Friends of the Museum may have already read this great article (it appeared in a recent newsletter). We thought it was so interesting that it deserved to be read by as many people as possible so here it is! Many thanks to Kerriann Godwin for providing this and letting us share it.
With
a pitchfork as his only weapon, David McLean stood over the injured German
soldier. ‘My name is Captain Alfred Horn and I must speak with the Duke of
Hamilton.’
Seventy-five
years ago, on the 10th May 1941, Hitler’s private secretary, Rudolf Hess, flew
solo to Britain and parachuted from his Messerschmitt 110, injuring his leg as
he exited the plane, and landed in McLean’s farm. Hess’s target, Dungavel
Castle near Glasgow, was the home of the Duke of Hamilton. Hess was planning to
meet with the Duke, who he wrongly believed was sympathetic to the Nazi cause,
to discuss a possible peace treaty with Britain. The Nazi’s were planning their
attack on Russia (Operation Barbarossa), and he hoped he could negotiate with
Britain so that that the Germans would not have to fight a war on two fronts.
Thus began one of the most intriguing incidents of World War Two.
Rather
than calling the Duke who was unaware of Hess’s plan and out of the country at
the time, McLean summoned the Home Guard. The Führer’s deputy was arrested and
imprisoned. Prisoner ‘7’, as he was known, committed suicide at the age of 93
within the walls of Berlin’s Spandau prison. He had been its sole inmate since
the 1960s.
Since
his incarceration, conspiracy theorists have put forward many ideas relating to
the reasons for his flight. Astrologers, occultists and fortune tellers feature
strongly in these theories and there may be reason to believe some of them are
not as far-fetched as was originally thought. It was known that astrologically
advantageous dates were being used to plan successful attacks against the
Allies and MI6 had a number of spies working to uncover members of the Nazi
party who had an interest in the occult. One of the operatives working in this
area was Ceil Williamson, founder of The Museum of Witchcraft in Cornwall.
Others included Ian Fleming, Dennis Wheatley and possibly Aleister Crowley.
Above: Cecil Williamson in military uniform.
Williamson,
the son of a career military man, had had an interest in the occult since a
meeting with a village wise-woman in Devon as a child. He was well-connected
and kept salubrious company including the Egyptologist Wallace Budge,
anthropologist Margaret Murray, and author Montague Summers. In January, 1938,
he was approached by Colonel Maltby of MI6 and asked if he would be interested
in ‘helping with occult matters’ in Germany and Europe. It seems that the
middle and upper classes, particularly in Germany, had been swept up in a wave
of interest in the occult, especially astrology, fortune telling, and the works
of Nostradamus.
The
Witchcraft Research Centre was thus born and Williamson made many trips to
Germany ‘collecting’ folklore tales and discovering the esoteric interests of
the German upper classes. After a particularly fruitful trip, he returned with
a list of 2000 names of Nazi military personnel who had an interest in the
occult. It is possible that this was the information the British Intelligence
had been waiting for. They could develop a plan to bring down party members,
uncover secret military information, and thereby help to bring about an end to
the war?
When
he sold his museum to Graham King in 1996, Williamson was quite open with King
about his part in WWII and discussed the plan to lure Hess to Britain. The
plot, he said, involved a faked Nostradamus quatrain, a break-in at a French
bookshop, and a Japanese astrologer. Before the war Cecil had worked in the
film industry, even directing the movie ‘The Soho Conspiracy’, so one could imagine
his story as an outlandish film script: but was it?
Above: Cecil in more witchy attire!
Hess
and his wife Ilse were extremely interested in astrology and Nostradamus, as
were many of his friends and associates. Albrecht Haushofer was a keen
astrologer and is thought to have instigated the correspondence with The Duke
of Hamilton who he and Hess had met at the 1938 Olympics. This correspondence
was intercepted by MI5 so the Duke was never aware of the letters informing him
of Hess’s anticipated arrival. Haushofer’s father, Karl, was once the German
military attaché to Japan and is said to have become interested in eastern
esotericism. He helped establish the Thule Society (a German occultist and
folklore group focussed on the origins of the Aryan race).
Karl
Krafft, sometimes referred to as Hitler’s astrologer, was also an associate of
Hess. Krafft, whose birthday fell on May 10th, had warned the Reich
that, according to his astrological findings, for victory to be certain, the war
must end for Germany in 1943. On the night of Hess’s flight, May 10th,
there was a rare conjunction of 6 planets in Hitler’s sun sign Taurus. Perhaps
this seemingly auspicious date along with information purportedly coming
directly from Nostradamus urged Hess to undertake his mission.
Williamson
told King that master-forgers and paper-makers from the Bodleian Library in
Oxford rewrote a page of Nostradamus’ predictions, Les Propheties, and sewed it
into a book of prophecies to appear as a lost quatrain (prophetic poem). This
book was planted in a bookshop in Paris and a Japanese astrologer who was
working with Ilse Hess was informed of its whereabouts. The bookshop was
subsequently broken into; the book was stolen and transferred to Germany where
it was ‘fed to Hess by astrologers in the pay of the Allies’. Williamson went
on to say that the prediction stated that ‘a man called Hess would fly to
Scotland to end the war’ thus sowing a seed that Hess would act as an emissary
to bring about Hitler’s supposed hope for a peaceful settlement with Britain.
Despite
information to the contrary, Hitler claimed to have known nothing of Hess’s
plans and ridiculed him as a madman. On June 9th 1941 he implemented
Aktion Hess which involved arresting
and imprisoning hundreds of astrologers, faith-healers and occultists who he
blamed for Hess’s actions. Propaganda minister Goebbels, an avid studier of
Nostradamus himself, wrote in his diary ‘…an order against occultism,
clairvoyancy etc – the obscure rubbish will now be eliminated once and for all.
The miracle men, Hess’s darlings, will now be put under lock and key.’ In a
later entry he writes ‘Haushofer and his son have been forced out of public
life. They are both responsible for peddling mystic rubbish and have the Hess
affair on their consciences.’ Albrecht was shot by the Nazis in 1945 and Karl
and his wife committed suicide in 196. Karl Krafft died from typhus on his way
to Buchenwald prison camp in 1945.
After
Williamson died, Graham King was tasked with sorting through his belongings and
found several boxes tied with pink ribbons and marked ‘Top Secret’ in the loft
of his house. He did not look inside but when he returned several days later
they were gone. Four boxes did remain but they were all empty. One was marked
‘Trip to USA’, another ‘Tricked’, the third ‘Returned to UK’, and the last
‘Rudolf Hess Mission’. The boxes still exist, kept in the house of a local
Boscastle author, but what of their contents? Who stole in to remove the top
secret files and why did they leave these four empty boxes? If only King had
stolen a look inside when he had the chance.
Above: from left to right Cecil, Graham and Robert Lenkiewicz.
Williamson
said he felt sorry for Hess as he was treated very badly. The Russians insisted
he remain in prison long after he would normally have been paroled. He made
several suicide attempts in prison until his final attempt was successful in
1987.
Hess
claimed that the indiscriminate bombing of thousands of women and children had
motivated his flight. He was also worried about entering into a war on two
fronts. Some say he was insane; he certainly pretended to be at his Nuremburg
trial. Perhaps when the government files are made public in 1917 we may finally
find the true answer to what made Hess believe he could broker a peace deal
with Britain when he made his flight here 75 years ago.
Did
astrologers and occultists really influence his decision? And did the founder
of a little museum in Cornwall, The Museum of Witchcraft, really play an
integral part in luring Hess to this ill-omened meeting in Scotland? We may
soon find out.
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