The Seer of Freilassing
A simple Bavarian well-digger and dowser whose prophecy of the Third World War still resonates today: a war breaking out overnight, three armoured army columns from Russia driving to the Rhine, a poisonous yellow dust and three days of darkness — and, beyond it, a long and warmer peace.
I just say it the way I see it.
Alois Irlmaier
Alois Irlmaier is the best-known German seer of the Third World War. He was born on 8 June 1894 in the hamlet of Scharam near Siegsdorf in Upper Bavaria and died on 26 July 1959 in Freilassing. He was a well-finder and well-builder in the Rupertiwinkel, a plain, deeply devout man with no schooling and no taste for self-promotion. Those who knew him found him credible precisely because of his simplicity: he was, as schauungen.de puts it, so ungifted that “he could never have invented his visions.” His own, often-quoted word for what he did was modesty itself — “I just say it the way I see it.”
His first gift was dowsing. Even as a young man he could sense water: near a vein it would “tingle” in his fingers, the veins of his hand would stand out, and the rod would pull so hard that no other hand could hold it. He is said to have found almost every water vein. To this ability, tradition holds, a second was added around 1928: clairvoyance. In 1939 he built a small hut on his land where he received his many visitors — free of charge. After the Second World War it was above all women and mothers asking after missing husbands and sons; Irlmaier is said to have told them, often with startling accuracy, whether the missing man still lived and where he might be found.
He saw not in words but in images, “like at the cinema” — an inner film he could only describe, seldom interpret. Places and dates usually stayed hidden from him; he named what he recognized and kept silent about the rest. In 1947 a clergyman charged him with fraud and “charlatanry” before the district court at Laufen; the witnesses contradicted one another, some disbelieved him, several confirmed his accuracy, and Irlmaier was acquitted for lack of evidence — which only enlarged his fame. One caveat matters: his words survive only at second hand, chiefly through the collector Conrad Adlmaier and other chroniclers such as Arthur Hübscher, in differing versions. They are to be read as tradition, not as verified prophecy.
First comes a prosperity such as there has never been.
Then follows a falling away from faith like never before.
After that, a moral corruption the world has never known.
Then a great number of foreign people come into the land.
A great inflation reigns — money loses more and more of its value.
Soon after, revolution breaks out.
Overnight the foreign armies overrun the West — the war begins.
Once the seven signs are fulfilled, tradition holds, the war ignites in the south and the east. Irlmaier first saw a deceptive peace and a new war in the Middle East: “Everyone is calling peace, Shalom! That is when it will happen. — A new Middle East war suddenly flares up, great naval fleets face each other hostilely in the Mediterranean — the situation is tense.” But the true spark, he said, would not fall there; it would be “thrown into the powder keg of the Balkans.”
There he saw a political assassination: “I see a ‘great one’ fall, a bloody dagger lying beside him.” More precisely: “Two men kill a third, a high-ranking man. They have been paid by others. One murderer is a small dark man, the other somewhat taller, with fair hair. I think it will be in the Balkans, but I cannot say for certain.” And curtly: “The third murder has happened. Then there is war.”
Here caution is needed. Irlmaier spoke only of a “third” high-ranking figure, without naming anyone. The widespread reading that the two preceding murders were the assassinations of Mahatma Gandhi and the UN mediator Count Folke Bernadotte (both in 1948) comes from his interpreters — foremost his chronicler Conrad Adlmaier — not from Irlmaier's own words. It is a later interpretation, not a quotation from the seer.
After the assassination comes the blow without warning: “Then it goes blow upon blow.” Massed troop formations, in his vision, march into Belgrade from the east and press on toward Italy. “Immediately after, three armored wedges thrust north of the Danube, lightning-fast, across West Germany toward the Rhine — without warning.” The attack comes so unexpectedly that the population “flees westward in wild panic.”
Irlmaier saw the clogged roads almost prophetically modern: countless cars blocking the way, while the tank spearheads crush everything in their path. “From sunrise the war comes, and it goes very fast,” he is said to have told. The most dreadful thing about this vision is its speed: overnight, tradition holds, more people die than in the two world wars together.
The heart of his vision of the Third World War is the three wedges, or “army-worms,” that he saw rolling in from Russia and the east. Their course is set out stage by stage on the separate page about the invasion. “Three thrusting wedges I see approaching: the lower army-worm comes from Bohemia over the forest.” Father Norbert Backmund added, from oral report: “The enemy does not cross the Danube but bends to the northwest; in the Naab valley in the Upper Palatinate Irlmaier sees the headquarters.”
“The second wedge goes straight across Saxony to the west, the third from the northeast to the southwest. Day and night the Russians race; their goal is the Ruhr, where the many furnaces and chimneys stand.” The war begins, he said, at the “Golden City” — Prague — from which the devastation runs northwest, up to a city on a bay by the “great water.”
One strip of land alone stays spared: “Southeast Bavaria is protected; there Our Lady of Altötting spreads her mantle over it. No one comes there.” The townspeople, he saw, flee to the farmers in the countryside; and around the last battlefields the old order collapses.
The turning point comes with a weapon Irlmaier could grasp only in images. He saw “the earth like a ball,” and above it “white doves” rising up from the sand — by common reading, aircraft or rockets from a desert region. “And then a yellow dust rains down in a line. The Golden City is destroyed; that is where it begins. Like a yellow stroke it runs up to the city on the bay.”
The effect of this strip is total: “Where it falls, nothing lives anymore — no tree, no bush, no cattle, no grass; it withers and turns black. The houses still stand.” The tanks are still moving, “but those sitting inside have turned completely black.” Whoever crosses the stroke dies; the fronts are thereby cut apart: “Those on this side cannot get across, and those on the far side cannot come over.”
From the “doves” fall small deadly containers — the famous “little black boxes”: “Here too the aircraft drop their little black boxes. They explode before they touch the ground and spread a yellow or green smoke or dust. Whatever comes under it is finished, be it human, animal, or plant.” For a whole year, Irlmaier said, no living thing may enter that area without exposing itself to the gravest danger.
At the Rhine the thrust of the three armies collapses. Two refugee columns still manage to cross the river; “the third is lost and encircled by the enemy.” Then come the white doves, the yellow dust rains down, and the squadrons cut off the last army column. Irlmaier's verdict is merciless: “At the Rhine the attack is finally beaten off. Of the three army columns, not one soldier will come home again.” And briefly: “Around Cologne the last battle is fought.”
At the same time he saw the fortunes of war turn: “At once the revenge comes across the great water” — by common reading, a counter-strike from America. The attackers' retreat is sudden: “Through a natural catastrophe or something similar, the Russians suddenly withdraw to the north.” France sinks into civil war — “the city with the iron tower is destroyed; its own people set it alight” — a revolution rages in the “boot-land,” Italy, and the Pope flees in disguise across the water, only to return after a short while, “when calm has been restored.”
Into the midst of the catastrophe Irlmaier set a sign of great weight. “During, or at the end of, the war I see a sign in the sky, the Crucified One with the wounds, and all will see it.” It is no image from the battlefield, but a sign for the whole world, which no one can escape.
Striking is the insistence with which he held to it: “I have already seen it three times; it will come for certain.” In his vision this great cross marks the spiritual turning of events — the moment when, as he said, “the cross comes back into honor,” and even the Russian people “believe in God again” and sing the Easter hymn.
His most urgent and most practical warning dates from the spring of 1959, a few months before his death. “It will grow dark one day during the war. Then a hailstorm breaks out with lightning and thunder, and an earthquake shakes the earth. Then do not go out of the house!” The power fails; no light burns except candlelight.
The danger is the poisonous dust: “Whoever breathes in the dust gets a cramp and dies. Do not open the windows; hang them with black paper.” All open water and food would turn poisonous, except in tightly sealed tin cans; one should drink no milk and lay in stores of tinned goods, rice, and pulses. “Outside the dust-death goes about; very many people die.” After three days it is over, “the wind drives the death-clouds off toward the east.”
Three times he invoked the same rule — the instruction still bound to his name today: “Do not go out, do not look out of the window, let the blessed candle or the wax taper burn. And pray.” Seventy-two hours, tradition holds, decide between life and death — and whoever looks out is lost.
As black as Irlmaier's war images are, their ending is as bright. “Three nines I see; the third nine brings peace,” he said; about the duration he stayed open: “How long does it all last? I see three strokes. Whether that is three days, three weeks, or three months, I do not know.” When it is all over, part of humanity will be gone — “more than in the two world wars.”
But afterward comes “a long, happy time.” The cross returns to honor, people grow God-fearing again, and the laws “that bring death to children” become void. A new ruler steps forth: “A gaunt old man I see as our king.” After the victory, “an emperor is crowned by the fleeing Pope,” and “flowers bloom in the meadows when the Pope returns from exile.”
Even the climate changes: “Through the change of climate, wine will be grown here, and southern fruits will grow among us; it is much warmer than now.” First there is still hunger, then abundance; the few survivors may settle wherever they wish. Yet every new beginning is hard, Irlmaier said, almost consolingly and sternly at once: “People will have to begin again where their great-great-grandfathers began.”
Everyone is calling peace, Shalom! That is when it will happen.
Two men kill a third, a high-ranking man. They have been paid by others. I think it will be in the Balkans, but I cannot say for certain.
From sunrise the war comes, and it goes very fast.
And then a yellow dust rains down in a line. Where it falls, nothing lives anymore — no tree, no bush, no cattle, no grass.
Do not go out, do not look out of the window, let the blessed candle or the wax taper burn. And pray.
During, or at the end of, the war I see a sign in the sky, the Crucified One with the wounds, and all will see it.
How long does it all last? I see three strokes. Whether that is three days, three weeks, or three months, I do not know.
A gaunt old man I see as our king. Flowers bloom in the meadows when the Pope returns from exile.
What is asked most often about the seer of Freilassing and his prophecy of the Third World War.
Alois Irlmaier (1894–1959) was a well-digger and dowser in Freilassing in the Rupertiwinkel of south-east Bavaria. He had no schooling and took no money for his statements. He became known after the Second World War, when relatives asked him about missing men; the tradition holds that he was often strikingly accurate. His visions of the Third World War made his name known well beyond Bavaria.
According to the tradition Irlmaier named a sequence: first a prosperity such as there never was; then a falling away from faith; then a corruption of morals; then a great number of foreign people entering the country; then a great inflation; then revolution breaks out; and finally the foreign armies overrun the West overnight.
Irlmaier’s most urgent warning, handed down from the spring of 1959: during the war it will grow dark one day, hail, lightning and an earthquake will come, and a poisonous dust will spread. His instruction was: do not go out, do not look out of the window, cover the windows with black paper, keep blessed candles burning, hold supplies in sealed tins — and pray. After 72 hours it would be over.
He named no date. Every year in circulation comes from interpreters. On the duration he said only: “I see three strokes — three days, three weeks, three months, I do not know exactly, but it does not last long.”
He described three armoured army columns thrusting into Germany from the east: out of Bohemia over the Bavarian Forest, westward from Saxony, and from the north-east via Berlin — all aimed at the Ruhr, all breaking at the Rhine. The full course, with map, gazetteer and sources, is set out on the page about the invasion.
That cannot be decided. He wrote nothing himself; everything comes from collectors, above all Conrad Adlmaier, whose editions of 1950, 1955 and 1961 contradict one another at important points. In 1947 he was charged with fraud and “trickery” and acquitted for lack of evidence; the record also shows fifteen previous convictions, seven of them for fraud. Both belong to the picture.
schauungen.de — Alois Irlmaier (https://www.schauungen.de/wiki/Alois_Irlmaier)
schauungen.de — Prophecy index (https://schauungen.de/Sonstiges/Prophezeiungsindex/)
Wikipedia — Alois Irlmaier (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alois_Irlmaier)
aloisirlmaier.de — Collected prophecies (https://www.aloisirlmaier.de/wiki/prophezeiungen/alois-irlmaiers-prophezeiungen-sammlung/)
alpenschau.com — “Everyone is calling peace, Shalom” (https://www.alpenschau.com/alois-irlmaier-alles-ruft-frieden-shalom-da-wirds-passieren/)
thymosmagazin.de — “I just say it the way I see it” (https://thymosmagazin.de/2023/04/04/i-sag-halt-wie-is-seh-irlmaier-prophezeit-den-dritten-weltkrieg-2-2/)