Adolf Hitler and the Spear of Destiny

Hitler's childhood

Hitler had a mystery about him, in the way he lived, and in the manner of his death, that will live and grow after him. He had in him the stuff of which legends are made.”

― John F. Kennedy

Adolf Hitler was born in Braunau del Inn (Austria) on April 20, 1889. He was the son of Aloys Schicklbruber (who later changed his surname to Hitler) and Klara Pölzl. His mother hoped his son would become a priest, and at the age eight, Hitler was sent to the school at the Lambach Monastery. He first saw the Swastika on the heraldic arms that decorated the baroque choir stalls.

Even during his early years, Hitler was different from the rest of the children. His curious spirit and creative instincts guided him. He could draw skillfully when he was only eleven years old. His first drawings and watercolors, at the age of 15, were full of detail and sensitivity. His artistic orientation took various forms. He wrote poetry and dictated an entire play to his sister Paula, who was surprised by his talent. Hitler's lifelong obsession was to become an artist, and it caused a constant conflict with his father.

On February 2, 1900, Hitler's younger brother, Edmund, died of measles. Edmund's death deeply affected him; his personality changed; from being confident and outgoing, and an excellent student to a taciturn, distant, and surly boy who constantly fought against his father and his teachers. Until late at night, young Adolf was seen sitting on the high wall of the cemetery “gazing at the stars”, or walking up the hill behind his house at night and talking to a non-existent audience. Here started Hitler's first contact with that ‘other world’ would play such an important role in his later life.

The Young Hitler I Knew

In 1898, Hitler’s family moved to Leonding, on the outskirts of Linz, where he met August Kubizek, probably the only close friend he ever had. Kubizek reports that, during that time, young Adolf aroused his admiration for Richard Wagner's operas: “Hitler instinctively sought his own world and found it at the dawn of the German people, which he considered to be the most beautiful era. This continuous and intense relationship with the old Germanic legends gave him an extraordinary sensitivity to understand Wagner's work.”

“The first evidence of Hitler's supernatural phenomena occurred after a performance of Wagner's ‘Rienzi’ that he and Kubizek attended at the Linz Opera. After witnessing the tragic fall of Rienzi, the two friends left the theater at midnight, deeply moved and walking outside the city. Kubizek described the account of what happened that mysterious night: “As if impelled by an invisible force, Adolf climbed to the top of the Freinberg […] He takes both my hands and holds them firmly. Adolf had never made such a gesture before. His eyes blaze with enthusiasm. The words didn't come out softly from his mouth like they used to, but instead exploded, hoarse and shrill. Gradually his speech loosened and the words flowed more freely. Never before and never again had I heard Adolf Hitler speak as he did in that hour while we were there alone under the stars as if we were the only creatures in this world. It is impossible for me to reproduce my friend's words exactly. It was as if 'another being' spoke outside his body and moved him as much as me [...]

I will not attempt to interpret this phenomenon, but it was a state of ecstasy, a state of total rapture, in which what he experienced in Rienzi, without even mentioning it as a model or example, placed him with visionary power on his own plane. Until then, I had been convinced that my friend wanted to become an artist, a painter, to be more exact, or perhaps an architect. [...] In that moment, however, he spoke of a mission, which he would receive one day, to free the people from their servitude and lead them to the heights of freedom [...] Silence follows his words. We descend again towards the city. Adolf shakes my hand and says goodbye. I see, astonished, that he is not heading in the direction of the city, on his way to his house, but again towards the mountain.”

To quote Kubizek: “It was the most impressive hour I lived with my friend… Wagner's music produced that trance that escapes to a mystical dream world… he was left intoxicated and haunted… willing to let himself go through a mystical universe ... transported to the happy regions of Germanic antiquity.” Thirty years later, in 1939, Hitler and Kubizek met again at Mrs. Wagner's house in Bayreuth. At the meeting, the Führer, addressing Mrs. Wagner, says Kubizek, recounted that scene we lived in Linz, after which he gravely said to him: “That was the moment it all started.”

The Spear of Longinus

The glorious musical evocations of Wagner and the harsh daily reality would mark the life of young Adolf. His father died in January 1903, when he was barely 13 years old, and his mother died on December 21, 1907, due to a long illness. It will be after the death of his mother that Hitler moved permanently to Vienna. In 1912, Hitler was nothing more than a failed painter trying to sell his watercolors for pennies in the cafes of Vienna. His artistic future seemed uncertain, having failed the School of Fine Arts entrance exam. His personal future was not very rosy either; he was living in boarding houses and residences and only with luck managed to eat once a day. He shoveled snow from the streets, beat rugs, carried suitcases to the station, and painted watercolors.

One day, the young Adolf (only 23 years old) had no choice but to enter the well-known museum of the Hofburg Palace to take refuge from a storm, and there he would find his destiny. Wandering the halls, he focused his attention on a singular object; a Christian relic of great mystical power belonging to the imperial treasury of the Habsburgs: the Holy Spear. It seemed to emanate mystical vibrations in the peaceful scene of the Schatzkammer, which had the power to evoke powerful imaginations. Although Hitler suspected that it could be the Spear of Longinos, used during Christ’s crucifixion, shedding the Savior's blood, he symbolically associated it with the Holy Spear in Wagner’s ‘Parsifal’.

Adolf Hitler himself relates that moment: “I knew immediately that this was an important moment in my life... I stood there watching it in silence for several minutes, oblivious to the scene around me. It seemed to have some hidden inner meaning that escaped me, a meaning that I felt I knew inside but could not bring to consciousness [...] I felt as though I myself had held it in my hands before in some earlier century of history—that I myself had once claimed it as my talisman of power and held the destiny of the world in my hands. Yet how could this be possible? What sort of madness was this that was invading my mind and creating such turmoil in my breast?” Hitler was convinced that he had a high destiny to fulfill and that the possession of the Holy Spear could be the necessary instrument to make it happen.

Charlemagne the Great, King of France, carried the spear through 47 victorious battles, but he died when he accidentally dropped it. The spear also fell into the possession of Frederick Barbarossa, Holy Roman Emperor, who died minutes after accidentally dropping it into a stream. Napoleon attempted to seize the Lance after the Battle of Austerlitz, but it had been smuggled out of Vienna just before the battle, so he never managed to obtain it.

The First World War

*A premonition saved Hitler from death in World War I.*

According to Mein Kampf, upon learning of the outbreak of war, Hitler knelt down and thanked heaven for having granted him the good fortune of being able to live at that time. Although Hitler's description is somewhat melodramatic, he was undoubtedly pleased that the war had finally come, and in this, he was no different from millions of other ordinary people. The German Army hosted a considerable number of war volunteers, and the Salzburg medical court declared him useless to serve due to his precarious health. Hitler then decided to emigrate to Bavaria, Germany, where he was admitted to the 6th Bavarian Reserve Division.

Once in the Army, serving as Corporal in the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry, Hitler volunteered for the dangerous job of Meldeganger or messenger of the regiment. Throughout the war, he refused to be promoted above the rank of Corporal. Hitler was a brave and cautious soldier who deserved the praise of several leaders, as well as a good comrade. In August 1918, Hitler received the First Class Iron Cross (equivalent to the British Victoria Cross) for his exceptional bravery. His Weimar-era political enemies spread the rumor, obsessively repeated after 1945, that he had unjustly carried the Iron Cross. However, the courage of Adolf Hitler is well documented.

Once in the Army, Hitler volunteered for the dangerous job of Meldeganger or messenger of the regiment. Throughout the war, he refused to be promoted above the rank of Corporal. Hitler was a brave and cautious soldier who deserved the praise of several leaders, as well as a good comrade. In August 1918, Hitler received the First Class Iron Cross (equivalent to the British Victoria Cross) for his exceptional bravery. His Weimar-era political enemies spread the rumor, obsessively repeated after 1945, that he had unjustly carried the Iron Cross. However, the courage of Adolf Hitler is well documented.

In an interview, Hitler recounted an experience that had happened to him during the First World War while he was fighting in a trench with several comrades: “suddenly it seemed that a voice was saying to me: Get up and go from where you are! The voice was so clear and insistent that I automatically obeyed as if it were a military order. After obeying it, from the place in the trench I had just left, came a flash and a deafening boom. A missing shell had exploded in the middle of the group where I had previously been sitting. All of my comrades present died”.

In October 1918, shortly before the end of the war, Adolf Hitler was left blind in a gas attack in Ypres and was subsequently sent to a military hospital in Pasewalk, a small town northeast of Berlin. In Mein Kampf, Hitler describes, in detail, his physical pain along with the anguish and despair he felt when he learned about Germany's defeat. He was confined to his bed, unable to see. According to Hitler, he experienced a ‘vision’ of ‘another world’ while in the hospital. In that vision, he was told that he would lead his homeland back to glory: “Once the blindfold that covered my eyes was removed,” Hitler wrote, “I was convinced that the goal of my life was to achieve the salvation of Germany.”

Dietrich Eckart – Hitler's Mentor

After fighting in the First World War, Hitler returned to Munich, where he worked as an informant for the military police, interested in gathering information on some groups that operated in the city. To this end, in September 1919, the future Führer participated in a meeting of the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (DAP), the German Workers’ Party, founded in a Munich brewery by Anton Drexler, a member of the Thule Society. The Thule-Gesellschaft (name taken from the mythical Homeland of the Hyperboreans), was an esoteric order linked to the Germanenorder and Ariosophy, which promoted the idea of developing the latent qualities of the Aryan race.

Hitler was deeply impressed by the ideas of the new party ―which were perfectly in tune with his own― and presented his superiors a favorable report. He revisited the group and enrolled in it as affiliate number 7. Shortly afterwards, he assumed the presidency, and the organization ended up adopting the name of the National Socialist German Workers Party (N.S.D.A.P.). Hitler was well aware that “such an absurd little organization” was the long-awaited opportunity for his political career. The economist Gottfried Feder, affiliated with the DAP and the Thule Gesellschaft, was impressed with the almost magical charisma of Hitler’s personality and wasted no time in reporting his exciting discovery to his friend, Dietrich Eckart.

Undoubtedly, the Thule Society was vital in the formation of the Führer and in the formulation of his political doctrine. Eckhart considered Hitler a prodigy and was convinced that he was the “chosen one” to save Germany. He believed that the Aryan race was to wage a terrible war all over the world against the Jewish race and Untermensch. The eschatological destiny of the world would be realized through the final victory of the Aryan race, the only bearer of spiritual salvation. Hitler came to think seriously about his mentor's belief that he had been chosen by “Providence” to fulfill a great mission on Earth, and that voice that miraculously saved him from certain death in World War I was a sign of his destiny.

At Eckart's home in the German Alps, called Sonnenhauesl, Hitler honed his superb public speaking skills. Hitler described the region as “a field of indescribable beauty.” It is no wonder that Hitler later said that it was there where he had the most enjoyable moments and conceived his best ideas. In front of the Sonnenhauesl was the mighty Untersberg, the main mountain overlooking Obersalzburg. The Untersburg is no ordinary mountain, and one of the reasons Hitler was intrigued with it was the repetition of events, legends and tales of missing persons, people experiencing loss of time and passageways into what Hitler called ‘The Inner Earth’.

One of the most persistent rumors has to do with the legend of German emperor Frederich Barbarossa. It is believed that his astral form currently sleeps in the mysterious depths of the Untersburg, waiting to come back to life during the Final Battle between Good and Evil. The return of the Emperor will mark the beginning of a thousand-year empire of Aryan rule. Hitler was deeply affected by the legend, and years later, looking from the gigantic window of the Berghof, he commented to his architect, Albert Speer: “Look at the Untersberg there. It is not by chance that I have my seat in front of it”.

In 1923, Eckart told his confidants at the Thule Gesellschaft, days before his death: “Hitler will dance, but I am the one who has set the tune. I initiated him into the ‘Secret Doctrine’, opened his vision centers and gave him the means to communicate with the Powers! Don't cry for me: I will have influenced History more than any other German.” Hitler regarded Eckart as the most important single influence on his life.

A Wagnerian Hero

*Adolf Hitler, chancellor of Germany, is welcomed by supporters at Nuremberg in 1933.*

After the failed Munich Putsch in November 1923, Hitler's trial in June 1924 was presided over by sympathetic conservative judges who viewed nationalists of Hitler's stature as a necessary bulwark against the real enemy, Communism. In the courtroom, Hitler expressed his views on all kinds of matters, ideas that he would later develop in the rambling Mein Kampf during his subsequent incarceration. In one of these monologues, Hitler referred to his vigil at Wagner's grave, by saying: “The first time I stood in front of Wagner's grave, my heart was filled with pride ... I was proud that this man, and so many men, in German history, were satisfied to leave his name for posterity, not its title. It was modesty that made me want to be the party’s drummer. That is of the utmost importance.”

Hitler's political statement 'Mein Kampf' was written during the period of his detention in Landsberg, in collaboration with Professor Karl Haushofer, Rudolf Hess, and Haushofer's son Albrecht. The book was an immediate success after its publication in 1925, and not only did it make Hitler enormously wealthy, eventually selling over nine million copies, but it also swayed intellectuals, academics, and the upper classes on the legitimacy and value of the new National Socialist ideals. Mein Kampf offers a solution to the problems planned by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, in their intentions to impose a “world dictatorship.” It is probably significant to note that it was only after 1945 that such criticisms of the style and content of the book became widespread; before that, it sold well even outside of Germany and was highly praised by many influential critics worldwide.

In the following years, Hitler turned the NSDAP into a great mass party. As he gained prominence, the Thule Society lost importance. Once transformed into the ‘anointed one’ by his people, the esoteric origin from which the party had emerged had no purpose, since this same National Socialist party was becoming the new religion of Germany. Louis Bertrand, a French academic, described one of the demonstrations of the Third Reich in Nuremberg, in 1936: “I wonder what kind of sovereign, what national hero has been acclaimed, loved and cheered as much as this man, this man who, followed by his courtship like a sovereign, always has the air of a worker. It is something very different from popularity; it's about religion. Hitler is an envoy in the eyes of his followers; he participates in divinity”.

Wagner’s opera Rienzi had elated Hitler to believe about how he would one day hold the masses spellbound with the magic power of the word. In Mein Kampf he seems to reveal the very source of his magical technique of oratory: “The power which has always started the greatest religions and political avalanches in history rolling have from time immemorial been the magic power of the spoken word”. “By appealing the living emotion of his hearers”, Otto Strasser suggests, “he will go straight to their hearts, enabling him to act as a loudspeaker, proclaiming the most secret desires, the wildest passions, the least admissible instincts, the sufferings, and personal revolts of a whole nation”.

The Führer was considered a mediator between the masses of the people and unseen ‘hidden forces’. Even the skeptical observers of the rise of the Third Reich could not comprehend the power behind Hitler’s enigmatic character and his magical ability to “bewitch an audience”. External observation alone could never reveal how he incited the hearts of the German people to follow the Nazi racial cause.

Hitler's interpretation of Parsifal

*Hitler as Parsifal. Early NSDAP propaganda.*

In Hitler’s words, Richard Wagner was “the greatest prophetic figure the German people ever had. Parsifal has revealed to me a heroic, chivalric, Aryan vision of Germany fighting corruption and decay”. Hitler modestly claimed that he could do the same, perhaps inadvertently presenting himself as the legendary heroic knight of the Grail. He consecrated the annual Bayreuth Festival of Parsifal, Wagner’s latest opera, as a sacred holiday. In September 1933, as the newly elected Chancellor, he visited Wagner's villa in Bayreuth and was enthusiastically received by the composer's widow, Cosima, and her children, Winifred and Siegfried. Winifred later recalled that Hitler “visited the grave of the Master alone and returned in a state of great emotion, saying ‘I will make my religion out of Parsifal.’”

In Wagner's last opera, “Parsifal”, Hitler realised that he had established the essential connection between the Holy Grail and the Spear of Destiny. For Wagner, the ‘union’ of the Spear and the Grail Chalices ―as sexual objects― was essential to the eventual consummation of the drama. The Grail Cup symbolizes the purity and perfection of the ‘Aryan womb’, and the spear symbolizes the phallus. The mystical union of these two elements, “the Vessels of heavenly innocence and earthly wisdom”, represents the sexually creative union, which was essential for the regeneration of the “pure and noble” Aryan blood. “The real virtues of the Grail,” said Hitler “were common to all the best Aryan peoples. Christianity only added the seeds of decadence such as forgiveness, self-abnegation, weakness, false humility, and the very denial of the evolutionary laws of survival of the fittest, the most courageous and talented.”

By mastering his Willpower, Parsifal attains the Holy Grail and becomes a New Man. Adolf Hitler associated, again and again, the highest virtues of the Grail Knight with the concept of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Übermensch, the “Superhuman” who would lead the Aryan race and set up a New Order which would last for a thousand years. The Führer was excited to find that the prediction of such “an awakening of the pure and noble blood” was confirmed by the religious texts, myths and legends of almost every ancient civilization. The Übermensch, as predicted by various groups of German intellectuals, would carry a spiritual renaissance into every sphere of science, art and religion. They would have an intrepid countenance, giant stature, glorious physique, and superhuman intelligence and strength. “They will be the Sons of the Gods”, said Hitler.

The possession of the Holy Lance

Adolf Hitler acquired the Spear of Longinos along with the rest of the Hapsburgs treasure in Vienna, on March 12, 1938, the day he annexed Austria to the New Reich. Crowds welcome the arrival of the man who had once tramped the ancient Imperial City “as a vagabond, unwashed and empty-bellied”. The same man “had assumed the powers of the Hohenzollern Kings in Germany and had now taken upon himself those of the Hapsburg Emperors”. “I knew beyond contradiction”, Hitler said during the Anschluss, “that the blood in my veins would one day become the vessel of the Folk-Spirit of my people.”

Thirty years earlier, Hitler’s indelible conviction that he would one day claim the Spear of Destiny, materialized from the moment he was free to remove the ancient weapon in the museum of the Hofburg Palace. One can imagine he held the talisman of power in his hands. Walter Stein comments that Hitler stood at the moment like a man in a trance, as if had cast some dreadful magic spell: “he was suffering almost a total eclipse of self-consciousness […] He felt somehow renewed as a complete human being, a deep longing arose in his heart to discover the meaning of his individual destiny. It was a chastening experience.”

The Führer claimed the Spear of Longinus as his personal possession, and from this moment forward he would strike out openly to achieve his ultimate ambition; the conquest of Lebensraum for the greatness and spiritual heritage of the German people. While it is true that Hitler was still interested in the occult, he was fully aware that the Holy Spear had no power over the course of Destiny. His interest in the Holy Relic resided at that moment as a historical and allegoric symbol with which to unite the Volk and convey the glory and authority of the Holy Roman Empire over its new ‘successor state’, the Greater German Reich.

The Spear of Destiny arrived on German soil, and it was seen as the symbol of imminent Victory in the coming battle against Communism. Karl Haushofer saw it as a signal for the Wehrmacht’s mobilizations to begin. Less than a year later, Germany was at war. The Holy Spear stood in St. Katherine’s Church, in Nuremberg, throughout the Blitzkrieg, but as RAF bombers penetrated farther and further into the Third Reich and began reducing its great cities to rubble, Adolf Hitler ordered that a permanent hiding place for his most cherished possession.

The Führer’s war intent was to serve and glorify his nation, to achieve the final triumph for the Aryan race and the coming Übermensch. The defeat of the German Armies at Stalingrad ended his dreams. It also brought an eclipse in the Nazi confidence in the ‘magic’ of the Spear. At the war's end, General Patton’s US troops found the Holy Lance in an underground vault of Kohn’s Bank on the corner of the Konigstrasse, in Nuremberg. According to legend, they took possession of the lance at 2:10 p.m. on April 30, 1945. Less than two hours later, Adolf Hitler killed himself in a bunker in Berlin. The fact that the defeat of the Third Reich occurred shortly after Hitler lost possession of the Spear, rekindles a special interest in the power of the mythical relic over the course of human history.

“Whoever possesses this Holy Lance, holds the destiny of the world in his hands”. That is the legend, the myth, the curse of the Spear of Destiny. General George Patton had knowledge of the terrible significance of the Spear of Longinus. And while holding the talisman of power in his hands, he told his Aides that mankind was standing on the brink of the most evil epoch in the entire history of the planet. His young subordinates knew nothing about the myth, and they wondered if their General had finally gone off his head. They saw him leave the bunker in a somber mood. In the coming days, the Spear of Destiny passed to the United States of America, and General Patton died mysteriously, to fulfil the legend.