussen eventually achieved fame enough to open a successful nightclub, which he named the “Palace of Occultism.” In this personal theater, Hanussen showcased a series of performances blending astrology, clairvoyance, mind-reading, telepathy, and other similar, “paranormal” talents.
Hanussen’s Wikipedia article claims that he was the real-life inspiration for the scheming magician Eduard Abramovich – alias “Eisenheim” – in the 2006 movie, The Illusionist, featuring actors Edward Norton and Jessica Biel.
Money for Hanussen’s extravagant and egocentric “palace” came from the success of his astrology-based newspaper. The publication garnered wide circulation based upon Hanussen’s renown as a “fortune teller.”
Hanussen was reputed to have predicted the infamous Reichstag Fire of February 27, 1933. Occurring one month into Adolf Hitler’s chancellorship, the event is routinely cited as a milestone in the inception of National Socialism. It also appeared to be an unsettling vindication of the National-Socialist claim that a vast Communist conspiracy had taken root in German soil.
One month after the politically convenient fire, sometime between the late evening of March 24 and the early morning of the twenty-fifth (1933), Hanussen was evidently assassinated. His death followed a brief arrest and interrogation by the Sturmabteilung (SA). This entire episode led many observers to suspect that the Reichstag fire had been an “inside job.” On this version of the story, and owing to his compulsion to wow his audiences with semblant prescience, Hanussen spilled the beans on sensitive plot details and became a liability.
It appears highly likely that Hanussen was running an ambitious “confidence-scam” operation. According to biographers, Hanussen had attempted to make a living as “a society reporter” back in his Vienna days. “During this time he [supposedly] blackmailed wealthy citizens with [the threat of publishing] rumors in tabloids and [he did, in fact, publish] the tricks of a fraudulent clairvoyant…”. This is ironic, since “he later adapted [similar techniques] himself.”
During the rise of National Socialism, Hanussen maintained profitable “contacts with the SA leadership,” and he was attempting to gain leverage over them “by financing their gambling debts and other [activities], especially [the procurement of] sexual services.”
In other words, he was something of a 1930s-German version of Jeffrey Epstein. And, like Epstein, Hanussen was not ethnically German.
And that leads us to note that Hanussen was also part of a little-known – or, at least, seldom-acknowledged – group that we’ll call Jewish (or part-Jewish) National Socialists.
Prominent members of this category include Luftwaffe Field Marshal Erhard Milch and Three-Star General Helmuth Wilberg.
One of the more remarkable, a proud descendant of the Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, was high naval officer Franz Viktor Mendelssohn. A master shipbuilder since World War I, he joined the party in 1934, according to Bryan Mark Rigg.
Of course, we can’t forget Emil Maurice. Not only was Maurice Adolf Hitler’s first personal chauffeur, but he was also a charter member – and some would say a founder – of the dreaded Schutzstaffel (SS). Staggering!
Lastly, we’ll mention Vice Admiral Bernhard Rogge. “Although he had a Jewish grandfather, Rogge received the …German Blood Certificate …from Hitler, declaring him to be an Aryan.”
For some time during World War II, Rogge was in command of an armed, ex-merchant ship named the Atlantis. And that seems as good as any opportunity to segue into our next figure…
9 — Alfred Rosenberg
Rosenberg had been a refugee from the Bolshevik takeover of Tsarist Russia.
He became a protégé of Dietrich Eckart and was quickly integrated into Völkisch circles in Germany – including into Rudolf von Sebottendorff’s Thule Society that we surveyed in Part 1.
Officially, Rosenberg had a ponderous and nearly untranslatable title. But, he operated something like the “Führer’s overseer” for education and training in matters relating to intellectual development and worldview reckoning.
In terms of philosophical outlook, his definitive statement was The Myth of the Twentieth Century – “…the most important Nazi text after Mein Kampf.”
The word “myth” here means “guiding idea” rather than “made-up story.” For Rosenberg, this starting premise has to do with “…the death of Materialism and Individualism” and the anticipated rise of a neopagan Volk.
In this, Rosenberg was shaped by Indian thought, the music of Richard Wagner, and the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer. For this background, see Part 1.
Rosenberg’s political thinking was indebted to the British-born theoretician Houston Stewart Chamberlain who, in 1899, published his pæan to Teutonism, The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century.
Within the pages of Rosenberg’s volume, the author detailed an “occult history” of the Aryan race whose “original home” had been the fabled and ill-fated lost civilization of Atlantis.
Far from the sun-kissed islands of Bimini or the conflict-riddled “Holy Land” of Palestine – two oft-favored locations for the vanished continent – Rosenberg situated Atlantis near the North Pole. This hyperborean focus was seamlessly woven into a tapestry that included the legendary Thule and that explained the symbolism of the “Black Sun.” The latter – found, for instance, as a mosaic in the SS-embellished Castle at Wewelsburg – was a stylized recollection of the arctic summer, when daylight was visible at midnight.
Along with William Scott-Elliot and numerous others, Rosenberg integrated the story of Atlantis into speculative anthropology.
But the genesis of this Atlantean mythos owes much to Theosophical foundress, H. P. Blavatsky, whom we profiled in our first installment …
…as well as in “Top 10 Occultists of All Time.”
On this roughly Blavatskian view, “…humankind has evolved through different phases of spiritual growth and intellectual development, each of these being known as a root race. The present state of humanity is broadly identified as the fifth root race. It was preceded by the Atlantean (fourth) and Lemurian (third) root races, both of which were engulfed in cataclysms.” In this picture, “…the blonde-haired blue-eyed race …[descended from the] Atlantean.”
Finally, Rosenberg was noteworthy for his opposition to the Roman Catholic Church. His method, in this, “is a staple of occult literature” – namely, playing up the “theme …that the true religion… has been concealed by an establishment conspiracy.”
Rosenberg lauded “the Albigensians, Waldenses, Cathars, Arnoldists, Stedingers, Huguenots, and reformed Lutherans,” as exemplars. Whoever was vilified as a “Heretic” by the Vatican was eulogized by Rosenberg as a “martyr of free research” and a “hero of Nordic philosophy.”
For Rosenberg, pure expression of volk free thinking was epitomized in people like the thirteenth-century Dominican neoplatonist Meister Eckhart. We have referred to him in several past videos including our deep-dive into “Neoplatonism.”
8 — Rudolf John Gorsleben
A one-time proponent of Ariosophy, he was a member of von Liebenfels’ Order of New Templars. Later, in Munich, he had brief dealings with Dietrich Eckart and Julius Streicher and would ultimately join the Thule Society.
Gorsleben’s lasting impact – if not memorialization of his name – was guaranteed by his groundbreaking modern translation of the Edda which, he believed, contained the vestiges of an ancient Aryan religion.
Building upon a foundation of esoteric genealogy laid by Guido von List, and continuators like Johannes Balzli, Gorsleben advanced an idiosyncratic etymology of the word “race,” which he leveraged to argue that pure-bred Germans (in particular) had peculiar claims to innate divinity.
Consequently, Gorsleben’s project, aborted by his premature death, became a quest to reawaken latent Aryan “occult powers” by employing a combination of hermetic, Kabbalistic, and magical procedures and genetic segregation. Gorsleben “elaborated upon the wisdom of the runes, mantic sciences, the Edda, and Teutonic astrology.”
Much of this was in line with the professed goals of Madame Blavatsky’s society. And when we get to Heinrich Himmler (in just a few minutes), we’ll see one result of this new Theosophical reading of the Edda. Specifically, it inspired a whole crop of esoteric archaeologists that combed the earth looking for evidence of Aryan prehistory – all under the ægis of the SS.
Believe it or not, a lot of this spirit has been carried over into some “Ancient-Astronaut” and “Ley-Line” investigations and movements as far flung as the New Age and Transhumanism.
7 — Gregor Schwartz-Bostunitsch
This Russian-born writer became estranged from his homeland following the Bolshevik Revolution, on which we hope to have more to say in the future.
Along with Gen. Anton Denikin, Cossack Grigory Semyonov, Baron Pyotr Wrangel, and others, Bostunitsch seems to have been highly placed within “White Russian” resistance movements.
These were so named because they contrasted with the red symbolism of the Communists.
After fleeing Soviet Russia and its murderous apparatchiki, he traveled – ostensibly, in search of mystical as well as political insight.
At first, Bostunitsch decamped for the Caucasus Mountains, where he met an unknown teacher that the late researcher James Webb identified as the pervasive G. I. Gurdjieff.
For more on him, look for our upcoming video “Top Ten 20th-Century Occultists.”
Later, Bostunitsch made his way to Bulgaria. There, he was received by a circle of Theosophists gathered around Peter Deunov, founder of the Universal White Brotherhood.
Intuitively, there is a parallel to the “Great White Brotherhood” of Madame Blavatsky, the Russian co-founder of the Theosophical Society whom we discussed in Part One.
The basic idea is that a group of perfected entities – known as “Ascended Masters” – guide or control the mundane world from behind the scenes.
Bostunitsch then mixed these ideas with Rudolf Steiner’s “Anthroposophy,” which our peripatetic expatriate discovered while shuttling between Yugoslavia and Germany.
Once in Germany, however, he abandoned the Steiner school – which he (like Dietrich Eckart) came to regard as part of a Judeo-Masonic conspiracy – and embraced Ariosophy instead.
Changing his surname to Schwartz-Bostunitsch, he set up shop with Alfred Rosenberg’s news agency and joined the S.S. in 1944.
From then on, he was much in demand as a lecturer. Given the honorific “Doktor Gregor,” Schwartz-Bostunitsch spoke throughout the Reich on Masonic intrigues.
“In May 1946, his name appeared for the last time on a prisoner list of SS officers compiled by the High Command of the American Armed Forces; this list is in a Moscow archive.” “[H]is eventual fate is unknown.”
6 — Karl Ernst Krafft
Born in Basel, Switzerland in 1939, he was regarded as an expert and insightful graphologist. “Graphology” refers to the purported determination of personality and psychological traits by scrutinizing the way a subject writes his or her letters.
This has been alluded to or mentioned in such films as Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, from 2011, and David Fincher’s Zodiac, of 2007.
In Donnie Darko, the 2001 cult classic by James “Richard” Kelly, police investigators work with school administrators to try to identify a vandal using a clumsy handwriting-analysis technique.
Elements of this were also present in the horrifying, 1888 Jack-the-Ripper serial-murder case, which had been overseen by then-commissioner Sir Charles Warren.
In a future video, we may turn our attention to some little-considered aspects of that momentous occurrence. It’s of interest for numerous reasons, not least of which was the fact that Warren was a high-ranking Freemason and later a principal founder of the significant Quatuor Coronati “research lodge” in London.
Even earlier, starting in 1867, Warren secretly explored the catacombs beneath the Jerusalem Temple Mount – a site that is increasingly portentous in the latest Arab-Israeli “war.”
In any case, Karl Krafft’s primary field was astrology. And, according to his admirers, he “had already proved himself a talented seer” when “[o]n November 2, 1939, he …predicted [imminent] mortal danger for [Adolf] Hitler…”.
Indeed, less than a week later, “[o]n November 8, Hitler spoke at a rally commemorating the anniversary of the Munich Beer Hall Putsch.” Moments after leaving the main podium, a bomb went off, devastating the stage and caving in the building’s superstructure. The explosion maimed over sixty people, and killed eight bystanders.
The first instinct of German police was to suspect Krafft’s involvement in what was obviously a well-planned, but failed, assassination attempt.
By successfully projecting his innocence, Krafft simultaneously testified to his psychic powers. He was straightaway promoted to a psy-op campaign termed “…the Nostradamus Project.”
“Nostradamus,” of course, was the almost “…magical pseudonym…” of the sixteenth-century French-born astrologer and prognosticator, Michel de Nostre Dame… . Nostradamus …published his famous predictive writings, The Centuries, in 1555.” He recorded alleged prophecies in nearly one thousand cryptic, four-line poems known as “Quatrains.”
According to numerous Western sources: “…Nostradamus at times seems to have had a remarkable foresight into the events of the French Revolution, and some have discerned references in his writings to [Italian leader Benito] Mussolini and [Adolf] Hitler.”
Krafft’s job was to interpret the famous French seer’s prognostications with a “pro-Nazi slant”. To illustrate, Krafft associated Hitler with Nostradamus’s “grand duke of Armenia”.
Krafft was also said to have originated the “notion that Nostradamus …predicted the German blitzkrieg [‘lightning war’] that resulted in the 1940 occupation of Paris…”.
Meanwhile, of course, “Allied” analysts were busy vilifying Hitler with other of Nostradamus’s passages. In Britain, this included MI5 operative and astrologer Louis de Wohl, psych-warfare propagandist Sefton Delmer, and Naval Intelligence agent (and later James-Bond creator) Ian Fleming. A well-known illustration of their efforts is the passage which “predicts” that Hitler was the “Western-European …child …seduce[d] a great many people.”
Finally, we’ll note that some say Hitler himself displayed signs of clairvoyance. According to Pauwels and Bergier, “Hitler predicted exactly the date of the entry of his troops into Paris… When he decided to reoccupy the Rhineland in 1935, all the experts in Europe, including the Germans, were convinced that France and England would resist. Hitler predicted that they would not. He also [supposedly] announced [in advance] the date of the death of [four-term American President Franklin D.] Roosevelt.”
Perhaps it was more than a coincidence that “one of the most heavily annotated books in Adolf Hitler’s personal library” was Ernst Schertel’s 1923 Magic: History, Theory and Practice.
Interlude
A number of second-stringers didn’t quite rate a full treatment, here. But, in passing, we’ll mention Count Karl Friedrich Dürckheim-Montmartin. Sometimes referred to in print as Karlfried Graf Dürckheim, he was a strident anti-Communist who, after World War II, converted to an idiosyncratic combination of Jungian “depth psychology” and Zen Buddhism.
Although largely forgotten today, Eugen Herrigel operated on a similar wavelength. In fact, Herrigel’s posthumously published “The Zen Way,” was supposedly translated into English by Alan Watts, who helped popularize and Westernize versions of Eastern religion.
Of more importance was Wilhelm Theodor H. Wulff, whose 1968 book, published in English as the Zodiac and Swastika, purported to describe How Astrology Guided Hitler’s Germany.
One episode reported by Wulff was the Reich’s alleged attempt to locate ousted Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini in 1943.
Foreign-intelligence chief Walter Schellenberg was said to have put a number of esoterics on the trail of Il Duce. These included Wilhelm Gutberlet and Ludwig Straniak, …
…who are remembered for their prowess in the far-out field of “dowsing.” This is a form of divination in which the practitioner uses “[a] forked rod, or branch of a tree, which in the hands of certain people is said to indicate, by means of spasmodic movements of varying intensity, the presence of…” some sought-after item. Usually, this would be “…water and minerals underground.” But, in our case (it would seem), the target was Mussolini, who was recovered by the Luftwaffe working with an SS contingent under Otto Skorzeny.
5 — Ignaz Trebitsch-Lincoln
A Hungarian-born intriguer, his uncanny ability to disguise and reinvent himself was matched only by his seemingly endless capacity for charming political heavy hitters.
Reportedly, at one time or other, he had ingratiated himself with British Prime Minister David Lloyd George; American Federal Bureau of Investigation chieftain, J. Edgar Hoover; and German SS frontman, Heinrich Himmler.
Without question, Trebitsch-Lincoln is one of, if not the strangest characters on our list. Raised Jewish, he converted to Christianity and reportedly became a missionary in Canada.
Through various ecclesiastical channels in Anglicanism, he ended up in Britain where, in 1910, he managed to get elected to Parliament.
After bouncing amongst Germany, the Netherlands, and Romania, he “set himself up as a double (or rather a triple) agent during World War I,” according to his biographer Bernard Wasserstein.
A tangle of schemes followed, during which he had a run-in with the American Pinkertons – who had apparently been hired by the British Crown to apprehend him.
The Pinkertons, of course, were – and indeed, through a jumble of mergers and acquisitions, remain – a combination detective agency and security-guard force. Named after their founder, Allan J. Pinkerton, they rose to prominence during the fratricidal fray known as the “Civil War” when Pinkerton inveigled himself into upper-level Union circles. During the “Reconstruction Era,” his private army enforced corporate diktats when they were hired as “strikebreakers.”
The Pinkertons succeeded in locating Trebitsch-Lincoln and dragged him back to His Majesty’s Prison in Parkhurst, on the Isle of Wight. The commotion just previewed the coming attractions.
Trebitsch-Lincoln allegedly knew Dietrich Eckart, an early founder of the German Workers Party.
But, during the 1920s, he was mostly associated with a right-leaning German revolutionary government under Wolfgang Kapp. In fact, Trebitsch-Lincoln became the movement’s press secretary during its brief seizure of power in Berlin.
At this stage, he was agitating in favor of restoring monarchies all over Europe. These pro-royalists – including Waldemar Pabst – formed a loosely knit group referred to as the “White International.” The name was presumably intended to mark a contrast with the Communist International (Comintern) which was sometimes designated the “Red International.”
Trebitsch-Lincoln shuffled over to the island country of Sri Lanka (Ceylon), where he studied Buddhism. Incredibly, he underwent ordination (upasampadā) to become a monk.
Then, exploiting a network of Chinese warlords, Trebitsch-Lincoln finagled his way into the orbit of Tibetan Buddhists. Upon the death of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama in 1933, he declared himself to be the new Dalai Lama! Unsurprisingly, the outlandish claim received virtually no support in Tibet. However, his profession may have been championed in some Japanese circles – though, this was probably for geopolitical (rather than theological) reasons.
Incidentally, Russian occultist-painter Nicholas Roerich was also posing as a Dalai Lama.
Stranger still, the current – and supposedly bona fide – 14th Dalai Lama has been criticized for maintaining too cozy relationships with various National Socialists. For instance, “…he … cultivated friendly contacts with people such as the ex-SS [man] Bruno Beger… Beger …[was] a member of the …SS-Tibet Expedition organized by …in 1938/1939 whose primary goal was to find traces of an ancient, lost Indo-[Aryan] religion in the Himalayas. Some occult leaders in the SS were convinced that Tibetan Lamas are the key holders of these Indo-[Aryan] mysteries.”
The Dalai Lama was also friends with “…Heinrich Harrer, author of Seven Years in Tibet (a chronicle of his experiences with the Dalai Lama over seven years prior to his exile to India).”
In fact, Seven Years in Tibet was tackled by French film director Jean-Jacques Annand, with no less than Hollywood sex symbol Brad Pitt cast as the SS explorer, Harrer, himself.
For a mention of the erotically infused Tibetan Kalachakra Tantra, see “10 ‘Sex-Magic’ Cults.”
From Tibet, the already convoluted story takes a number of dizzying additional turns – with Trebitsch-Lincoln landing in Shanghai to begin his own monastery.
Then operating as a British-instituted “International Settlement,” Shanghai was still reeling from the fallout of the Opium Wars.
As the prospect of a second world war became ever likelier, Trebitsch-Lincoln is said to have been busy playing the Chinese and Japanese against one another. Coincidentally or not, Trebitsch-Lincoln’s time there seems to overlap with the so-called “January 28 Incident,” a Chinese-Japanese skirmish that led, months later, to the assassination of Japan’s premier.
For his final act, Trebitsch-Lincoln allied himself with Josef Meisinger, the Gestapo’s liaison to Tokyo. What he did in this capacity is not altogether clear. However, it’s worth recalling that Trebitsch-Lincoln fell within that subset of occultists who believed in, and advocated a search for, the group of legendary Tibetan adepts known as the “Ascended Masters.”
These enthusiasts included G. I. Gurdjieff and the above-named Roerich, both of whom we mentioned in our video “10 Occultists Who Were Accused Spies.”
Of course, as mentioned above, one of the principal theorists of this Great-White-Brotherhood mythos was H. P. Blavatsky, whom we profiled in Part 1.
The Stoic philosopher Seneca attributed to Aristotle the observation: “There is no great genius without a touch of madness.” One may be forgiven for suspecting that this might have applied to Trebitsch-Lincoln. Indeed, it may also apply to our next entrant.
4 — Karl Maria Wiligut
The details of his life before 1933 are sketchy. He appears to have been born into a fairly well-connected family of career military men – a tradition continued by Karl.
While stationed with the Austro-Hungarian infantry in Moravia around 1900, Wiligut encountered “a curious prehistoric [standing stone] called the Rabenstein… As a result, he began reading the books of Guido von List, …[the] founder of …Ariosophy ….”. [Silent slide follows.]
Wiligut then moved to Vienna, where he connected with Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels’s Order of New Templars, or O.N.T. We profiled both List and von Liebenfels in Part 1.
The O.N.T. became Wiligut’s entrée into Vienna’s wider occult world. That world included the Austrian branch of Madame H. P. Blavatsky’s Theosophical Society, which had been dominated by the little-remembered esoteric Friedrich Eckstein. Once again, we direct viewers back to Part 1, where we profile both Blavatsky and Eckstein.
At some point in all this, presumably during the 1920s, Wiligut was exposed to British occultist Violet Mary Firth.
Otherwise known as “Dion Fortune,” she will be a fixture in our upcoming “Top Ten 20th-Century Occultists.”
For now, we’ll note that her idiosyncratic esotericism (Anglo-centric though it may have been), was informed by racial theorizing. Fortune combined the legend of lost Atlantis with the voluminous lore associated with Britain’s mythical King Arthur.
All this must have resonated in Vienna as well, not least because Eckstein’s circle was partial to Wagnerian opera. In 1882, Wagner premiered Parsifal at his Bayreuth Festival Theatre. The production was based upon thirteenth-century German poet Wolfram von Eschenbach’s medieval romance Parzival and centered around the Knight Percival’s search for the Holy Grail.
Wiligut was naturally focused upon Germanic mythology. Accordingly, he joined Gorsleben’s Edda Society, which we named above.
Where Wiligut really distinguished himself, however, was as a clairvoyant. He complemented book learning with his own, alleged ancient “ancestral memory.” This amounted to numerous “…tales of prehistoric Aryan glory…”. SS-Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler – whom we will discuss in a moment – is said to have much “enjoyed listening to [Wiligut].” And that endorsement sufficed to launch Wiligut into the stratosphere.
But his most “‘spectacular contribution’ …to National Socialist Germany was the development of the Wewelsburg as the castle and ceremonial center of the SS order. Acquired by the SS in 1934, …the castle …[was conceptualized by] Wiligut … as the ‘center of the world,’ an Ariosophic ‘Vatican’ and [an] occult academy.”
This legacy was passed to more recent figures such as Temple of Set founder, Michael A. Aquino. The now-retired lieutenant colonel, who had reportedly worked in psychological-warfare operations – or “PsyOps” – for the U.S. Army, inaugurated his “Order of the Trapezoid following a magical working …performed at the Castle of Wewelsburg in 1982.”
Contemporary neopagan and Odinist, Stephen Flowers – known for his studies on runology – joined Aquino’s group in 1984. For some background information, once again see Part 1.
Another “conspicuous [example]” of a person “who sympathize[d] with some aspect of National Socialist imagery or ideology …is Anton [LaVey]…,” whom we ranked in “Top 10 Occultists.”
LaVey introduced the German-language text of his “…ritual …‘The Electrical Preludes’… published in his 1972 work The Satanic Rituals” with an alleged quote from Dietrich Eckart.
Eckart himself was a mystic in the mold of Jacob Böhme and Angelus Silesius – both of whom owed much to Medieval Neoplatonists Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, and Heinrich Suso.
But, as we tune off the darker, LaVeyan frequency, we’ll note that not all active, World-War-II-era German occultists were National Socialists. One example was runologist Friedrich Bernhard Marby, who was supposedly jailed under the Third Reich.
Another case in point: mystic and renegade Armanist Siegfried Adolf Kummer. His views evidently opposed those of the high-ranking, SS occultist known as “Himmler’s Rapustin,” whom we will meet later. The ensuing antipathy landed Kummer in the clink as well.
Then there’s Eugen Grosche. Better known as “Gregor A. Gregorius,” he founded the “Thelemic” Fraternitatis Saturni, or “Brotherhood of Saturn.”
This Brotherhood was continued by the likes of the now-deceased neo-pagan and runologist Karl Spiesberger.
Possibly, his runology competed with that endorsed by Adolf Schleipfer, who resurrected the Guido von List Society and the Armanic Order.
3 — Rudolf Hess
Adolf Hitler’s longtime deputy had actually been born in the esoterically saturated land of Egypt.
Like Hitler himself, Hess was “[a] vegetarian.” In this, both men were evidently influenced by Pythagoras, who advocated the dietary practice – as mentioned in our dedicated video.
To situate Pythagoras among the greatest esoterics of all time, see “Top 10 Occultists.”
As explained in Part 1 of our study, this orientation toward vegetarianism was funneled to Ariosophists via Richard Wagner and his occult-minded admirer Friedrich Eckstein.
One of the clearest-cut examples of a high-ranking Nationl-Socialist occultist, Hess was partial to astrology, Ariosophy, herbalism, hermeticism, and even magic.
However, unlike many others of similar temperament – including even Thule Society founder Rudolf von Sebottendorff – Hess viewed himself as an implacable enemy of Freemasonry.
This had partly to do with the fact that, historically, early founders of institutional Masonry associated with various Jewish rabbis (such as Judah Templo) and drew upon Kabbalistic symbols. (See, the similarity between the “Star of David” and the Compass and Square.)
This means that the occult landscape became, in essence, a spiritual battleground on which you had German neopagans facing off against Kabbalistic “sex magicians.”
And this wasn’t confined to Germany. According to Ordo Templi Orientis occultist and Wiccan founder Gerald Gardner, whom we profiled in “Top 10 Occultists of All Time,” …
… “[T]he [witch] covens of Great Britain [allegedly] met on the coast of England in 1940 …[and] raised …an intense agglomeration of spiritual energy …[called] the ‘burning brand’ – …and supposedly beamed a mental message to the führer: ‘You cannot come. You cannot cross the sea.’” Some sources refer to this as “Operation Cone of Power.”
Another version of what is likely the same story has it that the forest ritual was – in fact – a psy-op, hatched by Ian Fleming and Cecil Williamson and codenamed “Operation Mistletoe.” It’s not for nothing the world of spycraft has been called a wilderness of mirrors.
Of course, there were people who seemed to cross these battle lines. For instance, there’s the curious esoteric writer Karl Hermann Heise (1872-1939). At one time or other, Heise was involved with Guido von List’s Ariosophy and runology, Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy, and Ernst Otto Hænisch’s quirky and eclectic cult known as “Mazdaznan.”
Although he was a stalwart anti-Mason, Heise nevertheless appears to have been affiliated with Leopold Engel and Theodor Reuss in their reconstituted Illuminati Order. Reuss, of course, went on to head the sex-magically-obsessed Ordo Templi Orientis.
But the ambiguities may cut even deeper. Peter Levenda asserts that the structure of List’s High Armanen Order was partially inspired by the Kabbalistic “Tree of Life.”
Of course, in List’s view, the Kabbalah was “erroneously thought to represent a Jewish mystical tradition.” List held that Armanism had been the wellspring of the relevant beliefs.
Rudolf Gorsleben’s Edda Society, eventually taken over by occultist and Wiligut-disciple Werner von Bülow (1870–1947), seems likewise to have explored ostensibly Kabbalistic sigils, such as the hexagram known variously as the “Seal of Solomon” or the “Shield of David.”
On the other hand, German mythology itself is replete with “tree” symbolism. For example, there’s Yggdrasil, the “World Tree,” mentioned by Hollywood’s Marvel Cinematic Universe in movies such as Captain America: The First Avenger and Thor, both released in 2011.
Also keep in mind that, to many of these theorists, the events of the Bible (insofar as they were considered factual at all) were construed as having taken place in Germany. For example, to the previously discussed Wiligut, Jesus Christ was really an Irminist deity named Krist.
Mutatis mutandis, all this was not too dissimilar from the views of journalist William Comyns Beaumont who believed that the “…events …of the Bible …actually took place …in Britain”!
In List’s case, knowledge of the Kabbalah may have been mediated from the British-based Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn via William Wynn Westcott and Franz Hartmann.
And, remember, in the early twentieth century, the Golden Dawn said it was the English branch of a German Secret Society! Golden Dawn founders Samuel Liddell “MacGregor” Mathers and William Wynn Westcott claimed that their order was chartered by a mysterious – and possibly fictitious – Rosicrucian adept. Allegedly the lovechild of ousted Bavarian King Ludwig I, this adept – supposedly named Anna Sprengel – tied the British magicians to German occultism.
Similar things are said about a certain American college fraternity headquartered at Yale Univ. Some suggest that “…Skull and Bones [just is] the Yale Chapter of a German society.”
Recall that: “From 1831 to 1832, [Skull-and-Bones founder William Huntington] Russell studied in Germany. It has been suggested [that] while there, he was initiated into a German society that inspired Skull and Bones. …[Of course, t]he [original] German ‘Illuminati’ was outlawed …by an edict of the Bavarian government in 1785 and it is assumed [by those suspect this wasn’t the end of the story] that they then became a truly secretive underground organization” after that. Although it’s anyone’s guess whether Skull and Bones is literally a continuation of the Bavarian Illuminati, this much is clear. The U.S. was periodically on its guard against Freemasonry.
This was no truer, perhaps, than in the aftermath of the 1826 William Morgan Affair.
As discussed in “Presidents & Secret Societies,” William Morgan was kidnapped and believed murdered by Freemasons for exposing the secrets of their order. The episode prompted the creation of the Anti-Masonic political party – the first major “third party” of note in U.S. history.
Similarly, “[i]n 1939, on the eve of World War II,” Rudolf Hess – along with other N.S. functionaries – worried “that the Third Reich was threatened by a sinister Judeo-Masonic conspiracy, which …was fomenting the imminent conflict.”
This was elaborated upon in 1943 by French film director Maurice Remy in his sensational Forces Occultes. The story follows the activities of an intrepid “young Frenchman who infiltrates the brotherhood to expose its role in starting the war.” We’ll have more in a future video. Look for “Ten 20th-Century Mystery Men” in which we’ll name a little-known behind-the-scenes operator who stands at ground level for the contemporary “Traditional-Catholic” movement.
Speculations abound regarding Hess’s possible esoteric connexions. As discussed in our first segment, one suggestion had it that he came out of alchemist R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz’s orbit.
To hear others tell it, Hess may have covertly followed the precepts of Aleister Crowley. The suspicion was that Theosophist and Ordo Templi Orientis acolyte Martha Küntzel, in the circle of Franz Hartmann, might have introduced Hess to the “Great Beast’s” quasi-religion of Thelema.
Hess was also a known disciple of geopolitician Karl Haushofer, whom we mentioned above. If the more lurid accounts of Haushofer have any truth, they would imply that Hess was one of the high-level operators in the über-secret Thule Society.
Regardless of the truth of these conjectures, “…Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess” – along with Heinrich Himmler, whom we will consider momentarily – are both “said to have consulted with …astrologer[s] before making important decisions…”.
Of course, they weren’t the only world leaders who were enamored with esoteric arts. Two-time British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill was initiated into an order of Druids in 1908. [2nd img]
And four-term United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt had so many secret-society affiliations we dedicated a portion of an entire video sketching some of them.
On the Russian mystic Nicholas Roerich, who was connected to FDR through 33rd U.S. vice president – the Iowan Theosophist Henry Agard Wallace – see “10 Occultist Spies.”
Four decades after WWII, Ronald Reagen famously – or, infamously, as it were – arranged his presidential schedule according to the advice of his astrologers (partly at the behest of his wife).
For more on this, look for our forthcoming presentation “10 Celebrity Astrologers.”
In Hess’s case, astrological devotion had a particularly dramatic attestation. I’m thinking of his “planned [personal] …secret mission” for which he allegedly depended on occult counselors.
“On May 10, 1941, Hess [allegedly] flew alone to Scotland, [ostensibly] hoping to forge an accord between the Germans and their fellow Aryans in Great Britain.”
The story goes that “[t]he mission failed miserably…” and, after 1966, Hess ended up in virtual solitary confinement for decades until he supposedly ended his own life in 1987.
Or… did he?
Among the people to raise doubts about this account is a man described by “Big Five” Publishing giant HarperCollins as a “surgeon and forensic expert of international repute.”
According to W. Hugh Thomas, writing in his book The Murder of Rudolf Hess, the man long incarcerated in Spandau had not been Hess, but a double.
These days, the Google-approved view is that various DNA tests have put paid to this worry.
Whether this is so or not, we’ve no idea. We can’t comment on questions about the chain of evidence or about the reliability and trustworthiness of the testing procedures. But, it’s curious to us that these press releases are seldom (if ever) cross-checked with numerous mainstream admissions about widespread distortions – or outright fabrications – of genetic-test results. In the words of one U.S. attorney and “forensic pathology expert”: “In the United States[,] we take science as gospel. …The public perception is that faking science is rare. The truth is[,] it happens all the time.”
This isn’t even to note, additionally, that if facial characteristics are determined by our genetics, then it follows (fairly trivially) that two people with similar appearance will have genetic overlap – regardless of family relationship.
One-time Spandau commandant, Col. Eugene K. Bird, advanced a different hypothesis. In Bird’s view, Prisoner #7 had genuinely been Rudolf Hess. But Bird felt that many mysteries had simply been swept aside regarding Hess’s daring flight.
Why had Hess been attempting to meet with Royal Air Force Commodore Douglas Douglas-Hamilton, 14th Duke of Hamilton? Had Hitler been aware of Hess’s intentions? Had Hess been aware of the Fürher’s Operation Barbarossa, an invasion of the Soviet Union carried out one month after Hess’s arrest? Why was Hess being held by himself, presumably at lavish expense, in a fortress designed to hold hundreds?
Significantly, despite their different emphases, Bird and Thomas concurred in supposing that Spandau Prisoner #7 had been murdered. And, of course, all the lingering genetic questions go no distance toward deciding whether an arthritic 93-year-old man with limited range of arm motion could manage to have hanged himself from a window latch using an electrical cord.
2 — Otto Rahn
He was “a medievalist who had made a study of the lost cultures of Provence and Languedoc. [But, above all,] Rahn, who had lately become an officer in the SS, was fascinated with the Holy Grail. He read great significance into the passages from Parzifal in which Wolfram [von Eschenbach] describes the sources of his work,” especially the mysterious poet “Guyot.”
We may focus upon Grail mythology another time. For now, suffice it to say that there have been two main schools of thought on what the Grail is. According to one, owing to 12th-century French Troubadours Chrétien de Troyes and Robert de Boron, the Grail is a cup.
This view is commonly taken in popular depictions like John Boorman’s 1981 Excalibur and Steven Spielberg’s 1989 Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Usually, this sort of Grail is identified as the vessel used by Jesus Christ during the last supper and, perhaps, the one used by Joseph of Arimathea to catch Jesus’s blood when He was crucified. Following Eschenbach…
“…Rahn believed [instead]… that the grail was not a cup but a set of stone or wooden tablets on which the sum of all esoteric knowledge had been inscribed, probably in runic characters.”
We briefly touched on related “tablet esoterica” in our videos “10 Gold-Making Alchemists,” …
…“Pythagoras,” and
The story seems to begin in the Old Testament Book of Genesis, chapter four. In the genealogy given for Adam and Eve’s son Cain, one “Lamech” appears as the father of four children.
His offspring are said to have originated various primitive arts and sciences. Several extra-biblical traditions suggest that they may have learned these from various fallen angels and that they recorded the particulars on two tablets. These stories may underlie Eschenbach.
In any case, Heinrich “Himmler and at least a few of his colleagues came to believe that the tablets might prove to be the long-lost Book of the Aryans – a pagan ‘Ten Commandments,’ which would support their notion of an Aryan super-race.”
In Parzifal, the Grail Castle – headquarters of the “Fisher King,” Amfortas (or Anfortas) – is referred to as “Munsalvæsche.” The mysterious word permits no definitive translation. But, scholars specializing in the medieval languages of Occitan and Provençal, speculate that it either meant “Wild Mountain” or “Mount of Salvation.”
Rahn identified Munsalvæsche with the old Cathar stronghold “Montségur, in Languedoc.”
Before the Cathars were slaughtered by Catholic, anti-Albigensian crusaders, “four …[knights] escaped …by lowering themselves down the cliff …on ropes and then made off with the grail.”
In this Cathar spirit, Rahn sought the Grail to restore the supposed original form of Christianity. To Rahn, this was a thoroughly Germanic neopaganism in which the truth – or the “Light” – “was [not] represented by …Jesus or Jehovah …but by …the ‘Light-Bearer’ …Lucifer.”
Twice, Himmler allegedly sent “…Rahn to rummage through the ruins of Montségur” in order to find and retrieve this Grail.
“No one can today say with certainty whether or not the grail was ever captured by Nazis. …Otto Rahn committed suicide after returning from Montségur for the second time, and he took to the grave whatever secrets he knew.”
Of course, Rahn’s mystique persists… not least in the character – Indiana Jones – he is said to have partially inspired.
1 — Heinrich Himmler
The man who served Adolf Hitler as Reichsführer of the much-dreaded Schutzstaffel (“SS”), or “Protection Squad” was also the confluence for many of the occult currents we have surveyed.
Like Hess, Himmler covered many of the occult bases that were then au courant. His interests ran to astrology, herbalism, hypnosis, runology, spiritualism, and telepathy.
Essentially, he “combined …occult revival with an illuminated nationalism.” So, Himmler was, in a sense, an Idealistic Nationalist. But, for Himmler, National Socialism had nothing to do with Communism – except for being its mortal enemy!
The sense of “socialism” was instead grounded in a “feeling of unity” – arising from shared Nordic-Teutonic ancestry – and it drove toward a thoroughly spiritual society. A more accurate phrase might well have been (something like) Germanic Tribalism.
Like Alfred Rosenberg, Himmler was keyed-in on the wavelength of Ariosophy which, as discussed in Part 1, aimed to resurrect distinctly German forms of neo-paganism.
To this end, Himmler poured the SS out of the mold of the Catholic crusaders. In fact, the SS even bore a resemblance to the much-later Jesuits. Indeed, Adolf Hitler referred to Himmler as “my Ignatius Loyola.” Ignatius of Loyola, of course, had been the principal founder of that order, whose official name is the Society of Jesus and which had been instituted as the militant right arm of the Counter-Reformation.
“In its command structure, secret oaths, and rituals, the SS was fashioned after the knightly religious brotherhoods of medieval Germany.” The SS had its own secret ceremonials and sanctuaries, including one at the previously mentioned Wewelsburg Castle.
And Wewelsburg was only one of a network of castle-sanctuaries belonging to the order.
A primary vehicle for systematizing his worldview perspective “was the organization known for short as the Deutsches Ahnenerbe, which Himmler made part of the SS.”
Under the auspices of the SS-Ahnenerbe, Himmler conferenced with various esoterics and “orientalists” with an eye toward “construct[ing] …a new Indo-[Aryan] Nazi Religion.”
The Ahnenerbe made documentary films promoting pagan ritualism.
And it undertook archaeological and exploratory expeditions. Himmler’s anthropologists sought confirmation – for example, in artifacts and runes – of root-race Theosophy.
According to Pauwels and Bergier, it was the Ahnenerbe that had made contact with the “secret masters” of Shambhala – as described in Kalachakra Tantra.
And it was the Ahnenerbe that sought fabled, and supposedly power-infused, objects like the Holy Grail and the Spear of Destiny – if Trevor Ravenscroft is to be believed.
We mentioned the Spear – or “Lance of Longinus” – in our video “10 Unnamed Bible Figures.”
Himmler’s occultism inspired comics such as the Hellboy franchise. As to the legendary Grail, Himmler himself looked for it at the Benedictine monastery of Montserrat near Barcelona, Spain.
The SS chief had been following up on the same lead we previously noted when we discussed Otto Rahn. In Himmler’s estimation, clues regarding the identity of the Grail castle of Munsalvæsche actually led to Montserrat.
As far as we know, Himmler came up empty handed. But the SS-Ahnenerbe’s fascination with magical totems has inspired numerous Hollywood films – including several installments of the Indiana Jones franchise – not least, the inaugural, 1987 blockbuster Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Then there are the intriguing claims of curious, Austrian-born Anthroposphist and homeopath Walter J. Stein. The one-time physician to British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill predicted that “…the true grail would be made manifest in the world as a global form of finance capital.”
Perhaps this is the sub rosa reason for the close connexion between economic powerhouses like the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve System and the ancient art of alchemy.
For more detail and context, see our video “Top 10 Gold-Making Alchemists.”
Outro –
It would be tempting to say that the conclusion of the Second World War closed the book on the occult themes canvassed herein. But, several factors suggest that this is mistaken.
A direct descendant – often credited to Heinrich Himmler – is the current often called “Esoteric Hitlerism,” a seminal articulation of which was owed to Maximiani Julia Portaz. Better known as “Savitri Devi,” she associated Germans with Hindus and considered Adolf Hitler to have been an incarnation (or “Avatar”) of the major Indian god Vishnu.
We mentioned Devi, in conjunction with intelligence work, in “10 Occultist Spies.”
Another mentionable is the Chilean statesman Miguel Serrano. Serrano, who included Swiss psychologist Carl Jung and novelist Hermann Hesse among his associates, created a stream of Esoteric Hitlerism combining ceremonial magic with Kundalini Yoga.
A tangent line involves Britain’s “royals.” Shortly after abdicating, the man who was briefly King Edward VIII toured N. S. Germany – which, to quote from his Wikipedia article, “…fed rumours that he was a Nazi sympathiser.”
How wide-spread these “sympathies” might have been is a still largely unexplored question. But it’s been given renewed impetus owing to frontpage images such as (in Jan. 2005) of Prince Harry sporting a Nazi uniform – complete with a Swastika armband.
The possibly illegitimate prince, who is routinely presented by the media as something of a pariah within King Charles’s family, now says that Prince William and Princess Catherine (known as “Kate Middleton”) put him up to the stunt.
One does wonder – especially given The Sun’s revelations, ten years later, that the late Queen Elizabeth II herself may have been introduced to (well …let’s just say) now-politically incorrect beliefs when she was a girl.
When she grew older, Elizabeth was successfully wooed by a dashing scion of the German House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg. Of course, by the time of their marriage in the numerologically interesting year 1947, he was styling himself Prince Philip Mountbatten.
In the post-war environment, Philip’s three surviving sisters weren’t invited to the ceremony. Two of them had married royals who became members of the National Socialist Party …
…as had Princess Cecilie who died prematurely – with her husband – in a plane crash in 1937. Brother Philip attended her funeral surrounded by “Nazi” regalia, Swastikas, and Storm-Trooper outfits. (Many of these owed their designs to R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz. And, doubtless, many were manufactured by Hugo Boss, as mentioned in Part 1 of our study.)
We also note that the Greek angle has interesting elements we may develop in a future video. To get started now, see our presentation “10 Mysterious Mediterranean Islands.”
Tie-ins may be discerned from the fact that Prince Philip was born on the Island of Corfu. He maintained a lifelong relationship with the Greek Orthodox Church. This latter fascination was reportedly passed to his son, Charles III. Obviously, British royalty has to display affection for, and involvement in, Anglican Protestantism – specifically, the Church of England.
Still, Philip and Charles made numerous, mysterious pilgrimages to Holy Mount Athos on the male-only Halkidiki Peninsula. This would be a digression, presently, were it not that, “[d]uring the German occupation of Greece, the [Holy Administration’ governing peninsular affairs] formally asked Adolf Hitler to place the monastic community under his personal protection. Hitler agreed and received the title ‘High Protector of the Holy Mountain’ …from the monks.” Evidently true to his word, Hitler’s safekeeping preserved “The monastic community … [from] significant damage during the war.”
We’d be negligent if we didn’t acknowledge “Western” appropriation of German engineers and intelligence agents. We’re thinking, of course, of the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps’s “Operation Paperclip,” which brought rocket scientist Wernher von Braun (&c.) into America. …possibly with the help of a Central Intelligence Agency asset named Clay Shaw.
There’s also German General Reinhard Gehlen, whose anti-Soviet “Gehlen Organization” fell under the sway of the likes of William Donovan, Allen Dulles, and Walter Bedell Smith. In other words, Gehlen came in at the ground floor of the creation of U.S. Central Intelligence.
We can’t forget Nikolaus “Klaus” Barbie, the former Gestapo chief and interrogation expert who was shielded by the CIA and the CIC and who – among other things – supposedly trained “Death Squads” in South American countries like Bolivia.
The so-called “School of the Americas” institutionalized training “for dictators, torturers and assassins,” as Noam Chomsky has observed in several places.
Apparently, the Israeli spook shop, Mossad, got in on the action by recruiting former Waffen-SS Obersturmbannführer and special-tactics expert Otto Skorzeny.
Finally, there’s the Bush family that produced the ex-Director of Central Intelligence and, later, 41st U.S. President, George Herbert Walker Bush, whom we discussed in “10 Occultist Spies.”
Family patriarch “…Prescott Bush …worked for …[the private investment-banking house] Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH), [which] acted as a U.S. base for the German industrialist, Fritz Thyssen, who helped finance Hitler in the 1930s…”.
And what rôle was played in this regard by Sosthenes Behn, founder of International Telephone & Telegraph, now known as ITT Inc.? In August 1933, Behn became one of the first American businessmen to visit “the new Chancellor of Germany, Herr Hitler…” – ostensibly on behalf of National City Bank.
Further details are suggestive – tho, admittedly, inconclusive. One is the oft-alleged complicity of the Bank for International Settlements in “…transferr[ing] …[National Socialist] money to Argentina (and other Latin American countries) via the Vatican.”
Recall that the current “Vatican Bank” (technically euphemized as the Institute for the Works of Religion), founded in 1942, is run by a Board of Superintendents who report – ultimately – to the Pope. And that office, presently, is occupied by a Novus-Ordo Jesuit going by the name “Francis.” Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, he hails from – and was a bishop in – Argentina.
We won’t even get into Benedict XVI’s conscription into the Hitler Youth as a lad in 1939.
Antony Sutton, writing in the introduction to his 1976 investigation, Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler, remarked upon the “obvious” need to seriously consider “…the mystical origins” …and the neo-pagan historical roots of Naziism, the Bavarian Illuminati and the Thule Society…”.
On that note, which throws us back upon our current – and important – topic, look for the future video “10 Precursors to the Illuminati.” And we’ll expand our investigations. So …stay tuned!