British Secret Service agents have a longstanding reputation for the inconceivable ways in which they operate. News just out in the UK reveals that during World War II, secret agents employed the services of a horoscope expert. Just like Hitler did.
The documents that revealed this information were first released Monday 3 March by the National Archives. An astrologer by the name of Louis de Wohl apparently convinced British secret agents that Hitler was strongly palatable to astrology.
Hitler, so de Wohl told the secret agents, listened very carefully to the advice of his own horoscope expert, a Swiss guy named Karl Ernst Krafft. To gain insight into the often unpredictable plans of Hitler, it was very important that the Brits took readings of the stars themselves too, de Wohl argued, pitching his own candidacy for the job. The espionage chiefs bought it and De Wohl soon became a respected advisor to the Defense chiefs. De Wohl suggested, in a memo to a mentor Sir Charles Hambro that "shadowing" his counterpart's predictions would be a good idea. "The system according to which Hitler is advised is universal, and, being mathematical, has nothing whatsoever to do with clairvoyance or mystic matters," he wrote in a letter that was first released last Monday.
De Wohl traveled to the US in 1941 where he held lectures to convince the Americans that Hitler could be defeated. De Wohl appealed to the Yanks to intervene in the European situation.
De Wohl as a person was not beyond reproach; he claimed to be a Hungarian aristocrat but everybody doubted that. He was born and raised in Berlin and arrived in London in 1935, where he rapidly became known for his flamboyancy among the rich and famous. He was officially hired by the Ministry of Defense in 1940.
After the war De Wohl's claims were probed by historians and members of staff of MI5 and MI6 (the UK secret service), who said that his predictions seldomly came true. And some historians claimed as early as 1945 that Hitler had never taken astrology seriously.
However, the files, released at the National Archives at Kew, suggest that some of his predictions might even have come true.
But De Wohl also had his victorious moments; "He appears to have forecast the German invasion of Crete, the Battle of Midway to within a few days and Montgomery's desert success against the German Field Marshal, Erwin Rommel", Ananova reports.
The Ananova reporters quote Prof Christopher Andrew, who is writing the official history of MI5, as saying that "Hitler regarded astrology as nonsense, but the belief that he really paid attention to horoscopes entered Whitehall."
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