When Austria was annexed to Germany, Adolf Hitler took the lance, fanatically believing that, like the great leaders in history who wielded it, he could become invincible.

Now becoming foolishly attached to the belief that the lance, which had helped Christ conquer the world when it caused blood and water to wash out the sins of men, Hitler believed keeping the lance bestows upon him extreme powers.

One of the earliest documented uses of the Holy Lance is credited to Attila the Hun, who acquired it as he cut his path of destruction through Europe.

Stories, of the power of the Holy Lance have persisted for centuries.

The Holy Lance after being used by the Holy Roman Emperors was put on display 'in the Hofburg Palace in Austria.

Hitler seized the Lance in the 1930's and held on to it until shortly before (or till the day of his death) his death in 1944.

The spear, said to be the lance of the Roman soldier Gaius Cassius can be traced back through history to Constantine the Great, the Roman Emperor who first adopted Christianity in the early 4th century.

This spear is made of iron.

The long tapering point is supported by a wide base with metal flanges depicting the wings of a dove.

Within a central aperture in the blade, a hammer-headed nail (thought to be from the cross) has been secured by a cuff threaded with metal wire.

According to legend the spear passed from the possession of Gais Cassius, the Roman centurion.

Accordingly, the lance was possessed by a series of successful military leaders including Theodosius, Alaric (who was responsible for the sacking of Rome), Charles Martel (who defeated the Moslems in 733 AD), Charlemagne and Frederick Barbarossa.

A legend grew around the lance that whoever possessed it would be able to conquer the world.

Napoleon attempted to obtain the lance after the battle of Austerlitz, but it had been smuggled out of the city prior to the start of the fight and he never got a hold of it.

Barbarossa met the same fate only a few minutes after it slipped out of his hands while he was crossing a stream.

Napoleon attempted to take the Holy Lance following the Battle of Austerlitz, but, unfortunately for him, it had already been smuggled out of Vienna just prior to the battle, and he never secured it.

The spear finally wound up in the possession of the House of the Habsburgs and by 1912 was part of the treasure collection stored in Hofburg Museum.

According to Ravenscroft it was in September of that year, while living in Vienna and working as a watercolor painter, that a young Adolf Hitler visited the Museum and learned of the lance and its reputation.

Dr. Walter Stein, who accompanied Hitler on that visit, remembered, "when we first stood side by side in front of the Spear of Destiny it appeared to me that Hitler was in so deep a condition of trance that he was suffering almost complete sense-denudation and a total lack of self-consciousness."

Hitler later said, "I stood there quietly gazing upon it for several minutes quite oblivious to the scene around me. It seemed to carry some hidden inner meaning which evaded me, a meaning which I felt I inwardly knew yet could not bring to consciousness...I felt as though I myself had held it before in some earlier century of history.

That I myself had once claimed it as my talisman of power and held the destiny of the world in my hands..."

Hitler saw the lance as his mystical connection with generations of conquering Germanic leaders that had come before him.

On March 14, 1938, after he had risen to power as the chancellor of Germany, Hitler annexed the state of Austria and ordered that the spear, along with the rest of the Habsburg collection, be sent to the city of Nuremberg, heart of the Nazi movement.

Historians reveal much of the absolute Satanism which physically possessed Hitler.

After having declared Austria to be a part of the Third Reich the Austrian born Adolf Hitler had the lance loaded on to an armored SS train and taken to Nuremberg on October 13, 1938.

There it remained in St. Catherine's Church for the next 6 years until it was removed to a safer, protective underground vault where Lt. Walter William Horn, army serial number 01326328, of the United States Army took possession of it in the name of the US government at 2:10 PM on April 30, 1945; the same day Adolph Hitler and a woman named Eva Braun were reported to have committed suicide in a bunker outside Berlin.

It is also the same day that Munich was captured by Patch’s 7^th Army unit. Also, on April 30^th, 1945, Germany surrendered ending the Third Reich.

With the fall the Soviet Union, and the opening up of Soviet archives in addition to recent testimony by former Soviet soldiers who actually captured Hitler's Bunker in Berlin, we have finally been able to confirm that at approximately 3:30 PM, just 80 minutes after the United States took possession of the Spear, that Hitler committed suicide by shooting himself in the head.

Today the Holy Lance has been returned to the Hofburg Museum.

Is it authentic? General George S. Patton thought so. He became fascinated by the spear after the war and had its history traced.

Did Hitler really think possessing the spear would help him win the war?

Some claim that a replica of the lance was returned to the Vienna Museum, while the real lance may have been squirrelled-away with other secret Nazi plundered treasure by Himmler and the SS to South America or Antarctica.

From this point on the history of the Holy Lance becomes clouded with rumor and heresy.

The German Nazi heretics called themselves the Knights of the Holy Lance.

There is another story for another time, back to the Knight's Templar.

Before their destruction the Templar's had established the largest banking system 'in Europe, they owned thousands of castles and tracts of land.

Along with this great material wealth the Templar's had also amassed a great spiritual wealth, seeking to acquire all religious artifacts associated with the life and death of Jesus Christ.