The Master Plan: Himmler's Scholars and the Holocaust

J.L. Granatstein, Distinguished Research Professor of History Emeritus,
York University, served as Director of the Canadian War Museum from 1998
to 2000. His latest works are Who Killed Canadian History?, Who Killed
the Canadian Military, and Hell’s Cor

Academics have always wanted to believe that they operate responsibly
and ethically in pursuit of their scholarship. As Heather Pringle, a
Vancouver journalist, demonstrates irrefutably in this book, such was
not the case in Nazi Germany. Far too many scholars bought into the New
Order and found themselves willingly working for SS chief Heinrich
Himmler and his Ahnenerbe (an institute set up to research the
anthropological and cultural history of the Aryan race). This institute
intended to “prove” Himmler’s fantasies about the Aryan origins of
the Germans, and research expeditions set off for Finland, Tibet, Iraq,
and elsewhere. All this might have been harmless, if foolish, except
that the Aryan mythos played its role, backed up by “scholarship,”
in setting the stage for the elimination of the untermenschen
(“inferior people”) in the Holocaust.

This book, which has won prizes, is well-researched and well-written.
Its lessons about the way scholars, scholarship, and science can be
twisted for the most evil of ends are well worth reading.