NAZI WONDER WEAPONS
JUST SIX DAYS AFTER THE D-DAY INVASION OF EUROPE, ON JUNE 12,
1944, the residents of London were startled to hear a droning buzz in the
skies over their city. They were more startled when the sound suddenly
stopped and moments later a huge explosion rocked the East London
neighborhood of Mile End, killing eight civilians.
It was the first of the V-1 Buzz bombs - a forerunner of today’s cruise
missiles.
The V-1 and the later V-2 rockets that terrorized London are two of the more
famous examples of German war technology. These Vergeltungswaffe, or
retaliation weapons, were developed at the secret German rocket facility
Peenemunde and put into operation just after the D-Day landings in Normandy,
France.
From June 12, 1944, until August 20, more than eight thousand of the
V-1 rockets (each carrying a ton of explosives) rained down on London,
inflicting 45,479 casualties and destroying 75,000 buildings. The less
numerous V-2 rockets - which, unlike the V-1, could not be seen, heard, or
intercepted in flight - nevertheless produced more than 10,000 casualties in
the British capital.
In addition to the vengeance weapons, the Germans produced a number of
scientific breakthroughs in their quest for weapons technology during World
War II. German ingenuity and efficiency appeared capable of overcoming
almost any obstacle. One clear example may be found simply by comparing
figures from its armaments industry. Despite constant bombing by the Allies,
overall production of tanks, small arms, ships, and aircraft was higher at
the beginning of 1945 than in 1941, when Germany was victorious on all
fronts and America had not yet entered the war.
Technological advances were seen in almost every area. The rate and quality
was astounding.
Plastics, which only came into general use in the United
States during the 1950s, were developed in Nazi Germany. Bakelite,
polystyrene (under the name Trolitul), Plexiglas, polyethylene (forerunner
of today’s plastic Baggies and syringes), polyamide (nylon), and aldols
(a derivative of polyvinyl) were all produced during wartime.
The various forms of plastic were produced under
a consortium of companies but led by
I.G. Farben, which also in 1941 synthesized the opiate methadone and Demerol
under the name “pethidine.”
Television, which most Americans did not get to see until the early 1950s,
was highly developed in Nazi Germany. More than 150,000 persons in
twenty-eight public viewing rooms in Berlin saw clear television broadcasts
of the 1936 Olympics.
They watched screens equipped with Fernseh 180-line
cathode ray tube projectors that presented a picture about forty-eight by
forty-two inches. In 1939, the German firm Fernseh began developing a
miniaturized TV system that allowed pilots to guide both bombs and missiles
after launching.
This system was used in the anti-aircraft rocket Wasserfall, or waterfall.
“Many of these tests failed,” noted author Joseph
P. Farrell. “But by the war’s end, a successful test of the television-guided ‘Tonne’ missile was conducted by German scientists for the Allies in
Berlin, with the target being a photograph of a little girl’s face. The test
was successful, much to the impressed, and doubtless shocked, Allied
observers.”
Tanks, which began the war as little more than armor-plated bulldozers
designed to support infantry, were developed into independent, thickly
armored machines powered by gas turbines, with guns stabilized while moving,
hydrokinetic power transmissions, and defenses against chemical and
biological attacks.
Some German tanks were so far ahead of their time, they
were still being utilized in other nations as late as battles in the 1970s.
To counter the threat of modern tanks, the Germans developed simple, but
very effective, portable rocket launchers armed with a hollow charge such as
the Panzerschreck bazooka and the easily produced Panzerfaust, a forerunner
of today’s hand-carried rocket-propelled grenade (RPG).
The innovative 9-mm
German MP-40 Schmeisser machine pistol saw extensive use during the war, and
its successors, the MP-43 and the MP- 44 assault rifles, became the
forerunners of today’s ubiquitous AK-47. Late in the war, some MP-44s
carried an early but effective night- vision light and scope called the
Vampyr, or Vampire.
At the end of the war in 1945, American military intelligence officers were
shocked by the technology they found as Allied forces overran German
research facilities.
Supersonic rockets, nerve gas, jet aircraft , guided
missiles, stealth technology, hardened armor - even flying saucers - were just
some of the groundbreaking technologies being developed in Nazi
laboratories, workshops, and factories. To give some idea of the aspirations
of Nazi scientists, the huge ME-264 was dubbed the “America Bomber,” while a
three-stage rocket was named the “Mars Rocket.”
As respected British historian Barrie Pitt noted,
“[T]he Nazi war machine
swung into action utilizing as much as it could of the most up-to-date scientific knowledge available, and as the war developed, the list of
further achievements grew to staggering proportions. From guns firing
‘shells’ of air to detailed discussions of flying saucers; from beams of
sound that were fatal to a man at 50 yards, to guns that fired around
corners and others that could ‘see in the dark’ - the list is awe-inspiring in
its variety.”
Pitt stated that while some German technology was less
developed than imagined at the time,
“some were dangerously near to a
completion stage which could have reversed the war’s outcome.”
Former Polish military journalist Igor Witkowski described German wartime
research as “the greatest technological leap in the history of our
civilization.”
He said the Germans ignored Einstein and developed an
approach to science based on quantum theories.
“Don’t forget that Einsteinian physics, relativity physics, with its big-picture view of the
universe, represented Jewish science to the Nazis. Germany was where
quantum
mechanics was born. The Germans were looking at gravity [and other matters]
from a different perspective to everyone else. Maybe it gave them answers
to things that pro-relativity scientists hadn’t even thought of,” explained
Witkowski, who had unprecedented access to German wartime documents that
only recently because available, due to the collapse of communism.
Consider that at the beginning of the war, aircraft were made of canvas
stretched over a wooden frame. By 1945, Germany had become the first nation
in the world to put into service an all-metal, jet-propelled jet fighter - the
Messerschmitt-262.
They also produced the world’s first operational
helicopter and vertical takeoff and landing aircraft .
As German scientists worked feverishly to perfect the V-2 rockets and other,
more secret weapons, SS chief Heinrich Himmler was taking steps to separate
his SS from normal party and state control. “In the spring of 1944 Hitler
approved Himmler’s proposal to build an SS-owned industrial concern in order
to make the SS permanently independent of the state budget,” wrote Nazi
armaments minister Albert Speer.
Employing methods later used by the CIA, SS
leaders created a number of business fronts and other organizations - many
using concentration camp labor - with an eye toward producing revenue to
support SS activities. These highly compartmentalized groups headed by
young, ambitious SS officers neither required nor desired any connection
with Germany’s high-profile leaders. Their purpose was to create an economic
base that could continue pursuing Nazi goals long after the defeat of
Germany.
Armaments minister Speer conceded that there were weapons development
programs that he knew nothing about. He admitted that an SS scheme in 1944
to construct a secret weapons plant requiring 3,500 concentration camp
workers had been concealed from him. Speer even hinted at the possibility of
secret weapons that “were secretly produced by the SS toward the end of the
war and concealed from me.”
While the V-2 rocket program began under the aegis of the German Army, and
the ME-262 jet fighter under the Luftwaffe, they were ultimately
transferred to SS control.
“In short, anything that had shown any real
promise as a weapon system - in particular, anything that appeared to
represent a quantum leap over the then- state-of-the-art - had ended up under
the oversight of the SS,” noted Nick Cook, an aviation editor and aerospace
consultant to Jane’s Defence Weekly.
With
secret projects in the hands of
hardcore SS fanatics, and with factories and research facilities scattered
over - and under - the countryside, it is entirely conceivable that weapons far
in advance of the V rockets could have been developed without the knowledge
of anyone except Himmler and his top lieutenants.
Other notable secret Nazi weapons nearing completion in 1945 included the
Messerschmitt-163 Komet and the vertically launched Natter rocket fighters,
the jet-powered flying wing Horten Ho-IX and the delta-winged Lippisch DM-1.
It has been noted that some of top-secret Nazi weaponry development was
moved outside Germany, to such places as Blizna, Poland - the same area where
Allied aircrews first encountered the infamous “foo-fighters,” small glowing
balls of light that shadowed Allied bombers.
The “foo-fighters” soon caught
the attention of the American news media. The New York Times, on December
13, 1944, reported news authorized by the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied
Expeditionary Force.
“Floating Mystery Ball Is New Nazi Air Weapon,” read
the headline.
Airmen of the American Air Force report that they are encountering
silver-colored spheres in the air over German territory. The spheres
are encountered either singly or in clusters. Sometimes they are
semi- translucent.
The new device, apparently an air defense weapon, resembles the
huge glass balls that adorn Christmas trees. There was no information available as to what holds them up like stars in the sky, what is in
them or what their purpose is supposed to be.
According to author Renato Vesco, the “foo-fighters” were actually the
Feuerball, or fire ball, which was,
“a highly original flying machine...
circular and armored, more or less resembling the shell of a tortoise, and
was powered by a special turbojet engine, also flat and circular, whose
principles of operation... generated a great halo of luminous flames.... Radio-controlled at the moment of takeoff, it then automatically followed
enemy aircraft, attracted by their exhaust flames, and approached close
enough without collision to wreck their radar gear.”
Vesco claimed that the
basic principles of the Feuerball were later applied to a “symmetrical
circular aircraft” known as the Kugelblitz, or ball lightning, automatic
fighter that became an “authentic antecedent of the present- day flying
saucers.”
He said this innovative craft was destroyed after a “single lucky
wartime mission” by retreating SS troops.
Even though the public has been conditioned for more than sixty years to
dismiss any notion of flying saucers, or UFOs, the accumulation of evidence
available today makes it impossible to reject the reality of such craft out
of hand. Obviously, the Nazis were experimenting with new and exotic energy
technology. The extraordinary development of the Feuerball may have provided
the fi rst public glimpse into the heart of Nazi super-science.
Several writers have produced articles about the Nazi development of flying
saucers. British author W. A. Harbinson claimed that he got his ideas after
discovering postwar German articles mentioning a former Luftwaffe engineer,
Flugkapitan Rudolph Schriever.
According to information gleaned by Harbinson
from articles in Der Spiegel, Bild am Sonntag, Luftfahrt International, and
other German publications, Schriever claimed to have designed a “flying top”
prototype in 1941, which was actually test-flown in June 1942.
In 1944, Schriever said he constructed a larger, jet version of his circular craft,
with the help of scientists Klaus Habermohl, Otto Miethe, and an Italian,
Dr. Giuseppe Belluzzo.
Drawings of this saucer were published in the 1959
British book German Secret Weapons of the Second World War and Their Later
Development, by Major Rudolph Lusar, an engineer who worked in the German
Reichs-Patent Office and had access to many original plans and documents.
Lusar described the saucer as a ring of separate disks carrying adjustable
jets rotating around a fixed cockpit. The entire craft had a height of 105
feet and could fly vertically or horizontally, depending on the positioning
of the jets.
Schriever later said the Allied advance into Germany put an end to his
“flying disc” experiments, with all equipment and designs lost or destroyed.
However, a Georg Klein told the postwar German press that he had witnessed
the Schriever disc, or something like it, test-flown in February 1945.
Schriever reportedly died in the late 1950s and, according to a 1975 issue
of Luftfahrt International, notes and sketches related to a large flying
saucer were found in his effects. The periodical also stated that Schriever
maintained until his death that his original saucer concept must have been
made operational prior to war’s end.
This possibility is acknowledged by
British author Brian Ford, who wrote,
“There are supposed to have been
‘flying saucers’ too, which were near the final stages of development, and
indeed it may be that some progress was made toward the construction of
small, disc-like aircraft, but the results were destroyed, apparently before
they fell into enemy hands.”
These accounts would seem to be corroborated by a CIA report dated May 27,
1954. As reported in Nick Redfern’s 1998 book, The FBI Files: The FBI’s UFO
Top Secrets Exposed, the document stated,
“A German newspaper (not further
identified) recently published an interview with Georg Klein, famous German
engineer and aircraft expert, describing the experimental construction of
‘flying saucers’ carried out by him from 1941 to 1945. Klein stated he was
present when, in 1945, the first piloted ‘flying saucer’ took off and
reached a speed of 1,300 miles per hour within three minutes.
The
experiments resulted in three designs - one designed by Miethe was a disk-
shaped aircraft, 135 feet in diameter, which did not rotate; another,
designed by Habermohl and Schriever, consisted of a large rotating ring, in
the center of which was a round, stationary cabin for the crew. When the
Soviets occupied Prague, the Germans destroyed every trace of the ‘flying
saucer’ project and nothing more was heard of Habermohl and his assistants.
Schriever recently died in Bremen, where he had been living. In Breslau, the
Soviets managed to capture one of the saucers built by Miethe, who escaped
to France. He is reportedly in the USA at present.”
Another candidate for inventor of a German UFO is the Austrian scientist
Victor Schauberger, who, after being kidnapped by the Nazis, reportedly
designed a number of “flying discs” in 1940, using a flameless and
smokeless form of electromagnetic propulsion called “diamagnetism.”
Schauberger reportedly worked for the U.S. government for a short time after
the war before dying of natural causes. Prior to his death, he was quoted as
saying, “They took everything from me. Everything.” No one knows for certain
if he meant the Nazis or the Allies.
That someone was flying highly unconventional disc- shaped objects shortly
after World War II was made plain by the now-public comments of U.S. Army
Lieutenant General Nathan Twining, then in charge of the Army Air Forces’
Air Material Command (AMC).
In mid-1947, two years after the war ended, “flying saucers” were being
reported both in Europe and America. General Twining wrote that the
“phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary or fictitious.”
He
went on to describe attributes of such discs as having,
“extreme rates of
climb, maneuverability (particularly in roll), and action which must be
considered evasive when sighted or contacted by friendly aircraft and radar, lend[ing] belief to the possibility that some of the objects are controlled
either manually, automatically or remotely.”
Allowing a small glimpse into the reality of such radical technology,
Twining concluded,
“It is possible within the present U.S. knowledge
-
provided extensive detailed development is undertaken - to construct a piloted aircraft which has the general description of the object [described
above] which would be capable of an approximate range of 7,000 miles at
subsonic speeds.”
If technical knowledge in the 1940s was advanced enough to construct a
workable flying saucer, the public was never to hear about it. Beginning in
the late 1940s, a national security “lid” was placed on the subject.
But it is fascinating to recall that one of the first and best documented
cases of mysterious abductions took place in September 1961, when
Betty and
Barney Hill under hypnosis recalled being taken aboard a circular craft
manned by men in black uniforms.
Barney Hill described the leader as a
“German Nazi” wearing a shiny black jacket, scarf, and cap.
Before anyone rushes out to proclaim that all UFOs are really secret Nazi
technology, serious attention should be given to the wealth of public
literature that clearly indicates that while some saucers, especially in the
years following World War II, may indeed have been Nazi test vehicles, any
objective review of the material suggests the presence of some
unconventional source as well.
Another amazing - and chilling - aspect of Nazi technology involved their
development of nuclear weapons. Researcher and author Farrell concluded from
new material released from the former East Germany that the Nazis were much
closer to developing an atomic bomb than previously accepted by postwar
writers.
He characterized the idea that the Germans had neither the talent
nor the capability to construct an operational atomic bomb - recall the
well-known story of the destruction of the heavy-water plant in Norway by
commandos - an “Allied Legend” designed to distract the public from a horrible
reality.
“[A]ll the evidence points to the conclusion that there was a
large, very well-funded, and very secret German isotope- enrichment program
during the war, a program successfully disguised during the war by the Nazis
and covered up after the war by the Allied Legend,” wrote Farrell, after
concluding that the conventional story that “the German failure to obtain
the atom bomb because they never had a functioning reactor is simply utter
scientific nonsense because a reactor is needed only if one wants to produce
plutonium. It is an unneeded, and expensive, development, if one only wants
to make a uranium A-bomb [emphasis in the original].”
Plus, there is the cryptic remark made by Kurt Diebner, a physicist involved
with the Nazi atomic bomb project.
Surreptitiously recorded by British
intelligence during postwar internment at Farm Hall, England, Diebner
mentioned a “photochemical process” to enrich uranium bypassing the need
for a centrifuge. Since no modern researcher understands what process was
referred to by Diebner, this may mean that the Nazis discovered a method of
isotope separation and uranium enrichment that even now remains classified.
Adding to the idea that the Nazis already had perfected a method of
enriching uranium are the words of nuclear scientist Karl Wirtz, who was
also secretly taped at Farm Hall.
Upon learning of the atomic bomb dropped
on Hiroshima, Otto Hahn, who discovered atomic fission, commented,
“They
can only have done that if they have uranium isotope separation.”
To which Wirtz agreed by responding,
“They have it too,” a clear indication that he
knew of a German separation process.
“Thus, there is
sufficient reason, due to the science of bomb-making and the political and
military realities of the war after America’s entry, that the Germans took
the decision to develop only a uranium bomb, since that afforded the best,
most direct, and technologically least complicated route to acquisition of a
bomb.”
Based on his research, Farrell wrote,
“American progress in the plutonium
bomb, from the moment [physicist Enrico] Fermi successfully completed and
tested a functioning reactor in the squash court at the University of
Chicago, appeared to be running fairly smoothly, until fairly late in the
war, when it was discovered that in order to make a bomb from plutonium, the
critical mass would have to be assembled much faster than any existing
Allied fuse technologies could accomplish.
Moreover, there was so little
margin of error, since the fuses in an implosion device would have to fire
as close to simultaneously as possible, that Allied engineers began to
despair of making a plutonium bomb work.... I believe a strong prima
facie case has been outlined that Nazi Germany developed and successfully
tested, and perhaps used, a uranium atom bomb before the end of World War
II,” Farrell concluded.
Farrell was not alone in this assessment. In 2005, Berlin historian Rainer
Karlsch, in a book titled Hitlers Bombe, claimed that the Nazis indeed
tested nuclear weapons on Rugen Island near Ohrdruf, Thuringia, site of a
subsidiary concentration camp to the infamous Buchenwald. Reportedly, many
prisoners were killed during these tests, which were conducted under the
supervision of the SS.
Karlsch’s primary evidence consists of “vouchers” for
“tests” and a patent for a plutonium weapon dated 1941. He also claimed to
have found traces of radioactivity in soil from the site. However, in
February 2006, the German government reported no abnormal radiation levels
at the site, even after taking into account elevated levels due to the 1986
Chernobyl disaster in Russia.
Although Nazi armaments minister Speer was questioned about a mysterious
blast at Ohrdruf during the Nuremberg war crimes trials, no significant
information on a nuclear test was found, either because it never happened or
because a postwar cover-up was quite successful.
Mainstream historians, at the mercy of carefully concocted cover stories in
both Germany and the USA, have remained skeptical that Nazi scientists could
have advanced their nuclear knowledge to the point of actual testing.
However, evidence that the Nazis were planning a nuclear strike near the end
of the war came from varied sources, including a news article in the
Washington Post dated June 29, 1945, which reported on an amazing find by
Allied troops in Norway:
R.A.F. [Royal Air Force] officers said today that the Germans had nearly
completed preparations for bombing New York from a “colossal air field” near
Oslo when the war ended.
Forty giant bombers with a 7,000-mile range were found on this base
- “the
largest Luftwaff e field I have ever seen,” one officer said.
They were a new type bomber developed by Heinkel. They now are being
dismantled for study. German ground crews said the planes were held in
readiness for a mission to New York.
It should also be noted that the Nazis had two prototypes of the Junkers-
390, a massive six- engine modification of the Junkers-290, known to have
made flights to Japanese bases in Manchuria.
In late 1944, one JU-390 was flown from a base in Bordeaux, France, to
within twelve miles of New York City, snapped photographs of the skyline,
and returned - a nonstop flight of thirty-two hours.
What weapon was to be transported by these massive bombers? After the war,
authorities discovered a feasibility study by the German Luftwaffe
detailing the blast effects of an atomic bomb over New York’s Manhattan
Island. The Nazi study was based on an atomic bomb in the fifteen-to
seventeen-kiloton range, approximately the same yield as the Little Boy
uranium bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
If Nazi Germany had a nuclear weapon, they surely must have tested it, and a
collection of disparate sources seems to indicate this was accomplished.
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, in a “Political Testament” written
shortly before his death at the hands of partisans in April 1945, stated,
“The wonder weapons are the hope. It is laughable and senseless for us to
threaten at this moment, without a basis in reality for these threats. The
well-known mass destruction bombs are nearly ready. In only a few days, with
the utmost meticulous intelligence, Hitler will probably execute this
fearful blow, because he will have full confidence.... It appears there
are three bombs - and each has an astonishing operation. Th e construction of
each is fearfully complex and of a lengthy time of completion.”
Mussolini’s mention of three bombs is intriguing because of a statement of a
former Russian military translator who served on the staff of Marshal Rodion
Malinovsky, the officer who took Japan’s surrender to the Soviet Union in
1945.
As reported by the German magazine Der Spiegel in 1992,
Piotr
Titarenko had written a letter to the Communist Party Central Committee, in
which he stated that the three atomic bombs were dropped on Japan. One of
these, dropped on Nagasaki prior to the blast of August 9, 1945, failed to
detonate and subsequently was given to the Soviet Union by Japanese
officials.
If Titarenko’s account is accurate, this would mean that America
had three atomic bombs on hand in the summer of 1945. Yet, a report to
Manhattan Project leader Robert Oppenheimer just days after President Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, stated that not enough enriched uranium
existed to create a viable critical mass for even one atomic bomb.
News stories in Britain point to a possible Nazi atomic bomb test in 1944.
An August 11, 1945, article in London’s Daily Telegraph reported,
“Britain
prepared for the possibility of an atomic bomb attack on this country by
Germany in August 1944. It can now be disclosed that details of the expected
effect of such a bomb were revealed in a highly secret memorandum which was
sent that summer to the chiefs of Scotland Yard, chief constables of
provincial forces and senior officials of the defense services.”
Another odd
story also was published in En gland’s Daily Mail on October 14, 1944, under
the headline “Berlin Is ‘Silent’ 60 Hours, Still No Phones.”
The story,
filed by a correspondent from Stockholm, stated that all telephone service
in Berlin had been interrupted for three days with “no explanation for the
hold-up, which has lasted longer than on any previous occasion.”
The story
ended by saying,
“It is pointed out, moreover, in responsible quarters that
if the stoppage were purely the technical result of bomb damage, as the
Germans claimed, it should have been repaired by now.”
A modern readership
would know that such disruption can be caused by the electromagnetic pulse
associated with a nuclear detonation.
Other intriguing hints of a German atomic test came in the form of three
separate intelligence reports. A once-classified U.S. military intelligence
report dated August 19, 1945, and titled “Investigations, Research,
Developments and Practical Use of the German Atomic Bomb” details the
experience of a German pilot named Hans Zinsser, a Flak rocket expert, while
piloting a Heinkel bomber over northern Germany. Note that his experience
coincides with the dates of the Berlin telephone blackout.
At the beginning of October 1944, I flew from Ludwigslust (south of Luebeck)
about 12 to 15 km from an atomic bomb test station, when I noticed a strong,
bright illumination of the whole atmosphere, lasting about 2 seconds.
The clearly visible pressure wave escaped the approaching and following
cloud formed by the explosion. This wave had a diameter of about 1 km when
it became visible and the color of the cloud changed frequently....
Personal observations of the colors of the explosion cloud found an almost
blue-violet shade.
During this manifestation reddish-colored rims were to be
seen, changing to a dirty-like shade in very rapid succession. The
combustion was lightly felt from my observation plane in the form of pulling
and pushing.... About an hour later... I passed through the almost
complete overcast (between 3,000 and 4,000 meter altitude). A cloud shaped
like a mushroom with turbulent billowing sections (at about 7,000 meter
altitude) stood, without any seeming connections, over the spot where the
explosion took place.
Strong electrical disturbances and the impossibility
to continue radio communications turned up. Because of the P-38s operating
in the area Wittenberg-Mersburg I had to turn to the north but observed a
better visibility at the bottom of the cloud where the explosion occured
[sic].
Note: It does not seem very clear to me why these experiments took
place in such crowded areas.
Then there was the report of an Italian officer,
Luigi Romersa, who
claimed to have been present at the testing of a “disintegration bomb” on
the night of October 11-12, 1944. Romersa was granted a special pass
from Oberkommando Der Wehrmacht, or German High Command, to
visit the test site on the island of Rugen.
Romersa was a special envoy from
Mussolini, who had wanted more information since Hitler had mentioned
to him “a bomb with a force which will surprise the whole world.” According
to Romersa, he and others were told the “disintegration bomb” was “the most
powerful explosive that has yet been developed” and that “nothing can
withstand it.”
They were sent to a bunker about a mile from the actual test
site.
He also was warned against radioactivity.
“Around 4 P.M., in the
twilight, shadows appeared, running toward our bunker,” recalled Romersa.
“They were soldiers and they had on a strange type of ‘diving suit.’ They
entered and quickly shut the door. ‘Everything is kaput,’ one of them said
as he removed his protective clothing. We also eventually had to put on
white, coarse, fibrous cloaks. I cannot say what the material was made of,
but I had the impression that it could have been asbestos. The headgear has
a piece of Glimmerglas [mica glass?] in front of the eyes.”
After making their way to the test site proper, Romersa stated,
“The houses
that I had seen only an hour earlier had disappeared, broken into little
pebbles of debris. As we drew nearer [to the point of explosion], the more
fearsome was the devastation. The grass had the same color as leather. The
few trees that still stood upright had no more leaves.”
Romersa’s credibility is supported by the fact that he eventually came to
the United States, where he was granted a high-security clearance.
A third report dated December 14, 1944, but only declassified by the
National Security Agency in 1978, is titled “Reports on the Atom-splitting
Bomb.” This purports to be a decoded intercept of a message from the
Japanese embassy in Stockholm to headquarters in Tokyo.
This bomb is revolutionary in its results, and will completely upset all
ordinary precepts of warfare hitherto established. I am sending you, in one
group, all those reports on what is called the atom- splitting bomb. It is a
fact that in June of 1943, the German Army tried out an utterly new type of
weapon against the Russians at a location 150 kilometers southeast of
Kursk.
Although it was the entire 19th Infantry Regiment of the Russians
which was thus attacked, only a few bombs (each round up to 5 kilograms)
sufficed to utterly wipe them out to the last man.
The following is according to a statement by Lieutenant Colonel... Kenji,
adviser to the attaché in Hungary and formerly... in this country, who by
chance saw the actual scene immediately after the above took place:
“All
the men and the horses [within radius of] the explosion of the shells were
charred black and even their ammunition had all been detonated. Moreover, it
is a fact that the same type of war material was tried out in the Crimea
too. At that time the Russians claimed that this was poison gas, and
protested that if Germany were ever again to use it, Russia, too, would use
poison gas.”
... Recently the British authorities warned
their people of the possibility that they might undergo attack by German
atom- splitting bombs. The American authorities have likewise warned
that the American east coast might be the area chosen for a blind attack
by some sort of flying bomb...
The Japanese report then goes into a remarkably accurate description of the
splitting of the atom, ending with the statement,
“[T]he German
atom-splitting device is the Neuman disintegrator. Enormous energy is
directed into the central part of the atom and this generates an atomic
pressure of several tens of thousands of tons per square inch. This device
can split the relatively unstable atoms of such elements as uranium.
Moreover, it brings into being a store of explosive atomic energy....
That is, a bomb deriving its force from the release of atomic energy.”
Some elements of the Japanese report were obviously in error, such as the
confusion over descriptions of a fission versus a fusion bomb and the date
of the Kursk offensive, which did not begin until July 5, 1943. Mistakes
notwithstanding, it is clear that Japanese intelligence was firmly convinced
that the Germans had used a revolutionary type of weapon on the Eastern
Front.
But if the Nazis had deployed a tactical nuke or other exotic weapon on the
Eastern Front, why would the Soviets have kept such an attack secret?
Farrell pointed out that had Nazi Germany used such a weapon, it would most
likely have been against the Russians, whom the Nazis considered
“subhuman,” in Nazi ideology.
Fully one-half of the 50 million casualties of
the war occurred in Russia, and several massive explosions, such as the one
that destroyed a section of Sevastopol, have never been fully explained. It
was announced that a hundred-foot below-ground ammunition bunker was
destroyed after being struck by a lucky shot from Dora, a 311/2- inch German
railway gun considered the largest in the world.
Such attacks were never reported by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, due to the
fear of losing control over a panicked and war-weary Russian population.
The use of a super-weapon on the Eastern Front also might explain why more
is not known about this issue. Accurate war news from Russia was extremely
hard to come by during the war and grew more so during the Cold War.
To make
public the use of a nuclear or unconventional weapon “would have been a
propaganda disaster for Stalin’s government,” noted Farrell.
“Faced with an
enemy of superior tactical and operational competence in conventional arms,
the Red Army oft en had to resort to threats of execution against its own
soldiers just to maintain order and discipline in its ranks and prevent mass
desertion. Acknowledgment of the existence and use of such weapons by the
mortal enemy of Communist Russia could conceivably have ruined Russian
morale and cost Stalin the war, and perhaps even toppled his government.”
IF THE NAZIS had operational atomic weapons, is it possible they were
transferred to the United States?
Documents exist showing that America’s
secret development of the atomic bomb, the Manhattan Project, could not have
produced enough enriched uranium to make a bomb by mid-1945. Since only a
plutonium bomb was tested at Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945,
researchers have wondered where America acquired the uranium bombs dropped
on Japan less than a month later.
Some have speculated that the United
States used a Nazi bomb or used Nazi enriched uranium to manufacture its
bombs.
The Trinity bomb exploded near Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945, was
a plutonium bomb. Why then would the United States first drop the Little
Boy, an untested uranium bomb, on Japan on August 6, 1945?
“A rational
explanation is [that] ‘Little Boy’ was not tested by the Americans because... [t]he Americans did not need to test it, because its German designers
already had,” surmised Farrell. This idea is supported by the statement of
German authors Edgar Meyer and Thomas Mehner that J. Robert Oppenheimer,
the “father of the atomic bomb,” maintained that the bomb dropped on Japan
was of “German provenance.”
Of course, this idea would fly in the face of
the long- accepted Allied Legend that Germany simply couldn’t manufacture an
atomic bomb by the war’s end.
Where could the Nazis have obtained enriched uranium for such a bomb?
One
potential source was the secure underground laboratory of Baron Manfred von Ardenne, built in Lichterfelde outside Berlin, which contained a
2-million-volt electrostatic generator and a cyclotron. In 1941, von Ardenne,
along with Fritz Houtermans, had calculated the critical mass needed to
create U-235. It should be noted that Hitler visited the laboratory toward
the end of the war, at a time when he spoke enthusiastically of a new wonder
weapon that would turn the tide in Germany’s favor.
Some researchers contend that the Nazi development of a uranium bomb was
kept secret because the work was not part of the German military- industrial
system but hidden within the German Postal Service.
“[A]ll of Ardenne’s facilities... were provided by and ongoing funding
made available through, the patronage of one man, Reich minister of posts
and a member of the Reich President’s Research Council on Nuclear Affairs,
Wilhelm Ohnesorge.”
Reportedly, Hitler once remarked that while his party and military
leadership worried about how to win the war, it was his postal minister who
brought him the solution.
Farrell explained that the Reichspost was,
“awash with money, and could
therefore have provided some of the massive funding necessary to the
[uranium enrichment] project, a true ‘black budget’ operation in every
sense.”
Another source may have been a giant
synthetic-rubber plant built by I.G. Farben next to Auschwitz, the notorious death camp. The site was
chosen for its proximity to transportation hubs, both rail lines and rivers,
as well as the nearby supply of slave labor found at the Auschwitz camp.
This site probably was also selected with the idea that the Allies would not
bomb a concentration camp, a supposition that proved correct.
Yet, despite
the facts - established during the Nuremberg trials - that more than $2 billion
in today’s dollars were spent; that 300,000 slave laborers had been used in
both the construction and operation of this plant; and that it had consumed
more electricity than Berlin, not one pound of buna, or synthetic rubber,
was ever produced.
So, what was produced?
“The facility has all of the characteristics of a
uranium enrichment plant,” noted Hydrick, adding, “the various components of
the German atomic bomb efforts could have been implemented with a high
degree of secrecy, even from other high-level Nazis, given Bormann’s
close-knit relationships with Ohnesorge; Schmitz, who was chief of I.G. Farben; [Rudolf ] Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz; and Heinrich Mueller,
who, among his many other duties as head of the Gestapo, oversaw the
supplying of forced laborers to Auschwitz.”
A theory has been offered that, late in the war, certain Nazis arranged the
transfer of enriched uranium to the United States in exchange for immunity
from prosecution. At the heart of this transfer theory lies the saga of a
Nazi submarine - the U-234.
Unterseeboot-234 was originally designed as a mine-layer but was converted
to a cargo carrier prior to its only mission into enemy waters: the last
German shipment to its ally, Japan. It sailed from Kiel in March 1945, with
a most unusual cargo consisting of several high-level German officials,
including Dr. Heinz Schlicke, the inventor of fuses for atomic bombs, and
two Japanese officers - Air Force Colonel Genzo Shosi and Navy Captain
Hideo Tomonaga.
Also listed on the boat’s manifest of 240 metric tons of cargo
were two dismantled ME-262 jet fighters, ten gold-lined cylinders containing
560 kilograms of uranium oxide, wooden barrels of “water,” and infrared
proximity fuses.
On May 14, 1945, six days after the German surrender, the U-234 was
intercepted by the USS Sutton and taken into captivity. Oddly enough, the
sub had been overflown several times by Allied aircraft but never fired
upon. The circumstances implied a preplanned meeting and surrender. Here the
mystery began. Who issued the orders for this enemy sub to surrender, and
why to the Americans? Upon arrival at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, it appeared
that some of the boat’s cargo was missing.
The two Japanese officers, after learning that the ship’s captain planned
to surrender, had committed suicide and were buried at sea with full honors.
But, suspiciously, the two ME-262s were missing, as well as the uranium
oxide. In fact, when the U.S. Navy prepared its own manifest for the U-234,
there was no accounting for seventy tons of cargo.
Dr. Velma Hunt, a Colorado environmental scientist, said she uncovered
information that the U-boat made a secret stop at South Portland, Maine,
sometime between May 14 and May 17, 1945, where the cargo in question could
have been unloaded. There has been controversy as to whether this uranium
had been enriched enough for use as a weapon.
Cook noted that the gold-lined cylinders indicated the uranium was emitting
gamma radiation, which meant the normally harmless uranium oxide had been
brought to enrichment through the use of a working nuclear reactor.
“And
yet, officially, there had been no nuclear reactor in Germany capable of
fulfilling this task,” wrote Cook. “[At least] not in Speer’s orbit of
operations.”
Farrell further explains,
“The use of gold-lined cylinders is explainable by
the fact that uranium, a highly corrosive metal, is easily contaminated if
it comes into contact with other unstable elements. Gold, whose radioactive
shielding properties are as great as lead, is also, unlike lead, a highly
pure and stable element, and is therefore the element of choice when storing
or shipping highly enriched and pure uranium for long periods of time, such
as a voyage.
Thus, the uranium oxide on board the U-234 was highly enriched
uranium, and most likely, highly enriched U-235, the last stage, perhaps,
before being reduced to weapons grade or to metallization for a bomb (if it
was already in weapons grade purity) [emphasis in the original].”
Adding weight to Farrell’s deduction is an anecdote regarding the German
crew of the U-234. Some crew members were amused when they saw the Japanese
officers bring on board cargo marked “U-235.”
They apparently thought their
Japanese guests couldn’t even get the number of the boat correct. Some now
believe the labels indicated the presence of uranium 235, the only isotope
found in nature that has the ability to cause an expanding fission chain
reaction - in other words, the element needed for a uranium fission bomb.
Uranium that has undergone an extraction process to boost its U-235
proportion is known as enriched uranium.
Wolfgang Hirschfeld, radioman on the U-234, stated the submarine’s orders
were “only to sail on the orders of the highest level. Fuehrer HQ.” He also
revealed after the war that crew members believed Japan had succeeded in
testing an atomic weapon before their departure from Germany in March 1945.
The U-234 met an inglorious end in November 1947, when it was used as a
torpedo target and sunk off Cape Cod.
Hydrick published copies of documents from the National Archives to show a
connection between the Manhattan Project and the U-234. One such document is
a secret cable from the commander of naval operations directing that a
three-man party take possession of the sub’s cargo. In addition to two naval
officers was the name of Major John E. Vance with the Army Corps of
Engineers, the department of the army under which the Manhattan Project
operated.
A few days after the visit by Vance, a manifest of the cargo indicated the
uranium was no longer in navy possession.
Furthermore, telephone transcripts
between Manhattan intelligence officers about a week later stated a captured
shipment of uranium powder was being tested by a person identified only as
“Vance.”
“That there could have been another ‘Vance’ who was working with
uranium powder - especially ‘captured’ uranium powder - is improbable,” noted Hydrick.
But author Henry Stevens found an even more disturbing cover-up. After
receiving a statement from the National Archives denying that any canisters
containing fissionable material was onboard the U-234, Stevens, recalling
that the submarine had surrendered to the USS Sutton, wrote to the Naval
Historical Center at the Washington Navy Yard requesting a cargo manifest
from the U-234 in the files of the Sutton.
For a $5 microfiche charge,
Stevens received the manifest that was identical to the one from the
National Archives except that the uranium oxide canisters were listed. This
discrepancy in the manifests can only be explained by someone altering the
documents.
A plutonium bomb, such as the one Manhattan scientists were developing,
required a critical mass to be achieved within 1/3000th of a second, a speed
far exceeding the capabilities of fuses available at that time. According to
Farrell, there is evidence to support the idea that the necessary fuses were
obtained from U-234 passenger Dr. Schlicke.
A message from the chief of
Naval Operations to the authorities in Portsmouth, where the U-234 was taken
after its surrender, indicated that Dr. Schlicke along with his fuses were
to be taken to Washington accompanied by naval officers. Once there, the
doctor was scheduled to present a lecture on his fuses in the presence of a
“Mr. Alvarez,” apparently meaning Dr. Luis Walter Alvarez, the man who is
credited with producing fuses for the plutonium bomb.
Alvarez and his
student Lawrence Johnson are credited with designing the exploding-bridgewire
detonators for the spherical implosives used in the Trinity bomb test as
well as the Nagasaki bomb.
On March 3, 1945, President Roosevelt received an ominous memo from Senator
James F. Byrnes, a Democrat from South Carolina and a longtime confidant to
the president.
This “Memorandum for the President” stated,
“I understand
that the expenditures for the Manhattan Project are approaching 2 billion
dollars with no definite assurance yet of production.... Even eminent
scientists may continue a project rather than concede its failure.”
Byrnes,
who went on to become a secretary of state and a Supreme Court justice, was
voicing the concern of many that the atom bomb project was foundering and
might even prove a failure. Byrnes may have been aware of a letter dated
December 28, 1944, in which Eric Jette, chief metallurgist at Los Alamos,
expressed reservations over the lack of sufficient amounts of uranium for
the atomic bomb.
“A study of the shipment of [weapons grade
uranium] for the past three months shows the following... : At present
rate we will have 10 kilos by February 7 and 15 kilos about May 1.”
According to Hydrick, Edward Hammel, a metallurgist who worked at Los
Alamos, where enriched uranium was made into material for the atomic bomb,
reported that very little enriched uranium was received there until less
than a month before the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
Little Boy, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, carried 64.15 kilograms of
enriched uranium, virtually the entire quantity that could have been
produced since mid-1944 by the enrichment facilities at Oak Ridge,
Tennessee, even working around the clock. One explanation for the lack of
enriched uranium was that some of this fissionable material had been used to
produce plutonium in Enrico Fermi’s breeder reactors at Hanford, Washington.
The mounting pressure on Manhattan Project directors to produce a bomb
before the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands must have been
terrific. If the submarine’s cargo did indeed include U-235 and Dr.
Schlicke’s fuses, its acquisition by the United States solved two pressing
problems of the Manhattan atomic bomb project - a lack of sufficient amounts
of uranium and adequate fuses.
The American bomb-makers may have been
greatly relieved that the two major problems facing the Manhattan Project
were solved with the surrender of the U-234.
“The fact that U-234 arrived
on American soil carrying 560 kilograms of uranium that was enriched and
went on to be used in the bombs that were dropped on Japan can scarcely be
argued any longer except by those who refuse to consider the evidence,”
concluded Hydrick.
While it may remain a controversy whether the acquisition
of the U-234 was a fortuitous capture or the planned transfer of technology
from Germany to the United States, the evidence strongly indicates the
latter.
If additional uranium was obtained from the U-234, this would have provided
more than could ever have been produced by the Manhattan Project, and the
equivalent of about eight Hiroshima bombs. It also means the German nuclear
program was much further advanced than believed by conventional historians.
In late July 1945, atomic bomb components - and perhaps additional German
uranium bombs - were delivered to Tinian Island in the Pacific following a
secret and rushed voyage from California by the USS Indianapolis.
After
delivering its deadly cargo, this Portland- class heavy cruiser suffered the
largest single at-sea loss of life in
U.S. naval history and became the last American ship sunk in World War II
after being torpedoed by a Japanese submarine in the Philippines.
Farrell voiced the suspicion that the Indianapolis may have delivered much
more than America’s atomic bomb - it may have carried a German bomb in
addition to its cargo of uranium and fuses.
He was supported by Stevens, who
wrote that the,
“unexploded German atomic bombs fell into the hands of the
Americans at the end of the war in Europe in May 1945, two months before the
‘first’ explosion of an atomic weapon in the New Mexico desert. What a
present for the Americans!
All they did was to put new tail fins on the
bombs, repaint them, and drop them on Japan. Naturally, the American
scientists involved with the Manhattan Project were given credit.”
But, if the Nazis had developed a working atomic bomb, why was it not used
as Allied armies closed in on Germany? One answer seems to be that they did
not have a reliable delivery system in place.
The Nazis’ V-3, a smooth-bore
150-mm gun dubbed the Centipede, designed to launch large-finned shells into
London, along with its multistage A-10 rocket, was still undependable. Witkowski voiced his suspicions that the fatal flight of Lieutenant
Joseph
Kennedy, older brother to the future president, might have been an ill-fated
attempt to destroy the V-3 complex at Mimoyecques, France. The giant
airfield in Norway, home to the massive six-engine bombers, had not yet been
completed.
This idea was echoed by Stevens, who became convinced that the Third Reich
produced an atomic bomb.
“The Germans did make atomic bombs,” he stated
emphatically. “Not only did they make atomic bombs, they made uranium as
well as plutonium bombs and other atomic weapons which remain somewhat of a
mystery. What the Germans could not do, in these dying days of the Third
Reich, was to match up one of these nuclear weapons with an effective
delivery system. The reasons for this differ with each weapon, individually,
and run the [gamut] from mistake to treachery to incompetence.”
One thought that must have crossed the minds of Nazi leaders was the total
destruction of Germany that would have resulted from the use of a nuclear
weapon.
The devastation of London or New York would not have materially
altered the course of the war in the spring of 1945. And the retaliation of
the Allies would have been unimaginable. Further, high-ranking Nazis, such
as Hitler’s secretary Martin Bormann, who by war’s end had become the second
most powerful man in Nazi Germany, realized the war was lost, and used
advanced technology as a bargaining chip with the Western allies.
Hydrick proposed just that intriguing possibility: that the U-234 was
purposely handed over to U.S. authorities on the order of Bormann in
exchange for immunity as part of a covert plan for the continuation of Nazi
research.
Although there was criticism over Hydrick’s technical descriptions
of both the atomic bomb and its detonators, his mass of documentation
concerning the transfer of nuclear technology from Germany to America is
compelling.
Hydrick’s claim is supported by Farrell, who wrote,
“I have
argued that most likely all of it [extra uranium and even atom bombs] came
from Nazi Germany, courtesy of Nazi Party Reichsleiter Bormann and SS
Obergruppenfuehrer Hans Kammler.”
But Farrell had an even more horrifying thought about why the Nazis did not
drop an atomic bomb. Considering Nazi research into quantum physics and
energy manipulation, Farrell speculated that their atomic bombs “were being
developed as detonators for something far more destructive.” Since only a
few scattered plans to Nazi super-science were recovered after the war, the
question arises, “What became of their advanced technology?”
There has never
been a public answer.
HOWEVER , THE ANSWER to this question may be found by studying the
man in charge of Germany’s high-tech weapons programs, Dr. Engineer Hans Kammler.
Kammler, whose name has been largely lost to history, may have played a
large role in developing and hiding away the technology secrets of Hitler’s
Third Reich. Kammler did not have higher purposes in mind when he set out to
develop rockets and energy manipulation. He was searching for new weapons.
Born in 1901, Kammler completed engineering studies at a technical
university and began working for the German Air Ministry. Aft er joining the
Nazi SS, he managed finances and construction for the SS until 1942, when he
became chief of Group C under the Wirtschafts und Verwaltungshauptamt, or
the Economic and Administrative Central Offi ce (WVHA) of the SS, one of
five key branches of the Black Shirts.
This branch controlled all economic
enterprises as well as all concentration and extermination camps. Beginning
in 1943, Kammler took control of all “special tasks,” which included
“Kammler special construction” - the creation of secret underground facilities
as well as exotic weapons programs. His official title was SS Obergruppenfuehrer, or lieutenant general, and he had worked his way up to
command the Third Reich’s most precious war time secrets.
In mid-1943, SS chief Heinrich Himmler sent a letter to armaments minister
Speer. “With this letter, I inform you that I, as SS Reichsfuehrer... do
hereby take charge of the manufacture of the A-4 instrument,” it read. The
A-4 rocket was later designated by Hitler as the V-2. Himmler then placed Kammler in charge of the project, one of Germany’s most secret high-tech
weapons systems.
Due to the devastation brought on by incessant Allied air
raids, by the end of 1944, Kammler had taken control of weapons research as
well as the construction of underground factories and concentration camps.
“Thus - just a few weeks before the end of the war
- he had become commissioner
general for all important weapons,” wrote Speer, who later bemoaned the fact
that Himmler’s SS gradually assumed total control over Germany’s weaponry,
production, and research.
In connection with his new responsibilities, Kammler created an SS
Sonderkommando, or special command, independent from the normal German
military and bureaucracy.
“What Kammler had established was a ‘special
projects office,’ a forerunner of the entity that had been run by the bright
young colonels of the USAF’s stealth program in the 1970s and 1980s,” noted
Cook. It was “a place of vision, where imagination could run free,
unfettered by the restraints of accountability. Exactly the kind of place,
in fact, you’d expect to find anti- gravity technology, if such an
impossible thing existed.”
Kammler also had use of computer technology that was only dreamed of in
American science fiction stories.
“Dr. Kammler had the benefit of
knowledge, hardware and software that was developed by the computing
pioneer, Dr. Konrad Zuse,” wrote Stevens.
“In spite of everything churned
out by the computer industry and ‘history’ as we know it, Dr. Zuse built the
first digital computer in 1938 and the first programmable soft ware
language, Plankaikuel. He also was instrumental in developing magnetic tape
as a computer storage medium. By 1944 the Germans were using computers, the
Zuse-built Z-3, to plot the course of ballistic attack by the V-2 at
Peenemunde and Nordhausen.”
Stevens, who spent more than fifteen years
researching the Reich’s most secret technology, including flying saucers,
wrote,
“By the end of the war a whole new research and production command
and control structure had been set up which reduced or replaced the figures
we normally think of as running the Th ird Reich, such as, for instance,
Hermann Goering and Albert Speer.”
It was Kammler and his Sonderkommando
that became the repository for the Reich’s most advanced technology, going
far beyond the rockets and flying discs.
But Kammler’s immediate concern was the V-2 rocket program. Kammler worked
closely with Wernher von Braun and his superior, Luftwaffe Major General
Walter Dornberger.
Von Braun, who had been a member of the SS since 1940,
carried the rank of SS Sturmbannfuehrer, or major.
Alarmed by progress on the V-2 rockets, Britain’s Bomber Command sent 597
bombers on the night of August 16–17, 1943, to raid Peenemunde - Germany’s
top-secret rocket facility built on an island at the mouth of the Oder River
near the border of Germany and Poland. Because of a navigation “blunder,”
much of the underground and well-camouflaged Peenemunde site was left
undamaged.
Brian Ford described the results:
“Even so, over 800 of the
people on the island were killed.... After this, it was realized that
some of the facility had better be dispersed throughout Germany; thus the
theoretical development facility was moved to Garmisch-Partenkirchen,
development went to Nordhausen and Bleicherode, and the main wind-tunnel and
ancillary equipment went down to Kochel, some 24 miles south of Munich.
This
was christened Wasserbau Versuchsanstalt Kochelsee - experimental waterworks
project - and gave rise to the most thorough research center for long-range
rocket development that, at the time, could have been envisioned.”
Mary Bennett and David S. Percy, authors of
Dark Moon: Apollo and the
Whistleblowers, speculated that the British air raid on Peenemunde was
designed not to knock out the V-rocket site but to force it to move to safer
environs, to ensure the safety of the rocket program.
They showed how the
raid bombed the site’s northern peninsula rather than the main facility, due
to misplaced target indicators. These authors noted that of the eight
hundred personnel who died in the air raid, about half were mostly Russians
from the prisoner labor force and the other half were technicians and their
families.
After this raid, the irreplaceable Hermann Oberth was transferred
to the safety of the Reinsdorf works near Wittenberg, to continue his work.
“Instructions from the highest level, it seems, had been to target personnel
and certainly not the V-2 rocket production facilities. It was clearly
CRUCIAL that these rockets, plans and parts were spared,” they stated.
Someone with high authority wanted this Nazi
technology available to them after the war.
Nick Cook also saw the connection between such exotic technology and the
mysterious Hans Kammler.
“There was, via the Kammler trail, a mounting body
of evidence that the Nazis, in their desperation to win the war, had been
experimenting with a form of science the rest of the world have never
remotely considered,” he wrote.
“And that somewhere in this cauldron of
ideas, a new technology had been born; one that was so far ahead of its time
it had been suppressed for more than half a century.”
One clue to what this revolutionary technology might involve was found in
the capture of physicist Walter Gerlach, one of the Nazi scientists brought
to the United States after the war. Gerlach has been connected with the
German attempts to build an atomic bomb, yet his background indicated even
more esoteric knowledge.
In 1921, Gerlach received a Nobel Prize, not for nuclear research but for
magnetic spin polarization, dealing with the momentum of electrons of atoms
situated in a magnetic field. Such work had little to do with the atomic
bomb but much to do with energy manipulation to include antigravity.
In 1931, a paper titled “About Gravitation, Vortices and Waves in Rotating
Media” was published by O.C. Hilgenberg, a student of Gerlach, which
indicated the focus of Gerlach’s work.
“And yet, after the war, Gerlach, who
died in 1979, apparently never returned to these subject matters, nor did he
make any references to them; almost as if he had been forbidden to do so,”
noted Cook.
Interestingly, Gerlach’s wartime work diaries were confiscated
by U.S. authorities and remain classified today.
At the turn of the current century, both Cook and the Polish military
journalist Witkowski tracked Kammler and his top-secret Nazi energy work to
the Wenzeslaus Mine, located about 215 miles west of Warsaw in Lower
Silesia, near the border with Czechoslovakia. This mine is in Ludwikowice
Klodzkie, formerly Ludwigsdorf. The location was perfect for security
purposes as it was outside Germany yet within the Greater Third Reich.
Additionally, Kammler spoke fl uent Czech.
During their journey, Witkowski revealed his access to a formerly classified
Soviet document detailing the interrogation at the end of the war of a
Rudolf Schuster, who had been a member of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, or
Reich Central Security Office, Nazi Germany’s version of the Department of
Homeland Security.
Schuster revealed that in June of 1944, he was
transferred to a special evacuation Kommando called General Plan 1945,
formed by Martin Bormann to evacuate valuable science and technology from
the Reich. Schuster, who was not privy to the plan’s overall agenda,
nevertheless located much of these evacuation activities in the area of the Wenzeslaus Mine.
Schuster’s testimony, coupled with other information, convinced Cook that
the Bormann evacuation plan had been one of the Nazis’ greatest secrets.
“There has never been any official acknowledgment of the existence of the
special evacuation Kommando,” he wrote.
It was this unacknowledged
evacuation operation that saved the Reich’s most precious technology. Once
at the mine site, Cook and Witkowski found remnants of what once had been a
secret SS testing and production facility that may have even included a
giant early superconductor.
In 1931, the Wenzeslaus Mine suffered an accident that caused bankruptcy and
a takeover by the Polish government. With the occupation of Poland, the mine
was reconditioned by the Nazis as a gigantic science center.
“The whole
area, in the center of which was located the main left shaft, proved to be
the interior of a deep valley, which was accessible only through two
‘mountain passes,’ ” noted Witkowski.
“Since the remnants of watchtowers
could be seen in them, it was obvious that the whole area had been closely
guarded, and its configuration caused that in this way the whole valley was
physically cut off [from] the outside world.”
This valley, about three
hundred yards across, was bisected by rail lines, and lined with a variety
of structures, concrete bunkers, and guard stations, many covered with dirt
and trees to act as camouflage. Today the site is virtually ruins and
overgrown with trees and vegetation.
Cook saw that,
“the Germans had gone to a great deal of trouble to ensure
that the place looked pretty much as it had always looked since mining
operations began here at the turn of the last century, a clear indication
that whatever had happened here during the war had been deeply secret....
Almost everything that was known about the Wenzeslaus Mine had been handed
down from [SS General Jakob] Sporrenberg [the officer appointed to command
the ‘northern route’ of General Plan 1945’s evacuation Kommando]. It had
been run by the SS, had employed slave-labor and had been sealed from the
outside world by a triple ring of check points and heavily armed guards.”
Sporrenberg’s testimony and affidavits, the only known description of the
strange experiments at the mine, were given during a postwar trial in
Poland. He was found guilty of war crimes and executed.
In the closing days of the war, most of the local population was evacuated
westward. In fleeing the Russians, many of these refugees died during the
fighting or froze in one of the coldest winters on record. Today, most of
the local residents are newcomers with no recollection of what transpired at
the mine during the war.
A central shaft led downward to the original mine as well as a labyrinth of
additional underground facilities dug by Germans. But what most intrigued
Cook and Witkowski was a huge circular concrete structure. Green camouflage
paint was still visible on the edges. The circular structure was formed by
twelve thick columns supporting a dodecagon-shaped reinforcing concrete ring
about ninety feet in diameter.
Initially, Witkowski thought this might be the remains of a cooling tower.
He abandoned this idea once he saw cooling towers at a different location
on photographs of the area, taken in 1934. Next he thought of the structure
as a “fly trap,” similar to those used to test helicopters and other
hovering aircraft . Yet, this answer was not satisfactory either in that the
researchers found a concrete duct containing thick electric cables leading
to a power-generating station.
Learning that high-voltage current cannot be
used in mines with the potential for flammable gas - such as the Wenzeslaus
Mine - Cook and Witkowski determined that the structure had nothing to do with
mining but was used in connection with the strange experiments described to
his captors by the SS officer Sporrenberg.
These experiments centered around a bell-shaped object - appropriately enough
codenamed Die Glocke, or the Bell - which was housed in a concrete chamber
hundreds of feet underground. According to the research of Witkowski and
Cook, the Bell was made from hard, heavy metal and cylindrical in shape with
a semicircular cap and hook or clamping device on top. Huge quantities of
electricity were fed into it through thick cables dropping into the housing
chamber from the outside. Inside the Bell was a thermos-like tube encased in
lead and filled with a metallic liquid.
During operation, the Bell was covered by a ceramic material, apparently to
act as insulation. Inside, two contra-rotating cylinders filled with a
mercury-like and violet-colored substance spun a vortex of energy, which
emitted a strange phosphorescent blue light and made such a buzzing sound
that operators nicknamed it the Bienenstock, or beehive.
Due to the phosphorescent light and reports that operators suffered from
nervous-system disruption, headaches, and a metallic taste, Witkowski
concluded the Bell’s operation involved iodizing radiation as well as a very
strong magnetic field of energy.
The scientists experimenting with the Bell
would place various plants, animals, and animal tissue within its energy
field.
“In the initial test period from November to December 1944, almost
all the samples were destroyed,” noted Cook.
“A crystalline substance formed
within the tissues, destroying them from the inside; liquids, including
blood, gelled and separated into clearly distilled fractions.”
Very little is known for certain about the Bell. However, it was given the
highest - and perhaps most unique - classification possible in the Third Reich.
In a few captured documents, experimenters with the Bell were said to be
working on something Kriegsentscheidend, or decisive for the war. Most
top-secret German weapons, including the V rockets, were classified
Kriegswichtig, or important to the war.
One major reason that so little is known about the Bell was the loss of the
scientists involved in the project.
“They were taken out and shot by the SS
between the 28th of April and the 4th of May, 1945,” explained Witkowski.
“Records show that there were 62 of them, many of them Germans. There were
no survivors, but then that’s hardly surprising.... It’s quite clear that
someone had gone to great lengths to clean up.”
The whole concept is a nightmare - Nazis tinkering with the building blocks of
the universe. And it gets even worse.
TO TRY AND understand the purpose of the Bell requires a brief side trip
into the amazing world of cutting-edge science and quantum physics. While
discussions and articles about energy manipulation - whether termed cold
fusion, antigravity, or free energy - have been generally discouraged as
science fiction in mainstream America, many credible writers have dealt with
the subject.
In his 2003 book Winning the War: Advanced Weapons, Strategies, and Concepts
for the Post-9/11 World, Colonel John B. Alexander noted,
“A potential link
between superconductor quantum mechanics and gravity has been inferred from
recent quantum gravity research. Another approach to modifying gravity
involved the manipulation of the quantum vacuum ZPE [Zero Point Energy found
in the vacuum of space] field. One proposed experiment to manipulate the
ZPE involves the use of ultrahigh-intensity lasers to irradiate a magnetized
vacuum. If any of these are successful it will change energy issues on Earth
and our relationship with the universe by allowing deep space travel.”
The idea of gaining mastery - and power - from the environment around us is
nothing new.
Such ideas were advanced by American physicist
Thomas Townsend
Brown, who, in the early 1920s, experimented with antigravity based on his
understanding that a charged capacitor tended to move toward a positive
plate when sufficiently energized in the hundred kilovolt and upward range.
Brown contended that all matter is essentially an “electrical condition.”
“It fact, it might be said that the concrete body of the universe is nothing
more than an assemblage of energy which, in itself, is quite intangible.”
Brown’s theories echoed those of U.S. electrical engineer
Nikola Tesla,
whose discovery in 1888 of the rotating magnetic field led to alternating-current (AC) electricity transmission. Tesla foresaw limitless free energy
by simply tapping into the Earth’s natural magnetic energy field.
In 1908, long before the idea of rotating magnetic fields was commonplace in
science, Tesla stated:
Every ponderable atom is differentiated from a tenuous fluid, filling all
space merely by spinning motion, as a whirl of water in a calm lake. By
being set in motion this fluid, the ether, becomes gross matter. Its
movement arrested, the primary substance reverts to its normal state
[stillness].
It appears, then, possible for man through harnessed energy of the medium
and suitable agencies for starting and stopping ether whirls to cause matter
to form and disappear. At his command, almost without effort on his part,
old worlds would vanish and new ones spring into being.
He could alter the
size of this planet, control its seasons, adjust its distance from the sun,
guide it on its eternal journey along any path he might choose, through the
depths of the universe. He could make planets collide and produce his [own]
suns and stars, his heat and light, he could originate life in all its
infinite forms. To cause at will the birth and death of matter would be
man’s grandest deed, which would make him the master of physical creation,
make him fulfill his ultimate destiny.
The belief that antigravity or other exotic technologies were passed from
the Nazis to the Allies has been further supported by sporadic periodical
coverage of antigravity in the late 1940s and early 1950s. This was at a
time before the total blackout of news concerning energy-manipulation
experimentation was enforced as a “matter of national security.”
In 1956, the Swiss aviation journal Interavia Aerospace Review published an
article titled “Towards Flight Without Stress or Strain... or Weight.”
The article carried the dateline of Washington, D.C., and stated,
“Electro-gravitics research, seeking the source of gravity and its control,
has reached a stage where profound implications for the entire human race
begin to emerge. Perhaps the most startling and immediate implications of
all involve aircraft, guided missiles and free space flight of all kinds.”
The article added,
“There are gravity research projects in every major
country of the world. A few are over 30 years old [emphasis added].”
It also
mentioned that, over and above theoretical research, there was empirical
research into the “study of matter in its super-cooled, super-conductive
state, of jet electron streams, peculiar magnetic effects [and] the
electrical mechanics of the atom’s shell.” The article stated that the
weight of some materials utilized in this research had been reduced by as
much as 30 percent by “energizing” them. But in a premonition of what was to
come, it added, “Security prevents disclosure of what precisely is meant by
‘energizing’ or in which country this work is underway.”
Proving the ability of superconductors to produce antigravity effects,
researchers at Pacific National Laboratory, in the late 1980s, cooled a
ceramic superconductor with liquid nitrogen and levitated a round magnet in
midair.
Some of the companies involved in this cutting- edge research, according to
the Interavia Aerospace Review article, included
-
-
-
-
-
Clarke Electronics
Laboratories
-
the U.S. General Electric
Company
The names of these firms are especially noteworthy, because in his 2001 book
on Zero Point energy, author Cook cited another 1956 magazine article naming
aviation experts Lawrence D. Bell, George S. Trimble, and William P. Lear as
stating that work was then under way with “nuclear fuels and equipment to
cancel out gravity.”
This article, from an unnamed publication and titled
“The G-Engines Are Coming!” may have let slip mention of an incredible new
technology.
“All matter within the ship would be influenced by the ship’s gravitation
only,” Lear was quoted as saying. “This way, no matter how fast you
accelerated or changed course, your body would not feel it any more than it
now feels the tremendous speed and acceleration of the earth.”
During the 1960s and 1970s, public discussion of energy manipulation such as
antigravity was virtually closed off, scorned as fantasy or conspiracy
theory. Yet, it is clear that within government and military circles, work
continued secretly in this area. Could it have been based on transferred
Nazi super-science?
Bruce L. Cathie, a former New Zealand commercial pilot, theoretician, and an
advocate of the existence of a worldwide energy grid, wrote in 1971,
“Somewhere, I knew, [my proposed energy grid] system contained a clue to the
truth of [Einstein’s] Unified Field which, he had postulated, permeates all
of existence. I didn’t know at the time that this clue had already been
found by scientists who were well ahead of me in the play.... for many
years they have been carrying out full- scale research into the practical
applications of the mathematical concept contained in that theory.”
The only way to traverse the vast distances of space is to possess the means
of manipulating, or altering, the very structure of space itself; altering
the space-time geometric matrix, which to us provides the illusion of form
and distance.
. . . for distance is an illusion. The only thing keeping places apart in
space is time. If it were possible to move from one position to another in
space in an infinitely small amount of time, or “zero time,” then both the
positions would co- exist, according to our awareness. By speeding up the
geometric of time we will be able to bring distant places within close
proximity. This is the secret of UFOs - they travel by means of altering the
spatial dimensions around them and repositioning in space-time.
One hint that the U.S. government experimented with such technology came in
December 1980, when Betty Cash, Vickie Landrum, and Landrum’s seven-year-old
grandson Colby encountered a large, glowing, diamond-shaped object hovering
in the air near the small town of Huff man, Texas.
The trio, supported by
other witnesses in the area, said the object was surrounded by military
CH-47 helicopters. Days later, the trio experienced painful swellings and
skin blisters, along with headaches, nausea, and hair loss, all symptoms of
intense electromagnetic radiation. In 1985, the three victims sought $20
million in damages from the U.S. government, but the following year, their
suit was dismissed, based on denials by the government that any such craft
existed in its inventory.
Yet another small public exposure to exotic energy manipulation may have
come with the accidental discovery of single-atom (monatomic) elements in
the 1970s by Phoenix-area cotton farmer David Hudson. His discovery was
followed by several scientific papers exploring the mysteries of the atomic
structure, nucleus deformation, and electromagnetism. Hudson himself
obtained eleven worldwide patents on his “Orbitally Rearranged Monatomic
Elements (ORME).”
Hudson found that the nuclei of such monatomic matter acted in an unusual
manner. Under certain circumstances, they began spinning and creating
strangely deformed shapes. Oddly, as these nuclei spun, they began to come
apart on their own.
It was found, for example, that in the element rhodium 103, the nucleus
became deformed in a ratio of two to one, which made it twice as long as it
is wide, and entered a high- spin state. When all electrons are brought
under the control of the nucleus of an atom, the nucleus attains a “highward,”
or high-spin, state. When reaching a state of reciprocal relationship, the
electrons turn to pure white light and the individual atoms fall apart,
producing a white monatomic powder.
Using thermo-gravimetric analysis, it was found that a sample of Hudson’s
monatomic matter lost 44 percent of its original weight when reduced to this
white-powder state. By being either heated or cooled, it would gain or lose
weight.
“By repeated annealing we could make the material weigh less than
the pan weighed it was sitting in,” said Hudson, “. . . or we could make it
weigh 300–400 times what its beginning weight was, depending on whether we
were heating or cooling it.... [I]f you take this white powder and put it
on a quartz boat and heat it up to the point where it fuses with the quartz,
it becomes black and it regains all its weight again. This makes no sense,
it’s impossible, it can’t happen. But there it is.”
“Hudson was then asked to reverse the
process fully by turning the powder back into a piece of metallic gold. It
was like asking someone to remake an apple from a pan of apple
sauce - seemingly impossible! Early trial led to some disastrous results.... By late 1995, the difficulties had been overcome and the figurative apple
had indeed been rebuilt from the apple sauce.
From this, there was no doubt
that it was possible ( just as in ancient metallurgical lore) to manufacture
gold from a seemingly non-gold base product. From a commencing sample which
registered as iron, silica, and aluminum, emerged an ingot which analyzed as
pure gold. After centuries of trial, error, frustration, and failure, the Philosopher’s Stone of ancient times had at last been rediscovered.”
Gardner amassed a wealth of material linking the white powder of gold to
alchemists, the legendary Knights Templar, Solomon’s treasure, the manna of
the Israelites, Moses, and ancient Egypt. The significance of these
connections will become apparent in the next section.
By the early 1990s, scientific papers were being published by the Niels Bohr
Institute and Argonne National and Oak Ridge National Laboratories,
substantiating the existence of these high-spin, monatomic elements and
their power as superconductors.
Hudson also met with Dr.
Hal Puthoff, director of the Institute for Advanced
Studies in Austin, Texas. Puthoff performs cutting- edge research into
zero-point energy and gravity as a zero-point fluctuation force. He and
other scientists have theorized that enough energy exists in the space found
in the atoms inside an empty coffee cup to boil all the oceans of the Earth
if fully utilized.
Puthoff had also theorized that matter reacting in two dimensions should
lose about 44 percent of its gravitational weight, exactly the weight loss
found by Hudson. When it was found that Hudson’s elements, when heated,
could achieve a gravitational attraction of less than zero, Puthoff
concluded the powder was “exotic matter” capable of bending time and space.
The material’s antigravitational properties were confirmed when it was shown
that a weighing pan weighed less when the powder was placed in it than it
did empty. The matter had passed its antigravitational properties to the
pan.
Adding to their amazement, it was found that when the white powder was
heated to a certain degree, not only did its weight disappear but the powder
itself vanished from sight. When a spatula was used to stir around in the
pan, there apparently was nothing there. Yet, as the material cooled, it
reappeared in its original configuration. The material had not simply
disappeared; it apparently had moved into another dimension.
Hudson also saw evidence of perpetual energy through the use of a
superconductor.
“You literally start the superconductor flowing by applying
a magnetic field,” he said. “It responds to this by flowing light inside and
building a bigger Meissner Field [Walter Meissner in 1933 discovered that
light flowing within a superconductor produces an electromagnetic energy
field that excludes external magnetic fields] around it. You can put your
magnet down and walk away. Come back a hundred years later and it is still
flowing exactly as when you left. It will never slow down. There is
absolutely no resistance; it is perpetual motion and will run forever.”
This new technology dealt with the manipulation and control of basic energy.
Some scientists believed that such control at the atomic and subatomic level
might do much more than offer new propulsion technology. It might open the
door to antigravity, limitless free energy, a cure for diseases such as AIDS
and cancer, an end to the aging process, faster-than-light speeds, and much
more, perhaps even inter-dimensional and time travel.
Since science is coming to the conclusion that gravity and time are
interconnected aspects of energy, it is possible that the Bell was used for
experimenting with time travel. This possibility is not as outrageous as it
sounds, as many notable scientists and authors have written seriously about
the possibility of time travel.
Astronomer and Pulitzer Prize winner
Carl Sagan, director of the
Laboratory
for Planetary Studies at Cornell University at the time of his death in
1996, when asked about time travel, stated:
Right now we’re in one of those classic, wonderfully evocative moments in
science when we don’t know, when there are those on both sides of the
debate, and when what is at stake is very mystifying and very profound.
If we could travel into the past, it’s mind-boggling what would be possible.
For one thing, history would become an experimental science, which it
certainly isn’t today. The possible insights into our own past and nature
and origins would be dazzling. For another, we would be facing the deep
paradoxes of interfering with the scheme of causality that has led to our
own time and ourselves. I have no idea whether it’s possible, but it’s
certainly worth exploring.
Jenny Randles, a science-oriented British author, presented compelling
examples of recent discoveries in her 2005 book Breaking the Time Barrier,
which indicate the very real possibility of
time travel. She noted that “a
race to build a time machine has been going on since at least the Second
World War.”
After discussing “worm holes” in time and space, and other
possible means of time travel, she pointed out,
“... [F]rom our
understanding of physics - if you travel faster than light, then you can
overtake the flow of events that light happens to transmit. Since the
passage of these events forms what we interpret as time, then by traveling
faster than light you ought to travel through time. Spaceships that outstrip
light speed are always going to moonlight as time machines.”
Today, more
than one scientist has claimed to have broken the light barrier, though official acceptance has been lacking.
This horrendous idea sounds preposterous, but
the science is there and the Bell did exist.
No wonder certain powerful persons would go to any lengths to obtain or
conceal such knowledge. Just such attempts began in the closing days of
World War II, as the victors sought to learn the secrets of Nazi super-
science.
It is clear that certain members of the American military were keen to learn
Nazi secrets, as shown by this portion of a 1945 letter from Major General
Hugh J. Knerr to Lieutenant General Carl Spaatz, the commander of U.S.
Strategic Air Forces in Europe:
“Occupation of German scientific and
industrial establishments has revealed the fact that we have been alarmingly
backward in many fields of research. If we do not take this opportunity to
seize the apparatus and the brains that developed it and put the combination
back to work promptly, we will remain several years behind while we attempt
to cover a field already exploited.”
Consider the rush into Czechoslovaki a by General George S. Patton’s Third
Army even as the Europe an war wound to a close.
“The madcap, and some would
say, militarily and politically indefensible, Allied dash away from Berlin
and to south-central Germany and Prague are consistent with American
knowledge, at some very high level, of Kammler’s SS Sonderkommando black
projects and secret weapons empire,” wrote Farrell.
Vernon Bowen, whose 1950s-era book on UFOs was classified by the U.S.
government, relates how one of Patton’s officers, Colonel Charles H. Reed,
organized the escape of the Lippizan horses from the Spanish Riding School
at the end of the war, an event memorialized in the 1963 Disney film Miracle
of the White Stallions.
Bowen noted that Reed saved the horses,
“while on his
mission of persuading the head of German intelligence to turn over to the
U.S. the many truckloads of documents buried on the Czech-Austrian
border - documents which are still secret today.”
Could these documents have
been Kammler’s technology files?
The Allies’ rejection of SS chief Himmler’s last-minute offer to surrender
may not have been due to the “frantic attempts of a desperate mass murderer
to avoid his inevitable fate,” as described by mainstream historians, but
instead because Himmler had lost real control over the exotic technology.
After all, Himmler was too high-profile a person to be allowed to live on
after the war. He reportedly committed suicide by taking a poison capsule on
May 23, 1945, after being caught trying to sneak through British lines
disguised as a German Army private.
Hans Kammler, on the other hand, was largely unknown to the public, though
he undoubtedly was high on the list of wanted Nazi war criminals,
considering his involvement in the construction of concentration camps and
their gas chambers as well as his participation in the leveling of the
Warsaw ghetto.
“Unlike Himmler,” noted Cook, “Kammler had something of value
to deal - something tangible. By early April [1945], Hitler and Himmler had
placed under his direct control every secret weapon system of any
consequence within the Third Reich - weapons that had no counterpart in the
inventories of the three powers that were now bearing down on central
Germany from the east and the west.”
“The deal had already probably been cut between Kammler’s representatives
and OSS [the U.S. Office of Strategic Services] station chief in Zurich,
Allen Dulles, or via General Patton himself,” Farrell surmised.
If such a deal was made with Patton, he did not live to see the results.
On
December 9, 1945, while riding in his 1939 Cadillac staff car, Patton
suffered a head injury when his car was struck by a 21/2-ton military truck
that turned in front of them. Patton’s driver and a passenger, his chief of
staff Major General Hobart “Hap” Gay, were uninjured. Paralyzed from the
neck down, Patton was taken to a military hospital in Heidelberg, Germany,
where he died on December 21.
Since the war, there have been several conspiracy theories regarding
Patton’s death - one being that he was killed by his own government. Most have
concentrated on his vocal assertions that the United States should have
carried the war on into Russia and put an end to communism, plus his public
advocacy of reinstating ranking Nazis to help rebuild Germany.
Noting that Patton, whose forces drove straight to the heart of Nazi
research in Czechoslovakia, may well have been aware of Kammler and his
Nazi superweapons, Farrell stated that if Patton was deliberately silenced,
“then surely this [knowledge of Nazi super-science] is the most plausible
motivation for the deed.”
Did knowledge of the incredible ability to manipulate energy die with top
Nazis at the end of the war? Consider the fate of Hans Kammler.
As the war drew to a close, Kammler made no secret that he intended to use
both the V-2 scientists and rockets under his control as leverage for a deal
with the Allies. On April 2, 1945, on Kammler’s orders, a special train
carried rockets and five hundred technicians and engineers escorted by a
hundred SS troopers to an Alpine redoubt in Bavaria.
According to von Braun
and Dornberger, Kammler planned to “bargain with the Americans or one of the
other Allies for his own life in exchange for the leading German rocket
specialists.”
“[Kammler] came to me in early April in order to say good-bye,” recalled
Nazi armaments minister Speer.
“For the first time in our four-year
association, Kammler did not display his usual dash. On the contrary, he
seemed insecure and slippery with his vague, obscure hints about why I
should transfer to Munich with him. He said efforts were being made in the
SS to get rid of the fuehrer. He himself, however, was planning to contact
the Americans. In exchange for their guaranty of freedom, he would offer
them the entire technology of our jet planes, as well as the A-4 rocket and
other important developments....”
On April 4, 1945, when von Braun pressed Kammler for permission to resume
rocket research, the SS officer quietly announced that he was about to
disappear for “an indefinite length of time.”
He was true to his word: no
one saw Kammler again. As everyone knows, von Braun and Dornberger, along
with other scientists and many of the V-2 rockets, eventually made their way
to the United States, becoming founding members of its modern space program
with no help from Kammler.
Jean Michel, himself an inmate of concentration camp Dora, which provided
slave labor for Kammler’s rocket program, wrote of Kammler:
“The chief of
the SS secret weapon empire, the man in Himmler’s confidence, disappeared
without a trace. Even more disturbing is the fact that the architect of the
concentration camps, builder of the gas chambers, executioner of Dora,
overall chief of all the SS missiles has sunk into oblivion. There is the
Bormann mystery, the Mengele enigma; as far as I know, no one, to this day,
has taken much interest in the fate of SS Obergruppenfuehrer Hans Kammler.”
Michel, along with others, wondered,
“Why had the ‘cold and brutal
calculator’ described by Speer so abruptly discarded the trump cards he had
so patiently accumulated?”
As the war drew to a close, Kammler,
“had the good fortune to inspect the
Czechoslovakian stretch of the front,” wrote Witkowski. “After this
event, nobody knew what became of him. Perhaps he died, though it is
unlikely that this would never have been recorded.”
The reports of Kammler’s death are varied and mutually exclusive.
One
version has him committing suicide in a forest between Prague and Pilsen two
days after Germany surrendered, while another said he was shot by his own SS
aide in Prague. Another version was that he died in a shootout with Czech
partisans. The Red Cross initially reported Kammler as “missing,” but this
was later changed to “dead” upon the testimony of a relative. The one common
denominator regarding Kammler’s various death reports was that he was last
seen in north central Czechoslovakia, in close proximity to the Wenzeslaus
Mine - and the Bell.
Despite the lack of a body, no effort appeared to have been taken to
establish the truth of Kammler’s death and, unlike his superior Bormann,
Kammler was not tried in absentia at Nuremberg.
Kammler was not alone in his escape. Dozens of high-ranking former SS or
party members simply disappeared. Many of them were associated with advanced
technology programs.
Did Kammler and his cohorts escape with weapons plans for the amazing Bell
project? Whoever controlled such secret technology was certainly in a strong
position to strike a deal with one of the Allied nations.
With secret projects in the hands of the fanatical SS and with factories and
research facilities scattered over - and under - the countryside, it is entirely
conceivable that saucers, uranium weapons, the Bell, and other exotic
technologies could have been developed without the knowledge of anyone
except Himmler, Bormann, and Kammler. The high- profile Himmler had been
taken out of the loop as far back as 1943.
The fates of Bormann and Kammler
remain unproven.
“[T]he evidence is strong enough to suggest collusion at
the highest levels between the United States and Nazi Germany
governments - and that collusion extends down to those within U-234, its
officers, crew and passengers - and has been maintained by powerful parties
with vested interests on both sides of the Atlantic ever since,” stated Hydrick.
If the highest circle of America’s ruling elite indeed obtained Nazi
super-science in the wake of World War II, it came with a price - one these
prewar, pro-Nazi sympathizers were willing to accept.
When American
authorities realized the alternative and nonlinear physics within Nazi
science, they knew it was beyond the frame of reference of most U.S.
scientists, which is why they recruited so many Germans and brought them to
America.
“The trouble was,” recounted one government insider, “when the Americans
took it all home with them, they found, too late, that it came infected with
a virus - you take the science on, you take on aspects of the ideology as well.”
The intense interest of the Nazi leadership in
occult or hidden
subjects - from ancient artifacts to legends of prehistorical high-tech
super-races - is well documented.
Toward the end of the war, their acquisition
of super-science may have been matched by the recovery of an amazing and
precious treasure.
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