Forbidden History - The Nazi Quest for Holy Relics

Episode Date: June 19, 2024

As the Nazi war machine tore through Europe, they plundered museums in search of holy relics that would grant them untold power and prestige. In this episode, experts investigate how close Hitler was to discovering the Holy Grail and its promise of eternal life. Cast List: Guy Walters: A British author, historian, and journalist who has written several books on WWII. As a journalist for The Times, he writes on historical topics for the national press. Dominic Selwood: Historian, barrister, bestselling author, novelist and frequent contributor to national newspapers including The Independent, The Spectator and The Daily Telegraph Tony McMahon: Former BBC news producer, author, print journalist and historian  Klint Janulis: Archaeologist & Former Special Forces Operative Lynn Picknett: Historian and researcher specialising in exposing historical conspiracies. She is also the co-author of several notable works Noah Charney: Art Historian & Author Dr. Karen Bellinger: Anthropologist, archaeologist, and historian  Harald Pernkopf: Guide at Altaussee Salt Mine Joanna Lamparska: Journalist & Author Tomasz Bonek: Journalist & Author Andrew Gough: Writer, presenter and editor of The Heretic Magazine  Dr. Franz Kirchweger: Curator and Hofburg Palace Andreas Clemens: Guide at Historischer Kunstbunker Katarzyna Pakula: Keeper of Conservation at St. Mary’s Basilica Dr. Sheila K. Hoffman: Art Historian, Iconologist and Senior Lecturer at the University of Massachusetts Eric Meyers: Narrator Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Forbidden History Podcast. This program is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It contains mature adult themes. Listener discretion is advised. At the end of World War II, Allied soldiers uncovered vast hordes of stolen goods across Europe. Under Hitler's command, the Nazis had systematically plundered museums and private collections for priceless treasures and works of art. The scale at which the Nazis looted

and stockpiles, the greatest masterworks of European art. It's truly staggering. There's works by Picasso, works by Klimt, works by Caravaggio. There's many works of art that simply disappeared. While ravaging Europe of its cultural heritage, rumor has it that Hitler was also on the quest for an even bigger prize. Holy relics, especially the Holy Grail and the power that having these objects would bring. So on the one level, these objects are historical artifacts of artistic and cultural merit, but one can't get away from the fact that the occultism of Nazism also imbued them with special powers. He believed that there was a coded treasure map built into the painting

that would have led to some of the most venerated Christian relics. Hitler was organizing a different type of power. He was organizing the power of religious persuasion. On January 30th, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed the Chancellor of Germany. Over the coming months, he grew in power and became a dictator. He saw himself as king of the world. What Nazism was trying to achieve is basically creating a political religion. And that's an incredibly powerful thing. No one has really created a political religion before this point in quite the same way. If you look at Nazism, if you look at all of its elements holistically, you can't but come to the conclusion that there's something very religious about it.

And by that I mean it had beliefs, it had a central figure, it had an idea for how you would reach salvation, it had a mission, it had dogma, it had imagery. You only have to think of the cathedrals of light at Nuremberg built by Speer, of the hypnotic chanting and marching, of the adulation towards a world. this one Christ-like figure, which is how Hitler monstrously like to present himself. So it should be seen as an ideology, but with absolute cult wrapping around this. What he strove to do was to replace organized religion in Germany with a new Nazi religion, that Jesus would be an Aryan, that instead of the Bible there would be Mnkamp and that instead of the crucifix there would be the swastika. This would have been a horrifying church.

It's a church that believed in racial purity, a church that was part of a socialist government that believed that anybody that wasn't of the purest form was not worthy of living or would have been subjected below the Aryans. Also they were pulling and hijacking elements of pagan religion, occult religion, and throw in just the Nazi brutality. Imagine going to that church. expansion throughout Europe began in 1938, with the annexation of Austria, and then continued with the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939.

At the same time Hitler's number two, Heinrich Himmler, was expanding his knowledge of the occult. He was convinced the Nazis could achieve great victories by harnessing the powers of the relics. Several of the other Nazis in the hierarchy did lean towards the occult. But mainly, of course, it was Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, who had this glorified idea of how the chivalric ideal of the medieval times could somehow be channeled through him and his henchmen. But he was completely bonkers. The Nazis were systematically looting Europe of all of the ancient holy relics that they could.

But if you think out it, from his perspective, churches in Europe at this time period had a lot of power and persuasion over the local population. By taking the most sacred things, you're taking the power and the influence and essentially kind of ripping the heart out. He wanted the churches to be dictated by him, the new religion, the new empire, Hitler's empire, Hitler's religion. Hitler had an idea for after the war, he was going to have this sort of palatial museum, which would be the best and biggest museum in the world, and would have the best art

in it. So he basically sent his stormtroopers out to bring that art back to Germany. Noah Charney is an art crimes investigator and has been studying the Nazis' obsession with artworks and relics. To understand the Nazi interest in holy relics, it's important to know the place of origin of Nazism and it really grew up in a socioeconomic world in middle class, Germany, and Austria where people were focused on mysticism and the supernatural. This belief in the occult was really in the cultural oxygen of the time, so it sounds maybe funny to us today, but at the time it was not very exotic.

And the Nazi party actually began as an occult fraternity before it morphed into a political party. Hitler and Himmler had this concept of creating a sort of new religion, and one of the things that fascinated them was the legend of Parcival, which was a medieval Christian poem that had been popularized in the late 19th century, and also through Wagner's interpretation, of the Grail myth. The Armacristi, or Weapons of Christ,

were the implements that were used in Christ's passion. We've got the crown of thorns, the holy nails, the Veronica Vale, and pieces of the true cross. These objects were venerated by Catholics, but also thought by some to have supernatural powers. And certain key Nazis, Himmler and Hitler above all, really believed that they did. The Holy Grail is incredibly significant

for all sorts of reasons for different people. For devout Christians, it's the cup that caught the blood Christ as he hung on the cross just after the spear of destiny pierced his side. It is for other Christians the vessel that he drank out of at the Last Supper. It is for people in search of global domination, a vessel that is meant to provide that power. If anybody wanted the Holy Grail, it was Adolf Hitler. It was the thing that was going to give them absolute invincibility and great knowledge

and the meaning of life and everything else they would. want. It was the Holy Grail. As the story goes, Hitler thought he could locate the Holy Grail if he could get his hands on the Ghent Altarpiece. Within it, he believed, was a secret code that would lead him to the relic. The 12 panels of Yan Van Eyck's famous adoration of the Mystic Lamb is believed to be the most influential painting in history, and perhaps the greatest artwork that the Nazis stole. Everything bad that could possibly happen to a work of art has happened to this one. It's been stolen at least six times. All are in part. It's been the object

of forgery. It was nearly destroyed. Parts of it were burned. It was dismembered, pillaged, used for ransom. The final and most dynamic adventure of the Ghent Altarpiece led it to this salt mine deep in the Austrian Alps that was converted by the Nazis into this high-tech stolen art warehouse. During World War II, the Nazis systematically looted valuable artworks from across occupied Europe. But was this for monetary gain? Or did Hitler have a more sinister motive? The reality is there are thousands upon thousands of masterworks still lost. Not clear whether the Nazis hid them so carefully, we've yet to find them, or whether they destroyed them if they perhaps were particularly repugnant in terms of their religious iconography.

The Altauze salt mines in Austria were one of the many underground storage facilities. used by the Nazis. It's believed that in this location alone, over 7,000 pieces of art were hidden. Noah meets with Harold Pernkov, a local expert, to get a better understanding of how the Nazis used this underground treasure vault. About 700 meters inside the mine,

that's where the art was hidden. Tell me a little bit about why this was such an ideal atmosphere to store art. In here we have 70% of humidity, humidity, 7 degrees of Celsius, and the air is very salty. So this may make perfect conditions except for iron. So iron gets rusty in here, but all kind of paintings or even paper, you think 70 or 75% of humidity would be too wet, but the salt preserves perfectly.

And I imagine there were no concerns about bombs because we're very well secured inside this mountain. Yes, we are 700 meters inside the mine and we have 200 meters of solid rock. offers. So about how many pieces of art were stored here? Over 7,000 paintings, but also gold coin collections, weapon collections, Michelangelo's Madonna from Bruch. There were eight different rooms, big rooms, 40,000 square meters of storage room. All were connected with railroad tracks. That's why they didn't have to carry them for it. It's hard to say how many things were in here and it's more hard to say the value of the whole collection. Sure.

When the Monuments Men discovered the Altaise treasure trove at the end of the war, the Ghent altarpiece was among the priceless works of art. He also wanted it because it was considered the single most important painting ever made, and so it was to be the centerpiece of his planned super museum at Linz. But there are also some alternative theories about why he may have wanted it. One of them goes that he believed that there was a coded treasure map built into the painting that would have led to some of the most venerated Christian relics, and that he might have wanted these for both symbolic and perhaps supernatural reasons.

The occult was incredibly important to the Nazis, but not for the straightforward reasons one might think. Yes, Himmler clearly believed in this mumbo-jumbo. But the reality is that the efficacy of it was not a very much of it was not a very much more than, not in performing rituals that did anything. It was in cloaking the entire Nazi project in a certain magical legitimacy that leaped way back into the deepest mythical history

that the German people really needed to boost their morale and to feel good about themselves. This was just one of many locations where the Nazis hid their stolen loot. All across Europe, secret layers can be found where they stashed priceless valuables, and more importantly to the regime, holy relics. Poland was invaded by the Nazis in 1939, and it became an important part of the Reich's strategy for taking over Europe. Like France and Italy, its artwork and holy relics were ruthlessly stolen

by the Nazis. Polish journalist and explorer Joanna Lamparska has spent several years investigating the Nazis' theft of art and holy treasures. which generally accepted that the Nazis hid this loot all over occupied Europe. It was a vast collection of material. They moved all very valuable items to Germany first, to Berlin, to museums, to private collection of Himmler, Hitler and so on. But when allies were approaching from the West and when Russian army started to approach from the East, they chose a few castles and palaces and abyses.

be in Lower Silesia to collect all this church and museum items, valuable things, just to protect them from other armies. Throughout the Nazi occupation of Europe, it was accepted practice for soldiers to ruthlessly steal priceless works of art wherever they went. Of particular importance were religious relics, believed by the German leaders to possess occult powers. One of the locations that was used to store their plunder was Lubias Abbey in southwest Poland. It's a former monastery and architecturally, one of the largest Christian complexes in the world.

Its underground spaces were used extensively by the Nazis to build research laboratories and manufacturing plants. Polish journalist and explorer Joanna Lamparska has come to Lubez to search its subterranean tunnels and chambers with a team of experienced local treasure hunters. Can they find evidence of the priceless holy relics and other valuables allegedly hidden at the site? They had to find hidden places, and in the end of war,

they brought it here. Explorers and treasure hunters believe that something still may be hidden in this abbey. Among this labyrinth of tunnels and passageways, secret rooms and spaces lay hidden behind brick and stone walls. The team is using high-tech methods to explore these dark voids. Krischstov is using so-called inspection endoscope camera. It is a very small camera, stick to a wire or a cable or a stick,

and you put it into a very narrow hole to see what is on the other side of the wall. In this abbey, the Germans made a military factory during the war, and they robbed the whole monastery and they hit all valuables from this building somewhere. As far as we know, they were buried in a crypt for a moment, then they were stolen. But there is a lot of treasure hunters who still believe that something could be hidden in a locked chambers in the cellars of this abbey. Some people are looking for golds, some people are looking for works of eyes. for works of arts. Nobody knows what is hidden here.

Churches under the shadow of the Nazi regime saw their prized relics and masterpieces spirited away. But this was more than near robbery. Hitler and many in his regime positively loathe the Christian religion. The reason why Hitler had such a loathing for Catholicism was that fundamentally the idea behind Catholicism and Christianity is that everybody is equal in God's eyes. that everybody shares God's love.

To Nazis, that's absolutely anathema. For them, there are complete hierarchies of the order of people. So they had to exterminate those values that they didn't believe in. So a war was begun against Catholicism. The Nazis are arresting priests, they're closing down Roman Catholic organizations, they're shutting down Catholic political parties, and so there's just this growing stress and tension

between Catholicism and Nazism. and Nazism. Hitler took a very firm line with the Polish people. He knew they were all practicing Christians, regular and faithful churchgoers, but wanted them to follow and believe in a new Nazi ideology. Catholic Church was very strong link to Polish national history. And it was very important for Germans to close the churches,

to destroy them, to turn them into prison, just to humiliate Christian community in Poland. They took over thousands of Polish churches. Many of those priests were sent to either concentration camps were killed. Most of the relics and artifacts were taken and essentially just wiped the Polish church culture from existence. One of the most bizarre examples of Nazi cultural vandalism

can be found in St. Michael's Church, located in the town of Alessno in present-day Poland. A member of the local clergy leads Joanna to the site of this extraordinary crime. During World War II, Nazis come here and take down the biggest and most beautiful bell of this St. Michael Church. It was taken to Germany and was lost until the end of the war. The Nazis are estimated to have seized over a hundred and seventy-year. 35,000 church bells across Europe.

This is going at the heart of the spirituality of each individual community that they were taking over. Because the Nazis never wasted anything. They took the metal and they melted it down and they used it for munitions. So they've taken these bells from buildings of peace and turned them into weapons. So terrified were priests at the prospect of their holy relics, the chast the chalises and the monstrances and the bells being stolen by the Nazis, that they even put them into coffins and staged fake funerals in order to hide these items from prying Nazi eyes.

Fortunately for the parishioners of a Lesno, the mystery of their church bells had a happy conclusion. For six years, Christian community on Lesno was wondering where the bell could be. They heard something about Bell Cemetery in Hamburg. They heard that somebody recovered their bells in other cities. So they decide to look for information. And when they were informed that there is a church in Germany with a bell from a lesson, they decided to act

and they recover this piece of art. But not all religious objects stolen from churches were put to such practical uses. For the Nazis, some holy relics served much more occult purposes. As the Nazis stormed across Europe taking control of country after country, soldiers plundered the greatest art, holy relics, and gold wherever they went. In the end, they amassed a vast fortune of stolen goods, which they hid in salt mines across Germany and Austria. The Nazi's grand plan was to capture and then display some of the greatest holy relics in the world. In the end,

They only captured one piece, the Holy Lance, which was claimed to be the actual spear that pierced Christ's side while he was on the crucifix. The Spear of Destiny, or Lance of Longhinus, was something that Hitler felt had deep symbolic significance for him. When he first saw it in the museum in Vienna, he said he felt as if he'd formally held it, that it was his talisman of power, and it gave the destiny of the world to him in his hands. Despite the Nazis having taken it to Nuremberg, today this legendary object is kept with other priceless artifacts in the treasury of the Hofberg Palace in Vienna. Dr. Franz Kershveger is the collection's curator.

In the glass case that we have upstairs in the treasury, we see the Holy Lands together with the big piece which was supposed to come from the Holy Cross of Jesus Christ. It's together with these immense, huge, two-willed cross, actually, actually, which was made to house these two most precious relics. It's definitely very important to know that the Holy Lands is part of a big group of objects, of insignia and relics that were brought together over many centuries. This extraordinary assortment of objects is part of the Imperial regalia,

the ceremonial crown jewels of the Holy Roman emperors. Dating back to medieval times, the most important parts were the imperial crown, imperial sword, and the Christ-linked spear of destiny. This spear that supposedly pierced the side of Christ and thus was empowered with his power, then went on to develop even greater legend as it passed from the hand of one powerful man to the other under the belief that if they wielded this spear, they were omnipotent, and they could bend the world to the their will. For Hitler, having the imperial regalia of the Holy Roman Empire was his aspiration to create

a 1,000-year Reich. I mean, the Holy Roman Empire had lasted a thousand years, so he wanted his Reich to last the same amount of time. And in the same way that Holy Roman Empress had sacred relics, which gave them authority before the people, Hitler viewed the sacred relics such as the Spear of Destiny in the same life. Hitler got his hands on a spear of destiny. The fact is that several different objects have been presented as the spear of destiny,

which again goes to show you that the importance of this object isn't really in the thing itself. It's in what it stood for. As far as the lens is concerned, the spear is concerned, we definitely know that the way it looks like is from a different age than from Christ, Jesus Christ. It comes from the Carolingian time that means late 8th. century and it's probably linked to the person and the history of Charlemagne. The whole story of the Speer of Longinus and the way it's treated by these junk historians, it's like the Ark of the Covenant in episode one of Indiana Jones.

It's going to give them the Nazis infinite power. It's just total nonsense. It's just another relic that's meant to be associated with Christ. And you know and I know that it's just simply not true. We are still in a process among scholars, scholars to find out whether there is a chance that small parts may be of a former holy lands or of a former holy nail was integrated, was forced into the land. So there are options that we can say for sure, no, that's definitely not true, or we can say it's definitely true.

So there is still a way of even for the ones who want to believe to do so. For centuries, Nuremberg had been home to the Imperial Regalia, and Hitler thought that the city was where they belonged. But in the late 1700s, these crown jewels were hastily moved from Nuremberg to Vienna to avoid Napoleon's clutches, and Hitler was determined to take them back. In 1938, the lance, as well as the rest of the Imperial Regalia, was brought back to its former home of Nuremberg. Nuremberg was sacred to the Nazis. It was the traditional part of the Holy Roman Empire. And the Holy Roman Empire had been, at its heart, a German state.

And so Hitler wanted to return these items of power to this heart and rule his Third Reich from it. Nuremberg was the heart of Nazism. It's where Hitler held all the early rallies. It's where they would reconvene every year. to extol the virtues of Nazism. But it was also a deeply symbolic place. It was one of the great medieval cities of southern Germany. It was a place where the church and relics and cathedrals

had very powerful sway. It was a symbolic place in the German mind. And the Nazis harnessed all of that and made it their cult headquarters. There are a couple of ideas about why Hitler wanted to possess the crown jewels so badly, particularly the Spear of Destiny. The more accepted theory is its symbolic value,

that it would symbolically link him to all of the past Germanic kings, the Holy Roman emperors, and he saw himself as the latter-day version of them, a new incarnation for the Third Reich. But then there are the more exotic theories that may posit, and it's entirely plausible that Hitler would have believed this, that some of these holy relics, particularly the sphere of destiny, might have granted the owner some sort of superhuman powers. In fact, the legend goes to the spear of destiny if it's carried in battle,

whoever carries it can't lose. And we know that Hitler and Himmler were researching things that would support the war effort for our supernatural means as well. So it's entirely plausible to believe that Hitler thought hedging his bets that possession of the Spear of Destiny might have helped from a military standpoint as well. The most important relic Hitler ever got his hands on was the Holy Lance or Spear of Destiny,

that he kept in Nuremberg, together with other priceless pieces, which comprise the imperial regalia or German crown jewels. Art historian Noah Charney follows the trail. When the Second World War was brought to Germany and the Allies started bombing, there was a serious concern that some of the art treasures of Nuremberg, including the crown jewels, would be destroyed in an Allied air raid. In order to prevent this, it was ordered that the crown jewels should be stored in a secret bunker, a vault underneath Nuremberg Castle.

That vault is where the crown jewels remain throughout the war until they disappeared from this locked vault. Today, this tunnel system is known as the Kunst bunker. Noah meets guide Andreas Clemens, who can tell him more about the intriguing site where the Imperial Regalia and the Holy Lance were safely hidden from the Allies. The bunker originally was a beer cellar.

The beer cellars are now 640 years old. There are four football fields of them, and in some spots they're up to four floors deep. This place was bomb-proof. Next thing they did, they put in a ventilation system. So fire was no problem here, bombs were no problem here. The place was dry, the place was well-ventilated. So at least during wartime, this was perfect to start artwork. Even as the Allies overran Germany, the treasures stored in the Kunst bunker should have remained hidden, But a US Army intelligence officer named Walter Horn had a lucky break. Yet Horn wasn't an average intelligence officer.

He had an extensive education in art history. Walter Horn was a senior intelligence officer in the US Army. And at the end of the war, he was interrogating a 48-year-old German private, a rather beleaguered figure called Fritz Huber. And he was asking him about biological chemical weapons at the Americans. were worried that Hitler may have concealed in certain ways that could be used at the end of the war. They weren't getting anywhere in the interrogation. And then Huber just asked him whether he was interested in old art

and not realizing maybe that Horton was a professor of history, a medievalist at Harvard. And he then started to describe artifacts which Horn suddenly realized was the imperial regalia, including the spear of death. and it was buried underneath Nuremberg Castle in an air-conditioned bunker. The American forces captured Nuremberg in April 1945, and Horn sent a report detailing where they could find the Nazi's secret bunker. But before the U.S. soldiers could enter the Aladdin's cave of treasures, the Imperial Regalia were removed by three clever Nazi soldiers who were one step ahead.

Towards the end of the war, it became clear that rather sooner than later Nuremberg would be conquered by the Americans. They were coming quite close. The free men in charge of the bunker wanted to save the regalia from the, as they put it, culturalist Americans. So they conspired to remove the most important pieces, crown, sceptre, orb and sword. By July 1945, Germany, Germany was defeated, and Horn had transferred from intelligence into the Monuments Fine Arts and Archives program. This group, better known as the Monuments Men, was established by the U.S. government to track down art and cultural items stolen by the Nazis. And they had been sent to the Nuremberg bunker to track down the Imperial regalia detailed in Horn's report.

The Monuments Man find the bunker. They do an inventory. And early on they notice, huh, the four most important pieces were missing. And they start looking for them, for those three guys. They find two of those guys, and they interrogate them for several hours. And at first they keep their mouths shut. And at one point, one of them gives up the location, shows the real regalia to the Americans. Supposedly, after they promised him, the regalia would not be taken to the US, but would be given back to Vienna.

So it's interesting that they chose four objects, but they didn't take the Holy Lands. No. It shows you what was considered important. They chose what they considered important, the symbols of power, not the relics. So how much art and relics were eventually returned by the Monuments Men?

And are there any pieces still hidden today? While many looted works surfaced from the Nazis' hidden network of caves and bunkers, a significant number of other pieces have vanished forever. The legacy of the Nazis having spent so much time plundering and looting cultural artifacts, relics, art is still with us. These objects still surfaced today on the black market, in auction houses, in private collections,

and there are still lists of the vast number of them that remain missing. Almost 80 years after their theft, individuals and organizations, organizations around the world are still on a quest to recover these lost works. In the Polish city of Krakow is a collection of restored paintings that reflect the fate of so many of these stolen Nazi treasures. Journalist and explorer Joanna Lamparska visit St. Mary's Basilica to learn the fate of the cycle of St. Catherine of Alexandria from art conservation expert Katarzina Pakula.

Originally it was eight panel paintings made by Hans Zies von Kulbach, who was a painter, Renaissance painter from Nuremberg. And they have been ordered to Krakow in the Golden Age of Polish culture. It was the beginning of the 16th century. The eight paintings that made up this medieval masterpiece were taken by the Nazis during World War II, but were recovered and returned at its end. Unfortunately, after the war, out of eight paintings from one of

six paintings came back so still two are missing and San Maris Basilica is searching and the Polish Ministry of Culture and hoping that they are still existing. How does it feel to lose all these beautiful pieces of art? It is a great loss, it is a great loss of course for the church and for the cultural, from the emotional point of view, it is priceless and they are unique and they are of the best quality we know of the works of Hans von Kumbach. I think it's a huge tragedy that so much of this religious art, iconography and treasure, it's still missing even today.

Now some of it clearly was simply destroyed, you know, maybe in Allied bombing raids, you know, which is obviously even more tragic in a way. And then you've now today got people trying to find this treasure, you've got people whose entire life's work is to try and maybe find one work of art. While we do have a sense of certain specific items that we are searching for and there people out there all the time trying to recover them. We really don't know the true magnitude of what's missing and don't even know in some respects what we should be looking for.

Many of these artworks that are considered still missing are actually being actively traded through black market networks and it's become even easier to do so now with the internet and the deep web and there are people who fetishize some of these artifacts and trade in them as commodities and that goes on every day. There are many existing commissions in Europe and in the United States and Canada to try to repatriate a lot of these pieces as they're found. Some of them eventually wound up in state and local museums and have been relocated to the families from once they were stolen.

But many of them still reside probably in private collections or remain underground, maybe never to be found. Many people are still obsessed with finding the missing art. Including, of course, the people's families who originally owned some of these, because a lot of the art was originally owned by Jewish families, who simply had it removed from them. At least 600,000 of them were stolen from Jewish families, and some hundred thousand of them still remain at large.