Previously we looked at the WWII magical defence of Britain conducted by Aleister Crowley, Gerald Gardner and Ian Fleming (also remember the Fleming/John Dee link) but was there an even more complex game at work? In fact did Crowley replace Hitler and lead the world to the brink of destruction?

Apparently so, at least according to "Before Hitler was: Looking for a Doppelganger" part of a broader argument about Hitler surviving (or someone looking like him surviving). The theory starts off with Crowley's intelligence/occult work in the first few decades of the last century. This put him in a position to pick a patsy who he could switch places with and then make an attempt at power under his new identity.

Hitler was believed to have died in the fall of Berlin but a lot of people doubt it (despite the evidence being strong) but here we appear to have the real Hitler being brought out of storage for the final scenes. Crowley himself passed away in obscurity in 1947. Or not as the page goes on to claim he was frozen and hidden under Istanbul. I think, it all gets a bit confusing at that point.

So was Crowley Hitler? The difference in age, weight and build would suggest not and putting a little Hitler tash on most people will give them a bit of a look of the despot. Although Crowley's absences do seem to link up with important periods in Hitler's life it would be difficult for him to have pulled this off throughout WWII without anyone noticing.

Weirdly, we do know that Crowley was seen dressed as Churchill (right) and according to the Guardian "It was also Crowley who gave Churchill his famous victory sign, a magickal gesture to counteract the Nazi's use of the swastika." So was he also Churchill?

Oddly Kevin Brownlow's The Tramp and the Dictator (shown in the BBC) has demonstrated parallels between the lives of Chaplin and Hitler. So were Chaplin and Hitler the same person?

The answer to all these questions is probably no but still... makes you wonder.

See for example this article "Crowley, Hitler and World War II":

These characteristics of ruthlessness, arrogance and blasphemy were of course, rightly or wrongly, traits for which Crowley himself would become most commonly and widely known in the public mind, while there is a fair case, in conventional history alone (Crowley’s claims aside), to be made for the fact that—besides the “secret four-fold word, the blasphemy against all gods and men...Do What Thou Wilt”—Adolf Hitler whole-heartedly adopted many of the central tenets of Liber Al. Whether or not he actually embraced “the Law of Thelema,” as such, there can be no doubt at all that Hitler was aware of the Book, and probably derived a certain demonic inspiration from it. The third part of the Book, pertaining to Horus, begins:

Now let it first be understood that I am a god of war and vengeance. I shall deal hardly with them... I will give you a war-engine. With it ye shall smite the peoples; and none shall stand before you. Lurk! Withdraw! Upon them! This is the Law of the Battle of Conquest: thus shall my worship be about my secret house.” (I:3,7-9) [It continues:] “Mercy let be off: damn them who pity! Kill and torture; spare not; be upon them... (18) Argue not; convert not; talk not overmuch! Them that seek to entrap thee, to overthrow thee, them attack without pity or quarter; and destroy them utterly. Swift as the trodden serpent turn and strike! Be thou deadlier than he! Drag down their souls to awful torment: laugh at their fear: spit upon them!

Certainly such sentiments, if taking at face value, would have appealed to the young monomaniacal Austrian bent upon leaving history in ruins. As he had done with Nietzsche, however, Hitler was wont to twist and distort the text to his own ends, and to pervert the whole by taking what were perhaps (one hopes) as much metaphorical expressions as literal commands. Nevertheless, between Nietzsche and Hitler, it seems, came Crowley. Crowley himself made no bones about it: “Before Hitler was, I am,” he boasted, in imitation of Christ, who said the same about Abraham. (It might be fair to reply, however: “Before Crowley is—Aiwaz!”)

Crowley’s involvement in espionage on both sides of the first and second world wars (he worked for both US and British intelligence writing deliberately “absurd,” i.e., counter-productive, German propaganda during the first) is well known and presumably well-documented. Nevertheless it is extremely difficult to find any author anywhere who will admit to Crowley’s involvement with Hitler, despite the fact that Crowley himself confessed, or more accurately bragged, about it to his associates.

If nothing else, he seems to have been playing a dangerous game, just one that probably isn't as deep and strange as some think.

Hat tip