Gold in the Furnace

by Savitri Devi

  The answer of all of them has been printed in a letter addressed to the editor of the Observer by E.I. Watkin, and published in that paper on the 27th of February 1949: “Experience of National Socialism and Communism should have taught us that toleration, if it is not to stultify itself, must have a limit. We cannot tolerate the dangerously intolerant.”158

  The intelligent Frenchmen (like the one whose talk I reported in the beginning of a former chapter159) admit that “business”—that is to say, plunder—is the ultimate motive behind their whole disgusting policy in Germany. And the British would doubtless admit the same, had they the moral courage and intellectual honesty to do so. But the sincere and courageous ones among them are either fools, misled by the press and the radio, or (in those rare instances in which they happen to be intelligent) National Socialists, ex-internees of Brixton or of the Isle of Man under “18B,” not to be found in present-day Germany. The intelligent ones are, generally, neither courageous nor sincere. They are congenitally prudish, congenitally squeamish, and, if moral cowardice and hypocrisy can he cultivated, their whole education has helped to give those vices a foremost place in their psychological makeup. They will never call a spade a spade, even among themselves. They have grown so accustomed to a scale of spurious values, to moderation and “decency” through falsity, that they believe their own lies. And that is, partly, the secret of their diplomatic successes in war and peace. That is also the secret of their hold upon the mind of the average coward. Moderation; “decency”; toleration of all but the “dangerously” intolerant—of all but the sincere, the bold, the strong; of all but those who prefer healthy violence to diplomacy; who despise diplomacy, even when compelled to use it; the average coward relishes such an attitude and therefore likes them.

  They—and the Americans, with whom I have not come into contact but who, I am told, are even more bent on “de-Nazification” than they are—have not come here for plunder. They do not persecute us because they know that, in our hands, a free and racially conscious Germany would not take more than a couple of years to rise once more, on the material plane also, to the leadership of the Aryan world. Oh, no! They do not want the material leadership of the world for themselves, those broad-minded, humane, peace-loving British and American Democrats—so they say. They persecute us for philosophical reasons: because we are prepared to enforce our scale of values—which is the complete denial of theirs—by violence, while they, old, sickly, decadent people, have nothing to enforce, save rules destined to protect, forever, the worthless lives and silly amusements of a more and more ape-like majority, as well as the profits of the “decent” capitalists with Christian ideals of charity and a deep-rooted horror for eternal truths expressed in new, living words.

  There is, undoubtedly, a far more impressive connection between our enemies’ economic greed and fears, and their “philosophical” dislike of National Socialism, than one suspects at first sight. But it is not, perhaps, the simple causal connection one expects. The Democrats’ “philosophical” objection to our Ideology, and their alleged horror of our methods (as of those of the Communists, who, as I said before, are also earnest people) are perhaps not so much an excuse for their plunder policy, as the insatiable material greed behind that policy is a consequence of the whole mentality of the decadent West, embodied in Democracy. In other words, the Democrats want a free hand to exploit the world, and hate all possible competitors, because they have nothing nobler, nothing more lovable to live for than their pockets. And they are so “tolerant” not out of a generous comprehension of every point of view (for, in such a case, they would tolerate us too) but out of indifference towards anything that does not threaten the cherished security of their little lives—the material security, no doubt; but the moral security also; the comfortable feeling that all is well with the established Judeo-Christian tradition of degenerate Europe.

  They speak of us and of the Communists in the same breath, however fundamentally opposite our two philosophies be, however contrary be our basic aspirations. They are hypnotised by one fact, namely that we and our bitterest enemies both know what we want and believe in what we preach; that we are both prepared to use any methods which are expedient, any means that lead to triumph; in one word, that we and they are equally intolerant.

  All living Weltanschauungen are equally “intolerant.”160 Christianity was, when it was alive. The Greek religion of old, in its narrow, ritualistic aspect, was not—so they say. But even if this be true, the real racial and national Weltanschauung at the back of the public cult—the Hellenic edition of our broader Aryan philosophy, expressed in the proud words: “Pas men Ellen, Barbaros” (“Every man who is not a Hellene, is a Barbarian”) could not have been more radical, more intolerant. As our Führer has rightly said: “The greatness of any active organisation which is the embodiment of an idea, lies in the spirit of religious fanaticism and intolerance in which it attacks all others, being convinced that it alone is right.”161 But the Democrats are old and sick and tired—decadent, as I said before. At heart, they are afraid of any people bearing, like we, that glaring sign of youth: intolerance—precisely because it is a sign of youth. They envy us that faith and devotion that fills us, that once filled the early Christians, their forerunners, and that they know they will never have again. And they fear us, and they hate us because we are young; because we are the embodiment of Aryan vitality, the everlasting Youth of the Race. For they know, as everyone else, that youth is to take the place of decrepit old age; that the living are to take the place of the dying and of the dead.

  * * *

  The attitude of the few French and British people whom I met in occupied Germany, to us and our way of life, is essentially the same as that of most anti-Nazi specimens one comes across in France or in England. Only a little more cynical, perhaps—or else, still more hypocritical—in the case of the clever ones; and, if possible, still stupider, in the case of the average. For one does not remain in the service of the Allies in that oppressed land, unless one is brazenly selfish and cynical, congenitally dishonest, or incurably stupid. Any person who does not possess one of these three qualifications—or two; or all three—becomes disgusted of the Allies’ doings and resigns, or is forced to resign, within a remarkably short time.

  As a rule, I do not discuss with anti-Nazis if I can help it. I only wait for the time and opportunity to silence their quack162 by force. Yet, from the few I came in contact with, out of policy or out of compulsion—useful members of the British and American forces in India during the war; useful officials, in or outside Germany after the war, and, last but not least, people who cross-examined me during or before my trial—from all those, I say, the impression I received confirms entirely that which written Democratic propaganda had made upon me long before: those self-styled champions of “humanity” and “decency” have no philosophy whatsoever. Their stubborn enmity towards us; their blind hatred of all we stand for; even their pretended horror of our uncompromising methods, all spring from the same source: fear, and bitter envy—the envy of the mental (or physical) cripple at the sight of us, healthy Heathens, in whose world he knows he would have no place; the envy of the blasé, pitiable product of decay, at the sight of the rising Youth of the Race in whose heart, in spite of material disaster, confidence still abides and love can still work wonders; the envy of the weakling and of the coward, too cautious to be radical, too squeamish to face facts, too shaky to walk more than half way along the path of resurrection, at the sight of those who, in one frantic leap, have thrown themselves into the struggle for the survival of Aryan mankind with Hitler’s immortal words “Future or ruin!” as their battle cry; that envy, and . . . the fear of coming death.

  Those are not our final enemies. However much they might hate us and persecute us, the real, the final issue does not lie between us and them—any more than it does between them and their “gallant allies” of yesterday, the Communists. The ultimate issue lies between us and the Communists. For they alon
e profess the Democratic principles without being impaired by that insurmountable shallowness of the Western Democrats; by that mania for “moderation” and “decency”; that unhealthy admiration for half measures. Their Weltanschauung is diametrically opposed to ours; but it is a Weltanschauung—not just an excuse for dabbling in politics without any serious inconvenience to one’s physical comforts and moral and intellectual slumber. It is Democracy, nay, it is Christianity—that oldest successful snare held out to the Aryan world by the ubiquitous Jew—carried to the limits of its logical implications. (The attitude of the Communist State to the Christian Churches, as temporal organisations, lessens in no way the importance of that philosophical fact.) It is more than the artificial creation of the brains of idle, decadent Aryans under the influence of Jewish thought. It is the brutal, physical impact of an immense portion of the multifarious non-Aryan world, coalesced in aggressive hatred against us, its natural betters, and against that outward expression of our legitimate consciousness of superiority: racial pride.

  The unpardonable crime of the democrats is to have strengthened that, by fighting us for their petty ends.

  May they suffer—and die—for that crime!

  Chapter 9

  THE ÉLITE OF THE WORLD

  “Der Stärkere hat zu herrschen und sich nicht mit dem Schwächeren zu

  verschmelzen, und so die eigene Größe zu opfern. Nur der geborene Schwächling kann dies als grausam empfinden, dafür aber ist er auch nur ein schwacher und beschränkter Mensch; denn würde dieses Gesetz nicht herrschen, wäre ja jede vorstellbare Höherentwicklung aller organischen Lebewesen undenkbar.”

  —Adolf Hitler163

  Somebody once asked me what had attracted me to National Socialism. I replied without a shadow of hesitation: “Its beauty.”

  And today, after many years; after the test of disaster and persecution has reduced our number, but strengthened our faith; today, from the narrow prison cell to which our enemies have confined me—like thousands of my betters—while the free, sunny world blooms and smiles far and wide in the glory of spring, I am happy to repeat those words. For, strange as they might have seemed to my anti-Nazi interlocutor of long ago (who gazed at me in amazement, as though this was the last statement he had expected in answer to his question); strange as they might appear to all those who do not realise the full meaning of what we stand for, or who are too coarse to feel the appeal of an eminently aristocratic philosophy such as ours, they are true, and could not be more so. I know nothing in our times and, since a very remote antiquity, nothing in the past, also, which can be compared for beauty with the life and personality of Adolf Hitler, with the history of his struggle, or with the National Socialist Weltanschauung itself.

  Many a time, in this book and elsewhere, I have stressed the truth of the National Socialist doctrine, the unquestionable facts that underlie it, the natural laws, older than the world, on which it rests. But aesthetic perfection is the glorious tangible sign of absolute truth. Even before I fully realised how sound and everlasting Hitler’s ideas are, his socio-political system appealed, in me, to the artist. And I know of no other system—nay, apart from the immemorial cult of the Sun which I profess, I know of no religion—capable of appealing in like manner to me or to anyone else who, like me, is first and foremost a lover of beauty, and especially of visible beauty; a lover of this earth and of this life, here and now; a worshipper of the body in all its strength, grace, and vitality; a worshipper of Nature in her merciless majesty; a real Heathen.

  Two words appear over and over again as a Leitmotiv in the few splendid pages that Heinrich Himmler has devoted to our philosophy under the pen name of Wulf Sörensen: “Wir Heiden”—we Heathens.164 They provide the key to our whole outlook. For not only I, but every true National Socialist is a Heathen at heart. And—which is more—every true Aryan Heathen of our times is bound to be a National Socialist. (If inhibited by ‘‘humanitarian” reservations, he or she is no true Heathen.)

  One does not become a National Socialist. One only discovers, sooner or later, that one has always been one—that, by nature, one could not possibly be anything else. For this is not a mere political label; not an “opinion” that one can accept or dismiss according to circumstances, but a faith, involving one’s whole being, physical and psychological, mental and spiritual: “not a new election cry, but a new conception of the world”165—a way of life—as our Führer himself has said.

  And it is, essentially, the way of life of those in whose eyes the value of man, which lies in his all-round beauty—in his faithfulness to Nature, that calls on him to surmount humanity—is far more important than that “individual happiness” of which the “bourgeois” make such a fuss; more particularly, it is the way of life of those whose personal happiness is inseparable from the awareness of their rights and duties as Aryans, i.e., of their value in the natural hierarchy of human beings.

  * * *

  . . . The axe has mutilated the forests,

  The slave crawls and prays, where swords once clattered;

  And all the Gods of Erinn have departed. . . .166

  Thirty years ago, I read for the first time that concise and pathetic description of the twilight of European Heathendom, which a French poet has put into the mouth of an old Irish bard. And I sobbed desperately because I—in 1919—could do nothing to bring back the proud and beautiful Gods of bygone days. From my earliest childhood, I had always been a bitter rebel against the Christian values; a soul to whom the Christian ethics had never meant anything but silliness or perversity—or “pose”; to whom the Christian message meant nothing. And I loved the Gods of the ancient North, as well as those of Greece and of the Aryan East, with passionate, nostalgic love. And I kept within my heart the healthy, warrior-like ideal that they embodied, while despising the dreary humanity in the midst of which I lived—that humanity that tried, through the teaching of Christianity or of the principles of the French Revolution, to impose its wretchedness and sickly benevolence upon me.

  I was not, then, aware of the dawning of National Socialism in Germany, only a few hundred miles away from my native town. I did not know I was destined, one day, to hail in that inspired Movement the long-delayed awakening of the Aryan Gods within the consciousness of the undying Race that had once created them. I only began to take a serious interest in it ten years later. And yet, at heart, I was already a National Socialist. And my continual conflict with the world around me and both its Christian “humanitarian” and Democratic values—its man-centred, equalitarian values—was nothing else but the conflict of the new Movement itself with those same values, those same traditions,

  those same principles, outcome of centuries of decay; with that same ugly world, boasting of its incurable sickness and hypocrisy under the name of “moral progress.”

  Oh, if only I had known that, in 1919! I could have done nothing, for I was a mere thirteen year old girl. But I would have dried my tears, and looked with hope and confidence to the slowly rising Leader beyond the Rhine and to his handful of followers. Instead of mourning for a past that would never come back, I would have sought in the living present and in the future that eternal beauty for which I was craving, and spared myself ten years’ more bitterness.

  * * *

  As I have said before, National Socialism is not merely the one modern “ism” which is anything but modern; the only political Ideology which is infinitely more than political. It is the only system concerned with social questions and government, with economic and territorial problems, national welfare and international relations, in our times—and perhaps in all times—to which a man or woman who is first and last a lover of beauty and nothing else, can be wholeheartedly attracted; should, indeed, be wholeheartedly attracted.

  No out-and-out lover of beauty can help feeling bitter, at times, if not utterly dejected, in a world in which, roughly speaking, everything is beautiful and lovable save his own species. And such seemed to be our world, until very recently; un
til, in fact, out of the hopeless general slush of slowly decaying humanity, new Germany rose, as by miracle, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, a living picture of what the whole Aryan race—the world’s natural élite—could re-become, if only it were willing to follow its true friend and Saviour. And, what is more, for the last four years already, the reborn Nation has stood the terrible test of disaster. She suffered; and there were times when one could believe she had reached the limit beyond which no human beings could keep faith in themselves and in their destiny. And yet, invasion, prolonged occupation, with all its demoralising consequences, hunger, humiliation, de-Nazification: she stood it all and did not lose faith. And the worthy ones among her martyred people are, more than ever, today, a splendid example of what the Aryan race can be, when invigorated anew with the sound doctrine of pure blood and legitimate racial pride. More than ever, the lover of beauty cannot but admire them, and feel happy to have at last found a land where the unchanging beauty of Nature outside man is equalled by the superhuman, all-round beauty of a small section of mankind; a land where a few hundreds of thousands if not a few millions of men and women fulfil the purpose of their race—which is to create a “supermankind”—as surely and as simply as the beautiful beasts of the forest, or the trees, or the distant stars in heaven fulfil theirs.

  National Socialism has performed that miracle. That new Germany, that stands today erect in the midst of her appalling ruins, a thing of indestructible beauty forever, is entirely Adolf Hitler’s handiwork; the product of that love that led him to the intuitive knowledge of a few eternal truths and to the ruthless application of that knowledge to the complete remoulding of a whole nation. And the miracle is unique. For nothing, save the short-lived application of the Nazi Ideology to government and education, seems ever to have arrested man’s unavoidable decadence, even for a while, let alone to have raised a superior race, once more, towards its forgotten perfection, against the all-powerful current of time. So much so that, if the Western world is one day to rise again, it will have to date its resurrection from the birth of the National Socialist Movement, or at least from the 30th of January 1933, the day Hitler came to power. And if it is never to rise, still it will remain true that the only way to resurrection was once opened to it by our Führer.