History Channel - The Occult History of the Third Reich (1991)

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.

Written and Directed by Dave Flitton ; Produced by David McWhinnie ; A LaMancha / Castle Co-Production

Part 1: Adolf Hitler
In May 1933, Nazi students, Brownshirts and Hitler Youth burn works of literature, philosophy and science by the thousands. Hitler's revolt against the intellect was enshrined in a new religion, a religion devoted to the mysteries of blood and race. A new religion that paved the way to the murder of millions.
The occult was never far from the life of the infamous leader of the Third Reich. From his poverty-stricken boyhood years in Vienna right up to his death in the flaming ruins of war-torn Berlin, Adolf Hitler was immersed in the Germanic mysticism of Guido von List and Jorg Lanz. Believing he was the Stark von Oben, the Strong One From Above sent by providence to create the Thousand Year Reich, Hitler's vision of himself as a new Messiah was reinforced by his closest associate, deputy leader of the Nazi party, Rudolf Hess, himself an astrologer and mystic.
For the first time in this documentary the strange and terrifying beliefs of this sinister figure are explored. Hitler's fascination with the origins and rise to power of Aryan man, his obsession with possessing the spear of destiny and his own messianic plans for the world are revealed through recently discovered rare archive footage of this terrifying era.
Part 2: Himmler the Mystic
In the violent aftermath of the first World War, an increasing fascination with the mystical and esoteric had swept German aristocratic and educated classes. Obsessed with the occult, leader of the SS Heinrich Himmler made it his goal to create a race of superhumans and embarked on the strangest eugenics experiment in history.
The world of Heinrich Himmler was based on the strange and mysterious occultism that featured throughout the Third Reich, and he remains the most enigmatic of Hitler's high command. Obsessed with astrology and spiritualism, Himmler transformed the SS from Hitler's bodyguard into a mystical order steeped in the Aryan cult and, guided by ancient prophecies, planned to create a city ruled by SS nobility and inhabited by racially pure Germanic peasant warriors.
This documentary explores the strange beliefs of the Reichsfuhrer SS and his black-uniformed elite and their origins in the shady world of secret societies, mystics and clairvoyants.
Part 3: The SS Blood and Soil
By 1934, almost ten years after its creation, the SS was in the process of becoming Hitler's own brotherhood of templars. The handpicked, disciplined and fiercely loyal bodyguard of the Fuhrer, was being transformed into an Aryan Elite - a mystical order dedicated to the creation of an Empire.
The most sinister of all Nazi creations was the black-clad SS. Originally Hitler's bodyguard, this military-religious order became a racial aristocracy under the leadership of Heinrich Himmler. A carefully selected elite, destined to subjugate all other peoples and achieve the ultimate purification through racial selection and elimination, the SS personified the Aryan vision of a master race.
This documentary explores the strange and secret world of the SS, from its roots in the teachings of Germanic mystics and occultist circles, to its rise to a position of unprecented power and authority in Nazi Germany.
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.