PART ONE

THE ARYAN MYTH FROM BUDDHA TO ADOLF HITLER: WALTHER WÜST AND THE ARYAN TRADITION

Horst Junginger

1. Introduction

Walther Wüst is rightly known as one of Germany’s leading academics during the Nazi period. He was a scholar of a new voelkish type. Being on very intimate terms with Heinrich Himmler, he quickly advanced in the SS and was appointed SS-“Oberführer” in 1942, the highest rank he would achieve. His academic career prospered similarly. Full professor since 1935, Wüst was nominated rector of the University of Munich in 1941. At that time, he had already headed Himmler’s brain trust named “Ahnenerbe” (ancestral heritage) for four years. Indeed, Wüst represented the archetype of a politically engaged Nazi scholar. It is misleading to raise doubts about his extraordinary position only because Alfred Rosenberg tried to thwart some of his projects. Michael Kater goes too far in his still authoritative book about the “Ahnenerbe” relat- ing Wüst to a somewhat old school of scholarly learning in Germany.1 Writing his dissertation in the early 1970s, Kater did not see through the widely played game of many post-war university professors who made a virtue of necessity in transforming their former rivalries into opposition and even resistance after the war. But it has to be acknowl- edged that Kater stood under great pressure from his interviewees, mostly university professors and high ranks of the former “Ahnenerbe” and the Reich Ministry of Science and Education, during his research.2 They went to great lengths to impose their view on the young doctoral student, even threatening him with legal proceedings if he would go a little bit too far in his interpretation. Their intention was clear: to neglect or, at least, to diminish their involvement in National Socialism

1 Michael H. Kater, Das ‘Ahnenerbe’ der SS 1935–1945. Ein Beitrag zur Kulturpolitik des Dritten Reiches (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1974, 3rd ed. 2001), p. 275. 2 Kater’s correspondence with them is to be found in the Institut für Zeitgeschichte München (Institute of Contemporary History, Munich), ZS/A-25 “Zeugenschrifttum Kater.”