Nazi occult films

Films that contain Nazi occultism, although this may grade into Nazi superscience or the supernatural where the dividing line is tricky to discern (the latter because the pseudoscience required is so extreme it almost conforms to Clarke's Third Law about science and magic), so it can touch on secret Third Reich bases in Antractica, Nazi UFOs and associated craziness.

Thanks to publications like Morning of the Magicians, there is an undercurrent of suspicion that the Nazis were up to all sorts of occult hi-jinks (beyond the well-known activities of the Ahnenerbe) and these films take that ball and run with it.

In his study of James Herbert's novel The Spear, Nick Freeman looks at the history of our interest in the Nazis, from the relative tame in the post-War years to the lurid in the 60s, with the occult aspects rising in popularity in the 70s:

Nazi occult experimentation may not have offered the same opportunities for pornographers as death camps and military brothels, but this did not mean that its treatment was any less sensational. Works such as Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier’s Le Matin des Magiciens (1960), Trevor Ravenscroft’s The Spear of Destiny (1972), and J. H. Brennan’s still more outlandish Occult Reich (1974) captured the popular imagination. Ravenscroft’s book is still in print, as is its sequel, The Mark of the Beast (1990), and a paperback reprint of Le Matin des Magiciens claimed a million copies had been sold by 1971 alone. All were fixated by supposedly secret or suppressed histories: the 1976 reprint of Brennan’s book boasts that it deals ‘in facts – but facts that orthodox historians ignore.’ Since the appearance of Nicholas Goodrich-Clark’s The Occult Roots of Nazism (1985), such works seem poorly researched and hysterically argued, but they were accorded considerable popular interest in the mid-1970s when Herbert was writing The Spear.

However, he does point out that the Nazi/occult mix can be dated back to Dennis Wheatley's 1941 novel Strange Conflict, the same date as the first film on this list.

References: Nick Freeman "'A decadent appetite for the lurid'?: James Herbert, The Spear and 'Nazi Gothic'"

Further reading: The Occult Roots of Nazism, as mentioned in the quote, this is one of the best researched and takes a level-headed approach to the topic as does Arktos: The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism, and Nazi Survival. Raymond Sickinger's "Hitler and the Occult: The Magical Thinking of Adolf Hitler" is a good quick overview of the debate. Adam Shreve's "'Beunos Noches, Mein Fuhrer': A Look at Nazism in Popular Culture" is a pretty broad look at the influence of the Third Reich on our media. Why the Nazis and the Occult Plotlines in 'The Devil's Rock' Work so Well, a short piece on Nazi occultism in movies and why it is so effective.

See also: My Horrors of War and Nazi zombies/zombie Nazis lists, the latter in particular, as there is nothing Nazi occultists like to more than raise the dead for their nefarious purposes.

Links: TV Tropes have a number of pages that cover this: Those Wacky Nazis, Stupid Jetpack Hitler and most relevantly Ghostapo.

Others: Hardkor '44 still seems to be in the pipeline.

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