HITLER’S PRIESTESS NICHOLAS GOODRICK-CLARKE HITLER’S PRIESTESS Savitri Devi, the Hindu-Aryan Myth, and Neo-Nazism a NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW YORK AND LONDON NEW YORK UNIVERSITYPRESS New York and London Copyright (cid:1) 1998 by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke Nicholas Goodrick-Clarkehas assertedhis right to be identifiedas the author of this work. All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-PublicationData Goodrick-Clarke,Nicholas. Hitler’s priestess : SavitriDevi, the Hindu-Aryanmyth, and neo- Nazism / Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references(p. ) and index. ISBN 0-8147-3110-4 (acid-freepaper) 1. Neo-Nazism. 2. SavitriDevi. I. Title. JC481.G57 1998 320.53'3'092—dc21 97-45407 CIP New York UniversityPress books are printed on acid-freepaper, and their binding materialsare chosen for strengthand durability. Manufacturedin the UnitedStatesof America 10987654321 C O N T E N T S ALL ILLUSTRATIONS APPEAR AS AN INSERT FOLLOWING PAGE 80. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii INTRODUCTION: ‘‘Discovered Alive in India: Hitler’s Guru!’’ 1 1. Hellas and Judah 7 2. Aryavarta 26 3. Hindu Nationalism 43 4. The Nazi Brahmin 64 5. The Duce of Bengal 77 6. Akhnaton and Animal Rights 92 7. The Hitler Avatar 109 8. Defiance 126 9. Pilgrimage 147 10. The ODESSA Connection 169 11. Inside the Neo-Nazi International 187 12. Last Years and Legacy: Nazis, Greens, and the New Age 210 v vi CONTENTS NOTES AND REFERENCES 233 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 251 INDEX 255 ABOUT THE AUTHOR 269 A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S When writing the biography of an underground figure, one can only benefit from the help of persons in the milieu. Here I would like to thank Ernst Zu¨ndel for initially drawing my attention to Savitri Devi in 1982 and sending me a copy of The Lightning and the Sun. I also wish to acknowledge Samisdat Publishers of Toronto for allowing me to quote at length from Savitri Devi’s books. FormercomradesofSavitriDeviweregenerouswiththeirmemories, as well as with the loan of books and photographs. I am grateful to Beryl Cheetham, Lotte Asmus, Matt Koehl, and Colin Jordan. My re- searches were greatly aided by Muriel Gantry, at whose Essex cottage Savitri Devi died en route for America in 1982. A friend since 1946, her nonpartisanmemoirsoverseveraldecadesrevealedmuchofSavitri Devi’s personality, as well as providing amusing anecdotes. I am much indebted to Miguel Serrano, who kindly sent me books and transla- tions, and his correspondence with Savitri Devi, andotherwiseclarified the nature of his ‘‘Esoteric Hitlerism.’’ This study has also benefited from scholarly encouragementandde- bate. Warm thanks are due to my friends Professor Joscelyn Godwin and Dr. Hans Thomas Hakl for their generous help with sources and leads. An earlier review of Savitri Devi and her Hitler cult was the subject of my plenary lecture at the ninth international conference of CESNUR (Centre for Studies of New Religions, Turin) held at the University of Rome in May 1995. I owe thanks to the librarians and staffs of the British Library; the India Office Library and Records, London; the Bodleian Library, Ox- ford; the Taylor Institution Library, Oxford; and Indian Institute Li- brary, Oxford. vii I N T R O D U C T I O N ‘‘Discovered Alive in India: Hitler’s Guru!’’ The young German sat on the threadbare sofa listening to the words of the old woman before him. Through windows opening onto a bal- cony, shafts of dust-flecked sunlight shone into the darkened space of her humble, spartanly furnished room. Outside the strange, heady tu- multofIndiaresoundedinthefullglareofthemiddayheat.Allaround he could hear the street sounds and raucous, bustling squalor of this back alley in Delhi. Occasionally, her narrative was interrupted by the songs of the exotic birds she kept in her room and the young manwas distracted by the sudden darting movement of the many cats, her in- separable companions, that lay at her feet or dozed out on the balcony in the warm air. His attention fixed on the worn and crinkled face of the old woman as she carefully chose her words to tell the story of her life. She was dressed in the fashion ofIndianwomen,wearingaloosewhitesariand a thin cotton shift over her shoulders. Soft gray hair framed her high forehead and wasgatheredbehindherears.Whileherbrowwasbarely lined, her cheeks, chin, and neck blurred in a mass of furrows and wrinkles. Her lips were thin, and her mouth looked twisted, pointing downward at the right side. But it was her eyes that held him. Her eyes burned with a strange luminous quality, the light of inner vision and missionary zeal. But he also noticed that the left eye stared with a pained expression, while the right appeared tired and liquid, and he remembered with a start that she was now almost blind withcataracts. The old woman’s name was Savitri Devi and the young man had traveled all the way from Frankfurt to find her in thissmallbareroom in old India and to hear in her own words the story of her sacred 1