Hitler's Holy Relics: A True Story of Nazi Plunder and the Race to Recover the Crown Jewels of the Holy Roman Empire

Sidney Kirkpatrick

May 2010 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

From Paris to Stalingrad,​ the Nazis systematically plundered all manner of art and antiquities, but the first and most valuable treasures they looted were the Crown Jewels of the Holy Roman Empire—now, bestselling author Sidney Kirkpatrick tells the riveting and never-before-told true story of how an American college professor turned Army sleuth recovered these cherished symbols of Hitler’s Thousand-Year Reich before they could become a rallying point in the creation of a Fourth and equally unholy Reich.

Anticipating the Allied invasion of Nazi Germany, Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler had ordered a top-secret bunker carved deep into the bedrock beneath Nürnberg castle. Inside the well-guarded chamber was a specially constructed vault that held the plundered treasures Hitler valued the most: the Spear of Destiny (reputed to have been used to pierce Christ’s side while he was on the cross) and the Crown Jewels of the Holy Roman Empire, ancient artifacts steeped in medieval mysticism and coveted by world rulers from Charlemagne to Napoleon. But as Allied bombers rained devastation upon Nürnberg and the U.S. Seventh Army prepared to invade the city Hitler called “the soul of the Nazi Party,” five of the most precious relics, all central to the coronation ceremony of a would-be Holy Roman Emperor, vanished from the vault. Who took them? And why? The mystery remained unsolved for months after the war’s end, until the Supreme Allied Commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, ordered Lieutenant Walter Horn, a German-born art historian on leave from U.C. Berkeley, to hunt down the missing treasures.

To accomplish his mission, Horn must revisit the now-rubble-strewn landscape of his youth and delve into the ancient legends and arcane mysticism surrounding the antiquities that Hitler had looted in his quest for world domination. Horn searches for clues in the burnt remains of Himmler’s private castle and follows the trail of neo-Nazi “Teutonic Knights” charged with protecting a vast hidden fortune in plundered gold and other treasure. Along the way, Horn has to confront his own demons: how members of his family and former academic colleagues subverted scholarly research to help legitimize Hitler’s theories of Aryan supremacy and the Master Race. What Horn discovers on his investigative odyssey is so explosive that his final report will remain secret for decades.

Drawing on unpublished interrogation and intelligence reports, as well as on diaries, letters, journals, and interviews in the United States and Germany, Kirkpatrick tells this riveting and disturbing story with cinematic detail and reveals—for the first time—how a failed Vienna art student, obsessed with the occult and dreams of his own grandeur, nearly succeeded in creating a Holy Reich rooted in a twisted reinvention of medieval and Church history.

Ratings and reviews

Kirkpatrick does a praiseworthy job spinning Walter Horn's story searching for missing ancient Crown Jewels. Along with his journey to the eventual conclusion we are treated to background European history of the jewels and their significance. We are also treated to some unanswerable philosophical questions concerning greed, power, egomania, cultism, and human psychology. Within the main thesis is a human suffering sub-thesis and the story of Lt. Horn finding his family. The author does a masterful job of withholding judgement on the larger questions of the war in telling the tale of Lt. Horn's thinking as the Lieutenant seeks answers to why, how, and where the jewels were missing. This reader suspected Mr. Kirkpatrick of spinning a conspiracy theory in that this tale could not be told for this reason or that reason at the time and wondered why now the story can be told. But, the author was stating facts as he knew them and it was the reader's choice to understand it as history. Most of the reasons for the public's lack of knowledge of this story were reasonably explained to this reader's satisfaction. For example Lt. Horn's success being withheld from journalists may have been due to political reasons just prior to Nurnberg trials. Mr. Kirkpatrick did make a comment at this time about the Nazis being progagandist experts. This reader read into that comment that maybe the US occupation forces needed to also spin propaganda. This reader greatly enjoyed this book. The European history told within the Lieutenant's search was a plus to the story of where the jewels were and why they were missing. An editorial reviewer suggested Kirkpatrick made unsubstantiated claims of cult reasons for the missing jewels. This reader read that Lt. Horn, not the author, was thinking along these lines and neither made concrete claims the jewels were missing for Fourth Reich reasons, only conjecture. A more scrutinizing read may be needed by this reader.

I found this book to be many things: a thriller, educational, inspirational and a primer on cultural art related ethics. A bit anti-climatic ending.

Refund

About the author

Sidney Kirkpatrick is an award-winning filmmaker and international bestselling author. His critically acclaimed non-fiction books include A Cast of Killers, Turning the Tide, Lords of Sipan, Edgar Cayce: An American Prophet, and The Revenge of Thomas Eakins. His documentary film, My Father the President, about Theodore Roosevelt as seen through the eyes of his daughter, Ethel Roosevelt Derby, was a winner at the American Film Festival. HBO, the History Channel, the Discovery Channel, and A&E have all featured his work. Biographical profiles of Kirkpatrick have appeared in The New York Times, Time, The New Yorker, and Playboy. He is a graduate of Hampshire College and New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. He lives in Stony Brook, New York.