At first glance, the large circular room in the basement of Wewelsburg Castle appears to be harmless enough. Smooth, finely cut stones pave the floor. Glistening rock walls arch majestically towards a high vaulted ceiling.
In the centre of the room lies a sunken circular altar with polished steps leading towards a burnt and cracked stone. From here you can see thirteen lanterns flickering on the curved walls. But its only when you look directly upwards that the rooms significance becomes shockingly clear. At the centre of the dome lies a giant swastika.
This room was the central temple of the Satanic cult that created and directed Germanys Nazi party. This so called Vril Society counted many of Hitlers henchmen as members, including Himmler, Bormann, and Hess. Central to the whole cult was Hitler, who they believed to be a psychic medium in contact with powerful forces that would create an all-conquering Aryan nation. Some saw him as the Dark Messiah.
Historians have tended to downplay the occult foundations of Nazism for fear of trivialising its heinous war crimes, but a recent documentary on the Discovery Channel laid bare the untold story of the secretive religion at the heart of fascist Germany. And bizarrely, it is thought to have been based on a 19th Century science fiction novel that predicted flying saucers, an alien race at the centre of the earth, and a mysterious force known as Vril.
Occult myths played a central role in Nazism, says Professor Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, head of the Centre for the Study of Esotericism at Exeter University. When we look at these ideas today, we think of them as crazy, but they were central to the early Nazi Party and through them played a critical role in 20th century history.
The Vril society was dedicated to evil, says historian Michael Fitzgerald. Through their control of the Nazi party they committed the greatest acts of evil in the 20th Century.
Vril occultists worked in complete secrecy doing anything that would promote Aryan power. This ranged from straightforward political assassinations, through to evoking the spirits of the dead, human sacrifice and summoning mysterious energies or Vril - through sexual orgies.
To understand why the Nazi party was so obsessed with the occult and Satanism, you have to travel back to Victorian times. In the late 19th Century, Germany in common with Britain, was obsessed with the occult. It was a time when no self-respecting hostess would dream of holding a dinner party without a séance to round off the evening.