The latest addition to my website is Gervasio Posadas‘ El mentalista de Hitler The Clairvoyant. This is the story of the very real Erik Jan Hanussen. He was an Austrian Jew but pretended to be the son of Danish aristocrats. He had had some success as a clairvoyant/hypnotist but his fame increased when he predicted that Hindenburg [the then president] and his right-wing allies would hand Hitler the Chancellery of the Reich on a silver platter, even though the Nazis had not done as well as they expected in the 1932 presidential election. We follow the story through the eyes of Pepe Ortega, a Spanish journalist. He becomes close to Hanussen as Hanussen becomes closer to the Nazis, though Pepe is more interested in sex and money while Hanussen wants power as well as sex and money. We gradually learn that Hanussen is a fraud, albeit a clever fraud and we follow his rise as the Nazis struggle to increase their power. We also see how Pepe gets sucked into Hanussen’s orbit. Posadas tells an excellent story of a charming liar, womaniser and fraud and what happens when the Nazis seize power after the Reichstag fire.