by Savitri Devi
Notes
[←1]
“Must a military defeat lead to a complete collapse of a nation and a state? Since when is this the result of an unfortunate war? Do peoples perish in consequence of lost wars as such?
“The answer to this can be very brief: always, when military defeat is the payment meted out to peoples for their inner rottenness, cowardice, lack of character, in short, unworthiness. If this is not the case, the military defeat will rather be the inspiration of a great future resurrection than the tombstone of a national existence.
“History offers innumerable examples for the truth of this assertion” (Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf [Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, Franz Eher Nachf., 1939], vol. I, ch. x, p. 250; English trans. by Ralph Mannheim [Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1943], p. 229). Emphasis added by Savitri—Ed.
[←2]
“Savitri Devi” is a nom de plume meaning “Sun Goddess.” (“Savitri” = sun; “Devi” = goddess.) It may seem like undue familiarity to refer to her, for the sake of verbal economy, as “Savitri” rather than as “Devi,” but “Devi” is not a surname, but a title analogous to “Saint,” and just as one refers to Saint Paul as Paul for short, rather than as Saint, one refers to Savitri Devi as Savitri, not Devi. Savitri’s surname, after her marriage, was Mukherji, Mukherji being a contraction of Mukhopadhyaya.
[←3]
Savitri Devi, Defiance (Calcutta: A.K. Mukherji, 1951).
[←4]
Ram Gopal (1912-2003) was one of the leaders of the revival of classical Indian dance and one of the most celebrated and widely travelled dancers of the twentieth century.
[←5]
In Defiance (51), Savitri gives her date of return as 7 September 1948; in Gold (123) she gives the date as 11 September.
[←6]
Count Geoffrey Wladyslaw Vaile Potocki de Montalk (1903-1997).
[←7]
Defiance, 52. The friends were probably Muriel Gantry (1913-2000) and Veronica Vassar (d. 1972).
[←8]
Defiance, 200.
[←9]
Defiance, 85.
[←10]
Defiance, 116.
[←11]
Savitri Devi, And Time Rolls On: The Savitri Devi Interviews, ed. R.G. Fowler (Atlanta: Black Sun Publications, 2005), 53.
[←12]
Defiance, 530.
[←13]
Defiance, 114.
[←14]
In Defiance (94), she gives the date 21 February, but this does not seem to be consistent with the chronology of the book’s narrative, which indicates a later day. In And Time Rolls On (61), she gives the date as 22 February, which makes more sense.
[←15]
Defiance, 184. Savitri marked the point in Chapter 7 where she resumed work after her conviction with a footnote. See below, 118 n2.
[←16]
Defiance, 288.
[←17]
Defiance, 393.
[←18]
Gold, 288.
[←19]
Savitri Devi, The Lightning and the Sun (Calcutta: Savitri Devi Mukherjee, 1958), 19.
[←20]
Lightning, 55.
[←21]
Defiance, 276.
[←22]
Defiance, 527-28.
[←23]
Defiance, 527.
[←24]
Lightning, 86.
[←25]
Defiance, 467.
[←26]
Defiance, 514.
[←27]
There had already been a preliminary search on 26 May and a clandestine search on 27 May, thus her ordeal had lasted three weeks by 17 June.
[←28]
Defiance, 523-27.
[←29]
Defiance, 470-78.
[←30]
Defiance, 397, 452-53.
[←31]
Defiance, 250.
[←32]
Defiance, 392.
[←33]
Defiance, 529.
[←34]
Gold, 182, 202.
[←35]
Defiance, 258.
[←36]
Gold, 196 n1.
[←37]
Gold, 283 n1.
[←38]
Defiance, 248.
[←39]
Gold, 20-21, n1.
[←40]
Defiance, 301.
[←41]
Gold, 56 n1, 118 n1,
[←42]
Defiance, vii.
[←43]
Lightning, 126.
[←44]
Pilgrimage (Calcutta: Savitri Devi Mukherji, 1958) was written in Emsdetten, Westphalia in 1953-54. The Introduction is dated 3 June 1953; the completion date of the book is 6 February 1954 (Pilgrimage, 8, 354). Long-Whiskers and the Two-Legged Goddess, or the true story of a “most objectionable Nazi” and . . . half-a-dozen cats (Calcutta: Savitri Devi Mukherji, 1965), was begun in Joda near Baramjamda in Orissa, India, in September 1957 and completed in Hanover on 10 July 1961 (Long-Whiskers, 136).
[←45]
And Time Rolls On, 68.
[←46]
Savitri Devi, Defiance (Calcutta: A.K. Mukherji, 1951).
[←47]
The Bhagavad-Gita, 4:7-8
[←48]
“A whole people, a whole nation feels strong and fortunate today, for in you not only a leader but also a saviour has arisen” (Speech in Nuremberg, 15 September 1935) [Trans. by Ed.].
[←49]
The famous battlefield in ancient India, where the words in the Bhagavad-Gita were spoken.
[←50]
Longer Hymn to the Sun, circa 1,400 BC.
[←51]
Bhagavad-Gita, 1:41-42; based on Eugène Burnouf’s nineteenth century French translation—Ed.
[←52]
“All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died of blood poisoning” (Mein Kampf, I, xi, p. 316; cf. Mannheim, p. 289) [Trans. by Ed.].
[←53]
This is a paraphrase of ideas expressed in Mein Kampf I, v, pp. 186-89; Mannheim, pp. 170-72.—Ed.
[←54]
Norman Douglas, How about Europe? Some Footnotes on East and West (London: Chatto and Windus, 1930).
[←55]
Mein Kampf, I, xi, p. 314; cf. Mannheim, p. 286.
[←56]
Wulf Sörensen [Heinrich Himmler], Die Stimme der Ahnen. Eine Dichtung (Magdeburg: Nordland, 1936), p. 36. [In English: The Voice of the Ancestors: A Poetical Work by Wulf Sörensen, trans. anonymous (Hammer, 1993), p. 39.—Ed.]
[←57]
Lokamanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak, The Arctic Home in the Vedas: Being Also a New Key to the Interpretation of Many Vedic Texts and Legends (Poona: Kesari, 1903).
[←58]
The word used, in ancient Sanskrit Scriptures, to designate the inferior races.
[←59]
For a more complete telling of this story, see Savitri Devi, “Hitlerism and the Hindu World,” The National Socialist, no. 2 (Fall 1980): 18-20.—Ed.
[←60]
Such as Robert Brasillach, shot on 6 February 1945.
[←61]
Author of the famous Myth of the Twentieth Century, Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts (Munich: Hoheneichen, 1930).
[←62]
Professor at the University of Leipzig under the National Socialist régime, author of Die 25 Thesen der deutschen Religion.
[←63]
See the numerous passages of the Goebbels Diaries attacking the Churches.
[←64]
King Akhnaton of Egypt, circa 1,400 BC.
[←65]
“Nowhere in the world is there such a fanatical love of millions of men for one.”—Ed.
[←66]
“Germany, awake!”—Ed.
[←67]
Hjalmar Schacht, Abrechnung mit Hitler [Settling Accounts with Hitler] (Berlin: Michaelis, 1948)—Ed.
[←68]
“We are the pure gold put to test in the fu
rnace. Let the furnace blaze and roar! Nothing can destroy us.”—From Savitri’s own leaflet. For the full text, see p. 34 of this volume.—Ed.
[←69]
Mr. Churchill, in his War Memoirs, gives a different explanation of these orders of the Führer to General Halder, Chief of the German General Staff. This is only to be expected. He writes: “He [Hitler] felt he could not sacrifice armoured formations uselessly, as they were essential to the second stage of the campaign. He believed, no doubt, that his air superiority would be sufficient to prevent a large-scale evacuation by sea. He therefore, according to Halder, sent a message to him through Brauchitsch, ordering ‘the armoured formations to be stopped, the points even taken back.’ Thus, says Halder, the way to Dunkirk was cleared for the British Army.
“Other German generals have told much the same story and have even suggested that Hitler’s order was inspired by a political motive, to improve the chances of peace with England after France was beaten” (Winston Churchill, War Memoirs, Vol. II., Their Finest Hour).
The supposed “actual diary” of General Rundstedt’s Headquarters “written at the time,” on which Mr. Churchill bases his statement that the orders were given on the initiative of General Rundstedt, are very probably not “written at the time” at all, but after the war. I have come to this conclusion for the following reason.
On the 6th of April 1949, I was told by Colonel Edward Vickers, British Governor of the Werl prison where I was myself a political prisoner, that “political prisoners are the last ones to whom the British authorities would grant light in their cells after 8 p.m. and the facilities to write” (I had precisely asked for extra light, which I was not given). “But,” added Colonel Vickers, “those who write things for us,” who do “secret work in our interest, are given every facility.” On the other hand I was told by a responsible member of the British police in Düsseldorf, who intended to impress upon me how “good” and “lenient” the British are in Germany, that General Rundstedt was given in captivity all sorts of special advantages—not only light after time and the permission to write, but the permission to leave his prison on “parole” which is indeed much. I would not like to be unfair to anyone, especially not to a German general, but I cannot help wondering if the “diary” of his mentioned by Mr. Churchill is not another “secret work in the interest of the British” of the kind Colonel Vickers had in mind on the 6th of April 1949.
[←70]
We are accused of having exterminated goodness knows how many “millions” of Jews. It is strange—to say the least—that so many were still living undisturbed in Germany at the time of the Capitulation.
[←71]
“Wenn alle untreu werden, so bleiben wir doch treu . . .”
[←72]
“. . . treu wie die deutschen Eichen, wie Mond und Sonnenschein!”
[←73]
Cf. Mein Kampf I, v, p. 189; Mannheim, p. 172.
[←74]
From Savitri’s propaganda leaflet. For the full text, see p. 34 of this volume.—Ed.
[←75]
The dance company of Ram Gopal (1912-2003)—Ed.
[←76]
Ram Gopal—Ed.
[←77]
Elwyn Wright—Ed.
[←78]
Ben Topf—Ed.
[←79]
Aachen—Ed.
[←80]
From a hymn to Amon written after the overthrow of the Religion of the Disk (14th century BC) and preserved on an ostrakon in the British Museum.
[←81]
“Every attempt to fight a worldview by means of force will fail in the end, unless the struggle takes the form of the attack of a new spiritual attitude” (Mein Kampf, I, v, p. 189; cf. Mannheim, p. 172) [Trans. by Ed.].
[←82]
Remarkably enough, both persecuted régimes—Akhnaton’s ideal state dominated by the Religion of the Disk, in ancient Egypt, and Adolf Hitler’s New Order in modern Germany—lasted about 12 years: 1377-1365 BC, and 1933-1945 AD.
[←83]
“His Majesty has doubled to me his gifts in gold and silver. My Lord, how beneficent is thy Teaching of Life!” (Inscription in the tomb of Ay at Tell-el-Amarna).
[←84]
This was true in 1948 and 1949, when this book was written. It is no longer true in 1951.
[←85]
In January 1949, the world-famous German pianist Walter Gieseking was not allowed to play in the USA on the ground that he had been the “musical ambassador” of the Third Reich.
[←86]
All the people I mention in this book are living people whom I actually know. I refrain from writing their full names and particulars for their safety’s sake, as one can easily understand. And the initials by which I designate them, here as well as in other chapters, are not necessarily their real initials. [In every case that can be checked against Savitri’s letters, interviews, and other writings, she does use real initials.—Ed.]
[←87]
“All persecutions of the movement and its individual leaders, all vilifications and slanders, were powerless to harm it” (Mein Kampf, Conclusion, p. 782; cf. Mannheim, p. 688) [Trans. by Ed.].
[←88]
In my book The Lightning and the Sun (yet unpublished), ch. 1. [The book was published in 1958: Savitri Devi, The Lightning and the Sun (Calcutta: Savitri Devi Mukherjee, 1958)—Ed.]
[←89]
One-third of the population of Bengal—15,000,000 people—were starved to death or permanently injured in their health through the effect of prolonged hunger, from April to December 1943, as all the rice had been requisitioned to supply the British and American troops fighting in Burma.
[←90]
Over one million innocent animals are vivisected yearly, in Great Britain alone.
[←91]
Ten were actually hanged; three put an end to their own lives; seven others are in prison to this day. Hjalmar Schacht alone was acquitted.
[←92]
Montgomery Belgion, Epitaph on Nuremberg: A Letter Intended to Have Been Sent to a Friend Temporarily Abroad (London: Falcon Press, 1946)—Ed.
[←93]
In several English and American magazines.
[←94]
Savitri is referring to her dream, on the night of Hermann Göring’s death, of visiting him in his cell and giving him a cyanide capsule, a dream which Sven Hedin suggested may have been a case of “astral projection.” For the full story, see Savitri Devi, And Time Rolls On: The Savitri Devi Interviews, ed. R.G. Fowler (Atlanta, Georgia: Black Sun Publications, 2005), pp. 43-44—Ed.
[←95]
Hertha Ehlert—Ed.
[←96]
Herta Bothe, according to Goodrick-Clarke (Hitler’s Priestess, 143).—Ed.
[←97]
At least since the days of ancient Greece.
[←98]
Anna Hempel or Irene Haschke, according to Goodrick-Clarke (Hitler’s Priestess, 143).—Ed.
[←99]
Cell leader—Ed.
[←100]
Friedrich Horn—Ed.
[←101]
Local Group Leader—Ed.
[←102]
Mr. R was relieved of his post and forced to leave for having protested.
[←103]
This appeared in the Rheinisch-Pfälzische Rundschau, a democratic paper of Bad Kreuznach, on 31 December 1948. It was reproduced in French in the Revue de la Presse Rhénane et Allemande, vol. 4, no. 1, which was kindly given to me by the French authorities in Koblenz.
[←104]
He died on the 12th of December, 1949.
[←105]
Gerhard Waßner, the young man whose indiscretion led to Savitri’s arrest—Ed.
[←106]
“. . . one does not die for business, but only for Ideals” (Mein Kampf, I, iv, pp. 167-68; cf. Mannheim, p. 152) [Trans. by Ed.].
[←107]
A French composer of songs was the first man to make that joke public.
[�
��108]
“At least, here is a confession stripped of artifice!” This is a paraphrase of a line spoken by Hermione in Act IV, Scene 5 of Jean Racine’s Andromaque.—Ed.
[←109]
See the Neue Volkszeitung (Dortmund), 13 December 1948.
[←110]
Reported in the Allgemeine Zeitung (Mainz), 23 December 1948.
[←111]
See Badische Neueste Nachrichten (Karlsruhe), 29 December 1948.
[←112]
Ibid, quoted in Revue de la Presse Rhénane et Allemande, vol. 3, no. 52.
[←113]
See the Main-Post (Würzburg), 24 December 1948.
[←114]
The newspaper names a few of the well-known concerns effected—Franz Haniel, Duisburg-Ruhrort; Rhenania-Rheinschiffahrt, Homburg; Harpener Berghau, Abt. Schiffahrt; Linden-Reederei, Duisburg-Ruhrort; Klöckner Werke, and the Reemtsma cigarette works.
[←115]
Main-Post (Würzburg), 24 December 1948, quoted in Revue de la Presse Rhénane et Allemande, vol. 3, no. 52.
