In
UFOlogy,
conspiracy theory,
science fiction, and
comic book stories, claims or stories have circulated linking
UFOs to
Nazi Germany.
The German UFO theories describe supposedly successful attempts to
develop advanced aircraft or spacecraft prior to and during
World War II, and further assert the post-war survival of these craft in secret underground bases in
Antarctica, South America or the United States, along with their creators.
[1]
According to the limited available information on the UFOs, various
potential code-names or sub-classifications of Nazi UFO craft such as
Rundflugzeug,
Feuerball,
Diskus,
Haunebu,
Hauneburg-Geräte,
V7,
Vril,
Kugelblitz (not related to the
self-propelled anti-aircraft gun of the same name),
Andromeda-Geräte,
Flugkreisel,
Kugelwaffen, and
Reichsflugscheiben have all been referenced.
Accounts appear as early as 1950, likely inspired by historical German development of specialized engines such as
Viktor Schauberger's
"Repulsine" around the time of WWII. Elements of these claims have been
widely incorporated into various works of fictional and purportedly
non-fictional media, including video games and documentaries, often
mixed with more substantiated information.
German UFO literature very often conforms largely to documented history on the following points:
- The Third Reich claimed the territory of New Swabia in Antarctica, sent an expedition there in 1938, and planned others.[2]
- The Third Reich conducted research into advanced propulsion technology, including rocketry, Viktor Schauberger's engine research, flying wing craft and the Arthur Sack A.S.6 experimental circular winged aircraft.
- Some UFO sightings during World War II, particularly those known as foo fighters, were thought by the Allies to be prototype enemy aircraft designed to harass Allied aircraft through electromagnetic disruption; a technology similar to today's electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons.[page needed]
Early claims
In WWII the so-called "
foo fighters,"
a variety of unusual and anomalous aerial phenomena, were witnessed by
both Axis and Allied personnel. While some foo fighter reports were
dismissed as the misperceptions of troops in the heat of combat, others
were taken seriously, and leading scientists such as
Luis Alvarez to investigate them.
[page needed]
In at least some cases, Allied intelligence and commanders suspected
that foo fighters reported in the European theater represented advanced
German aircraft or weapons, particularly given that Germans had already
developed such technological innovations as V-1 and V-2 rockets and the
first jet-engine fighter planes, and that a minority of foo fighters
seemed to have inflicted damage to allied aircraft.
[page needed]
Similar sentiments regarding German technology resurfaced in 1947 with the first wave of flying saucer reports after
Kenneth Arnold's widely reported close encounter with nine crescent-shaped objects moving at a high velocity. Personnel of
Project Sign, the first U.S. Air Force UFO investigation group, noted that the advanced
flying wing aeronautical designs of the German
Horten brothers were similar to some UFO reports.
[5] In 1959, Captain
Edward J. Ruppelt, the first head of
Project Blue Book (Project Sign's follow-up investigation) wrote:
When WWII ended, the Germans had several radical types of aircraft
and guided missiles under development. The majority were in the most
preliminary stages, but they were the only known craft that could even
approach the performance of objects reported by UFO observers.[6]
While these early speculations and reports were limited primarily to
military personnel, the earliest assertion of German flying saucers in
the
mass media appears to have been an article which appeared in the Italian newspaper
Il Giornale d'Italia in early 1950. Written by Professor
Giuseppe Belluzzo,
an Italian scientist and a former Italian Minister of National Economy
under the Mussolini regime, it claimed that "types of flying discs were
designed and studied in Germany and Italy as early as 1942". Belluzzo
also expressed the opinion that "some great power is launching discs to
study them".
[7]
The
Bell UFO
was among the first flying objects to be connected with the Nazis. It
apparently had occult markings on it and it was also rumoured to have
been very similar to a Wehrmacht document about a vertical take off
aircraft. It is directly related to the supposed crash of a bell-shaped
object that occurred in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, USA on December 9,
1965. The same month, German engineer
Rudolf Schriever gave an interview to German news magazine
Der Spiegel
in which he claimed that he had designed a craft powered by a circular
plane of rotating turbine blades 49 ft (15 m) in diameter. He said that
the project had been developed by him and his team at BMW's Prague works
until April 1945, when he fled Czechoslovakia. His designs for the disk
and a model were stolen from his workshop in Bremerhaven-Lehe in 1948
and he was convinced that Czech agents had built his craft for "a
foreign power".
[8][9] In a separate interview with Der Spiegel in October 1952 he said that the plans were stolen from a farm he was hiding in near
Regen on 14 May 1945. There are other discrepancies between the two interviews that add to the confusion.
[10] However, many skeptics have doubted that such a Bell UFO was actually designed or ever built.
[11]
In 1953, when
Avro Canada announced that it was developing the VZ-9-AV
Avrocar,
a circular jet aircraft with an estimated speed of 1,500 mph
(2,400 km/h), German engineer Georg Klein claimed that such designs had
been developed during the Third Reich. Klein identified two types of
supposed German flying disks:
- A non-rotating disk developed at Breslau by V-2 rocket
engineer Richard Miethe, which was captured by the Soviets, while
Miethe fled to the US via France, and ended up working for Avro.
- A disk developed by Rudolf Schriever and Klaus Habermohl at Prague,
which consisted of a ring of moving turbine blades around a fixed
cockpit. Klein claimed that he had witnessed this craft's first manned
flight on 14 February 1945, when it managed to climb to 12,400 m
(40,700 ft) in 3 minutes and attained a speed of 2,200 km/h (1,400 mph)
in level flight.
Aeronautical engineer
Roy Fedden
remarked that the only craft that could approach the capabilities
attributed to flying saucers were those being designed by the Germans
towards the end of the war. Fedden (who was also chief of the technical
mission to Germany for the Ministry of Aircraft Production) stated in
1945:
| “ |
I have seen
enough of their designs and production plans to realize that if they
(the Germans) had managed to prolong the war some months longer, we
would have been confronted with a set of entirely new and deadly
developments in air warfare.[12] |
” |
Fedden also added that the Germans were working on a number of very
unusual aeronautical projects, though he did not elaborate upon his
statement.
[13]
Later claims
Morning of the Magicians
Le Matin des Magiciens, a 1960 book by
Louis Pauwels and
Jacques Bergier, made many spectacular claims about the
Vril Society of Berlin.
[14] Several years later writers, including
Jan van Helsing,
[15][16] Norbert-Jürgen Ratthofer,
[17] and
Vladimir Terziski,
have built on their work, connecting the Vril Society with UFOs. Among
their claims, they imply that the society may have made contact with an
alien race and dedicated itself to creating spacecraft to reach the
aliens. In partnership with the
Thule Society and the
Nazi Party,
the Vril Society developed a series of flying disc prototypes. With the
Nazi defeat, the society allegedly retreated to a base in Antarctica
and vanished into the hollow Earth to meet up with the leaders of an
advanced race inhabiting inner Earth.
Ernst Zündel's marketing ploy
When German
Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel started
Samisdat Publishers in the 1970s, he initially catered to the
UFOlogy
community, which was then at its peak of public acceptance. His books
claimed that flying saucers were Nazi secret weapons launched from an
underground base in Antarctica, from which the Nazis hoped to conquer
the world and possibly the planets.
[18] Zündel also sold (for $9999) seats on an exploration team to locate the polar entrance to the
hollow earth.
[19]
Some who interviewed Zündel claim that he privately admitted it was a
deliberate hoax to build publicity for Samisdat, although he still
defended it as late as 2002.
[20][21]
Miguel Serrano's book
In 1978
Miguel Serrano, a
Chilean diplomat and Nazi sympathizer, published
El Cordón Dorado: Hitlerismo Esotérico [The Golden Thread: Esoteric Hitlerism] (in Castillan), in which he claimed that
Adolf Hitler was an
Avatar of
Vishnu and was at that time communing with
Hyperborean gods in an underground Antarctic base in
New Swabia. Serrano predicted that Hitler would lead a fleet of UFOs from the base to establish the
Fourth Reich.
[22] In
popular culture, this alleged UFO fleet is referred to as the
Nazi flying saucers from Antarctica.
Fiction and media
- In 1947 Robert A. Heinlein published Rocket Ship Galileo, a science fiction novel featuring a German moon base.
- Iron Sky (2012): a sci-fi black comedy about Nazis who left Earth from their hidden base in Antarctica and established a secret fortress on the dark side of the Moon.
After Germany's defeat in 1945, the Nazis vowed to return to Earth "in
peace," and they finally return in the year 2018, but with a full
invasion force of flying saucers in order to finally defeat the Allies
and restore the Third Reich. During their invasion, they end up battling with the President of the United States (who in the film resembles Sarah Palin) and unintentionally cause a world-wide nuclear war when every space-faring nation on Earth lays claim to the Nazis' powerful Helium-3 resources on the Moon.
- Iron Sky: Invasion (2012): a video game space combat simulator and an expansion of the 2012 movie, with interactive and flyable recreations of numerous alleged prototypes and models of Nazi UFO spacecraft.
- Robert Rankin's novel Nostradamus Ate My Hamster
features Hitler and a group of Nazis escaping the end of the war to the
future in a time machine; they attempt the subtle takeover of Earth
through media manipulation until their time machine is used against
them.
Pictures, described as recently declassified and purporting to show these flying saucers, were shown on the History channel.
[citation needed]
See also
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