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Concept
Nazi archaeology
Summary
Nazi archaeology was a field of pseudoarcheology led and encouraged by various Nazi leaders and Ahnenerbe figures, such as Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler, which directed archaeologists and other scholars to search Germany's archeological past in order to find material evidence supporting an advanced, Aryan ancestry as alleged and espoused by the ultranationalist Nazi Party.
The search for a strong, nationalistic, Aryan-centric national prehistory of Germany began after Germany's loss in World War I in 1918, in which during this time, the country faced a severe economic crisis due to the terms brought on by the Treaty of Versailles. One of the leading experts who engaged in research and study in search of the German prehistory was German philologist and archeologist Gustaf Kossinna, with his ideas and theories being picked up and further researched by the Nazi organizations Amt Rosenberg and Ahnenerbe. With specialization in researching German prehistory as well as Hitler being able to provide funds from the Nazi Party into the study of German prehistory, the Nazis were able to add pseudoarchaeology into its extensive propaganda campaigns of the German people, presenting Germany as the beginnings of civilization.
The Kulturkreis ("culture circles") theory, originally by German ethnologists Fritz Graebner, but used in studies by Gustaf Kossinna, stated that recognition of an ethnic region is based on the material culture excavated from an archeological site. This theory was used by the Nazis to justify takeover and occupation of foreign lands such as Poland and Czechoslovakia. One such example of Kulturkreis is shown in Kossinna's article "The German Ostmark", in which Kossinna argued that Poland should be a part of the German Reich, since any lands where an artifact was titled "Germanic" were therefore ancient Germanic territory, in which the artifacts had been "wrongfully stolen" by "barbarians".
The Social Diffusion Theory, which stated that cultural diffusion occurred through a process whereby influences, ideas and models were passed on by more advanced peoples to the less advanced whom they came into contact with.
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