| Nazi UFO | |
|---|---|
 Artistic impression of a Naziflying saucer, similar in appearance to craft allegedly photographed byGeorge Adamski, Reinhold Schmidt,Howard Menger, and Stephen Darbishire | |
| General information | |
| Type | Alleged experimental flying disc |
| National origin | Nazi Germany |
| Manufacturer | Unknown; attributed to SS E-IV orVril Society (unverified) |
| Designer | AllegedlySchutzstaffel engineers and esoteric researchers |
| Status | Unverified; speculative |
| Primary user | Nazi Germany (purported) |
| Number built | Unknown; believed to be a prototype only |
| History | |
| First flight | Allegedly 1943–1945 (no verified records) |
| Developed from | Haunebu I |
| Developed into | Haunebu III |
| Preserved at | None known to exist |
| Fate | Mythical or destroyed; no physical evidence |
Inufology,conspiracy theory,science fiction, andcomic book stories, claims or stories have circulated linkingUFOs toNazi Germany. The German UFO theories describe supposedly successful attempts to develop advanced aircraft or spacecraft before and duringWorld War II, further asserting the post-war survival of these craft in secret underground bases inAntarctica, South America, or the United States, along with their creators.[1]
During the Second World War, unusual sightings in the skies above Europe were often interpreted as novel Nazi technology. In the first years of the Cold War, Western nations speculated that unusual sightings might stem from Soviet deployment of captured or reverse-engineered Nazi technology.
In World War II, 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 asLuis Alvarez began to investigate them.[2][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 asV-1 andV-2 missiles and the first operational jet-poweredMe 262 fighter planes. A minority of foo fighters seemed to have inflicted damage to allied aircraft.[2][page needed]
Ghost rockets wererocket- ormissile-shapedunidentified flying objects sighted in 1946, mostly inSweden and nearby countries like Finland.
The first reports of ghost rockets were made on February 26, 1946, byFinnish observers.[3] About 2,000 sightings were logged between May and December 1946, with peaks on 9 and 11 August 1946. Two hundred sightings were verified withradar returns, and authorities recovered physical fragments which were attributed to ghost rockets.
Investigations concluded that many ghost rocket sightings were probably caused bymeteors. For example, the peaks of the sightings, on 9 and 11 August 1946, also fall within the peak of the annualPerseid meteor shower. However, most ghost rocket sightings did not occur during meteor shower activity, and furthermore displayed characteristics inconsistent with meteors, such as reported maneuverability.
Debate continues as to the origins of the unidentified ghost rockets. In 1946, however, it was thought likely that they originated from the formerGerman rocket facility at Peenemünde, and were long-range tests by the Soviets of captured GermanV-1 orV-2 missiles, or perhaps another early form ofcruise missile because of the ways they were sometimes seen to maneuver. This prompted theSwedish Army to issue a directive stating that newspapers were not to report the exact location of ghost rocket sightings or any information regarding the direction or speed of the object. This information, they reasoned, was vital for evaluation purposes to the nation or nations assumed to be performing the tests.
Similar sentiments regarding German technology resurfaced during the1947 flying disc craze afterKenneth Arnold's widely reported close encounter with nine crescent-shaped objects moving at a high velocity. Personnel ofProject Sign, the first U.S. Air Force UFO investigation group, noted that the advancedflying wing aeronautical designs of the GermanHorten brothers were similar to some UFO reports.[4] In 1959, CaptainEdward J. Ruppelt, the first head ofProject 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.[5]
While these early speculations and reports were limited primarily to military personnel, the earliest assertion of German flying saucers in themass media appears to have been an article that appeared in the Italian newspaperIl Giornale d'Italia in early 1950.[6][7] Written by ProfessorGiuseppe 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".[8]
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During the same month, German technicianRudolf Schriever (1909-1953) gave an interview to German news magazineDer 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.[10][11] He said that the project had been developed by him and his team atBMW's Prague works until April 1945, when he fled toCzechoslovakia.[12] 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".[13][14] In a separate interview withDer Spiegel in October 1952, he said that the plans were stolen from a farm he was hiding in nearRegen on 14 May 1945.[15] There are other discrepancies between the two interviews that add to the confusion.[16]
In 1953, whenAvro Canada announced that it was developing the VZ-9-AVAvrocar, 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 Nazi era. Klein identified two types of supposed German flying disks:
Miethe claimed he had worked on the V-2 program but no corroborating evidence exists. Georg Klein claimed the engineer had escaped capture by the Soviets in Breslau by flying out in aMesserschmitt Me 163Komet, which would have been impossible.[17] There is no evidence that Habermohl even existed. Rudolf Schriever claimed he had worked for Heinkel as a test pilot and engineer between 1940 and 1941, but this has never been corroborated.[18] In post-war Germany, Schriever drove supply trucks for the US Army but told newspaper reporters that delegates from foreign powers were constantly making him offers regarding his wartime projects.[19]
Aeronautical engineerRoy 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.[20]
Fedden also added that the Germans were working on several very unusual aeronautical projects, though he did not elaborate upon his statement.[21]
By the 1960s, fringe authors began spreading tales of Nazi UFOs that were tied to the occult or aliens.
According to these theories and fictional stories, various potential code-names or sub-classifications of Nazi UFO craft such asRundflugzeug,Feuerball,Diskus,Haunebu,Hauneburg-Gerät,Glocke,V7,Vril,Kugelblitz (not related to theself-propelled anti-aircraft gun of the same name),Andromeda-Gerät,Flugkreisel,Kugelwaffe,Jenseitsflugmaschine, andReichsflugscheibe have all been referenced. Model kit companies likeAirfix andRevell have released kits of the "Haunebu", and it is featured in video games likeX-Plane 11 andWarplanes: WW2 Dogfight.Accounts appeared as early as 1950, likely inspired by historical German development of specialized engines such asViktor Schauberger's "Repulsine" around the time of World War II. Elements of these claims have been incorporated into various works of fictional and purportedly non-fictional media, including video games and documentaries, often mixed in with more substantiated information.
German UFO literature very often conforms largely to documented history on the following points:
Le Matin des Magiciens ("The Morning of the Magicians"), a 1960 book byLouis Pauwels andJacques Bergier, made many spectacular claims about theVril Society of Berlin.[23] Several years later, writers, includingJan van Helsing,[24][25]Norbert-Jürgen Ratthofer,[26] andVladimir 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 theThule Society and theNazi 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 theHollow Earth to meet up with the leaders of an advanced race inhabiting inner Earth.
WhenErnst Zündel, a GermanHolocaust denier, started Samisdat Publishers in the 1970s, he initially catered to theUFOlogy 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 Earth and possibly the planets.[27] Zündel also sold (for $9999) seats on an exploration team to locate the polar entrance to thehollow earth.[28] 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.[29][30]
In 1978,Miguel Serrano, aChilean diplomat and Nazi sympathizer, publishedEl Cordón Dorado: Hitlerismo Esotérico [The Golden Thread: Esoteric Hitlerism] (in Spanish), in which he claimed thatAdolf Hitler was anAvatar ofVishnu and was, at that time, communing withHyperborean gods in an underground Antarctic base inNew Swabia. Serrano predicted that Hitler would lead a fleet of UFOs from the base to establish theFourth Reich.[31] Inpopular culture, this alleged UFO fleet is referred to as “The Final Battalion”.[citation needed]
Die Glocke ("The Bell") was a purported top-secretNazi scientific technological device, secret weapon, orWunderwaffe. First described by Polish journalist and authorIgor Witkowski (born 1963)[32] inPrawda o Wunderwaffe (2000), it was later popularized by military journalist and authorNick Cook, who associated it withNazi occultism,antigravity, andfree energy suppression research. Mainstream reviewers have criticized claims about Die Glocke as beingfictional, recycled rumors, and ahoax.Die Glocke and other alleged Nazi "miracle weapons" have been dramatized in video games, television shows, and novels. However, many skeptics have doubted that such a Bell UFO was actually designed or ever built.[33]
Nazi UFOs are misconceptions (recorded proof) of Zeppelins flying over the seaside of Germany
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