A Collation of Sources
6: Hitler's Supernatural Sciences:
Astrology, Anthroposophy, and
World Ice Theory in the Third Reich
Eric Kurlander
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=rm&ogbl#inbox/FMfcgxwJXpTLLLVlcJsLxQdNdhxRLgKm
As Corinna Treitel has convincingly shown, thousands of Germans
participated in astrological societies, seances, and spiritual experiments
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HITLER'S SUPERNATURAL SCIENCES 135 ?
during the interwar period, while hundreds of thousands more purchased
occult, New Age, and other esoteric literature.12 As G. Szeszcny put it in
his 1940 Munich dissertation on the occult press, 'The general cultural
and economic collapse, inflation and the ensuing big political and social
crises . . . prepared the way for the occult.. in its most widespread and
popular in interwar Germany.13 The first astrologer to come to prominence during the war was Krafft.
Like many astrologers, Krafft was enthusiastic about the Third Reich and
made some efforts to earn the trust of the regime through his published
horoscopes.21 By late 1939, Krafft had apparently made the acquaintance of the Nazi Labor Minister Robert Ley and Justice Minister Hans
Frank, himself a member of the occult-infused Thule Society.22 Among
the favorable horoscopes Krafft published during the 1930s in order
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136 E ? RIC KURLANDER
to ingratiate himself with the regime, none was more important than a
seemingly accurate prediction of the assassination attempt on Hitler by
Georg Elser in November 1939. It is this horoscope, which Krafft had
sent to the authorities shortly before the attempt, that brought Krafft to
the attention of Goebbels. Wanting to control public opinion, which continued to pay close attention to horoscopes, Goebbels' first reaction was to ban all astrological journals (earlier bans had been partial), particularly
those making political predictions along the lines of Krafft's.23
In 1942, Navy Captain Hans Roeder even recommended the creation of a Pendulum Institute 'to pinpoint the position
of enemy convoys at sea by means of pendulums and other supernatural devices, so that the German submarine flotillas could be certain of
sinking them.' 35 While Krafft was recruited directly from prison, where
he had languished for a time after Special Action Hess, the institute also
attracted some of Germany's most respected mathematicians, astronomers, astrologers, mediums, psychics, and radiesthetic (pendulum) practitioners, including Wilhelm Wulff and Ludwig Straniak, the first dowser
to claim he could teach lay people how to employ a pendulum to locate
large metal objects hundreds of miles away.36 Importantly, Roeder and
his colleagues were inspired in their efforts by the belief that the British
were themselves employing esoteric intelligence practices to find and
destroy German U-boats. Of course, the British were employing quite
'natural scientific' methods to locate German ships, namely RADAR
and SONAR. Despite the lack of any concrete evidence that astrology or
divining could locate ships with similar alacrity, the navy decided to fund
the institute regardless.37
ewish Question.39
Wulff and his occult colleagues were even reassembled by Himmler
a year later, in Summer 1943, as part of the famous rescue Operation
Oak, organized by Kaltenbrunner and Waffen-SS Commander Otto
Skorzeny.40 More skeptical toward the border sciences than some SS
functionaries, Schellenberg initially mocked the idea of locating Mussolini
through 'representatives of the occult sciences,' who apparently sat in a
castle chosen by Himmler consuming copious amounts of expensive food,
drinks, and cigarettes. Yet the otherwise cynical Schellenberg attests in his
memoirs that the motley group of astrologers and diviners did somehow
help locate the Duce in a secret hideout south of Rome: 'And in all honesty, it must be said, that these dowsers had no contact to the outside
world.' 41 After the success of Operation Oak, Himmler charged Wulff,
Straniak, and company with a number of 'scientific' and military tasks
beyond astrology, for example, determining whether there was an astrological way to calculate the weather, a question he had world ice theorists
explore as well.42
'After delineating the book' s lack astrological rigor, Kisshauer concluded that the author must likewise
expurgate remarks critical of world ice theory and its greatest living proponent, Phillip Fauth, 'who had just been given an honorary doctorate
by the Fuhrer for his service.' 44 Thus, even as the regime's attitude to popular astrology became less tolerant after 1937, its investment in 'scientific astrology' and other border sciences became increasingly serious, a pattern we see repeated in respect to anthroposophy and world ice theory
Glacial cosmogony, later known as world ice theory (Welteislehre or WEL), was developed in the 1890s by the Austrian scientist and philosopher Hans Horbiger, who claimed that the idea came to him in a dream. Horbiger and his collaborator, the amateur astronomer Philip Fauth, posited that much of the known universe was created when a small, water-filled star collided with a much larger star, causing an explosion, the frozen fragments of which created multiple solar systems. This explosion and the ensuing fragments, Horbiger and Fauth argued, explained gravity, the rotation of the planets, and various other interstellar phenomena. In emphasizing the impact of prehistoric moons made of ice, the fragments of which created the various layers of earth's crust, WEL supposedly revealed Earth's own geological history as well.84 Beyond its natural scientific implications, Horbiger and his supporters believed that WEL provided 'the foundation of a new 'cosmic cultural history,' and an 'astronomy of the invisible' founded upon 'creative intuition.' 85 Needless to say, few mainstream physicists, astronomers, or geologists gave this theory credence, with the Austrian astronomer Edmund Weiss famously pointing out that, by employing Horbiger's 'intuitive' methods, one could just as easily claim the cosmos is made out of olive oil as ice.86 Horbiger, in turn, merely ignored mainstream science, seeking to popularize WEL among a Weimar public hungry for spiritual alternatives through public lectures, cosmic ice movies, and radio programs.87 Although there was nothing explicitly racist about Horbiger's theories, WEL attracted a number of Germans who, weaned on ariosophy and other esoteric doctrines, sought an 'Aryan' alternative to so-called Jewish physics, from relativity to quantum mechanics. WEL supporters also were keen to point out the parallels between Horbiger and Hitler, from their Austrian origins to their successes as so-called amateurs reshaping 'professional' fields (physics and politics, respectively).88 Hitler, who was generally less enthusiastic about esoteric beliefs than were some Nazi colleagues, nonetheless found world ice theory attractive, from its util