I'm pretty sure I have heard of this before, but here's a short account at the BBC about it:
In 1938, Heinrich Himmler, a leading member of Germany's Nazi party and a key architect of the Holocaust, sent a five-member team to Tibet to search for the origins of the supposed Aryan race. Author Vaibhav Purandare recounts the fascinating story of this expedition, which passed through India.
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Adolf Hitler believed that "Aryan" Nordic people had entered India from the north some 1,500 years earlier, and that the Aryans had committed the "crime" of mixing with the local "un-Aryan" people, losing the attributes that had made them racially superior to all other people on earth.
Hitler regularly expressed deep antipathy for the Indian people and their struggle for freedom, articulating his sentiments in his speeches, writings and debates.
Yet, according to Himmler, one of Hitler's top lieutenants and the head of the SS, the Indian subcontinent was still worth a close look.
This is where Tibet came into the picture.
Those who swore by the idea of a white Nordic superior race were believers in the tale of the imagined lost city of Atlantis, where people of "the purest blood" had apparently once lived. Believed to have been situated somewhere between England and Portugal in the Atlantic Ocean, this mythical island allegedly sunk after being struck by a divine thunderbolt.
All the Aryans who survived had supposedly moved on to more secure places. The Himalayan region was believed to be one such refuge, Tibet in particular because it was famous for being "the roof of the world".
In 1935, Himmler set up a unit within the SS called the Ahnenerbe - or Bureau of Ancestral Heritage - to find out where people from Atlantis had gone after the bolt from the blue and the deluge, and where traces of the great race still remained and could be discovered.
In 1938, he sent a team of five Germans to Tibet on this "search operation".
You can read more at the link above.
Update: I thought it worth showing the photo in the article of the 5 guys on the hunt for Aryan roots in Tibet (so to speak):
The pants are a bit baggy, but still: pretty snappy dressers for Nazi scientists. (And you really do expect Indiana Jones to be lurking somewhere in the background.)
wow in 1938 they sent Schact on a wild goose chase to get 'world Jewry' to pat for jews to go to Palestine. Who would have thought the Nazis of all people would support the creation on Israel.
ReplyDeleteQuite comical! Der Postillion came out with a joke along similar lines today.
ReplyDeleteTurns out that the Nazis were quite right. We didn't know that until about 2014. Linguistic analysis implied that the Aryans had taken over. Europe the British Isles and India. They had replaced the Europeans for the most part, except on the Southern coast in places like Sardinia. Italians generally are only somewhat Aryan. They are mostly "old Europe."
ReplyDeleteLinguistic analysis is insufficient alone. The Palestinians spoke an Aryan language. And yet they apparently have been revealed as more genetically "old Europe." So the 19th Century linguistic interpretation was not unreasonable. But it was premature. Yet from about 2014 we see that they were mostly correct. The key Aryan tribe was the Yamnaya tribe. I am likely just shy of 40% Yamnaya. Thats how successful this tribe was. Their phenotype as darker skin then we have and generally blue-eyed. Like Ronald Reagan or Henry Fonda. Although with these two that could be Hollywood sun lamps. But thats basically what these guys looked like. Yet their genes have been stunningly successful.
I try and analyse why they conquered all before them. But of course I'm mostly guessing.
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