Revealed: Hitler's twisted plan to bring back giant historic beasts from the dead... so that top Nazis could HUNT them



Hitler wanted to bring back animals that had been extinct for 9,000 years

Nazis planned to re-instate prehistoric wild Auroch cows in Europe's forests

Animals stood at 7ft tall to the shoulder and had giant horns

Project overseen by Herman Goring - who wanted to hunt the creatures



Astonishing research revealed in documentary Hitler's Jurassic Monsters



He wanted to create an Aryan race of so-called superior beings, but Hitler and his Nazis didn’t stop at humans.

They were also trying to re-instate prehistoric animals that had been extinct for 9,000 years.

They planned to bring back wild Auroch cows - which stood at 7ft to the shoulder and had giant horns - to hunt in ancient forests across Europe, new research has uncovered.

Hitler and his Nazis wanted to bring back the prehistoric auroch cow, a new documentary will reveal next week. Pictured is a portrait of a Nazi posing with the skeleton of the creature

The documentary, called Hitler's Jurassic Monsters featuring Dr Jacqui Melville- a Bio Archaeologist, will divulge the efforts his men went to to try and reinstate the creature into Europe's forests

And next week a new documentary will reveal the previously unknown lengths key Nazi figures went to in developing their prehistoric flock during the Second World War, using a process known as back breeding.

It was all part of the Nazi obsession with creating a connection to the primeval Germanic tribes of history, which they believed would give them added credibility with the German people.

And it was overseen by Herman Goring – Hitler’s second in command and chief huntsman of the Third Reich – who sought a larger and more challenging beast to hunt.

Goring studied ancient documents and cave paintings about Aurochs, which once roamed across Europe in earlier times.

And he planned to breed the animals in zoos before reinstating them in the primeval Białowieża forest in Poland, which was rapidly cleared of its Jewish inhabitants.

The project was overseen by Goering, pictured with the carcass of a deer, who wanted to create the beasts to provide him with a more challenging animal to hunt

Goering poses with a line of dead deer - with other Nazis behind him. Goring studied ancient documents and cave paintings about Aurochs, which once roamed across Europe in earlier times.

Yesterday Dr Toby Thacker, senior lecturer in modern European history Cardiff University, said: ‘This is one part of a larger story about how the Nazi party sought to give itself a longer history and a credibility and a sense of legitimacy with the German people by saying they weren’t something totally new but had this 2,000 year history going back to the Germanic tribes in the forest.



'So the creation of these animals is just one part of that effort to give themselves some history.

‘For Goring, hunting was one of the greatest human activities and he believed there would be a special quality to these particularly wild and ferocious animals.



'He imagined repopulating large areas of Eastern Europe with these animals.



'They were bigger and more atrocious and more vicious and that was one of the attractions, because Goring knew hunting those animals would be much more of a challenge than hunting say a fox or a hare. It was the ultimate hunting challenge.’

Dr Toby Thacker, a History lecturer at Cardiff University, will also appear in the show - which will air next week. Experts will say how the plan to bring back the cows was part on an obsession to create a connection to the primeval Germanic tribes of history

As with many Nazi policies, the level of secrecy Hitler ruled in has made it difficult for historians to make discoveries.

Orders were given verbally and rarely written down and evidence of killings was covered up – by burning bodies and destroying concentration camps.

But by examining fossilised bones of Aurochs and a war diary kept by a Nazi unit, researchers have been able to identify the Nazis’ plans.

Heck cattle pictured in Neadrathal Germany - which look similar to the auroch cows, which would roam across Europe in the prehistoric period

And they appear to chime with the party’s ideology about creating racial purity, which saw the execution of 3,300,000 Jews during the Holocaust.

Dr Thacker said: ‘When the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union and captured Białowieża forest they immediately set it aside and gave it to Goring who said let’s reinstate these animals there.



'And he said we need to get rid of all the inhabitants, particularly the Jews. So there’s this connection between the reintroduction of the animals and the extermination of the Jews.



'And that’s what adds a terrible twist to this story.’

Next week, Hitler’s Jurassic Monsters will use a combination of old footage and photographs and reconstructed drama to tell of the seizure of the primeval Białowieża forest in July 1941 and the Nazis’ mission to reinstate prehistoric Aurochs.