Action against secret doctrines and so-called secret sciences

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The action against secret doctrines and so-called secret sciences , also known as Aktion Hess or Sonderaktion Hess or Hess-Aktion , was directed primarily against occultists in National Socialist Germany . The action, which began on June 9, 1941, was a reaction by the party leadership of the NSDAP to the so-called " England flight " by Rudolf Hess , Adolf Hitler's deputy . Hess, who was inclined to the occult, had let himself be led into his flight by two personal horoscopes , among other things . The party greats Martin Bormann and Joseph Goebbels , who strictly reject occultism, were the main actors in the action ordered by Hitler. The executive organs were the security service (SD) and the police under the direction of Reinhard Heydrich . As a result of the action, not only were many occultists arrested, members of the Christian community and other organizations also fell victim to it.

The action against secret doctrines and so-called secret sciences was the climax of the measures against occultists in the Third Reich . It has hardly been scientifically processed so far. For example, there is no reliable information about the number of victims. It is estimated that around 300 to 1000 people were arrested. Some of the arrested were recruited at the beginning of 1942 to set up the "SP Division", which was subordinate to the High Command of the Navy . This department was supposed to locate enemy ships and convoys with the help of sidereal pendulums .

background

Rudolf Hess (1935). His flight to Scotland on May 10, 1941 was the trigger for the action against secret doctrines and so-called secret sciences .
Martin Bormann (1934), strictly rejected any form of occultism.

The regime of the National Socialists in the German Reich officially rejected everything occult in principle. Shortly after the seizure of power in 1933, occult and a number of religious movements and associations were classified as "sects hostile to the state". There were first professional bans against astrologers . Some organizations were initially only monitored by the Reichsführer SS's security service , including the Theosophical Society . In February 1935, the publications of Hermann Rudolph , the chairman of the International Theosophical Brotherhood , were confiscated and were henceforth banned. Both organizations were dissolved in July 1937. Even the Anthroposophical Society , which was sponsored by Rudolf Hess and other high-ranking National Socialists, was banned in Germany on November 1, 1935. The Christian community close to anthroposophy was initially able to continue to exist as a Christian association. Of the eight existing Waldorf schools , five were closed by ban or self-dissolution by 1938.

Exemplary wrote Kurd Kisshauer , astronomer and consultant in the Rosenberg office , on January 4, 1936 in the National Socialist Monatsheften :

“Astrology is of oriental origin and cannot be Germanized by any means. It fundamentally contradicts all of our views and is one of those institutions that are harmful to the people and which we have to clean up as quickly as possible. We cannot need a teaching that poisons the soul of the people and robs our people of their own will. We can not need followers who walk on the magician's leash, but only people with an open eye and purposeful action who listen to the word of the Fiihrer. "

On July 20, 1937, a circular signed by Reinhard Heydrich for the “dissolution of Masonic lodge-like organizations” banned all such “sects”.

On the other hand, the relationship of some leading National Socialists to occultism was rather ambiguous . Heinrich Himmler , for example, had a strong affection for esoteric circles , occult celebrations and old Germanic myths . For many years he was advised by the occultist Karl Maria Wiligut and in Wilhelm Wulff he had a personal astrologer. Members of the Waffen-SS were trained as dowsers to track down water, ore, gold and other treasures. The curative education and biodynamic agriculture belonging to the anthroposophical movement could continue to exist without major restrictions until the end of the war - Himmler's personal interests prevented a possible ban.

Rudolf Hess, Adolf Hitler's deputy, was very interested in esotericism , alternative medicine , naturopathy and astrology. This was known to the members of the leadership of the NSDAP, who gave him the nickname "Yogi from Egypt", alluding to the country of his birth. Increasingly there were confrontations between Hess and other high officials of the party. One of Hess's opponents was his staff leader Martin Bormann , who personally strictly rejected any form of occultism. Joseph Goebbels and Reinhard Heydrich were similarly negative and contemptuous of Hess' inclinations. Hess also had considerable differences of opinion with Hitler on these subjects. Some important authors and historians are of the opinion that Hess has become insignificant within the Nazi regime since the beginning of the Second World War and was essentially only interested in alternative medicine, naturopathy and astrology.

On May 7, 1941, exactly three days before Hess's spectacular “flight to England”, Martin Bormann had warned the Gauleiter in a circular against “superstition, belief in miracles and astrology as a means of subversive propaganda”. "Confessional and occult circles [would] bring more uncertainty and confusion into the population through the conscious dissemination of miracle stories, prophecies, astrological calculations of the future, etc." In the letter in which he explicitly referred to Adolf Hitler, it goes on to say:

“Furthermore, fortune tellers, clairvoyants, astrologers and fortune tellers are now taking advantage of the natural tension with which the people of the country expect the further political and military development of the war. It is partly a matter of systematic denominational propaganda, partly of thoughtless chattering by sensationalist people who fall for the anti-popular machinations of elements who abuse the fearfulness of certain people for their power or business. "

With this, Bormann clearly positioned himself against his boss Rudolf Hess.

Hess' "Flight to England"

Karl Haushofer (left) and Rudolf Heß (around 1920)

In the summer of 1940, Hitler made a rather half-hearted attempt at an offer of peace to Great Britain in his “Appeal to Reason”. He remained well below the expectations of his followers. Public opinion in Great Britain and the government cabinet rejected Hitler's offer. During this time, Hess, who was very popular in his party, had the idea of ​​his "peace mission". In discussions with his mentor Karl Haushofer and his son Albrecht , he developed the plan for the “England flight”, “to stop the bloodshed between two Germanic tribes”. In January 1941, Hess had his colleague Ernst Schulte Strathaus create a personal horoscope. This horoscope predicted May 10, 1941 "as a promising day for a journey in the interests of peace". On this day, “the full moon and six planets in the sign of Taurus” are said to have coincided.

The historian Manfred Görtemaker assumes Hess' three flight attempts, all of which failed due to technical difficulties or unfavorable weather conditions. The first is said to have failed on December 21, 1940, the other two in January and February 1941. In March, Schulte Strathaus had the horoscope he had created confirmed by the Munich astrologer Maria Nagengast. Nagengast is said to have received 50 Reichsmarks for the creation of the horoscope . The astrologer Waltraud Weckerlein claims in her book Hitler's Stars Lied in 1949 that Nagengast Hess advised: "In May you can fly without endangering your life". Weckerlein has no evidence for the statement. According to Weckerlein, Hess is said to have been a "permanent guest" at Nagengast; however, it does not provide any evidence for this either.

The wreck of Hess' Messerschmitt Bf 110

On May 10, 1941, at 6:10 p.m., Heß took off with a Messerschmitt Bf 110 from Haunstetten Air Base near Augsburg in the direction of Scotland . In Dungavel Castle he wanted to negotiate a peace agreement with Douglas Douglas-Hamilton . Hess mistakenly believed that Douglas-Hamilton, who was friends with Albrecht Haushofer, was an opponent of Churchill . His offer of peace found no interest and he fell into British captivity . Before he took off, Hess left a letter for Hitler to his adjutant Karlheinz Pintsch.

There is a great deal of speculation about the motives for Hess's decision to fly to Great Britain. The flight is "still one of the great puzzles in world history". Essential files are still under lock and key on the British side or have disappeared in the turmoil of the end of the war in Germany - both ideal conditions for speculation and conspiracy theories. According to the historian Rainer F. Schmidt , Hess is said to have been the victim of a targeted intrigue by the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). Hess is said to have been in correspondence with Douglas-Hamilton, but is said to have hidden behind the reply from MI6. Donald McCormick , who mostly wrote under the pseudonym Richard Deacon , worked for the British Naval Intelligence Department during World War II . After the war he became a journalist and historian. As a journalist he worked for the Sunday Times with Ian Fleming , the inventor of James Bond and also a former member of the British Naval Intelligence Department. McCormick has published a statement by Fleming that the British secret service used a fake horoscope to encourage the occultist Hess to take his flight. The occult circles close to Hess were systematically infiltrated and in the spring of 1941 he was sent a specially prepared horoscope via a contact from the Secret Service in Switzerland, which prompted him to undertake his “peace mission”. From the leadership of the National Socialists, Hess, a believer in astrology and striving for peace with Great Britain, was the best candidate for such a coup.

First reactions to Hess's flight

The day after Hess's flight, Pintsch personally handed Hitler's letter at the Berghof . There are different traditions about Hitler's reaction. The majority of historians assume that Hess will go it alone and describe Hitler's reaction as angry and dismayed. Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary: "The Führer is completely shattered" when he heard about the "England Mission" Hess'. According to Otto Dietrich , the Reich Press Chief of the NSDAP, Hitler seized "a tremendous excitement" when he read the letter. Albert Speer is said to have heard an "inarticulate", almost "animal sound" from Hitler. His chief interpreter, Paul-Otto Schmidt, compared the situation to the impact of a bomb in the Berghof. Hitler is said to have wished his long-time companion and cellmate from Landsberg imprisonment : "I hope he will fall into the sea".

A statement by Pintsch discovered in the State Archives of the Russian Federation in 2011 describes Hitler's reaction in a completely different way. Hitler would not have received the report in disbelief, but rather listened to it calmly. In this declaration, Pintsch also claims that Hitler was privy to Hess' plans and that the flight took place in "prior agreement with the British".

On May 12, 1941 at 9:00 p.m., a first public statement was distributed as a party official announcement via all the stations of the Großdeutscher Rundfunk . It was formulated personally by Hitler in the afternoon. The text read:

“Party comrade Hess, who was strictly forbidden by the Fiihrer to continue flying because of a disease that had been progressing for years, has, contrary to this order, been able to regain possession of an airplane recently. On Saturday, May 10th, around 6 p.m., party comrade Hess took off again in Augsburg on a flight from which he has not returned to this day. A letter left behind unfortunately showed in its confusion the traces of a mental breakdown, which leads to fear that party comrade Hess was the victim of delusions [...]. Under these circumstances the National Socialist movement has to reckon with the fact that Party Comrade Hess crashed or had an accident somewhere on his flight. "

In terms of content, the communication was based on the final sentence of Hess' letter to Hitler. According to Hess' wife Ilse , her husband wrote in it:

"And if, my Fiihrer, my - as I must admit - project, which has very little chance of success, should fail, if fate should decide against me, it cannot have any bad consequences for you or for Germany: You can withdraw from me at any time - declare me crazy. "

On the morning of the next day, the British radio reported that the Führer’s deputy was flying alone at night.

According to Hans Frank's notes , which he made in the Nuremberg cell prison after the Second World War , Hitler is said to have invited all NSDAP Reich and Gauleiter to a briefly arranged meeting on the afternoon of May 13, 1941. At that time, Frank was Governor General of the occupied Polish territories and head of the Reich Legal Office of the NSDAP. Hitler is said to have said furiously about the flight of Hess:

“Hess is above all a deserter, and if I ever catch him, he will pay for this act as a common traitor. For the rest, this step seems to me to be largely due to the astrological clique that Hess kept in influence. It is therefore time to radically clean up this magical nonsense. "

Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary on May 14, 1941 about this process:

“The next man after the Führer was such a fool. It's hard to imagine. His letters are full of half-baked occultism. Prof. Haushofer and his wife, old Hess, were the evil spirits there. They have artificially increased their 'big ones' into this role. He has also had visions, had horoscopes drawn up, etc. dizziness. That is what rules Germany. The whole thing can be explained from the atmosphere of his healthy life and his grazing. "

On the same day, all German daily newspapers reported with the headline “The investigation of the Hess case” that Hess had landed in Scotland and repeated several times that he had suffered from delusions and was ultimately a victim of them. It also reads:

“Rudolf Hess, who for years, as was known in the party, suffered severely physically, has lately increasingly turned to various aids, magnetizers, astrologers and so on. The extent to which these people are also to blame for causing mental confusion that prompted him to take this step is also being tried to clarify. "

Also on May 14th, Bormann telegraphed Heydrich that Hitler wanted "the sharpest means to be used against occultists, astrologers, quackery and the like who seduce the people into stupidity and superstition".

On the next day, Joseph Goebbels, as Reich Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, issued an order that prohibited all occult, clairvoyant, telepathic or astrological presentations. On May 16, he noted in his diary:

“I am issuing a sharp edict against occultism, clairvoyance, etc. This whole obscure hoax is now finally being eradicated. The miracle men, Hess' darlings, are put under lock and key. Instruction to the district to inform the party about the facts. "

In a letter from Bormann to Himmler found after the war it says:

“As can be seen from the files, RH himself affirmed the chances of success of his conversations one hundred percent when General Haushofer told him about the so-called true dream and after Schulte-Strathaus and Nagengast had prophesied happiness and success in horoscopes. Hess believed in such things, and after having been prophesied of success from three sides, he believed in them particularly firmly. "

After he went it alone, Hess's esoteric interests were used twice by Nazi propaganda . On the one hand, they served as an explanation for the "flight to England" of the "confused" and "manipulated" loner who was influenced by astrologers and occultists. With this strategy - probably developed by Martin Bormann - the political damage internally and externally should be minimized. On the other hand, they were a justification for the drastic measures that followed against the entire occult scene.

Action Hess

Reinhard Heydrich organized the Hess campaign
Albert Hartl's (≈1947) office group coordinated the Hess action

On June 4, 1941, a little more than three weeks after Hess's "flight to England", the action against secret doctrines and so-called secret sciences began on the instructions of Adolf Hitler Reinhard Heydrich . All heads of the state police, the criminal police and the SD sections received a secret express letter that day. In it, the action was ordered for June 9th, if possible between 7 and 9 a.m. The instruction applied to the entire German Reich, including some occupied territories. The coordinating body was the office group “ Opponents of ideology ” headed by SS-Sturmbannführer Albert Hartl in the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA IV B). The reason for the action was as follows:

“In the current struggle for fate of the German people it is necessary to keep not only the physical but also the mental strength of the individual as well as the whole people healthy and strong. Occult doctrines, which pretend that what people do and don't do depends on mysterious magical powers, the German people can no longer be divulged. It is therefore necessary to act against these doctrines and sciences with the sharpest immediate measures. A final legal regulation is already in preparation. "

Heydrich's letter consisted of nine pages plus four pages of attachments. He set out in detail how and against whom this action was to be carried out. It was directed against: anthroposophists, theosophists, ariosophers , astrologers, parapsychologists , fortune tellers, faith healers, rune readers, dowsers and many others who practiced occultism in some form. The material seized during the action should be evaluated immediately in order to find “clues for further action”. The action was directed not only against individuals, but also against corresponding organizations, clubs and associations. The state police stations and SD sections received “information on the questioning of adherents of occult teachings” in a circular from the Security Service (SD) on June 6, 1941 with the note “Secret!”. The SD distributed individual reports from several hundred citizens who were accused of occult activities. The reports provided details of the alleged activities, as well as recommended actions and penalties for each individual. In many cases it was house searches with interrogations, police warnings and, in exceptional cases, confiscation of correspondence. For example, the anthroposophist Franz Dreidax was placed under house arrest for the duration of the investigations. His colleague Gerhard Hardorp was warned by the police after a house search. Ariosophs such as Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels and Herbert Reichstein were also on the SD list. A number of occultists was arrested and in custody taken or equal in prison. Some were transferred to a concentration camp after their imprisonment. In the case of Caroline Thun, a fortune teller on the SD list, the arrest and subsequent transfer to a concentration camp was recommended. The author and publisher Karl Rohm , a supporter of the Hitler coup of 1923, was supposed to come to a concentration camp for a long time and be expropriated.

There is no reliable data on the number of prisoners. Estimates go from 300 to 1000 people. In addition to the aforementioned, there were other prominent victims in the Hess campaign. Emil Bock , the anthroposophist and co-founder of the Christian Community, was arrested on June 11, 1941. He was first taken to the Stuttgart Schmale Strasse police prison for three weeks and then transferred to the Welzheim protective custody camp. Bock was released from prison on February 5, 1942. His colleague Georg Moritz von Sachsen-Altenburg had been arrested two days earlier . He was put in protective custody by the state police for nine and a half months and thus had to serve the longest prison sentence of any well-known anthroposophist. The astrologer Hubert Korsch was probably in April 1942 at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp by shot in the neck murdered by the SS. His colleague Walter A. Koch spent three years in prison after his arrest, most of them in Dachau concentration camp . The Freemason and theosophist Johannes Maria Verweyen was advertised for a search as part of the Heß campaign . On August 27, 1941, the Gestapo arrested him while on a lecture tour in Frankfurt am Main. On September 8, 1941, he was initially transferred to the Alexanderplatz police headquarters . On May 23, 1942, he was transferred to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp without a judicial conviction. On February 7, 1944, he was sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp , where he died of typhus on March 21, 1945, three weeks before being liberated by British troops .

Ernst Schulte Strathaus, who created the first horoscope for Hess's "England flight", was arrested as his close confidante on May 14, 1941, before the actual Hess action. First he was in solitary confinement for eleven months in the Gestapo prison at 8 Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse in Berlin . After that he was in Sachsenhausen concentration camp until March 3, 1943.

Karl Ernst Krafft , who worked in the Propaganda Ministry on the interpretation of the prophecies of Nostradamus, was arrested on June 12 by the Gestapo. He was released a year later. In the Propaganda Ministry, he now had to draw up horoscopes about statesmen and hostile high-ranking military leaders. In the process, Krafft obviously came into conflict with his clients. In February 1943 he was arrested again and then transferred to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He died on January 8, 1945 in Block 61 of the Buchenwald concentration camp . Krafft had an adversary on the side of the Allies . The German astrologer Louis de Wohl was on the Special Operations Executive (SOE) payroll . He headed the Psychological Research Bureau in London from September 1940 to 1943 . Astrological prognoses and Nostradamus interpretations against Nazi Germany were made in this office. In addition, de Wohl was supposed to calculate which warnings or advice the "Hitler astrologer" Krafft would give the Führer. De Wohl had been able to convince his clients of the false assertion that "Hitler would not make a military decision without the advice of the Swiss astrologer Karl Ernst Krafft". In June 1941 the SOE even sent him to the United States , where he was supposed to "persuade the Americans to join the war with his predictions".

The philosopher and parapsychologist Gerda Walther was also imprisoned as part of the "Rudolf Hess Special Campaign", but was released again shortly afterwards.

Wilhelm Theodor Heinrich Wulff was arrested by the Gestapo on June 9, 1941. He came to the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp , where he had to create horoscopes for some Nazi figures in the “labor camp for specialists”. These included Walter Schellenberg , head of the foreign intelligence service, Arthur Nebe , the head of the Reich Criminal Police Office and Heinrich Himmler. Schellenberg in particular is said to have been impressed by Wulff's abilities. In November 1943, Wulff is said to have predicted the assassination attempt on July 20, 1944 and Hitler's death in late April or early May 1945. According to Wulff's autobiography Zodiac and Swastika: As an astrologer at Himmler's court , he received instructions from Nebe in July 1943 to “join in the search for the missing Mussolini”. Wulff created horoscopes for Himmler from the second half of the war.

On June 13, 1941, Joseph Goebbels noted in his diary:

“All astrologers, magnetopaths, anthroposophists etc. arrested and all their activities paralyzed. This put an end to this hoax. Oddly enough, not a single clairvoyant foresaw that he was arrested. A bad professional mark. "

The course against occultism already taken by Bormann before the "England flight" was continued with the action against secret doctrines and so-called secret sciences with more stringent means. In an exchange of letters in June 1941, Bormann called on Goebbels to use propaganda more strongly against “any occult teachings”. In doing so, he relied on an instruction from Hitler that explicitly mentioned the Hess case. Goebbels agreed to this, but expressed concern that this could increase public concern about the Hess scandal. Bormann led a kind of crusade against everything that was connected in any way with occultism. This went so far that magicians were only allowed to perform when they revealed their magic tricks , such as the sawed-up maiden .

Bormann benefited most from Hess' "Englandflug". On May 12, 1941, he took over Hess' office, the staff of the Fuehrer's deputy , which was renamed the Party Chancellery . Bormann was given the powers of a Reich Minister , was a member of the Reich Government and the Council of Ministers for Reich Defense .

Department "Sidereal Pendulum"

A sidereal pendulum
Otto Schniewind (May 1933)

The "secret doctrines and so-called secret sciences" were officially banned with the Hess campaign. However, this was by no means the end of all occult or borderline scientific activities in the Third Reich. For certain applications that were compatible with the aims of National Socialist warfare and that were not in great contradiction with National Socialist ideology, the activities could be continued. Some of the persecuted occultists and frontier scientists became staunch supporters of the Nazi regime. A few months after the Hess operation, some of the people harassed and arrested by the SD and Gestapo were transferred to the “SP Department”. The abbreviation "SP" stood for " sidereal pendulum ". The department was under the command of the Navy (OKM). To this day it is unclear who built the department and when, and which circles within the navy and the Nazi regime knew about it. Relevant documents are missing. The essential detailed information comes from eyewitness reports from the post-war period, especially from Gerda Walther and Wilhelm Wulff. When these two first found out about the SP department in spring 1942, it had been in existence for "some time". According to Wulff, at least Admiral Otto Schniewind should have been informed of the experiments. It is very likely that the department was set up by naval officer Hans A. Roeder (1888–1985). From September 1939 he was general advisor for "Invention and Patents" at the Naval Weapons Main Office . According to Walther, the corvette captain is said to have called himself a "commuter". One possible reason for building the division was the success of the British Navy against German submarines. According to Walther, Roeder is said to have suspected that the British Navy was using commuters to determine the position of the German submarines. According to Walther, “the German side wanted to counter something similar as quickly as possible”. The cause of the British success, however, was not spiritual in nature, but rather that on 9 May 1941, the hijacking of U 110 full encryption type machine Enigma M3 was captured. This enabled the British to “continuously decipher the radio traffic of the German submarine command for several months with more or less slight delays”. After the war, Rear Admiral Gerhard Wagner , who was head of the operations department in the naval command from 1941 to 1944 , commented on the experiments of the SP department as follows:

“R [oeder], the commuter, was known to all of us. His work was not so unusual from the point of view of the time. After all, you were constantly thinking about new techniques, and when someone came along who said they could achieve something through a certain method, it was of course natural that they should be given the opportunity. "

After the war, Wulff described the SP department, in which he had worked, as a “strange society”. "Media and psychitives [...], commuters [...], Tattwa researchers [...], astrologers and astronomers, ballistics and mathematicians" were gathered in the office in Berlin. The chemist and patent attorney Fritz Quade (1884–1944) and the former professional officer Konrad Schuppe (1871–1945) also worked in the SP working group . Quade was President of the German Society for Scientific Occultism (DGWO) until 1939 , which was renamed the German Metaphysical Society (D. m. G.) in 1939 . Schuppe became his successor. Both were imprisoned for several weeks during the Hess operation. The PhD astronomer Hans-Hermann Kritzinger (1887–1968) was also a former member of the DGWO in the SP department. The ballistics expert initially worked for the Air Force and the Army Office. From the beginning of 1940 the Nostradamus specialist also worked for the Propaganda Ministry. The extremely versatile Kritzinger was also a specialist in radiesthesia . The working group SP was evidently built up from the still existing network of the DGWO. After the war, Gerda Walther wrote that she had met "old parapsychological friends" again at work meetings of the SP department.

The professional astronomer and astrologer Wilhelm Hartmann (1893-1965) is said to have carried out the aptitude tests for the selected commuters. The Austrian engineer, pendulum and radiesthesia researcher Ludwig Straniak (1879–1951) is said to have played an important role in setting up the SP department . The avowed National Socialist founded the "Society for Scientific Pendulum Research" in 1936, which was banned in the course of the Heß campaign. Straniak offered his services to the German Navy. In his first attempts he is said to have succeeded in determining the position of German battleships using a sidereal pendulum. This was obviously the starting point for setting up the SP department in a villa on Von-der-Heydt-Strasse in Berlin. According to Wulff, the commuters are said to have crouched day in and day out “with an outstretched arm over the nautical charts” to locate enemy ships and convoys. Gerda Walther also completed a kind of probationary period in the SP department with commuting. The very heterogeneous composition of the employees in the department caused some conflicts. Ultimately, it was fundamental differences of opinion between Walther and her boss Roeder that prevented her from continuing to work.

In spite of all considerable efforts, the SP division was unable to provide any results that could be used militarily. All sources show that there was no success in the education. According to Gerda Walther, the SP department is said to have been dissolved again in autumn 1942. Vice-Admiral Erhard Maertens (1891-1945), chief of the naval intelligence service , declared on November 2, 1942 at a briefing with Grand Admiral Erich Raeder that attempts with pendulum locating methods would now be stopped because they had proven useless.

In an illustrated book by Sven Simon from 1980, Admiral Schniewind is quoted as saying: "I never found out [...] that the Roeder Institute's pendulum tests were used in any way for practical naval warfare."

At the end of January 1943, the private scholar Hans-Hermann Kritzinger , who was involved in the attempts to locate the pendulum, was given an honorary professorship at the suggestion of the Navy High Command . Kritzinger was one of the "men who deserved particular help in solving war tasks", so the reasoning. Almost at the same time, the naval high command moved from Raeder to Dönitz . Party chancellery boss Martin Bormann then asked whether "this pendulum will continue even after the change in naval leadership." Bormann wrote to the Nazi chief ideologist Alfred Rosenberg that the now excellent Kritzinger had made a name for himself in the worst sense because he " with a whole staff of so-called commuters [...] tried to commute convoy trains ”.

Remarks

  1. ↑ These short names were largely created in the 1950s. Which of these terms is historically correct and how it came about has not yet been clarified. The parapsychologist Hans Bender informed Hans Buchheim , who was head of the Institute for Contemporary History at the time , on May 7, 1953: "The Gestapo called this campaign a 'special action Hess'."
  2. ↑ The letter got lost in the (post) war confusion.
  3. ↑ Hess was - like Hitler - a vegetarian.
  4. ↑ Allegedly, at Goebbels' urging, Krafft is said to have forged verse V.94 by Nostradamus. Stalin's victory can be interpreted from this verse: le grand duc d'Armenie . Krafft is said to have turned it into grand duc d'Arminie . So Armenia became the " Arminius country".
  5. ↑ Gerda Walther described Goebbels' ambivalent attitude to occultism as follows: If prophecies and other occult things could be used for propaganda, [Goebbels] made use of them, which did not prevent him from completely rejecting them another time. See Robert Stockhammer : Magic Texts. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, 2000, ISBN 978-3-05-007757-4 , p. 126 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  6. ↑ Sven Simon is the pseudonym of Axel Springer junior.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Uwe Schellinger, Andreas Anton, Michael Schetsche: Between scientism and occultism. Frontier science experiments by the German Navy in World War II. In: Journal of Anomalies. Volume 10, 2010, pp. 287-321.
    Also in: Uwe Schellinger, Andreas Anton, Michael T. Schetsche: Pragmatic Occultism in the Military History of the Third Reich. In: Monica Black (Ed.): Revisiting the “Nazi Occult”. Boydell & Brewer, 2015, ISBN 978-1-57113-906-1 , pp. 157-180. ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  2. ↑ a b c Peter Staudenmaier : Between Occultism and Nazism. Chapter 6: The Nazi Campaign against Occultism. , Brill, 2014, ISBN 978-90-04-27015-2 , pp. 214–248 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  3. ↑ a b c d e f Peter Staudenmaier : Nazi Perception of Esotericism: The Occult as Fascination and Menace. In: Ashwin Manthripragada, Emina Mušanović, Dagmar Theison (Eds.): The Threat and Allure of the Magical: Selected Papers from the 17th Annual Interdisciplinary German Studies Conference, University of California, Berkeley Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014, ISBN 978-1- 4438-6586-9 , pp. 25–58 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  4. ^ A b Helmut Zander: Anthroposophy in Germany. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008, ISBN 978-3-525-55452-4 , p. 251 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  5. ^ Wilhelm Theodor H. Wulff: Zodiac and swastika. Bertelsmann Sachbuchverlag, 1968, p. 105 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  6. ^ Siegfried Fritsch: The spirit over Germany. Fix, 1985, ISBN 978-3-87228-137-1 , p. 241 ( limited preview in Google book search) (excerpts as PDF file )
  7. ↑ a b Female Navamsa . In: Der Spiegel . No.  44 , 1968, pp. 92 ( online ).
  8. ^ Dissolution of Masonic Lodge-like organizations. Ministerial-Blatt of the Reich and Prussian Ministry of the Interior, issue A 2 (98), from August 11, 1937, pp. 1136–1139. Federal Archives BA R5101 / 23856 , pp. 161–164.
  9. ↑ Tobias Aufmkolk: witch hunt . In: planet-wissen.de. June 21, 2013, accessed August 17, 2016 .
  10. ↑ Franz Wegener: Heinrich Himmler. Kulturfoerderverein Ruhrgebiet, 2004, ISBN 978-3-931300-15-9 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  11. ^ Corinna Treitel: A Science for the Soul. JHU Press, 2004, ISBN 978-0-8018-7812-1 , pp. 215–224 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  12. ↑ Michael H. Kater : The "Ahnenerbe" of the SS 1935-1945. Oldenbourg Verlag, 2006, ISBN 978-3-486-59468-3 , p. 222 ( limited preview in Google book search).
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