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Louis de Wohl: Shady Astrologer, MI5 Recruit, Christian Storyteller

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Darren J. N. Middleton Open the ORCID record for Darren J. N. Middleton [Opens in a new window]
Darren J. N. Middleton*
Affiliation:
Baylor University, Texas, USA
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Darren_Middleton@Baylor.edu
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Abstract

Using files declassified and released to Great Britain's National Archives, this article shows how Britain's domestic spy agency, MI5, recruited Louis de Wohl (1903-61), a flashy Hungarian astrologer and Christian writer to create horoscopes for Adolf Hitler during World War II. De Wohl was a controversial figure. His origin story does not check out. His MI5 handlers found him showy. And recent journalists dismiss him as a ‘persuasive fake’. Yet his pre-war fictions were adapted for cinema, his later theological novels remain bestsellers, and his personal story deserves greater attention if we are to better understand Christian historical fiction's popularity.

Keywords

Louis de WohlChristian historical fictionastrologyWorld War IIliterary saints
Type
Original Articles
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 104 , Issue 1110 , March 2023 , pp. 179 - 189
Copyright
Copyright © 2023 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

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References

1 Lawrence, D. H., Studies in Classic American Literature (New York: T. Seltzer, 1923), p. 3Google Scholar.

2 Ibid., p. 2.

3 For details, see Beck, Richard, Trains, Jesus, Murder: The Gospel According to Johnny Cash (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2019), pp. 29-33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Cash, Johnny, Man in White: A Novel about the Apostle Paul (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1986)Google Scholar.

5 Middleton, Darren J. N., The Writer and the Cross: Interviews with Authors of Christian Historical Fiction (Jefferson, NC: McFarland Publishing, 2022)Google Scholar. For a podcast interview on this book, see: https://practicing-gospel.blubrry.net/2022/11/28/the-writer-and-the-cross-with-darren-middleton-pge-80/

6 Graeme Thomson describes Cash's internal division:

The Man in Black was never black and white. Conflict ran through him. Conflict between wired and straight; God and the devil; the Saturday night sin and Sunday morning hair shirt; loving patriarch and wayward son; country conformist and eternal rebel. Jack [his late brother] and John. And on it goes. He was always trying to resolve this essential contradicition in his music. Every testament of faith has a quiver of doubt; every hymn a whiff of cordite; every original sin comes with the certainty of an Old Testament bolt of judgment.

Thomson, , The Resurrection of Johnny Cash: Hurt, Redemption, and American Recordings (London: Jawbone Press, 2011), p. 38Google Scholar.

7 Cash, Johnny, Man in Black: His Own Story in His Own Words (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1975)Google Scholar. Also see Cash, Johnny with Patrick Carr, Cash: The Autobiography (New York: HarperOne, 2003)Google Scholar.

8 Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature, p. 2.

9 Hillburn, Robert, Johnny Cash: The Life (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2013), p. 321Google Scholar.

10 Kingsley, Charles, Hypatia; or, New Foes with an Old Face (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1902)Google Scholar; O'Connell, Joseph P., The African Fabiola; or, The Church of Carthage in the Days of Tertullian (New York: D & J Sadlier, 1897)Google Scholar; and, Leslie, Emma, Sowing Beside All Waters: A Tale of the Early Church (London: Religious Tract Society, 1895)Google Scholar.

11 Hillburn, Johnny Cash, p. 440. Also see Farrar, F.W., Gathering Clouds: A Tale of the Days of St. John Chrysostom (New York and London: Longmans, Green and Company, 1895)Google Scholar.

12 Backstories repay close attention. I first presented this essay as a paper at the March 2022 meeting of the Southwest Commission on Religious Studies (SWCRS). Interestingly, my research turned up at least one SWCRS connection to the topic of Christian historical fiction. Joe Barnhart and Linda Kraeger, regular paper presenters at the SWCRS conference across the years, co-authored their own novel on Puritan America. See Kraeger, Linda and Barnhart, Joe, Trust and Treachery: A Historical Novel of Roger Williams in America (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2004)Google Scholar. Joe served SWCRS well, and he received the region's John G. Gammie Distinguished Scholar Award in 2005-06. In late July 2008, however, Linda and Joe were caught in crossfire when a gunman entered their church in East Tennessee. Linda died. And the story made national news. Recently, Joe reflected on Linda's legacy. See: https://www.utmedicalcenter.org/joe-barnhart-shooting-survivor/

13 Stubbe, Arlon, An Inscrutable God: Arius and Nicaea—A Novella (Self-published: CreateSpace, 2021)Google Scholar.

14 The National Archives of the United Kingdom. KV 2/2821(1), (2), (3), PF49321, Louis de Wohl. Also see: https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C11439609 For details on MI5's place in the history of British Intelligence, see Andrew, Christopher, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 (New York: Penguin, 2010)Google Scholar.

15 See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7276217.stm and https://www.theawl.com/2012/04/the-inconvenient-astrologer-of-mi5/

16 In an e-mail to the author, dated September 19, 2018, Ms. Eva Muntean (Ignatius Press) confirms that de Wohl's fictionalised biographies of the saints sell very well, and seem to have done so every year since his death in 1961.

17 de Wohl, Louis, I Follow My Stars (London: G. G. Harrap, 1937), pp. 9-10, 14, 49-50, 67Google Scholar. A thorough account of de Wohl's astrological predictions appears in Parris, James, The Astrologer: How British Intelligence Plotted to Read Hitler's Mind (Cheltenham, U.K.: The History Press, 2021)Google Scholar.

18 De Wohl, I Follow My Stars, p. 27.

19 Ibid., pp. 59-64; 212. Also see The National Archives: KV 2/2821 (1), PF49321, Item 295a.

20 De Wohl, I Follow My Stars, p. 190.

21 Newspapers around the world reported this story of the Hungarian writer who sought his material in disguise. I first discovered de Wohl's remark in The Daily Examiner, Friday, November 19, 1937, p. 11.

22 Parris, The Astrologer, p. 19.

23 De Wohl, I Follow My Stars, p. 113; also see p. 126.

24 Ibid., pp. 125-42.

25 Ibid., p. 132.

26 Although de Wohl does not use this term, which was first coined in 1821, his philosophical overlay shares some important points of consangunity with panentheism.

27 De Wohl, I Follow My Stars, p. 141.

28 Ibid., p. 142.

29 It seems that de Wohl arrived in London and persuaded British intelligence that Adolf Hitler and his team relied on astrology. Hitler had a personal astrologer, Karl Ernst Krafft, but de Wohl overstated the extent to which Hitler consulted Krafft or any stargazing specialist, according to James Parris. See Parris, The Astrologer, pp. 10-11, 39, 47-68, 75-79, 83-87, 215-19, 245-52. Coincidentally, a novel about de Wohl and Krafft is available. See Perkins, David Bryant, Hitler's Astrologer: A historical novel based on the true story of how the Third Reich used astrology (Mustang, OK: Tate Publishing & Enterprises, 2013)Google Scholar.

30 Parris, The Astrologer, pp. 71-89.

31 The National Archives: KV 2/2821 (3), PF49321, Item 157a. It seems de Wohl made public his deep desire to secure an Order of the British Empire award (OE) for his services to King and Country. The National Archives: KV 2/2821 (1), PF49321, Note 183.

32 The National Archives: KV 2/2821 (3), PF49321, Item 149a; The National Archives: KV 2/2821 (1), PF49321, Note 148; and, The National Archives: KV 2/2821 (2), PF49321, Item 228a.

33 On de Wohl's past, and the questions surrounding his origin story, see The National Archives: KV 2/2821 (3), PF49321, Items 117a, 125b, 131a. On de Wohl's wife, Alexandra Betzold, see de Wohl, I Follow My Stars, pp. 51, 75, 82-83. Also see The National Archives: KV 2/2821 (3), PF49321, Item 108b. At least one officer claimed personal knowledge that Louis de Wohl was ‘well known in pre-war days in Germany as a Nazi’. The National Archives: KV 2/2821 (2), PF49321, Item 262a.

34 The National Archives: KV 2/2821 (2), PF49321, Items 201b, 229a, 272a, 282b. Also see The National Archives: KV 2/2821 (3), PF49321, Items 131a, 135a, 157a, 175a. It seems that a newspaper astrologer, ‘a rival soothsayer’, complained to the Home Office that de Wohl was a consistently indiscrete talker, often heard bragging that he had ‘been appointed official Astrologer to the British War Office’. See The National Archives: KV 2/2821 (3), PF49321, Item 114a.

35 The National Archives: KV 2/2821 (2), PF49321, Items 201b, 228a, 282b.

36 This phrasing appears in a US press packet, which is included in de Wohl's personal file. See The National Archives: KV 2/2821 (2), PF49321, Item 260. Also see Howe, Ellic, Nostradamus and the Nazis: A Footnote to the History of the Third Reich (London: Arborfiel, 1965)Google Scholar. Finally, see Parris, The Astrologer, pp. 211-15, 239, 251-58.

37 Parris, The Astrologer, p. 233. Additionally, Parris informs us that MI5 soon discovered de Wohl's plans to write a wartime memoir, which he eventually published in 1952, and so he remained under surveillance until late 1945. De Wohl became a naturalised British citizen one year later. See Parris, The Astrologer, pp. 227-29. Also see de Wohl, Louis, The Stars of War and Peace (London: Rider & Company, 1952)Google Scholar.

38 Hepburn, Allan, A Grain of Faith: Religion in Mid-Century Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), p. 28, 222CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 Ibid., p. 222.

40 This comment appears in an autobiographical sketch that de Wohl made shortly after the war ended, See http://www.catholicauthors.com/de_wohl.html

41 Ibid. For the novel, see de Wohl, Louis, The Living Wood: A Novel (Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott, 1947)Google Scholar.

42 de Wohl, Louis, The Quiet Light: A Novel about Saint Thomas Aquinas (Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott, 1950)Google Scholar. Also see the following fictions: The Restless Flame: A Novel about Saint Augustine (Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott, 1951)Google Scholar; The Golden Thread: A Novel about Saint Ignatius Loyola (Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott, 1952)Google Scholar; The Joyful Beggar: A Novel of St. Francis of Assisi (Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott, 1958)Google Scholar; Set All Afire: A Novel of St. Francis Xavier (Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott, 1953)Google Scholar; The Glorious Folly: A Novel of the Time of St. Paul (Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott, 1957)Google Scholar; Citadel of God: A Novel of Saint Benedict (Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott, 1959)Google Scholar; and Lay Siege to Heaven: A Novel of Catherine of Siena (Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott, 1960)Google Scholar.

43 Fort Worth Star-Telegram, September 17, 1950, p. 33.

44 Melbourne Advocate, June 17, 1954, p. 10.

45 Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature, p. 2.

46 Again, see the short autobiography, http://www.catholicauthors.com/de_wohl.html Also see Parris, The Astrologer, pp. 233-46.

47 This faith in reading novels for spiritual formation pulsates at the heart of some recent books for preachers and lay Christians. See Carty, Austin, The Pastor's Bookshelf: Why Reading Matters for Ministry (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2022)Google Scholar; Doerksen, Paul G., Take and Read: Reflecting Theologically on Books (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2016)Google Scholar; Ford, Marcia, God Between the Covers: Finding Faith Through Reading (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 2005)Google Scholar; Plantinga, Cornelius, Reading for Preaching: The Preacher in Conversation with Storytellers, Biographers, Poets, and Journalists (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2013)Google Scholar; and, Wilson, Jessica Hooten, The Scandal of Holiness: Renewing Your Imagination in the Company of Literary Saints (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2022)Google Scholar.