The Nazi government used the Ahnenerbe's research to justify many of their policies. For instance, the think tank's claim that archaeological evidence indicated that the ancient Aryans lived across eastern Europe was cited in justification of German military expansion into that region. Ahnenerbe research was also cited in justification of the Holocaust, the mass killing of Jews and other groups—including Roma and homosexuals—through extermination camps and other methods. In 1937 the Ahnenerbe undertaking was renamed the Research and Teaching Community of the Ancestral Heritage ("Forschungs- und Lehrgemeinschaft des Ahnenerbe"). Some of the group's investigations were placed on hold at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. Towards the end of the war, Ahnenerbe members destroyed much of the organisation's paperwork to avoid it incriminating them in forthcoming war-crimes tribunals.