'Tibet' was a German concept rather than real strategic plan to seize Tibet as a springboard for an assault on the British in northern India (September 1939/spring 1943).

As early as the late summer and autumn of 1939, German leaders began to consider strategic options in the war with the UK that was now almost inevitable. The German foreign minister, Joachim Ribbentrop, proposed German attacks on important elements of the British empire, primarily in India, as a means of forcing the British to disperse their forces. Three of the ministry’s senior officials immediately started work on the creation of concrete plans, working in collaboration with the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht. These plans concerned Afghanistan, where it was believed that a puppet government could be installed, and thus reviving a project already developed during World War I, but also Tibet. Vizeadmiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr (German intelligence service) seems to have informed Adolf Hitler of the 'Tibet' plan, and Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, asked for the expertise of Ernst Schäfer, a pre-war explorer of Tibet and now an SS officer, in assessing any plan for military operations to put the British under pressure in northern and north-eastern India.

Given his obsession with destroying the Soviet system, however, Hitler in September 1939 still wished to spare the 'brothers of the English race' and their colonial empire. Himmler therefore informed Schäfer that the 'mission will take place only if the political situation demands it…If the war with England…is only brief and benign, then the mission will not take place, but if it is a serious war it will last longer and the mission will be prepared for optimal implementation.' To prepare for this latter eventuality, Schäfer and two other officers were ordered to go immediately to a training camp of SS-Oberführer Georg Keppler’s SS-Standarte 'Der Führer' near Prague to receive 'the best possible military training'.

In November 1939 Himmler asked Schäfer, who had just finished his expert report – after consulting Heinz Jost, another SS officer and the the head of the SD-Ausland (the section of SS-Gruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich’s Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS intelligence service operating abroad) and Keppler to transmit it to the foreign ministry. Schäfer spoke in favour of an operation similar to that which the British had carried out in Arabia during World War I, when T. E. Lawrence succeeded in fomenting an armed insurrection against the Ottoman empire. The Tibetan expert proposed to start firstly by inciting the 'nomadic Golog bandits', through bribes and promises of loot, to participate in operations against the British; then, and secondly by securing the support of the Tibetan army. He said that he himself was perfectly capable of implementing all of this on condition of 'having the necessary financial means'. Considering that 'the British government sends a donation of approximately 350-400,000 Reichsmarks every three years to the leaders of Tibet' and that 'the English will show themselves or have already been much less mean in the event of war', Schäfer estimated to need 'currency (coins and silver bars) worth 2 or 3 million Reichsmarks'.

Both the foreign ministry and Himmler approved, in principle, Schäfer’s plan for a 'guerrilla war and sabotage against India' aimed, as it was summarised by an under-secretary of the foreign ministry, 'to disturb, disturb and sabotage constantly all the English governmental installations like the railways, the post office, the telegraph, etc., and to fix English troops'.

In order to infiltrate the Tibetan area of Qinghai and then central Tibet, an SS commando unit would have to pass in 1939/40 through the USSR, which had just signed the Ribbentrop-Molotov non-aggression pact with Germany. On 13 November 1939, Friedrich-Werner Graf von der Schulenburg, the German ambassador to the USSR, met Vyacheslav Molotov, the Soviet foreign minister, and informed the later of Germany’s plans to send ex-King Amanullah back to Afghanistan and Schäfer to Tibet, as well as the role that could be played in this matter by the USSR. Soon learning of the Soviets' lack of enthusiasm for the German intentions, Ribbentrop sent his Eastern European expert, Peter Kleist, to Moscow several times. Now committed to the idea of plating for time in order to defeat the German plans, the Soviets requested additional information before issuing the visas necessary for passage through their territory. While Kleist allowed himself to be played by the Soviets, Schäfer now suspected that 'the problems with the [Russians were] more serious than expected', asked for exploration of the alternative possibility of his commando’s passage via China with the help of the Japanese.

The evolution of relations between Germany and the USSR during the latter’s 'Talvisota' winter war in Finland, then the German 'Barbarossa' invasion of the USSR definitively terminated Schäfer’s 'Tibet' operation, although Himmler continued to dream of attacking India, the 'jewel of the British empire', by taking the British position in that country in a pincer offensive in concert with Japanese troops and their Indian auxiliaries in Burma.

The course of the war resulted in other priorities. So when German troops were pushing through the southern USSR to the Caucasus and its oilfields in the ;Blau' offensives of the summer of 1942, Himmler created a special Kommando 'Kaukasus' within the Waffen-SS. Commanded by Schäfer, this was intended to operate in these regions of Central Asia and also in Tibet. However, the German defeat at Stalingrad rendered this plan for an operation in Central Asia entirely impossible.

Repulsed on the Eastern Front in gigantic battles like that at Kursk in 'Zitadelle', the Germans forgot all such aspiration and left Asian operations to their Japanese allies.