Antiquity Corner: Nazi Science and Scientists of the 1930s and 1940s

Antiquity Corner: Nazi Science and Scientists of the 1930s and 1940s

Head-measuring device

Once upon a time, there was a very evil man named Heinrich Himmler. During the period of the Third Reich– 1933–1945, Himmler had the title of Reichfuhrer SS. As head of the SS (Schutzstaffel), Hitler’s private army, and the Gestapo, Himmler was the most feared man in Europe. During the Holocaust, six million Jews and nine million other Europeans were murdered on his orders. It was he who directed the work of the concentration camps and the roving action groups that carried out the work of genocide. In order to begin to understand the mind of Himmler and the homicidal maniacs who worked with him, the basics of Nazi racial theories must be examined. Hitler, Himmler, and the other Nazi leaders preached the superiority of the German race. Those of pure Aryan descent were ein herrenvolk, a master race whose destiny it was to rule the world. Non-Aryans were untermenschen, racial inferiors, who must serve the master race. It all became quite involved, with an Institute for Racial Study, charts, graphs, racial purity tests, genealogical studies, etc. Eventually, all the peoples of the world were placed into racial categories, ranked in order of their proximity to the pure Aryans. By killing off racial inferiors, either immediately, or by working them to death, the Nazis would create a better world, based upon the principles of racial superiority. Such beliefs motivated them to do all sorts of things, such as naming their Japanese allies honorary Aryans during World War II (1939–1945).

In the summer of 1935, Himmler founded the Ahnenerbe, an organization devoted to the study of German ancestral heritage. The organization was intended to give scientific credibility to Nazi racial theories and to strengthen German nationalism. Its mission was to investigate German history and mythology, using as their principal tools the disciplines of archeology and anthropology. The Ahnenerbe’s most important task was to investigate the origins and spread of the Aryan race. It was in pursuit of this task that Himmler ordered the Nazi expedition to Tibet (1938–1939). Five Ahnenerbe scientists, all SS officers, aided by Indian and Tibetan guides and porters, suffered considerable hardships making their way through Indian monsoons and freezing Himalayan passes before entering Tibet and spending two months in the area around the capital city, Lhasa. Tibet was a strange place to search for the origins of the tall, blond, blue-eyed Aryans of Germanic mythology. However, scientists of the 19th and early 20th centuries believed that the highland plateau of Tibet was a likely place in which to find evidence of human origins and evolution. There the superior Aryans originated, aided in their cultural development by survivors of the lost continent of Atlantis.

The leader of the expedition was 28-year-old Ernst Shafer. A respected scientist who had studied zoology and geology at Gottingen University, Shafer had gained fame as an intrepid explorer and expert hunter. He was only the second European to shoot a giant panda. Although a great marksman, Shafer had shot and killed his wife in a hunting accident the previous year. During their two month stay around Lhasa, the Germans collected specimens of Tibetan flora and fauna, researched Tibetan ancestral traditions, and took 20,000 black and white photographs, and 2,000 color photographs.

Ernst Schäfer (left) and an Ahnenerbe colleague collecting data.

The expedition’s anthropologist was 26-year-old Bruno Beger. Seeking physical traits that indicated Nordic traits in the Tibetan population, Beger made detailed records, taking fingerprints and checking hair and eye color against special charts. Beger also used calipers to compare facial characteristics such as the size and shape of noses, ears, chins, and eyes. Plaster was used to create facial casts. Beger’s study of nearly 400 Tibetans led him to conclude that migratory Aryans coming from northern Europe had shaped history and human anatomy in the locale. This was proved, he believed, by what he perceived as the Nordic characteristics of Tibetan nobles. These included their smooth hair and a sense of themselves as being dominant.

The expedition returned to Germany shortly before the German invasion of Poland, which began World War II in September 1939. During the war, Ahnenerbe scientists were sent to Poland, Italy, Ukraine, and the Crimea to acquire artifacts thought to be Aryan. The scientific study of racial characteristics was much in demand by the SS and their death squads as they exterminated Jews and other undesirable ethnic groups. In June 1943, Beger spent eight days at the Auschwitz concentration camp taking measurements of 115 inmates chosen for their “Asian” physical characteristics. After he departed, the prisoners were sent to another concentration camp where they were gassed. Their bodies were sent to the anatomy department of the Reich University of Strasbourg, where Dr. August Hirt was building his collection of skulls.

After the war, Beger was first cleared of any Holocaust related wrongdoing. At a second trial in 1970, he was sentenced to three years in prison. The sentence was later suspended. Ernst Shafer went to Venezuela in 1949 to run a wildlife preserve. He had been arrested by the Allies, but was cleared of war crime charges by a de-nazification tribunal. He eventually became curator of the Hanover Museum.

Although Beger was the only member of the Tibet expedition to be connected to Nazi war crimes, it has been argued that all the Ahnenerbe scientists were guilty of supporting with their alleged science an ideology that led to the mass murder of millions. They brought a degree of respectability and scientific authority to theories that could not be substantiated by any genuine evidence or scientific methodology. It is in popular fiction that the work of the Ahnenerbe has most survived. It provided a model for some of the characters in the film Raiders of the Lost Ark.