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00:00Hollywood loves an iconic villain and there are none better than Hitler's
00:09Nazis but did Indiana Jones's old enemy really plunder the world for ancient
00:15relics as depicted in the famous films the answer is yes spearheaded by Heinrich
00:26Himmler and the SS epic expeditions were mounted by Nazi scientists they called
00:33themselves the Ananurba their weapons lies theft and murder they are
00:46Hitler's treasure hunters
00:56behind every Nazi treasure hunt was one ultimate goal a burning desire of Adolf Hitler himself
01:05they were super villains they were fantastical occult Nazis
01:12to create a German foundation myth that would give him the right to conquer not only Europe
01:19but the world they needed some new unifying ideology by which to organize people who supported them in
01:29order to unify the right mad Nazi scientists like Edmund kiss and Hans Reinhardt wouldn't
01:36just hunt the treasures of history they would manipulate history itself we see Himmler who
01:44is trying to find evidence for all of these fringe scientific beliefs he's also trying to recreate a
01:52heroic history for the ancient Aryan race stealing the symbols and treasures of the world and making
01:59them their own the swastika even if it's been reversed is an ancient Eastern symbol
02:07and ultimately using these twisted myths to justify their own horrific actions they were essentially monsters
02:19so it's not surprising they did monstrous things
02:26Troy Atlantis Tiwanaku ancient cities steeped in legend
02:36heroism war and romance to Adolf Hitler such mythological cities were not only a gold mine of
02:46ancient treasures but a link to a mythic past he could manipulate to create his third Reich we can
02:54see that societies always look to their past for questions that they want to know about their future in Adolf
03:01Hitler's case as much as it was a constructed myth looked much much better than the present that they
03:07were living in and it seemed to justify them taking what they saw as their rightful place in Europe
03:15assembling a crew of Nazi archaeologists and researchers Hitler sets out to pull off the ultimate historical heist
03:23to rewrite the origin story of the German people and lay the groundwork for one of the darkest episodes in human history
03:33to understand how the Nazis began misappropriating history for their own
03:42ends the archaeological discoveries of ancient Troy are telling long before the time of Hitler
03:51when unified Germany was in its infancy jewelry pots silverware bronze weaponry statues were smuggled out of
04:02Turkey by the man who discovered the ancient city German adventurer amateur archaeologist and businessman Heinrich Schliemann
04:11already wealthy beyond measure by the time he was 40 Schliemann dedicated the second half of
04:21his life to amateur archaeology in the pursuit of Troy in the 1870s he traveled to Turkey and using
04:30what's described as explosive and destructive methods excavated large portions of Troy Schliemann had little
04:40affiliation to a burgeoning national socialist class in Germany but one innocuous find at Troy barely even
04:50regarded as treasure at the time would go on to be a symbol of hate and terror for generations and a
04:57beacon of the power of cultural appropriation culture was something that literally was a weapon with
05:08which to defend and construct this narrative of German superiority and this idea of a usable past I think is
05:18is one of the hallmarks actually of most totalitarian systems that have interest in archaeological resources
05:26at Troy Schliemann found swastikas adorning all sorts of pottery
05:35by chance he consulted with an Aryan nationalist to identify the symbol this man Emile Louis Barnouf claimed the swastika was of Aryan origin and adopted it for his nationalist cause
05:41Sixty years later Hitler would use this symbolic treasure to drive home his Aryan master race theory
05:48Conquerors of the entire ancient world
05:50By chance he consulted with an Aryan nationalist to identify the symbol this man Emile Louis Barnouf claimed the swastika was of Aryan origin and adopted it for his nationalist cause
05:56Sixty years later Hitler would use this symbolic treasure to drive home his Aryan master race theory
06:04Conquerors of the entire ancient world
06:11The idea that if you found evidence that purportedly linked any of these sites to ancient Germanic culture
06:19Then it really suggested that this idea of the Aryans as the only race that could be the creator of culture
06:26The swastika Hitler wrote in his book Mein Kampf represented the mission of the struggle for the victory of the Aryan man
06:44Yet even this proud national symbol like so many other treasures was stolen
06:50It's definitely a manufactured symbology there's no question about it
06:53It's an extremely ancient symbol it shows up in all kinds of other cultural contexts
06:58Sometimes it's clockwise sometimes counterclockwise
07:00But it does show up in prehistoric context there are you know kind of swastika like symbols in the Iron Age context
07:08They're basically neutral in that context until they become this symbol of the national socialist terror state
07:16By hijacking the universal swastika the Nazis create an absurd theory
07:22They preach that it was in fact the symbol of Aryan Nordic warriors who gifted it to nations they conquered throughout ancient history
07:31In fact the fact that most people who left Germany had done so to get away from things like Hitler
07:43He sprang his pet theory that every person of German blood no matter where he lived belonged to the Nazi Reich
07:50Germans are descendants of Germans often with no more than a drop of German blood in their veins suddenly learned that they were godlike
08:05In an unsupported twist of logic
08:10The Nazis proposed Aryan ancestors colonized the world claiming they bred with the populations of their conquered territories
08:18To create local elites like the Japanese samurai and Brahmin class of India
08:24The story of the swastika highlights the way Hitler and the Nazis sought out treasures of the ancient world
08:33What was merely a symbol on some pottery in Troy
08:37By chance fell into the hands of an Aryan idealist
08:41And was immediately co-opted to reflect an Aryan dominance over ancient history itself
08:47Despite no evidence that could prove it as fact
08:56The delusion of Nazi theologists knew no bounds
09:00In their eyes, Japanese Shinto was the old authentic heathen religion of Germans
09:08Buddha himself was the progeny of a Nordic couple
09:12This is the man who grabbed, who set the world aflame
09:17With Austrian Anschluss
09:19The Munich Grab of Czechoslovakia
09:26The Nazis were ambitious to say the least
09:29But how could anyone be arrogant enough to take innocuous treasures
09:33Sometimes even just symbols like the swastika
09:36And rewrite history before the world's eyes
09:41Unsurprisingly, the grounds for such fantastical thinking
09:45Had already been set
09:47Even before the rise of Hitler
09:49There was a secret occult group obsessed with grotesque racial theories
10:06The Thule Society
10:10Formed in Munich by conservative German nationalists in 1917
10:15Was bonded in anti-Semitism
10:18Members signed a special blood declaration of faith
10:22Swearing that no Jewish or colored blood flowed through their veins
10:27Like the swastika before it
10:29Even the name Thule was a co-opted symbol of Aryan superiority
10:36A Greek reference to a mythical Nordic ice world
10:40Home of glorious blonde-haired, blue-eyed superhumans
10:48The Thule's predominant belief is that the origins of the German peoples lay in this ice world
10:54The Thule Society included a number of other ideologues and military generals
11:00People like that
11:02Who believed in what was essentially a newly constructed history of Germany
11:08Because every nation needs its founding myths
11:11It needs a heroic history to bring people together
11:14The Thule Society might have been a weird fringe group in pre-Nazi Germany
11:27But under Hitler
11:29It would go on to birth his cultish treasure-hunting troupe
11:33The Annenerbe
11:35The Thule Society and the Annenerbe
11:38That develops out of that
11:39And does in fact provide ideological justification for a lot of the Nazi war crimes
11:46The Thule would tap into a dark little obsession of Hitler's
11:51One that tormented him after his visit with the fascist leader of Italy, Benito Mussolini
11:58And one that would drive his obsession for ancient treasures
12:01Mussolini had built his empire on the sheer grandeur and history of the Roman Empire
12:11He probably even bragged about it
12:16Italy was a sitting duck for an ex-communist named Benito Mussolini in 1922
12:21The lantern-jawed founder of fascism took advantage of the political unrest in Italy after World War I
12:26Hitler already had an inferiority complex with Mussolini
12:31A dictator who had seized fascistic power a decade before him
12:36Even the fascist salute was said to have been based on an ancient Roman custom
12:41But it was the ancient history of Rome
12:44And how Mussolini used that history to fuel his power in Italy
12:48That really grated with Hitler
12:51Because Germany didn't have the same
12:53And this was a problem for Hitler
12:58Because much of the pre-history
13:02And the history of what we now call Germany
13:05Was not full of glorious past battles
13:09Glorious figures, empires, myths and legends
13:14Iron Age Germany was characterized by the Romans as kind of rubbish
13:18If you're basically comparing the contemporary cultures in the Mediterranean with what's happening in Germany
13:26You get a comparison that's not particularly favorable
13:30The only way to get around that then is to effectively claim that the civilizations of Greece and Rome were the result of an invasion from the north
13:37It wasn't based on any facts, of course, but it was the ultimate treasure hunt for Hitler and his team
13:48To find evidence in ancient artifacts that proved great ancient empires like Rome were actually founded by the Nordic ancestors of Germany
13:57And this is what led to these ideas, these efforts, these desperate efforts, really, to try and explain why, for example, Rome was where it was or why writing started in different places
14:12One attempted to go back and sort of see these ancient Aryans as having always in the Nazi ideology potentially migrated to some of these places and planted this culture there
14:27In order to fortify the future by raiding the past, Hitler turned to one of his most senior allies, S.S. Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler
14:42His task? To find proof that Germans were the master race, the true founders of civilization itself
14:49They really wanted to prove the total superiority in military victory, cultural domination, scientific preeminence, that was the point of Aryanism
15:06They were the master race
15:11To complete his task, Himmler assembled the Anna Nurba, an offshoot of the devoutly racist Thule Society
15:19Himmler stole academics, researchers, from German universities and installed them inside the Anna Nurba and compelled them to research the kinds of ideas that obsessed him
15:36During the war, members of the Anna Nurba literally became treasure hunters
15:41They were sent into the conquered territories of the Reich
15:50It was 1935 when Himmler set up his pseudoscientific body called the Anna Nurba
15:57A name which translated to the Ancestral Heritage Society
16:02One way of translating Anna Nurba is the inheritance from the past
16:08That which we have taken from the past to carry into the future
16:11This elite SS unit was comprised of the best and brightest non-Jewish German scholars and scientists
16:21Devoted to proving the Nazis' racial doctrines
16:26They became the most dangerous think tank on earth
16:29So the Anna Nurba, insofar as it started as an office researching Aryan purity
16:38Always contained at its core this preoccupation with the proving and then deploying or operationalizing the superiority of the Aryan race
16:48The Anna Nurba recruited from every field of academia
16:55None more crucial than archaeologists
16:59Archaeological expeditions sponsored by Himmler were sent out across the world
17:04Their orders
17:06Dig, dig, and dig some more
17:09To prove a diabolical doctrine
17:12Retrieve ancient Aryan knowledge
17:15Prove Aryan supremacy
17:17And if they couldn't do that
17:19Steal the relics of other civilizations
17:22And co-opt them as their own
17:24Himmler's motivation to set up such a specialized treasure hunting force
17:32Was inspired by several German archaeologists
17:36Who had already begun searching for evidence of ancient Aryan ancestors
17:41One man in particular would grab Himmler's attention
17:46By claiming Nordic origins in Bolivia of all places
17:50Archaeologists have long recognized that an indigenous Andean people
18:02Forerunners to the Incas
18:04Designed and built the Bolivian city of Tiwanaku
18:10Many of the relics are perfectly preserved
18:13Timeless tributes to the skill and patience of the Indian craftsmen
18:16So what could the Nazis possibly hope to achieve by focusing their treasure hunting efforts
18:29On such a well-established place?
18:35Despite being 10,000 kilometers and one huge ocean away from Germany
18:41The Nazis returned to their modus operandi
18:44Brazenly claiming this ancient civilization was created by the Aryans
18:50They based their ideas on the work of a 1920s fantasist and pseudo-archaeologist
19:03Edmund Kiss
19:05Originally an author
19:07Kiss had strong ties to Nazism in the early 1900s
19:10He was one of the first to link the origins of civilization to Aryan ancestors by writing of the mythical land of Thule
19:21It was Kiss's work that would inspire the racist Thule society
19:26And by extension, Himmler's Anna Nerva
19:29Edmund Kiss was a popular author of the time who had actually gone to Tiwanaku in 1928 or so
19:44And he goes trying to see if he can find any information on world ice theory
19:50Nazis were obsessed with world ice theory
19:55Nazis were obsessed with world ice theory
19:58An unproven idea that the ancient Aryan mega civilization of Atlantis
20:03Was destroyed by giant ice asteroids
20:07Kiss believed Bolivia's Tiwanaku could be a remnant of this fabled lost city
20:12And when he goes to Tiwanaku he makes various observations and one of the things that he thinks he sees on the ruins at Tiwanaku are evidence of Nordic looking peoples
20:26And he had come to the conclusion that the people who had survived the catastrophe of Atlantis had ended up
20:40This was a kind of refuge civilization in the Andes
20:43The Atlantis legend, one of demigods who traced their origins back to Poseidon
20:54Was perfect fodder for Himmler and his Aryan master race theories
21:00It didn't matter what Edmund Kiss's background was
21:03Well, Himmler would get angry at chemists and geologists and physicists who made fun of his theories
21:14Say, well, you're just arrogant and unwilling to question your own beliefs
21:19And then he'd put people in charge
21:22Or Edmund Kiss, who was basically a fantasy writer
21:26He would literally find novelists and fantasy writers
21:28Who believed in Thor and Odin and Frost Giants and say, they believe in world ice theory
21:34So they're now going to be in charge of my Annanerba Institute for Meteorology
21:39Himmler jumped at the chance of furthering the research of Edmund Kiss
21:43Who until now had been working on the idea alone
21:51Now, the reason it was popular among German nationalists
21:56Is that a superior ancient culture had been destroyed
22:02And that its survivors had spread across the world
22:06And seeded all the civilizations of the ancient world
22:11And that fitted with this idea of a superior Aryan or Nordic culture
22:18That meant so much to Himmler and other ideologues of the Third Reich
22:23The smallest German schoolboy is taught that he belongs to a race of supermen
22:28And his primers are carefully prepared and illustrated by the propaganda bureau
22:32To make an indelible impression on young minds
22:35Germans had only recently unified under one new state
22:39They craved a common identity, a common origin
22:43Germany was not an old country as a unified state
22:46Germany didn't exist as a nation state until 1871
22:51So compared to a lot of other nations in Europe, they were kind of still teenagers
22:56And thus it didn't have German myths in the same way that Britain would have with King Arthur
23:04The thing about archaeology is that it provides you with a connection to the deep past
23:08And that gives legitimacy, rightly or wrongly
23:12They felt, wrongly, that the only way to find that powerful common origin
23:18Was to co-opt the history and artifacts of older nations
23:23Because they had no history of their own
23:25Kiss had spent nearly a year in Bolivia studying the ruins in relation to astrology
23:40The skulls of the dead
23:42The art and architecture
23:44And much more
23:46All of it was pseudo-scientific in nature
23:48But it supported his theories of Nordic men representing a special civilization
23:55And because it did, he was welcomed back to Nazi Germany as a genius
24:03Kiss found evidence of ancient writing
24:07Unsurprisingly, because there had been a long tradition of civilizations in Central and South America
24:12But what he couldn't prove was this Aryan link between the ancient writing in Bolivia to the ancient writing systems of Northern Europe
24:26Nazi magazines presented his fantasies as if they were scientifically proven facts
24:32Completely crazy idea
24:37But it convinced Kiss
24:39And Kiss convinced Himmler
24:41No one was more delighted and supportive than Heinrich Himmler
24:46He even had a copy of Kiss's book, The Sungate of Tiwanaku
24:51Bound in leather to present to Adolf Hitler as a Christmas gift
24:55Himmler agreed to mount an expedition to study Tiwanaku
25:01And to prove that this was where the people of Atlantis had ended up
25:06It was going to be the most expensive expedition ever mounted by the Ahn and Urba
25:10Because Himmler was enraptured by the Atlantis myth
25:16Himmler was a committed ideologue
25:20He genuinely believed in this Nordic mythology
25:31He very definitely was attracted by mysticism and sort of what we would consider to be, you know, magical thinking
25:34So he was absolutely the person in that Nazi regime who was going to attempt to establish the truth of these mythologies and these ideas
25:52So German bombers swoop over Polish land
25:55Polish cities and harbors are attacked
25:57Even the capital of Warsaw itself is bombed
25:59Hitler appeared at the front to watch his military might in action
26:06The Fuhrer wanted a ringside seat at Poland's wake
26:08Unfortunately for Kiss, the invasion of Poland and declaration of war in 1939 stalled the follow-up expedition back to Tiwanaku
26:24A father of the racist Thule society and master of pseudoscience
26:31Edmund Kiss would be drafted into the Waffen SS and captured in 1945
26:37Luckily for Himmler, Kiss wasn't the only archaeologist researching the grand origins of conquering Nordic ancestors
26:45Few would delight the zealous Annanerbe bosses more than the golden 1930s archaeological duo of Franz Altheim and Erika Troutman
27:02Franz Altheim and Erika Troutman were not Nazi ideologues
27:08But their research was later utilized by the Nazis to their own ends
27:13And you could argue that they became Nazi sympathizers eventually
27:17Altheim was one of Europe's leading intellectuals
27:21At first, he ignored politics and Nazi ideology
27:25But by the mid-1930s, Altheim realized he could no longer ignore those willing to fund the travel and research he yearned
27:33He sold his soul to the devil and despite his earlier political views signed up to dig on behalf of Himmler and the Annanerbe
27:44I think it would be a mistake to see all of the academics that ended up working for the Annanerbe as
27:50truly signed up Nazis who believed in the myths they were trying to prove
27:56Erika Troutman, on the other hand, had impeccable Nazi credentials
28:02She came from wealth and privilege
28:05Her older brothers attended cadet school with none other than Hermann Göring
28:10And it's said the future Reich Marshal fell in love with the beautiful Troutman
28:14And even asked her to marry him
28:17Erika Troutman herself was very well connected to the Nazi elite
28:21And it was she who introduced Altheim himself to leading Nazis like Göring and Goebbels
28:38But to really gain Nazi support, Altheim and Troutman needed a theory that fed Himmler's racial Aryan fantasies
28:46And they dug deep all the way to the Neanderthals
28:52So France, Altheim and Troutman were fascinated by a rock art site in Italy called Valcomonica
29:02And when Himmler heard about their work, he realized that here was a way of stitching together
29:09His ideas about this Aryan, Nordic origin of civilization and the civilizations of Greece and Rome that obsessed Hitler
29:26Obsessed Hitler
29:31This expedition became one of the most important works of Himmler and his Anunnurba
29:37A chance to finally link Nordic mythology with the first humans on the planet
29:43The expedition aimed to prove that the Neanderthals were, if you like, deeply prehistoric Aryans
29:51Why might they do this? Because if you can establish an Aryan ancestry for Neanderthals
30:00Then anywhere on the planet that you could find Neanderthal remains
30:04You could label it as originally Aryan and thereby justify your expansion across the world to these places
30:11This research was their eureka moment, the whole purpose of the Anunnurba
30:22If they could link Aryan ancestry to the Neanderthals, then it would give them the justification they craved to conquer the world
30:31Because the world originally belonged to them
30:35From the ancient rock carving treasures of Volkemonica, Altheim and Troutman would manufacture the Nordic link so craved by the Nazis
30:46They were basically drawn into the sphere of the Anunnurba
30:52At the same time they were sent on other trips to the Middle East
31:01And it was while they were out there that they became spies
31:05Not just archaeologists, but spies who were reporting back to the SS
31:10The romantic pair became favorites of Hitler
31:18Not only were they spying for him, but their theories could put to rest a problem that had bothered him ever since he met Benito Mussolini
31:27The research provided by Altheim and Troutman would allow him to claim the Roman Empire
31:33Actually traced back to blond-haired migrants from the Nordic-Germanic North
31:40Like many treasure hunts before and after them though, it was classic Nazi fantasy
31:46Despite the aims of Himmler and the best efforts of Altheim and Troutman
31:52They were unable to prove exactly what they were looking for
31:56I mean it was doomed to fail from the beginning, I think there's no doubt
31:59It's pretty clear that there is no archaeological evidence for the kinds of evidence that they're looking for just doesn't exist there
32:18Never letting truth get in their way
32:20The Nazis ran the research as propaganda anyway
32:24And continued funding the expeditions of Altheim and Troutman
32:27They would travel through Central Europe, the Middle East and West Asia for many years
32:34Seeking evidence of a great power struggle in the Roman Empire in the 3rd century AD
32:41While most scholars thought this period was one of class struggles
32:45Altheim and Troutman approached it as being a conflict between peoples and races
32:49One in which Indo-Germanic peoples of the North fought and defeated the Semites of the Orient
32:57Hitler and Himmler delighted in their false findings
33:02Fire! Fire! Fire!
33:08Further expeditions were put on hold when war hit
33:11And the duo were forced to take up spying as their main contribution to the Nazi High Command
33:19Perhaps a sign of the times, they would go on to have very different careers post-war
33:25She was his mistress, but he then found a much younger partner
33:32But they lived together as a sort of ménage a trois
33:35And Erika Troutman would cook for France and his new partner
33:41And in the meantime, he had a thriving academic career
33:56The wild master race theories Altheim and Troutman plundered for Himmler
34:01Were never heard of again
34:04The war might have slowed Ananerba expeditions into ancient territories
34:09But the conflict would give Hitler a chance to search for a new type of treasure
34:14In occupied territories
34:16A treasure very close to home
34:21There are few air prances to and fro on the balcony of Vienna's Imperial Palace
34:26Screaming his challenge
34:2775 million people in one nation
34:30No force on earth can shake us
34:34As Hitler's army smashed their way across Europe
34:41Those that followed them began a treasure hunt that would wage a different kind of war
34:47A war on culture and history
34:50And then behind them you have in many cases the Ananerba
34:53Who's coming to not only steal the cultural artifacts but also to try and draw on these artifacts
35:00To make connections between again ancient Aryan culture and these areas
35:05To again provide this justification for why Germans should now be living in these areas
35:11So you see the conquest, the ethnic cleansing and ultimately genocide
35:15Then June 1940, the sweep across France
35:20Hitler's D-Day after the phony war, the war of waiting
35:24Led by Alfred Rosenberg, the man who was leader of the Nazis while Hitler was in prison in the 1920s
35:32The Rosenberg Task Force sought out more modern treasures
35:38Artworks that represented the culture of their conquered territories
35:43By stealing objects with cultural significance to display in German museums
35:49Hitler was stepping through the playbook of conquerors throughout history
35:53Claiming treasures as a sign of dominance
35:57I think in some ways you have to consider sort of middle management there if you want to call them that
36:03Or you know the top sort of of the middle management
36:06As the driving force behind the utilization of culture
36:10Of weaponizing culture in this particular fashion
36:13To underwrite this murderous regime that they created basically
36:17Rosenberg's task force operated separately to Himmler's Ananerba
36:21Concentrating on looting artworks to prove racial superiority
36:28Their warped sense of righteousness suggested only Aryan artists could create high art
36:35So the Jewish owners must have stolen it
36:39The work of Rosenberg to steal art while not only critical to destroying the culture of their enemies
36:46Was perhaps the biggest treasure of all for Adolf Hitler
36:51Before his turn as dictator Hitler dreamed of being an artist
36:55But was rejected twice from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna
37:00I think what we can learn from his rejection from the Art Academy in Vienna
37:06Is that Hitler is a dabbler
37:09He didn't really have the skill nor did he really attempt to develop the skill
37:13To ultimately make a go of it to get into art school
37:18If there was any doubt to how significant a treasure modern art was to Hitler and his Nazis
37:25It's estimated they stole more than 650,000 pieces in just 12 years
37:32Satisfying the failed artist in Hitler
37:36While completely hijacking the culture of their conquered territories
37:40The work of Rosenberg during his art heist tenure played another significant role in the history of Hitler's treasure hunters
37:51It gave influence and power to fascist archaeologist Hans Reinert
37:57Reinert's mandate the purification and Germanization of the German prehistory
38:04Reinert was venal and threatening in published papers
38:08He basically said anyone who doubted the purity of German ancestry would face the full wrath of the Nazi party
38:17They need some way to create an ideology, an invented tradition to organize the world
38:25And for them border science about race and space and empire and Atlantis
38:33That substitutes for science
38:36The Nazis aren't alone in doing this
38:38But they really epitomize this quasi-cynical, pragmatic and quasi-ideological search
38:44For an alternative history and alternative past that can substitute for the complexities of modernity
38:55It was in occupied Greece in 1941 that Reinert found a way to pander to the great Nazi obsession
39:03That Aryans from the north had brought civilization to the south
39:07He excavated a Neolithic site at Thessaly and found what he claimed was a Megaron
39:18The great hall of ancient Greek and early Mycenaean palaces
39:23Reinert dramatically claimed the so-called Megaron in Thessaly was Nordic-like
39:33Similar to structures from a Neolithic settlement in the Schwaben region of Germany
39:38To the Nazis, these dwellings suggested Nordic migrants
39:43Which illogically meant racial infusion of Aryans into Greece and Rome
39:48The finds from the excavation, including painted and incised pottery, were spirited off to Germany for study
39:58Most research since cast doubt on whether these structures were even Megaron's
40:05But it highlights the continuing Nazi attempt to use pseudo-archaeology
40:10And sometimes outright lies in order to manipulate history
40:14Himmler actually did do that, he clearly felt it was important to try to connect
40:20The mystical side to the ideological program
40:24And for him the archaeological evidence was one way to do that
40:27Like every story of Hitler's treasure hunters
40:30From the swastika to Tiwanaku
40:34To the lost city of Atlantis and beyond
40:37Himmler's Ananurba dabbled in questionable archaeology
40:40In order to prove beliefs they already had
40:45There are three ways that archaeological research was manipulated under Himmler's sort of auspices
40:51One was exaggerating archaeological evidence to make it sort of fit a particular idea
40:57About what, you know, the Germanic people's achievements had been
41:01The other was suppression of evidence, so if, you know, this is the problem with the application of the scientific method
41:06If you do science right, it doesn't necessarily always provide you with the answers that you want
41:12And then the third, and this was the least common but it did happen, was falsifying evidence
41:16Doing that to, you know, that kind of violence to the archaeological record was acceptable
41:21As long as it kind of furthered the overall goals of defending the nation against Jewish Bolshevism
41:29And, and establishing the superiority of the Germanic people
41:34By employing these three methods, Himmler could point to almost any archaeological site in the world
41:41And claim some sort of Nordic ancestry
41:45Thus proclaiming the divine right of Germans to not so much conquer the world
41:50But rather reclaim a world their ancestors once civilized
41:57Here's to the new order! Here's to the Super East!
42:01Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire!
42:11Hitler and Himmler achieved their goal of finding a place in history for Germany
42:17But it wasn't the history they had hoped for, as their armies wreaked havoc throughout Europe
42:25Devout researchers and archaeologists failed time and time again
42:31To deliver an ancient German ancestry to rival Rome and Greece
42:36No matter how many lies they told
42:39Their legacy instead would be one of deceit, terror and failure
42:51Immortalized as the great bumbling enemy of countless Hollywood adventures
43:09So besides all the time that we see from the nation here
43:11There's the new idea about them, and that's what they can do
43:13If we leave the country in the world come out and relax
43:15So they come all of us then come to the europe of this land
43:18And for sure they don't have any information that they have already
43:20Tune in and all of us, it's been an example
43:21So if you are not scientists, you're a part of the mountain
43:24So if you are not scientists, you're not scientists, you're a part of the country
43:25You're not scientists, so you're experts, they are not scientists
43:29Then it's a great educating, you're experts
43:34Transcription by CastingWords
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