Savitri Devi Mukherji | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Devi in 1937 | |
| Born | Maximiani Julia Portas 30 September 1905 |
| Died | 22 October 1982(1982-10-22) (aged 77) Sible Hedingham,Essex, England |
| Citizenship | France (1905–1928; renounced) Greece (1928–1982; death) |
| Education | University of Lyon (MA,MS,PhD) |
| Occupation(s) | Teacher, author, political activist, spy |
| Notable work | The Lightning and the Sun Impeachment of Man |
| Spouse | Asit Krishna Mukherji |
| Espionage activity | |
| Allegiance |  Nazi Germany |
| Service branch | Sicherheitsdienst (SD) |
| Service years | 1941–1945 |
Savitri Devi Mukherji[a] (bornMaximiani Julia Portas,French:[maksimjanipɔʁtɑ]; 30 September 1905 – 22 October 1982) was a French-born GreekNazi activist,spy, and author. She served theAxis powers by committing acts of espionage against theAllied forces in India. An exponent ofesoteric Hitlerism, she became a leading member of theneo-Nazi underground during the 1960s. Savitri was a proponent of a synthesis ofHinduism and Nazism, proclaimingAdolf Hitler to have been anavatar of the Hindu godVishnu. She depicted Hitler as a sacrifice for humanity that would lead to the end of the worst age, theKali Yuga, which she believed was induced by theJews. She was also a radicalanimal rights activist andvegetarian.
Savitri was an associate in the post-war years of several neo-Nazi and Nazi figures. She was also one of the founding members of theWorld Union of National Socialists. Her writings have influencedneo-Nazism andesoteric neo-Nazism. Within neo-Nazism, she promotedoccultism andecology, and her works have influenced thealt-right.
Born as Maximiani Julia Portas in 1905 inLyon, Savitri Devi was the daughter of Maxim Portas, a French citizen ofGreek and Italian descent and an English woman, Julia Portas (née Nash).[1][2] From childhood and throughout her life, she was a passionate advocate foranimal rights. Her earliest political affiliations were withGreek nationalism.[3] In her youth she was interested in German philosophy and Germany; she was disturbed by Germany's treatment at the end ofWorld War I and by the treatment of Greek refugees simultaneously. She blamed the Jews for the defeat of Germany.[4]
Educated in Greece and France,[5] Portas studied philosophy and chemistry, earning twomaster's degrees in philosophy and science and aPhD in chemistry from theUniversity of Lyon based on her thesisLa simplicité mathématique.[1][5] She next traveled to Greece, and surveyed the legendary ruins. Here, she became familiar withHeinrich Schliemann's discovery ofswastikas inAnatolia. Her conclusion was that theAncient Greeks wereAryan in origin. Her first two books were herdoctoral dissertations:Essai critique sur Théophile Kaïris andLa simplicité mathématique.[citation needed]
Influenced by her hatred of the Bible and laterZionist actions inPalestine, she becameantisemitic at a young age.[5] In early 1928, Portas renounced her French citizenship and acquiredGreek nationality.[6] In 1929 (a year of conflict between Arabs and Jews in the region) she joined apilgrimage to theBritish Mandate of Palestine duringLent, which reinforced her beliefs. Portas was also influenced in her antisemitism by various French intellectuals, with whom antisemitism was prolific; she was especially influenced byErnest Renan.[4][6]
During the 1930s, Portas increasingly came to admireNazism andAdolf Hitler. She read and greatly appreciatedThe Myth of the Twentieth Century, a lengthy book on Nazi ideology written byAlfred Rosenberg; academicJeffrey Kaplan commented that Portas may have been one of the only people to have read the book, which even Hitler had found unreadable, in full.[7] In 1932, she traveled to India in search of a livingpagan Aryan culture, believing that the country represented an ideal racial caste system.[8] Once in India, she studied classical Indian texts, perceiving them as evidence of the "greatness of the Aryan race".[7]
Formally adhering toHinduism, she took the name Savitri Devi (Hindi:सावित्री देवी), in honor of the Indian sun god Savitri.[9] In 1937 she volunteered to work at the Hindu Mission,[10] and wroteA Warning to the Hindus in order to offer her support forHindu nationalism and independence, and rally resistance to the spread ofChristianity andIslam in India.[11] During the 1930s, she distributed pro-Axis propaganda and engaged in intelligence gathering on the British in India.[1] She claimed that, duringWorld War II, she enabledSubhas Chandra Bose (the leader of the Axis-affiliatedIndian National Army) to contact representatives of theEmpire of Japan.[12]
On 9 June 1940 in Calcutta,[13] Devi marriedAsit Krishna Mukherji,[7] aBengali pro-Nazi and an Indian nationalist,[7] who edited the pro-German newspaperNew Mercury. It was the only pro-Nazi paper in India, and Devi had read it prior to their meeting; the German ambassador to India commented that no one had helped them in India to the extent Mukherji had.[14] During 1941, Devi chose to interpretAllied military support for Greece, against Italian and German forces, as an invasion of Greece. Devi and Mukherji lived inCalcutta and continued to gather intelligence for the Axis cause. This included entertaining Allied personnel, which gave Devi and Mukherji an opportunity to question them about military matters. The information which they gathered was passed on to Japanese intelligence officials and the Japanese military found it useful when they launched attacks against Allied airbases and army units.[12] During this time she wrote three books, in addition to a play about the Egyptian pharaohAkhenaten; this work is kept in print by the occult orderAMORC.[15]
AfterWorld War II, she travelled to England in 1945[7] under the name Savitri Devi Mukherji as the wife of a British subject from India, with aBritish Indian passport. She briefly stopped in England, then she visited her mother in France, with whom she would quarrel over the latter's support for theFrench Resistance.[16] She then traveled toIceland, where she witnessed theeruption ofMount Hekla on 5–6 April 1947.[17] While in Iceland, she also adopted the Norse pantheon.[18] She briefly returned to England, then she traveled toSweden, where she metSven Hedin.[19]
On 15 June 1948, she boarded theNord Express and traveled from Denmark to Germany,[20] where she distributed thousands of copies of handwritten leaflets in which she encouraged the "Men and women of Germany" to "hold fast to our glorious National Socialist faith, and resist!" She recounted her experience inGold in the Furnace (which was re-edited and released asGold in the Furnace: Experiences in Post-War Germany to coincide with the hundredth anniversary of her birth).[21][22][page needed]
Arrested for posting bills, she was tried in Düsseldorf on 5 April 1949 for the promotion of Nazi ideas on German territory as a subject of theAllied Control Council, and sentenced to three years imprisonment. She served time inWerl Prison, where she befriended her fellow Nazi andSS prisoners (recounted inDefiance), before she was released early in August 1949 and expelled from Germany. She then resided in Lyon, France.[23][22][page needed]
In April 1953, she obtained a Greek passport in hermaiden name in order to re-enter Germany, and while she was there, she went on apilgrimage, as she called it, to Nazi "holy" sites. She flew from Athens to Rome and then she traveled by rail over theBrenner Pass into "Greater Germany", which she regarded as "the spiritual home of all racially conscious modernAryans". She traveled to a number of sites which were significant in the life of Adolf Hitler and the history of theNazi Party (NSDAP), as well as German nationalist and heathen monuments, as recounted in her 1958 bookPilgrimage.[24]
Savitri Devi became a friend ofHans-Ulrich Rudel, and she completed her manuscript ofThe Lightning and the Sun at his home in March 1956. Through his introductions, she was able to meet a number of Nazi émigrés inSpain and theMiddle East. In 1957, she visitedJohann von Leers in Egypt and traveled across the Middle East before she returned to her home in New Delhi, making stops inBeirut,Damascus,Baghdad,Tehran, andZahedan.[25] In 1961 she stayed withOtto Skorzeny in Madrid.[26]
Savitri Devi took employment teaching in France during the 1960s, spending her summer holidays with friends atBerchtesgaden. In the spring of 1961, while she was on her Easter holiday in London, she learned about the existence of the originalBritish National Party (BNP). This group emerged after the Second World War when a handful of former members of theBritish Union of Fascists took on the name. She met BNP presidentAndrew Fountaine. Beginning a correspondence withColin Jordan, she became a devoted supporter of theNational Socialist Movement.[27] Savitri was an associate in the post-war years ofFrançoise Dior,[28]Otto Skorzeny,[29]Johann von Leers,[30] andHans-Ulrich Rudel.[29]
In August 1962 Savitri signed the Cotswold Agreement which established theWorld Union of National Socialists (WUNS), and attended Colin Jordan'sGloucestershire conference. At this conference she met, and was greatly impressed by,George Lincoln Rockwell. When Rockwell became the leader of the WUNS, he appointedWilliam Luther Pierce the editor of its new magazine:National Socialist World (1966–68). Along with articles by Jordan and Rockwell, Pierce devoted nearly eighty pages of the first issue of the magazine to a condensed edition ofThe Lightning and the Sun. Because of the enthusiastic response, Pierce included chapters fromGold in the Furnace andDefiance in subsequent issues.[31]
After retiring from teaching in 1970, Savitri Devi spent nine months at the Normandy home of her close friendFrançoise Dior while she was working on her memoirs; although she was welcome at first, her annoying personal habits began to disrupt life at the presbytery (among her habits, she did not take baths during her stay and she continually chewed garlic). Concluding that her pension would go much further in India and encouraged by Françoise Dior, she flew from Paris to Bombay on 23 June 1971. In August, she moved to New Delhi, where she lived alone, with a number of cats and at least one cobra.[32]
Savitri Devi continued to correspond with Nazi enthusiasts in Europe and the Americas, particularly withColin Jordan,Matt Koehl and other neo-Nazis.Ernst Zündel proposed a series of taped interviews and published a new edition ofThe Lightning and the Sun in 1979.[32]
By the late 1970s, she had developedcataracts and her eyesight was rapidly deteriorating as a result. Myriam Hirn, a clerk from the French embassy in India, looked after her, making regular house visits. She decided to leave India, returning to Germany to live in Bavaria in 1981 before moving back to France in 1982.[33]
Savitri died in 1982 inSible Hedingham, Essex, England, at a friend's home. The cause of her death was recorded as aheart attack andcoronary thrombosis. She wasen route to lecture in the United States at the invitation ofMatt Koehl at the time of her death. Her body was cremated in a simple ceremony inColchester, Essex which was attended by Tony Williams as well as two young British Nazis. Devi's ashes were shipped in an inscribed urn to the headquarters of theAmerican Nazi Party inArlington, Virginia, where they were then taken and purportedly placed by Matt Koehl next to those ofGeorge Lincoln Rockwell in a "Nazi Hall of Honor" inMilwaukee, Wisconsin.[22] At the time of her death she was reportedly very poor.[34]
In addition to her racist and antisemitic views, Devi developed an occultist view of Nazism, as espoused inThe Lightning and the Sun. She disliked democracy and the current state of western civilisation.[35] Savitri was a proponent of a synthesis ofHinduism and Nazism, proclaimingAdolf Hitler to have been anavatar of the Hindu godVishnu.[35][36] She was an earlyHolocaust denier.[34]
Devi was also ananimal rights activist, as well as avegetarian from a young age, and she also espousedecologist views in her works. She wroteImpeachment of Man in 1959 in India[15] in which she espoused her views on animal rights and nature. According to her, human beings do not stand above the animals; in her ecologist views, humans are a part of theecosystem and as a result, they should respect all life, including animals and the whole of nature.
She held radical views with regard to vegetarianism[15] and believed that people who do not "respect nature or animals"should be executed. She also believed thatvivisection,circuses,slaughter andfur industries among others do not belong in a civilised society.[citation needed]
In life, Devi had few accomplishments (at least relative to her goals of restarting Nazism), but her writing continues to greatly influence the neo-Nazi movement, particularlyesoteric neo-Nazism.[37][34] AcademicJeffrey Kaplan described Devi as "one of the most compelling figures to emerge from the wreckage of post-war National Socialism", and noted her influence onneo-Nazi occultism, "more than any single figure".[5] Her works have also influenced thealt-right,[38] as well asNew Age religiosity anddeep ecology.[34] In addition to her writings her correspondence with many far-righters was significantly influential to the neo-Nazi movement.[34]
She also influenced the Chilean diplomatMiguel Serrano,[15] and her Holocaust denial influencedErnst Zündel.[34] In 1982,Franco Freda published a German translation of her workGold in the Furnace, and the fourth volume of his annual review,Risguardo (1980–), was devoted to Savitri Devi as the "missionary of AryanPaganism".[39]
Media from Commons
Quotations from Wikiquote
