Over half a century after the defeat of the Third Reich the complexities of Nazi ideology are still being unravelled. This text is a serious attempt to identify these ideological origins. It demonstrates the way in which Nazism was influenced by powerful occult and millenarian sects that thrived in Germany and Austria at the turn of the century. Their ideas and symbols filtered through to nationalist-racist groups associated with the infant Nazi party and their fantasies were played out with terrifying consequences in the Third Reich: Auschwitz, Sobibor and Treblinka are the hellish museums of the Nazi apocalypse. This bizarre and fascinating story contains lessons we cannot afford to ignore. In this book among others the following issues are treated: The background – the Pan-German vision, the modern German occult revival 1880-1910; the ariosophists of Vienna – Guido von List, Wotanism and Germanic theosophy, the armanenschaft, the secret heritage, the German millennium, Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels and theozoology, the order of the new templars; ariosophy in Germany – the Germanenorden, Rudolf von Sebottendorff and the Thule society, the holy Runes and the Edda society, Herbert Reichstein and ariosophy, Karl Maria Wiligut – the private magus of Heinrich Himmler, ariosophy and Adolf Hitler. Appendices: genealogy of Lanz von Liebenfels; genealogy of the Sebottendorff family; the history of ariosophy, new templar verse; the modern mythology of Nazi occultism.