Mystery Babylon Episode 40: The Occult and the Third Reich Part 2 (The SS: Blood and Soil) | Summary & Sources

Episode Summary

Episode 40 aired on March 1, 1994, the second night of the three-episode arc on the occult history of the Third Reich. Before the documentary plays, Cooper reads an entry from Mackey’s Encyclopedia of Freemasonry, 1924 revised edition, noting that the entry for Aryan traces the term directly to Blavatsky’s writings and identifies it as one of three historical divisions of religion, alongside the Turanian and the Shemitic. He also notes that the encyclopedia’s earlier 1893 edition mentions the swastika as the sole cross entry in its section on symbols. Cooper uses both observations to connect Masonic scholarship to the Theosophical-Aryan lineage the series has been tracing. His brief commentary before the documentary carries the same message as his introduction the previous night: those caught up in white nationalist ideology have been manipulated, and the same system that produced the Third Reich is operating in the United States.

The documentary’s second part is titled The SS: Blood and Soil and focuses on the formation and ideological character of the SS under Heinrich Himmler. It opens at Hitler’s Berghof mountain retreat and frames the SS as the fulfillment of Hitler’s stated desire for a Brotherhood of Templars around the Holy Grail of pure blood. The documentary traces the roots of the SS through the same occultist-nationalist milieu covered in Part One, emphasizing that the SS’s character was formed not primarily by Hitler or Himmler personally, but by the intellectual tradition of Guido Von List and the Volkisch nationalist movement.

The documentary covers the social and cultural conditions in German-speaking lands at the turn of the twentieth century: rapid industrialization, urbanization, the decline of traditional authority, and a widespread nostalgia among educated and aristocratic Germans for a more spiritual, orderly past. From this milieu emerged the Lebensreform movement, devoted to vegetarianism, herbal healing, nudism, and communal living, and the Wandervogel youth movement, which combined nature mysticism with German nationalist folklore. The documentary identifies this cultural context as the soil in which both Theosophy and the Volkisch occult movements flourished. It extends Blavatsky’s influence to include Aleister Crowley, who claimed in 1909 to have crossed the abyss and become an Adept, and presents Blavatsky’s claims of telepathic contact with Hidden Masters as part of the same tradition.

From this background the documentary traces the career of Jorg Lanz, an Austrian ex-monk and biblical scholar who fused List’s Aryan occultism with the emerging science of eugenics into a doctrine he called theozoology. Lanz taught that the decline of the Aryans was caused by interbreeding with subhuman races, an idea derived from Blavatsky’s account of the fall of the Lemurian race. He proposed a program that included polygamy for racially pure Aryans, compulsory sterilization of the racially impure, deportation of inferior races to Madagascar, and SS-style breeding programs. His journal Ostara, founded in 1905, reached a claimed circulation of over 100,000, and Hitler is documented to have been a reader since the age of twenty. Lanz’s organization, the Order of the New Templars, founded in 1907 at Burg Werfenstein in Austria, anticipated the SS in its racial vetting of members and its aspiration to replace parliaments with a council of priest-kings. The documentary states that in the future Nazi state, all of Lanz’s proposals received serious consideration and some were put into practice.

The documentary then traces the formation of the SS as a distinct organization from the SA. The SA, originally Hitler’s party militia, was trained by army officers and controlled by the military rather than by Hitler. The prototype for the SS was the Stosstrupp Hitler, formed as a personal bodyguard loyal exclusively to Hitler. After Hitler’s release from prison in December 1924, he rebuilt the party and commissioned Julius Schreck to form the Schutzstaffel in April 1925. The SS’s early identification as an aristocracy with a closed culture of discipline and silence is emphasized, as is its gradual elevation over the SA.

Himmler’s appointment as head of the SS in January 1929 and his methodical transformation of the organization into a racial breeding experiment are covered in detail. Himmler had been an agricultural student and devotee of the Lebensreform movement, and his concept of blood and soil, which became the SS oath, reflected the writings of Walther Darre on the mystical relationship between German blood and German land. Himmler’s breeding program began with minimum height requirements and expanded into the Race and Resettlement Bureau, which by 1933 was examining nearly two thousand SS marriage applications a month. The documentary describes this program as the beginning of the largest and most terrifying eugenics experiment in human history.

The final section of the documentary covers the political consolidation of SS power through the Night of the Long Knives on June 30, 1934, in which Himmler and Heydrich orchestrated the murder of SA leadership, eliminating the principal rival power base within the Nazi movement. Up to five hundred people were killed. The German army, relieved of the SA threat, changed its oath of allegiance from the German state to Hitler personally. Following the death of President Hindenburg on August 2, 1934, Hitler confirmed the SS as an independent organization and authorized the formation of an SS military unit that would eventually become the Waffen-SS. Cooper’s brief closing remarks after the documentary consist of a quotation in German followed by his translation: Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer — one race, one government, one religion. He then tells his audience to wake up, or the adepts will have them by the neck.

A Note on Format

This episode, like MB39 and MB41, consists primarily of audio from a commercially produced British documentary series. Cooper airs the material with his own brief framing commentary. The documentary is under copyright and is summarized here for commentary purposes only. Short quotations are used under fair use for critical and historical analysis.

Key Claims Made in This Episode

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

• Cooper claims that the 1924 edition of Mackey’s Encyclopedia of Freemasonry traces the word Aryan directly to Blavatsky’s writings, linking Masonic scholarship to the same Theosophical-racial lineage as Nazi ideology.
• The documentary states that Jorg Lanz, in his journal Ostara (founded 1905), proposed polygamy for pure Aryans, sterilization of the racially impure, and deportation of inferior races to Madagascar, and that all of these proposals received serious consideration in the Nazi state.
• The documentary states that Hitler had been a reader of Ostara since the age of twenty, and that Lanz’s Order of the New Templars, founded in 1907, anticipated the racial vetting and hierarchical structure of the future SS.
• The documentary states that Himmler’s Race and Resettlement Bureau was examining nearly two thousand SS marriage applications per month by 1933, and that from 1935 it was empowered to vet all civilian marriages in Germany.
• The documentary states that the Night of the Long Knives on June 30, 1934, in which Himmler and Heydrich manufactured evidence of an SA coup, resulted in the murder of up to five hundred people, including the SA leadership.
• The documentary states that after the Night of the Long Knives, the German army swore its oath of allegiance not to the German state or constitution but to Adolf Hitler personally.
• The documentary states that compulsory sterilization laws passed within months of Hitler becoming Chancellor, and that by 1934 alone over fifty-six thousand sterilizations had been ordered by German genetic health courts.
• Cooper frames the documentary as confirmation that the same Mystery Babylon system that produced the Third Reich is operating in the United States in 1994.

Primary Sources Cited in This Episode

Notable Quotes

How can we arrest racial decay? Shall we form a select company of the truly initiated? An order, the Brotherhood of Templars, around the Holy Grail of pure blood.

Adolf Hitler, quoted in the documentary aired on MB40, March 1, 1994

Historians’ View

The documentary’s account of SS formation, Himmler’s eugenics program, and the Night of the Long Knives is consistent with the historical record as documented by mainstream historians. The mass sterilization campaign in Nazi Germany, the racial vetting requirements for SS membership, the Night of the Long Knives (June 30, 1934), and Himmler’s ideological debt to the Volkisch occultist tradition are all thoroughly documented in the scholarship. The figure of up to five hundred killed in the Night of the Long Knives aligns with historical estimates. The documentary’s claim that Jorg Lanz’s proposals were seriously considered in Nazi policy is supported by historical research: the sterilization and deportation programs that were implemented do have documented parallels in Lanz’s writings. The compulsory sterilization statistics cited in the documentary are consistent with scholarly figures. Historians do contextualize the relationship between occultist ideology and Nazi practice as more complex than the documentary’s framing suggests: Hitler himself was skeptical of some of Himmler’s more elaborate occult projects, and the Holocaust was primarily an administrative and ideological project driven by bureaucratic and political structures, not reducible solely to occult cosmology. The Holocaust and its crimes are matters of documented historical record that require no framing qualification. 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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Frequently Asked Questions

What is Mystery Babylon episode 40 about?

Episode 40 is the second of three broadcasts on the occult roots of National Socialism. It covers the formation of the SS under Himmler, the development of eugenics as Nazi policy, the occultist and Volkisch cultural movements that shaped SS ideology, and the Night of the Long Knives through which the SS eliminated its rivals. Cooper frames the material as further evidence of the Mystery Babylon system he has been documenting throughout the series. Full context is on the Occult History of the Third Reich hub.

What was the Night of the Long Knives?

As described in the documentary, the Night of the Long Knives (June 30, 1934) was an operation organized by Himmler and Heydrich in which the SS murdered the SA leadership and other political opponents of the Nazi regime. Himmler and Heydrich fabricated evidence of an SA coup against Hitler to secure authorization for the purge. Historians estimate that up to five hundred people were killed over several days. The event eliminated the SA as a rival power center and established the SS as the dominant security force in the Nazi state.

What role did eugenics play in the SS?

The documentary describes the SS’s eugenic program as the largest and most terrifying in human history. Under Himmler, the SS Race and Resettlement Bureau examined the racial ancestry and physical characteristics of every SS applicant and vetted marriage partners. By 1933 the bureau processed nearly two thousand marriage applications a month; from 1935 it oversaw civilian marriages across Germany. The program drew on the science of eugenics as it had developed in Britain and the United States, combined with the Aryan occultism of the Volkisch tradition. See the hub page for further context.

Where can I listen to episode 40?

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

Continue the Series

• Previous: MB39: The Occult and the Third Reich Part 1 (The Enigma of the Swastika)
• Next: MB41: The Occult and the Third Reich Part 3 (Himmler the Mystic)
• Topic hub: Occult History of the Third Reich
• Related hub: Secret Societies
• Series context: Part 1: The Enigma of the Swastika
• 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