The Ahnenerbe was a Nazi German organization which was founded by Heinrich Himmler on 1 July 1935 with the objective of promoting the racial doctrines of Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party and researching the origins of the "Aryan race". Attached to the SS, the Ahnenerbe consisted of scholars and scientists who challenged academic understandings of prehistory and both collected and fabricated evidence to back up Hitler's pseudohistory. The Ahnenerbe sent out expeditions to various parts of the world to find evidence of ancient Aryan expansion, including expeditions to Karelia (1935), Sweden (1936), Italy (1937), the Middle East (1938), Antarctica (1938-1939), Tibet (1938-1939), Poland (1939), Normandy (1941), the Crimea (1942), and Ukraine (1943). The Ahnenerbe's research was cited in the justification of the Holocaust and other genocidal campaigns, and Ahnenerbe members destroyed much of the organization's paperwork at the end of World War II to cover up their crimes. Many former Ahnenerbe members escaped denazification in West Germany after the war and remained active in the country's archaeological establishment for decades.
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