Nazi archaeology

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Nazi archaeology was a movement in pseudoarchaeology, directed and funded by leaders of Nazi Germany such as Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler, that sought material evidence for a prehistoric Aryan master race in the archaeological record of Germany and Europe. Drawing on the ethnocentric theories of the philologist Gustaf Kossinna, its practitioners aimed to show that the Germanic peoples had created an advanced civilization responsible for the major achievements of Western culture. The principal institutions of Nazi archaeology were the Ahnenerbe, founded in 1935 and controlled by Himmler's SS, and the rival Amt Rosenberg under the party ideologist Alfred Rosenberg. Backed by state funding, they organised excavations and expeditions in Germany and abroad and produced films, journals and open-air museums to promote a nationalistic view of the German past. Kossinna's Kulturkreis theory, which equated material culture with ethnicity, was used to justify German territorial claims to Poland...

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