Plans for the systematic creation of a cultural framework to replace Christianity, referred to as the ‘development of the Germanic heritage’, were worked out between Himmler’s personal staff under Wolff and academics in early 1937. A key draft obviously expressing Himmler’s ideas stated that now ‘in the age of the final showdown with Christianity’ it was one of the missions of the SS to provide the German people with ‘the proper ideological [weltanschaulichen] foundations’ within which to conduct and frame their lives.
