Buzz
The Nazis were fixated on their peculiar racial ideologies and determined to manipulate archaeological science to validate the idea of an ancient race of pure Aryan superhumans. In the 1930s, two key groups focused on Nazi pseudoarchaeology: the SS Ahnenerbe, led by Heinrich Himmler, and the Amt Rosenberg, an academic Nazi Party organization headed by Alfred Rosenberg. These factions fought for control, with the Ahnenerbe ultimately prevailing, though both conducted some outrageous expeditions. Recently, we discussed the unusual expedition by the SS to Tibet in search of the legendary Aryan race. Here are 10 additional stories of archaeology gone awry.
10. Tiwanaku
SS officer Edmund Kiss spent time in Bolivia during the 1920s, forming a friendship with Austrian explorer and rubber plantation owner Arthur Posnansky. Posnansky was involved in excavating the ancient city of Tiwanaku, located in the Altiplano region, known for its massive stone blocks and intricate carvings. He despised the local population and, like Kiss, was unwilling to believe that the indigenous Aymara people built the city. Kiss developed a far-fetched theory suggesting the city was constructed by Nordic Atlanteans a million years ago, who conquered the local inhabitants before creating the impressive city. These theories were embraced by the European-descended Creole minority in Bolivia, who used the idea of Atlantis to justify their racial control over the country.
Kiss was partially influenced by the ideas of Bolivian scholar Belisario Diaz Romero, who proposed that there were three human species—Homo niger from Africa, Homo atlaicus from Asia, and Homo atlanticus, a white Aryan race that originated from Atlantis. For a year, Kiss wandered the ruins of Tiwanaku, examining the elongated skulls of the ancient Tiwanakans and questioning whether they were artificially altered or evidence of a superior Aryan race.
In Germany, Kiss’s theories were published in magazines as scientific fact. He also promoted his ideas through a series of science-fiction novels. These stories featured an ancient Nordic elite, the Asen, led by the eugenicist Baldur Wieborg of Thule, who clashed with a threatening Slavic underclass. The Asen were depicted as migrating to the Andes to subjugate the local people and ultimately returning to their Arctic homeland under blue and white swastika banners, only to be forced by climate change to relocate to the Mediterranean and establish the Hellenic civilization.
Kiss’s theories captivated Himmler, who invited him to contribute to Ahnenerbe-sponsored journals and supported an extensive expedition to the Andes. Kiss spent 1938–39 assembling a team for the journey, but it was ultimately delayed by the onset of World War II. After the war, Kiss was captured and initially imprisoned as a war criminal, regarded as a “major offender” during the denazification process. Later, his status was reduced to “fellow traveler” due to his archaeological studies.
9. Grove Of The Saxons
Heinrich Himmler not only sought to uncover legendary Aryan history but sometimes aimed to recreate it. Himmler believed that the Grove of the Saxons, located by the Aller River near Verden in Saxony, was the site of a massacre in AD 782, where Charlemagne supposedly killed 4,500 Saxons for refusing to convert to Christianity. There is debate over whether this massacre truly occurred or if it was a result of a translation mistake, depending on whether the Latin text reads
Landscape architect Wilhelm Hubotter, who had purchased the land from seven local farmers, was tasked with designing the Grove. The layout consisted of a large, cleared oval encircled by a 6-meter-wide (20 ft) pathway and bordered by 4,500 irregular stones, which were said to represent the fallen Saxons. Native shrubs such as wild roses, alder, and dogwood were planted around the walkway, while the interior was left as grazing land. At the center stood the supposed thingstead, which included two “leader’s pulpits” flanked by beech trees, and a council ring made of boulders around a campfire. The site was a floodplain for the Aller River, which, despite damming efforts, flooded the Grove repeatedly over the years—a phenomenon some saw as symbolic of the struggles of Nazi Germany.
The ideological significance of the Grove waned when Charlemagne was later restored to greatness by the Nazis for his role in establishing an early Germanic Reich. Despite his ties to Himmler, Hubotter would go on to help design the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp Memorial, dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust.
8. Karelia
Yrjo von Gronhagen, a Finnish noble, was captivated by the enigmatic Karelia region, which lies between Finland and Russia. His fascination began after reading The Kalevala (The Land of Heroes), a 19th-century work by country doctor Elias Lönnrot. Lönnrot had speculated that the songs of Karelia were remnants of an ancient northern epic, lost to time. He had spent years traversing the region, on foot and by boat, trying to piece together this epic. Among the most popular characters in the story was Väinämöinen, a powerful sorcerer who could transform the barren land into a paradise, heal the Sun, banish pestilence, and perform many other magical feats.
When Gronhagen published an article about The Kalevala in a Frankfurt newspaper, it caught the attention of Himmler, who was keen on proving the superiority of the Aryan race through the analysis of ancient Germanic myths and Norse eddas. Gronhagen, however, was determined to debunk theories suggesting that the Finns were descended from Mongols or Hungarians, a belief stemming from the fact that the Finnish language is not related to Germanic languages. After arranging a meeting between Gronhagen and Karl-Maria Wiligut, a madman who claimed to channel ancient Germanic spirits, Himmler offered Gronhagen a position with the Ahnenerbe. His task was to conduct research on folklore at the Finnish Literature Society in Helsinki, preparing for fieldwork and gathering insights into ancient Aryan religious practices that Himmler intended to use to replace Christianity.
In 1936, Himmler gave Gronhagen permission to embark on an expedition to Karelia to photograph witches and sorcerers, as well as to record their songs and incantations. Gronhagen brought along an illustrator, anticipating that the elderly sorcerers might be reluctant to be photographed, and Dr. Fritz Bose, a Nazi “expert” on music and race. Bose brought with him a sophisticated piece of recording technology, the magnetophone, an early version of the modern tape recorder. The eclectic team of pseudoscientists spent the summer traveling from one Karelian village to another, interviewing elderly locals they believed to possess magical abilities, and recording their songs and performances on the traditional kantele zither.
In one village, a 92-year-old witch named Miron-Aku was discovered picking mushrooms. She locked eyes with Gronhagen and said, “You came to me in my sleep and wanted to take away my secrets. Since then, I have been ill and will soon die. What do you want from me?” Over several visits to her hut, she offered them a bitter tea brewed from local plants, spoke of the old god worshiped before Christianity arrived, and claimed to be able to summon ancestral spirits to foretell the future. She became distressed when Dr. Bose played back a recording of her ritual and vowed never to practice magic again.
Eventually, the team collected over 100 songs, including lullabies, work songs, patriotic anthems, and songs of mourning, which they believed demonstrated the mystical power of saunas. Himmler was thrilled with the findings and appointed young Gronhagen as head of the Ahnenerbe’s Indo-Germanic-Finnish Studies department. Meanwhile, in Finland, he was regarded by intellectuals as a dangerous fraud who was manipulating and falsifying Finnish folklore and history for the Nazi agenda.
7. Crimea
During the German occupation of Crimea, the invading forces quickly secured cultural relics, a task that was often easily accomplished through intimidation or bartering with the subdued local population. One SS officer reported to Himmler about successfully purchasing antiques, including agate necklaces, bronze figurines, and pearls, from the widow of a deceased Soviet archaeologist in exchange for just 8 kilograms (18 lbs) of millet. The Ahnenerbe sought to outmaneuver the Rosenberg group by taking charge of museum collections and archaeological discoveries. The Nazis planned for Crimea to be resettled by Germanic immigrants after the Slavic population was displaced, and they sought evidence of an ancient Germanic presence on the peninsula to justify this resettlement. Professor Herbert Jankuhn was dispatched to the region to uncover proof of this Gothic empire, which was his area of expertise.
Himmler authorized the formation of a special task force, Sonderkommando Jankuhn, to search southern Russia for archaeological evidence and cultural artifacts linked to a Russian Gothic empire supposedly established by Germanic Vikings. This team traversed Ukraine, southern Russia, and the Caucasus, visiting museums and plundering art collections. Jankuhn was fixated on uncovering a racial connection to his Gothic theories. Among his notes was a photograph of a Ukrainian child with the annotation: “Nina, blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl.” Fieldwork became more challenging as World War II progressed in 1943. Jankuhn returned to his professorship, but was later recruited as a military intelligence officer with the Fourth SS Panzer Corps. After the war, he surrendered to American forces in May 1945. In interviews in the 1960s, Jankuhn minimized his role in the looting of Ukrainian artifacts, though his involvement remains a historical fact.
6. Behistun Inscription
The Nazis believed that the ancient Persian empire had been created by ancient Aryans. In 1922, Hans Friedrich Karl Gunther, a professor of social anthropology, published a book asserting that the Persian empire was a nordrassische Schopfung, or “northern racial creation,” originating in the North and spreading through Asia around 2000 BC. Meanwhile, his colleague Gerhard Heberer claimed to have evidence that the Aryans first emerged in central Germany. Aryan theory was largely championed by Walter Wust, professor of the “Seminar for Indo-Germanic Studies,” later renamed the “Seminar for Aryan Linguistic and Cultural Studies.” Wust argued that the ancient Persians were indeed Aryans but had lost their racial superiority through mixing, resulting in degeneration and “denordification.” He believed, however, that under Reza Khan’s leadership, there was hope for a renewal.
Wust had garnered the attention of Himmler due to his theories that the ancient Sanskrit Rig Veda text offered evidence of a Nordic race that had spread from Europe to colonize Iran, Afghanistan, and northern India in ancient times. In 1937, Himmler appointed Wust to lead the Ahnenerbe, where he worked to marginalize individuals he considered eccentric, like Wiligut, and newcomers such as Gronhagen. Wust had aspirations of organizing an expedition to Iran to study the Behistun (or Bisutun) Inscription, located in Kermanshah province. The inscription, carved between 522–486 BC, details the life and ancestry of the Achaemenid emperor Darius I, also known as Darius the Great, who identified himself as an Aryan.
The inscription was carved into a cliff face using scaffolding, a method too expensive for Wust to replicate. As an alternative, he proposed sending himself, his Iranian student wife, a photographer, and an experienced mountaineer by balloon to capture photographs of the inscription. However, with the onset of World War II, the plan was permanently abandoned.
5. Spain And The Canary Islands
In 1939, Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco appointed his friend, archaeologist Julio Martinez Santa Olalla, as the commissioner-general for archaeological excavations at the Spanish Ministry of National Education and Fine Arts. This move established a connection with the Ahnenerbe, with plans to conduct archaeological surveys across Spain and the Canary Islands to uncover evidence of an ancient Aryan civilization. The Nazis had long held an interest in Spain, with several German archaeologists visiting the northern and northeastern regions of the Iberian Peninsula to trace hill shelters and cave paintings. The Spanish fascists sought to create their own version of the Ahnenerbe, one that was entirely dependent on Falange, replacing the existing system run by the General Directorate of Fine Arts and the Ministry of National Education.
The first significant collaboration between German and Spanish archaeologists during this era took place with the excavation of the Visigothic necropolis at Castiltierra, where numerous artifacts were transferred to Germany. The SS had long been intrigued by the Canary Islands, a fascination that dated back to the early years of the Ahnenerbe, with Herman Wirth, the first head of the organization, believing the islands were remnants of Atlantis. It was proposed that the original inhabitants of the Canaries were pure Aryan Cro-Magnons who had preserved an untainted lineage until the 15th century. Ahnenerbe researcher Otto Huth had planned an expedition to the islands in 1939 to investigate the local rituals and religious practices, hoping to analyze them as a reflection of ancient Aryan religions. However, this project was indefinitely postponed due to the outbreak of war.
During the conflict, Martinez Santa Olalla provided information gathered by Spanish archaeologists to the Germans and delivered several lectures within the country. He leveraged his relationship with Himmler to further his own professional interests, which caused tension with other Spanish archaeologists. Santa Olalla maintained his personal, professional, and academic ties to the Ahnenerbe throughout the war and remained an influential figure until he was removed from his position by conservative forces in the 1950s.
4. The Pillaging Of Poland And South Tyrol
As the German invasion of Poland loomed, an Ahnenerbe official named Wolfram Sievers presented Himmler with a proposal to assume responsibility for the ‘protection measures of prehistoric monuments in Poland.’ Previously, this task had been handled by art-protection (Kunstschutz) units within the German army, but the SS Ahnenerbe showed greater zeal for the project, aiming to seize Poland’s artistic and cultural treasures. Himmler appointed Sievers, along with a Nazi-affiliated academic, Heinrich Harmjanz, to lead the GTO, a unit focused on expropriating Polish property. Before the war, it’s believed that the Germans had used art historians as spies to gather intelligence on Polish artworks, and the GTO enlisted two ancient-history professors to create a detailed list of museums, prehistoric items, and art collections across Poland.
One of the teams assigned to secure Polish artworks was Sonderkommando Paulsen, led by Gestapo Untersturmführer Peter Paulsen. Their greatest achievement was recovering the altarpiece from the Church of Maria in Krakow, a masterpiece by 15th-century German artist Veit Stoss, considered cultural property of the Reich. The Polish had disassembled and dispersed pieces of the altar, but Sonderkommando Paulsen managed to locate all the fragments and had the altar reassembled in Berlin, where it was placed in the vault of the Reichsbank.
Shortly thereafter, Sievers was tasked with organizing a kulturkommission in the German-occupied South Tyrol region, which had been ceded to Mussolini’s Italy. The aim was to eliminate any ‘Germanic’ cultural and spiritual artifacts before the German population was repatriated eastward. In addition to obscure studies of folklore, the group’s efforts were consistently hindered by disputes with the Italians over the racial heritage of many of the cultural items.
3. The Holy Grail
The Nazi fascination with the Holy Grail might sound like something out of an Indiana Jones film, but in fact, it was grounded in real events. Otto Rahn, a Nazi scholar of the Middle Ages, was convinced that the Grail was a treasure once protected by the Cathars, before they were wiped out during the Albigensian Crusade. He believed that the Cathars were descendants of the Spanish Visigoths and that their religion fundamentally rejected Judaism. Rahn thought the 13th-century epic *Parsifal* contained the secret to locating the Grail, which, according to him, had been secretly removed from the Cathar fortress of Montsegur Castle by three Catholic knights who concealed it in a Hessian bag.
During the summer of 1931, Rahn spent time exploring the caves beneath Montsegur, which the Cathars used as an underground cathedral. His experiences led to the publication of a book called *Crusade Against the Grail*, which brought him both fame and the attention of Himmler. After receiving a mysterious telegram offering him 1,000 reichsmarks to write a sequel, along with an address in Berlin, Rahn visited 7 Prinz Albrechtstrasse, where he met Heinrich Himmler in person. Himmler, an admirer of Rahn’s work, urged him to join the SS and fully supported his quest for the Grail, despite Rahn not being a member of the Ahnenerbe. Rahn’s sequel, *Lucifer’s Court: A Heretic’s Journey in Search of the Light Bringer*, was filled with dense prose and a palpable sense of desperation. Even with SS resources at his disposal, Rahn was making little progress in his search.
Rahn faced other challenges as well—he wasn’t truly anti-Semitic, and he may have even been Jewish himself. He was appalled to discover that anti-Semitic content had been inserted into his book without his approval. Additionally, Rahn’s homosexuality led to his arrest in 1937 for engaging in homosexual activity while intoxicated. His punishment was to serve as a prison guard at Dachau concentration camp for three months, where he witnessed horrific scenes. Moving in anti-Nazi circles, Rahn eventually resigned from the SS and was rumored to have connections with British intelligence. Himmler, enraged by Rahn’s inability to find the Holy Grail, decided that Rahn had to be eliminated. Rather than face assassination, Rahn chose to take his own life. On a cold evening in March 1939, Otto Rahn drove to the snow-covered Tyrol mountains, where he lay down to die in a place he had always loved. The next day, he was found *frozen to death*.
2. Greece
During the German occupation of Greece, Nazi archaeologists looted museums and carried out unauthorized excavations, while occupying forces vandalized statues and destroyed other priceless artifacts. The Germans installed anti-aircraft batteries in the Parthenon, used the Acropolis’ monumental gateway as a latrine, and transformed the Museum of Livadia into a bicycle repair shop.
The Ahnenerbe is believed to have had a presence in Greece as well, with Himmler reportedly becoming captivated by tales of caves in southern Peloponnesus that supposedly extended deep underground, reaching as far as Berlin. Himmler theorized that these ancient tunnels were used by the Aryans during their migration southward to escape a cataclysmic ice age, ultimately founding Hellenic civilization. It is believed that Hans Reinerth led an expedition to explore these caves, known as the Gates of Hades by the Greeks, as they were thought to lead to the underworld. However, this may have been nothing more than a rumor, as Reinerth was *not a member* of the Ahnenerbe.
What is definitively known is that an archaeological team from the Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce arrived in Thessaly in 1941 to excavate a Stone Age settlement located between the cities of Volos and Larissa, aiming to establish a Germanic foundation for ancient Greek civilization. Items such as vessels, painted ceramics, stone axes, blades, and flint tools were packed into boxes and sent back to Germany, where the Nazis congratulated themselves on supposedly *“proving” the Aryan heritage* of ancient Greece. For years, many of these finds remained stored at the Wilhelm University in Berlin, wrapped in copies of the *Volkischer Beobachter* newspaper, before finally being *returned to Greece* in the 1990s.
1. Scandinavia
In 1936, the eccentric Dutch prehistorian and head of the Ahnenerbe at the time, Herman Wirth, presented Himmler with a slide show showcasing his theory that petroglyphs discovered in southern Sweden were evidence of a 12,000-year-old language, intertwined with ideas about the ancient Aryans. Intrigued by this theory, Himmler approved the first Ahnenerbe expedition abroad, which traveled to the Swedish island of Bohuslan to create casts of the rock carvings.
Although Wirth managed to assemble the world’s most significant collection of ancient Norse carvings, his carelessness was evident in the process of making the plaster casts. He often damaged engravings or failed to clean them properly afterward, leaving them covered with plaster remnants. Many of these casts were over 3 meters (10 ft) long and weighed several hundred kilograms, but the Ahnenerbe team persevered and transported them despite their cumbersome size. After the war, Wirth was allowed to continue his work until the Swedish government grew weary of his negligence and *permanently banned him* from cleaning, drawing, casting, or altering any rock art in Sweden in any way.
The Ahnenerbe was also active in Norway, Denmark, and Iceland during the 1930s, with the aim of using archaeology to convince Scandinavians of their connection to a great Germanic race and reduce opposition to Nazi control. SS Ahnenerbe members like Walter Wust and Otto Huth frequently gave speeches to Norwegian students, attempting to persuade them of their racial origins and encourage them to join the National Socialist cause. These efforts were *usually unsuccessful*. Meanwhile, Herbert Jankuhn played a key role in the excavation at Haithabu in Schleswig-Holstein, near the Danish border. His goal was to prove that the ancient megalith builders and the “stone axe people” of northern Europe were representatives of the *superior Nordic race*.
