When it comes to Nazism, or even the Second World War, the first name that comes to mind is Adolf Hitler. This is a name that will not be forgotten for decades because he was the leader of the NSDAP, but others such as Göring, Goebbels, Bormann, Speer, Globočnik or Himmler and many more are also extremely relevant because of their actions. In addition to his roles before and during the war, he also appeared in films such as ‘Inglourious Basterds’ or ‘Downfall’.

But the name that is not so familiar to us is Karl Maria Wiligut. Wiligut was Austrian and served in the Austro-Hungarian army during World War I, and he was not a role model: he was violent and eccentric, and doctors claimed he suffered from schizophrenia and megalomania. And if there was one thing he was obsessed with, it was having a male heir to whom he could pass on his secret knowledge.

What secret information? Everyone who invented it has been working for years disciplines such as magic, alchemy or divinationa set of occult sciences that only a select few were worth knowing. And his figure fascinated Heinrich Himmler, the architect of the Final Solution, who became extremely obsessed with occultism, ancient history, Viking symbolism and the Aryans. He devoted part of his life to finding out the extraordinarily sublime past of the Germans, but Hitler was not at all pleased.

Search for the Aryans

Let’s go back to Wiligut for a moment. The Austrian was a member of a Masonic sect from 1889 to 1909. During these 20 years, Karl had reached the rank of “Knight” and, above all, acquired a lot of knowledge about esoteric practices and connections with the world of occultism. . In fact, I believed so Heir to a long line of Germanic masters This confusion of ideas, dating back to prehistoric times, together with the influence of positive Christianity, prepared the ground for Karl to later come to Himmler’s attention.

In those years, the New Templar Order was also founded in Austria. Born in 1900, this organization was a proto-fascist secret society that had already begun to spread the ideas of a superior race, the “ruling class”, who had to impose themselves on the inferior race, the “animal people”. According to the group’s ideology, the superior race could use all its power to impose itself on the inferior race. This led to Nazi eugenics and Hitler’s extermination policies.

The Ordo Novi Templi supported Nazism in its early years, and the sect’s symbol was a yellow flag with a swastika and four lilies. Meaning? A gold background symbolizing eternity, the lilies of racial purity, and the swastika with the Aryan hero.

Welsburg

Back to Wiligut. After being diagnosed with schizophrenia, he was admitted to a psychiatric clinic. He lived there from 1924 to 1927, and in 1932 he left his family for Germany. From there he kept in touch with former members of the New Templar Order and continued to develop his reputation as an occultist, but now in Munich.

In 1933, his time came: he met Himmler. They must have liked each other, because both were recruited into the SS and within two years rose to one of the highest ranks of the paramilitary group: Brigadier Fuhrer. He moved to Berlin to be closer to Himmler.. He was originally tasked with developing the plans for the Wewelsburg Palace to become the “center of the world” created by the Nazis. Wiligut developed a series of runes and designed the SS-Ehrenring, the SS ring of honor that became one of Nazism’s most coveted awards.

Design of SS-Ehrenring

It was delivered directly by Himmler and had a set of rules:

• Each ring had to have the recipient’s name and the date it was given.
• Himmler’s signature was engraved inside.
• It was meant to be worn only on the ring finger of the left hand.
• If the recipient died, was fired, or dismissed from service, the ring would be returned.

This was one example of Himmler’s interest in Germanic mysticism – there was more – but it seems that no matter how much Karl contributed to fostering the historical, supremacist and occult interests that Himmler already had, He embarrassed the German high officialIn 1938 he learned that the Austrian had been admitted to a mental health institution and that Karl had been “encouraged” to retire early: in February 1939.

And SS Ehrenring

In the same 1938 Himmler sent a Nazi team to Tibet. This was not a sabotage or espionage mission, but archeology? Both Hitler and Himmler wanted to know the racial origins, the “Viking” blood (in many quotes) and the history of the Aryans, distorting the fact that the same Aryans came to India from northern Europe and mixed with the local population, distorting their “purity” (again in many quotes). The interest was so great that in 1935 Himmler founded a research institute where 100 German “scientists” studied the history of the species.

Himmler believed that traces of the purest Aryan could be found in the Himalayas, and they arrived there without breaking a sweat: with swastika flags. Of course, in Eastern cultures the swastika has a very different meaning. Himmler and his team (including zoologist Ernst Schäfer and anthropologist Bruno Beger) conducted fieldwork there: collected samples, artifacts, anthropological data, took photographs, measured the skulls of 376 Tibetans… but then World War II broke out.

They also took lots of photos.

SS anthropologist Bruno Beger, who participated in this expedition, measures the skull of a Tibetan man

Life support

At the end of the 19th century, geographer Friedrich Ratzel popularized the term. Life support. Initially, it was the key to “living space” policies, where the state had to provide enough space for its people to develop. The problem is that it involves social Darwinism, so The strongest had the right to take land from other peoples.

This idea caught Hitler’s attention. My StruggleThis distorted the idea of ​​a living space. When Hitler came to power in 1933, he showed his plan to his main officers: the living space plan in the east. The General Ost Plan, or GPO, consisted of the colonization and Germanization of Central and Eastern Europe. The colonial character was implicit here, however, not only deporting the already existing inhabitants of the region, but also allowing their annihilation.

With the attack on Poland in 1939, Germany initiated not only the Second World War, but also the first steps towards the conquest of vital territory in the east. Based on these ideas of Hitler, Himmler wanted to shape a settlement plan that would translate in his mind as villages full of Germans of the highest genetic purity, with farms, sports fields, political centers and all this surrounded by thick forests of oak trees to reproduce the ancient forests of northern Germany.

The idea, of course, was that this colonization plan would turn the senior SS officers into a kind of powerful landowners, so that they would not question any orders from the command and thus would be more effective with any means of clearing up the eastern territories. Himmler began to pressure Hitler, insisting that the settlement plan be implemented; the Führer agreed to it in July 42. A victory for Himmler.

Hitler’s shame

Although Hitler left the layout plan to Himmler, he was not very happy with what Himmler found. With the desire to sneak into Germanic historyData that shamed the Führer and the German people’s past was coming to light.

As science and history journalist Heather Pringle writes, this was because the Germanic peoples did not live as “orderly” as, for example, the Roman Empire, which refuted the idea that the Third Reich was the heir to the empire of the Romans. Even in his private circle, Hitler had mocked Himmler: “It’s bad enough that the Romans built big buildings when our ancestors were still living in mud huts,” he commented to Albert Speer.

These archaeological discoveries were made possible thanks to the Ahnenerbe, the ‘Society for the Study of the Ancient History of the Soul’, through which the Nazi leadership justified its actions. And Hitler’s quote in particular was:

“Why are we drawing everyone’s attention to the fact that we have no past? It’s bad enough that the Romans built great buildings while our ancestors were still living in mud huts. Now Himmler has started unearthing these mud hut villages and he’s getting excited. Every piece of pottery and stone axe he finds. We really should be doing our best to keep quiet about this past. Instead, Himmler must be laughing too hard at these revelations.”

But Hitler had to think that in the midst of an expansionist war there were better things to do; I was pleased with the layout plans This is what Himmler was carrying out. “This is a practice that must be followed. We must send elite units into areas where the tendency towards degeneration is evident, and in ten or twenty years the lineage will have improved beyond recognition,” he said.

In the end it did not happen that way and from this plan only a few SS farms remained on a road in the city of Mehrow.

Pictures | Carsten Steger, Michael Moynihan and Stephen Flowers, Equirhodont, MSWG, Bundesarchiv

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