In the wake of World War I, in Berlin, fascination with the occult was everywhere – in private séances, personalized psychic readings, communions with the dead – as people struggled to escape the grim reality of their lives. In the early 1930s, the most famous mentalist in the German capital was Erik Jan Hanussen, a Jewish mind reader who became so popular in Berlin that he rubbed elbows with high ranking Nazis, became close with top Storm Troopers, and even advised Hitler. Author and journalist Arthur Magida, The Nazi Séance: The Strange Story of the Jewish Psychic in Hitler's Circle describes the unlikely rise and fall Hitler's Jewish clairvoyant.

In the wake of World War I, in Berlin, fascination with the occult was everywhere – in private séances, personalized psychic readings, communions with the dead – as people struggled to escape the grim reality of their lives. In the early 1930s, the most famous mentalist in the German capital was Erik Jan Hanussen, a Jewish mind reader who became so popular in Berlin that he rubbed elbows with high ranking Nazis, became close with top Storm Troopers, and even advised Hitler. Author and journalist Arthur Magida, The Nazi Séance: The Strange Story of the Jewish Psychic in Hitler's Circle describes the unlikely rise and fall Hitler's Jewish clairvoyant.