The number of prominent people who commit suicide in the oh so democratic state of the Federal Republic of Germany is impressive. A few immediately coThe number of prominent people who commit suicide in the oh so democratic state of the Federal Republic of Germany is impressive. A few immediately come to this reviewer's mind. There was Ulrike Meinhof of course, who was apparently so depressed she hanged herself. The authorities later took off her skull for examination to prove to the world that she suffered from some version of bipolar disorder, a contributing factor presumably to her suicide. Ulrike Meinhof was followed a year later by her RAF comrades Gudrun Ensslin, Andreas Baader and Jan-Carl Raspe in the “high security” prison in Stammheim where they were held. Raspe and Baader reportedly shot themselves and Ensslin died by strangulation. They were depressed after hearing of the failure of an RAF hostage capture to work their release. This story is widely accepted by the German public. Another public figure whose depression led to suicide according to reports is the former president of the state of Schleswig Holstein Uwe Barschel. This gentleman apparently drowned himself in a hotel bath fully dressed, an eccentric way of ending one's own life, but accepted by the general public as just one of those things. Then there was Jürgen Möllermann, a member of the FDP party (free democrats) who had associated himself with the Arab cause against the official policy of his party and the government, who became “depressed” and “ostracised” to the point that he felt his life was not worth living. Möllermann intentionally failed to open his parachute while indulging his favourite sport of sky diving while depressed. The account of these sudden deaths as case of suicide are accepted by the great majority of a trusting German public. Only a few “conspiracy theorists” are sceptical of these official and state and media approved narratives. It is worth noting that the media financed by a mandatory tax on every citizen of over 200 euros a year in the German Federal Republic work in close collaboration with the political authorities. This has been increasingly evident in recent years.
One of the most implausible suicides of a prominent personality living under the jurisdiction of the West German puppet regime is Rudolf Hess. The account given here is by his son Rüdiger Hess. Rüdiger Hes sis convinced his father was murdered. Hess was interred by the Allies in 1941 for flying to Scotland in the hope of negotiating a peace settlement. He was condemned to life imprisonment with the only possibility of release in his later years if the four powers occupying Berlin (France, Britain, the USA and Russia) would unanimously agree to his release on compassionate grounds. Hess's release had been repeatedly rejected by Soviet authorities. However, President Gorbachev on behlaf of the Soviet Union consented to Hess's release. It was not to be. On Monday August 17th 1987 a “tired” 93 years old Rudolph Hess “with no strength left in his hands” (page 49) took advantage of the absence of his personal guard, who was conveniently called away by a telephone call which according to that same guard proved to have no one at the other end, in that moment the very frail old man, shocked at the prospect of being let free rushed back to his cell, got onto a chair and hanged himself with an electric cord which had been “accidentally” left behind by staff of an electric company, a company which never confirmed they had forgotten any cord.
In this sad book Rüdiger Hess explains the circumstances of his father's death and argues convincingly that Hess was murdered by British Intelligence with the connivance of course of the subservient little German state. Both Britain and Germany were frightened by the possibility that despite his advanced years Hess might act as a political magnet for opponents of the pro Western NATO state of Germany. The German Federal Republic remains then and now a vassal of the West. If this account is to be believed, the submissive little German state will look the other way if instructed to do so, when suicides take place.
This is a sad but necessary book for anyone who wishes to be familiar with the trajectory of the life of Rudolf Hess and what he sought for himself his country and the world or who seeks an insight into the hypocritical nature of “democratic” regimes which are loud in voicing outrage at the deaths of dissidents in other lands but ingenuously assure the world when their own dissidents die suddenly and unexpectedly, that it is because they have become “depressed” at their own failings, failures and shortcomings and for that reason put an end to their lives. Honit soit qui mal y pense....more
The Lightning and the Sun by Sevitri Devi is a book written with passion, in religious frenzy. The frenzy strikes the reader like a suddenly illuminatThe Lightning and the Sun by Sevitri Devi is a book written with passion, in religious frenzy. The frenzy strikes the reader like a suddenly illuminating shaft of lightning. Savitri Devi was born Maximine Portaz and adopted the nom de plum in Sanskrit: Goddess of the Sun Rays. She was devoted and fanatical national socialist and Hindu. She believed strongly in the role of avatars in human history. An avatar is the incarnation of a deity in human form. The Lightning and the Sun considers a number of figures whom the authoress regards as avatars and whose lives she recounts from the perspective of what she understands to be cosmic history: Genghis Khan, Akhenaton, Adolph Hitler and finally he who is yet to come, Kalki, the avenger.
The writer passionately rejects Abrahamic religions, that is to say Islam (submission), Judaism (allegiance to the tribes of Israel) and Christianity (followers of the Nazarene cult). The Abrahamic religions all uphold the belief that there is only one god who speaks from above to his followers whose doctrine, so Savitri Devi, runs counter to the laws of nature. She rejects the doctrine of progress and equality of souls before God. Perhaps most importantly, she decries the humanism and anthropomorphism which creates what she sees as abstractions "Man" and "the human race" and "the soul of each individual". History does not run to a final end as preached in The Bible, nor are all men created in the image of God regardless of their origins as preached by the purveyors of the Mohammedan and Nazarene faiths. History in the traditional Aryan world view is cyclical and within that cycle are four yugas or stages, just as a human life is made up of four Ashramas. The four yugas are Satya Yuga, Treta Yuga, Dwapar Yuga, and Kali Yuga. For those whose understanding of the world springs from Hindoo teaching, humankind is now in the last stage, the stage of strife and disintegration, the Kali Yuga.
This is the background to the understanding of this highly unusual, even original work. Savitri Devi is convinced , empowered and inspired by the vision of a world of light to come. The book yearns for the return of the Golden Age The Satya Yuga. Nothing, according to this writer, can save mankind from catastrophe now because that is a cosmic law that man must be destroyed to be reborn. The Gods sent one man to turn back time and he foundered and was brought low. This book is written in contempt, increasing contempt of mankind. Why “increasing”? because as a die hard national socialist, the writer believes the human species is degenerating. It will become and is becoming ever les scapable of creating beautiful things. It is becoming ever less spiritual and more centred on its simplest appetites. This short excerpt exemplifies the writer's pathos: "The privileged ones-the wise-are those few who, being fully aware of the increasing worthlessness of present-day mankind and of its much-applauded "progress", know how little there is to be lost in the coming crash and look forward to it with joyous expectation as the necessary condition of a new beginning-a new "Golden Age", sunlit crest of the next long drawn downward wave upon the surface of the Endless Ocean of Life."
The Lightning and the Sun stands out above all as a spirited rejection of humanism and progress, doctrines which regards all human lives as inherently equal, all human life inherently superior to the rest of the natural world and of inherent value, regardless of such qualities the individual life may or more importantly may not have. The doctrine spread and proclaimed by Abrahamic religions insists on the equality and timelessness of individual souls, exclusively of human souls, which will be granted eternal bliss by an omniscient God. Animals and plants only exist to serve Man who is made in God's image. The semitic religions are fundamentally, so Devi unnatural, worse they are anti-natural.
For Savitri Devi a human being's value lies "not in the intellect but in the spirit".
The Lightning and the Sun is dedicated to the man hear presented as the penultimate and greatest avatar to date preceding the ultimate avatar, Kalki the destroyer. Her dedication "as a tribute of unfailing love and loyalty, for ever and ever" reads: To the god-like Individual of our time; the Man against Time; the greatest European of all times; both Sun and Lightning: Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler for Savitri Devi is a man against time that is to say fighting valiantly but vainly against the inexorable compulsion of cosmic destiny in which all men sink into death and destruction in the culmination of the horror which is the triumph of Jewish individualism which is in the end of days nihilism and self destruction. The ideal which she believes Hitler longed for was "the Golden Age ideal", the inner vision of a healthy, beautiful and peaceful (necessarily peaceful) world; of the real earthly paradise, faithful image of cosmic perfection, in which righteousness prevails as a matter of course."
Few books are written which such power and passion, the passion of conviction, as this book. One book which does come to mind, (I doubt either writer would thank me for making the comparison but who knows?) is Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. Yes Ayn Rand née Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum, the Jewish champion of unbridled capitalism, also introduces her book with a dedication which is planned to provoke: to America's persecuted minority Big Businessmen". Ayn Rand's book is religious too in the same sense that she believes in cosmic values. John Galt makes the sign of the dollar over a flourishing landscape based on the Jewish virtues of progress, selfishness and individualism. For Ayn Rand, America's upward surge in its young days, the conquest of the West, the suppression of the savages, the development of the land were the hallmarks of triumphant individualism over what the hero of her book codnemning collectivism, calls the "slime of Europe".
The Lightning and The Sun is at the opposite pole to Atlas Shrugged but therein lies a perverse affinity of opposites. Both works exult great individuals and are contemptuous of the masses. Both acknowledge the Titanic struggles which unfold in the world.
In the world at the time of writing it indeed seems as though the Hindoo writings and Savitri Devi's work is a work of Hindoo writing, is unfolding with clarity. As the human species relentlessly increases its population and its average intelligence sinks and the natural world is exploited ever more, now in the year 2021 there a true apprehension of Armageddon underlying the fear and helplessness in the face of global disasters. The politicians of the entire world still stubbornly creep and cringe before their doleful idols "progress" and "growth" and “development” and scientists working on projects of artificial Intelligence are near to proclaiming in seems the replacement of the species with machines. The humanist dogma that each individual is of equal worth to every other individual, the doctrine which insists that people ignore the evidence of their eyes and that there are no differences from one race to another between one gender and the other, that dogma will be irrelevant when the master scientists and experts announce their cyborg. The plundering of the planet, the industrial slaughter of animals, the cult of ugliness and death: are these not indeed manifestations of an age which is increasingly dire, foreboding and dark, a Kali yuga?
The Lightning and the Sun is a religious book and therefore disregards what would strike a discordant note in this encomium to the avatars of the Aryan race. Specifically Savitri Devi passes in silence the abuse of medicine in the Third Reich and the allegations of mass extermination and mass sterilisation. The admiration for stalin struck a discordant note for me. Savitri Devi refers to a respect which Hitler is purported tohave expressed for Stalin's acumen. I do not know where she had that from. She herself expresses a certain respect for Stalin. another avatar? The dark side to this celebration of greatness is cruelty to the weak. To write enthusiastically of the greatness or mission of men like Genkhis Khan or Adolf Hitler and evince no pity whatsoever for those who suffer that the great may thrive comes uncomfortably close in my view to admiration of power as the natural expression of the law of nature that the strong rule over the weak. However, this social Darwinianism which can certainly be seen in Hitler seems at odds with the writer's insitence that the ultimate vision of the avatar in being a force against time, was to retrieve the era of peace the Kali Yuga. The national socialist regime was condemned among other things for vivisection practised on human beings, those it considered inferior human subjects. It is stretching belief in Hitler as a man of peace and goodness in his entuirety to breaking point to assume that human experiemnts were a necessary part of his mission. Experiments carried out (in)famously by Dr Mengele were continued in the USA after the war and although the CIA insists that the reprogramming experiemnts code named Monarch have ceased, rumours and consipracy theories abound that they did not cease. For many who believe that the curenet dispensation si demonic, part of that demonic rule owes methods to the regime which Savitri Devi offers as the expression of Aryan greatness and divinity. What of the alleged link between alleged experiments on mind control in national socialist Germany and the subsequent mind control projects, notably the MK Ultra project developed after the Second World War by the CIA ? These are part of the allegations which adherents of the theses of Lyndon Larouche maintain in their widespread presence on the internet. They cannot be ignored and if they can be refuted, Savitri Devi so far as I am aware, did not attempt that task. This is a significant rift. For those who regard the common doctrines of humanism as manifestations of a force of destruction, is that force Satanic in the Christian sense or Jewish? Was the persecution of witches in Europe for example a healthy reaction to the early challenge of Satanic hysteria, as the current conspiracy theorists of the strong Christian persuasion will have their followers believe, or a Christian man dominated cult persecution of women whose crime was to work more closely with nature than the Church would tolerate? The beliefs of a writer such as Savitri Devi and the beliefs of Christian followers of Larouche who link national socialism itself to Satanism are the same insofar as they believe that we are in a dark age (Kali Yuga or end times) at least agree that our times are very dark ones. This is one issue which has come to the fore in recent years and which is not dealt with here in any way.
Savitri Devi stresses that part of national socialism which is perhaps after all its fundamental premise, also, to borrow her own phrase, "above time", namely the claim of national socialism to act in harmony with, and not in opposition to, the laws of nature. "At the beginning of our Time-cycle" she writes in her penultimate chapter, Gods on earth "(as it is shown in the myth of the Garden of Eden, which the Christians borrowed from the Jews, and the latter from immemorial non-Jewish sources) man, — Golden Age man, in all his pristine health and beauty, — was a perfect part of a perfect Creation, in harmony with himself and with it; with every living being, which he at first respected. “Sin” — the cause of degeneracy — consisted not in man’s rebellion against a man-loving “God distinct from the Universe and “Maker” of it in the manner an artisan is the maker of a pot or of a watch, but in rebellion against that divine living Nature of which man was and remains a part and nothing but a part. It consisted in man’s implicit claim to dominate and even to “change” Nature for his own ends and, as time passed and as “civilisation” spread, in his increasing contempt for the silent daily example given him by less evolved (but also less corrupt) living species, still faithful to the spirit and purpose of Creation; in his deliberate transgression of the laws of Life for the sake of pleasure, temporary convenience or mere superstition. In other words, it consisted — and consists — in the sacrifice of the divine whole to the part, and of the future to the present; of the Universe to “man” and of every human race to the individual; and of the individual’s own immortality in his race and of his proper mission in the universal scheme, to a passing whim or a tiny, selfish “happy life.” It is noticeable that in this Dark Age — the only one, the historical evolution of which we can somewhat follow, religion itself has become, everywhere (in practice at least, when not also dogmatically) more and more man-centred and more and more individualistic. "
"For and more man centred" "more and more individualistic". That is indeed what religions have become, not least humanism which itself is a sort of religion putting the sanctity of individual human life at the centre of ethical striving.”
In Lansberg prison in 1925 Hitler prophesied in Mein Kampf that if his movement was defeated the planet in a hundred years would become lifeless. At the time of writing this review, four years to go..
Savitri Devi is well aware of Hitler's sense of cosmic destiny. She adds her own painful and passionate vision of the humanist dystopia:
“Adolf Hitler has rightly stressed that the definitive victory of such an Ideology would mean the end of life upon this planet — which is precisely the aim of the more-than-human Forces of disintegration that stand behind world Jewry. The tragedy, however, is that it would not mean such a rapid and dignified end as one might imagine. It would mean, first, a general and irredeemable bastardisation of the whole human species and an unbelievable increase of the number of human beings — “producers” — at the expense of the rest of life — increase, till the last beautiful wild animals are killed off and the last patch of forest cut down, to make place for more worthless two-legged mammals; — and then, when all the possibilities of nourishment which the earth can provide even with the assistance of perfected agricultural technique, are exhausted, war for food;1 bitter, savage war to the finish (also with the assistance of perfected technique) until the doomed species has blown itself to pieces. It would mean, in other words, “the reign of quantity” in all its horror, and then, — in the absence of any biological elite capable of starting a new Time-cycle — a full stop; on this planet at least, the final victory of that death-tendency which is, from the beginning, inherent in every manifestation within Time."
This is obsessive and compassionate writing indeed. Passionate in terms of destiny and religious mission, it is cooly silent on the reality of ruthless power: the one party state, the fear of falling into disfavour, the fear of the knock on the door, the pitiful misery of those subject to medical experiments. This kind of esoteric writing is inspired by poetic imagination for the high flowing and historical but lacks imagination for the humdrum for the fate of the individual. National socialism did not only place the Gemeinschaft above the individual. The individual counted ultimately for nothing weighed against the community. Again I am reminded of Ayn Rand, the high priestess of the Jewish world-view.
And where does the reader stand? How does the reader feel? That is for each to decide for herself, for himself by reading this book with the high respect which it undoubtedly deserves but not after all entirely uncritically. Respect of course need not mean agreement. All I can recommend to anyone who cares for what may lie beyond the destiny of the confined three score years and ten of the natural life span of the human individual (expended now often painfully out of the kind of humanistic impulse which Savitri Devi decrieds to face the issues which this writer poses. Is this book merely an outburst of hysterical frenzy by one more unrepentant devotee of an abhorred sect or is The Lightening and the Sun an arousing statement of faith in nature and a better future and deep respect for the avatars, who reveal to us in the trajectory of their terrible mighty lives something of the jealously guarded secrets of the universe? Or is perhaps something even of both? As the writer herself says in her preface "The endless future alone will tell us who has understood divine Wisdom the best."...more
I have a very strong feeling of enthusiasm and at the same time of aversion for this book, which I read when I was 16. William Shirer wrote a no-holdsI have a very strong feeling of enthusiasm and at the same time of aversion for this book, which I read when I was 16. William Shirer wrote a no-holds barred account of the rise of Adolf Hitler from the perspective of a fanatical (in the full sense of the word) opponent of everything Hitler stood for. Shirer was also a journalist writing as though he were a historian, so his writing reads easily and persuasively but is not necessarily a font of historical accuracy. Whatever one's own position, this is far and away a more honest book than many of the cold cynical assessments made after the events by historians who also have a private agenda but who unlike Shirer do not make it obvious or claim to be objective when they are no such thing. Shirer is however in my opinion,right to stress more than is often stressed, the novelty of the Nuremburg Laws, which essentially disenfranchised a large section of the population on the basis of a postulated alien ethnicity. These laws undermined the fundamental principles of citizenship as understood in Europe since the American and French revolutions and were profound and potentially murderous in their implications. Shirer also laid stress on medical experimentation on human subjects, which in my humble opinion is as close to Hell as human beings are likely to get on earth. I do not think there are any medical experiment "deniers" : of course, medical experimentation on human beings is in no way something unique to the Hitler dictatorship, but Shirer is right to highlight it as a particularly pernicious abuse of power by politicians and doctors, one which should serve as a reminder to us, if we really need a reminder, of the arrogance and ever lethal potential of the notions of so many representatives of both. It is all very well talking about controlling decadence, crime or whatever, but who controls the controllers, is a question that should never be for a moment forgotten.
I give this two stars but the two stars award is misleading in the sense that I would give his work 4 or 5 stars for readability as a breathtaking introduction to the history of the Third Reich, and 4 or 5 stars for highlighting certain aspects of that history so full of suffering and desolation, but 1 star for reliability, balanced view, veracity, objectivity. Shirer will have no track with the notion that Polish fears of Russia could have been justified, that Churchill wanted war, that in a sense whatever one thinks of him, Hitler was right in claiming that the war was between a Jewish and anti-Jewish world view, that Roosevelt was deeply anti-German and pro-Jewish, that the Soviet Union was planning a preemptive strike on Germany, that the Poles had been put up to provoking Germany and did provoke Germany and that Hitler in this case as later, with the British bombing of civilian targets, fell into a trap and allowed himself to be provoked just in the way his enemies planned he should be provoked; Shirer says nothing as I recall, about the appalling condiitons which induced many to vote for the NSDAP, and there are plenty more imbalances in this work, and half-truths and untruths besides, for there is plenty of history that Shirer does not mention, but I do not have the book any more and I read it 40 years ago. Shirer's is a book to be read by anyone interested in the time, but to be read with rather more than the proverbial pinch of salt. I was going to award this book three stars but I'll put that down to 2 to counter-balance the wave of quasi psychophantic enthusiasm with which so many Goodreads readers have greeted it. It is a deeply flawed book after all, for readibility it is up there in the top rank, for historical balance, down far below....more
Ein wertvolles Buch, interessant als Ausdruck aus vielen Hinsichten der Ideologie jener Zeit (NS Deutschland) allerdings betont (habe muss ich zugebenEin wertvolles Buch, interessant als Ausdruck aus vielen Hinsichten der Ideologie jener Zeit (NS Deutschland) allerdings betont (habe muss ich zugeben nur ein kleines Teil bisher gelesen) national statt ethnischen Eigenschaften aus. Man könnte wohl behaupten daß, zB Opern zu kompenieren ein Geist bzw ethnisch geprägten Genie benötigt, welche innerhalb einen Kreises von Suddeutschland und Norditalien sich befindet. Der Verfasser fühlt sich wahrscheinlich quasi-verpflichtet (man brauch nur an der Zeitgeist zu denken) jüdischen Musiker wie Mendelsohn und Mahler sehr kritisch zu betrachten, wobei die Aufassung, Mahler von Richard Srauss "geerbten" Stilkrisis in eigener Musik, niemals entkommt, bei mir glaubwurdig erscheint. Er weist schon auf Eigenschaften die wohl "jüdisch" sein sollte verweigert aber sehr viel Platz geschweige dann eine Abbildung dieser Komponisten, zu gewähren. Was fehlt -aber es fehlt auch nach dem Krieg und in Kommentaren überhaupt, ist was mach eine Musik aus, ich meine damit was ist der Zusammenhang zwischen zB Rock und Roll und Jugendkultur, Volksmusik, indische Musik, chinesische Musik und die für mich am meisten fesselde Frage: warum und woher gefällt dem einen eine Art von Musik und der anderen nicht? Ist/war z Beispiel Opern eine nur Modeerscheinung? Man kann es vermutern, in Anbetracht der Tatsache daß die grösseste Teil der jungendlichen von heute haben daran nicht die entfernteste Interesse. Und was ist mit modern "klassiachen" Musik? Dekadenz? Oder Rock und Roll Dekadenz? Oder beide? Oder weder die eine noch die andere, alles ist nur Geshcmack. Und was ist mit der Behauptung, Musik mach "Vortschrift" wie wissentschaftliche Entwicklung?? Eine Debatte die kaum angefangen hat.
Immerhin dieses Buch leuchtet einen Weg, und alle Vorurteile oder vielleicht sogar Ängste die von der Zeit der Verfassung ausgehen hinweg, hat der Verfasser einen interessanten Beitrag zu der Debatte über Musik und deren Verbindungen mit Charakterzüge des Menschens geleistet. Es ist eine Schade aber keine Überraschung, daß das Buch längst vergriffen ist und nur in Antikitätenladen gelegentlich erhältich....more
Loading...
