Customer Reviews

Hitler's Priestess: Savitri Devi, the Hindu-Aryan Myth, and Neo-Nazism

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

A Jewish journalist once observed that when writing about Nazism, objectivity is regarded with suspicion and writers feel obliged to pile on the invective. Just see some of the editorial reviews above. This makes it all the more remarkable that Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke has written such a balanced book on Savitri Devi, who taught that we should love all God's creatures--except Jews. Although the author makes it clear that he does not share Devi's views, he lets her speak for herself, and he actually passes silently over some of her more unattractive and fanatical statements, which would surely be insuperable barriers to otherwise open-minded readers.

I have only two objections to this book. First, the author does not adequately discuss Devi's deep philosophical debt to Nietzsche, who provides the framework for her interpretations of Akhnaton and Hinduism and makes possible their synthesis with National Socialism. Second, he never really captures Devi's unique and powerful personality--with its wild extremes of sentimentality and savagery, cold logic and enthusiastic rapture, love of cats and hatred for most human beings--which is stamped on all of her writings. It is her personality as much as her ideas that contributes to the haunting effect that she has on so many readers.

Devi has already influenced the world we live in today--far more for her work on behalf of Hindu nationalism than National Socialism. This influence will only increase as global capitalism continues to ravage the natural world and homogenize the cultural world, thereby drawing new people to the deep-ecological rejection of anthropocentrism and to the politics of difference. This is a wonderful book. Read it, and the world will seem a richer and stranger place.

_Savitri Devi_ by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke is an extremely bizarre read on one of the more mystical figures in the neo-Nazi movement. Devi was born Maximiani Portas of Greek and English heritage in the south of France, and earned a Ph.D. in mathematics. She grew up feeling disillusioned with Western liberalism, and set out to India in the 1920's to study India's caste system as an example of racial segregation and the Hindu scriptures, in particular the Vedas and the Bhagavad Gita, which she considered the most ancient examples of Aryan wisdom. She found India, the world's last Aryan pagan nation, to be a place poor but with an unbroken spirit, especially among the high caste Brahmins. She also viewed it as being under cultural assault by British colonization and its growing Muslim population. She joined the ant-British, anti-Muslim Hindu Mission (to spread Hinduism) and the Hindu Nationalist movement in India (groups which were to the right of Gandhi and favored militancy) which was under the leadership of V. D. Savarkar. Devi married a Brahmin, Asit Krishna Mukherji, who was well traveled in Europe and published a racialist and pro-Nazi magazine under the auspices of the German Consulate in India. Following the defeat of Germany in WWII, Devi went on three Nazi propaganda missions in Germany and even spent time in prison for subversive activities. During this time and the 1950s and 60s, Devi made contact with well known British and American neo-Nazis, among whom were George Lincoln Rockwell, Colin Jordan and John Tyndall. She also became aquainted with ex-Nazis such as the ace Hans Ulrich-Rudel and Leon Degrelle and others who had fled Germany and set up a networks in Spain, Latin America and the Middle East. She returned to India in 1971 and corresponded with Holocaust revisionist Ernst Zundel and the South American Nazi occultist Miguel Serrano. Devi published a number of books popular among the far-right and and also far-left environmentalist groups: _The Impeachment of Man_ (an argument for animal rights against a human-centered outlook), _A Warning to the Hindus_ (some of the aims of the Hindu Nationalist movement), _Pilgrimage_ (her reflections on her visit to post-WWII Germany), _Son of the Son_ (a study of Akhnaton who initiated the solar cult in Egypt, which Devi considered to be a forerunner of Nazism), and _The Lightning and the Sun_. _The Lightning and the Sun_ is Devi's most notorious book, in which she argues that Hitler is an incarnation of the god Vishnu the
Preserver, a "Man Against Time" who intervened and fought against the process of decay in today's modern world, which is known as the Kali Yuga of the Hindus. Thus Savitri Devi managed to provide a theological justification for outright Hitler-worship in the context of an Aryan/pagan revival. Altogether, this is an even-handed book on a highly controversial and eccentric woman.

An excellant well researched piece of scholarship! It combines academic detail with a clear writing style. Devi's life and work is a case where fact is stranger[and more fascinating] than fact. From her highly educated background [A PhD from Lyon University] to her association with American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell to her founding of the Green Movement, Goodrick-Clarke takes you on the "Magical Mystery Tour" of Devi's strange life. A must read. WELL DONE DR GOODRICK-CLARKE!!!

This is (hopefully) an accurate factual portrayal of a fascinating individual. The author is clearly not sympathetic to his subject's world view, yet he mostly refrains from editorializing.

Indeed, the presentation is so dry and lifeless, the reader never gets much of a sense of the Savitri Devi as a person. Also, the author does a rather mediocre job of presenting the necessary background on Hindu nationalism and Devi's contributions to that cause.

But the author deserves credit for tackling the biography of such a politically incorrect figure.

"Her eyes burned with a strange luminous quality, the light of inner vision and missionary zeal." As a young woman in the 1920s she traveled extensively, earned a doctorate in mathematics, and admired Hitler and National Socialism. By the early 1930s she was in India seeking the roots of the ancient Aryans, and mastering the Hindi language and learning about the Hindu myths and religion.

After WWII she tried to revive National Socialism. She wrote books, distributed propaganda, and consulted with former Third Reich warriors like Hans-Ulrich Rudel. She was imprisoned for speaking out. The Nazi women she met in prison only reinforced her belief in the pan-Aryan cause.

One of her books, The Lightning and the Sun, is probably the most invigorating and uplifting writing in all the National Socialist literature. She posited two great Aryan qualities -- the sun (the sustainer) and the lightning (the destroyer). Hitler she believed was "the man against time," who had both qualities, and his followers are the bridge to the superman.

Like other National Socialists, Devi revered Nature and was a serious conservationist. Despite the author's anti-Nazi bias, this is a great biography.

Biography of one of the most interesting and original thinkers in the post-World War 2 National Socialist/Racial Nationalist movement. Essential reading for both racial activists and students of social movements. (Only the author's negative bias prevents my giving five stars.)

Very enlightening writer who uses academics as a virtual weapon. Wonderful. Hitler a reincarnation of Visnu Hardly. A Hindu teacher in Delhi called him a incarnated bisexual savant of Anubis. In India, the author Lockshmi Singh also said if you look at a picture of Propaganda Minister Goebbels after he ignobly committed suicide and killing his children sending him to a lower level of incarnation then his birth and by committing cowardly suicide the famous picture of his dead body reveals his true Spiritual nature. Lockshmi Singh said if you look at the photo of his dead body you can see he was an incarnated rat Demon. Take a look at Nazi Propaganda Minister Goebbels death photos and you can see his true self is revealed.His human body has melted away. Like Gura Singh says you can not say 'truth is a lie' and not pay for people's pain. Yes Clarke's book is worth reading to see how mythology is a tool for hate or hope.Great book. Look on internet at Goebbels picture and see for yourself,see what he looks like after he died, see cold hard truth, something Goebbels did not believe in.

The back cover claims this book to be a study, but information is only given and not analyzed or "studied", the information given, if concerning Savitri Devi (SD) is taken directly from her own books or does only very indirectly, around many corners, concern her.
The author keeps calling her pagan beliefs "amoral" (of course they are, i.e. not fitting Christianity), SD's religious beliefs are portraied as only serving political ends, and the last chapter is a general, rough summary of all the bad things that various left/green/right/ufo/new age/satanist etc. groups have perpetrated, or tried to, over the last 30 years.
Conclusion: Information given can easily be obtained freely by using an internet search enginge, and money spent on this book is lost money.

Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke is a British scholar specializing in the connection between Nazism and occultism. His book "The occult roots of Nazism" is already a classic. There is also a sequel, "Black Sun" where he mentions the notorious Savitri Devi in one chapter. This book, "Hitler's Priestess", is entirely devoted to Devi, her bizarre combination of Nazism and Hinduism, and her equally strange odyssey through post-war neo-Nazism.

Savitri Devi's real name was Maximiani Portas. She was of mixed Greek and British ancestry, and was born and raised in France. At an early age, she became anti-Semitic, hostile to Britain and France, and sympathetic to National Socialism. However, she spent most of the 1930's and 1940's in India, where she aided various Hindu nationalist movements (precursors to the modern BJP). Apparently, Savitri Devi moved to India in the hope of finding the Aryan homeland, where a caste system had supposedly kept the Aryan blood pure since time immemorial. Instead, she found the Hindus in West Bengal besieged by Muslims and British colonialists. In India, she married Asit Krishna Mukherji, who was publishing a pro-Nazi magazine financed by the German consulate. The marriage was platonic - a ruse to make Devi a nominal British subject, so she couldn't be deported from India due to her controversial political sympathies.

After the war, Savitri Devi entered Germany, was arrested by the British for Nazi propaganda activities, and sentenced to a brief imprisonment at Werl, where she met and bonded with female war criminals. Eventually, Devi became a well known figure in post-war Nazi circles. She frequently met with old Nazi refugees in Spain and Egypt, while also befriending leading neo-Nazis, including Colin Jordan, Ernest Zündel and Lincoln Rockwell. Naturally, she was present when the World Union of National Socialists (WUNS) was formed.

However, what really marks Savitri Devi out are her bizarre religious ideas. As already mentioned, she attempted to combine Hinduism and Nazism, indeed to turn Nazism into a literal religion. Devi claimed that Adolf Hitler was an avatar (incarnation) of the Hindu god Vishnu, presumably the last avatar, Kalki, the Hindu "Messiah". She had religious visions of Hitler at the grave of his parents. In another vision, she saw herself give Goering a cyanide pill (this vision supposedly took place the same night as Goering committed suicide). During a "pilgrimage" to Germany and Austria, Savitri Devi visited various locations associated with the rise of Nazism, naturally including Nuremberg and Munich, treating these places as holy shrines. She would also pray to Hitler.

Frankly, Savitri Devi wasn't just evil. She was also quite mad!

What I find most intriguing is that this obviously cranky woman had full and instant access to both old and new Nazis, who even treated her with respect, interest and a certain reverence. I suspect this says something about the disorientation within Nazi circles after the defeat. At first, Savitri Devi was able to meet influential Nazi refugees, such as Otto Skorzeny and a string of Nazis aiding Nasser's regime in Egypt. But as time went on, she seems to have been mostly confined to sectarian and cultish neo-Nazi circles. This, of course, reflects the increasing isolation of explicit Nazism after the war. Only in a completely sectarian milieu could ideas such as Hitler being a Hindu avatar ever get a serious hearing. During the Third Reich, Nazism was a secular nationalist movement, and the Nazis attempted to secure the support of the Christian churches. Had Savitri Devi lived in Nazi Germany, she would have been barely tolerated.

Still, even this bizarre personage could wreak some harm. Goodrick-Clarke points out that one of Devi's "purely" spiritual writings about the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten has been kept in print by AMORC, an otherwise harmless New Age-oriented group. Or are they really that harmless? (I have noticed a streak of anti-Semitism in their writings as well.) Savitri Devi's book on animal rights, the author believes, might unduly influence deep ecologists or animal rights activists. Personally, I suspect Peter Singer might be more dangerous!

"Hitler's priestess" is an interesting book, but there are also some problems with it. The main sources used by the author are Savitri Devi's own books and reminiscences of her friends, most of whom were Nazi. Indeed, these seem to be the only sources available. Devi was well known in Nazi circles, but she was not a public person. Obviously, this makes it impossible to double check her claims. Were Devi and Mukherji really successful Japanese agents during the war? Did she really meet Sven Hedin in Stockholm, and did Hedin really tell her that Hitler was still alive? Was she actually present at the eruption of the Icelandic volcano Hekla, approaching the molten lava while shouting "Heil Hitler"? And when Savitri Devi made her "pilgrimage" through Austria and Germany, she seems to have encountered former Nazis and SS officers behind every bush!

Another question the book never answers is: why? Of course, the tainted sources probably don't give a real answer. Still, one wonders. Maximiani Portas seems to have been a precocious girl and a star student, who spoke several languages and wrote two dissertations, one of them about mathematics based on Frege and Russell, hardly a light subject. Her marriage to Mukherji was platonic, and the sources never mention another lover. However, Goodrick-Clarke does imply at one point that Devi may have been a lesbian, since her admiration for one of the female war criminals at Werl had a sexual undertone. Personally, I also suspect that a certain kind of religious devotion might be a psychological substitute for sex. One also wonders where her misanthropy came from? A deeply rooted hatred for other humans (and love for cats) surely must have some kind of psychological explanation. Devi must also have been estranged from her parents - her mother supported the French Resistance during the war!

Be that as it may, Goodrick-Clark has probably gone as far as the sources permitted him.

I agree with another reviewer that people who simply want a general overview of the Nazi-occult milieu might read the condensed version of Savitri Devi's life in "Black Sun". That book also contains chapters on other occult Nazis, including Julius Evola and Miguel Serrano. However, if you are an obsessive cult-watcher, "Hitler's priestess" is probably a must.

This is the first biography of Savitri Devi. For a long time, it was the only biography. Thus I recommended it in spite of the author's dry style and evident distaste for his subject.

But HITLER'S PRIESTESS is no longer the only game in town. Most of its biographical information is drawn from ten hours of interviews taped by Savitri Devi in New Delhi in 1978. These interviews have now been transcribed as And Time Rolls On: The Savitri Devi Interviews. The interviews are mostly autobiographical, but Savitri Devi also discusses her ideas on religion, history, National Socialism, and contemporary society. They are lively and entertaining reading.

It is interesting to check HITLER'S PRIESTESS against the original. Some, however, might wish to skip the copy and go directly to the original. For me, the primary interest of HITLER'S PRIESTESS now lies in its summaries of Savitri's books, its account of her last four years, after the 1978 interviews, and the connections it draws between Savitri's ideas and their historical context and influence.