In 1935, Heinrich Himmler, the leader of the SS and one of the most powerful men in

the Nazi Party, met with a controversial Dutch-born historian named Herman Wurth. The two men,

along with a number of other archaeologists and so-called racial experts, were looking

to deepen and expand some of the SS's recent archaeological work in both Germany and abroad.

In the years since the founding of the SS in 1929, Himmler had been involved in sponsoring

historical projects that would help lend academic and scientific, or in most cases pseudo-scientific,

credence to the racist ideology of the Nazi Party. With Herman Wurth, Himmler was now interested

in creating a new research society that would focus specifically on finding evidence of the

historical superiority of the so-called Aryan race. The result was the foundation of the Ananerbe

society. This new government-funded research facility would end up sponsoring some of the most

ethically despicable research of the 20th century, including some of the horrific experiments that

were carried out on human subjects during the Holocaust. When it came to history and pre-history,

the goal of the Ananerbe society was simple. Find proof that light-skinned Nordic peoples had been

the true originators of all human civilization. To that end, the Ananerbe sent researchers around

the world to selectively collect data that neatly aligned with Nazi racial theories. There were

expeditions to Northern Finland, Eastern Europe, and even Tibet and Northern India, apparently to

prove a theory that the Buddha had actually been a Nordic Aryan. But perhaps one of the most bizarre

expeditions was one that was ultimately cancelled. In 1939, the Ananerbe had planned to explore the

Canary Islands in hopes of finding the remains of Atlantis. You see, Ananerbe founder Herman Wurth

had been inspired by the writings of the famous occultist Helena Blavatsky. In her incredibly

influential book The Secret Doctrine, Blavatsky claimed to be transmitting the knowledge of a group

of spiritual adapsed known as the Masters. From the Masters, she had learned that Atlantis was real,

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