Hitler, as you know, was "turned" to various pseudoscientific and mystical theories, while obsessed with ancient Germanic mythology. Some of his comrades-in-arms, such as the leader of the SS, Himmler, also matched him. Sometimes their hobbies even determined one or another decision in military strategy.
"Anenerbe" in search of the innermost
For the study of occult secrets in the SS, a special department "Anenerbe" was created. In England, in Westminster Abbey, the Ahnenerbe agents tried to steal the Skunk stone, on which the Anglo-Saxon kings were crowned, and were looking for the sword of King Arthur. In Spain, they searched for traces of the Holy Grail and the Ark of the Covenant.
In the Vienna Hofburg Museum was kept the spear with which the Roman centurion stabbed the crucified Christ. It was believed that the owner of the spear would be invincible. After the Anschluss of Austria, the spear was kept at the headquarters of the Ahnenerbe at Wewelsburg Castle. A few days before Hitler's suicide, the castle was captured by American troops.
In Tibet, special expeditions sent by the Nazis searched for Shambhala, the country of an ancient wise race. However, Hitler, after his emissary Schaeffer, having come into contact with the Tibetan lamas, did not find the desired Shambhala, suspected that a secret entrance to this country could be located somewhere in the Caucasus.
Search for Shambhala on Elbrus
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In March 1942, Hitler announced to the shocked generals of the Wehrmacht that the goal of a large summer offensive in the East, after the winter defeat near Moscow, would be to capture the Caucasus. The rational motive for such a decision was the need to master the oil fields, without which Germany allegedly could not wage a war. The military knew that Germany was producing more and more synthetic fuels, and oil was no longer a critical resource. They did not understand how it was possible to move away from the vital centers of the enemy, because there it was impossible to impose a general battle on him and win. But "the Fuhrer ordered - we are carrying out."
In August 1942, the Wehrmacht reached the foothills of the Greater Caucasus. The elite Alpine division of the Wehrmacht "Edelweiss" was aimed at capturing the mountain passes. On August 15, the Klukhorsky Pass, leading from the North Caucasus to the Black Sea coast of Abkhazia, was in the hands of the Germans. But suddenly, instead of descending into the Transcaucasus, the division receives a different task - to set Nazi flags on the peaks of Elbrus.
Elbrus is the highest mountain in the Caucasus. In ancient Iranian languages, this word means "sparkling mountain". This is the name of the highest mountain range of Iran. In the imagination of the Nazi mystics, this mountain merged with the legendary mountains of Meru "Avesta" and "Vedas" - the sacred books of the ancient Aryans - which protected the entrance to their ancestral home. According to one version, this entrance could be a secret cave somewhere in the Caucasus mountains.
On August 21, special teams of the "Edelweiss" division planted the flags of the Third Reich on Elbrus. As if the Germans were trying to signal to someone with banners with swastikas about their arrival.
At the foot of Elbrus, the Germans equipped an airfield from which reconnaissance aircraft flew. Once a plane landed there, from which a group of people in clothes strange for these parts, with oriental features, unloaded. It is known that the Nazis took many Tibetan monks to their place, who were supposed to help them in their mystical quest. What happened to those who were taken to Elbrus is unknown.
German officer Karl Singer was buried there in November 1942. A member of the mystical society "Thule", who was engaged in the search for Aryan and Germanic occult antiquities, also had the same name. It has not yet been possible to establish whether it is the same Singer or two different persons.
And the personality of the commander of the Edelweiss division, Major General Hubert Lanz, is rather mysterious. Long before the war, back in 1936, he visited the Caucasus. The general spoke excellent Russian, carefully studied the area, made acquaintances with the highlanders, who later, during the war, were of great use to him. At that time, the Nazis had not yet planned any military operations in the Caucasus and hardly assumed that they would be conducted there … Was Lanz only traveling to the Caucasus for military intelligence purposes?
Hyperborea and Siegfried's grave
The Caucasus was not the only place where the Nazis hoped to find something intimate. Back in the early 1920s. in the USSR, it was announced that the remains of the ancient civilization of the Hyperboreans were discovered on the Kola Peninsula. Information about this discovery was probably tracked by interested parties. Throughout the war, Hitler strove to capture Murmansk and planned to include the Kola Peninsula directly into the Third Reich after the war.
According to the views of the proponents of the Nazi racial theory, the ancient Germans came from the east. The events of the "Song of the Nibelungs", where the Germans oppose the Huns, could take place on the territory of present-day Russia. According to vague reports, in November 1941, Hitler only sent Guderian's tank group on a distant and hopeless bypass of Moscow from the southeast, that he hoped to find somewhere near Ryazan the grave of the legendary ancient German hero Siegfried.
Gothic Queen's crown
The most obvious search for artifacts was undertaken by the Nazis in the Crimea. In 1925, in the area of the village of Marfovka on the Kerch Peninsula, a treasure was found with many gold items of the Gothic period. The most valuable of these was the diadem that the legendary Goth queen Fidea could wear. The find became a worldwide sensation. The American millionaire Armand Hammer himself, who was the first to trade with the Bolsheviks, wanted to buy the treasure for fabulous money, but he was refused.
In the fall of 1941, when the Germans burst into Crimea, the treasures stored in the Kerch Historical and Archaeological Museum were prepared for evacuation. This is where their adventures began, which have not ended until now.
According to one version, the ship on which the valuables were transported was sunk by German aircraft, and the treasures still lie somewhere at the bottom of the Kerch Strait. However, this does not agree with the data that the suitcase with packed items from the treasure was transferred several times in the North Caucasus in evacuation from one guardian to another until it was handed over to the commander of some partisan detachment. Here further traces of it are lost. When the Krasnodar Territory was liberated from the Germans in the fall of 1943, the suitcase with valuables was empty. So, in any case, the NKVDists reported.
Earlier, in August 1942, breaking through to the Caucasus, the Germans embarked on a hot pursuit search for the evacuated treasure. A special Sonderkommando, led by archaeologist Karl Kersten, a renowned Nazi expert in the seizure of cultural property in the occupied countries, quickly found out where the suitcase with Fidea's treasure was the last time. She attacked his tracks in Krasnodar, in Armavir, in the village of Spokoinaya. But apparently it was not possible to find it.
Fidea's treasure disappeared as completely as the Amber Room.
