Hitler's Search for the Holy Grail

PBS ^ | 11/30/01 | PBS

[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.

Day & time: check with your local station

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[nopardons]

Are you a member of Bohemian Grove ? Do you REALLY know what goes on there ? I'm willing to bet that a resounding NO! Is the answer to bothe questions. Instead, YOU post gibberish, overlaid with contemptable stupidity !

There is NOTHING " occult " happening at Bohemian Grove gatherings.

OTOH, the Nazi leadership were heavily into the ocult, and Hitler DID have the Spear of Longus, stolen from an Austrian museum, which he imagined made him supernaturally powerful. Himmler set up a sort of monestary, for occultic rites, and decorated the walls of the cerimonial room with all sorts of strange symbols. The symbols for the SS, are actually ancient runic symbols.

[nopardons]

You've hit the nail on the head, with one exception. The Thule Society had NOTHING at all to do with Crowley. LOL

Oh, and Wilson wrote those books before " HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL " was written.

[AMDG&BVMH]

The symbols for the SS, are actually ancient runic symbols.

The swastika too . . .

[DensaMensa]

>HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL

I read the book, then visited the sites in France. More than a little interesting...

[DensaMensa]

>Hitler drew on many things floating around Germany at the time, not least of which was the extant anti-semetism.

Your post isn't complete until you add the extreme pressure felt by Germany from Communism expanding in nearby Russia, which was in large measure an outgrowth of Jewish Bolshevism. This did not help the Jews in Germany at all.

[DensaMensa]

>Perhaps if someone had shot Hitler up with various pharmaceuticals, we could have skipped WWII.

Quite unlikely. The state of Germany in the 30s was such that there had to be some resolution. A Communist takover of Europe would probably have been the alternative, and WW2 would have occured in a different form. If we had not entered the war when we did, and England had not insisted on invading the continent, Germany and Russia could have fought it out and solved even more of our contemporary problem.

[ALASKA]

"I told him we already got one."

[DensaMensa]

>Errr... what didn't help the Jews wasn't Jewish bolshevism... but the fact that many bolsheviks happened to be jewish, and the Nazis used that fact to marry the two in their propaganda.

Yes, I was trying to be polite...

[nopardons]

No, the swastika, or " solar cross ", sometines called the " bent cross ", is an ancient symbol; commonly found in many cultures. From the ancient Indians to the American Indians, to indiginous Australians, and many cultures inbetween.

The lightenng bolt like SS symbols, is Tuetonic / Nordic runic in nature, and can be found nowhere else.

[nopardons]

No, the swastika, or " solar cross ", sometines called the " bent cross ", is an ancient symbol; commonly found in many cultures. From the ancient Indians to the American Indians, to indiginous Australians, and many cultures inbetween.

The lightenng bolt like SS symbols, are Tuetonic / Nordic runic in nature, and can be found nowhere else. The myth about the alphabetical runes is ONLY to be found in ancient Tuetonic / Nordic culture.

[DensaMensa]

>But what's easy to say is that Hitler was a nut, and the Nazis were a pretty aweful group.

I completely agree, as does most everyone, but do not agree with the apparent premise that Hitler was the cause of WWtwice. With or without Hitler there would have been a big bad WW2 of some sort.

Regarding Russias ramping up it's economy to fight the Germans, they could have done very little if we had not fed them war materials. Again, if we had not entered the war as aggressively as we did, the baddies could have fought it out, hopefully to our benefit. The last thing Hitler (or Germany in WW1) wanted was to fight the United States industrial collossus.

[A CA Guy]

That explains the hair on the lip and lack of willing sex with her husband.

[AMDG&BVMH]

the swastika, or " solar cross ", sometines called the " bent cross ", is an ancient symbol; commonly found in many cultures. From the ancient Indians to the American Indians, to indiginous Australians, and many cultures inbetween.

Meaning eternal recurrence . . .

Thanks. I was focusing on the "ancient" in your previous post rather than the "runic."