In August 1940, a group of 17 British pagans performed a days-long ritual intended to make Adolf Hitler believe he could not invade Britain. And Hitler never did.

The summer of 1940 saw the United Kingdom standing alone on the brink of defeat. Nazi tyrant Adolf Hitler had unleashed his armies on the West on May 10, conquering France and the Low Countries and driving the British from the European continent in less than a month. By August, Hitler ruled Western Europe and was casting his eyes across the English Channel. The Battle of Britain was about to begin.

Students of World War II know that Germany needed air superiority to launch any potential invasion force. The German Luftwaffe’s failure to rout the Royal Air Force (RAF) that summer and fall meant that any cross-Channel assault would have been an uphill battle. However, after the Nazis lost the Battle of Britain, Hitler—the consummate gambler who was riding an unprecedented five-year winning streak—never even tried the crossing. Why not?

Military historians have many sensible answers to that question. The RAF’s continued existence opened any amphibious operation to devastating attack from the air. The Royal Navy still commanded the waves, and the German Kriegsmarine was ill-equipped to challenge that supremacy, even with its vaunted U-boat fleet. And while Germany’s blitzkrieg attacks were the terror of the European continent, the navy had a near-complete lack of a coherent amphibious warfare doctrine, including the landing craft with which to execute Operation Sea Lion, the Nazis’ plan for a cross-Channel invasion. The best they had were a collection of Rhine River barges that could be towed across the Channel at dangerously slow speeds, vulnerable to British aircraft the whole way.

The Luftwaffe possessed a formidable and proven force of Fallschirmjӓger (paratroopers) who could drop into England, but airborne troops are necessarily light infantry. Their mission is to quickly seize and hold key objectives, like bridges and crossroads, until they can be relieved by heavier forces proceeding from land. No matter their initial success, those troops would be overwhelmed unless Germany could land regular infantry and armor in a timely manner.

Still, the German Wehrmacht was nothing if not resourceful. It had transited the supposedly impassable Ardennes Forest in May, breaking out with powerful armored spearheads that lunged to the coast almost before the surprised Allies could respond. That was much riskier than is often understood, but Hitler enthusiastically rolled the dice—and won. So why did he not do it again in the fall of 1940?

If one is inclined to believe in the supernatural, the answer could be witchcraft.

That answer, of course, is unlikely to be taken seriously in a modern war college. But it was taken extremely seriously by a group of British witches, who in mid-1940 cast a spell on Adolf Hitler intended to make him believe that such an invasion would end in disaster.

British Neopagans Cast a Spell on Hitler—Did It Work?

August 1 marks the Christian observance of Lammas. It is also the halfway point between the summer solstice and the autumn equinox, and is celebrated by some neopagans as a harvest festival called Lughnasadh. August 1 is therefore significant in pagan folk religions, and that date in 1940 saw an unusual gathering in Britain’s New Forest, located on the south coast near Portsmouth and Southampton.

The location is significant, as any serious German amphibious operation would target that area, with a goal of capturing one or both port cities to support a full-scale invasion effort. According to a man named Gerald Gardner, a British civil servant who later founded modern Wicca, a group of British witches gathered in a New Forest clearing on the night of August 1 to cast a spell on Adolf Hitler himself.

Gardner had joined the New Forest coven after returning from years of service abroad. The members were mainly older Britons who could not serve in the armed forces, whose numbers were understandably maximized given the situation.

On the night of August 1, the coven’s 17 available members, including Gardner, gathered in a clearing near the village of Highcliffe, where they reportedly marked out a witches’ circle for their ceremony. The witches eschewed the traditional bonfire, likely to avoid unwanted attention from local air defense officials or perhaps even Luftwaffe aircraft. Instead, they probably used a hooded lantern—or perhaps even a flashlight placed at the circle’s eastern edge—to focus their energy toward Berlin. Then the group chanted and danced, naked or “skyclad,” in a spiraling pattern around the circle, building themselves to the ecstatic state where they believed themselves able to control magical forces.

The coven cast what is known as a binding spell, which doesn’t aim to harm its subject. Instead, a binding spell seeks to prevent the target from doing something. The more specific the event to be prevented, the more powerful the spell since the witches can focus on that one purpose. To that end, the New Forest coven’s binding spell was very specific: it directed Hitler not to invade the British Isles.

The ritual became known as “Operation Cone of Power,” named after the force the witches believed they were invoking. As Gardner later recounted, the cone of power aimed a specific thought at Hitler’s mind: “You cannot cross the sea, you cannot cross the sea”; “Not able to come, not able to come.” The witches believed their pagan forebears had previously performed similar rituals, with the same purpose, against Napoleon in the early 1800s and the Spanish Armada in 1588.

Gardner reported that the frenetic dancing and chanting took a hard physical toll on the participants. He claimed that several died from exhaustion over the next few days. That allegation cannot be verified since we don’t know their identities. But if they were elderly, as Gardner suggested, the possibility exists.

Gardner never revealed the ritual’s exact location, other than a New Forest clearing near Highcliffe. But possible locations include the Rufus Stone clearing, which allegedly marks the spot where King William II was mortally wounded by an arrow in the year 1100. Another possible candidate is near to the Naked Man, a giant oak tree where convicted highwaymen were hanged and left to die. The coven may have perceived these locations as significant or auspicious, or they may have been somewhere else entirely. Whatever the case, Gardner and the others took that secret to their graves.

Did the Spell Work on Hitler? We’ll Never Know for Sure

The Germans, of course, never invaded the island of Britain. Although they had detailed plans to do so, they never even made the attempt, though the British were on high alert and considered an invasion to be imminent throughout September. But Hitler seems to have lost interest by then, with the Luftwaffe’s clear failure, the clear flaws in a landing without air support, and—crucially—his distraction by other matters. By the fall of 1940, he was already casting his eyes eastward toward the vast landmass and untold riches of the Soviet Union, where, the next summer, he unleashed the most devastating land war in human history.

Historians sometimes debate why Hitler never tried to cross the Channel. They have many rational reasons to explain his inaction. They are all valid, and the truth is probably a mix of those reasons. Not launching the Wehrmacht against Britain was one of Hitler’s last truly rational decisions as a war leader.

But there is perhaps one more reason we have overlooked. Who can say what effect the actions of 17 British witches may have had on his thought process? Many believe Hitler was obsessed with the occult, though I myself am skeptical. If true, however, could he have been more susceptible to the coven’s binding spell? We can never know. 

About the Author: William Lawson

William Lawson is a military historian focusing on World War II and 20^th century conflicts and the American Civil War. His specialty is operational level warfare, especially American amphibious doctrine. He writes on history, politics, and firearms for multiple publications and historical journals. He serves on the editorial advisory board for the Saber & Scroll Journal and Military History Chronicles and is a member of the Society for Military History and the American Historical Association. Lawson is based in Virginia.

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