History Channel - The Occult History of the Third Reich (1991) Part 4 The Enigma of the Swastika

The murderous deeds of Hitler's Third Reich are still widely recalled today, but what is less well-known is the strange concoction of beliefs that underpinned the Nazi regime. In the early 20th Century, the young Adolf Hitler was just one of many German-speaking people attracted by a new Germanic mythology that combined ancient legends and esoteric cosmologies with cutting-edge theories of genetic science. In the hands of the Nazis, the result was a new ideology that saw racial purity as the key to human destiny. This was a belief-system of arcane rituals and potent symbols, with the ancient swastika appropriated for the Nazi cause. By the time of the Third Reich, Hitler and the Nazis had evolved an entirely new faith, complete with holy book, venerated relics and a priestly elite in the form of Himmler's SS. It was a religion based on obedience, power, and the cult of the leader, with Hitler himself conceived in Messianic terms. This powerful and disturbing series uses rare original footage to tell a story that is as bizarre as it is horrific, and which casts new light on a national movement that came to see evil as a sacred task.

Part 4 The Enigma of the Swastika

The swastika was adopted by the Nazi Party in 1920. But it was neither the Party's invention, nor its discovery. Since the end of the nineteenth century, the Swastika had been spreading amongst the peoples of Europe. And everywhere, it was the sign of a new and powerful force - a deepening fascination with the arcane, the esoteric and the occult. First adopted in 1920, the Swastika was at the very centre of the Nazi Party's ideology. Amidst the intense pageantry and Gothic symbolism surrounding the worship of military might and spiritual purity, the armed cross became the cornerstone of Aryan mythology and the symbol of the terrifying ambition of one man – the messianic figure of Adolf Hiler. This documentary looks at the swastika's ancient roots in the mysterious religious cults of India and Tibet and explores its adoption by European occultists and the subsequent transformation of this symbol of good fortune into an infamous emblem of terror.

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