Digging for Hitler: The Nazi Archaeologists Search for an Aryan Past - Hardcover

David Barrowclough

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1781555001 ISBN 13: 9781781555002

Publisher: Fonthill Media, 2016

Synopsis

During the 1930s, in the build up to the Second World War, the Nazis established a band of specialists, the SS-Ahnenerbe, under the command of Heinrich Himmler and Hermann Wirth. Their aim was nothing less than to prove the superiority of the Aryan race, and with it the unique right of the German people to rule Europe. The occult figured as a key feature in many of these increasingly desperate quack research efforts. Part science, part espionage, and part fantasy. Archaeological expeditions were sent to Iceland, Tibet, Kafiristan, North Africa, Russia, the Far East, Egypt, and even South America and the Arctic. The Nazi Ancestral Heritage Societys chief administrator was Dr Wolfram Sievers, who cruelly conducted medical experiments on prisoners in concentration camps, and was responsible for the looting of historic artefacts considered Germanic for return to Germany. He rewarded those academics that took part with high military office, whilst those academics who contradicted or criticized the SS-Anenerbe were carted off to concentration camps where they faced certain death. This book tells the true history of the real life villains behind the Indiana Jones movies. Sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction!

About this title

About the Author

David Barrowclough is a historian and archaeologist at the University of Cambridge. He has a special interest in the role that archaeology played in supporting Nazi ideology in 1930s Germany, a topic that he has researched extensively. He is author of a number of academic and popular books on archaeology and history and has acted as archaeological consultant for the BBC.

Edition details

• Publisher: Fonthill Media
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1781555001
• ISBN 13: 9781781555002
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256