Deplorable McAllister examines stories of Otto Rahn, the German metaphysicist and member of the Nazi SS (the Schutzstaffel), who conducted a search in the 1930s for the Holy Grail. What is the Holy Grail? That is the cup or vessel that Christ used in the Last Supper.

Rahn served as the inspiration for Indiana Jones, the fictional hero of several adventure movies by Steven Spielberg. Rahn’s search for the Holy Grail took him to the mountaintop of Montsegur high up in the Pyrenees — the mountain range straddling southern France and northern Spain. A group known as the Cathars supposedly had taken the Holy Grail to a grotto somewhere within the mountain. They had a fortress atop Montsegur and held off the French for many decades.

It does not appear Rahn found the Holy Grail. He died an outcast, having quit the SS and been found frozen to death in 1939 on a mountainside in Austria. He had previously been assigned guard duty at the Dachau concentration camp, as punishment for a drunken, homosexual scrape.

Here is the trailer for Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, which transforms Rahn into an American archaeology professor, played by Harrison Ford.

Otto Rahn: Inspiration for Indiana Jones