The mad priestess of Werl

Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke is a British scholar specializing in the connection between Nazism and occultism. His book "The occult roots of Nazism" is already a classic. There is also a sequel, "Black Sun" where he mentions the notorious Savitri Devi in one chapter. This book, "Hitler's Priestess", is entirely devoted to Devi, her bizarre combination of Nazism and Hinduism, and her equally strange odyssey through post-war neo-Nazism.

Savitri Devi's real name was Maximiani Portas. She was of mixed Greek and British ancestry, and was born and raised in France. At an early age, she became anti-Semitic, hostile to Britain and France, and sympathetic to National Socialism. However, she spent most of the 1930's and 1940's in India, where she aided various Hindu nationalist movements (precursors to the modern BJP). Apparently, Savitri Devi moved to India in the hope of finding the Aryan homeland, where a caste system had supposedly kept the Aryan blood pure since time immemorial. Instead, she found the Hindus in West Bengal besieged by Muslims and British colonialists. In India, she married Asit Krishna Mukherji, who was publishing a pro-Nazi magazine financed by the German consulate. The marriage was platonic - a ruse to make Devi a nominal British subject, so she couldn't be deported from India due to her controversial political sympathies.

After the war, Savitri Devi entered Germany, was arrested by the British for Nazi propaganda activities, and sentenced to a brief imprisonment at Werl, where she met and bonded with female war criminals. Eventually, Devi became a well known figure in post-war Nazi circles. She frequently met with old Nazi refugees in Spain and Egypt, while also befriending leading neo-Nazis, including Colin Jordan, Ernest Zündel and Lincoln Rockwell. Naturally, she was present when the World Union of National Socialists (WUNS) was formed.

However, what really marks Savitri Devi out are her bizarre religious ideas. As already mentioned, she attempted to combine Hinduism and Nazism, indeed to turn Nazism into a literal religion. Devi claimed that Adolf Hitler was an avatar (incarnation) of the Hindu god Vishnu, presumably the last avatar, Kalki, the Hindu "Messiah". She had religious visions of Hitler at the grave of his parents. In another vision, she saw herself give Goering a cyanide pill (this vision supposedly took place the same night as Goering committed suicide). During a "pilgrimage" to Germany and Austria, Savitri Devi visited various locations associated with the rise of Nazism, naturally including Nuremberg and Munich, treating these places as holy shrines. She would also pray to Hitler.

Frankly, Savitri Devi wasn't just evil. She was also quite mad!

What I find most intriguing is that this obviously cranky woman had full and instant access to both old and new Nazis, who even treated her with respect, interest and a certain reverence. I suspect this says something about the disorientation within Nazi circles after the defeat. At first, Savitri Devi was able to meet influential Nazi refugees, such as Otto Skorzeny and a string of Nazis aiding Nasser's regime in Egypt. But as time went on, she seems to have been mostly confined to sectarian and cultish neo-Nazi circles. This, of course, reflects the increasing isolation of explicit Nazism after the war. Only in a completely sectarian milieu could ideas such as Hitler being a Hindu avatar ever get a serious hearing. During the Third Reich, Nazism was a secular nationalist movement, and the Nazis attempted to secure the support of the Christian churches. Had Savitri Devi lived in Nazi Germany, she would have been barely tolerated.

Still, even this bizarre personage could wreak some harm. Goodrick-Clarke points out that one of Devi's "purely" spiritual writings about the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten has been kept in print by AMORC, an otherwise harmless New Age-oriented group. Or are they really that harmless? (I have noticed a streak of anti-Semitism in their writings as well.) Savitri Devi's book on animal rights, the author believes, might unduly influence deep ecologists or animal rights activists. Personally, I suspect Peter Singer might be more dangerous!

"Hitler's priestess" is an interesting book, but there are also some problems with it. The main sources used by the author are Savitri Devi's own books and reminiscences of her friends, most of whom were Nazi. Indeed, these seem to be the only sources available. Devi was well known in Nazi circles, but she was not a public person. Obviously, this makes it impossible to double check her claims. Were Devi and Mukherji really successful Japanese agents during the war? Did she really meet Sven Hedin in Stockholm, and did Hedin really tell her that Hitler was still alive? Was she actually present at the eruption of the Icelandic volcano Hekla, approaching the molten lava while shouting "Heil Hitler"? And when Savitri Devi made her "pilgrimage" through Austria and Germany, she seems to have encountered former Nazis and SS officers behind every bush!

Another question the book never answers is: why? Of course, the tainted sources probably don't give a real answer. Still, one wonders. Maximiani Portas seems to have been a precocious girl and a star student, who spoke several languages and wrote two dissertations, one of them about mathematics based on Frege and Russell, hardly a light subject. Her marriage to Mukherji was platonic, and the sources never mention another lover. However, Goodrick-Clarke does imply at one point that Devi may have been a lesbian, since her admiration for one of the female war criminals at Werl had a sexual undertone. Personally, I also suspect that a certain kind of religious devotion might be a psychological substitute for sex. One also wonders where her misanthropy came from? A deeply rooted hatred for other humans (and love for cats) surely must have some kind of psychological explanation. Devi must also have been estranged from her parents - her mother supported the French Resistance during the war!

Be that as it may, Goodrick-Clark has probably gone as far as the sources permitted him.

I agree with another reviewer that people who simply want a general overview of the Nazi-occult milieu might read the condensed version of Savitri Devi's life in "Black Sun". That book also contains chapters on other occult Nazis, including Julius Evola and Miguel Serrano. However, if you are an obsessive cult-watcher, "Hitler's priestess" is probably a must.