Essay: Nazi Archaeology

Archeology is the study of historical and prehistorcial civilizations through the recovery and analysis of their materials culture. Moreover, it contains the study of human activity in the past. It has been often put to political use. In time of Adolf Hitler the Nazi Leader, archeology was unlikely special interest. The importance of Archeology was used by its leader to make his case that Germany had every right to invade surrounding countries. They used nationalism and the archeology itself to maintain and rationalize their party ideology of the superior Germanic race. It also allows employing many archeologists to help them seek and reach their political goals but the idea was not occur in a short time. To reach their desire, the idea was first developed in the mid 1800’s by two Frenchmen, the Comte de Gobineau and the Comte de Boulainvilliers (Young 2002). It is basis that archeology can be easy manipulate because it was rely on non-written sources of its interpretation.
On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler the foundation of the Nazi, he was appointed by President Paul von Hidenburg. It is beginning of the big influence of Nazi to power in Germany, they eliminate individuals’ freedom and create a society that surpasses the level of everyone and religious differences and they call it Volk community. In the first two years of his chancellorship, the Nazi became the controller of the power of every organization such as political groups, government’s state, and professional and cultural organization. They brought them in line with Nazi’s desire.
Nazi regime successively established a system that controls all aspects of society. Among the goals of this policy were two control how people think and as many aspects of life as possible (Sheridan 1984).
Hitler and Nazism got the ideology of Joseph-Arthur Comte de Gobineau and GustafKossinna. The inequality of the Human races which famously develop by Gobineau was adopted by Nazi and they are forced to edit his work to make it be conventional to their goal. Furthermore, Kossinna made his own theory in 1921 which suggested that “it was possible to map and track the millennia of struggle between the ‘long skulls’ (Aryan-Germanic peoples) and the ‘round heads’ (various eastern races, including Slavs and Jews) in the archaeological record based on ethnically distinct material culture distribution” (Arnold 2006: 11).
The Nazi system under the leadership of Adolf Hitler soon becomes dictatorship. As such, archeology becomes inexorably linked and pseudo-archeology provides simple answer to complicated question. Moreover, archeology was used to prove that the Nazi mission was viable especially when both Gobineau and Kossinna worked together and were combined with the racial program of the Nazi party. Nazi party not only argued that the Aryan race was superior to other races but they used fraud archaeological artifacts to support their mission of expanding their geographic borders by arguing that the German people were descendants of the original Aryan “master race.” They proved that by sending teams of archaeologists to excavate sites in the areas to invade as a means to substantiate not only their territorial claims there, but their superiority as well. For example, the invasion of Poland in 1940 in which Hitler sent a group of archaeologist to try to prove that the Germans had lived their first and had the right to invade the land. According to Bassett (2013: 63), “This is where Nazi archaeology can be considered as a form of pseudo-archaeology, because it has advanced a predetermined conclusion, andaltered archaeological data to fit this conclusion. Therefore, it is for these same reasons that the Nazi party utilized pseudo-archaeology as a means to appropriate and commercialize cultural heritage for its own political ends.”
The Nazi party exploited archaeology not only to justify the Nazi mission of expansion but also to expand as sites in Germany itself. According to Basset (2013: 63), “in the case of the Externsteine (Stones of the Ridge), archaeological data was skewed at this site in order to promote both a sense of nationalism and tourism. Both of these reasons reflect forms of appropriation and commercialization that are the most damaging to cultural heritage.”
Another ideology influence Nazi is the study of provincial Roman Germany is Alfred Rosenberg. He was appointed as leader of Nazi when Hitler was imprisoned. Rosenberg wrote a book called (The Myth of the Twentieth Century) in which he gave support to the idea that Germany had the right to invade other nations since German culture was superior and he also support the concept of a new Germanic religion. He did not appeared weak, he once study Jewish question and was said that Jesus is not a Jew but an Aryan Amorite.
Nazi Archaeology aimed for some targets: one of them was bringing out the idea that Germany is where the civilization started and that the history of Germany should make German people pleased and satisfied. People in that period of time didn’t know much about history therefore; it was easy to polish the historical image and make people believe it. By using journals and films, Nazi party thought they were given strong evidences that support their mission and that they could convince German people that they were learning the true German prehistory. People were asked to look up for the history of Germany and they were supported by the Nazis and making museums to public made it easier for them. All of this, gathered together was used to reinforce the nationalistic, fascist message Adolf Hitler did a good job in constructing his speeches, and open-air meetings.
The second goal of Nazi party is to convince the archeologists to manipulate the past. There were great opportunities for some people by giving them scholarships and helping them financially to improve the relationship with the surrounding countries. These people tried to do their best and have things that they can be proud of therefore; they successfully discovered some castles and went back home with some Archaeological artifacts to be displayed in museums. According to Young (2002: 31-32) “there are three generally recognized groups of archeologists during this period: the party-liners, the miltlaufer, and the opposition. Party-liners were eager to serve the Nazis by creating or twisting archeological data and interpretation to support part doctrine.” According to Arnold (1990: 468-469,470-471), “some prehistorians, including Hans Reinerth who later direrwed the Amt Rosenberg, received high-ranking positions in the Nazi Party for their cooperation.” AmtRosenbeg was a group who wanted to find a way to connect modern Germans to their prehistoric past. Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler joined the Schutzstaffel (SS) as work as Hitler personal protection. The education of the SS organization was highly important because they were considered the most racially pure of the entire Germanic race. According to Young (2002: 33), “They were supposed to be the ideal blond-haired, blue-eyed Germans and were expected to create a future pure German race with the aid of programs like Lebensbon.”
“The majority of archaeologist could be called fence-sitters, or mitlaufer. They simply taught what they were told to in the universities and accepted Nazi funding. Since they did not object, they legitimized the abuse of archeology for political purposes. The remaining archeologist made up the opposition, meaning they either openly opposed the misuse of archeology or they were attacked by the Nazis because of their race or political views. There was no official Party policy towards archeology; therefore, there was no uniform treatment of opposing archelogists.” (Young 2002: 32)
Throughout the context of this paper, it has been attempted to bring to light the very serious consequences of nationalism in Archaeology and the many dangerous faced by many archaeologist in their analysis of the prehistoric civilizations. Nazi party did not handle discipline in a good way when they used to have the power. The Nazis manipulated archaeological researches in the interest of the state that happens to have totalitarian control over the scholars which reside in it with the purposes of glorifying their past and justifying their occupation of Europe and their policies. Though many archaeologists would never intentionally falsify data, it is important to learn from the lessons of those under the Nazi regime because the Nazi government is not the only one that misused and manipulate archaeological data for political date and nationalistic reasons and this example should serve as a caution to all archeologists.