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See also: Hitler-Buddha-Krishna
– Presentation
Book review by Prof. Manuel Sarkisyanz
Hitler, Buddha, Krishna
An unholy alliance from the
Third Reich until the present day
(Victor and
Victoria Trimondi, HITLER, BUDDHA, KRISHNA, EINE UNHEILIGE ALLIANZ VOM
DRITTEN REICH BIS HEUTE, Wien, Ueberreuter, 2002)
This book can be considered as marking an epoch in
the intellectual history of cross-cultural links of Neo-Fascism. It deals
chiefly with Himmler, Tantric "Buddhism" and Krishna,
a "blockbuster" surpassing in geo-cultural scope by far previous
continental books about "aryosophic" esoterics. (1)
In discussions about "political
religion" of "National Socialists" their notions about India's
"primeval Aryan wisdom" had not yet received sufficient attention
of historians. These were supposedly "archaic" esoterics within
SS occultism of the so-called Ancestral Heritage "Ahnenerbe") - a
particular concern not so much for Hitler (who pragmatically preferred to
follow English models (2) but very much for Heinrich Himmler who headed the
SS: In contrast to the "Semitic" associations of Christianity, a
primeval "Aryan" religion was to be "more appropriate to
Germanic nature". Thus Himmler's "Ahnenerbe", the central
institution for systematic construction of an "Aryan" faith,
apparently was meant to receive its "SS-Vatican" in the castle
Wewelsburg, Westphalia (p.1 00).
An intellectual father of it became the Dutch
philologist Herman Wirth (18851981). Having initiated, in 1919, the
"National Socialist" movement in the Netherlands, he propagated ever
since 1920 the Germanic-"Aryan" Swastika. Insisting that the
Aryans descended from the polar "Hyperboreans" (who had allegedly
inhabited first the lost Continent of Atlantis and then the Nordic Thule,
("aryosophic" and supposedly Runic notions, inherited from the
Theosophy of Elena Blavatska), Wirth maintained that the primordial wisdom
from Atlantis had been preserved (by the "Mahatmas") in Buddhist
Tibet. Such Theosophy was combined even further with Nordic mythology from
the Edda (and with "Runic wisdom") by Rudolf Gorsleben
(1883-1930) - to the effect that in Tibet was to have been preserved
something of the occult abilities to dominate nature, abilities once
in the possession of the Arctic "primordial race" (Urrasse) of
Aryans. And this became gospel truth for the occultist faction of Himmler's
SS-"Ancestral Heritage". In particular the
SS-"Sturmbannführer" Karl Maria Wiligut (1866-1946), an
Austro-Hungarian colonel (locked up in a psychiatric clinic in 1924-1927),
had - under the pseudonym of "Weisthor", that is "Wise
[Nordic God] Thor", - influenced Himmler to believe that the refuge of
Aryans from "northernmost Thule", with parapsychological
medium-life "memories" about their inheritance was to be sought
-below the earth- in Buddhist Tibet. Thus, to "early Buddhism"
were attributed particularly "Aryan qualities" (p. 1 00, 90).
Nevertheless, it came to be doubted that Buddha's ethos of self-renunciation
could possibly be considered "Aryan". Accordingly, Buddhism was
assumed to be a degeneration of the genuinely Aryan Vedic religion of
Power. Meanwhile the warlike Vedic Aryans had become the pride of certain
anti-British Indian nationalists - after British images of subjugated
Indians had attributed to them effeminate qualities and pragmatically
irrelevant otherworldliness.
Because of pragmatically obvious successes, far
greater prestige than India
had in Himmler's Germany
triumphant Japan
of the Samurai with their Bushido ethos. (In private Hitler counted the
Japanese among the ‘lacquered half monkeys who want to feel the knout’.
[3]) And victorious Japanese militarism had instrumentalized a particular
Zen school of meditation to drill devaluation of life, discipline, will
power and the suppression of emotions. (This went much further than the
British models for strenghtening the will power -admiration for which had a
much longer history in Germany
(4) Thus Himmler himself recommended the model of Japan's
Samurais to his SS, the "Samurais of Hitler", the elite of the
elites, swayed by lower middle-Class upward mobility. (And the children of
Germany's post-war Economic Miracle there were - still in 2000- recommended
"the Road of the Samurai" for professional and private
"success": pp. 194-195).
It had been the Count Karl Friedrich Dürkheim (no
stranger to killing a family of squirrels for pure joy) who contributed Zen
"Buddhist" ethics to make contempt for life and death in Hitler's
Germany
intellectually respectable. Japanese models of sacralization of power
through Shinto mythology impressed Karl Haushofer, the mentor of Hitler's
deputy Rudolf Hess.
However, for practical purposes, there sufficed
the Lutheran notion that all governing authorities ("Obrigkeit")
came from God... It was in spite of this that SS Chief Himmler promised to
get rid of Christianity ("We must finish with Christianity. This great
plague..., which has weakened us for every conflict.” [5]) But Nietzsche's
declaring that "God is dead" was not enough: Alternatives to the
Christian religion, so "alien to the Nordic race", were required
to give notions inculcated into the SS a metaphysical foundation:
A sacralization of the warrior caste's duties was
expected from the caste ethos of the Bhagavad Gita, the sacralization of
race purity through the Brahmanic Code of Manu. For this the rational
findings of Indology were put "into the service of the
irrational" (p. 524), indological findings of seriously qualified
specialists into the service of Himmler to elaborate an esoteric mythology
for his SS. Thus Wilhelm Wüst (1901-1993), prominent in the philology of
Indoeuropean languages, became Curator in Himmler's "Ahnenerbe"
("Ancestral Heritage") after 1936, 1939 SS-Standartenführer
(Lieutenant Colonel) and the man of confidence of the SS Intelligence
Service (SO) at the University
of Munich -in 1941
its Rector. His kind of indologists made essential contributions to the
"Aryan religion" of the SS as the central Order of Warriors,
acting as if the Aryan faith were both inherited and constructable
(“machbar”). It was to provide cosmogonic bases for Leadership through
archetypes of Vedic gods like Indra and Varuna.
Consistently with this, Himmler's expedition to Tibet (in
1938/9) was interested more in its pre-Buddhist religion (Bon) than in
Tibetan Buddhism. It sought proofs that Tibet once sheltered a high
"Aryan" culture and that its Lamas were administering something
of primeval Aryan wisdom (p. 158). Nordic remnants, supposedly going back
to "Thule"
of the mythic North, to the Hyperboreans and the "Continent" of
Atlantis, were looked for in Tibet by Himmler's men. And yet
this SS ("Ancestral Heritage") expedition to Lhasa was directed by the qualified
Tibetologist Ernst Schäfer (1910-1992) - who had previously participated in
an American Tibet expedition. He too was impressed by the four Swastika
ornaments on the throne of Tibet's
Regent Reting Rimpoche. Impressive for the SS expedition was Tibetan
furniture made from parts of human bodies, particularly bones (p. 152f. :
Skulls and skin from the corpses of Concentration Camp prisoners of the SS
were subsequently made into "gift articles" [Geschenkartikel].)
Buddhist reminders of the impermanence of all life, of the world of
Suffering to be overcome by non-attachment, were "understood"
(that is misunderstood) to suit a "morality" for the Survival of
the Fittest, to suit the will to create a world where the weak would
have no right to survive. Thus the SS race specialist Bruno Beger was
deeply impressed by the Tibetan procedure of cutting dead bodies into
pieces for birds' prey, "one of the most impressive experiences in Tibet's
mysterious capital". (Later Beger organized a collection of skeletons
of extermination Camp victims from Auschwitz,
Central Asian Red Army prisoners of war. For participating in at least 86
murders he was sentenced to just three years -and that not before 1971
p.135f). What Hitler stopped was Himmler's plan to use the Tibetans -after
the model of Lawrence of Arabia - for a military attack on British India (p.122). His decision resulted from
insight into the impracticality of this (and from his admiration for the
British Master Race).
Hitler was obviously not impressed by alleged
military potentialities of occult abilities to dominate nature - allegedly
preserved in Tibet
- nor by the "polar powers centred there". This, precisely
this, came to be believed, in Neo-Nazi literature, just after Hitler's
"right of the stronger" turned out to be an illusion of the
weaker. Such Fascism -which according to the Law of the Survival of the
Fittest had lost all rights to survive- did survive by virtue of esoteric mvthology,
a consolation for failure of biology (of social Darwinism).
Thus Baron Giulio Evola (1898-1974) did derive
from the Vishnuite Bhagavad Gita a sacralization of Sadism in terms of the
divine will of destruction of everything mortal, the Endlessness of the
Divine meaning the perennial destruction of everything temporal: Thus the
sacralized sadism of the Kshatrya warrior celebrates the Blood Sacrifice of
Life -transcending the mere perversions of "profane" sadism.
Accordingly, Murder becomes a holy sacrifice (246). Evola's publications of
1953 and 1961 made him the chief "philosophical authority", the
Guru of today's Black Order of spiritual fascism (257), of the New Elite
proclaiming anew more than merely Hitler's New Order: It is more
explicit about the destruction of modern society. Evola was calling for
precisely this ever since his main work, "The Revolt against
Modernity" of 1935. Nevertheless, in spite of this admiration for the
55, the Kshatrya Warrior Order, he is but rarely mentioned in its
literature of the 55 although he did influence its self-image (particularly
the "Ancestral Heritage" of the "Grail Mystery" of the
Templars). Better known is his influence on Fascism's
"afterthought", the Italian race legislation since 1937.
Evola's "L'Uome come Potenza" ("The
Male as Might") is a glorification of power generated through sexual
energy, following models of Indian Tantric cults, associated particularly
with the Female Energy (Shakti) of Shiva Rudra and Kali, Indian deities of
destruction and regeneration. Among Evola's "applications" of
them was killing – sacrificing - the Female (the female principle
comprising both Compassion and Bolshevism...) -as its energy is to
strenghten the Male, the Aryan Masculinity (p.234) which accumulates its
own power by sacrificing the "Other".
These notions Evola derived from the Vajrayâna
School of Tantric Buddhism. And with concepts from Tantric texts concludes
his most influential work: The concept of Shambhala, symbolized by the
Swastika pointing to, a center of Hyperborean traditions "of Aryan
origins." Images of this mythic realm derive from the Tantric
Kalachakra tradition. Its main texts have been made accessible in the post-war
period, also by Jean Marquès Rivière, a French Sankritist, specialized in
police persecution of secret societies, Masons and Jews in the semi-Fascist
France
of 1941-1944.
Of more popular influence in Latin esoteric
post-war Fascism was the Chilean Miguel Serrano (born in 1917): Since 1938
he joined Chile "National Socialists" - and subsequently became
their Fuehrer (after experiences as Chile's ambassador in India and in
Communist Balkan states). In 1978, under the dictatorship of Pinochet,
appeared his book "Hitler esotérico" -and, in 1982, "Hitler
el último Avatar", then, in 1991, "Manu por el hombre que
vendrá". These he called expressions of "esoteric
Hitlerism". To Serrano is attributed the culmination of SS-mysticism.
He assimilated most notions from Himmler's Ancestral Heritage and the
writings of Evola. Serrano's books are reported to circulate now among Skin
Heads, Satanists, and Nazi Metal Music fans. Hitler's birth in 1889 meant
for him the beginning of a new Era (p. 425); Hitler was for him more than
only a Superman but the Nordic god Wotan and also Kalki, the last
incarnation of Vishnu - and the "Manu of the Future". For, as an
archetype, according to Serrano, Hitler could not possibly die - and was
carried away on an "UFO" (Unidentified Flying Object) to
"Shambhala" (where reside his God-Men: pp. 436, 438). Behind what
this Chilean Nazi offered is essentially Tantric instruction (p. 493).
Indeed, he was, - like Evola and Marquès-Rivière - practicing Tantric
rituals. And Tantrism meant for Serrano the main "wisdom" of the
Hyperborean (Polar Nordic) Warrior Caste. Following Tantric
"ethics" he supposed the deeds of the SS to be "beyond Good
and Evil" -justifying the extermination of "Lower races" as
fulfilment of "cosmic laws" .(Not effect but motivation matters
in Tantrism - the motivation of most terrible deeds in it can be
"Enlightenment" -which is potential Power (5A.) And the will to
(absolute) Power of the "Aryan" is -according to Serrano too-
generated by erotic vitalism. In fact, Tantric sex magic is
considered to be the "mystical center" of Serrano's fascism (p.
441) - including the Tantric sacrifice of the Female: Woman was to
be killed (at least "symbolically": p.442). In the Tantric
context killing may result to be "unreal". (About the seeming
"unreality" of modem racial genocide on the Black Continental
Hannah Arendt noted: "Native life anyhow looked a <mere play of
shadows>, so that when European men massacred them [these shadows, the
natives], they somehow were not aware that they committed murder.) (5a)
And the living woman Serrano venerated he
associated with the Nordic god Odin. She was Savitri Devi (Maximiliani
Portas, daughter of an Englishman, born in France in 1905), venerated in
the international Nazi subculture as Hitler's high priestess,
"Prophetess of Aryan Revival". She had evolved from Greater
Greece - through Theosophy - to the race cult of the "genuinely
Aryan", that is to the "only surviving Aryan culture":
Brahmanic India. There the Brahman Srimat Swami Satyananda, President of
the Hindu Mission of Calcutta, revealed to her that Hitler would become the
next incarnation of Vishnu. Similarly, the Pandit Rajawade of Poona
identified Hitler with the Chakravartin of the Vishnu Purana scripture,
destined to rule the world, the god Vishnu previously incarnated in Krishna. And Krishna Mukherji married Savitri Devi.
He recognized the Kshatrya tradition of the Indian epic Mahabharata in the
militancy of Hitler's Germany.
Upon its collapse of 1945, Savitri Devi called upon Kali, the Goddess of
Destruction, to destroy those who destroyed Nazi Germany (p. 346f). To this
"priestess of Hitler" the hymns to Kali's fearsome consort Shiva,
the male divinity of "creative destruction" I merged as a
"Mantra" with "Heil Hitler" (pp. 347, 349): For Hitler
was to become the coming Kalki (pp. 351, 358), destroyer of those who
caused the degeneration of the World Age. And, in 1958, Savitri Devi came
to attribute the sacralization of the extermination of Jews to the Bhagavad
Gita (p. 356) -years after Austria's
Lanz von Liebenfels, "the man who gave the ideas to Hitler",
demanded that the Jews become a human sacrifice (p.334).
From occultism derived such "Aryosophic"
predecessors of Nazism as the Thule Society of the Bavarian capital. And
towards the Occult tends what survives of SS-mythology. The crisis of world
economy promoted Nazism from obscurity into mass politics. And the
prosperity that followed its military collapse pushed it back into
obscurity of present day SS occultism.
Post-war SS mysticism of the Evolas and the
Serranos derives its "Aryanism" more from Indian and Tibetan than
from Teutonic sources. In the wake of the French Revolution the appeal to
the Germanic (that is pre-medieval) past had been directed against
the absolutist restoration -and the encouragement of Indologv, of
studies about the wisdom of the Brahmans, served against Democracy.
For mass consumption, Hitler pretended to defend the Occident against the
onslaught of the Asiatics. After this military "defence of the
Occident" collapsed, what survived of the SS-Ancestral Heritage took
refuge in the Occult, increasingly borrowed from Southern
Asia: Present day esoteric Hitlerism is Tantric (p. 441).
After Hitler -as if by "meta-electric" energy-, having excluded
the left, included Austria, switched on all the mass media, isolated
Germany, ranged the whole of Europe into maximal tension, and finally
brought: about his short circuit (5 B), he was made to mutate into an
archetype of something like divine energy. Hitler has been converted
esoterically into a myth, to be rooted in the transcendental - beyond all
History. And up to the present day such esoteric Hitlerism is reported to
grow (p. 526). In its subculture the SS is symbolized by the Black Sun.
And its Sieg Heil ("Hail Victory"), after ending in defeat, was
projected into becoming the chief Mantra of occult Power (p. 399, 411, 442)
of the Black Sun, symbolizing the end of the World in the Nordic Edda,
converted into the Solar Power of the "New Age".
At present, in the mysticism of the traditionally
necrophile SS -with its Skull emblem, associated with mountains of corpses-
are venerated the icons of Violence and Death. Some of the Rock music
groups in this international subculture of Neo-Fascism have CD of 100,000
copies. And among their titles are: "Born in order to hate";
"Gospel of Inhumanity". Some of their bands are named "Spear
of Longinus" [killer of Christ] and "Blood Axis", something
of Satanism evolving into Pop culture, into the Rock music of Skin Heads
(p. 451). According to Goodrick-Clarke, the Neo-Nazi Satanists and their
Heavy Metal Rock groups among the Skin Heads in Europe
and America
are associated with "Kshatrya" notions about "Aryan" India's
warriors. The song "Hitler as Kalki [future incarnation of the god
Vishnu]" was created by the composer and rock music star known as
"David Tibet": He calls himself "sympathizer of the
Devil" in the context of Tantric "Buddhism" (p. 451f). In
the Satanist literature the Nordic "Thule" and the SS Ancestral Heritage
have become metaphors of the Underworld -with Heinrich Himmler as a
Satanist adept. (A political joke from the Third Reich prophesied
that-after its final victory- Himmler would become Underworld Marshall when
Goering, the Reich’s Marshall,
shall have been promoted to world Marshal.) According to Trimondi, even in
purely Satanist circles have been absorbed ideas of the Fascist myth
makers, of Evola, Miguel Serrano and Savitri Devi. After all, the place of
Satan came since more than two centuries to be occupied by nefarious secret
societies. And the book "Secret Societies and their Might in the 20th
Century" by Jan van Helsing , appearing in 1993, was banned in Germany
within three years - under a law against inciting the public ("Volksverhetzung").
However, in 1998 he published "The Mysteries of the Black Sun".
Thus, mainly through him Esoterics have become "the most important
route of penetration for extreme rightist cosmovision" (p. 398).
Thus the claim that the Third Reich had been
conceived by German Templar Knights - as well as by Tibetan lamas - is no
longer news. News is that the "gasoline" for the Neo-Nazis UFO's
(Unidentified Flying Objects) shall henceforth consist of "Vril"
[Virile?] Energy. Indeed, "Vril" is meant to be the
"Metaphysical Gasoline" from the Atlantis, the lost Continent,
particularly for the UFO's from a "National Socialist"
engineering firm...: All this according to Wilhelm Landig's creation,
titled "Idols against Thule,
a novel full of reality". His Thule Trilogy (from the Vienna of 1971, 1980 and 1991) elaborated
notions of Elena Blavatska and of Evola. It is considered a mixture of
science fiction, pseudo-scholarly monograph and "National
Socialist" history on a mythical pattern (p. 392f). In contrast, more
recent publications of SS mysticism are indebted more directly to Tibetan
Tantric notions (pp. 402f). "Notions about Might and Supermanhood
(Maha Sidha) from Tantric Buddhism... could supply attractive doctrines for
a world wide <Kshatrya> culture. sacralized techniques... to convert
a soldier into a <holy killing machine>. This is why the SS Ancestral
Heritage and surviving "SS mysticism" attempt to give themselves
points of support in Tantric notions (p. 531). It is Tantrism that had been
called -by its English advocate- "The way to Power'.
Particularly in regard to such present day SS
esoterics the Trimondi's brilliant book has unusual scope. It takes the
place of an entire library. Its bibliography alone would be worth the price
of the book. To read it is a genuine intellectual experience. The authors
make rich use of Tantric texts of the Kâlachakra School.
Yet, it has to be reminded that the Kâlachakra
System remains marginal even in Tibetan Lamaism -just as Lamaism remains
marginal in the Buddhist world as a whole. Helmut Hoffmann (otherwise cited
in the book) has pointed out Tibetan historical resistance against
Tantrism; the rise of Tibet's
dominant "Yellow
Church" did
involve reactions against it. Hoffman had called attention to Iranian
dualist -that is non-Buddhist- origins of precisely the Kâlachakra. (6)
Although the authors rightly point out the primacy of compassion in the
social ethics of Buddhism and themselves mention that "the Kâlachakra
Tantra is in sharp contradiction to the originally pacifist tradition of
Buddhism" (p. 513), they generalize from the Tantric Kâlachakra about
Buddhism as a whole (p. 254). Thus in the heading "Buddhism as a
doctrine of Power" (p. 254) -as well as in the reference to militarist
Buddhism -by "Buddhism" is meant its Tantric degeneration.
Unfortunately, Volker Zotz's (author of a book about Buddhism in German
culture) attribution of "amorality" to Buddhism "from its
very beginnings" is repeated uncritically (pp. 456ff), particularly in
the unfortunate subtitle "Foundations of Buddhist thought and the
ideology of National Socialism" (p. 454).
Thus the main problem with the book is its attempt
to characterize Buddhism as a whole - its conclusions from particularities
of SS mystery literature to generalities about Tibetan culture. In reality,
the qualities attributed by "National Socialist" thinkers to
Buddhism are no basis for its characterization -no matter how convincing
points of departure Fascism finds in Tantric phenomena of Buddhism's
decline. In fact, the Kâlachakra similarities to esoteric Fascism (p. 463)
came about by Fascist imitations of Tantric categories of Vitalism
and Power - which in themselves had been inherent in Nazi sentiment (not
without impacts from Bavarian folk-vitalism). Even the famous [Fascist]
Tibetologist's, Tucci's rhapsodies about "heroic Buddhism" (p.
193) cannot be accepted uncritically -just as War Sermons (usually on the
text of Christ bringing not Peace but the Sword) could never characterize
Christianity as a whole. (Logically Fascists have rejected its message
while emulating its institution: the Church with its Hierarchy and
Discipline.) Obviously the SS's-film about its expedition to the Dalai
Lama's realm (pp. 155f) showed only what its chief desired to be seen -just
as the exiled 14th Dalai Lama's Buddhist messages to the democratic world
leave out what has been undemocratic in Lamaism. T 0 such present day
uncritically unilateral images of exclusively humanitarian and pacifist Tibet this
book is a most healthy corrective. Thus the authors point out that a public
discussion about the Buddhist Tantrism of Tibet by the Dalai Lama would
prevent its misuse and distortion by SS esoterics. But they can be easily
misunderstood to the effect that there was nothing humanitarian and
nothing pacifical about the Dalai Lama's realm, considering that among his
friends was the SS auxiliary Jean Marquès Rivière as well as Guru Shoko
Asahara who (in 1995) caused poison gas injury to more than 5000 victims in
the Tokyo subway -as sacrifice to Shiva Rudra-Chakrin, apocalyptic world
ruler in the Kâlachakra Tantra (pp. 505, 518). Such an "Aryan
Priest-King" of post-war Nazi mysticism (p. 469f) -and not the
specifically Buddhist universal ruler (Chakkavattî) is rightly compared
with the Japanese Tenno -and wrongly with the ideal Buddhist emperor Ashoka
of the third century B. C. (pp. 469f).
Most absurdly, Himmler's indologist Wüst and the
Fascist Baron Evola as well as protagonists of postwar SS mysticism saw
precisely in Ashoka the great power political model... of "the Aryan
Priest-King". Their absurdities about Ashoka should have been
contradicted most definitely. After all, he recorded his unforgettable
regret even about "one thousandth part of those who were slain". "And
this has been recorded in order that... whoever they may be, may not think
of new conquests as worth achieving... through arrows." And that the
only "real conquest is a Conquest through Dhamma [force of
MoralitY1." Ashoka's pride was that he "achieved conquest through
Dhamma ,... a conquest flavoured with love” (7). And yet, with Ashoka
remaining unmentioned in the context of oriental ideals of universal
empire, the Chakkavattî/Chakravartin (prototype of Buddhist kingship)
appears under the subtitle "Apotheosis of the Führer" (p. 328).
Among the numerous references to this Indian embodiment of absolute power
remains unmentioned the Chakkavattî-Sutta, one of the earliest Buddhist
texts, starting that to the Chakkavattî the East, South, West and North
shall submit voluntary: He shall declare that no living being
is to be injured. (8) In contrast, the Chakravartin meant by the authors is
Kalki from the Brahmanic Vishnu Purana (with reference to whom concludes
Evola's "Revolt against Modernity"), Aryan world ruler,
symbolized by the Swastika (p. 256). In reality, Kalki in India and
the Chakravartin in Buddhist Burma had inspired politically opposite
phenomena too:
It was precisely from Kalki that same Pariah
groups expected their emancipation against the caste hierarchy. In
same rural areas Gandhi was identified with such a future
incarnation of Vishnu. About the Chakkavattî Sutta's description of the
ideal future state reminded in 1959 U Nu (Burma's Prime Minister 1947-1958
and 1960-1962) - with reference to his anti-imperialist Buddhist
socialism. (9) In the name of the Chakkavattî (Burmanized as "Setkya
Min") repeatedly revolted Burma's peasants (as recorder
after 1837). With this ideal Buddhist ruler was identified the central
figure of the Burmese Peasant War of 1930-1932. (10)
This shows how much more correctly than by Fascist
indologists and their subsequent esoterics was Buddhism understood by
Hitler's inspirer, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, and the Führer's rival
Ludendorff. Chamberlain saw that Buddhism “was moved by humanitarian
reverie, proclaiming the equality of all human beings” (10a). Ludendorff
reminded that it "preached self-extinction..., spiritual and bodily
disarmament" (p. 295), both comprehending its ethos better than
Himmler's Professor Wüst and Mussolini's Baron Evola. A "Duce from Bengal" can be seen in Subhas Chandra Bose (pp.
93) only disregarding that a Soviet alliance would have been his first
choice: As vanished Redeemer he "is biding his time... Millions of
Indians believe... he is hiding in Moscow,
being instructed in the principles of revolution... Eagerly they await[ed]
him..." (11)
And archetypically less remotely from Communism
than from Fascism led historically that "Gnosis", Satanizations
of which are inherited in Political Science since Eric Voegelin (and echoed
on p. 537): By "Gnosis" is usually meant its Manichean current.
In fact, its vision of all material world, with all established
institutions, being in the power of Evil, stimulated revolt rather than
conservation of the established order. And that class distinctions and
hierarchies have no meaning at all for the truly Initiated is among the
messages of the Bhagavad Gita too: In the Brahman and in the [despised]
cook of dog meat the wise ones behold the same. Already here [on earth] is
Heaven won by those whose mind rests upon this Equality... That they are
rich and noble think those blinded by ignorance. (12)
That the SS Chief invoked one passage from this
<Song Divine> is no more a reflection upon this scripture (that was
being invoked again and again by India's social reformers -not
only in pacifist Gandhism (13) but also in "Hinduized Communism” (14)
than the "socialist" name of Hitler's party is a reflection upon
Socialism. It was not so much that Savitri Devi found in the
Bhagavad Gita principles that lend themselves for a convincing integration
into SS ideology (p. 360); it was rather that she insisted on having
found them: Her conclusions are not covered by the texts she quoted
(p.357), about fulfilling duty without regard for the outcome, about a just
fight, about Heaven for the fallen warriors and the Earth for the
victorious ones. Actually, the texts this "Priestess of Hitler"
emphasized lend themselves in general to hopeless, heroic resistance
against powers of this world, resistance that has been much less offered by
Fascists (under whom the weak had no claim to survival) than by
anti-Fascists with their faith in a world that shall belong to the weak.
(15)
On the other hand, not to every Professor
is given the character of professinq convictions: Thus it is more
the adjustment of certain German indologists to financial incentives
offered by 88 institutions than "affinities" of the Gita and of
Buddhism to Fascism that is proved by 88 appropriations of
"Oriental" thought.
The weakest text in the book might be that "a
Buddhist dissolves his Ego for the 'Liberation' of all suffering beings and
a National Socialist for <Nation and Race>, but this could again and
again in the history of Buddhism mean the precept of killing out of
compassion and wisdom"(p. 458).
SOURCE
REFERENCES
1)
Jean-Michael Angebert, The Occult and the Third Reich (New York, 1974);
François Ribadeau Dumas, Hitler et la sorcellerie (Paris, 1975); RR Carmin,
"Guru" Hitler, Die Geburt des Nationalsozialismus aus dem Geist von
Mystik und Magie (Zürich, 1985); Jean Robin, Hitler, I'élu du dragon
(Paris, 1987)
2) Hitler's speech of 28. April 1939:
Deutscher Kurzwellensender; Hitler, Monologe im Führerhauptquartier, edit. W.
Jochmann (Hamburg, 1980), pp. 48, 62 f.; W. Maser, Das Regime. Alltag
1933-1945 (Manchen, 1983), p. 259; J.H. Voigt, "Hitler und
Indien": Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte, IX (1971), pp. 33, 49
3) Hitler,
Speech of 22. August 1939 to the supreme commanders; L.P. Lochner, What
about Germany?
(New York, 1942), p. 3
4) Gerwin
Strobl, The Germanic Isle. Nazi perceptions of Britain (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 41, 42
5) Heinrich Himmler, Geheimreden und andere
Ansprachen (Frankfurt, 1974), p. 159: Speech of 9th. June 1942
5a). Hannah Arendt, Elemente und Ursprünge
totaler Herrschaft (Frankfurt, 1955), pp. 307, 313
5A). S.B.
Dasgupta, An introduction to Tantric Buddhism (Calcutta, 1958), p. 179 f; John Blofeld,
The Way of Power (London,
1970)
5B) "Die Linke ausgeschaltet, Osterreich
eingeschaltet, die Massenmedien gleichgeschaltet, Deutschland isoliert,
ganz Europa in Spannung versetzt und schließlich den Kurzschluss
erzeugt."
6) Helmut Hoffmann, Die Religionen Tibets
(Freiburg B, 1956), p. 58 ff., 119 f., 163; Hoffmann, "Das
Kâlachakra, die letzte Phase des Buddhismus in Indien": Saeculum,
XV/2 (1964), p. 128
7) Ashoka's 13th Rock Edict: D.R Bhandarkar,
Asoka (Calcutta 1925), pp. 300-303; J. Bloch, Les inscriptions d'Asoka
(Paris, 1950), pp. 125-132
8) Cakkavatti-Sîhanâda-Sutta,
Diaha Nikâva, XXVI, 6: Translation by Rhys Davids, Sacred Books
of the East, IV (London,
1957), p. 63f
Monier-Williams,
Brahmanism and Hinduism. (London,
1889), p. 114; Bharatan Kumarappa, introduction to: M.K. Gandhi, Hindu
Dharma (Ahmedabad, 1950), p. VIII; U Nu's Speech of November 16th, 1959 before the
Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League (Burmese typescript given by U Nu to
the author), pp. 17f, largely reprinted in Bama-hkit of 17. XI 1959,
p. 8; Sarkisyanz, Buddhist Backgrounds of the Burmese Revolution (The
Hague, 1965), p. 224
10) Cf.
Maurice Collis, Trials in Burma
(London,
1938), pp. 129, 273f.
10a) Houston
Stewart Chamberlain, Briefwechsel mit Kaiser Wilhelm II (Munich, 1929), Vol. 11 p.152
11) J. A.
Michener, Voice of Asia (New York, 1952),
p. 265; of. NA Chadhuri, "Subhas Chandra Bhose, his legacy and
legend": Pacific Affairs (1955), p. 356. All italics are mine.
12) Bhagavad
Gita, V, 18f; XVI; 12-17; XIII, 29: translation by R Garbe (Leipzig, 1905), pp.
94, 140f, 132
13) W. Roland
Scott, Social ethics of modern Hinduism (Calcutta, 1953), p. 109:
"Gandhi maintained that non-violence was... a central teaching of the
Gita" (sic); "the Gita ... does not teach, according to his
opinions, violence": Wilhelm Mahlmann, Mahatma Gandhi, der Mann, sein
Werk und seine Wirkung (Tabingen, 1950), p. 140
14) H.S.
Sinha, Communism and Gita, A philosophico-ethical study (Delhi, 1979), pp.
264, 262: "The Gita would always ... shake hand [sic] with communism
and bring out a workable synthesis...", "a valuational synthesis
of these two systems can save humanity..."
15) There was
no Nazi Leningrad that held out against a siege lasting nine hundred days
of near starvation (in 19411944). On the Fascist side there was no Madrid
that withstood more than two years of almost daily bombardments by aviation
and artillery (in 1936/8); no [Basque] fishery launch !hat resisted an
enemy battleship during an entire hour (on 5. March 1931) before sinking
itself (having received about 200 impacts of naval cannon): It was but the
Ocean that extinguished the fire of its last machine gun. (Sarria, De
arrantzales a gudaris del Mar [Bermeo, Vizcaya, n.n.], p. 108)
Manuel Sarkisyanz (born 1923) had been a subject of the Shah of
Iran. He studied at the University
of Tehran and then at
the University
of Chicago. There, he
wrote his first book, “Russia
and the Messianism of the Orient”. Upon its publication in German he was
immediately invited to Germany
– initially as visiting professor in Freiburg
und then in Kiel.
Hs main interests lie in the comparative history of independence movements.
Among his dozen of books are “History of the Oriental Peoples of the
Russian Empire” (in German), “Rizal (national hero of the Philippines)
and Republican Spain”, “Buddhist background of the Burmese Revolution”. His
publication on historiography as apology for British rule in Burma (Ohio
University Press) has also appeared in the Burmese language. The books of
Sarkisyanz on the “American Resurgence in Peru” and on “Felipe Carrillo,
the ‘Red’ Apostle of the Mayas” were published in both German and Spanish.
The latter is now being translated into the language of Mayas of Yucatán (Mexico)
where the author now lives most of the year.
See also:
Hitler-Buddha-Krishna
– Presentation
Fascist Occultism and it’s Close
Relationship to Buddhist Tantrism
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