The real-life Raiders of the Lost Ark: How Hitler collected thousands of mystical tomes and ordered archaeological digs to discover fabled 'divine' civilisation

In the eighty years since the Second World War, few topics have been as carefully and as closely studied by popular historians as the rise of the Nazi Party. The Nazi Party brought together strange ideas about the workings of the world with a paranoid and nationalistic history, taking their shape from secret underground groups like the Thule Society. It was this group that would ultimately sponsor the German Worker's Party that Hitler would reorganise into the National Socialist German Workers' Party -- the Nazi party. Members would go on to found the DAP, which was later reformed into the Nazi Party There are records of Hitler using 'dowsers' - using rods to find water, precious metals - to scan his Reich Chancellery for harmful 'death rays', and he The Nazis also hired astrologers to acquire military intelligence during the war. Himmler adopted the Wewelsburg Castle as an SS base, 'cult site and spiritual centre' on advice of occultist and SS officer Karl Maria Wiligut Adolf Hitler adopted pseudo-scientific theories to justify deplorable policies - and appealed to folk stories to rally the German public After the Second World War, the Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt attempted to understand the conditions that allowed the Nazi party to rise in Germany in the early 1930s.