“You could imagine it like a grant funding body,” says Hale. “So you had a bunch of people going to the Ahnenerbe saying, ‘Look, I think Atlantis was in Bolivia.’ This was one of the expeditions that never got off the ground but there was a famous site in Bolivia called Tiwanaku and there was a German archaeologist who believed that this was Atlantis. With an idea like that he’d get support from the Ahnenerbe. So you probably got people tailoring their ideas to what they understood to be Himmler’s interest. And Himmler was certainly interested in very odd ideas. Not only did he believe in Atlantis but he thought that the Nordic or Aryan people came to earth in a shower of ice.”