24, October 2007 Anthro 125 Germans > You: History as Propaganda History can be a very powerful weapon. Cultures and traditions are usually firmly entrenched in the past, and people use this past as the basis for many opinions about the present and even the future. In the Second World War, Germany's Nationalist Socialist Party used history and archaeology to justify their claims on parts of Europe. By declaring that historically German people were living in various parts of Europe, the Nazis invaded nation after nation before finally provoking war in 1939. The Third Reich's use of archaeology to conquer territory is just one prominent example of history used for political ends. Though this practice itself is not unethical given legitimate evidence, the Nazis stretched and occasionally broke the limits of scientific credibility by using often falsified finds to legitimize open acts of war. In this and other examples, politicians have used archaeologists' evidence to perpetuate their schemes. So who is to blame, the power-mongers, or the scientists empowering them? Although archaeologists are not innocent in producing false evidence to be used for unethical ends, it is the politicians who are ultimately responsible for the actions resulting from such evidence. Just prior to World War II, the Nazis spread their power and influence across international borders without any major resistance. In the Rhineland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, the Nazis took control under the pretense of liberating the German descendants living in those regions (Arnold 1992: 31). Being places traditionally very diverse in ethnic backgrounds, it was not false to claim that there were people of German descent in Austria and Czechoslovakia. However, instead of stopping here, the Nazis published false "proof" that the Germans were descended from the Ancient Greeks and
Alexander the Great, whose empire stretched across most of Europe. This, in the Nazis' minds, legitimized their claim to all of Europe, as a birthright from their ancient ancestor. The problem lies in the data, which was fabricated by German archaeologists: "One advertisement [in a popular journal] shows the reconstruction of a Neolithic drum from a pile of meaningless sherds" (Arnold 1992: 31). Heinrich Himmler, the Nazi chief of police charged with heading the archaeological search for Germanic history, summarizes his purpose best: "the one and only thing that matters to us, and the thing these [archaeologists] are paid for by the State, is to have ideas of history that strengthen our people in their necessary national pride. In all this troublesome business we are only interested in one thing--to project into the dim and distant past the picture of our nation as we envisage it for the future. Every bit of Tacitus in his Germania is tendentious stuff. Our teaching of German origins has depended for centuries on a falsification. We are entitled to impose one of our own at any time." (Arnold 1992: 31) This forced bias perverts the concept of science as the search for fact, and turns science into propaganda. One major obstacle for any fledgling political group is establishing itself as a legitimate entity. When it comes to gathering followers, few methods are as persuasive as cold, hard fact. Scientific evidence is a weapon that may not be universally understood, but is widely respected. In fact, herein lies much of the power of such evidence. Blind obedience to scientific authority allows a political group to promote its agenda amongst a group of followers who trust that the authority is truthful and benign. In the case of the Nazis, this authority was neither truthful nor benign, but was still followed because of the influence of perceived scientific support. In any case, it is the archaeologists providing information for politicians to use. Information is only seen as reliable when it comes from a trusted source, which
archaeologists represent. Himmler's project recruited archaeologists in a variety of ways: some were forced to cooperate under threat of personal harm, while others were attracted by the chance to perform well-funded research. Arnold believes that these men "saw the system as a way to develop and support prehistory as a discipline, [and] were willing to accept the costs of the Faustian bargain offered" it (1992: 37). Those who worked for the Nazis in World War II may have been threatened and extorted into cooperating with the Party, but even this fact does not exonerate these otherwise reputable scientists of being the ones who signed the reports to Nazi officers documenting imaginary finds that linked the Germans to the bygone civilizations of Atlantis, the ancient Romans, and the Holy Roman Empire. Given the situation, it may have been the wisest personal choice to work with the Nazis, but the fact remains that these archaeologists are at least partly responsible for the use of archaeological evidence as part of Hitler's propaganda machine. Though archaeologists are partly at fault for providing the data for the egregious abuse of science that the Nazis performed, the brunt of the blame lies on the politicians making use of this evidence, namely Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and the other SS officers in charge. It was they who actively used this false data to justify their occupation of foreign soil, and it was they who coerced German archaeologists into betraying their ethics. Himmler's own admission of bias (Arnold 1992: 31) removes any doubt that scientific integrity was purposely violated in the interest of political validity. The Germans were just one example of a political entity using archaeology to legitimize its power; they repeated the methods of many European powers striving for dominance throughout the centuries. Kohl states that archaeology has long been linked to
nationalism, for it can attach historical significance to relics found within a nation's borders (1998: 225). He cites the race between the French and British to claim Egyptian artifacts for the glory of the British Museum and the Louvre, respectively (1998: 227). This "scramble for Egyptian antiquities" (Kohl 1998: 227) was an extension of British and French imperialism, one of many facets of their fight for political dominance in Europe. Instead of fighting for territory, these two powers were competing for culture, to gain international respect as a pillar of intellectual sophistication. European archaeology in the nineteenth century was not limited to wellestablished powers; rising powers, such as Denmark, also used archaeology to create a cultural history and national heritage: "Each emergent nation-state had to construct its own national identity, which required the active forgetting or misremembering [...] and the rediscovery or inventing of one's past. Myths of national origin had to be elaborated from a variety of sources" (Kohl 1998: 228). Modern Macedonians, for example, "consider themselves heirs of the ancient Macedonians of Classical times and claim Alexander the Great as an ancestor" (Kohl 1998: 239), even though they are "linguistically and culturally related to other southern Slavic peoples who migrated into the Balkans roughly during the middle of the first millennium AD" and have no provable link to the ancient Macedonians or to Alexander the Great (ibid.). These elaborations on history are used to build a sense of national pride, by linking a present culture to a great power of the past. The use of history as a political means has been around as long as the study of archaeology has existed. Many powers have used archaeological finds to support their agendas, from the infamous Nazis to imperial France and even benign Denmark. As is
often the case when a national interest takes effect, archaeology has taken biases from time to time, to support varied causes like Danish national pride, British intellectual glory, and German territorial expansion. When archaeology loses objectivity, it is the fault of both archaeologists who produce the skewed data, and the politicians who use this data. It takes the effort of both scientists and nationalists to preserve the integrity of archaeology.
CITED LITERATURE
Arnold, Bettina. 1999. "The Contested Past." in Anthropology Today. Volume 15, No. 4. pp. 1-4. Arnold, Bettina. 1992. "The Past as Propaganda: Germany's Nazi Past." in Archaeology. July/August 1992. pp. 30-37. Kohl, Philip. 1998. "Nationalism and Archaeology: On the Construction of Nations and the Reconstructions of the Remote Past." in Annual Review of Anthropology. Volume 27. pp. 223-246.