Nazi UFOs
Encyclopedia
In science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

, conspiracy theory
Conspiracy theory
A conspiracy theory explains an event as being the result of an alleged plot by a covert group or organization or, more broadly, the idea that important political, social or economic events are the products of secret plots that are largely unknown to the general public.-Usage:The term "conspiracy...

, and underground comic books, stories or claims circulate linking UFO
Unidentified flying object
A term originally coined by the military, an unidentified flying object is an unusual apparent anomaly in the sky that is not readily identifiable to the observer as any known object...

s to Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

. These German UFO theories describe supposedly successful attempts to develop advanced aircraft or spacecraft prior to and during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, and further claim the post-war survival of these craft in secret underground bases in Antarctica
New Swabia
New Swabia is a cartographic name sometimes given to an area of Antarctica between 20°E and 10°W in Queen Maud Land, which within Norway is administered as a Norwegian dependent territory under the Antarctic Treaty System...

, South America or the United States, along with their creators. Within the canon of media various code-names or sub-classification of UFO craft are identified: Rundflugzeug, Feuerball, Diskus, Haunebu, Hauneburg-Geräte, V7, VRIL
Vril
Vril, the Power of the Coming Race is a 1871 science fiction novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, originally printed as The Coming Race. Many early readers believed that its account of a superior subterranean master race and the energy-form called "Vril" was accurate, to the extent that some theosophists...

, Kugelblitz, Andromeda-Geräte, Flugkreisel, Kugelwaffen, Reichsflugscheiben.

Accounts appear from as early as 1950, likely inspired by historical German development of specialized engines such as Viktor Schauberger
Viktor Schauberger
Viktor Schauberger was an Austrian forester/forest warden, naturalist, philosopher, inventor and Biomimicry experimenter....

's "Repulsine" around the time of WWII. Elements of the 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:
  • German 3rd Reich claimed the territory of New Swabia
    New Swabia
    New Swabia is a cartographic name sometimes given to an area of Antarctica between 20°E and 10°W in Queen Maud Land, which within Norway is administered as a Norwegian dependent territory under the Antarctic Treaty System...

     in Antarctica, sent an expedition there in 1938, and planned others.
  • German 3rd Reich conducted research into advanced propulsion technology, including rocket
    Rocket
    A rocket is a missile, spacecraft, aircraft or other vehicle which obtains thrust from a rocket engine. In all rockets, the exhaust is formed entirely from propellants carried within the rocket before use. Rocket engines work by action and reaction...

    ry, Viktor Schauberger's engine research, flying wing craft
    Horten Ho 229
    The Horten H.IX, RLM designation Ho 229 was a late–World War II prototype fighter/bomber designed by Reimar and Walter Horten and built by Gothaer Waggonfabrik...

     and the Arthur Sack A.S.6 experimental circular winged aircraft.
  • Some UFO sightings during World War II
    World War II
    World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

    , particularly those known as foo fighter
    Foo fighter
    The term foo fighter was used by Allied aircraft pilots in World War II to describe various UFOs or mysterious aerial phenomena seen in the skies over both the European and Pacific Theater of Operations....

    s, were thought by the allies to be prototype enemy aircraft designed to harass Allied
    Allies of World War II
    The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...

     aircraft through electromagnetic disruption; a technology similar to today's electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons.

Early claims

In 1947 Robert A. Heinlein
Robert A. Heinlein
Robert Anson Heinlein was an American science fiction writer. Often called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was one of the most influential and controversial authors of the genre. He set a standard for science and engineering plausibility and helped to raise the genre's standards of...

 published a science fiction novel Rocket Ship Galileo
Rocket Ship Galileo
Rocket Ship Galileo is a science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein, published in 1947, about three teenagers who participate in a pioneering flight to the Moon. It was the first in the Heinlein juveniles, a long and successful series of science fiction novels published by Scribner's...

that featured a German moon base.

The earliest assertion of German flying saucers 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".

The Bell UFO
Die Glocke
Die Glocke was a purported top secret Nazi scientific technological device, secret weapon, or Wunderwaffe. First described by Polish journalist Igor Witkowski, it was later popularized by military journalist and author Nick Cook as well as by writers such as Joseph P. Farrell...

 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. A bell-shaped object crashed in Kecksburg,Pennsylvania on December 9, 1965.
The same month, German engineer Rudolf Schriever gave an interview to German news magazine Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. It is one of Europe's largest publications of its kind, with a weekly circulation of more than one million.-Overview:...

in which he claimed that he had designed a craft powered by a circular plane of rotating turbine blades 49 ft (14.9 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". 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
Regen
Regen is a town in Bavaria, Germany, capital of the district of Regen.-Division of the town:Originally the town consisted of 4 districts, Bürgerholz, Grubhügel, Riedham and St...

 on 14 May 1945. There are other discrepancies between the two interviews that add to the confusion.

In 1953, when Avro Canada
Avro Canada
Commonly known as Avro Canada, this company started in 1945 as an aircraft plant and became within thirteen years the third-largest company in Canada, one of the largest 100 companies in the world, and directly employing over 50,000...

 announced that it was developing the VZ-9-AV Avrocar, a circular jet aircraft with an estimated speed of 1500 mph (670.6 m/s), 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
    V-2 rocket
    The V-2 rocket , technical name Aggregat-4 , was a ballistic missile that was developed at the beginning of the Second World War in Germany, specifically targeted at London and later Antwerp. The liquid-propellant rocket was the world's first long-range combat-ballistic missile and first known...

     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 12400 m (40,682.4 ft) in 3 minutes and attained a speed of 2200 km/h (1,367 mph) in level flight.


Aeronautical engineer Roy Fedden
Roy Fedden
Sir Alfred Hubert Roy Fedden MBE was an engineer who designed most of Bristol Engine Company's successful aircraft engine designs.-Early life:...

 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:

Fedden also added that the Germans were working on a number of very unusual aeronautical projects, though he did not elaborate upon his statement.

In 1959, Captain Edward J. Ruppelt
Edward J. Ruppelt
Edward J. Ruppelt was a United States Air Force officer probably best-known for his involvement in Project Blue Book, a formal governmental study of unidentified flying objects...

, editor of the U.S. Air Force's Project Blue Book
Project Blue Book
Project Blue Book was one of a series of systematic studies of unidentified flying objects conducted by the United States Air Force. Started in 1952, it was the second revival of such a study...

 wrote:

Morning of the Magicians

Le Matin des Magiciens, a 1960 book by Louis Pauwels
Louis Pauwels
Louis Pauwels was a French journalist and writer.- Biography :Louis Pauwels was a teacher at Athis-Mons from 1939 to 1945 , Louis Pauwels wrote in many monthly literary French magazines as early as 1946 until the...

 and Jacques Bergier
Jacques Bergier
Jacques Bergier , was a chemical engineer, member of the French-resistance, spy, journalist and writer...

, made many spectacular claims about the Vril Society of Berlin.
Several years later writers, including Jan van Helsing,
Norbert-Jürgen Ratthofer,
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
Thule Society
The Thule Society , originally the Studiengruppe für germanisches Altertum , was a German occultist and völkisch group in Munich, named after a mythical northern country from Greek legend...

 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.

Vladimir Terziski

Vladimir Terziski, a Bulgarian engineer who bills himself as president of the American Academy of Dissident Sciences, claims that the Germans collaborated in their advanced craft research with Axis powers
Axis Powers
The Axis powers , also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries, or just the Axis, was an alignment of great powers during the mid-20th century that fought World War II against the Allies. It began in 1936 with treaties of friendship between Germany and Italy and between Germany and...

 Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 and Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

, and continued their space effort after the war from a base in New Swabia. He alleges that Germans may have landed on the Moon as early as 1942 and established an underground base there. Terziski relates that when Russians and Americans secretly landed on the moon in the 1950s they stayed at this still-operating base. According to Terziski, "there is atmosphere, water and vegetation on the Moon," which NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...

 conceals to exclude the third world
Third World
The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either capitalism and NATO , or communism and the Soviet Union...

 from moon exploration. Terziski has been accused of fabricating his video and photographic evidence.

Ernst Zündel's marketing ploy

When German Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel
Ernst Zündel
Ernst Christof Friedrich Zündel is a German Holocaust denier and pamphleteer who was jailed several times in Canada for publishing literature which "is likely to incite hatred against an identifiable group" and for being a threat to national security, in the United States for overstaying his visa,...

 started Samisdat Publishers
Samisdat Publishers
Samisdat Publishers, Ltd. was a small Canadian publishing house owned and operated by Ernst Zündel, a noted Holocaust denier, during the 1980s and 1990s...

 in the 1970s, he initially catered to the UFOlogy
Ufology
Ufology is a neologism coined to describe the collective efforts of those who study reports and associated evidence of unidentified flying objects . UFOs have been subject to various investigations over the years by governments, independent groups, and scientists...

 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.
Zündel also sold (for $9999) seats on an exploration team to locate the polar entrance to the hollow earth
Hollow Earth
The Hollow Earth hypothesis proposes that the planet Earth is either entirely hollow or otherwise contains a substantial interior space. The hypothesis has been shown to be wrong by observational evidence, as well as by the modern understanding of planet formation; the scientific community has...

.
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.

Miguel Serrano's book

In 1978 Miguel Serrano
Miguel Serrano
Miguel Serrano was a Chilean diplomat, explorer and author of poetry, books on spiritual questing and Esoteric Nazism...

, a Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...

an diplomat and Nazi sympathizer, published The Golden Band, in which he claimed that Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...

 was an Avatar
Avatar
In Hinduism, an avatar is a deliberate descent of a deity to earth, or a descent of the Supreme Being and is mostly translated into English as "incarnation," but more accurately as "appearance" or "manifestation"....

 of Vishnu
Vishnu
Vishnu is the Supreme god in the Vaishnavite tradition of Hinduism. Smarta followers of Adi Shankara, among others, venerate Vishnu as one of the five primary forms of God....

 and was at that time communing with Hyperborean gods in an underground Antarctic base in New Swabia
New Swabia
New Swabia is a cartographic name sometimes given to an area of Antarctica between 20°E and 10°W in Queen Maud Land, which within Norway is administered as a Norwegian dependent territory under the Antarctic Treaty System...

. Serrano predicted that Hitler would lead a fleet of UFOs from the base to establish the Fourth Reich
Fourth Reich
The Fourth Reich is a term used to describe a theoretical future successor of the Third Reich.-Neo-Nazism:In terms of neo-Nazism, the Fourth Reich is envisioned as featuring Aryan supremacy, anti-Semitism, Lebensraum, aggressive militarism and totalitarianism...

. In popular culture
Popular culture
Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the...

, this alleged UFO fleet is referred to as the Nazi flying saucers from Antarctica.

Fiction and media

  • Iron Sky
    Iron Sky
    Iron Sky is an upcoming Finnish science-fiction comedy film from the makers of the Star Wreck series Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning. The film is directed by Timo Vuorensola and produced by Tero Kaukomaa of Blind Spot Pictures production company. The film stars Udo Kier and Tilo Prückner...

     - Film in production featuring a German moon base established in 1945.
  • Robert Rankin
    Robert Rankin
    Robert Fleming Rankin is a prolific British humorous novelist. Born in Parsons Green, London, he started writing in the late 1970s, and first entered the bestsellers lists with Snuff Fiction in 1999, by which time his previous eighteen books had sold around one million copies...

    's novel Nostradamus Ate My Hamster
    Nostradamus Ate My Hamster
    Nostradamus Ate My Hamster is a fantasy novel by British author Robert Rankin. In it, several seemingly unconnected and nonsensical events come together to make perfect clarity at the end; these include time travel and an attempted alien invasion vaguely orchestrated by Hitler.The plot centers...


See also

  • Foo Fighter
    Foo fighter
    The term foo fighter was used by Allied aircraft pilots in World War II to describe various UFOs or mysterious aerial phenomena seen in the skies over both the European and Pacific Theater of Operations....

  • Military disc shaped aircraft
  • Ahnenerbe
    Ahnenerbe
    The Ahnenerbe was a Nazi German think tank that promoted itself as a "study society for Intellectual Ancient History." Founded on July 1, 1935, by Heinrich Himmler, Herman Wirth, and Richard Walther Darré, the Ahnenerbe's goal was to research the anthropological and cultural history of the Aryan...

  • Ghost rockets
    Ghost rockets
    Ghost Rockets Danish Spøgelsesraketter were mysterious rocket- or missile-shaped unidentified flying objects sighted in 1946, mostly in Sweden and nearby countries....

  • Hollow Earth
    Hollow Earth
    The Hollow Earth hypothesis proposes that the planet Earth is either entirely hollow or otherwise contains a substantial interior space. The hypothesis has been shown to be wrong by observational evidence, as well as by the modern understanding of planet formation; the scientific community has...

  • Nazi occultism
  • Vril
    Vril
    Vril, the Power of the Coming Race is a 1871 science fiction novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, originally printed as The Coming Race. Many early readers believed that its account of a superior subterranean master race and the energy-form called "Vril" was accurate, to the extent that some theosophists...

  • Urda (anime)
  • Operation Highjump
  • Vaimanika Shastra
    Vaimanika Shastra
    The Vaimānika Shāstra वैमानिक शास्त्र is an early 20th century Sanskrit text on aeronautics obtained by psychic channeling and automatic writing...

  • Space Nazis
    Space Nazis
    Space Nazis is a recurring theme among many science fiction works dealing with World War II or World War II like situations.-Novels:The theme is already evident in Robert A...

  • Iron Sky
    Iron Sky
    Iron Sky is an upcoming Finnish science-fiction comedy film from the makers of the Star Wreck series Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning. The film is directed by Timo Vuorensola and produced by Tero Kaukomaa of Blind Spot Pictures production company. The film stars Udo Kier and Tilo Prückner...

  • Die Glocke
    Die Glocke
    Die Glocke was a purported top secret Nazi scientific technological device, secret weapon, or Wunderwaffe. First described by Polish journalist Igor Witkowski, it was later popularized by military journalist and author Nick Cook as well as by writers such as Joseph P. Farrell...

  • UFO conspiracy theory
    UFO conspiracy theory
    A UFO conspiracy theory is any one of many often overlapping conspiracy theories which argue that evidence of the reality of unidentified flying objects is being suppressed by various governments around the world...


Sources

  • 1988/1990: UFO - Das Dritte Reich schlägt zurück? (UFO - The Third Reich Strikes Back?) (viewable here in German) by Norbert Jürgen Ratthofer and Ralf Ettl
  • 1992: UFO - Geheimnisse des Dritten Reichs (UFO - Secrets of the Third Reich) (viewable here in German and here in English)
  • 2008, 'Mythos Neuschwabenland: Das letzte Geheimnis des Dritte Reiches' (The Myth of Neuschwabenland - The Last Secret of the Third Reich) by Polar Film + Medien GmbH
  • In production: (Iron Sky)

  • Joscelyn Godwin. Arktos: The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism, and Nazi Survival. Adventures Unlimited Press, 1996. ISBN 0-932813-35-6.
  • Christopher Partridge. UFO Religions. Routledge, 2002. ISBN 0-415-26324-7.

  • William R. Lyne. Pentagon Aliens (1993. 306 pages, Creatopia, 3rd edition, PB, 2007. ISBN 978-0-9637467-7-1)
  • Joseph P. Farrell
    Joseph P. Farrell
    Joseph Patrick Farrell, born and raised in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, is a theologian, scholar on the East–West Schism and the author of a number of books on alternative history, Pseudohistory, historical revisionism, Pseudoarchaeology, physics, and science....

    . Reich of the Black Sun: Nazi Secret Weapons and the Cold War Allied Legend
  • Branton (Bruce Alan Walton) The Omega Files: Secret Nazi UFO Bases Revealed (April 15, 2000 ISBN 1-892062-09-7)
  • Renato Vesco & David Hatcher Childress
    David Hatcher Childress
    David Hatcher Childress is an American author and publisher of books on topics on alternative history and historical revisionism. His works cover such subjects as pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact, Atlantis, Lemuria, Ancient Astronauts, UFOs, Nikola Tesla, the Knights Templar, lost cities and...

    . Man-Made UFOs 1944-1994: 50 Years of Suppression (September, 1994 ISBN 0-932813-23-2)
  • Henry Stevens. Hitler's Flying Saucers: A Guide to German Flying Discs of the Second World War (February 1, 2003 ISBN 1-931882-13-4)
  • Nick Cook
    Nick Cook
    Nick Cook is a British aviation journalist and author of fiction and non-fiction works and has won four Aerospace Journalist of the Year Awards from the Royal Aeronautical Society.-Journalism:...

    . The Hunt for Zero Point. New York: Broadway Books (2003)

External links

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