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http://www.berzinarchives.com/kalachakra/nazi_connection_shambhala_tibet.htm
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The Nazi Connection with Shambhala and Tibet
Alexander Berzin
May 2003, revised December 2003
Introduction
Many high-ranking members of the Nazi regime, including Hitler, held
convoluted occult beliefs. Prompted by those beliefs, the Germans sent an
official expedition to Tibet between 1938 and 1939 at the invitation of the
Tibetan Government to attend the Losar (New Year) celebrations.
Tibet had suffered a long history of Chinese attempts to annex it and
British failure to prevent the aggression or to protect Tibet. Under
Stalin, the Soviet Union was severely persecuting Buddhism, specifically the
Tibetan form as practiced among the Mongols within its borders and in its
satellite, the People's Republic of Mongolia (Outer Mongolia). In contrast,
Japan was upholding Tibetan Buddhism in Inner Mongolia, which it had
annexed as part of Manchukuo, its puppet state in Manchuria. Claiming that
Japan was Shambhala, the Imperial Government was trying to win the support
of the Mongols under its rule for an invasion of Outer Mongolia and Siberia
to create a pan-Mongol confederation under Japanese protection.
The Tibetan Government was exploring the possibility of also gaining
protection from Japan in the face of the unstable situation. Japan and
Germany had signed an Anti-Commintern Pact in 1936, declaring their mutual
hostility toward the spread of international Communism. The invitation for
the visit of an official delegation from Nazi Germany was extended in this
context. In August 1939, shortly after the German expedition to Tibet,
Hitler broke his pact with Japan and signed the Nazi-Soviet Pact. In
September, the Soviets defeated the Japanese who had invaded Outer Mongolia
in May. Subsequently, nothing ever materialized from the Japanese and
German contacts with the Tibetan Government.
[For more detail, see: Russian and Japanese Involvement with Pre-Communist
Tibet: The Role of the Shambhala Legend.]
Several postwar writers on the Occult have asserted that Buddhism and the
legend of Shambhala played a role in the German-Tibetan official contact.
Let us examine the issue.
The Myths of Thule and Vril
The first element of Nazi occult beliefs was in the mythic land of
Hyperborea-Thule. Just as Plato had cited the Egyptian legend of the sunken
island of Atlantis, Herodotus mentioned the Egyptian legend of the continent
of Hyperborea in the far north. When ice destroyed this ancient land, its
people migrated south. Writing in 1679, the Swedish author Olaf Rudbeck
identified the Atlanteans with the Hyperboreans and located the latter at
the North Pole. According to several accounts, Hyperborea split into the
islands of Thule and Ultima Thule, which some people identified with Iceland
and Greenland.
The second ingredient was the idea of a hollow earth. At the end of the
seventeenth century, the British astronomer Sir Edmund Halley first
suggested that the earth was hollow, consisting of four concentric spheres.
The hollow earth theory fired many people's imaginations, especially with
the publication in 1864 of French novelist Jules Verne's Voyage to the
Center of the Earth.
Soon, the concept of vril appeared. In 1871, British novelist Edward
Bulwer-Lytton, in The Coming Race, described a superior race, the Vril-ya,
who lived beneath the earth and planned to conquer the world with vril, a
psychokinetic energy. The French author Louis Jacolliot furthered the myth
in Les Fils de Dieu (The Sons of God) (1873) and Les Traditions
indo-européeenes (The Indo-European Traditions) (1876). In these books, he
linked vril with the subterranean people of Thule. The Thuleans will
harness the power of vril to become supermen and rule the world.
The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) also emphasized the
concept of the Übermensch (superman) and began his final work, Der
Antichrist (The Antichrist) (1895) with the line, "Let us see ourselves for
what we are. We are Hyperboreans." Although Nietzsche never mentioned vril,
yet in his posthumously published Der Wille zur Macht (The Will to Power),
he emphasized the role of an internal force for superhuman development. He
wrote that all people strive for creative "Socratic power." Since most
cannot have it, they settle for aggressive force.
In the years before and during the First World War, Guido von List, Jorg
Lanz von Liebenfels, and Phillip Stauff popularized the Ariosophy movement.
Ariosophy blended the concept of races from Theosophy with German
nationalism to assert the superiority of the Aryan race as a rationale for
Germany to conquer the global colonial empires of the British and the French
as the rightful ruler of the inferior races. It must be pointed out,
however, that the Theosophical movement never intended its teachings on
races as a justification for asserting the superiority of one race over
another, or the destined right of one race to rule the others.
In The Arctic Home of the Vedas (1903), the early advocate of Indian
freedom, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, added a further touch by identifying the
southern migration of the Thuleans with the origin of the Aryan race. Thus,
many Germans in the early twentieth century believed that they were the
descendants of the Aryans who had migrated south from Hyperborea-Thule and
who were destined to become the master race of supermen through the power of
vril. Hitler was among them.
The Thule Society and the Founding of the Nazi Party
Felix Niedner, the German translator of the Old Norse Eddas, founded the
Thule Society in 1910. In 1918, Rudolf Freiherr von Sebottendorff
established its Munich branch. Sebottendorf had previously lived for several
years in Istanbul where, in 1910, he had formed a secret society that
combined esoteric Sufism and Freemasonry. It believed in the creed of the
assassins, deriving from the Nazari sect of Ismaili Islam, which had
flourished during the Crusades. While in Istanbul, Sebottendorf was also
undoubtedly familiar with the pan-Turanian (pan-Turkic) movement of the
Young Turks, started in 1909, which was largely behind the Armenian
genocide of 1915-1916. Turkey and Germany were allies during the First
World War. Back in Germany, Sebottendorff had also been a member of the
Germanen Order (Order of Teutons), founded in 1912 as a right-wing society
with a secret anti-Semitic Lodge in the spirit of the Ariosophy movement.
Through these channels, Aryan superiority, racism, anti-Semitism,
assassination, and genocide became parts of the Thule Society's creed.
Anti-Communism was added after the Bavarian Communist Revolution later in
1918, when the Munich Thule Society became the center of the
counterrevolutionary movement.
In 1919, the Society spawned the German Workers Party. Starting later that
year, Dietrich Eckart, a member of the inner circle of the Thule Society,
initiated Hitler into the Society and began to train him in its methods for
harnessing vril to create a race of Aryan supermen. Hitler had been
mystic-minded from his youth, when he had studied the Occult and Theosophy
in Vienna. Later, Hilter dedicated Mein Kampf to Eckart. In 1920, Hitler
became the head of the German Workers Party, now renamed the National
Socialist German Worker (Nazi) Party.
Haushofer, the Vril Society, and Geopolitics
Another major influence on Hitler's thinking was Karl Haushofer (1869-1946),
a German military advisor to the Japanese after the Russo-Japanese War of
1904-1905. Because he was extremely impressed with Japanese culture, many
believe that he was responsible for the later German-Japanese alliance. He
was also highly interested in Indian and Tibetan culture, learned Sanskrit,
and claimed that he had visited Tibet.
After serving as a general in the First World War, Haushofer founded the
Vril Society in Berlin in 1918. It shared the same basic beliefs as the
Thule Society and some say that it was its inner circle. The Society sought
contact with supernatural beings beneath the earth to gain from them the
powers of vril. It also asserted a Central Asian origin of the Aryan race.
Haushofer developed the doctrine of Geopolitics and, in the early 1920s,
became the director of the Institute for Geopolitics at Ludwig-Maximilians
University in Munich. Geopolitics advocated conquering territory to gain
more living space (Germ. Lebensraum) as a means of acquiring power.
Rudolf Hess was one of Haushofer's closest students and introduced him to
Hitler in 1923, while Hitler was in prison for his failed Putsch.
Subsequently, Haushofer often visited the future Führer, teaching him
Geopolitics in association with the ideas of the Thule and Vril Societies.
Thus, when Hitler became chancellor in 1933, he adopted Geopolitics as his
policy for the Aryan race to conquer Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central
Asia. The key to success would be finding the forefathers of the Aryan race
in Central Asia, the guardians of the secrets of vril.
The Swastika
The swastika is an ancient Indian symbol of immutable good luck. "Swastika"
is an Anglicization of the Sanskrit word svastika, which means well-being
or good luck. Used by Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains for thousands of years,
it became widespread in Tibet as well.
The swastika has also appeared in most other ancient cultures of the world.
For example, the counterclockwise variant of it, adopted by the Nazis, is
also the letter "G" in the medieval Northern European Runic Script. The
Freemasons took the letter as an important symbol, since "G" could stand
for God, the Great Architect of the Universe, or Geometry.
The swastika is also a traditional symbol of the Old Norse God of Thunder
and Might (Scandinavian Thor, German Donner, Baltic Perkunas). Because of
this association with the God of Thunder, the Latvians and Finnish both took
the swastika as the insignia for their air forces when they gained
independence after the First World War.
In the late nineteenth century, Guido von List adopted the swastika as an
emblem for the Neo-Pagan movement in Germany. The Germans did not use the
Sanskrit word swastika, however, but called it instead "Hakenkreutz,"
meaning "hooked cross." It would defeat and replace the cross, just as
Neo-Paganism would defeat and replace Christianity.
Sharing the anti-Christian sentiment of the Neo-Pagan movement, the Thule
Society also adopted the Hakenkreutz as part of its emblem, placing it in a
circle with a vertical German dagger superimposed on it. In 1920, at the
suggestion of Dr. Friedrich Krohn of the Thule Society, Hitler adopted the
Hakenkreutz in a white circle for the central design of the Nazi Party
flag. Hitler chose red for the background color to compete against the red
flag of the rival Communist Party.
The French researchers Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier, in Le Matin des
Magiciens (The Morning of the Magicians) (1962), wrote that Haushofer
convinced Hitler to use the Hakenkreuz as the symbol for the Nazi Party.
They postulate that this was due to Haushofer's interest in Indian and
Tibetan culture. This conclusion is highly unlikely, since Haushofer did not
meet Hitler until 1923, whereas the Nazi flag first appeared in 1920. It is
more likely that Haushofer used the widespread presence of the swastika in
India and Tibet as evidence to convince Hitler of this region as the
location of the forefathers of the Aryan race.
Nazi Suppression of Rival Occult Groups
During the first half of the 1920s, a violent rivalry took place among the
Occult Societies and Secret Lodges in Germany. In 1925, for example, Rudolf
Steiner, the founder of the Anthroposophical movement, was found murdered.
Many suspected that the Thule Society had ordered his assassination. In
later years, Hitler continued the persecution of Anthroposophists,
Theosophists, Freemasons, and Rosicrucians. Various scholars ascribe this
policy to Hitler's wish to eliminate any occult rivals to his rule.
Influenced by Nietszche's writings and Thule Society creeds, Hitler believed
that Christianity was a defective religion, infected by its roots in Jewish
thinking. He viewed its teachings of forgiveness, the triumph of the weak,
and self-abnegation as anti-evolutionary and saw himself as a messiah
replacing God and Christ. Steiner had used the image of the Antichrist and
Lucifer as future spiritual leaders who would regenerate Christianity in a
new pure form. Hitler went much further. He saw himself as ridding the
world of a degenerate system and bringing about a new step in evolution with
the Aryan master race. He could tolerate no rival Antichrists, either now
or in the future. He was tolerant, however, of Buddhism.
[See: Mistaken Foreign Myths about Shambhala.]
Buddhism in Nazi Germany
In 1924, Paul Dahlke founded the Buddhistischen Haus (House for Buddhists)
in Frohnau, Berlin. It was open to members of all Buddhist traditions, but
primarily catered to the Theravada and Japanese forms, since they were the
most widely known in the West at that time. In 1933, it hosted the First
European Buddhist Congress. The Nazis allowed the House for Buddhists to
remain open throughout the war, but tightly controlled it. As some members
knew Chinese and Japanese, they acted as translators for the government in
return for tolerance of Buddhism.
Although the Nazi regime closed the Buddhistische Gemeinde (Buddhist
Society) in Berlin, which had been active from 1936, and briefly arrested
its founder Martin Steinke in 1941, they generally did not persecute
Buddhists. After his release, Steinke and several others continued to
lecture on Buddhism in Berlin. There is no evidence, however, that teachers
of Tibetan Buddhism were ever present in the Third Reich.
The Nazi policy of tolerance for Buddhism does not prove any influence of
Buddhist teachings on Hitler or Nazi ideology. A more probable explanation
is Germany's wish not to damage relations with its Buddhist ally, Japan.
The Ahnenerbe
Under the influence of Haushofer, Hitler authorized Frederick Hielscher, in
1935, to establish the Ahnenerbe (Bureau for the Study of Ancestral
Heritage), with Colonel Wolfram von Sievers as its head. Among other
functions, Hitler charged it with researching Germanic runes and the
origins of the swastika, and locating the source of the Aryan race. Tibet
was the most promising candidate.
Alexander Csoma de Körös (Körösi Csoma Sandor) (1784-1842) was a Hungarian
scholar obsessed with the quest to find the origins of the Hungarian
people. Based on the linguistic affinities between Hungarian and the Turkic
languages, he felt that the origins of the Hungarian people were in "the
land of the Yugurs (Uighurs)" in East Turkistan (Xinjiang, Sinkiang). He
believed that if he could reach Lhasa, he would find there the keys for
locating his homeland.
Hungarian, Finnish, the Turkic languages, Mongolian, and Manchu belong to
the Ural-Altaic family of languages, also known as the Turanian family,
after the Persian word Turan for Turkestan. From 1909, the Turks had a
pan-Turanian movement spearheaded by a society known as the Young Turks.
The Hungarian Turanian Society soon followed in 1910 and the Turanian
Alliance of Hungary in 1920. Some scholars believe that the Japanese and
Korean languages also belong to the Turanian family. Thus, the Turanian
National Alliance was founded in Japan in 1921 and the Japanese Turanian
Society in the early 1930s. Haushofer was undoubtedly aware of these
movements, which sought the origins of the Turanian race in Central Asia.
It fit in well with the Thule Society's search for the origins of the Aryan
race there as well. His interest in Tibetan culture added weight to the
candidacy of Tibet as the key to finding a common origin for the Aryan and
Turanian races and for gaining the power of vril that its spiritual leaders
possessed.
Haushofer was not the only influence on the Ahnenerbe's interest in Tibet.
Hielscher was a friend of Sven Hedin, the Swedish explorer who had led
expeditions to Tibet in 1893, 1899-1902, and 1905-1908, and an expedition to
Mongolia in 1927-1930. A favorite of the Nazis, Hitler invited him to give
the opening address at the Berlin Olympics in 1936. Hedin engaged in
pro-Nazi publishing activities in Sweden and made numerous diplomatic
missions to Germany between 1939 and 1943.
In 1937, Himmler made the Ahnenerbe an official organization attached to the
SS (Germ. Schutzstaffel, Protection Squad) and appointed Professor Walther
Wüst, chairman of the Sanskrit Department at Ludwig-Maximilians University
in Munich, as its new director. The Ahnenerbe had a Tibet Institut (Tibet
Institute), which was renamed the Sven Hedin Institut für Innerasien und
Expeditione (Sven Hedin Institute for Inner Asia and Expeditions) in 1943.
The Nazi Expedition to Tibet
Ernst Schäffer, a German hunter and biologist, participated in two
expeditions to Tibet, in 1931-1932 and 1934-1936, for sport and zoological
research. The Ahnenerbe sponsored him to lead a third expedition (1938-1939)
at the official invitation of the Tibetan Government. The visit coincided
with renewed Tibetan contacts with Japan. A possible explanation for the
invitation is that the Tibetan Government wished to maintain cordial
relations with the Japanese and their German allies as a balance against
the British and Chinese. Thus, the Tibetan Government welcomed the German
expedition at the 1939 New Year (Losar) celebration in Lhasa.
[See: Russian and Japanese Involvement with Pre-Communist Tibet: The Role of
the Shambhala Legend.]
In Fest der weissen Schleier: Eine Forscherfahrt durch Tibet nach Lhasa, der
heiligen Stadt des Gottkönigtums (Festival of the White Gauze Scarves: A
Research Expedition through Tibet to Lhasa, the Holy City of the God Realm)
(1950), Ernst Schäffer described his experiences during the expedition.
During the festivities, he reported, the Nechung Oracle warned that
although the Germans brought sweet presents and words, Tibet must be
careful: Germany's leader is like a dragon. Tsarong, the pro-Japanese
former head of the Tibetan military, tried to soften the prediction. He said
that the Regent had heard much more from the Oracle, but he himself was
unauthorized to divulge the details. The Regent prays daily for no war
between the British and the Germans, since this would have terrible
consequences for Tibet as well. Both countries must understand that all
good people must pray the same. During the rest of his stay in Lhasa,
Schäffer met often with the Regent and had a good rapport.
The Germans were highly interested in establishing friendly relations with
Tibet. Their agenda, however, was slightly different from that of the
Tibetans. One of the members of the Schäffer expedition was the
anthropologist Bruno Beger, who was responsible for racial research. Having
worked with H. F. K. Günther on Die nordische Rasse bei den Indogermanen
Asiens (The Northern Race among the Indo-Germans of Asia), Beger subscribed
to Günther's theory of a "northern race" in Central Asia and Tibet. In
1937, he had proposed a research project for Eastern Tibet and, with the
Schäffer expedition, planned to investigate scientifically the racial
characteristics of the Tibetan people. While in Tibet and Sikkim on the way,
Beger measured the skulls of three hundred Tibetans and Sikkimese and
examined some of their other physical features and bodily marks. He
concluded that the Tibetans occupied an intermediary position between the
Mongol and European races, with the European racial element showing itself
most pronouncedly among the aristocracy.
According to Richard Greve, "Tibetforschung in SS-Ahnenerbe (Tibetan
Research in the SS- Ahnenerbe)" published in T. Hauschild (ed.) "Lebenslust
und Fremdenfurcht" - Ethnologie im Dritten Reich ("Passion for Life and
Xenophobia" - Ethnology in the Third Reich) (1995), Beger recommended that
the Tibetans could play an important role after the final victory of the
Third Reich. They could serve as an allied race in a pan-Mongol
confederation under the aegis of Germany and Japan. Although Beger also
recommended further studies to measure all the Tibetans, no further
expeditions to Tibet were undertaken.
Purported Occult Expeditions to Tibet
Several postwar studies on Nazism and the Occult, such as Trevor Ravenscroft
in The Spear of Destiny (1973), have asserted that under the influence of
Haushofer and the Thule Society, Germany sent annual expeditions to Tibet
from 1926 to 1943. Their mission was first to find and then to maintain
contact with the Aryan forefathers in Shambhala and Agharti, hidden
subterranean cities beneath the Himalayas. Adepts there were the guardians
of secret occult powers, especially vril, and the missions sought their aid
in harnessing those powers for creating an Aryan master race. According to
these accounts, Shambhala refused any assistance, but Agharti agreed.
Subsequently, from 1929, groups of Tibetans purportedly came to Germany and
started lodges known as the Society of Green Men. In connection with the
Green Dragon Society in Japan, through the intermediary of Haushofer, they
supposedly helped the Nazi cause with their occult powers. Himmler was
attracted to these groups of Tibetan-Agharti adepts and, purportedly from
their influence, established the Ahnenerbe in 1935.
Aside from the fact that Himmler did not establish the Ahnenerbe, but rather
incorporated it into the SS in 1937, Ravenscroft's account contains other
dubious assertions. The main one is the purported Agharti support of the
Nazi cause. In 1922, the Polish scientist Ferdinand Ossendowski published
Beasts, Men and Gods describing his travels through Mongolia. In it, he
related hearing of the subterranean land of Agharti beneath the Gobi Desert.
In the future, its powerful inhabitants would come to the surface to save
the world from disaster. The German translation of Ossendowski's book,
Tiere, Menschen und Götter, appeared in 1923 and became quite popular. Sven
Hedin, however, published in 1925 Ossendowski und die Wahrheit (Ossendowski
and the Truth), in which he debunked the Polish scientist's claims. He
pointed out that Ossendowski had lifted the idea of Agharti from Saint-Yves
d'Alveidre's 1886 novel Mission de l'Inde en Europe (Mission of India in
Europe) to make his story more appealing to the German public. Since Hedin
had a strong influence on the Ahnenerbe, it is unlikely that this bureau
would have sent an expedition specifically to find Shambhala and Agharti
and, subsequently, would have received assistance from the latter.
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