1066 - Andrew Bridgeford [16]
The Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 and the First World War passed without mishap to the Bayeux Tapestry. It was during the Second World War that it was to undergo some of its greatest adventures.12 On 1 September 1939, just as German troops were attacking Poland in a manoeuvre that was to plunge the continent into five and a half years of war, the tapestry was carefully removed from its exhibition case, rolled on to the spool, sprayed with insecticide powder and locked for safe keeping in a concrete shelter within the basement of the bishop's palace at Bayeux. There it remained for a year, except for the odd occasion when it was checked and the insecticide renewed. In June 1940 France fell. It was not long before the tapestry came to the attention of the occupying forces. Between September 1940 and June 1941 the tapestry had to be retrieved and exhibited to eager German visitors at least a dozen times. Like Napoleon before them, the Nazis were hoping to repeat William the Conqueror's invasion of England. They, too, regarded the tapestry as a potent source of propaganda and inspiration, never suspecting for the slightest moment the subversive undercurrent that runs through the work. The German invasion, like that of Napoleon, was postponed in 1940. Churchill's Britain was also better prepared than Harold's England. Britain narrowly won the battle of the skies and, though the bombing of its people continued, Hitler's thoughts turned to the invasion of the Soviet Union.
Even so, German interest in the tapestry was not to be assuaged and a more sinister group soon began to take an abiding interest in the work. This was the Ahnenerbe (Ancestral Heritage), the research and teaching branch of Heinrich Himmler's SS which had been set up to provide 'scientific'evidence of the superiority of the Aryan race. The Ahnenerbe attracted a significant number of German historians and scientists who enthusiastically moulded their scholarly careers to the advancement of Nazi ideology. As an organisation, it remains notorious for its role in the inhuman medical experiments that were perpetrated on concentration camp victims, but history and archaeology continued to be a focus of its attentions. Even at the height of war, the SS devoted considerable resources to the study of Germanic history and archaeology, to Himmler's occult interests, and to the plundering of art and artefacts of Aryan origin from occupied territories.
What commended the Bayeux Tapestry to the Ahnenerbe was not only its depiction of a successful invasion of England. It was a work of art that seemed to celebrate the fighting prowess of Nordic peoples - the Normans, descendants of the Vikings, and the Anglo-Saxons, descendants of the Angles and Saxons. Amid the terrible conflagration of world war, amid the seismic clash of army with army, the 'intellectuals' of the SS devised an ambitious project of study of the Bayeux Tapestry, including its complete photography, with an artist copying the images and publishing of the results. The French authorities had little choice but to comply. The most that could be done was to make representations concerning the safety of the work and to ensure that no one could say that it had passed into ownership of the occupying forces.
For the purposes of study, the tapestry was transferred under military guard to the nearby abbey of Juaye-Mondaye in June 1941. The head of the study team was Dr Herbert Jankuhn. Professor of archaeology at Kiel, he was an active and enthusiastic member of the Ahnenerbe. Jankuhn gave a