Nazi Witch Archive: Himmler's Occult Propaganda Tool

In 1945, a Polish librarian discovered over 30,000 documents from the Hexenkartothek, an archive compiled by Heinrich Himmler's Hexen-Sonderauftrag (Witch-Special Mission) to document medieval and Renaissance witch trials. Himmler believed the archive would prove his theory that the Catholic Church had systematically murdered Germanic women to eradicate pagan religion. The SS research unit, founded in 1935 as part of the Sicherheitsdienst, employed philologists, historians, and jurists who scoured 260 archives across the Reich and beyond, compiling 33,000 file cards. Himmler's interest in witchcraft stemmed from his early Catholic upbringing and later embrace of occultism and völkisch ideology. He viewed witches as embodiments of Germanic racial purity persecuted by a 'Jewish-Catholic' plot. The archive was used to support Nazi propaganda, including Joseph Goebbels' 1934 rebranding of May Day as a celebration of Walpurgis Night. After the war, the Hexenkartothek was held in the Polish National Archive in Poznań. Scholars initially speculated it was a study of torture methods, but later recognized its role in Nazi racial propaganda.