Aliens and the Third Reich
Did a UFO really crash in Germany and did it contain blueprints for advanced weapons?
Who was Maria Orsic and could she really control the power of Vril?
Is there remains of a wonder weapon in an abandoned polish mine?
Our host Fredrik continues the mission to discover what is genuine, fake, and somewhere in between on the TV-show Ancient Aliens. In this episode we will break down episode ten from season two (Ancient Aliens S02E10) called “Aliens and the Third Reich”. It originally aired on November 25 2010.
This episode will be a bit more serious one than usual. Even if we tend to research topics and claims within this episode contain a bit of extra of it. We will digg down into claims that Nazi Germany had contact with or built their advanced weponry upon lost alien technology. The ideas that on the surface seem to be just loony and a bit out there did contain a quite dark history that the History Channel seems to have been ignoring.
Most of the show is built upon the ideas of Neo-Nazis, original nazis, spirutal sources and missinformation. Strong claims but my research is going in that direction. To back this up I’ve added my sources and also a transcription of the show. If you know people who don’t listen to podcasts they can read it instead.
Just a brief CW, it is an episode that focuses heavily on the second world war. We don’t go into any details but we mention executions, suicide and the horrors of world war two.
In this episode:
The Black Forest UFO Incident of 1936
Jan Udo Holey (Jan Van Helsing)
Esoteric Nazism and the spear of destiny
Sources, resources and further reading suggestions
Cimino, R. (2012). Deconstructing the myth of ‘esoteric Nazism’. [online] Religion Watch Archives. Available at: https://www.rwarchives.com/2012/11/deconstructing-myth-esoteric-nazism/
Colavito, J. (2011). Review of Ancient Aliens S03E12: Aliens and Deadly Cults. [online] Available at: https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/review-of-ancient-aliens-s03e12-aliens-and-deadly-cults
Colavito, J. (2014). Review of In Search of Aliens S01E02 ‘Nazi Time Travelers’. [online] Available at: https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/review-of-in-search-of-aliens-s01e02-nazi-time-travelers
Dunning, B. (2012). Wunderwaffen: Nazi Wonder Weapons. [online] Available at: https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4293
Einstein, A. (1950). Arms Can Bring No Security. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 6(3), pp.71–71. doi:10.1080/00963402.1950.11461215. Available at: Google Books
Goodrick-Clarke, N. (2003). Black sun : Aryan cults, esoteric Nazism, and the politics of identity. New York, London: New York University Press.
Goodrick-Clarke, N. (2004). The occult roots of Nazism : secret Aryan cults and their influence on Nazi ideology. New York: New York University Press.
Nouvelobs.com. (2007). Prison avec sursis pour l’auteur d’un livre antisémite, Le Nouvel Observateur, 15 June. Available at: Prison avec sursis pour l’auteur d’un livre antisémite
Olderr, S. (2017). Symbolism : a comprehensive dictionary 2d ed. Jefferson, N.C.: Mcfarland & Co.
Rodier, M. (2000). Viktor Schauberger : Naturforscher und Erfinder. Frankfurt Am Main: Zweitausendeins.
Schröm, O. (1998). Braune Esoterik auf dem Vormarsch: Viele Bücher aus der New-Age-Szene zeichnen ein rassistisches Weltbild. Die Zeit, 28 May. Available at: https://www.zeit.de/1998/23/esoterik.txt.19980528.xml
Strube, J. (2015). Nazism and the Occult, in Partridge, C.H (ed) The occult world. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. pp. 336-347. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/292292306_Nazism_and_the_Occult
Thad Allen, M (2004). The business of genocide : the SS, slave labor, and the concentration camps. Chapel Hill N.C. ; London: University Of North Carolina Press.
www.atomicarchive.com. (n.d.). Einstein’s Letter to President Roosevelt - 1939 | Historical Documents. [online] Available at: https://www.atomicarchive.com/resources/documents/beginnings/einstein.html
Zidan, B. (2020). The Concept and Utilization of Swastika ‘Hooked Cross’ on Islamic Artefacts. Journal of the General Union of Arab Archaeologists, 5(1). doi:10.21608/jguaa2.2020.18018.1024.
Music
“Now we ride” by Alexander Nakarada (serpentsoundstudios.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons BY Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
It does not take us a long time to encounter a swastika, one second in and we have parades and Nazi flags all over the place. But alright, it supposed to be about the Nazi Germany so I guess it’s appropriate. But then we kick into high gear with Henry Stevens who say:
“A lot of the information that we’ve been told about the Second World War is wrong.”
This quote will set the tone for the episode, because this will be the main take away from the episode. We also meet a new face to us, Jim Marrs, a conspiracy theorist and UFO hunter.
Nazi Saucers
V1 and V2 rockets
But after the intro we start to get inte to the gist of it. We are getting a lot of world war 2 footage in this first section, it is about nazi germany so I guess it’s thematic at lest. But the narrator tells us that the Germans had the most advanced weaponry for its time and this is somewhat true. They did spend a lot of money on research during this period. But it helps when you have slave labour to keep costs down and humans to use as guinniepigs. But this is of course left out.
But Billy, our beloved Bill Barnes comes in and talks a little about the V1 and V2 rockets and they are marvelous inventions. But from the show it seems as if the Germans had invented the rockets all by themselves. But this is not true, prior to the war there were exchanges between universities. Von Braun, who was the one of the main people behind the V2 rocket, had reached out to Robert H. Goddard. Goddard was the one who is credited with the first liquid fueled rocket. So there was an ongoing exchange of ideas. But there’s other who worked with early rocket design such as Robert Esnault-Pelterie, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, and Hermann Oberth. The last one we will get back to later.
Sure Germany was the first country to really develop a rocket that could be used in war. But the idea was already out there, it makes the comment from the narrator a little bit weird. Almost as he gives it away by accident.
“But what was the source of their incredible achievements? Were they simply smarter than their counterparts in other countries? Did they receive more funding and resources for their research? “
Yes it was the funding and being lucky to have people like Von Braun and Oberth who could use it. I think we should again highlight that slave labour from the camps was used in the development.
After this Linda Multon Howe joins in for a really quick soundbite. But she is wondering how Adolf Hitler could be so confident that Germany would take over the world. What we should read here is that they of course have some secrets. What might that be? Well if you have followed the series the answer is always aliens.
The Black Forest UFO Incident of 1936
So here we are going to go down a dark road that I feel confirms the show is resting on racist ideas. We have brought it up before but this time I think we’ll have to really dig into the persons they talk about. So after Howe's question on where the confidence came from we opened up on the correct name for the area, Black forest.
So back in episode five in season one they talk about this incident but there they called the area for the “Freiburg Forest”. But here it seems as if they at least get the name right this time around.
We talked a little bit about the Freiburg forest UFO incident with Blake Smith from Monstertalk back in episode 9. We get a more detailed description of the events in there so if you want to hear more about that you’ll need to go back to that episode.
But, they mention a name here. Jan Van Helsing. No, it is not the character from Bram Stoker's Dracula but we will discuss the pen name here. This person's real name is Jan Udo Holey, a German who has published a number of books. I think we will explain quite a lot about the character when we talk about how he chose that pen name.
Jan Udo Holey (Jan Van Helsing)
But first Jan Udo Holey was born in 1967 as a second child in an esoteric family. His mother claimed that Jan is a seer and he got a lot of his influences here. He went on to become an interior decorator and seems after this have come in contact with the far right.
So Jan Udo Holey did select the name Van Helsing to honor the vampire hunter since Jan Udo believes the jews to be “bloodsuckers”. Since Van Helsing was fighting vampires he felt it was an appropriate name to take.
But these claims about the UFO crash in the forest come from the book Secret Societies and Their Power in the Twentieth Century (or in German Geheimgesellschaften und ihre Macht im 20. Jahrhundert.). A book that is based on texts like “The protocol of elders of zion” and is building on other ideas from known holocaust deniers such as David Irving , David L. Hoggan and Germar Rudolf just to name a few. The book is banned in multiple countries due to the antisemitism in it. Since the book is banned Jan Udo has used this to sell more books by claiming to be a victim. That his critics are trying to silence him because they are afraid of the truth.
So it is a weird source for the History Channel to use so publicly in their show. But if you don’t know about the hoilocaust denialism and anti semitism I guess it might sound credible.
But I think it’s clear that we can write of the Black forest UFO as an invention of Jan Holey, he is clearly the source for this saga and have not provided any evidence for that it happened. There are claims about UFO:s and nazis in earlier sources such as Ernst Zündel and Miguel Serrano but they ties the UFO:s to antartica.
Jan, I refuse to call him Van Helsing, seems to go a bit further and add Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier ideas about the Vril Society from morning of the magicians. Jan Udo expands on the ideas and adds to the story, we will return to his writing later on. So with all of this I think we can for now write of Holeys claims as racist fiction. But all of this does not stop Bill Barnes from claiming:
“What exists are the reports of scientists who claim to have read reports of analysis done on that craft and the propulsions system.”
And I know this is TV and that giving a source can be tricky when trying to narrate a story, but it’s not even a name of the scientists or reports. To be fair we’re not sure that Bill Barnes talks about the German UFO crash here. So Ancient Aliens are so poor with their sources that you can’t even trust the editing of the believers.
We then have Michel Dennin who comes in and discusses if it would be possible for us to reverse engineer alien technologie if encountered. His answer is that it depends, if it is similar to what we have now it could be simple. If it is something really different it would become nearly impossible. I think he has a point, but the show agrees that since it could be possible it’s fine for us.
I think it would be good to discuss Michel Dennin a little bit, he has been in most of the episodes we have seen. But he isn’t really part of the Ancient Astronaut believers, so he is somewhat of the resident, maybe not skeptic, but science contact. He is a professor at the University of California Irvine. He is a devout Catholic and has written a book called “Divine Science”, this is why I would not call him a skeptic. But Michel Dennin claims to have stayed on the show for all this time so he can influence the show. If this is the product after Dennins influence, maybe it could in fact be worse.
But I think it’s good to know that Dennin is not a believer but lending his credibility to these types of shows to talk about science. I believe this to be a somewhat double edged sword, at one part it’s good to reach out and try to get new demographics interested in science. But at the same time these shows have had quite the artistic license toward facts. Dennin has been used and edited in ways often that makes it seems as if the prefered story of aliens presented by the show is true.
But let’s leave professor Dennins background for now and get back to the show because now we’re going to see the result from the reverse engineering of the spacecraft.
Viktor Schauberger
We’re going to move on to another German inventor named Viktor Schauberger the narrator start us of like this:
According to reports discovered after the war, German scientists began experimenting with anti-gravity technologies shortly after the alleged discovery of the alien craft. One of these scientists was an Austrian inventor named Viktor Schauberger.
Michel Dennin comes in and says something that in a moment will make more sense.
He was very instrumental in talking about creative ways of using fluid motion to generate propulsions. And a lot of it has to do with studying the way animals actually move through water or air.
So who is this Viktor Schauberger? Schauberger was born in 1885 and in 1922 he created a system that was able to ship more wood than before down the rivers. The inspiration behind this was according to Schauberger found in nature and specially he attributes the trout.
So I think that this is what Dennin was referring to when being quoted here before, but none of what I just said made it into the show. But we then meet Jörg Schauberger who is the grandson of Viktor who is going to fill us in on the inventions. But I have to say that when it is a relative who defends your theories, it’s not a great sign.
Viktor do bring up the trout but with a little twist:
“He looked especially on the trout standing still in a raging torrent. And he thought of, ‘how can this fish stand still in this river?’ And then he thought of how nature works. And he stated, it’s not the animal itself, it’s air or water that moves this animal. A fish does not swim, it is swum, and a bird does not fly, it is flown. So, why can’t we do this with machines? Move the air in a special way so that the vehicle is pulled, not pushed.”
I’m not sure what they really mean by this, both the bird and the fish use muscle to move. Sure they somewhat rely on wind and currents in water to move quicker or more efficiently. But it’s basically drag, just as a cyclist is riding behind someone else to save energy.
Repulsin engine
But all this boils down to that they claim that Viktor Schuberger invented an vortex engine. This is a truth with modification Schuberger seems to have called a number of things he invented for “Repulsin”. One of them was an idea to use air that’s sucked in through the disk, this somehow creates a vortex that can move an aircraft. They show you the invention on the screen and then a poor CGI video of how it would work. Why don’t they just show the invention in action since they have it already? Well it seems to be due to the fact that the patent was rejected for not being possible and well, the invention never worked.
Schuberger had not given up though, they don’t bring this up in the episode but he tried to make a new version of the Repulsin after gaining a lab at a concentration camp. Again, these are not great people, but due to his success with the lumber transport he had made a lot of connections.
But Repulsin 2.0 was meant to use water and a few unknown additives to create petrol for submarines. Again how it would work or even be possible is left unknown but again it didn’t work. But this should not be a surprise since except for the moving of logs his other inventions have gone terribly wrong.
Schuberger did dabble in water treatment and alternative energy sources. He managed to convince a few Siemens execs to build one of his ideas. After the device was built to Schubergers specifications the apparatus did implode and reached a temperature at 4000 degrees celcius. He got another chance from Siemens but the improved invention gave off so much radiation and heat that it melted the jewelry of people behind nearby walls. It does sound a bit as someone may have maybe exaggerated this story but Siemens cut ties after this.
Schuberger got more paranoid toward the end of his life and today he is mostly known for vitalised water with his vortexes. Water can apparently die and this is bad somehow, but you can give it new life by spinning it really fast.
David Childress then comes in to talk about Schauberger's vortex engines but is adding mercury to them. I did not find this anywhere other than in Childress' writing so I think this is something he added to make his mercury claims sound more plausible.
But in the show the grandson Jörg Schuberger claims that his grandfather got these ideas from ancient texts. I think you can almost guess where we will go now.
If you guessed India and Vimanas you are perfectly right! So the Vimanas, one of Ancient Alien proponents' most favorite things. We will not spend too much time here since we have covered these in other episodes. But again they mix up the Rukma Vimana or Vaimanika Shastra, the book which is a hoax and was first published in 1953, with real Indian texts.
Haunebu
But we talked about this in the last episode and in previous episodes before this. So we’re going to leave it here for now. But with this little segway we are going to move on to the, I guess, other result of the reverse engineered UFO. The Haunebu, but they don’t spend much time on this. I found that weird since Childress has written a book on this thing. But it seems to have been a saucer shaped aircraft in different variations. One of them was 25 meter in diameter and had windows on top. This invention is a fabric of imagination, by whom we will get to later on.
But Jim Marrs claim the following towards the end of this section:
“Almost all my life I’ve heard stories that the Nazis had obtained a flying saucer. And I do believe the Nazis were in touch with nonhuman intelligences that gave them the advanced technology that they developed right up to the end of the war.”
>I mean the Nazis lost! These intergalactic travelers who apparently used nuclear weapons in the past and can control volcanoes and tsunamis did lose against a ragtag bunch of humans with rifles. I mean do they hear how this sounds?
The Swastika
Here the show will go on a little side excursion. They are going to use the swastika as evidence that it must be aliens since it can be found all over the world. Michel Cremo tells us:
“‘Swastika’ is a Sanskrit word from ancient India. It means “mark of good fortune,” and the same symbol is found not only in ancient India but all over the world…in many different ancient cultures, ranging from Egypt to Iran to the cultures of the Americas.”
This is somewhat true, the meaning differs but swastika shaped symbols are found all over the world. Swastika originates from the word swasti and it does indeed mean luck, fortune or prosperity. The ending Ka is a suffix meaning of, so the literate translation to English would be “of peace” or so. Technically Cremo is right here but only technically.
In Egypt on the other hand the symbol does not have been popular among the egyptians except for in imported goods and practices. There is one case of native depiction of the hooked cross I can find and it’s a rock carving in the Eastern desert of upper egypt. It is a crude affair and does not give us much, the dating can be dynastic. The picture shows us two feets, one of them has a swastika in the foot and the other is slightly above the second foot's toes. You can find a copy of the carving at our webpage where you’ll find all the sources too!
Cremo continues:
“In the ancient Sanskrit texts, it stated that the symbol of the Swastika is connected with extraterrestrial beings, such as the Hindu God Brahma. It’s often used in worship in temples dedicated to extraterrestrial beings.”
It seems to be a case where Cremo wants to read that the hindu gods are aliens and therefore they are aliens. But you have the swastika all over in hindu and asian culture since it’s connected to so many things. You put it over doors, on paychecks and everywhere you would like to have some luck and prosperity. You also have it associated with the festivities of Diwali and sure it’s connected to Brahma and other gods but not as a symbol of their divinity.
It is maybe great to mention here that the swastika does appear all over the world. We mentioned the one location in Egypt but you can find it in many other places. What the show wants you to think is that it means the same thing all over and looks identical everywhere. But that’s not the case, if you compare a hindu swastika to a avar, an Greek tetraskelion, polish Ręce Swaroga or the Bashkirs swastika you will start to realize that even though it’s similar it’s not the same. The meaning differs too between different cultures and times. For medieval christians it symbolized Jesus and the authors of the gospels. For the native americans it was related to rain and fertility. Yes, it was luck and prosperity in some cultures too but we’re bound to have some overlap. Most of these are in Asia where cross influence would be more expected.
But how can it appear all over the world then? Well it’s a simple symbol to be honest and have the element of movement in it that makes it interesting. We also again need to stress they have not been identical over time and locations.
Bill Barnes just pushes us of in the deep end saying:
“The Swastika turns up in the legends of indigenous peoples all around the world, and the theory was that it was a magical power, a magical symbol, given to these indigenous peoples by extraterrestrials, and that by using this symbol, it could ward off enemies, ward off evil, give them the power to not only survive but become supreme.”
I really don’t like how he is trying to fit the Nazi ideology over all of these people. The swastika was not connected to a sence of superiority before the Nazi’s took it as their symbol. This clearly shows that Barnes does not care about the original sources, he wants to push his own narrative.
Esoteric Nazism and the spear of destiny
George Noory from coast-to-coast radio repeats a good old classic myth:
“Hitler was obsessed with ancient mythology, he was obsessed with the occult, and more importantly, he was obsessed with trying to gain knowledge That he believed he could muster before anybody else could. So, he spent an inordinate amount of time, energy and money all over the planet to try to get information about things that would give Germany an upper hand.”
I think we should have another excursion here and explore these occult and esoteric claims before we venture into the next section about the Vril Society.
The idea of the occult, mythological and esoteric ideas connected to the Nazi is more or less a quite modern invention. The story is quite long and complex and could easily be its own episode or even whole series of them. I’ll keep it to the shorter version but there’s a lot more that we could talk about, if you’re interested in an episode like this please let me know. But resources and reading suggestions on what’s brought up can be found at diggingupancientaliens.com.
Where to start this is not an easy thing, so let’s begin with the Völkish movement who started the idea of one nation, one people. This movement led to subgroups such as the Thule-society that the show doesn't talk about really in this episode. But this subgroup had esoteric influences due to their inspiration from Ariosphist writers such as Guido von List and von Liebenfels who did have a more occult idea in their writing. The Thule society did in 1919 have an important role in building the early Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei or DAP. This would later evolve to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP. But as soon Hitler had control over the party the connection with Thule Society was thoroughly separated. After this the society would wither and fade away.
Why would Hitler do this? To start he was never a member of the Thule Society, only a few of leading Nazis was even invited as guests. Rudolph Hess seems to have been a member for a brief period, but the question is if he really was a member or if this is something that was invented later due to political reasons.
Hitler himself never had any love toward the Völkish movement, almost having contempt for the organization and in “Mein Kampf” Hitler writes that these traveling scholars are not the way to spread the word. Hitler was not fond of mysticism or superstition and the same went for Goebbels. Already in 1933 when they seized power the party became hostile towards esoteric societies influenced by for example Theosophy, Rosicrucianism among others. Even Ariosophy was deemed to be one of the “sects hostile to the state”. When Rudolph Hess made his highly optimistic attempt to make peace and crashed in a Scottish field Hitler had enough. Hitler and Goebbles initiated a purge to clear out what remained of these esoteric ideas and societies. The task was maybe somewhat ironic given to chief of the German Police Heinrich Himmler, one of the few we know actually had an interest in the occult and esoteric.
Himmler is one of the few we know had an interest but he seems to have been keeping it mostly to himself. He tried to sow the ideas by creating research institutes and things but all attempts seem to have either ended at the planning stage or fizzled out. But Himmler seems to have been the one interested in finding the grail and did take people like Otto Rahn into the SS.
But these claims that Hitler was interested in the occult come from? Well some stem from a group of SS people who met up in 1950’s Vienna. One of them was an engineer named Erich Halik who would come to publish articles about Neo-nazi esoterism and UFO:s. His first articles was in fact about that a UFO sighting was not something extra-terrestrial but a nazi Cult device that was used by high ranking gnostic christians to influence society.
But we should not forget the French book “The morning of the magicians” who continued on these ideas. But maybe the greatest influence on the idea of Nazis being overly interested in ancient artefacts was Trevor Ravenscroft who wrote the book “The spear of destiny” published in 1973. In this book Ravenscroft claims that Hitler was obsessed with the spear who pierced Jesus at the crucifixion. This is based on the interviews he made with Walter Johannes Stein a philosopher, grail enthusiast and pioneer of anthroposophy. In these stories it’s claimed that Stein found a copy of Parcival in an occult bookshop. The book had these strange notes on how to gain transcendent consciousness, alchemy and other occult teachings. Stein then learned that the book belonged to Hitler and gained Hitlers address who welcomed this jewish teacher in his home and told him about all these occult things.
But Stein died in 1956, so some time before the book and sure Ravenscroft could maybe have met him before this but. As you might expect there’s no evidence that it would have happened. In an interview later he is supposed to have admitted to never having met Stein in life but gained the knowledge through a medium.
But this thread of authors then moves down to Norbert Jürgen-Ratthofer and Ralf Ettl who we will talk more about shortly and of course Jan Udo Holey. From these we go to Childress and Jim Marrs, the books keep selling so I guess we will see more on these topics. But be aware that the ideas stems from Nazi sympatizers or spirtually channeled works.
As I mentioned this is only a brief summary of this topic and if you want to learn more I’ve collected some good resources in our sources section. You should go and check those out. But now when we’re a bit more armed with some background leading up to the next section we can continue.
The Vril society
The narrator moves us to the next section by saying:
“One of the main groups advising the Nazi leadership was a secret society known as the Vril. Members are said to have included the commander of the SS, Heinrich Himmler…Air Force Commander Hermann Göring…and the head of the Nazi party, Martin Bormann.”
If you paid attention you know t hat except for a very few individuals the top of the Nazi party had any interest in the esoteric societies. In fact I can tell you with 100% certainty that none of these was involved in the Vril society. We will get into this in just a moment but let’s first see what the show believes the Vril to be. Childress claims that the Vril society took its name from the Sanskrit word Prana, it does not. The show goes on and talks about how this Vril power could have been used. They then start to claim that these Vril researchers were in contact with beings from the Aldebaran Solar System. Bill Barnes explain that:
“They believed that Aryans ascended from a race of ETs and these ETs imbued this Aryan race with tremendous power and meant for them to be the master race on earth. And that was, in part, the justification for the Nazi political party to establish the Aryan supremacy on the planet earth.”
Alright maybe we need to take just a moment here and try to figure out what is going on. What is this Vril, how can I be so sure that Goering was not part of the society and nazi aliens? Really?
Let’s start with Vril, we talked a little bit about it back in episode nine. But let’s recap that part here so you have a fresh framework. Vril comes from the novel “The Coming Race” written by Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1871. The book is about a young traveler who encounters the race of Vril-ya, a superior angelic like race who gained powers from the force of Vril. Vril in the novel can be used for many things, both destroy anything or create and heal anything.
But how did a sci-fi novel from 1871 become entagled with Nazi-ufology? For this we can thank Willy Ley who was in accademia during his time in Germany but who is maybe mostly known as a Sci-Fi writer. He wrote in the science fiction magazine “Analog Science Fiction and Fact” that in Germany there was a society trying to find Vril. Later research did uncover brochures by a group called R eichsarbeitsgemeinschaft ‘Das kommende Deutschland’, one of them called “Vril: Die kosmische urkraft” published in 1930. But in it they seem to talk more about Atlantis and free energy than other things. But this group was on the very fringe and did not do much more than release a second pamflet expanding on the idea.
Vril Society was picked up in “Morning of the magicians” where the myth was expanded. But what we hear in the episode mostly builds on the writings from 1991 by Norbert Jürgen-Ratthofer and Ralf Ettl. That year they published the book “Das vril projekt” where they came to expand on the ideas of nazi esoterism and vril. Both of them belonged to a society started by Ettl building on Marcionism, the base of this belief system rests on the ideas of Marcion of Sinope. The short version is that the god in the old testament is evil and is not compatible with the teachings of Jesus. So his idea was that the supreme good god took pity on the lost people following the false evil god and sent his son Jesus to save them. So the god from the old testament is different from the god in the new testament and is an evil force. This is a quite clever way to paint the jews as extra evil. Both Jürgen-Ratthofer and Ettl of course also have strong ties to the far right movements.
But in this book the Vril society becomes a larger organization and the author is starting to add sumerian ideas to the story. But the autors claim the society learned that a alien race from the Aldebaran system came here in the past and created a slave race and a master race. The aliens left these races alone and they started to mix. The aliens then created the Germanic people to bring order back to earth and get back to the original world order.
Jürgen-Ratthofer and Ettl seem to also be the original source for the Haunebu legends we talked about earlier. According to “Das Vril projekt” there were eight versions of the Haunebu spaceships and model 7 or 8 was used to travel to Aldebaran to get help in the war effort. The pair also claimed in this book that the ideas from Alderbaran was closely tied to what we today view as National socialism and the anti-semitism is part of the aliens teachings.
The mythology would later be expanded on by Holey that we’ve now encountered a few times already. But with this we can quite firmly confirm that the Vril society as described in these books never existed. There was a fringe group who did publish a small pamflett but that’s as close we will come.
But let’s move forward in the show, since we’re going for the Indiana Jones connection. The show claims that the Vril society got Hitler to look for artifacts, but we know that this is something that was somewhat invented by Ravenscroft in the 70’s. But it does not stop Childress from claiming:
“When you see, like, the Indiana Jones movies, which tend to focus on these secret Nazi occult expeditions around the world to find the Ark of the Covenant or the Spear of Destiny or some secret libraries and aliens, while those movies are fiction, they’re very much based on truth.”
We also have Noory and Hitchcock confirming this idea. This section is really short and seems to rest upon the idea that if Hollywood makes a movie with a theme it must be true. To be honest I’m not sure, could it be to fill time or that we’ve done 20 episodes with no direct mention of Indiana Jones. Even if some talking heads have done their best cosplay hinting at it.
Castle Wewelsburg
We then move to the Castle Wewelsburg, a renaissance castle whose current form was constructed 1603 even though a fortification has been on site since the 900 CE. The castle was under siege and later razed by Swedish troops led by Carl Gustav Wrangel during the 30 years war. A fun little fact I found.
The show claims that Himmler brought mediums and psychics to this castle to contact aliens. Wewelsburg castle was important to Himmler and the grand plan advised by Himmler's personal mage Karl Maria Wiligut, was that this castle would be the main center for the SS. Wiligut was behind the design of the Totenkopfring. But Wiligut believed that the castle was destined to be the magical stronghold of the SS. But the castle never became more than a museum and an ideological education center for SS officers. The grand magical plan never came to be realized. There were never any magical rituals or mediums on the site, well except for Wiligut then, that any scholars have found.
It wasn’t before the 1950’s it started to become important within the Nazi-esoterism due to the tie to Wiligut and that this is the only known location of the Black Sun. They don’t spend much time on this symbol in the episode but this is supposedly why the place is magical more or less.
Maria Orsic
But we have covered the castle and let’s move on to the show. The claim here is that a highly influential member of the Vril Society had seances and contacted the aliens here. The name of this member is Maria Orsic. The spelling of her last name seems to differ and vary depending on the source, this is something you need to watch out for. If something as spelling differs widely depending on the source, it’s probably made up.
But according to the now popular myth Maria Orsic (or Marija Oršić) was born 1895 in Zagreb Croatia. Later in life she moved to Munich where she became entangled with the Vril society a bit after 1919. She was important since she was one of two who could telepathically contact the aliens from Aldebaran and she grew into an important female leader of the Vril society.
But as you my dear listener might expect this is mostly inventions by authors we have brought up. Some put the finger towards Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier in “the morning of the magicians”. Even if they incorporated the Vril society in later editions I’ve not been able to find Maria mentioned in the book. It’s a thick book so it’s not beyond impossible that I missed it and if you have the pagenumber let me know. But, from what I’ve been able to find Marias creators are Jürgen-Ratthofer and Ettl in “Das Vril projekt”. But the story grew with Jan Udo Holey and became more popular and with the help of the internet her backstory has grown even more.
But after the narrator have mentioned the castle Jim Marrs come in claiming:
“Maria Orsic headed a group of women known as the “Vriligen,” or the female Vril members. And they were beautiful women. They grew their hair very long because they felt like their long hair could act as an antenna to the universal Vril energy.”
That the Vril had a special department with a special name seems to be an invention by Jim Marrs in this case. But Jürgen-Ratthofer and Ettl mentions that the Vril female members had long hair, maybe as an antenna but definitely to protest the short hair of the 1920s.
Bill Barnes repeats some claims that the show already have made and ends with
“The Germans were able to develop a technology so far in advance of the Allied technology, that people said they were helped by extraterrestrials. In fact, the one quote we have was from Hermann Oberth, and Dr. Oberth was in the German rocketry program. Hermann Oberth said, quote, ‘We were helped by people from other worlds.’”
As we mentioned briefly before, Oberth was with von Braun partly the origin and the main drive of the rocket program. In the 50’s and 60’s Oberth did talk about his beliefs in flying saucers and that UFO:s had been visiting earth. What he did not talk about or wrote was that the aliens worked with the nazis. The quote seems to come from a book called “Did Spacemen Colonise the Earth?” written by Robin Collyns. The book was published in 1974 so within Oberth lifetime but it seems to be dubious at best. In the book he supposedly said “We cannot take all the credit for our record advancements in certain scientific fields alone; we have been helped!’ When asked by whom, he replied: ‘The people of other worlds!”
The quotes have been changed throughout time and the version Barnes quoting is from his own “The UFO Magazine: UFO Encyclopedia” published in 2004. Yet again an example on how the alienist changed the material to make it more compelling.
Ancient Nukes
We leave the esoteric ideas now for something more tangible, the splitting of the atom. The show brings up Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann as the people who discovered it but leaves out Lise Meitner and Otto Robert Frisch for some reason. The show talks a little bit about fission and that the news of the discovery spread around the world.
The show then goes on talking about Albert Einstein's letter to president Rosewellt in August 1939. They then attribute this quote from Einstein to be a part of the letter
“If successful, radioactive poisoning of the atmosphere and an annihilation of any life on Earth has been brought within the range of technical possibility.”
But this quote originates from 1950 and the ideas of the hydrogen bombs. But in the letter Einstein talks about the discoveries of Fermi and Frédéric Joliot-Curie. He continues that it might be possible to use these discoveries to build a powerful weapon. Toward the end of the letter Einstein says that he has learned that the Germans have stopped selling uranium and that he believes the German scientists to have similar knowledge as the Americans.
This letter became the start for the Manhattan project of which Einstein would never be a part of due to his left leaning politics.
The show moves on to make the following statement:
“How were the German scientists in Berlin able to make this discovery before anyone else? Was this really a new breakthrough? Or might these scientists have rediscovered an ancient source of unimaginable power?”
But the Germans didn’t succeed in something that was out of the realm of possibility. They based their work on what others had made so far. With the discovery of radioactive material in the early 1900 the work on these materials had been ongoing. The group of German scientists was the first to prove Nuclear fission to be possible but it was more or less just a question of time at this point. As Einstein mentions in the letter there were a number of scientists who were on the track of finding this out.
Mohenjo Daro
We then travel back in time to find evidence of these ancient nuclear weapons. Of course we’re about to talk about Mohenjo Daro, Childress and Cremo repeating the ideas that were brought up back in episode 7. So we have the skeletons laying in the street and that there might be cases of trinitite in the desserts. But the only skeletons in Mohenjo Daro are found in the cemetery and no-one has so far been able to show a single piece of trinitite from the area. I also want to stress that Mohenjo Daro was built in mud bricks without mortars and still stands quite well today. Compare the town with pictures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and you will note that Mohenjo Daro is in good shape for being hit with a nuclear explosion.
The show moves on to speak about Brahmastra weapons and hindu gods for reasons. Childress say the following rather strange quote:
“Many of these Hindu gods did look different than humans. Generally they’re often depicted as having blue skin, and that may well be describing extraterrestrials.”
The rest of this section is repeating the claims from before that the Nazis was looking for ancient powerfull weapons and knowledge. The show seems to hint that Hitler had contact with aliens, but why would he not have succeeded in producing atomic weapons? If they had the blueprints so to say, why did Hahn and Strassmann experiment to find the fission? They could just have started building the bombs from the start. The show also asks this question but does not answer it.
But the Germans didn’t fail but chose to not invest their time and scientists in the endeavor. At a conference in 1939 the attending physisist theorised that the atomic bomb would be possible to create. But it would not be possible to do it earlier than five years. Hitler was informed about this and agreed that the endeavor would not be all too beneficial to the war effort. The research was still ongoing but did not take the same resources as the Manhattan project did.
We have to remember that the Manhattan project involved more countries than the USA and had an incredible amount of funding and scientists.
Die Glocke (“The Bell”)
From ancient nuclear warfare we go to Poland and a mysterious valley near Ludwikowice Kłodzkie where a strange building stands. Ludwikowice was part of Germany even before the second world war and had a small forced labor camp that later became part of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp.
But we meet a new face for the show, an Igor Witowski that says that the valley was closely guarded by the SS. There were three security rings and the henge or flytrap as they refer to it sometimes was in the inner of them. This structure is a bunch of pillars in a circle with a lintel on top.
The show moves on saying that “mainstream scholars” believe the structure would become a cooling tower for a coal mine if it had not been abandoned. I think it would make sense since Wenceslaus mine is located just next to it, also abandoned.
But the show moves on talking about the bell or “Die Glocke”, a machine built by the Nazis as a wonderweapon. Jim Marrs says that the project was so secret that Hitler didn’t even know much about it. Steven M. Greer say:
“There’s a great deal of evidence that suggests that the scientists, including Hermann Oberth and Wernher Von Braun and others, were working on a bell-shaped craft that was electromagnetic in its propulsion system.”
The evidence for this is really unclear and to make things complicated this myth seems to originate with Witowski who claims to have seen secret reports kept by a military official. But he was not allowed to make any copies of the documents. So where Greer gets all the evidence is a bit of a mystery. But this has not stopped Jim Marrs and others from expanding on the story. But it’s good to know that there is no earlier mention of this than Witowskis book “Prawda o Wunderwaffe” published in 2001.
I also believe that before we start to examine what type of propulsion method this thing used, maybe we should really confirm that it existed. I don’t really feel that they have managed to do this. You my dear listener might also wonder what with the henge, what was it used for?
As I understand the show it seems as if for some reason they believe that the scientists tied Die Glocke to the lintels so it didn’t fly away? It’s highly unclear what they believe the function is and if the henge is the finished product. Early in the clip it seems as the nazis was still constructing. But I don’t know what the idea is to be honest and why a concrete skeleton was needed, when some chains connected to a few concrete foundations would be quicker and cheaper.
We then move on to discuss if time travel is possible, we have Deninn explaining Einstein's relativity theory. Since Einstein say it might be possible it must mean that the Nazi might have had access to time travel. So again, the aliens gave the nazis time travel and they still lost the war. Again, if they could share the time travel part I guess they could have shared the blueprints for an atomic bomb.
Hans Kammler
We then using this discussion to talk about a SS Obergruppenführer Hans Kammler. I’ll let Jim Marrs set the tone here:
“SS general Hans Kammler was going to defect in exchange for immunity. But then, by the end of the war, he disappeared. So, where did Hans Kammler go, and what did he take? I think he took The Bell. Did he create a wormhole? Did he create a Stargate? And this is what the Nazis were working on.”
So according to Marrs this SS general was planning to defect, but instead chose to use the Glock and disappear. Henry Stevens fills in:
“The engineers that worked on the bell were put to death by the SS. They didn’t want this technology falling into the hands of the east or the west.”
Childress closes out by adding that many scientists blew themself up in their labs to avoid capture.
But how is it with all of this? There was a Hans Kammler in the SS who in fact did oversee secret weapons projects. But it was not Glocke, he oversaw the productions of the Messerschmitt Me 262 and the V2 rockets. These were built by concentration camp inmates, this will be important in a second.
Hans Kammler was not your run of the mill background nazi, he was a true beliver who was deeply involved with the construction of Auschwitz. He worked hard in the party and could therefore advance through the ranks. He was also a cold person who as mentioned used forced labor from the camp, many died during the production to which he is credited to have said “Don't worry about the victims. The work must proceed ahead in the shortest time possible”. He does not strike me as a person who was planning to defect. His utter indifference to human suffering is staggering.
The killed scientists then? I think this is an idea that comes from the Arnsberg Forest massacre. Kammler ordered some 200 men, women and children to be executed in the forest. These were not scientists but merely in the way of Kammler. But since Henry Stevens did not give any source or location I think this might be the people he talks about. A strange rewriting of history to be honest.
But Hans Kammler then, what did happen to him? As the war was drawing closer to the loss he was ordered to regroup and fall back. On April 16 1945 he telegraphed the command informing them of a new message center in Munich. The last known message seems to be on 23rd of April, asking his office manager to destroy V1 equipment near Berlin.
The end of Kammler is not known for sure, but many witnesses indicate that he died while trying to escape. Either by an unknown cause or during a firefight. Since there is no photographic evidence or a body we can’t be sure. The search has continued and some speculate that he escaped. But from what we do know Kammler was not near Ludwikowice. That he would have escaped with die Glocke is beyond the realm of possibilities.
We also learn the fate of Maria Orsic, according to the show she escaped with the Vril society. Maybe to Aldeban but who knows, apparently a mysterious note was left behind but I think we can agree that it must be as real as Maria.
But George Noory really wanted to take the prize for the show's maybe most dangerous comment.
“The ironic thing about all of this is, years later in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, a similar object was witnessed by a number of people That looked like The Bell. Is it possible that the Nazis perfected these things? Or is it possible that the aliens looked like Nazis in uniforms? How bizarre would that be?”
Why is this dangerous? Well it’s another attempt to try to clear the nazi crimes from the nazis. It’s quite discusting to be honest to say that it was aliens, not nazis, that maybe was behind the holocaust. But hey, if they build their show on information from litteral neo nazis and holocaust deniers I mean. I’m almost surprised that there was not more of this in the show.
Yet, we’re not done for some reason. The show talks about Hitlers suicide and to be honest it would have been a great spot to end on. I don’t think people should kill themselves and if you struggle with those thoughts I really do hope you get the help you need. But for Hitler I’m making an exception.
Alien ingenuity and Operation Paperclip
This last part is a little bit all over the place but they talk about the Manhattan project that succeeded even if they did not have aliens helping them. We get some ideas that the Nazis was inspired by ancient Indian texts, that the rocket program was not possible without operation paperclip. So the Americans did find and bring scientists from germany back to the US, the sovjets did have a similar program called “Operation Osoaviakhim” doing the same thing.
To be honest this part isn’t that interesting, or rather they don’t bring up any interesting things from Operation Paperclip or the rocket program. Allen Greenfield leaves us with this quote indicating that Von Braun had knowledge about aliens:
“And I said to him, “How did you develop that much technology so fast?” And he looked down the rows of UFO files. And he said, “We had help from them.” And I said, “You mean, them?” Meaning the aliens. He said, “Yeah, we had help. We all got help from them.” And that was, like, the eye- opening moment.”
But it seems to be basically a rewrite of the quote from Oberth earlier. Greenfield claims that this was from 1970 when he had access to secret documents at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. But in 1970 Braun got the role of NASA's Deputy Associate Administrator for Planning at the headquarters. I’m not entirely sure why he would be at this air force base then. We don’t get to know more from Greenfield and it’s here we end. The show closing out on if Nazi Germany had technology based on alien ideas and basically leaving us hanging.
Outro
Remember to leave a positive review anywhere you can such as itunes, spotify or to your friend at the trench. I would also recommend you to visit diggingupancientaliens.com to find some more info about me and the podcast. You can also find me on most social media sites and if you have comments, corrections, suggestions or just want to write an email in all caps you can find my contact info at the website.
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But it is time to go and the fantastic band Trallskruv will sing us out with their song “tin foil hat”. Links to their stuff will be found in the show notes.
Until next time, keep shoveling that science!