In August 1871, according to a story that refuses to fade, a senior American Freemason sat down and mapped out the next century of human conflict. Albert Pike, a Confederate general turned Masonic philosopher, is said to have written to the Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Mazzini predicting three world wars, the first culminating in what we now know as World War I, the second unfolding as World War II, both dismantling empires and reshaping global political ideologies, and a third still yet to come, a final global conflict that would transform religion and reorder the world as we know it.The letter, believers say, was once displayed in the British Museum. Then it vanished.No manuscript has ever been produced. No catalog entry confirms it. The British Museum and the British Library have both stated they have no record of the document. Yet the text, or rather, versions of it, continues to circulate, cited in books, sermons and online forums as proof that the catastrophes of the 20th century were not accidents of history but steps in a longer, deliberate design.
Revolutionaries, Freemasons and the 19th-century world
Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872) was not a fringe figure. He was one of the intellectual architects of Italian unification, the Risorgimento. A journalist, exile and conspirator in the political sense of the word, he founded Young Italy (Giovine Italia), a secret society dedicated to creating a unified, republican Italy. He believed in popular sovereignty, nationalism and democratic revolution at a time when much of Europe remained under monarchic rule. He moved through networks of activists and clandestine groups, including the Carbonari, and like many 19th-century political reformers, he was associated with Freemasonry.
Photograph of Mazzini by Domenico Lama/ Wikipedia
Albert Pike (1809–1891), meanwhile, built his reputation in a very different theatre. Born in Massachusetts, he traveled west, became a newspaper editor and lawyer in Arkansas, fought in the Mexican–American War and later served as a brigadier general for the Confederacy during the American Civil War. After the war, he devoted himself to Freemasonry, rising to become Sovereign Grand Commander of the Scottish Rite’s Southern Jurisdiction. In 1871, the same year as the alleged letter, he published Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonrya dense work of comparative religion and Masonic philosophy.
Albert Pike in Masonic regalia by Mathew Brady/ Wikipedia
Both men were products of a century in which secret societies, fraternal orders and revolutionary cells were common tools of political organization. That shared milieu, rather than documented collaboration, is the slender thread on which the later conspiracy rests. Some fringe accounts go further, alleging that Mazzini led the Illuminati’s global revolutionary program and worked alongside Pike to advance a Luciferian agenda. Historians, however, note that the Bavarian Illuminati, founded in 1776 by Adam Weishaupt, had effectively ceased to operate by the late 18th century. There is no credible archival evidence placing Mazzini at its helm in the 1830s, nor demonstrating organizational continuity into Pike’s era. The version of the letter that circulates today presents an audacious thesis. It claims Pike outlined three global wars, each serving a calculated purpose. The First World War, the text says, “must be brought about” to overthrow the power of the Tsars in Russia and establish atheistic Communism as a fortress state. Tensions between the British and Germanic empires would be manipulated to ignite the conflict. Afterward, Communism would be used to weaken governments and religion alike. The Second World War, according to the same text, “must be fomented” by exploiting differences between Fascists and political Zionists. The destruction of Nazism would strengthen Zionism sufficiently to establish a sovereign state of Israel in Palestine. International Communism, it adds, would rise in parallel to balance Christendom until the time came for a final upheaval.The Third World War, still in the future within the logic of the prophecy, is described as emerging from escalating tensions between Western powers aligned with political Zionism and leaders across the Islamic world. The conflict, the text claims, would draw in major nations and leave them exhausted, physically, morally and spiritually. Out of that chaos, it says, would come a sweeping upheaval: the collapse of both Christianity and atheism, followed by what it calls a universal revelation of “the pure doctrine of Lucifer.“
Some see echoes of Pike’s prophecy in rising tensions between Western-backed Israel and Iran-led regional forces.
It is a dramatic script. It appears to align, at least superficially, with the fall of European monarchies after 1918, the rise and defeat of fascist regimes, and the establishment of Israel in 1948. That symmetry is what gives the claim its staying power. In contemporary terms, believers often point to ongoing tensions between Israel and Iran, the broader Israel–Palestine conflict, Western military alliances in the Middle East, and periodic flare-ups involving armed groups across the region as early signs of the kind of confrontation the prophecy describes, a widening struggle between Western-backed Israeli interests and parts of the Islamic world.
Where the story came from
The letter did not surface in 1871, nor in Pike’s lifetime, nor even during the First World War. It entered public discourse decades later. The Canadian naval officer William Guy Carr popularized the “three world wars” version in his 1958 book Pawns in the Gamefirst published in 1955, with the 1958 edition widely circulated. In the preface (pp. XV–XVI), Carr wrote that the letter had once been cataloged and displayed in the British Museum Library, where he claimed it remained until 1977. He provided no archival reference, photograph, or direct quotation from an original document.
William Guy Carr’s 1958 book Pawns in the Game popularized the alleged Pike letter as evidence of planned world wars.
Earlier strands of the myth trace back to anti-Masonic literature in the late 19th century, particularly to Léo Taxil (real name Gabriel Jogand-Pagès). Writing under the pseudonym “Dr Bataille”, Taxil published sensational works in the 1890s alleging that Freemasonry concealed Luciferian rituals and global conspiracies. In 1897, he publicly confessed that his revelations were fabrications intended to ridicule both Freemasons and credulous clerics.
On April 19, 1897, Taxil confessed in Paris that his Masonic revelations were fabricated, prompting public outrage days later.
William Guy Carr’s later account drew heavily on this material, paraphrasing elements of the hoax narrative found in Taxil’s Le Diable au XIXe Siècle (1894) rather than citing any identifiable original document.Historians also point to anachronisms in the circulating text. Terms such as “fascism” and “Zionism” appear in forms that post-date 1871. The word “Zionism” was coined in 1890 by Nathan Birnbaum and gained prominence after Theodor Herzl convened the First Zionist Congress in 1897. The word “fascism” was coined by Benito Mussolini in 1919, derived from the Italian fascio (“bundle” or “group”), referencing the ancient Roman fasces and later adopted as the name of his political movement, the Fasci di Combattimento. “Nazism” as a defined ideology emerged in the 20th century. Such vocabulary makes it difficult to sustain the claim that the document was composed in the early 1870s. The British Museum and the British Library have both stated that they have no record of ever holding the alleged letter.
Between myth and memory
For believers, the fact that no copy of the letter exists is part of the story. If it can’t be found, they argue, that only proves it was suppressed. Historians don’t see it that way. There’s no manuscript, no archival trace, no mention of it in 19th-century records. Nothing contemporary at all.What does exist is the text as it began circulating decades later. It shows up in the mid-20th century, long after the events it supposedly predicted. And some of the language it uses, political terms that only entered common use years after 1871, sits awkwardly with the idea that it was written in that period.Pike was a former Confederate general who became a leading voice in Scottish Rite Freemasonry. Mazzini was a revolutionary nationalist operating largely from exile. Both were political operators in turbulent times. But there is no verified correspondence between them outlining a three-war plan for reshaping the world.
