Ahnenerbe

Introduction

As the Nazi party rose to power during the early 1930s, Germans still struggled to appear or act as a unified state. After the nation had experienced the humiliation of the World War I, the Nazi party capitalized on the opportunity to paint Jews as the root of all evils and the collapse of Germany in an effort to unify "pure" Germans. Hitler's claim that pure Germans descended from the sacred Nordic Aryans possessing the knowledge required to create civilization needed supporting evidence. However, given the sheer inaccuracy and myth of this claim, scholars could not produce any corroborating material evidence. In response to this failure, The Deutsches Ahnenerbe—Studiengesellschaft für Geistesurgeschichte (German Ancestral Heritage – Society for the Study of the History of Primeval Ideas), later shortened to simply Deutsches Ahnenerbe (Ancestral Heritage Society) was founded in 1935 under the direction of Heinrich Himmler. Over the course of the 1930s, the Ahnenerbe researchers "devoted themselves to distorting the truth and churning out carefully tailored evidence to support the racial ideas of Adolf Hitler." The organization became the scholarly mechanism for which Himmler could indulge his obsession with "unveil[ing] a new portrait of the ancient world, one in which Aryans would be seen coining civilization and bringing light to inferior to races." The Ahnenerbe was eventually incorporated into the Excavations Department of the Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) in 1938 as a tool dedicated to the scientific and archaeological research proving the superiority of the Aryan Race. The organization had three major overarching goals while it was in operation :

• To study the space, ideas, and achievements of the Indo-Germanic peoples.
• To bring the research findings to life and present them to the German people.
• To encourage every German to get involved in the process.

At its height, the organization was comprised of a wide range of professionals from archaeologists to botanists; however, the dominant pseudo-archaeological narrative situated itself around territory, religion, and race. Himmler utilized the Ahnenerbe and its consequent activities to assist in the justifying the military conquests and war crimes against Jews during World War II.

Context

Aryan Race Myth

While most commonly associated with Nazis and the Holocaust, the idea of a blond hair, blue-eyed Aryan race originates much earlier with Helena Blavatsky. Blavatsky founded the Theosophical Society in 1875 and published her book The Secret Doctrine in 1888 in which she detailed 7 stages of development of the human race otherwise known as the root races. "Aryan" is referred to as the 5th root race from roughly 100,000 years ago. Blavatsky claimed that Aryans were the first humans that were clean in spirit with higher levels of intellect. Aryans had supposedly stopped the "downward arc of involution" of the first four root races and kickstarted the beginnings of true civilization.

Heinrich Himmler

Often cited as the mastermind of the Holocaust and the Final Solution, Himmler was fascinated and heavily influenced by Blavatsky. Himmler was convinced that Germans were the descendants of the mythical Aryan race and German lands were the true cradle of civilization. He became determined to "unearth the glories of Aryan prehistory" as a means of strengthening not only Nazi power but collective German nationalism. Himmler considered himself "not as the fantasist he was but as a patron of science" which is why he used his power as head of the SS to declare the work of the Ahnenerbe essential. Himmler wanted to return to the pagan and farming lifestyle of the past German glory years. He felt the modern teachings of equality was causing the decay of Germans.

Structure and Expansion

Prior to combining with the Excavations Department, the Ahnenerbe primarily focused on studying "ancient texts, rock engravings, and folklore" with a relatively small number of employees. Once the organization became part of the SS, Himmler made clear the importance of the organization by housing it in one of Berlin's wealthiest neighborhoods. By 1939, the Ahnenerbe rapdily expanded to 137 German scholars and scientists including but not limited to "archaeologists, anthropologists, ethnologists, classicists, orientalists, runologists, biologists, musiclogists, philologists, geologists, zoologists, botanists, linguists, folklorists, geneticists, astronomers, doctors, and historians." The wide range of professionals working to for Himmler created a bubbling issue of financing the branch.

Deconstructing the Narrative

It is not an overly difficult task to point to the actions of the Ahnenerbe and Himmler as a vital piece of the machine that perpetrated not only mass genocide but brutal territorial conquests. The organization was complicit in providing "evidence" supporting Himmler's fantastical and mythical beliefs of Aryan domination over other races. Deconstructing the narrative of racist, anti-archaeological, and ethnic violence perpetrated by the activities and principles of the Ahnenerbe is not an extensive project yet still a necessary one.

Legacy

While the Ahnenerbe, itself, has been dead for several decades, its message and tactics have remained a strong fuel for white nationalists and neo-Nazis.