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Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler in July 1935 as an SS appendage devoted to the task of promoting the racial doctrines espoused by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. The Ahnenerbe was composed of scholars and scientists from a broad range of academic disciplines and fostered the idea that the German people descended from an Aryan race which was racially superior to other racial groups. Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, and transformed the country into a one-party state governed as a dictatorship under the control of the Nazi Party. He espoused the idea that the German people were descended from the Aryan race which, Hitler claimed in contrast to established academic understandings, had invented most major developments in human history, such as agriculture, art, and writing. The majority of the world's scholarly community did not accept this, and the Nazis established the Ahnenerbe in order to provide evidence for Nazi racial theories and to promote these ideas to the German public. Ahnenerbe scholars interpreted evidence to fit Hitler's beliefs, and some consciously fabricated evidence in order to do so. The organisation sent expeditions to other parts of the world, intent on finding evidence of historical Aryan expansion." - (en.wikipedia.org 12.03.2024)