Mountain conquest was the Third Reich’s physical, mental and spiritual preparation for international conflict. After the failures of the first war, “empty hands grappled for the ice axe” according to Paul Bauer, a leading figure in the German Himalaya Foundation. The main siege was on the then largely unexplored great mountain ranges of the world.  What we now call the Enlightenment era was a tripartite intellectual competition between France, Germany and Britain. The 20s and 30s saw the physical equivalent; it was the era of the race to the summits.

The Himalayas were the ultimate challenge, and each of the three countries had her objective. The French embarked on an expedition to survey the Karakoram range in 1936, and made an attempt on Gasherbrum I.  George Mallory led the fateful party to Everest in 1924. There were two further attempts in 1933 and 1936.  The Germans had Nanga Parbat in their sights, and launched the first of four pre-war attempts on the mountain in 1932.

In Germany, however, bellicose spirit turned into bellicose action.  In a process of mutual appropriation, mountaineering became political, and politics became sporting.  The years after the Great War were boom time for mountaineering in Europe; until then, the sport had been mainly the preserve of Victorian gentlemen.  The formation of Alpine Clubs, the construction of infrastructure – mountain huts and guest houses – to support mountaineers, and new tools for safety and expediency all contributed to this explosion of activity. Climbing satisfied a need for adventure, a spirit that counteracted the despondency of the aftermath of trench warfare.

National Socialism advocated physical strength, the beauty of the athletic body and praised valorous pursuit.  Mountains made bodies muscular and flexible and tested nerve. 

The propagandists were quick on the uptake; it was no time at all before film and literature showed and recounted heroic ascents.  They also showed the reality of the danger involved – but this was all part of the Nazi crusade.  Death, martyrdom for the cause, was the ultimate honour.  It was a sentiment shared by alpinists throughout Europe.  The Revista del   Centro Alpinistico Italiano wrote in 1932: ‘A climber has fallen.  Let a hundred others rise for the morrow.’

Student groups in Austria used mountains and mountaineering clubs for activist purposes.  Nazism was illegal in Austria until Anschluss, but, as ever it was, young people defied the already faltering authority of the Dollfuss government.  They led the propaganda assault on Alpine areas, marking out swastikas wherever they could.

The mountaineers enjoyed the kudos.  In 1938, two Germans and two Austrians won the ultimate accolade after making the maiden ascent of the North Face of the Eiger, a vertical face of rock and ice towering thousands of feet above the Grindelwald valley.  They were heralded as Olympians.  And of course, in the euphoria of the praise lavished upon them, climbers, if only inadvertently, became symbolic of the purist in Nazi doctrine.  They were the Aryan exemplars.