AJ

Mars entered the constellation Leo that exact afternoon.

This wasn't the first prophecy that predicted the rise of Hitler.

They actually started 500 years before he was born.

In 1555, Michel de Nostradamus sat in his study in France and stared at a pool of black water, trying to see an image of the future.

His prophecies made him famous, but one prediction disturbed him more than the others.

Please, no jokes when I'm trying to build drama.

Germany, a good speaker, rising hatred, war.

Nearly four centuries before Hitler's birth, Nostradamus saw him coming.

Then in 1821, the German-Jewish poet Einrich Heine published a warning.

He described a German thunderbolt that would make the world crash.

He said eagles in the air would drop dead.

The lions in Africa would hide in their dens.

Now, to people in the 1800s, it sounded like poetry.

To people in the 1940s, it sounded like the Luftwaffe.

In 1830, a Bavarian forest worker named Matthias Stormberger also had visions.

He saw machines that would change the world, iron wagons moving without horses, great wire boxes carrying voices across vast distances, modern technology described over 100 years too early.

But then his visions turned dark.

Two wars would devastate Europe.

The first would last four years.

After this war, money would lose all value.