Mystery Babylon Episode 41: The Occult and the Third Reich Part 3 (Himmler the Mystic) | Summary & Sources

Episode Summary

Episode 41 aired on March 2, 1994, the third and final broadcast of the Third Reich arc, and Cooper announces at the outset that it is the last episode of the Mystery Babylon series. Cooper’s opening remarks before the documentary are brief: a topical aside about the Vince Foster death controversy, followed by the announcement that this is the series finale. The aside is Cooper’s political commentary and is not related to the documentary material that follows.

The documentary, Part Four of The Occult History of the Third Reich, is titled Himmler the Mystic and covers the full development of the SS under Himmler’s leadership from 1929 through the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. It opens by framing the SS’s racial mission as an unlikely union between a modern scientific movement and the esoteric doctrines of the occult. The scientific component is eugenics, traced to its founder Sir Francis Galton, Charles Darwin’s cousin, who defined it as the project of breeding out feeble constitutions and petty instincts and breeding in those which are vigorous, noble, and social. The documentary establishes the international genealogy of eugenics: laws allowing compulsory sterilization of the mentally ill had been passed in Indiana in 1907; by 1930 twenty-eight American states had passed similar laws and fifteen thousand people had been compulsorily sterilized; by 1939 the figure would reach thirty thousand. The Weimar Republic’s health office studied American eugenic laws with admiration, and German eugenicists praised U.S. immigration restrictions and laws in southern states banning interracial marriage. The documentary presents this international context as directly relevant to the scale and severity of what followed in Germany.

Hitler’s own commitment to racial hygiene is documented through Mein Kampf, written during his 1924 imprisonment: the state must set race at the center of all life and act as guardian of a millennial future. By 1927, the documentary notes, eugenics under the name racial hygiene was rapidly gaining respectability in German medical faculties. Within months of Hitler becoming Chancellor, the Law for the Prevention of Genetically-Diseased Offspring established genetic health courts empowered to order sterilization. By 1934 alone, over fifty-six thousand sterilizations were ordered. By the time the program ended, nearly four hundred thousand Germans had been forcibly sterilized. A second law required all those wishing to marry to submit to medical examination. The third measure, in autumn 1935, was the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, forbidding marriage between Jews and non-Jews.

The documentary’s primary focus is Himmler’s transformation of the SS into a mystical order dedicated to the creation of an Aryan superrace. Himmler’s personal ideological formation is traced through his youthful consumption of Volkisch occultist writings, his devotion to astrology, herbalism, and spiritualism, and his adoption of the Aryan doctrine as the organizing principle of his life. The documentary describes Himmler’s SS as a strangest eugenics experiment in history: racial vetting of recruits; physical examination on a nine-point scale; racial investigation of prospective brides back to 1750; the development of an SS catechism in which God is the race; the swearing of a Kith and Kin oath that bound the SS man’s entire family to SS marriage law.

Karl Maria Wiligut, an Austrian army colonel who claimed ancestral clairvoyant memory reaching back 228,000 years, is presented as Himmler’s chief occultist advisor. Himmler appointed him head of the Race and Resettlement Bureau’s Department of Prehistory. Wiligut’s researches led Himmler to Wewelsburg castle in Westphalia, which the SS purchased in late 1934 and began reconstructing at massive expense. Wewelsburg became the spiritual center of the SS order: an inner sanctum with twelve columns around a sun-wheel mosaic, where Himmler and twelve chosen SS leaders communed with the Aryan race soul; a crypt named Valhalla beneath the hall for ceremonies of the dead; an eternal flame burning at the center. Himmler’s plan was to build an entire city around the castle, completed by the 1960s, that would serve as the SS Vatican and capital of a future SS kingdom carved from the Soviet Union.

The Lebensborn program, founded in December 1935, is described as a chain of maternity homes and breeding centers through which SS men and racially vetted women could produce children outside marriage without legal obstacle. Himmler’s stated goal was that by working across generations, the entire German people could be restored to pure Aryan blood within one hundred and twenty years. Children born at Lebensborn homes underwent a naming ceremony in which male infants were touched on the forehead with an SS dagger as their first initiation into Himmler’s mystical order.

The documentary’s closing section covers the SS’s role in Germany’s expansion and the opening of the war. Following the German reoccupation of the Rhineland in 1936, the SS conducted a sterilization campaign targeting five hundred children of mixed race born to black French soldiers. In Poland in 1939, Reinhard Heydrich’s Einsatzgruppen extermination squads followed the invading German army, shooting tens of thousands of teachers, doctors, officials, Catholic priests, and Jews. Himmler’s plan was to drive over one million Poles and Polish Jews from their homes, resettle their land with racial Germans screened by the Race and Resettlement Bureau, and identify and forcibly remove Polish children who appeared racially Nordic for re-Germanization in SS homes. The documentary closes before the story reaches the Final Solution, but its last words describe the SS entering the Soviet campaign believing themselves the vanguard of a great Germanic migration.

Cooper’s closing remarks are brief. He confirms this was the last episode of the Mystery Babylon series and directs listeners to write for a list of available tapes, noting there are forty-one tapes total including a Luxor video as number thirty-three. He adds commercial information about a food storage program. The announcement that the series is complete appears in his closing, not in a formal statement of conclusions; see the series finale page at MB42: Darkness for Cooper’s retrospective on what the series amounted to.

A Note on Format and Responsible Summarization

This episode consists primarily of audio from a commercially produced documentary series. It contains detailed descriptions of Nazi eugenics laws, mass sterilization, the Einsatzgruppen shootings in Poland, and forced deportation of Jews and Poles. These events are documented historical fact. The summary above presents them as the documentary presents them, without minimization. Cooper’s framing of the documentary as evidence of a continuing occult conspiracy is recorded separately from the historical content. The documentary is under copyright and is not available through this site.

Key Claims Made in This Episode

Cooper’s framing commentary and his endorsement of the documentary’s argument are recorded below, alongside documented documentary claims. The site records these claims; it does not endorse them. Dated claims also appear in the series timeline.

• The documentary states that by 1930 twenty-eight American states had passed compulsory sterilization laws and fifteen thousand people had been sterilized; by 1939 the figure reached thirty thousand; and that German eugenicists studied and praised American eugenic legislation as a model.
• The documentary states that within months of Hitler becoming Chancellor, German genetic health courts ordered over fifty-six thousand sterilizations in 1934 alone, and that nearly four hundred thousand Germans were ultimately sterilized under Nazi law.
• The documentary states that Karl Maria Wiligut, appointed by Himmler to head the Race and Resettlement Bureau’s Department of Prehistory, claimed ancestral clairvoyant memory extending to 228,000 B.C. and was the primary occultist advisor behind the design of Wewelsburg castle and SS ritual symbolism.
• The documentary states that Himmler’s Lebensborn program, founded December 1935, operated maternity homes and breeding centers in which SS men and racially approved women could produce children outside marriage, and that male infants born there were initiated with an SS dagger at naming ceremonies.
• The documentary states that following the German reoccupation of the Rhineland in 1936, the SS sterilized five hundred children of mixed race born of black French soldiers, the first sterilization campaign conducted explicitly on racial grounds.
• The documentary states that Reinhard Heydrich’s five Einsatzgruppen extermination squads followed the September 1939 invasion of Poland, seizing and shooting tens of thousands of members of the Polish educated and leadership class, and that within a month of the invasion Heydrich estimated only three percent of the Polish upper class remained in occupied territories.
• The documentary states that Himmler planned to drive over one million Poles and Polish Jews from their homes and forcibly remove Polish children showing Nordic physical characteristics for re-Germanization in SS Lebensborn homes.
• Cooper frames the completed three-episode arc as confirmation of the Mystery Babylon thesis and closes the series at this point, noting this was the last episode.

Primary Sources Cited in This Episode

Notable Quote

We assemble and march according to unalterable laws as a National Socialist order of Nordic men, and as a sworn community on our way to a far future.

Heinrich Himmler, quoted in the documentary aired on MB41, March 2, 1994

Historians’ View

The documentary’s account of the SS’s occult and eugenics programs, the Lebensborn homes, Wewelsburg castle, and the Einsatzgruppen operations in Poland is consistent with documented historical fact. The statistics on American and German sterilization programs are in line with historical scholarship. The existence of the Einsatzgruppen and their murderous operations behind the German lines in Poland is thoroughly documented in war crimes trial records, SS documents, and the work of historians including Christopher Browning and Richard Evans. The figure of three percent of the Polish upper class remaining in occupied territories within a month is drawn from Heydrich’s own contemporaneous estimates as quoted in the historical record. Karl Maria Wiligut’s role as Himmler’s occultist advisor and the construction of Wewelsburg castle as an SS spiritual center are documented in Goodrick-Clarke’s The Occult Roots of Nazism and other secondary sources. The Lebensborn program is thoroughly documented. Historians note that the relationship between Himmler’s occult vision and the operational machinery of Nazi terror was real but also limited: Hitler frequently regarded Himmler’s mystical projects with skepticism even while authorizing and directing mass murder for ideological and political reasons. The Holocaust is the documented historical outcome of the system this documentary traces; its victims were real people whose deaths are established historical fact. We record all claims as broadcast; we do not endorse them.

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.

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Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity

Goodrick-Clarke’s sequel, tracing the same currents into the postwar period. Relevant to the later Third Reich episodes, which reach past 1945.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is Mystery Babylon episode 41 about?

Episode 41 is the final part of the three-episode arc on the occult roots of National Socialism. It focuses on Himmler’s SS as a mystical racial order, tracing the eugenics laws, the Lebensborn breeding program, Wewelsburg castle as the SS spiritual center, and the SS’s role in the opening phases of German expansion and the murder of Polish civilians in 1939. Cooper announces this as the series finale. The series’ formal conclusion is in MB42: Darkness. Related material is at the Occult History of the Third Reich hub.

What was Wewelsburg castle?

As described in the documentary, Wewelsburg was a seventeenth-century castle in Westphalia that the SS purchased in 1934 and began reconstructing as a spiritual center for Himmler’s mystical order. Karl Wiligut identified an ancient prophecy associated with the site foretelling a great battle between Europe and Asia. The castle’s north tower contained an inner sanctum with twelve columns around a sun-wheel mosaic, and a crypt named Valhalla where SS death ceremonies were held. Himmler’s vision was to eventually build an entire SS city around the castle at a cost of three hundred million marks. Historians confirm the castle’s existence and its documented role as an SS ceremonial center.

What were the Einsatzgruppen?

As described in the documentary, the Einsatzgruppen were five SS extermination squads organized under Reinhard Heydrich to follow the German army into Poland in September 1939. Their mission was to eliminate the Polish leadership class: teachers, doctors, officials, Catholic priests, and Jews. Historians have thoroughly documented their operations in Poland and later in the Soviet Union. The Einsatzgruppen killings in Poland were among the first systematic mass murders of the Nazi state and a precursor to the organized genocide of the Holocaust.

Where can I listen to episode 41?

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

Continue the Series

• Previous: MB40: The Occult and the Third Reich Part 2 (The SS: Blood and Soil)
• Next: MB42: Darkness (Series Finale)
• Topic hub: Occult History of the Third Reich
• Related hub: Secret Societies
• 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