Speculation about National Socialism and Occultism has become part of popular culture since 1960. Aside from several popular documentaries, there are numerous books on the topic, most notably Le Matin des Magiciens (1960) and The Spear of Destiny (1972); The first examples of this literary genre appeared in the occult milieu in France and England in the early 1940s. These books have been discussed by the historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke as "the modern Mythology of Nazi occultism" or "the Nazi Mysteries": The recurring element of this "occult historiography" is the thesis that the Nazis were directed by occult agencies of some sort: black forces, invisible hierarchies, unknown superiors, secret societies or even Satan, who is supposed to have possessed Hitler. Since such an agency "has re