Was the Fuhrer a Black Magician?

  In the second year of married life, the couple decided to move to Liverpool, where they opened a small restaurant in the bustling thoroughfare of Dale Street, but it was only a modest success. Alois was a changeable person, and he decided to sell the restaurant in order to buy a boarding house in another part of the city. The boarding house venture was an utter disaster, and Alois became bankrupt. However, his economic outlook improved shortly afterwards when he gained a fortune after the horse he backed won the Grand National Steeplechase. Alois used the money to set himself up in the safety-razor business. He decided he needed a partner, so he wrote to his brother-in-law Anton Raubal in Vienna, asking him and his wife  to come to Liverpool straight away, and enclosed the travelling expenses.
  On a cold November morning in 1912, Alois and Bridget went to Liverpool's Lime Street Station and waited for the 11.30 train to steam in. When the train arrived, the couple waited with baited breath for Anton and his wife to disembark, but they were disappointed. The outline of a solitary figure descending from the train  was barely visible through the cloud of steam drifting across the platform. A pale-faced young man in a worn-out suit approached and offered his hand to Alois. It was Adolf, the younger half-brother of Alois. Adolf explained that he had come in the place of Anton Raubal, who had not been able to make the journey for various reasons.
  A heated discussion in German broke out between the brothers, and Bridget was so embarrassed, she left them and went home.
  In the evening, Alois brought Adolf to his three-bedroomed flat at 102 Upper Stanhope Street, and seeing that the brothers were now on friendlier terms, Bridget cooked dinner for them. After the meal, Adolf retired to the drawing room, while Bridget scolded her husband for giving his brother such a rough reception. Alois said that Adolf - who he referred to as 'my artist brother' - had deserted from the Austrian army and had been on the run for eighteen months. "That's why he came here to me," Alois explained, "When he confessed this at the station he wondered why I didn't welcome him with open arms."
  At that time in Vienna, there was a rigid system of registration of domicile, and this system made it easy to locate anyone failing to report for military service. Alois said that Adolf had gotten round this by using the identity papers of his dead brother Edmund. But when the Viennese police were finally on to him, Adolf fled to Liverpool after begiing Anton Raubal's wife for the travelling expenses that Alois had sent to her husband.
  Now that Alois had explained the facts, she understood why her husband had made such a scene at the station.
  According to Bridget, her 23-year-old brother-in-law spent most of his time lounging around the house and playing with two-year-old William Patrick. At first, he hardly spoke to her, but gradually, as the weeks went by, Adolf became more friendlier, and began talking about his interest in painting and his future plans. He told Bridget how disappointed he became when his application to become an artist at the Academy of Art in Vienna was turned down by a Jewish professor who said that he couldn't paint, but had a minor talent for architecture.
  Another subject young Adolf discussed - or rather, argued with his sister-in-law, was Germany's future. It was Adolf's unshakeable belief that Germany would one day take its rightful position in the world, and whenever he talked about the 'fatherland', he would unfold a map of the world that belonged to Alois, spread it across the floor, and explain how Germany would first conquer France, and then England. Sometimes Adolf would disrupt Bridget's housework o discuss his political predictions, and on one occasion when Bridget became thoroughly irritated by Adolf's ranting, she carried on cleaning, and Adolf began to scream and shout at her for ignoring him. Bridget retaliated by telling Adolf that he would never live to see England destroyed by Germany, and added that he wasn't even German; just a low-living Austrian deserter. Hitler was so taken aback by Bridget's riposte that he became speechless, and began to shake as he swelled with anger.
  One day, Alois took Adolf on a daytrip to London, where the latter became captivated by the various architectural styles of the city's buildings and landmarks. Adolf was beguiled by the dome of St Paul's Cathedral, and the workings of Tower Bridge. On the train back to Liverpool, the future dictator made several sketches of an enormous version of St Paul's, but Alois said such a proposed construction would be just a pointless folly. Adolf rambled on about his magnificent dream to build a domed temple to outlive the Pyramid of Cheops, but Alois fell asleep.
  In her controversial manuscript, Bridget mentions a Mrs Prentice; a neighbour who was into astrology and the occult. Adolf allegedly spent hours in her home having his cards and horoscopes read. He was enthralled by her prediction that a tremendous future lay ahead of him. Mrs Prentice looked at the Austrian's palm and told him he had a prominent line of destiny, which indicated that he would have a phenomenal career. However, Mrs Prentice noted that Adolf's 'heart line' crossed his destiny line, which meant that his life's goal could be thwarted by his own emotions if they got the better of him.
  Adolf eventually outstayed his welcome, and Alois told him to go home. In May 1913, Adolf left England and returned to Germany. Bridget says in her manuscript that she blamed herself for turning loose a man who plunged the world into its costliest war, and regretted not teaching him English.
  Many historians who have analysed the manuscript believe that Adolf's trip to Liverpool is entirely credible, and furthermore, November 1912 to May 1913 is something of a lost period in the Fuhrer's life. Hitler never mentioned his stay in Liverpool in 'Mein Kampf', but then that could be because he didn't want to publicise his shameful days as a draftdodging drop-out. Ironically, the last bombs to fall on Liverpool demolished the very house in Upper Stanhope Street, where Hitler once lived.
  Hitler returned to Vienna, where he lived on his wits and made a precarious living selling below-average postcard sketches, beating carpets and doing any odd jobs that came his way. He lived in a dosshouse, infested with lice, and continually wore a long black overcoat given to him by a sympathetic Jewish tailor.
  To escape the cold, Adolf would often wander the corridors of the Hofburg Museum, where he would view a particular exhibit which never failed to mesemerise him; the Holy Lance. This was the exhibit which was said to be the very spear which pierced Christ's side when he had given up his ghost on the cross. According to legend, the 'Spear of Destiny' as it was called, belonged to the Roman soldier Longinus, who smote Jesus. In the romance of King Arthur, the merchant Joseph of Arimathea is said to have brought the spear to Britain, and sir Balim the Savage used it to wound King Pelham. It then went to Austria, and somehow wound up in the Hofburg Museum as part of the Habsburg regalia. Hitler was well-read, and he knew the Biblical reference about the spear from John 19:33-37 by heart:
 

But when they came to Jesus, and saw that he
was dead already, they broke not his legs: But
one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side,
and forthwith came there out blood and water. And
he saw it bare record, and his record is true: and
he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe.
For these things were done that the scripture should
be fulfilled, A bone of him shall not be broken. And
again another scripture saith, They shall look on him
whom they pierced.
 

By putting every ounce of nervous energy into
the effort, the Fuhrer succeeded in pushing
Mussolini back onto the rails. In those four
days Mussolini underwent a complete change.
When he got out of the train on his arrival he
the Fuhrer thought he looked like a broken old
man. When he left again he was in high fettle,
ready for anything.

  Hitler's power of suggestion and motivation was also experienced by Karl Donitz, commander of the U-Boat fleet. Donitz once said of the Fuhrer's uncanny infuence: "I purposely went very seldom to his headquarters, for I had the feeling that I would best preserve my power of initiative and also because, after several days at headquarters, I always had the feeling that I had to disengage myself from his powers of suggestion. I was doubtless more fortunate than his staff, who were constantly exposed to his power and personality."
  On another occasion, Dr Hjalmar Schacht, the Nazi Party's financial wizard, asked Hermann Goring to discuss a minor point of economic policy with Hitler. Goring promised he would raise the matter with the Fuhrer, but when he came face to face with Hitler, he found that he could not bring himself to speak. Goring later admitted to Schacht: "I often make up my mind to say something to him, but when I meet him face to face my heart sinks."
  Many in the higher echelons of the Nazi Party were convinced that Hitler was possessed. Hermann Rauschning, the Governor of Danzig and confidant of the German dictator, claimed that Hitler often suffered terrible nightmares, and awoke many times to see a phantom-like being in his room. Rauschning gives an account of the Fuhrer's night-terror in his book 'Hitler Speaks':

A person close to Hitler told me that he wakes
up in the night, screaming and in convulsions.
He calls for help, and appears to be half
paralysed. He is seized with a panic that makes
him tremble until the bed shakes. He utters
confused and unintelligible sounds, gasping, as
if on the point of suffocation. The same person
described to me one of these fits, with details
I would refuse to believe had I not complete
confidence in my informant.
Hitler was standing up in his room, swaying
and looking all round as if he were lost. "It's
he, it's he," he groaned; "he's come for me!"
His lips were white; he was sweating profusely...
suddenly he screamed: "There! There! Over in the
corner! He is there!"

  But there was nobody in the corner. All the same, Hitler lived in fear of his nocturnal demon. Many of the SS guards thought the demon possessed their Fuhrer. In the Bible several people possessed by demons are described as falling to the floor and frothing at the mouth. During his screaming rages Hitler did the same. Rauschning believed that the man who caused the deaths of more than thirty million people was but a mouthpiece for something evil:

One cannot help thinking that of him as a
medium. For most of the time, mediums are
ordinary, insignificant people. Suddenly
they are endowed with what seems to be
supernatural powers which set them apart
from the rest of humanity. These powers are
something that is outside their true
personality - visitors, as it were, from
another planet. The medium is possessed.
Once the crisis is past, they fall back
again into mediocrity. It was in this way,
no doubt, that Hitler was possessed by
forces outside himself - almost demonic
forces of which the individual named Hitler
was only the temporary vehicle.

  Curiously enough, many other observers of Hitler's oratorial skills reached the same conclusions as Rauschninger. "I looked into his eyes  the eyes of a medium in a trance. Sometimes the speaker's body seemed inhabited by something." Bouchez remarked.
  The Devil's children have the Devil's luck is an old adage that certainly applied to Hitler. In World War One, Corporal Hitler fell asleep in a trench and dreamt a shell killed him. He awoke in a sweat and ran from the spot. The bemused soldier who took his place was blown to bits by an enemy shell minutes later. Then in 1923, Hitler lead a column of National Socialists through the streets of Munich. The police machine gunned the column, killing sixteen storm troopers. Hermann Goering was badly wounded, but Hitler somehow esaped injury. On 20 July 1944, a bomb planted by Colonel Berthold von Stauffenberg under Hitler's conference table exploded. The Fuhrer survived the assassination attempt and Stauffenberg was shot on the following day. His 150 conspirators were also executed.
  But Hitler's luck was dealed a severe blow when he allowed the Spear of Destiny to leave him. Because of heavy allied bombing on Nuremberg in October 1944, Hitler had the spear and the rest of the Habsburg regalia transferred to a specially constructed reinforced vault.
  Within six months, the Allies were closing in on the Fuhrer in his Berlin bunker. He knew all hope of victory had long gone, and that it would only be a matter of time before the end came. But for some reason, Hitler waited until 30 April 1945 until he shot himself through the head. It may have been a coincidence, but Walpurgis Night falls on the 30 April. It is an ancient occult feast when the demons are said to hold high revelry under their chief - the Devil.
   On the day  of Hitler's death, Lieutenant William Horn of the American Seventh Army located the Spear of Destiny in its underground bunker. The spear of Longinius was lying on a bed of red velvet. Horn took possession of the relic on behalf of the United States government.

CONDENSED FROM "STRANGE BUT TRUE" BY TOM SLEMEN
ISBN: 0-75252-407-0 (PARRAGON)

See also "Hitler Lived Here

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