Original subtitles

- [Narrator] In the early part of the 20th century,

the Nazis rose to power on a dark platform.

Till this day, their racist ideology

is overshadowed only by their ambition for power.

But behind the battles lie more secrets than we know.

Their most elite and evil force, the SS,

plotted far beyond a conquest.

They mounted global expeditions,

hunting for ancient relics of power

and long forgotten remnants of ancient civilization,

hell-bent on proving a mythical heritage.

Now secrets are revealed,

a new light is shed on dark schemes

and desperate adventures.

[dramatic music]

Deep in the wooded wilderness of Northern Europe,

far from prying eyes, a sacred ritual is performed.

- The idea that you can influence the world around you

by harnessing unseen forces

is something that's quite universal in human culture.

- An interest in things like chants

is part of the ritual of it.

A lot of this is very performative.

It's not just about reading old books or finding symbols.

It's also about saying spells.

Could be a hex or they could give good luck.

That's part of a very long,

broad culture of verbal folklore.

- [Narrator] Witchcraft practices

are more than merely legend.

They are alive and well today.

But it was not always so.

There was a time when the price for witchcraft was death.

And even more troubling,

dark forces in the past have attempted

to wrest rumored powers for their own evil purposes.

August 1935, young Finnish nobleman Yrjö von Grnhagen

is traveling between Paris and Helsinki on foot

for a practical sociology project,

asking everyone he encounters along the way

to record something in his journal.

This sociological fieldwork was all inspired by one book

that von Grönhagen had read, the Kalevala.

- The Kalevala is a collection

of traditional Finnish stories, songs, poems,

ancient folk practices of healing magic,

and traditional rituals,

which were collected by Elias Lönnrot,

who started going into the eastern part of Finland

in the 1830s and 1840s on collecting missions

to try to capture the traditional folklore

and songs of the area.

- [Narrator] The nearly forgotten Karelian region

lies in Northern Finland,

between the White Sea and the Gulf of Finland.

The dense forests and rough terrain

had left the land largely untouched.

Von Grönhagen believed the primeval Finnish

originated in a vast land,

from Scandinavia in the north to the Black Sea in the south,

and that the Fins were blood brothers to the Aryans,

a shared common ancestry.

And while he had never journeyed to the Karelian region,

he took the customs described in the Kalevala

to be direct representations of his lost ancient ancestry.

Arriving in Germany, von Grönhagen instantly feels at home

among the Nazis hatred of communism.

Von Grönhagen had seen Finland,

previously a duchy of Russia,

declare its independence as part of a bloody civil war.

Von Grönhagen's brother joined the White Army

that was killed by the Bolsheviks,

thus fulminating a deep hatred for communism.

He decides to abandon the final leg of his trip to Helsinki

and stay in Germany.

He publishes an article

in the Frankfurter Volksblatt newspaper.

- He writes an article

on how people in Karelia still practiced ancient songs

and sorcery.

- [Narrator] von Grönhagen's article catches the attention

of one high-ranking senior Nazi official.

- Himmler reads this article and it gets him really excited,

because he believes that it has links

to the ancient Aryan sorcery and powers

that could be linked to the modern Germans.

- Himmler was always searching for vestiges

of ancient or prehistorical Aryan culture and religion,

but clearly witchcraft was one vehicle for that.

- von Grönhagen would join the Ahnenerbe,

a Nazi think tank dedicated to all sorts of wild ideas.

Himmler, of course, was a enthralled

with von Grönhagen's mad ideas.

- Himmler sponsored a whole bunch

of archeological expeditions,

some cases more anthropological,

because they were looking at contemporary culture,

to investigate, supposedly scientifically,

the origins of the Aryan race and culture and religion.

- [Narrator] Himmler revered ancient history,

and had a vision of returning Germany

to the mythical golden age of the Aryan race.

- He is the quiet one behind the scenes

and it is those quiet ones you have to be concerned of,

because you don't know what they're thinking.

And as we know from hindsight,

the levels the Nazis went to were awful

and horrific evil ventures.

- [Narrator] He interpreted Nordic mythology

in a literal way,

believing certain abilities their ancestors once possessed

were lost due to interbreeding.

- At this point, they're looking at anything

that will give them strength.

Witchcraft, in a sense, has the ability to do that.

- Himmler wants to believe that they can, too,

harness these supernatural powers

to create an Aryan race.

- In between the 1890s and 1930s,

there are lots of Germans and other Europeans

in Britain and France, who weren't that enamored

of traditional Christianity anymore,

weren't really going to invest in material as science.

They wanted an alternative.

This was, for them, their mythology, their creation myth,

and the Nazis embraced that alternative.

- [Narrator] But Himmler wanted to take

these occult rituals one step further,

in order to build a super army.

Could witchcraft help Himmler achieve this sinister aim?

Much of the sorcery and chants commonly practiced

by rural European villagers in the Middle Ages

had disappeared during the Protestant Reformation.

When new denominations of Christianity

fought for popularity,

religious institutions

deemed these ancient practices witchcraft.

- Throughout history and in virtually every society,

people have been simultaneously morbidly attracted to

and frightened of witchcraft.

- [Narrator] This fear manifested in the form of a book,

Malleus Maleficarum, The Hammer of Witches.

Written in 1487 by a German Catholic inquisitor,

it would wreak unspeakable horrors across Europe and abroad.

- The Hammer of Witches,

this manual for how to identify witches,

then becomes an important tool

at the hands of people in the Roman Church,

but then beyond that, as this attempt to cleanse the land

of people that don't fit.

- In theory, it was the dummy's guide to witch killing

and this book became the sole use

of a misogynistic expedition against women, against witches.

And then for over 200 years,

the book sold more than any other book, except the Bible.

- [Narrator] By the 1500s, it was a standard practice

to burn accused witches at the stake.

- The Nazis see witchcraft as proof

that the Aryan race was persecuted

and actually victims of a genocide.

- For Himmler, this is more than just a theory.

He believes this to be truth.

- [Narrator] The Nazis were against Christianity

of any kind,

because they rejected the idea

of a deity being above nature.

- A lot of senior Nazis hated the Catholic

and Protestant Churches so much,

saw them as political and economic rivals

and would've loved to dispose of them.

- The Nazis didn't want any competition

that could come against their Thousand Year Reich.

They wanted to make sure

that they were bringing forward the racially pure people.

- All the Nazis were most skeptical of Christianity,

it wasn't just about living with it,

it was about trying to repress or replace it.

- [Narrator] On October 1, 1935,

Himmler meets with von Grönhagen

and is very impressed by his ideas and observations

of ancient religious practices described in the Kalevala.

If von Grönhagen can document these rituals,

Himmler can implement them

into the new Nazi ceremonies being developed,

the Solstice Celebrations.

This new ceremony would bring German communities together

around an amphitheater, where they

would celebrate pre-Christian Germanic traditions.

It's here attendees would be encouraged

to reject Christianity in favor of pagan rituals.

Could these Karelian witchcraft practices

be the key in removing Christianity from Germany,

once and for all?

- The idea of magic is really rooted in notions of power,

to make things happen that you can't affect

through normal means of cause and effect.

- [Narrator] In order to determine the providence

of the ancient practices described

in von Grönhagen's article,

Himmler sends him to meet with Karl Maria Wiligut,

his right-hand mystic.

- So, Wiligut fights in the first World War.

He has a hard time of it.

In the 1920s, he's committed to an asylum

for madness and alcoholism.

He's released and he rises in the ranks with Himmler,

as kind of his personal mystic.

- He used hallucinogenic drugs to, he claimed,

communicate telepathically

with his ancient Aryan ancestors.

- Wiligut was able to convince Himmler

and people around him that he was the real thing.

Now, how was he able to do that?

I think it's a combination of Wiligut's convictions

and his charisma.

- Wiligut is one of the only Nazis we can say,

without a doubt, was an occultist.

Not just that he dabbled in it,

not that he thought the ideas were interesting,

but he's one of the only Nazis who seemed

to buy all of this stuff hook, line and sinker.

Himmler decided he was going to consult this guy

on all sorts of stuff,

to the point where Wiligut was being asked, you know,

what runes should we put on this ring?

- He also gives weight to Himmler's more eccentric beliefs.

- [Narrator] Karl Maria Wiligut believed

he possessed a pure Aryan bloodline

and could therefore channel the spirits of his ancestors

through his psychic connection and become their oracle.

Himmler fueled his transcendence into a supernatural being,

by providing him copious amounts of drugs and alcohol.

1936, Wiligut decides von Grönhagen

is worthy of leading an Ahnenerbe mission to Karelia

to collect and record ancient myths and magical chants.

They may provide clues about Aryan wisdom

and their ancient religious practices,

the key to replacing Christianity

and restoring Aryan pagan rituals in the Reich.

- Karelia was chosen because witch trials

were relatively sparse there,

so that meant that a lot of evidence still exists

of the ancient sorcery and chants

of the supernatural Germanic past,

and they really wanted to instate it

into the Third Reich.

- The reason Finland worked

is it was still part of Scandinavia,

which they just took as a matter of faith

as the origin of the most pure practitioners

of Aryan or Indo-Aryan culture, religion, the Nordic race.

- If there's no one around to connect you to the past,

there's nothing to stop other people

from saying 'you're making that up'.

The problem is, of course,

if you're employed by someone like Himmler is,

you don't deliver, you don't last long.

- [Narrator] In early 1936, von Grönhagen was sent

to do research

at the Finnish Literature Society folklore archives

in Helsinki, in advance of the expedition.

He needs to find some Nordic Karelian witchcraft

for his team to document that will echo the Kalevala.

- Himmler knows that he needs this information,

because he believes

it can really boost the SS Summer Solstice ceremonies.

By gathering more information on rituals

and pagan ways of being,

he believes that he can transfer this

into the rituals of the current SS.

- And the Nazis were onto something,

in terms of bringing the community together

to eat and to drink, to dance, to have fun,

to reinvent that kind of communal festivity

into the religions that they were trying to develop.

- [Narrator] Then in June of 1936,

musicologist Fritz Bose arrives in Helsinki

to accompany von Grönhagen on the Karelia expedition.

- His job is to record the shamans and their music

so they can take it back,

and he, as a musicologist,

is able to work through the notes, the keys.

He's trying to build a visual with the music

and create a narrative from this

that's going to tie right back

into the uber race of Germans.

- [Narrator] Given the wide reach of the witch persecutions,

much of the pagan traditions were lost.

However, Karelia was different.

- But it would be wrong to think that Christianity,

the moment that it's adopted,

just eradicates everything else.

- You don't even have to go that far back.

Even in the 1930s, we still have people living

in those areas that are practicing the old ways.

That far north in the area of Finland

and Siberia and Russia,

the witch hunts really didn't make their way into that area.

It's very rugged.

It's a very difficult landscape to get around today, even,

so even in the early persecutions of witches,

very few people traveled that far north.

So they were actually spared the indignation

and the torture and the murder that went on,

so they were able to continue.

They weren't really affected by Christianity.

- [Narrator] And so an expedition is sent to Karelia

to document sorcery and songs

that might still be lying in secret places.

- Their idea is to travel there

and to be able to document this,

directly shows that these people had never been affected

by the influence of Christianity or Judaism

or any of the newer religions.

They were still practicing, in the purest form,

their original beliefs.

- [Narrator] But what might an expedition uncover?

Could they tap into the ancient Karelian wisdom?

They drive to Lake Ladoga in Karelia

and venture deep into the woods,

beyond the village of Suistamo to visit Timo Lipitsä,

a well-known traditional folklorist rune singer.

- For them, literally this person is the center

of everything that they've been trying to accomplish

with their research.

He has never left the village, he is illiterate,

but yet he knows the stories and the songs,

and he's able to recant them perfectly.

In the purest form, his inability to read

actually gives them the basis to say

that he gets this knowledge directly through oral tradition.

It matches the Kalevala,

therefore there must be a real truth in those writings.

- [Narrator] At that time, most residents

of the Karelian woods rarely ventured outside the borders.

The only way the Kalevala existed

was because its author, Elias Lönnrot,

visited the remote Karelian villages,

where sorcery was known to be practiced.

The rituals were recorded and compiled

into the Finnish epic.

These songs may contain secrets about Aryan origins

and practices passed down from primeval ancestors.

Timo Lipitsä offers to sing for the team.

He and his sons sang together,

joining hands so that the power becomes much stronger,

rocking back and forth in front of the hearth.

As they rocked, they sang about the creation of the world,

which closely resembled what was published in the Kalevala.

The song about the Kalevala creation of the world

describes a duck laying an egg.

It breaks and thus the world is created.

- What they're looking for here is any kind of indication

that there is a Atlantean or Aryan origin

and that these songs and stories

would actually give them a clue

as to where was the epicenter of the beginnings

of the Atlanteans or their location,

and then hence the Aryan race

being a progenitor of the Atlanteans.

They are trying to rewrite their own religious background.

- [Narrator] Deep in the Karelian woods,

Timo Lipitsä allows the expedition team

to record one of his ancestral chants.

Fritz Bose readies to record Lipitsä's songs,

fussing with dials to get the maximum quality sound.

These recordings were key to creating a new Nazi religion

steeped in ancient Aryan witchcraft.

While these recordings have since been lost,

Bose had taken great effort to capture these rituals

using a magnetophon,

which is a prototype of a modern day tape recorder.

These state of the art tools were crucial

in transporting these traditions

to Nazi Solstice ceremonies.

- The Nazis were on the cutting edge

of science and technology.

German engineers built some of the world's largest labs,

underground factories.

They erected massive concrete bunkers

and fortifications across Europe

and their fantastical weapons systems

were beyond anything the allies possessed.

Yet, at the same time, Himmler and some other Nazi leaders

were fascinated with the occult and mysticism.

They utterly ignored reality and facts

in order to embrace the supernatural

in hopes that it would help them win the war.

- [Narrator] von Grönhagen's team finishes up

in Suistamo with Timo Lipitsä.

They're now seeking a sorcerer to conjure spirits

from the golden age of the ancient Aryans.

von Grönhagen's team trek to the village of Tolvajärvi.

Here they meet prominent Karelian musician,

Hannes Vornanen, a master of the kantele,

an instrument commonly played

at pagan festivals around the fire.

Vornanen plays some Karelian folk songs

documented in the Kalevala,

while the team records and photographs him.

Bose examines the kantele's tonal system

and determines it is entirely of Finnish origin,

therefore surmises an Aryan instrument.

The Kalevala describes the origin of the kantele

as a pike's jaw bone that is shaped

by the god Väinmöinen,

the perfect musical accompaniment

for an SS Solstice ceremony.

It's here the expedition team learns of rumors

surrounding an elderly soothsayer, Miron-Aku,

who performs sorcery rituals.

If the team can find and document Miron-Aku,

her customs and rituals could become crucial components

to the neo-pagan religion the Nazis wanted to create.

But the expedition team is cautioned not to go find her.

- Shamans have a great power

and they have the ability to connect to the beyond

and they also have the ability to channel that power

for their own purpose,

and I think that they warned them to not go there,

because she would see through them.

She would see who they were

and perhaps she may even curse them.

So, that warning probably should have been heeded.

- [Narrator] But von Grönhagen is adamant

and the team moves on to the woods of Salmi,

where she is rumored to live.

When the expedition team finally tracks down Miron-Aku,

she tells them she has predicted

their arrival three days earlier.

- The shamans had the ability to see the future,

see the past, to commune with nature,

and they have the ability to connect to the beyond

and they also have the ability to channel that power

for their own purpose.

- The Nazis believed they were descendants of the Aryans

who had psychic and telepathic abilities.

Miron-Aku was a living relic of the primeval German age

that Himmler wanted to reconstruct.

- They like to think they found a sorcerer.

They found a shaman and that shaman

is practicing their beliefs

and they're thinking they've hit the jackpot here,

because this person is a living, breathing,

existing sorcerer in their eyes,

and that they can learn everything from this person

and take it back with them.

- [Narrator] But witches won't perform for just anyone.

- If you really believe these people are powerful,

you don't want to dilute their power

by having so many people go out and use them.

You, again, want to control that.

- [Narrator] von Grönhagen spent quite some time

trying to convince Miron-Aku to perform a ritual for them,

knowing how valuable it would be to Himmler.

He visited her each day to wear her down.

- And you certainly don't want to give that knowledge away

to somebody from outside your culture,

partly because you don't know what use

that stranger is going to make of it.

- [Narrator] During these visits,

she brewed him a drink made of plant roots

and spoke of an old god that the people of her region

worshiped before Christianity.

- You're drinking something

that you have no idea could kill you.

It could give you hallucinations at the least

and you're in front of this person who has these abilities.

It's that fine line between curiosity and terror.

- [Narrator] After days and days of pandering to her,

von Grönhagen finally persuades Miron-Aku

to perform the ritual.

She summons the spirit of her ancestors

and divines future events.

The team records and photographs

the ritual while it is going on.

- For them to get her

to actually perform her shamanic rituals for them,

for the camera,

is going to verify the trip itself.

The importance here was to show what she was able to do.

- [Narrator] This Karelian ritual

would become the pinnacle element

of future SS Solstice ceremonies.

- It was part of creating, I think,

a sense of mind control,

because when you ritualize something

and people follow that ritual,

it becomes a doctrine

and it becomes indoctrinated in their mind

and then you sort of have control over them at that point.

- [Narrator] Bose plays the recording of the ritual back

and Miron-Aku expresses deep regret.

She believes she has committed a sacrilege

by performing just to satisfy their curiosity

and that she will never be able to practice magic again.

- She's probably never heard a recording of her voice before

and now, all of a sudden,

they've captured something of her spirit, in her mind,

onto this machine.

That's magic.

- For Miron-Aku, she really did give away all her secrets

and I can see how she would feel remorseful

and perhaps never be able to be a shaman again,

because she exposed the mystical side of things

to the public.

- [Narrator] The team leaves Miron-Aku

stewing in her misery and shame.

- They take the parts they want,

but the lessons about moderation and virtue

and guarding the divine element in you,

they turned a complete blind eye to.

- [Narrator] von Grönhagen and Bose return

from Karelia to Germany.

Von Grönhagen writes an article

about Karelian magic chants for Germanian,

an anti-Catholic monthly magazine,

partly owned by the Ahnenerbe.

The chants are interpreted as ancient witchcraft rituals

passed down by Germanic ancestors,

a bond to their mystical past.

- They do make that connection

by saying that these old chants

come from the old ancient Germanic people

and so therefore the real root

of the original people are the Germans.

They're really showing the public

how important they truly are in the world.

- Himmler's fixation on the occult

goes even further as he establishes the Hexenkartothek,

also known as Special Assignment H in October of 1936.

- There were many divisions

already within the SS before 1936

and what's interesting about the Sonderkommando,

the Hexenkartothek, this research on witches,

is you would think

that this would fall under the research branch of the SS,

the Ahnenerbe, which was directly under Himmler.

It was a research institute,

where all these border scientific and occult

and mythological and religious activities were going on.

In the case of the Hexenkartothek,

he charged the intelligence service to do this research.

- Now, what he wants to do here,

is to create an organization

that look into the witches who have been persecuted

during the witch trials.

The benefit of this for Himmler

were that he could bring the ancient sorcery

and the ancient powers of these witches to the Third Reich.

- They create a scientific group of people,

who are sent out to literally comb the libraries

around Europe and into even the UK,

looking for these stories of the persecution of witches.

- [Narrator] To lead this important project,

Himmler selects a devoted member of the SS,

Reinhard Heydrich.

Trusting him to bring Germany back to its Aryan roots.

- Now, Heydrich had joined the SS in 1931.

He was a fiercely loyal member to the Nazi party.

He created the SS Security Service,

and he was definitely the architect

behind the Final Solution.

And it can't be argued

that he was certainly a favorite for Hitler, too.

And this was very significant for Special Assignment H.

It was a statement that Himmler had made,

showing that this was a very serious business

by having one of the full front Nazi party members

at the helm of this mission.

- That's odd, because Heydrich

was one of the least interested in the occult

of any SS person.

For him, it was all sectarianism.

They're just different sects that don't want to be Nazis.

Why are we researching them?

So to charge Heydrich with researching witchcraft,

at first seems completely bizarre.

And all these other people love the occult, like Wiligut.

Why is he asking Heydrich to do it?

And that has to do with opposition research.

He really thought that

if we study the ways they marginalized,

persecuted, and murdered witches,

we can better understand how our enemies

are going to come at us this time.

- He was highly intelligent, but also insanely violent.

This is a guy who is snapping up agencies left and right

to make himself the heir apparent to Hitler's throne.

So much so, that Himmler came to fear him.

- [Narrator] They begin gathering witch trial documents

that describe the activities of the accused witches.

- So that they can create a catalog, essentially,

of all of the persecutions.

And somehow Himmler is going

to creatively tie all this into the Germanic people,

because, of course, the Germanics

come from the Atlanteans and from the Aryans.

And so, therefore, that persecution

is aimed directly at the German people.

- [Narrator] Deeply paranoid,

the Nazis wanted to destroy any perceived competition

and set their sights on none other than the Freemasons.

- Nazis hated anyone that was doing something in secret

that they couldn't control.

And the Freemasons have a history

of keeping their rituals, their practices, secret.

So that, all of a sudden, put them on the radar.

- It's not hard to understand

why the Nazis superficially hated Freemasonry.

Like the Jews, and like the socialists,

and like the liberals,

it was another organization that was global,

that was involved in some conspiracy

to destroy hierarchical, noble, pure Aryan civilization.

- And so certainly that was enough

for the Nazis to view it as a rival

and as something that needed to be destroyed.

- [Narrator] In 1934, Himmler and Heydrich

forced Masonic lodges to close in Germany

and all their assets were confiscated,

including libraries and archives.

Because of the popularity of mysticism in the 19th century,

Himmler knew the Freemason libraries

possessed occult literature.

In fact, some Nazis

would have actually been part of the Freemasons,

before the lodges were banned.

- As they would do whenever they cracked down on anyone,

they took their offices and buildings.

They appropriated them.

- The Nazis move in Special Assignment H.

Now, the Nazis are equipped with an abundance of archive.

We're talking publications, documents, pamphlets

that can really hone in on what happened

during the witch trials.

- [Narrator] With the ancient wisdom uncovered

in the von Gronhagen expedition to Karelia

and Assignment H's research,

the Nazis are finally ready for their own Solstice ceremony.

- In June of 1935, thousands of Germans

attended a massive Summer Solstice celebration

in the city of Heidelberg,

organized by Himmler and Joseph Goebbels.

Meanwhile, Himmler's SS officers

incorporated pagan rituals into their training.

- [Narrator] Robed speaking choirs presented songs

and chants to the spectators.

The amphitheater was built in the Heidelberg Holy Mountain,

a place revered by cult followers of the Volkisch movement,

banks of stone seats surrounded a central stage

flanked by towers and stands for burning pyres.

The design was meant to resemble a human torso,

a metaphor for the central gathering place of humans.

The Nazis had planned to build 400 Thingstatte locations

for these performances, but only 45 were completed.

Nazi fascination with sorcery and spells ran deep.

The Nazi witch trial database, Special Assignment H,

had over 33,000 index cards with 57 fields to fill out.

This meticulous cataloging system

was aiming to provide as many details as possible

about the accused witches.

- Levin's cataloging system was actually quite significant,

because, later on in the 1960s,

historians picked it up and use it themselves

when researching information.

- [Narrator] Desperate for information,

Himmler requests a report from Special Assignment H,

which he receives in August, 1937.

In the report,

Special Assignment H finds a roundabout way

of telling Himmler what he wants to hear,

despite the lack of evidence.

They focus on the idea that the accused witches

held up heroically to the torture they endured,

evidence of their racial superiority.

- No longer are they just being shackled and starved.

They're being whipped and beaten

and tortured with implements and stripped naked.

And their skin is scraped from their bodies.

Then we get to the pyres,

where they publicly burned them to make an example of them.

This just spread like a disease throughout Europe

and throughout parts of North America at the time.

- [Narrator] As Assignment H continues their research,

they uncover the horrific extent

of witch burnings in Germany.

- Between 35,000 and 40,000 witches

are burnt at stake in Germany alone.

- [Narrator] But as more and more research arms

of the SS are popping up,

Assignment H is under pressure

to uncover something spectacular.

On September 2nd, 1938,

Himmler speaks at the annual conference

of the Organization of Germans Abroad in Stuttgart,

where he claims that the number of witches

burned at the stake is half a million.

He blames the Catholic church assisted by the Jews,

believing it was an attempt

to stifle true Aryan religious practices of ancient Germany.

1938.

After reading thousands of books, articles, and pamphlets,

Assignment H gets their lucky break.

- They discovered that Himmler has a 17th century ancestor,

Marguerite Himmler, who was executed for witchcraft.

- [Narrator] Realizing this was Assignment H's big break,

Heydrich wrote to Himmler informing him

of his direct blood connection to the witch trials.

- Himmler thinks that it was the Christian-judeo society

out to rid the world of the German strength,

that they want to literally run rickshaw over them.

- It would have confirmed for him his theories

about the purity of his own Aryan background,

and his ties to generations of Aryan pagans

who were persecuted by the Catholic church.

Right, you're looking for evidence to prove your theory.

Well, now it's personal for him.

- [Narrator] April, 1940, the Nazis invade neutral Norway.

They dissolve the Norwegian Masonic order in September.

- They close all the lodges and confiscate their books.

These books get added

to Himmler's ever-growing witch library.

- [Narrator] These esoteric books were stored

in a castle connected to the supernatural.

- In the 13th century, there is a castle built in Prague,

atop of a hill.

- It's one of those mystical places

where we don't really know the origins of it per se,

and so it has its own magic.

- [Narrator] Surrounded by swamps and thick forests,

it remains unoccupied for years.

Rumors of its mysterious history reach the Nazis.

And then in 1939,

the Nazis occupy Prague and seize Houska Castle.

- For the Nazis, the castle actually had no strategic value

when they occupied it,

but they still set up a Reich main security office there.

Something else must have been going on,

that surely they knew was a bit more important

for their overall plans.

- [Narrator] The castle itself was said

to be built atop a gateway to Hell,

to stop demons escaping from an open portal.

This portal is a giant limestone crack

that goes unimaginably deep.

- Dating far back as the ninth century,

it is rumored that demons would come up from this crack

and they would terrorize the local people.

- [Narrator] During its construction,

the defensive walls were built entirely facing inwards,

which can only mean one thing,

to keep something from escaping.

It was even rumored

that all of the villages prisoners who were on death row

were offered pardons if they agreed to be lowered down

by rope and harness into this gateway of Hell.

The first volunteer was a man who was tied up

and slowly lowered down into the pit,

but he began screaming and thrashing with terror

and begged to be pulled back up.

When he was out of the pit,

it was said he had aged 30 years

in the few seconds he'd been down there.

He was so disturbed by what he saw

that he was carted off to an insane asylum

and died only two days later.

The castle's chapel was said to be built

over this very fissure where demons were lurking,

so that they would be unable to cross the sacred grounds.

In the 14th century, the chapel walls

were painted with frescoes depicting demonic activity.

It was widely speculated that the SS officers

performed dark rituals in the chapel,

in hopes of harnessing evil secrets and immortality

from the gateway to Hell.

- This seems to be the perfect place

for some of these stories to emanate from.

- [Narrator] But the evidence and details remain a mystery.

- Houska Castle did end up actually serving

some significance for the Nazis.

I think when they really honed in on the fact

that this could have a spiritual connection.

- It's terrifying to think

that they were hunting these archives

and looking for the methods of which these witches

were persecuted and tortured.

And they took those methods and they applied them

to victims in the concentration camps, which is horrifying.

- [Narrator] In 1941,

despite finding records about Himmler's witch ancestor,

Assignment H realizes their research

is becoming increasingly less critical,

as Himmler's focus is elsewhere.

The Nazis are going to full war.

- In 1939, the Nazis invade Poland.

This marks the start of the second World War.

They do so by introducing the Blitzkrieg, the lightning war.

This an army made of men, tanks, air force together.

They are launching an unprecedented speed

and surprise attack on the enemy.

- [Narrator] If witchcraft wouldn't

produce Himmler's super army,

he'd need to look elsewhere.

And so he turned to drugs.

Before and during the Blitzkrieg,

the Nazis popped Pervitin, a methamphetamine,

which allowed them to go 36 to 50 hours

without feeling fatigue,

turning them from monsters to machines.

But not even Pervitin can save the Nazis,

as the Luftwaffe loses control of the sky

and everything changes.

August, 1940,

the first Allied air raid hits Berlin.

Desperate to protect his witch library,

Himmler secretly relocates millions of books to Prague.

- It must be so significant, that in the midst of a war,

they decide to up and move it.

Why would they go to such efforts for its protection?

- [Narrator] Himmler wants

to ensure any documentation of Aryan witchcraft rituals

was preserved.

- The Nazis were so obsessed with obtaining occult secrets

that they had obtained nearly 3 million books.

To hide these,

they had secret libraries scattered throughout Russia,

Greece, the Baltic states.

And even today, those books are still being repatriated.

- We don't know what anthropological plans they had,

or archeological or border scientific ideas they had in mind

for these libraries after the war,

but clearly they attached some intrinsic value

to the so-called research or doctrines

or whatever was contained in these libraries.

- [Narrator] Why, in the midst of the war,

would they go to this effort?

- The protection of the witch library

and the collection and the ongoing work that it does,

speaks to Himmler's personal fascination.

He also saw it as useful

for his own personal aggrandizement,

the aggrandizement of his agents.

- He was fanatical about the occult.

- [Narrator] In January of 1942 at Wannsee,

the Final Solution conference occurs chaired by Heydrich.

It outlined plans for the systematic, deliberate,

physical annihilation of European Jews.

Genocide.

But one of the key members of Project H

was about to be taken out of the picture.

It was May 27th, 1942,

when Heydrich was assassinated in Czechoslovakia,

the target of Operation Anthropoid.

- He ends up being the highest ranking official

in World War II to be assassinated.

- [Narrator] With the death of this critical SS officer,

the demise of Special Assignment H and the Third Reich

draws nearer and the Nazis act out in desperation.

1942.

The Nazis erroneously link Heydrich's assassination

to the Czech villages of Lidice and Lezaky.

Both villages are razed.

As the war continues,

Special Assignment H is officially suspended by the SS

in February of 1943.

- All the researchers on the project

are now assigned to other projects within the SS.

- [Narrator] Desperate

to salvage Assignment H's eight years of research,

their witch trial findings

are presented as a habilitation thesis at Munich University.

However, it was outright rejected as it proved nothing.

A lot of what the Nazis tried to demonstrate

with their pseudoscience was simply impossible to do.

- Even when these books don't align with these ideas,

they find a way to twist the information

to their own benefit.

- This is re-inventing your people's past,

fabricating it in order to beat other people with it.

- [Narrator] Clinging to their fantastical ideas

is why they were fated to lose their mission

and ultimately the war.

- We just have to remember at the end of the day,

the Nazis were not a rational group of people.

- [Narrator] When their defeat was imminent,

the Nazis abandoned Houska Castle,

burning their written documents

and leaving their library behind.

- The SS has an obsession with secrecy.

A lot of documents were purposefully

destroyed along the way.

- [Narrator] They also left the bodies

of three Nazi soldiers who had been killed execution style.

The Nazis interest in Solstice ceremonies

at the Heidelberg Thingstatte stopped in 1939,

overshadowed by the ongoing war.

It was just as well.

Only 1% of the German population had embraced the idea

that Aryan paganism was their rightful religion.

After World War II, the 45 Thingstattes became venues

for outdoor concerts and events.

Today, the Heidelberg Thingstatte

is a protected heritage building

and used as a public park.

As for the witch trials,

it wasn't until 1736

that England put an end to the persecutions,

but Bavaria and Germany

continued condemning so-called witches to death,

up until 1749.

- We still have churches today

trying to apologize for their past,

in terms of how many people they persecuted as witches.

- [Narrator] In 2015,

a warehouse outside Prague revealed a shocking find.

The warehouse contained hundreds of thousands of books,

untouched for over six decades,

including the lost Himmler's witch library.

Among its contents are 6,000 books

stolen directly from the Norwegian Freemasons.

Artifacts from witch trials around the world

are being uncovered and displayed to this day,

such as the Salem witch trials in the Peabody Essex Museum

in October of 2020.

Still, who knows what other nefarious things the SS teams

intended to use witchcraft for, had they gotten any further.