Gold in the Furnace

by Savitri Devi

  The characteristics that appear, today, the most disadvantageous to our creed, from the standpoint of worldly success, are the very ones that justify its claim to be the latest expression of everlasting truth, and that will assure its triumph and domination, in the long run. First among these, is its Aryan exclusivity; its appeal to the best, to the élite of mankind alone—to which all its adherents belong by birthright—and, to the most generous, the most heroic, the most disinterested feelings in each one of its adherents, according to that principle of natural hierarchy, and therefore of discrimination, of natural privilege, upon which it is founded: the principle of Race and Personality.

  It would be, no doubt, absurd to say that National Socialism does not appeal also to man’s legitimate aspiration to healthier as well as more pleasant material conditions of life. It does. It always did, from the beginning. The immediate solution which Hitler gave to the appalling unemployment problem that was threatening the whole economy of Germany in the 1920s and early ’30s, did, perhaps, more for the success of the Movement than anything else. And the material prosperity of Germany under Nazi rule, and the excellent social laws that were then promulgated and enforced (the laws for the welfare and education of children, for instance) are remembered to this day, in the martyred Land, like features of a lost paradise. “In Hitler’s days, we lived well.” “In Hitler’s days, we could have as many children as we liked: the State helped us to bring them up, or rather brought them up for us, and so beautifully!” “In Hitler’s days, food was cheap, and laws were wise, and well applied; there was plenty, then, and there was order. Those were splendid days.” “We never were so happy as under Adolf Hitler,” such talk one hears today everywhere, in every “Zone,” as soon as one enjoys the people’s confidence. And I am sorry to say that, from what I gather from their talk, there are quite a number of Germans for whom nostalgia for the National Socialist régime seems to be nothing else but the nostalgia for a period of material happiness—of cheap and good food, fine clothes, lovely lodgings, wealth and merriment. But such people are not—and never were—National Socialists. They are—and were already in the days they used to hail the Führer in the streets—but members of that immense animal-like majority of human beings who can, and do, “live on bread alone,” and who have no real allegiance to anybody or anything but their stomachs. They are not to be neglected, or despised. Many of them have been useful, and many more will again be so, when better times come back. The fact alone that they can breed healthy children of pure blood, capable of fighting for higher ideals, one day; the fact that they can themselves fight for that better mankind of which they represent the physical side, is a great point in their favour. But don’t call them National Socialists. They are not. The National Socialist ideology appeals, in man, to far more than such people contain in their mental and emotional makeup. It appeals to the finest elements of character: to absolute selflessness: to the thirst of sacrifice for something infinitely greater than one’s little individuality; to courage, fortitude; to uncompromising love of truth for truth’s own sake; to the love of better mankind—of the higher brotherhood of Aryan blood—for the sake of its inherent value, of its all-round beauty and endless possibilities. It appeals to intelligence—real intelligence; not the mere smearing of bookish information—to one’s capacity to think for one’s self and to draw one’s conclusions from the facts of life; to one’s capacity to read the meaning of the world in the unfolding of universal history, and to detect, in the tragedy of all past ages, the basic everlasting truths which Adolf Hitler proclaimed in our times. It appeals to one’s sense of beauty; to one’s aspiration towards that perfect comeliness and that integral truth which are one and the same, on all planes, and in all walks of life.

  In other words, while any German could be a member of the NSDAP, and while any Aryan could, and can still, take pride in the National Socialist Weltanschauung as the natural creed of his race, only superior individuals of Aryan blood—men and women without blemish—can be real, full-fledged Nazis. Stupidity, shallowness, meanness, pusillanimity—weaknesses of any kind—are incompatible with our glorious faith.

  I was once told that there are not more than two or three million absolutely reliable National Socialists in the whole of Germany. It may be that there are not more than ten thousand in the rest of Europe, and not more than two hundred among the non-German Aryans of the rest of the globe. But that fact—if it be a fact—will never induce us to lower the moral and physical standard up to which a person is to live, if he or she is to have the right to be called a National Socialist. For in this age of the exaltation of quantity, we are the only ones who consistently put forward the Golden Age ideal of quality before all. And to forsake that ideal, or even to compromise with the contrary current outlook on life, would be to deny ourselves, to deny our Movement, and the very mission of our godlike Führer.

  Individual value—personality—is rare enough. But many people who do not possess it are pleased to believe that they do. And therefore a philosophy that would put stress on personality alone would not be thoroughly unpopular—on the contrary. But our creed puts emphasis upon blood also. It is, as I have said in the beginning of this book, the eternal creed of Life and Light, viewed in our modern world of technical achievements, from the standpoint of the Aryan race of which the Nordic or Germanic people are, today, the purest representatives. It is an essentially Nordic philosophy; there is no getting away from that fact. And it is that, more than anything else, which has made it so unpopular, not merely among a great number of non-Aryan Orientals, but also among many Europeans who, though untainted by any admixture of Jewish blood whatsoever, are obviously anything but pure “Nordics.” People, as a rule, resent being told—or given to understand—that they are by nature inferior to any privileged aliens. To a philosophy such as ours, they are bound to prefer Communism and its indiscriminate appeal to all men of all races. Every vain individual from any one of the numerous varieties of inferior mankind, feels that he (or she) can “get somewhere” with such a convenient Welt-anschauung, while in a world dominated by us, he would always remain outside the privileged minority. “In his place,” we say. But one of the characteristics of the Dark Age—of our age of decay—is precisely that both worthless individuals and inferior races are less and less willing to remain “in their places”—and more and more indignant at the idea of being put back there by force. Consequently, the children of all the Untermenschen of the world, from the aborigines of Central Africa to those of the hills of Assam, to whom the Christian missionaries have taught the doctrine of the “equal dignity” of all human souls, the Latin alphabet, and discontent, are the first to jump at the new opportunity offered to them by the Communists. Communism appears to them—or will soon appear to them—as applied Christianity. And who can blame them? They are right. Christianity carried to its logical limits, under modern material conditions, can lead nowhere except to Communism. The Jewish doctrine of Marx is, at our stage of historical evolution, the prolongation of the doctrine of Jesus “son of David,” King of the Jews. True, the Kingdom of Jesus was “not on earth,” while the Communist paradise is (in theory at least). But that too is natural. For, as I said, history follows a downward evolution.

  The truth is that vanity is the pet defect of nearly all men and women, while the capacity to face facts with detachment and to stand for truth even against one’s interest, is the privilege of an infinitesimal minority. In reality, National Socialism does address its message to all men—it would to all thinking creatures outside mankind, if there were any on our planet—for it is true. And truth is independent of the qualifications of whoever might grasp it. It is men’s personal or collective vanity that stands in the way of their proper appreciation of it. Their vanity, and their jealousy, too; that hatred of their betters that has also its origin in wounded vanity.

  * * *

  I have said: only an all-round superior individual of Aryan blood can be a real Nazi; and alone people of Aryan
blood can look up to National Socialism as something theirs by birthright. But all thinking men and women can acknowledge the soundness of our principles; the eternity of that natural order in harmony with which our Führer has planned the socio-political structure of new Germany. Even a non-Aryan can admit it; and some do, if very few. But he would have to be not merely a fine individual of his race but an exceptional one, or, at least, a person brought up within the pale of a true tradition, entirely different from that which has imposed itself upon Europe, through Christian civilisation; a tradition based, precisely, upon our age-old principles of divinely ordained racial hierarchy.

  A sincere National Socialist who is neither a German nor even a Northern European—a pure Aryan, say, from the Mediterranean shores, who readily admits that an unmixed Nordic type of man or woman is a finer specimen of the race than he himself and three quarters of his compatriots—is rare enough. For such an objective attitude implies more detachment than most people can afford. But a non-Aryan capable of admitting the biological truths laid down in Mein Kampf, knowing fully well that he (or she) can never expect even a second rate place amidst the natural élite of mankind, should be, in all probability, still more unusual. And yet such people can be found. I have recalled, in the beginning of this book, the story of that young Indian servant of the Maheshya caste of West Bengal who told me, in the second year of this war “Memsaheb, I too admire your Führer, not merely because he is triumphant but because he is struggling to replace, in the West, the Bible by the Bhagavad-Gita”—which was, of course, amazingly true if taken to mean: the spirit of the Judeo-Christian tradition by that of ancient wisdom, rooted in the idea of racial hierarchy.

  “But,” said I to the boy, “you are not an Aryan; only Brahmins and Kshatriyas count as such among Hindus. What is that to you?”

  And the illiterate village lad of Bengal answered: “Maybe I am not an Aryan, but I know my place. All souls are reborn into bodies at the level they deserve. That does not alter the fact that the Scriptures are true and that men are divided into different castes—different races—the first duty of each one of which is to keep its blood pure. If I do my duty faithfully now, in this life, maybe I shall one day be reborn among the high castes, provided I become worthy to be an Aryan.”

  More than seven years later, in a luxurious restaurant in Stockholm, I met a pure Nordic woman—the finest type of Aryan, physically—who asked me, when she noticed the Wheel of the Sun—the sacred Sign of National Socialism—gleaming on each side of my face, “Why do you wear that ‘symbol of evil’? Those earrings of yours are ‘horrid.’” Immediately, I recalled the swarthy face of the lad of the Tropics, and his words—profession of faith of many primitive millions living for thousands of years under a social system based upon the self-same principles as National Socialism: “I am not an Aryan, but I know my place—and I know the truth; and I admire your Führer.” Never, perhaps, did I so bitterly hate that religion of equality, sprung from Judaism and first preached by Jews, that has, for so many generations, silenced the old pride of Nordic humanity. Never perhaps did I feel so keenly what a shame it is for Aryans—and especially, for those of pure Germanic stock—to deny their own God-ordained superiority, and renounce their privileges, while in caste-ridden India, millions of non-Aryans lucky enough to have escaped the influence both of Christianity and of democratic education, still believe in the natural hierarchy of races and look upon the Aryan as the lord of creation.

  * * *

  A racially hierarchised world in which every man would “know his place”—and, like the Indian lad, look up to the Man who, standing alone against the current of dissolution, proclaimed anew, in our times, the everlasting principles of the natural order—is not impossible. In fact, it is bound to come after the final period of chaos that will, one day, close this cycle; the period of chaos that it is the very business of Communism to bring about.

  In such a world, every nation, whether Aryan or not, would be organised under a national State. Every race would have its pride and its sense of duty, and would avoid intermixture as the greatest source of physical and moral evil. The noblest non-Aryan races would be the allies of the Aryan, in view of the creation and maintenance of a world order inspired by a deep sense of obedience to the eternal decrees of Nature. The alliance of Germany and Japan, during this war, was a symbol foreshadowing such a collaboration in friendship and dignity, but necessary aloofness in the domain of breeding; a mutual understanding, a knowledge of each other’s culture, to the extent that is possible, without the slightest desire of ridiculous imitation on either side. The “internationalist” tendencies of our decadent age would be—will be one day—in a world evolved anew according to our principles, replaced by something which seems now entirely utopian—impossible—the mentality of the “nationalist of every land.”

  I remember how I surprised the psychiatrist sent to examine me before my trial when, in answer to the question as to “why” I had thought it worthwhile to risk my freedom, if not my life, for a country that was “not mine,” I replied describing myself first as “an Aryan, grateful to Germany for having staked her all for the awakening of Aryan consciousness and pride in every worthy person of my race,” and then as “a nationalist of every land.” And yet, in this strange expression lies all the difference between the non-Russian Communist and the non-German National Socialist; the secret of the immediate success of Communism as opposed to the temporary failure—but to the triumph, in the long run—of National Socialism.

  The German Nazi is a German patriot before all. The Russian Communist might be an “internationalist” but might also be—and, from reports from Soviet Russia, often is—a Russian patriot using the Communist ideology, so popular outside Russia, for the benefit of Russian imperialism; thinking, in a mistaken manner, that such an ideology can be used in such a spirit.

  But the foreign Communist is pre-eminently an “internationalist”; a believer in “mankind” before nationhood, in mankind as a privileged species, united (at the cost of never mind what disgraceful blendings) in view of the ever-increasing exploitation of living Nature for the greatest enjoyment of the greatest number of human beings—which means, ultimately, the cheapest and coarsest enjoyment. While the foreign Nazi is either just an Aryan in whom the consciousness of race dominates and absorbs the narrower consciousness of fatherland or else—in the case of a minority within a minority—that, of course, and at the same time, a “nationalist of every land”; a person who, in a clear vision of world history, admires the working of those everlasting principles which Hitler has proclaimed over and over again; who, through his understanding of many cultures of different times, feels, with direct intuitive certitude, that man can reach his higher goal—which is to reflect the eternal, individually and collectively—only through oneness with his nation, i.e., with his race; that only by developing in himself the soul of his race can he expect to know and understand and love the soul of other races and, ultimately, the soul of multifarious, hierarchised mankind and of the whole scheme of life, ordinate in its various manifestations, one in its infinite diversity. He (or she) is also a person who looks up to Germany as to the Führer’s Land; the one Aryan Nation who bore witness to these truths in the midst of the hostile, decadent world of our age, at the cost of her very existence on the material plane. A person who, for that reason, would welcome German leadership as the expression of the divine right of these Aryans who proved themselves the worthiest.

  Needless to say, there are many more non-Russian Communists than non-German Nazis, and there always will be until, out of the ruins of the present world order, the new Day dawns—“the Day for freedom and for bread,” to quote the words of the Horst Wessel Song, giving them a symbolic meaning; the Day both of material prosperity and healthy beauty, manly thought, and manly joy—true freedom within order—the Day of the rule of best, for the coming of which National Socialist Germany fought and died (in appearance), and will rise in glory from the dead.

>   Then, many will feel for Hitler’s beloved people the same admiration as I and a few other foreigners do now, in the darkest days of persecution.

  * * *

  But it is not only its aristocratic conception of life and racial exclusivity that make our Ideology unpopular. It is also our blunt frankness about our aims and objects—and methods; the fact that we never tried to conceal what we really wanted, nor what we are prepared to do (or have already done) in order to attain our ends in the shortest time possible.

  National Socialism being, as I said before, a Golden Age philosophy, and this present-day humanity being at the last stage of its downward process towards degradation—in the gloomiest period of the Age of Gloom—it is clear that what we want is not what nearly all other people want.

  What nearly all people want is a “secure” world—a world in which every one can pursue his petty pleasures in peace. What we want is, pre-eminently, a beautiful world. The two conceptions often clash. Let them clash. We do nothing to hide the fact that they are bound to clash as long as our contemporaries remain, physically and mentally, what we know them to be. We do nothing to win their sympathy and collaboration by telling them lies. In order to maintain such a co-operation, we would have to continue lying until, in the end, some of us might begin to lose sight of the glaring, uncompromising ideal of truth set before us. The collaboration of the submen is not worth our taking that risk. Moreover, we hate lies as a weapon—save when they are absolutely indispensable. We much prefer bare, brutal, force, the weapon of true warriors. When true warriors are temporarily exhausted, or wounded, or in chains, the only thing for them to do is not to try deceit, but to prepare themselves in silence to become strong once more—and to wait.

  We never tried to hide or to excuse our ruthlessness, which is a consequence of our earnestness. On the contrary, we have always said we would stop at nothing in pursuit of the mission appointed to us by Nature, which is, to bear witness to our Golden Age truth against the spirit of these degenerate times. And we have proved it. We have done what we said. And we are ready to do it again.