Hitler's Priestess: Savitri Devi, the Hindu-Aryan Myth, and Neo-Nazism is a book by British historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke. It is a biography of fascist writer and esotericist Savitri Devi, who was influential on the development of esoteric neo-Nazism, and her connections with international neo-Nazism. It tells her life story primarily chronologically. Hitler's Priestess was first published by New York University Press in hardcover in 1998, and in paperback format in 2000. It was the first in-depth study of Savitri Devi and her life. The book received largely positive reviews from critics.
Background and publication history
Its author, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, was a British historian. He had previously published a book on the relationship between occultism and Nazism, The Occult Roots of Nazism in 1985. She influenced several significant neo-Nazi figures, and even after her death continued to have a cultic following among neo-Nazis.
Goodrick-Clarke had become interested in Devi when, in 1982, he received an advertisement from Samisdat Publishers, owned by Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel, for their republication of Savitri Devi's books. It read in part "Hitler Cult Revealed — Discovered Alive In India: Hitler's Guru!" and in paperback in October 2000. The book was the first biography or in-depth study of Savitri Devi and her life.
Reception
Booklist noted the book positively, saying Goodrick-Clarke had done "a fine job revealing Devi's strange and, ultimately, brutal personality". Publishers Weekly praised it as providing "plenty of information and insight about this little-known but influential figure", saying the most interesting material in it was the contents about her writings; the writing was however noted as "stiff and matter-of-fact".
Jeffrey Kaplan writing for Nova Religio called Goodrick-Clarke a "uniquely qualified biographer" of Devi, and praised the work as a "remarkable intellectual biography". He singled out the coverage of her Hindu activism as "thoroughly researched", and argued Goodrick-Clarke was at his best in his coverage of her writings.