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This documentary film lost in the German archives played to packed audiences in German movie theaters in 1933. Not wanting to dispel the illusion of a great find, the archeologists remained evasive about what they had really discovered. These misshapen skulls were actually the result of an ancient native American practice, in which the heads of young children are bound and deformed for religious reasons. But the third Reich's obsession with Atlantis and other myths went much further than appeasing the German public's appetite for mystery.
In 1934, a year after this film about Atlantis was made, Himmler formed the Ahnenerbe, a specialist division of the SS recruited from some of the country's best universities. Though many members didn't yet know it, the Ahnenerbe's aim was no less than the reinvention of German history. The academics and archeologists who joined the Ahnenerbe soon found their leader to be a difficult and troublesome taskmaster.
He had a habit of getting, you know, three o'clock in the morning, getting a sudden inspiration, jotting down a memo, find out why butterflies migrate or find out why crows tend to sort of gather at places of execution and he'll send this off to the appropriate unit, you know, imagine the sort of appearing on someone's desk, and they are looking at it thinking where did that come from. And If you were luck, he'd forget about it.
When war broke out in 1939, and German army swept across Europe, the scientists of the SS Ahnenerbe followed in their wake using archeology to claim that the Nazis weren't conquering territory, they were merely reclaiming land that once belonged to the Aryan race.
As the war progressed, the myth of Atlantis began to assume a far more malign role, the lost racially pure homeland of Atlantis now became the model for the new Nazi Germany.
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dispel: v. 驱散
evasive: adj. 逃避的， 模糊的
jot down: v. 草草记下
taskmaster: n. 工头
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