'Your Son Is My Brother': the Masonic Service Centers of World War II

by Christopher Hodapp

Over the weekend I posted a link to a YouTube video of then-senator and Freemason Harry Truman addressing the nation in 1942 during World War II about the Masonic Service Association and what eventually turned into 90 Army-Navy Masonic Service Centers across the U.S. After I called attention to that clip, I received a sizable raft of feedback from all over the country asking about that program of the MSA and Truman's involvement. 

It seems that Masons today are interested today in how the fraternity banded together with enough solidarity during a time of previous world crises to do something that benefitted their country and their communities on a national basis. And some are asking why we can't do that again.

Since we're all essentially under home detention for the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic shutdown, I took the opportunity to update and slightly revise a Power Point presentation I did about the Masonic Service Centers last January for Indiana's Dwight L. Smith Lodge of Research U.D. 

It's available now on YouTube and on Facebook.

Your Son Is My Brother - Youtube

Your Son Is My Brother - Facebook

On Monday I'll be facilitating an online conversation with Harry Truman's grandson, Brother Clifton Truman Daniel talking about some of the important Masonic influences in President Truman's life and several important Masonic events he was involved with, even during his presidency. The Service Centers were only one of many Masonic projects he was involved in. Throughout his lifetime he was an active participant and supporter of the fraternity. The online program is being sponsored by the Grand Council of the Allied Masonic Degrees, and I'll post login details as soon as I know them.

Make Your Masonic Hall The Center of Your Community — Again

A public radio station in Wisconsin posted an article Friday that shines a light on just how important a Masonic Temple really can be in a community. They looked at two different lodge buildings, in Rhinelander and Wassau, Wisconsin. The first is still owned by the fraternity, Rhinelander Lodge 22, while the second was vacated a few years ago. Wassau insisted on not tearing theirs down, but finding someone to rescue it.

The title of the article says it all: Not so Mysterious: Past and Present Masonic Temples Build Community

"Recently we received a question asking us to investigate the history of local Masonic Temples, which led us to wonder… what is the role of a Masonic Temple in a community?

"Mackenzie Martin headed to the Rhinelander Masonic Temple and the former Wausau Masonic Temple to find out...

(CLICK HERE to read the article in full, or listen to the NPR story - I quote much of it below)

When I was researching Heritage Endures, I came across news accounts of the very first joint Masonic Temple that was built in my home city of Indianapolis back in 1850. At the time, what is now the largest city in my state was still being created from scratch, a planned capitol city in the middle of a clearing in the woods that otherwise wouldn't have existed naturally at the confluence of two shallow, unnavigable rivers. The Grand Lodge and the lodges in Indianapolis built our first large, joint Masonic hall here at just about the same time the state opened its new State House on the opposite corner. We picked that important location then because so many of our members were involved in the government of the state and the new capitol city. 

You could make the case that we occupied the most influential street corner in the entire state of Indiana.

The Indianapolis Masonic Temple in 1850,
as it appeared when seen from the lawn of the Indiana State House

In 1850, before we even officially moved in and opened the doors, the state's delegates to the Constitutional Convention found that they couldn't all pack into the State House along with the General Assembly at the time. So, we volunteered our brand new Temple to them for the duration of hammering out the Indiana Constitution.

It's hard to get more vital to the entire state and the community than hosting a constitutional convention. Back then, we were a center of the community before we even moved in to the joint.

Over the years, our first Temple would be the preeminent public meeting space in town. We had built the biggest and the first public hall in the city, and theatrical productions, musical events, banquets, lectures, political speeches, touring groups and private parties all poured in to the Masonic Temple. Even more poured in once the railroad came to town and East Coast road shows could easily get here. 

Even when the Odd Fellows built their own large hall down the road six years later, most folks wanted to hold their important events with the Masons. 

The home of the Freemasons was no stranger to controversy then. "No religion, no politics!" only applied in an open lodge, not to the building itself. When a local church burned down, we let their congregation hold services there on Sundays until they could rebuild. Despite the image you might have about African-American versus caucasian Freemasonry before the Civil War, when the Prince Hall-descended 'African Masons' held their first public procession in Indiana in 1855, they ended at our Masonic Hall and held their 'sumptuous banquet' there. In the 1850s, the Indianapolis Masonic Temple was the site of numerous civil rights meetings, as pro- and anti-slavery forces duked it out in the run-up to the Civil War. Anti-slavery meetings were commonplace at the Temple. 

"No political speeches in Masonic halls??!!" Balderdash. They were common as ragweed.  Abraham Lincoln came to town and spoke there in 1859, and for decades no election went by  without one candidate or another, from any party, holding a speech or debate at the Masonic Temple.

Even after our first Temple was knocked down and replaced in the 1870s by a bigger one on the same corner, the new Indiana Freemasons Hall auditorium continued to host public events, despite having lots more competition in town by then. And when our present limestone Temple was built several blocks north in 1909 (giving up our choice location), our even bigger Indiana Freemasons Hall auditorium was used for many years for civic and political meetings, speaking engagements, musical recitals, even as a popular location for swearing in newly naturalized immigrant citizens. One of the first regular inhabitants of the theater was a Christian Science Church service every Sunday.

During World War II, our basement was remodeled into a Masonic Service Center for traveling servicemen, similar to a USO club. Many of the larger temples in bigger towns were part of a whole nationwide network of these centers that were developed by the Masonic Service Association. The Indianapolis Masonic Temple was listed in the paper every single day as a location in the city for military personnel who wanted a place to relax, write letters, read their local papers from all over the country, catch a nap between train or bus connections, get a decent meal, play cards or pool, or go to a dance on Fridays. Even all of our youth groups and the Eastern Star ladies pitched in to help staff it. And "everybody knew" the Masons were there to help. At least they did then.

Here's more of that article by Mackenzie Martin:

Masonic Temple in Rhinelander, Wisconsin

As is the case for many small towns, the Masons were instrumental in building Rhinelander in the early days. In 1930, the town of Rhinelander raised $50,000 to build the Masonic Temple, which was a lot of money for a small town going through a depression. They are also the oldest civic group and they laid the cornerstone for the Rhinelander District Library and the Oneida County Courthouse.

Whole rooms upstairs are full of historical portraits of Rhinelander’s early masons.

“It’s a lifetime of learning,” says Jones. “You start seeing some of the street names when you look at the rolls of members here, of what they did… The school board, the telephone company… It’s almost limitless what these men came up here to do... And then when you look at all of these pictures, they came up here by wagon train or on foot or by horse drawn carriage and they built something out of the woods. And that’s where we stand today...”

 I'm not sure when Masonic lodges decided to button up and shy away from being home to big community events. By the 1950s event announcements at our own downtown Temple slowed to a trickle. I'm sure much of that was due to our failure to air-condition the place. Countless other venues around the city were far more pleasant with their new 'refrigerated air' systems, at least during the summer months. We never cushioned our wooden theater seats from 1909 that still retain their wire under-seat racks for holding hats, from the age when all proper gentlemen still covered their heads. We essentially shut the doors to our auditorium in 1963 when even our Grand Lodge moved its large annual meetings across the street into the bigger and more comfortable climes of the Scottish Rite Cathedral. I'm sure our 19th-century brethren who wore wool three-piece suits and beaver felt hats everywhere would call us pathetic, cringing little milk sop girlie-men now.

In addition, our state's Masonic code got filled up with more and more restrictions on use of lodge rooms that too many Masons believed also included the rest of their Temples. Rules were tweaked to specify what groups could and couldn't use the lodge rooms; Sunday events were banned; Masonic trustees became more and more convinced that the lodge was somehow sacrosanct or secret or both, and the public was shut out for everything but fish frys and occasional family and friend nights. 

That's a damn shame, because that's just about the very same time American Freemasonry was starting on its downward decline in size that has never stopped since. Maybe part of that can be laid at the feet of our own retreat from being vital gathering places for the community. We gave up being essential to the civic fabric of our towns, cities and states, which helped perpetuate the great tail-eating ouroboros of dwindling membership and vanishing public image.

We even went through an absurd national movement in the 1980s and 90s to remove the world temple from our buildings and replace it with generically non-specific terms like Masonic center, lest somebody get the wacky notion that anything solemn, sacred or even vaguely important might go on inside.

But some of our leaders have finally looked around and are starting to ask why we shouldn't be clawing back that vital position within our communities we occupied for so long, and can again. That seems to be the case in Wisconsin. Here's more from that article:

Giving back to the community is a huge part of what their Masonic Lodge is trying to do now, but it didn’t used to be like that. It all changed about two years ago, prompted by a decision from Wisconsin’s Grand Lodge.

“The Most Worshipful Grand Master of the State of Wisconsin sent out a note, or an edict, out to all the lodges, saying it’s time to become family-friendly again,” says Jones. “A lot of the lodges were kind of shrinking in number and so that wasn’t going out.”

“We got together and said, you know, our organization can go one of two ways,” says Bob Dionne. “We can keep doing what we’re doing and just dry up and blow away, or we can change.”

They decided to bring the Masonic Temple back to the old days of being a community building, when Prom and other events had been held in the basement. They now host community events with partners like the Rhinelander District Library in addition to weddings and other parties now. This September, they're one of four downtown Rhinelander music venues for Project North Festival.

Both of Jones and Dionne now feel like they’re using the building for the purpose it was meant to be used for, even if not everyone agrees.

“There are people who think we should maintain the integrity of what it was,” says Jones. “I like what we’re doing now because people like coming here.”

Jones also says that in a world of online interactions in an area as spread out as the Northwoods, he thinks the message of masonry to create an in-person social network for men especially resonates today...

In keeping with that newly invigorated sense of civic participation, the Rhinelander Lodge is holding a "Roots Celebration" in October that will invite local clubs and civic groups to participate and "celebrate the history" of their town. From the poster, it appears it will be a two-day event, and is exactly what every lodge needs to take a careful look at and adapt for our communities. 

Up until the last half of the 20th century, everyone in any town that contained a lodge knew who and what the Masons were and what their importance was to their community. That's been lost as society has balkanized and become isolated into tinier and tinier slices.  Nothing can or will change overnight, but this is an excellent start.

Constantine Consistory's annual Men's Health Fair in 2018

Similarly, here in my own city the local Prince Hall Scottish Rite Masons host a Men's Health Fair every year. They invite the local health, hospital and related services, and it is well supported. They do theirs at a local neighborhood center instead of their Temple (which is arguably not large enough for this fair), but there's no question that 'The Masons' are the hosts and organizers. They also provide voter registration, food vendors, and more. Local politicians are often attracted enough by this fair to show up and meet the community - something that mainstream Masons used to accomplish naturally and don't anymore. With fewer Americans out there who have an awareness of who and what we are now, the PHA guys are making sure their local community has a reason to remember "The Masons." We can all learn a good lesson from this.

And what better organization could hold an event that appeals specifically to men than Freemasons?

The rest of the Wisconsin article talks about adaptive re-use of a Masonic Temple once the Masons inside pitch it overboard. The immediate question that comes to mind is, if a private individual can make a financial go of running a large venue with big public spaces inside, why can't 50 or 100 Masons do it, keep their temple, and still make it an active money-generating space for the public? 

As the article points out, our older buildings (not the generic steel pole barns in potato fields, but the centrally located, impressive ones that we once spent a fortune to build) are still significant community centerpieces, whether Masons inhabit them or not - too significant to let them fall down. What we once looked upon with pride and worthy of our work and sacrifice, we now regard as disposable and no more significant than an abandoned Taco Bell. Fortunately, not everybody feels that way. Our communities still recognize them for the important places they are, even when we think of them as nothing but albatrosses to be put out of our collective misery:

The Temple in Wausau was sold.
In May, it opened as Whitewater Music Hall.

Meanwhile across the country, many Masonic lodges have had to downsize and move out of their temples because there are less Masons than there used to be. It’s not all bad, though. In some communities, it’s creating a new kind of community space.

For example, Minocqua Brewing Company in Minocqua used to be a Masonic Temple, and the former Masonic Temple in Wausau was recently sold and in May, it opened as Whitewater Music Hall.

One of the owners, Kelly Ballard, says the history of the building is a big part of the reason she loves it. They barely changed anything when they moved in.

“The layout is one thing,” she says. “It’s perfect as far as they have their gathering room, plus their ceremonial room serves our purposes of having a tap room and a music space.”

Ballard says Whitewater Music Hall wants to be a stage for everyone in the greater Wausau community, and she’s excited to be in a building that she thinks was overlooked for the last few years. But she also knows it’ll take some time to rebrand themselves.

“Until this first generation dies, this will always be the Masonic Temple,” she says.

She’s hoping a mural on one of the walls next year will help.

In the end, the purpose a Masonic Temple serves in the community depends on the community and the Masonic Lodge. No matter what Masonic Temple you’re in though, there’s likely a lot of history there – and a few secrets.

Take a good hard look at your own city, town or village, and think hard about what sort of role your Temple could be playing there. Who needs to build a new "neighborhood center" when the Masons did it a century ago, and it's still there waiting to be re-discovered? Make your Temple the place where volunteers teach English lessons to immigrants, or the Kiwanis and the Optimists meet. Offer it up to Weight Watchers, Al-Anon, an "opioid addiction support group," a daycare center, a computer skills learning center, or what YOUR community is in need of. 

And here's a completely hare-brained closing thought to consider: if your lodge already moved out of downtown years ago, and you now see that your old city center is reemerging as the hot new place to live again? If the old Masonic Temple is still there, find out if you can rent back your old lodge room from the current owners and return to the place from whence you came. You might find a whole new life for a struggling, anonymous suburban lodge. Or charter a brand new lodge in that old location again and be there for a whole new generation of young men.

This isn't a plan that a grand lodge needs to invent for you. All Freemasonry is local. Be part of the larger civic solution, the way we used to be all along. 

And become indispensable to your own neighbors... all over again.

Saved By the Mystic Tie? - Mason Awarded French Legion of Honor

Brother Harry Wolfe congratulated by Guillaume Lacroix, Counsel General of France for the Midwest

On Tuesday of last week, Brother Harry A. Wolfe, longtime member of Englewood Lodge No. 715 in Indianapolis, was made a Knight of the French Légion d'Honor at a special ceremony in Franklin, Indiana at the Indiana Masonic Home, now known as Compass Park. The 98-year old veteran of the Normandy Invasion on D-Day was honored by Guillaume Lacroix, Consul General of France for the Midwest region of the United States. Present were representatives of Vice President Mike Pence and Governor Eric Holcomb, Congressman Trey Hollingsworth, Franklin Mayor Steve Barnett, Gen. Martin Umbarger (Ret.), and almost 100 other family members and friends.

Brother Wolfe was severely wounded during combat along the Seille River on the Lorraine front on November 8, 1944, and he credits his Masonic ring for perhaps saving his life at the hands of German medics.

The Order of Légion d'Honneur was created by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802, and is given to reward military and civilian service to France.

Private Wolfe wasn't drafted, he enlisted in the U.S. Army on March 28, 1944, and became a rifleman for Company G, 318th Infantry Regiment, 80th Infantry Division, under the command of Gen. George S. Patton. 

From the story: 'Franklin veteran presented with France's highest honor' by Ryan Trares:

“Everybody who lived in our society in those days realized that it was time we had to go to war. Our civilization was in terrible shape. Someone had to come forth and get rid of Nazism,” he said. “Thank God, we were the ones who went.”

Wolfe went from Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis to Camp Blanding, one of the primary training centers for replacement troops during the war. He was schooled in skills such as orienteering, marksmanship and lobbing grenades. His unit completed miles-long marches, spending nights at a time out in the Florida wilderness before finally completing a 25-mile hike.

The 17 weeks at the camp transformed him into a soldier. “I was 130 pounds when I went in, and I gained a pound a week, so I was 147 pounds when I went to war,” he said.

Wolfe and his unit left the U.S. in September 1944 aboard the Ile d'France, a luxury liner that had been repurposed as a troop ship. They arrived in Scotland, took a train to southern England and then was transported across the English Channel to Normandy Beach.

Throughout late September and October, he made his way to the front lines in eastern France.

[SNIP]

On the day he was injured, Wolfe and his unit were slogging through mud and rain on a mission to cross the Seille River as the Army pushed towards Germany.

Machine gun fire and mortar rounds forced them to sprint across a flooded channel, sliding in the mud for cover. Moments later, Wolfe was struck with what he described as “like the kick of a mule.”

His fellow soldiers forced a pair of captured German medics to treat his wounds in hopes of saving his life. After the soldiers left, the Germans could have easily shot him, or left him to die. Instead, they cleaned and dressed the wound, put on a tourniquet and covered him in rain gear.

Wolfe was a member of the Masonic Lodge; he had been inducted as a Master Mason in the organization the night before he shipped off for war. His wife, Elsie, had given him a beautiful ring to mark the occasion and he was wearing the ring when he was shot.

With no other way to explain their compassion, Wolfe believes they may have recognized him as a Mason.

“These two medics stepped aside and started mumbling between the two of them. They must have seen my ring, because they gave me the best kind of treatment I could have,” he said. “I often wonder if that wasn’t a brother Mason.”

Miraculously, the bullet that struck him had missed ligaments and the main artery, so his leg did not need to be amputated. Following surgery, Wolfe was returned stateside for his rehabilitation. After the war, he worked in the finance department at Fort Benjamin Harrison, then Job Corps, and eventually for the Internal Revenue Service. He lived much of his adult life in Vermont, Indiana and Arizona. 

For his bravery during combat, Harry has also been awarded the Bronze Star Medal, the European African Middle Eastern Ribbon with one Bronze Star, and the Purple Heart.
Seven weeks ago, he moved to Franklin and into Compass Park. Bill Pierce, administrator of the skilled nursing and rehabilitation center there says that, even in such a short time, Brother Wolfe has had an impact on those around him.

“Harry, to me, is the embodiment of an American soldier,” he said. “He’s a representation of what can happen in times of war. He’s representative of the battle scars, and those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice."

The cities of both Franklin and Indianapolis declared November 6th, 2018 to be “Harry A. Wolfe Day.” Lacroix and local military leaders, Command Sgt. Maj. James Brown, director of the Indiana Department of Veterans Affairs, and Maj. Gen. R. Martin Umbarger (ret.), former head of the Indiana National Guard, all spoke about the impact Wolfe and his fellow soldiers made to the liberation of France in 1944. He was also presented with letters from Vice President Mike Pence and Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb honoring him.

He's been a Freemason for 72 years.

Read the rest of Brother Wolfe's story HERE. 

A video report from WXIN 59 can be seen HERE.

Huge Stash of Nazi-Confiscated Masonic and Occult Books Discovered

The grand lodge building of the Norwegian Order of Freemasons in Oslo.

A collection of 13,000 books on occult subjects, including Freemasonry, were amassed by Nazi SS-Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler's forces during Germany's wartime occupation of Norway. The collection was stolen, in part, from the Norwegian Order of Freemasons' grand lodge library in Oslo. 

Shortly after the war ended, the collection was put into a storage building near Prague, Czechoslovakia.  In 1948, the Communists took power, and as part of the Warsaw Pact nations, they were effectively lost behind the Iron Curtain for many years.  Even after Czechoslovakia's opening to the West, they remained hidden away without any record since the 1950s.

These were just a small part of an enormous library of works on Masonic, occult, esoteric and witchcraft subjects that were confiscated throughout occupied Europe by a division of the Nazi SS.

From a story on the Prague Post website:

Books on witchcraft and the occult collected by SS chief Heinrich Himmler were found in a storage depot near Prague used by the Czech National Library.

The depot has not been accessed since the 1950s, according to UK tabloid the Daily Mail, which cited Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang. 

Bjørn Helge Horrisland, a Norwegian Freemason historian, told Verdens Gang he was involved in identifying some of the books. “Many of them belonged to the central Norwegian Order of Freemasons library in Oslo,” he said.

The collection of books totals some 13,000 volumes, some 6,000 of which allegedly came from a library of books owned by the Norwegian Order of Freemasons. The Masonic library [was] seized by Nazis when Norway was occupied during World War II.

Himmler began amassing the collection in 1935 and had a strong interest in the occult, He had a special unit within the SS to collect and manage information on witchcraft.

Many of the books deal with witchcraft trials in Germany, and Himmler reportedly believed that the trials were part of historical plot to weaken the Germans. He also claimed to be descended from a witch that was executed.

 Himmler also believed that knowledge of the occult could be used to benefit the Third Reich.

The books were not meant for Prague but for Wewelsburg Castle in Germany. Himmler intended to make that castle a modern-day Camelot with a round table of SS officers in the place of knights. Himmler signed a 100-year lease on the triangular castle in 1934. The building is now a museum.

The books will now be examined by scholars, and a Norwegian TV company is planning a documentary.

The project to recover the library of books received European Economic Area funds from Norway and is a result of a cooperation between Stiftelsen Arkivet, the National Library of Norway and the Czech National Library, according to Norwegian new server TheLocal.no.

Himmler's interest in collecting occult items has been well-documented and has inspired works of fiction including the 1981 film 'Raiders of the Lost Ark.'

Himmler was captured May 21, 1945. He committed suicide with a cyanide capsule May 23 and was buried in an unmarked grave near near Lüneburg, Germany. The exact location is not known.

In 1935, Himmler founded the Ahnenerbe Forschungs-und Lehrgemeinschaft (the Ancestral Heritage Research and Teaching Society), to use the methods of science to bend history and archeology enough to back up the Nazis’ racial and cultural policies. (In the film Raiders of the Lost Ark, the Nazi group looking for the Ark of the Covenant is supposed to be a contingent of Ahnenerbe archeologists.)

The tales of Himmler's alleged fascination with the occult have waxed and waned over the years. The Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) was formed in 1939 as part of the SS, combined with the SD, and was subordinate to Himmler.  It's purpose was to fight all enemies of the Reich both inside and outside of Germany.  It eventually grew to become a massive bureaucracy with close to one hundred sub-sections, divided into seven main divisions. Amt II was headed up by SS-Brigadefuhrer Professor Franz Albert Six, and was dedicated to "Ideological Investigation." 

Not long afterwards, Amt II was reorganized and split off as Amt VII for "Ideological Research and Evaluation," again headed by Franz Six (and after 1943 by SS-Obersturmbannführer Paul Dittel.) Their mission was partially to create anti-semetic and anti-Masonic propaganda, as well as surveying occupied Nazi population's public opinion.

Modern scholarship has dug into captured Nazi documents long held by Warsaw Pact countries, which have revealed Amt VII's other activities, including the collection of stolen  esoteric libraries. They also, allegedly, created an extensive card catalog on publications and other resources regarding witchcraft, a special interest of Himmler's (it was long whispered that a relative of his had been burned at the stake for being a witch). 

After the Soviets took parts of Berlin, and Germany was divided into East and West after the war, many of the records and books from their confiscation of occult, esoteric and Masonic libraries eventually wound up in Russia, the Silesia region of Poland, and Czechoslovakia, and were not researched until the 1990's.

In 2002, 750 crates of Masonic objects and papers stolen from occupied lodges and Grand Lodges across Europe and held by the Russian Military State Archive were delivered to the Museum of Freemasonry of the Grand Orient of France in Paris. These included membership lists that were used to help round up Freemasons to be sent to concentration camps. (The entire library of the Grand Orient of France was confiscated when the Nazis occupied Paris, and the books were taken to Berlin and subsequently burned.) 

A lengthy work, Restitution of Confiscated Art Works - Wish Or Reality?, was published in Czechoslovakia in 2008 as a collection of presentations from a conference in the city of Liberec. Buried in it are several references to the RSHA Amt VII unit's activities in assembling a vast library on the occult, witchcraft, esoteric, and Masonic books, eventually estimated to be in excess of 160,000 volumes:

Most of the books that traversed Sudeten crossroads had been held before August 1943 as part of the RSHA Amt VII (Seventh Office) library in Berlin, seized by the SD Main Office (Hauptamt) and the Gestapo starting in 1936. With the merger of the security services in late 1939, most of the collected books and archives preserved by the SD Main Office came under control of the newly formed RSHA Amt II (Second Office), headed by SS-Brigadeführer Franz Alfred Six, charged with investigation of political opponents (Gegnerforschung).

Starting in December 1941, Six organized the Seventh Office (Amt VII), specially for “Ideological Research and Evaluation” (Welt- anschauliche Forschung und Auswertung), split off from the other more  operational offices. Having inherited most of the SD/RSHA library and archival loot, Amt VII was responsible for organizing the RSHA library and archival centers, although some of the books went to other RSHA units. Most of the Amt VII staff, which Six headed until 1943, were members of the SS. Most of the books and archives were held in the buildings of two liquidated Masonic lodges the Gestapo had commandeered (Emserstrasse 12/13, and Eisenacherstasse 11/13), although some were stored in other depots in Berlin. From the spring of 1943, SS-Obersturmbannführer Paul Dittel, who from the start had been particularly involved with the collected Masonic materials, was the last head of Amt VII. Yet his title remained “acting,” indicative of the reduced importance and “mysterious twilight” of that unit towards the end of the war, as he made clear to his British interrogators afterwards.

During the Cold War, little was known about Amt VII, because its major surviving records were not publicly accessible. The Soviets found many SD Main Office administrative files among the massive RSHA-plundered archives they captured in Silesia (Wölfelsdorf), along with those of later Amt VII operations, and they seized a few more in the bombed-out RSHA Eisenacherstasse building in Berlin. Some of those files they passed on to the Stasi in the 1950s, and those are now being processed with other Stasi RSHA holdings by the Bundesarchiv in Berlin. Others were captured in Silesia by the Poles, came out of hiding in 1989, and were traded to the Bundesarchiv in 1997. However, many important SD Main Office and subsequent RSHA Amt VII files remain in Moscow, not all of them open for research. Combining clues from documents now in Moscow and Berlin provides hitherto unknown revelations about RSHA library operations, especially those in the Sudeten castles.

[SNIP]

Alleged occult elements in the Nazi ideology and Himmler’s interest in neo-paganism and Masonic rituals have aroused widespread interest since the defeat of the National Socialist regime. Even the History TV Channel produced a documentary on“Hitler and the Occult,”suggesting what would seemingly be a sensationalist theme. The popular internet Wikipedia suggests that ‘Nazism and Occultism’ is usually “a topic for sensational authors in pursuit of strong sales,” but it prominently cites Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, and his serious Oxford doctoral thesis on the Austrian Arisophists. Other important scholarly studies have analyzed occult themes in Nazi circles, especially under Heinrich Himmler, and the Masonic Library, confiscated from one of the alleged ‘enemies of the regime,’ was one of the most important components in the RSHA Amt VII holdings. Himmler’s interest in witchcraft and the supernatural was highlighted in Amt VII’s special unit devoted to Witchcraft (C 3), Sonderauftrag H, and Himmler’s card file on witches (Hexenkartothek), all of which are well documented. Reportedly, the materials gathered for the Witchcraft unit were sent to Schlesiersee [in Poland] with the Masonic collections, rather than the Sudeten castles, and that unit had ceased to function by the time of evacuation.

In the Sudeten castles, on the other hand, we find Amt VII SS specialists busily sorting and cataloguing occult literature, which the SD Main Office and Amt VII library had been collecting. Suddenly, that section of the library assumed a major prominence, and a top- secret project was launched on its basis—another important example of Nazi preoccupation with the occult. 

Himmler saw the SS as a kind of reimagining of the of the chivalric Teutonic Order, who were originally founded  in 1190, much like the Templars, to protect crusading pilgrims to the Holy Land.

Wewelsburg castle in Germany

He came to the town of Buren in the Westphalia region of western Germany in 1934, and took over the imposing castle of Wewelsburg. The castle was to become the center of a college for new SS officers and Himmler’s own elite Knightly Order. The castle became the place of initiation of his new order and the new spiritual center of the Nazi paganism that was based on Germanic legends. Ahnenerbe’s headquarters were based in Wewelsburg Castle.

Himmler planned very big. His goal was to make the surrounding village a complete SS colony, only for members of the SS and their families. In 1939, a concentration camp was established to provide 3,900 prisoners to work on the project. More than 1,200 were worked or starved to death building Himmler’s dream.

Himmler saw Wewelsburg as his own private Camelot which, of course, needed a Round Table for its knights. In the north tower, a round chamber was constructed, with a sunken area in the floor and a round, oak table.

There were just twelve seats around it, for the top dozen officers of the SS. In the domed ceiling a stylized, golden swastika set in stone can still be seen today, modified with the symbol of the SS at each corner. A different subterranean round chamber immediately below it was to be a crypt for the ashes of all dead SS members, complete with an eternal flame. Another one of Himmler’s goals was to find the Holy Grail, and a special room in the castle was set aside for the Grail when it was found.

The Nazis went to great lengths to engineer an elaborate explanation that Jesus was descended from Jacob, who, they said, was not Jewish at all, but an Aryan. Another part of Ahnenerbe’s mission was to prove the origin of the Aryans, and they even sent archeological expeditions to India, Tibet to seek evidence of the earliest appearance of their “Master Race”.

As a footnote to this post, I came across a brief account of Freemasonry in Norway under the Occupation, and especially about the grand lodge building in Oslo. From Freemasonry Under The Nazis by David Lewis, published in 2012:

When Norway was invaded in 1940 the Masonic temple in Oslo was converted to an army barracks and the order dissolved. Major Vidkun Quisling, the Nazi collaborator, had Freemasonry as point no. 1 for action on his agenda and emptied Masonic buildings and destroyed some of them. The main Temple in Oslo was converted to officers’ quarters but, according to one brother who visited it recently, amazingly it was not vandalised -- the only one in Europe known to have been left untouched by the Nazis. A number of masons were murdered. When he was tried after the war his trial, ironically, took place in a former Masonic temple before he was convicted and shot. 

“I was personally involved in identifying some of the books. Many of them belonged to the central Norwegian Order of Freemasons library in Oslo,” Bjørn Helge Horrisland, a Norwegian Freemason historian, told VG.