The Swiss Karl Ernst Krafft predicted the assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler by worker Georg Elser in November 1939. The Nostradamus expert immediately went to work for German war propaganda. But in the early summer of 1941 everything suddenly changed.
He was sure his calculations were correct. So, in early November 1939, Karl Ernst Krafft took pen and paper and wrote a letter to an acquaintance who worked in the Main Reich Security Office, the headquarters of the Third Reich’s terror.
However, this acquaintance of Karl Heinz Pelzel did not take Krafft’s prediction seriously. It sounded too fantastic to him, for the letter writer and the astrologer predicted that the “leader” was in grave danger. There would be a bomb attack on Adolf Hitler between November 7th and November 10th.
Hitler remained unharmed in the assassination attempt
But Krafft’s prediction turned out to be true. In fact, worker Georg Elser attempted to assassinate Hitler with a bomb on the night of November 9, 1939, two months after the start of the Second World War.
The explosive device went off and there were people killed and injured. However Hitler remained unharmed as he left the scene, the Munich Bürgerbräukeller, earlier than planned.
He didn’t know Kraftt’s prediction. The 39-year-old Swiss man really wanted to change that so he wrote a few more lines, this time in the form of a telegram. The target this time: Rudolf Hess, “deputy Führer”, one of the highest-ranking people in the Third Reich.
Arrest instead of praise
However, the results of the contact were completely different from what Krafft expected, as he was arrested by the Secret State Police (Gestapo). It was not wrong for security forces to wonder how a Swiss citizen who had lived in Germany for two years could have predicted the attack if he was unaware of it. Or was he even involved in the crime?
Krafft’s unfortunate situation. He probably knew about the brutality of the Nazi investigative authorities, as he would likely have been tortured during interrogation. But the Gestapo didn’t manage to get anything from him.
That’s not even possible, because Karl Ernst Krafft actually had nothing to do with the assassination attempt. He eventually succeeded in convincing the Gestapo of his innocence.
Now others were aware of it: Hess and SS chief Heinrich Himmler – both supporters of esoteric theories and believed that this Swiss man had clairvoyant abilities. And Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels also focused on Krafft.
Early interest in astrology
Krafft was born in Basel in 1900 into a wealthy family. His interest in astrology was awakened at an early age. He was 19 years old when his sister died and her death was an opportunity for the whole family to get involved in astrology and séances. But no one took this issue as seriously as Karl Ernst. Although he studied subjects such as mathematics, he increasingly focused on astrology.
After all, you can make a living this way. Between 1926 and 1936 he worked for the Swiss banker Oscar Gruhl, who also owned the Globus department store and the famous publisher Orell Füssli. Without Krafft’s astrological assessment, no potential employee would be hired. Apparently he was often correct in his assessments.
He also wrote books and gave lectures. Among other things, he was concerned with the question of whether the stars at birth could predict a person’s future career. Its popularity did not increase as much as in National Socialist Germany.
And finally he moved there because ideologically he sympathized with the Nazi regime. This is how he predicted the assassination attempt on Hitler.
Nostradamus and “Greater Germany”
Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels did not believe in astrology because he considered it quackery. But he saw another opportunity. He wanted to use Krafft, considered the French astrologer Nostradamus, for his propaganda purposes.
He supposedly used Nostradamus’ prophecies to predict “Greater Germany’s” victory in the war. Goebbels hoped that this would make a good impression on the German people and their opponents. He was said to be correct by the second assessment.
Krafft was officially employed as a translator at the “German News Agency”. But the real work lies in interpreting Nostradamus’ texts. The “result” is as desired. Krafft “discovered” a “pro-German attitude” in French people living in the 16th century. He believed he recognized him as the “prophet of Greater Germany.”
On the other side of the English Channel, Swiss activity in Nazi service did not go unnoticed. The British secret service MI 5 and the Special Operations Executive (SOE) believed that Hitler hired a personal palace astrologer – this rumor still persists to this day, although it has nothing to do with reality.
The British also employed a fortune teller
The British then also employed a man who claimed to be an expert in psychological warfare. This is the Jewish writer Louis de Wohl, who emigrated from Germany in 1935.
His argument convinced the British: “If I make the same calculations as Hitler’s astrologers, then I know what kind of advice Hitler got from people whose judgment he trusted. It stands to reason that this would have been in Britain’s favor.”
For a while everything went according to Krafft’s plan. But then a sudden accident occurred. When Rudolf Heß secretly flew to England in May 1941 to negotiate peace with the British government alone and without Hitler’s knowledge, the Nazi leadership needed a scapegoat.
Hess was depicted as sick and confused, and his passion for astrology was cited as a justification for this condition. This had consequences: Hundreds of astrologers in Germany were arrested shortly after the flight to England.
The fortune tellers are blind
Goebbels, who considered all the occult activities of some high-ranking Nazi leaders such as Himmler as a thorn in his side, was pleased. “This vague lie will finally be eradicated,” he wrote in his diary. And he scoffed: “Surprisingly, not a single astrologer predicted he would be arrested. Bad professional sign.”
Karl Ernst Krafft also experienced this fate of arrest. He was arrested on June 11, 1941 and spent a year in prison. His hopes that high-ranking Nazi officials he knew personally would help him did not come true. Hitler was very upset by Hess’s actions – everyone was afraid of responsibility for this matter.
In 1942 Krafft was released, but he was not exonerated. He was interned and forced to compile horoscopes of Allied statesmen and Russian generals for the Ministry of Propaganda.
Krafft hated this work because to him it was “fair astrology.” But he must obey. His wife later described this forced activity as “coerced mental labor.”
Prisons and concentration camps
And this “forced labor” made him sick. After suffering a nervous breakdown, he refused to continue making the horoscopes. He was then put back in prison. Here he fell ill again, this time with typhus. After some time he was sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp and finally to the Buchenwald concentration camp in November 1944.
His wife asked the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs to seek his release. As early as February 1945, the ministry assured that it was trying to protect Swiss prisoners in Germany as best as possible.
By this time, Karl Ernst Krafft had been dead for several weeks. He died on January 8. His career shows that perpetrators involved with Satan can also be victims.
