Heinrich Harrer, the Dalai Lama's Nazi tutor

Well, I'm beating it up a bit; The Economist's article is at pains to forgive Harrer for wearing an SS uniform at his wedding and being a member of the Nazi party. I have read 7 Years in Tibet and seen the movie starring -- spew -- Brad Pitt, but I had no idea that the Dalai Lama's tutor was even slightly that way inclined, and it is a fascinating and not entirely insignificant link between the greatest living exponent of non-violence and tolerance and the most depraved and intolerant regime of our times. Harrer's really is one of the great adventure stories of the 20th century:

"Over the succeeding months Mr Harrer became his photographer, his teacher and his friend. He taught him maths, geography, science, and what Churchill and Eisenhower had done. As Mr Harrer recorded and slowly understood Tibet, accustoming himself to barley porridge, searing cold and the virtue of stoical patience, the Dalai Lama with avid curiosity pieced the outside world together—until, in 1950, the Chinese invasion of Tibet put an end both to his political innocence and to Mr Harrer's seven-year sojourn there.

They had been, he said later, the happiest years of his life. They had also been unintended. Mr Harrer had gone to Kashmir in 1939 on quite different business, to scout out a “killer mountain” called Nanga Parbat for a possible assault by his team of German and Austrian climbers. He had been arrested instead, on the eve of war.

His purpose in Kashmir had not been entirely unpolitical. He was already a hero in Austria for having made, with three others, the first successful ascent of the infamous north face of the Eiger in 1938. The conquering of the mountain had coincided with Austria's absorption into Nazi Germany, a highly symbolic display of united dominance and strength. Hitler himself had congratulated him. Keyed up by that, Mr Harrer longed to be picked for a Himalayan expedition. To make himself more eligible, he joined the Nazi party and the Styrian SS, and was hired to teach SS officers skiing."