by Ken Asamatsu
The Führer, enraged by the assassination attempt, ordered a complete purge of all involved. Having survived the bombing, he was now further convinced of his own destiny to greatness.
In the end, Claus’s aborted exorcism called down even greater calamities. Everyone involved in the plot was stripped of their rank and honors and executed, and all the Jews in the internment camps were to be “disposed of.”
Claus was shot to death at one in the afternoon on July 20th.
Former Chief of Staff Beck and Field Marshal Rommel committed suicide in the following days.
And the others?
They were condemned to be hung from meat hooks (or with piano wire) at a butcher’s shop. This was filmed by the Gestapo’s photography team.
Lastly, the author would like to record a certain “myth” reported to be circulating in Berlin upon its fall on May 2nd, 1945.
The myth claims that as the Allied army advanced on Berlin, a certain SS unit resisted them until its utter destruction.
The unit was quickly annihilated, and when the Allied soldiers inspected the bodies, they were shocked to a man. For the whole unit was made up of Asian men dressed in SS uniforms—clearly, they were the Tibetans invited by Hitler and Hess to Germany during the war.
One other thing must be recorded.
The July 20th plot to assassinate Hitler included one more name: Albrecht Haushofer. Albrecht was the son of German geographer and geopoliticist Karl Haushofer.
After the failed assassination attempt, Albrecht was jailed in Berlin’s Moabit prison, where he wrote eighty sonnets. Sonnet thirty-eight is titled ‘Father’ and reads in part:
It was father’s job to return the devil to his hole.
Father broke the devil’s seal.
Father didn’t feel the devil’s presence.
And father unleashed the devil on the world.
It has not been confirmed whether or not Albrecht Haushofer ever actually met Oberst Claus von Stauffenberg.
(This story was written with reference to Yasushi Yamaguchi’s essay “The Plot to Assassinate Hitler” in History Reader World: The Enigma of Adolf Hitler.)
Notes
The Corporal’s Self Portrait
1 Order of Starry Wisdom
The Order of Starry Wisdom, or O∵S∵W∵ (∵ being a symbol of the association’s connections to Freemasonry, and its worship of the dark gods. If the association was on the side of light, they would use the reverse ∴ symbol) is a magical secret society. The O∵S∵W∵ was founded in 1844 by American scholar Enoch Bowen after he returned from an expedition to Egypt. Upon its founding, the society was denounced by local Baptist churches. Then, from around 1846, a number of suspicious disappearances occurred in the sect’s hometown of Providence, Rhode Island. Later speculation assumes these people were sacrificed in the order’s blood rituals. These rumors led to a mob of local Irishmen attacking the temple, housed in the former Free-Will Church on Federal Hill, in 1869. This led to further denunciation of the cult and its members by local residents, and by the end of 1877 everyone connected to the O∵S∵W∵ had left Providence. No one knows what happened afterwards, or what kind of world-wide network of “new religions” it spawned.
2 Abramelin
Also written “Abra-Melin.” Abra-Melin is the name of an Egyptian mage, most likely fictional. His supposed work, The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, was translated into English by Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers (see below). The Abramelin school of magic is based on a system of asceticism that includes meditation, abstinence, and seclusion, and performs spells via a “Magical square” (a grid containing magical words or numbers, which differs from a magical circle) with the goal of controlling demons. However, they say that mages who attempt this but make even the smallest mistake are often driven to suicide. Furthermore, the only ones allowed to undertake these spells are mages between the ages of twenty-six and fifty-five.
3 Azzoth
In Zurich in 1911, the German magus Klingen Mergelsheim used Abramelin magic to communicate with this mysterious greater demon. The demon named itself Azzoth and revealed to Mergelsheim visions of the apocalypse. These were recorded in the magical text The Deceits of Azzoth. This tome was translated into Japanese in 1983 and became a bestseller in occult circles. However, in 1995 the text was withdrawn by the publisher. It is now out of print.
The Mask of Yoth Tlaggon
4 Heinrich Himmler
Born in 1900. Put in charge of the Nazi SS at age twenty-eight, and at thirty-six became chief of the Abwehr, the German intelligence agency. In character, he was a loving father, impeccable leader, and reliable comrade. At the same time, he showed signs of being an obsessed religious fanatic and twisted fantasist. In other words, he possessed the complex character of the inveterate occultist. He believed in reincarnation and indeed that he himself was the second coming of Heinrich the First, a tenth-century Saxon king. He said that the king came to him in dreams and that he conversed with the spirit. He also planned to revive the Teutonic Knights, a secret society from the Middle Ages. He purchased Wewelsberg Castle near Paderborn in Westphalia and would gather the SS leadership there to perform magical rites. They say that Himmler’s nicknames among the SS included “the riddle-less sphinx” and “man from another world.”
5 Zarah Leander
Actress famed for her beauty during the Nazi era. Born in Sweden. She made her debut in 1937 and was known as “the German Greta Garbo.”
6 Goebbels
Born in 1897. Received a doctorate from Heidelberg University in 1921. Put in charge of Nazi propaganda in 1933. He used a variety of propaganda techniques for the Third Reich to maintain widespread public agitation. He used the prophecies of Nostradamus for political propaganda, and the works of popular occult author Erik Jan Hanussen and astrologer Wilhelm Wulff for propaganda purposes, but did not himself believe in the occult or astrology.
7 Deutches Ahnenerbe
This research institution was set up in 1935 under Himmler’s sponsorship. The primary object was to “aid in occult research regarding the origins of the Aryan people.” In particular, its members sought scientific proof of normally incredible “scientific” theories, such as the Welteislehre (a theory that massive space-borne ice chunks fell into the sun and caused the explosion of celestial bodies, giving birth to the universe) of Hans Horbiger, who preached the real-life existence of Atlantis and Lemuria, or the Hollow Earth theory of Karl Nerbart. They also performed research into traditional magic. The Ahnenerbe also performed experiments on concentration camp prisoners.
8 Occult Purge of 1934
German President Paul von Hindenburg died August 2nd, 1934. Hitler became head of state in his stead. That same year, Hitler ordered a purge of anyone in Germany involved in the occult. Hence, Berlin police headquarters banned all kinds of fortune telling and began confiscating German occult publications. As a result, theosophical societies, Freemason-style esoteric societies, magical societies, and others were forced to disband, close, or move underground. Amid all this, the leader of the German Ordo Templi Orientis (O•T•O), Karl Germer, was arrested by the Gestapo. After being held at the Alexander Platz jail, he was transferred to Esterwegen concentration camp. Germer was placed into solitary confinement, where he proceeded to practice intense meditation. Eventually, he was able to make contact with the Holy Guardian Angel. With that being’s aid, he was released after ten months without explanation. In 1941, he escaped to America, where he met up with Aleister Crowley. The two believed that “Hitler had studied the Book of the Law and that references and allusions to spiritual tomes in his conversations and speeches demonstrated that he was under the influence of extraterrestrial intelligence.”
9 Guido von List
1848–1919. When he was fourteen years old, in Vienna, he swore that on reaching adulthood he would build a temple to Wotan, the h
ighest god of Germanic mythology. As an adult, he joined a pagan religious group called the Austrian Alps Association. This group assumed a stiff-armed salute with the greeting “Heil” as an expression of their pagan beliefs. The holiest symbol of their faith was the swastika. In 1908, von List himself formed a secret society called the High Armanen Order.
This order was reformed in 1912 as the Germanenorden. After World War I, it merged with author Rudolf von Sebottendorff’s (formerly Rudolf Glauer, 1875–1945) Thule Gesellschaft. Their goal was a synthesis of magical ritual, mysticism, and pan-Germanism, which eventually influenced Nazi ideology.
10 Adolf Lanz
Born in 1874. Former monk and occultist. Friend of von List. Under the pen name Ordo Novi Templi PONT, he founded his own occult magazine, Ostara, in which he published articles on German nationalism, occultism, and eroticism. Hitler was a fan of Ostara when he was in Vienna and was influenced by Lanz’s racist occultism.
11 Friedrich von Junzt
German Occultist. 1795–1840. He traveled the world, joining countless secret societies and reading grimoires, notes, and fragments. He compiled his knowledge in the forbidden tome Unaussprechlichen Kulten. He continued working on an addition to the book until his mysterious death: he was found in a room barred from the inside, his throat torn by taloned claws, with the draft he was working on ripped to shreds. The French occultist Alexis Ladeau reassembled the scraps, but after reading what was written there he cut his own throat with a razor. The original German tome was published in Dusseldorf in 1839, and an unauthorized English version appeared in 1845 from Bridewall (London). A heavily edited edition was published in New York in 1909 by Golden Goblin Press. It also came to be known by the name The Black Book, a term used since the Middle Ages to refer to those tomes used in black magic ceremonies. Clearly, this is because the rites described within helped guide modern practitioners in their ceremonies.
12 H. P. Blavatsky
Russian Theosophist. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (Russian: Yelena Petrovna Blavatskaya). 1831–1891. Gifted with psychic powers from childhood, she traveled to London in 1851, where she met the Master Morya, whom she described as “superhuman” and a spiritual monk. She became the central figure in an ideology called Theosophy. Seminal theosophical texts include her works The Secret Doctrine and Isis Unveiled. Certain of Blavatsky’s ideas, such as that God intends global upheavals to push humanity towards spiritual development, or that humanity has progressed through seven levels of spiritual development and will soon become divine, had a large influence on Nazi ideology.
13 Oomoto
Also known as Oomoto-kyo, this is a religion founded in 1892 and often categorized as one of the “new Japanese religions” originating from Shinto. One of its biggest supporters was Asano Wasaburo, a teacher at the Japanese Naval War College in the early twentieth century. His influence led to several important members of the Japanese elite joining. Its early tenets, which led to several government attacks on the church, included forced spiritual possession and worship of the emperor as a true god, though these were later abandoned. The religion now professes to be working toward world peace and unity, and uses the Esperanto language in its liturgy. The Inventor of Esperanto, L. L. Zamenhof, has been recognized as a deity as well.
14 Thule
The Greek explorer Pytheas of Massalia described Thule as the unknown northern boundary of the world following his travels between 330 and 320 BCE. Three men connected this idea to Nazi mythology as the polar origin of the Aryan race: List, Sebottendorff, and von Liebenfels. The three took spiritual guidance from the works of Blavatsky and twisted them to support the Eugenic idea of the Nordic Aryan (tall, blond, blue-eyed). Essentially, they claimed that the Germanic people originated in the fantastic northern land of Thule, and that the non-Aryan races were repulsive anti-humans born of interbreeding with beasts. And so, to investigate this myth of Thule, the Thule Gesellschaft was created in 1918 by Rudolf Sebottendorf. Members included official Nazi historian Alfred Rosenberg, future Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess, and satanist Dietrich Eckart.
15 Yoth Tlaggon
A mysterious God. The first time the name was written was in a letter from H. P. Lovecraft to C. A. Smith, a close friend and associate of the American horror writer, dated April 4th, 1932. However, Father Lucio Damiani published a monograph on Ancient History entitled Visions of Kusha in which he writes that “In the days when Atlantis was still called Kusha, and Lemuria known as Shalarali, Yoth Tlaggon was named one of the Nine Princes of Hell.” Damiani could have had no knowledge of the Lovecraft letter, for it was not published until 1970.
16 Rudolf Hess
Deputy Führer of Nazi Germany. 1948–1987. Born in Alexandria, Egypt. Joined the Beerhall Putsch in Munich in 1923 and was jailed with Hitler in Landsberg Prison, where he helped Hitler write Mein Kampf. He was named agent of the Führer in 1933. In October of 1941, he flew his private Messerschmidt to Britain, intending to negotiate a peace treaty. He was made prisoner of war almost as soon as he landed. After the war, he was jailed in West Berlin’s Spandau Prison, where he committed suicide on August 17, 1987. From a young age, he had been interested in the occult. He indulged in such fancies as astrology, dowsing, black magic, dream-reading, ESP, and so on. Surprisingly, Hess was known as a follower of the German-rooted Anthroposophy (a school of mysticism founded by Rudolf Steiner). He preferred crops grown according to Steiner’s organic farming guidelines, and he followed the Steiner School’s physical training. Many occultists claim that Hess’s peace plans had an anthroposophical background.
17 Rudolf Steiner
German anthroposophist. Educator. In 1913, founded the Anthroposophical Society after breaking with Blavatsky’s Theosophical Society. His ideas of how human bodies and spirits are further united through art, and thus capable of achieving communication with higher beings and the dead, contradicted Nazi ideas of advancing humanity through black magic. This resulted in Steiner and Anthroposophy being denounced as racial treason by the Nazis, and in 1922 Steiner was almost murdered by members of the Nazi Party. At the end of that same year, the First Goetheanum Anthroposophical Center in Switzerland was burned down by the Nazis. Steiner remained exiled in Switzerland and, in 1924, fell ill from eating a poisoned sandwich as part of a Nazi plot. He died in March of the following year.
18 Akashic records
The Akashic records are a compendium of all the information ever to have existed in the past, present, or future encoded in a non-physical plane of existence known as the etheric plane. Those with finely honed spiritual perception can read those records. Steiner claims to have deciphered some anthroposophical sections and recorded them in his book The Akasha Chronicle.
19 Longinus
Longinus is the name given to the Roman soldier who pierced the side of Jesus Christ on the cross to ease his suffering. The lance he used came to be known as the Holy Lance, or Lance of Longinus (with some theories saying that Longinus itself simply means “spear holder”). The spear is now on display in the Weltliche Schatzkammer at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna. However, some scholars claim that this is an eighth-century replica. Others say that it was made and used to replace the original on Hitler’s orders in 1938. As to why Hitler would order such a thing, they point to the legend that “he who holds the Lance of Longinus will rule the world.”
Wasteland of Madness
20 New Swabia
According to an incredibly popular occult legend, from 1938 to 1939 a team of explorers sent from Nazi Germany explored an area of Queen Maud Land, where they found numerous lakes and an area free of snow and ice. They named this area Neuschwabenland, or New Swabia. The occultist Miguel Serrano claimed that this team had found the cavern entrance to the hollow earth and a city of the Hyperboreans. Author Jean Robin claims that Hitler escaped Berlin and fled here, eventually dying in an underground base in 1953. Many conspiracy theorists claim that Operation Highjump, an Ant
arctic expedition planned by Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd, Jr., was actually the last step to victory over the remnants of the Third Reich in their polar base. They say the plan failed. They claim that the aerial maps left after Byrd’s death in 1957 were skillfully manipulated to leave out that section of Queen Maud Land out of fear of a terrible secret Nazi weapon.
21 ...his father had served in the Great War on a U-Boat....
Records of the Imperial German Navy—U-Boat U-29: Captain Karl Heinrich, Graf von Altberg-Ehrenstein, Lt. Commander. Ship’s Officer: Lieutenant Klenze. Disabled August 20th, 1917, at N. Latitude 20°, W. Longitude 35°. No further records survive.
22 Leng
(1) An unexplored plateau alluded to in the Necronomicon. It says that those who live there follow a cult that feasts upon their own dead. (2) It was dreamed of by seer Randolph Carter as a place where the yellow-masked High Priest Not to Be Described resides. (3) A plateau discovered by the Antarctic expedition from Miskatonic University in 1930, beyond the Mountains of Madness. It lies between S. Latitude 82°, E. Longitude 60° and S. Latitude 70°, E. Longitude 125°. It is topped by a massive city of black stone.
23 Mountains of Madness
A terrible range of mountains running between S. Latitude 77°, E. Longitude 70° and S. Latitude 70°, E. Longitude 100° deep in Antarctica. Their northernmost edges can be seen from the coast of Queen Mary Land. According to W. Bernhardt, an ice cave in the Muehlig Mountains to the northeast is the final resting place of the Lance of Longinus and other Nazi treasures hidden by the crew of U-Boat 530 in 1945.
24 Operation Shoggoth
According to the Pnakotic Manuscripts, the Necronomicon, and other texts, shoggoths are artificial life forms created by extraterrestrial intelligences called Elder Things. They were at first mindless slaves used by the Elder Things, but they developed intelligence and nearly drove their masters to extinction. They are amorphous and ever-changing, but their most commonly seen form is a foamy amoeba-like mass.