Aug 01, 2007 19:07
Been a while, sorry about that. But now we start getting into the good stuff.
Okay, so Devi spent several years in India with her husband, running espionage and propaganda against the British in favor of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. She was taught by her husband, Indian far-right nationalist Asit Krishna Mukherji, that Hitler was an avatar of Vishnu, sent to save humanity from the darkness of the Kali Yuga ("Age of Iron", in which all decency and humanity fades). When Germany fell, she was heartbroken until she prayed for guidance in a temple of Kali and heard a voice advising her to "Travel to Germany, and there you will see what must be done."
So Devi went to Germany on three separate trips. The first two were rather quick, in and out. She did take the time to spread propaganda leaflets, like the following gem:
"Men and women of Germany, in the midst of unspeakable rigours and suffering, hold fast to our glorious Nazi faith, and resist! Defy the people, defy the powers, which work to denazify the German nation and the whole world. Nothing can destroy whatever is built on truth. We are the pure gold which can be tested in the furnace. The furnace may glow and crackle, but nothing can destroy us. One day we will rebel and triumph again. Hope and wait! Heil Hitler!" (HITLER'S PRIESTESS, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, pg. 131)
In 1947, in the midst of all these efforts, Devi briefly took a job that led her to Iceland to work as a tutor. She was dismayed by the Icelander's hatred of Nazism, but she saw Mount Hekla in the midst of a great eruption. It was an even greater religious experience for her than her first in Jerusalem almost 20 years before. She was entranced by the sight of the seven great craters as they flamed and smoked, while shooting out white-hot rocks in brilliant flashes against the nocturnal sky. Gaping mouths of fire flickered in the dark crust of the molten lava stream as it poured downhill. In the unceasing tremor of the Earth and roaring beat of the burning mountain, she heard the great primal "AUM" of creation being recited. She later said that as she looked over the mountain she fancied she could see Shiva and Kali performing their dance of destruction above the peak. "Ravished in religious rapture", she walked up the lava stream singing a hymn to Shiva. In her exultant rhapsody of nature's destructive might the deep tones of "AUM! AUM!" began merging with an imagined chant of "Sieg Heil!" as the nations praised the glorious Adolf Hitler until she could no longer tell the difference between one and the other. Later, in a German prison and at her trial, she would recall the eruption as a vision of future revenge: the crash of Christian civilization, the resounding Horst Wessel Song, and the triumphant swastika flying above a shattered and burning world.
When she returned to Germany for her third and last propaganda trip, her last remaining doubts had been silenced. Ina book she wrote later, Gold in the Furnace, she joyously recounts meeting Nazi diehards in defeated and ravaged Germany. Most of the follow a theme: cursing the Allies and their "Jew masters", exchanging mutual comfort and reassurance, and gleefully tellig each other that "Hitler will be back in two years, three at the most, and then we will revenge ourselves on these dogs."
One fellow she met was an unnamed Wehrmacht veteran and Nazi "Old Soldier". The two spoke in a cafe in Bonn where he told her his version of the war. He looked "elemental and fearsome, like a beast of the German forests". He remembered marching through France, through the Arc de Triomphe, and as far as the Spanish border. A grand time was had by all. They ate and drank well but always remained gentlemen. They brought order to Europe, maintained a strict code of honor and been generous and merciful to their defeated enemies. But when they lost the war, they were unable to return home, and many of them were abused horribly by their French captors. He, for instance, had been forced to spend three years in French labor camps, and some of his friends had been sent to the Congo.
His voice and face darkened as he began talking about current events. "Nice people to talk about freedom and justice, these damned democrats! They have tied us hand and foot, so that we cannot move, they have muzzled us, so that we cannot resist, while they plunder our country right and left, dismantle and carry off our factories piece by piece, cut down our forests, take our coal and iron and steel, all that we have, and then into the bargain try and make people believe that we were responsible for the war -- these confounded liars!" He lusted for revenge and longed for the day when the Allies ran from a revived Germany. Paris would lie in ruins at its next occupation; there would be no mercy or good humor next time. Savitri Devi felt a sense of rising excitement at his fury as he began gloating over how he would slaughter his enemies. This was what she had sought, the spirit of a maddened beast, of a war god of the Stone Age, lusting for the blood of his enemies. It was quite the meeting of minds, this vengeful Nazi and the Aryan prophetess of revenge -- but Devi would take things even further before she was finished in Germany.
Sorry but I have to go. Someone has to be going right now and has forgotten who drove them here (not to mention the air conditioning).
I'll finish this tomorrow, where we see Devi among female Nazi concentration camp guards, when she finally joined the persecuted faithful.
Best all.
nazism,
savitri devi,
history,
germany