The Ahnenerbe, which translates as “ancestral heritage,” was founded in 1935 by Heinrich Himmler, and Hermann Wirth (Dutch historian obsessed with Atlantis) and Richard Walter Darre (creator of the “Blood and Soil” theory and Head of the Race and Settlement Office).

In January 1929, Heinrich Himmler was appointed the leader of the fledgling Schutzstaffel (SS). He launched a massive recruitment campaign that took the SS from less than three hundred members in 1929 to ten thousand in 1931.