Savitri Devi

Savitri Devi

Savitri Devi Mukherji (September 30, 1905–October 22, 1982) was the pseudonym of the Greek-French writer Maximiani Portas, a prominent proponent of both animal rights and Nazism, who served the Axis cause during World War II by spying on Allied forces in India. She wrote about animal rights movements and was a leading light of the Nazi underground during the 1960s.

An admirer of German National Socialism (Nazism), Savitri Devi was also an animal-rights activist who authored the book The Impeachment of Man in 1959 and was a proponent of Hinduism and Nazism, synthesizing the two, proclaiming Adolf Hitler to have been sent by Providence, much like an avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu. She believed Hitler was a sacrifice for humanity which would lead to the end of the Kali Yuga induced by who she felt were the powers of evil, the Jews. Her writings have influenced neo-Nazism and Nazi occultism. Among Savitri Devi's ideas was the classifications of "men above time", "men in time" and "men against time". Rejecting Judeo-Christianity, she believed in a form of pantheistic monism; a single cosmos of nature composed of divine energy-matter.

She is credited with pioneering neo-Nazi interest in occultism, deep ecology and the New Age movement. She influenced the Chilean diplomat Miguel Serrano. In 1982, Franco Freda published a German translation of her work Gold in the Furnace, and the fourth volume of his annual review, Risguardo (1980-), was devoted to Savitri Devi as the "missionary of Aryan Paganism".

Savitri was an associate in the post-war years of Françoise Dior, Otto Skorzeny, Johannes von Leers, and Hans-Ulrich Rudel.

She was also one of the founding members of the World Union of National Socialists.