by Olav Phillips

History, as we know it, is a pervasively malleable thing and as time has shown us

history has often used as an ideological tool to support a philosophical or political

agenda. World history is ripe with examples of historical tampering such as the near

deletion of World War Two Japanese aggression in modern Japanese text books, or

the downplaying of our own aggression such as the bombing of Dresden or the use

of nuclear devices in combat. In the United States we have removed historic

references to our own atrocities like the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments or covered

up government projects such as Operation Midnight Climax and the LSD

experimentation done in San Francisco. But perhaps the most interesting and

sinister use of revisionism belongs to the Warrior Historians of the Third Reich, the

Ahnenerbe.

So who are the Ahnenerbe and what exactly did they do? More importantly how

was Ahnenerbe research leveraged by the Nazi political machine to create a broader

mythology. A mythology, which when leveraged by the Nazi propaganda machine

galvanized the German people behind the sinister beliefs of the upper tier Nazi

organization.

Our story starts in January of 1929 which Henrich Himmler, leader of the fledgling

Schutzstaffel or SS. At the time of its creation the SS number some 300 individuals,

but Himmler quickly realized that to fully realize his vision of the SS he needed to

establish a powerful Nordic mythos which would propel the SS from a bodyguard of

around 300 to a power political engine of nearly 10,000 members by 1931. To

achieve his fully realized agenda and aggressively recruit he knew that the SS must

be transformed into an elite organization of Nordic men and women with some sort

of historical precedent. It was a precedent derived from theosophy and the deeply

occult advisors to the then German leaders.

An example of this can clearly be seen later in Leni Rienfenstahl’s Nazi epic Triumph

of the Will, which portrayed the SS as knights riding into the Nuremberg rally on

horse back sporting chainmail armor and shields sporting the swastika. Banners

fluttering in the wind as the volk or German people stand besides these modern

Nazi nights. It was an image which forever reinforcing the vision of the SS as the

knights of the Third Reich.

But we need to get back to our story. As an avid student of history Himmler

fundamentally knew he needed to establish a divine providence in order to

perpetuate this myth and chose to do this by fashioning the SS after his

mythological interpretation of the Teutonic Knights, but that required reeducation

and research, it also required historic precedent. So in in 1931 Himmler tasked SS-

Obergrupenfuher Ruchard Darre to form the “Race and Settlement Office of the SS.”

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The formation of this office resulted in new SS recruits being trained, or re-

educated, by Darre’s office and their senior officers as well as a publication called

“SS-Leitheft” which again reinforced this mythos of the SS has modern Nordic

Teutonic Knights protecting the motherland and most importantly the volk or

peasant population.

The project and Darre’s contribution was seen as highly successful, and in 1935

Himmler again met with Darre as well as Herman Wirth, who at the time was seen

as one of Nazi Germany’s pre-emanate pre-historians as well several other “racial”

experts with the intent to form a think tank to provide ongoing research and

support of the Nazi’s racial superiority and well as supporting the constructed

history and pre-history of the German people.

What came out of that meeting was the “Deutsches Ahnenerbe—Studiengesellschaft

für Geistesurgeschichte” or translated as “German Ancestral Heritage—Society for

the Study of the History of Primeval Ideas.” Long title, but short story was this as

the very think tank and research arm the SS needed to perpetuate their philosophy

and contrived history.

Wirth was given the role of president of the organization with Wolfram Sievers as

the General Secretary functioning as the head of Ahnenerbe operations. A

operational portfolio which was as vast as it was damaging, especially long term.

Sievers, Wirth and later Dr. Walther Wurst, former dean of Ludwig Maximillians

University, set about to fashion the Ahnenerbe as a research organization and filled

it largely with academics which pedigree was used to reinforce the legitimacy of the

Ahnenerbe findings, no matter how insane it was because at the end of the day those

findings were legitimized by the state. So it was presented and staffed as a

legitimate SS research organization, which sought to prove the racial claims of the

Third Reich and they did it with PhD’s and experts, which is a pretty scary notion. It

is historical manipulation on a mass scale and implemented by the very academics

who were supposed to be in search of actual history, but instead leveraged their

skills to perpetuate an ideology.

Ok so you mentioned the Ahenerbe was a research group, so what kinds of things

did they research?

Financed by a SS budget line (which was massive to say the least), and beholden

only to Henrich Himmler directly, the Ahnenerbe began to spread out across the

world in search of scientific proof of Aryan superiority, which also including some

interesting side trips in search of historical Christian relics and other strangeness.

What follows is a partial list of some of the Ahnenerbe research excursions:

Karelia: In 1935 Himmler commissioned an expedition lead by Yrjo Von Gronhagen

to journey through the Karelia area of Finland in search of Nordic pagan practices

including the use of witches and sorcerers in hopes of not only using their skills to

perpetuate the thousand year Reich but also to foresee the outcomes of battles. The

expedition got underway in June of 1938 and results in the capturing of a ritual

performed by a soothsayer named Miron-Aku who was convinced to perform a

ritual on camera. Miron-Aku then proceeded to contact the ancient ancestors to

divine future events after informing the Ahnenerbe team they were expected.

Bohuslan: In August of 1936 a new expedition was commissioned under the control

of Wurst but managed by Sievers to explore ancient petroglyphs of the Bohuslan

region of Sweden. On the island of Rugen, Wurth believed he found symbols

representing an ancient archaic Aryan alphabet, and he interpreted the symbols to

represent “the Son of God” due in part to a petroglyph of a man with raised arms.

This was taken to show that ancient Aryan’s mastered, even early on a alphabet and

demonstrated their advanced intellectual superiority.

Val Camonica: In 1937 the Ahnenerbe expedition lead by Dr. Franz Altheim, a

lecturer at the University of Frankfurt, journeyed to Val Camonica, again in search

of petroglyphs which they believe to show that Rome and by proxy the Romans

were of Nordic decent.

Middle East: In 1938 base don his perceived success at Val Camonia, Altheim lead

an expedition that moved throughout the Middle East in search of evidence of war

fought between the Nordic Roman Empire and the Semetic peoples of the area. This

expedition took Altheim from Romania to Istanbul, Athens, Lebanon, Iraq and

eventually ending in Saudi Arabia.

New Swabia: In 1938 through 1939 the Ahnenerbe were again out in search of pre-

historic archeological finds. This time in Antarctica, and lead by noted explorer

Capt. Alfred Ritscher. The Antarctic expedition was partially to explore the Antarctic

contentment but the team also had a secondary objective of locating the lost

continent of Atlantis which some had hypothesized resided in Antarctica. What is

notable about this expedition is that it also laid the ground work for the Nazi

Antarctic survival mythos and the ideas around Base 211. Some readers may

remember that a site of which was supposedly found during the expedition and later

extended by elements of the Navy and Army to serve as Base 211 or a hidden long

term fortress from which the dying (at that point) Third Reich could continue their

movement.

Germany: Starting early on in the history of the Ahnenerbe several major

operations were undertaken a little closer to home in both the Murg valley where

Ahnenerbe teams excavated a ancient fortress as well as the burial mounds in

Tumulus. Perhaps their largest discovery came in Jura Mountains where R.R.

Schmidt discovered the use of red ochre pigment used by Cro-Magnon artists.

Additionally they found other artifacts such as pendants, spears and a wooly

mammoth skeleton, which Dr. Assien Bohmers interpreted to show that the site had

been used by the earliest Cro-Magnon in the world who were not only amazing

artists but also the predecessors to the Aryans.

Meanwhile in France two separate Ahnenerbe team members were dispatched to

recover the Bayeux Tapestry which purported to show long lost Germanic heroes

defeating their enemies. The mission was a failure but again demonstrates the

Ahnenerbe’s interest in all things Heroic and Germanic.

Tibet: Perhaps one of the most famous Ahnenerbe missions was one lead by Dr.

Ernst Schafer, a zoologist by training. Schafer lead the expedition in 1938 to journey

to Tibet and show a clear link between the Tibetans and the mythological Germanic

heroes especially interesting to the Ahnenerbe scholars because of the Tibetan use

of the Swastika. The mission was also tasked with finding the mystical cities of

Shambala and Agarti and to make contact with their mythical populations to secure

their support and gain access to the high tech weaponry they were believed to

possess. More modern appraisals of the mission have also pointed to Schafer

performing scouting for a base from which the Nazi’s could harass or attack India. It

is also believed that Schafer brought back a group of Tibetan monks who took up

residence in Berlin and were later found after the occupation having committed

ritual suicide.

Poland: Shortly after the invasion of Poland, Sievers secured an Ahnenerbe mission

to Poland to retrieve the Viet Stoss altar as well as the general looting of the

museums in Krakow and other major cities in search of records of Germanic

conquest.

Crimea: In July of 1942 Dr. Herbert Jankuhn was sent to the Crimea to loot several

museums in search of Germanic and Gothic artifacts denoting Germanic ancestry.

After conferring with the local Einsatzkommando unit, the museums were located

and with the cover of the 5 th SS Panzer unit Jankuhn was able to enter the museum,

only to find that the artifacts had been relocated.

This represents just a fraction of the missions carried out by the Ahnenerbe over the

course of their existence, and serves as a snapshot into the minds of the Ahnenerbe

program managers and their selection criteria. Most notably the ongoing scientific

justification for the Nazi mythos, and by proxy the justification for their ongoing

programs of atrocity based on that mythos.

Even while these explorations, and others, were underway including missions to

locate Atlantis and Ultima Thule in both the Antarctic, the Arctic as well as

Scandinavia another more sinister pattern was also starting to emerge.

Its long been known that many members of the Nazi regime were occultists, and by

proxy many of their decisions were driven by their firm belief in things like the

occult and theosophy but what is not generally known is their dedicated programs

to recover, for some unknown purpose, Christian religious artifacts.

A case in point is the mission of Otto Rahn. Rahn, who while studying at the

University of Giessen as a medievalist, came into contact with a professor named

Baron von Gall. That contact lead Rahn to become fascinated with the Cathar Heresy

and the Massacre at Monsegur where in the final battle of the Albigensian Crusade

the crusader forces defeated the last Cathar stronghold and slaughtered all if its

occupants.

Rahn, fascinated by the Cathar heresy and the Albigensian Crusade began to do

research and at some point became convinced that the Holy Grail was to be found in

Pyrenees region of southern France and was somehow related to the Heresy. Aided

by Wolfram Von Eschenbach’s Perzival as well as Antonin Gadall, Rahn sought to

link the Cathars, who he believed to be the guards of the Holy Grail, which he also

believed to have been housed at the castle of Montsegur, to Druids who had

apparently converted to Gnostic Manichaeism.

Rahn held firmly to the belief that the Druids in Britain formed the foundation of the

later Celtic Christian Church and that in culture of the medieval Cathars there was a

strong resemblance to the beliefs of the ancient Druids. He equated the Druidic

priests to the Cathar Parfaits and believed strongly that the Cathar Mystery School

was being preserved by the Troubadours, a type of the travelling poet and

entertainer of the medieval courts of France.

He researching the Grail mystery Rahn has developed the idea that the Cathers, as

the Grail Guardians, had hidden the Grail at Monsegur, and as impending defeat

approached had moved it to some other location in Languedoc region by sending

small teams of men over the walls to repel down the sides of the fortress with the

Grail in hand.

Shortly after the publications of his books, Otto Rahn’s research came to the

attention of Himmler who requested an audience and later convinced Rahn to join

the SS as a non-commissioned officer. Rahn’s joining the SS gave Himmler the

ability, through the Ahnenerbe, to bankroll Rahn’s research.

Rahn’s quest took him from Southern France to Iceland and all points in-between.

But at some point during his research and travels Rahn became disillusioned with

the SS, the Ahnenerbe and Himmler’s questions and eventually sought to leave the

SS. This repudiation of the SS and Ahnenerbe lead to Rahn being punished, and sent

to be a guard at Dachau until his eventual dismissal from the SS in 1939. Shortly

after which he was found frozen to death in the Tyrolean Mountains.

At the time, Rahn’s death was ruled suicide but many have hypothesized that Rahn

had been privy to some sort of larger Nazi plan and was murdered to close the loop.

Rumors still abound, despite his denial, that he actually did discover the Holy Grail

and transferred it to the SS / Himmler and was then washed out and murdered to

bury the secret. According to this theory, the Grail, Spear of Destiny and the Ark on

the Covenant were taken into protective custody by the United States Government

at the end of the war having been recovered during previous Ahnenerbe

expeditions.

The larger question that needs to now be taken on is Himmler and by proxy the

Nazi’s interest in Christian artifacts. Why would an organization that is

fundamentally occult search out and stockpile artifacts of a competing religion? On

the surface it seems like a very simple equation. The Nazi’s who sought total

societal domination were seeking to suppress a non-state sponsored occult

practices but at the same time the Nazi party enjoyed some level of support, as well

as ongoing support, by the Catholic Church. So we face a conundrum – why would a

fundamentally occult state fund operations to recover Christian artifacts?

For the answer to this we must look again look at the Ahnenerbe and the SS as a

organization as a whole. For example, shortly after looting the “Spear of Destiny”

from an Austrian museum, looted by elite SS commandos, it has been reported by

various authors that the spear was presented to Hitler by Himmler and at that point

early in the Nazi odyssey that the Nazi’s started to overtake vast chunks of Western

Europe. It was also reported that while rebuilding Wewelsburg Castle there was a

design on the books for a main hall whose design was inspired to be the earth bound

representation of the Spear of Destiny and by leveraging that design invoking the

spears power of the SS and its conquests.

The Nazi party, or at least the leaders, obviously believed that these objects contain

some sort of ritual power, which they could leverage for continued success. In the

case of the Spear of Destiny its, believed it was carried during early SS engagements

during World War 2. But that path is clear that the Nazi’s were after religious

artifacts, they were deep occultists, and they believed at multiple levels of the power

those objects wielded.

There is also another option. In conspiracy theory many times we seek as

researchers to establish links to a Lucifarian agenda. In some ways it seems to be a

catchall for the bad, we as humans cant believe that we would do such things to each

other so we evoke a kind of evasion tactic and blame the Devil/Lucifer. In this case

though, especially given the obvious occult agenda it might be a situation where

these very same artifacts captured by the Ahnenerbe could have been used in occult

rites to summon or to invoke. At some level that would make sense, its

uncomfortable but it would answer a lot of unknowns about why.

The investigations by the Ahnenerbe to establish the Aryan/Nazi mythos make

sense. The leadership had so much invested in this type of propaganda and used

Ahnenerbe findings to bolster their claims. It’s the obsession with Christian artifacts

that is puzzling, and can really only be attributable to some larger occult agenda that

was in play. The higher echelon certainly believed in the occult agenda and

attempted to leverage it throughout their reign of power not only to inspire the volk

as they put it but also in their daily dealings. So it really does make sense that if they

could find these Christian artifacts they would utilize them in their occult dealings

as well as leveraging the power, which they are purported to contain.

One final note on the Ahnenerbe, which is also very interesting. When the Germans

were defeated a great many things and people went missing. Priceless artifacts,

paintings, money and people disappeared through the ratlines. Billions of dollars

disappeared into banks, and it is believed a massive loot of gold was dumped into a

lake in northern Germany.

One thing that did not go missing is the Ahnenerbe research archive. As Germany

was falling in those final days, soldiers were sent to round up documents and

preserve them and prevent them from being destroyed. While they didn’t gather all

the documents, and I’m sure some were inevitably destroyed, someone somewhere

placed a great significance on the preservation of the Ahnenerbe archives. Some of

which can be found today in the United States Archive, if you know where to look.

What’s missing we’ll never know but what is there is significant. Their protection

and presence adds a interesting final note on the Ahnenerbe.

Why would a fringe occult organization have such significant information as to be

protected at that level? We can only wonder what they really did find, and what is

suppressed. Did they succeed in tracking down the Holy Grail, the Ark, or the Spear

of Destiny? Possibly, and just as the closing to Raiders of the Lost Ark are those

items stored in a warehouse somewhere – probably. It makes you wonder.