Hitler's Astrologer

It’s said you can boost the sales of any book by putting Hitler on the cover, but in the case of the book pictured here they’ve done just the opposite – they’ve removed Hitler from the cover. The book’s full title is The Shadow 1941: Hitler’s Astrologer. Written by Denny O’Neil and illustrated by Michael Kaluta, it was originally published by Marvel Comics as a graphic novel in 1988. This new “remastered” edition was produced in December last year by Dynamite Comics.

Dynamite Comics is a great invention for people like me with a penchant for things that used to be fashionable but aren’t any more. They’ve got Dan Dare, the Green Hornet and Magnus the Robot Fighter. On the distaff side there’s the Bionic Woman, Dejah Thoris, Red Sonja and Vampirella. Then there’s the weird stuff Jack Kirby produced during his “Rattling Gonads” period, like Captain Victory and Silver Star. And there are all the classic pulp heroes – the Spider, Doc Savage... and the Shadow.

Most of Dynamite’s output is newly created, but they’ve also put out a few reprints such as the ex-Marvel book pictured above. This is great, because Marvel themselves don’t seem interested in tapping the nostalgia market.

The Shadow was the first of the classic pulp heroes, created in 1931 by Street & Smith. I have to admit I’ve only read three of the original Shadow novels – the character doesn’t interest me as much as Street & Smith’s other great hero, Doc Savage, or the Shadow’s counterpart from a rival publisher, the Spider. Having said that, I see that JMS Books have put a distinctly Shadow-like character on the cover of my next ebook!

Notwithstanding a certain indifference toward the Shadow as a character, the presence of Hitler’s name in the title (it’s on the spine, trust me) was enough to swing it for me. I bought the book on a visit to London last month, and I’m glad I did. The Shadow 1941: Hitler’s Astrologer is a brilliant story. It hangs together better than most pulp novels I’ve read... and better than most comic books for that matter.

I was surprised to see the book doesn’t get an outstanding rating on Goodreads. I guess that’s because it’s not the sort of thing that’s going to appeal to casual readers. Not only is the story set in 1941 (which is as distant to a 16-year old today as 1901 is to me) but it assumes you’re at least vaguely familiar with the major events of 1941 – such as Operation Barbarossa and Rudolf Hess’s bizarre flight to Scotland.

The book also defies the comfortable stereotypes people expect from WW2 stories these days. The villains are Nazis, of course, but the most evil people in the book aren’t Germans. And despite having his name in the title, Hitler barely makes an appearance – instead he’s portrayed as being surrounded by schemers who are trying to manipulate him. Some readers won’t like that.

The astrologer of the book’s title is a purely fictional creation. Nevertheless, claims have often been made that Hitler and other leading Nazis really were obsessed with the stars. This may have been true, or it may have been propaganda, or it may have been deliberate disinformation. The British authorities certainly used astrology in this latter sense, when they claimed that intelligence information obtained by Bletchley Park code-breakers was actually the result of astrological predictions!

The government asks an astrologer for help (1666)

The Great Fire of London occurred early in September 1666, causing major devastation to a large part of the city. It came just a year after London had been ravaged by the Great Plague, and five years after the British Monarchy had been restored after a dozen years of Parliamentary rule. In 1651, two years after the Parliamentary coup and fifteen years before the Great Fire, an astrologer named William Lilly published a book entitled Monarchy or no Monarchy in which he purported to depict future events via a series of symbolic illustrations he called "hieroglyphics". According to Lilly's autobiography, the hieroglyphic on page 7 of Monarchy or no Monarchy represents "a great sickness and mortality", while that on page 8 depicts "a great city all in flames of fire".

In October 1666, the month after the Great Fire, the government ordered an inquiry into the incident due to concerns that it may have been the work of a hostile nation. To the amusement of many people, the Committee called Lilly to give evidence before them. He was nervous at first, because (based on past experience) he was expecting them to make fun of him. But he was pleasantly surprised to find the Committee took him seriously as a source of information, and just wanted to know whether his astrological skills could tell them anything else... such as the identity of the imagined perpetrators!

Lilly explained that, back in 1651, he was unhappy with the rule of Parliament (obviously a politically correct thing to say after the Restoration) and that he "was desirous, according to the best knowledge God had given me, to make enquiry by the art I studied, what might from that time happen unto the Parliament and the nation in general". He went on to discover "that the city of London should be sadly afflicted with a great plague, and not long after with an exorbitant fire"... but added that he could not discern any human culprits behind the fire and hence concluded that "it was the only finger of God; but what instruments he used thereunto, I am ignorant". He finishes his account by observing that "the Committee seemed well pleased with what I spoke, and dismissed me with great civility".

From the above, it's clear that as an astrologer William Lilly was taken more seriously than most. This is also reflected in the fact that there is an official City of Westminster plaque marking the site of his house on the Strand: "William Lilly (1602 - 1681) Master Astrologer lived in a house on this site". As can be seen from the photograph below, this plaque is attached to the wall of the disused Strand tube station (aka Aldwych station, before it closed in 1994).