The Haushofer Connection

Notwithstanding Adolf Hitler's claims on the contrary, some authors believe that it was Karl Haushofer, whom they see as Hitler's guiding brain, the one who suggested the Führer the adoption of the swastika as the Nazi symbol. This is, i.e., the opinion of Pauwels and Bergier. [1]

Karl Haushofer was born in Bavaria in 1869. He chose a career as a professional soldier, and his intellectual gifts and meticulous attention to detail quickly allowed him to get an appointment to the Staff Corps.

Haushofer is known to have had a reputation for precognition, manifested when he was a young field artillery officer in the Bavarian army. In 1908 the army sent him to Tokyo to study the Japanese army and to advise it as an artillery instructor. The assignment changed the course of his life and marked the beginning of his love affair with the Orient. During the next four years he traveled extensively in the Far East, adding Korean, Japanese, and Chinese to his repertoire of Russian, French, and English languages.

During his multiple visits to Japan, Haushofer made the acquaintance of many influential Japanese politicians and developed a strong rapport for the Japanese culture which helped in some way to create the German-Japanese alliance during the war.

Karl Haushofer had been a devout student of Schopenhauer, and during his stay in the Far East he was introduced to Oriental esoteric teachings. He became proficient enough to translate several Hindu and Buddhist texts, and became an authority in Oriental mysticism. Some authors even believe that he was the leader of a secret community of Initiates in a current of satanism through which he sought to raise Germany to world power, though these occult connections have been denied.

It is also believed that he belonged to the esoteric circle of George Gurdjieff. [2] Others claim that he was a secret member of the Thule Society. Some authors have linked Haushofer's name with another esoteric group, the Vril Society, [3] or Luminous Lodge, a secret society of occultists in pre-Nazi Berlin.

It was not until the age of forty-five that he obtained his doctorate with a brilliant thesis on Political Geography. He continued developing the ideas expressed on his dissertation, until developing a whole new doctrine he called geopolitics. [4]

Among Haushofer's students at Munich university was a young, bright army officer: Rudolf Hess. Soon Hess became Haushofer's favorite student. Later Hess also became one of the closest associates of Hitler. He was serving time with Hitler at Lansdberg. It is a well known fact that it was Rudolf Hess who introduced Haushofer to Adolf Hitler, and also that the professor frequently visited the Führer while he was writing Mein Kampf in Landsberg Fortress prison after his failed Munich putsch in 1923.

After Hitler came to power in 1933, Professor Haushofer was instrumental in developing Germany's alliance with Japan. Most of the meetings between high rank Japanese officials and Nazi leaders took place at his home near Munich. He saw Japan as the brother nation to Germany, the Herrenwolk of the Orient

Before the war Professor Haushofer and his son Albrecht maintained close contacts with British members of the Golden Dawn. When war between Germany and England broke out Haushofer tried to use his influence with Hess in trying to convince Hitler to make peace with the British

In the Spring of 1941, after having failed to convince Hitler, Haushofer urged Hess to make a direct contact with the Duke of Hamilton, a Scottish member of the Golden Dawn. On may 10, 1941, Hess took off for Scot-land. Whether Hitler knew his plans or not is still subject of debate among historians.

The British government, however, didn' t even want to hear Hess' peace propositions and put him in jail incommunicado. After Hess' failure the Nazis denounced him as mentally disturbed.

Karl and Albrecht Haushofer fell from grace. Albrecht became involved in a failed coup d'etat against Hitler on July 20, 1941. Karl Haushofer was sent to the infamous Dachau concentration camp, and Albrecht to the Moabite prison in Berlin, where was later executed.

Some authors claim that, while in Japan, Haushofer was active in the ultra-secret Green Dragon Society, whose members were under oath to commit ritual suicide if faced with dishonor. After the war Haushofer was among the Nazi members to be put to trial before the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal. But Professor Haushofer never went to trial. After killing his wife, Karl Haushofer committed suicide in the traditional Japanese way, cutting his intestines with a sharp samurai short sword, in a personal, formal ceremony called seppuku (commonly known as hara-kiri).

 

 

NOTES:

1. The Morning of the Magicians . New York: Avon Books, 1971, 280.


2. George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff was born in 1872 in the Caucasus region of Russia, of Greek, Armenian, and Russian ancestry. He claimed to have met members of a Hidden Brotherhood while traveling in Asia, and they initiated him in the occult tradition. After returning to Moscow Gurdjieff started an esoteric school where disciples were supposed to be taught how to reach higher levels of conscience through meditation exercises. After the school's success he opened a similar one in Paris.

Gurdjieff has always been an enigmatic figure. Some speculate that he may have been sent by the Russian authorities to Tibet as a spy. Others affirm that while in Tibet he was actually the man known as Dorjieff, the preceptor of the Dalai Lama.

According to some sources, it was in Tibet where Haushofer met Gurdjieff and became one of his adepts. On the other hand, it is evident that Gurdjieff never held the Nazis in high esteem. While visiting Berlin during the height of Nazi power he and a small group of disciples were watching a street parade, which he begin to satirize loudly. Somebody called the police and he was about to be hauled to prison, but was eventually dismissed as a madman.

On the other hand, it seems that Haushofer was somehow influenced by Gurdjieff's teachings, which held that men are sleep, just waiting for a strong leader to force them to awake and become supermen. Gurdjieff also believed in the legend of the Masters of Wisdom, superhuman intelligences who keep a careful watch over the destiny of mankind and intervene whenever human affairs get out of hand. Even more, he believed that he himself was in direct communication with a source of higher energy from which, through him, his disciples could draw.

3. The Vril Society, or Luminous Lodge, was a secret community of occultists in pre-Nazi Berlin. The Berlin Vril Society was in fact a sort of inner circle of the Thule Society, it was also in close contact with an English group known as the Golden Dawn.

The Vril Society in Berlin apparently sought connection with supernatural beings in the entrails of the earth, and its members practiced the techniques which would eventually strengthen their mastery of the divine energy, the Vril, empowering them to master people and events.

The term "Vril" came to the attention of the Western world through the writings of a not well known French author, Louis Jacolliot (1837-1890).

Jacolliot was an avid reader of occult literature, and was familiar with the work of Swedenborg, of the theosophist Jacob Böhme and of Louis Claude de Saint Martin. In the course of his professional career Jacolliot had been president of the tribunal at Chandernagor, India, and afterwards French consul in Calcutta.

The works of Jacolliot have inspired several writers and occultists, among them Rudyard Kipling and H. P. Blavatsky. Among Jacolliot's many books are: La Bible dans l'Inde ou la Vie de Iezeus Christna (1859); Les Fils de Dieu (1873); Christna et le Christ (1874); Les Traditions indo-européennes (1876); La Genèse de l'humanité (1879); and L'Olympe brahmanique (1881).

The main theme in his books is that modern civilizations were originated from a single, primordial nucleus, which was the same for India, western Asia, and Europe. The Semitic and indo-European races were not different at the beginning, but the Semitic races degenerated in the process, while the Aryans remained pure. A code of law rules civilized people, the Code of Manu, name of the divine ruler in India, while in Egypt he was called Menes, Mosses among the Hebrews, and Minos in Crete.

According to Jacolliot, Jesus Christ is but a recent reconstruction of an old indo-aryan tradition, that of Iezeus-Christna. Jesus of Nazareth is only a different characterization of the same personage.

North of Europe a magic civilization has existed for millennia and its name is Thule. The superior beings of Thule live in huge caverns in the entrails of the earth. They possess an extraordinary source of magic energy: the Vril. The theme of the Vril is exalted in most of Jacolliot's writings. Vril is an energy latent in man, but he utilizes only a fraction of it. It is the source of divinity, the source of the coming superman. He who discovers it and masters its use acquires great powers. He can become a master of men.

In many of his works, particularly in Les Fils de Dieu , and in Les Traditions indo-européenes, Jacolliot affirms that he discovered the existence of Vril among an Indian sect: the Jains, still active in the regions of Mysore and Gujerat, and counting millions of adepts.

The discovery of Vril by Jacolliot created extraordinary interest among European intellectuals, avid of knowledge about traditional oriental wisdom. Inspired by his writings a group of Rosicrucians from Berlin founded, by the end of the 19th century, the Vril Society to divulge the writings of the French master. Jacolliot's ideas were introduced in England by S. L. Matthews at the Golden Dawn Society, of which he was the Great Master.

With the passage of time, apparently the term Vril fell in disuse. Interest on Vril was renewed after it was used again in a novel with occult and prophetic overtones, The Coming Race , written by the Baron Edward Bulwer-Lytton.

Bulwer-Lytton was an English writer and occultist better known as the author of the best seller The Last Days of Pompeii. In The Coming Race he describes the existence of a superhuman race of beings living in huge caves in the entrails of the earth. These beings had developed a strong energy source of psychic energy --the Vril-- which make them equal to gods. Their plans are, one day, to take control of the earth and, using his energy, bring about a mutation of the now dormant human elite, subjugating afterwards the rest of the low-grade human beings.

Like Gurdjieff, Baron Bulwer-Lytton believed that he was a storer of Vril. He practiced ceremonial magic and Madame H. P. Blavatsky affirmed he was a Theosophist.

According to Bulwer-Lytton, Vril was a sort of great fluid, resembling electricity, with which all of life was pervaded. His "Vril people" accumulated it through yoga-like mental and physical exercises. The adepts of the Vril Society and the Thule Society shared the belief that it was possible to get in touch with the Vril, a belief which they inculcated in Adolph Hitler. It was precisely to get in touch with the spiritual "power-plant" of Vril that the Führer created the Ahnenerbe.

The Society for the Study of Ancestral Heritages, the Ahnenerbe, was an organization founded in 1935 privately by Frederick Hielscher, a mystic and friend of the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin, and Wolfram Siever's spiritual teacher.

SS soldiers receiving a crash course on the meaning of the Germanic runes and other "Aryan symbols". The Ahnenerbe was the SS branch in charge of the research on ancient symbols and other esoteric subjects.

Frederick Hielscher was never a member of the Nazi party, and was in friendly terms with Martin Buber, the Jewish philosopher. But his theories had some aspects in common with the esoteric doctrines of the Nazi leaders. Two years after Hielscher privately founded the Ahnenerbe, Himmler turned it into an official organization, attached to the SS.

Finally, in January 1939, the Ahnenerbe was incorporated into the SS as one of its branches, and its leaders absorbed into Himmler's personal staff. At that time it had fifty branches under the direction of Professor Wurst, an expert on ancient sacred texts who had taught Sanskrit at Munich University. The mission assigned to the Ahnenerbe was to locate the origins of the "Nordic" race which, according to Nazi lore, was of Aryan stock.

But the Ahnenerbe's multiple branches dealt with a more broad spectrum of activities. These activities ranged from strictly "scientific" research --like vivisection practiced on prisoners-- to espionage, as well as the study and practice of occultism.

According to the scant information available about the Ahnenerbe --its huge archives mysteriously disappeared after the war-- it seems that Germany spent more money and devoted more resources on the Ahnenerbe than America did on the atomic bomb. More than fifty departments in this branch of the SS succeeded in spending over a million marks on such "scientific" research.

Among the many researches tackled by the Ahnenerbe at enormous cost were:

-Gathering information about the strength of the Rosicrucian organization.
-Researching about the possible consequences of the suppression of the Irish harp in Ulster.
-The occult significance of Gothic towers and of the Etonian top-hat.
- Scientific examination of "Aryan" horses and "Aryan" bees, whose honey had special properties.
- Study of the Germanic runes and other "Aryan" symbols, among them the swastika.
- Thorough search for the Grail.

The Ahnenerbe also had archaeologists digging up all of Europe for remains of Germanic cultures. When the German army invaded the Caucasus in the Spring of 1942, a strange ceremony took place. Three SS mountaineers climbed to the summit of Mount Elbruz, he sacred mountain of the Aryan race, and planted a swastika flag.

The Ahnenerbe organized several expeditions to Tibet. Their purpose was to locate the origins of the "Nordic" race which was, according to the Nazi theoreticians, of Indo-Germanic stock. But the main goal of these expeditions was to get in touch with the spiritual "power-plant" producer of Vril.



4. The nucleus of Haushofer's doctrines was a term originated in his first lecture at Munich university: Lebensraum (vital space). Later on he was appointed professor of geopolitics at that University.

Haushofer theories became extremely popular in Germany and all around the world. Even American scholars were influenced by his ideas. As Hans W. Weighert put it in an article published in Foreign Affairs in July, 1942: ". . . the highest eulogy a political writer could earn was to be called 'the American Haushofer' . . . colleges all over the country hurried to organize 'Institute of Geopolitics.' "

Haushofer disguised racial mysticism in a veil of geography and science, providing Germans with a powerful reason to return to those areas in the hinterland of Asia where the Aryan race supposedly originated. His appeal for Lebensraum for the German people and his plans to achieve it were no more than a justification for international pillage on a grand scale, virtually a blueprint to world conquest.

Haushofer became an important personage among the Nazi elite. He was made president of the German Academy and finally became director of the highly respected Institut für Geopolitik of the University of Munich. His eldest son, Albrecht, was also a geopolitician, and occupied the Chair of Political Geography at the University of Berlin.

Haushofer advised Hitler to enlarge the living space of the Third Reich by moving out from a powerful territorial hub and by accomplishing this conquest progressively, step by step, following the accelerating movement of a growing spiraling sinistroverse swastika.