The Master Plan

As war and economic upheaval loomed, Heinrich Himmler mandated and funded these costly and time-consuming missions because he so strongly believed that prehistory needed a sharp revision. The chief of the SS and the architect of the Nazi death camps was convinced that archaeologists had long ignored the accomplishments of a primeval race of blond-haired, blue-eyed conquerors - the Aryans. Himmler believed that Germany's ancestors had evolved in the icy barrens of the Arctic, where they had ruled as an invincible master race. Now, he theorized, only in select parts of the world did some true Aryan blood remain. The identification of true Aryans and the eradication of all others would become the cornerstone of the Nazi agenda.
Drawing on extensive original research, Heather Pringle paints a portrait of the Ahnenerbe and its role in the Holocaust, revealing the German scientists and scholars who allowed their research to be used to justify extermination.