The closest we have come to observing how a large pool of dreamers can demonstrate awareness of forthcoming events is the description of German dreams when Adolf Hitler was rising to power, provided by journalist Charlotte Beradt. She collected the dreams of over 300 Germans from 1933 until 1939, just before she was forced to flee from the country. Many examples of these dreams are contained in her book The Third Reich of Dreams. They make for chilling reading (2).

It is possible to follow how the population gradually succumbed to the totalitarian pressure for conformity. Awareness of the propaganda devices appears in the dreams; one dreamer hears a radio blaring over and over, "In the name of the Führer, in the name of the Führer." Another dream, posters are on the corner containing the 20 words people are not allowed to say. The loss of privacy is signalled when a dreamer observes, as far as the eye can see no apartment has walls any more. A sense of paranoia begins to develop; a dreamer experiences her fear as a Storm Trooper invades my dream and strides across my kitchen to open the oven door so that he can have the oven repeat every word that our family has said against the government. Dreamed telephone conversations are interrupted by a voice announcing, "This is the Monitoring Office."

Some individuals could discern the unhealthy path the nation was taking but felt helpless to alter it. One housewife dreams, I keep trying to rip the swastika off the Nazi flag each night, but it is always sewn on tightly again in the morning. An office worker dreams, I sit at my desk and decide to submit a formal complaint about prevailing conditions, but instead I put a perfectly blank piece of paper in the envelope. A doctor tearfully acknowledges a dream in which Storm Troopers are putting up barbed wire at all hospital windows. I have sworn I wouldn’t stand for having them bring their barbed wire into my ward. But I put up with it after all.

Hitler’s techniques were seen by some dreamers as very transparent, but these people nevertheless found reasons to accept his leadership. A housewife reports dreaming, many people are dressed in Nazi-brown and sitting together, but I am sitting apart. Hitler appears dressed in evening clothes to please people and distributes bundles of leaflets at each table. When he approaches me,  he  gives  me  a  leaflet  with   one  hand  while  with  the  other  he