The 10 times Nazis tried to enlist the aid of the unseen are a wild mix of mysticism, desperate prophecy and outright lunacy. From crystal‑ball sessions to ice‑world fantasies, the Third Reich’s leadership believed that tapping into supernatural forces could tip the balance of World War II in their favor.
10 Hitler Hired A Jewish Clairvoyant To Tell Him The Future
In the chilly winter of January 1933, just before his appointment as Germany’s chancellor, Adolf Hitler walked into the consulting room of Erik Jan Hanussen, a celebrated clairvoyant, and demanded a glimpse of his destiny.
Hanussen had already snagged Hitler’s attention a year earlier when he published a bold article predicting that the future chancellor would rise in 1933. Convinced that the seer could see beyond ordinary eyes, Hitler arranged a private session – and, according to Hanussen’s own memoirs, the dictator returned for dozens of clandestine meetings.
During one of those séances, Hanussen warned Hitler of a promising surge ahead, yet cautioned that a hidden obstacle would threaten his ascent. To neutralise this danger, Hanussen claimed he could cast a protective spell involving a mandrake root harvested from a butcher’s yard and buried beneath the full‑moon‑lit sky of Hitler’s birthplace.
Unaware that Hanussen was, in fact, Jewish, Hitler remained oblivious to the irony. Hanussen, however, recognised the regime’s anti‑Jewish fervour and tried to disarm it with charm, insisting, “Hitler merely needs a friend to discover that good people exist everywhere.”
Whether the mystic truly foresaw the future or merely spun an elaborate tale, the episode remains a striking example of Nazi fascination with the occult.
9 Hitler Hired A Man To Magically Detect Jews
Almost immediately after the Great War, Adolf Hitler forged a friendship with Wilhelm Gutberlet, a seemingly ordinary physician by day and a self‑styled “Jew‑detector” by night.
Gutberlet boasted, and was quoted by a Nazi official, that he possessed “the power to sense at once the presence of any Jews.” His method? A swinging pendulum that, he claimed, pointed toward anyone of Jewish heritage the moment it was released.
Beyond his uncanny claims, Gutberlet held a pivotal role in the early Nazi movement, serving as a key propagandist before Joseph Goebbels took the reins. He and Hitler bonded over shared anti‑Semitic zeal, and Hitler soon began to lean on Gutberlet’s alleged psychic ability to locate Jews throughout the Reich.
Walter Schellenberg, head of foreign intelligence, later testified that Hitler “availed himself of Gutberlet’s mystic power.” According to those records, the pendulum‑spinning sessions continued well into the final days of the war.
8 The Nazis And The British Fought An Astrological War
A few days before a failed assassination attempt at the Munich Beer Hall, a Swiss astrologer named Karl Ernst Krafft warned Adolf Hitler that danger loomed between November 8 and November 10, 1939.
Krafft dispatched a letter to his confidant Dr. Heinrich Fesel, who worked for Heinrich Himmler, detailing the impending peril and urging the Führer to cancel all public appearances during that window.
Initially, Fesel kept the warning to himself, but when the bomb exploded, he rushed to inform Himmler, who took the threat seriously enough to bring Krafft into the Nazi fold.
While Krafft’s actual influence on Nazi strategy was limited, he did produce a report for Joseph Goebbels that cherry‑picked Nostradamus’s verses to portray Hitler as a destined victor. The British, catching wind of Krafft’s activities, hired their own astrologer to counter his predictions, sparking a modest “fortune‑telling” arms race between the two great powers.
7 Dietrich Eckart Prophesized That Hitler Was The German Messiah
Dietrich Eckart, a prominent member of the occult‑obsessed Thule Society, was more than a mentor to Adolf Hitler; he was a fervent believer that the Führer embodied a divine, messianic role for Germany.
Eckart preached that an Aryan messiah would arise to lead the nation to a promised land, and he was convinced that Hitler fit this prophecy perfectly.
According to Eckart, the Jews would unleash chaos, only to be met with a crushing retribution once the German messiah seized power. Though Hitler never publicly endorsed Eckart’s eschatology, the latter claimed the dictator’s later actions suggested a “messiah complex” gone awry.
Eckart’s own reflections grew increasingly alarmed as the war progressed, noting that “the way Adolf is carrying on now goes beyond me. The man is plain crazy.” Whether this was genuine concern or hindsight dramatization remains debated.
6 The Nazis Pushed A Creation Theory That Came In A Dream
The Nazi Party embraced a cosmological model known as the World Ice Theory, championed by Hanns Horbiger, who claimed the universe began with two colliding stars that flung massive ice blocks outward.
Horbiger’s conviction stemmed from a vivid dream after observing the Moon’s icy appearance; he awoke convinced that Newton’s gravity was wrong and that the cosmos was a frozen expanse.
The regime promoted this theory not for scientific merit but as a weapon against what they termed “Jewish science.” By declaring a creation story that directly contradicted mainstream physics, they hoped to undermine the credibility of Jewish scholars.
Heinrich Himmler dispatched archaeologists worldwide to locate evidence supporting a primordial ice block, while Hitler even commissioned a planetarium dedicated to teaching the World Ice Theory, turning a private vision into a state‑sponsored cosmology.
5 The SP Project Used Magic Pendulums To Find Warships
A secret Berlin office marked only with the letters “SP” – an abbreviation for “Sidereal Pendulum” – housed a team of Nazi psychics tasked with locating Allied warships using enchanted pendulums.
The project was launched after intelligence reports suggested the British already employed a similar psychic unit to spy on German vessels. In reality, the British were simply cracking Enigma, but the Nazis, convinced of a psychic threat, scrambled to develop their own clairvoyant squad.
The most celebrated success came when Ludwig Staniak swung his pendulum over a map and correctly identified the position of a downed German battleship – a remarkable coincidence that spurred the regime to expand the program despite its dubious foundations.
From that point forward, a small cadre of pendulum‑wielders spent their days hovering over charts, hoping to divine the whereabouts of enemy submarines and surface ships, a venture that ultimately proved more eccentric than effective.
4 Heinrich Himmler Thought He Could Tell The Future
Wilhelm Wulff, who served as Heinrich Himmler’s personal astrologer, recounted that the SS chief believed he could forecast events without external counsel, consulting the stars and moon phases before every major decision.
Himmler allegedly asserted that each strategic command he issued was guided by “certain, little‑known moon constellations,” a claim that Wulff documented in his memoirs.
Ironically, despite his personal reliance on astrology, Himmler later outlawed the practice across Germany, not because he deemed it frivolous, but because he feared its power could rival his own occult authority.
3 An SS Brigadefuhrer Convinced Himmler That Jesus Was German
SS Brigadeführer Karl Wiligut harboured an outlandish belief system that placed the origins of Germanic culture at 228,000 BC, a time when three suns shone in the sky and giants roamed the earth. Among his most controversial claims was that Jesus himself was German, bearing the name “Krist.”
Wiligut professed a divine lineage, asserting he descended from an ancient German god‑king, a claim that many dismissed as madness. Yet Heinrich Himmler found his ideas compelling enough to enlist Wiligut for a mystical architectural project.
Wiligut’s influence helped Himmler select the site for Wewelsburg Castle, envisioned as a Nazi reinterpretation of Camelot, and reinforced the regime’s mythic self‑image.
2 Rudolf Hess Betrayed Hitler Because Six Planets Were In Taurus
On May 10, 1941, Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess embarked on a solo flight to Scotland, hoping to negotiate peace with the British. The motivation behind this daring sortie lay not in politics but in astrology.
Hess’s confidant, Karl Haushofer, recounted a dream in which Hess marched through English castles, heralding peace between the two nations. Consulting his personal astrologer, Hess learned that six planets would align in Taurus and that a full moon on that very day signaled an auspicious moment for his mission.
The plan backfired spectacularly: Hess was captured by the Home Guard and spent the remainder of the war in imprisonment, prompting Hitler to ban astrologers, faith healers, and occult practitioners across the Reich.
1 The Nazis Hired A Psychic To Find Mussolini
Even after Hitler formally prohibited supernatural consultants, Heinrich Himmler persisted in employing them, convinced of their efficacy. When Benito Mussolini was captured, Himmler turned to his imprisoned occultists, promising freedom in exchange for locating the Italian dictator.
One psychic claimed to have pinpointed Mussolini’s hideout on an island west of Naples by swinging a pendulum over a map. Though German intelligence ultimately found Mussolini through intercepted radio traffic, the psychic’s accurate guess did not go unnoticed by Himmler.
Secretly, Himmler maintained a payroll for psychics, clinging to the belief that a covert team of mystics could ultimately secure victory for the Nazi war effort.
These ten episodes illustrate how the Nazi regime, desperate for any edge, turned to the uncanny and the arcane, weaving superstition into the very fabric of its war strategy.