Mystery Babylon Episode 39: The Occult and the Third Reich Part 1 (The Enigma of the Swastika) | Summary & Sources

Episode Summary

Episode 39 aired on February 28, 1994 and opens the final three-part arc of the Mystery Babylon series. It is the first of three consecutive broadcasts in which Cooper airs segments from a commercially produced documentary series on the occult roots of National Socialism. Before the documentary begins, Cooper addresses his audience directly, explicitly rejecting white supremacist and Aryan nationalist ideology in plain terms. He tells listeners who have been drawn into such movements that they have been deceived, that the Aryan myth was invented rather than discovered, and that everything happening in the United States in 1994 mirrors what he claims happened in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s. He instructs his audience to watch for connections between the Third Reich, the Knights Templars, the Thule Society, Freemasonry, and the British Israel movement, framing the three episodes as confirmation of the thesis he has been building across the entire series: that Mystery Babylon operates under many names in every era.

The documentary itself opens with a stark narration describing Nazi Germany as a state that would sterilize, enslave, and systematically murder millions. The narrator frames National Socialism as an enigma that conventional political analysis cannot explain, pointing to its elaborate pageantry, its messianic cult of Hitler, and the omnipresence of the swastika as signs of something other than ordinary politics. An American journalist’s eyewitness account of the 1934 Nuremberg rally is quoted: the spectacle, the writer recorded, carried the mystical and religious fervor of an Easter mass in a great Gothic cathedral.

The documentary’s central argument is that the swastika was not the Nazi party’s invention. Its spread through European nationalist movements before 1920 is traced to Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, the Russian founder of Theosophy. In her 1888 work The Secret Doctrine, Blavatsky described the swastika as the most potent of seven esoteric symbols, associated in Tibetan mythology with the god of the sun and of creation. Her system of seven root races placed the Aryan race as the fifth, the race of ascending spiritual evolution, and assigned to it the swastika as its symbol. A German-language Theosophical periodical published in Germany became the first German publication to carry the swastika on its cover.

From Blavatsky the documentary moves to Guido Von List, an Austrian occultist born in 1848 who claimed psychic visions of ancient Germanic tribes. List’s visions told him of a priestly caste he called the Armanenschaft, keepers of the occult heritage of the Aryan ancestors. He taught that Christianity had driven this secret knowledge underground, where it survived in the rituals of Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, and the Knights Templar. List developed an interpretation of runic symbols, finding in them a hidden Aryan alphabet, and he identified the swastika as, in his phrase, the twice holy secret of constant generation. By the time of the Great War, List’s ideas had inspired a substantial network of German-nationalist societies. Soldiers in the German and Austrian armies wore swastika talismans based on his researches.

The documentary then traces the formation of the Thule Society, the Munich lodge of the anti-Semitic German Order, which was itself dedicated to List’s teachings. On November 9, 1918, with socialist republics declared in Munich and Berlin, Thule’s master, Rudolph von Sebottendorff, pledged the lodge to counter-revolution. In April 1919, Thule-associated nationalist forces took part in a violent seizure of Munich. The documentary connects Thule directly to the formation of the German Workers Party, which became the NSDAP: Thule’s chairman Karl Harrer co-founded the party; its most active early member was Anton Drexler. On September 12, 1919, an army intelligence operative named Adolf Hitler attended a meeting of the party as a spy and within weeks had joined it.

The swastika was formally adopted as the party symbol on May 20, 1920, in the form chosen by Hitler himself: straight-armed and tilted, derived from the many swastika variants that had spread through nationalist circles via Guido Von List’s List Society. By the 1930s the documentary shows the symbol at the center of an elaborate pseudo-religion: Christmas banned from official use, replaced by a festival of light; the summer solstice made a national holiday; the Hitler Youth reading Mein Kampf in place of the Gospels; Alfred Rosenberg proclaiming a new mythos of the blood that had overthrown the old sacraments. The documentary closes its first part noting that Guido Von List’s detailed blueprint for the Aryan state, written before 1914, anticipated almost every structural feature of the Nazi system, including race-based citizenship, ancestry records, and the primacy of the male head of household.

Cooper’s brief closing remarks after the documentary note only that he has been trying to tell his audience this for a long time. He closes with a pointed aside about the newly appointed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whom he accuses of lying about his father’s willing membership in the SS, and suggests the man would not hold such a position unless he had inherited a National Socialist heritage. This unverified accusation is Cooper’s own editorial commentary and is not from the documentary. The site records it as broadcast; it does not endorse it.

A Note on Format

Episodes MB39 through MB41 consist primarily of audio from a commercially produced British documentary series, The Occult History of the Third Reich, narrated by Patrick Allen. Cooper airs the documentary with brief commentary before and after each segment. The documentary is under copyright; this page summarizes the material Cooper chose to broadcast and his framing of it. Short quotations are used for commentary purposes only. The documentary is not available through this site.

Key Claims Made in This Episode

Cooper’s pre-broadcast commentary and endorsement of the documentary’s argument are recorded below. The site records these claims; it does not endorse them. Dated claims also appear in the series timeline.

• Cooper claims that the Aryan master race concept was invented rather than discovered, specifically attributing it to Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, and that no historical Aryans resembled European white nationalist claims about the race.
• The documentary states that Blavatsky’s 1888 The Secret Doctrine described a system of seven root races in which the fifth, named Aryan, was destined for ascending spiritual evolution, and assigned the swastika as its symbol.
• The documentary states that Guido Von List, an Austrian occultist, developed an interpretation of Norse runes as an Aryan esoteric alphabet and identified the swastika as the supreme symbol of creation and racial destiny, years before the Nazi party existed.
• The documentary states that the Thule Society, a Munich occultist lodge devoted to List’s teachings, helped found the German Workers Party in January 1919, which became the NSDAP, and that Hitler first attended one of its meetings as an army spy in September 1919.
• The documentary states that swastika talismans worn by German and Austrian soldiers during the Great War were designed by the List Society, a group devoted to Guido Von List’s occult research.
• The documentary states that List’s pre-1914 writings described a future Aryan state with race-based citizenship, ancestry verification requirements, and a ruling elite of Aryan initiates, and that these features were all realized in the Nazi system.
• Cooper claims that the pattern he identifies as Mystery Babylon, visible in Theosophy, occult nationalism, and the Third Reich, is repeating itself in the United States in 1994, and that the same people are behind it.
• Cooper claims, in his own commentary after the documentary, that a named senior U.S. military official lied about his father’s SS membership and could not hold his position unless he had inherited a National Socialist ideological heritage. This is Cooper’s editorial claim and is unverified.

Primary Sources Cited in This Episode

Notable Quote

All of you people who have been scammed and caught up in this Aryan master race — listen very closely and find out how you’ve been conned.

William Cooper, MB39, February 28, 1994, pre-broadcast commentary

Historians’ View

The documentary’s core historical claims about Theosophy, Guido Von List, and the Thule Society are broadly consistent with mainstream scholarship on the occult roots of National Socialism. Works by historians Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke (The Occult Roots of Nazism, 1985) and George Mosse (The Crisis of German Ideology, 1964) document the same lineage: Blavatsky’s racial cosmology, the Volkisch nationalist movements, Guido Von List’s Armanenschaft concept, and the Thule Society’s role in the early Nazi party. These connections are matters of established historical record, not fringe claims. What mainstream historians do not support is the extension of this lineage into a still-active global conspiracy operating through modern institutions, which is Cooper’s framing. The Thule Society’s involvement in founding the German Workers Party and Hitler’s early attendance as an army informant are documented facts. Historians note, however, that Hitler quickly dominated and redirected the early party, and that the occult enthusiasms of figures like Himmler operated in tension with Hitler’s own more pragmatic politics. The Holocaust and the crimes of the Nazi state are matters of documented historical record and are not in dispute. Cooper uses the documentary’s factual historical material as evidence for his broader thesis connecting the Third Reich to Freemasonry, Theosophy, and a present-day conspiracy; that interpretive step is his own, not the documentary’s. We record all claims as broadcast; we do not endorse them.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Mystery Babylon episode 39 about?

Episode 39 opens a three-part arc in which Cooper airs segments from a documentary series on the occult origins of National Socialism. The first episode focuses on the swastika’s pre-Nazi history in Theosophical and Volkisch occult movements, tracing it from Helena Blavatsky’s writings through Guido Von List’s runic nationalism to the Thule Society and the founding of the Nazi party. Cooper frames the documentary as evidence for the thesis he has developed throughout the Mystery Babylon series. Related material is at the Occult History of the Third Reich hub.

Where did the swastika come from before the Nazis?

The documentary aired in this episode traces the swastika’s spread in European occultist and nationalist movements to Helena Blavatsky’s Theosophical writings (1888), which described it as the symbol of the Aryan root race, and to Guido Von List’s runic symbolism, which called it the fire-whisk of creation. Before the Nazi period the symbol appeared in Tibetan and Hindu religious contexts, as well as in British wartime charity campaigns and American jewelry. Its association with Aryan racial ideology came specifically from the Blavatsky-List lineage the documentary traces. See the Occult History of the Third Reich hub for context.

The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology

Goodrick-Clarke’s study is the reference work on Ariosophy, Thule and List. It is also the book that separates what is documented about occult influence on Nazi ideology from what is not.

Check Price on Amazon › As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

What is the Thule Society?

As described in the documentary, the Thule Society was the Munich lodge of the German Order, an anti-Semitic nationalist secret society founded in 1912 and devoted to the occult teachings of Guido Von List. Its master, Rudolph von Sebottendorff, helped organize the nationalist counter-revolution in Bavaria in 1919, and Thule’s chairman Karl Harrer co-founded the German Workers Party that became the NSDAP. Historians confirm the Thule Society’s documented role in these events. See the hub page and sources hub for further reading.

Where can I listen to episode 39?

The series is preserved at archive.org. This site never hosts or distributes the audio; see our content policy.

Continue the Series

• Previous: MB38: Rose Cross Part 3
• Next: MB40: The Occult and the Third Reich Part 2 (The SS: Blood and Soil)
• Topic hub: Occult History of the Third Reich
• Related hub: Secret Societies
• Related hub: Mystery Schools and Ancient Religion
• Every dated claim from this episode: series timeline
• Full index: Mystery Babylon complete episode guide
• Background: Who was William Cooper?
• Sources cited: Mystery Babylon sources hub