Why Was Heinrich Himmler Obsessed With The Holy Grail? | Myth Hunters | War Stories

[Music] [Music] it is the most elusive Treasure of them all the cup of Christ used at the Last Supper and imbued with miraculous Powers it was barely the answer to whatever it is you need the ultimate bomb the ultimate healing thing the solution to one's problems the Holy Grail has Bewitched treasure hunters for over a millennium and Hinrich himler the head of the Nazi SS would become obsess obsessed with finding it don't underestimate Hinrich Kimler what he wants he gets he scoured the world in his search and was said to have sent Special Forces on top secret missions who better to send on your Grail Quest than uto sceni the ultimate oneman Nazi fighting machine and he placed the resources of the SS in the hands of Germany's foremost Grail Hunter Oto ran was really the real Indiana Jones who would eventually give his life in the ultimate Nazi treasure [Music] hunt this is the story of himmler's quest for the Holy Grail Berlin 1933 the Nazis are in full control of Germany Otto Ron a young cash strapped writer is heading to to a meeting he is answering a mysterious telegram an anonymous benefactor has offered ran 1,000 Reich marks a month a very impressive wage to write a book the meeting is at 7 Prince Albert straser Ron has no idea who will be waiting for him he goes there and who should he see but Hinrich Kimler [Music] himself reich's fura HCK himler was the second most powerful man in Nazi Germany second only to Adolf Hitler himler was the head of the SS a fearsome paramilitary organization which controlled much of the Nazi [Applause] State he charged ran with a remarkable almost unbelievable mission to find the Holy [Music] Grail the Holy Grail is the most sought after treasure in history the Holy Grail is the cup of the Last Supper the cup of Christ that um is meant to have been used to celebrate the first communion it is commonly believed that the same cup was used by the disciple Joseph of arthea to catch the blood of Christ whilst he was nailed to the cross but other Legends say it is even older than that that the Grail was used by Abraham the founding patriarch Ark of the Jewish people there are other people of course who think that it's the cup of Abraham and this cup apparently became part of the Sacred Treasure of the Jews and was carried around with the Ark of the Covenant over the years the legend of the gril has grown and been embellished sometimes it is said to be a stone or a plate but most commonly it is a chalice whatever it is all the Legends agree that the Grail possesses miraculous powers for the Grail is supposed to provide its holder with eternal life Grail is very the answer to whatever it is you need the thing that will fill you up when you're empty that will heal you when you're wounded it's kind of um the ultimate bomb the ultimate healing thing the solution to one's problems such is its Mystique The Grail has Obsessed treasure hunters for centuries Tales areound of Crusader Knights searching for it whilst they laid waste to lands in the Middle East and in Legend many of the stories of the mythical King Arthur and his Knights concern their quest for the Grail discover the past with exclusive military history documentaries and adree podcasts presented by world-renowned historians all on History hit watch them on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device download the app now to watch everything from the gripping story of the Band of Brothers to operation Barbarosa and D-Day immerse yourself in the dramatic stories of this remarkable era by signing up via the link in the description but despite thousands of years of searching no one has ever found it but why would himler want such an item Not only was he a fanatical Nazi it seems he held some other very unusual beliefs he was obsessed with mystery Legend astrology the occult and Germany's Pagan [Music] past himler fundamentally was today we would call him a geek he was the type of guy who was massively into talking he'd be playing Warhammer every day um you know he he was just a nerd if you like I mean there's no word to describe him well hinr himler was obviously an extremely strange man but he was a position of extraordinary power don't underestimate Hinrich himler what he wants he gets hler shaped his SS on the traditions of Germany's pre-christian tribes he promoted a cult of ancestor worship and within the SS Christian Festival would be replaced with pagan holidays instead of Christmas and Easter himler had his SS celebrate the winter and spring [Music] solstices officers were married in SS rituals called airv SS naming ceremonies replaced christenings it was as if he were attempting to create a new Nazi religion by Reawakening the old gods and the ancient traditions of their Germanic ancestors they they hoped to create a new order that would dominate Europe for the next Thousand Years even the design of the SS Insignia reflected him's obsession with Germany's Pagan past it was two sea Grooms ult symbols of a long dead Germanic people you've got this creation of a kind of whole mythology which starts starts to become a real quote unquote religion you've got all these sort of elements that the Nazis want to include and you know if you're trying to create a religion if you want to look how to do it well you should just study him learn what he got up to because in many ways you know he was the perfect kind of cult leader and that's what Nazism became and that's what the religion behind narcism became it was basically a [Applause] cult imler's obsession with mysticism led him to focus on one of the greatest legends of all the legend of the Holy Grail he selected for his headquarters velburg Castle in Northeast Germany he installed a round table and a ritual chamber in the basement of the north facing Tower he named rooms after King Arthur and the Holy Grail this was to be himmler's [Music] Camelot a castle for his new nightly order he wanted the SS to be a kind of breed of chonic knights and he wanted to blend aruan myth with actual present day real me recognized military machine he wanted to have those same s of nightly virtues that you read about in grail Legends now he had his castle and his Knights there was one last thing he [Music] needed now I mean what better to have in your nightly aruan style Castle than the Grail itself and that was why Ron had been summoned to meet himra because Ron was Germany's leading expert on the Holy Grail Otto ran was born in 1904 he grew up during the horrors of the first world war as an escape he immersed himself in Legends and mythology he was enamored by all the myths and legends of the old days because the present was not so nice so that he fled back in books and stories and uh the stories of wodan and donor and all the Nordic stories his favorite myth very popular in Germany was about one of King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table peral known in Germany as parcifal the best known version of the the story was written by wolf Lan Von ebar in the 13th century in the tale a young parival searches for The elusive Grail in ashar's version The Grail is not a cup but a rock The Grail is described as a hard dark stone which is contained in a relic and ebach says Whoever has the stone or is near to it will have eternal life and will be healed according to the legend paral eventually finds the Grail in a mythical Castle which ashbach calls [Music] [Applause] mes Ron became captivated with the tale believing that munal VES was a real place and that the passal story was actually true he was convinced that by studying it he could find the castle and if he could find msales then he would find the [Music] Grail the young ran threw himself into researching these myths I think Otto became infused with the idea of actually finding the truth behind these Legends Mo he had a very methodical German mind he was trying to um really back engineer the myth by finding the historical person that became the figures in mythology we can see in his work that there's maps and genealogies after years of researching ran eventually discovered a [Music] clue he found it in the songs of the troubadors the traveling Poets of the medieval courts of France Oto ran um rightly decided that um the trador songs and were really the only authentic record of what had happened a lot of the St a lot of the written records had been destroyed but um through oral tradition through the songs and through the Legends Echoes of what had really come down still survived into the present day in some of these songs the troubadors sang of a medieval religious sect called the cathars the cathars were said to have owned great Treasures including a sacred Relic a rock that had fallen from Heaven ran was sure that this Relic must be the Holy Grail as described by eshach the cathars certainly were real they were a 12th century religious sect predominately from the longer do region of Southwest France what we call catharism is really a variant of Christianity which believed that you needed no intermediaries between man and God that any individual could um have direct commun with the Divine which meant that um the entire hierarchy of priests prelates um Cardinals the entire church is kind of irrelevant which um also um buged Catholicism no end the pope branded the cathar Heretics and a vicious Crusade was launched against them and this religious group of people were hunted down by the Roman Catholic church because they opposed the Roman Catholic Church across southern France the cathars were slaughtered in their thousands by the forces of the Pope the last remaining cathars were besieged in a mountain Fortress called [Music] monag Monsur was the place where the katars held their last stand in 1244 War this is when the armies surrounded the castle for 10 [Music] months eventually the odds were just too much for them 10,000 against approximately 300 fighting [Music] men after a 16-day truce the surviving cathars under their um their last priest berand Marty were um chained by the hands and the the neck and dragg down the the the mountain at dawn hanging them cutting their throats a a way of destroying the faith once and for all and finally after they surrendered 200 cathars were burned at the stake so it is gone into history as the Last Stand of the katars all of this was verifiable fact but if as ran believed the stories of the trador were also true what had happened to the cathar treasure and the Holy Grail when the Crusaders entered the castle there was no trace of the mythical treasure the infinite amounts of money they had expected and over the years um various Legends and rumors have acred around what actually happened to The Treasure of the cathar the Treasures of the faith ran uncovered local stories which said that the cathars had managed to smuggle their treasure out of the castle before it fell there was a very enduring story a myth perhaps that um there were four of the cathars who were hidden in the castle um against the terms of the ceasefire who apparently escaped from the night before the burning carrying with them the legendary Holy Grail people started to believe that it had been smuggled out out the escaping cathars according to this Legend then hid the Grail somewhere in the network of caves and caverns which run for Miles throughout the mountains ran became convinced that the legend was true and that the Grail had to be hidden at Monsur I can see Ron's thinking in that um he thought that these really were the places described in the original myth and he was certainly very very infused and excited by what he had found Alo was quite sure that he had to find the Grail here that this must have been the place where they hid [Music] it even before being summoned by himler ran had traveled to Monsur a beautiful remote area of the French Pyrenees he was sure that the Grail could be found in the Uncharted mountains of this region he spent years exploring the area all these places were completely off the map at that point no one no one knew about this history or about the existence of the caves of the castles the work was difficult and treacherous but undeterred ran sunk more and more of his money into the quest we took over the lease on a small hotel which was really a front for his continued explorations of the area he started to really methodically work his way through um all the cave systems certainly had his work cut out it's the largest Limestone District in Europe and he wasn't a a trained archaeologist in fact he was a a trained etymologist but he certainly got his hands dirty auto run was really the real Indiana Jones he was out there he was into the woods he was climbing caves he was climbing castles he was searching for relics and searching for Treasure eventually he had a breakthrough deep in the caves he found childlike Engravings which he copied in his notebook in a cavern known as the Bethlehem Grotto he discovered a strange pentagonal depression carved into the wall he believed that cathars once stood in the pentagram when they were being initiated into the order ran also uncovered human skeletons in the caves which he believed were cathar remains to ran this was solid evidence that the cathars had brought the Grail here here if he could only explore deeper into the caves Ron was sure that he would eventually find [Music] it but after years of expensive Explorations Ron ran out of money Otto left France under something of a cloud he um was unable to um to make the payments on the um the hotel he had taken over and he hadn't been able to pay his staff and there were in fact legal proceedings against [Music] him when he returned to Germany all he had to show for his efforts were notes for a book but unknown to ran a copy of his book would fall into the hands of the one man in Germany who had both the resour resources and the will to relaunch his expedition Hinrich himler before the Nazis came to power people like oton were you know these kind of weedy inconsequential figures you know they're obsessed with finding the Holy Grail this was something no one really took seriously but then suddenly you get this whole new regime that takes these things extremely seriously Ron had never shown any interest in the politics of the Nazis but now Hinrich himler would provide a solution to the biggest problem he faced in his quest for the Grail because he offered ran the one thing he needed [Music] money he was told that the SS would take over funding his um research that they'd give him all the money he needed to um continue his search the only catch being you'd have to wear a black uniform and um report to his superiors ran now found himself in the SS an organization recruited from the arean elite of Nazi Germany its members were required to prove their ethnic Purity and Trace their German bloodline often as far back as the 18th century it ran some of the most intim ating branches of the Nazi State including concentration camps and the secret police despite this ran seem to have no concerns about joining when you don't have any money and somebody offers you 1,000 rice marks a month and the only thing you have to do that is to join the SS and you could have a card launch you could go anywhere in Europe and do your your hobby Al's Hobby was to research so he said yeah I'll take the money I'll go find you know treasures and stuff why not in 1936 on him's orders un shaur Iran joined one of the strangest and most unusual outfits in the SS a unit entirely staffed by academics it was called the anaura if you want the classic example of how the Nazis manipulated intellectualism and academic Behavior you can go no further than look at the anaa this was an institution set up by ultimately by himer to research quote unquote German ancestry and it was to look at how uh you could construct a mythology of aryanism and Germanic culture himler believed the Germans were a master race set aside from all others by their nobility and Purity the nura's task was to provide intellectual proof for this claim the neba is very much him's baby these are his academics these are his scientists these are his historians these are his archaeologists and they're there ultimately to do one thing to prove that him is Right unfortunately he's completely wrong as an academic joining the anba was the equivalent of selling your soul because to be a member you would be asked to prove things that were not true for example himler even wanted the anaura to prove that Jesus was not Jewish they were creating their own Bible an Aryan Bible a Bible in which Jesus was an was an Aran theba claimed that Jesus was part of a tribal Group which was not Semitic but Aryan difficult to believe that you could take Judaism out of out of the Bible but that's what the Nazis were doing and they literally did it they created an Arian Bible although it might seem ridiculous the work of the anaura was not harmless one's got to be very very careful not just to write off the honor nurba as a bunch of harmless cranks no these people are willingly subverting their own knowledge their own academic excellence in order to prove something that will later be used to murder [Music] people but for the moment Ron turned a blind eye in return he got lavishly funded in his quest for the Grail with him's backing Ron threw himself into his research with renewed Vigor and soon published a second book Lucifer's Court it was based on new research and on his earlier explorations of the caves around Monsur where he was convinced the cathars had hidden The Grail himler was impressed with Ron's progress on re's fur's order 5,000 copies of Ran's book were Bound in the finest leather and distributed to the Nazi Elite Otto's books first crusade against the Grail and his sequel Court of Lucifer rapidly became um compulsory reading at a certain level of promotion within the SS if you Rose above a certain rank you were required to read ran and I bet a lot of people really cursed at the idea of having to plow through that material with him's backing ran swiftly Rose through the ranks of the SS even though he was not typical SS material he was a scholar an academic a writer a poet and um and not a warrior he was a a terrible soldier who was um not not not a a great physical specimen he smoked too much he was very uh didn't he wasn't very useful on the exercise ground he was a very very poor with a gun he was still promoted very rapidly and ended up as an overr and furer but his new power and Rich is came at a terrible cost to his [Music] Integrity reading proofs of his new book ran discovered that someone had inserted anti-semitic passages ran chose to ignore this still his only interest was in finding the Grail it was a devil's deal that I think he was perhaps too too quick to pick up on himler would now send ran all over Europe to find the Grail ran is dispatched to any number of locations there's a lot of letters from the time where otos asking permission to visit various sites and excavate various sites and it's just literally lists of of place names he visited Europe's most famous Pagan sites he conducted excavations and visited pre-christian monuments around the continent including the exen Steiner a towering rock formation in Northwestern Germany where ancient Germanic tribes had worshipped for centuries himler even dispatched ran as far as Iceland at the head of an SS Expedition searching for The [Music] Grail but despite a worldwide Quest lasting over 2 years Ron couldn't find it the fact that he couldn't find the physical Grail made him very nervous because he couldn't really please himler the way he wanted to please him little by little ran began to lose himmler's confidence there's an increasing desperation in the way that Oto attempted to safeguard his position he was desperate to try and come up with some kind of material evidence for himler to try and show that he was actually of value to the Nazi party after all and when ran returned from one of his trips he began to see the SS for what it really was a terrifying force that oppressed and brutalized its victims really it became a kind of a state within a state almost like a parallel form of the police force of the army Al was away a lot so he didn't really see it much and when he did come home in Germany he noticed the change he noticed the difference suddenly it had become clear to Ron the danger he was in for failing to find the Grail I think he realized his days were numbered he started to drink he started to smoke a general sense of panic seems to have set in things began to fall apart Ron desperately hoped that Hinrich himler would give him more time but himler had run out of patience in 1937 himler stripped Ron of his rank ran was sent to act as a guard at the notorious daau and booken wildd concentration [Music] camps the concentration camps were built by the Nazis to imprison political and social undesirables at that time inmates in banal included socialists Communists gypsies Jehovah's Witnesses and homosexuals who were herded into inhuman conditions he saw people being hurt beaten up murdered he he wanted to get out of there quick he didn't want to have anything to do with it he wanted to flee he wanted to go somewhere else live somewhere else he asked several times to live here in France but it was denied he didn't really want to be part of the Germany that it had become he wrote to a friend I have much sorrow in my country impossible for a tolerant liberal man like me to live in the nation that my native country has become he was scared out of his senses there was a particular reason that what Ron had seen at book andal filled him with Terror because he was hiding a dangerous secret he was himself homosexual she had covered this up from the SS from the very beginning because obviously um homosexuality just like being Jewish was something which would get one sent to the camps certainly a lot of people died for the same reasons and there was something even worse Ron wasn't a pure blooded Aryan he was Jewish he had Jewish roots through his mother Clara and um which succeeded in covering up for quite a long period of time time as a member of the SS ran was required to prove he was a pure Aryan descent it was something he had been deliberately avoiding there's also the matter of his Aron pass his um the certificate of racial um Purity that he was meant to fill out which he never submitted an Aron pass needed to show four generations of a pure German bloodline for ran to have submitted his would have been tantamount suicide he had hoped that if he could find the Grail then no one would be concerned about his Annon pass but he had failed to find it and in 1939 his luck finally ran out people found out that his parents you know especially his mother was Jewish and it was obvious that he was gay there were so many people saying it proving it to his Superior years a gay Jewish SS officer could not survive long in Nazi Germany coupled with his failure to find the Grail Ron's options were narrowing plainly Otto's position ofin the SS became untenable he must have realized that it was suicidal to stay in March 1939 ran traveled to the German Austrian border high in the snow covered Alps he headed out into the mountains here winter temperatures sit well below [Music] freezing Ron took with him only a bottle of whiskey and some sleeping [Music] pills it is interesting that it was very close to the 16th of March to the anniversary of the fall of the chadow of monore and the burning of the cathar marm maybe he chose that date deliberately I think he chose the Endura the the death of the cathars to sit in the forest in the middle of the forest on a mountain slope with a magnificent few took a couple of bottles of sleeping tablets knowing that he wouldn't wake up because he would freeze to death night a notice in a Nazi newspaper reported it has a tragic death of an outstanding SS officer and [Music] scientist in 1939 Europe descended into war him's SS were in the thick of the fighting but even so the right furer continued his search for The Grail throughout the war yeah one might readily have assumed that the death of their their bif fell their lead cril Hunter might have closed down the whole program but this wasn't entirely the end of him's interest in um the occult and um the archaeological Oddities of the [Music] past in 1940 himler accompanied Hitler on a mission to Barcelona to convince Spanish dictator General Franco to bring Spain into the war but himler had an ulterior motive for traveling with the fura to Spain he had a new lead for the [Music] Grail it took himler to moner Abbey in the pyrenean mountains an hour from Barcelona an Abbey built on the foundations of an ancient castle the SS had uncovered an age-old catalonian folk song about a Grail like mystical font of Life at that castle himler now believed that the Grail Castle might not be Monsur in France but instead monserat in Spain himler ordered that the sole german-speaking monk at the Abbey Andrew Ripple Noble should help him with the quest but if the monk knew anything he decided against telling himler and the right furer left Spain empty-handed however it seems that himmler's Quest did not end [Music] there the next stage of the story would be taken up by an American Author Howard Bookner in 1991 as a young man in 1945 bno was part of the American Advan through Europe like Ron he would become fascinated with the legend of of the Grail Colonel Howard bner had been a surgeon with the American um army Third Battalion and was the allegedly the first Allied doctor to enter daa there he supposedly uncovered information from a captured SS officer which he included in his book about the Nazi quest for the Grail BNA wrote a book called Emerald cup a very curious book according to Booker's sources now that himler had ruled out Spain he once again focused his attentions on the French Pyrenees but this time he decided on a radically different approach frustrated with the efforts of academics such as ran himler now called upon one of the reich's greatest military Heroes to take up the quest Otto sceni he's a bear of a man he's very tall he's very Charming he's very imposing he's got a dueling scar down one of his cheeks um and in many ways he's he's a pretty unreconstructed [Applause] Nazi sceni was the chief of Germany's Special Troops the most famous and feared Commando in the German Army bold fearless and a hero to the Nazi faithful lookner claims that himler had dispatched none other than Otto sceni the um famous paratrooper in Commando allegedly the most dangerous man in the world to retrieve the sacred treasure him's tried the academics he's tried the boffins why did we send Otto schoeni sceni was more than qualified for the task in September 1943 he had led a daring raid on a prison in the Italian Alps to free the captured Italian dictator Bonito musolini dropping in by glider with a squadron of elite German commanders they came under heavy fire but sceni would ensure the mission's success and his own Glory by returning with molini alive he's in many ways represents uh kind of the ultimate onean Nazi fighting machine now who better to send on your Grail Quest supposedly than Otto sceni so according to Bookner in March 1944 himler charged sceni with yet another top secret mission but this time to the castle of Monsur in France to find the Grail sceni decided to look again at Ran's theory that the Grail had been taken out of the castle 700 years before by escaping cathars Colonel Howard bner believed that OS sceni was able to look at the Chateau with a a military mind and imagine how such a feat might be possible until now nobody could understand how the cathars could have escaped three sides of the castle were besieged by thousands of soldiers and the remaining side backed onto an impassible precipice but by studying this Cliff sceni had a revelation one side of the castle is this sheer cliff and obviously everyone thinks well it the Grail can't be hidden there that's impossible there's no way they could have done that but sceni because he's this supposed tactical military genius you know is the first person to say ah but what if it is hidden there sceni worked out that by using ropes the escaping cathars could have lowered themselves unseen over the castle walls and down the cliff face if he was right everyone else had been looking on the wrong side of the [Music] mountain sceni quickly assumed that the cathars would have taken the least likely route out of the castle and escaped down the sheer side of the cliff and um according to bner um he swiftly picked up their trail from the base of the cliff 6 days after sceni was said to have arrived at Monsur it was the anniversary of the cathar massacre March the 16th 1944 was the 700th anniversary of the fall of the Chateau a small group of local people chose to Mark the occasion with a simple ceremony at the base of the castle then something unexpected happened the story has it that um while they were getting together on the mountain that a German aircraft flew overhead it's the 700th anniversary of the masar of the cathar and the plane makes a a cross a cathar cross in the [Music] sky BNA claims that this was a sign from from himler that sceni had been successful in his mission in recovering the emerald [Music] cup but could this be true had scorsi really succeeded where everyone else had failed and found the Grail bna's story is certainly entertaining but there is one fundamental problem with his account and that concerns otos scorsi whenever you hear the name Otto School zy mentioned in connection with any Fantastical story to me that's a really important signifier that the story is almost certainly going to be an absolute pile of rubbish although oeni was a real person captured by the Allies at the end of the war he could not have led this Mission by linking um scan's alleged retrieval of the Holy Grail to the 700th anniversary of the fall of the castle it means that he must he would have to have been here on the 16th of March 1944 but the Allies have proof that Otto sceni was not in France in March 1944 he was in Yugoslavia where the Germans were involved in vicious fighting now the truth is when he was supposed to have been supposedly finding the Holy Grail in France he was in fact you know somewhere near the Eastern Front burner's story gets even Wilder The Grail being taken by Nazi ubot to Antarctica where it is placed in a cave of ice in a secret Nazi base in the muig Hoffman mountains I mean all of it makes for a wonderful story and I'm certainly after the Indiana Jones movies we love the idea of uniformed Nazi Stormtroopers ransacking the castles of the panes I mean this is fun I mean you know but it's just not true but even though Booker's story is just fantasy the story of the Nazi hunt for the Grail is [Music] not Heinrich himler was obsessed with mysticism and he did fund expensive Expeditions for the Grail including Rams but he never found it because in all probability it never even existed Hinrich himler was eventually captured by the Allies at the end of the war and committed suicide whilst in British custody this is the house in lunberg where himler committed suicide in that room the most despicable of all German criminals contrive to take poison after arrest but the horrifying truth is that millions of people across Europe would lose their lives on the direct orders of this man orders which the Nazis attempted to justify through the work of the anaura and men like the Grail Hunter Oto ran [Music] [Music]

Channel: War Stories

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Keywords: Heinrich Himmler obsession, Little Dot Studios, Myth Hunters series, Nazi Germany history, Nazi regime history, Otto Skorzeny exploits, War Stories, World War II history, battle accounts, captivating storytelling, dramatic documentaries, elusive relic, historical narrative, holy grail mystery, military conflicts, miraculous powers, past discoveries, provocative documentaries, relic of christianity, warfare chronicles, world-renowned historians

Id: wWVji2OqH8Q

Length: 49min 17sec (2957 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 21 2024