Stand Up for Your Life

In 1938, on the eve of war, a Nazi expedition set out through British India on a mission sponsored by Himmler himself. Their aim was to find the roots of the Aryan people, high in the sacred mountains of Tibet. It was led by two complex individuals - one, Ernst Schafer, a swashbuckling naturalist who was using the Nazis to pursue his own ends, the other, Bruno Beger, so committed to the cause he ended up conducting experiments on prisoners in Auschwitz. The expedition quickly found itself battling hostility from the British, being manipulated by the Tibetans and struggling with the primitive conditions of Lhasa. Every step was recorded in diaries, letters and reports back to Delhi and London by the suspicious British, and to Berlin by the Germans. It was also documented in masses of extraordinary photographs, many of which are reproduced here.