Nazi archaeology

Nazi archaeology was the movement led by various Nazi leaders, such as Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler, archaeologists and other scholars to research the German past in order to strengthen nationalism.

The search for a strongly nationalistic, Aryan-centric national prehistory began after Germany's loss in World War I in 1918, . At this point, the country faced a severe economic crisis due in part to the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Later on, Hitler was behind the Nazi Party's funding for German pre-historical research. The first influential academic engaging in such research is said to be Gustaf Kossinna. His ideas and theories were picked up by the Nazi organisations Amt Rosenberg and Ahnenerbe. Presenting Germany as the place where civilisation began, the Nazis added pseudoarchaeology as part of its extensive propagandizing of the German people.

The Ahnenerbe Organisation, formally the Deutsches Ahnenerbe – Studiengesellschaft für Geistesurgeschichte (German Ancestry - Research Society for Ancient Intellectual History ) was an organisation started as the Research Institute for the Prehistory of Mind and was connected to the SS in 1935 by Walther Darre. In 1936 it was attached to Hitler’s Reichsführer-SS and led by chief of police Heinrich Himmler. By 1937, it was the primary instrument of Nazi archaeology and archaeological propaganda, subsuming smaller organisations like Reinerth's Archaeology Group, and filling its ranks with "investigators". These included people like Herman Wirth, co-founder of the Ahnernerbe, who attempted to prove that Northern Europe was the cradle of Western civilisation. Although it included some real archaeologists with extreme views, such as Hans Reinerth and Oswald Meghin (who became high-ranking party officials due to their cooperation), much of the membership of Ahnenerbe were second-rate archaeologists or untrained researchers, backed up by amateur enthusiasts.

...
Wikipedia