Raider Of The Lost Ark has one of the most memorable villains in recent movie history.

 Who can forget Major Arnold Toht, the Nazi officer hunting Indiana Jones as the adventurer searched for the Ark of the Covenant? A sinister figure with a terribly scarred hand, Toht is a character of pure evil, part of a group determined to stop our hero from acquiring the valuable artifact.

When the movie was over, I was relieved that he, and his Nazi organization, was made up, a product of George Lucas’s rich imagination.

Well, guess what?

 The group portrayed in Raiders Of The Lost Ark was real.

 It was inspired by a Nazi organization whose goal was to collect ritual objects and conduct anthropological research.

 They called themselves “Deutches Ahnenerbe Studiengesellschaft für Geistesurgeschichte” or Ahnenerbe for short (from the German “something inherited by the forefathers”). The group was founded in 1935 by Heinrich Himmler, Hitler’s right hand man who had a deep interest in magic and the occult. He was determined to possess objects he believed would give the Nazis power.

 And what was Himmler’s group searching for?

 Their wish list reads like items off Indiana Jones’ scavenger hunt.

The Ark Of The Covenant: The box used to store the Ten Commandments that God handed down to Moses of Mount Sinai.

Last seen in Jerusalem 2,600 years ago.

 The Holy Grail: An object Himmler desperately wanted (he embarked on his own expedition to find it in 1940), this was the cup Jesus drank from during the Last Supper. It was also the vessel Joseph supposedly used to collect blood from Christ after he was crucified.

 The Lance of Longinus (also known as the Spear Of Destiny): This was the weapon used by a Roman guard to pierce the side of Christ. Legend suggested that whoever possessed the spear would be the ruler of the world.

 Mjöllnir, Thor’s Hammer: The weapon that gives the God of Thunder his power. Himmler believed that the mythological object was real and “an early highly developed war weapon of our fathers.”

An Ahenenerbe Researcher Taking Measurements From A Subject In Tibet

Major Toht of the Ahnenerbe, as played by the late Ronald Lacey

The Ahnenerbe Wish List (Note: Not to be found on Amazon)

The Ark of The Covenant

The Holy Grail

Thor’s Hammer

If the Ahnenerbe were only after ritual objects they thought would give them power, that would be disturbing enough. But what made the Ahnenerbe truly sinister was their anthropological field work. They sought to rewrite history in their image, to wipe “undesirable” groups from history and claim all great civilizations were founded by the Aryan race.

To accomplish this, scholars were recruited from a wide variety of disciplines, including archaeology, anthropology, ethnology, folklore, runology, and astronomy.

 Their mission to prove Aryan supremacy took them to all over the world, from Europe to Asia to remote locations like the Canary Islands and Iceland. Wherever they went, they “found” Aryan roots. They ever went as far as to claim that the Buddha was of Germanic descent.

The Ahnenerbe dissolved at the end of World War Two, but many members of this pseudo-scientific group disappeared back into mainstream academia. Despite their sketchy past, these former members held prominent positions in West German universities. This was one of the reasons no one talked about the group until the late 1960’s. Canadian historian Michael Kater was even threatened with a lawsuit in 1974 when he published the first definitive account of the organization, Das “Ahnenerbe” der SS, 1935-1945.

 In the 1990’s, the tide turned.

 With German reunification, many of the documents related to this strange but true group were declassified and made available to researchers.

 In November 1998, the first international conference on the Ahnenerbe was held.

 Ironically, it took place in Berlin, the former capital of Hitler’s once mighty Third Reich.

Want to see what happens to Nazis who unearth sacred artifacts? Click on the Arnold Toht candle for a quick peek from Raiders of The Lost Ark. (WARNING: There is moderate, cartoon-like violence)

Lance of Longinus, aka The Spear Of Destiny