Himmler's Crusade

The Nazi Expedition to Find the Origins of the Aryan Race

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As the Indiana Jones films showed, Nazis, new age mumbo-jumbo and exotic locations are a formula that works. Christopher Hale's gripping and well-researched tale of an SS-sponsored scientific mission to Tibet in 1938-39 has the whole shebang: mad occult beliefs, mountains, strange charactors called Bruno or Ernst and stomach-churning concentration camp experiments to round things off." - The Sunday Times (London). A scientific expedition or a sinister mission? Why would the leader of the Nazi s dreaded SS, the second-most-powerful man in the Third Reich, send a zoologist, an anthropologist, and several other scientists to Tibet on the eve of war? Himmler's Crusade tells the bizarre and chilling story one of history's most perverse, eccentric, and frightening scientific expeditions. Drawing on private journals, new interviews, and original research in German archives as well as in Tibet, author Christopher Hale recreates the events of this sinister expedition, asks penetrating questions about the relationship between science and politics, and sheds new light on the occult theories that obsessed Himmler and his fellow Nazis. Combining the highest standards of narrative history with the high adventure and exotic locales of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Himmler's Crusade reveals that Himmler had ordered these men to examine Tibetan nobles for signs of Aryan physiology, undermine the British relationship with the ruling class, and sow the seeds of rebellion among the populace. Most strangely, the scientists -- all SS officers -- were to find scientific proof of a grotesque historical fantasy that was at the center of Himmler's beliefs about race. Set against the exquisite backdrop of the majestic Himalayas, this fast-paced and engaging narrative provides new and troubling insight into one of the strangest episodes in the history of science, politics, and war. - Jacket.