twentieth century was lost, locked into an irrevocable collision course with disaster. And yet there are more problems with this pivotal point in the book. Ravenscroft writes: ‘When Hitler was driven down the Ringstrasse to the Ring and on to the Heldenplatz to the reviewing stand in front of the Hofburg, the tumultuous jubilation of the crowds reached near-delirium. How could the citizens of Vienna have known that the ecstasy on the face of Adolf Hitler was the twisted ecstasy of revenge!’ (32)
Joachim Fest, one of the greatest authorities on Hitler and the Third Reich offers a slightly different account of the Fuhrer’s moment of triumph at the ‘reunion’ of Germany and Austria: ‘All the aimlessness and impotence of those years were now vindicated, all his furious craving for compensation at last satisfied, when he stood on the balcony of the Hofburg and announced to hundreds of thousands in the Heldenplatz the “greatest report of a mission accomplished” in his life …’ (33) If Fest’s academic credentials are insufficient, there are also photographs to prove that Hitler faced the Viennese crowds from the balcony of the Hofburg, not on a ‘reviewing stand’ in front of it.
Ravenscroft goes on to claim that after reviewing the Austrian SS and giving his permission for the founding of a new SS regiment, Hitler refused an invitation for a tour of the city. Instead, he ‘left the Ring to drive directly to the Imperial Hotel where the most luxurious suite in the city awaited him’. (34) Arrangements for a civic dinner and reception were cancelled because Hitler was ‘terrified that an attempt would be made to kill him’ (35) and remained in his suite. Anderson asks a pertinent question: if Hitler was terrified that an attempt would be made on his life, why did he arrive in Vienna in an open car that passed through the cheering crowds, then stand in full view outside the Hofburg, and then go out onto the balcony of his hotel suite several times at the insistence of the Viennese people? (36)
In spite of this, Ravenscroft has Hitler leaving the Imperial Hotel ‘long after midnight’ to head for the Habsburg Treasure House and the Holy Lance. According to Anderson:
… Hitler arrived in Vienna at 5 p.m. on 14 March and the mass welcome in the Heldenplatz took place the next day — the fifteenth. If Ravenscroft has meant us to understand that the rally in the square he speaks of was on the fifteenth, then there is a further problem: Hitler stayed in Vienna less than twenty-four hours! He was not there on the night of the fifteenth.
After attending a military parade at the Maria-Theresa monument at two o’clock that afternoon — the same parade which Ravenscroft says Hitler attended before going on to the Imperial — Hitler flew out in his Junkers aircraft as the twilight settled on an enervated Vienna. (37)
It is also difficult to imagine how Hitler could have left his hotel and gone to the Treasure House without being seen by anyone in the seething crowds that remained in the streets. It would surely have been easier for him to order the Holy Lance to be brought from the museum to his hotel suite. (38) On reflection, it must be said that the only things in the Habsburg Treasure House Hitler coveted were the Habsburg Crown Jewels (which were sent to Nuremberg immediately following the Anschluss), not to mention the Austrian gold and currency deposits that would aid a German economy stressed by preparations for war. Hitler was motivated more by financial than occult concerns, as the transfer of Austrian gold and currency reserves to Germany amply demonstrates. (39)
It will, one hopes, be apparent from this all too brief overview of the problems inherent in The Spear of Destiny that, while the book may be a fascinating — if somewhat lurid — read, in the Dennis Wheatley mould of occult ripping yarns, as a serious historical work it is completely unsatisfactory. It is, of course, conceivable that Trevor Ravenscroft was well aware that he was penning a work of almost total fiction; however, this is mere conjecture and is absolutely not proven. Even assuming that he wrote the book in good faith, believing its revelations regarding Hitler and the Holy Lance to be accurate, it is crippled by the research methods on which he appears to rely: namely, the use of occult techniques to enhance the powers of the mind and thus gain access to historical information that has not been preserved in any conventional way. In the final analysis, we must dismiss The Spear of Destiny on the grounds that when information gathered through psychic processes conflicts with what has been established through documentary evidence or the testimony of first-hand witnesses we have no serious alternative but to abandon it in favour of what can be verified by those who do not possess these psychic talents.
Before moving on, we must say a few words about the claims of many occult writers that Hitler was involved in black magic practices, having been initiated into the dark arts by Dietrich Eckart and Karl Haushofer. (Eckart, Alfred Rosenberg and Rudolf von Sebottendorff were said to have conducted horrific seances, in which a naked female medium exuded ectoplasm from her vagina and through whom contact was established with the seven Thulist hostages who had been murdered by the Communists in April 1919. The ghosts predicted that Hitler would claim the Holy Lance and lead Germany into global conflagration.) (40) There is no evidence whatsoever to link Hitler directly with black magic practices of any description. While it is of course beyond question that the Nazi Party arose out of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, which in turn began as the Thule Society (a group founded on occult and racist principles), there is no evidence that Hitler himself was an occultist — and considerable evidence that he wasn’t.
Speer, for instance, recalls Hitler’s contempt for the woolly-headed mysticism of Heinrich Himmler:
What nonsense! Here we have at last reached an age that has left all mysticism behind it, and now he wants to start all over again. We might just as well have stayed with the church. At least it had tradition. To think that I may some day be turned into an SS saint! Can you imagine it? I would turn over in my grave … (41)
Hitler was also scornful of Himmler’s attempts to establish archaeological links between modern Germans and the ancient Aryan descendants of Atlantis:
Why do we call the whole world’s attention to the fact that we have no past? It isn’t enough that the Romans were erecting great buildings when our forefathers were still living in mud huts; now Himmler is starting to dig up these villages of mud huts and enthusing over every potsherd and stone axe he finds. All we prove by that is that we were still throwing stone hatchets and crouching around open fires when Greece and Rome had already reached the highest stage of culture. We really should do our best to keep quiet about this past. Instead Himmler makes a great fuss about it all. The present-day Romans must be having a laugh at these revelations. (42)
In truth, those who subscribed to occultist or pseudoreligious notions were indeed something of a laughing stock in the high echelons of the Third Reich. Himmler’s beliefs about the original prehistoric Germanic race were considered absurd by both Hitler and Goebbels, the propaganda minister. ‘When, for example, the Japanese presented [Himmler] with a samurai sword, he at once discovered kinships between Japanese and Teutonic cults and called upon scientists to help him trace these similarities to a racial common denominator.’ (43)
As for the belief that Hitler was deeply interested in astrology and kept in constant touch with astrologers who advised him on the various courses of action he should take, this too is completely fallacious. According to the former Office of Strategic Services (OSS) officer Walter Langer:
All of our informants who have known Hitler rather intimately discard the idea [of Hitler’s belief] as absurd. They all agree that nothing is more foreign to Hitler’s personality than to seek help from outside sources of this type.
The Fuhrer had never had his horoscope cast, but in an indicative move Hitler, some time before the war, forbade the practice of fortune-telling and star-reading in Germany. (44)
As we have just seen, while Hitler was contemptuous of mysticism and pseudoreligion, Himmler was another matter entirely, and it is to him that we must now turn our attention.
6 — Ordinary madness
Heinrich Himmler and the SS
Many writers on the occult have suggested that the notorious SS (Schutz Staffeln or Defence Squads) was actively engaged in black-magic rites designed to contact and enlist the aid of evil and immensely powerful
