NOSTRADAMUS, ASTROLOGY AND THE BIBLE
substudY "WORLD WAR II"
The fate of the nations (A. Prieditis, St. Paul, 1982)
- T.W.M. van Berkel -

Introduction
In this article, the second, enlarged edition of The fate of the nations - Great Events of the Near Future as Predicted by Nostradamus and Other Clairvoyants is discussed, written by Arthur Prieditis and published by Llewellyn Publications in St. Paul, Minnesota, as far as the contents of this book deal with World War II. The first edition of this book, also published by Llewellyn Publications, dates from 1975.[1] 
In The Greatest Proven Seer Since Biblical Times!, the preface to the second edition of The fate of the nations, it is written that Prieditis was born in Latvia and lived there until the Second World War. He then lived in Germany and Switzerland for five years before settling in the United States. Prieditis wrote books about Chinese philosophy and poetry and about Greek mythology and made a number of translations. A bibliography of books by Prieditis and translations he made, is missing.
According to the colophon of The fate of the nations, Prieditis not only gives the most accurate translation of the Centuries, but also shows how they became fulfilled and interprets the quatrains which remain to be fulfilled - most of them in the last two decaded of the twentieth century. He extensivelyu discusses the interpretations by Hans Bauder in Schicksal der Fürsten und Völker 1945-3797: Prophetische Weltgeschichte nach Nostradamus (Basel, 1944-'45); those by G. Gustafsson in Europas framtid enligt Nostradamus (Härnösand, 1956) and those by Emile Ruir in Nostradamus - ses prophéties de nos jours à l'an 2023 (Paris, 1947) and Nostradamus - les proches et derniers événements (Parijs, 1953). Predictions by a.o. Edgar Cayce, Jeane Dixon, Irene Hughes and in the Book of Revelations, which are also discussed in The fate of nations, confirm, according to Prieditis, the predictions in the Centuries.

Contents
The second edition of The fate of the nations is a non-illustrated paperback of 450 pages. The table of contents is as follows:

• The Greatest Proven Seer Since Biblical Times!

• Introduction

• 1. The Life of Nostradamus

• 2. The Writings of Nostradamus and Their Interpretation

• 3. Survey of Fulfilled Predictions

• 4. Ambiguous Predictions

• 5. Epistle to Caesar, A (Preface to Centuries I-VII)

• 6. Epistle to Henry II, King of France, B (Preface to Centuries VIII-X)

• 7. Quatrains of Nostradamus' Centuries

• 8. Three Views of the Future

• 9. Predictions Other Than by Nostradamus

• Conclusion

• List of Works Consulted

• Index to Predictions of Future Events

World War II: Krafft, Goebbels, Hitler, Kritzinger en De Wohl
In the chapter Survey of Fulfilled Predictions, Hitler was one of the persons which Prieditis discussed. According to Prieditis, Hitler was very much interested in astrology, clairvoyance and occultism, given for example the career of the clairvoyant Hanussen and the fact that in 1935, Hitler appointed astrology as a "science of state" (Reichsfachschaft). According to Prieditis, Hitler surrounded himself with astrologers who determined which periods were favourable or when military actions had to be started. When the world war began, Hitler engaged Germany's best astrologer, K.E. Krafft, a Swiss citizen, in order to elaborate plans for military operations. Basing himself upon his astrological calculations, Krafft was convinced that Hitler's life was in danger in the days between November 7 and November 10, 1939. He warned Hitler in a letter, dated on November 2, 1939. After the failed attempt on Hitler in a beer cellar in Munich on November 8, 1939, Hitler showed this letter to a number of prominent Nazi's. Himmler concluded that Krafft was involved in the conspiracy and had him arrested. Goebbels, more clever, managed to to obtain his release, bade him to Berlin and appointed him as a translator in the German news agency. Goebbels was impressed by the way Krafft interpreted a number of quatrains and linked them to Hitler. He gave Krafft permission to publish a photocopy of the best edition of Nostradamus' quatrains in the original French text, with scientific German commentaries, and spread Krafft's interpretation of quatrain 05-94 by means of pamphlets. Krafft was convinced that the text of this quatrains contained a printer's error and that the words duc d'Armenie were actually duc d'Arminie, pointing towards Germany, the country of Hermann the Herusc. According to Krafft, quatrain 05-94 would contain allusions to the incorporation by Great-Germany of Brabant, Flanders, Ghent, Bruges, Boulogne and Cologne, which is the Rhine land, which region for a short period was occupied by the French. Today, Prieditis emphasizes, it is a matter of fact that quatrain 05-94 does not contain a printer's error and that the last part of this quatrain has to be linked to Stalin, as was already noted by professor H.H. Kritzinger, who was unable to convince Krafft that his interpretation was not correct.
In order to find out and to repel Krafft's plans, the British government engaged the well-known Austrian astrologer and author Ludwig von Wohl, who became a British citizen and changed his name into Louis de Wohl. To some extent, De Wohl managed to discredit Krafft. In the summer of 1941, Krafft warned Hitler and even predicted failures. Hitler got angry and had him arrrested. In 1942, when the number of unfavourable predictions steadily increased, Hitler proclaimed astrology a useless science which had to be prohibited. By a decree of Himmler, the spread of Nostradamus' predictions was suppressed in Germany. Krafft died in the Buchenwald concentration camp on April 16, 1944.[2] 
Prieditis' story about the failed attempt on Hitler in the Bürgerbraukeller in Munich and the events in the life of Krafft corresponds in almost every detail with what Boris von Borrisholm and Karena Niehoff have written in the chapter Nostradamus in Dr. Goebbels nach Aufzeichnungen aus seiner Umgebung (Berlin, 1949), a story which in many ways is incorrect, as has been demonstrated elsewhere on this website.[3] In the list of consulted works in The fate of the nations, the title of the book by Von Borresholm and Niehoff is not included.
Prieditis' remark that Kritzinger unsuccessfully tried to convince Krafft of the incorrectness of his linking of the words duc d'Armenie to Hitler can be traced back to what the British searcher Ellic Howe has written about this matter in Urania's Children - The strange world of the astrologers, which in 1995 was translated into German and published under the title Uranias Kinder - Die seltsame Welt der Astrologen und das Dritte Reich.[4] In the list of consulted works in The fate of the nations, the title of Howe's book is not included. By the way, it was not on April 16, 1944 but on January 8, 1945, that Krafft died in Buchenwald, a fact which was discovered by my colleague Ulrich Maichle ,who published this on his website Die Nostradamus-Propaganda der Nazis, 1939-1942.
Prieditis was, as far as one can read, unaware of the fact that Kritzinger had written the national-socialist, propagandistic brochure Der Seher von Salon, volume 38 in the series Informations-Schriften, and that he ended this brochure with a free translation of quatrain 05-94, in which he did not write about Armenia, but, like Krafft, about Arminia, and linked this quatrain to Hitler, the Westfeldzug in 1940, the invasion in Poland in 1939, the remilitarization of the Rhine land in 1936 and the Anschluß of Austria in 1938:

Hinübernehmen nach Großdeutschland wird,
Brabant und Flandern, Gent und Brügge, Polen -
Vertrag war Schwindel! - Der Arminien führt,
Wird sich im Sprunge Wien und Cöllen holen.[5]

The quatrains 10-100 and 03-57
On the pages 112 to 116 of the second edition of The fate of the nations, closing his survey of fulfilled predictions of Nostradamus, Prieditis discussed the quatrains 10-100 and 03-57. These quatrains, which deal with Great-Britain and her role in the world, cover a large time span which, according to Prieditis, ends in our days. We, Prieditis writes, have been eyewitnesses of the fulfilment of these quatrains and it also seems that their fulfilment is still going on.
In The fate of the nations, Prieditis did not specify the sources which he consulted while discussing the quatrains 10-100, 03-57 and the other quatrains which already are fulfilled. On the contrary. Like the one who wrote the preface The Greatest Proven Seer Since Biblical Times!, Prieditis raises the impression that it was him, Prieditis, who established which quatrains already are fulfilled and in which way, although in some lines it is clear which comments are really his.
The list of consulted literature in The fate of the nations contains on page 426 the title Fontbrune, Dr. de. Les propheties de Maistre Nostradamus. Paris, 1947. This is an incorrect listing of the bibliographical data of the 1946-edition of De Fontbrune's Les Prophéties de Maistre Michel Nostradamus - Expliquées et commentées, published by Michelet in Sarlat (Dordogne). On the pages 259-261 in this edition, De Fontbrune discussed the quatrains 10-100 and 03-57 in the same sequence as Prieditis in The fate of the nations. The study upon which this article is based, has shown that the introduction in The fate of the nations to quatrain 10-100 and the comment upon this quatrain can not be traced back to the 1946-edition of Les Prophéties de Maistre Michel Nostradamus - Expliquées et commentées. In this edition, De Fontbrune wrote nothing which can be translated into the restore of her military power or the lacking of the principal element: time. On important points, the text of the introduction to quatrain 10-100 corresponds with the introduction to this quatrain in the national-socialist propagandistic brochure, written by the end of 1939 by Hans-Wolfgang Herwarth von Bittenfeld, prof. dr. Karl Bömer and Leopold Gutterer, all working in the German ministry for People's Enlightenment and Propaganda. They copied this introduction from the fifth edition (1939) of Les Prophéties de Maistre Michel Nostradamus - Expliquées et commentées. The words to restore her military power and the lacking of the principal element: time, return in the book of Prieditis, who has not listed the 5th edition of Les Prophéties de Maistre Michel Nostradamus - Expliquées et commentées.
A remarkable thing in the introduction to quatrain 10-100 in The fate of the nations is the French line Les Iles seront à sang pour le tardif ramer. In the available translations/versions of the German source text by Herwarth von Bittenfeld c.s., this line is present in the French and Italian translation/version and its quote in the appendix in the Dutch translation/version. This means that either Prieditis or one of the author whose books he has listed, consulted the Dutch, French or Italian version of the German source text by Herwarth von Bittenfeld c.s.[6]

 
A part of Prieditis' comment upon quatrain 03-57 also can be traced back to the German source text by Herwarth von Bittenfeld c.s.: the part in which he described that the German scholars Kritzinger and Loog, the French scholars Rochetaillée and Piobb and the Englishman Rupert Taylor all concluded that the year 1939 would bring a war, marking the end of the British Empire. As far as I know, there is only one publication which contains the combination of the names of these scholars: the brochure by Herwarth von Bittenfeld c.s. We can note that Kritzinger, in his comment upon quatrain 03-57 in Mysterien von Sonne und Seele (Berlin, 1922) copied Loog, whereas Rochetaillée, Piobb and Taylor, who is not a British citizen, but an American citizen, wrote nothing about 1939 in relation to quatrain 03-57.
In Prieditis' phrasing on page 114, the title Dr of Kritzinger and Taylor is lacking. This corresponds with the way they are mentioned in Que se passera-t-il entre le printemps 1940 et le printemps 1941? ("Rossier"-1940b), which might mean that either Prieditis or one of the authors whose books he consulted, copied from Que se passera-t-il entre le printemps 1940 et le printemps 1941?.