HITLER AND YOGANANDA
(The Tale of Trust Betrayed)

Preface – The Inspiration Behind this Article

The overall story of what happened during the Winter of 1941 on the Eastern Front is well known, although few fully understand its geostrategic context. Almost unknown is the Spiritual influence which in the end proved decisive for the outcome within World War II’s European Theater. Quite recently, I became aware that Yogananda had once bragged about how he caused the critical delay that left the Germans and their allies unprepared for the winter of 1941/1942.

This 1941 betrayal of Hitler by Yogananda provided me with the one missing element to the story that had previously prevented me from fully understanding a few key reasons for the Third Reich’s eventual military defeat. I may very well be the only person anywhere who would write this article due to my previous research on these subjects which dates back to when I was 17 years old. It now seems that no one else presently has the background knowledge that is needed to place Yogananda’s betrayal of Hitler within its proper context.

 

Who Was Yogananda?

Commentary by James Rousse

Paramahansa Yogananda, who also went by the name Swami Yogananda Giri, was an Indian spiritual teacher who arrived in Los Angles in 1925 and worked as a yoga teacher and teacher of Indian Spiritual traditions until his death in 1952. While still living in Boston, Youganada founded an organization called the Self Realization Fellowship in 1920.  The first five years of Yogananda’s time in North America were spent in the Boston area before setting up a yoga center on Mount Washington in Los Angles.  For those who are not familiar with the Los Angeles area, Mount Washington is a rather rich and trendy neighborhood that sits in the eastern hills of Los Angles not too far from the city limits of Pasadena.

The image above shows Yogananda at his Los Angeles spiritual center in the 1940s. 

Before leaving India, Makunda Lal Ghosh, who would later take the monk’s name  of Swami Yogananda Giri, studied under the well-known guru named Sri Yakteswar at a hermitages in Serampor and Puri within the West Bengal part of India. During these 10 years of study in Serampor, Ghosh earned what was the functional equivalent of a Bachelor of Arts degree from Serampore College. Weeks after earning his degree and taking an official monk’s name, Ghosh founded a school for boys in Dihika West Bengal. Ghosh, now going by the moniker “Yogananda,” ran a school that taught a mixture of traditional Hindu teachings and modern Western school curriculum which was based on the Scottish school system.

In 1920, Yogananda claimed to have received a vision which told him to go and spread the teachings of yoga and Hinduism to America. Soon after receiving his vision about visiting America, Yogananda received a formal invitation to attend the year 1920’s International Congress of Religious Liberals that was hosted in Boston by the American Unitarian Association.  After accepting the invitation to vist Boston and give speeches at the upcoming convention, Yogananda turned stewardship of his school over to his childhood friend Manamohan Mazumder who went by the monk name Satyananda Giri. Yogananda’s first four years in America were filled with lectures that were given across the Eastern Seaboard, and some of these lectures drew thousands of attendees. During these early years in America, Yogananda attracted a few minor celebrities as his supporters and admirers, including Clara Clemens Gabrilowitsch who was the daughter of Samuel Clemens. Samuel Clemens is best know by his pen name of “Mark Twain.”

Yogananda taught Kriya Yoga at his Los Angles center atop Mount Washington and he is rumored to have taught around 100,000 students by way of lectures and class sessions while passing his time in the United States. As of 2025, Yogananda’s Self Realization Fellowship (SRF) operates more than 600 centers in 62 countries. As of 2025, the SRF operates also eight temples and three retreat centers in North America.

The image above shows the international headquarters for the Self Realization Fellowship which sits atop Mount Washington in the city of Los Angeles, California. Image courtesy of yogananda.org

Yogananda is most well known for authoring his book titled Autobiography of a Yogi which was published in 1946 by The Philosophical Library. As noted by Google’s AI search engine, Youganada wrote at least 13 books and the Thrift Books website lists 258 books that name Yogananda as their author. Autobiography of a Yogi has sold more than 4 million copies since its first publishing run back in 1946, and this book has now been translated into 50 languages by volunteers working with the SRF.

Image courtesy of shafsbury-srf.org

In summary, “Yogananda” was one of many Buddhists and Hindus who traveled to “The West” during the early 20th century looking to spread their ideology. Today, yoga is popular and widespread across Europe and all European diaspora nations, so this yoga that we now see in so many places had to arrive from India by some manner to become so mainstream outside of India. Today, yoga studios dot the landscape in suburbs and hip urban enclaves, and yoga is a now very popular pastime for many European women the world over. Many of these Indian Hindu “teachers” and “yogis” have proven to be of questionable character, as have many imported Buddhist teachers of all types and stripes. Some of these imported Indian teachers have shared some valuable wisdom, yet many of these same teachers have also clearly taken advantage of their well-meaning but naive and unsuspecting students.

Chogyam Trungpa is one notable case in point where a Tibetan Buddhist teacher drank copious amounts of alcohol, smoked heavily, and slept with his students while teaching Tibetan Buddhism in England and North America. Trungpa’s bad antics did take place after he had officially disrobed and operated as a non-official and non-ordained “Ley Teacher,” yet his behavior was still a disturbing. Other Indian gurus in America have been accused of running extortion rackets and cults, and the Indian spiritual teacher named “Rajneesh” or Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh” comes to mind. Rajneesh was commonly known as “Osho.”

The image above shows Chogyam Trungpa giving a lecture about Buddhism in 1974. Image courtesy of chogyamtrungpa.com

In the 1980s, Osho ran his own ashram and intentional community in Eastern Oregon which was named Rajneeshparum. While living at his intentional community in Oregon, Osho reportedly owned a fleet of 93 Rolls Royce sedans and his community was under federal investigation on many occasions. Interestingly, members of his community were charged with the first know incident of bio-terrorism in North America when they poisoned the water supply of a small city called The Dalles, Oregon. The Dalles had its city water supply poisoned with Salmonella bacteria in early 1984. This bio-warfare attack sickened 751 local residents right at the time of local county elections, and this act of terrorism was done in hopes of swaying local election results. The point to remember concerning Osho and Chogyam Trungpa is that Asian spiritual teachers have histories of leading cults and misleading their students after establishing themselves as spiritual teachers in European-derived nations.

The image seen above shows Osho giving a talk in 1987. Image courtesy of oshoworld.com

The image seen above shows Osho in his later years during the 1980s. Image courtesy of Spiritual Living on medium.com 

In more recent times, Shamans from the Amazon basin who specialize in traditional native teachings and indigenous spiritual medicine have also been known to take advantage of their European students sexually and financially. The overwhelming majority of South American Ayahuasca shamans are decent enough people who basically know their craft and mean well, but there are certainly charlatans and real shamans who are bad actors. Learning some traditional Amazonian wisdom from different types of Native American shamans is good and generally beneficial, but European people have to be careful who they choose to work with.

Author’s Note: I have been down to the Amazon and spent time at an Ayahuasca center, so I can speak from personal experience that most of the Amazonian shamans I have worked with were decent enough people who meant well, but the shamans I worked with certainly warned me about impostors and those who did not mean well. It tuns out that evil shamans have been around from the start, so absolutely everyone must be careful who they choose to work with. In recent times, being an Amazonian shaman has become an economically viable occupation for the locals, so a small industry of Ayahuasca and traditional Amazonian medicine tourism has developed in the Amazon basin. So, is this industry a good thing? It turns out that shamans have always taken payment for their services, so there is no real issue with “selling out,” and it seems that running pricey retreat centers is preferable to just logging the Amazonian forest. Despite its share of charlatans and commercialization, I would give the Ayahuasca tourism industry a vote of confidence.

The image seen above is furnished courtesy of amazon frontlines.org

So, have these teachers from various parts of Asian and Latin American been a valuable addition to European nations? The answer is neither a yes nor a no because yoga, traditional plant medicines, and buddhist meditations do offer tangible benefits; however, if these creeds and practices that originate on the Indian subcontinent and the Americas are applied to European people, then there will inevitably be some changes to these imported teachings and something will inevitably get lost in the cultural and linguistic translation. European people would do best to stick with their own traditions a much as possible and to look upon Indian, Native American, and Far Eastern spiritual teachers with a healthy dose of skepticism and mistrust.

Introduction – How Decisive Was the Winter Of 1941-42?

The war on the Eastern Front would have ended in victory for the Third Reich before the winter of 1941 arrived if Operation Barbarossa had not been delayed. The Western Powers could not have defeated the Axis by themselves, but of course, neither could the Soviet Union. It is not correct to assume that the Third Reich lost World War II due to their troubles during the winter of 1941. Neither did the Third Reich decisively lose the war on the Eastern Front during the winter of 1942/1942 at the Siege of Stalingrad. No, not until after the Battle of Kursk in 1943 was the Third Reich’s defeat on the Eastern Front rendered virtually certain. The technological miracle that very nearly happened in mid 1945 would have created a very different telling of history, but such an outcome never came to pass.

Image courtesy of siamagazine.com 

 Yogananda’s betrayal did directly spell death for tens of millions of people that would not have died otherwise. Yogananda’s betrayal also ushered in eventual devastation throughout much of Europe.

 

Part One – Stalin and the Jews

Stalin was actually Georgian, not Russian, and he spoke Russian with a pronounced Georgian accent. “Joseph Stalin” took a Russian sounding name because he felt that would make it easier to govern the Russian majority in the USSR if he operated under a different name. Stalin’s original name was Iosif Dzhugashvili, which was a Georgian name meaning “Son of the Jew” (Oh!). From this moniker some have jumped to the conclusion that Mr. Dzhugashvili was a crypto-Jew which simply is not the case. His parents were both Georgian; however, what that family name does signify is that several generations back the family earned its surname from a Jewish man getting freaky with a Georgian woman. Judging by his surname, Dzhugashvili did have some Jewish blood in him, even if it was rather watered down.  The only question is how much Stalin’s Jewish blood influenced his behavior. Mr. Dzhugashvili (Stalin’s) behavior towards the Jews was very contradictory and unsteady.

From the time that the original Bolshevik government in began in June of 1923, up until some point soon after the end of World War II, the USSR’s government was totally dependent on money from Jewish International Bankers AND Jewicized Multinational Corporations. It turns out that the USSR was dependent on this foreign money for its very survival. However, sometime after World War II, Stalin managed to break away from this foreign and Jewish control and establish a completely self-contained Soviet economy. Stalin’s creation of a self-contained Soviet economy led to a situation where the USSR was free of international debt and even domestic debt when it all finally fell in 1991. However, the Russian Federation has accrued debt since integrating itself into the worldwide banking system.

The image above is furnished courtesy of geograph.in

Stalin was never in as full control of USSR to the degree that outsiders and Russians born after his time might imagine. Stalin was always dependent upon international Jewish bankers and foreign multinational corporations until he broke with them. Stalin was eventually murdered for daring to create an empire that was free of international Jewish control.

So long as Stalin was under the thumb of his international Jewish financiers, these foreign Jews could dictate a substantial portion of the Soviet Union’s domestic and foreign policies. Being told what to do be foreign Jewish interests was something that Stalin certainly resented. While Stalin was not totally averse to expanding the USSR’s territory a little bit here and there, he did renounce the idea of spreading Jewish Communism throughout the world by military force of by fomenting revolutions abroad. Instead, Stalin wanted to concentrate on developing “Socialism in One Country” as he referred to it.

Stalin’ desire to focus on improving life within the Soviet Union often put him at loggerheads with International Jewry who he was financially dependent on. The result was a situation where Stalin often did the bidding of his international Jewish financiers while at other times he openly defied them. During the years that divided World War I and World War II, Stalin was at his most defiant when dealing with his international Jewish backers.

The image seen above shows Stalin at a conference in the Kremlin during 1935. Image courtesy of marinamaral on the r/CononizeHistory forum from reddit.com 

Stalin was married a number of times, and every one of his wives was a Jewess. All of Stalin’s Jewish wives functioned as his handlers and there was never anything like love involved in these sham marriages since these unions were really arranged marriages. It is true that Stalin’s government was the first to officially recognize the state of Israel, but that was a tactical move on his part. What he was hoping for was that once the Jews had their own homeland, then they would leave the Soviet Union in mass. Realizing the true state of affairs within Stalinist Russia is essential if one is to understand what would happen later.

 

Part Two – The German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact

Stalin’s conduct towards German Nationalism, and later the Third Reich, was marked by inconsistency. Stalin’s lack of consistency when dealing with the Third Reich reflects the fact that he was not entirely his own man, as I have explained earlier.

While Stalin went along with International Jewry’s wishes so that he could remain in power, while on the other hand, he often wished to make different decisions than those desired by his Jewish financiers, a case in point would be the Ukrainian Famine of Infamy. The Jewish Communists wanted to create a famine in the Ukraine, so Stalin went along with their agenda reluctantly. Stalin’s purges at the highest levels of the Red Army, the Red Navy, and the Red Air Force had an enormous influence on what was to come because the Bolshevik Jews had overplayed their hand.

As noted on the History.com website, when Stalin’s purges were finished, 81 out of the Soviet Union’s 103 generals and admirals had been executed and one third of the Communist party’s approximate three-million members were purged and killed. Stalin’s purges were not just limited to Jews, but to anyone who might function as “Fifth Columnists” in the event of a war. These purges were done under the guise of eliminating German spies, but these purges were also done to eliminate Trotskyists from power because this faction did represent a real internal threat to Stalin’s government.

The image seen above shows an archival photograph of a mass execution that took place during Stalin’s purges during the 1930s. Image courtesy of blogs.bu.edu

After realizing that they had a rather unreliable servant, the Jewish Bolsheviks decided to take direct control of the vast Russian empire themselves, so they staged a high-level takeover of the Soviet military. These scheming Jews planned a military coup that would dispose of Stalin and put themselves in absolute control of the USSR. After seizing control of the USSR’s military, these Jewish Bolsheviks planned to leverage greater Russia’s vast military industrial complex towards forcefully spreading a worldwide (Jewish Bolshevik) revolution. Stalin found out about this scheme just in time to decimate the conspirators in one huge purge.

Before actually coming to power, Our Fuhrer planned to expand German territory eastwards to gain “Lebensraum” or “living space” for the German Folk; however, once he came to power, he gained access to the Intelligence Estimates of the German General Staff concerning the actual military capabilities of the Soviet Union. After gaining access to the Third Reich’s intelligence reports relating to Soviet Military capabilities, Hitler realized that that any plans to occupy greater Russia were going to be an extremely costly endeavor in regard to the Blood of the German Folk.

The image above shows a military parade in Moscow’s Red Square on November 7, 1941. The Soviet Union was fond of staging massive military parades as shows of martial pride. These military parades were not simply facades because the Soviet Union really did have very large and relatively well equipped armies during the 1930s. Image courtesy of wikipedia.org

As time passed, Hitler also began to realize that settling new eastern territories would spread out the German Blood and dilute it through inevitable race-mixing with the local populations. Since he was in the process of restoring the German Folk and ultimately taking them to a Higher State of Being, Hitler soon began to see his original plan as counterproductive. Around the same time that Hitler began reassessing his original ideas concerning German expansion to the East, he also grew more aware that Stalin had his own problems to deal with; therefore, Stalin really had no desire to start a war with the Third Reich. Stalin’s internal concerns revolved around to his plans for “Socialism in One Country.”

Stalin knew that he needed to replace the senior leadership within the Soviet military and within the Communist Party itself because it was all infested with Jewish traitors. These Bolshevik Jews had been so successful at monopolizing the senior leadership positions within every branch of the Soviet Military for such a long time that there were actually surprisingly few non-Jews left who were qualified for senior positions once Stalin’s purges were finished. Stalin’s purges are today known as “The Great Purge” or “The Great Terror.” Official estimates place the death toll behind Stalin’s internal purges of the 1930s at between 700,000 and 1.2 Million deaths, but nobody knows the real death toll for sure.

In light of Stalin’s internal difficulties, the stage was now set for the Third Reich’s Non-Aggression Pact with Stalin. Part of this non-aggression pact included permitting the Soviet Union to occupy parts of eastern Poland. The areas in Eastern Poland which the Soviet Union reoccupied was not inhabited by Poles but by ethnic Russians. For a period of time, Stalin actually lived up to his end of the agreement as Hitler was able to confirm through the Third Reich’s Embassy in Moscow.

Image courtesy of encyclopedia.ushmm.org 

Part Three – The Planned Bolshevik Conquest of Europe 

Stalin reluctantly agreed to hatch plans for a westward invasion of Europe after much arm-twisting on the part of his financial backers. Although the Soviet Ground forces and Air Forces were huge, Stalin also knew that his military assets were nowhere near being ready for a major war due to the weakness in their command structures.

The Soviet Navy was never that strong to begin with because they only possessed two battleships and a few light and heavy cruisers, plus a relatively small submarine force, but they had no aircraft carriers nor any amphibious landing capability. Due to the considerable strength of the Royal Navy and the relative weakness of the Soviet Navy, there were never any plans to include the British Isles in this planned conquest of Western Europe. This Soviet Naval weakness was also compounded by a lack of competent admirals.

The image shown above shows crewmen on a Soviet navy ship during the 1930s. Image courtesy of allworldwars.com

“The Stalin Line” Fact and Fantasy

When studying the early stages of Operation Barbarossa on the operational level, one encounters a term: “The Stalin Line.” This term referrers to an incomplete and scattered line of field fortifications that were occupied by large forces and sat deep within Soviet territory. Allied Propaganda of later years claims that this “Stalin Line” was a failed and hastily thrown-together defensive measure that was meant to stem the oncoming Axis Blitzkrieg. The “Stalin Line” did become a hasty line of fortifications once Operation Barbarossa progressed, but this was not what the “Stalin Line” originally was.

In reality, the “Stalin Line” was a staging area for Soviet military forces that were intended to invade Continental Europe. The “Stalin Line” was located deep within Soviet territory as a measure to keep its existence hidden until the intended surprise attack was launched. The German invasion took the Russians totally by surprise and the Axis attack came on so fast that all the Red Army could do was to begin hastily throwing up some types of field fortifications.

The image seen above shows remains of the Stalin Line that now serve as tourist attractions and visitor centers in the nation of Belarus. Image courtesy of atlasobscura.com

KG200 (Kampfgeshwader or Bomber Wing 200) was the Special Operations Command for Goering’s Luftwaffe. In the 1930s, somebody in the Luftwaffe decided that they needed to keep an eye on the USSR in case they tried to pull something sneaky, so KG200 was ordered to fly clandestine and very high-altitude strategic reconnaissance flights over European Russia. It was these secret flights which the Soviets were totally unaware of that discovered a secret Soviet build-up of invading military forces. These photo-mosaics that KG200 produced documented a gathering Soviet invasion force, and these photographs were soon relayed to Hitler and the German High Command.

 

Part Four – Panning for Operation Barbarossa Begins

The German way of war from the time of the military reforms that were instituted in Prussia by Scharnhorst and Gnesineau emphasized decisive engagements. These doctrines were formulated after Prussia’s defeat at the hands of Napoleon during the battles of Jena and Auerstadt which took place during the Napoleonic Wars. This emphasis on pushing for decisive engagements during the early phases of a war were adopted as a measure for minimizing overall casualties. This same military doctrine that began after the Napoleonic Wars drove German military doctrine up until the end of World War II.

The operational German war doctrine during World War II demanded that the German army be willing to accept heavy casualties at the beginning of a war to bring about a decisive end to a war as quickly as possible. The idea was to take heavy casualties at the beginning of a war to reduce casualties later on as a consequence of the war having been greatly shortened. As the Germans reasoned, the longer that a war drags on, the greater the cost will be over the long run, and the more likely something will go disastrously wrong.

When approaching the preemptive invasion of the Soviet Union, Germany’s General Staff opted to pursue just such a decisive engagement. They realized that if Moscow fell, then this would spell the collapse of the USSR’s war effort initially and later, the whole Russian Empire would see their westward war effort collapse in short order. At the time of Operation Barbarossa, Moscow was the sole nerve center for the entire USSR’s administrative apparatus, and this state of affairs still holds true for the Russian Federation of the 2020s.

Image courtesy of dh.scu.edu

Even to the present day, if Moscow is captured militarily and destroyed, then the entire Russian empire will soon crumble and lose its ability to wage anything beyond localized brushfire conflicts. Given Moscow’s key importance, the Third Reich’s high command geared all their resources toward capturing Moscow as soon as possible while relegating every other operation to a subsidiary of this goal.

Contrary to what contemporary Jewish lairs might say, the Third Reich knew about the Russian Winters in general because they had experienced combat in these conditions without undue difficulty during World War I, and they had emerged victorious. The Winter of 1941/1942 did turn out to be the worst winter in more than 400 years which certainly was unexpected. The Third Reich’s top generals concluded that the best way to get around the problems that stem from conducting combat operations during Russian Winters was to start their campaign soon enough to finish by the time that rains which precede winter snows and frigid temperatures arrive during the late fall. The Third Reich’s planners allowed themselves plenty of extra time to overcome any unexpected obstacles that might have showed up during their move towards Moscow.

Image of a Russian village during the winter months furnished courtesy of colourbox.com

As far at the Third Reich’s planners were concerned, there was never any need to advance past Moscow during operation Barbarossa. The plan was to have German forces reach their stop-line in Moscow before the late autumn rains began. After reaching Moscow, the Third Reich’s military forces planned to dig in and wait for the arrival of their winter gear which would be brought up by rail. The Russian railroads had a narrower gauge (distance between rails) than their German counterparts, so right behind the advancing German front came Wehrmacht Railroad Engineers who would switch over the rail lines to accommodate the wider wheelbase of German locomotives and rolling stock. All that the process of switching Russian railroad tracks to a German gauge involved was moving the rails a little bit further apart. The plan was to finish adjusting the Russian rail lines soon after the Third Reich’s forces arrived at their Moscow stop line.

The German General Staff was certain of success during Operation Barbarossa because KG200’s clandestine surveillance work showed them the locations of every Soviet unit that was larger than a company across all European Russia. The Third Reich did not know what forces lurked in Siberia, but they planned to finish their attack campaign before any Siberian military assets could become a factor. The Third Reich’s planners also knew that they had to finish their advance on Moscow ahead of the late autumn rains because they knew from experience that once these cold rains set in, then the Russian roads quickly turned into oceans of mud. The plan was to start Operation Barbarossa as soon as the ground dried up after the spring thaw and spring rains. As it turned out, the Operation Barbarossa offensive started about five weeks after it had been originally planned to commence.

 

Part Five – The Balkan Interlude 

The Balkans Interlude was responsible for all of Operation Barbarossa’s delay except for the critical final five days where Yogananda played a role. Prior to the planned commencement of Barbarossa, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia also became part of the Axis Alliance. This alliance with other European nations helped secure the southern flank of the offensive. The Romanians advanced along the Black Sea Coast providing flank security for the German Army Group South. A couple of relatively small enclaves along the coast of Yugoslavia which had Italian populations were voluntarily ceded to Italy. The Third Reich’s Balkan Campaign was also waged to protect any allied military forces from capturing or destroying Romania’s oilfields and refineries. Romania was the main source of crucial engine fuel and lubrication oils that kept the Third Reich’s war machine running during Operation Barbarossa and the rest of World War II.

Image of Romanian oilfields courtesy of people tales.blogspot.com 

—————————————————–

Albania:

Prior to World War II, Italy made large commercial investments in the country of Albania and many Italians were living there as a result. There was a sudden insurrection in the country and the insurrectionists went about attacking Albanians who were loyal to the government. These same insurrectionists also went about attacking Italian commercial interests and brutally massacring nearly 4,000 Italian men, women, and children. Mussolini intervened and quickly restored order, so Albania remained under Italian occupation until late in the war. This overwhelmingly Moslem country turned out to be staunch supporters of the Third Reich and they contributed their Skanderbeg Division to the Waffen SS.

—————————————————

Yugoslavia:

Yugoslavia was a somewhat tricky situation because the ruling Royal Regent Prince Paul did sign a Tripartite Pact with the Third Reich on the 27th of March 1941. Prince Paul reluctantly signed this agreement with the Third Reich. Prince Paul’s agreement was signed as a guarantee of neutrality for Yugoslavia in exchange for Italy, Germany, and other Axis Nations guaranteeing to respect for Yugoslavia’s territorial integrity. Prince Paul’s agreement also stipulated that Yugoslavia was not to be used as a transit area for Axis military forces, nor was Yugoslavia expected to contribute military equipment or soldiers to the Axis alliance.

Two days after Prince Paul singed the Tripartite Pact, a coup was staged and King Peter II of Yugoslavia was decreed to to be the rightful king, even though he was only 17 years old at that time. This coup to install Peter II was done with the support of Churchill and British assets. Yugoslavia was needed as a transit zone for supporting Mussolini’s military forces in Greece, so an Axis German military invasion of Yugoslavia did happen.

The image above shows King Peter II of Yugoslavia at the time of the April War. In the photo seen above King Peter is 17 years old. Image courtesy of wikipedia.org

Germany felt a need to commit some military resources to occupying and policing Yugoslavia because a continued Axis presence a Yugoslavia prevented any easy access to Germany itself from the southeastern direction and it prevented access for the Allies if they wished to attack Operation Barbarossa’s southern flank or Romania’s oilfields with movements through Greece and the Adriatic Sea. An exposed Balkan flank would have given the British and the Zio-American Empire easy access for unloading massive military forces through the ports of Greece and Yugoslavia. In short, Operation Barbarossa could not afford to operate with an exposed southern flank.

Planning for the Axis Yugoslavia Campaign commenced on April 3 1941 when Hitler issued Directive 26. Germany’s Yugoslavia Campaign lasted 12 days from the 6th of April to the 18th of April 1941, and this campaign noted only 151 German men being killed while 392 were listed as wounded. The Italian numbers listed 800 killed and 2,500 wounded. Italy also contributed to this campaign by suppling 22 divisions consisting around 330,000 soldiers and around 660 combat aircraft. Hungary also made a few minor contributions of soldiers and combat aircraft to the Yugoslavia campaign.

After Germany had established military control over Yugoslavia in April of 1941, King Peter II went into exile and a pro-German government was installed. After a pro-German government was installed, Yugoslavians began attacking each other over ethnic differences while Josip Broz, who is commonly known a “Tito” and his gang of communists tried to maintain some degree of order between Yugoslavia’s internal warring factions while also trying to mount a successful campaign of guerrilla warfare to depose the German occupation forces.

Tito’s gang of Communists operated with the full support of the British and the Zio-American Empire. Tito’s efforts to resist German occupation were also assisted by the Chetnik Movement that was led by Dargoljub Mihailovic. The Chetniks were simply a group of Yugoslavian royalists and nationalists who opposed all foreign occuaptoin of Yugoslavia, but they were not communists. Tito went on to become Yugoslavia’s communist dictator until his death in 1980. Yugoslavia’s partisan resistance was a continual drain on German military resources until the end of World War II; however, German occupational forces were also assisted by pro-Axis local groups of Yugoslavians such the Pecanac Chetniks. 

Image courtesy of wikipedia.org

 

---

Greece:

As they had during World War I, the Greeks started out by being strictly neutral during World War II. During the First Great Zionist War (World War I), Britain coerced Greece into joining the Allies by threatening Greece with an invasion and an occupation by British forces if they did not cooperate. Before Operation Barbarossa began, the only way that Churchill’s army could get ground access to Yugoslavia was through Greece. Whether granting the British access to Yugoslavia by land was done voluntarily or done under duress, the Greeks agreed to allow a British Army to land in their country and move their military northward into Yugoslavia.

Mussolini’s invasion of Greece is now officially called the The Greco-Italian War which is officially listed as lasting from the 28th of October 1940 until the 23rd of April 1941. Mussolini’s war in Greece was intended to forestall Churchill’s British forces; however, incompetent senior leadership within the Italian Army and ferocious Greek resistance coupled with terrible weather conditions meant that the Italians completely bungled the operation and found themselves driven back into Albania. The Greek Army eventually chased the Italians back into the mountains of eastern Albania; however, the Italians finally rallied under new leadership, then the Greeks became bogged down in a stalemate with the Italians. Part of the reason for Germany rendering assistance to the Italian military efforts in Greece stemmed from Hitler’s need to support Mussolini for protection against Allied invasion from the South and for ongoing Italian support in Operation Barbarossa. The Third Reich’s high command considered their trip into Greece to be a time-wasting headache and a drain on their resources, but they also felt a need to support Italy in their war efforts.

For the Greek Campaign which started on the 6th of April 1941 and ended officially on the First of June 1941, German forces had arrived in Bulgaria by way of Romania in the winter of 1940/1941 and they were massed along the Bulgarian border with Greece. Bulgaria’s King Boris II granted the Third Reich access to Bulgaria in January of 1941 due this ongoing border disputes with Greece and Turkey. King Bori’s’s willingness to grant the Third Reich access to Bulgarian territory was really a self-serving plan to acquire more land from Bulgaria’s border regions with Greece, but this agreement did serve the German war efforts well. German forces that were positioned along the Greek and Bulgarian border numbered 680,000 men, 1,200 tanks, and 700 military aircraft.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia.org

The German Blitzkrieg quickly plowed through somewhat limited Greek Forces in northern Greece, so this German advance left the bulk of the Greek Army trapped between the Italians in front of them and German Panzers in their rear. Between pressure from the Italian army and the German army, the Greeks were soon decisively defeated. After the Greek army was put to rest, the Blitzkrieg was directed against the approaching British Army. German military forces that were operating in Greece inflicted staggering losses on the British who had to abandon much of their equipment and quickly evacuate in order to prevent total annihilation.

Image courtesy of Wikiepedia.org

---

Crete:

The Germans knew that British forces hoped to fall back onto Crete and use this large island as a base of operations for another invasion of the Balkan Peninsula; therefore, the Germans also had to take some time to capture the island of Crete.

——————————————————–

The German General Staff performed brilliantly during this relatively short Balkans campaign. Their planning often had to be on the spur of the moment, yet their performance was still virtually flawless. The execution of German operations during their short Balkans campaign was also virtually flawless. Only on Crete did things go seriously wrong, yet German military opposition still ended up being successfully dealt with regardless of heavy German losses. Despite seeing success, by the time that everything was put into proper order, German military forces had consumed around a month fighting in the Balkans, which was a month that they had hoped to spend on Operation Barbarossa.

 

Part Six – Traitors and False Prophets

The Director of German Military Intelligence was a man named Admiral Wilhelm Canaris. In actual fact Canaris was on the payroll of the Allied Intelligence Services. Canaris’s job was twofold. First, he was commissioned to betray Axis Secrets to the Allies, and his second imperative was to provide Hitler with false information so that the German General Staff could not properly direct the Third Reich’s war effort.

The image seen above shows Admiral Canaris in 1940. Image courtesy of wikipedia.org

Canaris and those who were working with him unsuccessfully tried to betray Operation Barbarossa to the USSR. Having failed on that plan, they made every effort to sabotage Operation Barbarossa once it got started. Although he could not initially prove anything, Himmler never trusted neither Canaris nor his organization. On his own, Himmler set up The Department of SS Military Intelligence to bypass Canaris and his department. In time, Canaris would become a major player in yet another attempt to assassinate Hitler. Himmler’s Gestapo eventually proved Canaris’s guilt and treachery, so Canaris and a number of his chief operatives were eventually hung once Himmler was  able to provide sufficient proof of treason.

—————————————————–

Around the highest levels of Hitlers entourage, a group of “Astrologers” were frequently seen orbiting around for “consultations.” These astrologers began to have a major detrimental effect on the military planning and operations of the Third Reich’s military actions.  I do not know how these astrologers got into those positions of influence, nor do I know why they were trusted to do so; however, is very clear that these people were a detriment to the Third Reich. These astrologers deliberately produced false predictions that sabotaged the Third Reich’s war efforts and undermined Hitler’s ability to properly direct World War II.  Any connections between Canaris and these astrologers is unclear, but these astrologers and Canaris were all certainly working towards the same rotten ends.

——————————————————-

At heart, Adolf Hitler tended to be a pure and trusting Spirit, so he had trouble grasping the Evil natures of some people who were around him and whom he trusted. In time, Hitler learned to be far less trusting of those who were around him, but this wariness came at a terrible price.

 “Next time I won’t be so nice.” – Adolf Hitler.

 

Part Seven – Yogananda’s Five Day Delay

The decision to launch Operation Barbarossa was made five days before it launched. After Operation Barbarossa started, orders were issued and the leading German Panzers started moving towards the border with Russia through heavily wooded areas which concealed them from the USSR’s NKVD Border Guards up until the last moment. As Operation Barbarossa began, a vast army consisting of 2 1/2 million men, 3,000 pieces of artillery, 10,000 tanks, 5,000 aircraft, and 1 1/2 million horses had been massed all along Germany’s border with Russia, and in some cases this vast army was parked within a mile of the Russian border. As this vast army sat in waiting, none of these military assets had been detected by Russia’s border guards, and none of these stealthy movements were seen or heard, including shifting around vast amounts of supplies that had been stockpiled by rail.

As Operation Barbarossa’s invasion force was approaching the border with Russia, which was the largest invasion force  in recorded history, some panzers were less than 100 yards from the NKVD Border Posts. Only the Germans could have managed what happened next. In mid-lunge this vast army suddenly received orders to stop and return to their jumping off positions, which they all somehow succeeded in doing without anything being detected by the Soviets. These waiting German forces were then informed that there would be a five-day delay before the start of their offensive.

What happened was that the “Astrologers” which I mentioned earlier made the call to wait five days before commencing Operation Barbarossa. These shifty astrologers who were operating under instructions from Yogananda informed Hitler’s Entourage that the Stars were not yet right for a successful operation, so there would have to be a five-day delay before the stars would be in the proper position to guarantee success.

 

Part Eight – Conclusion and the Straw that Broke the Camel’s Back

Before the five days of delay became decisive, some other things had also to be arranged, which when coupled with chance did finally make Yogananda’s delay decisive. The Germans would have overcome the deleterious effects of Yogananda’s delay if it were not for other things which were intended to buy time for the Communists. A series of delays that wound up catching the Germans unprepared for the winter as Russia’s vast reinforcements from Siberia began to launch a counteroffensive.

Operation Barbarossa’s main axis of advance was directed toward capturing Moscow and destroying any Soviet forces that sat between the frontier and the city of Moscow. German military efforts to eliminate any Russian units that stood in defense of Moscow were entirely successful. Operation Barbarossa was going to be successful well before the late fall rains set in, then bogus reports of a threating Soviet counterattack from the north began to appear at Hitler’s headquarters. The origins of these false reports about a Soviet counterattack coming from the north originated from Canaris’s Department of Military Intelligence and the “Astrologers” at headquarters. German Military Group North was more than able to deal with any Soviet counteroffensives that might come from the north without calling on help from Army Group Center that was advancing on Moscow; however, due to Canaris’s false reports large German forces were transferred to deal with an imaginary threat.

This act of treachery almost ended up backfiring on the traitors. The reinforcements that were directed southward into the Ukraine were part of the German Army Group North which was sweeping rapidly through the Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia where they were welcomed as liberators from the Red Terror of the Bolsheviks. As the German Army North group neared Leningrad, which was now barely defended, the Finns had also crossed the Russian border in support of Germany’s Army Group North. Soon after crossing the Russian Border, the Germans and the Finns were on the verge of capturing the city of Leningrad almost without a fight, which would have been a major disaster for the USSR.

Soon after German and Finnish forces began to approach the city of Leningrad, reports of a crisis in Ukraine suddenly arrives. Now, large Soviet Forces seemed to be threatening the southern flank of Army Group Center which was advancing on Moscow. A supposed sudden Soviet counterattack in the south was a threat that German Army Group South and their Romanian allies could easily deal with as per the original plan, but these bogus reports described a truly massive Soviet Force attacking in the Ukraine. These false reports of massive Soviet counterattacks were reported in the Kiev area. This diversion of German resources from Leningrad southward into the Ukraine was intended to be a disaster for the German army, but this treachery actually backfired.

Diverting German forces southward towards Kiev on false premises was a disaster for the Bolsheviks because a large Soviet army in the Ukraine was almost entirely eliminated in a great battle of encirclement which today is known as The Battle of Kiev. After the Soviet forces were encircled and destroyed near Kiev, the Third Reich was welcomed as liberators by the long-suffering Ukrainians.

The image seen above shows two German soldiers huddling in a trench during the 1941 Battle of Kiev. The Battle of Kiev went on from the 7th of July 1941 until the 26th of September 1941. At the end of this campaign, the Soviet Union had 616, 000 soldiers dead or missing, 480,000 POWs taken by advancing German forces, and 86,000 wounded along with 411 tanks, 343 aircraft, and 38,000 artillery pieces destroyed. Image courtesy of WWII Pics on x.com 

After routing the Soviet forces in the Ukraine, German military assets were transferred back to Army Group Center which was now advancing on Moscow. As the German army neared Moscow, there still seemed to be time to capture the city, but a great deal of time had been misspent unnecessarily in the Balkans and on account of taking actions to deal with false intelligence reports. Once again, as the Germans began to close in on Moscow in what has come to be known as The Battle of Moscow, which is an event that occurred under the auspices of Yogananda’s delay. As the Germans neared Moscow, a Russian Tank Corps arrived which had been transferred from the Soviet Far East where they had been deployed opposite a Japanese Armored Division.

Image courtesy of wikipedia.org

At that time, this Soviet Far East tank corps was the only large and armored force that the Red Army could mount for a counterattack. This Soviet Far Eastern tank corps was unexpectedly sent to attack the southern flank of the German Forces which were closing in on Moscow. Based on false reports, large numbers of German reinforcements were sent to deal with this Far Eastern Soviet tank corps; however, this Soviet advance was halted before any significant German forces even arrived on the scene to deal with threats. Luftwaffe Stukas and local German forces were able to easily deal with the last Soviet tank corps; however, by that time, a bit too many German military assets were called away from the main assault on Moscow.

This last delay proved to be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back when it was coupled with the five-day delay that took place before starting the offensive. The diversion toward an overblown threat to the south of Moscow in combination with Yogananda’s five-day delay resulted in the Germans being caught in Russia’s late Fall rains and the following frigid winter. The German army would up getting caught in cold weather while they were still short of Moscow and their intended stop line. This combination of delays left the German army in a dangerously exposed position when Moscow launched the Great Siberian Counteroffensive during the depths of the worst Winter in over 400 years.

The image seen above shows German Soldiers during the Battle of Moscow. Image courtesy of the Warfare History Network. 

Official records say that “The Battle of Moscow” began on the Second of October 1941 and progressed through 7th of January 1942. Official casualty numbers vary by those who report the data, but Soviet losses are estimated to be in the neighborhood of one million deaths for soldiers alone without counting any localized civilian deaths. German death tolls are listed at 175,000 dead soldiers by German estimates, and official Russian estimates for German casualties during that same time frame place the number at around 580,000. Through improvisation and sheer dogged determination, the Germans almost succeeded in capturing Moscow despite internal treachery and encountering bad weather that they were really not well prepared to endure, but alas, as they say, it was not to be.

As I have said before, the Germans did not lose the war that first winter; however, this delay in the winter of 1941 and 1942 did prevent any quick and decisive defeat of the USSR in what should have been the most brilliantly planned and executed campaign in military history. The British and Americans would not have dared to invade Continental Europe without the USSR tying down the vast bulk of the German forces in the East.

Heil Hitler deva!

-88-

Randall Lee Hilburn

 Addition To Preface

The reason that Yogananda chose to betray Hitler was because the Jews had threatened the survival of his organization in Southern California if he did not betray Hitler. However, the Jews finally ended up seizing control of Yogananda’s organization anyway. The Thule Society has also spoken about Jewish subversion of American Buddhism. It is also worth noting that before his death in 1952, Yogananda set accused of secretly fathering several children from women within his organization, and recent DNA tests have fingered him as the father of at least one child that was born to a female member of Self Realization Fellowship during Yogananda’s lifetime.  – Yogananda’s secretive sexual exploits are problematic since he did bill himself as a celibate renunciate. Accusations that the Self Realization Fellowship is a cult still circulate from the general public and former organization members.

———————————————————————————–

This is fascinating, Randall,

I want to ask about this line:

 What happened was that the “Astrologers” that I mentioned earlier operating on instructions from Yogananda informed Hitler’s Entourage that the Stars were not yet right for a successful operation and there would have to be a five-day delay before they would be in the proper position.

I went to Yoganada’s center in San Diego in 2013.  How did he communicate with Hitler from the USA?

I had no idea about this.

Brian Ruhe

 

————————————————————————————

Brian,

The only way that Yogananda could communicate with Hitler was through his crew of “Astrologers.” Exactly how Yogananda communicated with these astrologers I still do not know at this point. However, Yogananda bragged about being responsible for Operation Barbarossa’s deadly delay. I have this information that from someone who heard Yogananda boast about his betrayal of Hitler. A number of senior German military leaders mentioned that Operation Barbarossa’s strange five-day delay was the result of the “Astrologers.” “The Astrologers” was what the German General staff called these mysterious people. I always put the term “Astrologers” in quotation marks when referring to these people because it is not clear who they really were. As far as I know, there was never any direct contact between Yogananda and Hitler during Operation Barbarossa.

There are still many unknown details here obviously, but this seems to be what happened.

Years ago, there was an article in the Barnes Review that discussed how the Third Reich’s war efforts were sabotaged by traitors. “The war was the 3rd Reichs to lose.”  According to the Barnes Review, the Third Reich only failed because of treason in high places. I do not know of any direct contacts between Canaris and company and the so-called “astrologers,” but it was obvious that Canaris and these “Astrologers” were both working towards the same end.

 Hitler’s Luftwaffe Adjutant relates in his memoirs how later in the war Field Marshal Guderian had to leave his command on the Eastern Front and journey to meet with Hitler in person in order to counteract all of the lies that were being told to Hitler about what was going on across the Eastern Front.  “I wished I had more people who would tell me the truth” Hitler told his Adjutant after Guderian had departed.

Randall