1938–1939 German expedition to Tibet

[8] The British writer Christopher Hale claims that one cannot infer that Schäfer was independent of the SS and could do "pure science" simply from the special letterhead that he got printed for the expedition.

[12] In the "Register of the Heinrich Himmler Papers," 1914–1944, archived at Stanford University's Hoover institution, the folder containing the material pertaining to the expedition bears the title "The SS-Tibet-Expedition, 1939".

[21] Schäfer turned the expedition from a complete failure into a great success, and the SS took note by sending him a letter informing him of a promotion to SS-Untersturmführer and summoning him back to Germany from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The researcher Roger Croston described the objective of the expedition as "an holistic creation of a complete biological record of Tibet alongside a synthesis of inter-relating natural sciences with regard to geography, cartography, geology, earth magnetics, climate, plants, animals and mankind.

[26] Hale also recalled the existence of a secret warning issued by propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels to German newspapers in 1940 that "the chief task of the Tibet expedition" was "of a political and military nature" and "had not so much to do with the solution of scientific questions" and added that details could not be revealed.

"[27] According to the American journalist Karl E. Meyer, one of the expedition's aims was to prepare maps and survey passes "for possible use of Tibet as a staging ground for guerrilla assaults on British India.

"[28] The Italian essayist Claudio Mutti stated that the official plan included research on the landforms, climate, geography, and culture of the region,[29] and contacting the local authorities for the establishment of representation in the country.

[1] In July 1937, the team suffered a setback when Japan invaded Manchuria, China, which ruined Schäfer's plans to use the Yangtze River to reach Tibet.

Another problem in the preparations for the Tibetan expedition occurred during a duck hunting accident on November 9, 1937, when Schäfer, his wife of four months and two servants were in a rowboat.

Himmler agreed with the plan and set about furthering it by contacting influential people, including German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop.

Schäfer complained to SS headquarters and Himmler in turn wrote to Admiral Barry Domvile, who was a Nazi supporter and former head of British naval intelligence.

He sent the letter to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who permitted the SS team to enter Sikkim, a region bordering Tibet.

There, the British official, Sir Basil Gould, observed them and described Schäfer as "interesting, forceful, volatile, scholarly, vain to the point of childishness, disregardful of social convention."

Although Beger wished to ask the guest's permission to measure him, he was dissuaded by the Tibetan porters, who encouraged him to wait for Schäfer to return from a hunting trip.

[21] In December 1938, the Tibetan council of ministers invited Schäfer and his team to Tibet but forbade them from killing any animals during their stay by citing religious concerns.

[21][1] During the trip to Tibet's highlands, Beger began making facial casts of local people, including his personal servant, a Nepalese Sherpa named Passang.

[31][35] In a 1946 "Final Interrogation Report by American Intelligence", Schäfer claims to have met "the pro-German regent of Shigatse"[36][37] (the 9th Panchen Lama had died in 1937 and the 10th was not to arrive before 1951).

The seeds were later stored in the SS-Institute for Plant Genetics in Lannach, near Graz, Austria, a research centre run by SS botanist Heinz Brücher, who entertained hopes of using both the Tibet collection and that of the Vavilov Institute in the eastern territories to select crop plants able to withstand the climate of Eastern Europe, which was considered as part of the Nazi Lebensraum or "biotope," with a view to reaching autarky.

The researchers took stills and film footage of local culture, notably the spectacular New Year celebrations in which tens of thousands of pilgrims flocked to Lhasa.

To carry out his research, he posed as a physician to win the favour of Tibetan aristocrats, dispensed drugs, and tended to monks with sexually-transmitted diseases.

According to Engelhardt:[44] From Calcutta the expedition first took a British Airways seaplane to Baghdad, which developed engine trouble and was forced to make an emergency water landing in Karachi.

His assignment, which he carried out, was to provide the Nazi physician with a selection of detainees of diverse ethnic types from Auschwitz to serve Hirt's racial experiments.

[40] Because of the war, Schäfer's writings about the trip were not published until 1950, under the title "Festival of the White Gauze Scarves: A research expedition through Tibet to Lhasa, the holy city of the god realm."

All through the expedition, Beger kept a travel diary, which was published in book form 60 years later: Mit der deutschen Tibetexpedition Ernst Schäfer 1938/39 nach Lhasa (Wiesbaden, 1998).

However, Sievers, the head of the "Ahnenerbe", declared in January 1938, "The task of the expedition in the meantime had diverged too far from the targets of the Reichsführer-SS and does not serve his ideas of cultural studies."