History Decoded: The 10 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time

by Meltzer, Brad

  Saint Peter traveled to Rome, and in 64 CE, he was martyred by crucifixion and then buried. Three hundred years later, Saint Peter’s Basilica, the centerpiece of the Vatican, was built over the grave site of the man believed to be the first pope.

  At the heart of the basilica, 60 feet below the altar, is the body of Saint Peter. And then, located around it on the piers that are holding up the dome, are four chapels that have contained four of the most important relics of Christianity:

  The veil that wiped Christ’s face when he was on the Cross

  A piece of the true Cross

  The head of Saint Peter’s brother, Saint Andrew (returned to Greece in 1964 by Pope Paul VI)

  The Spear of Destiny (the one presented to Pope Innocent VIII as a bribe).

  See Exhibit 5A for a map of the Vatican Grottos.

  The Tomb Of Saint Peter

  The chapels surrounding Peter’s tomb contained four of Christianity’s most sacred relics.

  Otto The Great

  Otto I, founder of the Holy Roman Empire, successfully defended Hungarian raids into Saxony—and the Spear of Destiny was believed to have aided in his victories.

  Pope Innocent VIII

  Pope Innocent VIII was said to have been given the Spear of Destiny as a bribe.

  Over the centuries, the Spear of Destiny is said to have passed through the hands of at least 45 leaders:

  Constantine the Great possessed the spear and supposedly became the foremost general of his time, founding the Eastern Roman Empire.

  Charlemagne supposedly used the spear to conquer Italy and unite most of Western Europe.

  Otto I successfully defended Hungarian raids into Saxony.

  Sounds crazy, right? But think about this: Otto I, founder of the Holy Roman Empire, was said to have never been defeated in battle. And yes, maybe his unbroken string of victories was the result of his military skills and the size of his armies—but that didn’t stop others from thinking that the Spear of Destiny was the source of his triumphs. More important, if a power-crazed megalomaniac thinks that an ancient religious relic can grant him absolute power, you can bet that he’s going to do everything he can to get his hands on it.

  No matter the cost.

  The same goes for protecting the spear. In fact, when Napoleon’s armies were approaching Vienna early in the 1800s, the city fathers ordered the spear moved to Nuremberg. They were willing to move one of the city’s most prized possessions, its holiest treasure, to another city in order to keep it from falling into the hands of a man who already seemed poised to conquer the world. Holding the spear might make Napoleon completely unstoppable.

  Which brings us back to Hitler—who was clearly looking to steal a page from the super-villain playbook.

  Hitler and the Spear

  Adolf Hitler

  Adolf Hitler had a lifelong obsession with the Spear of Destiny. He was said to have first seen it as a boy, in a museum in Vienna.

  Adolf Hitler was said to have first seen the spear in Vienna, in a museum. But know this: There are almost as many legends about Hitler’s relationship to the Spear of Destiny—and its promise of near-infinite power—as there are surrounding the spear itself.

  Many of those legends come solely from a 1973 book by Trevor Ravenscroft, The Spear of Destiny, which claims that Hitler first saw the spear in Vienna, where it had been returned after the Napoleonic Wars. Hitler was a boy at the time, but was already dreaming of world conquest. What sort of kid dreams of conquering the world? The kind who grows up to be Adolf Hitler.

  The way Ravenscroft tells the story, upon seeing the spear, the young Hitler was seized by a mystical vision that foretold his possession of the spear, and its use to help him conquer the world.

  But Ravenscroft goes even further, arguing that Adolf Hitler’s ruthless rise to power, and his actual launching of World War II, were all undertaken to capture the spear. According to him, everything else was secondary to getting the Spear of Destiny into Hitler’s possession.

  OK. Time out. Let’s just be clear here. No question, that’s taking the crazy a bit too far. Even a quick look will tell you that there are no credible historians who take Ravenscroft and his theories seriously.

  Of course, there are plenty of Ravenscroft enthusiasts all over the Internet, but secondhand Ravenscroft is even wackier than the original. However, we do owe Ravenscroft’s book for one thing: The screenwriter of Raiders of the Lost Ark used it as part of the movie’s plot.

  Still, one giant question remains: What happened to the actual spear?

  In October 1938, the lance that Hitler believed to be the Spear of Destiny was in a Viennese museum. With Austria now under Nazi control, Hitler supposedly ordered the SS to seize the relic and move it by train to Nuremberg. He stored it in a church for six years, the amount of time it took his engineers to secretly build a specially constructed vault—a vault capable of standing up to Allied bombing, protecting the spear and the power Hitler may have believed it possessed.

  Heinrich Himmler was the head of the SS, Hitler’s most elite military group. He was also the man behind the horrors of the extermination camps, where more than six million Jews and ethnic Europeans were gassed, cremated, and worked to death in the single most horrible and most chillingly efficient mass murder campaign the world has ever seen.

  For me, here’s the heart of the story: Real or fake—whether it had mystical powers or not—if this object is being chased by the most evil man of all time, I want to know more about it. Yet the more we searched, the more we realized that there was one person who might’ve been even more obsessed with the spear than Hitler himself: Heinrich Himmler.

  Trained as an agronomist, Himmler was also deeply committed to both the study of the occult and the attempt to put occult forces to work for the darkest goals of the Third Reich. Those forces included the power of the Spear of Destiny.

  But the spear was far from the only focus of Heinrich Himmler’s obsession. A self-styled “intellectual,” Himmler developed and promoted any number of “theories” explaining the superiority of the Aryan people. The Aryans, Himmler believed, were meant to rule the world—and impose their superiority upon it.

  And ready for creepy nuttiness? He believed that Germans were superior to all other people, and put that belief to the test by tracking down the burial places of great heroes from the Aryan past. Such graveyards were designated “breeding cemeteries” because they thought babies who were conceived in graveyards would inherit the attributes of the heroes buried there. That’s right. They were trying to make babies in cemeteries.

  Most important, Himmler was an ardent member of the Thule Society, a group dedicated to both mysticism and the superiority of the Aryan race.

  Himmler took his fascination with the occult so far, he had a precise replica of the spear made for his private office, where he kept it near a vial of his own blood. And yes, a vial of your own blood is easily the worst paperweight ever.

  So what happened to Himmler? He killed himself in prison after the war, rather than standing up to face his accusers and accepting punishment for his crimes. So much for the super-German.

  Yet before he was captured, before the Third Reich fell to the Allies, Himmler may have put into place a fantastic plan involving the Spear of Destiny, German submarines . . . and Antarctica. Which again takes us back to the only question that matters: Where is Hitler’s spear today?

  Heinrich Himmler

  Here’s the one person who might’ve been even more obsessed with the spear than Hitler himself: Heinrich Himmler.

  The Thule Society

  The Thule Society was built upon beliefs that stretched back to the early German myths: of men with the powers of gods . . . men who were better than all other men . . . a super-race. Those who joine
d the Thule Society had to sign a blood oath, asserting the truth of horrifying lines like this: “The signer hereby swears to the best of his knowledge and belief that no Jewish or colored blood flows in either his or in his wife’s veins, and that among their ancestors are no members of the colored races.” (See Exhibit 5B.)

  The emblem of the Thule Society inspired the Nazis to use a swastika as their symbol, and Hitler dedicated Mein Kampf to a Thule member. It was this occult group that selected a young man named Adolf Hitler to be their leader, and it is said that with the Spear of Destiny in their possession, they believed they would become invincible.

  Even the twin lightning bolt insignia of the SS, based on an ancient German rune, has been compared to spears.

  Antarctica

  According to historian and Nazi researcher Dieter Maier, at the end of World War II, the Germans were mounting submarine expeditions to Antarctica, shipping “important objects and important people” there “to preserve the Fourth German Reich to strike back at any given moment.”

  Is that even true? It is.

  Without question, at the end of World War II, the Nazis started to lay the groundwork for their own comeback. There’s concrete evidence that Hitler sent U-boats to various locations around the globe—including Antarctica—to set up bases across the ice. Rumors of these secret bases on the frozen continent, perhaps used as storehouses for secret research materials, stolen artworks, wealth, and treasure, began circulating even before the end of the war. Hitler was trying to give the Fourth Reich the ability to succeed where the Third Reich had failed.

  But with the war drawing toward its inevitable close in 1945, other rumors began to circulate. German U-boats had been sneaking secretly to the coast of the United States, putting spies and saboteurs ashore in Maine, Long Island, and North Carolina, clearly working their way down the East Coast. What were they after? Among other things, the secrets of the Manhattan Project. Oh yes. The Nazis were going after the plans for the atomic bomb. The spies dropped on Long Island managed to remain hidden in New York for almost a month before they were captured.

  Yet according to Maier, there may have been another agenda at work aboard the U-boats. He believes it’s possible that with the Reich collapsing around them, Germans, including Heinrich Himmler, may have hatched a scheme to leave behind a fake Spear of Destiny, while smuggling what they believed to be the true spear out of Germany. Their goal? To hide it in a secret Antarctic location, where it, and its powers, could be used to launch a rebirth of the Nazis—a Fourth Reich—when the time was right. The journey down the East Coast was only part of the voyage—the U-boats’ actual goal was farther south. Much farther south. As in Antarctica.

  U-Boats

  At the end of World War II, the Nazis started to lay the groundwork for their own comeback. Hitler is believed to have sent U-boats to various locations around the globe to set up bases. Where? Some snuck secretly to the coast of the United States.

  Yet what’s most disturbing about Maier’s assertion isn’t just the ongoing existence of neo-Nazis and modern-day followers of Hitler—it’s their belief that the spear’s real power could be used today. This belief was further clarified by biblical scholar Dr. Erhard Zauner, who said that “they wanted to present Hitler as the leader of the world. The new God.”

  Please tell me you’re paying attention here. According to Dr. Zauner, Nazi occultists supposedly believed getting the spear in the hands of Hitler wouldn’t just symbolize his leadership and make him an unstoppable force in war. With the Spear of Destiny, Hitler would become more than the Führer—he’d become God himself.

  Let me be crystal clear here: I’m not worried about the spear having magical powers. But what I am worried about is a small group of modern neo-Nazis who believe in those powers. And will fight for those powers. You see, it doesn’t matter if they’re wrong. From 9/11 to recent shootings here in the United States, there’s nothing more dangerous than a true believer on his own crazy mission.

  The Frozen Continent

  Some believe the Nazis planned to smuggle the Spear of Destiny out of Germany, hoping to hide it in a secret Antarctic location, where, when the time was right, it could be used to launch a Fourth Reich.

  So. Back to the location of the spear. If there is any accuracy to Maier’s speculation, it would mean that the spear captured by the Allies was most likely the replica that Himmler had stored in his office. Or even another replica. Historian Peter Levenda pointed out that the Nazis created a virtual industry out of counterfeiting works of art and rare artifacts, including religious relics. After the war, many of the artworks that were returned to their owners turned out to be counterfeits—and it could very well be that the spear captured by the Allies, which now sits in the museum known as the Vienna Hofburg, is among the fakes.

  The only way to find out for sure is to test the spear in Vienna. But when we tried, that also proved to be impossible.

  However, we were able to arrange for an exact replica of the Vienna spear to be examined by an archaeo-metallurgist, a scientific expert on ancient metals. But after X-raying its metal pieces, Mathias Mehofer was only able to determine that the material is “very old.” To get more precise and accurate figures for the age of the spear would require carbon dating, which would require removing as much as a half centimeter of material from the spear. Much as we’d love to do it, the museum wouldn’t allow it.

  So with no means of scientifically dating the age of the spear that’s in the Vienna Hofburg, there’s obviously no way of knowing if it even could be the true Spear of Destiny.

  In my mind, though, I don’t think it’s the real spear. To me, it’s a replica—and whether it’s the one Himmler commissioned or yet another, we have no way of knowing.

  Nazi Spoils

  Knowing that the Allies would recapture plundered art treasures, Himmler may have planted a fake spear in order to keep the location of the real one secretly in Nazi hands.

  Yet that doesn’t mean that there aren’t some very strange stories surrounding it, some of them dating to its recapture by the Allies.

  While the legend says that he who holds the Spear of Destiny is invincible, here’s the flip side: He who loses the spear loses his life.

  Those believers look to Hitler to prove their point. Because two hours after U.S. General George S. Patton and his men captured the spear, Hitler allegedly committed suicide in his underground bunker. So, yes, it could have been the spear. Or the fact that thousands of Allied troops were at his doorstep screaming for his little mustache.

  To this day, we don’t know whether or not the American troops who took possession of the spear believed in the legends surrounding it—or were even aware of those legends. But we do know that the Allied commander who was ultimately in charge of the occupation forces in that part of Germany certainly knew of the spear, and had in fact given it some thought of his own.

  George S. Patton

  The Spear of Destiny was found in Nuremburg by invading U.S. troops, and returned to Austria by American General George S. Patton after World War II. Patton died soon after.

  While the legend says that he who holds the Spear of Destiny is invincible, here’s the flip side: He who loses the spear loses his life.

  George S. Patton

  In addition to being a brilliant and controversial battlefield commander, Patton was a strong believer in reincarnation. In his poem “Through a Glass, Darkly,” he recounted his numerous former lives. And ironically, one of those lives may have been lived as Longinus himself. “Perhaps I stabbed our Savior,” he wrote, clearly referring to Longinus’s infamous deed.

  Pretty spooky, right? Here’s an even spookier one: As part of the occupation, Patton oversaw the return of stolen artworks and relics to their rightful owners. In the case of the Spear of Destiny, the rightful owner was Austria, from whom the spear wa
s taken by Hitler years before. Patton had ordered that the spear be returned to Vienna, where it resides in a museum to this day.

  And here’s the twist. Not long after the spear was released from Patton’s control, the great general was killed as a result of a freak, slow-speed car accident.

  One more chapter in the strange history of the spear.

  So if we rule out the Vatican spear and the one in Vienna, that leaves one final theory to investigate: What about that supposed Antarctic base? It’s more real than you realize, though its purpose remains unknown. A New York Times article from July 1945 mentions the discovery of a secret Nazi “Antarctic haven.” Another source said 16 crew members landed on the Antarctic shore and deposited numerous boxes that apparently held documents and relics from the Third Reich. A U.S. military operation called Operation High Jump soon followed. The operation had numerous objectives, ranging from testing equipment in frigid conditions to the establishment of a research facility. It was also alleged that Operation High Jump had another purpose: to seek out and demolish a Nazi base.

  Which begs the question: Back in 1945, if you were looking for a place to hide the most precious and potentially powerful relic in your possession, where would you hide it? No question, Antarctica wouldn’t be a bad choice, especially back then, when it was largely unexplored, hard to get to, and difficult to survive in. Y’know what I call a place like that? The last place anybody would look.

  And that may just be exactly what the Nazis were hoping for: a place almost impossibly remote and inhospitable, where they could hide the Spear of Destiny and its powers while they put into motion their darkest and most dangerous plan yet.

  But here’s the twist. That U-boat that was supposedly bound for Antarctica? It never reached its destination. It was sunk off the coast of Florida, where its hulk still rests today—and where, perhaps, the true Spear of Destiny rests with it.