Gold in the Furnace

by Savitri Devi

  * * *

  This fundamental shallowness of the Democrats makes the persecution of National Socialism at their hands none the less thorough, but all the more hateful. It is not—as in the Russian Zone—the persecution of a faith in the name of another faith; of truth, in the name of a sincere illusion. It is the persecution of the eternal Religion of Life in its modern form, for the sake of nothing else but vested interests of the lowest order; business interests.

  Of course, behind those business interests, there is far more. There is the irresistible tendency of a degenerate world towards its doom; the frenzied rush to death of Judaised Europe, at an accelerated speed. We who have long overcome in ourselves that general human tendency; we, the children of Light and Life—the regenerate—joyfully holding out against the current of time, our eyes fixed, beyond the ruins of today and of tomorrow, upon the glory of the new Beginning; we, I say, the only ones in the world who stand in the way of the death forces and defy them, we must be crushed, if the death forces are to triumph forever. And that is the real reason why persecution has been waged upon us from all sides on their behalf. But in the East, those unseen forces have chosen as their vehicle a false Ideology sufficiently deceitful to impress, along with the unthinking masses, quite a number of the best men and women. In the West, they knew, so to speak, that allegiance to vested interests on the part of the clever few, coupled with selfishness, chauvinism, moral cowardice, squeamishness, and gullibility on the part of the many, were enough to inspire and sustain, for any length of time, the persecution of our everlasting Idea.

  But ultimately, nothing can prevent the triumph of life. Nothing can alter the iron laws that regulate the succession of cycles in time, bringing back an era of resurrection after the worst era of disintegration.

  One day, with the help of all the Gods—I hope—we shall see to it that the Democrats and even the Communists bitterly regret not having killed more of us. In the meantime, the fact that our enemies’ shallowness has kept some of the most ardent ones of us alive, in spite of their defiant boldness, is a sign from the Gods; a sign that National Socialism is to live, and to become, once more in a relatively near future, the ruling force of the Aryan world.

  Chapter 8

  A PEEP INTO THE ENEMY’S CAMP

  “Jede Halbheit ist das sichtbare Zeichen des inneren Verfalls, dem der

  äußere Zusammenbruch früher oder später folgen muß und wird.”

  —Adolf Hitler146

  One of my earliest contacts with the representatives of the Occupying Powers in Germany was, naturally, at the technical frontier that separates Saarland from the French Zone. There I had a glimpse of the puerile arrogance with which one of the most conceited nations in Europe lords it today in a part of unfortunate Germany.

  I crossed that frontier at Saarhölzbach on the 11th of September 1948, at about nine in the morning. It was a bright sunny day. I lined up with the other passengers for the control of my passport and the examination of my luggage, not without a little anxiety, for I had with me, among other things, an extremely heavy trunk containing, concealed between books, six thousand National Socialist leaflets—or, to be more accurate, six thousand minus the few dozen I had already distributed in Saarland. I had written them myself, in Sweden, and had them printed in England. It would not do, now, for “them” to find “those,” I thought, as a man helped me push the trunk in front of the customs officer. I was prepared for the worst. Yet, if I were destined one day to “get caught” I hoped it would be after I had finished distributing my papers, not before. For a moment, I withdrew myself, mentally, from the surroundings, and thought of our beloved Führer. And also of the invisible Gods who had, up till then, helped me to do my best for our ideals and at last brought me to Germany. If such was their will, they would also help me cross the border unscathed. If not, I would at least show our enemies that there are still National Socialists worthy of the name, even among the non-German Aryans. And I thought of all those who have suffered and died for our cause. Would I ever have the honour of suffering too? Of dying? I wished I had. But not yet; not until I had distributed all my leaflets, stuck up all my posters; done all I could.

  I was pulled out of my inner world by loud shouting. It was the French customs Officer who had lost his temper with some German traveller whose turn was just before mine. I shall never know why the man had suddenly become so angry. But I shall always remember the tone of his voice and the expression of his face. He was spouting out a series of abuse in bad German. His face was congested; his mouth was twisted. However hard he might have tried, he did not look a bit like a military officer in a conquered land. He looked, rather, like a clumsy and overgrown schoolboy attempting, in a game, to play the part of a policeman. The German passenger, nearly twice as tall as he, was gazing at him in silence, inwardly no doubt with contempt. At last, the officer’s vocabulary of abuse was exhausted; he pushed the passenger’s open attaché case violently along the table and, pointing to the exit, cried out in French at the top of his voice: “Foutez-moi le camp!”147 My turn was next.

  I speak perfect French, having been brought up in France. I handed over to the officer a letter from the French “Office of German Affairs” (Bureau des Affaires Allemandes) in Paris, stating that I was the authoress of several books on “historical and philosophical subjects”—which is true; that I had come to Germany “in order to gather the necessary information for writing a book about that country”—which was partly true—and finally asking “the French and Allied Military authorities” to be kind enough to provide me “with every help within their power.” I had obtained that precious letter through a French woman who had once sat at school in the same class as I, and who, since then, had become the wife of one of General De Gaulle’s prominent collaborators and worked in London, during the war, in the “free French” information service.148 Both she and her husband knew the official in whose power it was to grant me a military permit to Germany. The woman had not seen me for nearly thirty years, and she did not ask me what views I held, nor what I had done in India during the war. She remembered that I had always been, even in my childhood, “an out-and-out ‘Pagan,’” and told me so. But it did not occur to her that “an out-and-out Pagan” in the modern world can hardly be anything else but a National Socialist. The official had seen me five minutes and asked me nothing at all, so that I had not even needed to lie in order to obtain that unexpected sauf-conduit149 to occupied Germany.

  The face of the enraged customs officer softened at once.

  “So you know Monsieur S, you say?”

  “Yes. I was at school with his wife, years and years ago . . .”

  “Oh, well, in that case . . . it’s all right. Tell me all the same what you have in there,” he said, pointing to one of my travelling bags.

  “A few edibles; three kilos of sugar, five kilos of coffee . . .”

  “Much more than one is allowed, you know. But it does not matter, since you know Monsieur S.”

  “And what have you got in there?”

  “There,” in an iron box, I had all my jewellery: lovely massive gold necklaces and armlets and earrings from India. I intended to sell them in Germany in order to live and carry on my National Socialist activities, or else—if I came across any serious Nazi underground organisation—to give them, for the same purpose. But intentions cannot be seen; papers can. I thought it good policy to distract the attention of the officer on this box. He would perhaps forget to examine the heavy trunk too thoroughly. So I opened the jewel box, and showed some of its contents. I was wearing my golden swastika earrings—under a scarf tied over my head. So they were not to be found in the box.

  The officer marvelled at the exotic ornaments. In a minute, the whole customs office was around me, handling the glittering things.

  “It is a treasure that you are carrying about with you!” said the officer: “Are you not afraid it might get stolen? There are plenty of thieves in this famishing country, you know!”


  I thought within my heart: “They could have betrayed me for money, on the 15th of June, and they did not.” But naturally, I said nothing. The police stepped in, wishing to see the Indian jewels. “Dear me! That would be worth something, in Paris!” said a police officer. “Why do you take all that with you?”

  “I know nobody with whom I could leave it.”

  “And what about a bank?”

  “Well,” said I with a smile, “the truth is that I do like to wear those things sometimes, when I put on my Indian dress.”

  The policemen laughed. “Women are all alike,” exclaimed one of them. And the chief police officer put an end to the exhibition by telling me that I was free to take the jewels into Germany. The trunk full of dangerous leaflets was completely forgotten. It is I who reminded the customs officer of its existence. He made an effort to lift it.

  “It is damned heavy! What have you got in it?”

  “Books.”

  “Books are indeed heavy things. Well, open it, will you? We cannot let you pass without even opening it,” said he.

  I opened the trunk with perfect assurance and calm. I now knew it would pass. The men were thinking only of the Indian jewels. The customs officer took a glance at it; picked out a book or two. “All in English?” he asked me.

  “Some also in French,” I replied, showing him a volume of poems by Leconte de Lisle, “one or two in German—a grammar, a dictionary, easy story books—and a few in Greek.”

  He laughed. “Greek! Oh, dear! That is too learned for me.” And at last he uttered the words I was longing to hear, the words that were to enable me to continue in the “Zones” of occupied Germany the happy and dangerous life of which I had had, already, a taste in Saarland. “You can pass,” said he.

  And I sat once more in the train bound for Treves, with the jewellery that would now help me to live, and to move about, and with the leaflets written from the depth of my heart for the German people.

  I sat in a compartment alone—there were relatively few passengers that day—and the train moved on in the beautiful valley of the Saar. Under the bright sunshine, both sides of the winding river, I could see nothing but green meadows and wooded hills. The train was making a terrific noise as it rushed along. And, with my head at the window, against the wind—like on my unforgettable first journey—I really felt, this time, that, notwithstanding my personal insignificance, I was entering Germany as a liberator. At least as a forerunner and as a sign of the coming liberation. Had I not put all I had and all I was to the service of the forces that are to free not merely my German comrades but the Aryan race at large, and the Aryan soul? “One day,” thought I, “in many, many years to come, I shall remember this life, now beginning for me, and feel, with happiness and pride: ‘I too had a place in the glorious Nazi “underground” during those darkest days.’”

  And I felt elated at the thought that the Gods had willed me to do this. And, gazing at the lovely German land spread before me, I sang the Horst Wessel Song with something of the conquering joy of 1940.

  The train was making too much noise for it to be heard in the next compartment.

  * * *

  Some time after this, I was going to Treves from a village named Wiltingen where I had spent a few days.

  In occupied Germany, every train comprises several carriages reserved not only “for the troops of occupation,” as stated on a notice hanging outside, but also for any person travelling with an Allied passport, and, an equal or often a smaller number of other carriages in which the Germans are allowed to travel. The former—the occupation ones—are warm and comfortable. And as there are relatively few people travelling with Allied passports, they are not crowded. No German is permitted to use them. That is a regulation of the Allied Military authorities. The other carriages—in which people holding Allied passports can travel, of course, if they wish to, but in which the Germans are forced to travel whether they wish to or not, if they must travel at all—are neither warm nor comfortable. They are—or were, until very recently—not lighted at night. And naturally, as they are very few, they are overcrowded. Needless to say, I never used the “occupation carriages” as a matter of principle. (I never took advantage of any privilege that my British-Indian passport could grant me, unless I could share it with at least some Germans of my persuasion.) But, on that day, the signal for the train to move had already been given when I reached the platform. I had no choice. I stepped into the first carriage before me. It happened to be an occupation carriage. And it also happened that some fifteen or twenty Germans who could not guess that I held a British-Indian passport and who somehow felt that I could not possibly belong to the “personnel” of the Occupation, seeing me get into it, stepped in too.

  At the next station, a French officer came along, red with fury from the start: “What are you people doing here? This is an occupation carriage. This is not your place!” he shouted. “Your papers! Show your papers!” The terrorised folk started showing their “Ausweis.”150 Not one, naturally, had an Allied passport, except me. But this was not written upon my face. I was sitting in a corner with my luggage (including my heavy trunk full of Nazi propaganda tracts) at my side, and slightly smiling. I suppose my hardly perceptible smile infuriated the fellow all the more, for he turned to me and thundered: “And you! Your papers, I say! Have you not heard? Are you deaf?” This was all said in German, with the most shocking French accent.

  “I am showing you my papers,” I replied, in faultless French.

  My accent must have impressed the man.

  “But you are not French!” he exclaimed. “Or are you? You don’t look it.”

  “I was born in France,” said I; “That is all.”

  That simple assertion seemed to pour oil upon the fire of the man’s fury. He flared up.

  “And you went and married one of those . . . sales Boches”151 (sic) he retorted. “In that case, you have no right to be here. Clear out!”

  “I am sorry to disappoint you, sir,” said I—and a triumphant irony rang in my voice—“but the man who gave me his name is ‘only’ a Brahmin from faraway India.” And I produced my passport.

  The Frenchman glanced at the cover, and his face changed. A passport issued in Calcutta in the days when India was still a British colony—that was enough to tame a foaming French officer in occupied Germany! “My Führer’s people, how long will these rats rule over you?” I thought. The Frenchman was all honey. He did not even open the British-Indian passport. The sight of the cover was sufficient. “Quite all right! Quite all right!” said he. “Naturally, you can stay here. Why did you not tell me at once?”

  “I wanted to show you my passport,” I replied. “And it was at the bottom of my handbag.”

  “Quite all right! Quite all right! Don’t bother to move.”

  The train slowed down its speed as we were entering another station. The Frenchman suddenly forgot that he had just been overwhelmed by the reflected prestige of an ex-colony of his country’s allies. He only remembered that he was there to make as many Germans as possible feel the pressure of his unexpected and undeserved power. He turned to the other passengers. “Get out!” he shouted, “Get out!” He caught a man by the collar of his jacket and, opening the door, actually pushed him out before the train had stopped. Then—as at last it did stop—he pushed out half a dozen women who, in his estimation, were not getting down quickly enough. He kicked out what little luggage they had, and also kicked out a young boy about twelve or thirteen. The bulk of the passengers rushed to the other exit, and got down as speedily as they could. The frenzied man could not be at both doors at the same time.

  Then, the railway employee on duty—who should have seen to it that these passengers did not enter the occupation carriage—was called in, reprimanded in the most abusive language, and told he would be dismissed for his carelessness. He wished to say something. The Frenchman cut his speech short: “Shut up, I tell you! And get out!” He spoke to him as though he were a dog—or
worse. He spoke to them all—and treated them all—as though they were worse than dogs. Harmless people; peaceable people—far less aggressive than myself, the whole lot of them! Sitting, immune, in my corner, I mused over the injustice—and irony—of the scene I had witnessed. “Yes, peaceable people,” thought I. “Not one of them is travelling with six thousand Nazi leaflets. But also, not one has a British-Indian passport!”

  Alone with the Frenchman, I pretended to be sleepy, so that he might not talk to me. I did not wish to address a word to him—if I could help it—after the way he had behaved with the Germans. But we reached Treves, and I made ready to get down. The officer was getting down too, apparently. He remembered that I was a lady and not a German; nor in sympathy with the Germans—at least he thought, mistaking, as most people do, the average probability for the living individual reality.

  “May I carry some of your luggage for you, Madam?” he asked me, as the train halted in the main station of Treves.

  “How kind of you, Monsieur,” I replied. “I am really grateful. In fact, I have here a trunk that is a little heavy. If only you were so amiable as to carry that for me, I would consider it a great favour.”

  He lifted the trunk and joined me, with it, on the platform.

  “Gosh! It is heavy!” he said, “What have you got in there? Lead?”

  “Books.”

  “Where are you going? To the waiting room?”

  “To the cloakroom.”

  Along platform number one of the main station of Treves, and past those walls that the Allied bombs have reduced to a heap of ruins, straight to the cloakroom walked that French officer—that man whom I had heard and seen abusing and mishandling Germans, only half an hour before; that living embodiment of all that the word “Besatzung”—occupation—means to proud Germany. On he walked, ahead of me, carrying . . . my trunk stuffed with Nazi propaganda! That was something worth seeing indeed!