SECUENCIA DE HECHOS DEL MES DE MARZO

This German expedition was sponsored by Heinrich Himmler after a meeting with expe- dition leader Ernst Schäfer in the summer of 1936 in Berlin at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse 8. At that meeting Himmler shared his beliefs that the Aryan race had descended perfect and fully formed from heaven during a cosmic battle be- tween fire and ice. Himmler was a fan of the World Ice Theory of Hanns Hörbiger, who was a German engineer that dabbled in astronomy. After the death of Hörbiger in 1931 many pseu- do-science groups formed that supported his beliefs including the Ancestral Heritage branch of the SS which was directly under the supervi- sion of Himmler.

Schäfer used the meeting to tell Himmler about his dream of leading an expedition to the heart of Tibet. Since Tibet had been so perfectly isolated for many centuries some an- thropologists had postulated that extensive studies could reveal Tibetan connections to the original Aryan race.

Legends abounded throughout Europe about Tibet and many felt that since it represented the highest point of land above sea level, it would have been the first area to be settled after the biblical flood.

The expedition itself has been the source of much speculation since the end of World War II. Some people thought that Himmler believed that the Tibetan monks may possess secret abilities that Germany could make use of. Others thought that they were setting out to prove that the Tibetans were the remnants of the lost city of Atlantis and may have secrets of immortality that could be used to create an undying race of German supermen.

Schäfer had gained the attention of Himmler by being an early member of the elite SS with a high rating of racial purity. Himmler had also been very impressed by the published re- ports of earlier trips by Schäfer into the east- ern regions of Tibet along the Chinese border and his bringing back of many specimens of birds and animals for the German museums. Schäfer had the distinction of being the second non-Asian to shoot a panda bear and bring it back as a trophy.

In his 1931 expedition Schäfer joined up with an American hunter named Brooke Dolan, be- ginning their trip through Shanghai. During that period Shanghai was a large trade port with communities of 36 nationalities and di- vided between competing European empires. There were criminal gangs running vice rack- ets, whilst poor Shanghai citizens were left to die in the streets (at the rate of over eighty per day).

Once the expedition had been provisioned, they traveled up the Yangtze River in a boat with a contingent of American armed guards. This was a turbulent time in China with the Communists fighting against government forc- es everywhere. Schäfer describes the trip up the Yangtze as night scenes of burning villages silhouetting fleeing people. Women and chil- dren huddled together under the river banks to escape being killed in the open warfare. In other places there were continuous ghastly screams and the sound of rifle fire.

During this expedition Schäfer and Dolan traveled through the Kham region of Tibet and met with the Muli King and Joseph Rock. The expedition ended in 1932 through the south- ern route to India. Schäfer was frustrated that he could not obtain permission to travel into the heart of Tibet. The Swedish explorer Sven Hedin was his hero and Schäfer had vowed, that unlike Hedin, that some day he would reach Lhasa.

When Schäfer received approval and fund- ing through his connections with Himmler, he traveled to London in March 1938 to apply for permission to enter Tibet through British

India. There was a great deal of suspicion that the expedition was political in nature rather than scientific. This was reinforced when it became known that all four of the Germans on the expedition were

officers in the SS. Sty- mied at every attempt to obtain entry permis- sions, Schäfer was star- tled when on 14 March 1938 he was visited in his hotel by Sir Francis Younghusband. Youn- ghusband advised the younger man to “sneak

over the border then find a way round the regula- tions.” The old British

explorer and imperial- ist also provided Schäfer with

letters of reference to the governors of Assam and Bengal, the British-Indian Foreign Secre- tary and the Viceroy Lord Linlithgow. With the added weight of the letters Schäfer was able to obtain permission for the German expedi- tion to enter India and travel as far as Sikkim on the Tibet border.

The German expedition that departed from the port of Genoa, Italy, in the summer of 1938 consisted of:

• Ernst Schäfer – The leader of the expedi-

tion and a trained zoologist specializing in the study of birds.

• Ernst Krause – A professional botanist

and entomologist who had the mission to bring back unknown species for German researchers.

• Karl Wienert – Trained geographer who

was going to use new German instruments to measure the variations in the magnetic fields of the Himalayas.

• Bruno Berger – An anthropologist who was

tasked to gather measurements of the heads and bodies of as many Tibetans as possible.

Notable Persons - Secrets of Tibet This was intended to be used in research of

racial purity and to see if the Tibetans were related to the Aryan race as Himmler sus- pected. Berger would later, during the Sec- ond World War, go on to perform experi- ments on prisoners of the extermination camps. Himmler was influenced by many schools of mysticism and was keenly inter- ested in anything that might validate some of the more outlandish theories about an- cient civilizations and an Aryan connection. Despite obtaining permission to travel to Sik- kim, the British still viewed them as German spies and the India Office at the British Library still has the files on Ernst Schäfer (File Refer- ence # L/P&S/12/4343).

After spending time in Sikkim the Germans managed to obtain an invitation from a Tibet- an noble to visit him and, taking the advice of Younghusband, snuck across the border. This created a small diplomatic incident but since Britain was following an appeasement poli- cy with Germany at the time, London forced the British political officers in India and Sik- kim to grant Schäfer’s expedition a two week tourist permit to travel to Lhasa. They were expressly forbidden to conduct any scientif- ic research or to do any hunting within the borders of Tibet.

Still seeking to circumvent the British rules, the magnetic readings and other measurements were collected during the night whilst their guides were sleeping. Schäfer assumed cor- rectly that the guides would be reporting their activities to the British.

Upon reaching Lhasa, the Germans charmed the Tibetans and eventually ended up hav- ing their stay extended to two months. They used their medical supplies and skills to treat Tibetan aristocrats and through these favors managed to gather many gifts that they would return with to Berlin. They also gained access to many ceremonies and temples, and were permitted to take over 60,000 photographs and 120,000 feet of movies. Their prominently displayed Nazi banners with the swastika sym-

bol mirroring the Tibetan yungdrung symbol and created much discussion with the people who saw it.

Schäfer tells about a visit to the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa where the monks revealed a statue of the Tibetan goddess Palden Lhamo. The statue showed her as a monster that was wearing human skins from her victims and cracking open a skull to eat the brains. The Tibetan monks told Schäfer that it was their belief that Queen Victoria had been a rein- carnation of this terrible goddess.

Ernst Krause, the botanist in the group, trav- eled to a site called Sothang which is near the foot of the Gangpo Ri. The Tibetans call it the “first field” and it is considered to be where man first cultivated the seeds of the six kinds of grains (buckwheat, barley, mus- tard seed, rice, wheat, and millet), brought to them by Chenresig the bodhisattva of com- passion who is reincarnated as each of the Dalai Lamas. Krause gathered many samples of the grains from this area to study when he returned to Berlin.

The German expedition had been using a radio to keep track of what was going on in Europe during their absence and decided that they would leave Tibet on 20 March 1939 and return to Germany through Calcutta, India.

To add even more mystery to the expedition, in 1940 Himmler issued secret orders to every media organization in Germany not to publish anything about the Tibet expedition unless he personally approved it. An adventure or cam- paign could be written around the mystery of what was found during the 1939 expedition.

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