One of the best-known stories of World War II is that the Nazi leaders made their decisions based on these types of predictions. However, the rigorous work of the British historian Ellic Howe has shown that the Nazi hierarchs did not take into account the relative positions of the planets in the sky to make any important decisions. There is only one exception: the case of Rudolf Hess , number three in the party after Hitler and Göring.
It all started in full confrontation with England, when Hitler began planning the invasion of Russia. A decision that his generals feared would lead to disaster by opening a second front in Europe. Hess thought that England would sign a secret peace agreement with Germany and decided to fly there secretly. In January 1941 Ernst Schulte-Strathaus, an astrologer on Hess’s staff, told him that on May 10 there would be a planetary conjunction: the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus would occupy an arc of only 8º. in Taurus – more or less the one that encompasses our fist with the extended arm. On the other hand, a Munich astrologer named Maria Nagengaast told Hess that this would be an auspicious day for traveling abroad. The rest is history: Hess’s peace terms seemed like a joke to Churchill who detained him as a prisoner of war. To Hitler, Hess had been driven mad by astrologers . On June 9, the Gestapo, in the so-called “Aktion Hess” operation, arrested between 300 and 1,000 astrologers who ended up in the infamous Nazi death camps.
Planetary conjunctions also had their effect on the greatest conqueror of all time, Genghis Khan , also one of the greatest genocides in history: 20 million dead behind his back. The Mongols often looked to the sky, where they saw portents and omens: the campaign against the people of the Chinese province of Honan stopped on May 21, 1221 because of a solar eclipse. The celestial obsession of this people was such that Years later, Marco Polo counted more than 5,000 astrologers and fortune tellers in the Mongolian capital alone.
The planets and Genghis Khan
In March 1226 Genghis Khan returned victorious from his campaigns in Central Asia, and his next step was to declare war on the Tangut empire in northwest China. After defeating them in December, he ordered his soldiers to exterminate the entire Tangut race. On December 12, the five planets visible to the naked eye (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) were concentrated in Capricorn. His astrologer interpreted the conjunction as a sign from heaven against such barbarism . The emperor complied and although the order was not carried out throughout the conquered territory, at least the planets were responsible for the salvation of 100,000 innocent people.
Planetary conjunctions have heralded dire situations , such as floods and deluges. On September 14, 1186, the 5 planets met within 11 degrees of each other, with the Moon and Sun less than 3 degrees apart. The bishop of the Syrian Orthodox Church wrote: “All astronomers predict that there will be a universal flood and that all mankind might perish. Kilij Arslan II, Sultan of Rüm has bought into this nonsense. He has spent vast sums digging up the ground and building a house inside.”
Omens of the end of the world
But no other conjunction has caused more panic than that of February 19, 1524 , when the five planets and the Sun were concentrated in Pisces. The first to warn of the impending disaster was the German astrologer Johann Stöffler in 1499. His professional colleagues took him at his word and spent the following years amplifying his predictions, turning it into a Universal Flood . Thousands of pamphlets were distributed, the most widely used means of communication at the time, and more than 160 books were printed: it was a publishing boom . There were those who built an ark in the style of Noah. The court astrologer in Berlin, Johann Carion, set the day of judgment for July 15, 1524.
Something similar happened with the famous alignment of 1982 , with the 9 planets placed on the other side of the Sun at an angle of 90º: we had a great catastrophe just around the corner. Even two astrophysicists, John Gribbin and Stephen Plagemann, published in 1974 The Jupiter Effect where they said that the combined gravitational effect of the planets would cause a super earthquake that would destroy California. What actually happened is that the book became a best-seller and the authors made huge profits.
The only influence of the planets on human history has to do with how much we want to believe that they influence us.
