Still with Rumours and Psychological Warfare.. and how they decide wars easily, in the past and in the present.. and we are also talking about World War II in particular...
And after Hitler's invasion of Austria in 1938.. and the "First Czechoslovak Republic" a few months later.. and the European and global tension awaiting the Third Reich's next move...
And on one night in 1939, a copy of the book "Nostradamus" — the most famous French physician, pharmacist and astrologer — falls into the hands of the wife of "Goebbels", the propaganda minister of the Nazi era...
The book was called "The Prophecies" and became known after its translation as "Centuries"...
And the truth is that the book stirred the passion of "Magda Goebbels", Goebbels's wife, intensely.. and she sat up with it for a while.. until terror began to creep into her.. and she woke her husband from sleep.. to talk to him about the book.. and what she had read in it...
The reality is that Goebbels could not grasp how a book written four centuries earlier.. could tell of something happening in the future.. until Magda showed him a quatrain in the book that spoke of Hitler..
Nostradamus in his prophecies had mentioned a man called "Hesler", and predicted that he would be born in Western Europe – Germany specifically – to poor parents, and said that he would be able to seduce a huge army using his extraordinary skill in oratory; he also indicated that his fame would extend to the East.. but that he would in the end be defeated before many armies that would ally to fight him...
And here Goebbels began to wake up and grasp it.. true, the book refers to Hitler by the name "Hesler".. but the words are clear.. this is Hitler who is meant...
And what stirred Goebbels's passion even more was that the book was a 1922 edition.. meaning 16 years before they started the war...
And Goebbels kept reading the book until morning.. and then took it with him to his office.. and the plan was crystallising in his mind.. and he decided to exploit the book in a new propaganda campaign in the war, one that no propaganda apparatus had ever resorted to...
And Hitler liked the idea and they began to carry it out....
And slowly, through agents in the heart of Europe.. the spreading of rumours began that Hitler would invade all of Europe.. and that Nostradamus had predicted that four centuries earlier...
And the European security and intelligence services monitored the rumour campaign.. and passed it up to the leaders, who smiled in mockery.. at Germany's strange, incomprehensible method...
The truth is that the legend of Nostradamus began long before that time.. despite what he did in his lifetime.. and the many predictions he made that turned out true.. it began specifically in May 1791...
The height of the bloody French Revolution, and after France had almost fallen.. and thousands of heads flew under the guillotine.. including the heads of the revolution's own leaders in the end.. luckily for the French..
And three drunken rabble-rousers of the revolution decided to dig up the grave of the most famous physician and astrologer, "Michel de Nostradame", as a crude, savage way.. of asserting their control over the old order.. and their desecration of all its symbols and sanctities ..
And the grave was nothing but a simple pit, in the yard of an old church, holding an old wooden coffin, worn out and shattered.. after two centuries and more in the dirt ..
And the three dug up the grave.. and they were happy and laughing.. until the wine began to leave their heads and terror took its place.. ..
And the source of their terror was not the grave with its pile of bones and a crumbling skull.. it was a mere bronze plaque.. carved by the grave's own occupant.. who had ordered that it be buried with him after his death...
A plaque inscribed with the date of that very day.. and the hour..
The seventeenth of May, 1791 - midnight..
And on the plaque, whose writer had predicted with astonishing precision the date his grave would be dug up, was a quatrain that said:
After years of the mob's revolution, and in the fifth month
Three drunkards dig up the old grave
Two meet their death the same night
And the third remains mad to the end
And in their extreme terror.. they threw down the digging tools.. and tried to flee the place.. but an army patrol spotted them and shot them.. two of them died.. and the third was driven mad by sheer terror...
And Goebbels gathered all this information.. and began to spread it through agents.. so that those people in Europe who did not know would learn who Nostradamus was..
And the terrifying Nazi machine went to work.. and Goebbels began to select certain quatrains that pointed to Hitler's victory and Germany's triumph and print them.. and translate them into English, French, Greek, Czech, Russian and others.. and printed hundreds of thousands of copies of them...
And slowly and confidently.. and after the rumours had seeped in and reached people and they believed them.. the German air force began dropping these translated papers over the cities of Europe...
And the matter reached the leaders of these countries.. and whoever scoffed scoffed and whoever laughed laughed.. until everyone was taken aback by the terrifying effect this story had...
The truth is that the countries of Europe began to fall before the Nazis like dominoes.. and in a single blow Hitler had occupied Norway, the Netherlands, Denmark and Belgium.. and then went on after them to Croatia, Monaco, Slovakia, Romania and Poland.. etc..
And then the great catastrophe happened.. he entered France...
And it was natural that the European intelligence services should become active and gather information in search of a solution..
And what observers saw in reality was that the soldiers stood defeated and dispirited.. and their morale was shattered.. because the morale of the people.. the homes the soldiers came from.. had fallen below zero...
And the first to realise this and make up for the mistake was England.. which immediately began a counter-propaganda campaign using the same book.. and it set about translating and printing hundreds of thousands of papers containing the quatrains that might point to or hint at Hitler's defeat.. and dropping them over German cities by aircraft.. and also dropping them over Europe and over Britain itself.. to raise the morale of the other peoples of Europe.. and the morale of the English people themselves..
And Goebbels took up Nostradamus's book.. and could no longer find new quatrains.. that pointed to Germany's victory or hinted at it.. so he began composing quatrains and attributing them to Nostradamus.. and England went and did the same...
And because Nostradamus was French by origin.. it was easy for French literature professors to forge quatrains in the same style and language that looked as if they were genuine.. to the point that Goebbels in the end was forced to call on a fortune-teller named "Karl Ernst Krafft".. to forge new prophecies for him pointing to Hitler's victory.. to use against Nostradamus's prophecies..
And thus Nostradamus became part of World War II nearly four centuries after his death..
And because in wars and global crises.. souls weaken and tension rises.. people begin to lean on superstitions and nonsense.. and believe rumours.. any rumours...
And sometimes they become so weak that none of them goes back to the source of the rumour.. and verifies it...
The Tatars played this game.. and they used to send their spies and agents before attacking any country.. with a bundle of rumours.. about economic failure and scarce resources.. and about the army's weakness.. anything that would demoralise people they would spread.. and spread along with it the myth of the invincible Tatar army...
He has to make you feel humiliation, weakness and failure all the time.. and give you a sense of inferiority.. along with a few financial rumours of the "police salaries have gone up" kind.. pensions, I don't know whose, have gone up.. on top of a few violent rumours of the "the Nile has dried up and there is no more water" kind..
Look at that last rumour.. even though you could simply open the tap and see whether the Nile has dried up or not.. or look at the street at the Nile itself.. yet he made you so weak that you are unable to verify..
Spreading a powerful, frightening lie, in order to drive a certain group, or even all groups, to anger and revolution, and to rush into destruction or sabotage, without pausing to think about the situation, and study it, and establish whether it is true or false...
Rumours sometimes possess the ability to defeat the facts themselves, even if they are not based on sound logic..
And the main purpose of the rumour is to direct public thought towards a particular matter, or a specific idea, so that it settles in hearts and souls, and becomes capable of destroying morale, or stripping away the general will, when the decisive moment comes..
The moment of confrontation...
And the matter was not limited to Nostradamus and his quatrains alone.. the government was collecting money for the war and asking for donations by dropping posters that terrified people with the fate of defeat at the hands of the Nazis.. donate to the war effort or else Hitler will come and take your children..
It was dropping posters on the Nazis and on Europe about the women of Europe and how their courage and fortitude were better than the men of Germany..
How to keep military secrets and not tell them even to your beloved wife..
Even Disney entered the game.. to raise the people's morale and make them rally around their country and raise its flag and be filled with enthusiasm.. like the posters in the pictures..
Today, of course, he doesn't need to print papers for you and drop them by aircraft.. it is enough for him to let loose a few pages on social media.. that look like joke, comic and humour pages.. plus a few paid media mouthpieces on the satellite channels with a few hired journalists in the newspapers.. and the matter is settled...
It seems clear that rumours are one of the most powerful weapons of war through the ages..
And the war is still going on..
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References:
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1 - Wing, Richard (30 April 2012). "Hitler and the secret astrologers"
2 - Zodiac and Swastika by Wilhelm Wulff.
3 - Currey, Robert (March 1, 2008). "Strange Role of Astrology in World War II".
4 - T.W.M. van Berkel. "World War II Krafft". Nostradamus Research.
5 - Astrology and Psychological Warfare during World War II by Ellic Howe.
6 - Astrology: a recent history including the untold story of its role in World War II (1968).
7 - Masterman, John C (1972) [1945]. The Double-Cross System in the War of 1939 to 1945. Australian National University Press.
8 - Ambrose, Stephen E. (1981). "Eisenhower, the Intelligence Community, and the D-Day Invasion". The Wisconsin Magazine of History. Vol. 64 no. 4. Wisconsin Historical Society. p. 269.
9 - Latimer, John (2001). Deception in War. New York: Overlook Press. p. 238..