Nostradamus’ prophecies were used as propaganda during World War II.

Nostradamus’ prophecies were used as propaganda during World War II.

Shortly after Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Magda Goebbels, the wife of Hitler’s propaganda minister, stumbled upon a passage in the book “Mysterien von Sonne und Seele” (Mysteries of the Sun and Soul) in which one of Nostradamus’ quatrains was believed to predict that crises would develop in England and Poland in 1939. After bringing the passage to her husband’s attention, Joseph Goebbels ordered the creation and distribution of a brochure that would convince those living in neutral countries that a Nazi victory was inevitable, as Nostradamus had predicted it centuries earlier. The Allies retaliated with a bit of psychological warfare of their own, airdropping large quantities of flyers over German-occupied territories, claiming that Nostradamus had actually foreseen Germany’s defeat. In an attempt to boost American morale, MGM also produced a series of short films about the famous soothsayer.