Kritik am Buch „The Shadow Of The Dalai Lama ... - Neues von Shi De

within the German right-wing. It was precisely the Nazis, Brauen says, who denounced the Lamas and
the Tibetans as “Untermenschen” (subhumans).
• Among the anti–Dalai Lama and anti-Tibet literature are works by S. Ipares (Geheime
Weltmächte [Secret World Powers], 1937), who was influenced by the orientalist Albert
Grünwedel. In his book, the author talks of an occult hierarchia ordinis of the Lamaist theocracy,
which invisibly influences and steers the East.
• J. Strunk’s arguments (Zu Juda und Rom — Tibet, [To Juda and Rome — Tibet], 1937) are
more far reaching; he tries to uncover a conspiracy of an international ecclesiastical elite (with
members from all the world religions) with the living Buddha, the Dalai Lama from Lhasa as their
visible head. “What there are of organizations and new spiritual currents running alongside and in
all directions nearly always end up on the ‘roof of the world’, in a Lama temple, once one has
progressed through Jewish and Christian lodges” (Strunk, 1937, p. 28).
• In the same year (1937) Fritz Wilhelmy published the piece Asekha. Der Kreuzzug der
Bettelmönche [Asekha: The Crusade of the Mendicant Monks]. In it “Tibetan Buddhism … [is]
openly appointed to play a more than mysterious role in the great global hustle and bustle of
suprastate pullers of strings” (Wilhelmy 1937, p.17)
• General Ludendorff and his wife likewise took to the field with great vigor against the
“Asian priests” and warned that the Tibetan Lamas had emplaced themselves at the head of
Jewish and Jesuit secret orders (Europa den Asiatenpriestern? [Europe of the Asian priests)],
1941).
• Clearly the most prominent of the anti-Lamaist Nazi faction was the racialist Alfred
Rosenberg, who in his seminal work Der Mythos des 20. Jahrhundert [The Myth of the 20 th
Century] made the battle between the priests and the warrior caste into the primal conflict of the
history of the world. The Tibetan lamas appear here as the representatives of a decadent Asian
Catholicism.
The problem with the construction of a fascist anti-Lamaism lies in the fact that apart from Alfred
Rosenberg the right-wing authors cited definitely did not occupy positions of power like those of
Himmler, the SS, and the Ahnenerbe project. “Hitler’s mythologist” (Rosenberg) was cut dead by
Himmler and barely taken seriously by Hitler. The Ludendorff’s fell out of favor with the Führer. In
contrast, the SS with their rites and their martial style increasingly became the epitome of the Nazi
myth. It was the SS who explored Tibet and it was a former SS trooper (Heinrich Harrer) who
schooled the Dalai Lama.
Besides this, the national socialist opponents of Lamaism mentioned, who Martin Brauen so
demonstratively parades to prove that fascism was hostile towards Tibetan Buddhism, are just as
fanatically fascinated by the atavistic mythology of Tibet as the pro-Lamaist fascists whom we have
listed above. They do not attack the Lamaist system out of a democratic attitude or rational
consideration, but the opposite, because they fear the occult world of the Lamas — namely, control by
magic, the conquest of the planet by Buddhist despots, the manipulation of awareness through rituals,
etc. — all concepts which can indeed be found in the tantric texts. Thus, right-wing opponents of
Lamaism, just like the right-wing advocates of Lamaism, see in Tibet and its religion an occult control
center.
Since the pro-Lamaist intellectuals can no loner deny that fascist authors increasingly sought out