Books by Heather Pringle

A groundbreaking history of the Nazi research institute whose work helped lead to the extermination of millionsIn 1935, Heinrich Himmler established a Nazi research institute called The Ahnenerbe, whose mission was to send teams of scholars around the world to search for proof of Ancient Aryan conquests. But history was not their most important focus. Rather, the Ahnenerbe was an essential part of Himmler's master plan for the Final Solution. The findings of the institute were used to convince armies of SS men that they were entitled to slaughter Jews and other groups. And Himmler also hoped to use the research as a blueprint for the breeding of a new Europe in a racially purer mold.The Master Plan is a groundbreaking expos of the work of German scientists and scholars who allowed their research to be warped to justify extermination, and who directly participated in the slaughter--many of whom resumed their academic positions at war's end. It is based on Heather Pringle's extensive original research, including previously ignored archival material and unpublished photographs, and interviews with living members of the institute and their survivors.A sweeping history told with the drama of fiction, The Master Plan is at once horrifying, transfixing, and monumentally important to our comprehension of how something as unimaginable as the Holocaust could have progressed from fantasy to reality.

This edition does not include illustrations.Acclaimed science writer Heather Pringle uncovers the true story of the scientists and archaeologists Heinrich Himmler deployed to find proof for his theories of a prehistoric Aryan master race.What happens when science falls prey to a political agenda?Pre-history, according to Heinrich Himmler, must be re-written. Himmler, the chief of the SS and architect of the Nazi network of death camps, was obsessed with re-writing history. He was convinced that archaeologists had long ignored the great accomplishments of ancient Germanic peoples. Himmler believed that Germany's ancestors - the tall, blue-eyed, blond-haired Aryans - had evolved not in the savannahs of Africa with the rest of humanity, but in the icy barrens of the Arctic. There, refined and distilled by natural selection in a bitter land, they had become an invincible master race. But some 12,000 years ago, theorized Himmler, a natural cataclysm shook the earth, decimating the scattered Aryan colonies and now, only in select parts of the world - most notably northern Europe - did some true Aryan blood remain.Himmler's history was pure fiction, but his conviction was unshakable. In 1935 he founded the 'Ahnenerbe' - a research institute to manufacture archaeological evidence for political purposes - appointed himself president, and set about recruiting a bizarre mix of adventurers, mystics, careerists and reputable archaeologists to help write a new chapter in the ancient history of the Aryan race. Expeditions went sent out to Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Greenland and beyond, each backed by the power of the Third Reich to realize this bizarre scientific dream.'The Master Plan' is also an expose of the German scientists and scholars who allowed their research to be used to justify extermination - many of whom resumed their academic positions at war's end.Intensely compelling and comprehensively researched, 'The Master Plan' is a story of delusion and excess; of scientific and political abuse on a global scale. It has all the energy of an adventure, but also the chilling truth of a terrifying episode in twentieth century history.

Almost unimaginably immense, North America stretches from a few degrees short of the North Pole to a few degrees shy of the equator. Archaeologists are now racing to unravel the mysterious past of the forgotten peoples who once inhabited this sprawling land.