James Parris - The Astrologer: How British Intelligence Plotted to Read Hitlers Mind

First published 2021

The History Press

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James Parris, 2021

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ISBN 978 0 7509 9779 9

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For Isabel, who had her doubts

Theres some ill planet reigns:

I must be patient till the heavens look

With an aspect more favourable.

Baron Harald Keun von Hoogerwoerd, astrologer, to Louis de Wohl, 1930:

Everybody has felt that at some period of his life he was lucky or unlucky. Well, we know when we are going to be lucky and when unlucky One is, as it were, in the position of a general who has at his call an excellent secret service. He will be informed in time about the movement of the enemy and of every movement of the allies too.

Louis de Wohl, Secret Service of the Sky, 1938:

I have come to the firm conclusion that a knowledge of astrology is one of the most valuable assets of human life. The use of this knowledge is as ideal as it is practical and I have the feeling of a man who discovered a Bonanza of incalculable value and calls to his friends: Come here! Here is Gold! Enough Gold for us all!

Memorandum, Advice tendered to Herr Hitler, 30 September 1940, Rear Admiral John Godfrey, Director of Naval Intelligence:

It has been known for some time that Hitler attaches importance to advice tendered to him by astrologers, and that he studies the horoscopes, not only of himself, but of his own generals and of his more influential opponents The significance of Hitlers astrological researches is not therefore whether or not we believe in them or if they represent the truth, but that Hitler believes in them, and to a certain extent bases his acts on the opinions and predictions of his astrological experts.

Louis de Wohl, The Orchestra of Hitlers Death, January 1941:

His very love of life will increase his fear of death By his astrological advisers he is told this: Your death will be Neptunian. This means that it will be mysterious and strange, you will disappear, and the people will not for a long time, if ever, actually know how you have died.

Dick White, Assistant Director MI5 B Division, to MI5 Deputy Director General Jasper Harker, 19 February 1942:

I have never liked Louis de Wohl he strikes me as a charlatan and an imposter. He at one time exercised some influence upon highly placed British Intelligence officers through his star gazing profession.

MI5 officer Toby Caulfields observations on Louis de Wohl, 24 September 1942:

Louis de Wohl is widely known as an astrologer and, despite the fact that many people regard him as a charlatan, there are still a great many people eager to take his astrological advice. He has great gifts as a psychologist and excellent insight into the Continental mind.

Lieutenant Colonel Gilbert Lennox, Operations, MI5, 14 January 1943:

The only interest of astrological forecasts to Service Departments, or for that matter to anyone else, should be that it may be interesting and informative to know that the advice given in these reports may be the astrological advice that Hitler is receiving from his astrologers. The danger is that all this sort of pseudo-science is most insidious, and unless you have a complete sceptic or a very strong-minded man dealing with it, quite the wrong point of view may be indulged in.

Ellic Howe, typographer and printer working for Political Warfare Executive, on Louis de Wohl, early 1943:

He asked me to repeat my name and how to spell Ellic. Then, without lowering his persistent gaze, he took a pencil in each hand and simultaneously wrote Ellic Howe, normally with his right hand and in mirror or reversed writing with his left one. I felt he was trying to hypnotise me and looked away. That broke the tension and we got down to business.

All warfare is a bloody mix of nightmare and farce, but Britains engagement of an astrologer in the fight against Nazi Germany raised the element of farce to a new level. When Louis de Wohl began his wartime involvement with British Intelligence in 1940, he was a practising astrologer in London with a clientele composed of in an MI5 officers words the good and the great. De Wohl had also been a prolific novelist and writer for the screen in pre-Hitler Germany. He had a network of acquaintances and friends among artists, actors, film directors and diplomats in Britain and among refugees from Nazism in the United States. He was at heart an entertainer who saw the distinction between reality and fantasy as fluid rather than rigidly clear cut. Born with the Sun in Aquarius, de Wohl once described the signs typical native, knowing he would thereby reveal part of himself to his reader:

He is everything at one and the same time, conventional and eccentric, conservative and onto anything new like a flash. He has a great sense of the romantic. His strongest asset is his imagination, which stops at nothing. He is gay, lovable, good-natured, but nevertheless keeping an eye open for himself Sometimes his imagination kicks over the traces and he builds castles in the air Everything originates in his mind and imagination. He can make plans like no other can.

De Wohl had become an active informant for MI5, the Security Service, in 1938, three years after his arrival in England from Germany, feeding scraps to his handler about the questions his astrological clients were asking, what concerned them, the advice he was giving. Why, how and who made the initial contact has never been revealed and de Wohl avoids mentioning in books dealing with his life to the role he played informing on others. What evidence there is emerges patchily from the surviving personal file MI5 kept on him.

For a few of his intelligence contacts there were elements of de Wohls complex character that never quite rang true, the worrying impression he was playing some private and mysterious game, perhaps even a treacherous one. Did Louis de Wohl believe in astrology? a fellow practitioner in the strange concoction of science, art and intuition once asked himself. I began to doubt it: he could talk of his practice in the same superficial and often brilliant manner as of any other matter, be it women, card games, a new fashion or the shortage of cigars. And yet for a time British Military and Naval Intelligence were willing to listen to what he had to say.