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a movement that makes the world tremble." 9 When Hitler annexed
Austria, Von Liebenfels was forbidden to publish. Indeed, the Nazis
severely regulated - almost to the point of squeezing it into
complete non-existence - any public display of "occultism" or
"secret society" activity. Hence, Himmler's motivations for creating
the SS Ahnenerbedienst within the bureaucracy of the SS becomes
clearer, for the regime was in part fearful of its own connection to
the highest level to such societies and activities. By placing such
activities under SS jurisdiction, they could be monitored, studied,
funded, organized, and exploited in complete secrecy.
What was the Ahnenerbe In many respects it was the most
secret of all the SS' myriad secret departments.
Imagine that the evening adult education program of the New
School of Social Research had suddenly become an independent
government agency with a budget as big as the Defense Department,
with Lyndon Larouche as president and, perhaps, Elizabeth Clark
Prophet as the physics chairperson (sic).
Or maybe the summer session at the University of California
Berkely, had become militarized and all the students had immunity
from prosecution for any crime they had committed, or would ever
commit, and could conduct any form of independent study they liked
as long as they wore their black uniforms with the silver death's head
insignia at all times and swore an oath of personal loyalty to the dean.
The one might have some idea of what the Ahnenerbe was, and of
the type of people it first attracted to its ranks.
It was a humanities program. With guns. 10
This bizarre and irrational element of the occult at the very heart of
Himmler's Black Order of the SS is one of the hidden entities, for
example, coordinating and conducting the gruesome "medical
experiments" on concentration camp victims, and even on ordinary
Germans, during the war.
During the height of the war, the insanity gripping the
Ahnenerbe and its macabre and bizarre experiments became almost
surreal. The bureau devoted so much manpower and money to
"esoteric research projects that it began to seem as if (Himmler)
9
Ibid., p. 21.
10 Levenda, op. cit., pp. 151-152.
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