Karl Ernst Krafft

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Karl Ernst Krafft (10 May 1900 in Basel - 8 January 1945) was a prominent Swiss astrologer. He worked on the basis of astrology and graphology. Krafft was a brilliant young man with a genuine gift for figures and statistics, but his greatest love was the study of planets and astrology.

After graduating from university in mathematics, for the best part of ten years he worked on a massive book entitled Traits of Astro-Biology. This expounded his own theory of "Typocosmy": the prediction of the future based on the study of an individual's personality, or type. By the early 1930s, when Hitler had come to power, Krafft enjoyed a unique status among occultists and prophets in Germany. The National Socialists, later to become his patrons, at first posed a threat to him. Occultists, like Freemasons, were among those harassed and vilified by the National Socialists.

While the Nazi state persecuted astrologers, Rudolf Hess and Heinrich Himmler consulted them. Krafft moved into the orbit of the National Socialist elite in November 1939 when he made a remarkable prediction. He predicted that the Führer's life would be in danger between 7 and 10 November. He wrote, on 2 November to a friend, Dr Heinrich Fesel, who worked for Himmler, warning him of an attempt on Hitler's life. Fesel filed the letter away, unwillingly to become enmeshed in something dangerous.

On 8 November, a bomb exploded at the Munich beer hall. There were many injuries but the target, Adolf Hitler, was unscathed. When newspapers reported the near-catastrophe Fesel despatched a telegram to Hess, drawing attention to Krafft's prediction. Krafft was arrested and brought to Gestapo Headquarters in Berlin. Questioning soon proved that he was innocent as far as the attempt on the Führer's life went. After his release he was summoned to the Reich Propaganda ministry, run by Dr Josef Goebbels. Goebbels had recently taken to poring over Nostradamus, trying to squeeze propaganda from the prophecies. Krafft, he felt, should work on deciphering the cryptic quatrains. In January 1940, Krafft began work on a pro-German evaluation of Nostradamus.

Krafft was convinced that the prophecies of Nostradamus boded well for the Third Reich. Tens of thousands of pamphlets based upon his interpretations of the quatrains were circulated in various languages and he soon came to the attention of the Führer. In the spring of 1940 he gave a private horoscope reading for Hitler to an aide. but he never met his leader. Later he boasted to friends that he mentioned that the time for an attack on the USSR was some way off. Hitler, impatient to launch Operation Barbarossa after he had dealt with the West, in fact delayed his operations in the east until the following June. The stunning success of the early days of Barbarossa convinced him that Krafft had great powers.

British intelligence became so concerned at the thought that their opponent's war was being conducted by a mystic that they, for a time, hired the services of astrologer Louis De Wohl. De Wohl was quietly dropped after several months, having failed to procure any hard evidence about Krafft's work.

Krafft warned the Reich leaders that for victory to be certain, the war must end for Germany in 1943. Krafft's star was still in the ascendancy when Rudolf Hess made his astonishing flight to Scotland in 1941. Hitler was outraged. Hess was the biggest occult supporter of them all. Hitler ordered a purge of astrologers, occultists and other sages. Krafft was caught up in this, and was in prison for a year. He was sent to work on horoscopes of Allied generals and admirals. One of his predictions when seeing the charts of both Rommel and Bernard Montgomery, adversaries in the desert war, was: "Well this man Montgomery's chart is certainly stronger than Rommel's."

Krafft's health began to fail and he developed a persecution complex. He wrote to a senior official predicting that British bombs would very soon destroy the Propaganda ministry in Berlin (another true statement). The letter was passed on to the Gestapo who viewed it as treasonous. He was incarcerated in foul conditions, contracted typhus, and eventually died on 8 January 1945 on his way to the Buchenwald concentration camp.

[edit] References

Zodiac and Swastika by Wilhelm Wulff.
Mysteries of the Unexplained Section 2 (Karl Ernst Krafft and the Hitler Horoscopes) by Reuben Stone.
Astrology and Psychological Warfare during World War II by Ellic Howe.