Of Hitler, Vishnu and gullible Nazis This has got to be about the weirdest life-story I've ever read. It's about a lady by the name of Savitri Devi, of Greek and English descent, who married a pro-Nazi Bengali Brahmin and ended up as an international Nazi icon:

She was born Maximiani Portas, of English and Greek parents in Lyons in 1905. She became a Greek national in 1928 as she took to Hellenism, disillusioned with Christianity. It was the swastika signs on the palace of Athens, built by 19th century German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, that stirred Maximiani's first feelings for the Aryan race. She left for India in 1932 to search for the roots of the Aryan civilisation. She regarded Hinduism as the only living Aryan heritage in the modern world and was convinced that only Hinduism could take on and oppose the Judaeo-Christian heritage. Soon, she adopted the name Savitri Devi which would make her famous in neo-Nazi circles ... In early 1937, Savitri Devi met Srimat Swami Satyanand, president of the Hindu Mission in Calcutta, and offered her service to the mission. She told Swami Satyanand that India was the only country that honoured Aryan Gods and could stop the influence of the Jews. Satyanand, clearly impressed, told her that Hitler, of who Savitri was a devout follower, was an avatar of Vishnu -- a force that would preserve the cosmic order. In 1939, she published A Warning to Hindus under the auspices of the Hindu Mission. In the book, she scorned the Congress for its secular policies and said there was no India but a Hindu one and warned the Hindus not to let the Muslims overwhelm them. During the war, the Hindu Mahasabha adopted a strong pro-German position, drawing a link between the Aryan cult of Nazism and Hindu nationalism. In 1939 Savitri Devi met a Bengali Brahmin, Asit Krishna Mukherjee, a publisher with pro-German sympathies, who made a strong impression on her. He edited The New Mercury, a Nazi mouthpiece funded by the German consulate in Calcutta. In 1940 she married Mukherjee in a Hindu ceremony in Calcutta ... Gradually, Savitri Devi became active among neo-Nazis, meeting the British neo-Nazi Oswald Moseley and other European fascists. She also joined forces with the British fascist party, the National Socialists. She began to write theories denying the Holocaust and was patronised by Ernst Zundel, the German revisionist publisher. In 1958, Savitri published her famous book dedicated to Aryan supremacy, The Lightning and The Sun. In 1960, she was travelling in Spain and France and working actively in the neo-Nazi International called World Union of National Socialists

This reminds me a bit about the brouhaha that arose when it was revealed that Heinrich Harrer the mountaineer who befriended the Dalai Lama and who was portrayed by Brad Pitt in the movie Seven Years in Tibet was also a Nazi. Apparently some Nazis like Harrer believed that Tibetans were the sole remaining 'pure Aryans' because of their geographic isolation. Then there is the Nazi gullibility for Eastern mysticism and theosophy. Update from Razib: Not too surprising. Though the Nazis were contemptuous of the Indian Aryans, seeing in their dark skins race mixing with their subject peoples, Devi and her ilk looked with envy at the Hindu masses worshipping white Aryan gods. They believed that ancient Aryans had accomplished what they only dreamed of. The book Hitler's Priestess is all about Devi. Also, British administrators did sometimes feel when they visited India that they were walking amongst their own ancients, the pagan philosophers and devotees of old. But India is far more complex than Devi and the early 20th and 19th century Aryanists perceived, as its synthetic culture owes as much to pre-Aryan and post-Aryan thought as it does to the people of the Vedas [1]. [1] The primary gods of the Vedas become marginal in orthodox Hinduism. Vishnu, Shiva and Brahman owe more to the pre-Aryan heritage of India. Similarly, other Indo-European peoples were influenced by the indigenes, only Zeus of the Greek gods is Indo-European without dispute, and by the Hellenistic and Roman eras, the Indo-European people of the Mediterranean were worshipping pagan deities of non-Indo-European origin such as Isis, Magna Mater or Christ as often as Sol Invictus or Jupiter Optimus. Also, some find in the division between the Aesir and Vanir among the Norse gods a reflection of Indo-European and non-Indo-European (the latter are fertility deities, primarly Frey and Freya).