The following piece contains information about Urban Legends that have mostly been debunked by fact checkers And yet they continue to spread on the internet. 

By David Castello

If there is one name that will forever be synonymous with evil it is Adolph Hitler.

When he came to power in 1933, it was not over some backwater country. In fact, Germany at the time was the most technologically advanced nation on the planet.

How did this man with a Charlie Chaplin toothbrush mustache and his Brownshirts seduce millions of otherwise intelligent men and women into blindly fpllowing him on a suicidal quest to conquer the world?

Did he succeed solely because he used the Jews as scapegoats during the economic crash of the Weimar Republic that was capped by the Great Depression? Or did he and his fellow Nazis have powerful help from another dimension?

Urban Legends about Hitler and his Nazis’ use of the occult abound, but I find these five to be the most pause-worthy.

1) The Thule Society. Hitler’s membership in Munich’s Thule Society in 1919 and close relationship with mentor Dietrich Eckart marks the beginning of the Hitler and Nazi party the world would come to fear.

Besides Eckart, the Thule Society’s membership roster reads like a Who’s Who of Nazis including Rudolf Hess, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank, Julius Lehmann, Gottfried Feder and Karl Harrer.

In Hitler, Eckhart found the angry but passionate World War l veteran he could mold into his German Messiah introducing him to occult powers such as Bulwer-Lytton’s Vril.

Shortly before he died from a heart attack in 1923, Eckhart supposedly told the inner circle of the Thule Society, “Hitler will dance, but it is I who have called the tune. I have initiated him into the Secret Doctrine and opened his centres of vision and given him the means to communicate with the Powers. Do not mourn for me. I shall have influenced history more than any other German.”

Many historians have sought to downplay Dietrich Eckart’s prominence in Hitler’s life, but that position is countered by the fact that Hitler dedicated the second volume of Mein Kampf to him and named the Waldbühne arena in Berlin as the Dietrich Eckart Bühne when it opened for the 1936 Summer Olympics.

Photo Credit: Felipe Loyola/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)

2) The Vril Society. Whereas the Thule Society was basically an anti-Semite and anti-Communist organization who lusted for a German Messiah, the Vril Society made no bones about their intent to communicate with the other side.

Founded by Karl Haushofer, the Vril Society eventually included the Lords of the Black Stone, the Black Knights of the Thule Society, and the Order of the Black Sun (later incorporated into the elite of Heinrich Himmler’s SS).

A Vienna-born medium named Maria Orsic began receiving telepathic messages in an unknown language and met regularly with the Vril Society along with another medium named Sigrun.

Both Maria and Sigrun were dropdead gorgeous, each wearing their hair in an extremely long ponytail.

As Maria deciphered these messages, she realized they were coming from the Aldebaran star system (68 light-years away in the constellation Taurus) whose beings claimed they colonized the Earth eons ago, creating the Sumerian culture in Mesopotamia.

These messages included plans for a flying machine that could reach Aldebaran.

As the legend goes, Maria Orsic later escaped to Aldebaran in one of these craft. Her last message to the Vril Society on March 11, 1945 read, “No one is staying here.”

3) Nazi UFOs. The flying machine plans that Maria Orsic received from Aldebaran were sent to Dr. W. O. Schuman at the University of Munich who deemed them credible and a decision was made to construct the craft with funding from the Thule Society.

Progress was slow and it took three years just for the parts to arrive. It then took over ten years to complete construction.

Flown by World War I ace Lothar Waiz, the first test flight occurred in 1934. The craft rose sixty meters in the air and then plummeted to the ground. Waiz escaped unharmed and successfully flew it later that year.

By this time, Hitler took notice and Himmler’s Order of the Black Sun occult group of the SS, originally part of the Vril Society, claimed the project with Maria as an advisor. There were further tests including the Vril-7 in late 1944 which supposedly entered a dimension channel or worm hole that could facilitate a journey to Aldebaran.

Upon landing, witnesses said the craft looked as though it had aged over a hundred years.

After the war, the US focused on rocket propulsion spacecraft spearheaded by Wernher von Braun. The Nazi saucers were propelled by an anti-gravity mechanism and the Soviets may have obtained information about the program.

Richard Russell, who served 38 years in the US Senate and was chairman of the Armed Services Committee from 1951 to 1969, stated in an Air Force Intelligence report, dated October 14, 1955, that he and two traveling companions spotted two flying saucers on October 4, 1955 while traveling by rail across Russia’s Transcaucasus region.

4) The Hollow Earth Of Antarctica. In 1943, German Navy Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz declared that his submarine fleet had “built for the Führer an impregnable fortress at the other end of the world” in the region of Queen Maude’s Land, Antarctica, later renamed Neuschwabenland.

Hitler allegedly believed in a hollow earth with moderate climate existing somewhere in Antarctica and conspiracy theorists had a field day with this one after the war.

In December 1946, Operation Highjump, commanded by Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd, reached Antarctica with a task force consisting of 4,700 men and 13 ships including the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Philippine Sea.

Needless to say, the size of this naval force raised more than a few eyebrows, especially when the reason made public was nothing more benign than aerial mapping, building a runway and refurbishing a base.

After the expedition ended in February 1947, rumors began to spread about the planes launched from the aircraft carrier destroying a Nazi military installation and being attacked by UFOs. Rumors is the key word here.

5) Winston Churchill’s Warning To The World. Walter Johannes Stein (1891-1957) was an Austrian philosopher and one of the pioneers of Anthroposophy.

During World War ll, Stein was a confidential advisor to Winston Churchill about the minds and motivations of Adolph Hitler and the leaders of the Nazi Party. Churchill reportedly told him, “The occultism of the Nazi party should not under any circumstances be revealed to the general public.”

The problem is that the sole source of Stein’s alleged relationship with Churchill comes from the Introduction in Trevor Ravenscroft’s best seller, The Spear Of Destiny.

When the book was first published in 1973 it literally rocked the Nazi occult market back on its heels with bombshell after bombshell about Hitler’s early life and the Nazi occultists who brought him to power.

It’s a fantastic read, but over time the wheels began to fall off the cart as researchers and fact checkers methodically picked it apart. In 1982, Ravenscroft admitted that he never actually met Stein, but communicated with him through séances. Nevertheless, to this day the book has legions of defenders.

David J Castello is the manager and drummer for Nashville rocker BREE (Werewolf Tunes) and the Chief Operating Officer and Editor-in-Chief for the Castello Cities Internet Network (CCIN.com).  

RISE NEWS is a grassroots journalism news organization that is working to change the way young people become informed and engaged in the world. You can write for us.

Cover Photo Credit: Barney Moss/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)

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