Miguel Serrano
Miguel Joaquín Diego del Carmen Serrano Fernández, was a Chilean diplomat, writer, occultist, and fascist activist. A Nazi sympathiser in the late 1930s and early 1940s, he later became a prominent figure in the neo-Nazi movement as an exponent of Esoteric Hitlerism.
Born to a wealthy Chilean family, he developed an interest in writing and far-right politics, allying himself with the National Socialist Movement of Chile. During the Second World War, in which Chile remained neutral until 1943, Serrano campaigned in support of Nazi Germany and promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories through his own fortnightly publication, La Nueva Edad. In 1942, he joined an occult order founded by a German immigrant which combined pro-Nazi sentiment with ceremonial magic and kundalini yoga. It presented the Nazi German leader Adolf Hitler as a spiritual adept who had incarnated to Earth as a savior of the Aryan race and who would lead humanity out of a dark age known as the Kali Yuga. Serrano became convinced that Hitler had not died in 1945 but had secretly survived and was living in Antarctica. After visiting Antarctica, Serrano travelled to Germany and then Switzerland, where he met the novelist Hermann Hesse and psychoanalyst Carl Jung; in 1965, he published a reminiscence of his time with the pair.
In 1953, Serrano joined the Chilean diplomatic corps and was stationed in India until 1963, where he took a keen interest in Hinduism and wrote several books. He was later made ambassador to Yugoslavia and then Austria, and while in Europe made contacts with various former Nazis and other far-rightists living on the continent. Following Chile's election of a Marxist President, Salvador Allende, Serrano was dismissed from the diplomatic service in 1970. After Allende was ousted in a coup and Augusto Pinochet took power, Serrano returned to Chile in 1973. He became a prominent organiser in the Chilean neo-Nazi movement, holding annual celebrations of Hitler's birthday, organising a neo-Nazi rally in Santiago, and producing a neo-Nazi political manifesto. He wrote a trilogy of books on Hitler in which he outlined his view of the Nazi leader as an avatar. He remained in contact with neo-Nazis elsewhere in the world and gave interviews to various foreign far-right publications. After Savitri Devi, he has been considered the most prominent exponent of Esoteric Hitlerism within the neo-Nazi movement.
Biography
Childhood: 1917–1938
Miguel Joaquín Diego del Carmen Serrano Fernández was born on 10 September 1917. On his maternal line, he was descended from the countesses of Sierra Bella. His mother, Berta Fernández Fernández, died when Serrano was five years old, while his father, Diego Serrano Manterola, died three years later. He had two younger brothers and a sister, who were then all raised by his paternal grandmother, Fresia Manterola de Serrano, moving between a Santiago townhouse and a 17th-century country mansion in the Claro Valley.Between 1929 and 1934, he studied at the Internado Nacional Barros Arana. The school had been heavily influenced by Prussian staff members who had arrived in the late 19th century, with Serrano attributing his later Germanophilia to this early exposure to German culture. At the school he moved in literary circles. A close friend of his was Hector Barreto, a poet and socialist. Aged 18, Barreto was killed in a brawl with uniformed Nacistas, members of the National Socialist Movement of Chile, a fascist group inspired by the example of the Nazi Party in Germany. This event encouraged Serrano's involvement in left-wing politics as he began to take an interest in Marxism and the Chilean Marxist movement. He wrote articles for leftist journals like Sobre la marcha, La Hora, and Frente Popular. His uncle, the poet Vicente Huidobro, encouraged him to join the left-wing Republicans in the ongoing Spanish Civil War, but he did not do so.
Nazism and occultism: 1939–1952
Serrano grew critical of Marxism and left-wing politics, instead being drawn to the Nacistas after their failed coup in September 1938. By July 1939, Serrano was publicly associating himself with the Nacista movement, now organised as the Popular Socialist Vanguard. He began writing for their journal, Trabajo, and accompanied their leader, Jorge González von Marées, on his speaking tours across Chile. At the outbreak of the Second World War, in which Chile remained neutral, Serrano expressed support for Nazi Germany; from July 1941 he launched a fortnightly pro-Nazi publication, La Nueva Edad. Among the magazine's regular contributors were the journalist René Arriagada, General Francisco Javier Díaz, and Hugo Gallo, who was the cultural attaché at the Italian Embassy. Through this work, Serrano developed close links with the German Embassy in Chile and its personnel.Although Serrano had initially shown little interest in Nazi attitudes towards Jewish people, he became increasingly interested in antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jews manipulating world events. Two Chilean artists gave him a Spanish language translation of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a text purporting to expose this alleged international Jewish conspiracy. According to the historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, it was this discovery of the Protocols which "marked a crucial point in the development of Serrano's Nazism". From November 1941, he began printing excerpts from the Protocols in La Nueva Edad.
Serrano also developed an interest in forms of religious or spiritual practice, including both Western esotericism and Hinduism. In late 1941, Gallo suggested that Serrano could support the German and Italian war effort not just through his publications, but also on the etheric Inner Planes, introducing him to an esoteric order sympathetic to Nazism. Serrano later claimed that this order had been founded near the start of the 20th century by a German migrant known as "F. K." Serrano was initiated into the group in February 1942.
F. K. claimed that the group owed its allegiance to a secretive Brahmin elite who resided in the Himalayas. It practiced combined kundalini yoga with ceremonial magic and expressed a pro-Nazi position. It espoused a belief in an astral body which could be awakened through various rituals and meditative practices. The group revered the Nazi German leader Adolf Hitler as the savior of an Aryan race and presented him as a shudibudishvabhaba, an initiate of immense willpower who had voluntarily incarnated onto Earth to assist in the overthrow of the Kali Yuga, a present dark age for humanity. F. K. claimed that through the astral realm, he was able to establish a connection with Hitler, during which they had various conversations.
As the Second World War ended in defeat for Nazi Germany in 1945, Serrano was convinced that Hitler had not committed suicide in Berlin as was claimed by the victorious Allies. Instead, Serrano believed that Hitler had escaped and was living in Antarctica, either in a secluded warm environment on the continent or under the ice cap itself. This idea had been suggested to him by F. K.—who claimed that he remained in astral contact with Hitler—but was also widely rumoured in the Latin American press. In 1947, Ladislao Szabó's book Hitler est vivo had been published, exerting an influence on Serrano. Szabó's book alleged that a U-boat convoy had taken Hitler to safety in Queen Maud Land. In 1947–48, Serrano travelled to Antarctica as a journalist with the Chilean Army. In 1948, he wrote his own short book, La Antártica y otros Mitos, which repeated Szabó's claims about Hitler's survival.
In 1951, Serrano travelled to Europe, and in Germany visited various sites associated with the Nazi Party, including Hitler's Berlin bunker, Hitler's Berghof home, and Spandau Prison, where Rudolf Hess and other prominent Nazis were then imprisoned. During this trip he also visited Switzerland, where he met and befriended the writer Hermann Hesse and the psychoanalyst Carl Jung.
Diplomatic career: 1953–1970
In 1953, Serrano—following a number of other family members—joined the Chilean diplomatic corps. He hoped to gain a posting to India, a land which he considered to be a source of great spiritual truths. He was successful in this, and remained in India until 1962. In this period, he visited many Hindu temples and searched for evidence of the secretive Brahmanical order into which F. K. had alleged initiation. In his role as a diplomat, he met various prominent figures, including Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, and the 14th Dalai Lama. It was while in India that he wrote and published two books: The Visits of the Queen of Sheba, which had a preface by Jung, and The Serpent of Paradise, which discussed his experiences in the country. Serrano had engaged in further correspondence with Jung between 1957 and 1961. In 1965 his book, C. J. Jung and Hermann Hesse: A Record of Two Friendships, was published.Leaving India, from 1962 to 1964 he was posted as the Chilean ambassador to Bulgaria. From 1964 to 1970 he then served as his country's ambassador to Austria, for which he lived in Vienna. During the latter posting, he also represented Chile at the International Atomic Energy Agency and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, both of which were based in Vienna. While in Europe, he had sought out a number of individuals linked to Nazism and to the far-right more broadly; these included visits to the Ahnenerbe co-founder Herman Wirth, the designer and occultist Wilhelm Landig, the poet Ezra Pound, and the Traditionalist thinker Julius Evola. He established friendships with a number of individuals involved in the old Nazi movement, including Léon Degrelle, Otto Skorzeny, Hans-Ulrich Rudel, Marc "Saint-Loup" Augier, and Hanna Reitsch. He also discussed issues with the ancient astronaut proponent Robert Charroux.
In the 1970 Chilean presidential election, the Socialist Salvador Allende was elected president. Later that year, Serrano was dropped from the country's diplomatic service. Rather than returning to Chile, he moved to Switzerland, renting an apartment in the Casa Camuzzi—where Hesse had lived from 1912 to 1931—at Montagnola in the Swiss Ticino.