by Savitri Devi
The train passed by and disappeared in the distance. One could no longer hear the song of the SS. But one knew the young warriors were still singing. And one remembered the words that sprang from their lips—the motto of their lives tomorrow, for months, perhaps for years, in hunger, fever, and agony; in torture at the hands of the cowardly Jew and of his agents, till the very minute of death: “Faithful as the German oak trees, as the moon and as the Sun.”72
Where are they now, those fine young National Socialists, real men among apes, followers of a god among men? Dead, probably, by this time, most of them; or back from captivity with ruined health and apparently no future—crushed by the all-powerful machinery of “de-Nazification,” that whole organisation set up in Germany by the sub-men to grind to dust all that is naturally strong and beautiful, alive, intelligent and proud, and worthy to rule; all that the worms cannot understand and therefore hate. That is, no doubt, the fate of the great number of them. But not of all. Thanks to the Aryan gods Who love and trust eternal Germany, some have miraculously retained their physical vitality along with their National Socialist ideals and, whether still in concentration camps or in their homes, are waiting to lead and conquer in the coming struggle. Heroes of that episode worthy of Antiquity which I have just related, or of other, equally moving incidents of which I have not heard, wherever they be, now, the undaunted survivors of our immortal SS—and SA—may the song that sprang from the wagons of captivity, in the station of Saarbrücken, on that bleak evening when all seemed lost, resound, one day, along the highways of Europe and Asia, accompanying their resumed onward march to the South, to the East, to the ends of the world! They deserve it. And we deserve it, all of us, far and near, who in secret action or in silent expectation remain faithful to our Führer and to our ideals among a majority that has lost faith.
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Majorities are always faithless. Majorities are composed of average men and women, neither good nor bad, for whom the security and comforts of everyday life and personal ties always come before great impersonal ideals such as ours. Majorities stand openly for great ideals, and proclaim their devotion to great leaders by word and deed, only when they feel they can safely do so without impairing their daily bread or disturbing their private lives. Even the best Aryan majority is not yet free from those weaknesses; and one can doubt whether it ever could have been—whether it ever can be—even after years of National Socialist training. And that is why, although centred first around race, our socio-political philosophy is not centred around race alone, but also around personality. Personality is always the privilege of a minority—all the more so that it is stronger and more conscious, more definite, and consequently more reliable.
And yet, in spite of this undeniable, universal fact, what astounds a foreign National Socialist today, in occupied Germany, is not to meet so few genuine German ones, but, on the contrary, to discover so many, often in the most unexpected circles; it is not to be forced to acknowledge, with disappointment, how similar the most consciously Aryan population in Europe is to any section of mankind considered en masse, despite twelve years of the National Socialist régime, but, on the contrary, to behold how different it remains, even after such a brief experience of the New Order as it had.
As I have already said, the desolate nation is—apparently—devoid of every external Nazi sign, picture, or book, and the German people are silent—casual, noncommittal—(at first sight at least) about all that is connected with National Socialism. They talk of everything but “that.”
The foreigner who has come to “occupy” the land, or to buy and sell, or to send “interesting” articles to the democratic newspaper of which he is a correspondent—the unsympathetic outsider in whose eyes National Socialism is a curse, or all politics a matter of indifference—shrugs his shoulders and says: “Well, they are probably sick of the blessed ‘régime’! Can’t blame them, seeing the mess in which it landed them.” Or else he mistakes the German people for a passive flock interested only in eating and drinking, daily work, material betterment; ready to follow anybody who will promise them these things—and keep his promise. “What do you think?” told me, in Paris, a Frenchman in high position who had spent three years in Germany, “They followed Hitler because of what they got out of him: the opportunity to stuff themselves at the expense of other nations; to stamp about in jackboots and behave as bullies both at home and abroad. Not one of them cares two hoots for him now, save a handful of fanatics. They only grumble over the advantages they lost and await the new master who will again give them parades and plenty, whoever he be. That’s the Germans!” I wanted to say: “Don’t be so cocksure of it, my dear sir.” But I had not come to discuss.
In other instances, the enemy settled here ever since the capitulation finds the Germans “sly” and “undignified in defeat,” to quote the expression of an official in the French Zone to whom I paid a visit shortly after my arrival in the country. (One just has to keep in with the creatures, outwardly, however much one might detest them at heart. And all the more so, that one lives more dangerously.) “There are,” said this man, “any number of Nazis about; and of the worst type. But they will never tell you so. You will never know what they really think. I have been three years in the country. I speak the language fluently. I have made friends with many people. But I only met one—one in all that time—who told me that he (or rather she, for it was a woman) still clung to National Socialism. And some say that I am lucky. They met none.” “My dear sir”—I thought—“you are not ‘lucky’ at all. I have been only a week in the place, and I have already come across over fifty people, both men and women, who told me ‘that,’ or allowed me to guess it without difficulty. But I am not saying a word, lest you might suspect what sort of a customer I am myself, in such a case, and start investigating about me. No fear! I do not disturb the sleeping dog. You will not know me—or real Germany—until the liberation.”
Now, in the meantime, the only outsider who can expect to know anything about real Germany is the genuine foreign National Socialist. And not the mere thinker at that; not the one who draws his conclusions in silence and waits philosophically for the next war to put things right. But the active one; the one who loves the Führer enough to take risks; who loves the German people enough to share with them the burden of hardships and persecution; the one who in his beautiful life of poverty, faith, and danger, has no protection but that of the immortal Gods, and theirs. Such a person has naturally a truer insight into the reactions of the Germans, today, than any other outsider, and even than many Germans themselves, for no one can possibly fear him. The downright enemies of the National Socialist régime—who would have had every reason to fear him a few years ago—know only too well that he can do no harm to them now, however much he might like to. (It is, on the contrary, they, who, if they find him out, and if they choose to do so, can do any amount of harm to him. But they express themselves frankly, imagining in their vanity that no outsider can still seriously support the régime they hate, after its defeat. The foreign Nazi scents the danger and takes good care they do not get to know him too well.) The bulk of the people who have “no politics” but who, in the present-day atmosphere of persecution, are afraid to say a single word in praise of “Hitler’s times,” give him their genuine opinion about all the prominent men of the New Order, as soon as they know for certain who he is. Sometimes, they even destroy some of his illusions without meaning to. But they surely trust him—precisely because he is a National Socialist.
And, above all, he (or she) is the only foreigner whom the genuine German National Socialists—those who, in these days of trial, not only retain the courage of their convictions but are ready to resume the struggle at the first opportunity—can, and do, trust implicitly.
And it is amazing, not merely how aware—how alive—but also how numerous these are among the outwardly silent, outwardly subdued—“selfish” and “devoid of all idealism”—average Germans. I once asked a man whom I know
to be a Nazi of the purest quality, how many others there were “like himself” in the whole country. He answered with earnest pessimism: “Very few; perhaps two million; surely not more than three.”—“Germany deserves to rule,” I replied, “if she can still boast of three million such sons and daughters, now. It is a very high proportion.” (And I am personally inclined to believe they are many more than three million.)
To feel the confidence of that proud élite of Europe (which is also the élite of the world) now, in 1948, when it knows it can trust nobody, is surely the most moving experience a foreign Nazi can have, in present-day Germany. To sit in some humble dwelling in the midst of a ruined town, or in a lonely place in the countryside, and to hear, with one’s own ears, words of unshakable faith in our Führer and all he represents, from men and women who have acclaimed him in glory and stood by him in disaster, and suffered all manner of persecution at the hands of his enemies, during these three years; from men and women who have never, even outwardly, compromised with those who hate him, whatever their courage might have cost them materially, and who now, when all seems against us, are ready to fight again for the triumph of his great dreams; to experience the comradeship of such people, it is worth coming from the other end of the earth. To admire in them the proud soul of everlasting Germany and to bring them, through one’s devoted collaboration in hardships and danger, a foreshadowing of the future homage of the whole of Aryan mankind, which they so deserve, it is worth any sacrifice. To be worthy of them—to earn the right to think and say “we,” and not “they,” when referring to them—it is worth living with the knowledge that one’s career might end, at any moment, in prison or in a concentration camp.
In the meantime, as long as one is still free, one has the pleasure of defying those who now hold Germany under their heel. One forces them to feel—to know—they cannot keep the country down for long. One teaches them that material power is something, no doubt, but not everything; that, as our Führer rightly said, “One cannot kill a Weltanschauung by force, but only through the aggressive impact of another Weltanschauung.”73
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Another Weltanschauung? Which one? What have our enemies to offer the world in the place of National Socialism which they are trying so hard to destroy as the purest expression, in our times, of a natural élite they detest? What have they, to build the future upon? Christianity, of which the world is already sick, anyhow? Or Democracy, that other large-scale farce?—“freedom of speech for everybody,” save for those who think for themselves and love truth; “freedom of action for everybody,” save the better men and women, those who would act as they think, if given power, and who think as we do; the systematic installation of the wrong people in the wrong places; the plunder of the nations’ wealth by clever rascals; the rule of the scum? Or Communism—that most cunning of all mass delusions, that philosophy outwardly endowed with many characteristics of ours—and therefore, at first sight, attractive to sincere haters of capitalism—but devoid of the two fundamentals to which our creed owes its everlastingness: the acknowledgement of the natural hierarchy of races, and that of the importance of personality in history and in all walks of life?
Do they seriously expect anyone who has studied National Socialism—and a fortiori anyone who has lived it—to fancy one or the other of these snares of the human mind?
Christianity might still satisfy the blind, the old, the weak—people of the type of those kind and silly elderly virgins of Great Britain who, to this day, refuse to believe that their male compatriots used phosphorus bombs during this war, or mishandled German prisoners. Such naïve people, living in a fools’ paradise, can spend their few last quiet days musing over the possibilities of what they call “esoteric” Christianity as opposed to the exoteric brand which has failed. But the world’s millions have no time for that nonsense, whatever might be its next label. And the strong ones despise it. Democracy is doomed by the fact that the Democrats themselves know it is nothing but a pitiable show. And Communism—real Communism; not the diluted stuff for Western consumption—might well be the best ideology for Chinese coolies, for the lower castes of India (the former customers of the Christian missionaries, and the once easy converts to Islam) and for the lousy masses of North Africa and of the Near East. But not for the working men and women of the superior races, whether in the West or in the East—especially when these come to know all that the Founder of National Socialism has done for the labourers. And not for the thinking people in whom the Aryan consciousness has once been awakened—not for us. Never! Let the wave come! It might for a time subdue the whole of Europe, materially, and prolong our trial. But its impact will prove, ultimately, as powerless as that of the Democratic Weltanschauung. “Nothing can destroy that which is built in truth.”74 In these words, circulated throughout Germany in a Nazi leaflet in 1948, lies our confidence in the future. The truth behind our socio-political philosophy—along with the character of its faithful representatives, now, during the time of our trial—is the strongest guarantee that we can never be submerged.
Today, we suffer. And tomorrow, we might have to suffer still more. But we know it is not forever—perhaps even not for long. One day, those of us to whom it will be granted to witness and survive the coming crash, shall march through Europe in flames, once more singing the Horst Wessel Song—the avengers of their comrades’ martyrdom, and of all the humiliations and all the cruelties inflicted upon us since 1945; and the conquerors of the day; the builders of future Aryandom upon the ruins of Christendom; the rulers of the new Golden Age.
Chapter 4
THE UNFORGETTABLE NIGHT
“When all is lost—when thou hast no possessions, no friends, no hope
left—then I come, I, the Mother of the world.”
—The Goddess Kali (according to Swami Vivekananda)
I was coming from Sweden, and going back to England through Germany and Belgium. The train was rolling on towards the German frontier, which I was to cross at Flensburg on the same day, the 15th of June, 1948, at about 6 p.m. All these years, I had lived six thousand miles away, in India. I had never seen Germany in the grand days of Hitler’s power. Now, the Gods had ordained that I should have a glimpse of her ruins. Bitter irony of fate! “But there must be a meaning to it”; I thought, “All that the Gods do has a meaning.”
I was travelling—officially—as a dresser in a theatrical company.75 And I marvelled at the network of circumstances that had been preparing for me, of late, a new life. Never, perhaps, had I felt more grateful to the principal of the company76 for having taken me to Sweden two months before. That trip had been for me the welcome awakening after a long nightmare. I had met in Stockholm an old friend: the sincerest, perhaps, and surely the most intelligent of all the English Nazis I happened to know; a fine character, and the one person to whom I had been able to open my heart in London when I first came there from India, in that wretched year 1946.77 We had talked again, and he had managed to convince me that things were now a little less awful, from our point of view. And through that friend, I had soon met others, Swedish Nazis, magnificent men and women of the purest Nordic stock, faithful to our eternal ideals; real Pagans according to my heart. And through these—and through the will of the Gods—I had had the honour of meeting one of the great men of the New Order, the famous explorer and the Führer’s friend: Sven Hedin, aged eighty-three, looking forty-five, and speaking as only everlasting youth can express itself. I had had a four hour interview with him on that memorable Sunday, the 6th of June. “Have confidence in the future,” had he told me, among other things: “There are millions like you in darkest Europe. Trust them as you would trust yourself.” And as I had recalled our irreparable losses, in particular, the death of the martyrs of Nuremberg, he had replied: “Germany has other such men, of whom you never heard.” And as I had pointed out that one Man, at least—namely the Führer himself—must be looked upon as irreplaceable, he had told me: “Do not be so sure of his death. Several versio
ns of it were published, none of which is convincing.”—“So,” I said, “perhaps . . .” I was too moved to finish my sentence. “Yes, perhaps . . . ,” replied Sven Hedin. He said no more. But I understood.
After three years of despair and disgust, I felt an inexpressible happiness fill my breast. I had known from that minute that a new life had begun for me; that all was not finished—that all was perhaps just beginning. I then told Sven Hedin what I intended to do during this first journey of mine through Germany. He had not discouraged me but only told me that “times were not yet ripe,” and tried to make me realise how risky my project was. Several young Swedes who had indulged in similar activities had never come back or been heard of again. Still I said, “I shall try.” The pleasure of defying those who had set out to destroy the National Socialist Idea was something too tempting for me to resist.