Hitler's Priestess: Savitri Devi, the Hindu-Aryan Myth, and Neo-Nazism (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780814731109)

The rarely told story of Savitri Devi--a Frenchwoman and one of Hitler's most powerful advocates

In this window onto the roots and evolution of international neo-Nazism, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke reveals the powerful impact of one of fascism's most creative minds.

Savitri Devi's influence on neo-Nazism and other hybrid strains of mystical fascism has been continuous since the mid-1960s. A Frenchwoman of Greek-English birth, Devi became an admirer of German National Socialism in the late 1920s. Deeply impressed by its racial heritage and caste-system, she emigrated to India, where she developed her racial ideology, in the early 1930s. Her works have been reissued and distributed through various neo-Nazi networks and she has been lionized as a foremother of Nazi ideology. Her appeal to neo-Nazi sects lies in the very eccentricity of her thought--combining Aryan supremacism and anti-Semitism with Hinduism, social Darwinism, animal rights, and a fundamentally biocentric view of life--and has resulted in curious, yet potent alliances in radical ideology.

As one of the earliest Holocaust deniers and the first to suggest that Adolf Hitler was an avatar--a god come to earth in human form to restore the world to a golden age--Devi became a fixture in the shadowy neo-Nazi world. In Hitler's Priestess, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke examines how someone with so little tangible connection to Nazi Germany became such a powerful advocate of Hitler's misanthropy.

Hitler's Priestess illuminates the life of a woman who achieved the status of a prophetess for her penchant for redirecting authentic religious energies in the service of regenerate fascism.

Author: Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke
ISBN-10: 0814731104
ISBN-13: 9780814731109
Publisher: New York University Press
Language: English
Published: 05/01/1998
Pages: 278
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.22lbs
Size: 9.24h x 6.24w x 0.96d

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 04/13/1998 pg. 64
Booklist 04/15/1998 pg. 1400
Library Journal 05/01/1998 pg. 116