Visualizza Versione Completa : DAS DEUTSCHES AHNENERBE
LE ORIGINI DELLE SS AHNENERBE
di Marco Dolcetta
Alla fine del giugno 1935, quando il cancelliere Adolf Hitler invito a Berlino il movimento nazionalsocialista di Monaco per festeggiare la copertura del tetto del Haus der deutschen Kunst (Casa dell'arte tedesca), accadde un evento molto significativo per la politica culturale del Terzo Reich. La prima mostra, fortemente voluta dal Fuhrer, si doveva svolgere sotto il motto “Mille anni di arte tedesca”. Tra i numerosi ospiti d'onore mancava il capo delle SS del Reich, Heinrich Himmler, e questa clamorosa assenza era pienamente giustificata non tanto perchè l'indomani egli avrebbe dovuto inaugurare la Grande Scuola per i capi delle SS a Brunswick, quanto perchè l'1 luglio, negli uffici delle SS, avrebbe dovuto fondare, con sei persone d'idee affini, 1'Associazione di Studi per Preistoria Spirituale “Deutsches Ahnenerbe”. La Society Ahnenerbe precede di molti anni la fondazione Belle SS Ahnenerbe. Era un gruppo di studio legato al conservatorismo tedesco nell'ambito dell'archeologia, della poesia, della filologia e delle scienze linguistiche e delle tradizioni germaniche, nel tentativo di identificare e riesumare una linea di Germanesimo puro e ancestrale. Himmler se ne interessò moltissimo, ma all'inizio fu per così dire, snobbato da questi studiosi. In seguito, con la presa del potere da parte dei nazionalsocialisti, fu pero in grado di cooptare la Società facendola divenire una delle sezioni delle neonate SS, divenendone il tutore politico, e reindirizzandone gli sforzi scientifici in maniera più funzionale all'espansionismo aggressivo del nuovo regime. Cosi Himmler, che nella struttura di potere del Nazionalsocialismo era uomo d'ordine e di polizia, introdusse nel neonato Ordine le componenti spiritualistiche e superomistiche sconosciute, perlomeno in forma consapevole, ai nazionalsocialisti della prima ora. Le Ahnenerbe mantennero indubbiamente un primato, per ampiezza di ricerche e sforzi profusi nel sostenerle, rispetto alle altre due componenti culturali del Nazionalsocialismo: quella di Alfred Rosenberg, cioè la Sezione culturale del Partito Nazionalsocialista, e quella di Joseph Goebbels e del suo apparato di propaganda. Queste due associazioni ebbero indubbiamente grandissimo impatto e visibilità all'interno dell'intero sistema, ma non di certo la profondità di campo e la visione storica degli studiosi assoldati dalle Ahnenerbe. Le Ahnenerbe funzionarono dunque e sempre come un vero e proprio Ordine esoterico, Ordine the non aveva alcun interesse ad apparire a livello di comunicazione di massa. Se ne guardarono bene, sia durante gli anni del regime, sia durante i lunghi decenni del dopoguerra in cui continuarono ad operare di nascosto. L'incarico di coordinare le ricerche alla fondazione delle Ahnenerbe venne conferito da Himmler direttamente a Herman Wirth (1885-1981), poeta e letterato amburghese che, appassionato della cultura nordica riprese la tradizione dell'Edda, reinterpretandola in chiave nazionalsocialista, e si interessò allo studio e all'interpretazione delle rune. Wirth, sotto indicazione di Himmler, the voleva aprire le Ahnenerbe alla magia operativa accentuandone il carattere di vera e propria setta iniziatica, fu affiancato dall'austriaco mago e astrologo Karl Maria Wiligut, in arte Weisthor, che si dedicava principalmente alla pura divinazione e alla magia nera. Egli era in contatto con la Loggia del Vril a Berlino e con Aleister Crowley a Londra, e millantava addirittura una discendenza eroica e semidivina. Wiligut creò una serie di nuovi simboli nazisti che avrebbero dovuto sostanziare esotericamente la potenza degli eletti: a lui si attribuisce la creazione dell'anello delle SS e di una serie di altre suppellettili e fregi iniziatici. Ma 1'astro di Weisthor era destinato a tramontare in un clima di congiura cui non fu estranea 1'influenza del filosofo italiano Julius Evola. Quest'ultimo odiava a morte Weisthor, perchè costui gli aveva precluso l'ammissione nelle Ahnenerbe tra il 1939 e il 1940, criticandolo, sia nelle sue pubblicazioni sia nelle conferenze che aveva tenuto a Berlino, in quanto troppo filo-romano, quindi latino e potenzialmente antigermanico. Evola lo ripagò facendo giungere a Himmler la notizia the Weisthor aveva fornito dati falsi nel suo giuramento di ammissione alle SS (in realtà la sua città natale sarebbe stata Bolzano e non Vienna), e Himmler se ne ebbe talmente a male da espellerlo dalle SS, condannandolo all'oblio (e alla follia, che presto lo assalì). Da quel momento fino alla fine della guerra, data dello scioglimento ufficiale dell'Ordine, capo delle SS Ahnenerbe fu Himmler stesso. Altro personaggio di grandissima influenza nelle Ahnenerbe, e destinato a salvarsi al Processo di Norimberga (al quale fu solo convocato come testimone), è Friederich Hielscher, che in molte foto ufficiali di manifestazioni dell’Ordine Nero vediamo, unico tra i membri, non in divisa. E a Hielscher the si deve, come testimoniato da Ernst Ringer nei suoi diari di guerra, la codificazione di una vera e propria ritualità religiosa e iniziatica delle Ahnenerbe. E lui, secondo molte fonti dirette, il vero “Grande Falconiere”, il vero ispiratore della politica culturale di Himmler e delle Ahnenerbe.
Dittatori e dittature - Le origini delle SS Ahnenerbe (http://www.dittatori.it/ssahnenerbe.htm)
Marco Dolcetta, Nazionalismo esoterico. Studi iniziatici e misticismo messianico nel regime hitleriano,
Cooper&Castelvecchi, Roma, pp. 302, euro 18,00.
giovedì, febbraio 4, 2010
di Paolo Palliccia
Il libro che recensiamo è di qualche anno fa, ed è un libro molto interessante per ciò che concerne il contenuto storico espresso e gli spunti storiografici che ne possono derivare. Marco Dolcetta, giornalista e docente di Filosofia della Politica presso l’EHESS di Parigi, ha “sfornato” un testo importante per chi si vuol avvicinare al cosiddetto “nazismo esoterico” e capire affondo l’iter paranormale e esoterico seguito dai nazionalsocialisti nel tentativo precipuo di riformare e rifondare l’umanità. Questo tentativo, come ben dimostrato dal Dolcetta, comprendeva, oltre agli studi e alle molte ricerche sul paranormale, l’interessamento e l’approfondimento di alcune dottrine provenienti dall’oriente. Venne creata una particolare divisione delle SS, la Ahnenerbe (ovvero, “Eredità Ancestrale”), proprio per attendere allo sviluppo di queste nuove discipline con lo scopo precipuo di dotare il regime nazionalsocialista di una forte componente iniziatica.
Il libro del Dolcetta è un vero e proprio lavoro di ricerca tra le fonti della dottrina esoterica del nazismo hitleriano. L’interesse dello studioso spazia dalle società segrete fino alle spedizioni che portarono “gli esoterici nazisti” sulle alture tibetane, alla ricerca delle origini ancestrali del gruppo.
Gli uomini delle SS Ahnenerbe, alla fine del loro percorso di ricerca, elaborarono, come ricorda lo stesso Dolcetta nella sovraccoperta del suo testo, “una vera e propria dottrina segreta, con vari rituali di iniziazione”.
L’autore si sofferma s moltissime vicende e questioni, ma, in diverse occasioni, evidenzia come “gli esoterici” non volessero soltanto “riformare completamente l’umanità” ma, anche, “riscrivere la storia”, scegliendo come incipit del loro racconto il culto degli eroi, carpendo e palesando, con una visione delle cose e del divenire umano decisamente selettiva, sia l’epica di Wagner che il pensiero filosofico di Nietzsche; altresì, per dirla ancora con il Dolcetta, “[…] fino a ipotizzare che il Nazionalsocialismo vero, come mito ariano dell’aristocrazia guerriera, fosse un Empireo di valori eterno e attingibile solo agli iniziati, del tutto indipendente dalle vicende storiche immediate dell’hitlerismo e del Terzo Reich”.
Decisamente interessante, inoltre, è la figura del capo carismatico, Hitler, visto dagli iniziati come una incarnazione della cosiddetta “Ruota del Mondo”, simboleggiata dall’immagine d’origine orientale della svastica, che, secondo i cultori e gli adepti della disciplina esoterica nazista, non avrebbe mai cessato il suo girare…”fino alla Fine dei Tempi”.
Lavoro storico, quello del Dolcetta; un lavoro dove la ricerca e l’utilizzo delle fonti vanno di pari passo con l’acume e con la capacità narrativa dell’autore, davvero un libro da leggere!…un libro che non fa apologia, proselitismi o arcane congetture ma, semplicemente, narra storicamente dei fatti e delle storie di uomini.
La quinta stagione » Marco Dolcetta, Nazionalismo esoterico. Studi iniziatici e misticismo messianico nel regime hitleriano, Cooper&Castelvecchi, Roma, pp. 302, euro 18,00. (http://www.laquintastagione.com/wp/?p=1213)
Abbiamo personalmente conosciuto l'autore dell'articolo e del volume recensito da Paolo Palliccia appena postato.
Marco Dolcetta, collaboratore Rai, e' indubbiamente uno tra i piu' interessati (che non e' affatto sinonimo di interessanti) studiosi del cosiddetto "esoterismo nazionalsocialista".
Il testo in questione merita per una introduzione all'argomento. Esistono altri testi (sui quali cominceremo nei prossimi giorni a dare maggiori informazioni aprendo anche una discussione specializzata con una Bibliografia accurata e selezionata di quelli che consigliamo) dei quali parleremo diffusamente. In ogni caso ricordiamo sempre che quasi tutte le opere su questo argomento ancora "tabu'" sono da considerarsi particolarmente insidiose proveniendo, in massima parte, da storici e studiosi non allineati culturalmente e politicamente con l'ideologia N/S.
Grazie per l'attenzione riservata.
Avamposto
Ahnenerbe-SS
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The Ancestral Heritage Research and Teaching Society, or Ahnenerbe Forschungs-und Lehrgemeinschaft, was founded in July 1935 by Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Wirth (a Dutch historian obsessed with Atlantean mythology), and Richard Walter Darré (creator of the Nazi "blood and soil" ideology and head of the Race and Settlement Office). There is some evidence that the Ahnenerbe existed as early as 1928, when Wirth established the "Hermann Wirth Society" for teaching and spreading his theories. Another candidate for precursor of the Ahnenerbe was a research institute for "spiritual prehistory" created by the German state of Mecklenburg in 1932, when the state was governed by the NSDAP.
The Ahnenerbe was created as a registered club as a private and non-profit organization. Funding for the Ahnenerbe primarily came through Darré and his position within the German Ministry of Agriculture, but this association ended around 1936, leaving Himmler in total control of the Ahnenerbe. The Ahnenerbe was not incorporated into the SS until April 1940, though even before this, all but one member of the academic and medical staff of the Ahnenerbe were at least honorary members of the SS and many held significant rank. Wolfram Sievers was Reichsgeschäftsführer, or Reich Manager, of the Ahnenerbe from 1935, and held the rank of SS-Obersturmführer since 1937, rising to the rank of SS-Standartenführer by the end of the war. There was an obvious link between the SS and the Ahnenerbe long before it became official in 1940.
The Ahnenerbe was part of Himmler's greater plan for the systematic creation of a "Germanic" culture that would replace Christianity in the Greater Germany to exist after the war, a kind of SS-religion that would form the basis of the new world order. This new culture would be based on the völkisch beliefs of the Nazis, and it was the role of the Ahnenerbe to marshal scientific research in an interdisciplinary program to reject the "priggish line of high-school professors" and support the "development of the Germanic heritage". While the Ahnenerbe were fervent Nazis and most of their research was based on racist pseudoscience, they rejected the occult thinking of groups like the Thule Gesellschaft, preferring a pragmatic methodology based on Mendelian genetics, Darwinism, and biology. Fundamentally, the Ahnenerbe was a politically-motivated academic association, albeit with enough funding to go beyond mere lectures and publications to include wide-scale expeditions and experimental research.
Himmler himself served as the "chairman of the Kuratorium" of the Ahnenerbe, and held the real power within the Ahnenerbe. As Reich Manager of the Ahnenerbe, Wolfram Sievers was responsible for all administrative tasks, with day-to-day business matters handled by the deputy "Kurator" Dr. Herrman Reischle. Professor Walter Wüst joined the Ahnenerbe in 1937 and, as trustee and "Kurator" of the organization, replaced Hermann Wirth as its intellectual leader. Wüst had been dean of the University of Munich, and his presence brought a number of reputable academics into the Ahnenerbe. The Ahnenerbe was funded by the Ahnenerbe-Stiftung, the German Forschungsgemeinschaft, member fees, and "from funds of the Reich and from contributions of industry" (including a group of financiers called the Circle of Friends led by Wilhelm Keppler). The budget of the Ahnenerbe was as much as over one million German marks (400,000 American dollars).
Besides financial support, enlistment in the Ahnenerbe was attractive as it placed scholars in the academic elite of Nazi Germany, gaining them the patronage (and sometimes unwelcome attention) of the Reichsführer-SS himself. This academic status did not travel beyond the borders of Nazi-controlled territory, as the Ahnenerbe were considered, even at that time, as a sort of "intellectual criminals". The Ahnenerbe could also be attractive to those seeking to avoid military service, as its work was considered "war essential".
A central function of the Ahnenerbe was the publication of materials as part of the effort to investigate and "revive" Germanic traditions. Before the war, the Ahnenerbe set up its own publishing house in the academic suburb Berlin-Dahlem, and went on to produce a monthly magazine (Germanien), two journals on genealogy (Zeitschrift für Namenforschung and Das Sippenzeichen), and countless monographs.
The Ahnenerbe had fifty different research branches named "Institutes", which carried out more than one hundred extensive research projects. Some of the institutes, particularly those responsible for Tibetan research and archaeological expeditions, could be quite large, but most made do with less than a dozen personnel. For example, the staff for experiments to make sea-water drinkable consisted of a supervisor, three medical chemists, one female assistant, and three non-commissioned officers. The two-year musicology project to study folk music in South Tyrol consisted of one Ahnenerbe researcher and eight local collaborators.
Linguistic study was at the forefront of Ahnenerbe activity. The first institute to be established specialized in the study of Norse runes (the symbol of the Ahnenerbe was the life rune). This institute was under the command of Hermann Wirth until he left the Ahnenerbe in 1937. In 1936, Wirth's successor, Professor Wüst, headed up another institute for broader research in linguistics, where great attention was paid to Sanskrit (Wüst's area-of-expertise) and the connection of the language to the Aryans.
Ahnenerbe-SS (http://greyfalcon.us/Ahnenerbe.htm)
The Institute for Germanic Archaeology was created in 1938. Archaeological excavations were conducted in Germany at Paderborn, Detmold, Haithabu, and at Externsteine. Haithabu, which is still recognized by archaeologists as an important site for medieval Norse artifacts, is in an area of northern Germany near the Danish border, and is very close to Detmold and Externsteine, the site of a much-reputed Aryan temple and which some legends connected with Yggdrasil, the "World-Ash" of Norse mythology. Externsteine is also close to Paderborn and Wewelsburg, and the entire sites compromised for the Ahnenerbe a mythological heartland where the Saxons resisted the Romans and their heirs, the Franks of Charlemagne. The area was also sympathetic to the ideology of the Ahnenerbe, as Detmold was one of the first German states to elect an NSDAP government, and Paderborn and Wewelsburg were strongholds of Prussian beliefs.
During the war, archaeological expeditions were sent to Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Poland, and Rumania with the collaboration of local authorities. The Ahnenerbe also conducted similar operations in occupied Russia and North Africa. They were also very active in the Far East, mostly in Tibet, but the Ahnenerbe did send an expedition to Kafiristan.
A significant amount of Ahnenerbe research involved Tibet, and was carried out by the Sven Hedin Institute for Inner Asian Research. The institute was named for the famous Swedish explorer whose memoirs My Life As An Explorer were popular worldwide for their tales of Hedin's travels throughout Tibet. Hedin's descriptions of hidden cities deep within the Himalayas were as much a source for Nazi interest in Tibet as Blavatsky's theosophical vision of the East. Though never an official member of the Ahnenerbe (the old explorer was in his seventies during the war), Hedin corresponded with the organization and was present when the Institute for Inner Asian Research was formally established in Munich on January 1943.
Hedin's closest contact in the Ahnenerbe was Ernst Schäfer, who commanded the Institute for Inner Asian Research and was eventually responsible for all scientific projects within the Ahnenerbe. Schäfer first visited Tibet in 1930, on an expedition organized by the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. In 1931, he returned to Tibet while a member of the American Brooke Dolan expedition that also visited Siberia and China (another Brooke Dolan expedition funded by the OSS travelled to Tibet in 1942, following in the footsteps of the 1939 SS-Tibet mission). He joined the Nazi Party after Hitler's rise to power in 1933, as well as the SS, rising to the rank of Sturmbannführer in 1942. Schäfer travelled throughout the East and Central Tibet from 1934 to 1936, and lead an ambitious Ahnenerbe-sponsored expedition into the Himalayas in 1939. In Tibet, the Ahnenerbe sought their own twisted brand of Shangri-La, a source of the Germanic superman and a repository of lost Aryan knowledge.
The SS-Tibet expedition led by Schäfer visited Tibet between April 1938 and August 1939. The purpose of the expedition was to acquire flora and fauna specimens, to perform an ethnological survey of the populace, and to gather cultural information on the Tibetans that included everything from their religious practices to the sexual positions used by older monks during homosexual relations with young adepts. There were rumors of secret tasks that included the SS making overtures to the Reting Regent to lay the groundwork for a German invasion of India through Tibet (if such a scheme had been formulated, Stalingrad stopped it cold). Schäfer was also rumored to be tasked with (dis)proving the "missing link" between apes and humans by collecting specimens that would prove his theory that the Abominable Snowman or Yeti was in fact nothing more than a species of bear that roamed between Nepal and Tibet. Schäfer failed to bag his "Yeti" bear, but the expedition did gather over fifty live animals that were sent back to Germany. Another interesting acquisition of the expedition was the 108-volume sacred document of the Tibetans, the Kangschur. Besides espionage and hunting for the Abominable Snowman, the SS-Tibet expedition may have also been involved in "geophysical" research to prove the "World Ice Theory", which may have included the search for fossilized remains of "giants" as part of the cosmology of the theory (more below).
The Ahnenerbe had an Institute to study the Eddas (considered by Himmler a sacred text) and Iceland itself, which the Ahnenerbe considered something of a holy land, like Tibet. Based on the ariosophical beliefs like those that gave rise to the Thule Gesellschaft, the Ahnenerbe saw Iceland as the last surviving connection with Thule, the mystical homeland of the pure Germanic race of prehistory. The Eddas contained secret knowledge for the Ahnenerbe, keys by which they could unlock their ancestral heritage. Besides study of the Eddas, the Ahnenerbe also wanted to study Icelandic artifacts, and, as they had in Tibet, perform "the recording of human images", using calipers to measure facial dimensions based on ethnological pseudoscience.
The Ahnenerbe succeeded in sending a mission to Iceland in 1938, but it was a thorough failure. On orders from Himmler himself, the expedition was to search for a hof, a place of worship of Norse gods such as Thor and Odin. The expedition ultimately failed as the Reichsbank lacked sufficient amounts of Icelandic kronur to fund their expenses, mainly due to German restrictions on foreign currency. The Icelandic officials also denied the Ahnenerbe permission to excavate in certain areas, and though the Ahnenerbe did find a cave they claimed to be Himmler's hof, it proved to have not been inhabited before the eighteenth century. The Ahnenerbe lost the opportunity for any further expeditions after Iceland was occupied by the US Marine Corps and British forces in mid-1941 to prevent its invasion by Germany.
Another Institute was devoted to musicology, collecting and analyzing everything from folk music to Gregorian chants (Himmler's pet project) to determine the essence of German music. Folk music was recorded during expeditions in Finland and the Faroe Islands, from ethnic Germans transported from occupied territories, and most significantly, in South Tyrol. The Ahenerbe made sound recordings, transcribed manuscripts and songbooks, and photographed and even made silent films of instrument use and folk dances. The lur, a Bronze Age musical instrument, became central to this research, which concluded that Germanic consonance was in direct conflict to Jewish atonalism. Connections in musical traditions was even used as evidence of a Germanic presence in occupied territories and thus another excuse for the military invasions that established "Greater Germany".
One of the stranger institutes of the Ahnenerbe researched the Welteislehre (World Ice Theory) of Hans Hörbiger, under the command of Dr. Hans Robert Scultetus. This truly odd theory was based on the Blavatsky thesis that there had been several moons in the past, that the approach of these moons results in a polar shift and a cataclysmic Ice Age, which are responsible for the fall and rise of the various root-races of Theosophy. According to the theory, the world itself was created when a giant chunk of ice collided with the sun. Hörbiger died in 1931, but his theory was adopted by some Theosophists, South American occultists who used it to prove the existence of Andean civilization with parallels to Atlantis and Thule (this may have been part of the reason behind Ahnenerbe expeditions to South America), and by Himmler and the Ahnenerbe, as "our Nordic ancestors grew strong amidst the ice and snow, and this is why a belief in a world of ice is the natural heritage of Nordic men". The Ahnenerbe were most concerned with practical applications of the World Ice Theory focused on meteorology, vital to military operations. Scultetus sent Edmund Kiß, a German playwright well-known for his novels on Atlantis, to Abyssinia to find evidence to support the World Ice Theory. German rocketry may have even been delayed because of fears based on Hörbiger's theory that a rocket released into space would initiate a global catastrophe.
The most infamous section of the Ahnenerbe was the Institute for Scientific Research for Military Purposes, which carried out experiments under "Secret" or "Top Secret" classification and was funded by the Waffen-SS and Wehrmacht. This "research" included hideous experiments on live human beings, prisoners procured by the Ahnenerbe from Dachau and other concentration camps. Over one hundred skeletons were collected by Professor August Hirt, several from live subjects, and he was assisted in his work by former ethnologists of the SS-Tibet expedition of 1939. Hirt was also involved in the feeding of mescaline to concentration camp inmates to determine its effects.
The most notorious among those who worked in the Institute for Scientific Research for Military Purposes was Dr. Sigmund Rascher, a Luftwaffe medical officer, a Hauptsturmführer in the SS, and a member of the Ahnenerbe. Rascher was in charge of the Institute's experiments at Dachau, and was the first to request "test subjects", who were frozen in low-pressure chambers and vats of icy water, and then experimented upon with attempts to rewarm them using sleeping bags, boiling water, and intercourse with incarcerated prostitutes from the Ravensbruck concentration camp. Those who survived the experiments were shot. Rascher also had the skulls of "test subjects" split open while conscious to examine their brains. He developed the standard form of cynanide capsules used by the SS, one of which would be used by Himmler to commit suicide. In 1945, Rascher was executed by the SS due to a plot with his wife to pass off kidnapped children as their own.
The Ahnenerbe also had institutes conducting Celtic studies, investigating popular traditions, and assisting in the creation of the SS-Order Castle at Wewelsburg. It was rumored that the foreign expeditions of the Ahnenerbe were a cover for German espionage, but there is no evidence of significant intelligence activity. The Ahnenerbe was also responsible for "cultural-political" (kulturpolitisch) missions in occupied "Germanic" countries (ie. Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands), spreading propaganda throughout the local population and recruiting for the volunteer divisions of the Waffen-SS. These missions worked with local pro-German political factions and academics to "revive" and promote Germanic culture and spread Nazi ideology. This was carried out through academic journals, popular magazines, exhibitions, and lectures which promoted the Ahnenerbe viewpoint, as well as censoring those academics that did not fall into line. Another wartime function of the Ahnenerbe was the acquisition of artifacts, as they seized and collected documents, paintings, sculpture, pottery and other items considered "Germanic" and "returned" them to Nazi Germany.
The interest of the Ahnenerbe in Germanic history and pre-history often put them at odds with others involved in such research. Chief among their rivals was Alfred Rosenberg, who was butting heads with Hermann Wirth even before the Ahnenerbe was created. Another rival of a sort was Karl Maria Wiligut, or "Weisthor", the head of the Department for Pre- and Early History in the RuSHA (Race and Settlement Office) and Himmler's personal Aryan mystic. The Ahnenerbe was forced to work with Wiligut due to the his close association with the Reichsführer-SS, though they considered Wiligut and his associates to be the "worst kind of fantasist". This attitude was typical of the academics in the Ahnenerbe, who bemoaned occult interest in the topics they studied, feeling that it impeded the "science" of their research. It is interesting to note that Wiligut fell from power in 1939, just one year before the Ahnenerbe was officially made a department of the SS.
Ahnenerbe
and the
Quests
To avoid Allied bombing, the Ahnenerbe relocated to Waischenfeld in Franconia on August 1943. There they remained until American forces took the city in April 1945. The war ended before the Ahnenerbe found another permanent home, and, during the interim period, a great number of documents were destroyed. Had the Ahnenerbe survived the war, Himmler planned to use its members to staff an SS-University at Leyden in the Netherlands. Those that survived the war were either tried for war crimes, or faded back into academia under their own or false names.
Ahnenerbe-SS (http://greyfalcon.us/Ahnenerbe.htm)
Nazism and the myth of the "master-race"
Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, was the chief driving force in developing the nationalist and racist myths advanced by the Nazis.
When Himmler joined the Nazi Party in 1925, he was already a member of the Thule society, which believed in the greatness of German history, reaching back to the year 9AD, when the Teutonic tribes defeated the Roman army. It promoted the superiority of the Aryan race, an ancient northern European people.These ideas formed the basis of Nazi racial philosophy that was to have such an impact on history.
When the Nazi Party took power, Himmler sought to create an Aryan knighthood in the shape of the SS.
Originally founded as Hitler's bodyguards, the SS had grown rapidly. By 1939, it was 300,000 strong. Its members would run the concentration camps and take charge of the deportations of Jews. It became the standard bearer of “racial purity” within Germany and in the campaign directed especially against the peoples in the East.
The centre of this new order of knights, an "aristocracy of soul and blood", was the Wewelsburg castle. This was Himmler's “Camelot”, with SS commanders cast as the Knights of the Round Table. Rooms were dedicated to figures of Nordic history and mythology like King Arthur. Himmler's room was dedicated to King Heinrich I, founder of the first German Reich (empire). Himmler believed himself to be the reincarnation of Heinrich the Fowler. Another room was set aside to house the Holy Grail, which was to be searched for all over the world. Himmler's goal was to "create a focus point of all the aspirations he had towards religion, towards science, forming a new policy.
To this end, Himmler set out to re-establish an ancient Aryan religion within Germany in opposition to Christianity, as a basis for Nazi ideology. Himmler maintained that many sacred symbols had been stolen from a more ancient Aryan religion and set out to restore them. One such symbol was the Holy Grail. One leading academic recruited to the Nazi cause was Otto Rahn, the leading German authority on the Holy Grail. He was brought into the SS to lead the search for it the world over.
Himmler saw the potential of archaeology as a political tool. He needed archaeology to provide an identity for his SS. But Himmler also believed that archaeology had a certain pseudo-religious content. There were excavations; there were myths and legends, a feeling of superiority. They believed by drawing on the power of prehistory they would achieve success in the present day.
In 1935, Himmler established a new arm of the SS, Das Ahnenerbe (the Ancestral Heritage Society). It was staffed by high-profile academics and headed by the Nazi Wolfram Sievers. Of the 46 heads of departments, 19 were professors and another 19 held doctorates. Amongst them were such eminent figures as Walter Wust, a leading expert on India; Ernst Schäfer, a veteran explorer; and Walter Jankuhn, an archaeologist.
Through these academics the Nazis sought to lend their propaganda the status of objective truth. The Ahnenerbe organised expeditions into many parts of the world—to Iceland in search of the Grail, to Iran to find evidence of ancient kings of pure Aryan blood, to the Canary Islands to seek proof of Atlantis.
In April 1938 the SS undertook its biggest and most ambitious expedition to Tibet, led by Schäfer and the anthropologist Bruno Beger. Beger believed that the proportions of the human body were vital indicators of race and that "one could determine the moral and intellectual capacities through the shape of the skull.
On 10 March 1937, SS officers gathered in Munich to listen to a lecture by Professor Wust, with the title " Mein Kampf as the mirror of the Aryan worldview”. In it, Wust claims a “similarity between the words of the Führer and those of that other great Aryan personality, the Buddha ... the basic idea of racial identity and the sacred concept of ancestral heritage.”
With the beginning of the war, the role played by Ahnenerbe became more sinister. It took on a grandiose scale. Entire contents of museums, scientific collections, libraries and archaeological finds were looted and shipped to Berlin or the Wewelsburg. Himmler and Sievers created a special unit—the "Sonderkommando Jankuhn"—to supervise the plunder. Professors, doctors and scholars were now directly integrated into the Nazi murder machine.
In October 1941 Sievers bought Ernst Schäfer to Dachau to photograph experiments on inmates carried out by the Luftwaffe medical officer, Rascher. One witness at the Nuremberg trials described the content of these experiments. Prisoners would be exposed to extreme vacuum pressures until their lungs exploded or extreme pain made them tear out their hair, bang their heads against the wall or maim their faces with their fingernails. These experiments usually ended in death.
At Nuremberg. Sievers was asked about his role in the collection of skeletons for Professor Hirt at Strasbourg University. Jews held in Dachau concentration camp were selected while still alive to provide specimens. In a letter from Sievers to Himmler's adjutant Dr. Brandt, he set out how a Jew's head was to be severed from his body after he was killed and placed in conserving fluid. This was then to be sent directly to Hirt. The activities of the Ahnenerbe in Dachau and Auschwitz show the direct connection between their racial theories and fascist atrocities.
Scholars involved in the Ahnenerbe research claimed that their sole interest was the development of their specific field of study. But evidence shows they knew of, and were complicit in, the Nazis' crimes against humanity. They were SS officers in uniform and participated in close discussions within the council of Ahnenerbe, while scientists who would not go along with the Nazis were ostracised and victimised.
Historians, archaeologists and anthropologists utilised the opportunities they saw opened up during the Third Reich in order to further their scientific research. Hitler's nationalism and racism was aimed at assembling a social force that could be used as a battering ram against Germany's powerful socialist working class. At the same time, theories of racial superiority served the interests of the ruling class in obtaining control of territories and markets, especially in the East, to overcome the restrictions laid on Germany after its defeat in the First World War.
The Nazis were able to recruit substantial layers of academics to their cause. For the majority of the professoris, the years of the Weimar regime were periods of riot and alarm. Historians, economists, and philosophers were lost in guesswork as to which of the contending criteria of truth was right, that is, which camp would turn out in the end the master of the situation. The fascist dictatorship eliminates the doubts of the Fausts and the vacillation of the Hamlets of the university rostrums. Coming out of the twilight of parliamentary relativity, knowledge once again entered into the kingdom of absolutes.
What has to be laid at the door of archaeologists and anthropologists was that at the end of the Second World War, they didn't sort out the issues of ethnicity. The holocaust was so ghastly that they walked away from the issue and didn't analyse it carefully. That ethnicity, the notion of who a people is, is very much what a people wants to be and is not to be demonstrated or proved from something deep in prehistory.... Archaeologists were very late in saying this and have only been saying it very recently. Academics did not grasp the nettle with sufficient vigour.Most important from this standpoint is the re-emergence over the last period of theories that use ethnic criteria as a tool of historical analysis.
In all spheres of life within the post-war German state system, there was no real reckoning with former Nazis. Judges, high ranking policemen, army officers, doctors, psychiatrists and politicians all assumed leading and respected positions in the state apparatus of the Federal Republic of Germany and, on a smaller scale, the German Democratic Republic. Things were no different regarding members of the Ahnenerbe. All became important scholars in post-war Germany—with the exception of Sievers who was sentenced to death at the Nuremberg trials. Any trace of their role in the SS murder machine was basically expunged.
Although everybody knew about his past, Jankuhn,, who had supervised the Nazis' archaeological plunder, continued to enjoy the reputation and lifestyle of a well-respected academic. His book on the early medieval site at Hedeby, or Haithbu, in North Germany is still regarded as a standard work.
Ahnenerbe-SS (http://greyfalcon.us/Ahnenerbe.htm)
La preistoria secondo le teorie di Herman Wirth
Marco Zagni
Heinrich Himmler,nella foto,nel 1938 (WaA359)
Con particolare interesse analizzeremo ora le vicende legate alla vita e agli studi del professor Herman Felix Wirth (1885-1981), co-fondatore insieme con Heinrich Himmler dell'Ahnenerbe, nonché primo presidente della stessa fino al suo inesorabile allontanamento avvenuto nel 1937-'38.
In effetti, si decise definitivamente di scrivere questo saggio dopo che ci eravamo accorti che parte delle teorie descritte nel nostro primo lavoro L'Impero Amazzonico, collimavano in linea di massima con quelle esposte molti anni fa da Wirth stesso, o meglio non si poteva far altro che risalire anche alle ricerche di Wirth (e di altri studiosi, tra i quali Tilak ed Evola) per completare il quadro delle nostre ipotesi.
Chi scrive, appassionato della preistoria del Sud America, aveva infatti considerato la possibilità di una antica migrazione di uomini Cro-Magnon Atlantico-Europei nel continente americano durante l'ultima Era glaciale di Wisconsin-Wurm, una migrazione indipendente, e forse precedente, da quella Sapiens "asiatica" proveniente dallo Stretto di Bering, perciò ci si imbatté logicamente nella scuola di pensiero di tutto un "corpus" di studiosi tradizionalisti, per arrivare infine anche a Wirth.
Per inciso, ci teniamo a rilevare subito che la portata delle sue teorie sono ancora oggi quanto mai oggetto di polemiche tra le opposte fazioni dei suoi estimatori e detrattori.
Anticipiamo anche che i temi "wirthiani" saranno ripresi nella parte conclusiva del presente saggio dove anche noi non ci sottrarremo nel dire la nostra su tutta una serie di tematiche affrontate nel corso della presente esposizione. Da tutto quello che abbiamo letto in merito a questo ricercatore, una cosa possiamo subito dire: era senz'altro un personaggio geniale ma eccentrico e, come sempre accade, in perenne contrasto con le personalità degli altri studiosi suoi coevi.
Vogliamo solo ricordare che quando Rudolf Mund, ultimo presidente dell'ONT morto nel 1985, lo contattò per avere notizie di prima mano in merito alla figura di Karl Maria Wiligut, Wirth si irrigidì moltissimo sostenendo che "quel famigerato truffatore doveva essere assolutamente dimenticato".
Ma probabilmente, questo francamente esagerato giudizio negativo derivava non tanto da screzi personali ma dal fatto che Wirth si era sempre considerato uno "scienziato" nel senso più completo del termine, mentre gli studi di Wiligut non sarebbero mai potuto essere da lui considerati come tali. Invece Himmler aveva sempre preso in forte considerazione scientifica le idee di entrambi.
Ma, a questo punto, che dire di questo tenace studioso tedesco-olandese - era nato a Utrecht?
Già dalla fine degli anni '20, naturalizzato tedesco, dopo la pubblicazione di uno dei suoi saggi più famosi, Der Aufgang der Menschheit - L'Ascesa dell'Umanità -, in complementarietà con altre pubblicazioni e conferenze, Wirth aveva cominciato lentamente a far presa su una certa parte della cultura giovanile tedesca.
Wolfram Sievers ,nella foto, assassinato a Norimberga(WaA359)
Non dobbiamo dimenticare infatti, che proprio in questo periodo avvenne l'incontro con il giovane Wolfram Sievers, il quale abbandonò la sua attività di commerciante di libri e divenne suo fidato assistente.
Wirth voleva soprattutto che le sue ricerche facessero presa sulla gente, anche sulle persone più comuni, e si batteva contro la burocrazia tedesca per far sì di ottenere sempre la possibilità di illustrare i risultati delle sue ricerche anche all'aperto, di fronte al pubblico, sotto un semplice tendone da circo.
Julius Evola, già nel 1930, ha ben presente il pensiero di Wirth e riesce ad esprimerlo compiutamente in poche righe qui riportate: "Il Wirth, in un'opera ponderosa e molto discussa... ha sostenuto che per spiegare una quantità di convergenze e di corrispondenze di simboli, dati antropologici e filologici, ecc., è necessario ammettere l'esistenza di una razza nordico primordiale, che verso l'Età della Pietra dalle regioni artiche si sarebbe spostata verso il sud, dando luogo alle forme più alte di una civilizzazione di tipo cosmico-solare".
Come possiamo vedere, l'influenza sul pensiero di Wirth da parte dell'opera dell'indiano Tilak, era stata fondamentale: sull'origine "polare" o in ogni caso Nord Europea dei bianchi ariani, si trovavano dunque in sintonia diversi studiosi nel mondo, Evola compreso, il quale però considerava l'insieme delle fonti Tradizionali tramandate segretamente, per via iniziatica, come un elemento di prova addirittura superiore agli elementi circostanziali e scientifici riscontrati dal Wirth nelle sue ricerche.
Abbiamo così, secondo Wirth, una dimora polare, patria primitiva della razza nordica, che aveva sviluppato una sorta di civiltà da "Età dell'Oro" (corrisponderebbe, secondo le ultime ricerche, ad un periodo interglaciale "caldo" collocabile tra il 40.000 ed il 28.000 a.C.).
Qui Wirth riportava una grande quantità di dati geologici, climatici e botanici veramente impressionanti dimostrando come allora, tra i 70 e gli 80 gradi di latitudine Nord, vi era una temperatura media annua paragonabile ad un clima temperato (sui 10 gradi centigradi, contro i 20 sotto zero attuali a quelle latitudini) e che questo territorio aveva incluso anche l'Islanda, la Groenlandia e le Isole Spitzbergen.
Era L'Atlantide polare, Thule, la sacra dimora della prima umanità.
Umanità che quindi, secondo Wirth, era nata in un periodo "Terziario", molto prima dell'arrivo di una fortissima glaciazione (dal 28.000 a.C. - ultima fase del Wurm) che aveva di conseguenza costretto gli abitanti di questo Eden Polare a migrare verso Sud, per costituire più tardi l'Atlantide platoniana che tutti conosciamo (dal 15.000 al 9.000 circa a.C.).
La fine del Wurm, l'innalzamento repentino dei mari, insieme con altre catastrofi naturali (il Diluvio Universale) aveva costretto i superstiti dell'Atlantide ariana ad una diaspora in Europa, Asia, Africa nordoccidentale ed America.
Questo, in sostanza, il pensiero di Herman Wirth.
Come si può facilmente comprendere, l'essenza delle teorie di Wirth riscosse allora il favore dei nazionalsocialisti, chiaramente perché secondo questa storia alternativa dell'Homo Sapiens Sapiens, la parte del leone la faceva la razza primigenia nordico-aria e di conseguenza i suoi discendenti, i popoli germanici.
Anche con il favore dei nazisti, in ogni caso, Wirth non aveva certo vita facile.
Atlantide Thule Wirth Himmler Ahnenerbe : OLODOGMA____"Biblioteca" alternativa ad OloCa$h e favola $terminazioni$ta (http://olo-dogma.myblog.it/archive/2009/12/03/atlantide-thule-wirth-himmler-ahnenerbe.html)
Al Presidente per conoscenza Atti
Berlino, li 13 luglio 1938
8/ S/S-K
Al
Reichsfuhrer-SS
Heinrich Himmler
Berlino SW 11
Prinz Albrecht-Strasse 8
Oggetto: Presa di posizione a riguardo delle conferenze del Barone Evola
Il Barone E vola ha tenuto tre conferenze sui seguenti temi:
"La dottrina aria della guerra santa"
"Il Graal come mistero nordico"
"Le armi della guerra occulta"
Vi hanno preso parte i seguenti membri dell'Ahnenerbe
SS-Haupsturmruhrer Sievers
Dr. Plassmann
SS Bauer, studente di Lettere
K.K.A. Ruppel
SS-aspirante Dr. Mischke
A riassunto delle impressioni riportate Le comunico:
Dal nostro punto di vista la posizione di Evola è da ritenere in generale positiva. Evola, come già emerge dai suoi precedenti discorsi, considera compito supremo di Roma e dell'Italia essere l'avanguardia della fede solare nordica nel mondo mediterraneo, per taluni aspetti estraneo e diverso. I realizzatori di tali impresa egli li definisce genericamente "Arii", intende in questo modo evidentemente qualcosa di affine agli indogermani dal punto di vista razziale. Queste forze arie della luce si devono riunire, in una sorta di ordine o di lega segreta per conservare nel mondo una certa istanza superiore. Questa concezione, considerata dal punto di vista degli italiani, non potrà mai andare d'accordo con la concezione tedesca che è sostanzialmente condizionata dall'elemento volkisch. Dal punto di vista storico egli vede incarnata questa idea nel medioevo ghibellino. Più questa dottrina vorrebbe essere precisa, più essa va incontro a difficoltà oggettive nel momento in cui si cerca di attuarla. Evola non mostra di avere completa fiducia nei confronti delle forze politiche reali e così ha potuto in buona fede entrare in confidenza con gli orientamenti che solo apparentemente rappresentavano queste idee. Esse in realtà infatti o avevano una posizione ostile al pensiero volkisch (Othmar Spann), o non possedevano alcuna propria dinamica politica (Goga). Se si tenta di organizzare una tale dottrina, subito si manifesta il pericolo di un certo cosmopolitismo ideale che potrebbe portare ad alcuni effetti imprevedibili.
Per tali ragioni non è consigliabile affidare ad Evola un apparato propagandistico e dargli un tale ruolo; ancora di più perché egli va pienamente d'accordo con le forze principali dell'Italia di oggi. Viene invece ritenuto opportuno, secondo il parere deirSS-Sturmbannfiihrer Wiist (2), il quale già in precedenza ha parlato con Evola, di restare in rapporti regolari con lo scrittore italiano che in ogni caso rappresenta un fenomeno spirituale degno di nota, di incitarlo e, in caso di necessità, di moderarlo, per quanto tale cosa sia possibile. Quanto tutto ciò possa avere efficacia alla lunga e quanto possa essere inserito in un vasto progetto politico, potrà essere verificato solo dopo un certo tempo, attraverso l'osservazione della maturazione del suo pensiero.
(firma illeggibile) SS-Haupsturmfuhrer
http://www.thule-italia.net/recensioni/img/evolaanhenerbe_1b.jpg
Julius Evola nei documenti segreti dell'Ahnenerbe (http://www.thule-italia.net/recensioni/evolaanhenerbe.html)
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