“So, we finish the eighteenth and he’s gonna stiff me. And I say, ‘Hey, Dalai Lama, hey how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know.’ And he says, ‘Oh, uh, there won’t be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness.’ So, I got that goin’ for me, which is nice.

                                                            ⏤Carl Spackler

                                                         Caddyshack

Click here to watch Bill Murray.

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Did You Know?

Did you know that several home builders recently found 239 gold coins while renovating a 13th-century manor located in Brittany, France? They found a metal box hidden inside the wall of a barn. The box contained gold coins and several days later, above a ceiling beam, a purse was found with more coins.

The coins were minted during the reigns of King Louis XIII and his son, Louis XIV. The oldest coin dates to 1638 while the most recent is 1692. The occupants of the manor would likely have been successful merchants or farmers. (The earliest known occupants can only be traced to the 18th-century.) The collection includes some very rare coins including the Golden Louis with Templar Cross, Golden Louis with a long curl, and Louis XIV by the Atelier de Dijon. (About one hundred years later, it would have been Louis XVI without a head⏤ha ha, I couldn’t pass up that one.)

The estimated value of the collection has yet to be established but it is thought to be around US$356,000. The owner of the manor and the contractors will split the proceeds from a future auction.

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Schutzstaffel (SS) Race and Settlement Main Office

The SS Race and Settlement Main Office (RuSHA) was the Nazi organization responsible for “safeguarding the racial purity of the SS.” One of its duties was to oversee the marriages of SS personnel (i.e., ensuring the SS man’s fiancée and her parents could trace their Aryan lineage back to 1800) as well as screening all SS applicants for racial purity. It also controlled the settlement of discharged SS men into the occupied eastern European countries. The RuSHA established and operated the Lebensborn network of maternity homes. Another task was to conduct “racial-biological” investigations.

Ahnenerbe

The Ahnenerbe was a German think tank established in 1935 on orders from Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. It was run by the SS for the purpose of promoting Hitler’s beliefs that the German race descended from an ancient Aryan race that was superior to all other racial groups. Ahnenerbe’s mission was to investigate the ancestral heritage of the modern German. (I guess it’s kind of like the forerunner to Ancestry.com.) The term “Ahnenerbe” loosely meant “something inherited from the forefathers.” Essentially, the project was aimed at proving the Aryan race was descended from Nordic gods. Although its mission called for evidence based on established scientific methods, the methodology and results were rooted in myths. Truths were distorted and molded to conform to Hitler’s expectations. Himmler staffed the Ahnenerbe with young, intellectual archeologists and anthropologists. Basically, they started by embracing the idea that Aryans were responsible for civilization and then worked backward rather than the other way around. (It was completely opposite of the accepted scientific method.)

Hitler saw the human race as being divided into three groups: cultural founders, bearers, and destroyers. He designated the Aryan race (i.e., tall, blonde, and blue eyes) as founders of culture and responsible over the centuries for developing the arts, sciences, music, literature, and other worldly cultural aspects. Not too hard to figure out whom he designated as destroyers of culture. (It was all laid out in his book, Mein Kampf.) Hitler believed modern Germans were the descendants of the ancient Aryan race and Himmler wasn’t going to disappoint his boss by disproving that theory.

Ahnenerbe’s research indicated the ancient Aryan race had lived in Eastern Europe. Hitler used this in part as justification for invading Poland and expanding the Third Reich into eastern European states. It was also used to justify the Nazis’ persecution and extermination of Jews, Roma, homosexuals, and other untermensch.

Between 1935 and 1938, the Ahnenerbe concentrated its studies using ancient texts, rock engravings, and folklore. All of this fit in perfectly with Himmler’s belief in mysticism and the occult. However, in early 1938, Himmler folded the SS Excavations Department into the Ahnenerbe and archeological digs began in Germany. Artifacts including ancient stone, bones, and ceramics helped recreate the lives of ancient Germans. One of their leading young archeologists, Assien Böhmers (1912−1988), claimed he could trace “Nordic” origins back to the Paleolithic era in Germany (i.e., the time when woolly mammoths were wandering around).

The “findings” of the Ahnenerbe teams were used primarily for propaganda purposes but only when the conclusions proved Hitler’s racial theories. If excavations and results did not support the correct Germanic elucidation, information was censored, and the public never saw the full story. From the mid-1930s to the start of the war, Ahnenerbe undertook activities that would make Indiana Jones proud. (The Germans really did search for the Ark of the Covenant as well as trying to discover the lost continent of Atlantis.) One such project was the expedition to Tibet to confirm the “Vril Theory” that Aryan superiority existed.

Vril Theory

A science fiction novel called The Coming Race, or Vril, the Power of the Coming Race was published in 1871. The story was about a superior master race of people living in a subterranean world. (Think: The Time Machine by HG Wells.) The people call themselves “Vril-ya” and they have telegraphic powers as well as the ability to get rid of pain and put others to sleep. Their destructive powers are so immense that certain children are able to destroy entire cities. The story (and theory) goes that the Vril-ya were descended from ancient Aryans and they consumed a fluid called “Vril,” the source of their energy. The Aryan connection catapulted the Vril Theory into the stratosphere of Nazi conspiracy theories.

The Tibetan “Schäfer Expedition 1938/1939”

In 1938, the Ahnenerbe sent five men to Tibet for the purpose of confirming the Vril Theory. It was believed that Aryan superiority possibly originated in that part of the world. This is where the lost continent of Atlantis enters the picture. Hitler believed Atlantis was inhabited by people of “the purest blood” and after the island sank, the survivors made their way to very secure locations including Tibet which was known as “the roof of the world” due to its location in the Himalayan mountains (elevation of 14,000 feet).

Click here to watch How the Island of Atlantis Played a Central Role in Nazi Beliefs.

The men docked at Colombo in Sri Lanka in early May. From there, they went to Madras (now Chennai) and then onto Calcutta (now Kolkata). British intelligence in India thought the men were Gestapo spies. Reluctant to allow the Germans to enter Tibet, the British eventually allowed the men to go through Sikkim on their way to Tibet. By the end of the year, they reached Tibet. Tied to their mules and baggage were Nazi swastika flags. The Tibetans were very familiar with the swastika. The left-handed swastika was known to the Tibetan Buddhists as “yungdrung,” a symbol of good fortune. Even today as the western world abhors the swastika, the yungdrung is displayed prominently in Tibetan Buddhist homes and businesses.

Click here to watch the video Dalai Lama, Tibet and Nazi Germany Collaboration.

Five years before the Germans entered Tibet, the 13th Dalai Lama died. His successor was Tenzin Gyatso (b. 1935), or the 14th Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama is an appointed position (for life) as the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism and defacto political leader of the nation. (Although it is part of modern China, Tibet is not recognized as an independent nation.) The 14th Dalai Lama was too young to rule, and a regent was appointed. What the regent didn’t know was that his guests considered the Buddhists and Hindus to be inferior to the Germans. The Nazis believed native Tibetans diluted the Aryan race through intermarriage 1,500 years earlier when the Aryans from Atlantis emigrated to Tibet.

The German “Scientists”

There were five members of the expedition: SS-Untersturmführer Ernst Schäfer (1910−1992), SS-Hauptsturmführer Bruno Beger (1911−2009), Ernst Krause (1899−1987), Karl Wienert (geologist), and Edmund Geer (organizational and technical leader). Schäfer led the expedition and handpicked the other four members. The lead scientist was Beger, a racial anthropologist, who would go on trial after the war for crimes against humanity. Schäfer was an ornithologist while Krause, an entomologist, went along as the group’s photographer.

Before the Tibet expedition, Beger was a department head in the RuSHA where he specialized in identifying Jews according to racial features. After Tibet, he was assigned to KZ Auschwitz II-Birkenau to select Jewish inmates for the infamous Jewish skeleton collection. The eighty-six men and women he selected were sent to KZ Natzweiler-Struthof in France where they were murdered in the camp’s offsite gas chamber. The intent was to use the skeletons as visual examples of Jewish racial impurity. After the war, Beger’s involvement in the selection was unknown and he was classified as “denazified” and released. By 1960, the authorities became aware of his role in the collection, and he was arrested but set free four months later. However, Beger was finally put on trial in 1970 and convicted as an accomplice in the deaths of the eighty-six Jews as well as being a member of a criminal organization (i.e., the SS). Sentenced to three years in prison, Beger appealed, and the sentence was reduced to probation.

The Experiments

Beger was the most active member in conducting racial experiments on the Tibetans. Prior to accepting Schäfer’s invitation to join the exhibition, Beger stated his contribution would be “to study the current racial-anthropological situation through measurements, trait research, photography, and molds . . . and to collect material about the proportion, origins, significance, and development of the Nordic race in this region.”

Cranial and facial measurements were taken. Facial casts were made of the Tibetans. Beger took measurements of 376 people along with casts of heads, faces, hands, and ears of another seventeen. Three hundred fifty people supplied fingerprints and handprints. The team also collected everything from animals to plants and archeological artifacts were taken back to Germany. Detailed notes were kept on the anthropological aspects of the Tibetan culture. Beger wrote a daily diary and in 1943, his notes were published as a book on the expedition.

Return to Germany

In August 1939, the Germans packed up and left. Less than a month later, Hitler invaded Poland and World War II began. They took gifts to Hitler including ceremonial Tibetan costumes and a hunting dog (Schäfer liked to hunt). When Himmler met their plane at Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport, the SS leader was giddy with joy. He presented Schäfer with the coveted SS skull ring and dagger of honor. I suppose that meant the expedition was a success and proved the Aryan race had settled in Tibet.

Schäfer was promoted and given his own department within the Ahnenerbe. Although Schäfer was arrested and imprisoned after the war, he was released in 1949 and a year later, moved to Venezuela where he taught at the universities. He returned to Germany and became curator of a natural history museum.

Beger continued working for the SS and as previously discussed, was involved in further racial studies culminating with his participation in the Jewish skeleton collection. The other three members of the group went back to their civilian lives and disappeared.

Post-War

As the war came to its conclusion, Ahnenerbe’s members destroyed any documentation they felt could be used against them in the inevitable trials of war criminals.  However, Schäfer had secretly moved his Tibetan “treasures” and documents to a castle in Salzburg where they were discovered in 1945.

Click here to watch Nazi Quest for the Holy Grail – Nazis and the Aryans.

After the war, de-Nazification procedures largely left the members untouched. Unfortunately, the Ahnenerbe’s archeological theories managed to survive the collapse of the Third Reich and the generation of former Ahnenerbe “archeologists.” Today, far right and neo-Nazi groups have embraced the discredited stories and conclusions from eighty-six years ago.

The current Chinese government is cracking down on minority communities in China including Tibet. It is the goal of the Chinese to eliminate the minority cultures to achieve national unification. One of the tactics is to require the Tibetan Buddhists to conduct their faith in Mandarin.

Click here to read the Wall Street Journal article Xi Jinping’s War on Tibetan Buddhism.

★ Learn More About the Dalai Lama and the Nazis ★  

Anonymous (based on the diary of Bruno Beger). Geheimnis Tibet Erster Bericht der Deutschen Tibet-Expedition Ernst Schäfer 1938/39. Munich: F. Bruckmann, 1943. German language.

Hale, Christopher. Himmler’s Crusade: The Nazi Expedition to Find the Origins of the Aryan Race. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2003.

Kater, Michael  H. Das Ahnenerbe Der SS 1935−1945: Ein Beitrag zur Kulturpolitik des Dritten Reiches. Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1997. German language.

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What’s New With Sandy and Stew?

We have approved the book proof for the first volume of Where Did They Put the Gestapo Headquarters? As you read this blog, Pollock Printing in Nashville is running the first edition and we should have books in hand shortly.

If you would like to be placed on the “pre-sale” list, please e-mail Sandy (sandy.ross@yooperpublications.com). If you purchase the book through us, we will absorb domestic (i.e., within the United States) postage and the book will be autographed with a personal message

You will be able to preview a part of the book in several days. Sandy is creating the preview and we will issue a special blog with a link to the book preview. So, be on the lookout for this “blog” in the next several weeks.

Please be aware that the French government will not allow books to come into their country. (They are trying to preserve the independent bookstores.) This book cannot be sold in Germany due to the swastika images. Other than France and Germany, I can’t think of another country where the new book can’t be shipped.

Thank you to all of you who subscribe to our bi-weekly blogs. It seems there isn’t a day that goes by where we don’t increase our readership. Please let your history buff friends and family members know about our blog site and blogs.

Someone Is Commenting On Our Blogs

I’d like to thank Jane G. and Ben S. for contacting us regarding the blog, He Led from the Front (click here to read the blog). Jane’s comment was “Super story!” while Ben assisted me with some information on Gen. Rose. Thank you for your support.

I’d also like to thank Susan S. for her comments on the blog, The Rasputin of the Abwehr (click here to read the blog). She had never run across Alesch until watching “To Call a Spy.” Thanks, Susan, for reading our bi-weekly blogs. Hope you enjoy the future blogs.

If there is a topic you’d like to see a blog written about, please don’t hesitate to contact me. I love hearing from you so keep those comments coming.

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