He claimed that Germans were descended from an Aryan race which, in contrast to established academic understandings, had invented most major developments in human history, such as agriculture, art, and writing.

Nazi propaganda also cited Ahnenerbe claims that archaeological evidence indicated that the Aryan race had historically resided in eastern Europe to justify German expansion there.

Numerous members escaped Allied denazification policies and remained active in West Germany's archaeological establishment in the postwar era, which stifled scholarly research into the Ahnenerbe until German reunification in 1990.

He believed that in prehistory, the Aryan race had been responsible for all significant developments in human culture, including agriculture, architecture, music, literature, and the visual arts.

[3] The destroyers of culture, in Hitler's view, were the Jews, whom he regarded not as a genetically diverse population sharing certain ethno-cultural and religious traits—as they were then widely recognized—but as a unified, biologically distinct race.

[9] In believing in the existence of a "Nordic" racial type which was the purest survival of the ancient Aryans, Himmler was influenced by the Nordicist ideas of Hans F. K. Günther (1891–1968), which had been popular in German nationalist circles over the preceding decades.

[15] Himmler, who was newly appointed as the police chief of Munich, ordered the arrests of those he regarded as a threat to the Nazis—including journalists, labour organisers, Jewish community leaders, socialists, and communists—and their incarceration in Dachau concentration camp.

It employed scholars from a wide range of academic fields, including archaeology, anthropology, ethnology, folkloristics, runology, Classics, history, musicology, philology, biology, zoology, botany, astronomy, and medicine.

Himmler believed that scholars active in all of these different fields would piece together a view of the past that would revolutionise established interpretations; in his words, it would represent "hundreds of thousands of little mosaic stones, which portray the true picture of the origins of the world."

Together they established an organization called the "German Ancestral Heritage—Society for the Study of the History of Primeval Ideas" (Deutsches Ahnenerbe—Studiengesellschaft für Geistesurgeschichte), shortened to its better-known form in 1937.

The event's success contributed to the trend that archaeologists were increasingly turning to the Ahnenerbe and away from Alfred Rosenberg's rival Reichsbund für Deutsche Vorgeschichte [de].

Under Jankuhn's direction four more archaeological departments were set up: in April 1938 the Forschungsstätte für naturwissenschaftliche Vorgeschichte (a laboratory for analyzing pollen) was established at Dahlem under the leadership of Rudolf Schütrumpf [de].

[42] Despite finding a cave which the Ahnenerbe-led expedition team claimed was the location of the mystic place of worship, known as the hof, it would be proven that the site was in fact uninhabited before the 18th century.

[32][page needed] On August 4, 1936, the expedition set off on a three-month trip, starting at the German island of Rügen, then continuing to Backa, the first recorded rock-art site in Sweden.

[45] In 1938, Franz Altheim and his research partner Erika Trautmann requested the Ahnenerbe sponsor their expedition from Central Europe through Western Asia to study an internal power struggle of the Roman Empire, which they believed was fought between the Nordic and Semitic peoples.

Eager to credit the vast success of the Roman Empire to people of a Nordic background, the Ahnenerbe agreed to match the 4,000 ℛ︁ℳ︁ put forward by Hermann Göring, an old friend of Trautmann's.

[32][page needed] In August 1938, after spending a few days traveling through remote hills searching for ruins of Dacian kingdoms, the two researchers arrived at their first major stop in Bucharest, the capital of Romania.

Through Baghdad, the team went north to Assur where they met Sheikh Adjil el Yawar, a leader of the Shammar Bedouin tribe and commander of the northern Camel Corps.

[50] Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) Standartenführer Franz Six oversaw SS-Untersturmführer Peter Paulsen [de], who was commanding a small team that entered Kraków to obtain the 15th-century Veit Stoss altar.

During the looting, Hans Frank, the head of the German General Government in occupied Poland, issued an order dated November 22, 1939 prohibiting the “unapproved export” of Polish items.

Paulsen obeyed the order, but his colleague Hans Schleif arranged for five freightcars of loot from the Warsaw Archaeological Museum[51] to be shipped to Poznań, which was outside Frank's control.

[54] Traveling with the 5th SS Panzer, Jankuhn's team eventually reached Maykop, where they received a message from Sievers that Himmler wanted an investigation of Mangup Kale, an ancient mountain fortress.

The team would consist of 20 scientists, who would excavate for a year and also explore Lake Titicaca, and take aerial photographs of ancient Incan roads they believed had Nordic roots.

Unable to afford the cost of erecting new scaffolds, Wüst proposed that he, his wife, an amanuensis, an Iranian student (Davud Monshizadeh), a photographer and an experienced mountaineer be sent with a balloon-mounted camera.

Bruno Schweizer had already traveled to Iceland three times in 1938 when he proposed an Ahnenerbe expedition with seven others to the country in order to learn about their ancient farming practices and architecture, record folksongs and dances, and also collect soil samples for pollen analysis.

The final piece of the puzzle fell into place after Hitler read a work by Alfred Frauenfeld which suggested resettling inhabitants of South Tyrol, believed by some to be descendants of the Goths, to Crimea.

Starting on October 10, 1942, Himmler's troops deported 10,623 Ukrainians from the area in cattle cars before bringing in trains of ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) from northern Ukraine.

He applied for and received permission from Himmler to requisition camp prisoners to place in vacuum chambers to simulate the high altitude conditions that pilots might face.

Walter Greite rose to leadership of the Ahnenerbe's Applied Nature Studies division in January 1939, and began taking detailed measurements of 2,000 Jews at the Vienna emigration office—but scientists were unable to use the data.

[67] Many scholars had likely been dissuaded from exploring the subject because ex-Ahnenerbe members held prominent academic positions in West Germany and did not want younger historians or archaeologists investigating their links with the SS.