In 1938, five German scientists, members of the Nazi SS, undertook a scientific mission to Lhasa, the "forbidden city of Tibet," traversing the mountainous and treacherous Himalayan region. The expedition, led by ornithologist Ernst Schafer, had the official objective of exploring Tibet for scientific purposes, focusing on collecting geographic, geological, ethnological, botanical, and zoological data. However, the research conducted by these SS scholars had other, far more controversial and obscure aims, rooted in the pseudoscientific and esoteric beliefs that were widespread in early 20th-century Europe.

According to the theories of Hans Friedrich Karl Günther, the so-called "Aryan race" (Ariyà: a Sanskrit term meaning "noble," historically used by Indo-Iranian peoples to identify themselves), a race of superhumans that the German Nazis claimed as their direct ancestors, had originated in the central Asian regions north of India. One of the expedition's undeclared goals was to study the Tibetan region and its population in search of traces of these ancient Aryans to support Günther’s racial and eugenic theories, which were integral to Nazi Germany's ideology.

The ideal link (from the German perspective) between National Socialism and the cultures of Central Asia was also evident in the symbolism adopted by the Nazi Party. The swastika, a spiritual symbol used in many Eastern cultures, including Tibetan Lamaism, was adopted by Hitler as the symbol of the new Germany, erroneously associated by many scholars of the time with an ancient Indo-European symbol with antisemitic connotations. Needless to say, Schafer's expedition did not yield the results the Nazis had hoped for. However, analyzing this mission offers a valuable reflection on how Nazi Germany legitimized and perpetuated its violent and distorted discriminatory policies.