What happens when science falls prey to a deadly political agenda?

Pre-history, according to Heinrich Himmler, had to be rewritten. The chief of the SS and architect of the Nazi death camps was convinced that archaeologists had long ignored the accomplishments of a primeval race of blond-haired, blue-eyed conquerors—the Aryans. Himmler believed that Germany’s ancestors had evolved in the icy barrens of the Arctic where they had ruled as an invincible master race. Now, he theorized, only in select parts of the world did some true Aryan blood remain.

Himmler’s history was pure fiction, but his conviction was unshakeable. In 1935 he founded the Ahnenerbe—a research institute to manufacture archaeological evidence for political purposes—and set about recruiting a bizarre mix of adventurers, mystics and reputable scholars to help rewrite all of human history. Researchers were sent on public expeditions and secretive missions to Iraq, Finland, Tibet and beyond, backed by the power of the Third Reich.

Drawing on extensive original research, Heather Pringle paints a compelling and sinister portrait of the Ahnenerbe and its role in the Holocaust, and reveals the German scientists and scholars who allowed their research to be used to justify extermination. Combining the energy and storytelling skill of the best fiction with the chilling detail of history, The Master Plan is a groundbreaking story of delusion and excess, of scientific and political abuse on a global scale.

Advance praise for The Master Plan:

“‘Beware,’ Churchill warned, ‘lest the Stone Age return on the gleaming wings of science.’ In The Master Plan, Heather Pringle gives a gripping account of Nazi perversions of science in support of the myth of Aryanism. A small army of scholars did the state’s bidding, precipitating all-out barbarism. The Master Plan provides an awful warning against binding scholarship too closely to the state.”
—John Polanyi, Nobel Laureate

“A phenomenal book. Just when we thought we had learned all we could about these monsters comes another tale as sinister as any yet uncovered. Heather Pringle belongs in the company of Barbara Tuchman and Hannah Arendt.”
—Larry Kramer

“This is an exceptional piece of work for those with a very deep interest in the intellectual structures of tyranny, in Heinrich Himmler, in how monsters work. Dictators always have theories and always find scholars to prove them. The Master Plan is the detailed history of one such effort, but it sheds abundant light on all of them.”
—Alan Furst, author of Dark Star and Night Soldiers

“I am hugely impressed by The Master Plan. Besides adding to knowledge of Himmler’s motivation and elements in his character, it demonstrates in hideous detail how highly educated men can lose all intellectual and moral restraints and descend to barbaric levels of criminality in pursuit of their goal.”
—Peter Padfield, author of Himmler