Himmler's bizarre search for the Holy Grail to feature in new documentary series — yes the Indiana Jones movie was based on some truth

Heinrich Himmler's strange search for the Holy Grail is to feature as part of a brand-new documentary series.

You may have watched Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade believing that it’s entirely fictional as Harrison Ford’s swashbuckling hero races with his father (Sean Connery) to get to the Holy Grail before the Nazis.

But actually there's an element of truth to the 1989 movie and one that's explored in Hitler's Treasure Hunters, a new TV series which is likely to air in the US and UK this year (although an exact broadcaster is still to be announced).

As the makers put it: "Following Germany's defeat in World War One, Hitler and his Nazi party needed to raise national morale and unify the masses to further their political ambitions. A galvanizing story for a nation to rally behind was required to cement Germany’s 'supernation' status and racial superiority over its enemies. Enter Heinrich Himmler and his SS treasure-hunting troupe, the Ahnenerbe. A handpicked collection of scientists, occultists, researchers and authors, they scoured the globe for evidence that ancient Aryan’s civilized the world to rewrite Germany’s history and feed Hitler’s racist ideologies."

The six-part series, just announced, will explore how the Ahnenerbe set about their strange quest and will include never-before-seen archive footage. The subject has been explored before both in movies like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and in fiction.

I recently read — and can recommend — "Otto Eckart's Ordeal", which is a work of historical fiction inspired by a real Otto. As the author Niall Edworthy notes, "a young medievalist — Otto Rahn — was dispatched to find the Holy Grail by the Ahnenerbe, a pseudoscientific branch of the SS established in 1935. The Ahnenerbe (meaning 'ancestral heritage') was the ugly brainchild of Henrich Himmler, ever eager to provide evidence of Ayran superiority and validate the perverse racial doctrines of the Nazi party". While the real Otto died in mysterious circumstances on a mountainside in 1939, the fictional Otto has his own adventure in the book.

We will provide an update when we get an official broadcaster for Hitler's Treasure Hunters in the US and UK. You can watch Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade via Disney Plus in the US and channel4.com in the UK.