The Master Plan

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 par