Heinrich Harrer

Harrer joined the Nazi Party in March 1938, weeks before he and three others made the first ascent of the Eiger's North Face that July, planting a swastika flag at the summit and meeting Hitler afterward. In 1939 he left for an expedition to the Indian Himalayas; the British arrested him when the war broke out. He escaped custody and made his way into Tibet, where he stayed until 1951. The experience became Seven Years in Tibet, published in 1952, followed by The White Spider in 1959, his account of the Eiger climb. Both books carried his name into a second life as a writer, long after the exp…