In 1971, Wilhelm Landig published a strange novel entitled Gotzen gegen Thule (Godlets Against Thule). In an echo of the nineteenth-century vogue for presenting fantasy as a ‘true story’, Landig subtitles his novel ‘a fiction full of facts’ and claims that it contains accurate information on the radical advances in aviation and weapons technology made in the years since the end of the war. Gotzen gegen Thule is fundamentally an adventure story that follows the exploits of two German airmen, Recke and Reimer (which Godwin translates as ‘Brave Warrior’ and ‘Poet’ respectively) (30), who are sent to a secret German base in the far north of Canada towards the end of the Second World War. This base, known as Point 103, is a large underground facility possessing highly advanced technology and supplied by powerful allies in the United States. Its occupants constitute a force opposed to the Third Reich, which is seen as a Satanic force.
Point 103 is, in fact, solidly anti-racist, as evidenced by one scene in which a conference there is attended by ‘a Tibetan lama, Japanese, Chinese, and American officers, Indians, a Black Ethiopian, Arabs, Persians, a Brazilian officer, a Venezuelan, a Siamese, and a full-blooded Mexican Indian’. (31) Travel to and from this remote and ultra-secret facility is by a highly advanced aircraft called the V7, which is shaped like a sphere with a rotating circular wing containing jet turbines. Interestingly enough, even the responsible and sceptical Godwin is willing to concede that this part of Landig’s novel may well have a basis in fact (see Chapter Eight).
The two airmen are sent on a mission to Prague to prevent the disc-plane technology from falling into Allied hands; following the end of the war and the defeat of Nazi Germany, Point 103 declares itself independent and continues with its pursuit of Thulean ideals. These ideals are explained by another character, an ex-Waffen-SS officer named Gutmann (‘Good man’). Godwin provides a summary of the Thulean philosophy:
The light of Thule comes not from the East but from the North. Its tradition is ‘Uranian,’ being derived from Uranos, lord of the cosmic world order and of the primordial Paradise of the Aryan Race, situated at the North Pole. It was Uranos’s usurping son Saturn who brought upon this originally happy and unified humanity the dubious gift of the egoic state. The temptations consequent upon this change in the human constitution lead to the loss of primeval unity and, eventually, the destruction of Saturn’s realm, Atlantis. Thereupon the warm climate of the secret island of the Hyperboreans was suddenly replaced by bitter winter. The primordial races of the Arctic and of the Nordic Atlantis both lost their homes, and were forced to migrate southwards. Wherever they settled — in Europe, Persia, India, and elsewhere — they tried to remake their lost Paradise, and in their myths and legends cherished the memory of it. (32)
As Godwin notes, Uranos and Saturn seem to be personifications of events in remote antiquity; however, the Thulean religion included an unmanifested God beyond space and time, and a Son through whom the will of the Father operates and who is identified with the laws of nature. Landig himself identifies the legend of Thule (which in geographical terms is located close to Point 103) with that of the spiritual centre of the world, sometimes called Shambhala. The reader will recall Nicholas Roerich’s encounter with a golden flying disc, described in Chapter Four, and how his guide stated that the UFO represented the beneficent influence of Rigden-Jyepo, the King of the World, who was watching over them. Through another character, a French collaborator named Belisse (‘from Belisane, sun god of the Gauls’), (33) Landig describes in elaborate detail the nature of this phenomenon, which he calls ‘Manisolas’. They are living, intelligent bio-mechanical entities with a complex life cycle that begins as a circle of light and continues through a metallic form before reaching the reproductive stage. Through a regenerative process, a new Manisola grows within the womb of the adult.
The regenerated part is expelled by the remaining mother-nucleus as a new energetic circle of light, corresponding to a birthing technique. This new circle enters on the same seven developmental stages, while the expelling maternal element rolls itself into a ball, which then explodes. The metallic remains contain particles of copper. The optical impressions that eyewitnesses of these Manisolas have had up to now are basically quite uniform. In the daytime they display an extremely bright gold or silver luminescence, sometimes with traces of rose-colored smoke which then often condense into grayish-white trails. At night the disks shine in glowing or glossy colors, showing on occasion long flames at the edges and red and blue sparks, which can grow so strong as to wreathe them in fire. Most remarkable is their power of reaction against pursuers, like that of a rational creature, far exceeding any possible electronic self-steering or radio control. (34)
Landig goes on to describe how, throughout the ages, all mythologies refer in one way or another to the Manisolas, which are seen as symbols of spiritual potency, unity and love. Although Point 103 is claimed to be a non-racist society, the Thuleans nevertheless consider Israel to be in eternal opposition to their ideals, and remember the time when their ancestors, the Nordic Atlanteans, were held in slavery by Semitic sorcerers.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Ark of the Covenant is brought into this bizarre occult adventure and is described as a kind of battery for astral energy to be used in magical operations. This energy is the fertilising ‘force-field of the Aryans’, which is stolen by Hebrew magicians and stored in the Ark for their own anti-Aryan purposes. The international conspiracy against the Aryans is further defined when the characters travel to Tibet and meet another German, Juncker (‘Aristocrat’), (35) who tells them that the Asiatic peoples are waiting for a great warrior who will come from the subterranean realm of Agartha and lead them to domination of the world. We then learn of the nature of ‘Shambala’ and ‘Agartha’, which is another perversion of Buddhist teaching, similar to that suggested by Ravenscroft in The Spear of Destiny (see Chapter Five). The central point of Gotzen gegen Thule is that the Third Reich arose with the assistance of the twin power centres of Agartha and Shambhala and was defeated when it succumbed to the materialistic attractions of Shambhala, thus destroying the balance between the two. We can look again to Godwin for a good translation of Landig’s originaclass="underline"
The source of material energies of the left hand, which have their seat in Shambala, is the upper-earth city of power and might, which is ruled by a great King of Fear. But it is the same seat of Shambala that a part of the western secret brotherhoods and lodges regards as their point of origin, from which come the promises and warnings of a Lord of the World. This Shambala is a searchlight of our will! Then there is the second source: Agartha, the inner, underworld realm of contemplation and its energies. There too is a Lord and King of the World, who promises his domination. At the proper moment, this center will lead good men against the evil ones; and it is firmly connected with Brahytma, that is, God. And that is the king to serve, the one who will set up our empire and rule over the others … [T]he men in [the Third] Reich … joined themselves with the energies of Shambala, of pure force, and in their secret way worked against the other men of [the] Reich … And behind these energies which manifest themselves in Shambala stands the Caucasian, Stalin-Dugaschvili! He knew everything, he knew the men of the circle in [the] Reich and he played his own cards with them as if they were their own. Stalin-Dugaschvili had the support of the Lord of Fear and Power against [the] Reich! (36)
In the final stages of the novel, the heroes leave Tibet but are captured in India by the British, who place them in a prisoner-of-war camp. When they finally return to Germany, it becomes clear that they will probably never rejoin Point 103, which ‘seems to have forgotten them: they ruefully admit … that if it still exists, it has probably had to isolate itself completely from the world of today’.
All that remains to [the Thuleans] is to constitute a ‘Fourth Reich in exile,’ patiently waiting for the Age of Pisces to reach its inevitable end. And as the Fish Age passes, so St Peter’s religious tyranny in Rome will crumble … and the Jewish Ark will lose its potency. Then, says Landig, the … banner of the Aryans will fly again … (37)
Added to the weird flights of fancy, Gotzen gegen Thule contains several statements that mark it out as a work of pernicious historical revisionism, such as Juncker’s claim that the bodies in the liberated concentration camps were actually those of Germans killed in Allied air raids on Munich. (38) Aside from this, the novel manages to weave together a wide variety of myths, all of which have come to be associated with the concept of Nazi survivaclass="underline" Nordic mythology, UFOs as man-made aircraft, the subterranean realms of Shambhala and Agartha, the Hollow Earth, the Holy Grail, and the international conspiracy to inaugurate a secret One-World Government. While it might be expected that such a ridiculous and (in its attempt at historical revisionism) morally reprehensible tale would sink into a merciful literary oblivion, it did nothing of the kind; instead, it entered the murky realm of the cultural underground, where it was discovered by certain interested parties who saw in it an opportunity to further their own agendas.