Still with rumours and psychological warfare.. and how they settle wars with ease, in ancient times and modern.. 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 coming move of the Third Reich...
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 "Joseph Goebbels", the propaganda minister of the Nazi era...
The book was called "The Prophecies", and after it was translated it became known as "Centuries"...
And the truth is that the book aroused the fascination 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...
And the reality is that Goebbels could not comprehend how a book written four centuries ago.. could tell of something happening in the future.. until Magda showed him a quatrain in the book that spoke of Hitler..
In his prophecies, Nostradamus had mentioned a person called “Hesler”, and he predicted that he would be born in Western Europe — Germany specifically — to poor parents, and he said that he would be able to seduce a huge army with the help of his exceptional skill in oratory, and he indicated that his fame would extend to the East.. but that he would ultimately be defeated before many armies that would ally together to fight him...
And here Goebbels began to wake up and comprehend.. it is true that the book refers to Hitler by the name "Hesler".. but the words are clear.. it is Hitler who is meant...
And what stirred Goebbels's fascination 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 crystallised in his mind.. and he decided to exploit the book in a new propaganda campaign in the war, the like of which 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.. rumours began to be stirred up that Hitler would overrun the whole of Europe.. and that Nostradamus had foretold it 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...
And the truth is that the legend of Nostradamus had begun long before that time.. despite what he did in his lifetime.. and the many predictions he made that turned out to be true.. it began specifically in May 1791...
At 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 from among the revolutionaries decided to dig up the grave of the most famous physician and astrologer, "Michel de Nostradamus", as a crude, barbaric means.. of asserting their control over the previous era.. and their contempt for all its symbols and sanctities..
And the grave was nothing but a simple pit, in the courtyard of an old church, inside it an old wooden coffin, worn out and shattered.. after more than two centuries in the dirt..
And the three dug up the grave.. and they were happy and laughing.. until the wine began to clear from their heads and panic took its place.. ..
And the source of their terror was not the grave with its pile of bones and a worn-out skull.. it was a mere bronze plaque.. carved by the occupant of the grave himself.. who had instructed 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 author had predicted with astonishing precision the date his grave would be dug up, was a quatrain that read:
After years of the uprising of the common people, and in the fifth month
Three drunkards dig up the old grave
Two meet their death on the same night
And the third remains mad until the end
And in their intense terror.. they threw down the digging tools.. and tried to flee the place.. but an army patrol spotted them and shot them.. so two of them died.. and the third was afflicted with madness from sheer terror...
And Goebbels gathered all this information.. and began spreading it through agents.. so that those among the people of Europe who did not know would learn who Nostradamus was..
And the terrifying Nazi machine went to work.. and Goebbels began selecting particular quatrains that pointed to Hitler's victory and Germany's triumph and printing them.. and translating them into English and French and Greek and Czech and Russian and others.. and printing hundreds of thousands of copies of them...
And slowly and with confidence.. 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.. some mocked and some 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 Nazi like pieces of dominoes.. and in a single blow Hitler had occupied Norway and the Netherlands and Denmark and Belgium.. and went in after them into Croatia and Monaco and Slovakia and Romania and Poland.. etc..
And then the great catastrophe happened.. he entered France...
And it was only natural that the European intelligence services should spring into action and gather information in search of a solution..
And what observers actually saw was that the soldiers stood there in defeat.. their morale shattered.. because the morale of the people.. the homes the soldiers came from.. had fallen below zero...
And the first to grasp this matter and make up for the mistake was England.. which immediately began a counter-propaganda campaign using the same book.. so it went and translated and printed hundreds of thousands of papers containing the quatrains that might point to or hint at Hitler's defeat.. and dropped them over German cities by aircraft.. and also dropped 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.. pointing to or hinting at Germany's victory.. so he began composing quatrains and attributing them to Nostradamus.. and England went and did the same as him...
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 though they were original.. 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 increases.. 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 they attacked any country.. with a bundle of rumours.. about economic failure and scarcity of resources.. and about the weakness of the army.. anything that would demoralise people, they would spread it.. and along with it they would circulate the myth of the Tatar army that cannot be defeated...
He has to make you feel humiliation and weakness and failure all the time.. and give you a feeling of inferiority.. along with a few financial rumours of the "police salaries went up" kind.. pensions of I-don't-know-who went up.. plus a few violent rumours of the "the Nile has dried up and there is no more water" type..
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 from the street at the Nile itself.. yet he made you, out of weakness, unable to verify it..
Spreading a strong, frightening lie, in order to push a certain group, or even all groups, into anger and revolt, and into rushing towards destruction or sabotage, without pausing to think about the situation, and to study it, and to 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 principal purpose of a 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 about the fate of defeat at the hands of the Nazi.. Donate to the war effort or 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 does not need to print papers for you and drop them by aircraft.. it is enough for him to release a few pages on social media for you.. that look like joke and comic and humour pages.. plus a few paid media figures on satellite channels along 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..