Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Otto Rahn: The Real-Life Indiana Jones Villain (Encore)

Starting point is 00:00:00 The following is an encore presentation of Everything Everywhere Daily. In the Indiana Jones movies, Indiana is usually searching for a rare artifact with mystical powers, while some other nefarious archaeologist, usually a Nazi, is trying to find the artifact before Indy. Believe it or not, that trope of a Nazi archaeologist looking for an item of incredible power actually has a kernel of truth to it. Sort of. Learn more about Otto Ron and the real-life Nazi search for the Holy Grail on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong?

Starting point is 00:00:50 ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. Otto Ron was born in 1904 in Middlestott, Germany. He attended the University of Giesen, where he earned his degree in philology. and FYI, philology is basically the study of linguistics and literature in a historical context. While at the University of Gieson, one of his professors was a Baron von Gaul, who introduced him

Starting point is 00:01:29 to the Elbe Jensen movement, also known as the Cathars. And before I get too far, I should probably explain who the Cathars were because they're kind of central to the story. The Cathars were a religious movement which had its heyday from the 11th to 14th century. They primarily existed in southern France and northern Italy. The Cathar's ideology was believed to have come from the east from the Byzantine Empire, and it's also known as Albigensianism based on the French city of Albi where it was centered. If you have ever come across the term before, it was probably from the Albigensian heresy, which is what it was considered by the Catholic Church.

Starting point is 00:02:03 The Cathars had a belief system which differed dramatically from Orthodox Christianity. For starters, they thought there were two twin opposing deities. One was an evil god who created the world, which was the god of the Old Testament, and the other was a benign god who created the spirit world and was the God of the New Testament. As such, all matter and the physical world was to be considered evil. The Cathars thought that all people were angels who had literally made a deal with the devil to get corruptible physical bodies. They rejected Christian concepts such as the Trinity and the resurrection. They also had some other really odd beliefs which stemmed from their views.

Starting point is 00:02:39 Because the world was bad, they shun sexual reproduction, which is not really a good way to create a long-term religious movement. Likewise, they shunned meat, cheese, and eggs for the same reason, but they did eat fish. The Pope eventually issued a crusade against the Cathars, and there was a huge massacre in 1209 when 7,000 Cathars were killed. The last Cathar leader was executed in 1321, and they eventually died out after existing in very small-mount communities over the next few centuries. When the Cathars were wiped out, they became a thing of legend and myth. Anyways, back to Otto Ron.

Starting point is 00:03:11 Ron became obsessed with the Cathars. This was in addition to his previous lifelong fascination with the legends of the Holy Grail. Eventually, he became convinced that the Cathars were the last group to have possession of the Holy Grail, and there were clues to its location that were located in the medieval German poem Parzival, written by the German knight and poet Wolfram von Eschenbach. Parzival tells the story of one of King Arthur's knights who searches for the Holy Grail. In 1931, he set out to find the Grail, which he thought was located at Montsegur Castle in Languedonges,

Starting point is 00:03:43 France. Montseger Castle was the last Carthor's stronghold in France to fall during the Albigensian Crusade. In 1244, when it fell, 200 cathars were burned alive and what was called the field of the burned. Ron thought that the grail was located somewhere beneath the castle. He saw himself as a modern-day Heinrich Schliemann, who discovered the ruins of ancient Troy by re-following the clues in Homer's Iliad. Ron spent months in the French Pyrenees searching for the grail. Needles to say, Otto Ron wasn't Heinrich Schliemann and never found the Holy Grail. However, Ron did get one thing out of his adventure. He wrote a book.

Starting point is 00:04:18 In 1933, he released his first book, Crusade Against the Grail, a book which, by the way, is still in print and can be purchased on Amazon. The book didn't sell very well, but there was one person in particular who became a huge fanboy, a person who was really into mysticism, German fables, and ancient mysteries. The head of the German SS Heinrich Himmler. Himmler, too, was a big fan of the Holy Grail. He had a personal citadel in Veeblesburg Castle in central Germany, and in it he built a grail room that was a circular room with 12 pillars in a nod to the knights of the round table. Here I need to explain a little bit about the personal life of Otto Ron.

Starting point is 00:04:56 Otto was not what you'd call someone who'd be naturally attracted to the Nazi party. For starters, he was a left-leaning academic. He attended lectures by anti-Nazi intellectuals and was reported to have expressed anti-Nazi sentiments in private. He also may have had Jewish ancestry on his mother's side. But perhaps the biggest thing, however, is that Otto Ron was an open homosexual in 1933 in Nazi Germany. For most people in Ron's shoes at that place and time, life would not have been good. It would probably have involved some combination of arrest, detention, beatings, and possibly an end in a concentration camp. Because of the support he had from Himmler, however, Ron was protected.

Starting point is 00:05:36 His theories on the Holy Grail and his scholarship on medieval German legends fit the Nazi mythology about some pre-Christian R.E. Nordic civilization. Eventually, Otto Ron was offered a literal deal with the devil. Himmler offered to sponsor his research and his expeditions to help find the grail, as well as a thousand Reichs marks a month. The only thing that Himmler wanted in return was loyalty. In particular, he wanted Otto Ron to join the SS. And so he did. It wasn't something he did out of ideology or loyalty so much as it was just an offer he couldn't refuse. He had a patron in one of the most powerful men in Germany who was willing to pay for all the research he ever wanted to conduct. As he later confided to one of his friends, quote, a man has to eat. What was I supposed to do?

Starting point is 00:06:22 Turn Himmler down? So he became a member of the SS, and they funded his expeditions into France to search for the Grail and for continued research into the Cathars. He also did other academic related tasks for the SS, including doing a genealogy on Himmler and taking a trip to Iceland to do research on the Nordic sagas. In 1937, his research resulted in a second book, Lucifer's Court, a heretics journey in search of the Lightbringers. Kimmler again loved it, and purchased 5,000 leather-bound copies to give to Nazi officials, including Adolf Hitler. However, he found anti-Semitic additions in the book, which he never wrote. The deal that he did with the devil began to catch up with him. Later in 1937, he was assigned to be a guard

Starting point is 00:07:06 at the Daqao concentration camp, and what he saw there shook him to his core. He spent three months there and told a friend, quote, I have much sorrow in my country. It is impossible for a tolerant liberal man like me to live in the nation that my native country has become. End quote. In February 1939, he resigned from the SS. In his resignation letter, he wrote, quote, I must ask you to accept my immediate discharge from the SS.

Starting point is 00:07:31 The reasons are of so grave in nature I cannot explain them in writing, end quote. Unfortunately, you can't just resign from the SS. Once he submitted his resignation, he became a wanted man by the Gestapo. Just a few weeks after his resignation, the body of Otto Ron was found frozen on the side of a mountain in Tyrol, Austria. Officially, his cause of death was listed as suicide. However, there has been mysteries surrounding it ever since. Why would he kill himself by exposing himself to the elements on a mountain? Was he trying to escape German territory by fleeing to Italy? There were even rumors that the body that was found wasn't that of Otto Ron. Some said he became the West German ambassador to Italy after the war, and others say he died in a car crash in Iran in 1958.

Starting point is 00:08:14 No one knows for sure. Ron was a thin man who wore a wide-brimmed hat who looked suspiciously like Major Arnold Ernst Tote in the movie Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, of course, there is literally a search for the Holy Grail and Nazis who are looking for it. Ron became the basis of the Nazi archaeologist trope, which has appeared in many films over the years. In the end, Otto Ron was an academic who was filled with fantastic ideas which turned out not to have been true, and he paid an incredibly high price in the pursuit of his research. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett.

Starting point is 00:08:58 I just want to thank everyone, including the show's producers, who support the show over on Patreon. If you'd like to support the show, just head over to patreon.com, which is currently the only place where you can get show merchandise. Also, if you want to talk to other listeners about the show, head over to our Facebook group or Discord server, both of which have links in the show notes.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Otto Rahn: The Real-Life Indiana Jones Villain (Encore)

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