CENTURIA III · QUATRAIN XXXVI
The Buried Tyrant
Ensepeli non mort apopletique,
Sera trouve avoir les mains mangees:
Quand la cite damnera l'heretique,
Quy avoit leurs loix ce leur sembloit changees.
Entombed, not dead, the apoplectic man
will be found with his hands devoured:
when the city curses the heretic
who had, so it seemed to them, changed their laws.
THE MASTER SAYS…
This quatrain describes Hitler’s suicide and his remains found later, as well as the consequences of the death of the Great Reich. Nostradamus says that in his time an apoplectic was considered an unbalanced person whose brain was most often subject to attacks of high blood pressure. This is a person who, having become enraged, can drive himself through his own talk to a complete nervous breakdown, without managing to cope in time with the emotions and passion that fell upon him. This is exactly how Hitler seemed to Nostradamus. The second part of the quatrain also refers to Hitler. Nostradamus thought that this part of the prophecy was so obvious that it made no sense to explain it. If in the past the entire population of the city, praising its idol, habitually chanted “Heil Hitler!”, now, after his death, with the same readiness it curses everything connected with the name of the Führer and his dictatorial policy. To the question about rumors that it was not Hitler but the corpse of his double that was found in the bunker, Nostradamus replied: no, it was Hitler’s body. These rumors were mainly supported by a small group of high-ranking Wehrmacht officers who fled to South America: they still cherished the dream of reviving the Great Reich. These rumors were designed to raise the spirit of former Hitlerites and were aimed at “gluing together” the remnants of the almost collapsed Nazi party.