All language subtitles for Secret.Nazi.Expeditions.S01E03.Into.The.Mountains.720p.WEB-DL.DDP5.1.H.264-squalor

- [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 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.

[ominous music]

[solemn music]

- It's human nature

to search out the
unknowable, the forbidden.

We are naturally
attracted to mysteries,

and there's probably no
greater treasure or quest

than to find the Holy Grail.

- And in some sense,
all of us have

our own personal grail
which we're trying to find,

so the idea of the grail
keeps people's curiosity,

enthusiasm, their
sense of wonder alive.

- And I think that explains
why, for over 2000 years,

archeologists, devoted
Christians, adventurers,

everyone has been
searching for the grail,

including the Nazis.

- [Narrator] In the early 1930s,

Heinrich Himmler, leader of
the SS and a fervent occultist,

was building the framework

for what would
become the Ahnenerbe.

- Well, the Ahnenerbe
is a think tank.

It is a grab bag of
different academic

and pseudo-scientific
approaches.

It had anthropologists and
historians and cultural experts.

Many of them in different
fields were widely disparaged

outside of Germany as being
crackpots or pseudo-scientists,

and rightly so.

- [Narrator] In an attempt
to rewrite history,

the Ahnenerbe would
hunt down, loot,

and plunder ancient artifacts,

claiming them as German relics.

- The Nazis were very interested
in finding alternatives

to Judeo-Christian
theology and ethics.

It wasn't that
they really wanted

to create their own religion,

but to recover
ancient traditions

that were more compatible
with being an Aryan,

so Himmler was always
searching for vestiges

of ancient or prehistorical
Aryan culture and religion.

While it was great if a relic
could be actually validated

as part of some kind of Germanic

or pre-Germanic civilization,
even when it couldn't,

he was willing to find someone
who would ascribe value to it

or find an argument to
make it fit his narrative.

- [Narrator] While Himmler
was laying the groundwork

for his Ahnenerbe research team,

German anthropologist
and historian Otto Rahn

was doing research of his own.

- Otto Rahn is a scholar,
he's a medievalist,

and he has some
considerable repute.

He is also a Grailist.

- I haven't seen
evidence that he thought

there was really a magical
grail with healing power

that was gonna pop
up at some point.

What he did believe is that
the Holy Grail represented

an important connection between
ancient Aryan civilization

and religion and the
heretics of the Middle Ages.

- [Narrator] Obsessed with the
grail from a very young age,

Rahn was convinced
that the clues found

in the many ancient and
medieval grail legends

would lead him to the
answers he sought.

- It's hard to imagine
a more intriguing

or important artifact in
history than the Holy Grail,

but it was not always
the object of fascination

that it is today.

- The most ancient
version of the grail story

seems to have its roots

in Welsh and Irish
mythological material

about some kind of
cauldron of plenty.

- [Narrator] The concept of
a grail was first popularized

in the 12th century
romance "Perceval"

by French poet
Chretien de Troyes.

- In this story, Perceval
goes to the castle,

and there he sees a wounded
king lying on the bed,

the Fisher King, and he
sees a mysterious procession

in which the
centerpiece is a grail.

And in French, at that point,

the 'graal' was simply a term

for a very large
serving platter.

- [Narrator] As Perceval
rides away from the castle

the next day, he meets a
woman who admonishes him

for not asking about the grail.

- And he says, "I didn't know
that there was a question

that was to be asked."

And so he's fated now to Rome

until he can return
to the grail castle

and put right his
lack of curiosity.

The version that Chretien
gives us is not finished,

so we don't know if Perceval
ever makes his way back.

- [Narrator] The grail
legend was introduced

to German audiences

through Wolfram von
Eschenbach's "Parzival",

an epic poem written in
the early 13th century.

- It gives a slightly
different version of the story.

And here, Perceval does
eventually make his way

back to the grail castle
and asks the question,

"Whom does the grail serve?"

And this is sufficient
to heal the Fisher King

and to allow the wasteland
that surrounds the castle

to flourish once again.

And so, this seems like quite
old and quite mysterious story

of loss and regeneration,

something which perhaps has to
do with notions of fertility

that might inhere
in this vessel.

- [Narrator] While
"Parzival" was inspired

by the earlier French poem,

the grail would take
another form here.

- It's this beautiful,
shining, gleaming green stone

that supposedly sat
on the head of Lucifer

when he was an angel.

And when Lucifer was
cast out of heaven,

this stone falls from the
heavens into this cave,

and the cave closes
up on this stone,

so that mortals could not
get their hands on it.

- Around the time that Wolfram
was composing "Parzival",

a French writer,
Robert de Boron,

was connecting this story up

with a more explicitly
Christian tale.

- [Narrator] In
"Joseph d'Arimathie",

the grail became the Holy Grail

and assumed the Christian form

that people in modern
times are familiar with.

- From the biblical text,

we know of a person named
Joseph of Arimathea.

He's said to have arranged
to have Jesus buried,

and that's all we know,

but that gets elaborated
throughout history,

and particularly into
the 12th, 13th century,

that he was in proximity
enough to the last supper

that he scooped the
cup that Jesus used.

And then, Joseph
went to the cross

and Jesus' side was
pierced with a lance,

another relic that
Himmler and his crew

were very interested in finding.

And Joseph used the cup
from the Last Supper

to also capture some
of that blood of Jesus.

- In a way, it's a work
of Christian genius

to appropriate this story
for the Christian church

and its key writer,
the Eucharist,

and to make this
mysterious symbol

of fertility and wellbeing
the specific chalice

of the Last Supper and the
one that's actually held

Christ's blood and water.

- Joseph is believed to
have become a missionary

after the death of Christ,
and traveled to Europe

and perhaps taken
the grail with him,

where he converted
thousands of people

to the early form
of Christianity,

and apparently made it
all the way to Britain.

[ominous music]

- Robert de Boron's
tale of Joseph

and his followers in Britain

influenced the later 13th
century grail stories

of King Arthur,
the legendary hero,

famous for his court at Camelot

and for assembling the
Knights of the Round Table.

- There's very little
if any evidence

for historical Arthur himself,

but he's proved a
really productive figure

to graft onto the kind
of classic rise and fall

of the greatest king the
kingdom has ever seen.

And as the center of a court,

he attracts a whole
group of champions,

of warriors around him,

and they have their
individual stories as well.

- [Narrator] One of those
stories sees Arthur's knights

embarking on a quest
for the Holy Grail.

The grail appears to
the knights in a vision,

bringing with it feelings of
wellbeing and camaraderie,

and then disappears.

- And there's a kind of
almost addictive desire

to have that sense
of community again,

and the knights swear that
they will go and seek for it.

- And we find the knights,
again, going on the quest

meeting with difficulties

and all kinds of
obstacles and hurdles,

so the idea is that the knight

has to attain a kind
of perfection of virtue

to be able to be worthy
of receiving the grail.

- [Narrator] Of the 150
Knights of the Round Table,

only three were able
to find the grail,

Bors, Galahad, and the original
grail seeker, Percival.

- And so, the grail
has been achieved,

but it's something which
is not really consonant

with the more worldly life
of the Arthurian Court.

Those who achieve it

can't really go back
to normal life again,

and so it represents something
which is unattainable,

but which is an
infinite blessing.

- I think those stories
resonate with people

and help them feel like,
if they touch that relic,

then that's as close as we
can come to touching God.

- No one knows what
the grail really is.

Was it an actual chalice or cup?

Was it a symbol of Christ?

Was it a stone from
Lucifer's crown?

So there's not even agreement
on what the grail is or was,

yet alone of its
whereabouts today.

Yet that did not
deter the Nazis.

- [Narrator] Though still
somewhat shrouded in mystery.

it's clear Himmler
saw the grail,

along with other ancient relics,

as both a potential
source of power

and a symbolic trophy
for the Third Reich.

- The idea of possessing the
world's greatest treasure,

that the Nazis would have it
as a prize or as a trophy,

carried with their
armies into battle,

that would be used to intimidate
and put the fear of God,

literally, into their enemies.

- Even though it was associated
with the Jesus story,

it's not entirely clear that
they were looking for objects

associated with Christ.

With Otto Rahn's work,
what he's looking for

is described as Lapsit exillis,
a stone from elsewhere,

fallen from the sky, a
meteorite, something like that.

- [Narrator] As a student
of medieval literature,

Otto Rahn had obsessively
studied Wolfram von Eschenbach's

German version of "Parzival",

and its imagining of the grail

as a stone from Lucifer's crown.

- Rahn comes the conclusion
that certain place names

within that text
are actual places

located in the French Pyrenees.

- [Narrator] While the idea
of using a fictional story

as a roadmap may have
appeared farfetched,

Rahn drew inspiration from
a groundbreaking discovery

made decades earlier by
a German archeologist

in the Eastern Mediterranean.

In 1873, German researcher
Heinrich Schliemann

unearthed the city of Troy,

described in the epic poems,
"The Iliad" and "The Odyssey"

by the eighth
century writer Homer.

- Up until that point,

everyone had said that Homer
had invented this city,

and Schliemann was so convinced
that it was historical

that he set out to prove
it archeologically.

He follows clues in Homer's text

to pinpoint where Troy
is and starts digging,

and, of course, discovers the
ruins of not one ancient city,

but multiple layers.

- [Narrator] Schliemann
was able to turn fiction

into historical fact, sparking
an international sensation.

- Schliemann, using
"The Odyssey",

which most people agree was
some form of oral history,

makes some sense.

"Perceval", by the time
it was written down

in the Middle Ages, many
people already thought

it was a collection of myths.

So I don't know to what
extent someone using that

to uncover what actually
happened anthropologically

was scientifically acceptable,

but it's not unusual for
Nazi border scientists

to use literary or mythological
or religious concepts

as hard evidence for something
they really wished was true.

- [Narrator] Otto Rahn's
fascination with the grail

intersected with
another interest of his,

the history of the Cathars.

- The Cathars are a breakaway
group from the main church

that, fed up with the corruption
of the medieval church

and reading some early
Christian writings,

formed a doctrine
sort of counter to
the mainline theology,

which saw a very
dualistic division

between the body and the spirit.

- Himmler and many semi-serious
academics and scholars

claimed that what the
Cathars were practicing

could have been some version

of this pagan Germanic
religion, or influenced by it,

and that's why the
Catholic church

went after them as heretics.

- In the 13th century,

the Cathars were gaining
more and more followers,

more and more power,

and whole towns were
starting to believe

what the Pope thought
was an aberrant theology,

and so ordered their massacre.

- And in 1243, they laid a
nine-month siege to a castle

in Southern France
called Montsegur,

and they kill almost
everybody inside.

Legend suggests that some
of them may have escaped

through a tunnel or
a secret passageway,

or perhaps scaled over
the walls of the fortress,

and they might have taken
the grail with them.

- [Narrator] Rahn was
convinced that Montsegur,

in the heart of the
French Pyrenees,

was the inspiration
behind Montsalvat,

the mountain castle described
in Wolfram's grail story,

and that the Cathars
had indeed been

the keepers of the grail.

Drawing inspiration from
Schliemann's success

at finding proof of the
legendary city of Troy,

around 1931, Rahn mounted
an expedition to Montsegur,

though it remains a mystery
how this early work was funded.

- You couldn't
just travel around

doing what Otto Rahn did
from your own pocket,

so there was always some funding
coming from somewhere else.

He knew a lot of wealthy people.

He had connections and he
could tell a good story

and he could convince people
to invest in his pursuits.

- [Narrator] As Rahn was
ramping up his research,

he met Antonin Gadal, a
French mystic and historian

dedicating his life to
studying the Cathars

in the south of France.

Gadal believed that the
extensive cave system

in the vicinity of Montsegur
had played an important role

in the Cathar faith, and that
their galleries still held

their lost treasure, and
possibly the Holy Grail itself.

- Searching for the grail
in the caves and mountains

and the region around Montsegur

would have been an
enormous undertaking.

You're talking about
looking for a small object

amidst an intricate system of
miles and miles of tunnels.

You could explore it for years

and walk right past the grail.

- [Narrator] But as
locals started to question

Rahn's presence in the
area, rumors began to swirl.

- As for his credentials,
he is a medievalist.

He's relatively legit,

but given the tensions
that are rising in Europe

in the early 1930s, there's
certainly a lot of concern

about Germans poking around
in the Pyrenees in France.

- [Narrator] In March
1932, a local newspaper

published an article
associating Rahn

with a cult group
called the Polaires,

excavating the caves
near Montsegur.

In a show of solidarity,
Gadal wrote a retort

stating that Rahn was
a serious academic

who had studied the
Cathars extensively.

In his own reply, appearing
a few issues later,

Rahn himself was more upset

that they had gotten
his name wrong.

Rahn explored the grottoes
and caves around Montsegur,

most notably the massive
cavern of Lombrives,

where he discovered
Cathar emblems

carved among the ancient
cave art and modern graffiti.

In 1932, Otto Rahn
returned to Germany,

and in 1933, published
his first book

detailing his explorations
of the Pyrenees.

- Rahn's book, "Crusade
Against the Grail",

brought to the fore the idea
that the grail is find-able,

that there are clues out there,
and so this makes a splash.

- [Narrator] While
Rahn was in France,

the Nazi party was
expanding its power.

On January 30th, 1933,

Adolf Hitler became
Chancellor of Germany.

Hitler's plans to make
the country a powerful,

unified one-party
state began in earnest,

and Heinrich Himmler's ideas
would play an important role.

- Once the Nazis take power,

the idea that the society
can be transformed

into this Germanic-Aryo vision
suddenly becomes very real.

For Himmler and the
SS, it means expansion.

It means greater funding

to put money and effort
into proving the existence

of this Germanic Aryan
civilization that once existed.

- Himmler's goals
and Otto Rahn's quest

would converge in 1933 when
they were brought together

by Himmler's religion
expert, Karl Maria Wiligut.

- Of all the interesting
and colorful characters

in Heinrich Himmler's
orbit, there's few that are

as fascinating and
bizarre as Karl Wiligut.

- He comes from an
Austrian military family,

was a decorated soldier.

He'd fought as a colonel
in the First World War.

He comes to believe that
he is the descendant

of this great line of
Aryo-Germanic kings,

and he claims to
be able to tap into

this vast ancestry
through clairvoyant means.

- One of the most
bizarre ideas Wiligut has

is tracing the ancestry
of the Aryan people

thousands and
thousands of years,

far beyond any recorded evidence

of the dawn of civilization.

There were mammoths
roaming the earth.

People were living in caves
as crude hunter gatherers,

yet he conjures up an advanced
civilization of Aryans.

- [Narrator] Wiligut had
written a book on Irminism,

which he claimed
to be the religion

of this ancient
Aryan civilization.

- Irminism is
appealing to Himmler,

in large part because
it's not Christianity.

But there's a lot
of other religions

that are not Christianity,

and I think part of
the appeal is also

that it has ancient roots
that goes back pre-Christian,

but this takes it
back even further.

So it's a more pure
form of religion

that Aryans carried through.

- For the Nazis,

this was about remaking
humanity in their image.

And according to them,
Christianity was infected,

to use their word, with Judaism,

and Christianity was
spiritually impoverished.

Christianity was the
religion of the weak.

We have to return to a religion

which comes from the
ancient German people.

- Wiligut was a big reader
of Rahn's first book,

and somehow got into his head

that he was the foremost
world expert on the Cathars

and on the grail,

and so, he becomes a very
useful pawn in Wiligut's game,

vis-a-vis Himmler and the boss.

- [Narrator] After receiving a
mysterious unsigned telegram,

Otto Rahn traveled to Germany,

where he discovered the
sender of the telegram

was Reichsfuhrer
Heinrich Himmler.

- And Himmler clearly had
read about the Holy Grail

before the 1930s,

but it was only after being
alerted to the article

that Otto Rahn had
written in '33 or '34

in the "Frankfurter
Zeitung" about his book

that Himmler started
to see the connections

between theories of the
grail and the Aryan religion

he wanted to investigate
and reconstruct,

and that's why he hired Rahn

to start conducting his own
research on behalf of the SS.

- And there's this
unique relationship

between Himmler,
Wiligut, and Rahn,

all three crazed individuals
whose views and theories

are utterly discredited,
but they all

sort of feed one another
in this loop of madness.

- [Narrator] Himmler's
hiring of Rahn

was another step toward
his goal of creating

the occult think tank that
would become the Ahnenerbe.

And while Rahn's primary
task was to continue

his study of the
Cathars and the grail,

Himmler and Wiligut gave
him additional assignments.

- Because Himmler was impressed
by Otto Rahn's ability

to create a syncratic narrative

around all these
disparate theories,

he would often send him
on expeditions to Iceland

and some other places to help
make sense out of artifacts

or evidence that was
found in the field.

- [Narrator] Mystery and
secrecy surround Rahn's travels

during this time with the SS.

It is said that
Rahn was instructed

to communicate with Wiligut
in coded dispatches.

These were to be shared with
no one other than Himmler.

- I think it gives us
this aura of mystery

that there was something
maybe very sinister going on.

The simpler answer is that

some of the more outlandish SS
cultic activities are hidden,

because Himmler and Hitler

are maybe worried
about bad press.

And especially if you are
advocating for something

that is unChristian,
Hitler needs the churches

in order to have the
support of the public.

And so, I think, for
somebody like Rahn,

it was probably quite limiting.

I think he was somebody
who was looking for fame,

looking to make that
next great discovery,

and he was probably
quite frustrated.

[curious music]

- [Narrator] Now
funded by the SS,

Otto Rahn headed to Italy

to continue his exploration
of pagan Europe's sacred spots

in hope of uncovering
the secrets of the grail.

His quest took him to
Bolzano in South Tyrol,

where Rahn wanted to
walk in the footsteps

of King Theodoric,
ruler of the Ostrogoths,

and known as Dietrich Von Bern
in Germanic heroic legend.

- He's the king around the
time that Rome is collapsing

in the four or 500s,

and one of the theories
is that the Romans

would have had the grail,

but when the Goths sack
and ultimately defeat Rome,

it would have been
the great treasure

that they would have
confiscated or looted from Rome.

The Goths may have presented
it as a gift to King Theodoric.

That's attractive for Otto Rahn,

so that's another
lead that he pursues

to try to find the
grail's whereabouts.

- [Narrator] Theodoric, in
his Germanic incarnation

of Dietrich Von Bern,
also featured in "Laurin",

an anonymous
medieval German poem.

The poem revolves
around Dietrich's fight

against the Dwarf King Laurin

after Dietrich and his
companions destroyed

Laurin's magical rose garden,

which was concealed
within a mountain.

Rahn hypothesized
that Dietrich Von Bern

could have been the inspiration
for "Parzival's" grail king

and wished to walk the
ancient rose path of the poem.

- The stories often
have some truth to them,

and by following the
footsteps of King Theodoric,

perhaps that will
lead him to the place

that the grail may be hidden.

- To me, it's akin to people
that go on pilgrimages

to the Holy Land to walk
in the steps of Jesus,

or to India to walk
where Gandhi walked,

that somehow that putting
your feet on the same land

as someone else connects
you to that person.

- [Narrator] Rahn stayed
in Italy for weeks

following the rose path
and climbing the mountain.

He lived in a hut in a meadow
that he used as a base camp.

He mused on legend and
lore, but found nothing

that tied this place to
any physical treasure.

But despite Rahn's
lack of a result,

Himmler was inspired
to ramp up his plans

for his occult think tank.

In July of 1935, Himmler
met with five racial experts

at SS headquarters in Berlin

to officially establish
the organization

that would become known
as the SS Ahnenerbe.

At the meeting, they
designated its official goal,

to promote the science of
ancient intellectual history.

In September of 1935,
Rahn wrote to Wiligut,

requesting permission
to travel to the ruins

of Wildenberg Castle in Bavaria.

Wildenberg Castle was
built by the Lords of Durn

sometime between
1180 and around 1200.

Wildenberg is known as the
Grail Castle in the area,

and it's believed that
Wolfram Von Eschenbach

wrote parts of his
"Parzival" here

as a guest of a
knight from Durn.

Rahn believed that this castle

could have been the
model for Monsalvat,

Wolfram's grail castle.

- It makes sense that the castle

would be linked to the grail

if the author is
reputed to have written

parts of a poem like
"Parzival" there.

Even that in and
of itself, I think,

would put it on the map in
terms of sort of grail legend.

But it's another
step to say that

somehow the grail
was housed there.

- [Narrator]
Permission received,

Rahn drove to Wildenberg Castle

through a looming
hardwood forest,

accompanied by two
literary historians.

His companions agree
that Wildenberg

is one of Germany's most
beautiful castle ruins,

but questioned if
Wolfram Von Eschenbach

had actually been there.

Rahn explored the
castle grounds,

studying the stoneworks
and various marks

made by the stone cutters.

But despite his efforts,

Rahn was unable to find
anything definitive

to confirm that Wolfram Von
Eschenbach wrote at Wildenberg,

and he maintained his belief
that Montsegur in France

was the true inspiration
for Monsalvat.

[ominous music]

In March 1936, Hitler
sent over 20,000 troops

into the Rhineland,
a demilitarized zone,

according to the
Treaty of Versailles

that was signed
after World War I.

- Also in '36, Heinrich
Himmler is put in charge

of all policing inside Germany
and German territories,

and this effectively
makes Himmler

the second most powerful
person in Nazi Germany,

and it emboldens him to the
point where he can expand

the SS and state policing

into all aspects of German
life and German culture.

- [Narrator] With Himmler's
new status and power

came the need to justify
his goals and speculations

with academic gravitas.

For this reason, in addition
to Rahn's grail investigation,

the Ahnenerbe would fund
multiple expeditions

to places like
Scandinavia and Tibet

to search for evidence
of Aryan origins.

Following further
fruitless grail searches,

Rahn published his
second book in 1937,

"Lucifer's Court:
A Heretic's Journey

in Search of the
Light Bringers".

Here, Rahn traces the
roots of Catharism

back to the legends
of the ancient Greeks,

Goths, and Germanic pagans.

- It's a bizarre book.

"Lucifer's Court" is about
how Satan was misunderstood,

that he was ultimately good
under pagan interpretations,

and then Christians distorted
him and made him into evil.

It speaks to this idea,
both of how Christianity

had eroded ancient
German values and ideas,

but it also brings
to the forefront

the idea of occultism
generally speaking,

and certainly, that's where
Himmler's own interests came in.

- [Narrator] The book takes
the form of a travel journal,

beginning on the eve of
Rahn's trip to Montsegur

in the early 1930s

and follows him on a
number of grail hunts

and some other
assignments from Himmler.

However, the story stopped short

of a discovery of
a physical grail.

- "Lucifer's Court",
it's a perfect case study

of how Himmler's
money and influence

impacts the outcomes
of the research,

because Rahn was primarily
interested in the origins

and meaning of the grail
and its possible connections

to Indo-Aryan
religion and culture.

By "Lucifer's Court",

he's constructed this
whole civilizational theory

that represents all these
great Aryan civilizations.

That's very much
Himmler talking.

- [Narrator] At the
time of its publishing,

Himmler was pleased
with the book

and ordered leather-bound copies
to gift to the Nazi elite,

including Adolf Hitler,

but Himmler's enthusiasm
for Rahn wouldn't last.

- If you're chasing a legend,

you'd better be
prepared for failure.

The odds of finding
it are pretty slim.

Otto Rahn's failure has
multiple implications,

and some of them tragic.

- [Narrator] Rumors
about how and why Rahn

fell out of
Himmler's favor vary.

- There's multiple theories.

One has to do with
his drinking problems.

When he was getting drunk,

he was engaging in homosexual
acts, which was even worse.

- [Narrator] In 1937,
Otto Rahn's assignments

took a dark turn.

- He's demoted and sent to
the Dachau Concentration Camp

in 1937, where he serves
as a guard for two years.

Dachau was one of the
earliest concentration camps,

one of the most infamous,
and one of the bloodiest.

It was a place for
political prisoners.

- [Narrator] Extremely unhappy
about his reassignment,

Rahn repeatedly wrote to
Himmler's personal adjutant,

Karl Wolff, asking
to be released from
his duties at Dachau

and allowed to concentrate
on his research

and write another book.

- You don't go up from
there, you only go down.

The only hope I would
think you would have,

would be to convince somebody
close enough to Himmler

that the possibility
of finding the grail

is still very real.

He's got nothing else to offer.

- [Narrator] But by this point,

he had lost the ear
of the Reichsfuhrer

and his requests were ignored.

In a handwritten memo to
Wiligut in February of 1939,

Rahn asked to leave the SS,

citing, "reasons of
such a serious nature,

I can only explain
them to you verbally."

- I've looked at a
lot of SS documents.

I don't remember coming across
lots of resignation letters.

My suspicion is that Himmler
still wanted him around

in some capacity,
was punishing him

or trying to toughen
him up or something.

And Rahn is like, I
can't take this anymore.

I'm out of here.

And by resigning from
the SS, he thought,

okay, I'm no longer
connected to them,

and shortly thereafter, died.

- [Narrator] On May 17th, 1939,

a Nazi newspaper
published Rahn's obituary,

stating that Rahn was
tragically killed in a snowstorm

in the mountains
of Tyrol, Austria.

- He seems to be almost
too good of a traveler

to get caught in a snowstorm.

That seems a little suspicious,

but it's hard to imagine also

that it was an
orchestrated murder.

I can imagine Himmler
wanted him dead,

but there were easier
ways for him to do that.

The more popular story is he
actually willingly went out

and killed himself,
dying in the cold.

- [Narrator] Some
conspiracy theorists claim

that he faked his death, but
the true cause remains unknown.

[ominous music]

The Holy Grail was
not the only object

the Nazis were seeking
for its propaganda power.

Throughout World War II,
they would pillage and loot,

procuring countless artifacts

in an attempt to rewrite history

and aid their
nationalistic cause.

- Hitler was an artist
earlier in his life

and was keenly interested in
all different forms of art.

And therefore, he
authorized the looting

of artistic treasures of
all sorts all across Europe,

and the Nazis were bringing
train after train of art

back to Germany as
the spoils of war.

- [Narrator] Among
the items looted

after the annexation
of Austria in 1938

was the Imperial Regalia
of the Holy Roman Empire,

including a spear purported
to be the holy lance

mentioned in the grail stories.

- At the crucifixion of Jesus,

Longinus pierces his
side with a lance,

and that blood which
comes from the wound

is collected in a bowl,

and that is what has been
called the Holy Grail.

- Like the grail was said to
carry divine powers with it,

and in this case, sort of
powers that were weaponizable.

It's said to sort of have this
energy that comes out of it.

- [Narrator] Then, on
September 1st, 1939,

the Nazis invaded Poland,
officially kicking off the war.

The SS believed that Poland
was made for German expansion.

The Ahnenerbe was intent
on fabricating evidence

to prove the Germany was
righting an ancient wrong

and seizing land that
was legitimately theirs.

Shortly after the invasion,

a small group of SS
moved into Krakow

in an attempt to capture the
15th century Veit Stoss Altar.

- A Germanic artist
named Veit Stoss

produced this magnificent altar

that was put into a
cathedral in Poland.

It's a Polish national treasure.

The Poles knew that the
Nazis would be interested

in something like this.

- So they decide to
actually take it apart.

They break it down into
32 different pieces

and they ship pieces all
over, to different locations.

And yet, the Nazis
somehow tracked down

each individual piece.

- [Narrator] Himmler
would become fixated

on another artifact

to strengthen his Nazi
Pan-Germanic ideology.

- So the Bayeux
Tapestry tells the story

of the Norman conquest, 1066
and William the Conqueror,

and this is all sewn by hand

with beautiful gold
and silver threads.

- [Narrator] The French had
claimed the Bayeux Tapestry

as a national historic
object since the early 1700s,

but the Nazi regime
had another theory.

- The Normans were
themselves the descendants

of Scandinavians who had
had that part of France

ceded to them in
the 10th century.

And the word Norman
itself comes from Nordman,

men of the north.

- Himmler really becomes
obsessed with this,

because he believes that
the Normans are Aryan,

and, of course, this heritage
belongs to the German race.

- A well-known and pretty
widely respected archeologist,

Herbert Jankuhn, did want
to study the tapestry

and did try to appropriate
it for the Third Reich,

but it's not clear what role
the tapestry would have played

in more mythological narratives.

- [Narrator] After the
fall of France in 1940,

Jankuhn led a team
of experts to Bayeux,

where they studied,
drew, and photographed

all 70 meters of the embroidery.

In 1944, two SS officers
attempted to take the embroidery

to an unknown,
quote, safe place,

only to be thwarted by
resistance fighters.

While many looted items,
like the Veit Stoss Altar,

were eventually returned
to their rightful places,

not all objects were so lucky.

- So much art was
looted that, even today,

not all of it has
been accounted for.

Some of it was taken by Nazi
leaders like Hermann Goring,

and put in their homes
as private collections.

And it's probable that much of
it has been lost to history,

destroyed during the war

as buildings were
reduced to rubble.

- [Narrator] Himmler's
lust for the grail

did not die with Otto Rahn,

nor was it overshadowed
by the war.

- It's curious that
they continued to fund

the kind of
pseudo-scientific ventures

that Himmler was overseeing,

while so many resources had
to go into the war effort.

I think it's because
he truly believed

that things that had
esoteric kinds of powers,

they would make a
difference in the war,

certainly at the
propaganda level.

- Himmler is still
searching for the grail,

and he finds a story that
talks about the grail

possibly being taken to Spain,

to Montserrat, to
an abbey there.

- [Narrator] The story was said

to have been partially inspired

by a folk song from Catalonia,

which cryptically mentions
a mystical font of life,

and partially by Richard
Wagner's opera, "Parsifal",

based on Wolfram's "Parzival"

and hugely popular with
both Hitler and Himmler.

- Wagner's grandiose music,

sort of this epic
soundtrack, if you like,

to what they imagined
the Nazis to represent,

strength and power,
grace and beauty,

and all the things
that, of course,

the Nazis didn't
represent at all.

- [Narrator] Wagner's "Parsifal"

is said to be set on the
northern slopes of the Pyrenees.

While Rahn believed that
it referred to Montsegur

in the French Pyrenees,
others, including Himmler,

thought it referred
to Montserrat

near the Spanish Pyrenees.

In October 1940, Himmler
took a trip to Spain

to discuss security measures
for Hitler's upcoming meeting

with Spanish leader,
Francisco Franco.

- Spain's a neutral country,

and the Germans and the
Italians were both interested

in drawing them into the war.

That's another ally
with sizable military,

and occupying a very important
geostrategic location

on the southern
border of France.

- [Narrator] After seeing to
Hitler security arrangements,

Himmler traveled to Montserrat

in a convoy of Gestapo
agents, but when he arrived,

the Abbott refused to greet him.

- There's a number of reasons
why the Abbott at Montserrat

would not want to greet Himmler.

One is just a refutation
of the Nazi party

that has not been kind
to the Catholic Church,

to say the least.

I also suspect that he knew
what Himmler was all about.

He didn't want his
monastery affiliated with

the kinds of things that Himmler
is searching for and why.

- [Narrator] He was passed
off to Andreu Ripoll,

the only monk there
capable of speaking German,

who assured him that there
was no grail in his temple.

Himmler found nothing of merit

on the mountain in Montserrat.

His grail hunt was fruitless

and he returned to
Germany later that day

to concentrate on
other pursuits.

- Himmler wanted to
find a lot of stuff.

He had so many different
branches looking for things.

The grail was an
important one of those,

but it wasn't the only
one, and this, I think,

is the difference
between Himmler and Rahn.

Rahn was solely dedicated
to finding the grail.

That was his life's work.

Himmler used him
to find the grail.

- Himmler kept pushing
his books after he died,

having thousands of new
copies of "Lucifer's Court"

made during the war, and he
wanted the Waffen-SS to read it.

So, clearly, in Himmler's mind,

it represented some kind
of ideology of empire

that was going to
motivate the troops

in the later stages of the war.

- [Narrator] Otto Rahn
and Heinrich Himmler

were not alone in their
interest in the Holy Grail.

- Even today, we
still don't know

the whereabouts of the grail,

and it remains perhaps
the greatest mystery

and the greatest
quest for humanity.

- [Narrator] There are
hundreds of claimants

vying for the title
of Holy Grail,

many relics, like
Genoa's Sacro Catino,

the Nanteos Cup in Wales,

and the Antioch Chalice,

currently residing in New
York's Metropolitan Museum,

have been studied and dismissed.

The most famous contender
for the Holy Grail

is the Santo Caliz.

It has been sitting in
the Valencia Cathedral

in Spain since 1939.

Legend says that the agate cup

was taken by St. Peter to Rome

and was later sent to
Spain for safekeeping

during the Roman persecutions
of the Christians

in the third century.

The metal base and
handles were added later,

likely in the medieval period.

Spanish archeologist
Antonio Beltron

studied the chalice in 1960

and concluded that the
cup portion originated

somewhere between
the second century BC

to the first century AD,

likely from a workshop
in the Middle East.

But in 2011, two Spanish
historians make a discovery

that could debunk the claim
of Valencia's Santo Caliz.

Margarita Torres Sevilla and
Jose Miguel Ortega Del Rio

are doing research
in a Cairo library

when they find two
medieval Egyptian documents

that mention the
chalice of Christ.

- I just can imagine
the excitement.

As a historian, I get excited,

you know, working on
ancient inscriptions,

when I discover something
that I didn't know before.

On the other hand, I think that
it would be very tempered by

can we trust these manuscripts?

Even if they brought me to a cup

that looked exactly like

what I thought the
grail should look like,

that doesn't mean
it's the grail.

- [Narrator] Using
the information
found in the scrolls,

Sevilla and Del Rio
trace the history

behind what they now believe
to be the true Holy Grail,

the Chalice of Dona Urraca,

which has resided
since the 11th century

in the Basilica of San
Isidoro in Leon, Spain.

After being taken from Jerusalem

and gifted to the Amir of
Denea in Southeastern Spain,

it came into the possession

of the King of
Leon in the 1050s.

It was passed down to the
king's daughter, Urraca,

who embellished it
with gold and jewels,

and later donated
it to the Basilica.

The historians' research is
backed by scientific dating,

which estimates that
the cup was made

between 200 BC and 100 AD.

- It became so popular after
they published their discovery,

that the church actually had
to remove it from their museum

and put it away
until a later date

when they can open a larger
facility to house this cup.

- [Narrator] While they
are convinced their grail

is the true chalice of Christ,

even Sevilla and Del Rio concede

that the first 400 years of
its history remain unknown.

There is no evidence
that this chalice

or any chalice, for that matter,
ever touched Christ's lips.

- In some ways, the
idea of the grail

is perhaps even less important
than the idea of the quest.

Searching for the
grail is the process

which allows a kind of
spiritual wisdom to accrue,

and once you've got that wisdom,

maybe it doesn't matter if
you find the thing or not.

[dramatic music]